Good luck getting this guy to empty his pockets at the courthouse metal detectors.

I kid. The city is actually being sued by Olde Good Things, a salvage and antiques business owned by a religious cult founded by a former atheist and vacuum cleaner salesman who claims to be the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah.

So it's not as weird as I first made it seem.

Anywhere else, such a development would inspire amused disbelief, but this is Scranton, where truth is almost always stranger than fiction, the sacred and profane are often one and the same and lawyers routinely and successfully argue that up is down, black is white and the moon is just the sun at night.

Conflict of interest?

Speaking of lawyers who make a good living straining credulity, Olde Good Things is represented by Scranton City Council solicitor Boyd Hughes. That's right - council's solicitor is suing his employer on behalf of a cult founded by a former atheist and vacuum cleaner salesman who claims to be the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah.

I'm still not making any of this up.

While news of Mr. Hughes' obvious conflict of interest had tongues wagging all over town last week, most of their owners likely had no clue that his client is the business arm of a cult. In fairness, it's possible Mr. Hughes didn't know the background of Olde Good Things, either.

The business is owned by the Church of Bible Understanding. I reported on the cult shortly after it set up shop here in a series of stories published in 2003.

The series made a brief splash, but like anything else, Olde Good Things' cult connection soon faded from public attention. There are only so many businesses (one) in Scranton where you can buy doorknobs from the original New York Times building. The business also has locations in New York and Los Angeles.

Former Forever Family

For the uninitiated, here's the short course on the mysterious organization cult experts and ex-members call COBU: Stewart Traill, now 74, founded the Church of Bible Understanding in Allentown in 1971. It was originally called the Forever Family and soon spread to Bethlehem, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Within three years, the group was recruiting wayward youth in Philadelphia, New York, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Baltimore.

Wherever its army of proselytizers turned up, COBU soon wore out its welcome. A March 1, 1976, Time magazine article described vigilante attacks on "fellowship houses" in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Time quoted Monsignor and future Bishop James C. Timlin, then chancellor of the Diocese of Scranton, warning local youths not to be "taken in" by the Forever Family's "easy and simple solutions to very complex problems."

Mr. Traill changed the cult's name in 1976, the same year he started Christian Brothers Carpet Cleaning Inc. in Manhattan. The "carpet cleaning cult" lampooned in an episode of "Seinfeld" was a spoof of Christian Brothers.

COBU members believe the Bible is written in a color-based code only Mr. Traill can interpret. If you really want to grasp the good news of the gospels, you must enslave yourself to him and work in his sweatshop businesses for little or no compensation.

Mr. Traill's followers reportedly live in squalor while he lives it up between Philadelphia and Pompano Beach, Fla. He has access to at least two private planes. COBU once claimed 10,000 members, but most experts suspect it actually peaked at around 3,000. Today, membership is believed to be fewer than 50.

Cult's assets $7.4M

The latest federal tax records available show that COBU reported total revenue of $3.5 million in 2008, including $3 million from contributions. It listed $1.9 million in total expenses, including about $546,000 for a pair of orphanages COBU operates in Haiti. Even ex-members who say the cult is destructive to its adherents insist the orphanages are legitimate and truly help people.

COBU reported assets of $7.4 million as a nonprofit organization in 2008. Unlike other nonprofits, it pays property taxes because Olde Good Things is a for-profit business. Based on county assessment records, COBU paid $43,782 to the county, school district and city in property taxes last year. Deadline came before I could find out if it pays mercantile, business privilege, occupational and wage taxes.

Olde Good Things' lawsuit against the city and the Scranton Sewer Authority stems from a December 2007 fire at a warehouse it owned at North Ninth and Lackawanna avenues. The sidewalk above the building crumbled, and the damage was worsened by heavy rains. The city contends that the fire and subsequent demolition of the remains of the building caused the damage. Olde Good Things claims the sidewalk collapsed because the sewer system failed, and wants the city to take responsibility for stopping the flow of raw sewage onto the property.

To hear neighbors tell it, the sewage backups aren't confined to the Olde Good Things site. The property is an eyesore, strewn with debris and wood.

A neighbor I talked to last week said she and others are fed up with the mess and want the city to do something about it. That seems unlikely as long as the lawsuit is unresolved.

