Deranged hate rears its head again

When Gabby Giffords was shot two years ago, I think we all learned a valuable -- if hard -- lesson. We learned that before you can start pointing fingers at people as if you're certain what their motives are, you can't assess blame for enormous tragedies that just rip the heart right out of the country.

I learned that lesson, anyway. It was easy to say that amped-up political rhetoric caused a mentally unbalanced man to open fire on Ms. Giffords and cause an unspeakable tragedy. It was easy because, well, political rhetoric IS amped up ... and will continue to be amped up long after we're all dead. But 99.99999 percent of the country understands it for what it is, and can manage to function within society's normal parameters and protocol quite nicely.

So why, after another horrible tragedy Thursday night in Colorado, in which a 24-year-old man opened up a canister of gas in a crowded theater showing the premiere of the latest Batman movie, and then started shooting (killing 12 people) do I hear lefties blaming it on the Tea Party and righties blaming it on relaxed standards, Hollywood, our growing ambivalence (if not antipathy) toward  organized religion. Why has this -- already -- turned into an opportunity for zealots on either side of the gun control issue to start spewing rhetoric?

Didn't we learn anything two years ago? Weren't we all a little too quick to jump to conclusions about any possible political motives for the Giffords tragedy? Couldn't it simply be that the man in question was unbalanced to the point that he received different messages coming out of the day-to-day hurly burly of life than the rest of us did?

And couldn't it be that this guy is similarly unhinged? Disconnected from reality? Disassociated with anything approaching an emotional filter that would curb his most virulently anti-social impulses?

A tragedy such as this screams mental illness. The whys and wherefores surrounding the shooter's condition are another story for another day. There is no singular definition for mental illness. There is only the fact that it exists, that it exists in many forms, and that it often ebbs and flows within the physical chemistry of its victims. And if there was an in-harmonic convergence of  circumstances that led to this, then I respectfully submit that nobody knows, less than a day after it happened, why.

So this is not a time to intensify the gun control debate. Who cares what anybody thinks? Does it matter to the 12 people who died, their families, their friends? Does it matter to the victims who may have been wounded by shrapnel or bullets? Or who may have inhaled too much of that gas? Does it matter to their families or friends?

This is not a time to start bitching about the Tea Party. We all know what we think. And we're all, by now, fairly entrenched in our views. Using a tragedy such as this to try and score points against the other side is rank opportunism that should be summarily condemned.

It's also not a time to start bitching about any other pet causes, be they the lack of religion, the disintegration of social mores, Hollywood, etc. If all this means to anyone is that it opens up an opportunity to bring down the hammer on some group or cause .... then all I can say is put the damn hammer away and show a little compassion and respect for the enormity of the tragedy.

Because if you really want to know, our willingness to get our backs up and immediately identify heroes and villains almost immediately, and paint them in such uncompromising black and white, does nothing but get in the way. I can't think of one Republican, one  Tea Party member, anyone named Obama, or anyone named Rush Limbaugh who WANTS to wake up in the morning and find out some deranged gunman has blown away 12 innocent people in a movie theater. We are all uniformly horrified as such an act regardless of we stand politically, just as we were uniformly horrified when Gabby Giffords was shot, when the terrorists brought down the towers, when the two kids blew their classmates away in Colombine, and when the killings occurred at Virginia Tech.

I really wish we could hang onto that feeling for a least a few days before all the political and sociological posturing starts. Because such posturing shows a startling lack of respect for the memory of those victimized by these random acts of violence. It's bad enough that they died for no apparent reason other than to fulfill the (perhaps) momentary vision of a deranged, unbalanced person. Do their deaths have to become political footballs so soon?

Death Penalty (and maybe even more) to Penn State

This is hardly a novel, or original, sentiment, but let me be about the one-millionth person to suggest (strongly) that the NCAA blow up the Penn State University football program and let the rubble sit for a good long time before picking up the pieces and rebuilding.

This may not be fair to the players who are still there, or the new coach, or to anyone else not directly connected with the Jerry Sandusky scandal, but as John F. Kennedy one said, so eloquently and so prophetically, life is unfair.

This is one time that if the university itself doesn't take a stand, then the sport's governing body must. The NCAA hands out penalties for the most foolish of reasons, so if it can't see fit to bring the hammer down on this fiasco, then whatever shred of credibility it has is gone forever.

I should say up front that my high school has two alumni coaching major college sports: Brian Kelley at Notre Dame and Bill O'Brien at Penn State. I should also say I'm a proud alumni of St. John's Prep and was thrilled, both times, when fellow Eagles made it to the top .... even if I don't know either of them personally. Still, O'Brien will land on his feet. He had the audacity to go face-to-face with Tom Brady, after all, so we know he's got the chops. He'll do fine. Penn State would have no choice but to pay him. He won't starve.

This isn't about Bill O'Brien. It's about institutional malfeasance of the most wretched kind. It's about a coverup that makes Watergate look like a white lie by comparison.

Think about this. An assistant coach at one of the most prestigious football universities in the country was found guilty of being a serial child molester. He corrupted the innocence of countless childhoods. None of the children he molested will ever be the same. And when you consider how many victims of that type of abuse ultimately end up doing the same thing, you can safely say he created, by his actions, more criminals.

Sandusky has been dealt with. He will never get out of jail. Ever. Unless it's in a box. And that's as it should be.

I am philosophically opposed to capitol or corporal punishment on the grounds that as a society we should be above that kind of eye-for-an-eye retribution (and all I can say is hope to GOD I never have reason to test that high-minded view). But if I were to ever make an exception, it would be for something like this. My gut tells me that one a week, the guards should let Sandusky loose among the general population and go for coffee.

 Sadly, the problem goes deeper than Sandusky. The FBI report clearly states that the Penn State hierarchy -- from the tippity top on down --  covered all this up. Apparently, its brand ... and its legacy .. meant more than protecting children. Awful. Unconscionable. Evil. All of these people should be thrown in the same cellblock with Sandusky, and should similarly be let loose among the general population for coffee break.

Any reminders of Joe Paterno at Penn State should be destroyed. And this is coming from someone who thought, for years, that Paterno was the anti-sleazy college football coach. Joe Pa does it the right way. Jo Pa has dignity. Jo Pa is a guy we can admire and root for without feeling like we have to take a shower afterward.

Now? There aren't enough showers, and there isn't enough soap or hot water, to wash away the stench. What an awful realization.

That statue of him on campus? Dismantle it. Throw it in the trash. Anything named for him? Change the name. It won't be nearly enough, of course, to wipe out the indelible stain of his neglect in this matter, but at least it'll be a sign by the university that it means business if it seeks to atone for its (in)actions.

Needless to say, anyone connected with this coverup should be fired on the spot and prosecuted to whatever extent the law allows (there's the inconvenience of the statue of limitations in some cases, I suppose).

And then, finally, maybe just as a symbolic ritual, the entire campus should be fumigated.

This is personal with me. I've worked with kids in youth sports. I know how delicate some of them can be. And generally, it's the delicate and timid kids that end up being the targets of predators such as Jerry Sandusky.

