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HONOLULU, HI--At this moment in the new year, Christmas is but a fading memory, New Year's Eve but a cipher of a dimly remembered past.
For this reason, stories of holiday heartlessness can seem so, you know, last year. But wickedness knows no time; it is eternal in the human heart. Herewith, then, the story of a pair of holiday criminals who seem, in their reckless nefariousness, shockingly insensitive.
Plus, they are total dumbasses.
"Honolulu police arrested a 24-year-old Makiki man and a 43-year-old Makiki woman for allegedly breaking into a van belonging to a charitable organization on Christmas Eve."
So reports the Dec. 27, 2010 edition of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. The story, which does not name the charity, says witnesses spotted the pair "in a van... at about 4 p.m. Friday" and confronted them. The pair fled but "were arrested at Makiki District Park."
This story, like others to which First of All recently has alluded, arises from the Star-Advertiser's "Police Blotter." These just-the-facts accounts detailing the city's police and fire-related incidents are short on color, so one is left to fill in the blanks.
The man is twenty-four, the woman forty-three. Mother and son? Young man and so-called "cougar"? (This appellation recently has come to signify an older woman who enjoys the company, in and out of bed, of young men. At one time it referred to Puma concolor, a mammal of the family Felidae that is native to the Americas. It also referred to super-badass car.)
Or were the man and woman drug-addicted confreres for whom, when it comes to stealing stuff to pay for shit, age simply was not an issue?
Did they understand that the van belonged to a charity and that charities, as a rule, do good things for people in need? Did they realize that the holiday season is predicated on exactly that concept? Were they so desperate for money that they simply didn't care that they were acting not just illegally but immorally?
Or, on the other hand, did they so frantically need a ride--say, to an ailing family member's distant home for one last Christmas get-together--that they were willing to hotwire any vehicle at all, including one belonging to a do-gooding organization?
For the purposes of First of All, if not of the judge, lawyers and jury members in front of whom the pair may one day appear, these and many other questions will go unanswered. This thought generates within the heart a certain amount of gloom.
Our spirits brighten, however, when we repeat, like a mantra, the word "Makiki." Hawaiian words and names are charmingly long on vowels and repeated alliterative syllables, so they can't help but bring cheer to even the most despondent soul.
One occasionally fantasizes about moving to Hawaii. There, one idly imagines, life would be chockablock with sun, sand and surf. It would be defined by the kind of indolence considered alluring by terminally lazy writers whose very best artistic efforts result in reinterpreting odd news stories for the amusement of four or five nonexistent readers.
Sun, sand, surf, indolence--these may not, in themselves, be enough to sway the mainlander teetering on the brink of a life-altering decision. But add a bit of "Makiki" and one is convinced that Hawaii is, indeed, a paradise. It is the kind of place in which unscrupulous robbers always come to justice. In at least one case they have done so in a no-doubt well-sculpted recreational area the name of which includes an enchanting and entirely compelling mantra: "Makiki."
(Makiki. Makiki. Makiki. Makiki. Makiki. Etc.)
HONOLULU, Hawaii--"A 20-year-old man who tried to rob a man at a Kalihi bus stop Saturday night was arrested riding a stolen bicycle, police said."
This mystifying lede appeared in the first item of the "Police Blotter" in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser yesterday. The story went on:
"A 21-year-old man refused to give up his property at the bus stop at 9:45pm, police said.
"He was then assaulted by the 20-year-old man, said police.
"The suspect fled but was stopped a short distance away, riding a bicycle that had been reported stolen from a 57-year-old woman at a nearby store, police said.
"The man resisted arrest but was subdued by officers, police said."
The "Police Blotter" is endemic to newspapers in small communities. It calls to mind the sort of place in which everyone knows everyone and, when not on the job, the police chief sells used cars and trucks.
"Police Blotter" items often are written by the most junior member of a paper's staff. This person is learning, on the job, how to write in journalese, a language which resembles English not hardly a'tall.
For this bicycle-related item, the green reporter evidently wasn't aware that after noting in the first graf that police were the source of information ("... riding a stolen bicycle, police said"), he or she no longer needed do so. It is understood that all following facts derive from the same source unless otherwise indicated.
Still, our earnest correspondent showed a bit of flair in the third sentence. After twice writing "police said," he/she stepped out on a limb to write "said police." But reason swiftly reasserted itself. The nascent Hunter S. Thompson-esque rule-smashing newcomer once more prudently used the more conventional "police said."
