It's 1974. We're all out on Henry Drive, dragging cinder blocks and sheets of plywood pilfered from some house under construction into the middle of the street.
We prop the plywood up with the cinder blocks. We climb on our Schwinn Orange Crushes and Lemon Crates and pedal full speed at the ramp.
The bikes go airborn and come down on the front wheel about two feet from the ramp. Our crotches slam into the handlebars and somewhere Evel Knievel is laughing.

Just what the world needs, another list of top high schools. First was Newsweek, with the top 1,200 high schools. Now U.S. News & World Report, which almost singlehandedly caused the “get into one of these 20 colleges or just go smoke crack and live in a homeless shelter now” frenzy, has released the top 100 “Gold” schools.
Not a single Connecticut school made the cut. Not Madison, Guilford, Amity, Darien, Greenwich or Avon. Zippo.
Of the 405 “Silver” schools, one Greater New Haven school is on the list: Madison’s Hand H.S. As the philospher Dale Earnhardt once said “Second place is the just the first place loser.”
There were 1,086 “Bronze” schools. Cooperative and Hill Regional high schools in New Haven represented Greater New Haven.
I guess there’s something to be learned from these lists. Take more AP classes, Study harder. Don’t read U.S. News & World Report. Stay off crack.

CO-WORKER: I wonder what Kevin DuBrow died from?
ME: Shame

I finally have proof of something that has bothered me for years. Like any other American over the age of 40, I grew up watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” a cultural touchstone more important during my childhood than oxygen. Just saying the words “large Eastern syndicate,” gives me flashbacks to the rec rooms and console TVs of the early 1970s.
I’ve had the nagging feeling that little bits of the show have been snipped out to make way for more commercials, but I was never able to say for sure what scenes had been deleted.
So last night, my two daughters and I settle down and get ready to watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on ABC. By chance, my wife had gotten a stack of tapes and DVDs at the library, including an old VHS copy of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Were about 10 minutes into the ABC broadcast and there’s too many commercials, so I suggest watching the VHS tape instead. We pop it in and start watching the first 10 minutes again.
And there it was. The lost scene.
It’s when the gang is throwing snowballs at a tin can on a fence. They repeatedly miss, until Linus uses his blanket as a slingshot and nails the can. That scene was missing from the ABC broadcast we had just watched. Was it a crucial part of the show? Many would say no. I say every second of the show is crucial or else Charles Schulz wouldn’t have written it.
So, listen up ABC, next year show “A Charlie Brown Christmas: Uncut and Unrated.” Ratings will skyrocket.
And another thing, Fig Newtons were bigger when I was a kid. If I could only prove it.

In honor of the Register’s fantastic new Web site, I’m back to posting the same kind of witty, um, witticisms you’ve come to expect over the years. Like this:
Apparently, the Brainy McBrainiacs over at Yale have discovered something that Simpsons fans have known all along: “Even infants can tell the difference between naughty and nice playmates, and know which to choose, a new study finds. Babies as young as 6 to 10 months old showed crucial social judging skills before they could talk, according to a study by researchers at Yale University’s Infant Cognition Center published in Thursday’s journal Nature.”
How else to explain baby Maggie’s visceral repulsion at the sight of Gerald, her monobrowed nemesis? In fact, the Infant Cognition Center staff was probably sitting around watching old Simpsons episodes when inspiration struck. And now they’re all on a tenure track. D’oh!