I See Dead People

Four o'clock flight from Miami to D.C. I am walking down the aisle to my seat in the ass of the plane. Through first class. Hmm, that guy seems familiar. Abbe Lowell. A relatively famous D.C. lawyer. Who is the fat guy in a baseball cap sitting next to him? So familiar. Then, it hits me. It's Jack Abramhoff.

I'd known he was in Miami; I was there on business and a U.S. Marshall told me he was being sentenced today. He got six years. Not enough, but something. I was meeting with some folks near the court house, and it had been a zoo.

I have a history of confronting political celebs. I got into a weird staredown with Bob Dole once on the U.S. Airways shuttle from DC to NY (I'll admit he won; that motherfucker is even scarier and cadaverous in real person. I thought he was going to eat my brains.). Then there was the time I ignored Oliver North when he said hi to me on a plane. He was sitting right next to me. Fuck him. He even offered me his peanuts, and I looked at him like he had slightly mispronounced the word and was offering something else. I told Jerry Brown in 1992 that he'd lose the Democratic nomination because he refused to shake my hand.

My moment with Abramhoff was too fleeting for me to cause trouble. But, he wasn't my only brush with celebrity. This guy I know in Miami owns a boat, and he took a colleague and mine out for a cruise around the waterways around Miami last night. We ended up cruising Star Island. I saw the giant Shaquille O'Neal bobblehead on Shaq's pier. And learned that Gloria Estfan really, really likes huts. It was huts everywhere.