It wasn’t 2001.

In a way, that’s a compliment. A backhanded one, to be sure. Like saying, “Hey, I’ve seen uglier babies.” Or, “We’ve taken a look at the slate of candidates, and we endorse Adam Dread.” (Just kidding, Mr. Councilman.) At least this year we didn’t walk around every day on the verge of tears. At least this year we didn’t walk around wondering why nothing made sense.

Don’t get us wrong: 2002 was a pretty bad year. Bad elections. Bad scandals. Bad men doing bad things. But it was bad in a reassuring, predictable, the-enemy-you-know sort of way. There were no surprises as awful as last year’s. We now know that the forces of evil are out there somewhere, aligning against us. We now know that Dubya wants us to stay scared, so he can transform the executive branch into an imperial one. We now know there won’t be a Country Bears II.

And the rest? Attack ads? Clumsy criminals? Officious officials? Please. This is our 12th annual edition of the Boner Awards, our yearly roundup of the city’s most ignoble achievements. We lost our capacity for shock long ago. It must have been that item about the lawman found in a hotel room with a sheep. (Don’t ask.) But if you somehow just got here—well, you’d better sit down. This stuff’ll kill you. Without further warning, Nashville, prepare to meet your Boners.

ELECTILE DYSFUNCTION

The 2002 election cycle was the ugliest, meanest, nastiest year for state and local politics that we can remember. It also had its bad points. Read on.

Remind us again why we didn’t vote for Gore?

For the Bush clan and their hapless buds, Nashville has been Boner Country ever since Vice President Dan Quayle confused astronaut Buzz Aldrin with convicted Ohio congressman Buz Lukens at a local function. In September, President George W. Bush made The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart a happy man with a mangled quote at a carefully stage-managed East Nashville photo op. Stumping for his nebulous war plans against Iraq, the POTUS attempted to impress an audience of East Literature Magnet School students with folksy wisdom. “There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says fool me once, shame on—shame on you,” President Bush stammered. After an uncomfortable pause, he concluded, “Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.” Great. Not only does our commander-in-chief use the teachings of Gomer Pyle to formulate foreign policy, he can’t even use them correctly.

It was part of the new Homeroom Security Act.

To make room in the school’s auditorium for invited guests and dignitaries, more than 300 children at East Literature were forced to remain in their classrooms, on lockdown, while President Bush spoke on his Iraq policy and led other students in the Pledge of Allegiance.

The stealing’s supposed to come after you get elected.

In one of the saddest and most precipitous flameouts in the history of Metro politics, Vice Mayor Ronnie Steine resigned and abandoned his congressional aspirations after news of a shoplifting incident came to light. In December 2001, Steine, the scion of a wealthy family, was caught leaving the Green Hills Target with a $7.50 pack of football cards. He explained the incident as an isolated lapse of judgment, apologized contritely, and the matter might have dropped after he (admirably) brought the matter to the Tennessean’s attention. But Steine—in a move variously interpreted as forgetfulness, arrogance or something more pathological—told the paper he had never been cited for shoplifting before. In truth, he had been stopped at the same Target once in the 1980s on similar grounds. Not only did Steine withdraw from a U.S. congressional primary he might have won, but as reporters scoured his background, he resigned his vice mayoral post as well. It also ended, for now, a distinguished record of public service on terms even his adversaries wouldn’t have wished.

New thin-lipped Senate action figure with kung-fu grip!

Even The Washington Post took note when, in the heat of a predictably nasty fall campaign season, a Democratic operative claimed that U.S. Senate candidate and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander assaulted him at a Dickson rally—with his bone-crushing handshake. The victim accused Alexander of intentionally twisting his finger after he proffered a fake dollar bill representing the former governor’s supposed sweetheart dealings. After a brief cycle of skeptical reports, the matter was dropped without troubling the candidate for a second. “He gave me a firm handshake and I gave him a firm handshake, and I’ve just shaken 2,000 more hands at a barbecue in Knoxville,” Alexander told the Post. “I feel fine. I may go home tonight and play a little Chopin.”

The clothes unmake the man.

