My Sunday Feeling

"OK. Where's a screwdriver? I'm going to fix this damn thing once and for all."

She stood before me with half the doorknob to the bathroom door in her hand.

" I thought you fixed it," she said.

" Well, I just screwed it back together," I said. " I guess I forgot."

" You need to fix this," she said as she headed back to the bathroom. " I can't help it if I am stronger than I look."

We all bring different gifts to the party. I am not completely useless around the house, the preceding lecture notwithstanding. But I concede that my skill level is somewhere between "not completely useless" and "can hang pictures by myself." Which is unfortunate as I live in an old house. And there is something always going wrong with an old house.

Here's a true story. The Previous Administration wanted a dremel tool for Christmas one year.

"Ok," I said. " What's a dremel tool?"

" You're kidding," she said. "You don't know what a dremel tool is?"

" Ummmmm, noooooo."

" You poor sweet man," she said as she patted my forearm as she regarded me with pity. " You poor sweet man." She then walked away shaking her head, undoubtedly wondering how she had wound up with the only straight guy in the county who didn't know what a dremel tool was.

So, thus knowing when I am whipped, I recently retained my neighbor Jimmy to do a series of small repairs here at the Hillcrest Sports Bar. Jimmy runs a handyman service. People are taking better care of their property and/or merely staying there longer. And so Jimmy is a very busy man.

I mainly needed my front gate fixed and the door to the laundry room replaced. But while he was here he was going to do a series of other small jobs.

" I think you need to replace that latch," I helpfully observed as he was poking around on the gate. " The wind has caused it to bend over time. Maybe a latch made with stronger metal. "

He put the earpiece of his glasses in his ear and ran his tape measure from the house to the latch. He looked at me with a " do I tell you how to practice law?" expression on his face.

" Actually, you are looking at this backwards," he said. " Whoever built this fence didn't put the post in deep enough over yonder. My guess is he hit the slab about 2 foot shy of where he needed to be to stabilize this gate. By the time he got here he was probably too far ahead and just decided not to tell you that this gate would be trouble eventually. The post by the house has been moving over time. That's what is causing the stress on the latch."

Oh.

" How are you going to fix it?"

Jimmy is hunkered down and scratching his chin.

"That I do not know just yet."

The door in the laundry room folds like a screen. It recently got all hung up. I was afraid to try to force it.

" I hate these doors," Jimmy said as he shined his light up the top hinge. " This is the 'flat roof' of doors. They always have problems and they can't be fixed for good. You can't fix it. I can't fix it. But it's cheaper to just get it to halfway work than to put a new one in. Because eventually you will have trouble with it too. You will have trouble with this kind of door until the Lord comes."

I did not know that. But his explanations concerning the door and the gate made me feel less idiotic than I did before hand. Why beat myself up? The gate was screwed up by the moron that built it. The only permanent solution to the door in the laundry room requires Gabriel to blow his trumpet first.

Such things are out of my control.

Jimmy must have figured something out with the gate. It works fine now although he comes by from time to time and eyes it with professional skepticism. So far so good with the laundry room door. It is either working or I have not been called to Glory yet. At least I have my doubts on that latter score as I don't believe that I would have gotten a text from Don about how GM "fucked the Saturn brand up" if the Rapture had taken me this morning.

I know this. While we bring different gifts to the party, one woman's "poor sweet man" is a man whose head another woman is about to put a knot upon.

So I better fix the doorknob.

After all, she can't help it if she's stronger than she looks.

Vox Populi: Wild Blue Yonder

Polycarp: Did you hear about the pilot who got grounded after a video got out on the Internet of him fooling around with a porn star while flying a helicopter over San Diego?

tmfw: Yes I did! I looked it up. The woman in question is an allegedly Swedish actress named Puma Swede.

Polycarp: This would be her stage name, yes?

tmfw: We may safely say that Puma Swede was not the name conferred unto her upon her baptism, no.

Polycarp: I am unfamiliar with her work.

tmfw: As am I. However, I do not believe that you will find her in any movies by the late Ingmar Bergman.

Polycarp: Probably not.

tmfw: What did the FAA ring the pilot up for anyway? I would opt for a strictly legal defense as I doubt that they can point to a regulation that specifically prohibits having sex with a porn star named Puma Swede while flying a helicopter.

Polycarp: No.

tmfw: They probably fell back on what the FDIC relies on when it goes after a bank when the fastball ain't working. It alleges "unsafe and unsound practices."

Polycarp: Close. The FAA argued that he was "careless and reckless."

tmfw: Ah.

Polycarp: They said the pilot's attention was diverted from flying.

tmfw: I can see that.

Polycarp: He was unable to reach the controls while she was.....

tmfw: Yes

Polycarp: That she could have injured him thereby rendering him incapable of flying.

tmfw: A stretch, though I concede that so called "unexpected turbulence" could have been exceedingly worrisome under the circumstances.

Polycarp: Here's my favorite.

tmfw: Yeah.

Polycarp: They also charged him with "idle chatter" while flying.

tmfw: There probably wasn't much that was "idle" about it.

Polycarp: We are talking in the strict aeronautical sense of the phrase.

tmfw: Ah.

Polycarp: He plans on appealling. His defense was that since the video shows his hands on the controls, he was in control of the aircraft.

tmfw: That was his defense?

Polycarp: Yes.

tmfw: That's not gonna work. They got him dead to rights on "idle chatter."

Polycarp: There you go. I gotta run. I suddenly have an interest in getting my pilot's license renewed.

tmfw: Bye.

Polycarp: Bye.

My Easter Feeling

I attended a Memorial Service for the father of a good friend of mine the other day. I seem to be doing a lot of that lately. The service was held at a stately old Episcopal church downtown. The same one Douglas MacArthur attended when he was a boy. You could look it up, as the famous theologian Casey Stengel used to say.


The service was hardly a somber occasion. Dr. Thomas lived to be 95. He worked up until a year or so ago. He lived independently, albeit with a helper, until 2 or 3 months ago when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. His son moved him into a nursing home where he died in his sleep a week or so ago.


We should all be so lucky. Most of us won't be.


I like the Episcopalians. The older I get, the more I am comforted by liturgy and symbols, by a mode of religious discourse that has remained relatively unchanged over time. The older I get, the less I am tolerant of preachifying. And don't even get me started on so-called "contemporary services" with the power point presentations and lousy music.


I concede that I haven't given it a fair chance. I don't care. I concede that I may be starting to act like a cranky old man.


I don't care about that either. Last time I looked it was a free country.



Nothing will put you off religion like theology. I have been grappling, on occasions when I feel like a good grapple, with the issue of theodicy, which is the branch of theology that concerns itself with reconciling the notion of a benevolent and loving God with the reality of human suffering. These days, as far as I am concerned, when it comes to suffering, bet the over.



And so it is that my church attendance has been irregular lately. I have trouble more and more manufacturing sense from what I perceive to be nonsense nowadays. Why should religion be any different? After all, there must be some reason God gave us brains and it can't be to give neurosurgeons something to do.


One of my best friends in law school has reached the same impasse. Or so I thought. He has begun attending Mass again. I asked him why.

" I don't know," he said. " I just felt like I needed to start going. Hard to explain." I understand how he feels. I enjoyed being amongst the Episcopalians yesterday. And I intend to attend services on Easter Sunday with my sister-in-law and nephews. I don't much know why either.

