My Sunday Feeling

Good Morning dearly beloved! I have returned from my hiatus from blogging. I return unto you fit, tan and well rested. Well mostly. I have a strained right hip from overdoing golf and Miracle League. And I have a huge hematoma on my right thigh from accidentally banging into the corner of counsel's table in the Courthouse. The hip is better. And the good news is that x-rays revealed no arthritis which surprised both myself and the orthopedist. But damn does this thigh hurt. Ugh. The Marines say that pain is weakness leaving the body. Screw the Marines. This thing hurts.

Today is Father's Day. I typically write about Father's Day and Mother's Day as well. However, with Mother's recent passing I pretty much feel that these chapters in my novella are closed now. Buck has been dead for longer than I knew him. Which is pretty strange when you think about it. And certainly not the natural order of things. Indeed, I wouldn't have given the day the second thought but for the recent ads in print and on TV. So I celebrated by by buying Father's Day specially priced golf balls and cologne.

My first post-Mom Mother's Day was pretty uneventful. I am now discovering that this year will be an accretion of "firsts." And Mother's Day 2010 was my first without a Mother to go visit. It wasn't a bad thing. It was just a thing. I darkened the door of the Methodist church for the first time since Easter. I thought sitting with my friends was a better move than sitting alone. And so I went. And earlier this month it hit me in the middle of a 3 day trial in Federal Court that I was spending her birthday at the Courthouse.

Not a bad thing. Just a thing.

What else have I been up to? I read another short story for local radio show "Tales From The South." If you want to hear it you can get the link from the previous post here. If you don't want to hear it, fine. I have been asked to take pictures of the neighborhood that will be put up on the not-yet-actually-in-existence website that will be administered by the Hillcrest Property Owners Association. I will put that link up as soon as they give it to me. If you don't want to look at it, fine.

The little gym where I have worked out, hung around and "bs'ed" with folks closed abruptly last month. Evidently, Amy lost her ongoing dispute with her landlord concerning the noise level in the gym which caused no end of bitching from the other tenants in the building. Hey, I've been in plenty of gyms in my day. The Wellness Studio was downright monastic compared to most exercise joints. Anyway, I need to find another socially acceptable place where I can hang around women wearing scant attire. It's close to a bad thing because I liked the convenience of Wellness and I miss seeing my friends there. But it's mainly just a thing.

Like most sports fans I have found the recent machinations in the world of college football to be pretty damn interesting. I plan on writing about it more after the dust settles. But I think we may conclude that whatever Texas wants, Texas gets. And that Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State should thank their lucky stars that they are still in what is left of the Big Twelve and not in Conference USA or the Sunbelt. Or as one caller to the Paul Finebaum show said Friday "those little bitches are damn happy to have landed where they landed." This is true. And even though all of this backstabbing was football driven, you can bet that the basketball people in the Big Ten were telling their ADs "For God's sake do not let Kansas and Baylor join."

Another irony. Now that Colorado and Nebraska have both bolted for the PAC Ten and Big Ten respectively the Big Twelve now has ten teams and the Big Ten has 12. Maybe they could swap out.

More proof that change is inevitable: PM and I met for lunch Friday at the Town Pump. It was our first trip since it changed hands. One of the things we liked about the old Town Pump was that it was pretty much a dump. Rumor has it that it was a bookie joint at one time. I can believe that.

The new and improved Pump has a Tiki Bar outside in the back. !!!!!!!!! It now offers live entertainment at night along with karaoke. The old drunks who were practically in residence at the bar there back in the day have been replaced by attractive young women drinking tea and munching on salads. The phone in the kitchen has been silenced.

This is just not right.

I mean, it still has Sportscenter going on 4 flat screens at once. It is still dark enough inside to induce blindness when you step back out into the sunlight. And the pool table and shuffleboard are still there. They just moved them to increase the seating like a real restaurant or something.

These are not bad things. They are just things. Just an accretion of little things in this my year of "firsts."

I will keep you posted as I experience even more in the coming months.

I'm glad to be back. I've missed you.

Shameless Plug

Tune in to local station KUAR FM 89 tomorrow night at 7 pm CDT for "Tales From The South" where I was invited to read a story for the Mother's Day show. The show will be simulcast on the website for you out-of-town types which you can access here:http://www.kuar.org/ . If you miss it you can hear it later at your convenience from the TFTS archives.

I hope that you enjoy it.

Leave Of Absence

The literary world will take but little note of this. But I am going to take a vacation from blogging for awhile. The day job has gotten exceedingly crazy and the last thing I want to do after hours is to look at a computer screen.

I don't think I'll be gone too long. But I know that right now I don't have the time or the energy to devote to this little endeavor.

I will be back someday. Until then, talk among yourselves.

My Sunday Feeling

The same storm that put the kibosh on my plans to play golf Friday night shut down Miracle League yesterday morning as well. This presented me with what NV refers to as a UDOR which is an acronym for Unexpected Day Of Rest. So after reading the paper, I headed down to the gym to run on the treadmill.

I have made no secret of how much I enjoy living in the People's Republic of Hillcrest. One of the reasons I like it over here is because of all the interesting people that seem to abound in the square mileage bordered by War Memorial Golf course, Riverdale, Catholic High and the Arkansas School for the Deaf.

The only other person in the gym when I got there was a local artist named Kevin. Kevin actually supports a family by doing art. And does it well. I got on the treadmill next to him.

"How's it going in the art world?" I asked.

"Oh man," he said. " This latest project is going to kill me."

" Oh yeah?"

He shook his head and winced.

"Big piece. Biggest I've ever done," he said. " Mother Nature. This is how big she's gonna be. Her hands are gonna be 25 feet apart."

He held his hands out to show me the perspective.

"Anyway, last week I did her head."

"Okay."

" Now this isn't a sculpture in the sense of me chipping away at stone. At least not all of her. First I had to build her head out of wire. After that I had to shape her face out of cement. You understand what I'm doing, the process?"

" I do," I said. I did.

"Anyway, they backed the concrete truck up to the frame, pulled out the chute and let her rip. You know how fast they pump that stuff?"

" Not really."

" Let me tell ya, it must be different pumping cement for a construction project that doesn't require a lot of manipulation. It's different for pumping it for an artist!"

"I guess nobody thought of that."

"I guarantee you we didn't because I had to do some fast work with those trowels. I mean, I must've looked like Kevin Scissorhands trying to keep up with all that."



All of a sudden he started doing his best Johnny Depp impersonation, hands flying around, fingers splayed open.

I kind of wished I had seen the real performance.

Maybe I'm wrong but I have my doubts that you're going to overhear many similar conversations in the various gyms in the Central Arkansas Area.

And that's why I like living here. I live a stone's throw from a couple of writers. An actor and screenwriter. He belongs to my gym too but I've never seen him. And any number of artists like my stressed out cement worker.

And that's also why I can't imagine that I will ever leave.



Mea culpa: Not that anybody cares but I want to explain my lack of blogging lately. Quite honestly, I have just simply been swamped at the day job. The last thing I want to do when I come home is look at a computer screen. I hope to be back more regularly once I put a couple of major projects to bed.

But thank you for your continued support of this ministry. I will try to do better.

Vox Populi: Some Asshole At Starbucks

I went to the SB by my house to get some iced tea before embarking on my errands. The guy ahead of me apparently knew the kid behind the counter.

"Man, I need some coffee. I was out pretty late last night," he said as he stretched and yawned.

"You must've been having a good time," the kid behind the counter said.

" I had too good a time. I was about halfway drunk and rear-ended somebody in front of the police station.

" No shit?" said the kid. "What happened? Did you get arrested?"

" Arrested? I didn't even get a ticket."

"No!'

" Swear to God. The other guy's car wasn't damaged. I just bumped him. But that ain't exactly where I needed to have a fender bender under these circumstances. So I got the hell out of there."

My luck ain't that good. If I had been in his shoes, I would be posting this from the Pulaski County Jail.

Amazing.

