Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Hilary Hutcheson wasn't on tonight's "news" show, nearly causing me to lose the will to live. I'm afraid you'll just have to close your eyes and imagine her peripatetic hair part.

Top Story: Sorry for the pause there. I was waiting for the almost inevitable "Breaking News" but it never came. Let's march forward resolutely. The Top Story was entitled "Child Targeted." A young boy was chasing a cat on the edge of the woods behind his house in Keizer when a man jumped out of the bushes and grabbed him. The kid got away, unharmed. David Frietas/Freitas (the spelling of his last name is kind of the male version of the Hilary Hair Part) was On The Scene to tell us about this collision of boy and weirdo. The boy's mother is now on a mini-crusade to tell all her fellow Keizerians about the Danger Lurking Among Them (as KPTV might label it).

Octogenarian and human bag of waste material Louis Nemnich has been returned to Oregon and finally arraigned. You may remember the creepy ol' sum' bitch from his alleged molestation(s) of a while back.

Hey, speaking of sex abuse, there are charges of that kind against Tyler Lupoli, a gym worker in Hillsboro. Debra Gil, a lovely lady in her own right, I'm sure, but no Hilary, was On The Scene to tell us about how Tyler allegedly made advances on an 8 year-old girl in the gym's daycare center. He's out on bail at the moment.

Despite Shauna Parson's assertion the other day that this is the Summer of the Shark, going by tonight's "news" show it appears to be the Summer of Sex Abuse. Veronica Rodriguez, come on down! You're the next contestant on Alleged Perverts of the Willamette Valley.

Christopher Cook, who was accused of strangling a woman in Vancouver, Washington, has entered a plea of no contest. That means he's conceding that the prosecution has some evidence that might lock his sorry ass up but he isn't admitting guilt. Gotta love the legal system, dontcha?

There was an apparant murder-suicide in Dallas, Oregon. It involved a couple who were not getting along. A neighbor saw the man stumble out the door of the house and die on the sidewalk. And you think you had a bad day! Buy that man a Happy Meal, stat!

Boring, Oregon was anything but on Tuesday. A 42 year-old registered sex offender has moved into town and hilarity ensues. No, sorry, that's the TV Guide description for about 50% of all sit-com episodes ever. What actually happened is that some neighbor of Mr. Pervert took offense to the guy living in town, especially right next to a school. The neighbor responded by printing up some fliers alerting the Boringites to the presence of the ex-con (who has no restrictions on where he is allowed to live) and pasting them up all over God's Creation, or at least the part that falls within the city limits of Boring. Jamie Wilson, who told us that she wouldn't give us the offender's name, was On The Scene.

Break.

Meth Watch. That stupid bill requiring a prescription to buy what used to be over-the-counter cold meds is inching closer to being law in Oregon.

2 people were killed on a camping trip last month. The cops are investigating, focusing on the couple's missing camping gear.

The Portland cops have a mobile precinct that they take around to bad neighborhoods. They are also stepping up patrols in those areas.

A "lucky kitten" was found in the engine compartment of a vehicle. It is now up for adoption in Sherwood. Know what would have been even luckier? Never having been in the engine compartment in the first place.

An absolutely vital story on the rising price of printing digital photos will air on Wednesday morning on Good Day, Oregon.

OK, back to that stupid about-to-be-law requiring a prescription to buy cold meds containing pseudoephedrine. Keri Tomlinson was the "reporter" on the story. She was in Hillsboro, waving her driver's license (with her finger carefully positioned over her personal information) as a prop. The connection, see, is that you'll soon need an ID to buy medicine for your stupid nagging head cold. We got a montage of Men (and Women) On The Street, the majority of whom gave some variation on the old "if it saves one life..." logic in defense of this asinine new restriction.

Northwest Tonight

*Wildfire in Wenatchee, Washington!

*Tight security is expected at the courthouse in Seattle where the trial of the loser who allegedly wanted to blow up a ferry back in '99 is about to begin.

*As previously mentioned on this site, Southwest Airlines wants to move their Seattle-area operations to Boeing Field, claiming that Sea-Tac is inadequate. The Washington legislature is considering yanking Southwest's chain by imposing taxes and stuff on them. That seems unfair--and even possibly illegal.

*Is Bigfoot real? Putting aside for the moment the fact that anyone who has paid even cursory attention to this "story" knows that the answer is "no," some Canadians with too much time and money on their hands are going to test the DNA of some alleged Bigfoot hair found in British Columbia. As the visual for this story, KPTV showed us, for the eleventy-seventh time, that grainy footage of "Bigfoot" walking in the woods. Why should the fact that the guy who paid a friend to wear the Bigfoot costume and walk for his camera has admitted his hoax stop a "news" operation from blowing the dust off that old chestnut one more time?

*Camp Rosenbaum, designed to allow urban kids to have a vacation at the coast, is celebrating it's 25th anniversary of operating in Warrenton.

Break.

The Space Shuttle finally lifted off. Unfortunately, a small part of it fell off. No one at NASA is sure yet exactly what that small part consisted of. Don't misunderstand me, I think the space program is worthwhile, but thanks to budget cutbacks at NASA, that Shuttle is quickly becoming the Yugo of space travel.

War On Terror/London Terror

*A car was seized by the London cops in connection with the recent bombings. It would have been nice if KPTV told us if the car actually turned out to have any connection to them, though. Eh, facts, who needs 'em?

War On Terror

*A suspect in the bombings in Egypt the other day is in custody. DNA testing is being conducted to figure out who the other bombers are.

