Antibiotic Fueled Random Thoughts

The general malaise that lurked inside my head late last week-the one that was physiological in nature that is-ripened into a full-blown sinus infection by last Saturday with fever, chills and a voice which sounded for all the world like I had been doing cocaine all Friday night. Which I deny.

Anyway, I had planned to spend the long weekend playing golf, cooking on my grill and doing stuff around the house. Instead, I have been flopped on the couch drinking water and watching sports. And occasionally feeling sorry for myself.

Until, I look at the footage coming out of Louisiana and Mississippi.

Me? I ain't got no problems. Saturday morning I a) used my telephone to call my doctor who b) called me back on his telephone which he c) later used to phone in a prescription to the d) pharmacy which I picked up later while I was e) driving around running errands. Virtually nobody in Orleans Parish can do what we up here on high ground take so easily for granted. I ain't got no problems.

But I am feeling quite poorly. Perhaps a hatchet job on Wally Hall will make me feel some better.

For some reason Wally couldn't content himself to stick to an account of the Razorback's victory over Missouri State or SW Missouri State or whatever the hell they call themselves. No. He had to lead off by musing about how Houston and Danny had to be pining away for their late father who was not at the opening game for the first time. Or let us quote from the master wordsmith himself:

"It was there.

Not so anyone could see or notice but it was there. A small but very real ache for Houston and Danny Nutt."

Well, if you can't see it or notice it, then you can't know it's there unless someone tells you it is there. And then you quote that person.

But that would be journalism. Wally just makes stuff up. It's easier.

Boy. I feel better already.

It is a pleasant morning here in the People's Republic of Hillcrest. I decided to take a walk just to get some fresh air. As I was walking past the grocery store, I got honked at by one of the hotel courtesy van. The young black fella waved at me. I waved back. He pulled up. The window came down.

" Hey, man! Can I take you somewhere? Can I help you in anyway?"

" No, son. I'm fine. Thanks."

Granted, I don't feel well and so I ain't exactly my usual picture of vigorous good health. But I didn't think that I looked like a shellshocked evacuee. Then I looked down at my shirt to see "Tulane Baseball" emblazoned across my chest. Note to self: The Tulane stuff goes in the closet for the foreseeable future.

Speaking of evacuees, my church is going to take in some folks. And so the call went out for sheets, linens, towels etc. I in turn called many of my little friends and asked them to pitch in. The response has been astounding. They got enough stuff for an army in that gym. People really do respond.

My favorite offer of assistance came from my friend B who called me from up in the Ozarks somewhere.

" As soon as I get back you tell me what y'all need and I'll do whatever."

"OK. Great."

" I was thinking. You know? I would be willing to take in a single mother. I could do that. Only don't tell my mom. She would die and I don't want that on my conscience."

"Neither do I. Your secret is safe with me."

Speaking again of evacuees there was a lady from Gulfport in church Friday night. She was there with her daughter girl who I figured to be around 15 or so. She was staying with her other daughter here in Little Rock. I spoke with her after the service. She had the vacant look in her eyes of someone who has seen hand-to-hand combat.

" We were trapped in the attic. I thought I was gonna die."

She collapsed into my arms weeping. Both her daughters were weeping.

I put my free arm around the kid. I put my right hand above my head.

" Lady, you are in a neighborhood called Hillcrest. You are in Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church. Are you getting the picture?"

She laughed. Thank God.

I put both my hands on her shoulders. "You may freeze to death before you get back to Gulfport but you will not be swept away by water."

She looked at me solemnly.

"I will never complain about the cold again. Never."

I've never had to hole up in an attic while waiting to be rescued.

Me? I ain't got no problems.

Errata

I discovered,much to my horror, that I forgot to run yesterday's post through the spelling checker software. I guess I was in a hurry or something which is unfortunate since I can't spell worth kiss-my-ass anymore.

Anyway, the errors have been corrected. I apologize. Thanks for your patience.

tmfw

Hell to Pay

Today's news from New Orleans is marginally better, "better" being a relative term given the unprecedented devastation that has been occurring in Southeast Louisiana. But I say that things are "better" seeing as how the work on the breached levee seems to be progressing. The tide is pulling the water back into Lake Pontchartrain and the water in affected areas is receding. With any luck the Corps of Engineers will have effectuated the plug before the next round of rain that will surely come soon. The National Guard has finally-finally!-arrived with men and materiel. The long overdue evacuation of Charity Hospital is finally underway now that the civilian helicopters are supported by fully armed Chinook helicopters sent up in order to dissuade sniper fire from the damned fools that have been inexplicably shooting at rescue workers as they attempted to extract folks. More on this later.

I don't know what it takes to qualify for a Congressional Medal of Honor or a similar award around here. But the next time they start to think about handing some out, I have a suggestion: How about the staffs of Tulane and Charity hospitals? Talk about holding down the goddamn fort! Tulane got its people out a couple of days ago but as of yesterday, the skeleton crew at Charity was working with no food, no water and very little electricity. They were ventilating people by hand. All of this while armed looters were thought be on the bottom floors of the vast building. God almighty. What devotion to duty. What bravery.

By contrast, let us now consider the human scum that has been busy stealing, causing even more property damage and shooting the place up. The story coming out now is that the authorities were surprised by the extent of this violence.

Please. Let me explain something.

In the first place, in Louisiana your homestead is exempt from property tax. In the second place, I would imagine that fully 45 percent of the buildings in Orleans Parish are owned by church or church related entities. So all of the owners of all those stately homes in the Garden District (for example) and all of those beautiful structures owned by the Roman Catholic Church (for another example)do not pay one nickel of property tax. And yet, they expect municipal services such as fire and police protection as if they did. They just expect it on somebody else's dime.

So this requires the Parish and City governments to fund municipal services out of general revenues for the most part. Which doesn't leave much for social services and public education. Which is too bad because, as the world is now seeing, New Orleans for all of it's old world charm and ambiance has one hell of a lot of poor people.

The public school system there is a joke. Nobody goes to public school except black kids on the lowest end of the strata. Public housing is horrific. The response of the City is to warehouse folks in the schools and in hellholes like the Desire Housing Project ( which was mercifully razed some time ago) and the St. Thomas Housing Project and just hope they cause the bare minimum of trouble during their sojourn through this vale of tears. And so you have a permanent population of an insufficiently civilized underclass that passes its collective sociopathy from generation to generation. Some of these people are exceptionally dangerous and live within easy proximity of Tulane and Charity and the French Quarter.

And they say they are surprised? Bullshit. They dealt with this problem much the way that they dealt with the issue of the potential arrival of a Category 4 hurricane. They just turned a blind eye and hoped for the best.

I do not say this to explain away the behavior of these punks or to assign blame to society. There is no time for such hand-wringing. Their shocking behavior is inimical to good order and public safety and must be stopped pretty much by any means. And so, there will be war in the streets tonight. There will be hell to pay for what they have done whether they did it for money, for thrills or for street cred. And much of the hell that will be visited upon these desperately stupid young men will be visited upon them by the 39th Infantry Brigade from here in Arkansas working alongside the local authorities. As we know, the 39th just got back from Iraq where they spent a year or so doing urban warfare at night. These thugs don't have a chance. Peace, even if it is an uneasy peace, will be restored.

There will be hell to pay at the polls as well. It will be interesting to see who the electorate blames for this debacle. The Feds? The State? Local government? It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

But there will be time enough for that. The time for tears has past. The earth can accept no more water. It is time to go to work. But first, pray that peace is restored so that search and rescue teams can work without bullets flying overhead. Pray that they get the water out sooner than later. And pray that, for future reference, somebody in the government remembers the old saying that "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

It applies to emergency readiness. It applies as well to social engineering.

Trouble

We have had much activity of late in my little corner of the People's Republic of Hillcrest. The college boys that lived in the rent house two doors down from me have moved out. They were replaced by female counterparts of about the same age. I suspected that young women would be moving in as soon as the guys left. For about a week prior to the day I actually saw U-Hauls in the yard, I saw women who appeared to be about my age carrying in loads of stuff on almost a nightly basis. My suspicions were confirmed one day when I went around back to take out the trash and saw a tits high pile of boxes from stores like Tuesday Morning and Pier One stacked up behind the house.

Girls. No doubt.

Men and women move stuff differently. I didn't know that the guys were moving until about 10 of 'em showed up one Sunday afternoon armed with trucks, SUVs and coolers full of beer. The biggest item of furniture I saw hauled out was a big- screen plasma television.

Guys move stuff in. They move stuff out. They don't spend the week before hanging drapes, shooting measurements or comparing fabric swatches to the colors in the room. We move stuff in. We move stuff out. Point me to where the refrigerator will be.

One of my friends allowed as how I thrilled I must be to have a couple of cute girls living just a chip shot away from me. I pretty much am predisposed to view this as trouble. But not of the sexual foolishness variety. Even I am incapable of that level of hubris.

I tried to explain it once before to my friend J. I accompanied J to a wedding earlier this summer. After 20 years of dedicated service to the noble and useful profession of teaching, she decided to chuck it all to go to law school. As you might suspect, her classmates are all in their twenties. Anyway, at the reception, J introduced me to the bride and groom. The bride, as radiant a girl as I have ever seen, held my hand the whole time I stood there congratulating them and wishing them luck and all of that.

In the car afterwards J was smitten with the sentimental emotions that overcome women from time to time at these events.

