As you may have noticed even if you just pay moderate attention here, I write about a mythical person named "Nell Minow" from time to time to time to time.  I do this for many reasons.  One is that I just freaking like her.  Another is that I always like to have really, really smart people on my side.  Another reason is that when I write about her and the smart, good, wise things she has to say, if they're not paying close attention it makes people think I'm smart, good and wise.  Lots of other reasons, too.  But those are at the top of the list.

There's a reason I mention all this, but I'll get to that in a moment.

First though, it's important to know that one of the pieces of advice I tend to give people is that -- "If Nell Minow gives you advice about something (whether about business, politics, what movies to see, how to pick a good restaurant, the economy, general etiquette, parenting, or pretty much anything), it will serve you well to at the very least consider what she says before taking your next step."

I'm not saying you have to follow every piece of advice Nell Minow gives you.  Me, I disagree with her a good six percent of the time.  We may agree about almost every movie, down to our favorite scenes, but even I refused to go see Speed Racer.  (Side Note: Knowing that Nell Minow is a sci-fi fangirl geek is a good sign post to keep in mind.)

But it's also good to keep in mind that this is a person who in her two main jobs in life -- as a world expert on corporate governance and as the Movie Mom film critic -- she's paid to give her opinion and tell you what to do, and she is really successful at it.

I suspect that at times it must have been hellish growing up as her children.  It's one thing to have to always listen to your mother telling you what to do, and telling telling telling you, but to know that she's usually going to be right, and right about pretty much everything, is enough to drive the strongest kid to drinking too many Ovaltines.  In the end, though, enough seeped through, because they've turned out seriously well.

(Nell Minow in her natural habitat.  Being asked to tell people what to do.)

I bring all this up because that mythical "Nell Minow" wrote a brilliant article here on the Huffington Post, that comes complete with a pure Minowesque title -- "10 Easy Tips to Take You from College to Success in Jobs, Love and Life."  And like Most Things Minow, it's blunt, polite, entertaining, and gives actual reasons and stories behind her advice which is what keeps it from becoming inflexible and Know-It-All.  A tip that Ms. Minow herself seems to have learned comes from who I assume is her guru, Mary Poppins, that a spoonful of sugar does indeed help the medicine go down (with an assist by the Sherman Brothers).

In the article, she tells you not just to send thank you notes, but explains why -- and what you stand to lose if you don't.  She explains why you can learn a lot from that Chinese finger-pulling toy and also from improv theater class and even the Boy Scouts.  She tells you why "on time" means something else entirely than what you think.  And one of my favorite of its wise thoughts is that "No one is getting paid to teach you any more. You have to seek it out" -- and she goes into how to do just that by understanding the value of being criticized.

There are two things I especially love about this article.  One is that, happily, I find that I'm following a bunch of these already and even regularly pass along some of the advice to others (though admittedly "a bunch" and "some" are the operative words, and I clearly have a ways to go).  And the other thing I love about it is that, having advised people for years to pay attention to what Nell Minow tells you, this article makes me seem really smart, good and wise for advising that.

So, again -- read her article.  Just stop what you're doing so that you don't forget about it, and read it now.  Just read it, and again, here is where you can find it, so you have no excuse.

Thank you.

"The president needs to take responsibility for his failures,"
-- Mitt Romney (R-MA) on "Fox News"

God love Mitt.  Sometimes you just want to take the self-delusional and give them a nurturing hug.  I don't know what it is about losing candidates for president, but there's something whimsical about them thinking that the public thinks they are wise and prescient, despite having voted against them.  It's sort of the Bob and Ray Syndrome.  (They have a sketch where a losing candidate, who spent a "fortoone" of his own money, is giving a concession speech and goes All-Bitter, noting how one day the public is going to say, "We should have voted for you.  The other guy's a bum.  He stinks.  We should have voted for you."  He then goes on to add that, "You know what I'll say to them?  I'll say, 'NUTS!  You had your chance.  You could have voted for me, but you blew it.  Nuts.  I an't never gonna run again.")

I just love Mitt Romney saying saying that the winning candidate has to take responsibility for his failures, yet he himself couldn't even take responsibility for his 47% comments that were recorded on video, coming up with a wide range of regularly-changing explanations to suggest that he didn't say what was there on the screen for all to see.  For that matter, Mr. Romney has acknowledged he was unable to take responsibility for losing, so certain was he that he was going to win on Election Night, yet being crushed the Electoral College vote in a landslide.

The president should take responsibility for his failures?? Mitt Romney couldn't even take responsibility for his successes.  He ran away as far as possible from his "Romneycare" health laws in Massachusetts that you needed the Hubble Telescope to find him.  He refused to take responsibility for his own actual positions, flip-flopping on most every one that even had a taint of being seen as moderate, let alone liberal.  Which is ultimately not taking responsibility for who you are.

Actually, though, his interview on Fox wasn't limited to this one gobsmacker, but filled with great quotes, any one of which could have been the Quote of the Day.  Like him saying of the Obama presidency that there has "not been a level of competency."  This from a guy who ran against an incumbent president during a recession and high unemployment, and couldn't win.  The incompetence of losing under such conditions was near unprecedented.  Especially against a black man who your party spent four years painting as a a Nazi, anti-American, foreign-born socialist who hates white people and it was their #1 job to defeat.

Yet he had even another quote eligible for Quote of the Day.  Speaking about VA Director Eric Shinseki and Congressional hearings, Mr. Romney said it "would be nice to grill him over the coming weeks and months."  This from a man who refused to release his tax returns, something that presidential candidates have done dating back half a century to his own father who may have been the first to start the practice.  Perhaps Mr. Romney has grilling on the mind because it's summer and the Fourth of July is around the corner, but Mitt Romney is so averse to the concept of hard questions that "How are you doing?" might get his press secretary to step in and say that "Mr. Romney answered that yesterday and believes the issue is an old one and has been addressed."

