Congratulations to my friends Grover and Marc on their wedding day.

Here’s another fine example of compassionate conservatism, in the form of a pin offered for purchase at the Republican state convention in Texas.

While this sort of messaging (albeit usually somewhat more cleverly disguised) has worked for them in the past, I don’t think this approach is going to help them this election year — and may have quite the opposite effect. But I suppose we’ll see.

Thanks to Paul Crist for making me aware of this.

Thirty years past high school, I have finally developed an interest in playing soccer.

Furthermore, if topless soccer is what would come to town, I have changed my mind and now favor taxpayer subsidies for building the new sports arena.

That’s what this piece on Slate asks.

In a word, the answer is: No.

At least, from all evidence, not this night owl.

Some time even before puberty, it became almost impossible to go to sleep at what most people would consider a “reasonable” hour. I remember as a boy reading comic books by flashlight under the blankets so that my parents wouldn’t see my light on. By age 12 I gave up on that and just used the lamp, because my parents had given up on trying to get me to go to sleep early. In adulthood, here’s what I’ve discovered: My body wants to fall asleep somewhere between 3 and 4 a.m., and get up at 10:30. To prove it once again, I set no alarm clock when I was in Nebraska and just let my regular cycle happen — and I fell asleep between 3 and 4 a.m., and woke up at 10:30.

In addition to being a night owl, I have a further complication. Just about everyone in my family has what I’ve come to decide is a sleep disorder:

• My father was a somnambulist (sleep walker)
• So was his father
• I am a somnambulist and a nocturnalist (someone who can’t fall asleep early, and doesn’t sleep well)
• Both my brothers are nocturnalists
• My sister is a somnambulist
• I believe all five of my adult nieces and nephews sleep talk or sleep walk
• My elder son sleepwalks
• My daughter sleepwalks and sleep talks
• My younger son sleep talks and, if I read the signs on the landing correctly the other night, was walking around doing something in his sleep

Clearly, there must be something genetic behind all this. Given the other maladies one can pick up genetically — say, sickle-cell anemia or the sort of cancer that has torn a hole through Jimmy Carter’s family — this isn’t so bad. Although I do wonder on occasion what a full good night’s sleep might feel like.

When I was back in New Jersey recently, my birth family and I were discussing all this. (Yet again.) Treatments we had tried came up. My one brother takes sleeping pills, which I have relentlessly avoided because I don’t want to spend the next day feeling drugged. (I have a low tolerance for medications.) My other brother, the one who gets up at 5 or 6 a.m. (!) just stays up late. I’ve tried acupuncture, which worked brilliantly, but it wears off and I get tired of building it into my regular routine. I’ve tried exercise to tire myself out, but weight training, racquetball, firewood-chopping, and even marathon training isn’t putting me to sleep. Hypnosis was the single best remedy yet, resulting in an immediate sleep benefit that shocked my wife (“I kept checking on you because I thought you were dead!”), but gradually it wore off and now I need to find a new hypnotist.

Yes, I’ve read books with titles like “Get a Good Night’s Sleep.” I’ve tried herbal remedies and, as I said, hypnosis and acupuncture, and also resetting my circadian clock, and taking vitamins, and drinking warm milk, and laying off caffeine and on and on. I’ve done everything but go to a sleep lab for testing, which I’ll get around to at some point. This would be less of a problem if two of my three school-age children didn’t need me to get up with them at the ungodly hour of 7:06 a.m. twice a week, roughly four hours after my body would actually like to be asleep. If I could figure a workaround — some other way to get them up and out on Mondays and Tuesdays — the world would be a better place. But in the meantime, whenever I come across an article like that one on Slate, I always read it in the hopes that it has something new to say. So far, it never has.

Today, Al Gore endorsed Barack Obama for president.

I know. I couldn’t believe it either. I mean, was he sure? Had he thoroughly vetted the field, now that it was down to one Democrat?

