The crack sketch artist for the Washington, D.C., Police Department released a series of pictures of missing intern
Chandra Levy, suggesting how she might look if she were to change her hairdo. One looks like Harpo Marx, one like
Farrah Fawcett on a bad hair day in 1981, one like a Michael Bolton mullet on a wire-haired terrier, and one like
Yassir Arafat. Be on the lookout.
*
Colette Avital, head of the Ethics Committee in Israel's Parliament, says she's fed up with name-calling among
legislators and has introduced a list of 68 insults that she wants banned under threat of reprimand or suspension. She
wants to make it an offense to call a fellow legislator an "animal," an "anti- Semite," a "back-stabber," a
"blood-drinker," an "eye-gouger," a "hypocrite," an "idiot," an "instigator of murder," a "swamp fly," a "gut-ripper," or,
that most horrible epithet of them all, a "poodle." Asked to comment on Avital's proposed measure, the speaker of the
Parliament said, "What a bitch."
*
In Aachen, Germany, a man went looking for a prostitute in the red-light district--and found his wife working there.
Cops were called to calm them both down after the ensuing argument almost resulted in violence. Obviously the guy
expected a freebie.
*
The government of Switzerland wants strict new laws regulating the "extreme sports" that draw thousands of young
adventure-seekers to the Alps every year. The most popular sport, "canyoning," involves swimming fierce rapids,
rappelling down ravines and sliding off waterfalls, and it became no LESS popular after 21 Australians died near
Interlaken in a flash flood two years ago. More recently three cavers were trapped underground by flood waters, and
eventually saved only by a tiny dry spot that was inches above the water line. Lawmakers in Geneva cite endless
instances of dangerous stunts involving "underground trekking," paragliding, ice climbing, and bungee jumping, which
claimed the life of an American two years ago, and say they want adventure travel companies regulated, expedition
leaders licensed, and some sports shut down entirely. The most dangerous Swiss sport of them all, flogging goats with
soiled lederhosen, has already been banned in French-speaking Switzerland, but is still legal in the German-speaking
and Italian-speaking regions.
*
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is losing its touch. An animal-rights demonstrator at the American Fashion
Awards in New York concocted a tofu-cream pie that had Karl Lagerfeld's name on it. But the pie-thrower mistook
Calvin Klein for Karl Lagerfeld--probably the first and only time such a misidentification will ever occur--and then the
aim was so bad that the pie only GRAZED Calvin, but did hit the writer Fran Lebowitz with its full fury. Lebowitz'
response: "I never owned a fur coat, but now I'm thinking of buying one." All the excitement came just one day before
the announcement of the new "Jo-Bo" line of winter fashions, designed by Joe Bob Briggs and consisting entirely of
fabrics made from prairie-dog fur, the ears of bunny rabbits, and collie skin.
*
It had to happen: designer flip-flops. That most fashionable form of feminine footgear--formerly called "thongs" until
that term moved upstairs--now comes in floral print, camouflage, straw, lobster print, ribbon, satin, and with the logos
of both Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Of course, the most popular style remains lime green with grimy sole, the beloved
signature of the disaffected lesbian, the fat-girl-with-an-attitude, and the woman who, after that third child, just doesn't
give a big flying flip- flop anymore.
*
More than 200,000 acres of Oregon farmland has dried up since April 7, the day the Bureau of Reclamation cut off all
irrigation water from Upper Klamath Lake because a drought was threatening the endangered suckerfish. As farms shut
down, businesses close, and populations dwindle, politicians have descended on the area to make speeches about the
stupidity of the Endangered Species Act. But since the suckerfish is an ugly bottom-feeding scavenger, the Republicans
are conflicted. Actually letting it die seems too much like cannibalism.
*
Two elderly Iowa nuns--Dorothy Marie Hennessey, who is 88, and her sister Gwen L. Hennessey, who is 68--were
given six-month prison terms, the maximum allowable by law, for participating in a protest at a U.S. military school in
Fort Benning, Ga., that trains Latin American soldiers. The judge, federal Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth, offered
Sister Dorothy Marie six month's house arrest at her convent in Dubuque, Ia., instead of serving the time in the prison,
but she said, "I'm not an invalid. I'd like to have the same sentence as the rest." More than 3,500 people were arrested at
Fort Benning last November when they trespassed onto the base in a mock funeral procession, in an effort to bring
attention to the fact that the U.S. trains soldiers who kill innocent people in Latin America. All but 26 of the protesters
were given "ban and bar" warning letters, telling them to stay off the base. But the two nuns were among the 26 who had
already had previous "ban and bar" letters, so they were charged and prosecuted. They're now waiting at the convent
where federal marshalls will presumably show up to take them to the federal penitentiary in Pekin, Ill. The current
federal marshall's manual says that, in all such cases, the prisoner is to be transported in handcuffs and leg shackles.
With ALL of the nuns in the Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Family of Dubuque watching the marshall who shows up,
it will be interesting to see just how far this goes. After all, both women are one mistake away from the "three strikes"
law, and we can't have dangerous nuns disrupting our global military plans at will.
*
Anne Marie Smith, the flight attendant having a field day with daily tabloid revelations about Congressman Gary
Condit, says that she suspected he was engaged in such bizarre sex rituals that she feared for her life. Her evidence:
"There were neckties tied together underneath his bed as if someone had been tied up in bed." All together now:
Ooooooooooooooooooooooo. There is no fury like a mistress scorned, especially when she's scorned for a second
mistress. Who's younger. Somebody show this woman where all the emergency exit doors are.
*
Two men were gunned down while sitting in a Burger King parking lot in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. A
woman in the car then drove through the neighborhood looking for police. She found two uniformed officers, who called
for an ambulance and helped get the men to the hospital, where one died and the other was in critical condition with a
head wound. The only reason the officers were present is that they were working security . . . for MTV's "The Real
World." It was not the first crime in the neighborhood since "The Real World" has been there; there have also been
three robberies. MTV is extremely concerned- -that the publicity will result in people finding out the location of the
"Real World" house. Such a catastrophe might result in REAL PEOPLE showing up.
*
Meanwhile, reality intruded on yet another reality show when 26-year-old Justin Sebik was kicked off "Big Brother 2"
for putting a knife to the neck of a woman he was kissing and asking her if she would still love him if he killed her. A
bartender and office worker from Bayonne, N.J., Justin got a little carried away with Krista Stegall, a 28-year-old
single mom and waitress from Opelousas, La. Apparently Justin and Krista had been "partying," in the words of the
CBS spokesman who announced the heave-ho. The incident didn't occur on the regular show, but was seen by those who
watch the 24-hour website coverage. The network explained that they had no choice but to send Justin home, because he
already had a previous warning--for stealing a housemate's pillow. Right before the incident, Justin and Krista had been
kissing. Then he picked up the knife and said, "Would you mind if I killed you?" Her response, "No, but I want some
water." Then they kissed again and left the room. Obviously she was afraid for her life. She'd seen the ties on his
bedposts.
*
Comedian Paula Poundstone was arrested for
"lewd acts on a girl under the age of 14" and
"endangerment" of three other children. Released on $200,000
bail, she spoke briefly to reporters outside the Santa Monica jail, saying
cryptically, "I have faith that the truth is the right thing."
The mother of four adopted children and one foster child--all of whom are
being held by the child welfare department--was reportedly hiding from the
press by shacking up with Lisa Marie Presley. * The only sex shop in
Cambodia--you know the place--was raided by Phnom Penh police, who
confiscated all the sex toys and aphrodisiacs and charged owner Yuan
Genxing with "debauchery." He could face 15 years in prison
because, according to Police Chief Yim Symany, he was endangering the lives
of Cambodian women. "Look how dangerous," said the chief.
"Look how long those rubber penises are. There is also medicine to
keep sex going longer. If people use this medicine, it could be dangerous
for them." Declaring the country safe for small penises and brief
encounters, the chief then smoked a Tiparillo. *
Meanwhile, a major British sex shop chain--you know the one- -is apparently
striking out against Cambodian police actions by declaring July 31 National
Orgasm Day. Citing a recent survey that showed 80 percent of women faked
their climaxes during intercourse, the Ann Summers chain is pursuing the
motto "Make it, not fake it" and offering a series of sex aids
ranging from the top selling Rampant Rabbit vibrator to lip-smacking
chocolate body paint. At this time their position on elongated rubber
penises is not known, but it's assumed they will have paramedics ready on
July 31.
*
The sex-hungry Germans, on the other hand, have opened a chain of sex
shops--you know the ones--right on the Autobahn. Upset by the new trend of
prolifering rubber penises, aphrodisiacs and Rampant Rabbits being sold
right alongside Valvoline, the church has responded by opening Autobahn
chapels to compete with the Beate Uhse chain of sex shops. With either
choice, German women are probably saying "Oh God" more often than
either Cambodians OR the British.
*
Pretty boy Benjamin Bratt dumped pretty
woman Julia Roberts when she got too close to "Ocean's 11"
co-star George Clooney. Bratt had replaced Daniel Day-Lewis in her life,
and Day-Lewis had replaced husband Lyle Lovett, who had married her on the
rebound from Jason Patric, whom she ran off with while Kiefer Sutherland
was standing at the altar. Sutherland had saved her from an engagement to
"Steel Magnolias" co-star Dylan McDermott, who had rescued her
from the bed of "Satisfaction" co-star Liam Neeson. There's more,
but records don't go back that far. Jack Nicholson reportedly invited
Clooney, Day-Lewis, Bratt, Patric, Sutherland, McDermott, and Neeson out to
his beach house for his weekly "Carnal Knowledge" slide show,
"Ballbusters on Parade."
*
Ol' Dirty
Bastard, the rapper featured in the group Wu Tang Clan, was sent to a
court-appointed psychiatrist by a Queens judge expected to sentence him to
two to four years in prison for drug possession. (He pleaded guilty to
possession of 20 packets of cocaine. He said they were for his personal
use--and the police pretty much AGREED.) Peter Frankel, the lawyer for Ol'
Dirty Bastard, told the court that his client had been in the psychiatric
ward of Kings County Hospital for three weeks prior to the sentencing
hearing, and since Ol' Dirty Bastard's gray sweatpants were in danger of
falling off his butt at any moment, the judge agreed to delay sentencing.
The lawyer later said that Ol' Dirty Bastard didn't understand anything
that occurred at the hearing and was hoping to use this additional
pre-sentencing time to be reunited with his lifelong spiritual advisor, Ol'
Dirty Needle.
*
The venom of the western diamondback rattlesnake is being tested by the
Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma
cancer, prostate cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and blood clots. So far the
results are promising, with the only side effect being a tendency to chew
the heads off live rats.
*
The German online magazine Thema1 offered a ticket to
Madonna's sold-out show in Berlin to anyone who would have sex
with a Thema1 staff member. More than 120 fans responded, with 90
men willing to have sex with website columnist Shelley Masters,
11 men willing to do it with a gay staffer, and 19 women offering
themselves to any of three men on the staff. The strangest
reaction came from Masters, who said, ""Ninety men from around
the world want to spend the night with me: that's something women
around the world dream of." If there's a city where ANY woman
can't find 90 men who will sleep with her for money, then we need
to start a new Marshall Plan for Germany. We'll send a stud named
Marshall over there to put these female fires OUT.
*
Martha Sahagun, press secretary for popular Mexican
President Vicente Fox, announced publicly that she's in love with
her boss. (The president has refused to talk about it.) One
problem in Catholic-dominated Mexico is that both of them are
divorced with children, so a church wedding is out of the
question. Meanwhile, the Mexico City newspapers are having a
field day with those noises coming out of the presidential
palace. Now, when Fox gives his daily press briefing, Sahagun
calls the assembled reporters to order by saying "Please rise for
my little Vicente-pooh."
*
Heroin prices are five to seven times higher ever since the
Taliban stopped the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan,
destroying three-fourths of the world's supply. To put this into
perspective, the Taliban, in a six-month period, dismantled more
of the international drug trade than the combined law enforcement
agencies of the west have stopped in 40 years. An official of the
Drug Enforcement Administration was recently seen kneeling in the
direction of Mecca and praying for an Islamic revolution in
Colombia.
*
The Tonya Harding Topless Ice Show is temporarily on hold.
An unnamed Vegas casino was putting the deal together, but Tonya
and her two enormous surgically-enhanced talents are currently
occupied, "working hard on a book about her life story,"
according to Linda Lewis, Harding's godmother, publicist and
manager. The working title of the autobiography is "If I Had a
Hammer."
*
At the same time the Kentucky Derby was getting record
levels of media coverage, the grand Garden State Park racetrack
in Cherry Hill, N.J., was closing its doors with virtually no
national notice. The 60-year-old track which once stabled
Citation, Bold Ruler, Dr. Fager and Secretariat is being torn
down for a $500 million condo-office-shopping complex, and of
course we all need more of those. Presumably they'll put up a
plaque so the next generation of Philadelphia children can say
"What did the horses do here, Daddy?" and the generation after
that can say "What's a horse?"
*
President Bush announced that the United States would not
abide by the 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming, which required
the United States and other western nations to reduce emissions
that are destroying the ozone layer. Bush said the United States
would not stand by its signature on the treaty because . . . uh .
. . because he wasn't the president then.
*
Britney Spears and boyfriend Justin Timberlake of 'N Sync
walked out of the New York party bar Float without paying their
bill. Left behind was 'N Sync member Joey Fatone, who agreed to
pay $200 but refused to pay the rest of the $600 tab, saying "I
didn't drink all the drinks." Lost in news accounts of the
controversy was the following question: Who spends $600 on drinks
for three people? And how many drinks is that? It would normally
take an extended family of alcoholic Irish hillbillies to spend
that much on booze, even in New York. Meanwhile, on the exact
same day, First Daughter Jenna Bush--19 years old, just like
Britney--tried to buy one lousy margarita at Chuy's in Austin and
was nailed with criminal charges. She obviously hasn't mastered
the art of ordering the special fifty-dollar super-fruity pina
colada that includes immunity from prosecution. And the silly
girl was trying to actually PAY.
*
Kramer and Twitch, an evening deejay team on KEGL-FM in
Dallas, were fired for doing a comedy routine in which they
reported that Britney Spears had been killed in a car wreck in
Los Angeles, that boyfriend Justin Timberlake was driving, and
that alcohol was involved. The routine set off a worldwide panic,
jammed Los Angeles phone lines, caused a run on Spears
merchandise, and had teeny-boppers in tears from Sydney to
Moscow. After the firing, Kramer pointed out that the bit was
pre-approved by Program Director Duane Doherty, who was NOT
fired, but Clear Channel Worldwide, which owns KEGL and 1200
other stations, insisted that they weren't fired for just the
Spears hoax. "It was an accumulation of things," said Tom Schurr,
vice president and market manager for Clear Channel's Dallas
stations, "and we just kind of agreed that it was best for the
station to let them go. They're talented guys, and I'm sure
they'll find something somewhere." Meanwhile, KEGL launched its
new ad campaign, featuring highway billboards that quote the
AC/DC song "Highway to Hell" and show Satan dragging Timothy
McVeigh into the flames. Shortly after the billboards appeared,
Duane Doherty was killed in a car wreck in Fort Worth with Tom
Schurr driving. Alcohol was said to be involved.
*
The number one foreign market for American films is Japan,
so it was only a matter of time before the Walt Disney Company
had to decide what to do about "Pearl Harbor." Their solution?
Give away 30,000 tickets to a special premiere screening at the
Tokyo Dome, bar all foreign reporters from attending, edit out
large parts of Alec Baldwin's patriotic speech at the end, tone
down pro-American scenes, and change the ad campaign to a Romeo-
and-Juliet-style love story. Brochures for the event were
headlined "Pearl Harbor, Love in Tokyo"--even though the only
thing that happens to Tokyo in the film is that it gets BOMBED in
the movie's climactic sequence. The only thing Disney forgot to
do is send the film's stars to Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Ben
Affleck could stand on street corners going, "Come on, people, it
was a LONG time ago. Here, have a Milk Dud."
*
When Wal-Mart orders its standard polypropylene shopping
bags for its stores, the standard order is 1,000,000,000,000 bags
at a time. A cool TRILLION shopping bags. Even more interesting,
a full 570 billion of the bags are used by old ladies to dispose
of dog doo-doo.
*
Andrew Burnett went on trial in San Jose for killing a dog
named Leo by throwing it into traffic. Burnett was enraged after
a minor collision with a car driven by Sara McBurnett, and to
express his feelings hurled the woman's little white bichon frese
onto the roadway near the San Jose airport. Burnett could face
three years in prison, where known bichon-frese-killers are
normally placed in protective custody lest they be seized by
inmates and forced to assume the "barking dog position."
*
Death penalty advocates declared that Timothy McVeigh
received much better than he deserved, dying peacefully under a
haze of mood-altering drugs. Spokesmen for the Oklahoma City
bombing victims called for new legislation that would allow mass
killers to be executed more than once. "To make this thing fair,"
said Walter J. Wilcox, president and chief lobbyist for the
"Bring Back Old Sparky" movement, "McVeigh should have died 168
times, and really, if we're going to use needles and drugs, those
should be double deaths, to approximate the pain he caused to
others. So to get justice for the families, I would suggest
killing him 336 times. Of course, some of these families have as
many as 12 victims per dead person, so if we average that out at
six, you're up to 2,016 killings of McVeigh. At that point we're
talking about eye-for-an-eye parity. Now if you want to throw
some punitive execution in there--and I think that's what this
country needs--then you should kill him 2,016 more times after
that, for a total of 4,032 executions of this one man. Sure it's
expensive, but can we as a society afford NOT to do it? I think
not." *The CIA believes that Saddam Hussein is the author of a
paperback novel called "Zabibah and the King" that retails on
Baghdad street corners for a dollar a copy. (One big tipoff is
that the book got 100 per cent rave reviews from the Iraqi
press.) The allegorical love story is about a mighty king and a
beautiful village girl named Zabibah who is commanded to love and
serve him. When the village girl is raped, the king declares a
war that "will not end until victory or death." The end of the
book is strangely open-ended, as the king dies but is not
replaced. Instead the head of the popular assembly says "We will
come back to discuss our affairs with a new spirit." Disney is
said to be interested in the rights to an animated movie version,
with Jennifer Lopez as the voice of Zabibah, Rosie O'Donnell as
The New Spirit, and Sandra Bernhard as the king. *The new tourist map of Hanoi--we know you've been waiting on
yours--mistakenly labeled the tomb of Ho Chi Minh as the city
zoo. Vietnam's solution: correct all 16,000 copies by hand.
Wouldn't it have been less conspicuous just to change the name of
the national shrine to "Ho Chi Minh Tomb and Zoo" and tether a
goat out front? *Nepal's Crown Prince
Dipendra, despondent because his mother
wouldn't allow him to marry a beautiful Hindu girl, opened fire
in the royal palace and killed both his parents--the king and
queen--as well as six other family members before taking his own
life. Dipendra had spent the weeks leading up to the massacre
drinking heavily in the bars of Katmandu and smoking hash,
telling everyone who would listen that he didn't want to marry
Priyanka Shaha, a member of the ruling Shah clan and a Muslim,
but was in love with Devyani Rana, an Indian beauty who had lost
her first boyfriend in 1989 when he was murdered by a political
opponent of his father. Devyani and Dipendra had been carrying on
a secret romance that began while both attended school in the
city of Dehra Dun, near New Delhi. Meanwhile, the Nepalese
people, with no access to western media, were so frightened by
the massacre that they thought some foreign enemy had wiped out
the royal family. When local newspapers reported that it was
"just a family matter," two editors were thrown in jail! To
better explain the situation to the people, Jeff Foxworthy was
being flown in to explain that redneck behavior is not just a
Southern thing. *The Supreme Court told the state of Texas--for the second
time--that Johnny Paul Penry, a retarded man with the mental age
of a 6-year-old, cannot be executed. The Texas Board of Pardons
and Paroles, which has repeatedly refused to commute Penry's
sentence to life since the Supreme Court first took up his case
12 years ago, announced that they would enroll the convict in
special education classes in the hope of raising his IQ to 70 or
above and making him needle-eligible.
