Archive for March, 2011

High school students in the “Show Me” state will get an eyeful if they Google their teacher, a retired porn actress.

Why hire an investigator to background teachers when students will do it for free?

The science teacher, Tera Dye, asked for the rest of the year off after Parkway North students in suburban St. Louis figured out she’d appeared in pornagraphic films as “Rikki Andersin” in the 1990s, according to a CBS station in Chesterfield, Mo.

Amazingly, she will be paid to not work. Maybe that’s why school districts are always strapped for cash?

Less amazingly, Dye passed a background check, which probably meant the school system hired Inspector Clouseau to check out her Facebook page for signs of drinking on vacation.

Seems like they would have heard that she left a nearby school system for the same reason a few years earlier. She was suspended with pay from that job too.

“I’m a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who’s made a lot of bad decisions in life,” Dye said in …

Continue reading Teacher quits after students find old porn videos »

Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s  final ride is for sale on eBay for a mere $1.5 million.

Zero to 60 in less than 3 minutes.

The 1996 Lincoln Town Car hearse is located in Huntersville, N.C., and has 115,000 miles on it. That’s less than 50,000 laps at the Daytona 500 where ”The Intimidator” died in 2001 after his No. 3 car slammed into a wall while going 160 mph.

According to the New York Daily News, someone bought the hearse for only $8,800 in 2010. The long black ride lists a cassette player among its features; perfect for playing Red Sovine’s Greatest Hits.

As of Wednesday morning, eBay had received no bids. The auction ends Monday.

I can’t be sure, but this may be a sign to sell off those stacks of commemorative NASCAR plates.

Continue reading Dale Earnhardt’s hearse for sale on eBay »

Minnesota police say young men who want to see strippers are less likely to be crime victims if they go to strip clubs.

The Clermont Motor Hotel, aka Ponce's bastion of safety.

“If you want to go and see some strippers, go to the legitimate clubs that we have all over the metro area. At least it is safe, somewhat safe, in there, opposed to having somebody come to your home,” Minneapolis Lt. Mike Fossum told CBS station WCCO.

I agree. I’ve never been robbed at gunpoint by strippers at the Clermont, though I once felt forced to give Blondie $5 to walk away from my table.

I’ve also never gotten hammered with some buddies and decided to call up some Craigslist strippers at 2 a.m. That was the plan for a couple of guys in Minneapolis. They found some ladies on Craigslist and, soon after the women arrived, a group of men with guns stormed into their home.

They were forced at gunpoint to stay in a bathroom while their apartment was raided of valuables.

“Think before you go …

Continue reading Police: Avoid crime by going to strip clubs »

Secretly-recorded videotape has ended more than one career, but not Paris Hilton’s, sadly.

Now, it’s a National Public Radio exec’s turn.

Diversity is a Tea Party tradition, as this sketch illustrates.

A tape released Tuesday shows NPR’s vice president of fundraising, Ron Schiller, saying members of the conservative Tea Party are “seriously racist, racist people.”

Schiller thought he was trying to get donations from the fictitious Muslim Action Education Center, but he was actually being filmed by filmmaker James O’Keefe, who is well-known for undercover chicanery, such as trying to seduce a CNN reporter.

Here’s the complete Schiller quote: Tea Partiers are ”Xenophobic, I mean basically they are; they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

Perhaps more suicidal, he said NPR “would be better off in the long run without federal funding.”

The best I can tell, NPR gets about 25 to 30 percent of its …

Continue reading ‘Punked’ NPR exec: Tea Party members are ‘racist’ »

Is it Friday yet?

The thought of grabbing a Friday night cheeseburger and cold beer is one of the things that keeps a working man toiling.

I typically burn out of the office at 6:59 p.m. and head for one of several favorite Decatur haunts. I’ll be eating a lot more pizza after checking reports by inspectors with the DeKalb County Board of Health.

Scores should be easily viewable in any restaurant you visit. I used to manage a pub, and there’s no excuse for anything lower than a score in the 90s. I once heard a rumor that Cracker Barrel managers got fired for anything less than 100, but that must not be true.

Here’s some of my favorite watering holes and their most recent health department score.

100 – Fellini’s (Decatur) – 10/20/1020

94 – The Brick Store Pub – 1/31/2011

90 – The Thinking Man Tavern – 10/1/2010

87 - Raging Burrito – 6/24/2010

87 – James Joyce – 7/26/2010

83 – Leon’s Full Service – 1/5/2011

82 – Universal Joint – 8/27/2010

81 – Fox Brothers BBQ – 11/02/2010 …

Continue reading Cool Decatur pubs with uncool health reports »

President Barack Obama, all politics aside, is a trail blazer.

