Compelling Explanations
“(Death row) is the calmest place I’ve ever been in,” said convicted murderer Paul John Fitzpatrick in March to a judge in Largo, Fla., hoping to avoid a mere life sentence, which would place him in the general prison population. “I probably found the most peace I’ve ever had in my whole life (in his…
Least competent criminals
Two Bulgarian nationals were arrested in San Marcos, Texas, in January after being caught allegedly robbing coin-change machines at an apartment complex, and police subsequently found apartment guides for several cities in their van, along with a half-ton of quarters ($18,700). Kevin Russell, 21, was arrested in Hobart, Ind., in February when he went to…
Oklahoma watchdog leader says man facing murder charge is in nursing facility
The head of a nursing home watchdog organization claims the state has placed a man charged with four counts of first-degree murder in a nursing facility. Wes Bledsoe (pictured), founder of Tulsa-based A Perfect Cause, said Earl Bradford Postelle, 43, was ordered to reside at the OakHillsLivingCenter in Jones. The order came from Oklahoma…
Recurring themes
Traditional Chinese celebrations have been mentioned several times in News of the Weird, including the annual Tombsweeping Festival in April, which calls on people to visit relatives’ graves and leave offerings that will improve the afterlives of the deceased. Actual objects (such as jewelry and money) are no longer required, as paper representations are considered…
Gazette wins NAMI Oklahoma award
Oklahoma Gazette was given the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ Outstanding Media Award April 16 for contributions to the goals of NAMI Oklahoma. NAMI Oklahoma recognized the Gazette for Nathan Gunter’s “Crisis intervention” story, which published Aug. 2, 2006. The article addressed actions taken by the Oklahoma Bar Association to provide preventative assistance to lawyers…
Lawsuit “reform” bill passes senate, goes to Governor
The Oklahoma State Senate passed Senate Bill 507 by a vote of 23-25. The 119-page would-be lawsuit “reform” legislation would place restrictions on average citizens filing lawsuits and require caps on non-economic (including punitive) damages. The measure will go to Governor Brad Henry for signing or veto. The vote went strictly down party lines, with…
Former baseball commissioner should be removed from hall of fame
Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Major League Baseball’s first commissioner, gave baseball a black eye in his 24-year run in that office. “For 24 years, Judge Landis wouldn’t let a black man play. I had his records, and I read them, and for 24 years Landis consistently blocked any attempts to put blacks and whites together on…
Latest Rights
Di Yerbury, the retiring vice chancellor of Australia’s Macquarie University, is embroiled in a dispute with her successor over her spending habits, leading the successor to seize 1,000 pieces of art that Yerbury tried to take with her as she left. She has asserted that many of the works she had on display are her…
OKC metro man goes without amenties for six-month Tent Life experiment
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” “Henry David Thoreau, “Walden” Sam Duregger gets a lot of questions…
What can be bought with Oklahoma football coach’s salary
What can you do with 3.5 million Washingtons? Bucky took a Web whirl: Pay for Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan “¦ through 2009. Buy the property of Tulsa’s iconic (but demolition-slated) Camelot Hotel (complete with moat and drawbridge). Cover the operating expenses of schools shorted in the recent legislative budget, according to Treasurer Scott Meacham…
Perfect Stranger
bisi) seeks incriminating e-mails by hacking into Hill’s computer. The movie ladles on increasingly ludicrous plot and backstory. While it all leads to a preposterous climax, director James Foley deserves some credit for ratcheting up the tension as Rowena edges closer to Hill. R “?Phil Bacharach View trailer
The Doors – The Doors, Et Al
Rhino Before you hit the snooze button on another batch of vintage reissues, dig this: The 40th anniversary mix of the debut Doors album plays at the correct speed in comparison to slightly slow and off-key previous versions. Add a reinstated Jim Morrison vocal on the opening track, “Break on Through (To the Other Side),”…
Norman to vote on curbside recycling
Voters in Norman will cast ballots on curbside recycling on May 8. If approved, Norman would become one of just a handful of cities in Oklahoma to offer such a program. Oklahoma City and Edmond have conducted curbside recycling for nearly 10 years. DETAILSThe ballot measure will ask voters if urban residents of Norman will pay…
Country legend Charlie Louvin still going strong
Despite 65 years and counting as a performer, country music legend Charlie Louvin says he still hasn’t reached the point where it feels like work. “I’m from a generation where there’s no such thing as work, as long as you enjoy what you’re doing,” said Louvin, who will perform Thursday at The Blue Door, 2805…
Oklahoma’s sustainability conference to address state environmental issues
Thinking green is the theme for the sixth annual Oklahoma Sustainability Network Conference. A variety of topics ” ranging from agriculture and ethics to alternative energy and transportation ” will be discussed Friday and Saturday when the Oklahoma Sustainability Network and Sustainable OKC host the conference at the National Weather Center, 120 David L. Boren…
Counterpoint: The ethics of ethanol