*Some master keys for the Boston "T" (transit system) are missing. OK, that sounds kind of ominous, but as the story progressed, we got the idea that, basically, a lot of the keys are in the hands of retirees from the system and that this isn't a particularly new problem (or, perhaps, not actually a problem at all).

Oh, by the way, since I know people who work in the KPTV "news" department read this blog, you may be interested to know that the White House has now officially retired the phrase "War On Terror." Yes, I'm serious. It's now called the Global Pillow Fight. No, that part wasn't serious. Time to update the Chyron, people.

Break.

Pump Patrol. Gas in Oregon is averaging $2.41/gallon. In Portland, the average is $2.33. Suck on that, you non-Portlander Oregonians.

Michael Bloomberg, mayor of my ancestral home, New York City, is supporting the idea of hybrid vehicles being used as taxi cabs. Ever ridden in a New York cab? Your knees are up against your chin as it is. They start using Hondas and you'll have to stand up through the sunroof to ride in the damn things.

Fire Season 2005. There are currently 6, count 'em, 6, wildfires in Oregon at the moment.

Storm Team 12 drafted Wayne Garcia to tell us that, back East, it's hotter than Hillary Clinton watching a Girls Gone Wild DVD. "KPTV's Bill Persad [sp?]" was on hand, via the magic of videotape, to show us a bunch of sweaty people. Now that's good television!

Weather. Break.

Final Cut

*We saw helicopter footage of a car chase in L.A. where a day without a car chase Caught On Camera is like a day without sunshine. The bad guy made a right turn at high speed but the cop chasing him couldn't follow and crashed into a store on the corner. Johnny Law is OK and the bad guy was caught.

*Next we saw surveillance camera footage of a gang-related shooting at a Fort Worth, Texas gas station.

*4 Boy Scout leaders are dead after their tent (big kind, not a puptent thing) touched some electrical wires at a Jamboree in Bowling Green, Virginia. OK, funny story about Bowling Green: A few years back, I was living not terribly far away from there (although I had never been to Bowling Green proper). I read a story about a new radio station licensed to the town. Hoping to get a job there, I drove to the town with my wife in tow.

When we got to Bowling Green, I went into a local convenience store and asked the girl behind the counter where the radio station was. She told me, "I didn't know there was a radio station in town." Now, lest you think that she was just, uh, what's the word I want here? oh yeah, STUPID, try as I might, I couldn't find a single person in all of Bowling Green who knew that the station existed, let alone where it might be. Why do I get the feeling that they would have loved KPTV's 10 o'clock "news" show?

*There was a bear attack in Plano, Texas--or was it Anchorage, Alaska. See, Wayne said it was in Anchorage, but the Chyron insisted on Plano. Easy mistake to make, seeing as they're right down the road from each other.

*A plane hit an SUV in Delaware. Authorities are investigating why the SUV was at 10,000 feet. No, silly, I'm just kidding in that way that I have. The SUV was only at 5,000 feet. Wrong again. The SUV was on the ground as was the plane.

*A jet ski-related Rescue At Sea in Nassau, Bahamas was Caught On Camera. Remember children, if it isn't Caught On Camera, it hasn't really happened.

*An 8 year-old girl is missing and it is feared that a man whom her family allowed to live in their home has abducted her to Mexico. Her understandably distraught Mom was shown, asking the girl to come home, which struck me as sort of silly, seeing as the child almost certainly wouldn't be in control of that.

*The suspect in the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart--remember her, the pretty young white girl kidnapee du jour of a few years ago?--has been ruled incompetent to stand trial at the moment.

*20 months ago, the cops chased a guy who promptly ran into a woman's car. Jim Hyde was in Beaverton to tell us how the woman is still kind of shook up about the incident, seeing as she has to drive past the spot almost every day. The perpetrator got 145 months in jail, an odd sentence, says me.

*The Mars candy company is working with some pharmaceutical companies to develop medicines out of cocoa. Something about flavenols (which sounds like a word Professor Frink on the Simpsons would say).

*Next we got a story that had been ballyhooed through the show. It was something or other about using natural hormones to "turn back the clock" on aging. I couldn't make head nor ass out of it, other than to glean the alleged fact that synthetic hormones are bad for you and natural hormones are good for you.

*In the same vein of encouraging the viewer to see aging as a Communist plot, we got some bullshit about "tighten lasers" whatever the fuck they are which can give you a "1-hour facelift." I suspect that, if the damn things work at all, 1 hour is about how long the facelift will last.

*A patient in the state-run nuthouse in Salem is allegedly pulling a phone scam on people when he's in his manic phase. We'll get the gorey details on Wednesday night's "news" show.

*Pitbulls are hard to find homes for. Gee, go figure. What is the world coming to when people don't want "pets" that will chew open their chests and suck the blood out of their aortas while they sleep? David Wilson was On The Scene of an animal shelter which had undoubtedly been closed for several hours to bring us this information. We also got to see a young woman with copious tattooing on her epidermis; she runs the Family Dogs Shelter. Speaking personally, she was scarier than the friggin' pit bulls!

The whole shebang ran out of gas with 7 seconds left on the Countdown Clock.

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

*George Pataki, governor of New York state, has announced that he will not seek re-election.

*Despite his protestations, O.J. Simpson was fined $25,000 for pirating satellite TV.

*NASA is now saying that the piece that broke off the exterior of the Space Shuttle is a tile. That can't possibly cause a problem...can it? I feel as if I've sat through this movie once already.

*Latoyia Figueroa has been missing for 8 days now. As she isn't an upper-middle class white blonde, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for her story to turn up on KPTV.