Bearly Surprising

From the files of "I Can't Believe This Doesn't Happen More Often" we are taken to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (which may or may not be where Borat was from) where we learn from AOL wire services that an "...ice-skating bear turned on its trainers, killing one and seriously wounding another." Uh-huh. Sounds about right. And?

See, this is where I was surprised to learn that a) there was more to this story and b) that it was being considered "a story". I don't know how much of a story it is that a bear gets pissed off because someone has the audacity to put ice skates on it, give it a Dorothy Hamill haircut (I'm assuming, of course) and force it to skate around to entertain the masses. But let's look into it and see what the media left out, shall we?

According to the BBC, "Bears on ice are common in Russian circuses. Some are equipped with helmets and sticks and trained to play hockey." Translation: This will happen again. It's just a matter of whether it will be in a circus or on an ice hockey rink.

Trained to play hockey?! Good Lord, man! What is wrong with you people?! What part of BEAR don't you understand?! Sure, sure, a bear playing hockey is cute; novel even. But that's why there are CARTOONS. We should be drawing cartoons with bears playing hockey instead of actually getting a freaking bear and making it play hockey!

What's the point of that, anyway? It's not like the bear could ever join a league, could it? You can't just have various Russian hockey teams decide that they're going to add a BEAR to their lineup one night, can you? I don't think that sounds wise at all. Again, it sounds wacky and highly entertaining, but what say some Russian fellow churn out a graphic novel of sorts and we go about being amused by the denizens of the forest in civilized situations that way, eh?

But I digress. Back to the mauling. "Kyrgyz officials said the bear turned on the manager, 25-year-old Dmitry Potapov, during a rehearsal." (By the way, the pronunciation of Kyrgyz is unknown and thus, completely unpronounceable. Can't they buy a vowel or something?) "The bear, who had skates on at the time, severely mauled another circus worker who tried to rescue the manager."

They feel the need to make it clear that the bear was actually wearing the ice skates at the time. It's as if they want to make sure that we know that the bear might not have just been lounging about on some sort of break or had refused to skate that day or something. No, the bear was officially wearing the skates. See, to me that only illustrates further why this happened. It's a BEAR. Bears don't wear skates. I swear! Look it up! You'll see. Lots of bears, but no....? Skates, that is correct.

Here's the part that always bothers me: "(Unpronounceable) police shot and killed the bear when they arrived on the scene." See, why did the bear have to be killed? The bear was only being a bear! That's what bears do! They maul people that make them wear ice skates and twirl about. It's right there in the name --- BEAR!!

And here is what all of these sorts of incidents always have in common. That would be the cluelessness of either the bloke writing up the account of the mauling or those investigating the mauling and telling the writing bloke of their findings. We always read: "It is not clear what caused the attack." Um, I think it's crystal clear.

You've got a bear, normally a denizen of the forest, being held captive by circus folk. The circus folk have somehow (through methods I'd prefer not to ponder and really don't want to know about, but a friend of mine says are really mean) managed to get the bear to comply to the point where the bear will ice skate and/or ride a bike, drive a little car, do a little dance, and probably make a little love and basically get down tonight. A bear, despite what we've all been led to believe, mainly by those Paddington folks who make 'em seem just cute as can be in a little coat and little hat, are mean creatures which will rip you limb from limb and then eat you from the inside out. They're mean effers.

What have we learned? Nothing I wouldn't think that we all didn't know before. Such a shame that the trainer (translation: bear captor) didn't read this blog. It could have saved his life.

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Michael Jackson and a Choir of Young Children

I told you there would be new weirdness surrounding Michael Jackson's upcoming concert series in London. There is! And it's weird all right! And if it's not weird, certain aspects of it are at the very least, extremely questionable. Not much of it sounds like a good idea. But let's begin!

Every performer who puts on some sort of concert usually has a theme for the show. It seems to often center around whatever the 'theme' is of the most recent album that they've released is. (Are we still calling them 'albums'? I know CDs isn't right because we're kind of past CDs and onto MP3s. But are they still albums? Please advise.) As you can imagine Jacko's theme is centered somewhere in the middle of his swirling universe of disconnected reality. But you can decide after reading the headline from over yonder across the pond at The Telegraph: "Michael Jackson Issued Demand for Choir of Children." Ewww. Oh, and what the hell?