That being said, we have nothing but good wishes for our intrepid if inexperienced reporter, even if he/she only exists in the fevered First of All imagination. To enter upon a career in journalism at this juncture in the Fourth Estate's enduring fadeout is brave beyond compare. Soon all journalists will be writing short pieces using sticks on leaves which they'll float down the river to the next village. But it will be called "Tweeting."
Oh, wait. Never mind.
If it turns out our "inexperienced" reporter is in truth a broken-down alcoholic writing "Police Blotter" items in the final days of a long and storied career, well, so much the better. Good on ya, old-timer. You were there when dinosaurs roamed the land. First of All, a proud dinosaur, salutes you.
One last thing: robbing a man while riding a stolen bicycle? Seriously?
The burglars of yore would be aghast.
GORJ COUNTY, Romania--Police arrested a man here recently for attempted burglary after his intended victims discovered his presence in their home when his cellular telephone rang, a Dec. 27 AFP piece reports.
The story neglects to mention the name of the man, who is eighteen. For the purposes of this post, then, the well-traveled and sophisticated First of All shall give him a name we assume to be typically Romanian: John Smith.
A police source in Gorj told AFP that Mr. Smith's victims, two neighbors in their seventies, "were resting on their bed when [Mr. Smith's] phone rang." The couple deduced that someone else was in the room, a task made easier by the fact that, as the police source noted, "they have no phone."
This couple shows a perspicacity First of All likes to think is native to all Romanians. Mr. Smith, on the other hand, displays a spectacular level of criminal folly. One wonders at his ringtone; was it, perhaps, the theme from The Three Stooges?
Gorj is a Romanian county with a population of a few hundred thousand. Its main industries produce mining equipment, glass, wood, mechanical components and textiles. (This according to Wikipedia, the source of all information of dubious provenance.) There is also a vibrant food and beverage industry, aka hotels and tourism, aka partying.
That Mr. Smith evidently was unable--or unwilling--to find gainful employment in any of these fields, and instead turned to crime, un-silenced cellphone in hand, fair baffles the mind.
This is Mr. Smith's second arrest for attempted burglary. He faces seven years in prison.
Seven years in prison because he neglected to silence his phone? First of All is not convinced that this is sufficient penalty. It would be perfectly apt punishment for those who do not silence theirs in movie theaters. But for a young man embarking upon what he hopes is a lucrative career in criminal enterprises, yet who forgets to silence his phone, seven years is not enough. Better would be a life sentence of hard labor, by which we mean being forced to text friends until his thumbs fell off.
Mr. Smith's foolhardiness affirms the truism that they just don't make 'em like they used to. The burglars of yore would be aghast.
CELLULOIDLAND, The Universe - I Love You Philip Morris is not, alas, a film about a shrinking sect of smokers with a passionate fealty to a large tobacco conglomerate who rebelliously use machetes to hack off the hands of the antismoking fanatics who fan those hands in front of their own scrunched-up noses to signal their disdain for cigarettes, cigarette smoke, free will, responsible choice, and anything else that gets in the way of their desire to dictate to others how they should live.
Instead, it is a romantic comedy-drama (a "comma"?) about a pair of gay guys. Steven Russell, played by Jim Carrey, is an incorrigible con man. Phillip Morris, played by Ewan MacGregor, is a trusting Southern soul. The two meet and fall in love in prison, where each is serving time for something or other. (Who, in the end, cares why they're behind bars? Life is short; we're all going to die someday. Tracking details of this or that movie's plot is, you might agree, simply too exhausting.)
The film is sweet and mildly enjoyable, excepting a scene which for First of All sabotaged the whole thing.
In it, Mr. Russell appears to be dying of AIDS. In a wrenching phone call, Mr. Morris, though angry with Mr. Russell for other reasons, sobs wildly when he learns of his lover's illness. For those of us who lost friends to AIDS in the eighties and nineties, the scene is a knife to the heart.
Later, it is revealed that Mr. Russell's "illness" was faked. It is another con, one that allows Mr. Russell, posing as a lawyer, to try to spring Mr. Morris from prison.
(Oops. Did we spoil the film for you? So sorry.)
For the AIDS scene to work, the audience must feel Mr. Morris' agony. So the film tricks us in the same way that Mr. Russell tricks Mr. Morris. When the con is exposed we feel Mr. Morris' rage--he slaps Mr. Russell's face--and his exasperation with Mr. Russell's iniquitous duplicity.
