How and where did you watch the vice presidential debate? (Or did you?)

So I don’t want to turn PopWatch into a political blog — you can visitour corporate cousin at Time.com to weigh in on Joe Biden and SarahPalin’s performances in Thursday night’s vice presidential debates –but seeing that this is a place where we talk about what happened on TVlast night, I figured I’d post a quick item asking how and where (orif) you watched last night’s face-off, and whether you viewed thetelecast as vital political theater, good old-fashioned entertainment,or a mixture of both. (Please do not grumble something like “Where thehell were my fresh eps of Grey’s Anatomy/The Office?” It will make mefeel woeful.)

Despite a big glass of Three-Buck Chuck (Trader Joe’s house-brandShiraz…respeck) and a plate of “Most Delicious Meat Cubes” fromMadhur Jaffrey’s Quick & Easy Indian Cooking (a manual so reliableI think folks from both sides of the aisle can get behind it!), I wasgenerally anxious when I sat down to watch the pre-show (on MSNBC) andactual debate (CBS in high-def) with my hubby and our friend Drew (whocould not resist the siren call of our massive screen and home-cookedeats). My stress level wasn’t really a surprise, though, consideringthat I’m someone who gets emotional watching American Idol‘sresults shows, and the stakes of the Palin-Biden showdown arearguably obviously even more serious than a Cook-Archuletasing-off. But I have friends who tingled with anticipation over thedebate, telling me they couldn’t think of a more entertaining block ofprogramming — fictitious or otherwise.

How about you, PopWatchers? Did the political drama that unfolded lastnight trump what might otherwise have been offered up by the networks?Did you watch at home or away? Alone or with friends and family? Withalcohol or without? And if you (gasp) tuned out, how did youfill those 90 minutes instead? Let’s hear about your debateexperience…and let’s keep the discussion respectful and polite. (Hey,Gwen Ifill may not be here to moderate, but if our potential veeps cando it, so can you!)

Oh, and this just in via e-mail from my pal Annie Barrett: “I actuallywatched part of the debate in a Brooklyn pizza place and had to trudge out whenthe pizza guys flipped the channel to baseball on TBS.” Wonder how those dudes would answer our poll question:

addCredit(“Joe Biden: David McNew/Getty Images; Sarah Palin: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images”)