Yes, my name is Johnny Wishbone

Another weekend gone by. On Friday night, I drove to the big city, ate a spinach salad with walnuts and feta and red onions and raspberry dressing, and watched a little bit of An Evening with Kevin Smith before we had to turn it off. I like Kevin Smith, but I do not like shots of overly enthusiastic fans in any kind of video. Music concert, lecture series, whatever. Spare me the extended footage of audience members applauding, "woo!"-ing, guffawing. Hate.

On Saturday morning, it was off to the French bakery for a muffin and croissant. We bought a Christmas tree and went to split the planet's best barbeque shrimp po-boy. We went to the mall, which was hellish, of course, to buy a gift card for the intern at my office who's graduating, then to Border's, then to meet my parents for coffee but not really because they got stuck in traffic and didn't make it, and started a game of Scrabble before heading out to dinner, where the wait was long despite reservations but the food was very good. The house salad was especially tasty, as was the butternut shrimp bisque, into which I dipped much bread.

The next morning we went out for Christmas lights and put them on the tree and I headed home around lunchtime and set out for my supposed six-mile run which ended up being a 3.5-mile run. I was having a hard time and kept slowing down and slowing down until I realized, "Hey, I'm walking." I kept on walking and didn't finish the run. It might have been the heat or running outside again after a two-week stint running indoors or the fact that mentally I knew that I'd already run 6 miles the Sunday before. I don't know. It was the first time in all of this training that it was body over mind and I was upset about it at first but have now let it go and plan on running my 19 miles this week come hell or high water.

Alert. Alert! Bravo is airing the first ten episodes of Friday Night Lights, marathon style, on Saturday, December 30. My evangelism relative to this show is perhaps growing tiresome but I don't care.

And here's another alert: You can watch three episodes of thirtysomething on YouTube now. I have done searches for this show since forever and now look, there they are: "Separation," the episode when Nancy and Elliot separate; "Legacy," the episode when Michael and Elliot's plane almost crashes so Michael and Hope start drawing up a will, Nancy and Elliot are getting back together, and so forth; and "Mr. Right," the episode when Melissa and Ellyn do video dating, Ethan has to kiss Cinderella in the school play, and Melissa meets Lee. Excellence all around. I now see that you can buy this show on DVD here and here, both of which might be sketchy as the show has never been officially issued on DVD. I'm thinking of buying it from the first link; is that insane?

I caught part of Eddie Murphy on Inside the Actors Studio tonight and was reminded of how often my brother, sister, and I used to watch the first two Beverly Hills Cop movies when we were young. I remember how hard they made my brother laugh. For having parents so holy, we sure did watch a lot of filth. I think the trick is having holy parents who can still find amusement in the likes of Axel Foley.