My night with Julia Roberts

I’m not going to be among those who today are commenting on last night’s new episodes of “Jon & Kate + 8.” I’ll leave it to others to speculate on the randy shenanigans of serial cheater Jon and to what extent his shrewish wife drove him to it.

No, on this day it falls to me to discuss journalism ethics.

This ought to be funny because I have none.

But I’m uniquely qualified to tackle the subject because the issue here is the oxymoronic topic of tabloid journalism ethics.

I’m talking about tabloid Star magazine reporter Kate Major who while on assignment to cover Jon Gosselin apparently decided to cover him in ways Mike Wallace never dared.

She slept with him.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen -- it just did,” she gushed. "I went to do a story on Jon and ended up falling for him.”

I don’t understand how girls keep falling for a rather dumpy looking chap with more baggage than a Samsonite warehouse, but that’s beside the point. Citing a conflict of interest, she quit her job with Star to follow her heart and the man she considers dashing.

As a tabloid veteran of who wrote more than 1,000 swashbuckling stories for National Enquirer from 1994-2000, I wish Kate would have called me for advice.

I’d have told her to continue screwing Jon in every sense of the word. Quitting your job when you have pillow talk access to one of the biggest tabloid stories in the country?

In the tabloid world it’s considered highly unprofessional to be so professional.

Even my wife understood this.

That’s how I ended up with my hands in Julia Roberts’s pants.

It was October 28, 1997, Julia’s 30th birthday. She was having an exclusive birthday party about a private yacht cruising the Chesapeake from Annapolis to Baltimore’s splendid Inner Harbor.

An Enquirer editor called me in an apoplectic state, which was a fairly constant condition for Enquirer editors. Guaranteed, he’d been apoplectic four minutes previous to my call and would re-enter an apoplectic state three minutes after setting down the phone from talking to me.

“We need you to get to Maryland right away!” he said. “We’ve snagged a personal invitation to Julia Robert’s 30th birthday party. You need to get your ass down there.”

I did better than that. I took my wife’s ass, too!.

Ah, those were the good old days.. The Enquirer was a demanding master, but never stingy with the expense account. I knew I could take my wife and we’d have a wonderful time in Baltimore with or without the Pretty Woman.

But I was determined to get on board that boat. I thought presents would add a semblance of reality to my scheme to thwart what was bound to be a tightly controlled arrangement. The invitation was legit, by the way. Someone in her inner circle had secured an lavishly embossed invitation and for whatever reason -- Cash? Revenge? -- gave it to the Enquirer.

So we stopped by a Baltimore gift shop and charged armfuls of crab-themed delights. There were spices, a T-shirt, earrings, cookbooks and some crab-covered silk boxer shorts.

Val was excited, too. Neither of us were big fans of the toothy actress, but it’s easy to be dazzled by the proximity of fame and fun.

It was an interesting time for Roberts. She and dorky singer Lyle Lovett had recently divorced and the Enquirer was reporting she had been dating a string of regular guys.

Guys like me.

I told this to Val and said it was important for her to remember that I was on duty here and might need to behave in ways that might be considered immoral and outside the bounds of our marriage.

In short, I said I might have to -- in the line of duty -- screw Julia Roberts.

But I wasn’t going to screw The National Enquirer.

That’s where Kate Major made her mistake.

Val gave me permission to make out with Julia, but no more, an understanding compromise on her part, I felt.

Of course it didn’t work out. We weren’t on the guest list. They hustled us off the pier and the only pretty woman I got to make out with that night was my own wife.

But we left all the presents and told the guards to tell her they were compliments of National Enquirer.

It wasn’t until the drive home that I realized that I could forever say I had my hands in the star's pants. I was sure she’d like the crabby silk boxers best of all.

It was just my luck that it happened at least three hours before she even knew the pants were hers.

Related . . .

Fox News goes too far; lies about National Enquirer

Hilary Swank & all my neighborhood nipples

On Easter, thoughts of another King

Kate Upton in Latrobe! When a supermodel comes to town

Free Wireless and costly coffee

I’m such a bleeding heart liberal that anytime I see signs shouting, “Free Wireless!” I run inside looking for a petition to sign. Over the years, this has cost me a fortune in unwanted coffee purchases.

