Spicoli lives!

Last anyone saw of Jeff Spicoli, the dude was on the beach in Southern California, enveloped in an intoxicating haze.

Until today.

He's in Omaha -- absolutely. Because of the tasty waves on Carter Lake, no doubt. (Don't laugh. As windy as it's been around these parts lately. . . .)

Anyway, I didn't actually have an official Spicoli sighting, but I did see his handiwork while walking on the Keystone Trail today.

Look.

 

Spicoli was here.

 

And here.

And here.

And, for killer bud's sake, here.

When I find Mr. Spicoli, I shall prevail upon him to run for mayor. That would be totally bitchin'.

Dude!

Your Daily '80s: I know that dude!

In 1982, at Ridgemont High School, it wasn't for nothing that surfer dude Jeff Spicoli lived his life inside a cloud of cannabis smoke.

No, what you don't realize is that the dude had "second sight." Like, the dude could, like, see the future, man. He could see us today, bro.

And stoned just seemed like a rational response to that knowledge at the time.

OK, I love this clip, dude. So sue me.

This is your brain. This is your brain . . . what was the question, dude?

Because people are stupid . . . they sign up for Facebook groups like Medicinal Marijuana In the State of Nebraska and make it quite clear that they're not necessarily interested in the issue because they're puking their guts out from chemotherapy.

At least that's my layman's interpretation of comments such as "i love weed :)" on the group's "wall." And this:

see tim i told u ppl would join this s*** bc if ne1 says bud is harmful to u tell them to put down there beer or not to get in a car those r way more dangerous then weed

THEN AGAIN, there's a Jeff Spicoli in every crowd . . . like, y'know, man?

But in this crowd, it seems to me there's at least 497 complete idiots as I write. That would be the total number of group members, many of them eastern Nebraska high-school students, and perhaps high school students as well.

Mind your hyphens, dude. Not to mention how many plugs you give NORML, that noted cancer/glaucoma/digestive-patient advocacy group.

IF I'M A high-school principal -- as opposed to a high school principal (who'd be too toasted to notice, presumably) -- I'm logged onto my Facebook account, looking at the pot-group page and scanning for my students among the members. Guess whose locker is going to get an extra sniff by the drug dog?

And guess who's going to get some extra scrutiny throughout the school year?

Ditto if I'm an employer . . . or a prospective one, Or if I'm an administrator at a certain Catholic school for the developmentally disabled. Is what I'm getting at.

SEE, IF I'M going to start -- or join -- a group dedicated to the legal, medicinal use of marijuana, I'm going to make sure it's about the legal, medicinal use of marijuana. There's a legitimate argument to be had over that, I am sure.

Somehow I don't think "Smoke killer herb till my lungs collapse" would fly in such a forum.

To be fair, one frequent poster did try to make a serious argument for medicinal marijuana. I was just about to buy it until . . .

I will admit I do like to also smoke in a recreational fashion on occasion, but when my stomach is acting up it relieves some of the symptoms.

AND I LIKE to take zinc lozenges and Ex-Lax "in a recreational fashion on occasion, too." I love me that sudden urge to go and the metallic taste in my mouth, too.

Well, at least the poster was smart enough not to post under his or her real name.

Unlike the former youth-group kid from my church. My wife and I volunteered almost 14 years in youth ministry there.

Somehow, I don't think the sweet smell I smell is that of success.

Flunking News Writing 101 in Omaha

I look at the above crime brief from the Omaha City Weekly, and I wonder what Bob Sheldon would have done if I had turned that in for Journalism 2151, Beginning Newswriting.

I mean, apart from giving me an "F" for the assignment and strongly suggesting I find a new field of interest. And apart from suggesting, perhaps, that I find something else to do with my time than hang out on the LSU campus -- or that of any other college or university.

SHELDON WAS an old-time newspaperman. Did some time at the National Enquirer. Loved snappy ledes and colorful headlines.

Didn't think much of calling homicide suspects "dumb f***s" in your copy. He was funny that way. Made a friend of mine cry once in class over far less of a journalistic sin.

God knows what might have happened had I been stupid enough to hand in something like this:

It's no surprise that the one-night shooting spree that took place on Nov. 12 in the midtown Omaha Dundee area was the work of three mentally disabled dumb f***s with ties to local gangs.

OR . . . AS PERRY WHITE might have said, "Great Caesar's ghost! Get me a libel lawyer . . . now!"

It could be, though, that our Nov. 26 item from one of Omaha's "alternative" weeklies just might have rendered my old professor speechless. Back in the day, journalism schools expected more of teen-age reporter wannabes than some publications demand of alleged adult "professionals" in 2008.

Also, it seems to me that in far too many cases -- especially in cities the size of Omaha -- arrested-development types manage to grab hold of the green eyeshades, leading the "alternative press" into a high-school hell concocted by Jeff Spicoli, just emerged through a cloud of smoke from a VW microbus. What you end up with is gratuitous sludge like the City Weekly story above, where rank incompetence conflates itself with simple-minded notions of "narrative" and Anglo-Saxon expletives sprinkled through ill-written copy passes for "edgy."


EVERY PARAGRAPH of crap contained in half-baked rags, whether they be "mainstream" or "alternative," is a compounding tragedy for an industry with one foot in the grave already, as well as for the society that industry purports to inform.

And on a smaller scale, these journalistic Jeff Spicolis -- pretentious, poseur rubes turning out their "tasty" stories in their "gnarly" mags -- make it look like their brand of half-baked, foul-mouthed, faux-edgy dreck is about the best one might expect out of somewhere like Omaha.

Maybe it is, but I sure could have taken this city for a far smarter place than that.