I haven’t been paying much attention to LSU basketball this season, though my stepfather has repeatedly told me that I should.  And I didn’t watch much of yesterday’s first round games in the annual celebration of Madness (except, of course, the bit that I caught while I was having my nails done.  Yes, I was the only customer, and the guy who did my manicure was a guy, and the only other employee in there was also male, and there was basketball on the television set.  The whole thing was a little odd).  But I did have a wincing moment of precognition when I first saw the bracket, given that the Atlanta regional bracket looked like this:

What did I foresee?  LSU getting slaughtered by Duke in prime time.  And now, given that the bracket has begun to look more like this –

– well, it’s beginning to look pretty much inevitable.  I guess there are worse ways to go out.

Chuck Henry, NBC 4 News, 11 pm broadcast:  apparently the sky marshal program was begun “in 1968, under President Reagan.”

I wish I were kidding.

After long struggle, with numerous setbacks, I have at last gotten myself entirely caught up on Lost.

That is all.

(No, seriously:  that is all.  That and making a big pot of red beans.  It has been a lovely, lazy, non-traveling weekend.  And now I’m working really hard on not panicking about the week ahead.  Off to do some reading.)

This is why I love NOLA, courtesy of Wonkette:

SHEPARD SMITH: You’re live on FOX News Channel, what are you doing?
MAN: Walking my dogs.
SMITH: Why are you still here? I’m just curious.
MAN: None of your fucking business.
SMITH: Oh that was a good answer, wasn’t it? That was live on international television. Thanks so much for that. You know we apologize.
[snip]
SMITH: “I’m watching two dogs drink out of a glass of ice water, and it’s none of my business why they are still here.”

Way to handle the locals, Shepard.

So I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours watching obsessive amounts of CNN coverage of Katrina’s onslaught on the Gulf Coast.  The good news, insofar as there is good news, is that none of the nightmare projections of what could have happened to NOLA appear to have come to pass.  There is water in the streets, and there is substantive structural failure, but the levees held, and the worst is just about over.

I haven’t talked with my family in Baton Rouge yet this morning, but the reports from there appear to be pretty good—big-ass storm, but not the kind of devastation that was feared.  The CNN reports are just bizarre, though:  Anderson Cooper standing out on a pier on the Mississippi, getting the hell blown out of him in order to point out that this crane, right here, has broken free of its moorings and is swinging in the wind, periodically bashing into the pier.  And some local numbskulls out walking around, testing the wind, seeing if they can fly.

The best of Anderson’s coverage thus far, though, was an exchange a few minutes ago with the meteorologist in the CNN studio, who was explaining to him why Baton Rouge wasn’t being hit as hard as the cities like Gulfport and Biloxi to the east of the storm’s eye.  I was reading blogs at the moment, so I was only half-listening, but it apparently has to do with geometry, as the terms “hypoteneuse” and “Pythagorean theorem” both came up.

I went to sleep last night afraid that my favorite city on the face of the earth was about to be obliterated from it.  It now appears that things are bad, but not that bad.  My thoughts are with everyone on the Gulf Coast, and with everyone worried about their loved ones there.

[UPDATE, 8.20 am:  Just talked to the fam.  They’re fine, though they lost power early this morning (so, weirdly, they were asking me for news).  The real disappointment here is that this was going to be the first opportunity my stepfather was going to have to use his Y2K generator, but it seems not to be working properly.  And if that’s the worst that’s happened, they ought to be okay.]

[UPDATE, 9.19 am:  Apparently CNN correspondent John Zarrella was able to go into the French Quarter, shoot a report, and file it with CNN via computer, due to a new technology called FTP!  Or, as the anchor has it, “our new FTP technology.” What will they think of next?]

So I’ve still got Six Feet Under on the brain.  Spoilers, below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Spoilers abound.  Read at your peril.

Read the rest of this entry »

So last night, we’re flipping through the channels and trying to pretend like we don’t realize that we’re missing the second-to-last Six Feet Under ever, and we stumble across a Japanese-language channel, KBFD, which is apparently airing some kind of soap opera.  Apparently, because while the thing was subtitled, we only saw about thirty seconds’ worth, but those thirty seconds were worth an awful lot.

To wit:  a very good-looking upper-middle class Japanese couple is having a screaming fight.  Or at least she’s screaming; he appears to be in massive retreat.  What we catch of the dialogue is the following:

He:  Okay, okay—and I’ll stop taking the cooking class!

She:  And get rid of your blog right now!

At which point their small child appears, and tearfully asks why mommy and daddy are fighting again.  “It’s okay,” her mother tells her, tears streaming down her own face.  “Mommy’s just very angry.”

I found myself awake much of the night obsessing over this scene.  Had his outside interests really carried him so far away from his familial responsibilities that the benefits of the cooking class were completely overshadowed by the mere fact of his periodic absence from the home?  And what was it about his blog that was so upsetting?  His links to the hot mommy bloggers?  His comment-thread political arguments?  His repeated dissing of the MSM?

Alas, we moved on in our channel-surfing, so I have no idea how it all turned out.  But the speculation is at least 80% of the fun.

The good news:  I found out this evening that I’ve got the Olympics in high-definition.

The bad news?  I’ve got the Olympics.  In high-definition.  24 hours a day.  For two weeks.

And I’ve got exactly the same two weeks to finish getting ready for the fall semester.

My satellite TV provider has dropped a slew of channels from its offerings overnight, due to a contract dispute with Viacom.

The channels?  No biggie:  BET, Comedy Central, MTV, MTV2, MTV Espanol, Nickelodeon, Nick Games & Sports, Noggin, VH1, VH1 Classic and CBS.

The good news, of course, is that my provider is, as always, looking out for my best interests.  And in compensation for this loss of service, they’ll be refunding me a shiny new dollar each month!

Time, I think, to do a little service-shopping.