Sunday, July 17, 2005

I'm back in the (metaphorical) saddle again.

Top Story: Violence Erupts! A race riot? Did Critical Mass engage in "pedal-by" shootings perhaps? Nah, just two jerkoffs (hey, if Keri Tomlinson can use that term, why can't I?) going at it in a strip club. It's a Southeast Portland joint called Cocktails and Dreams (or "Cocktails and Screams" by the locals because of the frequent outbursts). "Betty," a former dancer at the club--and how fortunate was it that she just happened by while they were outside doing the piece?-- said she wasn't surprised the one guy ventilated the other (5 to 8 shots, according to the cops). The victim is expected to survive, robbing KPTV of the chance to do a series called Strip Clubs That Kill.

Hey, speaking of drive-by shootings, there was one in Portland Sunday afternoon.

The Dayton, Oregon SWAT Team got a chance to break out its heavy artillery when they had a standoff with a guy inside his house. I was surprised that KPTV didn't have a "reporter" On The Scene for this story, seemingly tailor-made for them, but then again it was Sunday and they appear to be a little short-handed on the weekends. The boys in the black ninja suits reportedly had thrown some tear gas into the residence, but we weren't told if the alleged perpetrator was still inside. Tip: If you have a grievance and you want to get it on the TV news, don't stage your standoff on Sunday.

A suspicious death is being investigated in Washougal. a 48 year-old man was found dead in the trailer he lived in by the owner of the land the trailer is on. The land owner gave us tonight's first "You don't expect that in this neighborhood"-type comment. Oh, he found the body on Friday, but hey, like I said, KPTV seems short-handed on the weekends.

Speaking of Washougal, a woman fell into the Washougal River. She was rescued and airlifted to a hospital.

2 local doctors have been stripped of their licenses to practice medicine. One of them admitted to kissing patients without permission. Hey, he was just "practicing his love" as George W. Bush once said about OB-GYN's. The other was accused of sexually harassing the customers.

There was a meth bust at a marina in Portland. People say they knew something was up when they spotted hundreds of boxes of cold medicine floating down the river. Seriously.

A 3-alarm fire broke out at a store that sells pellet stoves and the like near Oregon City, triggering an Irony Alert. We were told there was a loss amounting to about $800,000, the same amount as the loss from the fire at the Dollar Warehouse on Sandy Blvd. the other day. Coincidence? I think not! It's like that whole Kennedy/Lincoln thing.

Storm Team 12 (consisting of the weekend weather dude) made an early cameo appearance to tell us that it was hot today. Storm Team 12 has a 100% accuracy rate at predicting the weather in the past.

A new adoption bill is going to the Senate. It says that birth relatives get first crack at adopting babies. All things being equal, I guess that makes sense.

A bill to require released sex offenders to live at least 3 miles from their victims is making its way through the legislature.

Northwest Tonight

*There was a kayaking death near Eugene.

*"KPTV's Lisa Pappas" told us that a suspicious package found in a train tunnel in Seattle shut down service temporarily. Turns out the package was some funny-looking electronic thingie, but not a bomb.

Hilary Hutcheson's part is still on the left side of her head, but she's straightened it out. Just thought you'd want to know.

Break.

America Tonight (NOT News Across America. How could you possibly confuse the two? Sheesh.)

*A baby caught in the building collapse the other day on Manhattan's Upper West Side is okey-dokey. It's been released from the hospital with a great story to tell its grandchildren years from now. "You think you have it tough? When I was a baby..."

*Divers in Aruba found some long blonde hair attached to duct tape which washed ashore. This, of course, is in connection with the search for the missing Natalee Holloway.

*In Roanoke, Virginia, a man was about to jump to his presumed death on a bridge when a cop grabbed him from behind, saving him. The hype for this story claimed that traffic was whizzing past him, but we could clearly see in the video that the cops had the bridge he was on closed off with their cars, so that was, uh, what's the technical news industry term I'm searching for here? Oh yeah, bullshit!

*Indianapolis is suffering from summer flooding, making it difficult to do stuff without getting wet.

*A memorial to the victims of the Valujet crash in Miami is being cleaned up. Some person or persons unknown has/have vandalized the memorial with racist graffiti. What sense that makes, I do not know.

World Tonight

*An Israeli jet shot a missile at a car on the Gaza Strip, blowing it to smithereens. Man, every day in that neck of the woods is like the napalm scene in Apolcalypse Now, isn't it? How do people live there?

*There was a bus crash in China.

*Flooding in Romania has destroyed hundreds of homes and forced the evacuation of 12,000 people.

