Won’t you please help? Millions of dollars are spent every year on life-threatening illnesses like cancer, heart disease, and restless leg syndrome.  But precious little is being done about a chronic, as yet incurable condition that frankly, most people are not comfortable talking about. I’m talking about UHS.

If you’re like many women, you probably think it stands for Ugly Husband Syndrome (which afflicts roughly half of all marriages after 15 years). If you live in Arizona, perhaps you think it stands for Unregistered Hispanic Syndrome. If you’re my teenage daughter, your guess might be Unbelievably Hideous Handbag Suckiness Syndrome (my daughter is not good with acronyms). But you’d be wrong. I’m talking about an actual medically diagnosed and thus far untreatable condition called Uncombable Hair Syndrome. Yes, there actually is such an affliction. It even has its own web site.

What exactly is UHS? This silent killer (of any hopes for a social life) usually presents itself between the ages of 3 months and 12 years and typically results in thick, frizzy, light-colored hair which simply will not respond to combing.

So the next time you see a slovenly teenage boy who looks like a complete toad, with his over-sized pants hanging down around his knees, shoelaces untied, a tattoo of a snake slithering through the eye socket of a skull on his left arm, and unkempt hair flopping about all over the place, don’t be so quick judge. He just might have UHS. Underneath his sliced-up Judas Priest T-shirt and nipple ring, he might be crying silent tears (from the pain of the nipple ring). Give him an understanding nod, and while you’re at it, a hat.

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It started out innocently enough. My wife asked me to go to Costco because we were low on shampoo. Perhaps I should not have gone on Black Friday, when Costco had everything on sale.

The second I breached the entrance of Costco, I was immediately confronted by a bank of alluring gigantic flat screen HDTVs showing exotic tropical waterfalls. Wow! Some in 3-D. Hey, look. If you buy the home theatre sound system package, you can get a 55” flat screen HDTV for only $1,449.99 (big savings today only). What a bargain. So I added an LG 55″ Class 3D 1080p 120Hz LED HDTV with 4 Pairs of 3D Glasses to my flatbed cart.

As I was lugging my cart towards the shampoo aisle, I couldn’t help but notice the festive Christmas tree display. An 8-ft Pre-Lit Clear Mixed Country Artificial Pine ChristmasTree complete with 800 Clear Dura-Lit Mini-lights for $20 off! Wow! It looks so real. By buying it, I’d be doing my part to save the world’s endangered commercial tree farms. So I added the artificial tree with mini-lights to the cart.

On to the shampoo aisle. After all, that is why I came here today. Just before I reached the shampoo section, I noticed this really cool 3-speed nail gun in the hardware aisle. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted one of those. It’s just $79.99 (regularly $99.99). So I added it to my cart. And if you’re going to buy a nail gun, you might as well make sure you have an electric drill – oh, and the accompanying Black & Decker 300-piece Ultimate Super Drill Bit Set for just $69.99 more. Oh sure, the last time I used a high-speed drill was in 1987 when I tried unsuccessfully to build shelving for our garage. But you never know when you may need to build a jungle gym for your darling grandchildren (whom I hope to have within the next 15 years).

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I’ve lived in Seattle for twenty years and I still love it here. It’s known by various nick names: Jet City (because of all the Boeing jets built here) and The Emerald City (because of all the greenery). Personally, I prefer Drip City because it’s more accurate, thanks to all the rain and the fact that at last count there were at least 1,542 Starbucks locations in Seattle (and that’s just in downtown).

For many people in the eastern two-thirds of the country, Seattle is this mysterious, faraway place they only know about from Sleepless in Seattle. But there is so much more to this city than a spunky Meg Ryan (although let’s not understate Meg’s importance).

Let me debunk a few myths about my adopted city:

• Myth: It rains here all the time. That is simply not true. The weather here is gloriously sunny and mild with zero humidity – if you happen to be here in August. Otherwise, yeah, it does rain a fair bit.

• Myth: The sun vanishes for nine months of the year, from October through June. Again, utter hyperbole. There are many winters where you may see the sun for long stretches of time – usually during the second week of August.

• Myth: It is so damp here that the roofs of most houses are covered in thick moss. Actually, it’s more like a light dusting. And this also goes for the dusting of moss you’ll typically find on our lawns, driveways, patio furniture, and any toddler who has been left out in the backyard for more than 45 minutes.

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Every now and then I dip into the View from the Bleachers Reader Mail Bag to check out reader comments. I like to hear what my loyal following has to say about my recent posts. It may surprise you to know that my humor blog is (hardly ever) read by people all over the world – from Melbourne to Moscow to Mogadishu, and everywhere in between.

Whenever I wonder whether anybody is paying any attention to my posts, I need look no further than the blog’s comments section to discover that spammers from around the world are regularly checking out my web site. How flattering, I must say. And they always have something positive to say.

As a professional humorist and three-time Golden Globe nominee, I have found that coming up with original, entertaining topics to write about each week is a formidable challenge. But when I stop to read the highly personal reader feedback of spammers from places like Istanbul, I am reminded that this labor of love is well worth it. One week I had over 800 comments from an eclectic collection of web sites, most of which, I sheepishly admit, I had never heard of. At the risk of sounding immodest, the feedback from these spammers has been almost universally effusive. Many times, the comments are surprisingly coherent, if you can just decipher the mangled spelling.

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BLACKSBURG, VA – A newly released study reveals potentially upsetting news for millions of white Americans. According to the longitudinal study, the conclusions are shocking: Black Americans are getting happier – much happier.

