The Joe Bob Report

Romanian Tourism Minister Dan Matei Agathon announced groundbreaking for Dracula Park, to be built at the Transylvanian birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, but by week's end the opposition Liberal Party said they would build their own Dracula theme park, near Bran Castle, popularly known as the place where Vlad dispatched his victims. Agathon was furious, saying that his project would create 3,000 jobs, but the Liberals responded that their Dracula park only cost $18 million, while the official government version was budgeted at $30 million. Since Romania has no money, the Liberals pointed out, you can't suck blood out of a stone.

* London jeans maker Lee Cooper has introduced the new " jeans, equipped with a strategic bulge for those who have less to work with than they would like. "The bulge has become the fashion statement of the season," a company spokeswoman said. "The jeans are designed for the ultimate in bulge enhancement, so men can put their assets on display." The original Lee Cooper jeans, released in 1978, are designed to be worn skin-tight and are favorites of Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi, among others. The new ones create more of an impression, and often lead to the question, "Is that a tube sock in your crotch or are you just glad to see me?" * Katherine Knight of Aberdeen, Australia, donned a sexy nightgown and had sex with her boyfriend, then stabbed him 37 times with a butcher's knife, skinned his body, cooked his head, and served him to his children. Evidence presented before a court in Canberra showed that she had planned the attack 48 hours earlier, and when the wounded boyfriend managed to escape the house, she dragged him back inside and finished him off. Knight had worked as a meat-slicer in a slaughterhouse, so she was able to expertly remove his head, face, nose, ears, neck, torso, genital organs, and legs, to create a pelt from his skin. She then took all the body parts to the kitchen, peeled and prepared some vegetables, and cooked the head in a stew. She also cooked "steaks," which she left as meals for the man's son and daughter. Her motive: the boyfriend wanted to end the six-year relationship and expel her from the house, which he wanted to save for his children. At press time Tobe Hooper, George Romero and Clive Barker were all angling for Lifetime Network film rights, with the lead role going to Kathie Lee Gifford. * Apco Aviation of Israel is selling an escape parachute for workers trapped in high-rise buildings that are attacked by terrorists. The "Executivechute" sells for $795, weighs four pounds, and is contained in a backpack with a special ripcord that can be attached to heavy furniture when its wearer jumps out the window. It has a military-style round canopy so that you can sail past your trapped co-workers, waving and offering condolences as you flutter down to earth. For safety-minded users who desire practice sessions, a 20-pound sledgehammer to knock out the window in your office is optional. * In the second case of psychotic Santa Clauses this season, a Brazilian Santa drew a gun from his black belt and shot a woman on a Sao Paolo street, wounding her in the wrist and face. Shortly before the shooting, the unidentified Santa was handing out candy to motorists. When he saw the woman, he fired. Police said she was involved in a paternity suit, so they were treating the crime as a possible retaliation, but the Santa is going to be hard to identify because he had the full bushy beard on at the time of the crime and he was shaking like a bowl full of jelly. * Money is tight this year, so the Christmas fantasy gift at Victoria's Secret, the Heavenly Star bra, is being sold for only $12.5 million, a full two and a half million less than last year's rubies-and-diamond bra, panty and belt set. The Heavenly Star bra is covered with 1,200 pink sapphires and 2,300 diamonds, with a 90-carat diamond fastened above the cleavage. (The emerald-cut diamond alone is worth $10.6 million.) But the matching pink panties, trimmed with diamonds arranged like angel wings, are priced separately--because most people think wearing diamonds down there would be a little gaudy. It's all about scale. * Tony Cornell, of Britain's Society for Psychical Research, reports that ghosts are disappearing, the victims of cell phone usage. "Ghost sightings have remained consistent for centuries," said Cornell. "Until three years ago we'd receive reports of two new ghosts every week. But with the introduction of mobile phones 15 years ago, ghost sightings began to decline to the point where now we are receiving none." Cornell called on the government to curtail cell phone use in Britain, which currently has 39 mobile phones, so that haunted tourist attractions won't be threatened by electronic noise. He also called on paranormal researchers everywhere to be on the alert for ghosts who lurk near drug dealers and Hollywood agents. * Returning from a day of sunbathing at Copacabana Beach, a man walked past a Rio de Janeiro apartment building and was struck on the head and killed by the falling body of another man who had leapt from a high window in order to kill himself. He succeeded. An investigation and protest was announced by the Committee To Prevent Irresponsible Suicides. * In a plot out of "High School Confidential," a 30-year-old cop posed as a student at Tomah High School in Tomah, Wis., and busted two students on drug charges. Police Chief Chris Anderson didn't identify the narc, but said he had been planning the operation for more than a year with the cooperation of school officials. When he couldn't find anyone on the force who looked young enough, he hired an officer specifically for the investigation, and enrolled him in classes starting in September. After three months of undercover work, two guys, aged 17 and 18, were arrested for selling drugs. Next up: Mamie Van Doren look- alike who will go in to bust up the rampant smoking in the girls restroom. * Koleen Brooks, a 37-year-old ex-stripper who was elected mayor of Georgetown, Colo, in April, says she is being persecuted for flashing her breasts at bars and vacationing at nude beaches. "I'm vivacious. I'm a nut. I'm just a social butterfly who wants to bring this town together," said Brooks, countering political enemies who don't like her and say she shouldn't be allowed to change the mountain town of 1,100 people. A Georgetown native, Brooks owns a local hair salon and rides a motorcycle. Police were forced to investigate allegations that she exposed herself at Dexter's Tavern in Georgetown in October, but she denied the charges, and the cops did nothing. "I want her removed, not for personal reasons but for the sake of the town," said Brooke Buckley, a town board member and mayor pro tem. Brooks has constantly clashed with the board, notably over her proposal to dispense with the town's police department and replace it with patrols by the Clear Creek County sheriff's office to save money. The board says she's mad because an officer treated her badly. She said she's fighting an "old guard" that has always controlled everything about the historic Victorian town. Most recently, the board inquired about the possibility of ousting her, which would require a two-thirds vote, or of ordering a recall election. Brooks responded that they shouldn't be so angry, and offered lap dances at half price to make them feel better. * Former World Cup snowboarder Sabrina Blassnig will compete this year in panties and bra only, as a way of dealing with her failure to secure a clothing sponsor. "There is nothing else I could do," the 31-year-old Austrian champ said. "It doesn't really matter as I still have a lot to offer, even without my overalls on." Audiences in Laax, Switzerland, site of the next competition, were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the woman soon to be know as the Hoboarder. * Swiss police made a pre-dawn raid on the luxury hotel room of 75-year-old French composer Pierre Boulez, arresting him as a suspected terrorist on the morning after one of his concerts in Basel, Switzerland. They confiscated his passport and his plane tickets, and caused him to miss his fight to Chicago, even though the Basel chief of police later apologized profusely. His explanation: six years ago, a Swiss music critic had panned one of Boulez' performances. Afterward the critic received a threatening phone call making a reference to a bomb. The incredibly efficient Swiss police couldn't question Boulez, as he'd already left the country, so they just put his name on the terror suspects list, where it's remained ever since. They were doing a routine check of the guests at the five-star Drei Konige Hotel, saw the name, and planned their S.W.A.T.-team operation against the elderly avant-gardist. Now, if Boulez really DID want to commit an act of terrorism, he could probably sneak onto the narrow-gauge at Interlaken and blow up some yodelers in lederhosen. * President Bush has appointed Bo Derek to the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The first cultural program to be overseen by Miss Derek will not be scheduled until the fall of 2003. It's a multi-cultural festival featuring Chinese acrobatics, Indonesian fire-dancing, Russian ballet, Japanese Kabuki theater, and lesbian porn. * The British racehorse Taleban, like its namesake, ran last in its latest outing. Owner John Wade is encouraging betters to refer to the animal as "Tale Ban," and looking into officially changing the name, but meanwhile it reminds everyone of the world's most famous student movement, including its edicts against women. For Taleban is a gelding. * A stressed-out Santa Claus in Pfungstadt, Germany, allegedly slapped a boy and locked him in a broom cupboard after a group of children kept taunting him, trying to find out what he was wearing under his Santa suit. The parents of the nine-year-old boy filed a legal complaint against Santa, but he denied the charges and as of press time was still at large and still allowed to wear his Santa suit. A judge was expected to send the agitated Claus to a special Kringle Rehab Center in Baden-Baden. * Airport metal detectors have been buzzing like crazy because of . . . brassiere fasteners. Always ahead of the curve, a Japanese company called Triumph International is manufacturing a metal-free bra for women who have been wand-searched once too often. We won't even go into underwire support. Those babies have just gotta sag. * The Chicken Rescue Centre in Sharnford, Leicestershire, England is in danger of closing if it doesn't receive a huge cash infusion before January 1. The only sanctuary dedicated exclusively to chickens, the centre charged with "rehabilitating cast-offs from intensive chicken farming," and exists on public donations and sponsorships, as well as the sale of its "free- range eggs." In essence, the Chicken Rescue Centre returns chickens to the wild. "When the battered hens arrive," says their promotional literature, "they are in a sorry state: featherless, sometimes beakless, under-weight and petrified of everything, from the ground they walk to the very eggs they lay." To get the chickens feeling good about themselves again, the centre needs one ton of feed per month, but even donations from the likes of Sir Paul McCartney haven't been enough to keep pace. Martin Hudspeth founded the centre in 1998 as a hobby, but it turned into a full-time passion in November 1999. He states firmly, with British disdain for nonsense causes, that "the Chicken Rescue Centre is in no way connected with any animal rights or liberation group." These chickens don't want handouts. They want workfare. *A Tampa midget is suing Florida to overturn the state's ban on barroom dwarf-tossing. "Just because I'm 3-foot-2 doesn't mean I can't make decisions," says the aggrieved dwarf, saying he should be allowed to don a harness and allow people to hurl him through the air onto mattresses, like God intended. Florida banned the practice in 1989 amid intense lobbying from the advocacy group Little People of America, which said the contests were demeaning and encouraged people to treat dwarves as objects. Bars that allow the contests can be stripped of their liquor license. David Flood, the 38-inch radio broadcaster who filed the suit, said the law illegally singles out people with dwarfism. He filed in the U.S. District Court in Tampa by hurling himself over the clerk's counter. * Tony Danza was named the permanent male host of the "Miss America" pageant, with other changes intended to revive its sinking ratings. Among other things, Danza sang "There She Is, Miss America" for the first time since Bert Parks was fired, and the 41 losing contestants participated in "Survivor"-type reality interviews, commenting on the relative merits of the ten finalists. The first one to be voted off the Boardwalk will be forced to dance like a chicken in a Tony Danza special. * Signs that the apocalypse is near: There are only two Beatles in the world, and one of them is Ringo. *A woman going through the metal detector at the Raleigh- Durham airport was asked to open her purse. She objected, saying the purse contained "personal items," and decided to leave the terminal instead. And officer followed her and continued to demand to see the contents of the purse. She pleaded, begged, freaked out, and ended up assaulting a couple of cops. She was then jailed and had her bags checked, plus a full body search. The contents of her bag turned out to be . . . sex toys. Obviously she was not familiar with the proper airport procedure, which is to simply remove the dildo from your purse and turn it on so that the security guard can see that it doesn't contain a bomb. *Americans make the sign of the double-humped burrowing tree-monkey more than the French, according to a poll of 18,500 people conducted by Durex SSL International of Wellington, New Zealand. They aardvark more often, and they do it with more partners. In fact, France's libido did no better than third in the rankings of 28 countries, with Greeks being the second horniest nationality. Worldwide, people have sex an average of 97 times a year, but in America the figure is 124 times a year with more than 14 different partners. Americans also start early, losing their virginity at an average age of 16. (The Germans are the second youngest, at 16.6 years.) France plummeted in this year's rankings, dropping from 121 sexual encounters to 110, with the number of partners dipping to 13, compared to 17 a year ago. The least sexually active country was Japan--no surprise here, they lose every year--with an average of 36 sweaty sessions per annum. Overall, single people had the least sex (86 times a year), and married couples had it less than people living together (100 to 145). One in 10 people said they never have sex at all. And 347 people in England answered, "What's sex?" * A disgruntled ex-postal worker--remember those?