Too bad Alexander’s opponent, U.S. Rep. Bob Clement, didn’t face anything more crushing than his rival’s handshake. During a televised debate, Clement denied that he had served on the Butcher Bank board. (You know, Butcher—as in the boys who went to prison for bank fraud?) As if by magic, out came a 1970s annual report with a photo of the board members—and there, sure enough, was poor Bob. Although Clement’s candidacy was probably doomed the second Alexander entered the race, it never recovered from that whopper. Or perhaps it never recovered from the outfit Clement wore in the photo—a hideous blended suit/wide tie/slip-on loafers ensemble that made him look like Match Game host Gene Rayburn.

America’s least wanted.

In the history of gubernatorial lame ducks, no wing-damaged fowl hit the pavement with a louder thud than outgoing Gov. Don Sundquist. Hated by constituents, mocked by opponents, the governor spent the fall months watching both parties beat him like a piñata. Republican gubernatorial nominee Van Hilleary—yes, the governor’s own GOP colleague—produced commercials that morphed rival Phil Bredesen’s mug into Sundquist’s, creating a centaur-like beast called “Bredesundquist.” Meanwhile, the Bredesen campaign paraded around a “titular head” costume, a giant, wearable caricature of Sundquist that interns sported at political events. (By summer’s end, the big head smelled so bad that staff were loath to retrieve it from the locked storage closet where it was stowed.) The governor couldn’t resist a parting shot: “Little boys will be little boys.”

We had something else in mind—more along the lines of a landfill.

But don’t cry for Gov. Sundquist just yet. The same governor who resorted to closing state parks—to shave a tiny fraction of the state’s multibillion-dollar budget—went on a naming spree of Tennessee’s natural resources this year, spraying every leaf and tendril with the names of his family and cronies. A few months ago, a 2,000-acre state forest in Cocke County was christened the Martha Sundquist State Forest in honor of the governor’s wife. Most notably, the 283-mile Cumberland Trail, destined to become one of the state’s most popular hiking destinations, was named for friend and Deputy Gov. Justin Wilson. Wilson said he was honored when he heard about the naming, but he joked that the governor had gotten the better end of the deal: Wilson had set aside a scenic overlook in Gov. Sundquist’s honor.

Mr. Sundquist, meet your new public relations representative.

When the 2002 election was finally put to bed, the all-purpose flack firm The Ingram Group asked operatives, wonks and other observers to vote anonymously in its “2002 Tennessee Smell Test,” an index of the best and worst of the campaign season. Among the hands-down winners was Van Hilleary spokeswoman Jennifer Coxe, who claimed the dubious honor of “most annoying” political mouthpiece in a landslide. Among the Georgia girl’s most ill-informed, least tactful paid utterings: “We just want the rest of Tennessee to know how awful [Phil Bredesen] was as mayor.”

In a related story, Gov. Sundquist canceled his ride through Smyrna in an open-top convertible.

As Lynyrd Skynyrd might say, “In LaVergne they love the governor—boo, boo, boo!” But city alderman David Fleming was even more eloquent raging against the state’s lame duck leader, Gov. Don Sundquist. At a meeting of the city’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen, Fleming suggested a solution to the state’s budget problems: “Somebody oughta assassinate that governor.” Fleming later said his statement was “probably a very wrong thing for me to say.” You’ve gotta love that “probably.”

The sud stud.

A WTVF-Channel 5 investigation last May painted Davidson County Clerk Bill Covington as the Homer Simpson of municipal government. A surveillance team followed Covington’s “business license inspector” David Brasel, a $30,000-per-year Metro employee, for six weeks—during which his inspections consisted mostly of beer runs to Frugal McDougal’s in a Metro vehicle. Asked where the beer went, a Covington employee told Channel 5 reporter Phil Williams that it went into his boss’ office. Sure enough, a camera crew caught Brasel loading six-packs into a Hewlett-Packard box, then delivering the package to Covington’s office. Confronted by Williams, Covington denied he had any alcohol on the premises—then watched as the reporter pointed out a nearby cabinet full of bottles and mixers. D’oh! The series went on to charge that Covington used Brasel as an errand boy and conducted personal business on Metro computers. Indeed, the exposé was so persistent—and Williams’ demeanor so smug—that it shifted some viewers’ sympathies to the affable, well-liked county clerk.

