So when one wakes up at 3:30 AM, one tends to watch some terrible TV. First, I have a complaint. How come 30% of DirecTV’s programming is ads for DirecTV? I already have the service, and am paying for it, so why do I need ads for it?

Do you remember Ricky (oops, sorry, Rick) Shroder’s movie about reform-school stars of track and field? I thought not. Well, I’m watching it now and Rick Shroder is kicking ass in races, beating everybody and being generally a gentleman about it, despite his less-than-perfect upbringing. But what’s cool is this: the track coach is wearing jeans, motorcycle boots and a tucked-in white cool-guy t-shirt, only missing some Lucky Strikes rolled up in the sleeve. See, that’s how it is in bad neighborhoods like the one where Rick and (get this) Brad Pitt (his brother) come from.

Perhaps the coolest thing in the movie is the fact that when Ricky gets a pair of purloined track shoes as a gift, he says “shit yeah!” That, and the fact that they carry around the same Modern Geometry text book that I had in ninth grade.

Incidentally, did you know that Ricky Shroder lives in my hometown of Grand Junction, Colorado. I guess he absconded to the hills with his LDS wife and his “Silver Spoons” money and bought a big ranch on Glade Park. My friend (well, I call him my friend, but he never writes) Steve mother taught Ricky Shroder at Mesa State College, where he was taking agricultural and, for some reason, music classes.

Ricky also owns the only cool “loft apartment” and rennovated historic building type place in Grand Junction. It’s on Main Street.