Rejected Romance Novel Titles #4

I've been busy the last few days and haven't had time to do a "proper" post, one of those gems that mines the complexities of life, grapples with moral quandaries and makes people laugh so hard they spew their Yoo-Hoo. As a stopgap measure, here's the fourth part of this continuing series. Would any of you ladies like to be in this romantic position? I think this gal will need a good chiropractor if this keeps up.

Random Observations and Trivial Events

1. I have a great idea if there’s a group of balding middle-aged guys out there who have formed a boomer classic rock band and are trying to come up with a cool name. Are you ready? INVOLUNTARY TONSURE. Mysterious, self-deprecating, and even a bit assonantal. If they’re costume lovers, they could take the stage wearing monk’s hoods. That would get the ladies’ attention.

2. The change of seasons, courtesy of Wal-Mart late one night this past week: an aisle marked “Seasonal,” a girl at one end removing red, forlorn unpurchased Valentine hearts and candy, a second girl at the opposite end, filling shelves with pastel eggs and rabbits. It’s like watching the moon and the tides.

3. I’m excited! Mrs. Muley and I are going to see the movie “Walk the Line” tonight, and I hope it’s as good as everybody says. Right now, I just don’t see Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash, so I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Rejected Romance Novel Titles #3

I don't know, I see maybe Patrick Swayze or David Hasselhoff in the movie version.

Lovesick

I spent the Day of Love yesterday at home, sick in bed. Luckily, it was nothing more than a bad cold, and I spent the entire first half of the day asleep.

When I finally awoke, I stayed in bed and watched two movies, both of which I can heartily recommend. The first is the 1999 Masterpiece Theatre version of the classic Charles Dickens tale David Copperfield. This three-hour adaptation is broken into two parts. The first part, where David is a boy, features Daniel Radcliffe playing David. Radcliffe, as you probably know, went on to much greater fame playing Harry Potter on the big screen.

The movie is wonderful, mainly for the fine acting of the supporting characters. Maggie Smith, another Harry Potter alum, plays Betsy Trotwood, and Ian McKellum, who played Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies, does a perfect job as the cruel schoolteacher Creakle. Bob Hoskins, one of my favorite actors, does a fine job as Mr. Micawber. I will say that the guy who played the grown-up David Copperfield was rather bland, but all of the great supporting turns made up for his somewhat by-the-numbers performance. Highly recommended.

After watching David Copperfield, I saw a highly rated "chick flick" romance I'd been wanting to see for some time, Love Comes Softly. This is based on the book of the same name by Christian fiction author Jannette Oke. It's a quiet, gentle movie set during pioneer days when families were going west in covered wagons to settle the plains. Katherine Heigl, who plays on the TV series "Grey's Anatomy," which I've never watched, is excellent in the leading female role. She plays a young woman who comes west with her new husband, only to lose him during the journey to a freak accident. A widowed farmer makes her an offer to marry him and watch over his young tomboy daughter until the spring, when he'll then pay her passage back east to her home. She accepts, and the movie is about how this woman comes to learn to "bloom where she's planted" and follow God's sometimes unexpected leadings.

Like I said, this movie is considered a "chick flick," but I enjoyed it. There's a sequel titled Love's Enduring Promise which features the same family years later getting eaten alive by a pack of wolves. Just kidding. I want to watch this one as well.

Speaking of "chick flicks," I am in the middle of one of the classics of "chick lit," namely, Little Women. It's a quiet little book, full of grace and class, and though I could see why some might consider it dated in its portrayal of women, I am enjoying it for its spirit and its strong Christian undercurrent.

I'm back at work today, even though the medicine I'm taking makes it hard to stay awake. I'm happy to report that my daughter's basketball team won their first game last night, and my daughter scored the winning basket. She was so happy, it made my feelings of fatigue and illness just melt away. And Mrs. Muley gave me a sweet card and a nice new shirt I really like. A great way to end Valentines' Day.

How was your day?

Some Things About Me (part two)

26. Two foods that a lot of people seem to like (but I hate) are onions and mayonnaise. Two foods that a lot of people seem to hate (but I like) are lima beans and pork rinds.

27. I was a fairly good speech-type person in junior high and high school. I placed second in state in both debate and extemporaneous speaking different years.

28. The only time I’ve stayed overnight in a hospital is when I had my tonsils out when I was five years old. I was upset because I had asked my parents to get the doctors to put my tonsils in a jar that I could take to my kindergarten class for show and tell, but they didn’t come through. I did like all the ice cream, through.

