I try really hard not to throw rocks at legislators.  For one thing, they have a very tough job, a very boring job, a job most of us wouldn't take unless they'd stopped hiring at the steel mill.  For another thing, if you throw a rock at a legislator, you're gonna hit him; they're as defenseless as an animal with opposable thumbs can be. 

Near as I can determine, legislators use up all their instincts for self-preservation during the decennial re-districting process.  Having successfully gerrymandered themselves into impregnable wards and boroughs cut and pasted into shapes previously known only to God and Gaudi, they are just plumb tuckered out.  Their stores of energy and imagination are so thoroughly depleted that when one of their number comes barreling through the Capitol behind the wheel of one of those zombie Cadillac bad ideas they like so much, it never occurs to them to get out of the way.  They just press the aye button and get run down like so many armadillos on a Texas highway.   

It's pitiful, really, and we shouldn't be laughing at them when it happens.  Making fun of legislators for bad ideas is like kicking cockapoos for being tiny and adorable. 

I know that. But, sadly, while my spirit is willing, my flesh is weak.  Try as I might to be nice to these people, they keep serving up column fodder, and I'm just not a good enough person to resist it. 

I would rather not say mean things about them.  They do a lot of good, and they set my salary.  But hey, I got a deadline coming up in three days.  And the folks I'm gonna throw rocks at today have nothing to do with my salary.  So another chance to rise above my own base personal interests "gang aft agley."¹

This time it's Kentucky I can't resist.  Which is really too bad.  I have a reader in New York² who has put together something he calls "The Bedsworth Safety Map."  It shows the United States with a big, red "X" in every state I dare not drive through because I have insulted them in print.  Kentucky was my last remaining corridor to the east coast.  Sigh.  On the other hand, there were only six states left on the east coast I could safely visit, so maybe it's just as well.

The Kentucky state legislature is currently wrestling with a bill that would make Kentucky Fried Chicken, "The Official Picnic Food of Kentucky."  Seriously.  "The Official Picnic Food."  Representative Charles Siler has introduced a bill that would so designate KFC's "Original Recipe."

How could anyone expect me not to tee that up?  Gandhi couldn't resist a straight line like that.³

Neither can PETA.  You remember PETA:  People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.  They're like the Sierra Club for cockapoos.  They're the kind of organization legislators should have to protect them from us rock-throwers.

PETA's very upset that Kentucky is considering "honoring" Kentucky Fried Chicken.  They loathe Kentucky Fried Chicken.  If PETA were Iran, they would consider KFC "The Great Satan."  So they're on Representative Siler like ugly on a bulldog. 

Their position, I think eloquently expressed, is that, "If the state legislature moves forward with this one, then they should change Kentucky's state bird from the cardinal to the debeaked, crippled, scalded, diseased, dead chicken."  That lovely picture is provided by one Bruce Friedrich, identified by the Lexington Herald-Leader⁴ as PETA's vice president.  If I were a state legislator, with my heretofore referenced diminished capacity for self-preservation, I would not want to run afoul⁵ of Mr. Friedrich.

But with all due respect to the formidable Mr. Friedrich, I think PETA's missing the point here.  The point is, "How has Kentucky gone 216 years without an official state picnic food?"  I mean, I can understand failing to provide health care for its citizens and neglecting the state's infrastructure and not putting up barbed wire all along its borders to protect its citizens from terrorist hordes swarming down from Ohio like so many Buckeye Visigoths . . . but how could Kentucky's legislature have shirked its responsibility to designate an official state picnic food?

Now I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, "Isn't the mint julep already the official state picnic food of Kentucky?"  Well, apparently not.  It isn't even the official state beverage.  Milk is.  They decided that in 2005.⁶

They got lots of other official stuff.  They got an official state dance (clogging), an official state butterfly (the Viceroy), and an official state locomotive (Old 152).⁷  They've even got an official state silverware pattern, for crying out loud (Old Kentucky Bluegrass:  The Georgetown Pattern) and TWO state mottos (one in English, one in Latin, but they're different; go figure).

Yet they have NO OFFICIAL STATE PICNIC FOOD.  God bless Representative Siler for straightening that out.

