Ahhhhh, sweet celebrity...

This is a pretty good picture of Randy Travis, the country western superstar - he looks a little sinister, but it is not a bad photograph. Looks like hi-def. The bad news is that it is a mugshot; the good news is that it appears as if police departments are beginning to upgrade their photographic equipment. This mugshot is from February, when Randy Travis was arrested for sitting in his car in a parking lot with an open bottle of wine on the seat. He reportedly smelled of alcohol.

Rather benign and probably quickly forgotten. Mistakes happen, after all, so no harm, no foul.

That changed earlier this week when Randy Travis was arrested again for drunk driving. Ironically, in neither instance was Travis actually pulled over while driving drunk. The first time, he was simply sitting in his car. This week, however, things got a bit more exciting.

A call was placed to 911 in Grayson County, Texas by a motorist shortly after 11pm Tuesday night, informing law enforcement that a man was lying in the road, either injured or asleep. The caller also politely informed the police dispatcher that the man appeared to be "shirtless". "Shirtless" turned out to be "buck-naked" and the man lying in the road turned out to be Randy Travis, who was inebriated and had ran his car into several construction barricades in the road and subsequently climbed out of the wrecked vehicle and lay down on the pavement for a little nap.

When rousted, Travis, who apparently once again smelled strongly of alcohol, threatened to shoot the policemen and was summarily transported to jail, where he was lent a shirt and again photographed for legal posterity. As facts began to trickle in, it was discovered that Travis had also wandered into a local convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes. Also buck-naked. When asked how he was going to pay for the butts, since he was holding no money in his hands and had no pockets, Travis left the store, sans smokes.

He was released the next day in a blue paper suit supplied by the county, which should one day be on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame, along with George Jones' lawnmower and Jake Owen's sombrero.

Of course, this is not the first time a celebrity has been arrested for driving drunk. In fact, the one and only Rick Springfield was popped last year for speeding drunk through Malibu in his vintage Corvette. I don't know about you, but if I'm driving through Malibu in a vintage Corvette, I'm going to do it fast... Unfortunately, he was also inebriated. I'm nearly certain that Rick Springfield was less upset by the arrest than by being referred to as a "one-hit wonder" in every article written about the incident. Reporters can be cruel.

Famously, Nick Nolte was pulled over along the same stretch of freeway and had this legendary photograph taken by police. Also drunk.

   

Glen Campbell had a similarly disheveled photo taken several years back and chose to growl at the camera when asked to smile. Then again, Campbell has always been a maverick. Especially when drunk.

The first thought that always comes to mind when these incidents crop up is "why in the hell are these folks driving?" These are not middle-class construction workers having a couple too many after work; we're talking about rich celebrities who should by all rights be able to afford a cab. Or a towncar, or a limousine to drive them around, naked or clothed, when they want to get their drink on.

I think that celebrities probably get away with lots of stuff, but driving drunk is where the powers that be draw the line. If Rick Springfield had been driving through Malibu in the middle of the night with the top down in his vintage 'Vette, blasting "Don't Talk to Strangers" at full volume, he could have probably gotten away with a stern warning and a splashy autograph written on the back of the officer's ticket-book. Nolte might have growled his way out of arrest if he hadn't been drunk and grooving out of his mind on Ecstasy. Glen Campbell should have just had a driver. Period - look at that angry face - FIRE - BAAAAD!

Of course, back in the old days Frank Sinatra could get away with anything - he was the "Chairman of the Board" and leader of the Rat Pack. He owned Vegas - if he wanted to burn Sin City to the ground, the Mayor would have probably handed him a match. However, pre-Rat Pack, back when he was just a young, pencil-thin crooner, Frank was hauled in to the poky for seducing to his bed a young lady with far-fetched promises of marriage. But at least he wasn't driving drunk...

Charges were dropped when it was learned the young lady was already married.

Those were the days...

Take Me Out To The Ballgame...

As we all know, because we've been told so for decades, there is more than one way to skin a cat. On a side note, I think this is one of the creepiest axioms ever. As true as this statement may be, there is a part of me that thinks the thought might be better served with a suggestion that is a little less violent and anti-pet. For instance, "there is more than one way to plow a field", or "pick a pocket", or "iron a dress shirt" or "dispose of the decomposing body of the Korean hooker in your basement, even though it was all an accident and a big misunderstanding, it might be safer to get it out of the house..." would all be less gruesome than the image of skinning the house-kitty. Except maybe the hooker-thing - that's also pretty disturbing, but after all, you barely knew her and what right did she have to argue about fees for what you considered to be a rather sub-average service?

But this is not why I'm writing.

