Friday, September 30, 2005

Man, you know it's a slow news day when your lead story is the weather. Oooh, it rained. In Oregon. Stop the presses.

Top Story. Rain! OK, to be fair (and I’m nothing if not fair), it was the first significant rainfall in some time in the Portland area. The Mt. Hood Highway got washed out; 20 miles of it were closed. It'll be closed for several days, according to ODOT. David Frietas/Freitas was On The Scene in Parkdale, maybe live, maybe pre-taped. Who really knows?

Mark Nelsen was chloroformed and dragged into the studio early. He told us that Friday was the wettest September 30^th in the Portland area in a long time. How much do they pay someone to compile statistics like that, I wonder. I think Friday also had a .323 batting average with men in scoring position. In case you care, Portland got 1.64 inches of rain in 24 hours.

The wet roads contributed to a big ol' crash on I-5 south of Wilsonville. 6 cars were involved.

Diesel fuel was spilled all over the road near Oregon City, the most excitement in that town since the Municipal Elevator got stuck halfway between the 2 stations. Whee doggies! There were no injuries (because of the diesel fuel, not the elevator, silly).

A transformer went kaflooey in Northeast Portland, knocking off the power for a lot of people.

Don’t drink the water in the Willamette River for a few days. The sewers are flowing heavily into it and that involves poopy and stuff.

The murder of Richard Minnifield, a Jefferson High School student last Sunday afternoon is making the school’s administration consider moving its next football game to Wilson High. David Wilson (no relation) was On The Scene. Although his parents, who were way more forgiving of their son’s killer than I would be, say Richard wasn’t in a gang, his school is concerned about retaliation for his murder. His funeral will be next Tuesday at 11 AM.

Weapons charges were dropped against a local man. Hey, you want details, watch the damn show yourself. :)

Oregon Responds

• Pretty much a recap of the story from last night: Oregon National Guard soldiers are coming home. Good.

Break.

4 people have been arrested over the past few weeks in Salem for car theft. They possessed master keys and shaved keys to let them into almost every make of car, allegedly. Hilary Hutcheson, with yet another hairdo, was in Salem “live” for this story. OK, question: Obviously, master keys are necessary but why are car locks so shitty that a shaved-down key can open them? We do know how to make better locks; in fact, we do make them for things worth a lot less than cars. Why should the second most-expensive thing most people own be so easy to break into? By the way, according to the cops, these 4 people didn’t sell or strip the cars; they just took them for temporary personal use.

Next up was an orgy of sex assaults. A white guy committed the act (allegedly) in Southwest Portland back on August 18^th. A Hispanic man pleaded guilty to the same thing and got 6 years in jail A guy who was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl got a total of 30 years in the slammer.

As reported yesterday, Darrell Paris was found innocent of the death of his son. Tonight, we learned that the D.A. will not seek any more charges against him or the boy's mother.

An 18-year-old high school senior hit a 4-year-old neighbor with his car. The boy's alive but in less-than-great shape. The mother of another local boy says the 18-year-old threatened her son recently, also with his car. Nice kid, huh? He’s facing a total of 12 charges.

3 teens were injured when the car they were in went out of control in Southwest Portland.

Fox 12’s Most Wanted

• The cops are looking for 2 men who robbed a bank in Gold Hill, Oregon, where, I believe, the Mystery Spot is located. You know, the place where they use optical illusions to try to make you believe that “gravity has been suspended.” Last I heard, they were trying to sell the Mystery Spot for something like $2 million. They better hope that it also suspends all reason and logic.
• Apparently, there’s “human trafficking” in Oregon. I had no idea. There must be, because someone got a $450,000 grant from the Feds to fight it and, as we all know, the government never spends money frivolously. Actually, all kidding aside, this seems to have to do with smuggling people into the U.S. from places like Mexico.

Break.

Northwest Tonight

• A Coast Guard medical helicopter went down near the Puget Sound. Both passengers were killed. No one’s exactly sure why it fell yet.
• Oh, the shit hit the fan in a store in Tacoma. A guy tried to rob the car parts store with a gun. Then a customer with a gun tried to stop him. The lead flew and the suspect and a clerk were hit. The suspect is in serious condition and the clerk is expected to be OK.
• 4 Canadian tourists were hurt when their tour bus went ass over teakettle near Smokey Point, Washington.

Break.

Flu Season

• Get your shots now before we run out. There will be clinics (not free) at some Portland area malls over the weekend. Man, I’m old enough to remember when America could handle shit like flu shots for everyone. When exactly did the bar get set so damn low in this country?

