tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63166482024-03-23T13:54:37.247-04:00Infinity Ranch (Archive Only)Musings about the important things in life - law, politics, music, racing, soccer, etc. - an "eclectic blend of miscellany"JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.comBlogger3170125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-86107225050484567132010-01-04T00:01:00.001-05:002010-01-04T00:01:02.213-05:00Los EndosI've come to a conclusion.After more than six years and 3100 posts, I've decided that the Ranch has run its course. In short, this will be the last post I make here. I'll leave the blog itself up as an archive (and a collection of useful links), but the lights will go dark after this post, so to speak.What's brought me to this decision? I blame jedi jawa.OK, that's not really fair or accurate,JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-18032592966659534212009-12-31T12:01:00.001-05:002009-12-31T12:01:00.059-05:00You Aughta See . . .While I wrote about music back in the days before blogs, I never really did the same with movies. It wasn't due to lack of interest. A lot of lonely weekends in law school led to my development into a film fanatic. Thanks to Netflix, I've got a treasure trove of great cinema, new and old, to work through these days.As with the tunes, I do not claim to be any kind of an expert. Hell, I can at JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-58068819506792460672009-12-30T17:01:00.001-05:002009-12-30T17:01:00.654-05:00You Aughta Hear . . .Back in the days before blogs, I wrote album reviews. Nothing all that substantive, just gut reactions to whatever passed through my world. Ever since I started this blog I've occasionally popped off about music. So it only seems natural, as we wind up the decade, to look back at the high points.I am by no means an expert and won't make the argument that these are the ten "best" albums of the JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-9966155341710972312009-12-29T17:01:00.003-05:002009-12-29T17:01:00.306-05:002009 - My Year in Film and VideoIn comparison with the year in tunes, it feels like I've hardly seen any movies this year. Maybe it's because, going back over my list, there wasn't anything I saw in the theater that really grabbed me. I suppose I should just delete "film" from the post title, then, but why mess with a tradition?That being said, I managed to uncover quite a bit of good older stuff this year and catch up with JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-77431504759331662572009-12-28T17:07:00.001-05:002009-12-28T17:12:33.772-05:002009 - My Year in TunesYes, dear readers, it's that time of year, once again. The time where I take a few minutes and talk about the cultural artifacts that particularly moved me over the past 12 months. And after that, a special treat - my top movies and tunes of the decade as we send out the Aughts.We start, as always, with music. Holy cow I listened to a lot of tunes this year! It was a big year for several of JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-2235893072475552522009-12-18T18:19:00.003-05:002009-12-18T18:19:00.082-05:00Law Is the DevilThe Devil. It’s always the Devil’s fault.It seems appropriate that in the same week that we bid good riddance to religious huckster supreme Oral Roberts that one of his followers makes the kind of base plea for cash that would have made ol’ Oral smile. Remember, he demanded millions in 1987 lest he be “called home” by the Lord.Rod Parsley runs a megaministry in Columbus, one that is firmly in JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-12129223764204608822009-12-17T19:59:00.004-05:002009-12-18T08:18:45.556-05:0020 Years Ago TonightThe nation first met this family (for the most part):Hard to believe the show started before I was even in college! And that debut episode profoundly shaped my ideals of Christmas:Ho ho ho, indeed!JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-86630755409346508052009-12-15T18:16:00.003-05:002009-12-15T21:58:33.768-05:00A Dubious Honor Is Better Than NoneI’ve never wasted a whole lot of time or energy on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.For one thing, the idea of a “hall of fame” for music of any kind (or art in general) seems odd. Unlike sports, which have statistics to work with and a career defined by a term of specific years, music is inherently subjective and careers never really end, as long as we’re talking about recorded music, anyway. InJD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-31648306184464044402009-12-14T17:48:00.002-05:002009-12-14T17:55:41.807-05:00Perverse JusticeWhen I made the shift from state to federal criminal defense practice, it seemed to me that the leitmotif of the cases passing through our office, which were mostly drug cases, was this: dude gets pulled over for speeding (sometimes flagrantly) or some other minor traffic violation, gives consent to search the car, and the cops recover a large amount of cocaine/crack/meth (pick your poison). JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-83479388420936797812009-12-10T17:45:00.002-05:002009-12-10T17:50:01.913-05:00Who Would Jesus Convict?Sadly, we may never know the answer to that question. For when Jesus gets called for jury duty, she (yup, you read that right) can't make it through voir dire (via Volokh):Christ was sent to Judge Clyde Jones's courtroom for a criminal case. She was excused because she was disruptive, court officials said. Instead of answering questions, she was asking them, a court employee in Jones's office JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-8788050843875435822009-12-09T18:15:00.002-05:002009-12-09T18:20:14.383-05:00Fuck You Aeolus!I live in a duplex. That means that earlier this year when the roof picked up a little wind damage on my side of the house, but quite a bit on my neighbor's side, I had to pony up to put a new roof on the whole shebang. Such is one of the perils of sharing a wall with someone.So today, we've had some amazingly powerful winds whipping around (74 mph at the airport, according to local news). JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-87801006036271664722009-12-08T18:31:00.002-05:002009-12-08T18:55:45.746-05:00Quick HitsJeez, you leave town for a few days and all this juicy news stuff piles up at the front door. Oh well, at the risk of ruining the spirit, if not the letter, of my “one post per day” limit, a few quick thoughts . . .On Clemency & HuckabeeI am no fan of former Arkansas governor and failed GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. His approach to governance is so enmeshed with his religious JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-45766763971862662062009-12-03T17:30:00.005-05:002009-12-06T21:55:46.245-05:00What Ed Said (Redux)Were you glued to the TV last weekend watching the Grey Cup, the Super Bowl of Canada? No, neither was anybody else with a full slate of NFL games to watch. Nonetheless, the game, between the Montreal Alouettes and Saskatchewan Roughriders was a nail biter, coming down to to a field goal attempt with no time left the clock by Montreal kicker Damon Duval.He missed.But wait! A second chance at JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-21187879780274354612009-12-01T17:56:00.002-05:002009-12-01T18:35:42.625-05:00Spoilers Ahead! Deal With ItWhen I first got online in college back the mid-1990s (before there were even pictures on the Web, kids!), the main interactive destination was the USENET newsgroups. Organized by topic and dedicated to a bewildering array of human interests, newsgroups provided a way for fans of particular arts, artists, hobbies, sports teams, whatever to talk to each other in semi-real time. Web-based forums JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-33448862523286206232009-11-30T18:49:00.003-05:002009-11-30T19:00:00.658-05:00I'm a Winnah! (Redux)It is done, yet it is not finished.What could lead to such near incoherence? Why the end of National Novel Writing Month, that's what! For the second year in a row, I've hit the magic 50,000 word month and thus I'm a NaNoWriMo winner twice over!After a month's worth of work, I've pooted forth 50,202 words. That's the good news. The bad news is that, unlike last year, I'm nowhere near finishedJD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-12669642575284018822009-11-24T19:16:00.004-05:002009-11-24T19:18:36.667-05:00How to Make Baseball InterestingI'm not a fan of the national pastime, but maybe that's because I've been doing it wrong. Like engaging with it sober (via Concurring Opinions):I've heard worse excuses to embed some echolyn, while I'm at it:JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-19975975655262486702009-11-23T20:39:00.001-05:002009-11-23T20:42:02.605-05:00Can't Argue With ThatFor the most part, the fortune cookies I get when I eat Chinese food actually make some kind of sense. Not so yesterday's lunch chaser:Now go to it!It's ready to be prick.Add to that the fact that my Chinese word of the day on the other side was "disease" and I'm not sure what they were trying to tell me. Maybe that I should have ordered off the Chinese, rather than Japanese, side of the menu?JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-61267744026917113672009-11-19T22:23:00.002-05:002009-11-19T22:27:36.761-05:00Oh Noes!She's gone rogue, but now Sarah Palin is . . .. . . going Moog! Run for the hills!Shamelessly lifted from here.JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-50346760344522683162009-11-16T18:01:00.002-05:002009-11-16T18:08:13.803-05:00The Breaker’s GoneEnglish actor Edward Woodward, most well known in the States for his Golden Globe winning role in the TV series The Equalizer, has died in a British hospital.Though prolific on stage and both screens (small and big), he only really got to be the main attraction in films twice. Once was in the cult classic The Wicker Man (the first one, obviously) and in one of my favorite films of all time, JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-78879559442853385072009-11-12T17:07:00.000-05:002009-11-12T17:07:00.170-05:00Time to Make Some ListsI just realized that we're coming to an end of a decade, as the "aughts" will finish up when the New Year rolls around in January. Not surprisingly, we're starting to see "best of" lists for the decade. The Times of London is already up with its 100 best films of the decade, while The Onion's AV Club has started a project to nail down the decades best . . . well, everything.In that spirit and JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-58029094903653401732009-11-10T16:55:00.005-05:002009-11-10T16:55:00.309-05:00On Annoyance and ArtWhen it comes to fictional characters, main characters at least, most audiences want them to be likable. They want to empathize with the hero battling evil or the underdog overcoming huge odds. At the very least, we don't want the main character to be an annoying dipshit.Not that annoying dipshits can't be entertaining. John Cleese has made a living annoying other people for a living. He evenJD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-28143037084324726562009-11-09T17:20:00.002-05:002009-11-09T18:17:11.184-05:00Twenty Years Ago . . .A great day indeed.JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-91427199734623705362009-11-06T17:08:00.000-05:002009-11-06T17:08:00.054-05:00Do They Have Super Duper Precedent?Legal briefs on the whole are dry, dull, boring affairs. Trust me - I write them for a living. It can be tempting to try and enliven things with a joke or a pop culture reference, but you have to tread carefully. If the audience either doesn't get the joke or is insulted at its very existence, you're better off dry, dull, and boring. And if you drop a pop culture reference, you might just JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-88997934258511210452009-11-05T17:12:00.001-05:002009-11-05T17:12:00.615-05:00A Kindred SpiritOne of my pet peeves, although one I don't go off on much here because I don't carry a camera around with me all the time, is the abuse so many people heap upon quotation marks. Hardly seems like a day goes by where some store sign or announcement completely mangles the poor things.Thankfully, I've found somebody else who is keeping an archive of this abuse, The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" QuotationJD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316648.post-85970073275561380452009-11-04T18:24:00.004-05:002009-11-05T08:12:22.337-05:00Freedom is Slavery!Turns out Big Brother was right. At least that's what the church up the street from me says. Who knew?At least Big Brother was pithier.JD Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00752668899810828567noreply@blogger.com0