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You know what's crazy? I'll tell you what's crazy.™
How a story is born.
I get a simple text Wednesday morning.
"Not much over night. Just an unwanted visitor at Kenny Chesney's. That's about it."
Bada Bing. Bada Boom!
It may not be much to the source, but I've been doing this a while.
I know the phrase: unwanted visitor and Kenny Chesney is going to blow up like Kirstie Alley in a donut factory.
Armed with a text message, my next call is to the sheriff's department. Sources there tell me they don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
I've been down this road before. Sometimes you get ahead of the story. I quickly deduce that the midnight shift handled this misdemeanor call. That means the paperwork hasn't made it to the power brokers yet. It's a misdemeanor. It wouldn't normally raise an eye brow in a grizzled law man's life, but this day will be a little different.
I go into the newsroom and see my boss.
"A woman was arrested at Kenny Chesney's house this morning. She was out near his pool drinking wine," I say non chalantly.
The boss laughs, blurting out. "That's gonna go national."
He was right.
within the hour I'm interviewing a spokesman for the Sheriff's Department.
He plays it pretty close to the vest, essentially reading me the arrest affadavits. But he does say some interesting, that the woman believed she was in a relationship with the country music super star.
The charges are nothing. They are a mosquitoe biting a rhinoceros. Public Intoxication and Criminal Tresspassing. Both are misdemeanors.
But a misdemeanor at Kenny Chesney's house is gonna be news. It's Clint Eastwood yelling "Hey kids get off my lawn."
I go to the neighborhood where Chesney lives. The sub division is full of huge homes. It's the American Dream on steroids. I drive up and up and up. The vista is delightful. Every lawn neatly manicured, every house just right.
I go as far as I can and look into the clouds, above the rainbow, where the gold is spun by fairies and there I see the Chesney compound.
It is a palatial estate looking down on the land of milk and honey.
The singer's home is high on a hill, up a driveway a 1000 feet long. It presides majestically over the pastoral hills of Williamson County like Mount Olympus presided over Greece.
The Chesney estate makes these 5,000 square foot homes seem like double wides.
I shoot the electronic gate near the cul-de-sac. A woman in sweat pants comes out and politely asks me what the hell i'm doing. I tell her about the intrusion. She seems horrified.
According to my sources, the 31 year old intruder tells law men she went to Knoxville to visit with Kenny Chesney's family. When she doesn't make contact there, she reportedly boards a greyhound bus and travels to Music City. She tells deputies she got a limo at the bus station to take her to the Chesney gate. Once there she made her way up the side of shangrila to the rear of the mansion to the pool area.
Somewhere along the way she trips an alarm and authorities find her in a bathroom with a couple of bottles of wine.
It's the usual story of girl loves boy who isn't home and breaks into his mansion to get drunk and smoke some Marlboros.
The woman is reportedly drunk, and possibly delusional telling officers she is in a relationship with Kenny Chesney.
Not in this lifetime honey.
The country music star is not home. His p.r. firm will later tell me that he doesn't know who she is.
The woman is in jail under a 1,000 bond. That means she only needs about $135 dollars to get out. Apparently she doesn't have it, so she stews in the grey bar hotel.
I've covered a lot of crime stories. I don't think I ever met a perp who didn't have $135 dollars to post bond.
What the hell does that tell ya?
After my story airs, it goes viral. It is picked up by the AP and many other media outlets. That's satisfying.
The woman's brother reportedly sees the story wherever the hell he lives and calls the station. he reportedly says his sister has spent some time in a mental institution and she may actually believe she is romantically linked to Kenny Chesney.
Makes you wonder what Brad Pitt was doing on the social calendar of her dreams.
The story picks up steam by Thursday and answers the age old question; what celebrity gossip won't people inhale like crack?
I laugh out loud knowing that the whole damn snow ball starts with a simple text from a well placed source.
And that my friends is how the news baby is birthed.
And that is crazy.
You know what's crazy? I'll tell you what's crazy.
The Febreze Experiment.
You know Febreze, that air freshener stuff that takes turkey poop and makes it smell like a Bed Bath and Beyond candle.
So I'm watching this commercial and quite literally it made my jaw drop.
After 10 seconds I'm sucked in. It's like a reality game show. It's survivor meets the Jersey Shore.