Or at least trying to.  There is some opposition to Rep. Siler's bill quite apart from its PETA-antagonizing propensities.  The Ashland Daily Independent, for example, has editorialized that the official state picnic food should just be generic, unbranded fried chicken.  As it cogently points out, "not all chicken served at picnics in Kentucky is from KFC."⁸

Which reminds me, didn't the KFC people become KFC by deleting the words "Kentucky," "Fried," and "Chicken" from their corporate moniker?⁹  Didn't they make a corporate decision they did NOT WANT to be identified with Kentucky, fried foods in general and fried chicken in particular?  Are these really the people the Kentucky state legislature ought to be honoring? 

If California Pizza Kitchen decided to call itself CPK so it could better market itself to Texans, wouldn't we be a little offended?  I would be.  Especially if we'd put a bust of the founder of the company in the state capitol. 

Yep, there is a bust of Harland Sanders in the Kentucky State Capitol building.  I know this because I almost wrote about it when Pamela Anderson tried to get the governor to remove the bust a couple of years ago because of her concern about KFC waterboarding chickens.¹⁰  I spent an hour trying to write the column before deciding it was not worth all the effort just for the Pamela Anderson/Colonel Sanders bust/bust double entendres.¹¹

So I can certainly understand the feeling of some Kentuckians that they've already done enough for a company that jumped ship years ago.

Besides, there are some disturbing questions raised by some of the whereases in Representative Siler's bill.  According to the first whereas,¹² Harland Sanders opened his first restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky¹³ in 1930.  But according to the third whereas, Colonel Sanders's "Original Recipe" fried chicken was first cooked in Colonel Sanders's restaurant in 1940. 

Which means it took ten years for the Colonel to come up with his "Original Recipe?"  I'm sorry, that's a use of the word "original" I - the English major - have a little trouble with.  What fried chicken recipe was used for the ten years before the "original" recipe?  What was the universe like before the Big Bang? 

If I were Kentucky, I would want answers to these questions before I enshrined that finger lickin' good stuff in my codified statutes forever and ever.¹⁴  Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be to have to stand in Costco parking lots gathering signatures for the initiative to repeal your Official State Picnic Food designation?

But the biggest reason not to name Kentucky Fried Chicken the Official State Picnic Food of Kentucky is found in the second whereas of the resolution in support of it.  It says, "Whereas Kentucky Governor Ruby Laffoon made Harland Sanders an honorary Kentucky Colonel in recognition of his contributions to the state's cuisine in 1936 . . ." 

Governor Ruby Laffoon?!?!  That alone should be enough to keep this bill from ever becoming law.  It would violate Bedsworth's Third Law of Statutory Interpretation:  No statute that requires an admission the state once elected a man  named Ruby Laffoon as its governor can possibly be a real law.  Ignore it.

1  That's Robert Burns.  It's from "To a Mouse."  The "gang aft agley" part is Scottish dialect for "go oft awry," which is what the poem tells us happens to "the best laid plans of mice and men."  Every so often, I feel the need to include something for the benefit of those of you who think anybody could write this column - something to make you say, "Oh, jeez, you need to waste three years getting a bachelor's degree in English to write this drivel?  I couldn't do that; my pain threshold is too low.  Maybe I couldn't write this column."

2  Probably only one.  We'd have to appoint attorneys for everyone in the state before questioning them to find out if there are more, so let's just assume there's only one.

 3 Okay, maybe Gandhi could.  Gandhi did not have to fill column space every month.

4  "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport."  Me and ABC's Wide World of Sports.

5  Or, in Kentucky's case, a-fowl.

6  And wouldn't you want to hire the lobbyist who was able to get milk declared the official state beverage in the state that invented bourbon?

7  Hell if I know.  It's a locomotive.  What would an English major know about locomotives?

8  Now there's an editorial board not afraid of controversy.

9  Or at least "entucky" "ried" and "hicken."

10  At least I think it was waterboarding.  I know it was torture of some kind.  I tried to double check with the Department of Justice, but they informed me General Mukasey is still working on that one.

11  And because at that time there were still east coast states I wanted to visit and I was hoping to keep Kentucky open on "The Bedsworth Safety Map."

12  This word apparently can only be printed in boldface fonts.  I went out and looked at a couple of documents I have that contain whereases, and, sure enough, boldface.

