So the World Cup starts tomorrow. This would normally be a time of great rejoicing, but sadly I won't get to see any of the opening day action (live, at least), as I have to attend to the closing on our house.

I'll deal with the last item first. A while back, I noted that I wasn't feeling all that bad about selling the family home. That had continued up to yesterday, when I got an email from my future sister in law, asking how I was feeling about it. She mentioned that my sister, who hasn't lived in the house for a good dozen years at any rate, was feeling sad about it.

Which got me to think about it some more, and feel a little more melancholy about the whole thing. I've brightened up a bit since, thinking more about what I wrote before, and I think I'm back to being OK. That may change by this time tomorrow, after papers pass and money changes hands.

I know there are things I'll miss. I know that, when I am back in Manchester, and I go by the house, I'm going to think of it as still being ours, and will have quite the temptation to walk right in. But I'm also thinking about my mom, who was in a similar position when she was young. She spent a lot of time living in Manchester going by the house she lived in as a girl, and it didn't seem to cause any sort of sadness. Of course, she didn't always have the easiest time in that house (seems that her grandmother lived with them for a time, and she wasn't keen on my mom for whatever reason).

The difference for me is that I'm not living in the town anymore. That may change in the future, as Sarah has a strong interest in living there (even stronger than mine, which comes and goes), but for now I'm kind of dispossessed. That may not be as big a deal as it sounds, seeing that I got up to Manchester precious few times over the last year or so.

More on this as it happens, of course.

Looking at the World Cup, my biggest concern is that I may fall asleep at my desk a lot. Consider that most start times for opening round games are 2:30, 5, and 7:30. That's AM! The US-Portugal match is a 5 am start on a Wednesday. I do have to start being in the office earlier starting next week (4 day work weeks, which makes Friday viewing easier), but even so, that's early!

The US is in an interesting group. They face Portugal, South Korea, and Poland. Conventional wisdom says they have to go 1-1-1 to make the quarterfinals. That's probably true. Portugal is the clear class of the group, led by Luis Figo and Rui Costa. For a while they were a trendy pick to win it all, but some lackluster play leading up to the Cup cooled such talk. I can't see them losing in group play, but perhaps the US can fight them to a tie.

South Korea hasn't had much success in the World Cup, never winning a game. But they're playing at home, and have worked hard to improve. The US match is at Taegu, the largest stadium in use for the Cup in South Korea, with over 60,000 fans. You can guess how many Americans will be on hand. Weather may also be a factor, as I've read that there's a good chance for hot and humid weather. The US should be able to beat the Koreans, but there's a definite home field advantage to overcome.

Poland is the X factor in the group, having been absent from the World Cup for 16 years. This after being much in the swing of things, finishing third in 1974 and 1982. Their new success comes from replacing the old, Communist-era soccer heirarchy, and the emigration of Emmanuel Olisadebe from Nigeria to Poland. Not that he's their only player, but he's the straw that stirs the drink. In a perfect world the US would beat Korea and only need a tie here to move on. My fear is that Poland will also go 1-1-1, making goal differential come into play. My hope is that the Koreans will spend their nut to beat Poland in the first game, and fall flat in the second against the US.

Of course, if the US does finish second, they get to play the winner of group G in the quarters. That'll almost certainly be Italy. Uh oh.

We should have known something was up when, on Sunday, as Sarah and I left to wash comforters at a local laundromat (that fact alone tells you how our Memorial Day weekend went), we ran across somewhere between 6 and 10 minivans parked in a row in the parking lot that abuts our building.

Turns out there's a big soccer tournament in these parts. And people drive from all over (at least from parts of New York and Vermont, going off of licence plates) to play.

This actually turned around to bite us as we got lunch during the washing, as the local Friendly's was innundated with players, coaches, and parents, who swamped the apparently already understaffed restaurant. I'd originally hoped to dine at this establishment, but couldn't find it. Apparently, the one time I'd been to Needham wasn't enough for me to remember its location (and I didn't ask for directions not out of some wellspring of testosterone-induced machismo, but because I felt like an idiot).

There's an episode of King of the Hill where a bunch of kids switch over to soccer from football. It's an interesting episode, in that it points out two things that, perhaps not exclusive to youth soccer, seem to plague large children-based activities in general.

