LUKE: Entry for the weekend. Fairly boring week in terms of my journal because I was very focused on achieving my goal for diamond rank this season for my game. Just to give you a scope on how much I had to play, the system is laid out like this. The ladder is divided into bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, challenger. In these there are 5 ranks like bronze 3, silver 2 diamond 1 etc. and to get promoted you have to get to 100 lp or league points and then win a best of 3 series. You get about 20 lp for a win and lose 15 for a loss. This Friday I was at plat 3 20 lp so I had to win a lot and now im at plat 1 20 lp. Now I have 1 day left to get to diamond. Wish me luck!
RICK: Sunday nights have become great TV nights, a time to wind down from whatever’s gone on during the week and settle in with the golden age of television. I’ve been trying to keep up with Madame Secretary, Homeland and The Affair, but last night was the can’t-miss season premiere of HBO’s The Newsroom. The show’s third and final abbreviated season is getting hammered by critics, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like seeing the fast pace as smart folks make important decisions in a big-time cable newsroom.
It was her first time seeing it, and after 15 minutes Paula asked me — “Is that what it’s really like?” The truth is I have no idea, but I’ve never even been in a local newsroom during a crisis, and Jeff Daniels’ crew on the show seems to be handling multiple issues at once — trying to do the right thing and wait for confirmation on the Boston Marathon shooting, concern about a ratings slide while discovering the network may be subject to a takeover. It’s all so dramatic. It’s probably more realistic that Tea Leoni’s Secretary of State or the spy strategies of Claire Danes on Homeland.
My answer to Paula is that no, I don’t think that’s what it’s really like. For one, the characters aren’t so good-looking. But I like watching the series because it’s about news, it’s really well-produced, and it’s at least fun to imagine that they’re really like that.