My Sunday Feeling

Phil Mickelson won the Masters last Sunday beating perennial bridesmaid Lee Westwood by two stokes. A surly Tiger Woods finished tied for 4th. Which is plenty impressive seeing as how Tiger has a lot on his mind nowadays.



Or did. The story this week was to the effect that Elin has had it and the divorce is all but a foregone conclusion. Sources have said that the final straw was that creepy Nike ad where a stoic Tiger shot in black and white listens to the disembodied voice of his late father Earl supposedly giving him counsel from beyond the grave.



You know, they paid somebody a lot of money to come up with something that stupid. As near as I could tell, the ad was calculated to make the viewer connect up with a chastened, more human Woods. Well, it didn't work. The spot was almost universally panned. For one thing, Tiger ain't exactly Sir Ralph Richardson. The other thing is that the snippet of Earl talking was taken from an interview in which he was talking about this wife! The spot was a complete contrivance.



I heard an interview with former PGA great Curtis Strange who said that he thought the pressure of it all-the scandal, his foundering marriage, his lack of recent playing time during which downtime he obviously did not take acting lessons-on American golf's biggest stage simply got to him by Sunday.



Maybe so. Maybe no. Which brings us to Lefty.



You want to talk pressure? Both his wife Amy and his Mother have breast cancer. Amy was so weak last Sunday that she didn't leave her bed to go to the course until it looked like Phil had sealed the deal on the final holes.



You know, there are lot of people that don't like Mickelson. He is widely considered by his peers to be an arrogant phony. Indeed, it is for this reason that he was once derisively referred to by the acronym FIGJAM. Which stands for Fuck I'm Good Just Ask Me.



But Lefty, who had a lot on his mind as well, could be seen after his rounds in Augusta signing autographs and chatting with fans. And he reverted back to Phil the Thrill making back to back Eagles on Sunday which I have never heard of. In interviews during the tournament he spoke frequently of the courage of the women in his life.



I'm thinking that golf needs Lefty right now a lot more than it needs a Tiger Woods. Both men entered the Masters facing adversity. The one whose adversity was completely of his own making viewed it as a marketing opportunity and made a self-reverential commercial.



The other one talked about his wife and how her sickness had changed his life. And he won the Masters with Amy in her sickbed.



So don't talk to me about all the pressure Tiger Woods has been under. Nobody deserves to have a loved one diagnosed with cancer.



Tiger's earned every bit of his trouble.

My Sunday Feeling

I pulled into my driveway after the work the other day. There was a young man with a clipboard standing on the sidewalk. As he approached I noticed that he was eying back of my car and the sign in my yard. A buddy of mine is running for Supreme Court. I guess he was checking to see if there were any bumper stickers that might also give him some clue as to my political orientation.
The kid started asking me questions about the Democratic primary and my opinions about certain subjects such as health care and the bailouts of the "Wall Street Banks." I told him that I pretty much confined my political opinions to the ballot box and I bade him farewell. Undeterred, he continued to press me concerning the issues of the day, at least the ones he was interested in. He handed me a flyer. I handed it back.

"You must not have heard me Son," I said as I cut him off. " This conversation is over and you are leaving."

He glared at me for a second. But leave he did and I stood in my yard as he went to bug my neighbors down the street to the West of me.

I ran into one of my political friends in the grocery store yesterday. I told him about my run-in with the canvasser. He rolled his eyes.

" Have you gotten one of those polling type calls yet?" he asked. I told him that I do not pick up the phone if I don't recognize the number. As far as I am concerned, whoever invented Caller ID is way overdue for the Nobel Prize.

" The Unions are all calling on behalf of Halter. If you give them an answer they don't like or if you tell them you support Blanche or even if you tell 'em you don't want to talk to them, they start arguing with you. This has got the Chamber worried. I hear they are gonna run ads on their own in the Primary on behalf of Blanche which has never happened before."

I told him that I have gotten to where I hate politics and the election season.

" This Tea Party shit has gotten outta hand," he replied. " I know more politicians in both parties who have told me that they aren't running again or that they aren't going to stay in politics for long. The constant harassment 24/7 from people that aren't even in your State or District is driving a lot of people that would consider themselves pretty conservative out of public life. It's crazy."

It is crazy. People have a right to believe whatever they want. The Constitution gives each American the right to petition the Government for redress of grievances. But it is another entirely to attempt to harass and intimidate those who don't share your particular persuasion. Because it tends to have a chilling effect on those who stand for public office. And even worse, it tends to encourage the type of candidates who would pander to these people. There are a couple of them now that are running for Congress. I won't mention them but they know who they are.

The sort of incivility that was displayed in the Town Hall meetings about Health Care Reform also tends to empower unstable people with a litany of grievance. I am familiar with a pro se litigant who has wasted much money on filing fees and postage suing various businesses and government entities that have allegedly done him wrong. These pleadings, uncontaminated by merit though they are, used to be amusing. But his filings have recently become increasingly infected with apocalyptic language and vague references to "taking up arms" and identification with the Tea Party movement.

Lunatics do not tend to identify with the League of Women Voters. They are, however, more likely to attain class consciousness with the disaffected cranks in "movements" like the Tea Party.

But enough about them. They fact that these kind of tactics have infiltrated the mainstream even slightly is depressing. As he wheeled his cart away my buddy asked me to look at the calls on my landline when I got home. I did. There were 9 calls from 1-800 numbers and 2 from pollsters in the last 4 days. And this is just the Primary!

After my confrontation with the kid I left my house to walk up to the gym. I saw him watch me from down my street as I headed up the hill. When I came home the flyer I did not want was stuck in my door.

They say that all political advertising is for that one or two percent that are undecided. Well, all the ads and aggressive door-to-door canvassing in the world won't change my mind about anything.

They can piss me off though. I wonder what percentage of the electorate I happen to represent?











"

My Easter Feeling

" How you doing Sir?" said the black kid emptying the trash. "Sure does get busy around here this time of day."

I was pumping gas on Good Friday at the convenience store across from War Memorial Park.

" I'm doing great, Son," I said. "How are you?"

" I'm fixin' to get off work myself. Big day Sunday. Big day."

" Yeah it is."

" I'm gonna get a haircut and then I'm going to church for Good Friday. I can't wait for Sunday."

" Yeah?"

" Gonna take my mother to church. Then we'll go to her sister's for lunch. The little kids will hunt for Easter eggs. I just plan on eatin' myself."

"Sounds like you have big plans."

" Yeah I do. Can't wait for Sunday. Big day. Big day."

I like Easter myself. I like Spring. Even though I'm not so sure about what I believe anymore, I like the ancient promise of hope in redemption and that victory remains in love.

It's hard to remember that lesson during a Lenten season in which nominal Christians, some of them armed to the teeth, have taken upon themselves to attempt to foment insurrection. Many of our Governors received letters from a militia group telling them to remove themselves from office or be "taken out."

Granted, most of these people are complete loons who couldn't be trusted with a wet match much less the violent overthrow of the government. But still, it is disconcerting to think that there are people out there who believe that Jesus, who my Bible said to render unto Caesar, care for the sick and the poor and to turn the other cheek, would approve of a plan to kill police officers in hopes of igniting a larger conflagration of unrest and disorder. You ever heard that cops are underpaid? There's your proof.


I mean, I'm as big a fan of the First Amendment as there is. But I'm beginning to think that maybe "The Turner Diaries" the trash novel from whence this hair brained notion that killing law enforcement officers is all to the good, should be banned. Or maybe anybody that tries to buy a copy should be made to prove that they have actually read another book in their life.

But I digress. I'm wasting too much time pondering the actions of morons.

I am sitting on my porch swing as I type this. The dogwoods have gloriously returned-as they do every year- despite nearly being destroyed in the great ice storm 9 years ago or so. The lawns and the trees that are situated thereon are greening up. A buddy of mine is a landscape architect. He planted some bulbs last fall. They bloomed last week. Purple and gold. He went to LSU. I got my law degree at Tulane. This amuses him greatly.

