Vacation time

Taking a week off; see y’all later.

Will be back on July 7 … unless I melt in this heat!

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Michael Jackson

It is customary to say something nice about someone who has died.

Good luck for anyone trying this with Michael Jackson.

Too many creepy stories about child molesting. Too much freakish plastic surgery. Too many weird stunts like putting veils on his own kids.

This guy redefined strange. He pushed the boundaries so far that other celebs seemed almost normal when they went into rehab or committed a felony.

You want to hear something nice about MJ? OK; he put out a nice album 27 years ago.

Almost everything else is too pathetic to waste time over.

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Jon & Kate, Get It Straight

If you’re like some people, you can’t get enough of “John & Kate Plus 8.” You plan your day around the show. You worry endlessly over the ups and downs of this fascinating TV family.

Or maybe you have a life.

I will admit to occasionally pausing on J&K+8 while channel-grazing. But the reality behind the show is a lot more interesting than the reality show.

As most of the civilized world knows by now, Jon and Kate are getting a divorce. This would seem to put the kibosh on their little venture, but apparently the lure of money — I mean their love of family — will overcome this hurdle.

The game plan is to shuttle Jon or Kate into their Pennsylvania house for video snippets with the kiddos.

“We interview separately, we film different things,” Jon explained patiently. “Me and kids, her and the kids.”

To millions of normal people, this tag-team setup could seem a little, well, phony.

Then again, another report says Jon & Kate have been living apart for two years.

Um, that’s a long time to pretend that everything is spiffy.

I mean, I hate to split hairs, but the show’s title is “John and Kate … ” Maybe it depends on your definition of “and.” Or maybe “Jon Occasionally With Kate … ” is too wordy.

To get even weirder, if that’s possible, Jon’s girlfriend may join the show next season. So if you’re flipping through your TV Guide, you might want to look for “John & Kate Plus 8 Plus Deanna Hummel.”

That’s the gal’s name. Or if Kate has any say about the new title, it could be “John & Kate Plus 8 Plus That Homewrecker Slut.”

If the producers really want to boost the ratings, they’ll have Kate and Deanna get into a good ol’ fashioned catfight while Jon watches passively from the side and the kids scream, “Mommy, Daddy, what’s going on?”

Even I might watch all of that episode.

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Finally, some good news

The last few days have been pretty grim.

At long last, however, the bad news has been offset by one of those heartwarming, feel-good stories that brings tears of joy to even the toughest among us.

And we needed it. We’re seeing democracy crushed in Iran and craziness spinning out of control in North Korea. Swine flu won’t go away and the summer heat is getting hotter. The Astros aren’t mathematically eliminated from the division race, but that’s because it isn’t July yet.

It’s one of those periods when you struggle to get up in the morning and keep plugging away, forcing yourself to put one foot in front of the other.

But then you read something like the following news item, and it restores your faith in humanity. Your blood pressure drops and you can't get that smile off your face. You know that life is worth living and that sometimes dreams come true.

Here is the lead from a story by Reuters; it says it all:

“PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – A U.S. drone killed at least 45 Pakistani Taliban militants on Tuesday when it struck after a funeral of an insurgent commander killed earlier in the day, Pakistani intelligence officials said.”

I’m too choked up to continue; talk amongst yourselves.

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Delinquent decorations

Finally, a landlord that doesn’t fool around!

A woman in Boulder, Colo., was evicted from her apartment because she kept Easter decorations on her door for two weeks after the holiday.

If you’re like me, you’re shouting, “It’s about time! They should have tear-gassed her on the way out too!”

Incredibly, the evictee is whining that she got a raw deal. Her lawyer is even claiming religious discrimination because Easter is a Christian holiday.

I’m not buying it. She was told in plain English to take down her “display of Easter stickers, plastic grass and Peeps marshmallow candies” when the big day was over.

Yet she refused — thus making it impossible for her neighbors to occupy the same building or even sleep at night.

Outdated holiday decorations are one of the great plagues of the modern era.

We’ll never be able to tackle poverty and injustice until we stamp out things like Christmas tree lights still up in January and Halloween pumpkins lingering on the porch in November.

I mean, if you cut people some slack on this, there’s no telling what could be next!

It could lead to … to … to … well, something really bad I’m sure.

