Morons of the Month - April 2011

We've got a whole busload of morons this month, gang.  All of them spinning around the horrific tragedy that took place in the Dodger Stadium parking lot on Opening Day. 

Unless you've been hiding in a closet, you know the story.  Some poor unsuspecting Giant fan is pummeled to a cranial pulp after the game by the absolute shitheads shown in an artist rendering above.  Now there's a dragnet out to catch these two neanderthals plus the woman who drove the getaway car.  And there was a child with them!!

Good luck finding them.  Don't bother looking anywhere in the Los Angeles environs.  I'd bet dollars to burritos that this bunch has hightailed it over our gravy strainer of a southern border and are now back where they came from.  Most likely illegally in the first place.

If they show their faces ever again on American soil, let's hope their greeters shoot to kill.  And, if the driving senorita and the little nino get hit and suffer collateral damage, oh, well, life's a bitch.  How do you say "tough love" in Spanish?

So, they're the easy picks to be April's Morons.  But, there are others skirting this whole situation that also need to be recognized for their excess stupidity.

Another simple target for projectile vomiting would be the increasingly inept Dodger owner Frank McCourt.  Heck, even before this happened, 99.9% of Dodger fans wanted this guy shipped back to Fenway P-ahrk with the rest of the cre-tahns who reside in Red Sox Abomination.  Now, everything Frank does looks like the last act of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible."  If it's true that McCourt neglected to hire a new head of security last winter in a cost-cutting measure, the recent violence could be his Dodger Blue waterloo. 

Still, it's really too simple to draw a bulls eye on his back.  Why not recognize the true Moron in the McCourt travesty?

Yes, that would be Major League Baseball's woeful sap of a commissioner, Bud Selig.

There has never been a more likely stooge since the days when Shemp was wielding a lead pipe at Larry's head.  Selig, who was inexplicably elevated to the commissioner's seat after years fucking over the Milwaukee Brewers franchise as chief owner, has screwed the sport royally.  Under his leadership, baseball suffered through the steroid debacle as Bud conveniently looked the other way as science projects like Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire made a mockery of the record books. 

Most importantly, with regard to our topic today, Selig is the one who approved the deals that turned the likes of Frank McCourt into baseball owners.  Let's face it, from everything we hear, McCourt bought the storied Dodger franchise on his Sears credit card.  Who allowed this to happen?  Bud Selig.  And let's not forget that Bud has also let the New York Mets franchise to wilt on the vine in the wake of the Bernie Madoff/Fred Wilpon alliance.  Two major baseball franchises.  Stripped of both dollars and dignity. 

It's time for Bud Selig to pick up his Velveeta processed cheese and go back to Milwaukee where shoveling mounds of snow is considered a creative achievement.

But, wait, there's more.  Morons galore in April.  Lots and lots of them found in the pages of the Los Angeles Times. 

These days, I'm still a fan of newspapers and love to go through one in the morning.  But, the Los Angeles Times is making it hard for me to keep my subscription.  They're a Sudoku puzzle and a Blondie comic strip away from losing my business.  Their coverage of the Dodger Stadium situation has been that biased and inaccurate.

The regular Dodger beat writers like Dylan Hernandez, Steve Dilbeck, and columnist/alleged stand-up comic TJ Simers are already working overtime in their daily attempts to trash the team both on-the-field and in the front office.  Their rants are the journalistic equivalent of week-old Chinese takeout.  They seem to be on a crusade to run Frank McCourt out of town and, while I'm not opposed to the notion, the Times sports hacks are blaming him for everything from the recent earthquake in Japan to the stoning of Lot's wife in the village square. 

But, now with the parking lot calamity, everybody who writes for the Los Angeles Times is piling on as if there's a rumor going around the building that Frank McCourt is secretly sleeping with Sarah Palin.  Regardless of their expertise or lack thereof, all of the columnists are waxing philosophically on the violent element at Dodger Stadium.  Because, at the Los Angeles Times, you can pull an opinion out of your ass and call it news reporting.

Take, for instance, some dumb broad named Sandy Banks, whose journalistic skills lead me to think that her time would be better spent at home doing the wash.

