Undignified Deaths
Surprisingly Complicated: A 24-year-old woman in Lawrenceville, Ga. (in July), and a 59-year-old woman in Lincolnton, N.C. (in August), were killed after failing to negotiate driver’s-side devices allowing them entrance to, respectively, a gated parking lot and an automatic car wash. The Georgia woman had leaned out her window to insert a card into the…
Least Competent Criminals
Too Puny for a Life of Crime: Keith Bellanger, 20, failed in his attempted burglary in Duluth, Minn., in September when homeowner Wayne Boniface, age 69, walked in and beat him up so thoroughly that Bellanger had all his clothes ripped off trying to get away. And in Bay Shore, N.Y., in September, a 32-year-old…
Recurring Themes
Some Americans continue to prefer to “do it themselves” to get rid of pests on their property, with tragic results. In June, Mike Harstad of Jamestown, Calif., attempting to eliminate a wasps’ nest with a can of Pledge and a cigarette lighter, ultimately burned down his mobile home and contents and destroyed an outbuilding, a…
Obsessions
Just when Internet newspaper sites appear to be gaining ground as replacements for printed editions, a 70-year-old woman identified only as Maggie told the Edmonton (Alberta) Sun in September that her paper edition of the Sun is a crucial part of her daily diet, literally. She eats it, in strips, and has, she said, for…
News That Sounds Like a Joke
Oral-B’s Triumph SmartGuide toothbrush, available in the United Kingdom for the equivalent of about $280, uses navigation technology to transmit the exact location of the toothbrush to a base unit so that the user can see which areas in his mouth the brush might have missed. The wireless LCD mouth display can be mounted on…
People With Too Much Money
The adolescent offspring of some well-to-do parents are serious art collectors, according to a September Wall Street Journal report, and their interest appears not to be motivated solely by parents’ strategies to shield income from the tax collector. Ms. Dakota King, 9, for example, owns 40 pieces and specializes in animals and “happy colors.” Ms.…
Thomas on Hill: ‘my most traitorous adversary’
Former University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill made headlines again this week, 16 years after her sexual harassment allegations against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. In an autobiography released Monday, Thomas ended his public silence on the allegations, which turned his 1991 confirmation hearings into a national media spectacle. Thomas calls Hill “my most…
Encyclopedia Brown Cracks the Case – Donald J. Sobol
Dutton Children’s Books$15.99 Like many kids of my generation, I knew who Encyclopedia Brown was before I knew of Sherlock Holmes. Donald J. Sobol’s “boy detective” has been going strong since 1963, and “Cracks the Case” is his 24th collection of bite-sized mysteries, perfect for grade schoolers’ consumption. Here, Encyclopedia Brown “? aka Leroy “?…
Government in Action!
Bookkeepers Wanted: Pentagon investigators discovered in August that a small South Carolina company fraudulently collected $20.5 million in shipping costs, including one invoice of $999,798 for sending two washers (cost: 19 cents each) to a base in Texas. According to Bloomberg News, the Defense Department was said to have a policy of automatically and unquestioningly…
Attorney general requests hold on executions
Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson announced Wednesday he has requested a moratorium on Oklahoma executions, pending a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court regarding lethal injection, according to court records. According to a brief filed by Edmondson, the hold comes before the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals was to schedule an execution for the…
Across the Universe
Reviewer’s Grade: C You might wonder how a movie loaded with great Beatles songs could possibly go wrong, but “Across the Universe” shows us how. Director Julie Taymor (“Frida”) taps songs from the Fab Four catalog for this marginal mystery tour through a comic-book version of the Sixties. But don’t expect to hear…
Second state biofuel conference scheduled
More than 35 speakers from across the nation are scheduled to present at the second annual Oklahoma Biofuels Conference, to be held Oct. 16-17 at The Sheraton, 1 N. Broadway. Among the topics to be discussed include:” the $40 million research and development initiative for the Oklahoma Bioenergy Center,” an update on new farm and…
The Game Plan
Reviewer’s Grade: D If you’ve never seen Joe Dante’s wonderful movie “Matinee,” track it down. Among other things, it presents in just a couple of minutes a parody of the supernaturally awful live-action comedies Disney produced in the early Sixties. Of course, this new laugh-challenged wonder from Disney also is reminiscent of those old…
The Kingdom
ner, Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman) arrives on Saudi soil despite the objections of the big brass within the U.S. government who don’t want to offend Saudi sensibilities or strain the alliance with the royal family. But the team tones down Garner’s filthy infidel rack, and starts to investigate. But wait! They can’t take evidence,…
Former Rush Springs coach played big role in state prep football history