First of All understands this filmic conceit. You know what? First of All does not care. It is a terrible manipulation of the audience. We found ourselves weeping at Mr. Morris' pain; we recalled our own in the same kinds of situations. So for the illness to be exposed as fake--well, for hours after leaving the theater we boiled at the film's aggressive guile.
In fairness, we note that the film is based on true events. Perhaps Mr. Russell's AIDS con did, in fact, happen.
Still.
A side note: Mr. Morris and Mr. Russell's relationship does not last. In this sense theirs is no different from many nongay couplings. Love, sad to say, does not conquer all. Gays and lesbians eager to marry, in prison our out, need take note.
PORT ARTHUR, Texas - It is cheering to know that the women of America are stepping up their efforts to match and even to best the country's men, including in arcane pursuits such as stealing police cars and leading cops on exhilarating high-speed chases.
As sport and leisure past-time, pilfering police cruisers is nothing new. As we recently reported, a Greely, Colo. man named Adam Segura, who was allegedly drunk, allegedly pinched a cop car and allegedly raced down a highway for a bit, after which he allegedly came to a halt at the entrance to a mall, where, alas, he was arrested.
Not to be outdone, a woman named Candace Broussard pulled a similar stunt late last month. Ms. Broussard, who hails from Beaumont, TX. (pop: 110,099 in July 2009), was arrested for creating a disturbance on the campus of Lamar State College - Port Arthur ("A Great Place to Begin"), according to a Sept. 24 report on the Web site of the Beaumont Enterprise.
Ms. Broussard apparently kicked up a bit of a fuss when police attempted to guide her into the back seat of a cruiser. So they cuffed her hands behind her back and sat her in the car, the engine of which, as it happened, was running.
The Enterprise reports that Ms. Broussard managed to maneuver her hands so that they were in front of her. This Mr. Segura also did. So at this point in the cop-car-filching competition, the two are pretty much even.
But in a daring move that requires no little skill - and which, therefore, elevates Ms. Broussard's alleged crime head-and-shoulders above Mr. Segura's - Ms. Broussard then slid open the screen separating the cruiser's front seats from the back ones. She wiggled her way through the foot-wide slot and into the front of the car.
Let us just pause here to say that, according to statistics that Blogspot is kind enough to provide, First of All has readers from as far away as Denmark (2), Canada (1), the United Kingdom (1), Lebanon (1), and, bewilderingly, Malaysia (1). (Evidently, they simply can't get enough of ironically re-interpreted odd news stories there.) We have a full ninety readers in the U.S., for a readership grand total of, it turns out, roughly ninety-six.
It possible that some of our U.S. followers hail from, or live near, the Port Arthur area, or are familiar with it. It is with them in mind that we mention that Ms. Broussard, having gained the driver's seat of the police cruiser, shot down Proctor Street and turned north on Woodward Avenue. She managed to hit what the Enterprise referred to as an "occupied vehicle at Lake Charles and Proctor...." No one was injured. In time, she raced up northbound U.S. 69, zipping along at speeds of up to 100 mph.
Presently, coppers managed to lay down spike strips, the second pair of which did the trick. Her tires shredded, Ms. Broussard inexplicably pulled into a Conoco gas station. (For our Port Arthur readers, it's the one at U.S. 69 and FM 366, a name which suggests a radio station in a distant galaxy far above the world, where the stars look very different today.)
It was there that she was re-arrested, according to a police source, quoted by the Enterprise, who goes by the arousing name of Major Raymond Clark.
Major Clark (no relation to Major Tom, who, incidentally, is herewith encouraged to contact Ground Control) told the Enterprise that Ms. Broussard has a history of mental illness.
He added that he had no knowledge of whether or not she was under the influence of alcohol or drugs - colloquially, drunk as a skunk or high as a kite, which, incidentally, Major Tom was known frequently to be. ("Ashes to ashes/Funk to funky/We know Major Tom's/A junkie....")
The mentally ill often excel in particular areas of life, and Ms. Broussard appears to be no exception: her stolen police vehicle of choice happened to be a Dodge Charger that, at that point, had been used for only four months.
The moral of the story is this: if you're going to steal a police car, steal a fast, new and sexy one. Doing so will give you something to tell your grandchildren, provided you are not strung out in Heaven's high, hitting an all-time low.
