Sunday, July 24, 2005

The Terror Train stopped off at KPTV and unloaded a fresh pile of fear. Let's take a look at it, shall we?

Top Story. No, wait, something happened after 5 PM, qualifying it as "Breaking News." There's been a shooting on Killingsworth in Northeast Portland. Heh heh, he said "Killings." A drive-by shooter blasted two Hispanic men standing on the street. The cops have no license plate nor any description of the alleged perpetrator.

Now back to the Top Story. A man was hit by a boat near McGuire Island. The victim is dead. We'll probably get his identity by tomorrow night's 10 o'clock "news" show.

Portland detectives were pleasantly surprised when the killer in an unsolved 1997 murder turned himself in.

There's been another shooting in downtown Portland. Jim Hyde was in News Control to tell us about the incident at 3rd and Washington. Paul Hall, Jr. is the un-dead victim. There have been seven shootings in downtown Portland recently and KPTV did its level best to imply that this was an unusually high number although no statistics were given to back up that implication.

Dean Schwartzmiller, Guinness Book record holder for "most sexual assaults" (if there was such an entry) apparently kept coded notebooks about his assauts, both real and imagined. The cops say they've broken 90% of the code. The books have 36,000 entries.

Dear Hollywood:

Please don't turn this asshole's life story into a movie. Especially if the movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio. I guess you can make the movie if Leo is a victim, though. Lemme think about it.

Thanks.

An apartment fire in North Portland caused an estimated loss of about $40,000. Yikes.

Meth Watch. OK, pay attention. This is where the "news" show started getting interesting. Seriously, pay attention. We'll be coming back to this subject with an important observation or two later. Anyway, that bill to require prescriptions for cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine is still making its way through the bureaucracy. There was mixed opinion on it from the Men (and women) On The Street.

An OSU student died coming down a mountain. She fell 700 feet. Which is about 695 feet further than I could fall without registering on the Richter scale.

Northwest Tonight

*Some liquor stores in Washington state are now open on Sundays from 9-5. Some stupid Woman On The Street type opined that they should be closed because "what about the people who don't need liquor on Sunday?" I love the People On The Street vignettes. They make me feel MUCH better about myself. Oh yeah, this story was brought to us by "KPTV's Stella Thurkill." I wonder if she knows "KPTV's Wolf Blitzer?"

*If you thought that whooping cough was a thing of the past, you've probably never visited Deschutes County. There's a health warning for that very ailment there at the moment. Maybe those Deschutters don't cotton to those new-fangled "vaccination" things.

Break.

Church Scandal. I loved the way Hilary Hutcheson (whose hair part is back on the left side of her head, by the way) told us that this particular church-related sex scandal was "different" because it didn't involve a Catholic church. (New slogan: The Catholic Church: Fun. Folks. Fondling.) OK, the deal is that this couple got upset because their daughter was allegedly molested by a sound tech who worked for the same church they did.

They went to the pastor, who promptly did what any responsible authority figure would do: he fired the couple and denounced them from the pulpit. Oddly enough, the couple is kind of perturbed by this and complained to the state. The score as of now: the couple is still out of work, the church has closed down, the sound tech is out of the state and the couple's daughter has tried to commit suicide. Religion is such a comfort in times of need.

America Tonight (which bears no resemblance to News Across America)

*Lightning hit a preggo on the beach in Florida

*A van hit a gas line in Miami. The resulting fire melted the van.

*NASA is sending the ill-fated Space Shuttle up on Tuesday morning, working gas gauge or no working gas gauge. I want to know who's putting the pressure on NASA that's making them try to stay on schedule even when there are obvious problems with that rust bucket.

*Speaking of spaceships, the privately-financed Spaceship One made a "pit stop" in Albuquerque, on the way to some air show.

*Hawaii has put mandatory caps on wholesale gasoline prices. Sounds good, but small retailers say that the gas companies are making up the difference by simply raising their rents. Bottom line here is that the "caps" may actually cause retail gas prices to go UP in Hawaii.

World Tonight

*Thailand was under a tsunami warning but it has been lifted. That's great 'cause I've had a Thai sex vacation planned for months now and it's "no refunds."

*A baby hippo and a baby seal were born in a zoo in Serbia, proving that there's no lengths KPTV won't go to to bring the most important news stories in the world to its viewers.

Break.

War On Terror/London Terror

*We saw souvenir photos of the alleged London bombers taking a rafting trip just days before the attacks. Hey, terrorists need to take vacations, too. Lotsa stress in that line of work, you know. You gotta blow off some steam before you blow up some commuters.

War On Terror (non-London type)

*1 American is among the dead in the bombings in Egypt. Some say the total of dead is 88.

*Was Osama binLaden the instigator of the London bombings? No one knows but that didn't stop some official types from giving their fact-free opinions on the subject.

Break.