The study by the University of Pennsylvania, tracking the “happiness gap” between black and white Americans since the 1970s, reports that the gap has dramatically narrowed in recent years to the narrowest margin since the study’s beginnings. Fortunately for white Americans, they are, on average, still happier than their black counterparts – but not by much anymore.

Even more alarming is the study’s finding that while blacks’ happiness has progressively improved over the past four decades, whites’ happiness has steadily declined. A spokesman for the National Association for the Advancement of Non-Colored People (NAANCP) argues that there can only be one conclusion to draw from this study: that over the past forty years, blacks have been deliberately and systematically stealing happiness away from whites, without even asking permission or so much as a thank you very much, leaving millions of white Americans outraged and nervous about their futures.

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Hey there, America! Does the depressed economy have you feeling DOWN!!!!??? Are you concerned because our government can’t seem to solve our spiraling debt crisis? Confused about how to end the stalemate between Republicans and Democrats over how to restore America’s former greatness and still balance the budget?

Well, worry no more. At View from the Bleachers, our dedicated staff of economic analysts and female impersonators has come up with a brilliant solution to our nation’s economic and political problems.

Now, you can finally break the governmental gridlock that is ruining our country and TAKE BACK OUR GOVERNMENT – literally, with our new Take Back America, Do-It-Yourself Self-Government Tool Kit.

When George Washington delivered the Gettysburg Address on the deck of the Mayflower, he spoke of a government “of the people and by the people.” Finally, thanks to our Take Back America, Do-It-Yourself Self-Government (TBADIYSG) Tool Kit, government will finally be by the people once and for all – people like YOU!

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As I look back upon my life thus far, I realize just how blessed I am. Two wonderful daughters, a talented portrait artist wife, living in a gorgeous city (Seattle). But you know, it wasn’t always this way. My life story has been fraught with challenging and perilous obstacles at almost every turn.

Much like Jesus, I had a very humble origin. Like baby Jesus, I too was born in a little town called Bethlehem (just outside of Albany, NY). My childhood home, while not quite a manger, was rustic in its own way. While we did not have sheep like baby Jesus, we did have a sheepdog, at our 3,700 sq. ft. suburban split level five-bedroom house. I missed out on the simple joys of attending a public school. Instead I had to be bussed 20 minutes away to an all boys’ prep school for grades 1 through 12. I rarely got a window seat on the bus. But it made me stronger.

I was forbidden to wear colorful shorts, fun t-shirts or high top sneakers to school. Every day I had to wear the same dull grey uniform with a black tie. It was a military college prep school. Every year, I had to march in the Veteran’s Day Parade while the public school kids all had the day off so they could come to the parade to mock me. But I never complained about the injustice of it all. I reminded myself about all the kids in Africa, Bangladesh and New Jersey who had even less than I had.

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Oops. Seems I accidentally pressed the RETURN key on the Headline a bit too soon. My bad. What I meant to write was:

“Why Baseball is way betting than having sextuplets.”

Frankly, do I really need to defend this position? I mean, seriously, who would rather parent six screaming babies than to go to the ballpark, watch a game, while scarfing down peanuts, a hotdog and a cold beer? Anybody?

The fact of the matter is I have loved baseball ever since I was a young child. I even named this humor blog View from the Bleachers in part as a nod to my favorite spectator sport. Baseball has long been called America’s pastime. The first baseball game was played way back in 1846 – can you believe it? Any high school student today could tell you, that’s probably over 70 years ago.

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About 17 years ago, my wife and I committed a horrible lapse of financial judgment. We are still paying for this reckless mistake these many years later: We became parents. At first it seemed like a great idea – staring into the innocent, helpless eyes of our two adorably sweet, tiny angel babies we adopted from China.

If only someone could have intervened – stopped me from boarding that plane for Hong Kong – and pointed out that over the next 17 years, these little angels would morph into retirement-savings-draining, eye-rolling, “take me to the mall now” moody, fashion-obsessed teenage drama queens who would eventually become legally permitted to drive my car and whose primary function on this planet appears to be texting their friends about how lame their parents were for not letting them go to a party simply because we don’t know the boy or his family… if only somebody had intervened back then and told me what we would be in for, I would have undoubtedly made … the same reckless decision. But that’s beside the point.

My point is this: Raising kids is expensive. The return on your college investment is highly speculative at best, particularly when you learn your son has decided to major in Medieval French Gender Studies. For many parents a far less risky investment would be to put down their entire life savings on the trifecta in the second race at Belmont Park.

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For years, our nation’s law enforcement agencies have made great technological strides in their efforts to hunt down criminals. Thanks to popular shows like CSI Miami, CSI New York, CSI Las Vegas, and the lesser known CSI Akron, CSI Schenectady and CSI Terre Haute, Indiana, police in our nation’s most crime-ridden cities (have you been to Terre Haute lately? Lock your doors!) are now able to use sophisticated tools to solve perplexing crimes and track down the bad guys.

But soon our nation’s police may turn to a decidedly low tech solution to help them catch a thief, that is, if they take my expert crime-prevention counsel. I give you Exhibit A: baggy pants – preferably worn about mid-thigh – by fashion-conscious urban gang members.

I recently discovered that in the past nine months no less than three robberies have been foiled as the would-be robber tripped over his low-riding baggy pants while attempting to make his getaway. Imagine if all robbers wore baggy pants how much safer a nation we would be?

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