XM Nation

I can't listen to regular radio anymore. Two-plus years of subscribing to XM Satellite Radio has spoiled me. It took a little while for it to grow on me, but I'm addicted to it now. I've found out how addicted in the last few weeks. Due to a subscription snafu, I've been without my XM for a while. The drives to and from work never took so long.

I guess I initially got interested in XM for the music -- non-stop, no commercials and lots of obscure stuff that Clear Channel won't let on the air, which means nobody ever hears it because Clear Channel has taken over every terrestrial station known to man and programmed them all with the exact same playlist. But XM's other stuff grew on me. Sports -- lots of sports -- talk, comedy. And perhaps best of all, there are 24-7 traffic reports for the nation's largest metropolitan areas -- a feature I'm not sure I totally appreciated until this week.

As I was sitting in traffic on I-95 a few days ago, creeping along trying to get to work, taking an hour to make a trip that should last 25 minutes, I finally broke down and put on the radio -- the regular radio -- to see if I could get a traffic report. I put on old reliable 1500-AM, which used to be WTOP, Washington's main news station. The Washington Post purchased it not long ago and now it's Washington Post Radio. And despite the fact that it serves one of the most intensely congested areas in the country, the new management apparently decided that traffic reports were expendable.

I listened for more than half an hour. No traffic. This from a station that used to break every 10 minutes for "traffic and weather together on the 8's." Even in the middle of 9-11. I know because my office didn't have a TV at the time, so we had to listen to the defining news event of our time on the radio. Welcome to the 21st Century. The world was coming apart at the seams, but WTOP was still taking time every 10 minutes to tell people that the inner loop of the Beltway was slow from St. Barnabas Road to the Wilson Bridge. Stop the presses!

ESPN: Jumping the shark -- and beyond

There once was a time when I couldn't get enough sports. Couldn't get enough ESPN. A lot of it had to do with the fact that my parents refused to get cable TV, so I grew up with about four or five channels, most of which didn't come in all that well. I learned to play paddycake with the rabbit ears and didn't see a clear picture on ABC until I went away to college.

But back in those heady, early days of cable, the concept of a 24-hour sports network made me drool. I can remember looking at ESPN's listings and wishing I could watch all the time. And when I finally did leave home and get cable, ESPN was everything I'd hoped. In the early 1990s, the network was at its height. SportsCenter became part of the national consciousness at that time. Baseball Tonight and NFL PrimeTime were practically appointment TV.

To say the least, things have changed.

ESPN has expanded, and as it has fattened its imprint on sports media it has become often insufferable. Watching or reading any ESPN content is to subject yourself to a master class in self promotion. They're either plugging their own horribly ill-conceived shows (Bonds on Bonds) or plugging their own horribly ill-conceived technology (Mobile ESPN) or they're acting as though they were the first to report every story that comes along. To be sure, they do have good reporters working for them. But it says a lot that most of their top "insiders" are former print reporters who made the transition to broadcasting and brought the best of their skills with them, transforming ESPN into something far more than it had been.

There are now four ESPN TV networks (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic and ESPN News). And all of them have morphed into something other than where they started. Everything is debate and argument -- sports reporters and ex jocks mouthing at each other. And ESPN Classic? What the hell happened to that? It's a great concept, giving fans a chance to see games from the past, get a little nostalgia. But all they seem to run anymore are old bowling tournaments and World Series of Poker reruns. And today I was channel surfing and they were running -- no shit -- the World Series of Darts. Darts! What the hell is that? Actually, I was transfixed. One of the announcers was Scotish, I think, because he sounded like Mike Myers in the Saturday Night Live sketch, "If it's not Scottish ... it's crap!"

I guess with all those hours of TV to fill, it was natural for them to reach a little. But what crackpot decided poker belonged on TV? Poker, golf, bowling ... fucking darts? They put that on, but people say soccer is boring. Go figure.

It's just nice to see that things blow up in ESPN's face as often as they work. That Barry Bonds show was like a million pound anchor. They let that arrogant bastard take up their air time with his weepy, "nobody understands how much I hurt" bullshit. And Mobile ESPN -- what a joke. They introduced a phone for $399. Then the price dropped to $99. Now they're giving it away for free when you sign a contract. The monthly fees are too expensive and nobody needs access to that much sports information on the go. And if there is anyone like that, I certainly wouldn't want to be driving anywhere near them.

All ESPN needs is to end up getting sued after some moron causes an accident because he can't wait until he gets to the office to check on his fantasy team.