Other writers and, invariably, breakfast waitresses look at me like I tell them my head’s a time bomb set to explode when I say no thanks to morning java.

I admit it’s a startling declaration, like an Eskimo saying he dislikes snow.

Everybody drinks coffee, and most of them seem to enjoy it. They say the caffeine gives them a jolt that helps launch them into the day. It’s a jolt they reignite every 30 minutes or so with multiple refills.

I wonder how different my life would be if I self-medicated that way. I’m sure I’d be more alert and that’s a sufficient reason to keep me from ever doing so.

Truly alert people are the cause for much of life’s miseries. They start shooting wars, they cut you off in traffic and shout out the answers to televised “Jeopardy!” questions like they have an actual money stake in the result.

I’m as alert as I ever want to be. I spend most of the day looking like at any second I could fall fast asleep. In fact, I’m sure I could drift off right now for a few quick winks.

But I’m going to fend off the urge to do so because I don’t want to slow the blog’s momentum for any coffee drinkers who might get impatient at the somnambulant siesta.

I wonder if becoming a coffee drinker because it might be a good career move.

I decided to call my home blog, www.EightDaysToAmish.com, shortly after shedding internet access at my shabby little office. I did it to save money and because internet access is readily available in nearby coffee shops and my local library.

The next logical step once you start down that road is cutting cable, electricity, water, etc., and the next thing you know you’re churning your own butter and wearing burlap britches.

(Note: if I were to rename the home blog today I’d call it www.TwoDaysToAmish.com. Things are so tight and bereft of promise that I’ve looked into the legality of trading the kids for cows.)

I’m perfectly content doing on-line work at the local library. But because that government-subsidized outfit is nearing an Amish existence, too, its doors are open as infrequently as a miser’s wallet.

On Fridays the library is down for the day. Its still-functioning wireless reach extends to the parking lot, but I’m reluctant to work on my laptop in my car for hours at a time because the library’s right next door to a busy church playground.

A cop could come by and lurch to the conclusion that something sinister’s afoot, especially if I can’t get him to swallow my story that reading computer pornography next to a church playground involves some farfetched sort of story research (I have trouble believing that one myself).

So that leaves the inviting coffee shops and their “Free Wireless!” signs.

I’m not the kind of mooch who could sit there for hours nursing one mocha frappo whatever. I feel obliged to patronize the joint.

Plus, I’m not going sit there and do like so many other writers and be surreptitious. No, I’ll want everyone to know with whom they’re dealing. That means the purple robe, the extended ebony cigarette holder, the brandy snifter and flamboyant stalking about the bean bins as I grapple about for fancy words like “surreptitious.”

I’m sure word would soon get around that I was the disgraced writer so destitute he couldn’t afford internet access at his pitiful little office.

They’d probably start calling me snide names like “Wire Less” behind my back.

So just to be safe, if you are a fellow writer sitting in some cyber cafe, I ask you to set down your coffee, your cigarette holder, and cinch up your purple bathrobe.

Approach the store manager and ask to start a “Free Wireless!” petition.

She’ll know what you’re talking about.

A naked solution to swimsuit controversy

Unless I’m misreading the situation, and I don’t think I am, the future of competitive swimming could involve full nudity. And that gives me a kind of water willies that might be at odds with what just went through your mind.

I’m fascinated by the Michael Phelps swimming controversy involving the buoyancy-enhancing, friction reducing polyurethane swimsuit worn by dastardly German swimmer Paul Biedermann.

Golf, tennis and NASCAR, certainly, have struggled with souped up equipment issues for years. But it never dawned on me that swim apparel could be considered performance enhancing. Sure, a stylish one could maybe help you connect on the beach but after doffing the duds it would require standard pharmaceuticals to do any actual enhancing.

How wrong I was. I guess we can all rest assured that technological savants are at work to shave .0001 off a competitive swimmer’s time rather than devoting their genius to building, say, vehicles that are safer, more fuel efficient or -- and wouldn’t this be cool? -- edible.

Swimmer Beidermann tried to deflect the controversy by saying, “I hope there will be a time again when I can beat Michael Phelps without the suit.”

