Preston L. Allen's Ing and Bling Book Review

A Cure for Baldness

2011-02-17T15:29:00.000-08:00

A Cure for Baldness!
by Marrecca Fiori

(found on Aol)

Scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles and the Veterans Administration say they "stumbled" upon a possible cure for baldness while researching how stress affects the stomach and gut.

The researchers said this week they've found a chemical compound that spurs hair growth by blocking a stress-related hormone associated with hair loss -- at least in mice.

"Our findings show that a short-duration treatment with this compound causes an astounding long-term hair regrowth in chronically stressed mutant mice," Million Mulugeta, an adjunct professor of medicine in the division of digestive diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a corresponding author of the research, said in a statement. "This could open new venues to treat hair loss in humans ... particularly hair loss related to chronic stress and aging."

The study is published in this week's issue of the online journal PLoS One.

For the study, UCLA and VA researchers injected the compound, called astressin-B, into the bald mice to observe how it affected gastrointestinal tract function. The initial injection had no effect, so the mice were given one injection each day for five days.

After measuring the the effects of the injection on the stressed out mice, the animals were placed back into the cages with mice that had hair.

About three months later, researchers checked in on the mice and found the bald mice had regrown the hair they lost from stress and could not be distinguished from their unstressed, hairy counterparts.

"It was totally unexpected," Mulugeta said of the discovery.

The study also found that the effects of the five-day shot regimen lasted for four months, which researchers say is a long time considering that mice only live for two years.

Although the researchers aren't' sure if the results will translate to humans, they said minoxidil, sold as Rogaine, had the same effect on the mice as it does in humans leading them to believe the newly discovered compound may have a similar effect on humans as it does in mice. Further research is planned.

I Know Nothing About NFL Football

2011-01-16T18:32:00.000-08:00

My beloved Rams, my beloved Colts, my beloved Patriots are all gone.

I cannot believe it.

Preston

Zodiac update: I Am Ophiuchus!

2011-01-14T05:25:00.000-08:00

Did your sign change? Mine Did!

The New Dates:

Capricorn: Jan. 20 - Feb. 16
Aquarius: Feb. 16 - March 11
Pisces: March 11- April 18
Aries: April 18- May 13
Taurus: May 13- June 21
Gemini: June 21- July 20
Cancer: July 20- Aug. 10
Leo: Aug. 10- Sept. 16
Virgo: Sept. 16- Oct. 30
Libra: Oct. 30- Nov. 23
Scorpio: Nov. 23- Nov. 29
Ophiuchus: Nov. 29- Dec. 17 (New Sign)
Sagittarius: Dec. 17- Jan. 20

It Warms the Heart

2010-11-09T05:30:00.000-08:00

Would you give away your lottery winnings? It kinda warms the heart.

Thanks,

Preston

________________________

Nicest Canadian Couple in World Dole Out Lottery Winnings
By Liz Goodwin

A retired Canadian couple who won $11.3 million in the lottery in July have already given it (almost) all away.

"What you've never had, you never miss," 78-year-old Violet Large explained to a local reporter.

She was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer when the couple realized they'd won the jackpot in July.

"That money that we won was nothing," her tearful husband, Allen, told Patricia Brooks Arenburg of the Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald. "We have each other."

The money was a "headache," they told the paper--mainly, it brought anxiety over the prospect that "crooked people" might take advantage of them. Several people called them out of the blue to ask for money when the news first broke that they'd won the jackpot. So they began an $11 million donation spree to get rid of it and help others, the Chronicle Herald reports:

They took care of family first and then began delivering donations to the two pages' worth of groups they had decided on, including the local fire department, churches, cemeteries, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, hospitals in Truro and Halifax, where Violet underwent her cancer treatment, and organizations that fight cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes. The list goes on and on.

Violet told the Canadian Press that they retained about 2 percent of the money for a rainy day.

"It made us feel good," Violet told the Chronicle Herald. "And there's so much good being done with that money."

The Nova Scotia couple have been married more than 35 years and quietly saved up the money that Allen made as a welder and Violet made in retail before retiring.

"We haven't spent one cent on ourselves because we've been too busy getting everything looked after and with my health, I have to wait to get my health back to get the energy to do anything," Violet told the National Post.

"We're not travelers anyway. We live in the country and we're proud of it. Money can't buy you health or happiness."

Now their neighborhood is abuzz over their good deeds.

"People who know them just know that's the type of people they are—they're just happy to have each other," local restaurant owner Lori Hingley told the Canadian Press.

The prize was in Canada dollars (roughly equal to U.S. dollars at current exchange rates).

Nicest Canadian couple in world dole out lottery winnings
By Liz Goodwin

A retired Canadian couple who won $11.3 million in the lottery in July have already given it (almost) all away.

"What you've never had, you never miss," 78-year-old Violet Large explained to a local reporter.

She was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer when the couple realized they'd won the jackpot in July.

"That money that we won was nothing," her tearful husband, Allen, told Patricia Brooks Arenburg of the Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald. "We have each other."

The money was a "headache," they told the paper--mainly, it brought anxiety over the prospect that "crooked people" might take advantage of them. Several people called them out of the blue to ask for money when the news first broke that they'd won the jackpot. So they began an $11 million donation spree to get rid of it and help others, the Chronicle Herald reports:

They took care of family first and then began delivering donations to the two pages' worth of groups they had decided on, including the local fire department, churches, cemeteries, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, hospitals in Truro and Halifax, where Violet underwent her cancer treatment, and organizations that fight cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes. The list goes on and on.

Violet told the Canadian Press that they retained about 2 percent of the money for a rainy day.

"It made us feel good," Violet told the Chronicle Herald. "And there's so much good being done with that money."

The Nova Scotia couple have been married more than 35 years and quietly saved up the money that Allen made as a welder and Violet made in retail before retiring.

"We haven't spent one cent on ourselves because we've been too busy getting everything looked after and with my health, I have to wait to get my health back to get the energy to do anything," Violet told the National Post.

"We're not travelers anyway. We live in the country and we're proud of it. Money can't buy you health or happiness."

Now their neighborhood is abuzz over their good deeds.

"People who know them just know that's the type of people they are—they're just happy to have each other," local restaurant owner Lori Hingley told the Canadian Press.

The prize was in Canada dollars (roughly equal to U.S. dollars at current exchange rates).

Michael Jackson Tops the List of Earners Among Dead Celebrities

2010-10-25T14:37:00.000-07:00

I found this bit of macabre info on AOL and had to share it with you.

--Glad to see 4 writers made the list.

Thanks,

Preston

______________________________

Top-Earning Dead Celebrities
(Click on name to see full profile.)

1. Michael Jackson
$275 Million | Musician | Died: June 25, 2009

2. Elvis Presley
$60 Million | Singer, Actor | Died: Aug. 16, 1977

3. J.R.R. Tolkien
$50 Million | Author | Died: Sept. 2, 1973

4. Charles Schulz
$33 Million | Cartoonist | Died: Feb. 12, 2000

5. John Lennon
$17 Million | Musician | Died: Dec. 8, 1980

6. Stieg Larsson
$15 Million | Writer | Died: Nov. 9, 2004

7. Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel)
$11 Million | Author | Died: Sept. 24, 1991

8. Albert Einstein
$10 Million | Scientist | Died: April 18, 1955

9. George Steinbrenner
$8 Million | Sports Franchise Owner | Died: July 13, 2010

http://srph.it/aBy3YP

DEA TRACKS VIA GPS

2010-08-31T12:16:00.000-07:00

Police Can Put A GPS Device On Your Car Without Your Consent

Jonathon Ramsey
Aol Autos Correspondent

Is your vehicle private property? The answer seems obvious: of course it is. But depending on where you parked it, you might give up some rights in actually keeping it "private." Police can place a tracking device on your car without a warrant, according to recent judgment in California.

Earlier this year, an Oregonian named Juan Pineda-Moreno was convicted of growing marijuana after police tracked his car to a suspected growing site. Pineda-Moreno appealed, citing the fact that on two occasions DEA agents placed tracking devices on his car while it was in his driveway -- which he considered private, not public, property -- and therefore breached his Fourth Amendment rights.

In case you don't have your Bill of Rights handy, here's the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Pineda-Moreno didn't have any signage or barriers around his property to clearly indicate that it was private property, and since "an individual going up to the house to deliver the newspaper or to visit someone would have to go through the driveway to get to the house," why couldn't the DEA? Further, the court ruled that the underside of his car isn't private because "[t]he undercarriage is part of the car's exterior, and as such, is not afforded a reasonable expectation of privacy."

Of course there are all kinds of legal chicanery involved, so read the decision (it's short) if you really want to know how it went down (for instance, DEA agents attached GPS devices on seven occasion, five of those in public places, not Pineda-Moreno's driveway) and then decide for yourself whether Orwell has lifted a finger from the grave or not.

How It All Went Down

Pineda-Moreno tipped law enforcement off in 2007 when he was seen buying a large amount of fertilizer from Home Depot. The fertilizer, one typically used to grow marijuana, was purchased in conjunction with groceries, irrigation supplies and deer repellant and placed in the back of his 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee.

The Drug Enforcement Agency decided to study Pineda-Moreno more closely, placing GPS tracking devices on his vehicle. The devices, about the size of a bar of soap, were placed on the underside of his vehicle on seven different occasions -- four times while parked on the street outside of his residence, once in a public parking lot and twice while parked in his driveway. Reports indicate that police placed the devices on his vehicle between 4:00 and 5:00 AM in the mornings.

While tracking his vehicle, officials recognized Pineda-Moreno's car was leaving a commonly known marijuana growing location. They located his Jeep, pulled him over and noted the smell of marijuana coming from his car. All three people in the car were placed under arrest and when officials searched Pineda-Moreno's trailer, they found two large garbage bags full of weed.

What's undisputed is that Pineda-Moreno was in possession of marijuana. But should the manner in which police tracked him get called into question? While Pineda-Moreno lost this recent appeal, expect him to take it to a higher court (the U.S. Supreme Court) in the coming year.

Kick-A**

2010-08-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

I just saw Kick Ass and I loved it. Now I have to shuffle my list of greatest comic book movies. Kick Ass has got to be in the top five, maybe the top three.

I'm thinking. . .

Watchmen
Spider-Man 1
Spider-Man 2
Kick-Ass
The Incredibles
Dark Knight
Iron Man 1
Hancock
Superman Returns
X-Men 1
Blade 1
Batman Begins
Wolverine
Iron Man 2
My Super Ex Girlfriend
Blade 2
Hellboy 1
Hellboy 2
300
Incredible Hulk (Ed Norton)
Spider-Man 3
The Incredible Hulk (the artsy one)
Sin City
X-Men 2
Road to Perdition
Daredevil (director's cut)
Fantastic Four 1
X-Men 3
Fantastic Four 2
Ghost Rider
The Spirit
(Note: This list does not include pre-CGI movies)
***

Kick Ass:

Nicholas Cage is back!! He's one of my favorite actors, but every now and then he stars in a stinker. But Man Oh Man, he is great in this one as Big Daddy. The real star of the film, however, is Hit Girl, who plays his butt-kicking preteen daughter. The chemistry between them is powerful stuff--powerful enough to bring a chuckle to the heart and a tear to the eyes. Hmmm. Kinda reminds me of another great Nicholas Cage performance, MatchStick Men. He teamed up with a butt-kicking daughter in that one too. I think we're on to something here. Nick Cage makes a real good albeit twisted father figure.

Hit-girl, We never . . . what?
Turn our backs to the wall. Sorry, daddy.

The now infamous "Rescue Scene" cracked me up and saddened me at the same time, with lines like:

Take cover, Child!
Switch to Krypton Light!
Robin's Revenge!
The show is over, Motherf**kers!
I'm proud of you!

And after she disposes of all the bad guys, we have that tender moment when she wraps the body of her dying father in the cape to kill the flames. I'm a comic book fan from way back, and I can honestly tell you that I have never felt such genuine emotion in a comic Book flick. Death of Uncle Ben--close, but no. Death of the first Night Owl in Watchmen--close, but no. Superman on his getting whipped by Lex Luther--nice, but no. How the heck does a campy, half-serious film manage to push all of the right buttons?

Thanks

Preston

James Patterson Becomes First Author to Sell 1 million E-Books

2010-07-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

I found this bit of news.

Congrats to Mr. Patterson

______________________________________________

by Terrence O'Brien

James Patterson doesn't exactly write what you'd call "high literature." His thriller novels, often about a psychologist named Alex Cross, are basic bestseller tripe in the vein of Dan Brown. Patterson is far more prolific than most of his contemporaries, though, having penned 65 novels in his 33-year career. That body of work has put him in a position to be one of the foremost forces behind the e-book revolution.

Patterson's publishing company, The Hachette Book Group, claims that his novels have now moved 1.14 million copies in electronic form, making him the first author to sell over 1 million e-copies of his books. There are no third-party monitors of e-book sales, so Hachette relied on its own numbers and compared them with the sales of other prominent authors. Patterson will likely soon be followed across the million copy line by other bestselling authors, but we won't lie; we're shocked that he wasn't beaten to the punch by more geek-friendly authors like Stephen King or Douglas Adams. [From: L.A. Times]

He Hit the Debt Collection Lottery for 1.5 Million!

2010-06-03T04:54:00.000-07:00

I Found This on AOL.

Funny and sad at the same time.

Thanks,

Preston

_________________
VILE Voice Mails Cost Agency 1.5 Million Dollars

June 2) -- A fed-up Texas man has turned the tables on a collections agency.

Advanced Call Center Technologies, usually in the business of collecting money for its clients, now finds itself $1.5 million in debt to Allen Jones. A Dallas County court awarded him the hefty judgment after a jury found the agency barraged Jones with harassing and racially charged phone calls.

ACT debt collectors confessed to logging eight expletive-filled calls to Jones, of Lewisville, Texas, in August 2007, many peppered with the "n-word." Jones, 26, saved the vulgar voice mails as evidence.

"This is your motherf------ wake-up call you little lazy a-- b----," a collector said in one early-morning message obtained by Dallas/Fort Worth's WFAA-TV. "Get your motherf------ n----r ass up and go pick some motherf------ cotton fields."

The calls from the Pennsylvania-based company came as early as 6:30 a.m. and as late as 11 p.m., seeking to collect a $200 debt from Jones.

He said he told ACT in their first communication that he had already paid the bill.

"This shouldn't be tolerated," Jones told WFAA. "Nobody should have to experience what I had to experience."

A jury agreed with Jones, finding that ACT violated debt collection ethical guidelines. Jones was awarded $1.5 million in punitive damages, $143,000 in attorney's fees and $50,000 in mental anguish, one of the largest rewards of its kind.

One of Jones' attorneys, Dean Malone, said the reward was fair punishment for "the most egregious collection case" he's ever seen.

"It was just significant, over-the-top harassment," he told ABC News. "I've handled hundreds of these cases over the years. This is by far the worst I've ever seen."

A lawyer for ACT told ABC that the language used in the calls was "indefensible" and said the calls "must have been in some sort of personal attack unrelated to the business."

George Vignola, a collection expert and president of Commercial Collection Consultants, a debt collection firm based in Massapequa, N.Y., told AOL News he was shocked after listening to the audio of the voice mails.

"As an agency owner, I couldn't believe the vulgarity. That's what gives our industry a bad name," Vignola said. "What could you possibly hope to achieve by using profanity? The only thing you're going to get is a dial tone."

Or in the case of ACT, a whopping debt.
Filed under: Nation

Fran Drescher Blessed to Have Met Gay Ex-Husband

2010-06-03T04:51:00.000-07:00

I found this on AOl.

Thanks,

Preston

_____________________________

In a bombshell interview with In Touch Weekly, Fran Drescher has revealed that her ex-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson, to whom she was married for more than 21 years, is gay.

Although he broke the news to her after they divorced in 1999, Drescher has finally come clean about her ex's sexuality, admitting his confession brought them closer together. "Peter and I feel so blessed to have met each other and to still have a caring, loving relationship," Fran says. "Love is what we're all about."

In the interview, Drescher speaks candidly about her openly gay ex-husband and the traumatic burglary that changed everything.

The two first met while attending Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens. The couple married in 1978 when Drescher was 21 -- shortly after she made her film debut in 1977's 'Saturday Night Fever.' In hindsight, Drescher admits young love had its pitfalls, but the two went through life-changing experiences that would later define their careers in Hollywood.

"Peter and I met when we were 15," Drescher tells In Touch. "We were just kids and didn't know who we truly were. We went through a lot together."

Jacobson and Drescher became an unstoppable team when he wrote, directed and produced her signature television series, 'The Nanny.'

But not everything was as simple as it seemed.

The couple had quite a few ups and downs -- including a traumatic experience in January 1985 when two armed robbers broke into their Los Angeles apartment. While one robber ransacked their home, the other sexually assaulted Drescher at gunpoint. Jacobson was also physically attacked, tied up and forced to witness the entire ordeal.

Although the man was sentenced to two life sentences, Drescher had a difficult time overcoming the horrifying ordeal. "At the time, it didn't seem to hurt the marriage," Fran told Larry King in 2002, but added, "Nothing was ever really the same again."

The couple separated in 1996 and were officially divorced in 1999. They did not have any children together.

That's when Jacobson finally told Drescher that he was gay. Although the two split, Drescher reveals they're still "the best of friends" and continue to collaborate. "We love each other dearly," she says. "We have even fixed each other up! I more successfully than him, by the way."

The couple even co-hosted a cocktail party in LA to benefit an organization that sought to block California's ban on same-sex marriage -- known as Prop 8. "I'm a gay icon," she explains. "But even if I weren't, I'm a political activist who believes in preserving the American dream, which is tolerance of diversity and the separation of church and state."

Teens Aren't Getting Any Smarter about Sex

2010-06-03T04:48:00.000-07:00

I found this on AOL.

Thanks,

Preston

____________________

(June 2) -- Attitudes among American teens about birth control, sexual activity and pregnancy have remained largely unchanged since 2002, according to a new federal report.

Stalled progress is bad enough, but some subtle changes also have experts concerned.

Most notably, more teens than ever are using the "rhythm method" to prevent pregnancy, and a growing number of teen girls approve of underage childbirth.

The report, compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is based on interviews with 2,767 teens, ages 15 to 19, between 2006 and 2008.

At the foundation of the report is the prevalence of teen sexual activity. It's remained nearly unchanged since 2002, with 40 percent of teens reporting at least one sexual encounter.

But in a 6 percent increase from 2002, 17 percent of sexually active girls reported timing their sexual encounters in an attempt to prevent pregnancy. The so-called rhythm method has long been debunked as ineffective, as it only works about 25 percent of the time, according to the study's authors.

Attitudes about pregnancy are also changing. Nearly 64 percent of teenage boys think it's acceptable for a teen to have a baby, compared with 50 percent in 2002. Among girls, more than 70 percent now approve, compared with 65 percent in 2002.

Only 12 percent of boys who weren't sexually active said they opted out of sex because they feared impregnating their partner.

Combined, the two worrisome trends might help explain a related issue: the uptick in teen pregnancies, which occurred around the same time as this survey.

After dropping steadily for more than a decade, the teen birth rate in the U.S. rose between 2005 and 2007. Compared with other developed countries, the U.S. posted the remarkably high rate in 2007 of 42 babies per 1,000 teen girls. In Canada, by contrast, only 13 babies are born per 1,000 teen girls.

"We've known the decline in childbearing stalled out. This report kind of fills in the why," Bill Albert, spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, told The Associated Press.

Laura Lindberg, senior research associate at the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute, speculates that the growing number of glamorous celebrities bearing children -- especially as single mothers -- is having an impact on the attitudes of America's youth.

"Teens don't live in a vacuum," she told USA Today. "What they see adults doing around them is going to reflect in their own behaviors and attitudes."

Other advocates are speaking out about the need for immediate solutions, particularly in regards to sex education.

"[W]e cannot afford to keep our heads in the sand about ensuring that our young people have access to comprehensive sex education," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, who cited a need for sex ed that incorporates "abstinence, contraception, healthy relationships, and responsible decision-making."
Filed under: Nation, Health

JFK and George Washington were the two richest presidents by far

2010-05-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

Interesting.

This is from Asylum.com.

But I thought I read somewhere that Washington and Jefferson died penniless. I'll have to check on it.

Thanks,

Preston

______________________________

John F. Kennedy and George Washington were our two richest presidents by far.

The Atlantic magazine took into account property, savings, salary, inheritance and royalties when calculating, in present dollars, how much each of the 43 men who have been president were worth at their peak. JFK, due to family money, was valued at a whopping $1 billion, whereas George Washington, who had massive land and slave holdings, checked in at $525 million.

Other presidents who topped the $100 million mark were Thomas Jefferson ($212 million), Teddy Roosevelt ($125 million), Andrew Jackson ($119 million) and James Madison ($101 million).

Barack Obama is currently worth $5 million. That number, however, will likely skyrocket when he leaves office.

Bill Clinton, for example, has already upped his net worth to $38 million -- and the big fella never even did that lucrative McDonald's ad campaign we all expected him to cash in on.

Say it Isn't So!

2010-05-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

Dennis Hopper.

Another great one gone to that big screen test in the sky.

I loved him best in Giant, Blue Velvet, Easy Rider, True Romance, and Speed in that order. And who can forget Babalugats in Cool Hand Luke?

Rest in Peace, Jordan Benedict III.

1936-2010

Making the Hook-Up

2010-05-29T17:09:00.000-07:00

Check out the last erotic story I will ever write until I decide to start writing erotica again: "The Three Kisses."

It is in the collection "Making the Hook-Up" (Cleis 2010).

The book is pretty hot, so pick it up with a potholder.

Thanks,

Preston

Say It Isn't So

2010-05-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

Wachu talkin'bout, Willis?

Some people out there are making light of his passing, but for me and my generation, this one is big.

Gary Coleman

1968-2010

R.I.P.

Iron Man 2

2010-05-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw IRON MAN 2, a very entertaining film that matches up well with the original.

Gary Shandling is great in it--good to see him again. Yours truly is a big fan of the Larry Sanders Show.

Don Cheadle in an action flick? I was not sure that I would like it. He did a fine job, though I did miss Terrence Howard just a little bit. I think Howard and RD, Jr. had better chemistry.

Sam Rockwell--I loved to hate him in Matchstick Men, one of my favorite films, and I loved to hate him in this. He's good as the bad guy.

Scarlett Johannson and Gwyneth Paltrow--fine performances for both of them.

Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury--this was a stretch for me, but Samuel Jackson always brings it. There was not much scripted here for him to work with, but I think he'll do just fine in the eventual Avengers movie.

Mickey Rourke--My god! This guy is amazing as the villain. He sizzles on screen! I love the tooth pick almost as much as the Russian accent.

I kid you not, Mickey Rourke stole the show! Think Heath Ledger--though I do not think he will become the second supervillain to be nomimated for an Oscar. Been there, done that.

Mickey Rourke is gold right now.

Everyone should get on Twitter and vote him on to SNL ASAP.

Thanks,

Preston

New York Times Book Review of Jesus Boy

2010-05-16T20:01:00.000-07:00

The New York Times Book Review.

There is a God. And His blessings are bountiful.

Thanks,

Prof. Allen

__________________________________

The Ecstasy and the Ecstasy

What is it about church that is so damn sexy? The question has bugged me for a long time. An erotic current runs just below the displays of rectitude and purity, despite the hard pews and organ repertory. I suspect it has to do with the congregants’ concerted effort to suppress carnality in favor of distant heavenly rewards. Denying the flesh only makes it throb harder. It’s tricky to defeat one’s own biology, especially when young. It bubbles up during sermons as eyes and thoughts wander. The nape of a boy’s neck sitting two rows up — that modest strip of naked flesh between hairline and suit jacket — can surprisingly arouse.

Sixteen-year-old Elwyn Parker, the protagonist of Preston L. Allen’s novel “Jesus Boy,” is smitten by something just as banal: the glimpse of a twice-pierced, yet unadorned earlobe. The ear belongs to Elaine Morrisohn, 42, a freshly widowed member of his black community’s church, Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters. The widow’s earlobes lend credence to rumors that she lived a life of “singular wickedness” before she accepted the Lord. As Elwyn boasts to his high school principal, in this church “we don’t drink, don’t smoke, and our women don’t wear pants.” Jewelry is forbidden, as is coffee, dancing, secular music and most forms of fun.

But these strictures do nothing to repress the congregation’s primal urges, and generations of illicit sex run through this clever and wide-ranging book in which the flesh always triumphs. “Jesus Boy” could well be titled “Jesus People,” for it is crowded with backsliders, hypocrites, horny preachers and shunned “outside” children. All the furtive copulation makes for a general kinkiness that permeates the sanctuary like cheap aftershave. In one case, a couple decides to stop fornicating and get married — only to discover they are distant relatives.

When Elwyn discovers that the girl for whom he’s harbored a long but chaste crush is pregnant, he turns to the pierced widow to explore his own impulses. He visits her just hours after her husband’s burial — she is still in her funeral dress — to ask about the sins she committed in her former life, and whether she ever feels like “yielding.” She does. And she shows him how.

Surely no one does church sexy like Allen. In his worship services, the Holy Ghost descends on women who collapse in the aisle with “spasming legs” and preachers whip their flocks into orgiastic frenzies. The middle-aged widow gazes soulfully at her teenage lover as he strokes the piano during a hymn, “so tight and so fresh and so full of juice,” and calls out an “orgasm shout” that is lost among the holiness shouts.

These people want ecstasy in heaven and on earth. They may lapse into sin, but they can’t shake religion entirely because it is their identity. They quote the Bible — yea, the King James Version — as they beat each other up. They pray before cheating and raise holy hands in the middle of a seduction. One adulterous couple, knowing their congregation will ostracize them if they go public with their liaison, reach an impasse when it comes to finding a new church. As the man ticks off denominations, the woman finds faults with each. She can’t bear to leave her spiritual home of so many years. “Love will conquer all,” her lover finally reassures her. “Love will find a way.”

“Will it?” she responds.

The sinners here take comfort in the notion that “Christ is married to the backslider,” and will forgive their trespasses “seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22). That’s 490 times, or about one aberration every two months over an 80-year lifespan — not much. Like Ted Haggard-Jim Bakker-Jimmy Swaggart, when their hypocrisy and dirty secrets are revealed, they expect, even demand, forgiveness.

Allen’s writing is by turns solemn and funny. There is a revival scene staged by three ministers — two are African-American, one white — that is hilarious. As the “Rev’run” struts around the stage in a mint-green double-breasted suit berating the audience, the adulterous Rev. McGowan responds with tears, but the white minister leaps to his feet, slings the Rev’run aside and screams gibberish into the microphone before sprinting down the aisle and out the door. The stunned audience “pondered the role of the white minister,” Allen writes, while the two black preachers wondered who he was; neither had invited him. Was the mystery man speaking in tongues, reacting to the Rev’run’s emotional appeal or exhibiting psychosis? The reader must decide if his behavior is any more schizoid than that of the zealous sinners or sinning zealots who people this book.

Allen’s previous books include “All or Nothing,” a novel about gambling addiction (as this one is about religious addiction) and “Churchboys and Other Sinners,” a story collection in which Elwyn is a recurring character. It would be easy for “Jesus Boy” to become fluffy satire, but Allen keeps his characters real. Elwyn, who once aspired to become “a beacon unto the faithful,” becomes something much more profane. His faith wanes, but he still slips into the pews now and again to get his fix by singing the hymns he’s known since boyhood. He leaves before the sermon begins. There is nostalgia for the simple morality, the fellowship, the promise of celestial rewards. Old habits are hard to break.

by Julia Scheeres

BEN STEIN GIVES NIXON HIS DUE ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

2010-03-25T18:06:00.000-07:00

I found this article by Ben Stein (Bueller. Bueller. Bueller. Bueller.) on AOL.

No—I am not breaking my oath and getting political. This article lends perspective.

Thanks,

Preston
_______________________

Opinion: Giving Nixon His Due on Health Care Reform

March 25) -- Attention must be paid.

All eyes have been on Washington in the past year as the parties debated President Barack Obama's shifting versions of national health care. On Sunday night, after a highly questionable series of parliamentary maneuvers, President Obama signed into "law" his health care plan.

With some considerable reason, he noted that health care for all is an idea whose time has come. (His plan still leaves more than 20 million not insured, but let that be.) And, with some justification, most of the media rejoiced that national health care had arrived for people with low incomes, with pre-existing conditions, without jobs, with impoverished employers.

To call Barack Obama's response to the passage (however questionably executed ) of this bill "triumphalist" is like calling Mount Everest "tall."