I hear lawn mowers. A girl just walked by with a beautiful boxer. Folks are out with strollers. This is my Father's world. Why should my heart be sad?

Tomorrow NV is forsaking the Episcopalians to spend Easter with the Methodists. Vic Nixon is retiring in June. She enjoyed getting to know him last December. She wants to hear his last Easter sermon. At least the last one he will give at Pulaski Heights. It has been my experience that preachers never really retire. It's just not in their nature.

But the young man at the gas station is right. Tomorrow is a big day. And for one 24 hour period we are reminded that victory remains in love.

Despite the fact that there are fools in our midst.

Repealing A Law-Another Teachable Moment

I have noted certain comments on the grove of academe known as Facebook calling for the repeal of Health Care Reform. I have noted certain posters who are irate at the notion that some Repubs are starting to rethink this position. The reason why sane politicians on that side of the aisle are backing off is simple. The numbers aren't there. And even if they were, the current President would veto it.

Pursuant to Article I, Section 7 of-guess what?-the Constitution, it would take a 2/3 majority of both Houses of Congress to repeal this Bill or any other Bill. And even if they could pull that off, you can bet that the current President would veto it. Which would require another 2/3 majority to override his veto.

Not going to happen under any set of facts. Which is why the Repub Attorneys General are going for the home run ball in seeking to have the Federal Courts declare HCR unconstitutional. Even if they lose, which they probably will, they still have a puncher's chance. And it's marginally quicker than the legislative process set out by the makers of the Constitution.

The professional politicians on the Repub side of the line are jammed up. Do they waste political capital on something that they can't deliver as long as a Democrat is in the White House? Will they pimp the loons in their camp and press on knowing that it is a dead letter as soon as it hits the President's desk ?

I don't know. HRC as presently constituted may work or it may not. That's the million dollar gamble both parties are making.

We shall see what we shall see.

My Sunday Feeling

I attended the funeral of a friend last Friday. He was found dead a little over a week before the funeral. I first found out from a friend in law enforcement. Soon thereafter, I got a message from PM's wife asking me why there were police vehicles and an ambulance outside his house.



The initial rumor was that D had taken his own life. Then the longer things drug out with no obituary, folks wondered if the police were investigating the circumstances of his death. Maybe both rumors were true. I did not ask at the visitation. I didn't ask anybody after the funeral. It was pretty obvious that D had met a bad end whatever it was that caused his death.



I had known D for at least 15 years. We sang in the church choir together and we both quit singing at about the same time. Our interaction after our choir days was mainly whenever I saw him out in his garden while I was out running. D and his wife were (are in his wife's case) master gardeners. And D was always out working his flowers in the Spring and Summer.



I would invariably stop and we would shoot the bull. D was a quiet, soft-spoken man. He had a dry sense of humor that occasionally boiled over into the absurd. We talked about the usual stuff guys talk about: politics, women, real estate, sports. Sometimes he would invite me to smell a new plant or flower that he was particularly proud of. Sometimes he would take it upon himself to point out something in the flora that abounded in his back or side yard that especially delighted him. He knew that I didn't know much about the subject and he always explained things without the slightest whiff of condescension.


I only saw him mad once. Somebody had snuck over in the night and stole a bunch of plants from his side yard. It wasn't just the loss of the plants that irked him. He told me that he would have given some to the thief if he or she had wanted them that badly. He just couldn't comprehend how someone could be so lowdown as to steal flowers from a person's yard.



From all outward appearances, D was a content man. He and N seemed to have a good marriage. They enjoyed being Grandparents. They didn't seem to want for money. D had retired from the food service industry and had started a second career as a CEO for a local food bank. As far as I know, he didn't have an enemy on this planet. If I heard the phrase "he was such a nice man" once in the last week, I heard it at least ten more times.


And that is what is so disconcerting about his death, apart from the fact that he's gone that is. You wouldn't expect somebody as beloved, gentle and kind to meet a bad end. That shouldn't happen to people like him.



But we all have our problems. And you know as well as I that we all have a face and a persona for public consumption that is sometimes at odds with those problems. Most of the time it is because it is nobody else's business. Not that anybody really cares anyway. But sometimes we use our public face because we don't want to let on that things are not as they may seem.

His wife told me after the funeral that I should always look for D in the garden as I run past the house. Because he always be there among the flowers that he loved so much and cared for so well.

But I will miss him in the flesh as well. I last saw him a couple of weeks ago pulling weeds in the side yard. I hollered at him as I went past. He hollered back at me. Business as usual.

Now he's gone. And I will never be able to look at that house in the same way ever again.

Health Care Reform-An Opportunity To Teach Part 2

One of the few things that one looks forward to in the generally miserable journey that is law school is Constitutional Law. Because that's where you get to the hot parts: Freedom of Speech. Miranda. Abortion. Civi Rights.

Wrong. You start off with the concept of Judicial Review. You learn about the creation of the national banking system. And you learn about the Commerce Clause.

Article 1, Section 8 gives Congress the authority to "regulate Commerce....among the several states." The first Chief Justice was a guy named John Marshall. And he wrote in passing (which lawyers call dicta) that the Commerce Clause gave Congress the authority to regulate any interstate "commercial intercourse" however indirect. This power was plenary and absolute within it's sphere.

Indeed, the Supremes have held that Congress may regulate not only singular acts that have a substantial economic effect on on interstate commerce but also on acts that in the aggregate would do so. This has been case law since forever.

As I understand the argument, or at least one of the positions put forth by the Attorneys General that are seeking to have HCR declared unconstitutional, is that the Commerce Clause doesn't allow Congress to mandate citizens to purchase insurance. Maybe so, maybe no. At least this is a legal argument. Which is a step up from nutbar types spitting on Members of Congress as they go to vote. Or throwing bricks through Members of Congress's windows.

Lots of Commerce Clause cases go off on the cumulative effect of a decision not to obey a Federal law. Which are passed by Congress and stuff. My favorite is Katzenbach vs. hell, somebody. Back in the Fifties. Involved a bbq joint in Alabama called Ollie's that wouldn't let black folks eat there. The Feds sued. The Supremes,relying on precedent going back to Marshall, said that the potential of every bbq joint in Alabama taking this position would be enough to violate the Commerce Clause. So there you go.

The Ollie's bbq case ( And, coincidentally, I have eaten there) stands for a plausible interpretation that the Government can penalize those that don't buy insurance because the cumulative effect of enough people refusing to do so would affect interstate commerce. Remember, Ollie's didn't DO anything. It REFUSED to serve black customers.

Now I don't sit around all day and practice Constitutional law. But neither do you most likely. And I have no idea how the Supremes are eventually going to come down on this. But all this talk about Health Care Reform "shredding the Constitution" is nonsense. Most commentators that I have read have opined that the AGs arguments are a stretch at the least. Indeed, the Attorney General of Arkansas has stated that he would not join in with the other AGs for the reason that their legal argument is both frivolous and primarily political in nature. To that I would add that their lawsuits may not even be ripe for adjudication. The damn law hasn't been finalized yet. Hell, they filed their suits before Obama even signed it!

The United States Government has been promulgating and enforcing laws pursuant to the Constitutional mandate that the power to regulate interstate commerce resides strictly in the Congress since the earliest days of the Republic. Whether one agrees with it or disagrees with the new law, it is the law. It just won't go into effect until the Congress quits tinkering with it.

Really. No kidding.

Health Care Reform-An Opportunity To Teach Part 1

As I understand the main thrust of one of the main arguments against the health care reform bill signed into law today by the President concerns the fact that it mandates every citizen to purchase health insurance. The government is basing this requirement on the power of the United States Congress, who like voted on this bill and stuff, to govern commerce between the States.

It's in the Constitution at Article 1, Section 8. You can look it up. Really it is.

We will talk about the legal arguments down the road. It's been a long day. I'm tired.

Let's start off by talking about the paranoid argument that mandating the acquisition of insurance is an undue encroachment upon our liberties. Or as one commentator on Facebook, that font of wisdom, put it, " The more the government takes over the less we are free." Or something like unto that.

