I'm a guy who likes mini-vans.

Not many of you younger people know, but the mini-van is what saved the mighty Chrysler Corporation from going belly-up a few decades ago. Chrysler's leader, Lee Iacocca, had the vision (along with his engineers) to re-imagine the American car as something roomier and taller than a station wagon but with the same wheelspan, meaning as easy to park.

He (they) guessed right.

The mini-van was an immediate success. It quickly became the choice for anyone who needed to transport more than a few people but who didn't want to buy the traditional van, a clumsy and bulky vehicle that was hard to park and didn't get good gas mileage.

But the mini-van soon became anathema (look it up) for the same women who loved it but who didn't want to be called "soccer moms" -- those stay-at-home wives who were responsible for hauling their kids to and from sports practices and who needed extra space, etc.

Fast-forward to now. Mini-vans are still the most practical American vehicle to have been invented in the past half-century. The driver sits up high, with a clear view, and up to seven other people can be sitting in the seats beside or behind him/her, all with windows to look out.
And it still fits into most parking spaces.

What's not to like?

My understanding is that when it comes to making cars, there are two platforms -- the undergirding, the chassis -- for any vehicle sold to the public. The first is the car chassis, the second the truck chassis. Either the vehicle you're driving is built like a car, or it's built like a truck. Mini-vans were built to be like cars. SUVs, which came later, were built to be like trucks. From the beginning, you had to decide whether you were a car person or a truck person, or something between.

In my job for many years, I had the opportunity to drive both kinds, the mini-van built on a car chassis and the SUV built on a truck chassis. One was a Dodge Caravan, the other a Ford Explorer.
They both had their advantages, of course. Driving the bigger vehicle makes you feel sort of like king of the road, but it's damnably hard to park -- I bumped a few fenders in parking lots before I realized how big it was -- and uses lots of gas. The mini-van, on the other hand, didn't burn any more gas than a typical sedan, which seats fewer and much lower, limiting your view.

When I had a choice in my company, I always chose the mini-van. And now that I'm retired from that company, I still choose the mini-van.

Think about it: Do you really need a monster car or truck? I mean, you drive around town, maybe up to the mountains once a year, if that. Most of the time, you're traversing city streets and trying to get into parking spaces. How much car do you really need?

On the other hand, do you always want to drive with your rear end a foot from the road? Why not boost yourself up a bit, give yourself a better view? Sometimes I have to drive my wife's car, which is a very nice one, but getting into and out of it requires some dexterity. How could an older or mildly disabled person even manage to get behind the wheel of most cars, much less get out without help?

The mini-van made that possible. Anybody, with a little boost, or a friendly arm, can get into a Dodge Caravan and out again.


A friend once said to me, "But what about your image?" I think he meant that, at my age, I should be roaring around town in a red Corvette. (I can see it, sometimes.) How did I feel driving a "soccer mom" car? "I think that's my image," I told him. "I'm a mini-van guy."

I think that means that I'm practical and not overly interested in cars (except maybe for that Corvette) and think women were right all along. It doesn't matter that many of them have rejected the mini-van for all kinds of good reasons: they were right in the first place.

I'm saving my pennies to buy another one. I understand they're sleeker now, but still have the qualities I appreciated when I saw my first one: the view, the space, the easy of handling. And now a powerful sound system for all those LPs I burned to my MP3 player. (Okay, I didn't.)

All aboard! (Max. 8)

We're all political, whether we vote or not.

We just went through an election -- a mid-term election (meaning the middle of the President's term in office) -- and many of us didn't bother to vote. What that means is that Senators and members of the House of Representatives were elected without lots of us our having anything to say about it.



Why is that important? To you? To me?



Because -- duh -- those men and women elected to to the House of Representatives and the Senate make the laws of our country.



Go back, if you can, to Civics class in high school. Granted, you may not have paid much attention to what your teacher was saying because you were too concerned about how you looked and whether so-and-so was going to ask you to the prom or at least for a date or if the coach was going to let you play next week. You were being taught, whether you got it or not, about how we have two Senators per state and any number of Representatives, based on your state's population. If you live in New York, you have a lot more representatives in the House than you have Senators. If you live in Wyoming, you have two Senators but only one Representative because your state doesn't have many people living in it.



