Could answers to Sandusky’s alleged crimes be found in his 2000 autobiography?

“Within his words…between the lines…lies the truth.”

Such are the phrases I saw splashed across the big screen in the trailer for "Anonymous," director Roland Emmerich’s latest conspiracy minded/non-sci-fi disaster movie that entertains the notion that the famous plays William Shakespeare wrote were actually written by someone else.

Watching that trailer again on YouTube a few days ago made me think how those phrases may well apply to Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach who was arrested Nov. 5 and charged with 40 counts of child sex abuse involving eight boys.

If any of his family, friends or anyone interested in the Penn State scandal are looking for clues to his dark side, they certainly aren’t checking out Sandusky’s books, "Coaching Linebackers" or "101 Linebacker Drills" which were published back in 2000, on barnesandnoble.com.

Chances are they are searching the Internet in hopes of getting their hands on his 2000 autobiography, "Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story."

Out of curiosity last week, I searched for that book written by the “Great Pretender” as Sandusky liked to call himself according to an 11/20/11 CNN article by Ann O’Neill and Wayne Drash on the Internet. The book reportedly focuses more on the author’s association with children through his charity, The Second Mile, than he is reveling interested readers with tales of his football glory days as both a player and later a coach.

“He talks a lot in that book about hugging kids, about loving to be around kids,” editor David Newhouse of The Patriot News told CNN’s Piers Morgan. “There’s some chilling things in that book, and it’s only when you put them together with the allegations that you can see, perhaps what he meant.”

Up until a few days ago, the words I saw on amazon’s posting for the book were “Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available.”

Today, I see that used copies of the book are being sold, one for $59.71, the other for $249.50 which is also the same price a seller has listed on eBay.

A few of the books for sale on eBay are reportedly autographed copies signed by the “Great Pretender” himself with the words “May your life be touched with hope and happiness.”

Honestly, I have no interest in getting my hands on what I refer to as “child rapist memorabilia” once Sandusky has his day in court and is possibly convicted of the charges against him nor am I interested in finding out the key to his madness.

Anyone who purchases the book, if they have any common sense, they’ll do what Naperville businessman Joseph Roth did back in 1994 when he purchased 21 paintings done by executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy according to a May 18, 1994 article in the Chicago Tribune and light a match.

Roth’s reason for burning Gacy’s paintings was “to get them off the face of the earth.”

Even if Sandusky is found innocent, anyone with any moral decency should still be more than just a little disturbed when a guy like the “Great Pretender” admits during a Nov. 14 phone interview with Bob Costas on NBC’s "Rock Center with Brian Williams" that he “horsed around” and showered with young boys.

“I am innocent of those charges,” he told Costas.

Unlike the Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans) in "Anonymous" (2011) who dies knowing his name will never be attached to the plays he supposedly wrote, if you truly believe in such outlandish “Hollyweird” conspiracy theories, I don’t think I would be too far off in my assumption given the charges against him if Jerry Sandusky wishes he really were “anonymous.”

“It still comes as a shock to us about Jerry,” said NFL Hall of Famer Franco Harris in the 11/20/11 CNN story. “He reached far and wide, and people that were very, very close to him just had no clue. We all believed in what Jerry was doing.”

As family, friends, co-workers and loyal college football fans come to the sudden realization that the man they thought they knew had a sinister dark side, I can’t help but wonder if the line they are now telling themselves is one I also saw displayed in black capital letters in the Anonymous trailer.

“We’ve all been played.” 

11/28/11

"We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It's run by a big eastern syndicate you know."

As I write this column it is now 31 shopping days until Christmas, and I have one question. Is it just me or has anyone noticed that society forgot what Christmas really means?

The public’s belief when it comes to the holiday season every year is buying the right gifts for their son, daughter, mom, dad, relatives and even their dog. Most though don’t do it in a holiday mood. Almost everyone I’ve seen at the malls beginning the day after Thanksgiving is having a bad hair day.

Perhaps there were too many cars in the parking lot because they had to walk a great many miles to get to the store. Or it is simply just too many people packed in the malls to move around freely. Pity the underpaid employees with smiles on their faces who are forced to be courteous to such irate vultures only to have their required acts of kindness thrown back in their faces. A guy I know who has the unfortunate pleasure of working in retail said to me last year, “If these people would go to church, they wouldn’t be so mad all the time.”

“Christmas has become too commercial,” said a woman I know at work who planned on buying only gift certificates for people this year. “It’s all about money.”

