Wednesday, October 5, 2005

Let’s roll!

Top Story.  Debra Gil was really, really, really On The Scene in Tigard where a 16-year-old girl was grabbed by a Hispanic guy who had approached her, asking for directions.  He tried to push her into a minivan, which sounds a whole lot like the M.O. in 2 other attempted kidnappings in the area lately.  The girl ran to the nearby Transit Center for help.  The cops caught Hugo Alvarado; the cops, of course, suspect he’s involved in the other 2 as well.   All this happened about 3 PM.  We shall see.

There was a sexual assault in Beaverton Monday night.  Sheesh, since KPTV is right there in Beaverton, can’t they get local crimes on the air quicker? Anyhoo, there’s some suspicion that the miscreant was on drugs.

Jamie Wilson was at the KPTV “news” van to tell us that a man was stabbed about 8 AM Tuesday in Vancouver.  31-year-old Ozzie Curtis is your victim.  He’s on crutches and was walking near a ball field when 3 men, described as Asian, jumped him and beat him with a tree branch.  They got $40 from his wallet and left him for dead with stab wounds from the knife one of them had.  Some girls walking by called 911 and probably saved his life.

Fox 12’s Most Wanted

• 3 men, either African-American or Indian, robbed a bank in Vancouver at about 10:30 AM.  Stick it to The Man, my (possibly) Ebony brothers!

• A teen boy was stabbed at a Southeast Portland high school.  Go Fighting Stabbers!

David Wilson paid a visit to Tigard.  Somebody put a “skimmer” on an ATM at a bank at 71st and 99W.  It fits over the installed slot-thingie you put your card into, so that the crook can collect your card’s info.  There’s also a hidden camera nearby to see your PIN.  A former bank employee noticed the set-up, pulled it off the ATM and drove off with it. Trouble is, he didn’t go too far before someone, presumably the person who installed the thing, grabbed it from him.  Oopsie.

That former teacher from Stayton who was accused of molesting students got 90 days in jail where he will learn what it’s like to be on the other side of that sort of “fun.”  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  Actually, there is, if by “that” we mean anal rape.

Hilary Hutcheson with her new/old hairdo was in Beaverton to inform us about the school bus driver who was disciplined for pushing a 10-year-old girl onto her seat.  The girl’s father is going to sue.  To me, he looked like the kind of guy who would agree with Rush Limbaugh that a woman suing McDonalds for being served scalding hot coffee, which caused third-degree burns to her groin area, was a “frivolous lawsuit.”  There’s always the possibility, of course, that I’m reading a wee bit too much into the 10 seconds of video I saw of the guy.  KPTV wouldn’t give the bus driver’s name since he hasn’t been charged with anything yet.  Awww, how sensitive!

Break.

The defendant in the murder trial of his sister back in 2002 cried on the witness stand on Wednesday.  It’s taken this long to get him into a courtroom because he had to be evaluated for being a friggin’ nut.  That’s not exactly how they said it, of course, but it’s funnier that way.  The cops say he admitted the crime, which raises the question of why a trial is necessary.

A local man is accused of robbing more than 3 ounces of pot from a medical marijuana patient.  Fortunately, crimes like this will soon be a thing of the past as the Bush administration, on orders from God (who considers marijuana “My biggest fuck-up.  Well, biggest after making homos, that is.”) will be getting around to outlawing medical marijuana any day now.  

Lawrence McKinney is a scumbag.  Allegedly.  The police say he would pretend to be a “newspaper courier” to get into the homes of old people.  Then he’d rob them.  Allegedly.  

The dog stolen from a 24 Hour Fitness Center is still missing.  The owner is offering a $4000 reward, which is how much certain employees of KPTV “news” will pay you to whack me.

Meth Watch

• Some employers are using insurance money to pay for meth treatment programs for their addicted employees.  David Frietas/Freitas was in the studio for this story.  We were introduced to a former addict who works at Oregon Spring Service.  Personally, making springs 50 weeks a year would drive me to drugs, but he says he’s clean now, thanks to his bosses paying for his drying out.  I can’t really make too much fun of the guy since he said exactly what I’ve been saying for years now: we have to stop treating drug addiction as a moral problem and deal with it as a health issue.  You gotta applaud his employer for not throwing the guy’s junkie ass out onto the street, too.

Hey, kids, thinking about an assisted suicide?  Well, you better hurry.  The Supreme Court seems to be divided on the issue.  John Roberts, who the other Justices call “Bush’s Blow Boy” behind his back, seems to be in favor of outlawing your right to pay a doctor to help you kill yourself.  Once again the Republicans demonstrate that when they say they believe in smaller government which doesn’t intrude into your life, they really mean they believe in a government that tells you how to live, who you can have sex with and what you can believe from birth to the grave.  But it will be smaller, somehow.

