...while wondering what ever happened to BJ and the Affordables

So many idiots, so little internet. There is no Idiot of the Week award because, frankly, there were just too many idiots this week. To wit: District Judge Kristine Cecava refused to send convicted child rapist Richard Thompson to prison last week -- because, at 5'1", he is too small to defend himself in the big, mean prison. Yeah, well, things weren't too safe on the outside for his three-foot victim, now were they?...Idiot number two is, (well, was) Patrick Von Allman, 23, of Lanesville, Indiana, who was strangled to death this week by his 14' pet python. Need we explain why he was an idiot?...Continuing the Animals Fight Back portion of the Parade of Idiots, Bebe Lopez, of Queens was awarded a restraining order last week. 20 year-old Frederick Fontanez can not come within 100 yards of Bebe. Bebe is a dog...Steve Irwin. Enough said...But wait! There's more. Eddie Meadows, 62, of Orlando survived four days trapped in a swamp. Heroic? At first blush, yes -- until you hear the proverbial "rest of the story". Turns out Mr. Meadows was trapped while jogging. Through a swamp. Hey Eddie, here's your sign...President Bush defended Iraqi policy...More lunacy occurred in Stockton, California, where football coach Cory Patero, 36, stormed the field and leveled 13 year-old Joseph Santillanes, who had put a late hit on one of Patero's players. A twenty-minute brawl ensued...In a related story, 13 year-old Joseph Sanillanes had his college education completely paid for this week by being blindsided by a maniacal football coach...We don't know whether to give Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Ashley Lelie the Idiot or the Philanthropist of the Week award, but since he was probably brutalized as a boy, being named Ashley, we'll go with the latter. After sitting out the entire Denver Broncos preseason, Lelie and his $600,000 base salary were traded to the Falcons -- but not until he paid the Broncos fines totaling $982,000 for missing camp. Clearly Lelie did not major in Economics at the University of Hawaii...The baton has been passed. On the 29th of August, Alexa Ray Joel released her debut EP, entitled Sketches. Joel went the indie-label route, but clearly not for a lack of talent. Think Norah Jones, Fiona Apple and Lisa Loeb together in a studio, with Billy Joel delivering pizzas and adding some unsolicited input. That's Alexa Ray Joel. Going the indie route is a good idea, as is the current college/state fair/dive bar tour the Piano Girl is on. By starting out putting as much distance as possible between herself and dad, Alexa is setting herself up to succeed or fail on her own. But is the EP any good? Good, yes; great, no. But for a first time out, it's a good collection. She shows enough talent and diversity thereof to whet the appetite for her first full-blown, major label effort. In the meantime, compared to dad's debut, Cold Spring Harbor, Alexa's ahead of the old man. To be sure we weren't letting out innate bias for Billy affect our judgment, we ran the disk past 14 year-old Chelsea, who loved it. To judge for yourself, click here or here to hear songs from Sketches...Johnathan Eding, 29, of Fairfiled, Connecticut came home from work and was told by his wife that the neighbor, Barry James, 58, had sexually assaulted their two year-old daughter. So Eding goes next door and stabs the guy to death. Not sure how we feel about this one. One side of us wants to say, "atta boy!", but the other thinks, "man, but you killed the guy". We just hope the kid's ok. No word on how tall James was...As for the upcoming NFL season, our playoff teams are: Seattle, Carolina, NYGiants, Chicago, Philadelphia and Dallas in the NFC. Over in the AFC it'll be New England, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Denver, Pittsburgh and Miami. Pencil in Seattle, Philadelphia, New England and Cincinnati for the Conference Finals, with New England beating Seattle in the Super Bowl. Or not...And finally, speaking of kids, Ingrate of the Week goes to Cindy Kienow, of Hutchins, KS., who received a $10,000 tip on a $26 tab last week. Yes, that's ten thousand dollars. From the AP story: "Kienow, whose father will have to take some time off work for surgery on both of his knees, said she hasn't decided what to do with the money. 'I'd like to take care of my parents, since they always took care of me,' she said. 'But I feel like he wanted me to buy something for myself, and there's a Jeep that I've had my eye on for a while.' Hmmm -- sick, old parents or shiny new Jeep. Nice kid.
Until next time,
Paz

