February Sweeps begins today.

I’d like to tell you that this is one of those months where your favorite shows will pack in lots of surprises and cliffhangers to keep you watching through to the all-important May Sweeps.

Of course, with the writers strike still in full swing, most shows have few new episodes left and have shuttered production for the season.

So how will television compete with little new episodes other than those crappy reality shows?  It should be interesting to find out.

Two days ago, 89-year-old Mike Wallace, one of my all-time favorite journalists, underwent triple bypass surgery, CBS has revealed.

Today, he took his first steps since the procedure that doctors are calling a success.

Heart surgery.  At 89.

I think if I had heart surgery at 39, I’d be off my feet for at least a week.  Hell, the pain would probably be enough for me to request being placed in a medically-induced coma for a good month-and-a-half.

May we all be going that strong just months from the big 9-0!

It was on this date back in 1958 when a Denmark company finally got it right. And had they not settled on the particular design they patented five decades ago, the their brand, named after the words leg godt, which translate as “play well,” might never have become a household name.

The company had actually been in business since the early 1930s, but their idea for a toy involving interlocking bricks just never quite caught on. Through perseverance and a little experimentation, they finally stumbled on the right formula for the plastic that makes up their “Automatic Binding Brick.”

And America has been grabbing up LEGO blocks ever since. I think my first LEGO set was a hospital, and since I already knew I wanted to go into television, when I played with the set, I would build the hospital without the “fourth wall;” then I’d stage the action on the inside and outside of the hospital. For a while, the doctor and nurse characters were right out of Jack Webb’s Emergency! series. (Remember that show?)

Every kid should have a LEGO set.

Mourners visiting the final resting place of TV mogul Merv Griffin are due for a laugh:

You gotta love tombstone humor.

This week’s question might turn a few people off. Not everyone is willing to go on record over politics, and I understand that. So if you want to bow out of this week’s edition, I’ll understand. Just be sure to be back next week!

For those who don’t mind talking politics, you’ll need to take this candidate quiz. You’ll use the results for your answer.

• First to play last week: Bun-Girl of “BunGirl.” Congratulations!

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
Starting with the top match, name the seven candidates the quiz says most closely match your views.

Either answer the question in a comment or answer it in your journal and include the link in a comment. (To be considered “first to play,” a link must be to the specific entry in which you answered the question.) You may include this link in the URL space when leaving your comment, or in the comment itself. As long as it’s there in one spot or the other.

Recently, I wrote a post about Fred Thompson’s appearance on NBC’s Today show, during which he complained about the media running with a story that he was rumored to be on the verge of dropping out of the race — of course, he has dropped out, but let’s ignore that little part — then said that the media ought to check with him before reporting what someone else had to say. He then made claims against an unnamed campaign, and when Lester Holt asked for elaboration, Thompson was oddly mum, actually refusing to provide any facts or substantiation, demonstrating that his position about the media “checking their facts” only applied when something bad was said about him, not anyone else.

Bill Clinton demonstrated this week in South Carolina that he is capable of pulling the same kind of “I’m going to blame the media then make myself part of the problem” double standard.

Responding to reporter questions about Dick Harpootlian (former head of SC’s Democratic Party) who called the former president’s comments about the Obama campaign “reprehensible,” Clinton went into a long, drawn-out tirade during which his advisers were probably secretly wishing he’d be struck with sudden laryngitis.

His almost five-minute-long finger-pointing diatribe included this:

“This rhetoric is getting a little carried away here. … And the final thing I would like to say is, you’re asking me about this, and you sat through this whole meeting. Not one single, solitary soul asked about any of this. And they never do. They are feeding you this because they know this is what you want to cover. This is what you live for. But this hurts the people of South Carolina, because the people of South Carolina are coming to these meetings and asking questions about what they care about. And what they care about is not going to be in the news coverage tonight because you don’t care about it. What you care about is this. And the Obama people know that. So they just spin you up on this and you happily go along.”

On the surface, it’s a valid point. The people in the crowd aren’t asking Bill or Hillary what they think about a former Democratic party head accusing them of playing the race card against Barack Obama. But take that with a grain of salt: the people who attend such meetings are generally people who support Bill and Hillary — make that Hillary and Bill — so there’s no reason for them to ask anything pointed. That’s what reporters are supposed to do.

