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Tally so far: no fish jell-o, no horseradish, no salty parsley. Surprisingly, no bread, either, not by design. One charoset on matzoh, hold the horseradish. One box of Joyva Ring Jells, half a box of Joyva Marshmallow Twists. One See's Easter Bunny (they're kosher!). Two small bags of Cadbury's Mini Eggs. Two Snickers Eggs. A handful of Hershey's Eggs.

Nutrition be damned, it's a holiday. Leave the healthy stuff for Elijah.

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This has been an interesting opening weekend for the NBA Playoffs- Iverson's 55, Marbury's prayer, Milwaukee getting annihilated and arraigned, the Lakers blowing out KG on the road. That last one will fuel more talk about something that's going to be trouble for the league- if the Lakers breeze through Minnesota, then continue the run all the way to another title, you'll have the final nail in the coffin for the NBA regular season.

It's true that, to some extent, the regular season was killed off last year, when the Lakers played uninspired ball before waking up in time, but at least they were in a playoff slot all the way through. This year, they waited until it was almost too late, then won just enough to get in. Shaq once again let himself Goodyear up, then, after injury time and a few months of "playing into shape," finally lost the poundage and took over. It's the clearest signal yet from the defending champions: The regular season is our exhibition season. We can turn it on whenever we want to.

So, why pay hundreds of dollars for a regular season game ticket, or $150. for the cable package?

(crickets)

I saw two NBA games in person this year, both decent games, but I also had the League Pass package and watched a lot of uninspired play. Everybody knows that the Lakers walked through half the season, but so did a lot of less talented teams, including most of the Eastern Conference. I'm an old school basketball fan- I go back to the Knicks of Reed-DeBusschere-Bradley-Frazier-Barnett and the ABA of Hawkins-Daniels-Levern "Jelly" Tart, and I will watch practically any basketball game. But there were times during the season when I wondered if the $150. I spent on the TV package was worth it, and when I see a team like the Lakers save themselves for "when it matters," I wonder why I should bother spending money on games that don't matter to the players.

So much of pro sports depends on the fans' willingness to pay and watch. I don't know if the fans will ever stop paying and watching, so maybe they deserve what they get. But if the Lakers don't think November through February are worth their time and effort, they shouldn't expect me to pay and watch until they decide to start showing up.

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I looked at the picture of Scott Peterson in the paper, read the accounts of his behavior since Laci's disappearance, read how his father says he's a prince. I looked at the picture- the badly dyed hair, the goatee- and I thought, geez, I know this guy.

I don't mean that literally. I never met the guy. But I know who he is, what he's all about, and when I hear anyone say "they seemed so happy" and "he was a loving husband," I cringe.

Scott Peterson is this kind of guy: think of a foursome on a muni golf course, four thirty-something guys in Ping caps and golf togs, dipping into the cooler for another Coors Light. Mid-level white-collar guys, suburban, married, living for golf every Saturday and football every Sunday. They tell their families and co-workers how happy they are, but when they're out on the golf course, loosened by a few morning beers, they tell a different story- the wife doesn't understand, they say, she spends too much, wants to redecorate the spare bedroom for the baby. Oh, man, say the other three, your life's gonna change with the kid, you know. No more time for yourself. We won't even see you here for a while. Pretty soon, the four are alternately complaining about domestic life and fantasizing about the girl in marketing in a Maxim/FHM kind of way (Dude, if I wasn't married, I could get her, no problem), and life with the wife and impending kid seems more and more a life sentence. The guys feed each other, and feed on each other, and they think that maybe getting married so young wasn't such a good idea. They may make the jump to cheating- probably will, maybe on a solo business trip, maybe with an administrative assistant in the stairwell back where nobody ever goes. But it's mostly beer and golf and my-wife-doesn't-understand-me, just like their fathers and grandfathers and probably cro-magnon guys and neanderthal guys too.

That's Scott Peterson, and that's why I shook my head sadly when his dad went to the media to say that the cops botched the case, that there are other leads, that Scott LOVED Laci and LOVED his unborn child and would NEVER have killed them EVER. He doesn't know his son. Parents rarely do.

