Various and Sundry

Last night I finished Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger. Woo-hee, did this guy peg Texas football. It's the true story of a high school football team and a town's obsession with winning the 1988 Texas State Championship. The author starts out with character portraits of six of the players at the start of the season and then follows them through to the final game. The characters are exquisitely drawn and you can feel the affection that the author feels for them. However, this is not just a football book. It's the story of race in Texas (and I'm not talking the 40 yard dash, either), and a stark look at priorities in the Texas educational system. I grew up in Dallas, and attended many high school football games in my day. The Skyline Raiders weren't that good when I was in the stands, but later they did develop something of a reputation for winning. In the book, one of the characters says "football is king." Well, in Texas, football is bigger than that. It's Zeus. High school, even the Dallas Cowboys (well, before their…cough, cough… adventures with the judicial system). If you don't like football, this book probably isn't the book for you, however, don't dismiss it as just a sports book. This is a book about an entire culture and it's a cautionary tale as well. Highly recommended.

So, in the last week how many of you have conveyed your life-support wishes via email, phone, letter, or telegraph to every single member of your family? One of the issues that has been lost in this whole drama is the story of how Terri Schiavo ended up in a coma in the first place. An eating disorder. MSNBC covers some of the complications that arise from anorexia or bulimia , but this case should be a wake-up call to the women out there who are killing themselves to lose just a "few pounds".

Ah, spring, when a young boy's fancy turns to beating up the Easter Bunny

So, you could have predicted this , couldn't you? Oh, yeah. I did. Harlequin, in conjunction with the Oxygen channel, just set the romance industry back twenty years. Respectability? Pish-posh. We don't need no stinkin' respectability.