"You could tell Mary-or whatever the hell her name was-really liked you." she said.

"How you figure?"

" You could tell by the way she held your hand the whole time she spoke to you. That was so sweet."

" Look" I said. " She could give a rip about me. She likes you. I have just reached a stage in my life where young women consider me to be completely harmless."

Here's another example. A couple of years ago I became friends with a young woman with whom I ran on a relay team for the first Little Rock Marathon. She was a second year med student at the time. She is a beautiful girl and an accomplished marathoner. However, like many highly intelligent people, she occasionally can not be trusted with a wet match, so absent-minded is she.

She called me late one night to tell me that she had locked herself out of her apartment. She asked me if I would come over and help her climb into the second floor window which was unlocked. This is how I would up with a 26 year old girl in a blue jean skirt hiked up to her hips with her piston-like legs wrapped around the back of my neck some 30 minutes later.

At this point, let me say that this wasn't nearly as much fun as one might think. Given the kind of luck I usually possess in all things, I just knew that the cops were going to show up at any time during this refenestration. That would have been some picture. Me with a girl on my shoulders and a beer on the hood of my car trying to bust into a private residence in the middle of the night. Bearing this in mind, it was with all due haste that I pushed her ass up through the window and threw her goddamn flip flops after her.

Clutching her flip flops to her breast she beamed down at me Juliet-like from her window.

" Thank yooooooou." she said. " I knew I could count on yooooou. You are so sweeeeet. " she cooooooooed.

Nah. Mainly I'm harmless. And she knew it.

Besides, I'm a guy. We move stuff in. We move stuff out. Plasma teevees, budding pediatricians, whatever. It's just stuff that's gotta be moved.

And so, these new neighbors will need something moved eventually or they will need someone tall to reach something high up ( I am exceedingly popular at Christmastime for this reason). And they will come to me.

They can't go to the grumpy gay couple to the North of them. Those guys don't talk to anybody. They can't go to the neighbor to the South of them because, even though she has a boyfriend that stays with her a lot of the time that might be of some use, he's a strange ranger. On the weekends, he occasionally wears leather pants and a cotton peasant blouse. It's like living next door to Mick Fleetwood.

But then again, who am I to talk? I just realized that I used the words "grumpy" and "gay" in the same sentence to describe someone. Maybe living next door to me is like living next door to Wally Hall.

My friend M lives in Jackson, Mississippi. She understands these things. And while I don't mean to suggest that I hear Edith Piaf in the background anytime she calls or sends e-mails, she has a certain world weary view of relations between men and women that informs her judgment in this regard.

" Oh yeah." she said the other day. " They will come. First you will be moving furniture. Then you will be hearing about their problems with their boyfriends. Trust me. Just make them produce a driver's license before you give them any alcohol." In that regard, I guess I had better brush up on my froofy drink recipes. From the looks of those two, I bet I won't serve 'em many boilermakers.

Like I said. Trouble. Just not the kind my buddy who obviously has spent way too much time watching porno on the Internet was contemplating.

They will come because at this stage of my life, young women find me to be completely harmless. That's kind of depressing. But it is what it is.

Found Objects

You can get reacquainted with surprising things whenever you clean house. I remember the last time I cleaned out the closets. I managed to unearth numerous items of memorabilia. Here they are in no particular order: Different items of women's underwear, a 12 gauge shotgun, a guitar case, a pair of espadrilles (Which strongly implies that someone actually left without her shoes. Why don't I remember that?), a baseball bat, a woman's bathing suit, 2 tennis rackets (one of them being an old Jack Kramer woodie), a highly illegal Blue Dot softball that I attempted to smuggle into a softball game once, shotgun shells for the weaponry mentioned earlier on, a robe and surplice, and last but not least, a bottle of moonshine made by-no lie-an itinerant Baptist preacher in the Ozarks.

Who says I have lived a wasted life?

I cleaned out my old desk the other day. I bought the old rolltop about 20 years ago from Hambuchen Home Furnishings in Conway, Arkansas. I paid 400 bucks for it, which was a lot of money at the time. And while the process failed to produce anything so interesting as a jar of white lightning that was distilled by the clergy, there were some interesting relics.

I found tons of useless financial relics. Cancelled checks and the like. I lingered over those old checks, an ordinate number of them written mostly to various area liquor stores , and I marveled at how much my handwriting has changed. I used to have pretty good handwriting for a guy. This was the result of my engineer father's insistence that anything important must be printed. Now I am told by the people who are forced to decipher same that my writing is illegible. My signature nowadays could be the scrawl of an orangutan or a lunatic.

Speaking of writing, I found various items of correspondence. I found a letter from my mother asking me to confront my youngest brother about some "older woman" who Mother believed was leading John down the path to certain destruction. Being raised a Baptist, she felt comfortable viewing matters involving her sons in such starkly apocalyptic terms. And John being John, he was enjoying the trip down the path as I recall. In any event, the letter goes on to state that the reason that I was the best candidate to counsel Junior in these delicate matters was " because you are a mature man that knows how to handle women."

I had to pick myself up off the floor again just as I did when I read Mother's letter 15 years ago. I ought to frame it.

I found letters from my buddy Don, who was working on a tugboat for a ruffian named Captain Billy while studying for the Louisiana bar exam. I came across a series of letters written by an old girlfriend who was studying architecture in Italy. I found a copy of a letter that I had written to a woman who was concerned for my soul after reading a piece I had written for the old Arkansas Gazette. I wrote to decline her invitation to attend her church. She belonged to one of those huge non-denominational churches out in West Little Rock that subscribed then and now to a sort of "Brand X" theology. She thought that I would profit mostly from the Sunday night service where I could show up comfortably attired in mere "khakis and a short sleeve shirt."

I think it was the part about the short sleeve shirt that I found most offensive. Listen buddy, you might find a couple Lily of France bras in my closet. But you won't find any short sleeve dress shirts.

I found an old Agfa 35mm camera. The only thing I can figure is that it must have been given to me by my poor old crazy Aunt IdaBeth who watched "Hogan's Heroes" religiously and actually talked back to the television while doing so. She had lived in Germany with her equally crazy husband Donald who was stationed in the Air Force there. Agfa is a German camera. I would guess that they bought it at the PX. I made a mental note to see what I can get for it on e-Bay just in case there were still any lingering crazy vibes yet infused in it. I am not a particularly superstitious person but I believe craziness, like radioactivity, can be stored in objects. In any event, one can't be too sure about these things.

I found all sorts of pictures. I saw a picture of me from the Arkansas Gazette back when I was the student body president at Mabelvale Junior High. I was wearing my letter jacket. Which I also found in my closet earlier on. Finally, I ran across a picture of me with my old girlfriend LS. We are apparently at a dinner party. I deduce this from the fact that I am holding a plate and am captured in the moment of placing a fork thereto. LS has her hand on my forearm, as if to call my attention away from the grub. Her face is turning toward the camera. She is wearing a summerry cocktail dress that is cinched behind her neck beneath her long curly brown hair.

She looks so happy. She is so pretty.

In the picture, my hair, beard, eyelashes and eyebrows are bleached out from playing tennis on hardcourts in the blazing sun 3 to 4 times a week. I no longer play tennis other than fooling around with friends. My beard is gray and I have a lot less hair.

I ran into LS the other day. She pretty much looks the same, which is to say pretty great. In fact, I don't know what to attribute this to, but it seems that the women I have loved in this life haven't changed much over time. I know this cannot possibly be true and I also know that most of them, LS included, would guffaw at this notion. And she would give you chapter and verse of every line, every ding, and/or scar she has added to her chassis in the last 15 years.

But then again, it is only the good looking ones that keep an inventory.

The day after I cleaned out the desk I took the financial documents to the shredder service. The world has changed 360 degrees since I bought that old desk. I write very few checks any more. Most of my transactions are done on the Internet. I no longer get cancelled checks. The shredding service is over by the golf club to which I belong. I didn't play golf 20 years ago. Everything is changed.

All but one thing. Like I said, thanks to the lens of sentiment, to this day all of the women I have ever loved remain beautiful and resolutely changeless to me.

Who says I have lived a wasted life?

You call this a Warpath?

The National Collegiate Athletic Association recently announced the ban, effective immediately, from the use by its "member institutions" of American Indian images deemed "hostile or abusive" from hosting post-season events or displaying such iconography during championship competition. It has identified 18 schools that allegedly use such derogatory imagery and it includes six Division I schools including a couple of biggies in Florida State and Illinois.

I was immediately reminded of the late Frank Zappa who once observed ( and when was the last time you saw Frank Zappa invoked in a piece about sports?) that they would never start World War III in Los Angeles because there's just too much real estate involved.

Let me state at the outset that I am a white male. As far as I can recall, I have had the privilege of knowing only one person of Native American descent. I know nothing about how the majority of Native Americans feels about the use of Native American iconography by sports and corporations. I believe that diversity is a good thing and that any practice that perpetuates hurtful stereotypes or causes needless offense is probably something that should be closely examined to see if the continued perpetuation of that practice causes more harm than good.

Having said that, the latest edict from the NCAA is nothing more than a cynical attempt to placate those advocacy groups that have called for the elimination of "ethnic identifiers" in sports iconography without actually doing anything about it. And if I were a Native American with an interest in the issue, I would be offended. Here's why.

