It’s only a few seconds long but it’s an amazing movie. Unfortunately, we already know the ending. YouTube has a high-quality film that contains the only known moving image of Anne Frank.
Toy Story 3-D comes highly recommended to me and speaking of great soundtracks, it’s just another reason to see “Zombieland.”
So how much fun was “Zombieland”? Not as awesomely great as “Shaun of the Dead,” in my opinion, the movie which set the standard for gross-out, horror comedy. But just like “Shaun of the Dead,” “Zombieland” is very tongue-in-cheek--and the tongue stuck in the cheek came from the mouth of the dead guy on the ground. It’s clever, it rarely drags and it has the best surprise in the middle and a gag that’s funny enough to wait around after the credits at the end.
Fresh off a crush on the recently married indie idol Zooey Deschanel, my 16-year-old is now smitten by the gun-toting Emma Stone. A hot teenage girl who loves to kill zombies as much as he does; my kid didn’t stand a chance.
Neither do the zombies in “Zombieland.” See it before somebody tells you too much about it.
It’ll be fun to take your mind off your troubles.
And there are troubles in the world.
(CNN) -- Typhoon Parma slammed into the already storm-battered Philippines on Saturday afternoon, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes for safer shelter.
As many as 4,000 people could be buried under the rubble in the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes in Indonesia, United Nations officials said Saturday.
Authorities arrested a man accused of secretly taping ESPN sports reporter Erin Andrews in the nude and posting the videos on the Internet, the FBI said Friday.
A CBS producer, Robert "Joe" Halderman, has been charged with first-degree attempted grand larceny; officials said he threatened to go public with the 62-year-old funnyman's dalliances unless Letterman paid $2 million.
Mr. Halderman’s lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel, said his client denied wrongdoing.
“He pled not guilty, and he stands by that plea,” Mr. Shargel said after the arraignment in a telephone interview. “My position is that, even upon a superficial glance, there is another side of this story and I’m working on it.”
Yeah, I bet he’s working on it. He hasn’t come up with another believable side to the story yet but he’s working on it!
What’s the other side of this story?
VISITORS to a remote grotto have claimed a statue wept and crosses appeared and disappeared in the night sky this week.
A group of 14 people, who had gathered at the statue of the Virgin Mary, in a rocky outcrop near the town of Dungloe in Ireland on Tuesday night, were transfixed as they watched the phenomenon, which they said lasted almost an hour.
"It was a crazy evening. It was absolutely amazing. I am still on an emotional high. All but one person seemed to see the same thing," recalled James Boyle who was at the site with his wife and children.
The Kerrytown shrine is visited by thousands of pilgrims annually, after first becoming the subject of a religious apparition 70 years ago.
James explained how the group had been drawn there last Tuesday night because of a claim by a faith healer that the Virgin Mary had told him in a channelled message that she would appear at the shrine on September 29 at 8pm.
"We went into the shelter facing the rock and at a few minutes to eight someone suggested we should start the rosary. We had no sooner started than someone shouted 'look up'.
"To the left of the cross, another cross appeared in the sky and as soon as it disappeared, another one appeared. It lasted about 10 minutes," he explained.
Then people began noticing that the white statue with its red heart had begun changing colour and form.
"She appeared to have a human face and her head turned and she looked at people. She looked down at the children who were at the front," he said.
One woman explained how the statue began crying and she went up to dry the tears.
"The tears were running down from her eyes," she told Highland Radio.
. . . And then the statue started crying so hard that the Virgin Mary’s mascara was running and she had these big snot bubbles coming from her nose.
Is it possible? I guess. You know what seems impossible? That not one person had a cell phone camera. They’re everywhere. Now, that would have been cool.
Not that I don’t believe. You might not be a believer but I am. Turns out, I have the brain for it:
(Wired) Brain scans of people who believe in God have found further evidence that religion involves neurological regions vital for social intelligence.
In other words, whether or not God or Gods exist, religious belief may have been quite useful in shaping the human mind’s evolution.
“The main point is that all these brain regions are important for other forms of social cognition and behavior,” said Jordan Grafman, a National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist.
In a study published Monday in Public Library of Science ONE, Grafman’s team used an MRI to measure the brains areas in 40 people of varying degrees of religious belief.
People who reported an intimate experience of God, engaged in religious behavior or feared God, tended to have larger-than-average brain regions devoted to empathy, symbolic communication and emotional regulation. The research wasn’t trying to measure some kind of small “God-spot,” but looked instead at broader patterns within the brains of self-reported religious people.