*
A University of Pennsylvania student was driving his truck
through the Sahara Desert in Egypt when he found . . . a 94-
million-year-old dinosaur. The plant-eating "Sauropod" had a long
neck, weighed 60 tons, and may be the second largest land animal
we know of. Scientists already knew about 50-foot-high predators
on the coast of North Africa that lived around the same time, but
they could never figure out where they found enough food to
survive. It turns out that they were eating Sauropods, rare.
Since the area was full of huge prehistoric ferns and mangrove
trees, they also had a salad bar. They used elephants as
croutons.
*
Mysterious pig deaths shut down the Lihir gold mine in Papua
New Guinea. After quite a few pig carcasses turned up, the local
landowners instituted the practice of "gorgor," the traditional
way to shut down a business, demanding that the mining company
explain the porcine carnage. The most likely culprit is poisoned
lead batteries that were lying around on the island, but local
authorities aren't ruling out kosher terrorism.
*As we previously reported, Brigitte Bardot has been
agitating in Bucharest in an effort to save the 300,000 stray
dogs that are roaming the streets and sometimes attacking the
locals (up to 50 biting incidents a day). The latest is that the
French film star has agreed to donate $140,000 over two years for
mass sterilization and adoption programs, and the mayor, Traian
Basescu, has soften his position, agreeing to kill only the most
dangerous dogs, or those that are really really old or terminally
ill. From now on the strays will be taken to a pound and held for
ten days. "We have to convince the people of Bucharest," said
Bardot, "to treat dogs like they treat their children." Many
Romanians responded instantly to the appeal and started beating
the dogs daily.
*
In 1990 McDonald's made a big deal out of switching from
beef fat to vegetable oil for cooking their famous fries. Now two
Hindus and a vegetarian have filed a class action suit saying
those rascals lied and that the fries have beef products added in
the factory. According to the suit, which seeks reparations for
anyone misled by advertising into eating beefy fries, the
McDonald's potato is first washed, then steam-peeled, then cut,
then "blanched," then dried, then "par-fried with flavoring" (and
that flavoring turns out to be BEEF flavoring), then frozen, then
shipped to your local McDonald's where it is dumped into one of
those wire baskets and fried in a vat of scalding vegetable oil.
Among other things, this rather frightening list of food
processing begs the question: Irishmen died for THIS?
*
Archeologists from Peru's San Marcos University unearthed
the oldest known city in the Americas, a 160-acre settlement
dating to 2627 B.C., with six pyramids, an amphitheater, and a
residential complex all built 100 years before the Great Pyramid
of Giza. Three thousand years older than Machu Picchu, the ruins
of Caral are located 120 miles north of Lima. The Peruvian
Congress reacted to the news of yet another possible tourist
mecca by changing the name of the province to--translating
loosely--"Region of Cool Scary Bloody Sacrificial Stuff That's
Older Than Mexico's Coolest Scary Bloody Sacrificial Stuff."
*
Last year the nation of Oman passed a revolutionary law
allowed women to drive taxis--as long as the passengers were
women. Now they've gone one step further, allowing lady cabbies
to accept male passengers as well. Transsexuals, however, are
still required to take the donkey-cart.
*New findings in the Archives of General Psychiatry show that
the brain does not stop maturing at age 20, as previously
believed, but continues developing until age 48. We now know that
the "white matter" of the brain, the part that sends signals from
one part of the brain to another, continues to develop in the
frontal and temporal lobes, whereas the "gray matter," or
cerebral cortex, achieves peak development at the end of
adolescence and then declines. Put more simply, the hard-wiring
is pretty much finished by the time you stop lusting after
Britney Spears, but the ability to get really kinky with
combinations ricochets around in there like a Silly Putty tennis
ball.
*
A fleet of Japanese whaling vessels left for the North
Pacific with plans to kill 160 whales by late July. Their quota:
100 minke whales, 50 Bryde's whales, and 10 sperm whales, which
are listed as endangered under the United States' Endangered
Species Act. Japan insists that the ships are making the trip for
the purposes of scientific research, which frees them from the
ban on commercial whaling. They say they need to study the
feeding patterns of the whales to determine which species need to
be protected, and the only way to that is to harpoon them, cut
them open, study the contents of their stomach, and eventually
use portions of them on "The Iron Chef."
*
The number of single mothers in America increased three
times faster than married couples in the nineties, with a record
13 million women now raising children without a husband. Newly
released census statistics on the state of the American family
also revealed that, of the 54.4 million married men, 47.3 million
are planning to get out while the gettin's good.
*
Seven construction companies, including one from Mexico, are
bidding on the contract for the $60 million "Dracula Land" theme
park, to be built in Transylvania in an attempt by Romania to
draw tourists. The project will include a Dracula Institute,
library, and convention facility, in the hope that the 4,000
Dracula clubs throughout the world will want to meet there.
Transylvania has already seen a rapid rise in tourism in recent
years, and locals around Bran Castle have quickly cashed in,
producing among other things a red wine called Vampire, bottled
in the Dealu Mare south of the Transylvanian Alps. It is, of
course, a blood-red Merlot, and like all Romanian wines, it has a
bite.
*
Those party animals the Taliban decreed that all non-Muslims
in Afghanistan will be required to wear marks on their clothing
to set them apart and make sure the local authorities can check
to see if they're following Islamic law. The snappy new arm-band
ID cards will have a organ donor form on the back so that, in
case of arrest, the offender can have the body part of his choice
hacked off.
*
The executive committee of the NCAA ruled that Mississippi
can no longer host championship tournaments in football,
basketball or any other college sport because the state's
citizens voted to retain the Confederate emblem on their flag. In
other action, the committee decided that they don't much care for
the way Rhode Island is voting on the school-voucher issue
lately, and if Indiana keeps approving those riverboat casinos,
those people might need a little spanking.
*
The yearbook advisor at Boulder High School removed a
picture from the school yearbook because it showed two girls
kissing. In protest, two dozen students held a "Kiss-In," with
same-sex smooching performed for 150 spectators, and now next
year's yearbook editor, Stephen van deer Merit, vows that he'll
have plenty of lesbian liplock on display. The principal said he
supports the advisor's decision to remove the offending photo,
but he hasn't yet ruled on a goth student's request to be
photographed kissing a mummified frog corpse.
*
Republican Congresswoman Marge Roukema of Ridgewood, N.J.,
introduced a resolution condemning the depiction of Italian-
Americans in "The Sopranos," claiming the show amounts to "ethnic
profiling." She cited a report issued by the Italic Studies
Institute claiming that of all the movies made in the U.S. about
Italians or Italian-Americans between 1928 and 2000, 73 per cent
portrayed the group in an ethnic light. Roukema and the institute
both called for a return to simpler, less negative times in the
American entertainment industry, when we had happy feel-good
shows like "Amos and Andy."
*Vigilantes continued to prowl the streets of New Delhi
trying to kill the mysterious "monkey man," variously described
as a wild killer ape, a serial killer wearing a monkey mask, a
four-foot-tall killer with a hairy face and metal claws, and a
snake that changes into monkey form when it attacks. Dozens of
people have been bitten and clawed by the Asian version of
Bigfoot, and at least three people have died by falling to their
death from buildings after being convinced they were being
pursued. Police are offering a reward of $1,063 for capture of
the monkey man, which they believe is not an animal, and so
residents are taking to the streets with hockey sticks and
batons. The mob thought they had caught the guy in a forested
suburb, but he turned out to be a four-foot-tall wandering Hindu
mystic, performing rituals in the woods. He was beaten senseless
by the mob, then handed over to police, and by the time they got
him to the police station, a crowd had gathered, causing a near
stampede. The man's uncle declined comment.
*
Camden, N.J., birthplace of the drive-in, has agreed to turn
over its government to a state-appointed manager who will control
its affairs for the next five years and try to revive its slums
and increase its population, which has declined from 120,000 in
1950 to 80,000 today. In return, the state of New Jersey will
borrow $150 million to rebuild the downtown area and improve
health care, police and fire services. Camden Mayor Gwendolyn A.
Faison is not entirely happy with the deal, but she's going
along. There was no mention of any plan to rebuild the famous
drive-in theater on Admiral Wilson Boulevard erected in 1932 by
gas-station owner Richard Hollingshead, nor was there any effort
made to put a few leaves of grass on the grave of Camden's OTHER
famous resident, Walt Whitman.
*
After a fight that lasted years, the Texas legislature
finally made it illegal to have open alcohol containers in cars
on the open highway. In other baffling legislative moves, the
lawmakers made it a crime to take a "covert video" or picture of
someone for "improper sexual purposes" and passed a "biker civil
rights law" making it illegal to deny service or admission to
people because they operate a motorcycle or wear clothing that
displays the name of a biker gang. In other bad news for rural
Texans, riding in the back of pickups was outlawed for anyone
under the age of 18--UNLESS the pickup is the only vehicle you
own, or you're using it in a hayride, a parade, or driving on the
beach. The good news is that the state will no longer regulate
the owners of exotic wild animals, and the statewide speed limit
will go from 70 to 75. Pickups doing 80 on the interstate with
ten or more children in the back will be sentenced to mandatory
family planning.
*Topps, the Microsoft of sports trading card companies,
announced it would start putting bubble gum in its baseball cards
again after ten years of gumless cards. In 1991 the bubble gum
was taken out of the card packages after collectors complained
that the gum was staining and ruining the cards. But this is the
same company that makes Bazooka bubble gum, and who can live
without that pink gooey taste? The original Topps cards, which
are 50 years old this year, have become such valuable
collectibles that a Mickey Mantle card from 1952 was once sold
for $100,000. It would have been worth $200,000, but someone had
already chewed the gum.
*
The remains of a Confederate sailor were found by divers
excavating the sunken submarine H.L. Hunley off the coast of
Charleston, S.C. The Hunley had disappeared on February 17, 1864,
after becoming the first submarine to sink an enemy warship, the
USS Housatonic. The recovered remains consisted of a belt, bits
of a uniform, and three ribs. Protesters against all symbols of
the Confederacy immediately called for the ribs to be DNA tested
to find out if the dead rebel fathered any black children.
*
Conservative rabblerouser David Horowitz, who publishes the
bimonthly lampoon Heterodoxy, sent an ad to 47 college newspapers
headlined "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea-
-and Racist Too." His basic argument was that white Christians
ended slavery so blacks should thank America for their freedom,
not seek money for ancient crimes. But his real purpose was to
see just how politically correct college campuses are. The
answer: pretty darn PC. Most of the papers refused to run the ad
at all. At Brown University, The Brown Daily Herald was removed
from its newsstands by student protesters. At the University of
Wisconsin, 100 students demanded the resignation of Badger Herald
Editor Julie Bosman. At the University of California, The Daily
Californian ran the ad but then issued a front-page apology for
being "an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry." Harvard, Columbia and
the University of Virginia--all supposed bastions of intellectual
freedom--refused to publish the ad. Virtually no one said, "Hey,
here's a good debate topic." The only thing that could have been
more controversial at those particular universites would have
been an ad headlined "Ten Reasons Why Trust Funds Are a Bad
Idea."
*
Priscilla Sue Galey--a former Washington, D.C., stripper now
working as a streetwalker in Columbus, O., to support her crack
habit--told The Washington Post that FBI-agent-turned-Russian-spy
Robert P. Hanssen gave her $100,000 in jewelry, a Mercedes, a
trip to Hong Kong and cash during 1990 and 1991. Yet he never
once asked for sex and spent most of his time trying to get her
to go to church. Now THAT is kinky.
*"Judy & Liza Live!" premiered at the trendy New York cabaret
Don't Tell Mama, with Tommy Femia impersonating Judy Garland and
his sidekick Christine Pedi doing her daughter. This is, of
course, the first time in recorded history that Liza Minnelli has
been portrayed by a female.
*
A research psychologist from Penn State University released
the largest study of child care ever conducted, and the ten-year
results showed that the longer young children spend in day care
away from their mothers, the more likely they are to be overly
aggressive by the time they reach kindergarten. According to Jay
Belsky, who now teaches at London's Birkbeck College, children
who spend more than 30 hours a week in day care "scored higher on
items like `gets in lots of fights,' `cruelty,' and `explosive
behavior,' as well as `talking too much,' `argues a lot,' and
`demands a lot of attention.'" Researchers found that 17 per cent
of the children who were in care for more than 30 hours per week
were regarded by teachers, mothers and caregivers as being
aggressive toward other children. That compared with 6 per cent
for the group of children in child care for less than 10 hours a
week. The National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development, which funded the study, recommended following the
Bush administration's lead and certifying psychopathic five-year-
olds as adults and then sentencing them to prison without
possibility of parole.
*
A 71-year-old man was arrested at the Miami airport after an
X-ray check of his luggage revealed 61,000 ecstasy tablets. On
his way to jail, the man had to be shackled and cuffed when he
insisted on hugging the arresting officers and refused to stop
dancing.
*USA Network announced a cross-country road race called "The
Real Cannonball Run 2001," to be filmed this August, 20 years
after the Burt Reynolds movie and 30 years after the actual race
that inspired the movie. The five-episode series will track six
teams in souped-up stock cars trying to win a $100,000 prize by
being the first to go coast to coast. Extra points will be
awarded to cars that run over Terry Bradshaw, Mel Tillis or Jerry
Reid.
*In Lake Alfred, Fla., a replica of Michelangelo's David had
to be adorned with a makeshift jockstrap after residents
complained that David's whangdoodle, even in a somewhat limp
condition, was creating embarrassing questions from their
children. The 500-pound five-foot statue stood buck nekkid
outside the Fountain and Falls shop until City Manager Jim Drumm
asked shop manager Chuck Cole to sarong the offending member.
Drumm admitted there are no city codes or statutes banning
sculpture, but asked Cole as a courtesy to thong the schlong. Now
the statue is attracting even more attention, as Cole has wrapped
David's taut thighs in a leopard-print bandana, causing curious
children to unsheath the love glove. *
Tom Green, a husband of five and father of 29, was convicted
in Utah on felony bigamy charges, putting something of a chill on
the 30,000 polygamous families in the state. Green is facing up
to 25 years in prison at a time when almost all "marriage"
crimes--gay marriage, lesbian marriage, multiple-partner common-
law arrangements, "alienation of affection," "abandonment," guys
who keep a mistress on the side--are not prosecuted at all. The
difference in Green's case is that he didn't sneak around or
conceal anything; he just said "Here's my family, I married all
five of these women, and all these children are mine." He's a
member of a splinter sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints that apparently failed to instruct him in the
art of deception. Interestingly, the ACLU--which has often come
to the defense of people persecuted for alternative lifestyles
AND religious beliefs--was nowhere to be seen in this high-
profile case. Those Utah polygamists are just too darn far from
New York, aren't they?
*
Zeta Psi, the Dartmouth College fraternity that inspired the
1978 film "Animal House," was closed down by university
authorities. Their crime? Publishing a newsletter called "Zete-
mouth" that rated women who had sex with fraternity members and
promised "patented date rape techniques" in upcoming issues.
Obviously Dean Wormer still doesn't know the meaning of the word
"satire." And now there can only be one solution: Togaaaaaaaa!
*
Larry Ellison, founder and chief executive of Oracle Corp.
and the nation's second richest person, filed suit against the
San Jose airport for sending him threatening warning letters
every time he lands his Gulfstream V jet between 11:30 p.m. and
6:30 a.m. The curfew was passed in 1984 and applies only to
planes weighing more than 75,000 pounds. When Ellison's tank is
full, it weighs 90,500 pounds, but because of aeronautical
advances since 1984, it's actually quieter than much heavier
planes. Yet the 10,000 neighbors of the airport don't find that
distinction too convincing and they've put pressure on airport
officials to stop Ellison's landings and takeoffs. Unfortunately
for them, the law doesn't have any real penalty beyond warnings--
and Ellison is sick of the warnings. Once the case gets into
federal court, which appears to be where it's headed, the judge
is likely to turn it over to federal regulators, who don't much
care about curfews. Meanwhile, the public is loudly complaining
that Ellison is acting like a billionaire, and as we all know, billionaires have no rights.
*
Emotional ferret owners packed the chambers of the New York
City Council for a debate on whether to legalize ferrets as
household pets. Ferrets have been classified as illegal "wild
animals" since 1959, but after heated debate on such issues as
whether ferrets attack bunny rabbits, whether they can travel
through small holes in walls and bite neighbors, and whether they
would do harm to babies, the council voted 26 to 13 to legalize
the animals, with seven council members abstaining. (Councilman
Noach Dear, an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, voted against ferrets
because they're not kosher.) But it's still too early for the
ferrets to roam free because Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has already
gone on record as saying he'll veto the ferret bill, arguing that
they are wild animals and, just like lions and pythons, are
"naturally inclined to do harm." Where is Marc Singer when you
really need him?
*
The Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau commissioned a
nude statue of the Greek god Poseidon for its front lawn, then
had clothing placed over his privates. After all, any god with a
three-pronged spear who lives at the bottom of the ocean doesn't
need to prove anything. Presumably Poseidon was chosen to promote
the beautiful beaches of central inland California.
*
Scientists discovered that, when the universe was
.000000000000000000000000000000001 of one second old, it created
"energy fluctuations at the quantum scale" that resemble a
harmonic hum, recorded by a microwave detector at the South Pole.
What this means is that the Big Bang had an afterglow and that
the universe is multi-orgasmic, but nothing compared to that
first one.
*
The 26,000-acre Washington State Forest Preserve near Mount
Rainier was closed after a methamphetamine lab was found hidden
among the fir trees. The state Department of Natural Resources
said the preserve would remain closed for several weeks, because
"hazardous chemicals" were spread over a two-ACRE area. The only
person arrested was a 19-year-old Tacoma woman, who was biting
the heads off squirrels and building a house with them.
*
Colorado, the everyone-should-be-nice state, passed
legislation intended to stop bullying by students. The statute
would specify three months of detention for "Hey, Buttface, your
ass is grass!," two months of detention for "I better not see you
on this street after school, Dickweed!," and one month for "Your
mother wears Army boots!"
*
A Texas appeals court told a West Texas lawyer that he could
put a sign back up on his property facing Interstate 20. The
lawyer's billboard said "Just Say NO To Searches!" and gave a
phone number people could call for a recording telling them that
they're not required to let police search their cars during
traffic stops. The police in nearby Abilene complained, and
eventually the Texas Department of Highways prosecuted him for
violation of the Highway Beautification Act, which places
restrictions on roadside signs. He was found guilty and fined
$1200, so in 1999 he burned the sign down to bring attention to
his case. Now the circuit court of appeals says that his message
was protected free speech and the sign can go back up, but Texas
being Texas, the Attorney General is considering his own appeal.
Seeing as how Interstate 20 is one of the longest loneliest
highways in America, and seeing as how West Texas ranchers are
among the most ornery cusses in the world, we hope this starts a
trend that will finally create some visual relief on that endless
prairie. Suggested messages include "Just Say NO To the Pope,"
"China Can Kiss My Royal Red Hiney," and "Bald Eagles Kill
Hundreds of Calves a Year--Let's Shoot 'Em!"
*
After a two-year investigation by Gregory L. Vistica of
Newsweek, former Senator Bob Kerrey admitted leading a Navy Seals
mission in Vietnam that killed 13 to 20 unarmed civilians,
including women and children. Kerrey is now president of New
School University, historically the most liberal school in New
York City, a hotbed of anti-war protest in the sixties, and an
institution that has included actual Communists on its faculty.
As Ho Chi Minh once put it, "Holy shit."