Guess the poll-worker training seminar in Florida didn’t help.

In August, a court-ordered recount revealed widespread irregularities in ballot-counting for the 52nd House district race, including missing ballots, missing or incomplete tally sheets and unlocked ballot boxes. Patricia Helm, a former election commissioner, said 90 percent of the ballot boxes she saw opened contained serious irregularities. Election Commission chairman E.L. Collins, meanwhile, casually attributed the problem to understandable human error.

Open mouth, insert ink.

No year of political Boners would be complete without the Scene’s own contribution. When Metro Pulse publisher Joe Sullivan wrote a profile of Van Hilleary and ran it in his Knoxville paper, Scene editors were impressed enough with its reportorial insights to run it. After the piece ran, however, there turned out to be a little problem: Sullivan was a political donor to Hilleary’s Republican primary opponent, Jim Henry. Can you say, “hatchet job?” At least we didn’t run Hilleary’s picture under a cover-page headline that read, “This man doesn’t have a prayer.”

THE BONER BRIGADE

So many Boners, so little time. From bad medicine to bitter pills, some notable headscratchers from a seriously strange year.

Liver and let die.

When Dr. Charles Harlan played “Operation” as a kid, we’re guessing he heard lots of buzzes. The controversial former Metro and state medical examiner was slapped with a battery of grisly, often disgusting charges by the state Health Department, which accused him of 39 improprieties ranging from incomplete autopsies to obstruction of justice over the past seven years. The charges relate to work Harlan did for counties across the state after leaving Metro in 1994. In one case, Harlan allegedly cut off the flesh surrounding a victim’s gunshot wounds, then told an observer that “no one would be able to second-guess me now.” In another, the Health Department said Harlan threatened to make sure the evidence in a child-murder case got lost if anyone challenged his findings. Among other infractions, Harlan supposedly allowed animals to “roam freely in his facility and consume the organs of dead persons.”

A funny thing happened on the way to the pavement.

Bart Sibrel, a Nashville-based filmmaker, became a literal punchline in September when his pushy attempts to prove the NASA moon landing was a hoax got him socked in the jaw. The punch came from astronaut Buzz Aldrin outside a Beverly Hills hotel, where Sibrel insisted that he swear on a Bible that he actually walked on the moon. When an irritated Aldrin tried to leave, the larger, heavier Sibrel reportedly blocked his path and prodded him with his Bible—at which point the 72-year-old space explorer clocked him. Sibrel was gathering footage for a follow-up to his DVD A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, a goulash of archival flotsam and conspiracy theory that purports to offer proof the landing was faked. These claims are debunked at www.badastronomy.com—assuming, of course, that the site isn’t a tool of the Illuminati and the Trilateral Commission.

With watchdogs like these, who needs sheep?

This year’s Trent Lott Award for celebrating diversity goes to Bellevue Chamber of Commerce President Michael Gilmore. Last summer, Gilmore convened local business leaders to address the development of the notoriously sprawling Bellevue enclave. A reporter from the community paper Westview asked Gilmore about the composition of his group. “We don’t have any women, no blacks, no Mexicans,” Gilmore crowed, as quoted on the paper’s Web site. “We’re not politically correct, and we don’t want to be. These six are the only ones who will be allowed to meet.” As if that weren’t flabbergasting enough, Westview editor Paula Winters removed the offensive quote—not because she thought it was inaccurate, but because she and Gilmore work together at the Chamber of Commerce. “I have worked with Mike Gilmore for a long time, and I don’t think that was the point he was trying to get across,” said Gilmore’s psychic friend.

THE BONER BEAT

A WKRN reporter tipsily accepted her first regional Emmy—for a story about a woman tortured for 20 years by her adoptive parents—while giggling and talking through repeated music cues to leave the stage. That was February. There were 10 more months of media Boners to go, including these:

But the Snowbird cookie jars drew unqualified praise.