Party like it's 1979

When people ask me about how I got to be a sports fan, or how I decided to go into sports media, I tell them about growing up in Pittsburgh. Really, I'm too young to remember the city's best of times. The Pirates were one of the best teams in baseball during the 1970s, though they only managed to get to the World Series twice in six trips to the playoffs during those 10 years. The Steelers ... were the Steelers, plain and simple. But in 1979, when the Steelers won their third Super Bowl and when the Pirates won the World Series, I was only 7. So I barely remember. What I recall is the hype, the way the buzz from all that winning seemed to be on everyone's mind. And I suppose I ended up wanting to be a broadcaster or a writer because those were the people who told me about what was going on. I spent more time hearing about the games from them than I did actually watching the games being played.

The Pirates teams of that time period will always hold a special place for me. I don't want to wax too dramatic about it, lest I start to sound too much like Bob Costas or Thomas Boswell. OK, nobody is ever going to confuse me for either one of them. But I do think I got caught up in the romanticism of baseball's every-day presence in the lives of its fans. As Boswell has said, it's not that you have to watch or listen to the game every day. You can miss a few and when you go to come back to it, you know it's there and available every day. Baseball players seemed larger than life because of that daily presence. To me, none were larger than Willie Stargell, who had moved from left field to first base in the late stages of his career by the time I grew to know who he was. Willie Stargell was my boyhood idol. At the time, it was because he was the Pirates' leader on the field. But then I came to understand his meaning to the team off the field. His quiet dignity, his leadership. I actually got to interview him once, when I was working in Morgantown. I sat in the Pirates' dugout in Three Rivers Stadium, talking to my boyhood idol. Man, I was scared shitless. I'm fairly certain he had no recollection of me at all after that conversation, but it meant the world to me.

All of these memories have come flooding back the last few days because I just got my hands on a boxed DVD set of the 1979 World Series. Major League Baseball has done something I've long wished for all the leagues to do by releasing DVDs of the TV broadcasts of historic games and series. Actually, baseball and the NBA have been doing it for a couple years now. The stodgy, crusty old NFL will never do it. They don't call it the No Fun League for nothing. But baseball is releasing a few World Series a year over the next few years. The '79 Series is just out, all seven games in their entirety from the ABC network feed.

It's wonderful nostalgia for me, since I didn't actually watch the games when they were played. I knew the players and their statistics by heart from their baseball cards. But now to see them come alive in living color -- a lot of color -- is really something. In the late 1970s, the Pirates sported a gaudy color scheme -- nine possible combinations of black and gold and pinstripe tops and pants, which they would mix and match indiscriminately in a practice Sports Illustrated referred to as "multi-hued anarchy." Some of the combinations were just flat out hideous, like the getup Dave Parker was sporting on the cover of a 1977 issue of Sports Ilustrated. In the 1979 World Series, the team wore four different uniform combinations in seven games.

Despite all of those difficult uniform decisions, the Pirates managed to come from 3 games to 1 down to win the series, 4 games to 3. Stargell redeemed himself for a horrendous performance eight years earlier in the 1971 World Series by hitting three homers in 1979 and winning the Series MVP. I know all of the facts. I've known them for years. But watching it happen, seeing the old stadium and the shots from the camera they had in a helicopter above the city, it all made me think back to that time and that place. I tried to picture myself at 7 years old and what I was doing that October while those games were being played. Even now, even though I don't live in Pittsburgh anymore and probably never will again, whenever I tell someone I'm going home there's part of me that's thinking about that place -- thinking about a cool, bleak autumn day and the rivers and the bridges and the rolling gray hillsides, a place where everything was black and gold and sports were still larger than life. That will always be where home is to me.

There is no justice

Just when you think there might be such a thing as hope -- just when you think that sometimes the little guy can topple the big guy every once in a while -- something happens that makes you realize life is all about getting kicked in the balls and laughed at by the big guy while he watches you writhe around on the ground in pain.

OK, that's overstating it more than a little bit, considering what prompted me to write this. But as a baseball fan I'm so goddamn sick of the New York Yankees I can barely see straight.

Tonight, the Yankees were tailing the Texas Rangers 10-2 at one point. Yes, of course, I know the Rangers pitching staff is notoriously pathetic. And so it was that you could have easily predicted what was to come. The Yankees made a comeback and Jorge Posada blistered a two-run homer over the right field fence in the bottom of the ninth to give New York a 14-13 victory.

I'm so sick of the Yankees. I'm so sick of their limitless payroll and the way they go out and buy whoever they need -- often getting the team they rape in the deal to agree to keep paying a good chunk of the salary of whatever rent-a-player they pilfer. I'm sick of their YES Network and the ungodly smug Michael Kay ... the other day I listened to him bitching about how some team the Yankees were visiting set off a bunch of fireworks before the game and it made the stadium smoky. And he kept whining about it and said, "the Yankees drew four million fans last year and they didn't have to set off fireworks." Well, you know Michael, maybe if every other team in baseball could afford to field an all-star at almost every position nobody would ever have to put on any promotions of any kind. But until that day comes, the rest of the groveling little peasant teams still have to figure out some ways to put asses in the seats. So, we're sorry if we annoy you with our circus-geek freakshow routine. Why don't you leave the peon teams alone and go buy a few more all-stars?

