Why I'll always give to the homeless

I could see the driver behind me shaking his head in a slow scold as I lowered the power window to hand the homeless guy a $5.

I was crawling through traffic in my Saturn Vue. The guy behind was turtleing along in an Escalade. The homeless guy was freezing his bony ass off begging alongside a Pittsburgh parkway. Guaranteed, either of our vehicles would have seemed like The Ritz to the bearded bum.

Had the situation been different, I might have enjoyed a philosophical discussion with Escalade about the virtues of giving to homeless people. It’s rare I come to any argument by way of the moral high ground, and I’ve heard and vanquished all the arguments against giving.

Tell me he’s just going to spend it on booze and I’ll ask if you’d prefer he run out and buy a new tie. Chances are good I’ll spend the same five on beers with buddies, too.

Say I’d be better off giving the money to a homeless shelter and I’ll say I do that, too.

Argue that studies show I may be perpetuating his homelessness with my handouts and I’ll point out anecdotes that refute those studies.

For the past few years whenever I’m likely to encounter a homeless person, I always lunch someplace where I can order tasty takeout wrapped to go for the first homeless person I see. This is particularly gratifying if I’m hungry for one of Pittsburgh’s famous Primanti’s cheese steak sandwiches.

It’s a tremendous treat (meat, slaw and fries on Italian bread) for those of us who have access to three hot meals a day. But giving one to a homeless person always reminds me of giving Christmas presents to 2 year olds. They can’t comprehend the why of the situation. They’re just overjoyed by the gesture.

The Bible says the ideal is to treat every homeless person as if they were Jesus Christ, Himself.

Well, for the love of God, that’s unrealistic. Am I supposed to flop down there on the sidewalk with him, hold my nose and -- Amen! -- wait for him start preaching? Should I take him home and give him tubby time after my daughters are done?

I suppose I could crucify him, but that’d likely to lead to controversy.

So I do what I can. I hand the guy a few bucks, look him right in the eye and say, “You hang in there, man.”

I have a slightly different perspective on giving to the homeless than most people for the simple reason that I know what it’s like to be homeless.

It was for a story about 10 years ago. I had to a day on a busy Pittsburgh sidewalk with a “Will Work for Food” sign. I spent a couple of weeks gruffing up, put on my filthiest duds and -- thinking I might as well have a little fun with it -- stationed myself right off the bus stop where my dear white-haired Mom used to go to work.

I’ll save that part of the story for another time. I will say Mom came through with some change, some motherly warnings about other territorial panhandlers, but ultimately no offer to let me move back home.

In all, I got a measly $23 over about 10 hours of sidewalk begging. What stayed with me is how utterly worthless people made me feel. I was polite. Friendly. I spent that whole stifling August day trying to make earnest eye contact with every passerby. Few did. Sure, it was a gag, but I couldn’t believe how few people would even acknowledge the presence of a fellow human being in struggling circumstances.

I suppose that day launched my trajectory of becoming a compassionate liberal who snorts at people who fail to understand the vast gulf between that mindset and the masquerade some call compassionate conservatism.

Now, the flip side of the story: I spent the next day in the exact same spot, same get-up, but this time with a sign that read, “Why Lie? Need Beer Money. Let’s Party!!!”

Strangers high-fived me. I had one cab driver stop, leave his vehicle and give me $5 while his smiling fare waved a thumb’s up from the back seat. All told, I made $89.75 in just five hours.

I don’t know why I dream of making lots of money because if I did, I’m fairly certain I’d give it all away.

Even in this time of uncertainty and struggle, I’ve got more than so many unfortunates ever will. And I could lose all I have and it wouldn’t matter one bit. I’m confident I’ll never endure hunger or want.

You see, I still have that sign.

Designated Steroid User

Major League Baseball’s immersing itself in another hand-wringing episode over steroids and I’m once again left chagrined that my influence is so miniscule.

