At one point in his ill-fated reign over the Celtics, Rick Pitino told the team that Larry Bird wasn’t going to “come walking through that door.” He was right. But it looks like Danny Ainge is. This is pretty awesome news. It relieves the team of the burden of Chris Wallace, who has made some good moves but has also made some moves so incredibly boneheaded that I can only say “Wow, what a boneheaded move.” It provides a connection to the most recent Celtics dynasty. And Ainge has a good basketball mind. ...

It looks like the whole looting question (original) has been more or less cleared up. Various people were quick to jump on reports that only a handful of artifacts were missing. Turns out that there are only a handful missing… now. Because Customs did its job and found thousands of missing items (mostly manuscripts, some artifacts). Praise is due to the US for making a strong and serious effort to fix the initial mistake. People who can’t wait for the full story to be in before mocking those who mourned the initial loss might want to consider getting a little more patient.

Dear Raed is back, with the assistance of Diana Moon. (Via Metafilter.)

Do not fear the giant robots, for El Santo is here! Santo Street is in the business of selling Mexican movie posters. To me, that can mean only one thing: masked wrestlers (original)! These are just so very cool.

So, this cartoon (original). It’s from a newish online comic strip, which has found an audience by being fervently right-wing. The art isn’t bad. OK, all well and good. Occasionally I see right-wing bloggers chuckling at a strip and I can usually see why. But, y’know, that cartoon. I gotta ask. Is the artist aware that the Dems are in fact blocking only a handful of nominees? Jeff Sutton got through, no problems. Deborah Cook just got through. Michael McConnell got through. Dennis Shedd got through. Timothy Tymkovich got through. ...

The new Richard Thompson CD is out, so what are you waiting for? Somewhat terrifyingly, it appears to come with a bonus CD, and Amazon claims that “Kiss” by Prince is on that CD. Dig if you will the picture. I’ll report back on that when I know more. What I know right now is that you can get a limited edition EP (original) at certain retailers, which has a couple live tracks on it, so the healthy thing to do would be to buy it. I did. ...

Actually, it occurs to me that since the book has been announced, there’s nothing stopping me from saying “Hey, look at this, I wrote part of it.” So there you are. Yes, I am a diehard wrestling fan. I have an old LJ post about this which I think I will dig up soon.

The Great Sasuke continues to get all the good press (original), although CNN failed to post a picture of the new mask. No worries; as the premier provider of masked politician news on the Internet, I tracked one down. Very sleek, and I think the coat of arms on the side is an especially nice touch.

Quick little followup on Jimmy Wynn: Jay Bookman wrote an editorial about Wynn (original) in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Read it while you can; it’ll move to a paid archive at some point.) From the summaries of his past columns, I wouldn’t call him a conservative — he looks pretty liberal to me. He defended Wynn and praised the decisions made by the GBI. So, I guess that’s who’ll speak out against this injustice. Liberal columnists. ...

How times change. April 24, 2003 (original): The world must focus on the issue of nonproliferation, says President George Bush. “One of our goals and objectives must be to strengthen the nonproliferation regimes and get the whole world focused on proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” he told Tom Brokaw of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) during an April 24 interview aboard Air Force One on his way to Canton, Ohio. ...