How many times have we heard recently of someone falling overboard from a cruise ship. Usually, it comes down to too much alcohol or too little value for life – or a combination of the two – and it seldom has a happy ending. This one is the rare exception.

According to reports, at 4 a.m. Monday, Larry Miller, 46, fell overboard from the Carnival Inspiration as it was returning to the Port of Tampa.

The crew of a pilot boat found Miller clinging to a buoy in the shipping channel near the Sunshine Skyway shortly before 7 a.m.

Miller was taken to the Fort DeSoto boat ramp, where an emergency vehicle picked him up and took him to Bayfront Medical Center. He was treated for minor injuries.

A spokesperson for Carnival said Miller fell overboard when he climbed on a railing to get a better view of a boat as it passed by. He slipped, then fell overboard.

Climbing on the rail at 4AM to get a better view? Riiiiiiight. Probably as he was transiting from one onboard bar to the next.

Bad news for the Darwin Awards committee – Mr. Miller won’t be joining you just yet. But keep his application on file … I have a hunch he’ll be back.

Rather than rant on about the weekend’s sports, or the Lakers inevitable victory over the Orlando Magic to take the NBA title, let’s talk about economics for a moment.

Sunday night, once the champagne corks were popped in the visitor’s locker room at Amway Center, yahoos took to the streets around the Staples Center back in LA to celebrate. Well, it’s only a celebration if your idea of a party includes looting shoe stores and overturning buses. Not sure what kind of twisted mind it takes to equate basketball victory with riot and pillage, but let’s just say this: there’s one kind of person who lives in the neighborhoods around the Staples Center, where the Lakers play, and another kind that lives near the Lakers’ practice facility just a mile or so from the Home Office … and no one was rioting around the practice facility. You draw your own conclusions.

But the riots weren’t the big celebration story today. On the same day the Pittsburgh Penguins had their celebration – the second that city has seen this year (the other being the Steelers), the big question in LA was “who’s gonna pay for the Lakers parade”. See, the politicos love a good parade, since they tend to equate to photo opportunities. But they just announced the furloughs of city workers and layoffs of cops, and the unions are lining up their lawyers. In the meantime, Mayor Tony is lining up his favorite corporate donors to kick in a couple of shekels to pay for the thing.

You guys are making a mistake, so let me straighten it out for you: scrap the parade, but keep the rally. Back in the day, the team used to party down in the parking lot on the north side of Staples. But since that’s now LA Live, they have to move the celebration – in this case, to the Coliseum. That means a parade to get the folks there, which means more people to police the route and people to clean the route. So drop the parade, open the gates at the Coliseum, and invite in a hundred thousand of your friends. You can even clip them a sawbuck for the parking and make back some of the money you’ve lost. Get Villaraigosa and Bratton to work the gate, and I might even kick in a tip …