Over the next little while, we will see plenty of stories about Amy Winehouse and how tragic her death is. Truly, any time someone is lost so early in life, it is a tragedy. But just like the train coming into the station, this whole event was predictable, on schedule, and pretty much expected by everyone in the room.

The real tragedy of the situation isn’t the death of Amy Winehouse, which has been pretty much a foregone conclusion for ages now, but rather the tragedy is in the system that lets it happen. As a British citizen, I am entirely shamed by the way the courts and legal system in the UK works these days, especially when it relates to the users of hard drugs and the havoc they reek on themselves and the world around them. For me, there is much to be learn by Amy’s death, and much that could have been done to prevent it.

First and foremost, there are the enablers. Two key players in that game were Amy’s ex-husband Blake Civil-Fielder, by many reports the man who introduced Amy to the terror that is is heroin additiction. For a girl who was admittedly depressive, moody, and even prone to self-harm, it was a powerful choice. It was at this period that Amy went from the curvy, well fed, well rounded and powerful singer, slowly contracting into a drug addicted shell of a woman, losing weight, losing her way, and eventually into endless trouble. She married Civil-Fielder, a marriage she later admitted was pretty much entirely based around drug use. She along the way started dating notorious drug fiend Pete Dorherty, who seemed to fuel her drug habit even stronger, and encouraged her in very destructive ways. Between these two people, you have a significant negative influence, both of which should not have been present if the legal system truly worked out.

That for me is key. Both Doherty (known in the British tabloids as Doperty, his drug fueled stupidity so blatant that nobody tried to hide it) and Civil-Fielder proudly told tabloids that he had introduced Amy to crack and heroin. Both of these fine citizens had been before the courts, and until Civil Fielder was locked up for assault in 2008, had never really had any negative implications for his drug use and the like. Doherty has been in front of the courts any number of times, and always gets off. When the legal system, from Police to the courts and to the prisons are unable to deal with these people in a meaningful way, they will be out there in public, encouraging others to join in their destructive ways.

What happened to Amy Winehouse is a tragedy mostly because it reflects how far an entire generation of the UK has slipped, where drug use, binge drinking, and other reckless behavior is not only tolerated, but seemingly encouraged. The tragedy is that nobody in the system wants to deal with the issues, nobody wants to take responsiblity, and nobody wants to make the changes that says “this just isn’t tolerable”. Until that happens, there will be plenty of unknown Amy type girls dying every year from the same horrible combinations of social pressure, addictions, and a wildly permissive society. That is truly tragic.

What a weird world we live in. Since President Obama became the candidate for President of the US a few years ago, there has been a group of people who think he that he wasn’t born in the US. These so called birthers are the mouth breathers of US politics, a group that makes Sarah Palin supporters look bright. They ragged on about the birth thing, called Obama a Kenyan, pointed out his middle name is Hussein (trying to paint him as a hated Muslim, which he is not), and so on. They were a persistent, annoying circus, egged on by the Republican leaders and conservative media types who would sidestep the issue and by their silence, encouraged the wingnuts to keep up their crusade. Donald Trump, seeing this as a chance to ride the wave, took the concept very public, and attacked Obama about his failure to release a birth certificate.

Of course, all of that changed a couple of weeks back when Obama’s Birth Certificate was released. Suddenly, the birthers were left out in the cold, Trump was busy eating his words, and the nut jobs didn’t have anything to rag on about anymore. The more extreme went into the last defensive position that it took 2 years for them to fake the birth certificate, and in the end, the release of Obama’s birth certificate pretty much shut up the birther movement and made them useless.

Skip ahead a few days, and Osama Bin Laden gets taken out by US forces. Now it’s a double down time for Obama, not only did he shut up the birthers, but he accomplished the very mission that Bush and the Republican’s could not do, taking out the biggest terrorist target in the world. What does that get us?