My son and wife work with kids in Boy Scouts. I know how seriously they takes their obligations and responsibilities when it comes to their stewardship.

I've had several acquaintances prosecuted for this crime, with two of them convicted and sentenced to lengthy jail terms. I cannot tell you how low my heart sank when I heard about their arrests, or how angry I was when I found out the details of what they'd done. It is the ultimate betrayal ... and not just on a personal level either. Every time someone molests a child, whether it's a priest, youth sports coach, scout leader, camp director, whatever, it calls into question everyone else who seeks to volunteer for such endeavors.

All I can say to those who feel the football program shouldn't suffer because of this is get real. Maybe if college football wasn't such a humongous big business to begin with, Jerry Sandusky would have been thrown out of Penn State years ago. If there wasn't such a legacy ... or such a "brand," think of how many kids would have been spared this horrific experience.

Shut it down. Open up the windows. Let the fresh air -- not to mention a good professional fumigation -- blow away the stench that will otherwise pollute this campus as long as there's an active program.

And maybe, someday, in the far future, they can try again.

Meanwhile, it really behooves the NCAA to reassess, on every level, the emphasis it puts on college sports. If there's a better example of the tail wagging the dog, I don't know what it is.

The drought ... and I don't mean water

So what do you do when you’re in a drought? What happens when no matter what you do, and what you try, you suffer a creative dry spell that makes you wonder whether you’ve lost your mojo?

This seems to be what’s happening with me. Sometime around the end of March or beginning of April I wrote a short story. Banged it out in a day. Thought it was great while I was writing it …and hated it as soon as I put the final period on it.

 I find myself hating everything I write these days … whether’s it’s for work, or just for my own creative advancement. I wonder if I’m too picky … or too Virgo “perfect,” or something else that might explain why I haven’t done anything worthwhile in well over three months. The reasons abound. I’m busy. We just came out of the winter tournament season (well, not “just;” it’s May, after all), which is hectic and generally leaves me emotionally drained. All of a sudden, after a spectacular winter and an even more spectacular April, we got reminded why they call this region “New England” with the crappiest stretch of weather we’ve seen around here in at least two years. Crappy weather is depressing.

Well it is to me, anyway.

 As an aside, I love how people react to bad weather. As I said, we have the single most extraordinary winter we’ve seen around here since probably I was born. It was an extended autumn and an early spring, perhaps, but it wasn’t winter. Except for maybe a week in January, when it actually got cold andn snowed once, we were well above average. We were also dry. So dry that the forecasters were starting to use the “D” word … drought. Dum-Dee-Dum Dum. They usually throw that word around in July or August, after a brutal stretch of heat without rain. But they were using it in April, when we’re usually doused with rain. So it started raining around the first of May and, save for a few days here and there, it hasn’t stopped. But bless people and their short memories. Now it’s like, “damn this weather. When is it ever going to stop raining?”

This is why we live in New England. The law of averages catches up with us. We have one horrendous winter; and then we have a decent one. We go three months without rain, then it pours. If it’s crappy on July 4, it’ll be crappy into August before the next pattern takes hold. That’s just how these things work.

I’ve driven many people crazy with the axiom “as goes the Fourth …so goes the summer.”

 But for me, bad weather’s depressing. It robs me of all motivation, and I end up lethargic and apathetic. And we can add sick to the list this year. For the first time in about five or six years, I got a good, old-fashioned, heavy COLD that turned into a sinus infection. So now, it’s “lethargic, apathetic, and miserable.” This is a perfect recipe for just wasting away in Margarittaville (or somewhere else, perhaps).

But the truth is, I’ve felt out of sorts for a long time. Nothing’s coming to me. No blog items. I completely blew a deadline on a short story writing contest because I couldn’t stand the story I wrote. And then, when I tried to do it in a day to MAKE the deadline, well, forget it. Anyone who says they can bang together something meaningful in a night is lying. I certainly can’t. Some of my best stuff has come together only after hours of agonizing thought.

And that’s because good writing – even descriptive good writing – is concise and economical. And it’s impossible to be concise and economical when you’re almost writing stream of consciousness prose. that’s great for a first draft. And even better if you’re just filling the paper with thoughts, and expecting that you’ll sort it all out and make sense of it when you’re done. I get awfully suspicious of people who just let it rip … and then file it away as if the job’s done.

 I’ve always considered my best pieces like my children. I spend a lot of time with them, nurture them, correct them when I have to, and tend to want to hang onto them long after I should let them go be what they’re destined to be.

 But in the end, I have to let go of them.

So I figure if I’m going to let this child, or this story, out into polite society, I’m going to do everything I can to make them both acceptable. Anything less does them no justice at all. I don’t know … I just haven’t had the energy in quite some time now to do all that’s required to produce a real good piece of writing. This isn’t to say I haven’t done my job. But my job, thankfully, involves more than producing real good writing. There’s enough planning, editing, graphic design, and other things to be busy without writing Pulitzer-type copy. I’d rather go for the gusto than meet anything halfway when it comes to writing.

There is no such thing as “good enough” with me, and I’ve never understood, or had any use for, people who have that attitude. So I think all of these things have contributed to this funk. If I’m not all-in, as Terry Francona famously said last October, than I’m not in at all.

Back in the 1980s, I remember reading that Huey Lewis (of all people, right?) had this problem. He was having a devil of a time writing music for his next album. Now, I always thought Huey Lewis’ music was rather pedestrian even at its best. He always seemed to me to be a living, breathing example of a guy who went through life with the motto “no heavy lifting.” Yet there was Huey, spreading the news that the well had run dry. He got over it, of course, and wrote more pedestrian music.

Let’s just say I’ve never aspired to be the Huey Lewis of writing. I have the opposite problem. I aspire to be the John Irving of writing. And that, my friends, is an impossible standard to meet. Ever since I read “A Prayer for Owen Meany” I’ve felt that nobody could ever write a better book. Even he’s never really topped it. His “Cider House Rules-Owen Meany” are to modern literature what “ Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper” were to popular music. They both represent a period of prolonged, stunning excellence that may never be duplicated. They were both the works of extremely talented artists hitting stride … confident in both their material and their presentations. But here’s the thing. To get to Cider House Rules, Irving had to slog through three books in practical anonymity before he hit it big with “The World According to Garp.”

From there, he sailed, but the period leading up to Garp lasted almost 10 years. The Beatles didn’t have Irving’s problem with regards to anonymity, but if you take their material from the beginning up to Rubber Soul, you can see the progression. You can see how they went from teen idols serious musicians without too many people noticing.

 I went back recently and listened to a lot of songs from “Help,” and, lo and behold, there were signs on that album that they were straining at the confines of teen idolhood. There was maturity in a lot of those songs. The point is nobody produces a masterpiece right out of the gate. Well, except maybe Michael Oldfield with “Tubular Bells.” And Justin Hayward wrote “Nights in White Satin” with the Moody Blues when he was 19 (and it always infuriates me when he says – as he often does – he had no idea what he was writing).

