All the talk about the Superbowl reminded me of my favoritest soap opera ever: the Dallas Cowboys. Mind you, they won the title by default by pre-empting my actual soaps over and over. And over.

That's the thing about watching daytime television. You can't get too attached because at any moment the signal may switch over to some other drama, like a Dallas Cowboy being caught in a hotel room with a bunch of coked-up strippers. And I do mean 'at any moment.' This happened on a fairly regular basis back in the good old days, along with a generous smattering of other peccadillos such as fights, drunkenness, weapons possession, and more drugs.

Another good LIVE news moment was the time grass fires scorched across the suburban plains, and news helicopters filmed all these poor people trying to hose their houses down before the flames reached them, then giving up and fleeing in 4x4 trucks. I realize news craft are not supposed to get involved in rescue efforts, but it seemed awfully callous of them to just circle these scenes of doom, filming and filming, and not even dump a little water out of the cockpit to help those people out.

A third good LIVE news moment was the time a chemical plant upwind from my college had some sort of spill that sent dangerous fumes wafting our way. We all got evacuated to the mall, so I didn't get to watch too much of that on television.

If I were in charge of the news, I would constantly break into the regular programming and go live to completely random things, like shock theater moments of zen: You WILL smell the flowers. You WILL watch commuters stuff themselves three-high into an El car.

The only news job better than that would be writing LIVE closed captioning. I would get bored halfway through and start complaining about how much my fingers hurt. Then I'd ask if anyone was reading this. Then I would start commenting on what the people onscreen were wearing. Then I would beg someone to order me takeout and give them the newsroom address. I might even say I was being held hostage or start telling the audience that it was getting very, very sleepy.

Endless hijinks, obviously.