GO CAL!

The highlight of yesterday's TV was the crazy NCAA football action. #2 USC gets upset at home by Stanford, of all teams. And #1 LSU comes this close to also being upset at home by Florida (and what a great game that was -- I was rooting my heart out for Florida!). If LSU had also lost, that meant my beloved Cal, sitting in the #3 spot with a bye week, could potentially have moved up to #1 by doing nothing! And how sweet would that have been? As it is, Cal moved up to #2 in the AP and USA Today polls (though they still got zero votes for first place, and the new #3, Ohio St., got two votes for first in the USA Today poll, which is weird -- no respect!), and USC dropped to #7 (ha!) in the USA Today poll, and #10 (HA!!) in the AP. There's still a rough road ahead for Cal -- the Nov. 10 home game against USC is still huge, but before that, they've got an away game against #14 Arizona State (#13 in USA Today), who is currently 6-0 overall. In fact, though Cal is #2 in the nation, they're only third in the Pac-10! Arizona St. is #1, and UCLA is #2 -- they're 3-0 in conference (as opposed to Cal's 2-0), though they're only 4-2 overall.

Had enough football talk yet? Okay, I'll stop.

Speaking of football (suckers!), I did not watch Friday Night Lights on Friday night after all. I know a lot of you think it's the best drama on network TV right now. I guess I'm just missing out. It's one of those shows I can't make myself get interested in, even though I know I would probably like it if I gave it a chance (other past and current examples include Homicide, Boomtown, and The Wire, which I keep saying I'll rent on DVD, but never do). Oh well.

Saturday night I watched the reairing of the second episode of Chuck, and I still like it, though it's certainly nothing special. The humor is enough to keep me watching, even though the spy stories are weak and full of holes. And boy, that Yvonne Strahovski is a cutie, isn't she?

This week's Saturday Night Live benefited from having an actual comedian as host, Seth Rogen, but it wasn't much of an improvement over last week's debut. In fact, without an SNL Digital Short or a Robert Smigel cartoon, it may actually have been worse. Chevy Chase's appearance during Weekend Update was kind of exciting at first, ultimately turning sad as he stammered out one laugh-free gag after another. Really, the only good sketches in the show were the running "MacGruber" bits, which I always enjoy. The "Douchebag of the Year" sketch also had a few laughs, though, as with so many SNL premises, it was more unrealized potential than actual comedy. The sketch with Seth Rogen and Kristin Wiig as the two annoying children (attempted catchphrase: "I said 'we'!") was interminable and painfully awful. Please try not to be so horrible next week, SNL. What's that -- Jon Bon Jovi will be hosting? Well, there goes that hope.

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Tonight's TV brings the two-hour animation block on Fox, which is all I care about. I might watch a little of the Bears-Packers Sunday Night Football game, but it's hard to get enthused about it. And at 8:00 on The CW, we have one of the last debuts of the Fall season, Life Is Wild, which takes the usual obnoxious little shits from the typical CW teen drama, and transplants them to Africa. Hilarity ensues? Or something? We'll see.