But among the glorying, there was little or no mention of my former boss, Richard M. Nixon, and this was a monstrous wrong, one of an innumerable number of wrongs directed at Mr. Nixon.

The flat truth is that in February 1974, with the hounds of hell baying at him about Watergate, with a national trial by shortage under way after the Arab Oil Embargo, with the economy in extremely rocky shape, and with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Republican Richard M. Nixon submitted to Congress a national health care bill in many ways more comprehensive than what Mr. Obama achieved.

Mr. Nixon's health care plan would have covered all employed people by giving combined state and federal subsidies to employers. It would have covered the poor and the unemployed by much larger subsidies. It would have encouraged health maintenance organizations. It would have banned exclusions for pre-existing conditions and not allowed limits on spending for each insured.

I know a bit about this because I, your humble servant, as a 29-year-old speech writer, wrote the message to Congress sending up the bill.

In many ways, the bill was far more "socialist" than what Mr. Obama has proposed. It certainly involved a far larger swath of state and federal government power over health care. Please remember that this was 36 years ago, when middle-class Americans still had some slight faith that government was on their side.

My point is not whether or not Mr. Nixon's plan was better than Mr. Obama's. In fact, they have many points in common.

My only point is that if you want to call someone a visionary, if you want to call someone compassionate, if you want to note that someone was a foe of inequality and a friend to mercy, think of Richard Nixon, with a host of problems of his own the likes of which Mr. Obama cannot imagine, reaching out to the poor and the uninsured to help.

The plan, of course, was killed dead by the Democrats, led by Edward Kennedy, who later regretted what he had done. Still, attention must be paid to a prophet without honor in his own land.

Ben Stein is an economist, lawyer, actor, comedian, public speaker and university teacher, and he was a speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Ford. He has also written several books, the latest of which is "The Little Book of Bulletproof Investing," written with Phil DeMuth.

SISTERS BATTLE IN COURT OVER LOTTERY JACKPOT

2010-03-25T18:05:00.000-07:00

Sisters Battle in Court Over Lottery Jackpot

I found this on Aol.

Might I add that they are in their eighties?

LOL.

Preston

__________________

March 24) -- The beauty of sisterly love apparently runs only so deep.

Two sisters in their 80s had a special bond, taking regular trips to a Connecticut casino and buying lottery tickets. After one sister won $165,000 and shared most of the money, the siblings drew up a contract, saying they would equally divide all future winnings.

Both women said they adhered to the deal for nearly a decade, but they stopped talking after a fight in 2004 about a small loan, according to The Hartford Courant and The Associated Press.

Things turned ugly the next year when one sister, Rose Bakaysa, and a brother won a $500,000 Powerball jackpot. When younger sister Theresa Sokaitis learned of the win, she wanted a share of the money and took her older sister to court.

The sisters, who reportedly haven't spoken to each other in five years, saw each other Tuesday in New Britain Superior Court as Sokaitis' lawsuit went to trial. Sokaitis, 84, says Bakaysa, 87, violated their notarized contract. But Bakaysa says Sokaitis canceled the deal in 2004 during the fight, which was over several hundred dollars.

"She was shouting, 'I don't want to be your partner anymore.' I said, 'All right, that was it.' I tore up my contract," Bakaysa testified.

Acknowledging the fight, Sokaitis said she thought their contract was still valid. "I love my sister. There was no reason not to be partners," Sokaitis testified Tuesday. She denied saying she wanted to end their deal.

Both sides agree the case has damaged the family. In court, the sisters never seemed to lock eyes, the Courant said, nor did they exchange smiles or waves. And Bakaysa spoke of her sister as "Mrs. Sokaitis."

"One thing Theresa Sokaitis has maintained throughout is the thing she is most upset about is she has lost the relationship with her sister," said her lawyer, Samuel Pollack.

While a judge had dismissed Sokaitis' lawsuit under a Connecticut law that makes gambling contracts illegal, the state Supreme Court said the law didn't apply because the case involved legal activities and allowed the trial to go forward.

After the one-day trial, Judge Cynthia Swienton said she expects to issue her ruling in the next few months.

Berlin Poker Heist

2010-03-07T14:22:00.000-08:00

I heard about this on AOL.

Wow!

These guys have balls of steel.

Thanks,

Preston

Berlin Poker Heist

(Mar. 7) -- A group of robbers wielding machetes and handguns stormed a Berlin poker tournament Saturday -- escaping with as much as $1.1 million in a stunt that was captured by German television cameras.

In what looks like a scene out of an action movie, four robbers in disguise burst into the poker competition at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, sending panicked players, hotel employees and spectators scrambling for the exits as security guards attempted to tackle the thieves.

The initial moments of the heist were captured on live television, with poker players seen fleeing their tables mid-competition, but coverage soon cut away.

"An armed robbery in broad daylight in the heart of Berlin, at Germany's biggest poker tournament," Olaf Wagner, a witness and photographer for Germany's Bild newspaper, marveled to BusinessWeek. "I just couldn't believe my eyes."

"One guy stood in the corner stuffing 500 euro notes into his backpack, while a second man pinned down a security man with his machete," Wagner added.

Berlin police said seven people were injured and a security guard was slightly wounded when the robbers barreled into the hotel just after 2 p.m. local time Saturday, demanding employees of the poker competition turn over the one-million euro jackpot ($1.36 million.)

A police spokesman said it was unclear how much loot the group escaped with, but the BBC reported the sum could be as much as $1.1 million.

According to published reports, a security guard managed to force one of the robbers to drop a bag containing some of the prize money, but police would not say how much the bag contained.

The robbers escaped unscathed, at least temporarily, as no arrests have been made. Police said they are interviewing witnesses and reviewing surveillance tape.

Despite the scare, the poker playing continued, according to the competition Web site.

"Nobody was seriously injured and the Main Event, High Roller tournament and Ladies Event all managed to resume within a few hours," it said.
Filed under: World, Crime, Top Stories

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Obama on Vegas--"I take that back--It is Good to Gamble"

2010-02-03T14:34:00.000-08:00

I found this on AOL.

Generally, I stay away from politics in my blog, but this one is too funny.

Are they saying that it is GOOD to GAMBLE in a tough economy? LOL. Please do not tell this to me, for I am an addicted gambler and I need no excuses to go blow my hard-earned cash, tough economy or not. Hell, I built Las Vegas. I just didn't know that it was good to gamble.

Fire and damnation. I'm buying my plane ticket. Vegas, here I come.

And don't forget, folks, in a tough economy it is also good to smoke--if your state sells tobacco. In a tough economy it is good to drink--if your state sells whisky. In a tough economy it is good to plunk down a chunk of change on a new HUMMER--if your state sells Hummers. In a tough economy it is good to pick up a few hookers--if your state has legalized prostitution. In a tough economy it is good to spend--in this way the country's economy will work just fine, but you, personally, will lose your house.

Hmmmmm. This has started me thinking . . . more on this self-sacrificing concept later.

Thanks,

Preston

______________________________

LAS VEGAS (Feb. 2) -- President Barack Obama, attacked by Nevada leaders after referencing Las Vegas for the second time in a year as an inappropriate place to spend money, tried late today to soften the blow by praising the city as "one of our country's great destinations."

Obama's attempt to soothe ruffled feathers came hours after a town hall meeting in Nashua, N.H., where he told a crowd that people ought not "blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you're trying to save for college."

The comment came almost a year to date after the president referred to Las Vegas as a place where companies receiving bailout money from the government ought not be coming for junkets -- a perceived dig at America's top tourist and convention destination that led to an outcry.

This time, Obama told his audience: "When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It's time your government did the same."

That reference sparked a firestorm in which every member of the state's congressional delegation -- which includes three Democrats -- issued scathing statements lambasting Obama for discouraging tourism at a time when Las Vegas is among the nation's most economically depressed cities.

"I don't know if Obama has a problem with Las Vegas, but I have a problem with Obama," Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Democrat whose district includes the Las Vegas Strip, said in an interview. "This is the second time he has made a comment that is harmful to the city of Las Vegas and the people I represent. It is incomprehensible to me that he should not only repeat the same mistake but continue to insult the people and industry I represent."

Obama even took a licking from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, his top congressional ally and a politician facing a tough re-election campaign this fall. Reid issued a statement saying he told the White House "the president needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn't be spending their money."

But later this afternoon, Reid was circulating a letter from Obama attempting to defuse the situation.

"I hope you know that during my town hall today, I wasn't saying anything negative about Las Vegas," Obama wrote. "I was making the simple point that families use vacation dollars, not college tuition money, to have fun. There is no place better to have fun than Vegas, one of our country's great destinations. I have always enjoyed my visits, look forward to visiting in a few weeks and hope folks will visit in record numbers this year."

Obama is expected in the city later this month to raise money for Nevada Democrats. He won the state in 2008 but in February 2009, he invoked Las Vegas as an example of how bank bailout money should not be spent.

"You can't take a trip to Las Vegas or down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime," Obama said then during a town hall meeting in Elkhart, Ind.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Authority said the Indiana remark led to the cancellation or moving of several conventions because companies feared seeming profligate if they met in Sin City. Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman angrily demanded an apology from Obama at the time but never received one, instead settling for a remark by Obama in May on a visit to the city that "there's nothing like a quick trip to Vegas in the middle of the week."

The new flap came on what should have been a good day for Obama and Reid in Nevada. The president's budget axed funding for the controversial Yucca Mountain national nuclear waste repository, a project about 150 miles outside Las Vegas that the state has fought for decades to kill. Reid has been credited with having Obama's ear and persuading him to effectively end the project.

Instead of victory laps, however, Reid and others were defending a city that has the nation's highest foreclosure rate, record-high unemployment and a gigantic state budget gap brought on by falling sales, hotel and gaming tax revenues.

Berkley said what stuck in her craw was the fact that the president made Las Vegas sound like an extravagant destination when an oversupply of hotel rooms and soft visitation figures have turned it into a relatively inexpensive getaway.

"The president needs to get more information about my remarkable city," she said. "He is obviously terribly misinformed and has a stereotypical opinion of one of the most remarkable communities I've ever known."

Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce spokeswoman Cara Roberts said the chamber appreciated Obama's response to Reid.

"It sounds like the president clarified his remark and he's excited and supportive of Las Vegas," Roberts said. "We want the president to realize there are thousands of men and women whose livelihoods depend on us having a strong hospitality industry. We're in a particularly vulnerable time and we need to do everything we can to bolster that industry and support our economy and jobs in southern Nevada."

Yet others weren't so charitable. Former Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden, a leading contender to be the GOP nominee against Reid this fall, dismissed Obama's letter.

"It is rather embarrassing when the president of the United States has to apologize to the Senate majority leader of his own party on White House stationery," Lowden said via e-mail. "Worse yet is when the apology is over a second round of disparaging comments about Nevada within the past year. Nevada families are struggling and having the president against us doesn't help."
Filed under: Nation, Top Stories

Say It Isn't So

2010-02-02T09:21:00.000-08:00

We're saying goodbye to wrestling great Jack Brisco.

Remember the good old days. Jack Brisco and Gerry Brisco Versus Terry Funk and Dory Funk, Jr.

Say it, Gordon Solie: "What a matchup, the Briscos versus the Funks! Oh My!"

The Briscos also introduced the world to their buddy Terry Bollea, also known as Hulk Hogan.

Jack Brisco

1941-2010

R.I.P.

Ohio Lottery Winner Killed After Celebrating Prize

2010-01-28T12:15:00.000-08:00

I found this on AOL.

Wow. How sad.

Thanks,

Preston
__________________________________

Ohio Lottery Winner Killed After Celebrating Prize

SANDUSKY, Ohio (Jan. 27) - Authorities say a woman who had been out celebrating her lottery winnings at a north-central Ohio bar was killed when she was struck by a car.

The Ohio Highway Patrol says 47-year-old Deborah McDonald of Crystal Rock had just left the bar near Sandusky on Tuesday night and was hit as she was walking along a road.

An Ohio Lottery spokeswoman says McDonald won $8,000 in the lottery's TV game show "Cash Explosion Double Play."

The show was taped Jan. 12 and is set to air at the end of the month.

Bar patrons say McDonald was with a group that had been celebrating her winnings and playing pool.

Patrol Sgt. Joe Wentworth says police are looking into whether alcohol was a factor, but they don't think the driver of the car was drinking.
Filed under: Nation

Brett Favre Is a Living Legend and Deserves More Respect Than This

2010-01-26T04:55:00.000-08:00

Hey Minnesotans, quit yer whining.

Brett Favre did not lose the game for the Vikings.

The loss was a team effort.

The fumbles?

The two meek running plays in a row at crunch time?

A penalty for 12 men in the huddle that put them out of (realistic) field goal range?

Lack of pass protection all game long that left Favre with a weak ankle and unable to run on the crucial play?

Then Favre fails to see a man wide open down field and tosses his cross-body interception. Okay. That one was his fault.

But then there was overtime and the three consecutive bad calls by the refs that put the Saints in field goal range.

If Favre decides to retire again because the Minnesotans are angry that he (not true) lost the game with his selfish, gunslinging ways (not true), then send him on down here to Miami where the Dolphins will be glad to have him.

Thanks,

Preston

I Saw AVATAR

2010-01-21T17:03:00.001-08:00

I saw AVATAR.

Go see it. Go see it now. Do not wait. This movie has taken filmmaking to the next level. It kinda feels like when I first saw STAR WARS and I knew the world would never be the same. As a lover of the written word, I almost never discuss special effects, but let me tell you that this jaded viewer could not discern where the CGI ended and the live action began--the effects were that good. Seamless. Visually, the film is splendid. I have to go see it again. I can't believe my eyes.

Thanks,

Presty

Utah Man Pleads to Get More Prison Time to Cure His Addiction

2010-01-21T05:52:00.000-08:00

I found this on WTOP.com

Maybe gamblers should plead up, too. Maybe a little prison time can cure the gambling addiction. LOL. I think not. Prison is not the place to cure addictions. By nature, addicts are sick, not criminal. Prison is a place where, in fact, you can become addicted to various substances and vices. On the other hand, some of us sickos need to be grabbed and held down before we will take our medicine.

I am doubtful of the success of this method, but hopefully this guy is right and prison time will work to cure his addiction.

Heroin addiction is no joke. It's almost as bad as a gambling addiction.

Almost.

Thanks,

Preston
_____________________

UTAH MAN ASKS TO 'PLEAD UP' FOR MORE PRISON TIME

A Utah man has chosen to fight heroin addiction by spending more
time in jail.

Damon Conrow was sentenced Tuesday on a charge of possession with intent
to distribute a controlled substance after asking to "plead up" to a
first-degree felony. The charge had been a second-degree felony, but
Conrow wanted a longer sentence.

Conrow says he'll soon be happier than he is now because he'll get off
heroin. He says within about eight weeks of going to jail, he expects
withdrawal symptoms to ease so he can start having normal sleeping
patterns.

The 25-year-old pleaded guilty in December.

On Tuesday, 2nd District Judge Pamela Heffernan gave Conrow one last
chance to change his mind and withdraw his guilty plea. Conrow declined.

Do Not Pour Hot Water on a Frosted Over Windshield!

2010-01-12T02:41:00.000-08:00

Thanks, guys.

You were all in one hundred percent agreement in your advice to me: Do not pour hot water on the frosted over windshield to melt the frost--or it may potentially break the windshield.

Being a South Florida boy, I dd not know that common bit of windshield wisdom.

I guess I dodged a bullet. My windshield is still intact despite its hot water bath. I will not do it again.

This winter thing is tougher than I thought. Tryin' to get used to it. Trying' to adapt.

Thanks,

Preston

I Am an Arizona Cardinals Fan

2010-01-11T04:40:00.000-08:00

I never thought I would be saying this, but I am now, at least temporarily, an Arizona Cardinals fan.

As many of you know, I am the world's number one St. Louis Rams fan--but they took a little nap time break this year and left me without a team to pull for.

Way back when the Rams were the Greatest Show on Turf, they had a scrappy, tough as nails QB by the name of Kurt Warner.

Since Kurt Warner is now a Cardinal (and saintly is the lad indeed) and since the Cardinals are playing like the gunslinging Rams of yore ('98 through '04), I have granted myself permission to root for them.

Go Warner!

Go Cardinals!

But seriously, folks, you gotta admire Warner. Age 38. Completed 29 of 33 passes. Tossed 5 TDs and no INTS. Passed for over 400 yards.

Kinda reminds me of Jim Plunkett of the old Oakland Raiders. Poised. Unflappable. And destined for greatness.

Thanks,

Preston

Snow Flurries in Miami

2010-01-11T04:29:00.000-08:00

At 6:00 a.m. this morning after listening to the Weather Channel report 26 degrees in Kendall, I went outside to check my car. Yep. There was frost on the window. Actual frost.

I was so excited. I went back into the house and got some steaming hot water in a cup, poured that bad boy on the windshield, brushed it off with a towel. Voila! Frost-be-gone! I felt so . . . northern.

Then I wondered whether I had done the right thing. Would not sub freezing temperatures eventually freeze to ice even the hot water I had poured on the windshield?

Would my windshield suddenly freeze over while I was driving to work?

What do people up north do when they wake up with frost on their windshields?

Anyway, another day without portable heaters in South Florida.

Come on, Home Depot. Get your act together.

Thanks,

Preston

No Portable Heaters in Miami

2010-01-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

In the year 2010, there are no protable heaters to be had in South Florida. In the past FIVE days I drove around Miami-Dade County, Broward County, and I phoned the major stores in Palm Beach County--only to find out that they had NO portable heaters despite the fact that they have known for a week that we would be having a cold freeze throughout the weekend.

There were no portable heaters to be had after Wednesday, January 6, 2010 in Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowes, CVS, Brandsmart, or Walgreens (I spotted them in Walgreens on Monday the 4th but was not alert enough to purchase one before the big chill hit).

ACE was the only store with portable heaters and they were selling them (according to the manager) at about 200 to 250 per day. They couldn't take them off the truck fast enough. They made a killing! Good for them!

Capitalism in action! It's all about supply and demand. When people are demanding an item, the guy who can supply it gets rich.

Wake up, people. It's thirty degrees in Miami. Hint. Hint. There's a potential windfall out there for anyone who can supply a few thousand portable heaters.

Maybe Home Depot, Lowes, Wal-Mart, Walgreens, CVS, and Brandsmart are too big or too rich to want more money. In this depressed economy? I think not.

Some mid level executive is going to be fired for dropping the ball on this one.

Thanks,

Preston

$30 Million Lottery Winner Missing

2010-01-07T13:41:00.000-08:00

Why can't they just leave these poor lottery winners in peace?

This is from the Huffington Post.

Thanks,

Preston
____________________________

LAKELAND, Fla. — In 2006, Abraham Shakespeare – a truck driver's assistant who lived with his mother – won $30 million in the Florida lottery. His good fortune may have cost him his life.

Shakespeare vanished months ago. His mother hopes he is somewhere in the Caribbean, lying on a beach and enjoying the good life away from all the hangers-on who were constantly hitting him up for money.

The sheriff has a more ominous theory: Shakespeare was killed.

"There are a lot of odd and bizarre circumstances in this case," Sheriff Grady Judd said. "We fear and are preparing for the worst. We're working this case as if it were a homicide."

On Wednesday, Judd said investigators have a "person of interest" in the disappearance: a 37-year-old woman who befriended Shakespeare after he won the lottery.

Judd said Dorice Donegan "DeeDee" Moore has information about Shakespeare.

Shakespeare, 43, won the big jackpot after buying a lottery ticket at a convenience store in a town called Frostproof, claiming later that he gave the last $3 in his pocket to a homeless man just before the winning numbers were announced.

Shakespeare – who had a criminal record that included arrests and prison time for burglary, battery and not paying child support – took a lump-sum payment of $16.9 million instead of annual installments.

He bought a Nissan Altima, a Rolex from a pawn shop, a $1 million home in a gated community. He talked about starting a foundation for the poor and insisted the money wouldn't change him.

"I'm not a material person," he said in 2007. "I don't let material things run me. I'm on a tight budget."
The money quickly caused him problems.

A former co-worker sued him in 2007, accusing Shakespeare of stealing the winning ticket from him. Six months later, a jury ruled the ticket was Shakespeare's.

Then there were the people constantly asking him for a piece of his fortune.

"They didn't wait. They just came right after they found out he won this money," his mother, Elizabeth Walker, said recently.
She said her son was generous, paying for funerals, lending money to friends starting businesses and even giving a million dollars to a guy known only as "Big Man."

Not long after he bought the million-dollar home in early 2007, he was approached by Moore, said family and officials.
Moore – who could not be reached by The Associated Press – said she was interested in writing a book about Shakespeare's life. She became something of a financial adviser to Shakespeare, who never graduated high school.

Property records show that Moore's company, American Medical Professionals, bought Shakespeare's home for $655,000 last January. His mother said the last time she saw him was shortly afterward, around her birthday in February.

Detectives said Wednesday in a news release that Moore began using Shakespeare's cell phone in April 2009 to text the man's relatives and friends to have them believe it was Shakespeare attempting to contact them.

Officials also said Moore is believed to have offered to give away a home worth approximately $200,000 in exchange for making a false report to law enforcement regarding an alleged recent sighting of Shakespeare.

Detectives say Moore also paid one of Shakespeare's relatives $5,000 to hand deliver a birthday card containing cash to Shakespeare's mother suggesting that the card was from her son.

A telephone number connected to Moore was disconnected Wednesday.

The sheriff said the last time anyone saw Shakespeare was in April – but it wasn't until Nov. 9 that he was reported missing, by a police informant.

And the story gets more bizarre.

According to The Ledger of Lakeland, the 37-year-old Moore contacted reporters at the newspaper in April, saying Shakespeare was "laying low" because people tried to suck money out of him.

That made sense to Shakespeare's mother – sort of. "I remember once, talking with me over the phone, he said he might go to Jamaica," she said.

On Dec. 5, a sobbing Moore told The Ledger that she helped Shakespeare disappear, but now wants him to return because detectives were searching her home and car and looking for blood on her belongings. She said she was also upset that detectives went through her belongings and car while looking for clues in Shakespeare's disappearance.

One reason he wanted to leave, she said, was a child support case for a child he allegedly fathered after winning the lottery. "Abraham sold me his mess to get a better life," she told the paper.

She even gave the paper a video that she said she took of Abraham. In the video, he says he is tired of people asking him for money. "They don't take no for an answer," he says.

"So where you wanna go to?" Moore asks in the video.

"It don't matter to me. I'm not a picky person," Shakespeare replies.

Moore told the paper that she took the video to "protect herself."

Moore said she filed paperwork to take over five mortgages totaling about $370,000 that had been owed to Shakespeare. She said she sold the loans at a loss to another person. She added that many of the people who borrowed from Shakespeare have refused to pay, and she feels threatened by some of them.

Moore's past includes a year of probation after she was charged with falsely reporting that she was carjacked and raped in 2001. Officials said she concocted the scheme so her insurance company would reimburse her for the SUV, which she claimed had been stolen.

The woman did not answer several calls placed to a number listed for her in public records. During a recent visit to the home she bought from Shakespeare, a security box rang to a phone number that had been disconnected.

Sheriff's officials won't comment on Moore's involvement in Shakespeare's life.

The sheriff said that Shakespeare spent the bulk of his lottery winnings. The fact that he didn't call his mother on Christmas reinforces the theory that Shakespeare is not just hiding, Judd said.

"I hope so much that he is alive somewhere," said his mother. "And I want people to know, if they ever win the lottery, I hope they know how to handle the people that come after them. They can be dangerous."

The Colts Lost

2009-12-28T17:36:00.000-08:00

The Colts lost . . . to the Jets?

Cut the crap.

What about those poor gamblers in Vegas who had their money on the Colts? Did you think about them when you pulled your starters? Maybe there should be an investigation. Maybe there should be arrests. The Colts ownership THREW a game. Isn't that a crime?

Thanks,

Preston

2009-12-27T00:08:00.001-08:00

Say It Isn't So

2009-12-26T21:32:00.000-08:00

Gator Fans All Over the Nation Are Wishing This is a Big April Fool's Prank!!

No, no! Say It AIn't So!

Thanks,

Preston
__________________________________________

Urban Meyer Steps Down at Florida, Cites Health Reasons
by Clay Travis

from Fanhous

In a move that has already sent the college football universe into a post-Christmas state of shock, the University of Florida announced Saturday afternoon that Urban Meyer would be stepping down as head coach of the Gator football team after coaching in the Sugar Bowl on January 1.

Meyer, who has won two national titles and three SEC East titles in his five years at Florida, leaves with the highest win percentage in Gator football history and a career mark of 56-10. In nine years as a head coach at Bowling Green, Utah, and Florida, Meyer's career record was 95-18.

Immediately the GatorZone website where the official release went up was so flooded with visitors that it became inaccessible. In the release, Meyer stated as follows:
"I have given my heart and soul to coaching college football and mentoring young men for the last 24-plus years and I have dedicated most of my waking moments the last five years to the Gator football program," Meyer, 45, said in statement. "I have ignored my health for years, but recent developments have forced me to reevaluate my priorities of faith and family.

"After consulting with my family, Dr. Machen, Jeremy Foley and my doctors, I believe it is in my best interest to step aside and focus on my health and family." "I'm proud to be a part of the Gainesville community and the Gator Nation and I plan to remain in Gainesville and involved with the University of Florida."

Meyer, just 45 years old, is 32-8 all-time in the SEC, and led his Gators to a perfect 12-0 start to the 2009 season before losing to Alabama in the SEC title game on December's first weekend. In the wake of that game, Meyer was hospitalized and he now cites his health as the reason that he has chosen to resign as Florida football coach.

The Florida Gators, who recently lost their defensive coordinator, Charlie Strong, to the University of Louisville, play on New Year's evening against the Cincinnati Bearcats. In the meantime, the shockwaves from Meyer's abrupt departure will be felt for months, if not years.

Meyer remains the only coach in college football with two consensus BCS titles, and this past summer some were comparing him with legendary Alabama coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. Those comparisons are, for the moment, at rest.

The Saints Lost

2009-12-22T06:34:00.000-08:00

The Saints Lost.

One down.

One to Go.

Colts? You're next!

'72 Dolphins Rule!

In a Nation of over a Billion, There is Only One Half-Black?

2009-12-22T06:15:00.000-08:00

I found this on CNN.

Thanks,

Preston
_______________________________________

Half-Black Singer Raises Race Questions in China

By Emily Chang
CNN

SHANGHAI, China (CNN) -- It all started with the lure of the glitz, the glamour and the dream of being China's next pop star. But, as with many reality shows, Lou Jing's instant fame came with unanticipated consequences.

Lou Jing was born 20 years ago in Shanghai to a Chinese mother and an African-American father. According to her mother, who asked not to be identified in this report, she met Lou's father while she was still in college. He left China before their daughter was born.

Growing up with a single mom in central Shanghai, Lou Jing said she had good friends and lived a normal life. "When I was young, I didn't feel any different," she said.

But as soon as she stepped into the national spotlight on a Chinese reality television show called "Go! Oriental Angel," Lou Jing became a national sensation -- not necessarily because of her talent, but how she looked.

"After the contest started, I often got more attention than the other girls. It made me feel strange," Lou said.

The reality show hosts fondly called her "chocolate girl" and "black pearl." The Chinese media fixated on her skin color. Netizens flooded Web sites with comments saying she "never should have been born" and telling her to "get out of China."

Lou Jing's background became fodder for national gossip, sparking a vitriolic debate about race across a country that, in many respects, can be quite homogeneous. There are 56 different recognized ethnic groups in China, but more than 90 percent of the population is Han Chinese. So people who look different stand out.

"We lived in a small circle before," said her mother. "But after Lou was seen nationwide, some Chinese people couldn't accept her."

It has been a shocking ordeal for someone who says she always considered herself just like every other Chinese girl.

"Sometimes people on the street would ask me, 'Why do you speak Chinese so well?' I'd just say, 'Because I'm Chinese!'" Lou said.

But, as any curious child would, Lou Jing certainly thought about why she looked different. In a clip reel aired on the show, her classmates say they tried to protect her from feeling out of place.

"She used to wonder why she had black skin," said one classmate. "We thought about this question together and decided to tell her it's because she likes dark chocolate. So her skin turned darker gradually."

Another classmate weighed in, "We said it's because she used to drink too much soy sauce."

Even Lou Jing's maternal grandmother admitted in a taped interview, "I told Lou Jing she was black because her mom was not very well and had to take Chinese medicine."

But such explanations were not enough for a voracious Chinese public. Show producers convinced Lou Jing's mom to appear on-air and asked her to address the many unanswered questions.

"Lou Jing did not ask about her father until she was sixteen years old," her mother told the audience. "She said, 'Where is my dad?' I didn't answer, I just cried and Lou Jing never asked me this question again."

