Another typical Hollywood ending

file photo

   It was a couple of decades ago when I found myself strolling past the artwork of a certified schizoid and wondering whether what I was about to do was a good idea after all.
   I was a member of The Lima News softball team and our coach had skillfully managed to book a twin-bill at the (then) Lima Correctional Institution.
   Just a friendly game of softball against an all-male facility of caged felons with nothing better to do each day but pump iron and swing aluminum bats.
   We were, of course, the visitors in this contest as for obvious reasons the prisoners' games were all at home.
   Wrigley Field may have ivy growing on the walls, but the Lima prison is encased in more razor wire than I thought possible to produce.
  Our collective footsteps echoed nervously as we made our way past Billy Milligan murals, en route to a ball field walled in on all sides by four floors of inmates — possibly allowing even those in solitary a chance to cheer their mates to victory, provided they had a room with a view.
   Word was our hosts had never lost a game. We came within 7 runs in the opener which actually gave us enough cred for them to crush us in the second game (I'm sure it was like 26-8).
   But what makes this tangent so provocative is its propinquity to Whitney Houston's death: as I cannot think of Whitney Houston without thinking of Bobby Brown, and I cannot think of Bobby Brown without remembering his hit "My Prerogative," which blared frequently from the inmates' cells surrounding us.
   Normally, as sports teams do before a game, we would loosely warm up prior to the contest. Being a bit of a lanky fella (sporting a svelte pelt, yet admittedly aging) I decided to forgo my usual deep stretches as to not receive any additional attention from the increasingly interested (and intimidating) imprisoned populous.
   That was the first time I had actually heard Bobby Brown, probably autumn of 1989. And I will always blame Mr. Brown — from the beginning of his relationship with Whitney Houston until her bitter end on Grammys' eve — for her addiction problems.
   Her death may be more painful than other stars before her (I can't offer a formed opinion in the case of Janis Joplin) because we watched Whitney slowly crumble on TV and in the tabloids. In that way it was much like the demise of that buxom blonde from Texas named Anna Nicole who destroyed her life with booze and pills.
   Whitney Houston had become the butt of jokes, broken dreams and [no doubt] broken promises.
   A cleaned up junkie is, unfortunately, still a junkie and whether or not her death was specifically tied to drugs, the damage had already been done.
   RIP, Whitney.