Enotes

First, let's call it for what it is, not what its title is. The National Spelling Bee has nothing to do with spelling. Well, maybe a little bit. But only a little bit. The Bee is, in fact, a test of one's memory. The ability to remember the order in which the letters of words that no child will ever use, come in. It's a demanding, almost cruel ordeal we put the children through. And what do they get out of it, exactly? Nausea. Cold sweats. Fainting spells -- no pun intended. Wracked nerves. Besides, the Indian-American kids seem to have this down pat, so why bother anymore? This year's winner is a 13-year-old girl from Kansas who is now the seventh Indian-American child to win the event in the past 11 years. Her name is Kavya Shivashankar. “Spelling has been such a big part of my life,” said the Scripps Spelling Bee 2009 winner to the Associated Press. Kavya has been participating in national bees for several years, including the 2008 Scripps bee. I'm sure she's...

Time was, you could pull into a gas station and be reasonably certain that your brethren in other cars were there to do one thing, pretty much. Buy gas, that is. In fact, I remember when you didn't even have to leave your car to fill up. "Full serve", they call it now. Back then, it was just "serve" -- one kind. Sit tight. For here comes Mr. Attendant, striding up to your vehicle. "Fill it up, regular," my dad would say. And that's what Mr. Attendant did. While the gas was pumping, the windshield was being cleaned. Front and back. Air in the tires was being checked. If you asked, the hood would be looked under, as well. Not "full serve." Just, "serve." Sometimes, if they were in a really generous mood, the gas stations would thank you for stopping by. A free set of knives. Some maps. And other goodies. Buying gas now is an ordeal. And not just because of the prices, which, if they were afforded movie ratings, would be NC-17. An...

I'll pick you up at the Stroh's plant after work, then we'll ride on our Uniroyal tires to Cunningham's Drugs for a milkshake. Better yet, a Vernor's float. Speaking of beverages, I'm running low on Towne Club pop, so can we stop at the distribution outlet? I have my case of empty bottles in the trunk. Then it'll be off to Great Scott! for a few groceries. If you're good, I'll treat you to dinner downtown at the Rattlesnake Club. After a day at Bob-Lo, of course. Who says you can't go home anymore? You can do it in your mind. All the time. Whenever suits your fancy. I've pedaled my bike to Cunningham's, but for the baseball cards in the dispensing machine near the registers. Then I've traded them right out front, amidst the passers-by, with my friends. Meet me at the Kern Clock. And while we're nearby, you can do some Father's Day shopping for me at Hudson's. Lord help us if we ever lose the ability to have memories. It...

Too few things in life are certain, and the ones that are, aren't pleasant. Death. Taxes. Dick Cheney. And, the house always wins. For Pat DeMauro, she took that last one and said, "Nuh-uh!" DeMauro is a New Jersey grandmother who, in the words of craps-shooting expert Dominic "The Dominator" Loriggio, performed the equivalent of making 500 straight free throws or rolling three straight 300 perfect games in bowling. DeMauro plunked down $100 at a $10 minimum table, grabbed the craps dice at the Borgata hotel casino in Atlantic City on Saturday and started rolling. And rolling. And rolling. For four hours. "It was great. Everyone was chanting my name and clapping and I was dancing," DeMauro said, laughing, as she talked to CNN. In craps, rolling a seven can be very bad. And rolling a seven, mathematically, has a chance of occurring once every six rolls. That's what makes DeMauro's feat all the more amazing. She broke the mark of 3:06 set in 1989...

William Cunningham just got slapped with 100 years of prison time. He got off lightly, if you ask me. Cunningham is a Georgia man. Correction. He's from Georgia. But he's no man. Cunningham was sentenced Thursday after a jury found him guilty on seven counts of aggravated assault for forcing his children in 2006 to eat soup laced with prescription drugs and lighter fluid. Yep, you read correctly. Not even in my most vile moods could I have concocted that as a tall tale. Cunningham's motive was to have the kids, ages three years and 18 months at the time, ingest the poisoned Campbell's soup so that he could extort money from the company after they fell ill. He did it not once, but three times. “The third time, he forced it down them and this is the one that put the kids in the hospital and made them deathly sick,” said Ron Dockery, the children’s grandfather. No, 100 years ain't enough. How about some flogging, or some daily cell visits from brutes who'd like to ...

Forget the women and children. It's governors first. If you live in Florida, that is. Republican governor Charlie Crist of the Sunshine State is making a run for Senate in 2010. So far, so good. Who's to keep any man--or woman--from advancing any career? But part of Crist's motive, it's being reported, isn't so admirable. Charlie Crist wants to move into the Senate because, frankly, the heat's too high in the kitchen in Tallahassee. "I think Gov. Crist realizes that this is a pretty good time to leave the governor's chair, with all the unemployment and the state in massive debt," one of the politcal analysts said on MSNBC last week. Well! So your governor is a bailer, huh, Floridians? It's time to become a Senator because the state's going down in flames? My, that's some loyalty to your people, eh? Now compare Crist to our guv in Michigan, Jenny Granholm. It was posed to Granholm during the transition from President Bush to Obama whethe...

My goodness, now they're even calling Miley Cyrus the F-word. Fat. And, good for little Miley, she's fighting back. Miley is 16 years old. She's a pop star, the daughter of one-time pop star/turned actor Billy Ray Cyrus. Those are the facts. Now, the opinions. Seems some photos of Miley hit the Net that showed her in a bikini. Even little Miley made a crack on Twitter about her jiggly-ness in the photos. Then the hounds were released. The Internet wonks started deriding little Miley for her body. Used the F word. A lot. So little Miley fought back. NOT fat. And so what if she was? She posted on her Twitter: "Talk all you want. I have my flaws. I'm a normal girl. There's things about my body that I would change but stop with calling me f*t in post. I don't even like the word." Obviously, by the way she gave it genuine F-word status by refusing to even spell it out. She went on. It's OK to yell, "You go, girl!" as you read. "Those rema...