It's getting to be that time of the season that the Yankees start giving serious thought to their next player personnel conquest. I mean, you've got Hideki Matsui on the DL until at least August. Gary Sheffield is supposed to be back in the lineup soon, but he's been hurt. Randy Johnson is looking every bit of 42 years old, finally. They were so proud of themselves for getting Carl Pavano last year and they threw a bunch of money at him on the basis of one good season, and he's done just about nothing for them. So, while there may truly be no justice, Yankee haters can take a certain sense of satisfaction from the fact in spite of all their vast resources and continued acquisitions over the last few years, it all seems to have been for naught. They still haven't won the World Series since 2000. They lost to the freakin' Diamondbacks and Marlins. The Marlins! Of course, it should be quickly pointed out that the Marlins won their two World Series by demonstrating every bit of the championship-by-cash arrogance that makes the Yankees so incredibly distasteful. I guess we should be thankful for such poignant irony.

There's a long way to go in this season and the Yankees are easily playing in the toughest division in baseball. The Red Sox aren't going anywhere, and if A.J. Burnett can get healthy, the Blue Jays might have something to say. But it's only a matter of time before the Yankees buy themselves an outfielder to take Matsui's spot in the lineup. As miserable as my beloved, star-crossed Pirates are, I'm halfway hoping the Yankees talk them into giving up Jason Bay -- which would be just enough to put Pittsburgh out of its misery. It would be a mercy killing. And perhaps that might just be baseball's cruel way of delivering a little justice after all.

Farewell

The final episode of The West Wing aired earlier tonight. There are few television shows that reach out and grab you, and even fewer that do so because of their intelligence and their wit. The West Wing was a seven-year ride of brilliant dialogue and story development and easily ranks among the best political fiction of any kind. Unfortunately, many of us wished it could have been more than fiction. When Bush won the White House, the weekly look at the Bartlett Administration was a refuge from reality.

There is no disputing that The West Wing took a downturn after the end of the fourth season when Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme left. It took the show a good two seasons to find its footing after that, but this last season it became a great show again. Deadlines, of course, have a way of bringing out the best in everyone, and with the series ending, there was a rush of energy in the last dozen or so episodes. It would have been great to see the early days of the Santos Administration.

The West Wing, no doubt, took shape from the remnants of Sorkin's film The American President. The similarities between the two are unmistakable. There is no equal for the dialogue of Aaron Sorkin. The thing about The West Wing was that it seized your attention right from its first minutes on the air. By the time the opening credits of the pilot episode roll over John Spencer's arrival and walk-and-talk through the White House, the show has you moving at breakneck pace, and it kept up that speed for four seasons. When the first episode ended, you couldn't wait for the next one to air. You knew you were seeing something unlike anything else.

It's easy to nitpick, to make disparaging remarks about what happened after Sorkin left, or to complain that the timeline of the show skipped a whole year in between the end of season 5 and the start of season 6. But even at its worst, it was still better than anything else on network TV. It will be a long time before we see anything like it again.

No phones

In spite of my devotion to technology, I am not a fan of cell phones. I was the last human being on the planet to get one -- funny what being stranded along the side of I-95 will do to a person. But it's been two years since then and I still barely use the thing. I'm about to downgrade my plan to fewer minutes.

I don't get people who insist on using their cell phones everywhere. I don't get these people walking around with headsets, talking to the wind. They look like idiots, and they're the only ones who don't know it. They have these Bluetooth things now that are tiny and mostly unobtrusive, but a few weeks ago I was in the Target and saw a guy wearing what looked like one of those headsets the football coaches use on the sidelines. I wanted to walk up to him and tell him, "call a draw play -- the defense won't expect it."

But what happened today took the cake.

I walked into the restroom in the building where I work and another guy came in just after me -- one of these guys who you can tell is trying a little too hard to be Mr. 21st Century Man. He's a multi-tasker, always on the go, always connected, can't take a minute of downtime in the dog eat dog business world. So basically, the kind of guy who makes you sick to your stomach.

Anyway, he goes into a stall, drops his newspaper on the floor, takes a seat and proceeds to, uh, let's just say he made a lot of noise. And then, seconds later, he's on the phone!

"Yeah, it's me, I just sent that fax, so it should be there. No, I've been in the office all morning. I'll ask them about it....."

