Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Oh, KPTV, you fickle bitch! No sooner do you break up with Katrina then you're making time with Rita. You're all, like, "Rita this" and "Rita that."

Top Story. What else but Rita? "KPTV's Chris Huntington" was in New Orleans, telling us about Rita and her 175+ MPH sustained winds. People are either heading out of southern Texas or hunkering down. Is there a third option? The Feds have declared a State of Emergency in Louisiana and Texas until Rita blows over, so to speak. FEMA has sent support teams into the area, the better to screw up the coming relief effort. The levees in New Orleans are worrisome as they may collapse.

Oh, just in case you don't know the differences among the five categories of hurricanes, allow me to clear them up for you:

• Category 1: President Bush goes on vacation far from the affected area.
• Category 2: President Bush, if already on vacation, stays on vacation, makes no statement about the impending problem, visits Republican fund-raiser.
• Category 3: President Bush rolls up his shirt sleeves to prepare for important photo-op to be held at scene of hurricane after it has passed.
• Category 4: Press suddenly realizes that Vice-president Cheney hasn't been seen in public for weeks. President Bush praises the work of whoever is the current FEMA director, despite universal derision of FEMA's inept response to the crisis.
• Category 5: President Bush declares a National Day of Prayer for the thousands of people killed in the storm.

Drew Jackson, fill-in weather weasel, showed up on the set to give us the Official Explanation of the five hurricane categories (which, oddly, differs from the one I just gave you). A Category 5 hurricane has sustained winds of over 156 MPH.

A local medical team in the Gulf area to help with the Katrina mess has evacuated from Lake Charles, Louisiana to Shreveport. There's a hurricane a comin', you see.

There have been 17 named storms so far this hurricane season. The Official Namers of Hurricanes only use 21 of the 24 letters of the alphabet for some reason. If we run out of letters, they'll go to the Greek alphabet. Yes, seriously. After that, they'll go to the names of fraternities; prepare for Hurricane Tappa Kegga Brew. No, not seriously.

Pump Patrol

• Thanks to Rita, the price of gas, which has gone down infinitesmally in the past couple of weeks, may soar to over $3/gallon. Currently, gas is going for about $2.75 in Portland and $2.73 around Oregon.
• Debra Gil was in Northwest Portland to tell us that, as an amoeba could predict, gas theft is on the increase. Wait! You mean to tell me that when the price of a commodity that people can't live without goes up, the theft of it increases? Wow, knock me over with a feather!

Women working in some businesses in Portland and Gresham have been getting harassing phone calls from a friggin' weirdo. A woman in the Fashion Bug store in Gresham got a call from this loony tune telling her that he had abducted the daughter of one of her co-workers, which wasn't true.

Fox 12's Most Wanted

• Mohamed Jabbie was killed in Clackamas County about a year ago. The cops would like any assistance you can provide in solving the crime.

A baby boy died mysteriously yesterday in Portland. The cops don't think the death is suspicious, though.

The cops would also like help finding the asshole who jumped out of the bushes and scared a girl in Milwaukie on Tuesday. Remember that story?

A Portland teenage girl who has had a kidney transplant and has a history of mental problems is missing.

I think this was where the first commercial break was. I forgot to make a note of it. *sob*

Vancouver, Washington was the scene of a home intrusion. Wait, not a "home INVASION?" Is there a technical difference between a home intrusion and a home invasion? Anyway, The lady of the house saw the 16- or 17-year-old white boy who broke in. She didn't realize for a few days that the little scumbag stole her credit card. He used it at a local gas station, running up a $500 bill. What the hell can you buy at a GAS STATION that costs $500? Oh, a tank of gas, right.

The local cops are reviewing why it took them from Sunday to Monday to issue the Amber Alert about the woman who is missing along with her 2 sons. Maybe they should call it an "Amber Eventually."

Louis "Chip" Deloretto WAS a Stayton High teacher. Not no mo' though; he's been found guilty of improper touching of a 17-year-old female student. The turning point seems to have been when other students testified that he had touched them in that "bad way" as well. Turns out that this sicko has a history of this sort of thing and lost his teaching license for a while seveal years back.

8 men were caught in a Big! Pot! Bust! which netted 450 pounds of weed.

Meth Watch

• Hey, speaking of Big! Drug! Busts!, a routine traffic stop turned into one when the cop found 1 oz of crystal meth in the car of the stopee.
• That proposed "meth tax" in Cowlitz County is still failing by a 51%-49% margin. Don't those hicks watch KPTV's "news" show??? Don't they know that even the cows are tweakers??

A 2-alarm fire at a metal fabrication shop was apparently caused by some papers that were too close to a heater which went on automatically when the temperature dropped Tuesday night, causing $50,000 worth of damage.

"Co-eds in Aisle Three!" Opponents of a proposed new Wal-Mart store are encouraging 3 local colleges to buy the land the store would be built on.

In the Portland area, some people are opposed to the construction of a new restaurant near a school because it would have a liquor license. OK, can anyone please explain to me what SPECIFIC bad things they think would happen if this restaurant were to open? A guy opposed to the restaurant getting the liquor license mumbled something like, "Well, there's a school and they'd have a liquor license and it would draw that type of person and something else and mumble mumble and incomprehensible something and what about the children?" A lot of this kind of thing is just knee-jerk reaction, I think.

