Friday, September 23, 2005

Rita-rama!

Top Story.

• Rita, what else? As the show started, Rita was 55 miles south of the Texas-Louisiana border and heading north. Wind speed was 120 MPH. Fires in Galveston were hard to extinguish because of the high winds. "KPTV's Caroline Shivley" was in Beaumont, Texas standing in the wind like a regular Kevin Coari-type embedded reporter or something. Rita is expected to make landfall sometime Saturday morning. George Bush is staring at monitors at the Northern Command Center in Colorado.
• A Salem women is a teacher in the Houston area. David Frietas/Freitas talked to her parents who managed to get her on the speakerphone. There was too much traffic on the roads out of Houston for her to evacuate so she's going to just hunker down and hope for the best.
• Air travel in and out of Houston is cancelled for the foreseeable future.
• Task Force Rita, containing some Oregon-based National Guard troops, is in the hurricane area.
• Substitute Weather Weasel Drew Jackson told us what we already knew: Rita is heading for the Texas/Louisiana border; it was about 2 hours from landfall and there was a lot of rain in the area.

20 master keys to local mail boxes have been stolen. David Wilson was in downtown Portland standing next to a mail box for this story. The interesting part of this story is that the keys were stolen from the car of a postal employee back in April and the Post Office claims to have only found out about it Friday morning. Good security there! Marcia Natale sent a check to pay a bill and found out that it had been stolen and the personal information on it was used to steal her identity. 2 women have been arrested in connection with this and there's also a male suspect not caught yet. So, the moral here is, if you have to mail something, walk into the post office and hand it to the friendly employee behind the counter with the automatic weapon and the psychotic glint in the eye.

A 17-year-old high school exchange student staying in Portland was threatened by a guy with a knife. She called her "Host Mother" (a term I was not familiar with) when the attack happened. Her real parents, who live God Only Knows Where, are upset and considering having her move back to God Only Knows Whereistan. The knife-wielder is a 50-ish white guy.

Break.

Next we got more about the flaming douchebag who gets his jollies by calling women working at local businesses and telling them he plans on abducting and hurting the daughters of their co-workers. Jamie Wilson (a member of the family vaudeville act, The Aristocrats) was out at the Frito-Lay factory in Gresham 'cause some employees there have gotten calls from this wacko (and because she finds the burnt Cheetos her alien species lives on in the dumpster behind the plant).

A stabbing which was possibly gang-related killed a teenage boy about 4:30 PM in Salem.

The defense rested in the case of Chris Lehman, the former radio personality charged with sex abuse of a child. If I was on the jury, all the D.A. would have to say is, "Hey, the guy was a fucking DISC JOCKEY!" I'd vote to convict on the spot, based on what I know of people in the radio business. I'd volunteer to throw the switch on the electric chair and I don't even believe in the death penalty.

Meth Watch

• In North Bend, a former deputy entered a plea of guilty to possession of meth. Better glue your ass cheeks together before you get to jail, Mr. Probably-arrested-half-the-guys-in-there.
• Congress is working on a bill designed to target meth dealers and stop the importation of the materials needed to make the stuff. Based on the track record of the current Congress, I expect them to totally fuck this up somehow.

A Big! Pot! Bust! nabbed a man and a woman in a Gresham apartment.

Some pot plants were seized near Carlton, Oregon.

A motorcyclist died after crashing into a car on Northeast Portland Highway.

According to the cops, vandalism in Battleground is attributable to some boys, ages 12-14 who like to pretend that they belong to a gang. It's good to see that kids still have dreams, isn't it?

Hey, remember that cougar sighting from last night? Funny story, the "cougar" turns out to have been a large cat. You know, a CAT, like we see every damn day if we leave our homes, look out our windows or watch TV for more than five minutes. I know, I know, I'm like Chicken Little, interpreting every story to mean that our civilization is screwed, but Jesus, if we panic when we see a CAT, we truly are too scared to live.

Break.

Northwest Tonight

A Spokane boy burned on 55% of his body when he was playing with gasoline (and exactly how do they make those precise measurements?) went home on Friday from the hospital. Shauna and Wayne signed when he looked at the camera and said something cute like, "I'm going to sue the bastard who left the gas in the bottle." Actually, he said (paraphrasing), "They fix me up so I go home." It was like one of those novelty statues with the outstretched arms that say "I wuv you THIS much!"

Oregon and New York states signed some unholy pact that allows wine makers in each state to send their life- and marriage-destroying product to residents of the other. Skoal!

Stupidity Uber Alles! The Snohomish City Council or whatever they call the local hegemony is harassing the owners of a local BBQ restaurant because they have cartoony pictures of dancing naked pigs on the side of their building. It's good to see that every other problem has been solved in Snohomish; if it hadn't, they wouldn't have time for bullshit like this. Wait 'til these people find the Cartoon Network. Their heads are gonna explode; there's naked 'toon animals EVERYWHERE!

Break.

Mountain On The Move

• Whoa, dude! Time-lapse footage of the lava dome in Mt. St. Helens. Totally Koyaanisqatsi, man!

