Tuesday, June 28, 2005

What's that smell? Did the cat forget to ask to go out? Nope, it's just the KPTV 10 o'clock "news" show.

Top Story: Surprise Attack. 2 men beat up a 16 year-old in Milwaukie. As part of the attack, they shaved some of his hair off, so "reporter" David Frietas had, naturally, a razor as his prop for this story. You can't do news without props, right? Anyway, the boy's family is moving out of fear.

You have to hand it to KPTV on this one. Other news operations might have covered the story last week when it actually happened. Not KPTV, though. They know that news, like wine, just gets better with age. It's not STALE news, it's VINTAGE!

There was a deadly fire in Beaverton. 1 person is dead and 14 have been displaced.

There was an officer-involved shooting in Milwaukie. The cop is on paid leave as is standard operating policy in most police forces these days.

Fox 12's Most Wanted tonight was Nick Walter. Naughty Nick was arrested 8 days ago. The cops, however, failed to realize that he was wanted in another state so they released him. Now they want him back. Come back, Nick, come back.

A burglar is on the loose in Aloha, Oregon. We got to hear some KPTV operative ask a neighbor of the victim, from off-camera, "This surprise you?" You're letting us see the man behind the curtain, KPTV. You sure you want to do that? By the way, Mr. Neighbor said something about it being a quiet neighborhood, which to me qualifies as a "You don't expect that in this neighborhood" type comment.

A female suspect in a robbery is in jail. Well...good.

A father is under arrest for allegedly putting whiskey in his son's root beer. The kid had three times the legal blood alcohol level. This would have been the perfect KPTV "news" story if the kid had been pulled over for speeding on his Big Wheel.

We heard the 911 call for a fire in Gresham. A lady who seems to have made a pain in the ass of herself by repeatedly calling 911 about perceived problems at a local park found her new RV on fire. The flames spread to the house, damaging the wall. The RV is toast to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. The lady, of course, thinks the fire was set by someone who resents her calls.

Break.

eBay Scam: "Reporter" Jamie Wilson was in the newsroom to tell us about a lady in Vancouver, Washington who tried to sell an old juke box on eBay. There was some mishegas about the buyer being in the Netherlands but wanting the juke box to go to Nigeria. She got scammed into sending $2100 to a fake shipping company. Bye-bye $2100.

The family of Kendra James had their civil suit against the city for Ms. James' death at the hands of the Portland police rejected.

Next we got a story about road rage. I'd tell you more but sometimes I can't decipher my own hastily-scribbled notes. I think there was a gun involved. At least what I wrote looks like "gun."

Meth Watch. You thought there wouldn't be a Meth Watch segment tonight? Get real. 34 people were arrested in Yamhill County. I guess after you've gone to the Indian casino, there really isn't anything else to do in Yamhill County other than making meth.

Oh, Melanie Souther is officially a bad mother. Something to do with meth making, also.

Remember the climber who fell down Mt. McLoughlin last week? The autopsy came out. Cause of death? Falling down a mountain.

The mayor of Portland is advocating a dime-a-beer fee. I guess "fee" is the new euphemism for "tax." Oh, the "fee" wouldn't apply to Oregon-based microbrewers. Nice job of pandering there, Mr. Mayor. The "fee" is supposed to go to fighting, in some vague, unspecified way, meth use. OK, so we're going to put a TAX (sorry!) on the single most abused drug in America to fight drug use. That makes sense.

Northwest Tonight

*At least 50 bald eagles have been slaughtered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Native Americans (Native Canadians?) are the suspects; some of the tribes use the feathers in rituals.

Man, KPTV must have been really hard-up for "news" tonight; I've never seen them resort to doing a story about Canada in the Northwest Tonight segment.

Break.

Pump Patrol. Gas is averaging $2.24/gallon in Portland this week. They could have mentioned the fact that gasoline just passed $60/barrel for the first time in history, but that would constitute context, which the KPTV 10 o'clock "news" show avoids like Dracula avoids mirror factories.

Holiday Travel: AAA predicts that more people will be on the roads this upcoming holiday weekend than ever before. Again, the context might be that people can't afford more expensive air travel and are taking short trips in lieu of the longer trips they would have taken if gas were cheaper, but that's just speculation on my part.

Fight For Iraq

*Oregon has now suffered its first loss of a female soldier in Iraq.

*We got a recap of President Bush's speech from earlier tonight.

*The Department of Defense has set up some website to do something or other for the families of those in the military. The story didn't bother to give the website's address.

Um, am I loopy or didn't a helicopter go down in Iraq, killing 15 to 20 troops? Eh, no news there!