Break.

Remember that plane crash near Tillamook last October? Me neither. Anyway, it has been determined that it wasn't caused by mechanical problems or drugs or alcohol use on the part of the pilot. Maybe the vapors from the cheese factory overcame the pilot. Hey, it's possible!

Northwest Tonight

• A stranger grabbed a woman in a Tacoma park and made her drive a few blocks where he raped her. Obviously, the police would like to have a chat with this gentleman.

Break.

Half of some of Ford's lines of cars will be hybrids by 2010, just in time for us all to have to wear flotation devices all the time because of rising water caused by melting icebergs.

The National Transportation Safety Board is recommending that states pass laws prohibiting teenage drivers from talking on cell phones while driving. Keri Tomlinson was in "Beaverton" A/K/A the KPTV parking lot (I could tell by the giant satellite dishes in the background of the shot) for this story, inexplicably.

The newest Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Magic Zits of Puberty," has sold 11 million copies in America alone. The 7th and last book in the series, "Hogwarts Is Just Another Name For Herpes Sores," will be out whenever author J.K. Rowling gets tired of being only a half-billionaire.

Weather. Break.

Final Cut

• A stolen car went out of control on the Vegas strip, onto the sidewalk, killing 1 and injuring several pedestrians. "KPTV's Les Corvatin" (spelling?) was the talking head on this piece.
• A Jet Blue plane made a landing on its belly when its nose gear was stuck sideways. The plane went out over the Pacific to dump fuel before making the emergency landing at LAX.
• The van belonging to the psycho who went on the killing spree in the Gary, Indiana area has been found.
• There was a hostage standoff in Jersey City, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. The hostages were being held in the basement of a jewelry store until the cops talked the crook into releasing them.
• A female suspect was taken down by beanbag rounds after a chase by the cops in California.
• Someone thought it would be a good idea to try to run from the cops in a meat van in Michigan. 1 man was arrested and 2 are still on the loose.
• There was a deadly house fire in Gary, Indiana.
• ICK ALERT: An Arkansas woman pulled a Lorena Bobbitt and cut off her hubby's tallywacker with a pair or shears. She bought the shears over the weekend after finding out that the Mister was having an affair. OK, you can't really justify her actions, but the guy SLEPT WITH HER AFTER TELLING HER HE WAS HAVING AN AFFAIR??? Draw a dotted line and write "Cut here" on it, why don't you?
• Yes, He works in mysterious ways, all righty. Someone is selling a go-cart tire with the alleged face of Jesus on it on eBay. The bidding is up to $100. So, the Son of God allowed Himself to be nailed to a piece of wood in the hot sun so that He could return in the form of an ambiguous skid mark? Proof enough for me.
• Next we got a recap of the Hurricane Rita situation. It ain't good.
• Then we got to see how some Fox station in Texas is covering the Rita thing. About you would expect, actually. I mean, what can they do that would really surprise you here? It's not like they're going to do the weather in clay animation or something.
• Hey look, everyone! It's Hilary Hutcheson! And she don't look all that great, in the Control Center, with her hair pulled back and wearing some weird white sweater thing. Despite her own Fashion Crisis, Hilary soldiered on to tell us about a medical team from the Northwest evacuating Houston. Um, didn't we get this story already?
• It's History Time! Did You Know...Galveston is on an island about 9 feet above sea level and that it was pretty much destroyed in 1900 by another hurricane? It's A Fact. Oh, about 7000 people died in that storm.
• Cheer up, Gloomy Gus, it isn't all bad news, not since Levi's has announced that their stores will all soon feature the Intellifit body scan machine. With Intellifit, you'll never have to ask, "Does my ass look fat in these jeans?" because you just stand inside a booth and magical computeristic things scan you and tell you what size jeans to wear. Or something like that.

Hollywood Buzz

Kirstie Alley thinks that her recent 50 pound weight loss is the reason her show, Fat Actress, was cancelled. Yup, it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that no one was watching the thing. I see a lot of auditing in Kirstie's future. (She's a Scientologist, you see and "auditing" is the stupid, phony pseudo-scientific quasi-confession technique that Scientology uses to make members give the "church" their money. In my opinion.)

Wayne Garcia is losing his touch. He ended the Final Cut 6 seconds early.

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

George Bush is drinking again! What, you think the National Enquirer isn't a "realiable source?" They got the Gary Hart and Bill Clinton things right, didn't they? Click here

OK, read this story, then tell me why the mainstream "liberal" media is ignoring it. Click here

It's clearly just a coincidence that Bill Frist sold all his shares in his family's hospital company just two weeks before the company tanked. What other reason could there be? Click here

Fucking Nazis are everywhere! The European Union wants to log all phone calls and Internet use conducted within its borders. To anyone who says, "It's a different time. We have to monitor people," I would humble submit that you are saying that freedom is a failed system. After all, an umbrella that only works on sunny days is worthless. (I sure am smart for a fat college dropout, aren't I?) Click here