*
The county commissioners of Montgomery County, Texas,
ordered the installation of filters on every public-access
computer in the library system, even though the library policy
prohibited Internet use by minors without parental permission, so
they were essentially making it clear that they didn't want
ANYBODY, even the 97-year-old perverts, looking at any Ecuadoran
porno. Is it our imagination or is the Internet just scaring the
holy crapola out of everybody?
*
Missouri State Representative Sam Gaskill introduced a bill
that would authorize the use of force against someone who burns a
flag. This would give police officers greater flexibility in
enforcement: they could choose whether to stomp out the fire, or
stomp a head.
*
When a fight broke out at a skating rink in Iberia Parish,
La., police claimed it was caused by the rabble-rousing music
being played over the P.A. system. So officers confiscated CDs as
"evidence of a crime," including "The Hokey Pokey," "Jingle
Bells," "The Bossa Nova," and the soundtrack from Disney's
"Tarzan." We know which song we can blame it on, don't we?
The coal mining town of Pound, Va., has outlawed dancing,
but Bill Elam, the owner of the Golden Pines restaurant, is
defying the Town Council and the local Church of Christ by
keeping his parquet polished and his deejays rocking. Presumably
they kick off each set with the theme from "Footloose."
*
After coming under fire in 1995 for using sweatshop labor in
Central America, The Gap vowed to do better in the future. Since
then wages for garment workers in San Salvador have risen from 55
cents an hour to 60 cents an hour, which is almost a full penny
per year. Future increases aren't expected, however, as the
Salvadoran women have apparently run up massive credit card debt
with their windfall "mad money."
*
The Standard Oil Trust was the largest, most vicious
monopoly in the nation's history when it was finally dismantled a
hundred years ago and broken up into four companies that were
legally forbidden from ever combining again. One of those
companies, Standard Oil of Ohio, eventually became Exxon. Another
of those companies eventually became Mobil. Last week the company
listed by Fortune Magazine as the largest in the nation, at $210
billion in revenue, was . . . Exxon Mobil. Whoops! We forgot!
*
Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in
Baltimore discovered that sometime within the last 11 billion
years, a mysterious "dark energy" began to take over the
universe, and now it's believed that the cosmos consists of 65
per cent "dark matter," 30 per cent "dark matter of unknown
nature," and 5 per cent stars, gas and dust. (That would be our
part.) "We live in a preposterous universe," concluded Dr.
Michael Turner of the University of Chicago. A younger colleague
from San Francisco summed up by saying, "Goth rules, man."
*
The annual Bayreuth Festival, founded by Richard Wagner in
1876, has been directed for the past 49 years by Wolfgang Wagner,
grandson of the composer, but the foundation overseeing the
festival decided to terminate his lifetime contract--even though
he's still alive and feisty at age 81. Apparently they've chosen
a new Wagner, 55-year-old Eva Wagner-Pasquier, who is Wolfgang
Wagner's estranged daughter by his first wife. Wolfgang Wagner
says that, if he leaves, he wants the job to go instead to his
second wife, Gudrun Wagner, who is 56. Meanwhile, a fourth
Wagner, Nike Wagner, says that neither Eva Wagner-Pasquier nor
Gudrun Wagner should get the job, and that she is not only the
niece of Wolfgang Wagner but an eminently qualified art and music
critic who would be able to modernize the festival, and to
accomplish her ends she's publishing manifestos in the daily
newspaper Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung and forming a political
alliance with the manager of the Berlin Philharmonic, Elmar
Weingarten, who fortunately is not a Wagner. Everyone thinks that
the 24 members of the Bayreuth foundation, which includes several
more Wagners, wouldn't be in this mess if only Wieland Wagner,
Wolfgang Wagner's brother, hadn't died prematurely in 1966. But
that's Wagner under the bridge.
*
Caesars Palace signed Celine Dion to a three-year contract
promising at least 600 performances in a new $65 million
amphitheater that will resemble the Roman Colosseum. (The stage
alone is 22,000 square feet--larger than some casinos.) The
world's best-selling female artist will create a show in
partnership with Franco Dragone, who created all three Cirque du
Soleil shows in Vegas, and Dion's husband-manager, Rene Angelil,
will count the money and change diapers.
*
A middle school in Siberia has a new plan for dealing with
children who misbehave. If the problem can't be solved after
monthly conversations with the local Commission for Children and
Adolescents, businesses have agreed to release the child's father
from work so that he can attend school with his child. The idea
is that teachers will be left alone to teach, and Dad will be
free to administer corporal punishment if he thinks it's needed.
The idea probably wouldn't work in America, because in 13 million
homes Dad is . . . Rosie O'Donnell.
*
In Northern Ireland, line-dancing was officially banned by
the Free Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterians have always been
opposed to NORMAL dancing, but line-dancing has become
increasingly popular at Protestant weddings. Now the Rev. Ian
Paisley has officially denounced it, saying line-dancing "sullies
the sanctity of the ceremony" and that it's "aiding and abetting
fleshly lusts which war against the soul." All Free Presbyterian
ministers have taken a vow "to denounce dancing, drinking,
gambling and the crazes of the present evil world, some of which
line-dancing is very much a part." It's too bad the Rev. Paisley
never watched The Nashville Network, because once you've seen
THOSE thighs in THOSE jeans doing THAT kind of dancing, fleshly
lusts tend to wither away altogether.
*
Wal-Mart announced that it is going into the wine business,
teaming up with Gallo Winery of Modesto, Calif., to produce an
affordable ($6 to $8) bottle of vino for the masses. The
principal red varietal will be a charming little number called
Arkansas Beaujolais, made of muscatel and just a hint of wood
alcohol, while white-wine lovers will enjoy Chardonnay Pea Ridge,
with an aroma of the woolly muskrat competing fiercely for
prominence with the underappreciated wild Ozark smudgepot grape.
*
A 47-car freight train left Toledo while no one was aboard
and travelled 70 miles on its own. CSX engineers chased it with
an engine and attached the engine to the rear of the train to
slow it to ten miles per hour near Kenton, O., so that engineer
Jon Hosfeld could jump on and stop it. Amtrak passengers, still
waiting for their Toledo connections, asked that the runaway
train be added to the daily Amtrak schedule, preferably with no
humans attached.
*
William Hanna--creator with his partner Joseph Barbera of
"Tom and Jerry," "The Flintstones," "The Jetsons," "Yogi Bear"
and many other animated shows--died in North Hollywood at the age
of 90, so it's okay now to forgive him for "Huckleberry Hound."
*
Paul McCartney claims that Yoko Ono got rich off his song
"Yesterday," even though he was the sole author. At the time of
its writing, McCartney had a business agreement to claim all song
authorship as "Lennon-McCartney." But McCartney loved "Yesterday"
so much he went to Yoko and begged her to allow a solo credit.
She refused. "At one point Yoko earned more from 'Yesterday' than
I did," McCartney told the Radio Times. "It doesn't compute,
especially when it's the only song that none of the Beatles had
anything to do with. I asked as a favor if I could have my name
before John's on the 'Anthology' credits for 'Yesterday,' and
Yoko refused." Obviously she needed the money for all the acrylic
snot she wanted to hang in art galleries.
*
The owners of the sacred slopes of Aspen Mountain lifted all
bans on snowboards April 1, resulting in mass hysteria, protests,
letters-to-the-editor ("The only good snowboarder is a dead
snowboarder"), and dire predictions that it would only be a
matter of time before a buzzcut boogie-boarder killed a grandpa
from Chicago. It is now legal to snowboard on all Colorado
mountains, and the only snowboard bans remaining are in Taos, New
Mexico; Mad River Glen, Vermont; Deer Valley, Utah; and Alta,
Utah. Owners of nearby Snowmass, Colorado, also have a ban on
Norwegian mogul-humpers.
*
When Pete Simmons, Director of Space Astronomy at the
Grumman Corporation, first pitched the Hubble space telescope to
the Congressional subcommittee that oversees NASA funding, he was
turned away and told that it was not a priority with the "average
person on the street." His solution? He called the publisher of
DC Comics and asked him if Superman might be interested. In the
December 1972 issue of "Superman," Clark Kent reported on the
space telescope of the future and Superman volunteered to help
position it in the sky. Simmons returned to Congress with 500
copies of the comic book, proving the telescope was "part of the
popular, man-on-the-street culture," and within two weeks the
funds were allocated. Bill Clinton later used a similar technique
when he called the producer of "Beavis and Butthead" and
suggested an episode on "busty babes who put out."
*
Marco Arellano, 34, was arrested for spraying a "foul
liquid" onto New York salad bars out of a plastic bottle. Judging
by the odor, witnesses said the liquid was probably urine and
feces. Police say that there have been a dozen such incidents and
that Arellano is a suspect in all of them. Meanwhile,
delicatessen owners have temporarily removed lasagna, pasta salad
with black olives, and lemon meringue pie from their buffets.
*
Jason Miller, who played Father Damien in "The Exorcist" and
"Exorcist III," died of a massive heart attack in Scranton, Pa.,
after a long battle with the bottle. Miller won the Pulitzer
Prize for his one great achievement, "That Championship Season,"
a play about men that have one great moment of glory but pay for
it their whole lives with the guilty secret of how they achieved
it. Miller never stopped tumbling down those stairs in
Georgetown.
*
Perry Como--the man whose songs had to be withdrawn from
Muzak rotation because they were putting shoppers to sleep--died
at age 88. In his sleep. And now, in his honor, we present the
title to one of those songs that, once you think of it, you can't
get it out of your head and you go around singing and humming it
all day until your relatives assault you. Perry would have wanted
it that way:
"Catch a Falling Star."
Here, we'll get you started: "Catch a falling star and put
it in your pocket, save it for a rainy daaaaaaay."
* The XFL x-pired of x-cess.
*
A driver in Los Angeles typically spends 56 hours a year
totally motionless in traffic, according to a study by the Texas
Transportation Institute at Texas A&M. The statistic is not as
bad as it seems, since the typical resident of Los Angeles spends
184 hours a year totally motionless in his living room.
*
Both eBay and Yahoo Auctions have banned the sale of all
memorabilia with Nazi insignia on their sites, angering amateur
historians--many of them World War II soldiers--who have
collected helmets, uniforms and medals for six decades. Wasn't it
the early nineties when the Internet was being touted as the
world's first uncensored marketplace, where the press was finally
free to every man, and where every idea could have its place? How
quaint.
*
The thoroughbred racing industry is losing millions of
dollars as pregnant mares have mysterious miscarriages all over
Kentucky. It's estimated that as many as 3,000 stillborn foals or
early spontaneous abortions will occur this year, raising
suspicions that there is a fungus alive in the state's bluegrass.
Even more ominous are theories put forth by the University of
Kentucky Equine Research Center, where veterinarians speculate
that the mares have grown tired of being pregnant for 11 months
every year and have gained clandestine access to the morning-
after pill.
*
The United States announced plans to exterminate the nutria,
a huge South American rodent that was introduced by fur hucksters
as "the mink of tomorrow" in the thirties but now destroys about
1 million acres of wildlife refuge a year. Among government plans
are to popularize nutria meat in restaurants by using recipes
invented by Cajuns in Louisiana who have been trapping the
animals since 1940. According to a cookbook published by the
state of Louisiana, the nutria tastes like "a cross between dark
turkey meat and rabbit," but is delicious when served in dishes
like fettuccine with poached nutria, nutria salad and nutria a
l'orange. Unfortunately, the nutria's rat-like appearance and
giant orange teeth tend to put a damper on the appetite, so the
latest efforts tend more toward smashing the little critters over
the head with a sledgehammer.
*
In 1993 Los Angeles police arrested 26-year-old Kerry
Sanders on the basis of a New York warrant for a 26-year-old drug
dealer named Robert Sanders. Kerry Sanders, who was mentally ill
and homeless, repeatedly told authorities his name was Kerry, not
Robert, and renewed his appeals when sent to New York and
eventually to a maximum security prison in Stormville, N.Y. Back
in South Central L.A., Kerry's mother spent two years
interviewing shopkeepers, homeless people and gang members in a
search for her son. She never found him, but in 1995 the real
Robert Sanders was arrested in Cleveland. Meanwhile, a
psychiatrist assigned to Kerry Sanders in prison says that
Sanders spent most of his sessions asking "Why am I here?" The
psychiatrist's advice: write a letter to the superintendent. The
state of New York has now agreed to pay $3.25 million to Kerry
Sanders and his mother. They could have avoided that payment by
using a new high-tech criminal identification apparatus called a
fingerprint kit.
*
NASA unveiled its new X-43A hypersonic plane, which will fly
seven to ten times the speed of sound, or up to 7500 miles an
hour. That would get you from New York to Los Angeles in about 24
minutes. Baggage delivery will still require two days.
*
Blowing up dead cows with explosives has been banned in the
Austrian province of Vorarlberg because the practice was hurting
tourism. Because of the rugged mountainous terrain, any cow that
dies must be either lifted out by helicopter--at a cost of $950--
or blown up--at a cost of $32 per exploded bovine--in order to
prevent groundwater contamination. Austrian officials obviously
don't realize that many Americans would book tickets to witness
exploding livestock, if for no other reason than the Internet
photo-posting opportunities.
*
Uday Saddam Hussein, eldest son of the Iraqi leader, has
always been a chip off the old block, shooting people, knifing to
death anyone who crosses him, ordering executions, amputating the
hands of people who shame the country. When the Iraqi national
soccer team lost an important match, he put them in prison to
improve their play. But now Dad is raising his eyebrows, because
Uday seems to have gone insane. Through his youth TV network and
an FM radio station, both using pirated material, he's imported
American rock-and-roll to Baghdad. Deejays and veejays will soon
learn the true meaning of "shock radio."
*
The longest flight in commercial airline history--8,439
miles--began daily non-stop service between Hong Kong and New
York's Kennedy Airport. United Airlines Flight 821 goes over the
North Pole and a big chunk of Russia in 15 hours, 40 minutes,
carrying 57,000 gallons of fuel, which is almost the weight of
the plane itself. It also carries 7,000 pounds of food and
drinks, 6,500 pounds of service equipment, and 2,700 pounds of
water. Special first-class seats convert into beds. Coach
passengers get three first-run movies. The meals, however, still
suck.
*
Pillars, arches, gold stars, eagles, wreaths, giant
fountains--all will be part of the $100 million World War II
Memorial on the Mall in Washington, a throwback to the grandiose
public monuments of a hundred years ago. No ambiguity here. No
sly irony. No weirdness. No modern art. In fact, the design by
Friedrich St. Florian is most reminiscent of the work of . . .
Albert Speer, master-builder of Der Fuhrer himself. Sometimes
irony comes in a form so bizarre it doesn't even register on the
radar screen.
*
The new Boeing 747X can fly up to 18 hours without
refueling, but somebody will still try to cram his entire luggage
collection into your overhead bin so he can save ten minutes at
baggage claim.
*
The Czech beer Budweiser has given up its efforts to win the
use of its name back in America, even though it's brewed in the
town of Budweiser in the southern Czech Republic and has been
made there far longer than Anheuser-Busch has brewed a Budweiser
brand in America. After years of fighting over its trademark in
international courts, the Czechs are giving up and entering the
American market with a beer they're calling Czechvar. If they're
smart, the ad campaign will be "Czechvar--the beer that made
Budweiser famous."
*
The first Chinese boy band--sponsored by the state-run China
Radio International--premiered its hip-hop rap act at Workers
Stadium in Beijing, with ten hand-picked teenagers performing in
silver car coats, baggy pants and Nikes. They copied the best
aspects of American rap and Korean hip-hop, adding a few
traditional Chinese flourishes (like a song celebrating Beijing's
bid to host the 2008 Olympics), but they obviously had bad advice
in one area. The name of the band: TNT.
*
Michael D. Eisner, chairman of the Walt Disney Company,
announced he would fire 4,000 people worldwide--the biggest
layoffs in the company's history--and then the same day told Wall
Street that he could now easily meet his growth projections for
the coming year. The price of the stock went up, of course, so
all the fired Mousketeers sent flowers to Mickey and dog biscuits
to Goofy and died like the little cartoon troupers that they are,
stiff on the ground with a wilting flower on their collective
chests. As Walt himself once said, "I create a world of wonder
for the young, a world of fantasy for the young at heart, and a
world of science fiction for the mutual fund managers."
*
President Bush declared that we need more nukes and that the
Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 no longer applies to us,
because it's . . . uh . . . old.
*
Calvin Baker, charged with selling $10 of heroin in Harlem,
spent 15 months in jail awaiting trial because he was unable to
post $2500 bail. On March 29 a jury failed to agree on a verdict
and Judge Marcy L. Kahn declared a mistrial. One of the jurors,
appalled that the man had spent so much time awaiting trial, then
posted the $2500 for him. Baker was released, but ten days later
Justice Bonnie B. Wittner ordered another bail hearing, rejected
the juror's posting, gave her the money back, and raised the bail
amount to $10,000. At that point a senior managing director at
Bear Stearns & Company heard about the case, thought Baker was
being railroaded, and agreed to put up $6,500 of the bail money,
with the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice putting
up the remaining $3,500. Rather than letting him go, yet another
bail hearing was ordered, and once again the bail money was
rejected, with Justice Wittner saying that she wouldn't allow
"strangers" to post bail for someone. (What's a bail bondsman? A
close personal friend?) As Baker was led away in handcuffs, he
yelled a profanity. Justice Wittner ordered that the profane word
be entered into the record. Can you say "Midnight Express"?
*
For the first time in its 54-year history, the United States
was voted off the United Nations Human Rights Commission, mostly
because the U.S. has refused to pay its UN dues and shown
indifference to most international treaties. The three western
seats on the commission were taken by France, Austria and Sweden,
and even Sudan and Pakistan--countries targeted by the commission
in the past for human-rights abuses--were voted in. President
Bush, who has yet to even officially name a UN ambassador, had
nothing to say about the vote, and increasingly it appears that
members of the UN are prepared to make the conservative Congress
happy and just move the whole kit and kaboodle out of New York to
someplace like Geneva where the business of the UN would be taken
more seriously. In other words, Nero is getting his fiddle out of
the case.
*
Turkey agreed to abolish the death penalty, as a condition
of joining the European Union. There are only a few backward and
barbaric countries--most with either Muslim or Communist
governments--that continue the barbaric practice of state-
sponsored executions.
*
Presidential daughter Jenna Bush was cited for underage
drinking at a bar in Austin, where the 19-year-old attends the
University of Texas. Early reports were that a frat guy was
trying to get her drunk and score some Washington Wizards
tickets.
*
Essex County, N.J., refused to allow "The Sopranos" to shoot
on county-owned property, because County Executive James
Treffinger and Sheriff Armando Fortunato believe the HBO series
is derogatory in its portrayal of Italian-Americans. What a bunch
of wops.
*
Congress ordered schools and public libraries that
participate in federal programs to install software that blocks
access to "inappropriate" websites. Overworked librarians
throughout the country thanked the lawmakers for being so
specific: one f-word seen by a 13-year-old now threatens all
federal money given to libraries, regardless of whether the
computers were bought with government money or not. The first
websites to be banned were www.congresssucks.com and www.eatme.org.
*
Janet Jackson says she is obsessed with sex and intends to
devote her new album to the subject, especially on the song
"Would You Mind," in which she graphically describes performing
an X-rated sex act. "I have sex in my head all the time," she
told a German magazine, and says that she must have gotten her
sex drive from her parents. "They had nine children," she
explains. "They must have been at it like rabbits." Interesting
logic--if extended to Janet, who has no children, it would mean
she has the sex drive of a snail. It means they had sex at least
nine times, dear.
*
In separate interviews, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda revealed
that what split them up was her decision to become a Christian.
Ted says she just came home one day and announced she was a
Christian, with no prior warning. Jane admits she didn't discuss
it with her husband, because "he would have talked me out of it."
Presumably an argument ensued, with Ted screaming "So THAT'S what
you were doing on all those Sunday mornings when you said you
were working early!"
*
Wild rhesus monkeys in New Delhi have rifled through files
full of top-secret documents, snapped computer cables, attacked
visiting ambassadors, stolen whiskey from alcohol vendors,
disabled power supplies, and killed a man by dropping a flower
pot on his head. The Indian government, fed up with the 10,000
monkeys that have taken up residence in the government
headquarters area of the city, have now bought several extremely
ferocious langur monkeys, which are known to attack rhesus
monkeys on sight, and sent them on daily "patrols." The only
other solution--hunting or transporting the troublesome monkeys--
is impossible, because they are the incarnation of the monkey god
Hanuman. So just what is Hanuman trying to tell us here? In
America it would have something to do with the Federal Paperwork
Reduction Act.
* Dennis Tito became the first space tourist by paying $20
million to the Russian Aviation and Space Agency in return for
being booked on a 10-day flight on a Soyuz spacecraft. The 60-
year-old American financial consultant went through eight months
of training and was praised by his Russian comrades for his
dedication to learning how to use the technology. His only
requests--to bring along his sweater-clad chihuahua and to play
Lawrence Welk CD's en route to space--were denied.
*
Mississippi voters overwhelmingly rejected a referendum to
get rid of their state flag--which includes a Confederate battle
emblem--and made South Carolina look like a bunch of wimps.
*
South Korean President Kim Dae Jung met with President Bush
to tell him that he thinks North Korea's opening up to the
outside world is a good thing and that he intends to sign a peace
"declaration" with North Korean president Kim Jong Il. Bush
replied that in his opinion that was the wrong thing to do,
because North Korea was a threat, not to be trusted, and that
they were probably rearming and planning a massive Communist
assault on the 37,000 American troops in the south. Of course,
native Texan George W. Bush probably knows more about it than
native Korean Kim Dae Jung. Bush was once named "Jaycee of the
Year" in Midland, Texas. All Kim ever won was the Nobel Peace
Prize.
*
Christian fundamentalists announced that they would mail an
83-minute video on the life and teachings of Jesus to every
address in Texas--some 8.5 million homes. The Jesus Video Project
warmed up for the mass mailing by spreading 2 million Video Jesi
around Alabama and Florida, resulting in record low prices at the
discount bins of Half Price Books. Half Price is now paying 75
cents to every customer who will agree to take home a tape, with
the payout expected to go higher as the B-movie J-Man invades
pagan Austin.
*
The big Las Vegas casinos are pushing a bill through the
Nevada legislature that would allow them to create "whale
habitats" for their high-rollers--private gaming salons where the
public is not allowed. Current law says that all Nevada gambling
must be "open and accessible," which means that if you want to go
into the high-roller area and gawk at the marble blackjack
tables, crystal stemware, and hostesses in evening gowns, then
you can--although a big burly guy will probably give you the evil
eye and no waitress will bring you a drink. The casinos think
this law is way too democratic, and that during this year's
Chinese New Year--the biggest gambling week of the year--they
lost "whales" to Asian and Australian casinos which have no
problem closing the doors and bringing the gambler anything he
wants. Since there are only about 750 whales in the world, and
since two-thirds of them are Asian, the legislature is likely to
go along with it. Get those harpoons ready. Ho Chi Dick is
spouting.
*
Ted David, an anchorman on CNBC's "Market Watch," was quoted
in The New York Times as telling his viewers, "I know some of you
folks don't like to hear when we say this is a bear-market
situation. But we have to do that because that is reporting the
news. And if you don't like the news, we certainly understand. We
are with you. We want to see you make money, not lose money.
Believe me on that." Apparently CNBC was trying to get touchy-
feely and soothe the feelings of their viewers, who were
depressed by the recent market downturn. To which we say: Listen
up, Ted. Econ 101. For every buyer there is a seller. Some of
those viewers LIKE the bear market. They make money when other
people LOSE money. It's not something YOU can control. It's
called "capitalism." Now buy a teddy bear and don't let that
happen again.
*
A New York Criminal Court judge ruled that three-card monte
is not gambling, but a game of skill. Emmanuel Mohammed was
arrested for playing three-card monte on the street, but the
judge ordered charges dismissed, even though a 1999 city
ordinance bans the game, because he wasn't gambling. Although
it's hard to believe that any New Yorker doesn't understand
three-card monte, it would appear that Emmanuel Mohammed found
the only judge who doesn't. The game is played with shills who
can be seen winning or clumsily losing, until a mark decides to
join in. Then the rules are altered so that, in the unlikely
event that the mark selects the proper card, he has failed to
"call" the card, so he loses his money anyway. Properly
understood, it IS a game of skill. Perhaps the oldest skill.
*
For the first time in history, more women than men will
attend law schools this fall, meaning that they not only will
remember every time a man has forgotten their birthdays, but
they'll have the resources to see that he gets a life term.
*
Fruit of the Loom is suing its competitor in the cutthroat
underwear business, Gildan Activewear, for stealing trade
secrets. The briefs are expected to be messy.
*
Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, creator of the immortal Rat Fink, died
in Utah at the age of 69. The original gonzo hot-rodder was the
Dale Earnhardt for nerds.
*
Marvelous Marion Barry, the former coke-sniffing mayor of
D.C., was back in the news when he was sentenced to a year of
probation for indecent exposure. Barry had walked up to a urinal
in a men's room at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport
while a woman was cleaning the floor. She told him he'd have to
wait, but Barry had just had prostate surgery and couldn't hold
it, so he used the urinal anyway. The lady janitor not only
pressed charges, but sued him for $300,000. Presumably the ex-
mayor could have done the civilized thing and simply relieved
himself within the confines of his own pants and thereby escaped
criminal prosecution.
*
Robert Downey Jr. was arrested for using drugs in the back
seat of a patrol car on his way to jail on an arrest warrant for
a prior drug arrest just three days before his sentencing hearing
for a drug offense. While being fingerprinted, he managed to
snort two grams of cocaine, then asked two prostitutes if they
wanted to party on his way to his cell. Visited in jail by his
agent, he was told of his firing from "Ally McBeal" and requested
a rehab center recommended by his dealer. Taken before a judge,
he was contrite, asking to be sent to San Quentin, where he heard
they have really good drugs.
*
After 1700 episodes, Fred Rogers taped the final "Mister
Rogers' Neighborhood" at WQED in Pittsburgh. When the lights
dimmed on the last show, the 73-year-old icon of children's
television slipped off his blue sneakers, removed his zippered
cardigan, and said, "Fuck, yes. Booty call."
*
Jay Leno called New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani a "fascist"
because of the mayor's campaign against "indecency" in art
museums. Giuliani called the remark "disappointing," but Leno
refused additional comment. Giuliani has a knack for angering
talk-show hosts, having previously tangled with Rosie O'Donnell,
but a spokesperson for O'Donnell said that Leno was out of line
and that "crypto-fascist" would have been more appropriate.
Montel Williams added, "Would that be like Mussolini or more like
David Duke?" Meanwhile, New York police showed up in force at the
annual Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue, prepared to confiscate lewd
bonnets if necessary.
*
Trivia question: Where do the Baltimore Ravens play?
Answer: PSINet Stadium.
Followup trivia question: PSINet--isn't that the almost
bankrupt company whose stock has fallen 99 per cent in the past
year?
Answer: Yes it is.
Followup to the followup trivia question: When will the
PSINet signs be coming down?
Answer: They won't. Even though the company has $3.6 billion
in debt, its management is determined to honor the contract for
$105.5 million, or $5 million a year for the next twenty years,
to remain the standard-bearer of the Ravens.
It's that old Harvard Business School analogy: You're
trailing the other team 48 to 6. There are two minutes left in
the fourth quarter, and you have fourth down and 36 yards to go
from your own two yard line. What's the correct call?
Answer: Statue-of-Liberty Fake Punt Hail Mary. Everyone
knows that.
*
Chief Illiniwek--dressed in buckskin, warpaint and a turkey-
feather headdress--has danced at the halftime of University of
Illinois football games for 75 years, but for the past ten years
he's been assaulted more or less constantly with protests from
organizations claiming he's racist. Even after the U.S.
Department of Education ruled in 1995 that a mascot does not
constitute discrimination, the demands for his scalp continued,
with stadium fans booing, hissing and, most insulting, refusing
to return the solemn Illini "salute." Finally the university's
Board of Trustees paid for a 14-month study that solicited 18,000
opinions via email and letters. The result: overwhelming support
for the chief. But rather than signing a peace treaty with the
beleaguered student who actually volunteers for this abuse year
after year, the Trustees then called for "further study"! Only
one alternative remains: mandatory screenings of "A Man Called
Horse" for all university officials.
*
In Kansas biology classes, Darwinism is now being challenged
by a group of academics, creationists, and believers in
extraterrestrial life who say that the complexity of the earth's
plants and animals indicates an "intelligent designer" had to be
involved. The "intelligent design" theory makes exceptions,
however, for the Ecuadoran sand monkey, the Congolese canopy
orchid, and Carrot Top.
*
The lights went out at Spago, the restaurant where there was
always a table available for a movie star and rarely a table
available for anyone else, and where Wolfgang Puck established
himself as the best dang Austrian chef west of the Sierra
Nevadas. Among the closing-night guests were Warren Beatty, Aaron
Spelling, Louis Jourdan, Carroll O'Connor, Jacqueline Bisset,
Sidney Poitier, Sydney Pollack, Norman Jewison, Mitzi Gaynor, and
Milton Berle, who was carded at the door because his ID had
maxxed out like an odometer and started over at zero.
*
Jennifer Lopez walked into the Christian Dior boutique on
ritzy 57th Street in New York, rifled through some handbags, and
said "Don't you have anything better than this?" When a
saleswoman turned to talk to another customer, Jennifer said,
"Excuse me, I'm Jennifer Lopez," to get the clerk's attention.
When she finally left, the sales staff celebrated. But of course
this is the same diva who had an assistant go through a Los
Angeles radio station in advance of her appearance there,
spraying Tuberose perfume in the hallway and room where she was
to be interviewed. According to the New York Post, she also
ordered that no one at the station was allowed to make eye
contact with her. After all, she needs to save her eye time for
the work she does with starving Eritrean orphans.
*
Kobe, the basketball shoe that looks like an Audi TT because
it was designed by the same man who designed the Audi TT, was
recalled by Firestone.
*
The Turkish lira plunged again, and now a dollar is worth
one million lira. Normally this would make Turkey a great bargain
destination for tourists, but all Turkish hotels and airlines
simply announced that their prices would be posted in dollars
instead of in their native currency, leaving values at the same
level as last year. For Turkish tourists travelling to America,
however, all airlines and hotels will now post prices in goats.
*
Researchers at the University of Arizona found that 62 per
cent of all deaths in wilderness areas involved the use of
alcohol or drugs, leading to a special health bulletin: Don't
drink and rappel.
*
The Boeing Company announced it would move out of Seattle
after 86 years there. Seattle's Go-Away-Leave-Us-Alone-Don't-
Move-Here-No-Growth Movement celebrated with extra latte.
*
There are 358 mountain gorillas living in Volcano National
Park, Rwanda, up from 324 in 1989, indicating that they've been
having enough sex to survive all kinds of wars, poachers, tourism
and nearby refugee camps. Vigilant park rangers, who monitor the
gorillas daily and speak to them by making ape sounds, said the
animals appear to be happy and that three of the males recently
requested leather blindfolds and oversized wrist cuffs.
*
A 3.5-million-year-old skull was found on the western side
of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, and it's unlike any human
ancestor ever seen before. Its flattened face and small molars
gained it the name Kenyanthropus platyops, or Flat-Faced Man of
Kenya, and now scientists must determine whether we descended
from this guy, or from the famous "Lucy" skeleton, discovered in
1974. Since both existed at the same time, and since they're
different species, they can't both be human ancestors. One
theory: human descended from Lucy, and creationists descended
from Flat-Faced Man of Kenya.
*
Yasser Arafat's neurologist disclosed that Arafat is
suffering from anxiety. After examining the PLO leader, Dr.
Ashraf al-Kurdi of Amman, Jordan, prescribed Valium and suggested
he cut down on workplace stress.
*
Hundreds of Indonesians are vowing to use "holy murder" to
keep Muslim President Abdurrahman Wahid in power. The lawmaking
body of Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's largest Muslim group,
voted to declare Islamic law, approving the killing of people
involved in "bughot," an Arabic term meaning unholy rebellion.
Their interpretation of what constitutes "bughot" includes any
rival politician attempting to throw Wahid out of office before
his term ends in 2004. And to show how serious they are, hundreds
of NU members signed up for suicide squads called the Brave
Movement to Die Defending Gus Dur (Wahid). First battle line:
Surabaya, East Java's provincial capital, where 500 joined a
volunteer force vowing to fight to the death if anyone acts
against Wahid. Many of the world's leaders condemned the
introduction of murder into the Indonesian election process, and
Ralph Nader called for the formation of a Green Party to refocus
the country on consumer issues and health-care reform.
*
Scientists at UC San Diego's new Center for Medicinal
Cannabis Research began experiments to determine whether
marijuana has medical benefits for the treatment of pain and
controlling spasms. Unfortunately, after the first week of
experimentation, all the researchers had forgotten to write down
the results.
*
Robert Merlin Spangler of Grand Junction, Colo., confessed
to killing his third wife by pushing her into the Grand Canyon in
1993. While he was in a talkative mood, he went on to say he'd
also killed his first wife and their two teenage children in 1978
while living in suburban Denver. An Arizona judge sentenced
Spangler to life in prison before he had time to mention his
second wife.
*
A 62-year-old man in Pleasant Gap, Pa., was found guilty of
indecent exposure for gardening in the nude. His defense was that
he'd been doing the same thing for years, and only at night, but
the judge showed no mercy after hearing testimony from a 15-year-
old girl who said she was offended, even without evidence that
the man was fertilizing at the time.
*
President Bush asked Congress to remove part of the
Endangered Species Act that allows citizens' groups to file
lawsuits that protect plants and animals threatened with
extinction. He said he wants a year moratorium on all these pesky
lawsuits, forcing the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect
spotted owls and swallow-tailed fly-catchers, and at the end of
that year perhaps the federal agencies will be able to catch up
with the backlog and do their jobs better. Besides, just think
how many less species we'll have to deal with.
*
"Meatless corn dogs" sold by a subsidiary of the Kellogg Co.
were recalled after it was discovered that they contained
genetically engineered corn that isn't approved for human
consumption. The vegetarian-corn-dog scandal was uncovered by
Greenpeace, which conducted tests that detected StarLink corn in
corn dogs sold at a Baltimore Safeway. Most vegetarian corn dogs
are sold, of course, only in health food stores located in
Appalachia, Bakersfield, and Sallisaw, Oklahoma.
*
The CBS show "Survivor" sued the Fox show "Boot Camp,"
alleging that the format was so similar that it amounted to
"theft of intellectual property." The court is expected to rule
that the claim is rendered moot by the use of the word
"intellectual."
*
The Netherlands legalized euthanasia. Other Northern
European countries were expected to follow suit. Denmark, Belgium
and Luxembourg all voted to euthanize Finland.
*
The Vatican revealed that nuns have been forced to have sex
with priests in 23 countries, including the United States,
Brazil, the Philippines, India, Ireland and Italy--but by far the
most cases have occurred in Africa. In one diocese 29 nuns became
pregnant at the same time. Even more shocking, Vivid Video in Van
Nuys, Calif., offered the priest a contract.
*
More than 100 giant dinosaur footprints were discovered in
the Gansu province of northwest China, indicating the biggest
dinosaurs in history lived 100 million years ago on the shore of
a lake in Yongjing county. One of the late Jurassic prints was
four feet long and three feet wide, but Chinese archeologists
were even more intrigued by the fact that the foot was apparently
extended and tensed in what is obviously a kung fu fighting
position, leading to the Cretaceous Death Match theory of
dinosaur extinction.
*
Italy's minister of the environment threatened to cut off
power to the Vatican's radio station unless the Catholic high
sheriffs upgrade their transmitters and stop putting out so much
cancer-causing electromagnetic radiation. A spokesman responded
that the Vatican is a sovereign nation and doesn't have to comply
because the Pope recently purchased weapons-grade plutonium and
nuclear missile technology from Pakistan.
*
Archeologists discovered two tusks from a 20,000-year-old
Columbian mammoth ten miles northeast of Deming, N.M.
Paleontologist Mike O'Neill said the animal was so big it
probably died of old age. PETA disputed the statement.
*
Game Boy Advance, the latest Nintendo hand-held video-game
machine, goes on sale June 11 for $99.95 and features a monitor
with 32,000 shades of color, compared to the 56 colors of the
1998 version. It's expected to completely overwhelm the
PlayStation2 market, even though the competing Sony machine has a
128-bit processor compared to Game Boy Advance's 32 bits. The
difference is that Nintendo has more actual games, including the
"Make Daddy Fork It Over" and the "Make Mommy Shut Up About It"
games.
*
A coalition of environmental groups filed suit against the
U.S. government in Nevada, where ranchers use planes and
helicopters to shoot coyotes during the spring calving season.
Wendy Keefover-Ring of the Sinapu group in Colorado told a
reporter that the aircraft frequently crash, and that since 1989
seven people have been killed and 21 injured. "Taxpayers pay for
all investigations and workers compensation related to these
crashes," said Ms. Keefover-Ring. She didn't mention the whole,
uh, dead-person angle.
*
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami can't decide whether to
seek a second term or not. His popularity rating remains at 98
per cent, but he's been troubled by recent defections from two
organizations that are traditional bellwethers for the winning
candidate. One is the Cut-Off-the-Heads-of-the-Western-Infidels
Political Action Committee, and the other is the Disembowel-the-
Consumerist-Jackals Government Responsibility Council. Khatami is
expected to make his decision next week, after discussing it with
his bitch.
*
Wilman Oslund of Las Vegas jumped on his disabled sister-in-
law in the bathtub and beat her to death, then put her body in a
freezer for three days, thawed her out, and called police to say
she'd had an accident. Oslund was sentenced to ten years in
prison when the county coroner failed to find evidence that the
woman wanted to find out whether the light stays on when you
close the door.
*Yahoo gave in to a pressure campaign orchestrated by our old
friend Donald Wildmon, the Tupelo preacher who runs the American
Family Association and is famous for successful boycotts of TV
shows and magazines he doesn't approve of. After receiving about
100,000 emails Yahoo announced that it would remove "pornographic
material" from its site and make it hard to find if you use a
Yahoo search engine. Yahoo also closed a section devoted to adult
videos in its shopping area and said it would no longer accept
ads from porno websites. Spokesmen for the Wildmon organization
said the changes by Yahoo didn't go far enough, and that they
wanted the internet provider to make it impossible for anything
pornographic ever to be accessed. They also called for the
installation of a special "surprise" virus that would chemically
castrate anyone looking at a dirty picture on the net.
*Reacting to the police shooting of an unarmed man, young
blacks looted sneaker stores in Cincinnati. The mayor ordered a
curfew, presumably to prevent the rioters from outrunning police
in their new sneakers.
*The crew of an American spy plane was released after ELEVEN
WHOLE DAYS in captivity, and by the time the soldiers got home
President Bush was chastising China for its provocation, all but
suggesting that the dead Chinese fighter pilot was on a suicide
mission and had no right to be up there. "First you crash into
the sea! Then you die! Then you release our soldiers who landed
at your military base without asking permission! How dare you!"
To a suggestion that these are the kinds of incidents that cause
the entire world to regard America as a bully, Bush replied,
"Your point is?"
*The Taliban ritualistically slaughtered 100 cows to seek
forgiveness from Allah for not destroying the ancient Buddha
statues fast enough. Meanwhile, in Scotland, farmers slaughtered
100 Buddhas to seek forgiveness from Allah for not destroying the
hoof-and-mouth-diseased cattle herds fast enough.