President Obama has been known to drink a beer while campaigning or during high-profile meetings.

Not only has he read every Harry Potter book, but he is the first president to have beer brewed in the White House.

The blog Obama Foodorama reported this week that the 44th president served homemade  ”White House Honey Ale” at a Super Bowl party in January. The beer was brewed in the White House.

The honey came from Michelle Obama’s garden beehive, another White House first. About 100 12-ounce bottles were served and all were gone by the end of the party.

The Foodorama article says Obama is the first president since George Washington to homebrew beer, and since Washington never lived in the White House, Obama (or his chef) is the first to stew up a hoppy concoction at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The White House will release the recipe after a few tweaks.

The 39th president, Georgia’s Jimmy Carter, who has a …

Continue reading Obama first to brew beer in White House »

Most everyone has a smartphone these days. My vintage Google G1 phone battery lasts about as long as a newsroom doughnut, but it’s hanging in there.

Mmm … market share tastes like Apple, BlackBerry.

With all the iPhone/Verizon hype, you’d expect Apple to be dominating the mobile OS market. But info released today by The Nielsen Company, the same folks who try to guess what you are watching on TV, says the Android army of phones has helped Google’s baby claim the top spot in the United States.

It’s not a fair comparison between Android and Apple, since the Android OS can run on a toaster or a hundred different species of phone while the Apple OS is limited to iPhones and iPads. The business-centric BlackBerry, the former No. 1, will continue to lose market share in my opinion.

Nielsen said Thursday that 29 percent of consumer smartphone users use the Android OS, while Apple and BlackBerry are tied at 27 percent. Windows has 10 percent. Palm, Symbian and “other” share the …

Continue reading Android top mobile OS; geezers prefer iPhones »

Fewer teens are having sex, and no one knows why, exactly.

A study by the Centers for Disease Control, released Thursday, indicates those between the ages of 15 to 24 are having 4 percent less sex than a decade ago. The study is based on about 5,300 young people, apparently none of them from the Atlanta area.

Meth, the "ugly stick" of a new generation.

I have a few crackpot theories that can easily explain away that 4 percent dip, feel free to share yours. Please keep it clean.

WHY YOUNG PEOPLE ARE HAVING LESS SEX

** Meth is the drug of choice in rural areas, and have you seen how those people look?

** More young ladies are emulating Snooki, from Jersey Shore, and the men they know are too busy vomiting to work the magic.

** When you meet them in real life, no one looks as good as their Facebook (Match.com, e-Harmony, etc.) profile pic.

** Someone is telling kids that sex leads to babies and raising babies isn’t the funnest thing an 18-year-old can be doing.

** Free online …

Continue reading Theories on why teens are having less sex »

• A gun-toting Smyrna motorist pulled over by police for having tinted covers over his license plate claimed to be an undercover MARTA cop. He held up a walkie-talkie and said “See, I’ve got my radio.” Sensing real cops aren’t that dumb, the real Cobb County police officer asked for a badge number and called MARTA, but someone there said the man was employed as a radio technician. He was arrested for impersonating a police officer and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.
• A Powder Springs man who wanted to be a police officer learned you can be arrested for claiming to have a GED when you don’t.
• An Atlanta man called police to say he was drunk and “disoriented” and sitting in his Volvo at the Burger King on Metropolitan Parkway.
• It’s hard to smoke in jail when there’s a working smoke detector, which explains why a Cobb County inmate got in so much trouble for ripping the device from the ceiling of cell J144.
• A Douglas County …

Continue reading Police (Off)Beat | It’s tough being a cop, especially a fake one »

The Internet has made a lot of things easier. Who were the starting pitchers for Game 6 of the 1991 World Series? Nowadays, your phone can settle that bar argument before the next beer hits the table.

Meet "Peggy," she love you long time.

Speaking of bars, they still beat online dating sites when it comes to romance, according to a  study funded by dating site e-Harmony. The study says 36 percent of those between 40 and 70 said their relationship began online. Only 23 percent of those in the 18 to 40 age group said the same.

Traditional routes to love are still most popular. Seventy percent of those polled said they met their match at bars or clubs, 67 percent got hooked up through friends or family.

Online romance has to be on the rise; you can’t watch TV without seeing young couples in love explaining how normal it is to seek a life partner online. I’m not so sure about that, it would always be awkward to tell the kids a computer mouse introduced you to their mom.

I’ve …

Continue reading Bars top online dating sites at love game »