Standing Up For The Big Guy

• What I'm Watching/Listening To/Reading:
• Watched the first episode of "Hard Knocks" and you can't deny that T.O. is one funny dude. But what really got me was Tank Johnson and Adam Jones being on the same team. Talk about shooting the gap.
• Transformers premiered on HBO tonight and, having not bought it on DVD yet, I had been wanting to re-watch it for a while. It really holds up as one of the more fun movies from last year. When it came out, I referred to it as "Michael Bay's Citizen Kane", since Bay is unlikely to ever again make anything better (or close to as good).
• I'm not the biggest Olympics fanatic (I'm due for a rant about the basketball team), but I am really liking the HD Basketball and HD Soccer channels. NBC's doing a great job with using all of their networks and the internet to provide comprehensive coverage, a lot of it live. Remember back to Nagano in 1998 and how unpopular the games were because every event was tape-delayed.
• Random Thoughts/Links:
• Today is the anniversary of Nixon's resignation. Wasn't it nice when law-breaking presidents used to do the right thing?
• The weather was perfect today, as in it could not have gotten any better. I love staying inside and even I found excuses, beyond just walking the dog, to get out.
• Daily Rant:
• I was looking for something on Target's website today and saw a note that there are no Target locations in Alaska, Hawaii, or Vermont (thanks, hippies). I mention this on the tail of a conversation I had with a co-worker a few days ago where she was lamenting the power of chains and the dearth of small stores. I disagree. Small businesses still exist, but we're better off for having the economy of scale and wide variety of product choice that come with a big chain store. I went to our town center this evening to grab something to eat. It's almost all chains, yet there was a definite community feel thanks to good urban planning. Chains, in and of themselves, do not mean the death of a community.