13  Which, lo and behold, is in Rep. Siler's district.

14   Well, at least the first one.  Maybe it is asking a little much to expect the Kentucky State Legislature to explain the Big Bang thing.  At least right now while they're gearing up for re-districting.

My wife and I work together. This means I get to spend pretty much every minute of my life with her. This sometimes gets in the way because, of course, it means I have to spend so much time giving thanks to a higher power for my incredible good fortune. Other than that, it is the unalloyed blessing everyone who knows Kelly imagines it to be.¹

For one thing, it makes for some terrific conversation on the way to work. One morning in March, for example, we spent the entire 35 minutes talking about then New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and the holocaust he now inhabits.

It was a lively and candid discussion marked by the kind of perceptive sagacity and insightful, evenhanded deliberation you've come to expect from your courts of appeal. There were elements of history and moral philosophy and sociology and religion and politics and a fair sprinkling of psychology. There was serious analysis and impressive consensus-building.

The upshot of that discussion? I am not allowed to spend more than $150 on a prostitute.

Part of this is based on the fact that if I hire a prostitute, I will need the rest of my money for a good divorce lawyer and a nice, furnished apartment at the Oakwood Gardens.²  The rest is based on our agreement that the $4400 ex-Governor Spitzer is alleged to have paid is just way out of line when the math is done conscientiously.

As to this latter point, Kelly and I figure that when you factor in the actual time of usage, the cost of one of the ex-Governor's prostitutes to me would be approximately $176,000 an hour. Which seems high.

Actually, even $4400 an hour is high when you figure that if I took the entire hour, we'd be spending most of it doing a sudoku and watching an episode of House Hunters (two episodes if we tivoed them and fast-forwarded through the commercials).

Yet somehow the governor of New York, a smart man with a graduate degree, a product of two of the finest universities in the world, a man who has spent almost fifty years on the planet and has proved repeatedly that he can both divide and multiply, considered this a good deal. Even though he was doing it on a greased high-wire suspended over a flaming pit of hungry alligators.³

What gets into people? I mean, hiring a prostitute is risky business for even the most anonymous Joe Average. You can be the manager of an auto parts store, faceless to everyone you meet, barely able to get a waitress to come to your table, but you solicit a prostitute and suddenly there will be searchlights and sirens, helicopters and news vans, and your booking photo will be fed-exed to every member of your church congregation. Guaranteed.

Ask any john who's ever been busted for it. It's a low percentage play.

But if you hire a prostitute when you're the governor of the most famous place in the solar system, you go beyond the realm of the bad idea and ascend to the level of transcendental lunacy. For crying out loud, you're a guy who's on the six o'clock news every night. You're being watched and listened to constantly. Everybody knows your face. Your chances of escaping notice are absolutely nil. You've gone from a snowball in hell to a snowflake.⁴

And I'm sure the erstwhile governor would identify with the hell metaphor right now.

So it's time for the Jay Leno question. Remember when English actor Hugh Grant, one of the most attractive and urbane men on the planet, was caught in flagrante backseato with a transvestite prostitute? At the time, he was dating Elizabeth Hurley, a woman so beautiful I would have paid her $4400 to pound on my instep with a claw hammer.⁵  So help me, everything about Grant's transgression was inexplicable.

Well, a few nights later, he appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Leno asked him what I've always considered the single best question in the history of television journalism. Leno looked at him for about twenty seconds without saying anything and then asked the question everyone in America wanted asked, "What were you THINKING?" 

And Grant had no answer. He had the grace to admit he had no answer. But he had no answer.⁶

Nor, of course, does Spitzer. 

The talking heads do. Television is already full of pop psychologists trying to explain the inexplicable, trying to find some intellectual explanation for supremely anti-intellectual behavior. According to Slate.com, Dr. Laura tried to blame it on Mrs. Spitzer. Honest.           

Dr. Laura's theory is "When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he's very susceptible to the charm of some other woman, making him feel what he needs." 

This, of course, is absolute rubbish. This might be an explanation for cheating⁷, but we're not talking about cheating. We're not talking about falling for another woman's "charm." We're talking about hiring another woman's body. This isn't an emotional faux pas, it's a commercial transaction. Blaming his wife is like blaming the trailer park operator for the tornado.

