Perhaps the greatest pre-steroid athlete of all time, Rafer Johnson. At least right there with Jackie Robinson.

The rumor is that among the items stolen from Lindsay Lohen's house are sex tapes and pictures that could be embarrassing for Lohan. That is shocking. It is actually still possible to embarrass Lindsay Lohan?

The rumor is that Brad Pitt is in hot water with Angelina Jolie for a long drinking binge. Who can blame Pitt? When he started seeing Angelina she was a bi-sexual drugged-out party girl, now she is Mother Teresa who can't walk past a baby surrounded by flies without adopting it.

According to rumors, among the items stolen from Lindsay Lohan's house are sex tapes and photographs that would prove embarrassing. What could possibly embarrass Lindsay Lohan? We've seen pictures of her shaved whohah countless times, she was living with a scary and crazy lesbian disk jockey, she does enough booze and cocaine to derail a heavy metal tour. Unless those pictures show Lindsay pleasing Osama bin Laden's goat, I don't think they can be embarrassing. Oh, no, you don't suppose . . .


KFC has a new sandwich where they replace the bread with fried chicken. Yeah, and later, if you eat enough of them, you can replace your door stop with your heart.

His Nibs himself, Mister Wrigley Telluride Kaseberg

Because it is hot outside, I let the dogs come in the garage to rest. Instead of his bed, Wrigley laid down on the cool cement, to which I said; "That was smart, Wrigley." Thus marking the first time I, or anyone else for that matter, has said the words; "That was smart, Wrigley."

In Hungary, Madonna was booed by her 60,000 concert fans when she chastised them for being racist against Gypsies. Which is unfair because Madonna is a leading authority on European ethnic group relations. Oh, wait, no, that's right, she's not, she is a stupid pop star. Sometimes, like Madonna, I get those two fields confused.

Grilling tip of the day:

A slightly underdone medium rare steak can be made perfectly done with a quick 20 second zap in the microwave. A slightly overdone steak? Can't do dickall.

To continue with my Laurel Canyon obsession, this was Harry Houdini's house. It burned down and the grounds are reportedly haunted.

On this street, Lookout Mountain Avenue, you can see Houdini's haunted grounds, across the street is the Bird house designed by Byrd - who also designed the 10050 Cielo house where Sharon Tate was murdered - and occupied by Tom Mix and then Frank Zappa until it burned down, "Our House" of Joni Mitchell and "Mama" Cass Elliott's house where parties were attended by virtually everyone in the rock and roll Hall of Fame and where the songs "Helplessly Hoping" by CSN&Y ""Wild Horses" by Keith Richards and Graham Parsons and "Little Wing" by Jimi Hendrix were inspired/created.

That is just one freaking residential street.

To put just how wild the Laurel Canyon music scene was in the late '60's and mid '70's, Joni Mitchell, Linda Rondstadt and Judy Collins all pretty much dated/slept with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Don Henley, John David Souther, Glenn Frey, Jackson Browne, Jimmy Buffet and James Taylor.

And these women, especially Joni Mitchell, were considered downright straight prudes of their crowd because they didn't do one-night-stands, orgies or heroin or acid.

What were the wild women doing?

The Chicago Cubs got Milton Bradley for $30 mil for three years, right now he has 32 RBI and is batting .265, he has been thrown out of many games for stupidly arguing calls, he has made countless base running mistakes and thoughtless errors in the outfield, got an a screaming argument with his manager, Lou Piniella, and now he is whining about the Cubs fans being hostile towards him.

Bradley thinks they're hostile? I'll show him some hostile.

What is cuter? Seriously, what?

Paris Hilton just wished me a blessed day on Twitter. That's really sweet, so why do I suddenly feel like getting all Caligula on everyone?

You couldn't make this stuff up if you wanted to, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers.

Gosh it is hot. I'm sweating like Jason Biggs filming a remake of "Planet of the Apes."