...while wondering what ever happened to Gene Tenace

***RETRACTION***
Last week's edition inadvertently stated that Patsy Ramsey did not murder her small child. We stand corrected...What is in the water in Oakland, some kind of retro-juice? First Al Davis goes with throwback coach Art Shell to lead his Raydahs. Then the team re-signs 348 year-old Jeff George , who has not played in five years, at quarterback. When asked why?!?!?!?!, the apparently stoned Coach Shell replied, "I've always been intrigued by the guy and couldn't figure out why a talent like him doesn't spend his years in one place." Ummm, because he sucks? Because he's an asshole? Because there are 29 other organizations that know what they are doing? But wait, there's more to the Bay Area Nostalgia Tour '06! Across the parking lot from Oakland/Alameda/Network Associates/Novell/Whateverthehellitisthisweek Coliseum, at -- the Arena (now there's a name), the Warriors have rehired one Donald Arvid Nelson as head coach. What's next, Jerry Brown as mayor? Oh, wait a minute. They already did that one...Why I Hate Texas, Reason 472: The Dallas city council is currently considering a ban on -- baggy pants. Yes, in a city that ranks fifth in the nation in murders, seventh in aggravated assaults and in the top ten in rapes, the leaders of Texas' second-largest city are bearing the full weight of their office on hip hop. Now, if you wear pants that are six sizes too big for you, you look like a dumbass, no two ways about it. But to make it illegal? OK, just for a minute, let's play along. If we accept the argument that this style of dress, which typically reveals two to three inches of the top of a male's boxer shorts is, "perilously close to lewdness", as Mayor Laura Miller -- a Democrat, at that -- says, how is it ok to wear a halter top with no bra? How is it ok to wear a sports bra which, by its very name is underwear? So those two must go. Skirts too because, with the average wind speed in Dallas, Texas being .4 miles per hour faster than Chicago, Illinois, females in skirts are perilously close to lewdness, don't you think? And then there's the whole matter of colors. Blue is out -- Crips. Red too -- Bloods. White is out of the question. Anglos already run every aspect of society. We'll be damned if whitey gets to dress us in his color, too! Pink offends gays. Yellow pisses off the incontinent (pun semi-intended). Black scares the white people. Orange riles up the Catholics. Green encourages marijuana usage. The evil person who created Barney also took out a trademark on purple, so that's out. What are we left with? Oh, I know -- brown! Yeah, brown!! We can dress everyone in brown -- especially the children! We can make brown uniforms for the Youth, with little shorts. Wait, this sounds familiar...Acts III and IV of Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke were just as powerful as the first two. When it comes out on DVD, buy this film. My guess would be that proceeds will go to relief efforts. Kill two birds with one stone, or click here to donate...Let's see how much the media gives a damn about the Gulf area after they milk the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. What's the over-under on nation media stories on the state of the region in one week? My money is on Zero...Interesting notes on the Nellie to Golden State story: The W's have had eight coaches in the 12 years since Nelson left. None have lasted more than two seasons. None had a .500 record. The last coach to take the team to the playoffs -- Don Nelson, in his final full season. The strangest thing about this return to the Bay is the fact that, after he left the team in 1994 and took a job as the NYKnicks head coach, Warriors owner Chris Cohan sued Nelson to get back the salary he had already paid Nellie. The litigation dragged through the end of the century. Literally. Just three months ago, Nelson was quoted as saying, "I'll never work for that man again." Fortunately for Cohen, Don has no problem working for Mr. Benjamin and his one hundred thousand or so cousins. Fortunately for Nelson, he won't have Chris "Big Mouth, No Rings" Webber throwing him under the bus at every turn. Now if only Mully can sign himself out of the front office then make a run at Timmy Hardaway, then they'll be in business!...So John Karr confesses to a murder he didn't commit, gets arrested, extradited back to the United States and is subsequently cleared by (the lack of) DNA evidence. OK. Bill him for all costs associated with the arrest, charge him with any possible crime you can for this -- then plead it all out in exchange for his being barred from writing a book or profiting in any way from it. Then advise the family to sue for emotional trauma. Oh, wait -- the family killed her. Forget that part...Getting back to the baggy pants for a second, this is not a new fashion trend. People have been dressing like idiots for years. The only difference is that now the trend has trickled down to the white kids. That is what scares the hell out of the Dallas City Council. I mean, who cares what they do in the ghetto -- but don't you dare allow our virtuous white kids be sullied by "urban" culture. Honestly though, who do you think will be jacked up against a wall for violating the city's dress code -- Trevor or Tyrell?...And finally, we'd like to wish a happy 14th birthday to the lovely Chelsea. Thank you for the happiest 5,115 days a father could ever have.

