O.J. finally decides to tell us how, er, someone could've done it
'If O.J. Simpson wants to cash the one big paycheck awaiting him, there's probably only one way to do it, and that's by writing a book. Call it God Forgive Me, and spell out in detail the answer to every unanswered question. . . .
"The idea of such a book might be absurd in 1997, but five years from now, don't be shocked to see it happen."OK, so I was off by a few years.
That's an excerpt from a Feb. 11, 1997, column about Simpson, written after a jury ordered him to pay $25 million in punitive damages (in addition to $8.5 million in compensatory damages) to the families of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman.
I believe there's still a bit of an outstanding balance on the ledger.
Simpson's post-trial moves have been as shifty and elusive -- and as frustrating to his opponents -- as anything he performed on the football field. He moved to Florida, where his home and his lucrative NFL pension are untouchable. He golfs, he parties, he gets into a spat here and there, he's occasionally seen in the company of an attractive blond.
Life is good, baby, and the law is on O.J.'s side. Just last week, a judge in Santa Monica, Calif., denied Fred Goldman's efforts to win any income Simpson receives from his image and his football legacy.
Now, some nine years after I suggested Simpson would one day write a confessional, we hear that he's going to come clean.
Sort of.
Not that he's admitting a thing, mind you.
Think about the level of sickness in such an act. The mother of your children and an innocent bystander are murdered, you go through the "Trial of the Century" and you're exonerated -- and more than a decade later, you give a TV interview and publish a book in which you continue to deny you had anything to do with it -- but you speculate on how you would have pulled it off.
Funny, I don't remember JonBenet's parents writing a book called If We Did It. Maybe that's because most people would consider such an exercise to be grotesque and reprehensible.
Besides, doesn't O.J. realize all this speculative talk will deter his quest to find the real killers?
When a movie such as "Brokeback Mountain" comes out, we say there's no way we're going to the theater to see it, unless we're accompanied by a woman who will hold our hand throughout the experience and say things like, "Do you want some more popcorn, you raging mass of heterosexual heterosexuality?"
When we hear about Lance Bass or Neil Patrick Harris coming out of the closet, we crack a stupid joke or we say we figured the guy was gay, or we don't care.
But when we hear Beyonce and Eva Longoria are going to co-star in a lesbian love story, we make a note: SEE THAT MOVIE SIX TIMES. (And when Longoria tells People.com it's not true and says "Stop the madness," we say, "No no, let the madness begin, please!")
When former "Lost" star Michelle Rodriguez confirms she's in love with "Terminator 3" hottie Kristanna Loken (they met on the set of "BloodRayne"), straight guys say, "Sweet!"
We're hopeless.
For as long as I can remember, they've had these commercials on the radio for Max Madsen Mitsubishi.
The phone rings. It's answered by a guy (Chicago ad exec Doug Ekman) doing a not-so-great Indian accent.
"This is the doctor," he says. "Oh hello, Max Madsen!"
What the heck is going on there? Why is this car dealer calling this doctor all the time?
I don't know -- but it would be a lot hotter if Eva Longoria was ringing up Beyonce.