Cheerios

Had he a mind to, Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz might have played a tape of Pat O'Brien's "win one for The Gipper" pregame speech from "The Knute Rockne Story. " That's always been a surefire way to get the alumni weepy-eyed and Fighting Irish teams pumped enough to run through brick walls. Instead, Holtz opted for another tried-and-true motivational device to get his underdog team ready to go out and win The Big Game. Borrowing a ploy employed at various times by such predecessors as Frank Leahy, Joe Kuharich and Dan Devine, Holtz had Notre Dame dress in white jerseys with green numbers and green socks for last night's Sugar Bowl game against Florida in the Louisiana Superdome.

In what it's calling a marketing first, General Mills Inc. is giving away a million dollars to get you to buy Cheerios. The money has been stashed in a million boxes of Cherrios - $1, wrapped in cellophane, in every box. And to make those boxes easily identifiable, the money is being packaged in boxes with green borders on the front and photographs of dollar bills on the back. But, there's a hitch: Those boxes are now being shipped from company factories to retail outlets - along with 19 million boxes that have similar borders on the front and photographs on the back, but that don't contain any dollar bills.

NEW YORK - General Mills Inc.'s net income rose 18 percent in the fiscal third quarter, driven by the sale of more snacks and strength abroad. The maker of Nature Valley snack bars and Cheerios cereal has started to raise prices for some of its products over the past few months to cope with rising ingredient costs. It expects price increases will accelerate during the current fiscal fourth quarter. -Associated Press

The Acme Market in Cinnaminson pulled all 20-ounce boxes of Cheerios cereal off its shelves yesterday after a Burlington Township customer told the store that she had found a razor blade and a straight pin in a cereal box. No other reports of razors, pins or any other objects in cereal have been received by the Malvern-based supermarket chain, general counsel Walt Rubel said yesterday. Cheerios' manufacturer, General Mills Corp. of Minneapolis, also has received no consumer complaints, spokesman Craig Stulstad said.

First it was soft drinks and candy bars; now it's breakfast cereal. To the shopping list of grocery items already being pitched on the videos of hit movies - Diet Pepsi, Snickers, Nestle's Alpine White and Schweppes Tonic - you can now add Cheerios. The latest movie to carry a commercial is Nelson Entertainment's Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, due in video stores today. The cheerfully ignorant high schoolers Bill and Ted will not only be smiling down from video shelves, but also decorating 10 million boxes of Cheerios on supermarket shelves from September through December.

I am young, I tell myself, and anecdotally, this appears to be true. I can't drive. I care too much about basketball. I eat plain Cheerios by the pound. On my better days, tucked securely within the confines of my university's campus, such quirks register as endearing character traits. Matt, the lifelong city kid who never had a car, ducks away to check box scores on his phone, keeps six big yellow cereal boxes in his room at all times. What a character! That all changes this weekend when, after so many years of school - 17, actually - they hand me a diploma and kick me to the curb.

The Ellen DeGeneres Show (3 p.m., NBC10) - Eddie Murphy; Jason Lewis; American Idol castoff Casey James. The Oprah Winfrey Show (4 p.m., 6ABC) - Updates on past guests, including a woman who lost 175 pounds and a transgender teen. Glee (8 p.m., Fox29) - Plotting to divide and conquer, Sue tries to cause dissension among members of the glee club by forcing the students to compete against one another, then goes ballistic when Will flunks most of the Cheerios in his Spanish class.

Howard Eskin, the sports broadcaster who is often a target of Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky's barbs, set the tone of Stu's 19th annual Candidates Comedy Night last night with - what else? - a joke: "This is a night when politicians show their sense of humor by telling us jokes, and we show ours by electing them to office. " The lighthearted charity event at Finnigan's Wake, 3rd and Spring Garden streets, had local politicians parading to the mike to make funny with professional comedian Joe Conklin.

Joseph is looking at a puzzle and whispering to himself. "Apple," he says, looking at the wooden piece in his hand. He slides it over the board until he finds the corresponding slot. Then he lines up blocks, counts them and selects all the reds. Each has a hole in the middle, and he slips them over pegs on a board with wheels and moves it across the carpet. He is totally absorbed in his creation. Joseph, 5, enjoys kindergarten, where he's learning to write his name and count to 25. He knows basic colors and likes to draw, mainly green turtles with weapons.

How does a couple living on one salary, with two small children, and virtually no disposable income, get invited to join an organization as hoity-toity as the GOP Chairman's Advisory Board? It's a question I've been wondering about ever since Bob Dole wrote us, in what seemed to be an impressively personalized letter, to inform us of our nomination to this august body, and to personally extend an invitation to the Republican National Convention, soon to begin. In his letter, the presumptive Republican nominee cited my husband's "good standing in the community," as a ground for this incredible honor.

