Ruminating on marriage as my big day gets closer. A 7-month-old water skiier. And censorship at a high school paper: Always wrong

Rangers squeak out a 4-3 win Monday night, and I may or may not have spent the last 45 minutes of the game in the fetal position in front of the TV, clutching a pillow and shouting…

So while I was lying awake Sunday night, unable to sleep like a lot of nights, I started to really think about marriage.
Not just my impending marriage, which is less than a month away, but marriage in general, thanks to a throwaway comment made by my 8-year-old nephew last week.
My sister was explaining to him that his uncle was going to have a wedding soon, and that lots of people will be there and there’ll be food and dancing and all kinds of good stuff.

His response? “Aren’t they already married?”

He was completely serious, even though it made the grown-ups laugh. For all intents and purposes, my beautiful fiancee and I are married. We live together, we share some expenses, we spend nearly all of our free time with each other (what can I tell you, she thinks I’m fabulous and I tend to agree ) and we attend family functions as a pair.

So to his adolescent mind, we’re just like everyone else in the grown-up world he sees, people like my mom and stepfather, and dad and stepmother.

It got me thinking a little about why we go through the whole tradition of marriage. It’s clearly not just a piece of paper; it’s hugely symbolic, which is why the fight for gay equality has been so hard-fought and passionately battled on each side.

But what’s going to change after we say our “I Do’s?” We’re not going to love each other any less, or change our lifestyle much. She’ll change her name and become Mrs. Lewis, which I’m excited by, and maybe we link bank accounts and insurance policies and all that stuff.

But really, not much is going to change. Our lives and our relationship will be “official” to the rest of the world, but like the kid said, to me, I’m already basically married.

No real conclusions were drawn in my head thinking about this, just rambling I suppose. I just wonder if maybe we put too much symbolism into marriage, when really we should be worried about if the two people who promise to love, honor and respect each other really do.

I know in my case, I’m the luckiest man in the world, because that will never, ever be an issue.

**Next up today, a 7-month-old who’s already better at waterskiing than I will ever be. I want lessons from this baby…

**Finally today, censorship ought to be fought wherever it’s attempted, but it’s pretty disgusting when censorship looks like this. A high school’s journalism class in San Diego was ordered shut down by the school’s principal after the school newspaper committed a cardinal sin

What hideous act had the student journalists committed? They criticized the principal, that’s what.

Student credit, and the journalism program, for the award-winning paper at La Costa Canyon High School was ended after the students questioned in print principal Kyle Ruggles’ decision to fire the school’s athletics director.

Of course Ruggles denies the article critical of him had anything to do with his decision.

Sure. And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

“The Americans’ ends on a really high note. A rough sports weekend for me. And a legless Marathon victim inspires.

It’s been a few days since it aired but I feel like I must blog about the season finale of the best new show since “Homeland.”

“The Americans” had its season finale Wednesday, and it was a fantastic end to an incredibly strong first season (Spoiler alert for season finale here, but people, you really should’ve watched by now if you’re a fan).

What this show did in bringing us inside the lives of two Russian spies living in the U.S. in 1981 was sensationally entertaining, thought-provoking, and at times, scary.
What I loved about the finale is that of course not everything was resolved, but there were enough loose threads that you can’t wait for Season 2.
I loved that Granny fought with Elizabeth for so much of the season, knows that Elizabeth tried to have her reassigned, yet she still feels protective of her when she learns Elizabeth may be wanting into an FBI trap.
I love that the Jennings’ daughter is finally getting curious as to what goes on in her parents’ basement.
I love that Nina came clean as a double-agent caught by the FBI and now confessing to the Russians, and we really don’t know what she’s going to do next (she says she’s going to try to turn FBI agent/her lover Stan into a KGB supporter, but I don’t see that happening.
I also loved that it looks like Elizabeth is going to live even after getting a gunshot wound to the stomach from Stan in Phillip and Elizabeth’s escape.

