If you haven't had a chance to read Dwight Kidder's entry for August 30, please do so. Lots of good stuff there, one piece in particular I wanted to comment on.

The folks boycotting Sam Adams beer in Boston and New York for Jim Koch's studio presence during the much ballyhooed Opie and Anthony sex in the cathedral bit (if you don't know what I'm talking about with regards to Opie and Anthony, consider yourself lucky) should really be boycotting because Kock is such a sellout.

There was a time when you could consider Sam Adams a quality beer product. Now, it's still better than the usual megabrew BudMillCoors, but it's hardly the sort of artisan-crafted quaff that Koch wants you to think it is. Then there's the whole thing with Sam Adams Light, which is clearly trying to position itself with the younger crowd that usually drinks swill. Which may not be a bad thing if it helps wean them from Busch Light, but it strikes me as more of a market share/profit thing than part of a master plan to make "America's World Class Beer."

Then there was the whole lawsuit against the Boston Beer Works folks (BBW being a small local chain of upscale brewpubs), claiming that their use of the city name Boston could cause confusion with the Boston Beer Company, who make Sam Adams. The suit was as much about local competition as it was anything else. Thankfully, the Beer Works won.

I also miss the Honey Porter, and have no idea why they kept the Cherry Wheat. It's awful.

Anyway, long story short, drink Harpoon IPA. Or Tremont cask-conditioned IPA (or the regular stuff if you can't find the cask one, which is liquid heaven). Those are real Boston-area craft beers.

In unrelated news, I notice that I didn't mention that on the bus ride up to the retreat this week I was subjected to National Lampoon's Van Wilder. I was told by one RA that it would be better than Half Baked. Such a statement may qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records for Damning with the Faintest Praise.

Van Wilder is not a very good movie. It's not quite a train wreck, either. There are one or two moments of relative mirth, such as the interview that Indian exchange student Taj has to become Van's assistant. It's funny for the same reason that Burgess Meredith was funny in Grumpy Old Men: you don't expect to hear that person say what they say.

Otherwise, it's pretty lame. Ryan Renolds of Two Guys, a Girl, 37 Albanian Farmers, Six Geese, a Pizza Place, and a Squadron of AH-64s plays Van to little impact. Tara Reid plays the requisite "resistant at first but then becomes enamored" school paper reporter who's trying to get the lowdown on Van. That this could be Reid's second best film performance (after Bunny Lebowski) is sad. The Copacabana School of Acting is apparently still churning out grads.

I will say, though, that I will never eat another eclair again as long as I live. I won't explain the scene, but it's bad.

OK, so baseball is "saved." There's a new agreement that runs through 2006 which should prevent further baseball labor strife until well into Madame President Clinton's first term (got you, didn't I?).

I've not seen many specifics, but suffice it to say the rich teams are giving money to poor teams, there's a luxury tax in place, but still no guarantee that all this extra money is going to go towards making the small market teams better. Maybe I missed it.

Also, no contraction talks until 2007, meaning that the Montreal Expos live on. Sort of; for all I know they'll be the Norfolk Expos or the San Antonio Expos or the Expositos de Cidudad Mexico.

Anyway, I'm just happy I can now see the Sox genteel decline in its full glory. Eight back in the AL East, 4 back in the wild card. During training, we do an exercise where people write down on cards things they are concerned or worried about for the coming year. We read the cards, and people blow out candles to show that they share that concern, and those who didn't blow their candle out relight others to show they can help. Someone put the Sox on a card. You can guess whether or not my candle stayed lit.

Here's what I love about student loan companies. Got a letter from one today about being done with the loan. It was dated August 5. The postmark on the envelope? Yesterday.

They report me to the credit bureaus if I mess up. Shouldn't I be able to do something similar when they make a mistake? I know, I can call the Better Business Bureau or write my Congressman. I'd be better off trying to fill their offices with gravel or shaving cream or something.

Just got back from two days in the woods with the Babson RA staff. We had our annual training retreat, kind of a homecoming for me as we were at the Sargent Center for Outdoor Education, known to anyone who went to BU before 1998 (and probably even those since) as Sargent Camp. Did some lower team-building elements, high ropes, and something called the "flying squirrel," which is pretty much ten people hauling another person 30 feet in the air. I spent my time on the ground (mostly) helping the RAs to do this stuff.