--threw three buckets of animal feces at four co-workers, according to witnesses, and was jailed in lieu of $1 million bond. James Beal of Empire, Mich., is charged with assault, malicious destruction of property, and additional federal charges. No injuries were reported, but the postal facility had to be "decontaminated" by the United States Postal Hazardous Materials Team from Grand Rapids. This was the first animal-feces-throwing incident of the year within the U.S. Postal Service, but federal officials issued an "animal-feces-throwing alert" for employees at other postal facilities in the state. * The world's biggest donkey fair, in the village of Bhavgarh, India, was subdued this year, because there were no Afghan donkeys. Donkey traders in Kabul stayed home, ending a five- century tradition, and, almost as bad, there were no Pakistani donkeys either. According to Shamsher Singh, a donkey trader, Kabul donkeys would normally bring about 9000 rupees, or $200. He hopes that by next year somebody will be able to get his ass out of Afghanistan. * The annual pre-Christmas swine slaughter in Darvaspuszta, Hungary, ended prematurely when a visiting Croatian shocked himself to death while trying to knock out a pig with a homemade electric pig stunner. The pig's owner was so upset that he suffered a heart attack and died. The pig escaped into the cave and tunnel system of southwestern Hungary, where it was interviewed by the al-Jazeera television network. * Almost half of all grades at Harvard University last year were A's and A-minuses, according to a report released by the university. A full 48.5 of the grades handed out were A's, up from 33.2 per cent in 1985. Even more startling, C's, D's and F's accounted for less than 6 per cent. And at June graduation ceremonies, 91 per cent of Harvard students graduated either summa cum laude, magna cum laude or cum laude. We've heard about "grade inflation" at places like Chico State and Louisiana Tech, but had no idea you could load up your dance card with snap courses at HAHvud. Isn't that standard grading curve thingie supposed to be real skinny at the left end--like 10 per cent?-- and then make a big bulge in the middle, where the "C" is, and then taper off again around "F"? No wonder the Harvard grads get all the jobs. Who knew that "Hey, I got straight A's at Harvard!" is equivalent to saying "I nailed the Motel Management final at Tyler Junior College"? * Martha Stewart decided that her 600 employees at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia should forego the annual office Christmas party and instead have a series of intimate dinner parties at co-workers' homes. She sent out invitations--and less than a quarter of her staff responded by the RSVP date (a Martha Stewart no-no). She fired off an angry memo, stating that, if employees didn't have enough enthusiasm to support the dinner parties, then the terrorists had won. We at the "Joe Bob Report" don't normally like to take the side of the Taliban, but in the case of Martha Stewart, a mandatory burqa doesn't seem like that bad an idea. We would let her decorate it with poodles. *Okay, show of hands--how many want to see Jerry Springer do the pelvic thrust dance in "The Rocky Horror Show"? You missed your chance if you didn't see him on Broadway last week, standing in as "The Narrator," the role normally played by the vacationing Dick Cavett. Since Cavett plans an extended hiatus, other guest narrators will include Penn & Teller, Gilbert Gottfried, and New York gossip columnist Cindy Adams. Remember, it's just a step to the left. Or is it the right? * A man was arrested for stealing four bathrobes and 14 bikini bottoms from the public swimming pool in Herne, Germany, and when police checked his apartment, they found another 600 robes. A judge released him when he promised to donate all the robes and bikinis to charity and to never do it again. Of course, the judge didn't say anything about bikini TOPS. * A New Zealand employment agency for holiday Santa Clauses has told its Santas there will be none of that "Ho Ho Ho" nonsense this year. "When dealing with children one-on-one," explained Sian Barber of the recruitment company Westaff NZ Ltd., "the child sits on Santa's knee, they are right close to them, and imagine a child just having 'Ho! Ho! Ho!' yelled down its ear--it doesn't sound very approachable." However, ho-ho-ho-ing will not be strictly forbidden. It's acceptable while striding through shopping malls, but only at "a safe distance from children," Barber said. The 11 Santas employed by Westaff are considering the changes and expected to propose that "Ho Ho Ho" be replaced by "He He He" in an effort to reduce timber, range and overall intensity. * Norway wants to bring back baby-seal-clubbing as a tourist attraction. Plagued by an overpopulation of seals that deplete the fish population and damage fishing nets, Fishery Minister Svein Ludvigsen suggests that seal hunting be offered "as an exclusive product to tourists." Seal hunting was banned in 1989 after television cameras filmed bloody expeditions, prompting the European Union to ban seal-skin imports. But Norway legalized it again in 1995 despite organized protests by animal rights groups. Even so, only half the quota authorized for this year's hunt has been met. "We cannot just blindly follow the views of Brigitte Bardot," said Ludvigsen. "We have to take out more animals." He claims that all baby seals are now killed humanely, with a swift ice pick through the brain. Part of Norway's plan to popularize seal hunting involves selling key-chains and other souvenirs, including a T-shirt that says "My parents went to Norway to club baby seals and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!" Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer has been banned from London for the Christmas season. The Santa Claus who appears at Harrod's department store every year will have his sleigh pulled instead by horses. The reason: reindeer can spread foot-and-mouth disease, so the Environment Department has banned them from the city. "Rudolf has to stay in Lapland," said a Harrod's spokesman. "This is the first time in living memory Harrod's has not used a reindeer." But it gets worse. In the southern English port of Southampton, Santa's sleigh will be pulled by . . . dogs. Rudolf the Red-Nosed Pomeranian perhaps? *Columbia TriStar pulled a "Seinfeld" episode out of syndication after deciding it was too reminiscent of the anthrax scare. The episode, called "The Invitation," involves Jason Alexander reluctantly picking out his wedding invitations but getting off the hook when his fiancee falls ill and dies after licking the envelopes. Columbia TriStar's action actually sheds light on the grim season-ending episode, since we can now assume that she died of inhalation anthrax. Previously everyone had assumed that she died of bad writing. *A California woman is offering $15,000 for sperm from a tall (at least six feet), handsome, intelligent Stanford student. Men normally get paid $50 to $200 by sperm banks, but she wants the guarantee that the guy will have perfect Pac-10 genes. In related news, a woman in southern Missouri is offering $30,000 to a short, ugly, dumb student from Arkansas State University if he will agree to a vasectomy. *Controversial Sheriff Gerald Hege of Davidson County, North Carolina--known as "The Toughest Sheriff in America" thanks to the Court TV show broadcast weekly from his pink jail--sent out Christmas cards with a picture of himself holding the decapitated head of Osama bin Laden in one hand and a sword in the other. There are camels and a tank in the background, and the caption reads "Happy Ramadan!" After his conversion, Sheriff Hege asked to be referred to from now on as Sheriff Il-kheel-Muhammad. *Archeologists spent most of September scouring the Pacific island of Nikumaroro looking for clues about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. They checked a rust-colored reef, hoping to discover metal from her plane, but found red algae instead. They combed through two potential gravesites, looking for teeth or bones, but came up with nothing. Team leader Richard Gillespie returned to the United States with artifacts that, when tested, turned out to be fish bones, broken glass and a Tiki mug that was carbon-dated to the year 1217. Scientists suggested that the latter discovery could provide clues to the origins of Don Ho music, but Gillespie is refusing to change the focus of his mission. He announced a second expedition to Nikumaroro in the spring, because, "In our scientific opinion, based on all the evidence, the bitch is alive." * A man hired as a Chevron refinery worker was given a routine physical exam and discovered to have chronic liver disease. Chevron withdrew his job offer, saying that his liver condition could be made worse by exposure to chemicals and solvents used in the refinery. Even though the man could die from exposure, he sued Chevron for discrimination, saying that he was able to perform the requirements of the job but was denied employment because of a medical condition. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals eventually agreed with him, ruling that "disabled persons should be afforded the opportunity to decide for themselves what risks to undertake." The court specifically referred to actions taken by Congress in 1990, rejecting "paternalistic rules that have often excluded disabled individuals from the workplace." Chevron has appealed to the Supreme Court, calling this "an absurd result," and the court has agreed to hear the case. The would-be refinery worker celebrated his appeals victory with seven bottles of vodka. * President Bush signed an executive order giving the U.S. armed forces, the National Guard, the FBI, the CIA, and the Sheriff's Departments of every county the authority to detain any person named either "Abdul," "Mohammed" or "Kareem," to try them in secret, and to put three bullets into their skulls, one between the eyebrows and one at each temple. Scholars debated whether the latest order violated either the "equal protection" or the "due process" or the "cruel and unusual punishment" provisions of the Constitution, but finally decided that the "speedy trial" clause is all they need. *California loggers stopped chopping wood and developed woodies instead when nine nekkid strippers showed up at the contested Headwaters Forest near Eureka. It was one of several "Strip Tease for the Trees" protests organized by Dona Nieto, a devotee of "Goddess-based nude Buddhist guerrilla poetry" who reports that several of the transfixed lumbermen were actually kissing the ground during the demonstration. "La Tigresa," as Nieto calls herself, managed to stop logging for about two hours at the "Hole in the Headwaters," an area of second-growth redwood trees left out of a 1999 deal between Pacific Lumber Inc. and state and federal officials. Supposedly this area was set aside to preserve the virgin forest, and the lumberjacks apparently agreed, laying down their chainsaws to watch the women strip, sing, chant and hand out chocolates, tying up traffic until cops arrived. There were no arrests and no lap-dances. *Mass-murdering Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot will soon become the focus of a tourist attraction, as Cambodia converts his remote jungle hideout in Anlong Veng into a museum and resort. (Pol Pot died there in April 1998.) It's all part of the Cambodian Tourism Minister's efforts to give visitors what they want, which is healthy dollops of torture and death. He's also converted the home of Khmer Rouge military commander Ta Mok-- better known as "the butcher," and now awaiting trial for genocide before a United Nations tribunal--into a tourist attraction. That "beautiful and historic" site will join two other genocide-related tourist stops in the capital of Phnom Penh: "The Killing Fields," the Khmer Rouge's main execution ground, and S-21, the former Khmer Rouge torture center, now open to the public. The Khmer Rouge are blamed for 1.7 million deaths through torture, execution, hard labor and starvation between 1975 and 1979. Based in Anlong Veng, they continued to fight against the government until late 1998. To help with package tours, the government has repaired a road linking Anlong Veng to Siem Reap, home of the world-renowned Angkor Wat temple. In a novel twist, souvenir key chains will be fashioned from actual iron chains, and--here's the cool part--actors in Khmer Rouge uniforms keep all your keys. *A Detroit businessman is selling Osama bin Laden toilet paper for $4.95 a roll. His slogan: "We're letting the American people get their crack at Osama." Sales are slow, because it sounds . . . uh . . . scratchy. * Prostitutes in Cologne, Germany, have a new drive-in red- light district. The complex is located on the outskirts of the city and includes an "approach zone" where clients can drive by and check out the hookers. When the customer makes his choice, the prostitute gets into his car and is driven to a covered parking space which adjoins a bedroom with a shower. The scheme was conceived by city planners who didn't like the hookers working near the landmark cathedral, where churchgoers were sometimes mistaken for streetwalkers. To relocate the women of indifferent virtue, the city spent $387,100 of taxpayers' money. In Keynesian economic terms, the city actually made money, because the population was paying up to 40 per cent to pimps, and that money is now re-circulated into the consumer economy. * A drunken Norwegian pulled his boxer shorts over his face, entered a post office, and handed the clerk a note that said "This is a robbery." He got the money and got away, but on the back of the note were his wife's name and personal information. After cops arrested him, he told a judge that he didn't remember the robbery, but he thought something might be wrong when he saw a picture of the robber, disguised by underwear, in the newspaper, and then found a wad of money in his living room. He offered to turn over the boxers as evidence, but the police said, "No thanks." * A Swedish website is declaring war on Internet porn, creating hundreds of sites with names like "super sluts" and "horny schoolgirls" that are actually just decoys designed to clog up the search engines and shock porn-hunters, who get lectured on the evils of porn when they innocently click on something that offers nookie. The website, www.getsomereal.com, is fond of the message "Porn is fake. Girls are real." The Swedes are upset that their nation is thought of as a haven for porn-- although we all know it's the Danes who are kinky, not the Swedes, and certainly not the Finns. Swedes are fake. Danes are real. * A total of 48 Venezuelan inmates sewed their lips together as