Message to Crazytown: The notion that the government-hello!-exacts taxes is not exactly new. The government requires you to get insurance in order to drive a car. The government requires you to pay property taxes which funds the public schools even if your kid is not enrolled there. The government takes out taxes for Medicare from your paycheck. It requires businesses to pay Unemployment Insurance. And Worker's Comp.

Uncle Sam is up to his eyeballs in health care already. He regulates drugs, medical schools, the Health Care Finance Authority and the VA. That's just off the top of my head.

Did you birthers and Tea Party types just wake up to what has been going on since FDR and the Johnson Administration? Last time I consulted the history books there were Republican Presidents and Republican majorities of Congress that didn't get rid of these programs when they were in charge. And they have always pimped people like you.

Let's go all in. Let's abolish all of these programs. I dare you.

Good luck.

An arid dissertation on the Commerce Clause is forthcoming.

My Sunday Feeling

As many of you know, I have been a fan of college basketball for as long as I can remember. The NCAA tournament is going on right now. Like everybody else I have talked to about this, my tournament brackets look like smoking rubble. I seem to say this every year but this year I mean it. I have never seen so many crazy upsets in the first round games in my life. Anybody that knows anything about basketball would not have-hell, did NOT-pick the Ohio Bobcats to beat Georgetown who back in January looked about as good as anybody in the country. But I confess that I really haven't kept up as I normally have. I kinda got a late start with all the stuff with Mom.



This year's Cinderella is shaping up to be the Gaels of St. Mary's of California. They beat a pretty good Richmond team and today they beat a damn good Villanova team albeit one that struggled late in the year. The Gaels are fun to watch. They are very disciplined on offense and way scrappy on defense. And I can't say that they won't beat either Baylor or Old Dominion in the next round.



But as much fun as college basketball is honesty compels me to yet again lament that DI men's basketball is easily the dirtiest of all intercollegiate sports. The cheating that goes on in basketball easily surpasses football. And one of the rules that is supposed to help the "student athletes" like most rules is gamed by the players. At least by the ones who think they have any chance at playing in the NBA.

A few years ago, the NBA and the NCAA agreed that no player can play in the NBA until after he has played at least one year of college ball. The idea was that perhaps once a player got to campus he might take a shine to academic pursuits and stick around. The reality of the situation is that the NBA players union was scared to death that there might be other LeBrons out there that would take away a roster spot for one its members. And the colleges were assured of having these guys around playing for free for at least one year.

The unfortunate result that nobody apparently thought of on the front end is that the kind of players who at least think they have Kobe like skills figure out pretty quick that they only have to go to class for a semester because they are gone after the NCAA Tournament in April. Poof! John Calipari specialized in recruiting these "one and done" types at Memphis and has said that as far as he was concerned he was going to continue the practice at Kentucky. Which if it were anywhere but basketball crazy Kentucky the President might at least tell Cal to not try to make it look so obvious that when it comes down to it, the Wildcats just don't much care about academics. They care about winning whether they use mercenaries or real "student-athletes."

But enough about all of that. There isn't a system around that can't be gamed. Ask the IRS. Ask the guys who wrote the new Bankruptcy Code. Ask me.

But wait. Rumor has it that the 3 freshmen that start for Kentucky are thinking about coming back. The sensational John Wall has the highest GPA of anybody on the team. Which either means something or nothing.

What it means is that if the do come back, Kentucky wins the NCAA next year, barring injuries or arrests. And John Calipari will have to figure out which "student-athletes" that remain on the roster will have to go to make room for next year's "one and done" mercenaries that he is bringing to the Grove of the Academy.

This is Nature's Way of Saying Do Not Touch

Radar online now reports that Jesse James' lady friend is a bi-polar white supremacist that uses her son's name for a stage name for her stripper act.

This woman makes Rielle Hunter appear relatively stable by comparison.

Hit the link:http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2010/03/exclusive-court-papers-jesse-james-alleged-mistress-supports-white-power-gives

Things Get Ugly Between Two Legends At Charity Event -Agassi-Sampras-

The backstory: In his excellent autobiography "Open," Andre Agassi describes Pete Sampras as a tightwad and tells about a time he saw Pete tip a valet a mere 2 bucks once. He claimed that was all the money he had.

Agassi, a generous man, who has given a small fortune to numerous charities including his own foundation for underprivileged children in Las Vegas, describes himself as being aghast at Pete's chintziness.

Now watch as the tension rises between the two to the considerable discomfort of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal who were playing doubles with them at a freaking charity event.

My Sunday Feeling

I got up way too early yesterday morning. So I decided after awhile that I would go eat breakfast at a restaurant down the road from me a ways. As I was finishing up I notice a young couple come in. Both couldn't have been a day over 25. After a few minutes I heard rapid clicking behind me. Another young woman came blowing over to their table and pulled up a chair across from the young woman who got there first.

She was wearing a sleeveless top, a miniskirt and heels. Her hair was still wet from the shower. Now understand that yesterday was your typical early Spring day in Little Rock: 45 degrees, overcast with the wind howling out of the North at about 10 mph. Woman # 1 was wearing a sweater, jeans and Birkenstocks with thick wool socks. She could not have had a more incredulous look on her face if her friend had not shown up in the nude. Which she practically did.

W#1-Ummmm....you look really great but aren't you freezing?

W#2-Well, I'm going to a bridal shower that starts at 11. Tomorrow's the first day of daylight savings time. To me that means it's Spring. And you wear Springy clothes in the Spring. I figure other girls will be dressed up so I went ahead and went with this.

W#1 drew her arms across her chest as if to ward off the cold.

"You're nuts," she said.


Maybe Little Miss Fashion Plate was rushing the season a bit but I for one was deeply appreciative of her appearance in scant attire seeing as how I haven't seen an attractive woman dressed thusly since about last September or so. Her sighting along with the fact that Spring Training is in session give me reason to think that the long cold winter of 2009-2010 may indeed be over.

And it was a terrible winter. If it wasn't cold it was wet. If it wasn't wet we were graced with snow and ice. We buried Mother on one of the crappiest days of an entirely crappy Advent. It rained buckets. The wind was awful. And while we were under the funeral home tent I swear I heard thunder.

Thunder in December in rural Arkansas is never good.


Spring is my favorite time of year despite the fact that I am pretty much allergic to everything that floats in the air. As Fashion Plate correctly noted, Daylight Savings Time begins today. This means that I can fool around on the driving range longer shooting the shit with whoever is out there with me. It means baseball will be starting soon. It means the NCAA basketball tournament starts this week. It means color will return to the trees and lawns and birds will be singing.

It means folks around here will be walking their dogs past my house around 8 pm even. It means Kavanaugh will be filled with runners, bikers and young folks pushing strollers. Golf tournaments to benefit charities. The restaurants with patios will be jam packed with patrons.

It means that Easter, the only serious event in the Christian calendar, is at hand.

And it means that women everywhere will be uncovering the body parts they have had under cover the last 4-5 months which of course I very much approve of.

And so I thank the attractive if slightly dingy young woman who graced us with her half dressed presence at the restaurant yesterday morning.

She is proof that Spring is at hand, if not quite as "at hand" as she made it out to be. The reemergence of her type, even though best regarded strictly from afar, gives me the strength to press on.

Fearless Prediction

I betcha Glenn Beck urges the idiots that follow him not to cooperate with the Census. After all, telling a government worker how many toilets you have in your home is just giving the socialistic Obama Administration more of a foothold.

Just you wait. I betcha he does this.

Program Note

Not that the literary world will miss it but the usual Sunday post will not run tomorrow. I will be tied up this weekend with LR Marathon activities.

Talk among yourselves.

The Moving Finger Writes

Joseph Stack was mad at the IRS. So he typed a long rambling screed on his website in which he set out a litany of grievance against the government, churches and politicians which you can read by hitting the following link: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0218102stack1.html

He was so mad at the IRS that he set his house on fire, gassed up the private plane that he owned and flew it into an office building where the IRS had an office. He killed himself and an IRS employee who had served 2 tours of duty in Viet Nam. Other folks were injured but nobody else died which has to be something of a miracle.