Grafman suspects that the origins of divine belief reside in mechanisms that evolved in order to help primates understand family members and other animals. “We tried to use the same social mechanisms to explain unusual phenomena in the natural world,” he said.
I wonder how big the brain patterns were in that 5-year-old boy who took on a 12 foot, 800 pound alligator and won?
The Houston Chronicle reports that Simon Hughes, 5, killed the second largest alligator in Texas history back in September in a marshy section of his family's ranch about an hour north of Houston. "Everything out on our ranch will either bite you or stick you," Simon's father, Scott Hughes, told Fox 26 News in Houston.
At first glance, it wasn't a fair fight. Simon weighs 40 pounds, The alligator weighed as much as a Harley Davidson motorcycle. However, the boy's single-barrel .410-gauge shotgun leveled the playing field. Simon told Fox News he planted a load of buckshot right behind the critter's eyes. (www.parentdish.com)
Meanwhile, there is an adult who looks like they lost a battle with an alligator whose happy to have arms back. Not his arms, just anybody’s:
(telegraph UK) Jeff Kepner, an American father who had a double arm transplant, has spoken of his joy at the operation's success but says that he has been left with hands hairier than his body.
The former pastry chef lost his hands more than a decade ago due to a bacterial infection, but is now looking forward to returning home to his family in Augusta, Georgia.
Kepner became the first American to undergo a double hand transplant in May, since when he has been recuperating at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Yesterday he revealed how he was coping with his new limbs, explaining that he still lacks sensation but is learning to grip and pick up small items.
"I'm not the kind of person to say 'Ooh, those aren't mine'," he told the Daily Mirror.
"From the beginning I thought, 'These look pretty darn good'. The donor was hairier than I am but I feel like they've always been on my arms.”
That would be weird for me too. I’m a very hairless man and I don’t know how long it would take me to get used to seeing black hair on my arms.
I guess I could always shave my arms. With my toes.
Anyway, it’s always cool to the see the latest that doctors can do--and what doctors can’t do.
The devastation of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic is well known, but a new article suggests a surprising factor in the high death toll: the misuse of aspirin. Appearing in the November 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online now, the article sounds a cautionary note as present day concerns about the novel H1N1 virus run high.
High aspirin dosing levels used to treat patients during the 1918-1919 pandemic are now known to cause, in some cases, toxicity and a dangerous build up of fluid in the lungs, which may have contributed to the incidence and severity of symptoms, bacterial infections, and mortality. Additionally, autopsy reports from 1918 are consistent with what we know today about the dangers of aspirin toxicity, as well as the expected viral causes of death.
The motivation behind the improper use of aspirin?
In 1918, physicians did not fully understand either the dosing or pharmacology of aspirin, yet they were willing to recommend it. Its use was promoted by the drug industry, endorsed by doctors wanting to "do something," and accepted by families and institutions desperate for hope. (physorg.com)
Here’s something better than medicine. I know these two little girls, Safir and Lotus, daughters of a friend of mine, who came to visit us last summer from Denmark. It’s an annual trip from their mother and her husband, one of the top three rock star photographers in the world.
Anyway, they couldn’t be cuter. He’s a shot of them on my scooter, Safir in front, from just before the leaves started turning.
And not matter what kind of night or week you’re having, or how bleak the news looks, you’ll love this little existential story. Earlier this year, Lotus, the little one, was intently eating an ice cream (a rare treat). Then she said something that her mother wasn’t sure she had heard right, so she asked her to repeat it. Lotus said quietly, “The ice cream doesn’t know that it is me that’s eating it.”
The ice cream does now, Lotus, the ice cream does now.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009, 06:56 AM CST
[General]
They were passed along by a friend...not sure on the source, I'd expect it's a web compilation?
Water turning over a bus really blew me away...and that was in Gwinnett, where we lived...Hall now.
I don't think the Ansley Park area got it, although I remember all those storm runoff channels when I worked down near Piedmont Park...and the in-town creeks always flood.
Didn't a creek run under Piedmont near Ansley Mall?
The west side of town still has issues...some school systems were still closed this week.
Sunday, September 27, 2009, 12:25 AM CST
[General]
by Ian Punnett
I was just talking about this on the radio and I had to put it somewhere for you to see it, so here's the video of a spider crawling all over the pope:
OK, let’s play “Murder She Wrote.” For some reason, no police agency has been willing to call the death of U.S. Census worker Bill Sparkman a murder. Let’s review the known testimony.