Until next time,
Paz

...while wondering what ever happened to W. Wilson Goode

The sun came up in the West. The Earth revolved around the moon. A woman stayed in love with me for more than a week. This is the scale we're talking here. I was walking through a skybridge on the way to my office the other day when I read the words, "Suspect in JonBenet Case in Custody". I was litterally stopped in my tracks. As I read on, all I could say was, "She didn't do it?" No less than three people passing commented, "I know, can you believe it?!?!" Wow. Now I realize that this guy may just be a freak who wants attention but still, it comes as an absolute shock to me that it is now very possible that Patsy Ramsey was innocent all along. Well, not innocent. I mean, dressing your five year-old like a hooker does tend to draw just the kind of pedophile that aparently killed JonBenet, still it would appear as though her mother did not actively participate in her killing. As to our decade-long condemnation of the late Mrs. Ramsey: my bad. But OJ's still guilty...Eating Crow, Take II: We're always a little wary of a Spike Lee "joint", but his When the Levees Broke, A Requium in Four Parts is, through Act II, an amazingly powerful work. The presentation has been muted, balanced and very moving. Credit was given where due -- most notably to the US Coast Guard -- and blame distributed, to this viewer's eyes, fairly. One troubling part was the complaints of evaccuees about having to go to Utah (insert joke here). Look, help is help and getting out is getting out. How about a little gratitude? Also, there were claims that families were intentionally split up in the evacuation, with, "babies ripped out of their mothers' arms." Sorry -- not buying that one. Still, through the first half, Mr. Lee has acquitted himself quite well. HBO also made a wise choice in spreading the telecast over two nights. Four consecutive hours of this trajedy would have been too much... To donate to Hurricane Katrina relief efforst, click here...Why is Maurice Clarrett all over my sports sections? He has never played in an NFL game -- pre, post or regular season. He was a third round draft pick who got cut in preseason. Last year. He is not a sports figure. He’s a guy whose life didn’t work out precisely how he wanted it to, so he turned to crime. And isn’t a pro at that either…Why is LAClippers’ owner Donald Sterling not all over my sports section? He pays millions of dollars to black men to play basketball for him, yet will not accept thousands of dollars from black families – and children of any ethnicity – to live in his rental properties in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. Now I understand the concept of adult only communities and I am ok with them. But to systematically deny housing to people with children by making certain units “unavailable” or to employ other deceptive practices to discourage their letting is not only clearly illegal, but cowardly as well. It goes without saying that the race-based aspect of this discrimination is disgusting as well. When an athlete (more often than not black) is caught with drugs or beating his wife, it’s front page news. Hell, Maurice Clarrett doesn’t even play and he’s splashed all over the news. When the white D. Sterling continuously refused to ante up and pay his players, that was all over the news. But it turns out he’s a racist and – nothing. A little blurb on espn.com. Not even a story on the irony of the fact that Elton Brand couldn’t rent a house in Beverly Hills from the guy who pays him the money with which he would pay for it. Perhaps Mr. Sterling took the title Owner literally…Going back to our favorite Ohio State running back for a moment, Line of the Week goes to Gene Wojciechowski, of espn.com who, when writing about Columbus police officers’ failed efforts to taser the suspect – because he was wearing a freaking bullet-proof vest! – resorting to pepper spray and a “team of officers”, commented, “Yeah, that sounds like Clarett -- always tough to bring down with one defender.”…They say an NBA playoff series does not start until the road team wins a game. In much the same way it can now be officially declared football season, as our beloved Cleveland Browns have lost a game...Just for shits and giggles, go to www.google.com . Type in "failure". Hit enter.

Until next time,
Paz