Kind of nice to get away and outside of the "Babson bubble," the much-discussed membrane that often traps our students and insulates them from the outside world. It manages to capture those of us who live on, too. Still, it will be nice to sleep in my own bed and use a shower whose head is above eye level.

Oh, and did I mention it rained while we were out on the course this morning? I'm still damp.

Days that change your life don't always stand out before they happen. Some do; weddings, for instance. Others just kind of happen. You wake up in the morning, have your expectations for the day, and all of a sudden BAM. The day just took a huge, 180 degree, hairpin turn on Route 2 outside of Williamstown detour.

Yesterday was such a day for me. And it wasn't just surprises. There were some serious changes in the way I look at people, not to mention some questions about fundamental parts of my personality and beliefs.

Paradoxically for someone who's bringing this up on a public space, I'm not going to give the specifics on what caused this change. Suffice it to say it's nothing to do with my health, financial status, well-being, and so on. In most ways I'm the same person I was yesterday. It's just that assumptions and memories I've had from the past are different today than they were yesterday.

Sorry for being both ambiguous and perhaps worrisome at the same time. This'll work itself out over time, just need to process. If I do seem spacey or distracted at times (for those of you who get the non-Web based version of me), it's nothing personal. Thanks.

I'm in the office today, as we started resident assistant training yesterday. After a full summer of only working four days, I'm now starting a stretch that'll see me work every day until, I think, September 7.

It's an interesting time of year for people in student affairs (and education in general), one where routine is disrupted and the comforts of home are traded in for office furniture and much steadier diet of junk food than one really needs.

I will say that the RA training and opening period here is much less stressful than when I worked at BU. Here at Babson, we're training 38 RAs, usually end by 5 pm, and have our largest move in day on Labor Day, when we'll welcome about 415 first year students to campus. At BU, we trained almost 300 RAs (about 50 in my area), often went from 8 am to 8 pm (or later), and moving in 415 people in a day isn't even remarkable.

Even with the more human scale, there are still aspects of training and move in that never go away. Rooms that aren't ready when the student arrives. RAs who are perhaps not as attentive as one would like. And so on.

I had more to say about this, but I've been working on a couple of other things over the afternoon, and those original thoughts I had are gone. Which, when it comes down to it, is another common problem during this time of year.

If there is any upside to the looming baseball strike, it's that a work stoppage could be the only thing that will snap the Red Sox out of their second half slump.

To be fair to the All Star Game, the Sox were slumping before the Tie Near Titletown. Sweeps by the D-Backs, Dodgers, and Braves helped chip away at the Sox's torrid start. But, historically, the Sox are one of interleague play's biggest chumps, so such events weren't exactly major cause for concern. The five game sweep of the Blue Jays obfuscated the one for three performance against the Tigers right before the break, a series that now takes on bellwether status.

The problems with the Sox today are, in some ways, related to the problems seen in the Sox as they came north from Fort Meyers to start the season. Derek Lowe appeared as a solid counterpoint to Pedro, but otherwise we've got the modern, crosstown equivalent of "Spahn, Sain, pray for rain." Relief pitching is, in most cases, anything but. The offense, which came from the usual suspects (Nomar, Manny, Johnny) and not so usual (just about everyone else), is pretty much dried up now, with newcomer Cliff Floyd the lone bat with reliable pop- and even that's waning.

The AL East title is pretty much gone. Those Bronx people are eight games up with about six weeks left, and they show no signs of slumping. The wild card chase is slowly getting out of hand, with the Sox 3.5 back of the AL West tri-leaders Seattle, Anaheim, and Oakland. A four game set with the Angels is on tap, so there's some room for improvement here. But there are no more games against the other two. The only good news is that those three teams get to slap each other around for a goodly chunk of September, while the Sox play mostly Baltimore, Toronto, Tampa, and Cleveland (with three against the pinstripes just to keep us honest).

Season's not over yet, clearly. Just not sure what to panic about first- no Red Sox post-season or no more of any season.