I’m sure Hillary and Bill wouldn’t get even a little upset if a reporter asked a similar question of another candidate or candidate’s spouse accused of playing the gender card. I’m quite sure that they would probably be cheering at the television set.

I’m also quite sure that Clinton is bright enough to know that by becoming so animated and getting somewhat “fired up,” he was pretty much guaranteeing that his comments would end up on the media he was so clearly accusing of focusing on the wrong thing.

To put it another way, he complained about a burning fire by throwing gasoline on it.

A deadpan “That’s not even worth a response” would have been so much better suited to accomplishing the goal he seemed to want everyone to believe he had: to kill the “non-story” once and for all. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything he didn’t know all too well.

Who’s trying to fool who, Bill?

Here’s an interesting little meme I found over Mmmm, That’s Good Coffee, authored by my friend Rick:

“Take your name, google it as “[Your name] is” with the quotation marks, and see what comes up. Cut/paste the fun phrases into a post, and then do it again with google images and post that image, if you can without embarassing your grandma.”

I’ll go with the image first, and while there were a few headshots of different Patricks I have never met and don’t recognize, the first photo that comes up is an image taken in one of my favorite American cities: Chicago.

As I’m sure you can imagine, the image is all about St. Patrick’s Day, and shows the Chicago River dyed green for the big celebration there.

Either that, or there were some really sick geese in the Windy City that day.

I can say that I have stood at the corner of that river and crossed that bridge. If you ever have the chance to visit Chicago, I strongly recommend it.

Now, on to the listings. I’ll save the best for last: here are the first 9 that came up for my name:

• Patrick is said to have plucked a shamrock from the sward… (So much for spelling!)
• Patrick is leaving ESPN. (Where’s my severance package?)
• Patrick is planning to increase health insurance premiums for state employees and implement changes in Medicaid that would save more than $200 million.
• Patrick is set to unveil a major new $10 million push to virtually eliminate homelessness in Massachusetts in the next five years.
• Patrick is believed to have driven the snakes from Ireland. (Was it something I said?)
• Patrick is filling in nicely in Vitale’s absence as verbal fellatiator of the Blue Devils. (I did not have sexual relations with that team!)
• Patrick is proudly powered by WordPress. (Silly me, I thought it was my blog that was powered by WordPress.)
• Patrick is wearing this 40-pound taupe vest full of water and steel balls to see what it would be like if he did it. (Whatever it is, I’m sure I no longer want to do it.)
• Patrick is patient, self-possessed, and much more nurturing than I am. (Clearly the patient part is referring to a different Patrick.)

And my personal favorite:

• Patrick Is God!

Now I can retire.

It’s week two of primary elections here in South Carolina. This time, it’s the Democrats’ turn to lure voters out to select the right candidate for their side of the race. Unlike last week, I was able to get moving a little earlier, so here are this week’s questions in time for lunch!

• First to play last week: Jude of “My Way.” Congratulations!

Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your journal in which you answer the questions. A link to your journal in general cannot count. Enjoy!

1. You go to a restaurant and order alcohol: based on past experience, how likely are you to be carded? (Are you of legal drinking age?)

2. You’re selecting a new physician and you learn that the doctor you are visiting is in his twenties: would you feel any less confident about his ability?

3. One must be 35 years old or older to run for president. Based on arguments about experience, should the age be increased to 45? Why or why not?

4. Take the quiz: What age do you act?

5. When you were in high school, what age, in your opinion, qualified someone as being “old?”

6. Do you find yourself better relating to people older than you or younger than you? (Sorry, your same age group isn’t an option in this one!)

If you have a Reader’s Choice question you’d like to see asked (and answered), send me an email! I’d love to be able to include it in a future edition of the Saturday Six.

Here’s how my horoscope for this week, as reported by the Charleston City Paper, begins:

“In my astrological opinion, you should adopt a miscellaneous and serendipitous receptivity in the coming week…”

If I were one to take horoscopes seriously, instructions that started with a line like that might be just enough for me to call in sick and stay in bed.

Miscellaneous and serendipitous receptivity?

Where do they get this stuff?  Surely not from the stars…I can’t imagine them being so pretentious.

