Counting down 2010’s strangest news stories – Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
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THE ECONOMY may be in the dumps for a third straight year, but 2010 saw a spike in one welcome area: weird news.
From coffee-drinking dogs to pot-purveying barbers, the Inland Valley saw a standout year, humor-wise. I had a hard time culling my collection of odd news stories to a mere 10. They’re presented in descending order, from 10 to 1.
Joblessness persists, but thanks to the year’s silliest newsmakers, jokelessness is not an issue.
Can citizens at least watch ‘Dancing With the Stars’?
They’re not footloose in Diamond Bar, where nightclubs are banned and city leaders ruled in January that dancing won’t be allowed in any new restaurants or bars either. Dancing at two existing bars will be grandfathered in – and in the city young people nickname Diamond Bore, perhaps only grandfathers are dancing.
We always cry at fake weddings
Pomona then-Councilman Tim Saunders invited 300 people to his wedding at the Fox Theater in August but didn’t disclose to guests that, oops, he’d just learned he was still married to his first wife. Voters retired Saunders in November, which should give him time to sort things out.
I’m a wreck without my morning coffee and chew toy
In April, a City News feature profiled Rosey, a 16-year-old dachshund in Rancho Cucamonga that slurps Costco coffee with cream each morning. The elixir of youth for this canine equivalent of a 112-year-old? Arf!
Is my watch 13 minutes slow?
When the chimes in Pomona College’s Bixby Plaza clocktower were started up again in November after 10 years of silence, students decided they should ring on the 47th minute of each hour, from 9:47 a.m. to 5:47 p.m. weekdays.
This ties into a tongue-in-cheek tradition on campus to “prove” that the number 47 appears in nature more often than any other random figure.
At the inaugural bell-ringing, the first 47 guests – the ones who remembered the ceremony began at 5:47 p.m. – received a clock necklace.
‘Counting money. What are you doing?’
Testimony in then-Rancho Cucamonga Councilman Rex Gutierrez’s corruption trial included the tidbit that he exchanged 350 phone calls in 22 months with millionaire developer Jeff Burum, for an average of a call every other day.
The pair also spoke by phone seven times – each call lasting under 30 seconds – during a council meeting.
As the IE Weekly’s George Donovan put it: “Why can’t these dudes just Poke each other on Facebook the way normal folks do?”
What part of ‘irony’ don’t they understand?
In November, an anti-illegal immigration activist from Upland was turned away from a cruise to Mexico because she didn’t know she had to have a passport. The law went into effect in June 2009. As a reader on our website put it: “She should be proud she got what she was fighting for, secure borders.”
Business in the front, party in the back
At Groom Time barber shop in Pomona, the owner was arrested in May after police said a search of his car parked behind the shop turned up marijuana packaged to sell.
It was the bust that launched a thousand jokes. “That smell…was not aftershave,” cracked the L.A. Times. I.E. Weekly speculated that the shop’s magazine rack held High Times, not Maxim.
I’m wondering if, at Groom Time, the time is always 4:20.
Where a speech really is an address
Under Mayor John Pomierski, Upland’s state of the city events are breaking the mold. In 2008, Pomierski delivered his speech in Ontario, where he claimed the state of Upland was strong despite its lack of meeting facilities.
In 2010, the speech was never spoken. Instead, it was printed and delivered to residents by mail to avoid the expense of a ceremony. Punch and cookies were not mailed separately.
OMG, they’re supremely out of touch
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court took up an Ontario lawsuit involving text messaging and, during oral arguments, seemed unclear what text messages are.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who is known to write legal opinions in longhand, asked the difference “between e-mail and a pager.”
Antonin Scalia didn’t know about service providers – “you mean it doesn’t go right to me?” – and wondered if racy texts were ever printed out on paper and shared.
I can’t wait until the justices hear a case about “Twilight.”
And our No. 1 weird news story of the year:
Suddenly, at the lifestyle center, a shot rang out
A gun brought to an outdoors store in Victoria Gardens in May for use in the firing range discharged unexpectedly at the front desk.
Blam! The bullet traveled 40 yards across the cavernous Bass Pro Shops showroom and struck a woman shopper in the keister, although the spent round didn’t penetrate the skin.
The shooting was immortalized in the Daily Bulletin under the plainspoken headline “Woman hit in butt at Bass Pro Shops.”
Among the lingering questions: Was the hunter disappointed the woman couldn’t be displayed as a trophy?
And does “Bass” have one letter too many?
David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, which also don’t penetrate the skin. E-mail david.allen@inlandnewspapers.com, call 909-483-9339 or write 2041 E. Fourth St., Ontario 91764. Read his blog at www.dailybulletin.com/davidallenblog
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