Mildred Davey, long-time Tillamook radio broadcaster, died.  Davey started her show back in 1961. She was 93.  I saw her at the Tillamook County Fair last year and I can tell you, she didn’t look a day over 87.  Hot!

Break.

Northwest Tonight

• Yow!  Exciting video of a crash which narrowly missed a highway cop in Idaho.  Now that’s “journalism!”  Fuck those hard-to-understand stories about “issues.”  More car crashes!  Especially if they involve monkey drivers.

• The guy involved in the big cop chase Tuesday near Seattle has an Oregon criminal record.  Now if he had only committed a felony in California, he’d have the West Coast Trifecta.

• A Corvallis man is accused of trying to hire someone to set his girlfriend’s trailer on fire.  Hey, the guy’s an entrepreneur!  He was trying to help the economy by keeping the job in America!  He could have outsourced.  Where’s the love?

• As you would expect, the fire at the fake Fort Clapsop is being investigated by the authorities.  They’re still looking for the Chevy believed to have left the area shortly before the fake fort went up in flames.

Break.

Skinny KPTV morning weather weasel Andy Carson was at Heald College for the Grape Stomp where he was made to stand in a bucket of grapes.  Is that a morning show or a frat hazing?  Anyway, Heald won whatever the hell the Grape Stomp is.

Southwest Airlines has no sense of humor.  It kicked a woman wearing a T-shirt that says “Meet the Fuckers” with a picture of Bush and Cheney off one of their planes.  Does anyone else smell freshly-baked lawsuit cooling on the metaphorical windowsill?

Harriet Miers, President Bush’s nominee for the Supreme Court, is getting a mixed reaction from conservatives.  The biggest objection is “lack of experience.”  Hey, she spent a whole tax season working at H & R Block!  You think that’s easy?  58% of conservatives support her nomination in a poll.

Fire Season 2005

• A big-ass fire is burning east of L.A. licking at the edge of the 60 Freeway.

• There’s a fire on the border between San Diego County and Mexico.  The INS will catch it when it crosses over into the U.S. and drive it back to Tijuana.

• The Woodhouse Fire has already consumed about 500 acres near Sacramento.

Storm Team 12

• Tropical Storm Tammy has winds of about 50 MPH and is moving northwest.  Hey, don’t we live in the Northwest?  Oh, nooooooo!

• It’s snowing in Utah!  Hurry, hurry, get your Frozen Mormons!

• Parts of Minnesota have received 9 inches of rain recently.  Hurry, hurry, get your Damp Norwegians!

Weather.  Break.

Final Cut

2 men committed a murder-rape in the course of a “home invasion” in Georgia.

Pit bull rampage!  Well, sort of.  A doggie in Cincinnati bit the owner’s neighbor.  I don’t know about you, but I expect more from my rampages.

So, this substitute teacher in Florida heard a beeping sound in his classroom.  He thought it was a cell phone and he confronted the kid it was coming from.  The kid tried to tell him it was his insulin pump but before he could explain, Mr. Can’t Get A Full-time Teaching Job grabs the tube on the pump and pulls it, separating it from the kid’s catheter.  Hey, Teach, I think you should start practicing saying, “Would you like fries with that?”

A semi crashed into a tollbooth on a highway (probably the Pennsylvania Turnpike) in PA.  My guess is based on the fact that there aren’t a lot of roads with tollbooths in Pennsylvania.

Speaking of Pennsy, a burning body was found in Philadelphia.  Turns out it was the body of the uncle of Beanie Siegel, a rapper.  A rapper involved with violence?  I, for one, am shocked!  Shocked, I tell you.  Siegel, by the way, is about to go on retrial for murder.  His lawyer says the death of his uncle has no connection to the alleged murder, but what would you expect his lawyer to say?  Wait!  Wasn’t Beanie Siegel a kid’s show back in the 60’s?  No, that was Beanie and Cecil!

Former Washington D.C. mayor, Marion Berry, is in trouble again.  The IRS says he hasn’t paid his taxes for several years.  Well, the guy was a crackhead; he’s not gonna remember every little thing.  By the way, if you’ve never seen the hidden camera footage of his FBI arrest, find a copy.  It’s a laugh riot!  After you see it, you’ll be using the phrase, “The bitch set me up!” with all your friends for weeks.

KPTV couldn’t find a story about a monkey smoking cigarettes tonight, so instead we got a story about a python which tried to eat a gator.  Oh, Nature and its wacky pranks!