1. The "Everyone's A Winner!" mentality. One of the funnier things about the episode is seeing how the soccer coach rewards the team for doing very little. One would assume that, at the end of the year, every kid on the team would get some sort of trophy.

Should youth sports take on some sort of social Darwinist role to pigeon-hole seven year olds? No. But I've never quite figured out who we're fooling by making up awards for everyone. I know, we don't want to injure anyone's self-esteem, but I think kids see through this ruse more easily than adults realize.

If you're going to give out awards just to make some kids feel better, don't give out anything. Or just recognize participation and take everyone out for ice cream.

2. Soccer as social programming One of the subplots of the King of the Hill episode follows Peggy as she tries to fit in with the soccer moms and their sweater over the shoulder, latte sipping ways.

While eating, we were seated near a table with a soccer mom and her two kids. She spent about as much time on her phone as talking to her kids for the first 10 minutes they were there, which the kids didn't seem to think unusual. Then, as the wait staff was rushing around trying to get things under control, she says something along the lines of "they should have prepared knowing the tournament was going on."

Here's a thought: perhaps the world doesn't revolve around you and your ball-kicking spawn.

I know, I shouldn't take this one woman as an example of soccer mommery. I worked with a woman last year whose daughter played soccer, traveled to tournaments, the whole thing. Very nice people, not in any way like the woman I mentioned. I'm sure many of the soccer parents are decent folks.

But there's this odd undertone to youth soccer as one of the trappings of upper middle class standing. Get the kids in the SUV and drive them to the nice field, hurry! Sometime around 2016, someone's going to make a movie like The Ice Storm, but about a family that falls apart during some youth soccer tournament in 2005.

In most countries, soccer was the game of the people. In a typical US move, we've made it into another sport for the well to do.

I suppose my feelings about youth soccer stem in part from my own experience. I was part of my town's inaugural youth soccer program, in the wake of the NASL's prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It wasn't very complex; show up on Saturday mornings, learn some skills, and scrimmage. Parents? The only ones there were those who were instructing. Heck, not having my folks around was probably a win-win for both of us. I got to play a game that I liked, and they didn't have to watch a sport they didn't get.

Just read on Yahoo! that part of the Valley is looking to secede from LA.

Yesterday also marked another flare-up in the gay pro athlete sweepstakes, with Mike Piazza the target this time.

What do these two things have in common?

A professional baseball player comes out while playing for a team in the Valley in The Dreyfus Affair, a book by Peter Lefcourt. The book does add an interesting twist to this problem, as the player in question not only comes out, but has a thing for a teammate.

I read the book a few years ago when I was reading a baseball book a week during the season. This was, what, 1995 or 1996, and I was trying to rekindle an interest in baseball that had waned badly. I was commuting at the time, and thus had a lot of idle moments on trains during which I mostly read. While I didn't keep to schedule (like the Red Sox, I lost steam in September), reading all these books did bring me back to baseball, apparently in time for another work stoppage (though it's back to the table soon enough).

Other titles from that summer that I recommend:

Fleet Walker's Divided Heart by David Zang. A bio of the last African-American major leaguer until Jackie Robinson, a number of reviews take Zang to task for not necessarily connecting to Walker. It could be that Zang got hung up on his "divided heart" theory. I'd still recommend it.

The Year They Called Off the World Series by Benton Stark. I read very few books that involved teams from New York (thus saving myself all of David Halberstam's claptrap). Couldn't avoid that here, as the very heart of 1904's conflict was the AL's New York Highlanders and John McGraw, manager of the NL's Giants.

Wrigleyville by Peter Golenbock. Golenbock has a series of books that use a lot of oral history to tell the story of a specific baseball team (the Red Sox, Mets, and Brookly Dodgers) or a city and its baseball (St. Louis). I'm a theoretical Cubs fan, given that they are the NL's Red Sox analog, and the depth of history in the book was well appreciated. Oddly enough, it was Golenbock's book on the Sox, Fenway, that derailed my reading experience. Not sure if I was just burnt out or found the style less refined in this earlier book, but it was a chore to get through.

I'll have to see if I can find my full list.

Staying on the news kick, there are now reports that this summer will see more shark attacks. I'm sure there's someone out there trying to figure out how al Qaeda is training the sharks to attack.

A couple of political type thoughts today.

