One of our favorite shows is America's got talent. Usually it's not for the talent in the beginning of course, but because of the lack of it. However, a few years ago we found ourselves rooting for a chicken catcher. Kevin Skinner, was one of those guys you saw walk up to the microphone and you just knew that when he opened his mouth and drawled that he was a chicken catcher, well, we just knew it wasn't going to be good.

I will try to describe with words, the post-holiday sounds in the Close house since I opened my most unusual Christmas gift as an adult: Whine. Thump. Whine, Rattle. Whine. Whine, whine rattle. Whine. Crunch, scrape crash. "Ahhhh! Oh, No!" It was silly, I know, for a 46-year-old guy to ask for a toy helicopter for Christmas.

The extra batteries are in the camera bag; the spare knee brace in the suitcase. As I prepare for a late week trip to Tennessee and Kentucky, I have one huge fear: That something big will happen in the news while I am away. So, I pray for rain. As I write this, the VS baseball team -- according to the Facebook updates from parents watching the VS/East Marshall double-header in Le Grand.

Supporters of President Obama will stand by him no matter what. It is interesting that Chris Mathews is now a critic at least temporarily. Critics of Pres. Bush and V.P. Cheney will continue to criticize no matter what. The State Department Accountability Board Chaired by Ambassador Pickering did not look into security, intell.

“Why are we going this way?” “Where are we going?” “Why can’t we just go the way we always go?” I have heard these questions countless times from my kids in the back seat. But any man who has ever driven with a woman knows the very same questions are so much more intense coming not from the kids in the back seat, but from the wife in the front seat.

Every so often, a new prayer craze catches on among American Christians. Someone writes about a new or newly re-discovered way to find God, or at least talk to him. Soon, a cultural phenomenon is born. The author becomes famous. The book becomes a series. Christians all over the world rush to book stores, gather around the radio or TV, or flock to seminars to understand more about this new prayer they should learn to pray, while paying a considerable sum to the author.