“Stop touching me or I’ll tell Daddy.  Stop touching me!  Daddy, he won’t stop touching me!”

“Well, what do you want me to do about that?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t know.  Uh…I don’t know.”

Okay, here’s the thing: it’s undercover.

Come on, we all know what that means.

Double Super Secret!

Hush-hush!

Ixnay!

Buuuuuuut…not so much that they can’t enjoy a well put-together Facebook page.  Yes, because all undercover units should have a Facebook or MySpace page announcing themselves.  And they should all have officers list themselves on said page as members of said unit.

Come on, if that’s not a what the hell are they thinking moment, then I don’t know what is.

But wait, Trey, don’t be so judgemental. That page is only available for viewing by those within the circle, by pre-screened friends.

Ah-yuh, and that shit NEVER gets out into public.  Like moronic Ted Petruna’s account of his AirTran Flight 297 wherein he and another Texan saved the flight from 11 rowdy Muslims who were about to hijack it…but not before said Muslims watched porn on a cellphone…which they’re allowed to do before Jihad, according to Petruna.

Yeah, that really is what he wrote.  Check out AirTrans’ response at http://www.insideairtran.com/?p=2200.  But the lesson is that this dope wrote his account on a social networking page that was private except to his closest friends.

Ya catching my drift?  See which way I’m floating?

If you’re part of a unit that uses undercover work as one of its main tools, give a second – or even third  – thought to advertising said unit on fucking Facebook.

Okay, not for nothing, but I’m drowning in my own bile at Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the gate crashers from the White House state dinner.

They were on one of the morning shows today whining about how all the attention was the “most devastating” thing that every happened to them.  Funny, it wasn’t particularly devastating when they posted pix all over Facebook.  Wasn’t devastating when they slipped their way through the serpentine labyrinth of security.

Shaddup.

First of all, let me say this: the musicianship was outstanding.

In spite of the fact that I’ll be constipated for a month…maybe more…because there was so much cheese.

LuAnn and I did Trans-Siberian Orchestra last night and it was an interesting evening. It was their standard winter tour, replete with every single Christmas track they’ve not only ever done, but ever even had whispy thoughts of doing…endless Christmas, call it. Endlesssssssssssss Christmas.

I wanted to blow my brains out. “Merry Christmas!” Ke-BOOM. See how that red blood and white bone matches the Christmas lights on stage? Ain’t that purty?

Once they finally, mercifully, got past the Christmas crap and bagged down into their newest album, the show moved right along.

First of all, the tech was absolutely fucking amazing. I haven’t worked in theater tech in seven years and when I left, the second generation of computer controllers and cyberlights were just coming along. The advances in those seven years left me gobsmacked. Everything was run by computers and synched to very specific moments – individual beats, even – in the music.

The music was the music. You either dig TSO or you don’t. Call it ‘Metal-ing the Classics,’ ’cause that’s basically what they do. They opened with Verdi’s ‘Requiem for Manzoni,’ which surprised me but got some blood boiling. They also quoted liberally from Beethoven’s 9th, Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King,’ Orff’s ‘O Fortuna,’ and a pile of other Top 40 classic bits.

But damned if they didn’t also play some Black Sabbath and Led Zepplin. To be honest, when I first heard the strains of ‘Kashmir,’ I thought maybe someone had slipped some acid into my health water (it was that kind of crowd…the water, not the acid). But no, they were really tromping through the tune.

Overall, though, I had mixed feelings about the three-hour show. There were moments that rocked me to my little black heart. But there was so much cheese, it felt like what I thought a three-hour ‘American Idol’ might feel like. The singers, with only a couple of exceptions, were all belters and had as much subtlety as a two-by-four to the balls. Every moment of the staging and blocking were absolutely directed, leaving not a single heartbeat of spontaneity. Even the two lead violinists had matching rock and roll poses with their bows – straight up on the right hand…sort of reminded of the ‘Star Wars’ posters where Luke had his lightsabre cocked over his head.

It was all very safe, in other words. And ‘almost.’

It was almost rock and roll. It was almost classical. It was almost metal. It was almost sexy. It was almost dramatic.

It was almost lots and lots of different things, but not really any one of those completely. Like TSO didn’t really have the balls to commit to any one particular thing.

Because, as my wife and I discussed, that’s TSO’s market. The audience was brutally white, amazingly middle-aged (though there were fringes of young and old: teens, tweens, and those with walkers), and mostly wearing yuppie-fried Dockers, jackets, and loafers. This audience wanted to be able to say they saw and heard something dramatic and so that’s what TSO gave them. But without all those pesky edges that might jar their world a little.

