I’m back: What showbiz craziness did I miss?

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I appreciate all the cards and letters, wondering if I had flown the coop for good. I guess my editors were too lazy busy to actually alert everyone that I was taking a little vacation time, but it’s amazing when you’re away for a few days how much you can miss in the always topsy-turvy world of media, sports and pop culture. So let’s see, what sort of nutty stuff happened? A few favorites:

1) Rev. Al Sharpton spoke at Michael Jackson’s memorial service, telling Jackson’s children that ‘there was nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what he had to deal with,’ apparently forgetting all of Jackson’s strange behavior, obsession with young boys, costumes, masks and plastic surgery--not to mention, when it comes to all-surpassing strangeness, his naming the aforementioned children Prince Michael, Paris and Prince Michael II.

2) Sarah Palin, by way of justifying her abrupt decision to quit her job as governor of Alaska, explained: ‘Only dead fish go with the flow.’

3) Manny Ramirez got kicked out of a Dodgers game, not for tossing his helmet or his bat, but for--gasp!--throwing his elbow pad after getting called out on strikes.

4) Republican Congressman Peter T. King, who usually spends his time praising the IRA or attacking illegal immigrants and Muslims--he once said ‘there are too many mosques in this country’--lambasted the news media for its fawning Michael Jackson coverage, issuing a statement on Youtube saying, ‘Let’s knock out the psychobabble. He was a pervert, a child molester, he was a pedophile. And to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what does it say about our country?’

5) Kobe Bryant showed up at Jackson’s memorial at Staples Center--did he think the playoffs were still going on?

6) The ‘Transformers’ and ‘Ice Age’ sequels actually ended up in a tie for first place in the Monday morning box-office estimate stories, which of course is the strangest occurrence of all, since what are the odds of two different studios both wildly inflating their weekend box-office and coming up with exactly the same imaginary number? (In the final tally, ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ ended up No. 1, with $42.3 million.)

7) Adding to what any Cubs fan will tell you is surely the longest list of bizarre injuries known to man (including the time one of our pitching prospects was hurt after being beaten up by a homeless man at a CIrcle K), starting pitcher Ryan Dempster went on the DL after breaking his toe attempting to vault the dugout railing at Wrigley Field after the team had defeated the Milwaukee Brewers.