King For A Day, Fool For A Lifetime*

Famous Mom and I stepped of a plane after travelling all day yesterday, and she asked as I was looking at the news on my phone if anything happened while we were out of town, and apparently, Rodney King discovered his kryptonite was not police batons, but water.

Let's just get out of the way the fact that excessive and unnecessary force was used by the cops on March 3, 1991 when King was "arrested" and dispense with any shock at my making light of his death.  It was unjust, as was the trial resulting in four exonerated police and the '92 riots.  But while others may take the time to praise Caesar King, I have come to bury him.

No person should get the beatdown King received (unless you're talking about the likes of Evil Dick Cheney or Karl Rove, and they don't really qualify as people), but let's remember that King was an already convicted felon (robbery!) on parole leading police on a drunken high-speed chase while more than twice the legal drinking limit .  Again, not justification, but this wasn't a little old lady coming back from BINGO night at her church.  Had King only become the icon he was given the chance to be, uttering his famous "Can't we all just get along?", then certainly his passing - or chance at a positive legacy, would not be tainted.

Shakespeare (who you'd never expect mentioned in the same breath Rodney King) did say that some men were born great, while others had greatness thrust upon them, and although it was really a dick joke from Twelfth Night, it has come to reflect rising to the situation, and King could not become that person.  Even Jesse Jackson, who has squandered much of the respect he had when he first came into the public eye, made more of himself due to his association with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but Rodney King was not made of the material to transcend himself.

So what happened to King in the years afterwards?  Here's some of his greatest hits:

• August 21, 1993: King crashed his car into a block wall in downtown Los Angeles, and was convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol.  He received a fine, entered an alcohol rehabilitation program and was placed on probation.

• July 1995: King was arrested by Alhambra police, alleging he hit his wife with his car. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail after being convicted of hit and run

• King invested a large portion of his $3.8 million settlement in a record label, Straight Alta-Pazz Records.  It quickly folded

• August 27, 2003: King was arrested again for speeding and running a red light while under the influence of alcohol. He did not yield to police officers and slammed his vehicle into a house, breaking his pelvis.

• November 29, 2007: King claims was shot in the face, arms, and back with pellets from a shotgun while riding home on a bike, though police described the wounds as looking like they came from birdshot.  He offered few details about the suspects, a man and woman, who demanded his bicycle and shot him as he fled. 

• May 2008:  King checked into the Pasadena Recovery Center and is cast member of the second season of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

• September 9, 2010: King plans to marry Cynthia Kelley, a juror in the civil suit he brought against the city of Los Angeles.

• March 3, 2011 (the 20th anniversary of the beating): King was stopped by LAPD for driving erratically and was issued a citation for driving with an expired license.  It led to a February 2012 conviction for reckless driving.

His pool drowning in the early hours at his home yesterday unexpectedly punctuates the historical footnote that Rodney King will become, a victim of circumstance, but not an innocent.

*with apologies to Faith No More

Leave That Thing Alone

Looks like it's going to be at least another nine months before they need to change the name from "19 Kids and Counting"...

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar got some sad news yesterday when they went to a routine checkup to find out the sex of their 20th child (yes, I would say it's routine after the first three or four), and the answer they got was dead - I know, an odd answer for a child's gender.

Their doctor was unable to find the baby's heartbeat or restraint by the parents for breeding (which is what it becomes when you've had more than a litter of children), and it was determined Michelle had miscarried in her second trimester. Jim Bob released a statement confirming the news to Access Hollywood, and also marking the rare occasion that the name Jim Bob and Hollywood were in the same sentence. In a not-at-all-creepy way, they will still name the baby after they find out of it was a boy or a girl, and plan to hold a funeral service. No word yet if it will be part of their upcoming television season.