 By and large, though, we all have to trip all over ourselves a few times before we connect. And even after we connect, the important question – at the end of the day – is “with whom are we connecting?” I ask because we may connect with ourselves (which is much more important in the long run than whether we make the top 10 best seller list), but with no one else. If you know anything about the history of the arts, there are way too many examples of composers and authors whose best work languished in obscurity for years before someone gave it another look … and often long after these people were dead.

So yes, it’s a crapshoot. So if you’re an artist, or in any way creative, you’d better learn the chorus of Ricky Nelson’s “Garden Party:” You can’t please everyone so you gotta please yourself.” Anyway, that’s where I’m at today … tonight … as I contemplate why I’m stuck in a morass of ennui and apathy. This is my confession of sorts. Who knows. Maybe it’ll break the logjam. Lord knows something has to.

Things that go bump in the night ... and the rest of the time too

I was at a softball game yesterday and got an attack of nature. Thankfully, even though the door to the men's room at this ballpark was padlocked shut, there were several people there who had keys. One of them let me borrow his.

So, I trudged down to the men's room, key in hand. And I was in full panic. What if it's the wrong key? What if it gets stuck in the lock? What if the lock is situated in place where I can maneuver my way to use the key? What if the key won't turn? What if I break the key because it won't turn the lock.

I'm telling you. It dawned on me at that moment that even though I'm a mature (some would argue about that) middle-aged man with no apparent lack of capacity, the simplest things intimidate me. Like unlocking a door!!

I wonder whether anyone else has these feelings of terror over doing the simplest little things. Later, after successfully unlocking the door, and then locking it back up (though not without a last-minute surge of panic over the fact it took a few seconds to close the lock), I started compiling a list of all the stupid little things that intimidate me on a daily basis. Such as ...

Dealing with the freakin government about anything. I don't care if it's paying a parking ticket, dealing with the Department of Motor Vehicles (or, Registry as we call it up here in Massachusetts), preparing tax forms ... anything ... these simple chores can seem exhausting and terrifying to me. I'll go to any length to avoid doing these things, even if it's to my detriment. I don't think a year's gone by that I haven't left my taxes until the very last minute (I even got a ticket for running a red light trying to make it to the Post Office so I could have my return postmarked in time).

I'm forever trying to figure out the exact, perfect time to do my business at the RMV because I hate waiting in line. I detest waiting in line.

It's not just the RMV that catches my line-hating wrath either. I put off Christmas shopping until, literally, the last day because I can't stand crowded stores because they mean, of course, endless lines. So you can say lines intimidate me too.

Everyone else has glowing memories of their time at Disney World ... all I can remember is standing in line for over an hour just to get on Space Mountain.

I got in a fender bender recently. Well, not that recently. It was in February. I just last week submitted all the paperwork to my insurance company. Dealing with insurance companies intimidates me, especially if I've been in an accident that might raise my rates (as this one surely will).

Seeking, and receiving, any kind of medical treatment puts me on edge for days at a time. I suffered with a toothache for a month and a half before breaking down and going to the dentist. By the time I finally went, and the dentist got a good look at the abscessed tooth in my mouth, he said, "that's one of the worst ones I've ever seen."

Of course it was. Going to the dentist means Novocains. The Drill. Some guy you barely know sticking long, sharp objects in your mouth and picking your teeth with them ... and gouging the insides of them as well. It means severe discomfort. So, for people like me, who tend to put these things off for as long as possible, you have to find that balance that exists between the pain you're in, and the pain you're going to be in. More often than not, you fail. And one day, what was a little nagging, dull ache becomes a full blown abscess, and you're climbing the walls.

And then -- and only when it's way too late -- drills, Novocains and teeth-pickers don't seem so bad. The day the endodontist numbed my tooth and put me out of the misery of "the worst abscess I've ever seen" was a very happy one.

And then, of course, there are the pain killers. I have an aunt who was a nurse, and she once told me that pain killers don't really put you to sleep. It only seems that way because they take the edge off the pain and allow you to relax.

Could be. I'd never argue with Aunt Ruth. One didn't argue with Aunt Ruth. But if she's right, I did a lot of relaxing after that root canal!!! I can certainly understand how these things can get addictive if you're not careful. And this wasn't even the good stuff. It was only Vicodin.

If the dentist intimidates me, so does the doctor, especially if it's my GP, and I'm feeling a little porcine on the day of my physical. Then, I don't want to go. I've come up with some great excuses for not going, too. It's not that he's going to hurt me as much as he's going to lecture me. Imagine. I'm a grown man and I quiver at the idea of my doctor ... a guy who I'm paying ... giving me a lecture about making healthier choices. If that's not the definition of "intimidation" I don't know what is.

But there are other reasons going to the doctor intimidates me. Just after I turned 50, and just after I'd lost 50 pounds doing Weight Watchers, I had surgery on one of my knees. I went to the hospital for all the pre-op stuff, and next thing I know, I'm getting a call from my Primary Care Physician tell me he had to see me now. .

What on earth could he want, I wondered. Well. What he wanted was to tell me was that I had diabetes. Ain't that just a kick in the pants! Wasn't losing weight supposed to prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes?

So now, I come by this aversion to doctors naturally. It seems I'm always getting bad news from this guy when I go. So I don't go. And when absolutely have to go, I have this impending sense of doom for the entire week prior to the appointment.

Believe it or not, and even though I have an electric lawn mower now instead of a gasoline-operated one, cutting my grass intimidates me to the point where I can let it go for weeks at a time.

Why? Old tapes. Back when I had the type of lawn mower where you had to pull the rope to ignite the engine, I'd pull the rope and nothing would happen. Wouldn't matter what I did. Every spring, I'd take it to the repair shop to get it tuned up, I'd get it home, pull that rope, and pffft. Nothing.

I swear, I hurt my back from all that pulling. And, of course, the more nothing happens, the more impatient you get, the louder you curse, and the harder you pull that rope. And you keep getting nothing ... and keep repeating the same cycle of frustration.

Eight years ago, I got an electric lawn mower. Now, all I have to worry about is running over the cord, which -- so far -- I've managed not to do. I still have the same lawn mower, it works perfectly, and I still have this momentary sense of dread every time I go to start it up.

Next on the list are airports. Any airports. And for any reason. My best/worst airport story involved Philadelphia last summer. For some reason, our GPS took us into the Philadelphia Airport, which was not where I wanted to be. Don't ask me why. Ask Magellan. She told us to go there.

Once Magellan got us into the airport, she kept us going around in circles until I was ready to throw her out the window. Finally, I politely (!) told Mrs. Magellan her services were no longer needed -- at least on this journey -- and that I'd find my way out of the stupid airport myself. Which I did.

Simply put, airports are terrible places. And they were terrible places long before 9/11 made it necessary for them to be terrible places.

Nothing like having your luggage left behind at the airport while you're on a cross country flight to San Francisco for a wedding. But since 9/11? Oy Vey.

If you want to fly, fly early. Like crack of dawn early. The later in the day you travel, the worse those lines get (and we've already discussed how I hate lines). It just makes traveling such a chore. The whole ordeal just seems overwhelming to me.