In fact, since the dog died, I can’t think of a single carbon-based entity that bends at all any of my wise suggestions.

My kids think I’m nuts. My wife tunes me out. My friends, even the drunks, don’t pay my ideas any attention.

Can you believe it?

And, of course, neither does Major League Baseball. That’s a pity because four years ago I offered a sensible compromise solution to the torturous problem of performance enhancing drugs laying waste to long cherished records.

Here it is:

Every Major League Baseball team gets a designated steroid user. As a purist, I’ve always loathed the designated hitter rule. That abomination could be banished and replaced with one player who is sanctioned to take as many performance-enhancing drugs as he can handle without collapsing in the batter’s box from heart failure.

There would be no need to asterisk sacred baseball records because baseball would have created an entirely new category: most home runs by a steroid user.

This would have the added benefit letting the medical community carefully study what happens when players ingest the sort of steroid overdoses that turn lab rats into a tiny Clydesdales.

I saw Barry Bonds play hundreds of games in Pittsburgh back when he was drug-free. The most remarkable change in him, to me, wasn’t the overall body size, but how much larger his head has grown. One book says his hat size grew from 7 1/8 to 7 1/2, a spurt that added an inch in circumferance to his noggin.

Sign him up as a designated steroids user and study the results. Who know? Maybe with prolonged use, maybe his brain will get bigger and bigger, too. Think of the possibilities:

“And in today’s news, Barry Bonds was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize bringing surprising peace to warring parties in the Middle East and between Yankee and Red Sox fans in the American League East.”

Commissioner Bud Selig’s even talking about going over the record book from the past 15 years, in effect wiping away some of my greatest memories from hundreds of games I’ve attended.

If that’s the case, I’m going to have to come up with a whole new non-steroid hightlight reel from those once golden years to replace the counterfeits. So here it is:

• April 8, 1991 -- Fuss bucket property owners erected a 10-foot chainlink fence between Three Rivers Stadium and Zagnuts bar. Our options included walking nearly 100 yards out of the way (unacceptable), waiting for an enterprising fan to shear a hole in the fence (might take hours), or scale the fence after already consuming too many ballpark beers. Three of us made it, but my big buddy Paul snagged his pants on a spur and ripped a hole that went clear from ass to ankle. He begged us to take him home so he could change. We did. Six hours and about four bars later.

• May 20, 1991 -- Many devoted baseball fans go their entire lives without ever snagging a foul ball. I caught one about two hours after my friends ridiculed me for giving $5 to a homeless man whose sign said “God Will Bless You For Your Donation.” My blessing ricocheted off a facade and came like a laser right between my eyes. I was holding a beer right handed and deftly caught the sizzler with my left. Didn’t spill a drop. The stadium erupted in cheers. Catching just one foul ball is one of the great tiny joys in life.

• Sept. 30, 1992 -- I used my newspaper press pass to gain free admission for me and three buddies into a playoff game. Then I took our four tickets, scalped them for an indecent profit and used the same press pass to get back in again for free. The ethics of this chicanery are, I admit, shameful. But so is charging me and my thirsty buddies up to $7.50 for a glass of beer so I have no regrets.

• June 20, 1993 -- We saw Barry Bond’s future ex-wife, the lovely Sun Bonds and Barry’s children, buying nachos at a Three Rivers concession stand with a microscopic portion of the $20 million or so Bonds was earning to play baseball. She fumbled a quarter and two dimes that fell into the filth at her feet. We watched in amazement as she ordered one of the kids to dig through the slop to get the change. Paul said, “Now be sure to give that to your Daddy.”

• May 17, 1994 -- I caught another foul ball.

• July 7, 1997 -- We heckled N.Y. Mets ballplayers and Dwight Gooden, Bobby Bonilla and Vince Coleman with such profane vigor that the trio of felonious bums actually looked up from the dugout, pointed and laughed at us. I don’t remember a single thing I said, but it was the only time in my life when I’ve understood the religious phenomenon of people speaking in tongues.

