My wife and I disagree on many things, but nothing more striking than the quality of Patch Adams.

Catherine lists Patch Adams as one of her all-time favorite films. I list Patch Adams as anal discharge.

To me, one scene in this you-can-change-the-world-if-you-just-believe saga from brain dead hell sums up my feelings: Early in the film, Patch (Robin Williams) is trying to prove to a medical school classmate that laughter is the best medicine. So he climbs a tree, then dangles down just as an elderly woman passes by. “You’ll see,” he tells his peer. “Just watch.”

In the real world, Bertha has a heart attack and dies. Hell, she’s probably 85, and this strange man pops out of a tree. Surely, he’s a mugger. Maybe even a rapist.

Here, in Patch Adams, she giggles like a child. Literally, she giggles, then shoos her hand in that you-wacky-kidder motion. It is inane and pathetic; the worst genre of movie moment.

Making matters worse, Williams character spends much of the movie hitting on a fellow student, played by Monica Potter. She is initially repulsed, but over time (and, of course, laughs) he begins to win her heart. Yet more than reaffirming or joyful, it’s creepy. Williams is 20 years older than Potter in real life, and no matter Mork’s comb-over, it just screams, “Ew.”

In regards to the ongoing B.P. disaster, Republicans are screaming, “What is Obama doing?”

Which is a fair question. But not to be asked by Republicans. Who want government out of our lives. And have spent years trying to give corporations even greater power.

Corporations like B.P.

You can’t have it both ways. If you believe in corporate American and a completely free market, and you want the president and congress to have as little impact as possible, then stop whining about Obama allowing B.P. to dictate the terms of the cleanup. Because it actually symbolizes your ultimate goal—a company doing the government’s job.

If, on the other hand, you believe in government, and you want regulation, you have every right to be pissed at Obama.

Right now, I am.

Spent the day at a beach in nearby New Jersey. Great for people watching, great for reinforcing people as sheep. Bah, bah, bah.

It’s riveting. You have the guys in their early 20s, cockily tossing footballs back and forth, sporting stupid tattoos and wearing their bathing trunks down to their asses (with underwear peeking out, inexplicably). You have the teenage girls with their belly rings (Writer’s note: If my daughter ever wants a belly ring, she won’t be living under my roof. Nose ring? Fine. Lip ring? OK. Belly ring? No way in hell. As I’ve said to my wife on this topic, “the belly button is the gateway to the vagina.”). You have old farts like me sucking in our guts and feeling ancient (I especially dig the guys my age sporting that barbed wire-around-the-forearm tatt from long ago. It screams, “I made a poor choice!”). You have, well, you have everything.

We actually sat near a 24-year-old woman with eight tattoos covering her body. I said to my daughter, “Never get a tattoo with somone’s name on it, because if you wind up hating that person it’s there forever.” She overheard the conversation, spun my way and told us she just broke up with her fiance, Kevin—whose name was tattooed under her right breast. Oops. I said, for my daughter to hear, “So you’ll never get another tattoo, right?”

“No!” she said. “I’m getting a huge grape vine down my side next week!”

Ugh.

She also had a cross tattooed beneath her armpit, which surely must violate about 8,653 Biblical commands.

But I digress. The beach also reminds me why I’m a heterosexual. Because while there are certainly good-looking man, the vast majority of us are gross, fat, hairy, smelly orbs from Planet Nasty. The female body is soooo much more appealing than the male, and no matter how many times my wife tells me I’m handsome (or any wife tells her husband/boyfriend/hookup) he’s handsome, I don’t get it. Maybe I’m handsome compared to Butterbean Esch, but if you hold the best-looking man next to the best-looking woman, well, there’s no contest.

Again, I digress. The beach is a wonderful place for kids, and a wonderful place for parents with kids. But the cleanup is the absolute worst. Sand up the ass, sand in the shoes, sand on food, sand in cell phones. Sand, sand, sand, sand.

OK, I’m done.

… the one, the only, the Dale Peterson, candidate for Alabama Agriculture Commissioner. Here’s his advertisement, which Gail Collins wrote of in her latest column.

