Time capsule musings of a 13-year-old me

Editor's note: The following column was found in a time capsule that indicated the author was 13. The thoughts and predictions contained are not necessarily those of the Daily Republic or even the present-day Brad:

Hey everyone, I'm putting this column in a No. 2 mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls' back porch (like Johnny Carson says!), so I can tell you what I think sometime in the future. Like maybe the year 2000.

• I read "The Sporting News" every week and Dick Young never runs out of column topics, so I can't image the older version of me ever running out of things to write about. I love notes columns, although Herb Caen in the San Francisco Chronicle writes about stuff I don't understand.

• Other than that, I'm like J.J. on "Good Times": Dyn-o-mite!

• So what should I write about? How about the most influential person in my life: Al Michaels.

Yes. Al Michaels. You might know him best from "Wide World of Sports," but I know him as the San Francisco Giants play-by-play announcer. Since that's what I'm going to be when I'm an adult, I pay close attention to everything he does.

When I sit down in front of the TV and practice announcing games into my awesome tape recorder, I think about Al Michaels. How he announces things. The stories he tells. I suspect that he'll still be the announcer for the Giants when I get the job as the No. 2 man.

• I just hope I'm there in time for John Montefusco, my favorite Giants player, to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

• Al Michaels isn't the only thing I know. For instance, here are five people who will still be stars when I'm old:

5. Carl Douglas. "Kung Fu Fighting" will be the first of many hits for him.

4. John Lindsay. The former mayor of New York is going to be president.

3. Lynda Carter. You can't tell me that "Wonder Woman" isn't going to be a great, long-running TV show. It has everything!

2. Pete Rose. His style of baseball will never get old and his attitude guarantees him a place in the game after retirement. He's "Charlie Hustle!"

1. Gabe Kaplan. He's not only a great actor, he's funny! Every week on "Welcome Back, Kotter," he tells great jokes about his relatives.

• Here's something you may not know: If you chew a bunch of saltine crackers and don't swallow them, they stay in your mouth and can make it look like you're chewing tobacco. Like a baseball relief pitcher.

• My AM radio picks up stations from as far away as Denver and Seattle. I like listening to sports talk radio shows when I'm supposed to be asleep.

• The price of gas keeps going up. If we don't do something about the Arab Oil Embargo, it could cost more than $1 a gallon – and it's already caused my dad to cancel our plans to rent a Winnebago for our family vacation this year.

• I will never get sick of eating macaroni and cheese. And when I'm an adult, I'll eat Appian Way pizza and Kraft cheesecake every day. I love food that comes with all the ingredients in one box.

That will  be dyn-o-mite!

• Until next time, keep on truckin'!

Brad Stanhope is a former (and future, for the 13-year-old Brad) Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Creative solutions for House speaker quandary

One of the most powerful jobs in America is open and nobody wants it. With good reason.

It's about politics, but stick with me. It's worth it!

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives spent the past few weeks hoping that a good candidate – anyone – would step up to succeed John Boehner as speaker of the House. Boehner announced Sept. 25 that he was stepping down after realizing he couldn't unite the party behind him. It looked like Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California would take the job, but he decided not to do it.

Then . . . nobody. Paul Ryan is the top candidate, but he doesn't want the gig.

It's third in line to the presidency and nobody wants the job!

Admittedly, politics is an uncharacteristic subject matter for this space, which more often focuses on how to exploit Mars' water supply or how great it would be to have a monkey servant. But stick with me, because I have suggestions that could solve everything.

For the Republicans.

For Congress as a whole.

For the American public.

I have some nominations for speaker of the House, based on something I uncovered in my research (thanks, Wikipedia!): The speaker of the House doesn't have to be a member of Congress.

That's right: While all 61 speakers in history have been members of Congress, there is no rule requiring it. The speaker can be an outsider.

And this might be exactly the time that we change things. We could be like George Mikan, who gets credit for popularizing the 3-point shot in basketball. Or Charley Douglass, who invented the laugh track for radio and TV shows. Or Barry Mann, who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp.

We could change history.

If the leaders of Congress want to be famous for something other than adding to government gridlock, they should consider appointing an outsider from the following list:

• Samuel L. Jackson. We would watch every press conference by the speaker of the House if it was Samuel L. Jackson. Seriously. Can you imagine him presiding over a congressional hearing? You would never know when he might go off and drop a profane, amusing, sinister threat. To anyone.
• Hugh Laurie. He played the titular character on "House," so he's already a speaker on "House." Why couldn't he be speaker of the House?
• Tony Wade. My rival Daily Republic columnist could likely persuade Congress to do anything. If not, I'd enjoy seeing him under attack.
• Don Rickles. Same as Samuel L. Jackson. I'd watch every session of Congress to watch him work.
• Don Draper. Really, it's actor Jon Hamm, but I'd be comfortable also hiring the writers for "Mad Men" if it meant we get a speaker who goes to a meeting, lets things get out of hand, then comes up with a brilliant, last-second idea that leaves everyone shaking their head in wonder.
• Snoop Dogg. The spizzle of the hizzie!
• Jed York. Anything to get him away from running the 49ers. Even if it means making Congress worse.
• Sara Lee. One of the biggest problems for the speaker of the House is automatic unpopularity. So why not Sara Lee? As we learned from advertising, nobody doesn't like Sara Lee!

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Mars presents solution to our problem

Scientists think there might be water on Mars, making it the greatest opportunity since gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill 160 years ago. Or when Lewis and Clark explored the West. Or when Lewis and Martin perfected the buddy genre during the 1950s.