Legal case not issue

The fact that Olde Good Things is owned by a cult is immaterial in terms of deciding its dispute with the city. This is America, where we are free to follow any former atheist vacuum cleaner salesman we choose. When an employee of the taxpayers of Scranton takes sides against them, however, they deserve to know all the details. In a sense, it's hard to blame Mr. Hughes for taking COBU's case. When a prophet as important as Elijah asks you to represent him, you at least have to take the call. Beyond that, Mr. Hughes apparently represented the cult before he was appointed to his council post.

Now that the taxpayers are on the hook for any award he might win on behalf of the cult, however, Mr. Hughes should find someone else to handle the matter. His involvement may not legally constitute a conflict of interest, but he clearly has one.

To put it in a local perspective that can't be misunderstood: Johnny Damon plays for the Tigers now. He doesn't bat for the Red Sox or Yankees when they're in Detroit.

Council silent

If Mr. Hughes can't see his obvious conflict of interest, it is up to city council, and particularly President Janet Evans, to educate him. Council may have conveniently suspended the summer meetings Mrs. Evans and others once called sacrosanct, but that does not preclude her from weighing in on this issue.

Mrs. Evans won't talk to The Times-Tribune, but it's a safe bet she has Mr. Hughes' telephone number. She should call him and explain that his representation of Olde Good Things against the city he is paid to serve is not only counterproductive, but morally and ethically wrong.

Up is not down, black is not white, and the moon is not the sun at night.

That such things need to be said would be remarkable anywhere else, but this is Scranton, where personal gain at the expense of the public good is a time-honored tradition, arrogance is a virtue and the loudest critics of corruption are often just sore about being denied a place at the trough.

CHRIS KELLY, The Times-Tribune columnist, is still not making any of this up. Contact the writer: kellysworld@timesshamrock.com

He is also a human being, even though he has done his worst to disqualify himself from the considerations that distinction affords.

Mr. Pinto, 29, pleaded guilty in May to producing child pornography and was shipped to Lackawanna County Prison to await sentencing in federal court. He should still be in his cell, but instead he lies comatose in intensive care at Community Medical Center in Scranton, his face pulverized, his brain floating in a lake of blood.

He is breathing and eating through tubes, according to Patrick Rogan, the Scranton lawyer who is preparing a slam-dunk federal civil rights suit against the county and anyone and everyone who can be held legally responsible for his client's condition. The lawsuit will probably require a forklift to file after all the defendants are listed. The taxpayers of Lackawanna County won't be named, but we ultimately will be stuck with the bill.

Police say Mr. Pinto was sent to the hospital by Michael Simonson, who at just 33 has distinguished himself as a genuine menace, charged with murder, attempted murder and related offenses. At his arraignment on the murder charge in a Luzerne County courtroom, he head-butted his co-defendant, who was taken away on a stretcher. Mr. Simonson's penchant for mayhem was well known when he was sent to Lackawanna County Prison, where he should not have had access to a beam of sunlight, let alone Mr. Pinto.

And yet there he was on the morning of Aug. 8 as Mr. Pinto, a protective custody inmate, returned from recreation.

Police say Mr. Simonson, an "administrative custody (known to head-butt without warning)" inmate, punched Mr. Pinto and knocked him to the ground. He then hit and kicked Mr. Pinto before stomping on his head at least 15 times.

The gaps

How long does it take to stomp on someone's head 15 times? Such statistical information is hard to find, even on the Internet, but I tried it at home with a pillow and it took me an average of 16 seconds. Add to my stomping time the 10 seconds it took me to knock the pillow to the floor and punch and kick it a few times, and you're looking at close to half a minute for the whole attack. On my pillow.

It is unclear how long the attack on Mr. Pinto lasted, and it is unlikely we will ever have anything but witness testimony as a gauge. One of the three correctional officers who were supposed to be minding the store had gone out to his car. Another was on the phone. Who knows what the third may have been distracted by, but The Sunday Times Giant Sudoku puzzle is wildly popular. The coupons are great, too. Just saying.

Fewer guards may explain the slow response, but not the fact that Mr. Simonson apparently was somehow allowed to wipe his sneakers clean with a rag, a misstep that wouldn't be digestible as a plot twist in a TV legal drama. There are but two explanations for such an obvious blunder on the part of the responding officers - gross incompetence or criminal complicity. Which one is acceptable?