I've never paid attention to anything she's written before, but, suddenly, she's an expert on Dodger Stadium.  In a recent column, she even admits that she's rarely been to the ballpark over the past three decades.  But, that doesn't stop this nincompoop from spending two dozen paragraphs lecturing us on the deplorable situation that Dodger fans must endure every game.  This is all based on a worrisome text message she got from her daughter on Opening Day.  Just where was her daughter sitting at that game?  That is apparently not the issue.  But, if Sandy Banks is so darn worried about her daughter's safety, she might use her pull to get the kid some seats on the Loge Level where absolutely nothing sinister happens on any given day. 

At the very least, I give Banks credit for insinuating in her column that ethnicity might play a part in the Dodger Stadium problems.  But, still.  Come to a game once every ten years or so and then have something to say.

Then there's the Times' Pulitzer-Prize-winner-wannabe/resident crybaby Steve Lopez.  If his photo looks like a mug shot, that's fitting.  What he writes in his column is frequently borderline criminal.  An uber-do gooder, Lopez is most known for befriending some screwball schizophrenic bass player and turning it into a movie called "The Soloist."  That's a good title for the film since I think only one person saw it.

Anyway, if there's a sob story to be told in Los Angeles, Lopez will find it and write it.  You read his dribble and you just know that cold hard facts are being overlooked in favor of whatever heart strings Lopez wants to tug.

So, naturally, he has to weigh in on the Dodger Stadium fracas.  His focus is on the neighborhood around the ballpark where fans are now parking their cars in lieu of spending $15 to put their cars in the stadium lot.  Since this was raised from ten dollars a few years back, the folks in the environs have seen an increase in hooliganism as a result.  That blasted Frank McCourt!  For an extra five bucks, our front lawns are now littered with beer bottles.

What????

First of all, parking fees are parking fees and an easy way to gouge more money from fans.  This is a fact that all baseball owners now subscribe to.  Heck, there are some Met game tickets at Citi Field that cost less than the $19 parking lot.  Hello? 

Meanwhile, Lopez zeroes in on the neighbors and their plight now living near a ballpark.  Excuse me?  Dodger Stadium didn't suddenly emerge from the ground one night.  It's been in the Chavez Ravine area in some shape or form since 1958.  Most of the people Lopez chatted up were relatively young.  So they moved to a house, knowing fully well that a ballpark was nearby.  These are the kinds of idiots that Lopez likes to empower in his columns.  And, once again, logic and facts need not be included. 

Let's hope he finds another classical music lunatic living under a freeway overpass soon, so he can stop beating the hell out of Dodger Stadium.

None of this is to say that there is not a serious problem lurking the top levels of Tommy Lasorda's famed Blue Heaven on Earth.  But, I can tell you all that I have never once dreaded a single moment attending a game at Dodger Stadium.  I have found the customer service staff there efficient and friendly.  Last weekend, when a foul ball fell two rows in front of me, a security person was down the stairs immediately to see if anyone was hurt.  I have seen ruffians dealt with when I called over the attention of game day staff.  I'm totally comfortable.

But, then again, I'm in the pricier seats.  Upstairs, in tickets affordably priced so EVERYONE can attend a baseball game, you have a clientele that mirrors what is happening to the population of Los Angeles.

Let's face it.  Here's something you don't hear from the Los Angeles Times.  The Mexican influx into California has severely degraded the region.  And, almost automatically, it couldn't help but permeate the 56,000 chairs at Dodger Stadium.  Frankly, there is nothing happening in this city that isn't happening to any other major metropolitan area.  But, to hear it from the mouths of the assholes at the Los Angeles Times, you would think this was a problem totally unique and confined to Dodger Stadium.

Shame on them. 

Trust me, I would like nothing better than to think it was 1965 again.  It's a bright sunny day at Chavez Ravine and Sandy Koufax, as Vin Scully might say, is putting some smoke rings on the scoreboard.  But it's not.  Those days are long gone. 

Yep, plenty of morons this month.  And, given our lax immigration policies, there are even more headed our way in years to come.

Dinner last night:  BBQ Ribs at Kate Mantilini.