It sounds to me like he’s suggesting racing in the nude.

That would solve many problems while simultaneously launching a host of others.

I enjoy pure competition as much as the next guy, but if swimmers begin hunching over the starting blocks without even their Speedos on, I’m frantically clicking to find a channel with fully clothed bowlers.

Devoted students of this blog -- and thanks so much to all three of you! -- know I’m a near unwavering advocate of more nudity to improve nearly every social situation. Just last week, it was I that suggested nudity could save the space program from being forever marooned on Planet Boredom.

But naked competitive swimming is where I draw the line.

I understand that’s a confounding position because we can all agree that being naked in water is generally among the most joyful human experiences. It’s one reason people sing in the shower.

It feels good. You’re all sudsy. It’s cleansing. What could be better?

Veteran skinny dippers like me know the answer to that. It was back in high school when my friends and I would coax a group of innocent lovelies to sneak into neighborhood pools with us in the hopes it would lead to mutual corruption.

It never happened the way we dreamed but I enjoyed more illicit nudity on those moonlit summer nights than all those years later when the cable company mistakenly included The Playboy Channel in our basic package.

Those were my wonder years and from them blossomed a lifelong affinity with naked, or “nekkid” swimming.

The late, great Southern humorist Lewis Grizzard once said that the difference between being naked and being nekkid is the state of being without clothes and being without clothes and being up to something.

The logical conclusion of what swimmer Beidermann is proposing is naked, not “nekkid” swimming and that leaves me cold.

Despite our black president, our states embracing gay marriage and whiffs of pot legalization in California, we’re still essentially a puritanical nation that instinctively puts fig leaves on works of art rather than embracing our Eden’s essence.

Naked swimming would never fly.

Still, something must be done to mitigate the vexing swimsuit controversy.

I propose we remove the human element from the pool and simply drop the new high-tech suits into the water when the starting gun sounds.

Then we can cheer the empty super-charged suits as they fly down the lanes shucked free of their human cobs.

“USA! USA!”

It’ll seem a lot less impersonal when Ol’ Glory goes flying down the lane without an actual swimmer inside.

'twas a Merry Christmas in July

Christmas in July was over before you know it and now I can’t wait until next July 25.

I’m usually Scrooge-like when it comes to all holidays that don’t involve drinking and joking, and I don’t feel the need to crowd the calendar with any more days of structured jolliness. If I feel like being a mean, nasty SOB on holy days like Easter or Christmas, by God, I want to do it.

But as I come to grips with the knowledge that I’ll likely die as I’ve lived -- flat broke -- I’ve understood I need to make some compensations so my daughters will leaven their memories about their lazy, unproductive father with the appreciation that the old man was good for giggling.

So as we entered the dog days of summer, our vacation behind us, school still a ways off, I knew I needed to do something until August 7 and National Lighthouse Day.

I seized on July 25, Christmas in July. It was a natural because Christmas in December is the very best holiday for kids like ours, ages 8 and 3. And because, as we can all agree, Christmas needs some tyrannical improvements.

It’s too commercial. It’s excessively shrill. You feel pressure to do repulsive things like hug in-laws.

But Christmas in July is a fresh canvass. A visionary like me could cast it any way he wants.

And now I’m hopeful Christmas in July will usurp Christmas in December.

First of all, there is no stress to Christmas in July. In fact, I decided to honor the holiday just two shopping days before the actual event. That’s plenty of time because I decided everyone would get just one gift. I was able to shop for and wrap all four gifts in two hours (got myself a DVD of John Wayne’s, “Red River”).

Second, no Santa and no Jesus. They’re both real sweethearts, but every December they engage in an unseemly tug-of-war that makes the holiday difficult for sensitive sorts like me. So for Christmas in July, to hell with the both of them.

Third, decorations are minimized. There will be no neighborhood competitions about who can create the most light and noise pollution with mega-watt, ‘round-the-clock renditions of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” Christmas in July is a stealth holiday. In fact, my wife didn’t even know it was happening until she walked down stairs to our cozy basement and saw a fire in the fireplace (it was 84-degrees outside) and the rented version of “A Christmas Story” on TV.

