Hello Sluggo:

A) Oops… Hey, Last.fm…  Seen the news lately?

B) I wonder what Michael Jackson’s play count looked like before he bought the farm (but not the ranch)? I’d be willing to bet it was nowhere near 29 million.

C) Does Last.fm knows something we don’t? Is the King of Pop planning something along the lines of his former Father-in-Law, The King?

I received a text from my wife yesterday that signaled the passing of a great man.

“Have you read the news that Dolemite died?”

I hadn’t. Jumping over to Dolemite.com, I read the mounting news reports of his death and remembered the couple of times I met him. Onstage, he was Dolemite, Shine, Petey Wheatstraw the Devil’s Son-in-Law and more, all rolled up in one big nasty package, but offstage, he was kind, thoughful, even going-out-of-his-way courteous to a crowd of people he didn’t know as they lined up for autographs and souvenir photos.

The first time I saw him perform in 1993 at the See You Later Lounge over on Montopolis Drive, he seemed to just be starting his “revival” after languishing in obscurity during most of the previous decade. A small crowd of Emo’s regulars (all white, of course) had come to the show, and RRM took enormous pleasure including a bit of friendly harrassment in his act that night, at one point asking if anyone would “eat a chitlin cleaned by this white bitch over here” (my future sister-in-law, Mary Ann) and even getting me up before the crowd to exclaim, “This big motherfucker look just like Pee Wee Herman, just fatter.You jack off alot don’t you, man?” And what could I say but, “Yes, Mr. Dolemite, yes I do!” For my good sportsmanship, I was rewarded with a copy of a porn movie entitled “Willy Jackoff’s Chocolate and Cream Factory: Black Thunder.” The crowd loved it. As I left the stage with my prize, he sent me off with “Here, take this… It’s horrible.”

In order to pay his way back to LA, he was selling posters and other Dolemite merch, plus some dubious non-RRM junk such as framed prints of huge stacks of cash and cheap VHS porn tapes and other junk, most of which he had nothing to do with. Upon asking him to sign the movie I had proudly won, he replied, “Man, I ain’t in that movie, I can’t sign my name to it.” He did, however, finally signing the box, “To John, You Pee Wee Herman Motherfucker.”

The second time I saw him was in 1997 at Catfish Station on Sixth Street. By then he was enjoying a rebounding career that brought high praise from the movers and shakers of the comedy and hip hop worlds. His act, as well as his gracious personality, was basically the same though, but this time I noticed his advanced age was surely catching up with him. I picked up a “Dolemite for President” t-shirt and some other memorabilia, and as he was signing the merch and chatting with me, he seemed to be looking right through me—he was probably already suffering vision problems from the diabetes that had plagued him for so long. He remembered the Pee Wee Herman comparison from years earlier, and thanked me “for being such a good sport up there.”

The lasting impression left on me by RRM, besides the fact that he was a funny motherfucker, was that he was the antithesis of the “take the money and run” stereotype of his contemporaries. If anyone deserved attention and respect for all that he pioneered in the entertainment world, it was him.

Talk about taking things into your own hands…

Convicted sex offender attempts to castrate himself; Tells police he was fighting the urge to offend again

From The State Journal-Register, Springfield, Illinois

A convicted sex offender who told police he was feeling an urge to offend again took a fillet knife to his testicles in an attempt to castrate himself Sunday night (10/21/07).

The 59-year-old man, who lives in the 1600 block of Seven Pines Road, was bleeding profusely when police and paramedics arrived. However, he was expected to survive.

The man successfully removed one testicle and flushed it down the toilet; the other testicle was severely injured.

He then called a friend for help. Authorities were notified about 8:15 p.m. Sunday, and the man was rushed to the hospital.

According to a police report on the incident, the man, who was not identified, said he was feeling the urge to touch and hurt children. He was not trying to take his life, he reportedly said, but was trying to stem the urge.

The man’s offense happened in 1984, police said. He had been on a sex offender registry for some time but no longer was required to register.

Self-castration is not as rare as one might think. Historians say some early Christians castrated themselves… And instructions for castrating oneself accompanied by firsthand accounts can be found on the Internet.

In case any “responsible child molesters” are reading this, here are the instructions for using an elastrator (a device used in the castration of farm animals) to nullify your urges. Go ahead, knock yourself out!

Link contains images that might produce feelings of being kicked in the nuts, so don’t say I didn’t warn ya.