Not sure this has a whole lot to do with sports crime, but . . . it does involve Tila Tequila naked, so that's a start for an interesting exploration of something. The putatively bisexual former host of the weird-as-hell MTV reality show A Shot at Love was in the news earlier this year when she accused her ex-boyfriend, San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman, of assault. Those charges never stuck, and the resulting scandal tainted Tequila more than it did Merriman.
Now Tequila has doubled down on batty, putting out a live Web cast in which she rolls around in bed naked and makes various accusations against Merriman. In the interest of not letting the otherwise quite effective trick of posing naked to manipulate the male-dominated sports press into re-publishing potentially false charges against a football player, I won't repeat what those charges are.
I will, however, convey some of the other substance of Tequila's three-hour, late-night, completely bonkers and fully naked rant, which is just one of the funniest things ever (note to readers: don't go looking for the video online, as spyware sites are using it as bait). At one point, she slurs, "People call me an attention whore . . . or whatever . . . but excuse me, I'm a grown-ass woman and I'm confident in myself . . . I think a woman's body is a beautiful thing . . . that's why I'm a lesbian . . . I was born naked . . . anybody who is against that is gay and in denial."
Tequila also says that she is an "angel" and is "born to save the world with my army." She goes on to announce plans (via her Twitter feed) to build her own version of a Hugh Hefner–style compound called the "TilaArmy mansion" that will be "like Playboy Mansion except 1 million times better!" In it, according to one tweet, she plans on having "a HUGE sliding pool tunnel in the backyard & we are gonna have a little farm area w/baby piggys/Mini Horses!"
Again, the relevance to sports here might be dubious at best, but this just gets funnier and funnier. Can't wait for the Merriman response.
LT back in the news
No football player was ever a more entertaining off-the-field story than Lawrence Taylor. Unlike a lot of sports-crime types, LT never hurt anyone, and was mostly guilty of just doing a lot of blow and sleeping with a lot of women. Readers of Taylor's sports-autobiography classic Over the Edge might recall the time he met a woman the night before a game who handcuffed him to a hotel bed, then left — forcing Taylor to come in to the pre-game meeting the next morning with a sweatshirt over his cuffed hands.
Taylor went a little down the tubes after his playing days ended — at one time he was spending thousands of dollars a day on cocaine and call girls. He kept sheets over his windows to shut out the sun and stayed up days at a time. When his agent visited at one point, he found holes in all the furniture and a pool filled with sludge.
