"I don't wanna be anything other than what I've been tryin' to be lately . . . AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

GO SOX!

I can finally understand for the first time why people have those televisions with split-screens. One Tree Hill conflicts with the Red Sox/Yankees playoff game tonight.

And, yes, One Tree Hill is good . . . so bad it's good, that is--so bad it's AMAZING, in fact. No show moves faster: in the season finale last year there was:

1. an attempted divorce;
2. the wife-half of said divorce sleeping with the husband-half's brother and the husband-half walking in on them;
3. the husband-half having a heart attack (after #2) while he was starting to sign the divorce papers (#1);
4. the basketball coach winding up in the hospital with bad medical news;
5. two girls conspiring to send the mother of their male friend's baby to the wrong city after they help the male friend get on a ship with the baby to get away from the scheming mother;
6. the husband-half's brother leaving town to start over with the husband-half's son with another woman (whom he impregnated his senior year in high school and then left for college);
7. a denied marriage proposal from the husband-half's brother to the mother of the husband-half's first (illegitimate) son;
8. a marriage among two high school juniors (the wife- and husband-half's son and the female best friend of the husband-half's first (illegitimate) son who also works for the mother of said best friend at her coffee shop) so that they can sleep together; and
9. the delivering of the best line ever by the mother of the husband-half's first (illegitimate) son to said son: "There's only one Tree Hill . . . and it's your home" with all the appropriate cheesiness. Tree Hill is the name of their town. One Tree Hill is the name of the show. Big groan.

Confused? Don't worry--you're not alone; and all of this in the space of an hour. That much doesn't happen in a daytime soap in three years! So you see my dilemma. I'm talking major, earthshaking stuff here. Obviously.

All of this depends on whether or not I get out of work at a decent time tonight, of course. There's a good chance that I'll be editing and proofreading right through it all. I worked through lunch again today and don't really see an end to the evening's work. It's been made easier by my having found "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!" archives on-line that I can listen to on my computer. If you're unfamiliar, this is an NPR quiz show about current events. I started with January of 2004 and have come forward in the future, and it's quite funny listening to things they jokingly predict that actually have come true!