Kangaroo

The Miller Center Commission at the University of Virginia has just issued a timely reminder to Americans about the importance of what Gov. Bill Clinton and Ross Perot are about to do: select running mates.The commission, chaired by former vice presidential nominee Edmund Muskie and former Maryland Sen. Charles McC. Mathias, devoted a couple of years to studying how vice presidents have been chosen and made recommendations about how they should be chosen.The commission pointed out that since 1945 three vice presidents have become presidents due to death or resignation and five of the last nine vice presidents have become presidents either by accession or election.

The deadline for submitting sports copy is 9 a.m. on Mondays. We prefer email (howardcountysports@patuxent.com). We do not accept results by phone. When two Howard County teams play, players from both teams (first and last names) must be mentioned in the write-up. Questions? Call 410-332-6578. Jump rope Kangaroo Kids Twenty-two members of the Kangaroo Kids competition team competed at the USA Jump Rope Region 1 Championship April 28 at the Meadowbrook Athletic Center.

Abbey Burger Bistro figured 300 pounds of kangaroo would be enough to last a month. But customers ordered their way through that supply in just about two weeks. Abbey 's general manager Jon Taylor general manager told me that kangaroo, currently the "meat of the month" on the restaurant's "build a burger" menu, has a sweet taste that his customers are enjoying. It's a lean meat, too. Kangaroo will advance to the regular menu, Taylor, says if he can be sure of a regular supply.

It's national hamburger month. Just trust me. I guess I better have a hamburger every day and blog about it. Ya with me? Let's get started. Have a look at this photo gallery from a few months back. Not all of them are hamburgers. Some of them are other kinds of burgers, made out of things like turkey, kangaroo and even vegetables. But a few of them are legitimately hamburgers.    

PEOPLE ALWAYS ask me: How come the newspaper prints so much bad news? How come the front page always has negative headlines like: "Freak Espresso Machine Explosion Destroys Crowded Starbucks?" Why don't we print stories with a positive slant, like: "Destroyed Starbucks Was Popular Gathering Place for Lawyers?" Well, OK, then. You want good news? We got yer good news right here, starting with this: Exciting Advance in Livestock Flatulence As you know if you have ever stood outdoors in the Midwest, cows give off methane gas. We don't know why. Maybe they're bored.

AYERS ROCK, Australia -- In the heart of the Australian outback, the kangaroo has hopped from national icon to dinner choice. At the Desert Garden Hotel, the buffet line is digging into kangaroo stew. The a la carte crowd is ordering Desert Bites -- grilled kangaroo, crocodile, camel and emu. A hundred miles northeast, in Alice Springs, the lunch crowd grabs a kangaroo burger at a sidewalk cafe.Hundreds of pounds of kangaroo are handled by meat processors in the outback, but that's just the tip of the staggering amount that is available.

SAN FRANCISCO - Not long ago, Marion Jones was a darling of the American sports scene, a powerful sprinter with explosive strides, a blur going down the track. Now she cuts a starkly different figure, a woman standing her ground against speculation about steroids and questions from anti-doping authorities. With the clock ticking down to the Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, and her ex-husband talking to investigators, Jones faces the specter of charges that could ban her from the games.

Kathy and Keith Simpson and their two children have traveled to places such as Australia, Canada, New Orleans, Detroit and Disney World (six times). They got there by jumping. The Simpson children, Scott and Amy, joined Kangaroo Kids, a precision jump-rope team in Howard County, at a young age. They quickly found success that has led them and their parents to competitions out of state. Scott is now a ninth-grader at Hammond High who plays in the school band, is on the JV soccer team and still finds time for jump-rope practices.

* Editor's note: One young kangaroo takes a journey that shows her how to like herself just the way she is. Marsupial Sue, A young kangaroo, Hated the hopping that kangaroos do. It rattled her brain, It gave her migraine, A backache, sideache, tummyache, too. One morning in May Sue wandered away, Leaving her relatives grazing on hay. What did she see Way up in a tree? Koalas, gaily at play. And suddenly Sue was convinced she had found A way to escape all that bouncing around.

benjaminchristie.com Want to learn how to cook kangaroo meat or make Shortbread Cookies With Wattleseed? This redesigned Web site from an Australian celebrity chef will show you how. And there's information for those in the restaurant business.