Whether the shoes or rag were collected as evidence is also unclear. If they were not, everyone involved in the immediate response to the incident should be fired. From a cannon.

There would be no question about what happened and who is responsible if all areas of the prison where inmates travel were outfitted with cameras that record. Incredibly, some areas of the prison have less video surveillance than the average convenience store. It's likely some inmates were convicted based on the same type of video evidence the prison administration is incapable of producing.

How is such technological stagnation acceptable to the correctional officers union? Recording cameras would undoubtedly enhance the safety of officers and back them up (or not) when things go wrong. On the other hand, cameras would also make the extremely lucrative trafficking of contraband like tobacco much tougher. Somehow, I doubt any grievances would get filed.

Sgt. Bill Shanley, union president, showed up at Wednesday's prison board meeting to suggest an outside investigation of the Pinto beating. After three hours of closed-door talks, the board announced it had already decided to ask the state Department of Corrections to conduct a probe, scheduled to begin Tuesday.

Déjà vu

Here's hoping it is more thorough than a three-day inspection conducted in March 2007, after which the department of corrections rated the county prison 100 percent compliant with state standards.

Then-county Commissioner Bob Cordaro and Commissioner A.J. Munchak, who have since been indicted on a raft of federal corruption charges, pointed to the "perfect rating" as irrefutable evidence that the prison had recovered from a 2003 scandal rooted in a Times-Tribune investigation and a pair of grand jury probes that uncovered a host of abuses at the prison. The abuses, which included inmates used as slave labor, brutal beatings and witness intimidation, were a major factor in Mr. Cordaro and Mr. Munchak unseating the previous majority.

"We've overcome a lot," Mr. Cordaro said of the sterling inspection.

Three months later, inmate Shakira Staten gave birth to a baby girl in a prison cell after four hours of labor less than two miles from three hospitals.

The county dodged a multimillion-dollar bullet in what should have been a slam-dunk prison birth lawsuit because Ms. Staten's attorney, Nicholas Fick, dropped the ball. The case was dismissed after he missed filing deadlines. He has appealed, but a reversal seems unlikely.

Mr. Pinto's lawyer is unlikely to have such slippery fingers. Mr. Rogan has been handed a layup, and the only thing between him and the basket is his client's status as an admitted child pornographer. Sympathy for such a wretch is difficult to engender in a jury, but Mr. Rogan will have a baby born in a cage in his back pocket. If she's not enough, there's always Thomas Ogden.

Who was Thomas Ogden? He was a husband and father from Archbald. He is the answer to those who blithely dismiss prison violence with statements like, "Well, if you don't want to get (raped, stomped, or otherwise damaged), stay out of prison."

Mr. Ogden was living proof that not everyone in the county lockup is a rapist, murderer, drug dealer or child pornographer. Some people land there for failing to pay child support, petty theft, DUI, even failure to ensure their children go to school.

Thomas Ogden was 51 when Lackawanna County Judge Chester Harhut sentenced him to 14 days in prison for failing to show up for a parenting class meant to address his 14-year-old daughter's chronic truancy. Mr. Ogden had emphysema, and said he missed the parenting class due to his illness.

Mr. Ogden needed oxygen therapy 24 hours a day, something his family claimed he did not receive at the prison. On June 29, 2005, he complained to prison medical staff that he was having trouble breathing. After what his family claimed was a golden hour that might have saved him, prison officials called an ambulance at 8:32 a.m., and Mr. Ogden was taken to Mercy Hospital.

He was pronounced dead 14 minutes later. Pulmonary embolisms. His wife, Donna, who was also locked up on truancy charges, was released after his death.

Jenine Ikeler, senior disinformation specialist for the Cordaro/Munchak administration, said at the time that prison officials were investigating Mr. Ogden's death. The investigation was deemed "unnecessary," however, after an autopsy determined the death was not suspicious, county Chief of Staff Maria Elkins told me Friday after she spoke with Mrs. Donate.