At the end, I felt like I could take that entire TSO show, jam it against my jugular, and cut for half a thousand years and I would never draw blood.

No edges. Sanded fine and smooth as a baby’s bare butt.

But again, the musicians were actually quite good. The pianists, the guitarists, and two of the male singers. Top shelf. They were riffing on some fast classical tunes and keeping up pretty well.

Perhaps the worst musicians, at least for me, were those I call the Stepford Singers. Four chicks in identical black dresses – with tails – and with absolutely identical blond hair. Straight and fine and falling to about mid-chest. But worn specifically that way so their ‘dance’ moves (which were as white and rhythmless as anything I’ve seen…ever!) would look exactly the same when they flipped their heads back and forth. Sort of retro go-go girl in a cage. But again, without any actual sexuality.

The female violinist had exactly the same hair and she kept doing a Metallica/Rage Against the Machine thing that I’m surprised didn’t leave her with a concussion. Head forward…head backward…forward…backward…SIDEWAYS…forward…backward…forward.

But I was able to stomach their bad singing and dancing because – as horribly sexist as this is – they all wore matching black leather boots with just a bit of funky fringe. I can take a lot of crap for hot boots.

All in all, it was a fun night. I had fun with the music, I had fun laughing at their ‘edgy’ performance. I had fun laughing at some of the crowd.

But I will say this: that crowd loved that band and that’s cool. And that band gave nearly $12,000 (straight off of ticket sales) to two local charities and that rocks my sad little world.

So I’ll count myself as a TSO guy and I’ll continue to listen to them and buy their tunes and maybe see some shows.

But I’m gonna keep laughing at ’em, too.

ps – the pix aren’t mine, I didn’t take any. I swiped these off the ‘net, but they give you a flavor.

A few days ago, there was more videotape.

– one –

Of a cop. Out of control.

Again.

– two –

This time, it was a school resource officer at a special needs school in Dolton, Illinois. What we see, and admittedly it isn’t the entire tape, is a kid walking down the hallway. The officer says something to him, the kid’s body language makes it appear as though the kid gives the officer a ‘whatever.’ The cop then puts his coffee down, sets his feet, and throws his entire body into the kid, slamming him first into the lockers, then into the floor. At which point, the officer falls on top of the kid.

– three –

I’m not going to post the video not because I don’t think you should all see it. You should, everyone should. But because it is so depressingly familiar. I have seen this exact video too many times before.

– four –

The kid, a 15-year old with behavioral problems and brain damage from a car accident when he was a kid, ended up with a broken nose.

– five –

He’d begun attending the school in May. The incident happened in May. “Well, hey, young sir, welcome to our school. How ‘bout a broken nose to go with those snazzy new sneakers you’ve got?”

– six –

The cop, Christopher Lloyd, says the kid refused to tuck his shirt in. The cop’s father later said the kid took a swipe at the cop and broke his glasses. The officer was, in fact, treated and released for a scratched eye.

– seven –

But that’s not my problem. Here’s my problem (my first of several, actually):

– eight –

Coffee.

Go watch the tape.

– nine –

The cop SET HIS COFFEE DOWN!

– ten –

There is no emergency when an officer has time to set his coffee down. Emergencies, actual, honest-to-cosmos emergencies, don’t leave anyone – cops included – with time to set down their fucking coffee.

– eleven –

After the incident was brought to the attention of the Dolton Police Department, Officer Lloyd was suspended with pay. Okay, I’m good with that. Do an investigation, figure out exactly what happened, mete out punishment from there.

– twelve –

But Lloyd came in and resigned before the investigation was finished. Okay, his job, he can quit if he wants.

– thirteen –

This, then, moves me to my next problem:

Rape.

– fourteen –

Christopher Lloyd, late of the Dolton Police Department, was arrested in August (three months after beating a kid) for raping a woman. Allegedly, he held a pillow over her face while sexually assaulting her. And this is after threatening her previously with a knife.

– fifteen –

Hhmmmm…issues?

He’s being held on $110,000 bond and could go down for 20 years if they convict him of the rape.

– sixteen –

Which brings me to my next problem:

Murder.

And I don’t use that term lightly.

– seventeen –

February 17, 2008, Christopher Lloyd – according to a lawsuit filed by his ex-wife – gunned down her new husband outside their house in front of their children. Lloyd shot the man twenty-four times.

Twenty-four times.

Chicago Police charged him with bupkis because Lloyd said it was self-defense.

– eighteen –

Twenty-four times is not self-defense. No way in hell is it anything other than murder. One shot, two shots, maybe three…maybe even five…is self-defense. Twenty-four shots is reloading and shooting again. That is not self-defense.

