Iraq agreed to admit United Nations weapons inspectors to
search for bombs, and the Bush administration said that if the
inspectors find any bombs, that's why we have to attack them, and
if they don't find any bombs, that's why we have to attack them.
*
The opening night performance of the Paris Opera had to be
halted after strange voices were heard by the audience. An
impromptu intermission was called, and eventually the culprit was
found: a tape recorder with two speakers had been placed in the
upper reaches of the theater, and it was playing Handel's "Giulio
Cesare," the same opera that was being performed below. We would
like to point out that Michael Bennett hasn't been seen recently.
*
Christopher Krohn, the mayor of Santa Cruz, California,
stood in front of City Hall to supervise a massive marijuana
giveaway, challenging the Drug Enforcement Administration to
loosen its restrictions on dope for the sick. People were allowed
to smoke the marijuana on the City Hall lawn, but when someone
lit up a legal cigarette, he was banished to the sidewalk.
Second-hand marijuana smoke, after all, is organic.
*
A federal judge ordered the end to 42 years of court-
supervised desegregation of the Little Rock public schools. In
1956, when federal court intervention began, there were no
integrated schools in the city. Today the schools are 68 percent
black, leading to speculation that whites will now ask the court
to monitor their education until the year 2044.
*
Scenes from our secure republic:
- Elliot Gosko, a 14-year-old student from West Chester,
Pennsylvania, was going through security at the airport in Aspen,
Colorado, after visiting his grandparents, when a screener
ordered him to drink the contents of his Gatorade jug. He had
filled the jug with water from a mountain stream as part of a
biology project and was planning to culture the bacteria in the
science lab at Henderson High School. As it turned out, he
cultured the bacteria in his own stomach. By the time he changed
planes in Minneapolis, he had an especially nasty case of
Montezuma's Revenge, causing him to miss two days of school and
be treated for exposure to the bacteria giardia. "They stopped a
bioterrorist," said Gosko's father, who had paid Northwest
Airlines $150 extra to carry his son as an unaccompanied minor.
Gosko didn't have the presence of mind, however, to throw up
directly on the screener.
- When Gurdeep Wander, an American citizen from New Jersey,
and Harinder Pal Singh, an Indian citizen, boarded a Northwest
Airlines flight in Memphis, bound for Las Vegas, the flight
attendants didn't like their appearance and asked passengers to
keep an eye on them. Right before takeoff, Wander left his seat
to retrieve his shaving kit from the overhead compartment, and a
flight attendant asked him why he was not in his proper seat next
to Singh. Wander explained that Northwest had missed their
connection in Minneapolis and rerouted them, causing them to
spend a night in a hotel, and they'd had little sleep--so he
chose an unoccupied seat where he could rest. After takeoff,
while the "Fasten Seat Belt" sign was still on, Wander asked the
same flight attendant if he could use the restroom. She allowed
him to do so, and he stayed inside for 10 minutes. She knocked on
the door. He opened it, and told her he needed to clean up with
his complimentary Northwest Airlines shaving kit. She knocked
again a little later. He opened the door again, and was shirtless
and in the middle of shaving. She consulted with the pilot, who
told her to check the man's razor and then order him back to his
seat. After several exchanges, during which Wander kept asking
for more time to finish shaving, she got him to sit down. As soon
as he sat down, another man, Carlos Nieves, got up to use the
same restroom. For some reason this fact was reported to the
pilot, even though Nieves was not travelling with the other two
men. After Nieves left the restroom, Singh got up to use it--
because, after all, he, too, had not shaved nor slept. The flight
attendant decided she didn't want Singh going into the same
restroom, so she told him it was broken--not true--so Singh used
another restroom and then sat down next to Wander. At this point,
the pilot decided to make an emergency landing in Fort Smith,
Arkansas, where the plane was surrounded by police officers, fire
trucks and bomb-sniffing dogs. Everyone was told to leave the
plane except for Wander, Singh, Nieves, and a fourth man who had
done nothing (!) named Alaaeldin M. Abdelsalam. All the luggage
was pulled out onto the tarmac, and the luggage of the four men
was singled out. A dog raised an alert on Abdelsalam's bag--the
guy who was clueless--and so it was blown open with a water
cannon, and he was arrested! So were Wander and Singh. Nieves was
released. Abdelsalam was released a little later when he
explained that he worked in an oil field and his bag contained
boots and a hard hat that were stained with chemicals. Singh and
Wander spent a week in prison, and then Singh was released after
paying a $500 civil penalty. (It's not clear why. After all, all
he did was go to the bathroom.) Wander is still in trouble,
though. Charged with intimidating a flight attendant, a felony
that can carry penalties up to 20 years in prison, he's currently
free on $25,000 bond. Okay, here's our question: why do INDIAN
guys get nailed in so many of these stories? Aren't they the
sworn enemies of Pakistan, where all the terrorists actually come
from? And if facial hair is an issue, these guys were trying to
shave it off!
- Seven-year-old Rozlin Templeton of Branford, Connecticut,
was departing Hartford Airport with her mom when a security
screener singled her out for a an electronic-wand search,
followed by a search of her backpack, followed by a full body
search of her teddy bear, follow by a request that she unpack two
Polly Pockets, dolls that come in plastic cases full of
accessories. Her mother, Kathryn Templeton, had the quote of the
year. "If I'd only known this was going to happen," she told The
Wall Street Journal, "I would have packed her Barbies instead.
Barbie is so much easier to strip search." Of course, she didn't
say that in the presence of the screener, for fear of being sent
to the Smartasses-Will-Miss-Their-Flights Detention Area.
- Susan Hambleton of Sunnyvale, California, was ordered by a
screener at Chicago's O'Hare Airport to take a drink from the
feeding bottle of her three-month-old son. Since the bottle
contained her own milk, she protested, saying that it wasn't a
pleasant taste to her. The screener insisted, so she unscrewed it
and took a sip. The screener said, "That's not enough, you have
to chug it." She did as instructed, resisting the impulse to burp
loudly as she was waved on through.
- Elizabeth McGarry of Oceanside, New York, obviously didn't
hear what happened to Susan Hambleton, because she was forced to
drink HER own breast milk by security guards at JFK Airport
before she could board a plane to Florida. She's considering a
lawsuit, but says she'll settle for making the screeners drink it
themselves. Colleen Carboy of Dallas obviously didn't hear what
happened to Susan Hambleton OR Elizabeth McGarry, because when a
screener at the Austin, Texas, airport asked her to drink from a
bottle of breast milk, she absolutely refused. A fracas ensued,
but a female security supervisor intervened and let her board
without quaffing. It took two Texas women to get this thing
settled.
- An office building in Aliso Viejo, California, was
evacuated after mail room workers at Fluor Daniel complained of
feeling sick from the fumes of a fluid leaking from a mysterious
package. The fire department rushed to the scene in hazardous-
materials gear and discovered . . . a broken bottle of 80-proof
vodka. Californians are, of course, allergic to all alcoholic
beverages and were presumably hospitalized for shock.
- A tourist from Shanghai, China, was detained at San
Francisco Airport after batteries and wires were discovered in a
pair of shoes in his carry-on luggage. The man demonstrated that
the shoes were designed to keep his feet warm, that the wires and
batteries were harmless, and that there were no explosives
inside. The police, after learning of the shoes' true purpose,
blew them up anyway. Don't try to use the old "cold feet" ruse on
US.
- Sigbhatullah Mojaddedi of Afghanistan and his wife Nadera
were detained by screeners at Orlando airport, causing them to
miss their flight to London. The screeners told authorities that
Mojaddedi, who was dressed in traditional Afghan clothing, spoke
of an Islamic liberation organization and said "I know you're
looking for a bomb" and "God will revenge this." Actually he said
no such thing. None of the screeners spoke English as a first
language, and they had just detained a respected former president
of Afghanistan who was visiting Jacksonville for a wedding. Sure
he was talking about frappucino, but it was the WAY he said it.
- The FBI spent 13 months, using 10 full-time agents, to
monitor 90 calls a day at a New Orleans brothel, both before and
after September 11th. Obviously the war against terrorism takes
many forms.
*
Okay, here's your 9/11 fill-in- the-blank quiz:
A year ago America was [seven letters, rhymes with
"deranged"] forever. They hated us for our [seven letters, rhymes
with "Needham"]. But with courage we must [six letters, rhymes
with "manure"]. We will always remember the [seven letters,
rhymes with "knavery"] of those who made the ultimate [nine
letters, rhymes with "hack the ice"]. This is a time to reflect
on our [nine letters, rhymes with "lateness"]. For this is a
nation of great [five letters, rhymes with "snide"]. We will
endure. We will triumph. We will not be deterred by cheap [nine
letters, rhymes with "tenement"]. *
Florida tried to vote again. *
The Nimbus 2000, a toy broomstick manufactured by Mattel
from the "Harry Potter" movies, retails for $19.99 and features a
"grooved stick and handle for easy riding," plus vibrating
effects. Originally marketed primarily to boys, it's proven so
popular with teenage girls that they play with it for hours and
need frequent battery replacements. The Harry Potter fantasy has
obviously touched an entire generation. *
The Lithuanian health ministry dropped its requirement that
all women have gynecological examinations before being licensed
to drive. The rule, dating from the Soviet era, was considered no
longer necessary now that most modern women operate cars
primarily with their hands and feet only. *
Parisoula Lampsos, mistress of Saddam Hussein for 30 years,
told ABC News that the Iraqi strongman pops Viagra, tried to have
his son Uday assassinated, raises gazelles so he can dine on
gazelle steak, loves the movie "The Godfather," likes to dance to
Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night," and enjoys smoking
cigars and wearing cowboy hats while watching videos of his
enemies being tortured. What, he hasn't switched over to DVDs? *
The final chapter in the Battle of the Miss North Carolinas
was decided by a stroke of the pen wielded by Federal District
Judge James C. Fox of Wilmington. Rebekah Revels, she of the
phantom nude photos, gave up her title and can't compete. If she
wants to pursue her claim that Miss America officials pressured
her into resigning, then only a jury trial can decide those
issues. Misty Clymer, the runner-up who snatched the crown and
won't be giving it back, celebrated with an extra calorie. *
Credit card companies started using scenic Hallmark greeting
cards to ask people who are behind on their bills to call and
work out a payment plan. Discover Card's version features a
gurgling brook and a hand-written note inside, with a message
about how "life often takes sudden turns" and how Discover understands
your "unexpected detours." As the greeting-card debt-
collection plan expands, the companies will presumably be sending
get-well cards, birthday cards, and those popular cartoon joke
cards. On the outside they'll say "Hey! We're All Deadbeats From
Time To Time!" Inside, they say "Your Turn!" *
"Spirit Bear," the only known black bear that is actually
white, was saved from hunting when the Alaska Board of Game
declared a ban on the killing of any black bear that's white.
Darker-furred black bears were expected to file a discrimination
lawsuit. *
The East Turkestan Islamic Movement, an organization that
idolizes the United States and holds it up as a model as they
seek independence for the Uighur people of western China, was
labeled a terrorist group by the Bush administration in an
attempt to bring China into the coalition against Saddam Hussein.
The result is that China now has the international sanction it
wanted to wipe out the Uighurs. Western scholars say the East
Turkestan Islamic Movement has never been tied to Al Qaeda, never
taken money from extremists, and never even been once mentioned
by Osama Bin Laden in any of his speeches. We just don't like
that darn NAME. *
The Chicago Police Department has routinely interrogated
witnesses for up to 24 hours in small locked rooms without
lawyers present, according to a ruling by Federal District Judge
Milton I. Shadur. Hey, they got the idea from TV. *
Kimberly Fennessey of Bryan, Texas, wanted to see if her
friend's .22-caliber pistol worked, so she fired it at a Teflon-
coated frying pan. The ricochet hit her directly in the forehead
but caused no serious injuries because of the well-known
consistency of the Kimberly skull. *
Undercover investigators in New York seized 25,000
counterfeit Viagra pills--estimated street value $100,000--after
a 17-month sting in which bootleggers claimed they were able to
deliver 2.5 million pills per month. The fake pills, which use
the same active ingredient as real Viagra, are made in China,
Hong Kong, India, Nevada and Colorado, and are considered
dangerous because they've been known to produce unregulated
uncontrollable stiffies. Don't point that thing unless you know
what to do with it. *
Cattle rancher Ken Legan of Halfway, Missouri, has
introduced a bill in the state legislature to ban taking pictures
of animals in barns or breeding facilities. Legan says undercover
reporters take photos and videotapes of hog-farm operations to be
used in a "derogatory manner," and he's not about to allow
unregulated depiction of wallowing. *
The morning after a party at the Sigma Phi Epsilon house at
Wake Forest University, a 200-pound pig was found passed out in a
park--drunk, dehydrated, missing its tail, and burned by heat
lamps. The Sigma Phi brothers also did $827 worth of property
damage, a figure which doesn't include the reduced slaughterhouse
value of scorched pork. *
Construction on the $1.5 billion Bay Area Rapid Transit line
to San Francisco International Airport was halted when
construction workers found a dead garter snake. Since the snake
is listed as endangered, California wildlife officials had to
investigate. It was the second dead snake found during the
construction. The last one, last September, caused an 18-day
shutdown that cost $1.07 million. However, as we all know,
sometimes you can club one with the flat end of a shovel and it
will go belly up and pretend to be dead for an hour or so, just
to disrupt capital improvement projects. *
The president of Honduras formally denied an Internet site's
claims that the Swan Islands off the Honduran coast were being
sold as a medieval-themed fantasy resort. The islands were owned
by the United States from 1863 to 1971 and contained fertilizer
factories that mined the local bird droppings. The Internet
promoters offering "The Ultimate Fantasy Resort" said nothing
about the ready supply of bird doo-doo and were undeterred by
President Ricardo Maduro's declaration that the islands belonged
to the government of Honduras, were not for sale, and would not
be developed for tourism. "We have proposed a joint venture,"
said Felipe Danzilo, the promoters' lawyer, "in which the
Honduran government would give us a multi-year concession for the
islands and we in return would put up millions of dollars in
investment." Danzilo appears to be LIVING on Fantasy Island. *
When Ruth Sheppard of West Hempstead, New York, found a 1985
Mercedes-Benz 380SL parked in her driveway, with the keys left in
her mailbox, she assumed someone had given it to her, she says,
because "Mother's Day was coming up." So when a local garage
called a few days later to say they'd made a mistake--they had
done repairs on the car, but an employee had dropped it off at
the wrong address--she refused to give it back. Eventually Nassau
County police showed up to return the car to its rightful owner,
but as soon as they arrived Sheppard jumped into her OTHER car, a
1987 Honda, and told them she was going to church. An officer
told her not to leave because they needed to talk to her and
reached into the Honda to shut off the ignition. As soon as she
did, Sheppard hit the gas and dragged the cop 10 feet in reverse.
Sheppard's daughter Carla then started pushing and shoving cops
as they tried to arrest the Mercedes-deprived woman. Sheppard's
explanation: "I'm not a thief. I wanted the owner to have it. Put
it this way: Who wouldn't want to have a car like that?" The
entire Sheppard family is made up of Janis Joplin fans.Kicking off their latest tour, the Rolling Stones opened at
the Fleet Center in Boston with "I Can't Get No Regularity."
*
Keiko, the killer whale who starred in "Free Willy," turned
up in a Norwegian fjord six weeks after being returned to the
wild from his pen in Iceland. Norwegian children swarmed around
Keiko, petting him, playing with him, swimming with him, then,
because Norway never agreed to the global whaling ban, harpooning
him and dining on Free Willy Sushi.
*
Lance Bass of 'N Sync was kicked off Russia's October flight
to the International Space Station after he only paid $200,000 of
his $20 million ticket. Hey, he found that price on the Internet.
*
The new Hard Rock Vault museum in Orlando will feature rock-
and-roll memorabilia from the company's 64,000-item collection,
including one of Madonna's molars. Presumably it will be
displayed behind glass, because, as Mama used to say, we don't
know where that's been.
*
The United States national basketball team, which is loaded
up with NBA players, lost to Argentina, which is loaded up with
guys with cute mustaches. The U.S. then followed up one night
later with a loss to Yugoslavia, but still had a chance to use
their home court advantage in Indianapolis to prove they're the
fifth best basketball team in the world.
*
An astigmatic gunman failed to assassinate Afghan President
Hamid Karzai, slightly wounding the governor of Kandahar instead,
after which he was reduced to rubble by Green Berets.
*
New developments in the saga of Rebekah Revels, the Miss
North Carolina who relinquished her crown after her ex-boyfriend
produced some topless photos and showed them to Miss America
officials. Rebekah went to court to get her crown back! A judge
gave it to her! Now the runner-up, Misty Clymer, is clenching her
fist around the crown in an iron grip and filing her own lawsuit
to keep what became hers after fickle Rebekah stepped down. Bek's
a quitter! Misty's so selfish! What. Ever.
*
In other beauty-queen news, a Miss America slot machine,
complete with Bert Parks singing "There She Is, Miss America,"
made its debut in Atlantic City, but not without grumbling from
current Miss America Katie Harman, who says it's demeaning to her
crown. Then we gave her three quarters and she shut up.
*
President Bush decided that, oh, okay, sure, he'll have some
meetings and make some speeches before he puts Saddam Hussein's
head on a stick.
*
The Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity at Baylor University was
suspended for a year after members appeared in a picture in the
October issue of Playboy. The university had threatened
disciplinary action against anyone participating in the "Girls of
the Big 12" issue, but the Sigma Phi's thought the policy only
applied to nekkid girls. The offending photo shows 50 men and
four women, all clothed, on a volleyball court holding Baylor
banners and flags. But Larry Brumley, Baylor's associate vice
president of external relations, says that doesn't matter:
"Posing for a magazine that exploits women and sells sex is a
violation of [the] policy." All the students were suspended and
required to perform community service and write essays relating
to their violation. One of the essays was entitled "My Cutie
Bootie Did Virtual Duty."
*
Kennedy relative Michael Skakel, presenting himself before a
Connecticut judge to be sentenced for a murder when he was 15,
compared himself to Jesus Christ. "As far as a job is concerned,"
he said, "I mean, what did Jesus Christ do? He walked around the
world telling people that he loved them. Should I go to jail for
that?" Somebody tell Mike that you have to try the insanity
defense BEFORE the trial starts.
*
Professional feminist Andrea Dworkin announced she would try
to get lap-dancing outlawed in New York, because she considers it
"one rung up from prostitution." To motivate council members to
pass the law, she's threatened to perform a lap dance.
*
McDonald's announced a new recipe for its French fries, with
less saturated fat and fewer trans fatty acids, in an effort to
make fat people stop dropping dead so quickly.
*
CNN's Connie Chung heavily promoted an expose of Yale's
secret society, Skull and Bones, then didn't air it and offered
no explanation. Chung and CNN both refused comment. But a
spokesman for AOL Time Warner, owner of CNN, appeared outside of
the company's New York headquarters clad only in a toga, then
crushed a beer can on his head and chanted the lyrics to "Inna
Gadda Divida."
*
Albrecht Stromeyer showed up at the U.S. Open to declare his
love to Serena Williams--and was promptly arrested for stalking
the tennis queen. The German loverboy was previously arrested at
Wimbledon and deported from Italy after showing up at the Italian
Open. All three incidents were obviously Serena's way of playing
hard to get.
*
Scenes from domestic life:
- Alex and Derek King, age 12 and 13, were afraid their
father Terry King was going to punish them, so they decided to
kill him with a baseball bat and set his bed on fire in hopes of
burning up their Pensacola home and destroying all evidence,
according to police. (They later recanted their confession and
claimed a family friend named Ricky Chavis did the killing.) At
any rate, their plan worked. Their father died from a bashed-in
skull, the house burned up, and Alex and Derek were not punished-
-by their father.