The birthers were reborn, this time as deathers. Yup, now that Osama Bin Hiding is now Osama Bin Killed, the wingnuts are on the warpath, alternately claiming that Bin Laden isn’t dead, was killed for no reason, was killed illegally, or was in fact killed years ago and that Obama is just trying to get a boost by killing his ghost.

Some people will never be satisfied.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have not been a huge fan of the direction NASCAR has taken in the last few years. A number of moves by NASCAR management (such as creating the chase to the championship), changes to the cars, and an incredibly poor selection of tracks has really dragged the series down. This year, NASCAR attendance and viewership is down in the range of 20% or so, with many tracks hiding grandstands under plastic covers, offering 2 for 1 deals, or otherwise doing whatever they can to put people in the stands.

One of the fixtures of the dull and floundering NASCAR has been Jimmie Johnson and Hendrick Motorsport. Johnson is the sort of guy who’s personality just doesn’t shine through, no matter how hard NASCAR and their media partners try to push him. He is the white toast, no butter of racing, a guy without a single memorable quote to his name, with little outward emotions for about 99% of the time. He is sort of like a talented driving robot, not really someone you would want to get to know.

So the finish to the 2010 season should come as no surprise to anyone, as the 48 team once again rolls to a championship, with a second place finish in the race. With that 5th championship in a row, Johnson sets a record and really comes up to be one of the greatest champions in NASCAR history. Sadly, that championship pretty much sums up what ails NASCAR (or as I call it these days, NAPCAR). Here’s what I see:

First and foremost, NASCAR evolves very slowly. Unlike the NFL, MLB, and the NBA, it takes many, many years for things to change on the track and in the series. A reasonable durable driver can make a 25 year career out of NASCAR. Jeff Gordon will be entering his 19th year, Johnson is in his 10th year, and team mate Mark Martin will complete his 30th season next year. What it means is that the players on the field often don’t change much from year to year, and each season becomes a repeat of the previous year. In the last few years, there have been typically been only a handful of changes. The changes are often so minor that sites like Jayski celebrate paint job changes as major events.

In football, players move from team to team, some teams go up, some go down, and so on. Last season, the New Orleans Saints won the superbowl, yet it is very doubtful that you will see any of the lower end NASCAR teams ever reaching for the stars. Those guys who finished around 35th this year (Robby Gordon’s team) will likely be around the same place next year.

NASCAR is also incredibly slow with technology. The cars still run pushrod V8 engines, with carbs, a distributor, 4 speed transmissions, and use truck arm style suspensions in the rear. New model cars? NASCAR is suggesting 2013 or so. Fuel injection? Maybe next year… but then again, maybe 2012 or 2013. 17 inch wheels, lower profile tires, and independant suspensions? Get comfortable, none of that even has a date with possible in the next 5 years.

The chase? Well, it’s despised by many, yet NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France arrogantly suggests that everyone loves the chase, that nobody is complaining. Apparently he doesn’t spend any time listening to fans, reading chat boards, or actually paying attention to the media. The chase is one of many things that fans routinely complain about, and yes, the results of this season’s championship are more proof. Without the chase, Kevin Harvick would have sewn up the championship without issue. Instead, he lands 3rd – meaning the best team didn’t win the championship, just the little playoffs. Brian France doesn’t seem to get that people realize they have been manipulated here.

The tracks are another issue. So many of the tracks are either 1.5 – 2 mile cookie cutter tracks, or are tracks with personality that have been modified and neutered in the last 5 or 6 years in the name of “better racing”. Bristol, which was one of the tracks which sold out 40+ races in a row modified their track with progressive banking to make the racing better, and instead turned the race into a snooze that is chasing the fans away.

Jimmie Johnson’s 5th championship sets a record, and hammers another nail into the NASCAR coffin. It is very unlikely that any changes for the 2011 season will come over the short winter period, and it is very unlikely that NASCAR will offer up anything new and exciting that the lost fans will want to come back for. The same drivers, in the same look alike cars, at the same look alike tracks, repeating the same season they have repeated for the last 5 years, with the same predictable results. Congrats Brian, you have just about killed your family legacy!

