Legendary Jeopardy host, Alex Trebek, was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer today and I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty damn upset. Amongst my friends and family I am known as a huge nerd and Jeopardy addict. I received no less than four texts messages or notifications when the news was first released. Check out my Twitter or Facebook timeline and it is filled with tweets and posts about Jeopardy. My favorite part of the day is getting off of work after a long day, making myself dinner and sitting down to watch Jeopardy. It’s my me time and I cherish it. When I see Jeopardy on the screen, I can decompress and relax. I generally don’t care about celebrities. I’ve never been one to get caught up in the culture of worshipping celebrities and their lifestyles, but DAMNIT THIS IS ALEX TREBEK!!! I’ve only cared about Mac Miller dying and now Alex being diagnosed. The man is a American hero and treasure. Without him their is no Jeopardy and frankly I’m not sure I wanna exist in a world where there is no Jeopardy. Don’t tell me that they’ll find somebody. There is nobody else that can match his experience and talent. He adds the intellectual gravitas that makes Jeopardy into what is. Without Trebek, Jeopardy would be a game for chaotic peasants like “The Price is Right” or “Let’s make a deal”. It’s been my dream to go on Jeopardy forever. The good news is that dream will not end because Alex is gonna beat this. He’s gonna kick cancers ass, I don’t care about the odds. Watching his video to the Jeopardy fans, I’m not gonna lie I feared up a bit. The last time I remember having tears in my eyes was my grandmothers funeral. I’m sure that he will never read this, but we’re all behind you Alex! You’ll kick cancers ass and your in all our thoughts and prayers.

Sit down and buckle up for a rollercoaster ride of emotion. Now picture this it was, February 17, 2019, I was on my way home from Scene 75, the knockoff Dave and Busters with a go kart track. I had had myself a couple bigass daiquiris so I was feeling pretty good. (No shame in my alcohol game. I love a fruity, frozen beverage) anyways there I was on 2nd Avenue when I opened my Snapchat at a red light, obviously. I’m not gonna be snapping and driving. That would be irresponsible and I’m the furthest thing from irresponsible. Since I opened my Snapchat my last location was on 2nd Avenue and that was the last anybody heard of me for nearly four hours.

Now for those who are unfamiliar, the “Smiley face killer” are an alleged serial killer or killers who kidnap men in the early to mid 20’s dump their bodies into nearby water with smiley faces spray painted on the nearest man made structure where the body is found. Three men have disappeared and been found in Pittsburgh, most noticeably Dakota James. There has been a recent series on Oxygen about the disappearances and deaths of those suspected to have been killed by the “Smiley Face Killer.” (Check out my Dakota James blog cause to be fair there was a lot of shady shit with the investigation). My younger sister has been slightly obsessed with these “killers” since the story first came out about James. She’s constantly telling me to be careful and not go anywhere alone. You get it. I’ve always taken the idea that if I’m destined to get murdered by a serial killer than that’s just how the cookie crumbles. The chances are so minuscule of that occurring that I just don’t really worry about it.

Back to my disappearance so my sister had seen my last location and her “spidey senses” immediately tingled. Fear coursing through her veins in an icy panic, she launched a manhunt to find me and make sure I was safe. She enlisted family, friends to find my whereabouts. Thinking and fearing the worst, knowing what happens to those who are taken by these sociopathic killers, she raced to my rescue in a battle against time. I received approximately four phone calls; three from her and another one from a friend. At least twelve text messages from four different friends, both of my parents and also my sister in those missing four hours. When I finally received these calls and messages they found me safely in bed where I had been napping peacefully sleeping off my buzz. To be clear, I don’t live at home with my parents or sister and I have regularly gone days without communicating with them. My sister launched a MANHUNT because the last play she saw me was on 2nd Avenue. It was only FOUR hours and my phone was being blown up. I haven’t received so much attention since the day I’d been born. Now all joking aside I am very grateful for that a sister who cares so much about me possibly missing. It’s great to have family that cares. The bigger benefit of her and everybody I know calling me is that I woke up without napping too long. Everybody knows that napping on a Sunday is a dangerous game. If you nap too long you won’t sleep all night and Monday will be worse than they already are. So thank you Danielle for not letting me ruin my Monday by sleeping too long on Sunday.

Ace Davis, 10 year old budding scientist from Lexington, Kentucky, has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Tom Brady is a cheater. For his school’s science fair, Ace proved that deflating balls gave Brady an unfair advantage through his experimentation. He observed that balls with less air in them went further then balls with more air. Listen this just proves everything we’ve ever known about Tom Brady, he deflated those balls and he’s only won because of it. If you deny these studies conducted by a ten year old consider yourself a science denier.