This is Manifest Destiny for the 21st century. It could be a game-changer for Earth, if we play things right and seize the day.

And the water. As much of it as we can.

Stick with me on this.

The initial report came from NASA, which was bold, if naive, about the discovery. At least according to a report in The New York Times, which I read every day while wearing a sweater and smoking a pipe.

“This is tremendously exciting,” said James L. Green, the director of NASA’s planetary science division, at a news conference. “We haven’t been able to answer the question, ‘Does life exist beyond Earth?’ But following the water is a critical element of that. We now have, I think, great opportunities in the right locations on Mars to thoroughly investigate that.”

Oh, yeah. A great opportunity. The greatest opportunity ever to solve our water problems.

Scientists, taking a break from conducting studies about whether coffee is healthy or unhealthy, said that the water on Mars is not in oceans, lakes or rivers – although those all existed in the distant past (the 1970s). They say the water is in the small patches of damp soil, indicating Mars may be a lot like drought-stricken California.

The scientists indicated that they are unsure of from where the water came, saying it comes from "above or below," an answer that would be disqualified on most game shows.

Anyway, here's the opportunity: Water. On Mars.

Think about it.

We need water and a neighboring planet has it. Mars could solve our drought problems.

I suggest that we launch a plan similar to President Kennedy's in 1960, when he announced that we would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade (a less-known Kennedy guarantee during the same speech: That we would wear bell-bottom pants by the end of the decade. Both were right.).

This is our time. Mars is ripe for exploration and exploitation. It's floating in space, with plenty of water, taunting us.

Let's take it!

If we launch a spaceship to Mars, carrying drills and 35 million miles of pipe, we can mine that planet for water and use it to fill our hot tubs, water bottles and hanging planters. Imagine a long pipe, like the proposed XL Pipeline – but have it running from Mars to a huge set of reservoirs in California.

It's simple. We have rockets. We have plenty of PVC pipe. In a zero-gravity environment, the wear and tear on the pipes would be minimal, so they'd last much longer than the Bay Bridge.

This solves several problems:

It gives NASA something tangible to do.
It creates jobs in the construction industry.
It gives us water.
And if we foul up Mars' atmosphere, who cares? It's just Mars – and the start of "global warming" there might bring the average temperature from the current 67 degrees below zero to something like Earth's. Does anyone else think it might be a vacation paradise?

If we don't mine Mars for water, we're missing a huge opportunity, because where else are we going to get water?

Uranus?

That's would be gross.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Getting through grief of a bad commute

The only thing slower than morning rush-hour traffic is navigating an emotional response to it.

I've got a five-speed. Not a five-speed vehicle, a five-speed reaction. I think I'm in fifth gear now, which is acceptance.

But I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. In fact, it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong about gridlock.

I thought last spring was a reasonable example of what to expect in traffic on my way to Walnut Creek.

I was wrong.

It goes back to mid-August, when normally slow morning traffic along Interstate 680 (and I-80, as well) got even slower. And slower. My drive, which takes 40 minutes with light traffic (almost always the situation when I come home in the afternoon), took about 50 minutes in the morning for months and months. And months.

In mid-August, it jumped to 70 or 80 minutes. And not just for me. There are four other Fairfield-Suisun City-Vacaville residents at my office, and all were shocked.

Our first reaction was simple: We told each other that it was a coincidence. There must have been an accident. School was starting. Once we got a couple of weeks into the academic year, parents would get off the road and it would go back to the way it was all last year – heavy traffic, but tolerable.

We knew it wasn't really a permanent change.

We were in denial.

As late-August arrived and things didn't change, denial gave way to anger.

"This is stupid!" I said several mornings after arriving late. "It's ridiculous. Weren't these people driving their children to school last year? How could it make this much difference?"

We complained about construction and bad drivers and inexplicable slowdowns. It was absurd. It didn't make sense!

We were angry.

By the time Labor Day passed, most of us began to think this might be a permanent change. We began to look for ways to navigate it.

"I would be willing to accept more traffic on Friday (when there's typically little traffic) in exchange for fewer drivers the rest of the week," I proclaimed.

We also began to look for alternate ways to get to work, thinking that if we took side streets or came another way (would going to Vallejo, then taking I-780 to the Benicia Bridge make sense?), it would be better. We would give up something – almost anything – in exchange for a shorter commute.

We were bargaining.

By mid-September, nothing changed. Maybe this wasn't a start-of-school event. Maybe this wasn't going to go away. Maybe this was the new normal – that it would take us 80 minutes to get to work, 40 minutes to drive home. Maybe we would be stuck in stop-and-go traffic before the Benicia Bridge day after day, month after month.

Our conversations about traffic were punctuated with sighs and groans. I told one co-worker that pretty soon, we'd have to leave home Monday morning to get to work Tuesday. Then I sighed and walked back to my desk, looking down, shoulders slumped.

It was depression.

Finally, we got to October and realized this: It isn't changing. Last year isn't coming back. We won't breeze through traffic and get to work before 8 a.m., unless we leave Fairfield-Suisun City at 4:30 a.m.

There's no use complaining, no use being mad, no use being sad. It takes more than an hour to get to work. That's how it is.

We reached acceptance, although there were still flashes of anger, bargaining and depression.

Especially anger.

But there was one day last week when traffic moved better. It only took an hour.

Is it possible things could go back to what they were before?

Or is that denial?

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.