The Duggars most recently had daughter Josie in December 2009, and the rest of their offspring are Joshua, 23 (who has two children, Mackynzie, 2, and Michael, 4 months, with wife Anna, 23), twins Jana and John-David, 21; Jill, 20; Jessa, 19; Jinger, 17; Joseph, 16; Josiah, 15; Joy-Anna, 14; twins Jedidiah and Jeremiah, 12; Jason, 11; James, 10; Justin, 8; Jackson, 7; Johanna, 6; Jennifer, 4; and Jordyn, 3. Shockingly, not a Jim Bob junior in the bunch!

If you're keeping score, Michelle's record is 19-2, which would win the AFC East. Yes, she miscarried before, during her second pregnancy, when she was reportedly taking oral birth control. I should add that anal is a very effective birth control, but it is not exactly church-supported. After the first miscarriage, it's said the couple decided to let the number of children they have be "up to God." Well, I think he's trying to let you know you may be finished crapping out kids...or should be.

Now, before I get angry replies about making light of dead babies, ask yourself if it's reasonable to have that many children as some kind of religious quest. If you didn't already know, it's not. We're not in the age of cholera or they need farmhands, and unless it's the second coming of the Khan Empire, there's no need to lay enough seed for an army.

Berry Very Heaveh

"CBS 2 affiliate reporter Serene Branson did not have a stroke live on air while reporting on the Grammys Sunday night", media sources reported, but you wouldn't know it from watching the tape.

Quite The Looker

I admit, you had me at "Oregon Woman Receives Prosthetic Face After Shotgun Trauma", and while you can read all about the whole, touching procedure at The Oregonian, I found something very wrong with this tale.

Back in 1999, an accidental shotgun blast totally wrecked 16-year-old Chrissy Steltz's face. Her then-boyfriend unintentionally shot her in the face at a party (and how many times have we heard that one), destroying her nose and leaving her blind. After Steltz's son was born last year, she decided to receive a facial prosthesis so her "little boy can grow up looking at a regular mom." More than a decade later, Steltz was fitted for the custom prosthetic face that allows her to go out in public without wearing her usual cloth facial mask.

In addition to building the prosthesis, which took four days to mold, Steltz had to first undergo surgery that would allow her to hold the new face in place. She underwent four surgeries to prepare her face for the prosthesis. Last September, a nasal opening was cut where she had none. And in February, eight screwlike implants were drilled into bones above and below her eye sockets, allowing the prosthesis to snap into place and held by tiny magnets.

Did you catch it? Yeah, "After Steltz's son was born last year, she decided to receive a facial prosthesis so her 'little boy can grow up looking at a regular mom'. " That means that somebody - consciously and deliberately - made the decision to fuck Chrissy Steltz. That lucky fella happens to be blind, because, well...I'm not going to spell it out for you, but that's the lucky part. I'm sure they're both decent folk, and they've overcome their share of difficulties, but if I was blind - no, blind and living in Oregon - even then would I not reduce myself to banging a faceless woman. Not even if she was built like Kelly Brook.

"You Know The Rules..."

I'm warning you now...because you may not even get to the part about being "the toilet of your dreams". Best to let your friends tell you about this and spare yourself.

Wheels Of Steel

You're Going To Hell If You Laugh

See you there. I'll be in the deep end of the Lake of Fire.

C9nnibal Flower Weekend

The big thing this weekend (other than enjoying a 4th day of 100 degree heat in a downtown warehouse to work on Saturday) is the 9 year anniversary of Cannibal Flower. Funny that ever since I started working downtown, CF started to jump locations monthly instead of sitting conveniently close down the street.

It's been a real pleasure taking in some amazing underground art as well has having MAGNA perform in a space what is truly suited to our artistic approach to music. Knowing many of the artists who have shown there as well as owning several pieces that have had the fortune of being displayed, it will be nice to celebrate the accomplishments of Cannibal Flower with them, knowing that the underground is still alive and well after almost a decade. That news alone is the best of the week.

Not good enough? Fine, how about this:

Police in Florida city used the promise of economic stimulus checks to lure 76 people to their arrest on a variety of outstanding warrants. You're a horrible place, but you actually did something right. The Fort Lauderdale Police Department set up "Operation Show Me the Money" to round up people wanted on charges ranging from second-degree murder to guns and drug charges to failure to pay child support. "Operation Arrest College Kids At Spring Break" was such a success, but really only gave the department one solid win a year.