While hiking on Gibraltar Island near Spain, "American Pie" actor Jason Biggs was attacked by a Gibraltar monkey. He's OK, but the scariest part for Biggs was when the monkey slapped him and ordered him to; "Say my name, bitch."

A rock in a Dutch museum thought to be a moon rock turned out to be a worthless piece of petrified wood. It's the same disappointment Kimberly Conrad had on her honeymoon with Hugh Hefner.

It is rumored that Oprah Winfrey and President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama will dine together in Martha's Vineyard. Poor Stedman has to sit at the kid's table with Sasha and Malia.

Two Florida TV reporters were attacked by a woman wielding a garden hoe. According to reporters, the hoe was big, dangerous and scary. And the gardening tool she held was frightening as well.

Since you asked:

No lie, I was sitting here like a big stupid turnip whining about how hard it is to come up with comedy topics and premises at a time when it seems that everyone, including President Obama and Oprah Winfrey, is out of town on vacation.

When suddenly "American Pie" actor Jason Biggs gets bitch-slapped by a Gibraltar monkey.

Have you seen the incredibly gory and controversial English PSA about the horrors of text messaging while driving? YouTube has deemed it too gory for under 18-year-olds. That defeats the whole purpose. Yes it is gory and shocking and upsetting. But so is the notion of somebody at 16 and 17 being so stupid and selfish and lazy that they will text message while driving. You have seen them, so have I, they will cause crashes and it could be us who gets hurt.

When you are drunk and drive, your judgment, timing and decision making is off. When you text, dial a cell phone or search for an iPod song while driving, your judgment, timing and decision making is non existent.

The other day I saw a woman in the car next to me. She was stopped at the light and was eating a bowl of soup while talking on her hand held cell phone. It was unavoidable for me to see that operating her car, for her at that time, wasn't even a consideration, it was, at best, an outside annoyance. It never even occurred to her the danger that could happen to herself by not concentrating on driving her car, let alone those near her. Got that? She wasn't even considering how she herself could get hurt let alone me or anyone else. Now that is world class stupid, lazy and selfish.

These people who text or talk on a hand held cell phone and eat soup and put on makeup while driving are so stupid, lazy and selfish they don't even think about their own safety. How far down the list of their priorities do you think you, me and our children are? A bloody commercial to shock these idiots into consciousness seems like too little. I say fine them $1,000 per offense.

It is hard to reach and impress people who are that stupid and selfish and lazy that they will text/e-mail/iPod while they are driving, so if a really scary and bloody commercial reaches and influences these stupid and lazy and selfish people, especially at age 16, than I am all for it, no matter how gory and upsetting it may be.

Attention older person pulling out of the grocery store parking spot in front of me:

You can see I have stopped my car and thus I am waiting for you to pull out. By virtue of the fact I have stopped where I have stopped, I have utterly eliminated the chance of another car driving up and hitting you. They would have to go through me to get to you. Cars on the other side driving the other way are too far away to hit you.

So you can actually pull your car out of the parking spot faster than one foot every ten seconds for the love of god.

Oh, and lady-who-knew-I-was-waiting-for-her-parking- spot, but-still-took- about-five-minutes-to-pull-out? Just so you know, you are going to hell. Oh, yes you are.

No lie, she went through her purse, cleaned out her glove compartment, dialed up her cell phone and fixed her hair and makeup, all while she knew I was sitting in back of her in my car, burning time and gas, waiting for her to pull out.

Lord, why did you put so many selfish morons in my neighborhood at once? Why?

This Jockey ad alone should be reason enough not to put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame

Should Pete Rose be inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Ever since the 1919 Black Sox scandal very nearly destroyed the one thing most Americans thought could not be destroyed, baseball, Major League Baseball has made it abundantly clear that the single worst thing anyone in baseball can do - outside of committing murder - is to bet on baseball. If you do bet on baseball, you get a death sentence: a lifetime ban. Period. End of story. No exceptions.

You know it, I know it, anyone who has ever watched or been to a baseball game knows it. But you know who knows it more than anyone? Professional baseball players. They have "There is no gambling on baseball, period" pounded into their heads every single day.