Joe Tunnell dedicated 40 years of his life to high school football and to his players, and in the process, deeply etched his name into Oklahoma’s landscape. Prior to his retirement at the end of the 1999 season, Tunnell won more games as a head coach than any other Oklahoma prep coach before him. Although…
Tulsa-born Aqueduct brings act back to state
Oklahoma native David Terry laid the groundwork for his group, Aqueduct, in Tulsa, where he is from and where his family still lives. “Living in Tulsa definitely made me more hungry for music. The scene there now isn’t at all what it was, even just a few years ago,” Terry said. “Just driving to Dallas,…
Evan Almighty
2007 Reportedly the most expensive comedy ever made, “Evan Almighty” certainly isn’t the funniest. But neither is it the outright disaster the buzz would have you believe. There are some laughs to be had, but the genial proceedings eventually turn preachy. Despite being the villain of “Bruce Almighty,” Steve Carell’s Evan Baxter is a…
Actors in ‘Amadeus’ make beautiful music together
Oklahoma City Theatre Company’s production of “Amadeus” takes a great deal of dramatic license with the actual history of composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, but playwright Peter Shaffer’s smart examinations of jealousy, revenge, politics and music appreciation are so striking. Salieri talks at length to the audience as he plots, rails at God,…
Cross Canadian Ragweed comes home to debut new CD
There’s a good reason one-third of Cross Canadian Ragweed’s releases are live albums: It is first and foremost a live act. Although lead singer and songwriter Cody Canada acknowledged the group’s live albums are its best sellers because of the band’s road reputation, the last two studio discs have crept up. As the band prepares for…
Fast-thinking Oklahoma City coach bites horse
If you could pick a guy who’d be most likely to bite a horse, then why not Oklahoma City Blazers hockey coach Doug Sauter? First, he’s a hockey coach. Second, he’s got a great mustache (goo goo ga joob!). But, beyond all this, he bit the horse in the service of humanity. …
State’s first Halloween fan convention slated
TrickConTreat, Oklahoma’s first and only Halloween fan convention, invites everyone to get into the season’s spirit a little early this year. The convention gives fanatics a chance to hear ghost stories from local authors, see the latest in ghost-hunting technologies, and gather makeup and costume tips from the pros. The all-day event will take place…
Jacobson House showcases work of late American Indian artist
This Sunday, Jacobson House proudly unveils “The Inner Culture of Mirac Creepingbear.” Although Creepingbear died 17 years ago, he always will be remembered as a self-taught master artist who created a legacy of art through painting and sculpture in just 15 years. His paintings portray the mystic world of American Indian expression and traditions. “Along…
After escaping zoo in 1950, Leapy the Leopard held city in fear
For three February days in the early Fifties, Oklahoma City residents were frozen in terror, their lives at the mercy of a runaway leopard. The afternoon of Feb. 25, 1950, was just an ordinary Saturday for the metro, which included the usual crowd of attendees at the zoo. Some had come to see the zoo’s…
Merit pay system for Oklahoma teachers debated in house
Merit pay for teachers ” now being called “performance pay” ” is not a replacement for across-the-board pay raises, according to education experts brought in to testify before Oklahoma’s House Education Committee. House Speaker Lance Cargill, who announced the series of committee hearings in August, sat among legislators for the testimony of educators and others…
Undignified Deaths
Surprisingly Complicated: A 24-year-old woman in Lawrenceville, Ga. (in July), and a 59-year-old woman in Lincolnton, N.C. (in August), were killed after failing to negotiate driver’s-side devices allowing them entrance to, respectively, a gated parking lot and an automatic car wash. The Georgia woman had leaned out her window to insert a card into the…
Silverfish – David Lapham
Vertigo “Stray Bullets” creator David Lapham stretches further into the world of noir with “Silverfish,” a story-driven graphic novel that plays like an old-fashioned murder mystery, which must be why the writer-artist chose to tell it strictly in black-and-white visuals. Mia is a teenage girl not too thrilled with Suzanne, her widowed father’s new choice…
Oklahoma City store sells tattooed “I Love You” fish
If you want to propose affection to your sweetie in Oklahoma City, just don’t say it with a fish. The slippery subject of fish tattooing hit the metro recently, when police officers visited wholesale supplier Quality Pets, 1501 S. Agnew, after someone complained a fish the place sold to a local shop had “I love…
State’s spaceport looks to attract more aeronautical business
The Oklahoma Spaceport in Burns Flat is going full throttle to lure space travel and rocket-launching businesses to western Oklahoma. “Because of this facility, we have (a) world of opportunity,” said Bill Khourie, executive director of the Oklahoma Space Industrial Development Authority. At OSIDA’s last board meeting, Khourie announced the spaceport is up and running,…
Oklahoma baseball coach’s OSU daughter poses in ‘Girls of the Big 12’
CFN’s intern, Bucky, is a child of the Internet. Well, that’s only 75 percent accurate, but let’s just say he’s part of the whippersnapper generation that gets most of his news by clicking around the World Wide Web. When Bucky mentioned a news item emanating from a print publication, our interest was piqued. It…