In other sports news, the boys from the Jesse Burkett Little League in Worcester take on the Harlem team tomorrow in one of the US semifinals of the Little League World Series. Sox-Y@nks paralell aside, the most notable angle for this game is Harlem's taste for hot-dogging. You may remember one Harlem player pulling the Babe Ruth point in the game against Bethlehem, PA. Add to that Adam Diaz's home run wave and trot in Harlem's win over Aptos, California.

The Harlem coach handled the situation pretty well, making it very clear that any similar display would get a kid tossed from the game. My concern is that people are going to remember that rather than the success of a team from Little League's Urban Initiative, which is doing great work to bring baseball back to the inner cities. Of course, what I really hope for is that people remember Worcester's run to the title.

Which, considering that the Netherland Antilles were the first team to get a hit off of the Japanese team in pool play, would be something to remember indeed.

Apropos of nothing so far, Terrell Davis for the Pro Football Hall of Fame? No. Four years do not a Hall of Fame career make. Would he make the Hall if he got to play a full career? Almost certainly. Sadly, you don't get to the Hall based on promise and what could have been. Consider if Jamal Anderson's career ended today (which, heck, it just may). Would you put him in the hall? No way.

While any stability in this crazy world of ours is usually a good thing, there are times where it's sad to see that some things never change. While it may turn out that there is a logical explanation, the history here suggests otherwise.

In a completely unrelated set of events, rented two movies over the weekend, and was glad I didn't pay theater prices for either.

Spy Game put last generation's hunk Robert Redford with this generation's hunk Brad Pitt (or is this generation's hunk now Josh Hartnett?). In any case, Pitt's CIA agent character goes rogue to get someone out of a Chinese prison, and Redford spends his time at CIA HQ trying to figure out what happened, deflect the pressure from some ad hoc committee of CIA suits, and devise a way to get Pitt's character out. Most of the movie is in flashback, which gets annoying. That Redford's character tries to teach some lesson to Pitt's character that Redford ultimately violates to save Pitt doesn't help, as it's Foreshadowing wearing that orange tux from Dumb and Dumber.

I'd have almost prefered this movie to only be about Redford maneuvering inside CIA HQ to save Pitt. What the movie does have in this vein isn't anything new, but it's pretty good light entertainment. Of course, that would also take out a lot of Pitt's scenes, except those where he's getting slapped around by his captors. Hmm, that would be a much better movie, come to think of it.

Proof of Life is best known as the film that ruined the Meg Ryan-Dennis Quaid marriage. That Meg and Russell Crowe had any sort of romantic relationship is well hidden in this movie, where the leads develop feelings for each other through some sort of deus ex machina that involves long hours negotiating over a short-wave radio.

I mean, it's not ridiculous to think that either character would develop feelings for each other. Crowe's character comes back on his own volition to get David Morse's character out of the clutches of narco-terrorists, which is pretty endearing. And Meg Ryan is, well, Meg Ryan.

Her character actually plays pretty poorly. I think she's supposed to be some sort of free spirit/hippie/bohemian, but the only way they suggest this is to give her mismatching clothes and show her smoking in like half of her scenes. Actually, she's not really smoking, but rather just holding a cigarette that she rarely brings to her mouth. In most cases it's just attached to her hand and way out of place, like she's got a beach umbrella or a 9 iron there.

In the end, the movie turns into Let's Get Harry or any other of those 1980s flicks where a small group of committed men invade the enemy's compound to rescue a friend, children, or whoever. It's pretty much what you'd expect. David Caruso is OK as a fellow kidnap negotiator/paramilitary leader.

Probably a much better movie if we got to see more from the victim's perspective. I think David Morse is underrated. Not that he's Master Thespian or anything, but I think he was more compelling in his scenes than either Crowe or Ryan (or Pamela Reed, who plays Morse's sister, and is very annoying, though in some ways that's the point).

Which commerical moment is more worrisome?

1. Dana Carvey looking like Sammy Hagar and sounding like Jack Nicholson in the ad for Lays' California Cool Dill chips.

2. The Geico ad that has their spokesgekko romping romantically with a fulsome woman, suggesting interspecies action not seen this side of Danish porn.

