The Weirdo-American Community
When police in Brimfield, Ohio, stopped Jaime Aguirre, 42, for a traffic violation in October, they found some conventional photos of nude and near-nude women, but were especially surprised at a stash of x-rays and mammograms, which they supposed came from Aguirre’s job as technician at an imaging center in Tiffin, Ohio. The Brimfield police…
Recurring Themes
Thousands of airline passengers continue to attempt to bring prohibited carry-on items on board. The New York Post reported in September that the Transportation Security Administration had confiscated 123,000 items so far this year from just the three main airports serving New York City. Included were 43 explosives, 1,600 knives, a 10-point deer antler, several…
Least Competent Criminals
Oops! Three men and a woman from Atlantic City, N.J., were arrested in August and charged with robbing the Artisans Bank in Bear, Del. Their escape after the robbery had been delayed when they accidentally left the keys to the getaway car in the bank. Andrew Burwitz, 20, was arrested in Appleton, Wis., in November…
Kids, Let a Professional Handle This
Two high school boys in Markesan, Wis., were hospitalized in September with broken pelvises after a “prank” went bad and a classmate inadvertently drove over them as they lay in the road in front of her car. On the other hand, a professional, Tom Owen (known as the “Human Speed Bump”), was hospitalized in October…
Chutzpah!
In Ogden, Utah, in October, Adam Manning, 30, accompanied his pregnant girlfriend to the McKay-Dee Hospital emergency room as she was going into labor. According to witnesses, as a nurse attended to the woman, Manning began flirting with her, complimenting the nurse’s looks and giving her neck rubs. When Manning then allegedly groped the nurse’s…
Those Overhead Costs!
The price of gasoline for U.S. troops in Afghanistan is about $400 per gallon, according to a U.S. House subcommittee in October, citing Pentagon officials (factoring in the security necessary to bring fuel through Pakistan). Patient Jim Bujalski complained to St. Anthony’s Central Hospital in Littleton, Colo., in September about the cost of his prescription…
Unclear on the Concept
Nurses might best treat patients who have self-cutting disorders by helping them in their endeavor, according to an October advisory from Britain’s Royal College of Nursing. “Assisted self-harming” should be considered as part of nursing care plans, according to the advisory, benefiting patients by having skilled professionals at their side, for example supplying sterile blades…
Oklahoma football team ranks at bottom of conference for graduation rates
This just has not been one of Bob Stoops’ better years. The head football coach at the University of Oklahoma started 2009 off with a loss in the college football championship game against Florida. But the fall looked better as several players who could have turned pro decided to stay in school and play one…
Dreamer Concepts Gallery closes out 2009 with discounts on locally produced art
Bargain-hunting art buffs who seek an early jump on Christmas shopping have an opportunity to stock up on locally produced art at bargain-basement prices as Norman’s Dreamer Concepts Gallery strikes up its inaugural garage sale the day after Black Friday. Amber Clour, the gallery’s executive director, said Saturday’s event is first and foremost a fund-raiser,…
Panel selects Oklahoma’s best governors
ctices in the Oklahoma National Guard and the state crime bureau. Aside from civil rights, he helped create the Department of Commerce and laid the groundwork for a tourism department with the publication of Oklahoma Today magazine. The Oklahoma Water Resources Board came about to deal with the state’s underdeveloped water system. Gary also initiated…
Jewel Box Theatre’s ‘Bell, Book and Candle’ burns brightly with charm, style
n Holroyd, and her family of enchanters, comprised of her wayward trickster brother, Nicky, and their irrepressible but well-meaning Aunt Queenie. The story kicks off when Gillian’s neighbor, publisher Shepherd Henderson, drops by to discuss finding Queenie in his apartment on two separate occasions. Gillian’s passing interest in Shep accelerates when she discovers that he’s…
Syndicated judge TV show features OKC teens
In this week of giving thanks, we pledge our undying love to TiVo. Now if we’d only remember to program it more often. See, we missed two Oklahoma City teens duking it out on the Nov. 17 episode of the syndicated “Judge Joe Brown” courtroom reality series. According to CBS Television Distribution, our local litigants…
Oklahoma City native Hank Stuever brings ‘Tinsel’ to town
All Hank Stuever wants for Christmas is the same thing he wanted when he was 14: some cash in his pocket so he can walk around Quail Springs Mall and buy whatever strikes his fancy. “I always wanted cash, which my mother never gave me,” he said. “She wasn’t having it.” But it’d be nice…
OKC-area parents have chance to glimpse teens at ‘Reality Parties’