Using the name of the fictitious "South Florida Stimulus Coalition," police mailed letters asking the suspects to call an undercover phone line and make appointments to claim their money. When they showed up at an auditorium and presented their identification, they were led to an area where uniformed police were waiting to arrest them. Police said such roundups are safer and more efficient than serving warrants at people's homes. "You totally control the environment whereas when you're walking up to someone's home there's an unknown factor there," police said obviously.

The operation ended this week, and authorities declined to say how much money the suspects were offered. "They were not large dollar amounts," they said. "No one was promised thousands of dollars." And that's what made it believable for Florida - stimulus checks for $62.35.

Worst of the week: Trouble brewing in Malaysia! (chortle!)

I know that there's not many (any?) hardcore Islamic readers of this site, but if there are, could you please tell me why all the countries where your theocratic governments and zealot societies can't see the church from the state have insane punishments for the most harmless of actions?

Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno had originally been scheduled to enter a women's prison, but was abruptly turned around and sent home. She was to be lashed six times with a rattan cane...for drinking a beer.

Beer, wine and liquor is widely available at shops, bars and restaurants in Malaysia, unlike in more austere Islamic nations such as Iran and Pakistan. The Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities in Malaysia are free to consume alcohol but its Shariah law forbids Muslims — who make up 60% population — from drinking. Islamic morality police, the enforcement officials of the Islamic Religious Department, arrested Kartika in a raid for drinking beer at a hotel lounge at a beach resort in December 2007. The sentenced caning will be carried out after the current Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, largely in part to the Attorney General's office advise to delay it for "compassionate reasons". Ramadan began Saturday and will end in mid-September.

So to recap, in a country where morality police operate under a governmental religious department and enforce laws that do not apply to all citizens of the country, your punishment, that could never possibly fit the crime, will be delayed and called compassionate as those who seek to initiate such asinine and absurd laws need to keep their consciences clear when they enter their most holy periods of religious fanaticism.

If you were banning Muslims from seeing the Black Eyed Peas concert for being shitty and not because of religious intolerance of anything remotely out of step with your medieval beliefs, I could maybe get behind your position. But you're batshit crazy and completely backwards. Islunatics!

Special news of the day: Silence is golden.

Late breaking news today was that DJ AM, aka a really shitty disc jockey that became a celebrity for playing records for psuedo-celebrities at supposedly hot nightclubs, died. And that suits me just fine.

Now all you stay-at-home moms who are agast at my cool moral platitudes, or morons who think Entourage is a blueprint for coolness, shut up and prepare to have some education dropped on you (like it was hot).

You should know that my shit is old school. Like hating his weak ass, no-talent act from back in the day. Since this is the Year Of Dead Celebrities, let us hope that Good Charlotte and other useless meatsticks also do their part and die to make this world better. Yes, Samuel Ronson, you too are are getting close to your fifteenth minute of inexplicable existence outside a North Hollywood LGBT club - time to die.

DJ AM was to DJing as Milli Vanilli was to singing. Or the Detroit Lions were to a perfect season. Or Republicans are to telling the truth and progressive thinking. Or Twilight is to great literature. Must I continue?

When Heath Ledger decided to accidentally OD, we lost a talented performer who gave us a taste of his abilities in the posthumous The Dark Knight Returns. When DJ AM took a little too much of his crack pipe and prescription pills (yes, that's what they found there), we lost nothing, and who leave behind a playable character in the upcoming DJ Hero videogame. Clearly, I don't feel anything bad about seeing his death as, well, not bad. Because it really shows how unimportant he was and how shallow and phoney the celebrity circlejerk realm is.

