Tales of goats and Brett Favre, Pete Townshend ventures into the world of musicals and legalizing the chronic gains momentum in Latin America

- Wow. I hate Brett Favre, but even I’m not going all animal sacrifice on some poor goat as a means to protest or decry his latest selfish, me-only decision to un-retire and return to the NFL. That was apparently the M.O. for a Minnesota family who were on their way to sacrifice a goat in an unspecified location when their car broke down. This unidentified woman, with her husband and child in tow, pulled into Tires Plus, a car repair shop, in Winona, Minnesota last week. Her car had broken down and she needed a belt replaced, so she did what most of us would do, found the nearest repair shop and pulled in. The problem was that when she and her family vacated the car and allowed the shop’s employees to get to work, they noticed something unusual about the vehicle. More specifically, they heard some curious sounds coming from the trunk. The mechanic tasked to work on the car, James Prusci, the mechanic, opened the trunk and discovered the goat, painted in the gold and purple of Favre’s new team, the Minnesota Vikings and with the No. 4 (Favre’s number) shaved into its side. It wasn’t immediately clear if the woman was a Green Bay Packers fan who wanted to strike back at Favre for his traitorous act of joining the Packers’ biggest enemy or if she’s a Vikings fan who was looking to honor the team’s new quarterback, but either way is really creepy, really bizarre and really inappropriate. Prusci and the other mechanics rightly decided to call animal control, who met the woman at the shop when she returned for the car. She didn’t try to deny anything - her first smart move of this sad incident - and the goat was ripped from her custody and placed in foster care, where he has been given the name Brett. So far, police aren’t commenting on whether this kook has been charged with any crimes, but unless being a soul-less moron with an IQ of 45 is a crime, then I doubt any charges are coming her way, sadly………

- For the longest time I’ve been wondering when someone would make the logical connection and combine two segments of the business world that have long been a perfect match: comic books and meth. If you think about it……well, I don’t think I even need to explain to you why this pairing makes sense. If you don’t get it, then the problem is with you and not with the logic of this match. Some intrepid businessmen in the Denver area have brought these two endeavors together, creating a massive methamphetamine ring in the Denver area that distributed pounds of meth every week and laundered the profits using collectible comic books. Investigators in Colorado have unfortunately broken up this innovative business, so someone else is going to have to take up the torch if we’re going to keep this thing going. "To launder the money you have to use something that is quick and convenient," Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said. "And in this case, they used classic comic books." See, now that’s a bit dismissive, labeling this as merely quick and convenient. To say that is to overlook the brilliance of combining two things that a whole lot of people love. Allow me to explain, if you will. The alleged ringleaders, brothers Aaron and Alfonzo Castro, were running quite the meth ring if I do say so myself. Law enforcement officers seized about 100 boxes of first-edition collectible comic books, with one of the titles worth $3,500 and the total collection worth half a million dollars, including some first-edition Superman and Batman titles. "It appeared they were working on a startup company for high-end comic books," said Don Quick, the district attorney in Adams County near Denver. The brothers Castro went all out in regards to these comics, storing them in plastic bags for protection. At the same time, they struck a nice balance for their business by setting up weekly, multiple-pound shipments of the meth from Phoenix, Arizona. Once the meth rolled into Denver, they distributed the drugs to a network of runners that made deliveries to dealers around the Denver metro area. These runners…well, let’s just say many of them were ladies who hid drugs in places where neither drugs nor anything else you put into your body should be stored. These women would then deliver the meth to a series of houses, and then lower-level dealers would distribute the drug. The runners were also responsible for collecting money from dealers and delivering it to the Castro brothers. Authorities believe the drugs originally came from Mexico and that each month's shipments had a street value of about $2 million. Because of this, the Castro brothers are facing 145 drug possession and distribution charges from October 2008 to earlier this month, as are 39 other defendants. On top of that, the Castro brothers and their top runners are also charged with racketeering. So that’s the price you pay for being creative and innovative in business these days, you get touched up with triple-digit criminal charges. Nice country we live in………

- Peter Townshend has done it before, but not for a while. Yet the guitarist of the iconic, legendary rock band The Who is once again venturing into the world of musicals and rock operas. Having already written ubar-successful rock operas "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia," Townshend is now writing a new musical "Floss," about getting old.
It’s an admittedly ironic twist for Townshend, who penned the legendary song “My Generation” in 1965, railing against the elder generation of his time. “As a 19-year-old, with 'My Generation,' I wrote the most explicitly ageist song in rock," Townshend wrote on thewho.com. The song includes the line "I hope I die before I get old,” and is absolutely one of The Who’s best songs. Now, he’s flipping the script and taking on the other side of the issue. “At 64, I now want to take on ageing and mortality, using the powerfully angry context of rock'n'roll,” Townshend wrote. Don’t expect
"Floss" any time soon, as Townshend doesn’t expect it to be ready for a concert premiere until 2011. The musical will be designed for outdoor performance and arenas and willy likely debut in New York. However, fans can get a preview of what “Floss” will sound like when some of the more "conventional" songs from the musical appear on a The Who album set for release next year. "'Floss' is an ambitious new project for me, in the style of 'Tommy' and 'Quadrophenia,' " Townshend wrote. "In this case the songs are interspersed with surround-sound 'soundscapes' featuring complex sound-effects and musical montages.” The story of the musical centers on a married couple whose relationship runs into difficulties (somehow I think a lot of people can relate to that theme).
The protagonist, Walter, a rock musician, finds sudden wealth when one of his songs is picked up by a car company for its commercials. However, his return to music after a 15-year break has a decidedly negative impact on his life. Seeing the end result of this project and being able to compare and contrast Townshend’s voice and perspective now versus when he wrote "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia" should be interesting, no doubt, and new music from The Who is always great in my book………