Are you following me? If not, go back and read what I just wrote. I'm no political genius, but the math works: Two Senators times fifty states means a hundred Senators. The House can vary, depending on population, but it always has well over four hundred. (It may actually be capped at four hundred thirty five, but I'm not sure.)



Those are the elected officials who decide if we will pass a health care bill or authorize more money for overseas wars or cut taxes or raise taxes or let kids pray openly in schools or let women have abortions or allow us to carry a concealed weapon or . . . you name it. Anything you've ever gotten heated about in the past in arguments/discussions with your friends is decided by those men and women that you either voted for or didn't.



So what if you didn't vote? What if you said, "I'm not political" (and so never vote)?



Then your voice -- a tiny voice in the wilderness for sure, but maybe one of many-- is never heard. And you have to abide by whatever laws are passed, whether they're in your interest or not. You don't like what Congress -- the Senate and House combined -- has voted into law? Too bad. You're going to have to live with it.



Our system of government is based on the votes of the citizens. Make that the citizens who vote. Those who don't aren't counted, and their opinions go unheard.



Politics isn't an esoteric/odd/strange/weird field of study that only the smartest and nerdiest among us indulge in. It's actually very simple. It's all about how our government makes decisions about how to spend the taxes we pay.



Think of a household -- your own -- that brings in a certain amount of money every year. How is that money spent? On rent? On groceries? We hope so. What about the rest? That's where it gets tricky. The head of the household, the main wage-earner, exerts his/her rights. Dad's beer may trump daughter's soccer outfit; Mom's new dress may mean that son won't be getting that X-Box for Christmas. You don't like it? Tough. Families aren't democracies. But would it be better if they were? Hmmm . . .



Nations that embrace democracy -- one person, one vote -- risk having those who vote deciding against what may be in the best interests of us all. But it's our choice, as a people. If we vote in a President who pushes laws we don't agree with, all we have to do next time around is vote him out of office. But if we don't vote, if we say we aren't "political", and if there are enough of us so inclined, then he's likely going to be re-elected.



Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the rest.



Our system -- again, one person, one vote -- is far from perfect, especially when many of us don't know what we're doing when we cast a vote. Wacko candidates win elections. Dangerous individuals are elected. People we thought we were dweebs back in high school are suddenly Representatives or even Senators. How did that happen?



I have had friends who told me they didn't vote last time around. "I just wasn't excited about either one." Hello? It's not about being excited. It's about putting someone in office who promotes and reflects your own values. We don't need our elected officals to be exciting. We need them to be bigger than themselves and their own egos, to go to bat for us in the halls of government where laws are made. The woman who was just running to become governor of California, and who spent an ungodly amount of her own money trying, admitted that she hadn't voted in a while. She was defeated, and rightfully so.



We are all political because those who are elected to represent us -- be they Representatives or Senators or our state legislators or city council members -- decide for us how that "family" money is going to be spent. You can tuck yourself into a shell and say it doesn't matter, but, believe me, it does. If you vote or if you don't vote, someone is going to be making decisions that will impact you.

You are political just because you're human. Living in a democracy means that no one can kill you, legally, because of your political beliefs. If you choose to have none, that's your right. If you decide not to vote, so be it. You've made a political statement. You've said, "I'm okay with what most of the others decide."

Just don't come bitching to me later about how the government has let you down.

I support homosexual sex but don't understand all of it.

Okay, get ready for some graphic stuff. If you are turned off by homosexual sex, tune out now.

Many of the most interesting people I know are homosexual, meaning that they're sexually attracted to others of the same sex. Some of them are as committed to their partners as any married couple. Some have been with one person of the same sex for many years.

So what's up with that?

Well, I guess we humans just naturally gravitate toward others who are most in tune with us and who like us and want to be with us.

But that's not what I'm writing about here. I'm writing about -- again, the warning -- what homosexuals do "that way" with each other.

Heterosexual couples unite sexually by the male inserting his penis into the female's vagina, and both -- hopefully -- enjoy the experience. Yes, it varies with each couple and maybe with each encounter, but that's the basic plan. The ultimate goal, according to biology, is producing offspring. The more children you have, the more viable your marriage, or so we're told. It often goes awry, of course, and couples separate, leaving the children to try to figure out what went wrong.

But homosexual couples can't have children, at least not with each other, at least not in that way.
In the case of females, they can adopt or get a male to donate sperm, which is implanted in one or the other of them. Homosexual males can donate sperm to a woman, who then bears their child, or they can adopt.

