I was very surprised to hear that Tim Russert died. I always liked the guy, and hearing many of his fellow professionals speak about him, it would be hard to find anyone who disliked him. "Meet The Press" has been a Sunday staple of mine for years, even though Channel 3 shows it at 10:30 locally. That program is always a bridge from early morning activity like reading the paper, running errands, etc. to whatever sports I have lined up for Sunday, especially during soccer and football seasons.

I like "Meet The Press" because Russert will get on these folks about certain ideas they may have, but he always allowed his guests to get their point across. I think it's a pretty good tradeoff, I'll take some abuse but my message gets out, and Russert did that the best. Certainly, his program could be considered the first primary in any election year, because they all show up, even folks like Ron Paul.

And I appreciated how he would have Senatorial candidates from each state when they were battling for an election. After you viewed some of those programs, you were grateful you lived in the state you did.

But there's no question, he was the top political journalist in this country. And he'll be missed terribly.

David Remnick with some kind words.

Boy, NBC is getting hit hard by the Grim Reaper these days as one of my favorite sportscasters, Charlie Jones, has died. He had a really good voice for sports and I always thought he did a great job on down and distance and the clock, when those things were not on your screen the whole game. And he did an Olympics stint as the track and field guy in 1988, you know, Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis, for one. I seem to recall he blew the name of the winner of a distance race, and they moved him off of that beat, but I always liked him.

Meal of Links

Not as shocking, but startling nonetheless, is that I heard that Cheeta is still alive! Yes, that Cheeta, from the Tarzan movies. He has the official title of the world's oldest living non-human primate. And they are trying to get him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Ungawa!

How to live with only 100 things. It is an interesting take on purging. I have that same problem with jeans. What is the number that is too many. I probably have over 10 pair. White, Khaki, Blue and Black represented. Is that too many?

Movies with twists. I say, this is a pretty good list.

All weekend on the AT&T Blue Room, it's Bonnaroo.

Angry Guy picked us some sushi from Ginza last night. Well, he didn't order anything we wanted and waited til he got there, but that's another story. Really good spicy salmon and tuna. Or it may have been spicy tuna and salmon. Either way, whatever was on my plate was inhaled.

I failed to mention that Geddy Lee recently donated a huge signed baseball collection to the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Yep, it's that Geddy Lee.

Why do I read stuff like this? Ugh.

Exercise Yard

Saw David Villa (him again) pull one out late against Sweden in Euro 2008 today.



But how about yesterday? The Dutch, the Dutch? again, with a 4-goal outburst against France. Their defense cannot hold up, can it? I mean the French had 23 shots, not exactly clamped down. The Netherlands moves on to join Portugal and Croatia in the quarters.

Also, Italy drew with Romania.

Visitor

1 Down: King who was Time's 1974 Person of the Year (6 letters) Answer: Faisal