This just in: Teens like to sneak Natty Lights when they can. No! The horror! And here we were believing little Suzy really was creating macramé projects with Linda and Betty and then maybe going to the roller rink. But according to an article from NewsOK.com, they’re doing a lot more than that. And parents…
Multi-instrumentalist John Fullbright releases ‘Live at the Blue Door’
Greg Johnson can be brutally frank when sizing up musicians because he’s seen so many walk through the front door of his concert venue, The Blue Door. It wasn’t long after he first laid his ears on 21-year-old multi-instrumentalist John Fullbright that he signed on as the singer/songwriter’s manager and agreed to release “Live at…
Poteet closes its season with biblical musical ‘Children of Eden’
Despite its source material, “Children of Eden” just isn’t that great. The characterizations are fairly simplistic, and even the best of the songs are generic-sounding, but Poteet offsets weaker aspects with a huge cast, some lovely spectacle and fantastic choreography. Originally created as part of a religious high school theater camp, “Eden” is a pretty…
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Do you know what you’re really worth? Not as measured by your bank account and luxurious possessions. Not as reflected by your boss’s or parents’ or enemies’ images of you. Not as distorted by what you wish you were worth or fear you’re not worth. I’m talking about taking an illusion-free inventory of the skills…
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
If “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” is any indication of what the books in Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” series might be like, one must beg the question: How can so many angsty, teenage gazes be translated into the written word? “New Moon” “? just like its predecessor, “Twilight” “? is one giant inside joke for those…
Local party rappers hope to form frenzied Freaksho fans
Not every rapper is cut from the same mold and Waylon Clark ” aka Daddy WarrBuckss ” has taken one of the more unconventional routes to finding his flow in the Oklahoma City rap scene. The emcee’s path began with a traveling troupe of bluegrass musicians. “I grew up around music. My parents were in…
MAPS 3 proposal includes $50 million for trails, sidewalks to improve walkability
Wheeler Dealer Bicycles has been in business in Oklahoma City for more than 35 years, and owner Hal McKnight said he’s never seen a surge in new bicyclists like he has the past two years. CONTIGUOUS NETWORK LONG-TERM STRATEGY “Many of them started riding last year when the economy took a downturn,” McKnight said, “but…
The Mentors stew filthy new brew
If ever a grease stain were to transform into a black hole and begin making music, it’d probably sound like The Mentors. Profane even by punk’s sacrilegious standards, the trio formed out of a Seattle high school in 1976, responding to the Sex Pistols’ brash provocation with an outrageously sexist and hedonistic bombast. Poised between…
Jason Boland brings the Stragglers to Bricktown for Thanksgiving show
Jason Boland is riding high after touring steadily behind 2008’s “Comal County Blue.” The current single from that album, “Bottle by My Bed,” is a track that springs from his personal embrace of his own sobriety over the last few years, and confesses the familiar, often heart-wrenching connection between the “emptiness of the bottle” and…
Can’t Possibly Be True
In April, Richard Huether, the manager of the HoneyBaked Ham outlet in Cary, N.C., was shot in the stomach during a robbery of the store and hospitalized, with medical bills paid through worker compensation and his employee health benefits. In September, when his worker compensation expired (and though still at least three months away from…
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
“The more you do what you want,” says Santa Fe artist Erika Wanenmacher, “the more magic happens.” And what she wants, in part, is to be surprised by how life’s random events ask to be included in her creative process. During her long walks along the irrigation ditch near her home, for example, odds and…
Oklahoma football team ranks at bottom of conference for graduation rates
This just has not been one of Bob Stoops’ better years. The head football coach at the University of Oklahoma started 2009 off with a loss in the college football championship game against Florida. But the fall looked better as several players who could have turned pro decided to stay in school and play one…
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
While walking in an unfamiliar neighborhood, I saw a huge red wooden chair on someone’s front lawn. It was big enough for a 20-foot-tall giant. An equally oversized martini glass was perched on the arm of the chair. Nearby was a sign that read, “I have flying monkeys at my command, and I’m not afraid…
Graham Colton celebrates Thanksgiving weekend with concert fund-raiser
