F-R-E-A-K-I-N-G P-R-E-S-S-U-R-E

'Aww Damnnn, what the fuck did you just say dogg? Can you slap that shit in a sentence?'

Welcome to Summer TV, where the top season finales have concluded, and repeats, bottom-of-the-barrel reality shows, and oddball specials enter your living room.

Tonight, ABC hosts live the final round of the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee , two hours of watching awkward pre-teens crap their pants standing on stage while trying to spell crazy ass words like h-e-i-l-i-g-e-n-s-c-h-e-i-n. I must say, in the company of repeat episodes of That 70's Show, The Office, and watching a make-up caked Leslie Nielsen play Let's Make a Deal on CBS' Gameshow Marathon, the Bee doesn't sound that bad, and it isn't. These kids are nervous, awkward, emotional- themselves. It's actually refreshing to see such pure drama, no nutty obstacle courses, no eating crazy contests, no voting people off, just kid versus word.

I'm reminded of my adolescedent days, where I actually thought for a while that getting far in the school spelling bee was gonna actually help me get to 2nd base with the chicks (get to 3rd base at my Catholic elementary school and you might as well have a marble statue built in your name). Boy was I wrong. It seems like epochs ago, where PCs weren't ubiquitous, but rather were a novelty, in the form of a Commodore 64. Spell check was just in it's infancy stage, and the Internet was non-existent. I'm glad these youngbloods are keeping the art of vocabulary and spelling alive. In an age where computers do most of the heavy lifting for the brain, there's something to be said about picking up a dictionary and reading it, learning it, and applying it, old-school style.