Eric Neel

Eric,

I received an e-mail from the Captain this morning pointing me towards your column (yeah, I was a day late, between the Jew Year, the hangover and the hissy-fit my timing was a little off) , in particular this:

MEA CULPA
A weblogging reader from Boston who calls himself Jose Melendez (after a one-time Mariners and Red Sox pitcher) and refers to himself (at least in e-mail) in the third person, wrote this week to complain that I had "ripped him off" by referring to Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo as "Balki" (a reference to the character played by Bronson Pinchot on the long-dead ABC series "Perfect Strangers") in last week's column.

He says he got there first, referring to Bronson as "Balki Arroyo" in a May 21, 2004, posting at his site.

"What hurts Jose's feelings," Jose writes, "is that everyone except for Jose's small cadre of loyal fanatics will think you thought it up. This joke is Jose's legacy!"

Yawn. "Balki"? Shouldn't we, as a people, be doing everything in our power to put "Perfect Strangers" behind? But I continue reading...

My sincere apologies, Jose. Far be it for me to tramp on a man's legacy. I honestly didn't know you'd been down the Balki road before me. Still, I wish now that I had gone with the other Bronson reference I was thinking of at the time, and called him Death Wish Arroyo. My bad."

Now what hurts me isn't that you're bitin' my rhymes. No, what hurts is that you a) thought you needed to steal from me, b) you thought I'd be dumb enough for you to get away with it and c) you totally butchered it. The Death Wish Kid is a way nickname.

But like Bush, I'm a divider not a uniter, and so I sallied forth, only to read this slap in the face:

"A couple weeks back, my friend Jon and I were at a Brooklyn Cyclones game on Coney Island."

'tha fuck! Are you shitting me? Can you believe yourself?  You roll up on my borough, don't even have the decency to drop me the insincere, perfunctory "Hey, I'm gonna be in Brooklyn, maybe we'll get a beer" e-mail and then have the temirity to mention it in your column.

It's no wonder you and the Assclown are life-long friends.


Now at this point I've had about as much as I can take, but I figure I'vew come this far... and go to the main piece of the column where I find this: "(M)ore lovely, Bacchanalian shots of McCovey Cove on TV." Huh? I don't know, is it me or are you pushing your luck? "Bacchanalian"?

I don't know, man,
FM