Speaking of Florida, God’s Waiting Room, a family found a crocodile in their garage.  Now if only a python was trying to eat it while a monkey sat in the corner watching while smoking, it would have been the Perfect KPTV Story!

Katrina’s Devastation

• Some of the victims of post-Katrina crime are finally getting some help.  Oh, tacked onto this story was the teensy revelation that a lot of the stuff you heard about when all those people were trapped inside the Superdome, like the multiple rapes and murders, turns out not to be true.  Yup, after whipping America up into a frenzy about those out-of-control Negroes for weeks now, the “correction” is slipped inside another story.  Gee, I can’t imagine why people don’t trust the media.

• The Feds say it may take as long as a year to clean up the toxic mess in New Orleans.  There’s an estimated 5 million gallons of ooey-gooey down there, which seems a little on the low side to me.  Then there’s all those refrigerators with rotten food inside which also have to have their Freon removed safely.

• In another of the meaningless gestures organized religion is famous for, the Catholic Church blessed some of the pets rescued from Katrina at the cathedral in Washington, D.C.  Oh, by the way, if you ever go there, ask to be shown where the Yoda gargoyle is.  No, I’m not kidding; there really is one.

• A woman who survived Katrina has won a million bucks on a slot machine at a casino.  Oh, in that case, I guess there’s a happy ending after all.  KPTV need never report on the “suffering” of any of the people in New Orleans again.

• Some person or persons broke into a warehouse where the Powerhouse Church of Vancouver was storing food and other needed goods for Katrina survivors and stole lots of stuff.  

Oregon Responds

• Some 700 local restaurants participated in “Dime for America Day” to raise money for hurricane victims.  I still don’t understand the name of this thing.

Kids get arthritis too.  According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (the existence of which is one of the biggest reasons you don’t have national medical care), a doctor has come up with a formula of various medicines which may be effective against childhood arthritis.

Spaceship One, the first privately-financed spaceship, has been donated to the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, where I used to work.  Yes, really.  Shauna Parsons said that Spaceship One will be next to Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.  Uh, since the Spirit hangs from the ceiling, I’m guessing that the spaceship isn’t going to be right next to it.  Near it, perhaps.  By the way, the Air and Space Museum is the most-visited museum in the world.  Just thought you’d like to know that.

Is even Wayne Garcia starting to realize that KPTV’s 10 o’clock show isn’t exactly a “news” show?  He said, “Here’s our nightly iPod story,” which made me laugh (him too).  Apple says they have a Big Announcement to make next week and some industry analysts think that they will be unveiling a Video iPod.  The Earth will stop spinning on its axis immediately after this unprecedented release of an overpriced gadget.

Hollywood Buzz

• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are expecting!  The couple says they don’t know if they are having a boy or a girl but so long as it’s a healthy alien, they’ll be happy.  Besides, “L. Ron Cruise” can work for either gender.

• Speaking of couples who add nothing to the smooth functioning of the planet, Jessica Simpson and her husband Nick Lachey are not breaking up.  I repeat, Jessica and Nick are NOT breaking up!  You can put that fistful of Midol down now; there’s still a reason to live.

• New breakthroughs in technology mean that Stevie Wonder may gain the ability to see.  His first words are expected to be, “You mean I’ve been paying someone to dress me like this all these years???”  Oh, he has a new album coming out, too.

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

• Al Gore has awoken from his thousand-year slumber and he doesn’t like what’s calling itself “journalism”: “The coverage of political campaigns focuses on the "horse race" and little else. And the well-known axiom that guides most local television news is "if it bleeds, it leads." (To which some disheartened journalists add, "If it thinks, it stinks.")”  Jesus, where was THAT Al Gore when he ran for President?  If THAT Al had run, I wouldn’t have had to hold my nose when I voted for him.  Click here

• A spy in the White House!  Yup.  Feel safer yet?  KPTV can find time for a story about a fucking snake trying to eat a gator, but none for something like this.  Click here

• Palm Beach County, Florida says, “Fuck the darkies!” (essentially) with its plan to turn a small town, home to mostly poor black people, into a billion-dollar yachting and housing complex.  Thanks, Supreme Court and your wacky eminent domain ruling!  Click here  Maybe if they turn Shauna Parsons’ house into a Carl’s Jr. KPTV will report on stuff like this.

• The LAPD says that Lindsay Lohan was not being pursued by paparazzi, as she had claimed, when she crashed her Benz into another car.  Hey, po-po, you callin’ my homegirl a liar?  Actually, I suspect her (alleged) use of the Peruvian nose candy may have affected her critical thinking abilities.  AND made her boobs disappear.