Friday, September 17, 2005

OK, so far the new software that allows me to type this report into Microsoft Word, then export it to Blogger is working. With any luck, we won’t have a repeat of the horror from the other night. Cross whatever appendages you want.

Top Story. Thursday night, Jose Martinez was walking around the Beaverton Fred Myer with Mr. Happy out of his pants, allegedly. This is considered uncouth in polite circles. When informed of this by a KPTV minion, female shoppers were suitably outraged. Jamie Wilson was On The Scene, waving Jose’s arrest papers at the camera. Jose, a Beaverton Car Wash employee, has been charged with public intoxication and currently resides in Washington County jail.

A local 15-year-old girl, who was raped in the past, has allegedly been raped again by her legal guardian, with whom she ran off. Get all that?

A Hillsboro woman has been found guilty of sex abuse.

Milwaukie’s Daniel Mitchell is accused of having picked up a retarded 21-year-old woman. The woman’s father was looking for her when he spotted Mitchell having sex with her in Mitchell’s car. Mitchell is now being held on $25,000 bail. According to David Frietas/Freitas, Mitchell has no previous criminal record.

Fox 12’s Most Wanted

• Big Time Creepy Guy Carl Harrison of Gresham has been arrested.

• Joseph Williams was turned in to the cops by his co-workers.

• Alleged armed robber Keit Le has also been captured.

So, 2 Rottweilers were fighting when 1 of them turns on the owner. Owner fends the dog off with a machete. You know the rest: “They’re good dogs. I don’t know why he turned on me…” etc. etc. OK, let’s be honest here. People buy these four-legged killing machines precisely because they’re vicious. Let’s stop pretending they’re just like fluffy little bunnies.

Meth Watch

• Mark Lyzewski, KPTV Weekend Warrior, told us about a Big! Meth! Bust! in Keizer. The cops found a lab, but not just ANY lab. This one was near TWO schools! Gee, remember the Good Old Days when every friggin’ crime was reported by KPTV to be “near a school”? But I digress. Anyway, Michael Wilson and 2 other people were arrested in conjunction with this bust.

• A 2-month-long investigation culminated in a drug raid at a farm in Woodland, Washington, according to David Wilson.

• That Portland marina that was on the show the other night has closed up. The owner says it’s because of harassment of his tenants by the police.

Break.

Katrina’s Devastation

• “KPTV’s Doug Luzader” says that large parts of New Orleans are without electicity and the city is still a huge mess. Thanks, Doug.

• Keri Tomlinson was at the armory in Northeast Portland to show us some National Guard soldiers returning from the hurricane zone. She said they had to put Vicks Vapo-Rub under their noses to protect them from the smell in New Orleans. Her prop for this story was a T-shirt, intended to stand in for the clothing she says the troops have to burn now because it is permanently toxic. I guess you probably can’t sell that stuff on eBay, huh?

• Oh, some Portland area firefighters are back from New Orleans, too.

• Next came Kevin Coari, Embedded Reporter, to show us some video of “City In Ruins,” New Orleans. Although we saw “Jeffrey,” a guy from down there, again, at least we didn’t see Skinny White Trash Woman On Bus With Baby for the fourth time.

In Beaverton, the cops held a meeting to try to convince a group of new citizens from Somalia and other African states that the American police are on their side. Apparently, in those countries, the cops are lawless thugs who enforce the rule of a hegemonistic government. OK, so what was the difference they were trying to teach the new arrivals about? Joke. Sort of.

Break.

Back in March, a local woman drove her SUV off a Portland bridge. That must have been pretty scary, but hey, she got her story in Reader’s Digest, where millions of people will read about it while defecating. Anyway, today she met the guy who saved her for the first time. Life In These United States, huh?

Speaking of Portland bridges, the St. Johns Bridge is reopening after 2 years or something like that and millions of tax dollars. Remember, it’s only pork when it isn’t spent where you live.

Remember that story about Washington state removing their HOV lanes and how that hack from Fox News Channel tried to say that HOV lanes were an example of “social engineering?” Remember how KPTV had to air a retraction because SUV lanes are only being removed in the Vancouver area? Well, this is the weekend when Washington State de-socially engineers the Vancouver area. In other words, they’re removing the SUV lanes around Vancouver.

Speaking of things that’ll screw up the streets, the Race For The Cure is Saturday in downtown Portland. The streets are supposed to be reopened by 11 AM.

Break.

Good news, deadbeats! Oregon is raising its minimum wage by a quarter, to $7.50/hour, soon. I’m rich!

Flu Season is fast approaching. The government is going to give Katrina survivors first crack at the flu shots. The rest of us will get our chance after them.

In the ongoing story of the pussification of America’s children, a “safe” playground opened on Friday in North Portland. Does that mean that all the abandoned needles in it are pre-blunted? OK, no sane person wants to see kids injured, but always remember that “safe” equals “dull.”

Weather. Break.

