Keeping a civil tongue in traffic

May 12, 2008

P.M. Forni even drives with civility.

Recent columns

• 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.

• Bodies of evidence about anatomy

  April 23, 2008

  I have just returned from seeing Body Worlds 2, the popular exhibit at the Maryland Science Center that uses real bodies to display the human anatomy and makes us realize it's a good thing we have flesh covering our insides, or we'd all look like extras in a George Romero movie.

• Celebs as shills are going too far

  April 21, 2008

  Here is the first thing I see the other night when I turn on the TV: Jamie Lee Curtis rubbing her belly and shilling for Activia yogurt.

• Proving regular guyness

  April 16, 2008

  It sure is a hoot watching Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, two wealthy, powerful U.S. senators with Ivy League backgrounds, trying to out-regular-guy each other.

• Speeding excuses fall on deaf ears

  April 14, 2008

  The police have been setting speed traps in my neighborhood recently, and they're writing so many tickets that entire forests are being wiped out.

• Another health myth goes down drain

  April 9, 2008

  So that whole business about drinking eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day is a lot of hooey?

• Clerks keep eyes on fresh prey

  April 7, 2008

  I am at a men's clothing store in the mall and have taken exactly two steps into the place when here come the sharks.

• Anthem singers: Hold the theatrics

  April 2, 2008

  Ilike banging my head against the wall and advocating for lost causes, so here is another appeal to those artistes who sing the national anthem at sporting events: Can we please get on with it?

• A society overrun by dumb videos

  March 31, 2008

  Here's a major problem in society that no one seems to address: We're drowning in dumb videos.

• Directory lost use, gained weight

  March 26, 2008

  The new phone books that we'll never use arrived the other day, just in time to replace the old phone books we never used.

• Goodbye, Pudgie. You were loved

  March 24, 2008

  From the cover

• Gas prices filling us up with panic

  March 19, 2008

  Spring is almost here and what better way to celebrate the new season than with a nervous breakdown each time you pull up to the gas pumps?

• Down a Guinness like an Irishman

  March 17, 2008

  It's St. Patrick's Day, and maybe you plan to celebrate with a pint or two of Guinness, except you're new to the legendary beer and want to know more about it so you don't come off looking like a dork.

• Hey Southwest - how 'bout you cut the sass, focus on safety

  March 12, 2008

  As a nervous flier, I wasn't too thrilled to hear Southwest Airlines could be fined a record $10.2 million for failing to inspect planes for cracks in the fuselage.

• Words to fear: assembly required

  March 10, 2008

  The idea, as explained to me by the 16-year-old, was this: We buy a pingpong table for some serious father-and-son bonding and when that goes south - say, about 10 minutes later - he and his friends can play.

• Bragging rights for sleepless nights

  March 5, 2008

  A new survey finds that a third of American workers said they had fallen asleep or been very sleepy on the job in the past month, which should surprise absolutely no one.

• Watching knights of the dinner table

  March 3, 2008

  Let me begin by saying how lucky we are to live in an area where you can visit a replica of an 11th-century castle and feast on hunks of roasted chicken while knights on horseback joust and sword fight and a comely wench keeps coming up to your table and saying: "More to drink, sire?"

• Hope doesn't spring eternal

  February 27, 2008

  Spring training is a time of hope for baseball fans, a time to forget the past and look toward the future with optimism -- unless you root for the Baltimore Orioles.

• A far cry from peaceful at library

  February 25, 2008

  I go to the library for peace and quiet and to read the great books, but the peace and quiet thing can be dicey in these places.

• So what? It's only a falling satellite

  February 20, 2008

  Here's something that's hard to understand: A damaged U.S. spy satellite is about to fall out of the sky, or maybe get blasted with a missile within days, and no one seems very worried about it.

• Tracking pizza dough to door

  February 18, 2008

  For years now, I have tried to keep life simple and not get dragged under by modern technology and the slow geek death of being chained to a PC or laptop or BlackBerry.

• Really rocking the '08 vote

  February 13, 2008

  Outside the Cockeysville school where I voted yesterday, there were more campaign signs for Ron Paul than anyone else, so many you'd think the Free State had suddenly awakened from a long sleep with this collective thought: The only one who can get us out of this mess is Ron Paul.

• Melting over all that chocolate

  February 11, 2008

  Let's begin by saying that when it comes to chocolate, I have been around the block a few times and am pretty much considered the last word on the subject now.

• 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