For the first time in 200-odd of these columns, I have some inkling of a clue as to what I'm talking about. Which is why I'm beyond confident in recommending that anyone with even a vague interest in running - hell, anyone with even a vague interest in the durability of the human spirit - check out "Run For," an alternately inspiring and heartbreaking series of vignettes designed to brand Dick's Sporting Goods as the ultimate runner's outpost.

Following a weekend spent at a family wedding, at a New England inn so quaint that even the squirrels wore Izod, I couldn't wait to get home and reunite with my television. After nearly seven hours on the road, I bounded through the door, my heart fluttering either with joy or breakfast-meat-induced aortic convulsions, and leaped into the waiting folds of my couch. It received me as it would an old friend, or a sweaty throw pillow.

I was never much of a science student. While several of my schoolchums seemed to have a genuine curiosity about the world around them, my tastes ran more towards shenanigans and tomfoolery. That's not to say I didn't appreciate the many off-label applications of a pipette - specifically, as a vessel through which one might divert water onto the northern region of friends' dungarees - but, alas, I lacked the brains and patience to sift through Baldwin-dense textbooks. It was like, gravity? Stuff falls. Why worry about the precise mechanics?

It is a glorious time to be a nerd. Offline gatherings indulge our must-hear-about-it-first compulsions. Online communities permit - nay, encourage - us to disseminate our theories about island wormholes and fascism in outer space. Hell, the marketing of pop culture is as much about leveraging the collective might of our nerd enthusiasms as it is about playing to the masses. Along those lines, I have it on good authority that Jennifer Lawrence will be donning the season's hoTTTest earwax-drip receptacles in the September issue of Vogue.

Brand-video proponents sure like to toot their own cyber-horns, don't they? It's one thing to make a client look good, but it's far more rewarding to flaunt their brandiness and viralitude chops. Why, it's almost as if they have a product worth touting, or an approach in which they have such confidence that they want to alert other sentient entities to its existence.

Once again, I would like to go on the record as firmly, proudly, incontrovertibly pro-cuteness. I prefer things that are cute, like nesting dolls and marshmallows, to things that are not cute, like drains and infected cuticles. If you gave me the choice between Quvenzhan Wallis and Ed Asner, I'd totally pick little Quvenzhan and her bedimpled cheeks and the curls that dangle off her temples like... holy mother of Mellencamp, is that a baby otter?!? I absolutely LOVE baby otters! Ho ho - the little guy thinks he's people! See? My pro-cuteness credentials are impeccable.

Pity the poor cinematic auteur. Years ago, his Malick-ian vision was frustrated by plutocrat sine qua nons like cameras, film and talent. Nowadays, that high bar to entry has been lowered, courtesy of digital distribution and dime-at-a-time Kickstarter backing. Alas, the D.I.Y. rising tide has lifted all rafts, including ones in which slackers reenact the climactic Unforgiven confrontation with sock puppets.

The year was 2008. Bankers were awarding mortgages to any individual whose footwear didn't announce "my current domicile is a mud hut." Lifetime's "How to Look Good Naked" taught an insecure, body-dysmorphic nation how to look good, naked. On the Internet, we reveled in the glory of branded Flash-y sites with embedded video doohickeys. Oh, the techno-pageantry! Clicking on one thing took you to another thing - which, in turn, revealed either another thing or another another thing. In the end, there were many things.

Like everyone else, when I was made aware of yesterday's video teaser promising a huger-than-Mothra-and-Antarctica-combined online announcement from Beyonc at 9 a.m. ET this morning, I cleared my calendar. Deadlines were postponed. Appointments were abandoned. The kid was passed off to the neighbors, or at least a couple wandering around our cul-de-sac who probably live somewhere in the general vicinity. After Beyonc's disappearance from the public eye - it seemed as if a full four days had passed since she'd last been sighted - I was ready. It was time.

My toddler son said something profound the other day. As we played amid a host of plastic screamthings and clangable salad implements appropriated from the kitchen, a ruminative, far-away look appeared his eyes. Summoning the accumulated wisdom of the ages, he placed a steady hand on my shoulder and said the following: "TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK WIWA [window, through which one might view a truck] TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK WIWA WIWA TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK WIWA!" He punctuated this monologue by pointing towards the wiwa/window and pooping himself orange.