Today’s Moron: The Killer Power Ranger

Today’s Moron is a person called Skylar Deleon, who used to be a “child actor,” but was so spectacularly untalented he got a job on a hot TV show but wasn’t allowed to speak any of the brilliant dialogue while appearing in the background. This was Mighty Moron Power Rangers, an epic of storytelling, as you well know, so anyone who can’t master that dialogue is probably a little dim. Wait, here’s a photo. Yeah, that’s quite the face.

Where is he today? He’s a murderer in prison.

Skylar went to jail for, uh, tying a married couple to an anchor and tossing them into the Pacific, drowning them in a plot to steal their $500,000 yacht. He also killed another guy a while earlier, and that was included in his trial.

Here’s the weird part: Skylar teamed up with two other morons to pull off the yacht crime, which involved pretending to be buyers, luring the couple out on the water, and carrying out the crime. One was a guy named John F. Kennedy. No lie. The other was a real champ named Alonso Machain, who, when arrested, spilled the beans on the JFK/Power Rangers conspiracy. The plan was this: they made the couple sign their names on the title to the boat, then sent them to the briny deep. Their bodies have never been found. This is evil.

To cap off Deleon’s glorious, epic-level moronity, when he was questioned by police looking into the couple’s disappearance, he admitted buying their boat, but said he didn’t know where they’d gone after that. He then told police he bought the boat to launder money he’d stolen earlier. You know, just so they had all the facts. After he was arrested, he pleaded not guilty, and kept saying he was not guilty despite all the evidence, until the first day of his trial, when his lawyer told the jury, well, yeah, he did it, but please don’t give him the death penalty, because had had a difficult childhood.

I don’t get crooks.

I don’t understand how three criminals with long records, one of whom was a TV actor and one of whom was named John Fucking Kennedy, could even work out this elaborate scheme that falls apart the minute anyone looks at it. Oh, you jobless fartheads just bought this yacht right before the previous owners vanished while showing it to you? Sorry to bother you, boys. Sail on.

Good detective work is to be admired. But sometimes it isn’t necessary. This is one of those times. Also, I wonder how the name ‘Skylar’ is going to go over in prison.

While in prison, Skylar did something to himself so horrendous that I won’t describe it. You can google it if you want to know more. But it isn’t pretty.

UPDATE: November 6, 2008: Death sentence for Skylar Deleon.

Hockey Fever: A Second NHL Team for Toronto?

The word out of Toronto tonight is that the National Hockey League is considering adding a second team to that already thriving hockey market — and that team would be owned and run by Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of BlackBerry builder Research in Motion.

The Maple Leafs are Toronto’s hockey team, and have been for close to a century. Never mind that they haven’t won the cup for 40 years — and only come close once or twice — the Leafs are the No. 1 selling team in the 30-team operation. The blue-and-white is the biggest moneymaker in the league. So why wouldn’t the NHL consider glomming into some of that by throwing in a second team?

Putting Balsillie in the mix is a no-brainer. He’s a billionaire jock, a hockey fanatic who’s been stymied in two previous attempts to buy NHL teams (and probably move them to southern Ontario, where he’s from and where RiM is based). The NHL wants Jim Balsillie. They want him bad. He is exactly the kind of owner any sports organization wants: savvy, smart, and so fucking rich he could build a new arena with his pocket change.

The question is this: can Toronto support two pro hockey teams? And the answer is yes. (I know there are minor-league teams, but it just isn’t the same, and you know it too.)

The NHL has made some dubious expansion decisions over the past 15 years. Moving into the sun belt led to underperforming teams in places like Miami, Tampa, Phoenix, Atlanta and Nashville. Nashville! That never made any sense to me. I am a Canadian kid. I played hockey all my life, and still love the game. I just never quite adjusted to the idea of hockey being played in places where it never snows. Other expansions and moves put more teams in California; one wise one was returning a team to Minnesota after the North Stars moved to stupid Dallas. Minnesota is a hockey hotbed, or coldbed, I guess. When I played peewee hockey, I played for the Jr. Minnesota North Stars, green uniform and all.

The simple truth is that all the good markets are taken. Aside from maybe Seattle and Portland, and maybe Houston, there are very few large American markets that can support a pro hockey franchise. So many have failed: Cleveland, Denver (although a team did come back), Kansas City, Atlanta (likewise, another team is there now). Other teams in big markets are struggling, like Pittsburgh, which has a winning record, a superstar in Sidney Crosby, and yet still hurts financially.

And pro sports are packed with teams sharing cities. Chicago has two baseball teams. Los Angeles has two NBA teams, and a whole bunch of baseball teams, and once had two NFL teams, but now has none. New York has three NHL teams if you count New Jersey. It can be done. It can work.

Especially in Toronto. This isn’t Portland or even New York. It’s a hockey-made city in a hockey-mad country with disposable income to burn. Canada’s economy is pretty okay, and Canadians love to spend money on the things they love — beer, pickup trucks and hockey.

Now, I’m a born-and-bred Vancouver Canucks fan. Always have been. I spit on the Leafs. My kids, though, like the Leafs, as they are, more or less, our hometown team. It would be nice to have a new option. And it would be nice to have another team in Canada, where hockey belongs.

My only concern is the name. You just know Balsillie’ll want to call them The Toronto BlackBerries. And that would be on a Mighty Ducks level of suck.

p.s. I know I don’t usually talk about hockey here, but the season’s just getting started, so you might see more of it, because it’s better than soccer, or “football,” and all other sports. Really.