MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, March 6, 2011
A sitcom character from the South once said: “We’re proud of our crazy people. We don’t hide them up in the attic. We bring ’em right down to the living room and show ’em off. No 
one in the South ever asked if you have crazy people in your family. They just ask what side they’re on.”
As an expatriate Southerner from a very large family, I know a thing or two about crazy people. When it comes to crazy, Long Island is just Louisiana with way more traffic and a funny accent.
Lordy me, could Eudora Welty have invented a girl any more troubled than Lindsay Lohan? Could Tennessee Williams have concocted a family more dysfunctional than 
the Baldwins? If Joey and Amy and Mary Jo hadn’t sprouted magically from the soil of Nassau County, John Kennedy Toole would have had to invent them.
There must be something about the transfer between the Southern Crescent and the Long Island Railroad. Colorful doesn’t begin to describe the looniness that connects the two.
Hollywood has its eccentric characters. Joaquin Phoenix has that multiple-personality disorder. Tom Cruise will bounce on the occasional couch. Gary Busey, well, no one really knows what’s wrong with Gary. Charlie Sheen sounds nuttier every time he opens his mouth. Lately, that mouth has been closed as seldom as the In-N-Out Burger drive-through. But
those amateurs look like understudies when compared to our scramble-brained superstars.
Want more proof? On Long Island, these people are all considered sane: J-Woww, Al D’Amato, Peter King, all the Baldwins, and Howard Stern.
NFL STRIKE GRIPES
1. Players don’t earn enough.
2. Owners aren’t rich enough.
3. Season isn’t long enough.
4. Tickets aren’t expensive enough.
5. ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?!
ASKED AND UNANSWERED:
Now that Albany’s about to approve more red-light cameras for Nassau County, 
one obvious question: Why is Albany – not Nassau County – deciding how many red-light cameras Nassau County needs?…After Thursday night’s crushing by the Islanders, are Minnesota fans really calling their beloved Wild “the Tame”?…You mean Jeff Browne and Joseph Skalka WEREN’T drunk for their alleged 140-mph LIE drag race? So they were just stone-cold stupid?…Is the Nassau Planning Commission afraid of the dark? Nah, there must be some other explanation for their canceling of night meetings…Is anyone still trying to downplay the Nassau police’s crime-lab fiasco? The mismatched-paperwork news stories have branded the incompetence-or-worse a “quagmire.” Is “scandal” next?…The real test for ‘Am-I-a-total-boat-nut?’ Attending both the Long Island Boat Show at the Nassau Coliseum AND the World Fishing and Outdoor Exposition in Suffern this weekend. Those double-dippers are CRAZY!…Why is Nassau so much stingier than Suffolk in helping to pay for Long Island Bus service?…Dana Saltzman’s admitted conspiracy in that harebrained plot at Connetquot High? File that under ‘The Things They Do for Love.’
LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK
ROBBIE ROSEN
Okay, so he didn’t make the finals. Robbie Rosen’s swan song, “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word,” could just as easily have come off the lips of “American Idol” judge Randy Jackson, who moaned that cutting the Merrick teen was part of “the toughest night ever.” But finals or not, Robbie is still “the pride of Long Island.” Charismatic, poised, clean-cut in a 2011 kind of way, he will be back for more. Much more. As for his premature departure from America’s largest stage: Blame us as much as Robbie. He did his job, belting ’em out like no 16-year-old should be able to do. What happened to voter turnout among his “Idol” fans back home?
E-mail ellis@henican.com.
Follow him at twitter.com/henican
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