And everyone on the internet is blaming Robert Wagner.

For the younger readers; before Robert Wagner became famous as the spokesperson of reverse mortgages, he was one of the best looking, hottest, Hollywood Stars of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.  Just trying to avoid the “Who’s Debbie, Eddie. Liz?” kinda question!

And they’re blaming him all on the word of the captain of the yacht, Splendor, who was there the night she drowned. Dennis Davern told the cops the original story we’ve all heard for, again, 30 freakin’ years!

The boat was named after Natalie’s hit film “Splendor In The Grass”.

At the time of her death, Natalie was married to Robert Wagner, for the second time.

Wood, one of the most beautiful women of all time, was a childhood star and great actress who’s life was followed as closely as Elizabeth Taylor’s, was found floating in the bay off Catalina Island on Thanksgiving weekend in 1981.

I do know enough to know that there is no statute of limitation on murder.

But why, again, after 30 years, has Captain Dennis Davern changed his story?

Did he find Jesus?

Is he dying?

Has the guilt just “gotten to him”?

Really, Dennis, what gives?

The LA Times reported a press release from the LA County Sheriff’s Department which states:  ”Recently sheriff’s homicide investigators were contacted by persons who stated that they had additional information about the Natalie Wood Wagner drowning. Due to the additional information, Sheriff’s homicide bureau has decided to take another look at the case.”

Again, 30 years!

Conspiracy theories have abounded for years regarding the event.  Natalie slipped off the swim step while trying to stop the dinghy from bumping into the yacht and keeping her awake.  Wagner hit her on the head and threw her into the water.  Christopher Walken did it because she told him he couldn’t act. The butler did it.  Really, the list goes on.

Lana Wood, Natalie’s sister, says that RJ told the captain to leave her in the water to teach her a lesson. Davern is now saying that Wagner is responsible for her death because “we did not do enough for her”.

WE.

Hey, dumbass, that includes you!

Wagner, who will be 82 in February, released a press statement as well – through his lawyers.  ”Although no one in the Wagner family has heard from the LA County Sheriff’s department about this matter, they fully support the efforts of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and trust they will evaluate whether any new information relating to the death of Natalie Wood Wagner is valid and that it comes from a credible source or sources other than those simply trying to profit from the 30-year anniversary of her tragic death.”

Translation:  we don’t know, you don’t know, let us know, and don’t call me unless you have a warrant, and oh, BTW, Lana and Dennis are nutz!

The question in my mind about Wagner is, “Why would he kill her?”

Was she having an affair with Walken?  Would anyone want to?  Really, look at him!

Had Wagner just had enough?

Was he already in love with Jill St. John?   Who wouldn’t be?  But then again, he was married to Natalie Wood!

Is Davern just looking for fame?  And, if so, is that stupid?  This makes him an accomplice to murder.

Lana Wood has a new movie coming out, is this pre-press?

30 years later most of the world is wondering how Natalie Wood really died.  I’m not, she slipped, she hit her head, and she drowned.

Lana Wood says “Natalie deserves the truth” and she just wants what’s right for Natalie.

So do I, and I say, let her rest in peace.

Dr. Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s personal physician was found guilty Monday of involuntary manslaughter.

He’s the Doc who plied MJ with propofol at the King of Pop’s residence.  Quite frankly, I’m sure had it not been Michael Jackson, this would not have gone to trial.

Most doctors, I am told by a physician to whom I’m very close, won’t even use the substance in their offices, much less a residence.

It was negligence, pure and simple, and the jury was right to convict him of the charges.

Sadly, a good doctor gone bad is going to jail and will lose his hard earned medical license.  He won’t spend all that much time in jail even though he was sentenced to four years.

If his time is based on the ‘Lohan Scale’, he should serve about 10 days in the slammer.  Lindsay was in jail for five hours of her 30 day sentence.  That’s about .00694%.  So, doing some quick math (aren’t you proud Charlie?) the Doc should do the same, and .00694% of four years, or 1460 days is about 10.1324 days.

Local jurisdiction rules in situations like this, and it is not always the case that the doctor is hit with criminal charges.

But, Dr. Murray isn’t the only one to blame.

There’s plenty of blame to go around.

The body guards who refused to let the family members who had enough of a conscience to try to get to the singer share some.

The hangers on and entourage who never told Michael no get plenty of the blame.

And once the people around him realized he was the meal ticket of all meal tickets, all bets were off.  Their income would be gone if he sent them away.  It was easier to say yes than protect him; they took the low road.

And of course, blame aplenty is there for the entire Jackson family, with the exceptions of his children.  Sucking at the teat of Michael’s bottomless wallet, the family watched one of the most talented entertainers of my life time, torture himself with unnecessary plastic surgery, spend uselessly and endlessly, and turn into a drug addict.

All while they lived off his fame, his talent, and his money.  LaToya Jackson flashed a victory sign as she left the court house, well, either that or she was answering the “What’s your IQ question.”

Yes, there’s plenty of blame to be sure, and it’s not just the “Thriller Killer’s” fault.

The list is endless.