Addiction, it is said, often blinds those so afflicted to the moral and ethical considerations of behaviors intent on satisfying their habits. In our present oil addiction, we so fervently have embraced corn ethanol as one solution to our petroleum dependency that we have neglected to question the ethical and moral propriety of using food…
Dewey Jackson – Live at the Barrel
Delmark Dewey Jackson (1900-1966), a trumpet player and contemporary of Louis Armstrong, specialized in the hot, swinging, New Orleans-style jazz of the Twenties and Thirties that Armstrong made famous. Though Jackson tried the New York scene, then the pinnacle of the jazz world, he eventually opted to return back home to St. Louis. It was…
OKC’s MAPS for Kids garners district recognition
MAPS for Kids efforts garnered Oklahoma City Public Schools an award in a nationwide contest this month. The district earned honorable mention honors in the American School Board Journal’s 2007 Magna Awards, which were presented in San Francisco Monday. The awards this year celebrated districts with programs that further community engagement and academic achievement through…
People With Issues
A federal appeals court in March turned down Ruth Parks’ challenge to her re-election loss in 2001 as the recorder-treasurer of Horseshoe Bend, Ark., which she blamed on a conspiracy by the mayor and police chief. The court concluded that voters, not a conspiracy, had defeated her, perhaps because of the prominence of her belief…
Oklahoma Centennial clock unveiled
On a dreary, overcast evening Tuesday, the corner of N.W. 36th Street and Shartel Avenue got a little prettier as a Centennial Street clock was unveiled. The clock is a replica of the kind that used to grace the streets of cities and towns 100 years ago at Oklahoma’s statehood. The Shartel and 36th clock…
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Merge It’s a little disappointing to get what may be the best record of 2007 so early in the year. It sets a dangerous precedent unlikely to be matched. The group’s second full-length release, “Neon Bible,” sounds like its 2004 debut: huge and orchestral, with strings, drones and organs weaving in and out. The album…
Filling car with alternative fuel almost impossible in OKC
According to a 2006 purchasing guide released by the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, there are only two public pumps in Oklahoma City where consumers can purchase E85, a blend of fuel containing 85 percent corn-distilled ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. The only other public consumption pump in the state is in Seminole. Several workshops will…
Oklahoma governor, Democrats work on their relationship
Like in a broken marriage, where the partners need their best friend to run messages back and forth, Gov. Brad Henry and the Senate Democrats appear ready to fight over who gets the car and who gets the dog. The past few weeks have seen the two sides squabbling over everything from money to…
Disturbia
Reviewers’ grade: B The season of Shia LeBeouf “? we’ll see him again July 4 in “Transformers” “? begins with this surprisingly effective update of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.” LeBeouf stars as a high school kid who is under house arrest for the summer. Bored, he begins spying on his neighbors and is soon…
Black Christmas 2006
Yet another horror remake, “Black Christmas” turned out to be a lump of coal at the holiday box office this winter. Granted, releasing a slasher film during the season celebrating the birth of Christ may not be the wisest move, but “Black Christmas” isn’t sacrilegious. Nor bad at all. As it turns out, it’s more…
The Pursuit of Happyness 2006
If you didn’t know going in that “The Pursuit of Happyness” ultimately ends on an uplifting note, it might seem like an exercise in unmitigated misery. Based on a real-life rags-to-riches story, the movie subjects its protagonist to travails that stop just short of finding him tied to the railroad tracks. Set in the San…
Jury acquits OKC attorney on sex charges
Ya know, it’s an interesting life that longtime Oklahoma City attorney Mike Gassaway leads. He shakes his fist at the powers that be; he’s done time in the joint (albeit for just a couple of months, but hey); and, once again, he dodges the bullet. According to The Associated Press, Gassaway allegedly said he…
OKC swingers claim partner-swapping is ‘wholesome’
Participants in the swingers scene don’t call themselves “swingers.” They just call it “the lifestyle,” according to LeeAnn (not her real name), a local woman who pursues this alternative sexual lifestyle. LeeAnn said the club she and her partner frequent on Saturday nights is a dance hall with about 30 to 60 members. “There’s not…
Swinger Q and A
Writer Ben Fenwick’s selected questions and answers from the print edition’s follow-up article on OKC’s swingers. “Derek” “James” “LeeAnn” “Derek”What activities do you undertake that you identify as being in “the lifestyle”? My wife and I attend gatherings of swingers, private parties “¦ for swingers at which people meet and make connections that…
Oklahoma governor vetoes abortion measure
Governor Brad Henry today vetoed a measure that would have restricted abortions in Oklahoma, citing that the measure did not provide exceptions for instances of rape and incest, stating it would have placed severe restrictions on the doctor-patient relationship. “First and foremost, the measure is flawed in that it does not include exemptions for…
The Hoax
Reviewers’ grade: B+ Lasse Hallstr
News of the Weird
Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird (.995) WEEK OF MARCH 4, 2007 Muslims Find School Kosher About half the students who attend the Jewish primary school King David, in Birmingham, England, are Muslims, and in fact, their parents work hard to get them in because they so respect the school’s ethos and its halal-like diet.…
Survey measures individual’s impact on environment
An online survey from Earth Day Network attempts to determine an individual’s “ecological footprint,” the effect one person’s actions and routines have on the environment. “(The survey) takes a look at an individual’s consumption of resources, and it projects how much acreage would be devoted to producing those resources in a sustainable manner at that…
Pathfinder
Reviewers’ grade: C- The Indians take on the Vikings in this pulpy, Conan-esque historical mishmash. Karl Urban stars as Ghost, a Viking child left behind on a raid to Vineland. He’s brought up by Indians and when the Vikings return 15 years later to show what pillage idiots they are, Ghost lays into them. …
A Florida political consultant’s career is in jeopardy for missing a payment on a storage locker
Doug Guetzloe, one of central Florida’s most prominent political operatives (and a subject of investigations by the Florida Elections Commission and a highway agency in Orlando), had long eluded criminal charges by denying any knowledge of unethical activities that prosecutors were sure he was involved in. However, late last year, Guetzloe missed a payment on…
Michael Shayne Mysteries: Volume 1 2007
These days, Michael Shayne is all but forgotten, but at one time he was among the coolest things going in crime fiction “? so much so that 20th Century Fox bankrolled a series of feature films featuring Brett Halliday’s detective character. Four of these 12 genial crime dramas are collected in the two-disc “Michael Shayne…
Speaking of OKC juries
Having trudged through jury duty twice in the past three years, Chicken-Fried News feels for the impaneled men and women deciding the guilt or innocence of Antwyon Deangelo Turner in the murder of Leroy Joseph Vigil. According to a report in The Oklahoman, one of the 12 jurors was dismissed on April 12 because…
Oklahoma native creates tree house community in Costa Rica
Finca Bellavista, the world’s first sustainable rain forest tree house community, was created by an Oklahoma native and her husband. Finca Bellavista is located on the South Pacific coast of Costa Rica on 250 acres of primary and secondary rain forest, between two white-water rivers. Protecting the environment is important to both Erica and Matt…
Punk-rock garage sale offering music, movies and memorabilia
Rock culture will be paired up with the bargain-hunting lifestyle Saturday at The Conservatory for the 5th Quasi-Annual Oklahomapunkscene.com Garage Sale/Show & Birthday Party. The idea for the sale came from Jenny Nickell of Norman, whose husband plays in punk band The Dwarves. They had movies, music, magazines and interesting memorabilia to get rid of,…
Study examines improving OKC’s public transportation
By 2030, Oklahoma City could join the ranks of a handful of bustling U.S. cities with public transportation options if local officials follow the plan determined by the Fixed Guideway Study. The study identifies potential solutions for the transportation issues facing Oklahoma. Fully implemented, the plan would include:” improvements to the existing bus system, “…
OKC performance artist’s anything-goes shows defy description
Describing comedian / musician / performance artist Balthazar is not an easy task. You’ve got Jack Black’s manic mugging, Andy Kaufman’s unpredictability and Gilda Radner’s gleeful awkwardness, all strained through a marathon of “I Love the ’80s” episodes on VH1. “Who doesn’t want to be a rock star?” Balthazar, aka Leslie Hensley, said. “I have a…
Norman’s Groovefest offers day of music and activism
Norman’s Groovefest has been showcasing local bands and promoting the importance of human rights to people of all walks of life since 1986. Sunday’s show carries the theme, “A Healthy Environment Is a Human Right,” and will coincide with the worldwide Earth Day celebration. “Groovefest has always showcased amazing Oklahoma artists, and this year is…
Point: Preserving our heritage industries
Last year, the United States borrowed approximately $320 billion to import oil ” nearly $1 billion per day. Significant portions of these funds are used by hostile nations to finance and perpetuate hatred of the West and its philosophies. Therefore, it is critical that American leaders, policy makers and private industry search for ways to…
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
Reviewers’ grade: D An animated movie about talking food items, robots and weird space creatures shouldn’t be this boring, but the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” doesn’t work on the screen remotely as well as it does on cable television. The film follows the adventures of Frylock, Master Shake and their little- pile-of-meat cohort, Meatwad, as…
Annual 89er Celebration slated in Guthrie
Guthrie has hosted the 89er Celebration for 72 years, and this year’s event takes place from Wednesday to Saturday. Along with the annual parade, which will be held at noon Saturday, and the rodeo, which will be at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 4 p.m. Saturday, food and craft vendors will line Guthrie’s downtown streets. A…
University of Oklahoma responds to false gun report
The University of Oklahoma Norman campus was placed under a lockdown after a student reported possibly seeing an individual with a gun this morning. The report turned out to be false, but the campus was placed under the lockdown anyway. All buildings were locked up preventing any one from entering.