On stage this time, it was Lou Jing who wept as she held an arm tightly around her mother, gripping the microphone in the other. The camera zoomed in on audience members tearing up as well.

"Lou Jing would cook dinner for me before I got home," her mother said. "I was quite sad then. In other families a girl her age would have a mom and a dad who loved her."

Although her father has been absent, Lou seemed to be curious about learning more. On the reality show, the host inquired, "Lou Jing, have you ever thought about going to find your dad, to get to know him?"

Lou Jing pauses for a moment and softly responds, "Yes, I have thought about that before."

In this way, the most private aspects of Lou Jing's otherwise quiet life became painfully public. But as the show went on, so did Lou Jing. She stuck with her daily routine, listening to Beyonce, her favorite artist, hanging out with her friends and continuing to go to school.

"I was so angry," said her drama teacher, Tao Yandong, of the Shanghai Drama Academy's School for the Television Arts. "My student had been insulted by others so of course I felt bad, too. But she told me she was fine and wasn't letting these things hurt her heart."

Watching Lou Jing laugh and gossip with her Chinese classmates today, this appears to be true. Back in her modest two-bedroom apartment, it is hard to imagine that Lou Jing and her mother are subjects of national scrutiny.

Instead, they are focused on her future. Her career goals are many, spanning from hosting a television show to becoming a diplomat "to bring people together," she said.

As a college junior, Lou Jing is thinking about graduate school applications, hoping to pursue a master's degree in foreign policy in New York City after she graduates from college.

When asked what she will do without her mother, Lou excitedly said, "My mom is going to come with me!"

Her mom shakes her head and smiles. If anything, their enduring bond as mother and daughter only seems to have gotten stronger. After all, for all their critics, there were just as many supporters.

Until the end of her run on "Go! Oriental Angel," fans continued to vote for Lou Jing show after show. The judges praised her confidence. Lou Jing was eventually eliminated before the finale, but not without a powerful parting message.

"I think I'm the same as all the girls here, except for my skin color. We share the same stage and the same dream. I've tried my best, so no matter what happens, I'll hold onto my dream."
Filed under: World

© 2009 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Elin Leaves House With Police Escort

2009-12-22T06:09:00.000-08:00

She's leaving the house.

I found this on aol/Fanhouse.

Thanks,

Preston
____________________________________

Elin Leaving Tiger With Police Escort Assistance

by Will Brinson of AOL Golf/Fanhouse

Reports have been floating into the internet ether today -- though photographic evidence has yet to emerge -- that Elin Nordegren is rolling out of Tiger Woods' home amidst a heavy police escort in what is being rumored as a likely permanent exit strategy.

Nordegren supposedly wants, as mentioned earlier on FanHouse, a stunning $300 million and custody of their children and is not budging from that stance via a divorce. Such reports -- if true -- would theoretically support her exiting their Orlando home, which X17Online.com (safe for work, despite the potentially misleading name) noted today:

An X17 photographer on the scene tells us, "With Tiger off on his yacht, Elin's had enough. She's ready to take the kids and go back to Sweden. And with this many cops on bikes entering the community, we can only imagine they're preparing a motorcade for her to get herself and the kids to the airport quickly and safely."

Two police choppers are also hovering overhead waiting for the motorcade to start their move.

Now, if anyone is wondering why Elin needs so much security, it should be obvious: Tiger and his wife and his seemingly unending list of mistresses have been the talk of every tabloid, gossip magazine and sports Web site since Thanksgiving, and if Elin leaves the house, she will be dealing with the paparazzi.

That's just an indisputable fact; Elin knows it as much as anyone else, and taking extra precautions to make sure she doesn't put herself or her children in any harm because of overzealous reporters is a smart idea.

He Won! He Won! Tiger Woods Won!

2009-12-22T01:47:00.000-08:00

I found this on AOl/Fanhouse

Thanks,

Preston
__________________________________

Tiger Voted PGA Player of the Year!

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Tiger Woods was voted the PGA Tour player of the year by the players on Friday, the 10th time in his 13 years on tour that he has won the award.

The PGA Tour does not disclose vote totals.

Woods started and finished the season the same way -- with questions when he would return. He was coming off knee surgery at the beginning of the year, and last week announced an indefinite leave to work on his marriage after admitting to infidelity.

In between, he won six PGA Tour events, captured the FedEx Cup and its $10 million bonus, won the money title for the ninth time in his career with over $10.5 million, and had the lowest scoring average for the ninth time.

No one else won more than three times on the PGA Tour. It was only the second time that Woods was voted player of the year when he did not win a major. In a peculiar twist, Woods won in his final start before each of the four majors.

Marc Leishman of Australia was voted PGA Tour rookie of the year, becoming the first since Charles Howell III in 2001 to win the award without having won a tournament.

Leishman was the only rookie to reach the FedEx Cup finale at the Tour Championship.

Players voted on the awards over the last month, with balloting ending Friday.

It was the eighth time that Woods has swept all the major PGA Tour honors -- Byron Nelson Award for the lowest adjusted scoring average (68.05), Arnold Palmer Award for the money title and Jack Nicklaus Award for player of the year.

Radio Giant Files for Bankruptcy

2009-12-22T01:35:00.000-08:00

Citadel Broadcasting Files for Bankruptcy

I found this on Aol by Jeff Bercovici.

Thanks,

Preston

________________________________________

JEFF BERCOVICI Posted 12:13 PM 12/21/09 Company News, Media

Faced with the likelihood of breaching its financial covenants, Citadel Broadcasting (CTDB) -- which syndicates such broadcasters as Don Imus (pictured) -- took the initiative Sunday and filed for bankruptcy. The Chapter 11 filing will let the radio broadcaster get out from underneath most of its $2.5 billion debt.

Under a pre-arranged plan approved by more than 60% of Citadel's lenders, the company's creditors will end up with 90% of the reorganized company's equity. In return, they'll exchange $2.1 billion in loans for a more manageable $762.5 million.

Losing out big in the deal is Forstmann Little & Co. The New York-based private equity firm is currently Citadel's biggest stakeholder, with 28.7% of its equity. Forstmann had already written off its investment in Citadel, according to The Wall Street Journal, which included a $1.5 billion infusion in 2001.

Citadel owns 224 radio stations, including WABC in New York and WLS in Chicago. Among the programs it syndicates are Imus in the Morning and The Mark Levin Show. Just three years ago, it was still aggressively expanding, shouldering heavy debt to finance a $2.7 billion merger of its stations with Disney (DIS)-owned ABC Radio. That deal turned Citadel into the country's third-biggest radio operator, behind Clear Channel and CBS (CBS) Radio.

But then the bottom fell out of the radio-advertising market, and the ad economy in general. Citadel's ad revenue was down 14% in the third quarter. Overall radio spending is off an even steeper 19% in 2009, according to the consultancy BIA/Kelsey.

A covenant with its lenders requires Citadel to have $150 million in cash on hand by Jan. 15. As of Sunday, the company had only $24 million.

Now, This Guy Is Real Gambler. Take the Money and Run! Lol.

2009-12-18T06:44:00.000-08:00

He's a bad, bad boy.

Thanks,

Preston

____________________________________

Lottery Winner's Wife Evicted From Home After He Flees With His Winnings

MIRAMAR, Fla. -- A South Florida woman whose husband won the lottery and then left her was set to be evicted from her home Tuesday evening.

But Local 10’s camera was rolling when Donna Campbell received an early Christmas present.

Campbell was given until Tuesday to pack up and leave the Miramar home she once shared with her husband, Arnim Ramdass.

I have asked myself over and over what I did to deserve this, to deserve this ending," Campbell said.

Ramdass and several other airline mechanics won $19 million in a June 2007 lottery jackpot. Instead of sharing the wealth, Campbell said her husband did not tell her about his win and eventually left her.

A previous lawsuit Campbell filed was dropped. Ramdass stopped paying the mortgage, and their home went into foreclosure.

While they are still legally married, Campbell said Ramdass has vanished.

"I have no idea where he is," Campbell said.

In fact, the only reminder of the man with whom she once shared this home were wedding pictures on the dining room table. As far as the rest of her belongings, she was prepared to have to let them go.

“I could part with anything in the house. It doesn’t matter. But the Christmas stuff means a whole lot to me,” she told Local 10’s Jen Herrera.

Campbell spent Tuesday packing up pictures and clothing. She said she would leave behind furniture and other large items, as she had no place to go and can't afford to store them.

But when the folks at AA Varco moving company saw Campbell’s story on Local 10, they offered to move her belongings and store them at their facility for free.

“That would be wonderful. Thank you very much. You made my Christmas,” Campbell told the man on the other end of the phone when she heard the news.

Campbell wants to divorce Ramdass, file suit for her half of the money and serve him with papers, but her husband is nowhere to be found.

"I intend to find him. I will keep trying until I get him," Campbell said.

In the meantime, she plans on moving in with her sister while her attorney continues to look for her husband to serve him divorce papers.

Say It Isn't So

2009-12-18T05:39:00.000-08:00

Oral Roberts

1918-2009

You lived your three score and ten, plus many more.

R.I.P.

Walking Away from Your Mortgage? What's Going on Here? What Does All of This Mean?

2009-12-18T05:28:00.001-08:00

I found these profiles on Aol.

Thanks

Preston
_____________________________

Jim Warr
Situation: Walked Away

"I walked away from my house four months ago in Albuquerque. It was the smartest thing I've done.

My house was worth $360,000 when I refinanced it and $280,000 when I quit paying. There was only one way I could pull any equity out and that was to live in it for as long as I could and save as much as I could. I stopped making payments on everything except [my] cars. For 10 months I saved about $50,000 -- not really in cash -- but in what I would have paid [for the mortgage] and I still would have had bad credit.

Credit scores were invented not to stop people from borrowing but to make it possible for creditors to make more money. You can buy a house, new cars, get credit cards with bad credit; it just costs more. Every time I have to pay higher interest rates I think of that $50,000 I didn’t pay for 10 months and I’m ok with it. Renters spend 26 percent less on rent than home owners do on their mortgage. I will never buy another house."

_____________________

You can find the other profiles here.

http://realestate.aol.com/real-estate-finance/walking-away

Thanks,

Preston

Fantasy Football

2009-12-18T05:19:00.000-08:00

I found this on Aol.

Preston
______________________________

Fired Over Fantasy Football: The Unfortunate Case of Cameron Pettigrew

From Fantasy Fanhouse/Aol.com

On the surface, Cameron Pettigrew seems a lot like many people you might know. A young, ambitious guy who felt he found his ideal job at Fidelity Investments in Westlake, Texas. He even joked one time about getting a Fidelity tattoo.

Good thing he didn't.

In late October, Pettigrew and three other fantasy football league commissioners were fired by Fidelity. Pettigrew, a distinguished employee in the Private Client Group who had been with the company for two and a half years, was left scrambling for further explanation. Pettigrew said he never received a single verbal or written warning before his dismissal.

His slip-up had overridden an impressive resume, which contains multiple company honors, including being the only person chosen for an exclusive, 10-member program (Future Leaders of Westlake) who was not already in a management position. Three weeks before his firing, he was offered a position at Fidelity's prestigious Wall Street branch, but Pettigrew said he chose to decline the offer due to the high cost of living in New York City.

"I loved my job, my coworkers, and frankly, I loved Fidelity. I practically begged to have my job back," Pettigrew told FanHouse. "I spent weeks trying to appeal my termination ... I even said I would take a demotion if they accepted me back."

Pettigrew was commissioner of a $20 entry fee league with nine other employees. According to Pettigrew, those other nine league members -- which included three team leaders and a manager -- were simply given warnings and got to keep their jobs. "They are all dear friends of mine and I would never want for them to be fired or additionally reprimanded," said Pettigrew, "but the way in which Fidelity applied our punishment was flawed and unequal."

According to Pettigrew, he was questioned by two company investigators for an hour and a half, where they wanted to know everything he knew about fantasy sports at the Westlake site. "They were insistent upon knowing about everyone involved, especially leadership, and whether those persons even mentioned a league," said Pattigrew. "I kept thinking, 'All of this over a $20 fantasy football league?' "

In the past, Fidelity made it known to employees via e-mail that participation in fantasy sports activities is not permitted on company time. However, Pettigrew says "nobody at the entire Westlake site took the policy seriously." He claims there are numerous different active leagues at Fidelity and team leaders, managers and directors discussed fantasy sports regularly. For many participants, fantasy sports is considered a harmless hobby that has potential to bolster camaraderie between employees and overall morale.

When FanHouse contacted Fidelity for details on the policy Pettigrew violated, FanHouse was told by spokesman Vin Loporchio that the company doesn't comment on either current or former employees "out of respect for their privacy and confidentiality" and that nothing should be construed from the lack of a comment.

"The only official communication I ever received about Fidelity's policy against fantasy sports was a very generic e-mail which could easily be overlooked," said Pettigrew. "We were definitely never told that this could be a 'fireable' offense."

According to Pettigrew, that fireable offense included two incoming instant messages from league members, wherein brief conversations followed about teams and players. "Those two messages were received when I was idle and not in contact with any clients."

The league Web page, which was hosted on Yahoo! Sports, is blocked from access on work computers, according to Pettigrew, so members did not check their lineups on company time. And he claims the $20 league buy-in was only paid by a couple of guys on work property. "I only accepted the money during a scheduled break or after work, so I thought I was not doing so on company time."

Despite his appeals to Fidelity, Pettigrew was labeled with a stain on the Termination Explanation of his U5 form (Uniform Termination Notice for Securities Industry Regulation) ... VIOLATION OF COMPANY GAMBLING POLICY INVOLVING FANTASY FOOTBALL.

"They see the word gambling and it's as though I am toxic," said Pettigrew, who made note of the tough economy. "I have been blackballed in my industry."

According to Pettigrew, his department director and local leadership fought hard for his job, but he was considered an "organizer of gambling activities" by the corporation, because he was commissioner of the league.

Interestingly, Pettigrew says he never played fantasy football before coming to Fidelity. "Last season I was approached by one of the managers who asked that I be in his league. I knew vaguely about the policy at the time but figured that if a manager was involved than the rule was probably just something of an outdated law, like how it's illegal in Michigan for a woman to cut her own hair without asking her husband first."

In a statement offered to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last week, Fidelity spokesman Vin Loporchio said: "We have clear policies that relate to gambling. Participation in any form of gambling through the use of Fidelity time or equipment or any other company resource is prohibited. In addition to being illegal in a lot of places, it can also be disruptive. We want our employees to be focused on our customers and clients."

That "gambling" label has drawn the ire of leading Fantasy Sports Trade Association members. While fantasy sports may be considered gambling in a minority of states, it has been deemed one of the exemptions in the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, according to Professor I. Nelson Rose, who is a published expert on gambling law.

Paul Charchian, president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, had this to offer: "No fantasy sports company has been the subject of prosecution for gambling. No person has been the subject of prosecution for gambling related to fantasy sports participation."

A former Fidelity employee, who spoke to FanHouse on the condition of anonymity, claimed: "Saying the word 'gamble' at Fidelity is like saying 'bomb' on an airplane." He also alleges that "Fidelity likes to make examples out of people and this was probably seen as a good opportunity to do so."

With the evidence available, this seems more of a corporate culture issue than anything. On one hand, you could just ignore Pettigrew's strong track record and say company policy is company policy, end of story. Even if any given policy outlaws fantasy sports, or for that matter, Facebook usage and 15-minute smoke breaks. On the other, you can show leniency and let him off with probation, or perhaps even soften the termination explanation on his U5 form to exclude "gambling".

In a way, Pettigrew and three other employees are out of work because they were fantasy league commissioners -- the "organizers" -- and therefore the easier targets for Fidelity to exhibit that said activities will not be tolerated.

Certainly, it's not the first sympathetic termination story we'll hear, and it won't be the last. Yesterday, a woman e-mailed FanHouse to say her daughter was fired after eight years of service for bringing a one-pound puppy to work to show her friends for five minutes. One year later, she claims her daughter still can't find a job.

Sounds outrageous? In these times, you can believe it.

In the meantime, Cameron Pettigrew is available for employment.

He just wishes he could have his job and his life back.

Football Bet

2009-12-14T05:31:00.000-08:00

As a reformed gambler, I have vowed never to make another wager, but my oh my it's getting pretty hairy out there with two (count them--Two!) undefeated "thirteen and Oh my oh my" teams out there . . .

And my beloved Rams are being pummeled every week.

Ah, well, there is always next year's draft.

Stop it! Just stop it!

2009-12-14T05:21:00.000-08:00

Naked Pictures of Tiger Woods?

Stop it! Just stop it!

This is too much, people.

_____________________________________________

I found this on AOL

Playgirl Magazine recently claimed that they have naked pictures of Tiger Woods and may publish them if they can verify their authenticity. A "third party" is shopping the photos, and a Playgirl spokesman said, "Our lawyers are currently going over them, the source, the entire package."

Yup, that's why attorneys go to law school ... to look at Tiger Woods' package. Woods' lawyers are fighting back globally and have obtained an injunction in the UK against the publication of any nude pictures. Using sneaky lawyer talk, they aren't acknowledging that any naked pictures actually exist, but they don't want those pictures with his likeness published, Photoshopped or not. In the internet age, I'm not sure that there are enough lawyers in the world to stop the distribution of naughty pictures if they exist.

Donaghy: The NBA REF Who Bet On Games

2009-12-11T07:09:00.000-08:00

I am intrigued with this guy.

Donaghy Sticks With His Story

By Henry Abbott
ESPN.com

At times, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was vague in an interview Monday about his role in gambling on NBA games.
At times he was combative. At times he was indignant. At all times he was controversial.

Donaghy spoke with ESPN on Monday about allegations in his book, "Personal Foul," which was published last week. He talked about the biases of NBA referees and his own career as a gambler.

He called the NBA more of an entertainment show than a true competition. He said that so many referees were so biased that he could win more than 70 percent of his bets simply by knowing which referees carried which grudges.

And to those who doubt that he won as often as he did, he said: "I can tell you that the FBI was brought into this because of the success of the picks that we were giving."

Donaghy pleaded guilty and served a 15-month sentence on federal wire fraud charges. He was released from prison last month. He was an NBA official for 13 seasons before being snared in an FBI investigation of gambling on NBA games.

Donaghy said he was betting $2,000 or so on games when he first started betting. He said the wins came easy and so did the money.

"It's euphoria," he said. "I'm making picks. I'm the go-to guy. And I'm continually winning at an unbelievable rate."
While keeping his bets small to avoid attention, Donaghy said he was making so much money it was hard to hide it all.

"I'm stuffing it everywhere. Suitcoat pocket, card games, golf games, luxury items for the wife and kids," he said. He estimates he made roughly $100,000 betting on the NBA. Donaghy said his picks were once right 15 out of 16 times, a rate that he and gambling experts agree is nearly impossible with just luck. That streak, he said, "scared the living daylights out of us and almost made us think we should stop, because we were scared that we were going to be detected."

In his book, Donaghy wrote of a number of techniques he used to win at an astounding rate. Among the ways Donaghy said he made money was to bet on big underdogs when Dick Bavetta was one of the referees, because Bavetta liked to keep games close.

"He would instruct other referees to change their style, too," Donaghy said. "He'd say, 'Let's not embarrass anyone.' Get the marginal calls at one end, but not down at the other end of the floor. Not to change the outcome of the game, but to keep anyone from getting embarrassed."

However, an analysis of box scores during the period Donaghy was betting shows that betting on double-digit underdogs in Bavetta games would have resulted in a 17-25 record.

Donaghy insisted that other officials were also predisposed against certain players. He wrote that teams that include Allen Iverson underperform when Steve Javie is one of the referees, yet tend to beat the spread when Joe Crawford is officiating. He wrote that referee Joe Forte also gave a boost to the Memphis Grizzlies when Mike Fratello was the coach.

However, an analysis of final scores and betting lines showed that using that criteria would have resulted in just 35 wins out of 109 games.

"These are some of the criteria that I used," Donaghy said Monday. "I'm not saying I bet every game. ... You can spin the stats any way you want. ... The FBI investigated thoroughly. ... To sit here and say there was a science to how I did this, with the stats you're throwing at me ...

"Based on the information you're using, with your equation, it's not even in the same ballpark," Donaghy said. "There were other factors that came into play. Inside information about injuries. Home game or away game. Home crowd. Many more factors to take into consideration.

"I'm claiming that I picked 15 out of 16, and I'm also claiming that all the facts in this book are true, and it's what I used to pick games."

Donaghy was similarly indignant about a tale from his book involving Charles Barkley. As a player, Donaghy wrote in his book, Barkley stalked into the referees' locker room looking for Donaghy after an on-court dispute between the two in a Los Angeles Clippers-Houston Rockets game. Barkley, Donaghy wrote, then dumped a bucket of Gatorade and ice over the referee.

In a text message to ESPN's Mark Schwarz, Barkley insisted he has no recollection of any such thing. Donaghy said Monday it was true.

"The two refs in the locker room know it happened. I know it happened," he said. "For Charles Barkley to lie like that is troublesome to me. Maybe we both need to sit down and take a lie detector test, and maybe the loser needs to give $500,000 to charity. And I'd like to see what his response would be to that."

Donaghy told Schwarz in a separate interview that he couldn't say for certain that any other NBA officials gambled on NBA games.

He did say that NBA commissioner David Stern "needs to take his head out sand" in terms of Donaghy's accusations.

Henry Abbott writes the TrueHoop NBA blog for ESPN.com.

In a Dec. 7 ESPN.com story, the number of games included in an analysis of games involving referees Dick Bavetta was incorrect. It should have included only 109 games.

Gambler Blows 127 Million

2009-12-11T06:34:00.000-08:00

In my novel, ALL OR NOTHING, my protagonist ends up blowing 50 million dollars.

Some readers were skeptical, writing to me: "I think it's a serious exaggeration, Mr. Allen, that anyone would blow that kind of money."

My answer would be: "If you feel that way, then you don't know gamblers. The people I met during my time in GA spanned the range from minimum wage workers to millionaire athletes and corporate CEOs. If you have a hankering to meet famous people, join GA."

Then I found this on Sphere.com through Aol.com.

GAMBLER BLOWS $127 MILLION: SHOULD CASINO SHARE BLAME?

SAN FRANCISCO (Dec. 8) -- Terrance Watanabe sometimes got so high on painkillers and alcohol in Las Vegas that he walked into doors and passed out at the gaming tables.

The Omaha philanthropist consumed more than two bottles of expensive vodka daily and gambled for days at a time without sleeping. In a single year, he lost $127 million at two casinos owned by Harrah's Entertainment. Nearly $1 billion in wagers passed through his hands.

This embarrassing portrait of excess and dissipation comes from legal documents filed by Watanabe's own attorneys, who are defending him against criminal charges that he still owes Harrah's nearly $15 million from his gambling spree.

Watanabe's lawyers cast the once wealthy businessman as the victim of heartless executives who enticed him to their casinos with offers of lavish rewards, then plied him with massive quantities of alcohol and drugs to keep him under control as they milked him of his fortune.

From Harrah's perspective, Watanabe is a deadbeat gambler who faces four felonies and is telling his story publicly in a desperate attempt to avoid jail.

A civil lawsuit and a complaint to the Nevada Gaming Control Board filed last month by Watanabe's lawyers allege that Harrah's kept him a virtual "captive" at the Caesars and Rio casinos in 2007 and supplied him with the prescription painkiller Lortab without a doctor's diagnosis or supervision.

"They preyed on a vulnerable person who had a gambling and alcohol addiction," said Pierce O'Donnell, one of his attorneys. "Terry Watanabe takes responsibility for what he did, and Harrah's needs to take responsibility for what they did."

Watanabe, 52, is the former head of the Oriental Trading Co., a direct marketing firm that sells novelties and party items. In Omaha, he is known for donating money to AIDS patients, military families and the police department. He now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He declined through his attorneys to be interviewed.

Watanabe sold his interest in the family company in 2000 and by 2006 was gambling heavily in Las Vegas. In the parlance of the Strip, he was a "whale," a high-roller whose huge losses can be a casino's biggest source of revenue. Casinos vie with each other to entice whales to their tables, offering opulent rooms, private jets, gourmet meals, exclusive show tickets and all manner of other inducements.

Watanabe was one of the biggest whales to come along.

For a time he played at the Wynn casino, where he ran up losses of $26 million by June 2007. Owner Steve Wynn personally cut him off from further play, citing his apparent gambling and alcohol addictions, according to the complaint to the gaming board. A spokeswoman for Wynn said the casino had no comment.

Watanabe soon took up residence at Harrah's properties, first the Rio and then Caesars, under an agreement that offered him 20 separate incentives, including a free luxury suite, an airfare allowance, discounts on his losses, private gaming areas, and deferred marker payments of at least 60 days, the complaint says.

The dispute over how much Watanabe owes Harrah's centers on that agreement, which was recorded in a series of e-mails between Watanabe's assistant and a Harrah's executive, his attorneys say.

On its Web site, Harrah's calls itself a leader in responsible gaming and says it trains its employees to recognize problem gamblers.

"Our company's long-standing and continuing commitment to responsible gaming is something we take great pride in," the Web site says. "Harrah's position on this issue is clear: We want everyone who gambles at our casinos to be there for the right reasons: to simply have fun."

But in Watanabe's case, his attorneys say, the casino staff played a different role.

The complaint alleges that Harrah's assigned employees to watch over Watanabe and ensure that he continued gambling at its properties.

During a six-month period in 2007, employees continually plied him with drinks, ignoring several requests from an acquaintance to water down his vodka, the complaint says. Photos of Watanabe were posted in staff areas so employees would know he should not be denied anything he wanted, his lawyers allege. At the height of his binge, witnesses say he consumed two to three bottles a day of his favorite brand, Jewel of Russia, according to court documents.

If Watanabe was absent from the casino floor for a time, his handlers would call or visit his hotel room and steer him back to the casino floor, the complaint alleges.

Staff members who objected to the way the casino was treating Watanabe were reassigned or dismissed, according to the complaint.

His attorneys say that Harrah's carefully managed a daily routine for Watanabe that included alcohol and drugs, inadequate sleep and pressure to continue gambling. As his intoxication grew worse, his losses increased.

His condition began deteriorating markedly in September 2007 after he slipped on the marble floor in his suite and injured his back. He asked for aspirin or Tylenol, his attorneys say.

Instead of calling a doctor, casino employees began giving him Lortab, a prescription narcotic that should not be mixed with alcohol, the complaint says. Casino staff continually supplied him with the drug, it says, on one occasion delivering the pills to his room in a candy box.

Witnesses say Watanabe became so intoxicated that he slurred his speech, walked into obstacles and at times passed out while playing, according to the complaint. "Rather than taking him to his room, a staff member would wake him up to continue gambling or to sign a marker," O'Donnell said in the complaint.

There is no indication from the documents that close friends or family members spent time with Watanabe in Las Vegas until he had lost much of his fortune.

Watanabe's spree came to an end in December 2007 after his sister visited and persuaded him to leave Las Vegas.

By that time, he had given Harrah's $112 million. But he balked at paying $14.75 million more in markers, contending that the debt was offset by promised discounts and other incentives that Harrah's never delivered.

After Watanabe hired an attorney to help him negotiate, Harrah's submitted the markers to his bank for payment. When the markers were returned because of insufficient funds, Harrah's asked the district attorney to prosecute the man who had been their best customer.

In February, Watanabe turned himself in to face four felony counts of theft and fraud.

Under a unique Nevada law, Harrah's turned over the markers to Clark County District Attorney David Roger for criminal prosecution.

The company is seeking the money despite the $112 million it has already taken from Watanabe -- a sum so large it constituted almost 6 percent of casino revenues for the entire Harrah's chain in 2007, the complaint says.

The prosecutor's Bad Check Unit alleges that the markers Watanabe signed are the equivalent of checks that must be paid on demand. Watanabe's lawyers contend that the markers represent loans, not checks, and therefore should not be subject to the bad check law.

The Bad Check Unit has handled cases involving the markers of several prominent gamblers, including the recent $900,000 debt of former NBA star Antoine Walker. But the $14.75 million at issue in the Watanabe case is the largest sum the unit has sought to recover.

Under the law, the district attorney's office will receive a 10 percent commission on any amount it collects from Watanabe. O'Donnell, a prominent Los Angeles trial lawyer, questions whether such an arrangement is constitutional.

"The statutory scheme in Nevada creates an unholy alliance between private gambling companies and the public prosecutor," he said in an interview. "There is no other industry and no other state where this happens. To give a bounty to the district attorney for collecting private debts is extraordinary."

Deputy District Attorney Bernie Zadrowski, who supervises the Bad Check Unit, did not return telephone calls from Sphere.

Jan Jones, Harrah's senior vice president for communications and government relations, issued a brief statement saying the company has no intention of asking the district attorney to drop the case.

Jones said Watanabe's lawsuit and his complaint to the gaming board contain "false statements" but did not specify what she considers untrue. Jones and other Harrah's representatives declined to answer any questions about the case.

"We will not get into a public debate with a criminal defendant who is trying to avoid imprisonment," Jones said in her statement. "He is the one on trial; he's the one who needs to explain his actions."

Watanabe's civil lawsuit does not specify the amount of damages it is seeking. In the complaint to the gaming board, O'Donnell calls for an investigation of Harrah's and the possible suspension of the two casinos' licenses.

"Mr. Watanabe is the victim of a ruthless corporation that deserves the harshest sanctions for its unlawful conduct," he wrote. "Indeed, the evidence is overwhelming that Caesars reprehensibly behaved like a predator stalking, trapping and consuming its prey."

Filed under: Nation, Top Stories
2009 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.

100 Year Old Pedophile Set To Be Released from Prison

2009-12-11T06:24:00.000-08:00

I found this on AOL

BUFFALO, N.Y. (Dec. 10) -- Everything that pedophile Theodore Sypnier has to show for his 100 years on earth is packed in a single duffel bag as he prepares to begin a new chapter in life: freedom.

It's a chapter that prosecutors, judges and others who know him never wanted -- or expected -- to see written.

New York's oldest registered sex offender is scheduled to move by week's end out of a Buffalo halfway house for released inmates and into a place of his own, after completing his latest term in state prison for molesting little girls.

The judge who sentenced him said at the time that she expected him to die behind bars.

But 10 years after his last arrest, as Sypnier prepared to shed the closely monitored lifestyle of the halfway house, its director warned that the spry and active Sypnier has not changed from the manipulator who used his grandfatherly charm to snare and rape victims as young as 4.

"Whether he's 100 or 101 or 105, the same person that was committing these crimes 10, 25, 30 years ago still exists today and has an unrepentant heart," said the Rev. Terry King, director of Grace House, which has twice taken Sypnier in from prison. "He is someone that we as parents, as members of the community, any community, really need to fear."

Six months after marking his 100th birthday in the Groveland Correctional Facility -- becoming the first New York inmate to reach the milestone while incarcerated -- the retired telephone company worker now says he wants to get to know the youngest members of a family that has disowned him.

"I'll tell them I never harmed any children," the father, grandfather and great-grandfather told his hometown newspaper, The Buffalo News.

A former daughter-in-law said he is not likely to get the chance.

"No one from the family plans to have any contact with him," Diane Sypnier said before ending a brief phone interview.

Being grandfatherly was how the 5-foot-5, 150-pound Sypnier found his victims, authorities say. After his most recent arrest at age 90 on charges of raping and sodomizing a 4-year-old girl and her 7-year-old sister, his neighbors in the suburb of Tonawanda recalled what appeared to be a kindly Sypnier offering rides to adults, handing out money to children so they could buy candy, and baby-sitting.

The victimized sisters called him "Grandpa," their mother said at the time, adding that it "was a total shock" when police showed her sexually explicit pictures of her girls found in Sypnier's apartment.

Sypnier's convictions date to 1987, when he was given three years' probation for sex abuse. He spent a year in prison for sexually abusing a minor in 1994. His neighbors in Tonawanda never knew of Sypnier's background because he was convicted before the adoption of laws requiring sex offenders to register with police.

A relative once came forward and said Sypnier had molested her while she was growing up, former Erie County prosecutor Frank Clark told the News. Authorities wonder what else might lie in Sypnier's past.

"People don't start to become pedophiles at 78," Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita told the AP. "I call them vampires. ... This is something that's deep inside of them, and they won't want to stop doing this until they're dead."

But Sypnier says he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, despite twice pleading guilty in the case involving the sisters.

"Those children crawled into bed with me because they were frightened, but there was never any sexual hanky-panky," Sypnier told the News.

Sypnier initially pleaded guilty in 2000 to two counts of rape, 15 counts of sodomy and endangering the welfare of a child for molesting the Tonawanda girls, as well as three in Buffalo. An appeals court threw out the conviction in 2002 after Sypnier claimed he was confused at the time, leading to another plea the following year to a lesser charge.

In sentencing Sypnier to as many as 10 years in prison, state Supreme Court Justice Penny Wolfgang told him she expected he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

"The sheer notion of him wandering the streets unattended or unsupervised is a scary proposition," King said.

Sypnier was released on parole in 2007, only to be returned to prison in 2008 after failing to attend sex-offender counseling. He completed his term in November and will be on parole through 2012. Until then, he's forbidden from using e-mail, chat rooms or social networking sites; hanging around playgrounds or schools; or spending time in bars.

Instead, he spends his days watching television, cooking, socializing in the halfway house and attending programming, King said.

Sypnier's new address has not been disclosed, but the law requires him to enter it in the state's sex offender registry.

Although his age makes him New York's oldest registered sex offender, there is at least one older offender elsewhere. Bert Jackson of Utah is 103 and living under home confinement.
Filed under: Nation, Crime
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Nude Female Teachers

2009-12-11T06:16:00.000-08:00

I was going to write about Tiger Woods, but this article by BRETT SINGER caught my eye.

Female Teachers Caught Nude Together In Brooklyn HS Classroom
by Brett Singer Dec 9th 2009 3:01PM

Two female teachers were allegedly caught nude together in a classroom in Brooklyn, according to a story in the New York Daily News.

The women are both language teachers at James Madison High School. According to the newspaper, the linguists were in a classroom nude and "speaking the international language of love" while the students were in the auditorium "watching a talent show." Janitor Robert Colantuoni saw a little show of his own, and, well, informed the principal.

According to the Daily News, one of the women is single and a French (ooh-la-la) teacher. The other is married and teaches Spanish. The News called the Spanish teacher's husband and he said, "The school district has not informed my wife of these allegations and they are untrue." (What else would the guy say?)

The best line from the story (or the worst, depending on your point of view) is this: "Students said both teachers were popular." One student is quoted in the News as saying that one of the teachers is "kinda sexy" and "dressed like a teenage girl ... low-cut tops, shorts, three-quarter length jeans." The other reportedly wears less provocative clothing but is still described by students as "pretty" and "good-looking," according to the News.

Both teachers have tenure. They have been sent to NYC Education Department "rubber rooms" pending an investigation.

Lumberjack Wins 5 Million

2009-11-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

I found this on AOL.

You gotta love this guy.

Thanks,

Preston
___________________________

LAS VEGAS (Nov. 10) -- What is Darvin Moon going to do with his new fortune? "Put it in the bank," said the lumberjack who came in second place at the World Series of Poker.

It was a characteristically plain-spoken response from the 46-year-old from rural Maryland who had never flown in a jet plane before coming to Las Vegas in July to play -- and eventually beat -- many of the world's greatest poker players. Tuesday, he walked away with the $5.1 million purse after Joe Cada, a 21-year-old from Detroit, pushed him out.

Normally, potential champions are Type A glory-seekers, people who dream of being on TV and splurging on luxuries and soaking up all the media attention they can. Throughout the tournament, Moon has baffled onlookers as a plain-spoken guy who doesn't use the Internet, doesn't own a credit card and flat-out refused to sign any of the online poker Web site endorsement deals that are de rigueur for final table players.

"I'm not interested," he said, sporting the only swag he's received: a New Orleans Saints cap the team sent him after he told reporters he was a fan. "Why sign something that's gonna change me so that I'm gonna have to be sitting in a corner in front of a computer? That is like watching paint dry on the wall. I like being outside, moving, doing outside things."

When it was all over early Tuesday morning, following four hours head-to-head and about 90 hands on the stage where illusionists Penn & Teller perform, Moon was beaten by someone very different: a gregarious, eagerly famous 21-year-old from Detroit. Moon wouldn't acknowledge that he was relieved to be able to return to anonymity, but he did tell a Washington Post reporter who was blogging and tweeting his every move, "Why is everybody so upset? It's all good. This is fun."

The break between July and the November finale was designed to give the nine finalists a chance to promote themselves and the tournament while leaving the ultimate result unknown as ESPN aired weekly shows of the summer's action. Moon, the chip leader, largely went back to work, talking to journalists if they caught him on his phone but declining to fly to Europe and elsewhere to play in poker events as other players frequently do.

"I'm not going to that stuff," he said. "I'm not interested in that. I may go to some other games, but I'm going to the ones I want to go to when I want to go."

None of this computed in the balloon-boy era and, in fact, was met with some hostility in a poker community that talks constantly about the importance of good "poker ambassadors." Even his new poker-pro pals seem to believe that Cada's victory may be better for the game.

"Darvin's a great guy and he's turning into a good friend of mine, but he is not a person who wants to go out there in front of the media and anything like that," said Dennis Phillips, who finished third in the 2008 World Series. "Joe will be more that way. So in that aspect, yes, there's a difference. But believe me, Darvin's a heckuva good guy."

Moon lives in Oakland, Md., where even his great-grandfather grew up and which boasts fewer residents than the number of contestants he outlasted in the tournament. He owns a logging business and drives to Yellowstone for hunting trips once a year. Also, he likes to play poker, earning entry to the World Series by winning a tournament at a casino in Morgantown, W.Va., that cost him $130 to enter.

His rough-edged demeanor served him well at the poker table where he sat with a steady, inscrutable frown as his head rested on the palm of one of his thick hands. Even when he won big hands or busted someone out, his expression changed little. He said later he felt it was rude to appear to celebrate someone else's ouster.

Moon received his minimum payout of $1.26 million for finishing in the top nine before departing Las Vegas in July. Most of it's in the bank, but he did buy new logging equipment and a new pickup. He and his wife, who have no children, also accelerated previously laid plans to replace the 14-by-70-foot trailer they've occupied for 17 years, but the new house, also a modular, will be no bigger or fancier than they previously had planned for, despite the money.

"He almost has roots in the old pioneer West or something of people who went into the woods," said Nolan Dalla, the announcer at the event. "Living a rural lifestyle with his family and parents, he has no use for the perks of the modern society. That's pretty unique in the poker world because it's all about money and fame and glory. He's the antithesis of that."

Indeed, asked how he liked Las Vegas, Moon replied, "It sucks. Too many people, too fast-paced for me."

Had he seen any shows or had any great meals?

"I had a good shot of whiskey in the casino at 5 a.m. this morning."

Of the media circus that engulfed him?

"I'm as uncomfortable as hell."

And what about all the money he just won?

"No, Uncle Sam won a crapload. And what'd he do?"

And he had exactly the response one might expect for his plans when he gets back home.

"I'm gonna change my phone number."

Mob Hit Man Comes Out in Court

2009-10-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

I found this one on AOL.

Thanks,

Preston
_____________________

(Oct. 20) -- Mob hit man Robert Mormando had two surprises for the Brooklyn, N.Y., judge who sentenced him Monday: first, he renounced the mob and then he announced that he was gay, the New York Daily News reported.

Mormando, 44, was being sentenced for his part in the 2003 shooting of a bagel store owner, who was wounded in his driveway. The hit was ordered by Vincent Gotti, the paper said.

"That's the first time I've heard this in court," Federal Judge Jack Weinstein said of the gangster renouncing the mob.

Mormando, a divorced father of two who became a government informant just after the shooting, has been living in hiding from the Mafia.

"He has been openly gay since he left the mob," his lawyer told the judge.

Mormando faced up to 17 years in prison but was sentenced to time served, even though he hadn't served any prison time, the Daily News said.

2009 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved.
2009-10-20 09:15:40

_____________

This is the first time the judge has heard someone renounce the mob. But it's not the first time (I am assuming) that he has heard a mobster come out in court. Okay. Deep. The times they are a changing.

Preston

Doctor Wins 189 Million Powerball

2009-10-16T17:42:00.001-07:00

Congratulations, doc.

Preston
____________________________________

Doctor Wins $189M Powerball Prize
AOL

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Oct. 16) - An Orlando dermatologist is Florida's first Powerball winner.

Dr. William Steele chose to take a $101 million lump-sum payment Thursday rather than $189 million spread over 20 years.

That's the largest jackpot of any kind awarded in Florida history.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that Steele kept the winning ticket in his wallet for days without checking it.

His wife, Frankie Summers-Steele, an inspirational writer and speaker, accompanied him as he turned in his ticket and collected his prize.

Steele, who lives in a gated community nicknamed "Millionaire Road" for its fancy homes, recalled breaking the news to his wife.

"Honey, do you love me?" the doctor asked her.

"I always loved you," she replied.

"I love you, too. Oh, by the way ..."

The doctor said he plans to continue his practice "if the public will let me" and give much of the money to charity, the Sentinel said.

Florida became the 30th state to offer the high-jackpot game in January. It abstained for years, fearing Powerball would detract from sales of the state's own lottery games.

Steele was the sole jackpot winner in the Oct. 3 drawing.

The winning numbers were 12, 24, 48, 50, 57 and the Powerball was 22. The Power Play was 3.

2009 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2009-10-15 13:44:53

Justice of the Peace Refuses to Issue Marriage License to Interracial Couple

2009-10-15T17:13:00.000-07:00

I found this on AOL.

No Comment.

Thanks,

Preston

______________________________________________

No Marriage License for Interracial Couple
AP

HAMMOND, La. (Oct. 15) - A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.

"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

Thirty-year-old Beth Humphrey and 32-year-old Terence McKay, both of Hammond, say they will consult the U.S. Justice Department about filing a discrimination complaint.

Humphrey told the newspaper she called Bardwell on Oct. 6 to inquire about getting a marriage license signed. She says Bardwell's wife told her that Bardwell will not sign marriage licenses for interracial couples.

"It is really astonishing and disappointing to see this come up in 2009," said American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana attorney Katie Schwartzman. "The Supreme Court ruled as far back as 1963 that the government cannot tell people who they can and cannot marry."

The ACLU was preparing a letter for the Louisiana Supreme Court, which oversees the state justices of the peace, asking them to investigate Bardwell and see if they can remove him from office, Schwartzman said.

"He knew he was breaking the law, but continued to do it," Schwartzman said.

According to the clerk of court's office, application for a marriage license must be made three days before the ceremony because there is a 72-hour waiting period.

The applicants are asked if they have previously been married. If so, they must show how the marriage ended, such as divorce.

Other than that, all they need is a birth certificate and Social Security card. The license fee is $35, and the license must be signed by a Louisiana minister, justice of the peace or judge. The original is returned to the clerk's office.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2009-10-15 16:11:52

Say It Isn't So

2009-10-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

Captain Lou Albano

1933-2009

R.I.P.

Paranormal Activity

2009-10-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

This movie sounds like a winner.

My students who have seen it are saying . . .

"The scariest movie I have ever seen."

"I hated it! It scared me too much. I can't stop thinking about it."

"This one will scare you."

"It's worth the money, if you can stay through the whole thing."

Okay, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY--I will see it.

The last movie to give me a good scare--though only a brief one--was THE SIXTH SENSE. It was during that scene when the vomit-girl show up suddenly in the red tent. That gave me a nice jolt.

Thanks,

Preston

Good Books Don't Have to Be Hard

2009-10-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

This article from the Wall Street Journal put some goosebumps on my spine.

But it makes sense to me.

Thanks,

Preston
_____________________________________________

Good Books Don't Have to Be Hard
A novelist on the pleasure of reading stories that don't bore; rising up from the supermarket racks

By LEV GROSSMAN

A good story is a dirty secret that we all share. It's what makes guilty pleasures so pleasurable, but it's also what makes them so guilty. A juicy tale reeks of crass commercialism and cheap thrills. We crave such entertainments, but we despise them. Plot makes perverts of us all.

It's not easy to put your finger on what exactly is so disgraceful about our attachment to storyline. Sure, it's something to do with high and low and genres and the canon and such. But what exactly? Part of the problem is that to find the reason you have to dig down a ways, down into the murky history of the novel. There was once a reason for turning away from plot, but that rationale has outlived its usefulness. If there's a key to what the 21st-century novel is going to look like, this is it: the ongoing exoneration and rehabilitation of plot.

Where did this conspiracy come from in the first place—the plot against plot? I blame the Modernists. Who were, I grant you, the single greatest crop of writers the novel has ever seen. In the 1920s alone they gave us "The Age of Innocence," "Ulysses," "A Passage to India," "Mrs. Dalloway," "To the Lighthouse," "Lady Chatterley's Lover," "The Sun Also Rises," "A Farewell to Arms" and "The Sound and the Fury." Not to mention most of "In Search of Lost Time" and all of Kafka's novels. Pity the poor Pulitzer judge for 1926, who had to choose between "The Professor's House," "The Great Gatsby," "Arrowsmith" and "An American Tragedy." (It went to "Arrowsmith." Sinclair Lewis prissily declined the prize.) The 20th century had a full century's worth of masterpieces before it was half over.

But let's look back for a second at where the Modernists came from, and what exactly they did with the novel. They drew a tough hand, historically speaking. All the bad news of the modern era had just arrived more or less at the same time: mass media, advertising, psychoanalysis, mechanized warfare. The rise of electric light and internal combustion had turned their world into a noisy, reeking travesty of the gas-lit, horse-drawn world they grew up in. The orderly, complacent, optimistic Victorian novel had nothing to say to them. Worse than nothing: it felt like a lie. The novel was a mirror the Modernists needed to break, the better to reflect their broken world. So they did.

One of the things they broke was plot. To the Modernists, stories were a distortion of real life. In real life stories don't tie up neatly. Events don't line up in a tidy sequence and mean the same things to everybody they happen to. Ask a veteran of the Somme whether his tour of duty resembled the "Boy's Own" war stories he grew up on. The Modernists broke the clear straight lines of causality and perception and chronological sequence, to make them look more like life as it's actually lived. They took in "The Mill on the Floss" and spat out "The Sound and the Fury."

This brought with it another, related development: difficulty. It's hard to imagine it now, but there was a time when literary novels were not, generally speaking, all that hard to read. Say what you like about the works of Dickens and Thackeray, you pretty much always know who's talking, and when, and what they're talking about. The Modernists introduced us to the idea that reading could be work, and not common labor but the work of an intellectual elite, a highly trained coterie of professional aesthetic interpreters. The motto of Ezra Pound's "Little Review," which published the first chapters of Joyce's "Ulysses," was "Making no compromise with the public taste." Imagine what it felt like the first time somebody opened up "The Waste Land" and saw that it came with footnotes. Amateur hour was over.

But we don't live in the Modernists' world anymore. We have different problems. We've had plenty of bad news of our own. Some of which has to do with the book business itself—sales of adult trade books declined 2.3% last year, compared with 2007. Should we still be writing difficult novels? Isn't it time we made our peace with plot?

After all, the discipline of the conventional literary novel is a pretty harsh one. To read one is to enter into a kind of depressed economy, where pleasure must be bought with large quantities of work and patience. The Modernists felt little obligation to entertain their readers. That was just the price you paid for your Joycean epiphany. Conversely they have trained us, Pavlovianly, to associate a crisp, dynamic, exciting plot with supermarket fiction, and cheap thrills, and embarrassment. Plot was the coward's way out, for people who can't deal with the real world. If you're having too much fun, you're doing it wrong.
There was a time when difficult literature was exciting. T.S. Eliot once famously read to a whole football stadium full of fans.

And it's still exciting—when Eliot does it.

But in contemporary writers it has just become a drag. Which is probably why millions of adults are cheating on the literary novel with the young-adult novel, where the unblushing embrace of storytelling is allowed, even encouraged. Sales of hardcover young-adult books are up 30.7% so far this year, through June, according to the Association of American Publishers, while adult hardcovers are down 17.8%. Nam Le's "The Boat," one of the best-reviewed books of fiction of 2008, has sold 16,000 copies in hardcover and trade paperback, according to Nielsen Bookscan (which admittedly doesn't include all book retailers). In the first quarter of 2009 alone, the author of the "Twilight" series, Stephenie Meyer, sold eight million books.

What are those readers looking for? You'll find critics who say they have bad taste, or that they're lazy and can't hack it in the big leagues. But that's not the case. They need something they're not getting elsewhere. Let's be honest: Why do so many adults read Suzanne Collins's young-adult novel "The Hunger Games" instead of contemporary literary fiction? Because "The Hunger Games" doesn't bore them.

All of this is changing. The revolution is under way. The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, romance. They're forging connections between literary spheres that have been hermetically sealed off from one another for a century. Look at Cormac McCarthy, who for years appeared to be the oldest living Modernist in captivity, but who has inaugurated his late period with a serial-killer novel followed by a work of apocalyptic science fiction. Look at Thomas Pynchon—in "Inherent Vice" he has swapped his usual cumbersome verbal calisthenics for the more maneuverable chassis of a hard-boiled detective novel.

This is the future of fiction. The novel is finally waking up from its 100-year carbonite nap. Old hierarchies of taste are collapsing. Genres are hybridizing. The balance of power is swinging from the writer back to the reader, and compromises with the public taste are being struck all over the place. Lyricism is on the wane, and suspense and humor and pacing are shedding their stigmas and taking their place as the core literary technologies of the 21st century.

From a hieratic, hermetic art object the novel is blooming into something more casual and open: a literature of pleasure. The critics will have to catch up. This new breed of novel resists interpretation, but not the way the Modernists did. These books require a different set of tools, and a basic belief that plot and literary intelligence aren't mutually exclusive.

In fact the true postmodern novel is here, hiding in plain sight. We just haven't noticed it because we're looking in the wrong aisle. We were trained—by the Modernists, who else—to expect a literary revolution to be a revolution of the avant-garde: typographically altered, grammatically shattered, rhetorically obscure. Difficult, in a word. This is different. It's a revolution from below, up from the supermarket racks.

—Lev Grossman is the book critic at Time magazine and the author of "The Magicians," a novel.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
www.djreprints.com

Roman Polanski Arrested

2009-09-27T04:28:00.001-07:00

Big Fan of Polanski. Chinatown. The Pianist. Rosemary's Baby.

Not a big fan of sleeping with 13-year-olds.

Thanks,

Preston
______________________________________

From AOL

ZURICH (Sept. 27) - Organizers of the Zurich Film Festival say director Roman Polanski has been taken into custody on a 31-year-old U.S. arrest warrant.

The organizers say Polanski was detained by police Saturday. Zurich police couldn't immediately confirm the information.

The festival said in a statement Sunday that Polanski traveled to Switzerland to receive an award for his lifetime of work as a director. They said he was arrested in relation to a 1978 U.S. request, without specifying.

Polanski fled the United States in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2009-09-27 06:29:21

MacArthur Award Winner! Congrats to Edwidge Danticat!

2009-09-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

Edwidge Danticat to read at FIU next week.

Thanks,

Preston
___________________________________________

By LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com
Local author Edwidge Danticat, a recent MacArthur ``Genius Award'' winner, will speak at a Florida International University event next week.

The Haitian-born author, who last week received the prestigious award that comes with a prize of $500,000, will speak at an event of the Honors College at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Mary Ann Wolfe Theater on the Biscayne Bay Campus, 3000 NE 151st St. ``A Conversation with Danticat'' is free and open to the public. Danticat will discuss her work, which focuses primarily on Haiti and Haitian culture.

Danticat has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award and the Pushcart Short Story Award.

She holds a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.F.A. from Brown University and has served as a visiting professor of creative writing at New York University and the University of Miami.

For more information, contact Honors College associate dean and fellow Juan Carlos Espinosa at 305-348-6795 or espinosj@fiu.edu.

Say It Ain't So

2009-09-15T00:57:00.000-07:00

Patrick Swayze!

1952-2009

Ghost

Dirty Dancing

Red Dawn

R. I. P.

Attention Black People! Skin Whitener for Sale!

2009-09-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

Among Americans, I am considered black.

Okay . . .

Heck, among black people, I am considered black. I am a very dark skinned black man. I am not honey skinned or brown skinned or red skinned or tanned--I am black.

The interesting thing is that I did not know how dark I was until a few years ago I pondered a photograph I had taken with some of my dark skinned black friends. I had always considered them very dark, but when I looked at that photo I made the decision to stop using the "very" when describing them. Among these dark hued brethren, I was the darkest (and the cutest, but that's another story).

That was so weird. When I looked at photographs from my childhood, I was less black. I was more brown. Now I am black.

Then I started looking around to see if I could find black people who were darker even than I was. And there they were. They weren't too hard to find. I would stand beside them and glance furtively, comparing skin tones. I would make excuses to take photographs with them.

Cool, I thought. Cool. There were people even darker than I was.

And my student from Nigeria--I was fascinated by her skin. It was so black it seemed to swallow light and ooze it back out as a sort of sheen or shine. She made even dark skinned people like me seem light.

I recall a conversation I had with this student after class because of a self-deprecating comment she had made during class discussion. Like I said, she was very dark, much darker than I (though much cuter and much smarter). "But Professor Allen," she said, "I'm no different from any other black person. Sometimes the blackness is a burden. Sometimes I just wish I were white. I think we all feel that way sometimes. Right?"

"No. Not all of us," I told her. "Not me. Not as far as I can recall. I've never wished I were white. Maybe I wished it when I was a kid and I cannot remember it, but I even doubt that. My head is just not made that way."

"You've never wished you were white? Come on, professor," she said. "Be honest. You're just trying to act all superior."

"No. I am being honest. I've wished for money. I've wished for fame. I wished to be a best selling novelist. I once even wished to be taller. I wished to be Spider-man when I was a kid, but not because Peter Parker was white, but because I wanted to spin webs, climb walls, and be strong enough to beat up bad guys. I once wished to go out with the prettiest girl in my class, who was white. But again, I did not wish myself white. I saw us together as black and white--in fact, I saw her as pleading with her parents to support her brave love for the amazing black guy that she had fallen in love with. It never happened, of course. I was too shy to even talk to her."

"So you've never wished to be white."

"No. Never," I said. "But I have wished that I could live in a world where there weren't extra hurdles and obstacles because I was black."

She locked onto me with her gaze. "Yes, professor, all black people wish for that, but let me put it to you another way. Do you wish you were black?"

Her question puzzled me. I shrugged. "I am black. I do not have to wish."

"Okay," she said. "When you're about to have a child, do you wish it were black?"

I sensed a trap, but could not see where it was being laid. I answered with joviality, "I certainly do not wish it were white. Hahaha, that would mean my wife had been spending quality time with male company other than myself."

Her expression remained serious. "Do you wish it were as black as you, professor?"

"Uh." The trap. "Uh," I said, searching for words or more joviality.

"Don't equivocate," she said. "Do you wish the child were as black as you, or do you wish, silently, somewhere deep down inside that it were lighter?"

"It does not matter. I do not wish a complexion upon my children. I love my children regardless of their complexions."

"But does the world? Does our country?" she said. "When you have a child, you might wish it were many things that we as a culture find attractive and/or desirable. You might wish he were tall, that she were beautiful, that he were strong, that they were smart, that he were athletic, that she were clever and independent. And if he/she is born with very dark skin, you accept it--but you do not wish it."

"But--"

"No more than you would wish your child were born with a defect. You would love the child regardless of the defect, but you certainly would not wish it upon him/her. I can just see you now, professor, sitting in the waiting room excitedly speculating 'Ooooh, wouldn't it be nice if she gave birth to a sweet little down syndrome boy.' "

I cried foul. "Young lady, you are quite mixing up the issues here--"

But she stuck to her guns. "It's the same way with homosexuality. We are all liberal-minded folk who accept people of all sexual proclivities and persuasions, but who among us wishes to give birth to a little lesbian? Oooo, wouldn't it be nice to bring home a bouncing baby queer boy?" she laughed.

I forgot to mention that on the first night of class she made it clear, to the chagrin of many of her classmates, that she was a very out lesbian.

I countered, "While I do not wish for a dark child, I certainly do not wish that the child be NOT dark. I think dark skin is beautiful as are all of the other possible complexions. In fact, of late even the world has come to see what I have known all along: that very dark skin is beautiful. Just look at the number of famous celebrity beauties and fashion models with very dark skin. Wesley Snipes, a very dark man, is considered quite handsome. And if we take a cynical look at even our history of slavery, we have to admit that the incidence of very white skinned men visiting their sexual passion on what must have been very dark women (since they had come straight from Africa) is further evidence that in the eyes of sexualized males (even white ones) black has always been beautiful, or at least not ugly enough to repulse as is sometimes claimed."

She shook her head sadly. "Blah, blah, blah. And Michael Jackson was rich and handsome and black, and he did something, who knows what, to make his skin lighter. All right, professor, now you're rationalizing, which tells me that you're not going to drop your facade, even though you know that I am right. So I give up."