*A panda was up a tree in China and didn't want to come down, so "they" did what "they" do and shot it with tranquilizers and snagged it. Oh, Hair Part Hilary referred to it as "the bear" at one point. Not to split hairs or anything ('cause I'd hate to do that to the KPTV "news" people) but pandas are not really bears. And that was that for World Tonight.

Hey, did you know that a lot of cars are stolen in Portland every year? Especially Southeast Portland? Yup, 'tis true and on tomorrow night's KPTV 10 o'clock "news" show, they'll tell you more about that startling fact. Set the TiVo now.

"KPTV's Lisa Bernhard" told us--at great length--about a real-life School of Rock. There's a documentary called "Rockschool" about this place that teaches kids to be professional musicians. Yeah, OK, whatever.

Break.

War On Terror/London Terror

*The American grandparents of one of the alleged London bombers were surprised by his reported involvement in the murders. They think he's innocent.

Fight For Iraq

*A suicide bomber in Iraq killed about 100 people by setting off his bomb near a gas truck. Dem's some "last throes," huh?

*The special tribunal for Saddam Hussein is ready to go, although no date to start that hootenanny has been announced yet.

Break.

Hurricane Emily is now a Category 4, having reached speeds of 145 MPH. Tourists in Cancun and other Yucatan Peninsula resorts are being forced to go into shelters.

Texans on the Gulf Coast are boarding up their windows, expecting Emily to hit their collective fan on Tuesday.

Weather. Break.

Final Cut

*Debra Gill was in the KPTV "news" van for this one. Security on Oregon college campuses is being beefed up. The schools are expected to develop plans to deal with sexual harrassment and reports about any such incidents on their campuses. The representative Man On The Street we saw said he didn't see the need for the new policies.

*Speaking of college students, the selfish little weasels are being blamed by the ASPCA for an increase in the number of abandoned pets. They move out of their little apartments when school closes for the summer and kick Mr. Whiskers to the curb.

*La Conchita, California had a big ol' mudslide about six months ago but neither the county or the state has fixed up the hillside yet. The angry residents are suing.

*In an eerie echo of the "School of Rock" story from earlier in the 'cast, next we got a piece about "Hip Hop For Hope." "KPTV's Mandy Murphy" told us about this project run by an old white woman (and who knows more about the hip hop lifestyle than 60-something white women?) in a St. Louis juvenile lockup. It helps the kids there express themselves. This was such an important story that they only waited 12 weeks to tell us about it (it was noted in passing that Old White Woman worked on this project back in April).

*Streets of Speed. Tune in Monday morning to Good Day, Oregon for this groundbreaking story about how some people actually drive too fast on residential streets. Next up: People who brazenly defy the "Do Not Remove This Tag Under Penalty Of Law" notification on pillows.

*Some journalists waste their time in Iraq, filing stories about our fighting men and women and their struggles. Shauna Parsons, on the other hand, refuses to take the easy way out. Tonight she "reported" on a place in Portland that does Airbrush Tanning. Debbie Ethel, the proprietress of the salon, is dedicated to the noble cause of helping Caucasians with discretionary income better resemble the people they aspire not to live next to.

*The new children's book, Harry Potter and the Great Steaming Piles of Cash J.K. Rowling Skiis Down, sold almost 7 million copies in the first 24 hours of its release.

*Sunday was Disneyland's 50 Anniversary. Increasingly unpopular California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was on hand to recount some memories of past visits to The Happiest Place On Earth which no one could understand because of his impenetrable accent.

*Lastly and least importantly, Kimberly Maus told us about a "new" company called Ask G.O.D. Ask G.O.D., which I read about at least a year ago, charges $25 for up to 60 minutes per month of phone questions. They'll answer any question which can be researched on the Internet, which means that it exists for the benefit of incredibly lazy people and those who can't figure out the Byzantine complexity of the Google home page. The company, which has about 3000 customers, has some phone operators in the Good Ol' USA, but it was mentioned in passing that some of their phone flunkies are in India. Screw that! I prefer to deal with domestically-based low-income wage slaves, thank you very much.

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

*The FBI, in an echo of the 70's, has been spying on anti-war groups and organizations like the ACLU. If you listen closely, you can hear the lawsuits being typed up right now.

*The vice president’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, was a source along with Karl Rove for a Time story that identified a CIA officer, the magazine reporter said Sunday, further countering White House claims that neither aide was involved in the leak. If there's no breaking news about American Idol winner Bo Bice, KPTV will try to sandwich in some mention of this ongoing scandal.

*President Bush has said that his nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor may not be a lawyer. Justice Shania Twain? Nah, she's Canadian.

*Whirlpool, the nation's largest appliance maker, is offering $1.35 billion in cash and stock for Maytag, topping bids from two other groups for the third-largest US appliance manufacturer. Hey, let's all play a gag on the Maytag repairman. Nobody tell him.