part of a hunger strike at Tocuyito Prison in the state of Carabobo. Prison officials agreed to listen to their demands, which included "Mmmmmmmmmmm!" and "Owwwwwwwwww!" as well as "Pfffffft." * Nolan Lett, a delivery man for a catering company, was paid $17,767.54 for injuries sustained when he was attacked by a wild goose. He was reporting to work in Oak Brook, Ill., but two Canada geese blocked his way. He went to another door, but a third goose "started acting crazy," according to Lett. When the goose flew directly at his face, he tried to fan it off, "but it was very ferocious." He turned to run, tripped and fell, breaking his wrist. In the subsequent trial, Lett's attorney argued that the employer was responsible because it's located in a "high- goose area." An urban waterfowl expert was ready to testify that the area attracted geese by offering short grass for feeding, a pond for roosting and drinking, and good visibility to protect against predators. The company settled out of court rather than go on a wild . . . you know. * Dutch prostitutes have organized the world's first trade union for sex workers. Henceforth all disputes about what is included in "around the world" will be decided by a labor arbitrator. *The London tabloid The Sun is reporting that Queen Elizabeth has a yellow rubber duck with an inflatable crown on its head that shares the royal bathtub. (They got the information from a decorator who was repainting the bathroom walls.) Buckingham Palace issued an official response: "We never comment on personal items in royal apartments." The story is not very far-fetched, since the queen was previously reported to be enchanted with a "Big Mouth Billy Bass," which she keeps on her piano at the Scottish highland retreat Balmoral. The British press has never been renowned for its good taste, but this is going too far: let's not get people thinking about what the queen looks like in the tub, much less how she amuses herself there. * An employee at Dollar General Store in Troy, Mich., called police when a store clerk reported hearing a can of green beans ticking right after a foreign male left the store. An officer investigated the suspicious can and discovered that it contained . . . green beans. He also said that the can sometimes emitted "a high-pitched whistle." Upon further investigation, a voice could be heard, saying "Botulism! Botulism!" * Kokouvi Agbekossi, pastor of the Church of the Lord for the Adoption in Lome, Togo, was having trouble getting new members, so he filled up three ceramic pots full of vulture eggs, hyena paws, a panther pelt and--best of all--a hunchback's hump so he could create a satanic altar. Apparently this sort of thing is illegal in Togo, so police raided the place and seized the fetishes and "human remains" and threw the pastor into jail along with a witch doctor named Roger Dossou Tchoumado, who apparently sold him the stuff. When interrogated, the pastor said he had paid Tchoumado a down payment of $112 to supply the items, with a promise of more money when his attendance got better. Tchoumado, on the other hand, said he still expects to be paid, and that the whole affair shows that fetish magic should be favored over "imported religions." "These so-called pastors say they have their own God, but if they still need to use us secretly, despite denigrating us on television and radio, then it's a victory," he said. Where is Szandor La Vey when we need him? Film rights assigned to Roman Polanski. * Australian Graham Barker has extracted his belly-button fluff every day since 1984, collecting a world record 0.54 ounces. Fortunately, the latest edition of the Guinness Book of World Records has chosen not to include a photo. * A man with a portrait of Osama bin Laden tattooed on his chest was arrested by police in Orange County, California, right after the World Trade Center attacks. Authorities refused to release the man's name but said he was being held for carrying false ID. (Is that an actual crime? If so, look for 2 million high school students to be arrested in coming weeks.) Taking a cue from Arab-American restaurant owners, the man has asked a jailhouse tattoo artist to add an American-flag lapel pin to Osama's chest. * The police in the Venezuelan state of Portuguesa are being prosecuted for what authorities say are dozens of unlawful killings. So to protect themselves, they've built witchcraft altars in all the affected police stations, with photographs of the investigating prosecutors placed upside down amid candles and effigies. So far the prosecutors remain healthy, although one showed up at work with knitting needles protruding from his stomach and neck. *India's Health Ministry has launched a project to study the size of male organs in order to make condoms of different sizes, because the current "one size fits all" version is breaking and spilling at a 15 to 20 per cent rate. To make the world a safer place for the wrapped whangdoodle, hospital volunteers will measure the length and width of their own fully erect penises with a digital camera. The current condom size is specified by the World Health Organization and the International Standards Organization, and it's apparently either too small or too large for the 3 per cent of the population that use condoms at all. The Indian government is concerned about population growth, and if that means they need a "Magnum Whopper" version for the whale- schlonged, and an "Ultralite Snug" version for the pencil emulators, then they're willing to pony up the necessary research money and round up 300 uninhibited natives to digitalize their members. As they say in Calcutta, it's not the motion in the ocean, it's the sag in the bag. * A Finn mistook his younger brother for an elk and shot him dead at the start of the elk hunting season. Oddly enough, at the exact same moment, a member of the Elks Lodge in Finney, Montana, mistook his brother for a Finn and shot him dead. This was foretold by Nostradamus. * A fleet of Japanese whaling ships returned to port with 440 dead minke whales, which they intend to use for "scientific research," they say, although the whale meat will be sold to restaurants because why should it go to waste? Japanese remains the only nation in the world that still hunts whales, partly because of its insatiable appetite for blubber sushi. * South Carolina is taking possession of 300 old New York City subway cars so they can be dumped into the ocean and used as artificial reefs. Bob Martore of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources says that the subway cars will cause more fish to grow, and now Delaware, Virginia and Georgia are talking to New York about getting some subway cars for the same purpose. The only problem with the project so far is that the only fish who seem to enjoy the subway-car habitat are sardines. *Moon cakes, the traditional sweet pastries sold during the mid-autumn festival in China, showed a 40 per cent drop-off in sales this year after the state press ran an expose on moon-cake factories, revealing that mold-covered filler left over from last year was sometimes used in new cakes, that workers use their shoes to mix the flour, and that employees sometimes sleep overnight on the wooden boards on which the cakes are made. (This would explain the name.) * Researchers in Essen, Germany, are using leeches to reduce pain in arthritic knees. The treatments have become so popular that Germans are now undergoing more than 70,000 leech treatments a year, with reports of pain levels after the 80-minute sessions going from 7.4 (on a scale of 10) to a mere 1. The only negative result came when the leeches were used on lawyers. They refused to suck blood: professional courtesy. *The city of New Rochelle, N.Y., best known as the hometown of Rob and Laurie Petrie on "The Dick Van Dyke Show," is trying to retrieve the body of another famous resident, Thomas Paine. The problem is that Paine's bones are apparently scattered all over the globe, the result of New Rochelle spurning him when he tried to live there after the Revolution. New York State had awarded Paine 277 acres in New Rochelle in 1784, but the area was full of Tories who branded Paine an atheist and prevented him from voting. He gave up trying to live there and moved to Greenwich Village, where he died penniless and all but forgotten in 1809. His body was buried on his farm in New Rochelle, but in 1819 an admirer of his named William Cobbett decided that America didn't appreciate him, so he dug up his body and moved him to England, where Paine had spent the first 37 years of his life. A new problem arose when Cobbett couldn't find any place to bury him in England, so he just remained in a trunk in Cobbett's attic. Cobbett died in 1835, and his son tried to auction off Paine's bones. In the 1850s a Unitarian minister in England claimed he had Paine's skull and right hand. In the 1930s a woman in Brighton said she had his jawbone. And in 1987, a Sydney businessman claimed he purchased Paine's skull while vacationing in London. He sold it to a man named John Burgess, who claims he's a descendant of Paine's illegitimate child. (Historians say Paine had no children.) Now Burgess's wife is trying to raise $60,000 to have DNA testing done on the skull. Meanwhile, back at the Thomas Paine Museum in New Rochelle, you can view the original site of Paine's burial and his hair samples, and the museum curator claims that--if DNA testing is ever needed-- Paine's brain stem is buried in a secret location on the grounds. Also on display is Paine's death mask and what is called his "grave mask," which is a molding made from his decomposed body while he was in Cobbett's attic in 1822. For those trying to restore Thomas Paine to his farm and assemble his various parts, these are indeed the times that try men's souls. * Givaudan, the Zurich fragrance company known for its food additives, is experimenting with a new system that would add the sense of smell to the moviegoing experience. (Didn't John Waters already do this 25 years ago with "Odorama"?) Every five or ten minutes during a movie, a fragrance--corpses, rain, garbage, and, uh, well, there are some opportunities here for porno movies--would waft into your nostrils. "It can be the green smell of the jungle," says Georg Frater, head of fragrance research at Givaudan. "It can be a typical swamp odor. It can be sweat when someone is climbing mountains. When you have a beautiful lady you could have a beautiful floral fragrance. The possibilities are amazing." Givaudan got the idea for the new technique when they produced an ad for the orange drink Fanta, and experimented with the Fanta odor coming out of the chair of the viewer. "It is really amazing," Frater said. "You salivate." The particular technology at work here is called a virtual aroma synthesizer, which works like a color printer, mixing chemicals to produce various smells. To show you how serious these guys are about aromas, they sometimes float above the rainforest in hot-air balloons, trying to collect new fragrances. Most of their research has tended toward finding nice smells--they've won several "Fifi" awards, the Oscar of the perfume industry--but we would be more intrigued to see what they could do with the works of, say, David Cronenberg. "Crash" in "Odorama"--now that would be the most disturbing experience in cinema history. * Late-night advertising king Ron Popeil--inventor of the Pocket Fisherman, the Popeil Automatic Pasta and Sausage Maker, the Ronco Electric Food Dehydrator, and, of course, the Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ--says infomercials are giving him a bad name. He claims infomercial psychics like Miss Cleo are selling "hocus pocus" and that a lot of products sold by infomercial pitchman are bogus get-rich-quick schemes. Apparently the state of Missouri agrees. They just hit Miss Cleo with 94 fraud indictments, including allegations that she charged the credit cards of dead people for her services. Reports that Uri Geller has purchased Miss Cleo's ad time, so that he can bend Ginsu knives with his brain, are unconfirmed. * Two eight-year-old boys at Augusta Street Elementary School in Irvington, N.J., were playing cops and robbers on the playground with pieces of paper they had cut into the shape of guns. One of them said "I'm going to kill you"--and they were both promptly hauled off to the principal's office. The principal called their parents, then called the police, and the police charged them with "making terroristic threats." The Essex County Prosecutor dropped the charges after two weeks, but the arrest remains on the boys' records, much to the chagrin of their outraged parents. Every single adult involved in the case used words like "We had no choice" and "Zero tolerance" to explain why a childhood boy's game that has been played for 200 years had suddenly become a criminal matter. It's a good thing they weren't playing cowboys and Indians, because then they would have been charged with a hate crime. * Twiggs and Jeffrey, two African giraffes in the Cape May County Zoo in New Jersey, were fighting with the other giraffes, so zoo director William E. Sturm kicked them out. He advertised on the internet, hoping another zoo would take them, but when he got no offers, he sold them to an animal broker. One month later, Twiggs and Jeffrey turned up ten miles away, on the boardwalk in Wildwood, N.J., as part of a travelling circus petting zoo. Animal-rights advocates were outraged that a zoo would sell animals to a circus, so Sturm and his veterinarian went to Wildwood to try to buy the giraffes back. But circus owner Serge Landkas Coronas refused to sell, saying they were fat and happy working in front of an adoring crowd that feeds them with dollar- a-bag carrots. Living with llamas, a bull, goats and a zebra is apparently exactly what they needed. Twiggs and Jeffrey turned out to be multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-species, plus they get to spend most of their time on the road, like travelling rock stars. Jersey was cool, but they wanted careers. * The Varyag, a 973-foot Ukrainian aircraft carrier, has been circling aimlessly around the Black Sea for 14 months because Turkey refuses to let it go through the Bosporous Straits. The Varyag is actually only partly an aircraft carrier. It was unfinished when the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991. Ukraine inherited it but didn't have the funds to complete it, so they auctioned it off. The buyer was a Macao-based company which wants to transform it into an offshore casino, hotel and disco. Since 1999 Macao has belonged to China, so China has ordered the carrier brought to Macao in the South China Sea. The problem is that Turkey thinks the vessel is dangerously large and unstable, and it could drift out of control while going through the Bosporous and cause damage to what is