Funny the Way It Is

I was watching the Mets vs. Nationals game on Fox this afternoon, and noticed how distracted television is sometimes. The game was on the screen, but also on the screen was a yellow box running an ad for the upcoming All-Star game (on Fox) that we were required to read, I assume. While all this is going on, the play-by-play announcer was entertaining us with a random baseball story that had nothing to do with either what was happening on my TV screen or on the playing field.

I think that the only way Fox could have created a more mentally distracting sight would have been to run loud music over the entire thing. That, or they could have tilted the screen a little so that I would have to move my head. Now they have another new idea.

And then, there was an ad for a Dodge truck whose big selling point was that it had a cargo bay "capable of holding 5.5 pounds of chili." Really, that's what he said. It's gotten to the point that chili storage is a positive trait in a vehicle. Here I was, concerned about fuel mileage or handling. Don't cook and drive.

NASCAR held their annual July 4th weekend race at Daytona Beach tonight. As part of the celebration, Darius Rucker sang our National Anthem and there was an F-18 jet flyover. Three great American traditions were celebrated at once: War, jingoism and a black crossover country singer. It doesn't get much more American than that.