Heath Ledger and Jack Nicholson My Eye

It's official. Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon is now The Joker. I caught him the other night on one of those Time-Life Music infomercials. I believe it was the "We Used To Have Roadies Carry Suitcases of Aqua Net and Groupies With Only One Disease, and Now We're Lucky To Get a Gullible, Failing, Corporate Classic Rock Station To Believe There Are Still Five People Who Give a Crap About Us; I Guess We'll Wait To See If Celebrity Fit Club Comes Calling" collection.

Those Time-Life infomercials are addictive. The guest shots by the old celebs are priceless. Mickey Gilley doing the "When Country Music Was All About Beer Drinkin', Coon Dawgs, and How Much I Love My Beer and Coon Dawgs More Than My Woman" collection, Cuba Gooding, Sr. with the "You Know My Son, Don't You? Well I Ain't Him! My Son's a Lot More Famous Than Me, Don't Remind Me! No, I'm Not Doing that Jerry McGuire Thing, That Wasn't Me, That Was My SON, DAMMIT" collection, and the great Bobby Vinton co-hosting the "I Have So Much Vibrato, My Uvula Looks Like a Boxing Speed Bag" collection.

I just saw a couple more, and it's interesting they were shown back to back. The first was the "Best Of The Midnight Special: The In Our Prime, Doing Lots of Cocaine, and Lovin' It" DVD set, which I have to admit looks pretty awesome. Right after that came the "Rock And Roll Hall of Fame Concerts: The Post Rehab/Mortem, Blondie Ain't Blondie Any More, We Have To Sing Everything An Octave Lower Except For That Fro'd Punk Leo Sayer" DVD set.

Speaking of rehab, I obviously need some, because this Time-Life addicition is either out of control or I am just a big, honkin', grotesque loser.

I'm Goin' Straight To Hell

The old Drivin' N Cryin' song from my college years is never more appropriate than this time of year, the time when ghosts, fairies, pirates, Gene Simmons, Spider Man, and Transformers arrive at your doorstep with the Adam Sandler commandment "Gimme some candy!" on the tips of their tongues. It is also the time of year when the costume industry absolutely insists that every woman in America wants to dress up as, to paraphrase the Mrs. and some of her friends, a whoooooooooore. So what do candy and ho's have to do with me and my destiny to shake hands and play poker with Mephistopholes when my number is up? Well, to believe the Halloween antimatter cottage industry that has developed over the last couple decades, everything.

When I was growing up, my then-church (First Baptist Church of Trenton, GA) threw a Halloween party every year. Don't worry, you haven't had too much S'Mores Schnapps. You read that correctly. A HALLOWEEN PARTY was given by a Southern Baptist church in the buckle (or maybe the fourth or fifth hole) of the Bible Belt every year in the 1970's and early 80's. It usually included loads of candy that made us behave like, well, (imagine this) kids, bobbing for apples, and (GASP!) a haunted house! I must say with all modesty that, having personally worked in many of those haunted houses, they were some of the best in Trenton year after year. They were also some of the most painful because instead of running away while screaming, those who go through Baptist haunted houses tend to leave you with shiners and loose teeth while screaming.

(Completely random thought: Can you scare the bejesus out of someone in a Baptist haunted house? Just wondering.)

I might have missed their conception, but I first remember hearing about alternatives to Halloween parties and to Halloween itself during my college years. One of the loudest and (at least for a while in the South) ubiquitous of these alternatives was the "Judgement House." In a nutshell, Judgement Housing was designed to scare the bejesus INTO someone by showing them, often times graphically, how'd they'd be whittling away their time with The Devil if they didn't come to know The Lord. I could make a comment about a loving God dressing up for Halloween and going "Boo", but I won't. Folks are free to believe what they want and to share those beliefs as they'd like. What gets me more than the Judgement House alternative to All Hallows Eve are the folks who sincerely believe that I will end up in the final scene of the Judgement House simply by taking my kids trick or treating.

Those folks will claim this isn't the case. "We only hold 'Fall Festivals' or 'Harvest Festivals' or 'Trunk or Treat' or 'Keep Your Kid Out of Hay-ell" events on Halloween to keep children safe." After all, for the last 70 years, there has been a long line of deranged adults who eat the corpses of children for a living. They spend 364 days a year preparing the poison to be injected into copious packages of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and other treats, which, when you think about it, may explain the flavor of Candy Corn. I am not trivializing bad neighborhoods or the rare occasion when something bad happens, but do we need 8,000 alternatives to one of the most fun nights of the year when all that needs to take place is for parents to (get ready for one of my few Einstein moments) stay with their kids and only go to decent 'hoods with lots of lighting? I know. Not all parents are decent parents, which makes the victims my kids since only a handful of homes in my neighborhood actually welcomed trick-or-treaters last year.

