The Jester’s Last Laugh

This is a story that I couldn’t even make up. Somehow, a former Bank of America employee was able to befriend Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, the King of Tonga. He did so by convincing the King to move his countries funds from a low-interest checking account and allow him to invest it in a series of risky investments. But besides being put in charge of the countries funds, Jesse Bogdonoff convinced the king to appoint him as Tonga’s Court Jester.

The Jester and his company Wellness Technologies then recommended the investment of $24.5 million in three companies: a Nevada-based purchaser of life insurance polices (now dissolved), an energy start-up (now struggling) and a dot.com (in Chapter 11 bankruptcy). The Tongan’s are now suing Bogdonoff for $26.5 million plus punitive damage.

A note to King Taufa’ahau: if your Court Jester doubles as a Royal Investment Advisor… warning. And if you are looking for a new Court Jester, I am available, and I cost a lot less then $24.5 million.

Lights, Camera, Action

When you buy a video camera, it should come with two very big warning labels. 1) Do not videotape yourself having sex. 2) Do not videotape yourself committing a crime. This should be common knowledge, but no, we are constantly seeing reports that some actress is upset because a videotaped love session is showing up on the internet. Do you want to make sure that doesn’t happen… don’t videotape yourself. It’s simple. And the second one: for god sakes people, just put the noose around your neck instead.

These rules should just be common sense. But time and time again we hear about someone who didn’t follow them. Let’s take the latest example: R. Kelly. Now Mr. Kelly made the mistake of videotaping himself having sex and of course the tape got out. So now the world can see just how little he does during sex. From what I heard, this is one of the most boring tapes ever made. Supposedly he just lies there through the whole thing.

But that’s not the big mistake Kelly made. It seems that the woman he was with… wasn’t a woman. She was a 14-year-old girl. Now it’s bad enough he videotaped sex. But with an under-aged girl is sick. He basically filmed himself committing a crime. And now that tape is going to be used against him. There are times like these I pray that we aren’t the most intelligent race in the universe.

With Friends Like These

Jennifer Aniston is suing two magazine publishers. She claims that they hired a photographer with a telephoto lens to scale a neighbor’s fence and take pictures of her sun bathing nude. She claims that the photos, along with the text that described her as “raunchy” was highly offensive. Now I read the article and I believe I’ve seen the photos. All of this brings two things to mind.

First, you know the neighbor has to be involved. How else would a magazine know that Aniston is sunbathing topless to begin with let alone exactly when? There had to be a phone call to one of the magazines, or the neighbor himself took the pictures. So I think the real thing here is for her to sue her neighbor.

Second, and the most important, who cares? I don’t mean who cares about her privacy being invaded, I mean who cares about seeing her naked. She attractive, definitely, and I wouldn’t throw her out of bed. If she asked me to, I would do a photo shoot with her. So it’s nothing about her. But if people are so damn interested in seeing a naked woman, there are enough websites out there with women of every size, shape and color. I jut don’t see the draw of a grainy, zoomed in picture of a woman lying topless on a lounge chair.

There are enough women out there willing to pose nude that publishers shouldn’t bother with the “celebrity” sneak peek. It’s burned Penthouse with the Anna Kournakova photos and it’s going to burn these two as well.

Everybody Must Get Stoned

According to Reuters – a Nigerian woman, sentenced to death by stoning, has been given a two-year reprieve to wean her baby. By itself this is a slightly odd story. The really strange part is when you find out her crime: adultery. That’s right, she was sentenced to death for having a child out of wedlock. This is the second woman to receive this punishment since 2000 when the predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria adopted strict Islamic sharia law.

How do people choose to vote in a set of laws that punishes theft with amputation? I can understand the countries that have had these laws in place for centuries, but to decide in the decade to follow such an inhuman system of justice makes you question the true evolution of man. We are supposed to be moving towards spiritual enlightenment, not backwards into the dark ages.