I have done something I’ve never done before: I’ve come face to face with a candidate for president. I was able to pull a couple of strings and work my way in with a camera crew to meet Barack Obama.

In the “Select a Candidate” quiz from the previous post, Barack Obama comes up as the candidate who most matches my current positions on things. That’s followed by John Edwards, then Hillary Clinton. Dennis Kucinich, who just dropped out, is a distant third. Rudy Giuliani falls several points behind him.

The candidate I am furthest from, I’m pleased to say, is Ron Paul, with whom I seem to agree only on Social Security and marriage.

As someone who works in the media, there have been occasions when I have met celebrities. Very often, they act one way “on camera” and when the camera isn’t rolling, they are totally different. In some cases, they’re very demanding, very rude, very pretentious — the stereotypical “spoiled brat” celebrity — when they’re comfortably confident that no one is recording them, then congenial and polite, even folksy, when they’re “on.”

I didn’t get to pull him aside and have a conversation, though I’d have liked to. But it was very interesting watching Obama interact with people when the cameras weren’t rolling. He is casual, friendly, and calm. If he has last-minute jitters before speaking to the growing crowds who are showing up to hear his vision of the future, it certainly doesn’t show. It struck me that after spending a few moments in his presence, it would almost seem natural to invite him to grab a bite to eat and hang out for a while.

When he speaks at one of his rallies, he is much like a preacher. It’s part talk, part cheering, part revival. There’s something distinctly positive and optimistic about his presentation. And what amazes me, as a native of a state whose lawmakers fought for decades about removing the Confederate flag from its statehouse dome, is that a man of mixed race has even lasted this long in the race, not to mention that some polls have him leading in tomorrow’s Democratic primary, even by double-digits, over Hillary Clinton.

We’ve all grown cynical over the years, and I think our cynicism factor increases dramatically as we get closer to elections.

Listening to Obama, you get the idea that things actually can be put right. He makes sense. If appearances are true, he gets it. It’s almost something you’ve stopped expecting from politicians these days. Maybe that’s why it leaves such an impression when you see it.

Have you decided for sure who you’re voting for this November? If not, or if you want to see which candidate is the closest match to your own positions, try this quiz that I found online:

In light of recent headlines, I thought I’d take a look at how many celebrities we’ve lost to drugs. WCBS-TV in New York compiled a list of 79 famous people who were killed by drugs in one way or another; for example, some died of overdoses, some died of complications from alcohol abuse, some from lethal mixes of physician-prescribed medication and alcohol. Some of the deaths were accidental and others were suicides. But all of them shouldn’t have happened.

Here are just a dozen from WCBS’s list:

• Singer Hank Williams, Sr., on January 1, 1953, age 29
• Singer Billie Holliday, on July 17, 1959, age 44
• Marilyn Monroe, on August 5, 1962, age 36
• Comedian Lenny Bruce, on August 3, 1966, age 40
• Musician Jimi Hendrix, on September 18, 1970, age 27
• Singer Janis Joplin, on October 4, 1970, age 27
• Singer Jim Morrison, on July 3, 1971, age 27
• Actress Anissa Jones, on August 28, 1976, age 18
• Actor Freddie Prinze, Sr., on January 29, 1977, age 22
• Actor/Comedian John Belushi, on March 5, 1982, age 33
• Actor River Phoenix, on October 31, 1993, age 23
• Actor/Comedian Chris Farley, on December 18, 1997, age 33

All of them were under 45 when they died. There are a lot of people who like to argue that drug use is a “victimless crime.” Tell it to their families and let me know what they say in response.

It seems like only a week ago — then again, it was just a week ago…to the day, in fact — that I wrote a piece about the needless death of a young celebrity.

I expressed in that piece the frustration of seeing the demise of someone who should have had at least seventy more years of life left in him. At least that much.

The news reports that actor Heath Ledger, 28, was found dead next to a collection of pills elicited the same reaction, with perhaps slightly more anger because it happened once again and so soon, and because I didn’t really need to know that he was found naked at the foot of his bed. The detail about the pills was plenty of information.

In any case, you can go back and read it here. I think everything there pretty much still applies.

America paused to honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today.  Here are a few words of King’s wisdom, every bit as applicable and important today as when he first delivered them.

“When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.”

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”

“Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.”

