FROM AMERICAN DREAMS TO FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

Loyal reader(s) know my thought about tv shows. There just aren't many I like.

American Dreams was one of the better ones, but like a lot of the shows I like it was not long for prime time. When this year started out, I thought Jericho was the show I'd like. Nope.

It turned out to be Friday Night Lights. I really like the concept, the book, and the movie, so I shouldn't have been surprised that I'd like the tv show.

The coach is so real that he missed his calling. And if Lila Garrity wasn't a high school cheerleader, she should have been. Her parents are great, especially her dad. Would I buy a used car from him? Sure.

The football player who lives alone and has an affair with a single mom is a stretch, but he's a good actor and I like him, too. As well as the quarterback, Smash, the Assistant Coach, the coach's wife, the Christian, the girl he likes and her mother. Even the quarterback's grandmother is cool.

The only one I don't like is the pouty coach's daughter. She is so stiff and frowny. She tries to play the role of the distraught teen who's in love with love, but she doesn't pull it off.

Anyway(s), it's good tv for 2007, and I can't wait to see if Coach Taylor took the TMU job or not. (Ok, I know he didn't or they would have to change the name to Saturday Afternoons.)

HOBBLED

Don't you hate it when people talk about their aches and pains? It seems that people have them or don't. In other words, most people talk a lot about them or say nothing about them. Ever.

When I came across this picture of Mont St. Michael in Northern France, I remembered the day we climbed to the top. When we got to where they parked the bus at the bottom of the , I started to say hill, but it was bigger than that, ok, mont, tel, or mountain--now it was a little mountain, I thought to myself, "well, we'll have to walk quite a bit, but I'm sure there's a lift of some kind to take us to the top". Wrong. We had to walk the elevation. And we did. With my wife suffering from sciatica, for which she has had two surgeries in the last 31/2 years to alleviate a ruptured disc. A trooper she was, and we scaled the heights to an enjoyable time in the old mont.

My doctor tells me I have a very mild case of sciatica. Mine is a pinched nerve that causes the left side of my leg at the calf to hurt kinda like a dull ache. Or as Beaver Cleaver might say, "I got a toothache in my leg." So I've laid off from playing golf now for about 10 days, done my exercises, used the old heating pad, and added smelly liniment to my leg.

But I still can't walk a long way without it barking a lot. And I have a couple of long walks to make this weekend when the Might D-backs take on the Colorado Monts at Chase Field.

Oh, I'll do ok, because I'm a junior trooper. But this getting old stuff is getting old.

COLOR ME RED

But do so many baseball teams have to wear the same color? And if it's not red, then blue.

When the Diamondbacks went to Sedona red, it sealed the deal. I don't know who started it, but the Astros went from their orange and yellow to Sedona red (perhaps clay red) and black. Then the Padres went from brown and yellow to blue and orange to St. Louis Ram colors blue and gold. I know, the Rams went from bright blue and bright yellow to Notre Dame blue and gold. I don't approve of that look either.

The Phillies changed their color scheme, too. They used to have a burgundy-like quality, but now it's red, too. In the junior circuit ( I love to use that term because it annoys American League fans. I can't help it. If they were true fans that petition to get rid of the stupid DH) the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim near Mission Viejo and not all that far from Tijuana brightened their red considerably to blend in with all the others.

The Cincinnati Reds turned a good uni with a vest even into a bad one by adding so much black to it.

It was all so simple then as Barbra crooned(can women croon, or is that only men?) back in the MTV Little League when the Cardinals were red, Cubs bright blue, Giants green, Dodgers dark blue, and Pirates black. Then you could tell who was who and baseball didn't look like an intersquad game.

I WITNESS

Great eyes. I have always been blessed with tremendous eyesight. Well, until I reached the age of 45 or so. So I got reading glasses. Then progressive lenses because of a bit of astigmatism.

Then for six years or so, maybe not that long, I wore one contact lens in my left eye for reading purposes. I could still pick out where the golf ball traveled and could see much better than my golf partners.

I decided not to bother with the contact lens shortly after I retired. So it was laser surgery. But my eye doctor thought I didn't need the cut retina so he did an abrasion-type surgery where they reshape the eyeball and make no incision.

Bottom line: I'm still wearing reading glasses. Unless there is adequate lighting. And I can't see where my golf ball goes after 120 yards or so. Oh, I still check out well on the eye tests. But they have me read from a board that is lit up. Hey, give me light or a coal miner's hat and don't need anything to see.

Now my wife thinks I should go to her eye surgeon in St. Louis for the laser. I don't think so. I'm gonna wait for a light behind the retina invention.

2080 THE GLOBAL WARMING BIRD

Fresh out of the Brussels Conference on Global Warming comes the scientists drawing of the GW Bird of the future. Don't worry: most of us won't be around to see this bird.

Its turkey-like feathers serve as a filter from dust particles caused because of a skorched earth and dried up river beds. Its eyes have a protective cotelydon type film over them to block out harmful UV rays which will be at a premium since the depletion of the ozone layer according to the report. Its feet are quasi hydrolic much like airplanes tires and mechanisms for landing. And they're stored in the abdomen sac.

Bats won't be the only night flying birds. The built in sonar will help them to hunt at night and stay out of the sun in the hottest times of the day.

The colorful bird (a male is pictured) is artistically rendered, of course. But so are the findings and speculations based on a short time frame.

Hey that's what happens when scientists go PC, and they listen to the guy with the emmy. You know, the one who invented the internet.

THE MASTERS ON CBS

As I write this entry, they haven't begun final round play at golf's showcase--The Masters. But I know who won. And I'm tired of Tiger Woods.

I cannot say that I haven't behaved badly on the golf course. I certainly have. And it's not one of those macho things that guys do when they act badly and then say they're sorry or make excuses. That's always been my favorite apology, "I'm sorry, but..." but, I've never had a tv cameraman following me around my whole life. Why does Woods act and cuss that way?

He's not alone. I remember Freddy Couples a few years ago doing it, too. He's just not as consistent. And there are others.

But when the weather got bad on Saturday, the crybabies came out. Moaning, crying--c'mon. Just play the game. Sure Some Like It Hot. Most do. But golf is a game that is dependant on the weather, and try telling young kids playing in brutal conditions on courses a whole lot less pristine than Augusta that the wind was too strong and the greens were too hard.

Give me a break, primas! Play golf on Saturday morning in the rain in May because in the Midwest it rains lots of Saturdays that time of year. Play golf because you love it: not because you can't shoot in the 60's every round.

And try to show some class along the way.