I finally got some sleep ...

... and not a moment too soon. I needed a clear head before I sound off about this Sean Bell murder acquittal. And yes, I said murder because that is what it is.
What do you call shooting someone, who is unarmed, and then they die? It's murder, there's no other way to classify that.
Last week, the three cops, excuse me, detectives. who fired at Bell and his two friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, 50 times. Guzman and Benefield were wounded, one had critical injuries.
To jog your memory, Sean Bell was due to get married. He was out at his bachelor party and according to police, he and his friends got into an altercation and left the club. During all this, Guzman supposedly said, "Yo go get my gun."
That is when undercover detectives tried to stop them. During his testimony, he says he identified himself and told them not to move and Bell, who was drive, struck him with the vehicle on his leg and that's when the shots started - all 50 of them.
So, of the 50 shots fired, 31 were fired by one person. That means he emptied a clip, changed it and emptied another one.
According to previous reports, another officer fired 11, the rest fired four, three and one. If I remember correctly, the cops charged were the ones who shot the most, that's Gescard Isnora, Marc Cooper and Michael Cooper.
***They should all change their names to Scott Free***
Reports say that Bell was shot twice in the arm and once in the neck. Guzman was shot 11 times, Benefield was shot twice. There have been reports of a fourth man but no one knows what happened to him. He is supposedly the one with the gun.
One theory is the police officers kept firing because they thought Bell and his friends were firing at them. Since Bell, Guzman and Benefield didn't have a weapon, the officers were firing at the echo of their own guns. I'm inclined to believe that.
Not sure if you've had the (mis)fortune of hearing a gun shot, but the sound tends to ricochet off of whatever is around. I'm guessing that if they were on the street, the sound of so many gun shots at once will bounce off the buildings.
Anyway, two of these guys were charged with manslaughter in the first and second degrees, in an effort to get a conviction on one. They are class B and class C violent felonies. The other was charged with reckless endangerment in connection with discharging his fire arm into an occupied dwelling, which was the car Bell was driving.
Now, you all have all the facts I have. I've watched enough Law & Order to know that there was enough evidence to convict these officers but for whatever reason, the judge didn't see fit to do that.
My concern is that these guys are detectives, right? That means they've been on the force for a hot minute, long enough to make detective. If they've made detective, that means that their superiors trusted their skills, abilities and instincts.
To me, that means they can determine whether or not to use excessive force and their fire arms. Obviously, these three and their cohorts were not ready or equipped to make this decision, especially that trigger happy dude who emptied two clips.
I would have thought they'd get this thing together after they killed Amadou Diallo for reaching for his wallet. In case you've forgotten, Diallo was shot 41 times and killed in '99. At this rate, the next time, and there will be a next time, the next person will be shot or shot at 65 times.
There needs to be some sort of an overhaul as it relates to getting new cops. Apparently, the cops that are there now are tired, their instincts are off and they need to be replaced. If they keep killing everybody, after a while, there won't be anyone to protect and serve in the whole damn city.
The good news in all this is that Bell's fiancee, Nicole Paultre Bell and his friends Guzman and Benefield have all filed a wrongful death suit against the city. If you ask me, Guzman and Benefield ought to have separate suits of their own for the injuries they sustained.
While no amount of money can make up for a lost husband, father, son or friend, I hope the courts award them enough money so that his kids won't need or want for a dag on thing!

Don't cry for Star ...

