Steven Seagal's Life Like Bad Steven Seagal Movie

ews just keeps getting better and better for fans of the bizarre and absurd. Friday allegations were made that "actor" Steven Seagal, famous for his chubby-flanked kicking and limp ponytail in horrible action movies, is linked to a private investigator who alleges Seagal hired him to terrorize a reporter.

The victim of the terroristic threatening was a Los Angeles Times reporter, Anita Busch, whose name was being held confidential by police at press time. Busch wrote articles alleging a former filmmaking partner of Seagal's used mob connections to extort $700,000 from the actor, who, in one of his own movies, would have likely punched out the ex-partner with one Aikido punch and cracked the mob boss's arm into a severe fracture before kicking him backwards off the balcony. Instead, the actor paid the money.

Private investigator Anthony Pellicano was allegedly hired by Seagal to scare Busch away from writing her articles about the extortion. Police reports say in June the show biz reporter found a dead fish, a rose, and a note saying "Stop!" on the hood of her smashed car windshield. The monosyllabic note initially led police to suspect Seagal's involvement, but the combination of the dead fish and the rose was just slightly more imaginative than anything that appeared in his films, leading investigators to believe Seagal's involvement was more hands-off.

Just after the incident, Busch was approached by two men and told to stop writing articles about Steven Seagal. Had Seagal not been the perpetrator, and been in the car, and had the whole thing been one of his movies, he likely would have gotten out of the car, leaped upon the hood to deal out a series of bone-splitting kicks before flipping through the air to land behind the larger villain, bending his arm back and forcing him into the car's hood, warning him not to mess with the lady again.

Further, had this been a Steven Seagal movie, the police force would have been under the power of the corrupt Hollywood star/villain—Seagal, in this case—and seeking their help against the threatening would have been fruitless for the victim. However, the victim did go to the police in this case, and Seagal's alleged henchmen were arrested and charged with the incidents. Seagal has yet to be charged, but a paper trail and witness accounts may put Seagal behind bars yet, this time for a crime he did commit.

In the private investigator Pellicano's office, police found a cache of plastic explosive, a detonating cord and blasting cap, two grenades, 15 to 20 bundles of cash bearing $10,000 wrappers and a number of pieces of jewelry—i.e., things you might find in the hideout of the lead henchman in any Steven Seagal movie. Had the police not intercepted Pellicano and his hired goon, according to initial statements, plans were in place to blow up Busch's car, something that would have sent movie-Seagal out in the night, angrily breaking into the top boss's house—his own, in this case—to deliver the final, fatal beating that ended the movie.

In the real world, however, Seagal waits patiently for his court date, when his lawyer will argue fine points and details of testimony to discredit Pellicano's claims of direct requests from Seagal that initiated his actions. There is likely to be little kicking and punching, and Seagal will be referred to as Steven or Mr. Seagal instead of "Jack," "John," or "Mason Storm."

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Few things in life are more annoying than sports fans who think they're cursed. That is unless they think they're individually cursed, which can be hilarious. If all their breakfast cereal turns into locusts or they gain weight no matter what they eat, I can listen to that stuff all day. But nobody can stand listening to some sorry loser complaining that the Curse of Cheops kept his sad-sack team from winning the big one, and how the gimpy harem of mama's boys deserved better. In ancient times, men were killed for less, usually by fans of more-successful teams.

Baseball fans in Chicago and Boston have gone to great lengths to lament and preserve their teams' curses, and the commune staff has not been spared their pain. This very column is an effort to try and end the "Curse of the commune," which involves having to hear commune reporter and former Cubs pitcher Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown explain the Curse of the Cubs every time somebody makes a comment about baseball, goats, mummies, bears or Chicago-style deep dish pizza.

The Curse of the Cubs, also known at "The Billy Goat Curse" and "Loser's Excuse #42" dates back to the World Series of 1945. Local Chicago tavern owner William "Billy Goat" Sianis wanted to take his goat to see World Series game four, ostensibly because he couldn't find a babysitter. His real reasons were thankfully kept private.

Sianas had been the owner of the Lincoln Tavern for years, and one day a goat fell off the back of a passing truck and wandered into his bar, looking for a place to drop off a batch of road apples. Sianas had the annoying habit of taking nearly everything that happened to him as a sign from God, and in keeping with this quirk he promptly grew a goatee, renamed his bar the Billy Goat Tavern, and began taking the goat along with him wherever he went, to promote his now disagreeably-themed establishment.

