Opening Day

• The Monologue:
• A report has determined that the FBI overstepped its bounds and misled Congress after 9/11. In other news, the FBI was part of the government after 9/11.
• IKEA is expanding into India, meaning that a Bollywood version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo can't be far behind.
• Lady Gaga held a rally in Maine to convince the state's senators to vote to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". The two lawmakers became so confused by her appearance and music that somehow there's a new law that gays can only serve in the military if they wear meat uniforms.
• Random Pop Culture:
• The relatively high amount of great one-liners on this week's Mad Men, coupled with the great physical humor as the SCDP staff tried to drag a dead Miss Blankenship away from her desk behind the clients' back, were all almost too perfect. It was very entertaining but, I don't know, over-written (?) for a show that is often perfect by being not too fine dialogue-wise. Still, the best season yet of the best show on TV continues to roll along.
• There is that special moment at the beginning of each TV season where I begin to smile at a joke on How I Met Your Mother and then remember that the show has a laugh track. Tonight's episode was fairly funny and I'm glad that they are moving the mother story along, but still. Laugh track.
• On the other hand, the realization that House (the character, but also the show) is back is as positive as that laugh track is negative. The show, with its grand change from the very end of last season, is not fundamentally different, but still entertaining. "There's an 'I' in Cuddy." Great line.
• Hawaii Five-0 gets a B-minus for the show and an A-plus for the title sequence. The show is formulaic, but it's not entirely boring. It's not as good as Human Target, but I foresee it filling a similar role -- a fun show to DVR and watch on weekends when I'm looking for something to do.
• Still have to watch the pilots for Boardwalk Empire and Fox's Lone Star (which has been critically-proclaimed the best network pilot of the year).
• When the Saints took the ball back with just over a minute, I commented that Brees is probably second to Manning in terms of QBs that I would not want to see in that situation if I were the other team. A fairly distant second, but second all the same. When he got the ball quickly to 49ers territory with 45 seconds left and a timeout, I proclaimed the game over. Not rocket science.
• Random Video:
• On this day in 1967, we got two for the price of one as both Matthew and Gunnar Nelson were born.