Howie Sullivan could be a key witness in getting Lowell Baldwin off on a 40-year-old murder charge. Lowell, of course, is a former 60s radical who police accuse of setting a bomb in a bank which ended up killing an innocent security guard. Howie was a member of Lowell’s band of anti-establishment protesters, and his testimony may prove Lowell didn’t commit the crime after all. Since Lowell’s recently been arrested after decades on the run and living under an assumed name, and the son he abandoned all those years ago just happens to be a hotshot lawyer, everyone’s after Howie Sullivan to get Lowell, who now goes by ‘River,’ off the hook.

This would all make much more sense if I prefaced this by saying this isn’t the Howie Sullivan that you and I know as the Chenango County Judge, and that all of the people mentioned above are fictional characters on “The Young and the Restless.”

Timing my lunch hour as I often do to coincide with “Y&R” (it’s nice to turn my brain off for an hour mid-day), imagine my surprise this week when Lowell Baldwin and his son Michael started talking about Howie Sullivan. It’s the kind of thing that’ll rouse you from a post-lunch Pringles-induced coma and make you suddenly pay closer attention to the goings on in Genoa City.