Abbey Burger Bistro figured 300 pounds of kangaroo would be enough to last a month. But customers ordered their way through that supply in just about two weeks. Abbey 's general manager Jon Taylor general manager told me that kangaroo, currently the "meat of the month" on the restaurant's "build a burger" menu, has a sweet taste that his customers are enjoying. It's a lean meat, too. Kangaroo will advance to the regular menu, Taylor, says if he can be sure of a regular supply.

It could well have been Howard County's Kangaroo Kids auditioning for television's "America's Got Talent" several weeks ago instead of a rival team from the Midwest. The Colorado-based precision rope jumpers waited 10 hours to perform on the popular summer program, but errors soon set off the dreaded triple buzzers from the judges. In less than a minute, they found themselves trooping back off the stage beneath three illuminated red X's, said local coach James McCleary. He commiserated with the other team's bad fortune as if his own team had been axed.

Eduardo Cini uses his creative skills daily in his job as a professional hair stylist. Off the job, the 47-year-old native of Malta employs that innate sense of design and color in his Baltimore County home. In August 2003 Cini purchased a two-story townhouse at The Beeches, a Towson community of cedar-sided homes complete with neighborhood pool and tennis courts. The setting is almost completely surrounded by woods, and deer roam an area architecturally designed for privacy. No house faces another, either in the front or back.

Photos depict Gehry design in Columbia Photographs of the General Growth Properties building, designed by architect Frank Gehry and built in 1974 as headquarters of the Rouse Co., will be on display at the Columbia Archives until Aug. 15 and will be highlighted during the Columbia Festival of the Arts, to be held Friday to June 28. Photographer Gary Kubicek, who took the photographs in different seasons and at different times of day, will discuss "Views...

benjaminchristie.com Want to learn how to cook kangaroo meat or make Shortbread Cookies With Wattleseed? This redesigned Web site from an Australian celebrity chef will show you how. And there's information for those in the restaurant business.

COLLEGE PARK -- Maryland senior guard Mike Jones had every intention of breaking a school record last night - a different one. During the first half of the rout of Missouri-Kansas City, Maryland assistant coach Keith Booth leaned over and told Jones that the school scoring record was 44 points, and "if you keep getting opportunities to shoot, shoot it." American @Maryland Dec. 23, 1 p.m., Comcast SportsNet, 1300 AM, 105.7 FM

Janet Sasser never dreamed she'd grow up to be the mother of a boy who jumped rope.Growing up in Winston-Salem, N.C., in the '50s, she'd run outside with a length of clothesline and meet her girlfriends to swing the rope, jump in and out of its twirling cadence and sing silly songs of youth as the rope slapped against the sidewalk."

It's national hamburger month. Just trust me. I guess I better have a hamburger every day and blog about it. Ya with me? Let's get started. Have a look at this photo gallery from a few months back. Not all of them are hamburgers. Some of them are other kinds of burgers, made out of things like turkey, kangaroo and even vegetables. But a few of them are legitimately hamburgers.    

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA / / I went to the Sydney Fish Market to see what strange creatures I had been eating: barramundi and Balmain bugs. I found them amid an astonishing variety of seafood at one of the world's largest fish markets. Mounded on ice were more than two-dozen types of whole fish, steaks and fillets. There was smoked eel, sea urchin roe and several varieties of oysters, already shucked and displayed on the half-shell. There were tubs of calamari rings and squid tubes. And a lovely rose-colored octopus, its arms twisted to show off rows of perfect tentacles next to a sign that proclaimed "Sashimi quality."

At Oakland Mills High School on the eve of the first, a musical called Seussical was played and rehearsed. And the audience, familiar with the Seussical plot - they all liked the musical, yes, they liked it a lot. The childhood rebel's favorite Cat in the Hat acts as the emcee through a flashy, energetic production of extraordinary "thinks." Familiar Seuss characters return to wreak havoc in lands like the Jungle of Nool and the planet of Who. Before long, the imaginative elephant, Horton, hears a Who and becomes friends with the Who Mayor's son, JoJo, who often gets into trouble for his extravagant daydreams.