Replacement refs were entertaining

Thank goodness the official NFL referees are back on the job. A new labor deal was reached Wednesday and all is right again at NFL stadiums nationwide, with the league’s 32 teams either winning or losing games on their own merits and not because of bad calls by the less competent replacement refs.

On the other hand, the plethora of bad calls, mass confusion and flaring tempers did have its amusing side, recalling how much fun it was back in 1987 when the NFL players themselves went on strike and were replaced for a while by mostly second-tier players — which led to a fun movie in 2000 called, not surprisingly, "The Replacements."

Maybe they’ll make a film someday based on this season and its striking refs.

In other football news, the erratic, four-team United Football League’s fourth season is under way. You can see the second game of its first week today, starting at 5 p.m., on CBS Sports Network, channel 247.

One man’s trash is another’s art

Not everybody is pleased, we’re told, about Japanese billionaire Genshiro Kawamoto’s plans to build a garden museum on some of his beachfront properties in Kahala. The idea seems to have taken years to develop; meanwhile, many of the homes he owns in the tony neighborhood he allowed to decay and finally had to tear down.

Now, however, many of those vacant properties are starting to look like parks, though not open to the public, and you can actually see the ocean from various spots where the Kawamoto homes used to be.

Maybe there is a silver lining, after all.