Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Oh, let's get this over with. Like pulling a bandage off quickly, it'll hurt less that way.

Top Story: Remember alleged bad guy Ed Boss from last night? The guy who allegedly attempted to rape an eight year-old girl he was supposed to be driving home. Yeah, that guy. Well, he hasn't been captured yet and the speculation is that he might be living in the woods near Estacada. "Reporter" Jim Hyde told us that people are frightened. Channel 12 should have a new motto: "You're never far from fear with KPTV's 'news' show."

Fox 12's Most Wanted tonight was some numbnuts who used numchuks to beat up another guy. Say, did you know that you can't take numchuks into the White House when you take a tour there? It says that right on the ticket. I'm not kidding. Oh, Oregon officials have lost track of another sex offender, who is registered as a transient. He hasn't done anything bad that anyone's aware of; they just want you to know they don't know where he is.

Octogenarian sociopath Louis Nemnich is still in Wyoming but the governor of Oregon has issued a warrant for his return. A female acquaintance of his said that she thought he was a "nice guy." He turned up on her porch after he allegedly tried to rape and strangle a young woman. "Reporter" David Frietas held up some papers that either were a copy of the warrant or merely supposed to represent the warrant. We'll probably never know for sure.

A cat burglar was caught by a surprised homeowner in his dining room in the early morning. This story gave us a rare "You do expect that in this neighborhood" type comment from a neighbor of the victim. Bravo for the change of pace, KPTV!

Thieves are stealing stuff from cars parked in the lot at a Bally's Gym in Beaverton. The local constabulary has put a cop on a nearby roof with binoculars and a radio. Two hours in, they thought they had a culprit, but he turned out to be a non-criminal. No arrests have been made yet.

A beating suspect is on the loose. There was probably more to this, but as I've said before, I just can't write fast enough to keep up with the Whirly-Gig O' Crime that is KPTV's "news" show.

Ray Weaver drove over a sleeping dog. The dog was injured badly enough to need to be put to sleep. He also almost drove over a teenage girl, the owner of the dog. Ray Weaver is a guest at the Greybar Hotel for the next 90 days.

A pilot had to make an emergency landing. He's okay.

A truck turned over on I-95.

A road rager got 3.5 years in the slammer.

A man is missing in the woods.

Speaking of missing men, yesterday's Disappearo DuJour, Todd Witt, has turned up, unharmed.

Break.

Meth Watch

*Oregon's Governor wants stricter laws concerning the sale of cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine. He wants to ban the sale of hard tabs with the stuff in 'em. He also wants to restrict liquid meds with it, too. We got the predictable video of people saying things like, "Well, they have to do what they have to do." Whoever the hell "they" are. We also got a lady who said that the bans were making it difficult for people who just want to get rid of a cold to get medicines.

Off the meth tip, there's a cougar on the loose. Where? I forget.

Parking meters in downtown Portland are going to get more expensive. Yup, that's the way to stimulate the local economy, all righty!

The Rose Festival is on, so we had to look at video of little kids walking in the Junior Parade.

Hey, remember that story from last night about Fleet Week and how there's a Security Zone in place around the ships in the river? In case you didn't, we got the same story over again.

Budweiser is sponsoring some stuff at the Rose Festival so we got Clydesdale footage. Oh, Bud also has some kind of portable video studio at the Festival so you can tape yourself telling our troops to surrender to the insurgency. Well, you could (not that I'm suggesting that you do) but Budweiser expects you to send messages of support to the soldiers who are over there "defending our country," as an Anheiser-Busch flack told us. Needless to say, no one mentioned that Iraq didn't attack us, so we didn't exactly need to be "defended" from it. Eh, facts are so 20th Century!

Break.

Back, we got some information about Project Safe Neighborhoods. This puts posters up in prisons reminding inmates that it would be unwise to commit gun-related crimes upon their release as they could get 15 years to life.

A teacher in Washington state has been accused of child rape. I don't remember if this is a guy we've already heard about. One of the ways KPTV's "news" show manages to make it look as if crime is ubiquitous and on the increase is by doing multiple stories about the same people over and over. After a while, you forget that you're hearing about the same people and start to believe that child rapists etc. are behind every tree. Speaking of ubiquitous, we got a "You don't expect that in this neighborhood" type comment in this story.

There was a deadly train accident in Cottage Grove, Oregon (the town Animal House was filmed in). How the kids who were on the track managed to not hear a train coming, I have no idea, but apparently they didn't.

We saw some footage of K-9 school in Hillsboro. Does anyone remember anymore that "K-9" is a corruption of "canine?" Anyway, coming out of the footage which showed a police dog going through an obstacle course with his trainer, anchor Hilary Hutcheson said, "Give that guy some kibble!" Sure, but what about the dog, Hilary?