And we're just talking about escaping the airport. Next we can discuss boarding the plane with stuff you want to store overhead, only to open the compartment and see steamer trunks that take up three spaces in there. Really, you have all you can do not to hit someone.

I suppose half the reason I get so tense about these things is because I'm so skittish about the whole idea of traveling to begin with. I don't have the same feelings about trains or automobiles ... just planes!

Going to Fenway Park anytime intimidates me. Going to Gillette Stadium does not. Any time I ever set foot in the old Boston Garden was an exercise in torture. I love the new place (and I may be in a distinct minority here, too).

Anything I do for the first time terrifies me. If I've never driven somewhere before, I have to give myself an hour to get lost (even with the GPS, because now I worry that it'll direct me to an airport and drive me around in circles). Anything that needs to be assembled in "six easy steps" just about makes me break out in a rash. They may be six steps, but they're not easy. There's always some pre-drilled screw hole that won't line up with its counterpart, which makes screwing two pieces of wood together damn near impossible. I've done some of my best cursing trying to assemble something in "six easy steps."

I'll do you one better. Reading any directions makes me quake in fear. I just got a new iPod, and reading those directions ... they might as well have been printed in Russian. First of all, the type is so small that if you have any eye issues at all, you can't read the instructions. But more to the point, they're in a language that simply isn't to be understood. Either that, or they assume you know the lingo when, most of the time, you don't.

And that's why I really resist buying anything technological.

And when it comes to human confrontations, count me out. I'm the world's worst. They intimidate me more than anything else. Even when I'm sure I'm right, I instinctively back off the minute I encounter one of those uber-agressive types who seem to be louder, and more obnoxious, when they're the most wrong. I'm sure we've all dealt with them.

Instead of standing my ground against these bullies, I take the attitude that it's better to escape situations peacefully with the knowledge you're right than it is to take the humiliation of losing an argument to a total jerk who can't admit he's wrong.

And I'm always totally ashamed of myself when that happens, too.

Right about now you're probably thinking, "boy, what a fuss-budget!" Maybe if I told you I'm a Virgo it would make you understand better. We Virgos are like that. Everything has to be just so.

You're probably also wonder howinhell I manage to get through life with all these phobias and fears! I'll tell you. It ain't easy! Instant paralysis over anything that isn't laid out neatly before me can be unsettling.

But you know? What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Somehow, I unlocked the men's room door ... somehow, I got my iPod to work. Somehow, I figured out how to uninstall, and then re-install, iTunes because the old version wasn't compatible with my new iPod.

And that's the beauty of it. Having fears and phobias, and learning to work past them, gives you this "cool of the evening" feeling ... as if, for that one, brief, shining moment, you've conquered the world.

Until you have to go the men's room again and have to unlock it yourself. Then all the gremlins return.

Happy 100th to the Lyric Little Bandbox known as Fenway Pahhhhhhk

Anyone from Boston -- or anyone who likes to make fun of the Boston accent -- will understand the proliferation of "h's" in the title. It's how we speak.

And it's worse when you listen to the radio squawk shows around here, and hear someone get on there and say "they're ruining my summmaaaaaaaahhhhhhh" with regards to the Red Sox and their propensity to excite us and frustrate us all at once.

In fact, in 1999 I had the thrill of a lifetime when the all-star game was at Fenway Park and Major League Baseball unveiled its nominees for "team of the century." Among the nominees was Bob Gibson, who pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals, and who won three games in the 1967 World Series ... and whom I always admired for his sheer ferocity and competitiveness on the mound.

I went up, shook his hand, and told him I was from Boston.

"Oh, NO," moaned Gibby. "I can just hear it now ... YOU BROKE MY HAHHHHHHHHHHT."

Actually, he didn't. I was only 14 in 1967, but I knew greatness when I saw it. And Gibby was pure greatness. In fact, in the overall realm of greatness, I'd put him above any pitcher I've seen since ... and that includes Clemens, Pedro Martinez circa 1999-2000, and Justin Verlander today.

But I digress. This is about Fenway Park, not Bob Gibson (though I could probably write an entire blog item on that seventh game of the 1964 World Series when he threw about 700 pitches -- OK, a slight exaggeration -- and beat the New York Yankees).

Fenway Park had just turned 50 when I first saw it up close and personal. That was in 1962, when I was nine years old, and my father took my sister and I to see a Yankees game so we could watch Mantle and Maris hit home runs (Mickey hit one out; Maris did not).

And even though it was 50, it was less than 30 years removed from the massive renovations it underwent when Tom Yawkey took over ownership of the club in 1934.

Being only nine, I had no idea about significant anniversaries. And besides, I don't recall there being much of a fuss over Fenway's 50th (though in retrospect, I wonder ... the all-star game was at Fenway in 1961, and perhaps that was why).

The only thing I remember about my first experience at Fenway -- and this is so horribly cliche I almost hesitate to mention it -- is that coming up the runway into the grandstand, it was hit with two memories I'll never forget. First, before my eyes, was the greenest and most perfect grass I'd ever seen. Don't forget that in 1961, most TVs in America were still black and white, and you didn't get a sense of how lusciously green those fields were with a B&W TV screen the size of a shoebox.

The second memory is the smell of the park itself. I can't describe it today. I can't possibly count the number of hours I've spent at the ballpark since 1961, and the place still smells the same ... a combination of stale cigar smoke (well, maybe less so now that you can't smoke there), stale beer, stale popcorn, and maybe a whiff of "fresh roasted peanuts here."

In those days, the Red Sox served popcorn in a container that looked like a megaphone. When you were finished, you could pop the cover off the bottom and actually USE it as a megaphone.

The kid behind me was from New York, and he was freak-in obnoxious. He laughed at everything the Red Sox did wrong. And there was plenty to laugh at, too, as the Yankees quickly got up 10-2 in that game before the Red Sox got home runs from Jim Pagliaroni and Bob Tillman to make it 10-6. Pags and Tillman went back-to-back (Pags was the catcher and Tillman, who was a rookie, pinch-hit). I remember that shut the New York kid up but good.

At least once a year until I got into high school, and was old enough to ride the rattle-trap Green Line trolley cars of the Boston MBTA system on my own, my father took us in to Fenway at least once a year ... sometimes twice. We saw doubleheaders most of the time (the man was a saint, taking two little kids to doubleheaders during an era when the team was dreadfully bad).

If Fenway was a lyric little bandbox, which is what John Updike called it when he wrote his farewell to Ted Williams in 1960 (Gods do not answer letters), it was news to me. It was just the place where the Red Sox played. There wasn't anything more significant to it than there was to Yankee Stadium, Tigers Stadium, Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, or Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles. Back then, just about every other ballpark in the American League was named either Memorial, Municipal, or -- in the case of the Minnesota Twins -- Metropolitan. These were the days before naming rights.

National League parks had the much more interesting names ... Forbes Field, County Stadium, Crosley Field, Candlestick Park, Dodger Stadium, Sportsman's Park (later, Busch Stadium), Connie Mack Stadium, Wrigley field. And if you can name the teams that played in those edifaces in the 1960s -- before most of them were torn down in favor of the cookie-cutter era -- you're good. Hint ... only two of them are still in use for baseball, though the name for a third one -- which has since been torn down -- is still used.

