Humor
Selections from Comic Relief, February 1997

Facts
Year in which America last had as bad a relationship with Britain as it does today, according to James Baker: 1773

Year in which the British sacked the city of Washington and burned the White House: 1814

Miles of asphalt in the US the year Strom Thurmond was born: 18

Year in which Gerald Ford modeled for the cover of Cosmopolitan: 1942

Weird News:
Gannett Outdoor Advertising covered up 10 billboards advertising suntan lotion in Grand Rapids MI, after some residents complained they showed too much skin. "Michigan has been a particularly difficult area for us," said Cheryl Stone of California Tan of Los Angeles, which paid for the ads. "We're not out to offend anyone. We will always need to show skin to show a tan."

The Red Robin Grill, trying to organize a holiday dinner for needy people last Christmas in Langhorne, PA, collected food for 200 and gifts of toys for children, but nobody showed up for the party. Assistant kitchen manager Mike Lerro, who came up with the idea of feeding local orphans and having Santa Claus show up to give out toys, said he tried to find orphans, but there are no orphanages in prosperous Bucks County. Expanding the search, Lerro discovered many poor families had already made plans to eat Christmas dinner at the Salvation Army. Others said they had no way to get to the restaurant. Despite the outpouring of food and gifts, the dinner was canceled. "I got it all backward," Lerro said. "I figured getting the big corporations to give me the food would be the hard part, not finding people to eat it."

Missing from Denmark's lineup at this year's European soccer tournament Euro '96 was Lars Elstrup. After scoring a crucial goal against France in Euro '92, Elstrup had recurring nightmares that he had missed the goal. According to a European newspaper, the stress made him give up soccer altogether and join a macrobiotic commune.

After a 20-year-old woman in Parsippany, N.J., received a call from a stranger who threatened to hurt her unless she wired him $600, she went to the Western Union office and wired the money to a Western Union office in Atlantic City, relaying a vague description the man had given her so he could collect the money without having to show identification.

After the death of Jonathan Melvoin, 34, a backup musician for the band Smashing Pumpkins, from an apparent overdose of a particularly potent brand of heroin, New York City police noted a dramatic increase in sales of that particular drug. "It's kind of sick," police Capt. Denis McCarthy told the New York Times, explaining Melvoin's death was "sort of like a quality test" for drug buyers.

Police at a roadblock in Fort Worth, Texas, stopped Philip G. Rojo, 24, because he wasn't wearing a seat belt. After spotting some wrapped packages on the floor of his car, they began backing away, explaining they feared the packages were a pipe bomb. "Man, that ain't no pipe bomb," Rojo told them. "That's cocaine." Reassured, the officers arrested Rojo.

When John Mahoney, 31, went to a Concord, N.H., police station to pick up some paperwork on two rifles he had reported stolen, an undercover officer looked up, recognized Mahoney as the man who sold him heroin and arrested him.

Amsterdam police arrested a 29-year-old suspected mugger after the man he tried to rob bit off the tip of his finger. The mugger fled, but police matched the fingerprint on the digit with one in their files and discovered the suspect's identity. The arrested man refused to answer police questions but admitted the man bit off his finger, calling him "the cannibal."

Curtis Crenshaw, 30, dropped by Cincinnati police headquarters to get a copy of his rap sheet so he could review his police record. Records clerks reviewed them first and alerted officers when they noticed Crenshaw was wanted in New York on a murder charge. "One of my detectives said 'That wasn't very smart,"' a police spokesperson said. "Well, I told him smart people don't commit homicides. That's one of the edges that we have."

Contract workers repairing a stretch of roadway in Pennsylvania's Schuylkill County paved over a deer carcass lying along Route 895. State transportation engineer Walter Bortree said the contractor probably just didn't see the animal, but Keither Billig, the mayor of nearby Bowmanstown, pointed out, "The deer was lying there dead for three to four weeks. You can't miss it. It's in a straight-away."

The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease announced it was funding a $280,000 study to determine if a chemical widely used in sexual lubricants makes anal sex safer for homosexuals.

Police in Orange County, Calif., found two boys, ages 5 and 10, who had been missing for 14 hours, after they apparently scared off their abductor when the 5-year-old started crying at a video arcade the man had taken them to. The suspect also left behind bags containing $800 he took from the boys' home and another $12,000 in cash that sheriffs Sgt. Jay Mendez admitted, "We don't know where it came from."

While fining Katie Nemeth, 19, who pleaded guilty to misusing a credit card by giving one she found to her boyfriend. Judge Shirley Strickland offered some advice: Dump your boyfriend, show your legs and find a doctor to marry. "Men are easy," the Cleveland judge elaborated. "You can go to sit in the bus stop, put on a short skirt, cross your legs and pick up 25. Ten of them will give you their money. If you don't pick up the first 10, then all you got to do is open your legs a little bit and cross them at the bottom and then they'll stop."

When TWA flight 800 exploded off New York in July, killing all 230 people on board, more than 6,000 people bet 8-0-0 in the next Connecticut lottery and won. The lottery collected $344,277 on the tickets, but had to pay out all of that, plus $678,170 more.

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Updated 22 May 1997