Graham Colton is bursting with productivity these days, releasing a new EP every month until his new album drops in 2010. After releasing his two previous albums on major labels and scoring a breakout hit with “Best Days,” Colton is moving to the indie ranks as a way to retain control and offer his complete…
Eastern Oklahoma County gains weekly newspaper in 2010
You may recall our mourning of The Midwest City Sun in this very section a few weeks ago. After launching in 1980, the community newspaper was shut down abruptly by its corporation, and printed its final edition on Oct. 28, leaving behind an informational hole for its loyal readers. Well, we’re about to fill that…
Their Health Care Is Just Fine Without “Reform:”
In September, the Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, along with four physicians and three surgical nurses, donated their services for delicate brain surgery on a 25-year-old silverback lowland gorilla at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. Among the health-insurance upgrades demanded by Philadelphia-area transit workers and agreed to by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in…
Precious
of two sociopaths. Her father began sexually abusing her when she was 3, and got her pregnant at 14. The resultant child, nicknamed Mongo “? as in “mongoloid” “? has Down’s syndrome. As the film opens, Clarice Precious Jones (newcomer Gabourey Sidibe) has been raped by her father again and is once again pregnant. Precious…
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
Needing a creative disruption in my routine, I hiked into a forest I’d never visited. The late afternoon light was wan and the wind was chilly. In places, the trail narrowed to a scruffy rut barely big enough for me to walk on, leading me to wonder if I was reading my map wrong. Three…
Inexplicable
For its Halloween gala, the Kings Island amusement park near Cincinnati had set up an exhibit featuring skeletons dressed to resemble, among other deceased celebrities, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ted Kennedy, Ed McMahon, TV salesman Billy Mays, Sonny Bono (his skeleton in front of a tree) and Ted Williams (his skeleton in front of a…
Oklahoma State vets treat runaway elephant
In an update from the elephant escapades we reported in CFN a few weeks ago, Kamba, the pachyderm that tussled with an SUV, headed to Oklahoma State University to treat her injuries, according to the Tulsa World. If you remember, Kamba escaped the Enid circus she was performing in Nov. 4 and took a sojourn…
Do not sacrifice public education
The state’s economy is going from bad to worse. Shortsighted spending has left us facing the most serious crisis in fiscal responsibility in history. The failures by Oklahoma’s Legislature ” the highest paid regionally ” to incorporate long-term incentives, government and educational reforms, and diversification of our industry base have left us hanging out to…
Penn Square Mall displays Lego OKC
essway, through Jan. 3, 2010. Zimmerle constructed 50 buildings in his replica, which includes areas of downtown and Bricktown, but the project was more than just tinkering with toys. Along with the work Zimmerle put forth, more than 30 local businesses sponsored the exhibit, which serves as a fund-raiser for OKC Educare. This program will…
AT&T Bricktown Ballpark houses Snow Tubing at the Brick
Winter is on its way, and Chesapeake Energy has made it easy for kids to find a snowy slope. Snow Tubing at the Brick starts Friday at the AT&T Bricktown Ballpark, 2 S. Mickey Mantle. Through Jan. 3, 2010, the ballpark will become the Southwest’s largest man-made snow-tubing slope, with a giant slide extending from…
Panel selects Oklahoma’s best governors
ctices in the Oklahoma National Guard and the state crime bureau. Aside from civil rights, he helped create the Department of Commerce and laid the groundwork for a tourism department with the publication of Oklahoma Today magazine. The Oklahoma Water Resources Board came about to deal with the state’s underdeveloped water system. Gary also initiated…
A vote of confidence
As a retail owner in Bricktown, I am asked about MAPS every day, and whether it is important to our city. My answer is always “yes”! Oklahoma City invested a good portion of the first MAPS program in or near Bricktown. That early investment has paid huge dividends, and the number and quality of entertainment…
Their Health Care Is Just Fine Without “Reform:”
In September, the Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, along with four physicians and three surgical nurses, donated their services for delicate brain surgery on a 25-year-old silverback lowland gorilla at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. Among the health-insurance upgrades demanded by Philadelphia-area transit workers and agreed to by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in…
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
