Why not to mess with a KISS tribute band, the recession strikes the weathy where it truly hurts and exporting American crazy to China

- If there is one ironclad rule in this world, it is that you do NOT screw with the gear of a KISS tribute band, period. No, I am not a huge KISS fan. I haven’t seem KISS in concert, I’ve never seen a KISS tribute band in concert and I don’t own a single KISS album. My reason for making this declaration is very simple: these losers already have enough working against them in life. They are in a freaking KISS tribute band, for God’s sake. They earn part of all of their living by gravy-training off of someone else’s image. They are so unoriginal and unimaginative that they must copy the music and identity of someone else for anyone to give a crap about them. I feel bad for them and so when someone takes thousands of dollars in instruments, props and a trailer from one of the best-known KISS tribute bands in the land, I have a serious problem with that. The recipient of this terrible treatment is none other than Kiss Army, which was heading to a show in Louisville, Ky. when someone ripped off their gear. The stolen items are fairly distinctive: a 2007 Haulmark trailer, Pearl 15-drum set, black with chrome pin stripes; eight Zildjian cymbals and one gong with Japanese writing, Ampeg bass cabinet with SVT head, Large "coffin sized" case for drums with "Christie Lites" in white lettering, Stage speaker props, road cases and a Kiss Army sign. "Here we are, right around the corner from creating our finest moment in our history, and to have someone potentially derail that is heartbreaking," said Kiss Army band member Steve. "We're starving and striving at the same time. We can't afford to have something like this happen." The anger and hurt in Steve’s words is clear. Here is a tool who has been criss-crossing the country with his faux bandmates for 18 years, playing to county fairs, in smoke-filled casinos and at festivals that aren’t big enough to bring in real, original versions of bands. Their Louisville gig was important because the band was on the verge of making a move to Las Vegas as a house band act in the near future. Already, some of the stolen items have been recovered thanks to the stupidity of the thieves. A few days after the theft, two men walked into Music-Go-Round in nearby Jeffersontown and attempted to pawn some of the goods. Christopher Goff and Austin Becker were arrested on the spot and their cohorts Joe Morel and James Riggs were eventually arrested as well. "They didn't get any cooperation whatsoever out of them trying to locate the property," detective Steve Fisher said. I wouldn’t expect that to change and perhaps this is a hit that Kiss Army will struggle to recover from, but hopefully other a-holes out there will back away from their plans to steal gear from or otherwise harass the pathetic losers who take the stage in a tribute band of any sort. They’ve already suffered enough, everyone……………

- You all know how pissed off I get at global developments that will eventually lead, directly or indirectly, to an increase in the cost of illegal narcotics for my stoner, coke head and heroin addict pals all around the world. The arrest of prolific Mexican drug trafficker Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental by Mexican federal police, assisted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, is just such a development. Simental was arrested Tuesday in the city of La Paz, Mexico, capping off a truly crap-tacular month for the Tijuana cartel as it does battle with the powers that be. "He is one the most notorious drug lords and was on a list of the Top 24 drug traffickers in all of Mexico," said one DEA official. Taking down a cartel big shot like Simental in the capital of the state of Baja California Sur is a bad omen for the Tijuana cartel and all cartels for that matter. Sure, Simental is accused of more than 300 murders, most of them since he split from the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix organization in April 2008, but you can’t believe it every time the police accuse a guy of murdering a few hundred people, right? Seriously, it’s not like this guy is accused of disposing of 300 body parts by dipping them in acid…….oh, that’s exactly what he’s accused of doing? Dang. As ugly and heinous as those allegations might be, what I always attempt to do in these situations is to look past the damaging accusations made against one particular drug cartel leader and see how the problems posed by his arrest will affect average Joe Stoner or average Jane Crackhead. How will that street-level drug user be impacted? Will he or she be unable to afford the dime bag or the eight ball because drug prices have soared higher and higher due to the cartels who supply those drugs raising prices with the cost of doing business going up? These are the kinds of problems that the authorities who are so eager to make these arrests never seem to think of. But it’s why I’m here, seeking a solution for the problems that ail…………