"It is no facade. Black is beautiful. As beautiful as white. As beautiful as brown. As beautiful as tan."

She said, "I will leave you with one more question. You don't have to answer it. Just promise me you'll go home and think about it."

"What's the question?" I said.

"If you could pull a Michael Jackson," she said, "would you do it?"

"What?"

"If through a medical treatment (or some kind of magical elixir, or maybe even a skin creme) black people--dark people like you and me--could become lighter or even white, would you use it?"

That was the question. And then she left.

But the key for me has always been this: I like Preston. You cannot get me to start disliking Preston. He's got black skin, so then I like black skin. I also like people who like Preston. I like them a whole lot. What I don't like are people who don't like Preston. I don't like them at all.

But I had to admit it was a very good question.

A very troubling question.

____________________________________________________

And then along came this article I found on AOL.

OMG!!!

There are a whole lot of dark people who want to be light, and now I see why!

If you are light, you will get the girl of your dreams. LOL.

_______________________________
NEW DELHI, India (Sept. 10 ) -- Cosmetic advertisements in Asia are targeting men with blunt campaigns aimed at skin color that one lawmaker labels racist.

In one TV commercial, two men, one with dark skin, the other with light skin; stand on a balcony overlooking a neighborhood. The dark skin guy turns to his friend and says in Hindi, "I am unlucky because of my face." His light skin friend replies, "Not because of your face, because of the color of your face."

Suddenly the light skin guy throws his friend a cream. It's a whitening cream.

It is one of several television commercials aimed at men in Pakistan and India. In the end the darker skin actor is shown several shades lighter and he gets the girl he was after. Most of the ads end up that way.

The commercials are sending a not-so-subtle message to men in Asia: Get whiter skin, and you'll get the girl and the job of your dreams. Or at the very least you'll be noticed.

"We always have a complex towards a white skin, towards foreign skin or foreign hair," Jawed Habib says.

Habib should know. He owns a chain of 140 salons located in India and across the world. "We Indian people, we Asian people are more darker, so we want to look more fair."

Skin whiteners were once targeted only to women. Now the products are a hot commodity for men.

Many of the brands being advertised for men are well known around the world -- including Nivea and Garnier.

A marketing study found sales for skin whitening creams have jumped more than 100 percent in rural India and sales for male grooming products are increasing 20 percent annually.

Hindustan Unilever, one of the largest consumer products companies in India, noted in recent annual reports that "skin lightening continues to be a major area of emphasis" for its skin care division.

And Emami Ltd., the company which produces "Fair and Handsome," sent CNN an email saying: "Fair and Handsome is a market leader with almost 70 percent market share in India and doing extremely well in Gulf countries and the Middle East as well."
But in a country where most people have brown skin, the message being sent to men and women has some people outraged.
"Basically if you need a job you have to have white skin. If you want a good partner, a companion you need white skin and you always seem to get it once you've used the fairness cream. Basically I think it's completely racist and highly objectionable," says Brinda Karat.
Karat is a member of India's Parliament who has made formal complaints about the advertisements to Indian authorities. She says the ads are simply playing on a social stigma that already exists in India.

To get a good look at the pervasiveness of the stigma attached to dark skin in India all you have to do is look at the want ads for brides and grooms in the newspaper.

Arranged marriages are still commonplace in India, and the advertisements for brides and grooms often list physical attributes of the person being sought. Many of the ads list "fair" as one of the wanted physical characteristics.

"I mean at a time when we're talking about talents and skills, and the need for the accessibility to that to develop our potential; what does it do to dark persons' self esteem?" Karat says. "I think it should be stopped."

But the product makers say they are simply giving the public what it wants, and a few Indian consumers agreed.

Deepak Rajput said: "Everybody wants to look handsome and beautiful, why not me?"
Salon owner Jawed Habib says he will accommodate if that is what the customer wants, but he doesn't push the skin whitening products.

"Why do you even think about it?" He says: "Let's accept the way we are."

© 2009 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
2009-09-10 10:42:16

I Am Desperately Trying to Give Away Millions of Dollars

2009-08-29T19:36:00.000-07:00

. . . But Nobody Wants It!

Here are three business plans I years ago gave to my close friends, who are an MBA and two attorneys. They laughed at me, dismissing the plans as silly and unworkable. But as recent events will prove, Preston L. Allen is, as always, ahead of the curve.

1) A Clock that runs backwards (counter clockwise). You can hang it on the wall behind you in the bathroom so that while you are shaving you can keep track of time by staring straight at the mirror instead of turning around; the backward-running clock on the wall behind you will read forward when you look at it in the mirror.

2) A company that harvests human breast milk from lactating women and markets the milk and its related "human" dairy products.

Check eBay and you will find people looking to purchase breast milk as well as looking to sell it . . .

3) Celebrity funerals: People, I argued, will be willing to pay top dollar to be buried next to celebrities; therefore, we run a company that pays living celebrities a few million dollars up front to allow a select number of their fans to be buried near their final resting place; the company then charges the fans, wealthy fans, a tidy sum for the privilege of being interred near their favorite movie star, musician, athlete, politician, and so on; the burial spot will be predetermined so that if the fan dies before the celebrity, he/she dies knowing that eventually, and eternally, the celebrity will reside nearby.

In the case of celebrities that are already deceased, I argued, our company will make arrangements with their surviving kin, or caretakers of the property; for example, for fans of Elvis Presley, Graceland would be contacted to make arrangements to have select fans buried near the King (is Elvis actually buried at Graceland? I do not know, but it makes little difference. In fact, whether he is buried there or not, many of his fans would pay for the privilege of being buried there.)

Think about this third business plan as you read the following brief article about Marilyn Monroe--and remember, Preston L. Allen, your forward-thinking novelist, came up with it first.

Thanks,

Presty

________________________

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – An American widow sold her husband's burial crypt directly on top of film legend Marilyn Monroe's final resting place for $4.6 million on Monday, through online auctioneer eBay Inc.

Elsie Poncher has said she was selling the crypt in a small, celebrity-heavy cemetery in Los Angeles to pay off her mortgage.

The auction opened earlier this month at $500,000 and attracted 21 bids before closing on Monday. eBay did not say who submitted the winning bid.

"We are currently working with the seller and the high bidder to finalize the sale and will be happy to report more of the details once the sale has been completed," it said in a statement.

Poncher's husband, Richard Poncher, bought the crypt from baseball star Joe DiMaggio, Monroe's ex-husband, as the famous couple was divorcing in 1954.

Monroe died at age 36 in 1962. Richard Poncher died in 1986 at age 81. Elsie Poncher said her husband's body was positioned to allow him to look "face down" on Monroe.

She plans to move his remains over one spot to a crypt that had been intended as her own final resting place. She now will be cremated when she dies.

The Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery, surrounded by office buildings in the suburb of Westwood, is home to such celebrities as Dean Martin, James Coburn, Roy Orbison, Truman Capote, Natalie Wood, Carl Wilson, Minnie Riperton and recent arrival Farrah Fawcett.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Dean Goodman)
_____________________________

Kidnapped Girl found 18 Years Later

2009-08-29T19:26:00.000-07:00

Read the sick news below and then read my short story entitled "I Am Dragon" on my other blog at Allornothingthenovel.blogspot.com

Thanks,

Preston

_______________________________
(from NY Daily News)

A California mom whose 11-year-old daughter was kidnapped 18 years ago got a call she never expected: On the other end was the child she had long thought was dead.

Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was abducted from in front of her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991, was privately reunited with her mom Thursday night.

"It's an absolute miracle. Can you imagine this after 18 years?" said Jaycee's stepfather, Carl Probyn.

Cops arrested a 58-year-old religious fanatic and convicted rapist, Phillip Garrido, who they say kept Jaycee hidden in a "secret backyard" and fathered two children with her - one the same age as the victim was when she vanished.

In their first conversation Wednesday night, Jaycee gave her mother a double jolt, Probyn said.

"I have something to tell you. I have babies," Jaycee told Terry Probyn, 50, who asked how many.

"Two," she replied.

Also arrested was Garrido's wife, Nancy, who police charge was with Garrido when they snatched Jaycee on June 10, 1991, as she walked to her school bus stop.

"I gave up hope for 18 years, just went into recovery mode," said Carl Probyn, who witnessed the abduction but was too far away to stop it. "Now, I just won the lotto. It's just unbelievable."

Probyn said his estranged wife called him soon after getting word from the FBI that Jaycee was safe and healthy.

"She said, 'They found Jaycee. She's alive,'" said Carl Probyn, 60, now of Riverside in Southern California. "We cried for about two minutes."

In an interview with KCRA3, Garrido on Thursday night urged people to wait for more details about the case to come out before making a judgment.

"What's kept me busy the last several years is I've completely turned my life around," he said.

"And you're going to find the most powerful story coming from the witness, the victim - you wait. If you take this a step at a time, you're going to fall over backwards and in the end, you're going to find the most powerful heartwarming story."

Lt. Fred Kollar of the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department said Garrido and his wife kept Jaycee for nearly two decades hidden the backyard of their home in the suburban San Francisco town of Antioch.

"My understanding is they went directly to that property right after the kidnapping," Kollar said. "The children were born there and they lived there since."

He said that Jaycee, now 29, and her two daughters, ages 11 and 15, were kept in a shack and two tents hidden behind a tree-lined, 6-foot-tall fence at the rear of the suspects' backyard.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/08/28/2009-08-28_kidnapped_girl_found_years_later.html#ixzz0Pd5mTTO4

Nice

2009-08-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

(From NY Post August 24, 2009)

A retired South Carolina state employee won a $260 million Powerball jackpot. Solomon Jackson Jr., of Columbia, refused to say much about himself or his plans. It's not known whether he will take his winnings annually over three decades or in a $129 million lump sum. Lukas Alpert

Oh, Stop it

2009-08-29T19:21:00.000-07:00

Disney Employee Wins the Lottery
(from New York Post August 24, 2009)

Here's a story about Snow White and the seven figures.

In a fairy-tale twist, a smoking-hot actress who played Snow White at Disneyland walked off with a cool $5.2 million after winning the California Lottery.

"I know I played Snow White, but I feel more like Cinderella," said Natalie Marston, 22. "In a million years, I would not have thought something like this could happen to me."

Marston hit the jackpot on the California Lottery's "Make Me a Millionaire" game show, on which contestants get to appear by buying a winning scratch-off ticket.

Marston -- who has appeared in films like "Magnolia" with Tom Cruise -- will take home an annual $195,000 after taxes for 20 years, for a total of $3.9 million, lottery officials said.

She has already quit her Disney job, which she said she was doing only to further her acting career. . .

Say It AIn't So

2009-08-29T19:18:00.001-07:00

Senator Edward Kennedy (1932-2009)

R. I. P.

Say It Ain't So

2009-07-31T19:11:00.000-07:00

Walter Kronkite (1916 - 2009)

As a child, I watched Walter Kronkite on the CBS Evening News many nights, imitating the way he spoke to improve my accent. I wanted to sound like Walter Kronkite.

Moon Landing

Viet Nam

Watergate

Nixon's final goodbye as his helicopter lifts off the White House lawn

Kronkite told it like it was.

RIP

Say It Ain't so

2009-07-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

Reverend Ike

Frederick Joseph Eikerenkoetter II 1935 - 2009

"Close your eyes and see green!"

RIP

Wikipedia Warning

2009-06-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

The day Ed McMahon died, I looked up his bio on Wikipedia.

Near the end of his entry I read the words, "Ed McMahon was known to cruise gay bars in Miami."

I suspected that this bit of info was a prank line snuck in by someone trying to get a cheap laugh or by someone testing how quickly the Wikipedia guardians would find and delete it. It's kinda like cyber-graffiti. Marking up a public space with your TAG.

At any rate, the line stood out as odd.

The next day when I checked, the line was gone.

"LOL," typed the prankster to his Myspace buddies. "They caught IT."

I'm sure Ed McMahon's family didn't find IT amusing.

Wikipedia is a great concept, though not a new one.

Read PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN, and you will see that the idea of building an exhaustive body of knowledge by encouraging the masses to contribute is how the Oxford English Dictionary was put together, way back when.

To build the Oxford English Dictionary, the assemblers requested that lovers of words simply mail definitions to Oxford, England; then they, the assemblers, spent many decades sifting through the millions of entries sent in, checking for accuracy, of course, and selecting the best definitions and phrasings for this or that word.

In short, the assemblers of that great, seminal work were making sure that the wheat was separated from the tares, the good stuff from the junk, the serious contributers from the pranksters.

It was an overwhelming task that took many decades to accomplish as well as many succeeding teams of assemblers. In fact, those who began the work on the Oxford Dictionary were not alive to see the printing of its first COMPLETE set.

Wikipedia's attempt to maintain accuracy of information on its site is perhaps even more daunting (and, perhaps, ultimately impossible).

Wikipedia receives billions of entries on every subject in dozens of languages.

The Oxford people had the luxury, if you want to call it that, of having language experts sift through all of the entries for decades before they felt confident enough to print and bind their many-volume work.

Wikipedia's format is virtual, the absence of paper and ink allowing for a faster (perhaps immediate) "printing", or posting, of new (and unverified) information.

Nevertheless, when you want information fast, Wikipedia can't be beat.

I go to it, pretty much, every day, though I don't completely trust it.

The information is not always accurate, you see?

Furthermore, the mistakes in spelling, punctuation, and grammar . . . okay, let's not even get into that.

So Wikipedia is always my first source.

Never my only.

Never my last.

This week, you are going to be reading a lot about MJ and Farrah on Wikipedia. But don't fret--the Wikipedia guardians will be watching those sites carefully for pranks and unintended falsehoods because MJ and Farrah were big.

Then again, Ed McMahon was big too.

Thanks,

Preston

Say It Ain't So

2009-06-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

Rough Week for Entertainment.

You are correct, sir!

Ed McMahon

March 6, 1923 – June 23, 2009

Say It Ain't So

2009-06-26T05:01:00.000-07:00

Two Words:

Michael Jackson

August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009

Billy Jean
Will You Be There
Beat It
Off the Wall
Bad
ABC
Ben
Pretty Young Thing
The Love You Save May Be Your Own

The teens of my Generation, classes of 81 through 85, you ALL know what you do when you hear the opening bass and keyboard riffs of BILLY JEAN. You stop right where you are standing--whether you are in traffic or in court or trying to get up into some of that sweet stuff. You start nodding your head in time to the beat. You make eye contact with another human, if you can, and you say, 'Damn, boy, back in the day, back in the day,oohhh, this is my jam!' as Michael sexily hiccups and spits those immortal words, 'She was more like a beauty queen when she crossed the scene . . .

Say it ain't so. Say it ain't so.

R.I.P.

Say It Ain't So

2009-06-26T04:57:00.000-07:00

Charlie's Greatest Angel is Gone.

FARRAH FAWCETT

Feb 2, 1947 - June 25, 2009

If you haven't seen THE APOSTLE with Robert Duvall, go see it now. Farrah plays Duvall's long suffering wife who finally gets fed up and takes up with another man. She played the hell out of that role.

R.I.P., angel. R.I.P.

Visit Screwiowa.com

2009-06-20T15:10:00.000-07:00

Hey folks--here's a great new website to visit screwiowa.com.

My friend Nina Romano is doing some exciting things on that site. Plus there's a nice little piece I wrote about the craft of writing.

Thanks,

Preston

Say It Ain't So, Morgan!

2009-06-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

Unsavory Situation
(From Moviefone.com)

Morgan Freeman had a long-running affair with his step-granddaughter, alleges the National Enquirer. The questionable relationship began when the woman was just a teenager and Freeman hit on her while drunk. At the time, the actor and his wife had an "open marriage." Though we imagine "open" didn't mean it was OK to sleep with underage relatives-by-marriage. (June 18)

Hopefully this Enquirer story is just hearsay. I am eager to print a retraction to this.

Say It Ain't So, Mel!

2009-06-18T11:22:00.000-07:00

Ex MLB Player Gets 45 Years in Prison
Posted Jun 16, 2009 9:06 PM
By SCHUYLER DIXON
(AP)
FORT WORTH, Texas (June 16) -- Former major league outfielder Mel Hall was sentenced to 45 years in prison Wednesday after being convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl and sexually abusing or inappropriately touching three girls.

Hall, 48, looked skyward and swayed back and forth as the verdict was read. One of his two daughters who testified on his behalf during the punishment phase sobbed as the reality of the sentence set in.

Jurors reached the verdict on the punishment after about an hour of deliberating. They took about 90 minutes Tuesday to convict Hall on three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency with a child. He must serve about 22 1/2 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole.

After the verdict was announced, prosecutor Kim D’Avignon read a brief statement on behalf of the 12-year-old victim and other of Hall’s accusers.

"We believe that the verdict does on some level show that the jury understood,"

D'Avignon said. "They looked in these girls’ eyes and said this is worth 40 years and we agree with them."

The defense had argued in the sentencing phase of the trial that Hall was a good man who mentored a lot of athletes and had a lot of good still to do.

"For all the good this man has done in his life, it seems like this was an excessive verdict," defense attorney Brady Wyatt said after the verdict.

The prosecution’s final witness during the punishment phase testified that she was 14 when Hall touched her inappropriately and told her he wanted to have sex with her. Late Tuesday, two women testified Hall sexually assaulted them when they were underage.

On Wednesday, a woman testified that Hall was her softball coach when, during an end-of-season pool party, he made lewd noises and grabbed her around the waist.

"He just grabbed me how I thought was inappropriate," said the woman, now 19. She said Hall also would watch her take batting practice and make crude comments and tell her he wanted to have sex with her.

Hall’s ex-wife and two daughters testified on his behalf.

"My dad would not do that," said his daughter, Bianca Hall, who had to stop to compose herself throughout her emotional testimony.

Hall, who had been stoic and unemotional throughout most of the trial that began Monday, smiled and nodded as his daughter spoke of their relationship. When she become emotional while describing how much she loved and trusted him, Hall bit his lip and looked away.

During the trial this week, witnesses testified that Hall was impressed with the 12-year-old girl’s talent and wanted to start a basketball team. The woman testified that Hall exposed himself to her and her younger brother at home, when their parents were away. The boy testified that he thought they were playing a game and never told his parents.

"I trusted him," the woman testified. "I honestly had no idea anything was inappropriate at the time. I looked up to him. I just thought this is how normal people act."

Hall’s interaction with the girl progressed to inappropriate touching and him showing her how to perform oral sex, she testified. She said he also showed her pornographic movies at an apartment Hall shared with his girlfriend and their infant son.

The two women who testified Tuesday told similar stories of how he won their parents’ trust and then charmed the young girls.

One said she was 15 and Hall was in his first season with the New York Yankees when the abuse began in 1989. The other testified that she was a 14-year-old basketball teammate of the 12-year-old victim when she was raped in 1999. Hall has been charged in that case.

Hall’s 13-year major league career ended in 1996. He hit .276 with 134 home runs and 620 RBIs in a career that included stints with the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians,
Yankees and San Francisco Giants. He also played four years in Japan.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Marley and Me

2009-06-12T16:48:00.000-07:00

I avoid watching two types of movies--

1) movies with kids (I've already seen HOME ALONE 1 and 2, LOOK WHO'S TALKING, DENNIS THE MENACE, and THREE MEN AND A BABY, so what reason is there to see any lesser flicks with kids?);

and 2) movies with dogs (There is OLD YELLER, and then there is nothing else. Maybe BENJI).

But after watching MARLEY AND ME, I hereby declare that OLD YELLER is now the second greatest dog movie ever made. I also hereby admit that this movie made me a little bit . . . weepy. I saw it coming. I saw the emotional manipulation of the heart coming a from a mile off, and yet my eyes became wet when the crucial moment arrived on film.

I watched this movie, and then I dragged my wife and teen boy to see it. A dog movie of all things.

Good Stuff: Marley and thunder; dog training class (Kathleen Turner is great!!); the beach scenes; Own Wilson (I have always liked Owen Wilson, who is sort of hippie beach bum philosopher cool--he hit his groove in ME YOU AND DUPREE with that particular shtick and perfected it in MARLEY AND ME--gotta love him); Jennifer Aniston (her best role yet!); Marley and the bedraggled dog sitter; a weird but sexy night in Ireland (the chemistry between Aniston and Wilson needs to be bottled and marketed to the rest of us poor slobs); Marley and the necklace; Marley and the destruction of property (ANY property); the real life marital problems and growing pains; the kids, who are not typical annoying film kids; Alan Arkin as the editor in chief (this guy just gets better with age); Eric Dane as the eternal bachelor best friend; Marley (the dog steals the show--well, it is his show).

Not So Good Stuff: There is no Not So Good Stuff in this movie. I loved every hilarious, sweet, sad minute of it.

Take it from a dog movie hater, this film is the real deal. Go see it. You will love it. I promise.

Thanks,

Preston

UP

2009-06-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

Did you catch the new movie by PIXAR--"UP"?

UP

is the name of the film. The word UP is so small for a title . . . Maybe I should use a larger font each time I refer to it . . . Maybe I should repeat it three times each time I refer to it.

UP

UP

UP

Go see this movie if you haven't already. It may not be the greatest movie ever made, or even the greatest PIXAR, but it is an example of a PERFECT STORY, one in which all of the loose ends come together logically and harmoniously in the resolution.

In other words, the gun introduced in the first act of the play is used by the third and final act of the play. In the case of this clever little movie, all guns are used by the final act.

Good Stuff: An old guy carrying a house on his back (lol); the romance between the old guy and his wife--how sweeeeetttt and heart warming--well done, well done, well done--and all of it done in the first 12 minutes of film time; Talking dogs--they will crack you up; the absurd plot device (a house elevated by balloons); the villain; dog pilots dog fighting (pun); the cone of shame; the house; the scrap book.

Not So Good Stuff: the villain was the old guy's childhood hero, which is okay but if the old guy was born around 1920-1925 and the villain was at least 15 years older (by all on screen indications) and the old guy is now in his late 70s (at least), the present day villain is in his 90s? 100s? They are both too spry for their implied ages, but especially the villain; the sweet but annoying kid--he does grow on you after a while, but we see that coming from a mile off--Disney has a way of forcing annoying children down your throat and making you, eventually, love them.

So how good is this movie?

It ranks above SHARK TALE and ICE AGE2, and slightly below the classics NEMO, INCREDIBLES, TOY STORY, ICE AGE 1, and MONSTERS INC.

But despite all that--go watch it and you will love it. I guarantee it.

You will love UP.

UP

UP

UP

Preston

Star Trek

2009-06-06T14:34:00.000-07:00

Hey, STAR TREK is in the theaters, or maybe they already pulled it.

At any rate, I liked it.

Good stuff: Young Spock (Don't talk about my mama or I will kick your a**!); Old Spock (same old logical Spock); Iowa of the future--where can I steal one of those cars?; let's name him Tiberius (hahahahaha); the Uhura/Spock romance (hold on, wait a minute--the Uhura/Captain Kirk romance of the 60s led to the first interracial kiss on TV); Uhura (she is hot--as they say, I would do her); Bones McCoy (the old alchy, lol); Scotty (great performance by actor Simon Pegg, whose Scotty kinda reminds of Eric Idle crossed with Paul McCartney); Bruce Greenwood as Captain-and-then-Admiral Pike; the elder Captain Kirk's heroism; and the action sequences.

Not So Good Stuff: Why no Klingons?; the Back to the Future Rip Off plot was cliched laziness, but tolerable with so much good going on elsewhere (and I loved the Spock meets Spock deal--"I am not OUR father" hahahahaha); the green chick (or was she blue?--yuck); the drill was a good bit (pun), but it should have been used to greater effect in the climax--in fact, that whole final scene felt like anti-climax.

Fair to Middling: Chris Pine was a fine Kirk, just fine; Chekov was grossly under utilized, but he stole every scene he was in; Mr. Sulu fencing? Okay.

So how good was it?

Well, on the whole, the movie was fun--it was at least as enjoyable as TRANSFORMERS, and slightly much more fun than Spiderman 3. Furthermore, as a fan of the original 60s TV show, I found a lot of nostalgia value in it, so I will be purchasing it as soon as it comes to DVD.

New School Hopes Six-Figure Teacher Salaries Pave Way to Success

2009-06-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

Wow!

Read this, colleagues, and then let's all move to New York!

Preston

_____________________________________________

from "PoliticsToday.com"

People everywhere envy teachers for the comfortable schedule, reliable benefits, and job security, but teachers are not known for their lucrative compensation packages. A new charter school in New York City is looking to change that by offering six-figure salaries to recruit the best teachers.

The school, scheduled to open next fall for 120 fifth-graders, will offer its eight teachers yearly salaries of $125,000 with the potential for additional performance-based bonuses, more than twice the salary for New York City public school teachers and nearly two-and-a-half times the national average for teacher salaries.

According to an article in Friday's New York Times, the new school is looking to prove that teachers, not small-class sizes or high technology, are the backbone of an effective learning environment.

Known as The Equity Project Charter School, the school aims to be the practical implementation of research that highlights the role of skilled teachers in student success. According to the school's Web site, "TEP is uniquely focused on attracting and retaining master teachers. To do so, TEP uses a three-pronged strategy that it terms the 3 R's: Rigorous Qualifications, Redefined Expectations, & Revolutionary Compensation."

The new school has recruited an impressive array of teachers, including two Ivy League graduates and Joe Carbone, the gym teacher whose previous work includes time as Kobe Bryant's personal trainer.

"The idea [behind the school] is relatively simple," said founder and principal Zeke Vanderhoek in an interview with WNYC in March. "The key to educating anybody, but particularly important for low-income students, is a great teacher. The idea behind the school is that to attract and retain great teachers you have to do what you do in any other profession to attract and retain talent, and that is pay for it."

The school also aims to demonstrate that its model for teacher compensation can be accomplished using existing public funding; it is not relying on outside donations like some other charter schools, except to finance the cost of its building, which represents a cost not encountered by existing public schools.

The school's first class was chosen through a lottery that gave preference to neighborhood students and academic low performers; most of the students are from low-income Hispanic families.

Eventually, the school hopes to grow to 480 children in Grades 5 to 8, with 28 teachers.

The fact that the teachers will be well paid is not the only thing that distinguishes TEP from other schools. Because there are fewer teachers available, class sizes will be larger at TEP than in most public schools. The expected size is 30 students per class--six more than the average 5th grade class in New York City. TEP teachers will not have the same retirement benefits as members of the city's teachers' union and they can be fired at will.

Interestingly, the teachers will be making more than Vanderhoek, who, according to The New York Times, will earn $90,000.

The new school opens as President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, call for nationwide increases in the number of charter schools that the President hopes will stimulate innovation in education.

"Right now, there are caps on how many charter schools are allowed in some states, no matter how well they are preparing our students. That isn't good for our children, our economy, or our country," the President said during a speech at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on March 10. Assuming that there is a mechanism for accountability, the President called upon states "to reform their charter rules, and lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools, wherever such caps are in place."

This Is Interesting

2009-06-02T10:11:00.000-07:00

I am not political, I am not political, I am not political, but this is interesting . . .

"When Vice President Dick Cheney appeared at the National Press Club to participate in the Gerald Ford Journalism prizes today, he warmly remembered his old boss, the late President Ford, as someone only truly appreciated by history. Ford was, Cheney said, "Unafraid to make the tough calls, even when they carried high political risk."

Although Cheney focused most of remarks on national security issues, it was his very personal answer to a question on gay marriage that broke new ground. "I think freedom means freedom for everyone," Cheney said. "As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay, something that we've lived with for a long time in our family."

Cheney's daughter, Mary Cheney, is gay and gave birth to a son in 2007, whom she is raising with her longtime partner, Heather Poe . . . "

Teachers Getting Their Groove On With Their Students

2009-05-30T15:00:00.001-07:00

What the heck is going on here with these teachers and these young students? Excerpts from AOL and other news services follow, but you can Google them and find the complete articles online.

(1) - A New York City teacher accused of having sex with a 14-year-old student in the classroom was ordered held Friday on $100,000 bail, the New York Post said.
Melissa Weber, 27, a social studies teacher at Middle School/Intermediate School 8 in the borough of Queens, allegedly had sex with the male student seven times between April 13 and May 14, the Post and Daily News reported, citing police. The two allegedly met in the teacher’s classroom between the hours of 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., when other kids had gone home.

She was arrested Thursday and charged with rape, sexual abuse and child endangerment.
The News said someone at the school tipped off the boy's mother. She checked her son's cell phone and found hundreds of calls and texts from Weber. The last text read, "Erase your phone," prosecutors said.

They said Weber, who lives in West Babylon on Long Island, warned the teen not to tell anyone of their trysts because if word got out, "I could get arrested, and I could lose my teaching license."

