IS THERE ANYONE except for Boulder, Colorado, District Attorney Mary Lacey who actually believed that creep's story? I speak of John Mark Karr (and why do the bad guys always get the full three name treatment -- John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Richard Milhous Nixon. . .?) Karr was the confessed companion of JonBenet Ramsey on Christmas Day 1996 inside her Boulder home when she was strangled, swaddled and stuffed in a crawl space in the cellar of her parents' home. "I was with JonBenet when she died," Karr told reporters during a press conference in Thailand when the world got a close look for the first time of what a lying sack of pus this pervert is.

Continue reading "JonBenet: And the creep goes on" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

THIIRTY FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY, Dougie died.

On Nov. 30, 1972 I wrote this column:.

Continue reading "And now, doug, can we talk of love?" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I always get a case of the blues towards the end of August. It has something to do with the days getting shorter and the nights cooler, that sense of longing for a summer that is nearly over. This seasonal melancholy is quite common, I'm told. Lots of people experience a vague sort of sadness triggered by the first hint of fall. But I love autumn; it's my favorite season. I always looked forward to the beginning of school and a new football season. Yet, for as long as I can remember, the third week in August has been accompanied by feelings of regret and loneliness. I talked to my brother Bill about these feelings once, and he said late August made him feel the same way, and he knew exactly why, "It's about Doug."

Continue reading "August is the saddest month" »

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MY BROTHER BILL was my hero. What can I say? He taught me rugby. He taught me cool. Look at him in this family picture when he's about 14, and I'm the goober to his lower right and upper left. Notice I'm touching my sister Denise with a single finger, while Denise is splayed across my father's lap with her right foot touching my mother's thigh. Notice my mother's arm pulling my brother Dougie into the picture before he becomes a poster boy for ADD or bladder control. Notice my sister Jan -- how perfect she was -- softly resting her fingers against my mother's back. Notice how cool my brother Bill looks with his hands in his pockets, not touching anyone. .

Continue reading "And then we were three" »

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The following account first published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on June 18, 1984 is true and should not be read by members of the bride's family nor by anyone else who frowns upon adolescent behavior by grown men. If you enjoyed the movie "Animal House," read on. If you find the antics portrayed below as demeaning, crude, vulgar and not in the least bit funny, as a wise man once said (or words to that effect): "The heck with you if you can't take a joke."

Continue reading "For a brother who died too soon, again" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 03:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

GET A LOAD OF THOSE BIG BOYS from Old Blue bearing down on Philly-Whitemarsh in one of the most courageous games I've ever seen from our team. You guys who missed it, missed it. It was magnificent. One-and-three PW facing the 4-0 juggernaut of the Rugby Super League. Played in ball chilling cold and rain in the awful wind off the Delaware River in what is called Pennypack Park. We won by the way. I called my brother on the way home. He'll tell you the score.

Continue reading "Whitemarsh beats Old Blue on a wet and windy day" »

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LOOK AT THAT FACE. If it weren't for the nose, it would be flat as a frying pan. Notice you can't see my eyes. Notice the black caterpillers crawling above them? About the haircut. . .well, I guess my mom would call that choice of haircut "unfortunate." As for the message on my shirt, I mean every word of it. And the horse you rode in on.

Continue reading "Clark at 56, still crazy, still clark" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

If you are 30 years old or younger, you do not remember a time when the national and international and local image of the city of Philadelphia did not include the cinematic-branded memory of Rocky Balboa running up the steps of the Art Museum. You don't remember the days before a fictional boxer transformed Philadelphia's self image of itself from a snake-bit Palookaville, where nothing goes right, to a Camelot where anything is possible, where a past-his-prime club fighter from South Philly/Kensington, proved to the city and the world that he weren't just another bum from the neighborhood. You don't remember a Philadelphia without hipsters and $500,000 row houses.

Continue reading "30 Years later, another true life Rocky story" »

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OK, OK, SO IT DOESN'T LOOK GOOD. But I did it. I'm 56 years old and I got a mohawk. I was in San Diego visiting my sister. She lives in a part of the city called Ocean Beach, which is the equivalent of South Street in Philadelphia, if South Street was on the shore of the Pacific Ocean.

