The following was originally written back on March 16th, 2008...

Last time I checked, my damn GPS said I'm in the Midwest. I guess I am but, you wonder why this world is so friggin' messed up? It's when big stars in "Tinseltown" and on "The Strip" come through town leaving chaos in their wake. Take for instance, Johnny Depp... Maybe you didn't know that he was in "The Hoosier State" for a few days to film a big new motion picture about John Dillinger, the famous gangster. Now, depending on who you talk to, Johnny is either a nice fella or just another jackass that let the spell of Hollywood turn him into a an angry, bitter man who shooed away photographers and autograph seekers. One person wrote about this in his NWI Times column. Phil Potempa who rubs elbows with such legends like Phyllis Diller, Carol Channing, and Ruth Buzzy jumped at the chance to join the thousands of fools who packed the Indiana town to possibly become a "Hollywood Extra". I don't know if all his kissing up to the film crew got him in or lnot, but the movie moved on to a new location and chances are, Potempa's acting career will end up on the cutting room floor. The "regular Joe's" of Crown Point were somewhat troubled by Johnny "avoiding" them as if he was in town to have supper with them. Cripe's sake! He came to do a job, not add new friends to his buddy list! Many were insulted that they didn't even get a glimpse of the weirdo or snapshot on their cell phone and now, Depp has left a sour taste in their mouths. He's as creepy a character as his role as Willy Wonka! He loves his fans so much that he calls France his home. Think about that the next time you suckers camp overnight for 10 hours in the cold hoping he'll join you for an Egg McMuffin and coffee in the morning!
Another entertainer has besmirched the area. I'm talking about John Caponera. Who's he? The guy who has annoyed you in those AT&T commercials the months of February and March with his way off the mark impression of Harry Carey. I've seen this guy's act in comedy clubs and he's no Rich Little. The ad department at AT&T was smart to put a March 31st expiration date on these commercials. You see, these ads air only in Chicago. Meanwhile, Harry's widow, Dutchie lives in California totally unaware that her late husband's image is being poked fun at all without her consent ...Until now. When Dutchie learned of these ads and was offered a "Director's cut" of all three, her heart sank. Just for the record, she never found any rhyme or reason to watch. Get with it! Harry already was a characiture of himself even before Caponera was in diapers! Go back to Zanie's John, and let the old man ferment away in his beer can aluminum casket!

Occasionally things get mixed up. As a service to you, we bring you a post from the past that for some reason or another, never made it.. This one is from April 5th 2008.

POOR William Wrigley! It seems as though that damn billy goat from The Billy Goat Tavern's curse runs a heck of a lot deeper than we originally thought. The Cubs passed the 100 year mark with no World Series and make it only far enough to have homeplate yanked from under their shoes! Yeah, "Yadda, yadda, yadda", we've heard a lion's share of excuses and numerous cracks at breaking the curse have all but failed. It's like going to Earl Shibe with your '73 Oldsmobile for a new paint job...it's gonna look shiny and nice, but it's still going to be a shitty car underneath. That's what you get when you unwrap the stitching from this Cubs baseball. Let's put their record loss of a century to the side for just a minute and focus on the other oddities abound on this franchise. Take the great Hall of Famer, Ernie Banks. The first strike against him was being a black man in a white ballclub. He overcame that one! So, he makes it to the Hall of Fame and the Cubs decide the guy finally deserves a statue in his honor...that's strike two! Strike three is putting up the statue on public display along with a televised tribute to the former great complete with a missing apostraphe! After a day of finger pointing came up empty as to who was at fault for this, it was fixed this morning and life goes on. Now let me point out that the statue STILL isn't fixed. Does Mr. Banks have copper skin? Oops! Seems like this artist goofed!
Now let's talk about Wrigley Field being named an historic place. What's in a name? Nothing. Chicago based United Airlines could have also bought the rights to the joint and slapped their name on the new United Field. Nope. That wouldn't seem right. How about a name that has true meaning? I think renaming the park as The Field of Dreams is a perfect fit. Don't look for James Earl Jones and Kevin Costner to come strolling out of a cornfield either. This is the type of dream that doesn't just doesn't come to fruition. So, the 2008 season is once again off to a doomed start that will be played under a dark storm cloud. There's really nothing a red faced, pin-striped Lou Panella can do about that but take his nitro glycerin and pray for next year!