- A man in Merriwa, Australia, strapped explosives to his
body and blew himself up on a quiet residential street to show
the girlfriend who dumped him how much she meant to him. Of
course, now she sees the error of her ways and knows that he
wasn't crazy after all and they could have a long life together.
- Celeste Charles loaned $10 to her sister Robyn Sayer and
wanted her money back. They started arguing about it in their
shared Bronx apartment, then went at it with knives. Robyn bled
to death within about 60 seconds, making the possibility of debt
collection extremely remote.
- When the Roman Catholic church failed to approve of his
divorce, 71-year-old Lloyd Robert Jeffries killed two monks and
wounded two others at Conception Abbey in northwest Missouri. Now
that he's expressed himself so vividly, he's expected to enjoy
full communion privileges once again.
- Daniel and Lisa Vesterfelt of Grayville, Illinois,
recently named the state's Foster Family of the Year, were
charged with predatory criminal sexual assault of a child,
aggravated battery of a child and domestic battery. Whoops!
- The sister of Jacques Robidoux of Taunton, Massachusetts,
got a message from God to stop feeding solid food to Robidoux'
10-month-old son and to limit him to breast milk only. After 51
days of the all milk, all the time diet, the baby died. Robidoux
was convicted of murder and sentenced to life. His wife Karen is
charged with second-degree murder. His sister Michelle Mingo is
charged with accessory to murder. God is not charged.
- Rocco Brusco, a 31-year-old guy living with his parents in
Hackensack, New Jersey, opened a window in the apartment, causing
an argument with his mother, who wanted the window closed. Their
argument awakened the father of the house, Francesco Brusco, who
waded into the fight and was punched out by the son, falling
against a wall and hurting his head. A few minutes later a
daughter of Francesco--who lives nearby--called police. All four
family members were taken to police headquarters, and the son was
charged with assaulting the father. The father was granted a
restraining order. But the next night the police were again
called to the apartment, and this time the father was dead. The
son was arrested for aggravated manslaughter, and was presumably
told that all windows for the rest of his life will definitely be
closed.
- Barry and Judith Smiley of Albuquerque lived for the past
22 years under the fake names Bennett and Mary Propp, after
fleeing from Long Island in 1980 with a 15-month-old child they
had tried to adopt despite being ordered to return him to his
biological parents. When the child grew up and applied for a
birth certificate so he could become a law enforcement officer,
no birth certificate existed. The resulting investigation led to
the Smileys being arrested and brought back to Long Island for
trial on kidnapping and "custodial interference" charges. As part
of their plea agreement, the abducted baby--23-year-old Matthew
Propp--will be remanded to diapers and held by his biological
parents until the age of 41.
*
Under a new law in Florida, any woman offering a child for
adoption has to publish her sexual history in the newspaper,
including the names of the men she's been with. If she had sex
while drunk, she's allowed to use "John Doe who wears green
plaid, drinks Heineken, wears a Rolex, and said he would call."
*
Akbar Turkmenbashi, the president of Turkmenistan whose name
means "Great Leader of All Turkmen," changed the name of January
to Turkmenbashi, to go along with the city, streets, mosques,
factories, airports, vodka, tea and currency already named after
him. We're looking forward to that new Turkmenbashi Diet Cola.
*
Fourteen-year-old Elbert Donell Hines disappeared at a pool
party in West Babylon, New York, and was missing for two days
before his body was found--in the pool. Thirty people had been at
the party when Hines vanished, and two of them reported bumping
into something on the bottom but just "thought it was a pool
toy." Two nights later, police searched the area again and
noticed a "soccer ball" bobbing just beneath the surface--but it
turned out to be the back of Hines' head. Two words here, people:
pool cleaner.
*
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the right
of Joseluis Saenz, a Chiricahua Apache, to own eagle feathers
that he uses in religious ceremonies. The feathers had been
seized by authorities, who said that they could only be used by
federally recognized tribes, but Saenz sued and won. Saenz has
been unable to practice his religion lately, but now that he has
the feathers back he'll be using them to stir his sacred spotted-
owl soup.
*
Carl Patrick Brown of Gulfport, Mississippi, was caught on
videotape having sex with a horse, but claimed he was high on
ecstasy and didn't know what he was doing. Circuit Judge Jerry O.
Terry sentenced him to 18 months in prison and ordered him to
avoid further contact with the horse. He's not even allowed to
explain why he never calls or visits?
*
Dr. George Coppa, a psychiatrist in Staten Island, New York,
treated a woman suffering from "hypersexuality" for three years--
by having sex with her. The state Health Department revoked his
license--but wouldn't reveal the patient's name or, more
important, phone number.
*
The city of Venice wants to trademark its name
internationally so it can earn income from companies that use
words like "Venetian blinds." If the city succeeds in its
campaign, the economic effects are expected to be far-reaching,
especially for the city of Acme in the Czech Republic.
*
Drug addicts, hookers and beggars on the streets of
Vancouver are demanding compensation from the Hollywood
production companies who frequently shoot films and TV series
there and disrupt business during the time the streets are taken
over by film crews. The Vancouver Sun is backing their demands,
which would ask the Hollywood producers to pay for alternative
housing for displaced homeless people, and compensation when a
prostitute has to retire early for the evening. In a related
development, producers working on location in the Yukon will be
asked to pay noise abatement fines for frightened moose.
*
The school board in Devils Lake, North Dakota, voted
unanimously to remove the nickname of Central High School. Its
athletic teams have always been known as the Satans, but devil-
worshippers apparently complained that they didn't want their
sacred traditions demeaned with cartoon devils on sweatshirts.
They'll also have to alter their traditional cheerleading yell,
which was "Two! Four! Six! Eight! Who do God and Jesus hate!"
*
Angry taxpayers in Stevens County, Washington, say they're
tired of paying for them durn liberries, so they've gathered
signatures and forced a referendum that could dissolve the entire
county library system. They're especially upset that so many of
the libraries are located in the smallest out-of-the-way towns in
an age when NORMAL people can use the Internet, video outlets and
discount book stores. The American Library Association says this
is the first effort to eliminate an entire country library system
by referendum. One leader in the anti-library campaign, Karen
Frostad, told The New York Times, "When we were circulating the
petition, we ran into people time and time again who said they
pay all this money in library property taxes and they don't even
use it." That much we already knew.
*
Animal rights fanatics are trying to shut down the annual
Calaveras County Jumping Frog Jubilee, held each year since 1928
in Angels Camp, California, to celebrate the 1865 Mark Twain
story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The
Animal Protection Institute is orchestrating a letter-writing
campaign and claiming that humans handling the 2,500 to 3,000
competing frogs makes the frogs' skin subject to disease. The ban
on frog-handling would not apply to the Warner Brothers singing
and dancing frog--"Hello my honey, hello my baby . . ."--because
he has retained professional management.
*
Eleven scientists published a report in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Science estimating that the earth's
resources are now being used up at a rate of 125 percent when
compared to how fast those resources can be regenerated. This
compares to a 1961 rate of 70 percent, meaning we're 25 percent
over the eco-budget and basically devouring ourselves. After
releasing the report, all 11 scientists had a Diet Pepsi.
*
Most girls under 18 would stop using clinics where they get
birth control pills, pregnancy tests, and sexual-disease tests,
if the clinics were required to inform their parent. According to
a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association, 59
percent of the girls now using family planning clinics for these
services would stop using them, but 99 percent would continue
having sex. This falls under the category of "Duh" research.
*
Luciano Pavarotti announced he will retire on his 70th
birthday--October 12, 2005--which means he'll spend three more
years being forklifted into arenas for one-nighters.
*
Pizza Hut, Papa John's and Domino's all started tacking on
delivery fees of up to $1.50 in selected markets, causing
dormitory rioting in parts of Colorado and eastern Oregon.
*
The state of Texas went 72 hours, a modern record, without
executing anyone.
*
Dr. David C. Arndt of Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, left a patient anesthetized with an open incision
in his back while he popped out to make a bank deposit. Dr. Arndt
explained that the six-hour surgery was running a little long and
he needed to get his paycheck to the bank before closing time. He
just hates those ATM fees.
*
The average American consumes 14 meals a year in his car,
and there are more food-related accidents than cell-phone-related
accidents on the highways, according to federal studies. Our
solution: hands-free feed bags.
*
"We Will Rock You," a $10.7 musical co-produced by Robert
DeNiro and based on the songs of Queen, debuted in London to tar-
and-feather-level reviews. The show runs two and a half hours,
telling the story of a rebel group called the Bohemians fighting
against a music-hating conglomerate called Globalsoft led by a
big-busted executive known as the Killer Queen. The tale is set
in the future, with the Bohemians living in underground caves,
where they search for "the lost vibe" and "the ultimate riff."
They're also hunting for a mythical guitar that was buried by the
members of Queen in the late 20th century, but the Ga-Ga Police
are trying to get to it first. The leading Bohemian rebel, named
Galileo Figaro, has to remember the words to the lost song "The
Rhapsody" in order to inspire revolution in the hearts of the
other Bohemians. As noted, it's 150 minutes. Aren't those guys
too YOUNG to be acidhead sixties hippies?
*
A woman in Jordan successfully sued her husband for divorce
just four months after the nation's laws were changed to allow
women to obtain divorces for the first time. Her grounds were
simple: she hated her husband. Oddly refreshing, isn't it? She
didn't say "He does terrible things." She said "I hate him." We
can learn from the ancient cultures.
*
The world's first photograph--an 1825 image of a man in
baggy pants leading a horse--was purchased by the French National
Library for $392,000, even though the horseman is reported to
have said "Wait a minute, my eyes were closed on that one."
*
President Bush convened an economic forum at Waco's Baylor
University, home of the Bears, instead of Chicago's United
Center, home of the Bulls, then made a speech about economic
policy that would be worthy of Canberra's soccer stadium, home of
the Ostriches.
*
The 41 members of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes were
fired en masse when their union contract expired and were told
that from now on there will be no permanent Rockettes jobs and
that open auditions will be held for each show. The clear message
from Radio City management: a varicose vein is not a crowd-
pleaser no matter how high you can kick it.
*
US Airways filed for bankruptcy, but ensured consumers that
its 3,800 flights would continue at the their customary level of
service. Darn.
*
Ed Headrick, the man who perfected the Frisbee, died in San
Francisco at age 78 and left instructions for his ashes to be
molded into Frisbees. Some of the mortuary Frisbees will be given
to family members, and others will be sold to fund a Frisbee
museum. The original flying disc, called the Pluto Platter, was
invented by Walter Morrison after World War II, but it had a
wobbly flight pattern. Headrick, working in research and
development at Wham-O Inc., added aerodynamic ridges in 1964 and
was awarded the patent for the first "professional" Frisbee in
1966. Okay, people, we know it's tempting, but let's not let this
funeral get out of hand.
*
Jennifer Lopez' new fragrance, Glow by J-Lo, may be laid low
by a trademark suit filed by Glow Industries, a Los Angeles
company which already sells bath and body-care products under the
Glow name in Nordstrom stores and at boutiques in Ritz-Carlton
hotels. With J-Lo's perfume expected to hit stores in September,
this could get smelly. Our suggestion would be that she simply
expand her line: Poe by J-Lo (for writers), Dough by J-Lo (for
Wall Street), Yo by J-Lo (for Brooklyn), Faux by J-Lo (when you
need to fake it), Fro by J-Lo (for that retro seventies feeling),
Roe by J-Lo (for girls who love caviar), Schmo by J-Lo (special
nerd fragrance), Cousteau by J-Lo (for the beach), Freak Show by
J-Lo (for Dennis Rodman), Go-Go by J-Lo (for strippers), and the
simple Ho by J-Lo, for when you just don't care.
*
Adam Ant walked into a pub in north London wearing cowboy
duds, causing the customers to whistle the theme to "The Good,
the Bad and the Ugly." The pop singer was not amused, left,
returned later brandishing a starter's pistol, and threw a car
alternator through the window of the pub. He pled guilty to a
single count of brawling after being chased down by a posse, but
he ain't takin' kindly to it.
*
F-16s pursued a UFO over the Washington area, according to
witnesses on the ground who said they saw a light-blue object
travelling at a a high rate of speed. Pentagon officials
confirmed that the jets were scrambled and sent to check out "an
area of interest," but scoffed at the idea of a UFO. "Everything
was fine, so they returned home," said Major Douglas
Martin, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense
Command in Colorado, which has responsibility for defending U.S.
airspace. "Klaatu barada nikto."
*
Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and the same evangelist
who called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion" in November,
said during a Charlotte radio interview that all Muslims owe the
victims of the September 11 attacks an apology and a check.
Failing that, Christians can always just suit up again for the
Fourth Crusade.
*
Human remains were found aboard the U.S.S. Monitor when the
ironclad warship was raised from the ocean floor off Cape
Hatteras, North Carolina, after 139 years. They didn't seem to
mind.
*
Ten supporters of the Aquarium of the Americas in New
Orleans were taking a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility when
a platform collapsed and they plunged into the shark tank. Two
people were treated for minor cuts and bruises, but the sharks
were frightened away by the fact that they were all commodities
traders and lawyers.
*
Mister Softee ice cream trucks are being sued by residents
of Hartford, Connecticut, who say they just can't stand that damn music
anymore. The trucks play "Turkey in the Straw" and "The
Entertainer" over and over again. In the latest fracas, the
driver of a Mister Softee truck faces third-degree assault and
breach of peace charges for attacking a neighborhood activist
with a baseball bat. "Mister Softee tried to kill me!" claims Wil
Troutman, a frequent critic of the truck's loudspeakers, who said
the attack was "monstrous," although it didn't cause any serious
injuries. Luis Amaro, the ice-cream truck driver, told police he
only "shook a stick" at Troutman, and was backed up by his boss,
who says his drivers have been constantly harassed for weeks. He
said Troutman follows Mister Softee trucks everywhere, taking
pictures and intimidating drivers, in an attempt to get them
banned from the streets. Mister Softee is offering to compromise
by adding "Roll Out the Barrel" to the tape loop.
*
In other ice-cream truck news, a Good Humor driver in New
Jersey was beaten by a Mister Ice Cream driver, police said.
Rashed Awaadeh became enraged that Good Humor was trying to
invade Mister Ice Cream turf in Ramsey, New Jersey, and Shiam
Daoud ended up with bruises on her head, face, arm and hip, not
to mention a bad humor.
*
Mitchell Guilliatt pulled a hammer out of his backpack and
whacked the Liberty Bell, resulting in $7,093 worth of gouge
marks that had to be repaired. His lawyer said he didn't want to
HURT the bell, he only wanted to hear it ring. The judge said she
didn't want to PUNISH Guilliatt, she only wanted to see him spend
nine months behind bars.
*
A man in Wilson, North Carolina, pulled over on Highway 264
when he saw a nylon padded bag on the side of the road. Inside he
found an MP-5 submachine gun, which he took home. A little later
a woman travelling down the same highway found a nylon padded bag
containing a Smith & Wesson revolver, which she took to work.
Eventually both people turned the guns over to police--which
turned out to be a good idea, since they belonged to the police.
Officer A.A. Boone and Lieutenant T.L. Earnhardt of the Raleigh
Police Department lost them while driving to Wilson Technical
Community College, where they were scheduled to teach a gun
training class. About two dozen Wilson police officers and Wilson
County sheriff's deputies had been searching for the guns from
8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. The gun training class was postponed, and
both officers were assigned to Barney Fife "Keep your bullets in
your pocket" status.
*
The Monticello Association, a group composed of 700
descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his wife Martha, voted 74 to
6 to deny membership to the descendants of Sally Hemings, a slave
who some believe bore Jefferson's children. The only advantage to
belonging to the association is that you can be buried at
Jefferson's Monticello home, but given the level of animosity and
name-calling at the decisive meeting, it doesn't seem worth the
price of a burial plot. What would they put on the tombstones
anyway? "Proud to be a bastard great-great-grandson of a
president"? Some things are better left uncommemorated.
*
The co-op board in a 452-unit New York apartment building
voted to ban smoking inside the owners' apartments. Anybody who
lights up can be evicted and forced to sell. That will teach
those inconsiderate people who think that, just because we can't see
them smoking, they can just do any damn thing to their bodies
they want to.
*
Michael McDermott told a Cambridge, Massachusetts, jury that
he had to kill seven co-workers at a software company because he
was killing Hitler and his henchmen in order to prevent the
Holocaust. The jury gave him a Heinrich Himmler sort of sentence.
*
Joe Dabney is suing American Airlines for losing his wife.
On December 5 Margie Dabney, a 70-year-old Alzheimer's patient,
was changing planes at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport
and was met by an airline attendant. She said she wanted to go to
the bathroom and the attendant told her to meet up later, either
outside the restroom or at the connecting gate. Mrs. Dabney
hasn't been seen since. Her luggage, however, arrived in fine
shape.
*
For ten years now Archer-Daniels-Midland has been buying
European wine, processing it into ethanol in El Salvador, and
selling it as tax-free fuel at American gas stations. The scheme
was discovered when a 1978 Toyota started behaving erratically,
speeding like a German, bashing into parking spaces like an
Italian, plunging through intersections like a Frenchman, and
apologizing like an Englishman.
*
Seven years of legal disputes over who gets Jerry Garcia's
four guitars were resolved by compromise, with two guitars going
to Doug Irwin, who built them, and two going to band members.
Garcia left all of the guitars to Irwin in his will, but the band
members claimed they were the property of the Grateful Dead
because they, like, uh, sorta remembered Jerry saying that but,
uh, they didn't remember when he said it and, uh, it's not like
we know how to play them or anything but, uh, it would be cool if
we had them.
*
Two one-year-old Guatemalan girls, Maria Teresa Quiej
Alvarez and Maria de Jesus Quiej Alvarez, were born joined at the
head, but were separated in a 22-hour operation performed by a
team of 13 doctors at UCLA. Interestingly, the event received
massive media coverage without anyone ever using the word
"Siamese," indicating that "Joe Bob's Week in Review" failed to
get the memo on the old term being declared politically
incorrect, and also failed to get the memo on just what term
we're expected to use now. At this point we're going with Yul
Brynner Twins, in honor of the most famous King of Siam. Did
Siamese people really protest?
*
More than 1.2 million Americans had plastic surgery last
year, making this the most lifted, tucked, augmented and
liposucted country in the world. In the last ten years, the
number of women having breast enlargement has increased more than
500 per cent, with the next most popular alterations being
liposuction, tummy tucks, forehead lifts and eyelid surgery. An
even more intriguing statistic is that, of the 1.2 million
patients, 1.1 million remained ugly.
*
Brandy and April, the Thomas sisters, robbed a bank in
Gloucester Township, Pennsylvania, but as they left, their
backpack ripped open, leaving a trail of greenbacks. When cops
arrested them, they had a paintball gun--the holdup weapon--and
$2,600 in cash. Another $1,700 was still floating around out
there somewhere. Apruuuuuuuuuul, I told you to, like, zip the
backpack! Brandeeeeeeeeeee, it was, like, too much money. What ever.
*
William Mallow, the inventor of clumping kitty litter and
the rubber skin used on robot dinosaurs at Walt Disney World,
died in San Antonio at age 72, but not before the polymer chemist
delivered his latest invention, called the Mobility Denial
System. Designed for use by the U.S. Marines, it's the slickest
substance in the world. When sprayed on any surface, everyone
slips and falls and no vehicles can get traction. Just for fun,
it will be tested next week at a fat farm in North Carolina.
