Imagine a future where employment is determined by a simple blood test, actually what I meant to say was: realize that soon a blood test can determine your right to be employed.
A few weeks ago a funny news item struck me on the way to the sports pages. A bipartisan bill introduced by republican Senators John McCain and Tom Davis along with democrat Henry Waxman seeks to establish steroid use penalties in the four major professional sports.
Here I though the Senate was divided into bunkers from which democrats throw proofs of filibusters and republicans hurl copies of the constitution back (heavily amended to provide adequate damage). But no, the two halves of the same legislative coin are still working together for the better of this nation’s entertainment.
The Clean Sports Act of 2005, if passed into law, would mandate that professional athletes in baseball, football, basketball and hockey would have five random drug tests yearly. Athletes get a minimum two-year ban on their first failed drug test and testing positive for steroids again is met with a lifetime ban. Basically Congress is looking at applying the Olympics standards concerning performance enhancers to professional sports
That’s the gist of the legislation, and there is a similar bill in House committees right now.
Let me be clear, I hate steroids. I hate them in professional sports and I hate them at the gym. In professional sports I think they destroy all statistical relevance and historical perspective almost instantaneously. And people who use them in a pseudo-recreational manner to ‘get big? sicken me. Steroid made muscles exhibit the absolute dregs of our culture and should be placed on the same pedestal with rhinoplasty and magazines that tell sub-100 pound high school girls they are too fat.
So, my first reaction when I read the specifics of the Clean Sports Act was positive. ‘Thank goodness for congress? I said to myself, ‘They will make sure that sports get cleaned up.?
But I got swallowed up in the sensationalistic aspect of the issue. I let my hate for steroids cloud my judgement. I let the end justify the means. In short I fell into a common trap these days.
The sticking point for me, as I’ve said in the past, is that professional sports is a business. While baseball might be a pastime, and football is close to becoming a religion, they and the other major sports are part of an industry, and I don’t understand how congress has the right to simply up and decide to start regulating that industry.
I can see why the government needs to regulate the airlines, there are a lot of lives at stake. But what threat does an athlete taking steroids pose to our nation as a whole? slim to none?
If congress wants to argue that they have been forced to maintain the integrity of sports, they should all be voted out of office. Since when do we count on politicians to dictate our culture?
What’s next, the government taking over the NHL for the good of the people’s viewing pleasure? This is America right? not the USSR circa 1972.
Should there be a ban of two years or more for athletes caught using steroids? absolutely. Is it congress? place to institute those penalties? absolutely not.
Now I do realize that athlete’s who take steroids are usually breaking the law, even if the drug they are taking is not on the banned substances list because the justice department does not know about it yet. The question of whether or not to take steroids is not only about morals, there are legal ramifications as well.
In any occupation, breaking the law can result in termination. Everyone from a doctor who steals painkillers to a gas station attendant who gets high in the store room can be fired from their job for using drugs, they may even face prosecution. I may not be completely up to speed on the United States drug code but I am pretty sure a gas station attendant is still allowed to get another job at a gas station even if they got fired from their last job for using drugs. Furthermore, if someone gets pinched for possession charges, what right does the government have to tell their employer they have to fire them.
It is wrong to hold an athlete to a higher standard than that of a doctor (or a gas station attendant) because people pay to watch them do their job.
Today a basketball player is pink slipped because of steroids, next thing I know I grab some coffee to help with making a deadline and I find myself facing a three year ban on writing newspaper articles.
Maybe congress should look into curbing the development and dispersal of performance enhancing drugs rather than targeting the athletes who use them. Why go after the tree tops rather than the root of the problem?
I think the Clean Sports Act is ridiculous pandering, something to start talking about now and carry right into an election year. The sad thing is while Congress stumps and thumps about steroids, dietary supplements still flow freely into stores with only the faintest hint of regulation.
How many deaths occurred before ephedra got banned?
In my opinion the dietary supplement industry fosters a natural progression from relatively benign products to pseudo-steroids and then on to the real thing.
That’s right, I’m calling Creatine a gateway drug to intravenous injections.
The only reason much of what is sold at local ‘health? stores is on the market is that the letter of the law states the Federal Drug Administration has to prove that a company’s product is harmful, not the other way around. But, shockingly, the FDA is massively under funded to keep up with the flood of dietary supplements entering the market.
So why does Congress go after steroids and not dietary supplements? Steroids don’t have lobby groups.
So while Congress spends hours and hours regulating our entertainment we can still walk into a store and buy a product that may or may not kill us and someone somewhere is making and paying out millions of dollars because of it.
Right now lobbyists are trying to get the ban on ephedra overturned, and yet Congress spends its time trying to set a nasty precedent for the future.
Sure it’s professional sports today but how long before the Clean Sports Act of 2005 becomes the Clean Jobs Act of 2015?

One of my most vivid memories from childhood is when my father taught me to ride a bike. I still remember what he told me that day: ‘Make sure your feet are on the pedals, hold the handlebars tight and pedal as fast as you possibly can while looking straight down at the ground.?
Wait, that’s not how he told me to ride a bike. Blindly speeding off without looking for upcoming terrain and obstacles ? not smart. So, why is my first memory of riding a bike tainted with such a reckless attitude?
Well I do love this country, and sometimes people emulate things they love. But I’ve lived under the Bush administration for five years, why am I suddenly overflowing with irresponsible, rash, unthinking and possibly uncaring tendencies? I guess it’s a good time to revisit some of the sagely advice I received over the years, before I hurt myself.
‘Always put out your campfire properly.?
Forest fires often start from campfires not being sufficiently extinguished. While I have never fought a fire from a helicopter, I am sure it is easier to damp down a fire pit than to contain a raging blaze.
Like when the United States military was in the process of securing Iraq, guarding the explosives warehouses might have been a good idea. But because we went ‘to war with the army we had,? 380 tons of explosives were stolen from one storehouse in southern Iraq, back in October 2004 (FOX News). Would the insurgencies today be half as effective without ammunition to strap to suicide bomber’s backs?
The easy way out is to say the insurgents would get explosives one way or the other, but to ignore the role of the 380 stolen tons of explosives in the daily bombings in Iraq is ridiculous.
‘Buckle up for safety.?
Seatbelts save lives. And they also teach us an important lesson about prevention. If someone gets in an accident not wearing a seatbelt, and still escapes with minor injuries, I think it is a pretty safe bet the next time they have a fender bender they will buckle up, right? The person got lucky the first time and they learn from that lesson.
Well under that logic, you would assume the feeding practices associated with theUnited States? first case of Mad Cow Disease almost two years ago would surely be phased out by now.
Actually, the opposite happened. After the first mad cow, The Food and Drug Administration mandated that American slaughter houses discontinue the practice of feeding cattle chicken litter, cow blood and restaurant leftovers, because doing so leads to Mad Cow Disease. But six months ago, the FDA reversed itself, and put slaughterhouse waste back on the menu (Associated Press). The result: our very own domestically raised ‘downer? cow whose brain and spinal cord is crawling with the proteins which cause Alzheimer-like conditions in people of any age.
While this cow undoubtedly contracted the disease back in the old days of slop feeding, how is it possible returning to those practices was even an option? Unlike AIDS or cancer, Mad Cow Disease has no known treatment (FDA), shouldn’t we go the extra foot to contain it? If the nation’s health is not good enough justification, wouldn’t working towards getting international bans on our meat lifted be helpful in these times of economic woe?
‘Listen to your elders.?
Why should we listen to our parents as children? Because they know more than we do.
What’s bothersome about the recent Mad Cow Disease case is that even six days before the ‘downer? cow was found, reports were made about the danger of our feeding practices (Associated Press).
What’s scary is the precedent of ignorance this administration seems to be carrying over to our preparation for a flu pandemic. Recent reports have stated that the United States is headed into a flu outbreak capable of killing 500,000 people and hospitalizing 2.3 million others (Reuters). For perspective the U.S. has just under 1 million hospital beds.
These reports are not Orwellian scare tactics, these studies are genuine warnings about incredibly contagious strains of avian bird flu. And the possibility of the flu being spread by terrorists is in my estimation about 1,000 times more likely than a nuclear device being detonated on American soil.
I don’t think we need to start doling out painting masks right now, but it would be nice to see some funds diverted to update the flu vaccines.
Right now we are not going to recover those stolen explosives before they take someone else’s life, but we can ensure that Mad Cow Disease remains a subject for late night TV monologues. And if this administration is able to actually accept helpful advice for once, they can do something to protect us from a flu pandemic.
I hope our government doesn’t continue to pedal wildly down the road with their head down, making changes to ensure this nation’s security before thousands die this time.