Twenty-five years ago today was, in my memory, a day not unlike the one at hand. Perhaps it wasn't as hot or humid, but I remember it as being kind of gray. I was home, doing whatever eight year olds do when they're stuck at home, when the news came down.

Elvis was dead.

I remember yelling the news up to whoever was home, probably one of my sisters. I had enough understanding to know who Elvis was, but not so much to think of it as the epochal passing that it's become.

Today, with the deeper understanding of who Elvis was and his place in American culture, I have to say this on the silver anniversary of his demise.

Woo hoo.

Sudden, unexpected deaths can have this sort of effect. Think about the responses to the deaths of John Lennon or Princess Di. In Elvis's case, I can see how his surprise death would result in a massive, loyal following, given that at the time of his death he was such a vital cog in the music industry and a devotee of healthy eating and a substance free lifestyle.

For all of the rock n roll classics that Elvis gave the world, in his last years (comeback or no comeback) he was an increasingly sad and mockable figure. Fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches? An almost equal appetite for a variety of pharmaceutical substances? That white jumpsuit?

Have you noticed that Elvis impersonators, almost universally, style themselves after the gaudier, tubbier Presley than the slim, raw performer of the 1950s? Doing so allows them to meld the music with the kitsch, walking a line between entertainment and parody. Get some oversized shades, an ugly one piece garment, a wig with muttonchops and a half-gallon of Brylcreem and you're in business.

During part of the Today show coverage of this, one of the people who works for Elvis's foundation noted that before Graceland was opened to the public it had to be renovated to its 1960s style because, in his dissipated years, the house was an odd combination of shabby and tacky. Appaprently, a man's home truly is his castle.

I suppose my problem with this whole thing is that the worship of Elvis so far outstrips his persona. A great musician? Yes; but so were many of his contemporaries, including the minority acts whose music Elvis took into the mainstream. But worthy of such adulation? Not unless he becomes the first saint of the Church of the Subgenius.

Many thanks to the Champion of the West, who sent along a link for the site in oppositon to the Save Karyn site I'd linked to yesterday.

She's also selling stuff on eBay, and getting decent money. Too bad, really. I was hoping the postage would be more than the winning bids.

Oh, thinking about yesterday, it would of course be required that the Utah NBA team become the Utah Hornetzz.

Three sporting ideas whose time has come.

1. The New Orleans Hornets and the Utah Jazz should swap nicknames. The New Orleans Jazz can thus ride again, and Utah will have a mascot fitting of the Beehive State. They could even swap "teams" and make like the New Orleans Jazz were just on hiatus, like the Cleveland Browns.

2. Government funded stadiums call eminent domain if there's a strike. Void the contract with the MLB team and let whoever wants to rent it do so. Bring back the Federal League. I know, it's not that simple, and finding enough willing new owners and players would be difficult at best. But it'd be fun to watch the reaction.

3. Pro kickball. This is what the WWE should have started, not the XFL.

I don't know if this site is inventive or insulting. I feel like sending her coupons or something, or buying her precious Prada shoes from her for $5.

Sarah's sharp eye noticed that the TRASHionals picture on whatsbetter.com was paired with a picture from the NAQT ICT. If you click on the button that shows the pairing, you'll see how the two stack up against each other.

I suppose I should be happy, being a TRASH editor, but fully realize that (a) popularity does not equal quality, even though I think out product is great, and (b) the TRASHionals rank may benefit from pairings against such unpopular items as the Nazis, hunger, and Todd Rundgren.

OK, who's the wise ass who did this?

Based on the picture, I'm willing to bet it's someone in my core readership.

In 1987, a guy playing both offense and defense for the Holy Cross football team garnered national attention for his alacrity on both sides of the ball. A story in Sports Illustrated helped whip up the oddest grass roots Heisman Trophy campaign in history. The throwback angle, combined with his playing for a smaller school with a fairly historic football program, created the idea of returning the Heisman to its stated intent - honoring the best college football player - rather than what it had become (and what it still is), a trophy for the best offensive skill position player on a nationally prominent, winning team.

