So I’m surfing around the internet, and I click on a link about some billionaire who married his daughter, but it’s not really sordid enough to capture my interest. From there, I click on a news story about an 81 year old white woman who hit a black man in her car and is happy to have killed a nigger.

Well, Jesus Christ. What can you do? I read the whole story, and now that it’s in my poor brain, I’m stuck with it. It should be simple but it’s not. It’s certainly more than I bargained for. I never learn.

In May, Betty Bowen of Pompano Beach, FL,  made an illegal left turn and smashed into a motorcycle driven by Reginald Ervin, 41. Ervin was thrown from the bike and declared dead 2 hours later. Betty Bowen didn’t get a scratch, and won’t be charged with any crime. She didn’t even get a ticket for the illegal turn. She did lose her drivers license, and she’s glad to have helped “get rid of the niggers.” “One more off this earth,” she says.

Before you wish Betty into Old Sparky, though, here’s a closer look at her.
  
In addition to breast cancer, Bowen says she has “a fever in her feet,” which may or may not be nerve damage related to diabetes. She believes she recently suffered a mild stroke but was able to recover. Her arms are covered in red spots she calls “nerves,” and her blood pressure hovers around 200, she says. But Bowen has no doctor and takes no medication, save the blood pressure pills she once received as a sample.

“Fraud and lip service,” she says of all her experiences with doctors.

Her pills sit neatly on her coffee table among nail clippers, a pair of glasses from the drugstore, tweezers, a razor, a mirror, a toothbrush, a file, baby powder, Tums, candles, cologne, and 11 pens. Having the items close at hand is necessary, as Bowen does not leave the couch very often. But she was delighted when she learned that a reporter was coming over. Bowen is fired up to talk about “that Negro son of a gun” and his “whaddaya call it? Road raging.”

Reginald’s 12 year old daughter, who lives with her great-grandparents, is stoic about his death.  Ervin spent six years earlier in prison, where she visited him every weekend. Everyone who knew him says he had really turned his life around. The girl sometimes forgets that her dad won’t be coming home, and she wishes Bowen would be punished for the accident.

Meanwhile, Betty Bowen feels no remorse. She hates niggers and she’s sick of the foreigners, too.

She complains of having no friends – they’ve all died in the past seven years. She has no communication with her son or her daughter, whom she believes is trying to steal her money. She has no doctor. She has no means of transportation to her favorite store, Save-a-Lot, down the block, where she gets her candles. She has no social worker. Most days, she has no energy to get off the couch.

Well, that’s the story. You can read it here. All I can take away from this is an image of a horrible lonely sick old woman. I know it’s going to haunt me. I’m not forgiving her or anything. But if you know of anyone like this, give them a visit. Try to show them some compassion. Get them some social services. And of course, try to prevent them from driving a car.
  

I’ve been planning to write about the “Dead at 27” phenomenon among rock-stars, hoping to come up with some insight into the significance of age 27. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Kurt Cobain and Robert Johnson all died at 27. Junkie-of-the-moment Pete Doherty’s mom says she is worried that her son may share this numerical jinx, and I don’t blame her. But I just came across a weird Christian website devoted to dead rockers, and I see that there is actually a wide range of check-out age. Twenty-seven is a cool myth, sort of, but now it’s debunked, for me anyway.

My half-assed stab at research did lead me to an online music journal called Blender, which names Dead at 27 as #8 in a list of the 50 Worst Things Ever to Happen  to Music.

I love lists, and this is a good one. I would have put rap music at #1, and I would have put Madonna higher up on the list. But I like that they bothered to itemize the various scourges, and I know that lists of this kind are meant to stir up dissent. Blender is also nice enough to give us a list of the 50 Worst Artists in Music History. Here, they are pretty hit-and-miss, but I was so charmed by their selection of Insane Clown Posse as #1 that I was ready to forgive them for all their mistakes.

Until I realized that for some reason, I have confused Insane Clown Posse with a horrible “rapcore” band called Crazy Town. Crazy Town had a hit single that used to trigger a seizure of hatred throughout my entire nervous system whenever it came on my car radio. God, it was awful, I can’t even think about it. In my personal pantheon of the 50 Worst Artists in Music History, I will reserve the #1 spot for Crazy Town.   Nearby will be Whitney Houston, thanks to her rendition of “I Will Always Love You.” I would also like to give Hoobastank a place in there simply because of their name.

Meanwhile, Pete Doherty has until March 12, 2007 if he wants to join the Dead at 27 club. Godspeed, Pete.