February 2007 Archives

Watched the Wisconsin-Ohio State basketball game Sunday. Good game.

But the highlight, as far as I was concerned, was in the second half when Ohio State coach Thad Matta was screaming at the refs for what he believed was a bad call. (It was.) Matta was yelling when his gum flew out of his mouth.

Without missing a beat, Matta picked up his gum from the hardwood and popped it back into his mouth.

Didn't see it on Sports Center this a.m.

Finally, someone had the good sense to give Martin Scorcese an Adademy Award.

I didn't watch the awards and I haven't seen "The Departed" yet, but the honor is long overdue for one of the great filmmakers of all time. Scorcese is a visionary director and masterful storyteller.

In the past, he was robbed. In '76, "Taxi Driver" lost best picture to "Rocky." Scorcese wasn't even nominated for directing it. "GoodFellas" lost to "Dances With Wolves" and Scorcese lost to Kevin Costner. Give me a break.

The biggest crime, though, was in 1980 when Scorcese's masterpiece, "Raging Bull," lost to "Ordinary People" and Scorcese lost to Robert Redford. "Ordinary People" was a nice made-for-TV-like movie. "Raging Bull" was, and still is, a landmark. I just saw it again recently and it's astonishing how good it is.

Interestingly, all three of these Scorcese flicks are on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest movies ever made. Of the films that beat them for best picture, only "Rocky" is on the list.

Anyway, no sour grapes. Congrats, Marty. It's about time.

OK, England announces it's withdrawing its troops from Iraq just days after reports surface that Prince Harry -- heir to the throne and a member of the Army -- will be deployed.

How can we get the Bush twins to get with the program?

The Brittish are reducing the number of troops they have deployed to Iraq and are looking toward withdrawing altogether from the great quagmire in the sandbox.

So how long before some wingnut in Congress insists we change the name of English muffins to freedom muffins?

This hard: On Saturday, I attempted to remove the glacier surrounding my mailbox using a pick.

I took a swing. It took a small chip out of the glacier.

I took a bigger swing and the blade of the pick bent.

The glacier won.

OK, I point this out every year.

In New Orleans, they party like there's no tomorrow.

In Rio, they dance nekkid in the streets.

Here, we eat doughnuts.

Life isn't fair.

But come to think of it, too many doughnuts and you probably shouldn't be dancing nekkid in the streets. It might scare people.

Well, not exactly here.

In Florida, the Orioles reported for spring training. (Yeah, I hear the Phillies also reported.)

Anyway, first day of spring training, according to the Baltimore Sun, the players were complaining about how cold it was in Fort Lauderdale. It was in the 60s.

In other Orioles news, the O's are already eliminated from post-season play.

Carry on...

White House mouthpeice Tony Snow really needs to get out more. Or at least, watch some news on TV or read a paper or something.

Citing military documents from 2002 that showed our commanders expected that only 5,000 troops would be able to keep Iraq under control at this point and that the entire war would last a couple of months, three tops, a reporter asked Snow, "What went wrong?"

Snow replied: "I'm not sure anything went wrong."

Um, dude. Hate to break this to you...oh, never mind.

Boy, lots of us used to love snow days. Had a day off, got to play in the snow, didn't have a worry in the world about the sadistic snow plow guy coming by and mounding a Himalayan-like chain of ice at the foot of your driveway.

I was thinking this when, Wednesday, I attempted to shovel my driveway for the third time.Some fun.

Today, like a lot of you, it feels like somebody beat me with a baseball bat.

And driving to work was an adventure. The hill leading away from my home into town was like a bobsled track. Good thing was, the ruts in the ice were so deep, I didn't even have to steer!

Good news on the horizon: The ice is expected to melt by May, prehaps June.

Asked at his Wednesday news conference whether Iraq was enbroiled in a civil war, Dubya said, "It's hard for me, living in this beautiful White House, to give you a firsthand assessment."

OK, so everybody supports the troops, right?

Even if you think this war is the biggest mistake in the history of mankind -- which it is -- you have to support the men and women who serve. They're called upon to do a job and, for the most part, they do it with honor.

So supporting those troops, you would think, means taking care of them once they return home, especially taking care of those who were wounded and carry with them the scars of battle.

Think again.

The Associated Press reports that the Bush Administration is asking for deep cuts in the health care budget for veterans, hoping to balance the budget in the backs of wounded warriors and at the same time, keeping huge tax breaks for his rich patrons.

Astonishing. Really.

Read the Associated Press report here.

