Detroit Free Press

Mike Peplowski deserved better than this. He had the years. He had the scars. No way a guy like him should have ...

He calls himself the fifth wheel, or "Fab Four plus one," and he sits most often on the edge of the spotlight, as ...

NEWS ITEM: "The Golf Channel," a 24-hour cable network devoted entirely to the sport of golf, was announced ...

Dennis Rodman was sitting on his bed with a few friends watching television and counting the minutes to his new life. It was 8 p.m. He had one hour left as a Piston. That's what he figured. That's what he wanted."I been traded yet?" he asked a visitor."Not yet," came the answer."Damn," he said.

The van stops and the back door opens. Inside is a feast of garbage. Perfectly good food: coffee, bananas, crackers, frozen pizza, sugar, bread -- food someone was about to throw away."Lemme help you," says a homeless man in a ski cap and tattered shoes. He peers inside the van, like a child sneaking a peek at Christmas presents."Me, too," says an older fellow, unshaven, in a cheap grey sweater. "Right here for ya," says another."Go ahead, we're ready."

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Suddenly, a game they had played so beautifully, so masterfully, for 33 solid minutes, was ...

OK, I admit it. I watched the entire Michael Jackson interview. And I liked it. I especially liked when the security alarm went off, and they had to rush to a commercial, and when they came back, Elizabeth Taylor was waddling out of the kitchen, looking guilty, with powdered sugar on her lips.But I did have one problem. With the questions. I felt Oprah Winfrey -- who is fine on such major issues as "Women Who Date Their Daughter's Gym Teachers" -- blew her chance with the world's No. 1 Other From Another Planet. She was way too soft.

Think about 19. Think about where you were, what you were doing. Maybe getting drunk at a frat party, maybe starting a job you knew would never last, maybe flopping on the couch, watching TV, trying to decide what to do with your life. It's an in-between age, 19, and most likely you felt torn at some point by the childhood behind you and the adulthood that lay ahead. Like a wishbone.