He was helped by it being a slack year by Heisman standards. He finished third, beating out Lorenzo White from Michigan State and Craig "Ironhead" Heyward from Pitt. He narrowly lost the runner up spot to Syracuse's Don McPherson. Notre Dame's Tim Brown won the award going away that year, amassing over 1400 points, a good 800 more than McPherson. One does have to wonder what would have happened if Pitt and Syracuse were replaced on the list with, say, players from Washington and Florida. OK, he'd probably have only finished second, but still.

The Holy Cross player in question: Gordie Lockbaum.

I mention this today not because of the looming college football season, or because the Holy Cross head coach is Dan Allen, who led BU to its best football seasons ever and perhaps to its ultimate demise by leaving the cupboard bare for his successor.

Rather, Gordie Lockbaum, senior, gets mention because his son, Gordie Lockbaum, Junior, hit a home run to score the only run of the game to lead his Worcester, MA little league team to the Little League World Series.

While the story is notable in its own right, I mention it as it means that Gordie Lockbaum has a son old enough to play in this thing. I'm feeling old again.

Something else I get but don't get - NFL cheerleaders.

I know, cheerleaders are traditional for football, and there's the selling point of scantily clad women moving and shaking things (bodily or otherwise) for a heavily young, single, and male demographic. But then there's the fact that, in a stadium that seats at least 60,000, whose cheering are they leading? The front row of one section?

I'm prompted to query the need for cheerleaders after reading Bill Simmons column about the first episode of ESPN's The Season about the Raiderettes. If his description is close to accurate, the line between NFL cheerleaders and the lap dancers brought in to hype up the scabs in The Replacements is fine indeed. I suppose hoochies need to work, too.

(I know, some of these women are upstanding citizens, realistic about what being a cheerleader means, and aren't carrying any STDs. It's that stability that pushes them to the margins, as the hoochier members grab for exposure like a Survivor cast-off.)

Oh, and Raiderettes? Nice name. Right up there with the Jills, Ben-Gals, The Roar, Top Cats, Gold Rush, and perhaps the worst name, Sea Gals. Most teams have the smarts to just call their group the (Insert team name) Cheerleaders, which is bland but doesn't sound like something from the 1950s or another name from the folks who brought us Verizon and Accenture.

Then, of course, there are the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. The less said about them the better. If you're looking for why the 1970s were so insipid, you could do worse than starting here. Then there's the whole sociological thing about cheerleaders and Texas that confuses the rank and file American while guiding addled mothers to the ammo aisle at Wal-Mart.

The prominence of cheerleader links on many official NFL team pages makes me think I may be marching out of step on this. I'm sure the NFL marketing machine knows what it's doing.

Some news to chew on.

XXX tops box office I don't get Vin Diesel's appeal. I understand where it comes from, what with his hunky t-shirt wearing and urbanized Benicio Del Toro line delivery. But he's been in two good movies- Saving Private Ryan and The Iron Giant. It's not like he was the focus of the former, and God knows his mouth full of gravel style served him well in voicing a robot.

Other than that? Well, some liked The Fast and the Furious, and I can see how that'd appeal to the Nintendo generation. Otherwise, ugh.

I don't think he seems like a bad sort of person, as far as Hollywood types go. Maybe his theater and indie work grounded him or something. He's supposed to play Hannibal in a biopic slated for 2003 or 2004, which may be interesting, but I fear it'll wind up with Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay running the show.

Columbian president declares "state of internal commotion" Nice spin on "state of internal anarchy thanks to narco-terrorism and leftist rebels." I blame Madonna.

US AIrways goes Chapter 11 If you've flown them any time since, say, 1998, this should be no surprise. Why do I think they should have just turned the entire airline into Metro Jet?

Best case scenario: they sell off some/all of their gates at Logan to JetBlue so we can finally have a discount carrier centrally located. Won't happen, but I can hope for it.

Jason Priestly fractures spine There's a joke here involving Priestly and James Dean, but I can't put it together. The real surprise for me here was that Priestly is driving in an IRL developmental league. Didn't know he was that committed to racing, but I don't follow much outside of F1 (and even that I only sort of follow, mostly to root against Michael Schumacher).

