DAILY DOMER: EXHUMING McCARTHY'S PLAY, UNDERPANTS RADIUS, ETC.

The front page of today's Observer  has the following headline: "Police make 35 arrests at football game". That's a home-game record for 2008 thus far. This is becoming quite the fractious issue on campus and off. Consider this episode that was recounted on NDNation.com yesterday. 

On the other hand, a freshman from Lewis Hall, a women's dorm, wrote in to the Observer today reminding her fellow students that underage drinking is, well, illegal.

"If any student on this campus is unaware that it is illegal to drink alcohol under the age of 21, then the admissions office may need to review its admittance standards," writes Nicole Burson. "Assuming that this is not the case and that all of Notre Dame's high-caliber student body is aware of this fact, I fail to understand how those that knowingly choose to break this law should be either surprised or offended when the well-known consequences of illegal actions are applied to them.

"To imply shock or indignation that the "good reputation" of Notre Dame students does not exempt them from the legal system is ridiculous, and indicative of our generation's failure to take responsibility for its actions."

Whoa. Not only is Nicole probably not invited to the next lacrosse off-campus kegger, but she has top-level N.D. administration potential written all over her. It's just too bad she cannot become a priest.

Seriously? Burson is correct, of course. There is a difference, though, between the existence of a law and the enforcement of it. Every Friday afternoon and Saturday morning I see the same sketchy-looking characters holding up "Need Tickets" signs(hey, if the Indiana State Excise Police can make preemptive judgements about "appeared to be underage drinkers", then I can do so regarding the sketchiness of men who stand by the side of the road). They are scalpers, of course, and scalping tickets is illegal.

A couple of years ago, Notre Dame's ticket office and the South Bend Police made a concerted effort to crack down on this illegal activity. This year, you don't hear about it so much.

College students drink beer. They just do. And being people of reasonable intelligence, they understand the illegality of it. They fail to understand, though, what makes it perfectly legal for their senior and often junior classmates to do so and not them. The wider chasm in maturity is between college and high school, not between age 21 and 20.

Drinking and driving? Very serious offense, no matter what the age. But what is happening here at Notre Dame, at tailgaters, in the student sections and even at off-campus houses rented by of-age students, reeks more of a power trip than of a police force that is sworn to protect and to serve.

This is coming from someone who was not at all a serious partyer in college. Whose first weeknight out at a bar in South Bend was on his 21st birthday. But read an item such as this one and tell me if there isn't some worrisome hostility being exhibited by local law enforcement toward Notre Dame students.

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Wasn't crazy about the season premiere of How I Melt Your Mother a week ago, but the show found its stride again last night. If you've lived for more than a year in New York City, then you and your friends have had the "Best Burger in New York" argument. This was a very insider episode, right down to the Corner Bistro riff, because the Corner Bistro always comes up in this argument.
The CB, located in the West Village, has for so long been considered among the best burgers (and, at $5, among the cheapest) in the city that hipster-doofuses reject it as the best burger for that reason alone. I happen to love the Corner Bistro--the burgers are cheap and juicy, the booths are rustic and crowded, there's just one busboy/waiter for everybody, the burgers are served on glorified coffee filters, and it's just a cozy place to happen. The atmosphere itself is comfort food. I spent about three hours there on 9/11 and it was one of the few places in the city that day that was packed. Everyone was looking for a safe harbor, something familiar.

Also loved Ted's "Underpants Radius" Theory, which states that "the lower a person's self-esteem, the farther his underpants radius (the distance from his bed that he is willing to wear underpants) extends." There are people teaching 400-level courses in philosophy at Ivy League schools who've never come up with a theory this brilliant.

Ted also had the best line, as he checked out Barney wearing a suit and a loud baseball cap: "You look like a low-first round draft pick."

And, finally, what are the odds that some ratings-starved network doesn't develop "Heads or Tails" as a midseason replacement? Brilliant.

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About six months ago a friend of mine asked me if there was anyone in sports I hadn't met whom I really wanted to meet (so many, actually; we could start with the front line of the Denver Broncos Cheerleaders and go from there...if there is any justice in this world, Dr. Z will someday nominate Romi Bean for the Pro Football Hall of Fame).

Anyway, my reply was, "Not in sports, per se, but if I could meet any 'celebrity' it would be Paul Newman."

The reason was simple. No high-profile person that I can think of had lived a better, richer, more humanitarian life. First of all, Newman, who died last Friday at the age of 83, was simply one of the world's best-looking men and he was also blessed with an ineffable charm (my lifelong friend Tom V., currently stationed overseas with the State Dept., is the only person I've ever personally known who comes closest to having that rare combo). In film Newman was the dreamy guy's guy whom women swooned over and men only dreamt of imitating. 