NORTH CHARLESTON, South Carolina -- A man walked into a branch of the Wachovia bank here Tuesday and handed a teller a note saying he was there to rob the place. He asked for $30,000. When told, however, that the teller hadn't the money in her cash drawer he left, but not without first telling the teller "thank you."
This man is one of the last of a dying breed: mannerly Americans. A Sept. 13 Associated Press story neglects to say whether the man, Melvin Jesse Blain, thirty-one, has ever attended etiquette classes. Plainly, however, he was an infant so nice his folks named him thrice, and from there they sure done raised him right.
Under influences as disparate as politically-oriented shouting-heads talk shows, video games, reality TV, Tea Party rallies and the dispiriting artistic decay of Lindsay Lohan, Americans more and more appear to believe that good manners are a thing of the past and therefore are to be eschewed. That a man who allegedly planned to rob a bank showed better manners than do most drivers on American roads sounds a clarion call to his countryfellows: it's time to shape up... please.
Mr. Bain didn't get far after leaving the bank: police officers discovered him walking near it. This suggests, although the AP does not confirm it, that Mr. Bain's mannerliness derives from a leisurely approach to life. How many would-be bank robbers take casual strolls near the banks they almost rob?
The eminently polite Mr. Bain told police he had only recently been released from prison after spending almost four years there on a bank robbery charge. He added, according to the AP story, that he "didn't want to go back."
Well, of course not. Politesse only gets you so far; one imagines that in prison that's not very far at all.
Perhaps the judge in Mr. Bain's imminent case will recognize in him a thoughtful soul and will sentence him to perform community service in the guise of offering etiquette classes to the public. No doubt were the judge to hand down such a sentence he would receive from Mr. Bain a heartfelt "thank you," likely more than he receives from the bulk of the vulgarians appearing before him.
As it happens, issues of fading politesse, though distressingly acute in America, can be international in scope. We now join the case, in Lisbon, Portugal, of an aide to the mayor of a suburb called Oeiras. The aide, insulted that a young police officer addressed him employing the informal form of "you" without adding the honorific "sir," bit one of the officer's colleagues on the arm, necessitating for that officer a hospital trip.
A Sept. 13 Reuters story, forwarded to us by a regular reader who is a legal eagle and therefore has an eye for these sorts of things, reports that Esequiel Lino (no age given) had gone to the police station angry about officers having recently towed his daughter's car.
Reuters quotes a police spokeswoman as saying that Mr. Lino "started verbally abusing the officers, kicking the desk and was warned several times, but it didn't stop him."
Now, no one likes having one's offspring's car towed. Yet even from a standpoint of enlightened self-interest, Mr. Lino shot himself in the foot (bit himself in the arm?) by baiting police officers in their own "house."
In the end, the incident demonstrates that rudeness always comes a-cropper.
It is not without irony that, as Reuters flatly reports, "Lino's responsibilities in the mayor's administration include [maintaining] links with the police." These links, it is safe to assume, do not include gnawing on officers' arms, a notion which the kindly Melvin Jesse Bain, in his community service etiquette classes, would no doubt stress.
GREELEY, Colo., Sept. 15, 2010 - "If you're trying to escape from police, you might want to take a hint from Adam Segura, who learned an important lesson Thursday: Don't steal a police car, especially if you're drunk."
This eminently reasonable advice appears in the lede of an non-bylined Sept. 11 story posted on the Web site of the Greeley Tribune, the newspaper of record in Greeley, Colo., a township of 98,596 people located forty-nine miles north-northeast of Denver. (This according to Wikipedia, the site containing the scribblings both of fact-loving obsessives and of, well, liars. The population figure comes from 2006 Census Bureau estimates, so we can assume it is correct. Then again, it appears on Wikipedia, so who knows?)
It all began last Thursday at one in the afternoon, as so many things do. A Greeley police officer with the likably anonymous name of Craig Miller stopped Mr. Segura, who is thirty-two, for allegedly driving 62 mph in a 55 mph zone. In chatting with Mr. Segura, Officer Miller, as the mysterious Tribune reporter puts it, "noticed signs of drinking including glassy eyes, an odor of alcohol on [Mr.] Segura's breath and slurred speech."
While these symptoms may indicate drinking to excess, they also could be the result of a love-partner conversation gone wrong. After one of those, any sane man would want to hit the road for a bit and might presently find himself driving as fast as he is thinking. So it's difficult to say whether Mr. Segura was, in fact, drunk, because... oh, wait.