I had tickets to the ballgame yesterday, which is always a pleasant way to spend a summer evening. The fact that the tickets were free, the seats premium and the company superb were simply positive reinforcement for the activity. And as it turns out, we were in prime foul-ball territory - a section behind home-plate - and as the balls came rocketing back and careening off the stadia above, I couldn't help but notice how many folks were still busy risking life and limb texting on their phones instead of being alert for the incoming missiles.

The ballpark should probably be another one of those places where my idea for the cellphone jamming device would likely come in handy. As with automobiles, grocery lines, restaurants and movie theaters, I am of the firm belief that there is really nothing that can't wait until you get back outside. Although all the photos of everyone holding their plastic cups drunkenly aloft with the beautiful expanse of green field in the background are cute and sometimes provoke a wistful sigh, I could probably live without them, or at least wait until you got home to download them from your telephone-less digital camera. Ah, when I am King...

But I digress.

I debated before the game about how I was going to get to the stadium. I narrowed it down to three choices:

1) I could drive downtown. Given that temperatures were in the low-100's, my car has no air-conditioning and parking would cost me ten dollars, plus rehydration fees, this option was quickly nixed. Driving to the game under such circumstances would only put me in a foul mood and elevate my core temperature to unacceptable levels, neither of which is suitable for optimum viewing pleasure.

2) I could drive the three miles to the light rail station and park there and take the train downtown to the ballpark. Though the temperature would still be over a hundred, the drive would be short and it would save me the trouble of waiting for buses as well as trains. Probably the most convenient manner with which to go.

3) I could walk across the street, catch the bus to the train and reverse the process on the way home. Likely the simplest option and the one that would provide me the maximum air-conditioned riding.

I ended up choosing a sort of hybrid variation of option #2 and option #3. I had Logan (daughter) drive me to the train and would catch the bus home. Sounded simple and easy enough to me. I was on my way. The wait at the train station was relatively short, but I run a little warm - my doctor says I should lose a couple of pounds, and I in turn have told him he should buy some new frames and it has since become a ticklish standoff - and I was hot and sweaty when I got on the train that my companion was already aboard.

We got to the stadium early enough to watch rookie pitcher Trevor Bauer warm up, doing Ninja-stretches, working with some kind of flexible, pointless spear and throwing the baseball from one outfield foul-pole to the other, which doesn't sound like much until you see it in person and realize that even on a bicycle it would probably take me ten minutes and two rest stops to get from pole to pole.

The game began with Bauer striking out the side - Gardner set the over/under at 8 strikeouts. I took the over, proclaiming that 10 strikeouts was within reach. After all, the kid was already a third of the way there and looked unstoppable. "We could be on hand to witness a no-hitter, or dare I say it - a perfect game!" I gushed. I was giddy. The next inning, Bauer was tagged for two runs and four or five more the next inning - I lost count. He had a total of four strikeouts when he was pulled in the third and I was once again inevitably bushwhacked by my own exuberance, whimsy and lack of plain common sense.

In the fifth inning, a lady came to sit in the mostly-empty row behind us. She was wearing a scruffy-looking Padres tee-shirt and shouted out support for her team, which was by now soundly drubbing the hometown boys. When Justin Upton struck out with the bases loaded, she went nuts, shrieking and screaming like the preacher at a backwoods Baptist Snake-Handling service. We turned back to give her stink-eye and I blurted out, "JESUS, LADY - WHERE DID YOU COME FROM? (in all fairness, she had just arrived, so this was not a reference to any snake-handling in her past) YOU'VE GOT AN EIGHT RUN LEAD, FOR CHRISSAKES - CALM DOWN!" She said, "The pitcher's my BOY!" Gardner snarled, "Yeah, yeah, Upton's my boy, too..." "NO," She continued, her voice going higher as she tried to explain. "HE CAME FROM MY LOINS!!!"

Once we learned that the opposing pitcher was indeed her son, we mumbled reluctant apologies and after the following pitch was jacked out of the ballpark on her boy with the bases loaded, suddenly trimming the eight-run lead in half, we spent the next inning and a half in an uncomfortable silence, until she slinked quietly away. I have always found irony to be an untrustworthy bedfellow.

After a couple of scuffling errors and with the game most likely out of reach, we made our way to the exit and the train. We observed a kid by the light rail stop playing electric guitar and singing into a cute little microphone. He turned out to be amazing and when he broke into "Jesse's Girl", his reputation was cemented in my mind. Not enough to give him a tip, mind you, but watching him take handfuls of 1's, 5's and 10's from his tip jar and stuff them into his little backpack every five minutes, I figured the two-bits I was going to toss in the jar was not going to be that helpful when it came to paying for his orthodontia, or Korean hooker, or whatever he was going to use his rucksack of nontaxable income on.

The train was crowded and several passengers insisted on bringing their bicycles aboard with them, further crowding the bystanders. I was forced to turn my body in such a manner that I am certain I resembled a portly Baryshnikov in mid-pirouette to avoid taking a pedal to the onions at every lurch of the train.

