Thursday, September 16, 2005

Grrr. I’m still mad after last night’s debacle. I’m trying out a new piece of magical software which should insure that I never have a situation like that again. We’ll see. I’ll believe that when monkeys fly out of my butt or KPTV acts like a real news show, whichever comes first. My money’s on the monkeys.

Top Story. Man, this was weak. It was about people stealing stuff from local construction sites. This is allegedly a big problem in the Happy Valley area where some construction firms have taken to hiring private security guards to hang around at night (sleep on the job more likely). As you would imagine, the costs of this theft is probably going to be passed on to the homebuyer. David Frietas/Freitas was the face On The Scene for this story.

Fox 12’s Most Wanted

• Adrian Rekdahl, home invader, is the Top of the Pops tonight. See him? Call the cops.

Meth Watch

• Heather Collins is a bad parent (allegedly). Her 19-month-old daughter was found toddling across a busy street outside the Collins home. She admits to drug use (Heather, that is, not the baby) and the cops found drug paraphernalia lying around the place. David Wilson managed to pry from some neighbor kids the information that Collins and her husband/boyfriend/baby daddy fight a lot. The guys a regular Woodward and Bernstein rolled into one, isn’t he? Heather is locked up and her 3 kids are in foster homes for the time being.
• Some local goofball (of the male variety) managed to get himself into a car chase with the cops, who found meth residue inside his vehicle after the inevitable capture.

OK, seriously, someone tell me what the KPTV-LoJack connection is, please. This was LoJack blowjob Number Four, right? Not only that, but it was completely gratuitous seeing as it was about the same young woman, Taryn Taber, we heard about the other night. OK, we get it—her car was stolen, but she got it back thanks to the LoJack she didn’t even know was in it. There’s something smelly about all this, but I don’t know exactly what it is. Anyone know and want to clue me in?

Katrina’s Devastation

• President Bush made a speech on national TV on Thursday night from Jackson Square in New Orleans. Boy, the guy just can’t get enough of the Big Easy, huh? Too bad he didn’t give a rat’s ass when it involved interrupting his 5-week vacation. Anyway, he stole a page out of the old Democrat play book by promising to spend immense amounts of money on the reconstruction of New Orleans. No one, by the way, is putting an exact price tag on this project. Oh, in the course of this piece, we got to see an art gallery owner from Nawlins who had what appeared to be half a moustache. Interesting look there, Artsy Fartsy.
• Next, we heard from some locals who watched the speech on TV. They seemed less than impressed. Oh wow, KPTV actually mentioned the fact that Bush’s approval numbers are in the crapper!

Oregon Responds

• Some do-gooders are going to have 10 days worth of benefits to raise funds to send to Mercy Corps. They’ll involve music and food as all good benefits must.
• Something called Operation Backpack is collecting backpacks—logically enough—filled with stuff that kids need to send to the hurricane-ravaged area. I for one will be SO happy when this fad of naming everything “Operation” something or other passes once and for all.

Break.

Sean Shirk of Ridgefield, Washington, says his neighbor’s pit bull, Chopper, attacked him, so he shot it with his trusty .44. Naturally, the dog’s owner pulled the old “People hate pit bulls because they have a bad image” defense. Um, pit bulls have a “bad image” because THEY HAVE A NASTY HABIT OF ATTACKING PEOPLE! Pit bulls have a bad image in the same way that the Nazi Party had a bad image. Some “bad images” are deserved. The friggin’ dog isn’t dead, by the way. The owner should change Chopper’s name to Kevlar.

A gunman who waved his piece around at a Northeast Portland transit stop is still on the loose. And by “piece,” I mean his gun.

The 4 Caucasian yahoos who assaulted the Vancouver convenience store clerk while stealing beer are still un-caught, even though we know the California license plate on their Mercedes-Benz.

4 people were arrested for stealing gasoline in Lincoln County. Odds say that it was either in Lincoln City or Newport, so why didn’t KPTV just say so? There isn’t a whole lot else in Lincoln County.

Darrell Paris killed his 15-month-old son in Clackamas. Isn’t this the same guy who’s claiming it was a “mercy killing?” Oh, that was in the part of last night’s report that you didn’t get to see. I guess I’ll have to put that on the DVD as an “extra.”

A Milwaukie man who was convicted of molesting a girl got 6 years in prison where he will have much time to contemplate the true nature of sex abuse, from the victim’s perspective. Please promise me you won’t “find Jesus” while in the slammer, OK? That is SO over!

Portland police officer Jeff Parker was “laid to rest,” as they say, on Thursday. When I go, I’d like for my family to hollow out my body and turn me into a giant Lava Lamp. Actually, it doesn’t have to be a Lava Lamp; I’d settle for being turned into a giant version of anything on sale at Spencer Gifts. But that’s just how I roll.

A horse was shot by someone wielding a pellet gun in Ridgefield, Washington. The horse is dead and the female owner is appalled. “You don’t expect that in this pasture,” she said, or words to that effect.

They’re still kicking around the idea of building a casino in the Cascade Locks area. There was a community meeting Thursday about the project, attracting locals from both the “Yippee, I can’t wait until there are slot machines up the ying-yang in my formerly quiet town” and the “I can’t sleep with neon light streaming through my bedroom window” persuasions.

Mount Angel is hosting its annual Oktoberfest this week. So, ever wonder why Oktoberfest is held in September and not October? Me neither, but we were told anyway. According to some old coot who looked like the type of retired guy who gives his opinions about every damn thing to everyone who steps off a Greyhound bus in his town, the name “Oktoberfest” actually has nothing to do with the month of October and everything to do with harvest and thanking God and on and on and on until you want to point at something way off in the distance, say “Hey, what’s that?” and run away when the old fart turns to look.

