Emptying my notebook on vanilla, baby sprinkles and more

It's the second Sunday of April, which means (don't check) that it's time for my semiannual, ritualistic emptying of the notebook.

As my less-popular colleague Tony Wade observes, sometimes we have ideas that aren't enough to make up a column. Gathered together they create what we like to call a "think piece."

We are the only ones who call it that, by the way.

Such as:

• It's unfair that "vanilla" has turned into a synonym for "bland."

It happens all the time in sports or entertainment. If a performer or athlete is boring – on the stage or field or when dealing with the media – he or she is often dismissed as "vanilla."

Really?

Vanilla is a flavor! It's a strong flavor. Vanilla ice cream isn't ice cream without flavor. The flavor is vanilla!

If I was in the vanilla industry, I would champion this cause, because it's unfair.

Vanilla isn't bland. Vanilla is a flavor.

• A work friend recently attended a "baby sprinkle," which apparently is a thing. It's not a baby shower, it's a sprinkle. It's a way to get gifts for a second or third baby, apparently.

What? Why not just have a baby shower again if that's an issue. Why do we need to create a new term that is so obviously just an adjustment to the correct term (it's not a shower, it's a sprinkle!)?

That, by the way, is an old-man rant. Now get off my lawn and let me listen to my transistor radio.

• Did you see the report that the Pew Research Center has defined what makes someone a millennial?

According to Pew, the millennial generation is made up of people born between 1981 and 1996. That means the oldest millennials turn 37 this year and the youngest turn 22. (Although Pew is sloppy. The center said people born between 1981 and 1996, which literally means from Jan. 1, 1982 through Dec. 31, 1995. But they don't mean that. They meant from 1981 through 1996.)

The Pew decision brings the next problem: What do we call those born from 1997 to present? For now, Pew is calling them post-millennials, but that will likely change.

By the way, only one generation is designated such by U.S. Census Bureau – baby boomers, born from 1946 through 1964.

Now you're smarter.

• The reboot of "American Idol" on ABC is a success – if you consider "it seems just like it was before it went off the air a few years ago" to be the measure of success.

There are good singers, great (if clearly manipulative) storytelling, likable judges. Except . . .

I know that Luke Bryan is a country music legend. He seems like a nice guy. But he also seems like a stereotypical southerner straight out of "The Andy Griffith Show" – he comes across as a simpleton.

Maybe he is?

• Here's something said frequently in movies and on TV shows, but rarely in real life: "Are you threatening my family?"

It's usually at the peak of tension and is stated with an angry confidence, as if the speaker will make the person make the threat rue the day the did it.

It doesn't happen to most of  us, so I recommend you try to work it into a conversation this week. At your job, for instance, when someone asks how your weekend went, walk over to them, look them in the eye and quietly say, "Are you threatening my family?"

Then stare them down.

Trust me. It will be great. Right up until you get called in by the human resources person.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.