already an overcrowded waterway. While the various countries hash it out, the Varyag runs in circles, pushed and towed by tugboats, with a crew of 18 watching television, working out, and, until recently, playing basketball. Unfortunately, their basketball goal blew down. Those Turkish prisons are starting to look pretty damn good. *The largest non-fiction book advance in publishing history goes to . . . Bill Clinton, who will get $10 million from Knopf, beating the mere $8 million that Hillary got from Simon & Schuster earlier this year. Clinton also edged out the Pope, who got $8.5 million for a book in 1994, although if you adjusted the Pope's advance for inflation, it might come closer to $10.1 million. Rumors that Clinton asked for half of the advance to be paid in small bills suitable for lap-dance tips were unconfirmed. * Those wacky People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals unveiled a new billboard in downtown Vancouver depicting a cartoon chicken and cow painting a sign that says "Eat the Whales." This is the same group that planned an advertising campaign urging respect and compassion for sharks. It was cancelled after two people were killed in shark attacks. The whale billboard is located near several sushi restaurants where chefs are probably already considering taking PETA's advice. You know those items at the bottom of the sushi menu that are never translated into English? Yep. * A picture of Osama bin Laden has become the most popular screen-saver image in Pakistan and is being sent throughout the country via the mobile-phone network "short message sending" system. When you click on his nose, it grows. * Benetton is being denounced by the French government for an advertising campaign that features an elderly nude woman standing in front of three men on a beach. Nicole Pery, junior minister for women's rights, calls the ad a "pitiful provocation" that "sickens," but Benetton defended the ads. They said the ten people featured in the new campaign are volunteers, in order to celebrate the United Nations International Year of the Volunteer. The nudist senior citizen works as a "beach mom" at a nude beach in San Onofre, and the stars of other ads include a Guatemalan transvestite sex worker who distributes free condoms, a former Salvadoran gang member who preaches against violence, and an Afghan who runs a refugee center in Pakistan. Apparently the French National Assembly is not impressed. They've started work on reforming the press freedom bill to ban sexual discrimination and call on advertisers to show "respect for women's dignity." In other words, nude is lewd and crude--especially when it comes in a wrinkly package. * Victor Wong, the ultimate "wise old man" character actor,best known for his role in " Big Trouble in Little China ," died at the age of 74 at his home near Locke, Calif. Not many people know that Wong was a beatnik in the fifties, friends with both Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jack Kerouac, as well as a television journalist in San Francisco and a regular on the soap "Search for Tomorrow." He didn't make his first film until 1984, when he was 57, appearing in Wayne Wang's "Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart." He went on to star in 28 films, including "Three Ninjas," "The Joy Luck Club" and "Shanghai Surprise." * Robert A. Moon, who invented the zip code, died at the age of 83 at a hospital in 34748. A career postal employee, Moon first submitted his idea for coding addresses by digits in 1944, but it wasn't adopted by postal service officials until the third time he suggested it, in 1962. Moon was an amateur pilot and an advocate for uniform mail-handling efficiency throughout the country. He was reportedly upset when 90210 got too big for its britches. *Charlie Condon, the new attorney general of South Carolina, says that if you kill someone who has broken into your home, he won't prosecute you. And to prove it, he dropped all charges against Lisa Gant, who stabbed her boyfriend to death during an argument in her apartment--after she told him to leave but he forced his way back in. Condon calls his new policy "Invade a Home and Invite a Bullet"--or, in this case, a blade. Law enforcement officials and judges are concerned that the new policy will result in trigger-happy spouses and lovers cleaning up messy breakups with violence, but Condon says he won't change it. Marriage is sacred, but it's not as sacred as a double-wide. * Georgia State Representative Dorothy Pelote revealed that she has been visited by the spirit of Chandra Levy. "I want you to know that I can prophesy," she said from the House podium. "I can communicate with the dead. The last person who visited me was--I don't know if I need to call her name. Maybe I should not, because it's a controversial death now. She's missing. You know who I'm talking about. She has visited me. She has." At that point the legislator's head spun around three times and she threw up on a page.*There were broken hearts all over the world when Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, announced from his prison cell that he's getting married. The wily Venezuelan-born terrorist has fallen in love with his 13th French lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who says, "It's a marriage of both love and compatibility of ideas." It will be a small ceremony, with guests encouraged to bring molotov cocktails and, in lieu of a gift, to make a donation to the Bader-Meinhof Revolutionary Cell. The 15-minute honeymoon will be celebrated in a cubicle lined with bullet-proof plexiglas. * Ten lonely men who live in mud huts outside the southern China city of Changsha paid about $2,500 apiece for arranged marriages with brides. One by one the women all vanished, claiming they needed to go back to their home counties to get residence permits or, in one case, to visit a hospital because she was pregnant. When one of the men offered to accompany his new wife on her trip back home, she ditched him at a roadside motel. There is little the police could do, because most of the men failed to get a receipt. **The new spokesmodel for the English National Ballet is . . . Barbie. Mattel, maker of Barbie, is sponsoring this year's six- week run of "The Nutcracker," because, according to ballet CEO Christopher Nourse, "Ballet is all about fantasy and taking people into an imaginary world. So is Barbie." Mattel is underwriting the run to the tune of $125,000, and will be launching new Barbie dolls dressed as Clara and the Sugar Plum Fairy. Unfortunately, in early tests, Ballerina Barbie is so top- heavy that she topples into the orchestra pit. * The city of Calcutta started piping classical music into its subway system as part of a campaign to prevent passengers from committing suicide. (There have been 59 attempts since 1984, of which 26 were successful, with six deaths this year alone.) "Hopefully, people contemplating suicide will listen to our music and see our posters and get diverted from killing themselves at the stations," said subway spokesman S.C. Banerjee. One of the "choose life" posters reads "I don't like to die in this beautiful world," a quotation from Indian author Rabindra Nath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize in 1913. The anti-suicide music, on the other hand, is contemporary, written by a local composer concerned about the death rate. His music was chosen by the subway board in lieu of the runner-up choice, Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." * The Rev. Adrian Condit, a Baptist minister in Ceres, Calif. and the father of Gary Condit, told his hometown newspaper that "Satan had a big-time role" in the disappearance of Chandry Levy. The minister's wife Jean added that she believes Levy disappeared on purpose to get attention, but stopped short of saying that she actually shacked up with the devil. * Police in Rio de Janeiro seized 260 cocaine packages that were marked with bar codes. Each package also had a logo for "Third Command"--the name of a drug gang in the shantytowns of Rio--and a slogan: "Now, it's us." The bar code, when read by a laser scanner, gave the price as . . . $1.20 per packet. Less if you clip coupons. *President Bush pulled his diplomats out of the United Nations Conference on Racism and sent them home, claiming that the other countries were too intent on talking about "zionism"-- offending our friend Israel--and about America's history of slavery. Bush's reasoning is similar to his attitude toward the criminal court at The Hague. We'll support the indictment of people like Milosevic as long as nobody, uh, indicts an American for something. Once again our suggestion here at "Week in Review" is to move the United Nations from New York to either Switzerland or Belgium, where the host nation would have at least the pretense of supporting the UN's work, and would probably even pay its dues. * A woman in Pickering, Ontario, yanked off her 46-year-old boyfriend's testicles with her bare hands during an argument following the man's birthday party. Doctors at Pickering Ajax Hospital are uncertain as to whether they can reattach them. The girlfriend has been charged with aggravated assault. The boyfriend is not commenting, but we have one question: Just how long did it take to do that? On second thought, never mind. We don't wanna think about it. * One week after getting married, Anne Heche went on national TV to tell Barbara Walters that Ellen DeGeneres gave her "the best sex I ever had." Heche's new husband, cameraman Coley Laffoon, was feeling a little droopy the next day and went to the doctor, where he was examined with a tongue depressor. * Daniel Blouin of Quebec was stripped of his bronze medal and sent home from the 2001 Canada Summer Games when he bared his bewtocks after crossing the finish line. Blouin explained that he was so excited after his unexpected third-place finish in the 3,000-meter steeplechase that he just had to moon his teammates. "With the emotion--and my teammates were asking me to do it--I didn't think about it a lot," said Blouin. Reid Coolsaet of Hamilton, Ontario, who initially came in fourth but was awarded the bronze after Blouin's disqualification, said he would mail his medal to Blouin. Presumably he's grateful that Blouin didn't decide to drop trou two minutes earlier. * A theme park designed to resemble a Soviet prison camp, complete with barbed-wire guard towers and statues of Stalin and Lenin, opened in Grutas, Lithuania, with thousands flocking to it on the first day. Founder Viliumas Malinauskas, owner of a mushroom processing company, said he wanted to combine the charm of Disneyland with the horror of the Soviet gulag, where hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians were deported or shot by Stalin's secret police. When you enter the grounds, you're greeted by an actor dressed as Stalin smoking a pipe. A Lenin lookalike sits nearby, fishing in a lake. Not all Lithuanians were amused. Juozas Galidikas, a former member of Parliament, said, "This part of Lithuanian history is full of pain and suffering. It should not be exploited for cheap show business." But Malinauskas says he's already invested $1 million in the park and has the rights to use 60 granite and bronze Soviet statues that he won in a nationwide competition in 1998. Early reviews were mostly positive, but a few tourists reported minor discomfort after thrilling to the Butt Blaster super-coaster in Treblinka Land. * A Zeppelin airship made its first commercial flight since the company went out of business in 1937 because of that whole Hindenburg thing. Now, for $280, you can take a one-hour flight over Lake Constance from the southern German city of Friedrichshafen and have the thrill of knowing that at any moment you, too, could become a cinder. * Irene Smith, a St. Louis councilwoman, was conducting a filibuster to block a redistricting proposal, but when she asked for a bathroom break, presiding officer James Shrewsbury said that, if she left to relieve herself, she would have to give up the floor. Her solution: council allies surrounded her with a quilt while she apparently relieved herself in a pail. Now she's been charged with "public urination," which carries a penalty of up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine. Mayor Francis Slay says the incident has turned the city into "a laughingstock." Everybody else just though it was piss-poor manners. * A beautiful blonde German tourist was trying to kill time while waiting on her flight at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport, so she started having sex in the parking lot with random men. After one quickie between parked cars, she was spotted by a security patrol, questioned at the airport police station, and released. She was, however, required to pay an additional $200 by the airline as excess hormone allowance. * Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir wants to double the country's population, from 30 million to 60 million, so he's encouraging all men to take more than one wife. In a speech on national television, he said Sudan should ignore international family planning policies and take the full quota of four wives allowed by Islamic Sharia law, so that they can more quickly develop the economic resources of the country and defeat the South Sudanese rebels who have been fighting for autonomy since 1983. He said he also thinks it would be more fun. * In the village of Sirt, Turkey, all the women refused sex with their husbands as a protest against the lack of running water. The boycott, which lasted a month, was accompanied by demands that the men of the village build a drinking-water system, instead of forcing their wives to trek to the one public well each morning to bring water home. Local governor Mehmet Carpraz said the men came to him and said, "Please help us, please understand our situation," offering to donate their labor if the state would provide pipe and building materials. Carpraz promised help as soon as possible, troubled that their plumbing might be getting backed up. * A lawyer in Charleston, W. Va., paid $500,000 to set up a lab in the community center of Nitro, W. Va., where a UFO cultist tried to clone his dead baby boy. The lab was closed after other occupants of the building--including the local police department, a senior citizens center, and a day-care facility--became alarmed by British press reports, but Mark Hunt--the lawyer and ex- legislator whose 10-month-old son died after surgery for a heart defect--says he'll do it again if he gets the chance. Doing the research for Hunt was Brigitte Boisselier, a chemist and a bishop in the Raelian movement, currently under investigation by a Syracuse grand jury for offering cloning services to people who want to duplicate their relatives and pets. They offer their services via a website: www.sendintheclones.com.