Samantha Bell, Stack's daughter had earlier referred to her father as "a hero" a claim that she later recanted. However, she later said that "[i]f nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will be accomplished."


But her Dad wasn't speaking out against injustice. He was writing crazy shit on his blog.

Just like me.

Some people live inside their heads a little too much. If you think about it, only a complete narcissist would believe for 2 minutes that committing a terrorist act would effect any kind of meaningful change.

Stack's insane plan reminds me of the time 20 years ago when a young man came to me for legal advice. He had gotten charged by the DEA for possessing weapons and drugs. He had lawyered up with a guy who he said told him that while the lawyer thought he had a shot at suppressing the stuff the Feds has seized he told his client he might want to consider a deal. The young man told me that he was inclined to go to trial.


" This will be my chance to expose the DEA for what it is," he actually told me. " I want to show the world that they will do anything to get a conviction. They will regret the day they charged me. I'm not afraid to stand up to 'em."


" Well," I said." If that's your reason for going to trial you might as well plead out."

"Why?"

"Because you're nobody and the world doesn't care. You will be forgotten 5 minutes after you go to prison."


The Internet helps guys like Stack live inside their head instead of dealing with reality. The blogosphere is full of guys (and they're mainly guys) like Stack who have to reconcile their sad lives with a inflated self-worth that has no evidence to support it. And they spend an inordinate amount of time blaming everyone else for their troubles. Because when you live inside your head all the time you don't get any insight into your situation.


Joseph Stack was mad at the IRS and so he flew a goddamn plane into an office building. Last time I looked the Service was still collecting the tax. Last time I looked folks were still filing their returns.

Joseph Stack's kamikaze mission changed nothing. Because he was nobody and the world doesn't care.

Vox Populi: Revival Catchers

My buddy JR hadn't heard the news about faith healing evangelist Benny Hinn's wife filing for divorce.

JR: No! You're kidding!

Me: No! Get on the Internet and see for yourself.

JR: I wonder if he fell out when he got served with the divorce papers.

Me: Fell out?

JR: You know what I'm talking about. The afflicted that turn to him for healing always fall out after Pastor Hinn lays his hands upon them.

Me: I dunno. He would be more likely to fall out when he gets the subpoena for his bank records.
JR: You know what? If we ever get tired of practicing law we could become revival catchers.

Me: Huh?

JR: We could get hired to catch folks after Pastor Hinn heals them. Those guys that you see doing it on TV? Bet they don't do that for free.

Me: What do you think an experienced revival catcher could make in this economy?

JR: I don't know but it's got to beat practicing law. And it would be more useful besides.

JR may be on to something. Still, I would think that Pastor Hinn's most immediate need will be the services of a Charlatan Catcher when he gets hit with a Notice of Deposition from his wife.

Wonder where you can apply for that?

My Sunday Feeling

Unlike some folks I know, I wasn't particularly keen on watching Tiger's much anticipated news conference, especially when I heard that the audience was hand-picked by him and his handlers and that no questions would be taken. Indeed, it was for that very reason that the Golf Writers Association boycotted the event.



I didn't get around to watching it until after work on that day when ESPN showed the entire speech. The opinions concerning same were, predictably, all over the map. Some folks found it disingenuous. Others found it compelling and moving.



Me? I saw a man whose expression and skin color gave the impression of someone with an extreme case of nausea. I saw a prideful man brought low by amazingly foolish and indiscreet behavior. I felt sort of the same about Tiger's speech yesterday as I did about about Bill Clinton's video deposition over the Monica Lewinsky affair. The use of the camera in both cases made the subjects appear almost to be at the other end of a gunsight. And I felt badly for them both although neither had anybody but themselves to blame.



Which Tiger forthrightly acknowledged in no uncertain terms.



Lee Trevino has been quoted recently that Tiger would have been better off had he pulled up a lawn chair in his backyard and told the media the truth from the get-go. But that's not Tiger Woods' style. Apart from competition on the golf course where the law of the jungle obtains, his every image and utterance has been carefully orchestrated.



Until now.



Sure, the cynical heart that beats within my breast suspects a desire on his part to not only save his marriage but his "brand." The first step, of course, was to minimize the moral dimensions of his acts by blaming it on pathology. No matter what he said yesterday, the moral implications are delimited by blaming it on an addiction. Indeed, there are some who question whether impulsive sexual behavior rises to the level of alcohol or substance abuse. I don't have an opinion on it one way or another. Perhaps it is true that his wife, who mercifully did not attend the speech (I refuse to call it a news conference), insisted upon his entering a treatment facility as a precondition to a possible reconciliation. Perhaps not. We do not know. And it is none of our business.



Driving home last night I listened to the local sports call-in show. Predictably, many of the scholars and theologians checking in were shocked by Tiger's acknowledgement that he intended to return to practicing the Buddhism of his Mother's faith. As one high minded genius pointed out "Praying to Buddha isn't going to do him any good."



Point of order: Buddhists don't pray to Buddha. And Buddhism has many tenets with which Christians would be comfortable such as the condemnation of lying stealing, striving for meaningless things and sexual misconduct. As Woods himself said " (Buddhism) teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint." The Baptist preacher could say the same thing about the Bible.



The nonsense about the relative efficacy of Buddhism to the saving of souls was wisely cut off by the host. After that, the callers were pretty much equally split as to whether he was sincere and whether or not his problems were any of the callers' business.



I have always said about these matters that if the wronged spouse feels led to continue in the marriage after an affair then that is pretty much dispositive of it for me. I still feel that way. But Tiger Woods has an obligation to apologize if for no other reasons than his carefully crafted image as a loving family man and role model for the kids that participate in programs funded by the Tiger Woods Foundation completely evaporated a couple of days after Thanksgiving.



But at the end of the day, Tiger Woods is not a politician or a religious figure that strayed. He's a golfer. And trust me, he is not the only member of the PGA tour that has strayed from his vows. He is just the most spectacular example of it.



Do I believe that he is contrite? I cannot judge his heart. But I have to figure that for a man as prideful and arrogant as Woods-which he also acknowledged-to get up there even under the laboratory conditions imposed by him for the speech and lambaste himself for a quarter hour weighs in favor of a finding of sincerity.



The man at the end of the gunsight looked as if he might puke at any minute during his speech. This was a man brought low.



I believe him. Why not?

Vox Populi: The Salesmen

I had no sooner taken off my coat than I heard a knock on my door. 2 guys in blue parkas with AT&T emblazoned thereon.

Guy 1: How are you today? We're from AT&T.

Me: So I gathered.

Guy 2: And we are going door to door to make sure that folks in the neighborhood are aware of the opportunity to get in on a new product. Have you heard about all of the cable we've been running around here?

Me: Yeah. U-Verse.

Guy 1: That's right Sir! Could I ask you who your current cable and Internet provider or providers are?

Guy 2 is starting to write on a yellow legal pad.

Me: Look fellas, I'm happy with my service.

Guy 1: We understand your reluctance. But most people are really pleased with all of the content we can provide. It's pretty much constantly expanding. If you let us know you're currently with we can show you how much you can save.

Me: Really I'm good.

Guy 2: I bet if you give it a try you'll be amazed. 30 day free trial. You don't like it. Fine. We can't save everyone. Money back guarantee.

Me: Can't save....

Guy 1: What you got to lose?

Guy 2: Know anybody that's got it?

Me: Matter of fact I do. She hates it.

Guy 1 : Well, unfortunately there are some people whose service issues we can't resolve or they won't let us resolve. But we do have a 97% retention rate.

Me: Gentlemen. I'm good. Really.

Guy 1: Well, thank you for your time.

Guy 2: Sorry we couldn't interest you.

Me: Well, you can't save everybody.

Guy 1: Pardon?

Me: Nothing.

I need to remember to get that "No Solicitation" sign.