Apart from a slight upturn in the ratings last November, WSMV-Channel 4 endured a miserable year of high-profile staff defections, eroding morale and harsh criticism inside and out. Midday anchor Sharon Puckett, who had been with Channel 4 since the invention of television, led an exodus of reporters, producers and sales staff, many of whom bristled under WSMV’s new corporate boss Kevin O’Brien. A joystick jockey who often micromanaged the newscast via computer from Las Vegas, O’Brien ordered needless live remotes on the principle that nothing grabs viewers like a bored reporter in front of an empty building. (Getting said reporter to walk and gesticulate for no good reason looks even sillier.) More damaging was a push for shorter, more sensational stories—a slap in the face of WSMV’s once-venerated hard-news reputation. Even station stalwarts such as Dan Miller and Demetria Kalodimos told the Scene they question management’s focus-group approach to the news. Not only didn’t the new style catch on with viewers, it earned WSMV the wrath of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a think tank that cited Channel 4 as one of the worst stations it had studied and “by far the worst in Nashville.”

It’s items like this that make Boners worthwhile.

Columns in college newspapers are often forgettable, but Vanderbilt student Anna Cielinski commanded the attention of every male on campus with an opinion piece for the left-leaning campus newspaper Orbis. “I am a cocksucker,” Cielinski wrote. “Exactly what is so bad about being a cocksucker?” Her point was that the word had negative connotations when it actually denoted an act of giving, selfless intimacy. “A huge majority of women will be cocksuckers at some time in their lives,” she wrote (though we dispute the stats). Cielinski told an unusually attentive Scene reporter that her column was consistent with her “sex-positive views,” explaining that “young feminists are tending to work to define a healthy sexuality.” Still, campus prudes were even less amused when the Vanderbilt parody newspaper The Slant launched a like-minded defense of “motherfucker.”

On the bright side, 17,000 lucky people got brand-new doorstops.

Two former Nashvillians found themselves at the center of a national media controversy involving a best-selling book. But author David Vise and publisher Morgan Entrekin responded very differently to charges that Vise had tried to manipulate The New York Times best-seller list. Vise wrote (and Entrekin published) The Bureau and the Mole, an engaging book about Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent who became a Soviet spy. By early March, the book was perched at #4 on the Times’ vaunted nonfiction list. Then news broke that Vise, a high-energy graduate of University School of Nashville, had purchased as many as 17,000 of his own books from Barnes & Noble’s Web site, only to later return most of the books. Naturally, many speculated that Vise was using sneaky tactics to buy his way onto the respected list. Vise quickly went on the attack, defending himself against all comers in lengthy, manic harangues. Entrekin adopted a more sober response, but the long-haired, intellectual MBA grad was clearly among those left scratching their heads at Vise’s erratic behavior.

Desperately seeking “Desperately.”

After a controversial 13-year run, Scene editor Bruce Dobie canned the “Desperately Seeking the News” column in July. At the time, Dobie said the column had become “formulaic and predictable” and that the continual unearthing of incompetence at The Tennessean was “no longer news” but “cause for a big yawn.” Well, maybe. But without getting all John Peter Zenger about it, the well-read column did play a role in the fabric of our fair city. When our Founding Fathers created the Bill of Rights, they knew a free and inquisitive press was necessary to the formation of a free and just society. As The Tennessean and TV networks slide deeper down the hole of news-by-market research, they abdicate their watchdog role. If Thomas Jefferson were alive and speaking to the downtown Rotary—in other words, if he were in hell—he would say that now of all times the Scene needs to unleash aggressive columnists and wield its investigative might. As the pressure to succumb to mediocrity has never been higher, the “Desperately”s of the world are desperately needed.

It’s not easy being Greene.