In Big Creek, Ky, near the lovely Daniel Boone National Forest where I once spent the night, about halfway between Lexington, Ky and Knoxville, TN, in Appalachia (that I love), the 51-year-old, part-time census worker found hanging in a rural Kentucky cemetery was naked, gagged.
Police have been holding out the possibility that Bill Sparkman’s death could have been a suicide or an accident even though had his feet and hands had been bound with duct tape.
Authorities have also said the word "fed" was scrawled with a felt-tip pen across 51-year-old Bill Sparkman's chest but they are unwilling to say whether or not he was a victim of anti-government bias or even if the killer, if there is one, was aware that Sparkman worked for the U.S. Census even though his U.S. Census identification tag was found taped to his head and neck.
Jerry Weaver of Fairfield, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he was among a group of relatives who made the gruesome discovery on Sept. 12.
"The only thing he had on was a pair of socks," Weaver said. "And they had duct-taped his hands, his wrists. He had duct tape over his eyes, and they gagged him with a red rag or something."
"And they even had duct tape around his neck.”
The scene left Weaver without a doubt how Sparkman died.
"He was murdered," he said. "There's no doubt."
Weaver said the body was about 50 yards from a 2003 Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck. He said Sparkman's clothes were in the bed of the truck.
"His tailgate was down," Weaver said. "I thought he could have been killed somewhere else and brought there and hanged up for display, or they actually could have killed him right there. It was a bad, bad scene."
"It took me three or four good nights to sleep. My 20-year-old daughter ended up sleeping in the floor in our bedroom." he said.
So how could any investigating agency argue that “This is the worst case of suicide that I’ve ever seen!”
There must be a reason--Shaggy and Scooby wouldn’t even need Velma to determine a cause of death: Murder in the worst degree. How sad for his family. O, fellowship divine! We feebly struggle, they in glory shine; for all are one in thee, for all are thine. Alleluia, Alleluia!
So that having been settled, what could have been the motive? Anti-census paranoia, misplaced anti-government craziness, Sparkman’s accidental discovery of a meth lab or drug distribution point, perhaps a mistaken belief that this part-time census taker, teacher and family man was somehow a secret revenue agent who came across some old-timer’s still? Like the song says, some people never came back from “Copperhead Road.”
The motive alone remains a mystery for now, I believe, and I fear that the longer it takes, the harder it will be to find the killers in all those hills and hollers of that beautiful, ancient landscape.
Remember the Panama Monster mystery from last week?
Well, I wish I had a bigger update for you but here goes. According to many of my favorite bloggers, the creature in question is some kind of animal, not an alien. As much as I would love to report to you that it turned out to be Jar Jar Binks, Loren Coleman’s “Cryptomundo” is clearly coming down on the side that the Panama Monster is a newborn or perhaps diseased animal of unknown origin for now. I think it looks like a kind of sloth of which there are many in Central America but “quien sabe?”
Loren Coleman did have a photo of the decomposing carcass, however, maybe it's the "monster":
I’ll give you an update soon on the radio.
By the way:
The shower radio has been named the worst household gadget of all time.
It faced stiff competition from the electric nail file and electric candles which made up the top three.
In a survey of 3,000 women carried out by an insurance company the shower radio was revealed to have a host of design flaws.
Perhaps most unforgivably it let in water while its tinny sound quality was often not heard above the din of the water. (Metro UK)
I agree, I’ve never had any luck with shower radios! I gave them as presents the year they first started becoming popular and everybody hated them. Which got me to wondering whether C. Crane has ever done a shower--they do everything else right.
Son of a gun, there it is, right there in their catalogue:
“The world's first ‘serious’ water resistant radio. The Sangean H201 doesn't sound tinny and hollow like other shower radios you might have tried. You can hang it from your shower head by its curved, tracked, quirky handle that folds into the unit, or you can opt for the (included) wall-mounted bracket.”
Either way, I’m ordering one and I hope you get one too.
Don’t call me if you’re naked, though. That would make two of us and that would be weird.
Speaking of great inventions. Remember a few weeks ago when researchers claimed to able to tell the year that early human migration from Africa started? Egyptologists are doing that one better:
The Egyptians started building the Great Pyramid of Giza on August 23, 2470 B.C., according to controversial new research that attempts to place an exact date on the start of the ancient construction project.
A team of Egyptian researchers arrived at the date based on calculations of historical appearances of the star Sothis—today called Sirius.