My Sunday Feeling-Valentine's Day Edition

Today is Valentine's Day which is easily the least liked holiday for most guys that are brave enough to express an opinion on this matter. Be that as it may, Valentine's Day, that most extortionate "holiday," worse than Christmas even, serves as an appropriate backdrop for the latest turn of events with America's fun couple John and Elizabeth Edwards.

As we know, former John Edwards staffer Andrew Young wrote a book about the Edwards entitled "The Politician" in which he writes extensively about his efforts to hide the affair between John Edwards and Rielle Hunter, going so far as to claim the daughter she bore as his own illegitimate child. He also portrays candidate Edwards as a nickle plated phony and Elizabeth as a scheming meddler with a flaming temper.

Young has given numerous interviews about the book and I guess he is on a tour in support of same in which he is reading excerpts from it and/or giving talks about it. Because Elizabeth is pissed. And she has threatened to sue him if he doesn't stop speaking about the Edwards' troubled marriage.

Here is where it gets interesting. Elizabeth has threatened to sue Andrew Young for alienation for affection, an archaic cause of action which is still on the books in only about 7 states, North Carolina being one of them. As we like to say at times like these around here, this is a teachable moment.

Alienation of affection is one of two "heart balm" laws that state that a jilted spouse may sue to effect revenge against a third party who horsed around with the jiltee's spouse. Alienation of affection is a tort claim against a third party who induced a spouse to leave the marriage. Criminal conversation is another cause of action likewise sounding in tort (as we say) against a third party for having sex with the jiltee's spouse. As I stated earlier, most of these old heart balm laws are no longer on the books for reasons that should be fairly obvious.

Arkansas's experience with its own heart balm statutes is instructive. About 1981 or so, the Arkansas Supreme Court issued an Order in which it said that it would no longer entertain any appeals of any orders concerning these two causes of action. The Court said something along the lines that divorce is sufficiently painful and life changing without imposing tort liability upon people when a marriage breaks up. As they weren't going to hear anymore of these cases, the Court told the Arkansas Legislature that they might as well strike these statutes off of the books.

Which the Ledge did. And the laws eliminating these statutes was swiftly signed into law by-guess who?-William Jefferson Clinton who was Governor at that time.

As I recall, the irony of this was not particularly lost on anyone at that time either.

I actually know somebody who got threatened with criminal conversation. He took up with a woman who lived in one of these states. She and her husband were separated and going through an acrimonious divorce. Neither side had any interest in reconciling. It was Splitsville except for the property settlement. To put pressure on her to settle her ex threatened my friend with a lawsuit for criminal conversation as they were conversatin' while she was still legally married. Of course, this is unfair and ridiculous. And once her private investigators discovered that her ex didn't exactly have clean hands in this department himself, away went the threat of a lawsuit. And all is paradise once again.

Now let us turn to the situation at hand. Edwards claims that Young's covering for her horndog husband's marital misdeeds with uber-headcase Rielle partly led to the breakup of her marriage to the aforesaid horndog. Good luck with that. Insofar as is known, John Edwards never had sex with Andrew Young although one could sure make the case that Young is givin' both John and Elizabeth a good screwing right now. Elizabeth knew about the affair and still amazingly acquiesced to her husband's megalomaniacal decision to run for President.

How could she not have known that all of this sordid business would come to light?

Elizabeth Edwards says she will drop it if Young donates $250,000 to the Wade Edwards Foundation, a non-profit group named for her late son, quits yakking about her and her marriage to Horndog and turns over all the threatening and hectoring messages she left on Young's phone.

If I'm Andrew Young, I paraphrase Wellington and tell her to "Sue and be damned." She may be in a suin' mood but she can hardly sue the real target defendant because Horndog is paying Rielle's bills and the child support for her child. It wouldn't look good for Elizabeth to be preceived as trying to take bread out of her soon-to-be ex-husband's child's mouth. But she has no real claim against Young. And she's pissed. So her lawyer's cobbled together this stupid theory.

And you think your personal situation is fucked up.

I wish all of these really unpleasant people a Happy Valentine's Day. Y'all deserve each other. If you don't believe me hit the link: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/John_Edwards_Scandal/john-edwards-scandal-timeline-andrew-young/story?id=9688837 These three had more stories going at once than Stephen King.

Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day to you too! I hope you are not celebrating it with someone in any jurisdiction that still has these stupid heart balm laws on the books.

Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl

The late author and crazy person Dr. Hunter S. Thompson on sportswriters:

There is a dangerous kind of simple-minded Power/Precision worship at the root of the massive fascination with pro football in this country,and sportswriters are mainly responsible for it. With a few rare exceptions like Bob Lipsyte of the New York Times and Tom Quinn of the (now defunct) Washington Daily News, sportswriters are a kind of rude and brainless subculture of fascist drunks whose only real function is to publicize and sell whatever the sports editor sends them to cover...

Which is a nice way to make a living, because it keeps a man busy and requires no thought at all. The two keys to success as a sportswriter are: 1) A blind willingness to believe anything you're told by coaches, flacks, hustlers and other "official spokesmen" for the team-owners who supply the free booze...and 2) A Roget's Thesaurus, in order to avoid using the same verbs and adjectives twice in the same paragraph.

HST could get plenty over the top in his prose style. Indeed, the above-excerpt, brought to us by the good folks at deadspin.com, was relatively restrained. But I bet Doc would never have described Razorback guard Courtney Fortson as having "more moves than a boa constrictor on a mouse farm" as did a certain local sports "editor" in his column in today's sports page.

"Requires no thought at all" indeed.

My Sunday The Apocalypse Is Upon Us Now Feeling

There old eyes have seen some amazing things over the years. Many of these things I have chronicled in this space. But Sunday will be the damndest thing that I will have ever witnessed because the New Orleans Saints, long the laughing stock of the National Football League, will be playing the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl.

The Colts are favored by 4 or 5 points. And that is probably about right. But to me, the mere fact that the Saints, the Saints that were beyond inept when I was in school down there, the same ones that damn near lost every game despite being picked to win the Division that pre-season, are in the Super Bowl is nothing short of astounding.

Oh, they have flirted with decency during the Bum Phillips and Jim Mora regimes. But they always figured out some way to shoot themselves in the foot to either miss the playoffs or lose in the first round.

Sure 3 years ago they made it to the NFC Championship. But they went out and got drilled by the Bears. They followed that up with 2 mediocre seasons and Saints fans everywhere, myself included, just shrugged and thought that the rightful equilibrium in the known universe had been restored. The Saints are back to sucking. All is right with this world.

Now this.

There is a part of me that doesn't want to watch. Not for any reason owing to the apocalyptic nature of their appearance in a game that they haven't gotten within sniffing distance in the history of the franchise. No.

Heart disease runs in my family. I simply don't know if I can actually watch the typical Saints "blow a lead and then come from behind" or "get cuffed around for 3 quarters and then blow 'em out in the 4th quarter" performance they tend to specialize in during the Super Bowl. I may keel over.

Please guys. Get a lead. Hold it. Win in regulation. Or get whacked. But I don't know if my ticker can handle the usual Saints dramafest in this, the ultimate game in franchise history.

I've seen lots of incredible things in my 54 years. If the Saints pull this off, I will have seen it all.

Go Saints! 911 is on Speed Dial at my house.

My Sunday Feeling

Arkansas got socked with a pretty good snow/ice storm last Friday. I have been batching it the last week and will continue to do so for the next 2. There are entirely benign reasons for this recent turn of events mainly owing to kid and adult scheduling conflicts and not because of "tales of drunkenness and cruelty" to employ the immortal phrase of Ray Davies.



So I have been socked in here at the Hillcrest Sports Bar. I kind of like snow days. As long as the power and the Internet stays up, I can find any of a number of ways to pass the time. I had planned earlier to go through Mother's papers and continue the process of throwing out any documents that are past the IRS "lookback" period. But I'm certain the recycle station is closed today. I was also going to clean out my closets and take stuff to the Goodwill. But I ain't driving out to West Little Rock until the ice is completely melted. So that's out.



