Book Review: More News of the Weird

A Fair Trade Book

Title: More News of the Weird

Author: Chuck Shepherd et al.

Feature's web site, from which primary author retired this summer: http://www.uexpress.com/news-of-the-weird

Date: 1990

Publisher: Plume / Penguin

ISBN: 0-452-26545-2

Length: 210 pages

Illustrations: drawings by Drew Friedman

Quote: "As a condition of the sale, members of the shaven-headed sect agreed to wear wigs so they wouldn't frighten the neighbors."

In the concluding section of this book, Shepherd and collaborators discuss the nature of weird news: "Most of the stories in News of the Weird are funny, but 'funny' is only a small subset of 'weird.'" Some true stories of "weird" violence are horrific: "But murders and mutilations...can hardly be learned from reading books...there is at least as much evidence that calling a problem to attention by ridicule might prevent or lessen the incidence of the problem." The collaborators "view ourselves mainly as recorders of human behavior," with some interest in the way "the study of strangeness gives us...faith that we're personally not so peculiar. Our work gives us the opportunity to tell ourselves, 'I thought I was a little strange, but then again, I never stood on the front lawn wrapped in aluminum foil.'"

One of the weirdest stories was later reprinted as The Concrete Enema. Yes, it seems a man allowed a very close friend to give him one. If you've ever wondered what that would feel like, this book provides the following hint: The lighthearted lavender lads confessed all in the hospital emergency room.

Also during the 1980s:

* "Appealing his prison-escape conviction...a convict said that he was just trying to escape the prison's 'drug-filled environment.'"

* "Three teenage boys...stole a woman's purse and tried...jumping onto a five-by-four-foot slab of ice floating down the Hudson River. They were stranded on the ice until rescued by police helicopter."

(Yes, those "Least Competent Criminals" stories have always been the hilarious highlights of "News of the Weird.")

* A man "rammed his car into ten trees and three street signs...Police quoted him as saying that he only gets that way when there is a lunar eclipse."

* "In 1989, people in Houston, Pontiac (Michigan), Miami, and Tampa committed suicide minutes after...minor traffic infractions."

* A man "filed a lawsuit asking $180,000...claiming damages from the church's preaching to him over the years to abstain from sex."

At some of Washington, D.C.'s Metro stations, in the early 1980s, someone thought it was cute to name the drop-off lanes "Kiss & Ride." The original idea was supposed to have been housewives dropping off their commuter husbands. My school friends liked to chortle over the possibilities: "Kiss the bus? Kiss the driver?" Sure enough, in New York, in 1989 a school bus driver was "accused...of molesting several child passengers...by establishing a 'kiss the driver' day."

In the 1990s everyone chortled over the weird news item that a North Carolina traffic cop pulled over "one of those guys who think they're Richard Petty," only to discover that the driver was Richard Petty, King of NASCAR, newly retired from racing and a serious candidate for elected office. In the 1980s the bar of weirdness had already been set higher than that: "H. John Rogers, a candidate for the U.S. Senate...had just been detained four days at a Wheeling mental health center for spitting in the face of a police chief," and, when asked whether Rogers thought this incident would affect his campaign, "Rogers...got up...and punched [the interviewer] in the face." (And you thought the Alabama special election was "Strange"?)

Some ask whether "News of the Weird" is real news. It is. Watch your local newspaper carefully, and you can marvel at the number of weird stories that just don't rate weird enough for Shepherd's carefully selected weekly column. From my part of the world, the report of a convict in the Sullivan County, Tennessee, jail having seriously complained that "we are treated like criminals" made "News of the Weird," but the story of the Hawkins County man who managed to violate the traffic code in nineteen ways in one ride didn't make it...I suppose anybody who really wants to lose their license and/or go to jail can think of lots of different ways to violate traffic codes, all at once.

Regular features in "News of the Weird" do, however, include art projects and grant proposals, where the weirdness is fed by the need to make each project original. The painting-buying public may believe there's room for another landscape painter known for realistic portrayals of natural light, like Thomas Kincade, but nobody's going to get an award from one of those foundations by proposing to paint beautiful sunlit landscapes. The religious image defaced with dung was merely the art project that made headlines in the 1990s. Gems of art, science, and miscellaneous inventiveness immortalized in this book include:

* "a restaurant in a suburb of Winnipeg...called 'The Outhouse,' built on the theme of toilets," shut down "because it lacked adequate restrooms."

* "a pistol-shaped package that allowed children to drink...juice by holding the barrel in their mouths and squeezing a trigger."

* "a bumper sticker...'Have You Slugged Your Kid Today?'"

* "an art show...of elaborate drawings...done on Etch-A-Sketch, at prices from $200 to $500."

* a wheat product that "could be used to manufacture...lightweight armor, a wood substitute, and pasta."

And pages 98-99 document a real incident, in 1982, that inspired Felice Holman's novel The Blackmail Machine.

There are quite a few subcategories in the ever-popular "Least Competent Criminals" section of "News of the Weird," and I'm not even going to try to pick out highlights. Buy the book and pick your own top five. If you laugh at stories where criminals punish and/or incriminate themselves, never read any "News of the Weird" column or collection in public.

Despite a number of un-funny, chilling stories most stories in "News of the Weird" are funny, and there's a high probability that reading this collection may cause not only inappropriate laughter but also inadvertent coffee mis-breathing, or should that be mal-spiration, or maybe you have a more yuppified phrase for the phenomenon of workers snorting coffee onto their computer keyboards? It's recommended for bathroom and bedtime reading.

When Shepherd retired, vintage "News of the Weird" books became collectors' items rather fast. This one has actually been reprinted, so Shepherd probably prefers that you buy it as a new book, but you can get News of the Weird, More News of the Weird, Beyond News of the Weird, and The Concrete Enema, together, for $5 per book plus $5 for the package plus $1 per online payment, from the address at the very bottom of the screen. That's $25 (or $26) for the four-book set, until the publisher offers reprints as a set.