Normally I am all for letting countries grow and find their own way. Nothing says what we are doing her in the United States is the right way or the best for everyone; but the path Nigeria is now on is borderline barbaric. And they know it. In March, an appeals court reversed a similar sentence after receiving worldwide pleads for clemency and a warning from President Olusegun Obasanjo that Nigeria faced international isolation over the case.

This means they know they are wrong.

Hindsight is 20/20 Along the Party Lines

I don’t get much into politics. I know what’s going on, I just try not to talk about it too much. The whole thing is embarrassing to me. Our elected officials are just a bunch of whining crybabies that are only concerned with their jobs and their party. I had hoped that the tragedies of last September would pull the country and our government closer together. This morning I am reading that congress is going to be holding hearings into how much the government knew prior to the attack and where the communication broke down. If this was all they were doing I would be fine with it. There are holes in the communication between the agencies, so plugging those holes are crucial.

But the Democrats are using this as a witch-hunt to make the President look bad. They claim that the tragedy could have been avoided and the President did nothing to stop it. Well, I have a message for the Democrats… “Shut up”. The United States got caught with their pants down. We knew these guys were in the country; the CIA was following them for the last year, which means that it goes back to the Clinton administration as well. Somehow someone was supposed to put two and two together and come up with the fact that someone was going to run an airplane into the World Trade Center?

The agencies need to communicate better. Our national security needs to be heightened, but the finger pointing is just ridiculous. We try to teach kids to stand up and take responsibility for their actions, but at a time when the whole world is watching, the Democrats are pointing at the President and are saying “he did it”. Well, he didn’t. If you want to put blame anywhere besides the terrorists that actually committed the acts, then look at the country as a whole. We were living in a dream of security and pride. The dream is over. We screwed up. Now it’s time to work together and fix it.

And to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who said "There were a number of bits and pieces, and they weren't put together. There were several things that could have been investigated, had investigation been looked at as a way to go, which it wasn't.", can you stop telling people you’re from California please. You are just embarrassing us.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

I’ve been watching the NBA playoffs, and tonight culminated in an amazing game seven between the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers and the upstart Sacramento Kings. Now I never questioned the out come of this series… I knew exactly who the winner was going to be: NBC. You could see it in the way the fouls were being called. One night Shaq is checking Vlade’s nasal passages with his elbow and the refs look the other way, the next night Shaq is called on two violations that other refs had never heard of. The saddest thing was the brothers that own the Kings. After the game, they were interviewed about how the felt. You could see it in their eyes… they really thought they had a chance to win. It broke my heart.

If you took the Lakers and the Kings, put them on a high school blacktop court with no referees and no hidden agendas. I think the Lakers would win 99 times out of 100. Why? Shaq and Kobe. As of right now, there is no team out there that can put down these two players. Period. So why you might ask did it come down to a crucial game seven that went into overtime? Ratings. It’s summertime and sweeps are over. All the big NBC shows have had their finales and the filler shows have hit the air. So NBC wants the series to go on as long as possible. And they want the marquee match ups. It didn’t matter from the east. New Jersey or Boston, both have good television demographics. But the real draw is the Lakers.

Well, the NBA wants NBC’s money. It’s a simple equation. NBC wants seven games of the Lakers and the Kings. The NBA control the refs… the refs control the game. Result? A seven game nail biting series. But the Lakers had to win, because no body wanted a Sacramento vs. New Jersey/Boston final. No one would watch. The ratings would be horrible. And everyone knows that the east has no real chance against the west. So NBC had to get the most out of this series. They had the New Jersey/Boston series go as long so that people would keep in mind that there was more basketball coming up… to keep the audience for the finals.

So in a few days the New Jersey Nets will take the court, the announcers will try to convince us that they are a good team and capable of taking down the Lakers. The refs will call enough phantom fouls to let the Nets win a game or two and then the Lakers will take home their third trophy in a row. NBC will take home good ratings. The refs will take home a descent paycheck and the NBA will go back to looking for the next Michael Jordan… or the next Kobe Bryant.