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21 MAY 04: SHUT UP ALREADY!

This weekend marks the first anniversary of WHAL-AM, "Hallelujah 1460." The activities include a Sunday sermon with the title, "Make Them Hush." [True] The preacher ought to practice his message at the Columbus Civic Center - on the crowds watching commencement exercises.

The Class of '04 in Muscogee County schools begins receiving diplomas at the Civic Center today. There will be seven ceremonies there in the next couple of days - so many that the staff should learn every note of "Pomp and Circumstance."

Continuing a custom of recent years, crowds attending the commencement ceremonies will be expected to remain quiet while names are called. In other words, they should act like the baseball crowds at Golden Park most nights....

I was able to obtain a Kendrick High School graduation ticket a couple of years ago - and it actually said on the back the senior class wanted the audience to remain quiet while students were named. Is this for real? Do the seniors fear they'll be distracted, and they'll drop the diploma?

(I keep waiting for some Pentecostal pastor to challenge this no-noise policy -- on grounds that the school district is trying to turn everyone into Presbyterians.)

The last high school graduation I attended was in 1996, at Atlanta's Civic Center - and the atmosphere was very different. People in the audience shouted as names were called. The principal had seniors stand up if they were registered to vote. About the only thing missing that day was a commencement address by Jesse Jackson.

There's one group of high school students who WILL be noisy tonight. Taylor County High School is having a prom in the gym - only ONE prom for everyone. The only separation there should be this time is between the boys who can dance and those who can't.

You may recall Taylor County gained national attention last year when some students held a "whites-only prom" at The Estate in Columbus. The school's two dances were analyzed on "Nightline." They were blasted on TV and radio by Bill
O'Reilly. This year the only interested outsiders may be sexual deviants in trench coats.

(By the way: when the Taylor County town of Reynolds had its Georgia Strawberry Festival a couple of weeks ago, was that segregated as well? You know, divided between cream dip and chocolate-covered?)

There's only one question about having this prom at the Taylor County High School gym. Where do you take your date for a nice dinner before the dance -- all the way to Columbus? With gasoline approaching two dollars a gallon, some students may have to settle for convenience store hot dogs.

There are times when it's good to be silent - and times when it can hurt. Thursday night was one such perplexing time. A Columbus Catfish pitcher tossed a seven-inning perfect game at Golden Park! Thankfully it was "Thirsty Thursday," so fans drinking one-dollar beers made plenty of noise - but I'm not sure how many remembered the final out.

I turned on WDAK-AM in the sixth inning of the Greensboro-Columbus game -- and announcer Nathan Maynard never came out and said a perfect game was in progress. He only hinted at it with terms such as "dazzling" and "it doesn't get any better than this." Apparently the Catfish got his tongue....

If you weren't paying close attention, you might have turned off the 10-0 Columbus rout over Greensboro. But I know baseball enough to suspect something was up -- and Nathan Maynard probably was trying to avoid "jinxing" the perfect game. Is that why classrooms are so deathly quiet during S.A.T. exams?

Only in the top of the seventh inning did Nathan Maynard dare to give a linescore - with "no runs, no hits" for Greensboro. But he never said "perfect game" until the final pop-out was caught. The last time I heard such secrecy about an important fact, it involved Sheriff Ralph Johnson.

(BLOGGER'S NOTE: Why didn't you see the end of that perfect game on Columbus TV stations? We're working on that one for this weekend....)

The perfect game was thrown by pitcher Chuck Tiffany before a famous baseball name. Tom Lasorda was visiting Columbus on a tour of Los Angeles Dodger farm teams. Since he lives in L.A., Lasorda knows a high-quality Tiffany gem when he sees one - and maybe he should send one, to show congratulations.

(While he was in town, Tom Lasorda received a "key to the city" from Mayor Poydasheff. Somehow, I think all Lasorda really wanted was the key to Peluso's Italian Restaurant.)

SPAM-A-RAMA: I never received the e-mail about Wednesday's Stick It To 'Em Day -- but I have received a couple recently about preparing for divorce. So I guess for men, this would be Stick It To HER Day....

The spam e-mails offer a service called "Divorce Prep -- for men in an unhappy marriage." When I first saw this, I figured it had to include tickets to The Jerry Springer Show.

"Today," the spam offer reports, "a rising tide of miserable men race to the Internet for the secret ticket they need to escape their marriage without losing everything...." Hmmmm - is this ticket to Mexico, Cuba or Costa Rica?

I dared to click on the link Thursday night to find out what Divorce Prep is. I was offered five hours of digitally mastered audio and a "software kit" for only $179. But if you've already filed for divorce, "it's too late by then." Unless, of course, you buy it for the other man your wife is seeing....

The topics in the Divorce Prep kit seem quite detailed. One of them mentioned on the web site is: "How to avoid being labeled as a 'scum bag' in divorce court." Step one: ask the judge for permission to seal your spouse's mouth with duct tape.

What gets me about offers like this is the assumption they make - that if you're in an unhappy marriage, the only real option left is divorce court. But what about getting counseling, to work out differences and keep things going? And if all else fails, you can call Dr. Phil McGraw and become a TV star.

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