*
Federal Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the Bush administration
to release the names of people who have been held in jail,
incommunicado and incognito, since September 11, but Attorney
General John Ashcroft vowed to continue to fight that whole
"habeas corpus" thing.
*
A new gun called "The Butt-Master" is driving police crazy
because, as its name implies, it can be concealed in a very
private place. Originally a novelty product made by Serbu
Firearms, it has now been placed into general production. It
looks like a short slender stainless-steel tube, but it fires .22
ammunition and sells for about $300. Jail guards are not too
thrilled with it, but the fingerprint identification people are really
unhappy.
*
Voracious West Nile mosquitoes killed five people in
Louisiana and infected 70 more in the worst outbreak of the
disease since it first turned up in New York in the summer of
2000. The little rascals can't be distinguished from ordinary
August swamp mosquitoes because they were trained in Egypt, spent
two years developing sleeper cells and attended just enough
flight school to get halfway across the country.
*
Russell E. Weston Jr., a delusional paranoid schizophrenic,
is being held at a psychiatric center in the federal prison in
Butner, North Carolina, on murder charges, and will be forced to
take antipsychotic medication for 120 days in the hopes that it
will make him competent to stand trial just long enough to give
him the death penalty. Then he can go back to being crazy.
*
Speaking of crazy, seven women were excommunicated after
going through priestly ordination ceremonies aboard a ship on the
Danube, conducted by an Argentine who claims to be an archbishop.
Pope John Paul II gave them until July 22 to renounce their
claims and confess error, but when that date passed, he
foreclosed on their souls. The women were from Austria, Germany
and the United States, three countries that apparently need to
improve their media coverage of the pope's position on this
issue. His position in the past, in the present, and for the
foreseeable future could best be summed up as: Hell no, followed
by Are you insane?
*
Members of New York's Municipal Credit Union--mostly public
service workers employed by the city--stole $15 million from ATMs
during a computer failure following the World Trade Center
collapse. The credit union, which has its headquarters near
Ground Zero, lost its computer link to the ATM network and had no
way to check accounts to make sure the withdrawals were covered
by the member's balances. But officials decided to leave the ATMs
operating anyway, under the theory that these 300,000 people
needed their money during the crisis. Apparently some needed more
money than others. More than 540 members overdrew their account
balances by $5,000 or more, with a total of 4,000 stealing enough
to come under investigation by the district attorney. So far 101
people have been arrested after refusing to pay up. They say
that, if they have to give the money back, the terrorists will
have won.
*
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a voters
referendum on whether to grow marijuana on public property as a
way to stop federal drug agents from busting medical marijuana
clubs all the time. The idea would be for the city to grow it on
vacant lots, with cultivation being handled by a job-training
program for the unemployed. To ensure quality control, each lid
would be emblazoned with the seal of the city of San Francisco
and the face of Jerry Garcia.
*
Elizabeth Roach of Chicago admitted stealing $241,000 from
her employer, Andersen Consulting, but asked for leniency because
she's a shopaholic. Her lawyer, Jeffrey Steinback, told Federal
Judge Matthew F. Kennelly that she once bought a $7,000 belt
buckle at Neiman-Marcus, 70 pairs of shoes at one time, and took
a shopping trip to London that cost $30,000 and was so addictive
that she missed her plane home. Once she got home with her
various hauls, she would feel guilty, hide it all from her
husband, never wear the clothing, and then sell it to pawn shops
for a fraction of its value. Here's the best part, though: the
judge bought it! He said that she was using her shopping
addiction to "self-medicate" her depression, so he agreed not to
send her to jail. Instead she got five years probation, six
months of home confinement on weekends, six weeks in a Salvation
Army work-release center, and a fine of $3,000. She celebrated at
Marshall Field's, but, as a sign of her newfound self-restraint,
only visited eight of the ten floors.
*
German and Danish scientists discovered the first new insect
order since 1915, wingless predators called Mantophasmatodea.
They were first found in a 45-million-year-old piece of Baltic
amber in a museum, but last month an international research team
captured living samples in the mountains of western Namibia. The
paper-clip-sized insects resemble praying mantises and, according
to the Japanese, have aphrodisiac qualities when served in a
creamy broth.
*
A woman was hit in the head with a bowling ball and a man
was bashed in the eye with a bottle during a 30-person fight at
Whitestone Lanes in Queens. The brawl occurred at 4 a.m., when
gutter balls tend to turn into gutter brawls.
*
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a spy into
a University of North Carolina animal research facility and
discovered clear and convincing evidence of rat abuse. Before rat
brains are removed, the rats are supposed to be numbed in a
bucket of ice, but cruel lab assistants were saving time by
opening the skulls without anesthesia. This possibly prolonged
the suffering of some rats up to three full seconds, leading to
the question "Whither humanity?"
*
Albert Wellner of Lake Glass, Florida, was killed by 10,000
yellow jackets when he crossed a demilitarized zone of pine
needles and whacked them with his lawn mower. Plaintiffs
attorneys are still trying to figure out who to sue, with the
most likely defendant being the negligent inventor of the pine
tree.
*
Dr. Frederick B. Levenson, a New York psychoanalyst, formed
a company called TheraDate through which therapists will serve as
a dating service for their patients. You pay $2,000 for the
service, after which your therapist reveals all your issues and
neuroses to other therapists, who then match you up with
potential partners who have the same issues and neuroses. This
presumably avoids those ugly dysfunctional scenes between manic-
depressives trying to date schizophrenics with abandonment issues
while withholding emotional openness during long walks in the
park.
*
Karl Glazebrook, an assistant professor of astronomy at
Johns Hopkins University, says that the color of the universe is
pale greenish turquoise. Twenty million gay men can't be wrong.
*
The first commercial human-egg storage facility opened in
Los Angeles, offering to freeze any woman's eggs for $500 a year
so that she can have babies when she gets around to it later in
life. But if you fall behind on those storage payments, they'll
change the locks on your eggs and, if they have to, box them up
and sell them to hippies.
*
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced the latest of
37 plans for how to deal with Iraq. The new strategic maneuver
would involve building a golden bowling trophy with Saddam
Hussein's name engraved on it, then telling him he has to pick it
up in person.
*
A Princeton admissions official hacked into the Yale Web
site and executed searches on the following words: "Gwyneth,"
"Buffy," "the 4th," "Astor," "Vanderbilt," and "Texas oil."
*
President Bush signed a corporate-fraud bill that he called
"the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices
since the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt," thereby using up
his entire four-year quota of speech references to Franklin
Delano Roosevelt.
*
Carolyn Condit, wife of Gary, told Esquire magazine that the
lame-duck Congressman never had sex with Chandra Levy. In other
news, the magazine revealed that Nicole Brown Simpson died of
natural causes.
*
In London a three-judge panel ruled that nine foreigners
detained after September 11th were victims of a policy that was
"discriminatory, disproportionate and unlawful." The court said
that no public emergency entitles the government to take measures
against foreigners that it would not take against its own
citizens. That wacky British legal system--let's hope they never
export it to another country.
*
Billionaire Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom, divorced
his wife Phyllis after 55 years of marriage. They were young and
stupid.
*
Juan Diego became an official Catholic saint during the
visit of Pope John Paul II to Mexico, but not before the
Archdiocese of Mexico City gave the Indian peasant a makeover,
softening his facial features, lightening his skin, lengthening
his hair, and giving him a beard. The official portrait was
unveiled as Juan Diego was canonized to honor his three 16th-
century conversations with the Virgin Mary, in which she gave him
a message for the bishop, instructing him to build a temple in
her honor. In other miraculous exploits, Juan Diego ascended
barren Tepeyac Hill and miraculously found flowers there--then,
when he unwrapped his cloak, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe,
the patron saint of Mexico, was imprinted there. After the papal
ceremony, Juan Diego was featured in Studboy magazine.
*
Enraged fans threw Britney Spears souvenirs at the singer
and jeered her with shouts of "Fraud! Fraud!" after she sang just
four songs on the final night of her world tour in Mexico City.
"I'm sorry, Mexico," she said. "I love you. Bye." She later
claimed she was scared off by a thunderstorm that was approaching
Foro Sol Stadium. Obviously, if a lightning bolt hit one of those
electronic devices on her body, she could end up with the image
of Juan Diego imprinted on her midriff.
*
Alec Baldwin and Ellen DeGeneres were signed for the new
season of "Hollywood Squares," indicating just how disoriented
you can become after getting dumped.
*
The nine men rescued after spending 80 hours trapped in an
underground mine in Quecreek, Pennsylvania, were admitted to the
Conemaugh Medical Center in Johnstown and released after
treatment for minor injuries. By week's end, however, four of the
men were readmitted to the hospital after complaining of symptoms
consistent with prolonged exposure to the media.
*
The Who launched its U.S. tour, refining its sixties teen
angst with a more mature outlook, reflected in its new billing as
The Whom.
*
The last peep show on New York's 42nd Street, Peep-O-Rama,
was closed. Disappointed peepers were referred to Eighth Avenue,
site of a peep preservation effort.
*
Fifty-five pilot whales stranded themselves on the beach in
Cape Cod Bay, but 46 were dragged back into the water before they
could build one more damn miniature golf course.
*
"Joe Bob's Week in Review" normally doesn't crow about its
original reporting--mainly because we don't have any--but in an
item last week we reported news four days prior to the news
actually happening. To recap, here's last week's item, in its
entirety:
"Rebekah Revels, Miss North Carolina, resigned her title
because she said an ex-boyfriend had contacted the Miss America
Organization 'in a calculated attempt to defame my character.'
She said she didn't want 'the physically and emotionally abusive
relationship of which I was once a part' to harm the national
pageant in September. Sounds like kinky-photo prophylaxis to us."
This week--four days after the original item--Rebekah Revels
went on "Good Morning America" to reveal that, indeed, there were
two topless photos of her that were in the possession of her
former fiance. Yes, dear, we knew.
*
Hollywood animal trainer Frank Inn was buried with the
cremated remains of motion picture star Benji the dog, "Green
Acres" star Arnold the pig, and Tramp, the dog on "My Three
Sons." Let's hope none of his offended B-list clients dig him up.
*
James A. Traficant Jr., the defrocked Congressman, will be
required to give up his famous toupee as he is checked into
federal prison to begin an eight-year sentence for corruption.
The rug was discovered during a routine search by the Summit
County Jail in Ohio, and now Traficant is subject to additional
perjury charges for his recent sworn statement to Congress that
he cuts his hair with a Weed Whacker. All you need for Astroturf
is a little foam.
*
New York's Russian Tea Room closed after 75 years, the
victim of camomile, English Breakfast, and Lipton's.
*
Two WorldCom executives, Scott D. Sullivan and David F.
Myers, were the corporate-fraud poster boys of the week, as they
were paraded around Lower Manhattan in handcuffs, charged with a
$3.8 billion accounting fraud. A billion dollars is just not what
it used to be.
*
Michael Jackson is $200 million in debt, and remarkably only
$25,000 of it is dermatology bills.
*
Comedian Martin Lawrence didn't think interview questions by
Fox News reporter Bill McCuddy were funny, so he called him a "--
--head" and seized his videotape. Lawrence was being interviewed
during a Paramount Pictures promotional blitz for his new film
"Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat," but Paramount officials
refused to give McCuddy his tape back--even though Lawrence chose
not to answer McCuddy's questions about two incidents, in 1996
and 1999, when Lawrence waved a gun at a Los Angeles intersection
and fell into a coma while jogging in the summer heat. (Both
incidents are things Lawrence talks about in the movie.) Lawrence
was last seen waving the videotape at overheated joggers.
*
Scenes from American domestic life:
- Four wives of soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, were
killed by their husbands, and one soldier was killed by his wife,
all within a six-week period, with two of the soldiers then
committing suicide and the other three alleged murderers looking
at long prison terms. The Army was quick to say that there was no
connection between any of the couples, all of whom seemed to
adore Army housing.
- Gloria Rodriguez of the Bronx asked her husband William
Rodriguez for a divorce, but he was a Jehovah's Witness and
didn't believe in divorce, so she hired Hector Rodriguez (no
relation) to kill William Rodriguez for $1,000, with a promise to
give him $3,000 more later. One Rodriguez ended up dead, and two
Rodriguezes ended up serving 20 to life. But there's more: the
getaway car was driven by . . . Robert Rodriguez (no relation and
no relation). He got a mere nine months in jail, presumably to
ensure the continuance of the Rodriguez blood line.
- William M. Cronan Jr. of Clifton, Virginia approached his
wife Sigrid as she sat at a computer in their home, shot her
twice in the back of the head, put the gun down on a chair next
to his wife, dialed 911, told the operator he'd killed his wife,
waited for police, and pled guilty. How many times did he have to
tell her to always reboot after downloading?
- Clara Harris, a Houston dentist, hired a private
investigator to find out whether her orthodontist husband David
Harris was having an affair. When the private eye called and told
her to come to the Nassau Bay Hilton to see for herself, she
drove there with the husband's 16-year-old daughter, and found
her husband with a bisexual woman named Gail Bridges. She
screamed "You bitch! He's my husband!" and attacked the other
woman, ripping her shirt off. According to a witness, the husband
tried to separate the two women, and when other people tried to
help, the enraged wife said, "This is Doctor Harris, and we're
here today because he's ------- this woman." A wild argument
ensued, with bystanders holding the wife back as she constantly
tried to get in additional blows on Bridges, and with the teenage
daughter hitting her dad with her purse and screaming "I hate
you! I hate you! I hate you!" Hotel workers finally prevailed on
the husband to leave, but as he walked to his car, witnesses
heard squealing tires and watched as the wife's silver Mercedes-
Benz plowed into him and knocked him 25 feet. She then ran him
over three more times while bystanders banged on her window,
begging her to stop. Instead she put the car into reverse, backed
up onto his battered body, and parked the car on top of him. He
died a short time later. The wife's explanation: "It was an
accident." Dental-care professionals are just excitable.
*
Zacarias Moussaoui pled innocent, then guilty, then innocent to charges
that he helped Osama bin Laden plan the attacks of September 11th. He's
French. * Lynda Lopez, sister of J-Lo, is the new spokesgirl for Stayfree
Thong Maxi Pads, which allow you to avoid the heartache of panty lines
while frolicking in the surf. We don't really want to think about it. *
Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Billy Bob Thornton, causing a surge
in tattoo-removal stocks. * A thousand garlic farmers demonstrated in the
streets of Seoul against South Korea's new agreement to allow $9 million
worth of garlic imports from China beginning next year. The farmers shouted
slogans against President Kim Dae Jung, as police gave them a wide berth
and offered breath mints. * A "Save Martha" rally for the
embattled Martha Stewart was staged in front of CBS Studios, where Stewart
would normally be giving out cooking tips on the "Early Show"
except that the network has suspended the weekly segment until her insider-
trading case cools down. Wearing "Save Martha!" cooking aprons
and chef's hats, the Martha supporters hoped to get on camera during an
outside broadcast, but it didn't work because . . . only four people showed
up. They did look festive and summery, however. *
Rebekah Revels, Miss North Carolina, resigned her title because she said an
ex-boyfriend had contacted the Miss America Organization "in a
calculated attempt to defame my character." She said she didn't want
"the physically and emotionally abusive relationship of which I was
once a part" to harm the national pageant in September. Sounds like
kinky-photo prophylaxis to us. * Yankee Stadium banned "Boston
Sucks" T-shirts, disrupting a tradition of profane Red Sox hatred
dating back to 1918. What's the world coming to when you can't heckle
millionaire athletes? Especially when they suck. * After being attacked for
not releasing his tax returns, California gubernatorial candidate Bill
Simon Jr. finally released 11 years' worth, thousands of pages of
documents, but told reporters that they couldn't copy them, they couldn't
photograph them, they couldn't bring in tax experts to look at them, and
they only had till 9 p.m. before Simon whisked them away. Oh yeah, one more
thing--you could only use pens and paper supplied by Simon. The old
disappearing-ink trick. *
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is apparently proud of his tax returns,
terminated his agent and is talking to a political consultant about a
possible run for the governorship of California. Has anyone shown Maria
Shriver the real estate options in Sacramento? Obviously not. * Credit card
companies scored a major victory in Congress when a committee agreed to
make it much harder to claim bankruptcy. There were 1.45 million bankruptcy
filings last year, most of them by people who seemed like such great risks
when Mastercard, Visa, American Express and Discover gave them credit lines
of $100,000 on income of $20,000 so they could buy more power tools at 29
per cent interest. Instead of taking bankruptcy, they could have just made
monthly payments for the rest of their lives, like any decent person. *
Harvey Pitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, wants to
prove he can police the Wall Street corporations that he once represented
in private practice, so he asked Congress to promote him to "Level
1" status--on a par with cabinet members--at the very moment many
members of Congress were asking him to resign, thereby proving he has the
same level of awareness as most American CEOs. * Speaking of CEOS, the
Rigas family had a bummer of a week, with dad John and his sons Timothy and
Michael being waked up by postal inspectors at their New York
apartment--aren't they a little OLD to be living with Dad?--and slapped
into handcuffs on charges that they looted their own company, Adelphia
Communications, for more than $1 billion. The wife and daughter of John
Rigas were also sued by Adelphia itself, while another of John's sons,
James Rigas, was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission but didn't
have to be cuffed. The Rigas family had told authorities that they would
surrender voluntarily, but the offer was rejected because, at the SEC,
Harvey Pitt needed to froth publicly. * Eighty-four people were arrested in
New Orleans for bribery, fraud and malfeasance that reached deep into city
agencies. Reform-minded Mayor C. Ray Nagin proclaimed a new era of clean
government--the 74th new era proclaimed in the last ten years. * Major
General Jean-Claude Duperval, found guilty of conspiracy to massacre and
torture thousands in the port city of Raboteau, Haiti, in 1994, was fired
from his job at Disney World in Orlando. It's a small world after all. *
NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon says he shouldn't be required to pay alimony or
support to his wife Brooke because he "risked his life" to
acquire the couple's $50 million fortune, which includes a $9 million
oceanfront mansion, boats, a Porsche, a Mercedes and a private jet.
"It's not like he's a banker who goes to work from 9 to 5," said
Gordon's lawyer, Donald Sasser. "He takes his life in his hands."
Jeff Fisher, lawyer for the wife, says she's about to take something else
into HER hands and squeeze. * The police department of Oceanside,
California, plans to build an outdoor firing range next door to the Prince
of Peace Abbey, where monks are sworn to a life of contemplative silence.
Go ahead, make my prayer. * Marty Backus Jr., publisher of two small papers
in Arkansas, was told by his bosses at Lancaster Newspapers, Inc., in
Alabama that he would be fired if he didn't carry out all the directives in
a two-page letter, including "attend church weekly," "have
dinner as a family at least five times a week," and "go to bed
with (your wife) every night without fail." He managed to keep his job
for five years, but apparently he missed Sunday School or something,
because last year they fired him after 21 years of service, questioning his
religious faith and company loyalty. Backus is filing a federal lawsuit,
which reads, "Uh, can they do that?" * Victoria's Secret is going
all the way to the Supreme Court against a little shop in Elizabethtown,
Kentucky, called Victor's Little Secret. Victor and Cathy Moseley sell sex
toys, adult videos and lingerie, but Victoria's Secret claims they're
infringing a trademark, and the Supremes have agreed to hear the case.