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So I read about the guy near Syracuse that maintained a dungeon where he imprisoned women as sex slaves/rape victims, and how, as always, the neighbors neither saw nor suspected anything. They say they rarely saw the guy, period. The inclination is to say they all just chose not to see anything out of the ordinary, because you'd assume someone saw SOMETHING weird, like a girl being dragged into the house. But I believe them, because, well, my neighbors...

Let me ask you this- how well do you know your neighbors? ALL of your neighbors? Because I don't know virtually any of ours. Oh, sure, we know our immediate next door neighbor, but we really don't know a whole lot of detail about her. We've met the other next-door neighbors once. We say hi to the people across the street.

Don't ask me their names. I don't know.

What I'm saying here is that any and all of these people could be doing anything in their houses and I wouldn't know. One house could be cooking up meth. Another could be a major West Coast kiddie porn distribution center. Another could be a discreet swingers' club. Any and all could have dungeons. How do you know?

Knock knock Hello? Hi, I'm your neighbor- are you by chance doing anything illegal in there? Yes? OK, just checking.

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You know how you hear a song and you can't get it unstuck from your mind, and it starts interfering with everything you try to do?

The hold music on the All Access Malibu phone system is stuck in my head. I hear it every day, multiple times a day, and it burrows right through my brain.

Justin Timberlake's "Rock Your Body."

Take me now, Lord.

"So go ahead, girl, just do that ass shaking thing you do." I feel ill.

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Golfers have to make the 3 foot putt. Kickers have to hit those red zone gimme field goals. Hockey and soccer players have to drill penalty shots into the back of the net.

Basketball players have to hit their free throws.

In the New Jersey-Milwaukee game tonight, all the Bucks' Tim Thomas had to do to put the game away with 10.4 seconds left was to hit two free throws. He missed both. All Desmond Mason had to do was hit two free throws. He missed one, hit the second. It was by the grace of God that the Bucks escaped with the win anyway.

This usually comes up in the Shaq context, with crotchety old Jack Ramsay types grumbling that the kids don't know how to hit their free throws and don't care. But it's true- they can't and they don't. I don't understand it. How many times in sports do you get a totally free, undefended gimme point all yours for the taking? It's not hard- guys playing pickup at the Y can do it. 9 year olds can do it. Back in the day, if you couldn't do it more than 70% of the time, you were suspect. Now, guys survive in the league who haven't hit 70% of free throws, ever.

When old school guys like me talk about this, it's because we've seen the world be a different place. We know the days when you didn't make the major leagues without learning how to bunt or how to slide without breaking your leg. We know the days when kickers spent whole careers with one club instead of teams changing kickers each quarter, when a guy like Jan Stenerud or Garo Yepremian would come in and you knew he'd nail the sucker right down the middle. We held certain truths to be self-evident, and now they've all gone by the boards. Decrying the lack of fundamentals in the NBA sounds like sour old-fart noise- say, old man, surely you don't think Elgin Baylor and Bob Cousy could possibly keep up with Kobe and KG and T-Mac, do you?- but I do know this: if you're Shaq, you can be forgiven, maybe, but if you're Tim Freakin' Thomas and you can't hit your free throws, what the hell good are you?

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The YMCA I use has a counter with hand-held hair dryers in the men's locker room. I occasionally see guys using them, no big deal, barely notice them, don't use them. And that's a good thing, based on what I saw today. I was changing back into street clothes and turned to see an older gentleman drying his hair.

Not the hair on his head.

There is a very short list of things you can safely do with your most intimate of areas. Placing an electrical appliance with hot coils blowing very hot air at it would not be on that list. It would be on another list, the one with "inserting it into a food processor" and "sticking it into a meat grinder" and "Courtney Love." The guy using the thing didn't seem happy about it, either- his face was contorted into a serious grimace, and he was making low grunting noises.

