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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I've put up with a lot over our many years of marriage, Deidrebane my dear. Your incessant coupon-clipping, child-rearing and flair with culinary dishes of all varieties. Your sunnily upbeat manner, and troubling habit of treating the neighbors with civility and respect. Your distaste for NASCAR. Your charity work for the betwetting orphans of Botswana, and your pitiable need to stay abreast of world events. It's been a long, tough slog up a rain-soaked hill, my dear, but only this last bit has been intolerable. With all of our servants as my witnesses, let there be no mistake about it: You WILL take back what you said this morning about Dokken.

The day started out innocently enough, at least for those of us who harbored no venom in our souls, waiting for the slightest Dokken-related opportunity to spit it free. I rose at noon, after a refreshing fourteen hours of sleep, and proceeded to peruse the Journal for its most salient feature: Get Fuzzy. As you can imagine, I breakfasted on a hearty bowl of disappointment. Apparently the volatility of soybean futures means more to some depraved individuals than the slice-of-life adventures of Satchel and Bucky. I feign no supernatural ability to explain these things, my dear.

Turned away coldly by the inky black indifference of the Journal, I opted instead to soothe my soul with a little skeet shooting from the bedroom window, with neighborhood birds standing in for skeet. Don't get started about my habit of ridding our neighborhood of incessantly inconsiderate songbirds, my dear, if they had the good sense not to side with morning folk they'd still be alive and in one compact, non-shotgunned piece. I shed not a tear, after their daily double-insult of leaving the late-night hours to the shrill noodling of crickets, in addition to polluting my restful morn with their whistling farts.

As you well know, my dear, for I have explained it in detail on several occasions, nothing elevates a reflective noontime skeet-shooting spree from a pleasant diversion to the realm of the sublime like the thundering hair rock of Los Angeles natives Dokken.

The moment is crystallized in my mind like a dog trapped in amber, my dear. I had just winged a squirrel that had picked a poor time to attempt traversing the power lines spanning our property, and was marveling my shotgunmanship when you burst in, as if my privacy were nothing to be taken any more seriously than the word of a Scotsman. You burst in shouting some nonsense about orphans sleeping downstairs and the weak heart trapped within the chest of our frail, elderly, taking-her-sweet-time-to-die neighbor Mrs Weatherborrow. Most of this was drowned out by the blast of the shotgun as I spied a child's kite hovering tantalizingly just over our property line, but what you said next I will take with me to my grave, possibly on a Post-It note. Turn down that noise? That noise? Oh, my dearest Deidrebane. How you seek to wound me so, and my, how you've learned just where to stick the blade.

It would have been one thing if the racket in question had been Winger, Deidrebane. They're hardly worthy of your polite attention, my dear, say nothing of your rapture. Or if it had been a guilty pleasure like Slaughter pummeling from the speakers this morning, shaking the very air and vibrating the bathtub down the hall with each well-placed bass note. Referring to the work of those gentlemen as noise could be forgiven, albeit with a healthy slathering of condescension on the part of yours truly. But no, my wife of many a year, it had to be Dokken. It's as if the very Gods themselves have chosen the method of my slow undoing.

Have you learned nothing from my frequent lectures concerning the mannered vocal stylings of Don Dokken, my dear? Have my haikus addressing George Lynch's heavenly fretwork fallen upon deaf ears? Am I the only on in this house whose very dreams echo to the strains of "Alone Again"? Please, tell me you at least remember the driving force of "The Dream Warriors" from that Nightmare on Elm Street movie we watched. You didn't think I keep renting it again and again for the filmic content, did you? I swear, Deidrebane, sometimes it's like I'm married to a total stranger.

It's fortunate for you our neighbor to the East just put up that giant birdfeeder. Some things cannot be forgiven, my dear, but given enough concussive shotgun blasts in close proximity to one's head, it's entirely possible they may be forgotten.

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I'm fucking miserable. What an asshole I've been.

Sorry for the Turkish, good people, but Rok Finger's hit rock bottom. No fuckin' pun intended. In fact, if I did intend a pun in any slight or possibly intentional way, beat me to death with a dirty broom handle.

As you'll no doubt know, I've separated from my wife of 30 years, Arvelyn. Things came to a head and blew up after the whole possibly poisoned food incident, I won't go into the lousy stinking details, but just to cut through the bullshit, we're broken up. I've been living in my office at the commune since then, drinking from the water fountain and Ramrod Hurley's hidden Jim Beam bottle and eating the plants growing in the window sill of Omar Bricks' cubicle. Sure, I feel a lot better once I've eaten, but I always come back to here. Rock bottom. No pun, yadda yadda.

I'm sure I've expressed how large and impressive a bitch my wife is. Not that I'd totally recant that statement, but as of late I think it only fair to mention I'm no prince to live with either. Let's face facts, loyal readers: I'm a huge prick, and not the good kind of huge prick ladies talk about. I'm the awful kind of insane, self-destructive huge prick who drives away good-hearted women who love him.

There is no God. That's obvious. What kind of God would make a huge prick like me and then give him a perfect woman just knowing I'd drive her off just like I did all the other good women in my life, and small children as well? A huge prick God, of course. Satan, I think he's called. Yeah. God is Satan.

Oooh! Shit. This song, this song is so true. No shitting you, this is dead on the truth. I've heard it before but it never made sense like it does right now. Indeed, we're all stars in the dope show. I'm turning it up, Nacutchacokov and all his shushing can shove themselves up his ass, which would be a physics nightmare. He just works here, I have to live here. I don't think he's from this country either.

Sometimes I think maybe I should go outside, since there's always a better chance of being hit by some sort of traveling vehicle or being struck by lightning. Earthquakes, they're rare but they could happen. Something could fall out of a window, like my desk, and crush me flat under it. Arvelyn would get all the insurance money and I'd finally do something worthy of her, what a fucking prick I am. The bitch. Oh, shit, I just remembered, I made the cat my beneficiary. You see? This is the kind of humongoid prick Rok Finger is, no denying it.

I'm thinking of getting out The Catcher in the Rye and reading it again. Christ, I haven't read that book in thirty years now. In fact, I don't think I ever read it. I burned it once. It's hard to remember now what all that was about, I think I was just trying to be cool.

Bagel can shove his deadlines up his ass. I'll turn in a page full of randomly pressed keyboard markings before I write another column. I'm on contract, dammit, they can't hold me. Besides, I don't think they edit these things at all.

Anyway, I'm muddling through, good people, loyal friends, fans of a huge prick. I'm sure by next time I'll have a column better prepared or something. Or, with luck, I'll be dead and it will no longer be an issue. Fuck me.

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