And how do we know this? Because of the twatting. Grief, can you be contained in 140 characters? Perhaps not. But all the opportunists came out to catch a slice of his dim, dead spotlight with their own poignant, touching thoughts that had to be shared publicly. You're only as important as the thread you twat on, I guess. Lohag, Titty Perry, Ashton Doucher, Scientologist Masterson, Herpes Hilton, P. Douchie, Fall Out Pete, Heidi Yawntag, and the always ineffective None Gayer Than John Mayer were only a few celebritards getting in on the action. Interesting how no real DJs have anything to say on the matter...Paul Oakenfold, Kid Koala, The X-ecutioners, Mr. Scruff, DJ Q-Bert, Cut Chemist, DJ Food, Aphex Twin, Coldcut, Amon Tobin, DJ Shadow, The Herbaliser - all quiet. DJ AM was a poseur (fancy spelling because he was an extra big douchenozzle).

The cherry on top is that DJ AM recently announced an upcoming MTV reality series, tentatively titled "Gone Too Far," which had just completed shooting. The show was designed to help young people whose lives had been turned upside down due to drug dependencies. You better make sure you got those addictions of your own in check first before you think you're capable of helping others. Credibility = zero. And my question is, does MTV air the sucker? Or do they lose their balls like sister station VH1 with their millionaire murderer?

Literally like Final Destination (and the one that adds more irony opening today - zing!), DJ AM escaped death in a plane crash, only to have it catch up with him. Travis Barker, you better watch out. If you want a cup of sorrow, feel bad about the Olympic shot putter who was gunned down in front of his home by prowlers last night, not a guy whose credits were playing pool parties in Las Vegas.

Gangsta Bird

Please, let's keep abortion legal.

New Kind Of Rape

Just want to share with everybody something totally retarded that came up in conversation, and of course it exists as friendly chain spam. Verbatim:

This is a true story.

The woman left the office after working hours and saw a little child crying on the road. Feeling pity for the child, she went to ask what happened. The child said, 'I am lost. Can you take me home please?' Then the child gave her a slip of paper and tells the woman where the address is. The woman, being an average kind person who didn't suspect anything took the child there. And there when they arrived at the child's home, the kind hearted woman pressed the door bell and she was electrocuted as the bell was wired with high voltage, and fainted.

The next day when she woke up, she found herself in an empty house up in the hills, naked. Condoms were all thrown around with semen all over her and flowing from her body. There were at least about 20 condoms! She had not even seen her assailants. That's why nowadays crimes are targeted on kind people like her.

Next time if the same situation occurs, never bring the child to the intended place. If the child insists, then bring the child to the police station. Lost children are best sent to police stations!!!!!!

Please send this to all your female friends/colleagues, and your friends with girlfriends and friends with wives. It is better to receive this a thousand times than is a victim once!

To keep my Identity and job safe I will just say that I am Officer Justice. Keep safe Ladies!

Please pass this on to family members. It is better to be informed. It is sad that we cannot even help children now!

One Love

Wow. There's so much wrong and totally ridiculous, I was shocked that there was even any thought whatsoever that this could be remotely true. Let's take it apart, line by line.

This is a true story. (anything that begins with those words, especially an email, is not)

The woman (THE woman? which one? the made up one this didn't happen to) left the office (the nonspecific office) after working hours (because she was working regular hours) and saw a little child crying on the road (y'know, THE road, wherever it is). Feeling pity (not concern or empathy or any other normal feeling) for the child, she went to ask what happened. The child (that nobody else apparently saw - it must have been a very remote road where not many people were) said, 'I am lost. Can you take me home please?' (good, the child was taught to talk to strangers) Then the child gave her a slip of paper and tells the woman where the address is (if that was the case then what was on the paper? did she not know where the address was, and if so how far was she going to go to drop the kid off). The woman, being an average (actually, far below in the intelligence department) kind (but not so kind that she previously pitied the child) person who didn't suspect anything (because a child alone crying on the side of the road is normal) took the child there (without bothering to find out how the child got from home to the side of the road in the first place). And there when they arrived (what is that grammar?) at the child's home (which must have been in the middle of nowhere for the next part to happen), the kind hearted (oh, now there's kindness in her heart) woman pressed the door bell and she was electrocuted as the bell was wired with high voltage, and fainted (that's not called fainting).

