Life gets worse for Billy Gillispie, Riot Watch! in Argentina and a two-sport criminal in Arkansas

- Life is not going well for former University of Kentucky basketball coach Billy Gillispie, who clearly isn't making good use of his free time now that he is without a coaching gig. I don’t know if he’ll ever get the severance pay he claims that the university owes him, but he was bum rushed out the door so John Calipari could come in and take his spot. In spite of that hasty exodus, Gillispie has remained in the state of Kentucky and was a fixture at Keeneland Race Course during its spring meet, standing in the paddock before races and talking to fans. What he was doing Thursday morning was decidedly less productive and much less legal than attending horse race. Gillispie was picked up by police along a highway in the town of Lawrenceburg and busted on a drunken driving charge. Police say they arrested Gillespie at 2:47 a.m. after dispatchers received complaints of an intoxicated driver. Officers responded to the call and spotted the offending vehicle, a white Mercedes with Texas plates. Lawrenceburg police officer Michael Corley clocked Gillispie doing 63 mph in a 45 mph zone and pulled up behind him at a red light. When that light turned green, Gillispie pulled a Frank Solich and sat there in the middle of the road with his car running. A couple minutes later, he snapped out of his drunken funk and continued on down the road. Corley eventually pulled Gillispie over in a school parking lot. "Billy had a strong fruity smell coming from his person [possibly wine] and had red, glassy eyes and slow, slurred speech," Corley wrote. As quick aside, since when do officers refer to people they bust for drunk driving by their first name in a police report? Is he your pal from the local Elks club or a drunken loser who got behind the wheel after four beers too many and endangered the lives of dozens of fellow motorists? But I digress……Gillispie was pulled over, Corley asked for his driver’s license and Gillispie responded that it was in the trunk. That might seem like an odd place to keep your driver’s license, but Gillispie also claimed that he had been golfing all day, so perhaps it was in his golf bag, I don’t know. What I do know is that when Gillispie exited his ride and went to retrieve his wallet from the trunk, he was wobbly and “unsteady on his feet.” At that point, Corley asked if he had been drinking and Gillispie lied, er, said no. That’s when he claimed he’d been golfing all day. Right, because no one ever knocks back any beer when they go golfing, good answer. After that, Gillispie made a bad play by refusing to submit to breath and blood tests for alcohol. That led to his arrest and a trip to the jail in neighboring Franklin County for the night. In the morning, Gillispie wore an orange prison jumpsuit at his video arraignment before Judge Linda Armstrong. She informed him that his right to drive in Kentucky was being suspended for up to 120 days and set the date for his next court appearance on Sept. 23. Gillispie entered a plea of not guilty, but his story of a day of golfing still has holes in it. Wild Turkey Trace, a golf course near the site of the arrest, had no record of Gillispie signing in as one of Wednesday’s golfers. Not that this isn't painfully obvious, but with his lawsuit against UK for the $6 million left on his contract that he claims he’s owed, Gillispie doesn’t need any other legal issues to cope with. That being said, he’s got one and this looks bad for him……….

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! These guys (and gals) have shown on my occasions that they will absolutely go if you provoke them, so it should come as no surprise that Argentine farmers began a weeklong strike on grain and beef sales today in protest of a presidential veto that blocked tax exemption to farmers facing severe drought conditions. These same farmers have gone on strike before and blocked roads and highways over what they felt were unfairly high export taxes placed on their products by the government, so of course they’re going on strike when President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner vetoes a bill that would have given them a much-needed tax exemption. The tax exemption was part of an emergency agriculture bill that would have exempted some drought-hit farmers from those pesky export taxes. “This law would have given relief or breathing room to those producers who have been left so deep in debt after a long drought,” Carlos Garetto, spokesman for the farmers, said Thursday. “Unfortunately, this (veto) is the drop that overflowed the glass.” Whatever works for you, C. As I’ve said many times before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, social dissidence doesn’t need a grandiose, ironclad reason. If anyone wants to riot, protest, strike, etc., they need to meet only the most minimal of qualifications in my book to do so. Plus, the issue of export taxes is a big one in Argentina, which is one of the world’s leading exporters of soybeans and corn. Best of all, strike leaders said that their protest would not affect grain stocks and would not affect prices for consumers. In other words, this is the best of both worlds. The little guy gets to fight back against the tyranny of The Man and his fellow little guys don’t get hurt in the process by rising prices. So you have my full support in your strike, angry Argentine farmers, stick it to The Man………