The entire time he's talking, he's continuing to take just about the loudest shit I've ever heard in my life. I guess I should credit him with one thing, though. As he's talking and shitting, he's also working in an impressive number of courtesy flushes. So he has no regard for what the person on the other end of the phone is hearing, but at least he's not so crass as to make the rest of the folks in the bathroom endure his byproducts. Who is this guy and where did he learn that it's OK to engage in a business call while taking a dump? Because that's a job I want. I want the job where you can subject people on the other end of the phone to the sounds of explosive bowel movements and the repeated "Bawooosh" of the toilet. That's for me. Nothing like a casual workplace attitude.

So Mr. Mystery Shit finishes his very important call, and just before he picks up his newspaper off the floor, I notice it's The Washington Times ... which goes a long way toward explaining how he got so full of shit in the first place.

Bonds, bombs, roids and the rage of 14 years

So, Barry Bonds was a rampant steroid user ... stop the presses!

It's been 14 years since he made that half-assed throw from the middle of left field that was offline and needed one hop to get to the plate and failed to beat Sid Bream, the slowest man in baseball history. Maybe if Bonds had been using steroids back then, the throw would have a little more oomph on it and the Pirates would have made it to the World Series. We'll never know. I still thought Bream was out anyway.

But I'm not bitter about it or anything.

Not much.

The poor, miserable star-crossed Pittsburgh Pirates. Seems like every guy who leaves Pittsburgh goes on to bigger and better things elsewhere. Bonds is the ultimate example of that trend. He has 710 home runs as of this writing, the most recent of which came last night. I realized today, perhaps for the first time, that he's going to surpass Hank Aaron. He needs 45 more. It may take him until next season, and I think he'll come back next year if he's anywhere close, his weeping "nobody understands me and my pain" schtick on his preposterous ESPN show notwithstanding.

The furor over the Bonds steroid allegations has died down somewhat since Game of Shadows was released. There will be more. He's going to have to answer to the IRS and it looks like he'll be facing some perjury charges. But it feels like the damage is done. When he passes Aaron, I'm not sure anyone is going to know how to celebrate the occasion. It will be anticlimactic, awkward. But he brought that on himself.

Meanwhile, the Pirates have been lost since that night in Atlanta in October 1992. They are miserable yet again. They lost today by a run. Seven losses in a row. They've scored 12 runs in those seven games. Been shut out twice. It's not even May and the season is already over.

Only another three months until the Steelers start training camp!

Snow Job

OK, so it's been a while since I've had anything to say here. I've had better times. But today, Tony Snow was named the new White House press flak. And this is the kind of thing people who aren't in the media find alarming. One minute, he supposed to be a news commentator and now he's the White House's mouthpiece. So much for any witless fantasy that he might have displayed any objectivity. Is it any wonder so many people don't trust the media?

Now, to be sure, nobody ever was confused about Snow's politics. He's a commentator, not a reporter, and he's a Fox News Channel guy -- or should we call it Fox Republican Propaganda Channel? I was disgusted by a story that circulated not long ago about how Dick Cheney requests the TV's in his hotel rooms to be tuned to Fox News Channel when he gets there, as if he'd shrivel up and melt like the Wicked Witch of the West if he had to be exposed to a less-partial perspective. I won't make the mistake of thinking there's no bias on channels like CNN and MSNBC. There's just a lot less of it there than there is on Fox.

I've always thought it an impossibly irreconcilable paradox that Fox spews all of this conservative bile on its news broadcasts, but its entertainment offerings are often liberal (The Simpsons) or push the edges of the envelope (Family Guy) or are just outright trashy (Cops, The OC, 90210, Melrose Place, Temptation Island, Married With Children, I Want To Marry a Millionaire ... hell, every show they've ever aired!).

So anyway, I guess we get to spend the next couple years listening to smug Uncle Tony tell us how we're winning in Iraq and how the economy is great how the President really does care about high gas prices.

Good thing many of us already are in the habit of not believing anything he says.

Kirby

I don't know if I like the word "idol." Especially when it's applied to athletes. But at the moment, it's a word that comes to mind.

One of my boyhood idols died today.

Kirby Puckett -- Minnesota Twins outfielder, Hall of Famer -- went before his time. He could have lived 1,000 years and still not been done milking the marrow out of life. He was an exuberant ambassador for baseball. And now he's gone.

Glaucoma cut short his playing career. He played his last game in 1996. He gained a lot of weight. He was in the news for the wrong reasons -- something about a woman he mistreated -- the kind of stuff that makes you realize we dole out that word idol way too easily.

But on the field, his career was the stuff of hero worship -- a 5-foot-9, 220-pound barrel chested bundle of unbridled enthusiasm. He was short and pudgy and hit the snot out of the ball. A .318 career average. One of the most dramatic home runs in World Series history to end Game 6 in 1991. And a ridiculous leaping catch against the wall that kept the Twins alive in that game.