• August 26, 1999 -- I snagged my third foul ball.

• Sept. 24, 2003 -- I met my father for a Pirate game at Atria’s, a great bar in PNC Park, the Pirates shiny new stadium. We shook hands and made small talk with Steeler great Franco Harris who was in the bar being a friendly legend. After that I figured out a way to sneak into the new ballpark that we’d thought was impregnable to ticket cheats like me and my dad. It was the last ballgame I ever saw with Dad. There’s something about sneaking in that makes a $7.50 beer taste better.

And I can’t forget to mention Sept. 28, 2000. It was three days after the birth of our daughter, Josie, and the second to last ball game in the history of Three Rivers Stadium (yep, I attended the last one, too). My wife was furious.

My brother Ronald said, “I can’t believe you went to a baseball game three days after your first child was born.” I rationalized it by saying, “Hey, it was souvenir snowglobe night.”

He understood.

I’m staring at that lovely little snowglobe on my desk as I finish up this post. It means a lot to me.

Sure, it doesn’t consider any of my suggestions, but it’s never sassed me, either.

Folicular follies

I don’t think I’ve ever typed or said the word “folicular” before just now. I’m not even sure it’s a word, but if it isn’t it ought to be because it’s just so fun to say. I’m going to try and include it at least four more times in the following 700 words or so.

I suppose it’s enjoyable because it includes fun sounds like “folly” and “lick you” which conjures all sorts of fun things from lovers to lollipops.

I read a great quote last year from a professional golfer named Rory Sabbatini. He said, “Lick the lollipop of mediocrity once and you’ll suck it forever.” I keep trying to remember to use it, but as of yet have been unable to shoehorn it into any story or conversation.

Folicular (that’s twice) matters have been on my mind lots these days because I’ve never been hairier. I’m on the sixth week of a quest to look as beastly as possible for my new photo for my Pennsylvania driver’s license set to expire this week.

It’s always been my belief that the more menacing your ID mug shot appears, the greater the chances are you’ll get out of any speeding tickets or other unwanted run- ins with John Law. The theory being that if you appear more wholesome in person than the surly you does on your ID, the suspicious officer is likely to conclude you’re endeavoring to become a better person than you were when the disheveled shot was taken and he might give you a break.

Six weeks shows commitment but I hope to devote the majority of 2012 to the project before the the new one expires in 2013.

Still, this result is already being admired by family and friends who’ve been remarking on it as I get more and more hairy. My mother recoils when I drop off the kids. My impatient wife keeps asking if I’m ever going to shave again. My favorite was from a buddy who struggled to place whom I was starting to resemble.

“I know!” he said in a “eureka!” moment of recognition. “It’s Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.”

Perfect. It’s exactly the look I’m after. And, really, if you get past T.K.’s homicidal tendencies, there are many similarities. We both live in isolated homesteads. We both think technology’s moving along too quickly and we both write long-winded, typo-laden manifestos that are largely ignored by a general public that regards us as wackos.

For anyone, any change in our personal appearances naturally draws us to the mirror and I’ve spent a lot of time gazing in mine over the past six weeks. They say the eyes we’re born with remain the same size throughout our lives, but our ears and nose grow a little bit every day. I’ve spent so much time staring in the mirror I think I’ve begun detecting movement.

But it was folicular (that’s three) alterations that drew most of my attention. The beard at the chin is gray, but not uniformly so. It seems almost striped and thus appears skunk-like.

Draw your own conclusions.

But what is most fascinating to me is the one stout gray hair that is rising from just above my forehead like a unicorn’s horn. It’s twice as long as the other brown hairs, more coarse and robust, kind of like a towering redwood in a forest of sycamore.

I suppose there’s a Vesuvius of gray just beneath my scalp and it’s erupting through that one mother pore.

