About the Editor

May 15, 1999
Go West, young, carefree, car-buying man I just want to warn everybody out West: They’re coming. If you’ve watched any car commercials lately, you know what I’m talking about. A sudden influx of drivers in glimmering sports cars and sports utility monstrosities is swarming the vast virgin vistas of the Wild West. And since I’ve always taken car commercials as a reasonable portrayal of life in America today, I figure this should make us stand up and take notice. More...

May 10, 1999
Throwing your clock out the window to see if time disappears A funny thing happens once you turn 18. Every last shred of sense of time you spent years mastering (ever since you were drilled on what the heck the big hand and the little hand meant) evaporates. It’s called college. More...

April 7, 1999
Baseball sells its soul on its sleeve I’m learning that professional sports defies thresholds. That’s tough to accept when you hear what we heard last week, and when you want to respond by saying that we’ve reached a certain point where we haven’t been before, and that it should alarm us. More...

March 27, 1999
Telemarketers: Voices of Freedom You've got it all wrong, you know. I know that all you can probably think of when you get a call from a telemarketer is how you could inflict such cruel pain on the person that his or her ancestors would wince in their graves. But that’s missing the beauty of what’s going on here. Telemarketers are not your enemies to be dreaded; they are your friends to be embraced. More...

March 16, 1999
Till from my bones my flesh be hacked: Samaranch’s desparation It's never a good sign when the forest marches up to overthrow you. That was the fate of Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play when he says, “Bring me no more reports; let them fly all ... I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked.” More...

March 15, 1999
Gender generalities are from Mars, stereotypes are from Venus I love getting e-mail forwards. How can you not? For me, they’re much needed reminders that no matter how many useful functions email can serve – keeping phone bills down, getting appointments smoothly scheduled, talking with long lost friends, reviving writing skills – you’re just one chain letter away from written proof that some people either a) have more time on there hands than scientists have proven actually exists in a day, b) have attempted dangerous experiments with smoking antifreeze, or c) a tragic combination of both. More...

March 10, 1999
What's in a name? One word too many If you were to pay really close attention to the headlines in the sports pages I edit -- I mean so close you’d be hard-pressed to prove you have a life -- you might notice a definite trend. Never once has this space referred to the women’s basketball team as the “Lady Knights.” More...

March 3, 1999
Enjoy March Madness before April dullness I know spring training is supposed to conjure up the most profound sense of hope and renewal. We emerge from the dreary prisons of winter and enter the sunny, verdant pastures over which the temperate spring breeze and batting practice baseballs fly alike. But this year I just respond to all that with one big yawn. This figures to be one of the most useless recent seasons in baseball, even for a particularly useless decade in the sport's history. More...

January 27, 1999
When car mechanics rule the world One of the many ramifications of the trial of Bill Clinton -- one of the few that doesn't involve matters such as giggling when you hear the word "cigar" -- is the revelation that the President of the United States is effectively about as powerful and has as much direct authority over us as a jar of orange marmolade. I mean, really, when three fourths of America says they want to keep in power a guy who lied to their faces, jabbing a finger at them, seemingly aghast that anyone would dare to accuse him of things it turns out he did, it says something about how much impact they want their President to really have. More...

January 15, 1999
Just in time: NBA gives us Calvin-Hope intro I love it. Call me morbid, but I think it's a beautiful irony that the Calvin-Hope basketball rivalry is renewed so soon after David Stern and Billy Hunter sentenced fans to an NBA season. It's perfect timing. Not even two weeks after the cardboard-for-brains players and owners of the NBA, wallowing in their own financial filth, nearly strangle themselves over decimal points among billion-dollar figures, and two weeks before the elitist circus that is the NBA tragically resumes, now without living legend Michael Jordan, than does America s best small college rivalry open another intriguing chapter. The full-grown babies whine. The true basketball players and fans go to (or watch around the world by satellite) the Calvin-Hope game. Beautiful. More...

November 4, 1998
The new high tech championship: Call it stupid.com Now wait just a darn minute. We're settling this by computer? Another thrilling roller-coaster season in college football, complete with upsets, favorites, and surprises, and we're settling the whole thing by computer? Taking it out of the hands of coaches and players and into the circuits of a microchip? Used to be a national championship would be decided on fourth and goal. Now it's point and click? These horrors came to light two weeks ago. More...

September 25, 1998
Christians in the new sports world: Jesus Christ versus Jim Rome The ad is about as subtle as Mike Tyson at an elephant ear stand. On the left, a picture of Howard Stern, the squalid national morning radio personality, sitting atop the logo for KLQ FM. On the right, equally vociferous sports talk show host Jim Rome, sporting a goatee and his trademark cocky gaze, above the logo of WBBL - KLQ's all-sports AM sister station. At the top in bold lettering is the three-word axiom of modern radio: "Controversy means business." More...

June3, 1998
Higher Calling: GRCHS graduation speech Tonight we students fear the plight of the young piano student in the movie Groundhog Day, who is shoved out the door when Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, offers the piano teacher $1,000 for his first lesson. Connors, you see, has lost the concept of tomorrow. He is trapped in a day, February 2nd, that keeps repeating itself, playing the exact same routine over and over, until tomorrow seems as distant as ever. We graduates have been similarly drowned in familiarity for four years now, trudging through the same hallways and sitting in the same classrooms until tomorrow seemed very far away. But now it is June 3, our February 3. And suddenly we are frightened by the open-ended question, what does tomorrow hold? More...

May 1998
1997-98 in News: The Year of the Big In this last installment of my high school column, I call on all the resources of four years of editorial writing, hours of thumbing through language usage books, and my ambitions to major in English in college to conjure up the most comprehensive and accurate description of the school year in news. It was big. Real big. More...

March 1998
Why Michael Jordan is Underpaid My thesis for today should cause my math teachers to rethink my grades for last semester. It is simply this: 3 million is greater than 35 million. No, I don't have a case of decimal disease, but since I refer to pro athletes' salaries, I figure logic is out the window anyway. But I still wish to justify the above statement. More...

November 1997
When Christmas Magic Makes Thanksgiving Disappear They hang by the thousands in the vast upper reaches of Woodland mall, which, on this day after Thanksgiving, can only be considered the center of the universe. Lights. Strings of them. Blankets of them. Blinkling, twinkling, and dazzling as though to provide celestial approval for the money-driven mayhem below. More...

Back to Top

Home