- All right, this who recession thing has now gone WAY too far. When it was just lower- and middle-class people feeling the sting of losing jobs, seeing their banks close, unable to pay their mortgages and seeing their financial status circle the drain, I could tolerate it. But when the über-wealthy in this world are so stricken by the world’s financial woes that they can no longer throw exorbitant amounts of money away on racehorses at Keeneland Auction in Lexington, Kentucky, then that’s when I know this has gone too far. These rich snobs gather four time a year at Keeneland, a 1,000-acre racing grounds and sales facility, to put forth hundreds of thousands (and in some cases, millions) on horses that may end up winning lots of races or may end up finishing dead freaking last every time they run. Thoroughbred ownership is a harsh game and the downward turn of the economy has made it more difficult for multi-millionaires to stomach the idea of spending more than most people make in five years on a freaking horse at auction. The most recent five-day sale, which ended Friday, brought in about $23.9 million -- down 27 percent from last year's six-day gross of $32.8 million. In turn, that was a decrease of more than 50 percent from the amount the $70 million the sale raised in 2008. “I had executives who had the cash tell me they couldn't afford being seen buying a thoroughbred while they were sitting in a union negotiation during this economy,” says Keeneland President and CEO Nick Nicholson. One of the auction’s star horses, Distorted Passion, a 5-year-old mare who finished her racing career with five wins in 18 starts, did not sell because the bids on her fell short of the unannounced reserve price. "The market is soft," said Tommy Thornbury, associate sales director at Keeneland. "There's been some overproduction. We saw it coming for some time. Hopefully we're seeing the bottom." Some big names were on hand for the auction, including celebrity chef Bobby country music warbler Toby Keith, but they weren’t doing any buying in the end. Several international contingents also showed up, but they too were reluctant to splurge on many of the prized ponies. Oh, and as I always do when discussing horse racing for any reason, I do want to point out that HORSE RACING IS STILL NOT A SPORT AND NEVER WILL BE. That has nothing to do with this story, but it still needs to be stated. I am nearly as passionate about that fact as I am about seeing these poor, suffering multi-millionaires unable to throw away ridiculous sums of money on races horses…………

- There is no way this end any way other than disastrously. Two-time NBA All-Star Stephon Marbury has clearly gone off the deep end, spending much of last year going certifiably insane on U-Stream, causing observers, fans and former teammates to openly worry about just what had become of the man known as Starbury. He had bounced around from NBA team to NBA team and had been a free agent since leaving the Boston Celtics last season, but Marbury hasn’t been an effective player for quite a while. In short, I cant think of a worse American player to go to China and play basketball there. Yet that’s exactly where Marbury is headed after signing a deal to play in the Chinese Basketball Association. He has inked a deal with the league's northern Shanxi club and is scheduled to arrive in Shanxi next week. "The aim of signing Marbury is to pay back our fans and try to win more games in the rest of the season," said Shanxi boss Wang Xingjiang. Pay back your fans? Don’t you mean punish your fans? What did they ever do to you other than support your team, Wang? How is bringing an insane, unstable whack-a-doo who is too washed up to play in the NBA a reward for your fans? I am sure that for a game or two, Marbury will help boost Shanxi's ticket sales, but once fans see how little this guy has left in the tank, they are going to be in no rush to see him play. As much as Shanxi would love to have Starbury vault it from its current 15th-place standing in the 17-team league, that’s not happening. Supposedly Marbury’s salary won't be that high because he’s willing to take less in order for the chance to promote his personal brand of shoes in China, but whatever Shanxi is paying him will be too much in the end. You’d think Shanxi would have learned its lesson from last season, when the team hired former NBA player Bonzi Wells. Wells, who was nearly as insane as Starbury, played less than two months before he went on vacation but failed to return on time. The team terminated his deal and that was that. Maybe my man Wang Xingjiang has a soft spot for the crazies and wants to help them out, but signing washed-up nut jobs from the NBA is a practice he may want to consider changing……soon……….

- Polls about who the hottest or most desirable woman or man in the world is always crack me up. Everyone has one of these poles, they are totally subjective and thus pointless and are only aimed at generating talk. As an example, I’ll use the poll just released by AskMen.com, which had six million men (or the same six dudes with no life voting a million times each) weighing in over a six-week period as to who the 99 most desirable women in the world are. This year’s winner was “Entourage” actress Emmanuelle Chriqui, a Canadian actress who I’m guessing a lot of guys out there don’t know about at all. Personally, I’ve never watched “Entourage” and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single movie or TV show Chriqui has acted in. Is she the most desirable woman in Hollywood? Again, it DEPENDS WHO YOU ASK. Ask a hundred different guys and you’ll probably get at least 50 different answers. Some guys like blondes, some like brunettes and some like redheads. Others are partial to women of a certain nationality or ethnicity and in the end, who cares? What another dude finds attractive makes absolutely no difference to me. So other top-ten finishers like Marisa Miller, Jessica Alba, Beyonce and Miranda Kerr and Eva Mendes may not even rank on the list of some guys. Similarly, ladies like Kate Winslet, Alicia Keyes, Britney Spears, Katherine Heigl, Christina Aguilera and Keira Knightley didn’t make the AskMen.com list and they may be at the top of many guys’ lists. In the end, my point is that I just don’t give a crap and honestly wish that Web sites, magazines, tabloid TV shows and the like would just stop with these lists because they don’t matter and if you can't come up with anything better to fill space in your publication or on your site, then you don’t deserve to have a publication or Web site anyhow…………