I Swear

Angie Miller and her steely-eyed focus transmitted into the homes of 10-plus million American Idol viewers won her 50,000 followers in the Twitterverse the week of the show's Top 10 reveal -- nearly 18,000 more social media fans than her next highest competitor. More than two months later, the 18-year-old  Beverly, Mass., native tripled her followers, effectively blowing away the other wannabes on the cyberspace portal. Why then didn't the magic of the 140-character phenomenon carry her into Thursday's finale?

Listen up, Jessica! This is the other third of your brain talking. Don't wear that stupid pink Romo jersey again? Look at how good Tony played the other night when you wore a blue jersey and watched the game at home, flipping back and forth between Rock of Love reruns. He was amazing! That pink jersey is cursed, though. I swear! Remember that game last December in Dallas, when Tony went 13-for-36 with three interceptions in a loss to the Eagles? You were there with the jersey. It's like that ring in the movie where Elijah Wood plays a midget with big hairy feet, and he goes on a quest with a lizard.

An Elkridge man convicted of snatching an 8-year-old Brooklyn Park girl from a street corner and molesting her was sentenced Thursday to15 years in prison.Jeffrey Meredith Chaney, 35, received 15 years for kidnapping and five years, to be served concurrently, for battery and a third-degree sexual offense despite his protests of innocence."I work hard, I'm a hunter and a fisherman and a golfer, and I ran my own business. I have no reason to do something like this," Chaney told Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Bruce C. Williams.

I suppose there's someone reading this who hates tomatoes more than I do, but that doesn't seem possible right now, given the circumstances. Oh, sure, I used to be like most of you out there. That is, I used to love tomatoes. Then my wife started growing them in our garden. She grew Roma tomatoes and beefsteak tomatoes and some other kind of tomatoes, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Anyway, what difference does it make? The point is, pretty soon we were up to our ears in tomatoes.

An Elkridge man convicted of snatching an 8-year-old Brooklyn Park girl from a street corner and molesting her was sentenced yesterday to 15 years in prison.Jeffrey Meredith Chaney, 35, received 15 years for kidnapping and five years, to be served concurrently, for battery and a third-degree sexual offense despite his protests of innocence."I work hard, I'm a hunter and a fisherman and a golfer, and I ran my own business. I have no reason to do something like this," Chaney told Circuit Judge Bruce C. Williams.

Item: Mice apparently have nibbled their way through about 120 bags of marijuana stored in the evidence control vault at Baltimore's police headquarters, department officials confirmed. -- The Sun, April 9, 2002 "Dude, this evidence control vault is awesome." "Have you ever really ever looked at the holes in cheese?" "I got a monster case of the munchies." "I am the walrus." "Why 'mice'? Why not 'mouses'?" "Hey, put on the Allman Brothers." "Ever wondered if the Allman Brothers had sisters?"

Listen up, Jessica! This is the other third of your brain talking. Don't wear that stupid pink Romo jersey again? Look at how good Tony played the other night when you wore a blue jersey and watched the game at home, flipping back and forth between Rock of Love reruns. He was amazing! That pink jersey is cursed, though. I swear! Remember that game last December in Dallas, when Tony went 13-for-36 with three interceptions in a loss to the Eagles? You were there with the jersey. It's like that ring in the movie where Elijah Wood plays a midget with big hairy feet, and he goes on a quest with a lizard.

There's a movie opening today that is so indistinctive I can barely remember its name. I think it's called "Whatever It Takes," but it could just as easily be "Can't Hardly Wait," "Down to You," "Crazy for You," "Drives Me Crazy," "She's All That" or any of a half-dozen other movies with two teen-agers who don't realize they are perfect for each other, a loopy best friend who doesn't shower, a date that goes horribly wrong and a climactic prom scene in...

The gifts are bought and wrapped, the cookies are baked and the house is decorated --oh, yeah, sure! If you're like us, the Christmas countdown is bringing about its share of worries and joys. Each day until Dec. 25 we'll pass on some thoughts or tips on the holidays.It's beginning to feel like a listless Christmas.And I'm not referring to the economy; I'm talking about my annual everything-I-need-to-do-before-Dec. 25 list.You see, I haven't written it yet. And I'm not planning to either.

New Orleans -- The TV sold me a Solo-Flex over the holidays. I FTC have been quietly wishing for a god-like body ever since the last time I watched TV and noticed some perfect humans doing acrobatic things.The Solo-Flex they said, will give you this god-like body if you follow the three-times-a-week exercise without fail. It didn't say for how long. On the demo tape, the person who demo'd certainly had a god-like body, but I have no idea what he started with.What I had to start with was a tiny -- I swear -- potbelly caused by the food-rich city of New Orleans, biceps exercised only by lifting books, thighs used to climbing aboard buses and airplanes and one typing finger on the verge of carpal syndrome.

