If you’ve never heard of Fatty Arbuckle, you’re probably not alone. His persona has basically been lost to history for decades. But boy, was he a contenda — until the wheels fell off and he was destroyed by innuendo and sensationalism.

In 1918, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle became the first Hollywood actor to sign a contract for $1 million. His physical grace and athletic abilities despite his huge size were legendary. His contemporaries (Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and a very young Bob Hope, to name a few) admired him. The world was his oyster.

Then he went to a party in San Francisco over Labor Day in 1921. Several hours into the bash, a girl named Virginia Rappe ran screaming from a bedroom in the house. Four days later, she came down with an infection and died. Arbuckle was arrested and arraigned for rape and murder.

The rape was particularly brutal (I won’t go into the details here, but you can research it yourself to learn the nauseating facts), and many figured that the only person with the requisite size and strength to pull it off was Roscoe (his friends never called him “Fatty”). People assumed and figured, concocted and presupposed, and before long, Arbuckle was persona non grata in Hollywood. His career was over. There was just one little issue, however.

He didn’t do it.

He endured not only the scorn of his erstwhile adoring public, but the systematic deconstruction of the career he’d spent years building through touring with burlesque and vaudeville companies. Close friends refused to believe he’d done such a horrible thing, but with the combination of an overly-ambitious prosecutor looking for reelection, and a maniacal publisher (Wm. Randolph Hearst) dying to sell newspapers, Arbuckle was doomed. It was the first time that a major movie star was involved in such a spectacular scandal, and everyone wanted their piece of the action.

It was also the first time in the history of American justice that a jury later issued a formal, written apology. Even though they acquitted Arbuckle (at his THIRD trial) for the crime and set him free, they knew his life was irreparably shattered. In their letter to him and to the public, they said in a desperate plea for people to forgive and forget:

Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done him … there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime. He was manly throughout the case and told a straightforward story which we all believe. We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgment of fourteen men and women that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame.”

Too bad it didn’t work out that way. He never recovered from the scandal. He died in 1933.

So, it’s no wonder people like Reggie Bush are counting their blessings today, Heisman or no Heisman. It could have been a lot worse.

But hey, let’s end this on a positive note: BOOMR ARRIVES TONIGHT!!!

Remember when Vanessa Williams was stripped of her Miss America crown because of racy pictures? No? That’s OK. It’s ancient history, and she went on to have a great career and she’s rich as crap. Nobody talks about it anymore. And so it will go with Reggie Bush “losing” his Heisman Trophy. He’ll go on making great plays for the Saints (dangit), and probably be famous and wealthy the rest of his life. Everyone knows he was the best player out there in 2005. Doesn’t change anything, and it’s not like he was allegedly hiding a huge, terrifying secret, like, oh, murdering his ex-wife and her boyfriend in 1994 (good point, Johnny), not to mention following it with a veritable laundry list of successive felonies.

I’m not justifying Bush’s being a stupid kid five years ago and taking money as a college recruit. Pete Carroll should have known better, too. You makes your choices, and you lives with the consequences. I’m saying that in the long run, it doesn’t matter. When you’re successful and the best at what you do, people tend to suffer amnesia. It’s like getting forgiveness, which isn’t altogether a bad thing. Bush and Carroll both go to the pros, and everyone’s happy. There will be other Heisman winners, and the tradition will go on. “Cementing legacies” is bull; it’s the next winner that counts.

Tomorrow, I shall attempt to impress/depress you with a tale from the other side of the table. Imagine having your career ruined by something you didn’t do.

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world, I tell ya.

Happy Wingsday — we’re almost there!

The Chinese women’s gymnastics team from the 2000 Olympic Games was stripped of their bronze medal yesterday, after the IOC confirmed that Dong Fangxiao, pictured here, was not the minimum age of 16 when she competed (she was only 14). The bronze instead went to the USA team.

Yabbut…what about 2008? I yammered on about this very issue, after I watched the Chinese “women” take the gold medal, with the USA coming in second. Click over to that post and look closely at the photo of the Chinese team. If all those girls are 16, I am Mary on a donkey.