Every year around the time of the Nile River floods, Sothis would rise in the early morning sky after a long absence.
"The appearance of this star indicates the beginning of an inundation period" for the Nile, said team the former head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Throughout their history, "Egyptians … started their main buildings, the tombs, and the temples at the beginning of the inundation"—an auspicious time, since floodwaters brought fresh soil, maintaining the region's fertility.
In addition, pharaohs always started building their tombs at the starts of their rules. Khufu, the pharaoh meant to be buried in the Great Pyramid, took power in 2470 B.C., according to Nur El-Din and colleagues.
The researchers therefore compared the modern calendar, the ancient Egyptian calendar, and the cycle of the star to find the exact day Sothis would have appeared that year.
By the way, I asked, of course, and I was told that August 23, 2470 B.C.E. was a Tuesday. At least according to one calculator, the pyramids were started on a Tuesday.
Of course, they didn’t called it “Tuesday” in ancient Egypt, it was known as “Tutsday.”
I’m making that up. I have no idea what it was called but I do know that the Egyptian week used to be ten days. Glad it’s not like that now. I think the audience of my weekday radio show is already sick of me by Friday! The good news for Coast to Coast listeners is that I would only be on three times a month!
(PhysOrg.com) -- Gene therapy holds promise in the treatment of cancer as well as a large number of other diseases. However, developing a scalable system for delivering genes to cells both efficiently and safely has been challenging. Now, two teams of researchers have developed versatile nanotechnology-enabled platforms that could get therapeutic genes safely and efficiently into cancer cells.
In one study, a team of Northwestern University researchers has shown that nanodiamonds can serve as a novel gene delivery technology that combines key enhanced delivery efficiency along with outstanding biocompatibility, all in one drug delivery package. Said Dean Ho, Ph.D., who led the research. “By harnessing the innate advantages of nanodiamonds, we now have demonstrated their promise for gene therapy.”
If you can’t quite picture how big a nanodiamond is, just look at my wife’s original wedding ring. It was all I could afford. Hey, the guy at the pawnshop said she’d love it no matter what.
I guess he was right because she’s been “Hopelessly Devoted to Me” ever since. Which reminds me:
GREASE star Olivia Newton-John has revealed that she is fascinated by unidentified flying objects - and has even seen a UFO.
The 60-year-old -star claimed that she spotted a UFO when she was just 15. She said: "I have seen one when I was very young. It was unidentified and it was flying."
The star of “Xanadu” also recalled how the brilliant silver object flew across the sky at "amazing speeds.”
That means it flew almost as fast as I did when I left the theater that was showing “Xanadu.”
By the way, here’s a fun movie fact. Actor Joe Montegna had small role in “Xanadu” that was left entirely on the cutting room floor.
Sunday, September 20, 2009, 12:45 AM CST
[General]
by Ian Punnett
WASHINGTON – The head of the FCC plans to propose new rules that would prohibit Internet service providers from interfering with the free flow of information and certain applications over their networks, according to reports published Saturday.
The proposals would uphold a pledge Barack Obama made during the presidential campaign to support Internet neutrality and would bar companies like Verizon, Comcast or ATT&T, from slowing or blocking certain services or content flowing through their vast networks.
The rules would apply to all ISPs, including wireless service providers.
In the end, the war might not be over but it’s nice to win the opening battle. Net neutrality is good business for this country and brings peace to the world. Someday, some totalitarian government like China might attempt to control the flow of information on the internet like other governments have attempted to control the flow of oil or water. Someday, internet wars could be fought on actual battle fields, not just digital ones. Net neutrality in this country is necessary to maintaining the moral high ground around the world . . . that is, as moral a position as possible with all the hatred, porn, paranoia and human nature in general that pushes through the internet everyday.
Human nature is an amazing thing to behold, isn’t it? Did you see the story out of Panama that is the latest example of our age old instinct, “if you don’t understand something, kill it.”
A mystery creature in Panama was beaten to death by teens on Saturday. Four teens came upon a mystery creature in Panama while they were walking on near a cave in the city of Cerro Azul. The four teens were terrified of the mystery creature, which has subsequently been named the "Panama Monster."
The teens subsequently killed the mystery creature in Panama and threw it in to a pool. Once the teens were done, the mystery creature was found dead. The teens returned later on to snap a picture of this strange mystery creature in Panama.