Item: Mice apparently have nibbled their way through about 120 bags of marijuana stored in the evidence control vault at Baltimore's police headquarters, department officials confirmed. -- The Sun, April 9, 2002 "Dude, this evidence control vault is awesome." "Have you ever really ever looked at the holes in cheese?" "I got a monster case of the munchies." "I am the walrus." "Why 'mice'? Why not 'mouses'?" "Hey, put on the Allman Brothers." "Ever wondered if the Allman Brothers had sisters?"

The train fire in the Howard Street Tunnel was terrible for Baltimore, the CSX railroad and the Orioles. But for an elite group of companies it meant big business. Almost from the moment thick, black smoke began billowing from the tunnel Wednesday afternoon, businesses that specialize in responding to this sort of disaster descended on the wreck site. More than a half-dozen companies have worked the scene. Some have helped to right derailed boxcars, others have pumped hydrochloric acid from wrecked tankers and still others monitored the air inside the 1.7-mile tunnel to protect workers.

BOSTON - Two facts about teachers are by now abundantly clear: First, they are undervalued in this culture despite their often extraordinary work inside and outside the classroom. Second, they never know what has happened to any of their students from the last time they have seen them to the next time they meet. A perfect example is that of 15-year-old Meaghan Trumwell, who received news that her parents were divorcing on a Tuesday evening shortly after her grandmother's death. As she said, "I saw it coming but I didn't want to believe it. If you tell yourself something often enough, it, like, sort of doesn't happen.

There's a movie opening today that is so indistinctive I can barely remember its name. I think it's called "Whatever It Takes," but it could just as easily be "Can't Hardly Wait," "Down to You," "Crazy for You," "Drives Me Crazy," "She's All That" or any of a half-dozen other movies with two teen-agers who don't realize they are perfect for each other, a loopy best friend who doesn't shower, a date that goes horribly wrong and a climactic prom scene in...

RECENTLY, ONE of our local TV news shows in Miami did an investigative report on -- I swear -- brassiere sizes. The station promoted this report relentlessly for several days. Every few minutes you'd hear an announcer's voice saying, with an urgency appropriate for imminent nuclear attack: "Are you wearing the wrong bra size?" You'd have thought that women were dropping dead in the street by the thousands as a result of improperly sized brassieres. I was becoming genuinely concerned about this problem, despite the fact that, except on very special occasions involving schnapps, I don't even wear a brassiere.

I DON'T MEAN TO GET all mushy here, but I want to tell you about Earl.Earl is my pet. I got him several months ago, at my 50th birthday party, which was a quiet and relaxed affair, in stark contrast to my 30th birthday party, which I am pretty sure is still going on somewhere.Earl was given to me by my friend Carl Hiaasen, a Miami Herald columnist and book author. Carl does not write syrupy, romantic books; Carl writes the type of book wherein a key character has his left hand surgically replaced with a working weed whacker.

When John Michael Montgomery was a kid, he never figured he'd end up as a big-time country music singer. In fact, he never thought he'd be a singer at all."I was a guitar player," he says. "When I got in a band, my objective was to be a good guitar player. I actually focused on that before I even focused on being a lead singer -- or being asinger, period."I'm probably more accomplished on guitar," he adds, over the phone from a tour stop in Champaign, Ill. "I used to spend three to five hours a day, every day, just playing guitar and learning.

Oysterback, Maryland. -- We was all right, Huddie, I swear we was. Wade and Mookie and I only had about seven, eight beers apiece. Besides, it wasn't our fault that Wade had the gun. He'd just bought it offen a guy down the road and hadn't finished up the paperwork on it, that's all.It wasn't really concealed, he had it stuck in his belt. You just couldn't see it when the cops pulled him offen the truck 'cause his jacket fell down over it. They was no call to throw him up against the door like that, and that's what I told the judge, too.Hell, all we was gonna do was go bass fishin' over to Tom's pond up to Windy Hill, but we got over to Tom's and his old lady told us not to go fishin' there because they had a whole bunch of swans layin' around the pond, and they didn't want 'em all riled up. You know what swans is like when they gets all riled up and they're nestin'?

I WANT A PIT CREW.I say this after attending the NASCAR Slim Jim All Pro Homestead 150. This is an automobile race held at the Homestead Motorsports Complex in Homestead, Fla., which is a nice, all-American town, although it's also the only town I know of where a Citizen's Crime Watch meeting was disrupted by falling cocaine bales. Really. The bales had been shoved out of a low-flying plane being pursued by federal drug agents; one bale nearly hit the Homestead police chief. Stuff like that is always happening in South Florida.

THREE TRUE STORIES (honest, I swear) about the Battle of the Bulge.Gen. Anthony McAuliffe really did say "nuts." His famous reply to the German surrender demand at Bastogne 50 years ago today was widely reported, but almost as widespread was the grapevine talk that "the actual language used by the feisty American general was considerably stronger and more profane," as the New York Times put it.But reconstructions by historians, based on interviews with...