And lastly, there will be no silly arguments about what you can and can’t say. One of the best parts of Christmas in July was going to the local florist shop and asking for a Christmas in July arrangement. They’d never made one so we took a lovely vase full of fragrant summer sunshine (make up your own rules as you go along). The flowers served as the de facto Christmas tree and, believe me, it was a lot easier getting it into the house.

But the girls in the flower shop seemed perfectly charmed when my daughters and I explained the holiday and bid them Merry Christmas in July. One was so tickled, she said she was going to stop by and sing Christmas in July carols. I said she was welcome to do so but Christmas in July meant we didn’t have to answer the door and pretend we were happy with her off-key intrusion.

Wishing people a joyful “Merry Christmas!” in July was the best part of Christmas in July.

They seemed uplifted. For a moment, they could forget about their troubles and remember that once, well, six months ago, there was a time when the mundane greetings of our daily lives were exchanged by something more euphoric.

And because it was so unexpected half-a-year away, it wasn’t freighted with the baggage of all that Christmas in December entails. It didn’t have the pressures, the expenses and traditional obligations.

It was July. It was Christmas. And it was Merry.

I hope next year you circle July 25 on the calendar and remember to give you and your loved ones a little unseasonal treat.

Me, I’ll remain vigilant in looking for ways to bring spiritual improvement to every holiday.

And, remember, only 97 shopping days until April Fool’s Day in November!

Me, Mandela and doin' time

It was only a $15 parking ticket. It had been issued to me on July 3 outside the local public library for parking on the wrong side of the road. Many would have just paid it.

Not me. It didn’t seem fair. There was no sign. It was a holiday weekend on a road between a church and a small town library where my wife had asked me to pick up some books for the kids.

The only way my mission could have been more wholesome was if I’d paused to donate a spare kidney to some sick orphan.

So I took it to the local police chief. We’d never met, but have mutual friends. He looked at the ticket, looked at me, smiled and said, “Let’s let this go with a warning, okay?”

Okay!

I don’t know why I felt so good, but I had to fight the urge to jump up and click my heels together. It continued a run of friendly run-ins with badge-bearing folks from whom I used to instinctively run.

I’ve also become friendly with a Pennsylvania State Trooper whom I’d met at a golf function. We hit it off and and I invited him down to my local tavern where he proceeded to make as loud an ass out of himself as those of us who don’t carry loaded weapons for a living.

We all had a swell time. At the end of the night, he threw an arm around me and shoved his business card in my shirt pocket. I didn’t examine it until the next day. On the back, he’d written: “Chris is a personal friend/golf buddy. Any professional courtesy appreciated.”

I had to practically rub the Twilight Zone out of my booze-reddened eyes. It was a get out of jail free card!

And it’s just such a sad pity that I can’t think of a single circumstance where I’ll ever get to use it.

I don’t know how it happened, but all the menace of my youth has gradually leaked away. What remains couldn’t make a decent puddle.

Somehow I’ve become good and it seems like such a waste.

Where were these powerful friendships during my hell-raising youth? Where were they when I could have really used them?

Like the night I killed my wife.

It was 1987. All the old gang from college was in town and that meant lots of drinking. Inevitably, things got out of hand and one of my buddies, a Cincinnati lad, got busted for drunk and disorderly behavior.

The haze of history, not to mention multiple Ouzo shooters, fogs the details. I think it was an ill-advised game of toss involving empty beer bottles and a nervous valet, but I clearly remember a big steroid stallion of a cop rudely shoving him in the back of the cruiser.

As I was the semi-sober host, I felt honor-bound to take charge. I asked the officer when I could collect the miscreant.

“He’s with us,” was all he said.

“I understand that sir, but when, pray tell, can I come retrieve him?”

We went through a variation of this two more times before he growled, ‘Say one more word and you’re goin’ with him!”

You can beat me senseless and throw my shattered body in a dark dungeon until time runs out. But no one will ever incarcerate my inner smart ass.

I said, “Well . . .”

The very next instant began a lifelong appreciation for the sturdy construction of a well-built American vehicle. He grabbed the back of my head and slammed my chin into the cruiser’s hood.

I’m convinced if had been one of those mid-80’s foreign cars, the force would have collapsed the vehicle and the three of us would have had to perp walk a mile to the two-cell station.