I know I like the Spring. The weather has been pretty crazy lately but things are blooming and the grass has returned. Baseball, both Major and Miracle League, have returned. My dogwoods really took a beating during the ice storm in 2000 and yet they still bloom a little. I hate to pull them out as long as they are going to stubbornly insist upon resurrecting themselves as best they can every year. I seem to be becoming friends with someone. I like it. It has been awhile. Things are going pretty well this Spring.


Easter, with its transcendent themes of triumph over despair, is far more compelling to me than Christmas, that most-and I apologize in advance- infantile of seasons. Victory remains in love at Easter and helps to put things in perspective.


We must all contend with despair from time to time. And yet we stubbornly insist on resurrecting ourselves as best we can.


I don't much know what I believe anymore. But it does not hurt to be reminded that victory remains in love.

At least it always does on Easter Sunday.

The Road Not Taken

As far as I was concerned, the fact that Bristol Palin got pregnant was a non-story. An otherwise nice kid made a poor decision and got pregnant. It happens. It doesn't happen very often to the daughter of somebody that's running for Vice-President. But it happens.



And I was even willing to view this as a non-story despite the fact that all candidates for office put their family out front and center to show how "normal" they are even though you would have to be about 1/3 nuts to run for office in this great land of ours.



But the recent hyperthyroid response on behalf of the Palin family to certain remarks made by notorious babydaddy Levi Johnston on the "Tyra Banks Show" bothered me.



Johnston gallantly told Banks and that segment of the electorate that actually watches this kind of dreck that he and Bristol were allowed to share a room by themselves at the Palin house (ostensibly while he was visiting her), that they had safe sex "most of the time" and that Governor Palin probably knew that they were carrying on, Moms being smart people and all.



The Palin family went ballistic. They issued a statement that said " We're disappointed that Levi and his family are engaging in flat out lies, gross exaggeration and even distortion of their relationship."



Oh yeah?



We know they had sex. Young folk do that sort of thing. We know that at least on one occasion they didn't use any birth control method other than crossing their fingers because Bristol because there is a new baby crawling around in the Governor's Mansion. And since we can assume that these two star-crossed lovers didn't sneak off for romantic weekends at the Juneau Ritz-Carlton much less the Red Roof Inn of Wasilla, Levi's statements at least have the ring of truth.



I don't know what he was "flat out lyin'" about. But I do know where his testimony was absolutely credible. It was unseemly to the extreme given the forum in which he chose to dish on his former "fiancee". (Yeah right.) But it was credible. More so than that stupid statement issued by the Governor's family.



They would have been better off with something like the following:



"We are disappointed that Levi would discuss such intimate matters involving the mother of his son on a television show. As we prefer to view this as a family matter, we will not dignify his statements by any further comment."



But I guess when you are a conservative icon you can't take the high road when it is alleged that your teenage daughter was sexually active with her boyfriend. Even though it is self-evident that this was the case.



Like that's a crime. Like that makes either of them bad kids. Or you a bad Mother.



I guess it just makes Sarah Palin a bad Icon.

My Sunday Feeling

I know I've been writing a lot about sports lately. But there's a lot going on out there nowadays. You have the return of baseball for another season. The college basketball season is winding down. And coaches are getting fired left and right as is typically the case after every season. This creates many openings and people leave positions they have to take these jobs. This causes the usual sturm und drang amongst jilted fans and the media about whither the "sanctity of contracts." So let us review, yet again, the basic law of contracts in light of a couple of recent events. And let's put a lid on the sanctimony.

The latest big news out of the NFL is that Denver Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler just got traded to the Chicago Bears. Cutler is a Pro Bowl caliber QB who played for a mediocre team. After last season, the Broncos brass hit the panic button and fired long time coach Mike Shanahan and replaced him with Josh McDaniels, the former offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots. Shanahan was under contract with the Broncos when he was canned. McDaniels was under contract with the Patriots when he took the Denver job.

Cutler has a rifle arm and a thin skin. Word is that he was pissed when Shanahan got fired. But what really set him off was when the new regime started shopping Cutler around right off the bat. Then they basically lied and told Cutler that they had done no such thing. Cutler saw red and demanded to be traded. Which led McDaniels to say, presumably with a straight face, " Jay Cutler is under contract."

But you don't need a pissed off quarterback at the controls. And if you had made as big a mess of things as the new regime had made of this situation you need to get this story turned off. So they traded Cutler, contract and all, to the Bears where Cutler will get to run for his life until he demands to be traded to someplace else.

Are you getting the picture here?

What people don't understand is that implicit in every contract is the right to breach. The 13th Amendment is the law of the land. You don't have to work for anybody you don't want to. But if you signed an employment contract there are certain consequences for if you quit. Conversely there are certain consequences for your employer if you are terminated for reasons other than misconduct connected with your employment.

The legal effect of the breach is not that somebody gets burned at the stake or has to wear the Scarlet Letter in the town square. The legal effect is, typically, already agreed to by the parties in a liquidated damages clause which prescribes the damages for breaching the contract at the day of signing when hearts are still young and gay.

In other words, it's just business. Which doesn't always sit well with sports fans, primarily college sports fans, who tend to project their own romantic notions of business ethics and morality onto the movers and shakers who profit from their, well, fanaticism.

And to these people I say, " Get real."

Take our very own Wally Hall. If you must. One of his sports columns last week was entitled "Anderson man of word, committed to Tigers." He was referring to Missouri's Mike Anderson who turned down the men's basketball job at Georgia to remain with the Tigers. While Wally candidly admitted that the Mizzou job is a better gig than Georgia, Wally had to go further and schmaltz it up a bit.

" He gave his word."

Not exactly. According to Wally, Missouri's AD asked Anderson what it would take to keep him there. This was " probably right after they won the Big 12 Conference Championship." Wally has no more idea of when this occured than you do. And for all we know he gets his information the same way you and I do: Either from the media or he just makes it up.

In any event, Anderson gave Missouri his wish list and they agreed to it. And after he removed the gun from their head "he gave his word."

Wally says Mile Anderson is an honorable man. And from what I know of him, and all I know is what Wally knows, this is the absolute truth. It is also but minimally relevant to the discussion.

Because if a job pops up in the future that Anderson wants, he will direct his agent to throw his hat in the ring for him. Or, if he has a couple of bad seasons, Missouri will can him. Contract or no contract.

Bidness is bidness. And, conventional morality aside, implicit in every contract is the right to breach.

The Dirty Arms Race Just Got Dirtier

I remember watching 60 Minutes 15 years or so ago. The story was about mob lawyers. They asked one guy about the largest fee he had ever been offered. He said that somebody offered him a million bucks.


" Did you take it?" he was asked.

" Hell no," he responded. " You take that kind of fee you better win the case. Otherwise they will kill you. I got a family to consider."


John Calipari just signed the most obscene contract in the history of an obscene business. Kentucky will pay him @ 32 million over 8 years. Memphis had said that they would match any offer that Kentucky put on the table to keep him coaching the Tigers. Obviously, at some point, the bidding got too rich for the Tigers boosters' blood and they had to fold 'em.


Hell, at that the bidding could have gotten too rich for a member of OPEC.

About all I have to say to the Kentucky faithful is, ask George Steinbrenner how easy it is to buy a title. And those are the pros. Calipari specializes in guys that are "one and done" mercinaries who play for a year or two and then jump to the NBA. Is he going to still recruit those kind of guys to Kentucky? And speaking of "those guys" is he still going to try to keep the Memphis pipeline going to Lexington? Lots of luck.


And granted, the SEC was pretty horrible this year. But still, there's stiffer competition night in and night out there than in the Atlantic 10 and Conference USA.