If the purveyors of Halloween alternatives really wanted to help, they would turn their own neighborhoods into a giant welcome mat for kids who just want to have fun and give themselves a three-day sugar coma. But they don't want to help Halloween, they want to kill it, and usually it's because of an e-mail they received from their mother-in-law; you know, the one that has obviously been forwarded to about 97,000 people. That e-mail says Halloween comes from ancient pagan rituals which included the worship of Satan, raising your pinky when drinking a cup of tea, turkey bacon, the burning of Lee Greenwood records, and worst of all, the cancelation of college football games! And of course, since everything we read on the internet is true.....and you're going to Hades, too if you don't forward this to 50 people!

So, I humbly ask for your prayers, as I obviously need them. Because even though there may be fewer places for them to collect their chocolate booty, I can't wait for this Saturday. My older kid will be dressed as a doctor, so she'll be ready to perform animal sacrifices, while my toddler, dressed as a pumpkin, will surely be screaming "Yoo hoo, Satan, I'm here to serve you! My pumpkiness is your pumpkinness, oh evil one." My guess is that, in the end, my personal religious beliefs won't be worse off.

Oh, the first time I heard the song "I'm Goin' Straight To Hell" was at a Drivin' N Cryin' concert at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, circa 1991; a show I attended with some friends.....from the school's Baptist Campus Ministries chapter, who screamed the lyric at least as loudly as I. Well, at least I will have some good company.

Better choices to rank college football teams

Another week, another collective college football voter Cialis moment for Pete Carroll. Maybe its just me, but year after year, it seems that the cerebrally-challenged folks who rank the teams for college football's top 25 polls are simply trying to win the favor of the USC coach (by the way, that's the real USC in Southern California, and you South Carolina folks just need to stop right now). Guys, you remember how you desperately wanted to hang out with the cool guy in school, the leader of the pack, the man who got all the chicks and passed out the ones he didn't have time for to his buddies? That is how the hot dog eaters (hat tip to my pally Kevin Miller for that term) of the college football media and coaching world treat Mr. Carroll year after year, and this week there is yet another downright embarassing example of guys willing to be Pete's urinal hand-man.

Don't get me wrong. Pete Carroll has restored greatness to USC football. The program that was dominant throughout much of the 60's and 70's went through a swoon in the 80's, generating win-loss records that are only acceptable at places that believe they are big time but aren't, like Ole Miss or every ACC school except for Virginia Tech and, lately, Georgia Tech. But the Trojans has been mostly glorious over the past decade, and Carroll gets most of the credit for paying good money for....., errr, for rebuilding them. But Carroll also always gets a pass for losing games that USC should win in about the first five minutes of the first quarter, such as the Washington game this year. The reason for this is, well, he's just so dang cool. Instead of the 50-something guy that he is, Pete acts as if he's 23 and doing Red Bull/Crunk Juice shots on the sidelines during the game. Members of the media act like women trying to catch the garter at a wedding reception as they beat the snot out of each other just so they can inhale three seconds of the Carroll aura. How else to explain the fact that, despite suffering the worst loss of any top-ten team this season, Carroll's Trojans are ranked ahead of not one, not two, but THREE unbeaten teams in the new BCS standings.

I know what those pollsters who are desperate seeking some Cinemax skin-flick time with Mr. Carroll would tell me. "Do you really think Cincinnati could beat USC?" Well, Cincy's thugs beat Oregon State on the road by a larger margin than USC's thugs beat the Beavers at home. "Come on, Ray. TCU and Boise State ahead of USC?" Answer: Boise beat an Oregon team that may go to the Rose Bowl this year, and you have been shopping at those Cali Pot Shops too much if you really believe the Pac-10 is better than the Mountain West. "Who wants to see that dang blue field, again, or something called a Horned Frog when you can watch (cue the Marilyn Chambers music) Matt Barkley, the sexiest...errrrrrr, the best freshman QB in the country?" Bow-chicka-bow-bow. I always thought there was something pornographic about guys who follow football recruiting so closely. Now, we see that extends to media folks and other pollsters living their vicarious "Animal House" existence through those guys after they start their college careers.

Since the powers don't have the cojones to implement a playoff, the only way to fix the fight for college football's mythical national championship is simple. It is time to ditch all the pollsters and only allow a small "blue ribbon" panel rank the teams. Who would be on this panel? Glad you asked.