I’ll probably shave the beard in the next few weeks and look forward to 2012 when I’ll grow a facial tumbleweed that’ll sprawl across my next driver’s license.

I haven’t decided what I’ll do with that one gray hair, but I’m leaning toward preserving it.

It has proven itself too exceptional to be severed. It has not licked the lollipop of folicular mediocrity.

That’s four foliculars and I almost got to use the entirety of that great Sabbatini lollipop quote.

Plus in the time it’s taken me to write this manifesto, my beard has grown microscopically. So have my ears and nose.

The way things have been going for me lately, I’ll count this as a fairly productive morning.

Feeling the wrong kind of frisky

I popped out of bed this morning and saw a forecast that included five days of high temperatures in the 40s, 50s and the low 60s.

That means I’ve triumphed over another western Pennsylvania winter. Stick a fork in it. This one’s over. Sure, more biting weather may storm in, but it won’t endure. The most miserable season is behind and the loveliest one beckons.

This man-sized winter was a worthy foe. It included heavier than usual snowfalls, myriad school delays and a bitter stretch of subzero temperatures that threatened to turn my blood to the consistency of Slurpee sludge.

So now it’s time for a reckoning, a detailing of all there is to love and to loathe from the season when Mother Nature lays down and dies.

Wanna guess which list will be longer?

• Love -- Cuddling in front of the fireplace. There is no summer equivalent to the feeling of going from one extreme to the other like there is in going from an extended time freezing outside to coming in to loved ones and hot chocolate in front of cozy fire.

• Love -- Mouth-shagging snow flakes while waiting for the school bus with our tiny gigglers.

• Love -- Watching the morning news after a big snow fall and seeing them scroll through the school delays until finally-- yeah! -- Greater Latrobe is closed! Sure, I know it doesn’t apply to the parents who work, but out of euphoric kinship with the students I always, what the hell, take the day off, too.

• Love -- The onset of spring makes me feel like a wrongly convicted man who’s just been paroled. Every breath, scent and sight is more vivid and wonderful.

Now the flip side . . .

• Loathe -- Arresting myself. At any given time in winter, I could be wearing garments that include 10 pockets (four outer coat, two inner jacket, four pants). I’m a man of routine. I keep my wallet and my car keys in the same place throughout the year. But in winter, the pocket sprawl means my essentials become nomadic and I lose track of their whereabouts. I’ll stand there and pat myself down like I’m doing some kind of Arctic macarena. Whenever I go into the whole frisky routine, I always feel like reading myself my Miranda Rights.

• Loathe -- The freakish weather phenomenon that means no matter what direction I sweep fresh inches of snow from the windshield, the sum of it blows back and deposits itself on the one inch of exposed skin on the back of my neck. It doesn’t matter how I alter my position, my sweep or the direction of the wind. It never fails to avalanche onto the exposed skin. It’s fascinating and if a cheerful meteorologist ever tries to explain it to me, I’ll strangle him on the spot.

• Loathe -- Migratory accessories. I have about three coats depending on the weather’s severity, but I only have two sets of gloves. I’m always having to do a mental check on which gloves I need for the conditions and am always worried that I’ve either lost some gloves or left them behind.

• Loathe -- Taking inventory of all my stuff. The other day I took the baby on a long shopping trip to the grocery store. I dropped her off at the store nursery and doggedly tore into the long list. When I finished, I had to run through another mental checklist to make sure I had all my winter gear. Hat, gloves, scarf, etc. When I’d satisfied myself it was all there, I began pushing the cart out to the parking lot and had the bags all packed before I realized I’d left the kid behind in the store’s care center. But I did have the gloves.

• Loathe -- Treacherous walking conditions. I love to stroll, but winter conditions restrict that soul-restoring activity. Worse, thoughtless property owners make it dangerous. I took a nasty spill three weeks ago that still has my left wrist aching, all because some jerk was too lazy to bother shoveling the snow. The only reason I haven’t contacted a lawyer is because it happened in my very own driveway and I know the lazy homeowner isn’t worth suing.