- There are two-sport athletes, multi-platform entertainers who succeed in multiple industries (TV, music, etc.) and then there are dual-threat criminals. Pulling off the last of these three can be dicey, especially when you are also a volunteer fire department chief. People tend to trust you when you occupy that role and maybe you don’t want to betray their trust and let them down. Donald Lee Wilkins of Jacksonville, Ark. doesn’t appear to have any such issues. Wilkins, a volunteer fire department chief in Faulkner County, was arrested on forgery and fraud charges. And no, forgery and fraud are not the double threat of criminal activity to which I allude. No, that would be the nice criminal combo platter of forgery/fraud and suspicion of bigamy, which Wilkins is also charged with. He’s wanted in Carroll County on a misdemeanor bigamy warrant after allegedly marrying a woman in March in Eureka Springs but not being divorced from his estranged wife whom he married in 1991. See, that’s why you need to tie up those legal loose ends, because if you don’t, sooner or later that estranged wife you never got around to divorcing will come back to bite you in the ass. While it is rare to see this kind of bigamy outside of Utah (just kidding Utah and its Mormon community, you know I love tweaking you guys), every now and then a case will pop up and typically for the exact reason that Wilkins finds himself wanted on a misdemeanor bigamy warrant (one of my new favorite phrases in the English language). I’m sure that the good people of Faulkner County are oh, so proud to have an upstanding man like Donald Lee Wilkins as their volunteer fire chief, but something tells me that they might have to look for a replacement some time soon. A misdemeanor bigamy warrant can be cleared up much more easily than felony forgery and credit card fraud charges. Those tend to stick to you and they tend to send you to jail for a while. But hey, D.L. Wilkins can still boast about being a dual-threat criminal and at the end of the day, that’s something…..I think………

- While I’m a bit peeved at Jake Gyllenhaal for stealing my gig of interviewing the hot, smart Natalie Portman (okay, so I’ve never actually done it, but it’s still my gig because I say so), but I’ll give Gyllenhaal this round of the battle and allow his interview with her for Interview magazine to stand. After the two actors filmed this fall's war drama Brothers, the magazine asked them to sit down for an interview, but with a catch. Gyllenhaal would interview his co-star on all sorts of topics, mostly non-acting. Most of the questions ended up being fairly innocuous, such as what is Portman's favorite food (Carvel ice cream cake), what terrifies her (Smurfs, specifically evil Smurf Gargamel - although in my book, Smurfs are a distant second to those creepy Oompa-Loompas) and what she would be if she weren’t an actress (a bike messenger). "I'd basically have trouble with any job that doesn't require me to wear silly clothes and talk in funny voices,” Portman admitted. But what was actually interesting and unexpected was her answer to a question about her musical preferences. “I've mostly been listening to dirty rap lately. That's sort of my scene," she says. "Really, really obscene hip-hop. I love it so much. It makes me laugh and then it makes me want to dance.” I’m going to overlook the fact that she used the term “dirty rap,” because no one who is truly a hardcore hip-hopper would ever say they listen to dirty rap. But apparently Portman loves the Ying Yang Twins, from whom she quoted lyrics during the interview. Of course she love hip-hop, because what white chick from a middle or upper-class upbringing doesn’t think she’s gangsta and throw on hip-hop like it means she’s ghetto and has the first inkling about what the hip-hop culture is really like? That doesn’t mean she’s not one of my favorite actresses (and one of the hottest in my book), but it just goes to show that famous people are still just like the rest of us…….

- Count me among those who just don’t get the fascination with either bashing or mocking University of Florida all-everything quarterback Tim Tebow. As any college football fan knows, Tebow has led his team to two national championships in his first three years at UF, won a Heisman Trophy, is a devout Christian who practices abstinence, is the son of missionaries and regularly spends his summers doing mission work in Third World countries. For those efforts, he’s admired by some but despied by others. Maybe those haters assume it can’t all be real and genuine, maybe they don’t like Tebow’s open advocacy of his faith or more than likely, they hate this guy because he seems to be good at everything and makes them feel worse about their own lazy, unaccomplished existence. Rather than try harder and work to be more successful, it’s easier to tear a guy like Tebow down. Either that or there are people out there looking to have a laugh at the guy’s expense, people like the Fort Myers Miracle, a minor league baseball team in Fort Myers, Fla. that was prepared to host "What Would Tim Tebow Do?" night Wednesday. Fans received promise rings and watched a character called "T.T." try to walk on water, two pot shots at Tebow’s faith and values. The Miracle also considered including a mock circumcision among the activities but decided against it. Thanks for showing class, idiots. But before any of this could take place, the University of Florida stepped in and forced the Miracle to drastically alter the plans for "What Would Tim Tebow Do?" night. The university sent the team a cease and desist e-mail, explaining that NCAA rules prohibit the names or pictures of its athletes from being used in commercial promotions. That forced the Miracle to change the name of the promotion to "What Would T.T. Do?" Miracle director of media relations Gary Sharp tried to slap a smiley face on the whole mess, saying the team was a bit upset but also pumped by the attention from UF. “We kind of feel special," Sharp declared. "The University of Florida knows who we are now. [Athletic director] Jeremy Foley and [coach] Urban Meyer were copied on the e-mail. But we plan on following their request.” Now look, I realize that minor league baseball is the haven for quirky, kooky promotions and teams will try anything possible to stir up interest and bring fans to the stadium. I’m not ever averse to taking shots at public figures. That being said, joining in on the mock/hate-fest of Tebow I just don’t get. No doubt, the guy’s not perfect and if you spent any significant time with him, you’d find out he’s flawed just like the rest of us. However, I don’t see why we all can’t just back off, let the guy play football and stand for the things he believes in without clowning or despising him……..