1) Me. Since, as should be obvious by my earlier analysis of media lust for Pete Carroll, I know everything.

2) Adam Van Brimmer, Savannah Morning News, the only pollster worth his salt. Even though for whatever reason he isn't allowed to write about sports on a regular basis any more, and the SMN's sports section is much worse for it, he is still an Associated Press Top 25 voter, and his rankings actually make some bit of sense. Adam can also defend his rankings with the best of them, using actual on-field results as his guide, not some hypothetical "but seriously, do you think..." rationale that so many other pollsters apparently use.

3) My kids. They are smarter than me. My first-grader could probably crank out a computer program that could correctly predict the results of every football game as well as the number of bribes your elected officials will take while running the country into a ridiculous amount of debt. My toddler, by simply walking up to the computer whenever one of those annoying espn.dot.com auto-play videos starts on every single web page, already watches more football every week than at least half the current pollsters.

4) My cats. I would talk to them about each school, then see how long it takes them to poop on the floor after the talk to determine the rankings. Yes, on the floor, as they apparently believe the litter box is a one-use item.

5) My Magic 8-Ball. I used a radio station contest several years ago to successfully prove that the 8-Ball could predict the outcome of football games as well as any human. Ranking a top-25 with an 8-Ball would be easier than the CEO's version of Marco Polo; "Budget Cuts! Everyone's Fired!"

"That isn't a representative sample of the nation, Ray. You have to have lots of people from all over the country pick the teams to be fair." No, you don't, because that would just lead to what we have this year, a bunch of guys desperate to sleep with Pete Carroll and desperate to keep two teams from what overwhelmingly is the best conference in the nation, the SEC, from playing for the mythical crystal fuball. Also, the beauty of the Steele system is that no one would know who was behind the rankings! We could just pretend that there are still a gazillion pollsters, not tell anyone the truth, and get something that actually resembles the best teams in college football competing for the fake national title every year. No one would ever have to know the truth!

Sure, it's ludicrous. So are this week's BCS standings.

Happy Birthday To The Mrs., and God Bless The Pit Bull in Pumps

Today, The Mrs. celebrates another b'day. Happy Happy Happy, Baby!

One of these days, if I say my prayers, eat my vitamins, and am on Santa's good list long enough, I will write almost as well as my friend Geveryl Robinson. Perhaps a better way of saying it would be, "when I grow up, I want to be a black woman voracious wordsmith with an "Oh no, you didn't" streak the size of a bill that Congress passes without reading. If you don't read Gevvie every Sunday in the Savannah Morning News, you are missing a treat. Yesterday, she ripped Barbara Walters a new one, and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person (or pewrson, as Babs would say).

The reason for Geveryl's wrath was Paula Deen's recent appearance on "The View", which quite astonishingly I missed! Nothing says stay-at-home dad like enjoying a four-cheese omelet
and a six-pack of Yuengling Light with a wardrobe of a wife-beater and boxers(1), all the while watching Joy Behar et al fail to understand why they can't get a decent man in their lives. In a nutshell, Ms. Walters, the most overrated journalist of the last half-century, essentially told Miss Paula, "I can't beweeve you are twying to make ouw chiwdwen ovewweight, with the fwied this and fwied that." Okay, I am paraphrasing. Miss Paula was simply making the obligatory appearance on 'View' to pitch her cookbook for kids, which is excellent by the way and doesn't actually involve much fwying at all.

First, if anyone needs a dose of obesity, it's Barbara Walters. I guess lobbing softballs at celebs and politicians for a few decades burns a lot of calories. Secondly, what is everyone's problem with Paula and the Deen family? I always knew there was a segment of Savannah who didn't care for the Deens, be it jealousy or just to appear to be one of the "cool kids" that criticizes popular people and things. I thought all that would eventually fade, but I was wrong. I keep hearing stories from folks like "well, I heard she curses." The answer is; yep, having been around Paula a few times, she does. She even let so many worty dirds fly during an in-depth interview with me on "The Last Talk Show"(2), a complaint was sent in to the Savannah Morning News's "Vox Populi" section. Also, in case you don't know, if you work in a professional kitchen, the boss is going to yell at you. Even if you are the best line cook, prep cook, prettiest waitress, or best dish washer in the world, the boss will say nasty things about your parentage and bodily orifices from time to time. It happens in every professional kitchen, and if it doesn't, that professional kitchen won't be open for long.

