East Dublin, Ga. (in July), and Athens, Texas (in August), sponsored their own versions of Redneck Games, with events such as mud-pit belly-flopping, seed-spitting and making armpit music (Georgia), as well as (in Texas) “red-neck horseshoes” (played with toilet seats), a Spam-and-jalapeno-eating contest, a mattress chuck, men bobbing for raw animal parts in tomato paste, and the ever-popular coed butt crack contest. Wrote the San Antonio Express-News: “There was something strangely arresting about watching 10 serious-faced guys grind away at pink bricks of Spam while Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to Be Wild’ boomed from the loudspeakers.”
NOT MY FAULT!
Amy Mueller filed a lawsuit recently against Samy’s Bar and Grill in Joliet, Ill., after she willingly tried to climb onto the bar to dance in May 2006 but fell and broke her ankle. Samy’s should have had a “ladder” or other climbing aid, said Mueller’s lawyer.
COMPELLINGEXCUSES
Cheveon Ford, 21, was arrested in Pensacola, Fla., in July and charged with making false 911 calls; according to authorities, Ford’s only explanation was that he had no more minutes on his phone and knew that 911 calls were free. And in Rochester, N.Y., in June, Eric Kennedy, 38, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for molesting an underage girl over a three-year period, which he partly attributed to his poor eyesight, in that at times he might have mistaken the girl for her mother, with whom he was living.
PURE IRONY
Florida state Rep. Bob Allen was a co-sponsor earlier in 2007 of legislation to increase the penalty for “public lewdness and indecent exposure,” such as trolling for sex partners in public restrooms (upping the crime from a misdemeanor to a felony). The bill did not pass, which was lucky for Rep. Allen, who was arrested in July in a men’s room in Titusville when undercover officers said he entered and exited three times in the space of a few minutes, peered over a restroom stall and offered oral sex for $20.
GRRLZZ WITH ATTITUDE
A 12-year-old girl was sentenced in Perth, Australia, in July to two months’ detention for stealing a car and leading police on a harrowing high-speed chase. According to court records, she has already been convicted of more than 60 crimes. And seven-year-old Alisha told reporters in Reidsville, N.C., in August that she was just being a good daughter when she challenged the man who tried to rob her mom (a convenience store clerk). “I was pushing on him and telling him to ‘back away, back away, man.’” Her aggressiveness foiled the robbery, but the man got away. Said Alisha, “He should be locked up by his gills and towed to the police.”
FINE POINTS OF THE LAW
In July, a federal appeals court ruled that no one could challenge President Bush’s order permitting warrantless eavesdropping on phone calls into and out of the United States, unless it was a person actually eavesdropped on. However, according to law professors cited by the Los Angeles Times, anyone who could prove that would be barred under other national security laws from revealing that fact in public. MTW
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