While you may think that killing the mystery creature in Panama was inappropriate, you really need to take a look at the link below. The animal has a swollen belly, leather-like skin, stubby facial features, and weird hook-like claws. (AssociatedContent.com)
I cannot tell how big it was but I’ve heard about sea turtles that have lost their shells that look something like this. Or some poor soul that’s just been murdered. Or its an alien. Or the catch-all these days: a chupacabra. Or a hoax.
All we know for sure is that it’s weird, scary looking and it’s dead.
As opposed to weird, scary-looking and alive.
SPOKANE, Wash. (Sept. 19) - Two days after an insane killer escaped from a field trip organized by his mental hospital, the union that represents mental hospital workers said it had become concerned about the type of patients allowed to participate in such outings.
Police continued to search Saturday for 47-year-old Phillip Arnold Paul, who walked away from the Spokane County Fair during an outing Thursday with 30 other Eastern State Hospital patients.
Paul had been committed after he was acquitted by reason of insanity in the 1987 slaying of an elderly woman, whose body he soaked in gasoline to throw off search dogs. Paul buried the woman's remains in her flower garden.
Patients must be cleared by a treatment team before they can go on trips to stores, parks, and other sites, said Dr. Rob Henry, director of forensic services at Eastern State. They wear street clothing and staff members are required to keep each patient within eyesight at all times.
But Paul's inclusion in Thursday's field trip to the fair drew sharp criticism from Gov. Chris Gregoire and the union that represents Eastern State Hospital workers. (AP)
As you might imagine, I think compassion is a beautiful thing but I don’t think compassion should include state fair trips for the criminally insane. Call me cold-blooded.
Interesting that an escaped, insane killer should be in the news as we approach October, traditionally the start of the scary movie season, as that is the premise of about half of all R-rated Halloween-themed movies.
Of course, another large portion of scary movies is premised on the existence of ghosts and popular talk show host and admitted Coastie, Matt Allen of “The Matt Allen Show” on WPRO 630 AM and 99-seven FM in Providence, Rhode Island, sent me a great ghost photo of a little girl, who shall remain nameless, who appears to be watched over by the spirit of her departed grandmother.
Real or not real? Matt tells me that he has spoken personally with experts on photo shop who have said that whatever it was, it was not likely photo-shopped.
Anyway, it would be nice to think that it was grandma. We should all be as lucky as this little girl.
Finally, if getting lucky has been an issue for you . . . here’s the latest on nano-technology:
An innovative drug-delivery system - nanoparticles encapsulating nitric oxide or prescription drugs - shows promise for topical treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED), according to a new study by scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
The new system, tested successfully on a small number of animals, could potentially prevent side effects associated with oral ED medications, if study results can be replicated in humans. That could mean safer and more effective ED therapy for millions of men with heart disease and other health problems affecting erectile function. The study is published today in the online edition of the Journal of Sexual Medicine. (Physorg.com)
So, we know have officially 20 ways for men to treat erectile dysfunction and still no cure for cancer, MS, etc, and finally now in cream form.
What’s next? A cure for MRSA? Nope, a treatment for ED that comes in spray form.
One tip for the marketers of this product, however, I would avoid using the word “nano” anywhere around the product.
Somebody with ED might be sensitive about that, if you know what I mean . . .
Monday, September 14, 2009, 12:33 AM CST
[General]
by Ian Punnett
This time last night, you might remember the big story about the disappearance of Yale student Annie Le.
"I will categorically say a body has not been found," an FBI spokesperson said last night. "Items that could potentially be evidence have been seized. Nothing that can be associated with Annie Le at this time."
The New Haven Register and other outlets reported that detectives found bloody clothing in the campus building where Le was last seen.
But tonight, the New Haven Register reported on their website:
NEW HAVEN - The blood-stained clothes found in ceiling tiles at the Yale University laboratory where graduate student Annie Le disappeared are not the clothes Le was last seen wearing, law enforcement officials said.
The items were sent for testing to see if the clothes had any connection to Le, whose disappearance five days before her wedding has attracted national media attention.
Investigators said a small amount of blood was found on the clothing found Saturday.
So whose clothes are those? More on that in a minute. Unfortunately, as you’ve probably heard, although the bloody clothes found hidden in the ceiling cannot be linked to Annie Le, the New Haven Independent is reporting that a body found hidden in the wall is hers.
(Updated: 9:52 p.m.) Police found what they believe is the body of missing Yale med student Annie Le, ending a five-day manhunt that transfixed the nation.
New Haven police made the announcement at a press conference at 1 Union Ave. at 9 p.m. Sunday.
