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  But I will not be there, & neither will Lyle Lovett nor Linda Lovelace nor eminent Lawyers like George Tobia & Gerald Goldstein, who are deeply diss-satisfied with pro Football.

  And so am I, for that matter. The Play-offs have been a bleak anticlimax to a season that was once so full of promise.… The two Losing teams on Sunday scored a total of Six (6) points between them, & the outcomes were never in doubt. Gore’s family will Lose all their bets & one of his daughters will manage to get busted for Drunk Driving. Many gamblers will not bet on the game at all, but the Bookies will win big, like always.

  Before you even think about betting against the Smart money in Tampa, consider This: The over/under number for the Giants-Vikings game was 41½. The final score was 41–0.

  —January 14, 2001

  Slow Week for Sports, in Politics

  Slow weeks are becoming more & more routine in the Sports business, just as they are in Politics—but last week was a clear victory for Politics, while Sports limped along like a crippled cat.… The hottest tickets of all were for the Inaugural Ball in Washington, where the new President’s daughter flashed her boobs on worldwide TV & Bill Clinton slunk out of town like an unemployed Actor.

  Meanwhile Super Bowl tickets went begging & the price of TV commercials for the Big Game sunk dangerously low. The over/under for Sunday’s game was hovering around ten (10), & more & more people canceled their plane reservations to Tampa.… A combined score of 10 would be a new low for Action & another grim disgrace for the NFL. I have about six prime tickets for the game pinned on the lamp in front of me right now, & I can’t even give them away. It’s not just that people don’t want to go to the game. They don’t even want to be seen there.

  I tried to give the tickets to my son, but he said he’d rather watch the spectacle over here at my house on TV.… When I offered them to Benicio Del Toro, he said the same thing. Ditto Keith Richards, who said he’d rather go to jail than fly to Tampa this weekend.… I had to send a set of $400 Club Seats back to my friend James Irsay of the Colts, whose generosity was wasted on me. Hell, I even have All-Access press credentials from ESPN that I won’t use. I could be paid to go to this game, but.…

  No. I have already adjusted my own line downward, from Six (6) to Three (3). Based on statements from both teams that they don’t even plan to score points.… Diehard Giants fans are flocking to take the Three, as New York fans always will, rather than pass up a bet. One fool went so far as to insist on taking the Giants with no points at all.… Now that is a classic example of betting your Heart instead of your head. I would have given him 2–1 odds on that one, but he didn’t even ask.

  It is always had business to blindly follow the Conventional Wisdom on big-money events, so the smart way to bet this game is to go both ways & try for a winning Middle—as in Giving the Giants with no points & taking the Giants with Six. That way, a single Baltimore field goal will make you a winner on both ends. Good luck.

  You will have to be working a genuinely Berserk gambling crowd to pull off a trick like this—but it happens, on some days, & the secret of making it happen is to invite the Right people to watch the game & bet with you. High on the Guest List should be hopeless Alcoholics with huge Egos & a weakness for Mob Hysteria in tense situations. These are the ones who will get Angry when their pregame bets start going wrong, and then they Double Up on every play in a desperate effort to catch up & win on some last-minute Fumble or shocking Interception. I have seen these loonies win on some days but not often. They are the spiritual descendants of legendary Old West gamblers who would bet the Ranch & even their Wives & Daughters on one final roll of the dice.

  Bill Clinton is one of these people, and so is George W. Bush. They are both high-stakes gamblers, and in both cases it runs in the family. They are both proven Winners. Bush is Undefeated, but he is barely more than a Rookie in this league & his last win came against one of the weakest & dumbest candidates ever to run for President. Almost anybody could have beaten Al Gore in 2000, and Bush will not be that lucky next time. Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.

  Clinton is a different animal. His record in major elections over 25 years of living in Public Housing is 8–1—two Presidencies, five Governorships, & one term as Attorney General of Arkansas—and he would still be President if not for the 22nd Amendment.… Clinton was a congenitally Lewd man who is evil in a way that seems Charming; Bush is a charming man who was born Evil. Clinton was born Poor & remains that way; Bush was born Rich & is now even richer.

