Last week, as I sat before my TV watching Tonya Harding pummel Paula Jones, I was struck with a sudden thought.More.I want Darva Conger next. Linda Tripp after that. Jenny McCarthy should be in the wings, alongside Gennifer Flowers, (Downtown) Julie Brown, Lorena Bobbitt and that witchy woman from "Survivor."
If I ever turn to a life of crime, I know just the judge I want.His name is Alvin Hellerstein, a bald, jowly, 68-year-old federal district court judge in New York City. A few months ago, he sentenced a man named Edward Bello to 10 months.Not 10 months in jail -- 10 months at home, with no TV.Hey. My parents gave me that, and I was only a minor!Judge Hellerstein figured that without TV, Bello, who had a record of petty crime convictions and was now pleading guilty to conspiracy to use stolen credit cards, would have time to think about the wrong he had done.
SALT LAKE CITY -- I will never win an Olympic gold medal. But I did, last week, make an Olympic-sized mistake.I caught a flu. In the middle of these Olympics. OK. It happens. I was sneezing and wheezing and blowing my nose all over the Alpine world.One night I got back to my hotel room early, hoping for a long sleep to knock the bug from my body.I should correct something. I said "hotel room." This would suggest that I was staying in a hotel. In truth, it was a motel. In truth, it was the TraveLodge. And not the world's greatest TraveLodge.
SALT LAKE CITY -- He's the one. The golden child. They all know it."C'MON BODE! . . ."It's the reason you saw a little more grit in their teeth as Bode Miller sliced down the giant slalom Thursday."C'MON, BODE! . . ."You could almost hear their prayer as he neared the finish."PLEEEASE, BODE! . . ."He's the reason the U.S. ski coaches and managers and poobahs all leapt a little higher when his hungry, wolfish style gave them another minor miracle, a silver medal from the back of the pack."YES, BODE, YES!"
SALT LAKE CITY -- It is raining down in Birmingham, Ala., and the air is a balmy 69 degrees. Yolanda Cooper, a senior sprinter at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, excitedly picks up the phone. She spent the previous night with her teammates watching her track coach, Vonetta Flowers, become the first black gold medalist in the history of the Winter Olympics. Vonetta, the woman who clocks her lap times? Vonetta, who runs alongside her? That Vonetta? Won the Olympic bobsled?
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.