After 20 seconds, I can't decide if it's brilliant advertising or just urban warfare crazy.
After 30 seconds I can't tell if it is human abuse or the perfect product pitch.
The spot opens with the giddy announcer saying:
"We asked real people if they would help us with an experiment for Febreze Fabric Softener."
They show real people on an urban street signing authorization agreements and then getting blind folded.
The shot cuts to a warehouse. It's dark and foreboding. It's like a rusty dumpster filled with soiled diapers from a thousand babies suckling at the breast of pestilence.
There is a tattered couch in the middle of the room. On cue, a pack of wild dogs roams by. They snarl and look to hump one another, but decide to wait for a cleaner environment.
The set looks like a place where transients come to relieve themselves and spend special quality time with forty ounce beers and crack.
While something like a jackal lifts its leg to urinate on a broken coffee table, the crew sprays the product on the couch and nearby cushions.
The announcer tells the blindfolded people to "relax and take a deep breath."
They cut to a montage of the contestants holding the moldy cushions to their noses.
The happy urbanites breathe in deeply, inhaling all the molecules of urine and dog fornification that has saturated into the fibers of that couch.
Then the masking power of Febreze does what it does. Somehow it has adhered to the molecular structure of the stench and dog feces and effectively diminished the noxious odor that lurks within.
"What do you smell?" the announcer asks as a cushion full of HOBO DNA is released into the air.
Its clean," one blind folded woman says.
"Something smells really fresh," another test subject says.
Others chime in "It's like children's blankets"
"It smells like home, and something beachy."
One jowely faced woman blurts out "It smells like Lilac!"
Yeah, If Lilac can be urinated out out of a werewolf in a cess pool.
Then the voice commands two women sitting on the couch full of excrement and baked-in perspiration; "take your blind folds off!"
The women take their masks off as a heard of wildebeest creatures saunter into the room.
The women are perplexed, even horrified as they lean forward, their hair, filled with static electricity.
They are looking around as if the camera crew has abandoned them in this heroine shooting gallery of filth.
The announcer pipes in; Febreze up to two times the odor elimination so you can breathe easily again, guaranteed.
It is real?
The small text says real people, not actors. there is no text explaining the mutant creatures that periodically stroll in and excrete toxins onto the floor.
All in all, I like the commercial's aggressive in your face delivery. It's like gorilla marketing where they make real people sit in some bum's vomit while they sniff a couch where a coyote just gave birth in a quagmire of liquids that nobody would want to smell up close.
And that is the commercial. It's a 30 second mixed martial arts combat film.
I don't usually say this, but I kind of want to go out and buy me some Febreze.
Apparently it is the air freshener recommended by four out of five crazy people and a hobo making love inside a dumpster.
and that is crazy.
You know what's crazy? I'll tell you what's crazy.™
TAXES.
I'm sitting here in a paper pile of hell created by taxes.
Words like dividend income and S corporation and IRA contributions fill my brain. WTF?
My eyes are flying whirly gigs of confusion.
I'm staring at numbers and W-2's.
I hate this time of year. It's a tax man's gauntlet. They take dollars out of my check every two weeks. Why do I have to go through all this again? Why must they take more? Does it matter how many dependents I have and how much mortgage income I paid and whether I gave my couch to charity?
Yes, yes and yes.
I hate it. Taxes suck. Paying the government more money is like rubbing a potato peeler over my sun burned ass. It's like the grim reaper of death, blowing smoke rings in my face and then saying; "so what you gonna do about it punk?"
The answer to that is not much. Which is why tax season is a frightening time for the average citizen. We're just trying to keep our jobs and make our bosses happy and then, April 15th arrives like a hockey mask wearing lunatic at the lake.
The only way to deal with Uncle Sam is to learn his tax language, and since I only know bus boy Spanish, that means I have to turn my financial Holy Grail over to the experts, the CPA's, who spend a lifetime learning to talk the talk and decipher the code.
Don't get me wrong. I love my tax guys. I just wish I didn't need them to compute how much I make and what I am worth and what i owe.
You shouldn't need a PHD to write your uncle a check. But that's what it takes now-a-days.
That's why your CPA is a necessary evil. These are humans who see the world differently than you and me. Their world is so punctilious, so structured, so black and white.