Fire Season 2005

"KPTV’s Anita Vogel" was on hand via the miracle of videotape for this piece. Wildfires are still burning in SoCal. California governor Schwarzenegger did that thing that governors and presidents do where they fly over a ravaged area and make concerned faces as they look out the window of their aircraft. We also heard from a woman whose house was spared by the fire which charred her property.

Weather. Break.

Final Cut/News Across America

• A Pennsylvania cop made an arrest for DUI. At the hospital, the arrestee grabbed the cop’s gun. Hilarity ensued.
• An inmate who escaped from a prison in South Carolina was captured in Florida after a crash.
• A crane collapsed in Alexandria, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, D.C.) falling onto some townhouses and damaging them. The crane’s operator was injured when he jumped from the falling crane’s cab.
• An accident involving a school bus injured some kids in my home town, The Bronx, New York City (the only borough of NYC attached to the continental shelf, by the way).
• A drug suspect crashed his car in Mobile, Alabama. 2 people are injured as a result.
• Hey, remember Rodney "Can’t we all just get along?" King? He's in trouble again after allegedly threatening his ex and his kid with a toy gun. Rodney, Rodney, Rodney. He’s free on $25,000 bail.

World Tonight

• This was interesting to me. A court in Japan has charged the Prime Minister with breaking a law by visiting a Shinto war shrine. The Japanese have strict laws against mixing religion and government, it seems.
• The cops in Birmingham, England raided a massage parlor and freed 19 women they say were being held as sex slaves. Gosh, wasn’t it lucky that there were TV cameras there to capture what appears to have been a “secret” raid? This is like when there just happens to be a camera nearby when pro wrestlers are backstage talking about how they’re going to sabotage an opponent.
• The government of the Philippines is planning on auctioning off Imelda Marcos’ collection of shoes and clothing. How long have they been paying to store that stuff??

Fight For Iraq

• The commander of coalition forces in Iraq told Congress on Thursday that the number of battle-ready battalions in Iraq has decreased. In June he testified that there were 3; he now says there is only 1. Yup, it’s going well over there.
• As I told you well before KPTV bothered to mention it, a federal judge has again ordered the government to release photos of American soldiers torturing Iraqis. He rejected the argument that releasing the pictures would aid the insurgents.

Meth Watch

• eBay has now agreed not to allow auctions of medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Keri Tomlinson was in the newsroom to tell us that eBay isn’t doing it because of concerns about meth abuse but because they say that the number of different local laws about pseudoephedrine distribution make it a pain in the ass for them.

Jamie Wilson was in downtown Portland for yet another story about how it rained on Friday. It didn’t say she was live, so I'm assuming she wasn’t. We got a montage of local people opining on the friggin’ rain.

The assholes from the Kansas church who go to funerals of gay people with signs saying "God Hates Fags" were in Beaverton to protest a local school’s possible staging of The Laramie Project, a play about Matthew Shepherd, a gay guy who was dragged behind a car to his death by some redneck douchebags. I’ve been through Laramie, Wyoming; it has a Hardee’s hamburger joint downtown. There, I said something nice about the town.

Hollywood Buzz

• The estate of the late Peter Jennings, ABC anchorman, amounts to over $50 million. Damn, that’s pretty good for a guy born in Canada who didn’t even go to college. That’s true, in case you’re wondering. Is "Hollywood" really buzzing about this, though?
• O.J. Simpson celebrated the 10^th anniversary of getting away with murdering 2 people by signing autographs at a comic book convention in San Diego. You know how you can have people personalize an autograph? Think he’d get pissed if you asked him to sign, "I did it. Love, O.J."?
• The KPTV team strapped on their knee pads for this "news" story about Firefly, a new movie based on a quickly-cancelled Fox TV show. The "reporter" for this piece was right-wing hack William LaJeunesse . He was the guy who, not too long ago, told us that Washington State was closing all of its HOV lanes (which he said were examples of “social engineering"). That, of course, was incorrect; only some HOV lanes in the Vancouver area were being closed. Have my prayers been answered? Has he been demoted to the "movie review" beat?
• Finally, the World Animal Festival, whatever the hell that is, is at the Portland Zoo this weekend. No extra charge for whatever the Festival is.

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

• KPTV still isn’t interested in the Judy Miller story, which could potentially cause much embarrassment for the Bush administration (or more). Click here
• Degenerate gambler, social moralist, Republican partisan and host of a radio talk show you’ve never heard of, William Bennett, thinks that black babies cause high crime rates. Click here
• Here’s more about that lone combat-ready battalion in Iraq. Click here
• Well, I can see why KPTV didn’t bother with this story. It’s only about how the federal government came very close to shutting down on Friday. Click here
• OK, there’s simply no excuse for them missing this one. Paris Hilton has called off her engagement to that rich Greek guy also named Paris. Click here