First, the Cuban embargo. I understand that Cuba is a repressive regime, whose brutality may only be matched by its crushing poverty. So here's my question: why are they so much worse than the Chinese?

I know, we play ball with China because they're a huge country, a ranking regional power on the cusp of being a world power, and they have the largest untapped market in the world as far as flogging US products go. But China's not exactly known for its reasonable treatment of people who run afoul of the government.

I still see it as a double standard. If we care enough to embargo Cuba, we might as well throw China, North Korea, and whatever right wing repressive regimes are out there into the same pot. Or, perhaps more wisely, we shouldn't embargo anyone. Let the free market economy and our participatory democracy take care of business.

The other thing that's been rattling around in my head is the whole Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened thing. Actually, if we're looking at non-specific reports where someone tries to inflict massive injury on the US by flying a plane into a building, there is a 1994 document with this plan. In fact, you can even buy a paperback copy of it on Amazon.

The problem with non-specific information is that, as the name suggests, it's non-specific. The information is out there, but without the specifics that allow you to make informed decisions. Clearly there were steps that, if taken before 9/11, may have made the plan much riskier and lower its chances of success, but those steps probably would have had less to do with bin Laden than they would have with the generally crappy state of airport security.

But, of course, everyone loves a conspiracy (see Michael Moore's continued flogging of this rumor), so we'll see where this goes.

If nothing else, this brouhaha is probably responsible for the articles over the last day or so that announced that suicide bombers in the US and terrorist acquisition of nukes are inevitable. Of course, the latter information was available in a non-specific document first published in 1991, soon to be a major motion picture.

The weekend past saw its share of college/university commencements, save for some of the more pretentious institutions of higher ed that have speeches in Latin. I got to attend one, but not the one I've gone to in the past.

As part of my new familial standing, I got to see Sarah's sister graduate from the University of Maine at Farmington on Saturday. Actually, I didn't get to see much, as most of the people sitting in front of me had umbrellas up.

That's right: they graduated in the rain.

It wasn't the sort of torrential rain that marked the commencement at certain institutions that pay my salary, but it was steady. The story, as told by UMF's president (incidentally a BU Ph.D.), is that she talked to people on Saturday morning, who said the forecast called for things to clear by 10:30. As there aren't enough rental chairs in western Maine to set up both inside and outside, she made the call to stay outside.

Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that there was no tent, either. Just many, many chairs out in the rain.

Did I mention that the temperature was, at best, 42 degrees?

We at least had it better than the majority of grads, who did not have umbrellas. But we were all glad that Lisa was one of the first to get her diploma (actually an empty holder; the actual sheepskin comes in the mail), so we could beat feet and hang out in the student center waiting for the ceremony to end (sadly, Lisa didn't have that option, as she was on the podium as a class officer).

The rain did lead to some very short speeches, including that of the keynote, who may be America's best-selling gynocologist. She plugged her books, gave 10 things to think about (most well recieved the idea that at least one family member, probably a parent, is crazy), and sloshed back to her seat.

The ceremony was followed up by dinner at Wilton, Maine's finest restaurant and brewpub. It's also the place where I learned that, apparently, the traditional Ritz cracker stuffing for baked stuffed haddock includes lobster meat. I'd never had it that way, not realizing until today that my mother, also allergic to shellfish, couldn't have made the stuffing this way, much less eat it. I am very stupid sometimes.

But the beer was good, and the rolls excellent.

For the first time since 1990 (or 1989, if you include watching it on TV), I missed commencement at my alma mater. After reading the Globe article about it (which I won't link, given that it'll expire after a couple of days), and hearing from a couple of people who did see it, I wish I did see it. It appears that I can still catch the main ceremony via webcast, so perhaps I'll do that.

You can fault BU for many things, but the one thing they do get right every year is commencement.

Returning to sports Americans tend to care about, here's a good idea about one way to stick it to Bud Selig.

There are multiple levels of irony to this plan:

1. The All-Star Game is in Milwaukee; Selig owns the Brewers.

2. Miller Park, site of the game, is one of those corporate welfare tax-supported parks that owners extort from the locals. Neither Minnesota or Montreal have done this- and yet both are better teams than the Brewers.

3. Both Minnesota and Montreal have more all-star types on their roster than the Brewers (Twins have Torii Hunter, Corey Coskie, and perhaps Eddie Guardado; Monreal has Vladi Guererro, the lately-cold Michael Barrett, and the stone-gloved Jose Vidro; the Brewers have Richie Sexon and the streaky Jose Hernandez).

