Not Exactly Stunning

Obvious Department, please pick up on Line 2. A study suggests women prefer muscular men over men who need more help from Hans and Franz.

I only add that this is the kind of drivel you get at schools that let their football teams wear baby blue.

Aging Rock Stars

My former colleague Don Suber is amusing in comparing Live Earth and Woodstock. I share his sentiment about pop stars preaching about the environment, and he's right of course that Dean Martin and Andy Williams would have extremely strange at Woodstock.

Since I like music trivial, I'll point that Don is wrong about Madonna and Jon Bon Jovi not having any hits within the last decade. I checked Billboard.com. JBJ, as She Who Sighs loves to call him, had a Billboard Hot 100 hit in 2006 with "Who Says You Can't Go Home." In 2005, Madonna scored even higher, when "Hung Up" peaked at #7 in Billboard's Hot 100. I think you've got to define those as hits.

The 45-year-olds of today (and the 45-year-olds of 1969) are buying music put out by their contemporaries, agewise. The difference is that 20-year-olds might buy a Madonna CD today, whereas 20-year-olds in 1969, especially those heading to Woodstock, probably wouldn't be caught dead with a Dean Martin record.

Dodger Dreams

Bill Plaschke, a treasure of a writer on the L.A. Times, pens a tear-jerker of a column today about Maurice Gardner, a dying Dodger fan from Martinsville, Va., attending his first game at Dodger Stadium.

>>"I may not love the Dodgers any more than Tommy Lasorda," Gardner says in his syrupy Southern twang, "but I guarantee I love them just as good."<<

I'll be heading to Chavez Ravine in a couple of weeks. I'll think of Maurice when I'm there, remembering the blessing I had as a youth to watch Garvey, Cey, Lopes and Russell in that beautiful venue.