Apologies to Craig Barker for ripping off his format.

So we're watching A League of Their Own on TNT, and it is full of pan and scan. An amazing amount of pan and scan. A motion-sickness inducing amount of pan and scan.

Someone get Ted some money to show the letterbox version. Please.

Two interesting things about the previous list:

1. It didn't include people who were born on August 8 who are now dead (which makes sense). So happy birthday to the dear departed Charles Bullfinch, Sylvia Sidney, Matthew Henson, Emiliano Zapata, Ernest Lawrence, Paul Dirac, and Andy Warhol, among others.

2. It's also interesting to see who is (as far as I can tell) still alive and not on the list. Not making the news feature cut include Mel Tillis, Robin Quivers, Nigel Mansell, Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman on The Six Million Dollar Man), Frank Howard, and Jose Cruz.

Among the interesting events that happened on this day in history:

* Napoleon sets sail for exile on St. Helena
* Brigham Young takes over the Mormon church
* First known ascent in a hot air balloon (indoors)
* Bhutan and the Ivory Coast become independent
* Goose Gossage records 300th save, Carlton Fisk ties Johnny Bench for most home runs by a catcher
* NYC has high temperature of 88 degrees on 8/8/88

I also seem to be coming up with today as Afghanistan's independence day, not the 18th as some would have you think.

What do Esther Williams, Donny Most, Keith Carradine, Dustin Hoffman, Deborah Norville, The Edge, Rikki Rocket (of Poison), Connie Stevens, JC Chasez (N Sync), Countess Vaughn (The Parkers), Peter Wier, Kool Mo Dee, Drew Lachey (98 Degrees), Larry Wilcox (CHiPS), and Princess Beatrice all have in common with me?

Our birthday. Woo!

Boggie may have The Mole and Cooch seems to enjoy the idea that he can get recaps of The Anna Nicole Show from TV Without Pity (a site I recommend, although the recaps can go on forever). I, however, have gotten interested in a show that almost defies recapping.

30 Seconds to Fame.

The premise is simple. Performers are rolled out at a breakneck clip and get 30 seconds to do their thing. The audience can vote them off by using some sort of device located at each seat. Performers surviving the 30 seconds are put into a pool, and the audience votes for the top three. Those three get another 30 seconds, audience votes again, winner gets $25k.

The show is hosted by Craig J. Jackson, who some of you may remember from his reporting and anchor duties on Channel One. That some of you being anyone under the age of, say, 25. The rest of us could remember him from his stint as host of The X Show on fX, but I'm willing to bet my core demographic (such as it is) doesn't quite match up with theirs. He's kind of a cross between Stuart Scott and Chuck Barris, and isn't too bad. He keeps things moving and light, at least. None of the faux-dramatic intonations the anonymous voice over guy from American Idol over-uses.

The acts are a real mixed bag. Mostly musical, either singing or instrumental. The singers tend to be OK, while the instrumentalists can really run the gamut. One of last night's winners (there being 2 episodes shown, as Meet the Marks, an improv/candid camera show, proved atrocious even by Fox network summer standards, which says something) was an electric violin player, who played on the same show as the guy who tried to play the clarinet and sax at the same time (and the woman who played the xylophone by spitting ping pong balls out of her mouth. I know where some of you are going with that- don't go there).

The other main type of act are movers, mostly dancing, but also martial artists, tumblers, Cirque du Soleil rejects, and so on. The other winners from last night were a dance pair who tangoed their way to the money after just 8 months of dancing together. There've also been hula dancers, more than one guy dancing with a doll/mannequin, and a male belly dancer (voted off).

Comedians fare poorly. There was one guy who was pretty funny last night, doing an impression of Al Pacino starring in Annie. Most get voted off, especially the prop comics. The wellspring of hate for Carrot Top is apparently deep enough for all of his comrades to take a dip, too.

I suppose the think that makes this a good show rather than a great show is that the contestants are, as a whole, perhaps too good. For every guy who yodels and strums a guitar upside-down, there are 4 or 5 relatively talented mainstream acts. Odd that I would criticize Fox for being too tasteful, but the show needs more fire eaters, plate spinners, and ventriloquists.

