Giving our all for TV diaries

July 23, 2008

If you ever had any questions about the accuracy of the Nielsen TV ratings, it probably won't help to know that my family is now serving as a Nielsen sample household.

Recent columns

• Book for the 'Dog' days of summer

  July 14, 2008

  If you're looking for a great summer read and have vowed to take a break from the usual trash that ends up on your nightstand, have I got a book for you.

• Please, limit the beach exposure

  July 9, 2008

  I have just returned from a few days in Ocean City, which confirmed my belief that what this country needs is a national campaign to get people to cover up on our nation's beaches.

• The N.J. Turnpike, at your service

  July 7, 2008

  Gas crisis or no, millions of Americans are hitting the road this summer, and many will travel that magical stretch of road known as the New Jersey Turnpike, where they'll stop at its various service areas which are, well, not so magical.

• Pull-out couch is no-zzzz zone

  July 2, 2008

  Until last weekend, I had not slept on a pull-out couch in many years and had, more or less, forgotten the joys of this particular experience.

• Putting brakes on rude driver

  June 30, 2008

  In a moment, we will get to the red BMW that tried some funny business on a busy mountain road and how we almost took care of this guy - took care of him good, too, although, no, not in a Paulie Walnuts way or anything.

• Drop the shovel, skip the photo op

  June 25, 2008

  If I were running the presidential campaign of either Barack Obama or John McCain, my first decree would be this: no more photo ops at disaster sites.

• Fun in Towson comes full circle

  June 23, 2008

  My fellow motorists, what have they done to our favorite traffic nightmare?

• Hungry patrons jack up economy

  June 16, 2008

  Friends, good news from the financial front.

• Athletes offer their thanks by pointing

  June 2, 2008

  I watched Orioles outfielder Luke Scott smack a homer and point to the heavens the other night, which tells me God is still having a pretty good year on the playing fields.

• Key to unlocking an e-mail hoax

  May 26, 2008

  Let me begin by saying I'm not one of those pathetic mopes who gets sucked in by e-mail scams or hoaxes.

• A college student evermore

  May 21, 2008

  On the face of it, Melvin Epstein sounds like your basic world-class slacker.

• Health sites will be death of you

  May 19, 2008

  Here's a little advice from someone who's been there: If you're ever having a health problem, don't research it on the Internet. It'll just scare the hell out of you.

• Pony up to save bay's crabs

  May 14, 2008

  Friends, it's time for all of us in the Free State to put our money where our big fat mouths are with regard to the Chesapeake Bay blue crab.

• Keeping a civil tongue in traffic

  May 12, 2008

  P.M. Forni even drives with civility.

• Cards offer bells and whistles

  May 7, 2008

  There's always something new from Hallmark, the sappy, greeting-card people, and this year is no exception.

• Blather factor ignites as they talk

  May 5, 2008

  At a tire store the other day, I had the misfortune of coming face-to-face with the bane of modern society: the self-absorbed yakker.

• One car, 50 years, 450,000 miles

  April 30, 2008

  If you ever feel like bragging about the old car in your driveway that has 200,000 miles on the odometer, still runs great, doesn't have a dent and blah, blah, blah, make sure not to do it around Bill and Miriam Hyde.

• Foreseeing outbreak of e-mails to doctors

  April 28, 2008

  I used to think no one in the whole world hated e-mail more than me, but that turns out to be wrong.

• Just can't wait to humiliate

  January 15, 2008

  Here is the question you have to ask yourself when tuning in to the season debut of American Idol tonight: Is there something wrong with me?

• Bill Hagy was one wild fan of the O's

  August 22, 2007

  I am not going to tell you "Wild Bill" Hagy was a choirboy, because someone who guzzles nine or 10 Budweisers and shot-puts his cooler from the upper deck of a stadium before being led away in handcuffs probably doesn't qualify for that.

• Floyd Landis keeps cycling through his list of excuses

  August 10, 2006

  Idon't know if Floyd Landis has a steroid problem, but he sure does have another kind of problem, the same one Paris Hilton has and Madonna and Mel Gibson when he's loaded and the cops pull him over: He just won't shut up.

• Class acts amid the meltdowns in the Olympics

  February 23, 2006

  Sasha Cohen, Kimmie Meissner and Emily Hughes aside, it's easy to think of these Winter Olympics as another depressing reality show, only without a lot of bad singing or Donald Trump and his lacquered hair reducing some poor apprentice to tears.

• Nicknames for Phelps still phoundering

  September 13, 2004

  AGUILTY CONSCIENCE is a terrible burden to carry, and mine was starting to feel like a pair of cinderblocks tied around my waist.

• Medal man needs a mighty moniker

  August 21, 2004

  SURE, MICHAEL Phelps appears to have everything a 19-year-old guy could want: fame, fortune and a chestful of Olympic gold medals that's the ultimate babe magnet, way better than hot wheels or walking your poodle past the bars at Happy Hour.

• Let's not drown Phelps in a sea of our expectations

  August 9, 2004

  GEE, I WISH Michael Phelps was getting a little more ink.

• For cicadas, the party's nearly over

  June 14, 2004

  I smell death in the air.

• Here cicada, there cicada, everywhere cicada cicada

  April 19, 2004

  YOU PEOPLE who haven't seen these things, you have no idea what you're in for.

• People can really get charged up over Isabel

  September 18, 2003

  TO SEE THE Isabel panic for myself, I went to Home Depot yesterday because there is simply no better place to be with a hurricane bearing down on you than a store the size of a NATO base that offers 15 varieties of duct tape.

• Even in face of 'Columbia,' astronauts say, carry on

  February 3, 2003

  BY YESTERDAY, the cold, sick feeling of seeing the space shuttle Columbia explode in the blue Texas sky was fading for many, replaced by a numbness as gray as the February dawn.

• Johnny on the spot

  January 7, 2003

  The first time I heard Johnny Holliday broadcast a University of Maryland basketball game was the winter of 1982. I was driving through some Eastern Shore backwater at night, and it was freezing cold, and the only light inside my little Toyota was the glow of the radio dial.

• Police chief dealing with nonsense from media

  October 17, 2002

  IN THE GLARE of the TV lights, Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose's scowl seemed to deepen with each idiotic question thrown his way, to the point where you wondered if the poor man's features could ever return to normal.

• Soon ghastly fish will walk off into the sunset

  August 8, 2002

  AND SO THE death watch begins for the northern snakeheads in that Crofton pond, the infamous "fish from hell" that provided us with so much entertainment throughout this long, horrid summer.

• Arming pilots both concerns and comforts

  September 27, 2001

  I'M TRYING to picture something here, and the more I picture it, the jumpier I get.

• 'Hoping for little miracles,' says firefighter of operation

  September 17, 2001

  IN THE spring of 1990, John Morris, a New York City firefighter and an old friend of mine, rolled up with Ladder 27 to the Happy Land social club in the Bronx, where a tragedy of unspeakable proportions had just occurred.

• What seemed like just another day actually wasn't

  September 13, 2001

  The morning after the worst attack in U.S. history, with images of a jetliner serenely plowing into a glittering office tower and the Pentagon on fire seared into our minds forever, maybe what was most startling was how utterly, blessedly normal everything felt.

• Exchanging vows is good reason to hit the ice

  February 15, 2001

• Experience is in their court

  February 12, 2001

  IT'S A LITTLE after 12:30 on a sunny February afternoon when the first game begins in the worn gym at the Bykota Senior Center in Towson.

• Man doesn't break a sweat buying lingerie for his wife

  February 8, 2001