I have also heard complaints about the boys, Bobby and Jamie. "Oh, they aren't as nice as everyone thinks." Really? I can only speak for myself, but those guys have been nothing but fabulous to me in the dozen or so times I have been around them, both in public and in private. What you have seen of the boys on TV is exactly what I have seen off camera. Look, I'm sorry if Bobby doesn't want to date your desperately single self, but that doesn't make him or his brother a jerk, and perhaps you should watch something other than "Sex And The City" reruns to learn about guys.

"Oh, the food at Lady And Sons isn't that good." You know, maybe it isn't as good as it used to be. That I can't answer, as I wasn't around for the early days of Lady And Sons. But while it is pricey, it is also less expensive than some of the worst downtown Savannah restaurants, and without a doubt, sister restaurant Uncle Bubba's is fantastic (we actually prefer it to Lady And Sons, no offense boys). I love Bubba for a number of reasons, but mostly because he offers the Cialis Of The Sea, chargrilled oysters. Oh....my........gracious.

I know I know. Everyone has their own story. "Well _____ said this directly to me/my momma/my great aunt Georgie Poo." Whatever. I'm sure we all regret just how somewhat insulated the Savannah area was to the recession because of folks who were still coming to town to eat at the Deen's restaurants and to buy stuff with Paula's name on it. Sure, we had a downturn, but imagine the recession without the lure of the Deen name. It would have been like living in rural South Carolina for cryin' out loud. And I'm sure America's Second Harvest Food Bank gets incredibly p-o'd every time the Deens show up to make another gargantuan donation of food. Dang it, Deens, don't you know the Food Bank has work to do?

So go ahead, hate on the Deens. And when you have a better idea to attract millions in tourism dollars to Savannah and to donate enormous resources to the Food Bank, Safe Shelter for battered spouses, and Bethesda Home For Boys, let's see it. As Miss Paula might say, you do that, and I'll be hotter than a $&@*!&$#()@.


(1) - full disclosure, I don't own a wife beater. Boxers, on the other hand....

(2) - "The Last Talk Show" is my pet name for my old show on 630 WBMQ, since, pardon my snippiness, there isn't a real talk show left in Savannah.

Pittsburgh's an excellent choice for G-20

Because when the nut job protesters burn down the city, Pittsburgh will be a great place to live for the first time since KDKA's Harold Arlen broadcast the Harding-Cox returns. That said, I am guessing the open burning of trash is illegal nowadays, and it might run counter to the environmental beliefs some of the protesters claim to espouse. We can only hope there is a Beavis in their midst.

I must say, though, one of my favorite childhood memories was of my grandmother letting me burn her trash on a giant rock behind her house whenever I stayed with her. Nothing says loving like giving a seven year old a giant box of kitchen matches. Before you say anything about my grandmother, keep in mind that a portion of the rest of the kids in Dade County, Georgia were proficient at distillery by the age of 7. I was not.

The future of Lady And Sons; Organic Bean Sprouts and Pomegrante Mineral Water

Sure the title is supposed to sound stupid, as ludicrous as the thought of Bob Barker donning wrestling tights for Vince McMahon, though that reality was perilously close to occurring a week ago. However, just as insane as the thought of Paula Deen doing a yoga headstand while Jelly Roll walks out of the kitchen with a plate of fat-free bean curd, rice and watercress hoecakes was a headline in the Savannah Morning News Exchange section Sunday: "The future of car buying in the U.S.: Don't supersize me." Please, don't make me choke on my bag of cracklins.

To be fair to the Morning News, the article was not penned by one of its scribes. It was written by Tom Krisher of what has rapidly deteriorated into one of the sloppiest news organizations in the world, the Associated Press. No, that is not a commentary on (cue the timpani and deeper- than-whale-dung voice guy) "liberal media bias", so please, the "Obama is Josef Stalin in black face" crowd should refrain from commentary. The A.P. has, like many traditional news organizations, simply become lazy, and Mr. Krisher was too lazy to even make a cursory glance at history and human nature.

The gist of Mr. Krisher's argument is that "American car-buying habits have changed forever. Scarred by the worst financial crisis since the 1930's and still leery of high gas prices, people are walking into showrooms intent on spending less." While Mr. Krisher acknowledges the exact same thing happened in the 1970's, which is when the actual last "worst financial crisis" occurred, this time things are different thanks to the biggest group of self-serving individuals outside of Members of Congress and the Dallas Cowboys of the 1990's; the Baby Boomers.