Fenway fit right in. It was always a more interesting looking part, having been built to accommodate a neighborhood that, in 1912, was rapidly developing. The "green monster" was made of wood, and covered with ads until after the renovation, at which time was reinforced with tin, painted its famous color, and adorned with what was, at the time, the most state-of-the-art scoreboard in baseball.

There was a 10-foot incline leading up that wall -- a reinforcement of the wall, actually -- known as Duffy's Cliff, which forced the left fielder to run uphill to catch fly balls (it was named for Duffy Lewis, the Sox left fielder at the time). Since the field was -- as it is today -- below the level of Lansdowne Street, the cliff served to compensate for the differences in grades.

That imperfection was remedied in the 1934 rehab.

Other along-the-way quirks and revisions occurred early in the Ted Williams era, when the bullpens were built in right field, ostensibly to give "The Kid" an easier chance to hit home runs (duly named "Williamsburg); and the construction of an elaborate left-field screen to catch fly balls as they went over the wall (so they wouldn't wreak havoc with business establishments and cars on the other side).

Williams once hit one so deep into the right field seats that the chair it hit was painted red for posterity.

Fenway had both an auspicious and inauspicious beginning. On the good side, the Red Sox beat the New York Highlanders (later the Yankees), 7-6. On the down side, coverage of the momentous event was overshadowed by the sinking of the Titanic just days earlier.

Fenway's first decade was perhaps its finest until this most recent one. The Red Sox won numerous world championships, the last one being in 1918 over the Chicago Cubs, and served as the first professional home of perhaps baseball's most historic figure ever ... Babe Ruth.

There's are lots of theories as to why owner Harry Frazee sold off Ruth and many others from that team to the Yankees -- thereby helping to create that dynasty -- and most of them are wrong. Some think Frazee sold Ruth to finance "No, No, Nanette," but that is incorrect. So all you people out there who want to gag every time you hear "Tea for Two," keep your food down. That had nothing to do with it.

It was true Frazee was hard up for money, but it's also true that The Babe, by 1919, was already developing a reputation as a man whose penchant for being a colossal pain in the ass approached his historic abilities. It's been said that Frazee breathed a sigh of relief that he was no longer in the business of babysitting the Bambino.

Of course, history has proven Frazee tremendously short-sighted. Athletes who are difficult to handle thrive in just about every sports ... perhaps just as much today as they did then. The only difference, really, between then and now is that thanks to the International Brotherhood of Baseball Players, pain-in-the-ass athletes have more power.

That trade, though, put the Red Sox into a tailspin they didn't really break until a 20-year-old Theodore Samuel Williams showed up on their doorstep in 1939. You can always tell an athlete's worth, and his future legacy, by how many nicknames are bestowed on him. Williams had his share ... "Teddy Ballgame," "The Splendid Splinter," "The Kid," and probably a few others that can't be printed among more genteel folk.

Williams is easily the most famous and celebrated player in Red Sox history. He is generally acknowledged by all knowledgeable fans as the most gifted pure hitter the game has ever seen ... or, if that's too hard to take, in baseball's modern era. He is really the first player to actively turn hitting into a science that went beyond "see the ball ... hit the ball."

In fact, every time I hear some crazed high school coach yell out to his batter "hit the top half of the ball" I want go down there and tell him, "hey, Jack, Teddy Ballgame could only do that one-third of the time, and he's the greatest hitter who ever lived. So let the kid breathe, would you?"

Teddy Ballgame's the last player in MLB history to hit .400 (though Tony Gwynn might have had a shot at it were it not for the 1994 strike/lockout).

Williams is also among the last of the true larger-than-life ballplayers in Major League history. Think about it. After the 1950s, baseball, as America's official pastime, ceased to exist. By the 1960s, football had risen to the point where it was just about equal to baseball in popularity, and it has surely surpassed the Grand Old Game by now. Why else would Major League Baseball take to ending its season on a weeknight? Why else would it start the World Series on a weeknight, instead of a weekend? It's because weekends are totally taken up with football ... colleges on Saturdays, and the NFL on Sundays.

Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle are the last two -- in this writer's opinion -- truly larger-than-life figures in Major League baseball. This doesn't mean there haven't been great players since, but nobody since has commanded the type of all-out attention these guys created. Not even Hank Aaron. Not even Willie Mays (who perhaps would have qualified had he not been banished to San Francisco for so much of his career), and certainly not Barry F. Bonds.

The Red Sox had a brief burst of relevance in the mid-to-late 1940s -- winning their first AL pennant since 1918 in 1946 (but losing in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals thanks to Enos Slaughter's mad dash), but then receded into mediocrity and outright incompetence until 1967, when Dick Williams, Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Lonborg authored "The Impossible Dream ... Baseball Style."

Along the way, the Red Sox themselves hardly covered themselves with glory as the game shifted away from its whites-only history into historical compliance with regards to race relations. They were the last of the established Major League teams to integrate, finally seeing the light in 1959 when they called up Elijah "Pumpsie" Green to the big club.

The club also, in this rather inglorious years, stood pat while its players were subjected to some horrendous racism during spring training when the club moved its headquarters to Florida (Earl Wilson, who was a very good pitcher, was traded away because of such an incidence in 1966 in favor of a severely broken-down -- but white -- Don Demeter).

Once the Sox of 1967 won the pennant, they remained relevant, with few lapses, until the present time. And it was as the sixties turned into the seventies that some of the older parks were razed in favor of ugly, all-purpose facilities complete with artificial surfaces that lacked character and ambiance. Three Rivers Stadium. Riverfront Stadium. Shea Stadium (which might be the worst ballpark ever built). The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis with a baggie for a right-center field wall.

These were some of the most horrendous edifices known to man, and it's worth noting that the four aforementioned stadia, along with several more, have been sacrificed to the great God of progress for baseball-only fields that somehow managed to combine modern accoutrements with an old-time flavor. Camden Yards in Baltimore was among the first, but more followed.

It was during this transitional era that Fenway became the darling of baseball dilettantes, going from a rather run-down facility that had already, by the end of the 1975 season, undergone major facelifts to a park that local histories fought diligently to preserve when it looked as if, in the 1990s, it would be replaced.

The first such facelift occurred after the '75 World Series when Fred Lynn almost broke his back trying to catch a fly ball in Game 6 (the Carlton Fisk game). After the season, the wall was padded.

That wasn't all, though. in recognition that times had changed, a brand-new jumbotron scoreboard was added in center field, and half of the left-field scoreboard -- which included National League scores -- was taken down (it has since been put up again, along with other embellishments, that make the one constructed in 1934 look tiny by comparison).

Finally, a new more spacious, the club built a new, more spacious, indoor press box (to that point, the facility was woefully inadequate with nature's air conditioning to boot).