I don’t know much, but I do know you don’t fuck with this guy. He rides horses, he brandishes a gun, he calls his opponent a “dummy.” And 33 years ago he started Alabama’s first pre-washed blue jeans laundry facility in Opp, Alabama (I have no idea what that means, but it sounds awfully impressive). It’s actually the latest example of a seemingly qualified Republican (if you read his bio, he seems to know agriculture) damning himself with a unambiguously stupid advertisement.

There are certain loopy people I know who genuinely believe that deaths happen in 3s. So, with Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper passing within the past 48 hours, they’re on the edge of their seats, waiting for the triangle to be completed.

I, for one, ain’t holding my breath. To begin with, the whole concept is inane; one endorsed by those very same people who look you up and down, then say, “Your aura oozes purple. What sign were you born under?” Second, when it comes to dying, who’s to say what’s celebrity and what’s not celebrity? Dennis Hopper is one of the elite actors of our lives, while Coleman was a faded sitcom star. Are they even in the same boat? The same ocean? Hell, I’d argue that, what Coleman is to Hopper, I am to Coleman. I’m not a celebrity, obviously, or anything resembling a celebrity. But If Hopper is 100 and Coleman is 50, well, I can be a 0. That’s fair. So if I died today (and, following this post, that’d be incredibly spooky, eh?), would that complete the Deaths in 3s?

No.

Speaking of death, I just took a dlightful nap. It’s 6:34 pm, and my wife was nice enough to make the kids dinner. Man, do I love naps.

Even for a 0.

Nate Robinson woke up a hero this morning.

Nate Robinson?

The guy who drove Knicks fans to drink? The guy who deliberately took a shot at the wrong basket? The guy who represented everything bad about me-first NBA players?

Nate friggin’ Robinson?

The cliche will be that the Knicks must be kicking themselves for trading him to Boston earlier in the year. The cliche would be wrong. Robinson was a mess as a Knick; a seemingly nice guy who just didn’t have the discipline to be a quality NBA player. And the Knicks, unlike Boston, couldn’t afford loose and spare parts. So they traded Nate Dogg to a place that could, and the Celtics suffered through Robinson’s immaturity and poor decisions … until last night.

He scored 13 second-quarter points—the burst of energy to send the Celtics back to the NBA Finals. It’s what he does well, only one never knows when it’s going to happen. Robinson just as easily could have had 13 second-quarter turnovers.

But he didn’t.

And Boston advances …

It’s 9:18 pm, and I just learned that Gary Coleman died.

I’m shocked.

No sarcasm. I’m truly, truly shocked. And sad. When I was a kid, I loved Gary Coleman. His work—on Diff’rent Strokes and in a bevy of made-for-TV movies—meant something to me. I vividly recall the early 1980s, my brother and I excitedly plopping down in front of the television every Saturday night for the back-to-back joy that was Diff’rent Strokes and Silver Spoons. Sure, Diff’rent Strokes wasn’t solely Coleman’s show—he shared the bill with Todd Bridges, Dana Plato, Conrad Bain and—when the program hit the crapper—Danny Cooksey and Dixie Carter (Arnold’s step-mom who, ironically, just passed a month ago). But, when push came to shove, Coleman was the headliner. He was cute and short and quick with a quip. Everyone remembers “What you talkin’ about Willis!” But when Mr. T guest starred, Coleman sported a mohawk. When Nancy Reagan arrived at his school, Coleman greeted the first lady. When Dudley was molested by the station manager from WKRP (played by Gordon Jump), Coleman comforted him.

He also was, for a brief span, The Man when it came to those cheesy made-for-TV flicks. Coleman played the manager of the San Diego Padres in The Kid from Left Field, a guardian angel in The Kid With the Broken Halo (featuring Georg Stanford Brown playing Rudy Desautel—my favorite all-time movie character name), a Scout who saves his friends in Scout’s Honor. Was he a particularly skilled thespian? To quote my friend Jeanne Hawkins, “He was the best small-statured actor ever.” Which is the equivalent of being the best chef at Burger King. But, hey, who’s keeping score?

Sadly, Coleman grew up. And with that, he became a punchline. A mean, lazy punchline. About short people. About faded stars. About virgins. He came off as angry and, to be honest, sort of pathetic. He ran for governor of California and worked as a security guard. The hit play Avenue Q literally has a character, Gary Coleman, who works as the landlord of a low-income housing development.