Purity police muddy Phelps's waters

I want to assure readers of this blog, which now includes at least two guys named Ronald, that I have no plans to drug test them. This blog will unconditionally continue to welcome both the sober and the so totally baked that they’re still giggling over the above picture of The Dude.

I’m doing this, in part, because I’m hoping to lure swimming legend Michael Phelps to jump on in. The water here’s fine.

Had Phelps, 23, been a reader earlier this summer, he wouldn’t be feeling compelled to bow and scrape before the nation’s purity police after a party goer snapped a picture of him snorkeling a bong and then sold the photo to dastardly editors at a British tabloid.

Who knew some pot smokers could be so lacking in scruples?

To me the absence of numerous other pictures indicates he took a single hit merely to be sociable. I see nothing wrong with that.

Of course, I’m on record as believing that those of us who work in places that don’t drug test have a social responsibility to test drugs on behalf of those who cannot, so judge for yourself.

Now USA Swimming has suspended him for three months and Kellogg’s is dropping its sponsorship. Both are ridiculous overreactions to a minor infringement that can almost be considered quaint in light of some of our other coke-sniffin’, spouse-abusin’, rootin’ tootin’, homey shootin’ felons who still earn millions playing professional sports for teams like the Dallas Cowboys.

It’s impossible for me to fathom the dedication it took for Phelps to get to the level he reached in Beijing. He trained every single day for five straight years. The result was an Olympic performance none of us will ever forget.

And suspending him from countless hours of grinding swimming makes no sense. If anything his sponsors should threaten to drop him if he doesn’t automatically resume spending countless hours of grinding swimming.

Heck, if America were at all serious about winning the so-called war on drugs, it would sentence anyone caught selling or using the stuff to work out with Phelps.

Now with the suspension, he’ll miss a March event and will be behind schedule for the July world championships in Rome. If he is to compete, it will be a grueling uphill swim, not unlike what a salmon must go through to spawn.

Of course, the salmon has a carnal motivation for all that work. Phelps does not.

That’s why six months ago I laid out a clear and wise path for Phelps to follow. I said he needed to sink his remaining swimming ambitions and become Arthur Bach.

Arthur was the Dudley Moore character in the title role of the 1981 movie of the same name. He played a happy, wealthy drunk who left $1,000 tips, was kind to and revered by his staff of flunkies and drivers, and generally laughed through life as though he were being tickled by a giant invisible feather.

As I correctly foresaw, further competitive swimming and trying to live up to his image would only dim Phelps’s luster.

I still maintain the thing for him to do is take the $10 million in sponsorships he’s already reaped and use it to build a huge mansion near the Inner Harbor at his Baltimore hometown, a great place to party. The house should feature an enormous and lavish pool with waterslides, a lazy river and an open invitation to all the inner city and neighborhood kids to stop by anytime they’d want. An adults-only section could feature the world’s largest swim-up Hooters.

He’d be the king of Baltimore (happily dethroning weirdo filmmaker John Waters). He’d be revered for his good nature. We’d all feel a little better about ourselves every time he’d make the news for some charitable act. And he could enjoy it all with the kind of endless buzz that made Arthur such a wonderful character.

It’s too bad he didn’t hear about my idea before he decided to try and live up to all the unrealistic expectations. Because now he’s trapped.

He’s forever at the mercy of those uptight stick-in-the-muds and their narrow 1950s definitions of how our heroes should behave.

I wish we could take the whole bunch and retroactively drug test them to see if they’ve ever taken a social hit on a bong or ever dabbled in recreational drugs.

I’ll bet we’d find they need to take lots more.

Jump hugs with dangerous drunks

While late night comics were ridiculing Pittsburgh for excessively celebrating its Super Bowl victory, I was trying to correct a conviction I hadn’t done enough.