I am starting to wonder these days if I am old enough to hanker for yesteryear. Is 26 years long enough to pine for the good old days?
Maybe kids do grow up too fast, maybe I have to face facts that the United States I grew up in was a different place in a different time.
Simpler times, that’s what I remember. In those days everyone smiled at one another, hitchhiking was safe, jokes about the weak Canadian dollar were hilarious and sometimes you even caught sight of a blueberry pie cooling on a window sill. Idyllic, that’s how I would describe American life back then.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking about how if our society could just set the clock back to 1995, everything would be okay; especially if we could keep the high-speed internet and cell phone technology of today.
For some, the change in society has not been as jarring. Some people hardly noticed a change at all, but rest assured, our society changed so quickly, we have forgotten the wisdom of days gone by.
Remember back in the day when we would hear about the effects of global warming, then go to the store and buy the pump hair spray instead of the aerosol kind? Back then, we may not of have affected much positive change in the environment, but at least we tried to pretend that we cared about preserving it.
I was young and dumb back then. I thought one day I would wake up and my bed would be floating down the street. From my soggy bed I would call out to a gentleman standing on his roof and say ? Hey what’s going on?? and he would reply ‘Global warming.?
But the science of yesteryear set me straight. Global warming is not something that happens overnight, it’s gradual. The other important nugget of information to remember is skyrocketing cancer rates and melted ice caps are not the first symptoms of the slow warming process threatening to turn our nation’s heartland into our nation’s hairy back land.
What was I taught ten years ago about global warming? Is it a myth? No, that is today’s stance.
The wisdom of ten years ago clearly posited that global warming would first manifest itself in our weather patterns, causing more violent and unpredictable storms year round. Hurricane Dennis sure did a number on Michigan this year, not to mention Florida. Does that fit with more violent and unpredictable storms? The way we are going I wouldn’t be surprised next year if we name two hurricanes Dennis.
Ten years ago, if stern warnings started becoming reality, our society as a whole would try to do something to reverse, or at the very least curb the destructive trend.
Nowadays, we don’t just throw caution to the wind? we strap it to a hang glider and drop it into the grand canyon.
What else could explain the explosion of luxury Hummer leases, or the fact a gas guzzling, environment trouncing beast like the H2 even comes close to justifying production?
The H2 embodies the hear no evil, see no evil shortsightedness of our society today. To become a modern incarnation of Mad Max on steroids, we ignore that the cars we drive destroy the air we breath, contribute to the greenhouse effect and contribute to terrorist nations in the form of oil money.
If only oil was like diamonds, at least with diamonds someone can tell us with shaky confidence the engagement ring we buy in the mall was not mined from the earth by slave labor. They say they have all the blood diamonds locked away in a vault in the Netherlands. There is no real way to track whether a diamond was cut from the earth using forms of labor we here in America like to pretend no longer exist- but at least they tell us a story to make us feel better.
Oil on the other hand, has no such feel-good subterfuge. Without a shadow of a doubt the gasoline I put in my car is refined from oil originating in the middle east, from OPEC nations. Do we screen out all the oil from Iran and Syria? Of course not. Does the money we spend at the pump flow right back to countries which sponsor terrorism? I don’t think I have to answer that.
So what is our solution today? We talk about drilling for more oil in wildlife preserves. Back when everyone had some sense left in their heads we would be thinking about ways to use less oil and even consider other forms of energy.
But what do we have today? We have a Whitehouse that will veto any legislation recognizing global warming. Our President tells us lower emissions standards would hurt our economy. What happened to investing in our future? Spending money now to save money later. You know, the logic of yesteryear.

I swear one of these days I am going to turn green, grow to nine feet tall and only be able to communicate in short guttural bursts of sound. Every time I turn on the news or read the paper, my mind shuts down momentarily to cushion the blow of the latest dumbing of America.
When I was young, I came home one day and found out my mom sold all of my favorite toys (Transformers) in a garage sale. On that day, a scale of anger was formed in my consciousness, with the hocking of my childhood toys providing a reference point.
Here are some examples from the scale: Burning toast – considerably lower than when my childhood was sold; finding an empty carton of orange juice in the fridge in the morning ? also lower than the sale of the toys; the lack of attention given to global warming ? decidedly more than when my childhood was put in a box and sold at a garage sale.
I wish instead of small claims court filling day time television airways with neighbor’s spats and fall out from doomed relationships there was an idea court on day time TV. Our collective thirst for on-air conflict would be slaked and we would be better educated on important issues of the day.
Global warming would make an excellent case for a pilot episode of this idea court. With global warming, scientists could bring massive amounts of data supporting climate change over the past hundred years, whle members of lobby groups and industry backed think tanks would bring two sheets of paper.
On one of the lobbyist’s pieces of paper, a cryptic warning about our nation’s economy sits, this argument is their trump card. On the other piece of paper, they brought some figures detailing how temperatures around the equator are not on the rise with the rest of the world, an isolated fact which to them disproves global warming.
Now the scientists of the world did not cart in mass amounts of catalogued evidence supporting the overall warming of the earth just for show. When they have the floor, papers and findings start to fly. The enormity of their facts starts to overwhelm casual viewers; even the TV tribunal of Judges Joe Brown, Judy and Mills Lane seems somewhat lost in the flood of evidence.
Parts per million and degrees of change flutter from monitoring results, but what is not lost is that as soon as ten years from now, the world climate could be at the point of no return. Ice masses in Greenland and Antarctica will be history and massive climate change, horrific weather, changes in the gulf stream, crop death on a world scale ? all this good stuff is on our door step.
The lobbyists counter with the lack of temperature increase in the tropics. Then the drama really kicks into high gear, as the scientists bring forth a surprise witnesses. Several groups of researchers from across North America take the stand to explain why the temperature is on the rise in the tropics. Their testimony clearly states the change in temperatures along the equator were not been properly recorded because climate monitoring satellites drifted slightly from their orbits, causing them to take readings at night. Other researchers found problems with the computations in relation to raw climate change data and adjusted those along with correcting the satellites. So according to these reports, which came out early in August, the entire world is showing signs of warming. The one shred of evidence the lobbyists came to court with should be considered thoroughly debunked.
Yet at the end of the trial, the scientists still somehow lose the case. As I watch the decision from my couch, I feel the need to smash things as my newly green tinted feet burst from my shoes.
What’s amazing, especially in this country, is that people can question a theory’s accuracy even in the face of overwhelming evidence. If I were to say the sky is green, yet have no scientific evidence, I would not have a theory. I would have a hypothesis. But, if I had hard data collected over time studying my supposed green sky, including physical evidence, both visual and data based, then I would have a theory. That’s an important distinction, one that is glazed over far too often to help fool people into believing that global warming is not happening or won’t have catastrophic effects on the entire planet. And when I say catastrophic effects, I do not exempt the US economy.
If you listen to the rhetoric against moving towards more earth safe policies, protecting jobs is the first line of defense.
But when climate change comes around and massive amounts of arable land is rendered infertile, what state is our economy going to be in then?

That phone number for the American Red Cross? hurricane disaster relief sums up everything important in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
This is a problem we need to throw money at until the American Red Cross and the other organizations helping tell us to stop.
The charitable response is strong already. The American Red Cross alone has taken in $48,913,105 in donations; a number that is rapidly growing.
Despite the millions already committed, more is needed.
The aftermath of Katrina is gut wrenching. How can anyone watching, listening or reading the coverage not be compelled to help?
The best way to help? Send money, send whatever you can and make sure to send it to a reputable organization. You don’t even need to finish reading this column, Call the red cross at 1-800-HELP-NOW and make a donation.
The keys are in the ignition and the organizations are on the starting line. They just need some gas, and that is where your dollars come in. The Red Cross chapter that serves Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties is not currently recruiting volunteers, they just need money.
We can’t turn back the clocks now. Congress can’t rush back in time and approve funding for buses to properly evacuate New Orleans. The $10.5 billion congress approved after the full toll of the damage was revealed is only the beginning of an estimated $100 billion needed to rebuild Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. First, we have to rebuild lives.
The response to this tragedy has been good though. The depth of America’s caring soul is on full display and donation dollars are helping save lives, but that does not mean we can stop giving ? we should give more.
People in New Orleans became instantly homeless; are forced to sleep on the ground; and have little if any access to bathrooms, food and medicine. And all the while pundits debate whether or not they should be called refugees.
Like the government’s slow initial response, the news media did a great deal of damage in the immediate aftermath to people who, on Aug. 29, instantly had nothing. The thinly veiled racist coverage demonized the victims. Mothers with hungry children were cast as looters. People with nowhere to go, who did not know whether their families were alive, were portrayed as uncontrollable gangs, unworthy of our help.
We lapped up sensationalistic reports of a medical helicopter being shot at, even as the Federal Aviation Administration reported no weapon fire directed at any aircraft in the New Orleans area. For the record, The FAA was in contact with military and civilian aircraft.
We, as a nation, failed the people of New Orleans. We can never make amends to those left in harm’s way, who could not afford a tank of gas to get out of town, or who did not even have a car. We can say that we are sorry ? we can send money. Whether we are apologizing for the mistakes of our government and media or empathizing with the plight of people effected by this tragedy; we can say we are sorry by contributing to the Red Cross and organizations like them.
We can not bring back the people who died in their attics in New Orleans because they had no way out. We can not revive the people who died sitting in the sun along the freeway. We can not explain why the National Guard did not provide adequate support until five days after the hurricane hit. But we can say we are sorry.
No one trapped in the scar Katrina cut through Louisiana is lucky. But we are lucky, because we can still help hundreds of thousands of people with a simple phone call.
Contact Noah Purcell at purcellcn@yahoo.com