Cell one was occupied by a surly-looking punk. He never even glanced up as they threw the two of us into the cell next door.

I confess I wasn’t unhappy about being there. I didn’t want to go through life without having to endure some imprisonment, if for no other reason than I could feel a kind of kinship with Nelson Mandela.

After about an hour of cellmate giggling -- and it was just giggling -- my buddy broke the ice with unseen Prisoner No. 000001.

He said he was in for a bar brawl, drunk and disorderly. “You guys?” he asked.

“Same thing, D&D,” said my buddy, a fast learner already hip to jailhouse lingo.

“You?” he asked me.

“I killed my wife.”

“You what!”

“Yep. Killed her dead.”

Maybe it was still the drunk part of his D&D, but I was surprised to learn he was such a sensitive sort. He was floored and came alive with interest. He asked what made me do it.

“Caught her in bed with a black guy,” I said.

“Oh, man!”

“Well, she’s black, too,” I explained.

He asked what I did.

“Shot her right in the ass,” I said.

“You sure you killed her?”

“I think so. It’s all so confused. All I remember is her rubbing her ass and hollerin' at me.”

I’ve heard stories of men who endure long incarceration. They say they remember the forlorness, the estrangement.

Me, I’ll always remember my buddy trying to stifle all his belly laughs as I spun one of my greatest stories ever, one rich with sordid detail about my criminal life as an outlaw youth.

When they let the two of us go at dawn, we walked past our cell neighbor. He didn’t even look up, too fearful to even fathom an evil so malevolent, so near.

I wonder if even one of Mandela’s nights over 27 years of bitter imprisonment was as much fun as my 12 hours.

I doubt it.

He probably ran with the wrong crowd.

Change your headshot every 5,000 miles

I changed without fanfare my headshot to this blog for the third time this year. I knew it was time to switch because I’ve decided to alter it every time I refresh the oil in my vehicle or about every 5,000 or so miles.

If I were an interstate truck driver, the procedure could become tedious. But these days I have little occasion to stray far from home. My commute to my office/bar where I work/guzzle is 3.2 miles. Once they fix the damn bridge that commute will be shortened to 2.1 miles and the periods between new photo sessions will be even fewer.

See, I went about eight years without ever once changing my mugshot. I used the same one whenever some magazine said they needed it for their contributor’s page. It was a picture of me with a smile I’d characterize as wry.

When they added the little editor’s note exaggerating my accomplishments, I’d always consider the pairing on the page ham on wry. Those things are always designed to trick readers into believing they were really, really lucky to read something by a guy like me.

But that only happened maybe a couple times a year, not enough to bore either me or any reader alert enough to know I’d roused myself from my usual professional stupor to create something print-worthy.

Then I began to blog.

I’d see that face, that same face with that same wry smile, three or four times a week. The guy started looking like a stranger to me. Plus, I began to resent him for all he was that I was not.

He was youthful with no gray hairs. He looked more carefree, like he didn’t have two kids. Plus, and this drove me nuts, I could tell by looking that the 2001 me had at least twice as much in his 401-K plan as the 2009 me does.

I decided to kill him off.

For my most recent picture, I’d had a beard, scraggly hair and wore a thick gray pullover hoodie. This was okay for winter, but it started looking increasingly silly as spring warmed to summer.

One day I got so sick of it I got in the car and drove 328 miles just so I’d need to get the oil changed.

For now, I’m liking this one, especially the shirt. The smile’s nice, too. The dimples shadow nicely and the closed lip grin conceals the ragged skyline of chipped ivories.

One thing I’ve noticed is that as time continues to rake my face with its cruel claws, I keep backing further and further from the camera. A really honest warts ‘n’ all mugshot should be taken about two feet from the subject in a well-lit place.

But that might lead people comparing me to troll-like singer Phil Collins. He released about four collections in the 1980s with album covers showing pictures of his pumpkin-like noggin inches from the camera.

You’d see gaping pores, stray nose hairs, age spots. It was one of the most repulsive events in music -- and that was before you’d drop the needle on songs like “Su-Su-Sudio.”