During the break which came next, we got a promo for a story about some local men accused of being Al Qaeda members. Hilary was a wee bit too perky reading this promo, if you ask me. Her tone was as if she was pimping a story about the Star Wars movie instead of scary alleged terrorists. I think it all just runs together after a while.

War On Terror

*Yup, here's that story about the Al Qaeda guys. Four men were arrested by the Feds. One of them supposedly said that he trained in Pakistan and asked his terror bosses to send him back to the West Coast so he could blow up hospitals. Maybe he did, maybe it's bullshit designed to distract us from something else. We'll see.

Anyway, this story was intro'd as being by "KPTV's Claudia Cowen," even though she ID'd herself during the piece as "Claudia Cohen, Fox News" which means that she works for Fox News Channel, not KPTV. Seriously, isn't it unethical to claim that someone is "yours" when they get paid by another entity? Wait, I just used the word "ethical" in connection with KPTV's "news" show. I'm wacky, aren't I?

There was a bomb scare on an Amtrak train. There was no bomb, however.

Fight For Iraq

*An oil pipeline was blown up. This is probably not a good thing.

In continuing Jackson Scandal "news," Michael Jackson is home--with kids, according to his spokeswoman. I'm no lawyer, but is it really a good idea for a guy on trial for sexually abusing children to let it be known he's hangin' with his pre-pubescent homies? Won't some members of an adult baby support group please volunteer to play with Mikey? Anyway, the spokeswoman said he's resting, nervous, but not pulling out his hair (as she claimed to have been misquoted as saying recently). Phew, good thing. You wouldn't want to mess up that 'do.

Weather. Break.

Ah, the sweet smell of the Final Cut (incorporating News Across America):

*A New Jersey surfer was bitten by a shark. Unless I'm nuts, the promo for this story that ran during the preceeding commercial break said something about his Mom not being surprised and how we wouldn't believe why she said that. The actual story made no mention of the guy's mother at all. Hmmm.

*Natalee Holloway, the young, attractive, white woman from Alabama who is missing in Aruba, belongs to a church which is constructing a "Wall of Hope," whatever that is.

*A pizza delivery guy was shot by a robber and kept making his rounds. Turns out he didn't realize he was shot at the time. The story's angle seemed to be that the delivery guy was some kind of American hero or something for staying on the job. Yup, that's Big Business' dream all right: low-paid employees who put concern for their own welfare aside to stay at their dead-end jobs. I don't care if I'm the friggin' Pope; if I get shot, I'm going to the E.R.

*Shoplifters in Ohio accidentally killed a bystander with their getaway car.

*A Las Vegas man was shot by a police Taser and died. Was the Taser responsible? The autopsy will determine that.

*2 Massachusetts window washers fell. 1 of them died.

*During some kind of vehicular altercation between a bus and a car, the car drove into a house in New Jersey.

*Speaking of buses, a Greyhound went up in flames in D.C. The passengers and luggage are okay, however.

*A teen Fight Club in Arkansas has been captured on DVD. The principal of their high school says that if the participants don't fess up, there's nothing he can do. Some parents think this isn't good enough.

*Illegal video poker machines were destroyed by the authorities in Nashville.

*A man was stuck in a charity donation bin in Missouri and was extricated by firemen. I'm guessing that he's poor and needed some clothing, but that possibility wasn't mentioned.

*Kerri Tomlinson seems to be the Designated Pervert Beat Reporter at KPTV. She told us about a website the Oregon Department of Justice has set up to tell kids how to avoid predators. ODOJ claims that 1 out of 5 kids gets solicited for sex online, which seems way too high to me, but what do I know?

*A new .xxx Internet domain will be up and running soon for sex sites. Some civil libertarians are worried that sites that give information about abortion or gay/transgendered issues will be relegated to that domain and blocked by libraries and "kid-friendly" software. Yeah, probably.

*Fake "bullet-proof" vests are popular with some urban kids at the moment. There was the predictable outrage at this, although the manufacturer says he's been selling them for ten years with no problem.

Hollywood Buzz

*The Inside is a new Fox show about police forensic people who have psychic powers...or something. Anyway, star Peter Coyote is enthusiastic about the show. Wow, stop the presses!

*Macaulay Culkin got sentenced for drug possession. Surprisingly, because this is America, where all men are equal before the law and money and celebrity can't buy you special justice, he only got a suspended sentence and a fine. You or I would be treated exactly the same way if we were the defendant, as you know.

*In honor of Anne Bancroft, who passed away this week, Broadway theaters dimmed their lights.

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

*President Bush's popularity poll numbers continue to drop. A majority of Americans now say that the Iraq war is not worth the sacrifices and that they think he is taking the country in the wrong direction.

*A Bush aide, who has no scientific experience and who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases, was allowed to edit government climate reports in ways that played down links between such emissions and global warming.

*A Marine recruiter allegedly kidnapped a boy in an attempt to get him to sign up for service.

*Still nothing about the ongoing "Coingate" scandal in Ohio that threatens to push the governor out of office.