Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Let The Grandstanding End
Thursday
March 31, 2005
Terri Schiavo passed away at about 9 this morning, EST. Now hopefully the endless TV media coverage, the group of "supporters" (who were deemed enough of a violent risk so as to force the school students at nearby Cross Bayou Elementary to move to temporary facilities) and the endless radio chatter on the subject will all just go away. This started as a family matter, and that's how this should end. Jesse Jackson, go find another cause to grandstand for, hoping that with all of this that the public will forget about your misdeeds, Reverend Jackson.
When you look at the NCAA Final Four, the matchups are intriguing. Illinois is the favorite over Louisville, but you know that Coach Rick Patino will have his Louisville Cardinals optimally motivated for the challenge. I wonder if the Howard Dean guy who I saw at the Louisville/Xavier 2004 game in Orlando will be there in St. Louis for it? St. Louis is a straight shot down I-64 from Louisville; for Illinois the trip isn't that bad, either. It's certainly closer for those two schools than it is for the two on the other side of the bracket, North Carolina and Michigan State.
Thank goodness the two remaining #1 seeds ended up on opposite sides this year so we don't have to hear any broadcast analysts whining about how they want to see "reseeding" in the Final Four. That would be a horrible idea.
My friend Tony at work bought a PSP (Sony's new portable PS2-esque handheld system), and I got a look at it before I left around 6 last night. The screen is set up in widescreen form, which is smart since it will allow for the viewing of movies in proper form. The tiny discs that play on the PSP hold 1.6 (or is it 1.8?) gigs of material, but the problem of course is that the PSP can't play DVDs. Or PS2 games. Personally I've never liked portable machines, from laptop computers to handheld gaming systems. The technology is usually well behind the curve, the game cost is about the same as what you'd pay for a modern game on a current home system, and overall they tend to be more of a hassle to deal with than anything. I hold by that with the PSP, though I will say that the screen looks very, very nice. I have no plans to buy one, but it is breaking through to the "mainstream" (from what I've seen).
CBS did a strange thing on Tuesday with The Amazing Race 6. They touted it as a "special two-part episode", but in reality the network just butted two episodes back-to-back (with a non-elimination leg at the first episode). Why did CBS do this? So next week they can show one of those awful "recap" shows. Ugh. But I am enjoying Rob & Amber using common sense and a team-first approach to winning (versus the other teams and their relatively less aggressive tactics).
At long last, we had a new episode of Lost to enjoy yesterday. Wow, I love that show. Locke's behavior is becoming rather bizarre, and I don't want them to start going sci-fi on us... but because they've paced the show well and they've done such deep character development, there are a ton of directions that could be taken from this point.
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