The next day when she woke up (that must have been quite a shock that knocked her out for at least 12 hours but didn't kill her), she found herself in an empty house up in the hills (in the hills of where? from where?), naked. Condoms were all thrown around (were all? - is this a story or a transcription from somebody without high school English) with semen all over her and flowing (really - how much was in there to literally flow out of her?) from her body (so someone used condoms because they didn't want to get a disease from her but not everybody because she was leaking semen? and it would have to be fairly recent, because that shit dries up). There were at least about (which is it - at least or about) 20 condoms (which means there were twenty people? or she got raped twenty times? or it's just another made up part of the story)! She had not even seen her assailants (is that insult to injury?). That's why nowadays crimes (nowadays crimes? not those ones of yesteryear?) are targeted on kind people like her (or the kind of people like her - total idiots who afterwards can't tell the authorities where the original house was that she brought the child to).

Next time if the same situation occurs (getting phantom gang raped?), never bring the child to the intended place (as if you want to pick up strange children). If the child insists (what are you, a moron - you do what a child insists of you), then bring the child to the police station (which should have been your only option to begin with, if you didn't just call them the moment you found the child). Lost children (who are being used to create overly complicated rape scenarios where multiple people can't figure out a less troublesome way to find victims) are best sent to police stations!!!!!!

Please send this to all your female friends/colleagues, and your friends with girlfriends and friends with wives (but not to your girlfriend, wife, or any family members). It is better to receive this a thousand times than is a victim (than is a? speak correctly!) once (actually, I'd rather the people responsible for passing it along get raped than have to read it ever again)!

To keep my Identity (capitalized for importance) and job safe (from what) I will just say that I am Officer Justice (of the made of title department, silly name division). Keep safe Ladies (also capitalized for importance)!

Please pass this on to family members (oh, now it's okay). It is better to be informed (better than what?). It is sad that we cannot even help children now (yes, you can, if you don't have fake, made up scenarios)!

One Love (oh, fuck you - what does that have to do with anything?)

Special thanks and a huge eat shit go to Liz Cruz in Payroll / H.R. at the Holmes Body Shop corporate office, as well as Laura Palma and Cheryl Weir, who helped make this chain find it's way to the gals who work for me at our office. 20 condoms all thrown around with semen for you ladies!

Sun, Fun, Stay, Play!

Just like the sign says in Bakersfield!

In a story so incredible I had to put three links to different reports in it, a man got high on PCP and ate his son's eyeballs out. Then the father attempted to hack his own legs off with an axe. The boy's mother, also a PCP user, came to the door just before the attack to deliver a pizza to their home, heard her son screaming for her to rescue him, but left anyway. If only she'd come earlier when he was hungry...

Five irony points if the pizza was Papa John's.

VG-IF Weekend

As I told you last week, we've got something for you.

Velvet Glove - Iron Fist.

It's a brand new blog, and it's going to pistol whip your sensibilities. I'll let it's moderator and co-creator Don MF Greeb tell you more about it:

Velvet Glove - Iron Fist is something that I've been doing for quite a while for my own amusment...just finding pictures and putting captions on them. The concept is simple and the the rules are few. What you're accustomed to reading or seeing on IOvUF is tame compared to some of the things that will pop up on Velvet Glove - Iron Fist. It will be inappropriate, sexist, racist, shocking, provacative, tasteless, crass, unapologetic, bitter, and morally reprehesible. And those are it's finer qualities.

Perhaps that's too strong a warning, but there will certainly be off-color, midnight black humor. Plus foul language and nudity, as needed. It's not quite the website you're going to want to read at work in case somebody's watching, but you'll check it out the moment you get home and email your co-workers about it the next day. And that's the beauty of it. It's every day.

Since Famous M is tied up with two sites already, he'll be helping hatch ideas and taking a sidekick's role for the daily posts, so hate him just a touch more for endulging my sick side. But I'll be your guide daily to the the best and the worst in an unholy marriage of thoughts, words, and images. Think of it as the drunken sex you had with that questionable girl - you can tell everybody you were repulsed and ashamed, but deep down inside you'd do it again.