It isn’t just about money. Has anyone ever had a perfect stranger wish them a Merry Christmas or Happy New Year? The last time I remember any of that happening was three decades ago. It was one of those rare December days in Chicago where the temperature was in the mid 60s and the sun was out. My mom, my sister and I were riding our bikes in the forest reserve trails; something Dallas doesn’t have. As we passed people by, everyone was wishing each other Merry Christmas whether they were on their bikes or taking a walk. Other than hearing it from co-workers, relatives, parents, and siblings, I have not heard that kind of holiday greeting come out of anyone’s mouths since.

What does Christmas mean to me? When I was in grammar school, Christmas was my favorite time of the year because there was snow on the ground and school was out for about two weeks. The usual ritual for our family was my parents would wake my sister and I up after midnight or 1 a.m. to let us know Santa just left. I would find, in my case, numerous Star Wars toys and space Lego sets near the tree. Toys of which are now gone or were sold to hobby shops for cash. Back then, our usual tradition was spending time at the grandparent’s house, eating dinner and exchanging gifts. I miss those days.

The best thing about Christmas in Dallas today is how people here go all out decorating their homes with lights. Chicago residents can’t do that with all the snow on the ground.

My main concern or focus today is not so much on gift giving. If I want anything, I go buy it myself. Now that we have established why I never have any money, I can say the best thing to get for people is gift certificates. Christmas, however, is more than that. It is spending that one time of the year with family and friends whom you never see except when you talk on the phone. It also means for those of us who go to church only once or twice a year, which is Christmas and Easter, like I do and those who go every week, celebrate the birth of Christ. It is about family and religion.

Not everyone today thinks that way. To them, this holiday is all about money.

To quote Lucy from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965), “We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know.”

Then again, I think the spirit of Christmas died decades ago when NBC bought the rights to show "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) once a year. I miss those days in December where that film was shown every day up until New Year’s. I don’t know the exact reason why the classic film was made exclusive only to NBC, but I am sure it had something to do with money.

©11/25/11

What's up with the gimp?

“I guess these guys were into the kinky stuff, huh?”

So said Dan Harmon (Dylan McDermott) upon seeing what his wife, Vivien (Connie Britton) stumbled across in the attic of their new Los Angeles home nicknamed “Murder House” that the couple, along with their daughter (Taissa Farmiga), moved into in the pilot episode of "American Horror Story" (2011-Present) premiered on FX in early October.

I had no idea the character in the shiny black rubber latex suit the Harmons saw in the attic was called “Rubber Man” until I read the cover story about the show in the 10/28/11 issue of Entertainment Weekly. Up until that point, the only question I asked myself as I watched the series every week was “What’s up with the gimp?”

I am sure by now most everyone familiar with the psychologically twisted horror drama knows about “Rubber Man.” Even if they haven’t seen the show they might have noticed the TV posters showing a scantily clad and pregnant Connie Britton in black lingerie in a sexy pose who looks like she is about to be ravaged by the man in black who seems to pop out of nowhere like he is on some sort of imaginary sex swing.

If this series was the kind of show the entertainment media can’t stop talking about, I could just picture some reporter doing a feature story about how sales in latex rubber fetish gear have jumped at stores specializing in sadomasochistic equipment. It would be similar to how the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, has reportedly helped spike sales of nude pantyhose this year thanks to her always being seen in public wearing nylons.

Just don’t go mistaking my watching American Horror Story as me going back on my word at how I have 400 plus cable stations and can find nothing to watch.

I still don’t know what to make this series. If I were to call it entertaining and feel compelled to buy the season 1 box set that will no doubt follow in the coming months on Blu-ray, I would feel like I need a shower afterwards. The title lives up to its name reeking of unpleasantness exploring subjects that include family dysfunction, infidelity, miscarriages, illegally paid abortions, suicides, high school bullying, mass murder, child kidnappings, cannibalism (though not in the Hannibal Lecter sense, at least not yet anyway) and of course, kinky sex. Then there’s the wild assortment of previous deceased tenants who inhabit the home as ghosts.

I don’t know whether to praise the show for the way it cleverly incorporates ideas and even movie soundtracks from several films in the horror/murder/serial killer genre that include "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992), "Hannibal" (2001), "The Haunting in Connecticut" (2009), "Kill Bill: Vol 1" (2003), "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), "The Omen" (1976), "Psycho" (1960), "The Strangers" (2008) and even "The Goonies" (there is some deformed adult baby who also apparently resides in the attic who looks like that abused gentle giant character, Sloth, the kids rescued in that 1985 film).

