Underwear

I have here a letter from Alison Schuler of Albuquerque, N.M. (motto: "The City That Is Probably Spelled Wrong"). Ms. Schuler is concerned about the issue of how guys do laundry. She relates the following anecdote:"My husband announced one morning that he had discovered the previous night, on the eve of a two-day business trip, that he was out of underwear. Why he told me, I do not know. I never tell him when I'm out of underwear. Anyway, he decided to remedy the situation in true guy fashion, by washing exactly three sets of underwear, thus disregarding the bulging hamper full of the rest of his underwear, which, presumably, would wash itself during his absence."

AS A PROFESSIONAL newspaper columnist with both medical and dental benefits, I receive many letters from people who would like to get into my line of work. "Dear Dave," they write. "I'm sick of my boring dead-end job as a (lawyer, teacher, office worker, President). How do I develop the skills I need to obtain a job like yours, where you have an opportunity to make a difference, even though you never actually do?" OK, then: Today I'm going to take you "behind the scenes" here at Dave Barry Inc., and reveal, step-by-step, exactly how I write a column: Step One is to come up with a topic.

Like most children, my daughters like to play dress-up. Fine by me -- so long as they lay off the underwear. There is nothing more annoying, when you're rushing to get dressed in the morning, than finding your favorite bra has been adjusted to fit a prepubescent 10-year-old."

NATICK, Mass. - It's the middle of winter. Snow is falling. Wind is blowing. And Murray Hamlet is talking underwear. The secret to staying warm, confides Hamlet, is not in a $600 high-tech parka. It's in what you put on over your birthday suit. "Moisture management is the name of the game," preaches the U.S. Army's king of cold weather research from his lab outside Boston. "You've gotta have good underwear, a good first layer. Cotton gets wet, stays wet. Cotton kills." Dr. Murray Hamlet knows sub-zero.

B. J. the deejay says he has not decided what he will do if the National Football League owners choose next week not to give Baltimore an expansion team franchise.That's B. J. Murphy, of WXYV-FM (102.7), who today entered the 22nd day of his "Give Baltimore the Ball" marathon broadcasting stunt.He vowed on Oct. 1 to stay on the air until the NFL granted Baltimore a franchise, and he has been eating and sleeping in the station's studios ever since."We're very excited about Tuesday, hoping the NFL owners see the light," he said yesterday, noting plans are in the works for him to travel to Chicago and broadcast live from the team owners' meetings.

MY TOP TIP for anyone contemplating travel during the coming Thanksgiving week is: Don't do it. Make those relatives trek to your house. Make them sleep on your fold-out sofabed, not the other way around. But if you lost the coin flip with your kinfolk and are among the estimated 36 million Americans who will trek 50 miles or more away from home this week, here are some tips from a cranky holiday traveler. Yesterday as I read perky missives on travel Web sites that promised getting around this Thanksgiving week will be "as easy as pumpkin pie," I snickered with disbelief.

"A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory," by Randy Roberts and James N. Olson. The Free Press. 352 pages. $26. No event in U.S. history has been more mythologized than the battle of the Alamo. Disney's Davy Crockett trilogy was, after all, the granddaddy of movies with merchandising spin-offs, generating a craze for all things Davy that eclipses even "Star Wars." Yet, visiting the Alamo, standing where Col. William Barret Travis drew a line in the sand and dared those who would stand with him to cross over, it's hard not to be moved by the bravery of men who chose to stay and fight knowing they would be slaughtered.

CAMP PENNSYLVANIA, Kuwait - Empty, it weighs less than a bag of flour, just flat folds of canvas-like material in green, black and brown Army camouflage. Fully loaded, it can tip the scales at 80 pounds and look like an overgrown first-grader - three feet high and about as wide, with fleshy appendages jutting here and there. The rucksack, and its smaller cousin the assault pack, are not mere bags. They are lifelines for soldiers expected to go weeks in the wild without shelter, shower or supplies besides food and water.

Ding dong, the winter's dead, the wicked winter's dead.Positively, unequivocally, quite sincerely dead.So what if it snowed a bit as recently as Friday -- or that snow buried the state on the Palm Sunday of March 29, 1942; played a 9-inch joke on Baltimore for April Fool's Day in 1924; or delayed an Oriole opening day by a few minutes on April 8, 1985.Time to pack away the snow shovel and boots, clean out the swimming pool, tune up the air conditioner and think about the greenhouse effect: Temperatures hit a summerlike 87 in Baltimore yesterday, shattering a nearly century-old record.

Anyone who has been around the block more than once knows that old habits die hard. But the experiment of breaking away from the customary crash in front of the telly for World Series games proved rewarding enough to occasion future repeats.While viewers were being anesthetized by meaningless replays, interminable commercial breaks, annoying graphics and superfluous crowd shots, all to the accompaniment of audio equipment turned up to full blast on CBS, over on radio Vin Scully and Johnny Bench have been a joy.The way Scully describes the radio assignment is superb: "You show up with a canvas and your brushes and you go from there, painting a picture."