Well friends, there you have it...check out Velvet Glove - Iron Fist, our newest endevour, which will begins today, and continues tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next...

Coming In Seven Days

You'll see what I'm talking about. And then regret it.

Who Needs Looks If You've Got Talent

Matt Taibbi has determined there are two kinds of grotesque athletes: the good ugly, who help you win by frightening and distracting teams for a game or two a year, and the bad ugly, who offend God every day of the week. Here is his scorecard...

Over the winter the Boston Red Sox re-signed their star first baseman Kevin Youkilis — third in league MVP voting — to a four-year, $41 million extension. This was not long after they failed (to great fanfare) to sign another first baseman, free-agent spokesmodel/megastar Mark Teixeira, who was stolen from them by the Yankees for eight years and $180 million. Two comparable players, both big bats with great defense, and yet one costs well more than twice as much annually. Why?

The conventional explanations are that Teixeira has the longer track record and was an unrestricted free agent. The unconventional explanation is that Teixeira is better-looking. He’s your basic laboratory-created, media-ready modern jock: perfect hair, Atlas build, 100-megaton dentistry — the type that grows up slamming nerds against lockers in between classes and/or groping passed-out cheerleaders in his convertible on the way to choir practice. Guys who look like that and hit 30 dingers a season you’ve got to pay $20 million a year for. They sell cereal in their spare time and once a year do uncomfortable photo ops with hairless cancer kids sitting under blankets in their wheelchairs. In sports, they’re the top commodity.

Then there’s Kevin Youkilis. Youk has only three body parts, all hideously oversized: an enormous set of gnomish, bushy forearms; a massive, casaba melon–size white head; and a cauldronlike belly. He has a truly awesome bristle of thick red chin hair that makes his face look like a cross between a vagina and something out of The Hobbit. At the plate he disgustingly gushes sweat by some means previously unknown to science in which the moisture travels upward along his body, racing in a cascade from his balls and armpits up his neck, over his head, and back down over the bill of his helmet to shower the plate. Whereas a guy like Teixeira was born with a swing so gorgeous you want to paint it, Youkilis fighting a middle reliever to a nine-pitch walk looks like a rhinoceros trying to fuck a washing machine.

Which is why he doesn’t sell cereal and why you can sign him relatively cheap. He’s also good for your team. It’s character-building to have guys like this around, and unpleasant and disheartening for other teams to compete against. But in sports there’s good ugly and bad ugly, and knowing which is which is a crucial part of any team’s success. The breakdown:

THE TOO-MANY CHROMOSOMES DIVISION

Club president: Dwayne Schintzius

Few people remember it now, but Schintzius became half of the greatest trade of ugly sports body parts when in 1991 the San Antonio Spurs traded his mullet to the Sacramento Kings for Antoine Carr’s ass. Now, Schintzius was 7-foot-2, which means that by itself  his mullet was nearly three feet tall. It was the most awesome sports haircut of all time, easily besting the Jaromir Jagr tornado mullet and the Mike Piazza peroxide job. Schintzius’s career was an important development in the history of sports ugliness because it represented the evolutionary merger of two key concepts: the hick/redneck who gets a million-dollar contract before he outgrows lip fuzz and bad sweaters (i.e., the John Kruk school), and the gland freak who in ancient times would have been chased into the woods by torchbearing villagers but in modern times can ride his mutation to a lucrative pro sports career (the Gheorghe Muresan school). Generally speaking, if you’re only one kind of ugly you can still very much be an asset to a team — witness the Celtics of the ’80s, who built a dynasty around a classic bad-sweater/lip-fuzz redneck in Larry Bird and a prototypical gland freak in Kevin McHale — but being two types of ugly is like having too many chromosomes: It doesn’t work. Chris Kaman’s death-metal/WWF look was the best recent bearer of the Schintzius standard, but then he cut his balding Hulk Hogan tail. Naturally, his scoring average went up.