The Boomers, who all of a sudden are as young as 44 according to Mr. Krisher (which would also make them eligible to be Young Democrats and Young Republicans, at least in Chatham County!), make up one quarter of the population. They drove the economy out of recession in the 1980's, but now Mr. Krisher says the poor babies are too "scarred" by what happened a year ago, so they aren't spending money this time around. If they are spending money, they are buying smaller, more fuel efficient cars and aren't going back to the muscle cars and SUV's of the past because this time, Mr. Krisher assures us, gas prices are staying high (cue the kid with the glasses from "The Sandlot") FOR-EV-ER!

If Mr. Krisher had told us that South Carolina would never, ever win a mythical national championship in football, that we could believe, but to say that gas prices will never again be low, relative to inflation, is absurd. It might never be 89-cents a gallon, but just as economic highs and lows are as sure a thing as Kanye West going ballistic because he was accidentally served a vanilla milk shake at a McDonald's drive-thru, gas in the next few years will be affordable enough for most of us to go out and get that BMW 5 Series with the 4.8 liter V-8 cranking out 360 horsepower.

"But but but", you stutter, "surveys show we all want 'green' cars now, cars that get 87 miles to the gallon and run on cow farts and distilled water." You would be correct but for one cruicial fact; we lie. We lie and we like doing it. "Sure, I'd LOVE a hybrid car." "Oh, yes, more public transportation is a GREAT idea." "I LOVE going to non-Thirsty Thursday Sand Gnats games. No I wasn't disguised as an empty seat!" Those phrases are among the many that should bring forth the fire extinguisher for your trousers. We like lying so much that we elect people to public office who lie, then we re-elect them until they die and, at their funeral, we forget about their pathological career and hail them as the greatest thing since sliced white bread...oops, sorry Kanye...and ice cream. We tell people what we think they want to hear because we are terrified of causing offense.

The truth is that we Americans love our cars, and we love driving them even if it takes us three hours to travel down Bay Street and five hours to find a parking space. Guys also love fast cars and, yes, so do gals. "Oh, come on Ray, the stereotype of the woman from 'Grease' who loves a guy because of his fast car died 50 years ago." Um-hmmm. And super dentist Brad Durham's next trendy creation will be permanent installation of "Bubba" teeth. You put any woman behind the wheel of a Bugatti Veyron that goes zero to 60 in two-and-a-half seconds and they'll sound like they're on their honeymoon with Brad Pitt. Yes, outgoing Chief Berkow, too much speed kills. But it is also sexy, and we love it as well as the gallons upon gallons of gas it burns.

We could make life easier by telling the truth so writers like Mr. Krisher wouldn't embarass themselves, but since we won't cooperate, get ready for more "news" stories telling us how much we love our hybrids even though they aren't being bought in great quantities, how much we long for the days of the AMC Pacer, and how we Americans are "green for good." Just remind me to tell you I told you so when, in a few years, the same news writers are "shocked" and "stunned" at the enormously successful comeback...of the Hummer.

What They Say....What They Mean

This is about as original an idea as Dr. Wayne Dyer meditating his way to hair growth while levitating above a gaggle of aging musicians singing their greatest hits a half-step off key, with the background painted by the skeletal remains of Bob Ross, all yours for your generous contribution of $250 to help continue the employment of Bill Moyers and that day-glow orange guy who gives the stock market numbers each night on public TV.

Savannah-Chatham Metro Police Chief Michael Berkow on the reason for his resignation:

What he said:
"I was approached about a new career opportunity in April, and I have thought about it and struggled with it and truly agonized over it,"

What he meant:

"Holy crap, it's about friggin' time. One more useless meeting with these jokers and I might have stuffed the city manager in a Bronco for some old-fashioned slow-motion chasin' down I-16."

Major Juliette Tolbert, commander of the metro police patrol unit; what she said:

"The community involvement is so much better, he decentralized the criminal investigations division - there are just so many things he has done."

What she meant:

"Ho boy, we're going to hell..."

Assistant Chief Willie Lovett, who was passed over for the job when Berkow was hired; what he said...

"His position will remain vacant until an appropriate replacement is found."

What he meant:

"You got another chance, mothers. Big Willie-time, baby, Big Willie Time!"

Alderman Van Johnson. What he said...

"I wish him the best in his future endeavors. Our department certainly has changed and grown since he's been here. I firmly believe that this community needs (more of) that in its next chief. We have the talent already to move this department forward."

What he meant...

"The future mayor got your back, Big Willie."

Brother Shabazz. What he said...

"Cracker. Pedophile!" Pedophile? "Yes, yes."

What he meant...

"Cracker. Pedophile!" Pedophile? "Yes, yes."