Last August, The City Paper had a tantalizing scoop: Former Pittsburgh Steeler “Mean” Joe Greene, one of the greatest and toughest defensive players in NFL history, was moving to Brentwood. The story, penned by reporter Kendrick Sadler, was full of curious details. After his legendary football career, Greene had apparently “tackled” the business world, launching a profitable health care company and serving as the operating president for a health benefits firm. In addition, the bruising lineman was already living in Franklin and planning to auction off his plantation estate. But a day after the report—which was accompanied by a photo from Greene’s NFL glory days—The City Paper retracted its story. In one of the most embarrassing mea culpas for any media outlet this year, the daily admitted it had somehow confused the African American football player with Joe Greene, a retired Caucasian health care executive and co-founder of Health Management Associates. More amazing still, the paper conceded that Sadler had never talked to either Greene, yet somehow came away with the impression he had found the legendary football player. Sadler and his editors should hit the showers.

All the snooze that’s fit to print.

Worried about the upstart City Paper’s nuts-and-bolts neighborhood coverage, The Tennessean launched a counterstrike earlier this year: a ballyhooed new section called “Davidson A.M.” Since the morning daily already has an ostensible local news section, skeptics wondered how 1100 Broadway would fill the new offering without turning it into an elongated Thrifty Nickel. But they didn’t count on Gannett’s usual flair for hard-nosed investigative reporting and analysis of the day’s tough topics. Here are 10 stories from the “Davidson A.M.” files that shook the city:

“Hot new business: Making Your Own Scrapbook”

“Weekend sale place to go for disco balls and fake cactuses”

“The Lakewood Theatre is a special place”

“Glencliff students find out about the real world”

“What happens with all those Metro textbooks in the summer months”

“Meet the man who created the Bellevue picnic”

“When heat is on, it’s cool to eat out”

“On your mark, get set, shop! It’s consignment sale season”

“Some restaurants open on Thanksgiving”

“An Eagle Scout and his car”

COPS AND BONERS

Two drunks cut each other up in a knife fight, yet refuse to press charges because they’re good friends. A teen prisoner escapes on Oct. 31 and convinces people that his no-shirt-and-handcuffs get-up is a Halloween costume. A man in a long fake red beard commits armed robbery—be on the lookout for ZZ Top!—while a 6-foot robber wearing a dress somehow eludes notice in Chattanooga. There are a million Boners in the naked city. These are just a few.

If someone in Dickson County offers you hot nuts, refuse.

Dickson County jailers James Miles and Keith Binkley were fired in January after an internal investigation found they had abused a prisoner. “It just really irks me for somebody to do something just because they have authority over them,” Sheriff Tom Wall said. According to Wall, an intoxicated man was strip-searched on a suspected drug violation. He became belligerent and had to be restrained—after which the jailers doused his privates with pepper spray.

White flight.

In May, state prison officials released inmate Donald White, gave him $75 and drove him to a bus station in downtown Nashville. Only later did they realize they were supposed to have released Bernard White, whose sentence was complete. Donald White, a murderer not eligible for release until 2015, was recaptured later in the morning.

The wrong arm of the law.

In a February armed robbery trial, a convenience store clerk told prosecutors she was “100 percent certain” that the man she picked out of a photo lineup, Roshaun Alexander, robbed her and another employee in a stick-up two years ago. When the prosecutor asked her to point out the man, she gestured to “the man sitting there in the black suit.” Alexander was acquitted shortly thereafter—the man in the black suit was his attorney.

Moral: Never get rear-ended by a 500-pound naked man. And never, ever, try to frisk one.

When Cheatham County sheriff’s deputies searched for the owner of a car that had rear-ended another vehicle, they got more than they bargained for—in the person of 500-pound Jimmy “Corky” Browner, whom they found walking down the road in a downpour. Browner, who was wearing only a pair of oversized shorts held up by suspenders, refused to go with the officers. As one deputy struggled to stop him, the suspenders came loose and the waterlogged shorts fell down. Browner, now naked, lay down on the road and told the deputies he wouldn’t budge until he could talk to Sheriff John Holder. By radio, the deputies contacted Holder, who persuaded Browner to go with them. After being charged with leaving the scene of an accident and resisting an order to stop and be frisked, Browner was released and driven home.

Where squirrels go, nuts will follow.