There are lots of great headshots of lovely bloggers at places like www.RedRoom.com. One of my favorites shows author Matt Benyon Rees wearing a spy overcoat, a grim expression and brandishing a gun. Very cool.

He writes crime stories so the prop is appropriate.

What’s a guy like me, a self-professed humorist, supposed to do? Wear a fright wig and a big red clown’s nose?

Some people have such lovely headshots I can understand their reluctance to tinker.

Still, I believe it’s important to keep our pictures current to avoid any Dorian Gray revelations. I know it wouldn’t do for someone like me to show up -- cross your fingers -- on Oprah looking vastly different from how I look on blog pages and book jackets.

I want people to be happy for me and eager to hear what I have to say.

I don’t want them confused by my appearance and asking questions like: “Say, when did Phil Collins start writing books?”

Today's space program needs nudity

I really thought by now we’d have at least the galactic equivalent of a 7/11 on the moon. We could go there for stale hot dog buns, overpriced milk and things like batteries and toothpaste.

Those would be all the things you might forget if you were packing for a moon vacation.

It may sound farfetched, but for the past 15 years or so I’ve talked to experts who assured me the future for moon vacations was on schedule for right about now. Back then I was told by 2010 a select few would be staying in inflatable lunar hotels, playing micro-gravity basketball with 40-foot hoops and sipping Tang & Tequilla Sunrises as the earth set on the Sea of Tranquility.

That’s why the 40th anniversary of the moon landing is triggering mixed emotions. It’s a landmark historical event, but seems like a nagging reminder of a wasted opportunity, sort of like 59-year-old Tom Watson whiffing on an 8-foot putt to, egads, win the British Open.

So it’s all very disappointing to an optimist who has been impatient for the future since way back in the past.
It all began for me in the mid ‘90s when I spied a tiny blurb in The Wall Street Journal that said there would be moon vacations by the year 2020 (and let me be the first to predict 2020 will be a good year for visionaries).

I knew the fuddy duddies at the WSJ were prone to erring on the sound side of prudence. At the time I was doing lots of stories for National Enquirer and instinctively erred on the side of gross recklessness. So I cut the projected number in half and launched a niche career as a half-baked futurist.

I did dozens stories for dozens of publications about what the future of moon vacations would look like. I found Japanese companies working on giant inflatable hotels. I found Swedish companies that were planning golf courses that would charge gray fees instead of green fees.

I found a man, Dennis Hope, who can justifiably claim he’s the king of the universe. In 1969, he seized on an obscure United Nations loophole that says “no country or nation can own outer space.” Because he’s an individual and neither country nor nation, Hope brilliantly laid claim to the moon and six planets and commenced to selling the real estate. He’s already sold more than 25,000 lunar acres at $27.15 a piece.

He’s going to be a whole chapter if I ever get around to my book about making millions by selling stuff that’s not yours.

And, of course, I found many people who were consumed with prospects of space sex. I don’t want to spoil the fun, but suffice it to say that bondage in the future will lose its deviant chic because experts say space sex will be impossible without straps, velcro and enough traction chains to get a cheap rent-a-car over the Rockies in a blizzard.

I found a private sector brimming with enthusiasm and Barnum-like initiatives that would re-ignite enthusiasm for a program that has somehow squeezed the euphoria out of what is man’s last, greatest adventure.

I believe the space program is at a standstill because we’ve turned the entire enterprise over to one of the most boring alliances ever conceived.

That would engineers restrained by accountants.

These are the people who for years have given us space experiments involving the mating habits of insects, frogs and worms when it seems all people really care about is the mating habits of astronauts.

Just imagine that pay-per-view.

In fact, the best human interest story involving the space program in recent years involved astro-naughty Capt. Lisa Nowak, kidnapping charges and a sordid love triangle. It was a fascinating peek behind the curtain at the lives of the star-chasing stoics.

And that all took place on earth.

We need some enterprising reality TV producer to develop a “Big Brother”-type show for outer space. And it should be R-rated.

We can’t ignore that adult entertainment was the driving force that keyed the development of the internet. A little space nudity -- lunar moons! -- could go a long way in humanizing the space program, a worthy endeavor that is ironically hitting bottom for its lack of cheekiness.