Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Oh man, I'm kinda groggy tonight. I didn't get my usual nap on Tuesday. You only think I'm kidding. I'm like Mister Nap. Anyway, I'll soldier on lest my army of anonymous readers bitches me out for not being diligent.

Top Story. Prostitutes in a major American City!? Say it isn't so. And not just prostitutes in any old neighborhood, either. No sir, these prostitutes have the temerity to ply their trade in an up and coming trendy neighborhood. NW 21st and Burnside to be exact. According to this story, brought to us by David Wilson by the way, gay men and local business operators alike are outraged by the very notion of women of the evening renting their hoo has in proximity to their fashionable haunts. Go back to the ghetto, you ho bags, where we can feel OK about ignoring your corrosive influence on the neighborhood.

Fox 12's Most Wanted

• 2 men knocked over a Key Bank in Vancouver on Monday. This story was part of KPTV's new policy of "Yesterday's News, Today."
• There's an armed robber targeting small businesses in Southeast Portland. Pacific Beach Tanning has been hit twice recently. He seems to hit businesses where there's a single female employee working the counter. Some of the women are understandably shaken up.

A pedestrian was hit on I-5 near I-84. Sorry for the injury, pain and all but who walks on the interstate? Make you a deal: you stop walking on the interstates and I'll stop driving on the sidewalks.

A domestic dispute resulted in a stabbing at the Wal-Mart in Dallas, Oregon. That's the great thing about Wally World; you can get the knife to commit the crime, the tourniquet to put on the gushing wound and the mop to clean up the blood all under one roof.

High school coach Katherine Erickson, in an apparent attempt to show that women can be pervs too, is accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-old student. Ladies, if you insist on going down the Michael Jackson road, at least go all the way; buy a llama and an amusement park to entertain your "young friends."

Jim Hyde was in downtown Portland at PSU to bring us this classic piece of scarenalism about how a few students have had their ID's taken from their bags while they were playing sports. Jimbo's prop for this story was his wallet. If you looked close, you could see a circular indentation from the condom he put in there back on V-J Day.

Katrina's Devastation

• Since KPTV is using the sad Brooke Wilberger music whenever they show the Katrina's Devastation graphic, if and when they go back to the Wilberger story, will they use the music for that too or is it Katrina-specific now? "KPTV's Doug Luzader," "their" man in New Orleans was at bat for this montage of Katrina-ana. President Bush says he is "fully responsible" for the federal government's sorry response to the crisis. Did he tell himself, "Bushie, you're doing a heck of a job"? The operators of a New Orleans nursing home are facing 34 counts of homicide because they didn't get the residents out to safety. The city of New Orleans is out of money and won't be able to make its next payroll. And the death toll in Louisiana is up to 423. It is expected to go higher as police and soldiers go door to door.

Oregon Responds (to Katrina)

Volunteers are collecting food and needed supplies to send down to New Orleans in Clackamas. Yeah, this is a serious story, but the accompanying video of a still-empty warehouse made me laugh. I get that TV "news" is all about the pictures but some pictures are just stupid.

Break.

Meth Watch

• 7 people were arrested in a Big! Meth! Bust! in Clatsop County (Scourge of the Northern Oregon Coast (r)). The 1 woman of the 7 was smiling in her mugshot.
• In one of those desperate actions taken by bureaucrats who don't know what to do about a problem, the Longview School Board voted to try to get ownership of the street in front of the local high school. Why? you ask. Well, if they own the street, see, they can then use drug-sniffing dogs to check out every student's car on it. I know I've said similar things before, but is it just possible that a society so afraid of its children might have a serious problem that drug-sniffing dogs won't cure? If you think this proposal is a good idea, please name me a country that treats its citizens in a similar manner that you would like to live in. This thing has "ACLU lawsuit" written all over it. Debra Gil told us about this civil rights-supressing nonsense.

Registered sex offender Patrick Hockersmith is a (n) (alleged) douchebag. The cops were chasing him so he made a call to 911 and claimed to be in the middle of a carjacking. Duh.

10 trees were damaged in a Northeast Portland park. As I was trying to scribble down the deets (as the kids say) I believed I heard the name of Martin Luther King Jr. invoked, so I'm going to guess that the park is in a not-so-good part of town.

Portland cop Jeff Parker died unexpectedly from complications after surgery.

At 10:45 Wednesday morning, Washington will have a state-wide tsunami drill. Um, state-wide tsunami drill? Is Spokane really in danger of a tsunami, considering that it's a few hundred miles or so from the ocean?

Katrina's Devastation (with dramatic soundtrack)

Oregon's Response. Kevin Coari is back from Hazardous Duty in New Orleans and he's a changed man for the experience. I guess. He told us about some Oregon soldiers who are holed up in a Louisiana convent that the nuns donated to the cause. We also saw some video of soldiers poking around inside a hospital, the pharmacy of which had been pretty thoroughly relieved of its medications.

Break.

Northwest Tonight

"KPTV's Darren Dido" (no relation to this: Click here) told us about two little boys who found a loaded 9 mm pistol on the playground of their school. In yet another indication of just how uninquisitive kids have become, they didn't fire it or even pick it up; they went and told their teacher.

A ban on strip clubs has been lifted in Seattle. The usual cabal of panicky losers is freaking out, afraid that titty bars might turn up in their neighborhoods, as the city has no rules on where the clubs may operate. OK, listen up! There is no--ZERO--chance that anyone is going to build a damn strip club on your stupid little cul de sac. Even though you don't like them (which is your right), they ARE a business and like any business, they want to be where the customers are. They will be on high traffic streets as they always are. Your children will not run the risk of eternal damnation via close proximity to naked breasts. Go back to worrying about the poisoning influence of people with darker skin than yours.