*"Dr. Laura"--the controversial talk show hosted by Dr. Laura
Schlessinger--was canceled after one season, the victim of
advertiser boycotts spurred by gay protests. Dr. Laura went on
"Larry King Live" to talk about why she was not bitter about the
whiny immoral homosexual jerks who crusaded against her because
they have the First Amendment right to spew their idiotic
lifestyle propaganda in any direction they want, the lying
deviates.
*Kevin Costner went to Havana to screen his new movie about
the Cuban missile cris, "Thirteen Days," for President Fidel
Castro. Costner and Castro then spent seven hours talking about
the film, which Castro compared unfavorably to the "I Dream of
Jeannie" episode in which Barbara Eden almost starts World War
III when she meddles with the space capsule of her master.
*Eminem got two years probation for carrying a concealed
weapon and allegedly pistol-whipping a man at a Detroit-area
night club after he saw the man kiss his wife. Eminem will serve
his community-service time by starring in a series of public-
service announcements intended to help people think twice before
acting in anger. The series slogan is "Igno the Ho."
*The famous Texas Horny Toad--which is actually a lizard--has
been disappearing for the last 30 years, so the city of Alpine,
Tex., is planning a "Horny Toad Awareness Weekend" in August to
teach children to stop crushing them to death with rocks, which
is, of course, a long-time Texas childhood tradition. Since this
particular lizard resembles a dragon and defends itself from
road-runners by puffing up to twice its size and squirting blood
out of its eyes--and since children look vaguely like road-
runners to a horny toad--the detente will probably be difficult
to accomplish. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has
already outlawed the collection of horny toads as pets, but says
that the spread of fire ants to West Texas may be wiping them out
anyway. (Their favorite food is the harvest ant, but if they slip
up and dine on a fire ant, toad trauma results.) The practice of
grabbing the horny toad by its tail, whipping it overhead like a
lasso, and hurling it into the desert while placing bets on how
many times it will bounce before coming to a full stop, has not
yet been banned, due to conflicts with traditional ceremonies of
the Southwest Texas Elks Club Reunion Weekend.
*After living with six different sets of parents, the eight-
month-old "twins without a country" were ordered by a British
judge to be sent back to Missouri, where a court will award
custody to one of the estranged biological parents who sold them
in the first place. Then, in a reality-TV special, Jerry Springer
will bring all the feuding parents together and the babies will
be ritualistically carved into equal sections.
*As scholars and historians begin their assessment of the
Clinton years, his grades so far are:
Economy: A+ (American Prospect, National Review)
Welfare Reform: A (Harvard University, The New Yorker)
Help for the poor: A+ (The New Yorker)
Help for the middle class: A (The New Yorker)
Help for higher education: A (The New Yorker)
Foreign affairs: B (Harvard University, Foreign Affairs, New
York Times Book Review)
But he can't take his report card home to his mother because
of that damn conduct grade.
*Sandy Murphy--a former topless dancer convicted of murdering
Las Vegas casino mogul Ted Binion--and Jessica Williams--a former
topless dancer convicted in the freeway deaths of six teenagers--
were moved to separate cells after a third cellmate--accused
millionaire husband-killer Margaret Rudin--claimed they were
having intimate relations in her presence. All three women have
had their cases aired on Court TV, and all three women have been
deprived of brand-name cosmetics for far too long.
*The cities of Boulder, Colo., West Hollywood, Calif., and
Berkeley, Calif., have all adopted pet ordinances changing the
word "owner" to "guardian," but Rita Anderson of Boulder, the
author of "They Are Not Our Property, We Are Not Their Owners,"
says the ordinances don't go far enough. She says that most laws
still refer to a pet as "it" rather than "he or she," and that
the word "pet" shouldn't be used at all. She wants the law
changed to refer to each animal as "friend." Texas guardians of
fighting pit-bull friends have invited Ms. Anderson to visit.
*North Korea announced that it would welcome tourism from the
west. Their first promotion is a special "Pyongyang By Moonlight"
honeymooners package, featuring a romantic horse-drawn tank ride
around the Fatherland Liberation Victorious War Museum.
*In Guatemala City, a judge made an unpopular ruling in a
rape case and was promptly hacked to death with machetes and set
on fire by a mob. Republicans in the U.S. Congress were quick to
cite this as an example of just how quick and efficient the
appeals process can be if you really try.
*The 67 residents of Loving County, Texas, the least populous
county in America, are hotly debating whether to install a Coke
machine in the courthouse at Mentone, the county's only town.
Currently, thirsty county employees have to walk across the
street to Juanema Hopper's service station for soft drinks, and
Juanema thinks that Sheriff Richard Putnam is trying to control
the girls who work in his office by putting a Coke machine closer
to their desks. If the sheriff is successful in his efforts to
install the Coke machine, the girls are expected to switch to
Pepsi just to spite him. *
President Bush said that he won't say he's sorry for the crash of a Chinese
jet and the death of its pilot and the unannounced landing at a Chinese air
base of a U.S. spy plane and the subsequent release of information to the
press portraying the dead pilot as a dangerous "hot dog" who deserved
what he got even though his wife was still grieving, despite the 18 detained
American soldiers being treated well and suffering no injuries and being
promised their release as soon as an "I'm sorry" is issued. Bush explained
that saying "I'm sorry" is something he learned never to do, because then the
other kids laugh at you and think you're weak and they might steal your
tetherball.
*
Senator Hillary vowed she will never run for president, but will accept a starring role in a sitcom as long as it's
not on basic cable. (HBO immediately put a show into development. Its title: "The Mezzo-Soprano.")
*
Sporty Spice quit the Spice Girls, two years after they lost Ginger Spice, leaving only Baby
Spice, Scary Spice and Posh Spice to make excuses about last November's flop album.
Sporty is the one whose real name is Melanie Chisolm and who was dubbed Sumo Spice by
the British tabloids after she blimped up, then gave interviews admitting an eating disorder
that has led her to take anti-depressants and to immerse herself in intense psychotherapy.
She plans to start a solo career, while the three remaining Spices will try to bounce back
under a new manager and a new image. Their comeback tour will be called "Old Spice."
*
Native American protesters tried to get the Idaho legislature to change all place names that include the word
"squaw," even though the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary says the derivation of the word indicates a
meaning of simply "woman." The same sort of protest occurred in Arizona in 1998, when the governor refused
to rename Squaw's Peak, and in Maine, where the govern did sign a bill last year to eliminate "squaw" from
two dozen place names. Squaw Valley, for example, was renamed Injun Bitch Gulch.
*
During the Cold War, the Americans stationed in Moscow would complain two or three times a year that the
Soviets were invading our sovereign territory by wiretapping the American Embassy, even going so far as to
embed bugs in the solid walls whenever new construction was done. So now FBI operative Robert Philip
Hanssen is arrested as a spy for Russia, and intelligence operatives say his great crime against America
was that he told the Soviets . . . we dug a tunnel under their embassy in Washington. This was a
BILLION-dollar engineering feat that sort of, uh, invaded Russian land. Wouldn't that be like, uh, one of those
sovereignty deals?
*
A 12-year-old boy in Lockney, Tex., was suspended from extracurricular activities for 21 days and forced to
go to substance abuse class after he refused to take the "suspicionless drug test" given to every kid in the
school system. Fortunately, Federal District Judge Sam R. Cummings of Lubbock ruled that the school district
violated the boy's Fourth Amendment rights, and ACLU lawyers celebrated by offering the kid a joint.
*
Bill Gates sought permission from the city of Medina, Wash., to add on to his 37,000-square-foot home
because it was "designed for a bachelor" and as a family man he now needs another child's bedroom, a new
connection between the house and the "guest pavilion," a new play and study area for the two children, and a
redesign of the space originally planned for the live-in nanny. The wing housing live-in antitrust lawyers will be
unaffected by the petition.
*
Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory proved that heavy methamphetamine use causes
permanent damage to the brain. The new study confirms conclusions reached in 1982 at a trailer park in
Sycamore, Kentucky.
*
Monti Rock III reported in his "Gaming Today" column that there are now 30,000 professional Elvis
impersonators. However, only 29,700 of them are working in Vegas.
*
A declassified State Department cable revealed that Myanmar, the most brutally repressive military
government in the world, sponsors factories that produce garments for K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Jordache, Nautica
and Kenneth Cole. One company in Mandalay, for example, assembles the popular Kathie Lee Gifford
sweatshop sewing smock in rainbow pastel colors and petite sizes.
*
Marijuana remains the number one cash crop in the state of Kentucky, despite a force of 700 law enforcement
officers trying to eradicate it. Asked why they're so ineffective at finding and destroying the plants, Kentucky
State Police spokesman Junior Strelnick said the officers are frequently sleepy, uncommonly hungry, and
drive their patrol cars at 15 miles per hour.
*
Three hundred people in the tiny coal-mining community of Lee County, Virginia, were discovered to be
addicted to the painkiller OxyContin, with the highest average consumption of the "miracle drug" found in rural
West Virginia, where abuse is so rampant that methadone clinics have more Oxycontin patients than heroin
patients.
*
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University say that one-third of the bicyclists killed in Maryland accidents have
elevated blood alcohol levels, leading to calls for new laws against bicycling while drunk. The matter will be
taken up at the next session of the Maryland legislature, as well as proposed bills against
wheelchairing-while-drunk, walking-while-drunk, riding- the-subway-while-drunk,
sleeping-in-the-park-while-drunk, slurring-your-words-while drunk, and drinking-while-drunk.
*
The international diplomatic community made it clear that it's one thing for the Taliban to wage war and kill
infidels, but it's quite another when they go so far as to destroy 2,000-year- old Buddhas. "This is unbelievable
and outrageous," said one western diplomat upon learning that two massive ancient Buddha statues are
being systematically destroyed as "idols." He condemned the action and pleaded with the Taliban to go back
to destroying human flesh.
*
The Boulder Valley School District in Colorado pulled an eight-year-old girl's project out of the Science Fair
because they say she might hurt other students' feelings. For her experiment, she showed two Barbie dolls to
15 adults and 15 fifth-graders at her school. One doll was white, the other brown. One was dressed in a purple
gown, the other in a baby blue gown. She then asked, "Which Barbie doll is prettier?" After showing the dolls
the first time, she switched the gowns and asked the question again. Results: the adults picked whichever doll
wore the purple gown, but the children picked the white doll, 24 out of 30 times. This girl is a third grader who
designed an experiment almost perfect in its simplicity. Her scientific conclusions were as follows: they don't
really LIKE science in Boulder, Colorado.
*
A shortage of cadavers in New York City means medical students don't get as much cutting experience as
professors would like. As many as a thousand stiffs are shipped to New York each year from hospitals in the
northern part of New York state, where people tend to be more willing to donate their bodies to science, but
hospital administrators have decided not to tell potential donors that their body might end up in New York City.
They can overcome the idea of being cut into a thousand little pieces, but residing on the Lower East Side,
even in a drawer, is just too frightening.
Sean "My Rap Beat the Rap" Combs announced on MTV that he no
longer wants to be referred to as Puff Daddy. The Artist Formerly
Known As Puff Daddy will henceforth use the name Unregistered-
Firearms Jefferson.
*
Ignoring the 45-second time limit on Academy Awards
acceptance speeches, Julia Roberts ordered the "stick man" not to
give the downbeat for her play-off music. The "stick man" was the
conductor and composer Bill Conti, who wrote the scores for
"Rocky," "The Right Stuff," "Private Benjamin" and "An Unmarried
Woman." He was holding, not a stick, but an orchestral baton. And
he seemed bemused when Julia went on to scream "I love it up
here!" and used all that valuable extra time to talk about how
happy she was, thanking her boyfriend but not thanking . . . Erin Brockovich.
All those pesky real-life people are just so hard to
remember, especially when they have such weird names. It was that
terrible mean stick-man's fault.
*
Leaders of the Zapatista rebel movement appeared before the
Mexican Congress in ski masks, asking for a constitutional
amendment that would guarantee some level of civil rights for the
nation's 10 million Indians. Half the Congressmen boycotted the
session, making the necessary two-thirds vote extremely unlikely,
but a brassy mama calling herself Commander Esther pretty much
stole the show with her Martin-Luther-King-style speech about the
coming extinction of her people if something is not done. And to
show just how peaceful they are, the Zapatistas asked their
traditional spokesman, Subcommander Marcos, not to show up, since
their military mission is over. The whole appeal was so
masterfully done--asking for justice in a spirit of peace,
thanking the Mexicans who have helped them, promising to remain
loyal to the nation they love, then saying farewell and starting
the long trek home to Chiapas--that it has no chance in hell of
passing.
*
A nine-year-old in Toronto bit into a rat's head hidden
amongst the special sauce on her Big Mac, and now the child's
parents want $11.2 million from McDonald's. A countersuit is
being filed against the child by PETA.
*
After Governor Gray Davis repeatedly promised that he would
not increase electrical rates, he kept his word--and let the
State Public Utilities Commission do it for him. Californians
were heartened, though, by the modest nature of the increase: 46
per cent. (All together now: Whoa, dude!) Those worried about the
pressure this would put on families were reassured by Governor
Davis's promise that, beginning next year, he will force the
utilities to slash their rates again, bringing them back to
the brink of bankruptcy while gloating
natural gas suppliers in Texas rob them blind and Oregon dam
owners tease them with that pesky upstream
spigot. (Hey, man, we need like, uh, water and coal and stuff.)
*
In the summer of 1999 Mark Yagalla, a 21-year-old Wall Street fund manager, met Sandra Bentley, a blonde
model who was dating Hugh Hefner at the time. They went to a Cher concert in Las Vegas--what could be more
romantic?--and the next day Yagalla bought her a Mercedes 500 SL valued at $95,223. Apparently Sandra
turned out to be a motoring enthusiast, because over the next 14 months Yagalla would give her seven more
cars, including a Range Rover, a Mercedes 600 SL, a $293,500 Bentley Azure (to match her surname, no
doubt), a Cadillac, a red Ferrari, a black Ferrari, and, for her mom, a BMW 323. But how could this woman truly
be the love of Yagalla's life unless jewelry were involved? So how about a platinum-and-diamond necklace, three
Rolex watches, a 14- carat white gold bracelet with 13 claw-set round brilliant diamonds, a diamond necklace
set in platinum and yellow gold, an 18-carat yellow gold bracelet with 30 diamonds on it, an 18-carat white gold
bracelet, an 18-carat white gold necklace set with one 16-carat emerald-cut tanzanite inset with baguette-cut
diamonds, a canary yellow diamond ring, a platinum necklace with rubies and diamonds with matching earrings
and bracelet, and a $500,000 Chopard watch, for those days when a Rolex just won't do. Did we mention furs?
Several of them, all bought at that bargain joint, Bloomingdale's. How about vacations? Chalk up the Bahamas,
Hawaii, Switzerland and Mexico. Oh hell, why not just an American Express card of her own? She put $1 million
in charges on it, in addition to the $470,000 he wrote out of his personal checkbook. Then there were all the little
housekeeping details, like the $3 million in renovations on her Las Vegas mansion, the $55,000 for her twin
Mandy's house payment in L.A., and $327,888 to pay off her older sister Cecilia's Oregon house. The two of
them were soooooooooo in love--until last summer, when those pesky federal investigators showed up at
Yagalla's Ashbury Capital Fund and suggested that maybe, just maybe, some investors money was being
diverted for personal use. No way, you say? Manhattan Federal Court Judge Richard Casey has decided that,
since investors are suing the fund for $40 million, he'll order Sandy not to sell any of those gifts just yet. She can't
be bothered, of course, because they broke up many months ago. And suddenly on Wall Street you're hearing
the impolite word "swindler." That's a little harsh, we think. Do they have Multi-millionaire Relationship Counseling
at Attica? We certainly hope so.
*
Federal agents seized two flocks of sheep in Vermont. So far there is no evidence of sexual assault.
*
Adolph Levis, inventor of the Slim Jim meat snack, died in Florida at the age of 89. By the end of his life, he was
all skinny and wrinkled up.
*
In San Francisco, the parents of two small children testifying in a favor of a leash law at Golden Gate National
Recreation Area had to be escorted out of the building by police as 500 protesters rose up against them,
banging on windows and chanting "No leashes! No leashes!" The dog-rights movement has taken to the streets,
with pooch-owners protesting against federal regulations that ban certain breeds from parks, calling it "profiling."
They point out that it's unconstitutional to assume that a pit bull or a rottweiler will commit more crimes than a
chihuahua or a poodle, especially when the targeted dog is driving in heavy freeway traffic.
*
President Bush expelled 50 Russian diplomats from the country, saying that they shouldn't have accepted
information from an FBI spy who told them that the United States was digging a tunnel under their embassy in
violation of pretty much every principle of international law. The Russians should have walked the information
over to the proper authorities and allowed the tunnel preparation to proceed as planned. What do they think they
are--some kind of sovereign nation or something?
*
Moody's Investors Service reclassified bonds issued by J.C. Penney Company as "junk." Hearing the word, a
clerk in the children's clothing department said, "Your point?"
*
Just last month a Japanese bank became the largest owner of British pubs, and now comes word that a
subsidiary of Deutsche Bank has bought 3000 British taverns of its own. Germans and Japanese selling bitters
to Welsh coal miners and Scottish goatherds? Once again, that's just wrong.
*
Bangalore, India, is fast becoming the capital of America's 800-number customer-service business, with young
Indian women pretending to be Americans as they settle credit card bills, field complaints, and take orders from
Americans who think they're right next door. The Indian gals, who use names like "Vickie Johnson," are paid a
monumental $1600 a year, and the whole operation is shrouded in secrecy. Why do the multi- nationals go to
such lengths to disguise the fact that the customer service center is in India? Obviously to avoid the charge that
they're supporting sweat-cubicles.
*
Federal drug agents in the border town of Nogales, Ariz., discovered a hand-dug tunnel connected to sewer lines
that smugglers have been using to get marijuana and cocaine from the Mexican side--Nogales, Sonora--into the
United States. It's the seventh tunnel found in the last six years, and all of them have been connected to sewers,
leading authorities to speculate that the mastermind is a fan of Art Carney's portrayal of Ed Norton on "The
Honeymooners." The "Ralphie Boy Bandito" remained at large by week's end.
*
At 9:38 p.m. last Thursday, Joe Bob Briggs became the last person in America who still likes Bill Clinton and
thinks he was a good President.
*
More than 80,000 college students chose Cancun as their spring break destination, thanks to the 18-year
drinking age, the tropical climate, the beach, the discos, the palm trees, and, of course, progressive Mexican
President Vicente Fox's new Better Nookie policy.
*
President Bush expressed compassion for the victims of the economic downturn, saying that he realizes people
have taken a hit in their "portfolios." Yes, that's the word he used.
*
France is suing internet providers to keep Nazi images off of French computer screens. The rest of the world is
suing internet providers to keep French people off computers.
*
Ground was broken in New York for a half-acre memorial to the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, right next to the
recently opened Police Memorial (honoring cops killed in action) and the "Living Memorial to the Holocaust," and
just a few blocks from the "African Burial Ground" national memorial. It will soon be possible to walk from the
southern tip of Manhattan, where the new memorial is being built, to Grant's Tomb in the far north without ever
forgetting that people from all nations, all historical periods, and all walks of life are dead.
*
Banks and credit card companies were whooping it up over the Senate's 83-15 vote to make it harder for people
to declare bankruptcy. Instead of wiping the slate clean, the new law would have people scraping up bucks to pay
off that old Discover card for years and years, and if that doesn't teach the welsher a lesson, then perhaps a little
jail time will do the trick. You could almost hear Lionel Barrymore, the banker in "It's a Wonderful Life,"
applauding his fellow lenders for encouraging a "thrifty working class" instead of a bunch of deadbeat losers who
actually USE those credit cards that get sent to them in the mail. Next up for consideration: the return of the
workhouse for lazy 9-year-old orphans.
