STYLING IT ON
Time magazine reported in August that among the entrants in this year’s “Detroit Hair Wars” (showcasing 34 stylists working with 300 models) were The Hummer (stylist: “Little Willie”), in which a mass of extensions is shaped to resemble the vehicle, including four large tires—with “metal” wheels and front grid added—sitting upon the styled hair of model Sharv Bailey; and Beautiful Butterfly (stylist: Niecy Hayes), featuring extensions thinned, teased and stretched into four artistic “wings” arising from the styled hair of model Taja Hiu. Both stylings appear to be at least 2 feet long, dwarfing the models’ heads, and take at least 10 hours to prepare.
HERE’S A TIP, WAITRESSES: BE HOT
After surveying 374 waitresses, professor Michael Lynn, who teaches marketing and tourism at Cornell University, concluded that customers left larger tips to those with certain physical characteristics such as being slender, being blond or having big breasts. Lynn told the Cornell Daily Sun in May that his study was important in helping potential waitresses gauge their “prospects in the industry.”
PERVERTS ON PARADE
(1) James Burden, 55, was convicted of indecent exposure in Scotland’s Falkirk Sheriff Court in June based on a March incident when a neighbor looked out her window before dawn and saw Burden, naked, smoking a cigarette and masturbating while bouncing on her family’s outdoor trampoline. Burden said he did not know anyone would be watching at that hour. (2) In New Zealand’s Auckland District Court in June, Judge Mary Beth Sharp dismissed an elderly male juror from a trial involving sexual abuse because the man disclosed, under questioning, that he had worn a condom under his clothes in the jury box because the testimony was making him aroused.
SEEING SPOTS
“Traditional medicine” practitioner Pham Thi Hong is credited with freeing three men who had been convicted of a rape in 2000 and were serving 16-year prison sentences. According to Hong, men with certain small spots on their ears are virgins, and since the men still have their spots, they could not have committed rape. Although Vietnam’s President Nguyen Minh Triet was reportedly impressed with Hong’s work and thus ordered the case re-opened, discovery of additional errors by police and prosecutors contributed to the recent decision to release the men.
LIKE CHOCOLATE, ONLY MORE DISGUSTING
News of the Weird has been among those taunting the Scottish over the years for their culinary devotion to haggis (sheep’s stomach, boiled, with liver, heart or lung, accompanied by oatmeal, suet, onions and various spices), but the Edinburgh chocolatier Nadia Ellingham recently answered—with “haggis chocolates,” which are thankfully meat-free but contain the familiar haggis spices.
INCOMPETENT CRIMINALS
(1) Harry Jackson, 26, was in jail in Woodbine, Georgia, in March, on several minor charges such as driving on a suspended license. However, acceding to pressure from fellow inmates brought on by the jail’s non-smoking policy, Jackson agreed to break out, steal cigarettes at a nearby convenience store and break back in. “Don’t come back empty-handed,” one inmate supposedly warned him. Jackson was apprehended climbing back in over a fence. In May, a judge sentenced him, for the earlier charges plus the escape and subsequent burglary, to 20 years. (2) Royce Spottedbird Jr., 23, apparently once thought it cool to have his name tattooed on his neck. However, when he was pulled over in a routine traffic stop in April in Butte, Montana, and feared a warrant might be out on him, he gave the officer a bogus name. When he could not explain what “Royce Spottedbird Jr.” was doing on his neck, he was detained for obstruction of justice and eventually pleaded guilty. (And he was wrong about the warrant.)
Comments
comments