Suicide For Dummies

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Amy Winehouse...It's all in the name. Only problem is, wine didn't cut the mustard. On second thought, neither did marijuana, hard liquor, prescription pills, illegal street drugs, or any combination there of. When you're 26 abd a hot pop singer in the UK, what better way to spend the day than to spend it "in a boat on a river, with tangerine people and marmalade skies?" I started hearing about this troubled singer about six months ago, when she first splashed onto the Billboard music charts and more often than not, the tabloids. This sounded like someone who needed help and was looking for it in all the wrong places. I usually keep my distance from Xerox copied top 40 songs however, my curiosity got the better of me and I had to hear for myself what all the "hubba-ballou" was all about. Surprisingly, this crap is good. A good kind of crap. With hints of classic 1960's Motown mixed in with R&B and Soul. It's kind of weird that some youngin' from overseas used these genres together to come up with a refreshing sound. Putting all that nonsense aside, what makes this young woman tick and why is she still painstakingly clinging on to a miserable life? She's become a parody of suicide and places the word in a negative light. Hey, it's downright insulting to all those before her who did the job and did it right, like Adolph Hitler for example. It's out of my element to piece together a "shopping list" of all this kid's issues but, in recent months, her partying lifestyle has pushed her closer to the edge. Hell, she's got enough toxins in her system to kill a stable of horses. Superman would even be crawling on his hands and knees after this! According to her, all the dope and booze are merely "recreational" as she continues to deny, deny, deny. Was her first U.S. single Rehab intended to be some sort of therapy? If that's a good idea then Dr. Phil makes Dr. Sigmund Freud looke like a quack. Someone needs to hurry up and write a Suicide For Dummies How-To book because she's not getting it. Not only are all the toxins affecting her body but, most notably, her mind. Just the other day Winehouse got herself into one dilly of a pickle in her hpmeland across the big pond, and what she said made Michael Richard's (Kramer from Seinfeld) racist rant from a few years ago look like a few lines yanked from a Walt Disney film. Her and her husband sat in front of a table filled with an A to Z assortment of pills, booze, and drugs while Winehouse and a friend added racist lyrics to a song that didn't leave anyone out of the picture. Next day, her manager shoved her out of her apartment where a weeping Amy expressed herself with a heartfelt apology. That was it...case closed. Notice how we didn't see Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson hopping on a Virgin Airline flight to London to set her straight! I'd predict some kind of rally or boycott concocted by the two if and when she comes to America on tour. Trouble is, Amy gets so strung out onstage that she passes out halfway through the first song. She wants to quit but by golly, doesn't need any more af that rehab garbage. The 12 step program has 11 steps that will never get stepped on by her. Oh yeah, that crystal meth is some good junk despite the fact you quit eating and lose your teeth. It's almost painful to watch her die a slow, painful death when it would be a lot easier to hang or shoot herself, or slit her wrists. Sad thing is, she probably won't make it to 27 and her music catalog will skyrocket in value just like John Lennon. She IS "The gorl with kaleidescope eyes" that Lennon and McCartney wrote about. Kinda eerie ain't it?

Briefly...

God isn't too happy with any of us! First, some BREAKING NEWS from out of Chicago this past weekend... To be more precise, out the back window. For the first time in many years we got to see one of them twisters they show at the movies, except this one was for real without Helen Hunt and that weird Marine from Weird Science. In the end, it looked like a tornado blew through this newsroom...pardon the pun but, I never thought such a thing would actually happen, By the way, Archie the Pig is still a little spooked but doing fine and eating again. With stock market numbers sinking, gas prices rising by a dime over the weekend, and wars going on in the world, it wouldn't surprise me one bit to see The Four Horsemen travelling down the street. If God really is George Burns and still smokes cigars like he did in Oh, God!, he's probably smoking not only stogies but, cigarettes and pipes too. Is it over yet? It's really frustrating the way things are. Nothing like a little dose of another type of reality courtesy of Comcast and VH-1. No luck there either watching Poison frontman Bret Michaels shake his ass in front of some Hooters rejects on Rock of Life. What's with this dope? You know, it still puzzles me how Poison managed to keep it together for 20 years with this guy driving the bus. Kudos to his songwriting but, he should have quit there and let someone else do the singing. Any more out of tune and Slappy White would have "gonged" him. His new alnum is sloppy and the accompanying video looks like it was made on a shoestring. The guy does have a heart of gold though when it comes to charity work for the disabled kids. He doesn't need a tv show to find someone to crawl in bed with...what? Can't he do this on his own? C'mon dude, hang up your cowboy hat and throw away your rose with the thorn and put the videos back! Heck, MTV won't do it. From frustrated I can breath a sigh of relief as the possibility of another Clinton running the U.S. of A. gets postponed for another four years. 60 Minutes did a piece on her campaign and her overall attempt to get inbed with the Press. They showed her "character" develop from a cranky lady in menopause who didn't want to talk to anybody, into a person with a "big heart" noting that after she lost Iowa, she became sort of a "Mother Hen" to female reporters following her around. She wore a happy face when buying and passing out Starbucks to news crews in the snow and cold, and smiled as she encouraged journalists on a plane to "enjoy a piece of peach cobbler" with her. "Try it, you'll like it!" she quipped. This wasn't being kind by any stretch... This was all for show as well as to get her mind off of husband Bill. You see, while she was learning where Crown Point was on the Indiana map, William Jefferson Clinton was a thousand miles away allegedly drinking like a fish and whooping it up with other women. Now that you can be back home and place your husband back on house arrest, quit crying! Use some of the "people skills" you learned on the road and put it to use for $7.00 an hour at Denny's serving up Grand Slams to truckers. If Hillary is one of us common folk, it's time to see what it's like to live from paycheck to paycheck where the boss doesn't bother to ever take the time to stop and thank you for a doing a good job!