29. I went through three schools and three majors in my tour of the Southwest Conference during college. I started out going for a year at Baylor as an accounting major, then went for a year and a half to the University of Houston as a Radio/TV major, then ended up at the University of Texas as a broadcast journalism major. I graduated with a bachelor of journalism from UT in 1982.

30. I started wearing glasses when I was 12 years old. I tried contacts along the way, but they always bothered my eyes and I gave them up. About 12 years ago, I got RK surgery so I wouldn’t have to wear glasses anymore. By that time, my glasses were almost Coke bottle size and kept slipping down my nose.

31. I got my first kiss in seventh grade during a spin-the-bottle session at a party. The girl’s name was Wendy. I enjoyed the spin-the-bottle concept because at that time in my life, it was the only way I was ever going to get a girl to kiss me without some sort of armed threat. The party might have been a little tawdry and all, but I remember it as a magical night.

32. I am a Dr Pepper addict. I believe they began putting it in my bottles soon after I was weaned from formula, and I’ve been drinking it ever since. If they figured out the volume of all the Dr Pepper I’ve drunk over the years, it would probably float a battleship. If they gave me back all the money I’ve spent on Dr Pepper over the years, I undoubtedly could retire comfortably.

33. I am a decent artist, but I never pursued getting better at it as I probably should have. I can’t draw people worth beans, but I can do graphics and landscapes fairly well.

34. I met my wife when we were both working for a small market television station. When we met, I was a news bureau chief and she worked in production. By the time we married, she had moved up to producer of the 10 p.m. news.

35. When I was being born (the natural way), my big head got “stuck” and I had my oxygen supply threatened. My mom has always claimed that if they hadn’t been able to pull me out with forceps when they did, I would have been born a mongoloid. Some people over the years have said this explains a lot about me.

36. When I was in college, I was in a “band” with some of my friends. We couldn’t play band instruments, and we couldn’t sing very well, but we knew how to use recording equipment. We’d find recorded instrumentals, write our own lyrics to them, then record our singing over the tracks. We even gave a few public “concerts” singing over these instrumentals, including one concert in a large airplane hangar. Youth has no shame.

37. I once entered a poem of mine in a contest run by some blue-haired ladies in a county literary society, and I won. I can’t even remember if I got any money, or if they just knitted me a potholder.

38. The singers or groups that I have seen in concert include Elvis (in the Astrodome as a kid), the Who, ZZ Top, Bruce Springsteen, the Marshall Tucker Band, the Blues Brothers, Amy Grant, Ronnie Millsap, Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, and Weather Report.

39. I once was in the same room as George W. Bush. He was the governor of Texas at the time, and he met in his reception room at the Capitol with Abner McCall, the former president of Baylor University, who was being honored. I was there to take video of them shaking hands and talking. To my eternal regret, I did not attempt to shake GW’s hand myself.

40. I took four semesters of Spanish in college, but still can’t speak it.

41. I am a “Trekkie,” albeit the non-obsessive type.

42. From third grade until my junior year in high school I thought I wanted to be a doctor. When I went on a field trip to a hospital and saw the kinds of things I would have to do to learn to be a doctor, like cutting open cadavers, dealing with blood and doing intimate things to people, I changed my mind.

43. If you can believe it, I then decided to get an accounting degree followed by a law degree, and be a corporate attorney. I was thinking how much money I would undoubtedly make, but thankfully I also came to realize that I would end up gnawing through my mahogany desk in boredom.

44. I like to collect quotes and lists of vocabulary words I don’t know.

45. I write haiku for fun.

46. I was in journalism classes at the University of Texas with E.D. Hill, one of the co-hosts of “Fox and Friends” on Fox News in the morning. And when I working as a bureau chief for one station in Waco, she was co-anchoring at another. I seriously doubt she would remember me now.

47. I never owned a leisure suit, but I did once go to a high school prom wearing a white tuxedo with a powder blue ruffly shirt and a honkin’ big blue bowtie. I did it to match my date’s dress, but I felt like the pinch hitter at a gay escort service.

48. The first magazine I ever had a subscription to was Boy’s Life, since I was in both Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. The first magazine I subscribed to out of my own pocket was Mad magazine. I can still remember how I’d be so excited when a new issue, full of twisted humor, would appear in the mailbox.

49. My first car was a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, which I outfitted with an 8-track tape player as soon as I could.

50. I had a childhood crush on Valerie Bertinelli from the “One Day at a Time” TV show, but then she went and married Eddie Van Halen. Oh, well.

