Road Apples
March 2, 2009


Cracks, crocodiles, pink panties and pork

By Tim Sanders

Humor columnists often take a back seat to "serious journalists." That is because serious journalists almost never get carsick. Actually, it is because serious journalists write about things like how the current administration relies heavily on Keynesian macroeconomics to explain the global banking crisis, while humor columnists write about how the Three Stooges relied heavily on Curly Howard to explain the old "B-I, Bicky Bi" alphabet song. Our topics may not be as weighty, but we humorists console ourselves with the knowledge that, deep down inside, way more people are interested in the late Curly Howard than are interested in the late John Maynard Keynes.

There, I just had to get that off my chest. The rest of this column will deal with some news articles which I’ve encountered over the past few days. They are the kinds of articles that serious journalists would not waste their time reviewing, but which tend to inspire a humor columnist to study them and pass them along to his readers.


1. A February 26, 2009 AP article actually carried the following headline: "COP MAKES ARREST IN BATHROOM AFTER SMELLING CRACK"

It is the kind of headline which would not interest a serious Journalist, but which draws a humor columnist to it like a moth to a flame. We can’t help ourselves; we must know more.

So we read the article, and of course are both disappointed and relieved at the same time. The report, from Elkton, Maryland, relates how Cecil County Sheriff’s Deputy John Lines, while waiting to use the bathroom at a Wawa convenience store, smelled crack cocaine and arrested a 27-year-old, glassy-eyed man when he came out of the bathroom carrying drug paraphernalia.

While the story itself isn’t worth much, on a scale of 1 to 10 the headline rates a 12.


2. Another story which caught our attention appeared on February 24. It was written by Doug Phillips of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, and we are absolutely certain that Mr. Phillips is a serious journalist. The headline in this case is: "Florida gives magnets a chance to thwart too-close-for-comfort crocodiles"
Now granted, this headline contained two words you seldom find within a mile of each other: "crocodiles" and "magnets." But to the trained humorist it is the story itself, not the headline, which seems to offer the richest material.

Apparently there are several thousand wild crocodiles roaming the suburbs in south Florida. When these reptiles are transported out of heavily populated areas to more suitable surroundings, they often manage to find their way back to where they were originally captured. The crocs seem to have a natural GPS device in their brains, and as Lindsey Horde, Crocodile Response Coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, says: "Scientists in Mexico have reported success in using magnets to break the homing cycle." So now Florida conservationists are following suit, and the article even carries with it a fine photo of a crocodile with a pair of magnets–one on each side of his head–held in place by several feet of black electrical tape. The idea is that the magnets will scramble the crocodile’s brain waves while he is being transported, so that he will not remember the road signs along the way and will be forced to stay where he is deposited when the tape and the magnets are removed.

A serious journalist, if he were to read that article, would probably say to himself, "Gee, I sure hope them crocodile magnets work." A humor columnist, on the other hand, would slap his knee and chuckle, and propose leaving the magnets taped to the crocodiles, and simply placing a large refrigerator in the shallows of whatever lake they were exiled to. We may not know science, but most of us have wives, and we understand magnets and refrigerators.


3. I particularly enjoyed an article by Jeff Lehr in the February 23 Joplin (Mo.) Globe. It told the story of a 54-year-old homeless man, Ronald J. Rozycki, who pleaded guilty in Joplin’s Jasper County Circuit Court to second-degree burglary on February 23 and is now awaiting sentencing.

"The charge stems from his arrest the morning of October 25, 2007, inside the Kohl’s store at 301 S. Geneva Ave. Store employees arriving for work were greeted by the sight of a man walking about the store in a pink camisole and pink panties taken from the store’s racks.

Police were called, and officers found the man asleep beneath a blanket at the back of the store. Nine pairs of panties and four bras were found in a pile near where Rozycki was sleeping, leading police to believe he had been trying on a number of the store’s undergarments for women.”


Those stories are all grist for the humorists’ mill. Oh sure, we could discuss the many recent articles about how the new $410 billion House Spending Bill contains hardly any earmarks, unless you count $238,000 to the Polynesian Voyaging Society of Honolulu, which organizes voyages in ancient style sailing canoes; $475,000 to "improve and expand" the Italian American Museum in New York’s Little Italy; $4.5 million for Jerrold Nadler’s new park development in Manhattan; $950,000 to convert a railroad bridge over the Hudson River into a walkway; over $1 million for mosquito trapping in Gainesville, Florida; $2.2 million to study grape genetics in New York; $1.7 million for "Swine Odor and Manure Management Research" in Iowa; and $200,000 for a "Tattoo-Removal Violence-Outreach program in Los Angeles. We wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that the bill contains several million more to provide crack sniffing bathroom patrol dogs to police in Maryland, crocodile magnets to the good people of Dade County, Florida, and pink camisoles and panties to homeless cross-dressers in Joplin, Missouri. We could blather on about the 9,000 other non-earmarked earmarks in the bill, but that stuff isn’t funny any more, only depressing. We’ll leave the big money talk to the serious journalists. We’re feeling a little carsick.