The ban only applies to post-season tournaments. That way, Division I men's sports are pretty much off the hook. D-I football utilizes that marvel of fairness and reliability known as the Bowl Championship Series to decide its national championship. And of the 18 schools listed, Illinois and Utah are the only schools that have traditionally made repeat appearances in the NCAA basketball tournament. And since the revenue ( much of which is derived from the advertisement and sale of merchandise, some of it now bearing derogatory imagery) from D-I football and men's basketball is what feeds the bulldog over at the NCAA, I can see where the ivory tower types over at headquarters in Indianapolis must feel as if they have arrived at a particularly elegant resolution of this problem. As I said, D-I is off the hook. The new policy mainly comes down hard on little bitty schools that don't produce much revenue. World War III does not start in Los Angeles.

And here's where I might have my nose out of joint if I were a Native American. If the use of derogatory ethnic imagery is wrong why not ban it outright? Period. Across the board. Notre Dame's "Fighting Irish" on the one hand connotes spirit and scrappiness. On the other hand it perpetuates a stereotype of Irish people being argumentative and violent. Is this really an appreciably better image than the one used by SE Oklahoma State whose teams are the "Savages?"

OK. Bad example. "Savages" is a really terrible nickname.

But you get my larger point. If it's wrong it's wrong. And it is just as wrong for the Seminoles of Florida State (probably soon to be known as the "High-Pissed Seminoles") as it is for the "Flying Dutchmen" of D-III Hope College in Michigan.

But the NCAA would rather kick the hell out of the Chowhan Colleges in its ranks than take on
Notre Dame and Illinois in any fight that might appreciably hit those schools, the ones that feed the bulldog, in the wallet.

Evidently the use of "hostile and abusive" imagery is not sufficiently bad to warrant starting World War III in Los Angeles. Or South Bend either.

And if I were a Native American, it would offend me that the NCAA evidently thinks I'm too stupid to figure this out.

Goodbye to All That

Boy, Major League Baseball can't get it right. If baseball were an automobile, it would be a Chrysler product. If it were a corporation (which it sort of is) it would be MCI-Worldcom. If it were a religion (which it also sorta is) it would be Scientology. When it comes to shooting itself in the foot, baseball is Audie Murphy.

Just looking at the sports page, you would think that baseball is a hell of a product. As of this writing, you have 2 heart-stopping pennant races going on over in the American League. In Chicago, both the White Sox and the Cubs are going good which, if we remember the sorry history of these two inept franchises, pretty much occurs with the frequency of Hailey's Comet. Speaking of the Cubs, not only is Derek Lee still flirting with the Triple Crown, he might win it while hitting .400. And for those of you that enjoy watching car wrecks on the interstate, I give you the National League West. Without a single team over .500, it just might be the worst division in the history of the game. One could go a lifetime and not see such hide-your-eyes collective incompetence again.

But do you hear about any of this stuff when you turn on ESPN or listen to talk radio? No. All you hear about is-once again-about how somebody got caught with steroids in his system. Once again, as is always the case with baseball, the sidebar stuff is bigger than the sport. To paraphrase Emily Litella, with baseball it's always something. It's labor trouble. It's owners highjacking cities for new stadiums ( I know that it is stadia. But this is a sport's piece after all.). More recently, it was all the high drama over drug testing. Would the union agree to it? Would there be a lockout? Will Barry get indicted?

And now, now that we have caught our collective breath real good, Rafael Palmiero tests positive for steroids. This is the same Rafael Palmiero who back in March waggled his left index finger at a camera and denied that he had ever used steroids, much like another rather prominent citizen in the DC area waggled his left index finger while lying through his teeth. Unfortunately for Palmiero, he was under oath at the time. Which creates its own certain set of difficulties.

What a month. On June 15, he gets his 3000th hit. On June 17th, the President-a man who, say what you will about W, has no use for steroids-congratulates him. On August 1, baseball announces that Palmiero was suspended for testing positive for steroids. The New York Times runs with a story that says he tested positive for stanozolol, a known wrecker of livers and shrinker of testicles. Which may or may not explain why Palmiero had such an interest in hawking Viagra.

How does the New York Times know this? "Unnamed Sources." And get this. The Baltimore Sun published a story (citing guess what?) that Raffy flunked his test in May. May. Which means that baseball (and presumably the Player's Union) knew that he was hot and waited until after he hit number 3000 to bust him.

After all, business is business.

This whole mess stinks to high heaven. One of baseball's poster boys pops up dirty. Stories are leaked to the media, presumably by higher-ups in baseball, which is what the Union always feared would happen. And now we know that "zero-tolerance" doesn't really apply if you are about to set a record.

Now you hear the old debates start all over. Should Palmiero be inducted into the Hall of Fame along with the other drunks, womanizers, cheaters, bigots and Bible-bangers that currently are enshrined there? Should Sammy? Should Mark? I don't care anymore. If I hear the names Gaylord Perry or Pete Rose invoked again this week I will put a gun to my head. Put 'em in. Leave 'em out. I don't care anymore.

This was not the easiest Spring for me for any of a number of reasons. So when my friend asked me to join he and his brother in coaching a Boy's Club team, I took him up on it. God knows that I preferred having a bat in my hands than time on them in those days. The highlight of many a day back then was the certain knowledge that I would soon be out on the field with friends who thought enough of me to ask me to help them and with little boys who loved to play baseball. Sadness was was only the special province of he that struck out. The only guys that hurt were guys who got hit in the head. Anger occasionally reared its ugly head. But it was only directed at the drag-ass college kid umpires who were too busy checking out the chicks in the stands to pay attention to the actual games. It was just what I needed.

Such are the simple joys inherent in this peculiar beautiful game. And only an outfit as completely dysfunctional as Major League Baseball could fuck it up so completely.

But I don't care anymore. Because with baseball, it's always something.

Random Thoughts

The following are some random thoughts that have come to me while getting over a stomach bug, proving once again that an idle mind is the devil's workshop:

TERRELL OWENS- It is indeed hard for the average person to pony up the first ounce of pity for the plight of the professional athlete in a team sport who demands that his contract be renegotiated. It is particularly difficult when the athlete in question is as narcissistic and has as few roots in reality as Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens, who was quoted last week in the Miami Herald as saying:

" At the end of the day, I don't have to worry about what people think of me, whether they hate me or not. People hated on Jesus. They threw stones at him and tried to kill him, so can I complain or worry about what people think?"

I am no scholar, but try as I might, I don't recall a biblical account of the stoning of Jesus. And the historical record is clear in that the Romans did actually succeed in killing Jesus, albeit only temporarily, depending on your religious persuasion. But let us forget for the moment our inability to comprehend someone being unhappy with a contract that pays him 49 million dollars over 7 years. And let us try to overlook the hubris of a man who, intentionally or not, equates his business dispute with the agony of Christ.

The fact is, Owens has every right to take this action and to hold out of training camp if he feels so led. People often confuse business relations with moral obligations. And while there is certainly a moral element to the concept of living up to one's agreements, of equal dignity is the concept that implicit in every contract is the right to breach. This is Contracts 101.

Unlike Major League Baseball, the NFL has revenue sharing. This ensures that every team is awash with money from television and radio as well as from merchandising. This means that every NFL team is turning a healthy profit no matter how incompetently it is run ( read Phoenix Cardinals). Secondly, unlike the NBA, the NFL's owners are not madmen. Accordingly, there are no guaranteed contracts in the NFL. Or there are none that I know of. This means that teams can get rid of guys who underperform or get dinged up without having to eat their salary in perpetuity (read New York Knicks and Portland Trailblazers).

Both Owens and his agent, the equally reptilian Drew Rosenhaus know that he is an injury away from getting cut. And so, they are threatening to breach by "holding out." The Eagles, for their part, are threatening to sue to get the signing bonus back. These are all big boys here. And it says here at TMFW that Owens will go back as they are taking quite the PR hit. I mean, Rosenhaus is so obnoxious that he managed to save a little boy from drowning last week and still come across as a jerk.

Owens has every right to do what he is doing, even if you and I cannot comprehend it. I am not one to invoke pop theology, but since TO has brought it up: What would Jesus do?

I have no idea. But I would like to think that He would have a greater sense of perspective and that He would comport Himself with a lot more dignity than Owen and Rosenhaus have displayed thus far.

PROFESSIONAL TENNIS IS SUCH BULLSHIT- The US Open, will crank up here in about a month. I don't know if you have seen it yet, but the USTA has given nicknames to some of the players in its advertising. Really. Roger Federer is called "The Boss." Justine Henin-Hardenne they refer to as "The Comeback Kid." Andy Roddick is "The Rocket" and Venus Williams is "The Goddess." You can see for yourself at http://usopenseries/news/fullstory.sps?inewsid=194928 .

Why would the USTA adopt the subtle elegance of Pro Wrestling to hype its product?

Because nobody watches tennis anymore. At least not the men. The women are more interesting. They are , for the most part, easy on the eyes. Which I know should be an irrelevant consideration, but hey, I'm a guy. And the women all hate each other. This adds an aura of bitchiness that you just don't get with the guys.

Besides, the men are just boring. They, for the most part, rarely stray too far from the baseline. Assuming that the point gets past the first serve that is. The only serve and volleyers left are Great Britain's Tim Henman and USA's Taylor Dent whose main claim to fame is getting his ass kicked by Andre's 4 year old in that commercial. The rest of them approach the net as if it is radioactive. Where's the excitement in that?

