Contributions gladly accepted

A RANDOM LIST OF THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH:
The "Soul Patrol"
Creationism and its incestuous cousin, Intelligent Design
Astrology
Homeopathy
Any piece of real estate offered for sale on late-night television by that guy from "CHIPS''
Anything at all offered for sale on late-night infomercials
Pat Robertson
Jerry Falwell
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell together trying to explain that natural disasters and terrorist attacks are due to God being fed up to here with gays and lesbians
Mass deportations
People who say "things are going really well in Iraq''
Hiring Britney Spears as your nanny.
Strippers at a frat party
Britney Spears at a frat party
"Heelies'' (if you're older than 15)
Living in a flood plain
Scientology (especially after what it did to that nice Tom Cruise)
Pyramid schemes
Over-the-counter sexual performance enhancing products sold at a convenience store.
Books by former governors
Right wing radio talk-show hosts
Left wing radio talk show hosts
Anyone who doesn't know that radio exists simply to play "Freebird'' and "Whole Lotta Love until our heads explode.
Anyone who wants radio stations to play more Doors songs.
People who start sentences with "I'm no prude, but...''
Lists like these.

Water wings

Did you hear about the 7-year-old boy, Braxton Bilbrey, who swam 1.4 miles from Alcatraz to San Francisco in cold, shark-infested waters yesterday?
I'm gonna have to have a talk with my wife. She won't let our 9-year-old cross the street by himself.
"Maybe it's time to stop coddling the boy,'' I'll tell her.

Speak the speech...

I'm a big fan of the English language. I've even been known to dabble a little in it myself.
Heck, some of my best friends are English speakers.
But the Senate amendment passed Thursday that declares English the "official language'' of the U.S. strikes me as a little silly. It's as if the government had declared oxygen the official gas of America, or called for enforcing the laws of gravity.
Of course English is the language of unity and commonality and quite probably success in this country. But to make it "official'' strikes a note of petulance, like little boys putting a sign on their treehouse which says, "No girls allowed.''
Moral suasion is a much better way to encourage mastery of English than one more law on the books.
And for the xenophobes who complain about the heavily accented in our midst.
Heck, at least they are bilingual, which is more than you can say for most folks, who figure that if English was good enough for Jesus, it ought to be good enough for everybody.

How many times can a Beatle split up?

The news that Paul McCartney and his wife are about to split up without a pre-nup has suddenly got me a little worried. I never made Sue sign a pre-nuptial agreement before we were married nearly 25 years ago. Uh-oh.

When I think that, should our marriage end, she'd be entitled to half of my Playboys, Maxims and Justice League comic books, I just shudder. On the other hand, maybe she'd take some of those old socks and elastic-bereft tighty-whiteys that always seem to find their way into my drawers.

Thinking about it logically, pre-nups seem to make good sense. On the other hand, a marriage, you know, with all that "'til death do us part'' stuff, seems like an odd place to start hedging your bets.

Mr. and Mrs. Jesus Christ?

I haven't read the DaVinci Code. And I don't plan on seeing the movie, even though it does star nice-guy Tom Hanks.

The issues are old hat to me. In seminary, we discussed the possibility that Jesus was, at one time at least, married. The Gospels are mum on that issue. Actually, the Gospels are mum on a lot of things that would interest our celebrity-driven, gossip-ridden culture. We know absolutely nothing about Jesus from the time he was 12 until he was 30.

But it would not have been unusual for a good Jewish boy like Jesus to get married. It would have been one of Joseph's fatherly responsibilities to find his son a suitable wife. Perhaps he was widowed by the time the dove settled on him there in the river Jordan. We'll never know. But even if archeologists were to find his marriage license as they were excavating the Nazareth City Hall, would it make a difference to the faith of anyone who loves and follows him?

Wouldn't bother me in the least. How about you?

Another strange power women have

According to a study published this week in a fancy British scientific journal, women are found to have one super power in their arsenal. They can tell if a man wants to be a good, stick- around-for-the-long-haul dad or is just good for a wild fling simply by looking at their faces.
They say it has something to do with testosterone and jawlines.

I never knew those two categories were mutually exclusive. You can be a wild man in bed and a good father to the product of a wild night, can't you?