In neither case does the pregnancy result from copulation with a lover.

Homosexuals do, however, have sex. Why? Well, duh. It's fun. It's one of life's great pleasures.

Homosexual females enjoy sex by stimulating each other's parts, the clitoris especially, but also by inserting fingers or whatever into the vaginas of their partners. (I once saw a video of a woman putting her whole hand into the vagina of her lover!) They also enjoy kissing and fondling and all those other activities we all love, but when it comes to the ultimate act, they either have to settle for clitoral stimulation or a simulation of the heterosexual act, meaning something like the penis -- fingers or a device -- inserted into the vagina.

For males, it gets more complicated. There are only two places to put a penis. A mouth or an anus. (No other points of entry into a human.)

Male homosexuals insert their erect penises into the the mouths of their lovers or into their anuses. I understand the first part: blowjobs are almost always welcomed by guys, whoever is giving them. (Clinton almost blew -- so to speak -- his Presidential gig over one.) It's the other option that baffles me.

I've tried to imagine how having some guy put his erect penis into my anus might feel good, but the concept somehow escapes me. I've had doctors slip their gloved fingers, coated with gel, up there -- to see if my prostate was enlarged and maybe cancerous -- but I didn't enjoy it. In fact, the doctor said, "This is the part none of us likes, but it's necessary."

The only thing I can figure out --and, again, this gets graphic (and is probably off-base)-- is that we humans do get pleasure from, say, a bowel movement. Very pleasant coming out. But the going in? Ouch! Is the male homosexual experience a combination of ouch going in and and ahh coming out?

Or do homosexual men experience penetration of the anus as enjoyable? It's not actually a sex organ and seems to have been adopted -- co-opted? -- for someone's convenience, probably the guy doing the insertion.

I'm lost here. Sorry to be so naive. Educate me. Please!

I understand very well the heterosexual sex act. The penis, the vagina, the climax, the sperm targeting the egg. (Lots of pleasure as the result but maybe also lots of children, wanted or unwanted.) And I kind of get the female homosexual sex act. In fact, lots of porno films show women doing all that stuff to each other, and men watch it, too, if only because we love to see naked women in any context, if not with us then with each other.

But men putting their dongs into other men's behinds? Hmmm . . .

That being said, and not said well, I think any couple who wants to be together should be allowed to marry and have or adopt children and live perfectly normal lives.

Bravo to the brave ones!

Still . . .

You don't have to cook to love cookbooks.

Lots of people I know, including me, love looking through cookbooks. Some of us even buy them when they're on the remainder table and take them home to file away on a shelf with all the other cookbooks we've bought. (I have a whole series from cuisines around the world, none of which I've ever opened.)

I grew up in a sort of poor family that never had much good to eat on the table. There was always enough, but it was pretty bland. A chicken in the pot, with veggies, but not much in the way of seasonings, if you know what I mean. Basic subsistence cooking and eating. Our big meal was meat loaf on Sunday. My mother did her best with what she had, which wasn't much money and not much of a flair in the kitchen. (To her credit, she did other notable things in her life, but cooking wasn't something she thought she'd signed on for.)

I was eighteen before I ate in a restaurant. I can't remember what I had-- maybe chicken fried steak with country gravy -- but I do remember that it was better than what I'd been eating at home. It was like a light bulb went off in my brain. Oh, so this is what it can taste like!

When I grew to be an adult and was shopping myself, I couldn't afford anything special, but I started looking at cookbooks. I began with The Better Homes and Garden and Betty Crocker books, which laid out recipes for pot roast and braised chicken and short ribs and even more exotic concoctions like Coq Au Vin and Swedish meatballs. As a taste-deprived young person, I used to read these cookbooks like a starved street urchin pasting my face onto the window of some fine restaurant while I boiled my macaroni in a box and fried my hamburger patties.

Now that I'm old enough to buy all the ingredients to make all those wonderful dishes I used to read about, I don't have the time -- or, like my mother, the desire -- to make them. I would love for someone to come into my kitchen and whip up a French cassoulet or Beef Wellington, but I know it would be way too hard to find someone who could/would do it, and I would pay dearly. Probably not worth the time or effort or money. Still . . .

So I amuse myself, in the meantime, by reading cookbooks and old issues of Gourmet and Bon Appetit, two magazines devoted to great food I'll never enjoy. But that's okay. I also read novels about times I might have liked to experience and places I'll never visit. It's the same thing in a way, no?

