Newsies: Almost like a musical Dark Knight, but better...

Christian Bale, a longtime heart-throb in my book, is utterly amazing as Batman. Everyone knows this.

But Christian Bale and I go wayyyyyy back. We go back to 1992 when Disney released the wonderful Newsies - a musical about newsboys forming a union and fighting the powers that be.

There's really no way for a movie to be better to me than Newsies:

• Newsies stars Christian Bale, David Moscow and Max Casella - tons of charming young men.
  
• Newsboys wear awesome hats and interesting suspenders.
• Unions are powerful agents for the greater good. As a union supporter I get teary seeing the Newsies unite. "We're a union just by saying so!"
  
• Best songs ever.
• Best Christian Bale dancing ever!
• Idiotic but easily ignored love storyline.
• Smart songs, clever story and wisdom! "When you got a million voices singing, who can hear a lousy whistle blow?"

Newsies: We need a good assassination, we need an earthquake or a war...
Newsie Kid: How 'bout a crooked politician?
Newsies: Hey, stupid, that ain't news no more!

I read that Christian Bale doesn't love Newsies anymore, but that's just talk. After all, headlines don't sell papes, Newsies sell papes.

Wow! Hospital dramas rock my world

I cannot get over Hopkins.

Hopkins is the new "medical drama" on Thursday nights on ABC. It's not really a medical drama - it's a reality show about cases, doctors, and nurses at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland. It's just amazing to me.

The show has documented two heart transplants in as many weeks - one on a 19-year-old and this week one on a 2-year-old. I'm completely interested in the real pictures - even the gory ones - and seeing a heart beat just makes me gasp. Seriously? That's what makes us work? And it just does its thing, most of the time? Wow.

Hopkins also makes me happy that people make the generous choice to donate their organs to others. When I go to the DMV I will be sure that the State of Illinois knows I want my organs donated too!

I'm also completely astounded at what doctors and hospitals can do. Since I love organization the fact that doctors in Baltimore can go pick up a perfect match heart in Puerto Rico in six hours and transplant it into someone else is just mind-blowing. It makes my filing system (complete with checklists and Post-its) seem short-sighted.

Each week as I watch Hopkins (the only show, besides Seinfeld, that I'm loyal to right now) I feel convinced that I must work at a hospital, doing who knows what. But I'm pretty sure I'm hooked.

The heat! My god, the heat!

Foolishly, it seems, I've signed up for another 5K run. This one is along Lake Michigan on a Sunday morning in July.

After work yesterday I waited until 7:30 p.m. to set off. There was a sporadic breeze and it wasn't too sunny. I felt a definite heaviness to the air. It was that summertime humidity that makes ice-cold sprinklers and fire hydrants so appealing. That heavy humidity just felt hot and sweaty.

And suddenly I was hot. I was sweaty. I was heaving (and not just because I've been more of a power-walker lately than a runner). I was pink-faced. Yuck!

So, as a solution I've purchased some wicking shorts from Kohls, for just $9, and decided to think frosty thoughts until my run.

Hopefully that keeps me cucumber-cool and running for a whole 3.1 miles. If not, thankfully, there's a cool lake nearby.

Geese honk me off.

Today my B and I took a lovely bike ride down the North Shore Channel Trail. We saw statues and sculptures. We biked past picnics, through parks and pretty close to a rowdy swimming pool. We saw bunnies, dogs and babies.

Then we saw geese. Canada geese. A whole little gang of them. Two or three large ones and a couple little goslings.

We rounded a corner and as my B passed the geese and their goslings he hollered to me, "Watch out! They might go for us!"

It was too late. A large goose came at me as I sped by. It opened its gross beak (or is it a bill?) and hissed a mean goose hiss at me, with its disgusting goose tongue sticking out at me.

According to Wikipedia's Canada Goose entry:

When threatened, geese stand erect and hiss.

Bullshit! I was not threatening that goose or its rude gosling gang. The geese were loitering on a path. And they hiss at me!?!

My gun-control-loving father has long advocated the right to bear arms for the sole purpose of shooting Canada geese. I think he's got the right idea.