Kentucky pulled the trigger on Billy Gillespie in 2 years. How long do you think it will take for the muttering to start over in the fishbowl that is Kentucky basketball if he Calipari doesn't start winning big out of the chute? Not very long, I predict. Not very long.

There's a reason the mob lawyer refused that big fee. Life is a lot more fun if you aren't constantly having to watch your back.

My Sunday Feeling

There are some things about sports that just aren't fair. Take for instance the latest example of why golf is such an exquisitely cruel mistress.



Sixty-two year old Unni Haskell recently took up the damned game. She had only 8 half hour lessons before she decided to take this accumulated knowledge out to the course. Naturally, she made a hole-in-one on her first swing taken in anger. And of course it was one of those hope-to-Jesus numbers. Her drive went all of 75 yards and then rolled through the grass up to the green and in.



I have been playing golf for @ 11 years now. I am pretty awful but I can scrape it around well enough to keep up with my buddies on pretty much any course. I have come close to a hole-in-one 3 times. I have seen one live. My buddy PM has made one. But he was screwing around by himself and hit his with a range ball. Doesn't count unless you have a witness. Shouldn't count with a range ball.



"I didn't know it was that big a deal," Unni told the St. Petersburg Times. " I thought all golfers do this."



No Unni. Not all golfers do this. And with all due respect, may you be struck by lightning during your next round.



Another recent example of the essential unfairness of sports is to be found in the NCAA tournament pools that abound this time of year all across our fair nation. I played basketball as a kid. I have watched it all my life. I still attend a fair number of high school and college games. I am a knowledgable fan.



And yet, my friend and colleague Laurie Peterson went 16-16 the first day despite knowing no more about basketball than a cow knows about the Gnostic Heresy. She picked Maryland because she thinks turtles are cute. She picked Western Kentucky because she felt sorry for the plight of the coal miners in Appalachia.



You get it. The scientific method. I wonder if Unni Haskell entered a pool?



Then there's the ongoing psychodrama at the University of Kentucky who just fired Billy Gillespie after only 2 years. First a little background. The Kentucky Wildcats are the winningest program in Division I. Their fans are also the functional equivalent of football fans at Notre Dame. They both live exclusively in the past and have completely insane expectations for their respective coaches. Gillespie went 40-27 in his two years there. Which might have been sufficient for a 3rd year at most places. It might have been at Kentucky as well. Except for two things. Kentucky didn't make it to the NCAA tournament for the first time in my lifetime while not on probation. And Billy Gillepie is a jerk.



The Kentucky brass were horrified when Tubby Smith decided he had had all the fun he could stand in Lexington and jumped for the vacancy at-gasp!-Minnesota. They decided they needed to make a quick hire to reassure the faithful that, yes indeedy, Kentucky was still the pre-eminent job in the land. They went to Billy Donovan at Florida who politely declined as did Texas's Rick Barnes.



Gillespie was the up and coming Next Big Thing down at Texas A and M. Kentucky knew that Arkansas was after him after it had fired Stan Heath because Dana Altman decided to stay at Creighton after allegedly accepting the Razorback job. So Kentucky decided to offer the job to Gillespie before Frank Broyles could get him to the altar.



Funny thing happened after that. Or so the rumor goes. Supposedly, no sooner than he had accepted the Wildcat job, it is said that Gillespie tried to pull a Dana Altman on them and tried to go back to A and M. I would have said no sooner than he had signed a contract except Gillespie never signed one. Which certainly gave his superiors every reason to doubt that Gillespie was in it for the long haul.



But A and M said, " Thanks but no thanks." And Billy Gillespie and UK were now stuck with each other.



Gillespie's brusque and aloof ways rubbed the Wildcat fans the wrong way. A confirmed bachelor, rumors swirled about his personal life. Rumor had it that he liked the ladies. Rumor had it that he would drink one with you. Rumor had it that he was not Adolph Rupp. Of course, none of this would have mattered if Kentucky was 30-3 and still playing.



Naturally, Kentucky Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart would have you believe that they are far more high-minded in Lexington when it comes to such matters.



"There is a clear difference [between he and Gillespie] in how the rules and responsibilities of overseeing the program are viewed," Barnhart said, presumably with a straight face. " It is a gap that I do not believe can be solved by just winning games."



Which is bullshit. Gillespie could set fire to the campus library and everyone would look the other way so long as the Wildcats were winning big.



But it is all, for a lack of a better word, academic now. Gillespie gets to leave a place he probably didn't want to be at in the first place. Kentucky has said that they don't plan to honor the six million dollar severance package since Gillepsie never actually put his signature on anything other than a Memorandum of Understanding about the contract that he never signed. I hope he sues to get the severance. Discovery would be great fun.



Come to think of it, maybe there are some things in sports that are fair after all.



These people deserved each other.

Social Networking

Little Rock's Dale Miller is in a heap of trouble. According to stories in the Democrat-Gazette yesterday and today, a search for a 16 year old Perry County girl led local authorities to Miller's home near Wye Mountain where he answered the cops' knock on the door clad only in a bathrobe.

While it is certainly not unusual to have to answer the door half dressed, there is no good reason for a grown man to be dressed in such scant attire with a 16 year old girl. It is for this reason that Miller was apprehended by the authorities and charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Indeed, a bathrobe is one of the more socially appropriate garments Miller has been seen in. For years, he has sashayed about locally wearing skirts and high heels. The license plate on his car spells "Skirtman" phonetically.

He is not one to hide his particularly bizarre light under a bushel. The first time I saw him was some 10 years ago at Riverfest. He was wearing a one piece miniskirt, espadrilles and deely-poppers on his head. The last time I saw him, I was having dinner with my excellent friend Lynne at Sufficient Grounds where he kinda hung out.

The night we saw him he was wearing a cheerleader outfit. What Lynne couldn't get past were the dangly earrings with which he had accessorized his look.

" Those are the wrong kind of earrings for that outfit," she hissed. " Doesn't he know anything?"

Meanwhile, as if he weren't in sufficient trouble, Miller foolishly consented to a search of his home and computer where they found child pornography. Miller obviously had not lawyered up by the time the local paper got to him yesterday because no lawyer would have let him talk to the press. But talk he did.

" My suspicion is since I never knowingly downloaded child pornography, that one of my computer programs picked up something I didn't know about."

And what do his programs search for? Why exhibitionist pornography of course.

That's his defense?

" That's my fetish. I'd rather that not be in the paper but it's part of the explanation of what happened. I can't hide from that."

Sure he could have. He could have kept his big mouth shut. But this is a man who wears women's clothing and deely boppers. Laying low is not his first instinct.

Miller swears he didn't have sex with the girl. But he says she arrived at his house unexpectedly at noon before he had dressed so he threw on the robe. Which doesn't explain why he was still wearing it at 4 when the cops came to call.

And naturally Miller is all over the Internet. He has about 4 homepages devoted to the essential weirdness of Dale Miller. Here he may be seen showing off his gams with the Hooters girls up in Fayetteville. This promptly got him threatened with a lawsuit by Hooters. And of course, he had corresponded with his jailbait girlfriend on Facebook.

As if public ridicule and the threat of incarceration were not enough, the paper reports that UALR is firing him. He did not have a good week.

If Dale Miller asked me for some advice I would tell him 3 things: Shut the fuck up, pull down all of his web pages, and exnay on the ornpay.