Who am I to doubt Ace? He did the work and not to mention won the science fair. Would they have awarded him if his hypothesis proved incorrect? Absolutely not. I’m just glad somebody finally had the courage to go against the New England Patriots and Tom Brady, thugs that they are. I fully expect Roger Goodell to strip the Patriots of their rings and ban them from the Super Bowl this year. It’s the only fair and just thing to do. Thank you , Ace Davis and god bless you. Not all heroes wear capes.

So I’m not an expert in police investigations or murder or even this particular case, but I did watch the documentary on the Dakota James disappearance last night and shit was wild. I had heard of the case, but like I said I wasn’t too familiar with it until watching the documentary and reading some other stuff about it.

First off, I’m not completely buying into this idea of the whole smiley face killer gang of serial killers across the country. It seems highly unlikely to me that if a group like this existed it wouldn’t be infiltrated and destroyed by the FBI or police. Somebody in one of these groups would brag to an outsider and expose the entire operation or one of their members would be arrested for a separate charge and snitch about these murders for lesser charges. In my very limited experience, criminals largely aren’t masterminds with a code of honor. Even in the mafia “the code of omertà” has gone by the wayside and with it a lot of their power and influence. It’s hard to force somebody to be silent when they’re looking at hard jail time. As Benjamin Franklin said, ” Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

When it comes to the smiley face graffiti, I feel like it can’t be that uncommon as a graffiti tag. If I’m learning how to tag things the smiley face would be one of the first things I would learn. Easy, quick with a low chance for being caught. It just seems like the smiley faces are coincidental and the investigators are using their “discovery” at crime scenes to try and link the different murders. In the Dakota James case there was a smiley face tagged on the I-79 bridge which was the closest bridge upstream from where his body was found, which follows their theory. I just think it’s highly coincidental and unlikely that it is a calling card for some super intelligent group of predators operating in multiple cities across the country.

Now past the theories and into the somewhat hard facts. Dakota James disappeared January 25, 2017 after leaving the bars in downtown Pittsburgh and was walking home to the North Shore. The last place he was confirmed to have been by surveillance cameras was the Cultural District just outside an alley leading to the Robert Clemente bridge. Now the police believed he either fell off the Clemente bridge and into the river or walked down steps off the bridge down to the rivers edge for reasons unknown. Yet neither cameras end of the bridge ever recorded him being on or near the bridge at all. Now I’m just an amateur, but I would be willing to bet he was snatched in that alley before he reached the end of it. In the picture from the camera where he was last seen it shows him looking at his phone and it wouldn’t be too hard to knock somebody over the head and stash them into a vehicle when they’re looking at their phones and not aware of their surroundings, especially if they had been drinking that night.

Now the second questions arise about where the police believe his body had gone into the water, where it ended up and the condition it was in after being recovered. If James had spent 40 days in the water as concluded by police there would have been substantial deterioration, yet the river recovery team who said they have discovered dozens of bodies and Dakota was in the best condition out of any of them. If he had been in the water that long his body would be unrecognizable due to simple deterioration. The rivers are always fairly fast moving rivers and it seems highly unlikely that it would have taken those forty days to travel the ten miles where his body was found. Another hole in the official story is that for Dakota to have gone in by the Clemente bridge and been discovered where he was, he would have had to pass through a concrete and steel dam. Now it is possible he could have passed through the dam, the gates can open from as small as a foot and a half high to seven feet high. The questions arise when you again consider the condition the body was in when recovered. There had been very little damage to the body that could be attributed to going through the dam. The investigators working the case believe in the day he most likely would have gone through the dam that the gates were only raised one and a half to two feet high. Now it seems nearly statistically impossible for a body to travel through a gap that small without suffering severe damage. Now it is possible Dakota passed through the dam on a different day when it was opened as much as seven feet so we can’t dismiss out of hand that his body was dumped in the river before the dam and he did somehow travel through it. The only problem with that theory is the according to the river recovery unit that recovered his body it would have only taken a half hour approximately for Dakota to travel from the dam to his final resting spot. The last time the dam had been opened to seven feet was days before his body was discovered which makes it unlikely that he passed through unscathed.

Despite his body being in relatively good shape for what had happened, Dakota’s family was forced to identify him by a ankle tattoo. They were not allowed to see the autopsy paperwork or photos unless they pressed the issue with help of private investigators as shown on the documentary. With the autopsy and pictures there are two inconsistencies that are fairly obvious; in the autopsy there is no mention of any markings around the neck, head or shoulder area that could indicate some sort of death besides the accidental drowning that the police and medical examiner ruled. Yet in the pictures released to Dakota’s mother there was significant ligature marks around his neck signifying strangulation as well as black and blue marks on his fingertips that indicate blood pooling as he tried to fight against whatever object was wrapped around his neck and strangling him. In what possible, plausible scenario could an accidental drowning victim have these marks on them?? And in what scenario could the medical examiner be excused for leaving these off the autopsy report?? I’ve never studied forensics, but any Joe Schmoe who saw the pictures could see that those sort of marks just don’t occur naturally.