I mean, I will watch the US Open because I used to be a player and I know how hard it is to play tennis at a certain level. That, and I know for a fact that Roger Federer may be the best player ever even if he is allergic to play at the net. And so, I will watch.

But there is no reason to make a BFD out of changing the color of the courts from green to blue. There's no reason to give the players these stupid nicknames (and by the way, there is only one Rocket and his last name is Laver) and there is no reason in this day and age why the women don't play 3 out of 5 just like the men.

No reason other than the fact that tennis is just bullshit. And that nobody much watches anymore.

HOCKEY IS BACK!-Who cares?

BERNARD HOPKINS-Just shut the hell up. What is it about you guys from Philly anyway?

And this are my random thoughts delivered while my stomach sounds for all the world like a flooded out Evinrude.

Dispatches from the Field

My friend Steve asked me to pick up his mail last week while he took the wife and kids to St. Louis for the family vacation. While I certainly don't pry, it is always interesting to see what other folks get in their mail. I'm sure that when Steve gets my mail for me, he can't help but see all of the returned checks, threatening letters from attorneys as well as the various items of correspondence from various state and local taxing authorities.

I am quite often badly misunderstood. It is an awesome responsibility being me.

Similarly speaking, I couldn't help but notice the stuff Steve gets. Indeed, I found the experience so fascinating I could not resist "text-messaging" him about it.

"You get more bills than even I do." I wrote.

A few minutes later came the reply across the ether, all the way from Six Flags over St. Louis or some place equally dreadful.

"I have four more kids than you do. Please don't bother me again unless the house is on fire."

He also gets one more copy of the "Arkansas Catholic" than I do, so I took the liberty of reading last week's edition. Evidently, there wasn't much of any import going on in the One True Church. At least not here in the Diocese of Little Rock. There was a nice article from Catholic News Service about how the new Pope is cooling his jets at the Papal villa in the Swiss Alps. The reporter quoted someone as saying that he was heard playing Mozart on the piano. Some guys really know how to let their hair down when they are off the clock. There was a weird little piece about the need to maintain reverence during Epiclesis.

For you Protestants out there, this is the moment in the Mass wherein the priest asks God to sanctify the gifts of bread and wine by sending down the Holy Spirit. I'm willing to bet that if you typed the word "Epiclesis" into a search engine, you would find all kinds of crazy articles and websites devoted to the subject. This is one of the reasons I love Catholicism. Five tool crackpot stuff like this abounds among the faithful. Finally, there was a thoroughly pleasant essay by the Bishop upon his memories of summer as a kid growing up in Memphis.

I confess that I was somewhat disappointed to see no red hot flaming letters to the Editor about gay marriages or the ordination of gays to the ministry in the Arkansas Catholic. To read the Arkansas Methodist you would think that this is about all us Methodists have on the brain anymore. What the hell kind of church newspaper wastes newsprint on the doctrine of Epiclesis when there are larger issues like eliminating social concerns and the "homosexual agenda" to obsess about?

I felt the phone buzz again while I was still yet engrossed in my ecumenical pursuits. It was my buddy D checking in from North Carolina.

" My first ex-wife just called and said she's leaving town Wednesday, so I just got in touch with my second ex-wife and arranged for her to take care of my youngest daughter until I can get back in town next week. " he wrote.

And what is he doing in North Carolina that is keeping him so damn busy that he is required to put in a call to the former spouse bullpen in order to relieve the starter, as it were? He is preparing to take the bar exam there. And why would an otherwise sensible man in a responsible position in a prestigious law firm in California and already armed already with three law licenses be sitting for the North Carolina bar?

To ask the question is to answer it. He is in love. To make a long story short, he saw C again for the first time in years at their college reunion. Zing went the strings of their hearts. And thus began their bi-coastal relationship. She has a young son in the home and cannot move. D's youngest is headed off to college in the fall. Hence, the plan to head east to the land of pine trees and big time college basketball.

I think this is utter madness and have made my position abundantly clear. I see no need for this foolishness especially when it ain't like there is a shortage of available women in Southern California. Besides, Me, I wouldn't take another bar exam for Sela Ward. This consideration has become even more acute since I am recent friends with a woman who is, even as I type this, slaving away at the law school preparing to sit for the Arkansas bar exam next week. And to think JL forsook the honorable and useful teaching profession for the wholesale agony of the bar exam. An involuntary shudder crawls up my spine anytime I look at her bar review books. It is indeed testimony to what a great gal she is as being around her is bringing back perfectly horrible memories.

Similarly speaking, honesty compels me to admit that C must be one hell of a gal to inspire such misery. I look forward to meeting her. And I hope she doesn't have any eligible sisters that are as obviously spellbinding as is she as I am not a particularly strong man nowadays.

And so, my sensible advice about all of this remains completely disregarded. They are a couple of crazy goddamn kids in love. There is nothing more that I can do.

Except to write back, " I'm certain that your future ex-wife would help if she could."


Steve came safely back last night and came by to get his stuff. I recognized on him the same poleaxed expression that my father used to wear after a week in the car with his four kids. JL is grimly beavering away at her notes and index cards. D is trying to remember what the hell arcane phrases like "the expectation is subsumed in the reliance" and other stuff equally not germane to an environmental defense practice actually means. Still, I have all the faith in the world that they will do just fine next week.

And that they too, like my buddy Steve, will all come safely back.

After Steve left, I got a reply from D to my earlier missive. It was succinct but it was not fit to relate in this space, devoted as it is to a general audience, as they say in the movie business.

I am quite often badly misunderstood. It is an awesome responsibility being me.

Sula vs. THE HURRICANE

I suppose that every now and again it does a person a bit of good to survive an act of craziness. As for me it has been a long time since I did anything crazy. And most of my brushes with bad craziness generally involved people wearing short skirts and high heels. But I'm not talking about that. And I'm not talking about other examples of forms of bad craziness such as reposing trust in e-mails from ersatz Ethiopian bankers asking for your bank account information or joining the Scientologists (or the Christian Scientists for that matter). No.

I'm talking about willingly doing something that could stand you a reasonable chance of getting yourself killed. Or worse. Like pumping gas while smoking a cigarette. Going up on the roof to mess with the satellite dish during an electrical storm. Standing between David Wells and an umpire. Stuff like that.

My friend Sula is an unlikely candidate for "Crazy Person of the Year" award. Sula on the one hand is the very model of the buttoned down kind of person that gravitates toward the practice of real estate law whose idea of an interesting day is to form condo associations and/or rifling through musty records in county courthouses. All the while racking up big honking fees for the title company where she works in Destin.

So you can understand my concern when Sula called to tell me that she was going to ride out the arrival of Hurricane Dennis instead of getting the hell out of Dodge, a course of action that I gently suggested a more prudent person might well be advised to take. Nope. She was bound and determined and could not be otherwise persuaded. After all, as she wrote in the blog (http://gulfbreezecourt.blogspot.com )that she maintained while the electricity stayed on during this adventure, "I'm...fairly adventurous, and am an able handy person who will take risks."

Well...just so long as she didn't have a stupid reason for taking on 150 mph winds.

But you know? If you think about it, this is not of unheard of down here in the South. History's immortal scroll is replete with instances where Southern women took on equally daunting tasks against insurmountable odds and prevailed. A couple of quick ones come to mind. It took fully six weeks of siege from his gunboats in the Mississippi before Ulysses S. Grant forced Vicksburg to surrender. This is in no small part due to the indomitable will of the women of Vicksburg who never gave in despite some of them being reduced to in caves and dugouts during the worst of it. Another example is the women of Little Rock during the integration crisis of the fifties who decided that keeping the public schools open was simply too important to be left up to the men. It is no exaggeration to say that probably 40%, if not more, of the social progress that has been achieved in these parts probably had its origins in the parlors of halfway dotty Episcopalian or Presbyterian broads who,when confronted with overwhelming crises, simply folded their hands in their laps and said, "Now this just won't do."

And perhaps the issue was similarly no more complicated for my dear Sula who, maybe looked around at her home and her stuff and said, "Now this just won't do."

Maybe Sula isn't crazy. She is, after all, an able handy Southern woman.

In retrospect, Dennis never had half a chance.

The Human Torch

I was driving through Hattiesburg the other day when I remembered a girl from Mississippi. Once upon a time, years and years ago, I was once crazy in love with a girl that was born in Hattiesburg. Now, it struck me as passing strange that I would think of her at that particular moment. After all, I was staying in Jackson where she has lived for 30 years and which is where we met. And yet, I didn't give her the first passing thought until I got out on Highway 49.

It's funny how we remember old flames. There is just no telling.

When I think of her, I remember her red hair, her green eyes and a deep voice, deeper than mine, that came from somewhere in her long, skinny body. She used to tell me that she yearned for me when we were apart. Really she did. Only it sounded like "yunned"when she said it.

I can safely say without hesitation or fear of contradiction that no woman has "yunned" for me before or since.

Of course, this reverie on Highway 49 did not pass by the many detours and obstacles along the way. There is no good way to get to Jackson from here. And despite her being as fit as a horse, she managed to rupture a disk in her back while mopping the kitchen floor, which made riding in a car uncomfortable. She had two young daughters, a deadbeat ex whom she was constantly haling into court and she wanted to go to graduate school.