I was dropped off at the train station of my choosing, bidding Gardner adieu and saw my bus driving into the distance. "Curses," I muttered and sat on a bench to sweat. I find it less miserable to sit when I sweat. I waited and sweated for a half-hour, when the next bus arrived. "You stop at McKellips and Rural, right?" I asked. "No sir," the driver said, pleasantly. I looked at the number of the bus again to verify I hadn't read it wrong. "The 72 runs up and down Scottsdale Road, right?" He shook his head, gamely. "Not after ten..." I realized that the bus I had missed a half-hour earlier might have been my last hope. "Useful information, that," I said. He turned to me and explained, "There is one more stop of the Earth at the transportation center that will take you there, providing you get there on time..."

I stared at him, puzzled. "Wait... Stop of the earth? What?..." Was he suggesting that there was some sort of magical portal at the "transportation center" that was going to somehow halt the movement of our planet and transport me to the location of my choice?

The bus driver explained. "The 'Earth' is a free shuttle that runs from the Tempe Transportation Center - there is one more shuttle that will be leaving in a few minutes. It stops at McKellips and Rural - if you stop prattling on, get aboard and we can get this bus moving, I might be able to get you there on time..."

I shot him a rakish grin and swung aboard, suddenly Errol Flynn. "That's a good man - onward!" I paid my fee and pointed out the window. "Ahoy - get me to the Earth!"

Forty minutes later, after driving around side streets on a free shuttle full of drunken, stinky loud people, I was dropped unceremoniously at my stop, all the Errol Flynn soundly slapped out of me by the shuttle ride. I walked into a dark house, to a kid on a computer. I gave a half-hearted account of my ride to little or no interest or response. So I went to my room, to be alone with my thoughts. And this keyboard. And an hour of getting lost in a Dick Van Dyke YouTube vortex from which I was lucky to emerge alive.

All in all, a very good night.

Too Far, Jerry - Two Years In: A Hearty Thank You!

After some diligent research, it has been determined that my blog "Too Far, Jerry" has reached its two-year anniversary. I will have a snort of cheap brandy to celebrate the occasion and perhaps tip some stuff over at an outdoor cafe, then intimidate the flamboyant waiter before I sprint nimbly into the passing crowd. That's how I usually celebrate important occasions and this shall be treated no differently.

I wrote my first blog on April 7, 2010 and it was a simple, but entertaining summary of a podcast that I had recorded with Michael Lyon. The podcast has since gone the way of the dodo-bird, the Ford Edsel and Goodwill Toward Man, yet the blog has gone on. And on. While many of the early blogs are no longer available here, the first year and a half of the thing has been published in a volume entitled "When I Am King", published at LULU.com http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/jeraldford. I made videos of some of the early blogs http://www.youtube.com/user/TooFarJerry and intend on making some even better video versions of some of the more entertaining pieces. Having some 500 of them at my disposal now, I am also considering a live presentation of the things, with a slide-show presentation showcasing some of the pictures and such that I have used in the blog, plus many flattering pictures of Raquel Welch to keep everyone awake. Look forward to these performances at theaters, Elk-Lodges, arenas, outdoor festivals, subway stops and strips clubs in your area.

You're welcome.

Looking back at some of the topics I have addressed, I am amazed at all the stuff I have forgotten. There is an entire series of entries detailing my plans to develop a Benjamin Button Traveling Circus, with infants who smoke and drink, several listing my various fears and paranoia and many commenting on news of the day. There are recurring themes (Raquel Welch, my irrational fear of circus clowns and the various doomsday predictions that have become commonplace) and homages to some of my favorite celebrities, such as Jerry Lewis, Rick Springfield, Buster Keaton, Wilt Chamberlain and Jack Bauer.

Buster Keaton - The original planker.



I have written of my various maladies, my love of sports and the changes I would make to benefit the earth and the surrounding universe should I be elected King. I have also been able to run excerpts from my books, though I have not witnessed any noticeable spikes in sales - perhaps there is a lesson here. Through all this, there have been nearly 6000 unique views from 58 different countries, Croatia being the most recent, Saint Kitts and Nevis seeming the most cozy. I know 6000 views is not much for some of the celebrity bloggers and the big shots who have their finger on the pulse of world-wide topicanary (no names mentioned, Yoko Ono), but it seems like a heck of a lot for a grumpy simpleton sitting in Phoenix, waiting for another summer to come and bake his brain just that much more... And I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has seen fit to click on the blog and give it a read. I hope it's made you laugh. If it's done so even a single time, then I have done my job.

"When I Am King - Reading for the Crapper"

Thanks for reading!

