High school is over. Your child has now grown wings and is headed off to college. This is a sad, necessary step in life.

Letting your metaphorical butterfly go free is never easy. It is even less easy because said butterfly will need stuff. Lots of stuff.

Don’t forget to send all of the following:

Bike
Towels & linens
Chairs
Table
TV
Gaming system
Games
Clothes
Weather-related clothes
School-related clothes (go team!)
Food (especially pizza and, for variety, pizza rolls)
Basketball
Tennis racket
Frisbee
Printer paper (loads)
Ironic t-shirts
Laundry basket
Lifetime supply of ramen noodles
Ipod
Gator Aid (really?)
Car (not)
Books?

Cleaning supplies (don’t worry, these will be returned at end of the year – unused)

And finally, the things that go with them, whether you like it or not…..

Childhood
Youthful optimism
Innocence

Good luck parent. This will be harder for you than for your child…

Believe it or not we have some pretty steady readers here at W-L. It is for them that we dedicate today’s article.

Below are sections from three songs. Try to guess who sang them.

The first one is for dear Peggy….

Isaac said he kissed you, beneath the apple tree.
When Benji held your hand he felt electricity.
When Alexander called you, he said he rang your chimes.
Christopher discovered you’re way ahead of your time.

We have two Tom’s who regularly follow us, so I will say this next song is for Tom “A”.

…… My grandfather and me
Around Nassau town we do roam
Drinking all night, got into a fight
Well I feel so broken up, I want go to home
So hoist up the….

And, to protect the identity of the other Tom, I will refer to him as “Lom”. For you Lom, a lollipop…..

Agents of the law, luckless pedestrian, I know you’re out there….

(by now the real “Lom’ will have this one all figured out, but for all of you luckless pedestrians who need more, I will continue on……)

With rage in your eyes and your megaphones
Saying all is forgiven
Mad Dog surrender
How can I answer
A man of my mind can do anything
I’m a bookkeeper’s son
I don’t want to shoot no one
Well I crossed my old man back in Oregon ….

——————-
Some of you, no doubt, figured out right away the first song is ‘The Love You Save’ by the Jackson 5. They don’t write them like that anymore.

Well, for the most part, they write them better, but you have to admit, these lyrics were pretty clever. (Don’t make me explain who Isaac, Benji, Alexander and Christopher are.)

The second song is “Sloop John B”, a much under-appreciated Beach Boys ditty.

They rarely ventured forth with this type of dark story.

Speaking of dark, our third song is the chilling “Don’t Take Me Alive” by Steely Dan.

Bonus points to anyone who actually figured this one out.

************
Scoring:

One right – Not bad ! (This is actually kind of a hard game)
Two right – You are older than you admit, and had your own transistor radio.
Three right – YOU are a music aficionado. Champion for a day!

I normally don’t do book reviews.

Any I do would probably be dated, because I rarely feel the need to purchase any book the first moment it appears at the bookstore (Harry Potter being the notable exception, of course)

I read a lot, but have specialized interests. Most of what interests me, history for example, doesn’t require that books be ‘new.’

But, strolling through the bookstore, I stumbled upon the new Carol Burnett book, “This Time Together.”

Hey, who DOESN’T like Carol Burnett? So I started thumbing through it.

Normally I toss back ‘celebrity’ books fairly quickly. They are usually self-serving, or scandalizing, or both, but this was none of that.

It was just fun.

There cannot be an easier read. The chapters are pretty much all three or four page stories of the various people she knew in her adult life. (She previously chronicled her difficult youth in a book released in 1986.)

David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle was not as smitten as I with the book, but gives it a moderately kind review anyway. Perhaps he was hoping for a dirty laundry tell-all type of book.

Maybe she can do that next time, but it seems unlikely. It just seems like she was placed on earth to entertain and charm us. Like she does in this book.

Buy it. You won’t regret it. Better yet, give a copy to a good friend. It is sure to brighten their day…

Short answer: Money.

Long answer: MOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNEEEEEEEEYYYYYYY.

