You can't buy a ticket to the Academy Awards. You must be invited. So I have been waiting. I check the mailbox every day. Nothing. And since the awards are tonight, I'm assuming once again, through no fault of my own, that I am not on the list.But this year, I am doing something about it. I am holding my own Oscars.That's right. I have decided that, with the exception of Jennifer Lopez's dress, whatda they got that I ain't got?
It was the saddest news photo of the week. A California mother fighting tears, her eyes squeezing shut, her lips quivering. She was displaying a picture of her 5-year-old daughter, who had been abducted hours earlier by a stranger in a green car. The news photo captured the tragic symbolism: a mother trying to hold her daughter up, even as she was falling apart.In the end, her world collapsed anyhow. The little girl, Samantha Runnion, was found the next day, naked and abused and dead on a hillside. Five years old. The killer left her like a gum wrapper.
Ialways laugh when politicians tell voters who is "fit to lead." It reminds me of a cat telling mice where they should hide.Last week, John Kerry told us John Edwards, his new vice presidential candidate, was fit to lead, even though earlier this year he criticized Edwards, saying the White House "was no place for on-the-job training."Edwards, for his part, told groups of cheering fans that his new boss was fit to lead, even though a few months ago, Edwards was doing his best to knock Kerry out of the race.
You leave work Friday afternoon, the Red Wings are talking contract with Sergei Fedorov. You come in Monday morning, and Fedorov is a Mighty Duck.Talk about a lost weekend.What happened? How did the Wings let their most talented player get away for nothing?Well, as Orange County real estate agents begin hunting for a new mansion, here's the bottom line:Sergei saw himself one way, the Wings saw him another.
The mark of a gentleman is that he behaves like one even when he doesn't feel like it, and Lloyd Carr didn't feel like it as he ran off at halftime of the Michigan-Ohio State game. For a moment, in ungentlemanly fashion, he let mood dictate behavior. An ABC reporter fired a question about why Michigan had just run out the clock when it had three time-outs left.Carr glared at him."Why would you ask a dumb question like that?" he said.When the reporter tried again, Carr ignored him and walked away, shaking his head as if the guy were an idiot.
"It is not the critic who counts. . . . The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly . . . and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." -- Teddy Roosevelt
Maybe they're trying to be nice.Maybe they need a bigger vocabulary.But have you noticed how the broadcasters for these NCAA tournament games seem hesitant to call things as they really are -- especially if they are the slightest bit ...negative?Example: A player dribbles the ball off his foot, then bounces it off his head, then runs the wrong way and shoots at the opposite basket.Announcer: "He's struggling today."Example: Team A falls behind by 30 points. Team A hasn't made a basket since last week. There are four minutes left.
They called it "getting the wood." It was a paddle or a stick several inches thick, and the coach gave it to you smack across the butt, sometimes alone in his office, sometimes in front of the whole team. The number of whacks depended on what you did, and how badly you did it.Joel (Tony) Blankenship got the wood in his day. He attended Detroit's Murray-Wright High School in the late '80s. He took his whacks, like most of his teammates. It never bothered him or scarred him emotionally. Parents didn't complain.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
