Once again, I must begin with a disclaimer:
I'm still on post-op drugs, so although I think I saw a story that said Saddam Hussein loves Doritos and believes he's still president of Iraq, and another one saying that a pizzeria owner from Hayward, Calif., paid a bounty hunter to track down and kill Osama bin Laden, I might still be a little fuzzy on things.
I have cut back on the drugs enough, however, so that I now fly into a rage at any mention of Tom Cruise. If he had jumped around on Oprah's couch and said he was in love with John Travolta and they were leaving Scientology to open a hair salon, I'd be mildly interested. But I don't care whether he loves Katie Holmes, what it all means, or whether anyone sees their Batman movie.
Bounty hunters, though. That's a subject that interests me, and not just because of the Hayward pizza connection to Bin Laden.
Two years ago I wrote about a bounty hunter named Duane "Dog" Chapman. He's the guy who nabbed that degenerate Andrew Luster, the descendant of Max Factor who skipped the country before being convicted of rape charges.
For those who've forgotten, the FBI fell asleep on the job while Chapman tracked Luster to Mexico and nabbed him, only to get locked up by Mexican police and trashed by the FBI for not respecting international law.
I defended Chapman, and then several months later, while vacationing in Hawaii where he lives, I bumped into him at a supermarket.
"Dog," who looks like a lion tamer in a traveling carnival, gave my wife a bear hug. He and his wife, Beth -- a cross between Mae West and Anna Nicole Smith -- emphatically thanked me for a boost that they claimed had reversed his fortunes. Dog said my column had helped him land a reality show on the A&E network called "Dog the Bounty Hunter."
I always knew I was doing the Lord's work.
Unfortunately, I hadn't even heard of Dog's show. My interest in "reality" TV began to wane roughly 15 minutes into the first episode of "Survivor."
Then one night, after I got home late from work, the lovely and talented Alison told me she had seen Dog's show. She wore a strange expression, as if Saturnians had transplanted a new frontal lobe into her head, and she seemed forever altered by a single night's journey into the white-hot vortex of pop culture.
We began watching together on Tuesday nights as Dog and Beth pursued Hawaiian low-lifes and deadbeats, and sure enough, I've never witnessed such a campy mix of knuckleheaded suspense, patriotism, romance, and trailer-park law and order.