Two days before the Steelers won the Super Bowl, Pittsburgh City Schools announced it would delay the start of Monday’s education by two hours to allow its students and staffers time to sleep it off.

Many commentators howled this set a terrible example for hungover Pittsburgh students and showed just how out of touch the city is from conventional priorities, as if pandering to the sports obsessed in America could ever backfire.

I thought it was brilliant and believe in a few months we’re going to start to see an influx of families who’ve moved their children to Pittsburgh just so they could sufficiently recover from future Super Bowl victories. Call them Steeler sleeper cells.

Me, I popped out of bed reveille ready at 6 a.m., dashed out to get the newspaper and immediately began reading it at an eighth grade level.

I’d spent the entire day with Valerie and our two girls, 8 and 2. During the course of 12 hours of available Super Bowl coverage, I consumed four beers.

I love watching the game with the girls. I don’t mind explaining basic football terminology. I don't even mind it when on a crucial third and long the 2-year-old crawls into my lap and insists I read to her Dr. Seuss’s “The Things I Think I Think.”

But there’s a part of me I’ve nurtured through decades of zero responsibility and dubious judgment that misses watching the biggest game of the year out with the boys. That part of me would like to jaw about complex strategy, football history and unleash wanton profanities at the brain-dead refs.

The essence of the event doesn’t change. I’m still watching the same game, but if one of the boys wants to crawl up on my lap and cuddle during a crucial play, well, I can take it on a case-by-case basis.

That’s the part of me I decided to briefly indulge on Monday evening.

Jack’s Bar on Pittsburgh’s South Side is open 365 days a year and is one of the city's most raucous taverns. It has a great jukebox and a lively clientele of inebrients who bring boozy spice to every conversation.

The bar was packed with Steeler fans. Every stool was occupied except for clear down at the end where five vacant seats stood between relative civilization and menace.

He was an older man, maybe 70. He was shouting profanity at one poor guy who looked too timid to get up and run.

And when I say profanity I do mean singular. He didn’t use a barnyard array. It was exclusively the word I’d heard an off-color country singer in another bar long ago refer to as “The Universal Adjective (“I lost my f-ing job, I lost my f-ing wife, the universal adjective is f-ing up my life...).

Finally, the mousy guy got up and skittered away. That meant I still had a five-stool Maginot Line between me and the old lout. I was about done with my first beer. I could have downed it and left, but I have a rule about always drinking at least two beers in any bar. Drink just one and you look like a tourist or prey.

Drinking two always friendlies up the bartender and the regulars who recognize you as someone who means business and not one of those one-beer dorks.

It automatically looked like the two-beer rule was a mistake, because the guy turned right to me and sneered, “What the hell are you doing in here?”

I didn’t flinch. “I’m here to drink some beers with some friendly Steeler fans.”

“Well, I’m a Steeler fan,” he said.

“You a friendly one?”

“I can be,” he said a tad defensively.

That little exchange brought him one stool nearer.

Turns out he was a friendly Steeler fan. The guy went way back and knew beloved Steeler patriarch Art Rooney Sr. He told some great football stories. One stool later he told me about his kids, his grandkids and how joyful it is to share with them what he called “jump hugs.” That's when the kids run clear down from one end of the house and explode into his arms.

He was a professional window washer who by the time he was sitting on the stool right next to me told me about the harrowing tragedy 30 years ago when he nearly got blown off a city skyscraper and about the one poor guy who did.

I left after four beers and had to resist the urge to run clear from the other side of Jack’s and give the guy a great big jump hug before I split.

I learned something that day when the Steeler Super Bowl victory shortchanged city students two hours of their precious education.

I learned never to sit five stools away from drunken old Steeler fans.

Any more than two and you’re just wasting time.

A confetti shower of Steelers/Springsteen/Groundhog Day thoughts

• My mother is from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Every year she makes Groundhog cookies for family and friends. I want to stress: Groundhog cookies are not made from critters.