That's a lot to unpack from 256 miles away. The timing could not have been worse. It could not work.

But I chose not to dwell on any of that. I vastly preferred remembering that a beautiful woman from Mississippi once yearned for me.

Werner Heisenberg would understand this completely. Surely you remember Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle which posits that the findings of the experimenter cannot be completely accurate for the reason that by virtue of conducting the experiment, the observer becomes part of the observed system. In other words, participating in a system necessarily colors one's perspective. Insert the word "relationship"for the word "system" and Werner Heisenberg prefigures Dr. Laura in history.

I once took a deposition in a sexual harassment case. The plaintiff worked with a man with whom she fell in love. They got engaged. It didn't work out and she broke it off. The ex still carried a torch for her and made numerous overtures to her in an attempt to win her back. She admitted that she went back with him but stated that she broke it off again after a couple of months.

The problem with carrying a torch is that sometimes you have to play with fire in the process.

She claims that he persisted in trying to hug her and kiss her after she broke it off for good. She claims that he called her house and that he pestered her in the halls. She is lovely, intelligent, articulate and believable. My client's guy, the ex, swears up and down that he left her alone after the second breakup. He is handsome, intelligent, articulate and believable. There are no witnesses to the acts complained of, which is not unusual in these matters.

So who is telling the truth and who is lying? Or are they both telling "truths" as whispered to them by their memories? Memories that are necessarily colored by their prior relationship if not their current relationships as well? Think of other "women scorned" of recent notoriety. Think of Anita Hill. Think of Paula Jones, if you must. Who was telling the truth? Who was lying?

The old country lawyer says, "Everybody lies a little bit." The problem is, everybody also tells the truth a little bit.

None of which would trouble Dr. Heisenberg in the least. What's good for describing quantum physics is equally good for describing failed relationships. The observer becomes part of the system.

Which is why I prefer to let my mind linger over the memory of a certain girl from Hattiesburg instead of remembering what a goddamned fool idea it was in the first place.

It is funny how we remember old flames. There is just no telling.

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The "Do Run Run"

Isn't this a pretty house? It is in Lake Providence, Louisiana which is an otherwise wretched little town not too far from the Arkansas state line. I was thinking of Jennifer Willbanks the other night and these ruminations brought back memories of this stately old home. You may be asking, "What in God's name does an old house in East Carroll Parish, Louisiana got to do with the "Runaway Bride?" Bear with me. All will be revealed in the fullness of time.

By now everybody has heard about the so-called "Runaway Bride" from North Georgia who told the authorities she had been kidnapped when in reality she was merely freaked over the huge high society wedding she had planned with her fiance. As you may recall, half the town went searching for her all over when in reality she was on a Greyhound bound for Las Vegas. When she finally turned herself in and her kidnapping revealed to be the scam that it was, there was much outrage on the part of the citizens and the cops.

I have recently become friends with an exceedingly proper woman from over in those parts. She knows many of the players. She even knows the prosecutor. And being a proper Georgia girl, she went into apoplexy the other night at the mere mention of RB's name and the recent news that she has sold her story to a production company who will make it into a movie. "Why that girl's crazy." she hissed. " She's been nothing but trouble. She's been arrested a couple of times for shoplifting. Now this. It's just not right that she should profit from her wrong-doing."

And so on.

Me? I got no problem with her making a buck if she can do it. After all, this is America where one person's difficult circumstances is another's "reality show." And I can kinda see RB's point about the wedding Nothing brings out the serious weirdness like a High Society wedding in the South. Granted, she ought not to have troubled the FBI and all with her personal problems. ( Parenthetically, I loved what the female FBI agent told RB when her story started falling apart: " We can't start a federal investigation just because you have cold feet, Jennifer." Hear, Hear!) But getting back to the nuptials, I have been in a bunch of these affairs and I could have told RB that she would have been better off to take the money it would have cost to put the damn thing on and to elope.

The following are TRUE STORIES from some of the weddings I have been in:

My first HS wedding was a Baptist affair I was singing for over at the old Immanuel Baptist Church here in Little Rock. The father of the groom was a local politician and the bride was some doctor's daughter. About an hour before the actual service began, the groom, who I knew a little, came up to me.

" Ummmm, about how long do you think it will take you to get through the Lord's Prayer?" he asked.

" I dunno. You were there last night at the rehearsal. Why?"

" Well, could you maybe speed it up? The less time we are all up there standing together, the better."

" I'm not sure I follow you."

He fidgeted and rubbed his forehead. " After the rehearsal dinner, we all went back to the hotel where we all stated drinking. And we all got pretty drunk I have to say."

" Okay?"

" C (the bride) was tired and went to her room."

" Okay? What's that got to do with the music? Do we need to speed it up because she is not feeling well?"

" No, we need to speed it up because I f_ _ _ _ _ the Maid of Honor. Who is all pissed off at me now. And the less time those two spend standing next to each other the better."

I went and told the organist that we needed to do the presto version of the "Lord's Prayer" before eyes were clawed out and bouquets were hurled.

He just shrugged his shoulders. "Something like this always happens at one of these big deals. People just go nuts." he said. "Either that or the groom makes a pass at me."

I never saw any of the wedding party again. The last I heard, the Bride and Groom got divorced and he and the Maid of Honor got married in Houston where they have lived happily ever after.

So some good did come out of this.

The second really big HS wedding I was in was a grand affair between a couple of my law school classmates in Birmingham, Alabama. The bride came from the toast of Birmingham society. Her father was a prominent physician in addition to having a considerable reputation as a rake. Her mother was a southern fried version of a woman straight out of Eugene O'Neill or Edward Albee depending on how much vodka she had in her. The groom's parents were Ozzie and Harriet by comparison.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once made the famous observation that the rich are different than you and I. I don't think that Fitzgerald had ever encountered Birmingham society. Otherwise, he might have said that the rich are more useless and relentlessly supercilious than you and I. Never had I been surrounded by more completely worthless human beings and never have I since. The small talk at the numerous parties given throughout the week were mind numbingly vapid recitations about golf scores, investments, SEC football and all the women the bride's father was hitting on.

Some examples: Upon identifying myself as being from Arkansas to one lady she said, "They fought. They fought."

Upon telling one gentleman that I was an attorney, said, "You work. How unfortunate." This same gallant bastard went on to tell me that he had plea and arraignment coming up on a DUI case in which he had run a police roadblock. Which I am certain amused the Birmingham cops to no end at the time.

" I told the officers that due to the bursitis in my shoulder I was not able to cut the wheel quickly enough." he said with a straight face. They are wrongfully insisting that I was drunk despite the fact that I told them about my bursitis. I intend to take this up with the judge and I will have some badges before this is over."

Finally, after the brunch before the wedding, it came time to clear the tables. A large epicene man who taught art at a local high school was in charge of the decorations. He enlisted the help of some matronly types in removing the orchids that festooned each table. He flitted about crying, "Quickly, quickly! Remove the orchids before the nigras get them."

All of these things I saw and heard in Birmingham, Alabama. Just for fun, repeat these quotes in your most ridiculous southern accent, preferably after consuming 3 glasses of Rebel Yell. That should give you the flavor of it.

Finally, let us turn to the house at the top of the page. The reason this house figures so prominently in my personal history is that the last really decent fistfight I ever got myself into was within the confines of its stately walls. During guess what? A reception after the rehearsal dinner at a HS wedding in Lake Providence.

Let me provide some background. Another one of my law school buddies was marrying a girl who was nominally from Lake Providence. I say nominally because K was packed off to boarding school about the time she started eating solid food. My buddy S came from a working class Polish family out in Scranton or something. He was serving in Army Jag in Ft. Dix, NJ at the time and this would be where he and K would make their home. This went over big with some of the bride's family as you might imagine. As also did the initial decision of the groom's party (all in the JAG Corps) to wear their dress blues in the wedding. The groom quickly realized that their waltzing into the church wearing the uniform of the Army of the Invader might evoke certain unpleasant memories, especially in the elderly in attendance, and they drove to Monroe to rent tuxedos.

So tensions were high by the time I got down there from Little Rock and C, another classmate, got up there from Thibodeaux.

Let us cut to the chase. After the rehearsal dinner, we all went to a reception at the house in the picture. After drinks were served, toasts were made and eventually it came time for the poems written by the bridesmaids. It is SOP in southern weddings for the bridesmaids to recite poems written by them for the occasion usually commemorating events known only to them or to family. As I did not expect any of this insipid doggerel to make me forget Wallace Stevens, I felt that my time was more wisely spent in the back catching up on news with C. And this is where the trouble started.

I immediately was set upon by one of the bride's family, a med student who accused me of " not taking our traditions down here serious enough" thereby causing he and his family great offense.

" You got to be f_ _ _ _ _ _ kidding me!" I explained, trying to be helpful. Whereupon he attempted to perform neurosurgery on me with a beer bottle.

Naturally C, being both Cajun and drunk, pulled me off so that he could take a crack at him. After all, fistfights are to wedding receptions in Acadiana as goofyass poetry is to receptions in the rest of the South. Not much came of it as the altercation was quickly put down by cooler heads. And after an exchange of a few more high words, we took our leave. But not before stealing a cooler of beer that was foolishly left unguarded on the porch.

This was many years ago. We have all settled into our lives and careers. In fact, rumor has it that C is on the short list to be a federal judge down there.

I spoke to him on the phone not too long ago.

