Tuesday, September 27, 2005

I was out of town.  Did you miss me?  By the way, I did see the Debra Gil fiasco on Sunday night where Toto pulled the curtain away just a bit and let us see that behind it Professor Marvel was pulling levers to fake being the Wizard of Oz.  Or something like that.  Actually, we found out that at least some of the “live” stand-ups of KPTV’s reporters are pre-recorded.  So much for that “First.  Live.  Local.” thing.  You don’t get to say, “Sorry, let’s do that over.  3,2,1…” on a live shot.  

Top Story. The feds are looking for Troy Coverstone.  They think he’s the creep who has been calling local female retail workers and telling them he is holding one of their co-worker’s children hostage.  While Coverstone hasn’t been formally charged with this yet, he has a history of this kind of thing and he’s apparently gone missing after stealing his employer’s truck.  The cops won’t confirm that he’s a suspect in all this.  David Frietas/Freitas was holding a cell phone as his prop for this story.

Fox 12’s Most Wanted

• The cops are looking for a Hispanic man in his 30’s with wavy black hair who allegedly raped a 12-year-old girl last November.  She was walking home from McDonalds when the guy jumped her.  She didn’t tell her parents about the incident at the time and has since had the baby.  Great, she and her kid can go to the prom together!

• Funny-speller-of-his-first-name and recent-multiple-appearer-on-KPTV’s-“news”-show Tobbie Eaton has been arrested for probation violation.

• Former radio personality Christopher Lehman will be appearing on K-JAIL soon.  He has been found guilty of abuse of a minor and is awaiting sentencing.  

Hillsboro was the scene of an explosion in an apartment building apparently caused by a propane tank.  For some reason, Kevin Coari, Embedded Reporter, was “embedded” in Beaverton (probably the KPTV parking lot) for this story.  There were actually 3 explosions heard by neighbors at about 2 AM.  A dog was rescued from the home and there were 8 human victims.

There was a Big! Pot! Bust! in Marion County.  The cops found 5 pounds of the stuff along with plants, guns and a couple of thousand dollars.  The owner of the ganja says he applied for a medical marijuana license which hasn’t arrived yet.  It’ll be there at 4:20, Dude!

2 Asian guys, brothers, allegedly attacked a guard in the course of a failed jail break.  An hour later, they were hungry for freedom again.

Hurricane Rita

• President George W. Bush, working tirelessly despite not having taken a vacation in over a month, visited the hurricane-ravaged area yet again.  It would be cruel to suggest that the most dangerous place in America to stand these days is between George Bush and a TV camera, so I won’t.  Some people down there are still waiting for the power to come on and to receive necessary supplies.  Don’t hold your breath, Rita Victims; the former head of FEMA told a Congressional committee on Tuesday that he didn’t feel it was part of his (former) job to provide ice for people “to put their hamburger on.”  Or, say, to use to prevent heat stroke or to put temperature-sensitive medicines on either, I guess.

Oregon Responds

• Oregonians have donated over $118,000 to the Red Cross via KPTV’s fund-raising efforts.  I know I pick on them a lot—and they deserve it—but this is obviously a good thing, so congrats to them.

Break.

OK, so there was a murder in Clark County a few years back.  The Big Eyewitness in the crime was originally deported to Guyana, then brought back to the U.S. to testify.  He decided that he’d really rather not participate in this because he feels threatened, so he told the authorities that he was gonna go bye-bye for a while.  Now they don’t know where he is and they have a warrant out for him.  Debra Gil was in News Control (Live?  Who knows?) for this story.

A former local school bus driver has pleaded guilty to abuse of one of his passengers.  Nice guy.  

Timothy Lane is in trouble for parole violation.  Is he also guilty of arson?  Could be.  One of his neighbors says the guy is schizophrenic.  Hey, some of my best imaginary friends are schizophrenic.

Pump Patrol

• Ooh, it’s time for Show and Tell!  Jamie Wilson was in Beaverton (again, probably the KPTV parking lot) with two glasses half-full of gold liquid.  No, it wasn’t her pregnancy test, silly.  It was gasoline.  Seems some people think there’s bad gas being sold at some stations in the Portland area.  A local woman said her pick-up truck suddenly started losing power when going up hills.  Well, if that doesn’t prove it!  Actually, her suspicions were backed up by a mechanic at a local Goodyear Service Center who says he’s seeing a lot of vehicles with symptoms that suggest exposure to bad petrol.