Or if I should be a little repulsed by the homosexual undertones and disturbed at how the series creators Ryan Murphy ("Glee") (2009-2015) and Brad Falchuk use real life tragic events like the 1999 Columbine High School shootings as inspiration for a couple of the paranormal characters.

There is no denying, however, that all these ingredients are the reason "American Horror Story" 

has become an unexpected cable network hit. FX has already renewed the show for a second season.

I guess I am of two minds on the subject.

“You may hate this show,” said star Dylan McDermott in the Entertainment Weekly article. You may love the show. But you’re going to talk about the show.”

Hence the reason I am writing this column.

At the same time, I share the same feelings actress Connie Britton did after reading the script according to the same article.

“I read the script, and I was like, ‘Um…whaat?’,” Britton said. “I don’t understand. I kind of took a leap of faith.”

I took that same “leap of faith” with "American Horror Story" last month and I have to say I am hooked. Then again, I have always been interested in movies and shows with dark, sinister themes.

The question is will I still want to watch after the identity of “Rubber Man” is reportedly revealed in the Nov. 23 episode. Do I really want to know? 

This show has gone off in so many macabre supernatural directions since its debut that for all I know the notion that I will finally learn what is really up with the guy in the shiny black rubber suit could all just be one big tease.

©11/20/11

Appreciation: Andy Rooney (1919-2011)

I never watched "60 Minutes" on a weekly basis but on the Sundays I did I always made sure to tune in during the last 15 minutes to see what topic commentator Andy Rooney had to gripe about.

It goes without saying that what made “America’s favorite grouch in chief”, as 60 Minutes correspondent Morely Safer called him in a tribute that aired Oct. 2, so popular with viewers for over thirty years was how people identified with practically all the topics he talked about.

“I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn’t realize they thought,” Rooney was once quoted saying in a Nov. 5, 2011 article by the Associated Press. “And they say, ‘Hey, yeah!’ And they like that.”

When Rooney died Nov. 4 at the age of 92 as a result of complications following minor surgery and practically a month after delivering his final essay Oct. 2 on 60 Minutes, I immediately searched the Internet, youtube.com and cbsnews.com for a few of those ‘Hey, yeah!’ moments that struck a few chords with me over the years.

Rooney’s Feb. 29, 2004 commentary about the number of movie trailers and needless advertising audiences are inundated with before the film ever starts was one segment I identified with.

“Now, movie theaters have started doing something even worse to delay the start of the picture you just paid to see: They show actual commercials,” Rooney said. “Don’t they understand that’s what we go to a movie to get away from – commercials?”

How true. Today the notion that a movie will actually start at 11:10 a.m. is like saying your doctor will see you at exactly the time of your scheduled appointment. An 11:10 a.m. showing of "Paranormal Activity 3" at the theater, for example, actually means 11:30 after my time has been wasted sitting through trailers I had already seen on the Internet and commercial advertising of upcoming television shows I have no interest in watching. By comparison an 8 a.m. appointment means I am sitting in the examination room for 15 minutes or longer before my doctor actually sees me.

I couldn’t tell if Rooney was more annoyed with British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen or “Ali G”, the character Cohen played in a segment of "Da Ali G Show" in 2004 as the commentator corrected the entertainer’s grammar.

“It’s English,” Rooney told him. “The English language would say, “Do you think the media has changed not ‘Does you think the media has changed.’ I have 50 books on the English language, if you’d like to borrow one.”

I could go on and on about many of the subjects I agreed with him like his Feb. 26, 2006 commentary on "Man’s Best Friend", for example.

“I think dogs are more dependable. They make better friends than people make. Dogs don’t disappoint you the way your people friends do.”

Every now and then Rooney had reason to be serious, if not celebrate, as when U.S. Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden on May 2.

“There have only been a few times in my life when someone's death has been the occasion for rejoicing,” he said in his May 8, 2011 commentary. “The demise of Adolf Hitler was a good day for the world and a good day for me. The death of Osama bin Laden this week was that kind of day for the world.”

I guess it was just wishful thinking on my part. When Rooney signed off 60 Minutes last month with his final 1,097 essay (it would have been great if he had left us with a nice even number of 1,100), I assumed despite his age that he would a year from now return with a brief commentary. Perhaps this one would be about “retirement” speaking from behind that walnut desk Rooney personally built himself and had placed in his CBS office which he spoke about in a December 6, 2005 column called “Andy’s Favorite Place.”

