Pedro Martinez, Kim Richards and Lord Stanley have something in common

High school seniors get to march wearing cap and gown, but fifth-graders here leave elementary school by running through a gauntlet of parents and vengeful siblings armed with water balloons, Super-Soakers and Silly String.

My youngest made this adventurous trek today, which means I am old, with children in middle and high school.

But it also disrupted my attempt at a morning posting of the Deezo Friday Five.

1) Don Zimmer beware, because Pedro is back!

We don’t know for how long, but I was pretty happy when he made it into the fourth inning, which is better than his first start this season.

And the Mets even scored 9 runs for him, which they pretty much have to do since Pedro have up three runs before he left and the bully allowed the Giants to start tacking on runs in the ninth.

If another couple batters have circled the bases, you know Pedro would have thrown Scott Schoenweis right to the ground. And we know he’s good at it.

2) My son is about to turn 16, and we’ve been trying to prepare him culturally, at least in the ways of the cinema. My wife is responsible for the high-brow stuff, and the extreme low-brow, which usually involves bad dubbing and plastic monster costumes.

I’m in charge of classic guy movies, like "Caddyshack," that guys must be able to recite or risk becoming social outcasts.

So far we’ve watched "Major League," "Animal House" — don’t worry, I made him cover his eyes during that part — and most recently "This is Spinal Tap."

I knew this important information was sinking in after church last week. We have two praise bands. One of younger folks, and one of, well, folks who are not. The band of people with, um, more life experiences played last week and thought they were rocking out, to at least the extent that they do rock out.

In the middle of this praising and mild rocking, the son leaned over and said, "They’ve got them turned up to 11."

I was so proud.

3) Lord Stanley is back! Hockey is a worthy off-season diversion, but I lose interest the moment spring training starts. I don’t pay much attention in the spring unless the Islanders are in the playoffs, which means I haven’t paid attention for a long time.

But the locals are all excited about the Red Wings winning the Stanley Cup again.

I have to say I was worried about them after the Penguins tied Game 5 with 34 seconds left and winning in triple overtime. I told a co-worker the goal that tied the game was their "Buckner Moment."

He was not amused. And I have to tread lightly because they are already distraught over the Tigers, who I suspect were printing up World Series tickets in March.

4) Kim Richards is back! Like every guy who grew up in the 1970s, I had a crush on actress Kim Richards, star of seemingly any Disney live action movie that didn’t have Dean Jones in it.

Dean = comedy, Kim Richards = serious.

It doesn’t appear that Kim has worked much in recent years -- the dreaded "Hello Larry" curse -- so I was pretty excited to see that she was signed to appear in the "reimagining" of the Witch Mountain movies. Apparently Ike Eisenmann is coming back, too. But I don’t care about him.

I don’t hold out much hope for the rest of the movie, which has Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Cheech Marin among the stars.

5) This week’s hidden iPod gem is another song that took me years to track down, largely because I didn’t know that it’s actual title was "Bird’s Fly" or that it was performed by Icicle Works. The only lyrics I could understand was "We are, we are, we are" and "Whisper to a scream," which sounds really cool. The glories of the Internet allowed me to Google those words and "lyrics" and finally had enough information to track it down.

The video is better than the recent hidden gems. But note that the lead singer is strumming his guitar when there are only drums in the song