I don't claim to be Leonard Maltin on his cinematic career, but I recall the first time I saw The Sting or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and thinking, There's nobody like that guy. Robert Redford was always a little aloof. John Wayne, a little too domineering (just ask Maureen O'Hara). Burt Reynolds, a little too macho. Warren Beatty, a little too serious. Paul Newman was, to steal Nick Lowe's line, the Jesus of Cool.

And that, of course, was not the reason I admired him so much. Paul Newman found a way to be a prolific philanthropist that appealed to me the most: by being a successful capitalist. He created products that people not only bought, but loved, the "Newman's Own" line, which was doubly beneficial: not only did it raise funds that Newman could donate to various causes (last night, in a tribute to Newman, David Letterman said that he'd given away $250 million in his lifetime) but it also created jobs.

I flinch when someone asks me to sponsor them to run a marathon or a 5-K. Yes, I'm a curmudgeon, but we've long passed the time when running a marathon or doing a walkathon was a "sacrifice". Now it's an act of self-improvement. And, really, who cares whether or not you finish the walkathon, much less do it (see: Larry David vs. Marty Funkhouser, "Curb Your Enthusiasm", Season 6). My common reaction is, "I'd rather pay you that money to clean my apartment."

Newman did it the right way. He produced something you'd want to buy and then he used the revenue to change people's lives. He understood his celebrity and exploited it only so much as it might inveigle you to buy his marinara sauce. But then you did purchase it and you know what? It was better than Ragu, so why not?

And I haven't even mentioned his auto racing jones yet. Or his sense of humor ("Where the hell are the singin' cats?"). Or the fact that he had been married to actress Joanne Woodward for fifty years (it was his 2nd marriage)? Here's something I never knew about him, from Wikipedia, regarding his military service:

Newman served in the Navy in World War II in the Pacific theater.^[15] Newman was sent to the Navy V-12 program at Ohio University, hoping to be accepted for pilot training, but this failed when it was discovered he was color blind.^[15][16] He was sent instead to boot camp and then on to further training as a radioman and gunner. Qualifying as a rear-seat radioman and gunner in torpedo bombers, in 1944 Aviation Radioman Third Class Newman was sent to Barber's Point, Hawaii, and was subsequently assigned to Pacific-based replacement torpedo squadrons (VT-98, VT-99, and VT-100). These torpedo squadrons were responsible primarily for training replacement pilots and combat air crewmen, placing particular importance on carrier landings.^[16] He later flew from aircraft carriers as a tail gunner in the Avenger torpedo bomber. As a radioman/gunner, he served aboard the USS Bunker Hill during the battle for Okinawa in the spring of 1945. He was ordered to the ship with a draft of replacements shortly before the attack, but by a fluke of war was held back because his pilot had an ear infection. The rest of his detail died.

Anyway, in Letterman's tribute to Newman on Monday night, which you can see here , Dave put it plainly: "Here is a guy who knew how to live his life, because he took care of other people. And it wasn't just here or there. It was a full time commitment...this guy, and I don't know how it works exactly, oughta be a saint."

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Finally, wanted to respond to the comment on yesterday's blog from "Irish Rogue". First of all, thanks to you and to anyone who writes. My "O! Bama!" commentary was not intended as political satire, or commentary. If you read my stuff, you know that I'm far more interested in wordplay than I am a political agenda. I try to be the Jason Mraz of blogging:

Ha La La La La
L-listen closer to the verse I lay
Ha La La La La
It's all about the wordplay
Ha La La La love
The wonderful thing it does
Because, because
I am the wizard of ooh's and ah's and fa-la-la's
Yeah The Mr. A to Z
They say I'm all about the wordplay

And, hence, the "O! Bama!" line was not a political statement. It was just an opportunity to point out that, in my mind, Bama is the No. 1 team in the nation and can be quite opportunely punned with one of the two presidential nominees just 35 days outside of the election.

A few more thoughts on this subject, if you don't mind...

--In November of 2000 I was still an employee at Sports Illustrated. During the week of the presidential election, SI put on its cover a then-wide receiver at Oregon State who was extended full-out to catch a pass. You know him better now as Ocho Cinco, but back then he was just Chad Johnson. Now, I believe, am pretty sure, in fact, that this was completely coincidental, but I loved that in the week of the most controversial election in our nation's history, SI put a hanging Chad on its cover.

--In the interest of equal time, anyone who wants to learn more about John McCain would do themselves a favor by locating a copy of P.O.W.: A Definitive History of the American Prisoner-of-War Experience in Vietnam, by John G. Hubbell. It's an outstanding an exhaustive account of what men such as McCain and Admiral Stockdale endured on a daily basis at the Hanoi Hilton. You can still find copies of it on Amazon.com

--Finally, Jay Christensen edits and runs the site WizofOdds.com and does an excellent job (even if he never posts links to my stories, but rather to the stories of people who spend nights on my hotel-room floor). Here's a photo that is bound to win the Democratic nominee a few votes among the Cornhole-playing crowd (to better understand the photo, hit the link that reads "the hands-on approach".

Thanks for reading, everybody.