After all, Victoria's Secret wouldn't want people to hear their name and
think about . . . SEX. * Atrazine, the most widely used agricultural
herbicide in the United States, turns frogs into hermaphrodites, makes it
impossible for them to croak, and sometimes causes them to grow extra
testicles and ovaries. We allow it in our drinking water, which accounts
for San Francisco. * Two years ago an 11-year-old girl was arrested and
handcuffed by transit police in Washington, D.C., for eating French fries
inside a subway station. The cops searched her backpack and actually took
her into custody, resulting in a lawsuit which, believe it or not, Metro is
actually CONTESTING. Aside from the constitutional issues, which we won't
go into here because they're the same constitutional issues aired in every
case of this type, our question is: where has there ever been a train or a
train station that did NOT have at least one person eating French fries in
it? That must have been one hellaciously messy fry. * Manuel Birrento of
Samora Correia, Portugal, bought the world's biggest bouquet of red
roses--518 of them, one for each day since he was dumped by his
girlfriend--and had them delivered to her. The Guinness Book of World
Records confirmed it as the biggest bouquet ever sold by a florist in one
order, but important tip for males everywhere: it didn't work. * Two sheep
seized from a Vermont farm last year were found to have a brain-deforming
disease, but it will take three more years to determine whether they had
actual mad-cow disease. That's how long it takes for them to start baaing
inappropriately. * Chancellor Gerhard Schroder of Germany is suing the
D.D.P. news agency for its allegations that he dyes his hair. D.D.P. had
quoted an image consultant as saying "It would do Mr. Schroder good to
admit that he dyes his graying curls." But Schroder intends to produce
evidence from hairdressers in Berlin and his hometown of Hanover stating
unequivocally that his hair remains its natural dark brown color. Obviously
there are no wars going on in Germany right now. * A Portuguese woman found
part of a rat leg in a hamburger she bought at the state hospital in Leiria.
The woman complained to local health authorities, and an investigation is
underway, since Portuguese burgers, as everyone knows, are commonly served
with all four rat legs intact.Morocco invaded the obscure Spanish island of Perejil, which
means "parsley" in Spanish. There were no casualties because the
only inhabitants are goats. Six days later the Spanish armada
stormed the island and took prisoner the entire Moroccan
occupying force, which was six soldiers strong. Four hours later
the prisoners were handed over to Moroccan authorities at the
border port of Ceuta. The goats, however, were held by Spain and
denied "prisoner of war" status.
*
Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman Aaron Gibson weighed in for
summer training camp at 410 pounds, making him the biggest man in
the history of the sport, and the only man in the world required
to buy three seats on Southwest Airlines.
*
Amhed Omar Saeed Sheikh was sentenced to death by hanging
for the murder of Daniel Pearl, after which the former London
School of Economics student invoked Allah and vowed revenge on
Pakistani authorities. This will presumably cause Allah to use
cheap frayed rope.
*
Citizens of Berkeley, California, will vote in November on a
referendum to ban all coffee that is not "organic, fair-trade
and/or shade-grown." With one of the highest concentrations of
coffeehouses in the country, Berkeley is a city that already
knows what this means. "Organic" means coffee plants that haven't
been exposed to pesticides or herbicides. "Fair-trade" refers to
a movement in Europe that guarantees a minimum coffee price to
small Third World farmers who operate within organized
cooperatives. "Shade-grown" means the coffee is grown in a manner
to protect rainforest canopies that are inhabited by migratory
songbirds. When you have all three, you avoid a nasty visit from
the dreaded Frappuccino Inspector General.
*
A northern snakehead--described by ichthyologists as a
Chinese "Frankenfish" that can destroy all living creatures, then
jump up on land and migrate to a new body of water--was
discovered in a drainage pond in Crofton, Maryland, and state
wildlife officials want it killed. The fish, prized as a delicacy
in China and Korea, can live up to four days on land, can grow to
15 pounds, and has no known predators in America. It has been
traced to a fish market in New York's Chinatown where, because of
its resiliency, it was able to call a cab and escape.
*
The National Security Agency hired Eric Haseltine, chief of
research and development at Walt Disney Company, stimulating
rumors that future special services operations will involve
"black arts" ground forces disguised with giant animal heads.
*
Air Force General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said "we hadn't thought about this" in response
to questions as to why he was unprepared to defend the Pentagon
from an air attack on September 11th. There are so many targets
to defend, that one just slipped their minds.
*
NBA scoring leader Allen Iverson of the Philadelphia 76ers
was charged with four felonies and ten misdemeanors after he
allegedly threatened two men with a handgun while searching for
his wife, whom he had thrown out of his $2.4 million mansion--
naked. Iverson's attorney said his client is not guilty and that
it was just a family scavenger hunt.
*
An F-117 Stealth fighter dropped a 25-pound dummy bomb on a
house in Monahans, Texas. Officials at Holloman Air Force Base
near Alamagordo, New Mexico, insisted that the plane had
encountered Al Qaeda fire.
*
Disgruntled Nigerian women took 700 ChevronTexaco workers
hostage for nine days at the Escravos oil terminal without using
any weapons except the threat that they would take their own
clothes off. (It's a traditional shaming gesture in Nigeria.) It
worked! The company agreed to hire 25 villagers and build
schools, electrical and water systems. The women broke into
singing and dancing on the docks, except for two who were
exhibitionists.
*
John Walker Lindh pled out for a 20-year prison term, and
his father proclaimed him a great patriot whose story is similar
to that of Nelson Mandela. Don't let his people go.
*
When President Bush spoke, Wall Street listened--and the Dow
plunged 439 points in response to his reassuring words about the
economy and vows to reform corporate governance. The market
remained at its lowest point since 1997, but Martha Stewart
proposed decorative paper doilies for all the seats on the New
York Stock Exchange and that made everyone feel better.
*
Rapper Jay-Z released two singles, "Take Over" and
"Superugly," making derogatory and profane references to Destiny
Bryan, the seven-year-old daughter of rival rapper Nas and a
woman named Carmen Bryan. Then a third rapper, Cam'ron, went on
New York radio station WQHT and threatened to kidnap Destiny and
give her to R. Kelly as a sexual favor. The mother of the girl,
fed up, held a press conference in Harlem, and called for
boycotts all the way around--of the music and the radio station--
and showed remarkable restraint by refusing to commit a single
homicide.
*
More than 160 people got salmonella poisoning, and one died,
at a restaurant in Chattanooga that will henceforth be known as
Dead Lobster.
*
"Sesame Street" is introducing an HIV-positive Muppet on its
South African program this fall, and is discussing doing the same
thing in the United States. The new character will probably be a
five-year-old female "Monster," like Grover and Elmo. "We know
that she'll be lively, alert, friendly, outgoing and HIV-
positive," said Joel Schneider, vice president of Sesame
Workshop. "She'll be healthy, not sickly." And we imagine that
she'll act up.
*
Avian flu hit the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, resulting
in the slaughter of 4.74 million chickens and turkeys at 197
farms. At the last minute, several of them tried to hire lawyers.
*
Scenes from our secure republic:
- Two elders from the Waorani Indian tribe of Ecuador wore
lethal blow-dart guns around their necks while taking four planes
to get to New York, without ever being asked to surrender the
guns or even to present them for examination. They then walked
through New York City barefoot in palm skirts and entered a
courthouse where they have a case pending against ChevronTexaco
for the pollution of their water--and again federal screeners
waved them on through. Meanwhile, a fat woman with tweezers was
detained in Akron.
- Part of New York's 64th Street between Fifth Avenue and
Madison Avenue--one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the
world--was closed off to both pedestrian and vehicular traffic
after a report of an "unidentified beeping object" in a black
plastic garbage bag on the curb. Residents--including Ivana
Trump, Tommy Mottola, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Donatella
Versace--were instructed to stay indoors and away from their
windows as the Emergency Service Unit, better known as the bomb
squad, arrived on the scene. The bag was opened to reveal . . . a
smoke detector. The detector was "disabled and discarded," but
conspiracy theorists continue to wonder what smoke was doing on
the curb.
- Rochelle Miles, responsible for hiring security screeners
at Philadelphia International Airport, was charged with
falsifying employment forms so that people with murder, drug and
weapons convictions could get hired. None of them, however, had
ever been convicted of a box-cutter-related offense.
- Kamal Dawood of Palestine was jailed for five months and
denied bail after two school crossing guards in Brooklyn claimed
they saw him open a mailbox, deposit something in a closed fist,
then stand around drinking coffee. Charged by the government with
"threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction"--even though
neither anthrax nor faux-anthrax was found in the mailbox--as
well as "injuring a letter box" and "obstructing the passage of
mail," Dawood was acquitted by a jury on all charges. He was not
released even then, however. Federal marshalls hustled him over
to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which intended to
challenge the legality of his visa. You just TRY to stand around
drinking coffee in this country.
- As American Trans Air flight 204 approached New York, two
fighter jets were dispatched to escort it to La Guardia and then
three Indian men and one woman were taken off the plane by armed
officers, separated, questioned, and detained for five hours.
They were Samyuktha Verma, the biggest movie star in India,
considered "the Julia Roberts of Malayalam-language films";
Indian pop singer Biju Narayanan; Jairaj Kattanellur, a comedian
and satirist; and a fourth Indian man who didn't know the first
three but was taken off the plane for suspicion of FWI (Flying
While Indian). The group had just performed in Dallas and were on
their way to New York for a performance at Queens College, but a
passenger told a flight attendant they were acting "suspiciously"
when they kept changing seats in an effort to get their first
glimpse of the skyscrapers of New York. They were finally
released after threatening to sing an entire Indian musical.
*
French scientists discovered a seven-million-year-old human
skull in the Djurab Desert of Chad and named it "Toumai." Toumai
is three million years older than the next oldest hominid skull,
and laboratory evidence indicates that he probably bitched about
how everything was better in the old days.
*
The FBI narrowed down the possible motives of limo driver
Hesham Hadayet for killing two people at an El Al ticket counter
at Los Angeles International Airport to either terrorism, a hate
crime, despondency over his business, domestic problems,
financial problems, copycat terrorism, mental illness, frustraton
with immigration authorities, road rage, a business dispute, or
too much al-Jazeera.
*
Michael Jackson drove around Manhattan in a bus, calling
Sony president Tommy Mottola a racist and organizing a protest of
1,000 people in front of Sony headquarters. Then he went to
Harlem and spoke to a summit organized by the Reverend Al
Sharpton to tell an audience, "The minute I surpassed Elvis and
the Beatles, they called me a freak, a child molester. They said
I bleached my skin. I know my race. I know I'm black." Previously
he had unfurled a banner at the Equinox night club in London that
read "Sony Kills Music!," then called Mottola "the devil." He
also held a press conference with Johnnie Cochran and Al Sharpton
to announce that he was a "slave to the music industry." Next he
called for a boycott of all Sony movies, music, hardware and
video games. Apparently those sales figures on his new album,
"Invincible," have led people to think the title is meant to be
ironic.
*
President Bush was hammered at a news conference, with
reporters asking repeated questions about his failure to report
his 1990 insider trades at Harken Energy right before the stock
tanked. White House lawyers are preparing a defense to the
charges that will involve the argument that any man who would
willingly buy the Texas Rangers doesn't really know how to make
money anyway.
*
"My Name Is Winona and I'm a Shoplifter" opens Monday at the
Zephyr Theater in West Hollywood, with Rex Lee in drag starring
as everyone's favorite bag lady. The play by Michael Kearns is
set in a 12-step meeting and features a section in which Winona
reads excerpts from the scathing reviews of her new release "Mr.
Deeds," as well as her secret desire to date serial modelizer
Steve Bing. Yes, she's officially a gay icon.
*
Our favorite pornographer, Al Goldstein, was scarcely out of
the slammer after his conviction for harassing his ex-secretary--
he's out on bail while the case is appealed--when he was arrested
again by New York City cops for harassing ex-wife Gina Goldstein.
In the June 10 issue of Screw magazine, Goldstein published a
"Wanted" poster of the ex-wife, along with her work phone number,
and asked readers to call her at work. The man is just a
journalist trying to cover his beat, okay?
*
Congress voted to dump nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca
Mountain, where it will be safe for 10,000 years. After that
time, if anything has gone wrong with the groundwater or
environment, all Congressmen voting "yes" have agreed to resign.
*
Ted Williams' body was shipped to the Alcor Life Extension
Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, and frozen so that, according
to Williams' son John Henry Williams, he can "play baseball in a
hundred years." But Williams' daughter, Bobby-Jo Ferrell, says
her dad wanted to have his ashes scattered over the Florida Keys
just to spite Walt Disney.
*
In a replay of the McDonald's hot-coffee case, 31 people in
England sued McDonald's over coffee burns suffered between 1996
and 1998. In America the scalded 79-year-old woman had been
awarded $3 million, but in Britain the plaintiffs got zip. The
judge's reason? "I am quite satisfied," he wrote, "that
McDonald's was entitled to assume the consumer would know that
the drink was hot, and there are numerous commonplace ways of
speeding up cooling, such as stirring and blowing." Now what kind
of cockeyed legal reasoning is that?
*
Dr. Arno Motulsky of the University of Washington released
research findings showing that first cousins who marry don't
really have to worry that much about birth defects or genetic
disease after all. "In terms of general risks in life it's not
very high," he said. "Ninety-three per cent of the time, nothing
is going to happen." Reacting to the news, officials in Kentucky
gave retroactive GED's to eight generations of the Stegall clan.
*
Ten thousand salmon broke out of their cages at a salmon
farm off the north coast of Scotland and raised fears among
scientists that they would dilute wild salmon genes through
mating, then spread diseases and introduce extra competition for
food. The outlaw salmon were described as sociopathic, dangerous
and pink.
*
Two dozen drug cases were thrown out in Dallas when seized
cocaine and methamphetamine turned out to be gypsum from
wallboard. All those drywall installers just seemed high,
especially when they disappeared for days and had no memory of
when they had promised to finish the job.
*
Commissioners in Washoe County, Nevada, voted 3-2 to deny a
permit for a kitty-litter processing plant in suburban Reno,
temporarily halting the most promising kitty-litter mining
operation in the history of kitty litter. Oil-Dri Corp. of
Chicago, which makes Cat's Pride and also supplies kitty-litter
clay for Fresh Step and Special Kitty, thought they had found the
most perfect, light, fluffy and absorbent clay in North America.
The land is owned by the Bureau of Land Management, so they filed
a kitty-litter mining claim, only to be opposed by the nearby
Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and other suburban-dwelling Nevadans. Oil-Dri inists that the Mining Law of 1872 gives them the right
to take the clay, which is much cheaper than the clay from their
current mine near Ochlocknee, Georgia. They also vow to fight the
county in court--because cats are waiting, all over America, and
when cats wait too long, you get a nice little gift on your
carpet.
*
Nearly 40 per cent of Americans sit on their butts,
exercising zero hours per week, according to the National Center
for Health Statistics. The figure would have been higher, but the
remarkably lax National Health Interview Survey awarded credits
for people who walk from their car in the mall parking lot to the
jogging-suit department of the Nike store.
*
Astronomers say an asteroid orbiting the sun will smash into
the earth with the explosive force of millions of tons of TNT--in
878 years. Congress appointed a special committee to monitor the
asteroid, chaired by Strom Thurmond.
*
An Italian court ruled that Giuseppe Andreoli of Naples must
continue paying $700 a month in child support for his 30-year-old
unemployed son, who has a law degree and a large securities
portfolio but lives with his Mamma Mia. The court said that "a
son (or daughter) who refuses a job offer that is not adequate to
his specific preparation, his attitudes and his interests is not
at fault" and that a young person's "aspirations, capacity,
scholastic history, including university and post-university
specialization, and the labor market of his field" must all be
taken into account before a parent is allowed to cut off the
support money. In Italy, 27 per cent of Italians between the ages
of 30 and 34 live with their parents. Andreoli's son Marco has
admitted that he doesn't need the $700 a month, but it's the principle
of the thing. Besides, $700 hardly buys a pair of Gucci
loafers these days.
*
Michael Griffiths of Queens filed 1,800 tax returns for the
1999 tax year in an attempt to collect refunds. His W-2s for the
next three to ten years will be issued by Sing Sing.
*
A mysterious black blob moved across the Gulf of Mexico,
scaring the fish, which instinctively knew to keep away from it.
Humans, on the other hand, DOVE RIGHT IN, only to report that
they still don't know what it is. Isn't this the opening scene of
a Stephen King novel?
*
Greece wants to "borrow" the Elgin Marbles from the British
Museum for the 2004 Olympics, but the friezes and statues that
were originally part of the Parthenon are not likely to leave
London. Thomas Bruce, the seventh earl of Elgin and Britain's
envoy to the Ottoman Empire, removed them to England in the very
early years of the 19th century, a time when they were little
more than piles of rocks on the Acropolis. Now Athens is building
a multi-million-dollar Acropolis museum and is leaving a place
for the Elgin Marbles, hoping to display them there during the
games and promising that they'll be identified as "the permanent
property of the British Museum." Parliament is uneasy, however,
believing you should never trust Greeks borrowing gifts.
*
Marijuana is not a narcotic in Idaho, according to the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals. In a related ruling, the court
determined that Idaho is not a real state.
*
A 1,900 per cent rise in the tax on cigarettes took effect
in New York City, making smokes cost up to $8 a pack and causing
New Yorkers to cease to be smug about fanatical Californians.
There was temporary gridlock at JFK Airport as every European in
the city attempted to flee.
*
Amalgamated Tubing, a publicly-traded corporation in
Altoona, Pennsylvania, turned in a completely accurate report of
profits, expenses and accounting practices for the past five
years, throwing Wall Street into confusion.
* Carolyn Condit, wife of Congressman Gary
Condit, claimed in
a Fresno, California, courtroom that the National Enquirer is not
a newspaper. The Enquirer wants her $10 million libel suit thrown
out because she never asked for a retraction before suing for an
article saying she attacked Chandra Levy. State law gives
newspapers a chance to correct mistakes by printing corrections
and retractions before suits can be filed. But the Enquirer is
not a "newspaper," her lawyers claimed. The Enquirer responded
that she is not a "wife."
*
NICO bottled water, which is spiked with nicotine, was
rejected by the Food and Drug Administration, saying it was an
unapproved new drug, after anti-smoking groups protested against
its imminent release. Presumably they were fearful of the effects
of second-hand drooling and belching.
*
Jim Brown, the former football star and action film hero,
was released from jail two months early on his misdemeanor
conviction for smashing the windows of his wife's car. Brown had
been offered no jail time if he agreed to domestic violence
counseling, paid a fine, and contributed to a battered woman's
shelter. This Soviet-style solution didn't appeal to him, so he
said he would take his six months jail time instead. He was out
in four because of his cooperative attitude. His wife, who had
recanted her testimony against Brown long before he was tried,
greeted him at home and showed off her new Teflon-coated
crockery.
*
Wal-Mart adopted a new policy on gun sales, refusing to sell
to anyone whose background can't be checked because of computer
glitches or missing records. The burglar can just wait.
*
Shares in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia have dropped 39
per cent since Martha Stewart's name was first connected to the
ImClone investigation a month ago and she became a one-name
tabloid favorite. It's not exactly clear how placemat and
comforter sales are related to charges that she may be guilty of
insider trading, but she doesn't appear to be too worried: she's
still taking a $900,000 salary and a $300,000 annual bonus. This
week she did fail to show up for her icebox pie segment on CBS'
"The Early Show" after the network told her they were going to
grill her instead of watching her grill. Responsible consumers
who had pre-chilled their filling were livid.
*
At a wedding in the village of Kakarak, Afghanistan,
revelers fired guns into the air--and American gunships fired
back, killing at least 50 people, including women and children,
and injuring 150 more, including a friend of President Hamid
Karzai who is known to be one of the most revered anti-Taliban
leaders. The attack lasted for two hours, between 2 and 4 a.m.,
and included a bomb dropped from a B-52. The U.S. Central Command
sent a "fact-finding team" to count the orphans and figure out
why a wedding party would so brazenly attack American soldiers.