Seems that Michael needs the "choir of children" for his performances. (AT THE CONCERT! Try to focus!) In an email that was sent by Michael’s promoters to the casting agents, they requested a group of children for the show and "...that the group should be made up of “exactly equal” numbers of black, white, mixed-race and Asian children." Because we have to be fair even during a comeback tour of a pop music super icon? I'm not thinking it's that so much as it is that Michael's just weird. Maybe weird is too harsh of a term. Damaged. He's definitely damaged.

So he wants a whole bunch of children to surround him while he's on stage? Is he going to be able to remember to sing? That seems awfully distracting for him. It'd be like a fat guy on stage surrounded by pizzas, wouldn't it? If it's not distracting for him, I think it might be a little bit for the audience. Especially since, according to the specifically worded email, "...the child choir must comprise singers ranging from five to 13." So, parents....are you going to let your five to thirteen year old child participate in Michael Jackson's comeback tour child choir? They'll get to be on stage with him! He might spend a lot of time with them! I'm sure there will be sleepovers in the hotel and all kinds of fun! Egads.

Now, he doesn't want to be surrounded by just any equal numbered, wide selection of varied races of singing children. Oh, no, not Michael. Not only should these children know how to sing, it's imperative that the group "...should include six marching snare drummers who must be “young adults, clean-cut and of mixed ethnicity”. Because he's going to launch into some sort of comeback production number of The Little Drummer Boy as well? Snare drummers? Who needs six snare drummers? Who needs one snare drummer?

Michael does. He needs six and he's serious, as the email also stated "They must be real drummers so please do not waste our time suggesting people who are not.” Do people DO that? Send in drummers that aren't real drummers? That seems like a futile effort. I'd like to see those auditions. ("You're the snare drummer?" "That's me!" "OK. Here. Show us what you can do with this." "What is that?" "It's a SNARE DRUM! NEXT!")

So what does he want exactly? A bunch of five to thirteen year old children who are of different races with each race being represented by the same number of children so that they can sing onstage with him. (Is he starring in a new Coke commercial? Is he teaching the world to sing for his comeback tour?) He also needs nicely groomed, young adult snare drummers to compliment his underaged choir there. It seems like a lot, but I think it's do-able. Oh, wait. I was wrong. No, it's going to be a pain in the ass because there's also "...an insistence that every child can do sign language."

Sign language?! At a music concert?! They don't have Jumbotrons over there in London? He can't have the words on a screen like one big karaoke night?! Why does a five year old who can sign need to know sign language? Who is going to be able to see them signing anyway? Have you ever seen a five-year old child's hand? It's approximately the size of a golf ball. You'd never understand what he was saying or gesturing or whatever it is. Are you kidding me?! Of course not. Because we're talking about Michael Jackson where nothing makes sense...until you remember that it's Michael Jackson and then, oddly enough, it all makes sense.

But even with the Michael Jackson disclaimer, would it make sense if I told you that the folks over at the extreme British tabloid The Sun were reporting a bit more in depth on a rumor that Jacko had also wanted a "disabled child" to appear with him on stage. They're saying he is "...looking for a child who is missing limbs or in a wheelchair to appear on stage with him at his O2 gigs." Um, wait. What now?

Yep. The Sun is saying that Jacko's promoters sent another email to "....London casting agencies asking for a kid for a film. But a source said it’s a decoy to stop tour secrets leaking." While that could be a possibility, the decoy part, I'm thinking that they could have come up with something a little less twisted and bizarre to serve as a decoy! Throw Brooke Shields back into the mix! Where's the Home Alone kid?! I think just about anything would be better than saying that he's on the hunt for a limbless youngster. It's really just in bad taste all the way around, true or not. Besides, what if the kid they find has no arms? How are they going to do all the sign language? I don't think they thought this one through!

I could cite a story from a one Daryl D who writes over there at The Examiner.com (and has some pretty interesting tidbits from his source(s) that I haven't read anywhere else. Good stuff!) and delve into how he was originally schedule to perform the song "Dirty Diana". Shirtless. But for reasons which we should all just be thankful of regardless as to what they were, that segment of the concerts has been scrapped. Whew! Had me worried there for a minute. (Had me screaming there for a minute , too. Good Lord, could you imagine?) But I'll just skip over that for now because there are a couple of other things that he's going to need as well. Hopefully they won't be as difficult to obtain and secure and the children will (strictly figuratively speaking). Yeah, he's going to need an elephant. I'm not kidding.