Break.

Fight For Iraq

• Bad day in the Big I. 73 dead and 162 hurt when something or other blew up.
• A "rebel stronghold" was attacked by U.S. forces in Northern Baghdad. I just had a thought. Do cities in Iraq have stuff like Chinatowns?
• An oil pipeline in Kirkuk caught fire, causing 4 deaths.
• George W. Bush met with the new president of Iraq and pledged that America will stand tall with the Iraqi people or some more of the usual crap that is resonating with fewer and fewer American, according to the polls. Oh, also, the new Iraqi constitution will be put to the vote in October.
  

War On Terror

• A Humvee in Afghanistan which blew up caused the death of 2 American soldiers. It's a possibility that it wasn't the result of terrorism, just a crummy car.
• Closer to home, a briefcase was spotted sitting on a pipeline in Rosemead, California. Upon investigation, it had nothing inside.

The John Roberts circus, oops, confirmation hearings, continued in D.C. The Democrats did that amusing thing they do where they pretend to be actually opposing something the Bush administration wants. That's so cute! For his part, John Roberts did his Karl Rove-approved thing where he answered every "hard" question with a non sequitor.

"Judge Roberts, how would you rule if Roe v. Wade was to come before the Court again?"

"Have you seen my two adorable kids?"

Ophelia is sitting off the coast of Charleston. Ophelia is back to hurricane status again. The new head of FEMA has started work on his resignation letter, just in case it takes a turn for the coastline.

Weather. Break.

Final Cut/News Across America

This is just plain friggin' weird. An Ohio couple who adopted several handicapped kids had eight of them sleep in cages inside their home. They claim that a psychologist told them this was a good thing to do. Oh, the cages had alarms on them which would go off if the kids tried to open the cage doors.

A carjack suspect was killed by the cops in Georgia.

Move over, Brooke Wilberger and Natalee Holloway. There's a new missing white girl in town. Taylor Behl is missing from Vienna, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, D.C.)

One of those "scare the kids straight" slideshows police departments present to high school classes about driving under the influence went bad when a girl in the Knoxville, Tennessee class recognized her dad as the crash victim in some of the slides. Awkward.

A couple of gay guys were attacked by an 18-year-old idiot when Shaquille O'Neal arrived on the scene and helped the cops arrest the guy. Shaq is HUGE! His shadow could pin your ass to the sidewalk.

World Tonight

• There was a pro-democracy protest in Nepal. Did you know that there is a stuffed Komodo Dragon in the lobby of the Royal Hotel in Katmandu, Nepal? If you can name the comedy duo who mentioned that fact in a routine, I could probably scrounge up a prize of some kind for you.

Marilyn Pruitt's body washed up near Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast. Her family says she tried suicide twice in the past and that she had a drug problem. David Frietas/Freitas was near the KPTV "news" van for this story--and he was wearing glasses! Memo from management to David: Your glasses do not count as a substitute for using a prop in your stories.

Katrina's Devastation (Live From Budokan)

This was a recap of the Katrina-related stuff they told us earlier about the couple that ran the nursing home who have been charged with 34 counts of negligent homicide; 423 confirmed deaths in Louisiana; President Bush saying he is "responsible" for the slow response from the Feds to Katrina.

I've mentioned before that "KPTV's William Lajeunesse" is really a Fox News Channel hack with a right-wing axe to grind. Man, he sure showed that in this piece. Turns out that, according to Lajeunesse, it isn't the government that's responsible for the levees in New Orleans not being capable of holding back the water; it's environmentalists. Well, that's what "some say." That "some say" nonsense where no one is actually named is a classic Fox News Channel trick. Talk about a bulllshit excuse for actual journalism. The saddest part of this is that the script for this piece put the "some say" thing in Shauna Parson's mouth. Hey Shauna, you have some tenure at KPTV. Why don't you just refuse to read crap like that? If there's a source, the story should name it. If there isn't, then don't imply that there is.

Daimler-Chrysler is donating a bunch of trucks packed with needed stuff to the Katrina relief effort and they made damn sure that they got a company executive on camera so that you heard about their charity.

Pump Patrol

• Around the nation, gas is averaging $2.95/gallon. In Oregon, the average is $2.87.

Toyota has announced that they are lowering the price of their hybrid cars.

Some Sony Playstation 2's have faulty AC adaptors. Contact Sony for a replacement which won't burn your house down.

Those dopey in-ear headphones that come with some MP3 players, including iPods, can cause hearing loss if you listen to your music too loud. Duh.

Speaking of stuff coming from anonymous medical sources, doing a few hours of housework every day can help lower your blood pressure. Who sponsored this study, Oreck vacuum cleaners?

Hollywood Buzz

Arrested Development, which just happens to air on KPTV, has been nominated for 11 Emmy Awards. Oh, some blonde actress with an odd name that I can't remember at the moment, is joining the show for some upcoming episodes. This is so annoying; I can see her face and her name is right on the tip of my tongue. LATER: I just remembered. Charlize Theron.

Matt Damon is engaged. Gee, I hope this doesn't get in the way of filming Ocean's 13.

Shauna Parsons ended the Final Cut with 14 seconds left on the Countdown Clock. Out of practice at stretching, Shauna?

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

Both Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines could declare bankruptcy on Thursday. Eh, two major American airlines simultaneously declaring bankruptcy isn't worth reporting if it runs the risk of knocking that Matt Damon engagement announcement off the broadcast.

According to the New York Times, "American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses."

So, a guy was covered in flames after his car caught on fire on the Tappan Zee Bridge a little ways north of New York City. Then he did what anyone would do: jumped 50 feet from the bridge into the Hudson River. Click here

The death of a transgendered teenager in October 2002 has resulted in 2 men being convicted of murder. Click here