THE FAT REEKING WHALE DIVISION

Club president: David Wells

With the caveat that fat is not necessarily ugly, not even in sports, there’s a certain kind of fat that separates itself from the pack. C.C. Sabathia, for instance, is fat without being ugly. He is built more like a snowman or the McDonaldland character Grimace, a giant, mostly muscular round form that is pleasing in some mysterious way to the infantile subconscious; he lacks the spindly legs, the floppy, genitals-concealing rubber tire, the sweaty bald head, and the atrocious Hitler mustache to fill out the awful picture. David Wells wasn’t just fat, he was I-don’t-give-a-fuck fat — fat in a way every man knows he could be deep down inside. When you watched him pitch, you looked for mustard stains on his uniform. You could imagine him blasting farts at the third-base gallery as he delivered his curveball, and if you were a kid you didn’t want him to sign your glove because you were afraid he might blow his nose in it. It was disgusting and intimidating. Not many athletes achieve David Wells fatness and live to tell about it. It’s a club that’s pretty much restricted to John Daly, Buster Douglas, Bartolo Colon, and Cowboys guard Nate Newton, who exemplified the species when a Snickers bar flew out of his uniform once during a game. This division is not to be confused with:

THE BIG DONKEY DIVISION

Club president: Keith Traylor

This is your huge, hulking, slow, fee, fi, fo, fum ugly. And it’s not all about fat. In fact, some of the guys in this division, notably Artis Gilmore, weren’t fat at all. For whatever reason, a lot of sports teams try to win by clogging up the court/field with a big, slow-moving donkey, and a large part of what makes this ugly is not so much what the athlete’s face looks like (although in former Dolphin Keith Traylor’s prune-skulled, bug-eyed case, that too was important) but his aesthetic impact on the flow of the game. So for instance, Adam Dunn, baseball’s reigning exemplar of this species, is not only a big donkey, but he strikes out 180 times a year and hits .240. He also has the one telltale physical feature of this class of athlete: the big sagging bullfrog neck that looks like it’s got a couple of liters of vanilla milkshake stored in it. Greg Luzinski, the Reuschel brothers, William (the Refrigerator) Perry, and NBA obesity experiment Robert (Tractor) Traylor were early members of this class.

THE SWAMP THING DIVISION

Club president: Tayshaun Prince

Hands-down the best kind of sports ugly, closely related to the Youkiloid strain, this is your tough, defense-oriented athlete whose appearance is a physical deterrent. On defense you want the guy who looks as though he spent his formative years being beaten with a shovel by his toothless, Lysol-drunk mother, who conceived him by mating with something that crawled out of a swamp with a hard-on and five dollars in its claws. That particular brand of taxonomic orphan is going to spend the rest of its life pissed off at everything that has the right number of eyes and fingers, which is just an ideal mind-set for sports. This list is heavily dominated by black guys with reddish hair or freckles (Tayshaun Prince, Dennis Rodman) as well as by misshapen-headed white dudes with four teeth and beards (Mark Eaton, Jack Lambert). Some people mistakenly include baseball catchers with big ears or monobrows in this group (Yogi Berra, Jorge Posada, Sal Fasano), but that’s actually a whole different species. Joe Frazier was in this group, but you tell him that.

THE METHUSELAH DIVISION

Club president: Robert Parish

There is no other way to say it: The ’80s Celtics were the Rosetta Stone of sports ugly. They had representatives of almost every group covered here, with a couple of pseudo-Schintziuses (Greg Kite and Eric Fernsten), a gland freak (McHale), a bad-sweater hick (Bird), a swamp thing (Dennis Johnson), and a big donkey (Rick Robey). Parish’s specialty was looking prematurely 600 years old, and he is the obvious leader of the Methuselah category, which includes such standouts as Patrick Ewing and Otis Nixon and, perhaps controversially, LeBron James. There’s a very high number of athletes who fit into this category, and the reason is obvious: Many of them grew up as 6-foot, 230-pound third-graders and never downshifted into looking their age. One of the great debates in sports today is whether Portland Trailblazers rookie Greg Oden belongs in this category, or whether he belongs more in the sloe-eyed passes bouncing off his head/big donkey group. In my mind Oden’s career doesn’t take off until he learns to be less clueless slow-moving donkey and more disturbingly prematurely old-looking giganto-jock. It’s likewise impossible to place Deke Mutombo in this group because we don’t know how old he is. He might have been 36 at Georgetown.

