The day the lights went out at the Beaufort Film Festival: We're here, live, at Lady's Island Cinema for Day Two of the BFF. We were 10 minutes into the first documentary of the day, Good Mother, when there was a loud noise and the power went out. The rumor here, and I haven't had a chance to walk out and investigate but several people have, a pole with a transformer near the Huddle House fell over. A couple that was in the intersection said they saw it happen. I also heard that just the transformer fell, so I'm not sure which.

Welcome to my second annual Beaufort Film Festival live blogging. I'm about to leave for the fest, which starts at 10 a.m. at Lady's Island Cinema, and will be posting throughout the day as thoughts arise.

Today is a full slate, with short films kicking the day off, followed by features and a documentary. The movies are also tomorrow. For all the details, go to our special Beaufort Kaleidoscope page.

OK, that's all I have at the moment. Check back all day. I mean it. Somewhere around hour 8 I will be loopy.

I should preface this by saying that I was hoping Rudy got the nomination. I wouldn't vote for him in the general election, but I was pulling for the guy.

With that said, this campaign, this incredible self destruction, HAS to go down as the biggest political boner ever, right? From being the frontrunner to ZERO wins in just a few months, and no close seconds. He spent gazillions in Florida -- he even LIVED there the last month -- and got THIRD. How incredible.

Here is my column from this past Sunday. It's an (hypothetically) humorous look at some predictions for the new year. I wanted to share it with you Gazzogers and get your predictions for 2008. What do you think will happen?

Who needs a crystal ball? Here's 2008 in a nutshell

Writing the news is hard. Predicting the news is fun! See the difference?

Here are our best guesses for 2008, certain to become true. Although we still advise you to read your Beaufort Gazette daily; you know, just in case:

January

I wrote a column Sunday about downtown businesses and their sometime-lax holiday hours. Since some of you Gazoggers are often critical of downtown, I wanted to get your thoughts on the issue.

I spent the better part of today watching football, but whenever I'd turn the channel past one of the all-news networks I saw coverage of "OJ -- The Sequel." They all seem ready to go to an "All-OJ, All the Time" format.

I know it’s gauche to link to your OWN column, but I thought this would be of interest to a lot of our Gazzoggers out there. This is not a partisan issue, unfortunately. Maybe if it was, there’d at least be two sides. No, when politicians have to vote about giving themselves more power, they tend to agree.

I wrote this column in Sunday’s Life & Times section. The link to the original is here.

Amy Rigard has a terrific story in Sunday’s paper about beach and pool etiquette. In addition to talking to etiquette experts, she also polled a few poolgoers and beachgoers. Surprisingly (well, surprising for me, since I can complain about literally anything) people weren’t nearly as worked up about rude behavior as we thought. We got a few tepid responses, and a couple of “well some people don’t like this, but I don’t mind it” comments.

American Idol announced the dates for auditions today, and Charleston made the cut. Which means teens and twentysomethings from Beaufort and beyond who want to make it as the next big pop sensation will not have to drive all the way to Atlanta.

I've been reading a lot about Ultimate Fighting lately. By the way, you know you are getting old when you discover something five years after it first became popular. It's like my dad calling me up asking, "What's the deal with this 'Seinfeld' show? Is it any good?"