So many great storylines, so well written, and Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are awesome as the protagonists.
If you’re not watching “The Americans,” I highly recommend catching up on episodes through OnDemand or the FX website.
It’s one of those shows that has a chance to be an all-time classic. The first season was that good.

**Here’s something that should inspire you. Jeff Bauman is one of the heroes of the Boston Marathon bombings. Bauman, if you remember, was the man who lost both of his legs in the explosion, but when he awoke in the hospital scrawled a note to police reading: “Bag, saw the guy, looked right at me.”

That may have been an important clue to police about how the bomb exploded; even if it wasn’t, it’s pretty sensational that even after his trauma, he was still trying to help.

Saturday night Bauman was a special guest of the Boston Bruins before their playoff game. Check out the chill bump-inducing video above (the good stuff starts at the 1-minute mark)

**Finally, it was another rough sports weekend for yours truly. Miserable performances by the Rangers and the Nets, but only one of them truly stunned me.
The Rangers, I sort of expected to struggle in this playoff series. It angers me that after four years under John Tortorella they still have no freaking clue how to run a power play. It angers me that they’re playing below their skill level against a team (Washington) that isn’t really that much better, yet looks 10 times better in the first two games. The Rangers have ONE goal in two games. ONE. You realize how hard that is to do against a goalie like Braden Holtby who’s not that good?
The Rangers aren’t dead, down 2-0 with Game 3 tonight, but they’re pretty close. I have zero confidence they’ll come back to win this series, but again, not really shocking that they’re in this spot.

The Nets, though… what a disgrace.  They’re at home Saturday night, in Game 7, against a Bulls team that’s missing two of its top four players (Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich) and is on the road having lost its last two games in the series.
And the Brooklyn boys, with SO much to play for, with the intensity of the home crowd behind them … fell behind by 17 at the half and never completed a furious comeback.
Pathetic. No bloody excuse in the world to explain why the Bulls had so much more heart, so much more desire. Joakim Noah (above) destroyed all of the Nets inside players, and he’s playing hurt!
P.J. Carlesimo got fired as coach Sunday, but that’s not enough. This team needs a legit power forward, some better bench options, and they need a full season of a healthy Deron Williams (who was great in the playoffs).

What a waste of a first season in Brooklyn, to go out like that Saturday.

Good News Friday: A very cool Make-A-Wish soccer dream comes true. A beautiful ode to newsrooms. And an awesome commercial from “Hockey Night in Canada”

Another great sports night Thursday: My Nets pull out a win in Game 6 over the Bulls, my Rangers play pretty well but stupidly in a Game 1 loss to the Caps, and the Golden State Warriors and their awesome crowd won their first-round series. Man I love to watch Steph Curry play basketball…

The Make-A-Wish Foundation is one of my favorite charities ever; the idea that there’s a group out there that helps makes terminally kids’ days just a little bit better, in the last weeks and months of their way-too-short lives, is a beautiful notion.

So when I heard about what the Portland Timbers pro soccer team recently did, I smiled widely. The Timbers have a superfan named Atticus Lane-Dupre, who is 8 and has cancer. His biggest dream was to play a soccer game against his heroes, so the team and Make-A-Wish arranged a special match between the Timbers and a team of Make-A-Wish Foundation kids.

It was beautiful, judging by this video below. The crowd came out in the thousands, cheering for Atticus and booing their own pro players. Of course, Atticus and Co. won the “game” 10-9, delighting the fans.

Such a sweet, sweet gesture by the team and the players involved.

**Next we have a beautiful essay by a member of my former profession. Ottawa Citizen newspaper journalist Kate Heartfield saw like many of us the fantastic work done by the Boston Globe staff during the Marathon bombings two weeks ago, and wanted to write something that summed up how so many felt about the crucial role the Globe, and all local newspapers, play when tragedy strikes.

The Globe did such a fantastic job keeping the world, and its city, informed and alert as to what was going on.
Heartfield wrote a sweet love letter to the paper, and I highly urge you to read it.