Ted Turner showed up at CNN as soon as the attacks happened, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and personally directed the top news decisions of that network and all the other Turner networks. Angry that CNN/SI was still carrying sports stories instead of World Trade Center news, he instantly switched that network, plus TNT and TBS, over to the CNN feed. Veteran staffers were happy to have him around, but it might be his last hurrah at the vast cable chain he built. His contract with AOL Time Warner has only three months to run, and the top brass is not inclined to renew it. The good news is that, once he's eased out, he'll be released from the gag agreement that's prevented him from talking about the media giant that swallowed up his empire. And when Ted talks, it's GOT to be entertaining.
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Business was down last week at the Khyber Pass restaurant in New York, even after the owner cut his Afghan food prices in half. In fact, the place was empty. In fact, it got so bad for New York's ten Afghani restaurants that several of them took down any signs that had the word "Afghani" on it and spread American flags all over the place. It still didn't work. The owner of the Afghan Kebab House got some phoned-in death threats on top of everything else. This war that Bush insists is "not directed at the Afghani people" seems a little different in the temples of lamb shishkebab.
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Flag-wavers staged a rally at Columbus Circle to demand that New York Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton introduce a constitutional amendment banning the desecreation of the flag. Representatives of the construction workers union, the sheriffs department, and war veterans all made speeches calling on America to overturn the 1989 Supreme Court ruling that established flag- burning as a form of free speech. In nutball politics, timing is everything, and we're sure they're saying to each other "We're gonna get those goldurn hippies YET."
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Liza Minnelli is angry at the terrorists. ""I don't want them thinking they can come here and shut down six Broadway shows!" she told "Entertainment Tonight." The diva was responding to recent CIA intelligence showing that Osama bin Laden despises both "The Lion King" and "Les Miserables."
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The Air Line Pilots Association is asking Congress for a new law that would allow commercial pilots to carry guns in the cockpit. President Bush is calling for armed federal marshalls to ride along with the public on many commercial flights. Pretty soon there's going to be so much firepower on board your average commuter flight that any tussle with terrorists is likely to end with guns blazing. Excuse us for asking, but even if a perfectly placed bullet pierces the forehead of said terrorist and takes him out of commission, isn't the bullet likely to continue out the back of his head and through a window, thereby depressurizing the entire cabin, not to mention the fact that the bullet could possibly penetrate TWO foreheads? If the boldest terrorists in the world are using knives, shouldn't we respond with knives ourselves, and perhaps a little kung fu training? It seems to us that this is a case for Jackie Chan, not Dirty Harry.
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For the first time in the history of the Internet, "sex" dropped off the list of the top ten items requested on search engines. Both Nostradamus and Osama bin Laden are now more popular search items than Pamela Anderson and Britney Spears. And the most intriguing change of all: last week thousands of people requested information on Arnold the Pig, formerly seen on "Green Acres."
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"The terrorism raises questions in my mind. What has our government done to provoke this action that we don't know about?" This profoundly disturbing observation comes from the mind of foreign policy analyst Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys.
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A bold thief stole $14,000 worth of ladies lingerie--mostly panties--from the exclusive Janet Reger shop in London, where Madonna, Nicole Kidman and Joan Collins all buy their knickers. The thief, dressed in a Ralph Lauren shirt and tie, distracted a sales assistant by asking to see a night grown, then pretended to phone his wife to ask for her size. As soon as the assistant turned her back, he grabbed an entire rail of underwear and ran out of the shop. Chief Executive Aliza Reger, visiting New York when the merchandise was stolen, said, "It's very distressing." And then changed her panties.
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Do your Teva athletic sandals have an antimicrobial compound built in? If not, those black rubber soles and Velcro fasteners are likely to get damp and STINKY. Apparently the problem has gotten bad enough for the Deckers company of Goleta, Calif., to start building the compound into Tevas. Now you can wear them without worrying about clearing out a subway car. That particular sandal style will remain, however, hideous.
*
Tony Rodham, brother of Senator Hillary Clinton, was discovered "in flagrante aardvarkus" by his lover's boyfriend when the boyfriend climbed onto the porch of Rodham's summer cottage in Lake Winola, Pa., spotted the sweaty coupling, barged in and proceeded to kick the bejabbers out of Rodham. Daniel Coyne, the enraged print shop steward and cuckold, apparently took out his rage on Rodham instead of his on-again, off-again girlfriend of six years, Kelly Quick. Fortunately Rodham's brother Hugh was upstairs and managed to break up the fracas, which ended with Tony on the floor in the fetal position, protecting his privates. Coyne left but returned a short time later--supposedly to get his house keys from the girlfriend--and this time Tony got in a few blows of his own, resulting in a black eye and dislocated shoulder for Coyne. (Tony's injuries were limited to a swollen nose.) Coyne spent the night in jail before posting $25,000 bond. The woman at the apex of the triangle, a 36-year-old paralegal, apparently cowered under the bedsheets, as women tend to do when caught between a Rodham and a hard place

Police showed up at the famous Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver with a search warrant, saying they wanted to know what books had been bought by a particular customer. He was suspected of manufacturing illegal drugs, and two drug "cookbooks" had been found in the lab, along with the bookstore's return address and an order number. The cops wanted to use the bookstore's records to tie the man to his crime--but they didn't count on Joyce Meskis, owner of the store, who refused to turn over the records, calling it an assault on privacy and the First Amendment. Everyone rallied to her defense, including the American Booksellers Association, but a trial court eventually ruled that she had to turn over records relating to the sale of the books. She's appealing that decision, and probably now counting herself lucky that she doesn't sell Arabic-language flight manuals.

* Lost in the media coverage the week of the World Trade attacks was the death of the great Samuel Z. Arkoff, producer and distributor of 500 low-budget movies and the virtual inventor of "youth culture." From BLACULA to MAD MAX to BEACH BLANKET BINGO to almost all of Roger Corman's movies as a director, Arkoff reigned as the king of exploitation from the early fifties well into the eighties. He co-founded American International Pictures in 1954 with partner Jim Nicholson, and their first big hit was "The Fast and the Furious," directed by Corman. It was made for $60,000 and grossed $250,000, satisfying Arkoff's supreme motto: "Thou shalt not put too much money into one picture." I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, the 1957 film debut of Michael Landon, cost $100,000 and was shot in six days, eventually grossing $2 million. THE AMITYVILLE HORROR starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder, was the top-grossing independent film up until that time (1979) at $65 million, and wasn't surpassed until TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES ten years later. Arkoff was also known for giving first jobs to people who later became stars--including Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, Woody Allen, Ivan Reitman, Brian De Palma, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Peter Fonda and Melanie Griffith. Arkoff and Nicholson sold AIP in 1979, and Arkoff attempted several comebacks via a new company. His memoirs, "Flying Through Hollywood by the Seat of My Pants," were published in 1992, and his last big public appearance was a year ago at the premiere of "It Conquered Hollywood: The Story of American International Pictures," a documentary narrated by one his early hires, Peter Bogdanovich. He served as executive producer of "Creature Features," a series of five new feature-length films inspired by five of his monster films from the 1950s. The first episode premieres on Cinemax on October 4. * The Mafia reportedly stole 255 tons of scrap metal from Ground Zero, resulting in a grand jury investigation that could result in indictments for tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, theft and conspiracy. Police seized the stolen scrap at junkyards on Long Island and in New Jersey, and said all trucks are now being escorted from the site to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, where authorities are sifting through it for forensic evidence. At the going rate of $1.60 per 100 pounds of scrap metal, the total Mafia haul was worth about $15,000--not even enough for a decent hitman contract. The story says more about the Mafia than anything else: these old geezers are literally picking through graveyards for espresso change. * Looking for a safe tourist destination? Try the Spam Museum, which opened September 15th in Austin, Minn., home of Hormel Foods. The 16,500-square-foot museum covers the entire 64-year history of Spam, beginning with World War II, when many GIs were first exposed to it, and including the famous Monty Python skit "Spam, Spam, Spam." Visitors will be able to test their Spam trivia and participate in a simulated Spam production line, with rubber gloves and hairnets provided. If you're lucky, the Spamettes singing group will be there when you arrive, reminding us that there are some American institutions that Osama Bin Laden can't touch. * Quote of the week comes from white-haired evangelist Paul Crouch, familiar from bordello-style set of the Christian Broadcasting Network: "If these terrorists think they're going to stop us from going to the mall, they've got another think coming." * According to the NAFTA free trade agreement, trucks from Canada, Mexico and the U.S. are supposed to be free to haul goods anywhere they want in North America. It's not working out that way, though, as Mexican trucks are being halted at the border, thanks to a strange combination of organized-labor Democrats and Republicans who think Mexican drivers are reckless and their trucks are unsafe. (Can you say "xenophobe"?) The way they see it, we're about to let in a bunch of dope-smoking Cheech Marin low-riders in broken-down jitneys full of spoiled cabbage. Every truck stop will have to be retrofitted with conjunto music on the jukebox and tamales at the buffet. For all we know, they might be overweight Pancho Villa look-alikes in battered sombreros, spoiling the image of the American truck driver, who, by contrast, is lean, fit, well-dressed, sophisticated and known for his courteous behavior. * Last year the European Commission banned the use of phthalates in baby toys. This substance, used to soften rigid polyvinyl chloride, has been linked to liver and kidney damage and to testicular problems. This year the commission investigated the same substance in adult sex toys, found levels 20 times higher than the minimum considered safe in children's toys, but said they don't plan to do anything. "There is no evidence that people using sex toys are at risk," said Torsten Muench, spokesman for the Health and Consumer Protection Agency of the European Union. However, he went on to caution German perverts engaged in the practice of "infant diaper training" that certain teething rings and oversized formula bottles, while considered safe, are still disgusting. * Two condom machines were shipped to the Ross Ice Shelf on Antarctica, where New Zealand maintains a scientific experiment base, so that when the sun came out in August for the first time since April, there would be adequate supplies for the expected influx of 400 visitors. Presumably protection is not necessary in the winter months, when temperatures drop to 76 below and most males are afflicted with the dreaded "penguin penis." * Since we're in this for "the long haul" and everything, shouldn't someone tell President Bush that the word "terrorism" has four syllables? A fight against "terrism" could be mistaken for an assault on a turtle sanctuary. * T-shirts bearing a picture of Osama bin Laden are the latest status symbol in Indonesia, home of the world's largest Islamic population. The three-dollar shirts are sold on the street in three styles, one with the words "Islam Is My Blood," and business is booming ever since anti-American protests broke out throughout the Muslim world. Merchants are so happy with sales that they're introducing a George Bush Halloween mask next week, complete with creased forehead and constipated grimace. * Daytime soap operas returned to the air but censors went through them like termites, scissoring out scenes that could be considered even remotely offensive. This left many pre-taped episodes on the shelf, including a "Days of Our Lives" sequence about a looming plane crash, and created plot holes that were miles wide. On one "Day of Our Lives" show, viewers were treated to the entire cast holding candles and singing "America the Beautiful," causing trailer-park families throughout America to exclaim, "So is she pregnant or NOT? Who embezzled the inheritance money? And is Kevin really gay?" * Clear Channel, owner of 1,200 radio stations, distributed a list of 150 "lyrically questionable" songs that program directors shouldn't play anymore because of the World Trade attacks. Included are some obvious ones, like AC/DC's "Shot Down in Flames," everything by Rage Against The Machine, the Dave Matthews Band's "Crash Into Me," "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas, and Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young." Less obvious were Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," the Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian," Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water," the Beatles' "Ticket to Ride," and Elvis' "You're the Devil in Disguise." Station managers were advised that it's still okay to feature the new rap hit "Osama Yo Mama." * Berry Berenson, 53-year-old widow of Anthony Perkins, was one of the victims aboard a hijacked plane used to attack the World Trade Center. She had a small part in "Cat People," but is best remembered for her supporting role in Alan Rudolph's "Remember My Name." She had been retired from the business for 20 years. * Joe Bob hereby invokes new rules for the media, which must be observed as long as the World Trade Center lies in a heap of rubble:

Morning drive-time deejays, with "Wake Up Crew" voices, are not allowed to talk about it.