Others have suggested resort to prostitutes might indicate the governor had some issues with his mother. So now we're blaming the tornado on the trailer manufacturer. I'm sure that there are dozens of journalists doing background on the governor's mother even as I write this. Has to be Freudian, right?

No.  It doesn't.  It might or might not be Freudian, but it doesn't have to be anything - except stupid.

You want someone to blame? Blame the tornado.

You want an explanation? Here's an explanation: My gender does stupid things.

Spectacularly stupid things.

Sure, the other gender does stupid things, too. But they seem to lack my gender's sublime capacity for the sex-driven, complete double-twisting, triple axel, "Look, Ma, both hands behind my back," flaming, somersaulting, breaking-every-bone-and-crushing-your-spleen catastrophe.

Exhibits A & B:  Messrs. Grant and Spitzer. Exhibits C, D, E & F: Charlie Sheen, Eddie Murphy, Rob Lowe, Dodger pitcher Dave Stewart.⁸  Exhibit G: My own experience AS A PROSECUTOR.⁹

Having spent fifteen years in the district attorney's office, I can vouch for the fact prostitution gives prosecutors fits. It's a misdemeanor, but it's one of those third rail misdemeanors. Legally, it's a 30 watt misdemeanor; politically, it's a 20,000 volt exposed wire.

The offenders are usually sad, often sympathetic, waifs eking out a miserable substitute for a living by pitilessly demeaning themselves.¹⁰  But the voters seem to have an interest in their punishment that far outstrips the crime. They'll go to church and pray for them on Sunday, but on Tuesday, in the voting booth, they'll crucify any prosecutor perceived as not throwing the trick book at them. The result is and always has been prosecutorial schizophrenia.

My first job as a lawyer was prosecuting misdemeanors for a great district attorney named Cecil Hicks.¹¹  Cecil had a rule: Prostitutes go to jail. End of story, end of discussion, end of inquiry. No prostitution case could be dealt for a fine or community service¹² or anything else. Prostitutes had to go to jail.

It wasn't that Cecil was a rigid moralist. We weren't working for Elmer Gantry. As far as I know, he didn't consider the crime itself any more reprehensible than the dozens of other misdemeanors he did allow his deputies to plead out for less than jail time. But he was convinced prostitution would be a perfect entrée into the county for organized crime, and he was determined to keep organized crime out of Orange County. So prostitutes did jail time.

I don't know if he was right. But I know prostitutes would plead to almost anything in Los Angeles County if they could get the judge to wrap up their Orange County cases as part of the deal. Fines were merely a cost of doing business for them, but jail time was hugely counterproductive.

And I know there is virtually no organized crime presence in Orange County today.¹³  And Cecil Hicks could be elected District Attorney tomorrow if he were still alive. Which puts him considerably ahead of Governor Spitzer on at least four fronts. 

First, Cecil, rest his soul, is dead. Spitzer only wishes he were.

Second, even dead, Cecil is more electable right now than Spitzer.

Third, Cecil is buried. Spitzer will be radioactive for a thousand years; they'll have to launch his body into space in a lead-lined trash barrel.

And fourth, everybody I've ever talked to about Cecil Hicks respected him as a prosecutor and remembers him as a good and decent, fair and honorable man.  Everyone has a Cecil Hicks story, and they all involve laughter.  But even if you spend the rest of the week trying, you will be unable to find anyone who remembers ever sharing a meal with Eliot Spitzer.

So what does this have to do with you? I hope nothing. I hope you didn't need to be reminded of any of this.  But, like all cautionary tales, it has an audience - often one that nobody suspects. Maybe you're it.

But even if you're not, there's a definite bright side to this for you. Ours is a stressful profession. Sometimes it flat out beats us up. You may have had a day like that today... or a week... or more. You may have lost a summary judgment motion... or a trial... or a witness... or a partnership. You may be headed home right now with your head down.

But take heart. No matter how bad your day was. No matter how bad your week, your month, your year... it's better than Eliot Spitzer's. 

Count your blessings.