The National Hockey League is back, and from what I hear is better than ever.
I would not know though, because between misinterpreted Major League Baseball umpire signs, Michigan State football’s rise to significance, Michigan’s decline into insignificance, the Lion’s wallowing in muck and the Pistons revving up for another victory filled campaign, there is no time for hockey.
I would love to be an avid Red Wings fan, follow the NHL on the whole, get wardrobe tips from Don Cherry and maybe even get a fantasy hockey team if I wanted to go hog wild. The thing is, I got used to hockey being gone; just because the players and owners are ready to drop the puck does not mean I am.
I am not the only one whose hockey replacements became the norm. ESPN found evenings filled with college basketball and a fictional poker drama drew better ratings this past year than hockey had the year before. So where is the NHL’s home on national cable television? The Outdoor Life Network is pleased to present the poetry on ice of the NHL this season.
ESPN made a business decision, and based on the NHL’s ratings from the past few years, a wise one. The NHL also made a business decision when the owners locked out the players last season. The league lost close to $1 billion over the past four seasons.
But let’s forget about the money for a moment. Fans were bored by the NHL ? pace-killing neutral zone traps stagnated play, clutching and grabbing only made things worse and goalie’s equipment was bloated beyond belief.
When I was a kid, I loved the little sponges that upon being wet would grow into larger dinosaur shaped sponges. I think the manufacturers of goalie equipment must have loved them too, because the pads from 20 years ago look like they were dunked in water and grew into the terrifying, net obscuring incarnations favored by NHL goaltenders recently.
But we don’t have to worry about giant dinosaur pads anymore; and along with sensible pad sizes the NHL made some other nice improvements to their game.
Living in the Detroit Metro area has somewhat insulated Red Wings fans to the problems of the NHL on the whole. Before the lockout, Joe Louis was packed every night. This is, as they say, Hockeytown, and we all had a special place in our hearts for hockey. But in places like Nashville, Anaheim and the majority of NHL cities, the hockey buzz was really more of a hum.
For better or worse, the game is changed. A larger offensive zone and other tweaks should ensure livelier action. Red Wings fans might have to accept that their team is no longer the New York Yankees on ice and can not reap the rest of the league’s harvest anymore.
All in all, I think the tweaks are for the better and I would be excited to watch some NHL action if I had any spare time to dedicate to the flash skates shaving through ice, the flashing of red lights as pucks come home to roost and so on.
So here is where I think the NHL went wrong: hockey came back to soon.
There are four major professional team sports championships a year in the United States. With hockey taking a year off, they have also taken a back seat to professional football, basketball and baseball ? in that order. And ESPN, the self proclaimed world wide leader in sports, views the NHL as running behind college football and basketball as well. Who am I to argue with ESPN? I won’t even bring golf and NASCAR into the equation. Basically, hockey is starting over at the bottom of a long pecking order.
What’s the best way to deal with a flooded marketplace? Eliminate the competition. The other major sports are not going anywhere, so the NHL should have. Pro hockey missed a golden opportunity to shift their season to later in the year coming off the lock out. Doing so would have made the game more visible and given hockey a better foothold from which to reclaim their lost market share.
Hockey fans waited 16 months to watch the NHL again, I think they could have waited 20.
The current NHL season combats every other major sport’s opening swell of attention and tries to draw casual sports fans to the rink during the other sport’s championships.
Baseball rules the fall, with the world series taking the luster off the NHL’s opening. Football, both college and pro, obscure hockey’s midyear action with bowl games and the Superbowl. Then the Stanley Cup playoffs get to go head-to-head with the NBA finals in late spring and early summer.
If the NHL season began after the Superbowl, the NHL’s regular season would be partially obscured by March Madness, then by the NBA playoffs in May and June, but then the greatest game on ice could shine in midsummer.
I know hockey in the middle of summer seems strange, but so is hockey teams inhabiting Dallas and Los Angeles. The game is not about winter time anymore, it is about having ice, and these days we can make ice last anywhere ? unless the federal government is buying it for Hurricane relief.
Though the rule changes are nice, I think the NHL missed a golden opportunity to increase the popularity of their game. Maybe the next time they have a lock out the league can implement my seasonal shift proposal. Until that happens, I don’t know how much time I have for the NHL.

Life is like an oval ? it may not seem like it, but you will end up coming full circle.
Last week a guy introduced himself to me as a phrenologist ? as in he studies the shape of people’s heads to determine what their favorite color or IQ is with nothing else to go on except the intricacies of an individual’s head.
The thing is, phrenology, much like intelligent design, never was or is an established science. Downright daffy, that phrenology, but here he was telling me he judged skulls for a living. I thought he was joking around with me and just as the contradictory words were about to escape my lips, bounce against some air molecules and find purchase in his ear, he leveled with me ? he was not a phrenologist.
We laughed. He reveled in his little joke. He was like a jaguar and I his prey. With his jovial falsehood in hand he had stalked me, sprang on me and dragged me into a tree to devour my still warm husk.
So now it was time to hear his real profession, which I was becoming more and more interested in as the seconds of this, oh say, two-minute encounter ticked by.
The undisclosed career and the question mark curled around it burned through me like the last two surviving humans on earth blowing through a red light.
Actually, that’s not completely accurate because if I was one of the last two humans alive on earth and the traffic lights were still functioning, I would run them with stark disregard, not with a throbbing need to know ? which is more along the lines of what I felt about the ‘Phrenologist’s? actual career.
So I asked him. As he avoided direct eye contact and took a sip from his beverage, he finally said: ‘I sell butt cream to old people homes,? with a straight face and an even tone.
I almost told him to stop kidding and tell me what he really did for a living, but the little pause his statement put in my windpipe caused realization to rise and curiosity to set ? he was serious.
Why he did not just say, ‘I’m a pharmaceutical salesman, I specialize in selling medical products to nursing homes,? will forever be beyond my grasp.
The moral of this encounter is clear: Only in the smallest of ways do we differ from the person next door, yet those little differences, like a miscalculated inch in the route of a space shuttle mission to Pluto make a big difference.
Everyday in life, we meet people who find the same things funny that we do, who are angered by the same turn of events, cry at the same stories, are annoyed by similar circumstances, fall in love for the same reasons and so on. Individual traits are mirrored by the collective; being absolutely unique is an illusion. Some thrive on the ubiquitous journey, comfortably enveloped in the mainstream. Others shatter their reflection in the surface, using the similarities they see to propel them to new angles, continually sculpting themselves inside and out, resisting change and stagnation all at once.
On a basic, albeit highly conceptual level. How many people in the world at one time are thinking to themselves ‘I am hungry? or ‘I am thirsty? or even ‘yes.? Random rolls know dice in this game; we are all the same.
And yet, despite all the shared feelings and thoughts the ‘Butt Cream Salesman and I undoubtedly had or will have in the future, I still wonder how one day he decided to make his real career sound sillier than his joke one. The whole experience still makes me smile.

The bread stare down is played’out’during first dates,’family gatherings and prison camps the world over. Wherever a basket of complimentary rolls resides, a bread stare down lurks. To lose one of these confrontations is to forsake your heritage. A person with no past, no inheritance from their ancestors is just fine during a thanksgiving dinner ? at a chamber of commerce luncheon for example, the stakes are much higher.
This is how the bread stare down works: each member of the table’nervously glances back and forth between the last piece of garlic, buttery and deliscious bread left in the basket and their table companions, who’are’equally enchanted by the lone roll. Then in a flash, like a cobra uncoiling to strike a miniature cheetah, the game is at an end. The victor claims the final carbohydrate-rich morsel and triumphantly plunges their butter knife into their left over half pat.
On a table of four with five rolls in a basket, only one person will be able to finish their individual butter packet – that is the ultimate prize at the end of the stare down. As the wait staff clears plates away, three people sit awash in feelings of impotence; a’stinging’at the base of their skull widens’into’burning shame twisted with anger across the back of their head,’as their tiny half used containers of’salty-sweet cream’are’whisked away;’their waste of such a precious foodstuff haunting them.
The last roll represents everything humanity has accomplished since we moved from a hunter-gatherer society into collectives of farmers clustered near rivers. The process of hewing and milling grains, then transforming’them’with fire into little rolls of warm accomplishment’separates us from’the beasts. Sure, chimpanzees make tools and dolphins’have’language, but we know how to make bread. The owner of the last roll at the chamber luncheon’has the privilege of munching’humanity’s greatest accomplishment; the’unlucky ones’can only watch.
If I were a wait staff person at one of the many fine dining locations offering free bread baskets, I would make sure to include one extra roll in each bread basket for all the tables under my watch. To’see the bread stare down unfold is to’peer back through millions of years of human evolution, to unravel the tapestry of culture, stripping away all pretenses of society to reveal the dormant beast within. To participate in the bread stare down is to delve into a’realm of our subconscious few pass through or come back from. But, to cause a bread stare down is to play god.
Funny thing happened the last time I engaged in a bread stare down. One of the people at my table took two rolls right off the bat. When my imaginary gorilla burst through the kitchen’doors, I made sure Mr. Two Rolls was the first to feel the agony of his somewhat dull canine teeth, which are worn down because he eats tough bamboo sprouts’most of the year.
Losing a bread stare down does funny things to a person. I like to pretend an eight-foot-tall, 500-pound gorilla with hair the color of a hot dog bun’saturated in fresh squeezed orange juice and smelling as such, bursts through the doors of the kitchen and unleashes havoc on the restaurant.
His roar is paralyzing, as it seemingly splits into two voices. The deep one’sounds’like the grating of a’car engine’operating at?5000 r.p.m. after the sudden disappearance’of all’lubricating oil. The’other is perhaps more disturbing, seemingly belonging to a 12-year-old’Castrati singer.
When the phantom gorilla appears before me, I often find myself wondering if losing the bread stare down is really the cause or if I am just stupefyingly bored. Could be both.

Like snowflakes or pieces of peanut brittle every person is unique in their own way.
And though we may set ourselves apart through our differences, there is no balance in the equation. For every person who claims apples as their favorite fruit of all time and forever, there is not another who swears allegiance with equal passion to the orange.
While our differences set us apart our similarities bring us together. Most people do not enjoy a good slap in the face with a large piece of ham. Most people would not enjoy slapping someone else in the face with a large piece of ham. But most people are not all people, and no matter how perverse, painful or sticky the activity, there is at least one person ready to enjoy it.
Perhaps in this crazy, mixed up world of different tastes and appeals there are a few people who eagerly await trash day each week. Not because they live in houses which create so much waste that by the time the garbage truck rolls around the house is practically overflowing with refuse. They enjoy trash day because they get to put on their special garbage day suit, pull on their boots, affix their goggles and slip on their gloves. At breakneck speeds they run with trash bags in tow from their house to the curb and back, only taking one bag at a time to extend the enjoyment. When their love of trash day spills into excess, entire black plastic bags affixed with yellow alligator tail ties are filled with bags of microwaveable popcorn, which they claim was burnt on accident. But one bag, maybe two is an accident, four trash bags full of a coal colored assortment of Butter Lovers, 99 percent fat free and Kettle Corn, is a trash day enthusiast gone wild.
The folks who would rather not take out the trash though are easily in the majority. Given the choice between having to take out the trash and not having to take out the trash, most people would avoid the dirty schlep to the curb altogether.
What would be the easiest way to get rid of garbage? Throw it out the window of course. When the pile of decay outside became too much to bear, a high-pressure hose could be brought to flush the mound of garbage into a neighbor’s lawn. When the neighbor’s complaints reached a fever pitch, the swampy globs could be easily set on fire. Then the process could start over again and everyone would be happy until the next pile rose to un-ignorable proportions.
In the same vein, what would be the easiest way to rid Americans from terrorist attacks? For starters, bug every phone. Once all communication over telephone wires was being monitored, cameras could then be placed in every residence and business. Then, of course, people would need to log any and all transportation with a central bureau, like the NSA.
While this system would take a pretty penny to implement, what price can we put on our freedom? Freedom from fear that is. Besides, just think of all the jobs that will be created in the ‘Monitoring? field – no college degree needed. In fact with college campuses becoming breeding grounds for seditious activities these days, it would probably best if they were fazed out sooner than later. Cutting $12.7 billion in funding for student loan programs, as part of the spending cuts passed by a 51-50 margin in the United States? Senate on Dec. 22, is a step in the right direction ? if America has wholeheartedly committed to ensuring the next generation of innovation happens predominantly outside the lower 48.
But back to the NSA.
George Bush has a dream, and that dream is to not take out the garbage. He has guided his administration to the very edges of what the founders of this nation set forth in the Constitution and boldly crossed them. Allowing the NSA to spy at will and without checks and balances on American citizens may be an easy way to try to stop terrorism, but we deserve better.
If the only way we can prevent our way of life from being fractured by outside elements is by fracturing it ourselves, what do we have left? A smoldering pool of garbage.

