I'm sorry I haven't updated for a few days. I've been busy, as you would expect, since I'm a popular guy. My social calendar is always full, but of late it has been fuller than usual. But I have some time and quite a bit on my mind this evening.

Over the last few days, I have run across three tools who deserve to be mentioned as tools of note in this space. I happened to see a guy pulling into a Home Depot parking lot this afternoon driving an oversized camouflage pickup truck customized for off-roading. Ordinarily, that alone would catch my eye, driving an off-road vehicle to Home Depot is never cool. However, this dude was wearing what appeared to be welding goggles in lieu of sunglasses. Wearing tinted safety glasses as sunglasses is never acceptable, never mind the welding goggles. It is ironic, is it not, that such a giant tool would be travelling to a massive warehouse filled with tools of every description sold by one of the world's largest purveyors of tools? Technically it's a mere coincidence, but ironic sounds better.

Another tool who has managed to stand out from the herd of tools to warrant mention in this space is none other than the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsome. Mr. Newsome has decided to save the environment by banning bottled water from city offices in San Fran. Even though I realize that this decision is going to put a stop to global climate change, greenhouse gas concerns, the hole in the ozone layer and Republicans and their corporations, I wonder whether the mayor of San Francisco could have found a legitimate step to reduce his city's eco footprint.

It seems vaguely noble at first, trying to cut down on the amount of plastic recycled each year. But residents who sign the no bottled water pledge receive a stainless steel recyclable container. Now I might not be particularly smart, but doesn't that mean that you end the plastic problem by creating a stainless steel problem? Of course one can sell scrap metal (or recyclable metal, if you want to put a pleasant face on it) for good money. Particularly stainless steel.

I wonder, then, if this move to stainless steel recyclable containers is more utilitarian than altruistic, while still being a total waste of time and shameless grandstanding. Would that ending the public menace that is the plastic water bottle could change the fact that the city's budget is a mess, or undo the fact that the mayor got caught tagging a subordinate's wife.

Our final honoree for tool of note is our old friend, the CHB. In a recent "effort," the CHB came tantalizingly close to proving that he is, despite his advancing years, hip, with it and completely connected to current trends in the youth culture. He discovered what no one else had had the perspicacity to realize. It was the run of the 2005 Chicago White Sox that made Journey's Don't Stop Believing a cult classic.

Now I am no Journey fan, but I am sure that many others who feel that way have found that particular song to be a guilty pleasure long before the White Sox latched onto it. The song did manage to climb to number 9 on the charts following its release in 1981. It's been in a large number of movies and TV shows, most of which occurred before the White Sox made it their theme.

I think you'll find if you take the time to look up when the White Sox were on a road in Baltimore and Joe Crede requested some Journey songs, which triggered the song becoming the team's theme for 2005, that it had to have occurred after the Family Guy episode that started the song's reintroduction to the mainstream was shot and probably after it aired. That particular episode aired in June, and it got a much wider audience than the White Sox did prior to the playoffs. I also don't think that Laguna Beach took its inspiration for using Journey from the White Sox.

Thanks, though, for the effort. If only the CHB would either familiarize himself with a small portion of the world outside of his experience in the press box prior to writing about it. Far better if he just retired, but why would any of us be so lucky.

And finally, congratulations are due to the Chicago Bears. After all, who would believe that they cut Tank Johnson for the sake of expediency? It takes very little moral courage to drop a guy like that who has had legal trouble. It also took little moral courage not to step in with a sterner hand before the situation came to this pass.

I really don't know what the right thing to do in a situation like this is. I like Tank Johnson as a football player. I think he has a chance to get his life together. He hasn't shown the propensity for attracting trouble like Pacman Jones. We know Tank didn't pay a visit to the strippie prior to his meeting with Roger Godell because Jay Mariotti probably would have had that big heart attack, the one Fred Sanford always threatened to have from the sheer unadulterated pleasure he would have derived from another slip up from Johnson.

I was looking forward to another year of rooting for the Bears. Now I'm not so sure. Any team that did something Mariotti hoped for this much might not be worth rooting for over a long season. I don't have any other team that really inspires me right now, though. I will make a deal with New England though. If Bob Kraft can conjure a pair of testicles and some guts, make his way up to Kennybunkport this weekend and come back with the ring a certain Russian head of state (can't mention his name lest I get some polonium in the mail) pocketed a few years back, I'll root for the Patriots. I'll even defend Randy Moss when he lets his team down when they need him most.

Lately, I've been rising and sleeping under some vague, undefinable feeling of security, as if a cosmic injustice were about to be righted. Then late last week, I learned with the rest of America that the most dangerous threat to the safety and stability of Second City since Al Capone walked the streets of the South Side is soon to enter a correctional facility. Finally, it's safe to walk the streets of America. Terry "Tank" Johnson's going to jail for four months.