**Finally, only hockey fans know how awesome the CBC (Canadian Broadcastcing Company)’s montages are. Check out this awesome promo for the 2013 playoffs. I don’t care if you’re a hockey fan or not, I predict you’ll find this pumping you up. (I got chills just watching it again).

Mike Piazza joins the ballet. A horrific gun death in Kentucky. And an ice-cream truck feud delights me

It’s a well-known fact that fathers will do just about anything humanly possible to please their daughters.

But this is going above and beyond. Mike Piazza, major-league baseball superstar and the best offensive catcher to play the game, is going to be in a ballet this weekend.
For reals.
It began when Piazza’s 6-year-old daughter Nicoletta, a ballerina herself, asked her father if he would please be in a ballet.

So this weekend in Miami, during a performance of George Balanchine’s”Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” by the Miami City Ballet, the man who Roger Clemens once chucked a bat at will play the role of a gangster gunman and appear at the end of the performance.

I love it. Good for Piazza to broaden his horizons.  Listen to him talk about why he’s doing it here.

**I’m going to keep writing about the insanity of our gun culture in the U.S., even though my pulpit is relatively small here on this blog, because it’s such an important issue.
And I hope stories like this continue to revolt Americans. A 5-year-old boy in Kentucky was given a youth-sized .22 rifle as a gift last year. That alone should be enough to scare the hell out of you.

But on Tuesday the 5-year-old also accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister, while the childrens’ mother was in the house, somewhere else.

A 5-year-old having the ability to A, get a gun, B, fire it, and C, use it unsupervised is as horrible a form of child neglect as if the mother left the kids in a closet for a week.

When’s it going to end, these “accidental” gun deaths? Should a 5-year-old really have access to a murderous weapon???

**Finally today, my good pal and frequent blog contributor Will Springstead sent me another gem from my old stomping grounds in upstate New York.

Seems there was a good old-fashioned ice cream truck feud in Gloversville, N.Y. the other day, as drivers for Mr. Ding-A-Ling (known as Ding to his friends, I’m sure) and Sno-Cone Joe got into a battle.
Apparently Amanda Scott and Joshua Malatino, both Sno-Cone drivers, followed the Ding-A-Ling trucks around neighborhoods, playing music loudly, and yelling that they have free ice cream.

And if that’s not the strangest sentence I’ve ever written, it’s in the top 5.
Scott and Malatino were arrested and charged with harassment.
Ice cream truck drivers of the world, please, can’t we all just get along??? Is there not room for italian ices and frozen chocolate eclairs alike?

And if not, can you toss me an ice cream sandwich on your way to jail?

“The Central Park Five” a fantastic documentary. A most bizarre new Hyundai commercial. And the Monica Seles stabbing, 20 years later

New York City in 1989 was as dangerous as it ever was, and when a young white woman was attacked, raped and beaten in Central Park one night, it seemed like just another blight on an awful period in the city’s history (Believe me, there was a reason kids like me came into Manhattan by train and never, ever, took the subway by ourselves back then).

The public was outraged, and five teenagers, all non-white, were all quickly arrested for the crime, then convicted without much trouble at all.
Except, as Ken Burns and his daughter Sarah show in a fantastic documentary I just saw on PBS, “The Central Park Five” the kids were innocent. They were badgered to confess under intense questioning by police, and despite there being a ton of holes in the case (the DNA evidence at the scene matched none of the boys, their stories about how the crime happened varied wildly), the NYPD and city prosecutors forged ahead.

Finally, a decade after the verdicts and after seven years in prison for each kid, the real rapist is found, and the boys’ verdict is overturned.

The fascinating film introduces us to Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Kharey Wise, and Raymond Santana, and the way they tell the story is harrowing. We also hear from journalists and activists from that time period, who still can’t believe how the boys were steamrolled into suffering so much for a crime they didn’t commit thanks to the culture of NYC at the time, and a wildly overzealous police force and prosecutor.

I highly, highly recommend this film; it’s as good as anything Ken Burns has done.
It’s not scheduled to be on PBS again in the new few weeks, but here’s a link to watch the whole movie online.