(2) Maria Guzman Hernandez, a 32-year-old teacher at a Florida Catholic school, was arrested May 27. She faces charges of sexual battery on a child after she allegedly admitted to police that she had sex with a 15-year-old student. Authorities said the boy's mother knew about the relationship and approved of it, the Miami Herald reported.

(3) A former Tacoma, Wash., elementary school teacher was found guilty on April 20 of having sex with a 10-year-old student and his 15-year-old brother. Jennifer Rice, 33, faces more than 25 years in prison after being convicted of kidnapping, child rape and other charges.

(4) Former Nebraska middle school math teacher Kelsey Peterson was sentenced on April 23 to eight to 10 years in prison for first-degree sexual assault of a minor. Peterson fled to Mexico with a 13-year-old student in October 2007. She will serve the time simultaneously with a six-year federal prison sentence she received in September.

(5) A Massachusetts teacher was charged Feb. 24 with kidnapping a 15-year-old student and taking him to a West Virginia motel where the two were found together, police said. The boy's mother had contacted her son's school on Feb. 13, saying she was concerned about the relationship between Lisa Lavoie, 24, and her child.

(6) Eric McLean was accused of fatally shooting an 18-year-old high school student with whom his wife Erin had an affair. In 2008, Eric McLean was convicted of reckless homicide and was sentenced to 90 days in jail after claiming the shooting was an accident. Erin McLean, a former Tennessee teacher, was sentenced to 95 days in jail as part of her conviction on 17 contempt charges.

(7) Former South Carolina elementary school teacher Wendie Schweikert, 37, pleaded guilty to having sex with an 11-year-old student. In June 2007, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

(8) Former Florida middle school teacher Debra Lafave was sentenced to house arrest and probation in 2005 after pleading guilty to charges that she had sex with a 14-year-old student.

(9) Mary Kay Letourneau served a seven-year sentence in California for having sex with student Vili Fualaau when he was 12. They had two children and wed in 2005 after she was released from prison.

(10) In 2005, former Tennessee gym teacher Pamela Rogers received an eight-year sentence for having sex with a 13-year-old student. She later sent suggestive photos to the boy and got two years added.

(11) In 2005, former California teacher Rebecca Boicelli was sentenced to two years in prison after DNA tests proved her 16-year-old student was the father of her child.

(12) Former New Hampshire teacher Pamela Smart is currently serving a life sentence for plotting to kill her husband. He was shot in 1990 by a then-16-year-old student with whom she had a relationship. (Source: AP, CNN, whnt.com, wbir.com, msnbc.com, foxnews.com)

(13) A Carlsbad substitute teacher who ran off with a teenage boy now faces child rape charges. Melinda Beth Bridges, 31, did not enter a plea at her arraignment Tuesday on a single count. Louisiana police arrested her five days after she disappeared with the 16-year-old boy, a student at Jefferson Montessori Academy where Bridges sometimes taught. The boy's father said the pair had an affair for about a month. The school's principal reported the relationship to Carlsbad police on May 1. The two disappeared the next day.

(14) A former Nebraska teacher who fled to Mexico with a 13-year-old student has entered a guilty plea to transporting a minor across state lines to have sex in a deal that allows her to avoid a mandatory 10-year sentence. Kelsey Peterson, 26, a former math teacher at Lexington Middle School, is expected to be sentenced to at least 70 months in prison.

After the plea hearing, members of Peterson's family claim that she is being unjustly accused and shouted to reporters to ask the victim, Fernando Rodriguez, how old he really is.

Peterson's family members and her attorney insist that Rodriguez is at least 16 years old. Attorney James Martin Davis has questioned the boy's birth certificate and claims that he is 16 years old and was the aggressor in the relationship.

(15) Two Bountiful Junior High School teachers are accused of sexually assaulting the same 13-year-old student, after their separate relationships with him spiraled from personal conversations to the exchange of sexual text messages and phone sex, authorities said.

On Friday, the Davis County Attorney’s Office filed first-degree felony charges of rape and sodomy on a child against Linda R. Nef, 46, and Valynne Bowers, 39.

Nef, a Utah studies teacher and cheerleading adviser, and Bowers, who teaches math, each confessed to having sex with the student, said Bountiful Police Lt. Randy Pickett.

Until recently, the two teachers did not know about each other’s relationship with the same boy, Pickett said.

(16) A fifth grade teacher in Abington, Massachusetts is facing statutory rape charges after reportedly having sex with a minor more than 300 times. Police arrested 29-year old Christine McCallum late last week after she was accused of having sex with a then 13-year-old boy. The alleged victim is now 16. Prosecutors say the teacher became so obsessed with the teen that she took away his cell phone after he got older and started talking to girls his own age. McCallum, who is married, faces three charges of statutory rape. - from WCBD

Police said Christine A. McCallum, 29, had sex with the student on the boy’s kitchen floor, in the shower and in the living room — all beginning when he was 13-years old, the Boston Herald reported. The alleged victim is now 16. He said he and the teacher had sex “possibly every other day,” a police report said. - from UPI

(17) Kelly Ann Abdo, a former math teacher and volleyball coach, was arraigned yesterday on charges of indecent exposure and having sex with a student in Monroe County, Michigan.

Abdo was accused of having sex with a student in a car outside of a house party with a number of minors in attendance. Students at the party told the prosecutor in the case that their actions were in plain sight and that they witnessed the pair naked in the car together.

Monroe County Prosecutor William Nichols’ office said Abdo is accused of having sex with the student in a car on a public street, next to a house where there was a high school party. Other students told the prosecutor’s office that they saw the two naked in the car.

Ms. Abdo, who married in 2007, has been a math teacher at the high school for four years. As the volleyball coach, she led the Trojans to only their second District title in school history and their first since 1991 in her first year at the helm in 2007.

But that success accompanied some problems. Several parents and players wrote letters to school officials and the board of education complaining about Ms. Abdo’s coaching methods. According to school officials only one of the players was coached by Ms. Abdo; the others were on the junior varsity team. Conversely, a number of parents support Ms. Abdo and her coaching methods.

At least one parent hired an attorney to look into the matter. That lawyer, Jean Ledwith King of Ann Arbor, said there is no lawsuit filed on behalf of the parents. She said she was hired as an adviser for actions that she referred to as “inappropriate for a coach.”

(18) A Mentor teacher appeared in court Thursday on charges that she had a sexual relationship with a student. Maggie L. Laughlin, 23, of Willowick, was a math teacher at Shore Junior High School. Police said Laughlin was arrested on Wednesday, accused of having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy during the last two weeks of school.

The sex took place in the teacher's classroom, police said.

"This crime is a devastating betrayal of the fundamental trust that parents put in their children's teachers every day," said Dr. Jackqueline Hoynes, superintendent of schools.

"Individuals who use their position of authority and trust to prey upon children must face the full force of the law."

Laughlin was charged with sexual battery, a felony of the third degree, and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, a felony of the fourth degree.

The case is under investigation.

Mentor School officials said they found out about the alleged relationship last week and immediately contacted police.

Laughlin resigned on June 9 after being at employed by the district for less than a year.

(19) Leanne Macklin, the 26 year old former drama teacher at Weaver Academy in Greensboro, North Carolina, is accused of having a sexual relationship with a 17 year old male student.

Allegedly, Macklin and the boy engaged in oral sex, presumably reciting a part in the 21st century version of Romeo and Juliet, at her apartment. The first incident is reported to have happened in December of 2006.

Macklin has been charged with 5 counts of sexual activity between school personnel and a student. She turned herself in and was released after posting a $25,000 bond.

(20) 35 year old Stacey Goodloe, an instructional aide for special needs students at Ceres High School, in Ceres, California has been accused of sexually abusing a male student.

Goodloe was arrested and charged with being older than 21 and having intercourse with someone younger than 16, being older than 21 and participating in oral sex with someone younger than 16, and committing a lewd or lascivious act with a 14- or 15-year-old, all of which are felonies.

(21) Rita Brum, 24 year old physical education teacher at Mt. Pleasant High School in East San Jose, California has been arrested after being accused of having a sexual relationship with a 17 year old girl, a student at Mt. Pleasent High.

Brum and the girl allegedly began their relationship early in the school year in 2008, and it is reported that in December of 2008 the two began kissing and then their relationship turned to that of a fully sexual one.

The girl's mother found a love letter to her daughter that was reportedly addressed from Brum, and after confronting her daughter about it, the girl reportedly admitted to having a sexual relationship with the physical education teacher Brum.

It is further alleged that the girl's mother accosted Brum at a sporting event, including pulling the teacher's hair.

Brum was released on a $15,000 bond and has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of yet another California school sex scandal. Brum’s attorney has been quoted as saying he is looking “to get the best plea deal possible” for his client.

(22) Jada Hendrix, the former 23 year old honors english teacher at North DeSoto High School in Stonewall, Louisiana, has reportedly been arrested on one count of molestation of a juvenile and another count of computer aided solicitation of a juvenile.

It is alleged that Hendrix sent sexually explicit text messages via cell phone to a 16 year old male student. It is further alleged that Hendrix had a sexual relationship with the boy, which is said to have occurred at her home.

Hendrix was investigated after her boyfriend discovered the text messages that he believed were sent to the student, and alerted police officers. Subsequently, Hendrix turned herself into the authorities.

Hendrix has also reportedly resigned from the school. She is free on $10,000 bond.

(23) Abigail Anne Holloway, a teacher at Saint Mary’s Academy in Englewood, Colorado is accused of having a sexual relationship with a 13 year old female student. Holloway is being charged with multiple counts of child abuse that are sexual in nature, according to her arrest warrant.

Holloway was formerly a teacher at a Christian Prep School in Sunnyvale, California, Kings Academy. It is there where the alleged sexual relationship with the 13 year old girl started, and allegedly lasted for years. Holloway left the Kings Academy in 2003 to work for several other schools in Santa Clara County, California until 2005, when she left California for Colorado.

Holloway is facing an extradition hearing to be returned back to California to face the charges. Reportedly police became aware of the allegations in December 2008, and are investigating the possibility of more victims.

The evidence against Holloway seems pretty air-tight, after the girl provided a 2 and a half inch thick binder full of love letters, cards, and poems that the girl says are all from Holloway. The girl also provided an email sent from Holloway's email address, which states “For the longest time, I felt like maybe I had tricked you into our relationship somehow. It was very real to me, and the best time of my life so far.”

The email was reportedly a follow-up to a call between the girl and Holloway which the police just so happened to be recording. Police say that during the call Holloway mentioned their sexual encounters.

(24) Sheila Vazquez, 8th grade teacher at The Renaissance School in Warren Township, Indiana has been arrested on suspicion of having sex with a student.

It is alleged that back in February 2008, the 15 year old male student mentioned to Vazquez that he was bored. According to the boy, she replied “I’ll give you something to keep you busy.”

On May 1st, 2008, it is alleged that Vazquez took the boy home for lunch. And she was on the menu. It is further reported that several times the two met in the classroom for kisses and hugs.

Vazquez has been suspended from the school.

(25) Tamara Hofmann, a 48-year-old teacher in East Valley, Arizona, has been the center of a "love" triangle that has ended in the death of a former student. In reality, it was more of a "sex" triangle.

The story is carried in the East Valley Tribune written by Gary Grado and Mike Sakal of the Tribune. Their article, "Teacher in deadly love triangle had been disciplined by former school, tells about the escapades of Tamara Hofmann that have left one man dead and has virtually ended her teaching career.

In 2006 she was let go from her teaching job at Marcos de Niza High School after she was found in a questionable situation with then student 17-year-old Sixto Balbueno.

After being let go from this position she took a job at El Dorado High School which is an at-risk charter school. She then picked up where she left off beginning a relationship with 18-year-old Samuel Valdivia.

As an aside, Hofmann was going through a messy divorce from 2007.

Valdivia was phoned by Hofmann late in the evening as reported by his family who claim they did not know he was seeing Hofmann.

Balbueno had joined the Navy and came home on leave. He called Hofmann and got no response so he went over to her home. Failing to get a response, he let himself into the home where he heard Valdivia and Hofmann in the bedroom. They took refuge in the bathroom.

At that point Balbueno forced his way in and finding them in various states of undress stabbed Valdivia and beat Hofmann.

Balbueno claimed he only wanted to hurt Valdevia.

He is in jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Hofmann's academic career is notable in that she received a Master's degree in 2003 with a 4.0 average.

The investigation into Hofmann's activities was slowed down by the unwillingness of Balbueno to cooperate.

Historically when interviewed about her activities by the school, she said that she felt like the student (in this case Balbueno) was more a member of the family than a student.

It is interesting but the one incident I knew of when I was in school was never made public. There was not overt sex perhaps that is why. However, no doubt what was going on was amoral if not illegal.

(26) This one is from Tampabay.com
Wallace and Lafave: Similar cases, different sentences
Several factors may have affected punishments for two ex-teachers.

By COLLEEN JENKINS and ABBIE VANSICKLE, Times Staff Writers

Published December 6, 2007

TAMPA -- One mother wanted the attention to go away.
The other wanted the abuser to pay with prison.

Attorney Joe Bodiford says their influence is the key to why two high-profile Hillsborough teacher-student sex cases ended with one woman locked up Wednesday and the other avoiding jail.

In the most publicized case, former Greco Middle School teacher and model-perfect blond Debra Lafave got three years of house arrest and seven years of probation after pleading guilty to having sex with a 14-year-old boy.

On Wednesday, a judge sentenced Bodiford's client, former Wharton High School teacher and coach Jaymee Wallace, to three years in prison and three years of probation. She had pleaded guilty to having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett handed down Wallace's sentence after hearing from the victim's mother.

"You preyed on my daughter," the mother said to Wallace. "I do forgive you, but, at the same time, I want justice."

So do the wishes of victims and their families really dictate a case's outcome? Or did the fact that Lafave's lawyer argued that she was "too pretty for prison" earn her a pass on hard time, while Wallace's homosexual trysts brought her a harsher fate?

The St. Petersburg Times asked local legal experts to weigh in.

Most agreed that, more and more, judges and prosecutors are considering the opinions of the victim and victim's family before levying punishment.

"Absolutely the victim's mother or the victim's family is going to impact the court," said Roberta Flowers, a former prosecutor who teaches at Stetson University College of Law.

But the prosecutor who handled Wallace's case said the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office also makes an independent sentencing recommendation based on the facts of each case.

In the Wallace case, that meant siding with the victim's parents over the wishes of the victim.

At a hearing in October, the teen asked a judge to spare her teacher time behind bars. Her parents said Wednesday that a probation-only sentence would be "a slap on the wrist."

Prosecutor Kimberly Hindman suggested the three-year prison term and wouldn't budge, Bodiford said.

Wallace refused the offer and took her chances with Padgett, who once equated sentencing with "retribution" in an interview with the Times, but is known to be a fair-minded jurist.

Wallace will likely serve about 21/2 years in prison under the state's 85 percent rule.

Prosecutors initially insisted on the same prison term for Lafave. But in her case, the victim's mother eventually said she would accept house arrest to avoid her son having to endure the media glare of a trial.

Prosecutors and defense attorney John Fitzgibbons ultimately reached a plea agreement that allowed Lafave to avoid incarceration.

On Tuesday, after serving two years of house arrest without incident, Lafave was arrested on a charge that she violated her probation. According to authorities, she had been having intimate conversations with a 17-year-old co-worker at Danny Boys' Restaurant in Sun City Center, in violation of her sentence, which prohibits her from having unsupervised contact with a child under 18.

Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman JoEllyn Rackleff said Tuesday that Lafave told the 17-year-old she knew she could get in trouble by talking to her. Fitzgibbons said he had no knowledge of that account.

That violation means a judge could sentence her to prison after all. Through a receptionist, Fitzgibbons declined to comment Wednesday about whether he believes Lafave will be punished for the violation.

"Given the extreme break that she was given initially, I believe the hammer's about to fall on her," Largo lawyer John Trevena said.

Another major distinction between the two women's sentences: Lafave is a registered sex offender, while Wallace will be tagged as the more serious sex predator. Both women pleaded guilty to the same charge of lewd and lascivious battery, and it was unclear Wednesday why they have different designations.

Trevena said the roles of race and sexuality play into the charging and sentencing of defendants, and likely influenced the tougher outcome for Wallace, a white woman who married a man in the midst of her affair with the black female student.

"We often see minorities and nonheterosexuals treated more harshly by the justice system," he said. "Is that really a surprise to anyone? That's reality."

Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, said she has seen different standards of justice when those involved are gay.

"The punishment should fit the crime," she said. "The race, the religion, the sexual orientation of the victim should play no role."

Prosecutor Hindman said none of those factors weighed on her sentencing recommendation for Wallace. Neither did the gender of the defendant or the victim, she said.

"Every case should be given independent analysis to determine what the appropriate punishment is," Hindman said. "It all boils down to an adult having sex with a child."

Times staff writer Rebecca Catalanello contributed to this report. Colleen Jenkins can be reached at cjenkins@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3337.

Note: Jaymee Wallace's case is the one that involved that odd line in the victim's transcript . . . you can google it and find more info, but the transcript reads something like this--as the student was going down on her teacher in a parked car, the student reports hearing the teacher say, "Wow, I can see Busch Gardens from here."

(27) There is no frickin 27! I wish it were only 27! There are many, many, many more, but I got too depressed looking them up.

By the way, these are the female “predators.” The list of male teachers doing this kind of stuff is roughly 20 times longer. The only reason these female cases are getting so much sensational press is because . . . well, you know the history of sexism in our country. In fact, the only reason I listed them is because I knew that you would be drawn more strongly to a list of female predators than a list of male predators. If I had somehow been able to produce a list made up entirely of FEMALE teachers who went after their FEMALE students, I would have attracted even more people to this site.

Whatever. Let's get back to my point.

What is going on here?

Before I attempt to answer that question, let me first say that my comments must be tempered by the understanding that each case must be judged based on its own specifics and particulars. Any attempt to lump them all together risks missing the big picture in trying to paint a big picture.

Nevertheless, here is my big picture.

The increasing incidence of cases such as these might be implying that our rules of law and our societal mores are inconsistent with what we are biologically programmed to do.

Let’s start with the whole idea of “teengager,” that pimply, sexually charged, hormonally confusingly beautiful hybrid of adult and child.

Our law says that it is an adult at 18.

Its social immaturity says that it is an adult at 18, or even much later.

Its lack of the work skills necessary to survive in our culture says that it is an adult at 18, or even much later.

Its naïveté, which makes it prey to social and financial predators of every kind, says that it is an adult at 18, or even much later.

Its sex drive, however, says that it is an adult at around 13.

Its ability to produce young says that it is an adult at around 13.

Its physical size and strength say that it is an adult at around 13.

Its physical reconstruction of wider hips in females, broader shoulders and facial hair in males, and outer sexual beauty in both, says that it is an adult at around 13.

We complain about sexual predators taking advantage of teenagers. Don’t make me laugh.

So do street gang recruitment drives—they want the teens’ strength and courage and lack of discretion and lack of discernment—their need to have fun and excitement in their lives, even at the cost of prison and the grave.

So do the fast food franchise minimum wage employers and their ilk—they want the teens’ raw energy and their childlike obedience to harsh, petty rules and their lack of financial savvy.

So do clothing retailers, junk food vendors, cigarette peddlers, drug dealers, coaches, preachers, malls, movie theaters, charities, the armed forces, and in so many ways even parents who need the younger ones baby sat, the roof painted, the boxwoods mulched, and especially parents with family businesses who need someone to mind the store and can’t afford to pay a real employee.

Teenagers are an easy sell.

Teenagers are the underpaid (or nonpaid) warm body out there on YOUR battlefield. They are the INFANT in infantry. They are ready to take a bullet for you for no reason other than you told them to do so.

Teenagers are kinda like grown ups, but without the ability to discern that you are not really beautiful or smart or talented or even original. Teenagers are cool because they don’t realize that you are full of sh---. They will go door to door for you and sell your plastic jewelry because you told them that it will pay their way through college. LOL.

They will buy your impossible dream that every adult in his/her right mind laughs at.

They are great company because they know even less than you do.

Kinda makes you look smart. Kinda makes you feel big. These big, handsome, beautiful, strong almost-adults hanging on your false gems of wisdom.

Teenagers fill your empty pews. When you preach to the choir, it’s usually full of teens.

The pre-adolescents are no good, because they are babies—they agree with everything—plus, they are not strong enough to lift the heavy cardboard boxes.

But teens—teens will take your weak, hackneyed, tired ideas and run with them. They will do all of the legwork for you—and what great legs!

A room full of teens makes you—yes, one-trick pony dimwit you—look good. Teens will elect a fool like you sage of the year.

Thank god, the just and wise rules of sexual engagement of our complex 21st Century society are designed to protect teens from predation by naughty, selfish old schemers who desire to pick the fruit from their teeny orchard before they even know that they have fruit to pick.

“Why should we not pick their cherries?” say the schemers. “We have picked everything else they have.”

And teens are horny little buggers—biology made them that way. And all of their sexual parts are fresh from the factory and still working right.

So you end up with a society in which the most beautiful and potentially best sex partners are also the easiest to seduce (because they think that you are soooo cooooool).

Think about that for a moment. Picture it with me if you will:

A world in which the most beautiful women with the best bodies also have the most air in their heads.

A world in which the hunkiest men are also the youngest, dumbest, and full of cumm-est.

Oh, and let me add—using even your weak, tired lines, you can have them eating out of your hands madly in love with you.

For some old schemers, the temptation is just too great.

Here she is at home with a potbellied husband reaching for the Viagra to do his weakly duty. In class she is surrounded by erections sprouting like mushrooms after a spring rain.

Here he is at home with a potbellied hag complaining about the bills and his inadequacies as he reaches for the Viagra. In class he is surrounded by perky breasts, breathy voices, and 101 daily panty shots between the legs parted beneath the wooden desks.

Do you understand that some junior and high school students literally worship their teachers?

What if a beautiful hunk worshipped you, ma’am?

My point is that it is abnormal for an adult to be sexually attracted to a child. The teachers on this list who went after children as young as 10 and 11 . . . they have no defense for their actions. A teenager, however, is often in appearance and behavior more like an adult than a child. Take a good look at them. Take a GOOD look. Is that a child?

Nevertheless, this is still not justification for their preying on children. This is just to make it clear that the only difference between them and us is that they are weak. They yield where the rest of us are governed by restraint.

A few years ago when my mother was ill I traveled up to see her in one of those marathon 18-hour drives to get to her home in another state.

That time we traveled with my family (my wife and two younger children 11 and 15) and a teen cousin who was 13 at the time.

This thirteen year old teen cousin and my 11 year old son played handheld video games throughout most of the long, tedious journey by car. But each time we stopped for food along the way at the McDonalds and Burger Kings that dotted the turnpike rest stops, I had occasion to watch how the older teen females and young women working the registers at these fast food restaurants regard this little cuz, who though 13 stood 6’5” with lightly tanned skin and a curly head of hair. In the old days, they would have called him a “handsome mullato,” though that term is considered racist and offensive today with good reason.

Some of these cashiers were grown women and they were blatantly checking this “boy” out, to the point of flirting and offering him their phone numbers. When I mentioned that he was only 13, they shamefacedly got back to their duties.

My son is now 15 and stands around six feet. I watch with concern the way adult women check him out in the mall. I wonder about his female teachers. I do not worry about it too much because the words “female teacher” conjure up images of goodness and safety and prudishness. At least that’s the way I saw it when I was a student back in the 70s and 80s. Maybe I am wrong.

On a trip to Honduras for a family reunion when my kid brother was 13 (5’10”—baby faced cute), he accompanied his older brothers to a bar in San Pedro Sula, where the Honduran women swarmed all over him as they do all Yankees.

The older siblings let it go one for a while, letting the younger one bask in the glory of being adored by beautiful adult women. When they thought it had gone far enough, they announced to the women swarming around their kid brother, “You know he is only 13. We were just playing a joke on him letting you guys talk to him. He’s only 13. He’s only a kid.”

My baby brother’s face fell.

But the women said, “So what? Thirteen is fine. Thirteen is a grown man over here, Yankee.”

And they continued to swarm around my kid brother, his wide smile returning.

Of course, we did not allow him to go to bed with any of these women because we are more responsible than that, but if we had allowed it they would have slept with him and he with them.

In the same country of Honduras, but back in 1976, before my old uncle died, he married his fourth and final wife. She was 12. He was in his seventies.

I have another uncle from down there who was married at 14. His wife was 13. They are still married.

Over the years I have had students, gay and straight, in the classes I teach at the college who have attended as a couple. While I have not yet had an older woman and a very young husband, I have had older husbands and very young wives. I have had an older lesbian and a very young partner. I have had an older gay man with a very young partner.

In fact, in an essay the older gay man wrote about falling in love with his partner (who was enrolled in the class at the time) but because of discrimination they had been forced to leave their small home town and they hadn’t been back in about five years.

I did the math. The young man was 19. Five years ago he would have been . . .

With the lesbian couple, it was the young woman who mentioned during a class discussion that her current lover (who was in the class) was once an assistant coach on her high school tennis team.

When I was in high school, there was a rumor that one of my classmates was dating the chorus teacher.

The year after we graduated high school, the rumor became flesh, and my classmate married the chorus teacher.

I guess they loved each other.

And Mary Kay Letourneau, after serving a seven-year sentence in California for having sex with 12-year old Vili Fualaau, got out of prison and married him.

I guess they loved each other.

I have to apologize. I have no idea what I'm talking about. I thought my argument was going somewhere. I thought I had an answer for this mess. The truth is that if any of these pervs put their hands on any children of mine, consensual or not, I would wring their necks.

And that's not right either.

It's tough to get a handle on this issue.

Maybe I should write a book about it.

Maybe I already did.

It's called JESUS BOY, and it's due out early next year.

Thanks,

Preston

$40 Poorly Spent on POWERBALL

2009-05-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

It's tough for a recovering problem gambler to travel the roadways of Florida these days with the billboards advertising the Powerball Jackpot, which is currently looming in the lofty hundred millions.

So I said to myself a hundred and seventy million is worth a shot.

And I knew exactly what numbers to play. A Quickpick plus all 39 of the powerballs. It would cost me $39 to play. For $170,000,000 it was worth it.

So I played my quickpick--the numbers looked good. Then I went back and covered that same number with each of the 39 powerballs. It took me more than a half hour to bubble in all of the cards.

When I was done, I noticed an error: I had played the powerballs 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,8,9,11,12 etc.

I noted that I had missed the 10 and that I had played the 9 twice.

I noted also that the errant 9 had shown up in front of the 8 and then after it.

This is significant to a sicko like me.

See, back when I was a degenerate two of my favorite numbers were 989 and 898; see my novel ALL OR NOTHING for more on this magical pattern.

So I said to myself--"Self, play the Cash-3 tonight. Play 989 and 898."

But that part of me that wants no longer to be a prisoner to the madness of my impulses took control. "No," it said. "No. Purchase these Powerball tickets. Correct your error with the 10. And go home."

That night in the Powerball, I did not hit one single number.

That night the Cash-3 was 898.

Preston

p.s.

This week the Powerball is up to $222 million.

Lord, Jesus, help me please.

Wallet Pop's 25 unusual Ways to make Money

2009-05-25T18:31:00.000-07:00

The following list comes from Wallet Pop and it is interesting that in these tough economic times one suggested method (# 1 at the bottom of the list) is to go to the casino. I just about flipped when I read that.

One of the reasons many of us are experiencing tough economic times is that we visitied the casino one time too many.

One of the reasons many of us are experiencing tough economic times is that the banks treated our investments like a trip to the casino.

Wall Street is a casino.

