If You're Looking for an Escape from Real Life

Welcome to one of the main testosterone weekends of the year. March Madness started off today, and Duke's already out. Do you have your brackets filled out for the office pool? You can check out John McCain's Straight Talk brackets if you want to (but you have to register with an e-mail address), but it's too late to enter into his contest to win a McCain fleece. Wonkette makes an intriguing point, recalling the good old days when McCain sponsored legislation to outlaw gambling on March Madness and college sports in general. But as long as there's not any actual wagering and the spoils include nothing more than a campaign fleece, I guess all's right with the world. But back to the brackets themselves, McCain doesn't really go out on a limb in straight-talking his choices, though. His Final Four includes all four number one seeds. When you used to be a front runner, I guess you don't have much interest in underdogs.

If you're not into basketball but still want to immerse yourself in a testosterone-heavy subculture, there's always SXSW (pronounced south by southwest) in Austin, Texas. This pop culture festival just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and it's now expanded to include several festivals, such as SXSW interactive and SXSW film. But the big draw started out as and continues to be the music festival, and it got underway on Wednesday. According to the SXSW site, 1,493 music acts are scheduled for showcase performances through Sunday. Earlier tonight we could've seen Jon Langford and Sally Timms recalling The Mekons (does that sound as sad to anybody else as it does to me?), Bloc Party, Dengue Fever, The Ponys, Badly Drawn Boy, Razorlight, and Joan as Police Woman, a band that's been intriguing me far more these days than I'd have expected. Or any of 300-some other bands. And as the weekend approaches, the tickets just get hotter.

So with these two events overwhelming life as we know it, there can't be any actual news taking place this weekend, can there? Of course, this is the natural environment for a major Bush administration document dump. Keep your eyes open!