1. Did I mention Kelly reads every column?

2. Assuming, that is, that my needs cannot be met quite nicely by the nearest available funeral home.

3. Yeah, that's a bad deal for the alligators, but an even worse one for Spitzer.

4. The operative word here being "flake."

5. Now, of course, my limit would be $150.

6. He also had no Elizabeth Hurley. Ever again.

7. Or it might not be.

8. And that list, I'm embarrassed to admit, took only three minutes and no resort to the internet to compile.

9. I thought that phrase needed to be shouted in case a train happened to be going by when my wife read it.

10. Governor Spitzer's associates in The Emperor's Club notwithstanding, prostitutes are the stoop laborers of crime (no pun intended).

11. "I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." And, like Hamlet's Yorick, he carried me on his back until I gradually turned into a lawyer.

12. They were already servicing the community; that's what got them in trouble.

13. There are also very few elephants - a fact I attribute to Cecil's "Elephants Go to Prison" rule. 

I must admit I was startled. I had not expected to see a gorilla when I left the golf course. And I certainly hadn't expected to be within 20 feet of one.¹ Yet there he was, standing on a street corner in Irvine, swaying rhythmically from side to side, listening to his iPod.

He was holding a large, arrow-shaped yellow sign that said, "Homes for Sale." At the risk of sounding anthropomorphic, I had the distinct impression he was smiling, despite the stultifying boredom of standing on a street corner for hours on end waggling a large yellow arrow. I assume he was either an illegal gorilla or had fallen on hard times, since this is precisely the kind of work I'm told we need gorillas to do because humans won't.²

I watched him until the signal changed. The whole concept of this kind of advertising eludes me. I mean, it's not like seeing a gorilla with a big yellow arrow is likely to remind me that I meant to buy a home while I was out. "Oh, that's right; Kelly wanted me to stop and pick up a new home after I finished golfing. What a break: This guy's got some!"

And even if I were the one guy in a million who would roll down his window and enter into negotiations with a gorilla, nobody ever goes through with those purchases. Sure, people will talk to a gorilla about a new house, people will act like they're interested in what the gorilla has to sell, but our society is still way too specist for anyone to ever close the deal. I talked to three different real estate boards and none of them is aware of a single home sale by a gorilla last year.³

Apparently large-animal-with-arrow-sign advertising works in other areas of marketing. I know this because it is generating more litigation nationwide than the Americans with Disabilities Act. Judging from the number of lawsuits reported in the popular press, people find large-animal-with-arrow-sign advertising almost as offensive as sexy-women-without-clothes-on dancing.

It seems a lot of places consider the arrow the key part of the act and consider it a violation of their sign ordinances. This seems to me to completely miss the truly remarkable significance of employing a gorilla. I'm afraid most municipalities have focused way too much on signage and way too little on underemployed species. And, of course, the result of such short-sightedness is always tragic.

In Woodland Park, Colorado, for example, a rare giant chicken has been ordered to stop walking along Highway 24 brandishing a sign urging passersby to eat at Wild Wings ‘n Things.⁴ The City Manager says the chicken⁵ violated the city's sign ordinance and threatened Woodland Park's "mountain grandeur."

As I understand it, the ordinance in question says nothing about "mascot signage," but includes a provision that "All signs not expressly permitted or exempted from this regulation are specifically prohibited."  Since there is nothing in the ordinance about giant chickens . . . well, you went to law school; construct your own syllogism here.  And while you're at it, construct a new sign ordinance for Woodland Park; the one they've got sucks.

While the Colorado Springs Gazette does not explain why PETA is not holding torchlight parades over this injustice, it does quote several townspeople who recognize the shortsightedness of the City Manager's decision. My favorite is, "It's a funky town; he's a funky chicken." This is the kind of straightforward, cohesive logic I strive for every day.⁶

Eleven hundred townspeople have signed a petition to save the Wings ‘n Things⁷ chicken, who, for reasons I cannot explain other than by reference to the townspeople's affection for him, is referred to as The Chicken Man. I thought at first that might mean he wasn't a REAL chicken.  But the owner of Wings ‘n Things is quoted as explaining the chicken's silence by pointing out, "He does not talk; he's a chicken," so I know that's not it.