I must say, I don't really know why I spend so much of my time in this blog defending people whose actions seem indefensible. Maybe it's a ghost in my machine, or maybe the majority of the people kicking Tank Johnson could do us all a favor and wait to inveigh against him in the full force of righteous indignation. After all, Tank Johnson is going to prison for violating his probation, not having killed some one.

I am not saying that Tank Johnson should not be subject to due process of the law, tried, sentenced and sent to prison for probation violations. For what he has done, it seems like he deserves some jail time. It makes sense that the prison officials are going to keep him out of general population. The amount of attention and trouble he would attract would not be good for any one. And in the long run, depriving him of a chance to work out will be as big a punishment as any.

As a big, athletic defensive tackle Tank Johnson could command a lot of money on the open market, even with a red flag in the character area. For the record, Johnson is signed through the end of the 2008 season, but productivity in the upcoming season is the key to positioning himself for a big contract year. It will be hard to produce at a high level in the NFL with 4 months away from the weight room and proper speed and agility training. He better do a hell of a lot of push ups and crunches.

Yes, Tank Johnson has a history of legal trouble. But a few weapons possession charges are disturbing, but not as serious as a history of DUIs. And in one of the incidents, he was arrested after a night club valet informed the authorities that Tank had a handgun concealed in his glove compartment. This, to me is as troubling for the manner in which the crime was discovered as it is in the nature of the crime.

First of all, when did America's night club valets as a body become a sort of posse comitatus empowered to police American society? More importantly, why was the valet looking around under in patron's car? It seems to me that there is an implied trust in handing over your car to a parking attendant that should give you the right to throw a hellacious beating on said parking attendant if they invade your privacy. Those of you who read this space occasionally will know that I abhor violence, but even more than that, I hate people who mind my business and touch my stuff without permission.

Reading Jay Mariotti's diatribe in praise of Tank's incarceration got me more than a little bit upset. I hate Mariotti. He brings nothing more than bitter, small minded barbs to his column and television appearances. Worse than that, as a person who enjoys good writing (whether it's within my grasp is not for me to decide) and tries to be funny and at least occasionally fair and honest, he gets paid good money to write while I (and better men than I am) operate on the fringe of the writing business pro bono.

It's bad enough that Jay accuses Urlacher and Lovie Smith of rallying around Johnson to perpetuate the jockocracy. It is far worse that he uses these inelegant epithets to do it: "he of the mega-popular No. 54 jersey" and "he of the freshly minted contract and stoic manner." Homer wishes he could have come up with epithets like that on the poem-writing-est day of his life. Or he/she/it would have had Homer the person existed, instead of a name given to a multi-generational oral tradition.

And far be it for me to parse his words, since I'm sure as little thought went into their composition, but I think Jay meant the defense asked Lovie Smith to vouch for Tank, not vow for him (since I don't think you can vow for a person, place or thing in the King's English). And Tank isn't rehabilitated yet. The prison term and concomitant counseling are supposed to do that. Or didn't they teach that at Ohio University? But it's a grand job they do in the editing department of the Sun Times, or is Jay God on the throne over there and, as such, untouchable. At least I'm a one man show (not entirely, but my budget only covers a good friend who labels my posts and monitors my traffic patterns pro bono).

Also, it is somewhat irresponsible to commend the prosecution and the judge for their adroit handling of this case without providing examples of how these type of cases are handled when the defendant is just a man off the street with a public defender and not a professional athlete. Since I don't know, and don't have the time (and, to be perfectly frank, the inclination) I can only be so critical of Jay on this point.

What offends me most in this piece of poorly written drivel is this paragraph and the rehashing of a Super Bowl week column I already shredded that follows it:

Maybe Propes wouldn't have felt so wronged had she been standing beside me weeks earlier at Dolphin Stadium. On Media Day at the Super Bowl, Johnson was given a wonderful opportunity to show remorse, apologize and prove himself worthy of a court-arranged release from home confinement to make a business trip in Miami. Surrounded by cameras and reporters, all he had to say were the things he tried to convey Friday in the courtroom, that he never should have had guns in his house and that he has learned from his errors. Instead, Johnson went full-blown attitude on us, blaming his problems on racial stereotypes.

The fundamental dishonesty of that passage sickens me. Any reader even slightly familiar with Mariotti and his modus operandi could tell you, that criticism is a poorly veiled gambit (the chess move where a player entices his opponent into a trap by offering up a piece as sacrificial lamb in hopes of snaring a more powerful piece in return, not the tool from the X Men). This is a neat trick, and one which requires very little effort to churn out as many columns as the writer desires.

