Undignified Deaths
In October, an armed-robbery suspect died during his getaway from a restaurant in Fresno, Calif., when he fell and impaled himself on his weapon (a screwdriver), severing an artery in his thigh. A 33-year-old man in Conway, Ark., was electrocuted in August when (after having his power cut off for nonpayment) he misapplied jumper cables…
Recurring Theme
Five years ago, News of the Weird reported that a Philadelphia woman had undergone $10,000 elective surgery to shorten one toe and straighten another so that her foot would look better in the fashionable shoes she coveted. According to an October report by London’s Daily Mail, foot surgeons’ business has improved, especially since Manolo Blahnik’s…
Least Competent Criminals
Arousing Suspicion: April Westfall, 40, was arrested in Reno, Nev., in December for DUI. An ambulance crew called the Highway Patrol after spotting her driving down U.S. 395 at 4:30 a.m. with a service station’s nozzle and severed hose protruding from her gas tank. Jeremy Aron, 33, was arrested for DUI on Thanksgiving night in…
Ghost Town
2008 “Ghost Town” stars Ricky Gervais as dentist Bertram Pincus, a Grinch-type who hates his patients, has no friends and spends most of his time avoiding conversations in general. After what was supposed to be a routine colonoscopy, Dr. Bertram notices some very odd people following him around. After a return visit to the hospital,…
It’s Good to Be a British Prisoner (continuing series)
(In November, British Justice Minister Jack Straw discovered, and immediately canceled, a 10-year-old program for inmates at Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire for “workshops” in comedy. Scotland’s Justice secretary similarly canceled a program in November after he learned that officials at Saughton prison in Edinburgh had set up poker classes, sanctioning games run on paper earnings…
Hellbound: Hellraiser II ” 20th Anniversary Edition
1988/2008 Before too many straight-to-video sequels diluted its power, the “Hellraiser” franchise was, for a brief time, a reliable and respected one. Anchor Bay has helped to restore that luster with a pair of re-releases that remind us at how good the first couple of films really were. Clive Barker’s original got the 20th anniversary…
New Frontiers of Self-Defense Law
Eugene Falle, 35, was acquitted of murder in Edmonton, Alberta, in December, as jurors apparently accepted his claim of self-defense even though the victim had 39 stab wounds. Falle said he was forced to keep stabbing the man because of previous threats by the victim and his gang and that the victim “wouldn’t bleed properly…
Oklahoma football recruit details Texas visit
The stories about behind-the-scenes battles between university football programs are as wild as they are numerous. Money exchanged and sex engaged usually accompany the rumors that fly around high school football studs. Most are dismissed as propaganda spread by the university that lost out on the recruit. But after a story in The New York…
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
During his time in the Senate, former U.S. presidential candidate John McCain has been a strong advocate for Native Americans. As chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, he sponsored or co-sponsored seven bills in support of Indian rights. And yet Native Americans voted overwhelmingly for McCain’s opponent, Barack Obama, who has no such track record.…
Study estimates that 78 million dogs and cats are overweight or obese
Most people know that Americans’ waistlines are expanding. But they may not know the same is happening to their pets. As humans become more sedentary and eat more unhealthily, their four-legged companions are sharing this lifestyle and the health problems that accompany it. “It’s a mixture of diet and a sedentary lifestyle. The human lifestyle…
Aggressive police questioning
Aggressive police questioning of a weak-willed suspect can produce an occasional false confession, but experts now believe that six men in a single case, and four in another, confessed to group crimes they did not commit, even though some described their roles in vivid detail. Recent DNA evidence in a 1989 Beatrice, Neb., murder case…
Death Race
IN: auto 0in”>His latest zoomed-out-of-theaters try is “Death Race,” a remake of the 1975 cult satire “Death Race 2000,” in which contestants on a cross-country ride accumulate points by killing people with their cars. Here, writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson (“Alien vs. Predator”) isn’t quite as sick, so the drivers are all convicts, and the Internet-broadcast…
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Please don’t wear a t-shirt that says what I saw on the canary yellow t-shirt of the Japanese tourist at JFK airport: “Sorry, I’m a loser.” I also beg you not to read Ethan Trex’s book How to Seem Like a Better Person Without Actually Improving Yourself. It’s very important, in my astrological opinion, that…
Oklahoma ranks top 10 for obesity, diabetes, high-blood pressure, depression
That Oklahoma ranks in the top 10 in both obesity and depression is no surprise to Philip Hyde, a clinical psychologist with the Oklahoma Psychological Center, 1117 N.W. 50th. He’s seen the conditions coexist in clients for years. “There is no doubt they are joined,” Hyde said. “My guess is it stems from a lot…
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
While loitering on a sidewalk outside a nightclub in San Francisco on a September night back in 1994, I found the cover of a booklet lying in the gutter. Written by Marilena Silbey and Paul Ramana Das, it was called “How To Survive Passionate Intimacy with a Dreamy Partner While Making a Fortune on the…
Amateur sports offer sedentary adults chance to kick-start metabolism
rs. Even people who’d never before touched a soccer ball, they will come play indoor,” he said. “It is very hard to do that with outdoor.” RUGBYSometimes dubbed “football without pads,” rugby mixes the flowing movement of soccer with the complexity of football. Unlike football, there are not prolonged breaks in action, and unlike soccer,…
