Software Update hangs...where can I see a log as to what its doing?
So it looks like the Console application is the only way to "view the logs", so to speak.  I launched it from the Finder under "Applications/Utilities".  It is rather sparse, but it does have information regarding the update.

I am having more success watching the progress of Software Update by executing it from the command line of a terminal.  This I launched as

sudo softwareupdate -i -a -v


I still don't expect it to complete, but am hopeful that I can get a better clue as to why it is failing.  Currently there are 4 packages called out in /Library/Updates, one of which is likely the source of my problems:

bobk-mbp:~ bobk$ find /Library/Updates/
/Library/Updates/
/Library/Updates//.DS_Store
/Library/Updates//index.plist
/Library/Updates//ProductMetadata.plist
/Library/Updates//zzzz041-3450
/Library/Updates//zzzz041-3450/041-3450.English.dist
/Library/Updates//zzzz041-3450/CoreFPDelta.pkg
/Library/Updates//zzzz041-3450/iTunesAccessDelta.pkg
/Library/Updates//zzzz041-3450/iTunesXPatch.pkg


Finally, it looks like you can actually tail the install log as

tail -F /var/logs/install.log


So I now know how to watch the thing, but why isn't it completing?