51 Birch Street
2005 Do you really know your parents? And how much about them would you really want to know, anyway? Such questions percolate throughout “51 Birch Street,” an engrossing, emotionally powerful documentary in which one man’s very personal journey uncovers some universal truths about the complicated relationships between parent and child. Documentary maker Doug Block felt…
The Graduate: 40th Anniversary Edition
1967/2007 Somehow, my all-time favorite movie just got even better, as Mike Nichols’ classic, Oscar-winning, post-collegiate-depression comedy finally gets the DVD treatment it long has deserved. Although costumes and hairstyles may be dated, the themes of “The Graduate” never grow old. The film follows Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) after he’s gotten out of college.…
Yukon cow stuck in silo made headlines in 1949
On Feb. 22, 1949, a Hereford cow named Grady had just given birth inside a barn at Bill and Alyne Mach’s farm in Yukon, according to daughter-in-law Pam Mach. After the attending veterinarian told Bill Mach to untie her, the 1,200-pound Grady bolted into a feed silo attached to the barn. The access door had…
The Fly Collection
1958/1959/1965/2007 No slight to David Cronenberg’s acclaimed “The Fly” remake, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the 1958 original. Ever since I caught it as a kid on local UHF showings, its story of science gone awry never has failed to capture my attention, and its closing scene (“Help me!”) still…
The Lemonade Club – Patricia Polacco
Philomel What happens when the lemons life dishes are cancer cells invading a child’s body? Author-illustrator Patricia Polacco’s “The Lemonade Club” gently answers in this tale about two fifth-grade girls’ friendship with their inspirational teacher, Miss Wichelman. When Marilyn is diagnosed with leukemia, Traci and the teacher begin the titular club to support her “?…
Disclosure works
On Feb. 4, 2008, the Oklahoma Legislature will convene its second session. The first thing the Legislature should do immediately is assemble a concurrent special session and take up ethics reform. The problems confronting our state in the area of campaign finance increasingly are capturing the attention of the news media and do not…
Moore’s Warren Theatre ’20-plex’ scheduled to open in spring
Commuters familiar with the drive through Moore will be happy to know that after more than two years, the big construction site west of Interstate 35 soon will become something recognizable. The Warren Theatre, a new 20-screen, $30 million movie theater billed as the “world’s largest luxury 20-plex” is expected to open on the site…
Omniplex Planetarium show highlights Pawnee Indian heritage
Astronomy-minded kids can learn how the Pawnee Indians explained the creation of Earth through the stars with “Spirits from the Sky, Thunder on the Land,” playing now through Nov. 18 at the Planetarium at the Omniplex Science Museum, 2100 N.E. 52nd. The show will take visitors on a journey with the Pawnee Indians, who annually…
Handmade greeting cards subject of new holiday
On Saturday, Jann McCollom will be one of the card makers around the world who will celebrate World Card Making Day. “When you give somebody a handmade card, it’s really giving them a part of you,” McCollom said. “That’s something they are going to cherish and hold on to.” Last year, organizers celebrated the first-ever…
Oklahoma folklore now online, thanks to library project
The Metropolitan Library System has made 2,500 songs, stories, interviews and more from its Oklahoma Folklore Collection available online this fall. The year-in-the-making effort is part of increasing access to the library’s offerings and beefing up state-history-related collections, according to Research Librarian Larry “Buddy” Johnson, who curates the collection, housed at the Downtown Library. “This…
LSD experiment at zoo in 1962 killed elephant
Five minutes into the acid trip, Tusko trumpeted, collapsed and lost bowel control. The 7,000-pound elephant’s limbs trembled and his brain entered a dangerous state of persistent seizure. An hour and 40 minutes after the injection of lysergic acid diethylamide, the 14-year-old elephant died. Dr. Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West, then professor and head of the…
Slain Okarche priest steps closer to sainthood as his murder is probed
The Rev. Stanley Rother’s indigenous parishioners lobbied to keep the slain priest’s heart in Guatemala to symbolize preservation of his spirit after his body returned to Oklahoma. A ‘mammoth’ task A Guatemalan request Unclassified documents While a requested joint Guatemalan-United Nations investigation may shed light into the assassination of the Okarche native, the Archdiocese of…
Hinder among 2007 nominees for Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame
Six more state musicians have been chosen as additions to the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, including:” a platinum-selling modern-rock band, ” country singers and ” a legendary guitar player. The 2007 nominees will be inducted formally into the hall of fame at a Nov. 1 ceremony at the Muskogee Civic Assembly Center. COUNTRYSammi Smith,…
Least Competent Criminals