I had no luck tracking down Mr. Ogden's family, but I'll keep trying. In the meantime, it is enough to know that Mr. Ogden entered the prison with 14 days to serve and left it with 14 minutes to live. And he's not the only inmate who walked into Lackawanna County Prison over the past 10 years and never walked back out.

n Nicholas Pinto now joins the sad roster of Samuel Swan, Frank Demeo, Daniel Jackson and Michael J. Campbell, but with an important asterisk:

n He is still alive.

CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, prefers "The Shawshank Redemption" to "Cool Hand Luke." Contact the writer: kellysworld@timesshamrock.com

- Steven Slater, American Zero

Howard Beale was "murdered" on national television almost 35 years ago, but his ratings have never been stronger. A manic technophobe, it's a safe bet Mr. Beale would have been horrified by the Internet, but he has a Facebook page.

Such staying power in a culture whose stars are as disposable as diapers is remarkable, especially when you consider that Mr. Beale existed only on celluloid, as the "Madman of the Airwaves" in the 1976 film, "Network." His wraith-like apparition still appears from time to time on cable, but nowhere near as often as the ghosts of Rocky Balboa or the Outlaw Josey Wales.

While those icons stand on the American spirit of perseverance in the face of impossible odds and the understanding that right always bests might, Mr. Beale - played by Peter Finch, who won a posthumous best actor Oscar for the role - lives on because he was an unapologetic fatalist born in an angry age. All was lost, according to Mr. Beale. Rocky wouldn't last a round with Apollo Creed. Ten Bears, the Comanche chief with whom Josey Wales negotiated peace, would have scalped that impertinent paleface on sight.

Hope is for suckers. It's best to expect the worst and pray the end comes as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Have a nice day.

In Mr. Beale's America, the economy was in the tank. Energy prices and unemployment were through the roof. Government was not only out of touch with the electorate, but showed clear contempt for the people it is paid to serve. Corporations destroyed the environment and poisoned the food and water supplies with impunity while the Middle Class was systematically destroyed. Mediocrity and vulgarity were celebrated, the media spewed more filth than a trillion sewer pipes and America was under constant threat of attack by enemies who hated our way of life and plotted to destroy us the moment we let our guard down.

Thank God all that's been resolved.

"I want you to get mad!" Mr. Beale raves in the most celebrated rant in the film. "I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. ...

"So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' "

Amen, Brother Beale! So, what next?

No one in the movie ever asks Howard Beale that question, and he utters not a blessed word that suggests he ever asked it of himself. He was all gall, no game, a prickly poster boy for impotent rage.

Mr. Beale's name pops up just about every time some ragehead has a public meltdown and the media sees an easy target it can build up and tear down with minimal effort and expense.

Enter Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who had a hissy fit heard 'round the world Monday after Flight 1052 from Pittsburgh to New York landed at JFK International Airport. Mr. Slater, 38, claimed he was knocked in the head by a piece of luggage a passenger pulled from the overhead compartment after inviting him to perform an unnatural act on himself. He then launched into a profanity-laced tirade over the public address system, grabbed a couple of beers from the galley, deployed the plane's emergency exit chute and slid into stardom.

Within hours, Mr. Slater was being hailed as a "folk hero" who had an historic "Howard Beale moment." His Facebook fan page had nearly 150,000 members as of Friday. A sampling of the comments:

n "YOU ARE FREAKING AWESOME!!!!! STEVE FOR PRESIDENT!!!!"

n "Good Sir you are probably the most epic person ever. Wonderfully done and continue to live awesomely."

n "Steve is officially my hero; standing up for the working class citizens who deal with so many unruly people every day."

By Friday, however, police still hadn't located the "unruly passenger" whom Mr. Slater claimed touched off his tirade. Investigators said some details of his story simply "didn't track." Meanwhile, passengers came forward and said the folk hero appeared to be drunk and was rude and combative with passengers. If he got bonked on the head, they said, he asked for it.

Who's telling the truth? Who cares?

Steven Slater is no hero. He's a crybaby who had an outsized temper tantrum on a slow news day. If there had been ground workers beneath the slide he deployed, his tantrum might have been recorded as a tragedy.

Call me a cynic, but I remember a time when being a working class hero actually involved work. Bonnie and Clyde at least had to rob banks and get shot at. When an alcoholic flight attendant who flies off the handle and the wagon via an emergency slide is hailed as a hero, we are truly through the looking glass.