I-Team 12

• Keri Tomlinson, Commander in Chief of the I-Team, was in her bunker, News Control, to tell us that some scumbags are going around, pretending to be collecting money for Food Bank. Turns out that the real Food Bank never raises money that way. In a related story, there is no such thing as the Salvation Navy.

Pump Patrol

• Gas is running about $2.71/gallon in Portland. Around America, it's averaging $2.78/gallon. Prepare for prices to rise thanks to the hurricanes.
• Then we got a montage of some really unattractive TV reporters from Fox stations around the country doing their version of the "local gas prices have gone up" story. That's right, me, a fat guy with multiple chins, just made fun of the way some TV reporters look. At least I don't force my big fat head into your living room in the guise of "journalism."

Weather. Break.

Final Cut

That guy who allegedly deliberately drove onto the sidewalk on the Vegas strip after having a "bad day" at drug court? The cops say he did it because the people on the sidewalk were "staring at him like demons." Well, if he had a good reason...

There was a riot at a prison in Chino, California. Isn't that the plot of a show on Fox?

10 Cubans floating in the ocean, trying to get to America, got into a hassle with the Coast Guard. Some of them refused life preservers thrown to them by the Guardsmen. Doesn't matter. All 10 of them are going to be sent back to Cuba. I guess I don't understand our country's Cuban policy; we spend millions of dollars every year to broadcast radio and TV propaganda to Cuba which is jammed by Castro but we send back people who are trying to escape from his dictatorship? Consistency, who needs it?

A small plane crashed in Arkansas, killing the pilot.

Indiana is trying to close down an exotic animal preserve, where the state says the animals are in bad shape. The owner has obtained a restraining order, though, keeping the place open for the time being.

A boy in Cape Girardeau, Missouri found a two-headed snake. He's named it Rush Limbaugh. That joke is funnier if you know that Rush is from Cape Girardeau.

People in Southern California who thought they were seeing a UFO were the victims of an unintentional prank played by the Air Force. It was really a rocket called "Streak," which probably stands for something, in that way that the military has.

Fox 12's Most Wanted (making a rare appearance in the Final Cut)

• William Martin, a registered sex offender, is missing. For some reason, Jamie Wilson felt the need to stand next to the KPTV "news" van to impart this information to us.

Katrina's Devastation

• Sheesh, Katrina is so Early September. Local high school students held a Debateathon to raise money for the victims of the last hurricane. My favorite part of this story was the very Asian-looking student whose name, according to the Chyron, was Melissa Cohen. American is a melting pot, indeed.
• Then Shauna Parsons tried to go to a story by "KPTV's Chris Wolfe." The tape didn't work or something, though, and Shauna looked thrown-off and a wee bit pissed. She awkwardly handed things off to Wayne Garcia.
• Wayne then gave us a story about a guy who sells that stuff that they put in disposable diapers that absorbs the pee. He's proposing dropping it on growing hurricanes to absorb the water and diminsh the storm. He claims to have tested it and says he's close to perfecting the technique. Interesting. I actually knew a guy who sold bags of that stuff for various water-absorbing purposes.
• Back to Shauna, who managed to go to Chris Wolfe this time. Wolfe was in Baytown, Texas to tell us about how things are going just peachy in the Gulf area. Fires are out of control in Galveston, a levee broke again in New Orleans' 9th Ward, reflooding the area, 20 old people died when their bus exploded as they tried to escape the area. Oh, the governor of Texas is now saying that anyone who hasn't yet escaped the hurricane target area should just stay put and hunker down.

Hollywood Buzz

Stevie Wonder recorded a song, the proceeds of which he is going to donate to hurricane relief efforts. At least that's what they told him he was doing.

If the idea of seeing a movie about rollerdancing in the 1970's wasn't enough to entice you to go to the multiplex this weekend, Fox Searchlight says they are going to donate 10% of the profits from the opening weekend of Roll Bounce to hurricane relief.

Britney Spears has announced that her baby will be named Sean Preston Federline. Damn, I was betting on Doublewide or NASCAR Federline.

J-Lo unveiled her new "Sweetface" line of clothing in Chicago, for some reason. A fat Hispanic gay guy said that this showed that Jen "loves Chicago." I figured it meant that the restraining order wasn't in effect in Illinois.

Martha Stewart did a commercial for PETA after she found out how fur coats are made. I'm certainly not in favor of animal cruelty, but doesn't it seem as if celebrities are the only people so sheltered that they can be "horrified" to find out that animals are killed to make fur?

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

I don't even remember what this story is about anymore. Just click here and see.

Here's a direct link to those pictures of dead Iraqis that American soldiers traded for porn. Click here

So, you thought that all that wacky torturing of Iraqi prisoners was over, huh? Turns out, not so much. Click here

Want another source for that? Click here

You have a volunteer military, you get superstitious assholes. Click here

Here's a story from a CBS station about the same nonsense. This is the single worst piece of "journalism" I have ever seen. What a crock of shit! This isn't a news story; it's like one of those emails I get from my cousin Mary Beth about how gang members are shooting people who flash their headlights. Anyone associated with this should be fired immediately. Click here