We at the Winkest Link have discussed this, and have accepted that none of the extra 32 teams would honestly have a chance. They wouldn’t be adding the possible National Champion. Granted, they could be adding another George Mason, and there is discussion every year about teams that deserved to make it but were left out.

But if you were left out in the first place, you didn’t have much of a chance to win it all anyway.

An expansion would also belittle the quality of play in the National Invitational Tournament, which is prestigious enough, and it’s a great honor to play in that tournament as well. We at the Winkest Link, being big Nebraska and Creighton basketball fans, are all too familiar with the NIT.

Plus, with the creation of the Collegeinsider.com Basketball Tournament (CIT) and the College Basketball Invitational (CBI), teams that even think they deserve a postseason will get one.

By Ike

Disclaimer: The Winkest Link is not responsible for the emulation of any actions listed below. These directions are to be heeded at your own discretion.

Death is a very touchy subject with most people. They see it as a thing to be feared and pushed away. As a result, they usually die comfortably in a hospital bed surrounded by loved ones. This is generally the preferred method, but to be truly memorable, you need to get creative.

To die in such a way as to be remembered until the end of time, you must be prepared to invest plenty of time, money, energy, and patience. First and foremost, be careful. Don’t drive too fast, don’t annoy government officials, don’t drink alcohol in excess. Remember, it would be really embarrassing to plan the most exciting death of all time and then die by choking on a pretzel.

To start, you need access to wild animals. Bears are your best option. Try to get a Grizzly bear or polar bear. If you can’t, sun bears or black bears will do in a pinch. Make sure that the bear wasn’t raised in a zoo or domesticated in any way, as this would defeat the whole purpose. Keep the bear in a wilderness environment until you arrive at the final stage.

Next, you will need a private jet. It will need a large amount of storage space. Retired military transport aircraft aren’t bad for your purposes, and possibly even attainable. Pilot lessons are preferred, but you really just need to know how to take off and keep the plane level. Make sure to keep the jet well-fueled and ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Finally, you’ll need active nuclear weapons. Look for World War II or early Cold War-era bombs, so that your spectacular death does not unintentionally wipe out all of humanity, leaving nobody to remember your greatness. Keep these bombs or missiles in the cargo bay. Ensure that nothing will be able to set the bombs off prematurely to avoid the need to buy a new airplane, air strip, and neighboring city.

Now that you have all the fundamentals, you must wait for hurricane season. In late August and throughout September, watch for significant hurricanes near the Atlantic Ocean. Don’t waste your time with a hurricane with a wind speed lower than 200 mph (320 km/h). After all this effort, it would be quite awkward when people find out that you died in a sub-par hurricane.

You can spend the downtime wiring your aircraft with an elaborate video system. This is the most efficient way to spread the news of your exploits. Make sure you leave a way to send the video footage to national news stations after your death. Hell, make it world news stations. You only die once, right?

When the right hurricane comes along, it’s time to move. Tranquilize the bear and put it on the plane. Double-check the plane’s fuel level and arm the nuclear weapons. When everything is ready, start the plane and take off.

As the plane comes within a mile of the hurricane, set the autopilot to direct the plane toward the center. Head back to the cargo bay and check the nuclear weapons. Keep a remote detonation device handy. Then release the bear, giving it a heavy dose of adrenaline to jolt it awake if necessary.

Begin fighting the bear, and don’t hold back. The bear will not. Remember, this fight will be broadcast to every news station available. Done right, it will make UFC look like a mild-mannered playground disagreement.

The plane will soon enter the hurricane, shortly after which it will stall and begin to nosedive, likely spinning constantly in the process. The time has come to amaze the world. Activate the detonation device, pausing only to give off some last words that will hopefully include a terrible pun¹.

As you wrestle the bear in a battle of life and death, the bombs will erupt in a horrific fury. The strong winds will contain most of the bomb’s energy, causing the entire height of the maelstrom to be filled with fire and capped by an orange-and-black mushroom cloud. (This adds the finishing touches to the towering inferno that serves as a beacon of your demise for hundreds of miles.)

