The Columnist Manifesto

Driving into the gym parking lot yesterday, I came within 3 feet of having a fender-bender with a big Cadillac, which was backing out. It's slightly shocked-looking driver was none other than Gerry Torres, our university Athletic Director and former bowl-winning head football coach.

How cool is that?

Dear Dan Savage,

When I'm in My Home Town, I probably spend 75-80% of my cafe time at Grandma Moses. I'm such a regular, that they just recently used my name and testimonial quotation in a handbill ad about their iced coffee:

Grandma Moses makes the best iced coffee in the continental United States... and perhaps the world. I drink it year round!
---Oscar Madison

So I feel like I'm having an illicit affair -- with The Water Nymph! It has a warm and cozy space, really good iced coffee (regular only, however), yummy non-Vegan baked goods --- and real breakfast and lunch food. And it's equidistant from my house (fortunately, in the other direction) from Grandma M.

I really don't want to leave Grandma Moses for this new fling... but can a man be in love with two coffee shops at the same time?

Please help me,

SOOGM

This week, I'm on "jersey duty" for my hockey scrimmage group.

When you do the NYT Crossword on line, the web page clocks you and then shows your rank among all the online solvers so far that day.

It's kind of fun to check the fastest times -- always around 2 minutes for M-W -- and see "tylerhinman," the young puzzle phenom featured in the movie "Wordplay."

I thought I was moving pretty fast through today's crossword, because I caught on to the theme pretty quickly and had good guesses to fill in the four 15-letter theme clues. But I got bogged down and ended up at 11 min., 30 sec., good enough to place me at #350 out of about #450 online solvers.

I notice that #453 was "kranepool3." Could it be Ed Kranepool? It would be cool to be able to say that I beat Ed Kranepool in solving the crossword puzzle. Poor Ed, the "Original Met," who spent so much of his long career as a bench player. It would be just like him to be the

Olympic rowing duo Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter of Great Britain won gold in the men's lightweight double scull today.

That's all well and good, but couldn't they have worked harder to come up with a more memorable name pairing -- like the U.S. rowing team of [Calvin] Coffey and [Michael] Staines, who took the silver in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal?

If only Purchase could have ditched Hunter for a guy named "Sayle."

I suppose Purchase could have stepped aside in favor of a rower named "Bargain." Or even "Gatherer," if he'd have been willing to sit in the back of the boat.

This morning I couldn't remember, when asked by the receptionist, when I last visited the eye doctor.

Among other potentially useful things I can't remember: anything from my graduate school statistics course.

But with only the letter X to go on, I answered 59 Across in this morning's New York Times Crossword, "1985 Golden Globe-nominated role for Eddie Murphy."

Answer: Axel Foley.