You wouldn't pull your own tooth would you? That's why you need a good tax accountant.
My CPA's are human calculators, who like Rain Man, see numbers in their sleep and savings while they use the John. These boys are working an angle brushing their teeth and demanding more documents of proof while they speed down the Diamond lane on I-5.
I'm just saying, this time of year sucks. I hate the numbers and the stress and the worry. Haven't I paid enough? Really, I owe someone more? For what?
So say a little thank you to your CPA this spring. And maybe flip the tax man the bird this April 15th.
And now back to line 1. wages, tips other compensation, not to be confused with line 2 federal income tax withheld.
Ahhhh.
And that is crazy.
You know what's crazy? I'll tell you what's crazy.™
Teenagers.
They are little combustion engines of adolescent angst.
Teenagers are hormonal H-bombs venting atomic disgust at anything and everything.
can you say; Vituperative?
You don't know anything dad. You are old, you don't understand.
Oh I understand all right.
I understand you kids are crazy.
Katie Perry and Maroon 5 and MTV's Jersey Shore.
This is the new religion for this new millennium wave of angry little people.
If you are over 25 you are an idiot who doesn't understand and couldn't possibly know.
What is it that goes on inside the teenage skull that transforms perfectly normal children into raving lunatics of moody frustration?
I remember when we could pose them on a pony.
Now they won't even look at the camera and they curse at you for daring to take their picture. They act like some Amish carpenter whose soul I am trying to steal.
Currently, I am looking into the chaotic eyes of a meltdown that begins without warning. It is raging, and brooding and it makes no sense. It is a rogue wave that emerges on a normal sea. Suddenly, the wave is 15 feet tall, and it is barreling down my couch, preparing to crush and kill all in its way.
All I asked was; "did you brush your teeth?"
ZOWIE.
You'd think I asked Joan Rivers how many plastic surgeries she had.
Stomping and huffing and throwing of the cell phone. It's an orchestrated funk that is growing old quickly.
I am looking for a huge UPS crate so I can ship this recalcitrant, dyspeptic teen to Timbuktu. I'll put a return to sender label on the box with special instructions: Return when irrational tantrums have subsided.
It could be a while. This unrequited anger ball has all the staying power of Mt Vesuvius.
Since putting a kid in a crate is probably a DCS violation, I guess like my parents and their parents before them, I will just have to grin and bear it. But I don't like it. I bet they didn't like it either.
Battle lines are drawn. Only time will tell.
Now go brush your F***ing teeth.
And that is crazy.
You know what's crazy? I'll tell you what's crazy.
Power Ball.
$2 dollars buys one ticket and a dream.
Match all 6 numbers and the pay off is 300 million dollars. That's the kind of money Mark Zuckerburg keeps on the night stand. But it's the kind of money that would make you and me stupid drunk on life.
I bought my ticket Saturday afternoon. I put it in my wallet. I know that mathematically I have a 70-million in one chance of winning. Secretly I know there is a better chance of the Easter Bunny changing my oil at Jiffy Lube. Basically I know that there's a better chance of doing body shots off Justin Beeber's chest, than there is of winning.
Well at least the school kids benefit from my addiction, right.
Man I love that moment, when the clerk takes my 2 dollars and pushes the magic power ball button on the machine.
It's like that first shot of tequila South of the Border. It just speaks to me
I love the sound of the paper printing - and the smell of the new ink. It's the smell of money.
I love the computer generated randomness that spits and spews out a yellow and black piece of paper.
I like to look at it for a moment, and try and memorize the Powerball number. The Powerball number is the key to unlocking the riches of the universe. In my case the number is 5. I think about 5 for a moment. 5 is a good Powerball number. It is the number of Joe Dimaggio and Donovan McNabb and it represents how many fingers I have on one hand. Yeah 5 will do.
But one powerball number won't do it alone. You need to match 6 numbers. Match them all and life changes in a moment. Match all 6 and people will bow down to you.
5 - 19- 26- 3- 33 -05
Hmmm. 2 fives. One at the beginning of the ticket and one at the end. That is odd and represents something special in my mind. It's quirky. It will make a nice story to tell the gathered press while I hold my big ass check and talk about what I was thinking when I first saw my numbers revealed.