News reports will be flooded with the tale of your events. People for decades to come will remember as the man or woman whose explosive, bear-battling death looked not unlike a giant, flaming ice cream cone. Congratulations, you have just enjoyed the most exciting death in history.

¹ “Bomb voyage!”

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“The shinbone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.” – Anonymous

“Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.” – Anonymous

“Nature abhors a tattletale.” - Daimyo Kubota

“Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.” - Anonymous

“Haikus are easy. But sometimes they don’t make sense. Refrigerator.” – Anonymous

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” - Mark Twain

Disclaimer: These are not our quotes. For the most part, we don’t know who said them. We take no responsibility over these quotes, and by reading this disclaimer you agree not to sue us.

What is it that makes the super-rich different from us? Do you have ‘what it takes’ to be super rich?

I have done some exhaustive research on this topic, and made some startling discoveries. Doubt it if you wish, but statistics never lie, and they tell us that the super-rich…

1. Are Right-handed – Are you right handed? This is a good sign, because most super-rich are right handed. For the left-handed among my readers the lesson is obvious: Those old grade-school nuns had your best interests in mind when they were whacking you with rulers for trying to write left-handed. They only wanted you to have a shot at the big bucks.
2. Are Cheerful – Maybe their cheerfulness is how they got rich. Maybe their wealth is what makes them cheerful. Who knows? It’s the old ‘chicken and egg’ thing…
3. Are Male – Are men just naturally more gifted than women? It must be true, especially when it comes to money. But don’t give up women, you can make your life’s big goal ‘job-satisfaction’ rather than money!
4. Own Nice Homes (often more than one) – This CANNOT be a coincidence. Don’t believe it? Buy a couple of very nice houses and wait to see if the money doesn’t start to roll in!
5. Are Well-spoken – If you trip over your tongue a lot, or the right word never really pops into your head when you most need it, you probably aren’t crazy-wealthy. Don’t beat yourself up over it though, you just weren’t meant to have money.

I hope these tips help pull you out of your cruddy, two-bit existence…

They haven’t worked for me … yet…

I grew up surrounded by all kinds of music: big band, pop, soul, country, jazz, blues, classical, metal, disco, and so on. Beatles? Mozart? Hendrix? John Philip Sousa? Aretha? I heard it all, and then some..

The music that still ‘drives’ me, to this day, is rock and roll.

But I do have one question for the rock and roll world…

Why can’t you guys (and gals) say ‘thanks’ once in a while?

Rock stars frequently take up big issues, like hunger and AIDS, and pollution. Good causes, all. I imagine there are a lot of big-hearted rock and roll stars out there. I don’t know any personally, so I have to assume…

But still, when I see an awards show, the rock stars always seem to try to act ‘too-cool-for-the-room.’ Think I am exaggerating? Watch the Grammys the next time they roll around.

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker (Steely Dan) finally won a Grammy a few years ago. I am a huge fan of theirs, and this seemed long overdue, so I was very excited about it. A lot MORE excited, apparently, than Fagen and Becker. They were at the awards ceremony, and did not appear drunk or stoned, so they had no excuse for their total lack of interest.

After all these years, are they still trying to be cool? So cool they don’t care about awards?

Hey Fagen and Becker, if you don’t like the awards, just don’t show up. If you DO show up, and win, show a little damned gratitude. At least thank your fans. Without them you wouldn’t have your multiple houses, your swimming pools and your diamond-covered stretch limos. You would have nothing.

Maybe, in their humble opinions, they thought the Grammy voters waited too long to acknowledge them.

It is painful to think your musical idols may just be jerks. Are you guys just jerks, or was your too-cool posturing just a poor decision on your part?

Don & Walt, you are both around 60 years old. Do you still feel the need to show us how cool you are? Isn’t trying to look cool kind of a ‘junior high’ thing?

This does not only apply to Steely Dan, this happens all the time in the rock and roll world.