Ashley Lee Gegner, 18, of Gallatin, wound up in jail on domestic assault charges after a fracas with her boyfriend Dwayne Burnett, 23. The fight started when Gegner dove into Burnett’s car to retrieve a pet squirrel, and as the car kept moving she flailed at Burnett and destroyed the car’s glove box. The News Examiner in Gallatin deadpanned that “court reports and incident reports did not disclose the squirrel’s name or gender.”

Hey, this Lemon Coke tastes better than usual, or: Don’t eat the yellow Icee.

Kris Omealy, 19, was charged with vandalism last January after causing $500 worth of damage at a Harding Place Exxon Tiger Market. He was accused of ruining 100 bags of ice by urinating into the store’s commercial ice machine.

They all thought she was hogging the spotlight.

Keaton Lynch Brown, a 2001 graduate of Brentwood Academy, was allegedly attacked by the student activities director at Georgetown College in Kentucky, where Brown was competing in a beauty contest. The school official, Kathy Wallace, was charged with assault after Brown, who had been voted Miss Congeniality, complained she had been grabbed, dragged down some steps and hit a door. Other contestants at the “Belle of the Blue” pageant said Wallace had objected to Brown’s choice for the talent competition, which involved a dance/lasso routine and the roping of a stuffed pig. “There was some controversy over whether her talent was ladylike,” contestant Suzanne Lunsford explained.

Knock, knock, knockin’ on humiliation’s door.

Spring Hill residents were stunned to see their former police chief, Steve Thomason, and his family on national TV. The occasion wasn’t a rerun of the Saturn ads Thomason did in the mid-1990s. To the town’s chagrin, it was a Jerry Springer episode called “Knockin’ on Cheater’s Door,” in which Thomason’s 52-year-old wife claimed she was sleeping with her daughter’s 19-year-old boyfriend.

OFF-SIDES BONERS

Technical fouls, skid marks, bad behavior—the Boner referees have their whistles at the ready. Here’s a sampling of sports-related goofs and gaffes.

The truth hurts.

Once again, ESPN roused the orange blood of Tennessee Vols fans—this time with a TV commercial that portrayed them as inbred yokels. The spot, which promoted ESPN’s College Football GameDay, showed a family of four UT fans on an elevator: an overweight mother in curlers hollering “Come here, Rocky Top!” to a pig; a geezer clutching an IV bag; and two teens (apparently brother and sister) kissing in the background. “You in town for the game?” asks ESPN’s Lee Corso as the woman chases the pig off camera. “Yep,” replies the man. Following howls of protest from Tennessee, ESPN pulled the spot after just two days.

The names “Money Pit” and “Bud Bowl” were taken.

The Tennessee Titans could find no takers for the naming rights for their East Bank home following the collapse of Adelphia Communications, which had previously paid $2 million per year for that privilege. Until a new sponsor is secured, officials announced that the coliseum will have the sporty new name “The Coliseum.” At that, some Metro Council members balked, saying that “Nashville” should be included in the name. Grudgingly, the Titans agreed to call the stadium, temporarily, “The Nashville Coliseum.”

When the dummy does the tackling.

In a butterfingered play that cost the paper credibility, The City Paper unceremoniously fired sports editor Raleigh Squires in December after he wouldn’t run an article to please one of the paper’s owners. The part owner, DeWitt Thompson V, apparently wanted to prove that Montgomery Bell Academy’s football team was the best in the city, not just its private school division. To settle the matter, Thompson, a former MBA jock, floated a postseason match between his alma mater and whichever team won the public school division championship. The paper plugged the idea and offered to bankroll the game. But when MBA declined—and logistics and TSSAA rules proved the game virtually impossible on short notice—a City Paper reporter began preparing an article suggesting it was dead. Thompson, crying foul, demanded that Squires put a positive spin on the piece. After the sports editor refused, citing deadline considerations as well as journalistic ethics, he was sacked the next morning.

Being Vanderbilt means never having to say you’re sorry, even if everyone else says it about your football team.

