Did someone grant me three wishes that I wasn't aware of?

I don't know if any of you have noticed or not, but lately I have been drifting, aimlessly. I had no center, no direction. Sometimes it felt as if I were merely existing, rather than living. Well, I finally figured out what was missing in my life. A girl? A family? Motivation? Ambition? A social life?

No! Seinfeld!

It was revealed to me a couple of weeks ago when I saw a commercial for the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. And what were they promoting but a Seinfeld reunion!

Of course. How did I not see it before? In the eleven years since the show went off the air, I still haven't moved on. Oh sure, I have a pretty steady thing going with The Office now, but I've never really gotten over my one true love. To this day I still reference Seinfeld every chance I get, to the delight of all, I'm sure. And somewhere in that deepest part of my heart which holds my most secret desires and dreams, I clung to the past, and a tiny shred of hope that someday there would be a reunion.

Now the day I have been waiting for, lo, these many years has arrived. My ship has finally come in.

Of course, Curb Your Enthusiasm comes on HBO, which I don't have, but thankfully you can watch everything online these days. Not that I wouldn't have ordered HBO or found some way to get it illegally. That's not to imply that I'm getting any channels illegally right now, nor have I or would I ever. What I meant to say is that maybe I could get a free trial period of HBO from my cable or satellite provider--whose name happens to be Mason. As in, jar, or Dixon. He can also start your car or get into your house without any keys. And he only accepts cash, or ammunition.

Now if this had been the only piece of good news I received all year, that alone would have been enough to make this one of the best years of my life--right up there with the year I got an Atari, the year I discovered Clorox disinfectant wipes, and the year I stopped peeing the bed. But more good tidings were yet to come.

Days later, General Hospital posted a message on Facebook that Jonathan Jackson would be reprising his role as Lucky Spencer beginning in October.

This had been my dream! For years, I told the Darryls and anyone else who would listen that I wished the original Lucky would come back. (Also, that Frisco and Felicia would come back, and Robert and Anna and the WSB, but let's stick to one dream at a time here.) I could scarcely believe my eyes. I even Google news'd it to make sure it wasn't a hoax. It wasn't. No more weird middle Lucky or lame third Lucky. (Sure, third Lucky has lustrous hair and rugged good looks, but I need more. The character had become about as exciting as an all-day scoliosis screening.) At long last, the original Lucky is returning!

I simply cannot believe my luck. It's as if a genie visited me while I was in a deep sleep one night and granted me three wishes, two of which have already come true. I'm bursting! We're talking Tom-Cruise-on-Oprah's-couch happy. No, happy as a lark. I'm a lark jumping up and down on Oprah's couch.

So let this be a lesson to us all. People may tell you not to cling to the past, but clearly that has been proven wrong. And sure, most hopes and dreams die hard, never having been realized or even chased, but... uh, I need something uplifting here. Hmm..... well, anyway.

As for my third wish? I have considered several obvious possibilities: A Wham! reunion; that Tab would make a comeback; that just once I could play the word QUETZALS in Scrabble covering two triple word scores and get the maximum 347 possible points.

But in the end, I passed them all over. Now I don't want to jinx anything by telling you what I finally decided on, but I will give you a couple of clues.

Clue #1. Two words: Brandon. Walsh.

Clue #2. Blank-0-2-1-0.

Happy sleuthing!

"I'm a genie in a bottle. You gotta rub me the right way. If you wanna be with me, I can make your wish come true..."

Let the screaming commence

It has been eight months since I stumbled out of the Superdome and onto those enticing streets of New Orleans in my Julio Jones jersey--naive, distraught, and in search of guidance.

Eight months of work, sleep, golf, sleep, fantasy baseball, sleep.

Eight months. Almost as long as the human gestation period and twice as painful.

But at last, it is here: the start of the college football season.

College football to me is the creme inside a Double Stuff basketball and baseball Oreo. It's like the part of Oprah where she tells you to look under your chair and find out what she's giving you for free. (I don't know what the rest of the show is for anyway.) It's the time in a Dexy's Midnight Runners concert when they sing "Come On Eileen." It's like fast money on Family Feud.

When I was little, I would sit through twenty minutes of face-off questions, bad guesses and Richard Dawson kissing people just for five minutes of pure unadulterated exhilaration. I used to wonder why there wasn't a show that was all fast money. They could call it Just Fast Money. Where have you gone, Mark Goodson?

Let me see if I can explain a bit better.

For eight months out of the year, I am mostly just coasting. Just kind of existing. Some days it's hard to tell if I'm even alive. Sure, I may take a couple of trips to the beach, play countless rounds of golf, and feign interest in socializing with others, but these are really just ways of passing the time until football season.

But for these next four months? I'm happy. I have a life. I'll hear from friends I rarely if ever hear from the other eight months of the year. Because that's what football does. It brings people together. And it gives me something to talk about with people with whom I evidently have nothing else in common.

Allow me to close with one last anecdote.

For me, college football is the roller coaster of the sports amusement park. Sure the ferris wheel, swings, and water rides are nice. But people don't drive a thousand miles to ride the swings. They drive a thousand miles to hop on Kingda Ka.

You scream, you cry, you try not to pee yourself.

That's college football in a nutshell.

"These people 'round here, with beaten down eyes sunken smoke dried faces so resigned to what their fate is. But not us, no never. No, not us, no never. We are far too young and clever..."