**I usually try to highlight fun or interesting new commercials on here, but this new Hyundai ad was so bizarre I wanted to see what you all thought of it. It’s called “Suicide,” and, well, I’m not exactly sure it makes me wanna go buy a Hyundai…

**I’m not 100 percent certain why, but I remember exactly where I was when I found out the best tennis player in the world was stabbed in the back on the court, during a match.

I was a senior at Commack High School on Long Island, and I had just gotten into my car after school and was ready to drive home. I flipped on WFAN and heard the radio voice talking in very hushed, freaked-out tones, saying that reports were sketchy, but that a fan had rushed the court at a tennis match in Germany, and stabbed Monica Seles in the back.

It was inconceivable to my 17-year-old mind then; 20 years later, it’s still pretty inconceivable. A superstar in the prime of her career, who had already won eight Grand Slam titles and displaced the great Steffi Graf at No.1, was attacked in broad daylight on a tennis court during a match.

If you don’t remember the details, the assault was staged by Gunter Parche, a German lunatic who was obsessed with Graf and wanted her to get back on top, thus he decided to attack her biggest rival. Parche, unbelievably, was found at two different trials to be legally insane and never spent a day in prison.

Seles took a two-year absence from tennis and, while she came back to the Top 10 and still had a strong career, was never the same again.

What bothers me about the Seles incident to this day is not that a crazy person did something like this; it’s that for all the post 9/11 security that we have in place, it could easily happen again. In recent years both Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were confronted on the court, mere inches away from them, by fans who stumbled out on the court.

Very easily and very quickly, both could’ve been injured or killed.

It’s always been a dangerous world, but until Seles was attacked in 1993, athletes on the playing field believed they were at least safe between the white line.

Bruce Jenkins of SI.com has a great column abut the Seles anniversary here.

 

Jason Collins comes out, and another huge barrier falls. A unique baseball squeeze play. And a haunting essay from a gun user

We overhype everything in sports.
Every year we have the “Game of the Century.” Every touchdown catch, every Super Bowl, every World Series, is hyped and hyped until eventually it loses all meaning, and we can’t really tell just what the big deal is anymore about any individual event or accomplishment.

But Monday, something happened in the world of sports that really IS a big deal. A really, really big deal.

A journeyman NBA center named Jason Collins wrote an essay for Sports Illustrated that was published Monday.

In the article, Collins admits that he is gay. In so doing, he became the first active male professional athlete in a major team sport to come out of the closet.

And a moment that has been decades in the waiting has finally arrived.

One of the last bastions of homophobia has been shattered.
The word “fag” and other homophobic slurs used to be heard in gymnasiums, arenas and locker rooms, spoken and shouted by fans and players, in every sport.

But that is less and less the case now, and as more and more gay athletes have emerged, people like Martina Navratilova and Greg Louganis, it has seemed inevitable that someday soon, a male athlete in a major sport would take the plunge.

And Collins is as good a trailblazer as any: Stanford educated, extremely bright, and a guy who’s established himself as a solid citizen and great teammate in the NBA.

As I and so many others expected, when the first gay pro athlete finally emerged, he was bathed in love and understanding. Collins was feted for his courage and bravery by superstars and scrubs, political royalty and average fans alike (Of course there was still the occasional bigoted comment, but they were so much in the minority)

Why now, Jason Collins?

“I realized I needed to go public when Joe Kennedy, my old roommate at Stanford and now a Massachusetts congressman, told me he had just marched in Boston’s 2012 Gay Pride Parade,” he wrote in SI.”I’m seldom jealous of others, but hearing what Joe had done filled me with envy. I was proud of him for participating but angry that as a closeted gay man I couldn’t even cheer my straight friend on as a spectator. If I’d been questioned, I would have concocted half truths. What a shame to have to lie at a celebration of pride. I want to do the right thing and not hide anymore. I want to march for tolerance, acceptance and understanding. I want to take a stand and say, “Me, too.”

Bravo, Jason Collins. He finally had the bravery and confidence to live his life on his own terms, and not be afraid anymore.

