Right now I am living in a city where it's commonplace for someone to get stabbed on the D-train over a dirty plastic seat, where "wrong place at the wrong time" means getting punched by a mentally insane hobo, and most altercations on the morning commute start with a wayward backpack hitting someone’s cup of coffee and a “oh no you did NOT just do that!"

That brings us to this installment of...
What I’d Talk About If I Had My Own Talk Show:  Oh yes they DID! 
Pet peeves, crimes and annoying things people do that are confusing.

In each fun-fact-filled edition of "Oh no you didn't!" I'll highlight someone who has gotten a bad rap sheet for freaking out too much, for getting in a cat fight (Courtney Love and anyone) or orchestrating a dog fight (Vick), or for generally losing their mind (Busey). This is all in the  name of justice, and finding out what they DIDN'T and DID do.

Oh No He DIDN'T:

Spit on a little girl in the stands. (Oh no) he did not “get enough foam” in his mouth when he tried to spit on a heckler - missed - and his wayward saliva bomb landed on a young girl, at a game in NJ in ’93. Nice one. He was suspended, fined, ridiculed, tarred and feathered in Phoenix's public square.

Get nicknamed “Sir Charles,” for being aggressive and outspoken. Last I checked (AKA just now on dictionary dot com, the epitome of word genealogy), that title is a distinctive title of a knight or baronet (no), a title of respect for someone notable in ancient times (nope), a lord or gentleman (game over).

Go from Republican to Independent, just to run for Governor of Alabama.  Charles announced that he’ll be running for Governor of Alabama in 2014, as an Independent candidate, he says it’s because: “Republicans and Democrats want to argue over stuff that's not important, like gay marriage or the war in Iraq or illegal immigration... When I run — if I run — we're going to talk about real issues like improving our schools, cleaning up our neighborhoods of drugs and crime and making Alabama a better place for all people.” Wow. So as long as there are zero gays, soldiers, or immigrants in Alabama, it should be a pretty smooth campaign.


Oh yes he DID:

Get called “fat” in high school. An assistant coach of Auburn University (where Barkley would end up) was scouting at his high school basketball game, and reported seeing “a fat guy who can play like the wind.” Umm, what? Nice recruiting trip feedback, weirdo. But honestly, this makes me like Charles, because this means that maybe once this pro athlete hesitated before annihilated a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked after losing the final match at the Washington State Women’s Tennis competition in 2002, and then took to the spoon to get over it. Reports say that Charles “struggled to control his weight” but continued to excel in basketball. Then clearly, the extra few pounds were a good thing, as it VERY OFTEN is in the world of professional athletics. And I bet the guy who called him fat in high school has some pretty bad karma. He deserves it for being a d-bag and calling a promising high school athlete a fatty.

Become friends with the young girl and her fam, and learned to calm down. He apologized, and developed a friendship with them, and gave them prizes, like tickets. He may have let her punch him once in the stomach, to get even. Not sure. But I’d like to think so. He said that this incident was his only regret, and that he learned that he needed to calm down.

Win an Emmy. He won for his role as a color commentator on basketball. No, Klan members, not that color. Charles was hired to liven up the commentating with fun sports jargon, jokes and strategy insights.

Refuse to father everyone’s children. In ’93 he got flack when he declared that sports figures should not be role models, and I completely agree. So did Dan Quayle. They are regular people with problems, faults, criminal backgrounds and personality disorders, who just have irregular sized quads and the ability to dunk from a standing position. Quayle said that Barkley’s “family values message” is important and that parents and teachers need to be role models themselves. Are those now the qualifications for parenting? Being good at something and having cameras on you? Yikes. He stated, "A million guys can dunk a basketball in jail; should they be role models?" Unless Mr. Barkley’s DNA is in your kid (if it is, then hello Maureen Blumhardt, and thank you for visiting my website), it’s up to you to make sure your children don’t drive drunk in Phoenix, spit on innocent bystanders, or make a cameo in Space Jam.