When speaking of Sashabaw Road, it seems some residents would prefer anything other than a Wal-Mart.
If aliens, outwardly hostile aliens at that, landed within the borders of the township and proposed a home-base from which to wage total war on the world to the planning commission, the proposal might cause less of a fracas then the amount of spit shared over Orco Investments prolonged flirtation with bringing what can be considered both the best and worst facet of America’s culture today, Wal-Mart.
Would a legal defense fund be raised to fight off the alien menace? Is an alien home-base drawing in life forms from across the cosmos as bad as a regional drawing hospital? If the aliens promised to only capture, probe, mentally enslave and create body doubles of area residents would there still be a problem?
I realize no one moved to the Clarkston area to become heroes in the fight for earth’s liberation from domineering otherworldly overlords, as alluring as that may be. In the same vein, I am sure not so many people moved to these parts to live next door to a domineering corporate juggernaut. At least with the evil empire (Wal-Mart) you can purchase a cup of sugar. Whereas when you traipse over to the alien’s front door with measuring cup in hand, all you get is a face full of acid, a large block of missing memory and terrible nightmares.
While it is important to consider both the possibility of aliens and a big box development landing in Clarkston, instead of focusing on outside detractors to the area’s charm, residents should take stock of what has made such a strong community. When the eye is turned to the inside, a struggling Parks and Recreation department asking for relief with an August millage is revealed.
From their hovel in the basement of the Independence Township offices, the parks and recreation department is the unsung hero in the battle to keep Clarkston tethered to its roots. From the annual fireworks at Clintonwood Park to the ball fields and trails of the parks themselves to the bevy of evening and weekend activities organized from their cramped offices, they engender community.
In August, the parks and recreation department will ask for monetary relief. Specifically, they are asking for building costs and funding for the Independence Township Senior Center to come from a millage. If the senior center is made a separate entity, nearly 20 percent of parks and recreation’s budget would be freed. Now that 20 percent would not pay for 24-hour monitoring of soil ph at Clintonwood Park, but it will help pay the staff and keep all the summer softball leagues in full swing.
If desire for a nonexclusive community center or just plain old hate of the elderly causes residents to balk at building a new senior center, I hope Independence Township and parks and recreation have a back up plan.
I know the committee charged with building a rope ladder to get parks and recreation off their funding precipice examined a litany of ideas, as well as concluding this is not the time to ask for a new full blown millage. I just wonder if the indirect approach of separating the senior center expenses might end up scuttling the whole boat in the end. Maybe it would be best to come and ask for help directly.
In the end, I hope residents realize the role parks and recreation plays makes Clarkston the community it is. The area has a lot going for it. In terms of maintaining a close knit community, whether under threat of Wal-Mart or alien invasion, the lone high school’s uniting flag should always provide a boost; and with committed support the quaint and vibrant downtown shops should continue to provide flavor.
But without parks and recreation’s contribution, instead of Clarkston being a jewel in northern Oakland County, it would just be another product of urban sprawl which I am sure is a far bleaker concept to many residents than some space invaders.

I have learned a lot in my 26 plus years spent on earth.
I know that singing random words in normal speech is funny to some, while others find it annoying or weird, but rarely does the practice invite violence.
I have not learned how many ways there are to misspell the word ‘six,? but I know there is only one way that can get you fired from your job as a reporter. Unless of course you misspell ‘six? with four letters, then there are many words that can get you fired from many jobs.
I have learned that on a crisp morning when the snow on your car window is frozen in a brief dusting of sorts so that you can peer out slightly through the crystalline beauty, yet not effectively clear a safe line of sight suitable for driving by slamming the door, you can not improve your view by blowing on the inside of your window as if you were clearing away sawdust.
I have learned that people will never like you no matter how hard you try. I have not learned how far sympathy will take you in life, but I am currently doing research.
I also have not learned why the people of Clarkston are not banding together to save one of the most important cultural landmarks in the area.
The Sandwich Strip is in trouble and with no clear picture of help on the horizon. It is time for the people of Clarkston to unite and help save what in little over a year has quickly become a hub for the vaunted community of the area.
While there may be a wide selection of food establishments to grab a quick bite in the Clarkston area, no cluster rivals the sheer volume and variety of the Sandwich Strip which stretches along the four-lane expanse of Sashabaw Road.
From Maybee to Waldon Road a veritable cornucopia of almost ready to eat delicacies erupts in Clarkston, and I fear residents are taking them for granted.
No less then 12 establishments which can serve lunch in under 30 minutes exist along the Sandwich Strip ? and that’s not counting the Roly Poly that recently closed its doors.
The closing of the Roly Poly should have sent a clear message to Clarkston area residents as to the overall plight of the strip as a whole. I mean, this is Roly Poly I am talking about here, not some run of the mill submarine or deli wrap outfit that differs from its competition mainly in name alone.
Now if there were a major hospital or even a Wal-Mart in the general vicinity of the sandwich strip, employees on their lunch breaks would flood from those juggernauts and combo meal by combo meal keep the sandwich strip afloat.
Is Clarkston ready to stoop to that level though? Will they really let outsiders do what the Clarkston community signed up for when the decision was made to widen Sashabaw Road?
The solution is simple, Clarkston residents need to roll up their sleeves, open their hearts and start buying all the tacos, pizza, hamburgers, chili cheese fries, triple stacked submarine sandwiches and egg rolls they can possibly afford. Being full is not an excuse, from now on everyone needs to eat like they are two people.
When the concept of the Sashabaw Road widening was originally conceived, do you think the people behind it envisioned a ghost town of forgotten eateries? Nay, they believed their community would band together to preserve and enhance their vision and so far, as pizza goes stale under hot lights and bread is thrown out at the end of a fruitless day, their vision has failed.
The stakes are high, for if the community were to lose a cultural gem such as the Sandwich Strip, who is to say how far reaching the effects would be?

Lately I have been hearing voices. Conversations from the past and whispers from the future.
The conversations make me smile now, looking back over the year and seven months or so during which I penned close to 500 articles while working for The Clarkston News. They bring me comfort as I do not just start a new chapter in my life, I switch to a whole other medium.
The whispers might as well be a banshee scream for my stomach is currently host to the honeymoon of nervous and excited. Everyone knew the two were going to get married for years, they are so alike. I am just glad that my impending move to Japan on April 19 gave them a chance to get together.
I am moving to Japan, Osaka to be specific, to teach English, and as much as it hurts to leave behind the athletes, coaches and CHS on the whole, the opportunity is too great to pass on.
I have come a long way since becoming The Clarkston News? sports reporter in September of 2004. When Kyle Gargaro interviewed me, still a fresh graduate of Oakland University’s journalism program, he asked me what experience I had covering sports.
‘I like watching sports,? I replied.
After they hired me, I was told my main competition for the job had been an individual who showed up for an interview in a t-shirt and NASCAR baseball cap.
Despite my impeccable credentials as a watcher of sports, the early days covering sports were awkward at times.
In the beginning I made sure to not only interview the coaches and players while covering a game, but also some of the fans. To this day, I still wonder who was more surprised: the poor parent who was just trying to watch their child play ball or Kyle as he cut the quotations from my story?
Like a man wearing underwear on his head at a black tie event, the awkward moments kept coming.
Within minutes of meeting Clarkston Athletic Director Dan Fife, he informed me of the massive turnover at the sports desk at my paper and shook my hand. I assured him that as I was the first full-time sports reporter I would be around for awhile. In comparison to the years he has put in coaching at Clarkston, my tenure was just a blip on the radar, but at least on the way out he shook my hand and smiled.
I have been privy to some astounding athletic performances while covering Clarkston High School, but I come away most impressed with the committment that Fife’s athletic department, the district as a whole and the community has for their athletes.
If I could cover CHS and live in Japan, I would jump at the opportunity. Taking photos would be somewhat tough though. If the News ever needs a Japanese correspodent though, they know who to e-mail.
After all my time asking vague, poorly conceived questions to CHS? coaches, I am now the one stammering. The simple question of ‘Why?? has me babbling like a varsity coach who just got asked: ‘What do you think the main reason the team reacted so well to the play of the other team today??
When the process of applying to teach English in Japan began for me, I was asking myself ‘Why?? by the minute. I found my reasoning in advice given to one of my favorite authors, A.J. Liebling, by his father.
At the time, Liebling was considering quitting a career as a journalist and matriculating at the Sorbonne for a year.
Liebling wrote his father said ‘You are getting so interested in what you are doing that if you don’t go now you never will. You might even get married.?
As my tenure with The Clarkston News sets, I hold a heavy heart, for I loved my role there. Whether or not the experience in Japan can match the times I have had as a journalist remains to be seen, but a new day dawns for me on April 19 as I fly across the international date line and into the future.
For those of you who would like to keep up with my travels in Asia, please send me an email at npurcell@gmail.com and I will keep you posted.