" You think that the FBI will ever find out about that night in Lake Providence when they do the background investigation?" he asked.

" They will if they ask me." I said, trying as usual to be helpful.

My friend from Georgia, who incidentally just returned herself from a big wedding in Atlanta in which a makeup artist was flown in from New York for the bride and her attendants conceded that it was all a bit much. (The only other useful information I have gleaned about the event was that the bride was fortified at all times by Bloody Marys and valium.)

"But you know what?", she said. "If that boy goes ahead and marries the Runaway Bride, he's even crazier than her. After all, life doesn't often give you such a good 'head's up' that you are marrying a nut."

So maybe he will have an attack of sense and we will have a "Runaway Groom."

Hope he gets a good deal on the movie rights!

The Strange Man Walks, the Rich Old Guy Doesn't and Wally Gets It All Wrong

Today we go straightaway to the criminal justice system wherein you can find all the action you want from the sports and entertainment world.

Let us begin with the BIGGEST STORY IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE which is the acquittal of Michael Jackson. We at TMFW don't really have much to say about this except that we are reminded of what some wag said when OJ Simpson was acquitted: "The prosecution worked really hard to frame a guilty man." I mean, of course, he's guilty. One doesn't share a bed with another warm body over 300 times without having sex.

Without being married,that is. But I digress.

They proved beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt that Michael Jackson is a sexual deviant, a semi-retard and a consummate strange ranger. The strategic advantage the One-Gloved One had over law enforcement was that he wasn't charged with any of that.

People will say that the outcome here is more proof that the jury system doesn't work. We at TMFW say it is proof that it does. When the prosecution comes in with a half assed case where its star witnesses are impeached to a fair-the-well and revealed to be a bunch of whack jobs and grifters, the defendant ought to walk. Even one as repellent and obviously guilty as Michael Jackson.

They proved Michael Jackson is a nut and a creep. The people of Los Angeles County should be grateful to the prosecution for spending millions of dollars to prove the self-evident. As Norm McDonald said years ago upon the divorce of Wacko and Lisa Marie Presley, " I guess being married to a homosexual child molester was just not what it was cracked up to be."

At least Elvis was spared this circus.

But enough about Neverland and the strange ranger that lives there. Let is turn instead to an offense which is near and dear to all of us who follow college sports: Dirty Recruiting. Wealthy businessman and Alabama booster Logan Young was recently sentenced in federal court in Memphis to 6 months imprisonment, which is to be followed by home detention and restitution. This was after he had bribed a Memphis high school coach to deliver local high school football phenom Albert Means to the Crimson Tide. I vividly remember the comments of an assistant coach for Oklahoma (whose name escapes me) who was in town to attend a local banquet. When asked what he thought about the then-breaking scandal he was quoted as saying, "150,000 bucks? For just one guy?"

In any event, the sentencing of Mr. Young, who was described in his June 15 disquisition of this subject as "friends with two of my buddies", drew the peripatetic gaze of Wally Hall, the sports "editor" of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette who decried the fact that a 64 year old man was going to prison for such a trifling matter. Wally should have left it at that. But no, he felt compelled to turn this case into the second coming of the Rosenberg Trial.

Wally wrote, " Young should not have been in federal court. Period." and "Apparently, Young gave [the coach] $ 150,000 to make sure Means signed with Alabama five years ago. How is that a federal crime?"

Well, we at TMFW will explain just how Mr. Young found himself in front of a jury of his peers over his participation in the dirty arm's race that is recruiting in SEC football.

First let us examine Wally's contention that Young was "found guilty of bribing a public official, which is a federal offense." Wally is correct. The crime of Public Servant bribery is indeed a violation of the United States Criminal Code. Ask Edwin Edwards. He knows.

Only Young wasn't convicted of that. Hell, he wasn't even charged with that.

The following is a TRUE STORY which might help illustrate the mysterious ways of how federal criminal jurisdiction happened to reach this latest example of the old "hundred dollar handshake" which is the mother's milk of Division I sports in these parts.

I was once visiting a lawyer buddy of mine in his office in Jackson, MS. He had just got off the phone with an Assistant United States Attorney concerning a sentencing date for his client.

" What's he pleading out to?" I asked.

" Rape." Hugh replied.

" Since when is rape a federal offense?"

" When you do it on an Indian Reservation."

The lesson? Federal Jurisdiction often depends on where you commit the crime, whether you used the telephone, put it in the mail or if you crossed a state line to commit the offense. Even if the crime is not a federal offense.

Basically the underlying charge for which Logan Young was indicted was of crossing a state line to commit a crime, namely breaking state bribery laws. Is that a slender reed upon which to make a federal case? Hell, yes it is. Which is why his defense team filed a Motion to Dismiss. The Court denied it citing Tennessee case law on bribing public officials which it felt would cover the offense of bribing a coach to induce a kid to play football at a particular crime. As the court stated, reference to a violation of state law is necessary only to identify the type of unlawful activity the defendant intended to engage. After that ruling came down, Young "had hisself a problem" as the old-timer defense lawyers say.

Or as my friend Don, who used to represent white collar criminal types back in Alabama, is fond of saying, "State lines are troublesome things."

You get the idea.

He was also indicted for conspiracy to commit racketeering and structuring bank withdrawals to avoid detection through the law requiring banks to report withdrawals over 10 grand to the Treasury. This is known as "stacking charges." And it goes on every day Grand Juries meet in courthouses throughout the land. Ask Jim Guy Tucker.

But he wasn't convicted of bribery. Wally was absolutely 100% flat-assed wrong on that one. One thing about stuff that's on the public record? It can be looked up. From your computer.

But what do I know? Maybe it's just easier to make stuff up.

I also have no idea how Young found himself in the cross-hairs of the FBI. Rumor has it Tennessee's Phil Fulmer snitched him off. Perhaps he made the mistake of dealing with someone who was already the subject of an investigation or who had bragged to someone who was who came forward with this tidbit in exchange for his own freedom. Who knows? The criminal justice world is a dark and evil place. Tassel-loafered good old boys like Young need to leave crime up to the professionals. They are better at it.

Young is free pending appeal. Maybe Wally and his buddies can console him with dinner at Corky's. It might be easier, all things considered to have this pity-party over at the one over in Memphis. He just might not be able to leave Tennessee without Court approval.

Back to the Toy Store

It has been a hectic 10 days here at TMFW. Quite frankly, I am tired. So let's do something simple just to get something up here and let people know that I am still alive.

So, let's return to the Toy Store! Let's bitch about sports!

1) The NBA! As many of you may know, the NBA Finals are upon us. Which means that the conspiracy theorists that follow the sport, and their name is Legion, will be on the 'Net and the talk shows claiming that the games are fixed, pretty much by the edict of NBA commissioner David Stern.

The most recent example of this thinking comes from the irrepressible Rasheed Wallace of the Detroit Pistons, who after they lost game 5 in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Miami Heat claimed, "They (the league) wants there to be a Game 7." This extemporaneous opinion cost Rasheed $20,000.

Forget Rasheed. He is a lunatic. And lest you think TMFW be hatin' on Rasheed, let us examine the record. He set the NBA record for ejections from games when he was with that roving jail break known as the Portland TrailBlazers. This should come as no surprise when you consider that 'Sheed may be the only player to have ever gotten tossed in McDonald's All-American game when in high school for Christ's sake. You could look it up. Indeed, an NBA scout once said of Rasheed, "Portland's biggest problem is that Rasheed Wallace isn't their biggest problem." Whoa! So let's forget Rasheed.

One of the reasons that conspiracy buffs find it easy to believe that games can be fixed is that, well, basketball is one of the few team sports in the modern era where games have indeed been fixed. You had the scandal at CCNY in the early fifties. Former NBA superstar Connie Hawkins took money from gamblers while in college. More recently gamblers got to players at Boston College and Tulane in the eighties. (As an aside, despite being bribed to shave points, Tulane's Green Wave always played it straight against Louisville because they hated them so much. Ya gotta love those idealistic college kids.) And Eddie Sutton, back when his paranoia was in full flower at Arkansas and Kentucky, would sometimes refer reporters to the power ratings and the point spread in the newspaper after a close loss as proof that the game was rigged from the opening tip.

Look, the common denominator in all of these scandals is criminal activity. It would not surprise me at all if the NBA would like each series to go the full seven games to milk the maximum advertising revenue out the event. But if you actually believe that David Stern could possibly orchestrate a conspiracy between the league and the refs to favor one team over another and to keep it a secret, well, you need to stick with Intelligent Design, the Homosexual Agenda and the DaVinci Code. You would be better off and your time would be better spent. Conspiracy theories thrive in the Petri dish of the unprovable. Thinking that the NBA is fixed is just stupid.

2) Wally! On June 7, Wally Hall wrote a typical discursive ( the unkind might say rambling and incoherent) piece in which he opined that Susie Gardner, the coach of the women's basketball team at Arkansas, might be in Frank Broyles' cross-hairs after a couple of mediocre seasons. On June 8, he was back pedalling at warp speed.

In a piece entitled " Observation of power not meant to be offensive", Wally wrote that his suggestion that Frank Broyles is running the Athletic Department up there was not meant to be a knock on Bev Lewis who is the Women's AD. He even apologized in print to her for suggesting that she would allow Broyles would to intrude upon her turf.