God knows I'm no paragon of impulse control, but whatever happened to good, old-fashioned shame? Anger is all the rage these days, and that's why Mr. Slater is a star and Howard Beale just won't stay dead.

It seems just about every other person you meet these days is mad as hell, even if they can't articulate what it is they aren't going to take anymore. There's so much to be ticked off about, why bother with specifics?

Like Mr. Beale, today's purveyors of impotent rage are all anger and no ideas. They are experts at assigning blame, but take no responsibility for finding solutions to the ills they spout about. All the same problems Mr. Beale railed against more than three decades ago are still with us, and still making the masses mad and a select few rich.

Much like the self-styled patriots who profess molecular reverence for the Constitution but can't be bothered to read it, I suspect most who lionize Mr. Beale have never actually seen the film that made him a hero of the perpetually aggrieved. If they had, they would find it difficult to reconcile his ultra-populist image with the fact that after he is chastised by his corporate masters, he changes his defiant tune and swallows every vile lie he once decried.

Howard Beale sells out, and is rewarded by being assassinated on national television for the sake of a ratings boost.

Though my saying so will make his fans mad as hell, Howard Beale was a loser to be pitied, not a hero to be emulated. He was also a fictional character. Steven Slater, at least the version being hailed as a folk hero, is too.

CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, wishes he had an emergency chute. Contact the writer: kellysworld@timesshamrock.com

As the cloud upon which I had been sailing for the better part of an hour gently dissipated, I lifted my heavy eyelids to find not an oompah band with a tuning problem but a series of beds ringed by curtains that occasionally poofed to the offbeat tune.

Disoriented but deliriously content, I pondered questions that have perplexed the human mind for eons:

- Where am I?

- How did I get here?

- Where am I going?

- Why does my stomach feel like I swallowed a zeppelin?

The answers to these questions were kindly provided by a very nice nurse who in my woozy state reminded me of Glinda the Good Witch from "The Wizard of Oz," right down to the glowing bubble she was floating in.

The procedure went well, Glinda said. The doctor would be in to talk to me soon, and then we would call my wife and I would be on my way.

I had no clue what "procedure" she was talking about, and the only doctor I wanted to see is named "Pepper." And there was no way I had a "wife." I was a simple farm girl from Kansas who got caught up in a tornado and plopped down on top of a bad witch with striped socks and ruby slippers. A band of singing Munchkins warned me she had an even nastier sister from the West who would surely seek revenge against me and my little dog, too, so as soon as I could locate Toto, I planned to find the back door and hit the Yellow Brick Road for the Emerald City.

It was going to be a long walk, however, considering I had swallowed a zeppelin.

Glinda explained that my intestinal discomfort was a normal byproduct of a colonoscopy, a word I slowly came to recognize as my head cleared. Yes, a colonoscopy! That's why I'm Here! And Here is a recovery room at Mercy Surgery Center on Adams Avenue in Scranton, not a mystical land populated by singing Munchkins and gaudy witches. No Toto, Tin Man, Scarecrow or Cowardly Lion. No Yellow Brick Road or Emerald City. Just another Wednesday with a camera up my caboose. I couldn't wait to tell Auntie Em about the crazy dream I had.

Lead zeppelin

Medical guidelines call for a first colonoscopy at around age 50, unless otherwise indicated. I'm 42, but my family has a history of colon and other cancers, so my doctor and I agreed it was worth doing now. Because "now" sounds a touch too immediate when you're booking passage for a crew of strangers to set sail down your alimentary canal, I put off what a friend calls "riding the black stallion" for a few months.

Over that time, I spent several nervous minutes painstakingly researching the procedure on the Internet. Somehow, I never stumbled upon the information that a colonoscopy requires the pumping of roughly 14,000 cubic feet of air into the colon. This expands the accordian-like organ so its many folds can be examined. By the end of the procedure, I was so inflated, a family of four could have climbed aboard and rafted down the Delaware.

In the recovery room, the very nice nurse I mistook for a good witch encouraged me to deflate myself in the natural way. I was understandably shy at first, but even in my drug-induced fogginess, I soon realized I was being granted something many guys have quietly fantasized about but would never say aloud in mixed company - the unfettered freedom to break wind at will.