I have been having bad dreams again.
Not the nightmares when I go to Las Vegas, get a late-night rhinoplasty and wake up the next day without any nostrils? but these nightmares are bad all the same.
My night terrors have focused on a central theme, that of embarrassment. Not the normal type of going to school naked embarrassment often found in such nighttime scare fests, but rather an embarrassment of much greater proportions.
The nightmares always start the same way. I’m awakened up by some unknown, sentient beings hundreds of years into the future. They have reanimated my body because they have some questions about my era that they simply cannot figure out for themselves. Once the initial grogginess and shock of being reanimated wears off, I am flabbergasted by their questioning; and as the interrogation continues, the red cheeked, darting eye, stammered toungue symptoms of rampant embarrassment set in.
The aliens, although they could just be a future iteration of humans for all I know, are confused about one specific era in American history ? that being the era we are currently living in.
Their first question is always general and sweeping in nature.
‘Why did the United States go to war in Iraq?? they ask.
I respond as best I can, telling them how our government at the time used a clever ruse concerning our safety to hide the true impetus behind our invasion of Iraq, that being the liberation of a captive people from an oppressive dictator.
‘But wouldn’t having control over the massive oil fields in Iraq have been the most logical justification for the war?? said the Aliens
At this point, I remind them who lived during the era and who was exposed to the extensive news coverage concerning the war in Iraq.
‘But your view of those events lack consistency,? said the Aliens. ‘Why, if righting a terrible wrong in the world was your country’s goal, did you not seek to at least curb the genocide going on in other parts of the world during the time? For example, at the same time the United States invaded Iraq, the region you called Sudan was embroiled in a 20-year civil war which featured massive ethnic cleansing and yet your cable news networks hardly made mention of it.?
At this point I stammer, inside I wonder why if liberation and spreading democracy was the United States? goal, why did we only try to spread the dream to countries with significant natural resources?
‘Well, moving on,? said the Aliens. ‘Why did America demand international outcry for events which they themselves were guilty of??
I laugh at the Aliens at this point in the dream. I wonder what exactly they could mean by such a sweeping statement. They show me pictures from Abu Gharaib and from detention centers in Guantanamo Bay. I tell them we were at war, that we needed to do what was necesary to protect our country.
‘Why did you allow your soldiers to humiliate prisoners? Why did interrogators dunk the Koran in prison toilets? Why did the United States decide to stray so far from the Declaration of Human Rights, which they ratified at the United Nations after it had been written by Eleanor Roosevelt?? said the Aliens
At this point in the dream, I begin to squirm in my sleep ? the nightmare has such a real quality to it. I have no rebuttall for the Aliens. Their words cut through me, leaving me tattered and torn, twisting in the wind.
‘And what of your leader?? said the Aliens. ‘Why did he cling to the idea that America was the end all and be all of world politics??
With my wits trounced to bits by their questioning, I stand mute, but their questions keep coming.
‘Why did Bush dedicate so much of the military to a phantom threat in Iraq, leaving the United States unable to confront real nuclear weapons threats in Iran and North Korea??
‘Why did Bush seem to feel he was above questioning, even from his own press corps??
‘Why did America swallow lines like ‘I know we’re winning,? when Bush was asked about the war on terrorism??
‘Why did the President insist that his press conference preclude an episode of Will and Grace??
Usually I wake up in a cold, speechless sweat at this point; and as I go back to sleep, I ask a single question to myself: Why?

Thanks to the United States Supreme Court, the sports seasons in Michigan will stay the same.
Thanks to the United States Supreme Court, athletic directors from here to Iron City will not have to scramble to reorganize their sports schedules for next year.
Thanks to the United States Supreme Court, some athletes in Michigan are not being forced to choose between two sports which they enjoy playing.
Thanks to the United States Supreme Court, girls are still not treated equally in Michigan high school athletics.
As the sports seasons stand right now, Michigan is somewhat out of whack with the rest of the nation. When our girls play soccer in the spring, everyone else’s boys are on the field. When our volleyball players throw up the first serve of the season, the rest of the country has dug their final ball.
Had the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling of the lower courts, Michigan girls basketball would have been played in the winter and volleyball in the fall. Boys and girls soccer, tennis and golf would have switched seasons as well.
Michigan is the only state which schedules volleyball in the winter and one of two which schedules girls basketball in the fall.
One of the easiest things to do when examining this issue is to say ‘who cares.? The belief that the current MHSAA scheduling is fair and equitable is mislaid, and the result of a unwillingness to change.
To put this issue in simpler terms: what if the MHSAA scheduled their football season for the spring, while the rest of the country played games in the fall?
Every other state’s seasons would have been wrapped up by the time Michigan athletes hit the grid iron. Now if you were a college scout, would you want to travel to see four kids during the fall, or three in the fall and one in the spring.
The answer to that question is easy. With the pressure of collegiate athletic programs placed on recruiting, why would a school hold a spot for a kid from Michigan? Often doing so means they will lose a talented recruit whose senior season is completed to another school.
A girl playing soccer in Michigan has an incomplete resum? when compared to a girl from Ohio or Indiana. The soccer players from other states get to show their senior season off to college scouts. The girl from Michigan only has a chance to complete her junior year. When a scholarship to a prestigious university needs to be awarded, who do you think is going to be signing on the dotted line? Not the girl from Michigan.
I know of at least one Clarkston student who is playing collegiate soccer next year, she should be applauded for her excellence. But I can’t help but wonder if she would have had even more opportunities if more college programs were able to see her play
The regrettable side of this issue, is that sports have been scheduled strangely in Michigan for so long that the MHSAA, the schools, the coaches and the athletes are entrenched; and change has become scary.
I do feel sympathy for students who would be forced to choose between two sports they love equally. While tough decisions like that will not have to be made this year, this court case is far from finished. Athletes may be forced to choose one sport over another as soon as the 2006-07 school year.
While change may be tough in the beginning, no reasoning against the sports season change can outweigh the reasoning for it. Female athletes in Michigan deserve to be on an equal playing field with the rest of the country.
You can reach Noah Purcell at purcellcn@yahoo.com

When I was in the seventh grade, I was faced with a visage that I will never forget. As I sat in my french class waiting for the lesson to start, one of my fellow students proffered a copy of a periodical of quite ill-repute, a tabloid if you will. The sight I saw then shook me to my very core.
Adorning the cover of said publication was the ghastly visage of a half-man half-bat creature, replete with pointy ears and teeth, his mouth impossibly contorted into a silent ear piercing scream.
Why was Bat Boy screaming? What horrible event had provoked such a pained expression upon his face?
What I did not know then I know now. The answers which slipped through my fingers like so much sand were laid out for me in the Clarkston Village Player’s production of ‘Bat Boy: The Musical.?
To say that ‘Bat Boy: The Musical? is a combination of the themes of suffering seen throughout ‘L’s Miserabl’s? coupled with the comedic buoyancy of ‘Pirates of Penzance? might be going too far. But the CVP’s latest production does offer laughs and personal traumas. It is light hearted, yet the core of the play is rooted in darkness.
The story of a boy with bat-like features striving for acceptance from the people of the town, as he struggles to attain inner peace with what he is, recalls Frankenstein’s monster’s plight. Yet ‘Bat Boy: The Musical? definitely tends to be more Mel Brooks? than Mary Shelley.
In fact, to backtrack some, Bat Boy is hilarious, from the hapless townsfolk to Bat Boy’s adopted family and right down to the inner struggles of the title character. The dialogue sparkles with non-sequiturs, razor sharp wit and at times good old, pure unadulterated, low brow humor.
The dialogue’s comedic tone is amped up in the musical pieces as the hilarity of the verses are enhanced by a wide assortment of musical styles. With the exception of a rap duet, which gave me serious awkward chills. But I place the blame for the rap more on the original authors than the current production cast. They were just given a palate to work with, they could not change the colors, only how they presented them.
And the cast of Bat Boy paints a beautiful picture with the colors they have to work with. Every single scene of the play caused me to laugh audibly, several times deeply, even to double over in my seat at times.
In terms of the casts singing voices, the ‘good chills? caused by especially passionate and skillful singing outnumbered the ‘awkward chills? five to three.
Several members of the cast stood out. Timm Gillette, nailed the role of Bat Boy with a singing voice which lacked not for conviction nor range.
Merideth Parker, who played the homemaker who deals Bat Boy the first favorable turn he has had in his life, was consistently good in every scene she was in ? anchoring the play.
Last but not least, I also think that Johana Bell’s performance as the female lead in the play was helped immensely by her astoundingly beautiful and powerful pipes. Her duet with Gilette was responsible for two of the ‘good chills? I had during the performance.
While ‘Bat Boy: The Musical? was not without its warts, they were few and far between. On the whole the cast does a wonderful job with this modern American drama. While the sets are minimalistic, they never detract from the performance. The live band which accompanies the show provides a catchy and varied musical backdrop to the hilarity of this CVP production.
I highly suggest that anyone who has even the faintest hint of a sense of humor goes to see ‘Bat Boy: The Musical? ? leave the little kids at home though.
For tickets to Bat Boy The Musical call 248-625-8811.

