Road diary: Press tour, DNA testing, NCIS: LA

In honor of Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann burying the hatchet...I found this in my hotel kit.

Every now and then I hear someone refer to press tour as a "junket." It's not -- and I have the expense reports to prove it -- but I understand where that's coming from. Every six months, dozens of journalists hauling beat-up luggage and wearing Costco clothes check into some of the most fabulous luxury hotels in Los Angeles. For two weeks. That seems kind of fishy, I will admit.

However, the thing you have to understand about the Television Critics Association, or TCA, is that its primary function is not to serve as a journalism organization, but as a buying club. And what we buy are hotel rooms. Because our lodging is contingent on networks rolling in their dog and pony shows, renting rooms from the hotel, utilizing hotel food and drink services to feed and lubricate the press and paying for hotel staff to perform any number of other related services to keep their executives and talent comfy, the TCA is able to negotiate a rate for critics that won't bust the budget of the publication back home. And the networks get to put on a nice show and give their stars an experience that makes them not so ill at ease when rubbing shoulders with the likes of us.

Of course, newspaper and magazine budgets are shrinking, so press tour isn't the 22-day "death march with cocktails" that it once was. But it's still an amazingly effective way to bring Hollywood home to the Midwest in a relatively short span of newsgathering. (I do, however, supplement my time out here with off-campus meetings and set visits that I arrange myself.) So press tour still works for me. Especially with the complimentary Loofah!

I forgot to mention that during the National Geographic panel on Thursday, we all got DNA kits. Nat Geo has partnered with with IBM on the cleverly-branded Genographic Project, which according to the card that fell out of my kit "harnesses a worldwide consortium of scientists and institutions to collect at least 100,000 genetic samples from indigenous and traditional peoples so as to better understand the genetic and migratory history of the human race." Wow! How could I say no to that?

The idea of having my genes traced back to my migratory kinfolk reminded me of that PBS series where Henry Louis Gates told celebrities like Oprah and Morgan Freeman that they had really interesting ancestors. Maybe he could do that with Officer Crowley and the president next time they get together. Anyway, I scraped my cheeks and handed in my swabs. I'll let you know the results.

There were set visits today. I went to "NCIS Los Angeles," which is about as sure a thing as you can get in network television these days, even though the set looks like a Mexican restaurant. I interviewed Adam Jamal Craig, a nice young actor from Olathe. That's him second from the left, wearing the "three wolf moon" T shirt. He plays a new member of the force and its resident nerd, which won't require much acting because he really is a nerd. He builds gadgets out of DIY books for fun -- like a jerryrigged VCR that automatically dispenses cat food when the timer goes off. Look for that in a sweeps episode.

PBS tomorrow. Always a good time.

Here's what's been in print since yesterday's Road Diary entry: MTV's unexpected push into reality (what will Paris think??)