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Too tattooed

There are some places where you can’t be too careful.

Like a tattoo parlor.

And don’t take my word for it. Ask Kimberley Vlaeminck, 18, of Belgium.

Kim wanted three stars tattooed on her face. After all, millions of kids have three stars tattooed on their face. You can’t walk through a mall without seeing a galaxy of ’em.

But Kim didn’t walk out of the tattoo parlor with three stars on her face. She walked out with 56! And she’s not happy about it! (Duh!)

Kim said she fell asleep during the procedure. And when she awoke, she had 53 more stars on her face than she planned.

This raises many interesting questions. Like how can you sleep while you’re being tattooed? Doesn't it hurt like hell, especially after the first 20 or 30 stars?

And how could Kim and the inkster have been so far apart? I mean, if she wakes up with four or even five stars, hey, that’s understandable. But 56?

And how many stars can you tattoo on a face until you run out of face? I bet 56 is real close.

But don’t feel too sorry for Kim. She seems like a level-headed girl. She’s going to keep the stars on her forehead and have the rest removed.

Heck, she’ll probably look back on this little incident one day and laugh.

“Hey, did I ever tell you guys about the time I went into a tattoo parlor and ended up with 53 more stars on my face than I wanted? It’s freakin’ hilarious!”

I’m sure everyone will laugh.

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Sin city?

Move over, Las Vegas.

It sounds like Brooksville, Fla., is now the wildest spot in America. Or the most pathetic.

The city council down there had to pass a law requiring city employees to use deodorant and swear off the foul language. They also have to wear underwear — and if they do, it can’t be exposed.

Can it get crazier? Yes. The one dissenting vote on the council came from … the mayor! He said the new rules “take away freedom of choice.”

Ah, yes. He must be referring to Catch 22 of the City Charter, which allows employees to be “rude, crude or lewd” as they see fit.

Basically, this is not a good sign for ol’ Brooksville.

You don’t put this sort of thing on the Chamber of Commerce brochures, unless you have deodorant factories. You don’t change the city limit signs to say things like, “Welcome to Brooksville. Our employees now wear skivvies.”

I guess it could be worse. The proposal could have failed before the City Council, and then Brooksville would be stuck with city employees who look like bikers on a road trip.

Sort of like the city employees in (INSERT THE NAME OF YOUR LEAST FAVORITE TOWN HERE).

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To catch a thief

So what do you do with a burglar who crawls inside a storm drain and won’t come out?

Apparently, the cops never thought about one option.

The story: This guy in Los Angeles is caught trying to steal copper wire from a warehouse. When he’s being chased by the cops, he crawls into this storm drain that’s 80 feet long but only 18 inches wide.

And he wouldn’t come out.

The cops teargassed him several times, but he wouldn’t budge.

Then they rigged up a plunger of sorts and tried to smoosh him out, but he cut the rope on the thing.

I guess you could say it was one of those occasions that called for the “long arm of the law.”

At any rate, eventually he calls his girlfriend from his underground lair on his cell phone, and she calls a TV station.

“He’s 30 feet underground, and somehow he has cell coverage,” said one amazed deputy.

After a brief interview, he finally gives up and comes out.

Fascinating. But after an hour or two, I would have tried a different approach:

Securely block up both ends, put signs over them reading “County Jail Annex” and tell Dr. Einstein to let them know when he was ready for a more traditional cell.

And if this little wait stretched out for hours or even days, well, that’s really not a problem.

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Free flight

Further evidence that this darned recession is for real:

British Airways has asked its employees to work for free for up to a month.

That’s right, frequent fliers. BA wants its 40,000 workers to give up those inconvenient paychecks for a month or so.

Now, I’ll admit that economics is not my strong point, but I thought the whole point of work was getting a paycheck?

If a worker works for free, is he really working? Isn’t it more along the lines of volunteering? Or slavery?

And how do you discipline a worker who’s taking one for the team? You can’t threaten to cut his pay because he doesn’t have any. I guess the next step is to force him to pay the company money for the privilege of showing up.

We’ll see how this shakes out. But if you’re boarding a BA flight soon and you see the captain at the doorway with his cap held upside down and asking for tips, well, just make sure your flight insurance is paid up.

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Paying the price

This news story reminded me of an old joke.