"'The defendant [Mr. Segura] also admitted to officer Miller that he'd drank alcochol,' according to [an] affadavit," according to the Tribune. Is it nitpicky to point out that the affadavit should read, "admitted to officer Miller that he'd drunk alcohol"? (Emphasis mine.) Perhaps so; often, officers of the law are simply too busy, what with catching criminals and so forth, to toy with the niceties of correct grammar.
Officer Miller quite sensibly handcuffed Mr. Segura's hands behind his back, and then placed him in the back seat of an unmarked police car. He then buckled Mr. Segura's seat belt. (Safety first, even for miscreants.)
Mr. Segura, showing the ingenuity that often, oddly, is the hallmark of those in the grip of an alcoholic blackout, managed to maneuver his hands, still locked in the handcuffs, around in front of him. He unbuckled the seat belt and climbed into the front seat of the car, unobserved by Officer Miller, who was busy chatting with (or, in police parlance, "questioning") a woman in Mr. Segura's car.
To the no doubt great surprise of Officer Miller, a backup officer, and possibly the woman in Mr. Segura's vehicle and Mr. Segura himself, Mr. Segura zoomed off in the cop car. Officers chased him down U.S. 34 for roughly a mile, at which point Mr. Segura inexplicably stopped.
The Tribune neglects to say whether Mr. Segura activated the car's siren, which would have been, like, totally awesome. The Trib does report that Mr. Segura was stopped near the entrance to the Greeley Mall, so it is possible that Mr. Segura had more important things on his pickled brain than blasting sirens, such as stopping at Hot Topic and buying his girlfriend a Tartan skirt and a skull-embossed black t-shirt.
Mr. Segura is now in the Weld County jail and faces no fewer than twelve charges, which really kind of puts him in the drunken-police-car-stealing hall of fame. Charges include aggravated motor vehicle theft, escape, vehicular eluding (a lovely locution), speeding, no proof of insurance, resisting arrest, obstruction of a police officer, two counts of driving under the influence (he blew a .26, three times the legal limit), and three counts of being a habitual traffic offender.
This last suggests that this is not the first time Mr. Segura has engaged in vehicular shenanigans (including eluding?). Some people simply aren't meant to drink; others aren't meant to drive; still others aren't meant to drink and drive, lest they wind up in the clink with the book t'rown at 'em.
PICO RIVERA, Ca., Sept. 12, 2010 -- The grand if evidently malevolent plans of a local man named Jose Parada got smashed when Parada crashed through the ceiling of De Le Cruz Jewelry, in Pico Rivera, and landed more or less in the arms of sheriff's deputies searching for whoever might have been burgling the jernt.
A Sept. 11 report in the Whittier (CA) Daily News notes that deputies responded to a burglar alarm at an establishment with the charming name of William's Boots, at 9233 whittier Boulevard, at about seven a.m. that morning. Upon arrival, one officer saw a person moving about inside the jewelry store, which sits near the boot emporium.
Police officers, including a K-9 (or "dog") unit, searched the store. (Whitter Daily News staff writer Brian Day, not to be confused with Queen guitarist Brian May, reports that police "...called in a K-9 for a search...." Either Mr. Day meant to write, as First of All has just done, "a K-9... unit," or the organs of the mainstream media are showing an alarming informality when reporting about coppers and their mutts.)
Deputies heard a noise coming from the attic. They ordered whoever hid there to show his face soonest, although it is possible that in the heat of the moment they said something more along the lines of, "Come out NOW, motherfucker!"
Perhaps Mr. Parada - for it was he in the attic - is a sensitive soul, or a religious one offended by references to Oedipal coitus. He declined the offer. Police shot pepper spray into the attic. This occasioned Mr. Parada's downfall. He actually fell through the ceiling -- or, as Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. John Adams, not to be confused with America's second president, told the Daily News, "He actually fell through the ceiling."
A police dog ("a K-9") grabbed Mr. Parada's clothing, "but did not bite him," the Daily News reports. That detail is interesting. First of All is anything but cynical - ho ho - but it's difficult to imagine that the information did not come from police sources whose department would have a strong desire to forestall - don't you see? - a bite-related lawsuit.