So I went OB. So sue me. Wait'll they get a load of me at home.

Continue reading "So what did you do on your vacation?" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 06:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

So I walk into Starbucks yesterday morning and I order a large coffee and a copy of the New York Times. The friendly blonde cashier says, "That'll be eight-sixty." My eyes bugged out and I said, "Eight dollars and 60 cents for a newspaper and a cup of coffee?!" The cashier looked at the register display, realized her mistake, and said, "I'm sorry, I meant six-eighty." And at that precise moment I realized that I am, indeed, in Lala Land. By Lala Land, I mean another country where a large black house blend and a New York Times costs $6.80. I felt like Dorothy without Toto. This isn't Kansas, anymore. And it sure isn't Philadelphia. This particular Starbucks happens to be located on the southwestern edge of the United States, about 15 miles north of a country where everyone speaks Spanish, and about 3,000 miles east from an island where everyone speaks Japanese. I'm writing this column from San Diego, Collyfornia, where it's always sunny, where the governor of the state has a foreign accent, where the Sunday New York Times costs five bucks.

Continue reading "Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink" »

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Here's what I think about Sen. Joe Lieberman losing the Connecticut Democratic primary yesterday.. Boo fuckin' hoo! It's about time someone in a position of authority in the United States has had their feet held to the fire over what our nation has done in Iraq, over what our nation has done to itself. If those feet happen to belong to an honorable gentleman with a great heart who has done nothing but good during his life in politics, well, boo fucking hoo to you, Joe Lieberman. You loser.

Continue reading "Lieberman Loses Primary: Bush Still Unimpeached" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 04:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

For the last four nights they played Shakespeare in the park down the street from where we live. Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare. Set in the natural greenness of just down the street. Everything about it was wonderful in all the ways that make that word. The wonder of it. The fullness of it. The intentions, the reception, the delivery, the. . .weather. It was the best of everybody enjoying themselves in their neighborhood park. People arrived on foot, carrying blankets and chairs. They walked across a smaller park where on that very day mixed-teams of black and white children, from tender years to teenaged, fought amazing duels with rubber swords over captured flags of blue or red. These children played like Montagues versus Capulets, mindful of their houses, not their race. But, boy, did they put a whacking on each other. It made me proud. I live in Illyrium, West Philadelphia, a place where Shakespeare collides with life. Where beauty meets truth. Where young men die in street duels. Where rubber swords is a cool alternative.

Continue reading "It wasn't too good to be true; It was Shakespeare" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 05:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

iT'S QUARTER TO TWO. I just got up to take a crap. I got to the toilet and I didn't have to shit. But I did have to piss. So I sat down to crap knowing I really had to take a piss. And I didn't even make it to the bathroom door before I heard myself going, "Man Sat Down to Take a Piss." The same way Eric Roberts in the Pope of Greenwich Village says, "Cop Shit Himself!"

Continue reading "This ever happen to you?" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 01:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

THIS IS THE RISK you take when you dare to perform Shakespeare in the Park (In this case West Philadelphia's Clark Park, which is known unofficially as Dog Park) on a record-breaking hot and humid evening. Maybe 300 hearty culture lovers settled in to watch the show around 7 p.m. on Thursday evening. That day's Inquirer had a story about the Shakespeare in Clark Park's final rehearsals for its first-ever production, Twelfth Night, mentioning an impromptu appearance by three dogs on the grassy stage, one of which proceeded to relieve him/herself.

Continue reading "Dogs review Shakespeare in Clark Park" »

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WITH TEMPERATURES creeping toward 100 degrees Thursday, William Roberts manned the lifeguard stand in the cooling station he set up for neighborhood kids under the spray of a fire hydrant within roped off traffic cones at the intersection of 47th Street and Paschall Avenue near his home in West Philadelphia.

Continue reading "It takes a village elder to cool a city's children" »

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