Development Arrested

Not to make light of what is a very serious matter for the father of long-time friend of Fraters Vox Day, but when you read some of the details in this Strib story on Robert B. Beale, it's hard not to think of the television series "Arrested Development":

Not so very long ago, he had a wife, a family and substantial wealth. He was a leader of his church and a successful business executive.

Then he decided he had the legal right to stop paying his taxes.

Now Beale wears the orange jumpsuit of a jail inmate, back in custody after 14 months as a fugitive.

This from his time on the lam:

"I rode my bicycle and I went jogging daily," he said. One weekend while riding his bike, he said, he stopped at a fruit stand, and a man at the stand sold him some watermelon and told Beale he was a full-time police officer. "I just decided to eat quickly and be gone," Beale said.

Around Christmas, he said, he moved to Orlando, Fla., rented a room under another name and continued to work on his computer. He obtained false identification, he said. He declined to say where he got money to live on.

During this period, he said, he made a couple of trips by plane -- one to attend a tax seminar in New York-- and also took a one-week cruise to the Bahamas, which he called "just a vacation."

Being a fugitive is hard work. You can understand the need for a vacation. And then there's how the run ended:

He said he made a "really dumb mistake" using the same cell phone for 11 months.

"I started calling my family," he says. "My ex-wife found out I was making these calls and she called the police. They subpoenaed the phone records from family... and found out where I was calling from."

He was arrested without incident in the parking lot of an Office Depot in Orlando on Nov. 1.

You can easily picture that happening to George Bluth Sr. The family business dynamic is also similar:

In the meantime, problems were multiplying at his company. In an affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court in May, Bradford Beale, another of his four sons and vice president of Comtrol, said many company decisions couldn't be made because his father was a fugitive.

If I'm not mistaken, Vox fancies himself a magician as well. The parallels are truly uncanny.

Once this little writers strike thing gets settled, I imagine there will be a slew of pitches for a new comedy series based on the Robert Beale story. Imitation is after all the sincerest form of flattery. All we need is to come up with a catchy title and an appropriate actor to play the lead role.