Continuing with yesterday's digression into international sports, time for soccer. Or, more accurately, my asking you to join a game I'm in for the World Cup.

At ESPN.com's Fantasy section, there is a link for a game called World Cup Challenge. I'm hoping to drum up interest from you, the lovely Blogalicious readership.

How do you play? Easy.

1. Go to the site linked above. If you've played other ESPN.com game, sign in. If not, please register.

2. Once you're logged in, click on the World Cup Challenge link.

3. You'll be taken through the steps to set up your entry. You'll need a name (though you can go with the default, which is usually "Last_Name Entry" (last_name being yours) first. Then, you'll be asked to choose the first and second place teams in each preliminary group.

This is not as hard as it sounds. Even if you only have a rough idea who is good and who isn't in soccer, you should be able to pick teams that at least make the playoffs. I think there are also odds on one of the pages.

4. You then pick the winners of all the games from quarterfinals on. This does get a little hard towards the end, when you have to compare the relative merits of top teams you may not know too much about. Do your best and guess where appropriate. It's what most people do, anyway.

5. Once your team is set, click on the link to create or join a group. Search then for the group "Mondial Madness." You'll need a password (corner) to join.

6. That's it!

So I hope to see you there. It'll be nice to play in a group with more than 3 people.

Not sure what I did, but it seems that sometime overnight I managed to hurt my shoulder. It's kind of sore, but every so often I move my arm and there's pain. Big pain.

Hope I don't need Tommy John surgery. Considering that's for the elbow, I probably won't. I'll just use whatever rehab plan Pedro came up with.

I've never been much of a fan of car racing, but I have slowly developed a taste for Formula 1 racing. I suppose it comes from seeing the Monaco Grand Prix every year as a kid, which fascinated me not only because of the surroundings, but because these guys were racing on city streets! Much cooler than the 500 miles of left-hand turns that Indy cars and NASCAR provide.

Thanks to the magic of 24 hour sports programming, every Formula 1 race is televised, often live (if you don't mind getting up early on a Sunday). From watching races the last few years, the F1 luster from my once a year watching is well worn.

This comes in part from the general predictability of the races. No one wins after starting in, say, 23rd place. The winner will likely come off of the first three rows, and will probably drive for one of three teams. The only way this changes is when, as in the opening race this year in Australia, there's a major crash.

But now, on top of the predictability, there's team collusion. This isn't the first time a driver's been ordered to throw a race, and there is a certain logic to it, but if you like competition, the idea that the winner should be the person who actually deserves it based on that day's performance, this result stinks to high heaven.

What stinks even more is that the driver who pulled over, Rubens Barrichello, just signed a 2 year extension with Ferarri, meaning that he'll be pulling over for Michael Schumacher for years to come. I've never cared for Schumacher, but I wonder if it's the team I should really hold accountable.

I got them all!

See how you do on this Mother's Day TV trivia quiz.

As close as I was to my mom, I was a terrible son where Mother's Day is concerned. Not that much was expected of me, especially when I was younger, but outside of contributing to the family present, I didn't do much. This was especially true when I was at BU, as the day always fell around finals. Usually, it'd be within 48 hours of Mother's Day (before or after) when something or someone would remind me. I think my mom understood my absent-minded professor mentality. It didn't help that I was usually approaching flat broke during those years, but a card on time would have been nice. It did happen, just not as often as it should have.

Now, Father's Day, I was pretty much on time all the time. Why? Because my mom would remind me. Which makes my forgetfulness even that much more shameful.

Bad, bad son. I'd feel really guitly about it if I didn't think my mom (were she here) would shake her head and mock me for making a big deal of it.

Considering that there may be a dozen (and that's being generous) signatures within the first 500 records (the rest marked as having been deleted as fake, probably due to a fraudulent email address), if it's not a joke it may be the least successful petition drive in history.

I'm having a hard time deciding if this is a joke or not. I'd like to think it is.

Over-Supportive Parent of the Week: Cameron Helder

"I really want you to know that Luke is not a dangerous person. I think he's just trying to make a statement about the way our government is run. I think Luke wants people to listen to his ideas, and not enough people are hearing him, and he thinks this may help."

