- Looking back, you have to feel genuinely bad for Mary Ann of Gilligan’s Island fame. After all, being stuck on that damn island for all those years with nitwits like Gilligan, the Professor and Ginger couldn’t have been much fun. However, it had to have been doubly tough for Mary Ann, given how hard it is to get a decent supply of the hippie lettuce on a deserted island. Oh, you didn’t know? Mary Ann is/was a stoner, it’s true. Well, at least the actress who played the wholesome, farm-girl-next-door on the show is a stoner, as evidenced by the fact that in Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann, has been busted for weed in Idaho just this week. A local patrolman stopped Wells’ car and found a couple of blunts in her whip. She was pulled over because she was driving erratically; swerving, speeding up and slowing down and generally operating her vehicle like someone who was high. When Wells was pulled over, she had a great excuse locked and loaded to try and explain the blunts found in the center console of her car. She claimed that the fatties belonged to three hitchhikers that she picked up, but that she kicked them out once she realizing they were getting baked. Plausible…assuming that the person you’re telling the story to is as baked as you are. If the person hearing your explanation is even mildly straight and sober, they’re not buying that one. Why is it that weed never is in the hands of the person it belongs to? It’s always a friend’s, a relative’s, a random hitchhiker’s, etc. How does the chronic ever get smoked if it’s never actually in the possession of the person it belongs to? Nearly as good as Wells’ explanation for the bud being in her car was the reason her attorney gave for her erratic driving that led the cops to pull her over. According to that attorney, Mary Jane, er, Dawn Wells was driving erratically because she was looking for the controls for the heater. A likely story, counselor. That still doesn’t explain why Wells still had the pot in her car even after kicking out those she alleges were responsible for bringing it into the vehicle to begin with. Call me insane, but if someone is in my car and I boot them out for smoking blunts, I’m throwing the weed out with them. Keeping it would lead one to believe that it was yours all along, D. Wells. But credit to you for being 69 years old and still being cool enough to get high, not many grannies can pull that off.
- I didn’t think it was possible to hate the New York Yankees any more, but turns out that it is possible. Yes, their archrivals in the American League East, the Boston Red Sox, have become every bit as detestable as the Bronx Bombers, but the men in pinstripes seem intent on edging back ahead in that race. In keeping with a recent spring training tradition that just needs to die, the Yankees have brought in a minor celebrity to sign a one-day contract and play for them in an exhibition game. Garth Brooks has done it before to raise money for charity, most recently playing with the San Diego Padres in spring training a few years ago. But the Yanks found someone nearly as irrelevant and as much of a has-been as Brooks, inking former alleged funny man Billy Crystal to a one-day deal as a 60th birthday present for the gung-ho Yankee fan. Crystal will play tomorrow for the Yankees against the Pittsburgh Pirates, which I’m sure will be oh, so funny and interesting. Well, it’ll be interesting in the same way that having a two-ton anvil dropped on your head would be amusing. Look, I know Crystal is a major fan of your team and has been a vocal and public supporter of yours for years. I understand that he has a lot of money and is fairly well-known. I also know that he hasn’t made a decent movie in two decades and is the textbook definition of a has-been. Anyone under the age of 30 can't remember a time when he mattered or was a major motion picture star. A lot of people out there, famous and otherwise, would like the chance to play even one game with their favorite team. Just because you’ve made a lot of bad movies and hosted a few awards shows over the years doesn’t mean that the rest of us should be subjected to you “living out the dream.” Major League teams need to stop signing geezer actors and singers to grab publicity or for whatever reason they do it. It’s not funny, it’s not interesting and it’s not amusing - it’s just lame.
- Gaining possession of things that used to belong to famous people is becoming a lot easier than it used to be. No longer do you have to stalk the celebrity of your choice and wait for them to leave some small trinket - used napkin or glass, a towel they used, et. - that you can snatch. Instead, you can simply wait for that person to default on their mortgage, run afoul of the IRS or engage in some other action that will lead to their belongings being auctioned off to the public. Whether it’s the owner of a storage facility raffling off Whitney Houston’s belongings because she hadn’t paid her storage bills, a collection agency auctioning off Michael Jackson’s crap at his Neverland Pedophile Park, er, Ranch or the latest, the belongings of deceased socialite Leona Helmsley being sold off as fulfillment of her last wishes, you have some legitimate shots at buying a famous person’s unwanted or unneeded junk. This particular sale has an edge over Houston and Jackson’s respective auctions, though. Helmsley specified that all proceeds from the sale of items that include some of her more famous and infamous outfits go to a charitable trust set up in the name of herself and her late husband. So if you want the threads she wore when she began serving her sentence for tax evasion, be sure to keep tabs on this auction.
- Knowing how I loathe the existence of Justin Timberlake, you might think that I’d have a negative reaction to news that he’s developing a new TV show for NBC. Actually, if you think that you’d be wrong. I may hate Timberlake for being a former man bander and for putting out some of the most unlistenable crap imaginable as a solo artist, but my thinking when it comes to his non-musical pursuits is not the same. From where I stand, anything that keeps him from signing, or what he tries to pass of as singing, is cool with me. If we wants to pursue a career as an elephant trainer in the circus, so be it. He wants to be a kabuki theater performer in Japan? Thumbs up. Even him developing a show about a thirty-something named Jose as he tries to come to grips with his romantic failures through therapy sessions. Honestly, it sounds like a show that’s going to be canceled after about four episodes, but if Timberlake and Reveille Studios want to work on it, I say go for it. Any activity that keeps a former man-bander out of the recording studio is great. All of those guys should receive a lifetime ban on recording music anyhow, but in lieu of that, diverting their attention into other, non-musical projects will have to suffice.
- Well that’s certainly not going to help drive down the street price of crack. Hermagoras Gonzalez, a man accused of smuggling literally tons (yes tons, not pounds or ounces) of cocaine into the United States in recent years, has been arrested and jailed in Venezuela. Venezuelan authorities staged a raid that netted them Gonzalez, which I’m sure they’re pretty happy with. His lawyer is insisting that he’s innocent, but this is a foreign court case and I just don’t feel right about advocating either side in this one. The side I will advocate is that of all the crack heads around the United States who are now going to have a much tougher time trying to finance their drug habit. Did you think about that before you went and nabbed a true hall of famer (allegedly) in the crack-smuggling world, Venezuelan police? Or did oyu just think about yourselves and boosting your own ego and reputation by apprehending someone who is a big name in the drug world? There are going to be a lot of unhappy crack heads in these here United States….well, until the drug rings do what they always do and simply find the next guy in line waiting to replace Gonzalez. That’s the great part about drug cartels; they don’t so much care who’s transporting their product or what happens to those people, just as long as their drugs are delivered and they get paid.
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