Mitt:  a glove heavily padded to protect the body from feeling any discomfort.

The other day, I wrote an extravagantly laudatory post about a father and daughter from New Zealand who were posting some of the funniest observational one-liners I'd read.  An intrepid reader here, Ed, wrote to tell me that pretty much all (or all, period) of the daughter's postings were written by others.  One by comic Emo Phillips, for instance, another by ventriloquist Jeff Dunham.  I checked out a bunch myself, and that was the case.  I even checked a couple by the father, and it was the same.

I've deleted the post.  Telling an "old joke" is one thing.  Telling other people's jokes as if they were your own is something else entirely -- as is solely telling previously-written jokes all the time as your voice and giving no indication that they aren't yours.  As a professional writer I take these things seriously.  To professional writers, it's among the most-serious thing.  At best it's foolishly thoughtless.  At worst it's plagiarism.

Sorry for the raves.  They've been taken down, here and on Facebook.  And thanks to Ed.

So, what do you do when you leave your job at Microsoft and have a lot of time to spare -- not to mention $20 billion to spare.

This just in. 

ESPN reports that an agreement has been reached for former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to buy the Los Angeles Clippers.  Making this all the more odd is that just yesterday current beleaguered owner Donald Sterling filed a 30+ page legal challenge that he wouldn't selling.  Perhaps changing his mind is that the reported selling price is $2 billion.  The next highest sale of an NBA team was just months ago when the Milwaukee Bucks sold for $550 million.  One might consider this overpaying by a tad, but...well, if you have deep pockets and big plans, oh, who knows.

One reason why this has been able to move so fast is that the offer is coming from Ballmer only, with no problematic issues of partners.  And there would be no problem with the NBA having to do a lengthy due diligence on whether Steve Ballmer has the money.

To be very clear, there's no report of Donald Sterling signing off on the deal.  But most analysts suspect he'll take MONEY MONEY and HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY and run.  But then, this is Donald Sterling, so who knows.

Chicago has a remarkably vibrant theater scene.  It's not that there are just a lot of companies, but rather that it's  heavily supported by the community, and even more, also by the city government.  A few years ago, for example, the Goodman Theater got funds from the city to expand, but there was one proviso that the city insisted on -- that Goodman had to give periodic free, outdoor performances to the public.  There are literally dozens of high quality theater companies that have successful subscription series -- places that include (but are far from limited to) the Goodman Theater, Steppenwolf, the Second City, Lookingglass, Apple Tree, the oft-mentioned here Writers Theatre, Victory Gardens, Northlight and more.

And sometimes they work together.

This is a much-too-short montage of a production I dearly wish I had seen.  It's a co-production from a year ago of the renowned Lyric Opera of Chicago and...Second City.  And starred the Lyric's creative consultant Renee Fleming (the first opera singer to perform the National Anthem before the Super Bow) and -- Patrick Stewart. 

From what I've been able to tell, Renee Fleming and her husband took an evening off to attend a performance of Second City.  As it happened, that particular show used a recording of hers.  And she was also very taken with the company's music director, Jesse Case, who wrote all those show's songs.  They and the Second City creative team all met, and the idea sprang from there.

Second City wrote the production and used their cast along with the Lyric Opera's company to put on the production.  It's called The Second City Guide to the Opera.

The Associate Press has a headline today about the Chicago Blackhawks goalie, Corey Crawford.  The Blackhawks are currently playing the Los Angeles Kings in the Stanley Cup semi-finals, which Los Angeles is leading 3 games to 2.  The headline reads, "LA Fan Files Battery Charge Against Corey Crawford."

Now, we've seen a lot of stories in recent years about bad behavior, even criminal charges involving athletes.  Even as we sit here, Aaron Hernandez of the New England Patriots is on trial from charges of two murders.

So, when you see a headline that reads -- "LA Fan Files Battery Charge Against Corey Crawford", about a pro athlete in one of the fastest, most aggressive sports, where fighting is commonplace, take a moment to consider what you envision that problem to be.

Do you have a picture in mind?  Good.

You probably got it wrong.

Here's what Los Angeles police are investigating. "The report alleges Crawford used a water bottle to spray the face of the heckling fan, who was thrown out of the arena and later filed the complaint with police."

Okay, how many of you had that in the office pool?  Hands?

Now, I'll acknowledge that players would be wise not to spray paying customers with water.  I'd also suggest that fans shouldn't be so abusive that they have to get thrown out of an arena.

"I just heard about it on my way over," Blackhawsk coach Joel Quenneville said on Wednesday. "First I heard of it. I'm not aware of the situation other than what you just said. I'm not worried about it right now. I'm worrying about the game."  (The Blackhawks won that game in overtime, 5-4.)

Los Angles Police didn't tell the A.P. whether or not charges are likely.  I suppose that they do have to look into all charges of battery, though one would think that a charge of "spraying water" shouldn't take too long -- especially at an event where competitors spent the event crashing one another into boards and slashing at their opponents with sticks, while having hard rubber objects shot at you at 100 MPH, while trying to protect the net.

So, no doubt the Los Angeles Police are indeed being diligent in investigating this potential water bottle spraying crime against the Chicago netminder.  I am sure that the fact that creating a distraction for the star goalie in the middle of a playoff series against Los Angeles doesn't factor into this at all.

Next on the police blotter.  Los Angeles Police Investigate T-P'd Fraternity During Rush Week.