Preston
________________________________________

Wallet Pop’s 25 Unusual Ways to Make Money

25 Start Your Own Part-Time Business From Home
If you want to start a business, you don't have to invest much money to make money. Sometimes you can start a business with next to nothing. Jacob and Susan D'Aniello's pooper scooper business is now a multi-million dollar franchise called DoodyCalls. But in the beginning, it was just them, a bag and a shovel. You might also consider hiring yourself out as a dog walker, errand runner, driver or computer consultant.
24 Take a Part-Time Job

With most part-time jobs, it's probably going to be two weeks, at best, before you receive that first paycheck. When you need cash sooner than that, look for jobs that offer immediate money in your pocket, like one that includes tips. Bartending and waiting tables are two tried-and-true examples.
23 Seek Emergency Assistance

Many charities provide services and items that you would otherwise spend money on, freeing up some dollars to apply to your most pressing needs. Among the most common of these are food banks and open-dining opportunities, help or waiver of utility costs, and clothing and other household essentials.
22 Make Stuff to Sell

Think of the proverbial lemonade stand, but all grown up. When one WalletPop blogger is entirely broke, she'll get out her sewing machine and make her favorite quick project: stuffed geese (made out of thrifted fabric). They sell like crazy on Etsy, an online shop devoted to crafty vendors, and is her go-to plan when the well runs dry and she needs to bring in some quick cash.
21 Rent Out Your 'Spot'

If you own some prime parking real estate, you could put cash in your pocket and get more exercise by renting out your spot and parking further away. If access to your car is less convenient, perhaps you'll even drive less, saving money on gas, too.
20 Sell Stuff on Craigslist

A good alternative to the yard sale is to make use of Craigslist, a great internet site for buying and selling almost anything legal -- furniture, bicycles, musical equipment, housewares, art, and whatever. Over 40 million people use it every month. It's free and localized, so there is typically no shipping involved.
19 Do Odd Jobs

Babysitters earn upwards of $10 an hour these days. Offer to sit for friends' kids on Friday or Saturday night. The parents will be only too happy to hand you cash when they return! One complaint of young males is that nobody is likely to hire them to watch their kids. An alternative is to offer to wash cars, mow lawns, weed backyards or haul crap out of the garage, instead.
18 Find an Online Gig

One valid work-at-home program is Amazon Mechanical Turk, where companies post tasks that machines cannot easily do, but that are relatively simple for humans. You choose an assignment, and, on completion, are credited with payment to your Amazon account. This money can be withdrawn once you accumulate $10.
17 Collect Your Change

If you are like most Americans, there is hidden cash throughout your home. It may be underneath your sofa cushions, in little jars or piggy banks, but there is bound to be bounties of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters just waiting for you to unearth them. You may be surprised how much you find and how much all that "small change" is worth.
16 Return Past Purchases

Taking recently purchased items back for cash is really one of the most efficient ways of making quick cash. Not only are you typically able to get your full purchase price back if you have a receipt, but you'll reduce your stuff and pay penance for your spending habit, too.
15 Hold a Yard Sale

If you have furniture, electronics, children's items, sports equipment, jewelry, collectibles (in other words, the usual hodgepodge of clutter that most of us once thought we needed to buy), then a yard sale may help you raise some money fast.
14 Recycle Scrap Metal

One way you can get some quick cash is to sell scrap metal to your local salvage yard or recycling center. One WalletPop blogger's co-worker bought a used camper for just over $600 and took his old one to get scrapped. The scrap value of his camper almost paid for his new camper purchase.
13 Become a Temp

If you show up to work on time, take reasonably short lunch breaks, don't leave too early, and demonstrate even the slightest amount of energy and initiative, chances are that your employers will view you as a God-send. In many cases, they will even offer you permanent employment. And temp jobs can pay really well.
12 Sign Up for Medical Tests

Perhaps your path to wealth is as a medical guinea pig. The National Institutes of Health has 300 studies that need volunteers. Rochester Clinical Research is looking for volunteers to test an Avian Flu vaccine.
11 Take in a Boarder

Sharing living expenses can put more cash in your pocket. However, if you ask someone to move into your spare room -- or onto your couch -- draw up a lease agreement, even/especially if your prospective boarder is someone you know.
10 Tap Your Life Insurance

If you have whole life (a type of insurance you buy to last your "whole" life and your heirs get the payout even if you live to 104), you pay higher premiums, but the insurance has a "cash value" that you can tap any time. All you have to do is call your life insurance company to access the money.
9 Get a Payday Loan

If you're responsible with your money and know that you're facing less than two weeks of a cash shortfall, borrowing $300 today in return for repaying $345 in two weeks may be a good idea. If you're the sort of person who has a continual spending or money management problem, this is the dumbest thing you could possibly do.
8 Raid Your IRA

If you need quick cash, your retirement savings can look like a great place to find the lump sum you need, but tread carefully. There are lots of rules and if you don't qualify for an eligible withdrawal you'll have to pay a 10% penalty plus taxes on the money at your current income tax rate.
7 Pawn Your Stuff

Pawnshops work like this: you offer up your prized possessions as collateral on a loan; in most cases, the loan will be about 10% of the actual value of your item. At this point, you have three choices: redeem the loan, pay interest to keep the loan alive, or let it lapse and forfeit your goodies.
6 Sell Some Body Parts
Well, not body parts, as in a kidney or lung, we're talking more of the replaceable (and legally sold) kind like plasma and hair. In most larger cities, there are clinics that will pay you up to $35 or so for some of your plasma, which you can donate twice a week. Sales for generous lengths of tresses reportedly can net you several hundred to over a thousand dollars
5 Bank on Your Sperm

Advertised sperm donation rates vary from $1 to $200 per week; most donors can expect somewhere around $40 per donation. It does, however, require a six-month or greater commitment, and no "liberation" of sperm when you're off the clock.
4 Sell Stuff to Motorists

Roadside sales can pull in some quick cash. Pick high-profit items that aren't highly perishable and/or have a high cost/sale price ratio: cold soda, corn, baked goods, flowers.
3 Scalp Tickets (Legally)

So you're broke, and it suddenly occurs to you that you are sitting on concert tickets to Hannah Montana. If the water dept. is threatening to cut you off for non-payment, scalping those tickets could save you from a dirty, smelly fate.
2 Go Scavenging

100,000 homeless can't be wrong! In states that require a deposit, 50 cans could bring you $2.50 or more. As scrap, 32 cans make a pound, worth 70 cents. Grab a shopping cart and go hunting! If you live near a beach, another treasure-hunting option is to use a metal detector to look for coins or other valuable items just below the sand's surface.
1 Head to the Casino

Understand this first: this is our No. 1 most desperate way to make some quick cash, and only applies in this situation: you have some money, but not enough, and MUST have more within a very short time or your life will fall into ruin. Only then does a reasonable man consider the casino.

Miami International Bookfair

2008-11-11T11:30:00.001-08:00

Come join me, Preston L. Allen, at the Miami International Bookfair.

I will be reading at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday November 15 in room 7106-07 at the Wolfson Campus of Miami-Dade College (the downtown campus).

Hope to see you there.

Be there or be square.

Thanks,

Preston

The Book of Virtue

2008-10-19T16:41:00.000-07:00

Here is an article on Bill Bennett and Gambling from an old blog posting (June 2003) on WashingtonMonthly.com.

It's very instructive.

Thanks,

Preston

________________________________________

"We should know that too much of anything, even a good thing, may prove to be our undoing...[We] need ... to set definite boundaries on our appetites."

--The Book of Virtues, by William J. Bennett

No person can be more rightly credited with making morality and personal responsibility an integral part of the political debate than William J. Bennett. For more than 20 years, as a writer, speaker, government official, and political operative, Bennett has been a commanding general in the culture wars. As Ronald Reagan's chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, he was the scourge of academic permissiveness. Later, as Reagan's secretary of education, he excoriated schools and students for failing to set and meet high standards. As drug czar under George H.W. Bush, he applied a get-tough approach to drug use, arguing that individuals have a moral responsibility to own up to their addiction. Upon leaving public office, Bennett wrote The Book of Virtues, a compendium of parables snatched up by millions of parents and teachers across the political spectrum. Bennett's crusading ideals have been adopted by politicians of both parties, and implemented in such programs as character education classes in public schools--a testament to his impact.

But Bennett, a devout Catholic, has always been more Old Testament than New. Even many who sympathize with his concerns find his combative style haughty and unforgiving. Democrats in particular object to his partisan sermonizing, which portrays liberals as inherently less moral than conservatives, more given to excusing personal weaknesses, and unwilling to confront the vices that destroy families. During the impeachment of Bill Clinton, Bennett was among the president's most unrelenting detractors. His book, The Death of Outrage, decried, among other things, the public's failure to take Clinton's sins more seriously.

His relentless effort to push Americans to do good has enabled Bennett to do extremely well. His best-selling The Book of Virtues spawned an entire cottage industry, from children's books to merchandizing tie-ins to a PBS cartoon series. Bennett commands $50,000 per appearance on the lecture circuit and has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from such conservative benefactors as the Scaife and John M. Olin foundations.

Few vices have escaped Bennett's withering scorn. He has opined on everything from drinking to "homosexual unions" to "The Ricki Lake Show" to wife-swapping. There is one, however, that has largely escaped Bennett's wrath: gambling. This is a notable omission, since on this issue morality and public policy are deeply intertwined. During Bennett's years as a public figure, casinos, once restricted to Nevada and New Jersey, have expanded to 28 states, and the number continues to grow. In Maryland, where Bennett lives, the newly elected Republican governor Robert Ehrlich is trying to introduce slot machines to fill revenue shortfalls. As gambling spreads, so do its associated problems. Heavy gambling, like drug use, can lead to divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, and bankruptcy. According to a 1998 study commissioned by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, residents within 50 miles of a casino are twice as likely to be classified as "problem" or "pathological" gamblers than those who live further away.

If Bennett hasn't spoken out more forcefully on an issue that would seem tailor-made for him, perhaps it's because he is himself a heavy gambler. Indeed, in recent weeks word has circulated among Washington conservatives that his wagering could be a real problem. They have reason for concern. The Washington Monthly and Newsweek have learned that over the last decade Bennett has made dozens of trips to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, where he is a "preferred customer" at several of them, and sources and documents provided to The Washington Monthly put his total losses at more than $8 million.

"I don't play the 'milk money.'"

Bennett has been a high-roller since at least the early 1990s. A review of one 18-month stretch of gambling showed him visiting casinos, often for two or three days at a time (and enjoying a line of credit of at least $200,000 at several of them). Bennett likes to be discreet. "He'll usually call a host and let us know when he's coming," says one source. "We can limo him in. He prefers the high-limit room, where he's less likely to be seen and where he can play the $500-a-pull slots. He usually plays very late at night or early in the morning--usually between midnight and 6 a.m." The documents show that in one two-month period, Bennett wired more than $1.4 million to cover losses. His desire for privacy is evident in his customer profile at one casino, which lists as his residence the address for Empower.org (the Web site of Empower America, the non-profit group Bennett co-chairs). Typed across the form are the words: "NO CONTACT AT RES OR BIZ!!!"

Bennett's gambling has not totally escaped public notice. In 1998, The Washington Times reported in a light-hearted front-page feature story that he plays low-stakes poker with a group of prominent conservatives, including Robert Bork, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice William Rehnquist. A year later, the same paper reported that Bennett had been spotted at the new Mirage Resorts Bellagio casino in Las Vegas, where he was reputed to have won a $200,000 jackpot. Bennett admitted to the Times that he had visited the casino, but denied winning $200,000. Documents show that, in fact, he won a $25,000 jackpot on that visit--but left the casino down $625,000.

Bennett--who gambled throughout Clinton's impeachment--has continued this pattern in subsequent years. On July 12 of last year, for instance, Bennett lost $340,000 at Caesar's Boardwalk Regency in Atlantic City. And just three weeks ago, on March 29 and 30*, he lost more than $500,000 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. "There's a term in the trade for this kind of gambler," says a casino source who has witnessed Bennett at the high-limit slots in the wee hours. "We call them losers."

Asked by Newsweek columnist and Washington Monthly contributing editor Jonathan Alter to comment on the reports, Bennett admitted that he gambles but not that he has ended up behind. "I play fairly high stakes. I adhere to the law. I don't play the 'milk money.' I don't put my family at risk, and I don't owe anyone anything." The documents offer no reason to contradict Bennett on these points. Bennett claims he's beaten the odds: "Over 10 years, I'd say I've come out pretty close to even."

"You can roll up and down a lot in one day, as we have on many occasions," Bennett explains. "You may cycle several hundred thousand dollars in an evening and net out only a few thousand."

"I've made a lot of money [in book sales, speaking fees and other business ventures] and I've won a lot of money," adds Bennett. "When I win, I usually give at least a chunk of it away [to charity]. I report everything to the IRS."

But the documents show only a few occasions when he turns in chips worth $30,000 or $40,000 at the end of an evening. Most of the time, he draws down his line of credit, often substantially. A casino source, hearing of Bennett's claim to breaking even on slots over 10 years, just laughed.

"You don't see what I walk away with," Bennett says. "They [casinos] don't want you to see it."

Explaining his approach, Bennett says: "I've been a 'machine person' [slot machines and video poker]. When I go to the tables, people talk--and they want to talk about politics. I don't want that. I do this for three hours to relax." He says he was in Las Vegas in April for dinner with the former governor of Nevada and gambled while he was there.

Bennett says he has made no secret of his gambling. "I've gambled all my life and it's never been a moral issue with me. I liked church bingo when I was growing up. I've been a poker player."

But while Bennett's poker playing and occasional Vegas jaunt are known to some Washington conservatives, his high-stakes habit comes as a surprise to many friends. "We knew he went out there [to Las Vegas] sometimes, but at that level? Wow!" said one longtime associate of Bennett.

Despite his personal appetites, Bennett and his organization, Empower America, oppose the extension of casino gambling in the states. In a recent editorial, his Empower America co-chair Jack Kemp inveighed against lawmakers who "pollute our society with a slot machine on every corner." The group recently published an Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, with an introduction written by Bennett, that reports 5.5 million American adults as "problem" or "pathological" gamblers. Bennett says he is neither because his habit does not disrupt his family life.

When reminded of studies that link heavy gambling to divorce, bankruptcy, domestic abuse, and other family problems he has widely decried, Bennett compared the situation to alcohol.

"I view it as drinking," Bennett says. "If you can't handle it, don't do it."

Bennett is a wealthy man and may be able to handle losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Of course, as the nation's leading spokesman on virtue and personal responsibility, Bennett's gambling complicates his public role. Moreover, it has already exacted a cost. Like him or hate him, William Bennett is one of the few public figures with a proven ability to influence public policy by speaking out. By furtively indulging in a costly vice that destroys millions of lives and families across the nation, Bennett has profoundly undermined the credibility of his word on this moral issue.

Reporting assistance provided by Robert W. J. Fisk, Soyoung Ho, and Brent Kendall.

Virginia Beach Man Wins Lottery for the Third Time

2008-10-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

Oh to be so lucky!

Thanks,

Preston

___________________________________

From Pilotonline.com

VIRGINIA BEACH

Luckiest. Guy. Ever.

It's not an official title, but it will do for Ralph Stephens.

The Virginia Beach man recently won the Virginia Lottery's Cash 5 drawing for the third time. Each time he matched all five numbers and walked away with the $100,000 top prize.

"It's amazing," said lottery spokesman John Hagerty. Hagerty did not know if the trifecta was unprecedented in Virginia Lottery history.

Stephens, who declined to be interviewed, picked up his first jackpot in 1997. Then, in April 2007, he again matched all five numbers and won another $100,000. And now, 16 months later, he's done it again.

Other contenders for luckiest people on Earth include a Chesapeake man who played the same numbers on 20 Cash 5 cards in 2004, raking in $1.8 million, and a Henrico County couple who won $9.7 million in 1991 and then $1,000 a week for life in 2002.

What Is Money?

2008-10-06T12:52:00.001-07:00

What is money?

It is neither the paper nor the coin that it is stamped upon. Those are only the symbols of its portable manifestations.

Money is real, but not real like a glass container, a glass of water, a waterfall, a glass ceiling, an Alaskan seal.

It is not real like an automobile is real.

It is not real like concrete is real.

It is real to us who use it and need it, but what kind of real is it?

It is not real like the bed we sleep in.

It is not real like the leaky roof over our heads.

It is not real like our heads.

It is not real like the leak.

It is not real like the drops of water leaking.

It is not real like wheat in the field.

But it is real.

Without money, the wheat in the field will dry up and the people will starve. They have the field, they have the wheat, they are hungry, but they will starve without money while the amber waves wave upon the fruited plain.

What then is money, this thing that can cause the hungry to die of starvation in the presence of food in abundance?

Quite simply, money, in all of its forms is a system for organizing humans in a human society.

It is for this reason that the beasts of the field will not die of starvation in the presence of abundant food. They will eat the food because they are hungry and it is there.

An American in that same field, a field of apples, an apple orchard let's say, will see the apples and reach into his pockets and say, "I wonder how much the owner of this orchard will charge for one of those juicy apples? I only have three dollars. I hope that it is enough."

If he has enough money, then he will eat. If he has not enough, then he will starve unless he can negotiate some other arrangement with the owner, or unless he is willing to steal. But stealing makes him a criminal--though stealing only to quell his hunger and avoid death by starvation, the thief will be outside of the law, a criminal, an outlaw. There are humans who would be willing to die rather than to break the law.

Money is as real to them as their hunger and the apples which will quell that hunger. The law is real to them in the same way. Society is real to them in the same way.

In reality, neither money, nor the law, nor society are real in the same way that an apple is, or that hunger is.

But we are not beasts of the field, we are humans in a human society, and so we must behave in a civilized manner. We must behave in an ordered manner. We must be, therefore, ordered or organized. But in what manner and by what organizing principle?

The simplest and most primitive organizing principles ("primitive" meaning that these principles were used even by the most primitive of human societies and to some extent are still in use by all societies today) are age and might.

Humans are born into families, and so the first organizing principle is, of course, age. It makes sense that parents hold a higher rank than children. Mothers and fathers tell the children what to do. Older children, it follows, often tell the younger children what to do.

Related to age is the organizing principle of might--the law of the jungle, so to speak. The stonger tell the weaker what to do. The big fish boss around the little fish, and so on.

Note also that parents start off bigger than children (until years later when the children attain adult size and weight). Thus, the principle of might is perhaps a subset of the principle of age.

There is also the principle of primacy, which may also be a subset of the principle of age. Primacy means, in layman's terms, whoever gets there first is in charge. Thus, if I possess the land before you, and you arrive and meet me there, you are expected to obey my laws. The land is my propert because I was there first; I am the lord of the land by virtue of beng first and you must obey my will.

Again, note that in the family, by the very nature of what it means to give birth, the parents always have primacy over the children they give birth to. The parents were there first, and so their will must be obeyed.

Of course, primacy can be defeated by might. If you possess the land before me, but you are stronger, you can very well wrest it away from me and become its lord. Now you are the boss, or the king, until a mightier king comes along and wrests power away from you.

But primacy, age, and might work best in smaller societies, tribes, or in families.

How do we organize a society of tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Hundreds of millions?

We do it with a concept called "money." The rule works like this: whoever has the most money is not a king or a boss exactly, but a part of a kind of power elite, whose job it is to oversee and direct the movement of the society; those who have the least money are not slaves, slavs, or peasants exactly, but they are relegated to doing the bidding of those at the top in order to be deserving of their daily bread.

Before we go further, let's talk about why it is to our advantage as humans to have the human society organized in the first place. Why not just live and let live? Why not just do what we want? Why not just live as we want?

Let us go back to the example of the apple orchard, and keep in mind that this is a metaphor. Indeed, I know nothing about the cultivation of apples.

If a group of, say, 200 hungry human animals descend upon an apple orchard, they will by their very nature devour all of the apples--because it is in their nature to eat when they are hungry, and perhaps to eat a little bit more than their hunger requires.

Now the apples are all gone and the humans move on. Who will plant more seeds? Who will tend to the young plants? Who, in short, will farm the land, not just with apples, but with grain, vegetables, fruit, and livestock? The answer is no one, and why should they? Farming is hard work. It is much easier to just eat the fruit from the tree and then move on.

Now, insert an organizing principle, like a king (the principle of might). The king establishes law. Only a certain amount of apples can be picked. Only certain people can pick them and only at a certain time of year. Certain favors have to be paid in exchange for the harvesting of the apples. Certain people will be paid certain favors for tending to and harvesting the apples, and so on. Furthermore, anyone who breaks these laws will have to deal with the might of the king. One cannot simply see an apple and reach for it. One must ask, "Am I breaking the law when I reach for this apple? In what way might I entitle myself to a bite of this apple?"

Thoughts such as that benefit the apples, but also the human society, for the apples are now likely to survive the lazy, careless appetites of the hunter-gatherer society and, thanks to the laws of the king, be there for generations to come.

Now substitute money for the might of a king in the example of the apple orchard.

In this case, the apples in the orchard are sold for a price. They cannot simply be plucked from the tree by anyone who desires to eat them.

One might say that the apples are cultivated so that humans in the society can eat them; or one might more accurately say that the apples are cultivated so that the owner of the orchard can earn money through the sale of them to the humans in the society who desire to eat them.

The orchard is not ravaged by careless hunter-gatherer behavior because in order to eat the apples, the hungry human must pay for them with money.

In order for the human to earn money to purchase the apple, he must be gainfully employed in an endeavor (ideally) that benefits the society. The more important to the society his labor is perceived to be, the more money he shall earn from said labor. And the more money he earns, the more apples (as well as other things) he is able to purchase.

The more money he earns, the more of everything he is able to purchase, for it follows that in a society organized around money nearly everything (and the best quality of everything) can be purchased; apples, apple orchards, automobiles, real estate, health care, education, safety and protection, beauty, legal representation, love and affection--though perhaps not the genuine kind of love and affection, but then again, maybe so, for indeed how difficult is it in a society organized by the principle of money to love someone who is handsome, well educated, well mannered, healthy, and has the best of everything that money can buy?

Well then, in a society organized by the principle of money, should we not all aspire to earn the most money?

Yes, we should, but the end results will be that a few will end up at the top, a large number will end up in the middle, and the largest number will end up at the bottom--and this is as the way it should be.

Let us go back to the apple orchard example again, for we not only like to eat apples as humans but we can earn some money working at the orchard.

First, the apple orchard is owned by someone--and in order to own it, the owner has purchased it at a price.

It is also possible that the owner has inherited the orchard, but that scenario works out to be the same as the first--for then it would be a parent who purchased the orchard and then passed it on to an heir, who is the present owner.

The apple orchard employs many laborers, who toil at the planting and the harvesting--these laborers, so that the point is not missed, are paid for their labor.

The owner, of course, is going to earn the most from the cultivation of apples for what many (cynically) perceive to be the least amount of actual labor.

The manager, or top employee, or ceo of the orchard is going to earn the most among the paid employees. He/she manages the apple orchard and is highly paid to ensure that everything goes well.

The remainder of the employees in this example--and there are many classes of employees from accountants and attorneys down to the lowliest apple picker and seed planter--will reflect a range of pay grades from quite a bit to very little (minimum wage earners).

But why can we not all earn a ceo's salary? Why can we all not be rich?

Because if we were all rich, then money would be nullified as an organizing principle. Since we all earned the same, and we were all rich, there would be no way to ensure that there were enough of us available to do the dirty, labor intensive planting and harvesting, or the labor intensive and often depressing sanitation and cleaning and mopping and raking and composting jobs. In short, apple production would come to a halt after a few days and the orchard would fall into disrepair.

The Egyptians built magnificent structures that we still marvel at today, and so did the Greeks and the Romans, as well did the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans. Their organizing principle was might--the king ordered his subjects to build and they obeyed. But what if every Egytian were a pharoah? Not one single pyramid woudl have been built, and I think you understand why. There must be might to organize the labor of the society to build magnificent structures. At the very top is the king, followed by his well paid master builders and architects, followed by a descending chorus line of laborers all the way down to the lowliest slave.

Humans are not ants. They have no instinct to work together for long periods of time without incentives such as danger from outsiders (all will fight to defend the common territory, perhaps), danger from nature (all will fight the fire or rescue the children from a flood) or strong desire for some common short term goal (all will fight together to bring down the big antelope and eat its meat). But the building of a pyramid--or some other such important but long term goal--requires an organizing principle.

The elder (age) can say, "We will erect an alter to God--and we will work on it for ten years," and his followers (an extended family group) will obey his will.

The king (might) can say, "We will erect a temple in honor of Zeus--it will take a hundred years to build and we will build it," and his subjects will obey his will.

The billionaire industrialist (money) can say, "We will plant a hundred thousand apple orchards across ten states. It will feed millions," and his company, his salaried employees will obey his will.

But the poor live in such depressing conditions. What can we do about it?

That's a tricky question, and there are two ways to answer it, considering what we have discussed about money as an organizing principle.

First, for the individual poor person--especially one who lives in the United States of America--there are educational opportunities that can be seized. With the help of the government and a few good motivational and inspiring teachers, an individual who is poor can better his/her circumstances. The poor might also benefit from this land of opportunity by opening up a successful business. The poor may also benefit by winning the lottery. It happens. There are success stories like this every day.

But what happens to the individual poor person who pulls himself up (so to speak) by the bootstraps is not the issue. Do not be deceived by such success stories for they are the exception and not the rule. The way our system organized by money works is that we NEED the poor to REMAIN poor.

Remember, we cannot build a magnificent structure if everyone becomes a ceo. We cannot all be equal in wealth--in fact, such a notion is unrealistic and childish in its conception.

And do not be deceived by those who believe that we can best help the poor in a system organized by money by giving more money and benefits to the people and businesses at the top so that it will "trickle" down to the poor. Money does not trickle down; but revolution and misery do trickle up.

Money does not trickle down in a system organized by money just as power does not trickle down in a system organized by might--if the king becomes stronger, does that strength trickle down to his lowliest slave? No. Money is not bread crumbs--money is an organizing principle; the more you give to me at the top, the more firmly on top I become, that's all.

Second, for the poor as a group, it is important that we as a nation make sure that the minimum wage is actually a wage that the poor can live on. There are people with the skill of numbers crunching who can advise our leaders on a minimum wage that will allow the poor to live decent and dignified lives. We at the top and in the middle OWE it to the poor to ensure that they live decent and dignified lives, for their poverty allows us the gift of our middle class and upper class lives.

Why do we OWE it to them?

First, in a society organized by money, there is only so much money to go around; thus, if we have it all, or most of it, then we have it because the poor DON'T have it. Despite the metaphor of the apple orchard, money does not grow on trees.

Second, their group is several hundred times larger than ours. In short, they simply outnumber us. If they used the organizing principle of might, they could simply take our wealth from us. What keeps them in their place in America are the various traps we have to keep the poor people poor: the fear of incarceration (though in truth we do not have prisons enough to hold all of the poor if they rose up); the rule of law (which they obey, despite the fact that it is weighted against them); sub-standard schools in their neighborhoods; alcohol and drugs (no explanation necessary); religion (it empowers as much as it restrains--love your neighbor as yourself has worked wonders to keep them in line--though their wealthier neighbors don't always seem to love them back); lack of leadership; lack of representation in our representative democracy (ever heard of a lobbyist for the poor?); TV (bread and circuses worked in Rome, why not here?); and the American Dream (because the poor believe in the American Dream, they, thank god, do not revolt--because they have a hope, despite everything they see around them, that one day things will get better, they continue to support a system of which they live on the bottom rung--instead of becoming angry and hateful when they see the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy celebrities on TV, they dream on, praying that one day, it will be they who live in the big mansion, that one day it will be they who drive the expensive automobile--because of the American Dream, those who have the least chance of achieving it are the ones who support it the most tenaciously--there is no reason to overthow a system that might benefit you . . . one day).

Third, we owe the poor because their sons and daughters swell the ranks of our military, because while serving in the military to the middle and upper classes is a patriotic duty or something to do instead of college--to the poor it is one of the surest ways out of the cycle of poverty. You want homeland security? Make sure the children of that welfare mother, despite what you may think about her, have food to eat and proper healthcare beause one day her son or daughter is going to take a bullet for you.

Fourth, we owe the poor because someone has to do the jobs that we will not do. You know those jobs. They don't pay much, but if nobody did them our lives would be miserable: cleaners of various unmentionably foul things, removers of vile things most of us would rather not even know existed, things that sicken the stomach, things that smell bad, distasteful things.

Finally, we owe the poor because they are the meek in a land of exhalted hubris, and our own scritpture warns that one day they will inherit the earth. We shudder to think what that might mean. Let that day be far off from this present one, lord.

Hopefully, they will not do away with our system so beautifully organized by the principle of money, capitalism.

It is a good system, capitalism, the best the world has ever seen, especially the way we do it here in America.

Socialism is really capitalism with the government forcing by law those at the top to be dutiful and considerate of their poorer brethren, so that works too.

Communism is a joke invented by a childish, idealistic mind--people are not compassionate enough or ambitious enough by nature for communism to work.

Monarchies? Well, it seems their day has passed, but be forewarned if our system governed by money fails, might will rule the day and we will likely see the return of wardlords and kings. Might is the easiest organizing system to put into place after chaos. Might precedes and follows all revolutions.

The only way to keep the warlord and the kings away? Keep the money flowing.