I would also tell him that Lynne says you shouldn't wear dangly earrings with a cheerleading outfit.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Shameless Commerce

I did another story for Tales of the South and it will be broadcast in the Central Arkansas area this Thursday on KUAR FM 89 at 7 PM CST. It will be simulcasted online at www.kuar.org . You can click on the live broadcast and it will also be in the archives which you can find on the KUAR website.

I hope you enjoy the show. The lady after me is hilarious.

My Sunday Feeling

The place I work out is located on the top floor of a commercial building that is built into the side of a hill. The top floor is the gym and a medical office. The bottom floor is a restaurant and some kind of office. This information will be relevant later.

My trainer is a guy named Grant. He couldn't make it Thursday so we rescheduled for Saturday morning. I got to the gym around 9. I unlocked the door and let myself in. According to the log book, I was the first person there which is odd. Generally there are a bunch of women in there working out whenever I am there. I am one of the few guys that belong.

I consider it to be a perk.

Grant was running late and so I decided to go to take a "comfort break"as they say at Wimbledon. The restrooms are located in an interior hallway outside the gym . I went out the back door of the gym and down the hall. I opened the door. It hit something. I put my shoulder against the door and reached for the light with my left hand.


A man was lying on the floor. His boots were off. The room smelled of cigarettes and alcohol. He looked up at me and blinked as the light hit his eyes.

" I'm sorry," he said. " I apologize."

I pointed down the hall. " You need to get OUT!" I yelled. I then went back into the gym and locked the door.

My cell phone rang. Grant.


" I'll be there in a minute," he said.


" Grant, you better hurry. I found a man sleeping in the bathroom."

" What?"

" Yeah. I think I ran him off but I'm not sure."

" Where are you?"

" I'm in the gym. The door is locked."

" Anybody else there?"

" No. Just me."

" Good. Don't go back in there until I get there."

" Hey, don't worry. You're the black belt, not me."

After he arrived we went back into the hallway. The bathroom was locked.

"I want you behind me," Grant said.

Nooooooooo problem.

He banged on the door. " Sir, I need you to come out and I need you to do it now," he said.

The door opened. The man came out.

He held out his hand. " My name's George Jackson," he said.

Grant shook his hand. " Grant Roberts. I'm a trainer here at the gym and this is my client."

George Jackson was a dishevelled black man wearing jeans and a blue hoodie. He was maybe 5'10" and 150 pounds. He reeked of booze and cigarettes as he did before. And he was terrified. Grant is built like a running back with a set of arms that Popeye would envy. George must have thought that he was fixing to get his ass kicked.

He produced an ID and showed it to Grant with a trembling hand. Even from my coward's perspective 6 feet away I recognized it as a welfare ID.

" I used to work at the Faded Rose but I lost my job. I needed someplace safe to sleep last night. I want y'all to know that this is just temporary. I am looking for another job but I didn't have no place else to go last night. You got to believe me. This is temporary."

Grant held his hands up palms out. "OK," he said. " Ok."

" I really appreciate y'all being cool. I really appreciate y'all not calling the police. Like I said, this is just temporary till I can find me some work."

He grew silent. His eyes found mine.

" And you, Sir," he said. " Thank you for not gettin' crazy on me when you found me in there."

" You have to go," I said softly. " You have to go."

" I'm going," he said. " I'm going right now out this here door. And remember, this is temporary."

And with that, George Jackson took his leave.

"What the hell," I said. " He might have been telling the truth."

" Might have been," Grant replied. " Most guys that are up to no good wouldn't have produced an ID. Anyway, it was clear that you put the fear of God in him."

" Me? That's ridiculous. You could knock him into the next county."

" Yeah, but he didn't have that door locked because of me, my friend," he said, slapping me on the back. " Good job."

We walked through out the building. Somebody forgot to lock not only the front entrance down at street level but the entryway to the second floor. That's how George Jackson found his lodging for the night. Grant called the owner of the gym who called the landlord who said he was on his way. Ridiculous.

Grant and I sparred afterwards. I could barely get through it because of nausea. Grant said that was my body's reaction to all the chemicals that got dumped into my system when I discovered the stowaway.

Maybe. I also think that it was a reaction to all the ways this could have jumped ugly. Sure, George Jackson seemed harmless enough. Pitiful really. But what if he had been armed? What if he had been psychotic and tried to attack me? What if one of the women had discovered him instead of me? This could have turned out far worse than it did. Far worse.

But it didn't. He was even more scared of me than I was of him. And like I said. What the hell. Maybe he was telling the truth.

A friend of mine works in an office not far from the Salvation Army shelter. She says the homeless population has changed in just the last 6 months. She said it used to consist mainly of young black guys and older white women. Now she sees more white guys that appear to be about my age.

" The Salvation Army and Rescue Mission can't take them all," she said. " How many of these churches have gyms and shower facilities? If they were really about helping the poor maybe they could take some of them in."

That will never happen for the same reason that Frank Zappa said that WWIII would never start in LA: There's too much real estate involved.

But this morning a homeless person looked me in the eye and thanked me before he returned to the streets. And while he didn't have any business in that bathroom and he had to go, his story had the ring of truth. And I felt sorry for him.

And I wondered just how many George Jacksons will be wandering the streets tonight looking for a safe place to sleep. I wondered whether his ranks will get bigger the longer the economy remains in the dumper.

We take for granted the roof over our heads and the food on our tables. I think of that man seeking shelter in a bathroom and what few problems I think I have came into perspective rather quickly.

Like It Ain't

" Jones learns lesson, worth risk for NFL teams." Thus reads the headline of Wally Hall's sports column today about former Razorback All-American Matt Jones who recently got a pink slip from the Jacksonville Jaguars after flunking a test for alcohol required as part of his probation for pleading guilty to possession of cocaine a year or so ago. This got him a week wearing orange and eating bologna sandwiches. It also got him waived by the Jags who clearly saw a last straw concerning the underachieving Jones.

After spending a considerable amount of time in today's column establishing that he really never interviewed Jones while he was a Razorback, Wally states " In my humble opinion Jones has learned his lesson."

Wait. There's more.

Wally also says that " [Jones] has stared his demons in the eye sic and told them to get behind him" and that " Matt Jones is clean and sober now."

Says who? As usual, Wally doesn't quote anybody or reveals that he has talked to folks that actually know about the situation off-the-record. For all we know, and for all Wally knows, Matt Jones is smoking a doobie and drinking whiskey even as I type this. For Jones' sake I hope he isn't because if he produces another dirty test, he gets to go away for even longer at a drug rehab facility. He will not like it there and not just because he won't be able to do drugs while a guest.

I do agree with Wally that some other team will pick him up off of waivers. As long as Jerry Jones and Al Davis are around, he stands a chance to land somewhere where they don't much care about character.

But cocaine really scares NFL types. And if he ever tests positive for that again, he can kiss his career goodbye. They will put up with a head case if he produces on the field. They will not if he doesn't. And even though he put up decent numbers last year, his production with the Jaguars clearly didn't merit giving a head case like Matt Jones another chance in their opinion.

Momentarily clean and sober or not. We don't really know. And neither does Wally.

Program note

There will be no usual Sunday post this weekend because I will be tied up with the Little Rock Marathon all day tomorrow.

But check back next week. I'll still be here.

Vox Populi: Dispatch From The Field

Got the following text today from a friend who wishes to remain anonymous. We are all about protecting our sources here at tmfw. So here goes. Verbatim and without attribution although stringently edited as this is a family blog.

" I am eating lunch. There are 3 waitresses here. One that all the guys who work here want to sleep with, another that they all sleep with, and another who keeps everybody else here working."