Or more of those large, pink-haired women who were so prominent in the early ads for the show (and still grace the website).

If 30 Seconds to Fame has done nothing else, it's showed the American viewing public that the human beatbox is alive an well. There were two on last night, and one the week before. The Fat Boys would be proud.

Having recently been through Chicago and Ann Arbor, a quick recap.

Blowin' through the Windy City Most of my previous trips to Chicago had it as the place to go through to get somewhere else (most memorably as the stop-over on a flight from Boston to Orlando, tickets bought through one of those supermarket register tape deals). This was the first time that I'd actually been in Chicago and actually did some Chicago-type things.

This meant on Friday seeing the Cubs beat the Rockies 6-4 in extra innings. Had unbelievable seats; face value $32, scalp for $25, about 30 feet from home. Missed the top of the first, but got to see 11.5 innings up close and personal. Saw Sammy go yard, Alfonseca blow a save by serving up Jack Cust's first MLB homer, and Moises Alou win with a walk-off 2 run job.

I also saw the future of homeland defense. The usher working the section in front of us (sections are refered to as "aisles" for some reason, but I'll use the more obvious term) was an older woman in her 60s, and she was relentless in keeping people out of her section who didn't belong, shooing people out of the actual aisle if they were blocking the view, and otherwise ruling that part of Wrigley with an iron fist. And who's going to argue with a midwestern grandmother? I'm thinking we get this woman and all of her friends to points of entry ASAP. Nothing could stop al-Qaeda colder than Nana's polite but firm no.

Returning on Sunday, we got kind of a late jump, so instead of doing a few different things we headed over to the Field Museum of Natural History. That part of Chicago is under construction (much of it perpetual, according to Greg), so parking was nightmarish. Once in, though, it was an easy walk to the museum "campus" that includes the Shedd Aquarium, a planetarium, and other stuff I'm forgetting. Oh, Solider Field is also right there, so we got to see some construction there, too.

Go to the Field Museum. They've got Sue the T Rex, the man-eating lions of Tsavo, and some other cool stuff. Plus, if you can convince the ticket people you're a teacher, you get in free!

As I've said in the past, one of these days I have to get to Chicago just to sightsee.

Oh yeah, the tournament The meat in the Chi-town sandwich was going out to Ann Arbor for an individual trash tournament. Both drives took place during evening/night/early morning hours, and I must have been a great traveling companion with all the napping I did. We stopped for dinner at a Steak 'n Shake, which was pretty good. They have really, really thin fries.

Tournament itself went better than expected, as I finished third out of 15 people. Highlight of the day was missing a question on the video game Mr. Do after playing the game during lunch. In an aside, Pinball Pete's is less cool now than it was in April, as they've thinned out their classic games and added a ton of music/dance games.

Post-tournament entertainment was pretty typical, Mexican food followed by Mike Burger's game show round (entertaining as always). The tournament all-star game was again in Weakest Link format, and I managed to get voted off after the second round. For my troubles, I won a number of books, including the novelizations of Space Camp and Dante's Peak.

Even the travel aspect of the weekend wasn't too out of hand, as both flights were relatively on time and hassle free. I can also confirm that American Airlines' claim of more leg room is spot on. It took me about 10 minutes on the flight out to realize what was different.

OK, I apparently need to use break tags much more liberally than originally thought. The links should all be nicely spaced now.

I've added some new links to people that weren't at BU at the same time I was (to the best of my knowledge). There are several other college bowl-related folks I could link to, but you can get to them pretty much through Craig's anyways. Though many of them have links to here, so I should just return the favor. Except that I can't be bothered right now. Too hot in the office.

I promised you a run down of TV Guide's 50 worst shows of all time, so here it is. I know you were waiting on tenterhooks!

My general observation about the list is that it seems to focus less on the truly worst shows than a combination of shows that combine lack of quality with a better cachet with the viewing public.

As much as it pains me to say it, I don't agree that The Jerry Springer Show is the worst TV show of all time. Should it be on the list? Certainly. But Springer has a knowing sense of its own lack of worth that other shows don't. Jenny Jones prattles on about the difference her show makes, even though it's best known for killing a guy. You could say the same of Ricki, Maury, and the dear departed Sally Jesse. None of them quite let the wall come down and admit that they're playing to the basest interest. Jerry does. For that he does deserve a place on the list. Just not the top one.

