News Of The Weird-487

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

Paul Michael Callahan, 32, was arrested in Boston in August after, according to police, a short career as a bank robber, which started badly when Callahan tried to hold up the copy shop at Boston University, believing it was a bank. (The clerk asked, “Do you know you’re in a copy store and all we can give you is copies?”) Callahan fled but allegedly robbed a Fleet Bank branch a few minutes later (getting less than $200) and then a Citizen’s Bank branch, clearing about $2,500. However, the red-dye pack from Citizen’s exploded, distracting him, and then his getaway car got a flat tire, and police found him hiding in a gas station.

Among the recent idiosyncratic decrees by Turkmenistan’s megalomaniacal president-for-life, Saparmurat Niyazov: No publicly chewing “nas” (the country’s popular drug, partly tobacco, slacked lime and chicken droppings); television show hosts cannot wear makeup (because the president said he has difficulty distinguishing heavily made-up males from females); and an ice palace will be built in the heart of the country’s extremely hot desert so that children can learn to ski.

Initially, Florida artist Maria Alquilar refused to correct a series of misspelled names in a $40,000 historical mural she did for the city of Livermore, Calif., claiming that “words” were not important to her art, comparing her errors to Michelangelo’s “David” (imperfect in the sense that one of the testicles is lower than the other). After receiving much hate mail from Livermore taxpayers, suggesting that she must have a learning disability for not detecting “(Albert) Eistein,” “(William) Shakespere,” “(Paul) Gaugan,” “(Vincent) Van Gough,” and seven other misspellings, Alquilar agreed to fix her mural in early 2005 (but wants an additional $6,000 for her trouble).
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD