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At left, there’s today’s Columbia Missourian with a late-entry for “obvious subhead of the year.”

In related news: yes, the town really is excited for the Senator’s visit. Well, except for a for a few guys at the local barber shop this afternoon.

“You think he’s really coming? What’s his name? Bo-ama?” one asked me, even as several copies of local papers confirming the visit littered the floor. I didn’t wonder aloud why he was unable to pronounce the Senator’s name, and instead asked the barber why he didn’t believe the news reports .

“Well, they said the same thing about McCain,” he said. “And he just got barbecue and left.”

I tried to assure them that, yes, Obama was really giving a speech in town, not just grabbing a pulled pork sandwich. “Should be a football sized crowd,” I said.

“I guess we’ll be getting the hell out of here, then,” one said.

Over at Time’s Swampland, they’re having a few glitches with the commenting filters. A word of advice from someone who’s been there: a mea culpa works nicely. Also: don’t switch blogging platforms with a week to go in the election.

Watching that old Don Cheadle ad for the NFL playoffs, I was struck by something he said: “Joe’s not just a name. It’s an idea.”

Weird how true that sentiment is this year, no?

From today’s Columbia Tribune:
-Murderer sentenced to 50 years.
-Three arrested after gunfire.
-Skinheads arrested.
-Senator guilty.
-Man(zini) as Houdini.

Oh, and some guy named Barack is coming to town.

For a town where almost nothing of importance ever happens, it seems like everything of any importance always seems to happen on the same day.

Back to stories about sidewalks tomorrow, I suppose.

This New York Times profile of Joel Levinson — perennial viral video contest award-winner — features one astoundingly brilliant paragraph:

Mr. Levinson’s gregariousness is an asset in the user-generated content world, as many of these contests are determined by voting. Mr. Levinson has a Facebook group entitled “Yes, Joel, I’ll vote for your newest stupid contest” and he uses Twitter, blogs, e-mail and text messages, asking acquaintances to vote. He even calls 24-hour customer service lines at night, when he thinks the representatives are bored, and asks them to vote for him.

Telemarketing to those who make calls for a living? Genius.

Professors of photojournalism here at the University of Missouri do not encourage us to take photos of signs. Unless, of course, they’re this brilliant.

Newsweek said, uh, this week, that “our comedy has veered too close to our news.” For another example, take today’s Washington Post:

HERSHEY, Pa. — Sen. John McCain made a direct appeal to baseball lovers Tuesday morning while mocking his rival’s decision to buy 30 minutes of television time Wednesday night for an address to the nation.

“No one will delay the World Series with an infomercial when I’m President,” he said to the approval of a crowd of thousands at a stadium here

Which is followed by this paragraph:

McCain’s own convention speech this summer forced a change in the start time of the NFL’s season opener, which started an hour-and-a-half earlier to accommodate McCain’s speech.

Fact checking is a beautiful thing.

A week ago, Senator John McCain came to Columbia, Mo., ate barbecue in the south of town and left. The visit was announced three hours before he arrived, though even upon arrival, his spokesperson refused to confirm where the Senator would be going while in town. He stayed less than two hours, made no public remarks and — unless you happened to be stopped in traffic as his motorcade went by — was widely ignored by locals.

Then there’s the case of Senator Barack Obama, who announced Monday his big news: he’ll come to Columbia on Thursday, speaking in a prime time address — 9:30 p.m. local time — on the South Quad. I don’t know where they’ll put the stage, but it will be somewhere between the Tiger Fountain and Jesse Hall (see right).

No one has ever given this type of address before on the South Quad, so no one really knows how many people will squeeze in to see Obama. But I’d guess that between the quad and the various fields/streets behind it, somewhere north to 40,000 people will show up to hear him speak.

As a current University of Missouri student, I will also say this: if we don’t beat the crowd of 45,000 that was at Colorado State last weekend, I’ll be disappointed.

[photo by Dan Oshinsky]

Nobody riots these days like they do in Morgantown, or so I thought until I saw these images from Penn State Saturday night after the Fighting JoePa went to Columbus and beat Ohio State.

Of course, that got me thinking about the mother of all sports riots — on Route 1 in College Park, Md., just minutes after the Maryland Terrapins men’s basketball won the national championship in 2002. [Full disclosure: yes, I’m even biased toward the Terps when it relates to rioting.] This classic “Daily Show” segment from the day after sums up the mayhem nicely:

My two favorite polling sites these days are FiveThirtyEight and Pollster, but I do like how Real Clear Politics allows you to create your own path to electoral college victory. For fun, I set the map at “No Toss Up States” and then tried to see how John McCain might reach the elusive mark of 270 votes.

One path that sets him squarely at 270: swinging Nevada, New Mexico, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida. McCain says he thinks he’ll win a week from Tuesday. All I can say: good luck, senator.