9.30.2005

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Some nights, what KPTV doesn’t do a story about is more interesting than what they do.

Top Story.  Oooh, KPTV done found themselves a crime wave.  6 cars have been stolen in the last 48 hours in the Wood Village-Fairview area.  Lock your Subarus in the closet, suburbanites!  Is meth to blame?  Who knows, but KPTV would like you to suspect as much.  David Frietas/Freitas was outside a Wal-Mart holding one of those Club anti-theft thingies.  

So, a man gets assaulted by 2 guys in Boring after offering to give them a ride home.  Covered in blood, he runs to a nearby house and bangs on the door, yelling that he needs help.  The people inside the house open the door, let him in and call 911, right?  Well, no, except for the “call 911” part.  The man of the house concluded that the guy was trying to rob him or something so he shot the guy through the door.  Nice.  I guess that whole “covered in blood” thing was just part of a clever disguise.  One of the 2 men who attacked the guy turned himself in to the cops; the other one is still on the loose.  While I can’t specifically blame KPTV for it, I honestly do think its brand of “be afraid of everything” scarenalism contributes to the paranoia exhibited by the people who shot the guy.  As I’ve mentioned before, overall crime rates are down all across America but you’d never know that if your only (or main) source of news information is KPTV.  They’d have you think that axe-wielding meth addicts are rampaging through the streets, swinging aborted fetuses over their heads by the umbilical cord with their free hands as they abduct our teenage daughters to take them to their underground lairs.  They aren’t “journalists” so much as haunted house actors; they’re paid to scare you.  May they all rot in Hell.

OK, back to the jokes!  2 19-year-olds in Gresham thought it would be funny to call 911 and say that 1 of them was going to stab his girlfriend.  Oddly enough, the police didn’t share their amusement in the wacky prank.  

So there was this carjacking in Southeast Portland months ago.  The cops have found what they believe is the carjacker’s DNA on the ski mask he wore during the crime.  D’oh!

Remember when the local Post Office announced that the master keys for a lot of the mail boxes in the Portland area had been stolen?  Well, they’ve got the locks changed on all the mail boxes outside post offices and they say they’ll have the locks on the rest of the local boxes changed soon.  Um, wouldn’t it have been more logical to change the locks on the boxes NOT in front of post offices first, since a crook would be more likely to rob one of them?  Just asking.

The police cars in Tigard are getting those nifty dash cameras, the better to document the broken tail light you get pulled over for.  We saw some video from this Tuesday when one of the camera-equipped cop cars chased Ryan Perkins.  “Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, you know you shouldn’t have meth in your car.  Your mother and I have talked to you about this several times!”  Oh, this was rich: when he got out of the car, he took a nosedive onto the pavement.  For his trouble, Ryan got himself convicted.  Already?  Damn, that’s fast.  The cameras are gonna cost $100,000 with a Federal grant.

Oregon Responds (to what?  They aren’t making this segment follow Katrina’s Destruction anymore?)

  • Some more Oregon National Guard soldiers are coming home.

  • An Albany company is donating some of the water they “manufacture” to people in the hurricane-affected area.

  • Some volunteers from Hillsboro are in Nagadotches, Texas, helping the people down there.  Awww, that’s nice.

  • A charity concert called “Pink for Katrina” was held in Portland.  Would they have called it that if they knew what “showing pink” means in porn-speak?  Anyway, it’s sort of a sequel to the recent “Blues for Katrina” concert.  Unless that involved Smurfs, I’m going to assume it featured blues music.

Break.

Darrell Paris was acquitted of the murder of his son.  He claimed to have found and unsuccessfully tried to revive the 14-month-old in his home.  His lawyer said the jury was “brave” to return the Not Guilty verdict.

Man, that didn’t take long.  That Oregon girl who allegedly was working as an underage hooker in Phoenix and whose Mom brought her home, has run off again.  The story is that she wants to go back to her pimp.  I just had a thought: you know those legal whorehouses in Nevada?  One of them should install something like a small roller coaster with booths instead of the cars on it that you could go into with your hooker and have sex as you ride.  Yeah, you laugh now, but wait about six months when you see a story about something like this on the Final Cut.