One of the greatest superpowers a human being can have is the ability to change herself in accordance with her intentions. Let’s say you’re tired of feeling shame about something there’s no good reason to feel shame about, and you decide to do whatever it takes to dissolve that shame, and you succeed in doing…
AT&T Bricktown Ballpark houses Snow Tubing at the Brick
Winter is on its way, and Chesapeake Energy has made it easy for kids to find a snowy slope. Snow Tubing at the Brick starts Friday at the AT&T Bricktown Ballpark, 2 S. Mickey Mantle. Through Jan. 3, 2010, the ballpark will become the Southwest’s largest man-made snow-tubing slope, with a giant slide extending from…
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping, wrote theater critic Kenneth Tynan. Your assignment is to uncover one of those secrets in yourself. It may not result in an instantaneous cure of your minor personality glitch, but it will be a potent first step that will set in motion a…
Rail talk a pipe dream
Regarding Ben Fenwick’s article stating that downtown rail initiative in MAPS 3 can serve as future framework (Officials: Downtown rail initiative in MAPS 3 can serve as future framework): This talk of light rail, streetcars with embedded rails, etc., is just another pipe dream to blend in with the subliminal message about Bricktown: It’s a…
Syndicated judge TV show features OKC teens
In this week of giving thanks, we pledge our undying love to TiVo. Now if we’d only remember to program it more often. See, we missed two Oklahoma City teens duking it out on the Nov. 17 episode of the syndicated “Judge Joe Brown” courtroom reality series. According to CBS Television Distribution, our local litigants…
Frenzied fans line up for midnight movie madness
Chinh Doan could not keep the smile off her face last Thursday night. “This is epic,” Doan, a University of Oklahoma journalism sophomore, said. “It’s one of those events that is so groundbreaking and revolutionary that no one can really describe it.” That event: the midnight premiere of “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.” The “Twilight”…
Rail talk a pipe dream
Regarding Ben Fenwick’s article stating that downtown rail initiative in MAPS 3 can serve as future framework (Officials: Downtown rail initiative in MAPS 3 can serve as future framework): This talk of light rail, streetcars with embedded rails, etc., is just another pipe dream to blend in with the subliminal message about Bricktown: It’s a…
MAPS 3 heroes or spoilers?
I am a longtime supporter of our Oklahoma City employees, including our excellent police and fire departments. However, I am disappointed to learn the police and fire union representatives have decided at the last minute to oppose MAPS 3. No one can argue we need to support our firefighters and police officers with whatever means…
Mr. Gnome hits road with trippy new album it hopes will ‘Heave Yer Skeleton’
Self-released last year, Mr. Gnome’s debut LP, “Deliver This Creature” is a distinctive blend of arty, face-melting guitar shred and billowing space-psych, propelled by drummer Sam Meister’s muscular backbeat and guitarist Nicole Barille’s willowy croon. The Cleveland duo ebbs from an airy, shambling shimmer to gut-busting thunder, transiting moods like a roller coaster. But for…
Chumming’ for votes for MAPS 3
If I’m having to pay additional taxes for a longer period of time, that’s new taxes. Now comes the newest chum from OKC officials. “Chum” is defined by Webster’s as “chopped fish or other matter thrown overboard to attract fish.” Our leaders in the past couple of months have proposed (chummed) all sorts of projects…
Officials see MAPS 3 land as too valuable to ignore as downtown looks to grow south
City Planning Director Russell Claus is not big on surprises, especially those on land slated for massive city projects. But as he looks to the Core to Shore area south of downtown, Claus is getting prepared. FIRST FORAY INDUSTRIAL CONTAMINATION STICKER SHOCK The most immediate change for the area is contingent on the upcoming December…
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
Seventy percent of the world’s fresh water is locked away in Antarctica’s ice, which is 7,000 feet thick. Let’s hope it remains that way for the foreseeable future. If global warming melted that giant slab even a little, sea levels all over the planet would rise and coastal lands would be inundated. As for your…
The Mentors stew filthy new brew
If ever a grease stain were to transform into a black hole and begin making music, it’d probably sound like The Mentors. Profane even by punk’s sacrilegious standards, the trio formed out of a Seattle high school in 1976, responding to the Sex Pistols’ brash provocation with an outrageously sexist and hedonistic bombast. Poised between…
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Do you know what you’re really worth? Not as measured by your bank account and luxurious possessions. Not as reflected by your boss’s or parents’ or enemies’ images of you. Not as distorted by what you wish you were worth or fear you’re not worth. I’m talking about taking an illusion-free inventory of the skills…
MAPS 3 heroes or spoilers?
