One of my favorite activities as a teen-ager was to watch television over the phone with my best friend.

It is hard to imagine Thomas Kinkade as anything less than supremely self-assured.

I have no idea how to get in touch with anyone anymore. Everyone, it seems, has a home phone, a cell phone, a regular e-mail account, a Facebook account, a Twitter account, and a Web site. Some of them also have a Google Voice number. There are the sentimental few who still have fax machines.

I love writing traditional magazine pieces, and especially their breadth of reporting and the deliberateness of the writing.

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.

Sense of smell, of course, is only one of those dog qualities that can't be replicated or improved upon. I've been researching dogs in warfare for my book about 'Rin Tin Tin,' and I've read many accounts of their heroics: carrying messages through battle, alerting troops to enemy planes, and even parachuting behind enemy lines.

College athletics are so entrenched and enjoyed by so many people that they will never be discontinued or substantially changed. I know that. I just pity the people caught in that tender trap. And most of all, I pity those kids.