Speaking of bad parenting, some local woman allegedly kidnapped her children and took them to Tijuana (“The Happiest Place On Earth” according to The Simpsons).  She got caught when she tried to bring them back across the border into the U.S.  I gotta tell you, no matter what you may think of America, crossing the border from San Ysidro, California to Tijuana is HUGE culture shock!  Instant Third World: just add drinkable water.

If, for some reason, you feel you need to push a wheelchair across the MAX tracks, make sure a train isn’t coming.  A local woman failed to heed this simple rule with disastrous results.  You know the expression, “You’re all up in my grill”?  That’s what that MAX train was saying.

Washington County’s Valley Theater got the go-ahead to serve alcohol with meals during their movie presentations.  Assuming that they check ID’s (and I’m sure they do), this just shouldn’t be a big deal.  I’ve mentioned before that I went to a theater like that in Chevy Chase, Maryland once and, even though I don’t drink alcohol, it was a very pleasant way to enjoy a movie.

The other day we talked about the story concerning the restaurant “near a school” that wanted a liquor license.  Well, the knee-jerk assholes of the world can chalk up another victory: the request has been denied.  

Northwest Tonight

  • According to “KPTV’s Lowell Deo,” a 12-year-old student at Washington’s McKnight Middle School is dead after playing a choking game involving a noose she made out of a belt.  I don’t even want to make a joke about this; it’s just sad.

  • 2 men were caught in a Big! Meth! Bust! in Medford.  The cops found 6 pounds of the stuff and $6,000.  

  • OK, all local Catholics who weren’t molested by a priest when they were a kid have until this coming Monday to get their names off the class-action suit filed against the Portland diocese.  If these cases included those who were mind-fucked by Catholic school, I would so be a plaintiff, dude!

Break.

Fire Season 2005

  • “KPTV’s Casey Wyan” [spelling?] told us that Southern California is fucked!  Well, he didn’t say it quite that way, but that was the message in this story about wildfires in the L.A. area.  Soooo, how do you rich people who live in the nice neighborhoods in the Hills feel about cutting government services—like oh, say, firefighting--now?  

Break.

If you’re an individual on food stamps (they still have those?), the minimum you can get is going up by a whopping $3.  Families will grab a HUGE $7. increase.  Whoo, the generic ginger ale will flow like water in the projects, Baby!

If you live in West Linn or Oregon City, the bad news is that there’s too much lead in your drinking water.  The good news is that it makes it harder for Superman to see through you.

Dirty Dining

  • Keri Tomlinson was “live” (maybe) in News Control for this weekly exercise in emetics.  Three restaurants in the Ceder Hills Crossing mall in Beaverton (hey, that’s how they spelled it on the Chyron) share a single kitchen.  Not, perhaps, a good idea, given that the conditions there seem to have been less than spotless.  The sanitizer was too weak and frozen chicken was left out on the counter to thaw.  Tsk tsk.  The joints got a collective score of 70.  Upon return, the health inspector gave them an 84.  See what happens when you apply yourself?  

Am I to understand that this “Civil War” thing is some sort of popular game, of the football variety perhaps?  The people in charge of that sort of thing are considering moving it to the Friday after Thanksgiving, but they haven’t decided for sure yet.

Weather.  Break.

Final Cut

Katrina’s Devastation

  • Business owners are being allowed to return to New Orleans.  Your basic residents will be let back in soon.  Um, who is going to shop at the stores if residents aren’t there?  People on a Toxic Waste Site Tour?  Just asking.

America Tonight

  • It sounds like a Weekly World News headline: “Baby Ate Coke.”  Nope, it’s apparently true.  The little girl was in daycare when it was discovered that she ate some cocaine contained in a Zip-Loc bag that was on her.  Hey, the seal helps keep the nose candy fresh!  Anyway, the kid’s gonna be OK.  Sure, she’ll have to go through rehab and some of her sandbox friends will write the inevitable tell-all books, but she’ll come through it.

