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Jetting to Venus' rescue
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Editor's Note: When we got to work today, we found another e-mail from that bartending, skateboarding buddy of ours in California. We decided to pass it along again. A word of warning: always wear a helmet.

Chapter 21
... in which our hero grabs justice, and Richard Williams, by the short hairs

The saying goes, some things can't be avoided. My saying goes, why avoid anything at all?

Sometimes that gets you in trouble.

That's what I was thinking to myself after I asked our manager, Stu Getzler, for the weekend off and he looks at me and says, "If you're not in Saturday and Sunday, you can forget coming in Monday."

Who wrote that poem? Would you not give your right one to grab 18 feet of air and land on his head?

"I've got four words to say to you, Wheeler," Stu stands there saying, "Yao Ming and Wang Zhizhi."

I want to say, "That's five words if you count the 'and,' " but I haven't landed on my head that many times.

It's not as if I don't understand where Stu's coming from. The first two dudes from the People's Republic expected to play in the NBA. They're coming in to check out the States. The Chinese sports delegation and Nike have rented Lore's for a lookee-Lou reception. It's wall-to-wall and Xtreme Nachos with Savory Pork for sure.

Whether they can play basketball or not. Think about one thing: A Chinese dude who is 7½-feet tall jamming on Shaq. Dude, I am running the other way. It's Godzilla's Revenge. It's like Godzilla marched all the way across the ocean and jammed on Shaq.

I tell Stu I hate to skip out on him, but if he ever wants to know whether it was Phil Jackson or Vince McMahon or someone else who walked in here a couple weeks ago and bashed his place to bits, I need the weekend off. I need to get to Miami.

"What's in Miami?" Stu asks.

I point at the women's tennis tour schedule I've been carrying around. I explain the ladies are playing at Key Biscayne at the same time Yao Ming and Wang Zhizhi are wading ashore and getting ready to jam on Shaq.

"The Ericsson's being played in Florida," I say.

Stu repeats his poem.

Just like "Gladiator"
The first good news is you can definitely tell how much someone likes you when you ask if you can borrow their private jet.

And my relationship with Jeanie Buss is put to the test. The conversation goes from "no" to "never" to what she really thinks about me.

But I get the plane.

And I get Puker to come with me. Puker is awesome. He is so there. The only problem the whole two days we are in Miami is when I tell Jeanie's pilot we need to sleep on the Gulfstream while it stays parked on the runway.

"No one does that," the dude says. He looks like he's slamming into a tree.

I tell him that me and Puker are trailblazers. That the Gulfstream is now unofficially Lore's East.

"You know you were going to hose the damn thing down anyway," I tell him, "whether or not me and Puker stink up the place, wreck the toilet and leave six cases of empty beer cans lying around in it."

The dude can't deny it. Which is why me and Puker remain in good shape. You not only fly in a Gulfstream, you also live in it, something about it rubs off on you and you walk right past the security guards at the women's tennis stop into the stadium before the finals. You just have that Gulfstream thing going on.

Here's a great thing about Puker. He has never even once asked, the whole time we flew across the country in Jeanie Buss's Gulfstream, the whole time we slept on the runway or even when we barfed out the passenger door onto the tarmac, or even when we walked into the stadium, "Why are we doing this?"

I figure I might as well tell him anyway. I say I suspect Richard Williams is the guy who trashed Lore's. That he was looking for Vince McMahon, who's fallen in love with his oldest daughter and is trying to exert mind control over her (see chapter 20) to start a closed-circuit female tag team that will rule the world. I can't be sure if this is making any impression on him, but I finish anyway, and just as I do, I hear:

"Puker! What are you doing here?"

It's Jennifer Capriati. She and Puker, it turns out, share a couple of memories, including a hammock, a beach in Mexico and a sombrero full of beer bottle caps.

That's when, from the other side, I hear a man's voice humming the theme from "Rocky." "Da da da da da da da da da da."

I turn and see it's Richard Williams, walking Venus out to the finals. Venus' hair is awesome. I rush up to her, holding a little round object I've kept in my pocket.

I say, "My name is Wheeler," and then I tell her father the bead I'm holding was picked up off the floor at Lore's 3,000 miles away.

"This bead is yours," I tell Venus. "Your father accidentally spilled a bag of them on the floor the night he came looking for Vince McMahon. He knows about you and Vince."

Venus is stunned.

"You know about me and Vince, Daddy?" Venus says.

Richard Williams doesn't say much. But what he doesn't say tells Venus he knows enough.

"I was only at Lore's with him one time, Daddy," Venus says.

"One time too many," I say. "Mr. Williams, you were trying to send a message, weren't you?"

Bu-huh-huh-sted.

"You're not too old yet not to listen to what Daddy says is best for you," he tells his daughter. "If I say 'play,' you play. If I say you don't play, it's Serena's turn, you don't play."

"Just like at Indian Wells," I say.

"I wanted to play at Indian Wells," Venus tells me.

"But you kept her from it," I tell her dad. "That's what's driving her to Vince."

"I don't care," Mr. Williams says. "You know what, I say you don't play tonight. I say your tendinitis is acting up. I'm ordering you to default the final."

No one, including Capriati, wants it to go down like this.

"I'm playing, Daddy," Venus says, "whether you like it or not. And from now on, I'm calling the shots. Not you and not Vince. Me, Venus."

Me and Puker watch Venus and Jennifer go out on the court. It's like that movie, "Gladiator." The only difference is that either Venus or Jen could kick Russell Crowe's ass.

Me and Puker never get to see the match, since doing anything other than drinking beers on a Gulfstream or snowboarding or some other thing that might land you on a slab is always a last resort at best.

But I can tell you this as we head home: The sports page said it was hot and windy for that finals match. But now you know the real reason Venus made so many unforced errors.

At least I kept her from making a bigger one.

Next week: In Chapter 22, Tiger Woods tries hiring our hero to head sliced drives back onto the fairway