He did after tell viewers he wasn’t retiring.

“Writers don’t retire, and I’ll always be a writer,” Rooney said.

His passing may well be the moment viewers and colleagues have dreaded. Rooney’s final request to his television audience before signing off was “if you do see me in a restaurant, please, just let me eat my dinner.”

Somewhere in the Heavens, Andy Rooney is doing just that having dinner with his best friend, Walter Cronkite. I suspect, for all eternity, he probably won’t ever have to worry about anyone interrupting his meal, except maybe God.

©11/9/11

On the list of horribles Gadhafi was among the most colorful of America’s real-life villains

I think I learned more humorous tidbits about former Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi this year since the downfall of his 42-year regime began last March than I ever did in decades past.

It all ended with his much-publicized bloody death at the hands of his own people in his hometown of Sirte Oct. 20.

I suppose I should thank a friend of mine who posted a blog link on Facebook last March about the dictator's "All-Female Virgin Bodyguard Retinue" which was reposted again as part of an ABC News story recently titled "The Seven Weirdest Things About Moammar Gadhafi."

Apparently, the Mad Dog of the Middle East, a name President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) called him back then, surrounded himself with female bodyguards who were called "Amazons," took vows of chastity and wore battalion type uniforms and high-heeled boots.

Up until an interview last March, the only Gadhafi quote which proved to me that the leader was having delusions of grandeur was his comment to "ABC News' This Week" host Christiane Amanpour, at the height of the unrest going on in Libya.

"They love me, all my people. They love me all. They will die to protect me, my people."

When the Chicago Tribune came out with a who-said-it quiz in March with quotes from Gadhafi and Charlie Sheen, who at the time was also going through some much-publicized delusions of grandeur of his own, I failed the test.

Reading such quotes from the quiz as "I am like the Queen of England," "I'm dealing with fools and trolls. I'm dealing with soft targets," and "If you love with violence and you hate with violence, there's nothing that can be questioned," I honestly figured both could have said such comments at one time or another.

Today, however, I can add a couple of other quotes to my useless knowledge of Gadhafi trivia that include "Were it not for electricity we would have to watch television in the dark" and "I am not such a dictator that I would shut down Facebook. I'll merely imprison anyone who logs into it."

Then there's the wealth of pictures showing the dictator in his many multi-colored wardrobes at various political functions profiled in an Aug. 12, 2009 issue of Vanity Fair.

The Snoopy hat and leather bomber jacket he wore in December 2007 at the Palace of Versailles, for example.

"Where does this extraordinary individual get the ideas for his wardrobe? Does he have a team of designers back in Tripoli, working up the hundreds of bizarre looks required of a world leader on official business?" said a caption that came with that magazine photo.

"He was without question the strangest foreign leader I had ever interviewed," said CNN host, columnist and author Fareed Zakaria when he interviewed the leader in 2009.

"Gadhafi seemed like he was on drugs – completely out of it. He was bizarre, constantly quoted from his own Green Book and was unaware of what was going on around him. Interviewing Gadhafi was like interviewing Yoda."

I won't speak for the Libyan people who suffered at the hands of Gadhafi's oppressive government or the families who lost loved ones when Pan Am flight 103 fell from the skies in December 1988, the result of a bombing, which he allegedly authorized.

I know I probably won't be far off in my assumption that most if not all of them will agree with me when I say I seriously won't miss the guy.

To quote the line from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" (1982), "Revenge is a dish best served cold" and I am Catholic, though I only attend church services at Easter and Christmas.

Just don't mistake Gadhafi's end as reasons to back slap and give each other high fives something that was apparently going on at the White House the day after he was killed.

I agree with Lt. Col. Oliver North when he was interviewed by conservative radio host Sean Hannity Oct. 21, that the celebrations going on in Libya could be premature.

"There are at least six armed militias who are part of this Transitional National Council — and not part of it as well — there is no agreement as to who is going to lead the country," North said.

"On top of all of that, you have friction between Arabs and Berbers, and in the southern part of the country between North Africans and all the rest of them. And you've still got 20,000 — perhaps even more — surface-to-air, man-portable missiles that are missing from the ordinance depots that Gadhafi had, all of which make a major threat to the United States. This could actually be much worse than what's already happening in Egypt."

Call me a pessimist or Glum, the Lilliputian from "Gulliver's Travels" whose trademark line from that novel was "We're doomed," but I believe it's still too early to tell with Gadhafi gone whether or not this will actually be a good thing for Libya, the United States and the world.

©11/8/11