*
Arthur "Spud" Melin, co-founder of Wham-O, the toy company
that made millions on the Frisbee and Hula Hoop, died after an
overdose of molded plastic.
*
Key West, Florida, is overrun by about 2,000 homeless
chickens who crow at 3 a.m., foul the beaches and generally get
in the way, so the resort city's solution is to have chicken
roundups and ship the birds to farms on the mainland. The normal
solution--beheading, plucking and frying--seems not to have
occurred to anyone. And THIS was the home of Hemingway?
*
Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, who was married to Kirk Kerkorian for
one month, is suing her ex-husband for $320,000 a month in child
support, claiming that their four-year-old daughter needs
$144,000 a month for travel, $14,000 for parties and playdates,
$4,300 for food, $5,900 for dining out, $2,500 for movies,
theaters and outings, $1,400 for laundry and dry cleaning, $1,000
for toys, videos and books, $436 a month for her pet bunny, and
$7,000 for charitable contributions. (The little darling is the
most precocious philanthropist since Marjoe Gortner.) Kerkorian
is 84, his ex-wife is 36, and they got married in 1998 in order
to "legitimize" the daughter when she was six months old. Their
pre-nuptial agreement stipulated that the marriage would end
after 28 days and that there would be no alimony. Then they
continued seeing each other until the summer of 2000, when Bonder
caught Kerkorian out on a date with another woman. In other
words, the deadbeat cad cheated on his ex-wife. Our question: if
you wait until the daughter is six months old to get married, how
does that make her legitimate? Must be one of those multi-
millionaire things. It may be a moot point anyway, because
Kerkorian recently hired a private eye to go through the trash of
Steve Bing, the man who fathered the love child of Liz Hurley,
and the detective came up with a piece of used dental floss that
tested out at a 99.993 per cent probability factor that
Kerkorian's daughter is not his at all, but Bing's. So now Bonder
is suing because . . . uh . . . her fake ex-husband cheated on
her and so he has to support the child he . . . uh . . . is
alleged to have legitimized back in the year when SHE cheated on
HIM. Must be one of those billionaire things. And, oh yeah, Steve
Bing is suing Kerkorian for $5 billion for "invasion of privacy"
because "a person's DNA reflecting their very genetic being" is
sacred. Must be one of those zillionaire things.
*
The Netherlands legalized euthanasia, making Amsterdam not
only the sex capital of Europe but the place where a tourist can
go to die, so now they'll have them coming and going.
*
House Resolution 256 was introduced before the Kentucky
legislature, encouraging "the purchase of a submarine to patrol
the waters of the Commonwealth and search and destroy all casino
riverboats." Those Indiana slots paybacks are looooooooooow.
*
Jim Barbe of Salem Township, Pennsylvania, faces two years
in jail and a $5,000 fine for talking too long at a town council
meeting. Barbe spoke for 11 minutes at a meeting of supervisors
where speakers are limited to five minutes each. The official
charge is disrupting a public meeting and defiant trespass. "I
did say I was just about done," said the 60-year-old Barbe.
Apparently the simple words "sit down and shut up" are unknown to
the town's leadership.
*
Englishmen around the world are celebrating the 100th
anniversary of Marmite, the brown vegetable extract they like to
slather on toast and mix with cheese and beans to gross out the
rest of the world. It was invented in 1902 in Burton-on-Trent at
an abandoned malt house, using spent yeast from the Bass Pale Ale
factory. The ingredients include yeast, vegetable extracts, salt
niacin, spices, folic acid, and vitamins B1, B2 and B12, and it
creates a distinctive Godzilla-breath that has been known to
induce vomiting in the strongest of men. No one except a Brit has
ever been able to stomach it, probably because it's used to wean
English babies and the taste has to be acquired before the age of
3. To celebrate the centennial, Brits will lick it out of the jar
and participate in kissing contests. Last man standing wins.
*
Two crack-cocaine addicts stole a Krispy Kreme donut truck
from a parking lot in Slidell, Louisiana, but were apprehended
when police followed a 15-mile-long trail of donuts caused by
leaving the back door open. After being jailed, the suspects
requested 40 gallons of black coffee.
*
An Internet site reported that Canadian Finance Minister
Paul Martin was quitting his job to breed Charolais cattle and
"handsome fawn runner ducks," causing the Canadian dollar to dip
lower on international exchange markets. The report turned out to
be a prank by author Pierre Bourque, who included hyperlinks to
sites featuring Charolais cows and brown-and-white ducks. Bourque
reported that Martin was getting ready to show his livestock at a
country fair in Havelock, Quebec, population 811. The problem is,
in Canada this is considered a reasonable goal in life.
*
Cynthia Fern Izon was jailed in Claremore, Oklahoma, on
charges of embezzling $50,000 from the Tulsa Akdar Shriners group
and $100,000 from the Barbie Doll Club of Eastern Oklahoma. The
club had hosted the international Barbie convention in Tulsa in
2000, and it seems there was a little extra in the Barbie cash
register. Under Oklahoma law, she will have her choice of a
lengthy prison sentence or having her arms twisted off by her
little brother and being placed upside down in a coffee can with
her legs spread apart.
The Supreme Court ruled that only juries, not judges, are
authorized to give people the needle, the gas, the bullet, the
noose or the jolt. It makes it easier on the condemned, who goes
to his death knowing that his non-existence was desired
unanimously.
*
Ann Landers died at age 83, sensibly.
*
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared that all
American currency printed at the Federal Reserve Bank of San
Francisco must include the phrase "In a Non-Specific Yet Loving
Deity We Provisionally Trust."
*
"The Horrifying Fraud," the French book claiming the
September 11 attacks were actually planned by extreme right-
wingers within the U.S. government, passed 200,000 in sales and
remained high on the best-seller list, causing Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld to name a special envoy to explain the American
position on terrorism to Frenchmen: Jerry Lewis.
*
Angela Bassett slammed "Monster's Ball" in an interview with
Newsweek, telling a reporter she turned down the lead role
because "I wasn't going to be a prostitute on film. . . . I
couldn't do that because it's such a stereotype about black women
and sexuality." Halle Berry took the role instead and won the
Academy Award for a role that is about as far from a hooker as
you can get: she plays a down-and-out single mom who has hot sex
with Billy Bob Thornton. Now that everyone knows Bassett's views
on blackness, women and sex, she's being considered for the lead
in the remake of Doris Day's "Move Over, Darling."
*
Four transsexuals claim they were threatened with baseball
bats by employees of a Toys R Us in Brooklyn while attempting to
purchase a "Butterfly Barbie." Store manager Bob Moloney claims
it was renegade employees who were not acting with the sanction
of the store, and he tried to make it up to the post-op females
by giving one a 50 per cent discount on a Barbie Bungalow Beach
House, a Scooby Doo ball and a Scooby Doo sleeping bag, then
offering all of them 100 "Geoffrey Dollars," a gift certificate
named after store mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe. It wasn't enough,
though, and the girls filed a federal lawsuit. Their four
complaints were filed on bunny-rabbit stationery in shades of
mauve, fuchsia, pastel blue and hot pink.
*
New York's Museum of Modern Art opened its temporary home in
Queens with a triumphal procession in which Egyptian-style
throne-bearers hoisted aloft an artist named Kiki Smith, draped
all in black, her wild white hair streaming in the wind, and
carried her across the Queensboro Bridge while others carried a
copy of Picasso's "Demoiselles d'Avignon." The museum will be
housed in a former Swingline staple factory while its new $800
million space is being constructed, so the gods of New York
pretension must be pacified.
*
WorldCom announced it made a $3.9 billion mistake in
accounting because they were using a No. 2 pencil that had not
been properly sharpened, but now they've got the problem fixed.
*
President Bush told the Palestinians to get rid of Yasir
Arafat, thereby ensuring a rise in Arafat's popularity polls.
*
Every April 20th, at precisely 4:20 in the afternoon, the
students of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington,
gather on the soccer field to smoke pot. Nobody remembers how the
tradition got started--too much pot--but "4:20 on 4/20" has
become so well known that this year the police were ready. Three
officers arrived at the soccer field shortly before 4:20--and
there wasn't a joint, bong, doobie, blunt or baggie to be found.
The Resident Assistants in the dorms had tipped off the entire
school, and the party had moved a short distance away to a place
in the woods called The Meadow. The cops hung around for a few
minutes and were even told that the gathering had been moved.
They deliberated as to whether they should go to The Meadow, then
decided they had doubts about the "credibility" of the tip. After
all, you can't trust a pothead.
*
In other marijuana news, the Dutch Experience coffee shop in
Stockport, England, is doing a booming business now that British
Home Secretary David Blunkett announced that cannabis possession
will no longer be an arrestable offense. Hundreds of people have
been seeking out the little town that's home to the first
Amsterdam-style establishment where everyone is encouraged to
inhale deeply and grin. The cafe offers coffee, Coca-Cola, table
football, card tables and plenty of joint-rolling space, and most
of the profit is used to provide free marijuana to medicinal
users. Customers appreciate the quality of weed available in a
country where street marijuana can sometimes be skanky, and so
far the town council is tolerating the place's presence. Among
recent visitors: the local MP, Chris Davies. "I applaud it," he
told the Observer. "It seems an excellent way of meeting people's
desire to try things other than alcohol without leading them on
to harder things." Then he grinned inappropriately and nodded
off.
*
Vanna White filed for divorce from her husband of 11 years,
because he just doesn't understand the pressures of her career.
*
Southwest Airlines started strictly enforcing it's Fat Flyer
Policy, requiring the exceptionally obese to buy two tickets
instead of one. At 18 inches, Southwest has the narrowest seats
of any major airline, causing a Squish Effect on adjoining seats
when behemoths travel. The airline has had the policy since 1980,
but they only started strict Porker Profiling this year, training
ticket agents to make hip, waist and thigh judgment calls. The
policy has been controversial among blimpolas, but was strongly
applauded by the Lard-Damaged Victims Rights group.
*
The far northern Swedish city of Pitea is putting up a
drive-in movie theater made entirely of ice and snow. When it
opens, a large-screen VCR will project movies onto the ice screen
from a wooden outhouse, but instead of popcorn, the local potato-
dumpling specialty will be served. Vehicles using the drive-in
will be snowmobiles--which, in Sweden, do have a backseat.
*
"Starballz," the animated sci-fi porno parody of "Star Wars"
that has previously been mentioned here, fended off an attack by
Lucasfilm, which tried to block it from distribution for
"misappropriating our valuable assets." A San Francisco federal
judge ruled against George Lucas' company and allowed the movie
to go forward--and now "Starballz" Strikes BACK! Media Market
Group, creator of the video, filed a libel suit in New York
courts asking for $140 million from Lucasfilm. It seems that,
shortly after the San Francisco decision in January, Lucasfilm
spokeswoman Lynne Hale said that "the law does not allow for
parody to be a defense to a pornographic use of someone else's
intellectual property, especially when that use is directed to
children." Media Market Group says they have never marketed to
children and that'll cost you 140 mill, Mr. Big Outer-Space
Gorillaman. Both companies, in our opinion, seem to be whipping
out their laser swords entirely too frequently.
*
Tom Cruise met with Dan Coats, the U.S. ambassador to
Germany, to encourage him to fight for the rights of
Scientologists. The German government refuses to recognize
Scientology as a religion, regarding it as a cult set up to make
money. Scientologists are barred from some government jobs and
openly derided for their love of John Travolta.
*
The wedding ring Eddie Fisher bought for Debbie Reynolds was
auctioned off on Sotheby's.com--by Debbie Reynolds. "I thought
maybe the kids would want it when they got older," she said--but
neither Carrie nor Todd Fisher was interested. The last time the
diamond-encrusted platinum band was worn was 43 years ago, when
Fisher commenced an affair with Elizabeth Taylor. Apparently he's
not coming home.
*
Public displays of affection are illegal in India, so the
Lovers' Organization for Voluntary Exhibition (LOVE) planned a
march on the Calcutta mayor's office to protest against the
government's refusal to set aside a special area where people
could hold hands and kiss without police harassment. Thirty
people showed up for the march--and dispersed quickly when
several police vans pulled up. As they scurried away, the cops
presumably shouted "Get a room."
*
Crocodiles have killed 43 people in a six-month period in
Lake Victoria, sometimes overturning small fishing boats in
search of appetizers. Uganda's solution: patrols armed with
automatic weapons, with officers presumably trained not to fire
until they see the slime of their jaws.
*
A 21-year-old ship's cook killed the captain and first mate,
took control of a 195-foot Taiwanese fishing vessel, and then
held off a crew of 27 Mandarin-speaking sailors with two knives.
The crew eventually subdued the cook while the ship was going
through a heavy storm 200 miles southeast of the Hawaiian
islands. They then fired flares to alert the Coast Guard and were
escorted to Pearl Harbor. The movie will be called "The Chow Mein
Mutiny."
*
Alfred Yazback was sentenced to two years in prison and
fined $185,000 for selling fake caviar to gourmet stores. Even
though his tins advertised "Product of Russia," they contained
the eggs of Tennessee and Alabama paddlefish. In 1999, when there
was a worldwide shortage of Sevruga caviar caused by Russia's ban
on fishing in the depleted Caspian Sea, Yazback still sold 7,900
pounds of paddlefish roe labed as Russian caviar. He also sold
some real Russian caviar that was smuggled out of the country
illegally. Caviar emptor.
*
A Texas jury awarded Laura Schubert $300,000 after the
members of Pleasant Glade Assembly Church in Fort Worth forcibly
tried to exorcise demons from her on two occasions in 1996. To
celebrate, Schubert boiled two cat's paws in a broth of blood.
*
The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that Jehovah's Witnesses can
knock on any door they want without registering with local
officials. The little town of Stratton, Ohio, had tried to
regulate door-to-door proselytizing, but the court was influenced
by receiving 17,000 free issues of The Watchtower, which Justice
John Paul Stevens called "a hell of a good read."
*
In the Arthur Andersen trial, a Houston jury deliberated ten
days before deciding that, yes, shredding documents is definitely
obstruction of justice. The jury was dismissed by the judge, but
four days later jurors were still filing out of the courtroom.
*
Financial records were released showing that Bill Clinton
received $9.2 million in fees for 59 speeches in the year 2001,
charging a top fee of $350,000 per speaking engagement and
sometimes speaking four times in four days in four different
countries. His spokeswoman was quick to point out that he made
several dozen free speeches as well, including talks to AIDS
groups, civil rights organizations, school music programs,
charities, and the entire chorus line of the Folies Bergere.
*
Danilo Nunez, a substitute teacher at Public School 4 in New
York, attacked an entire first-grade class with a broom handle,
sending 20 of the 27 children to the hospital with welts and
bruises. Nunez also pulled hair, twisted ears and slapped faces,
the children said, in what can only be called Rugrat Rage.
*
The Justice Department filed a brief arguing that military
prisoners, even if they're Americans, have no right to a lawyer
and can be held forever in prison. The filing in the case of
Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured with Taliban
forces, relies on the rarely invoked Amendment 16C of the
Constitution, which Solicitor General Paul D. Clement discovered
in a culvert over the weekend and pasted back into the document
in its proper place.
*
The Supreme Court ruled that executing the mentally retarded
is unconstitutional, but postponed a ruling on the legality of
executing people sentenced to death by mentally retarded judges.
*
Women made great strides in journalism this week. First Jane
magazine hired Pamela Anderson as a columnist. She will write
about women's health, domestic abuse, parenthood and Internet
porn. Then Amy Fisher, the "Long Island Lolita," was hired as a
columnist for The New Island Ear, a free weekly newspaper on Long
Island, where she will write about how Pamela Anderson is such a
slut.
*
Steven Johnson, a Brooklyn barber who played a violent drug
dealer in a Jay-Z rap video, went on a mission to kill white
people, shooting three men and terrorizing a Lower East Side bar,
where he doused everyone with kerosene and shouted "White people
are going to burn!" Two women jumped on him before he could
finish the job. Yes, rap fans, that's what we said--two women.
*
Terry Lynn Barton, a "recreation technician" in Pike
National Forest, says she started a campfire to burn a letter
from her estranged husband and burned up 136,000 acres of
Colorado instead. None of the 33 destroyed homes were believed to
belong to the estranged husband, who is presumably refusing to
reignite the marriage.
*
Mick Jagger was knighted for service to the empire. Sir Mick
promised to use his sword frequently.
*
Twenty years ago the United States spent millions on
textbooks for Afghan schoolchildren filled with calls to jihad,
pictures of Kalashnikov rifles, and passages about a Muslim's
right to make war on his enemies. Those textbooks were still
being used as late as January, when they were replaced with a new load of American-financed textbooks, this time telling Afghan
schoolchildren that Islam is a peaceful religion, with all
references to jihad removed, and with the weapons replaced with
sketches of pomegranates and oranges. Legal experts say that any mention of religion in textbooks paid for by the government is an
absolute violation of U.S. law, but how can we just abandon our
commitment to the Afghan child? After all, a first-grader who
read about jihad in his American-sponsored textbook in 1980 would
be just about old enough now to . . . uh . . . fly a plane into a
building?
*
The habitual truancy rate in the Milwaukee public schools
last year was 40.2 per cent, and at some schools it was as high
as 80 per cent. And they were giving out gold stars for perfect
attendance, too!
*
A counselor at the Pleasantville Cottage School in Mount
Pleasant, New York, was knocked to the floor by eight girls, who
then punched her, kicked her, held her down while they cut off
her hair, doused her with rubbing alcohol, set her on fire,
dragged her, threw her down a flight of stairs, and poured bleach
on her burned head and face. The young ladies, all either 15 or
16, were sent to bed early--in the county jail.
*
Gema Garcia, a hot babe reporter for the El Mundo network in
Spain, entered the Miss Spain pageant even though she was six
years over the age limit of 25 and bribed a judge $23,000 to make
sure she was named Miss Alicante despite stumbling in her high
heels during the regional pageant. All of it, including the
bribe, was preserved on videotape for Garcia's report that beauty
pageant contestants are treated "like fairground monkeys."
Apparently she has a problem with that.
*
Arizona legislators debated a resolution creating an
official state policy of "treating others as you would like to be
treated." Anyone violating the policy would be forced to sit in
the corner.
*
A retired Scottish hairdresser lured a woman to his home by
offering her a free haircut, then scalped her. Leonard Bowie, 62,
has had a fetish for female hair since the age of 19, so he used
a razor to cut strips of hair and flesh from the head of Mary
Mullady, 51, who was so disfigured that she needed skin grafts.
Bowie was sentenced to eight years in prison, despite his
lawyer's assertion that he suffers from "a deteriorating brain
condition" caused by alcohol abuse. The scalp was sent to the
British Museum and added to its famous Colonial Atrocities
Collection.
*
When she was 18, beautiful Swedish model Helena Dalquist got
a $1 million contract from Major Model Management and was
featured on 20 magazine covers around the world in the year 1997
alone. But she soon broke her contract and went to the agency
Next, owned by Daniela Pestova. Next, attempting to claim her for
good, sued Major Model to have the original contract nullified,
saying that it was "oppressive." Major Model then countersued the
model for breach of contract and the Next agency for "tortious
interference." It all got so messy that eventually the model
decided to jump to another agency, Ford Models, but Major Model
got a court injunction preventing that from happening. It was
finally all resolved in court five years later, but Dalquist is
23 years old now, living in Sweden, on the hook for huge legal
fees, and hardly working at all because everyone has forgotten
who she was. She's the one with the smeared makeup.