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Describing my writing, one critic said that I was “like a mutant love-child of Anais Nin and Jack Kerouac.” That also happens to be an apt description of the spirit you should bring to life in the coming weeks. So be like the memoirist Anais Nin: a collector of secrets, a connoisseur of intimacy, a…
Community Action Agency works to help first-time homebuyers
Free homebuyer education workshops offered by the Community Action Agency of Oklahoma City and Oklahoma/Canadian Counties (CAA) give first-time homebuyers a clearer understanding of the process of purchasing a home. Workshops are held twice a month in the metro; January’s are scheduled for Friday and Jan. 23. The half-day classes, from noon to 4:30 p.m.,…
Watermelon Slim eagerly returns to OKC for two shows
But based on his doctor’s instructions and with some regret, he said recently he will be limiting the number of his live performances in 2009. “I’ve played more than 500 gigs in the past three years, and the doctor has said, ‘Slim, your long-distance days are basically over. Your knees and your hips are bone-on-bone,'”…
Company approaches Oklahoma town to build religious prison
It probably had to happen sooner or later in the buckle of the Bible Belt ” a faith-based prison. That’s what’s on tap for Madill to consider, according to a recent story out of Ardmore’s KXII-TV Channel 12. According to the story, Correction Concepts Inc. recently approached the town with the idea of building a…
The Reader
At a key moment in “The Reader,” German law professor Rhol (Bruno Ganz, “Youth Without Youth”) tells his seminar students that civilization, despite what most people believe, isn’t held together by morality. It’s bound by law, and one’s adherence to the law must be judged by what was legal at any given moment. Does he…
Yikes!
Officials in South Africa, where government only recently came to accept the connection between HIV and AIDS after years of denial that provoked the country’s epidemic of cases, revealed in December that supplies of retroviral drugs are being used recreationally as hallucinogens smoked by schoolchildren. Health officials told BBC News that the drugs are prescribed…
2009 prognostications
Everyone is doing it and it feels really good. We all love to peer into the crystal ball and attempt to predict what will happen politically in the upcoming year. Your not-so-humble commentator is no different, so let’s get started and have some fun while we’re at it. Prediction 1: Congresswoman Mary Fallin will announce…
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
Hope “is not the conviction that something will turn out well,” wrote Czech writer and politician Vaclav Havel, “but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” That’s the kind of hope I suggest you invoke during your current adventures, Taurus. Be hungrier for meaning than for any specific outcome. If…
Henry Poole Is Here
2008 Luke Wilson stars as Henry, a “sad and angry” guy who has moved back to his childhood neighborhood for mysterious reasons. He avoids contact with others, then it’s discovered that a water stain in Henry’s back looks like the face of Christ. Henry, who doesn’t believe in the water-stain Jesus, yells at everyone to…
Creme de la Weird
Peter Trigger, 59, was “adamant,” according to England’s Kettering Evening Telegraph, that he had the right to wear whatever outfits he wanted, even though his favorite hangout was in front of Woodvale Primary school in the mornings, where he usually wore schoolgirl-like short skirts but with nothing underneath. In December, after numerous complaints, a Northampton…
Mamma Mia!
2008 I enjoyed this ABBA smorgasbord, but I didn’t actually like the movie, which by any trustworthy standard is lousy. The songs aren’t handled well, The choreography is non-existent “? just a lot of running from one place to another, arms waving, and then running back again. Non-singers can frequently get away with non-singing, but…
People who live large can be happy, group professes
If you’re happy and you know it, raise your fork. To all those who believe the key to happiness is a healthy and fit lifestyle, at least one study and a few organizations might throw food in your face. “Of course you can be large and happy,” said Peggy Howell. “I love my body. I’m…
Stillwater company presents Oklahoma contest in 3D
You don’t have $400 to buy nosebleed seats from a ticket broker for Thursday’s BCS Championship Game? For about 20 clams, you can watch Oklahoma play Florida in 3D thanks to a live broadcast presented by the 3ality Digital company. Where, you might ask? Central Oklahoma football fans will have to travel northeast to Stillwater…
Okla’bama’ Thunder
Michael Tomasky, American editor of London’s The Guardian newspaper’s U.S.-centered Web site, made a set of three suggestions to guide the Obama administration’s effort to broaden its support. The first suggestion was that Obama come to Oklahoma and make a speech. That is a fine idea. Barack Obama took 34 percent of the vote in…
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
“It takes a lot of time to be a genius,” said author Gertrude Stein. “You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.” I agree with her statement, which is why I have high hopes that you’re going to tap into more of your dormant genius in the coming days. The cosmic…
OKC company responsible for producing prestigious awards
You know that seemingly endless slate of college football bowl games that has kept you sequestered along with your big screen over the past few weeks? Well, lean forward in your recliner the next time the network flashes a shot of the winner’s hardware, and get a closer look. There probably won’t be a visible…
Valkyrie
Nobody must have really liked Adolf Hitler very much “? even his friends. The guy was looney tunes, and he was able to bully others in such a way that allowed him to first take over Germany, and then most of Europe. So resented and loathed was Hitler that during the time he was in…