• If you’re a Democratic-leaning fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, as I certainly am, the last six months has brought wave after wave of good news. The Steelers began the season playing compelling football against what was statistically the toughest schedule in the NFL. This coincided with a riveting presidential campaign. Then Steeler owner Dan Rooney, a lifelong Republican, endorsed Barack Obama and Obama won. Then Obama, a lifelong Chicago Bears fan, endorsed the Steelers and they won. The only thing that could make today any better is if the Groundhog pops up and in flawless English announces a radical economic recovery plan that confounds experts who all agree it will correct the economy in four weeks -- and that spring is on the way.

• The opening ceremonies for the game were among the most moving I’ve ever scene. Jennifer Hudson sang the national anthem with touching poise. And it was a stroke of genius to bring out the heroic crew from the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River. I tingle every time I’m reminded of that day.

• Did I miss it, or was there not one single monkey commercial during the game? I’d run out and buy truckloads of a feminine hygiene products if a funny monkey subliminally suggested I should.

• I acknowledge my priorities are way off kilter when I admit that I’m now having trouble ranking which was better news: the Hudson heroics that saved the lives of 155 souls or the Steelers sixth Super Bowl victory.

• One of the great things about being a Steeler fan is how generally well regarded we are in media and anecdotally around the country. I was in Wisconsin doing a golf travel story this fall and met a friendly gang of golfers who warmly embraced me simply because I told them I was from the Steel City. The one guy threw his arm around me and said he’d never met anyone from Pittsburgh who wasn’t a really great guy. I pointed to my giant glass of bourbon and ice and told him he’d never met me after three of these. I hope I didn’t do anything to ruin the guy’s perfect record.

• Bruce Springsteen’s halftime show was fantastic. It rocked, it was hilarious and showed all the joyful exuberance that makes him such an enduring classic. At one point he ran across the stage and slid crotch-first right into a heavy camera. If the 59-year-old rocker would have gotten up wobbly and ashen-faced from that stunt, it would have been the funniest thing any of us had ever seen. But the Boss was unfazed. Perhaps he’d borrowed a cup from one of the locker rooms.

• Springsteen is one of the coolest guys on the planet, but he’s not even the coolest guy in his own band. That would be Little Steven Van Zant. Not only does he play guitar in the E Street Band, he also played Silvio Dante for the entire run of the “The Sopranos.” I always imagine James Gandolfini coming up to him on the set and slyly asking, “So what’s Springsteen really like?” And Springsteen coming up to him back stage and wondering, “So what’s Gandolfini really like?”

• The color commentators for NBC’s main desk with Bob Costas and Cris Collinsworth couldn’t have been more colorless. Tony Dungy (great man), Mike Holmgren (lumpy bore) and Matt Millen (failed idiot) had me wishing my fancy remote came with a snooze alarm every time they opened their mouths. God help me, it actually had me wishing for some of the ESPN or Fox sports gang buffoonery.

• I’d written earlier about how if the Steelers win, two of the most powerful and envied institutions on the planet -- the U.S. and The Pittsburgh Steelers -- would be led by charismatic black men and how I planned to taunt racists I know with the thought that blacks must be genetically predisposed to lead. For the first time in my life, I’m looking forward to running into some racists today.

• One of these days I’m going to learn how to do that little hot link thingy instead of vaguely referring to past posts. It probably won’t be this week.

• I’ll stop whatever I’m doing anytime the Bob Dylan/Will.i.am commercial comes on TV, but I’ll never choose Pepsi over Coke.

• I’d predicted that the Steelers would win 33-10 and that after the game everyone would be talking about Ben Roethlisberger being among the best in the game. I was half right.

• That thing about me wondering if those Milwaukee guys not liking me after those three big bourbons? Nonsense. Those guys loved me. I’m always a lot of fun after three bourbons. Heck, I think I’m going to have three big bourbons for breakfast this morning and just see what the day brings.