Restaurants work to use more animal parts
A prominent chef once wrote, “If you’re going to kill the animal, it seems only polite to use the whole thing,” and recently restaurants specializing in such “nose-to-tail” cuisine have opened in several cities, according to a May report in Toronto’s National Post.
The hamburger at New York City’s Tasting Room includes cow heart, liver, bone marrow, tongue, flatiron, brisket, shank and clod. New York’s Casa Mono features dishes of lamb’s tongue, duck hearts and the red combs on top of the rooster’s head. San Francisco’s Incanto serves lamb necks, pig trotters and venison kidneys. Said Incanto’s executive chef, “It’s about viable cuts of meat that we have thrown into the trash can for years. … When it comes to food, we have been very wasteful.”
Not My Fault
Jessica Vasquez, 19, was arrested in Indianapolis in April for a road-rage assault, but swore she was only exercising self-defense. Her victim, an 81-year-old woman whom Vasquez said was driving too slow, had been punched in the face, yanked from her car and thrown to the ground, suffering leg fractures in 14 places.
Ironies
The graduation ceremony in May at Naperville (Ill.) Central High School was marred by the revelation that about half of the valedictorian’s speech was plagiarized from a speech on the Internet, but in this case, the principal was helpless to punish him because the principal plagiarized his own speech. (He said he forgot to ask permission of the author, a Naperville Central graduate who was in the audience that day.) The principal has been reassigned, and the valedictorian’s speech was removed from the graduation video.
‘ Hardcore Ironies: The prominent Texas personal injury attorney Brian Loncar, whose ubiquitous TV ads offer motorists a “strong arm” if they’ve been hurt by another driver’s negligence, landed in critical condition after a Dallas accident caused, said police, when Loncar’s 2008 Bentley failed to yield to an emergency vehicle and was struck by the speeding fire engine.
The Democratic Process
Legislating Love: (1) In April, Tommy Tabermann, a member of Finland’s parliament, submitted a bill to require one week’s paid vacation a year solely for romance, to counteract the country’s alarmingly high divorce rate.
(2) In April, Mayor Gonzalo Navarrete of the impoverished town of Lo Prado, Chile, ordered public money for funding up to four Viagra tablets a month to men over age 60, to improve “quality of life.”
‘ The longtime elected clerk of court in Pasco County, Fla., Jed Pittman, admitted to WTSP-TV in May that he rarely comes to work and in fact has researched state law to learn that as long as he shows up once every 43 days, he can’t be fired. (The law provides for removal by the chief judge only if the clerk is absent for “44” consecutive days.)
Pittman’s salary is about $136,000 a year, but he exploited another loophole in state law to “retire” in 2004, and then un-retire the next day, which brings him an additional $75,000 a year (besides the $362,000 lump sum he received on the day he “retired”).
Least Competent Criminals
Wesley Jumper, 36, and Shawn Stewart, 36, were arrested in Charles County, Md., in April and charged with running out of a CVS store with about $500 worth of soap and shampoo. Their easy-to-spot getaway vehicle was the Good Humor ice cream truck Stewart works from at his day job.
Recurring Themes
News of the Weird reported on “objectophilia” in June 2007, based on a prominent German therapist’s belief that people can develop romantic-type relationships with inanimate objects. In May 2008, Britain’s Channel Five produced a documentary with on-camera interviews with several such “mechaphiles,” including a 57-year-old American from Washington state who claims his “girlfriend” is a white Volkswagen Beetle, and a 54-year-old woman in Sweden who claims she has been “married” to the Berlin Wall since 1979.
News That Sounds
Like a Joke
(1) In April, as the police officer approached the motorist relieving himself on the side of the road in South Kitsap, Wash., the man explained that he had consumed “a bunch” of beers but was not driving drunk. According to the officer, the man said he was slurring his words because “his dentist advised him his mouth was too big for his tongue.”
(2) Comedian Aries Spears pleaded guilty in April to assaulting a woman in the audience during his act at a New York City club. Said prosecutor Elizabeth Pederson, ridiculing Spears’ initial explanation: “You can’t high-five a woman’s breast.”
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