News of the Weird, June 20, 2010
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2010 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* Catholic Youth Organization coach Michael Kman, 45, was
charged in May with various misdemeanors regarding an alleged
attempt over a several-month period to fix kids' basketball games
for Kman's Our Lady of Lourdes church team in East Pennsboro
Township, Pa. According to police, Kman sent multiple text
messages to referees Jay and Jon Leader, offering them as much as
$2,500 if certain games reached the "right outcome." The Catholic
Diocese of Harrisburg has suspended Kman from coaching. In
Kman's day job, he is a financial consultant. [Patriot-News
(Harrisburg), 5-14-10]
Cultural Diversity
* In May, Britain's Norfolk District Council banned the traditional
barroom game of "dwile flonking" just as the inaugural "world
championships" were to take place at the Dog Inn pub in Ludham,
Great Yarmouth. The game, which some believe has been played
since "medieval times," calls on players to fling a beer-soaked rag
from the end of a small stick toward the face of an opponent, and in
the event the tosser misses the target two straight times, he must
quickly down a half-pint of ale. The Council called the game a
"health and safety" problem. [Daily Telegraph, 5-29-10]
* Among the unique dining experiences of the Beijing Zoo is the
ability of patrons to view an exhibit of frolicking hippopotamuses
and then step into the zoo's restaurant and dine on such dishes as toe
of hippopotamus. Also available: kangaroo tail, deer penis, ant
soup, and other delectables.. Animal welfare activists condemned
the dining experience, according to a dispatch in London's
Guardian. [The Guardian (London), 5-21-10]
Latest Religious Messages
* Virginia state inmate Kendall Gibson, who is serving 47 years for
abduction and robbery committed at age 18, has spent the last 10
years in the prison's "hole" 23 hours a day in a cell "the size of a
gas station restroom" (wrote an Associated Press reporter) not
because he's a danger to the prison population but because he won't
cut his hair. Gibson is a Rastafarian and says his dreadlocks are
devoutly authorized by the spiritual Lord, Jah. (A 1999 Virginia
prison regulation requires administrative segregation for long-hairs.)
[The Sun News (Myrtle Beach, S.C.)-AP, 5-7-10]
* In May, in a news reverberation heard around the Arab world
from the city of Al-Mubarraz, Saudi Arabia, as a "policeman" from
the notorious Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and
Prevention of Vice approached a young couple in public to demand
the woman's ID, the woman beat up the cop. Charges are pending
against her, but women's rights activists across the Muslim world
are reporting the incident as a watershed moment, according to the
Media Line (Middle East) news agency. [Jerusalem Post, 5-17-10]
* Nelson Derbigney's second wife Laura is an Hispanic Catholic,
but the first wife has a court order that Nelson's and her joint-
custody son from that first marriage will be raised as an Orthodox
Jew like his mother. That means that stepmother Laura must learn
to create a strict-kosher lifestyle when the son stays with his dad.
(Said Laura's lawyer, of the logical extension of the court order, if
one substituted "fundamental Islam" for "Orthodox Judaism,"
Catholic Laura might have to wear a burqa in public.) [WMAQ-
TV (Chicago), 5-18-10]
Questionable Judgments
* Standing firm under severe local criticism, John Chianelli (the
chief mental-health administrator of Milwaukee County, Wis.) has
begun housing aggressive males and vulnerable females together in
the same unit. Chianelli defended his decision with research
showing that, in similar facilities, female patients provided a
civilizing influence that reduced males' propensities to violence--at
least males' violence against other males. [Journal Sentinel, 5-8-10]
* Bucket Lists: (1) Patricia Edwards, 51, was arrested in Sanford,
Fla., in March after being identified as the woman who walked into
a Bank of America branch, handed over a robbery note, and walked
out with money. After being quickly nabbed, she explained, "There
was no plan, no nothing, just impulse. I think everyone should have
a list of things they want to do before they [die]." (2) Still stuck on
the Bucket List (until recently) of great-grandmother Rosemary
Douglas was her regret that, at 81, she had still never collected child
support payments for her son, who is now 60, from the "boy"'s
father, Urban Joseph Grass, now 82. In a Los Angeles court filing
in April, she claimed $50 per month from the date of the 1951 court
order (totaling, including interest, $57,000). [WOFL-TV (Orlando),
3-30-10] [Houston Chronicle, 4-5-10]
* "A Brave Man's Solution to Baldness" (read an April Toronto Star
headline): Philip Levine, 28, working with artist Kat Sinclair,
initially solved the problem of his "boring" shaved head by having
her paint original murals on his dome, with the result that he
became a star in the London (England) club scene. Since then,
Levine has upgraded to painstakingly laying jewelry designs on his
bald head, employing hundreds of thumbtack-sized Swarovski
crystals to create a "swooping, shimmery, rockabilly" dome that
dazzles in the light. The crystals shed after about a day, creating the
opportunity for more designs. [Toronto Star, 4-9-10]
Fine Points of the Law
* (1) Scottish TV personality Drew McAdam, a professional body-
language reader who advises the "Five's Trisha" talk show on
whether guests with fabulous stories are telling the truth or not, was
rejected for jury duty in May after being called by the Livingston
Sheriff Court. (Obviously, at least one of the lawyers thought his
side would have a better chance without an "expert" lie-detector
evaluating witnesses.) (2) Restaurateur Ted Bulthaup told WRTV
in Indianapolis in May that he had finally convinced Internal
Revenue Service for a rare, "five-figure" income tax reduction
based on years of unusual "disaster" losses. Bulthaup proved to IRS
that he was making good money until Conseco Fieldhouse was built
in his downtown neighborhood (occupied 40 nights a year by the
mediocre Indiana Pacers NBA team), which caused his business to
fall off sharply. [Scottish Daily Record, 5-27-10] [WRTV, 5-18-10]
People With Issues
* Walter "Butch" Rubincan, 46, was charged in February in
Newark, Del., as being a serial thief with perhaps a 20-year habit,
specializing in men's shoes. When not out taking things, Rubincan
(who "kept to himself," according to neighbors) is a medical
technologist at two local hospitals, a part-time actor, and a one-time
championship figure-skater. When police investigators first visited
Rubincan's home, they discovered 3,900 shoes in about 150 boxes
and bags (along with a few more upscale items and stolen
photographs of young men), and Rubincan finally admitted he
needed help. [News Journal (Wilmington), 2-9-10]
Thinning the Herd
* Their Getaways Hit a Dead End: (1) Noah Comer, 39, crashed
his motorcycle and was killed as he tried to flee sheriff's deputies in
San Diego in January after allegedly stealing a pack of cigarettes
from the AM/PM minimart. (2) Gordon Wright, 58, and two
associates were killed in January going the wrong way on Interstate
94 in a Detroit suburb after allegedly stealing $45 worth of Axe
beauty products from a CVS store. (Police said they were not
pursuing Wright but that he was merely in a hurry to get away.)
[San Diego Union-Tribune, 1-8-10] [Sacramento Bee, 3-9-10]
A News of the Weird Classic (May 1998)
* British mechanical engineer John Tyrer told an audience at the
annual meeting of the Institute of Physics in Brighton, England, in
March [1998] that he and his colleagues were using lasers to design
a more comfortable bra. "A breast imposes various load
distributions . . . and vibrational problems as the woman walks," he
said, and he criticized the "strap design" that "transmits the load to
the wrong places." According to Tyrer, the technology, "Electron
Speckle Pattern Interfermometry," analyzes the way a three-
dimensional surface [like a bra] changes when a force is applied to
it. [London Daily Telegraph, 3-16-98]
Thanks This Week to John Thomasson, Mark Yeager,
Thomas Elliott, and Suzanne Jordan, and to the News of the Weird
Senior Advisors and Board of Editorial Advisors.
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