By contrast, watch any country music awards show. Each and every award winner will thank their fans. Most seem sincere, but it doesn’t matter even if some aren’t. They owe their success to their fans, and they know to say thanks.

Go back and watch Bonnie Raitt accepting her first Grammys (about 10 years ago). Like Steely Dan, she waited decades to be acknowledged for her efforts. Unlike Fagen and Becker, she was totally blown away and effusively grateful. I guess, maybe because she is more blues-oriented than rock, she didn’t feel she had to show how cool she is. Now THAT is cool…

Finally, a tip of the hat to Green Day. They have been around many-many years and they never ‘phone in’ a performance. Because they have punk roots, you would think they would act like they don’t care what the audience thinks about them, or what ANYBODY thinks about them. Nope, they don’t pretend they are too cool. Each show is an audio-party. The band is always extremely gracious and they never fail to thank the crowd, again and again, for supporting them.

A rock band who cares about their fans? Thank you Billie Joe, Mike and Tre.
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At the beginning of the season U Conn was deemed the best in the nation, and the logical pick to win the national championship.

So how did they do? They won all 39 games by double-digits, and with it the national championship.

A few years back U Conn did NOT win the championship. Tennessee did.

And only a few decades before that, neither Tennessee nor U Conn won the championship.

I am not besmirching women’s basketball, but if you want interest in a sport to grow, you have to have more that two champions over a 20 year span.

Utterly predictable will not win converts. None, not even ONE, of U Conn’s games this year was closer than 10 points. What kind of office pool would that make?

“Well, we had 219 people in our pool this year, but they all chose U Conn. I guess it’s a tie.”

My favorite comment came right after the game from a national sports commentator, about how great a coach whats-his-name is…… “He gets all the best players, and makes them into a great team.”

Wow! Now THAT is coaching!!! He can overcome the handicap of having all the best players, and still win!

I have somehow come into possession of an iPod. The first thing I did was to transfer all of the better songs from my cd’s to it.

Then I was given a bit of magic. I now have a device that can transfer the songs from my old records onto cd’s. From there it is only a short step to my computer and then to my iPod.

Some of the album music I have transferred are part of two-record sets, such as Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

Almost always, one record of a two-record set will have side A and side D, while the other has sides C and B. To clarify, on the flip side of A is side D. The flip side of B is C.

If you are my age or older you know why they are formatted A/D and B/C. On stereos you would physically stack the albums atop the spindle (the silver pole in the middle of the turntable), side A would play first, then the other record would drop down to play side B. After B ended, you would flip them both over and play C and D.

This concept is not so complicated (assuming I have described it adequately).

Here is the point (finally): WE LISTENED TO FOUR ALBUM SIDES OF ONE ARTIST ALL IN ONE SITTING.

That was a long time ago. We would never do that today. Aside from being at a concert, can you imagine listening to 20 consecutive songs by the same artist? No, you cannot. No patience.

And remember, we were listening to the whole album, including all the lame songs.

There are almost no complete albums on my iPod. From most albums I only selected one or two songs, and many albums I skipped altogether. (Did I actually pay money for those disco albums?)

So far my iPod has 1,200 cherry-picked songs, all songs I really like. It is set on “shuffle”. I never hear two songs in a row by the same artist.

It doesn’t matter. I now have an “MTV attention span.” This means if I am not entertained in the next 15 seconds, I am skipping this song and moving on to the next.

Remember, I CHOSE EVERY SONG on this device, I am never forced to listen to the same artist twice in a row, and I am still skipping songs all the time.

“Bored” has been redefined.

How did this happen to me? I expect this type of impatience from young, terribly immature people. I thought I would be immune due to my unusually high ‘intelligence and wisdom’ content.

Nope. No patience. None.

It has gotten so bad that I really don’t give a song 15 whole seconds. After about seven or eight notes I am usually done and movin’ on (thank you Bad Company).

Maybe deep down I DO think I am old, and can’t afford to give three whole minutes to a song that doesn’t just kill. I will call the shrink and check on this…