Friday, May 27, 2005

The partial-birth abortion known as KPTV's 10 o'clock "news" show again interrupted its Top Story with "Breaking News." The guy who climbed a crane in Georgia two days ago and stayed up there was "just" (I have no idea how long before the start of the "news" show this actually happened) shot with a Taser. So much for "First, Live, Local," huh?

OK, with that vital info out of the way, we're back to our Top Story. Girl "reporter" Jamie Wilson is out at Riverside Park where this year's installment of an annual festival will be held next week. In advance of that, the cops are issuing month-long bans to anyone found drinking, doing drugs or engaging in other socially-unacceptable activity in the park. Jamie cleverly employed a beer bottle as her prop for this story. She also informed us that "most Portlanders agree with the ban." Oh, I'm absolutely CERTAIN that Jamie went door to door, surveying Portland residents about this. I mean, a REPORTER wouldn't just pull a fake statistic out of her ass, would she? No siree Bob.

Fox 12's Most Wanted tonight was the same robbery suspect from the other day. This time around, though, we were told his name. It's attention to detail like that that's made KPTV the "news" show more ADD sufferers turn to.

Remember that story from the other night about ID theft at the Red Roof Inn? KPTV milked that dead cow once more by telling us that Jonathan and Jessica Gibson were victims of that crime. They'll never leave personal stuff in their car again now that KPTV has shown them the error of their ways.

A sex offender named Bishop Hamilton was released, having apparantly paid his debt to society. It's not that KPTV's policy is to attempt to frighten their viewers each and every night by implying that violent criminals are roaming every highway, byway, boulevard and street 24/7. Nope, it just looks incredibly like that.

Speaking of frightening the proletariat, it's time for Meth Watch! 2 people were caught in a drug bust. And just to show you that there's no limit to how far KPTV will go to gather "news" designed to make the middle class rush to Home Depot to buy more door locks, we were told about a routine traffic stop in Coos Bay (not exactly in the Portland Metro) which resulted in the cops finding drugs hidden in a fake car battery.

Well, it's the start of the Summer Season, so we're going to get an endless string of stories about contaminated water over the next several weeks, the better to frighten those who just want to cool off. Pity the poor Church of Christ members who won't be enjoying Camp Yamhill for the next few days because E. coli was found there. This just in: prayer is apparantly not an instant cure for diarrhea and cramps.

Hey, speaking of water, the ban on drinking H2O in Woodburn has been lifted. You may gargle with abandon once more, Woodburnians!

Next we got to hear a 911 call about a drowning kid. The rug rat's fine after some TLC from a rescue worker.

If you want to do some weekend camping in the forest, you need to get a pass. And now you know.

We couldn't have a holiday weekend without Pump Patrol. Gas is averaging $2.33/gallon in the Portland area.

There was a deadly accident in Tillamook when a woman driver drifted across the center line and proved the old axiom "A lumber truck can flatten you like a bug."

For the second time this week, a drunk driver went the wrong way on I-5. This appears to be the Wacky New Fad of the year. Kids today, huh?

Some sadistic SOB hung an eight-month-old puppy from a tree in the owners' backyard in Gresham. The family was understandably weepy over the loss of their pet.

Critical Mass, a radical group of bike riders (hey, it's Portland, dude!) took their monthly cruise around the Rose City. Unlike some other times, though, they didn't screw up traffic too badly.

Our panty thief was back. He's got a new lawyer. There's a rumor that his old lawyer resigned the other day because Panty Boy thought he was "conspiring against" him.

There was a fire in an adult foster care facility in Portland.

We got some stats about the results so far of that truck safety "crackdown." Sounded to me like they've hassled a LOT of truckers for little result, but hey, if it saves one life... That, by the way, was sarcasm (or "snark" as you young folks say).

Hmm, I wonder what happened in the Northwest Tonight. Not much, it seems. There was a brush fire in Washington state, a school coach in Oregon was arrested for sexual abuse and 11 local wineries are holding "seminars" which seemed to me to be an attempt to put an "educational" veneer on an attempt to get Yuppies to buy more vino. And that was everything newsworthy that happened in a geographically significant portion of the United States today.

Before our first commercial break, we got a technical snafu to chuckle at when the weather guy's microphone wasn't turned on as he tried to promo his upcoming forecast.

Back from the break, we were told that closing arguments in the Michael Jackson trial would be next week.

Then we found out how to stop unwanted credit card solicitations courtesy of "KPTV's Laura Mane" (sp?). At the end of her taped piece, however, she identified herself as "Laura Mane, Fox News" which isn't exactly the same thing. Actually, it isn't the same thing at all. She works for Fox News Channel, not KPTV, if you didn't figure that out on your own.