And it probably wouldn't matter if it were. There seems to be resistance to this kind of advertising no matter who does it. According to my friend Kevin Underhill, who writes Loweringthebar.net, "Police in Searcy, Arkansas, have no leads in repeated attacks against Steven Turnage, who wears a chicken suit on local city streets to promote a fast-food restaurant."  Someone went so far as to shoot bottle rockets at that poor guy, setting his chicken suit on fire.⁸

In McHenry, Illinois, they banned a woman who dressed as the Statue of Liberty to promote a tax-preparer. Then they decommissioned a guy who dressed as a mattress to remind people their wife told them to pick up a mattress on the way home after they bought the new house and picked up the chicken wings.⁹

You know how Robert Frost said, "Something there is that does not love a wall"? Well, whatever that something is, it has nothing on the forces of the universe that converge against mascot advertising.

Take New Jersey. Please.¹⁰

According to the Associated Press, "The New Jersey State Supreme Court [will decide] whether a town can ban a 20-foot inflatable rat." Honest.

Apparently some unreported natural disaster wiped out all the trial courts in New Jersey. Why else would their Supreme Court be deciding issues like this?

Seems the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers decided the best way to draw attention to their grievances against Gold's Gym was to post a 20-foot inflatable rat outside the gym. While the significance of that might not have been readily apparent in Newport Beach or Villa Park, it was clear in New Jersey.  According to the New Jersey Appellate Division's opinion, a rat "is a well-known symbol of protesting unfair labor practices."¹¹

Anyway, the IBEW was ordered to take down the rat on the ground it violated a local sign ordinance that prohibited "balloon signs or other inflated signs (excepting grand opening signs)." They did, but when they put it back up 45 minutes later¹², union official Wayne DeAngelo was cited.

He was convicted of violating the ordinance and fined $133. He appealed. The state appellate court ruled against him, BUT THERE WAS A DISSENT. Sing hallelujah, brothers and sisters, there was a dissent!

The dissenting judge pointed out the possibility of unequal treatment of similarly situated 20-foot inflatable rats. Relying on the statute's exception for grand openings, he expressed concern that had a new Disney store opened up right next to Gold's Gym, it could have displayed an identical rat right next door, to advertise the Disney film "Ratatouille,"while the IBEW's rat was being hauled off to the pokey.¹³ That's trouble with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "D" and that starts "Dissent."

This is important because there is an AUTOMATIC right of appeal to the state Supreme Court in any case in which a dissent is filed. Mr. DeAngelo is champing at the bit. His lawyer says of the upcoming appearance before the Supreme Court: "That's the silver lining."

I dunno. I have a feeling the state Supreme Court may not be that thrilled about hearing a $133 inflatable rat case. They may wonder why the IBEW didn't just paint "GRAND OPENING" on their rat and save them a lot of trouble. Appellate counsel might be well-advised to forget the silver lining and see about getting one made of asbestos for his suit. 

Fortunately, our own Supreme Court's docket will not be similarly sullied.¹⁴ The 9th Circuit ruled in Ballen v. City of Redmond (2006) 466 F.3d. 736, that the Blazing Bagels bagel shop could have an employee stand outside with a sign urging people to come in and buy bagels. Seems to me a shop that describes their bagels as "blazing" might be better off if they sent an employee outside with a gun to steer people into the store; a sign might not be enough.

But that wasn't the issue. The issue was whether Redmond's sign ordinance restricting purely commercial speech was drawn narrowly enough to pass constitutional muster.¹⁵ The Ninth Circuit said it was not.

I could spend several more paragraphs explaining why Redmond's ordinance was flawed, but if I did, you'd stop reading. I have not a clue why you've read this far, but I'm reasonably certain it wasn't for scholarly exposition of recent Ninth Circuit cases.

All you need to know about the Redmond case is that the court awarded the flaming bagel guy fees and costs and the City of Redmond ended up out of pocket $165,508. Now I don't know how much disposable cash the City of Redmond has jingling around in its figurative jeans, but I'm pretty sure the next time they take umbrage over a sign, they'll be a tad more reluctant to make a federal case out of it.

And I'm pretty sure all the City Managers in California know about the Blazing Bagels Case. I can't see them advising their clients to risk $165,508 over a sign unless it's pretty obnoxious.

2. Apparently, we are the only primates frightened by the prospect of "dehumanizing work."

3. Perhaps "talked to" is a bit of an exaggeration, since no one said a single word to me after I asked the question.  But I think three hang-ups in three calls are enough to establish a negative response.