She was the librarian at my High School.

Every one loved her.

And she loved everything that was Germantown-Farmersville-Valley View.

She was there forever.  I really don’t know when her first year was at Germantown High School, but I do know that she was my sister, Judy’s Senior English Teacher, and Judy graduated 51 years ago!!

She taught my brother, Charlie as well.

Buy the time the last three of us went through HS, Hazel Baker had become the school Librarian.   When Zola, my sister showed UP, she said, “Ah, Charlie’s your brother.”  Zola wasn’t sure what that meant.

She said that to me as well when I showed UP, and I’m sure Al got the same thing.  She loved Charlie.  And quite frankly, she loved every body at school.

She ran the Student Council!

She took no crap!

She took no prisoners!

She took her time, she helped us all find what we needed in the library, and she talked to us, worked with us, planned with us, and encouraged us.

She’d probably get fired today!

She went to Morehead College in Kentucky, and was very, very proud of it.  Her hair style didn’t change in my lifetime, and she always had a classy, classy car;  a Buick Electra 225 in my day!

I don’t know how old she was, I don’t know where she was born, I don’t know where she died, or how.

But I do know, that everyone in Germantown and Farmersville, Ohio is a bit sadder this week, and The Thousand Points of Light are now only 999.

OK, this crap’s gotta stop!

Seriously, I’m a at Waffle House EVERYDAY!

Everyday.

Last Friday, the Waffle House at U.S. 78 and Rockbridge Road near Stone Mountain in Gwinnett was robbed at gunpoint, according to Gwinnett police spokesman Cpl. Edwin Ritter.

This is about seven miles from my house, thankfully, there are forty-leven other WHs before that one.

Reports show the spree of robberies also includes cases in Auburn, Ala. and LaGrange, Ga.

Grogan says the suspects tend to strike between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., typically the slowest times at the restaurants, and the most interesting I might add, when they will place a to-go order.  He said that when the cash register is opened, a gun comes out.

Now, I’ve been in thousands of Waffle Houses, and I’m quite sure the fire-arms of the robbing scum trash aren’t the only heat in the place.

At least, not at 2 in the morning!

Waffle House officials are offering a $2,500 reward for the arrest and conviction of two men with a taste for Redneck Lattes and robbing the restaurants across metro Atlanta.

$2500!  Are they kidding?  That’s outrageous!  This is serious business!  UP the ante boys, and catch these butt-wipes!  I don’t want to have to dig my “carry permit” out!

At any rate, it’s a sad, sad state of affairs!

Had my Wedding Reception here in this room, 34 years ago!

It’s Monday, and I hate to bring you down, but the death of Amy Winehouse Saturday should surprise no one.

As I write this, the cause of her death is undetermined.

We can only speculate.

Drugs.

I despise drugs.

I look around at friends and family who’s lives have been altered forever and wonder, “Why?”.

So many people, not famous people, people who get no press, little mourning, and many shakes of the head have lost their lives to drugs.   Some are living in a perpetual state of death, some are gone. 

I despise what drugs have done to my friends, my family, my nation.  I know people who’ve been nearly bankrupted by their children’s actions.  Rehab, after care, lawyers, court costs, cars, insurance, more rehab, more lawyers, doctors, more rehab.  It’s a merry-go-round with hideous music, one can not escape.

It’s destroying families and lives and depriving the world of music, art, joy, and life.

Joplin, Jim Morrison, Hendrix, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe; wasted lives, wasted talent, all lives ended before they gave all.

And, don’t get me started on “The War On Drugs”!  Nixon started this one in 1971.  We’ve spent more on the war on drugs than we did in Viet Nam. 

Instead of saying no, no, no to rehab, take a line from Nancy Reagan and say no to drugs!

I was not surprised yesterday when the verditcs came out on the Casey Anthony case in Orange County, Florida.

My brother, who is apparently a prophet, told me earlier in the week that the defense had posed enough reasonable doubt to let the mother of Caylee Anthony walk.

And walk she did.

Yeah, I know, she’s still in the slammer for a few days, but when Thursday comes and the judge sets her free, and he will since she’s already served three years, and the charges of which she was convicted carry a year’s stretch each, I’ll possibly be even more angry than I am now.

Granted, I believe in the jury system, granted, I wasn’t there, I don’t know all the facts, and granted, I’ve no proof that the mother of the murdered child did it, but I’m pretty convinced she did.

And frankly, as much as I hate to agree with ANYTHING Nancy Grace or Joy Behar say, I’ll have to agree…justice for Caylee wasn’t done today.

Facts aside, the one thing that bothers me most is that the mother of the murdered child was out partying for 30 or more days while her child lay dead in the woods, or in the trunk of her car, and she didn’t report her missing.

My children never “went missing”, but you can be gaurandamnteed that if one of my kids did go missing, it wouldn’t be 30 minutes before I started calling someone everyone.

Twelve people decided her fate, twelve people decided there wasn’t enough evidence to convict her, twelve people decided that the prosecution hadn’t made it’s case, and twleve people decided that she should go free.