It’s about that old “do the crime, do the time” thing.

The true story is that an 81-year-old man in Alaska was sentenced to five years in the slammer for selling OxyContin.

The brief story doesn’t say where he got the stuff. Maybe he traded it on a street corner for some surplus Viagra.

At any rate, here’s the joke:

A 90-year-old man got bored in his retirement so he started robbing banks. He pulled off a few jobs, but eventually he was caught. And indicted, tried and convicted.

So he’s standing before the judge as His Honor tries to determine his sentence.

“Well, Mr. Jones,” the judge says, “this is pretty serious. You have been convicted of several counts of armed robbery. I’m afraid I’m going to have to sentence you to 20 years in the state prison.”

The old geezer is shocked by the sentence.

“Judge, I’m 90 years old,” he says. “I don’t think I can do 20 years.”

The judge was a thoughtful man who’d seen a lot in his many years on the bench. And he didn’t have much sympathy for criminals of any kind.

“Well, Mr. Jones,” he said with a smile. “Just do the best you can.”

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National Daze

Talk about confusion. A couple of guys in Indiana wanted to declare Monday as “National Man Day.”

Great idea? You bet your barbells. But Monday is already “Sneak a Kiss Day.”

What a mess. America needs a Calendar Czar to sort these things out.

And by the way, I thought we already had a National Man Day — the first day of deer season.

This NatManDay was designed to encourage guys “to take part in ‘manly’ activities such as football, hunting or watching Rocky movies.”

Rocky movies? Shouldn’t that be on another day? Like National Watch Bad Movies Day?

Whatever. If you want to plan the rest of your week, you should be aware of these other impending National Days:

Tuesday — National Wear Mismatched Socks Day. (Sometimes celebrated by individuals on other days of the year.)

Wednesday — National Eat a Burrito Day. Originally designed to celebrate our Hispanic heritage. Over time, it has been taken over by fat people of all races who want to pig out on carbohydrates.

Thursday — National Hug a Stranger Day. (Optional in Newark and Detroit.)

Friday — National Be Optimistic Day. (Yeah, like that’ll do any good.)

Saturday — National Armenian-American Appreciation Day. Lacks the pizazz of Columbus Day, but let’s face it, what the hell have Armenian-Americans ever done for us?

Sunday — National No-Designation Day. The one day of the year when nothing is officially going on. Enjoy it.

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Pricey parking

Hey, whatever happened to the recession?

It must be over in Boston, where some rich guy put down $300,000 for a parking space.

You read that right. Not a parking garage, but a parking space.

I thought New Yawk had the toughest parking problem. Now Beantown tops ’em.

This will make it even harder for the Big Apple to swallow this fall when the Red Sox win the division and the Yankees have to back into the playoffs as a wild card.

But back to parking: Does the space come with any extras, like freshly painted yellow lines? A shiny coat of blacktop? Free litter pickup? Is the darned thing even covered?

If I was gonna shell out $300K for a parking space, I’d want it to be a nice one.

And what if some other guy parks in The Space?

Do you leave him a nice note asking him not to do that again? Or do you bill him $8,219.18, which is the daily cost of a $300K per year space?

I know; more questions than answers. And I haven’t even touched on the bigger mystery:

Why do we drive on a parkway and park in a driveway?

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The finest fast food is …

According to the restaurant guide publisher Zagat, it’s Wendy’s. It named the franchise the nation’s best fast-food chain based on a variety of factors.

Whatever. Here are my unscientific rankings of several outfits, with the overall winner listed last:

Wendy’s – Overall, pretty good. It does have nice alternatives like chili and baked potatoes. The best thing on its menu? Grilled chicken go-wraps.

Whataburger – Good burgers, but its low-key star is beef fajitas. They’re pricey at nearly $4 each, but darned good.

McDonald’s – Terrific snap lids on their coffee cups; very good sausage-n-egg breakfast burritos. Almost everything else leave an oily aftertaste in your mouth. Ick.

Dairy Queen – Superb ice-cream products, of course. But the chicken fingers basket with molten-hot white gravy stands out.

Jack in the Box – A vastly improved menu. Best bet? Three egg rolls with sweet-n-sour sauce. I love the tacos, but they are grease bombs.