But for now, let's forget all about the fact that Pete Rose ignored all that and bet on baseball anyway- and lied about it for decades.

Even without the gambling, Pete Rose doesn't automatically deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Fame is reserved for very special players. Players who stick out, not just on their team, but in the entire league and for many years. Look at the Cincinnati Reds teams on which Rose played. Johnny Bench. Ken Griffey. Joe Morgan. Tony Perez. Davey Concepcion. Later, pitcher Tom Seaver.

Pete Rose was maybe the sixth or seventh best player on his own team. That is not sticking out. Now, granted, that was a great team, but being sixth best on your team doesn't make you a lock to get in to the Hall.

What about the all time hit record?

Records do not, by themselves, get you in the Hall of Fame, just ask the family of Roger Maris. Ask Mark McGwire in a few years. And Sammy Sosa. And Raphael Palmeiro.

And the all time hits isn't a great record anyway. You last long enough you will get records. Time brings respectability to whores, crooked politicians and ugly buildings.

And how many times did a selfish Rose go for a hit when his team could have had him advance the runner or make a sac. fly? Make no mistake, the hustle in "Charlie Hustle" was all for Pete and his record.

OK, yes, Rose won the batting title in 1969, hitting an impressive .348. But he did it by bunting for a hit to beat out the great and classy Roberto Clemente by one lousy bunt hit. Rose somehow managed to make winning a batting title seem sleazy.

What about three batting titles, an MVP and three World Series rings (don't forget the team he was on) and two Golden Gloves and a Rookie-of-the-year? That is all very impressive. But it is only impressive when one is assuming they were accomplished by somebody who did not bet on baseball.

OK, after looking at his career hitting numbers, I have to admit I was wrong. Rose did bring effort and hustle every day to the ball park, and that is a great asset for any team. And Rose wanted to win as much or more than anyone out there. And, all things being equal, a lifetime .303 hitter should probably be in the Hall. OK, fine, if Rose had not bet on baseball, yes, he would, without any doubt, deserve to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

But Pete Rose did bet on baseball.

And what about all the things Rose did not do besides not gamble on baseball? He couldn't run fast, he couldn't hit for power, he couldn't throw really hard. Physically anyway, Rose was a one or two tool player, and, as it turns out, quite a tool at that.

But let's not hold the fact that Rose is an arrogant idiot tool against him, if we took all of the arrogant idiot tools out of the Baseball Hall of Fame it would just be the Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks and Stan Musial Hall of Fame. (Sorry, Babe, but it's true)

The question should not be whether or not Pete Rose deserves to be in the Hall of Fame - he doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame - the question is: why isn't Ron Santo in the Hall of Fame?

Please forgive my Laurel Canyon obsession, but this a Lookout Mountain Avenue living room. Even I could write a song in there.

Louisville coach Rick Pitino says a sex scandal involving a waitress accused of extorting him has been "pure hell" for his family. If that wasn't bad enough, in genteel and polite old-school Southern Louisville, when Pitino had sex with her on the table? He used the wrong fork.

This is the legendary log cabin Bird House in Laurel Canyon built by movie cowboy Tom Mix - part of it designed by the same guy who built 10050 Cielo - and occupied by Frank Zappa. Can't you picture wild 60's parties with Jimi's "Little Wing" playing as the soundtrack?



What it is is what it is is what it is, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

At a Southern Illinois minor league game, a skunk ran out on the field chasing away the players and delaying the game in the ninth inning. As opposed to the Washington Nationals, their play chases away skunks.

This just in: in the time it took to report that story, Brett Favre retired and un-retired twice.

During the preseason, NFL team’s starting defense scrimmage their starting offense. In a sadly related story, in a scrimmage of the Detroit Lions, both sides lost.


South African 800 runner Caster Semenya will undergo tests to determine if she is female; the test is fairly standard, she is handed a beer and a TV remote. They then toss a flower vase at her, if she drops either the remote or the beer to catch it, she is not a male.