I assume that the servers in this place are college kids. But I have found that this sort of dynamic doesn't much change as we go forward in the world of work as adults.

My Sunday Feeling

It has been my privilege for years to audition kids for the choir at Arkansas Governor's School. For those of you that don't know, Governor's School is a total immersion experience for high school juniors that qualify through the various so-called "talented and gifted" programs in the high schools. Kids spend 6 weeks in the summer at Hendrix listening to lecturers and getting in-depth training in their various interests.

This being Arkansas, every now and again they bring in a speaker that pisses off the yahoos that would like to shut the program down as corrupting of our youth. But you don't hear that so much anymore. I get the impression that Governor's School isn't the big deal it once was for so many kids. Then again, I just do the singers. Nobody has ever gotten riled up over "Gloria" by Francis Poulenc. Except the kids that had to learn it.

I got my start with Governor's School almost 20 years ago completely by default. Back in those days the "talented and gifted program" at the State Department of Education was run by a college classmate of mine. One of the judges couldn't make it and so Cheryl had to open the can and get out another tenor. And there I was. At least I was actually singing back in those days. Now I would rather waste time playing golf. Why they keep asking me back is beyond me. I guess not everybody will do anything for a hundred bucks.

These auditions used to be a lot more fun back in the day when they came to do them in person. The halls at Parkview were filled with kids. The string players would be tuning up all over. The artists would be lugging their pieces. Anxious parents smoked outside or sat in the parent's room reading the paper and talking on cellphones. The pianists, all girls, would be dressed up in their recital best, eyeing each other like the hired killers they were.

No more. The weather in Arkansas is too volatile in the Spring to bring folks in from everywhere to Little Rock. One year we had a tornado pass overhead, causing us to herd everybody under tables and desks until we got the "all clear." One year we had an ice storm. So for about the last 5 years or so, the kids send in their auditions on tape.

It was more fun to have the kids there live. The question and answer period after each audition were alternatively inspiring or hilarious. Further, the kids actually had to prepare and had to look somebody in the eye. Singing in front of a bunch of strangers is not an easy thing to do. It is even more nerve wracking when you are singing in order to get something you want very badly.

It is a lot easier to just turn on the camera in your bedroom and sing something from "Beauty and the Beast" then it is to actually get serious and prepare some real music. But it is what it is.

My friend Venus Hamilton and I got the altos and basses. They don't make me do the sopranos anymore due to my long standing and oft-stated dislike of them. They are all a bunch of divas, even at that age, and most of them aren't really sopranos. They are the Terrell Owenses of the music world: Awfully flashy but hardly worth the trouble to put up with. Besides, most altos at that age are really sopranos who can actually read music. The music teachers stick them there because alto is hard to read.

Yesterday's auditions were the usual mixed bag. Two or three kids were outstanding. A bass from Little Rock Central had an honest-to-God 2 octave range. His "Deep River" would put Paul Robeson to shame. But he was the exception. Most of the offerings were pretty mediocre at best. In the first, place it is evident that kids nowadays are not really exposed to classical literature. I remember years ago 2-count 'em- 2 black kids from Dollarway came in singing lieder. That will never happen again. This year a girl announced she was going to do a piece by Schubert herself then proceeded to do it a capella. Why on Earth would you do something like that?

It is also obvious that some of these kids are getting bad advice from the adults. One bass attempted to sing "Caro Mio Bien" from the "Italian Art Songs" songbook that singers have learned to sing with for years. Only something was wrong as he really struggled to get through it.

" Is he trying to sing out of the High Voices book?" Venus asked.

I nodded and began easily singing the piece over the top of the quaking voice on the tape.

" I mean, was just the only book the teacher had?" she asked. " Why would you try to get a bass to sing out of the wrong book?"

Dunno. But it was obvious to us that these kids were being allowed to put out all kinds of crazy stuff with only minimal adult supervision. For example, they are supposed to vocalize a scale so we can get an idea of their range. 2/3 of them didn't do it. One of the rare people who did sang what purported to be a scale without going off a pitch thereby reposing faith in our willingness to take her word for its accuracy. The same kid that did "Caro" out of the wrong book also did " I am Sixteen going on Seventeen" which caused me to write what I believe to be the first "WTF?" down on a Governor's School auditions score sheet.

But there was the boy from Central with the amazing range. A female classmate of his sang Purcell and Mozart like a bird. A girl from Bryant did Cole Porter which ain't the easiest thing in the world. A skinny boy from the Delta had this incredible low range that came from nowhere out of his tiny body.

All in all, it was a fun morning. It is always good to see my friends among the judges and to catch up on old news. And it is always interesting to see what is going on out there in the world of teenagers.

Maybe they will wise up and ask somebody more qualified than me to come judge next year's auditions. If not, I will be happy to come and do my civic duty once again.

Just as long as I don't have to fool with those damn sopranos.

Say It Ain't So

I have been unwell over the last 3-4 days. I was out running when the deluge hit Friday night, soaking me to the bone despite wearing water repellent gear. I woke up Saturday with a bad cold which I am only now getting over.

Anyway, I went to the bookstore Saturday in search of brain candy and got "Odd Man Out" by Matt McCarthy. McCarthy pitched for noted baseball powerhouse Yale. He hung around briefly in the Angels organization before washing out and going on to Harvard Medical School.

"Odd Man Out" is his account of life in the minors in which he dishes on his team mates and coaches. Only, some of the dishees claim none of this happened. Even worse for Dr. Matt whom I hope has an umbrella policy that covers libel, some of these stories could not possibly have been factually correct.

If there is any sport that is totally anal retentive about stats, it's baseball. If you are wrong, it is pretty easy to prove it so. Some of the folks he discusses in the book think they can prove it ain't so. And some of them have lawyered up.

I'm still gonna read it. Might as well. I bought it. But if this boy is lyin' and the publisher didn't do due diligence.

Well, Matt McCarthy has sent sports journalism back a hundred years.

That was a joke. Want to see the story? Hit the link below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/sports/baseball/03book.html?_r=1

My Sunday Feeling

Connecticut's Jim Calhoun got a little testy the other night. A reporter chose a Huskies post-game interview to question Calhoun about the propriety of his making a million dollar salary at a state university while the State of Connecticut is running a budge deficit. Calhoun blew his stack which you can see here.



Actually, this is not a bad question but it kind of misses the point. The highest paid state employees here in Arkansas are certain of the men's athletic coaches at the University of Arkansas who are paid higher than the doctors at UAMS or the Governor even. You look at most states that have schools that play in the major conferences in the NCAA and you will see the same thing. Hell, even Vanderbilt is paying Bobby Johnson a million bucks a year to coach football.



Coaches' salaries, like the astronomical salaries pulled down by professional athletes, are what the market will bear. Believe me, the Yankees are making money even with a payroll approximating the GNP of some small countries. As Calhoun heatedly (is that a word?) pointed out, Connecticut basketball returned 12 million dollars to UConn. They are making money. Calhoun's salary is what the market will bear. And the minute he quits making money for UConn that is the minute that Jim Calhoun will be calling games on ESPN alongside Notre Dame firee Digger Phelps.



But the reporter, in his attempt to create a scandal where none exists, missed the boat. First of all, although his angry reaction to the questioning was not exactly his finest hour, Jim Calhoun is considered one of the good guys. I can think of 5 guys in college basketball who are absolute mercenaries. I can think of a couple in football. One of them is employed at Arkansas. Jim Calhoun made UConn basketball and will retire there a legend. Calhoun hardly epitomizes what the reporter was trying to suggest was a national scandal.