Some Things About Me (part one)

I've always been meaning to do one of these lists, so here goes. I'll break it down in smaller bites so as to not gag anyone.

1. I have blue eyes and brown hair. When I was born, however, my hair was a dirty blonde color.

2. I have lived in Texas all of my life, including stints in Houston, Austin, Friendswood and Waco.

3. I have traveled to 38 of the United States as well as the District of Columbia. I’ve got 12 more states to visit before I die: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Delaware, West Virginia, South Carolina, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota and Alaska.

4. Sadly, like many Americans, I have only been to two foreign countries: Canada and Mexico.

5. My favorite song as a very young child was “Puff the Magic Dragon” by Peter, Paul and Mary. I still love it.

6. The first LP I ever got my parents to buy me was the second album by the Monkees, “More of the Monkees,” the one with “I’m a Believer” and “(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone." I played it until the grooves disappeared.

7. I have a habit of cracking my knuckles, which unnerves Mrs. Muley.

8. Since I was a somewhat fat child all throughout elementary school, I got the honor of playing Santa Claus in my first grade Christmas play. I didn’t need a lot of extra padding. I had to pantomime to “The Night Before Christmas,” including puffing my pipe and shaking like a bowl of jelly.

9. I became a Houston Astros fan at a young age, back when they routinely occupied the National League cellar. I would listen to the game broadcasts on a little AM/FM radio in my room.

10. I signed up for the “Astros Buddies” club one year, and listed my favorite Astro as Jesus Alou. I got a membership card with his photo on it.

11. Speaking of the Astros, the summer before my freshman year in college I worked in “food service” at the Astroworld amusement park in Houston. I sold soft drinks, made hamburgers and peddled Pink Things out in the blazing Texas sun.

12. I have three brothers, all younger than me. I’m the only one of them who has either married or had kids. One of them still lives at home with my parents. I don’t see them very often.

13. I once was urinated on by a lion in a zoo. I must do a post about that some time.

14. My favorite Charlie’s Angel when the show was on TV was Cheryl Ladd, but now I think I like Jaclyn Smith the best. I was never a big fan of Farrah Fawcett-Majors, especially after she started knocking around with Ryan O’Neal.

15. I played trombone in junior high and high school. At one point I was thinking of switching to trumpet, so I took lessons and learned to play that as well. As a result, I ended up being able to play trombone, trumpet, baritone and tuba.

16. I can also play the triangle.

17. My mother describes my heritage as “Heinz 57 variety.” My ancestors were German, Czech, Polish, English and even Native American. We got around.

18. One of my ancestors supposedly an early Texas settler. As a result, I was accepted into membership to the Sons of the Republic of Texas. I have never been to a meeting, but I’m a member.

19. When I was a radio and TV reporter, some of the famous people I got to interview or ask questions of in news conferences were President Jimmy Carter, Beverly Sills, Merle Haggard, Alexander Haig, Donny and Marie Osmond and Heloise.

20. When I was visiting New York City one time in my bachelor days, I saw novelist John Irving in Central Park. I was a fan of The World According to Garp and a few of his other books, and I thought about approaching him and introducing myself, but he was in a deep conversation with a young woman, and I didn’t think he’d enjoy being interrupted.

21. I started collecting coins as a young boy, and have continued to do so off and on since then.

22. I can name all of the U.S. presidents from memory, and in the order they served. I’ve known how to do this since third grade.

23. I have written one short story that I took the trouble to have copyrighted. It’s called “The Bloody Turnip Diet.” I wrote it in college, and it’s about a kid who hates having to analyze stories to death in English class.

24. I’ve been a Beatles fan almost my entire life, but during college and my 20s I was a huge fan. When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, I wore a black armband to work.

25. As a kid, I once owned a guinea pig named Sassafras.

And Them Ain't Small Potatoes

Here's a little-known piece of Hollywood trivia for you on this rainy Friday afternoon (at least in Waco, Texas).

Actress Marilyn Monroe was photographed wearing just about every conceivable type of clothing during her career, including bib overalls, sailor suits and a few infamous shots wearing "nothing but a smile." At one point, a newspaper columnist remarked that Marilyn would look good even in a potato sack, and she responded by posing in one. The shots of her wearing the "potato sack dress" were a bit hit around the world.

So, what do you think? How does Marilyn Monroe look in burlap?