What has Wally been smokin'? Frank Broyles is practically omnipotent. He could have Mike Huckabee fired if he wanted to. But Broyles is nothing if not politic.

Here is how it would work:

Rinnnnnng!

" Bev Lewis."

" Bev, this heah is Frank. I want you to fiyuh Susie. Call yah press conference at 2 this aftuhnoon. I'll be on a flight to Augusta by then."

" Ok. Cool. Who do you want me to replace her with?"

" I'll have to get back to you. Aftuh all that shit with Nolan, the lawyuhs say it needs to be a black woman who is over 40. Meanwhile, I gotta call in to Pat Fostah. Bye now, heah?"

But is really interesting is the first sentence of the piece wherein Wally writes, " As soon as I read it, I knew it hadn't worked."

Didn't work? I thought journalism was supposed to be fair, accurate, thought-provoking even incendiary. It's not suppose to work. And if he knew it didn't work as soon as he read it WHY RUN THE PIECE?

This is just another example of what we at TMFW have always maintained about Wally: that he pretty much writes the first thing that flies into his head which for some reason is allowed to grace the front page of the sports section of the State's largest paper without having been first scrutinized by an actual journalist-editor.

We do not know this, but we suspect that somebody up on the Hill called and bitched and Wally retracted so as to not offend.

God forbid we ever do that on the sports page. Especially in a column entitled "Like it Is."

Fade

Mother started talking crazy about a week ago. The folks at the assisted living facility said she was getting lost inside the building. She had forgotten how to use dining utensils. She was talking about her husband, dead and gone these many years as if he were still alive.

Not good. Not good at all.

My brother the nurse took her to her local treating physician on Monday. He ordered lab work and a CT scan. He was asked if her meds could causing this. After all, the psychiatrist had increased the dose of her anti-depressant just the week before all of this amusement started. He told my brother that while he had an open mind, he suspected that the Parkinson's Disease had finally caused her to lapse into dementia. A call to the neurologist offered the same opinion. Her psychiatrist was on vacation and unavailable for comment until Friday.

Mother has a pretty complicated medical situation. She is pushing 84. As if the Parkinson's was not sufficiently burdensome, she also suffers from anxiety and depression. She takes at least 8 or 9 pills a day. This is the main reason she is in assisted living as she was having trouble keeping track of all the damn pills she consumes on a daily basis. Somehow I wonder how the staff at her facility keeps up with it.

Mother's precarious mental status resulted in her needing a level of care beyond what assisted living is designed to do. So, Tuesday I got her eligible for home hospice care. I arranged for a home health care aide to "backfill" around hospice. I started signing her up for nursing homes in the local area. I actually had to catch up on my work Wednesday and Thursday. And Friday I called the Reynolds Center on Aging.

For a little jerkwater town, we in Little Rock are lucky to have two first class medical facilities in Arkansas Children's Hospital and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). The Reynolds Center is on the south side of the UAMS campus. We take mother there twice a year for check-ups, mainly to keep a handle on the dementia. I called them on that Friday morning. A nurse promptly returned my call. I described what was going on and I informed that the tests run earlier in the week were all normal. She told me to bring her in that afternoon and she would be seen.

The Reynolds Center is a beautiful place. It has a light and airy feel to it. The walls are adorned by photographs and paintings-mostly depictions of rural scenes-created by Arkansas artists. God knows I am no decorator, but it seems to me that the spaces in the building are designed to impart feelings of peace and hope. As we waited for the doctor to enter the room, I thought back to our first visit there two or three years ago. As a matter of coincidence, a local lawyer friend here in town was there with her father on that day. They do not allow family members to go back on the initial evaluation. So we passed the time talking on our cell phones and poking at out PDAs. Meanwhile the respective members of "The Greatest Generation" that brought us into this life were back there in the clinic counting backwards from 100 and trying to remember the name of the President.

Eventually the doctor arrived in a swirl of white as they tend to do when they know someone has been waiting. She was an Asian woman, tiny and serious.

She took a history and examined the medical record from Mom's home.

" So, the blood work was normal?" she asked me.

" Yes, and CT was normal?"

" Yes."

" I see here some mention of her receiving injections from a son who is a nurse. Are you a nurse?"

"No. I'm a lawyer."

"Oh."

She turned to type on the computer keyboard.

" So she is lucid on the 11th when she sees the psychiatrist, he increases the Cymbalta and by the weekend she is talking crazy? Am I getting the picture?"

"Yeah. Pretty much."

She swivels and faces me. And then this serious, pretty little woman in a lab coat crossed her eyes and shrugged her shoulders as if to say " Durrrrrrrrr."

Which caused me to laugh out loud in spite of my anxiety.

She turned to Mother. "I'm going to call a friend one that knows all about these medicines. I will be right back."

She returned with a box of medicine and written orders for the folks at Mother's facility. "You are off the Cymbalta. Here is a 2 week supply of something else that I want you to take beginning Tuesday when the Cymbalta is out of your system."

She took Mother's hand again. " You are going to feel better soon. I want to see you in two weeks. And if you are not better by then we will try something else until we get this figured out."

No mention of Parkinson's related dementia or any other organic brain syndrome. No mention of anything but hope for a better day and continued assistance.

I got an e-mail from her brother last night. He said he had a good talk w/Mother. I talked to her sister the other day. Ditto. Charlsie said that she told Mother that she was lucky to have 4 good boys for sons. Mother said that she wrote our names down and put them in her purse so she wouldn't forget who we were.

I didn't have the heart to tell Aunt Charlsie that Mother has lost her purse!

Even though things are looking up, I am still going to explore nursing homes here in the area. We dodged a bullet this time. But that day will come when Mother's needs will exceed the additional help we can provide to keep her in assisted living. It's just a fact.

The Greatest Generation, the one that survived both the Depression and Hitler, is slipping away before our very eyes. I thank God for their sacrifice and for His lending me breath, as the old hymn so eloquently puts it.

And I thank God for the kind and thoughtful people at the Reynolds Center for providing care and comfort to The Greatest Generation as it inevitably recedes into history and eternity.

Patriot Act

Wally Hall, the inimitable "editor" of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's sports page, is given to occasionally overwrought, if not completely maudlin prose under the best conditions. However, it is when he summons his muse in the service of meditations upon subjects other than Razorback athletics or kissing up to Charles Cella that he really loses his bearings. A primo example of Wally at his most incoherent bathetic self is found in this Sunday's sports page wherein he waves the bloody shirt in attempt to honor the service of athletes who have served our country in her foreign wars. Here are today's gems.

Upon the lesson of history: " During World War II, 638 men who had played in the NFL served in the military, and 19 died. All of them were about the same thing as Pat Tillman, patriotism." How does Wally know that each and every one of them "were about the same thing, patriotism?" Also, before invoking their son's name, maybe he should have interviewed Pat Tillman's parents about how happy they are with the way the Army handled the news that their son was tragically killed by "friendly fire."

Upon the impact a two-year hitch Army hitch had on the career of Willie Mays: " Mays finished his career with 660 home runs, but if he had played those two years when he was in his prime and hit his career average of four-baggers, he would have had 720 and been second on the all time list, trailing only Hank Aaron." 720? No more? No less? This is the kind of extrapolating that got the wiseguys at Enron in so much hot water.

Upon making stuff up: " Yes, there were thousands more (athletes who served), and many of the former athletes who served were drafted, but remember, none of them went to Canada." None? Not a single discus thrower or wrestler said, "Screw this. I'm outta here?" Nobody? How the hell does he know? I don't know if any athletes went to Canada to avoid military service or not. And more importantly, neither does Wally. But I do know a rather prominent athlete in the Viet-Nam era who went to prison rather than serve in the military. His name was Cassius Clay who later became the fighter and icon known as Muhammed Ali. History is full of inconvenient facts like this. This is why it should be consulted before putting out blanket statements of "fact" in an attempt to justify a point.

Look, we at TMFW think it is a good thing to always honor those who served and continue to serve our country in harm's way. Two of my best friends just came back from Iraq. I am humbled and honored by their service and I thank God that they have been returned to their homes, families and friends. And the point is well made that the sacrifice that Tillman made was extraordinary in an era when basketball players can't be bothered to play in the Olympics and tennis players blow off Davis Cup.

A coherent and thought-provoking piece along these lines would have been ideal for Memorial Day. It's too bad that nobody that could actually write provided us with one.

Location, Location, Location

I was sitting in the waiting room at the doctor's office idly flipping through one of those local real estate flyers where all of the homes on the market around here are listed. For some reason my eye was drawn to an ad entitled "Foreclosures! Bank Owned Properties!" And there on that page was a red brick ranch style home set off from the street.

It was described thusly: " 5 bedroom, 2 bath home on 5 acres. Conveniently located across from an elementary school with room for everybody!"

Shit. I grew up in that house.

My boyhood home got took back by the bank!

I have no idea about the circumstances surrounding the fact that Mother's house is now on the auction block other than the obvious fact that the lady I sold it to didn't or couldn't keep up the payments for some reason. Mother would be horrified by this turn of events. But then again, she has always had a semi-morbid penchant for infusing excessive significance into places and things. As for me, I am able to look at this with the sense of bemused detachment with which I regard most events in life's rich pageantry. Bemused detachment works for me. It would also tend to explain my marital status.

But to be fair to Mother, she is not exactly the Lone Ranger in this regard. A friend of mine in the real estate game says that sometimes you can get "a house in your head." And to be completely unfair to the noble profession of realtoring, this is how they separate you from your money. But I digress.