Police believe, and so allege, that Mr. Parada (shown below), who is twenty-three and hails from Montebello, CA., burgled no fewer than three businesses along Whittier Boulevard, in Pico Rivera, on Saturday morning. Both Montebello and Pico Rivera have populations of roughly 65,000; could Mr. Parada's alleged burglaries be emblematic of a larger inter-burgh rivalry? The otherwise informative Whittier Daily News piece doesn't say, so it seems likely, and therefore sad, alas, that we shall never know.
SUFFOLK, Virginia - Sean P. Almond, of Windsor, VA., appears to be the sort of man who just doesn't have a lick of sense, if one is inclined to believe a clipping from the weekly publication The Virginian-Pilot (The "No. 1 source of news, information and advertising" for Southeastern Virginia and Northeast North Carolina).
At about eleven o'clock p.m. on April 22, Mr. Almond, forty-three, is alleged to have entered the Kangaroo Express convenience store at 1125 Wilroy Rd., in Suffolk (pop.: roughly 83,000), and threatened the clerk, thrown her to the ground and robbed the store.
The Virginian-Pilot story admirably sticks to the facts, but, alas, it skimps on color. So it is unclear in just what way Mr. Almond menaced the clerk. Did he say he might shoot her? Did he make ribald jokes about her family, including its matriarch? Or did he simply ridicule her hairstyle? It seems sad that we shall never know.
Whatever he did, he did it quickly and then took off. The clerk quite sensibly called the police. When they arrived, she pointed them toward the back of the building, the last known destination of the fleeing Mr. Almond.
When police rounded the corner, there he was - urinating against the wall.
Seen in one light, this shows extraordinary levelheadedness on the part of Mr. Almond. After all, as the saying has it, when one has to go, one has to go - even if, it might be added, it is done directly after one has held up a store. Seen in another light, however, it is an act of such monumental folly that it boggles what is left of the mind.
Police discovered that Mr. Almond (who is not the man shown in the photograph above) was in possession of the store's cash.
He was booked on one count of armed robbery. Charges of assault and urinating in public were pending, police told the newspaper, as should have been a single charge of Mr. Almond's being rather a dolt, if one with a notably overexcitable bladder.
ONTARIO and SAN DIEGO, the Northern Hemisphere - It is best to remember that policeman, as a whole, are determined to fulfill their job requirements. This includes making arrests for outstanding warrants, and if those named on the warrants are, well, idiots, it makes things that much easier for the cops.
So learned two men recently, one in Ontario, Canada, the other near San Diego.
According to an April 25 Canadian Press report, a man named Stephane Reid called police to report the theft of $1,000 worth of tools from a storage locker.
Police discovered that Mr. Reid had outstanding warrants for shoplifting charges, and unceremoniously arrested him.
Mr. Reid has been charged with theft under $5,000, possession of property obtained by crime and failing to attend court. The items he is alleged to have stolen have yet to be recovered.
The case of Mr. Reid confirms two well-worn pieces of folk wisdom: there is no honor among thieves, and what goes around comes around, although some or all items may never find their way back to their rightful owners.
In Carlsbad, near San Diego, a man named Theodore "Ted" Felicetti was arrested on an outstanding warrant for drunk driving after performing with the Beatles tribute band Help! on a San Diego morning television show, the San Diego Union Tribune reported on April 23.
Carlsbad police lieutenant Marc Reno told the newspaper that police had been trying to serve Mr. Felicetti with the warrant since December of 2008. A search of various residences proved futile. Then police received a tip that Mr. Felicetti was a member of Help!, playing the part of of Paul McCartney.
The Union-Trib neglected to include a photo of Mr. Felicetti, who is fifty-four. Therefore, alas, we shall never know whether he resembles the Paul McCartney of the "Cute Beatle" era or, more likely, the Paul McCartney who has lived past the "When I'm Sixty-Four" era. As it happened, police went to the Help! Facebook page, learned of the then-upcoming television appearance, and showed up to arrest Paul McCartney, er, Mr. Felicetti. (They were kind enough not to interrupt the performance to enact their duty.)
Lt. Reno told the Union-Trib that the band's having a Facebook page allowed police to locate the faux-Paul bassist "with the click of a mouse."
This suggests that criminals really ought to think twice about putting their mugs on social networking sites, and also that Beatles cover bands, by virtue of being unnervingly creepy, are karmically doomed.
MEDFORD, Ore. - "Two men accused of trying to rob someone at knifepoint were arrested when they returned to get their car while officers were interviewing witnesses."
That is the verbatim lede of an April 1 Associated Press story, and it describes men so dumb it's really not worth writing about them a'tall.