Food fantasies are like travel or literary fantasies or any others. You may want to be a heroine in a Jane Austen novel, but you know you missed that by 100+ years, not to mention that you weren't all that well-born to begin with. When I see a recipe in a cookbook or magazine for shrimp cooked in garlic and leek and tossed with fresh rosemary and some spice I've never heard of, I can close my eyes and almost taste it. Almost. Not quite.

Cookbooks are escapist literature, plain and simple, but with an added bonus: You actually could do it. You're likely not going to have some bare-chested young stud show up in your bedroom tonight, and you're probably never going to discover a new species of shark near the Great Barrier Reef, but you could very well cook for your guests an unforgettable Braised Shoulder of Lamb with Ratatouille (from James Beard's Theory and Practice of Good Cooking, 1977), topped off with Ice-Tray Apricot Ice Cream (from the same book). I've looked at the recipes, and they are very doable.

Will you or I make any of these, and other delicious dishes, any time soon? You know the answer. It reminds me of a sign I once saw at a craft fair, beside a display of bird feeders or whatever that were very creative and attractive. It read: Yes you could, but you won't.

You or I could make lots of the recipes we love reading about, but we aren't likely to. Why not? Because we (1) don't cook, (2) don't have the utensils, (3) can't afford the ingredients, (4) are too busy, (5) are overweight and not supposed to be fantasizing about food, or (6) you name it.

So we read cookbooks. And we love it.

If I were on death row and given a choice of a last meal, I'd forego the usual fried chicken or cheeseburgers or steak that many about-to-die guys order and would instead specify this meal (from The Yankee Cookbook by Imogene Wolcott, published by Ives Washburn, Inc., 1939): Greenfield Corn and Oyster Stew, followed by Baked Stuffed Lobster and Veal Pot Pie I (there is a II), ending up with Concord Grape Ice Cream. For my drink, given that I probably wouldn't be offered alcohol prior to my imminent demise, I would order a cup of Yankee Mead, made from molasses and cream of tartar and checkerberry and brown sugar and sassafras. If that didn't kill me, what would? If they did let me have a last taste of booze, I'd order up a big cup of Raisin Wine, which boasts two pounds of raisins and a pound of sugar, with some lemon thrown in for balance.

Reading cookbooks is a delight for those of us who can't eat what we want, but it's not without its risks, since the more we read -- and salivate -- the hungrier we get. And the worse our own concoctions look. You may have just read about a great new recipe for jerk chicken in a papaya marinade, but you spoon onto your kids' plates Hamburger Helper, hoping they'll eat it all so you won't have to. And all the time you're dreaming of a perfectly seared shark filet with a topping of pomegranate and walnut that you couldn't possibly have made in your own kitchen.

Or maybe you could.

Don't you have a recipe for that?

Know and maintain your fighting weight.

You may or may not like boxing, but it's one of the only established sports that separates its participants by size. If you weigh 130 pounds, your opponent is going to weigh the same. He may be taller or shorter, but he will weigh no more than you.

If he does, if he's a few pounds heavy at the weigh-in, he may give up a big part of his purse. As a result, boxers worry about their weight more than any woman you know. Guaranteed. They're not just thinking about how they look in this or that outfit: they're thinking about their next paycheck.

And you thought you had it bad, huh?

Not to belabor the point, but the weight classes for boxers begin at about 110 pounds and go up to 200+. In between, the divisions are labelled: flyweight, featherweight, bantamweight, lightweight, welterweight, middleweight, light-heavyweight, cruiserweight, heavyweight (with "junior" and "super" attached to some, to further delineate the poundage). It's all very precise. No cheating.

Boxers undergo maybe the most strenuous workouts of any athletes. It's why the best fighter in any weight class looks very good. He's at his peak. Did you ever see Ali at his best, about 200 pounds? A beautiful physical specimen. Sugar Ray Robinson or Sugar Ray Leonard in their primes? Smaller guys, but just as sculpted. Kenny Norton? Evander Holyfield? Impressive.

Each had found his fighting weight, and they were never better in the ring.

You have your own ideal weight, too, when you look and feel your best. Your fighting weight.