Here is a True Story.

One day, I went out on the porch and discovered the man who sold me my house sitting on the swing that was formerly owned by him. It was around 2 in the afternoon. He was drunk. Being the intuitive sort of person that I am I immediately sensed that SOMETHING WAS WRONG. I sat in the rocking chair across from him.

" Is it ok if I sit here a minute?" he asked.

" Sure." I replied. "Ummm. What's up with you?"

" Well, things haven't gone too good for me in the last couple of years. Vicki and I bought that house in Leawood so her mother could move in with us. About halfway through remodeling, she decides she wants a divorce. And then the software firm I worked for went under and I lost my job. Took me almost a year to find work. And all I could find was a sales job for a business that sells rubber stamps. "

" God, Jimmy. That's awful. I don't know what to say."

" Ain't nothing you can say."

" Well, why are you here?"

" I'll tell you the truth. I come by here at night sometimes. I climb up on the fence in back and look in the backyard. Today, I was walking by and just thought I would sit here for a minute. I figured you wouldn't mind."

"Okaaaaaaaaay.......Why are you doing this?"

" Vicki and I lived in this house for 22 years. Now in a year's time I am out on my ass, she's getting remarried and I'm living in a goddamn apartment. I just wanted to come and spend a minute at the last place I was happy."

He began to cry.

"Sure." I said. "You sit there for as long as you want."

We both rocked in silence for about 15 minutes.

" Can I have a beer?" he asked.

"I don't believe you need anymore beer, Jimmy." I said.

" Then I guess I'll head out."

We shook hands and he walked away. I never saw him again.

Jimmy sold me the only house I have ever owned. I like where I live. I've sometimes thought about selling but where else would I go? I've thought about adding rooms but I'm the only one that lives here and that looks like it will never change. What would be the point?

I am on my front porch as I type this. It is a beautiful spring day. One of my neighbors is planting flowers in her yard with the alleged assistance of her daughter. I just got off the phone with a buddy that wants to play golf on the neighborhood goat track this afternoon. The breeze blowing in from the West is cool and inviting. A stunning redhead unfolds out of a convertible T-Bird to go into the antique store across the street. She waves and says " What a great day, huh?"

Note to self: Cultivate an interest in antiques.

Note# 2 to self: Forget first note to self. This is how the troubles always start.

Some day I will leave here. And I will always have happy memories of my time here. But unlike my mother or Jimmy I will never have a "house in my head." Change is inevitable. The trick is to not believe for one minute that your happiness is tied to places or things. Or other people for that matter. Because then you start taking it all for granted.

But it is a beautiful spring day. And I am on the front porch of a little house that I love.

And that is enough for now. That is enough for now.

Ain't Gonna Drown in the Gene Pool

If it is true that biology is destiny we are completely screwed, blued and tattooed. Our grandfather died at 56. Father died at 53. Both were the victims of massive coronaries. So, if a crude mathematical progression (or regression as it were) is any barometer of our lifespan we are scheduled to buy the farm at around 50. Which is annoys us considerably given the fact that we are are about 5 months from achieving that distinction.

We don't particularly dwell on the fact that we caught a lousy break in the genetics department. But it is evident that our internist does as our yearly physical-which we were forced to endure last week- becomes significantly more arduous the closer we get to the mid-century mark.

We spent the first thirty minutes in his office going over our history. Our doctor, an intense and owlish man, asked us exceedingly personal questions concerning our daily habits which we felt were none of his concern. We consider our use of the crack pipe to be quite moderate in its breadth and scope. And we did not feel led to confess the recreational sex we had with those hookers during our vacation to Zaire. When it comes to the doctor-patient relationship, we still believe in a zone of privacy.

We then moved on to the examination itself during which every square inch of anatomy was poked, pulled, thumped and listened to for approximately an hour. We were ordered to give urine samples in 2 different labs. And believe us, we were in the Doctor's building long enough to accomplish this feat. An EEG was administered. Possessing a manly chest is its own reward when it comes to applying and removing electrodes. 5-count 'em-5 vials of blood were extracted from our left arm. Finally, 2 x-rays were taken of said manly chest. 2 hours later, we were finally discharged into the Arkansas sunshine.

Again, we try not to dwell on these things. We don't much believe that we will punch our ticket at 50. We don't smoke cigarettes which was the drug of choice of our progenitors. We have managed to pretty much keep our girlish figure over the years through a fairly sensible diet and vigorous exercise. We probably enjoy our martinis more than we need to. But everybody needs a hobby. We don't have certain stressors that a lot of other people have. We don't have a bad marriage. Hell, we don't have any marriage. We have been blessed to be gainfully employed through out our adult life. We are under the medical supervision of a talented and caring physician who seems to have taken it as a personal challenge to drag us through the fifth decade of life. Finally, we are fortunate to have adequate insurance which gives us the means to do the preventive care that may keep us from having to cash the genetic check given to us by our forebears.

But sometimes, in the stillness of the morning, we wonder. It is said that we know not the day our the hour when our souls will be required of us. And we know that some day, maybe sooner than later, we will be told some news that we don't want to hear.

Still, so far so good. Everyday we wake up to a new sunrise. The heart in our chest is still banging away even though in the past couple of months it has seen way too much action (to steal a line from Joe Jackson). We have the best friends a man can possibly have. We are returning to Little League. Not to get all Paul Greenberg on you, but it is always, always, a good thing to be around little boys and baseball. Life, despite the pain and loss that occasionally attends it is, for the most part, exceedingly beautiful. And we are grateful beyond measure to be here.

And so, call us crazy if you will, we like our chances.

Still, you might want to check on us in 6 months or so. Just in case.

And so it went

We got to play Mr. Mom the other day. It was nothing that we particularly set out to do. But our neighbor across the street came over about 7:30 am with the frantic news that she was going to be stuck in a meeting after work and that she couldn't find anyone to pick up her first grader at the after school program over at the Methodist church and could we pleasepleaseplease pick up Caroline and keep her until around 7 or so?

It is our privilege to know many single Moms. The vast majority of them are resemble drill sergeants in that they are used to imposing structure upon their respective environments. Days are planned out to the most minute degree. Which is only natural when you consider that they have to work, make sure everybody gets to the soccer practice or violin lesson on time, provide meals, check homework, clean house-clothes-dishes only to start planning to do it all again for the next day. Come to think of it, the foregoing could pretty much describe all of the Moms we know, single or otherwise. The time demands are just a little more acute on the ones who don't have a helpmate-or alleged helpmate-around the house.

But even the best planners get thrown a curve every now and again. And we may not be the most intuitive person in this Zip Code but we knew from the exasperated expression on this particular Mom's stressed out face that this was not the time to drop the ball neighborwise even though we had not planned to spend our early evening with a 7 year old girl. After all, it was a measure of her desperation that she was applying to us. Petitions to terminate parental rights have been filed over less.

So,"sure" we said. "Be no problem."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she said as she ran to her car. "I'll call the church to make sure that there's no problem."

Yeah. Like physical arrest or something.

On the way home from church Caroline, uncorked the first of the zillion questions that would park themselves in her little brain during the 2 hours that she was under my care and supervision.

"Mom says you are a lawyer. What did you do today?"

We looked in the rearview mirror. How does one explain the black art of lawyering to a child of tender years?

"Wrote some papers for the judge to read."

" And will he read them?"

" Maybe."

And so it went as we sat on the porch swing.

"Does ivy have eyes?"

"No."

" Then how does it know to climb?"

About that time AngelOne passed over en route to Children's Hospital.

" How can helicopters fly without wings? Even birds have wings."

" Do you know science? This is what I know about science. There are solids, liquids and gases. Is there more?"

By and by the unseasonable cool of the evening chased us indoors. Once inside she pointed at a picture of a young woman on the mantle.

" Who's that?"

"That's Audrey. She is our goddaughter." we explained, persistent in our use of the third party voice that many readers of these ramblings find highly irritating.

"What's a goddaughter?"

" Well, in the Catholic and Episcopal Church, a godparent promises to take care of the baby in case something happens to the parents."

"What's 'piscopal?"

And so it went, this call and response from one so very young to one who can no longer make that claim. And while we have never considered ourselves to be a natural in the area of pedagogy, we felt like our liberal arts education actually came in handy for once as we answered Caroline's questions fairly accurately, seeing as how they spanned from science to theology. Our afternoon with Caroline made us feel almost useful as it is a good thing to spend time with a child. It takes a village and all that.

And yet, for some kids, an afternoon spent on a porch swing going over the reading assignment is as likely to happen as spending the afternoon on Mars. Earlier last week we received an e-mail from a friend who teaches first grade at another school in Little Rock. It said:

" I should have been a doctor and not a teacher. There is a boy in my room-his dad was killed a few years ago. His uncle was shot and killed yesterday and his sister's daddy was shot in the leg. This was yesterday also. This is what I deal with. I need more peace in the workplace."

How can a child possibly be expected to learn and develop while surrounded by so much violence? Do we expect our teachers, underpaid and stressed out as they are, to work miracles? Some people lead far different lives than our different lives than our little Caroline. She gets to cool her jets at the neighbor's house until while her mom is through with her meeting. Across town some other kid's uncle and stepfather got plugged on the same day.

And so it went last week in elementary education in Little Rock.