This is not to say that the US hasn’t had its share of cheaters in the Olympics. Rather, it is to ponder why the IOC would swiftly rule on a happenstance case (the error wasn’t realized until Fangxiao recently applied to be a team official and listed her birthdate on the paperwork, and someone put two and two together and got 14), and not the more obvious violation of just two years ago? Who knows…maybe they are, and maybe they will act — it’ll just likely take another ten years.

Image credit: Shanghaiist.com

Jane: Hey, what’s wrong?

Liz: Oh, nothing. We’re just out of eggs; I swear I bought some last week. I was going to make French toast after class tonight, and I went to the fridge and the eggs are all gone. It’s ok. I’ll make something else.

Jane: Oh no! I’m really sorry. I ate the last 2 yesterday and totally forgot to pick up more. I’ll go out and get another dozen right now.

Liz: No, that’s ok. I’ll just have some cereal. It doesn’t matter anyway.

Jane: No really — I feel bad because I didn’t replace the eggs. My brain is Jello. Let me run out and get them real quick. It’ll just take a minute.

Liz: Well, ok. If you want to.

Obviously, Liz’s martyrdom got her what she wanted: the eggs, and emotional control. It’s a head game that borders on abuse, and I try never to play it. But let’s face it: sometimes it gets you what you want. We’ve all likely pulled the trick from time to time. But chronic passive-aggressives are much more dangerous. I divide them into two categories:

1. The Guilter. This one hangs on the cross, but somehow still survives. Picture a mother (usually stereotyped in a certain ethnic light), telling her adult son, “No, don’t bother coming over today to mow my lawn. I will try to do it myself. I’ll just take lots of aspirin before I go outside, and hope that my legs hold up.” Of course, this achieves the desired effect. Son cancels his golf game and mows the lawn. Mom gets what she wants: the reassurance that her son will give up anything for her. It’s a total power play.

Sometimes, when my students are giving me a hard time, I’ll jokingly tell them, “Ok, if you need me, I’ll be outside, lying under my truck wheels.” We all get a laugh and it’s over. But there are those who take that shtick and play it to the nth degree. They are the Grand Manipulators, and you need to either a) confront them about it, or b) run away.

2. The Joker. And yes, I do mean the character from Batman. All laughs and funny ha-ha on the surface, but hiding a vicious secret. These people take pleasure in ambiguous humor, designed to make you doubt yourself. Have you ever endured somebody teasing you — or making general observations about something you’ve said or done — in what appears to be a playful manner, but you get a creepy feeling that the little jabs thrown out in jest are actually serious, veiled insults? If you have, you’ve been Jokered.

The Joker attempts to cover his own screaming insecurity and feelings of mediocrity by chipping away at the self-esteem of others. I urge you to call him on it.

And that’s all I have to say today. My mood matches this dreary weather. Ick.

Fink out.

What did he get for doing this 40 times?

102 years. That’s one hundred two years. In jail. They’re calling it a form of armed robbery. Ok, I get the charge. I can see spending time in jail for it, too. It was a rotten, horrible stunt to pull on innocent people, scaring them to death and all. But here’s the thing…

Nobody died. Nobody was even physically injured. That doesn’t make what he did right – I’ll give you that and a cookie. So what’s my point?

Ray Lewis is my point.

Ray, who made millions, got in trouble with the law, made a few more millions, killed somebody, and then made some more millions. Oh, did I mention he killed somebody? And did I also mention his jail term?

Oh wait…he didn’t get a jail term. Where’s the justice here? A cop gets 100 years for playing SWAT commando, and Ray gets nothing for killing a guy? (You may refer to a previous rant on this subject, if you’re so inclined.)

I know, I know. It’s all about corroborating evidence. That still doesn’t make it right. Sometimes our justice system backfires, and criminals go free. Yeah, I know all that. But it depends on your definition of “sometimes.” I think “sometimes” translates to “too friggin’ often” — especially where professional athletes are concerned.

So says I.

Fink out.

PS – Here’s the original article about the ex-cop who will never see his family again.