Nature center plans ‘Gnome Home’ event
The “Lilliputian” people aren’t at all fazed by winter weather here in the metro. Out and about near their homes at Martin Park Nature Center, 5000 W. Memorial, the imaginary community of little people has left clues for clever children to discover at the park’s “Gnome Home” program, held 3 p.m. Saturday. Park naturalists will…
OKC-area hypnotists provide treadmill alternative
Karen Massey has a lot of “war stories” when it comes to dieting. As the community nutrition coordinator with Integris Health, Massey has seen it all. There was the guy that went overboard with walking, going until his feet were covered in blisters, or the folks who load up on diuretics or adhere to crazy…
Hamlet 2
2008 “Hamlet 2” is the story of Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), a failed actor who has moved to Tucson, Ariz., to work as a high school drama teacher and let his dreams mummify in the low-humidity desert air. On the first day of the new term, Dana finds that because of arts program cuts in…
Carpenter Square Theater stages ‘Orphans’
Famed playwright Lyle Kessler’s tragi-comedic story of two brothers struggling to survive in Philadelphia opens Friday on a downtown Oklahoma City stage. “Orphans” follows the pair “? petty thief and older brother Treat, and his younger, hypochondriac sibling Phillip “? as they make do in an old row house. Convinced he is allergic to the…
Spotlight shines brightly for many local productions’ players
d exemplary depth of understanding and preparation. But the theatrical season runs the same as the academic year “? fall through spring, with an additional summer session. So if you go back to late 2007, when Mays stole the show as Mozart in OCTC’s “Amadeus,” the feat becomes even more impressive. Talk about the hardest-working…
Resident Evil: Degeneration
style=”MARGIN: auto 0in”>For its first few minutes, the CGI, straight-to-DVD movie quickly pulls you in to its post-apocalyptic plot with clips from various news stations reporting on the rage virus that’s been loosed upon the population of Raccoon City. Over at the Havardville Airport, where a boorish, unpopular senator is spending the day, a plane…
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
If you’re an artist and you want to get steadily better at your craft, you need to continually refine your approach to telling the truth. The novelist Willa Cather said that. Now I’m here to invite you to adopt that strategy in 2009, whether you’re an artist or simply a person who wants to live…
OCMA screens Sundance-winning film about rural Mississippi
Filmed in rural Mississippi, “Ballast” details the lives of a family coping with suicide and poverty. The feature-length debut from director Lance Hammer won awards for direction and cinematography at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and has been nominated for six Independent Spirit Awards. The film screens 7:30 p.m. Thursday, and 5:30 and 8 p.m.…
Norman band uses element of surprise during live performances
MySpace junkies who found Early Beat online and perused the Norman band’s songs before committing to a live show might be in for a surprise Friday night. The online tracks were taken from the group’s self-titled debut, which simmers with ambient, jazz-tinged indie rock. Onstage, however, Early Beat is a wellspring of presence and boundless…
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
Now and then you may be able to whip up a wonderful breakthrough in the blink of an eye. But more often it’s the case that beauty and truth and love and justice emerge in their full glory only over the course of a painstaking, step-by-step, trial-and-error process. “All that I made before the age…
Oklahoma’s prehistoric mammoths faced nefarious diamonds
Mammoths and other critters making a land run in prehistoric Oklahoma got quite the surprise, according to a recent story in USA Today. A report from the journal Science stated that soil samples taken from Oklahoma and other states found concentrations of “nanodiamonds” ” kind of like the speck in the ring Bucky bought his…
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
In giving the Nobel Prize for literature to French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, the award committee praised him as an “explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” I suggest you consider doing some of that kind of exploring yourself in 2009, Cancerian. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you…
Oklahoma City, state leaders respond to growing problem
Certainly, the numbers can tell the story. But at this point, are statistics really necessary? Just look around: Oklahomans are obese. Young and old, short or tall, a large number of us simply carry too much weight. Of course, we know the equation to maintaining a healthy weight is simple: Eat less, expend more. Yet…
The Continuing Crisis
Australia’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission announced plans in December to create a third official gender for government identification: “intersex,” for transsexuals, whether or not they have had surgery. Immediately, activists from Sex and Gender Education Australia called the proposal inadequate, demanding a fourth gender, also, for people who feel that “gender” is either…
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
When gasoline prices soared last year, a Christian group called Pray at the Pump organized vigils at gas stations, where they prayed for God’s intervention. No one knows if their efforts were the cause, but the cost of gas did begin to plummet soon afterward. Inspired by their work, I have asked my team of…
U.S. cities, states consider restaurant menu-labeling rules
Jan. 1, 2011, will mark a turning point in the way restaurant patrons view their menus in California. With state-mandated laws requiring that all California restaurants with 20 or more locations post calorie content information directly on menus or menu boards, restaurateurs in Oklahoma are left asking the question, “Are we next?” MENU-LABELING LEGISLATIONEASY PREY…