I use to play birthdays, special dates and bra sizes I favor, but now-a-days, I just let the computer pick for me. I like the ease and randomness of the universal tumblers of life clicking before me. Too much pressure to remember a series of numbers twice a week.
So after I sniff it, and inspect it like a mint Juliet at the Derby I put the ticket in my wallet. I feel like a cloud of luck is sitting close to my ass. My wallet, my ass, is so powerball hot, so magnetic, I feel everyone in Publix staring at it. I suddenly know what Beyonce feels like at the beach.
I strut out of the store knowing that I am special, that there is an Aura of luck floating around me like Dorothy's ruby red shoes.
I think about winning. If all 6 numbers hit, life changes in an instant.
No more anxiety looking inside the mailbox. No more stress when the phone rings and that random 1-800 number from Peoria shows up in your call window.
Match all six numbers and you get paid, handsomely, as if Zeus came down from Olympus himself selling Cartier watches out of the back of his chariot.
Suddenly, you have no financial worries. You can roll a wheel barrow into the Maserati dealership and drive away like a modern day Jed Clampett.
Boats, cars, vacation homes. All of it possible. Simply with a slip of paper now in my wallet resting against my ass. I love that my ass controls the portal to my future.
So could I win? Sure. I have as much chance as anyone. 70 million to 1. Usually its 35 steel workers from Omaha all gathered at a podium smirking uncontrollably. But I think I have as much chance as anyone.
I will spend the rest of Saturday day with optimism. I won't harp on the fact that I have a chance, but it's a good feeling, like that extra tic tac you find in the container that you thought was empty.
I don't make it a point to watch the drawing. I usually check the next day. I don't want to mess up a perfectly good Saturday night with all the air hissing out of my life balloon.
It's now Sunday morning and I go to powerball.com
I begin to look.
I always wonder, what if...
What if the first number on the web site matches the first number on my ticket.
What if the 2nd number matches, then the third and so on.
Will I jump for joy like a Laker Girl doing a lap dance for Steven Tyler in front of 18,000?
I quickly see that there is no 5 to start the dream.
Yikes.
I lose on the very first peek.
Game. Set. Match. Dream over!
I see the Maserati rolling back into the dealership, I see the vacation home being blown away in a hurricane. The dream ends and the piece of paper that was sitting in my back pocket all night is suddenly not worth the paper it is printed on. I will use it later to hold some wadded up gum.
The powerball web site indicates that 2.7 million people won. From a few dollars to a few thousand dollars.
Good for them. Bad for me.
According to the power ball web site one lucky winner from Rhode Island won 300 million dollars.
What a life changing announcement.
300 million dollars.
One ticket. Now the question is, is it a consortium of people from the steel mill or one lucky bastard who will stand at the podium and tell us how he's still going to work Monday.
Guys who say that are Chumps.
This is the guy who buys hookers and bad land deals and squanders 300 million dollars and 20/20 does an expose on him 10 years from now and he is destitute and wearing a prison tat on his neck.
Fool.
Anyway, the good news is, the jackpot is all ready reset at 40 million. It's not exactly 300 million, but it ain't chump change either. And so the dream begins to build steam again. Wednesday, the next drawing, and my ass will once again house the lucky aura of possibilities and dreams that might be.
and that my friends is crazy.
You know what's crazy? I'll tell you what's crazy.™
A bacon flavored milk shake.
How fat are we America?
Isn't an ice cream flavored shake made from ice cream no longer good enough for us anymore? Do we need to fry up a pound of bacon and slather it on top with caramel and slices of ham too.
Jeez.
Have you been to a beach lately? Have you seen the rolly polly tidal wave of fat bouncing above every swim suit bottom? It looks like America has had enough to eat.
Do we really need bacon added to any other food product that is not all ready bacon?
There's a reason it Oinks people. It's a pig.
What's next? mainlining margarine? Snorting spaghetti?
How bout Chocolate Ice Cream Flavored facial cream?
DATELINE:
Jack in the Box is now offering patrons a Bacon Shake.
According to the company web site, the product is "made with real vanilla ice cream, bacon flavored syrup, whipped topping and a maraschino cherry,"
OK, bacon flavoring isn't exactly chunks of oinking bacon, but still, the caloric firestorm of this meal in a cup could single handedly kill a small rhinoceros.