Random Observations and Trivial Events

1. Did any of you see the Rolling Stones perform during halftime of the recent Super Bowl? I was watching the show with a bunch of other 40-somethings from my Sunday school class, and the initial consensus was that Mick Jagger looked pretty good for someone in his 60s, especially considering how thin he was and how much energy he seemed to have. However, after Mick removed his jacket and started strutting in a T-shirt, a closeup shot revealed the wiggling wattles of fleshy fat dangling from his upper arms, and the women in the room I was in let out a loud, simultaneous “Ewwwwww” of revulsion. I think it ruined for them the whole idea of Mick as a senior citizen sex symbol.

2. People here in Waco were shocked and saddened to learn of the death of one of our local TV weather forecaster’s sons over the weekend. What was unusual was that it was not an accidental death brought on by a car accident or drug overdose, but an accidental death that occurred while parasailing behind a tractor. I didn’t know you could even do this, much less that people do do it. I know the family must be grieving, so please say a prayer for them.

3. Have you heard the incessant ads on radio and TV for some product called “HeightMax?” A father comes on, worrying and fretting aloud about his son’s short stature, and the helpful female announcer asks, “Have you tried HeightMax?” It’s supposedly an “all-natural” supplement full of vitamins and nutrients, according to the company’s website, but my question is, who has the problem here? The kid who might just be a little delayed in his normal development, or the anal retentive dad who is so worried about his child not being as tall as the other boys that he’s willing to try pills hawked over the airwaves? I know a number of buddies of mine who were shrimps in junior high or early high school, and by the time they hit college they were six feet tall or better. Sometimes it just takes time. But I guess I can understand why a person might want to try to help the body along. Society is not very kind to very short men, I don't think. (I'm 6'2", by the way. I was very tall very early, the opposite dilemma).

Muley's Metaphors: The Coelacanth

"The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius."

--Aristotle, Poetics

Okay, now hold it. I'm surely not claiming to be any stripe of genius, but I do love metaphors, and I like to create them in the same way that some people might like to make a quilt or take a pretty photograph.

What usually happens is that I will be thinking about something, usually something puzzling or surprising in my life, and, unbidden, a metaphor will burst out of my subconcious. I will then match it to the situation I'm thinking about to see how well it "fits." If it springs a lot of holes, I discard it. But if it keeps its shape on first examination, I tend to put it in the back of my mind, and then bring it out every now and then to test it again. After passing a number of tests such as these, I'll usually "keep" the metaphor in my permanent storage chest, even if there are a few minor aspects that don't fit perfectly. I mean, how often does any illustration or comparison fit perfectly?

I say all of this to preface the fact that my metaphor chest has gotten a bit crowded, and to air it out I've decided to share a few of my "keepers" with you. That way, you can tell me if I'm spot on, or if my metaphor crafting ability is as full of holes as a donut factory.

Today's metaphor uses the image of something called a coelacanth. That's pronounced SEE-luh-kanth. I first heard the story of the coelacanth when I was a child, and it has always fascinated me.

What, you ask, is a coelacanth? Well, it is a species of fish, representing the oldest lineage of fish known to man. Here's the thing: until 1938, the only examples of the coelacanth we knew of were fossils. The fish was believed to have been extinct since the end of the Cretaceous period (the "Age of Dinosaurs"), which ended 65 million years ago.

So here's the coelacanth, thought vanished from the Earth for 65 million years. But then, in 1938, an amazing thing happened. A strange fish was caught off the east coast of South Africa off the Chalumna River. The local fishing experts couldn't identify this large and somewhat ugly fish, and it finally ended up being shown to a taxidermist. He remembered seeing pictures of the fossil remains of a coelacanth, and positively identified the mystery fish.

It was evident that the reports of the coelacanth's extinction were premature. Since 1938, in fact, a number of other specimens have been caught in various places in Africa and Indonesia.

I have never caught an extinct fish, but I have had a number of "coelacanth moments" in my life with friends and acquaintances. I will meet someone at a certain point in my life -- maybe a schoolmate, a neighbor, a fellow employee, a romantic partner -- and for awhile I am in frequent contact with them. But then, something major happens -- I move, they move, or we both move. Maybe we are good enough friends that we try our best to keep in touch, but we both get busy with new friends and responsibilities, and before long we have disappeared off each other's radar screens entirely. Old photographs and yearbooks might be the only way either of us remember the other at all.

But just when we think that other person is gone, forgotten, blotted off the Earth entirely, BOOM, we turn a corner and run into them. We have had our coelacanth moment, and a person we thought we'd never see or hear from again is now making small talk with us as if only days, not years, have passed.

