It's getting harder to get outraged these days

How many times can I complain about the cancellation of a Fox show? I don't know. They just cancelled Drive after a two hour special and then two episodes at its regular time. Good thing the DVR will catch the final two episodes when they air at some random time (read Friday night) this summer unlike the final four episodes of Arrested Development, which I missed.

Is it that surprising that Drive was cancelled? Not really. While I did like the show on the whole, it had several characters that annoyed me. And they clearly were not racing through southern Georgia. Oh, and did I mention it was scripted.

But in other news, ABC is punting on Friday nights, which is now known as "National Bingo Night"! Woo-hoo! Bingo. On television. It's like all the fun of bingo, but without the ability to actually play yourself.

On the other hand, ESPN will be airing the national Rock Paper Scissors championship, and I'm kind of excited. Should it matter that its on ESPN and not a "network" network like ABC? No, it shouldn't. But I guess it does. I think it's that the RPS championship existed prior to the television coverage.

Oops gotta run, the Sopranos are on.

Area man scared of roommate due to local news

Carrboro, NC--An area man became momentarily frightened of his roommate this afternoon when he heard the ABC 11 news report of the eBay habits of Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui. Authorities searched Mr. Cho's computer and found that he frequented the online auction site eBay.com and used it to buy the ammunition clips and to sell books including Men, Women, and Chain Saws, a book that the area man's roommate was in the middle of reading.

ABC 11 was not the only source to single out Men, Women, and Chain Saws among the books sold on the account, but they did fail to provide the desensationalizing discussion of Carol J. Clover's 1992 book, which is ensubtitled "Gender in the Modern Horror Film" and was required reading for the Contemporary Horror class taken by Mr. Cho, an English major.

The local roommate is reading Ms. Clover's book after hearing filmmaker Quentin Tarantino refer to it in an interview on the podcast of the NPR show The Treatment, hosted by Elvis Mitchell. Mr. Tarantino said that the book, which examines the identification of adolescent male audence members with the female victim of horror films in the late 1970s and '80s, had influenced Death Proof, his half of the double feature Grindhouse, which too few people are seeing.

Effective Scheduling

It's that time of the month again, the time we celebrate all that good, all that is pure and wholesome about the sport of baseball. I am of course talking about this weekend's series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. This most heated rivalry is renewed with six three-game series this season (April 20-22 and 27-29, May 21-23, June 1-3, August 28-30, and September 14-16). Of these 18 games, 10 are already scheduled for a national television audience on either ESPN or the Fox Saturday game of the week. I am not opposed to Major League Baseball's emphasis on the Yankees-Red Sox rivarly. These two teams would not play on national television so often if people did not want to watch them play.

However, MLB when they put the schedule together miss a golden opportunity. Lost in this Yankees-Red Sox celebration is a chance to celebrate anything else. The St. Louis Cardinals are in Chicago to take on their big rival, the Cubs this weekend. This rivalry is probably the second greatest rivalry in the sport. Fox knows this because each of the four Saturday meetings between the two clubs is scheduled for their game of the week. However, of the 16 games Cubs-Cardinals games this year, 9 of them are played on a day in which the Yankees play the Red Sox. Thus, three of these Fox Saturday games of the week, the national game is Yankees-Red Sox, and unless there is rain in the Bronx or Boston, the Cubs and Cardinals can only be seen in Chicago and St. Louis.

Why does MLB force these rivalries to compete? The health of the sport is measured by just the Yankees-Red Sox series. Is it not in the best interest of the sport to have something to celebrate every weekend? Sure, let the Yankees-Red Sox be the national focus one weekend, but do it in such a way that the next week, a light equally strong can be shown on the Cubs and the Cardinals the following weekend.

MLB errs in a similar way with the interleague schedule. The Yankees-Mets subway series is always the tentpole of this interleague extravaganza, but why do they have to have the idea of the interleague weekend in the first place? They are better this year by having only one of the two Cubs-White Sox series coincide with one of the Yankees-Mets series.

Public Service Announcement

This is a reminder to always practice safe religion. Specifically, when practicing mass self-flagellation, always be sure to use sterile blades, and never share whips. A participant in the annual Philippine Good Friday crucifiction reinactments died of rabies shortly after the celebration.