  They are both whores, because that is the nature of American Politics. They both have a designated Fool in the Family, because that is the nature of the Presidency. The fool is a necessary Lightning rod for criticism that would otherwise fall on the President & harm his approval ratings. Clinton had Roger, Carter had Billy, & LBJ had a brother so weird that he had to be locked in a White House attic for three years. There is always something queer in the closet.

  With Bush it is going to be poor Jenna, the 19-year-old blonde who fell out of her dress while dancing with her father on their first official night in Washington. She is also a known sot & Night crawler who might go sideways at any moment. She is already painted as the Cross the Bush family has to bear.

  Ho ho. There are no Accidents in the Bush family. Everything that happens to them is carefully scripted & accounted for: it is an old Family recipe that has worked for three generations & maybe more. Who knows?

  The Key to it is not Luck but the Fix. The Fix must be in for anything to proceed properly. The Bush family Gunsels have understood all their lives that their main Job is to Reduce the Risk Factor to Zero.… It is a much-admired ability in politics, Business, Gunfighting, & even professional Sports. The Yankees don’t win championships by being Lucky or by some crazed ability to “suck it up in the clutch.” No. They win because they are from the Big Apple & they spend Big money for Big players & they have developed a keen taste for Habitual Domination. The Yankees put Meat in the Seats because they Expect to win, by any means necessary—and so does the Bush family of New England, Washington, & Texas. Young George spent more money on one day of his Inauguration Ceremonies than Richard Nixon did on his whole Campaign in 1972—and Nixon was crucified as a Criminal Spendthrift with the ethics of a snake.

  Some people will tell you that Bill Clinton fits that description far better than Bush or Nixon—and they will not be entirely wrong.… Nixon stabbed his Enemies in the back, but Clinton did it to his Friends. His lust to inflict Punishment surpassed even Nixon’s, and he put more people in prison than Caligula. He had his own brother locked up & he refused to pardon his old friend Webb Hubbell.… Richard Nixon was a criminally insane Monster; Bill Clinton is a black-hearted Swine of a friend.

  Okay. That’s it for now. More to come after that Orgy of ill-conceived gibberish that is the Super Bowl—where the best we can hope for, I think, is a 0–0 tie & four scoreless overtimes. Yes. That would make even nongamblers frantic for many hours from Coast to coast & trigger many Suicides. But so what? We are stuck with this game, so why not make it an Unforgettable Experience? One of my clearest memories in Sport is of being on a five-hour flight with Edward Bennett Williams while the agonizing Double Overtime Kansas City–Miami Play-off game was happening. There was no TV & we had to get a radio update from the cockpit every 20 or 30 seconds. The tension was Unbearable. People cried & howled all around us. The stewardess had to give us our own bottle of scotch to keep us from going Mad.… The only player’s name I recall from that game is Ed Podolak, who told me later that he was going “in and out of consciousness” midway in the second overtime. “By then I hardly cared who Won or Lost,” he said. “I thought of Fumbling deliberately just to get it over with.”

  —January 21, 2001

  Lynching in Denver

  Peacocks don’t move around much at night. They like a high place to roost, and they will usually find one before sundown. They know how many nocturnal beasts are down there looking for food—foxes,
coyotes, wildcats, bloodthirsty dogs on the prowl—and the only thing that can get them when they’re up high is one of those huge meat-eating owls with night vision that can swoop down & pounce on anything that moves, from a water rat to a healthy young sheep.

  My own peacocks wander widely during the day, but at night they come back into their own warm cage. Every once in a while they will miss the curfew & decide to roost in a tree or on top of a telephone pole … and that is what happened last week while we were watching the Super Bowl. It was not a Lightning ball that blacked out my house but a male peacock that stepped on a power line & caused a short circuit that burned him to a cinder & blew half my Electrics.

  The power came back, but the bird did not. It was fried like a ball of bacon. We couldn’t even eat it. That tragedy occurred at halftime—so let the record stand corrected. Sorry.