I don’t know what was in their minds, but I’m pretty sure that their heads are empty. 

I do think they should be ashamed, and I, unlike Florida State’s Attorney Lawson Lamar, do judge and do criticize the jury.

They were wrong.

A jury of her peers has said that Casey is not guilty.

No one has said she’s innocent.

There’s a difference.

Say hello to Miss Kitty for us.

As a history nut, I can’t let it pass without comment.

The War Between The States was in my mind, the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to the United States of America.  I will always be amazed that rational, sane men allowed the country to be torn apart and cost the lives of over 600,000 soldiers and thousands of private citizens.

When I see civil wars in other countries, as we see today, I wonder, “Could this happen here, again?”

Let’s hope not.

The debate rages as to the causes of the conflict 150 years after the official start.  But the war really started shortly after the American Revolution. 

As a Southerner by birth, I cut my teeth on Confederate history.  As a Virginian, I learned early on to revere Robert E. Lee, and as a child born in the only home General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson ever owned, I learned to revere him as well.  

But, growing UP in the Nawth, and having an education that was “yankeefied”, I am of two minds. 

Some would say more!

To me there isn’t just one cause for the conflict, there were several. 

The northern and southern regions of the USA were vastly different economically.  With the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became cheaper and easier to grow and process.  It became King.  It required more and more labor, and more slaves were imported through the northern ports as well as the south to feed the beast.  The northern economy was based on industry, and the industrialist who used children as laborers and the influx of refugees from Eastern Europe, Germany,  and Ireland for pennies a day were no better than the largest slaveholder in the south.  When the workers wouldn’t go to work, the police forced them to.  When a child or other worker died of starvation or exposure, the factory foreman just took the next one off the boat.  It was slavery with a different name.

The north needed the southern cotton; the two areas were dependent and juxtaposed at the same time.  The industry needed the agriculture, and the agriculture needed the industry. 

The social orders of the two areas was different as well.  The south was nearly feudal.  Granted, only seven percent of southerners owned slaves at the onset of the conflict, but the aristocracy existed.  The north offered more opportunity for people to move from immigrant to tycoon and join the industrialist aristocracy.  Bluebloods are bluebloods regardless of real estate location.

Since the beginning of our nation, state government and federal government views have conflicted.  This exists even today.  At the onset, the thirteen states formed a loose confederation with a very weak federal government.  When problems arose, the weakness of this form of government caused the leaders of the time to come together at the Constitutional Convention and create the US Constitution - in secret.  Strong states’ rights believers, like Jefferson and Patrick Henry were absent.  Some believed that the new constitution ignored the rights of states to continue to act independently.  When the states were denied the opportunity to declare laws unconstitution and decide if they were willing to accept laws or reject them through nullification, the south moved closer and closer to secession. 

And of course, there was slavery.  How it happened is beyond me.  I can’t imagine anyone believing they had the right to own another human being, and I can’t imagine anyone believing that other living men and women were inferior or, in some cases, not human at all.  Slavery has existed for thousands of years, and quite frankly exists today in many countires.  But, it was wrong then, and it is wrong now. 

As more and more territory was added to the US via the Louisiana Purchase and Mexican War, the slave states and their statesmen – who were all slaveholders – were worried that the balance of power between the two economic systems would be tilted.  Compromises were made, people were unhappy, stuff happened.

Alarmingly, good people on both sides made bad decisions.  The peculiar institution was accepted in the south, despised in the north, and a focal point, or boiling point for conflict. 

The abolishionist movement gained momentum. 

Northerners became more polarized against slavery. Sympathies began to grow for abolitionists as well as slaves.  After the fugitive slave act, John Brown’s Raid at Harper’s Ferry, The Dred Scott Case, and the publishing of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, things heated UP.  The media, as powerful then as now, only far less sophisticated, played a huge part in pushing slavery to the front of the line.

It makes me wonder, “Is there a cause today that could be used by the media to tear the country apart?”

And then, there was Lincoln, or more correctly, the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln is one of the top two most revered Presidents;  he’s most remembered and most respected for “saving the Union”.   But, Lincoln didn’t do that.  His generals did.

The election of Lincoln helped to tear the country apart.  The situation was already explosive when Lincoln was elected in 1860.  South Carolina issued its “Declaration of the Causes of Secession.”   South Carolina, who in my opinion really started the war, was led by people who believed that Lincoln was anti-slavery and in favor of Northern interests.  Lincoln wasn’t completely anti-slavery at first.  He was simply pro-Union.  And he was a great politician who knew the war needed a cause, and there was no cause like slavery.  He was no friend to the black race at first – he may have emancipated the slaves, but he felt them inferior, and wanted to send ALL of them back to Africa.  Slaves of African descent had lived and been born in America for well over 200 years at the time of Lincoln’s election;  they were Americans.  One of his friends in a book published shortly after his death claimed, “Lincoln felt them no more than another farm animal.”

But, the south hated him, considered him the bogey man.   His election was the match that lit the fuse.

And the hot heads of South Carolina started shelling. 

The rest, of course,  is history.