THE AREA 51 DIVISION

Club president: Sam Cassell

It’s a very, very small list, but there are a few athletes who make a name for themselves not because they look bad, but because they don’t look like human beings at all. When Sam Cassell first came up with the Rockets, every NBA fan had the same feeling movie audiences had when they watched Tony Shalhoub regrow his exploded head during that pawnshop scene in the first Men in Black: a mixture of fascination and revulsion. Sam I Am is the reigning sports alien right now, winning by a tentacle over intemperate Dominican relief pitcher Julian Tavarez, but he’s had some company over the years — in particular, frightening Ontarian hockey player Mike Ricci and onetime Kansas City A’s pitcher Don Mossi (look him up — it’s worth it). Extragalactic cultures also seem to like to hide their advance Earth scouts on football rosters in the guise of placekickers, with Garo Yepremian being one of the few confirmed ETs.


THE B.C. COMICS DIVISION

Club president: Alexander Ovechkin

Not surprisingly, there are a great many sports cavemen, with most of them in hockey, one of the few sports that will tolerate a person who looks like Alexander Ovechkin as its leading man. He, Adam Oates, and famed goon Mick Vukota are probably your leading NHL troglodytes, but there’s been plenty of cross-pollination into other sports (tarantula-faced Reds pitcher Aaron Harang and foreheadless Patriots lineman Stephen Neal are probably also members of the Unk Unk group). It takes more than a beard to be a true caveman, which is why irritatingly handsome Casanova types pretending to be ugly guys like Johnny Damon don’t get to qualify. Shane Battier, who looks like a model from his very low forehead down, is one of the tougher calls in the history of sports ugly — I think the ruling here is that he is excluded. Ex-Brewers hurler Pete Vuckovich, who scored a cameo in Major League as the player who “leads the league in most offensive categories, including nose hair,” is, on the other hand, a definite yes.

The lesson in all this? When in doubt, pick the ugly player. Guys with vagina beards and holes in their faces are far more likely to play with the right rage than your pretty-boy QB who gets triple-cowgirled by the Swedish bikini team no matter how many interceptions he throws. The disturbing exceptions — Jim Palmer, Oscar de la Hoya, Tom Brady — only prove the rule. Give it up for gross bald guys. Youuuuuk!

Richardson Richardson

Definitively putting an end to any and all rumors which have persisted over the last 24 hours, a representative for Liam Neeson released this statement shortly after at 8pm:

"Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha. They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time.”

In reading a hundred different editorials about Natasha today, it seems most will remember her as an uncommon professional, someone who was gracious and easy going, someone who everyone enjoyed working with and knowing. And Liam Neeson seems like a pretty cool guy, so that sucks too.

Unlike Chris Reeve taking a dive from his horsey, this is a real shame. I've had to justify this several times in the past, but the thing isn't just that a star was injured in an accident, but somebody died far younger than they should have and so suddenly. Yes, I know Superwheelchairman lived many years and did much good in the way of lobbying and promoting spinal research (which would coincidentally benefit him), but my main distinction is that he bailed playing with this showponies - a hazard of the rich and elite, and the Tash smacked her noggin skiing, something that hundreds of millions of people have done and will do this year. Choking to death on a sandwich is sad. Choking to death on caviar and lobster, not so much. Tenements that burst in to flames beats European chalet fires every time. That, and if this had happened to Katherine Heigl, nobody would miss a beat.

May you bathe in Heaven...

Excitable?

There was a time they'd drown a newborn in the river....I'm just sayin'.

Bill: Bigfoot