Now, at the time, he was working as a Robbins city police officer. They suspended him – ya’ think? – but while the investigation was going on, in January, 2009, he got hired on at Dolton.

– nineteen –

What the fuck were they thinking?

Did they bother to do any sort of background check? Did they just miss that he was under investigation for gunning a man down with twenty-four shots?

A spokesperson for Chicago PD has said that the details of the investigation into that shooting “could not immediately be found….” Hehehehe…read that this way: “We are scrambling to figure out how to cover our asses because we’ve figured out that this man is, at best, a rogue cop and, at worst, a psychopath. We are endeavoring to ascertain exactly how any investigator with half an ounce of brain could look at twenty four shots and call it self defense. In other words, we are looking for a scapegoat to offer the Media Gods who demand a Sacrificial Lamb.”

– twenty –

I looked and looked for details of that shooting in the local media and couldn’t find anything so we’ll go with the details on their face. And yeah, I’m aware details could change things, but I refuse to believe there are any details that could make me say, “Hell, yeah, shoot that fucker 24 times and I’ll buy self-defense.”

– twenty-one –

How could a cop like this get through the system and get a job?

In my opinion, though it happens rarely, it happens too often. Of all the officers I know across the country, and it’s probably hundreds, I know of only one who’s a problem. He is a part time officer, but he has eight misdemeanor convictions in his past, from DUI to discharge of a firearm in public, illegal consumption and contributing to the deliquency of a minor. Yes, they were more than a decade ago, but those convictions, behind a shiny badge, look skunky. And they will look a helluva lot skunkier if he ends up hurting or killing someone or getting drunk and doing something stupid, won’t they?

– twenty-two –

The point of all this is, as I’ve said so often, is that cops are human and make mistakes. And there will always be bad cops, just as there will always be bad humans. But first and foremost, other officers have to call a bad cop a bad cop, and agencies have got to go the extra mile to make sure their candidates are qualified and don’t have these sorts of issues.

– twenty-three –

It doesn’t matter what demons are driving Christopher Lloyd. What matters is that we, as officers, have the only job in America where we can legally kill someone. We have to be held to a higher standard and we have to hold ourselves to that higher standard. We have to call out those who use their shiny piece of tin as a permission slip for their brutality and anger.

– twenty-four –

Twenty-four shots is self-defense? Really? Twenty-four? Not two or three or maybe even five?

Twenty-four?

No how, no way can anyone convince me twenty-four bullets to a human body is self-defense.

More on this madness tomorrow. Or maybe Wednesday.

And if that’s not soon enough for you, then you’ll have to shoot me…like…twenty-four times.

“This is Arkham asylum,” he said.  “This is my asylum.”

And then he’d laugh and whoop and all in all, it wasn’t bad.  Not as scary as it could have been, but he had thrown down the rules for the guests and had gotten the atmosphere just about right.

However, from there, it descended into a scream-fest.  See, the actors are all high school kids and what passes for scary for them is screaming.

“WELCOME,” she screamed, “TO NO MERCY HOOOOSPITAAAAALLLLLLLLL!!!!!”

Every three or four minutes for five solid hours.

Holy balls, Batman, can we shoot her now?

LuAnn and I are doing some volunteering at a local haunted house.  Actually it’s at the county fairgrounds and it encompasses two complete barns and then a third arena for little kids.

I’ve done one weekend so far and it’s been fun.

“WELCOME,” she screamed, “TO NO MERCY HOOOOSPITAAAAALLLLLLLLL!!!!!”

Uh…gotcha.  At the hospital.  Yeah.

Opening night was this past Friday.  We got there an hour or so before show time and the man in charge seemed overjoyed to have us.  His biggest problem is that most of his volunteers are high school kids and thus come with the baggage of being high school kids.

“…HOOOOSPITAAAAALLLLLLLLL!!!!!”

Yeah, so that means I’ve committed to spending my weekend nights surrounded by high school kids.  Yay!  My favorite!

Anyway, the man in charge gave us some jobs and off we went.  LuAnn was the ‘sorter.’  That is, she’d divvy up the groups into manageable sizes before shoving them along into the ‘Elevator To Hell,’ while I stand over the top of everything in the control tower and watch the timing of groups going through and watch for problems.

And listen…incessantly…to the hospital greeter.

“WEEEELLLCCOOOOOOME.”

Lots of screaming from lots of kids hidden in lots of places.

Pretty much, at the end of the night, I bought stock in Tylenol.  I figured that as much as I was going to eat over the course of eight shows, I might as well watch the stock price go up.