The number of my coelacanth moments is not large, but the sightings have definitely been more numerous than I'd ever have predicted. The latest one is one of the most surprising. I went to elementary school at a place called Frostwood Elementary School in Houston in the mid- and late 1960s. One of the kids in my classes was a guy named Lyle who was a friend, but not really a close friend. He had a very unusual last name (which I'll not reveal here), and his full name I doubt is shared by anyone else in the United States. I moved from Houston to Friendswood in 1972, and that was the last I saw of Lyle. I thought.

Fast forward to about six weeks ago. My nine-year-old daughter Katelyn has signed up for a new season of youth basketball, and it's the Saturday when she gets to meet her new coach and teammates for the first time. I take her to the gym and proceed to try and guess which middle aged guy on the court is her coach. I point to one man and ask a bystander, "Is that Coach Jones?", and they say "No, that's Lyle _____." I hear that name from my childhood, and I immediately know that there's no way that person can be anyone but my old classmate. I walk up and introduce myself, and sure enough, it's him. We're both a bit amused, I think, to run into each other this way.

Of course, there's a sequel to this story. Last night, my daughter's basketball team, winless so far, was hoping to score their first victory with an easy win against Lyle's team (winless and almost scoreless for the season). Dang it if he and his girls didn't beat us. I was thinking after the game, if I'd only known back in elementary school that Lyle's daughter's team was going to beat my daughter's team, I probably wouldn't have loaned him any pencils.

This is only the latest coelacanth moment I've known. I've been on vacation in faraway cities I've never visited before and run into people I worked with or studied with decades before. I have gotten calls out of the blue from high school classmates I last saw on graduation night more than 25 years ago. I have worked with neophyte reporters in small market television stations, lost track of them after they got better jobs, and then years later found them again, appearing on some national network TV news program. It seems I keep catching those ancient fish, over and over again.

So, what about you? Have you had any coelacanth moments? And if so, were they pleasing, or upsetting? I'm interested to know.

In any case, this was fun. I'll be back with more metaphors from time to time.

When Can We Call Ourselves Artists?

My teenage daughter Rebecca, an aspiring artist, found a book in the shelves on a recent Barnes & Noble excursion called The Art Spirit by Robert Henri. Henri was apparently a famous painter and painting instructor, and the book is a collection of his comments collected from his lectures and letters, published back in 1923. I looked through the book and found a number of thought-provoking observations. Here's how the book opens up:

Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing.

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it, shows there are still more pages possible.

The world would stagnate without him, and the world would be beautiful with him; for he is interesting to himself and he is interesting to others. He does not have to be a painter or sculptor to be an artist. He can work in any medium. He simply has to find the gain in the work itself, not outside it.

Museums of art will not make a country an art country. But where there is the art spirit there will be precious works to fill museums. Better still, there will be the happiness that is in the making. Art tends towards balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living -- very good things for anyone to be interested in.

Here's another passage that leaped out at me:

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual -- become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.

It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.

At such times there is a song going on within us, a song to which we listen. It fills us with surprise. We marvel at it. We would continue to hear it. But few are capable of holding themselves in the state of listening to their own song. Intellectuality steps in and as the song within us is of the utmost sensitiveness, it retires in the presence of the cold, material intellect. It is aristocratic and will not associate itself with the commonplace -- and we fall back and become our ordinary selves. Yet we live in the memory of these songs which in moments of intellectual inadvertence have been possible to us. They are the pinnacles of our experience and it is the desire to express these intimate sensations, this song from within, which motivates the masters of all art.

I felt a pang of knowing guilt reading this one:

The habit of digression -- lack of continued interest -- want of fixed purpose, is an almost general failing. It is too easy to drift and the habit of letting oneself drift begets drifting. The power of concentration is rare and must be sought and cultivated, and prolonged work on one subject must not be mistaken for concentration. Prolonged work on one subject may be simply prolonged digression, which is a useless effort, as it is to no end.

And here's one final thought from Robert Henri:

The true artist regards his work as a means of talking with men, of saying his say to himself and to others. It is not a question of pay. It is not a question of willing acceptance on the part of the public. If he is welcomed and paid it is very good, but whether or no he must say his say.

Rejected Romance Novel Titles #2

Random Observations and Trivial Events

1. I just noticed a new entry to the “Dummies” series of books called something like Getting Pregnant for Dummies. Don’t we have enough of this going around already? And do you really need a book to tell you how to do this? I’m wondering what the company will do for an encore. Will there ever be a book in the best-selling “Dummies” series titled Learning Disabilities for Dummies? Or a book in the “Idiot’s” series titled The Idiot’s Guide to Interbreeding?