Rick Friggin' Springfield

Friday, September 03, 2010
Rick Friggin' Springfield
Current mood: Animated
Category: Blogging

I first became aware of Rick Springfield like most of the young adults in the mid-1980s – via the television screen in the persona of Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital and through his music video and top-selling single “Jesse’sGirl”. And I dismissed him as a pretty boy-teen idol, as did most young men my age. Especially those of us who were jealous of his good looks, singing talent and ability to strum the living shit out of an electric guitar. I will also grant that no one rocked the Don Johnson cream-colored leisure jacket with its sleeves jacked up to the elbows like Rick – god knows we tried. I looked like a third-rate Phil Collins when I made the effort.

I sang “I’ve Done Everything For You” with The Hired Help throughout most of the eighties, not even realizing that it was written by Sammy Hagar and not Rick Springfield, who had taken it to the top of the charts. I once seduced a young maiden by luring her back to my apartment to listen to “What Kind of Fool Am I” and later drove to Tucson in my friend Dewey’s brand new Toyota pickup truck, with its state of the art sound system and the stern warning to “bring some Kotex pads to put on your shoulders for when your ears start bleeding…” listening to “Calling All Girls” six hundred times – rewinding the cassette to the back to the start over and over again, until we arrived - ears ringing, at our hotel.

Gradually, Rick Springfield faded from the public eye, as I in turn grew older and put whatever memories I might have had of the singer into the dusty, shady trunk of my mind where my thoughts retired to die. My daughters were born in the early 90s and in those days, I often made “mix-tapes” to listen to the car in the cassette player. I usually included “Jesse’s Girl”, “Calling All Girls” (out of a grinning respect for Dewey) and “State of the Heart” from Springfield’s “Tao” album. Not a big chart success, “State of the Heart” was a huuuuuuge success in the Ford-Family Caravan. The twins in their car seats would stare ahead as if blinded by science when the spooky intro began. “It’s juuust a staaate of the heart… Waiting here for…youuu… in the state I’m in…” Then the music would begin and they would bob their little heads to the beat the whole way through. Always a crowd favorite.

I finally got to see Rick Springfield perform live in Chicago at a place called “Joe’s”, in the mid-1990s, with my friend Steve Waste near the place where Dillenger got shot down by G-Men in the thirties. It was shortly after the release of his CD, “Karma”. It was a small club and Rick rocked the place as if it were a 60,000 seat arena. I sweated and sang along with every song, including the new stuff, which I had faithfully committed to memory. It’s not that I was adoring or anything, I simply appreciated the music. Seriously. A younger girl stood next to me and I did my best to explain the songs and their history to her and she bobbed her head along and eventually asked me if she could lay her head on my shoulder. “Sure,” I said. It was no big deal to me – I was having a fan-tas-tic time. After the show, Steve-O asked me if I had gotten the young lady’s number. “No…” I said, smiling at him dumbly. “She was all over you, man,” he told me, shaking his head. I looked around for her and she was nowhere to be found. I have kicked myself firmly in the ass ever since. I have never had a strong radar when it came to the ladies coming on to me – it’s a curse.

I moved to Phoenix and some years later and Springfield eventually came to town and played at the Celebrity Theater. I talked Taggart into going and we turned out to be the only two fellows in the entire venue that weren’t accompanied by a gal who had dragged them to the show. I sang along like a champion to every song and Taggart ran back and forth bringing us fresh rounds of beer. We each had our priorities. There were two young ladies that sat next to us the entire time and appreciated my enthusiasm. “I took pictures,” one of them told me. “You want me to e-mail you copies?” “No,” I said, smiling and trying to finish the last of my beer before we made our way out of the theater. “I’ll be happy to,” she insisted. “No thanks,” I said. “No one will think you’re gay,” she said. “Well, good,” I said. “Because I’M NOT…” She turned away as if I had swatted her in the mouth with a Brill-o pad and I thought for a moment about how it looked – Taggart and I being there like that.

“You think we look gay?” I asked him as the venue emptied. “Oh, fuck yeah,” he nodded, finishing his beer.

Since then I have not attended a Rick Springfield concert, but I have learned that he is coming – soon – to the Talking Stick Casino in Scottsdale. I think I’m going to go… I texted my daughters to rub it in and it appears that he is giving a show nearby to where they live as well. I have offered to pay half of their admittance fee, leaving it to the 2nd ex-Mrs. Ford to foot the rest of the bill, in order that they should attend. I have decided that it is worth the price of admission simply to allow my children to witness the man in concert. They may not get the opportunity to see McCartney, but they need to see where Fallout Boy and the rest get their moves. I will enjoy going to Talking Stick to take in the show. If I look gay, so be it. At least I’ll know all the words.

For Jerry's video blog, go to: http://www.youtube.com/user/TooFarJerry#p/f