Have I mentioned that this country’s going straight to the devil?

Boston University and Barnes & Noble (partners in extortion), I must admit, have happened on an idea that is positively, consummately, hilariously brilliant.

Ladies and gentlemen…the “Coursepack.”

What is a Coursepack, you ask? Well let’s see if I can get this right. A Coursepack is a bunch of Xerox-copied pages from various textbooks, compiled into a stack, and offered as reading material for my doctoral classes. Nifty, eh? Not so fast, pard.

Behold Exhibit A:

Right. They have some 18-year-old library droid pull books off the shelves in Boston and stand at a copier for 5 hours, and charge me $106.75 for the privilege (and this is the cheapest one yet – once I paid something like $190). But what do I get for my money?

Exhibit B:

The Coursepack. They did go to the trouble to punch holes in the sides so you can provide your own 3-ring binder. How thoughtful.

Exhibit C: Reduced in size and copied sideways so you have to turn the book to read it. Some pages are right-side-up, some aren’t. Brilliant.

Is this not the most incredibly profitable idea ever? Pardon me while I go get my credit card.

Sheesh.

PS – I want one of these.

The steroid scandal that slammed full-force into professional sports has once again surfaced in the news.

This time it’s Tammy Thomas, ex-professional cyclist, convicted yesterday of lying to a grand jury about her steroid use.

She denied ever using steroids. Friends, if this is the face of a woman who never shot up male hormones, I am Christ on a pony.

I suppose that people can be born to look this way, but I’d like to see her before she began her cycling career – which, by the way, was stripped from her for life.

And she blamed the jury and the prosecutor for “destroy[ing] people’s lives.”

Nah, I’d say she made that choice all on her own.

See, what gets me is not that people shoot up steroids. Folks can (and do) put whatever they want into their bodies, for myriad reasons. What cheeses me the most is when people screw up, then blame others.

A second cheese-off is the fact that such harsh punishment is doled out to these athletes, with more to come in the future (are you paying attention, Barry and Roger?), while criminals who hurt people other than themselves get slaps on the wrist. Drug dealers go free because prisons are overcrowded. Idiots like Ray Lewis serve 12 months probation for murder. People who beat their wives and children get a finger-wagging from the judge and are told to attend some bogus class.

To me, those are the real perps.

Why aren’t we dragging people to court for smoking cigarettes? I mean, the jig is up on tobacco – it’ll kill you sure as you’re sitting there reading this. But steroids? Oh wait…we’re dealing with professional sports <<insert angel chorus and beam of light from heaven here>> , so by God that’s serious business. We have to stop doping in sports!

No. We have to stop being dopes, paying top-dollar for sporting events and making it so one individual athlete makes more in one year than the entire economies of some third-world countries.

Ok, rant over for now. I’m happy there’s Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in my house. Shame on The Thriller for turning me on to it, ‘cuz it’s like $8 a pound.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Fink out.

He killed dogs, lied about it, and got 2 years in jail. By many accounts, this was completely justified. Heck, if they’d asked me, I would have said 2 years was a walk in the park for someone who had watched – and taken part in – the hanging, shooting and torturing of innocent animals.

[If PETA had their way, he'd have been lynched in public.]

Next case. For (always bitter) Browns fans like myself, this is a specifically ouchy memory. Remember Kevin Mack? Sure you do. He was another pro athlete for whom money, talent and fame were not enough. He had to add cocaine to the list, and it landed him a 6-month jail term. Six months? On a first offense with no prior record? Almost anyone in that position back then walked away with probation and community service. I remember the outcry from the Cleveland press and the football world in general, deriding the court system and the NFL for making “an example” out of Mack.

Next: Marion Jones. Another liar who broke the hearts of all those who supported her, defended her, and most importantly, looked up to her. She cheated in the Olympics, deceived an entire country, made fools of those who trusted her, and betrayed the kids who wanted to be like her.

She got 6 months. And the other liar on her level, Roger Clemens, should get even more, since he’s taking his lies to even loftier heights of insanity. But that’s another post for another day. Let’s get to the point (and I do have one, I promise).