Vanderbilt introduced Tom Collen as its new women’s basketball coach, then forced him to resign the next day after The Tennessean publicized an apparent discrepancy in an old version of his résumé, which claimed that Collen had earned two separate master’s degrees. Eventually, Collen’s claim proved correct, though it did him little good. After his name was sullied, his old employer, Colorado State University, refused to allow him to go back to his old job. Meanwhile, Frank Sutherland—whose own bio contained questionable claims—is still editor of The Tennessean.

He plans to run in next year’s Mecca 400, where women can’t drive.

Before a race in July, a group of male drivers, led by Mark Day, conspired against 25-year-old Deborah Renshaw, who earlier this year became the only woman in the history of the Nashville Speedway to win a pole in the track’s top division. As they had planned, the boys pooled money to file a protest against Renshaw’s car—which ultimately was disqualified because one cylinder head was 1 centimeter too large (a technical violation that didn’t alter the car’s performance). Citing concerns for her safety, Renshaw went on to race in the bigger ARCA circuit. Meanwhile, several weeks after orchestrating the “Get Renshaw” campaign, Day was disqualified for illegally running a car that had been significantly modified to enhance its performance.

OFF-KEY BONERS

Some sour notes from the year in music:

Warning: Requests for “Free Bird” will be punishable by death.

A few years back, one-time Nashvillian Ryan Adams was a Top 10 finalist in Chunklet magazine’s “100 Biggest Assholes in Rock ’n’ Roll.” This year, however, the gifted but erratic Whiskeytown vet worked hard to eliminate the competition. Adams asserted his anal magnitude early on at a Willie Nelson tribute concert at the Ryman, where a pre-show scuffle on Lower Broadway left him performing in bandages. He endeared himself further to his co-stars by stubbing out a cigarette on the venue’s near-sacred stage. It wouldn’t be the last time Adams blew smoke in the historic hall. At a Ryman solo show in October, he made headlines when a wiseguy shouted a request for “Summer of ’69” by Bryan Adams. Taking the dumb joke in his usual stride, the high-strung artiste went crazycakes and refused to play another lick until security bum-rushed the offender out of the room. The joker got the last laugh: Not only did he keep the $30 “refund” Adams forced on him, he quietly watched the rest of the show from the balcony.

Put your fat lips a little closer to the phone.

The mix of Ryan Adams’ beautiful music and bizarre behavior at the Ryman show prompted a puzzled pan from Tennessean reporter Peter Cooper—who in turn received one of the singer’s notorious telephone tantrums on his voice mail. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Adams railed, in an apparent attempt to make Courtney Love look even-keeled. “Little redneck newspaper. Ooh, The Tennessean. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. You wouldn’t know a good show if it bit you in the ass.” The paper happily printed the text of his rambling rant. Chunklet should demand a recount.

The no-brain zone.

No stranger to controversy, Steve Earle drew the wrath of right wing loonies all over America with “John Walker’s Blues,” a track from his 9/11-themed album Jerusalem. Written from the viewpoint of the so-called American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, the song uses first-person detail to evoke the mind-set of its subject: a troubled misfit who turns to religious fanaticism and imagines that he’ll “rise up to the sky, just like Jesus.” Only an idiot—or worse, some yahoo looking for cheap publicity—could hear the song and accuse Earle of praising or glamorizing Lindh. Enter a yowling mob of attention-seeking pundits on the nation’s op-ed pages, led by an opening salvo in the New York Post that basically branded Earle a traitor. Sadly, some of the dumbest quotes came from a local source: talk-radio blowhard Steve Gill, who accused Earle of “glorifying a traitor” and compared him to Hanoi Jane Fonda. Had Earle paid Gill—who sailed the singer’s coattails everywhere from CNN to the Post—he couldn’t have hired a more devoted publicist. This didn’t go unnoticed by Internet conspiracy theorists, especially after The Washington Post reported that Gill, as a Nashville lawyer, once represented Earle in a beef with Texas police.