Subway — A nice alternative to burgers, but a lot of its meats are loaded with salt and fat too. Oh, well; it worked for Jared.

And the winner is (drum roll, please) …

Taco Bell – Overall, relatively healthy chow that’s easy on the wallet. Not a lot of variety, but no one’s perfect. Pet peeve? It doesn’t serve coffee.

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Honk if you like justice

If something happens to Obama’s first choice for the Supreme Court, I know exactly who he should turn to:

That would be the Washington state judge who displayed a burst of common sense not always seen in America’s courtrooms.

Snohomish County Superior Court judge Richard Thorpe ruled that honking a car horn is not free speech.

I’m not sure which legal precedent he cited, but I would lean toward one that defined “speech” as actual talking or writing. That would be as opposed to, say, honking a horn or giving someone the finger or mooning someone (other quaint activities that are occasionally defined as “speech”).

The case dealt with a woman who was cheesed off at her neighbor for complaining about, of all things, her chickens. (Why don’t we have cases like that in our neck of the woods?)

So the chicken lady retaliated by parking in front of this guy’s house one day before 6 a.m. and leaning on her car horn for 10 full minutes. I guess she though that would make him more reasonable.

Well, it didn’t. He called The Man, and she got a ticket after another bout of horn honking two hours later. (I’m starting to think she’s a nut. Maybe she inhaled too much chicken dung dust. That’s some nasty stuff.)

Anyhow, chicken lady claimed free speech, but Judge Thorpe shot her down with a ruling that should go down in history (or at least be blogged about):

“Horn honking which is done to annoy or harass others is not speech.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes couldn’t have put it any better.

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It's party time, Swedish style

You gotta hand it to those Swedes. They know how to party.

Not have-fun party, but political-party.

You see, Sweden’s Pirate Party just won its first seat in the European Parliament. It snagged 7.1 percent of the vote in Sweden, enough to give it one seat in the European version of our Congress.

Confused? You should be.

The Pirate Party doesn’t believe in Somali-like buccaneering. It wants more free content on the Internet.

You would think they’d be called something like “More ’Net Goodies” Party, but maybe it’s a Swedish thing.

Anyhow, it got me to thinking. The U.S. of A. needs more political parties. I’ll support a new one, whatever it’s named, if it will promise to:

-- Require stores to keep an express checkout lane open at all times.

-- Limit patriotic Americans to two “Support Our Troops” magnetic ribbons per vehicle.

-- Force fast-food joints to give you something for free if the wait in the drive-through lane is longer than 5 minutes.

-- Confiscate any pet whose owner doesn’t “bag it and tag it” when walking them. (Especially on my lawn.)

-- Outlaw the use of lawnmowers before 8 a.m. on Saturday mornings.

-- Allow the firing of one warning shot for door-to-door cult evangelists.

-- Prohibit people from mentioning the humidity when talking about the weather.

… That’s all I can think of for now; more suggestions welcome.

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OK kids, have fun*

Ooops. For years the EPA recommended using ground-up rubber tires at playgrounds so our vulnerable kiddies wouldn’t get boo-boos when they fell.

Now the feds are admitting that “chronic, repeated exposure” to the icky chemicals and substances in tire pieces could present health problems.

This is a case of too much progress.

Old-fashioned dirt or grass was good enough. Jeez, if you wanted to fancy up a playground, dump some gravel for a surface.

But of course the modern goal was to make playgrounds safe and non-threatening. So the experts and consultants started putting in rubber floors and taking out “risky” equipment like see-saws and slides.

Slowly, playgrounds became less "dangerous." And more boring.

In some highly litigious places, I’m not even sure if kids are allowed to have fun anymore.

And if they do, I think they must have a recreational counselor on hand to ensure that they don’t commit cultural imperialism or engage in non-inclusive hierarchical patterns.

What a shame. We have destroyed the playground in order to save it.

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Big Unit needs new nickname

Well, Giants pitcher Randy Johnson has finally done it. He won his 300th game, which is impressive enough.

But what’s more amazing is that he may be the last hurler to do so.

You see, today’s pampered pitchers throw every fifth day instead of every fourth.

And they often don’t go deep enough into a game to get a win. Nervous managers are always rushing out to the mound to insert the closer, the setup man or the middle reliever.