Final Cut

Northwest Tonight

• “KPTV’s Keli McAlister” gave us this confusing story. The mayor of Seattle says that the city doesn’t have the money to continue with the monorail. OK, does that mean that the city can’t proceed with the planned EXTENSION of the monorail or that the city can’t continue to run the EXISTING monorail route? Seriously, I couldn’t figure it out from this piece. I went to the Web and found a print story, which failed to clear up the question for me. Someone must know what the deal is, but that someone ain’t me.

• A neighbor, alerted by the non-stop sounds of running water and a baby crying, found a toddler in the shower of her home next to her dead mother. This happened in the Spokane Valley. The autopsy of the mother’s body won’t be available for a few weeks.

• A Cottage Grove man has been brought up on child porn charges. The cops think that some of the pictures found on his computer may be of local kids.

• A Klamath Falls horse has been found to have West Nile virus.

America Tonight

• Some idiot shot who shot and killed some hunters is claiming self-defense, saying that some of his victims “needed killing.” Talk about ingratiating yourself with the jury, huh?

• Jeb Bush’s youngest son has been arrested for public intoxication and resisting arrest. The Florida governor did the same thing he did when his daughter was arrested for trying to obtain drugs without a prescription and said the arrest was a “private matter” and that he would appreciate it if people would butt out. Pardon my French, but that’s Bullshit! An arrest—ANY arrest—is public information. Screw these rich and powerful assholes who want to live by different rules than the rest of us. Hey, Jeb: if you were a better parent, your kids wouldn’t be acting like criminals and getting arrested; then you wouldn’t have anything to try to hush up. What IS it with the Bush offspring anyway? George’s twins are a couple of floozies and Jeb’s kids are frequent residents of the police blotter. Did they have difficult childhoods, growing up on the Mean Streets of the gated community?
  

• A fugitive turned herself in to the Las Vegas cops, over a decade after the armored car heist she was involved in. She and her then Significant Other took off to Europe with $2.5 million. Allegedly.

• A standoff involving hostages in a Tennessee drug store ended after the hostages escaped and the SWAT Team was brought in. There were no injuries.

• An exploding gas line in Montana destroyed 4 houses.

• A big ass crane toppled over, crashing through a roof in Florida

• Oh, this is so fodder for a conspiracy theory! Some mice which had been deliberately infected with the Bubonic Plague by scientists are missing from a laboratory in Newark, New Jersey. As creepy as this is, I can tell you this is the least dangerous thing in Newark, New Jersey.

• So, this guy goes into a convenience store in Florida and buys a Mountain Dew. He starts gagging and retching when he drinks it. Funny story, the guy who works there deliberately urinated in the bottle. Except the cops don’t think it’s quite so funny, for some reason. Now the customer is afraid that he could contract a disease from the tainted soda. But was the bottle cap the 1 in 4 that wins a free Dew? They never give you the most important details.

• In a move sure to thrill his supporter, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he will seek re-election.

World Tonight

• A bomb exploded in Beirut, killing 1 person and injuring many others.

David Wilson stood near the KPTV “news” van to inform us that a girls’ volleyball team from Longview had their uniforms stolen. They showed us some pictures of the outfits, just in case you couldn’t figure out a shirt with “Cowlitz” and a number on the back was part of a team uniform.

Hollywood Buzz

• “KPTV’s Lisa Bernhard” gave us some yadda yadda about the Emmy Awards this weekend. It's good to see these toilers in the acting vineyard in line for statues and accolades, because the work of people on TV continues to be so underappreciated in our society.

• Horny actor Charlie Sheen and his beautiful/goofy-looking wife, actress Denise Richards, are working on getting back together. Hookers all across Southern California now regret having made downpayments on luxury vehicles.

• Country singer-I’ve-never-heard-of Mindy McCready has been released from jail on $50,000 bond on a charge of probation violation. I think having committed a felony automatically insures her a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Having completely demonstrated their competence and won the public’s trust in recent years, NASA wants to go back to the moon. I actually do think that the space program is important from a scientific standpoint, but is this really the best time to be announcing a very expensive government program?

And apropos of nothing, Embedded Reporter Kevin Coari went slumming Friday morning as a disc jockey on 99.5 The Wolf. Did you wear your Combat Correspondent’s khaki to the studio, Kev?

There was no Countdown Clock again tonight, so Shauna Parsons was under no pressure to end in sync with it.

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

• We talked last night about the church behind President Bush during his speech on Thursday night and how nicely lit it was. More: Click here

• More about Jeb Bush’s son and his arrest: Click here

• Say, did you know Friday was a National Day of Prayer? Since KPTV didn’t bother to tell you about that, you may not have wasted your energy petitioning an imaginary deity not to kill people He clearly hates for some reason we can’t begin to fathom.

• President of the United States Dick Cheney who, for some reason, occupies the smaller office in the West Wing of the White House, is going into the hospital for surgery next weekend. Click here

• To celebrate the fact that Americans are free, schools which take Federal money were ordered to observe Constitution Day. Click here

• In a story which, frankly, I’m amazed KPTV missed, a majority of U.S. teenagers report they have had oral sex. Click here