  Since then, I have consulted with many Lawyers on the Lisl Auman case—which gets uglier every time I look at it; 25,000 people have checked into her Web site since I mentioned it here two weeks ago. She is still in Prison, of course, but the massive Web response was extremely encouraging to her parents and her many supporters.

  I don’t do this very often—Never, in fact—but this case is such an outrage that it haunts me & gives me bad dreams at night.… I am not a Criminal Lawyer, but I have what they call “a very strong background” in the Criminal Justice System & many of my friends & associates are widely known as the best legal minds in that cruel & deadly business.

  It is no place for amateurs, and even seasoned professionals can make mistakes that are often fatal. The System can grind up the Innocent as well as the Guilty, and that is what happened to 20-year-old Lisl Auman when the Denver District Attorney put her on trial for a murder he knew she didn’t commit, then put her in prison for the rest of her Life Without Parole.…

  In all my experience with Courts & Crimes & downright Evil behavior by the Law & the Sometimes criminal cops who enforce it, this is the Worst & most Reprehensible miscarriage of “Justice” I’ve ever encountered—and that covers a lot of rotten things, including a few close calls of my own. Which might easily have gone the other way if not for the help of some hammerhead Lawyers who came to my aid when I was in desperate trouble. (See Songs of the Doomed, Summit Books, 1990.)

  I learned a lot about Karma in those moments, and that is what got me into the Lisl Auman case, and that is why I will stay in it until this brutal Wrong is Righted.… That is also why the first contribution to the Lisl Auman Defense Fund came from Gerald Lefcourt of New York, current President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “This is not going to be easy,” he said with a wry smile. “But what the hell—count me in.”

  Indeed. It is no small trick to get a “Convicted cop-killer” out of prison—but it will be a little easier in this case because Lisl no more killed a cop than I did. She was handcuffed in the back seat of a Denver Police car when the cop was murdered in cold blood by a vicious skinhead who then shot himself in the head & left the DA with nobody to punish for the murder—except Lisl, who didn’t even know the freak who pulled the trigger.

  It is a long story & I can’t explain it all now. But you can find it on the Web at Lisl.com.

  And now back to Sports.

  Hot damn, the Extreme Football League kicked off this week & drew a staggering 10.3 overnight Nielsen rating for NBC. It was a big hit with the teenage Nazi crowd, but the NFL tried to ignore it. Nobody called it Football, but so what?

  It was good to see Jesse Ventura back on TV. I have great affection for Jesse and I wish him well in anything he does.… Which means, I guess, that I’m a charter XFL fan.

  Why not? The first game on Saturday night was not bad. The game itself sucked, but it was definitely good TV. The Gov’s commentary (with the play of Keith Elias) was the best thing about the New York–Las Vegas game, a pitiful whipping of the helpless NY/NJ Hitmen by the hometown Outlaws that should have been a lot worse than the 19–0 final score.… The cheerleaders were the stars of this game: they were not at all the lewd & sluttish bimbos that we were led to expect, almost promised, by NBC & the League. No. The Lewdness level varied from team to team, but in the main they were Pretty girls, Friendly girls, Sexy girls, but no lewder than the Dallas Cowboy girls or the Laker girls—at least not for now, but this is a freewheeling League, for sure, and big changes can be made very quickly. If the TV ratings start looking weak, the Lewdness level will be the first thing to change—if only because it will be a lot easier to hire naked cheerleaders than to go out & find better players.

  They might Play for cheap in the XFL, but they won’t play Naked. That would make the game insanely dangerous & ugly. The XFL girls, however, could turn the sidelines into a continuous orgy weirder than anything on the stage at the infamous O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, “the Carnegie Hall of Public Sex in America.”

  The Brutality level in the two Saturday night games was no worse than in any hard-hitting NFL game—but that too could change if the ratings drop. But I doubt that will happen. We are stuck with this fraud for a while. But it is a lot better than being in Prison.