Why make this decision so early? Surely he could have waited until, well, November 1st. Or even early evening on November 2nd. This election is four and a half months from now, and as we hear constantly from the same people writing the hagiography of Tim Russert, even 20 minutes is “a lifetime” in politics.

I realize that Gore probably was never going to endorse Ralph Nader, given their checkered history. (In 2000, Gore denied Nader the presidency by 270 electoral votes.) Had he not been so hasty, Gore could have taken a second look at, oh, Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate. But now he’s made this risky endorsement of Barack Obama — completely contrary to the expressed desires of every non-Democrat in the country, I might add. I just hope that he’s made the right endorsement, and at the right time.

Here’s the lede from a New York Times piece that shows just how John McCain or Barack Obama would handle the economy.

Senators John McCain and Barack Obama released their Senate financial disclosure statements on Friday, revealing that Mr. McCain and his wife had at least $225,000 in credit card debt and that Mr. Obama and his wife had put more than $200,000 into college funds for their daughters.

Who knew Obama was such a traditionalist? Saving to buy things: how old school.

McCain, though, really does represent all of us, doesn’t he? And if the street wisdom is true and we get the president we deserve, then I guess he will be unbeatable this fall.

No idea if we get the Planet Green channel at my house (last time I really checked such things, the TV had a top dial that went up to 12, and then U, after which we you had to turn to the bottom dial, which went up to 83).

But if we don’t get Planet Green I guess I’ll see if I can add these episodes to my Netflix cue, because this piece on Slate has me very interested in seeing the new “reality” show starring Ed Begley, Jr. To wit:

If Alter Eco is Planet Green’s Entourage, Living With Ed, which first aired on HGTV, is its Curb Your Enthusiasm. Actor Ed Begley Jr., who boasts of having owned an electric car as early as the 1970s, is the cranky head of household; his wife, Rachelle, is the spouse battered by her own embarrassment. The show would have us believe that a typical morning at the Begley home sees Ed riding a stationary bike for two hours to generate the energy to make toast. Rachelle scoffs at this and then tosses her Los Angeles Times in the garbage can, and then Ed scolds her and heads up to the roof to spend time with his solar panels. Living With Ed is clearly the most phony and least enlightening show yet devised about the home lives of celebrities, and I include Keeping Up With the Kardashians in that count.

I’ve met many a “cranky” environmentalist myself, and would offer all of them this advice: You might do a better job of achieving your mission if you’d come down off your high horse once in a while to meet all of the rest of us, who are equally concerned about the planet as you but don’t have all your time, or money, or desperate need to seem superior.

Here’s my friend and colleague Shelly Lowenkopf on the top 10 political novels.

In the future, this book might show up on a revised list, one that includes fantasy.

I’m very happy with how my one-act play, “About the Deep Woods Killer,” has turned out in the 2008 Moving Arts Premiere One-Act Festival. It’s a tribute to the cast, to everyone involved in the production, and especially to the director, Mark Kinsey Stephenson. Mark really understands the undercurrents in the play and has worked with the actors to express them. If you’ve never had a bad or mediocre production (and I have), you can’t fully understand how invaluable it is to have a director who understands your play and, in Mark’s case, your overall body of work — and who also has the talents to bring that vision to the stage. I’m grateful. Mark and I have been doing theatre together for 15 years; he’s directed my plays before, has acted in my plays, and I’ve directed him several times, as well as producing plays he’s been in. We’re a good match. If I’m lucky we’ll be doing theatre together for another 15 years, and beyond.

In the same festival, I think Terence Anthony’s play “Tangled” is a standout (and is a play I’m going to blog about later today or this weekend, when I have a chance), and I’m quite taken with “Compression of a Casualty,” which marries an Ionesco-esque device with  contemporary CNN coverage of the death of a U.S. soldier in Iraq, to great effect and, to my immense thrill, into an indictment of the timid and celebrity-obsessed mainstream media. I’m glad we’re doing that play, and I’m delighted to see the inestimably talented Michael Shutt prove, yet again, that he’s among the most versatile theatre artists I know.

The festival runs three more weeks. Here’s more info, including ticket information.