I don't even know where to begin with this quote. But I have an idea.

1. Pipe bombs are dangerous. People who make and deploy pipe bombs in the mail boxes of unwitting individuals are dangerous by extension.

I know this guy is going through a difficult period, what with his son facing the possibility of life in the hoosegow and all, but if you were to read this quote without knowing the context, you'd think he'd hit W in the face with a cream pie or hooked a TiVo into Dick Cheney's pacemaker. Instead, we have a combination Unabomber and Charlie Starkweather. It would be nice if, on some level, this guy made some sort of ameliorative remarks towards the half-dozen people hurt in this spree. Perhaps he has, and if so that's a good thing.

Looking at the picture of Luke Helder, I'm surprised he can tie his shoes, never mind whip up pipe bombs. Then again, driving halfway across the country only fueled by Arby's and anti-federal rage probably takes a lot out of a body.

I'll be very interested to hear what his specific beefs are with the government. Part of me hopes that his sole gripe is related to the legalization of marijuana, as I think the idea of a stoner/mad bomber is priceless (with respect to those injured). I can see the movie now, starring that kid from the Dell ads.

Went up to Manchester on Sunday to start the clearing out process. Seems that the closing date for the sale was pushed up to the end of this month, rather than mid-June, to facilitate some repairs that will apparently coincide with the new owner building a combined garage and woodshop attached to the house.

The repairs, shall we say, are serious enough that it almost killed the sale. That my sister and I were not immediately reachable almost screwed things up, too, but luck willed out and we were able to reach a new agreement.

The biggest discovery on Sunday was what little in the house actually belonged to us. Outside of photos and Christmas decorations, just about everything in the house belongs to my aunt. Which I suppose makes sense, given that she's moved pretty much everything in her house into our house, but it wasn't what I originally expected. She is starting her move to my sister's house today (as I type, even), but has hired people to move her.

Which was one of the more annoying aspects of Sunday. We were all there ready to work, the three of us and our significant others, and we did very little. We could have packed boxes for my aunt, or moved things around to facilitate the moving process today, but no go. The other, larger issue here is that my aunt is moving to a much smaller space. I don't know where she thinks all of her stuff is going to go, but it won't all fit in my sister's house. And she already has storage space rented out for things from her original house that she's not touched in over a year!

Sadly, I think I share her tendencies. Moving from BU to Brighton to Babson required that I become much less attached to certain things. Part of this was the natural process of moving, winnowing out items of little use. But part of it was also the deadline I had to get out so the new person could move in, and that resulted in some wholesale dumping.

I do think there's a genetic characteristic to this, as my dad had a similar predeliction. He would bring thing back to the house, though. I remember one time he brought back an old counter stool from a diner, and the argument he had with my mother about it. She saw it as a waste of space, while he thought there was some value to it. Probably was, actually, had we tried to restore it or sell it. What actually happened is that the stool spent several years in the cellar before being discarded again, most likely for good.

Oddly enough, I felt very little nostalgia on Sunday. When I've talked about the house sale before, I've definately felt at odds with what we were doing. It doesn't help that Sarah and I (more her than me, which is surprising) are considering moving back to Manchester at some point, but aren't in a position to move into the house and work out the financial arrangements.

But on Sunday, as we pulled away with our smallish hoard of lights, balls, and pictures of me which are sure to be used for evil purposes, I didn't feel that sense of sadness that I expected. I think it's because it stopped being our house when my dad died. Some of the things that we recognized as belonging to our house were still there, but the people who made the house our house were gone.

Perhaps this is one of those "duh" moments where something that most people see as true has only made itself apparent to me recently, but that difference between house and home is key. I think I would feel worse if we were selling the house because my folks were moving, because it would seem disjointed. Trips home wouldn't be like going home. It'd be more like a very long stay in a rental. But now that what I've considered home is gone (I love my aunt, but seeing her was never the equal to going home in my mind), selling the house is a final, logical act. It's a capstone on that part of my life where home was at 99 Pleasant Street.

What comes next is the part of my life where I make someplace a home for my family.

A couple of sporting notes.

You may have noticed Seattle center fielder Mike Cameron had 4 home runs in a game this week against the Chicago White Sox. I had Cameron on my ESPN.com Baseball Challenge team- during his 2 for 25 slump. Turns out he had a sinus infection that made his eyes water. It's all about timing, and mine stinks.

