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Here’s Baylor quarterback Robert Griffin III, the likely 2nd Overall pick in this week’s NFL Draft, receiving the ultimate honor: A sculpture of his face at a Subway restaurant made out of ‘Smokehouse Barbecue Chicken’: Sure it looks delicious, but the guy hasn’t taken a snap in the NFL yet – are we sure his career will turn out to be BBQ Chicken Face Statue-worthy? Con sarnit, back in mah day, Red Grange played every game for Twenty Years and all he ever got was his name on a Single Bean. They Couldn’T Even Fit His First Name On The Bean, dangit, they just drew part of an ‘R’, but Ol’ Red was so tough, he ran Right Through That Bean, and then he was like “sorry I destroyed that bean, can you make me another bean?” and the A&P Did because back then sports...

Family Guy creator/rememberer of things Seth MacFarlane has closed a deal to reboot the Flintstones franchise through a series of “tv and film projects.” Predictably, this has been met with an internet wave of “Oh God No”, probably because Seth MacFarlane makes bad things and people remember the Flintstones fondly; my colleague Alex Zalben summed up this impending disaster in an all-too-accurate Tweet, “Hey Wilma, do you remember the time when Oh Wait Nothing Has Happened Before This.” While I share and probably exceed the internet’s general distaste for Seth MacFarlane’s animated humor, and still believe The Flintstones was an objectively great show and not just something we remember fondly out of blind nostalgia, I also believe that some perspective is in order for the panicky masses who are acting like this MacFarlane announcement will somehow ruin the pristine legacy of one of television’s all-time most beloved cartoons.

I was born at the center of the universe, and have had good fortune for all of my days. The center was located at the corner of Washington and Maple streets in Urbana, Illinois, a two-bedroom white stucco house with green canvas awnings, evergreens and geraniums in front and a white picket fence enclosing the back yard. Hollyhocks clustered thickly by the fence. There was a barbeque grill back there made by my father with stone and mortar, a dime embedded in its smokestack to mark the year of its completion.

There was a mountain ash tree in the front yard, and three more down the parking on the side of the house. These remarkable trees had white bark that could be peeled loose, and their branches were weighed down by clusters of red-orange berries. "People are always driving up and asking me about those trees," my father said. He had planted them himself,...

April 24, 2008 -- On Wednesday morning I became seduced by the idea that I would, after all, somehow turn up at the festival. I would get there by ambulance, limo, MediVan, who knows what? But at the present I can't take a step with my fractured hip, so it would have taken two physical therapists to essentially haul me around. Thinking about it overnight, I decided it would be a great gesture to turn up and wave to my friends, but at what cost of pain and medical risk? The logistics just didn't add up. So while the festival unwinds in Urbana-Champaign, I will continue therapy at this end.

Chaz told me lots of people with experience of hip injuries advised her a six-hour round trip by whatever means would likely be very painful. (Flashback to old Trevor Howard story: "Right you are, old chap! Bloody difficult! Damned painful! No sense in my going!