Jane, Ted,

Rocker, Elian. So much to poke fun at, so little space to

do it in. Being susceptible to TV advertising as I am, I

took advantage of the 10-10-221 plan and gathered all

this spamming material by phone.

Those of us who have faith

in all things romantically American - like love,

flowers and prenuptial agreements - are a little bit

down these days. Ted Turner and Jane Fonda are officially

separating. Imagine my surprise when I called the Turner

household and actually got Ted and Jane on the phone and

made my plea for them to stay together. After all, who

will get custody of Barney Fife?

I first talked to Jane who

didn't really like me referring to her as

"Barbarella," but she said it was better than

Ted calling her "Gilligan" to his

"Skipper." Jane felt that she and Ted have been

growing in different directions recently and that the

advice he has been getting from Chipper Jones and Evander

Holyfield hasn't seemed to help. We just exchanged

niceties from there. I thanked her for helping me attain

incredible buns in the '80s and she put Ted on the phone.

After Ted begged me for a

few stock tips, I got him on the subject of his marriage.

He said he loved his "little buddy" but her

incessant bragging about being an "Academy Award

winning actress" got old. I told him, like Donald

Trump, he could get over his broken marriage by running

for president or getting a really bad toupee. If Jane got

too out of hand, he could always remind her that she was

in the film, "Leonard Part 6."

You know how in the movies

all the phone numbers start with 555? Well, it is true of

John Rocker's number, too. Only, he has that designation

because 555 on your phone dial also stands for KKK. I

won't tell you the rest of John's number but I did get to

talk to him at length about his comments in Sports

Illustrated. He said he was totally duped by the column's

author because they were out fishing and he thought he

was speaking off the record. The sportswriter brought

along his girlfriend, so John thought it was just an

informal situation.

Lastly, I got through to

Miami and spoke to Elian Gonzalez, the little Cuban boy,

about his fight to stay in America. It was a rather

expensive phone call as we kept being interrupted by his

Gameboy play and calls from people offering to adopt him

(mostly Michael Jackson and Richard Simmons). I told him

not to be too upset, that when I was 9, if people would

have taken me to Seaworld, Epcot, Disney and Ben and

Jerry's every day, I wouldn't have gone back to my

father, either. Besides, it's a lot easier to exile

somebody out Cuba than it is South Carolina.

What a feeding frenzy our

media has had with this issue. But, I'm sure the millions

of starving children in America don't mind giving up any

attention to their problems as long as a cute illegal

alien might gain the God-given opportunities of every

American child to become a lethargic obese person or a

college alcoholic. Time ran short and I never got Elian's

opinions on such important national matters as Madonna

singing at the Super Bowl or Puff Daddy's gun arrest.

Maybe next time.

[Visit Billy Murphy on

the Internet at https://billymurphy.homepage.com .]