Human remains were found shortly after 5 p.m. Sunday inside a wall at 10 Amistad St., the Yale medical building where Le was last seen, said Assistant Police Chief Pete Reichard. Police have not yet identified the body, but they believe it is Annie Le.
“We are assuming that it’s her,” Reichard said.
Police have ruled her case a homicide.
Le, a 24 year-old third-year Yale pharmacology graduate student, went missing on Tuesday. Video cameras captured her entering 10 Amistad St., but she was never seen coming out. More than 100 law enforcement agents descended on the city to try to solve the mystery. They watched hours of video surveillance tape taken from over 70 cameras. They combed through the 120,000-square-foot building day and night.
Sunday, they finally made a breakthrough in the case.
Shortly after 5 p.m., they found the remains of a female human body secreted inside a basement wall in the building.
O, fellowship divine, we feebly struggle, you in glory shine, for all one in thee for all are thine. Hallelujah, hallelujah.
Very sad.
Even sadder, there are bloody clothes in the ceiling that aren’t Annie Le’s! Could it be another victim? A weird coincidence? There is a killer at loose on the campus of Yale University--the only question at this hour is, is it a serial killer?
It is a dark matter--but not the “Dark Matter.” That too, is still a mystery tonight. There's a recap from Physorg.com:
Among the most astounding, unexpected, and important achievements of the past century (or even more) have been the discoveries of dark matter and dark energy, collectively dubbed the "dark sector."
A whopping 96% of the essence of our universe lies in the dark sector, where essence refers to everything that controls evolution and large-scale properties of the cosmos. Dark matter is unseen matter -- unseen in the sense that it emits no detected electromagnetic radiation (light, radio waves, etc) -- but it has been definitively spotted nonetheless because its gravity has measurable effects on stars, things that we can see. Of all of the matter in the universe, an incredible 90% is dark matter, with galaxies and stars being only minor constituents. We do not know what dark matter is, only that it is almost surely made of kinds of elementary particles unlike those that comprise normal atoms.
Now that we’re making progress on dark matter, isn’t it time for us to get to work on the all important red matter? If we don’t start working on it now, how will they have red matter in time for the launch of the starship Enterprise?
From red matter to pink grasshoppers:
A rare pink grasshopper has been found by a schoolboy taking part in a nature trail.
The insect was found by 11-year-old Daniel Tate who thought it was a flower until he saw it jump and then he realised it was a grasshopper.
The insect was later identified by wildlife officers as an adult female common green grasshopper, which has been born pink. (Telegraph UK)
Wait . . . isn’t a pink grasshopper a ****tail? Made with gin, served with a paper umbrella? Or is a grasshopper made with milk and creme de menthe? I don’t know anything about ****tails but if there isn’t a “pink grasshopper,” there should be.
Either way, it wasn’t what this guy was drinking:
Here's a story I re-wrote from the Kansas City Star:
A 22-year-old man who got into a disagreement at the IrishFest last weekend picked the wrong person to douse with beer.
Kansas City Police Chief Jim Corwin, wearing plainclothes and preparing to watch a band perform with his family, was saving the space for a boy in a wheelchair who had gone to the restroom with his father.
Jesse H. Rizzo of Warrensburg, Mo., asked to stand between Chief Corwin and the stage to try to catch one of the free T-shirts being thrown from the stage. Corwin told him no.
That’s when Rizzo, according to the police chief, dumped his beer on the officer holding the space for the wheelchair bound boy.
“This is your unlucky day,” Corwin told the man while pulling out his police identification card. “You’re under arrest.”
After getting drenched, Corwin escorted Rizzo to officers working at the festival at Crown Center and the man posted bond.
Now, is that how they wrote it in the Kansas City Star?
No. What did I do differently as I re-wrote the story? According to the basic rules of journalism, I moved the name of the accused, Jesse Rizzo, up from the last paragraph, of the story as it appeared in the Kansas City Star closer to the top of the story.
Why is that important? Because naming the accused is the basic “who” of the “who, what, where, why and how” of the story.
So why did the Kansas City Star not name the accused at the top of the story like I did and instead just refer to him as “the man.”
Well, that’s the last line of the story in the Kansas City Star:
Rizzo, the son of Kansas City Star reporter Tony Rizzo, had to post $100 bond.
Tsk-tsk. If that drunken idiot--I mean, drunken alleged idiot--was the son of a prominent politician instead of reporter, would the Kansas City Star have been so accommodating as to bury the name?
I’m not saying that reporter Rizzo had anything to do with it, but I smell a rat.