The next major facelift occurred after the 1990 season, when the grandstand-level press box was demolished for a facility halfway to heaven, with the previously existing space used for the abominable, poorly conceived 600 Club (that was changed to .406 Club after Williams died in 2002).

About the only noteworthy thing about the 600 Club was that hitters claimed the change in wind currents that resulted from its construction changed the course of fly balls, making it more difficult to hit home runs.

But then again, Fenway always had its critics based on its dimensions. Many experts claimed that the park, with its short (310 feet) dimensions to left field prevented the club from winning more because it spent too much time and money trying to find hitters who could knock home runs over that wall rather than pitchers who could actually get people out.

That wall also took away as many home runs as it gave up, as rising line drives became singles and fly balls that would have been outs anywhere else ended up as round-trippers. Or, to put it another way, if that 1978 playoff game had been anywhere else but Fenway Park, the Red Sox might have won, 2-0, and Bucky Dent would have flown out harmlessly to left field.

It appeared, though, that Fenway had run its course by the late 1990s. By then, the new parks were starting to emerge, and architects such as Janet Marie Smith (who designed Camden Yards) were able to convice people you could have it all, with regards to ballparks. The groundswell began to do the same to Fenway.

And the groundswell almost became a reality in 1999 when plans were unveiled to build a new stadium next to the old one. It would have involved the usual funky financing, as well as improvements to the existing infrastructure (a fancy way of saying roads), but it looked as if all systems were go.

Now, let's break from our rather objective historical narrative to express the following opinion: I was on John Harrington's side on this. Fenway by the mid-1990s was a tired ballpark that had been surpassed in almost every capacity by the newer structures. It may have been historic, but that's all it was. The seats were uncomfortable (unless you were Twiggy or Hopkin Hopkins (look him up); if you were sitting in the wrong spot in right field, you couldn't see parts of center field and left field. Ditto along the third base line (where the left field corner was totally obscured). Support poles blocked the action (instituting the aptly named term "obstructed view"), and seats were actually pointed away from the plate.

This may not have seemed relevant in 1912, or even in 1962. But if you went to places such as Camden Yards, or Pac Bell Stadium, or Jacobs Field, and saw the potential to have a much more enjoyable fan experience and still feel like you were at a real ballpark (as opposed to a cereal-bowl multipurpose stadium), and then went to Fenway Park, the difference was palpable.

So I do not think John Harrington was evil. I think John Harrington tried to do what he thought was right when it came to providing his ever-growing fan base with an enjoyable experience.

But into the breach came the "Save Fenway" crowd, and in the beginning I thought they were both crazy and obstructionist. I'd have preferred to see all them rounded up and transported to Saturn.

They brought up some valid points. Fenway Park was historic, and it existed in a city that place an important value on such things ... unlike New York, which suffered greatly under transportation/urban planning czar Robert Moses (it was Moses, and not Walter O'Malley, who was most responsible for the Dodgers moving to Los Angeles because of his intractability when it came to helping O'Malley find a spot to build a new stadium in Brooklyn.

Much of New York's early history was bulldozed (something that, sadly, is still an isue today, as evidenced by the callous destruction of "The House that Ruth Built" in favor of a modernized and more expensive Yankee Stadium).

But the historical issues could have been resolved. Perhaps the essence of the old park could have been transferred to the new facility; maybe some of it could have been preserved as part of an on-site museum. And maybe some of it could have been incorporated into the new design.

There was no reason that Red Sox fans, the same as Orioles, Indians, Giants, Pirates, Reds and Tigers fans, couldn't enjoy a modern facility with an old-time feel.

The only reason was the "Save Fenway" crowd.

So it was with great disappointment, to me and countless others, when John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino announced, upon acquiring the team in 2002, that they'd explore ways to keep Fenway as it was and improve it as much as they could.

Not what I wanted to hear. But Lucchino had worked with Janet Marie in Baltimore, and brought her in design the improvements. I'd never heard of Janet Marie Smith, but I can honestly say, now, that as far as members of this organization go, she's the one most responsible for turning Fenway into something approaching a modern ballpark.

Smith was responsible for all of it ... the "monster seats," the pavilion, improved sight lines, new seats and a better venue for standing room along third base, and the destruction of that god-awful 600 Club in favor of regular seats. By doing all this, she (and the Red Sox) improved Fenway's capacity, and -- in the process -- turned it from a moribund relic into a pretty attractive place ... albeit with many of the same limitations that caused people to pine for a new stadium in the first place. She is a true hero in this story.

She was also responsible for opening up much of the concourse, especially along the right field seats, and turning Yawkey Way into a bigger concourse on game days. Now, at least, if there's a fire, we have a chance of an easier egress.

For her efforts, Janet Marie was -- of course -- shown the door in what can only be seen as some kind of power struggle somewhere. That's too bad. It would have been nice to see what other ideas she had. But this fan will always be grateful that there was a Janet Marie Smith, and would, someday, love to meet her and thank her for all she did to make Fenway as attractive as it is today. Because quite honestly, and despite everything I still dislike about it, the park has never looked better.

So as we prepared to celebrate Fenway's centennial, we can, in the end, be thankful that a significant piece of Boston's historical landscape has been saved and, more importantly, cared for by the likes of Larry Lucchino (this may be the only time I ever say anything remotely nice about him) and Janet Marie Smith.

Be it ever so humble (and believe me, it still is), there's no place like home.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word ...

OK. Let's get in the mood for this, with two of the more melodramatic songs of apology ever written ... first, there's this ... and then there's this.

You know, there's a place in this world for a good, old-fashioned apology, but not when it's depicted like it is here ... in these two songs ... full of bathos to the point where it reeks of self-serving inauthenticity.

I bring this up today, of course, because Rush Limbaugh had to do the old mea culpa number over the weekend in response to the growing outcry over his ill-chosen words directed to Sandra Fluke, the 30-year-old Georgetown student who testified before Congress on the issues of contraceptives.

Poor Rush. He did something typically Rush. He went off on her, called her a slut, and even suggested that she should provide videos of her sexual exploits.

Before we go on, let's talk about Rush. John Henry, who owns the Boston Red Sox, once had a great line about the late George Steinbrenner. He said that being insulted by George Steinbrenner was a little like being by Don Rickles. You almost feel as if you've made it in this world.

If I were a liberal pundit, in other words, and I didn't feel the sting of a Rush Limbaugh rant every so often, I'd be insulted. I'd feel as if my efforts weren't being taken seriously. I'd feel like a neutered bull. I'd feel as if I'm a threat to nobody.

So Sandra, as crude as Rush's comments might have been, you have this to take to the bank: You're in wonderful company. Some of the most respected people in the world have been taken to task by Rush Limbaugh. Most of the time, the laugh's on him. And the fact that he doesn't know it yet makes it even funnier.

Rush jumped the shark a long, long time ago -- in my humble opinion at least -- and his influence beyond his narrow sphere of like-minded bullies and bigots is nil. At this stage of his career, he has to be satisfied with flinging red meat at perpetually angry people who possess none of the analytical, introspective gifts that would qualify them as intelligent.

