Mr. Irresponsible's Bad Advice

Power To The (Rich and Famous) People

Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is exercising his duty to even-handedly administer the laws of the land by pardoning the most famous and influential person ever charged with reckless driving in his state. Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was fined $162.20 for a 1975 incident in which he swerved while "adjusting the radio," and officers smelled marijuana in his car. (In fairness, it should be noted that Richards was well-known in the mid-Seventies for driving an imported Marleymobile, the only production auto ever fabricated entirely from pressed cannabis.) The pardon wasn't Richards' idea; seriously, what are the chances the guy remembers a $162 fine imposed 30 years ago? He's lucky if he can recognize his daughter. No, Huckabee proposed the gimme while mooching around backstage at a Stones concert in March. The incident seems like garden-variety star worship until you learn that Huckabee is an amateur bassist, which explains everything. There isn't a bass player alive who wouldn't swallow ground glass to get a guitar player to notice him.

With that as background, it may surprise you to learn that Mr. Irresponsible is in favor of moves like Huckabee's. I believe governors should have widespread discretion to offer amnesty to anybody they please. And I'm not saying that because of an outstanding incident in which I was stopped outside of Chicago while operating a rented Bentley at a high rate of speed, shooting an automatic weapon into the air and balancing a cooler full of tequila shots on my lap. (Are you listening, Rod?)  I just feel that we creative types should have a little leeway to express our outsized joie de vivre in a suitably boisterous fashion. It's for that reason that I want to bring the following incidents to the attention of the relevant governors:

-- Tom Petty ticketed for shooting off a Sidewinder missile from the parking lot of a Jacksonville rib joint, 1987
-- Randy Bachman detained for rolling a homemade soapbox-derby racer into a ditch and injuring some ducks, 1978 (no charges filed)
-- Leo Sayer held overnight in Buffalo for repeatedly accosting a local DJ with the words "Ha! Got yer nose" (settled out of court), 1976
-- Rupert ("Pina Colada Song") Holmes questioned in connection with sales of yellowcake to Saddam Hussein (2003)
-- Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top thrown out of an Atlanta Gap store for demanding free khakis because "Everybody crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man," 1999

Details on request. (And Governor Blagojevich? I really am feeling contrite about the thing with the weaponized Ebola. Call my lawyers. I'm sure we can work something out.)

In The Name of God, Don't Watch This

Gosh, we've seen so many different O.J. Simpsons over the years. He's been a Protean figure -- a Heisman-winning running back, a record-shattering pro, an actor, a murderer *... Now we learn we've hardly known O.J. at all. The real O.J., it turns out, is none of these things. He's a practical joker! A nutty prankster!  Taping a pay-per-view TV special/DVD to be called "Juiced," Simpson portrays an Elvis impersonator, a curbside orange peddler, and an elderly man leading a Bingo game. Oh yeah, also: In a hidden-camera segment, Simpson tries to get a used-car dealer to buy his White Bronco, claiming that "It was good for me, it helped me get away."

Get it?

The Simpson camp has had a little trouble getting its story straight on this. The producer of the special told the AP that Simpson "was not paid for the program," implying that he did at least knowingly participate, and wasn't loopy on Ambien or under the influence of a hypnotist or some other person holding one of those twirly hypno-wheels at the time the cameras rolled. Simpson's attorney, cutting the salami a little thinner, told the New York Daily News that Simpson isn't involved with the current project (proving that the only party who scuttles away from a sinking ship faster than a pay-per-view TV producer is a lawyer) and the footage probably came from a failed TV pilot Simpson shot three years ago. Oh, okay. Because three years ago the bit wasn't repugnant or anything. Why, three years ago it was a whole different world! Three years ago George Bush was in the White House and we were stuck in the intractable quandary of an unwinnable ground war in Iraq!

But I digress. The real question is: Seriously now, how much more loathsome can this guy get? Either he's doing it for the dough, which he'll use for greens fees and dinners at Joe's Stone Crab instead of paying down the $33 million civil judgment still hanging over his head, or he's doing it for attention. And wouldn't you think he's had enough of that? Hasn't he been in the papers quite enough for one lifetime? It seems a little tone-deaf, no? Why, a person who's that nakedly sociopathic could be capable of... anything. If I were advising Simpson, for which there isn't a Brink's truck big enough to back up to my door, my advice would be short and sweet: Hey, Juice? Publicity, good or bad, is not your friend. Keep your head down. Stay out of the papers. Stay off morning drive radio. And if some sleazy hack with a Digicam tries to get you to prank somebody for profit, get in the Bronco and drive away. It isn't like you don't know how.

*Redacted on advice of counsel

Just One Second, I'm Putting Some Things Away

Sometimes an advice columnist has to look below the surface of human behavior. (Not too far below, though, because that's where all the dark and scary stuff lives. And who wants to buy themselves a piece of that? The trick is to skim along the surface like a speedboat, only occasionally, and only as necessary, dipping a toe into the turbulent sea foam. Dip more than a toe and you create drag, which slows you down and makes it harder to zip away when things get knotty.) Sometimes you have to look at the messages our behavior sends. Like the message being delivered in New Mexico, which apparently has a new "Commit a Sex Crime, Meet a Movie Star" program. They're not describing it exactly that way, of course. The wire story simply describes a ride-along by actor Richard Gere with Bernalillo County deputies as they check in on sex offenders in the Albuquerque area. But come on, imagine you're a convicted pedophile answering the knock at the door for one more grim home inspection by burly deputies who hate your guts. Now imagine opening the door and seeing instead the twinkly blue eyes of the world's dreamiest practicing Buddhist. Would that or would that not qualify as the best day of your sad, desperate life?

Gere, it should be noted, is researching an upcoming role as a federal agent investigating a possible sex crime.  But hell, isn't every actor out joyriding in dune buggies or flying with the Blue Angels "researching" something? The members of SAG do more research than the Rand Corporation. Strictly speaking, it shouldn't even be called "research" at all -- I'm personally hesitant to equate what they do at, say, CDC to something Heath Ledger spends a spare weekend charging to his loan-out corporation's credit card. So at least let's call this what it is: An incentive program for sex criminals. And I'm willing to go on the record right here, right now: Mr. Irresponsible stands foursquare against incentivizing sex crimes. That's my position and I'm sticking to it, at least until somebody challenges it. (Remember: Like a speedboat.)

Message to Martha

It isn't always pretty, the work of a professional advice columnist. It requires me to cast a cool, appraising eye on the human condition, and sometimes what I see isn't very nice. Take the criminal justice system. I think we all know that the conditions under which convicted felons serve their time can be brutally harsh and repressive, and sometimes the cri du coeur that comes from such a person rends the air so painfully that I just can't turn away. (Also, I have a chronic back condition which makes it awkward for me to turn to the left, so cris du coeur that come at me from the right tend to get my attention.) It's just such a case that caught my eye this morning. Stock swindler Martha Stewart finds her house arrest "hideous," and complains that the electronic bracelet she's forced to wear on her ankle irritates the skin.

Gosh. Where to begin?

Let me sketch the outlines of Stewart's confinement, as I'm not sure her case made the papers.  Stewart is restricted to a cramped 153-acre estate in poverty-stricken Bedford, NY, where the median house value is $447,000 and median income is a bottom-scraping $100,053. This is according to City-data.com, which also notes that in 2001, the last year for which crime data are available, the mean streets of Bedford were wracked by murders numbering in the no digits. There are six structures on the property, which cost Stewart $16 million in 1990, and at least two of those have been reported to be "drafty." Stewart is forced to remain within the estate's old stone walls (only some of which, according to USA Today, have been "spruced up") for all but 48 hours a week. Which means, according to the crushing logic of penological math, that assuming Stewart's driver spends two hours a day shuttling her to and from her offices in Manhattan, and that she spends from 10 to 3 every weekday browbeating her underlings, she only has six hours left to get out and brutalize the local merchants on Saturday, and seven to catch a movie and some lunch in the village on Sunday.

Have we all gone nuts? Is she kidding? There are weeks when Mr. Irresponsible doesn't get out of his PJs at all, and this biddy is pitching a fit because she only has enough time in her average week of unspeakable privilege to, say, drive non-stop from New York to Las Vegas?* And a respected wire service -- or, in this case, the Associated Press -- actually prints it? As if it were news? 

