Adam Baldwin's older brother, John, was in the posse that never was*

Whatevs, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers.


A new study reveals men are not as good in bed as we think we are. In an equally enlightening study, breathing is better for you than not breathing.


A new study reveals men are not as good in bed as we think we are. Guys, you might not be as good in bed as you think you are when, during sex, your woman yells out your dog’s name by mistake.

Guys, you might not be as good in bed as you think you are when, during sex, your woman yells out her vibrator’s nickname by mistake. “Oh, Thunder Dan.”


The woman running for Delaware Senator, Christine O’Donnell, has a new TV ad where she closes with; “I’m not a witch. I’m you.” This is better than their first idea: “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too.”


A new study reveals men are not as good in bed as they think they are. This study was done by the center for the Department of Understanding Humans, or DUH.

Since you asked, bully edition, 2:

Sorry regular readers if you’ve heard this one before, but all this news about bullies reminds me of my bully experience as a child.

My four-year-older brother, John, who turned out later to be gay, but was really just a horribly awkward and clumsy kid, both socially and physically, was bullied unmercifully. It was gut-wrenching to watch. Everybody gets teased, hell, if a girl was pretty and a boy handsome, they got teased for being handsome and pretty.

But the abuse my brother endured went beyond the pale. Two neighborhood thugs, well, thugs for suburban Chicago anyway, Tom Berger and John Carney (no relation to the awesome NFL kicker) a year younger than my brother John, three years older than me, were particularly hard on my poor utterly harmless and defenseless brother John.

At one point I stood up to them. As John’s younger brother, it broke my heart I had to defend him, but, although my brother and I never got along, I couldn’t take their hitting him anymore.

Well, that was fine with the bullies, they decided to beat me up instead of John.

Although three years younger, I was about as big as they were, so they considered me fair game. And that’s what they did. I was about 9 and they were 12 and, if they saw me in the neighborhood park, they came over and punched me in the stomach, arm or back. Nothing bloody, nothing in the face, but it hurt.

One day my grandmother Rodgers was visiting from Louisville and she saw me riding my red Schwinn on the sidewalk with Tom Berger and John Carney in-tow alternately slugging my back. When I got home, my shocked Grandmother asked who those awful boys were. My matter-of-fact reply;

“Oh, those are the boys who beat me up.”

To this day when I hear the word terrorist, I think of John Carney and Tom Berger. For about one year, it was truly terrifying for me to leave my own house. At that time I felt like the loneliest and most frightened kid on the planet.

But, as I grew taller and the bullies didn’t, the beatings magically stopped. In fact, we were able to maintain a rather friendly détente. We all wordlessly decided to pretend nothing happened.

Six years later, a wet and cold early spring late afternoon in my sophomore year in high school where, that fall, I had distinguished myself by scoring 22 touchdowns for the sophomore football team, I was walking past the neighborhood park that was across the church and kitty-corner from my house on the way into town. The same park that constantly reminded me, every day for six years, the bullies had beat me up there on a regular basis.

As I recalled those beatings, who was walking the other way? None other than my former nemesis, John Carney.

High school had not been a success for John Carney, his acne was bad and he dropped out to work at the gas station. Oily and greasier than ever, Carney was walking home after his gas station shift smoking a cigarette. We exchanged pleasantries. But then, oddly, John Carney stopped to chat and reminisce:

“Hey, football star, remember how me and Tommy (Tommy Berger, had long since moved) used to beat you up in this park? Man, that sure was fun. We beat the hell out of you.”

The five-year silent détente was suddenly broken. John Carney was taunting me in a spiteful way while pretending to be friendly. Now, even just 15, I was bigger than he was at 18. The scrawny John Carney wouldn’t dream of hitting me, but, reeking of Marlboro smoke, motor oil and body odor, he was blatantly relishing the fact he used to punch out that little, scared kid who was now a big football player. It seemed to make him feel proud.

“Yeah, I sure do remember that,” I said. My face was getting hot. Before I knew what happened, I laughed and said;

“You used to do this to me all the time . . .”

And I wound up and under-handed punched John Carney as hard as I could right in his solar plexus.

John Carney doubled over, his feet came off the sidewalk “Rocky” style, the wind rushed from his lungs and he collapsed on the sidewalk like a marionette with its strings cut. Then he rocked in the fetal position unable to breathe, his face a bright-red tearful frozen imitation of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

Shocked by what I had done, I stood there in horror and waited for him to breathe. In what seemed like forever, he finally sucked in a loud, raspy breath which was followed by the loudest little girl-like screeching scream I have ever heard.

When I was convinced he probably wouldn’t die, I scurried into town to get away from his screaming and sobbing as good Samaritans ran to his aid. It was shocking for me to see a grownup, to me anyway, crying and carrying on in such a pathetic manner.

When I got home with whatever I had gone into town for, probably a Snickers and a “Mad Magazine”, I ran up and hid in my room. This is how a murderer must feel, I remember thinking. My guilt was horrible and, worse, there were going to be serious consequences. Outside of a sport, I had never intentionally tried to hurt someone. It felt terrible.

All my life my parents had driven into me the fact I was bigger and stronger than most kids and it was incumbent upon me to be careful. It didn’t matter to my parents that John Carney was three years older, I was in epic trouble for hitting someone smaller.

Sure enough, my heart sank as the phone rang, I ran outside of my room and leaned over the balcony as my Mom, in the kitchen downstairs cutting carrots and onions for dinner, answered the phone with a puzzled:

“Why hello, Mrs. Carney, what’s the matter?”

Rumors of alcoholism and infidelity had followed Mrs. Carney and she was not famous for being nice. So it was strange for my Mom that she called.

I hung over the upstairs railing straining to hear each of my mother’s curt and succinct replies to what seemed like screaming coming from the other end;

“Uh huh, uh huh. You don’t say. OK, calm down. Really? Why that’s awful. Is he going to be OK?”

I could hear her voice ice-over in controlled anger as only Mom could do. This was going to be worse than I thought.

And then, amazingly, my Mother said;

“What am I going to do about it? Well, Mrs. Carney, I’ll tell you what I am going to do about it. I am going to do exactly what you did when your son used to pick on my Alex when he was just 9. Absolutely nothing. You have a nice day, now, you here?”

Click.

(Mom could get real Louisville-like and Southern- polite on someone’s tuchus when she wanted to twist the knife)

Bless her heart, Mom had my back. To my utter surprise she had known all along about the bullying I had endured six years before and it must have almost killed her to do nothing, but she also must have felt I could deal with it.

Sure, there was the stern lecture about how John Carney could have gotten seriously hurt and I could have gone to jail, etc.

From that point on, whenever I was on one side of my Elm street, John Carney found his way to the other. We never spoke again. The terrorist was now utterly terrified.

There were rumors Carney was forming a coalition of the mechanics he worked with to form a posse* for the revenge-the-revenge attack. Nothing came of it. The other mechanics weren’t very big either. (One was John Baldwin, the older brother of successful actor, Adam Baldwin, of “Full Metal Jacket” and now “Chuck” fame. (No relation to the Baldwin brothers)

The moral? Who knows? Maybe its bullies are cowards and shrivel and go away when confronted. One thing I do know is being the victim of a bully is terrible, it is all-consuming, it is torture both mentally and physically, but being strong and standing up to a bully, even after six years, well, that can feel pretty damn good.

Maybe that is what these kids who get bullied have to do.