Nobody wants to hear about Yasmine Bleeth. She is officially off the media radar screen.
Paula Poundstone pled guilty to a single charge of child endangerment and made a deal for probation and alcohol treatment. Over. Finished.
Afro-Man is officially a one-hit wonder.
No more hour-long specials in which children are coached to ask "heart-breaking" questions. The solution henceforth will be: Don't let them watch the goddamn video footage in the first place.
Anyone using the phrase "Make no mistake" is a self- righteous idiot.

There will be further instructions. Carry on. * Bombing the Taliban back to the Stone Age has been ruled out because they currently live in the Jurassic Age and it would therefore be classified as a Third World development program. * Two days prior to the World Trade Center attack, a suicide bomber detonated himself inside a crowded train station near Netanya, Israel, and the surprising thing is that the killer was not a Palestinian. He was an Israeli Arab--first time in history an Israeli national has been blamed for a suicide bombing. Despite the rather alarming nature of this epochal event, most American newspapers relegated the story to "news brief" copy on inside pages. * The fall fashion shows were just getting underway in New York when the terrorist attack occurred. The response of the fashion industry? Donate the tents used for the famous "7th on Sixth" fashion show to help victims. Fern Mallis, executive director of the shows, was apparently just one of the thousands of clueless supermodels and fashionistas who didn't study the event closely enough to realize that one thing that was not required was tents. Joe Bob had to transform himself into "John Bloom" this week to report on the World Trade attack for United Press International. Normally it takes a full week after a human disaster for America to regain its sense of humor. This one might take longer. The usual grim jokes that inevitably pour in here didn't show up in this case. The grief lasted longer. The feelings of helplessness extended into a second week. We will return to our chronicle of human folly in future editions. We hope it will be next week. * Paul Morgan of Biloxi, Miss., plans to guillotine his legs on the web on September 19, but even if you decide to pony up the $20 he's charging to watch, your web server will probably deny access. Morgan was run over by a truck pulling a boat in 1986, and ever since then he's needed an operation to remove his lower legs and replace them with artificial limbs so that he can run and jump. His medical insuror considers the procedure "non- essential," so in protest he's decided to do it himself. He'll webcast the building of the guillotine beginning August 20, then use a local anesthetic and have a team of doctors standing by when he pulls the switch a month later. That link is www.cutoffmyfeet.com, but it's being blocked by most internet services for reasons that are somewhat cloudy. He's not doing anything illegal, and he's not hurting anyone except possibly himself. Complain! Protest! Free the Biloxi Two! * Austrian actor Hubert "Hubsi" Kramar showed up at the Vienna Opera Ball dressed as a dead ringer for Adolf Hitler--but as soon as he stepped out of his white Rolls-Royce, police stopped him from entering and arrested him on a charge of "disturbing the peace in a thoroughly thoughtless manner." The dumbfounded Kramar protested that he was just satirizing Joerg Haider's far-right Freedom Party. (After all, didn't Charlie Chaplin win worldwide acclaim for doing essentially the same thing?) Eventually a small claims court cleared Kramar of the charges and dismissed the $128 fine. So much for the road company of "The Producers"--with its show-stopper "Springtime for Hitler" number--ever playing Vienna. The next challenge for Kramar: Attilla the Hun at the Strauss Waltz Festival. * Latin lover Antonio Banderas told the New York Daily News that he's still in love with his wife, Melanie Griffith, "but we're not that passionate couple at the beginning of our relationship. But once in a while, maybe every two years, I may fall in love with my wife again, and the passion comes back for a period of time." He tries to time it for Spanish national holidays. * Here's something profoundly disturbing. In the last two decades beer consumption has declined by 20 per cent . . . in GERMANY! Half the country's 1,270 breweries are losing money. And the first quarter of 2001 showed another 2 per cent decline. Aren't these the guys who INVENTED beer? If Russian vodka consumption declines this year, watch for the apocalypse. * Bar owner Manoel da Paixao Goncalves of Salvador, Brazil, couldn't figure out who was stealing his hot cachaca rum. Upset that bottles of the national drink were disappearing each night, he laced three bottles with rat poison. Two customers ended up dead, and now Goncalves is looking at 24 years in prison. "I only wanted to give them a stomach-ache," he told police. Brazilians were appalled by the story: if any substance could survive biological destruction in a bottle of cachaca for more than five minutes, the man was serving watered-down liquor and should get the death penalty. * The hip cosmetics company MAC, currently using L'il Kim and Mary J. Blige as its spokesmodels, is reportedly ready to dump the rappers and go taller by hiring the flame-haired Pink, whose current hit single is "You Make Me Sick." MAC is bolstering its Pink relationship by sponsoring a pre-MTV Awards party for the diva at which they will body-paint a pair of hot pants on her. In other words, MAC will pants Pink, cut Kim, and sell "Sick." * A brown sparrow finally hatched those six eggs she was incubating on Gary Condit's head. (Question: why does the media call this thatch an example of being "well-coiffed"?) * Linda Tripp mailed a letter to Republican supporters, begging for a job, saying she can no longer pay her rent, buy food or support her family. The appeal requests that her fans sign a form letter to President Bush, asking that he find "a meaningful position in your administration" for Tripp, who was fired by the Pentagon one day before Bush took office. Tripp has more than $2 million in legal bills, most of which were charged to a Whitewater Mastercard. Watching your girlfriend pay for taping conversations about your secret love life: Priceless. * President Bush took a brief vacation--the entire month of August. To refute charges that he was too soft, he took the vacation in Texas. * California's Alcoholic Beverage Control Appeals Board ruled that the topless-bar regulation prohibiting touching, caressing and fondling a dancer's own body is unconstitutional. The case came up when the alcohol license of Angels Sports Bar in Corona was suspended because its dancers' routines were deemed "contrary to public welfare and morals." The appeals board ruled, however, that the dancers were involved in the "expressive nature of the dance." In other words, strippers are now free to fondle, and Corona-quaffing Coronans are free to froth. * Dr. Christian Barnard, who performed the world's first heart transplant, died while vacationing in Cyprus. And yes, the cause of death is exactly what you're thinking it might be. * And Pauline Kael, at one time the most influential film critic in America, died at age 82. Priests and federal agents were sent to her bedside to give her one last chance to recant her 1972 insane review of "Last Tango in Paris," but she remained unrepentant. * Eight Others were killed when a twin-engine Cessna 402B crashed in flames as it took off from the Bahamas en route to Miami. Media outlets descended on the crash site, trying to discover what might have happened in the last tragic moments of Eight Others' existence. Cable channels devoted an entire day to the life and works of Eight Others, punctuated with reminiscences from the friends who knew Eight Others best. By the end of the week sordid details emerged about the pilot's cocaine habit and the fact that the plane may have been 1,000 pounds overweight, causing a fiery explosion that cut off the promise of Eight Others and created mourning around the world. An Eight Others movie is planned, as well as a special public memorial for Eight Others fans paid for by Virgin Records. Laid to rest in a silver- plated casket carried on a white glass-sided hearse pulled by two white horses with black plumes, Eight Others will never be forgotten. *The House of Representatives voted to ban all cloning of human embryos, thereby cutting off research into possible cures for Alzheimer's Disease, Lou Gehrig's Disease, and many other crippling illnesses. "This House should not be giving the green light to mad scientists to tinker with the gift of life," said Representative J.C. Watts of Oklahoma. "Cloning is an insult to humanity. It is science gone crazy." In other action, the House funded a scientific expedition that will commission three ships to sail west from California in the hopes of discovering the place where the ocean ends and the earth rests on a giant turtle's back. * H.J. Heinz Co. unveiled its latest product--purple ketchup. EZ Squirt Funky Purple was launched onto the market when early tests showed that it looked especially delicious when partially consumed, then displayed on the end of the tongue to your little sister. * A Ukrainian woman jumped into a zoo enclosure to swim with a three-ton hippopotamus and its baby and was almost mauled to death. Zoo officials in Kharkiv emphasized that the woman was not drunk, and that the hippo was acting normally in an effort to protect her baby and her territory. The woman disputed this account, noting that when she was hauled away by paramedics the hippo, named Masha, seemed to be sneering sardonically. * As a crowd cheered, a Malaysian woman set the world record for sharing a glass cage with 2,700 scorpions, remaining for a month despite being stung seven times. Her prize: an entry in the Malaysian Book of Records. As we all know, Malaysian employers are required to provide time off with pay for citizens doing their civic duty. * Marios Angelodimou, better known as "Alexia," was arrested in Cyprus for fraud, but prison authorities couldn't decide whether to house him in the male or female wing. He/she was released "in the public interest," in the words of the island's attorney general. Because sex in prison is hard enough already. *Prince Philip visited a rocket project at Salford University in northern England and was introduced to a 13-year-old boy who told the prince that he wanted to grow up to be an astronaut. The prince's reply: "You'll have to lose weight if you want to go in that." This was the best gaffe of the 80-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth since he visited British students in Beijing and said, "If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed." Then there was the time in 1995 when he asked a Scottish driving instructor, "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?" Rumors that the prince is being sent to Macedonian to preside over peace talks were scotched after he proposed starting the meeting with, "So a Serb, a Croat, a Kosovar, a Macedonian and a bow-legged midget walk into a bar . . ." * Hillary Clinton wants to shut off federal funding for Viagra prescriptions unless Medicaid is expanded to allow more public funding for birth control pills. The reasoning goes: If we're paying for more deposits, there should be no penalty for early withdrawal. * Russian border police seized 2,000 live tortoises hidden on a passenger train originating in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The tortoises had been loaded in Kazakhstan, where they are endangered, and were destined for Moscow restaurants, where they bring $50 each as a delicacy. The tortoises are being returned to Kazakhstan and should arrive there by 2164. * A Sri Lankan man discovered his wife was unfaithful, so he convinced her lover to sign a contract transferring her from himself to the lover. To do that, he had to pay two rupees (about two cents) in property sales taxes to make the whole thing legal and get the proper stamp. Unfortunately, Sri Lankan police refused to enforce the contract, and, even more humiliating to the spurned husband, they refused to give his two cents back. * British satirist Chris Morris turned his "Brass Eye" program on Channel 4 into a spoof on pedophilia, causing 2,000 outraged phone calls, a million people turning off the program before it was over, protests from at least a dozen agencies, and a threatened investigation of Channel 4 by Parliament. In one scene, Morris assumed an "America's Most Wanted" tone of seriousness and introduced a child actor playing his son to a convicted pedophile, asking him if he wanted to have sex with him. Especially upset by the program were singer Phil Collins, journalist Nick Owen, BBC broadcaster Philippa Forrester, comedian Richard Blackwood, and TV personality Kate Thornton, all of whom had been duped into taping PSA's about pedophilia cases that had been faked for the show. Morris is not new to this kind of programming. He's always been a crusader against mainstream broadcasting, beginning with his very first job, as a newsman on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, when he aired a spoof news report headlined "Man Steps Off Pavement." Another time he filled the BBC newsroom with helium gas so that the news reader would sound like a cartoon duck. Our personal favorite Morris stunt came when he altered the Teleprompter copy on the Queen's Christmas broadcast, so that the monarch said, "It was in this room that my father used to service men and women." Once he started the "Brass Eye" series, he found his stride. He invented an imaginary drug called "Cake" and induced several celebrities to tape serious commercials and interviews condemning its use among today's youth. He even convinced Member of Parliament David Amess to submit a Parliamentary question on the subject. Later he enlisted Britt Ekland and other celebrities in a campaign to save an elephant which supposedly had its trunk stuck in its ass. After the latest broadcast, there were the usual cries of "This is not fit subject for satire" and "Sometimes he's funny, but this time he's gone too far" and the like, and Morris' reaction was to take a long vacation, leaving Channel 4 to defend the show as best it could. He has frequently expressed his disgust with namby-pamby TV executives, and has vowed to leave television forever before now, but the world really needs him. They still haven't gotten the trunk out of that elephant's ass. * Zaw Win Htut, the biggest rock star in Myanmar, was banned from all public stages in 1990 because the ruling military dictatorship ruled that his hair was too long. After several years of refusing to cut his hair anyway, Zaw Win Htut decided he wanted to perform live again, so he went totally bald. The result: a ban on public performances by all bald people. Zaw Win Htut is now planning a new tour with his band Emperor; this time he will perform with no head at all. * President George "Back to the Future" Bush continued to cement his international image as a latter-day George III when he threatened to pull the United States out of a United Nations conference on racism. Colin Powell, who's been going around the world talking his tough human-rights position, says the U.S. won't show up if Zionism or the transatlantic slave trade are discussed. Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary, explained that the Bush administration wants to focus on the FUTURE of racism, not the past. And if all these arrogant little countries think they can decide what they would like to talk about, then the U.S. is going to go home early and not invite anybody to our birthday party next year. * No sooner did we report on the controversial chain of sex shops on Germany's Autobahn than the founder of those chains--the legendary Beate Uhse, the female Hugh Hefner--died in Switzerland at the age of 81. Uhse was one of the few female fighter pilots in the Luftwaffe, then after the war became famous in East Germany as a distributor of contraceptive literature and sexual products. Communist prosecutors brought more than 3,000 lawsuits against her, all without success, as she became one of the most successful businesswomen in Eastern Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, she quickly built a sex-shop empire, with 193 stores across Europe, while she remained a fixture of the tabloids with her succession of young boyfriends and her popular Erotic Museum in Berlin. She died at a Swiss hospital and was buried in her hometown of Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, where the governor praised her as a role model. And we wondered why those Germans are sooooooo kinky. * City officials in Glencoe, Ill., want to fine dog owners up to $750 if their pets chase people, bark at someone, or growl at someone--even if the dog is on a leash. They're also considering a three-strikes law, so that after a third canine unruly-behavior offense, the human owner would be rapped on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. * The Chicago City Council is upset about gas stations that don't provide public restrooms, so they've passed an ordinance requiring potties in all 355 of them. (Whoa! Digression: Only 355 gas stations in a city of 5 million?) One reason for the ordinance is neighborhood complaints that motorists, when denied facilities, will simply go in the nearest alley or cubbyhole. Testimony from outraged citizen Faye Tasker: "Can you imagine living somewhere where you've got to watch men urinate all the time because the service station will not allow them to use the washroom they do have? Children can be coming through this alley and still, they do whatever they're doing." Tasker held on till the ordinance passed, then was relieved. * Vigilant British librarians discovered a couple having sex in one of the toilets at the British National Library Rare Books Section. The couple was believed to have become aroused by a particularly racy passage in Aristophanes, further moved to undress by a Sapphic couplet, and confirmed in their indiscretion by a passing reference in Chaucer's "Miller's Tale." * The latest from the Taliban, those Afghani party animals, is a ban on all imports that violate the "Sharia," or Islamic law, including playing cards, neckties, lipstick, nail polish, chess boards, fireworks, statues, fashion catalogs, greeting cards, musical instruments, cassettes, computer discs, movies, satellite TV dishes, pictures of animals, televisions (a moot point, since they've already banned broadcasting), any product containing pig fat, and anything made of human hair. That pretty much limits Saturday-night entertainment to the traditional Taliban pursuits of sandal-juggling and goat-canoodling. * A Japanese company introduced a T-shirt coated with chemicals that respond to the warmth of human skin and are absorbed into the body as Vitamin C. The company, Fuji Spinning Company, claims that the new fiber, V-up, has the vitamin content of two lemons and can last through 30 washings. Next on Fuji's product development list: vitamin-infused underwear. But shouldn't that be Viagra-infused underwear? * A high priest in the British White Witches says he's going to cast a spell on Warner Bros. for making a Harry Potter movie in which Harry is taught to ride a broomstick backwards. The brush part of the broom must always be pointed forward, according to Kevin Carlyon, who said this misportrayal goes as far back as the "Bewitched" TV series in the sixties. "Warner Brothers claims the film is an accurate portrayal of things that happen in witchcraft," says Carlyon, "yet woodcuts from the 16th and 17th centuries show broomsticks being ridden with the brush part in the front." Carlyon proposed to his coven in Sussex that they execute only a mild spell upon the movie, endeavoring to make it do badly at the box office. Carlyon himself owns three broomsticks, but has chosen not to fly in for the premiere. * A spokeswoman for Gary Condit, the blow-dried William H. Macy lookalike, told the press that Chandra Levy had "a history of one-night stands." Unlike the Congressman, who apparently had a history of 15-minute stands. * A three-month-old fetus was found on a sidewalk in Armilla, Spain, and taken to a hospital in Madrid, where doctors alerted police, preserved the fetus in liquid, started an autopsy--only to discover it was not a fetus at all but a doll encased in a very realistic fake placenta. Police and medical officials were hacked off about all the time they spent looking for the mother and preserving the fake fetus, but any veteran carnie could have told you that you can get two bucks a head for displaying those in a midway grind show. It should have been sent to the stolen property squad, because somewhere in Europe, a bunch of gypsies are pissed. * Helo Pinheiro, who inspired the song "The Girl from Ipanema," is being sued by the families of the songwriters because she opened a jewelry and accessories store in Sao Paulo called "Girl from Ipanema." The late Vinicius de Moraes, who wrote the song with Tom Jobim, had revealed in a 1971 interview that he and his partner got the idea in 1962 after watching the 18-year-old Pinheiro repeatedly stroll by them on her way to Ipanema Beach. The samba song became an international hit, as sung by Astrud Gilberto. Both songwriters are now dead, but their families, who inherited their estates, claim Pinheiro is "unduly using the works and images of the deceased." They're especially angry about pictures she has on the wall of her shop, posing with de Moraes and Jobim. The tall and tan and . . . well, she's 54 . . . and lovely Pinheiro vows to countersue, claiming the families are harassing her. So each time she passes, each one she passes goes "Bitch." * A drunk German stole his friend's boat in Denmark, fell asleep at the rudder, crossed the Skagerrak Sea, and was found by police in Kristiansand, off the coast of Norway. He was still sleeping. The German took the ferry back to Denmark, and the tiny craft was placed in the Intoxicated Oddities Collection of the Thor Heyerdahl Museum. * Acme Rent-a-Car of New Haven, Conn., installed Global Positioning System equipment in all of its cars and started charging drivers $150 every time they drove above the posted speed limit. When James Turner got a bill for $450 after renting a van, he complained to the state Department of Consumer Protection, which is now charging Acme with "unfair trade practices" for assessing speeding fines when there is no damage to the car. Apparently the privately-assessed traffic fine is a notion whose day hasn't arrived yet, even in capitalist America. Now if we could just get rid of those secret cameras that make it virtually impossible to hide bodies in the trunk. * Rush Limbaugh signed a new contract for $285 million over the next eight years, then celebrated by ordering a $2 million steak dinner. * Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party paid for a TV commercial encourging young Taiwanese to stand up and speak their minds, and to do it they included images of Fidel Castro giving a speech, John F. Kennedy giving his inaugural address, former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-Hui talking to the press--and Adolf Hitler addressing a crowd with his hands raised. The Jewish community didn't take kindly to the ad, but Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian said the commercial was "misunderstood" and that it just needed a little editing, with subtitles, to indicate that Hitler was indeed a dictator. This follows by a year the uproar over a trendy Taiwan bistro that introduced a Nazi-death camp theme--the first Holocaust theme restaurant--resulting in a protest and the removal of gas-chamber photos. And THAT incident came shortly after a commercial used a cartoon image of Hitler to advertise German space heaters. In each case, the protests ended the Hitler imagery, but the president says the latest commercial won't be pulled, merely altered. He can't help it if the guy is just so goldurn POPULAR. * The Moroccan parliament was thrown into an uproar when a woman was sighted in denim jeans and a T-shirt. Amina Khabab, 32, a camera operator for the state-owned 2M network, was filming a debate when suddenly an angry Muslim fundamentalist member of the Justice and Development Party rose from his chair and demanded she be expelled from the chamber. He said her clothing was an invitation to debauchery. "We cannot tolerate that a woman walks in these premises dressed like this, this is intolerable," he shouted. She didn't protest the expulsion because they were Guess jeans, and she had no excuses. * In our continuing roundup of international sex-toy news, the Dutch continue to lead the field, with an Amsterdam telephone company now offering free vibrators to customers who buy cell phone service. The telecom services firm Tring launched its new campaign with the slogan "Have an in-depth conversation." Unfortunately, both KPN Telecom, which provides the actual mobile services, and Nokia, which makes the phone itself, are less than enthralled. "We are not at all happy with the campaign and we have asked that it be stopped," said a KPN spokeswoman. Tring has agreed to suspend the campaign at the end of the month, even though company officials sound a little disappointed. "We're not just using sex to sell," said a Tring executive. "The products are very well designed." Their next innovation: a hands-free phone that vibrates. Think of the possibilities. "Excuse me, I have to take this." * The modern Count Dracula, an antiques dealer whose full name is Ottomar Rodolphe Vlad Dracul Prince Kretzulesco, sued an internet wine company in Munich for marketing a wine called "Dracula." But the court ruled against him, saying that he no longer had exclusive rights to the Dracula name, popularized by Bram Stoker's novel and hundreds of films. Court proceedings were hampered by Prince Kretzulesco's numerous motions to have testimony taken at night only. * Gunther Gebel-Williams, last of the big-time lion tamers, died in Florida at age 66. Gebel-Williams actually worked with tigers, leopards, elephants, horses, giraffes and dozens of other species and was known as the Cal Ripken of circus life, going 12,000 performances without missing one. His trademark bleached white hair was occasioned by his work with the rare albino ocelot, an endangered species that, unfortunately, disappeared from the face of the earth entirely when Gebel-Williams accidentally dropped the last one from a trapeze platform. * The Raelian movement, whose members believe we are all descended from outer-space aliens, is planning to clone humans at its upstate New York lab, "Clonaid." But now the Food and Drug Administration is trying to shut them down, claiming that Raelian founder Claude Vorilhon, an atheist French journalist slash race car driver, doesn't have the proper license. Plus he doesn't bathe often enough to ensure antiseptic cloning. Do you think it's a David Hasselhoff series? * Slobodan Milosevic, on trial for war crimes at The Hague, declared the international tribunal illegal. Following his declaration, everyone went home. * A husband-wife team in Syracuse plans to create hypo- allergenic cats for people who are allergic to felines. The idea is to splice a few cat genes, removing the one protein that resides in cat fur and causes allergies, then use University of Connecticut cloning expert Xiangzhong "Jerry" Yang to create a couple of "Dolly the sheep"-type cloned cats. David and Jackie Avner plan to take these allergy-free cats, breed them to one another, and sell them for a thousand bucks apiece through their company, Transgenic Pets. PETA has already weighed in as not particularly fond of this idea, especially since the purpose of the allergy-causing gene is not known. Their fear is that the gene might have some important purpose we don't know about, leading to scenarios similar to the screeching mutant attack-cat sequence in "Re-Animator." Those considering a hypo-allergenic cloned cat for their home should probably rewatch that movie in that event of an emergency, remembering that the animal WILL continue to devour flesh until its brain is thoroughly charred by incendiary special effects. * Five staff members at Heartland Christian Academy in Newark, Mo., have been charged with felony child abuse, accused of forcing students to stand in pits of cow manure at a dairy near the school. Charles Sharpe--founder and owner of the school for troubled children rescued from juvenile courts, foster care and broken homes--says the students