From NYP’s gossip gasbag Cindy Adams comes, in reference to the latest diaries of Anna Nicole Smith’s to be, ahem, released, this gem of moral turpitude:

for the first two days of this month, and not a one of my referrers is a legitimate site. So, like, do all y’all come from pr0n sites?

’k, guys, the previews for next week’s Nip/Tuck: a mouse growing a human ear so Rosie O’Donnell can get an ear transplant? Bitch, please. This season is waaaaaaay over the top, although I do like how Larry Hagman’s and Brooke Shields’ characters are developing.

Another title having nothing to do with my entry, other than the people who need to know what I’m talking about do. It’s funner that way sometimes.

Except for the Martin funeral, however, there really isn’t much to dish about—that is, unless you count the complete wang Gary Mayor Rudy Clay left in my mouth after his ugly show of ego at Martin’s wake Sunday. MerFer rolls up in his Mayoral Hummer, assistant and bodyguard/driver in tow, and waltzes up to the front of the line and bypasses the hour and a half wait the rest of us had. Yeah, I know this guy thinks he’s a marked man since someone’s tried to shoot him up once already; whatever. No one’s going to convince me that he and Gary Martin were THAT good of friends that he should’ve been given rights reserved to the family, close friends or even the sheriff. I mean, Hobart Mayor Linda Buzinec stood in line maybe 15, 20 people ahead of me—you didn’t see HER taking advantage of her position. Neither did any of the law enforcement officers who attended, at least none that I saw. Tool.

I do get to write a Political Notebook item out of it, though, and that’s always fun because you get to be as snarky as you wanna.

that I ganked from the lovely Bumptious and have been dying to use, but did y’all hear about the 24 morons that got busted in NWI for wanting to have sex with kids?

Without endorsing sex with underage children whatsoever (because I absolutely DO NOT), why would anyone try to solicit underage sex on the Internet? It’s bad enough having to wonder if the person you’re talking to online is actually who they say they are, so why would you compound the anxiety by doing something you’re likely going to get busted for sooner or later!?? Is there some sexual turn-on of which I’m unawares?

My girls’ story after the jump:

Here’s my day: Former Lake County Police Chief Gary Martin and ISP Trooper Lt. Gary Dudley were killed in a vehicle accident while biking for their annual charity ride that raises money for the fallen officers’ families across Indiana. Haven’t gotten all the details, but preliminary reports say that someone crashed into the cyclists’ supply truck, causing the truck to smash into the cyclists. Three other cyclists were injured in the accident, as was the driver that caused the crash.

I was just with these guys Sunday covering their stop in Merrillville. They were healthy, happy, exhausted but no worse for the wear. I joked with Martin about his goatee and earring (his “teaching persona,” he called it, as he was about to step back into the classroom to teach fledgling cops), and how he left his wife after their daughter’s wedding Saturday to rejoin the ride. I kidded Dudley about being “the brains of the operation.” And I said “Hello” and shook the hand of the guy who drives the supply truck—can you even imagine how HE feels right now!?? Good God. It wasn’t even his fault. All I can say is, I sure hope the person who hit them wasn’t drunk, because woe unto him if he was.

The Baby had him as a teacher when she was in undergrad, and she loved him. She was pretty distraught when I talked to her last. I’m just kind of stunned by it; I mean, I just saw these guys, and now they’re gone. I HATE when that happens.

Anyway, if any of y’all are so inclined to donate to their mission, you can either call (219) 755-3400 or go to the C.O.P.S Web site: Lookit.

Because the world is small and I never end up knowing who’s going to cross my path, I had the pleasure of talking to a college crush of mine for a story today. He was a rather short-lived crush, at least by my standards (from, like, January to shortly after school let out for the summer), but he was definitely one of the more fun ones—tall, gangly, goofy-looking and a bit younger than me; he was 18 or 19 to my 21? no 22, I would’ve been 22 when we hooked up. He was also the author of one of, if not the only, cartoons we ran in our college rag that wasn’t syndicated, so he ended up spending a crapload of time in the newspaper office with the rest of us misfits. Anyway, my favorite memory* of Slick, as we used to call him, involved the wonder wagon, a fifth of Rumplemintz and a tattoo.

Yeah, I know that has the classic markings of drrrrrrrty, but it wasn’t salacious at all. Seriously.

It was a Wednesday, and Slick, me and another doofus we used to hang out with took off for lunch. We were in my car—the illustrious 1985 Ford Escort Wagon I totalled three different times between 1988 and 1993—and I seem to recall that I was letting Doof do the driving for some reason, or maybe he was driving on the way back because I’d had a few beers at lunch ... Anyway, at some point on the way back, I pointed out to the two of them that I had an unopened bottle of Rumple left over from the Indiana College Press Association weekend from which the paper staff had just returned, and they were all “Sweeeeeeeeet,” so we cracked it open and started swigging.

(I should mention here that this was during the semester I almost drank myself out of college forealz, so that there was an unopened bottle of anything alcoholic in my car is a miracle, especially since ICPA was basically a giant hotel party for college newspaper nerds and my room had the hospitality tub. I didn’t even drink that weekend at all, probably because I was away from home and thus away from my “stress.” Whatever that was at the time.)

So we get back to campus, and Slick decides he needs to have his tat re-inked. I, needing very little in the way of excuses to ditch class, decided I was going to go with because I’d never seen a tat done before, but Doof had Calc or something that he just couldn’t miss (which I wasn’t the least bit upset about because, hello! Crush!). It was just me and Slick and a bottle of Rumple, of which he maybe drank the equivalent of the bottle neck while I pounded the rest. In about an hour. And I lived to tell the tale, without throwing it back up or anything. I remember being in the tat shop and watching the artist hit his tat with purple, of all colors, and going, “Wow. If I weren’t so drunk, I’d be completely freaked out by that.” I also remember stopping at the corner of Ridge and Wisconsin in Hobart and calling the newspaper office from the payphone while Slick threw some gas in the Wonder Wagon’s almost-empty tank. We just drove around all afternoon, talking and laughing about whatever. Of course, when we got back to campus, everyone knew what we were doing because I smelled like a giant candy cane (Tara can attest to this). And then I went out to Wad’s Wonder Wagon and started crying hysterically about something, and I sobered up. The end.

Slick’s a commercial painter now who focuses on high-end remodeling jobs, happily married with three or four daughters. Good for him.