So it's snowing out and we have, I don't know, about a quarter-inch of snow and the noon news on a certain local TV station is covering it like it's the end of the world.

Of course, a quarter-inch of snow in these parts is the end of the world.

I stand corrected.

Snow's coming.

Or at least, I think snow's coming. One sure sign of snow is the bread aisle at the grocery store. If all that's left is a loaf of sawdust whole grain stuff, you know snow's on the way.

Weird thing, though. And I'm sure I'm not the only who's noticed this, and I'm sure there's some kind of reasonable explanation for it, but why, every time it snows, is the Pennsylvania Turnpike the line of demarcation between heavier snow and lighter snow.

Always, heavier snow north of the turnpike, lighter to the south.

What kind of magical qualities does the turnpike possess?

Thursday, we were treated to wall-to-wall coverage of the death of a certain young woman. You know who I'm talking about.

Hours and hours were spent dissecting this young woman's life and death. The cable news channels called in all of their resources to cover the death of the young woman.

Here's a report about the death of another young woman. Which one is more important, more meaningful?

This is an excerpt from the Associated Press story:

BALTIMORE - A 2004 graduate of Fallston High School who followed her older brother into the Marines was killed during fighting in Iraq, the Department of Defense said Thursday.

Cpl. Jennifer Parcell, 20, of Bel Air, Md. died Wednesday "while supporting combat operations in Al Anbar province," a Department of Defense news release said.

"If you knew her, you loved her. She was a go-getter. She knew what she wanted in life and she was doing what she had to do to achieve that," Parcell's aunt Martha Benton of Aberdeen said.

Parcell joined the Marine Corps in January 2005. Benton said she'd wanted to enlist since attending her brother Joseph's graduation at Parris Island. The 24-year-old enlisted in February 2003 and he is returning from his tour to be with family.

The brother and sister were stationed together in Iraq for about a month before their tours of duty separated them, Benton said.

It was a trick question.

OK, maybe there is.

At Tuesday's White House press briefing, a reporter asked mouthpiece Tony Snow this:

"Presidents may not be able to predict the weather or change the weather, but is there anything that the President has been either briefed on about the current cold wave across the country, or any federal resources that are being brought to bear?"

White House mouthpiece Tony Snow answered, "I don't know. I'll find out."

Hadn't that reporter heard about the administration's plan to change our climate and battle global warming with a giant space mirror and shiny balloons?

I'd be remiss if I didn't note and mourn the passing of the one the greats in journalism.

Columnist Molly Ivins passed away after a lengthy battle with breast cancer. She was an astonishingly good journalist and story teller. Just a great, great woman.

I had the opportunity to meet her. Some years ago, at a writers' conference, I skipped out of one the sessions and wound up in the hotel bar with Molly and Rich Aregood, then the editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Daily News. Hanging out with these two passionate and accomplished journalists was like going to grad school.

When Molly passed, I told my wife I knew she was very sick, but I had hoped she would have been able to hang in there long enough to see Dubya leave the White House. (She called Dubya "Shrub.")

We'll miss her.

The National Intelligence Estimate for Iraq released last week painted a pretty dismal picture of the situation. Calling it a civil war, the report said, was inadequate to described what appears to be complete chaos. Shias fighting Shias. Shias fighting Sunnis. Rampant criminality. Al-Qaida fighting everybody. Insurgents and militias seemingly out of control.

John McLaughlin, a former acting director of the CIA, told the New York Times: "Civil war is checkers. This is chess."

He's right, except one thing. It's like five people playing chess and moving the pieces randomly and throwing the board off the table every now and then.

Or maybe it's like Chutes and Ladders. No, Monopoly, played at gunpoint. No...oh, never mind...

All day Tuesday, we were treated to 'round-the-clock coverage of the crazy astronaut who drove from Houston to Florida to confront the woman vying for the attention of her alleged object of affection.

And every time you turned on one of the cable news channels, the script at the bottom of the screen read: "Houston, we have a problem." CNN, MS-NBC, all of them. Even ESPN, on the sports yakker Pardon The Interruption, as hosts Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon dissected the case, the type at the bottom of the screen read, well, you know.

On the positive side, though, it did give Kornheiser an opportunity to crack wise and make a Uranus joke related to the allegation that the astronaut wore a diaper as she drove the 900 miles from Houston to Orlando. Kornheiser is the nation's leading distributor of Uranus jokes outside of middle schools.

We need a new cliche. Something like, "Houston, looks like we have a screw loose up there."