Thoughts during the apocalypse, Part 10.

Hi, folks. I took some time off yesterday to lounge around and be totally unproductive at anything -- which, as some would have you believe, is the best way to save the world right now. Glad to know I did my part.

Your humble blogger on "Sports Pulse" in 2006.

Anyway, I was originally supposed to be part of a multi-guest podcast with my old friend Ed Berliner this morning. Ed used to be a sportscaster in Boston about 15 years ago, maybe more, and when he was working for Comcast, he created a great nightly show called "Sports Pulse," which was really ahead of its time.

I would say that "Sports Pulse" was the precursor to the number of shows that are staples of the programming on NESN and NBC Sports Boston today. Ed put together timely highlights for a nightly sports recap, and he sought out in-studio guests from several different disciplines that had a lot to offer the viewership, but may not have been sought out by other sports media because they weren't from the Globe or Herald.

Ed Berliner

And yes, I was one of those. I probably guested on "Sports Pulse" five or six times and I enjoyed it immensely. Ed did like to run a fast-paced show, but he asked good questions and gave his guests the time and encouragement to flesh out answers and thus, hopefully, be more informative than could be accomplished in the sound-bite style of other media.

We used to shoot the show live at 11 p.m. at Comcast's studio on Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton, not too far from Boston University, and the lateness of the show made it an easy ride. It's also the only time I had to wear makeup on-camera.

"Sports Pulse" was available only to Comcast subscribers, most of the time on Channel 8 on their home cable boxes (the channel was called "CN8"), but that had a pretty good reach into a large portion of New England. And people did watch it, even if only by accident; I remember riding the elevator up to the press box on a Sunday at Gillette Stadium with members of the Chicago Bears' coaching staff, and one of them turned to me and said, "Hey, weren't you on TV last night?" I admitted I was, and the assistant coach said, "Good stuff."

Over my many years on the Patriots beat, I was a guest on many radio stations in the United States and Canada (yes, even New York's fabled WFAN) because sports stations are always looking for a knowledgeable beat writer who has a good voice and comes cheap. But I'll always appreciate Ed Berliner, who now lives and works in the Fort Lauderdale area, for giving nobodies like me an opportunity to shine on TV in their home markets when none others would.

I'll try to get Ed to chat about the "Sports Pulse" experience on a future episode of "The Owner's Box."

** So I braved the elements and the invisible clouds of alien virus to hit a supermarket in nearby Sharon today, looking for a few necessities without subjecting myself to the panicky gatherings I've been hearing about in my own home town. And as I suspected, this particular market was not overrun with those stocking up for 40 days and 40 nights of terror.

Fortunately, I don't need toilet paper. They had none. Besides, I have 14 rolls here at last count, and each roll tends to last me about 8-10 days depending upon the state of my digestive tract.

I don't want to get into TMI territory here, but I am limited per poop in the amount of toilet paper I can use. When my parents put additions on the house back in 1985, my mother opted for wall-mounted toilets in the new bathrooms because she believed they would be easier to clean around. She was right in that sense, but she did not know that these toilets had a lessened flushing capacity because they flushed horizontally to vertically, and not just vertically.

What does that mean, you ask? Well, a large load inside the bowl isn't helped by gravity initially, and thus the bowl tends to overfill before the poop parade gets going. To avoid that, I have determined that my limit for TP usage to ensure a successful flush is three forearm-length unrollings, folded (and not wadded) to prevent leakage and to promote maximum cleaning ability. Hold to that limit, and it's a happy flush every time.

So that being said, I'm still in good shape, TP-wise. But I still can't fathom why people have swarmed the stores to hoard the stuff. It can't be need; even a family of eight with explosive diarrhea can't use as much in a week's time as what I've seen people buying.

I can understand the disappearance of some necessities, but I was astounded when I reached the soft drinks aisle, For the third time in three recent supermarket trips, there were absolutely no 2-liter bottles of Diet Dr Pepper. Seriously??? Did they discover that Diet DP is the cure for COVID-19 and nobody told me? This is maddening to me, on a par with the temporary closing of the Forbes Boulevard Starbucks.

NESN's Jack Edwards

** Tomorrow around noon or so, there will be a new episode of "The Owner's Box" available for your listening pleasure. The guest is Jack Edwards, the TV "voice" of the Boston Bruins on NESN, and we'll talk about what it's like for him to not be calling the games for a Stanley Cup contender, what the future may hold for the Bruins and the NHL in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, and Jack even gives me a few tips for calling play-by-play -- which, as many of you know, I have been doing for local cable TV channels during the high school sports season. I can use all the pointers I can get.

It's a good hour of conversation and very timely, so don't miss it. I'll have links up here and on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribers to Apple Podcasts, Google Play, iHeartRadio.com and other platforms will have them automatically sent to their smartphones.

And in the meantime, if you haven't yet, listen to the current episode featuring Norwood High boys' basketball coach Kristen McDonnell, one of my favorite guests. Kristen speaks quite candidly about her first season as a boys' varsity coach, which was overwhelmingly positive except for a few circumstances that made her wonder if there's still a lot more work to be done for her to be accepted as an equal to the other coaches, just because of her gender.

As the Bears' assistant coach said, "Good stuff."

** Time to make a bowl of pasta and warm up the meatballs. See you all tomorrow.