A smile on his face. Always.

Bob Costas once astutely suggested that Puckett's small stature made him a fan-favorite with children. His free-swinging style at the plate should have made him a favorite of opposing teams as well. He once said he never saw a pitch he didn't like.

Rest in peace, Kirby. We'll miss you.

Gimmie a V-Smile for video games

I love video games. And I hate them. I love to play them when they're easy. And for me, they rarely are.

More than likely, I just don't have very good hand-eye coordination. But I'll always chalk up my inability to excel in the digital domain to the fact that I never had a video game system when I was growing up. All of my friends did. All of them. But not me. Video games weren't educational enough for my parents. I think it's hilarious every time I see TV commercials for this thing called the V-Smile -- it's supposedly the "educational" video game system. And you know that the poor, miserable, pathetic little bastard that ends up with a V-Smile is the type of kid who's regularly on the receiving end of atomic wedgies during recess.

The sad thing is, that would have been me. I would have been the V-Smile kid. That's what my parents would have gotten for me instead of the Nintendo that every other kid in the free world had.

Anyway, I digress. I don't want to turn this into a rant against my parents. There's plenty of time for that.

The first time I got a video game system was 1993. I was in college and bought myself a Sega Genesis -- primitive by today's standards, but I played that thing into the ground. NHL '94 absolutely rocked. Ever seen Swingers? Then you know the game. But my system came packaged with a game called Streets of Rage 2. There wasn't much to it. You walked down the street and beat the shit out of whoever came along at you. After a whole bunch of weak little guys who died after a couple of punches, you came up against a "boss" who took a merciless pummeling from you before he finally died. And that was it.

There were lots of games like that. Streetfighter. Double Dragon. Shinobi. But as the video game systems became more advanced, the games changed. They got a lot more complex. More buttons on the controllers, more levels to the games. I dumped my Genesis for a Playstation in 1997. And then hopped on the PS2 bandwagon in 2000. But over the years, the sports games were the only ones I could manage to play. Madden football, of course. Soccer, I love. I've never been able to master basketball. Hockey still rules.

But what bugs me is the lack of walk down the street and beat the shit out of people games for these new systems. Every so often I'll go on a search for some -- I happened to find one this week and I've been having some fun with it.

I've had Grand Theft Auto III for a few years. And while it's fun to just pick up a baseball bat or a 2 x 4 and walk along beating passers by on the street into a bloody pulp for no reason, you get bored with it after a while because the point to GTA III is to complete the missions -- go to certain places, perform certain tasks.

The one thing I'll give to GTA is that at least you know what you're supposed to be doing. I like the concept of big adventure games, where you have to explore vast environments and do a little thinking. But they're not a lot of fun to play because you spend most of your time trying to figure out what to do. I had a game for the Playstation called Akuji the Heartless -- one of those adventure games. And there was one room in that game that must have taken me half an hour to figure out how to get out of. I explored every part of that room systematically and I still couldn't get out. Finally, out of total frustration, I just started randomly hitting buttons and the analog stick on the controller and I just happened to notice a target way up near the ceiling that I hadn't seen before. I can't explain the sense of relief I felt to finally get the hell out of that room.

And as much as I love playing video games, I don't want to have to do shit like that. I don't want to solve puzzles. I don't want to have to press all sorts of maddening button combinations to get my guy to do what he needs to do. I don't want to run around in circles for 20 minutes trying to figure out where the fuck I'm supposed to go next.

Just let me walk down the street and beat the shit out of someone.

Kira and Yukon

Some people have children. I have dogs.

I try to be conscious of the fact that I tend to talk about my dogs the way a lot of people talk about their kids. And as someone who's not a parent, there is nothing more annoying to me than some stupid schmuck who won't shut up about every last mundane minutiae of his child's existence. Mike Greenberg of ESPN just wrote a book called "Why My Wife Thinks I'm An Idiot," and I saw a comment on a message board from someone complaining that Greenberg fell into the trap of writing as if his wife "is the only woman in the world who's ever given birth." Or something to that effect. The point being that nobody gives a rat's ass about most of what happens with other people's kids. I mean, you never hear anyone strike up a conversation with someone, like:
"Say, Dave, how did your little Bleetus do on that social studies test? He didn't get tripped up trying to remember all the key exports of Kazakhstan, did he? Oh, that's too bad. And his soccer season is over? That's terrible! You'll have to let me know when his basketball season starts."

I'll give you a moment to quit wretching.

Better now? Good.

So, I realize talking about my dogs could get on people's nerves. But I think it says something about a person when they love animals enough to have one as a constant companion. Or two, in my case.

