Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Fickle Forces
Sunday
September 17, 2006
It appears that I'll be spending as much time at home as I will on the road here in the upcoming weeks. From Wednesday night until tonight, I was in Nashville for work. And, with the forthcoming schedule, it appears that will be the case probably through the end of October.
Time on the road is a disorienting thing. I'm fortunate that my brother and my parents both have places to stay open to me, but the packing and unpacking and trying to make sure that things aren't forgotten in haste can be a bit grinding. One plus is that Alabaster-to-Nashville is a straight shot up I-65. Driving beats flying as far as I'm concerned (within reason).
One major advantage to being in Nashville this weekend is that it allowed me to watch several key NCAA football games on my brother's huge HDTV widescreen television. Soccer, football and hockey all benefit tremendously from HDTV, but in particular football is great as you can see more of the field (important for things like passing routes, the cameraman losing track of who has the ball, etc.) and really take in the feel of the stadium.
If there's a downside, it's that watching games on non-HD channels looked bad, particularly on lower-bandwidth feeds (I'm talking about you, Fox Sports Net and OLN.) Unfortunately the TV at Matt's house stretches the standard-def feed, so it looked really blurry trying to watch Marshall/K-State or TCU/Texas Tech.
The latter of those two provided high comedy, as TCU/T-Tech was a backup choice before the late games started, much to the displeasure of most of the people at Matt's house. Interestingly, Matt was at the Tennessee/Florida game, so he wasn't there to give his feedback on it. I tried explaining that TCU and Texas Tech were both Top 25 teams, but the consensus was that we shouldn't have the game on. It probably didn't help that it was a 6-3 score in the 3rd quarter (meaning it wasn't very high-scoring.) I explained the Top 25 implications, but even that was doubted. Dustin abruptly said, "You ain't gotta lie to kick it," (a 2Pac line) which was good for a laugh.
For reasons I don't understand, Sirius carries literally EVERY feed, home and away, of NFL games... except for the Titans! If you don't believe me, look for yourself. I don't get that at all. In a bizarre twist, I listened to 103 WKDF for much of the early drive home today, as they had the Titans/Chargers game on, until finally I had to shift to Sirius (in the radio no-man's land near the Tennessee/Alabama state line on I-65) to listen to the San Diego announcing team. Granted, it was a very one-sided game, and I ended up switching around to other games on Sirius, but still it would've been nice to hear the Titans announcers for the duration.
One hilarious commercial that I saw yesterday was a new ad for Vonage. It's not on YouTube as of this writing, but it's very clever. My description couldn't do it justice, but a part that made Matt and I literally laugh out loud is when a giant Vonage logo hits a pudgy-looking young guy (who just told a smoking hot chick that he was breaking up with her because he didn't "know where the relationship [was] going") and he yells: "Sweet, Vonage!" You have to see the ad to really appreciate the various comedy levels that went into it. Most advertisements annoy me (save for beer commercials), and the last Vonage ad campaign made me think, "That's dumb," but this commercial is hilarious.
|