Secondly, he missed the point, as I stated earlier. The better question, and Calhoun is not the guy to engage in a discussion of matters much weightier than the 2-3 matchup zone, is whether it is hypocrisy to have colleges essentially in the entertainment business using unpaid labor to generate millions of dollars that have little, if anything, to do with their alleged higher academic purpose. Calhoun's salary is just a symptom of the larger problem.



And here's another question that didn't get asked: Most coaches' salaries are not paid in full by the colleges they work for. There is no way that even a place as rabid about football as say, Georgia, or as nuts about basketball at, say, Kentucky could justify using public funds to pay these salaries. So most of them are paid by the boosters. Here in Arkansas, the coaches salaries are paid by a private entity know as the Razorback Foundation. This presents the second conundrum. If these boosters are responsible for paying most of the salaries-and indeed the UA athletic program itself is entirely self-sustaining and receives no tax money from the State-then who is running the athletic departments? The universities or the booster club?



Vanderbilt recognized this problem a few years ago and abolished the athletic department there. You may insert joke here. In any event, the former AD there is now a Vice-President of the University under the direct supervision of the President. If anyone remembers the psychodrama of the past couple of years involving Frank Broyles and the then Chancellor John White, one can see the beauty of Vandy's way of handling the jocks.



And how many schools running big time athletic programs have followed the Commodores' lead? Exactly zero. The tail wags the dog in Division I men's sports. And that will never change as long as DI ball remains a dirty arms race.



But back to Calhoun. The Governor of Connecticut was not real pleased with his performance the other night. I am certain that the President of UConn heard from her and the AD heard from the President and Calhoun was pointedly reminded that so long as he is at least a nominal state employee he had better show a little more sensitivity to appearances during a time of national economic emergency. Which I predict he will do if given another opportunity.



Because Jim Calhoun is not a bad guy. He's just a symptom of a larger pathology. And that's where the reporter was wide of the mark.

Vox Populi: The Bidnessman

I stopped by at a local place for breakfast this morning en route to a meeting at the Clinton School for Public Service. At the table behind me were a couple of older men who were talking about all manner of topics. The more rotund of the two was seated by my chair.

Rotund one: I went to the doctor about my indigestion the other day. You know what he said my problem is?

Other guy: No. What?

RO: He said I got alcoholic gastritis. Can you believe that shit?

OG: Yes.

My friend Ann came over with the baby to sit with me while waiting on a girlfriend. It is hard to eavesdrop when an 18 month old girl is sitting across from you doing those things that toddlers do. Eventually they left and shortly thereafter I heard the rotund one's voice again.

RO: Hey! Guess what? We made a profit in the 4th quarter last year.

OG: You did?

RO: Well, we did depending on how you amortize that shit.

I was at the meeting at the Clinton School with the Executive Director of a non-profit on whose Board I serve. She has decided that the latter phrase will be her mantra when it comes to explaining the books at our meetings.

It all depends on how you amortize that shit.

My Sunday Feeling

In times of trouble, it is easy to suspend disbelief and to give credence to those things that one would discount in a calmer climate. My brother John called me Friday night. He wanted to know what I knew, if anything, about the rumor going around that Stanford International Bank was the actual owner of the well known brokerage Pershing LLC. The story was that Pershing's assets had been frozen by the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of the securities fraud enforcement action it brought last week against Robert Allen Stafford pictured above in happier times. This would have been bad news for the family seeing as how the assets in Mother's revocable trust are held and maintained by Pershing.



To bring you up to speed if you have not heard, the SEC brought the aforementioned enforcement against Sir Allen (he was knighted by Antigua and is fatuously referred to as such in Stanford press releases despite his being a Texan) when the 8 billion dollars representing investors' money said to be on deposit in Certificate of Deposits in the Bank of Antigua did not actually seem to exist. The Bank of Antigua, owned by Stanford, was offering rates of 10% for its CDs, a rate of return which should have put the prudent investor on notice.



Actually, there are numerous red flags in the preceding paragraph: 1) a rate of return on CDs wildly out of kilter with rates offered by stateside investment products ) offered by an offshore bank in a part of the world known for banking and insurance fraud 3) owned by a Texan who refers to himself in the honorific. One would think that the prudent investor would steer clear of something that appears to be to good to be true especially if it would require him to deposit money with a bank in an offshore, and hence uninsured, bank. Alas, you would be wrong. Rumor has it that a local businessman, lured by the siren call of the 10% return, deposited ten million dollars with Bank of Antigua. One would also think that if one had that much money one could get by with,say, a 2% return. That is why I suppose that I am merely solvent as opposed to wealthy. I do not think big.



The extent of the losses associated with Stanford International Bank have yet to be completely fixed. However, the loss to investors who put their trust in New York's Bernard L. Madoff, currently stands at some 50 billion dollars. Indeed, the trustee appointed by the Court to go through what passes for the books, has indicated that Madoff had not actually made any investments with the money given him by investors for at least the past 12 years. 12 years! Some have predicted that the Madoff Ponzi scheme may eventually go down as the biggest fraud in the history of finance.



And they say one person can't make a difference.



In my conversations Friday night I learned that more than one person I know had money on account with Stanford or an entity owned by Stanford. Their money is frozen. It's insured but they don't have access to it and nobody seems to know how long this will last. One man called his Congressman who advised him to "get a lawyer." This is not good.



If the last 2 years have taught the American people anything, it is the essential truth of a couple of time worn statements: What goes up must come down. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. And here's one more. The notion that "the market will police itself" has been proven to be a complete falsehood. And thousands of people, innocents and idiots alike, have tasted financial ruin at the hands of imprudent, if not criminal, big talkers like Stanford and Madoff who made millions while the regulators looked the other way.



The truth eventually shook itself out by Saturday. Ray the Magician, our financial guy, left me a message. His voice was that of a man who had been on the phone a lot lately.



"No," he said. " Pershing is not owned by Stanford. Your mother's assets are not frozen. Everything is fine." Turns out that the SEC had frozen money Stanford was running through Pershing. "Running through" being an apt phrase for what I predict will eventually be revealed to be a pretty impressive money laundering operation. But all is well. Mother will not be kicked out of the nursing home.



I read recently that the Talmud makes a distinction between a crook and a thief. A crook pulls a gun on you and takes your wallet. The violation is episodic and limited. However, the thief sets upon while you are unaware, takes everything you have and leaves you destitute. Worse of all, the thief, in his hubris, forgets that God sees everything.



God sees everything.



Tell it to the guy who can't afford to keep his Mom in the nursing home anymore. Or worse, has lost every dime he ever had.



See if it makes him feel any better.

Errata

They recorded 2 shows for "Tales From The South" last week. Mine will be broadcast on KUAR FM 89.0 at 7pm CST on the 4th Thursday in March whatever date that is.

Thank you for the support of this ministry.

My Sunday Feeling

Sometimes when you write stuff, even stuff like this, you just don't know where to begin. So let's just state the obvious: The baseball world was shocked last week by the revelation that golden boy apparent Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003. Well, shocked is too strong a word. Nothing save the revelation that Joe Torre wears women's underwear could shock baseball anymore.



After all, A-Rod told ESPN in his sorta kinda admission, " Back then it was a different culture. It was very loose." No kidding. As Tom Verducci points out in this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, " Linked to drugs are two thirds of the MVP winners from 1995 through 2003, five of the top 12 home run hitters of all time and three of the four players ever to smash 50 homers in a season more than twice." Actually, as I type this deathless prose it occurs to me that the drug culture in baseball wasn't "very loose" at all. Drug use was practically the norm.