An interesting aside: Last week, I found a bunch of old checks in the first box of crap I went through. I set them aside for shredding. Then it hit me. The accounts are closed. The account holder now longer exists. What's the point?



It is damned difficult to defraud a potential victim who no longer walks among us. So it was off to the recycle station along with 4 armfuls of other completely useless and irrelevant documents that neurosis compelled my poor mother to keep.



I had planned to do a few other things around here but NV's take on snow days, one that she explained to me when my phone call woke her ass up at 9 Friday morning, was that snow days are "unexpected days of rest." Which the Queen of goddamn Sheba and I now refer to by the acronym UDOR.



I didn't completely goof off during my UDOR. I did laundry. I did dishes. I read as much of Julian Barnes' alternately moving, funny and depressing rumination on death entitled "Nothing To Be Frightened Of'" as I could stand at one pop. I did more thank you notes while I watched golf. I sent and received text messages to and from all over. E-mails and Facebook posts. Fixed a martini. Talked to my Uncle up in Quitman. His power was out. This after he cut down all the trees in the front yard after Aunt Ginger died so that limbs wouldn't knock down power lines like it always does. So much for planning. Fixed another martini. Read Sports Illustrated, ate leftover chili and fell asleep @ 9;30 or so. Not a bad way to kill a UDOR.



My buddy Don and I read the Chapel Hill News Observer's story about the latest wrinkle in the opera of insanely bad judgment that is the John Edwards affair. Ah! The Internet! Seems that a local interior decorator over there was the conduit through which @ $700,000 was funnelled from a member of the zillionaire Mellon family to Rielle Hunter, uberloon and babymama to John Edwards' kid.



Rumor has it that the local US Attorney is looking to see whether campaign contributions were funnelled to Hunter. I'm also willing to bet that the IRS is looking to see if there's a tax evasion case here as well as charges of structuring transactions to avoid the reporting requirements. I mean, you just can't take that much money and conduit it out to your girlfriend without somebody having to report it as income. If you will recall, that's how they got Barry Bonds' chick on the side to roll over on him. He bought her a house. She didn't declare it. Bingo! Tax evasion charge!



And if all of this wasn't lurid enough, Hunter has sued Edwards' former campaign aide who wrote a book in which he described both John and Elizabeth as nickle-plated phonies. He now claims he has found a tape in which Edwards is allegedly depicted as having sex with a pregnant woman who looks suspiciously like the Plaintiff. The suit alleges-get this-invasion of privacy and she got a TRO last Thursday Ordering that the tapes be turned over.



Edwards will undoubtedly be deposed. Hide the guns.

And the question will also undoubtedly come up as to how a New Age maker of mostly unseen documentaries can prove up damages while being the kept ex-girlfriend of John Edwards. What's she gonna say? She gave up a shot for the prize at Cannes to be with him?



And you think YOU had a bad month.



Meanwhile back on Planet Hillcrest, traffic seems to be moving out on Van Buren although it still seems icy. NV and the kids are going to meet me for dinner tonight most likely at some pizza place up the hill. I may walk although the last time I took a hike in the snow was @ 5 years ago. One of my numerous exes lived around the corner in those days and I was walking over for dinner when I slipped and landed flat on my back bruising the ribs beneath my shoulder blades. The damn things still hurt when it's cold.



Maybe I'll drive after all.



We are fortunate, or I think that we are, that we only have to endure ice and snow maybe a couple of times a year. I don't think that I would much like getting what the Midwest has gotten lately on a regular basis. So I can live with the occasional storm around here.



After all, everybody could use a UDOR every now and again.

The Rules Of Golf Are The Rules Of Golf. Except When They Aren't.

This being a snow day, I spent the afternoon watching the Farmers Insurance Open in sunny San Diego where 7 or 8 players are using wedges in competition that are no longer conforming to the Rules of Golf.

And it's legal. First, the back story.

As even the casual fan knows by now, the average pro golfer can hit a driver a country mile. Indeed, the Tiger Woodses, John Dalys and Bubba Watsons of this life hit the fairway with their tee shots with amazing infrequency.

And they pretty much don't care.

This is because they repose great trust in using their wedges to hit the ball high out of the rough and spin it back to the hole. This evidently pissed off the gimlet eyed lords of the PGA who decided that a premium would be placed on accuracy off of the tee. And they would insure this by screwing with the wedges.

Beginning this year, all wedges with "V" shaped grooves would be considered non-conforming or illegal. Instead, the players must use wedges that have square shaped grooves. Why is this important? Because the ball spins less out of the rough with the new wedges. This makes it harder to hit those nice high shots that stick and spin like you seem them do on TV. Which the PGA hopes will provide less incentive for guys like Daly to worry only about keeping his tee shot in the same Area Code if he knows that the short game will be tougher with the new wedges.

Except that Daly, Mickelson and a lot of other guys are using old Ping-Eye 2 wedges that were last made in the Eighties. They have "V"shaped grooves. Which makes them illegal right? No.

You see, this change has been contemplated for some time. So Ping sued the PGA over the proposed plan to ban the wedges with the"V" shaped grooves back in the Nineties. The parties settled and according to the terms of the settlement, any Ping-Eye 2 wedges made before April 1, 1990, remains approved under the Rules of Golf. Which means that guys are pulling out old Pings stored in garages or buying them off EBay.

And it's legal. Except for the fact that it's cheating.

This is great. Golf makes this big honking deal about how it is a gentleman's game. The players keep their own scores, and call penalties on themselves. And get this, Ken Duke-I believe it was- got friggin' disqualified a few years ago for having more than 14 clubs in his bag. Even though the 15th club was a pink child's putter surreptitiously put in his bag by his little daughter.

And they are letting these guys play with clubs that are non-conforming and yet are still legal? This is hilarious.

Rick Reilly recounted the Ken Duke story in an essay for Sports Illustrated about the Rules of Golf entitled "The Fools of Golf."

With all due respect to Mr. Reilly, maybe I should have entitled this post "The Return of the Fools of Golf."

My Sunday Feeling

I read last week where the publisher of the National Enquirer was going to submit its story on the John Edwards affair for consideration for the Pulitzer Prize. One doesn't exactly get the opportunity very often to mention the Enquirer in the same breath with the word "journalism" much less the Pulitzer Prize. But they did break the story which exposed a national politician as a complete liar and phony. Which blew up his campaign for President. So what the hell. Maybe they deserve consideration. Indeed, the Democrats should thank their lucky stars that Edwards' lies were uncovered even if they were brought to light by a tabloid that specializes in alien abductions and completely faked up sex scandals. What if the SOB had actually got hisself elected before the scandal hit the fan.



This would have made Bill Clinton's peccadilloes while in office pale in comparison.



To be fair, if the Enquirer does pull this off, it won't be the first time that a second rate publication won the Pulitzer. The New Orleans Times-Picayune won it in 2006 for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation caused by it throughout the region. As my buddy PM said at the time, " the worst f_ _ _ing paper in the business is going to win the Pulitzer Prize."



And make no mistake about it. The TP ain't much. When I was at Tulane, I used to marvel at the stuff they used to run in there. Every Monday, or it seemed, there was some lurid headline such as "Ax Murder in Slidell!" alerting the reader to a crime of senseless violence, still abundant there, that had occurred over the weekend. The TP was/is nothing if not earnest about the fact that it mainly cares about the sports and society pages. The sports page is still pretty damn good. I remember when the Saints beat the 49ers to end the then longest losing streak in the NFL. The headline on the front page screamed " THEY WON!" in large type generally not used except for declarations of war or the second coming of Christ.



Speaking of whom, if Jesus had chosen to return, or if war had been declared, if either of these events would have occurred during Carnival they would have been relegated to the back of the paper.

Unless old man Schweggman was running one of his paid editorials there. Schweggman, whose first name I cannot recall ran a chain of grocery stores down there. When I first graced Orleans Parish around 1978, he was in the middle of a protracted and highly acrimonious divorce proceeding. I seem to recall that he was alleged to have strayed from the marital hearth much to the displeasure of his wife who was doing her best to clean him out.


