BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY SEPT. 11, 2017) — Here’s a ripe piece of low-hanging fruit THE PLANET now makes available to any of our media colleagues. We think it especially relevant in light of yet another shooting, this one, ironically enough, near police HQ and not far from the mayor’s office. Oh, the vibrancy.

There is a video of the fatal shooting-by-cop. We have not seen it, but an official source, speaking on condition of anonymity, tells THE PLANET that there is film of the shooting, so we’ll give it a 99.96 % chance of its existence (the same odds, incidentally, the Atlanta Falcons had of winning the Super Bowl this year, late in the third quarter with a 28-3 lead). The person says “the images are definitive.” That description is open to interpretation, but so is the definition of “lunge.”

It would take but an eye-drop of imagination, two drops of initiative,  four of shoe leather, a few phone calls, and a reasonable dose of spine to obtain it, ingredients in the cupboard of any decent reporter. The latter ingredient, incidentally, is made necessary by the strong hint that Someone Important doesn’t want the video to be seen. That would mean butting heads with The Suits. The alleged official reticence about the video seeing the light of day, combined with how the mayor and other key officials have gone deaf and dumb on the case, does ratchet up the intrigue. A man is dead, shot by a police officer, and, what, it’s just supposed to go away?

FRANK ABOUT STEIN  — THE PLANET‘s pulling the ripcord of truth about the fatal confluence of Mark Pappas, mild-mannered owner of Pittsfield’s beloved Lantern Restaurant (est. 1926), and Lt. Randy Stein brought several responses to the Fortress with examples of how the latter brought his unjust stinging nettles to other commercial venues.

Each establishment is owned by what we call “small businessmen,” decent citizens who are having a hard enough time making a living in a dying city without having an out-of-shape, self-important official gripped by Fifeism to add to their bottom-line woes. Each source conveyed the same sentiments about The good lieutenant, which can be loosely translated as, “Tell him he can go f*** himself.” The odd rhetorical coincidence makes one wonder if the lieutenant has both male and female genitalia. We can’t see how else such an anatomical possibility could occur.

As for fire inspectors, give us an honest man, hard working and diligent, soft-spoken and tough in the right way, a man who will enforce the law but not blindly and not to scratch some internal itch borne of self-loathing and Fifeism … you know, a man like Milt Torres.

BLOW AWAY — Meteorological events of this past week bring us to a new definition of a familiar word: hurricane, n., rain and wind as apocalyptically broadcast by The Weather Channel as a wildly successful money maker.

TWC stands as one of the more bizarre developments in TV history, the equivalent of reading the same Hardy Boys novel over and over again. It is, along with the equally incomprehensible 24-hour cable news channels, an example of what Nietzsche termed “eternal recurrence.”

“I didn’t get this far just to get this far” — Tom Brady

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

The Usual Disclaimer.