• Oh, in case you were wondering, a gas station in Beaverton is selling gas for $2.56/gallon, Clackamas has it for $2.71/gallon and filling up will set you back $2.63/gallon in Southeast Portland.

Nothing like a month-old story, huh?  30,000 tax payments sent to the IRS’ office in San Francisco were lost.  KPTV didn’t mention this detail, but if I remember the story I read weeks ago, they were somehow lost in the Bay.

Northwest Tonight

“KPTV’s Darren Dedo” told us that a thief stole a laptop computer with a woman’s cancer research work on it.  Her family was sleeping upstairs when the crook broke into her home.  She is understandably upset about losing the work and she’s offering a $1000 reward for the return of the computer.

Break.

Meth Watch

• OK, I was kind of sleepy from my trip so I didn’t catch all the details of this story—like how it figures into “Meth Watch,” for example.  Apparently, over the weekend, KPTV did a story about a local woman looking for her daughter.  She’s now found her.  Like I said, what was the meth connection here?

War On Terror

• More than 4 years after the terror attacks, some workers at the Ground Zero site in New York City have found some bone fragments.  The longest is about 2 inches and it isn’t yet known for sure if they’re of human origin.  So basically there’s no story here yet.

The safety of tasers is being questioned.  For reasons I didn’t understand fully, the SEC is involved.  The company says it will cooperate and provide internal company documents.  Have I mentioned before that the word “taser” is derived from “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle?”  Yes, seriously.  For the younger reader, Tom Swift was the boy inventor hero of a series of books back in the Olden Days.

Break.

Just to fuck with your mind, the Post Office is raising the price of stamps to 39 cents this Saturday.  OK, wouldn’t it have been easier on everyone if they had made them 40 cents?  Seriously, wouldn’t that have made it easier for people to figure how much a sheet of stamps costs?  Would anyone have had an aneurysm over the extra penny?  And wouldn’t the extra penny have helped the Post Office with their alleged deficit?  

Katrina’s Devastation (still GREAT in concert)

• Michael “You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie” Brown, the former head of FEMA, played his version of the Blame Game in front of a Congressional committee on Tuesday.  Apparently, he let that bullshit Bush told him go to his head because, according to his testimony, he’s just about the only person in America who didn’t fuck up the Katrina aftermath.  If you so much as watched the debacle on TV, you’re more responsible for it than he was.  According to Brown, it’s not as if the American people should expect the Federal Emergency Management Agency to, oh, say, manage emergencies.  If there had only been some Arabian horses involved somehow, he would’ve been on that sum’bitch.

• The Chief of Police in New Orleans announced his retirement on Tuesday.  He wouldn’t give a reason for quitting, but an educated guess would say that he isn’t all that proud of the over 200 officers who walked off the job during the Katrina situation.  He asked the press to respect his decision and his privacy.  $5 says Rush Limbaugh ridicules the guy on the air by noon Wednesday.

• This ain’t gonna be good.  6,000 doctors in the Gulf area have no job site to return to, seeing as how most of the hospitals and medical offices in the area have been destroyed.  Even if people start to return to their homes in Louisiana and Texas, hospitals for them aren’t going to be rebuilt overnight.  

• Keri Tomlinson was in the studio with some car keys in her hand (Live?  Maybe.  Who knows?) for a story about how to protect yourself from buying a flood car.  Cars that have been through the floods should be retitled as “salvage” but some unscrupulous sellers and dealers don’t bother with that little detail.  Keri suggested that you thoroughly check out any used car you’re considering buying.  Look for stuff like fish in the trunk, for example.  That’s my tip.  You’re welcome.

Weather.  Break.

Final Cut

• A hotel in Los Angeles was robbed.  The cops think the guys responsible may also be behind 40 other robberies.

• A van carrying some Utah State students flipped over, throwing them all from the van and killing all but 2 of them.  Their fellow students held a vigil in their memory.

• In Florida, 3 boys were arrested for the sexual assault of a girl on their school bus.  Parents are understandably curious about why the driver didn’t see and/or do anything about the assault.  “You kids stop raping that girl right now !  Don’t make me turn this bus around!  Don’t think I won’t.”  Video from the bus’ onboard camera is being examined.