2. Don’t laugh, but I have just started reading the book Little Women. And no, it’s not because I think it’s a photo book you look at long ways. I’ve heard so much about this American classic, I feel I’ll be missing out on something if I don’t read it. The heroine of the story, Jo, is a tomboy who I’ve heard described as the only woman in 19th century American fiction who was allowed to be opinionated and independent and “get away with it,” meaning that she didn’t have to relinquish it for the sake of some guy. I want to read about her and see how Louisa May Alcott created her (a character very much like her, I’ve been told). Any Little Women fans out there?

3. Speaking of literary classics, there’s a number of others that I’ve so far neglected to read, and this year I’m going to try and tackle at least a few of them. On my 2006 reading list so far:

The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The four books in The Chronicles of Narnia I haven’t read yet

Any other suggestions for a good "classic" read?

4. Through various sermons I’ve heard lately from three different pastors, I’ve been getting the message that God has a plan for me, and that if I’m not having fun at what I’m doing for a living, God probably wants me doing something lese, something that uses the unique talents he’s given me. I’m on board with this assessment, but my question is – how do I find out what this “perfect work” is? The short, answer, or course, is pray about it, but I seem to be unable to discern God’s will for my life through prayer. I guess that’s my real question here – any tips on how to do this?

5. Finally, I was listening to a few minutes of an A&E “Biography” show on Frank Gifford this morning while I was getting ready for work, and I heard a funny story. The show was talking about how when Kathie Lee married Frank Gifford, he was already old enough to have grandchildren. It mentioned that when Kathie Lee had her first child by Frank, some of his old football and broadcasting pals were a little taken aback. When Frank called Don Meredith to tell him the news, there was a long pause, and then Meredith said “Don’t worry, Frank, I’ll find the guy who did this to her.” Years later, when Kathie Lee was pregnant with their second child, Frank called Meredith with the news, and again heard a long pause, followed by, “Dang it! I killed the wrong guy…”

Rejected Romance Novel Titles #1

Brad and Jen and Angelina, ad infinitum

As a former member of the broadcast news media, I understand a little about what type of story resonates with readers and viewers. A lot of recent stories that made a big splash on TV and in the tabloids I knew would be big, and I could see why. The runaway bride story? No doubt people would be interested in that. A young, healthy sex symbol like Lindsay Lohan showing up looking like a skeleton? I understand why people want to know what happened. The Weekly World News reporting that Bat Boy has run off with Hillary Clinton again? Hey, let me read that.

But there is one story that remains at the top of the news list for TV and magazines that for the life of me I can't understand. It's the story about the love triangle between Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. For those of you just emerging from a 50-year stint in the bomb shelter, here's the basic story: Brad marries Jennifer, Brad takes an interest in Angelina, Brad dumps Jennifer for Angelina. Jen feels bad, Brad and Angelina are happy. Angelina gets pregnant. That's it.

Now, I understand why all of that news would be of great interest to the media eager to fill pages or 30 minutes of air time a night. But why, oh why, is the story still apparently the hottest thing around, long after the big revelations have already been made, and analyzed, and analyzed again? It's been many months now since the original infidelity and subsequent switcheroo took place. So why is this story apparently the No. 1 news event in the solar system?

You think I exaggerate? I do my family's grocery shopping each week, so I see all the tabloids and magazines at the checkout counter. Last night, I wrote down what each one had as its cover story. Not a cover story, but the cover story, the one with the huge headline and the cover photo. Here's this week's roundup:

People: "Brad and Angelina: Inside Their Love"

US: "How Jen Found Out"

Star: "Pregnant Angelina COLLAPSES" (and a secondary cover head: "Humiliated Jen Proposes to Vince!"

In Touch: "What She's Not Telling Brad" (she being Angelina)

Celebrity Living: "Brad and Angelina: TWINS!"

OK!: "Who Really Told Jen?"

There was not a single magazine on the stand that did not have the Brad-Jen-Angelina story as its cover. And believe me, it's like this almost every week. Another story will occasionally grab the covers for a week here and there -- the Lindsay Lohan anorexia revelations, the Jessica and Nick divorce -- but after those stories burn out, it's back to Brad and Jen and Brad and Angelina and Jen and Angelina.

