It’s worth pointing out, just off the top, that nothing that could conceivably have occurred at the recent celebrity boxing event held in the Passion nightclub at the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida — from an outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease to a two-plus-hour performance by a heavily medicated Matchbox 20 to a long speech from retired Senator Fred Thompson about hard work — could possibly have been as depressing as the words “the recent celebrity boxing event held in the Passion nightclub at the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida.” That is the bottom — table seating and inert central Florida humidity; the faint ambient ching and whir of slot machines and obesity scooters audible in the background; the 65000 block of some endless four-lane boulevard of mega-retail and Astrodome-size Cheesecake Factories and Houston’ses; inside the Hard Rock, a bunch of crummy rock and roll paraphernalia (Eddie Money’s mustard-stained slacks from the “Two Tickets To Paradise” video, Joe Perry’s hairdryer from the Honkin’ On Bobo tour) stuck up on the walls behind smudgy glass. That is the worst, and the fact that someone is punching Danny Bonaduce or being punched by Danny Bonaduce in a ring in the middle of it all doesn’t really appreciably damage or improve the whole thing. It’s very bad. And so of course Jose Canseco would be there.

Or would be supposed to be there. In the Orlando Sentinel, Dave Hyde recounts Jose Canseco’s typically masterful attempt to execute a standard Sweet Valley High switcheroo in order to escape from (sorry) a recent celebrity boxing event held in the Passion nightclub at the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida, by sending Newark Bears co-legend and identical twin Ozzie Canseco to fight in his place. That Jose’s plan was somewhat less carefully wrought than his widely praised poetry is maybe not that surprising, given that, brainpower-wise, Canseco is essentially the human equivalent of the Fast and the Furious franchise. That any of the patrons at the celebrity boxing event held in the Passion nightclub at the Hollywood (FL) Hard Rock Casino were able to tear themselves away from suicidal ideation long enough to notice the switch, though, is maybe a bit more surprising. Anyway, here’s how it went down:

The tattoos, Jose! You forgot about your tattoos!

They were the first giveaway that made people alert Celebrity Boxing promoter Damon Feldman that Jose Canseco wasn’t really Jose Canseco just minutes before a scheduled event at a Hard Rock nightclub on Saturday night. Instead, it was his clean-armed, identical twin brother, Ozzie, the promoter said. “A bait-and-switch,” Feldman said. “I’m disgusted.”

… Jose missed his flight early Friday night from Los Angeles. But when “Jose” showed up for the Friday night weigh-in, Feldman said he figured all was good. The problems began Saturday night before the fight at Passion nightclub in the Hard Rock.

“The guy I thought was Jose kept asking me to pay him in cash before [the fight],” Feldman said. “I told him I had to pay him by check for business reasons. He said he needed cash. We went back and forth.”

Feldman said he also got a text message before the fight from Jose Canseco’s phone that read: “You have to pay him.”

“I was confused by why he wrote ‘him,’ ” Feldman said. “Who would’ve thought he would’ve sent someone else?”

Maybe Canseco isn’t so dumb. He was knocked out in a bout with former NFL player Vai Sikahema. He lost to a 60-year-old assistant athletic director from the University of Arkansas-Little Rock. He fought to a draw with Danny Bonaduce, for Ali’s sake. Why not see if Ozzie could do better?

I am leaving stuff out, and you should read the whole (brief) piece, if you want to see how Michael Lohan and a nicely existentialist final line fit in. I think this might be both my favorite and least favorite story I’ve ever written about here at CSTB, so I guess I can pop some champagne/Wellbutrin to that.