Vick killed some dogs. Jones took steroids, and Mack bought cocaine. Those are all bad things, for which each athlete paid (or is presently paying) in jail time. But then wait….

What about Ray Lewis of the Baltimore Ravens? Charged with murder and aggravated assault in 2000 (do you find it at all strange that they never found his blood-stained white suit?), he never served a day. Instead, he agreed to rat on his homies and walked free.

Leonard Little of the Rams rammed his Lincoln Navigator into the car Cindy Gutweiler was driving, after he ran a red light. He was skunk drunk, with a blood alcohol level of .19. Did Cindy press charges? Nope. She couldn’t, because she died. Little served 90 days and got 4 years probation.

And I won’t even go into the wife beatin’, crack smokin’, rapin’ and pillagin’ delinquents of the NBA. It is amazing how many commit felonies, then walk out of the courtroom, free men.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the biggest thug of them all:

Still walking free, still making millions – although the piper just might catch up with him in September.

And I know all about aggravating vs. mitigating circumstances. People, there aren’t that many mitigating circumstances on the planet. A woman who shoots up steroids – physically harming no one but herself – and lies about it gets 6 months, and people like Lewis and Little go free? You tell me how that’s fair.

I read on somebody’s op-ed column that we can’t compare cases. The justice system deals with individuals with myriad inconsistencies, and with humans who are imperfect, so we cannot expect perfection from the legal machinery all of the time.

Oh yeah? Just wait until it’s *you* sitting at the defense table, pal.

And my show.

Lately, every morning at 5 (sometimes earlier), I come downstairs and check the weather. More times than I’d like to think, I’ve seen something like this:

This is not a winter storm warning. This is a test – from God. Title of test: Mounting a Musical Theater Production with as Little Rehearsal as Possible.

Of course, I don’t have it as bad as my friends in Concord, New Hampshire over the last few weeks, but hey – anything’s possible. And with the way my cast and I have been scoring in the luck department, it’ll probably happen.

Who knows? Maybe there’ll be a cholera epidemic. Or the school will lose power for a week.

Or maybe all our tails’ll fall off…

Signed,

© The Walt Disney Company

Some things just ain’t fair. Take, for instance, our government. Constitution? Feh! Check this, homey…

1. The US government allows the open and unrestricted sale of alcohol (to anybody over the age of 21), despite the fact that in 2007, likkered up drivers caused more fatal accidents in cars than ever before.
2. The Kennedy-Kyl Bill prohibits internet gambling in one’s own household. Here’s a great essay on it from 1998.
3. Pornography -proven to have psychological effects that have led men to violent acts against women AND children, not to mention consistently exploiting women for 100 years – is openly displayed in “news stands” all over the country.

How can this happen in America?, you ask. We’re all the Land of the Whatever & Such. Well, friend, that may be the $640,000 question (I know there’s an extra zero – inflation).

I could go on a day-long rant about numbers 1 and 3. There’s all kinds of research on it out there. And although I have no personal issue with booze, alcohol has ruined the lives of many of my family, and consistently makes others act like fools – some of whom need little help doing so as it is.

It’s the Kyl bill that smokes my tobaccy. There are NO laws against drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes in one’s own home – behaviors that have repeatedly proven to cause death – as in, people stop breathing and die and kill other people with their cars – yet, I can’t play internet poker for real money in my own home because it’s against the law and it might harm me. Tell me that makes sense. Triple-dog-dare ya. Well, you can’t, because it don’t. Er, doesn’t.

The real reason, as we all know, is the overarching, suffocating power of the political lobby. In other words: money makes the world go around. In still other words: let people kill themselves by smoking and drinking themselves to death, or by polluting their pathetic psyches with porn, because those are personal choices. But boyo – don’t go touching the banks. People who spend their credit card balances on gambling – now there’s a problem, folks. That’s a choice we are going to control. Because, you know, gambling kills more children than anything else in the world, and we must save the children from their parents.

Puh. Leez.

Either let the gander do what’s good for the goose, or leave everyone alone.

Fink out (because I gotta get ready for school now).