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” 

The first of two critical primaries in South Carolina is over. John McCain was the victor, with Mike Huckabee following closely behind. Rudy Giuliani actually receieved fewer votes here than Ron Paul, as if the state’s two top picks didn’t make for a frightening-enough thought.

The sad thing for me is that the candidate I tend to agree with most on the Republican side of things these days is Giuliani, perhaps because he’s the most “middle-of-the-road” of the red team.

I can’t really take McCain seriously since he made that now-infamous tour of Iraq to prove how safe it is. And despite his assurances that it is safe, he somehow feels that it would be fine to stay in Iraq for another 100 years. If it’s safe enough for him to be able to walk its streets without fear (and with a small armada that he wants you to forget), why, exactly, would we need to stay in Iraq for another century? If it’s suddenly that safe, why does Iraq need even its own military?

Then Huckabee said something just last week, referring to the need for amendments that would ban abortion and define marriage as being between a man and a woman, that sounded alarms in the back of my head. He would be fine with making the Constitution more of a document God himself can be proud of.

“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards.”

Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist minister. I was raised Southern Baptist. But please don’t assume that I’m in even slight agreement with this notion. I’m not. It strikes me that everyone, especially the more religious among us, should be very afraid of such an idea.

In fact, if you’ll forgive the pun, it should scare the hell out of you.

I am reminded of a simple little bible verse every time I hear some politician trying to rewrite the Constitution for such a reason. You may already know which verse I have in mind, but in case you don’t, it’s found in 2 Corinthians 9:7:

“So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.”

Why would God care, as long as he’s getting his due, whether the giver is cheerful or whether he resents his perceived obligation to give? It’s simple: if you do something because you feel it’s the right thing to do and because you want to, it means something. If you do something that you are forced or coerced to do, what does the action itself really mean? It has no value.

So let’s look at the proposal for constitutional amendments banning abortion and gay marriage. Would banning them really make us a more God-like country? Would our Heavenly Father show his favor upon us more if we forbade anyone to have an abortion and refused to allow same-gender couples to wed?

If you think so, you and I aren’t on the same page at all. And that’s because of this pesky little thing called free will, something that God gave His people.

It would have been so much easier — since He’s God — to have given us the brains of sheep; we’d simply go where He wanted us to go, do what we were told, and not stray from the fold. (If we did, a good shepherd would come along, gently guide us back, and we’d go on with life, happy as ever we had been.) We’d have been prevented, through our very design from ever possessing the capability to doubt God or anything we think He stands for. We’d believe what God wanted us to believe at all times.

But God gave us free will. Why? Because He knew that it means more when you go to church or worship or pray because it’s something you have decided you want to do, not because someone is making you do it. And the really miraculous thing is that you get more out of it, too. Win-win.

And you can thank that dusty old Constitution for our right to worship as we please, up to and including not worshipping at all. We have the right never to set foot in or monetarily support any church. That, I’m sure you will recall from your middle school history classes, is one of the primary reasons our founding fathers decided to separate church and state to start with. It had nothing to do with stores saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” It had to do with being a cheerful follower rather than a hostage.

If you believe that abortion is such an unacceptable choice, you should be more concerned with educating people about alternatives than limiting their liberties. If you find the thought of two people who love each other and who happen to be of the same gender a threat to your own marriage, which is a ridiculous idea, you should at least be coming up with a way to give them the legal rights a traditional married couple enjoys while calling it something else: civil union or whatever you prefer. Otherwise, it’s not really about liberty or freedom: it’s about you trying to control someone else’s life.

I am concerned about the competence of any electorate that places things like abortion and gay marriage as being a more important problem than education, yet here in South Carolina, I saw a poll the other day that listed education as less of a priority than the other two.

How can we not care about education? If we pretend we care so much about children being allowed to be born and live in “moral” families as the bible defines them, how can we not give a damn about what they’re learning in their schools? Does that make sense to anyone out there?

I can’t bring myself to support a candidate for the highest office in our nation who has in his bonnet the rewriting the most basic rules of our country to be intentionally discriminatory. And whether you’re young or old, black or white, religious or non-religious, gay or straight, if you truly value those freedoms you act so prideful about every July 4th and that you thank our veterans for securing for us every Veterans or Memorial Day, you ought to feel the same way.