Again, our friends over there at The Telegraph tell us that Michael plans "...to make his entrance on an elephant and have panthers led on stage on gold chains." ::: blink ::: ::: blink ::: Of course he does. You think he's just going to stop at an elephant and what would appear to be more than one panther? No way. He's come this far. No sense in going ahead with everything unless he can "...engage the services of 100 Masai warriors for the 50 gigs in July." Masai warriors? From Masai?! I mean, Kenya. From Kenya?! But wait! There's more!

In addition to all of the warriors and the panthers and the elephant, he is also said to be wanting, "...snakes, tropical birds and three monkeys for a set that will have a jungle, circus and weather theme." Of course he does.

What happened to Bubbles? Wasn't he a monkey? No, he was a chimp. Chimp. Monkey. Does it really matter? If you're at this concert, you're not going to know where to look or what to focus on. Michael Jackson. An elephant. Panthers. Gold chains. Masai warriors. Disabled children. Underage children. Sign language. Snare drummers. Parrots. A monkey. A snake. Another monkey. Bubbles the chimp. Emmanuel Lewis. Brooke Shields. Harry Houdini. A tornado. The rainforest. PT Barnum himself. I think it's entirely possible that people's heads could really explode!

According to the paper, "He hopes to make it the most spectacular gig ever. For the jungle section, he wants to ride out on an African elephant with panthers led on gold chains. Parrots and other birds will fly behind him. If it goes to plan it will look incredible." Oh, I guarantee that the whole spectacle will be just that. It will be spec-tacular. But I'm not so sure that it's going to be in a good way. Just out of curiosity, these parrots and "other birds" that will be flying behind him? Yeah, how's that going to work? Birds don't tend to get in line and "fly behind" people. This isn't Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs meets Mowgli and the Jungle Book, you know. Has he not heard of props? Mechanical....things?

But naturally, since animals are involved, we have to hear from the Captive Animals Protection Society and their director, a one Craig Redmond, who said: "Exploiting animals in this way really is a thing of the past and not something that someone like Michael Jackson should be doing." Who should be doing it? (By the way, speaking of all of the exploiting of the animals, where does one get a panther to lead an elephant on a gold chain these days?)

Mr. Redmond added, "It would be like a circus act – a practice opposed by most people in the UK – and we are appealing to him and his management not to spoil the show by using animals." Why, yes. Yes, it would be like a circus act. It's Michael Jackson. Hence the term "circus act." He is a circus act! But don't you worry, sir! I can pretty much guarantee that even if he uses animals in his show, it's pretty much a given it will not "spoil the show". It's going to be spec-tacular. (And I'm not necessarily referring just to the talent that I know that Michael once had and maybe he still does. I don't know. I just know that if people are entertained by the oddity that is experienced when Michael just ventures out into public to buy a new hyperbaric chamber to sleep in, imagine the entertainment when he gets to orchestrate his appearance! Getting rid of the elephant won't stop the "circus act" from occurring.)

Eccentricity is fine. But when it takes you to a place where there is no relief from said eccentricity, you're kind of just a step or two away from full blown insanity, really. I mean, how realistic is all of this, really? It doesn't seem to be very much so at all to me. His first concerts are about a month away. And he's just NOW trying to secure an elephant?! That seems like something you'd have wanted to put your deposit down on a long time ago. Don't these creatures have to be tamed and trained to do things? Oooh! Maybe four of the animals that he comes up with can be taught how to sing and he can sort of impromptu some Jackson 5 stuff! Like the Country Bears Jamboree! It'd be just the same as the real Jackson 5. Only with animals and it would sound nothing like the Jackson 5.

Good luck with all of this Michael. Maybe someone will put a call out to Macaulay Culkin and see if he knows how to beat your snare drum (no pun intended). Maybe that'll help. At the very least, it'd probably make him feel better.

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Friday's Foreign Press Files

Well, well, well. It is QUITE the day over yonder at the Metro.co.uk. Yep, quite the day. Where to begin, where to begin?

I suppose I could start in New Zealand, where a judge has banned two parents from continuing to have their child named "Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii." Yes, that was her GIVEN and REGISTERED name. (The poor girl told people that her name was "K" because she was so embarrassed and didn't want to be made fun of. And who wouldn't have done the same thing? Other than the two asshats who named her that. What in the hell are you people thinking?) The judge in the case ordered that the court take custody of the girl until her name could be formally changed, which they did and which it later was.

