PicoBlog

CJ Dippre transferred to Alabama after a breakout season at Maryland. The former high school quarterback projects as a developmental depth in-line tight end who will go on day three of the 2024 NFL Draft. Visit my Twitter account @Sam_Teets33 for more opinions on prospects, clips, and the latest football content. Classification: Junior tight end from Scranton, Pa. Background: Dippre was a three-star recruit from Lakeland Jr. Sr. High School in Jermyn, Pa.

For the first Shelf Space feature, I want to highlight CJ Dunne. CJ and I grew up playing beach flags together at summer camp. He was always, and still is, an incredibly warm and personable guy. And when I stepped onto Notre Dame’s campus as a senior in high school, CJ set aside a substantial amount of time to give my dad and me a tour. It has been incredibly neat watching CJ turn from the summer camper into a start-up founder.

One day early because of travel plans. On our way up to Anacortes last week, to catch the ferry to Shaw and Lopez Islands, my wife and I stopped at the Tommy Thompson trail in Anacortes. If you’ve never been, the trail runs along an old train track for 3.3 miles. We had limited time so headed to the section that crosses the restored train trestle across Fidalgo Bay. Built around 1891, the trestle linked Anacortes to the east, at Weaverling Spit, which facilitated the movement of goods and people.

In recent years, comedy movies have mostly been either too lazy or too mannered. We’ve gotten lots of half-written improv-as-streaming-company-loss-leader or neoliberal circle jerks like Booksmart, in which aspirational characters trade progressive memes we’re meant to nod at in recognition, but not much genuine laughter. 2016 scared the shit out of much of the artistic class, and comedy largely pivoted to affirmation in response (think: Kate McKinnon singing “Hallelujah” on SNL).

Yuri Bezmenov is a kooky cat. His story is fascinating and a bit tragic: Leaving behind a wife and child, Bezmenov defected from the Soviet Union while he was posted as a KGB officer in India, where he posed as a journalist for Novosti, a Soviet propaganda outlet. With the help of the CIA, Bezmenov initially settled in Canada under the alias “Tomas Schuman.” He then spent several years working for Radio-Canada International (which broadcast into to the Soviet Union), until he was dismissed — either (depending on which story you believe) because of his excessive drinking and inability to get along with his coworkers or because the Soviets had blown his cover and had complained to then-Prime Minister Elliot Trudeau.

It’s the time of year to celebrate, and if I’m serving a cocktail, I’m always inclined to include one with a French spirit in it. Thankfully, a number of classic cocktails are made even better with French spirits, and I invited my friend Forest Collins to cover over, who writes 52 Martinis, a website dedicated to featuring the best cocktail bars in Paris, to shake, stir, and share a few of her favorite cocktail recipes with us.

I know that I’ve mentioned it close to a hundred times at this point, but in case you missed it, we went strawberry picking a few weeks back. I returned home, my arms brimming with warm summer berries and, after reserving some for snacking, I got to work. I turned two pounds into fresh strawberry preserves, and another pound got tucked into a simple sour cream and olive oil cake (recipe coming to the blog next week).

The night federal prosecutors indicted Donald Trump for dozens of felonies, Representative Clay Higgins tweeted the following: The writer Jeff Sharlet – author of The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War, a book I highly recommend – deconstructed the Tweet in an article for The Atlantic. Higgins is basically calling for armed insurrection, the same fascist call to arms I have heard from far-right sheriffs across the country in the course of reporting my forthcoming book.

My longtime friend and fellow broadcaster Mike Allegre has been a fixture in Oregon sports for decades—including 29 seasons broadcasting Willamette University football and basketball contests. He volunteered to write a commentary about an issue that has gotten under his skin—the over-saturation of the airwaves with “less than worthy” college football bowl games. My thanks to him for the contribution while I take this holiday break of mine. (By the way, pronouncing Allegre is easy to do….