Of course, there are plenty of them in the country ... enough so that Rush can still make a pretty good living being the point man for the ridiculous right (it's not as cleverly alliterative as the "loony left," but it's going to have to do).

But wait ... Eight of Rush's sponsors have flown the coop over his latest rantings about Sandra Fluke. Maybe that's temporary. Maybe when the heat dies down and everybody "gets past this," as we seem to love to do in this country, those sponsors will fly back to the nest. After all, Rush still gets ratings, even if he'll never broaden his horizons when it comes to influence. It's just that at the moment, the spotlight's on him ... and not because of anything good.

The issue itself? It's a bonafide wedge issue, defined here as any issue that, as soon as it's brought up in the public domain, is sure to cause predictable knee-jerk reactions among all the major players in government. And that's a huge part of what goes into legislative gridlock. ALL of today's major issues can be defined that way, and in every case, you can predict how everyone's going to react the minute anyone tries to discuss them. You might as well script and choreograph these discussions, because rarely do they deviate from predictable patterns.

Into this breach went Sandra Fluke last week, testifying before Congress that insurance companies should cover contraception. Well all right. It's a hot-button issue, and although I support this side of the argument, it's not without being cognizant of some very reasoned opinions from the other side.

And that's as it should be. If we can't, in this country, listen to reasoned arguments both pro and con on the important issues of the day, then what good are we? So it's no sin to admit that some of the answers we seek today are damn hard to come by, and that we need to listen to people, and take them seriously, if we're ever to arrive at them.

Now, Rush claims to be a serious spokesman for conservatives in America. My question is how? How can you be taken seriously if your answer to someone who's demonstrated the courage to get up and testify on a hot-button issue -- thereby setting herself up for a whole lot of grief and anxiety she could have avoided if she'd just shut up and gone about her life like most of the rest of us -- is to crudely ridicule and bully her?

Rush is a big boy. He understands backlash. And he certainly understands that you own what you say the minute it comes out of your mouth, and that no amount of explaining can erase them ... or change anybody's opinion about them.

That goes double if practically half the country thinks you're a buffoon because, lately, you're nothing more than a cardboard caricature of yourself anyway.

Yes, Rush is an easy target, but before anyone feels too sorry for him, let's also acknowledge that he makes himself an easy target ... the same way anyone who stakes out controversial, bellicose stands on issues becomes a magnet for backlash. Jon Stewart probably gets his share of hate mail too, as do Bill Mahar, Rachel Maddow and all the rest. It goes with the territory.

These are people in the business of provoking. And most of them do it quite well, Rush included. But once in a while, in provoking, you go too far. And it happens across the board. Mahar's gotten himself into trouble with ill-timed and crude remarks about Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Don Imus practically got run off radio a while back when he called the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos."

But while it's a good thing to cut people as much slack as you can whenever possible, it's also true that once you cross the line into bad taste or out-and-out misogyny (in the case of Rush), it's useless to try to retrace your steps. You can't do it.

And this brings us back to the original premise. Apologizing. Sadly, it's a lost art, and I think it's that way because -- frankly -- I don't think people quite know how to do it. We've been in an "anything goes" mode in this country for so long that it just doesn't occur to many people that what they say and do can be hurtful.

But we do. All of us. And apologies can be very cathartic ... as long as they're genuine and free of bathos and drama.

First of all, and perhaps most important, apologies don't guarantee forgiveness. If you go through the trouble of trying to manipulate people into feeling sorry for you -- the offender -- by concocting this melodramatic apology you're going to be disappointed. Nine times out of ten, that doesn't work. And if it does, consider yourself lucky.

That doesn't mean we can't say we're sorry. Of course we should. We owe it to the people we offend, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to at least let them know we feel badly for whatever pain and anguish we've caused them and that we do regret having done, or said, hurtful things. After that, it's out of our hands.

Rush's apology to Sandra Fluke is a blueprint of what not to do. First, he tried to justify it by tying his comments in with his personal agenda. Bad. That's about as insincere as it gets. Geez Louise, man, take the ego out of it would you? Separate your politics from your actions and focus on what matters in this instance.

Second, he pulled the old "I was trying to be funny" routine. Ugh. Is there anything more phony than that? How often have you heard that? "I didn't mean it. It was only a joke."

I don't think so.

Finally, "my choice of words was not the best." I'll say.

Look, to cut him some slack, apologizing is a hard thing to do. Most of the time, you're apologizing to people who are already either angry with you, or offended by you, and you're wading into crocodile-infested waters. Even with the best of intentions, a heartfelt apology can be received by deaf ears. It's quite possible that someday, in its own way, whatever rift you've caused by your actions can be healed, but it's probably 50-50 that a simple apology will turn the tide that dramatically.

So why do it? If you're genuine, you do it because regardless of what anyone else thinks, YOU know when you've messed up. And YOU know, instinctively, that YOU'RE not going to start to feel better about it until YOU'VE at least acknowledged that yes, you've done or said something hurtful.

And this is where I think Rush showed his true colors. His apology was not sincere. He managed to restate his political position on the issue, tried to pass off his crudity as an attempt at humor, and then -- today, on his show, -- acted like the wounded warrior because Sandra Fluke dared to be unimpressed with his "apology."

That's par for the course. This isn't television, where you have to say you're sorry, and kiss and make up, between endless commercials and within the half-hour, or hour, time span. It's real life, and it can take a long, long time to undo the damage we do.

It's fair to ask whether Rush would have felt the need to apologize at all if the backlash wasn't so intense, or if advertisers weren't pulling out. Once your misdeeds start hitting you in the wallet, it's a whole new ballgame.

Anyway, to those who feel the need to issue the odd mea culpa over some transgression, remember: it's best to take all the pride out of it, focus on what you did, express whatever sorrow or regret you feel you can, and then -- as they say -- put it in God's hands. It may not get you what you want (at least not right away) but at least you can look at yourself in the mirror and say you did the best you could to atone for something you probably wish had never happened in the first place.

On swimsuits and the rest ....

I'm not one of these people who spends a lot of time moaning and groaning about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. But that's only because if I waste a minute worrying about it, I may forget to sort my socks.

This year's edition is out, with Kate Upton graduating from mere swimsuit model to the cover. Good for her, I suppose. It'll certainly do wonders for her career.

But just because I don't spend a lot of time getting exorcised over the annual SI Swimsuit Issue thing doesn't mean I don't have opinions. I always have opinions.

Here are some of mine ... on this subject anyway.

First, one of my favorite SI issues of the year isn't so much the swimsuit. I can take or leave that, really. No. It's the issue after the swimsuit, when the letters to the editor cut a wide swath between faux righteous indignation and downright creepy worship of the women who model the swimsuits.

To those who would kill more trees complaining about the issue, I have a solution. Don't buy it. Don't read it. Don't let it into your house. That way, you can't see it, and it won't eat at you to the point where you have to look totally ridiculous complaining about it. Unless, of course, your goal in all of this is to amuse me. Then ... OK. Have at it. Because it is amusing.

To those on the other end of the spectrum: Please. I've seen less creepy letters in Playboy and Penthouse (which I only read for the articles).