4.  Shouldn't there be a second apostrophe after the "n," as in "Wild Wings ‘n' Things?  After all, we're apostrophizing both the "a" and the "d".  That's the kind of problem MY sign ordinance would address.  Give thanks I'm not on YOUR city council.

5.  Obviously a free-range chicken.

6.  And, according to many, achieve.

7.  I'm still bugged by that missing second apostrophe.  Do you think maybe they only need one because what they were going for was Wings On Things?

8.  Let's just hope no one does that to real chickens, like the one in Woodland Park.

9.  Wings IN Things?

10.  Henny Youngman, gone but not forgotten.

11.  See how much we miss out here on the left coast?

12.  Somewhere is a union lawyer who can lay claim to one of the most unusual billable hours in history:  "Research and analysis re propriety of rat display."

13.  Appellate work appeals to a very special kind of individual.

14.  Actually, I have nothing against the rat case, but I couldn't pass up a chance to use a phrase like "similarly sullied."  I just know I'm not gonna get that chance in an opinion.

15.  Please pass the muster; my hot dog's getting cold.

On October 5th of last year, I spoke to the American Bar Association's International Law Section in London. On October 19th, I spoke to the Nebraska State Bar Convention in Lincoln.

In between, I spent a week in a decompression chamber to keep from getting the bends.

I had a great time in both venues. I officiated two NHL games in London and took in the Nebraska-Texas A&M football game in Lincoln. I was a pig in slop.

In many ways, the two experiences were much the same. In London, I had great food (I could live for a long time on steak and ale pie, and they do nice things with venison) and went to the British Museum, where I saw some of the Chinese terra cotta soldiers on exhibit. In Lincoln, I had great food (you are not allowed to leave Memorial Stadium without eating at least one runza(1) and went to the National Museum of Roller Skating where I saw "the colorful history and the promising future of one of America's favorite sports."(2) In both places I met really nice people.

So, as you can see, there is not much to choose between these two places except that London has part of an ocean protecting it from the maniacal French, while Nebraska is chockablock next to the maniacal Kansans and you pretty much live in constant fear that they might pour across the border at any moment and take your science textbooks away from you. Other than that, I think you could have a great weekend in either place.

But I must admit I'm starting to think Nebraska, even given its terrifying juxtaposition with the newest state in the Union,(3) might be a safer bet than England. In fact, I'm starting to distrust any place that requires me to fly over a larger body of water than the Great Salt Lake.

So help me, folks, at the risk of sounding chauvinistic,(4) I'm starting to think governments in the rest of the world are smoking even more weed than ours is.

Let's start with the Brits. According to Reuters, a panel made up of "three of Britain's most senior judges" has discovered an inalienable human right not to live in France. Imagine. Eight hundred years since the Magna Carta and nobody in Britain had previously noticed that there was this innate human right lying around. Remarkable.

This will be an interesting precedent - especially for people like my wife, who tends to develop strong feelings about places we visit.(5) And employment lawyers will be especially interested in this case when the head office orders their client transferred from Newport Beach to Burundi.(6)

The Brits detected this inalienable right during a family law case. You knew it would be family law, didn't you. Family law makes everybody crazy.

Seems British dad and French mom split up. Mom took their two sons, ages 11 and 16, with her to France. But after a visit with Dad in England, the boys refused to return to France, on the basis that in England they could "walk to school, could have their own key and would not have to do as much homework."(7)

The court, citing the boys' "Britishness"(8), said they had "an inherent right to refuse to live in France." It's not exactly "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," or even "Liberte, egalite, fraternite," but it's the first inherent human right discovered since Justice Douglas wandered into a penumbra while on a camping trip in 1965 and wrote about it in Griswold v. Connecticut, so it's nothing to be sneezed at.

Inalienable human rights don't pop up every day. I really think it should have gotten a lot more attention from the legal press than it did.

Probably, though, it was overshadowed by the decision of the South Korean Court of Appeals to suspend a prison sentence on the basis that the defendant was too important to the national economy to be locked up for three years. That's right.  Go back and read it again. It says exactly what you think it says. He was too important to do the time.