  • In tonight’s installment of Appalachian Emergency Room, some yahoo in Kentucky shot up an E.R.  He hit a TV but there were no injuries.  He’s being charged with attempted murder.  

  • A gun was found in a man’s pants in a Sarasota, Florida courthouse.  Sheesh, pants come with guns in the South!  

  • A train derailment in Mississippi injured 20 people.  If the Republicans can’t defund Amtrack, they’re just going to kill everyone who rides it!

  • An SUV hit by a car went into a canal in Florida.  My notes say “W.B. OK” but I have no idea what the hell I meant by that.  Can anyone decode?

  • A 27-year-old immigrant man used fake ID to pretend to be a teenager so he could attend high school and get a diploma.  I’d make a joke about him getting caught when he brought his wife and kids to meet his teacher but I think about half the high school students in America could do that.

  • New road signs in New York City say “Leaving Brooklyn.  Oy Vey.”  The borough president of Brooklyn spent a considerable amount of his taxpayer-funded time to convince the Roads Department that this was a good idea.  Gevult!


A high school in Beaverton put on an elaborate little Grand Guignol for the kids to show them the horror of drunk driving.  Oh, it was a lovely little Passion Play, complete with “passengers” covered in “blood,” real firefighters extricating people from the “crashed” car and a voice-over via the PA system featuring the “dead” girl talking to her parents from the Beyond.  I spent $100 for tickets to Cats on Broadway and didn’t get this much of a show.  It was sponsored by S.K.I.D., Stopping Kids’ Intoxicated Driving because every good cause in America has to be accompanied by an acronym.

Pump Patrol

  • It’s OK to have your air conditioner on in your car; it’s better for your MPG than having your windows open at highway speed.  It’s OK to have your cruise control on, so long as you’re not going uphill.  Dirt on your car hurts your gas mileage.  Oh, in case you’re a complete mental case, putting nitrogen in your car tires will save you a whopping 3% in gas cost.  

Well, no hurry in telling us that we have a new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  I mean, this is clearly not as important as knowing that New York City (my hometown) has new Yiddish road signs.  John Roberts managed to dodge all the softballs lobbed at him by the Senate and will be wearing the Big Black Robe.

Now, this is news!  The Oregon State Supreme Court has ruled that stripping IS protected as free speech!  Damn straight it is.

Pamela Paul is the author of a new book, Pornified.  If I understood this story, the book is about the mainstreaming of porn.  Now, that may well be a good subject to study and debate, but I find it somewhat ironic for a Fox affiliate to try to take the “high road.”  Anyone remember when Fox first started as a network and it was accused of lowering standards with shows like Married With Children?  And how about that American classic, The Littlest Groom?

Hollywood Buzz

  • Coked-up clothes hangar Kate Moss is rumored to be in rehab in Arizona.  No thinking human gives a shit.

  • Aerosmith has been exumed and is planning a stadium tour.  Jimi Hendrix impersonator Lenny Kravitz will be the opening act.

  • A bunch of artsy-fartsy people trying desperately to look as if they weren’t really just trying to pick each other up assembled at the Portland Art Fair.  It was a fundraiser for a local museum; thousands of dollars in I.O.U.’s were collected.

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

Eh, why would a “news” show feel compelled to tell you that Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who went to jail to protect her source in the story about the “outing” of a CIA agent, has been released from her confidentiality promise and is now out of jail?  Kate Moss is going into rehab, for Chrissakes!  Click here

A judge has ruled (again!) that the Pentagon has to release the photos of American soldiers torturing Iraqis.  By the way, when you Click here, take a look at the actual address of the link, particularly the last part.

Endangered Species Act??  What’s that?  After all, it’s not as if we live in an area with a lot of woods and people who like to hunt or anything.  Click here

Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill to allow same-sex marriage in California.  Well, you can’t really blame KPTV here; it’s not as if California is a large state immediately to our south or anything.  Click here

Remember that contract that the striking Boeing machinists were going to vote on?  I guess that whole “follow-up story” thing isn’t on the KPTV menu.  It was approved.  Click here














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