And may his courage today allow the other current MLB, NHL, NBA and NFL players who are still afraid to come out see that it’s really OK out here, and the water is fine.

A truly historic day in sports, and I’m so glad it’s finally here.

(There were a ton of beautiful pieces written about Collins’ decision on Monday; here are two of the best: Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated with an inside account of what it was like watching Collins unburden himself, and Bruce Arthur of the National Post (in Canada) writing eloquently about what this means for sports.)

**OK, on to less-earth shattering events. I’ve seen a lot of runners try to avoid tags on squeeze bunt plays before, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this before. Check out this play pulled off by Ferris High School in Ferris, Texas. Pretty sweet…

**And finally today, check out this remarkable essay in the New York Times by a man named Bruce Holbert, who recounts a childhood gun accident that saw him killed his good friend, and how he feels about gun control legislation today.

The last two paragraphs, especially, are particularly powerful.

Highs and lows of a sports weekend: Rangers up, Nets dow. Jets? Who the hell knows. And Obama kills it at the silly Correspondents Dinner

This past weekend was one of those rare times of year when my three favorite pro sports teams were all making news and doing big things: The Rangers, the Nets, and the Jets all either delighted me, angered me and left me scratching my head and pulling out my few hairs left.

It was a worlds-colliding kind of sports weekend. Some highlights/lowlights from my point of view as a NY sports fan:

**The Nets: Since I’d like to get the misery out of the way first, that was one of the all-time brutal, gut-punching losses Brooklyn suffered Saturday. Deron Williams and Co. were up 14 points with less than four minutes to play … and lost.
That’s really, really hard to do. But if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. Turnovers, missed free throws, and some holy spirit of Magic Johnson got into Nate Robinson of the Bulls (the most obnoxious player in the NBA, am I right?), and all of a sudden the game went to overtime.
Where of course, the agony got drawn out for us Nets fans, as it stretched to three OT’s before the Bulls won.
Just a horrendous performance at the end by the Nets, and P.J. Carlesimo’s coaching job was as bad as the players’ performance. Series is now 3-1 Bulls, but it’s basically over. Damn.
**The Rangers: On a much happier note, my favorite hockey team appears to finally have stopped underachieving the last few weeks, and roll into the playoffs on a high note. Very excited to see Rick Nash and Derek Stepan scoring so much, and I think the Rangers have a very winnable first-round series against the Capitals. (Gotta love the NHL playoffs, the best in any sport).
Not saying the Rangers are winning the Cup or anything; they’re nowhere near as good as Pittsburgh, Chicago, Anaheim or Boston. But at least finally, after 3 months of mediocre hockey, they’re showing what’s possible with all that talent on the team.

**The Jets: Finally, the New York Jets, America’s most dysfunctional football team. I don’t know what the hell to think about a team with so few offensive weapons deciding that, instead of drafting some, let’s take a QB in the 2nd round who back in October was considered a Top 5 pick, yet by April wasn’t even worthy of a first-round choice.
Which is to say, the more everyone saw of Geno Smith, the less they liked him. Except for the Jets, who apparently decided five QBs on the roster already weren’t enough.
I spent Saturday trying to talk myself into the Geno Smith era: Hey, at least it means I won’t have to watch Mark Sanchez anymore, and maybe the kid will prove all his critics wrong who say he fumbles too much and can’t read defenses well. And maybe the Jets will be smart with him and let him learn on the bench behind David Garrard for at least half a season…

But who the hell am I kidding? I was rationalizing big-time. Taking Smith was not a good move by my Jets; I can’t see any way he can succeed this year with such little talent around him.
But it’s April; no sense stressing over the Jets’ miseries just yet.  There’ll be plenty of time for that in the fall.

Let’s go Rangers.

**Finally today, I say in this space every year how ridiculous and unprofessional I think the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner is.

Reporters whose job it is to investigate and cover politicians in that town get together and share drinks and back-slaps with the same people they’re supposed to be impartial about.

It reeks of unprofessionalism and “insider-ness”  and everything people suspect about the culture of Washington.