Somewhat ironically, I just pondered Coleman the other day. I was walking through a mall with my children. Someone working a SEARCHING FOR STARS kiosk approached … asked if I had any interest in getting the kids into show biz.

I thought of Coleman. Literally, I thought about him. About his post-TV life. About the jokes and the comments and the sadness.

“No,” I said. “No thank you.”

R.I.P. Gary. You didn’t deserve what you received.

… highlights Mike Ditka vs. Lane Kiffin. Integrity vs slime.

Holy crap. Just sat through the two-hour finale of American Idol. Even The Wife, as positive a person as they come, thought the show sucked ass.

My Top 10 Worst Moments:

1. Paul Abdul rambling and rambling and rambling about Simon, until some wise producer drifted away and started up the video montage.

2. Lee DeWyze singing with Chicago. Try and imagine being a 14-year-old girl (the target audience) and watching tonight’s episode. “Mommy, are those Lee’s grandfathers?” So insanely lame.

3. All the female contestants joining together to sing their Christina Aguilera montage. Then—and this was priceless—Aguilera joining them for all of two verses before launching into a solo of her very, very, very bad new single. Having covered celebrities for years, I can assure you this statement was made by an Aguilera rep: “OK, Christina will appear with the contestants for eight-to-10 seconds, and no more. Then they will swiftly depart the stage. Afterward, you will have imported Chilean grapes, served at room temperature, with a fresh-squeezed glass of papaya-orange-mango juice.”

4. Crystal Bowersox performing “You Oughta Know” with Alanis Morisette and changing the line, “Will she go down on you in a theatre” to “Will she go with you to a theatre.”

5. Flippin’ hell, the five minutes of Hall & Oates was so awful, it hurt my stomach. I’m the world’s biggest H&O fan, but, man, absolutely dreadful. First time I’ve ever heard Daryl sound like such slop. And poor little Oates …

6. Six words: Kris Allen singing his new single.

7. Joe Cocker. First, he looked like a drunk senior citizen removed from three years of homelessness on the streets of Brooklyn. Then he forgot a line of a song he’s only performed 894,321 times. Said my wife: “I really hope he doesn’t die on stage.”

8. Janet Jackson jumping back and forth from singing to mouthing to singing to mouthing, while wearing George Clooney’s rejected outfit from Batman Forever.

9. The 8,000 tributes to Simon. Yeah, he made the show. And yeah, it’s gonna be a fierce plummet without him. But enough is enough.

10. The warm drool running down my cheek as the words, “Your new American Idol is …” startled me from my sleep. For the second-straight year, the fans picked the person with the lesser talent. Not that it matters. Because I have a book to write. And a shower to take. And my toenails are too long. And …

I am a father of two children. I love them very much, and am insanely proud.

I am the owner of a cell phone. I use it quote often, and enjoy the wonders of communication.

That said, I would like to stick a knife inside my temple, and twist it round and round.

Am sitting here in my local Starbucks, helplessly subjected to the loud, speaker-phone-induced ramblings of the woman in the above video. She is sitting in the middle of an otherwise quiet, peaceful coffee shop, screaming, “HE SAID IPOD TODAY! ISN’T THAT FUNNY? HE SAID IPOD TODAY!” I’m sure she’s a nice woman, and a kid saying iPod is, I suppose, cute. But who the hell uses speaker phone in the middle of a public place? Damn.

Truth is, we now live in a culture plagued by bragging parents (Trust me—nobody wants to hear how cute your kid is. Really, nobody. I swear. Really). and cell phone addicts (Put it down. Seriously. Just for a minute. Maybe while you eat) who care little for manners or decency.

It might sound like I’m kidding. Well, I’m not. I’m frustrated, especially by the cell phone thing. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of having people (friends, family members, associates, etc), casually glance away from a conversation to check their fucking iPhones. I’d think maybe it’s just me, but I watch this happen all the time. To everyone. When I was a kid, table manners—and manners in general—mattered.

Now, it’s all gone to crap.

Man, I sound like I’m 88, not 38. Oy.