Odds and ends

-I've probably watched over a dozen hours of basketball since Thursday afternoon. (My bracket is doing pretty well in the pool that I entered. I picked a good upset in Wichita State over Tennessee, but I've already lost one of my Elite Eight teams [Kansas]. My Final Four are UConn, Duke, BC and Gonzaga. I'm really only worried about the Zags, but they looked good last night even without a stellar performance from Morrison the Mustache.)

-On a related note, the game that I'm currently watching is Bradley vs. Pittsburgh. On the score graphic, the schools are abbreviated "Brad" and "Pitt." Seriously.

-I've been listening to the song "Move Along" by The All-American Rejects non-stop since I saw the music video for it at Kate's house last night. No song should be that good.

-I'm going to be pissed if tonight's Sopranos episode is a flashback. The blurb for the episode mentions something about Tony going on a business trip, which doesn't sound like something that someone who's just been shot would do. The show has earned a lot of acclaim largely because it is unapologetically realistic (within the context of a mob story, anyway) and because it unfolds at the pace of real life. For the show to lapse into worn-out tactics like cliffhangers and convoluted timelines would constitute a major retreat from its usual sophistication. I could handle a flash-forward, but the idea that last week's episode was in fact the chronological end of the series feels cheap and disappointing.

All right, that's it. Over and out.