"It's a shame. He took over management in 2008 and he turned the team around, getting into the playoffs..."

"... but they just can't win in the playoffs. That's very important. That's baseball. They say that about all kinds of things, but when a team does not advance, then it's management. I'm sad for Dusty, because I think this will be the end of his career. He had that heart attack last season, and he's 65 or 64, and now, if you'll excuse me, I have things I need to know, like 5 things I need to know about Jodie Foster's new girlfriend."

That's what Meade said when I requested a quote on the occasion of the Cincinnati Reds firing Dusty Baker. Meade, who moved to Madison from Cincinnati, has been a Reds fan since 1972, when the Reds were in the World Series and — Meade starts talking again — "they were just an exciting team. That was the beginning of The Big Red Machine. Probably what really drew me to them in 1972 was Pete Rose. I kind of hated him, but I was fascinated by him."

"So have you learned anything about Jodie Foster's new girlfriend?"

"Yeah, she's Ellen DeGeneres's old girlfriend...."

"Anything else?"

"She's tall, dark, and handsome."

"That might offend people. Is that in the article?"

"Yeah. No."

Grammys.

I have no interest in this topic. I mean I was slightly interested in this photo of Ellen DeGeneres aiming her nose at the "keyhole" opening of Katy Perry's dress and in the fact that Lena Dunham has a boyfriend and he's in a band that had the "Song of the Year." And I'm interested in speculating about whether it was because of the Grammys that they ran such an atrocious episode of "Girls" last night. (The last few episodes of the show had been great, but this one descended into real estate porn: The girl gets a boyfriend seemingly for the purpose of letting us see all the rooms in his expensive house. Oh, that wasn't all there was. There was Lena Dunham — in one of said rooms and in nothing but her panties — playing ping pong. That carried forward the show's theme of really awkward nakedness. That's why I had to correct myself after I said "I might as well be watching HGTV.")