I had no choice, really. It was either expel the zeppelin or risk going Hindenburg. Beyond that, I knew I wouldn't be blamed. This unprecedented gastrointestinal liberty, combined with the after-affects of a powerful sedative, produced a euphoria I could struggle for the rest of my days to describe.

This carefree state was a thousand times removed from the grinding trial that was the day before, which I spent sprinting to the bathroom and struggling to stay hydrated enough to produce tears.

As advertised, there are few things more exhausting than the prep for a colonoscopy. As a friend and veteran of the procedure put it, "The test is easy. It's the studying that sucks."

Because I'm always looking for ways to give back to the community and am often criticized for failing to make regular use of "social networking" forums like Twitter and Facebook, I decided to share my prep experience online. My Twitter and Facebook pages are magically linked, so all my "tweets" post to both.

Bottoms up

The ordeal began in earnest Tuesday at 10 a.m., after 10 hours of no food or water, which were preceded by 24 hours of nothing but Gatorade, Jell-O and chicken broth, which is not as filling as you might think. Also, if you add bacon bits to Jell-O, it no longer qualifies as a "clear food."

Just so you know.

I was required to guzzle two 10-ounce bottles of magnesium citrate, which the label describes as a "sparkling saline laxative," as if it's a light aperitif you might offer dinner guests. Everyone gather around the toilet, I'm going to make a toast!

Magnesium citrate is available in four flavors - lemon, cherry, grape and Drano with a hint of napalm. I went with lemon, which tasted like furniture polish with a splash of Sprite.

I downed it without incident, but the instant rumbling in my gut led me to tweet:

Colon news flash: Mag citrate didn't taste that bad, but landed like a depth charge. Call the men and kids in from the fields. A storm gathers...

I tweeted on for about an hour and had attracted a respectable following before my wife intervened. Her co-workers alerted her to my tweets, and she strongly urged me to stop sharing. I replied that this was my colon's big chance at finding an audience, and what I needed was support, not scolding. I didn't hear from her again the rest of the day.

About two hours into the prep, the storm remained all thunder and no rain, which inspired me to tweet:

CNN(Colon News Network): Almost two hours since first dose of megalaxative. So far, no big whoop. I keep waiting for something to hap

My next and last tweet, posted about an hour later, consisted of "Holy" and the abbreviated term for a substance some folks can't tell from Shinola. After that, I didn't feel much like sharing.

I would love to share some of the details of the procedure, but I have absolutely no memory of anything that happened after the Diprivan began to flow. Some doctors call it "milk of amnesia," and it is exactly that.

Diprivan is popular for outpatient procedures because the "twilight sleep" it induces lifts in a matter of minutes. This allows medical staff to perform several procedures a day. They moved us through quicker than Jiffy Lube.

As I waited for my doctor, a new guy was wheeled out and encouraged to deflate at his leisure. Like me, he seemed a little shy at first, so I offered some encouragement.

"Dude, let it fly," I called from across the room. "When are you ever going to get another opportunity like this?"

A few minutes later, he joined the oompah band with gusto.

My doctor said all he found was a lone "baby polyp," which he removed. It will be biopsied, but he assured me my colon is cancer-free.

It was a huge relief. Most people, and males in particular, glide through their early lives blissfully unaware they even have a colon, let alone what it does. Once you reach middle age, though, that kind of detachment can be deadly.

An estimated 9,200 people are diagnosed with cancer each year in Northeast Pennsylvania, according to the Northeast Regional Cancer Institute. Nearly 1,400 of those people live in Lackawanna County and about 600 of them die from the disease. While lung cancer is most common regionally, colo-rectal cancer tops it in Lackawanna County. A good friend of mine is fighting the disease right now. Please pray for her.

And if you're 50 or older, have a family history of cancer or have anyone in your life near as wonderful as my wife, get screened. Now. There simply is no good reason to put it off.

When my wife arrived to take me home, I couldn't wait to share the results of my procedure.

"Good news, honey," I chirped, "my head wasn't up there."

She smiled sweetly, took my hand and led me out to the parking lot, where she suggested we get a second opinion.

CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, is developing a high-fiber chicken wing sauce. Contact the writer: kellysworld@timesshamrock.com