Break.

Portland is putting new bike markings on some streets. And New York has the reputation for being the city where things are always happening!

Tri-Met fares may be going up (for the third time this year) thanks to higher gas prices.

Northwest Tonight

• There was a HUGE! Pot! Bust! west of Ontario, over near the Idaho state line. The stuff was being grown on Bureau of Land Management property. Nice touch!

War On Terror

• Local cops are getting some new “tools” to fight terrorism, the exact details of which I have no idea. The money’s coming from Homeland Security. Whatever the hell it involves, I can guarantee that it will not stop terrorism, but it will involve hassling innocent citizens.
• Whatever agency is responsible for it is going to be spending $3 million on “security” for the Portland ports. My comments in the previous paragraph apply equally here.

Fight For Iraq

• American troops killed 200 suspected terrorists in Tal Afar, Iraq. That word “suspected” kind of worries me a bit. Shouldn't we know if the people we're shooting at really are bad guys before we shoot at them?
  

Judge John Roberts’ 3 grueling days of endlessly repeating, “I can’t comment on that, Senator” are finally over. Soon, Roberts will be able to start enjoying that well-deserved lifelong job of sucking at the public teat.

“KPTV’s Andy Williams” sang Moon River for us and—no, I kid. Actually, he told us about how Tropical Storm Ophelia is still hanging around the coast of North Carolina, making a big mess out of places like Atlantic Beach.

Weather. Break.

Final Cut/News Across America

• 2 young Florida girls wanting to help raise money for victims of Katrina were hit on by a sex offender. Color their Dad pissed.
• A teen is presumed to be drowned after falling into the water near Niagra Falls. Question: why was that the place to go on your honeymoon for decades? You go there, you look at the Falls, which kills about 5 minutes. Then what?
• Stanley Cardonik, who probably thought he’d be spending his Golden Years more productively, is a school bus driver. He was beat up by one of the little punks on his bus, getting a black eye and some facial bruising in the process. This happened in Florida.
• A small private plane landed on a highway in Alabama. The perfect landing resulted in no injuries, although it shut down the road for a while.
• A train ran into the back of another train in Texas, killing a person.
• After a 2-year wait, a New York man got 6—count ‘em, 6—transplanted organs put into him in a Washington, D.C. hospital. For some reason, this reminds me of that Visible Man figure you buy to educate your kids about the human body. Of course, since this is America, Visible Man has no Visible Penis or Visible Scrotum. This country really is kind of fucked-up in some ways, huh?

Katrina’s Devastation

• We were told again how President Bush promised a shitload of money to help rebuild New Orleans. He also said he has ordered all of his cabinet members to start immediate reviews of what their departments did right and wrong in responding to the hurricane. ‘Cause the absolute BEST way to determine what someone did wrong is to ask them and NOT to have impartial people investigate.
• Responding to a poll, or maybe just a guy with a clipboard, only half of the Katrina evacuees who have been relocated to Houston say they intend to move back to New Orleans.
• New filings for unemployment hit a 10-year high last week, thanks mostly to the Katrina thing. 68,000 new claims were filed.
• On the lighter side (‘cause there’s always a “lighter side” to a natural disaster which took hundreds or thousands of lives), 2 of the Katrina evacuees were married in the Astrodome. Did the groom carry the bride across the threshold of the endzone?
• A black lady who was evacuated from New Orleans was reunited with her dog.

Oregon Responds

• I’m not sure how Kevin Coari spent most of his time when he was “embedded” with a National Guard unit in New Orleans, but apparently it didn’t involve much of that "reporting" thing. For at least the third time, we saw tape of the same white trashy-looking woman on a bus with her kid. This time, though, it had something to do with the dog she left behind. The SPCA is going door-to-door looking for animals in New Orleans.

David Wilson, lurking near the KPTV “news” van, told us about how Washington County is thinking about letting residential neighborhoods buy their own speed bumps to slow traffic on their streets. The bumps cost $5000-$6000 and the concerned citizens have to go through some bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo before they can slap them on the asphalt. Turns out that Beaverton has had a similar program for about a year now and has had no takers.

From the Who Gives A Shit file, comes word that American Idol is conducting auditions in Chicago. A pair of female triplets drove a great distance to be informed that their talent is considerably less impressive than they imagine by has-been Paula Abdul, never-was Randy Jackson and British closet queen Simon Cowell.

Hollywood Buzz

• Russell Crowe may not be able to work in movies in America because of his assault with a phone on a hotel clerk in New York City earlier this year. Who’s throwing the pity party?
• Jennifer Lopez has announced that she will be marketing a new perfume soon. If they had any sense of humor, it would be called J-Lo’s Ass.
• Rene Zellweger has filed to annul her less-than-six-months-old marriage to country singer Kenny Chesney. Although KPTV didn’t mention this, she is alleging “fraud” as the reason for the annulment. No one knows what that means in this context.

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

So, did you notice how nicely the church behind President Bush while he delivered his speech tonight was lighted? Click here

So, you kind of think that we're fucked but you aren't sure exactly HOW fucked we are? Karl Rove is in charge of the reconstruction of New Orleans. THAT'S how fucked we are. From the Washington Post:

"All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson 's story in the New York Times this morning:

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."

Rove's leadership role suggests quite strikingly that any and all White House decisions and pronouncements regarding the recovery from the storm are being made with their political consequences as the primary consideration."

From sploid.com: "A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday. The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., declined to name the employee, citing confidentiality matters. Weldon described the documents as "2.5 terabytes" — as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress, he added."