Someday we'll find it, the Rubble connection

I've been following this Bay Area murder tale with a bizarre Hanna-Barbera twist since I first heard about it a few months ago. I like the Flintstones as much as anyone, or so I thought. But I'm a bit of a purist, my admiration peaking with 1966's The Man Called Flintstone. The Flintstones Kids might as well be Shemp, if you get my drift, and the 1990s live-action films just couldn't be saved, even by Goodman and Moranis.

Sure, I got my Flintstones placemats from Denny's (this was some years before the racial discrimination lawsuits and no, I haven't been back) and I still have my Fred Flintstone wristwatch (q.v.), which was the only good thing to come out of the films.

But there are limits. I wouldn't kill for Bamm-Bamm. Someone did, though, and now there's an update that is growing more amazing by the day:

Courthouse arrests in S.F.
It was a scene of pandemonium that played out in San Francisco court on Tuesday.

In a packed courtroom at the preliminary hearing for Charles "Cheese" Heard -- accused of murdering a man for his flashy, gem-encrusted pendant of the "Flintstones" character of Bamm-Bamm -- several reputed gang members stood up in unison.

They did so at the behest of the defense attorney as the prosecution was questioning its star witness in the case. The witness was about to be asked whether she recognized the man who killed Richard Barrett, 29, in November...