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Show A2 The Emery County Review, Tuesday, July 29, 2008 The News Off The Beaten Path MUG SHOT D E DA Z LIGHTER SIDE The Battle of the Superhero Geeks Begins Strike a Pose Tayler Tanner channels his inner model as he imitates Derek Zoolander’s Blue Steel while bowling in Price. Why he would need to imitate Zoolander’s Blue Steel while bowling is another question altogether. James L. Davis My son and I had an argument the other day about superheroes. I say and argument instead of a discussion because my son and I do not have discussions. We have arguments and some of those arguments have been going on for years. We will often pause in one argument so we can begin another, which is why they last so long. I am quite sure that we are still in the middle of arguments that we have paused for so long that we have forgotten what they are about. Don’t worry, I’m sure one of us will remember eventually and continue the argument pretty much where we left off. Our argument on superheroes started because my son asked me which superhero was my favorite and I told him Batman was my favorite. “Batman is not a superhero,” my son began the opening volley of the argument, which he often does. “Well of course Batman is a superhero.” “Nope. He’s not. He doesn’t have any super powers. Superheroes have to have super powers.” “He does have super powers.” “What super powers? He’s just smart and rich and has fancy tools and stuff. That doesn’t make him a superhero.” I begged to differ. If he is rich enough in today’s economy to spend money on things like bat suits, then that’s a super power. Or else he’s heavily invested in oil. But my son wasn’t hearing any of it. “Well, he has a suit. He has a superhero suit, so he’s a superhero,” I said. “You mean if I go and get a spandex suit I can be a superhero?” “Sure, as long as you don’t tell anybody I’m your father. We’ll call you Annoy Man and your super power can be the ability to make me cringe whenever you talk.” “Funny. Batman still isn’t a superhero though.” Our argument continues today because we devolved to the point where we were just looking at each other saying: “Is so,” “Is not,” and after an hour or so, it got tiring and we moved on to another argument. This argument revolved around what superpower would be the best to have. We both thought super strength was a fairly good superpower to have, but we differed on the whole flying thing, which I believe would be a pretty incredible superpower and my son thought would just make him throw up. That could have something to do with his fear of heights. Other than that, we argued the merits of super vision, super hearing, super speed, telekinesis and extrasensory perception. We both wondered why there wasn’t a superhero with super smelling ability and if there was such a superhero, what use would he be in a fight? And then it hit me. A middle-aged man and a teenager were sitting and arguing about the merits of superheroes and super powers. We were geeks. Not only were we geeks, we might actually be classified as super geeks, other than we weren’t arguing about whether Luke Skywalker would be classified a superhero. I was about to mention this to my son but then realized that it is something we would argue about, thus making us super geeks. My mind, being somewhat twisted by a lifelong habit of thinking abnormal thoughts, began to wonder if we truly were super geeks, then not only what would our superpowers be, but would I be my son’s sidekick or would he be mine? I came to the immediate conclusion that I would have to be my son’s sidekick. I would be the old, wizened former super geek that had passed down his super spandex costume to carry on the family tradition of geekdom. On second thought, scratch that. The thought of passing down a spandex costume is almost as troubling a thought as thinking about wearing a spandex super geek costume. He would have to get his own super geek costume and go out and save the world from cool people who stand around and look cool, but don’t actually accomplish anything. I looked up and noticed that my son was watching me, smiling happily as I was lost in my own twisted thoughts. “You’re thinking we’re super geeks, aren’t you?” “Yep.” “What color were our costumes?” “Black.” “Blue.” “Black,” I repeated and the next argument started with almost superhuman speed. Photo by Casey Wood Chuck Shepherd Lead Story The European Union allows fruits and vegetables to be sold only in prescribed sizes and colors (such as its 35 pages of regulations governing 250 varieties of the apple, or rules that cucumbers must be straight and bananas curved). In June, British marketer Tim Down complained that he was forced to discard 5,000 kiwi fruit because they were 1 millimeter in diameter too small and one-fourth ounce too light. (It is illegal even to give them away, as that would undermine the market price.) “Improvements” in the EU system continue, according to a July Washington Post dispatch from Brussels: Despite 10 pages of standards on the onion and 19 amendments, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture recently issued a report urging further refinements, using 29 pages and 43 photographs. Great Art! Artist Michael Fernandes’ exhibit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in June caused a commotion because it was merely a banana on a gallery’s window sill, and Fernandes had it priced at $2,500 (Cdn) (down from his original thought, $15,000). Actually, Fernandes changed bananas every day (eating the old one), placing progressively greener ones out to demonstrate the banana’s transitoriness. “We (humans) are also temporal, but we live as if we are not,” he wrote. Despite the steep price, two collectors placed holds on the “work,” requiring the gallery’s co-owner, Victoria Page, to get assurance from callers. “It’s a banana; you understand that it’s a banana?” Government in Action! -- In May, the school board in Barrie, Ontario, notified Children’s Aid Society to intervene with mother Colleen Leduc and her daughter Victoria, 11, because of suspected sexual