Pump Patrol. Right now, in the Portland area, the lowest price for gas is $2.16/gallon and the highest price is $2.50. At this very moment, I'm listening to Trilby Lundberg, whoever the hell Trilby Lundberg is, telling me on the radio that wholesale prices for gas have dropped a whole half-cent. Yippie! Happy days are here again! Fire up the Hummer, Honey, we're driving to Honolulu!

Are you fat? Do you wish you weren't fat? Tomorrow night on the 10 o'clock "news" show you'll learn about lap band surgery, a procedure to implant some scary-looking thingie that makes you feel as if you've eaten enough. Not rich? Don't have unusually comprehensive health insurance? Enjoy your morbid obesity, because chances are you'll never come any closer to this surgery than hearing about it on Monday night's "news" show.

It's hot in the Midwest. How hot? Like 100 degrees plus hot. Chicago has set up "cooling stations." We called those "fire hydrants" when I was a boy growing up on the plains of the Bronx.

Weather. Break.

Final Cut

*Breaking News Update. David Frietas/Freitas (depending on how they're spelling it on the Chyron on any given night) was On The Scene to "update" us (although he didn't really tell us anything we hadn't already been told, other than that Killingsworth was now open to traffic). Heh heh, he said "Killings" again.

*This next story was a classic example of misleading "journalism." It was about a Homeland Security plan to have civilians patrol the Mexican border. Debra Gil was in the KPTV "news" van to tell us about this. Only problem with the story was that the plan has already been scrapped after criticism from the press and public. Deb made it sound as if it was going to go into practice, then at the end of the story, she told us that some officials "claim" that it has been cancelled. Uh, no, Deb, it HAS been cancelled. Just to add further amusement value to this piece, the wrong Chyron popped up momentarily.

*Teens and drinking. It seems that the more alcohol it takes to get a teen shit-faced, the more likely it is that that teen will have a drinking problem as their life goes on. Oh, also, the kids of alkies are four times as likely to become alcoholics as the children of non-alcoholics. So there.

*Yay, Streets of Speed is back. Not now, silly, Monday morning on Good Day, Oregon.

*Next was one of those alleged heart-warming stories that never seem to warm my heart. A wedding was interrupted when the groom got a call that a heart was waiting for him to have transplanted into his chest. I kept thinking that the poor bastard probably isn't allowed by his doctors to have sex. Plus there's always the chance that the new heart belonged to a homicidal maniac and will cause the newlywed to go insane. I think I saw that in a movie once.

*Then we got some useless blather about "alternative wedding registries." I was thinking that maybe they let people buy you cool stuff like bouncing cars and ray guns, but nope. To be honest, I didn't see what was so "alternative" about the crap they were peddling. Kinda like how I feel about "alternative" music, actually. "Alternative to what?" I always wonder. But that's just me, I guess.

Hollywood Buzz

*Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a totally unnecessary movie as the original version with Gene Wilder was pretty much perfect, is still the Number One Movie in America. Do they even make movies that aren't remakes of old movies anymore?? I can't wait until The Passion Of The Christ becomes a midnight movie like Rocky Horror, complete with people showing up dressed like the characters and all. Oh, Wedding Crashers is the Number Two Movie In America, in case you couldn't go another moment without knowing that.

Meth Watch. OK, this is the thing I alluded to earlier. The cops are saying that most of the meth on the streets of Oregon comes from Mexico. When they catch a Mexican drug seller, they put him in jail, then deport him back to Mexico. We got to watch as the cops set up a meth buy sting. They caught a Mexican national. We were told that he has been deported before, which pretty much makes that whole "deportation" thing a joke, doesn't it?

Here's my question: if the majority of meth in our area comes from another country, what is that stupid "requiring a prescription to buy a common cold medicine" going to accomplish? I've said on a couple of occasions on this blog that I didn't believe that the prescription-for-pseudoephedrine law would accomplish anything at all. Now I know why I think that. IF it causes it to become difficult for people to make their own meth, then the business will simply go to the meth coming up I-5. This will result in driving up the price of the imported stuff, causing more crime to pay for the drug.

I'm now going to update my prediction. Not only will the new law NOT result in a decrease in crime, because of the rising price for meth, it will INCREASE crime. Congratulations, Oregon legislature. You've managed to make a bad situation even worse. Nice going.

Hilary ended in sync with the Countdown Clock, completely justifying her salary.

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

*Although KPTV is all over that "War On Terror" stuff, they didn't tell you that the guy the London cops shot, in the belief that he was one of the terrorists, had no connection to the bombings at all. Oh, they also say that there may be more accidental killings by the police of non-terrorists before the panic is over. Hey, you can't make an omelette without blowing away a few innocent people, right?

*The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Teamsters are threatening to leave the AFL-CIO.

*Still not a word about "a landmark in economic history," China no longer pegging its currency to the American dollar.

*Whirlpool has sweetened its bid for Maytag, causing the latter to reconsider its rejection of the previous bid from the former. Got that?

*The Bush Administration announced it does not intend to release all memos and other documents written by Supreme Court nominee John Roberts when he worked for two Republican presidents. Why, it could almost cause a guy to wonder what they have to hide!