But they’re going to keep having it every year, and with a pretty funny President in office, I usually get some good chuckles out of the POTUS speech.

Some of his best lines from the video above:
– “You know, sometimes I look in the mirror and realize I’m not the strapping young Muslim socialist I used to be.”
– “CNN covers ever angle of a story, just in case they stumble onto the right one.”
– “Sheldon Adelson spent $100 million in 2012 to try to get Republicans elected. He would’ve been better off offering me $100 million not to run.”

The Reds make a Down’s Syndrome kid’s dream come true. Joe Poz with a unique Ebert tribute. And pro athletes living in a retirement community? Sure

And a happy Friday to all of you out Internet-land. I’m extremely happy today because my heart attack-inducing Rangers finally clinched a playoff spot. Onward with today’s good news…

The Cincinnati Reds became acquainted last season with a young man named Teddy Kramer, a huge fan of the team who was born with Down’s Syndrome.

Teddy’s parents won an auction last year for Teddy to be an honorary batboy for a game, and he quickly bonded with the team.
That’s normally where these stories end. But Kramer was back with the Reds this week, and, well, some amazing stuff happened, including him predicting the final score and asking player Todd Frazier to hit him a home run before one at-bat.

And then Frazier went and did it, sending the crowd into delirium and later chanting Teddy’s name.

It’s a beautiful story and one that I promise will put a smile on your face.

**I thought this story was really cute. The Washington Spirit are a new women’s pro soccer team, as for about the 11th time women’s soccer tries to get a real league going in the U.S.

Looking to save money, the team was trying to find low-cost housing for some of the players.
And it what may be a first in pro sports, they found it in a retirement community.
Yep, in between canasta games and folks bragging about the grandchildren, several Spirit players are loving life at Ingleside of King’s Farm, a D.C. senior citizens complex.

Average age of players: 28. Average age of residents: 82.

It’s a really cute story, with the senior citizens baking cookies and stuff for the players. Check out the really nice story here.

My favorite quote? “I can’t wait to learn how to play bridge,” said Spirit player Diana Matheson, 29, an economics major at Princeton.

**Finally, it’s been a few weeks since the greatest film critic of all time, Roger Ebert, died, but the tributes are still rolling in.

I thought this was really creative by the great Joe Posnanski: He took 75 first lines of Ebert’s movie reviews and combined them into one story.

There’s great thoughts about life, movies, and plenty else in this cobbled-together story.
What a fabulous mind we lost in Roger Ebert.

I get to play tennis at the U.S. Open! (sorta). A ridiculous new product for babies. And “The Daily Show” brilliant again

Had one of the coolest tennis experiences of my life Wednesday night.

After not playing competitively for a couple years after my return to New York, I finally dove back into a USTA league this spring, and have played a few matches. (I used to be good when I left Florida; now, apparently, I stink).

A few days ago my opponent for this week suggested we play at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, where of course they play the U.S. Open. Since it’s only a 40-minute subway ride from my Manhattan apartment, I said sure.

What a lot of people don’t know is that anyone can go play on the same grounds that Sampras, Agassi, Federer and Nadal have walked. You just pay $30 for an hour, make a reservation, and you’re ready.

Now of course they don’t let you play at Arthur Ashe Stadium or any of the other major courts with thousands of seats, but still… you’re playing at the U.S. Open.

Have to say, it was a hell of a good time for a tennis die-hard like me. We played on Court 15, a smaller court but one with room for a few hundred spectators (in the above photo I was on the fifth court from the left, bottom row).

It was a playing experience like none other for me; for one thing, one time when I tossed my serve I looked up and noticed a huge TV camera perch above the court.
That doesn’t happen at the local parks court.
For another, every court was private and fenced-in, so nobody else’s errant shots ran into our court. It was delightfully, beautifully quiet.

And for the first 20 minutes of my match, I couldn’t stop thinking, “I’m actually playing on a court they use for the U.S. freaking Open.”
I’d like to tell you that I settled down and, inspired by my setting, played a terrific match.