In the HBO series “Hard Knocks” Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson revealed he eats at McDonalds three times a day. Ochocinco is a nickname for his number, 85, which is also the amount of heart attacks he will have before he dies.


In the HBO series “Hard Knocks” Cincinnati Bengals QB Carson Palmer humiliated his center, Kyle Cook, on camera, by complaining that his hand stunk after placing it under Cook’s butt for the snap. What kind of ignorant and arrogant primma donna insults a guy so responsible for his own protection? Where did Palmer go to college? USC? Oh, yeah.


Phil Specter has complained to his friends that he is in prison with convicts who would kill for “a 39 cent bag of soup.” Apparently Specter would prefer to be with people, like him, who kill just for the fun of it.


R.I.P. Ted Kennedy. He served the people so much better than he served himself.

The name Kennedy will forever be a monument to unrealized potential. Tragically for John F., Bobby and John F. Jr. and sadly for Ted.

Since you asked:

As I read "Helter Skelter" two things stick out:

One is that, besides her brutal murder, it is also tragic how Sharon Tate's legacy will forever be linked to the lurid decadence of drugs and orgies of that place at that time. Yes, it would turn out that her husband, Roman Polanski, was a degenerate pervert and child molester, but by all accounts Sharon was sweet, innocent, kind and naive with, what turned out to be, a fatal attraction to powerful men.

The second thing that sticks out is how Manson-murder-victim and Warren Beatty "Shampoo" movie inspiration, Jay Sebring, was nearly a perfect personification of Hollywood.

Outwardly, Sebring was handsome, charming, sharply dressed, lived in a beautiful home with a butler, slept with hundreds of beautiful models and starlets, drove an expensive and fast sports car and motorcycle and owned a thriving business that enhanced the appearance of his many exciting movie star friends.

In truth, Sebring was a small, sad, lonely and heart-broken - by all accounts he was still deeply in love with Sharon Tate - pathetic rapidly-aging Lothario who was deeply ashamed of his sexual shortcomings as well as his bondage and sadism predilections, heavily in debt and addicted to cocaine.

Welcome to the Hotel California, sorry, but your credit card was declined.

"They went rushing down that freeway messed around and got lost
They didn't care they were just dying to get off."

"Life in the Fast Lane."

Laurel Canyon Blvd., literally and figuratively the road to fame, fortune, decadence or demise in 1968.

This story was mentioned in here before, but I think it is worthy of repeating.

One of the impacts on the music business by Bob Dylan and the Beatles is that, suddenly, performers had to be the ones who wrote their own songs. Nobody cared who wrote the songs Frank Sinatra sang, by 1966, that had changed.

What this did was twofold, first, it made performers only, like Cher and Tony Bennett, seem cheap, dated and corny and, secondly, it thrust songwriters out on stage, whether they liked it or not, Joni Mitchell did not, Neil Diamond did.

One of these songwriters pushed into the limelight was Randy Newman. From the moment I heard "Sail Away" I was a huge Randy Newman fan. (Once, in Santa Barbara, I literally dragged my girlfriend to go see him. The fact that she fell in love with Randy made her even more appealing)

Randy was revered as a true musical talent by the late Sixties Troubadour/Laurel Canyon crowd. Newman's parents were movie music big shots and Randy was classically trained on the piano at a time when most of the "musicians" fighting for stage time couldn't read one note.

But Randy was also an intellectual who didn't have much in common with the hard partying rockers on that scene. He would attend the parties on Lookout Mountain at Joni Mitchell and "Mama" Cass Elliot's homes, they were sweeter, pot and wine inspired musical improvisations, but Newman was leery of the harder acid/coke/orgy parties hosted by movie producers and movie stars just a wee bit farther down the street. In fact he was warned by "Mama" Cass herself. But he went to one of those parties despite her warning and lived - just barely - to write a song about it:

"Mama Told Me Not to Come" made famous by Three Dog Night.

Nuggets, Ranchers and Slatinos, these are frickin' nuggets.