Even though baseball has begun this season shrouded in a cloud of congressional controversy, I would like to take the time here to point out why the great American pastime is still just as, if not more, important than ever before.
Let’s talk about attention spans.
Maybe all these years we have been wrong about short attention spans being caused by MTV and video games and suchlike. Perhaps a short attention span is an inheritable characteristic which we in America have been breeding into our society for the past 200 odd years. This red, white and blue predisposition to having a short attention span only went unnoticed for so long because society did not have anything to rapidly engage finch-like flights of mental fancy.
Then MTV came along in the eighties and everyone just assumed that it was the cause of their children’s inability to focus for any amount of time. Now with the inception of IPODs, Blackberrys and a whole slew of other technological marvels, which provide information and entertainment anywhere, at any time, the American short attention span gene is really starting to show. Both the executive set and teenagers alike now have an outlet for their wandering focus.
The other major sports have capitalized on America’s rapidly blinking eyes. Take football for example. Twenty years ago the ball would be hiked and handed to a running back, who in turn would catapult himself into a mass of entangled bodies only to be pummeled to the turf by the hulking behemoths lying in wait. Then the whistle would blow, the players would pick themselves off the ground, everyone would go back to the huddle and the process would repeat itself as the announcers opined on the action which had just unfolded.
Nowadays, the running back still gets the ball and the play is still usually over in about three seconds, but now we have 10 replays from 20 different angles which carry the action right into the next blistering flurry of live activity.
Baseball, on the other hand, at the core is a game which is slowly paced and not substantially enhanced by multiple replays. A grounder through the hole is a grounder through the hole. A close up, high-definition replay in baseball simply does not have the same yield as in other sports.
The opportunity to view a head dribbling off a parquet floor in beautiful syncopation with the basketball during a timeout has no corollary in baseball. In short, rarely does a different angle on a replay add much to the original play on the diamond.
But, ironically, getting back to short attention spans, I think baseball with its deliberate pacing could be America’s saving grace. If we have unknowingly been breeding a shorter and shorter attention span into our DNA over the past few hundred years, than perhaps baseball can serve as a lightning rod for those of us with any shred of focusing ability remaining.
In time, the people who meet at the ball park and produce offspring will tilt the balance back to a time when paying attention was commonplace and easy. Couples who can enjoy nine innings together should surely be able to weather the years of matrimony.
The fact does remain that baseball, like most sports, is enjoyed mostly by men, so unfortunately there is not that great of an opportunity to inject the gene pool with the patience needed to take in an entire baseball game.
But fortunately, the Bush administration seems bent on passing legislation amending the constitutional view of marriage, so maybe a rider can be tacked on to aid our nation in getting it’s focus back.
Even more lucky for us, the game of baseball and our puny attention spans, this Whitehouse seems to love playing around with taxes.
My proposal is this: we adopt a tax credit centering around baseball couples. A couple who watches baseball from the first pitch to the final out together could enjoy substantial tax relief. How do we monitor if couples are enjoying the game together, thus qualifying for the credit? That’s easy. We tweak the Patriot Act to let the government monitor all baseball related activities. We could even monitor who is tuning in to un-American sports like soccer, which does not have commercial breaks built into it like other major sports.
Once the tax relief and monitoring system are in place, we can sit back, comfortably enjoy a lazy Saturday double header knowing full well that our nation is on the road to recovery from the curse of a short attention span. Imagine, in just a few short generations, the nation’s collective ability to focus on one thing for a sustained period of time will be resurgent and we and baseball will be better for it.
You can contact Noah Purcell at purcellcn@yahoo.com.

At what point in time do we include baseball in the curriculum of our public schools? I think the time is now. In fact, I think the time is well past and we should start making up for past sins today ? something this important can not wait till next school year.
I do not recommend accepting the great American pastime into our public schools simply at face value. Rather, I would like to see baseball used as a teaching tool. Much like math, if baseball did not have so many applications in the real world, then it would have died out by now. Yet it has not. Despite scandal and strike, baseball stands tall. I think we can use the game as an example of being resolute against hardship.
Or coming back to math. Addition, multiplication, division and subtraction can easily be transferred from tabulating on base percentages and walks per nine innings to the classroom.
But perhaps the discipline that will be helped the most is current events ? when we use baseball as a metaphor.
What better way to teach children about world politics is there than comparing countries around the world to MLB teams? I don’t think there is one. Here is an example of one lesson we could teach using baseball: The US is the New York Yankees and China is the Red Sox, the rest of the good teams in baseball today fill out the rest of the security council and Bud Selig, commissioner of baseball, is Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN.
The Yankees were the toast of the league for a great many years while the Red Sox languished below them. Now the Red Sox and other teams, like the Angels and Mets, have caught up to the Yankees in terms of athletic ability. The Yankees are not happy about it, they used to be the only team which could frivolously throw around money and make bad investments yet still win games. Now Boston can spend just as much money as the Yankees and is emerging as a dominant force in MLB. A perfect parallel between China’s emergence as a dominant super power.
Will kids even want to learn this stuff if we don’t tie it to something they already understand?
Maybe a better question is: can we afford to not teach them the many lessons which baseball has to offer?
I say we can’t because to ignore the gaps in our education any longer would be our nation’s third strike.

No one talks about the future anymore.
When I was growing up, we all got some good laughs about fanciful predictions made during the 1950’s. Flying cars, colonies in space and all meals served in easy to swallow pills were just some of the spectacular predictions which just never panned out.
According to ?2001: A Space Odyssey? we should be hurtling through space while chatting with our computer. Instead, we putz around cyber space chatting on our computers.
Farms may not have shrunk down and morphed into little vitamin production laboratories, but farm subsidies have surely been pared down.
Perhaps people were focusing too much on a macro level when they were making predictions back then.
Sure, robots are not doing humanities grunt work, but we can have virtually anything we want delivered. Our computers may not take up entire buildings, but the wealth of information which they have access to is staggering, and surely the world wide web has made the world smaller.
But where are the predictions of what will be going on in the next 50 years?
Maybe we are all too ashamed of how the last rash of speculations turned out and we don’t want to be ridiculed by our grandchildren about how we thought airplanes would travel into space and cars would have massaging gas pedals.
But on the other hand, maybe the future we are making for our grandchildren is a little too bleak to wax optimistic about.
Say the United States continues down the road we chose when we pulled out of the Kyoto Treaty. What we heard from the White House was that the treaty was bad for business, that cutting back our production of carbon dioxide would damage our economy.
Sure, cutting back on environmentally damaging gases now might cost the United States and those companies pumping out pollutants some money now, but what about down the line. Just because cars are still on wheels and not flying around does not mean we should be afraid to look into the future.
The way the Kyoto Treaty works is that countries are all given ‘pollution credits.? Since the US is dragging its feet now, our economy will suffer later. Every couple of weeks, a nation which is over the carbon threshold set forth in Kyoto, snaps up some wiggle room in the form of ‘pollution credits? from a nation which is under the threshold.
So when we, the United States, come into line with our neighbors in the world, our companies will be the ones who have to drastically cut production of gases instead of using the credit system built into the treaty to avoid shocking our economy with withdrawal symptoms from a pollution addiction.
While some in the Clarkston area may welcome the effects of global warming, as March seemed to come in like a lion and leave like a tired lion this year, simply having a shorter winter is not the worry here. The effects of the massive amount of the extra greenhouse gases we launch into the atmosphere everyday will surely be a detriment to this region.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, over the next century if the trend in global warming continues, the Great Lakes? water level could be diminished by a foot and temperatures rise by three degrees. Not only would the rise in temperature hurt crop development in Michigan, but also the lowered water level would mean a lot less business through all of the ports along the great lakes.
So instead of predicting flying cars, maybe we should be predicting flying boats to start popping up in the next 50 years.

Oh the Super Bowl, perhaps the greatest championship in all professional sports. Only a fine woman such as my mother can point out the true grandeur of the event:
‘This is just like ancient Greece in the colosseum, except no one is naked,? said my Mom as the curtain was pulled back on XXXIX.
I think that was the point though this year, having everyone fully clothed that is.
Despite the specter of the ‘Wardrobe Malfunction? hanging over every possible facet of the big game, we, the viewing public got a pretty entertaining show.
Although, I can’t shake the feeling that either President Clinton or Bush might have tripped on the way to the microphone prior to the game. Yet, we at home never saw this former-presidential folly due to the omnipresent seven-second delay.
But the commercials were good. I was able to significantly expand my stomach’s holding capacity with mass amounts of pizza and there was quality time shared with my family.
In regard to my eating, I think I may have eaten a slice every time someone gained a first down, like I was engaging in some sort of twisted drinking game. Except the price is now being paid by my arteries rather than my liver, but I digress.
The way we watch the Super Bowl in this country has become just like any other holiday: heavily commercialized and fraught with gluttony; all in the company of loved ones, be they your father or your bookie.
At least at this point we do not have to exchange ‘Secret-Lombardi? gifts at work or light a candle on each day of the two week media blitz leading up to the game.
Irregardless of the halftime entertainment, America’s comfort level with the Super Bowl, as a holiday, is at an all time high. And while making the game an official holiday might seem silly, many of the important holiday criteria, aside from the obvious ones mentioned earlier, are met.
‘The game has a built in excuse for getting out of doing practically anything. The phrases ‘I can’t come help you move, it’s Easter Sunday? and ‘I can’t come help you move, it’s Super Bowl Sunday? are virtually interchangeable.
‘During the Super Bowl, while you do get to spend the game with loved ones, there is always someone who seems to chafe more than massage. Like the crazy uncle who drinks too much and makes a fool of himself at Thanksgiving. Except on Super Bowl day, there might be ten crazy ‘uncles? who drink too much and make a fool of themselves, cast mind bogglingly dumb wagers and run outside naked after every touchdown.
‘Much like other major holidays, many normal activities completely disappear on Super Bowl Sunday. (with the exception of alcohol sales, where instead of being suspended are encouraged). Drinking and driving seems to be in line with all the other holidays though.
In regard to this, I really question the thinking behind placing a beer commercial featuring a talking parrot in between commercials with cars being shot out of massive metaphorical gun tunnels. Our poor consumer minds can’t handle the mixed message that sends.
I think next year we should go all out and add the most hallowed of all holiday traditions onto the big game? gift exchange (and bringing chips and a twelve pack does not count). Football shaped couch cushions, phones and scented bath soaps? That’s the ticket. In fact, anything shaped like a football will do.
As I said before, there is no need for gift exchange at work though. Actually, let’s knock secret whatevers out of every holiday. With the money we save not buying stupid knickknack gifts for coworkers, we could buy really classy football shaped candelabra’s for loved ones.
In terms of the Super Bowl as a holiday, we are on the 50-yard-line. If we just sustain the drive a little longer we will have a true nonsectarian celebration which everyone can enjoy.