The men went unnamed in the piece. Their ages are nineteen and twenty; no pictures accompanied the AP report, so we'll never know, alas, if the young men were handsome enough to excuse, or at least make palatable, their alarming injudiciousness.
The AP report does note that when the men returned to collect the car, they wore different clothes than those they'd worn when pulling a knife on a man leaving a convenience store. This suggests either that the men are dimwitted enough to believe that changing clothes constitutes adopting a disguise, or that they are fashion-conscious enough to feel the need to wear at least two distinct ensembles in a day.
If the latter, this should be considered a mitigating circumstance. Perhaps the men's lawyer could appeal to the judge for leniency on the grounds that a requirement to wear prison orange is simply an insult to young men who care so much about dressing stylishly.
PORT CLINTON, Ohio - It is likely that we here in the United States of America will soon see the suspension of Saturday mail delivery by the U.S. Post Office. Indeed, in the not-too-distant future we may see the suspension of all mail service, because with the advance of global warming there may soon be no "snow nor rain" to challenge these couriers in effecting "swift completion of their rounds," so, really, what's the point?
Until that moment, the Post Office remains stickler-ish about details such as Zip codes, and well it should be; there are a lot of items to shove around the country, and Post Office employees have their hands full with all that on-the-job sorting, shelving and sleeping.
This fact was learned the hard way by a man named Donald Dudrow III, of Toledo, Ohio. That Mr. Dudrow is a "III" suggests that Toledo quite possibly has been chock-a-block with Donald Dudrows for generations, an exceedingly pleasant thought.
This particular Donald Dudrow is a guest of the state of Ohio; he has taken up residence at the jail in Port Clinton (a town that, as of July, 2008, boasted 6,135 persons, presumably none of them Dudrows, "III" or otherwise). He is there on a probation violation, according to an Associated Press report published April 2. (Yes, April 2. Today is April 18. First of All is terribly, terribly behind in its reporting, for which it is terribly, terribly sorry).
Mr. Dudrow III had the not altogether bright idea to write a letter to his mother offering her meticulous instructions for how to sneak drugs to him in jail.
Alas, in addressing the envelope Mr. Dudrow included an incorrect Zip code. The detail-stickler-ish U. S. Post Office returned the letter to the jail, where corrections officers read it, as they do all incoming mail.
Mr. Dudrow III has been indicted on charges of attempted drug trafficking and trying to bring drugs into a correctional facility, according to the AP.
There is a moral to this story, and it is this: if you go to a U.S. Post Office branch, chances are there will be a sixty-person line and only one of the nine customer service windows open. This is enough to make anyone want to numb themselves with drugs, in or out of jail, correct Zip code or no.
CHURCH HILL, Tennessee, March 29th - Police arrested a local man Friday on a charge of indecent exposure after he allegedly dashed through a grocery store dressed in nothing but a rubber mask, according to a report today in the Kingston (TN) Times-News.
The piece, by a reporter charmingly named Rain Smith, is a textbook case of excellent journalism, as it perfectly incorporates the classic Five Ws: Who, What, Where, When and Why:
WHO: Daniel, R. Lee, twenty-two, of 612 East Main Boulevard, Apt. A, Church Hill, TN. He was accompanied by a woman who claimed to be his girlfriend. She is Katelyn M. Trent, eighteen, of 1849 1/2 Forest View Drive, Kinsgport, TN.
WHAT: Mr. Lee, according to supermarket personnel quoted by the Times-News, "ran around the store exposing himself to several customers and employees." A question suggests itself: did Mr. Lee stop to waggle his wing-wang at customers, thereby consciously exposing himself, or does the mere fact of scampering around a store with baby's arm bobbing constitute exposure? The question goes unanswered in the Times-News report.
As it happens, one staff member tried to catch Mr. Lee, but couldn't. This suggests either that Mr. Lee is very, very fast, or that the store employee is very, very slow. Alas, although Rain Smith lays out her facts clearly and concisely, she does not expand upon them, and so we shall never know which is true.
WHERE: An IGA (Independent Grocers Alliance) supermarket at 3006 North John B. Dennis Highway. After leaving the store, Mr. Lee allegedly scuttled to a nearby Hardee's, where, wearing naught but an orange hoodie sweatshirt, he asked employees if someone could lend him something to wear. Apparently, in planning his misdeed, Mr. Lee did not think ahead to the moment when, suffused with joy from his bare-assed scurry, he would leave the store and need to cover himself with, well, clothing.