TEST YOUR BONER ACUMEN

1. Identify the speaker and the subject of this remark: “My opponent’s time has passed.”

a. Gen. George Armstrong Custer, addressing Sitting Bull before that dust-up at the Little Big Horn.

b. Peyton Manning, addressing Steve McNair before the Titans’ 27-17 gelding of the Colts.

c. That lying hussy Danielle, addressing Lisa before the final vote on Big Brother 3.

d. U.S. Rep. Ed Bryant, addressing his opponent (and victor) in the U.S. Senate primary, former Gov. Lamar Alexander.

2. Just when it seemed reality TV could sink no lower, a Nashville developer successfully sold the concept of:

a. A real life Hogan’s Heroes set in a wacky concentration camp.

b. A real life Maude with uptight white liberals annoying the hell out of their African American help.

c. A real life All in the Family with a clan of lovable bigots.

d. A real life Beverly Hillbillies with poor Appalachians set up in L.A. splendor.

3. At the other end of the reality TV spectrum, Nashville-based publisher Broadman and Holman announced it would produce the first Christian reality series, known as:

a. Touched by a Youth Minister.

b. What Would Jesus Eat?, a joint production with the Food Channel.

c. The Confirmed Bachelor: Conversion Therapy Acapulco!

d. Truthquest: California, described as the spiritual journey of clean-scrubbed teens who won’t just “sit on the beach playing tambourines and handing out tracts.”

4. What did USA Today’s television critic suggest Law & Order should do with U.S. Sen. Fred Dalton Thompson, who joined the cast this year as a Manhattan district attorney?

a. Set him to busting heads with his streetwise informant Huggy Bear.

b. Have him personally make that whauuum! sound before every scene change.

c. Bring back Jill Hennessy from Crossing Jordan and get him to “tap that ass.” No, wait, this was his idea.

d. Replace him with an actor who speaks English.

5. What was significant about the state Republican Party’s August rally for post-primary unity?

a. The musical guest was Insane Clown Posse.

b. The ratio of SUVs to guests was roughly 3-to-1.

c. Stepford scientists blamed Marsha Blackburn’s deadly rampage on faulty wiring.

d. By a strange coincidence, the state’s ranking Republican, Gov. Don Sundquist, was nowhere to be seen.

6. The inaugural CMT Flameworthy Awards caused a stink earlier this year when:

a. People saw the junk that was nominated.

b. A presenter accidentally announced Cledus T. Judd as “Wynonna.”

c. A CMT exec was overheard asking if Ralph Stanley was “that guy from Kiss.”

d. Word got out that the show wanted to replace its veteran “seat fillers”—who make sure the audience looks full when stars are out of their seats—with younger, more glamorous and demographically correct models.

7. In January, a firestorm of protest greeted a news leak that Gaylord Entertainment was secretly exploring plans to:

a. Shellac Little Jimmy Dickens.

b. Trade Opry Mills for some magic beans.

c. Focus the sun’s rays into a deadly laser, then imprison Halle Berry in an ice fortress.

d. Change the legendary WSM’s format from traditional country to sports and talk radio.

8. Rock ’n’ roll fans who showed up for the May 23 Dancin’ in the District concert at Riverfront Park got some extra entertainment. They got to watch:

a. Wild dogs tear apart Better Than Ezra.

b. A hacky-sack game played with human skulls.

c. A second two-hour song by Blues Traveler.

d. The Metro Thermal plant across the river going up in flames.

9. Last April, about 100 visitors to the Opry Mills Rainforest Café took home:

a. An unforgettable memory of tropical-themed dining.

b. A renewed curiosity about how jungle animals and endangered species must taste.

c. A bucket of chicken from KFC.

d. A dose of Pontiac fever, courtesy of pesky bacteria in the restaurant’s water-misting system.

10. Now that the deteriorating Demonbreun Street bridge has been found unsafe for buses and trucks, the adjacent Clement Landport—a $6.2 million eyesore built four years ago to solve the city’s public transportation woes—is now good for:

a. Unlimited rollerblading.

b. “Post-Apocalyptic Ruin Week” on the Sci-Fi Channel.

c. Wedding receptions in an intimate atmosphere of concrete and industrial decay.

d. Nothing.

Answers: 1-10, d.