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'The New Nick' Is Really The Same Nick
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Published: May 29, 2008
There hadn't been this much sobbing, weeping and assorted boo-hoos since Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey bawled their way through "Beaches."
Yep, there was young Nick Bollea, who has become to the criminal justice system what "Old Yeller" is to crying jags, whining to his mommy that the Pinellas County Jail isn't - ahem - exactly the Don CeSar hotel. No! Really?
In recent days, tapes of this product of inner-sniveling have surfaced, capturing jailhouse conversations between his gene pool from hell - phony wrestler Hulk Hogan and his mother Linda Bollea, who makes Joan Crawford look like Rose Kennedy.
On the tapes, young master Bollea, who is doing an eight-month stretch in the Pinellas County slammer after pleading no contest to a charge of reckless driving in a crash that caused massive brain damage to Marine and Iraq war veteran John Graziano, complains that his jail cell is smaller than his bathroom at the family manse.
The Joke's On Who?
And although the Bolleas are repeatedly warned their conversations are being recorded, the advisories did not stop them from making complete boobs of themselves.
Doing any amount of time behind bars is not a pleasant thing, but listening to this childish twerp yapping about the conditions of his confinement would make you think this was something out of "The Shawshank Redemption" meets "Cool Hand Luke."
Bollea kvetches about the lack of windows in his cell, the quality of his bed linens, the food, to which the matriarch responds by bringing her son a joke book to read - like an account of Dolt Hogan's career as cartoon character pretending to be parent, perhaps?
At one point, Daddio offers up some pseudo-psycho babble, lecturing his ne'er-do-well lad, to whom a car key is a weapon of mass destruction, about "temporary vibes" and "glimpsing the next stage."
Money Grubbers
Then again, when your next stage is a strip search, it is probably best to leave glimpsing well enough alone.
As well, pop-pop advises his son to "man up." A dim-bulb glorified circus clown with all the parenting skills of Saddam Hussein, who has made his living pretending to be a macho hero to the gullible yahoo crowd, is lecturing his son on masculinity?!?!
But what really makes these tapes so revealing, exposing the Bolleas as nothing more than money-grubbing opportunists, is the effort to exploit the Graziano family tragedy as if it is little more than a "reality" television plotline.
Finally, Nick Bollea takes a crybaby break to tell his father that for an anticipated court appearance he'll wear his jail jumpsuit, "For the sympathetic factor."
And then young Bollea - so much for contrition - tells his father to start working on a reality show about his coming out of jail, "Where I can make the most money."
"We can call it 'The New Nick,'" dad muses. Sigh.
Meanwhile John Graziano continues to serve his life sentence confined to a bed significantly smaller than Nick Bollea's jail cell.
Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.
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