Soy supreme

Not all the cliches about journalists are true.

We don't all smoke. We don't wear hats with a "PRESS" sticker in them. I've heard at least some of us aren't liberals.

But we do, in fact, live for getting free food.

Stone-hard candy corn from the Cartoon Network? Ate it.

Crappy buffet while covering a speaker? Ate it.

Bad donuts brought by the cops reporter? Scarfed them down.

My wife may have come home with the mother lode from her visit to some place called Grandpa's Farm the other day -- chocolate-covered soybeans. Think miniature peanut M&Ms with a kitschy Nebraska twist. The don't taste as good as peanut M&Ms. They're a littler gamier, ie: Chicken is to pheasant as peanut M&Ms are to chocolate-covered soybeans.

According to something called the Nebraska Soybean Checkoff, soybeans are quickly gaining on corn as Nebraska's top crop. Not sure if I believe that, but I like the candy.

I'd be willing to support a soybean insurgency. Replace all diesel with soy biodeisel. Replace all meat with tofu. Replace are candy-coated-shell sweets with chocolate-covered soybeans.

And -- dare I say it? -- swap out the University of Nebraska's nickname. The Cornhuskers are at an all-time low anyway. Along with a new coach and new AD, we need a new nickname.

Watch out for the Nebraska Soybeaners in 2008.

Now, where'd I put that free food?

I see rainbows

I've been bemoaning the tragedy of fall.

My beloved Huskers -- once a 14er of the mountain range of college football -- have been degraded to a pile pebbles.

My vaunted Yankees -- the first chapter of any book on baseball history -- have been relegated to a footnote in the novel of the 2007 season.

My fall, I've been telling people, is officially over. Might as well be the subzero middle of January.

Then out of nowhere there's a rainbow on the horizon.

Radiohead -- my favorite band, my only band -- announced on Oct. 1 that they were planning to release a new album, on which they've been working for years. And they were going to release it in just 10 days. The coolest part: You can download it from their Web site and name your price -- 1 pence to 1,000 pounds (they're British).

The album's name, "In Rainbows."

In a swift and unexpected moment, Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Phil Selway and Ed O'Brien swooped in to save fall. There are leaves on the trees after all. And they're beautiful, a multi-hued rainbow of leaves. They haven't all fallen dead to the ground like lead-footed linebackers and weak-hitting shortstops would lead you to believe.

Radiohead has always done this, propelled me through important stages of my life.

When I was 16, my best friend Dustin and I jumped in his family car and sped to St. Louis where we saw Radiohead in a dingy bar. They played hits from a new album on the horizon. Some album called "OK Computer," which many will tell you turned out to be the definitive album of the 1990s. That road trip laid the foundation for me to think -- to know -- that you did have freedom in life. As wide-eyed 16-year-olds we cut across the Missouri hills on our own. We were becoming men, becoming people with brains that function on their own, muscles that propel into action. The concert was amazing, easily the best I've ever seen to date.

When I was 21, I had just returned from Britain after studying abroad. While I was gone Dustin thoughtfully snagged me a ticket to go to a Radiohead show in my favorite venue ever, Red Rocks near Denver. I rode in a car with him. His new girlfriend and her friend sat in the front seats, Dustin and I in the back. He told me somewhere near Ogallala, Neb., that his girlfriend was pregnant. His life was changing, branching on a distinct path from mine. We didn't sit by each other at the concert. He and Jessica were busy arguing. We barely even talked. Adulthood. Reality.

When I was 23, I was living in Colorado, married and hadn't talked to Dustin in months. He was in West Virginia trying to be a father to his little girl and carve out an existence with that estranged girlfriend. I got on Ticketmaster the minute Radiohead at Red Rocks tickets went on sale. I got four. One for me, my wife, friend Cara and her ex-boyfriend who would let us crash at his place. The concert was great -- the band unexpectedly played "Big Ideas." Now called "Nude," I smiled when I saw it had ended up on "In Rainbows." I thought of Dustin while I was at the show, how our lives were very far apart. Very separate.

Dustin and I haven't talked in a long time. He's moved back to our hometown. Listening to my iPod, new Radiohead flowing, I wonder what he thinks about the songs.

I wonder if they've made his fall.