*
Kenneth Curtis, a South Carolina pipefitter, lost his bid
before the Supreme Court to continue selling his urine over the
Internet. For $69 plus shipping charges, you could get five
ounces of Curtis' urine, along with plastic tubing and a warmer,
but South Carolina authorities shut him down, fined him $10,000
and jailed him for six months. He then moved his business to
North Carolina, which has more liberal urine laws. We understand
it's really good stuff.
*
Thieves have hit six different Starbucks on Chicago's North
Side, stealing espresso machines. They're described as jittery
and saucer-eyed.
*
Jim Albright, a bodyguard and one of Madonna's former
lovers, is trying to sell her underwear, nude Polaroids and hot-
chat letters she sent him ten years ago. "This is the reality
about her horny past," Albright told London's News of the World.
"I'm not concerned about what she thinks or feels." Fans were
shocked to find out that she wears underwear.
*
Robert McDonough, a Staten Island bouncer, arrived home at 5
a.m. to find a suitcase on the curb with a dead body stuffed
inside. Yes, it was the kind with wheels.
*
A team of ornithologists spent 30 days in a Louisiana swamp
searching for the ivory-billed woodpecker. On January 27th, at
3:30 p.m., four of the six bird experts heard a series of double
raps characteristic of the ivory-billed woodpecker, which they
recorded. They never actually set eyes on it, though. Sure.
*
Erik Aude, a 21-year-old actor who appeared in "Dude,
Where's My Car?," was arrested at Islamabad Airport with 3,600
grams of opium. A Pakistan court can give him anywhere from 10
years in prison to the death penalty, causing him to wonder,
"Dude, where's my ass?"
*
Pepsi Blue, a cola drink dyed the color of Windex, hit the
market in answer to Vanilla Coke, which was an answer to Mountain
Dew Code Red. The only unexploited color in soft-drink marketing
is puke yellow, but Orange Nehi is almost there.
*
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared "Oreo Cookie 90th
Anniversary Day" at ceremonies on the site of the bakery where
the Oreo was invented in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, and
the City Council officially declared it the "favorite cookie" of
New Yorkers. Colin Powell, the New Yorker most identified with
the Oreo, sent his regrets.
*
F. Lee Bailey, disbarred in his home state of Florida for
mishandling $6 million worth of a stock for a client doing a life
prison term, was suspended from practicing before the U.S.
Supreme Court. The court gave him 40 days to say why he should
not be permanently barred from practicing law, and told him that
it would help if he would not be such a pompous ass.
*
The Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial in downtown Annapolis,
Maryland, was dedicated, memorializing the African slave who
allegedly arrived in Annapolis in 1767, and the author who
plagiarized his story and falsified his genealogy in "Roots." The
memorial cost $750,000 and features a bronze statue of Haley
reading a book to children of three different races, along with
ten granite markers featuring quotations from "Roots." Next up
for Maryland: the Howard Hughes-Clifford Irving Memorial in
Baltimore.
*
Ten thousand bagpipers all played at the same time during
the first Tartan Day Parade on New York's Sixth Avenue, and only
three people committed suicide.
*
Catholic bishops met in Dallas to debate the question: If
the church pays you money to keep silent about being diddled by a
priest, then 20 years later you tell the media you got diddled by
a priest, do you have to give the money back?
*
Governor Mark Warner of Virginia apologized for the forced
sterilization of 7,450 people between 1924 and 1979, calling it a
"shameful effort that must never be repeated" and ensuring the
descendants of the . . . oh, right . . . uh . . . never mind.
*
Kathryn Gannon Gilley, better known as porn star Marylin
Star, pled guilty to two counts of trading on insider stock-
market information passed along to her in the bedroom by James J.
McDermott, former chairman of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. The
actress was charged in December 1999 but had been fighting
extradition from her native Canada. Now she faces up to 10 years
in prison with Helga and Brunhilde, who are both fans of her
movies.
*
Steven Seagal says he was shaken down by the Gambino mob and
forced to pay $150,000 per movie, which is why he became a fat
pony-tailed unemployable Buddhist.
*
The 2,700 workers at the Hershey chocolate factory in
Hershey, Pennsylvania, went on strike after new CEO Rick Lenny--
the first outsider executive in the company's 108-year history--
eliminated 800 jobs, shut down the cocoa processing division, and
brought in a group of new executives. If he takes that little
paper strip out of the top of the Hershey kiss, they'll kill him.
*
Residents of South Central Los Angeles solemnly observed the
tenth anniversary of the Rodney King riots with street
processions in which people returned big-screen TVs to Korean
hardware stores.
*
Madonna, currently appearing in the London play "Up For
Grabs," forced fellow thespian Boy George to remove a song from
his West End musical "Taboo." His spoof of "Vogue" included the
lyrics "Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, that Madonna, dyes her
hair." Not funny, said the Material Mom, who raised hell with the
producers and then barred all journalists from her opening-night
party, presumably because they had all agreed that her acting was
"mechanical" (that was actually the nicest thing they said). At
least they didn't try to rhyme anything with "sucks."
*
Iceland stormed out of the International Whaling Commission
meeting and started sharpening its harpoons again, furious at
being rejected for full membership in the body. Look at a map,
people! If any country deserves to be in the Whaling Commission,
it's the one with the geysers and the fjords, not to mention the
scrumptious whale sashimi.
*
Stephane Breitwieser of Mulhouse, France, was arrested in
Lucerne, Switzerland, for stealing a rare bugle from a small
museum. Back home his mother learned of the arrest and proceeded
to chop up 60 paintings her son had stolen, including works by
Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Corneille
de Lyon and Watteau. She then proceeded to dump 112 other stolen
art objects into a canal. Estimated value of the destroyed art:
$1.4 billion. Breitweiser had committed 174 different thefts over
the years in some 50 European museums, keeping the works for his
private amusement. But as we all know, if you leave too much junk
in your room, your mom will throw it out, because they just
don't understand my stuff.
*
Peter Likins, president of the University of Arizona, banned
tortilla-tossing at commencement ceremonies this year, saying the
school tradition is "an offensive notion that when people are
hungry all over the world, and not so very far from our own
campus, that enormous quantities of food are just thrown in the
air, thrown away, so to speak." Throw that man a taco.
*
Continuing our pattern of signing treaties and then saying
"Whoops! We don't like that one after all," the Bush
administration said it would not cooperate with the new
International Criminal Court that's about to begin work at The
Hague. Both President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
expressed outrage that the court's definition of "criminal"
included all nationalities, even Americans. Who do they think
they are, judges and juries?
*
Last year 80,000 African-Americans listed a "black slavery
credit" on their income tax forms--and the Internal Revenue
Service actually paid $30 million for these legally non-existent
line items. Most of the cases are being treated as "negligence,"
not criminal intent, on the theory that someone making up a tax
deduction that doesn't exist is just one of those unlucky people
who forgets he's not entitled to $43,000, which is the most
common amount requested by the "black slavery" filers. It could
happen to anyone.
*
For a celebration honoring James Earl Jones on Martin Luther
King Day, a company called Adpro of Fort Lauderdale ordered a
special plaque from a company in Georgetown, Texas. When they
unwrapped the plaque, it read "Thank you James Earl Ray for
keeping the dream alive." Adpro was upset, but it was only three
letters off.
*
Tammy McIntosh of Lyons, New York, bit into some creamed
spinach she'd just cooked and "noticed a horrible taste." New
York state agricultural experts later examined the food and
concluded that it contained material "from some type of
amphibian." Boston Market, where she bought it, and H.J. Heinz,
the manufacturer, had perfectly good explanations: lizard
saboteurs.
* Gene Simmons launched "Gene Simmons Tongue Magazine" with
parties at Studio 54 in New York, Barfly in Los Angeles, and the
Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, and at the same time introduced his new
KISS Kondoms, including a style called "Tongue Lubricated."
"Could anyone possibly be more qualified than Paul Stanley and
Gene Simmons to create a rubber that truly rocks?" enthused Adam
Glickman, president and founder of the retail store Condomania in
Greenwich Village. "After all, both these guys are rock legends,
Paul adored by legions of women, and Gene, who touts to have had
more than 4,600 `liaisons' in his best-selling autobiography,
'Kiss and Make Up.'" The condoms will be availabe at Spencer
Gifts (not a joke), and the first condom will be made of bright
red lubricated latex with images of Simmons fully extending his
tongue on the condom wrapper and box. In the fall the company
will add "Studded Paul" condoms, featuring studded latex with
images of Paul Stanley, followed by "Love Gun Protection" (extra
strength and a group pose). A three-pack sells for $4.95. A
three-pack plus Gene Simmons actually in bed with you sells for
$3.95.
*
The Bloomingdale's at White Flint Mall in Maryland had to be
evacuated after somebody set the lingerie department on fire. Six
fire trucks responded, but the flames were so intense--those
bustiers burn fast--that the store's sprinkler system was
activated, so the fire was out by the time the firefighters
arrived. Fifteen minutes earlier, a rack of women's clothes had
been set ablaze at a nearby J.C. Penney, and a half hour later a
shopping cart full of clothes was set on fire at an Ames store.
Just the scorched lingerie alone was worth $400,000. We say it's
a fat girl.
*
At the end of World War II U.S. troops entered a German
castle, found four watercolor paintings by Hitler and about 2.5
million Nazi photographs, and seized them. They actually belonged
to a photographer named Heinrich Hoffmann, and after his death
the Hoffmann family sued for the return of all the art works,
plus damages. A federal judge in Texas ruled for the Hoffmanns in
1993, ordering the government to pay $10 million in damages for
refusing to return the art, but the decision was overturned by
the appeals court. The U.S. Supreme Court finally decided the
case this year, saying the U.S. can keep everything. The
reasoning? Bush administration lawyers argued that the paintings
were confiscated "in order to denazify Germany." Obviously,
giving this stuff back to the family would create an imminent
international threat from National Socialism.
*
Troy David Kline, a "showtender" at a downtown bar in Iowa
City, Iowa, set fire to a high-proof grain alcohol drink and
burned nine University of Iowa students. After they were taken to
the hospital, the resulting cocktails were killer.
*
Crazed Senegalese soccer fans ran through the streets of
Harlem, shouting in their native Wolof, to celebrate their World
Cup victory over France. Meanwhile, in a cafe in Greenwich
Village, two dozen leather-jacketed Frenchmen chain-smoked and
recited existential poetry.
*
Currently filming in New York, "The Hebrew Hammer" is the
world's first "Jewxploitation" movie, the tale of Mordechai
Jefferson Carver, a/k/a The Hammer, as a private eye who wears
black leather and drives a Cadillac painted to look like an
Israeli flag. The script by Jonathan Kesselman describes him as
"a baaaad Jewish brother," "the baaddest Heeb this side of Tel
Aviv" and a "Semitic super stud." Adam Goldberg plays the lead,
battling the evil son of Santa Claus, who's trying to abolish
Hanukkah. Goldberg told The New York Observer that has favorite
line is "Shabbat, shalom, motherfuckers!" No doubt The Hammer
will have girlfriends in every neighborhood of New York--
Orthodox, Conservative and Reform.
*
Seattle citizens will vote on approval of a 10-cent city tax
on espresso drinks. Talk about messing with people's minds.
*
John Glenn Carelock and Clinton Evers galloped drunk on
horseback through a Wal-Mart in El Dorado, Arkansas, leaving
manure piles on the floor. Based on early reports, the manure is
believed to have come from the horses.
*
In a wild geezer brawl, a 64-year-old man with a walking
cane attacked a 53-year-old man with a walking cane, fracturing
his skull, his eye bone and his elbow, bruising his head, face,
arms and legs, and giving him a concussion that sent him to the
emergency room. The fracas began when James Gibson of Brooklyn
accused Richard Martin of not returning some books. When Martin
denied any knowledge of the books, Gibson started beating him
with his metal cane. When the cane broke, he grabbed Martin's
cane and continued the assault, adding kicks to the head, face,
arms and legs. Gibson choked him, broke his glasses, then stole
the glasses and left Martin bleeding on the pavement. Police
found the assailant a few blocks away, taking his afternoon nap.
*
Robert Williams, serving a sentence of 3,000 years for a
1982 crime spree in which he robbed and raped the patrons of a
diner in Old Westbury, New York, was released from prison 2,980
years early. He got therapy. He's better.
*
The belongings of Perry Como were auctioned at an estate
sale in Morris Plains, New Jersey, but how many cashmere
monogrammed cardigans or Gucci loafers can one country handle?
Apparently quite a few. Eleven hundred bidders showed up to catch
a fallen star.
*
The City Council of Cypress, California, voted unanimously
to invoke the power of eminent domain and seize land owned by
Cottonwood Christian Center so the 17.9 acres can be sold to
Costco. All they do at churches is just TALK about loaves and
fishes.
*
Liza Minnelli peformed seven concerts at New York's Beacon
Theatre with a top ticket price of $1000 for the first three
rows--including complimentary liposuction.
*
A 16-year-old boy was expelled by L.D. Bell High School in
Bedford, Texas, because a bread knife was found in the bed of his
pickup truck on school property. According to the school
district's "zero tolerance" policy, any student with a weapon
gets kicked out. Taylor Hess, who will now miss his junior year,
explained that the day before the knife was found, he had helped
his father take his grandmother's linens, books and kitchenware
to a charity thrift shop, and that the knife had fallen out of
one of the boxes. The superintendent says he's hamstrung by the
state education code and can't make an exception to the policy.
Other Texas students have been expelled for giving mints to
classmates, possessing nail clippers, taking a plastic ax to a
Halloween party, and, in the case of an eight-year-old, pointing
a breaded chicken finger at a teacher and saying "Pow pow pow."
The little Al Qaeda bastards.
*
Woody Allen stopped seeing psychiatrists. The economy of the
Upper East Side suffered a 40 per cent drop.
*
When Ayn Rand died in 1982, she left four of her original
manuscripts to her friend Leonard Peikoff, a writer and
philosopher. In 1991 he donated the manuscripts and 11 boxes of
Ayn Rand material to the Library of Congress, but for
"sentimental reasons," he kept the first and last pages of "The
Fountainhead" and diplayed them under a spotlight on the wall of
his home in Irvine, California. He photocopied the missing pages
for the Library of Congresss and sent a private appraiser to
Washington to verify the value of the Rand papers and tell
Library officials about the copied pages. The appraiser was told
that the Library didn't care about the two photocopies. But this
past January a government agent showed up at Peikoff's door, cut
the manuscript pages out of their picture frames, and confiscated
them as federal property. Apparently the government had gotten
upset about a 1998 interview Peikoff gave to the Los Angeles
Times magazine. The Times interviewer had noticed the famous
manuscript pages on Peikoff's wall, including the opening
paragrah in Rand's handwriting: "Howard Roark laughed." Peikoff
explained that he had given the 2,158-page manuscript to the
Library of Congress, but joked that "I stole the first and last
pages." Library officials read the interview and demanded the
pages, claiming they were property of the government. Peikoff
refused to turn them over. Officials then threatened to sue him
for $1.1 million, the amount they claimed they had spent "in
storing, archiving and preserving the manuscript" in the belief
it was the complete original. Peikoff replied sarcastically that,
if they spent over a million dollars on a restoration and failed
to notice that two pages were photocopied, then they were pretty
lousy librarians. Peikoff eventually hired a lawyer, and after
some intense sparring, the library offered to let Peikoff
temporarily keep the pages, provided he put up a $30,000 bond for
their security and post a sign in his home reading "On Loan From
the Library of Congress." He refused. Among other things, it was
contrary to the whole philosophy of Ayn Rand herself to let the
government intrude into a private residence. So with a lawsuit
looming, Peikoff was advised by his attorney that he could
probably win, but that it would be expensive and stressful and
the outcome wasn't certain. Peikoff, 68 and struggling with a
heart condition, threw in the towel against what he now calls "a
virtually omnipotent government." He leaves the empty frames on
his wall as a reminder of how the government repaid his gift.
Atlas shrugged.
*
While his parents were away for Memorial Day weekend, a 15-
year-old Detroit high school student threw a party that resulted
in looting, a fire, a million dollars in damage to his house, and
the death of two family cats. The following day, in answer to the
question "So what did you do last night?," several hundred
teenagers said, "Nothing."
*
Scenes from American domestic life:
- Elizabeth Holt of Billings, Montana, plunged a six-inch
kitchen knife into the back of boyfriend James Demontiney because
he was washing dishes too slowly and they were late leaving for
her parents' house. He also wore plaid on a Tuesday.
- When James Dawson of Liberty City, Florida, refused to
accompany his wife Renee to church, she stabbed him in the heart
with a kitchen knife, presumably while quoting scripture about
the terrible swift sword of the Lord.
- Rhythm-and-blues singer Keke Wyatt plunged a steak knife
five times into her husband's chest, arm, hand and back during an
argument over the Christmas holidays at her Shelbyville,
Kentucky, home. Keke is the singer who was part of Destiny's
Child, but left the group to record heart-warming songs about
eternal love and cleaving her . . . er, cleaving TO her man.
- A jealous New Jersey wife, Nelly Latief, tried to lop off
her husband's penis with a kitchen knife while he was sleeping
after finding out he was having an affair. The knife was
described by police as "dull"--good news for husband Hassan
Latief, because doctors were able to stitch him up, and BAD news
for husband Hassan Latief, because dull HURTS.
- Jealous ex-boyfriend Dennis Roache used a machete to hack
off the head of his rival, Gregory Shannon, and then placed the
head on the hood of his car--as St. Petersburg, Florida, cops
pulled up. He had a perfectly good explanation, though. It wasn't
his head.
- Sixty-year-old Ann Perry poisoned her lover Rudy Wolmart's
milkshake and killed him, then bargained for a six-and-a-half-
year prison term. "I intentionally put thallium into Rudy's
malted," she told a Queens judge. At least he died eating comfort
food.
"MADMAN BITES OFF LOVER'S FACE" is the New York Post
headline for the tale of Felix Rondon, who was discovered by cops
on top of his girlfriend, ripping her cheeks, nose, eyes, ears
and mouth with his teeth. The crime was reported by neighbors who
called 911 to describe "bloodcurdling screams" coming from a
Queens apartment. Police followed the sound of the screams, and
when there was no response to their knock, they used a battering
ram to enter the apartment, followed the shrieks to the bedroom,
where the door was ALSO locked, and then crashed through THAT
door to discover the blood feast. Rondon was taken to Bellevue
for observation. If he starts drooling, the girlfriend will need
a painful series of rabies shots.
- David Norington of Chicago beat his roommate to death with
an ashtray, pliers, a hammer, a fire extinguisher, a dumbbell and
finally a knife, after accusing Ollie Hale of taking more than
his share of a chicken dinner. As we all know, the thigh is NOT
considered part of the drumstick.
- When Kevin Gross of Calvert County, Maryland, told his
girlfriend Adele F. Freeman that he didn't have time to go out to
dinner because he needed to work on his car, Freeman killed him
with five shots from a .38 revolver. Cell for one or first
available?
- Novis Parker, a high school basketball star who turned
down major NCAA scholarships in order to enroll at tiny Felician
College so he could be near his girlfriend, Tiffany Bratton, told
police he was just trying to reconcile with her when he went to
her dorm room at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Florham Park,
New Jersey, and strangled her to death in her bed. And they
looked so cute together--well, until the whole DEATH thing.
- Karlene Tolbert of Woodbridge, Virginia, got into an
argument with her husband Robert and kicked him down a flight of
stairs, after which he suffered a heart attack and died. She'll
serve a total of 12 days in jail, because a jury ruled that the
heart attack killed him, not the bumpy ride down. Besides, he
seemed fine after the first 17 stairs.
- Bianca Coleman of Springfield, Virginia, barged into the
apartment of her boyfriend's pregnant fiancee (following this?),
stabbed her numerous times, then left a trail of blood leading
out of the apartment. Coleman made a plea agreement and can get
up to 50 years in prison, but the good news, girls, is that her
boyfriend is available again.
