(From the Janesville Messenger, 9-16-07)
When one idea for a column just won’t do, it’s time once again for a “short attention span” column....
- Thank you to everybody who commented on the September 2 column about my car accident. My purchase criteria changed dramatically when shopping for my replacement car. My new vehicle’s best feature? A crash test rating of 5 stars out of 5 possible from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. And yes, Janesville, it’s a General Motors car.
- Speaking of driving, we have passed another milestone in my family. My daughter is 15.5 years old, which means she now has her Class D drivers license instruction permit. Or in other words, her “temps.” Until this momentous day occurred, I’m not sure she had ever steered so much as a bumper car, so we were literally starting from square one. My first experience in the passengers seat featured death-defying, white-knuckled driving at 10 mph in an empty high school parking lot. Not that I was much better at her age, mind you, despite the advantage I had of a few years experience driving tractors on our farm. My dad was probably happy that the car in which he was teaching me – a 1972 Buick Centurion the length of a battleship – had automatic transmission, since I had a tendency to pop the tractor clutch and send unsuspecting bale stackers flying off hay wagons.
- News flash: Britney Spears gives an awful, embarrassing performance on the MTV Video Music Awards. News flash II: No one is surprised. This was a no-lose scenario for MTV. In the unlikely event that she puts on a terrific performance, they score big. In the likely event that it’s just another chapter in what’s become Hollywood’s biggest career flameout, they also score big. Think about it; when’s the last time you heard much of anything about MTV? The channel is passé, but they got big press for hosting this debacle. I could live a happy life never reading another word about or seeing another clip of Britney, but it would be premature to pronounce her career over. After all, Mike Tyson still gets boxing matches. There will always be an audience for freak shows.
- The National Football League season has started, and once again, I have joined a fantasy football league. For the uninitiated, a participant is the coach and general manager of his own football team, selecting real NFL players to be on his “fantasy” roster. You are matched up each week against another team and the winner of the “game” is the team whose players rack up the most points using a scoring system based on their statistics from the real games. It is a fun diversion, though it now means I have a lot of other players to cheer for on Sunday besides Brett Favre and the Packers. It almost makes you think some ingenious employee of the NFL came up with this idea, to make you even more hooked on the league. But let’s face it; fantasy leagues are basically made up of guys practicing accounting skills while pretending to be football coaches. The only reason fantasy football isn’t considered the sport of geeks is because it involves, um, football. And nothing related to football can be anything less than manly.
- As I write this column, six years ago today I was sitting in a quiet coffee shop in downtown Janesville, when a young woman I didn’t know came up to me to tell me the most ridiculous story. She said that airplanes had flown into both of the towers of the World Trade Center. I found it so incredible that despite being only a few blocks from my office, I called there to see what had really happened. I will never forget that day. We must never forget.
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