I truly can't fathom that there are significant numbers of people in the United States so caught up in this non-story that they have to spend good money each week to avail themselves of every scrap of gossip and every idle speculation by "unnamed sources" about what Jen might think about what Brad and Angelina are doing, or what Brad might think of what Jen is doing, or what any of them think about anything at all.

Can any of you readers help me figure this out?

I tell you, it's almost enough to make me wish for another O.J. trial.

Spicy Wings and a Prayer

Now, faithful readers, in my time I have heard of ministers and other religious types invoking blessings over all sorts of things, living and inanimate alike: babies, married couples, buildings, pets and who knows what else. I mean, near where I grew up on the Gulf Coast, they even bless the shrimping fleet each year before it goes out to snag unwary crustaceans.

But I have never, until now, heard of a religious official clearing a path through the spicy chicken wings to preside over the blessing of a Hooters restaurant. And lo and behold, it's happening here in Waco, the buckle of the Texas Bible belt. Who says we're a dull town?

Now, I surely don't wish harm on anyone who works in or eats at this Hooters, and it would be proper and Christian to ask God to protect all souls inside from any disaster. But -- am I the only one who thinks that calling on the Lord to bless a restaurant whose appeal and indeed its very name is based on the idea of men coming in to look at women's breasts through tight T-shirts is a bit...oh, I don't know...unseemly? Is there a chart somewhere which lists which types of businesses may or may not receive church blessings? Where do casinos fit into this list? Strip clubs? Peep shows?

Looking Back at Christmas

Now that Christmas 2005 is just a fading memory, I thought I'd take a moment to look back on few things which briefly plopped in my brain pan during the holiday rush.

1. One of the things my kids look forward to every Christmas is to discover what kind of new animated Santa figurine the manufacturers will come up with. In the past, they've given us Santas that dance, snore and sing. This year, I was not surprised to see a "Rappin' Santa" figurine, as well as a Santa who shook his red booty as his pants fell partway down. Is there any limit to where they will go with this? Will we be seeing "Pull My Finger Santa" one day?

UPDATE: I can't even joke about this because they're one step ahead of me. Looking for a photo illustration to accompany this, I found out they already have a "Pull My Finger" Santa doll.

2. Everyone knows that all of the ingredients needed to make the "traditional" holiday foods often get in short supply around Christmas time -- icing and green and red sprinkles for Christmas cookies, frozen tukeys, cans of pumpkin, etc. One thing I was surprised to discover is also in short supply come Christmas time are cans of Rotel tomatoes -- you know, the ones that are a bit spicy and are used in salsa and dips. I never associated this with Christmas, but I found Rotel sold out at store after store on the eve of the big day (I was trying to buy some). I have figured out that lots of people must make the same cheese-and-Rotel dip that we do, and use it not at the Christmas meal, but for snacking at after-Christmas and football watching parties.

3. I won't deny that the lingerie sold by Victoria's Secret has always been attractive to me -- I think that's their entire point, right? -- but at the same time, it always seemed to be presented with at least a tiny bit of Victorian elegance and restraint. From what I saw holiday shopping last month, that restraint seems to have been deemed too tame. Every window I saw at a Victoria's Secret store this holiday season seemed to be one from a raunchier shop instead. The big signs in their windows said "Give Me Sexy," but I think it should have been "Give Me Sleazy." The mannequins were dressed in the naughiest, barest outfits, and placed in poses usually assumed by women either about to give birth or entertain a busload of sailors on shore leave. Don't we already have Frederick's of Hollywood for this?

4. I don't know about you, but I'm getting sick and tired of stores that have to do an in-depth interview with you before they'll ring up your purchase. I've always resented being asked even the simplest information at the counter, including my zip code or my telephone number. This past Christmas, however, it seemed as if salesclerks were instructed to probe further. I was at a Christian book chain store one day, trying to buy some Narnia items for my kids, and I got to listen in as the poor soul in front of me was quizzed for what seemed like minutes by the sales clerk. This guy ended up having to tell the clerk his name, address (including his apartment number), his zip code, his home number and his work number. I was ready for the clerk to come from behind the register, count his teeth and then take a blood sample. I made a decision right then and there: I'm no longer playing this game. At all. When it came to be my turn and I was asked for my address and zip, I said very politely, "I don't give out that information, thank you," and the clerk very politely said "okay."