So how do I feel about this? I am categorically and positively ambivalent about it all by now. I guess. My initial feelings when I heard the report were ones of extreme schadenfreude at the notion that the Yankees signed A-Rod to a 9 year contract extension so as to ensure that the home run record held by fellow juicer suspect Barry Bonds would be broken by another guy in pinstripes. Which may yet happen. So long as the Yankees' fairly inert bats keep runners from contaminating the bases or they continue not to go deep in the playoffs A-Rod can be counted to put them over the wall. And yet, you can bet that they would not have given him the extension had they known this. Now the half-billion dollar payroll they will bring to Spring Training will be overshadowed by this sideshow at a time when the Steinbrenners are trying to get folks to come out to the new Yankee Stadium.



This could not possibly happen to a nicer bunch of guys. A-Rod and the Yankees are made for each other.



Do I feel that his numbers are sufficiently tainted by the years he was juicing that there should be the proverbial asterisk by them? Nah. Drugs or no drugs, Alex Rodriguez is one of the most spectacularly talented players in the history of the game. You have to think that he would have come close to putting up the same numbers during his steroid years as he would have had he abstained. Unlike Bonds, A-Rod turned to steroids while he was on top of his game. Barry Bonds was as agile as a light pole his last three seasons.



Besides, baseball stats are the most impressionistic in professional sports. To discount the home runs during the steroid years you would have to take away the low ERAs of the pitchers in the so-called "high mound" years. You would have to discount the home runs in the "live baseball" years. And you would have to take into account the crackerbox stadiums built in the nineties where checked swings produce shots that reach the warning track in the opposite field.



I guess when it comes down to it, I'm just exhausted by all of this. Exhausted but not surprised. And I know this, it is easy to deride Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens as nickle-plated phonies. They are every inch of that, and in the case of the first two they are despicable human beings, Bonds being the worst of an exceptionally bad lot.



But steroids could not have possibly proliferated in the culture without Major League Baseball and the player's union turning a blind eye to what was obvious to even the casual fan. Indeed, it is alleged that Gene Orza of the union tipped Rodriguez off to when random tests were scheduled. If he did it for A-Rod, and Orza denies it, he did it for others. They were all in it together in a very real sense. Don't believe me? Re-read the quote from Tom Verducci and ponder these things in your heart.



Spring training will be interesting this year. Maybe they will actually talk about baseball some.

Shameless Plug Department: I will read another story for "Tales From The South" which will be broadcast on February 27th on KUAR FM 98 at 7pm CST. It will also be simulcast on the Internet at www.kuar.org. Tune in if you can. Maybe you will hear something you like.

Vox Populi: The Sportswriter

The Toronto Sun's Gary Loewen on the advent of Spring Training: "Next week the pitchers and catchers and pharmacists report."

Not to mention IRS agents armed with subpoenas.

Murder,huh?

They are at it again over at the Ledge. They are not content with debating such weighty matters such as whether to issue proclamations extolling the virtues of Thomas Paine or congratulating Barack Obama on his ascension to the Presidency. They do not pause for rest and succor after struggling with the concept of not criminalizing packing a gun in church. No. Now they are back trying to outlaw so-called "partial birth abortions" in Arkansas.

No matter that it is legally superfluous. There is no evidence that such a procedure was performed in Arkansas last year. Further, such a procedure is already prescribed by federal law. The backers of this proposed legislation want to make it even tougher than its federal counterpart in that it authorizes the State Medical Board to investigate any doctors that perform such procedures and it calls for potential jail time of 6 years as opposed to 2 in the federal version.

The Democrat-Gazette reported that one of the Representatives at the hearing yesterday before the House Public Health, Welfare, and Labor Committee asked the perfectly sensible question of why the bill as written imputes no liability to the mother who authorizes such a procedure.

" We were not trying to criminalize the woman," replied Martha Adcock, the attorney for the Family Council who is pushing this bill.

The other interesting exchange came when the spokesperson for Planned Parenthood excoriated some members of the Committee for leaving when the ACLU was testifying against the measure.

"We owe her (the witness) nothing when it comes to murder," explained Rep. Billy Gaskill of Paragould.

OK. Let's think this through. If a partial birth abortion is indeed murder, why the hell not "criminalize the woman?" Let's assume that the son of a bitch that set the trap for that poor doctor in West Memphis is not the same guy who built it. Of course, this also requires us to assume they are guys and the device that exploded was a home made device like an IED.

By the reasoning of some of the apparent backers of the bill before the Committee, we should then penalize the manufacturer of the device that exploded up there but not the guy who set the trap. Which is manifestly not the way the criminal law works.

So why use such incendiary terms like "murder?" And why not impute liability to the woman as well as the doctor performing the procedure? Because the backers of this bill don't think they could get a more draconian bill passed. Either that or they don't much believe it themselves.

And why even waste time on a measure that is manifestly legally superfluous? Here's why: Fooling around with emotionally charged bullshit that has no practical impact other than to make its proponents seem foolish is a hell of a lot easier than trying to find money for jails, schools and trauma centers. It's a hell of a lot easier than trying to solve real problems. That's why they waste time with stuff like this and packing guns in church.

And we voted to bring these guys back to Little Rock every year? How did that happen?

My Sunday Feeling

It finally hit me toward the end of my 36 hours at the Hollywood Casino in Tunica last week. I have been to Tunica, I don't know, 4 times or so and my mood has typically been one of surrealism, if that counts as a mood, during my other trips there.



I mean, you have these big Taj Mahal structures sucking down untold millions every year stuck smack in the middle of no frigging where in Tunica County, Mississippi. There is a cotton field right next to Hollywood. You don't see that in Vegas.



Inside, nestled in an absolutely noxious cloud of tobacco smoke, people sit, drink alcoholic beverages dispensed for the most part by homely cocktail waitresses and put money into slot machines and other games of chance. They sit. They sip. They pull. For the most part nothing happens. At least nothing profitable. Playing slot machines is a perfect example of Einstein's observation that the definition of madness is to do the same thing repeatedly without success in hopes of eventually obtaining a different result.



The inner Diane Arbus in me has historically been fascinated with these goings ons. But around lunchtime I started feeling a little depressed. And,like I said, then it hit me. The difference between Tunica and,say, Shreveport is that at Tunica there is no escaping the casinos once you are there. Sure, you can go play golf. (Actually, the course I wanted to play was closed until March and I'll be damned if I am going to pay 60 bucks to get on at a dormant Tunica National). But at least there's other stuff to do in Shreveport. My buddy PM grew up there. While he raised his eyebrows at this observation over breakfast today, he concedes the larger general proposition that there is more stuff to do in Shreveport than in Robinsonville, Mississippi. You can go get a pizza in Shreveport. Just try that in Robinsonville.

The noise. The flashing lights. The bad food (There are nice restaurants at these joints. But I refuse to spend over 40 bucks on a meal unless I accompanied by someone in heels. I'm funny that way). And the damn smoke. Everywhere. As my excellent friend J said this morning of the lack of non-smoking facilities in the Magnolia State, " You would think they grow tobacco in Mississippi." You would think.

So it was good to come home, just as it is always good to come home. The drive back was pleasant enough. I thought of the road I was on and how if you take 49 to State Highway 315 (I think) you can save time getting to Oxford. It helps to know these things.

