Good morning and greetings, offshore drilling fans. It’s not a pretty scene off the coast of Lousiana, as millions of gallons of bubbling crude, black gold, Texas tea are spilling out into the ocean water off the coast of Louisiana. In the words of Bill Maher, “the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of Texaco.”

It would be nice if we could send those Goldman Sachs boys down there to clean up the mess, but they only seem to be interested in profiting from other people’s misfortune while denying any wrongdoing. Watching Senator Carl Levin and his gang grill those executives was truly stunning political theatre. I haven’t seen that kind of anger from our elected officials since they upped the prices of smoothies at the Senate Snack Shack. As Olivia Newton John once told me about Wall Street, “greed is the word.”

As many of you know from my CB handle, I like to think of myself as “Mr. Positive.” When I look at my sippy cup, it is always half full. With this in mind, the other day my wife sent me an email describing the 89,000 ways sugar is bad for you. This was followed by a report on NBC News on the evils of added sugar and its relation to heart disease. A few days later came another NBC report on our over intake of salt. My first thought was, I’ve got to stop watching so much news. But then it hit me like a Muhammad Ali left hook-when did everything besides TV become bad for us?

Now, I don’t mean there aren’t still good things in life, like the smell of a rose, the laughter of a child or TiVo, but I’m referring to our more basic needs. Without going into any depressing details about our air, food, water or Chinese food, it seems as though the basic things we ingest all contain materials that are not good for us. Even the sun is harmful. My question is, what happened? In the words of the group Ambrosia, “how long has this been going on? Why is McDonald’s not a happy meal?

So as of late, I’ve been watching my added sugar intake like my golden retriever watches the Judge Judy. They say women can handle 100 grams a day and men 150 grams. The report said a can of soda had 170 grams of sugar with no nutritional value. In that case Mountain Dew, I say, Mountain Don’t. They also said one scoop of vanilla ice cream contained 92 grams of added sugar. Since that day, I’ve stuck with chocolate. And you know, dark chocolate is good for you. Yeah, the Easter Bunny told me that.

The bottom line is, I LOVE SUGAR. I love sweet and sour sauce or when someone says I’ll keep it short and sweet. Chocolate, cookies, chocolate, anything sweet works for me. But one of my daughter’s vocabulary words last week was moderation and that’s my new key. I’m going to have my blood tested today to check my cholesterol levels and then I’m seeing my doctor next week. So it could be goodbye, my old friend sugar, it was nice knowing you. But do me a favor, please leave me your forwarding address.

On to this week’s photo regalia. Last Tuesday brought us one last day of April showers. Since I didn’t have anything in mind for this week’s lineup, I laced up my hiking boots and headed into my front yard to shoot some flowers in the rain. And then to make it into a cardio workout, I walked around the block to complete the neighborhood watch package. You can see that a little precipitation performs wonders on the photographic front. Or as Lili Von Shtupp would say about photo #4, “a wed wose. How womantic.”

Let’s head to the late night action. “Last week, President Obama gave a speech in New York City about his plan to reform these rules on Wall Street. And one embarrassing moment. When the head of Goldman Sachs was going through security, he was asked to empty his pockets and five Republican senators fell out. During the economic meltdown, employees at the SEC were using government computers to watch pornography. Ironically, while they were watching porn, the other employees were watching Goldman Sachs screw the entire country. One good thing came out of this volcano in Iceland. Economists say consumers can expect a huge drop in the price of lava lamps.” –Jay Leno

“Former President George W. Bush is working on his memoirs. The title is ‘Decision Points.” It narrowly edged out his original title, which was ‘My Bad.’ Crown Publishing has given a November release date for what they’re saying is an incredibly honest account of key decision in the President’s life. There’s a whole chapter dedicated to smooth vs. crunchy.” –Jimmy Kimmel “Former President Bush is writing his autobiography about his eight years in the White House. He’s not done with it yet, but he’s already put up the mission accomplished banner.” –David Letterman ”

David Letterman’s Top Ten Thoughts That Went Through George W. Bush’s Mind As He Wrote His Memoirs
9. ‘Is 36 pages enough?’ 6. ‘How cool is it that I was president? Come on, up high!’ 4. ‘Chapter Eight: The day I went 5-for-5 in White House T-ball. And no gimmies. All ropes!’ “1,000 signed, cloth-bound copies will be sold for $350 each. Each one will say: ‘Thanks for reading about my decisions. Sincerely, Dick Cheney.'” –Jimmy Fallon

“You know what happened today down in Washington, D.C.? The world champion New York Yankees visited the White House. It was a beautiful day. President Obama charged them $25 for a hot dog and a warm beer. It was quite a change for the New York Yankees, going from ‘The House That Ruth Built’ to ‘The House That Bush Wrecked.’ Here’s a nice story. President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, took the weekend off. They went hiking in North Carolina. Had a great time. And so he wouldn’t get lost, Obama left behind a trail of cigarette butts.” –David Letterman

“Arizona’s Governor had been stalling on signing the immigration bill. She said it did not reflect any ambivalence. She just wanted to make sure her pool was clean and her lawn was mowed before she signed.” –Bill Maher “The movie ‘Avatar’ is out on DVD today. James Cameron wanted it to be released on Earth Day because nothing says ‘save the planet’ like millions of plastic DVD cases.” –Craig Ferguson “President Obama is now considering giving approval for the development of a hyper-supersonic missile that can reach anywhere in the world in an hour. It’s a joint venture between the U.S. military and Domino’s Pizza.” –Jay Leno

So that’s the first blast of fun and color for the new month. For NBA playoff watchers, April was fairly fantastic. Let’s just say I’m not unexcited about May. And let’s hope that they can put a cap of that oil well or this newest spill will make the Exxon Valdex incident look like a plate of Baked Alaska. We’ll catch you along the baseline. Aloha, mahalo and later, Deron Williams fans.