Over the past two months The Clarkston News has covered the Clarkston Community Schools plan for elementary school redistricting with a fine tooth comb and a magnifying glass.
At the final board meeting, on Jan. 10, several people appeared before the school board overcome with emotion, complete with cracking voices, and tear streaked cheeks. In the end, the school boards mission of providing equally good elementary schools district-wide was somewhat lost in the hubbub which ensued.
Now the issue is, for the most part, finished. The redistricting lines have been redrawn and some will be unhappy for a time, but at least every elementary school child in Clarkston will be able to enjoy a specialty room for art, music and science.
There would have been a great disservice done to the community if we had not taken a look at what was causing such a furor among some parents. We, as a newspaper, would have lost the respect and trust that this community has placed in us.
What if instead of airing the parents concerns, we had not only turned away from them, but trumpeted the schools? rhetoric as gospel?
What if the school district had gone so far as to pay us to stump for their plan? Even I, a fledgling journalist, knows taking such money would be a serious ethical mistake..
The list of blunders of the national news media has been getting longer and longer, but I feel the worst one yet has begun to unfold.
Armstrong Williams, whose columns have appeared in the Detroit Free Press as well as numerous other papers across the country, was recently shown to have accepted $240,000 of taxpayers money to basically shill for the No Child Left Behind Act.
The money flowed from the Department of Education to a private public relations company and Mr. Williams went from extolling the virtues of No Child Left Behind, to a one on one exclusive with Dick Cheney, to praising the war in Iraq and on.
I understand that Mr. Williams is a conservative commentator, and all the things I just mentioned are not out of line for someone in his line of work, but the fact remains that he was probably paid to say nice things about the current Whitehouse administration policies and programs, and that money came out of our pockets.
What I question is the role of the government in this.
Many people in the current administration have been critical of the media over the past four years.
Cheney has gone on record, to Mr. Williams, in December 2003 stating ‘the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene when they obviously are not objective.?
Recently, Laura Bush sniped at the media in the New York Times, questioning their objectiveness as well.
And yet now it seems that members of this administration have been contributing to the crisis of ethics in the news media today.
How do we know that Mr. Williams is the only person out there who took payola? Irregardless of what political party or issue they support, paying a journalist to write an opinion is wrong and it frays our democracy.
The plot thickens I’m afraid as The Department of Health and Human Services, the Census Bureau and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have all, during the past four years, produced news pieces that were aired without any warning that they originated from the government. What else do you call this except for propaganda?
These days the space between the lines is getting harder and harder to read between, at least the people of Clarkston can still get the straight dope on what is happening in their community.

Six years have gone by since I, Noah Purcell, controlled the fate of millions. High atop a four story high pile of salt I stood, sweat beading on my brow, in the hottest part of July, 1998. At that point in time, I had no idea the power which lay beneath my feet.
A summer job with the Oakland County Road Commision was just a layover on my way to college. The days I spent basking in the sun while holding stop signs, filling pot-holes and weedwacking kept me in shape, tanned and introduced me to the most powerful men in Oakland County, the salt truck drivers.
In times gone by, the Romans would sow their vanquished enemies? fields with salt, rendering those plots of land useless. Salt in those days brought civilizations to their knees and was used to pay soldiers in lieu of actual currency.
We may not be able to trade in salt any longer, outside of your friendly neighborhood commodoties trader, and yet it has not lost any value. Just imagine what a few flakes of snow would do to Michigan roads if we did not have salt to spread across them. I’ve seen what it would be like first hand, down south, where a laughable amount of frozen precipitation can shut down a city.
That’s why I felt so powerful that day in ?98, I was Lord of the Salt, Noah Caesar, and all of the county’s winter roads were mine to control. It was a hard fought position to win, mind you, I had raced to the top of this miniature white mountain beating my buddy by mere milliseconds.
I should have never descended from my lofty position, I should have become king of the salt hill. My rule would have been one of benevolence ? salt would have been doled out fairly and judiciously; children would have arrived safe to school and their parents on time to work. Much like things are today but with one key difference: I would have made mention to people that salt is not a cure-all for winter driving and even if a road is properly salted, it can still be dangerous.
Every winter I pray people have learned their lesson, that they will take note of icy driving conditions and ease off the accelerator just a tad. Yet every winter, the little devil and angel on my shoulders are thrust into a massive debate centering around this central theme: when someone flies by me in a snowstorm, spewing slush from their tires, even as they fishtail ever so slightly while changing lanes; should I feel bad about wanting to see their car or truck (usually truck) in a ditch a mile up the road?
I do not place all of the blame on the individual. For years here in the metro-Detroit area, we have been inundated with ‘drive as fast as you possibly can? car advertising. Just last year, the H2 was featured dominating the arctic circle to a pounding techno beat. My one question with that advertisement was not so much with the ability of the H2 to navigate the arctic circle – I know that it can not effectively do that – I just wanted to know what the owners of that neo-Hummer were going to do when it needed more gas three miles down the ice flow.
If I still controlled the salt though, I could wield my power to make people learn it doesn’t matter what kind of traction control or four wheel drive system a car is outfitted with, ice will always be slippery. Certainly I understand (having lived in Michigan my entire life) teaching people to slow their speeds on the roadways is a tough task, but if I still stood tall as the salt csar I would teach the lesson with force.
Every year when the first snows came, and my loyal salt truck drivers started pulling on their boots and adjusting the mirrors of their plow trucks, I would stride into the corral and tell them to stay their hands. My voice cracking, I would tell them no salt would fall with the first snow of the year; that people would have to learn the fury of winter first hand without any salty buffer.
All of the children would get a day off from school, and likewise anyone with any sense in them would be able to call in to work. The only people on the roads would be those who felt invincible cozied inside their four wheel drive vehicles.
And those fools who ventured out would be taught a cruel lesson, one they would not be quick to forget ? that winter roads are to be thoughtfully navigated, not wontonly bullied through.
When I set the salt truck drivers free upon their bounty of unsalted snow and ice, the scores of people pulled from ditches would greet the winter roads with a new found clarity and we would all be a little safer.

On Friday night, in front of a packed house, the Clarkston varsity basketball team won its first game of the season. I was there, and the way the game unfolded made me think.
The Wolves definitely did not have the height advantage, nor did it look like they would be able to best Flint Northern in an all-team arm wrestling tournament. What the Wolves had was a system, what they could do was execute that system and what came out of it was an impressive win.
The game was fun to watch, but it’s not like this was some great David and Goliath upset. Clarkston is a very good team which knows its strengths and plays to them, while Flint Northern played as individuals and lost as individuals.
I can’t help but wonder though with everything that is going on in professional sports these days how much longer will the team with the system be on top. How much longer will it be before high school sports is dominated by the individual.
The problem is steroids? not drunk fans or overreacting basketball players. The five-minute beverage tussle at the Palace pales in comparison next to what is going on with Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and some other world class athletes. The message that baseball is sending to children everywhere right now is: being truly talented at something is enough to get to the show, but to be a star you have to have help.
Baseball should suspend Barry Bonds and all the other ballplayers who admitted to steroid use for life. Letting them play as if nothing happened sends a dangerous message to all athletes.
Major League Baseball should suspend them all, but they won’t, because baseball, like all other sports, is a business, and businesses do not have moral obligations in this nation.
Why should professional sports have to care about things like values? Are we, the American people, owed a certain guarantee that the professional sports leagues in this country will abide by a set of morals purely because we pay so much attention to them? If everyone watched assembly lines each evening on TV would companies still be able to downsize their work force in order to maximize their profits?
Whether the answer to these questions is yes or no, it doesn’t matter in the end. MLB will do what is good for Baseball and that is to let Barry Bonds break Hank Aaron’s home run mark. The controversy surrounding Mr. Bonds at that point in time will only put more money into the sport, or should I say the industry.
Steroids will forever mar baseball, but baseball will survive. What I worry about is this, steroids used to be a bad idea for two reasons: one they were immoral to use in order to augment talent and outperform competition, and two they came with some very nasty side effects.
If we learned anything at all from the recent steroid scandal it’s that ‘the clear,? or whatever else they call the most advanced performance enhancing drugs nowadays, is not going to make hair grow on the bridge of your nose. Women who take steroids will not drop four octaves in two months. Cancer caused by steroids? you don’t hear much about that anymore.
Our focus is way off on this whole Steroid thing. We should not worry about what wonder cocktail Barry Bonds, knowingly or unknowingly, put in his bloodstream. We should be worrying about teenagers and young adults whose perception of the risks surrounding steroids stops at getting caught.
The media fails when they only report half of the story. When we hear about steroids, we hear about million dollar science, not street level drugs. We hear that the BALCO labs created undetectable steroids which cause no harm. We don’t hear about what the steroids available in Warren or Rochester or Clarkston can do to a young person’s liver.
I hope a team like the 2004 Clarkston varsity basketball team will always be able to win games by playing a system. But I worry that one day there will be a team that will befuddle any system with pure strength? strength gained in the weight room but not earned. You can reach Noah Purcell at purcellcn@yahoo.com

Some things in life are seen only in black and white. No grays, no hues at all, just simple black and white.
And even though everyone beholden to the two-tone nature of the things know it would look better in color, the colors are not available. That’s the thing with black and white, it is a dominating force – the white swallows up debate and the black envelops queries.
The Clarkston varsity girls cross country team and the MHSAA’s decision to not let them run in the NIKE Team Nationals is one of those issues that begs to viewed in color but sadly can only be seen in black and white.
I see sky blue when I look at the girls? grit as they slogged through ice and snow last winter in order to prepare for the season.
The two weeks off the girls took from running over the past year flicker pink against a solid palette of royal purple when I recall the numerous times the girls told me training was easy thanks to their teammates support.
When the girls won their second State championship, it was as if gold poured from their mouths as they gushed about their victory. A massive fall, at the onset of the State championship race, now just a brown smudge overwhelmed and wiped out by the girls golden swagger.
But the question of whether the girls can go to the NIKE Team Nationals is black and white; and nothing is going to change that.
The determination has been made and the rules and bylaws of the MHSAA specifically forbids the team from participation. The rules eschew team participation in a national championship event, will not allow travel over 600 miles round trip and outlaw any competition as a team outside the official season of a particular sport. The MHSAA’s intent is noble.
These rules seek to keep athletes in the classroom and ensure that the State championship is cherished.
I see orange thunder clouds now. They pulse and burst when I think about a team divided, parents arguing and administrations blamed. Deeper and darker hues of orange flashed as the debate raged on – should the Wolves attend the NTN as a rogue club, pitting themselves against their school and the state athletic association?
And then the red blame poured down.
I know that if the team had gone to Portland, they would have splashed caution tape yellow all over next year’s team in the form of a years worth of ineligibility. Instead, with Clarkston declining to participate, CHS’s athletic director, Dan Fife, has to wade through the blood tinged blame.
What is not shining through is the light green in Mr. Fife’s eyes when he talks about how dedicated the team is. How they are the best examples of a successful high school athlete there is. How he wishes he could squeeze the same commitment the girls freely give out of other teams at CHS.
Hopefully, people will see that Mr. Fife is caught in the black and white just like the girls. That if there is a rules violation, he is compelled to report it. He knows he must even thoug he does not want to do it. In the end the black and white trumps what he wants as a person and dictates what he must do as an administrator.
I think the girls should be able to take advantage of the opportunity they have created and paid for with the soles of their feet. I think it would be great to throw a parade in their honor once they returned from the NTN with the crown.
But in the same breath, I think the girls who remain next year should have a chance to three-peat the State championship.
Clarkston will lose three of its strongest runners, but there will be strong runners in their place next year. The worst discoloration of all would have been if the girls on next years team were suspended.
In the end, no one can escape the black and white. The rules of the MHSAA will not be tinted for this event – and the cross country team will sadly be drained of their color now so they may shine anew next year.