A Hardee's employee gave Mr. Lee a pair of "basketball shorts." This means that Mr. Lee, a healthy young man of twenty-two, was wearing a hoodie and athletic shorts, which, and we mean this in the strictest journalistic sense, could not be hotter.
Inexplicably, Mr. Lee stayed in the Hardee's bathroom, and that's where police found him. They took him to jail and only charged him with indecent exposure, which was a kindness; they could also have charged him, no offense to Mr. Lee and his choice of color scheme, with a fashion crime for wearing an orange sweatshirt. (Photo, below.)
WHEN: Just after nine p.m. on Friday, March 26.
WHY: An officer who wrote the police report quoted by the Times-News noted that "Daniel advised me that he did run through the IGA nude because he was bored and didn't have anything to do."
The use of "Daniel," as opposed to the more formal "Mr. Lee," or the chillingly dehumanizing "Lee," suggests that police look favorably on Mr. Lee's youthful hijinks.
And why not? Church Hill is a town of roughly 7,000 people. It was a Friday night. Mr. Lee and Ms. Trent were bored.
First, it is an act of benevolence to a small-town community, citizens of most of which believe fervently in God, for one of its healthy young males to display his ding-a-ling, the design of which surely is proof that the Lord is Good and His Gifts are many.
Second, it is better, is it not, for a young man to run nude through a grocery store than to, say, join a rural militia, arm himself to the teeth, and, with his fellow mental defectives, tear apart the fabric of this great nation grenade by grenade?
As First Of All likes to put it: Bones Not Bombs!
KENNEWICK, Wa., March 18 -- A seventeen-year-old youth robbing the Bella Office Furniture store in Kennewick (pop: 63,216 in July 2008) took a five-hour break from his work to use the store's computer to scan his MySpace account, attempt to sell stolen items (presumably, the ones he was in the act, or had been in the act, of stealing) and, inevitably, watch pornography, according to a March 18 story in the Tri-City Herald ("The Voice of Mid-Columbia/Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, Wash.")
Police later learned the burglar's identity via his MySpace page and arrested him Tuesday on a charge of first-degree burglary.
This, you see, proves that the newest Inter-nets generation really has no attention span a'tall, and that criminals just ain't what they used to be. The burglars of yore would be aghast.
ABERDEEN, Scotland, March 17 -- A twenty-eight-year old man has been fined nine hundred dollars for attempting to "assault" a female Scottish police officer with a dangerous weapon: his penis.
Various British news outlets - the Sun, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror and BBC News, but not the Times, because that august broadsheet dasn't touch news of the common willie - reported today that the man, named Marium Varinauskas (photo, below), was arguing with his girlfriend when police were called to his Aberdeen apartment.
When officers showed up, a Huffington Post roundup of the British press stories noted, he was "drunk and in his underpants." Colloquially, this means he was entirely shitfaced and nearly bare-assed nekkid.
The HuffPo did not say, however - nor, apparently, did the British press - what kind of "underpants" Mr. Varinauskas was wearing, so readers learned news neither of style, color, brand nor type: thong, bikini, briefs, boxer briefs, boxers, or other. This cannot be seen as anything other than an appalling oversight.
An official told the court that Mr. V. (honestly, how many times does one need to type out "Varinauskas" in his ever-shortening lifetime?) stood over the police officer "exposing his penis and thrusting it in her face, forcing her to take evasive action to avoid getting struck."
It is unclear what "stood over" actually means. Mr. V. was, when deputies arrived, sitting on a couch. Presumably, as they were standing, they loomed over him. When he stood, he'd have been eye-to-eye with them.
For him to have "stood over" the female officer, then, suggests that she was somehow below him, perhaps in a kneeling position, which would further explain why the potted Mr. V., who later confessed to having been in an alcoholic blackout, might have mistakenly thought it entirely correct and context appropriate to "thrust" his member "in her face."
Alas, we will never know.
With classic Scottish understatement, a police department spokesman said, "This was a distasteful experience for the officer."
The man is twenty-four, the woman forty-three. Mother and son? Young man and so-called "cougar"? (This appellation recently has come to signify an older woman who enjoys the company, in and out of bed, of young men. At one time it referred to Puma concolor, a mammal of the family Felidae that is native to the Americas. It also referred to super-badass car.) 
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