Now I’m not here to say that something bad or criminal is going on within Allegheny County medical examiner’s office, but at the very least this new evidence should be brought to lift and a new investigation should be opened. That seems like a reasonable conclusion yet the examiner’s office still drags its feet on looking into any new evidence or even answering how a trained examiner could have excluded those marks from the autopsy report or even missed them entirely.

The family of Dakota James family deserves the City of Pittsburgh’s full support to help them discover what really happened to their son. We may not discover and apprehend the murderer, but we owe them a full, thorough investigation into the death of their son, especially when there are so many holes in the current story we have been told. I felt ashamed to be from Pittsburgh when I watched the documentary and saw the disappointing treatment Dakota’s mother received at hands of the police as well as the medical examiner. Again I am just an amateur here and I don’t fully believe that his disappearance and death are the work of a highly sophisticated group of serial killers, but that is besides the point. This family is owed justice whether is was the “Smiley face killers” or just a simple murderer.

So we have all heard Panic at the Disco’s latest hit “High Hopes.” It has reached the number one spot on the Mainstream Top 40 charts as well as Hot Rock songs. It’s a good, catchy pop song with great vocals from leader singer, Brendan Urie. It is the band’s highest charting song, passing the absolute emo kid middle school classic, “I Write Sins not Tragedies.” It speaks to achieving your goals, overcoming obstacles and making a name for yourself in whatever you do in life. A pretty positive song and message to always do your best and “have high, high hopes.” I was on the bandwagon until one line jumped out at me and I knew I could not ignore it and turn the other cheek.

“Manifest destiny, back in the days. We wanted everything. We wanted everything.” I mean come on!! Manifest destiny! Unacceptable and a dog whistle to white nationalists and supremacist! For those who don’t know Manifest Destiny was a call during the 19th century used in white America to plow forward into the West. Conquest and settle these at all costs. Despite the fact that these lands had already been settled by indigenous peoples! (Notice I didn’t say Indians, stay woke). Newspaper editor, John Sullivan is generally credited with first coining the phrase to express the idea that it was white America’s destiny to conquer the West. Used by Democrats and President James K. Polk to justify the war of aggression against hapless Mexico and conquer the Southwest. The Mexican War established America as a continental imperialist power as we stuck our toe into the genocide pool, wishing to imitate our European cousins. We jumped in headfirst as we conquered and massacred the peaceful indigenous peoples (woke) who had already been pushed from their lands further east. Manifest Destiny was used to justify these atrocities as white America spread further and further west, oppressing any innocent, peaceful nature loving peoples in its path. I am honestly shocked that such a popular band would even think to use the term. It’s a short leap of imagination from “Manifest Destiny” of the 19th century to the alt-right Trumpian chant of “Build the Wall.” Now nobody else may be offended by these lyrics or have even made the connection, but I did! I am offended by these words and my feelings must be validated! I say radio stations ban Panic at the Disco until such a time as they publicly apologize for their alt right, bigoted, homophobic, patriarchic, white nationalist/supremacist lyrics and pay me reparations for the emotional trauma they have put me through. I will not be silenced, I will not be oppressed, nevertheless I will persist!

The world’s oldest World War Two veteran, Richard Overton, died today at the age of 112. Overton was a member of the 1887th Engineer Battalion which was an all black unit and served all over Pacific theater during the war from Guam, Iwo Jima, to Palau and Hawaii. Born 1908 in Bastrop County, Texas he joined the army in 1940 and served throughout the duration of the war, leaving the service in October of ’45 and returning home to Austin. First off, I wanna say thank you to Mr. Overton for his service during the greatest war in human history. I can scarcely imagine the things he saw, but having a history degree my history is obviously peaked in a man who lived so long and saw so much history. How did he live to be this long you may be wondering? Well luckily Mr. Overton was kind enough to give us the magic answer. THIS GODDAMN HERO DRANK WHISKEY AND SMOKED 12 CIGARS EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE! I mean what a legend. He smoked a cool dozen Hav-a-Tampa cigars as well as drinking multiple cups of coffee a day. You give me one cigar and I start feeling light headed and my throat hurts. Two cups of coffee and I got heart burn and acid reflux. Peach cobbler, waffles, pancakes, cinnamon rolls are also part of his diet. I’ll tell ya I wish I had this man’s metabolism. Ate whatever he wanted and lived to 112! I suppose after surviving the Pacific theater a few sweets weren’t gonna hurt this man. He also enjoyed a whiskey with soda water at night claiming it was good medicine and kept him feeling lose. Mr. Overton is an American badass and hopefully he will be remembered by everybody. This man has earned his place in Valhalla.