*
Sylvester Stallone was sued for sexual assault by a woman named Margie Carr, an exotic dancer who told the
Globe tabloid she had an affair with Sly for ten years and wanted to marry him. She says he ripped off her clothes
at the Santa Monica gym where they both work out every day. He evidently did it in the 11th year. Sly is expected
to plead mixed signals.
*
Several multi-national drug companies are in a bidding war to sell drugs to those 25.3 million Africans who have
H.I.V. or AIDS. Since an AIDS drug "cocktail" costs anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 a year in the United
States, the drug companies have decided to slash prices to as little as $500 a year--a "Crazy Eddie"-style 90
per cent discount sale!--because they regard sub- Saharan Africa as a growth market.
*
The Rev. Jesse Jackson tried to silence his critics by opening the books of Operation PUSH and his other
organizations, only to reveal the shocking truth: CNN pays its talk show hosts only $5000 a week. We knew they
were cheap, but we didn't know their salaries were equivalent to Geraldo's wardrobe allowance.
*
The race is on for the best dang purified cow blood America can make, to be used in surgical procedures when
they just don't have enough human blood to do the job. So far the blood substitutes--with names like Hemopure,
Hemalink, and Oxyglobin-- have worked in clinical trials. The only negative reviews have come from Northern
California goth clubs, where patrons have complained of a slight salty aftertaste.
On the advice of his national security advisor, President
Bush dissolved the Magna Carta of 1215, saying that granting
rights and liberties to insignificant barons and nobles is not in
the best interests of business, and that most of the liberal
abuses of the past 800 years can be traced to the creation of
parliaments, Congresses, and other inefficient deliberative
bodies.
*
Senate Republican leader Trent Lott criticized "ghoulish"
speculation about the health of 98-year-old Senator Strom
Thurmond, who has been in and out of hospitals for several
months. If Thurmond were to die, his seat would be filled by an
appointment made by Democratic Governor Jim Hodges of South
Carolina, and unless Hodges is an idiot, that means the 50-50
stalemate in the senate would become a 51-49 Democratic
advantage. Thurmond's angry rejoinder to the speculation "Over
my dead body."
*
During his four-day trip to the United States, Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon met with a number of Americans, including .
. . Michael Jackson. During the tete-a-tete at a Park Avenue,
Jackson reportedly gave his opinion on the Golan Heights ("Beat
it") while Sharon wondered about the scarcity of rabbi-line-
dancing videos on MTV.
*
Nevada sports books observed a minute of "betting silence,"
taking no bets during the memorial for Bob Martin, the father of
oddsmakers, who died in New York at the age of 82. Martin was the
inventor of half-point odds, eliminating ties, but hadn't been
allowed to work in Vegas since 1982, when he was convicted of
passing betting information across state lines and served 13
months in prison. A Brooklyn native, he booked baseball bets
while serving in the Army during World War II, then became a
legend at the famous gamblers hangout of 50th and Broadway, where
he was one of Damon Runyon's characters in the stories that
formed the basis for "Guys and Dolls." Two hundred people showed
up at his Vegas memorial service, where sports book executives
from the Barbary Coast, Castaways, Rio, Hilton, Palace Station,
Leroys, Stardust, El Cortez and Union Plaza established an 8-to-5
line on a heaven-or-hell proposition bet.
*
Bertrand Delanoe, a gay Socialist, was elected mayor of
Paris. Dapper in a baby-blue business suit with a splash of
magenta on his tie, Delanoe's first official acts were to
dedicate the new Edith Piaf National Cabaret and outlaw floral-
print tablecloths in all bistros north of the Seine.
*
An Amtrak train bound for Portland, Ore., demolished a four-
bedroom house that was being towed across the tracks in Tacoma,
Wash. No one was seriously hurt, but the homeowner has now become
the first parent in history who can say "This room looks like a
train wreck" and mean it.
*
After 15 years in space, the Russian space station Mir
crashed into the Pacific Ocean, creating a temporary worldwide
vodka shortage.
*
Using a computer in the Brooklyn Heights Public Library and
a copy of the Forbes Magazine "400 Richest People in the World,"
a busboy named Abraham Abdallah stole the identities of Oprah
Winfrey, George Lucas, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Ted
Turner, Disney executive Michael Eisner, billionaire Ronald
Perelman, financier Michael R. Bloomberg, and 210 other rich
people, developing files that included all their Social Security
numbers, their birth dates, their mothers' maiden names, their
home addresses, and the numbers of all their accounts. He
obtained 800 fake credit cards, 20,000 blank credit cards, and
took money out of at least 19 millionaires' accounts, then
developed a system of mail drops, cab companies and couriers that
allowed him to send packages to multiple destinations, track them
on Federal Express and UPS web sites, and eventually pick them up
when he was sure no one could possibly retrace the route. He did
all this with a public computer, a cell phone, and a single
private mailbox while working at a Brooklyn restaurant. New York
police were tipped off to his existence in December when an email
request for a $10 million transfer raised red flags at the
Merrill Lynch brokerage firm. They intercepted one of his
packages and set up a sting. He refused to take the bait several
times, but they finally managed to chase him down on the streets
and take him into custody. From his jail cell on Rykers Island,
he made 364 wire transfers with his right big toe, then shut down
the nation's nuclear defense system by sighing loudly.
*
The U.S. Customs Service installed electronic license plate
readers at 11 Southwest border crossings at a cost of about
$700,000, so that every time a stolen car goes from the United
States into Mexico a high-pitched alarm goes off. Unfortunately,
by the time the alarm goes off, there's no way to retrieve the
car, because it's already in Mexico, so what we have is a high-
priced index of the license plate a stolen car had before it got
its new plate in Mexico. The service is considering installing
similar machines facing in the opposite direction to detect
stolen Talavera garden pottery crossing from Mexico to the U.S.,
with the eventual goal of sending the pottery to the former
owners of the irretrievable stolen cars to make them feel better
about their loss.
*
The New York City Council wants to establish a permanent Rat
Control Authority to deal with the increasingly out-of-control
rat population and be in charge of killing rats wherever they
find them. After the announcement, 67 Wall Street firms
threatened to relocate to New Jersey and the Dow dropped 30
points.
*
In his book "Health Food Junkies," Dr. Steven Bratman
describes a new clinical disease called "orthorexia," or an
obsession with nutrition. Dr. Bratman describes patients who
spend every waking hour planning their raw-food diet, their
lacto-ovo vegetarian diet, their fruitarian diet, their anti-
food-allergy diet, and believe that by practicing "macrobiotics,"
they can totally control all aspects of their lives and be free
of disease forever. The flipside is that one McDonald's French
fry can send them into the depths of depression. The only
effective treatment, he says, is to hospitalize the patients and
hook them up to an IV drip attached to a box of Krispy Kreme
donuts.
*
The nation of Moldova, formerly a republic in the Soviet
Union, voted the Communists back into power after ten years of
capitalism. The average Moldovan worker earns $1 a day, a wage
that was hurting attendance at Tony Robbins Success Seminars.
*
At an elementary school in Fanglin, China, 41 students and
teachers were killed in a gunpowder explosion while the children
were assembling commercial fireworks. Chinese authorities then
bulldozed the school, blamed the explosion on a deranged suicide
bomber, and roadblocked the town so that foreign reporters
couldn't reach it. China denies that child labor is used to make
fireworks and says that the school will be rebuilt with funds
donated by the Sesame Street nuclear power plant in Hunan
province and the Toys R Us munitions factory in Shanghai.
*
Henry Lee Lucas, the confessed murderer best known in these
pages as the inspiration for "Henry Portrait of a Serial
Killer," died of a heart attack at the age of 64, two years after
Texas Governor George W. Bush commuted his sentence from death to
life in prison. (It was the only commutation Bush ever granted.)
Lucas admitted killing over 600 people and kept law enforcement
agencies busy for years as they ferried him to unsolved crime
sites around the country. He was finally condemned to death for
the 1979 murder and rape of a young woman whose body was found in
a culvert along Interstate 35, clad only in orange socks. After
his 600 confessions, resulting in a life spent travelling around
the country, he recanted, saying he was only telling cops what
they wanted to hear. When the Texas Attorney General and news
reporters investigated his claims, it turns out that many of the
murders were committed when Lucas wasn't even in the same state.
Only two of his crimes seem fairly certain--the killing of an 80-
year-old woman in Montague County in June 1983, and the killing
of the 15-year-old girl he called his wife, Freida Lorraine
"Becky" Powell." The reason Bush eventually commuted his sentence
is that it was proven he couldn't have committed the "orange
socks" murder. In fact, the woman in orange socks was never
identified. Henry Lee never saw the controversial movie, which is
a shame, because it was better than his life.
*
Linda Hoffmann-Pugh, the former housekeeper for John and
Patsy Ramsey, sued the Ramseys for $50 million in a federal libel
suit, claiming that they named her as a suspect in their book in
order to divert attention from the real killer of Jon-Benet
Ramsey Patsy Ramsey. The chapter speculating that Hoffman-Pugh
might have done it comes immediately after the chapter suggesting
that Jon-Benet committed ritualistic suicide.
*
Japanese theme parks are dropping like flies as crowds stay
away in droves from such can't-miss extravaganzas as "Huis Ten
Bosch" (a Dutch-village theme), "Canadian World," "Spanish
Village," "Glucks Kingdom" (a German theme), "Asia Park,"
"Phoenix Resort," six Santa Claus-themed parks, and, of course,
the famous "Navel Land." It's estimated that 100 theme parks have
been built in Japan since 1988, when Tokyo Disneyland opened, but
the only one expected to ride out the decade is "Big-Breast
Blonde Bikini World."
*
Brigitte Bardot flew to Bucharest to try to save the 200,000
stray dogs on the streets of the Romanian capital. Mayor Traian
Basescu wants to round them up and kill them, thereby cutting
down on the 20,000 people treated for dog bite every year, but
the French film actress says her foundation will donate $150,000
to sterilize the dogs, or at least 100,000 of them, over a two-
year period. Romanians--who say the dogs are vicious and bite
without warning--suggested Brigitte take ten or twenty thousand
home with her as pets.
*
The American Chemical Society reported that, when hamsters
drink beer, it unclogs their arteries. Reacting to the new
findings, the Texas legislature passed a law authorizing beer and
wine sales to hamsters aged 21 days and over.
*
Boston medical researchers said that obesity among American
children increased 100 per cent between 1980 and 1994, largely
due to extra soft-drink consumption. The research was immediately
challenged by the soft-drink industry, who said that those kids
looked like they would have gotten fat anyway. "Our studies show
that they had the porker gene," said an industry spokesman.
*
Ireland cancelled the St. Patrick's Day celebration because
of fears of hoof-and-mouth disease running rampant through the
populace. The pastures around Dublin are full of recumbent
leprechauns, green legs pointing up in the air, begging
elementary school children to shoot them.
*
Morton Downey Jr., the man who made Jerry Springer possible,
died of pneumonia at the age of 68, but none of the official
obituaries cited what we regard as his most significant
achievement. As a teenager in a Brooklyn garage band, he wrote
"Wipeout." Despite his public image, he was a nervous performer,
shaking like a leaf before he went on, and almost puppy-dog-like
in his eagerness to please. When he appeared on "Joe Bob's Drive-
In Theater" in the mid-nineties, he leaned over between each take
and whispered, "Just tell me how to be. You want me angry? You
want me wisecracking? You just tell me and I'll do it." He may
have been, alas, too fragile for show business. Mort's big secret
was that he wanted everyone to love him.
*
Robert Ludlum, author of "The Scarlatti Inheritance" and 20
other best-sellers, died of a heart attack at age 73, but stunned
representatives at St. Martin's Press announced that they still
hope to publish "The Ludlum Legacy," "The Ludlum Autopsy," and
"The Ludlum Resurrection."
*
Puffy Daddy Combs beat the rap.
*
After 65 years of production, the last Reliant Robin rolled
off the assembly line in Great Britain. The world's only three-
wheeled car can still be seen on the roads of England, where
44,000 are registered, and it will live on in the BBC comedy
"Only Fools and Horses," but it was made obsolete in recent years
when many of its former owners balked at the $14,000 sticker
price and bought wheelbarrows instead.
*
Three hundred people in the tiny coal-mining community of
Lee County, Virginia, were discovered to be addicted to the
painkiller Oxycontin, with the highest average consumption of the
"miracle drug" found in rural West Virginia, where abuse is so
rampant that methadone clinics have more Oxycontin patients than
heroin patients.
*
Matthew Perry of "Friends" purchased a weekend getaway home
in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
*
There aren't enough vultures to devour all the bodies of
dead Zoroastrians. On Malabar Hill in Bombay, where bodies have
been left to the vultures for centuries, the flesh-eating birds
are dying out. Indian authorities think there's only one
solution: breed disease-free vultures in captivity so they can
one day be released to munch again. Unfortunately, that will take
four years, and meanwhile Malabar Hill is getting stinky.
Microsoft has offered to set up a training center for middle
management on the premises to handle the temporary emergency.
*
The Dayaks of Borneo used machetes to hack off the heads of
as many as 500 Madurese, and 20,000 other frightened Madurese
fled into the jungle or, what amounts to the same thing,
government buildings. The head-hunting jungle-dwelling Dayaks
have been resentful of the Madurese for 50 years, ever since
Sukarno, the first president of Indonesia, started shipping
people from crowded overdeveloped islands to remote provinces
like Kalimantan, where the Dayaks live. That's how the
industrious hard-working Madurese, like Korean grocers in
America, ended up in the jungles of Borneo, where they soon
controlled local markets, transport and government jobs.
Unfortunately, when doing their startup business cost-benefit
analyses, the Madurese failed to take into account the whole
hacking-off-your-head-with-a-machete factor.
*
The U.S. Navy's pioneering public relations program, "Learn
To Drive The Pretty Nuclear Attack Submarine," has been suspended
until further notice.
*
On the day the Time-Warner merger with AOL was completed,
CNN laid off 400 employees, including Elsa Klensch, the star of
"Style with Elsa Klensch," which debuted the day CNN first went
on the air 21 years ago. Elsa wore a stunning Geoffrey Beene
structured jacket and shiny black patent flats. Ted Turner wore
his usual "Where am I?" grimace.
*
Fergie's new book, "Reinventing Yourself with the Duchess of
York," is getting rave reviews for dealing with basic weight-loss
issues in a straightforward manner that anyone can understood.
For example, from page 94: "Practice waving your hand so that the
sous chef will not ignite the flaming desserts prematurely. Ask
for a low-cal pineapple tart with kiwi-fruit topping instead."
*
The $200 million Clinton Presidential Library in Little
Rock, built to house 625 tons of archival material, is the 12th
presidential library in the country and the one most heavily
financed by fugitive financiers. Raising the question: Wouldn't
it be possible to put ALL documents from ALL presidents in ONE
library? And distasteful as it might seem to the executive
branch, wouldn't that library be the Library of Congress? George
Washington didn't have a presidential library, but in New York he
has a tavern dedicated to his presidency. Clinton could do the
same sort of thing--a motel perhaps.
*
Barbie sunglasses were recalled after it was found that
glitter in the transparent frames is floating in petroleum
distillate, which can leak out and burn the eyes, scald the skin,
and kill if ingested in large quantities. It can also dissolve
the bra strap on a Barbie bikini, provoking rumors that Ken
spiked the sunglasses as a sort of invisible date-rape thing.
*
A Ukrainian security officer released tapes secretly
recorded under the office couch of Ukrainian President Leonid
Kuchma over a two-year period, revealing that he ordered a murder
of a journalist, planned a bombing attack on a rival politician,
orchestrated money-laundering operations and kickbacks worth
millions of dollars, closed down businesses for personal reasons,
collected protection money from everyone doing business in the
country, and helped his ex-Communist cronies move billions of
dollars into secret offshore investments. The security officer,
Mikola Melnichenko, is hiding out in Europe with his family while
the tapes are transcribed by the International Press Institute in
Vienna. Ukrainian Secret Service officers are searching for him
and, if they find him, are not expected to read him his Miranda
rights.
*
Kraft Foods claims that all its frozen-pizza secrets were
stolen by its rival, Schwan's Sales Enterprises, through a
devious industrial espionage scheme that caused Tombstone and
DiGiorno pizzas (both made by Kraft) to lose market share to
Tony's and Freschetta pizzas (both made by Schwan's). Result: the
secret "rising-crust" formula was pilfered like a stray
pepperoni, resulting in lost dough.
*
Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi can't decide whether the
year is 1369 or 1431, even though all other Muslim countries
regard this as the year 1421. Compounding the nation's economic
problems, Libya's only Hallmark distributor in Tripoli declared
bankruptcy.
*
A California couple who claim the tax laws are
unconstitutional and don't apply to them were given long prison
terms for helping their clients evade $13.8 million in federal
income taxes. Prosecutors recommended that Dorothy Henderson of
Roseville, Calif., be sentenced to 11 years in prison. After she
made a speech to the judge, telling him that IRS laws don't apply
to her, he gave her 11 years and five months instead. Her
husband, George Henderson, got a five-year, ten-month
recommendation from prosecutors. After HE finished talking to the
judge, the judge decided to make it a good solid six-and-a-half.
As the Hendersons were taken away, they threatened further claims
against the government--holding out hope, no doubt, that they
could eventually get more years added to their sentences while in
prison.
*
The micro-miniskirt returns this summer, led by the frayed
denim version by Marc Jacobs (13 inches from waist to hem),
Theory's tight black leather version, American Eagle Outfitters'
khaki version, and Old Navy's "dirty dungaree hip-hugger" mini
for the cost-conscious (a mere $17.50). Never has the street-
trash hooker look been more trendy, proving that America hasn't
forgotten its roots after all.
*
After considering several conductors who came to New York
for "tryout" concerts, the powerful members of the New York
Philharmonic finally gave their approval to 72-year-old Lorin
Maazel, who will become the new Philharmonic conductor next
season. Notoriously snobbish about everyone who's ever conducted
them, the Philharmonic players praised Maazel for the day that he
told them they were playing Bruckner's Eighth Symphony so well,
he would be canceling the next rehearsal. The talent search
continued for another two weeks, as the musicians sought a
conductor who didn't believe in any rehearsal at all, but they
came back to Maazel as their best hope for the next four years of
playing their instruments as little as possible.
*
The Turkish political crisis caused interest rates in
Istanbul to soar to 6,100 per cent. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit
expressed concern for newlyweds who might have trouble making
balloon payments on those starter homes in Ankara. For a $100,000
three-bedroom with carport, for example, the monthly payment is
now $300,000. Ecevit advised families to cut back on dining out
until the crisis is over.
*
Anyone who's ever lived in the South has dealt with the
Yankee immigrant Snow Expert, the guy who makes fun of Dallas and
Houston and Nashville for closing schools during snow or ice
storms. His first mistake is that, if he's from New York or
Chicago, he's probably never seen a true Texas ice storm, which
is an Arctic blast that sweeps unimpeded down through the Great
Plains, where there are no trees, and puts up to a four-inch
solid-ice glaze on the highways that no level of sophisticated
snow-removal equipment could ever crack and no NASCAR racer could
drive on. But the next time he scoffs at the snow panic, remind
him of March 3-6, 2001, when the tough guys of New York City
cancelled school, shut down businesses and government agencies,
and cancelled hundrededs of flights--something that the southern
cities hardly ever do, even during ice storms--for what amounted
to a little fluffy blanket of snow on the ground. The newscasters
of the area were especially crazed, veins standing out on their
foreheads as they warned people not to go out on the streets,
when in fact it turned out to be a nice weekend for a country
drive, with very little traffic OR hazardous roads. I believe
this is called "snow panic."
*
Where did all these Mardi Gras come from? Mardi Gras
Seattle, Mardi Gras Philadelphia, Mardi Gras Austin, and Mardi
Gras Fresno all turned violent, with looting and beer-bottle-
throwing and police with billy clubs and at least one death, but
in New Orleans, which used to have the only Mardi Gras in North
America, police handled the wild hordes with nary a headline-
grabbing incident. Their secret: every five minutes, police
officers show their breasts.