Too Puny for a Life of Crime: Keith Bellanger, 20, failed in his attempted burglary in Duluth, Minn., in September when homeowner Wayne Boniface, age 69, walked in and beat him up so thoroughly that Bellanger had all his clothes ripped off trying to get away. And in Bay Shore, N.Y., in September, a 32-year-old…
Coheed and Cambria – Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow
Equal Vision Once upon a time, New York’s Coheed and Cambria was an uncommon gem: quirky and odd, with the piercing falsetto of singer/front man Claudio Sanchez backed with thick guitars, strange time signatures and rhythmic, syncopated drums. While listening to early Coheed, you got the idea that these guys listened to Rush, Pink…
Ha Ha Tonka – Buckle in the Bible Belt
Bloodshot Springfield, Mo.’s Amsterband changed its name to Ha Ha Tonka when the act signed with the “insurgent country” label Bloodshot Records. Ha Ha Tonka is also a state park in Missouri, which gives you an idea of what these rowdy lads are all about. Like fellow Missourians The Bottle Rockets, Ha Ha…
Death Proof
2007 “Grindhouse”‘s failure in theaters yields a bad news/good news situation for DVD collectors. The bad news: It’s been split into two halves “? minus the faux trailers “? to help recoup costs. The good news: At least the halves are now extended and unrated, with a bounty of bonus features splayed across two discs.…
Feast of Love
Reviewer’s Grade: C The transformation from novel to film seldom works to everyone’s satisfaction. What has become of Charles Baxter’s really good book “The Feast of Love” in its morphing into director Robert Benton’s innocuous “Feast of Love,” probably won’t please anyone much. The film stars Morgan Freeman, who also narrates, and Greg…
Relieving world tension
In August, a Roman Catholic bishop in the Netherlands, Martinus Muskens, suggested that Christians start referring to God as “Allah” as a way of relieving world tensions. “Allah is a very beautiful word . … What does God care what we call him? It is our problem.” A priest in Rome said Muskens’ intentions were…
Recurring Themes
Some Americans continue to prefer to “do it themselves” to get rid of pests on their property, with tragic results. In June, Mike Harstad of Jamestown, Calif., attempting to eliminate a wasps’ nest with a can of Pledge and a cigarette lighter, ultimately burned down his mobile home and contents and destroyed an outbuilding, a…
Without GM Plant, Oklahoma City still a strike site
OK, time to play that old-time favorite “Sesame Street” game: Which thing doesn’t belong? Mega-giant automobile maker General Motors Corp. and the United Auto Workers union finally struck a deal, which ended two days of strikes by GM employees nationwide. During the negotiations, UAW members picketed in front of GM plants all over the country…
The Film Crew: The Giant of Marathon
lted over the course of the film (and the apologies). “Giant” marks the fourth and final entry in the initial wave of Film Crew releases, but hopefully they’ll be successful enough for many more to follow. The world could use a good laugh. “?Rod Lott
Public school leaders say bond issue will boost education without raising taxes
Continuing the momentum of MAPS for Kids was the message at an economic development lunch Wednesday where discussion of Oklahoma City’s upcoming bond issue election formed the main course. Cliff Hudson, chairman of the Oklahoma City Public Schools board, and Superintendent John Q. Porter spoke at the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber-hosted event in downtown’s Beacon…
Athlete – Beyond the Neighbourhood
Astralwerks “Beyond the Neighbourhood,” the latest album from London electronic indie-rock band Athlete, is a fun and sometimes morose cinematic pop record. Although Athlete has only been around since 2003, it has made a huge critical impression in the United States and Europe. Combining tasteful doses of electronic glitch pop, dancey drums and…
Legislators consider sex-offender facility
The idea of building of facility for sex offenders in need of long-term care was presented to a legislative committee Tuesday afternoon. Lawmakers seek to address what continues to be a problem in Oklahoma: sex offenders being placed in nursing home and long-term care facilities. Nursing home watchdog Wes Bledsoe (pictured) presented his latest findings…
New It Dies Today vocalist settling in
The replacement of one’s lead singer after claiming a loyal fan base and a respectable amount of ink is hardly ever a good sign. But don’t tell that to It Dies Today when the band rolls through Oklahoma City and invades The Conservatory on Sunday. Jason Wood, who officially replaced lead vocalist Nick Brooks for…
Oklahoma’s unemployment rate drops in August
Oklahoma’s unemployment rate dropped seven-tenths of a percent to 4.2 in August, the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission Economic Research & Analysis Division reported today. OESC reported a 4.9 percent unemployment rate in July. Although the August 2006 unemployment rate was 4 percent, the August 2007 figures represent a departure from the increasing rate that…
Police Blotter
Just Say No: In September, police in Hertfordshire, England, stood fast under criticism for their program of placing posters around the area reading, “Don’t Commit Crime.” Said a police spokeswoman, “If stating the obvious helps to reduce crime or has any impact at all, we will do it.” (The police also installed signs at gas…