Watched the Kentucky Derby on NBC, and something was missing. Namely, Dave Johnson's "and down the stretch the come!" call. I don't particularly follow horse racing, but Johnson's call would still got my blood racing. NBC should open their check book and get Johnson in the fold for future races.

Some folks, however, seem to disagree (last couple of paragraphs).

The folks over at TV Guide ran a list of their top 50 shows of all time in their last issue. Making lists like this only seem to serve two purposes: to sell magazines and ignite arguments. As we've been getting the mag for free for some reason (they seem to think Sarah renewed her subscription, which she didn't), we're beating the former. The latter purpose, of course, is why I bring this up at all.

Herewith are my problems with the list (with TV Guide rating in parentheses).

Slumming in the Penthouse

Seinfeld (1) - It may say something that a show ostensibly about nothing captured the cultural zeitgeist of the 1990s. I mean, really, what from that decade will we be pining for when the current decade ends?

I do like the show, could certainly see it as a top 10 show for its impact on culture at the time, but there's a faddish quality at work here. When was the last time you heard someone talk about man hands, close talkers, or sponge worthiness? Where dropping Seinfeld references was once expected, doing so now almost labels you as being stuck in the past.

And let's not forget the Seinfeld curse, dooming the former co-stars and even supporting characters (even Estelle Harris, who played George's mom, based on her appearance in a Glad Ware ad where she looks like a zombie clown). Jerry Stiller is a survivor if nothing else.

I Love Lucy (2) - This may be more of a personal preference thing, as I'm not a huge fan of the show. I'm well aware of its place in TV history, but there's a certain amount of repetitiveness that annoys me. Lucy's anguished wail is funny - once or twice. After that, it's like a cry for help. That about a third of the episodes seem to deal with Lucy's attempts to join Ricky at the club doesn't help, either.

But for its development of the sticom style, and for bringing pregnancy to TV (albeit without being able to actually say the word "pregnant"), I can see Lucy ranking highly. Now if William Frawley and Vivian Vance, who played Fred and Ethel Mertz, actually allowed their off-screen hate for each other to spill into the show, we could be talking number one or two.

The Sopranos (5) - More of a gut feeling that based on actual viewership, as I've only seen a half of an episode (for what it's worth, I did like it). Kind of a too much, too soon feeling, almost like it'd be unhip to not include it on the list. But I could very well be wrong.

Someone's Got Something on Rupert

I have no idea why these shows are on the list at all.

Today (17) - The foundation of infotainment, progenitor of shows from Dateline to Access Hollywood (both NBC productions to boot!).
thirtysomething (19) - Please push me in front of a bus if I'm ever as whiny and self-absorbed as the characters on this show.
Frasier (34) - It's not a bad show, but top 50 all-time? They overused the Niles-Daphne thing, and hooking up Frasier and Roz is pretty desperate. It was actually a better workplace comedy, a scary thought given the abuse that genre's taken.
The Oprah Winfrey Show (49) - Apparently, Oprah's repackaging as Earth mother for the 21st century worked. They don't seem to remember when Oprah was as shallow as all the other talk shows. I imagine they didn't want to piss off the soccer moms.

The Replacements

Right niche, wrong show.

Prime time medical drama: Ben Casey for ER (22) - ER got the nod for its frenetic pacing and supposed ability to transpose it with the downer lives of the ER staff. The show's tendency to throw plot arcs at viewers out of the blue (Mark Greene's a racist! Kerry Weaver's a lesbian!), not to mention the over-use of that pacing, aren't discussed. I'd opt in Ben Casey given its prime place in fostering the young turk partnered with old hand dramatic construct- one ER aped with Benton and Carter.

That, and Casey's opening: "Man. Woman. Birth. Death. Infinity." So cool.

1990s NBC cop show: Homicide: Life on the Street for Law & Order (23) - L&O is a good show, and probably deserving to be on the list. But if forced to choose one or the other, Homicide is a hands down winner. Better acting (I'll take Andre Braugher over anyone on L&O, though even the lamest assistant DA is better than Jon Seda), better writing (L&O is using "ripped from the headlines" as a crutch), and more interesting visuals (not even close).

PBS non-fiction: Nova for An American Family (32) - Nova makes science and related issues palatable for the masses, accessible without becoming pointless. Family seems like it was included for being a quality reality show, but given that it was made 25 years before the current crop, I'd say it was more of a quirky anamoly than anything else.

