Feature Type:
Entertainment/News/Text
Frequency:
Updated 1x weekly
Target Audience:
General appeal
Fact Sheet:
PDF News of the Weird
Fun Fact:
When he’s not immersing himself in tales of bizarre behavior, Chuck retains his sanity by adhering to strict personal standards, such as dressing in men's clothing, never lighting a match to peer into a gas tank, and being extra wary of men who carry guns and have the middle name "Wayne."
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Each week, relying on his five-newspapers-a-day habit
and a worldwide network of correspondents, Chuck Shepherd
puts together a compendium of strange-but-true recent
events as reported in the legitimate press. *Also
Available in Spanish
Sample
Column
LEAD STORIES
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Campaign
2000: In September, Robert Salzberg finished a strong
second (26 percent) in the Democratic primary for a
U.S. House seat from Sarasota, Fla., despite revealing
that he would soon plead insanity (that a robot was
attacking him) to a charge that he beat up a police
lieutenant inside a station house in March. In Maryland,
the estranged wife of U.S. Rep. Albert Wynn (husband
and wife are black) is contributing a political telephone
ad for his opponent, charging that Wynn "does not respect
black women (because) he left me for a white woman."
And Lanett, Ala., city councilman Barry Waites was defeated
in August, largely through the effort of candidate Rod
Spraggins, who finished fourth but whose only issue
was to accuse Waites of murdering his own wife two years
earlier (but Waites was never charged).
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Among
recent news reports of stupefyingly high real estate
prices in the San Francisco area: a plain three-bedroom
house in a nice Palo Alto neighborhood, offered for
$3.5 million (renting for $12,000 a month), and a 1,000-square-foot
house in San Francisco that "needs everything done to
it," according to an agent, offered at $279,000 but
which will sell for much more because as of the first
of September, 48 people had bid on it.
Rights
in Conflict
Newsstand
clerk Mike Redina, 44, who is blind, was fired in July
because an underage boy illegally bought cigarettes from
him (Hauppauge, N.Y.). Chevron lost an employment discrimination
case in May because its doctor recommended rejecting an
application from a man with a liver disorder because the
work site was a highly toxic part of a refinery, and the
company would almost certainly have been liable if the
man had gotten sicker (El Segundo, Calif.). Parents Michael
and Jill Carroll were forced by a court to give their
son, 7, his prescribed Ritalin to regulate his school
behavior despite the boy's loss of sleep and appetite
(Albany, N.Y.).
Grown-ups
Setting Examples
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Never
Laid a Hand on Him: Otto Benjamin II, 39, was arrested
in May in Fayetteville, Ark., and charged with second-degree
battery after police found that he had been disciplining
his 15-year-old son by biting him, including several
recent incidents that had left permanent scars (on the
ear, upper nose area, lip, finger, left thigh, shoulder
and right forearm).
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Teachers
as Role Models: Columbia University literature professor
Edward Said, 65, visiting Lebanon on July 3, was photographed
throwing stones at Israeli soldiers at the border. (He
later explained, "The spirit of the place infected everyone
with the same impulse, to make a symbolic gesture of
joy that the occupation had ended.") And two weeks later,
New York City high school teacher Ryan Ward, 30, was
charged with grand larceny after he allegedly rode his
bike past a woman on East 26th Street in Manhattan and
swiped her purse.
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Des Moines, Iowa, anesthesiologist Eric Meek filed a
lawsuit in July against surgeon Scott Neff over a February
incident that Meek felt took their ongoing professional
feud too far. Meek said that when he walked into the
operating room to work with Neff on a routine hip replacement
at Mercy Medical Center, Neff grabbed the hose attached
to a fluid-draining machine and banished Meek from the
room by spraying him with a "blood-laden" liquid.
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Jeff
Schmidt was fired in May after 19 years as a staff writer
for the magazine Physics Today just after the publication
of his book "Disciplined Minds," which argues that a
hierarchical organization's structure almost guarantees
that its workers cannot devote their full energy to
the job. He was canned after a supervisor came across
a publicity interview by Schmidt, admitting playfully
that he had sometimes worked on the book during office
hours at Physics Today.
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In July, Genevieve Simenon, a great niece of the late
French mystery writer Georges Simenon, confessed to
killing her husband and expressed dismay that, but for
one detail, she would have gotten away with it, just
as the perpetrators in Georges Simenon's stories believe
they will. Genevieve had injected her husband with Valium,
then beat him to death, scrubbed the crime scene, and
convinced the family physician that her husband had
merely suffered a heart attack and that the bruises
on his face came when he hit his head on a table. However,
the funeral director looked under the husband's long
hair and noticed that his ear had been beaten off in
the attack.
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Additional Recent Ironies: An arsonist burned down the
Heart of Fire Church (Fern Creek, Ky., June). The founder
of an alcoholics' self-help group that advocated allowing
recovery through moderate drinking pled guilty to DUI
that caused the deaths of two people (Ellensburg, Wash.,
June). A very abled executive with the Massachusetts
Commission for the Blind was fined $100 for issuing
himself a handicapped parking card (Boston, August).
The
Unhygienic Lawyer
In
July, the Law Society of Alberta, Canada, announced it
had begun an inquiry into whether lawyer John M. Grindley
should lose his license to practice because he had harmed
the reputation of the profession. Grindley had been convicted
in June of drunk driving, but the Law Society filed charges
against him only later, after a residential eviction order
had been upheld against him based on an inspector's having
declared Grindley's home so grungy and putrid-smelling
that it was a hazard to public health. Grindley admitted
that his apartment is "messy" but said he would fight
the charge.
Recurring
Themes
One
of the most widely circulated offbeat stories of 1999
was the Michigan conviction of canoeist Timothy Boomer
under a seldom-used state law banning public cussing.
(He used the F word at least 25 times, in an area occupied
by recreational boaters, including many kids.) In May
2000, Sioux Falls (S.D.) high school senior Oakly Haines,
who had just won the gold medal in the 400-meter dash
at the state track tournament, was disqualified when two
volunteer officials overheard him cuss at himself ("damn
it" and "son of a bitch") that he had failed to beat the
record time of his older brother. Said one of the tattling
officials, "When you have children, you want them to be
exposed (only) to wonderful, good things."
Thinning
the Herd
In
June, a 16-year-old boy accidentally fatally shot himself
in the head while fleeing a sheriff's deputy who had tried
to question him; according to the deputy, the boy had
clumsily attempted to shoot back by firing over his shoulder
on the run. And in August, during a workplace scuffle
in Irvine, Calif., one man grabbed another in a headlock,
pulled his gun, and shot him in the face, but the bullet
passed through the target's cheek and into the shooter's
own chest, killing him.
Also,
in the Last Month ...
Federal
prison officials, angered at a recent bribery convict's
boast that he planned a lot of golf at a minimum-security
facility, shipped him instead to the same New York lockup
as John Gotti's son (Lake Placid, N.Y.). A veteran skydiver
got his foot caught outside the airplane door two miles
up and dangled for 30 minutes, and was still hanging during
the landing, but was not seriously hurt (Pittsburgh).
An ex-Marine gunrunner and minor figure in the Reagan-era
Iran-Contra affair was arrested for masturbating in a
Kmart parking lot (Brookfield, Wis.). A 36-year-old driver
was shot in the abdomen during a one-vehicle collision
when a handgun in the glove compartment fired as it was
jarred by the impact (Eastford, Conn.).
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