Once again Mr. Irresponsible is forced to crib from James L. Brooks' "Broadcast News," a movie that had a good deal to say about keeping one's humanity in the workplace. "What do you do when your real life exceeds your dreams?" asks Tom Grunick, the impossibly blessed anchorman. Aaron Altman, the correspondent who is drowning in his own decency, answers succinctly: "Keep it to yourself."  And apply a little Lubriderm to that place where the electronic bracelet chafes your ankle.

____________________________________________________

*Mr. Irresponsible has done this, and doesn't recommend it.

What I Learned From Michael Jackson (Besides The Moonwalk)

Mr. Irresponsible has, for more than 20 years now, plumbed the very depths of human dysfunction.  (And believe me, the depths of human dysfunction need some plumbing.) So Mr. Irresponsible isn't easily stunned. Mr. Irresponsible knows the score, he's been around the block, he's seen some things. But Mr. Irresponsible has never, ever seen anything like the statement Michael Jackson's put up on his web site.

It isn't that you expect quiet good taste from the man who built Neverland. That would be unrealistic. Wouldn't you think, though, that after a protracted trial in which, acquittal or no, his reputation was dinged seemingly beyond repair, a guy would think, Okay, well, time to putter quietly in the garden for awhile and regroup. Or Maybe I'll finally get around to painting the garage. Or Man, those New Yorkers have really been piling up around here -- time to stack 'em up by the old easy chair and have a nice read! But that guy wouldn't be Michael Jackson... and darn it, we just wouldn't want him to be, would we? No, the Michael we want is the one who constantly redefines the term Big Crazy, the one who exuberantly dashes our dwindling hopes that maybe this traveling circus of celebrity and jurisprudence and journalism will just quietly pull up stakes and slip out of town.  And that's the Michael we get on his website, in full, eye-gouging, bandwidth-hogging Flash animation.

The introductory fanfare, which makes the music they play at the opening of the Olympics sound like a kazoo solo, is only the beginning. Then -- wait for it -- yes! It's the montage of "Great Moments in The History of Mankind Which Previously Did Not, But Now Do, Include The Acquittal of Michael Jackson"! You'll stare in horror as Jackson compares his acquittal to the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr.! You'll gasp in frank disbelief as Jackson compares his acquittal to the fall of the Berlin Wall! You'll reach for something heavy as Jackson compares his acquittal to Nelson Mandela's release from jail!  (Lemme see, what was Mandela in jail for again?... I can't remember, exactly, because right at the moment I'm being pummeled into insensibility by the quick cutting and relentless pacing of this Flash thing I'm seemingly unable to stop watching. But whatever it was, I'm sure it wasn't a bigger injustice than what The Man did to poor Michael Jackson... What? No, I'm afraid I've lost the ability to remember anything that happened to me before the beginning of this animation, which is now actually seeping into my brain and wiping out my childhood.)

Fortunately, there's a lesson here. It's in the form of a simple "DO and DON'T" formula, and it applies to even those among us who don't live on vast Central Coast ranches with private zoos and amusement rides and a secret underground lair stuffed with death rays and ex-Staasi hitmen and a crack cadre of the deadliest female Ninjas the world has ever known. (I'm just assuming.)  The lesson is this:

Life is capricious, and frequently unjust. So if you should be fortunate enough to hit the karmic Lotto, in whatever way, shape or form it applies to you...

DO grab your hat, button up your overcoat and head out to enjoy the second chance the cosmos have dealt you. You may even, if you so choose, issue a cheery "So long, suckers!" as you glide on out the door.

DON'T hang around buttonholing strangers in the street and haranguing them about about how unfairly you were almost treated.  The life of the average citizen is as studded with real unfairness and random misfortune as a tasty cinnamon bun is with delicious raisins. All that post-game yammering about the historic scale of the injustice that really, no fooling, came this close to happening to you...? It's simply unattractive. So take the great big bus pass the Fates have given you and use it to go away and quit bothering people.