PS: A little post script to this story. About 2 hours after the end of the NASCAR season and the championship, I was unable to find NASCAR, Jimmie Johnson, or anything of that nature on Google trends for the US. However, the UFC night from the night before was up there, as was the Philadelphia Marathon Results. It is telling that NASCAR doesn’t even rise up to the level of interesting of the death of Bambi Bembenek (convicted killer from the 90s who died recently).

It is said that bad things happen in threes, and this week’s RIP list pretty much sums that up. Dennis Hopper, Gary Coleman, and Rue Mcclanahan all passed away in the last few days, kicking in many memories of 60s, 70s, and 80s culture.

Dennis Hopper is probably best known for his role in Easy Rider, the 60′s look at two bikers going across country for kicks, drugs, and girls. More recently, Hopper had been the spokeman for a retirement planning firm, which certainly shows how times flies. He died of cancer way too early, at 74.

Rue Mcclanahan is best known for her roles along side the late Bea Arthur, first in the wildly successful show Maude, and then on the Emmy Award winning The Golden Girls. Her career spanned stage and the screen, and passing leaves only Betty White as the last of the Golden Girls with us.

Gary Coleman is the best known for his childhood role in the immensely popular show Diff’rent Stokes, where he played the wise cracking younger son Arnold. He died as a result of a fall, at a young 42. Since his time on the TV show, he has spent much of his career as a sort of classic B list celeb, moving from odd project to odd project, often making fun of himself and his small stature, and getting into trouble often enough to keep his name in the news.

Three stars in a week, it’s never a good time to see them go. RIP all of you, your contributions to our common culture will live on for you.

As a long time fan of the Deadliest Catch, since the time before the show existed as was just part of the a Dangerous Jobs series, it saddens me to report that Captain Phil Harris, the gruff but loving master of the F/V Cornelia Marie passed away on February 9th, as a result of complications from a stroke suffered less that two weeks ago. Captain Harris had some past serious medical problems including blood clots (one that passed through his heart at one point), but had recovered well and returned to work. While offloading in St Paul during the crab season, he suffered a stroke and went into a coma. While he came out of the coma, he finally did succumb a few days after. His two sons work with him on the boat and appear on the show, and they posted this:

It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to our dad – Captain Phil Harris. Dad has always been a fighter and continued to be until the end. For us and the crew, he was someone who never backed down. We will remember and celebrate that strength. Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and prayers. – Jake and Josh Harris

RIP, Captain Phil Harris, we will miss you.

It’s almost a traditional thing now, the Tom Cruise dead rumors seem to come up about two or three times a year, more often when he is doing something nutty. Recent stories have peopel from inside his camp reporting on his weeks of trying to use his Scientology powers to dominate door knobs and other inanimate objects. It’s sort of up there with his classic jump around on Oprah thing. Whatever the deal, there is no truth to Tom Cruise having a heart attack, Tom Cruise falling off a building, Tom Cruise falling off a cliff, or Tom Cruise dying in some other manner, at least not yet.

Xenu must wait another day, I guess.

it hasn’t been a very good week for Perez Hilton, the screen name for flamboyant “blogger” Mario Lavandeira. First off, he gets into a scuffle in Toronto with Members of the Black Eyed Peas, calls one of them a “f-ggot”, and get whacked upside the head and gets a black eye as a result. Then on Thursday, as news broke that Michael Jackson had suffered a heart attack, this guy has the balls to post the picture above with “heart attack or cold feet” written on it, and the text:

Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance from his Holmby Hills home to a nearby Los Angeles hospital on Thursday afternoon!! Supposedly, the singer went into cardiac arrest and the paramedics had to administer CPR!!!
His mother is even on the way to visit him!!!…
We are dubious!!
Jacko pulled a similar stunt when he was getting ready for his big HBO special in ’95 when he “collapsed” at rehearsal! He was dragging his heels on that just like his upcoming 50 date London residency at the 02 Arena, of which he already postponed the first few dates!!! Either he’s lying or making himself sick, but we’re curious to see if he’s able to go on!!! Get your money back, ticket holders!!!!