The Delta is kind of pretty at dusk. A couple of friends called me on the cell which helped pass the time. And yes, I use a Bluetooth in order to keep both hand hands affixed to the wheel. There was a high school basketball game going on in Brinkley. If I weren't so tired I might have stopped in. While stopped at a red light down the street from Brinkley High School, I could see a barber in an old weather beaten shop give a customer a shave. I hadn't seen a man get a shave in a barber shop since I was a little boy. I wondered why a man would get a barber shave at 6pm. For some reason visions of a funeral popped into my head.

Maybe I was still suffering some residual Tunica-induced depression.

Even though I enjoyed getting the opportunity to get away from both Little Rock and the office, I was glad to be home. It is always good to get back into your familiar space. While it is good to do different things there is a real comfort level to knowing that there are things back home that never change. A little house with an oak and two spindly dogwoods in the front. A comfortable chair. A cold martini. And another completely idiotic column by Wally Hall.



I about choked on an olive when I read this observation as I caught up with the erroneously named "Like It Is" column in Thursday's sports page: "Let's see if we have the facts here. Barry Bonds is innocent but his attorney argued that urine and blood tests should not be admissible. Hmmm, aren't those the only ways to test for steroids?"



No, as usual we do not have the facts here. Bonds has pleaded not guilty to lying to a grand jury about using steroids. (Basically.) Innocence is not a term of art. One is either guilty or not. The burden is on the state to prove a defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Bonds doesn't have to prove that he is "innocent." And just because he claims to be "innocent" is not inconsistent with vigorously testing the evidence sought to be introduced against him contrary to Wally's insinuation to the contrary.

The Feds obviously will attempt to introduce certain forensic evidence to prove Bonds perjured himself. The defense has moved to suppress certain of this evidence for the reason that-as I understand it-they contend that the Feds haven't proven a chain of custody linking the forensics to Bonds.

Get this. Here is the part of the story Wally didn't tell you. According to the AP wire story that I read-and believe you me that is where Wally is getting his information as well-the United States District Judge presiding over the case indicated during a hearing last week that she was likely to suppress the evidence in question. In other words, and when discussing a Wally Hall column one can usually come up with other words fairly quickly, the more interesting part of this story is not that Bonds is a hypocrite as Wally seems to suggest, although he certainly is but not for reasons attached to this issue. It's that some of the sexier evidence-the cotton balls and needles bearing Bonds' DNA hoarded all these years by his "trainer"-may not get in. Which means this case may be blowing up.

So while Bonds may not be "innocent" as Wally suggests as he finds apparent irony in Barry's lawyers putting up a fight. But he may well be acquitted. That's the story irrespective of Wally's snarky thoughts about an "innocent" man putting up a defense.



Ahhhhhhh. It's good to be home. There is comfort in knowing that some things never change. Even if one of those things is that Wally Hall can be counted on for producing such stupid and irrelevant observations about the world of sports. And get paid for it.

Pat Knight Ejected

I'm sure that his Father will give him a stern talking to about his deportment on the bench. And I'm equally sure that the Commissioner of the Big 12 will suspend after this explosion.

My Sunday Feeling

As anyone but those who live under bridges are bound to know, as I type this, tomorrow is the 43rd edition of that yearly display of wretched sports success known as the Super Bowl. I find the fact that this is the 43rd game in the series remarkable for a couple of reasons: The fact that I remember watching the first game means I am really old. And secondly, I have actually been able to decipher the pretentious Roman numerals that have graced the recent logos.





I am not a huge fan of the product that the National Football League puts out. It is too tightassed and corporate minded when compared to the college version where you have the likes of a Tim Tebow at quarterback. I was mainly interested this year to see how long it would take for Dallas to implode under the weight of Jerry Jones's boundless ego. Answer: About the time brilliant personnel move Adam "Pac Man' Jones got kicked off the team for getting into a fight with his own security guard in a hotel. At least Tank Johnson-another reclamation product-didn't shoot anybody while under Jerry's supervision.





The Saints proved that their Katrina fueled run to the Division finals 2 years ago was a fluke. Oh, the Saints weren't bad. They just weren't much good. And it was truly awe inspiring to see the Detroit Lions go winless in a league which is as much a socialist collective as anything. In a 16 game schedule they couldn't beat anybody?





Outstanding.





But I am at best a casual pro football fan. Which makes me avis rara among some people I know. I ran into a college classmate of mine who introduced me to a woman that, as far as I could remember, was not wife # 2. He's gambles big on the NFL. Maybe there's a cause and effect re: his marital status. I would not about these things. I have a buddy in Mississippi who owns stock in the Green Bay Packers which is the only publicly traded franchise in the NFL, if not in sports. He actually went to a stockholders meeting up there a couple of years ago. This is despite the fact the could not buy a ticket to actually see a game at Lambeau Field in a million years.





There a million NFL fans that don't actually attend games. The average fan can't. You could walk up and buy a ticket to see the Arizona Cardinals as recent as 5 years ago. They were that bad. Which makes their presence in tomorrow's game all that much more remarkable. And I suppose if you were an absolute masochist you could have gotten a ticket in Detroit fairly easily this year.





But the pricing structure for seats at NFL games puts the cost of a game well outside the reach for many people. And it is going to get worse. Jerry's billion dollar-you read that right-tribute to himself is set to open next season. Already, lifelong Cowboy fans are being told that they need to up the ante or they won't have a place at the table. Some of these folks are retirees who have had tickets for 25 years. Tough. Cough up or you can watch the games on the big screen at TGI Friday's. The NFL doesn't care. Between the corporate skyboxes, the folks willing to purchase personal seat licenses which merely give them the right to buy the exorbitantly priced tickets, the TV and radio income and the royalties it gets whenever you and I buy a cap or a shirt, the NFL doesn't need to sell the average guy a ticket to make its money.



And yet, this will be the most watched sporting event of the year. More money will be wagered, legally and otherwise, on the Super Bowl than any other sporting event this year. More than the NCAA men's basketball tournament even. It is said that domestic violence spikes during and after the Super Bowl. That one is an urban legend. Which is to say it is utterly false. But tomorrow afternoon will be a good day to play in the streets if you have the notion. Won't be no cars out there after kickoff.



Ambivalent though I may be about the Super Bowl as a sporting event, I will watch the damn thing. Friends will come over. I will have a pot of chili in the crock pot. Drinks will be poured. And most likely it will be over by the 3rd quarter.



Not that I am very good at predicting these things. But I think that the Steelers are just too good defensively to let the Cardinals run around all over the field as they have done to others. But while I think the smart money says that the Steelers win, I like the Cardinals. Kurt Warner is having a career year after taking over for flash-in-the-plan Matt Lienart. Warner's story is remarkable. 15 years or so ago he was sacking groceries. Now he is in the Super Bowl again. I even like his wife now that she has put a zip on her lip. Wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald may be the most dangerous receiver since Lynn Swann or Jerry Rice. They may make a game of it. We'll see. But Pittsburgh's secondary has hired killers back there. And 4 weeks ago or so, the Cardinals were annihilated by the so-so Patriots. Pittsburgh may have lost 4 games but they didn't get their ass kicked a single time while doing so.



Cardinals Owner Bill Bidwell deserves none of this good fortune. For years the Cardinals organization was the laughing stock of a league that has the Fords, Daniel Snyder, Jerry Jones and Al Davis in it. They must be all scratching their heads in amazement.



The Cardinals may make a game of it. After all, that's why they keep score.



But it says here that the Steelers will win. Not that I much care.

Cold Enough For Ya?

If it is not, move to Springfield, Missouri where my brother Dave "lives." Here is a picture of the TV station where he works.