Kira and Yukon ... Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy .... Dumb and Dumber. They're my two idiots. Kira is a golden retriever/border collie mix, and she got the worst of both. There's the constantly shedding golden retriever coat and the constantly hyper border collie personality. She came from the pound at about nine months old. Yukon is a chocolate lab who I've had since he was a puppy. He's pure bred and dense as drywall. You look in his eyes and you can see he's got a brain like a blunt instrument. I tell people (who no doubt get annoyed listening to it) that if Yukon could talk he'd sound like Milton from Office Space:

"I was told that I would be fed at some point today, but there is no food -- no food -- in my bowl."

Kira is an attention hound, who would spend most of her time in my lap if I'd let her. She's one of those dogs that'll poke her nose under your hand and demand to be petted. Yukon is a little more independent. But he often wants to sit right next me even if there's no room, and instead of giving me the nose poke, he'll stand there with this poor, miserable look on his face and stare at me until I feel sorry enough for him to move and give him some space. I always start out resisting, figuring he'll eventually go find somewhere else. And then I always cave. He's got a bit of a stubborn streak. I'm always amazed at the amount of time he'll stand there waiting.

They're both middle aged now. She just turned seven, he'll be six later this year. They get hyped up when I have people over (which keeps me from having people over!) but most of the time they're pretty mellow, all things considered. It's a far cry from when they were younger. Man, what a circus. Hours would go by and they'd be bouncing off the walls non stop. Thankfully, those days are history.

Sometimes I think about what it would be like if they weren't here. I have to get home at the end of the day to let them out and feed them. It's a commitment. But they're part of my life and have been since 2000. I'm not sure what it would be like without them. The other day I was in the bookstore and saw a book written by a journalist about the life, and eventually the death, of his yellow lab. First of all, I figure if he can write a book about his dog, I can post a blog entry. But putting that aside, for whatever frustrations I sometimes have with them, I can't imagine what it would be like without them.

And bearing that in mind, my co-workers better hope I never have kids. No doubt I'll give annoying a whole new meaning.

Olympics and NBC: Broken rings and a not-so-proud peacock

What if they held the Olympics and nobody gave a rat's ass?

Well, I suppose we're in the process of finding out. I'm not sure which is worse, trying to get interested in not-so-ambiguously gay figure skaters and sports that were invented five minutes ago for the X-Games or listening to media people pretending they're interested.

It's not that I dislike the events or that I care whether Johnny Weir is gay or not. I've got no problem with snowboarders or gays. I guess what bothers me is that it's disingenuous of the media to bombard us with coverage of events that they neither know anything about, nor would care about if they didn't have the word "Olympics" attached to them. But such is the price we pay for living in a 500-channel universe. All that air time demands something to blab about, and right now, this is what there is. Poor NBC -- the network of the Olympics. They're stuck with this crapfest. The other day I watched the increasingly annoying Katie Couric interview Dick Button about men's figure skating on the Today show. We've got insurgents setting off bombs every day in Iraq and the Vice President shooting people in the face and a midterm election coming up later this year and NBC is spending every waking minute on this frenzied, sickeningly self-promotional clucking about the Olympics.

By the way, if Katie gets the big chair over at the CBS Evening News -- as has been the rumor for months -- Edward R. Murrow will roll over in his grave.

As much as I like NBC, they don't have much of a track record when it comes to Olympic coverage. Remember in 1992 when they tried selling people on three pay-per-view channels of Summer Olympic coverage? It worked so well they never tried it again. But that was a long time ago. NBC's problems with these Winter Games are many. There's the fact that nobody follows any of these sports, for starters. But then there's the little problem of the six-hour time difference in a world of instant information. No Internet in 1992. No live stats on the Web. No 24-hour ESPN News Network. Every day, NBC's people -- like IDIOTS -- are telling you to look away from the screen while they flash the results of events they're not going to show for hours.

News flash: It doesn't work anymore. Nobody is going to wait if they're at all interested. To me, it's the same concept that doomed the Star Wars prequels. The idea of waiting three years to find out what happened to Luke Skywaker worked in 1977. But not in 1999. And Jar Jar Binks didn't exactly help the cause either. But we were a more patient society 30 years ago. And, of course, back then we had an enemy to defeat at the Olympics. No more Soviets, no more drama.

Today, for drama, we look to American Idol and Dancing With the Stars -- proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that it doesn't take much to keep us entertained.

