Blake Prosecution Adds Co-Defendant to Raise Media Ratings

urprised by the waning media interest in the Bonny Lee Bakley murder case, the Blake prosecution team named young actor Christian Slater as a co-defendant in the case. As the prosecution's murder theory now stands, Blake murdered his wife in front of the Vitello's restaurant and Slater co-conspired in the plot and drove the getaway car.

The move has been seen by some to attract attention to a case that sounds pretty ho-hum in the modern media age. The Blake case, while garnering some media spotlight, has failed to attract the attention of the infamous O.J. Simpson case, lacking in comparison in brutality and sheer star power.

Slater, whose own career has slipped from attention in recent years, welcomed the prosecution, with a firm promise he and Blake will beat the charges.

"C'mon, we're famous!" he shouted at a press conference. "We'll be out in time to guest star on the Ally McBeal finale. Or, failing that, Fox Celebrity Boxing."

The prosecution announced at the same time it was dropping conspiracy charges against Robert Blake's bodyguard Earle Caldwell, saying he "just didn't appeal as strongly to the 18-35 age group as Slater."

"We thought of many possibilities," said prosecution team member Rad Harmscull. "Our first thought was Peter Falk, but we figured people might have trouble figuring out which is which. Todd Bridges was another possibility, but he had his day in criminal court for murder and we all yawned and let him go. This time I think we've got a can't-lose case for international media buzz."

However, Blake counsel Harland Braun was less pleased about the move.

"It's ridiculous media manipulation by the prosecution," said Braun. "Mr. Blake is not afraid to have his day in court over this matter, but we're not going to share it with some kid from Young Guns 2. Not to mention it makes no sense. They don't even know each other. Why not longtime Blake friend talk show host Tom Snyder or something? This is plainly a media-oriented move by the prosecution."

If the co-defendant prosecution ignites sparks in media interest, there are already rumors abounding about bringing in former Wiseguy star Ken Wahl on a conspiracy to destroy evidence charge. And if that move is successful, Wahl could receive his own spin-off murder trial, depending on the focus group's look at the evidence.

"I think we're doing very well now," Harmscull said. "We took a so-so case and have possibly made it into the trial of the century. This century, and even bigger than the trial of last century. Sure, we may not win as all the facts don't line up meticulously. But while we could've had a victory and execution before, killed some little rascal for some humdrum crime no one cared about… now we've created a lasting piece of criminal justice. This is the trial to which all others will be compared. And if it takes off, we promise there will be others."

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Things better change quick around the Coleman house or there's going to be a homicide or two. I'm throwing down the gauntlet by this weekend, someone and all their friends and family have to get out or I'm calling the cops. Not me, of course, I'm not getting out, I pay rent at the place. Every few months at least.

You might be able to guess from that my dad is back from Mexico. He didn't like the natives, he was worried about the crime, and couldn't drink the water. I told him, "Dad, you were in New Mexico. If you couldn't make it there how did you expect to last out in the real one?" But he just turned up his Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock and pretended he couldn't hear me.

Like mom, who's been staying with me even longer, I can tolerate dad. He's family. But he had to bring that dildo Freddie Mercury with him, and both of them are friends now with some bounty hunter named Icepick. The guy was all set to bust both of them and turn them over for the reward when dad and Freddie Mercury made him a member of the gang. Most people you couldn't pay to make a gangmember with my dad and that clod, but Icepick was more than willing to give up $60 for it. Someone even lower on the totem pole than Freddie Mercury is now an accomplice, that's good news.

What really pisses me off is they can't even give me the courtesy of asking or anything. They just show up and say they need a place to hide and move right in. I don't have an ammo room, dad, I can't store all your shit. You dicks are going to have to sleep on the floor.

No mention of when they're going to leave or anything. And don't bring it up to him, he gets all indignant and everything. The way he sees it, he put me up for 12 years, it's time for me to pay back the favor. It better not come to 12 years 'cause I'm not going to last that long. The idea of me even being 37 is severely unsettling.