I’d like to tell you that, but it’d be a lie. I fell behind 4-0 in the first set, clawed my way back to 4-4, and then dropped eight of the last nine games to lose, 6-4, 6-1.

But I didn’t care. I played on the U.S. Open courts, and that enough made me happy.

Since our Congress seems to think any kind of further gun-control laws are impossible, “The Daily Show” took it upon themselves to show what another country’s politicians did when faced with massive gun deaths.

As always, a hilarious but devastating indictment of our cronies in Washington. Take it away, John Oliver…

**I can’t believe this is real, but it apparently is. I present a product that literally could not be more ridiculous.

But yes, if you’ve ever wanted to know what your newborn baby looked like with a mustache, now you can! Introducing the Mustachifier, the pacifier that comes with a built-in mustache for your child.

America, we’ve hit a new low with this one. Why would anyone want their kid to look like a cross between Groucho Marx and Hitler?

Teacher fired after being outed in Mom’s obituary. Negligient homicide or religious belief? You decide. And a NYC radio station makes me laugh

It’s 2013 and so much has changed in this country when it comes to equal rights for gays and lesbians, but we still have so much farther to go in the equality fight.

Take this story as an example of the bigotry still among us.

A woman named Carla Hale is a teacher at Bishop Watterson High School in Columbus, Ohio.  For 19 years she taught physical education, and not once was her conduct or professionalism called into question.

In February, Hale’s mother died, and in the obituary announcing the death, Hale was mentioned along with her female partner as “survivors” of the deceased.

A parent of a student read about the obit and wrote a letter to the school, complaining that Hale’s behavior (basically, being gay) was immoral and a violation of the school’s “morality clause.”

Disgustingly, the school agreed, and Hale was fired.

Read the details here; it’s encouraging that what the school did might not be legal in Ohio, and that 15,000 people have signed a petition urging Hale’s reinstatement.

But schools like Bishop Watterson are still stuck in the dark ages, and it’s not likely they’re going to “come out” of that bigoted stage anytime soon, I fear.

**Speaking of dark ages, another disturbing story out of Pennsylvania, pointed out to me on Facebook by my friend Tom. A couple named Herbert and Catherine Schaible are fundamentalist Christians who believe in faith healing, as opposed to any doctors or medicine whatsoever.

In 2009 their son died from bacterial pneumonia, a fate that certainly could’ve been spared the child if he’d been taken to a hospital. Amazingly, the Schaibles were only put on probation for his death.

Now comes word that their 8-month-old son Brandon died last week after suffering from breathing problems and diarrhea.

How are these people allowed to get away with what is basically murder? Letting your own innocent children die when simple medical intervention could’ve saved them is just … unfathomable to me.

I hope the Schaibles go to prison for a long, long time.

**Finally, please indulge me here for a minute as I recount something that may only make sense to New Yorkers reading this. This can be filed under “There’s no reason I should be thinking about this for so long.”

So there’s this radio station in New York called WLTW, Lite FM 106.7. I like it a lot, much to the mocking of friends over the years, because it plays ’80s and ’90s music that I like, there are few commercials, and it’s just a nice, easy listen.

Anyway, about a year ago I was listening on a Saturday and they announced it was a “Best of the ’80s” weekend. So that was cool, I thought.
Then the next weekend I was in the car and again it was a “Best of the 80s” weekend.

Hmmm. And pretty much every single time we’ve been in the car since then on a Saturday or Sunday, WLTW has announced that it’s a “Best of the 80s” weekend!

So this leaves me with many questions: How can you advertise this as something special when you do it every weekend? Do they think listeners just won’t notice? Or do they hope to catch new people listening who will think “Hey, this station plays 80s music, I should listen more often!”

Or is that they just are too lazy to change their promos every weekend? Or is it just they are being ironic and funny, poking fun at themselves that every weekend is the exact same on the station, like a Bill Murray “Groundhog Day” thing?

Like I said, I’ve spent WAY too much time thinking about this. Now, hopefully, you can too.