On behalf of most guys who use health club locker rooms, I am issuing this open plea: do not do that. Not where someone else can see you, not with a shared appliance, not in our presence. You want to set that thing on fire, do it at home. Or on "Fear Factor." Thank you.

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I was about to write something really nasty about someone I know, and then the little angel on my right shoulder told me "no, you don't want to do that, you never know when you might have to work with that person," and I said "if I have to work with that person again, I will tie myself to the Metrorail tracks and wait for the express from Riverside." And the angel said "you never know what that person is saying about you, or might say to someone about you that could affect your job prospects," and I said "there's little chance that this person will ever be able to affect anything I ever do besides create an involuntary vomit reflex, but you may be right."

So I didn't.

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There's an item I wrote at AllAccess.com about the enduring popularity of Monty Python among pimply pocket-protector-anorak-trainspotter types who insist on quoting lines from the show and movies out of context, using embarrassingly broad accents and generally making everyone else move to the opposite side of the room. But I liked Monty Python.

And you know what comes to mind when you think of Philadelphia sports fans: pot-bellied, violent, brain-dead droolers who cheer head injuries and boo all that is good in the world. Naturally, I am a Philadelphia sports fan.

So it goes with pretty much everything I like. The music I tend to prefer is either the kind favored by angry, bored Orange County adolescents with tattoos creeping along their bodies and skateboards ready to ride the handrail down the steps at some Irvine office tower or the kind enjoyed by pretentious 30-something Silver Lake hipsters or westside leftists while perusing their Utne Readers at the Coffee Bean. I go to restaurants filled with fabulously wealthy and completely vacuous WASP matrons/ex-trophy wives lunching over barely-picked-over salads or the kind filled with seniors gumming their Chicken Pot Pie special while complaining to the waitress that the food is no good and the portions too small.

I hate the people who like what I like.

That's not to say that it's a hard-fast rule. Every once in a while, someone sheepishly admits that he, too, likes, say, MST3K but isn't obsessive (for some reason, many of these people come from St. Louis. I don't know why, but I think I'd like it there), or says he always roots for the Eagles but wouldn't ever go to a game for fear of being urinated on in the 700 level by a fellow fan. I know these people exist- I've met them, and some of them are people I count as friends. But I have to set forth a few rules, and I hope you're not offended.

Do not ever in my presence sing the Spam song, or the Lumberjack song, or refer to the Knights Who Say "Ni" or dead parrots or Dinsdale Piranha. Do not run around in green face paint whipping off your McNabb jersey on a Sunday screaming "Igggggglesssss!" and exposing the "G" painted on your pot belly, the result of your participation as the third letter of a human "E-A-G-L-E-S-!" chain, in my presence. Do not stare contemptiously at me and other shoppers at the Virgin Megastore on Sunset, whispering "he can't possibly like that" when I pick up a CD you'd approve of or "he has no taste" when I pick up one you wouldn't. Do not make eye contact with me. Do not try to talk to me. Leave me alone.

Other than that, let's be friends.

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Memo to TV sports directors: I do not care whether your network has a policy of always popping up a crawl at the bottom of the screen at certain times, to give other scores and to plug an upcoming telecast. When it's a key moment in the game, turn it off. Don't do it.

In tonight's Nets-Bucks playoff game, the Bucks were about to tie the game with 30 seconds left and as Toni Kukoc started his move and stumbled into a walk that the refs chose to allow, that annoying TNT duh-de-duh-DEE-dahhh tone comes up, a banner scrolls across the bottom with the earth-shaking and highly time-sensitive information that the Minnesota-Lakers game would be next. Then, with 27 seconds left, they put it up again and LEFT IT THERE, cutting off the bottom of the screen, staying there as Rodney Rogers blew two free throws, still there as Kenyon Martin slapped the rebound back to Rogers at the top of the key, still there when Rogers did his Robert Horry imitation, and blessedly off for the final two seconds, but the second Gary Payton's three clanked off the rim, duh-de-duh-DEE-dahhh and that banner again.