Now, to be serious for a few minutes. If your idea of a harbinger of spring is to look at women in swimsuits, have at it. Myself? I get a bigger thrill out of watching the truck leave Fenway Park in February.

Somewhere in the back of my mind is the notion that Sports Illustrated, which otherwise does a damn good job telling the story behind the story about the world's biggest athletic events, adds to the culture of objectifying women -- whether it's doing so with tongue planted firmly in cheek (which, at this stage of the game, is most likely the case) or it actually thinks producing the issue counts as compelling journalism.

And you can be sure that with each hysterically overwrought letter protesting the issue, there are guffaws of laughter at SI's headquarters and ever more resolve, as a result, to keep printing it. And in the grand tradition of the American free enterprise system, I'll bet the money SI rakes in via advertising and increase sales helps the magazine finance some of the other, good, things it does the rest of the year.

However, it's just that sometimes, I just feel that the exploitation of someone like Kate Upton, who's only 19, is just as creepy as some of those those letters can be.

I know Kate Upton probably got paid a bundle for the shoots that ended up with her on the cover. Kate's probably good for the entire year -- and maybe then some -- with the money she's received. So in that sense, it's hard to make the argument that she was exploited at all.

But make it we do. Because even if there's more than a little hint of teenage-boy cheekiness about all of this, the issue reinforces the notion -- which I think is still a strong one -- that there are still environments in this world where women advance to the level of their looks, and not their talents and abilities.

By all means, enjoy the issue. I'm an SI subscriber, and the magazine has taken to putting a box inside the front cover asking people like me to let them know if they do not want to receive this issue. I didn't bother responding this year, which means it'll come to my house, the way it always does, and that it'll go largely ignored. I suppose that even in my apathy over it, I'm contributing to its yearly presence in our lives, and I accept that.

We still live in a world where style trumps substance. You see it every day. And the SI swimsuit issue really reinforces that superficiality.

It's a free country, however. SI is free to publish the issue, and we're free to either buy it or skip the honor. Or, if you're me, allow it to be mailed to our homes every February so it can sit on the coffee table.

OK. End of rant ... even if it was a mild rant.

----------

Today's Valentine's Day, which, if you're so inclined, is the day you can shout your love from one end of the world to the other without looking overly mawkish about it.

Or, at least, it would appear to be that way.

Sorry to be so cynical. It's just that as I get older, it dawns on me more and more that Valentine's Day is getting to be just like Christmas, except the sentiment is a little different.

You'll notice that around Christmas time, people seem to be nicer. For that one week out of 52, the idea of good will toward men (and maybe even peace on earth) seems to penetrate our thick veneers. And as soon as January 2 comes around, all that good will goes right back into the box, and, they used to say on the Outer Limits, we resume our normal programming.

Valentine's Day seems to be when everyone freely expresses love, buys flowers and cards (this is not only a Hallmark Holiday but a florist's delight as well), and springs for dinner.

And what happens on February 15? "honey, there are leftovers in the fridge."

Again, to be serious, I have nothing against Valentine's Day. It's just that if we're all not careful, that love we so freely shout out to the world every February 14 can quickly get swallowed up the other 364 days of the year by the stress of work, the demands of life, bills, finances, health issues, the ruts we're all prone to fall into, too much TV or too much computer, and -- maybe most of all -- the rigors of parenting.

It's nice to have a day for celebrating love. It's better to do it all the time. And best, especially if there is no special "someone," to shower yourself with a little of that love and celebrate who you are.

----------

Just a word or two about the Grammy's (which obviously took the entire spotlight away from everything else Sunday night after Whitney Houston's untimely death).

I've always told people that if I could be anyone in the world, I'd pick Bono because of the power his words have over millions of people. But Sunday, at least, I'd have changed all that and decided to be David Grohl.

First, Grohl struck a chord with people like me, who value hard work, musicianship, and talent over the increasing encroachment of technology into the mix. He said music isn't so much about being perfect, but that it germinates from the heart and the mind. And as far as he's concerned, if it's not in either of those two places, it's not anywhere.

Amen. This is one of the reasons that, especially on a night that reached back and celebrated an era where all of music was made that way (Paul McCartney, the Beach Boys and Glen Campbell), the Foo Fighters were recognized as much as they were.

The other reason I'd have gladly traded places with David Grohl for the night is that he looked like the happiest person on the planet up there jamming with McCartney, Bruce Springsteen and Joe Walsh et al during the Abbey Road finale. Watching him (and them) go at it? That's music ... the unbridled joy you get from performing for people. It was awesome, and it was easily the highlight of the show.

Other Grammy observations ...

Who, or what, is a Nikki Manaj, and what on earth was that all about?

It is obviously sad and tragic that Whitney Houston died. But because she died the night before the awards show, and because most everyone feels her tortured lifestyle played a role, the amount of grief displayed Sunday night for her was disproportionate in comparison to say, Clarence Clemons, who is truly a giant in his own right, and who was acknowledged only in the litany of "those who have left us" toward the end of the show.

So it's even sadder to read that there was supposed to be a tribute to Clemons, but that it got bumped to make room for Jennifer Hudson's tribute to Whitney. Boy, I could think of a few other things that could have been bumped to make room for Clarence ... like, maybe, Nikki Minaj??

As it turns out, there was a nice, tasteful tribute to Etta James (though they managed to miss her entirely in the end-of-show litany) and, of course, one for Whitney. Glen Campbell was honored for his contributions (and rightly so), and the Beach Boys were trotted out to sing a portion of "Good Vibrations" (if you've ever heard the Ann and Nancy Wilson version of that, you were absolutely pining for it listening to the Beach Boys singing it Sunday).

But nothing other than a mention of Clarence Clemons' name and a snippet from his famous solo on "Jungleland."

Pity.

----------

Ronald Reagan (no favorite here) used to say his 11th commandment was "Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Other Republicans."

And you'd think that the party that's fallen over itself in recent years to be most thoroughly aligned with the "Great Communicator's" political philosophy would at least heed that very important piece of advice.

Someone forgot to tell Newt Gingrich.

I have rather curious criteria for judging political candidates. First, I feel they're all, to various degrees, con men, so you can't judge them on that (unless they resemble carny barkers so much they're obnoxious about it).

But disposition means a lot to me. And a lot of the time, knowing that most of what any politician says during a campaign you have to take with a grain of salt, I go right to disposition if I can't think of another reason why I'd want to vote for someone.

And petulant people really turn me off.

Newt isn't just petulant. He's nasty. I'm no fan of Mitt Romney's, but for all I don't like about him (and there's enough), I can't say he's nasty. Actually, his disposition's one of the better things about him. Even people in Massachusetts who really fought with him on issues agreed that he was a lot easier to deal with as a person than he may have been when it came to ideological struggles.

But Newt? Not that I care, but he's the type of guy who can easily bring the whole party down with his nastiness and petulance.

Hey. Go right ahead. The day moderate thinking conservatives retake the Republican party will be a happy day for all of us, as far as I'm concerned.

----------

Pitchers and catchers report in five days. C'moooooon srping!