*
The Senate completed its first formal act of Clinton
Repudiation by voting 56 to 44 to dismantle the new workplace
safety rules issued by the ex-President and intended to prevent
carpal tunnel syndrome and back sprains that result from
repetitive-motion jobs. The so-called "ergonomics" rules were
approved by OSHA after ten years of studies and hearings that
were provoked by the carpal-tunnel epidemic of the eighties, then
the rash of injuries at chicken-processing plants. Big Business
opposed the new rules, with some companies even going so far as
to say that carpal tunnel was not a real injury. Despite the
lengthy hearing process, Republican Senator Michael B. Enzi of
Wyoming said "OSHA rushed through the rulemaking process." And
showing just what kind of hardball they intend to play,
Republican leaders fished out of mothballs a legislative rule
that had never been used before, allowing new regulations to be
repealed quickly, without much debate and without the possibility
of filibuster. The AFL/CIO was predictably horrified, as were the
workers with permanent injuries who lined up to speak but were
never called. It might be the best thing that's happened to
organized labor in a long time. You can fight them on wages, you
can fight them on benefits, but when you fight them on safety,
they tend to get out their fund-raising typewriters and risk
carpal tunnel for the brotherhood. Several Republican Senators
disputed OSHA's finding that chopping the heads off chickens
could cause any kind of permanent injury by chopping the heads
off of 9,000 voodoo dolls, then repeating in unison, "We
feel fine."
*
The Seattle earthquake ranked 457th in strength among
tremors around the world over the last 12 months. It ranked 587th
in fatalities. It ranked first in whining.
*
President Bush told Congress he wants to pay off
$2,000,000,000,000.00 of the nation's debt over the next ten
years, leaving only $1,200,000,000,000.00 left to pay off after
that. His plan would transfer $1,000,00,000,000.00 of a high-
interest Mastercard to a no-annual-fee Discover card, then accept
a payment plan suggested by Credit Counselors of America that
includes paying $100 a month to Sears for the next 9,472 years.
"Frankly, the only thing holding this up is American Express," he
told Congress. "And I'm sick of taking their calls."
*
The U.S. Navy's pioneering public relations program, "Learn
To Drive The Pretty Nuclear Attack Submarine," has been suspended
until further notice.
*
Two neurosurgeons in Brooklyn operated on the wrong side of
a man's brain. After discovering the mistake, they closed the
incision and operated on the other side. In keeping with standard
American medical practices in such instances, the patient, a 41-
year-old construction worker named Kevin Walsh, has been billed
twice by the hospital, and his HMO has refused to pay both bills.
*
Naomi Campbell was kicked out of an exclusive members-only
clothing boutique in London after she rang the bell and got no
immediate response. The door was finally opened after another
customer showed up, and the supermodel proceeded to berate the
employees. After they apologized for making her wait, she
continued to make her "I won't be treated this way" speech and
was finally asked to leave. The manager of the boutique, called
Voyage, later phoned her agency to inform them that she was
permanently banned from the premises. This is the same supermodel
who, a year ago, assaulted her assistant with a cell phone. In
that case, Naomi was justified, however, because the assistant
had been caught failing to curtsy when Naomi entered the room.
*
A group of grad students at the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory near Socorro, New Mexico, found a "brown dwarf" that
flames more brightly than the sun. Not hot enough to be a star
and not cool enough to be a planet, the brown dwarf spouts off,
stirs things up for a while and then vanishes. The students named
it "Newt Gingrich."
*
The Connecticut legislature wants all its high schools to
start the school day at 8:30 instead of 7:30 so that the state's
teenagers won't be so sleepy and grumpy in first period. Last
year's attempt to solve the problem--by having the assistant vice
principal pinch every student on the butt as he or she entered
the classroom--was abandoned after parents complained that the
students were emulating the practice with pets and younger
siblings.
*
Gao Xian, the martial arts teacher who trained all the
actors in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," doesn't have enough
space in his three kung fu studios--one in New York's Chinatown,
one in Queens, and one in his hometown of Port Jefferson, Long
Island--for all the students who are showing up. Master Gao is 42
years old and plays Bo, the guard who slightly resembles the
star, Chow Yun Fat. The most popular classes for all the
newcomers are "Gazelle-Jumping Onto the Roofs of Four-Story
Buildings," "Swaying Willow-Branch Combat," and "Horizontal Wall-
Racing."
*
China was condemned by human rights organizations for
forcibly committing religous cult members to psychiatric
hospitals. As just one example of this gross abuse of individual
liberty, anyone claiming to be Jesus Christ is routinely sent to
a mental institution and subjected to electro-shock therapy. As
everyone knows, Americans claiming to be Jesus Christ haven't
been institutionalized since 1957 and haven't been subjected to
electro-shock since 1973, when "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
became popular. Instead, they've been confined to the subways of
the New York City transit system.
*
In their attempts to save struggling shows, Broadway
producers hired Reba McEntire to replace Cheryl Ladd in "Annie
Get Your Gun," and Rosie O'Donnell to stand in for David Shiner
in "Seussical the Musical." Reba got rave reviews as the most
original Annie Oakley since Ethel Merman did the part, but
Rosie's version of The Cat In The Hat was more like The Frump In
The Sump. Up for next season: Anna Nicole Smith in "A Streetcar
Named Desire."
*
Thousands of frozen human embryos are languishing in
fertility clinics, racking up monthly storage bills, waiting on
wombs. The National Right-to-Life Foundation is lobbying Congress
to recognize the failure to pay storage fees on frozen embryos--
which range anywhere from two cells to 100 cells in size--as
felony child abuse. The National Right-to-Choice Foundation, on
the other hand, suggests putting the embryos in cardboard boxes
and selling them at flea markets.
*
Eighty per cent of all babies born in Hartford, Connecticut,
have single mothers, a nationwide report revealed. Asked how this
happened, a spokesman for Connecticut Governor John Rowland said,
"The governor is more interested in fixing the problems than
looking at what caused them." Following this thoughtful far-
sighted comment, 2,754 mothers claimed the governor as the
biological father of their children. DNA testing will begin in
April.
*
Scientists now believe that a meteor hit the earth 250
million years ago and destroyed 90 per cent of all sea creatures
and 70 per cent of all land animals. According to the University
of Washington study, they examined a layer of sediment
corresponding to that time period and found round carbon
molecules called buckminsterfullerenes, better known as
"buckyballs." Inside the buckyballs were helium and argon gases
that could only have come from a distant star, as well as DNA
material corresponding to that of Dick Clark.
*
Eleven cities have passed laws against driving while using a
cell phone, but so far the booming cell-phone industry has beaten
back attempts in New York to ban the use of cell phones by 15-
year-old girls on Upper East Side sidewalks who can squeal and
giggle with three friends at a time using sophisticated call-
waiting features while their boyfriends yell at them, blocking
pedestrian traffic and clogging up the approaches to Starbucks.
Demands for the ban come from the "Stop Gwyneth" movement, based
on East 67th Street.
*
The Turkish political crisis caused interest rates in
Istanbul to soar to 6,100 per cent. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit
expressed concern for newlyweds who might have trouble making
balloon payments on those starter homes in Ankara. For a $100,000
three-bedroom with carport, for example, the monthly payment is
now $300,000. Ecevit advised families to cut back on dining out
until the crisis is over.
*
The Unimog, the world's largest sport utility vehicle, went
into production at Freightliner, the Detroit company that
normally makes 18-wheelers. Nine feet, 7 inches tall (three feet
taller than the tallest SUV), 20 feet long (a foot longer than a
Ford Excursion), two feet wider than a car, three inches wider
than a Hummer, and weighing 12,500 pounds (the weight of two
Suburbans), the Unimog will retail for $84,000. And if your kids
ignore repeated warnings to stop that roughhousing in the back, a
350-pound Nazi named Fritz in a pith helmet will discipline them
with a riding crop.
*
Dr. Eric L. Altschuler, a research fellow at the University
of California at San Diego, conducted a study for the Archives of
General Psychiatry concluding that the Biblical hero Samson
suffered from "antisocial personality disorder." Samson had six
of the seven criteria for the clinical illness, and only three
are needed for a positive diagnosis. As described in the book of
Judges, Samson was deceitful, failed to conform to social norms,
defied the law, was impulsive, irritable, aggressive, had no
remorse for his actions, and had a flagrant disregard for the
safety of others and even of himself. (He told Delilah about the
damn locks.) In short, it was a sociopath who killed those
thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. If the leading
men of Israel had known this at the time, he might have been
easier to deal with. Dr. Altschuler was asked to extend his
studies to other Biblical figures, in the hope it would shed
light on our early pre-history, but he said, "The others weren't
crazy. Eve, for example, was just a bitch."
*
A midday gunbattle erupted in the middle of a New York
street between hip-hop diva Lil' Kim and her posse and hip-hop
lyricists Capone-N-Noreaga and their posse, apparently because on
the album "The Reunion," Capone-N-Noreaga had invited rapper Foxy
Brown to record a song making fun of Lil' Kim, because Lil' Kim
had insulted Foxy Brown on a previous album, but possibly because
Lil' Kim is the ex-girlfriend of rapper Biggie Smalls, who was
gunned down while leaving a party in 1997, apparently in
retaliation for the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, although
officials said that was unlikely because Biggie had already
stunned Lil' Kim by marrying singer Faith Evans before his death,
and therefore a more likely reason could be sought in the four-
year hiatus between Lil' Kim's debut album, "Hard Core," and her
1999 follow-up, "Notorious K.I.M.," although they weren't ruling
out a connection to Sean "Puffy" Combs, who appeared with Lil'
Kim at a recent album-launch party even though he had already
been indicted on felony gun possession and witness bribery
charges stemming from a 1999 shootout at Club New York. The 4-
foot-11 26-year-old Lil' Kim--whose real name is Kimberly Jones--
says the important things to her are God and her music, and that
she trust Him to be bangin the mofos.
*
Where did all these Mardi Gras come from? Mardi Gras
Seattle, Mardi Gras Philadelphia, Mardi Gras Austin, and Mardi
Gras Fresno all turned violent, with looting and beer-bottle-
throwing and police with billy clubs and at least one death, but
in New Orleans, which used to have the ONLY Mardi Gras in North
America, police handled the wild hordes with nary a headline-
grabbing incident. Their secret: every five minutes, police
officers show their breasts.
*
Sean "Puffy" Combs testified that he didn't have no gun and
he didn't know WHERE his friend Anthony "Wolf" Jones had gone for
that year and a half he was in jail, and he had no idea what he
was talking about on his chauffeur's answering machine when he
offered to "make your family comfortable." The prosecutor in the
guns and bribery case then produced the third base bag from
Yankee Stadium and asked Combs if this was, in fact, his ass.
Combs affirmed that it was.
*
After nasty infighting, the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences agreed to create a new Emmy category for reality
programming, but with an important proviso: the producers of
"Survivor," "Temptation Island," and "Who Wants To Be a
Millionaire?" will be forced to participate in sack races around
the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, followed by a group voting process
that will eliminate every show except one. In keeping with the
policies governing the entire television industry, cheating will
be allowed.
*
When Canada banned Brazilian beef, anti-Canadian protests
broke out all over Brazil, with bar owners dumping Molson beer
into the street and port workers dressed as Mounties holding
barbecues in front of the Canadian consulate. By week's end the
angry Brazilians had banned Alanis Morissette's music from the
radio, and they were threatening to impose the ultimate sanction:
a boycott of Saskatoon tourism.
*
The Washington press corps got a jolting reality check after
realizing that, because President Bush's ranch is located in
Crawford, Texas, much of their next four years will be spent in
hotels in the nearest city: Waco. Fortunately, the city has had a
chance to brush up its image since the Branch Davidian inferno of
1993, converting the notorious massacre site into a barbecue pit
and RV park. The most Baptist of all cities has a new spring in
its step and is rolling out the welcome wagon, offering the
nation's press free macaroni-and-cheese dinners at Wyatt's
Cafeteria, discounted tickets to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame,
and complimentary shuttle service to Wednesday-night Bible study
at Baylor University, which is mandatory for all residents of
McLennan County. And to help the reporters do their jobs, the
Waco Tribune-Herald will be sponsoring a Worldwide Communications
Center and Satellite Uplink that will be able to deliver all
high-school football results within 20 minutes of a game's
conclusion.
*
The city of San Francisco agreed to pay for sex-change
operations as part of its health insurance coverage for city
employees. Any city worker who wants to switch genders can get up
to $50,000 for the surgery. The male-to-female surgery costs
about $37,000, which sounds a little high for what is essentially
a hack job, and the female-to-male surgery costs $77,000, which
sounds pretty low for what amounts to the building of the Tower
of Babel in miniature. Anyone going male-to-female and then
wanting to go female-back-to-male is not considered a candidate
for coverage because the Jerry Springer guest fee is higher than
the amount necessary to finance the surgery.
*
Detroit mobster Anthony J. "Tony Jack" Giacalone died at the
ripe old age of 82, destined to be remembered as the man Jimmy
Hoffa said he was going to meet at the Machus Red Fox restaurant
on the day he disappeared forever. On the day of Giacalone's
Mafia funeral, a slight ripple effect occured in the south end
zone at Giants Stadium in The Meadowlands, New Jersey.
*
The biggest operator of pubs in Great Britain, Bass P.L.C.,
sold 988 of its taverns to the Japanese, making the investment
bank Nomura the NEW largest owner of pubs in England--and that's
just WRONG.
*
DARE, the most widely used anti-drug program in the public
schools for the past 18 years, beloved by police officers who
regularly lecture to young children, has been credited with the
following results in terms of decreased drug usage:
Zip. Nada. Doesn't work.
A number of recent studies have proven that children don't
respond to lectures.
Duh.
*
George Harrison gave an interview claiming that he wrote
better songs than John Lennon and Paul McCartney but never
received as much credit because Lennon and McCartney had such
colossal egos. Harrison's comments instantly drew an indignant
retort from Ringo Starr, who claims that Harrison is a blowhard
who was always jealous of Ringo's classic "I Wanna Be Your Man."
*
Fergie's new book, "Reinventing Yourself with the Duchess of
York," is getting rave reviews for dealing with basic weight-loss
issues in a straightforward manner that anyone can understood.
For example, from page 94: "Practice waving your hand so that the
sous chef will not ignite the flaming desserts prematurely. Ask
for a low-cal pineapple tart with kiwi-fruit topping instead."
Three Las Vegas hotels announced new Dale Earnhardt
impersonator shows.
*
Darva Conger, the woman who won the "Who Wants to Marry a
Millionaire?" show then instantly dumped grand prize Rick
Rockwell, went on "Larry King Live!" to talk to her ex-husband on
what would have been their first anniversary. She apologized,
telling him she "made a dumb mistake" and "It was just a dumb TV
show." Rick said "Actually I have a few things I'd like
explained"--and she refused to answer. It's a tragic sign of our
times that so many marriages fail due to a lack of communication
skills.
*
The Federal Bureau of Prisons asked Congress to add $1
billion to its 2001 budget to cover extra clerical personnel
needed to process and release the 47,000 felons pardoned by
President Clinton in January. The last prisoner to be "mustered
out," a Miami cocaine trafficker named Carlos Obregon, returned
to his vacation home in the Grand Cayman Islands last Thursday,
where he was greeted by the Grand Cayman Secretary of State, a
deputation from the local casino, and three cousins of Hillary.
Nine hundred Kurdish refugees were abandoned on the French
Riviera by Turkish smugglers and are being held there until the
government of France decides what to do with them. After several
days of detention at a marine base, a spokesman for the Kurds
complained of bad food--and was promptly executed by order of the
prefecture of the Academie Gastronomie Provencal at Antibes.
Chefs from Marseilles and Monaco then demanded that the stranded
Kurds be returned to Turkey, but officials of the Cannes Film
Festival are protesting that decision, asking that they be
retained at least through May so that they can be used as
picturesque Third World cocktail-party servers during Documentary
Week.
*
The U.S. Census Bureau released a report stating that they
failed to count anywhere from 2.7 million to 4 million people in
the 2000 census, raising the question: If they know they didn't
count them, why don't they . . . COUNT THEM?
*
President Bush continued to push for his "Star Wars"
missile-shield system to protect the United States against a
sudden nuclear missile attack by . . . uh . . . hmmm . . . well .
. . actually nobody can launch that kind of missile attack right
now but IT COULD HAPPEN.
*
A judge in Champaign, Illinois, forcibly separated a 32-
year-old mother from her son and put the boy in foster care
because he was still being breast-fed at the age of five.
Apparently Judge Ann Einhorn thought there was something kinky
about it, even though all primitive societies breast-feed until
sometime between the ages of three and five, when the kid
develops permanent teeth. The La Leche League, a "breast-feeding
advocacy group," weighed in with both breasts, defending this
kid's right to "la leche" and saying that the natural thing is
for him to suck on those garbonzas until he decides to stop on
his own. Einhorn said there was "enormous potential for emotional
harm" in breast-feeding until the kid gets tired of it,
presumably because he might never get tired of it. But now let's
imagine what happened to this kid's brain when he found himself
in foster care. After getting that milk every day for four-plus
years, it's abruptly taken away, and on the first day it's taken
away, he finds himself in PRISON. Someday dominatrixes are gonna
make a lot of money off this guy. Thank you, judge.
*
Andrew Lloyd Webber, the musical composer sometimes compared
to God in theatrical circles, apparently won't make it to New
York in time for the Tony Awards because no one will rent him a
theater. His new musical, "By Jeeves," got good reviews in its
Pittsburgh tryout, but the Helen Hayes Theater told him they'd
already booked a one-man show, and the Brooks Atkinson Theater
told him they weren't going to kick out "Jane Eyre" even though
it's doing pretty dismal business. Lord Lloyd Webber took the
rejection well, singing for 20 minutes in a falsetto lament that
had several high C's, then throwing himself off a balcony through
a trapdoor that was hidden by stage fog.
*
"Saturday Night Live" Executive Producer Lorne Michaels
threw a hissy fit when an overtime game in the XFL caused his
show to go on 45 minutes later than scheduled, ruining the week-
long promotion of guest star Jennifer Lopez. When "SNL" scored a
mere 6 rating, compared to a 7.2 for the "SNL" rerun the week
before, Michaels told NBC executives that he was refusing to put
anything funny into any of the shows for the rest of the season.
Due to similar spats with NBC brass in the past, the last funny
"SNL" was in 1984.
*
Prince Andrew was photographed frolicking with naked women
on a yacht off the coast of Thailand, infuriating Fergie, who had
previously been photographed kissing the feet and sucking the
toes of American playboy Johnny Bryan. Andrew's escapades took
place on an island with the unfortunate name of Phuket.
*
On his 90th birthday, supporters of former President Reagan
said they would postpone their campaign to have his face engraved
on Mt. Rushmore and would settle for his face on the ten-dollar
bill. Of course, Alexander Hamilton is already ON the ten-dollar
bill, but all he ever did was co-author The Federalist Papers and
die in a duel. He never even came to close to "Bedtime for
Bonzo," much less Iran-Contra.
*
LeAnn Rimes, involved in a nasty $7 million suit with her
father, vowed to spend her money more wisely in the future, and
made a $1 million down payment on what will eventually be a $10
million quadruple-wide trailer house with an aboveground pool on
a special cliffside site in Malibu.
*
Suzanne Pleshette announced wedding plans--with Tom Poston.
Something about that is just WRONG.
*
France passed a new "parity law," requiring all political
parties to put up an equal number of male and female candidates.
The law also requires all French women elected to office to take
a male lover who will henceforth be known as a "mastress."