5. I'm usually on the tail end of trends, so I wasn't surprised when Christmas shopping that I suddenly saw books, games and magazines offering up something called "Suduko," and realized I didn't know what the heck this apparent new hot trend was. I finally picked up a book and learned that Suduko is a new type of crossword puzzle from Japan that uses numbers instead of letters. You look at the numbers that are printed in an unfinished grid and then have to figure out which numbers should be added in where. I bought a book, did one puzzle (at the "obscenely easy and infantile" level) and got it wrong. This dampened my enthusiasm a bit, but I guess I'll try again soon. Do any of you Suduko?

6. This might make me sound like trailer trash, but I wish we could keep Christmas lights up all year round. How they transform dark, dreary neighborhoods into fairy lands! If people got tired of seeing the same things, we could alternate light colors with the seasons and the holidays -- pink and red for Valentine's, pastel colors for Easter, red, white and blue for Fourth of July, etc. Just a thought.

Bye for now.

We Must Not Let Asia Lead in Snake Smooching!

Hear that giant sucking -- I mean hissing -- sound? That's the world snake-kissing record leaving the U.S. for distant shores.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- A kiss is just a kiss, but it may prove to be the kiss of death for a Malaysian snake charmer who will attempt to set a new world record by planting 50 smooches on a venomous snake in 10 minutes.

Shahimi Abdul Hamid, 33, will perform the dangerous feat on March 11 in a bid to break the current record held by an American man who kissed a poisonous snake 30 times in an unspecified time, the national news agency Bernama said Thursday.

Shahini has urged Malaysians to support him in his endeavor, saying he "wants to prove that Asians can also be champions in taming poisonous snakes." He could not be reached for comments.

Bernama said Shahimi displayed his prowess at a news conference late Wednesday by kissing a three-meter long King Cobra 21 times. His bid in March will be filmed by U.S. television show Ripley's Believe It Or Not, Bernama said.

Guess She Was All Shook Up

SYDNEY (Reuters) -- An Australian woman will face court on Tuesday charged with repeatedly stabbing her partner because he played an Elvis Presley song over and over again, police said on Tuesday.

Police said the 30-year-old woman was charged with unlawful wounding after her 35-year-old partner was stabbed with a pair of scissors in the back, shoulder and thigh at Northam, about 100 km east of Perth in Western Australia state on Monday.

The man, whose injuries were described as "non-life threatening", had been repeatedly playing the song "Burning Love," a police spokesman said.

The 1972 song was the U.S. rock great's 40th and last top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Acting My Age

Found a face-slapping quote today...

"Forty-five is the age of recklessness for many men, as if in defiance of the decay and death waiting with open arms at the sinister valley at the bottom of the inevitable hill."

--Joseph Conrad, Victory

Good morning, sunshine! Care to guess how old I am? Well, let's just say that after reading this, I'm inspired to drag my decaying carcass out into the middle of Interstate 35 and forget about waiting for the sinister valley. I'll just let a sinister Kenworth do me in.

Sheesh, now I see why this guy wrote a book called Heart of Darkness. I'll bet he was fun on a date.

And you know the funny thing? Old Joe lived to be 67 years old, so he had 22 years to mope around thinking he was a rotting bag of peat moss heading for Potter's Field.

I'm 45, and I'm here to say it's not bad, not bad at all.

POSTSCRIPT: Man, what was it with all of these turn-of-the-20th century writers? Couldn't they handle middle age with a little more grace?

Here's what one of my favorite humorists, Mark Twain, had to say on my desk calendar's daily quote today:

"The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity."

Gee, no wonder Huck left in the raft.

Is That Gouda in Your Pocket, Or Are You About to Whack Me?

(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) –– In an unusual case of mistaken identity, a woman who thought a block of white cheese was cocaine is charged with trying to hire a hit man to rob and kill four men. The woman also was mistaken about the hit man. He turned out to be an undercover police officer.

Jessica Sandy Booth, 18, was arrested over the weekend and remains in jail with bond set at $1 million on four charges of attempted murder and four counts of soliciting a murder.

According to police, Booth was in the Memphis home of the four intended victims last week when she mistook a block of queso fresco cheese for cocaine — inspiring the idea to hire someone to break into the home, take the drugs, and kill the men.

An informant described the plot to police, who arranged a meeting between Booth and the undercover officer.

The undercover officer gave Booth some nonfunctioning handguns, bought ammunition for her because she was too young, and the two proceeded to the home under police surveillance.

Booth told the officer that any children inside the house old enough to testify would have to be killed, police said.

A search of the home with the permission of the occupants revealed no drugs — only the white, crumbly cheese common in Mexican cuisine.

"Four men were going to lose their lives over some cheese," said Lt. Jeff Clark, who heads Project Safe Neighborhoods.