A few points in the early morning...

Well, 8 a.m. is early for me. This whole being grown up and going to work in the morning thing has not grown any more appealing as I get older.

1. Oh look. It seems that with extensive use of phone in shows, weak happy news announcements, carpet bombing newspaper letter pages and other tricks, you can rig a poll. Of course, it helps to have a patheticly weak opposition.

Yes, I can certainly see why Danny gets 78% approval when Gerry Reid and Lorraine Michael are your fallback options as leader of the province. Although 412 people is a pretty small survey.

2. One of these days I really wish someone would make the argument to those who want to crush the commercial seal hunt, that exempting the native one doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference. If you kill the commercial hunt, you kill the international demand. And then pelts drop to about 50 cents each, making the hunt almost completely useless for native hunters.

How do I know? Because that's what happened the last time the commercial hunt went down. And I gotta tell you, from what I've been told, people in the North didn't do so well when that happened.

3. Yes, I've seen the truck commercial for the Bonavista featuring the salesmen with the thick accent. And yes, maybe having the truck drive up the lovely highways of the Bonavista Peninsula might have been a better idea. But I'm certainly not offended by the commercial, and I'm not one to shy away from the outrage if I feel Newfoundland is being done over by a bunch of Mainlander.

All I kept thinking is they could have done that better. For one thing, it doesn't sound like the actor is from Newfoundland, although I don't know for sure. I've been told that I don't sound like I'm from Newfoundland. They could have gotten someone from out in Baie Verte or Notre Dame Bay to have done the commercial. Then you certainly could have justified the subtitles.

Or hell, Buddy Wasisname. That would have been fun. But as for this? Eh. Pretty low on my offensiveness scale. Sorry.

4. Haven't been keeping up on my TV reviews. I stopped watching Vanished because I got bored. I didn't watch Stand-off because it has the stench of Doom around it. An early pick for the Fall's first TV casualty.

I am sort of enjoying Justice, though. Hell, any show that uses Warren Zevon's "Lawyers, Guns and Money" over its credits isn't all bad in my books. I don't know if it's a show that's is going to hold up over the long haul, though. Using all the gadgets to rig trials in favour of their client is interesting for the first few weeks, but is it still going to be interesting in April of next year? We'll see. I had the same thoughts about CSI when I first saw it, and it seems to be chugging along just fine.

I'd say something about the actors, but it's almost "who cares" at this point. You know little about the characters because right now the emphasis is on the flash of the show, not them. I imagine that will have to change over time if the show is going to survive. Although I do also like the bit at the end where they show you if the person was actually innocent or not. That alone might be enough to hook people and get them coming back.

However, those who say it's like House for lawyers....no. Sorry. House is still a much, much better show. This one has a long way to go before it can be mentioned in the same breath as House.