I asked my wife, Sue, if she could tell by looking at me whether I was a keeper or not, and if she could detect high levels of testosterone by staring at my face. She told me she loved me, which of course, does not answer the question.

What do you women think?

25th wedding anniversary blues

OK. I need some help here.
Sue and I are about to celebrate a quarter century of connubial bliss and I'm looking for some inexpensive ways to celebrate. There ain't gonna be a long weekend in Paris or a romantic cruise to someplace where the warm zephyrs blow, because we've got two kids in college and two more at home.
I want some way to let the love of my life know what the last 25 years have meant to me, without losing my shirt.
(Although, I'm more than happy to lose my shirt and any other articles of clothing if she wants to show her appreciation for the gift.)
Any suggestions?

"I've only got two hands!''

I was booming down Route 35 over the weekend and happened to drive past (and let me stress the "drive past'' part here, lest anyone get the wrong idea) a local strip club. The amazing thing was its marquee, which announced that it would be showing a televised boxing match one night soon.

Now, I'm as big a fan of multi-tasking as the next guy, but this seemed fundamentally wrong to me somehow. Watching two men pummel each other has its charms, apparently, but doesn't putting it on TV in a gentleman's club pretty much undercut the whole point of the place, which is to watch scantily clad women pole dance (and occasionally wrestle each other in a tub of Jell-O)?

Do the dancers' tips go down during the boxing match? Am I missing something here?

No mercy

There are, it occurs to me, fates worse than death, and al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui seems to have earned one for himself. Maybe he was never as big a cog as he imagined himself to be in the movie that seems to be playing in his head, but he is as guilty as sin.

A divided jury has spared his life, but in doing so condemned him to living out the rest of it alone in a small box. Years and years of solitary confinement is a very real kind of deserved Hell. I trust that it will crush his spirit and ego very, very slowly.

And for those who wish him dead now, at least we know that death will claim him and, as both the New York Daily News and the New York Post pointed out this morning, Hell will still be waiting for him.

It's money that I love

I was talking with one of the high muckety-mucks here at the Press the other day. That's really not unusual. There's a real egalitarian spirit at work in this place. We were talking in the hall, this powerful number cruncher and me, when he mentioned that he had read a recent column of mine about how my oldest son had changed his college major from accounting to English literature.

I took the opportunity to ask him what he thought of an adage I mentioned in that column, namely, "Do what you love and the money will follow.'' Is it true, I wanted to know, and if it is, given that I'm nearly 48, how much longer do I have to wait before the money shows up.

"The money never follows,'' he said. "You have to chase it.'' He paused for a second. "But, he said, "you don't want to waste your life chasing it.''
So, we're pretty much out of luck, aren't we, I asked him. "Maybe,'' he said, "but no matter what, it's always better to do something you love than to work at a job you hate.''

Which goes to show you that even corporate muckety-mucks may have some wisdom tucked away in their hearts.

Click here for the column that sparked our conversation:http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060428/LIFE/604280422/1054

The sins of the son

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SOME PLOT DETAILS FROM THE APRIL 30 EPISODE OF THE SOPRANOS.

I think last night's episode of "The Sopranos'' provides stunning evidence that James Gandofini is one the great actors of our time. Last night's scene in the police station parking lot, after Tony gets his son AJ out of jail, was stunning, real and true.

AJ had gone to visit Uncle Junior in the hospital and had planned to kill him in revenge for Junior shooting his father. But, Fredo-like, AJ dropped the knife and was hauled off to jail, rescued only by his father's connections and clout.

When Tony confronts his son, we get to see a wild kaleidoscope of emotions. First came the screaming rage, then the shock of having become violent with one's own child, and then a line delivered with such a sense of loss -- "You make me want to cry.''

Many of us have been there, that place where you want to throttle your kid and hug him at the same moment. Gandolfini seemed to inhabit that place perfectly last night.

That would be enough for one scene. But the writers and the actor keep going as Tony tells his son, "You have to grow up,'' and tells him again and again, almost mantra-like. He seems genuinely mystified by the fact that his son has not yet matured.

We parents spend so much time when our kids are young hoping that they never grow up and praying throughout their late adolescence that they do. It looks like Tony Soprano, of all people, has given voice to all the worry we parents have when our children become prodigal children, when their mistakes and sins become their own, and we are helpless to do anything but find new ways to love them.