I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot no Texas lawyer

So, the vice president shot a guy. Should we be surprised? Al Franken did a bit at the beginning of his show yesterday talking about how if it had been Bush that Cheney had shot, Bush probably would have tried to shoot back. And they would have ended up blasting at each other like a scene from a Tarantino movie. I'm just surprised Vice President Pace Maker didn't have a heart attack from the shock of the moment. What does it say about us that the No. 2 person in our government is running around in a field with a rifle and apparently not looking too closely at where he's firing? It's not enough for him that he and his cronies turned Iraq into a pile of rubble, he's got to go hunting on top of it. If he wants to shoot guns so badly, he should catch the next transport to Baghdad.

I pity the fool that don't eat my cereal!

OK, I'm in a bit of a weird mood tonight. I'm thinking about snow and cereal and Mr. T -- I watched an old rerun of The A-Team on TVLand today. Don't ask me why.

Like I said -- a weird mood. And to top it off, I've got the Olympics on TV, but it looks more like the X Games, because I'm watching snowboarding right now. When did snowboarding become an Olympic sport? I guess if curling made it, anything is possible.

So it snowed a good foot and a half and they still haven't brought a plow down my street yet. I'm hoping to get to work again sometime before the end of this month. It's so much snow, everyone on my street quickly ran out of places to shovel it all, and a fight almost broke out this afternoon over it because some moron got all territorial when one of the neighbors started dropping snow where he'd just shoveled.

The other day I was in the grocery store, and people were buying up bottled water and bread because they don't know what to do with snow here in Maryland. And I walked down the cereal aisle and stopped in my tracks when I saw -- I'm not making this up -- Pirates of the Caribbean cereal. It's chocolatey and it's got marshmellows, and I'm thinking, what the hell does this cereal have to do with the Caribbean? Shouldn't it be tropical fruit flavored? I think this was just Kelloggs' excuse to put out another cereal full of chocolate and marshmellows and enough sugar in one serving to put a healthy 200-pound man into a diabetic coma. Who the hell came up with the idea of putting marshmellows in cereal in the first place? Marshmellows! There's a food that just screams breakfast.

Then I noticed another thing in the cereal aisle. First, I saw Yogurt Burst Cheerios, where you get pieces coated with yogurt. And then I saw Yogurt Crunch Life. So obviously this is now the latest thing in cereal. You didn't know that? Yeah, I guess I missed the memo too. So look out for Yogurt Raisin Bran and Yogurt Chex Mix and Total with Yogurt.

And maybe even Pirates of the Caribbean with Tropical Fruit flavored Yogurt -- official breakfast cereal of the Winter X Games ... er, Olympics.

Super Steelers

It is nearly midnight on Super Bowl Sunday. I'm typing in a dark room in Maryland. Pittsburgh, no doubt, is lit up and alive, its entire population dancing in the streets. In Morgantown, which is still Steelers territory, they're probably burning couches in celebration.

The Steelers first four Super Bowl titles are history, part of the lore of the game. And perhaps once the title they won tonight is behind us a little, it'll mean more than it does right at this moment. It's almost as if I want to say, "is that all there is?" Their victory against Seattle was sloppy, the result of some fortunate twists ... a foot out of bounds here, or a timely penalty there. But then, that's the nature of the Steelers' entire postseason run. If not for a one-in-a-million tackle by Ben Roethlisberger against the Colts and a once-in-a-hundred missed field goal by Mike Vanderjagt, the Steelers never would have made the AFC title game. So it was fitting they won the way they did.

But at the same time, they won with the kind of electrifying plays that become the stuff of Super Bowl legend. Willie Parker's long touchdown run and Antwan Randle El's gorgeous reverse pass to Hines Ward are destined to rank among the Super Bowl's most memorable plays. And they'll be part of Steelers' lore, right there along with the Immaculate Reception, Lynn Swan's graceful effort against the Cowboys in Super Bowl 10 and John Stallworth's long bomb from Terry Bradshaw in Super Bowl 14. A new chapter of Steelers history has been written.

And another chapter ended tonight, as Jerome Bettis played his final game. His class, his work ethic, his willingness to sacrifice part of his salary the last two years in order to help the team sign other players ... he will take a place in Pittsburgh sports history alongside Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente, Jack Lambert and Mario Lemieux.

I barely remember those Steelers titles of yesteryear. And I wasn't really attached enough to the Penguins to revel in their success. Hell, I didn't even actually see any of those games the two years they won the Stanley Cup, such was the pathetic state of the NHL's television coverage at the time. I was in college in Ohio, and I found out they won the first one, in 1991, by seeing the final score of the last game of the series on ESPN's :28 and :58 crawl at the bottom of the screen. But this one this year with the Steelers is different. I've followed these guys the whole way. Seen every up and down. I know their stories, their histories. These aren't just the Steelers. They're my Steelers. I actually feel like I own this one. The other four titles belong to another generation.

Now if we can just get a championship for the Pirates .... here's hoping whatever power there is didn't dole out all the miracles to the Steelers, because the Buccos are going to need a few.