About once a month, Schweggman would run a full page ad on the back page of the TP in which he would excoriate both his wife and the legal system that was rendering him destitute. Even though I was but a callow lad of 22 or so at the time, I felt that the publication of these screeds in the biggest paper in the Pelican State to be completely unwise as a matter of strategy. I did not know much back in those days but I strongly suspected that the Judge was reading this stuff too.



I used to get the Sunday Arkansas Gazette by mail. I would show it to my friends saying " Now THIS is what a newspaper looks like. Oldest paper West of the Mississippi. Won a Pulitzer. That will never happen to the damn Times-Picayune."



Wrong as usual. The Gazette no longer exists and the Times-Pic won a Pulitzer.



So who knows? Maybe the Enquirer, that purveyor of scandals, aliens and scandals involving aliens may win it after accidentally committing an act of journalism.


As Mother might say, but not about the Enquirer, you can't say for sure that stuff ain't true.

My Sunday Feeling

Last week found me struck down with some kind of weird fever virus, the main symptom of which seemed to be a high fever that topped off around 102. It pretty much only lasted 20 hours or so and then I was back to feeling relatively normal. Due to the fact that I had a really bad headache I didn't much feel like reading. So it was a good thing that I had access to ESPN and text messages during the period I was down to follow all of the high drama going on in college football.

For those of you who either don't know or don't care, there has been much turbulence in the college coaching ranks. Lane Kiffin (resplendent in orange and black above) left Tennessee after one year to take the Southern Cal job which became open when Pete Carroll left to go back to the NFL from whence he had not exactly enjoyed much success in his 2 previous gig with the pros. Kiffin was available to go to UT after Phil Fulmer "retired." Well, actually, he was able to go anywhere after getting fired by the Oakland Raiders.

Tommy Tuberville came out of retirement to take the Texas Tech job after they fired Mike Leach for allegedly making an injured player stand by himself in a shed. That and for being an asshole. Skip Holtz left East Carolina to go to South Florida when they fired Jim Leavitt for alleging slapping a player.

Whew! No wonder my head hurt! That's a lot to keep track of for a sickly boy such as myself.

The folks at Tennessee went ballistic when Kiffin bolted for sunny California after only one season. They set mattresses on fire outside a dorm, wrote obscene things about him on a big rock on campus and filled the airwaves and Internet with all kinds of invective about "disloyalty" and about how Kiffin was nothing better than a nickel plated phony.

Well, yeah.

Whenever this kind of stuff happens, and this kind of merry-go-round happens all the time in the utter cesspool known as college basketball, you also hear otherwise sensible people wax earnestly about contracts being moral obligations and that these coaches need to honor them as such.

Even financial guru Dave Ramsey was putting this malarkey out on Good Morning America concerning homeowners who make the purely economic decision to walk away from mortgages that are under water. Ramsey said that folks made a promise when they signed that note and they ought to live up to it. Which is, of course, nonsense.

As retired Roman Catholic Bishop McDonald used to say around here about funerals, the recent activity in the world of football, provides me with yet again an opportunity to teach. So here goes.

Subsumed in every contract is the right to breach. You can tell I am a lawyer. I use words like subsume. Not while making out or anything but I digress. Anyway, the law does not enforce moral obligations. It enforces legal obligations. And you have the right to breach. And the only question upon breach is how to put the non-breaching party in as good a position as he can be had the contract been fulfilled. That's it.

You can't have the breaching party arrested. Unless your contract is for a loan that is secured by goods you can't just go seize his stuff. And even if you could force a breaching party to perform on a personal services contract nobody in their right mind would do it. You only want to employ somebody that wants to be there.

And because these coaches breach contracts all the time, every one of these contracts have liquidated damage clauses known in the coaching world as "buyouts." If State U wants to hire your coach then they will buy out his contract with your school. Conversely, the only reason Charlie Weis lasted as long as he did at Notre Dame is because the Irish brass foolishly gave him a 10 year extension after his first season. To eat 8 years of a 10 year deal was too rich even for the fact cats at ND. Merely sucking is not sufficient"cause" to avoid paying a contract after firing somebody. The firee has to, well, slap a kid or something.

Rather than bitch and moan about how "wrong" it is when ever an opportunist like Lane Kiffin or Pete Carroll hits the bricks, maybe we would be better off asking ourselves if Urban Meyer is worth 4 million a year and whether the dirty arms race for players and coaches can possibly be sustained without cooking the books like many schools, such as the University of Central Arkansas here, are suspected of doing.

Oh. I forgot. Derek Dooley left Louisiana Tech to take the Chair of Football at Tennessee. Dooley actually has a license to practice law in Georgia. Or he did at one time. He would agree that subsumed in every contract is the right to breach. He just did it.

If you don't believe me, ask him.

Robertson's "true story": Haiti "swore a pact to the devil" to get "free from the French" and "ever since, they have been cursed"

Robertson's "true story": Haiti "swore a pact to the devil" to get "free from the French" and "ever since, they have been cursed"

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Kriegel Carroll slithers to Seattle 011110 - CFB News - FOX Sports on MSN

Kriegel Carroll slithers to Seattle 011110 - CFB News - FOX Sports on MSN

My Sunday Feeling

"You know who needs Jesus? Bill Clinton needs Jesus," opined Rev. Victor H. Nixon after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. Of course, Rev. Nixon was speaking not only about the President but about a man he knew personally, having married Bill and Hillary. And he spoke thusly while in the pulpit of Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church on a Sunday morning back in those days.



Unlike Vic Nixon, whose remarks were appropriate given the setting, Fox senior political commentator Brit Hume offered up the same recommendation last week about another famous man embroiled in a Clintonesque scandal of his own.

"He is said to be a buddhist," Hume said of Tiger Woods. " But I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger would be 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."



Of course, this comment was immediately the subject of much derision from people from all different religious and non-religious persuasions. Typically, the folks at Fox spun this as another example of the supposed oppression of the major belief system in the United States by liberals who oppose the free exercise of Hume's rights to make such a statement.



You will not hear that from me. While Hume's musing on the state of Eldrick's soul might not exactly be Comparative Religion 101, he has every right to say it. And as long as the ratings among the yayhoos that watch Fox are high, Hume's bosses won't tell him to keep a lid on such nonsense.



But Hume's comments are not only condescending and obnoxious they are misplaced. Tiger Woods has surely been misbehaving. But what concerned Hume was the fact that Tiger is allegedly a Buddhist which was news to most golf fans. Probably most Buddhists too. And this to me is short sighted. As odious as Tiger's behavior has been, he didn't kill anybody. As long as we are prescribing Christian conversion as a means of "recovery" let's offer Him up to some really bad actors.



Bernard Madoff bankrupted hundreds of people through a Ponzi scheme thought to be the biggest fraud in the history of finance. Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind 9/11 is still at large and an active terrorist. Tiger is in neither of these bastards' league when it comes to pure mendacity.


And as long as Hume is throwing out the lifeline he should include some nominal Christians who have strayed. Like fellow Methodist Ken Lay who was in charge of Enron. Okay. Maybe its too late for him. How about the guy who shot the Kansas abortion provider IN A CHURCH?



Maybe Hume should also call members of the cloth to an examination of conscience as well. Like any clergy who abuse children, steal money or otherwise abuse their position of authority. Or who are raking it in over the table like Kenneth Copeland. And let us consider Rick Warren whose message of homophobia resounded so well in Uganda that they passed a law making homosexuality a capital offense.



Brit Hume's observations were not only condescending and obnoxious. They were trivial as well, the theological equivalent of Facebook postings where folks dare other Christians to profess their face on their profiles.



But he had every right to make these remarks. And as long as Fox can make people believe that Brit Hume's wrongheaded statements made to a friendly audience ranks up there with Martin Luther nailing the thesis to the wall in terms of bravery there will be money to be made.



And that's what it's all about.