Sianas managed to get through the turnstiles at Wrigley Field that day in 1945, after telling the ticket-taker that the goat was his adopted Malaysian son. Thanks to Chicago's admittedly small Malaysian population at the time, the ruse was successful. The goat probably would have been left to enjoy the game in peace if not for the fact that it had just eaten twenty-seven caramel apples during the half-hour immediately preceding the game, and the panicked look in the goat's eyes made all the fans seated nearby extremely nervous. Sianas and his goat were soon ejected, after which the goat promptly ruined a convertible parked outside the stadium.

While he was searching around for a fire hose to clean up after his goat, Sianas cursed the Cubs to eternal postseason futility by announcing "Never again will World Series be played in Wrigley Field!" His pronouncement was met with raucous laughter from Cubs fans, who noticed that the goat had eaten Sianas's pants while he was cursing. Upon discovering his pantsless state, Sianas began to curse in doubletime, most of which was not suitable for historical documentation. It was noted, however, that during his tirade Sianas did pronounce that a goat would never win the Kentucky Derby, a curse that has remained eerily true to this day.

The Cubs went on to lose that World Series, and have never been back because they suck. They did make it back to the playoffs in 1984, 1989, 1998 and 2003, but each year Lady Luck stepped on the Cubs' balls in the most humiliating way possible. Baseballs were dropped, pooches were screwed and somebody ate a cat. Cubs fans love to blame the goat curse for their team's lack of success, but this holds little water for fans in other cities also cursed with teams that suck but are short on rank barnyard animals to blame.

The Boston Red Sox have their own curse, "The Curse of the Bambino," which is just as famous as Chicago's curse but told in a different funny accent. It has also been known as "The Curse of the Big Fat Hot Dog Eating Machine," but is usually shortened to "The Curse of the Bambino." In 1920, Red Sox accountants discovered that team profits were down for the third straight year because star outfielder Babe Ruth was eating the team out of house and hot dogs. The accountants took their plight to tight-fisted owner Harry Frazee, who promptly traded Ruth to the Yankees for a case of beer and a St. Bernard named Lucky. The Yankees went on to win 26 World Championships, while for the Red Sox the trade was a wash because Lucky loved hot dogs almost as much as Ruth.

What lesson is there to be learned from these two infamous baseball curses? In a nutshell, the universal lesson here is this: Don't hire the long-dead pitcher from a team that hasn't won the World Series since he played for it in 1908 to be a reporter for your Internet news site, unless you want to hear a lot of long, boring baseball stories. Amen.

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"I have long been, and may always be, a confirmed bachelor. But like other people who say that, I am not gay.

I did meet one gay fellow quite a while back. It was 1954 when I met him, an affable fellow named Pitt. He wore bright clothes but that didn't send me any signal that he was gay. To my ears he had no special way of speaking and there was nothing immediately gay about him. I would venture to say if I hadn't accidentally found out through a misunderstanding one day, while we were standing next to each other at the men's room urinals, I would never have found out.

'I can't believe it,' I told him quite frankly. 'Why don't you like girls at all?'

'I like girls, Sampson,' the gay said simply, no less visibly masculine than myself. 'It's not a matter of liking or not liking someone, and it's not a matter of picking who you're going to sleep with. People are just born the way they are, and it doesn't make them all the same if they share one common thing between them.'

He went on to say, as I tapped the water out, 'You and me may be more alike than me and any gay man. We both have sisters named Stephanie, we both have brothers that we're competitive with in our lives, and we both love to just sit and talk about the good ol' days, the 1920s. Why should the one thing that's different about us keep us from being good friends?'

It really made me think, and it hurt—the idea that I, like everyone else in the world, picked one different thing like religion, skin color, or sexual orientation to get all worked up about when in a lot of ways all of us are like one another. From that day on whenever I meet someone new, even if they don't look like me or might seem a little strange at first glance, I put on a big smile and say, 'Hi, there, neighbor! I'm Sampson L. Hartwig. Maybe we're a little different, but maybe we'll find out we're a lot a like, too!'

I might as well mention that me and the gay fellow Pitt didn't see each other after another week or so, when I found out the biker gang I had joined with him was all gay. Only when one of them named Peter couldn't keep the secret any more did Pitt tell me the truth, that they were all hoping I would 'come around' once I got used to wearing the leather. It's just another thing that's different, yeah, but it looked awful painful in all those videos we watched, so I found another crew to ride with."

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