• Hey, remember that inspiring story a while back about the plucky hostage in Atlanta who engaged her captor for hours, keeping him from killing her?  Turns out, it wasn’t her “pluck” that kept him from ventilating her with his gun; it was her meth.  Yup, she has now admitted that she is a meth addict and that she gave him some when he was holding her with the SWAT team outside.  You always hear about the bad things meth does, but does the liberal media tell you how it brings out the best in people?   Nooooooo.

• A Colorado mom who was already in trouble for the wacky drug-filled parties she let her kids engage in is in more trouble now that she has been in a car crash after she let her 14-year-old (unlicensed) daughter drive her car.  

• A Long Island school is using a Breathalyzer to check kids suspected of drinking before school.  If a kid is found to be under the influence or refuses to take the test, he or she is suspended for 5 days.  Yeah, I know I’m a broken record, but is it just possible that a system that makes kids think they have to be drunk to endure high school needs to take a long, hard look at itself?  Just asking.

• The Phoenix cops say they have broken up a prostitution ring involving underage girls.

World Tonight

• This just in!  NASCAR fans may not be the stupidest sports fans in the world!  2 people were injured during a Running Of The Bulls deal in Mexico.  Yes, by all means, let’s provoke very large, very strong animals and then release them into a crowd packed into narrow streets!  Then we can stick our hands in fans!

• 300,000 people have evacuated parts of Vietnam thanks to a deadly typhoon.  Upon hearing about this, former FEMA director Michael Brown immediately blamed the Democrats.

Breaking News

KPTV managed to get Fire Lieutenant Oswalt (who they even had a photo of) on the phone to tell us about a fire at Burnside and 18th.  Firefighters seemed to have it under control as he spoke and it had caused no injuries.

• The Ghost of Debra Gil was at the KPTV “news” van for this story about bedbugs being found in a dorm at Linfield College in McMinnville.  40 students were affected and their bedding was changed by the college.  Yes, we got to hear people make reference to “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”  

• Umm, don’t you just love that new car smell?  Well, it’s cancerous.  Yup, it’s caused mostly by plastics and it’s bad for you in some way or other.  Another of the little joys of life ruined.  I’m going to tie some heavy rocks to my legs and throw myself into the Willamette!

• Next, “KPTV’s Jim Armstrong” walked us through the Wacky World of Podcasting.  Sometimes, I get the feeling that anything invented after the light bulb is a revelation and a miracle to a lot of KPTV’s viewers.  Golly, did you know that you don’t actually need an iPod to listen to a podcast?  Yes, actually, I fucking well did know that!  

• No KPTV “news” cast is complete without a gratuitious reference to American Idol, so here goes:  Randy Jackson was the judge or something for a contest to write a new jingle for Oreos.  So, no one thought that it might be a bad idea to have a black person be involved with Oreos?  Do I have to explain the slang meaning of “Oreo?”

Hollywood Buzz

• Anna Nicole Smith will be before the Supreme Court this term.  No, she doesn’t have a case; Clarence Thomas just wants to look at her ass up close.  Actually, apparently having dealt with all the other problems in American society, like abortion and prayer in school, the Court is going to tackle whether Anna Nicole gets half her late, 900-year-old husband’s fortune.  I say, if she had sex even once with that fossil, she earned that money.

• Donald Trump’s wife is pregnant with the fifth of The Donald’s Hellspawn.  It isn’t known yet whether the cloven-hooved little bastard is male or female.

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

• Wanna know Who’s Who in the fight over the proposed Gorge casino?  Click here

• Bill Frist desperately tries to convince someone, anyone, that’s there’s no way he could have known his “blind trust” contained shares of the hospital management company his family founded.  Click here

• Don’t click here if you can’t handle photos of dead, tortured Iraqis.  Seriously.

• Who are the biggest crooks in Congress?  Click here

• So Michael Brown, the former head of FEMA screwed up and resigned, right?  Well, kind of.  Click here

• Remember Lynndie England, the soldier in the photos of the piles of Iraqis with the cigarette hanging out of her mouth as she smiled and pointed at them?  She got 3 years in jail and a dishonorable discharge.  Click here