Commercial break.

"Tracking Teens" This was yet another in an endless series of stories on KPTV's "news" show advocating the notion that spying on everyone at all times will make the world a better, safer place (how has civilization lasted this long without Universal Surveillance?) "Souped-up" cell phones report to parents on how fast a teen driver is going and in which direction he/she is travelling. Let's just all line up to get the Homeland Security-approved tracking chips implanted under our skin and get it over with, already.

Speaking of computer chips, Intel has introduced the new Pentium D. I guess they've stopped using numbers for their products.

OMSI is hosting a show about The Science Behind Illusion which actually sounded interesting to me and made me want to see it.

I don't usually bother to talk about the KPTV weather forecast because it's nothing special but this was pretty funny. The fill-in Weather Weasel said that something-or-other was "subtle yet pronounced." I can't say exactly what exactly it was because our cable was having an intermittent problem with static, but I do know that there is NO context in which that phrase can make sense in the English language. Hey, Weather Boy, look "antonym" up in your dictionary when you get a free moment, OK?

Commercial break

Ah, smell that? It's the Final Cut:

*There was a runaway truck in Manayunk, PA (a suburb of Philly).
*The Crane Standoff in Atlanta is over thanks to Mr. Taser. (same story as at the top of the show)
*A city block went up in flames in Minnesota.
*The Runaway Bride (TM) was issued a warrant in Georgia. About friggin' time!
*There was a fatal Prom Night Accident in California.
*Racial tension has broken out again at a Los Angeles high school.
*Some desperately delusional people see Jesus in a window pane in Texas.
*Some nuns have been scammed out of $3 million in Lousiana. Now that's a "Vow of Poverty" I could sign up for!
*The parental units of some quadruplets, quintuplets, whatever, want to sell ad space on their kids' strollers. God speed, you child-whoring bastards!
*Some puppies were rescued from a dumpster, I think, in San Diego. (Sorry, I just can't write fast enough to get every detail of each of the six million stories KPTV crams into their "news" show.)

Hey, there's that wacky Breaking News logo again! Not only was this not what I would call "Breaking News" but it was barely worth talking about at all. A drunk driver hit one of those big electric signs you see on the highway that tell you about a lane being closed ahead. Seriously, this was worth sending a "reporter" out to cover?

Back to the Final Cut:

*"Reporter" Dave Wilson was at the Mobile Newsroom to tell us that some guy has been robbing banks lately (which they had already told us earlier in the week). Two things made this story notable. First was the clothes hangar that could be seen hooked on the open door of the news van (which I suspect was parked in KPTV's driveway as there was no particular place it needed to be for this story). I figure Dave threw on his jacket right before going on-air and stuck the hangar there to use as soon as he got off.

Second was the completely-unrelated-to-the-story-in-any-perceptible-way woman-on-the-street comment: "I don't know why he would rob a bank!" Um, because that's where the money is?

*Wow, turns out that Viagra can cause blindness. [Insert your own "Just 'til I need glasses!" punchline here] There have been 38 verified cases of men who used anti-limpness drugs losing their "periphrial" vision, as anchorman Wayne Garcia pronounced it. You'll be happy to know that this only amounts to one case of vision problems (which, by the way, are NOT known as "going cockeyed," wiseguy) for every 750,000 users of the drugs.
*Hooters Air is expanding to offer flights to Vegas soon. Make your own joke here. I'm getting typing fatigue.
*They pushed that stupid overly-complicated contest to win a trip to Disneyland again.

Hollywood Buzz (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Final Cut):

*Green Acres' Eddie Albert is dead at 99. Arnold Ziffel will deliver the eulogy.
*This Just In! Angelina Jolie did NOT sleep with her co-star Brad Pitt. Her Dad cheated on her Mom so Angelina knows the pain associated with getting some on the side and would never engage in that behavior. In your face, you moral inferior!
*The mostly-forgotten TV show "Moonlighting" will soon be out on DVD. Upon hearing of this news, the Earth stopped turning on its axis.

WHAT KPTV DIDN'T TELL YOU ABOUT TONIGHT (a sampling):

Oh, you know the deal by now, right? They fill an hour of "news" show with total crap designed to scare you on a nightly basis and don't bother with anything that could actually affect your life. I can't tell you, for example, the last time I saw or heard anything about the mayor of Portland on their show. Throw a heavy object through your TV screen and go have a happy holiday weekend with your loved ones.