*
Alcoholics Anonymous announced a new 12-step program for
Republicans called Clinton-Hating Anonymous for those who refuse
to admit to themselves that he's out of office and it's no longer
necessary to prosecute him, impeach him, demand that he resign,
or force him to pay money. "Some of these people just got strung
out," said Roland Jaspers, director of the new CHA program. "They
spent eight years getting up in the morning with a new reason to
hate Clinton and going to bed with a subpoena or a bill of
impeachment gripped tightly in their clenched fists. It's going
to take some time for them to admit they're under the power of
this and turn it over to God. I think part of the addiction is
the failure to recognize that, no matter what they do to him,
Clinton just bobs up to the surface again like a cork." Jaspers
said that a secondary Al-Anon program would be specifically
directed at Hillary-Haters, "although technically that's not an
addiction per se, since she's currently holding public office and
Republicans especially have an overwhelming need to hate her
continually." Jaspers said that some of the most severe cases of
Clinton-Hating will be shown pictures of Hillary in an attempt to
transfer their venom from one Clinton to the other. "It's a
little like methadone," he said. "It gets them moving in the
right direction. We haven't had an actual cure yet, but we did
have one man who only hates Chelsea now. We show him pictures of
Bill and Hillary and he's still catatonic, but he's
expressionless, like Frank Gifford. He doesn't act out. It's a
start."
New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani got his panties in a bunch
again, this time over an art exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of
Art that includes a color photo of a nekkid woman in Christ's
place at the Last Supper. He swears he'll take away the museum's
city funding, because the work is "disgusting," "outrageous" and
"anti-Catholic." But Giuliani already went down this road in
1999, when the same museum put up an exhibition with a painting
showing the Virgin Mary with elephant dung on her breasts. He
suspended funding for the museum, but the museum sued him and got
its money back. More important, thousands showed up to look at
the elephant dung and say "Is it REAL elephant dung?" (It was.)
Brooklyn Museum officials, once again faced with long lines,
announced plans to commission contemporary artists to interpret
every book of the Bible, in a 15-year project to be underwritten
by Larry Flynt Publications.
*
The ABC movie-of-the-week, "These Old Broads," starring Joan
Collins, Debbie Reynolds, Shirley MacLaine and Liz Taylor, scored
a remarkable 47 rating among the key demographic of women 61-to-
86 who talk too loudly in restaurants and make illegal left turns
from the right-hand lane. ABC executives promised advertisers
that production on a sequel would begin immediately. That project
is tentatively titled "Four Whiny Bitches."
*
Eminem copped to a gun-possession plea and prepared to do
his Elton John duet at the Grammys while protests are going on
outside. The Family Violence Prevention Fund claims that Eminem's
music incites violence and that he needs to be bitch-slapped,
while the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation say that
his lyrics demean homosexuals and that he should be publicly
nipple-clamped.
*
The American nuclear submarine fleet continued to assert its
world dominance last week by sinking three Costa Rican shrimp
trawlers, two yachts anchored off the coast of Monaco, 14
Evinride power boats competing in the annual bass-fishing
tournament in southern Alabama, and three Jet-Skis that wandered
into international waters off Malibu.
*
The New York Times reported that there are no fresh fish in
Murmansk. Please adjust your life accordingly
*
On the day the Time-Warner merger with AOL was completed,
CNN laid off 400 employees, including Elsa Klensch, the star of
"Style with Elsa Klensch," which debuted the day CNN first went
on the air 21 years ago. Elsa wore a stunning Geoffrey Beene
structured jacket and shiny black patent flats. Ted Turner wore
his usual "Where am I?" grimace.
*
A federal appeals court ruled that Napster should be stopped
because the popular Internet company encourages the sharing of
copyrighted musical recordings among its members. If allowed to
continue, the court said, Napster could set a precedent that
would lead to other abuses of copyright, such as public lending
libraries, flea markets, second-hand bookshops, and people like
Joe Bob Briggs, who has given away every video sent to him since
1985 without charging a fee or returning a portion of the video's
purchase price to the producer.
*
Bill Clinton abandoned his plan to move his offices into
Carnegie Hall Tower after Congressional Republicans worked long
hours to block approval of his taxpayer-funded lease, so now it
looks like he'll be moving on up to Harlem's famous 125th Street,
where he'll be a neighbor of the Rev. Al Sharpton and, more
ominously, the Apollo Theater. Somebody grab that saxophone
immediately.
*
Miami Mayor Joe Carollo returned to work after spending the
night behind bars on a charge of beaning his wife in the head
with a tea canister. He agreed to a protective order, surrendered
his firearms, and held a press conference, but abruptly cut it
off after the first question, which was, of course, "Have you
stopped beating your wife?"
*
Al Gore taught his first class at the Columbia University
journalism school, impressing the nation's budding reporters by
making it clear that all his lectures would be "off the record."
He explained that he was following that great tradition of
western academic freedom that dates to the University of
Heidelberg, where, in 1258, King Gustavus Adolphus beheaded a
freshman for asking a personal question.
*
Bill Clinton, spending his first week of freedom in his new
suburban paradise of Chappaqua, New York, decided his favorite
local hangout was . . . Starbucks. Presidential historians say
this is the first president in history so visibly devastated by
the rigors of the office.
*
Earl Washington Jr., a mentally retarded man serving a life
sentence in Virginia for murder, was finally released from prison
after 18 years when DNA evidence proved he didn't do the crime.
He was supposed to spend his first day of freedom testifying
before Congress about how he was almost executed on the basis of
a confession he didn't know he made, but Virginia prison
officials said he wouldn't be allowed to travel beyond his
hometown of Virginia Beach. They were following "standard
procedure," they said, for the treatment of retarded innocent
non-inmates with opinions about the death penalty laws.
*
President Bush sent Congress his tax-cut proposal which will
provide much needed relief to the increasingly sluggish economy.
Addressing an audience of Mexican-American bakery owners, Bush
explained that the biggest cuts would benefit the middle class,
those families earning between $5 million and $100 million per
year, while the cuts for the rich would be much more modest. For
example, a single man who sells his dot-com company for $1.5
billion and amortizes that capital gain over 15 years will still
pay up to 8 per cent in income tax even after his accounting
department has made its deductions and offshore investments. By
contrast, Darcy LaPier's $20 million income for the 2001 tax year
will be taxed at the lower 7 per cent rate, and that figure could
plummet to 4 per cent if she remarries a billionaire. "This plan
is for all Americans," said Bush. "Well, the ones that have
money."
*
Soleil Moon Frye revealed in an interview that she likes to
cook in the nude, get "touchy-feely" with "Sabrina" co-star
Melissa Joan Hart, and have kisses from her husband "behind my
kneecaps" (which sounds painful). The former "Punky Brewster"
star has recovered from gigantomastia, or "giant breast
syndrome," diagnosed in her early teens and brought under control
by major breast surgery at age 16 to reduce her from a 36DD to a
36C. Eight years later, she can finally talk about it, because
she's become centered, focused, at ease with herself and at two
with her chest.
*
Dyan Cannon, who starred in "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," has
a new career as a faith healer, curing AIDS, cancer, deafness and
mental illness by channelling the love of Jesus, resulting in a
steady stream of the afflicted heading for Beverly Hills and the
44 double-D hug that heals.
*
Kate Hudson of "Almost Famous" and Chris Robinson of the
Black Crowes were married in Snowmass, Colorado, by a Ute Indian
medicine man. The special ceremony included a text written
especially for the shaman by the executive producer of "Doctor
Quinn, Medicine Woman."
*
The amazing part is not that Angela Ermakowa claims her
child was the result of a 1999 sex tryst with tennis star Boris
Becker in the closet of a London restaurant. Or that the Russian
mob had a plan to blackmail Becker by threatening to tell his
wife. It's that Becker's whole defense is that he only got oral
sex from Angela, so the upcoming court proceeding will center
around exactly where boris pointed that whangdoodle. Apparently
sex in a closet at the trendy Nobu is NO BIG DEAL to Boris.
*
Darcy LaPier, the former Hawaiian Tropic model, former wife
of Hawaiian Tropic founder Ron Rice, former wife of kung fu king
Jean Claude Van Damme, former wife of Herbalife founder Mark
Hughes until he dropped dead of a drug-and-booze cocktail
overdose, mother of two, stepmother of one, recipient of $20
million from Hughes' estate, has been kicked out of her Beverly
Hills mansion by the court, but the grieving widow has announced
plans to invest at least half of her inheritance in designer
pumps, lingerie and clingy cocktail dresses as she puts on a
brave face and ventures into the scary world of dating. The
particular brave face she's putting on is the same face that once
belonged to Leona Helmsley, but there have been no plastic-
surgery malpractice suits announced thus far.
*
In a tearful reunion, Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe agreed to
be "just friends" and to acknowledge that they were simply
incompatible, since she is a needy clingy bitch and he's a cold
lying bastard.
*
Jack Nicholson and Lara Flynn Boyle were spotted at a pricey
Washington, D.C., eatery, smooching and cuddling. Waiters said
the two lovebirds alternated French-kissing, throwing five-pound
paperweights at each other, cooing obscenities, and playfully
gouging each other in the ribs with steak knives.
*
Rhythm-and-blues singer Ginuwine, of the group 100%
Ginuwine, is expecting a baby this spring with fiance rap star
Sole, of Skin Deep. Ginuwine and Sole are excitedly combing
through second-grade spelling tests in a search for baby names.
*
Oprah pays $1,095 for her pashmina pajamas. Pashmina is made
from the underbellies of goats. This amounts to approximately 20
goats per Oprah sleep session, 30 in non-dieting years.
*
Lauren Bush, the presidential niece linked romantically to
Prince William, remains jailbait in her tough law-and-order home
state of Texas, where Uncle George W. once presided over the
various executions and life sentences that are meted out more or
less hourly. Just letting the bed-hopping William know in
advance--might be better to keep it on an email basis for a
couple years.
*
What's wrong with this picture?
Bill Clinton has three rather unsatisfying sessions of oral
sex with a young groupie, backs out of the relationship before
intercourse occurs, and almost becomes the first president ever
voted out of office.
Jesse Jackson has full-out sex with a young groupie, fathers
a child by her, and becomes a great statesman in need of
forgiveness.
*
Cindy Crawford and husband Rande Gerber are being sued by
their neighbors in a New York apartment building because they
make too much noise while having sex in the afternoon. In court
papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, offended Upper East
Siders said they were sick of being subjected to such outbursts
from Cindy as "Supersize the supermodel!" and "Oh, baby baby,
let's take the fun bus to Tuna Town!"
*
Julia Roberts announced wedding plans with "Law & Order"
star Benjamin Bratt and asked Erin Brockovich to be her maid of
honor. Roberts and Brockovich have become inseparable "soulmates"
since the release of "their" movie, causing Brockovich to propose
marriage to Kiefer Sutherland, leave him at the altar for a sex-
filled weekend with Jason Patric, move in with Lyle Lovett, and
French-kiss Hugh Grant in a Beverly Hills bar.
*
The Barbi twins, Shane and Sia, launched their new bulimia
book, "Dying To Be Healthy," by hosting a dinner for the media at
which health food was served without the customary air-sickness
bags emblazoned with Wolfgang Puck's logo. Shane wore a turquoise
tube dress formerly used as a Hopi Indian bracelet, while Sia
displayed her new "full figure" look in a playful size-zero dress
made entirely from pipe cleaners. The special dress was part of a
Special Olympics satellite event at which high-school-age
children create crafts from ordinary household objects. The young
dressmaker, 17-year-old cerebral palsy victim Gloria Stressner,
attended the dinner and gave a presentation of how she had
painstakingly woven together the pipe cleaners until all three
were in place.
*
NBC Chairman Bob Wright announced that he will fire 600
people, including staffers at MSNBC and CNBC, but that the cuts
would be "invisible to viewers." He pointed out that Geraldo
Rivera, for example, was actually fired in 1998 but has continued
his show in holographic form.
*
Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown celebrated their new clean-
and-sober lifestyle with a romantic getaway at a posh resort in
the Canary Islands, where they had a candlelight dinner, danced
the night away, and then, for a nightcap, mainlined some battery
acid.
*
Dick Clark released the first volume of his memoirs, tracing
his interest in rock-and-roll to the minstrel shows in the New
York neighborhood where he grew up. "The first time I heard
'Dixie,'" he writes, "I knew it was a hit."
*
Gwyneth Paltrow revealed that she went into a deep
depression after breaking up with Brad Pitt in 1997, but she got
over it with the help of a kind Columbus, Ohio, pizza deliveryman
who thoughtfully sent her packages of sex toys and pornography,
quoted passages in the Bible revealing that he was meant to marry
her, went four times to her mother's home in Santa Monica to tell
Mom the happy news, sent Federal Express pizzas with Reese's
peanut butter pieces sprinkled on top, wrote hundreds of letters
telling her how he would hold God's scalpel and cut the sin out
of her heart, and lavished her with trinkets like bras, panties,
stockings and a sexually mutilated toy pig. Gwyneth expressed
atonishment that her soulmate had been banned from three
different Kinko's copying centers and would be unavailable for
romantic counseling for the next three years.
*
Crooner Andy Williams confessed that he used LSD in the
early seventies in an attempt to wake up. He later abandoned the
experiment.
*
To celebrate her $479 million inheritance settlement, Anna
Nicole Smith decided to get a tattoo on her butt. She wanted
something that only her sex-slave lover Mark Fetters would see,
so she chose the word "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."
*
John Goodman, distraught over the cancellation of his
"Normal, Ohio" series, lost 37,500 pounds in two weeks, and his
friends are worried.
*
Lawyers for Sean "Puffy" Combs and Jamal "Shyne" Barrow, on
trial for shooting up a New York hip-hop club, told jurors that
Puffy did not have a gun and Shyne did not have a gun and the gun
found in the car occupied by Puffy and Shyne was not a gun.
*
Michael Moriarty purchased a home next door to the Bromide
Tavern in Moosehead, Saskatchewan, the last bar in North America
from which the "Law & Order" star has not been banned.
*
Soap star Hunter Tylo escaped from a frightening religious
cult that tried to brainwash her before realizing its mistake.
*
To celebrate his legal divorce from Demi Moore, Bruce Willis
impregnated 40 strippers and a Moroccan girl named Mihaila who
wears a tongue stud in her butt. Friends said that Willis was
distraught over the divorce and was considering a tongue stud in
his own butt.
*
Mickey Rooney, recovering from double bypass heart surgery
at Los Robles Regional Medical Center, said he felt so good he
wanted to revive "Sugar Babies" and take it on the road. After
the announcement, doctors prescribed a daily diet of Haagen Dazs
butter-pecan ice cream, Belgian waffles, and cheese balls.
*
The Godfather of Soul showed up three hours late for his gig
at the Blue Note in the new Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, threw a
chair, yelled at two women, tried to take a camcorder away from a
fan, and broke several drink glasses. Spokesmen for the popular
singer said he was having an allergic reaction to old age.
*
Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie were spotted at the
House of Blues on Sunset Strip sucking blood out of each other's
jugular veins. They topped off the evening with creme brulee and
were still canoodling when they left.
*
Kim Basinger filed for divorce and moved all the furniture
out of the house she shares with husband Alec Baldwin in the
trendy Hamptons millionaire haven of Amagansett, on Long Island.
She loaded up the truck and she moved to an undisclosed location,
although it's assumed she did NOT return to Braselton, Georgia,
the town she bought for $20 million in 1989 and then dumped a
couple years later when she went bankrupt. Baldwin, currently
seen in "Thomas and the Magic Railroad," issued a 30-page
statement blaming Republicans, then punched out Billy Joel, his
next-door neighbor, because Billy still has furniture in his
house.
*
O.J. Simpson IQ Check:
When Simpson chose a place to escape the glare of publicity,
he bought a home in Kendall, Florida, which is exactly 70 miles
from Lantana, Florida, headquarters of The National Enquirer and
four other tabloids.
*
Lawyers for NFL star Rae Carruth, accused of ordering the
murder of his pregnant girlfriend, downplayed the importance of
testimony revealing that he was dating 29 other women at the time
and that at least seven women had previously been pregnant by
him. "None of them other bitches got whacked," reasoned lead
counsel Strother Stephenson.
*
Darcy LaPier, bereaved big-breasted widow of Herbalife
founder Mark Hughes, told a Los Angeles judge that her $10
million pre-nuptial settlement was insufficient for her lifestyle
and that she needs $100 million to cover living expenses for the
next 44 years. She gave the judge the option of awarding her the
full amount or recruiting 100 "independent marketing
representative" sub-judges who would raise $1.2 million each and
pay 80 per cent to their supervisor for the right to recruit
other "independent marketing representative" sub-judges.
*
The JonBenet Ramsey Foundation, established in 1997 by John
and Patsy Ramsey to help needy children, has donated $19,000 to
orphanages in seven states. The funds have been earmarked for
mascara, kid's-size stiletto heels and training Wonder Bras.
*
Joan Rivers and Nancy Reagan were both treated for minor
injuries after a dinner party at the home of Beverly Hills
decorator Zsigmond DeFarge. Apparently they attempted to greet
each other with a Hollywood "air kiss," but the rushing air tore
throught the taut skin of Rivers' left cheek, creating a
horrifying flapping-window-shade effect. As frightened guests
looked on, the enraged comedy diva punctured and deflated
Reagan's neck by nicking it with a rat-tail comb. The women were
separated and repaired with aerosol cans dispensing temporary
tire-inflation sealant before being sent to separate hospitals.
*
Montel Williams broke up with blonde Swedish ex-model
girlfriend My Karlsson after his blonde ex-stripper ex-wife Grace
Williams became enraged about their continuing affair and cut off
all contact, leaving Montel free to start seeing blonde ex-
girlfriend ex-flight attendant Heather Stranahan, former love
companion of ex-"Lilith Fair" publicist Jan Carruthers, who dies
her hair red, making her technically an ex-blonde ex-girlfriend
of a blonde ex-girlfriend of an ex-husband.
*
O.J. Simpson kicked a Maltese puppy through the picture
window of his $625,000 Kendall, Florida, ranch-style suburban
home, but later apologized to frightened neighbors by barbecuing
the dead canine and offering each of them a free "O.J. Burger."
*
Scientists are close to a breakthrough proving that liver
disease, drug addiction and felony criminal behavior are all
caused by genetics. Preliminary results are expected by 2119,
when the love child of Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher, using
the sperm of David Crosby, reaches the age at which he can be
tried as an adult in all 50 states.
*
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was hired by Don
King Productions to be a ringside judge at King's next seven pay-
per-view events.
*
After one week, Madonna remained married.
*
New writings of Nostradamus were discovered, including this
enigmatic prophecy: "And the houn
d-faced mumbler will never
ascend until Texas freezes over."
*
Attorneys for Robert Downey Jr. asked a Los Angeles district
court judge to provide Downey with a jail key similar to the one
used by Otis on "The Andy Griffith Show."
*
The Journal of the American Medical Association reported
that cell phones do not cause brain cancer. The five-year study
involved permanently wiring cell phones to the ears of laboratory
rabbits, after which the hares showed no signs of mental
deterioration. However, 34 per cent of the animals did start
wearing Gucci loafers while day-trading.
*
Monica Lewinsky was hired as one of the Judds.
*
Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid announced a trial sleep-with-
anything-that-moves agreement.
*
Van Breck Watkins, 350-pound triggerman in the Rae Carruth
murder case, expressed outrage that he was not named Time
Magazine's Man of the Year, insisting that he could kill any Time
editor with his bare hands and that his comment "I hope the bitch
dies" was taken out of context. "I meant that other bitch," he
explained.
*
Frank Gifford achieved an erection with the help of the May
1999 issue of Hustler, alarming Kathie Lee, who has banned all
erections, not only in her own household but within the municipal
city limits of Fairfield, Connecticut, where the dream couple
resides. Meanwhile, Kathie Lee's new album, "Kathie Lee Sings
Kathie Lee," remained off the charts for the 11th straight week. |