Thursday, June 9, 2005

With more (implied) gore than all the Freddy Krueger movies combined, it's the KPTV 10 o'clock "news" show!

Our Top Story:

Wait! The Top Story is interrupted by BREAKING NEWS. Cops in Tigard are on the lookout for a guy who attempted to rape a woman in a church. I've noticed that basically anything that happens after the show's opening has been recorded is "breaking news" even if it happened hours earlier. It appears to me that the show's opening is done by 5 pm or so, so breaking news doesn't really mean what it does in other news operations.

Back to our Top Story. "Reporter" Jamie Wilson is in Vancouver, Washington to tell us about a guy hanging around a couple of school campuses. He hasn't actually done anything, other than hanging around. He's been wearing a Spiderman costume, though, which is kind of weird, I guess.

In tonight's installment of Fox 12's Most Wanted, a guy who molested someone three years ago in Hillsboro was caught. Also: remember that heist of a lot of furniture from a week or so ago? Well, the cops have a couple of suspects under arrest. They also found some of the missing stuff in storage units. Some is still missing.

A Wells Fargo bank in Tigard was robbed.

Creepy bastard Ed Boss is still on the loose.

A bus driver was charged with abusing a disabled woman multiple times. It seems he was taking her in his bus into a wooded area; a local woman noticed that the bus was in an odd spot on more than one occasion. She actually blocked him with another vehicle and told him, in answer to his question, that yes, she would shoot him, if he tried to get away.

An escapee got himself impaled on a pointy-topped fence. I thought it was an escapee from a prison but it may have been a juvie in a detention center. I didn't hear the details because my sister-in-law was politely asking me if I'd like some Jell-O at the time. Sorry for living in the real world, Daddy-O!

That lame-ass Dad who beat his daughter with a tree branch has a hearing scheduled. My advice: don't use "Hey, she started it!" as a defense.

An 80 year-old man drove his car into a bank. Let me guess: he confused the gas and brake pedals.

A family dog barked repeatedly, alerting his stupid family to the fact that their 2 year-old son had fallen into a pond. CPR kept the kid from dying. If I was a family court judge, I'd give custody of the boy to the dog!

Break.

"Reporter" David Freitas told us about a fire in Longview, Washington which killed a father of three. Most of the story was composed of relatives of the deceased crying and talking about missing him. Certainly the fire and the death are news, but showing the relatives like that is just exploitation!

BREAKING NEWS again! The Tigard cops are still searching for the creep who assaulted and tried to rape the lady at the Korean Baptist Church. We now have the asshole's name: Denzil Calloway. Actually, "we" probably had that information earlier, but KPTV wanted to milk this story by dribbling out the information over the course of the hour. Just my guess.

Kristopher Korsakas was released from prison. Then he was quickly rearrested. Duh.

The Hillsboro PD busted two people for running a meth house.

The Rose Festival Parade is on Saturday. The Rose Cup Race(s) is/are on Saturday and Sunday.

Portland is America's Number 5 Funnest [sic] City, based on what, I have no idea. Dallas is Numero Uno, Seattle is Number 24. In your face, Space Needle!

Break.

Yay, it's Dirty Dining Time! Hey, this is a gyp! Kerri Tomlinson isn't showing us any hidden camera footage of tacos and soup. Tonight we were told that how you cool hot food is important. If it isn't done right, it can make a subsequent eater of same sick. This isn't the Dirty Dining I know and love! You call this tabloid journalism??? Where's the camera shoved in the face of the manager whose restaurant failed a health inspection?

Break.

ATV's are unsafe! Unsafe at any speed even, as Ralph Nader might have said, if they had ATV's instead of Chevrolet Corvairs back in the early 60's. They didn't, though, and this isn't the 60's, you hippie, so KPTV had to tell us that ATV's can be dangerous. So, wear a helmet, or something.

War On Terror

*Remember those four alleged Al Qaeda-connected men, one of whom allegedly asked his Middle East trainers to send him to America's West Coast, not for the surfing, but so he could blow up hospitals and stuff? Well, for reasons I don't understand, there are now 5 of them and they're under arrest.

*I'm not kidding when I say that sometimes it's hard to tell if KPTV intends for a story to be part of one of their "features," like War On Terror. I guess this story was supposed to be part of W.O.T. but I wouldn't swear to that under oath. Anyway, the GAO says that there's a lot of waste in defense spending. They also said that, on cloudless days, the sky is blue. At times, the government is actually buying stuff that it is simultaneously selling as surplus. Yo, left hand! You might want to check out what Mr. Right Hand is doing.

Weather. Break.

Gather 'round, children. It's Final Cut time:

*A man beat a video store clerk with a rock. People think this is a bad thing to do.
*A New Hampshire man was charged with child porn violations. "They" claim that he tried to have sex with his 2 year-old granddaughter. Um, all they could come up with was "kiddie porn" for this (alleged) bastard??
*A corpse was stolen in Michigan for alleged use in an insurance scam.
*Young, attractive, white woman from Alabama Natalee Holloway is still missing in Aruba. The local cops have made some new arrests. Oh, this story was brought to us by "KPTV's Rick Leventhal." Five bucks says his paychecks have "Fox News Channel" on them. Any takers?
*There was a highway shooting in Hawthorne, California which backed up traffic for miles. Big whoop. Three raindrops will back up traffic for miles in Southern Calli.
*A small plane crashed near Houston, Texas.
*In a change of pace from the rash of bee stories we've been getting lately, a black lady in Raleigh, North Carolina is living in a house infested with millions of termites.
*A little bear was loose in Tucson.
*A deer ran into a story in Indianapolis.

World Tonight

*The cops in Hidalgo, Mexico made a big coke bust.
*A train exploded in France.

I guess that song "It's A Small World, After All" is right 'cause if it was a BIG world, more IMPORTANT stuff would have happened in the past 24 hours, right?

Hey, here's that BREAKING NEWS graphic again! Same story about an attempted rape of a church lady, with no new details.

Back to the mundane, non-breaking Final Cut stuff. David Freitas is in the KPTV "news" van in Vancouver, holding up his keyring to illustrate a story about car thieves who steal cars by using master keys for them. I have a joke about what David's keys might open, but since I don't actually know his personal life, I'll keep it to myself. It's funny, though.

*In continuing Jackson Scandal "news," the jurors only worked a half-day on Thursday because some of them had graduation ceremonies they needed to attend. Graduation on Thursday?? Wassup wit dat?!

*Okay, maybe you think that my constant bitching about KPTV claiming reporters who get paid by other corporate entities as their own is petty. Uh, how about "KPTV's Wolf Blitzer"?? Isn't that pretty egregious? Is there anyone who thinks that Wolf Friggin' Blitzer works for a local TV station in Portland, Oregon?? By what stretch of the imagination can a CNN anchor be construed to work for KPTV? Anyhoo, Wolfie told us about the prison that Michael Jackson might go to if he is convicted of sex abuse of children. It's the same ugly joint that Charlie Manson gets his mail at. Now that's a duet album I'd buy! Show tunes, boys, please.

*Speaking of Jacksons, Randy Jackson, of American Idol, is slumming in his down time by judging some stupid kids' talent show. Nice gig, Randy. What's next, wearing a clown costume outside a car wash, waving cars in?

Hey, did I just miss it or was there no Hollywood Buzz graphic tonight?

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

*President Bush says that critics of the Patriot Act are "unfair."

*Settling abuse cases has cost the Catholic Church nearly a BILLION dollars so far.

*New census data shows that that one in two new Americans since the year 2000 are Hispanic.

*The words "Downing Street Memo" have still not crossed the lips of anyone on the KPTV "news" team.