were merely being disciplined with 30-minute sentences of shoveling manure--a time-honored "dirty job" punishment--and that busybodies from the dairy made groundless allegations to the local sheriff. Eleven children were removed from the school and taken into custody on the day that the staff members were arrested, but now eight of them have been returned to the school by their parents or guardians, indicating that a little time in the manure pile doesn't offend them in the least. Sharpe is so peeved that he's filing a lawsuit against the county, the sheriff, the deputy sheriff, and the chief juvenile officer of the county court. The fan is scheduled to be switched on later this week. * AMF, the world's largest bowling alley operator, filed for bankruptcy. Company spokesmen said its 518 bowling centers will continue to operate, but with only nine pins. * Tampa police installed 36 face-recognition security cameras in the Ybor City nightclub district so that they can digitally scan noses, cheeks and chins and compare them to a mug-shot database in the hope of nailing some criminals. (These are the same cameras long used by casinos to identify card counters at blackjack tables.) The ACLU instantly protested, noting that it amounts to subjecting the entire population to a "digital lineup." On the first day of operation, three of the cameras near the goth clubs overheated and exploded, presumably due to an overload of facial jewelry. * There's a shortage of reindeer meat in Norway, caused by new policies that force Laplanders to take their reindeer herds to government-sanctioned slaughterhouses instead of slaughtering them out in the snow as they've done for centuries. The long trek to the abbatoirs is causing the animals to lose too much weight, and hence their fabled tastiness. Reindeer meat, a gourmet item in Europe, is fat-free, but let's not get all anorexic about it. * The supreme mufti in Cairo, highest religious authority in Egypt, has condemned "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" as a pernicious form of gambling and issued a fatwa, or edict, labeling the show a sin. In commercials for the show, a host stands in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza while men in the background haul suitcases full of money. Viewers are uged to call a 900 number to become contestants on the show. Unlike the American show, the Egyptian version features beheading by scimitar for anyone answering incorrectly. * The son and daughter of Carlo Gambino, of the New York City Gambino crime family, gave $50,000 to Roger Clinton, and congressional Pardongate probers want to know what the money was for. They think it may or may not be connected to Clinton's appeals to the U.S. Parole Commission on behalf of Gambino, currently serving the 17th year of a 45-year sentence for heroin distribution in South New Jersey. Okay, so let's vote. Everybody who thinks the money and the appeals for a pardon are connected, raise your hand. Okay, everybody who thinks Roger was just being a good citizen who thought Carlo had suffered enough, and the Gambinos just like to give lavish gifts to obscure presidential relatives, raise your diamond-encrusted pinky ring. * Charles K. Johnson, president of the International Flat Earth Research Society, died in his sleep in Lancaster, Calif. The following day, he bitch-slapped Copernicus. * Eli Lilly & Company introduced a new drug, Prozac Weekly, for people so depressed that it's too much trouble to open the medicine cabinet every damn day. * Dave Walker, author, screenwriter and faithful "Joe Bob Report" correspondent, has had all his R. Crumb comic books seized by Canadian Customs officials. Walker had ordered 67 reprints of Crumb's famous Zap Comix from the sixties, but somewhere between Last Gasp Comics offices in San Francisco and Walker's Toronto residence, they were all impounded as illegal, especially for their "depiction of sex with degradation, specifically those including bestiality, incest and ridicule." Walker has 90 days to appeal the seizure on the grounds of "artistic or literary merit," but defending the legitimacy of R. Crumb in the year 2001 is a little like being asked to defend the literary merit of Mark Twain's novels. (Come to think of it, that's happened. Recently. In America.) Crumb--the inventor of Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, and Joe Blow--is Walker's favorite cartoonist, and he had ordered the comics after meeting Crumb in May. He's currently working on a screenplay about American draft dodgers from the sixties, and he intended to use the comics for research. "What kind of faceless bureaucracy would be allowed to do something like this?" Walker told the National Post. "They're not everybody's cup of tea, obviously, but they're some of the most wildly imaginative images ever." Keep on truckin', Dave. The Mounties are apparently running out of things to mount. * More than 70 garden gnomes were found on the steps of a cathedral in Saint-Die, France, put there by the Garden Gnome Liberation Front. A banner was left behind, vowing to "return all the gnomes to the wild." This was the second operation by the GGLF. In eastern France, more than 100 gnomes, Snow Whites and other statuary were placed on a traffic circle, where some were arranged to spell out "Free the Gnomes." Or, as they said in 1789, "Liberte! Egalite! Stupidite!" * New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind is trying to have a wax likeness of Yasir Arafat banned from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum on Times Square. He called on Governor George E. Pataki to refuse to attend a Republican fund-raiser scheduled to be held at the museum, unless museum officials relent and remove the offending wax figure. Presumably Hikind has never visited a wax museum, where at least half of the figures are usually dictators, gangsters, outlaws from the Old West, and such notable political killers as Lee Harvey Oswald. A good argument could be made that being preserved in a wax museum is one of the WORST things that can happen to your reputation--but such an argument would require actual subtlety, and unfortunately we're dealing with the New York state legislature. * Bislan Gantamirov, mayor of the Chechen capital of Grozny, resigned his office, saying it was impossible to FIND his office. * Sixteen U.S. senators are fighting against 18 bishops from various denominations over the rights of chicken-pluckers. It started when the Labor Department investigated 51 poultry plants- -and discovered that all 51 had underpaid their hourly employees. They're now ordering the chicken companies to pay $350 million in back wages. But the senators in the chicken states of the South are so angry that Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao is besieged by appeals, so she's having meetings with union officials, industry executives, and the clergy, including two Methodist and 13 Roman Catholic bishops, to determine whether the workers should be paid. These are the same chicken plants that lobbied to get rid of the carpal tunnel syndrome enforcement, since that's a major ailment suffered by people who work with chickens. The standoff threatens to become extra-crispy. * Lizzie Grubman backed her father's luxury Mercedes-Benz SUV into a crowd of Beautiful People standing outside the exclusive Conscience Point Inn at the height of the social season in the trendy Hamptons on Long Island. Charged with seven counts of assault and leaving the scene of an accident, she explained that she stepped on the gas, not knowing that the car was in reverse. The bouncer at the club disagrees, saying he had asked her to move the car out of a fire lane but she responded with "Fuck you, white trash!" and then intentionally ploughed into him. Result: 16 people were hurt, 14 hospitalized. Lizzie's profession: public relations. Her client list: Britney Spears, Quincy Jones, Tommy Mottola, Jay-Z, Tara Reid (of "American Pie" fame, partying with Lizzie that night), and the Conscience Point Inn. Among the additional claims as the lawsuits start to pile up: Lizzie was seen drinking and taking drugs less than eight hours earlier. What does a p.r. person do in such a situation? Hire a p.r. person, of course! Howard Rubinstein is now speaking for the 30- year-old Grubman, saying she was "in shock" after the accident and had to go to a friend's house to calm down before she could call the police. Presumably the 16 people writhing on the pavement had cell phones anyway. * The city of Minneapolis announced it would mobilize armed police and set up barricades to prevent anyone from attending "Vampire Hookers" on a special outdoor screen set up at the Grainbelt Brewery complex. The 1978 drive-in classic was part of Atomic Shock Theater's annual "Guerrila Drive-In" series, which had used the same facility in the past, and Atomic Shock booking representative Bill Carter was befuddled by the forced cancellation of the show just one day before it was scheduled. Reasons cited by the city were "right of entry" to a grassy area adjacent to the parking lot, and various licensing issues that had never been raised in the past. The John Carradine film, which was re-released under various titles including "Graveyard Tramps," was famous for a particular poster with the tag line "They bite, they squeeze, they're ready to please." In Minneapolis, one of the most PC cities in America, that was apparently a little too distressing for their lily-white necks. * Kevin Jerome Pullum used Eddie Murphy's picture in a newspaper ad for "Dr. Dolittle 2" to make a fake ID and stroll out of the Los Angeles County Jail. The 6-foot-4, 240-pound three-time convict, recently found guilty of attempted murder, made his disguise more convincing by talking to a cheetah on his way out. * Dee Dee Derian of West Point, Utah, faces indecency and lewdness charges after neighbors complained for the fourth time that she works in her yard in a bikini. The 40-year-old Derian was mowing, weeding and planting trees when a Davis County sheriff's lieutenant showed up and told her that the case was being referred to the district attorney due to the constant neighborhood complaints about her French-cut animal-print bikini. The cops refused to tell her which neighbor complained, but he's no friend of either France or animals. * Meanwhile, the city government of Provincetown, Mass., is willing to go to court to defend people who want to sunbathe in the nude. In April, the historic Cape Cod community agreed at a town meeting to make the remote "Spaghetti Strip" beach clothing- optional. Now families with summer homes are complaining--and no doubt wishing they lived in West, Point, Utah--because think about it. Do you know just how WHITE a nekkid New Englander is? We're talking Pillsbury Doughboy Jubilee here. * Adun, the elephant who has starred in many Malaysian movies, just turned 17 and was apparently feeling some raging hormones when he got turned on in the shower and decided to give trainer Abdul Rahim Abbas a little love hug, wrapping his trunk around him and lifting him off the ground. Abbas suffered a broken rib and injured lungs. He will be okay, but suggested to authorities that in the future he and Adun meet in a bath house. * A 63-year-old Vienna man was trapped three days in a portable toilet after jumping inside to escape two men who had hit him on the head and robbed him. The muggers flipped the toilet over with the door face down so he couldn't get out. Because it was located at a busy intersection, no one could hear his screams and banging until, 80 hours later, he broke out a vent and flagged down a passer-by. Fortunately his rescuer did NOT say, "Hey, you've been in there a long time--did you fall in?" * The annual World Wife-Carrying Championship in Sonkajarvi, Finland, changed its rules this year, establishing a minimum wife weight. There were too many anorexic wives on starvation diets skewing the results--like last year's Margo Usorg, a mere 75- pounder carried across the obstacle-course finish line by her Estonian husband Birgit Ullrich. Anitta Blom, tourism manager for central Finland, announced that the new minimum would be 42 kilograms, or 92.5 pounds. Otherwise, the athletic integrity of the event could be compromised by Filipino child-brides. * Manhattan art dealer Frederick Schultz was arrested by the FBI on charges that he sold the stolen 2,400-year-old skull of Amenhotep III to a London art dealer for $1.2 million. Schultz is expected to plea to a lesser charge, but only if he leads Egyptian police detectives to the rest of Amenhotep's body and ID's the hitman. * BMW unveiled its new fleet of hydrogen-fueled luxury cars in Los Angeles, the nation's smoggiest, most gasoline-addicted city. The tailpipe of a hydrogen-powered car emits only water and steam, which means potential Beverly Hills buyers would conceivably be able to turn the exhaust inward and have facials and saunas inside their SUVs. * When Chinese food inspectors confiscated his meat, a butcher ran amok, chased them down the street with knives in both hands, and hacked four of them to death, wounding three others. It took 700 policemen 14 hours to catch 35-year-old Guan Jiadong, who was selling meat in an open-air market in the northeastern city of Shenyang from a stall that didn't have a license. When he was told he would have to give up his meat, he plunged into the group of some 50 inspectors and started hacking away. In China such crimes are rare, but the perpetrator always ends up well done. * An elderly couple in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, were attacked by their pet cat Touti, requiring emergency assistance from four carloads of police, two ambulances, and an animal control officer before Gerard Daigle, 80, could be rescued and taken to the hospital, where he was discovered to have lost a pint of blood. Gerald had been giving his pet parrot a shower when Touti decided he was hungry. Daigle batted Touti away from the bird, angering the cat, who turned on his owner, mauled him, then attacked Daigle's 81-year-old wife when she tried to render aid. "He tried to eat her, too," said Daigle at the hospital. Police showed up in force because they thought they were dealing with a domestic crisis. In the future, the couple has decided to have the parrot showered by assisted-living personnel.