According to news reports, a large 24 oz. serving has 1,081 calories, 54 grams of fat and 461 grams of sodium.
That's the equivalent of eating a small child in Zimbabwe.
"We know our guests love bacon," said Jack in the Box spokesperson Golda Akhgarnia. "But this has exceeded our level of expectation."
The shake is available nationwide, she said. That's good news for all the fat bastards from Portland Maine to Portland Tennesee to Portland Oregon.
Bacon flavored milk shakes? Where will it end? Isn't rocky road with marshmallow M & M's and peanut clusters enough of a heart stopper?
Why stop at bacon?
Just toss sugar into some lard and freeze it on a stick.
Lard-cicles.
Yum.
Call it "a coronary in the freezer"
Apparently fat ass America can't get enough of a bad thing. It raises the question: Will the meaty madness ever stop?
Not till every single American drops dead in a sweaty puddle of grizzled lard.
And that is crazy.
You know what's crazy? I'll tell you what's crazy.™
Being cool under pressure and performing when that pressure is palpable.
It's called being clutch.
The Giants win over the patriots was an example of clutch.
Superbowl 46 was the most watched TV show of all time. It was a back and forth affair, and the entire game boiled down to the last 3 minutes. That's when Eli Manning orchestrates the new millennium version of the drive.
With fireworks exploding in the stands and noise levels rivaling that of a 747, it was time to go big or go home.
With the Madonna Super Bowl show now a distant memory, Eli Steps into the huddle and calmly eyes his teammates. He doesn't say a word. He calls out the play. He stares in their eyes and quietly signals it's time to be extraordinary.
This is a moment of calm where possibility meets inevitability.
With only a handful of minutes left in the Super Bowl, Manning drops back in the shadow of his own goal line. It looks chaotic to normal humans, but to him there is a singular focus. The path is illuminated, easy to see in a vortex where time has slowed.
Eli cocks back his million dollar arm and lets the ball fly toward the sideline. The spheroid drops like a beautiful 38 yard rainbow in the hands of his wide out, Mario Manningham.
It is a delicious catch. It's the chocolate eclair of pass patterns. It's a highlight for the ages. It is a catch that has to be made, in the most pressure packed of moments.
The announcers will call it a Clutch catch.
There's that word again: CLUTCH.
The catch, the drive, the win, prompts an ABC news story on what makes some people, like Eli Manning able to excel when the odds are stacked against them.
The reporter asks the question; "can you set aside fear and win when it counts?"
What is fear? Is it 68,000 people screaming while you do your job?Is it 110,000 million world wide watching as you decide the fate of history?
Is it an ability to rise above the chaos as 11 New England Patriots try to behead you while you set poetry in motion.
And poetry it was. Manningham grabbed the ball with his cuticles and dragged both feet in bounds, maintaining possession through the catch.
38 yards. First and ten. The Giants are suddenly in position to win the game. A minute later, the Superbowl is a ticker tape parade.
And the pundits and pontificators and philosophizers began to ask;
"What intangible something does Eli Manning have and how can normal people get it?"
Now people say Eli is cool under pressure, the epitome of clutch. But early in his career some said he was aloof, disinterested. What they mistakenly thought was indifference was really a special ability to compartmentalize chaos and cope with pressure.
When it is raining hand grenades around you and you can see the way. That's clutch.
Clutch is that place in your brain, when fried synaptical nerve endings crackle like Jiffy Pop and somehow, you can push your way through the confusion and make sense of something improbable, cluttered.
ABC News called it the science of clutch. They equated high stress performance to a condition in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain.
According to the broadcast, this is the crowded region where the brain deciphers problems while dealing with anxiety.
Imagine a soldier running through a battlefield of sniper fire. It's chaotic and dangerous, but for the soldier, time slows and it all makes sense. He pushes crazy to the periphery and moves to the center where it is warm and feels familiar.
ABC news says during this fire storm of stress we think too much. We have to rely on instincts and react.
When asked about the throw, Eli Manning said, he didn't even think about it. He said it was just muscle memory and he let it fly.
Clutch on Superbowl Sunday was an awe shucks Cajun named Eli who elevated himself to superstar status in the house his brother built.
Clutch.
And that is crazy.