The reaction has been swift. Perez’s own blog is packed full of comments calling him out and really giving it to him. Online petitions have started. Fox news ran the story, which apparently Perez declined to comment on when reached for a comment. Considering this guy seems to have something to say about everything, well.

There is a pretty big move out there for people to boycott or stay away from his blog, the anger is running deep as the senselessness of his comments are sinking in.

RIP Michael Jackson!

Quite simply, I am shocked and dismays. As many of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s, I didn’t really like Michael Jackson’s music (rock guy here) but still had respect for this work. We all watched as he went through his creepy, reclusive stage, and deep down we cheered as he announced his 50 concert event for the UK, scheduled for later this year.

Well, some people, like annoying gossip blogger Perez Hilton, could only seem to joke and jibe about it. In his typical fashion, he made crude comments. The Perez style includes writing rude comments on images, adding genitalia, and other childish things. Anyway, when the news broke of Michael Jackson’s heart attack, this fool ran the picture above – “heart attack or cold feet”.

How crude. Perez, I know why you got slugged the other night. You are a creep. I hope every one of your advertisers drops your site like a rock, and I hope that every intelligent celeb in the world no longer wants anything to do with your rude, crude blog. Go away, your time is up.

RIP Michael Jackson!

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (aka SeattlePI) has stopped publishing but has gone to a web only format. In this move, 160 out of 200 people lose their jobs right away. It is also not clear that they will have enough “reporter power” to actually cover the stories they use to, and if the audience will actually follow them to the online world.

The Rocky Mountain News is a bit of a different case. It had been suffering for years, and various moves from management had not helped the decline. No buyer was found for the paper, and so it was shut down entirely. Ex staff members are currently trying to come back as an online news site, but a subscription model is somewhat out of sync with that the internet community expects there days.

For the most part, things are not looking good for the newspaper business. Various reasons are cited, from the short attention span of younger people to environmental concerns to the papers being too slow in a video and internet world. What is clear is that many papers across the US are in trouble, and that the news business will never be the same again.

I am a net guy, I know the old “out with the old, in the with the new” mantra of progress that never seems to stop. I don’t mind getting my news online or from broadcast TV, the medium doesn’t bother me. What concerns me is the ongoing drop of journalistic standards. Newspapers by their nature often have the time to consider a story before releasing it. A story at noon can get written up and finished just before press time at 11 pm, and a full day’s worth of information, updates, and fact checking goes into the final product. TV and the web is often a transient thing, consider today’s case of the Natasha Richardson ski accident reporting. Various online sources have reported her as alive and doing well to brain dead to somewhere in between. The lack of fact checking and the fast and loose with the facts mentality of the net has led some news organizations to shoot first and ask questions later.

Internet news is in the same boat as 24 hour news channels. Live coverage of news events means that we often see hours and hours with few actual facts and many talking heads, speculating, yabbering, and generally raising the noise level without imparting information. In the first to be first, nobody appears to be worried about being right.

Worse are blog sites (even like mine). I make it clear that what I post here is my opinion, not fact, but many do not do so. It is hard to tell when they are telling the truth, and when they are telling you what they want you to believe. Misinformation is rampant (surveys pre-election showed that many people in Taxes though that Barrack Obama was a muslim, a rumor spread online and through some conservative talk radio shows). A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth, and many opinion shapers use this to their advantage. Their perception, repeated and repeated, becomes their audience’s reality.

In losing newspapers, our biggest loss isn’t the paper, but the people and the standards they worked by.

If the reports are true, it is another scary and meaningless death in the world of MMA that has seen way too many strange deaths in the last couple of years, including the murder / suicide of Justin Levens and his family, as well as the death of Evan Tanner in the desert. It has been a very odd time in MMA, that is for sure.

RIP Mask – read more here