- Raymond Jones of Phoenix bit off his two-year-old son's
thumb because he wanted to "mix our DNA," then held it in his
mouth for six hours and ran naked down the street before being
apprehended by police. It is well known that aerobic nudity
quickens the DNA-mixing process.
- Margery Landry, a foreign service officer in the State
Department with a top-secret security clearance, is charged with
donning a black ski mask, slipping through the basement window of
a brick split-level house in Bethesda, Maryland, at 4:30 a.m.,
creeping upstairs to the bedroom of Arlen Slobodow, and shooting
him twice with a 9mm handgun as he lay sleeping next to his five-
year-old son. Slobodow ripped off the ski mask, recognized her as
the best friend of his estranged wife, and reached for the phone-
-but she grabbed it and began beating him with it. He yelled for
his older son to call police, but Landry ordered the children to
go back to bed and leave the phone alone. Slobodow managed to
crawl downstairs to the kitchen, but as he started to dial his
cell phone, he was attacked again and bitten on the hand. Finally
he was able to dial 911 and Landry fled. It turns out that
Slobodow has been in a bitter two-year divorce fight with his ex,
and last year was awarded full custody of their two children
after the ex threatened to hire a hitman to kill both Slobodow
and the children unless she was awarded custody. Landry, who
works in the State Department's Office of Children's Issues, was
helping the ex-wife save the children from . . . uh . . . crazy
people with guns?
- Raymond Alvarez and his girlfriend Zulma Lara handcuffed
Alvarez' 15-year-old daughter and her 16-year-old friend to a
chain-link fence in New York's Union Square Park, called 911, and
started beating the two girls--so that they would stop taking
marijuana and ecstasy. Alvarez' 16-year-old son showed up to join
in the screaming. When police arrived, the score was three counts
of misdemeanor assault, one of unlawful imprisonment, and a tense
dinner table that night.
- Shannon Jones, a trucker hauling light bulbs for Wal-Mart,
was arrested at a Dublin, Georgia, rest stop after his girlfriend
left 30 messages on restroom mirrors from New York to Tennessee,
trying to get someone to rescue her from six months of beating
and captivity. A restroom janitor in McMinn County, Tennessee,
finally noticed one of the messages, which identified her
location as "Cannon truck 383." He called 911, and police used a
satellite positioning system to find the truck. Katina Shaddix,
the kidnapped "girlfriend," is in good condition is suffering
from acute chicken-fried-steak poisoning.
- Joseph and Silva Swinton of Queens Village, New York, fed
their infant girl a strict vegan diet of fruit juice, herbal tea
and ground nuts--until she ended up in the pediatric emergency
room at the age of 16 months, weighing only 10 pounds and
suffering from malnourishment, brittle bones, a distended
stomach, weakness, difficulty moving her arms and legs, and no
ability to verbalize. Her colon, however, was clean.
- An Iowa hog farmer left his wife of 27 years and moved to
Milwaukee to live with a stripper. When she cheated on him, he
beat her to death with a hammer, resulting in a prison term of
five years less than his original marriage sentence.
- A California man spent $1.5 million to make a full-length
movie about his second marriage, featuring a cast of 60 and
starring an actress portraying his ex-wife as a lizard.
Presumably the low budget precluded full Medusa makeup.
- When her 17-year-old
daughter tried to leave the house
with her boyfriend, Virginia Dillard of Roxbury, Massachusetts,
grabbed a pair of knives, followed her to the door, kicked her in
the back and stabbed her in the upper left arm. The following day
the boyfriend had to tell his buddies, "And then she passed out
on me!"
- Andre Scott of Oakland fired five times, killing his
musician roommate Verlon Bourn, after an argument over a $1,000
utility bill caused by Bourn's use of powerful lamps used to grow
marijuana plants in the basement. His last words to the victim
were reportedly, "Get a small Latin American country like
everybody else!"
- Susan Winkler of Green Bay, Wisconsin, shot her husband in
the groin with a shotgun, then told police she was just playing
the "gun-in-the-groin" game that the loving couple frequently
enjoyed. Normally they play with an unloaded weapon, she said,
making relatives relieved that they weren't playing spear-in-the-
ear.
- Francisco Fernandez of the Bronx chased his girlfriend out
of her apartment with a knife. As Yolanda Carmarena ran screaming
down the street, several young men grabbed Fernandez and stabbed
him twice with his own knife, then fled themselves before police
arrived. Fernandez was charged with failing to realize which
borough he lives in.
- Julia Mack of Washington, D.C., found the "other woman" in
a love triangle asleep in an apartment, so she put a plastic bag
over her head, strangled her with a rope, held her down while she
struggled, took the body to a wooded area in Maryland and set it
on fire. It's unclear how that romance is proceeding now that her
rival is gone.
- When Hortensia Sanchez of Brooklyn told her husband
Abraham Lucero that she wanted an order of protection against
him, he stabbed her in the throat. When their 11-year-old
daughter tried to intervene, he slashed her repeatedly. Both
mother and daughter now realize the error of their ways and see
that an order of protection was a silly idea.
- John Jefferson of Brooklyn tried to win an argument with
his girlfriend by threatening her with a knife. She managed to
call 911 and, when police arrived, ran into the hallway of her
Manhattan apartment building. Jefferson proceeded to barricade
himself inside the apartment, hurl the television off the 23rd-
story balcony, followed by the air conditioner, all her clothes,
and her dog Ribsy. Now he wants to kiss and make up, but that DOG
thing is kind of a deal-breaker.
- Heidi Mark, ex-wife of Motley Crue singer Vince Neil,
explained why she was silent about ten years of spousal abuse,
including an incident in which Neil kicked her in the stomach
"Jackie Chan-style" in a Beverly HIlls restaurant. "I have all
these battle scars," she said, "but I didn't call the press
because I didn't want to be known as just another Playmate who
was getting her ass kicked by a Motley Crue guy." Typecasting is
a bitch.
- Yeshimbet Gonfa of Wheaton, Maryland, accused her son
Samson Adrefis of using her credit card and car without her
permission, so Adrefis choked his mom to death and left her on
her patio, thereby reducing her minimum payment to zero.
- When 10-year-old Kevin Smith of the Bronx refused to turn
off the TV, his father Calbert Smith hurled a kitchen knife at
him, slicing his throat, police said. The father claimed that he
only intended to throw a bag of orange rinds, but that the bag
contained a paring knife. It must have been a hellacious knife,
because Kevin was treated for "multiple stab wounds to the neck."
Television IS such a bad influence, though.
*
Native American Indian students at the University of
Northern Colorado have named their intramural basketball team
"The Fighting Whities" as a protest against a local high school's
use of an Indian-mascot caricature on its team logo. (The high
school team is called the Reds.) "The message is, let's do
something that will let people see the other side of what it's
like to be a mascot," said Solomon Little Owl, director of Native
American Student Services at UNC. The Fighting Whities wear
jerseys that say "Every thang's going to be all white." "It's not
meant to be vicious," said Ray White, a Mohawk American Indian
team member. "It puts people in our shoes, and then we can say,
'Now you know how it is, and now you can make a judgment.'" A
poll of white contributors to The Joe Bob Report revealed shock
and outrage that something very dear to them--their white skin--
would be held up as an object of ridicule and diminished by such
an outrageously racist organization as an intramural basketball
team.
*
Jerry Lee "The Killer" Lewis divorced for the sixth time,
but the succession was orderly.
*
Dr. Robert Atkins, of "Atkins Diet" fame, had a heart
attack. Explain THAT one, California Diet Blowhards.
*
The Food and Drug Administration approved
Botox for cosmetics use as millions made appointments to have their faces
injected with botulinum toxin type A, which smoothes out wrinkles but also
causes the inability to raise your eyebrows, "zombie face,"
headaches, respiratory infections, difficulty pursing the lips, droopy
eyelids, nausea and "a permanent quizzical look." Obviously this
is a bonanza for both Bill Cosby impersonators and extras in Sam Raimi
films. * The Maine legislature voted to change all place
names using the word "squaw" to the word "moose,"
giving you some idea of just how ugly the native women were. *
A British historian claims that the Chinese arrived in America 72 years
before Columbus and sailed around the globe a century before Magellan. The
voyages were made by Zheng He, admiral of the Chinese Navy. His name is
pronounced "Jung Huh," leading to the schoolboy saying "In
Fourteen Twenty-One--Huh?" * James T. Fisher was
found guilty of capital murder in Oklahoma City in 1982 after his own
attorney put him on the stand and grilled him in the manner of "a
police interrogation of a hostile suspect rather than the presentation of a
defense," according to a federal appeals court. During the sentencing
phase, the same attorney--E. Melvin Porter--said exactly nine words in his
client's defense. Asked for his opening statement, he said,
"Waive." While the prosecutor was arguing, he interrupted once to
say, "Your Honor, I object to that." And when the judge asked him
if he had a closing argument, he said, "We waive." Fisher got the
death penalty. The sentence was finally thrown out 20 years later, and
Porter, asked to explain, said, "I believe my personal feeling toward
James Fisher affected my representation of him. At the time, I thought
homosexuals were among the worst people in the world, and I did not like
that aspect of this case." Oklahoma's most famous native son, Will
Rogers, died before Porter was born. * Mississippi became
the first state to declare an official state toy: the teddy bear. The teddy
bear originated a hundred years ago when President Theodore Roosevelt made
a hunting trip to the Mississippi Delta but failed to kill a bear. When he
was offered a captured bear to shoot, he declined. A political cartoonist
popularized Roosevelt's gesture of humaneness, and toy bears were
thereafter renamed "teddy bears." The House approved the new bill
unanimously, and the Senate passed it 50 to 2. The two "nay"
voters were holding out for the Pickering eel. * Employees
at Della's Chicken, a fast-food outlet in St. Leonards, East Sussex,
England, drove away an armed robber by pelting him with drumsticks, which
were deemed more efficient than gizzards. * The state of
Arkansas' American Express cards were suspended for non-payment, with 6,400
state employees finding out about it over a weekend when they tried to
charge expenses in restaurants, hotels and airports. The state's unpaid
bill was $800,000, with $400,000 of that more than four months overdue.
When the governor called the 800 number on the back of the card, he was
told he'd have to speak to a supervisor but that she was "on
break" right now. * "The Color Purple" is
being made into a Broadway musical, to be called "The Color of Purple
Prose." * The Asian longhorned beetle arrived in the
U.S. in 1996 and so far has killed 3,500 trees in New York City. In January
it was discovered to have infested two trees in Central Park, stripping
their bark, devouring their leaves, and leaving them for dead-- while
witnesses did nothing. * A 27-year-old skier
was beaten with his ski pole by four snowboarders who became enraged when
the skier told them they were not equipped to be outside the boundaries of
Vail Mountain resort. The four were being sought by authorities for
investigation of slope rage. * James Oddo, a New York City
council member, introduced a bill requiring minors to get parental consent
before getting any piercings, especially the really icky kinds. *
When Freaky Tah, frontman for The Lost Boyz, was gunned down after the
release of "Legal Drug Money" in 1996, Lost Boyz posse member
Corey Bussey decided the gunman must be a member of Hell Razor Pham, so he
shot and killed Hell Razor Pham posse member Rodrick Padgett in a Queens
night club in 1999. Are you following this? A Queens jury followed it well
enough to send Bussey down for 25 years to life. Word. *
Albert Fentress, the convicted cannibal killer who kidnapped a teenager,
tied him up, molested him, sliced off his genitals, cooked them and ate
them, is being allowed to roam free on weekends, shopping and dining in
malls near his mental health facility on Long Island. There's just
something unsettling about this guy ordering at Olive Garden. *
Flocks of killer sheep have been found on a remote moor in Weardale, County
Durham, England. An ornithologist, Dr. Niall Burton, reports that he was
spying on a family of eight grouse chicks foraging in the heather on
Muggleswick Common when a sheep "ran forward, picked up a chick and
ate it whole." The area is just three miles from where a flock of
sheep reportedly stampeded a woman in 1999 and pushed her over a cliff.
Sheep were previously believed to eat grass only, but carnivorous sheep
have also been spotted by Dr. Bob Furness of Glasgow University, who
witnessed some tern and skua chicks come to a nasty end on Foula in the
Shetland Islands. Now that the sheep have been identified as predators,
many of them have started donning wolves' clothing. *
Butch Patrick, better known as Eddie Munster on "The Munsters,"
is dating Lisa Loring, better known as Wednesday Addams on "The Addams
Family." It gets better. They met 12 years ago through a support group
for child stars. They may be the only couple who could bond by sharing
makeup. * Sam Adams Utopias MMII, the most expensive beer
ever produced, was sold out in three days at $100 per bottle. The beer has
no carbonation, is made to be drunk warm, requires seven years of aging,
and has a 24 per cent alcohol content (48 proof). Only 3,000 bottles were
produced, and prices on Ebay have already gone as high as $330 per bottle.
The Joe Bob Report was stunned to find out that the beer is offered only in
bottles, not cans, as God intended. * Luciano Pavarotti's
Metropolitan Opera career ended with a whimper when he canceled his final
two performances, including a gala that had $1500 ticket prices. Pavarotti
kept the Met guessing up until curtain time, telling them that he was
treating his congestive flu with chicken soup made from a seven-pound
chicken. At 5:15 p.m. on the night of the gala, he announced he was well
enough to sing. By 7:10 he had changed his mind. When Met general manager
Joseph Volpe asked him to come to the theater anyway, if only to apologize
to the audience, he said "I cannot do that." Volpe responded,
"This is a hell of a way to end a beautiful career." Pavarotti
was obviously worried about his voice cracking on high notes, as it did
four years ago when he attempted to sing "Fille du Regiment" at
the Met but walked offstage during the first act after missing several high
C's. In this case the Met had a replacement ready--33-year-old Salvatore
Licitra, who was supposed to make his Met debut in 2004 but was flown in on
the Concorde to substitute for Pavarotti in "Tosca." Licitra had
no chance to rehearse with the orchestra, and he met his costar, Maria
Guleghini, 15 minutes before going on. Guleghini said to him, "I'm
Tosca, you're Cavaradossi, don't worry about the staging, we'll just live
it." And Licitra did, performing to two standing ovations. Pavarotti's
opera career is probably finished. He's 66 years old, has no bookings
anywhere in the world, and is still eating seven-pound chickens.
*
The Goldstein Saga continues. Al Goldstein, 66-year-old
diabetic publisher of Screw, spent six days at the Rikers Island
jail before his lawyers managed to bail him out pending an appeal
of his conviction on five charges of verbally abusing his
secretary. During the six days Goldstein took 14 medications,
cried a lot, hallucinated, lost 11 pounds because he wouldn't
eat, and was afraid to take a shower. He said he plans to sue the
city of New York for continuing to hold him four days after his
bail was posted. The city claims that his paperwork didn't "match
up." Thanks to all the Joe Bob Report readers who joined the
"Free The Goldstein One" campaign, proceeds of which will be used
to buy Al a hooker.
*
Among the officially forbidden practices at the Oakland
Mills High School senior prom in Columbia, Maryland, were "freak
dancing," "grinding," "doggy dancing," "front piggy-backing,"
"hiking up skirts," "hands on the floor" and "any train of people
unless it's a conga line." Chaperones equipped with flashlights
were stationed on the dance floor to illuminate infractions. Any
student caught performing all seven banned dance moves was
expelled from school but given a long-term contract on Janet
Jackson's next tour.
*
The Ohio legislature wants to require all topless bars to
close by 10 p.m., close all day on Sunday, deny admission to
anyone under 21, and create a six-foot buffer zone between the
dancer the tipper--except that there won't be any tipping,
because they also want to outlaw direct tipping. And we used to like
Cleveland.
*
Scenes from our secure republic:
- The American Airlines terminal at La Guardia Airport was
evacuated after passengers complained about irritation to their
eyes and throats. The police department's crack hazardous
materials team removed three ounces of . . . nail polish remover.
It had apparently been left behind by a delegation of clumsy but
well-groomed Alabama realtors.
- All the banks in the District of Columbia were shut down
after police received a bomb threat--from a 13-year-old boy in
the Netherlands. It's apparently the same boy who became bored
with standing around with his finger in a dike.
- Elwood Menear, a US Airways pilot with a spotless 19-year
flying record, was arrested at a security checkpoint in
Philadelphia when he was being searched for weapons and pointed
out to the searcher that it wouldn't matter whether he had
weapons or not because he was the pilot of the plane. The FBI is
considering charging him with multiple counts of saying something
truthful.
- Business executive Michael Lasseter ran around a security
checkpoint at Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport and was
immediately arrested. The airport was closed for three hours,
though, because . . . uh . . . he might break out of his
handcuffs, overpower local jail guards, rush back to the airport
and do it again?
- Enaas Sansour, a 17-year-old Muslim virgin whose hair is
not supposed to be seen before her wedding night, was required to
remove her head scarf by a male security screener at Baltimore-
Washington International Airport even though the metal detector
had not sounded. She was forced to remove it in front of quite a
few men, none of whom she intends to marry. So much for that tradition.
- Representative John Dingell of Michigan was asked to drop
his pants in Reagan National Airport so a security screener could
check his artificial hip joint with a wand. As we all know, the
FBI is notoriously skittish about hippies.
- Federal prosecutors arrested 356 people on charges of
supplying false information on applications to obtain jobs at
airports. If you're gonna lie about your background, please apply
at the nuclear plant instead.
- The Justice Department entered the names and descriptions
of 6,000 men from Muslim and Middle Eastern countries into its
database in an effort to find and deport "abscondees," even
though those 6,000 represent only 2 per cent of the "abscondee"
problem. It's not profiling, they said, because the other 98 per
cent are Mexicans.
- Joe Bob Briggs had a 50-cent cigar-cutter seized by
vigilant security personnel at Portland International, even
though cigar-cutters are specifically designed to make it
impossible to cut anything except a cigar. Okay, nobody move or
else I'll mutilate this Cohiba.
- An Orlando-bound US Airways flight was ordered to turn
around and return to the Philadelphia airport so that six Middle
Eastern passengers could be questioned. Their crime: buying one-
way tickets with cash. We all know that the total Disney World
experience almost demands credit cards.
- A Pakistani musical group, trying to go from Washington to
Los Angeles, was kicked off three separate flights in a two-day
period. Flight attendants reported that the men were sweating,
acting nervous and making frequent trips to the restroom.
Terrorists, of course, have notoriously small bladders.
- Four Saudi men travelling from Houston to Washington were
pulled off their flight and held for questioning. They said they
were diplomats who met with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in
Crawford, Texas, and were on their way back to Washington, but
the real truth came out later: they were Saudi diplomats who met
with Crown Prince Abdullah and President Bush. You see how sneaky
these guys can be?
- Alia Kate, a 16-year-old Milwaukee high school student,
was among 20 members of the Peace Action Milwaukee group who were
unable to attend the demonstration against U.S. aid for Colombia
in Washington, D.C., because they were all prevented from flying
by Milwaukee County sheriff's deputies and informed that they
were on a "No Fly Watch List" supplied by the FBI. Also detained
was Father Bill Brennan of Milwaukee's St. Patrick's Church, who
was active in the ongoing protest against training of Latin
American soldiers at Fort Benning, Georgia. Most of the 20
detainees got a flight out the next morning, after it was too
late to attend most of the events in Washington, causing a
sheriff's spokesman to say "The system did work." The peace
protesters were never told why they were detained and questioned,
but some of them were believed to be wearing suspicious
Birkenstocks.