War On Terror

*"KPTV's William LaJeunesse" (who actually works for Fox News Channel) brought us this pathetic fear piece about how terrorists might deploy car bombs on the West Coast. Yes, they might, but they might also put plastic explosives up the butts of trained dogs and send them to the doorway of the White House, as a crazy guy I knew when I worked outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. told me he'd like to do (this was during the Clinton years, so don't worry).

We got to see some guy from the LAPD training soldiers who were about to go to Iraq about car bombing. Um, since there are car bombings all the time in Iraq, that makes sense but it's a long way from that to claiming that stuff is going to start going KABOOM! on Hollywood Boulevard anytime soon. Fox News Channel traffics in fact-free fear-mongering, though, so I'd expect a piece of paranoid shit like this from LaJeunesse. Yellow journalism is one thing, deliberately trying to frighten your audience is another. Everyone involved with putting this on the air should immediately find the tallest bridge around and jump off it. Hey, they'd be guaranteed to make the KPTV "news" show that way!

Weather. Break.

Final Cut (yes, with the countdown clock!)

News Across America

*Dateline Memphis: some men stole an ATM by pulling it out of the store with their truck. The stupid losers didn't think that the ubiquitous security camera would capture their license plate, though.

*An Ohio ambulance driver was caught using dead people's credit cards to buy stuff. Apparently, that's illegal. Go figure.

*In Torrance, California, burglars are knocking on the doors of houses before they sneak in and rob stuff. This was treated as if it was unusual. Um, I don't think so; most burglars don't want to have to deal with the residents of the homes they rob so they try to find out if anyone is home before they break in.

*The victim of a carjacking took exception to something at the trial of his opponent and went a little loopy in Syracuse, New York. A brawl ensued. It was---say it with me now--Caught On Camera.

*In the second of two recent shark attacks in Florida, the boy who was attacked lost his leg.

*Speaking of sharks, a dead one washed up on shore at Rockaway Beach, New York City. A crowd of bathers gathered around--and stole the shark's wallet and watch.

*There was a fire at a Bible museum in Dallas. Hey, God's will! Maybe that's a clue from the Big G. about that whole "anti-evolution" thing.

*An immigrant-looking lady gave birth to a baby on a highway in Miami on the way to the hospital. After the 50th one, are these "giving birth on the way to the hospital" stories really "news" anymore?

*A BIG baby--13 pounds!--was born in "Milwaukie" Wisconsin. Hey, KPTV, I keep telling you, the town in Wisconsin is spelled MilwaukEe! Don't make me say this again!

*2 TV "reporters" doing a story about gators in the Miami area ended up wrestling with one of the prehistoric throwbacks. Didn't anyone teach them in journalism school that reporters aren't supposed to be the story? Wait, did I just use TV "reporters" and journalism school in the same sentence??

*A bear went wild in Tucson, Arizona. The story said he had a bad tooth. The animal wranglers waited for the tooth to get better before releasing Yogi into the woods, which my wife pointed out meant that the part of the story about the bear "going wild" had to be weeks old (teeth don't heal overnight, folks).

*Multnomah County wants to strap some kind of Global Positioning System thingie to parolees. Gee, if KPTV can tie into that system somehow, they'll never miss a "sexual predator doesn't report in" story!

*Next we got a long story about some mail-in DNA test thing that is supposed to let pregnant women know the gender of their baby early in their pregnancy. "KPTV's Liz Brunner" [sp?] was the reporter on this story, although the observant viewer would have noticed the "5"on her mic flag.

*Paula Abdul has found a cause she can get behind: stronger regulations for nail salons! Remember when Paula was wearing a big bandage on her hand on American Idol? Well, she suffered a bad manicure. Isn't there some way America can pay her reparations for her sacrifice in the name of self-absorption?

Hollywood Buzz

*Russell Crowe is going to court over his recent phone-throwing tantrum in a New York City. hotel. Sheesh, isn't it enough that the man apologized on the Letterman show? What do you sadists want, a pound of flesh?

*Starbucks is going to be the exclusive outlet for a CD of 10 previously-unreleased Bob Dylan songs from early in his career. Reached for comment, Dylan said "mumble mumble mumble [unintelligible] mumble."

Final Cut ended with 12 seconds left on the Inscrutable Countdown Clock. Nice work, Wayne Garcia.

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

*Canada has become the third country to legalize gay marriage.

*A Chinook helicopter went down in Afghanistan, killing approximately two dozen American soldiers. Gee, if only KPTV's "news" had a segment about the war where they could cover stuff like this.

*The UN is claiming that the United States is running secret prisons on Navy ships in the Indian Ocean.

Hey, quit your bitching! You got that story about Paula Abdul, didn't you?