Steve Delaportas

I said I wouldn't write much about law here but there's going to be those times ... this is one.

There's a guy named Steve Delaportas who seems to have previously worked in the food business. Somehow, he wound up as the manager for Brian Welch, the former Korn member who underwent a very public religious conversion a few years ago. They started a media company called Fortitude planning movies, music, etc.

One of my clients, Skinlab, got caught up in this when Crash Music tried to assign their recording contract to Fortitude. After doing some research, I found that Delaportas, the CEO of Fortitude, was a recently convicted felon, as part of a bankruptcy fraud. He's also on the losing end of a pair of $2,000,000 judgments. One's from a Colorado federal court, the other's from a Wisconsin federal court. I've got copies of the orders in the latter-when I get time to convert 'em to .pdfs and upload, I'll make 'em available. It's pretty clear the federal judge thought Delaportas was a crook.

Delaportas has also been sued a whole mess of times in Arizona civil court for various nonpayments. Go here to search 'em out:

http://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/

Just click on "find a case" on the left side, then "Civil Cases" and then "Case History". I found this history courtesy of some random stranger that modified the attached Wikipedia page. Note that it's the page for the word "Shyster". Look under "Other Uses". I'm guessing it's someone else who was cheated by Delaportas and I'm grateful for whoever it is putting that up there-it led me to find the other evidence and kept Skinlab from making a massive mistake.

Anyway, word out of Arizona is that Welch has figured out what I and Skinlab already knew-that Delaportas isn't someone to be trusted. If you run into this guy, keep your hands on your wallet.

Joey Gathright

One of my curses/better traits is my loong support of the Kansas City Royals. A couple of years ago, the then-new GM Dayton Moore made his first trade, for an outfielder named Joey Gathright. Very fast but as they say, you can't steal first. Gathright showed some improvement last season after some minor league time and two pretty smart guys (George Brett and Paul Splittorff) judge Gathright as the star of spring training. Last night, Gathright hit a ball down the first base line. Check out the video. Amazing stuff.

Mongolian Stomper

As a kid, the cool face wrestler here in Kansas City was the Mongolian Stomper. Key word here is "Mongolian". And here I find out that he's from Canada and his real name is Archie. Dang, I was gullible. Must have been the bald head as I was pretty sure at the time all Mongolians were bald. My memory is that he wrestled tagteam with Cowboy Bob Ellis against the late Bob Geigel and late Bob Brown.

Here's what I really find funny. Mr. Stomper is alive in well, living in Knoxville. That's not the funny part. Mr. Stomper also has ... a MySpace page:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=127507005

Or someone's doing it for him-the bio material isn't written in the first person.

The Onion Channels Macabre

One of my clients is Chicago's own Minstrels of Mayhem, Macabre. I had a liking for sick humor before working with them and that hasn't changed. I sent this link to their manager, Rodney Pawlak, last week and he replied, "THATS SICK." Probably all you need to know but if'n you're feeling brave, click below:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/anonymous_philanthropist_donates

Sid Gary

I've uploaded an audio file that's the impetus for starting this project. I don't see an easy way to upload audio, only video, so I've managed to upload it using my profile. If you click on the "view my complete profile" link on the left, you'll see the audio file.

This is an old vaudeville comedian named Sid Gary telling a story about his time as George Burns' partner. It's from an hour-long tribute to Burns that ran in 1964 on Monitor Radio. Monitor was NBC's weekend radio service at the time. Gene Rayburn is the host. If you want the entire hour, you can download it for free at http://www.monitorbeacon.net

Some of you might find it a tad sexist or a tad making fun of animal cruelty. That's fine. It's still one of the funniest stories I've ever heard.

Or ... if this works, click here: http://www.box.net/shared/3arg5hp44w