Blogging Roadshow

I am coming to you live from the Yuma County Library. I thought it was time to break out of my blogging rut and try some other locations. However, all this particular location has to offer is teenagers looking at things they can't look at when at home and some heinous body odor.
Alas, there is no time for delay. There is a lot to get to.
1. The Z Team (Kat, Eric, me and quasi-Z third wheel Maddy) took a day trip to Julian, California, a tourist trap for people who like antiquing, riding motorcycles or both. It was actually a really fun place. I would suggest it for anyone who happens to be in the area. However, be careful when driving there. There are twisty roads and mistakes made by others may cloud your vision. Do not be distracted!
2. Despite the fact that Chris Berman became an enormous caricature of himself a decade ago, I badly miss NFL Primetime. NBC's horrible substitute, Football Night in America, couldn't really be worse. The highlight packages are so short that I'm forced to actually watch games, rather than simply get it all from Primetime. I like Bob Costas, but he's been a little too smarmy during the first two weeks. Cris Collinsworth is so smug that the word smug doesn't even begin to cover it. I think it should be SSSSSSMMMMMMMUUUUUGGGGGG. Sterling Sharpe could be a character in Dave Chappelle's haters sketch, and Jerome (He's from Detroit!) Bettis thinks he should still be playing. All of this would be acceptable if the highlights were better. But they show like two scoring plays and that's it. No analysis, no here's how this play happened, no here's a run for eight yards. I'm saddened because Primetime has been an important part of my life for years. It's like having a beloved pet die. I know that You're With Me Leather and Tom Jackson are doing Primetime lite on SportsCenter on something imaginatively (by that I mean extremely unimaginatively) called The Blitz. But I don't want that. I just want Primetime.
Primetime was like any good television show: two strong characters, guaranteed drama every week, running gags that ran on far too long and so much fun that you would wish you were there. Football Night in America has none of these things. It's overproduced, boring and doesn't seem like it would be fun to sit with those four guys and talk football. That wasn't the case with Primetime. Most people thought it would be fun to hang out with Boom and TJ, bust their chops for getting fat, hope Michael Jackson caught a touchdown pass (hee hee) or someone from Brown University or Louisville factored into an important play. FBIA isn't cutting it, so I'll think I'll just cut it out. But I mourn Primetime.
3. I saw the documentary Grizzly Man. I hesitate to say it was enjoyable considering the ending, but I did like it. I would be willing to do just about anything with Werner Herzog, even if it was just folding his laundry or running errands. The man who created Fitzcarraldo is a man I can be down with. What I loved about Grizzly Man is that if some other director had made it, it would have been about bears or the craziness of Timothy Treadwell or the dangers of nature. But with Herzog, a movie about a guy living with bears and then being eaten by one, actually ends up being about filmmaking. It seems like a documentary about Herzog watching the Treadwell footage and trying to craft a coherent documentary out of it might be interesting as well. But that might be way too meta, but anyway, I typed it so I'm sticking with it.
4. Everyone at work says I type too loudly when I get to writing something, and judging by the looks I'm getting from people in this library, they are absolutely right. Some 15-year-old pulled himself away from Perez Hilton long enough to glare at me. And he's listening to an iPod and yet apparently he can still hear my clacking. Oh well, if he can look at Web sites for lad mags in a publicly-funded institution for free, I can be allowed to type loudly. If not, the (insert current hated subgroup) win.
5. No new Project Runway ep last night. I'm jonesing for some discussion of "whether he had a woman's body in mind." Maybe I just need to lay down.
6. I'm currently reading Ravelstein by Saul Bellow. It's categorized as a novel, but it seems more like an extended meditation on being a dying Northeast Jewish liberal professor at a leafy university. That doesn't mean it's not good, but Philip Roth, Mr. Bellow and Don DeLillo have plowed the field pretty clear in my estimation. But I'm a Philistine, so if you like, check your local library. I don't think I'm the target audience for Bellow's Adventures of Abe and Chick as they reminisce about the past before they shove off this mortal coil.
7. I'm listening to a sample of Saddle Creek songs that was included on Cursive's latest Happy Hollow. I'm enjoying the Bright Eyes tracks that will be included on the upcoming "this and that" album called Noise Floor. I like the Cursive album, although the absence of the cello player is felt. If you just want one song off iTunes, I'd go for Bad Sects. It combines moddy rhythms with bad puns, Catholic psychosexual guilt and Midwestern sameness. I think. Or I read a Pitchfork review and couldn't successfully purge all of it out of my cerebral cortex.
8. I think that's about all that I've got for you. If anyone actually got to the end, I applaud you. You can prove it by finding the 37th word (contractions are considered one item, punctuation is not counted) in item 7 and typing it into the comments section. I will then mail you an autographed photo and whatever uplifting message you choose, courtesy of The Yumanity. Happy hunting!