Should the XFL take the third spot? Production values were low, broadcast teams ill suited for football, and the product didn't live up to hype (to everyone's shock and chagrin). But was it worse than a variety show starring the Brady Bunch? Or a bunch of corn-fed yokels featuring Kathie Lee Gifford? Or worse than Celebrity Boxing, a show that put non-athletes (that's including the Fridge and Manute) into bouts that were fixed (sources indicate taping of several different endings)? The XFL, as far as we can tell, featured current athletes in non-fixed situations.

The biggest problem with the list is the show in fifth place - Hogan's Heroes. You can attack the show on several levels- it makes light of war, trivializes the Nazis, and so on. These would be good arguments- if the series was in any way meant to look at World War II in a meaningful way. The show was as knowing in its way as Springer. And would two men affected by the Holocaust- Robert Clary and Werner Klemperer- be involved in the show if they thought it demeaned their struggles? One would have to think they were happy to play the Nazis for chumps.

It's escapist humor all the way, and still provides chuckles today. This show shouldn't be on the list.

Hello, Larry at 12 is high. The show, one of McLean Stevenson's many post-MASH projects, is probably his best in that line. Not that it's high praise. The story of a single dad raising daughters while working on an AM station in Portland, Oregon, it combined domestic and topical humor (such as the older daughter's IUD use leading to an infection). The show is clearly better than Condo (perhaps his worst show, a mishmash of racial and cultural "humor"), In the Beginning, and the TV version of Dirty Dancing. Hello Larry makes the list because it's the best known of the group.

Twenty-One is most likely on the list due to the Charles van Doren scandal. The lame revival didn't help, either. But it's not 13th worst. It's better than most of the shows on the list, more deserving of something in the 40s. Or a trade with Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, which should be much higher on moral grounds alone.

Notably absent is any of the twaddle that's tried to fill the 8:30 Thurday time slot on NBC over the last few years. No The Single Guy or Union Station or Jesse or Inside Schwartz. All of which were worse than, say, Life with Lucy, The Ropers, or even Unhappily Every After (with sincere thanks to Nikki Cox's decolletage).

Other shows that don't seem to fit the list:

Howard Stern and The Tom Green Show Neither show caters to a mainstream audience, and Stern is hampered by trying to convert a radio show into a visual medium. But both hit upon a level of humor in America that clearly exists, even if it's not the level of folks who get all of the New Yorkercartoons (at least not admittedly).

I don't personally care for either Stern or Green, but think that they've redefined comedy in their own ways, and their shows probably would get the average person to laugh more than, say, Working or Fired Up.

Holmes and Yoyo Cop with bad luck in partners gets mated up with an android. It was out there for a 1970s show, but at least it wasn't all preachy (I'm looking at you, Quincy!).

Pink Lady... and Jeff Jeff Altman hosts, Pink Lady (a pair of Japanese women) sings, and no one understands each other. Jim Varney appears in a number of comedy sketches. It's train wreck funny, which I suppose means it should be a bottom 50 show, but can't think that this would be there and Susan and Mel Together, another incomprehensible pairing (but with two people- Susan Anton and Mel Tillis- who speak the same language... to a point), isn't.

Makin' It The greatest sitcom about roller disco ever. OK, this really does belong, but I watched this show a lot. Don't know why, exactly. I didn't roller skate, disliked disco, and couldn't identify with the family all that much. But Ellen Travolta can play a sitcom mother to perfection. Maybe that was it.

I suppose I should argue for The Flying Nun, but I can't. I really never cared for the show.

Other shows present an almost theological problem, in that arguing for or against them is a matter of such fine degree that it's almost pointless. I'm thinking here of shows like She's the Sheriff, A.K.A. Pablo, Rango, Co-ed Fever, shows whose general lack of quality makes them hard to distinguish from other bad shows that didn't make the list and which, thankfully, are receding into memory.

Barney, however, seems like the perfect capper.