- I am freaking moving to Argentina and I encourage all of you to join me. The Argentines are clearly innovators and they are willing to do what states across the United States of America are unwilling or unable to do: legalize the hippie lettuce. On Tuesday, Argentina's Supreme Court ruled it is unconstitutional to punish an adult for private use of marijuana as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. In other words, blaze away, Argentine stoners, blaze away. Nothing warms my heart quite like a country deciding that stoners can do their thing without being hassled by the government, so this decision gets a big thumbs-up from me. It makes Argentina the second Latin American country in the past four days to allow personal use of a formerly illegal drug. As with cases that go before the U.S. Supreme Court, this case was based on a specific case that had made its way through the Argentine legal system. The case involved five young men who were arrested for having a few joints in their pockets. Supreme Court Justice Carlos Fayt, who at one time supported laws that make personal use of marijuana illegal, admitted that "reality" changed his mind. I’m not sure what that means, but as long as this guy was part of a unanimous decision to legalize the chronic, it doesn’t really matter. Also, anyone who disagrees with this new law needs to realize that compared to the legal change made Friday in Mexico, Argentina’s new law is fairly tame. The Mexican law decriminalizes possessing low quantities of most drugs, including marijuana, heroin, cocaine and LSD. Brazil actually got the ball rolling on this trend earlier this year when one of its appeals court ruled that possession of drugs for personal use is not illegal. All I can say is that it’s about freaking time countries started legalizing mind-altering drugs that just plan make life more fun. For example, Mexico has been considering decriminalization for several years, particularly under the administration of former President Vicente Fox, who held office from 2000-2006, and doing a lot of dragging of their feet. Unfortunately, the W. administration opposed those measures and so Fox’s government held off. Now that Fox and W. are both long gone, Fox’s predecessor is taking up the fight. Also, the 17-nation Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy issued its recommendations in February after studying the issue of relaxing laws on drug possession and usage for a year. These Latin American leaders also seem to believe that because the U.S. is a leading consumer of the chronic, any reform on the issue needs to have American support. That’s a slippery slope, but if it can push our own government toward legalizing tree, then I’m all for it………

- I feel like anyone who needed this next warning really doesn’t deserve my help, but I will do it as a public service anyhow. For those who are out there doing Web searches for revealing pictures of celebrities like Jessica Biel, Brad Pitt or Miley Cyrus, be forewarned that there are computer deviants out there looking to jam you and your computer up with viruses for your troubles. Computer security company McAfee has released its list of the top 10 celebrity searches online that can lead to computer problems and leading the list was none other than my girl J. Biel. McAfee has officially named her the "most dangerous celebrity in cyberspace." What that means is that one in five Internet searches for terms related to "Jessica Biel" leads to a Web page, photo, video or piece of spam that contains a cyber-security threat. Clearly there is no link between good taste in music and being a Web threat, because Biel is the girlfriend of singer Justin Timberlake and if his toxic crap that passes as music isn't enough to taint Biel’s rep, then nothing is. Following Biel on the list are Beyonce, Jennifer Aniston, Tom Brady and the ever-expanding Jessica Simpson. Pitt actually topped last year's list, but this year he dropped all the way down to 10th. In explaining why Biel was at the top of the list, one McAfeee analyst did his best to break it down. "Biel is very, very popular right now, so it says to me that the cyber criminals really do know who's hot and who's not," said Shane Keats, a research analyst at McAfee. "They really are smart. They can spot a trend as well as anyone else can -- as well as Paris Hilton can." McAfee’s advice for avoiding these virsues and security threats are blatantly obvious and the sort of thing you should already know, but the gist of it is to avoid sites you don’t know and have never heard of. For the study, McAfee surveyed 900 Web sites and 150 ring tones and ranked celebrities based on the percentage of search results that were found to be damaging and on how harmful those sites turned out to be. As for stars who you might think would be at the top of the list but weren’t, Miley Cyrus and Lindsay Lohan both were in McAfee's top 15 but no higher and President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama ranked 34th and 39th, respectively. So now that I’ve forewarned those of you not smart enough to protect yourselves online, let’s move on………