To be continued--

The poor and Money
The Wealthy Who Go Slumming for Love
The Not So Wealthy who Make Deals With The Devil to Keep Their Jobs
Diogenes and Other Rich Beggars
The Linberg Law: The American Dream and Why Conspicuously Wealthy Americans Don't Fear Kidnapping
The Democratic Government and Money
Somes Gotta Win and Somes Gotta lose
Why They Lend Money

(I'm tired. I'll proofread it tomorrow)

Dear Mr. Vignola

2008-10-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

Mr. Vignola was a great man in many respects and an especially wonderful and inspiring educator. I am fortunate to have had him for sixth grade way back in 1976-1977.

But here's the thing . . . one day, in a joke, Mr. Vignola told us that there will never come a day when gas sells for more per gallon than milk.

We were doing an assignment on household budgets, if I recall, and the class dunce (who obviously had not done his homework again) had offered up an incorrect budget plan, one that showed the hypothetical family spending more to purchase a gallon of gas than a gallon of milk.

Well, we silly sixth graders had a good tittering laugh at the dunce, and then Mr. V, as we used to call him, added the humorous coda: "One thing you can be certain of, milk will always cost more than gas."

Oh, if it were only true.

Thanks,

Preston

R.I.P. Cool Hand Luke

2008-10-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

Paul Newman Jan. 26, 1925- September 26, 2008.

Cool Hand Luke

Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid

The Sting

The Hustler

Somebody Up There Likes Me

Hombre

Fort Apache the Bronx

Wow.

Another great one is gone.

Thanks,

Preston

700 Billion Dollar Baby

2008-09-30T09:04:00.000-07:00

I don't discuss politics in public, so I am going to be as non political as I can be in writing this.

"Children, papa gambled away all of the money for the mortgage--now you are going to have to bail papa out--break open your piggy banks--Papa needs every penny--oh, and by the way, we must all agree that papa must not be punished--oh and by the way, if you refuse to bail papa out, we're all going to be in big trouble. Papa gets kicked out of the house, but you get kicked out too. See, papa's troubles hurt you as much as they hurt papa--so break open those piggy banks, children!"

What I'm trying to say is that I love the super rich Main Street and Wall Street tycoons!!!

They are the ultimate gamblers!

Spend what you want--beg for what you need. Keep on playing the game. The only game is to play the game, baby. It does not hurt to have rich friends, either--friends with 700 billion dollars to loan to you who have proven to be poor stewards of the billions you already had.

Are these tycoons a metaphor for the gambler or is the gambler a metaphor for them?

Regardless, I love 'em!

Anybody who can bet that big, lose it all, and have the balls to come at you with his hand stuck out is my personal hero!

That, my friends, is capitalism in action. Sorry, I meant "socialism" in action--but of course we are not socialists, right, so we cannot say that word. Perhaps if we were those dirty, stinking, red, rat-bastard socialists we would come with our hands stuck out asking for money for unnecessary things like universal health care, education, the crumbling physical infrastructure of, say, Minnesota--sing it with me children: "St.paul Bridge is falling down, falling down, my fair lady . . ."

But we love the free market (especially unfettered and unmonitored)!

We love small government (especially when it allows our rich friends to do their business in a manner that is unfettered and unmonitored)!

But we are so stoooopid that we are forgetting what government (of the people, by the people, and for the people) actually means.

Government means that . . . WE are the government!

We should not hate or fear the government--WE are the government.

We should not hate or fear the IRS--WE are the IRS--it's our freakin' money! We simply created the IRS to collect it and to count it so that WE, the government, could use it later to fight our wars, defend our borders, educate our children, feed our poor, heal our sick, care for our elderly, maintain our roads, police our neighborhoods to keep them safe from crime, fight our fires, protect our forests and natural places.

We should not hate or fear our president--WE elected him to PRESIDE over our affairs. He is not our leader in the way a monarch such as a king would be; he is more of a chief steward, an overseer of our affairs. If the president is LEADING our country, then we no longer have a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

We should not hate or fear our senators and our members of congress--they are OUR voice in Washington. They only speak the will of the people--WE are the people. If they are speaking for themselves or in accordance with the ambitions of special interest groups and lobbyists, then we no longer have a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

As I see it, there are two major problems with us in America with our government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

One--it is too hard and too time consuming to participate in a government of the people, for the people, and by the people. We all have jobs that we must go to everyday, children to bear and care for, daily life things to see to. Thus, we grant too much unfettered and unmonitored power to those we have HIRED to be stewards of the affairs of our government of the people, for the people, and by the people--so much so that our government of the people, for the people, and by the people becomes a government of the people, for the people, and by the people IN NAME ONLY. We the people are no longer paying attention to our government, except when election time rolls around every few years or so or when there is a disaster--Hurricane Katrina, 911, Watergate, Vietnam, and, on yeah--"Children, papa needs to borrow 700 Billion dollars, and he needs it now."

Two--power corrupts. If we the people are too busy to watch our stewards, then they, in essence cease to be stewards and become de facto leaders, like the old monarchies and royal courts of feudal antiquity used to be, and they RULE and GOVERN in much the same way--through nepotism, cronyism [sic], whim, personal vision/ambition, through the knighting of those who have earned favor, and through the establishment of powerful vassals, henchmen who will carry out the orders of the king and make sure others abide by them, too. Oh, now that is a fanciful way of putting it--obviously I've been reading too much LORD OF THE RINGS. But like the old saying says, "another name for an unwatched steward is Lord and Master."

In other words, it is a fact that we are too busy to watch our government's stewards; so then we must answer honestly when we ask whether in fact we still have a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

How long have we been allowing the stewards to govern in a manner that is unfettered and unmonitored?

This 700 billion problem just sort of snuck up on them? Were they sleeping on the job? Were we?

Obviously, we are going to have to pay the tab. None of us is willing to suffer through another Great Depression. There will be an amended and improved proposal put forward by the president in a week or two or maybe three and the house will pass it overwhelmingly. Things will go back to usual, sort of.

But this time--after this shocking wake up call--we will, hopefully, understand how important it is to monitor the stewards of our government and hold them accountable for their lapses, and see that they keep an eye on their gambling friends down at the casino at the intersection of Wall and Main Streets.

Otherwise we need to stop saying that we have a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, and begin to pay fealty to our elected counts, dukes, barons, and kings.

Thanks,

Preston

David Foster Wallace February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008

2008-09-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

Novelist David Foster Wallace found dead
AP 9/13/08

CLAREMONT, Calif. (AP) — David Foster Wallace, the author best known for his 1996 novel "Infinite Jest," was found dead in his home, according to police. He was 46.
Wallace's wife found her husband had hanged himself when she returned home about 9:30 p.m. Friday, said Jackie Morales, a records clerk with the Claremont Police Department.

Wallace taught creative writing and English at nearby Pomona College.

"He cared deeply for his students and transformed the lives of many young people," said Dean Gary Kates. "It's a great loss to our teaching faculty."

Wallace's first novel, "The Broom of the System," gained national attention in 1987 for its ambition and offbeat humor. The New York Times said the 24-year-old author "attempts to give us a portrait, through a combination of Joycean word games, literary parody and zany picaresque adventure, of a contemporary America run amok."

Published in 1996, "Infinite Jest" cemented Wallace's reputation as a major American literary figure. The 1,000-plus-page tome, praised for its complexity and dark wit, topped many best-of lists. Time Magazine named "Infinite Jest" in its issue of the "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005."

Wallace received a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 1997.

In 2002, Wallace was hired to teach at Pomona in a tenured English Department position endowed by Roy E. Disney. Kates said when the school began searching for the ideal candidate, Wallace was the first person considered.

"The committee said, 'we need a person like David Foster Wallace.' They said that in the abstract," Kates said. "When he was approached and accepted, they were heads over heels. He was really the ideal person for the position."

Wallace's short fiction was published in Esquire, GQ, Harper's, The New Yorker and the Paris Review. Collections of his short stories were published as "Girl With Curious Hair" and "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men."

He wrote nonfiction for several publications, including an essay on the U.S. Open for Tennis magazine and a profile of the director David Lynch for Premiere.

Born in Ithaca, N.Y., Wallace attended Amherst College and the University of Arizona.

Please explain this cop to me

2008-09-20T15:37:00.000-07:00

Please explain this cop to me.

I went down to Key Largo with my family to dine at the Fish House, and suddenly I saw flashing lights behind me. A cop.

But why?

I was not speeding, I was not driving erratically, my license was not expired, and my insurance had not lapsed, so what the heck was going on?

"Pull over!" the officer (sherrif) shouted through his electronic megaphone.

So I pulled over.

The cop walked over to the car (with his hand on his gun) and said, "Do you know why I pulled you over?"

Now, in the past whenever a cop had asked me this question, I would look up at him guiltily and say, "Because I was speeding, officer?"

But this time all I could do was shake my head and say, "No. No. I have no idea why you pulled me over."

This seemed to make him angry and sarcastic.

He exploded, "I was behind you for the last three miles, giving you a chance to move to the other lane and you did not move to the other lane."

I was confused. What the heck was this angry guy babbling about?

"But what did I do?"

"We have a law in this state, and the signs are posted all over the highway, slower traffic must drive in the right hand lane. You have a Florida tag so you must know of this law. You were drivng in the left hand lane--all slower traffic must drive on the right. The speed limit is 45 and I clocked you at 43. You should have been driving on the right at that speed."

That was my crime? Doing 43 in a 45 zone? What!

I argued, "But, officer, if the speed limit is 45 and I am doing 43, am I not one of the faster drivers? I could maybe speed up to 44, I could do maybe 45, but if I did 46 you would pull me over for speeding."

He shouted, "Are you trying to argue with me?"

"No, sir."

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse! You should have shifted into the right hand lane!"

"Yes, sir."

"What were you doing in the left hand lane anyway?"

"Uh, uh," I stuttered, "we were looking for the Fish House."

"Well," he said, "you passed it a half mile back. Make a U-turn right here, and drive back a half mile."

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

"And from now on, obey the law. Drive in the slow lane."

"Yes, sir. I'll make sure to do it next time."

He was angry again. "No!" he shouted, and then he corrected me like a grade school teacher: "Do it EVERY time!"

Then he went back to his car, and I made my U-turn and took my baffled family to the Fish House, where we uncomfortably ordered and then ate our meal.

Biting into his grilled tilapia, my brother the rapper said, "It's racism. He was profiling you. He pulled you over because you are black, and then he became angry when he heard you speak so eloquently. You sound like a college professor or some smart person and black people aren't supposed to be smart. If it was me driving, he would have been happy to give me a ticket or beat me up and drag me off to jail. Notice that he did't even give you the ticket. So why did he pull you over? He was profiling you. Did you notice that he came to the car with his hand on his gun?"

My brother, who goes by the stage name CHIEF, was dressed in the baggy pants, loose-fitting short, and bandana of his stage persona. My brother is young (27) and gloriously tattooed, and wears an earring in each ear. I, on the other hand, was dressed in a tourist t-shirt, shorts, and sandals. I am not pierced. I wear no body art.

My son, the 14-year-old philosopher, nodded and then surmised: "His reasoning made no sense. How is driving 43 in a 45 zone to be considered driving too slowly? This raises the whole question of what slow driving actually is. It's like you said, papa, if you drive 45, you risk slipping into 46 momentarily and breaking the law for which he could technically give you a speeding ticket. But if you do 43, you are driving too slowly. Is 44 also too slow a speed? Is 45 the only speed that one is allowed to drive in a 45 zone and not be considered too slow? What is too slow? Should they not post the range of what is too slow on the speed limit signs? For example, 'Speed Limit 45: 44 to 45 is acceptible: 43 and below is too slow,' or something like that. And by the way, it is speed LIMIT. LIMIT. That implies that 45 is the fastest that you are permitted to drive--it is not a suggestion that you must drive 45, right? Is not a limit the highest point in a range?"

My wife said, "And we are tourists. The economy is bad all over, especially down here in the Keys. This part of the Keys is usually filled with people, but because of the hurricanes and high gas prices, there is very little traffic. We are tourists--he should be happy to see us here. Everybody should be glad that we are down here patronizing their businesses. It doesn't make any sense for him to pull us over like that. And if you broke the law, why didn't he give you a ticket? And why was he so nasty with you? You were very polite to him and he acted like such a jerk."

My brother said, "Because he knew he was wrong. He was profiling and he pulled over the wrong car, so he made up some BS excuse to explain it. I never heard any BS like being pulled over for driving too slow--too slow? And doing 43 in a 45 zone is too slow? That's just BS. He got caught, that's all."

The meal at the Fish House was wonderful. I highly recommend the Fish House.

But why was I pulled over?

Maybe it was just a misunderstanding. Maybe it was just a mistake. Maybe.

Thanks,

Preston

Doesn't This Warm Your Heart?

2008-09-12T17:02:00.000-07:00

Sorry for taking so much time off from blogging, but this new semester is kicking my butt with work and my new novel is close to complettion, so that's been taking up a great deal of time, too.

At any rate, as soon as the novel is done, I'll have more time, and I'll be back (as Arnold said).

On the other hand, I hope you red this heart-warming story on AOL.

The one about the autistic boy who got lost at sea but then was rescued miraculously hours later?

Thanks,

Preston
______________________________________

Boy's Illness Credited for Survival at Sea
CNN

(Sept. 10) - Walter Marino shouted to his 12-year-old son, Christopher, as he drifted farther away in the Atlantic Ocean.

"To infinity," the father yelled.

"And beyond," Christopher replied

After a rip current swept the boy and his father out to sea Saturday, darkness fell, and the sound of rescue helicopters and boats grew faint until they were nonexistent.
Despite the danger, Christopher, who has autism, was enjoying himself, his father said. The boy lacks a fear of death because of his autism and finds comfort in the water, Marino told CNN.

Marino finds comfort in his son. Their unique circumstances helped keep them alive for more than 12 hours in the open ocean, Marino said.

"With many kids with autism, the thing that is so dangerous is that they have no concept of fear or fear of death," Marino said. "In this case, though, it perhaps saved him -- that and the fact that water is one of his favorite things. Whenever he goes missing or tries to run away, we can always find him near water ... even at the mall if it is just near a fountain."

Christopher was laughing as the father and son were pulled farther and farther from Ponce Inlet, Florida. As the pair lunged for buoys -- and missed -- Christopher couldn't help but giggle. It was this spirit that helped ground Marino, the father said.

It was a big entertainment roller coaster for him, that's what got me through it -- because he wasn't freaking out," said Marino, 46.

But after four hours at sea without a life vest, and after it became obvious that rescue operations had ceased for the night, jellyfish began to sting the pair. That began to "freak Christopher out," his father said.

While Christopher is almost nonverbal in his communication, he and his father use catch phases from Disney movies, which the boy loves, to communicate.
After four hours, the currents picked up, and Christopher began to drift from his father's reach. Because of the darkness, they couldn't see each other. So Marino shouted out part of a phrase to his son.

"To infinity," Marino shouted, referencing one of Christopher's favorite lines from the movie "Toy Story."

"And beyond," Christopher shouted back, pumping his fist in the air like movie character Buzz Lightyear.

The call and response went on for a while, with Marino choosing different phrases and Christopher yelling back. But over the course of an hour, Christopher's voice faded until his father couldn't hear him anymore.

"That's when I resigned myself to the fact that he was gone," Marino told CNN, saying he believed his son had been pulled under the water. At the time, Marino said, he thought about giving up, until he thought of his daughter Angela. She had just registered for ballroom dance classes, and he told himself over and over he would live to see her dance.

"I just kept thinking about her and how I was not going to leave her without a brother and her father in the same day -- not on my watch," he told CNN. "It was the visual of her that kept me going."

Marino used other tricks to keep his mind focused in the 81-degree water. He remembered going to the Ponce Inlet museum, which highlighted a lighthouse. He then set out to use the lighthouse as a guide for himself, so he would know how far he was from shore.

He alternated doing the "doggie paddle" and floating on his back with his ears in the water, the way his son loved to.

He would float on his back and watch the bright stars. He wished on four shooting stars that flew by and used constellations in the sky to know what direction to go if he drifted away.

Under the stars and in the dark Atlantic, he turned to his spirituality, realizing his life was in God's hands. A religious medal rested on his chest.
As morning turned, Marino tried to stay alert for sounds that might mean help was near.

Hearing a boat motor, he waved frantically.

Soon, a group of fishermen pulled him aboard their boat. A flash of light from the medallion had caught the eye of one of the anglers, who shouted at his brother at the helm to stop the boat, one of Marino's rescuers told him.

The first thing Marino asked was if the men had heard anything about his son, but they hadn't.

Marino began to grieve. It had been nearly eight hours since he had last seen his son, and he believed he was gone for good. He wept.

When the U.S. Coast Guard arrived, Marino asked them, too, about Christopher, but they said they had not found him. The Coast Guard crew asked if he wanted to go to the hospital, but he decided to stay on the boat so the search for Christopher wouldn't be disrupted.

But Marino chose not to watch the water as the search went on.

"I chose to be down below, because I didn't want to see them pull up on Christopher being face-down in the water," he said.

So the Coast Guard vessel steamed on. After more than an hour, the boat went full throttle, jolting Marino backward in his space below deck. Suddenly, the boat was idling, and Marino was asked to come topside.

"That was my personal green mile," Marino told CNN, a reference to what some people call the walk on death row from the cell to the execution chamber.

"I took three steps up the green mile to the back of the deck, and they pointed to the helicopter and they said, 'You see that helicopter? It has your son on it, and he is fine,' " Marino recalled a crew member saying.

Marino was so excited he began "kissing all the Coast Guard guys."

The father and son were reunited at the emergency room at Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where they were treated for dehydration.

"We were both very weak, tired and thirsty," Marino said. "But I reached out and held his hand and could tell from the same sparkle in his eye that he was going to be fine."

While Christopher can't truly communicate what he felt during those hours alone at sea, his father hopes that one day, he will be able to tell him what he felt alone in the Atlantic.

The one thing Marino knows is that his son still loves the water and that the experience hasn't taken away that special comfort from him.

"It may be a while before we go back to a beach," Marino said. "But he still loves the water. He's already gotten back in a pool."

© 2008 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
2008-09-10 16:56:57

My Politics

2008-09-01T19:37:00.000-07:00

Dear loyal emailers, thanks for the emails, but as I have stated many times, politics is one of three things that I do not discuss in public, religion and sex being the other two.

I do not publicly discuss politics even in the era of Obama and Palin--though I am tempted.

But if I were one who discussed politics, I might tell you to go out and vote--vote your conscience.

Thanks,

Preston

Movies That Made You Love Cable and Never Want to Go Back to Regular TV

2008-08-23T03:42:00.000-07:00

Cable TV was invented in 7th and 8th grade in Miami in the late 70s. The cable guy would knock on your door and say, "We are installing in this neighborhood--free installation if you order it now. You can get the full package with three HBOs, the Atlanta Channel, the Chicago channel, and all of your Basic Cable channels. You'd better hurry because once we stop installing in this neighborhood, it's going to cost you more if we have to come back. Hurry up--all of your neighbors already have it." We begged and pleaded with our parents. When cable showed up, it was a flat plastic box that atop our TV set. There was no remote. We had to get up and drag the clicking dial to whatever channel we wanted to see. Click-click-click-click-click. HBO. Click-click-click-click-click. The Sports Channel. Click-click-click-click-click. The various scrambled adult channels. Yes, late at night when the parents were in bed, we would call upon the skills of our electric brother--everybody had to have an electric brother--he was usually one of the younger ones, and his touch, for whatever reason, could make the scrambled adult channels unscramble for as long as ten seconds, which was usually long enough for the rest of us to get a glimpse of a nude female body part. He had to stand there for countless hours with his finger on the cable box so that we could get these ten-second glimpes of the forbidden. Sometimes when the electric brother was unavailable, or unwilling, one of the others would do the trick with tin foil--he would wrap the measured piece of tin foil to the stem of wires behind the cable box and jiggle it until the sexy images unscambled. Click-click-click-click-click. tinfoil-tinfoil-tinfoil. The Playboy Channel. Poof! Ten seconds later it was scrambled again. But during the day when our parents were still awake, we would enjoy the cable shows that were leagally paid for. Do you guys remember these movies? We watched each of them like a hundred times. We knew almost all of the lines. We thought they were the greates movies ever made (they were not, usually).

At any rate, here are the "Movies That Made You Love Cable and Never Want to Go Back to Regular TV"

Motel Hell--(a brother and sister plant and harvest humans and sell them as meat to motel guests--"Meat's meat, and man's gotta eat!")

Stripes--(Murray and Ramos join the army, hilarity ensues--"Chicks dig me because I really know how to wear underwear.")

Snow Bunnies--(sorry--this was on the scrambled channel).

The Island--(Michael Caine and son are captured by modern day pirates--did you did, or did you didn't do it?")

Body Heat

American Werewolf in London

Friday the 13th

Halloween

Choir Boys (a great movie)

Arthur

Clash of the Titans

Duel

Airplane--Beaver's mom, the beloved Mrs. Cleaver says, "I speak Jive."

Cheech and Chong's New Movie

Logan's Run

Tron

Stir Crazy

The Blues Brothers

Escape from New York

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

Porky's (unscrambled nude body parts)

Love at First Bite

The Blue Lagoon (unscrambled nude body parts)

The Onion Field (a really great movie, actually)

History of the World Part I

Nine to Five

Orca

Smokey and the Bandit

The Jerk--("I was born a poor black child")

The Great Santini (a movie about my father--except he's white)

Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke

Midnight Express--under no circumstances, do not get caught with drugs in Turkey.

Convoy

Heaven Can Wait

Blazng Saddles--"Excuse me, while I whip it out."

The Wiz--"Ease on down, ease on down the road!"

Holy Moses

The Tin Drum--(We loved this movie and we don't know why.)

Watership Down

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Monty Python's Life of Brian

Being There (Great Movie)

The Deer Hunter

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Boys from Brazil

Gloria--"I am the man!"

Mad Max

Marathon Man--"Is it safe?"

10--(Bo Derek in cornrows! Unscrambled nude body parts)

Oh God

Animal House--"Road trip!"

Bad News Bears

Kramer Versus Kramer (Great movie)

The Muppet Movie

Alien

The Warriors

Punk Blood

2008-08-21T15:24:00.000-07:00

Lovers of hard boiled noir fiction, I'm adding a book to my list of books that you must read. It's by Jay Marvin and it's called PUNK BLOOD. I'd like you guys to read it and then give me some feedback. Let me warn you that it will be one of your best reading experiences ever--if you like an intense, visceral, in-your-face style. PUNK BLOOD reads like a gut kick, and I mean that in a good way.

Preston

Gene Upshaw

2008-08-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

Gene Upshaw!! Another great one.

R.I.P.

The Summer of Sequels

2008-08-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but I have just about had my fill of sequels--even though this year's sequels have been great! Why can't Hollywoon come up with new ideas for movies? In fact, why don't they use some of my ideas for movies? I've got 5 books out there with fresh new ideas (just don't steal my ideas--like I suspect someone already did with the movie TWISTED--but more on that in a later blog--I am still fuming over that one).

Nevertheless, my friends and my children and I recently had a nice long argument about which Hollywood sequels were just as good as (or better) than the originals.

Here is the list, which is numbered, but the numbering has no significance right now other than to keep the list organized. In a few days, I will come back and rank the sequels so that we can honor a grandchampion of sequels.

1. The Godfather 2--I like it just as much as the original--well maybe I like the original a little bit more because of Sonny's death scene.

2. Rocky 2--I like Rocky # 1way more than # 2, but I agree with my crew that # 2 is a great movie.

3. Dark Knight--OMG!--Way better than # 1.

4. Spiderman # 2--Doc Ock Rocks! I still like # 1 slightly more. Slightly.

5. Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers--I am a big fan of the novel, not a fan at all of the film versions, so I am forced by my crew to put this on the list, and I do it under protest.

6. Star Wars Episode 5, The Empire Strikes Back--great movie, but I like Episode 4 slightly better. Slightly.

7. Batman Returns (1992)--I like this one slightly more than # 1 because Danny Devito was so great and so sad as the Penguin.

8. Kill Bill part 2--I love both Bills, but I would kill for # 2.

9. Superman 2 (1978)--this is actually a better movie than # 1 beause Supes actually gets to knuck it out with supervillains, but I still prefer Supes # 1.

10. Billy Jack--is great only in my heart--I loved it as a child of the 70s and it is much better than The Born Losers, to which it is a sequel--the Trial of Billy Jack (#3) is quite watchable too.

11. Terminator 2--you know, I popped in Terminator # 1 the other day and I was shocked at how much I loved the movie, but you see T 2 is so good that I almost NEVER watch T 1 anymore. When a sequel is so good that you never watch the great original, then you know that Hollywood is doing its job right.

12. Aliens--Alien is an excellent, groundbreaking sci-fi movie--Aliens (#2) is just so dang good and action packed that you will never watch Alien # 1 again.

13. Predator 2--I'm alone on this one, but it's my bloggy and I'll cry if I want to--I love Predator # 1, but Predator # 2 is a classic, too. Danny Glover does not pack the requisite muscle, but he makes up for it with perseverence and cunning. And the ending in this one is deeeeeep I stand by my choice!

14. Die Hard 2--better than the original, but not by much. This one has a btter villain.

15. Ben--better than Willard and the Rats--these are not the greatest movies in the world, but I am a child of the 70s.

16. Toy Story 2--Just as much fun.

17. Shrek 2--almost as much fun as # 1.

18. Star Wars, Episode 2, Attack of the Clones--I am the only fan of Episode # 1 living in America, but I agree with my crew that the action in this one gives it the nudge over # 1.

19. Beneath the Planet of the Apes--my crew is full of horse hockey--this sequel is only ok, but I will include on the list under protest--There is nothing in # 2 to top Heston's "Get away from me you damned apes!"

20. Blade 2--included under protest.

21. Jurassic Park 2--I loved both movies and agree with my crew that this one had more energy. The T-rex eating the bulldog? Priceless.

22. Nutty Professor 2, The Klumps: I think this one is funnier, but not by much.

23. Honey I Blew up the Kid--I love this movie!!! Now it is not as original as the original Honey I Shrunk the Kids, but the baby in this thing is so sweeeeeet.

24. Letters from Iwo Jima--slightly better than Flags of Our Fathers, slightly.

25. X-Men 2--included under protest, I love # 1. I like # 2. Like.

26. Hulk (2008)--Much better than the firt installment, but still failed to live up to its potential.

27. Back to the Future 2--A fun movie that is just as exciting, if not as original as the first

Two in One Week

2008-08-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes, you will be missed.

Requiem, Mass.

2008-08-19T07:25:00.000-07:00

Here's a great review of John Dufresne's REQUIEM, MASS.

Thanks,

Preston
______________________________________
From

People Magazine, July 28th 2008

Reviewed by Michelle Green

Looking back on a crazed childhood in a town where identities seemed to shift with the wind, the narrator of Dufresne's witty and affecting REQUIEM, MASS. realizes that getting to the truth may be impossible. "Life," he observes, "gets terribly roiled and scrambled very quickly."

Raised on the wrong side of town, Johnny and his impertinent little sister Audrey (who wears cowboy boots with her Catholic-school uniform) are left with a psychopathic mother who believes they're imposters playing the role of her children and comes close to igniting herself in a tub full of gasoline. In the meantime, their truck-driver dad, Rainey, is on the road. As Johnny discovers, Rainey's "gratuitous and fruitless lies" to drinking buddies are telling: He's a charming sociopath with another family stashed in Florida and a Crown Royal sack full of fake driver's licenses in his rig. "I get to live a dozen lives," he tells his son. Multiple identities or not, few in REQUIEM find salvation, but Dufresne's incandescent novel makes it clear that just living to tell a tale can be enough.

Requiem, Mass: a Novel

2008-07-26T04:54:00.000-07:00

John Dufresne's new book: Requiem, Mass.: a Novel, got a great review in People Magazine (July 28th Edition)!

Way to go, John.

I will be posting excerpts as soon as I get my greedy little fingers on it.

Florida International University rocks!

FIU is the best kept little secret in South Florida. Wanna learn how to write and get an MFA? Wanna hang out at South Beach at night? Apply to FIU today. John Dufresne teaches there (Requiem Mass: A Novel) as well as Les Standiford (Washington Burning and the John Deal novels ), James W. Hall (Hell's Bay and the Thorn novels), Lynne Barrett (Secret Names of Women), Campbell McGrath (Seven Notebooks, and Spring Comes to Chicago), Denise Duhamel (Queen for a Day), and Dan Wakefield (Going All the Way, and New York in the Fifties).

Plus it's got famous Alums like Barbara Jean Parker, Vicki Hendricks, Richard Blanco, Leonard Nash, and of course, Dennis Lehane . . . and of course of course of course ME!!!

But we are old school.

Among its new crop of writers is Anjanette Delgado--scroll down to check out her novel--The Heartbreak Pill!

Preston