- Terminal D at New York's La Guardia Airport was shut down
for 90 minutes after a passenger on a stretcher was cleared by
security, but the paramedics accompanying him were not. Police
swarmed the terminal with bomb-sniffing dogs and a fire truck,
but nothing suspicious was found and only 30 planes were
affected. A small price to pay for eternal vigilance against
ambulance attendants who might have weapons concealed in their
stethoscopes.
- After weeks of debate, the FAA lifted the airport security
ban on tweezers and nail clippers, reasoning that rock beats
scissors.
*
Mike Tyson says he regrets choosing the island of Maui as
the training site for his June 8 fight against Lennox Lewis,
because the island has no topless bars. It takes a stripper to
tame The Ripper.
*
Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie, died in Los Angeles at
the age of 85, and was placed in the only accessory Barbie does not
have--a casket.
*
Boxing promoter Don King was slapped with a sexual
harassment lawsuit filed by medical technician Deborah Klimo, who
claims that, while she was administering King's chest X-ray at
the Cleveland Clinic, he said "Oh Debbie, would I like to have
some of that" and "Can I take you to Florida with me?" and
(moaning) "I need it!" Klimo is suing for mental anguish, trauma
and humiliation, aggravated by King's hair looking better on him
than hers does on her.
*
Emmett Rufus Eddy, better known as the Reverend E. Slave,
dressed up in a black Santa suit, carried an extension ladder
onto the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol, used the ladder
to climb a flagpole, burned the Confederate battle flag, and
refused to come down. Officers with the Bureau of Protective
Services tried to use pepper spray on him, but the spray fell
back into the officers' eyes. When he was finally arrested, he
shouted at onlookers not to replace the burned flag, but the
South Carolina Betsy Ross had already prepared a spare symbol of
oppression, racism and really cool bars and stars.
*
Al Goldstein, the 66-year-old publisher of Screw magazine
recently convicted on six counts of verbal harassment of his
secretary, dressed up in old-fashioned black-and-white prison
stripes for his sentencing hearing before Criminal Court Judge
Danny K. Chun of Brooklyn. Arguing that he was "a medical time
bomb" suffering from diabetes, hypertension and sleep apnea and
should therefore be spared jail time, he was nevertheless given
60 days in the slammer and three years' probation. Okay, all
together now: Free Al! Free Al! Free the Goldstein One!
*
An Egyptian was arrested by Lancaster, Pennsylvania, police
and held without bail on a fake-ID charge because he was carrying
documents telling how to deal with authorities if stopped for
questioning. Obviously, the guy was trying to become a smarty-
pants and think he had actual rights.
*
Chewing gum makes people smarter, according to Andrew
Scholey of the University of Northumbria, who had people chew gum
for three minutes before taking various memory tests. It still,
however, makes you look like a redneck.
*
Bad-boy Texas Rangers pitcher John Rocker will play a
homicidal maniac in a slasher flick called "The Greenskeeper."
Rocker landed the title role as a teenager-killing looney who
crashes a birthday part at a country club, dressed as a
greenskeeper and armed with golf course tools. Rocker prepared
for the part by riding the 7 train to Shea Stadium.
*
Seconds after being convicted of murder, Nicholas Brunetti
delivered a roundhouse right to the face of his lawyer, Vito
Castignoli, and gave him a black eye. Connecticut State Judge
William Holden found Brunetti in contempt and ordered six months
prison time tacked onto his eventual sentence. But now
Connecticut legislators are now considering legalizing the face-
bashing of the losing lawyer in all criminal proceedings.
*
Giving in to the Federal Trade Commission, Wonder Bread
agreed to stop using an ad featuring "Professor Wonder," who said
calcium improves children's minds and that Wonder Bread was a
good source of calcium. The company's new ad campaign is expected
to emphasize how easily Wonder Bread can be packed into a tight
snowball shape for easier lunch-pail packing.
*
Researchers at McGill University in Montreal made alcoholic
drinks available to 1,000 green vervet monkeys and studied their
behavior. The vast majority--65 per cent--became "social
drinkers" who only drank when other monkeys were around,
sometimes adding fruit juice to their drinks. (Not making it up.)
Fifteen per cent drank heavily, using nothing in their drinks or
just water. Another 15 per cent didn't drink at all. And 5 per
cent of the monkeys were classified as "seriously abusive binge
drinkers" who would get drunk, start fights and pass out. One
monkey drank heavily but showed no outward signs of drunkenness.
He would, however, request "Freebird."
*
Sony Pictures admitted putting fake reviews in its
advertising for "A Knight's Tale" as well as producing television
commercials in which Sony employees posed as moviegoers praising
Sony films. The rave review, attributed to David Manning of The
Ridgefield Press in Connecticut, was actually the name of the son
of a Ridgefield selectman, Sue Manning, who gave Sony permission
to use her son's name. He thought the movie was really cool,
though.
*
A Dutchman, angry that electronic giant Phillips failed to
live up to its promises of wide-screen television quality, took
18 hostages in Amsterdam's Rembrandt Tower, held them for seven
hours, then killed himself. Police went to the man's apartment
later and adjusted the vertical hold.
*
Alec Baldwin closed the guest book on his website because it
was flooded with "offensive material" and he was unable to verify
the identities of the emailers. About 200,000 of them were signed
simply "Kim B."
*
Connie Francis is suing Universal Records for $45 million
for licensing her songs to "vile pornographic" movies. In
"Jawbreaker," her song "Lollipop Lips" is used while a woman
performs a sex act on a young man. In "Postcards from America,"
two of her songs are used while a male prostitute picks up johns.
The 62-year-old singer also claims that the record label tricked
her into signing new deals on terrible terms while she was going
through bouts of mental illness. So who's sorry now?
*
Oprah Winfrey, the woman who owns her own vowel, has given
notice that her last broadcast will be . . . in 2006. That will
give her time to clean out her wardrobe closet.
*
Eighty-one Indian bookies were hauled off to
jail for taking bets on the likelihood of religious riots breaking out in
Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan. Odds ranged from 1-to-4 to 1-to-6, with a
special Trifecta parlay card for people who wanted to guess the expected
number of dead and pick the favored riot tool--bomb, gunfire, stones, or
booby-trapped burros. * Whoopi Goldberg will no longer be
the center square on "Hollywood Squares," leaving her free to
follow in the footsteps of Paul Linde and do regional theater while
drinking herself into oblivion. * Shirley Jones, star of
"Oklahoma," "The Music Man," "The Partridge
Family" and "Carousel," and mother of Shaun, Patrick and
Ryan Cassidy, filed for divorce from her husband of 24 years, Marty Ingels,
citing "irreconcilable differences." Specifically, he kept making
that face. * "Corey vs. Corey," a new ABC game
show starring Corey Feldman and Corey Haim, was put on hold when Haim went
into drug rehab. (We're shocked.) This is the latest blow to the Coreys,
who collaborated on a sitcom pilot called "The Coreys" that
wasn't picked up. Rumors that Haim would be replaced by Professor Irwin
Corey were unconfirmed at press time. * Maria Parlavecchio,
wife of New York mobster Antonino Parlavecchio, was busted for
sperm-smuggling at the Allenwood Federal Prison. Now that she's been
sentenced to one year's probation, she wants to keep the sperm, but a judge
has ordered it destroyed, writing: "To permit Mrs. Parlavecchio to
recover the illegally obtained seminal fluids would constitute judicial
approval of her criminal activities and reward her for her crime."
Five other New York mobsters have fathered children while detained at
Allenwood, so this is a huge blow to Maria, who's desperate to get pregnant
before her biological clock maxes out. Meanwhile, she's told Antonino not
to waste any. * Nineteen years after it was stolen, New
York City cops recovered the bust of Harry Houdini that sits atop his grave
monument in Machpelah Cemetery in Cypress Hills, Queens. The gravesite is a
popular pilgrimage for Houdini fans trying to access coded messages he left
for those he hoped to contact from the beyond. Charged with possession of
stolen property was Stephen Chotowicky of New Hyde Park, Long Island. His
defense: the bust wasn't really missing since 1983, it was Houdini messing
with our heads. And with his. * Iran banned Barbie as
"un-Islamic" in 1996, but the dolls are still so popular with
Iranian girls that the government is introducing its own
dolls, Sara and Dara, dressed in traditional Iranian clothing. Unlike
Barbie, Sara and Dara cannot be undressed. Like Barbie, they can
be beheaded. * The Washington state senate passed a law
against bullies in the schools, requiring all school districts to enforce
policies regarding harassment and intimidation by students. Dad's
traditional solution to bullying--taking the kid down to the Boys Club and
teaching him to box--will now be replaced by taking him down to the
district courthouse and teaching him to litigate that big bully until he's
screaming "Uncle." * Dow Corning, which stopped
making silicone breast implants, announced it will sell silicone products
over the Internet. They make highly unusual decorative paperweights. *
Loggers in Oregon threatened to sue the federal government unless it
removes the protected status of the marbled murrelet and the spotted owl.
Reacting to the threat, the murrelet lost its marbles and the owl's spots
were diagnosed as pre-cancerous. * A Bulgarian Orthodox
priest denounced the Harry Potter books from his pulpit, saying they
promote witchcraft and make children "interested in evil deeds."
He then adjusted his pointy black hat and swept out of the room in his
flowing black cloak. * Prince Philip, famous for his
social gaffes, was touring Australia when he asked an Aborigine businessman
and tribal leader, "Do you still throw spears at each other?"
This is one of his best ones since 1986, when he visited China and told
British students there, "If you stay here much longer, you'll be
slitty- eyed." Next month the prince will be touring Harlem in black
face. * Russia threatened to ban American chicken imports.
"Russia is not a garbage dump for poor quality food," said
Agriculture Minister Aleksei V. Gordeyev, referring to poultry from the
U.S. that is full of antibiotics, hormones and preservatives. In 2001
Russians consumed one million tons of U.S. chicken, or 8 per cent of all
American production, and 61 per cent of all chicken consumed in Russia.
Russians have long complained about the bland taste of "Bush
legs," as they call them, and a recent TV commentator noted,
"Take the American chicken-leg quarter, roast it, and what do you have
left? Only the skin and bone. The moisture comes out, but there's no meat
there. The foreign birds are vaccinated against 12 diseases, and we don't
know what they're feeding the birds." Unfortunately, we
don't know what they're feeding them either, but we stopped caring about,
oh, 1956. * The producers of "Off Centre," a new
sitcom on the WB network, received a memo from the network's Broadcast
Standards Acceptability Department telling them to stop using references to
the male member. Chris and Pault Weitz, the brother team that created
"American Pie," were scolded for using the word "penis"
on 11 different pages of a single script. "It is essential to reduce
and/or modify the significant number of uses of 'penis,' 'testicles,'
'foreskin' as well as euphemisms for the same, such as 'your thingie,' the
memo said. Also blue-penciled were "covered wagon,"
"unit," "turtleneck," "little fella,"
"anteater," "diddy," "cloaking device" and
"my pig is still snuggly, wrapped in his doughy blanket." The
humorless network censors obviously don't know dick. *
Venice continues to sink into the Adriatic Sea, with about 50 floods a year
now, compared to 20 a hundred years ago, so city fathers have decided to
build three floodgates. The sinking was first noticed in the year 589, so
they just needed some time to think about what to do. *
Richard Bizarro could get up to 20 years in prison for going to the
bathroom less than 30 minutes before his Delta flight landed in Salt Lake
City. (He missed the potty deadline by five minutes.) Two undercover air
marshalls, alert to the tardy-toilet infraction, ordered all passengers to
put their hands on their heads for the rest of the flight. When the plane
landed, Bizarro was arrested and jailed. If they're gonna take it this
seriously, shouldn't they at least pass out those little catheter baggies
that astronauts use? * In a few more decades there may not
be any more orioles in Baltimore, according to a new study by the National
Wildlife Federation and the American Bird Conservancy. Global warming is
driving the range of orioles farther and farther north, threatening to wipe
out the Maryland state bird as well as the state birds of Iowa and
Washington (goldfinch), California (California quail), Massachusetts
(chickadee), and Georgia (brown thrasher). The state bird of Nevada, the
liver-skinned slot jockey, is expected to survive.*
Charles Manson was considered for parole for
the 10th time, but hell has not yet frozen over. *Kathie Lee Gifford will
star in "Thumbs," a new Broadway play about an actress who
murders her husband--a kind fate compared to what happened to Frank. *
Researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine report
that cloned mice get fat in adulthood, raising the specter that attempting
to clone, say, Janet Jackson could result in Oprah Winfrey, while a cloned
Kevin Bacon could eventually resemble John Madden. The advantage is that
it would replace "glandular problems" as the most overused
excuse for obesity, as in, "Don't be mean to her. She's cloned."
* Wal-Mart surpassed Exxon Mobil in sales, becoming the world's largest
company, and celebrated by announcing new 250- pound discount boxes of
Beanee Weenies. * Forty breast-feeding moms demonstrated in front of
Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, N.Y., in support of area artist
Shawn Dell Joyce, whose painting was banished from the airport's community
art exhibition after 15 people complained about her depiction of a woman's
breast covered by a baby's mouth. A spokeswoman for the airport said the
painting made some patrons uncomfortable, but the 40 mammary fans made
them even more
uncomfortable the next day, waving photographs of breasts and babies,
unzipping their jackets and breast-feeding in public. We here at the Joe
Bob Report support the rights of women all over the world to
flop-and-feed. * Thomas Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza, wants to
erect a 250-foot crucifix and a 40-foot Jesus on the campus of Ave Maria
College, which he founded in Ypsilanti but is planning to move to Ann
Arbor Township, Mich., where he will turn it into a university to go along
with the church, Catholic school, Catholic day-care center, two convents,
two Catholic radio stations, a foreign mission, and a Catholic newspaper
that he's already located there. The town of 5,000 is not
exactly happy with the idea of becoming all Catholic, all the time, but
since Monaghan is the largest landowner, there's not much they can do
except reject his proposal for the 25-story cross, which, in town-
planning terms, is like an anchovy. * Japan is sharpening its harpoons,
announcing it will double the number of whales it harvests this year in
the North Pacific-- for "scientific research," of course. Japan
plans to kill 50 minke whales and 50 sei whales on top of the 100 minkes
it has already been killing annually, and in addition to the 440 minke
whales it kills in Antarctic waters each year. Japan is the only country
not participating in the international whaling moratorium, claiming that
they take whales for dissection and scientific study, and the meat shows
up in supermarkets only as an unrelated event--to avoid wasting it. And
let's face it, there's nothing like a good whale roast on those lazy
summer nights. * The World Wrestling Federation appealed a London court
decision denying it the right to use the initials "WWF" on its
logo. Worldwide rights to "WWF" belong to the World Wildlife
Fund, which registered its logo in 1961, said the court. The World
Wrestling Federation's appeal was denied, leaving only one last chance: a
three-fall panda death-cage match. * Two hundred fifty million monarch
butterflies froze to death and dropped into foot-high piles in the
mountains of central Mexico during a winter storm. Cleanup crews will work
around the clock so that second-graders aren't encouraged to cheat by
using pre-mounted specimens. * Heinz announced a new frozen-food product
called "Funky Fries," including "radical blue" fries,
chocolate-flavored fries, cinnamon-and-sugar "Cinna-Sticks
Fries," and fries that make a crunching sound when you bite into
them. Combined with last year's new product, Heinz multi-colored ketchup,
you can now gross out your sister before you start chewing.
* Six investment bankers working for Barclays Capital ran up a bar tab of
$63,000 at the London restaurant Petrus. They started off with a champagne
toast--six glasses for $80. Then they decided to try a few wines,
beginning modestly, with a $2,000 bottle of 1984 Montrachet, the world's
greatest dry white wine. Now they set their sights higher, asking for a
bottle of 1945 Chateau Petrus, the most expensive Bordeaux in the world,
at $16,500. The year 1945 tasted so good, they decided to try the 1946
vintage, which sells for a mere $13,400 per bottle. And what the heck,
given their post-war celebration, they went ahead and tried the 1947, at
$17,500. At some point in the evening they also consumed two bottles of
Kronenbourg beer ($10), ten bottles of water ($50), one pack of cigarettes
($7) and one glass of juice ($1). And what better way to top off the
celebration than with a 100-year-old bottle of Chateau d'Yquem dessert
wine? Prince: $13,100. News accounts don't say whether they tipped the
waitstaff the customary 20 per cent--or about $12,500--but we do know that
five of the six bankers tried to secretly write off the bacchanalia on
their expense accounts. Barclays was not amused. Only one banker remains.
No doubt he was the guy who ordered the beer. * The University of
Tennessee shut down the Kappa Alpha fraternity after finding out about its
weekly boxing matches in which frat memembers recruited homeless men,
"liquored them up, gave them large boxing gloves and let them go to
town," according to the student newspaper. KA has previously been in
trouble for cockfighting, gambling, and the weekly visit by a stripper.
Thank God they didn't find the keg. * Convicted pot dealer Ed Forchion,
better known as New Jersey Weedman, has filed a petition to have his name
legally changed to NJWEEDMAN.COM. Forchion, who has battled to legalize
marijuana for years by lighting up joints in courts, congressional offices
and the State Senate chambers, is currently confined to Riverfront State
Prison, where he continues to put out comic books starring himself as
"NJ Weedman." He was convicted in 1997 of possession of 25
pounds of pot that he contends was meant for ill people and Rastafarians.
His quest to change his name is his effort, he says, to sell more copies
of his autobiography, but the Camden County Prosecutor is opposing his
petition. "The petitioner's motive is clearly criminal," writes
Assistant Prosecutor Kathleen Higgins, "in that its purpose is
clearly to enhance his business of selling marijuana." Forchion
counters that he intends to use his new name as "an advertising
gimmick for my books, not as a criminal venture." He further adds
that he frequently forgets his name. * Jack Weigand of Mountaintop, Pa.,
ordered a Dell Inspiron 4100 notebook computer that never showed up on the
promised delivery date. When he called to find out what the problem was,
he was told that Dell had decided not to sell it to him. The
reason: they didn't like the name of his company (Weigand Combat
Handguns). Weigand, who has been called a "Renaissance gunsmith"
by American Handgunner magazine, is the current president of the American
Pistolsmiths Guild and is known for crafting custom revolvers. But Dell
claimed that a shipment to Weigand was prohibited by law. (They didn't
specify what law.) Weigand, taken aback, mentioned what happened on his
website, and within hours he was swamped with email support. Once the
story broke, Dell suddenly changed gears. "There was an unfortunate
series of events," said Dell spokeswoman Cathie Hargett. "We
should have, when the name of his company triggered a red flag, followed
up with him immediately to ensure that his order was not in violation of
U.S. export rules. Knowing what we know about him now, we know that is not
the case." (She didn't explain just exactly what export rules apply
to a shipment that's not, uh, exported.) Dell then offered
to send Weigand a free Inspiron 4100, but the gunsmith wouldn't take it,
saying he didn't want people to think he'd caused trouble just to save
money. So, Dude, he's not gettin' a Dell. * Wrestling coach Aron Bright
was suspended by the school board of Avon, Indiana, for biting the head
off a live sparrow in front of team members. Despite a spirited defense of
the coach by athletes and their parents, who said he was just having a
good time during a team get-together at his farmhouse and did it on a
dare, the board apparently regarded it as an animal-rights issue.
"It's a sparrow, big deal!" said Bright. The coach, who owns 19
chickens, three calves, a pig, a dog and two goats, says he frequently
catches sparrows, starlings and pigeons--the farm pests that crap in the
hog feed--and gives them to the farm's cats. Next up for the school board:
disciplinary action against a 22-year-old science teacher who crunched a
cockroach in her kitchen in plain view of witnesses.
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