Chung Mong-koo, the 69-year-old Chairman of Hyundai Motor Company, was convicted of embezzling $100 million from his company. For this he was sentenced to three years in prison.(9) But the appellate court suspended his sentence ON THE BASIS HE WAS TOO IMPORTANT TO GO TO JAIL.(10)

Honest. According to the Los Angeles Times, quoting the Associated Press, two organizations not on the list of the world's largest importers of hallucinogenic drugs, "In reversing Chung's sentence, presiding Judge Lee Jae-hong told a packed courtroom in Seoul, ‘I was unwilling to engage in a gamble that would put the nation's economy at risk.'"

And they're clearly right. I mean, I saw a picture of him and he had a tie on and everything. He sure looked important to me. And there were a bunch of people shoving microphones in his face like he was announcing the discovery of a cure for psoriasis - or a newly discovered inherent human right.

Which, come to think of it, he was.  He was announcing the right to do whatever you damn well please if you're really rich and live in Korea.  It's a lot like Britishness only it comes with a get-out-of-jail-free card instead of a get-out-of-France-free card.

Nor is this some kind of bizarre fluke. According to the Times, "Chey Tae-won, the chairman of another conglomerate, energy giant SK Corp., had his three-year prison sentence suspended by an appeals court last year after he was convicted of fraud."  In fact, the Times says 83% of suspects in embezzlement and breach of fiduciary duty cases have been set free by South Korean courts since 2001. Keep that in mind next time you feel like griping about American courts being soft on crime.

But as bad as these two are, the one that really worries me is the Italian decision that space aliens are testing secret weapons in Sicily. According to The Week, Sicilian villagers in Canneto di Caronia had reported that refrigerators and toasters and things have been spontaneously bursting into flames in their town. The Italian government investigated and concluded that "aliens testing secret weapons" are probably responsible.

I just don't know what to add to that. How can you read that and not think that maybe you want to postpone your trip to Venice for a year or two?(11)

Here is what the Malaysia Sun(12) had to say about it: "Dozens of experts, including a scientist from the US space agency NASA, were sent to investigate the bizarre blazes, in a two-year probe which cost the exchequer a whopping one million pounds. Now a leaked Italian report has said that aliens were a likely cause of the fires in the remote village of Canneto de Caronia in Sicily."

Makes Lincoln, Nebraska look pretty good to you, doesn't it?

Just be sure to approach Lincoln from the north or the west. You don't wanna come in through Kansas. They'll arrest you on suspicion of being a biologist and you'll have to invoke your inalienable human right to rip off Koreans in France.(13)

1. This is a beef and cabbage pie, not all that unlike the British pasties, only surrounded by screaming people wearing red.

2. Not to mention a gasoline-powered roller skate (you gotta go to their website and see this bad boy (http://www.rollerskatingmuseum.com/), although, as you can imagine, it's much more impressive in person).

3. This would be Kansas.  True, they were admitted to the Union in 1861, but according to their school system, they were created only 6,000 years ago, which makes them much newer than any of the other states.

4. In the original sense of the term.  Nicolas Chauvin.  "My country right or wrong."  That kinda thing.

5. Kelly cannot understand, for example, how Houston, Texas, can be anything but a penal colony.

6. Or Houston.

7. Considerations which have inexplicably not made their way into any reported California custody cases.

8. I'm guessing this was established either by sophisticated DNA analysis or the fact the boys found Benny Hill funny, which is not possible for anyone who is not British.

9. As I understand the South Korean sentencing system, embezzlement of less than the gross national product of Gambia, the maximum punishment is three years.  Chung just made it under the wire.

10. I don't resort to all-caps often, but this seemed to be a clause that merited them.  In the first place, they gave him only 3 years for embezzling $100 million.  Let me go on the record right here:  For $100 million, I would go to prison for three years tomorrow.  That isn't a sentence, it's a power forward's contract demand.  But then they decided he didn't have to go to prison AT ALL because THEY SAID HE WAS TOO IMPORTANT, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! That's all caps stuff, if you ask me.

11. Don't do it.  Don't EVER postpone a trip to Venice.

12. Yeah, I know, not exactly the New York Times, but probably a lot more reliable than Fox News.  What can I tell you?  Except for The Week, very few mainstream news organizations covered this.  Nobody wants to report on a major world government going absolutely loonytunes.  It's too disturbing.

13. No, it doesn't make sense, but if you say it loud, it may confuse them long enough for you to hightail it across the border into Nebraska.  Nice people in Nebraska.  Wear red.