Unsolicited Reflections of Jake Busey

Gary Busey died today.*

*(NO, HE DID NOT. I just figured that would be more of a "grabber" opening for a post about that very much (?) alive man's offspring than the actual truth that a twitpic made me think of said spawn.)

Somewhere between ten and two hundred years ago, I lived out in Santa Monica (California...near the ocean). A stone's throw (literally--my roommates and I even had a girl do it one time) from my apartment stood a "Vons" grocery store on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Euclid Avenue that I visited regularly. One sunny summer afternoon, I found myself walking into that Vons at the very same moment that a gentleman and his lady-friend were walking out. I stepped aside to let them pass...at which point I all but shit my pants:

That "gentleman" was no gentleman! He was the guy who had tried to kill my beloved Michael J. Fox (and, slightly more recently, my appreciated Jodie Foster)!

But I let him go, anyway, 'cause he was super-scary.


Wonder what he's up to these days.

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If Two Jokes Fall on a Utah Rec Center, Do They Make Us Laugh?

The middling hook of Newsweek's article on the recent, one-night-only Vanilla Ice/MC Hammer concert in Utah is the author's framing of obvious questions--why would MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice put on a show together? why in Utah? why would anyone pay to see it?--as philosophical mind-benders. This approach was destined to be briefly amusing yet entirely forgettable, much like the subject matter...were it not for the staggering irony (one lost on reporter Joshua Alston and his employer) that the article's mere existence creates a host of quandaries so layered as to confuse even Confucius:

If you've been lame for nearly two decades before Newsweek gets around to calling you lame, does that not make your lameness lame and therefore yourself less lame?

Does Joshua Alston truly believe that a second-grader playing a stalk of broccoli is a useful parallel in understanding Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer's behaviors, or was his misstep born of a deep resentment about a vividly specific incident from his childhood? (Or does he just really like broccoli?)

How could not one of the concertgoers documented have made it clear that he or she was enjoying the event ironically? Did Alston deliberately ignore those people (perhaps due to his broccoli-based hangup), or do they not exist? And if they do not exist...do I not exist?

Please Hammer don't hurt my brain anymore. I need it to hold my hair, which I like to feel the breeze in while driving around in my Mustang convertible.

Old Long Since

The decidedly unhip, nostalgia-fueled soft rocker Dan Fogelberg has depressed us one last time not only by dying on Sunday at the age of 56, three years after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, but also by doing so right around the time of year as the story in his most famous song--"Same Old Lang Syne"--takes place.

Completing the hat trick, now the world is left with only Kenny G to perform the tune.