Since Tank did not avail himself of the opportunity to apologize at the media circus that is the Super Bowl, he does not show sufficient contrition to merit compassion. However, had Tank apologized, then Jay would have had the perfect opportunity to rail against another celebrity making an insincere, stage-managed apology to hoodwink a naive public into welcoming them back into the fold. Sometimes, I wish I were that kind of writer. I wonder, though, whether the financial remuneration would be adequate compensation for the permanent damage it would do it my soul.

Tank Johnson needs to understand that this is his last chance. The compassion people like me feel for him in the wake of his friend's tragic death will not last much longer if he keeps getting himself arrested. At a certain point, you cease no longer a decent guy in the wrong place at the wrong time and you become a blight on society. I hope Tank takes stock of his life and the chance he has to be a great defensive tackle in the greatest professional sport known to man.

I wish him well, and I think the overwhelming majority of Bears fans do too. For my part, it's not because he can rush the passer and stop the run. I like to see people get their lives together and succeed in spite of past mistakes. And I'd like to believe that most people feel that way too. I hope Tank can do it.

Apparently, what happens in Vegas no longer stays in Vegas. The aftermath of the NBA All Star Weekend will not go away. Unfortunately, the conversation has become focused on race. Scoop Jackson points out that there were fewer arrests over All Star Weekend than there were over New Year's. Of course that leaves aside the question of the severity of the arrests, but that's a small matter.

When one discusses the incidents involving the NBA and its players, apparently it is now required by law that the commentator bring the NHL in as foil. Scoop Jackson mentioned that there were no media reports about arrests coming out of the NHL All Star game. Bill Simmons made the point that there was a massive brawl in a recent game between the Buffalo Sabres and Ottawa Senators which received less coverage than the Vegas All Star weekend. These things are true, but is it because of some sort of racist media conspiracy?

I am inclined to believe that this isn't a conspiracy against hip-hop culture and the NBA. First, hockey is very much a fringe sport. Either you like hockey and you get it, or you ignore it. The NBA has many more casual fans, so it gets more media attention. Yes, the NBA has more black players than white players and the NHL is overwhelmingly white. But that doesn't mean that media coverage of the two leagues is racially motivated. The NHL receives less media attention because so very few people care about it.

Another thing to consider is the fact that basketball players get suspended for infractions that aren't even penalties in the NHL. There are two schools of thought on this issue. First, the NHL and its culture of violence is tolerated because the thugs are white. The other school of thought is that hockey is a contact sport, basketball isn't (or at least it's not supposed to be). In case you don't get it by now, I am in the second camp.

There is a strong element of violence in professional hockey. But the NHL, its players and its properties have had the good sense and good manners to keep the violence confined to that boarded and glassed-in surface that some people call a rink. It's been a long time since any hockey players stormed the crowd. The NBA is still reeling from the incident in Detroit when the Pacers went into the crowd like the Hansen Brothers from Slap Shot.

It's hard to impute negative media perception to racism when there is a substantial body of evidence to show that the NBA has a serious problem. The reason that the NBA is cracking down on flagrant fouls could be a mainstream reaction against the hip-hop element, or it could be the NBA realizing that it just might have irreparably damaged the on-court product by turning a blind eye to the Bad Boys/Jordan rules Pistons and the Knicks/Heat of the 1990s. The McHale clothesline of Rambis was a great play and a message foul because contact like that was comparatively rare at the time. Now that's par for the course on an average drive on a given night.

It is true that the other major professional sports leagues have problems. Perhaps these leagues are ignored and the NBA is picked on because it embraced hip-hop culture to a greater extent than the other leagues. It is an interesting case, on the surface, but it falls apart in my eyes when you look at the disparity in the behavior of the athletes in professional basketball as opposed to the NFL, MLB or NHL.

Tank Johnson may have had a few unregistered firearms, but it's not like he took any or all of them out to confront the opposing team's bus as it pulled out of the stadium. The Buffalo Sabres and Ottawa Senators may have committed dozens of offenses that the courts would consider assault had they not happened on the ice during a hockey game. However, no player on either team entered the crowd and hit a fan. One can argue that Artest was provoked, but in what community is a savage beating considered a proportionate response to getting hit with a cup?

The NBA has a lot to work on before it can point fingers at the other leagues. Until the league and its players can behave like grown ups, and by this I don't mean the dress code or any other convenient quick fixes, the league's apologists can't simply call critics racists and slough them off. In the end, it doesn't matter if the players wear suits, suits of armor, warmup pants or nothing at all. Maybe if they stop using firearms in inappropriate situations and try not to assault fans whenever possible then people will ease up in their criticism of the NBA.