The famous Laurel Canyon Country Store where upcoming bands auditioned. Jim Morrison lived in back and wrote "Love Street."

As the (cough) staff is a little short-handed this summer, we at a.L.b.B. would like to make an editorial correction. The movie ranch used by the Eagles for the "Outlaw Man" video and the album artwork pictures on the Eagles second album, "Desperado" was not, as I said, filmed at the Spahn Ranch where Charles Manson and his family had lived. It was actually filmed at the abandoned Paramount movie set in the Malibu hills.

However, pride and honesty compels me to say my additional research shows I was right about the incestuous and crazy melding of the parties in Laurel Canyon on Lookout Mountain Road and the music business as well as Hollywood. In 1970, if you heard a song on the radio - or saw a movie in a theater - it was performed by someone who at least had a drink and dinner at, more likely shared drugs and or had sex with someone on that crazy street. From the Byrds to the Flying Burrito Brothers, CSN&Y, the Beatles, the Stones, Clapton, Hendrix, you name it. And, during 1969, Charles Manson was right in the middle of it helping to fuel the scene with women, drugs or both.

In "Helter Skelter" Vincent Bugliosi said the fateful Sharon Tate gathering at 10050 Cielo Drive was just an informal get- together and drugs were found on the scene. But the list of people who swear they were invited to be at that party that night reads like the who's who of music and movies: CSN&Y, The Mamas and the Papas, Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Steve McQueen, Joni Mitchell, Warren Beatty.

One Cielo Drive neighbor said there had been a big party there a few weeks before with guests arriving by limos and Cadillacs in "hippy garb." Sounds like the usual suspects.

Inmates say $65 billion swindler, Bernie Madoff is stricken with cancer. Doctors don't know what kind of cancer Madoff has, but they can rule out heart cancer because he doesn't have one.

My guess. No matter where the cancer is on Bernie, it is anal cancer, because that is what Bernie is.

This is what I was surfing with yesterday. This summer I surfed next to hundreds of leopard sharks, one huge great white shark, many seals, many dolphins including a family of three that hung out with me for half an hour and I stepped on a Sting Ray, but did not get stung.

Fun fake phone conversations to have in front of captive audiences:

"Speak up, I can barely hear you. Why are you hiding in a closet? Who came home early? What makes you think he has a gun? What was that popping noise? Hello? Hello?"

"Yes, please transfer the ten million from The National Bank of Bogota to my offshore account in the Bahamas. You have the number, thanks."

"No, I am not going to guess who you slept with last night. No, I am not. Get out of here? Really? As in Hilton?"

"Look, I said I was sorry the blind date didn't work out. Yes, I knew and I should have told you, but the term sexual offender is so broad and vague."

Thieves broke into Lindsay Lohan's safe and made off with a lot of her borrowed jewelery. Luckily they didn't get Lindsay's self-respect or dignity, they've been gone for years.

Michael Jackson died on June 25th and he still hasn't been buried. Let's hope he gets buried soon. You don't want to be caught dead wearing white socks and a white glove after Labor Day.

Carlos Gonzalez of the Colorado Rockies is day-to-day with a puncture wound in his hand. Gonzalez claims he hurt himself on a steak knife while he was putting a dish in his kitchen sink. Putting a dish in the sink? Clearly he is on Manny Rameriz's female hormones. And I heard he stopped and asked for directions on the way to the hospital.

Hurricane Bill's huge waves are slamming into the East Coast. The hardest hit beach? Monica's Cove.

Attention all competitive eaters: for the love of decency, please go away.

Have you noticed how you never ever hear interesting sides of a conversation when you're a captive audience to a cell phone yammerer? It's always; "Nothin', what are you doin'? Me neither. No, not particularly. Why? I dunno."

It's never; "See that red wire coming out of the timepiece going into to the plastic explosive? Clip that. Yeah, wait, no I mean clip the blue wire, not the red wire . . . yow, that was loud. Hello? Hello? Shoot."