Super Bowl Eve

OK, so it's not quite Super Bowl Eve yet ... close enough. Maybe it will be by the time I finish and post this. The game carries an extra meaning for me this year because I grew up in Pittsburgh and have lived and died (mostly died) with the Steelers for years. Sure, the Steelers have a great history -- the 1970s, four Super Bowl wins in six seasons. I was in second grade in January 1980, the last time Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl.

Things got bad for the Steelers after that. We're talking Mark Malone and Bubby "I ain't no mop-up man" Brister. All the while, we lived in the past. We rested on the laurels of those great Super Bowl teams and we expected the impossible of the mediocre squads the Steelers put on the field through most of the 1980s. There were nice playoff runs in 1984 and 1989. But we all knew it wasn't the same.

Then came Cowher and things finally got good again in the 1990s. But not quite good enough. How does Neil O'Donnell throw those two interceptions in Super Bowl 30, with the game on the line? How do you lose the AFC championship game at home four times?

It's all been leading up to this season. That's the thing about sports -- sometimes you don't understand things fully until enough time has passed -- until there's a chance to look at things with some perspective. When the Steelers became a force in the 1970s, it came after decades of futility. It was the reward for enduring years of frustration. It wasn't meant to come easily for Pittsburgh. It was meant to happen the way it did. Now, these last two seasons -- the rise of Big Ben and the development of the team into a multi-faceted threat -- this is the reward for so many playoff losses. It wasn't meant to be easy for this generation of Steelers either. They're a chip off the old block.

I only wish I could be home to experience what these last few weeks have been like. I'm sure I didn't have an appreciation for it when I was a little kid. But I think I got a taste of what it must have been like during the Penguins' Stanley Cup years. I remember during the summer of 1991, the city was still buzzing. I remember walking through downtown that July and so many storefronts still had their windows decorated with Penguins' stuff. Nobody wanted to let that feeling go. It's probably 100 times more intense these last few weeks for the Steelers. The place must be electric.

Wish I was there.

Hey Subway -- Eat This!

OK, I've eaten enough Subway sandwiches to help keep the place in business for at least a few years, but I'll be eating less of them now that they've phased out their Subway Stamps. You go in there now and they hand you some card that you scratch off, and for reasons that pass understanding, they have these Chinese fortune-cookie like messages on them. And then you've got to go online and type in some numbers to find out if you won anything. What the hell is that? Give me my stamps and my Subway card. Of course, those little stamps used to show up everywhere. In my car, in my desk drawer at work ... I can't remember the last time I dug into my wallet and didn't find a few of them crushed and folded over and stuck together. I lost track of how many times I was short on cash and managed to scrape together enough of those stamps to get a free sandwich. And now those days are gone forever. Thanks a lot Subway.

Quizno's rules!

First Post -- the things on the New World Mind

Who am I? Why am I here? Existential questions, of course, but that's not what I was thinking about with those words. Ever see Phil Hartman's goof on ill-fated 1992 vice presidential candidate James Stockdale? Now you've got it. Just a little SNL history.

This is my first post, so for the sake of saying so and little else, I'll tell you that the title of this blog comes from the title of a song by a band I like quite a bit. Bonus points for you if you know them. The song opens with the line:

He's a rebel and a runner
He's a signal turning green
He's a restless young romantic
Wants to run the big machine

OK, enough middle-schoolish quoting of the lyrics. I don't know if I am any of those things, but here's what I can tell you for sure. I'm a thinker. A liberal. A progressive. An open mind. A news junkie. A sports fan. A dog lover. A poor man's stand-up comic. A sucker for gadgets and technology and all things digital. And so that's what you'll find here -- a little bit of all those things.

It is January 31, 2006, and as I write I'm watching the "pregame show" of the State of the Union Address. George W. Bush. Eight years. What are we going to think of him years from now once his term is over? CNN is reporting that infamous war protestor Cindy Sheehan has just been arrested on Capitol Hill. How did we get here?

The other night, I somehow ended up watching Prime Minister's Questions on C-SPAN. Every week the British prime minister has to go before the House of Commons and answer questions from the members. I think I'm going to form a new political party, and the sole purpose, the sole platform will be to amend the U.S. Constitution to require the president to answer questions on the floor of Congress once a week. Can you imagine 'W' in that setting?

'Course we're gonna do somethin' bout education!

'Course we're gonna do somethin' bout Social Security!

But first we have to beat the terrorists. First we have to get the evil do-ers!

'Course we're gonna do somethin' bout robotic research! You think I wanna be without Dick Cheney?

So that's where my mind is tonight. The State of the Union is pre-empting a show about a fictional White House, Commander in Chief. And my vote is for Gena Davis.