Most holidays bore the tits off me.  I’m not sure if it’s because growing up it was pretty much just me and Mom and so we just didn’t go in for big holidays or maybe I have no heart or emotional center or I just dig creepy scary things.  For whatever reason, Halloween is my favorite of all the holiday (with the exception of the celebration of Will N. Harbin’s birthday, obviously).

When the store was open –

“NOOOOOO MEEEEERRCCYYYYYY – “

– I would be so tired of the holidays by the time they arrived that I pooped out on all of them.  In retail, the holidays start three damn months before they arrive and continue on until well after their expiry date because now you have to send whatever you didn’t sell back.

But now, with the store closed?  Hah!  I can enjoy Halloween again!

But I can also get my theater nut off at the haunting.

See, they have zero expertise in lighting.  They toss up a flood light they got at Wal-Mart and call it good.

So they’ve decided they want me to take a long look at the lighting this year and see how it and the electrics can be improved next year.

Woooohhooooo!

“…HOOOOSPITAAAAALLLLLLLLL!!!!!”

Theater is one of the things I’ve missed dearly since leaving Denver.  I tried doing some community theater here but the situation was not great and then my schedule at the Sheriff’s Office conflicted and blah blah blah.

But because the haunted shows are only in October, I’ve got all year to improve and tinker and work things around my schedule.  And my charge from those in charge is to light it, but it has to be dark and shadowy and dreary and whatnot.

That’s a light designer’s wet dream.

See, stage directors always want their actors to be seen blah blah blah.  Fine enough, I guess, unless you understand – as I do – that actors are only on stage to reflect my lighting.  The lines don’t really matter, the blocking doesn’t matter.  The costumes?  Eh.  The make-up?  Sure, whatever.

The actors are there to give my light something to bounce off of so people can see how prettily I focused that lovely instrument with the deep green or the one with the rosy pink.

So this is gonna be great fun.

“WELCOME,” she screamed, “TO NO MERCY HOOOOSPITAAAAALLLLLLLLL!!!!!”

If I don’t shoot them all first.

Okay, so I’m watching a little early morning TV…something on child stars or some crap…and there’s an ad for Hydroxytone.  Apparently, this is a miracle medication that can magically disappear pound after pound after pound…without the user having to do anything different.  That’s right, you can continue to eat nothing but Buffalo wings and donuts, not lift a finger to exercise, and still become that svelte and ripped hotbody like you see in airbrushed photos.

During this ad, there’s some siliconed-sister wearing a white lab coat and the on-screen graphics identify her as a ‘doctor of naturopathic medicine.’

Honestly, I laughed so hard I squirted my breakfast milk through my nose.

Naturopathic medicine is defined by the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (yeah, it exists…www.naturopathic.org) as medicine based on the “belief that the human body has an innate healing ability.”

And they call their physicians ‘NDs.’

I shit you not.  Funny enough to make me milk-squirt.

“Naturopathic doctors (NDs), teach their patients to use diet, exercise, lifestyle changes and cutting edge natural therapies to enhance their bodies’ ability to ward off and combat disease.”

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely agree the body can do amazing things that western medicine refuses to recognize because it would loosen the stranglehold the AMA has around our collective necks (which goes hand-in-strangulating-hand with the fucking insurance companies…which is why we need some kind of health care reform, though what that should look like I don’t know).

But it’s hard for me to take this naturopathic medicine seriously when it’s being used to hawk a weight loss aid that basically says someone can be both slug and hotbody.

To me, those are pretty much mutually exclusive concepts.  I make no judgments about either.

Personally, I would love to be a hotbody.

‘Trey the Hotbody…svelte, ripped, with a monsterous six-pack.’

But the reality is sliiiightly less impressive.

‘Trey the Slugbody…bit of a belly, torn rather than ripped…and more of a half-pack.’

Maybe I should call an ND and get me some’a that Hydroxytone.

hey…can you pass those wings….

…via TPMMuckraker….

“A shadowy private security company that has no known clients but claims to have helped foreign governments combat terrorism and will protect anything from cruise ships to Pakistani convoys has taken over a jail in a small Montana town, with plans to build a law enforcement training facility on the property.

Okay, so we’re back in business.

Apparently, according to my webguy, the Department of Homeland Security put some sort of virus on my website.

At least, that’s how it sounded when he explained it with lots of computer jargon and mentions of some of his other clients who happen to be local government agencies and then blah blah blah…that’s when my eyes sort of glassed over.  Chad is brilliant at what he does, but he loses me pretty quickly when he starts trying to explain it.

Whatever it was, it’s over and now we’re rolling again.

…at least for now….