... apparently ol' girl knows how to land on her feet.
News broke yesterday that Starlet Marie Jones Reynolds filed for divorce from her "husband" of three and a half years, Al Reynolds back in March.
Now every since my girl has been seen with Reynolds, there have been a few, uh, concerns about whether or not he's of the homosexual persuasion. Now he nor she neither confirmed nor denied that he has ever had sexual relations with a man or a woman for that matter.
I have been concerned every since she showed him on The View and I noticed that he arches his eyebrows. I don't know if he plucks, shaves or waxes them, but either way, that's a lil' on the feminine side. No straight man needs to walk around with his eyebrows arched. Anyway, shortly after they were married, it was reported that the man wore a Speedo and a loin cloth to a Halloween party. He was Bam Bam from The Flintstones.
I don't know about you but I don't need anymore evidence to rule in the matter of Al Reynolds' sexuality. I, the jury, find Al Reynolds to be gayer than Christmas - and I mean the lights, the tinsel, the metallic ornaments and the garland.
But hey, it's nothing to be ashamed of, we've all had a crush on a gay guy or two. Hell, I dated one in high school and I'm OK. In fact, we're the best of friends now. But for the record, I knew something was up when he was trying to "cut" after band practice.
In addition to my, and the rest of America's, speculations, Sybil on the Tom Joyner Morning Show said this morning that Jones kicked Reynolds to the curb because the brotha isn't working. And forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't blame her for that. Shoot, it's even in the Bible.
The Word says in II Thessalonians 3:10, "Even while we were with you, we gave you this command: “Those unwilling to work will not get to eat." I didn't say that, Paul did. So she was right to do that and nobody can fault her for that either. If you do, then you feed that shiftless negro.
While a divorce is certainly a set back, Star has definitely landed on her feet. In fact, the Detroit Free Press has reported that she is dating Dewayne Wade. That's right, D. Wade of the Miami Heat.
I wonder if he put her in his Top 5 on his T-Mobile phone. Even if he didn't, she's still doing better than Big Gay Al. She's doing so well, I had to go back to the 80s to find her a new theme song!

I'm on night No. ...

...I-don't-remember, of less than three hours of sleep. Since I have been having these 21-hour days for at least two and a half weeks, I have watched a loottttttttttttttt of TV and I realized why God does not see fit to make me a financially rich woman. I am convinced I would blow it all on these products on the infomercials.
No lie, I have seen that Magic Bullet thing about 20 times and everytime I watch it I want it more.

Doesn't that make you just want to mix up some muffins or a couple of daquaris? Something else I think I might want to is that Quick Chop vegetable chopper. When I get bored, I cook. The only thing I hate worse than baking is chopping up the stuff that I need to cook with.
For example, I make this off the hook pasta salad that has tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and red onions in it and sometimes grilled chicken. It takes nearly an hour for me to chop up all that stuff if I'm making a lot of it and it's not like I can just sit down while I chop this stuff up. So, I of course, I've fooled myself into thinking that it's practical.
If that's not bad enough, Time Life is about to hook me on those dang collections. Now to be completely honest, there are probably about 10 songs, in all, on those CDs that I either don't have or have access to, the difference is I don't have them all together. So, does that make it practical to start the Time Life Collection or should I just head to iTunes and pick up the 10 I don't have?
Sure it'd be cheaper but I won't get all those great liner notes and useless tidbits of information that I will never use again.

Soooo ...

I've had a touch of insomnia for a couple weeks and this has subjected me to late night TV which, in my opinion, has gotten a helluva lot better since I had insomnia when I was in college.
Back then, I watched reruns of MTV's "The Real World" and those nasty ole', stank ole' videos on BET's "Uncut" and a couple reruns of "The Cosby Show" on Nick at Nite. Now, late night TV is the best, or maybe I've gotten older. Either way, at 11, I watch "Will & Grace" on Lifetime because Karen and Jack are just freakin' awesome. At midnight, I watch "Frasier" and wonder how come he and his brother intend on staying in the closet. Then at 1, it's "The Golden Girls" and 2 brings on the best sitcom ever cut short, "Half & Half." All of this happens while I flip back between Nick at Nite which could show anything from The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, to Home Improvement to Roseanne to The Cosby Show.
For all intents and purposes, watching these shows allow me relive parts of my childhood while watching these shows but sadly, the commercials are starting to turn me off. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good commercial, in fact, those FreeCreditReport.com commercials and the Cheetos commercial where the dude wipes his cheesy fingers all over the white workspace have been known to keep me laughing for hours.
The commercials I'm referring to are the ones that feature the "We are 18" girls, those "Girls" who have gone wild and all of the ED (erectile dysfunction) commercials. You know the ones:
"Cialis goes to work fast. In as little as 30 minutes for some men and work up to 36 hours ..."
And the world's worst:
"Five years ago, few believed that this simple capsule can make a man larger ...
What do you want me to tell you, it got bigger!
It's made me a heck of a lot bigger!"
Give me a break! Can't I watch the Huxtables perform for their grandparents again without being bombarded with the dirty old man commercials? Can I watch Sophia tell a "Picture it, Sicily ..." story in peace?
My Lord, the only thing more aggravating than watching the commercial is knowing that some poor, gullible, impotent man is watching these commercials saying, "I should ask my doctor about that."
e-Yuck!!! I thought I was watching Lifetime, MyNetwork and Nickelodeon, not Cinemax. Can I have my late night TV back? Please?!