My Sick Mind

I know, at the age of 54 that the best half of my life is gone.  It's a simple mathematical work.  I could give you great odds that I'm not going to last 105 years, and I can also safely assume that the last 25 or so of my years will be spent in some hunched-over, problematic knee pain, hard-of-hearing-lost-sight-body-fat-gaining sustenance.  It's difficult to imagine now, but unless I'm some Jack LaLanne clone I don't see it ending any differently. I have to look back, at this point, and assess the events of the past and reflect - both negatively and positively - on their impact. This isn't some New Year's resolution-type thing, just random junk ... My gym is filled with 50-something year-old guys with tattoos and unsightly body hair.  It's what makes me wonder what guys find appealing in other guys.  I find nothing appealing about hairy asses and paunches - but reasonable men may differ. So there's that.   And I'm left to wonder ...

Victim number 7 has emerged in the Bill Conlin child sex abuse case, and victim number 12 in the Sandusky case.  I guess we're supposed to be shocked and appalled, but I'd guess that we've heard from maybe ten percent of the potential victims. This isn't like trying Sushi or skydiving.   You don't do it once and say, "OK, I got that out of my system."  It's not a Bucket List item that gets checked off.  It's recidivist behavior, just like adult sex.  It's perverted potato chips. On the grand scale of human behavior, I understand sex between consenting adults.  I even understand it between adults of the same sex, because we have opposable thumbs and reasoned thought.  But, when it comes to fondling 7-year old boys, that's on Pluto. People on Neptune are laughing at them.  "Wow, we like a lot of strange shit, but we aren't that bad." I can't figure out what climactic sexual thrill is derived from putting your ha...

Somebody should have Bill Conlin on suicide watch.   I'm just saying. I cut my baseball teeth on his Daily News columns in the 1970s and 1980s.  Who knew the deep secrets he was hiding?  Nobody, which is exactly the point.  Football coaches, filmmakers, musicians and writers perform their craft to our admiration, while we go about our daily lives.  They are awarded Grammy's, Pulitzers and are admitted to various sports Halls of Fame, all the while concealing their hideous private lives.  It's long past time that we stop admiring people for their so-called worth to society and start looking at their work - and their work alone - when it comes time to awarding them.  Does it make Bill Conlin any less a sportswriter because he enjoyed fondling young boys and girls?  No. What it does is make him less of a human, and that is something to which we all should aspire to overcome. Every night this week I have been on the road with a driver who...