I know, I know, this is not of great importance. It's no Iraq, it's no Wall Street, it's not even the Dixie Chicks naked on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. It just bothers me, that's all. Someone tell them to stop doing it. Thanks. I'll go now.

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I won't spend many more words or brain cells on the Dixie Chicks and celebrity politics. I guess people are still exercised over the whole thing, but I've run out of interest. Just one more note: at some point in recent months, getting naked has returned as a means of protest. "Peace" protestors have been doing it all over the world, and the Dixie Chicks have inadvisedly done it on a magazine cover. Insofar as the protestors are at least reasonably attractive females with freely available professional airbrushing, I wholeheartedly endorse the concept even if I don't agree with the protest. Unfortunately, most naked protestors are closer in appearance to your mother's annoying yenta friends. There should be an arbiter, a referee who tells protestors who should get naked and who should leave the peasant blouse and Birkenstocks on. I hereby volunteer for the job.

No, I have no idea what getting naked has to do with peace, either. Probably nothing. DEFINITELY nothing. But it beats whatever they charge for "Naughty Lesbian Reform School Girls Gone Wild XIV" on the Exxtasy Channel. Free porn? I'm for it. And that, in a nutshell, is my political philosophy. Free porn. And beer. Maybe some peanuts to go with the beer. I know I can count on your vote.

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Attention, people of Georgia:

Nobody cares what's on your flag but you. Stars 'n' Bars, a picture of Lester Maddox wielding an axhandle, a Krystal slider and fries- if this wasn't splashed across the Journal-Constitution every morning and on TV every night, you wouldn't even know WHAT the damn thing looked like. I barely know what my state's flag looks like- there's a bear, and it says something under it, can't recall what it is. I lived in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for most of the rest of my life and I swear I couldn't pick their flags out of a lineup. It doesn't matter. State flags are irrelevant.

You know what? Borrow some other state's flag- nobody'll notice. Or put someone nobody'll dare argue over on there- Vince Dooley? Michael Vick? Or leave it blank. Yeah, that works. And while you do that, I'm gonna raise my flag. Plain white, naturally. Isn't that France's?

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It dawned on me this evening that we have three times as many TVs as we have human members of our family. We have one PVR for each of us and a microwave for each of us. Microwave popcorn? We can do two bags at once without doubling the time.

Damn, life is good.

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About half of my daily mail delivery usually consists of trade magazines I didn't order from industries in which I've never worked- meeting organization, network maintenance, Reform Judiasm. It's gotten to the point where I assume that if a piece of mail is larger than a number 10 envelope, it's either bad news or an unwanted trade magazine. Today, I got something else- an alumni fundraising brochure.

If you went to college or grad school, you know what this is- it's not the alumni magazine, which is glossy and has articles about alums doing better than you and class notes that you read to see if anyone's doing worse than you. No, this is a thick booklet that resembles a mid-sized company's annual report, with a handy donation envelope instead of a proxy ballot. I get them from my college, and, as was the case today, I get them from my law school, which was Villanova. I went to Villanova because a) Penn wouldn't have me, and b) it was a 5 minute train ride from my apartment to the school, except when SEPTA was on strike, in which case it was the Bataan Death March uphill with a backpack full of thick hardcover books about four steep miles.

My three years at Villanova were distinguished only by my undistinguished performance, primarily because I hated 95% of the people there, was bored by the curriculum, and spent virtually every class in the back row where I did the Inquirer crossword and Wonderword and Jumble while praying that the professor wouldn't call on me. That I got my degree was miraculous; that I'm still a bar member is incomprehensible.

But that's not the point. (There IS a point. Sort of.) About half of this fundraising thing consists of a list of everyone who donated in the last year, arranged by class. I have never donated to the school, and will not in the future- I normally scrawl obscenities on the donation form and send it back via the magic of Business Reply Mail, their dime. The school did nothing for me, and does nothing for society other than produce lawyers, for which they should be punished. My feelings are not shared by my classmates. James C. Ackerman gave. Kevin R. Boyle did, too, as did John W. Buttrick, Ellen G. Casey, Georgette E. David, John C. Dodds, and a long list of people with middle initials. And as I scanned the list, I realized something that surprised me.