One day everyone in America will be able to see clearly. There will come a time when information will flow unfettered into the hearts and minds of the citizens of this great nation – and that time is almost here.
On Dec. 31, 2006, we will wake in our beds, rub our eyes and look out across a great new world. We will all join hands with our family members and count with absolute certainty the number of wrinkles on Regis Philbin’s face – and it will all be due to Congress forcibly bestowing HDTV unto us.
Let’s break things down. Currently, broadcasters are ‘broadcasting? our television signal as well as delivering a digital feed of the same programs some of us still laboriously tune in. Come 2006 the ‘broadcasted? version will cease and we will all revel in the widescreen shimmering brilliance of High Definition Television.
And let me just say again: Oh, what a glorious day it will be.
Every wrinkle of a football play will unfold before our eyes. It will seem as if we are center court as we take in Basketball games. Hockey will enjoy a renaissance as the elongated screen breathes life into the sport. And I am sure the new format will have some positive effect on other programming as well.
These days, HDTV and the digital signal it employs is optional, but come 2006 and possibly 2009 if we are not ready the choice between the new and the old will thankfully be made for us.
I enjoy the HDTV that we have these days to a frighteningly indescribable level. Having been forcibly removed from an electronics store display for attempting to use a camcorder and a 54-inch HDTV to shave with, I would attest that the picture really is top notch.
These days my fear is, upon purchase of an HDTV (and a programming package to go with it), I will become a hermit in my living room, unable to wrest myself from the jaw-dropping gorgeous picture and sound.
What if I was invited to watch a game at a buddy’s house only to arrive and find antiquated technology flickering away? Once you have made the big leap there is no going back.
This is why congressionally mandated TV is so important, so our nation is not further divided, with one side refusing to visit the other.
As much as I enjoy the format, I worry that making it the one and only way of watching TV will bring more harm than good.
Come 2006, what will those who are unable to upgrade do with themselves? Or more importantly what will the have-nots do to those who have? We, the owners of luxuriantly massive HDTVs, will be forced to barricade ourselves in our homes to circumvent home invasion and remote control larceny.
Stopping just short of predicting civil war is going a little far though, I believe, and I think we should all welcome this change.
Just think, we could take all the televisions rendered obsolete by the upgrade to digital, build a massive pile of outdated technology in a landfill, cover it over with dirt and then go skiing on it.
There really has not been any talk yet of a recycling program for all the tubes that will be thrown away come 2006 but when I think about that ski hill pushing up against the heavens with its millions of television sets I know everything will work itself out.
Noah Purcell can be reached at purcellcn@yahoo.com

For the first time this season I’ve seen, the CHS football sidelines was graced by their very own mascot.
Clarkston middle school student Shane Kouri stepped up and filled the void on the sideline left by the CHS Chearleaders, who competed in a tournament later that day.
Kouri helped the crowd through a game fraught with emotional ups and downs. In short he did a fantastic job of getting everyone hyped up throughout the game while keeping them focused. Though Clarkston fell short of victory against Eisenhower on Oct. 30, no blame fell on Kouri’s furry shoulders.
To me, the mascot is one of the most important things surrounding sports today. (This from a man who has been put in a headlock and hit on the head with the ‘noise? sign by the Pistons? Hooper.)
The periphery of sports is a wide and diverse place, and it breaks down into two categories: good and evil.
Obviously, a teams? mascot along with free t-shirts and homemade banners are staples of the good side. On the evil side, lurks corporate sponsorship, lockouts and the dreaded team curse.
There is an awful lot of curse to go around these days, what with the Red Sox exorcising their demons this October, by winning the World Series for the first time since 1918.
With the ‘Curse of the Bambino? being lifted off the Red Sox, the scales governing good and evil in sports are now tipped dramatically in favor of the good side. Just the other day, SBC pulled their proposal to sponsor the Michigan-Ohio State game this year, which only furthers my musings.
Maybe the good side will win the battle once and for all. Across the land people will rejoice in ticket giveaways and bobbleheads. Sports will enjoy a renaissance of down-to-earth players and better cushioned seating.
If the biggest curse in sports history can fall, all the little ones can not be far behind. And if sports is able to return to a time before it was governed by supernatural powers, it can not be long before the bad side falls completely.
The good side is about to blow out the bad side, but what will the ramifications be?
The first problem we will have is job loss. Sports radio across the nation will be forced into massive layoffs due to a lack of improbable and downright silly explanations to the mysteries of sport. Besides, in this eden which sports is poised to enter, the coach will always make the right call and players will always execute them.
The second big problem is curses just want to curse things. If they are cast from the realm of sports they are bound to latch on to other areas of American life.
What if the curse that afflicted the Red Sox organization for all of those many years is unable to latch on to another sports organization? What if instead it descends upon our struggling economy?
After all the ‘Curse of the Bambino? focused on Babe Ruth being sold to the Red Sox. The curse plagued that franchise since 1918. Now having haunted the organization which did the selling, the curse might follow the money right into our nation’s economy.
It is one thing to have economic problems caused by economic factors. It is a totally different story if our economy is cursed.
If our economy did fall under the sway of some foul curse, I think our only resort would be to fight fire with fire and get the economy a mascot.
We would need to counteract the mumbo-jumbo of the curse with something proven to balance things out in the past. I think we should look to Allan Greenspan’s visage for the head, but consider something like a lion or a rhino for the body. A mascot that says ‘I have a sound financial plan and the strength to carry it out.?
Hopefully in our collective time of need, someone will step forward, much like Shaun Kouri did, and be able to harness the will of the people and transfer it to our legislature as they combat the second incarnation of the ‘Curse of the Bambino.?

“Let’s just say that he’s not the kind of guy who orders a beer” -Tony Siragusa talking about Joey Harrington during the Lions Eagles game a few weeks back.
I know that my last column centered on statements from the media and their incredible stupidity, and I know the issue between Harrington, Siragusa and FOX is dead. I really could care less that Siragusa challenged Harrington’s manliness while Harrington and the Lions were getting trounced by the Philadephia Eagles in the background. Actually I really enjoyed the mini-drama that unfolded after the game as Harrington cast aspersions on Siragusa’s playing career and basically stopped just short of calling him a blithering idiot.
The exchange between the two was funny, I live for that kind of humor. It really is a wonder I do not watch more reality TV shows. But like I said all of that is a dead issue to me. What has raised my ire today is what the “goose” was hinting at, and what will heretofore be referred to as the beer test.
The beer test has determined some very important things in recent memory. Let’s get one thing straight before I continue, I do not deal with exact percentages and this is the opinion of one man, but the beer test decided our last presidential election.
I feel that the Supreme Court would never have been called in to rule on how they thought America had tried to vote if Al Gore looked more like a man who could throw down a cold one. Maybe Gore should have just come out to accept the democratic nomination hammered, maybe that would have endeared him to the American public. Everyone would have known then that Gore was a man they could not only have a beer with but also a man they could have several beers with. Instead Bush, a successfully reformed alcoholic, carried the “have a beer with vote” and with some help the election.
Who will win the beer vote this year is yet to be determined. Bush is still as dry as some of our nations wetlands will be in twenty years. That texas drawl of his seems to still be worth at least a six pack in the eyes of the voters though.
Kerry on the other hand is lucky to be running in 2004 instead of four years ago. Times have changed and the democrats are looking to sneak back into the bar this election year. Kerry differs from Gore in key areas when it comes to each man’s drink-with-ability.
For one Kerry hails from Massachusetts, a state which is synonymous with several different varieties of beers and breweries which could really help him belly up to the imaginary bars of undecided voters all over the country. Also helping Kerry is that the beer culture in America has begun to change in recent years.
Four years ago there was only about three or four main brands of beer floating around in the collective sub-conscious of America. These days there has been a veritable explosion of beer on the American public. Now, small party stores can stock up to 50 or 100 different types of beer. This proliferation of suds has led to beer drinkers being divided and grouped, now there are snobs and slobs and everything in between.
In this day and age, the casual drinker can choose to imbibe any number of lagers from around the world. The diversification of beer may provide Kerry an ‘in? with the “have a cold one with me” crowd in that his propensity for coming off as snobbish or high class can now be worked into the mythos of sharing a brew. Middle and lower class beer drinkers who agree with what the Democratic Party is trying to do for them will not be forced to vote for Bush because he is seen as being easier to drink with.
While Kerry may be drinking suds out of a glass that hails from a little brewery in Vermont, which only makes two batches a year of their special Oktoberfest triple filtered amber ale-bac, he is still at the bar with those who choose to heartily sample their domestic beverages from the bottle.
Maybe this year America will get to choose on issues like: Whose war are we fighting? What is our responsibility to our neighbors and children? Instead of being bogged down by the eternal debate of which candidate we would rather have a beer with.
I know deciding which candidate will be perceived to be a better drinking buddy is an important decision to many voters this election year, and I must take care not to forget that.
Who knows, there might be a time this winter when a snowstorm pushes me off the road in an unfamiliar town, with no refuge other than the local tavern. Forced to take shelter from the weather, I stumble out of the snow and across the welcoming threshold of said establishment.
In my disheveled state I hear a voice from behind me, it says “hey barkeep this man looks like he could use a drink.” I guess I need to decide whether I want that voice to have a Texas drawl or a New England inflection before I look at the other issues this year.