| Week at a Glance |
[HOT] Unemployment. This week, the Bureau of Labor announced that Americans now spend an average of nineteen weeks job hunting, as opposed to thirteen weeks in the late 1990’s. Not entirely dire news, if you consider that no job = more time to do sexy stuff, like have sex, then watch and re-watch taped episodes of Scrubs.
[NOT] Coupling. The new Thursday night sitcom proves that stiff acting and sexual stereotypes cannot be overcome, even with terrible writing.
[HOT] Nixed Reality TV Marriages. The ostensible winners of NBC’s Who Wants to Marry My Dad? decided to remain single. Surprisingly, after knowing each other for only six episodes, neither loved each other enough to relocate.
[NOT] Under the Tuscan Sun. Movie or Glade Plug-In commercial? Indiscernible.
|
| Quote of the Week |
“She strapped a burrito to her loins and called for white men to come up on stage, take a bite out of the burrito and absolve themselves of 500 years of the white man’s guilt. There was no shortage of ennobled participants, who knelt in front of the protruding offering, some taking delicate bites, others deep-throated chunks.”
The SF Weekly‘s description of “Indigurrito,” a 1992 performance-art piece conducted by the sister of California gubernatorial candidate Cruz Bustamante.
|
| The NYC Criminal Justice System Now Even Classier! |
The School of Rock might make Subversive Authority Figures seem all cute, but the world is just not ready for them. I once had a babysitter who let me stay up to watch Women in Prison, and a World History teacher who bought us beer and talked about his “bitch ex-wife” in class. Both soon found themselves out of a job. And so it goes for Manhattan police officer Nicole Waite. This week, the thirty-six year old was charged with bribery and official misconduct after she drank wine, smoked pot and had sex with a seventeen-year-old defendant in exchange for a favorable pre-sentencing report. (Plus, after learning she was being investigated, Waite told the teen to lie about their tryst.) The officer and the defendant met at least three times: in her office, in a hotel and in a restaurant. That last locale seems awfully formal when you’re trading sex and drugs for favorable court testimony, but hey, maybe I just have low standards perhaps evidenced by my childhood appreciation of Women in Prison. Carrie Hill Wilner
|
| You Can’t Hurry Love |
This week, the Romanian government investigated reports that two children were married in the region of Transylvania. The twelve-year-old bride’s father a self-declared gypsy king named Florin Cioaba vehemently defended the union on Romanian TV: “We have a tradition to marry our children as minors,” he said. The bride was betrothed five years earlier, for the reported sum of 500 gold coins. (Hmmm. A tyrannical king, a 500-gold-coin dowry, an arranged child marriage, Transylvania it reads like a composite of every fairy tale we’ve ever read.) In the past, the Romanian government has turned a blind eye to the gypsy custom of child marriage, but the European Union has threatened to prevent the country from joining the economic collective unless it cracks down. Both the king’s daughter and her fifteen-year-old “husband” are now in foster care, and their wedding gifts have been returned to the bridal registry at Hot Topic. Grant Stoddard
|
| Newsreel |
Man dies after wife crushes his testicles in a fight.
Cheerleader hazing at Scranton U. involves drinking ’til you puke, then performing oral sex.
In China, three-day orgy held in five-star hotel. Five hundred prostitutes reportedly involved.
Mexico’s first lady shown porn slides during presentation at cancer rally.
|
| How To Beat Your Cellphone At Its Own Devious Game |
Apparently, infidelity and text messaging are a dangerous combination. (And if there’s any stereotype we learned to cherish after watching The Real World: Paris gang go to Italy, it’s that Italians love infidelity and text messaging.) So it’s somehow perfect that this week, an Italian detective agency issued a list of suggestions to help cheating lovers avoid discovery via cellphone records. Here are some of their suggestions:
1) After a call is made or received, immediately delete the number from your cellphone, then phone a relative or friend whose number is recognizable to both spouses.
2) Delete all text messages, even the most beautiful. Ignore any desire to conserve them.
3) In case you get a call when your partner is with you, unobtrusively turn off the phone, then claim you can’t hear anything because there’s a problem with the line.
Admirable efforts, gumshoes! But you’ve left out some more effective tactics. These include asking your spouse, “Phone ring? What phone ring? You’re delusional, you crazy bitch,” then having her committed. That one’s a classic. So is coating your phone with a thin layer of sulfuric acid, then leaving it unattended, so wannabe spies get their fingers burned off. Carrie Hill Wilner
|
| Going Dutch |
Big Daddy Kane once said, “Pimpin’ ain’t easy.” A Dutch prisoner disagrees. In his view, pimpin’ is so easy he can do it while incarcerated. The inmate announced that he’s started a business wherein he arranges for prostitutes to pose as other prisoners’ girlfriends or wives and conduct conjugal visits. The unnamed entrepreneur who’s serving fourteen years for murder says inmates can even get condoms and Viagra from the prison doctor. “It’s all very legal,” he scoffed. “Every prisoner is allowed to have visits from their girlfriend or wife without supervision. I organize some ladies to come and visit them twice for ten minutes. The third time they can have sex for an hour, which costs 500 euro.” The man sent a picture of himself to the editor of a Dutch paper, posing with the computer he says he uses to run the escort service. Prison authorities say the man is lying and that he has no access to a computer, which is kind of puzzling, because there’s one in the picture. Grant Stoddard
|
| Space Invader |
Some people are so creepy that you have to respect them for raising creepiness to the level of art. So it is for Steve Danos, a.k.a. the Louisiana Snuggler. The twenty-four year old was arrested in Baton Rouge this week, charged with sneaking into women’s apartments while they slept. Once inside, he would fold their clothes, arrange their shoes, watch them sleep and occasionally crawl into bed with them and spoon. In one apartment, he even made some nachos. Personally, I’d be thrilled to wake up and find someone arranging my shoes, especially if they managed to find my left pink Converse, which I haven’t seen for two weeks. Throw nachos into the deal, and I’ll marry you.
But my needs aren’t everyone’s, and apparently the women of Baton Rouge aren’t so desperate for free housekeeping and Mexican food that they’re willing to overlook the stranger-breaking-into-an-apartment part of the equation. Reportedly, when some of the women awoke and found Davos hovering above their bed, he cryptically asked them, “Where’s the afterparty?” Now that would disturb me. The after-what party? After-sleeping? If it’s not after another party, isn’t it just a party? Anyway, the women all identified Danos in a photo lineup and used adjectives like “harmless” and “skinny” to describe him. None of them went on record saying, “It was just like Christmas.” Carrie Hill Wilner
|
|