I have no idea who any of these people are.

I spent three years in close quarters with these people. I was in their classes. I was in the same lunchroom, the same library, the same halls. I saw their faces, heard their names called out by professors doing their best John Houseman Socratic method acting. And I cannot remember a single one of them.

I amaze myself with the way I've blocked out the memory of law school. I've forgotten my fellow students (except, it should be noted, for a couple of them- hi, Joe and Jennifer! Hi, Donna and Dennis!) with whom I've remained friends. I've forgotten the professors, the administrators, the way the place looked and smelled and sounded. I don't remember a thing.

I see these names and I imagine they've gone on to practice at some medium-sized Philadelphia law firms. They're all married, on their second, a couple of kids at home. They wear suits all day, maybe loosen the tie when they stop for a drink on the way home, late, of course. They take work home. All their friends are lawyers, everything they do is about the law- in the luxury suite at the Sixers game, on the golf course, in a hotel room with an escort arranged through the knowing concierge, all they talk about, all they think about is work. They make good money, really good money, they're downright wealthy, but they're still severely disappointed that Dylan wasn't accepted into the "right" preschool- when people at work ask about the kids, they change the subject. Their kids will resent them, rebel, but eventually become lawyers, too. They will work into their 70s and then they will die. The end.

Or not. I wouldn't know. I'm the guy in the back doing the crossword, staring out the window, not talking to anybody. And I've been doing that for a long, long time.

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I don't know the specific circumstances behind Jamie Foxx and his sister getting arrested at a New Orleans casino- something about breezing past security at 4 am and refusing to show ID, which I'm not sure I've ever seen required of anyone in any casino. Nevertheless, I can imagine that at some point, someone pulled the celebrity card, which is:

"Do you know who I am?"

There should be a brochure, a pamphlet handed to every celebrity at the moment they become a celebrity. It should contain the rules for being famous, one of the most important of which is that "Do you know who I am?" never works. Let's go over some of the rules right here, in case any celebrities are reading (hey, could happen):

You are not still just Jenny from the Block. You are rich and famous, and your old friends and neighbors aren't. In fact, they resent your success and will hate you for having left whether you pull star trips or come back often to hang with the old crew. You are Jenny Who Used to Be From The Block But Now Rides Limos and Doesn't Remember the People Who Helped Her to Get Where She Is, whether you're like that or not, so get used to it.
Celebrities are not immune from practicing personal hygiene. Take a shower, Keanu. Please. That goes for all of you, male and female. Cologne does not compensate for body odor, it just makes matters more intense. Soap is not for decoration. Use it. Brush your teeth, too- just because you got them whitened doesn't meen they're perpetually clean and your breath isn't bad.
You know nothing about politics. If you have an opinion (any opinion, left or right), you lose the fans who disagree with your position. If you don't have an opinion, you don't lose any fans. So don't have an opinion. You'll only embarrass yourself, anyway. ("I have questions," the Natalie Maines cop-out, is not an alternative. Shutting up is.)
The amount of stalking and weird fan behavior you'll experience is in inverse proportion to your personal security measures. The more bodyguards you have, the more armored H2s you drive, the taller the wall you put around your Malibu Colony home, the more harassment and weird behavior to which you'll be subjected. Go to Ralphs yourself, without a bodyguard, all the time, and you'll be able to cruise the cookie aisle without anyone saying anything. Show up with five Vin Diesel lookalikes- hell, show up with Vin himself- and people will try stuff.
Nobody cares that you recycle or drive a Prius. It's done wonders for Ed Begley Jr.'s career, hasn't it?
When you get in trouble, "do you know who I am?" will only make matters worse. "Do you know who I am?" gets three possible responses: a) "Yes, but I don't care." b) "No." c) "Hello, Enquirer? Guess who I just arrested? And if you get a photographer here fast, you'lll have a great cover for next week." It's an invitation for bad things to happen.

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