Source: Maui Time, Maui News, Best of Maui, Maui Activities

News%20of%20the%20Weird
News Of The Weird

by By Chuck Shepherd

September 20, 2007

WRESTLE WITH THIS

Brian Blair, now a county commissioner in Tampa, Fla., asserted in a

2002 lawsuit that he had been forced into retirement from his previous

career as a professional wrestler after he tripped over a tray of

dishes and hurt himself at a Carrabba’s restaurant. Blair announced in

August 2007 that a settlement had been reached with Carrabba’s, and

thus he would not explain (according to a deposition cited by

Carrabba’s attorneys) how the “career-ending” injury allowed him to

keep lucrative wrestling dates in Japan months after he fell, or how he

registered a .089 blood-alcohol reading that evening even though he

admitted to only one sip of wine, or how a sober professional wrestler

accustomed to being thrown across a ring could be hurt so badly by a

simple fall, or how a politician who generally abides a pro-business,

anti-lawsuit philosophy could have initiated such litigation.

CAN’T POSSIBLY BE TRUE

Army officer Bryan Hilferty, a volunteer Little League umpire in Alexandria, Va., complained to The Washington Post in July that when he requested a copy of the League rulebook (to help him be a better umpire), he was turned down. Hilferty, who has access to classified information in his job at the Pentagon, was told that the Little League restricts its rulebooks, on a “need to know” basis, so as not to invite litigation, and that Hilferty did not qualify.

NORWAY IS COOL

Norwegian Correctional Services revealed in August that 20 percent of convicted criminals who are given reporting dates to begin their sentences (a total of 1,799 last year) simply do not show up. The problem is compounded by the fact that Norway has no separate law requiring them to report. Said a regional prison director, “It’s difficult to make plans for the prison terms when we have no idea who will show up and who won’t.”

NAUGHTY TV, HAWAI`I STYLE

The Federal Communications Commission famously imposed heavy fines for “indecency” against CBS for the brief, inadvertent glimpse it offered of Janet Jackson’s right breast during the 2004 Super Bowl. But the same “indecency”-concerned agency issued a routine official notice in July listing call letters of TV stations it had recently approved, including, for a proposed station in Honolulu, KUNT. (The applicant, headquartered in Skokie, Ill., withdrew the requested letters when the Honolulu Star-Bulletin publicized the FCC’s notice.)

HUH?

Serena Yen, a member of the 24 Hour Fitness gym in Houston complained to KTRK-TV in July that she had been inadvertently shut inside recently at about midnight while using an upstairs exercise machine, when employees locked up for the night. A spokesman at the company’s headquarters said that “24 Hour” does not refer to the hours of operation.

BRAND-NEW FETISHES

Verle Dills, 60, was arrested in Sioux Falls, S.D., in July after police found numerous homemade videos of Dills having sex in public with “traffic signs.” And Jeff Doland of Uniontown, Ohio, was arrested in July, caught in an Internet sting after he flew to Miami thinking he had arranged to pay a “mother” to let him photograph her two adolescent daughters while she periodically pushed them underwater because he “liked watching the bubbles.”