Back from vacation and playing catch-up, I find the Birmingham-Hoover area tittering from enough drama to make a desperate housewife blush.  
 
I like it, I admit.  
 
I'm so satisfied I could open a satisfactory, as my kid says. Because weirdness keeps happening, whether I'm here or not.  
 
Hoover High football coach Rush Propst found out there's no such thing as an old pal on the job. Lawyers for Richard Bishop, the ousted HHS principal, sent a letter to school officials outlining sordid allegations about Propst's personal life.  
 
The letter was probably most significant for its claim that Hoover Superintendent Andy Craig told Bishop - a former Jacksonville State buddy of Propst's - to disregard claims that Propst lived a secret life with a second family. It was most interesting though, in a Paris Hilton kind of way, for its point-by-point assertions of Propst's alleged, er, personal fouls with women.  
 
Propst denied it all in a recorded interview, but was quoted later forgetting the denial. But then, they say a good coach needs a short memory.  
 
The bad news is that Hoover's - and Propst's - credibility is in shambles. The good news? If MTV does a third season of "Two-A-Days," it might be a little more entertaining.  
 
Alas, the Propst/Bishop saga is but part of Hoover's internal combustion. No sooner had the Hoover board booted Bishop than it named Ken Jarnagin, the system's still-new chief academic officer, as interim principal. Pretty brazen in a system that sweats appearances.  
 
See, last month the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury released an audit of Maryville High School, where Jarnagin until June was principal. It told how a Maryville secretary is accused of stealing more than $60,000 from the school.  
 
Maybe it was a bureaucratic technicality, as Hoover officials now claim, but the audit - the official document - repeatedly pointed out procedures Jarnagin should have put in place to prevent theft.  
 
The principal failed to ensure that incompatible financial duties at the school were separated," the audit said.  
 
"The principal failed to ensure that the former secretary ... followed required procedures when receipting and depositing school money."  
 
"The principal failed to ensure that teachers and other staff followed required procedures when collecting money and turning it over to the cashier."  
 
Technicalities? Perhaps. But it was what it was. The person the state expected to implement procedures failed.  
 
But Hoover doesn't seem to care. Maybe because those pesky procedure penalties only cost five yards.  
 
Or maybe the system pegged Jarnagin as Bishop's replacement as far back as June, when he left Maryville for Hoover's central office.  
 
It would make sense. Maryville is a football power that won six championships in seven years, that in May bumped its beloved athletics director to a driver's ed job and replaced him with the football coach.  
 
If that doesn't prepare him for the Hoover experience, I can't imagine what would.  
 
Except maybe "Desperate Housewives." John Archibald's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Write him at jarchibald@bhamnews.com.