Detective playing against type: Magnum PI for The Rockford Files (39)- I actually really like Rockford, but like Magnum more. Rockford is more of the anti-hero, the man whose fight for justice often requires him to take a punch in the mouth or spend a night in jail. But Magnum is the more interesting character, thanks to the way they slowly revealed bits about his time in Vietnam. Magnum's got a better supporting cast, too. I'd take Higgins over anyone else on Rockford.

Living long and prospering: Star Trek for Star Trek: The Next Generation (46) - I like Picard better than Kirk. And the effects in the original were bad. But I have hard time thinking that Next Gen is the better Trek. The original dealt with topical issues in a less obvious way than Next Gen, and the tension between the crew and the various aliens was more palpable- even against the Borg, you never really feared for the new Enterprise crew.

The first couple seasons of Next Gen were pretty touch and go, story-wise. And there's that matter of Wesley Crusher, too.

Promotion

Shows that should be higher than actually listed.

Taxi (48), Rocky and His Friends (47), The Bob Newhart Show (44), The Fugitive (36), Your Show of Shows (30), The Twilight Zone (26), MASH (25), The Ed Sullivan Show (15), The Dick Van Dyke Show (13), The Simpsons (8).

Relegation

Shows that should be ranked at least 5 points lower.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (11), The Carol Burnett Show (16), Friends (21), Donahue (29), Roseanne (35), The X Files (37), Gunsmoke (40).

I'd add Bewitched, but that would actually push it off the chart, it being in 50th place.

Remember These?

Shows that should be on the list but aren't... though I'm not sure who they'd replace.

The Odd Couple - The first show to really examine the aftermath of divorce. Just in a really funny way.
Get Smart - Maybe seen as too silly, but it's the sort of sitcom we still don't see today.
The Avengers - Certainly during the Diana Rigg years. And you shouldn't hold the lack of money against the Honor Blackmon episodes. Linda Thorson you can keep.
The Prisoner - I know, no one gets it, but people think they sound smart by bringing it up. But you'd be hard-pressed to name a series that approached the nature of freedom in such a unique way.
Monty Python's Flying Circus - Yes, let's get all of the British shows out of the way now. I'll even throw in Fawlty Towers. But I think the Circus was better, and still funnier than 90% of the current sitcoms.
Victory at Sea - US Navy propaganda aside, this early documentary series manages to make the sea battles of World War II tense- even though we already know what happens.

Like I said, such a list is pretty much meant to be argument fodder. Hope I've met TV Guide's expectations.

Every time I've gone to lunch over the last week or so, I've been hearing the same songs over and over. I think the dining hall's been on 98.5, and they've got some sort of noon countdown show, so between that and the constant repitition of the other dining hall fave, KISS-108, the fact that I keep hearing these songs is no surprise.

The problem is that one of the songs is always "Underneath Your Clothes" by Shakira. This could be the worst Top 40 song since, well, a good half dozen of the songs still on the Hot 100 (nominations include "All You Wanted" by Michelle Branch, "A New Day Has Come" by Celine Dion, and to show that I'm not just picking on the women, "Hero" By Enrique Iglesias, which is too whiny for my taste).

I have to admit to being a little mystified at Shakira's popularity. OK, I'm not completely mystified, as the same forces that gave us Britney, Christina, and the like, are at play here. She also manages to combine the powers of Jennifer Lopez and Charo as far as shaking her rump goes. Shakira is reasonably attractive, but no more so than the average flavor of the week pop star/WB actress/centerfold.

Her music, meanwhile, is also of the same forces of Britney, Christina, et. al., in that it only involves caterwalling into the microphone as much as possible, hitting notes be damned. It doesn't help Shakira that the lyrics to "Underneath Your Clothes" sound like they were written by a Hallmark writer on acid. To wit:

You're a song
Written by the hands of God
Don't get me wrong 'cuz
This might sound to you a bit odd
But you own the place
Where all my thoughts go hiding
And right under your clothes
Is where I find them


My understanding is that Shakira writes her own songs, and these verses would seem to confirm that.

I suppose it's only a matter of time before Shakira winds up playing a lascivious nun on a telenovela, but until that time I may just have to eat lunch at my desk.