At least there's always food around. Mom gets lazy when dad's in jail or out of the country or what, but as soon as he steps back into the place the oven goes on and the dishes come rolling out like it's the kitchen at KFC. I haven't eaten this well since rehab, but nothing can make it worth sharing a place with these morons. If I come home and find the rodeo on TV again when I was geared up to watch Gilmore Girls I'm going to show those guys a 101st way to kill a man.

Don't get me wrong: I love my dad, to the full extent the law requires. I don't want him to go to jail or anything, that even works against my intention of getting mom the hell out of my place. But this group package bullshit has got to stop. Freddie Mercury is always talking about knocking down a wall and annexing a neighbor's apartment, and if he does it I'll probably get kicked out. And Icepick has rigged my fridge with a detonation device so I can't even get any booze to make me forget they're here. All this will have to change soon or I'm going to do something I'll moderately regret.

I'm desperate enough at this point to ask my sister to take them in, but once I mentioned the problem once on the phone she changed her number. I might go down to her office at the law firm tomorrow and plead with her to take them off my hands, but I wouldn't be surprised if the whole law firm uprooted and changed addresses. She takes family emergencies pretty seriously, or avoiding them.

What does all this mean? It means I'm stuck with an apartment full of family and A-Team rejects until I find the tactful, forceful, "let's-not-do-anything-crazy-here-like-set-that-napalm-off" way out.

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Sorry, sorry, sorry. Seems like everybody's sorry for something these days. Sorry for having the same exact car as me and parking it in the same supermarket parking lot. Sorry for having the stun gun set so high. Sorry for naming their gay bar "The Crank Shaft," even though that sounds an awful lot like a bike shop to anyone who doesn't have a copy of the latest gay code handbook. "Sorry for breathing audibly while you were trying to urinate, Mr. Bricks. Thank you for pissing in the pocket of my good dress pants to show me the error of my ways."

Seems like we've got quite a lot of sorry sons of bitches in the world these days. If they're not sorry for mowing over the donuts I left out to cool on the lawn, they're sorry for misleadingly naming the town Hempstead despite their almost total lack of interest in hemp products. "I'm sorry, sir, but you can't ride your bike on the escalator." The hell I can't! Did you see that wheelie?

And a lot of good it all does me. Why don't you shit out an apology onto a ten-dollar bill for me then, if you're so sorry? At least then I could put it toward a new go-cart to replace the one that was destroyed when you put up that new fence in your back yard without telling me. You could have at least painted it white or some color that shows up better in the moonlight.

But no, as usual, this world is all talk and no action. As if an apology is going to resurrect my streak of consecutive blocks driven without touching the brake pedal. And to be gut-wrenchingly honest, sometimes I doubt the sincerity of some of these apologies, or at least the degree to which they're heartfelt. Was that guy really sorry that his wife gave birth while I was trying to enjoy my McMuffin? I wonder. And I think I might have detected a hint of sarcasm coming from that blind lady when she apologized for blocking my view of that new Victoria's Secret billboard downtown. I don't know where she got off, it's not like I force-fed her all the cream cheese bagels that made her ass so freakin' big as to obscure a billboard. And I can't have been the first person to point that out to her.

I've been thinking about it, and I think I'm going to get myself a donation jar, like all the hard-luck cases and fast food restaurants have. Now put down your lawn darts folks, I'm not saying I'm going to go in and lift one that's full of dimes for cystic fibrosis or anything terrible like that. I'm going to buy one. Probably. I might have to ask some of these people where they shop at when their beggin' jar gets worn out, if there's some store tucked away somewhere I haven't bothered to look. And if there's more than one, then which one is the high-end jar store, since I want a pretty swanky jar so that nobody will confuse Omar Bricks with a common bum or street freak.

Once I get the right jar, then we'll see who's really sorry and who can put their money where their mouth is. If somebody's really sorry, they can hit me up with a ten spot or whatever they're comfortable with and I'm compensated. Bingo. If they're not, and they're really just being sarcastic, well then they're not very likely to pony up for the "Sorry Jar" since that's a level of extreme sarcasm you don't find too often in this country. You have to fly over to England for that kind of shit. Either way I win, in some manner of speaking.

So anyway, yeah, that's it. Sorry the column wasn't funnier. Ha, bet you wish you had a jar now, eh? Bricks out.

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