I am a longtime supporter of our Oklahoma City employees, including our excellent police and fire departments. However, I am disappointed to learn the police and fire union representatives have decided at the last minute to oppose MAPS 3. No one can argue we need to support our firefighters and police officers with whatever means…
Oklahoma State vets treat runaway elephant
In an update from the elephant escapades we reported in CFN a few weeks ago, Kamba, the pachyderm that tussled with an SUV, headed to Oklahoma State University to treat her injuries, according to the Tulsa World. If you remember, Kamba escaped the Enid circus she was performing in Nov. 4 and took a sojourn…
Multi-instrumentalist John Fullbright releases ‘Live at the Blue Door’
Greg Johnson can be brutally frank when sizing up musicians because he’s seen so many walk through the front door of his concert venue, The Blue Door. It wasn’t long after he first laid his ears on 21-year-old multi-instrumentalist John Fullbright that he signed on as the singer/songwriter’s manager and agreed to release “Live at…
Mr. Gnome hits road with trippy new album it hopes will ‘Heave Yer Skeleton’
Self-released last year, Mr. Gnome’s debut LP, “Deliver This Creature” is a distinctive blend of arty, face-melting guitar shred and billowing space-psych, propelled by drummer Sam Meister’s muscular backbeat and guitarist Nicole Barille’s willowy croon. The Cleveland duo ebbs from an airy, shambling shimmer to gut-busting thunder, transiting moods like a roller coaster. But for…
Oklahoma City native Hank Stuever brings ‘Tinsel’ to town
All Hank Stuever wants for Christmas is the same thing he wanted when he was 14: some cash in his pocket so he can walk around Quail Springs Mall and buy whatever strikes his fancy. “I always wanted cash, which my mother never gave me,” he said. “She wasn’t having it.” But it’d be nice…
Local party rappers hope to form frenzied Freaksho fans
Not every rapper is cut from the same mold and Waylon Clark ” aka Daddy WarrBuckss ” has taken one of the more unconventional routes to finding his flow in the Oklahoma City rap scene. The emcee’s path began with a traveling troupe of bluegrass musicians. “I grew up around music. My parents were in…
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
While walking in an unfamiliar neighborhood, I saw a huge red wooden chair on someone’s front lawn. It was big enough for a 20-foot-tall giant. An equally oversized martini glass was perched on the arm of the chair. Nearby was a sign that read, “I have flying monkeys at my command, and I’m not afraid…
Oklahoma City planning director answers questions about potential Downtown park
As the Dec. 8 MAPS 3 vote approaches, city leaders and paid consultants continue to amplify efforts to assure continuation of the city sales tax that funded previous MAPS plans. A part of these efforts was an Oct. 29 presentation by park planning consultant Mary Margaret Jones at a Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce…
MAPS 3 proposal includes $50 million for trails, sidewalks to improve walkability
Wheeler Dealer Bicycles has been in business in Oklahoma City for more than 35 years, and owner Hal McKnight said he’s never seen a surge in new bicyclists like he has the past two years. CONTIGUOUS NETWORK LONG-TERM STRATEGY “Many of them started riding last year when the economy took a downturn,” McKnight said, “but…
Officials see MAPS 3 land as too valuable to ignore as downtown looks to grow south
City Planning Director Russell Claus is not big on surprises, especially those on land slated for massive city projects. But as he looks to the Core to Shore area south of downtown, Claus is getting prepared. FIRST FORAY INDUSTRIAL CONTAMINATION STICKER SHOCK The most immediate change for the area is contingent on the upcoming December…
Justin Witte performs outdoor street music at The Brick
Justin Witte isn’t enthusiastic about the contemporary music scene. As a musician, he instead draws inspiration from the classic sounds of Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and other musicians from a time when jazz was in its prime. Although he’s well-known locally for his folk and blues songs, he has officially begun a transition into the…
The Road
A great work of literature doesn’t usually translate into a great movie. The language of cinema relies on externals as seen through the eye of a camera. It’s a far cry from the written word, which tends to be more internal and malleable to the interpretations of the reader. That difference is one reason why…
OKC-area parents have chance to glimpse teens at ‘Reality Parties’
This just in: Teens like to sneak Natty Lights when they can. No! The horror! And here we were believing little Suzy really was creating macramé projects with Linda and Betty and then maybe going to the roller rink. But according to an article from NewsOK.com, they’re doing a lot more than that. And parents…
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
I agree with football coach Lou Holtz, who said, “The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood.” It’s possible to work around this difficulty, however. What you have to do, before you unleash your levity, is conjure up empathy for the…
