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I'm a week late in telling you this, but I'm still six days early. So for your sanity, please listen up.Make your Super Bowl prediction now!Otherwise, your brain will turn to mush, your ears will clog with statistics, you'll see Michael Irvin and Tom Jackson arguing in your sleep, and you will only make your pick next Sunday on what you'll tell yourself is thorough, brilliant analysis when it is, in fact, and I want to use a scientific term here, blah, blah, blah. Nothing happens.Remember that phrase. Nothing happens.

A few years back, a friend named Sonya told me about her father, who survived the Auschwitz death camp but lost everything else, including his young wife and 2-year-old son. He had come to America after the war, started a new life, a new family, worked into his old age as a sign maker in Detroit."He reads your column," Sonya said. "He'd like to meet you."I promised it would happen, then, of course, never followed up. Now and again, she would mention it, and I'd say, "Oh, sure, sure, let's make the time," but again, I fell short.

I walked past a coffee shop last week and through the window I saw a TV screen. Under "breaking news" was this: The New York Times had endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain in the presidential primaries.Was this really "breaking news"?Should it be news at all?Once upon a time newspapers and endorsements were like baseball cards and bubble gum. Newspapers were bald-faced about their political views. In some cases, they were little more than the publishing arms of a political party. Those were the old days.These are not those days.

Not to rush things, but we've already picked our team.In fact, less than five minutes after the Super Bowl foes were determined, Detroit had its mind made up. We're going with Pittsburgh,We like Pittsburgh.We are Pittsburgh."Who do you think is gonna win?" fans here ask me."Pittsburgh," I say."YES!" they say.That is not a normal reaction for the Motor City, which, last time I looked, was not located in Pennsylvania.

A few weeks ago, the NFL sent out Super Bowl invitations to a handful of teams.On Sunday, Detroit received two RSVPs.They had bite marks.The combatants for football's biggest game will not be tiptoeing into town on Feb. 5. The way the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks chomped through their conference championship games Sunday, the new motto around here may be "Super Bowl XL: Hide the Women and Children."

I once worked at a football stadium. I sold programs. I was 14. Before the game, I lined up with the other vendors, including the guys who sold beer. They had to be older, of course, but they still trudged through the stands, like me, hoping for customers.At the end of the day, like me, they pocketed, in cash, a small percentage of what they brought in. And they went home, many via bus or subway.

Eleven years old. I was in the fifth grade. I wore black sneakers. I rode a Sting-Ray bicycle. I climbed trees with friends. I had never kissed a girl. I ate Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. That summer I went to sleepaway camp and a man landed on the moon. When I got home, I built a plastic model of Apollo 11 and kept it in my bedroom.Eleven years old. I have been thinking about how young that is, in light of arguments last week over how old it is.

Last week, at age 82, Richard Knerr died. You probably don't recognize his name. You probably can't pronounce it. He wasn't an actor or a war hero. He cured no diseases. Made no scientific breakthroughs.In fact, you could say Richard Knerr was about one thing and one thing only: fun. But if you measure a man by what the world would be like without him, here a few things that, minus Knerr, you would never know:The Hula Hoop.The Frisbee.The SuperBall.Those alone took up a third of my childhood.

Today America will erupt in celebration.But an outsider might ask: What are we so happy about?For most, this is the worst economy of our lives. People are losing houses. People are losing jobs. We are in two wars, and the Middle East is again simmering with violence.What are we so happy about?

There were two news-making plane crashes this past week. Miraculously, no one died in either one.But while the passengers of a US Airways jet were overjoyed to see rescuers in the frigid waters of the Hudson River, a pilot named Marcus Schrenker was much less happy.Schrenker, flying over Alabama last Sunday, radioed that his Piper PA-46 turboprop was having trouble. He said his windshield had imploded. Then, without telling air traffic controllers, he parachuted out, leaving his plane to fly on auto pilot until it finally crashed in the Florida Panhandle.

Here's something I'd like to see on Thursday. George W. Bush, being sworn in for his second term as president, then shaking hands with a few dignitaries.And everyone goes home.