So, here are a few of the other names (chosen by different parents) that were also disallowed:

• Fish and Chips (Mmmm...fish and chips)
  
  
• Yeah Detroit (What? No "Woo-Hoo!" at the end of that?)


• Stallion (Yes, the baby looked just like Sly Stallone. I'm sure of it.)


• Twisty Poi (You can't twist poi, can you? It's like mashed potatoes. They don't twist.)
  
  
• Keenan Got Lucy (I had a dog named Lucy, so I find this one particularly disturbing.)
  
  
• Sex Fruit (Not that this will make this any better, but it was unclear to me if the last entry on this list was two separate names, ie 1. Keenan Got Lucy, 2. Sex Fruit, OR if it was, in fact, just one name, ie Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit. I just don't know. I think I'd prefer that it's just one name, because if it were TWO names, then that's just one more set of crazy parents out there and we really don't need that, do we?)

Um, WTF, people? Oh, wait. I should have held that comment back until after I shared a few of the names that WERE allowed:

• 16 Bus Shelter (Clearly, where the child was conceived. I can picture it now, although I'd rather not.)


• Benson and Hedges (Twins, it says. As if that makes it all right.)


• Midnight Chardonnay (I picture Midnight Chardonnay having a lot of Afternoon Tequila with a name like that.)


• Hitler (Yes, this child will grow up to be perfectly normal. Sure.)
  
  
• Cinderella Beauty Blossom (Oh, how I PRAY that this is a girl's name.)


• Violence (Again, should grow up perfectly normal. What could possibly go wrong?)

Over there at the recorder's office, Brian Clarke, the registrar general of Births, Deaths and Marriages, explained that the law in New Zealand disallows names that would "cause offense to a reasonable person". ( He also said that they disallow names with "more than 100 characters (glad they narrowed THAT down. Phew! Those folks wanting to name their "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" can now breathe a sigh of relief that they have 61 characters to spare.), that include titles or military rank or that include punctuation marks or numerals. (Thus explaining why it wasn't "Yeah! Detroit!! #1!! Woooo!!"

So, "Stallion" is NOT OK, but sign your kid up to be named "Hitler" because that's just FINE and dandy?! How is "Stallion" offensive to a reasonable person? I understand that it's not reasonable to a reasonable person, but offensive? Compared to "HITLER"?! I think not.

But wait! There's more! (I told you, The Metro is on a roll today!)

Then the Metro provides us with a story about a dwarf who was participating in a show called the Circus of Horrors (trust me, that name is beyond appropriate for this story). It was the aforementioned dwarf who "accidentally glued his penis to a vacuum cleaner."

Accidentally?!?! What in the hell was he trying to do? Which part of that sentence was involved in "the accident"? Was it the penis or was it the vacuum? Was he trying to glue his ASS to the vacuum and attached his minuscule unit instead? Was he trying to attach his schlong (or in this case, probably a schort) to a feather duster and got the Hoover instead? And how is trying to glue your penis to ANYTHING an accident!??! You know how to prevent those sorts of accidents? Exactly! By trying to NOT glue your penis to ANYTHING!

Captain Dan The Demon Dwarf (soon to be renamed Castrated Dan, Just An Idiot) "was taken to a hospital when he became stuck to the machine after misreading superglue instructions." Again, misreading WHAT exactly? The part that says, "If your penis has fallen off, please do not use our product to reattach it. Instead, seek medical help immediately. And bring your severed schlong with you!" Did he think it said "Please use our fabulous product to glue your penis to motorized residential cleaning apparati, and do it now!"?

I guess the gist of his "act" is that he pulls the vacuum across the stage with it attached to...you know....that. Somehow, it's supposed to be attached, but that came loose and so he used the glue to fix it. He only waited 20 seconds instead of 20 minutes before, um, reinsertion and that's when the problem became evident. It took the fine folks at the hospital (who are clearly paid no where near enough when it comes to dealing with things like this) about an hour to remove him from it.

Why not just turn the vacuum ON and use it's wondrous powers of suction to keep him attached to it? Or, better yet, here's another idea: Don't use your PENIS to pull a VACUUM CLEANER across a stage! (Or anything else for that matter! It wasn't meant for that! I might not have one, but I AM aware of the basic functions it performs, and vacuum relocation is NOT one of those functions!) I don't care how wild the crowd goes when you do it! Can't you juggle or do something more...you know...NORMAL and circus-y?

God, I love the foreign press.

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