abuse, angering the conscientious Leduc, who until that point had taken extraordinary measures to protect the girl, who is autistic. Upon investigation, it was revealed that the suspicion came from a teaching assistant who said her psychic had told The Duplex NEWS OF THE WEIRD her that a girl with a “V” in her name was being abused by a man aged 23 to 26. Leduc now refuses to trust Victoria to public schools because “they might want to take out a Ouija board or hold a seance.” -- The June transfer of a prisoner from lockup to Britain’s Northampton Crown Court, just across the street, required summoning the closest prison van (57 miles away) to come give him a ride. The prisoner (accused thief Mark Bailey) could not simply be walked across the street because officials feared that public, custodial exposure (a “perp walk”) would embarrass him, in violation of his “human rights.” -- The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has a longstanding policy of not co-operating with the federal government’s enforcement of immigration laws, but in June that stance abruptly backfired, according to a San Francisco Chronicle report. Illegal immigrants who are minors and who committed felonies such as drug-trafficking in San Francisco have not been bound over for federal deportation but have either been quietly flown home, with an escort, at city expense, or placed in California group homes. In June, when San Bernardino County officials realized that one of its youth group homes contained drug dealers, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom halted the program and promised the city would improve its relationship with immigration officials. Police Blotter -- Police, including SWAT officers, were called to an apartment in Mesa, Ariz., in June after neighbors reported a fight between a man and woman that included yelling and breaking things inside. When they arrived, they found only a 21-year-old man, conducting the fight by himself, alternating a high-pitched voice with a low-pitched one. He was referred for a medical exam. -- Need for Speed: (1) Ontario’s recent law against street-racing snared two noteworthy drivers in April: a 26-year-old man who was cited when he passed a marked police car while doing 178 km/hr (106 mph) and the driver of a garbage truck, racing at 112 km/hr (double the posted speed limit). (2) A 3-year-old girl was seriously injured in Huntsville, Ala., in May in a collision caused, said witnesses, by a speeding contest between two men, both employees of Comcast Corp., driving company vans. Questionable Judgments -- In March, a jury acquitted the former parking manager for Fresno, Calif., Bob Madewell, of all misuseof-funds charges, including one count for reducing the minor league baseball Grizzlies’ parking fees in exchange for tickets for his brother and himself, and another count in which he paid a female worker $300 in city funds to let him touch her breasts. Juror Trish Riederer, in an interview with the Fresno Bee, said she and her fellow jurors believe that Madewell did everything that prosecutors say he did but that the city did not have clear procedures in place about Madewell’s scope of authority. -- Teachers Out of Control: (1) Fifth-grade teacher Susan Romanyszyn, 45, was arrested in Bucks County, Pa., in January and charged with 17 counts of threatening bombings and gun violence after she was assigned to teach fourth grade, instead. (2) Sixth-grade teacher Roshondra Sipp of Jackson, Miss., aroused parents’ ire in May for forcing the class to vote on who among them would be most likely to die young or get pregnant while still in school or get HIV or go to jail. Then, Sipp posted the results, enraging parents whose little charmers made the lists. Creme de la Weird “(A) person with a sneeze fetish can find erotic pleasure in those few seconds,” according to the ABC News Medical Unit, in an April report, when “the eyes close as the body prepares to forcefully expel air,” but “experts are stumped as to why.” An Internet “sneeze fetish forum” allows members to wax rhapsodic (“She has the cutest sneeze ever”) and recall pleasurable experiences (such as the thrill of discovering that one’s new college roommate has allergies and will be sneezing frequently), and many use language and suggest visions that mimic sexual behaviors. Least Competent Criminals Failure to Communicate: (1) The man who tried to rob the Cafe Treo in Salt Lake City in April likely told the employee to “fill” the bag, but when the employee reached over and earnestly started to “feel” the bag (according to police), the robber said, “You’ve gotta be kidding me” and ran out of the store. (2) Another man who came away empty-handed had tried to rob a Walgreens in Port Richey, Fla., in July, handing a clerk what appeared to be a holdup note, except that nothing was written on it. The clerk, sensing the forgetful robber’s cluelessness, boldly dialed 911 right in front of him, causing the man to flee. Recurring Themes Ronald McDade, charged with raping a teenager in Lansdale, Pa., in January, petitioned to be allowed to submit a plaster cast of his penis to the jury, to demonstrate that, since he is an “extremely large” man (according to his lawyer), he could not physically have penetrated the girl without causing genital injury (and no such injury was found). News of the Weird has reported previously on rape defendants offering to give the jury either a photograph, or a live exhibition, to make the same point. Thinning the Herd (1) An 18-year-old man was killed in March while riding in a shopping cart and holding onto an SUV racing down a Winter Park, Fla., street, when it hit a speed bump. (2) A 13-year-old skateboarder was killed in May at a railroad crossing in O’Fallon, Ill., when (according to police) he was unsuccessful in beating a train to the crossing. (3) An 18-year-old man was killed in June in Blaine, Wash., when the steamroller he was taking for a joyride at a construction site overturned and fell on top of him. (Copyright 2008 Chuck Shepherd. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.) By Glenn McCoy |