If you're a woman, you may have your eye set on 120, but that may not be reasonable, given your natural bone structure, etc. That weight might leave you weak and not able to defend yourself. You may actually feel better at 125 or 130. Or 140. Take a good look at yourself -- yes, in a full-length mirror -- and see if you like what you see. Now take your clothes off and look again. (Same for guys, but they'll never do it.) Do you think shedding x number of pounds would make you look better? How much better? And is it important to you? (If you don't have anyone to share that new sleeker body with, maybe it's not.)

If you're a guy, you may think 170 is when you felt your best, but wasn't that when you were in high school? You're an adult now. What's your ideal ADULT weight? I'm betting that if you felt your best as a teen at 170, you're probably going to be most comfortable as a grown-up at about 180 to 185. Hey, if you can get back to 170, I say go for it, but don't stress yourself in the process. It may not be your natural fighting weight. Used to be, but now you have a new one. It's up to you, but be honest about it. The only person you could possibly cheat is you.

So what is the weight at which you feel your best and, more important, that you can maintain? The weight that, if you're healthy and active, you always come back to?

Don't be fooled by the pencil-thin models. They're dying of starvation. They will have health problems later in life. You are the only judge of how big you should be, how you should look.

Now, if you tell me that you are 5'4" and weigh 200 and are happy with that, I'll have to take issue. You're WAY too big for your height. But if you're 5'6" and weigh 140 and think you need to lose ten pounds, I would say take that mirror test. If you still think you need to lose ten pounds, ask yourself: "Will the stress involved in losing those ten pounds turn me into someone I don't want to be?" And, really, what's ten pounds? Do you feel okay at your current weight? Enough energy? A positive attitude? If so, you're fine. If not, go back to the mirror.

In short, if you like the way you look and feel, then forget those ten pounds. As they say in the military, "As you were." Or as the English say, "Carry on." Think of all your peers who are 20 and 30 and 40 pounds heavier than you. Pretty yourself up and put on a dress that doesn't pinch and go out on the town, girl!

But do keep in mind the boxing divisions. Decide whether you are a featherweight or a bantamweight or a lightweight or a welterweight or a middleweight or a heavyweight or somewhere in between. And don't kill yourself trying to be something else. The annals of boxing are rife with stories of small guys who gained weight to fight in a higher class, only to have their heads handed to them. Or guys who tried coming down in weight, hoping to beat up on smaller guys, only to find that the smaller guys were fighting at their natural weights and weren't so easy to beat.

Find your fighting weight and get used to it. It's an ideal you can achieve. Hey, you've been there before, right?

Most movies aren't very good.

While rock concerts do draw lots of fans, movies are the dominant entertainment venue these days. Either you see them on the big screen or you rent them and watch them at home. It's a date night or just a night at home, curled up in bed. However we experience them, we ask that they transfix us, transform us, take us into lives and worlds we don't know and used to enjoy only in novels, back when we were young and read novels. But most current movies fall short.

I'm betting that you can't name five movies you saw in the past year that you think should be up for Best Picture.

Start counting now. You have one minute. Five Oscar-worthy movies.

Okay, time's up. Maybe you came up with five, but did they include digitally-enhanced and/or animated movies? If so, you have one more minute to come with five really good movies you saw last year that just told a story really well, with no artificial enhancements.

The clock is ticking. For the record, I'm thinking, too, and not coming up with much. "Shelter Island"? That was pretty good, right? Complicated plot -- that I had trouble keeping up with -- and starring one of those good-looking young actors. Was that movie even done this year? Or was it last year?

My point is that the best movies, the ones you remember all your life, are the ones with the best stories. Anyone who saw (or read the novel) "Gone With The Wind" doesn't remember any special effects but an epic story, well told, memorably acted. On the other hand, who remembers James Dean's break-out movie, in which he played a disaffected 50s youth who just wanted to be accepted? You may or may not have come up with the title, but if you even hesitated, it's because that movie was all about James Dean. The story -- was there one? -- is secondary. He may have been one our best actors, but that wasn't one of our greatest movies.

In an era when the media are blurring -- your cell phone can do what only your computer used to do -- it's always nice to bring ourselves back to the basics. Movies amaze us these days, but, if you think about it, they amazed us back when, too. Those larger-than-life people up there on that screen, going through adventures and traumas we could only dream about. Sometimes we actually bonded with them. I think I'm still kind of that little boy in "Shane" who's running after his wounded hero at the end of the movie, calling out his name. No special effects required. And don't tell me that any number of girls -- and women -- haven't taken Scarlet to their bosom.

So why aren't there more really good, even great, movies?

Well, because it's easy to come up with a good idea for a movie (or a novel), but it's really hard to see it through to the end and concoct a climax that satisfies. Writing is hard, and good writing is damned hard. The problem is complicated, when it comes to movies, by the fact that once a script is bought by a studio, those in charge feel the need to call in other writers to rewrite it, to "juice" it, to introduce special effects or even other characters. What might have been a really good movie, based on the author's script, becomes just another mish-mash of different writers' takes, and, in the end, another Hollywood movie, meant to please all and probably not pleasing much of anyone.

Do you know that a good many famous novelists went to Hollywood lo that time ago to write screenplays? Even Faulkner, who no one but English majors could read. What movie do you think we helped write? No idea, right? That's because the studio brought in writers to "juice" Faulkner's stuff. (Yes, you can find out which famous writer wrote what, but it's not common knowlege, is it? For good reason.)

It's the rare movie any more that is conceived, written -- and maybe directed -- by a single person and that rises above and connects with audiences. Sylvester Stallone is regularly dismissed these days as the action figure in his own fantasies, but when he thought up "Rocky" and brought it the screen, it won an Oscar for Best Picture. Woody Allen used to do that, before he got way too self-absorbed. His "Annie Hall" won Best Picture, one of the few comedies to do so. Remember "Sling Blade"? A truly moving picture imagined by Billy Bob Thornton, who also starred in it. It won Best Screenplay but, in my opinion, should also have won Best Picture.

And one reason those movies -- along with "Citizen Kane" and others -- are superior is that just one writer -- maybe two if it was a legitimate co-author -- did all the writing. Each was a story well told, in a writer's voice. And while we remember the actors, we also remember the stories.

In real estate sales, the cliche is "location, location, location" -- in movies, I think the cliche should be "story, story, story." If you tell a good story, cinematically, you're golden. And that's where most movies, of any era, fall short.

Think of the movies you've seen in the past ten years, more or less. Which do you think your kids, however smart and media-savvy, will know twenty years from now? "Avatar"? Likely they'll remember those elongated blue characters and all the crashing and killing. The story? Hmmm. Maybe "Star Wars" because it transcended its special effects and -- wait for it -- told a story. Arguably a simplistic story, but a story nonetheless. (Just ask all the fanatics who turn out for "Star Wars" conventions: it's not the weird make-up they don that lures them but the ongoing plot line that guarantees sequels. Hey, in America money can propel art.)

Lots of us of a certain age are aware of movies that were made well before our time: the Marx Brothers' comedies, the monster movies that started with "King Kong" in 1933 and continued through the 1950s, clever comedies from decades ago starring Katherine Hepburn (who?) and Jimmy Stewart (who?) or some other guy, etc. Some we remember just for the effects -- giant tarantulas, etc. -- and others for the gag lines, but the ones we best remember -- "King Kong," for instance -- are for the story. For me, the Marx Brothers comedies all blend into a series of funny lines, but I can't forget when I was six years old and kind of "got" that the huge gorilla up there on the screen wasn't such a bad guy and didn't want to hurt that girl. That's the kind of lesson movies can teach us very young and that stay with us.

I worry that today's younger movie crowd don't have the perspective to judge what they're seeing. If you've watched Brando in "Streetcar Named Desire," you're not going to be bowled over by a newer, more polished version like Brad Pitt. Good actor, but watch the young Brando and draw your own comparisons. But do you know what I remember most about that movie, besides Brando's startling performance?

You guessed it. The story. Based on Tennessee Williams' most famous play. His Blanche Dubois is a wonderful female character, and the play/movie is half hers.

Encourage your kids and nephews and nieces to see older movies. They might even be able to download them to their cell phones. I can't imagine watching "Shane," the greatest Western of all time, on a screen the size of my sticky pad, but I guess it's better than nothing.

So anyway, if you thought movies these days aren't as good as they used to be, you're right.
The most important ingredient, the story, has become just another of the considerations instead of the main one. Most movies these days just don't tell a compelling story that sticks in our minds and makes us remember them long after we can't name any of the actors. The director? Oh please. The producer? Who's that? What does he do? Story is all. Or mostly all.

The Oscars will be awarded in just a few months. Got your picks yet?

The clock is ticking . . .