  —February 5, 2001

  Mad Cow Disease Comes to the NBA

  February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned. It is a good time for building fires, reading books, watching movies, and cranking up random sex orgies with the neighbors.

  Not even pigs will come out of their pens in February. They would rather stay inside & wallow around in their own excrement than venture out in the bitter cold for a breath of fresh air.… The human animal needs a Good Reason to get out of bed on a wretched morning in February. Nothing is moving out there on the icy streets except drunk drivers, desperate criminals, & people who don’t have the imagination to call in sick for work. Hell, there are plenty of good reasons to wake up sick this time of year: the flu, Ague Fever, shin splints, Chicken pox, projectile vomiting, Rickets—even Black Hairy Tongue Disease, which is extremely contagious.

  It is not enough to be merely in real pain or suffering from a Nervous Breakdown. That is not Contagious, and Contagious is what you need. It has to be something that even the Boss might catch & die from. Mad Cow Disease is big in the news right now, and people are deathly afraid of it. I have seen people go rigid with Fear at the sight of a brain-damaged cow with wild eyes staggering crazily around in circles with its legs caving in and its spine seizing up & its hooves lashing out in the air.

  “Yes sir,” I like to say to them, “and it’s spreading to Humans now. One wrong hamburger is all it takes. There’s no cure, and it spreads like wildfire. You can kill five or six people just by talking to them.”

  You won’t have to worry about having to show up for work, once they hear you saying you have Mad Cow disease. It’s a guaranteed excuse for not showing up at Work or anywhere else. And nobody is going to come around checking on you, either. Never in hell. You will be lucky if your neighbors don’t nail your doors shut and burn your house down.

  Luckily, I am not afflicted with Mad Cow—or any of the others, either, as far as I know. Knock on wood for that, eh? You bet. I am as healthy as I need to be, these days. But I am rarely without access to my trusty Pathologies text. It is a bulky book, very awkward to carry around, but I can open it to just about any page & find three good reasons for Not doing anything at all. Check it out.

  I could not attend the XFL game in New Jersey last weekend, for instance, because I have better sense than to fly 2,000 miles in an airtight aluminum tube full of circulating germs, viruses, & deadly killer parasites from every country in the world. Even the pilots are Sick in most planes, and at least One passenger will be coughing up Ebola spittle or contaminating the Lavatories with some kind of lice & microscopic vermin. Only a fool would run that kind of risk for a stupid little football game.

  Or a stupid Big basketball game, for that matter. God only
knows what people who went to the NBA All-Star game in DC came down with.… The game itself was enough to make most people sick, and never mind that the final score was close. It was brazenly Fake basketball, far more bogus than anything the XFL put on TV.… At least the XFL players were making an honest effort on every play, and that is a hell of a lot more than can be said of the dismal NBA spectacle. For three Long quarters it was a goof-off mockery of itself. Only the final nine minutes were worth watching (only the last three, really), but by that time I had long since switched away to watch the news & 60 Minutes.

  The Alan Iverson Show is not going to be enough to save the NBA from sinking out of sight in the TV ratings—not unless the doomed league can coax more than Nine minutes a game out of their insanely overpaid “stars.” The fan base will continue to shrink, as more & more fans catch on to the morbid “fact” that the last nine minutes of Any NBA game are the only part of it worth watching.… Once the advertisers catch on, they will flee the scene like rats down a pipe into darkness. Not even the sleazemongers at Fox will pay big money to televise a dull & diminished NBA product.

  I am more than just a Serious basketball fan. I am a lifelong Addict. I was addicted from birth, in fact, because I was born in Kentucky and I learned, early on, that Habitual Domination was a natural way of life. The first time I managed to pick up a basketball, I knew I was destined to lead the University of Kentucky to another National championship.… Even now, so many years later, I still believe Kentucky will go undefeated in March & win everything.

  But that is another story, and we will save it for later. Meanwhile, I will be watching the ACC, Pac-10, and the SEC. That is where the basketball action is happening now—not in the NBA, where not much will happen until the Play-offs start in late April.