The real mystery about Johnson, however, is his nickname: The Big Unit.

This is the oddest and most mysterious nickname in all of sports. It sounds like a nickname you’d give the smartest kid in math class.

Randy Johnson needs a new nickname, something that would scare batters and get him some borderline calls by the ump.

Something like The Intimidator. … That one’s already taken? OK, then I would suggest:

The really tall guy. (He’s 6’10”)

Big Bird. (You see, he's tall, skinny and has a big nose.) (But he isn't yellow.)

The pitcher with the mullet. (No explanation needed.)

Mark Fidrych’s older brother. (Another weird guy.)

The pitcher who obliterated a seagull with a fastball. (Makes every collection of sports bloopers.)

… More suggestions are welcome. I will admit that at least his nickname is not as bad as the one hung on boxer Eric “Butterbean” Esch.

If I had a nickname like Butterbean, I think I’d enter the Witness Protection Program.

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Catch-and-release madness

It’s happened again. A ship in the international naval fleet patrolling the African coast snagged a bunch of pirates.

And let ’em go!

The latest affront to common sense (and the battle against piracy) happened this week when a British frigate “intercepted two skiffs filled with 10 men armed with assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades and boarded them with Royal Marines.”

The bad guys even had grappling hooks, which is pretty much a dead giveaway that you are DEALING WITH PIRATES!

So far, so good. But since the Western powers don’t want to cheese off the states or failed states that host The Pirate Community, and no one wants to haul them to a court back home and deal with trials, translators, etc., the buccaneers were sent on their merry way.

At least one of the boats was sunk and their tools of the trade were confiscated.

Jeez; I hope they also got a stern talking to.

Something along the lines of, “Now see here, my good man. If you are detected once again for intent to commit piracy, you will be issued an official citation with a stiff fine for failure to appear.”

Remember this the next time a Western ship gets taken over.

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Un’s the one

After months of watercooler gossip and friendly wagers, the great mystery has been solved. Kim Jong Il, the psychotic dictator of North Korea, has chosen his No. 3 son Kim Jong Un to carry the torch, so to speak.

Un appears to be a chip of the ol’ block — a bizarre introvert with a drinking problem. Just what the world needs — a 26-year-old with nuclear toys.

On the plus side, he was educated in Switzerland and likes basketball and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies.

His MySpace profile says he is into long walks on the beach, cuddling up with a good book on a rainy afternoon, bludgeoning anyone who shows him disrespect and partying with imported Swedish prostitutes. (I told ya — a chip off the ol’ block!)

If things could get any weirder in North Korea — and that’s saying a lot — sons No. 1 and No. 2 were passed over for certain, uh, deficiencies.

The eldest son was being groomed for the top spot until he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport in 2001 to visit Tokyo’s Disneyland. (You can’t make this stuff up.)

And pop thinks the middle son is — and I swear to God this is a literal quote from the AP story — “too effeminate.” (See above reference to one’s inability to make this stuff up.)

In theory, of course, commies don’t hand down power in a tightly controlled dynasty like the royalty they are supposed to be so different from. In reality, if you mention this in North Korea you soon have a close encounter with a firing squad.

I guess we’ll all soon find out if Un’s got the moxie to keep a lid on the world’s largest concentration camp, threaten world powers with the odd nuke blast or missile launch and extort food and fuel to keep the family enterprise running.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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Government Motors?

So General Motors has become Government Motors. And the president says his only goal is to get GM humming again and then “to get out quickly.”

I dunno. Speed is not the federal government’s strong point. … Offhand, I don’t what is, but I know speed is not in the running.

We won the Korean War, sort of, 56 years ago, and we still have troops in South Korea.

We won World War II 64 years ago, and we still have troops in Germany and Japan. … On the plus side, we have managed to pull out of Mussolini’s Italy.

The infamous mohair subsidy that is used as Exhibit A in any story about government waste dates back to World War I. Waaaay back then, Uncle Sam wanted enough wool for the doughboys’ uniforms.

To their credit, the feds have managed to close out the Spanish-American War … I think.

What I’m trying to say is, don’t be surprised if some day, many, many years from now, your grandchild asks, “How come the presidential debate had that question about whether GM should extend the warranty on all four-wheel drive models to 5 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first?”

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