The seventh day of Occupy Philadelphia got off to a quiet start, with rain falling lightly on the more than 100 still zipped-up tents. But keeping protesters inside, as rush-hour traffic was splashing by, wasn't the weather so much as the need for sleep. The mini-city was alive late into the night with socializing and social-policy discussions, said Adam Hill, 28, a self-styled "failing independent contractor" from Norristown. "A lot of new people showed up," said Hill, who arrived himself last evening and didn't crash until about 4 a.m. That's about when the tent next to him went up, at the southwest corner of City Hall's Dilworth Plaza.

For a kid who gets decent grades and is headed to college next year, my 17-year-old son can be a knucklehead about breakfast. If something isn't at his fingertips as he stumbles out the door on his way to an early morning football practice, he'll go without. And it shows - not only on the field, but in the classroom. You don't have to graduate summa cum laude to understand the value of a healthy breakfast, but try telling that to high school and college warriors, running through life juggling academics, sports, activities, and stress.

I am young, I tell myself, and anecdotally, this appears to be true. I can't drive. I care too much about basketball. I eat plain Cheerios by the pound. On my better days, tucked securely within the confines of my university's campus, such quirks register as endearing character traits. Matt, the lifelong city kid who never had a car, ducks away to check box scores on his phone, keeps six big yellow cereal boxes in his room at all times. What a character! That all changes this weekend when, after so many years of school - 17, actually - they hand me a diploma and kick me to the curb.

NEW YORK - General Mills Inc.'s net income rose 18 percent in the fiscal third quarter, driven by the sale of more snacks and strength abroad. The maker of Nature Valley snack bars and Cheerios cereal has started to raise prices for some of its products over the past few months to cope with rising ingredient costs. It expects price increases will accelerate during the current fiscal fourth quarter. -Associated Press

The Ellen DeGeneres Show (3 p.m., NBC10) - Eddie Murphy; Jason Lewis; American Idol castoff Casey James. The Oprah Winfrey Show (4 p.m., 6ABC) - Updates on past guests, including a woman who lost 175 pounds and a transgender teen. Glee (8 p.m., Fox29) - Plotting to divide and conquer, Sue tries to cause dissension among members of the glee club by forcing the students to compete against one another, then goes ballistic when Will flunks most of the Cheerios in his Spanish class.

There are moments when being a parent seems a bit like being a walking snack machine. From a toddler's first fistfuls of Cheerios to a tween's after-school foraging, modern American children are on the receiving end of a steady stream of food - much of it unhealthful and potentially contributing to childhood obesity. Snacking has become such a problem that a recently published study found that young Americans' relationship with eating is becoming "dysregulated, as our children are moving toward constant eating.

Howard Eskin, the sports broadcaster who is often a target of Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky's barbs, set the tone of Stu's 19th annual Candidates Comedy Night last night with - what else? - a joke: "This is a night when politicians show their sense of humor by telling us jokes, and we show ours by electing them to office. " The lighthearted charity event at Finnigan's Wake, 3rd and Spring Garden streets, had local politicians parading to the mike to make funny with professional comedian Joe Conklin.

I recently told a group of friends that my husband and I had bought a minivan. Now, I know minivans aren't considered cutting-edge fashion in the world of automobiles, but I was hardly prepared for the endless stream of mockery that followed. Despite the ribbing, no one present could deny that minivans are highly functional. As families grow, they are almost a necessity. I guess that's why they're the butt of so many jokes. Automotive purchases are sometimes the last aspect of a couple's lives to succumb to the demands of children.

TIME WAS, I could spend an entire Saturday morning eating Froot Loops. I'd fill a large container with cereal and milk, and deplete and refill the bowl until the milk had turned thick and pink. Then I'd drink the syrupy elixir. Ahhh. Just thinking about it makes me  . . . vomit. You get older, the sweet tooth abates. Or the dentist grinds it down and glues a cap over it. And your tastes change. The idea of plain Shredded Wheat does not seem so appalling.

First, the essential fact. Sarah Steele is lovely. Hollywood publicists say she was plucked from among 1,000 contenders for the part of Bernice in the new film Spanglish. At the time, she was a slender teenager from the Main Line who had already logged a few years schlepping to auditions, like so many of the young and aspiring, to get anything from Cheerios commercials to - one can always dream - the princess role in Star Wars. Steele won this contest, they say, because she's a gifted actress who was perfect for the role.