I just read that Larry Harmon, one of the men (there were several) who dressed up as Bozo the Clown, died at the age of 83 from congestive heart failure. According to the article I read, Harmon was the one largely responsible for popularizing Bozo around the country, as he came up with the idea of licensing the character and training others to act like him.

I grew up watching the Chicago version, which starred Bob Bell as Bozo. The show was on every morning at 7:00 and I’d tune in while I was eating breakfast and getting ready for school. I didn’t care much for the comedy segments between Bozo and Cookie, but I absolutely LOVED the Grand Prize Game. I thought the kids who were chosen for the game were so lucky, and I was sooo jealous when one of them won the $50 bill and the brand-new Schwinn bicycle. I would have loved going to a taping of the show, but never did.

Anyway, it was sad to hear about Harmon’s passing today. The Bozo Show is definitely a fond memory from my childhood!

One of the front page stories on Yahoo! news this morning was about a problem with McKinney High School yearbooks. Apparently, the printing company contracted to produce the yearbooks went a little crazy with Photoshop and royally screwed things up. The company, Lifetouch National School Studios in Minnesota, stretched, mangled, switched, and otherwise altered photos of students throughout the pages of the book.

No real explanation was given for all of these alterations, though a spokeswoman for Lifetouch said that the school insisted that all the students’ heads be the same size and eyes be on the same level. Apparently, Lifetouch employees took that as license to run amok with their image editing tools.

This is definitely a strange story, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a “scandal” as Yahoo! did. Give me a break!!!

(In the photo I’ve posted, apparently the girl’s neck is stretched out longer than it is IRL.)

Just how stupid can people be? Actor Dennis Farina was arrested yesterday at LAX after routine security checks revealed that he had a gun in his carry-on luggage. Farina’s excuse was that he “forgot” he had the gun with him.

Huh? How does that happen? I mean, if you know you’re going to an airport and getting on a plane, why would you even mess around with guns or weapons of any kind?

So Farina was held for carrying a concealed weapon — and the cops discovered that the damn thing wasn’t even registered. Hello, felony!

Anyway, in case you don’t know who Farina is, he currently appears in the new movie What Happens in Vegas… with Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz.

Hulk Hogan’s son, who for some reason is not named Nick Hogan, was sentenced to eight months in jail for a reckless driving charge stemming from an accident last August. At that time, 17-year-old Nick Bollea was drag racing in Clearwater, FL when he lost control of his car and slammed into a tree, leaving his passenger critically injured. The Toyota Supra that Bollea was driving was completely destroyed upon impact.

Bollea will begin serving his sentence immediately.

Eight months seems like a pretty short sentence considering the fact that Bollea’s passenger will require lifelong medical care because of the injuries sustained in this accident. Then again, extreme sports superstar Travis Pastrana served zero jail time after an equally reckless accident left his passenger, Matt Bigos, unable to walk without the help of a cane, so who knows.

By now, you’ve probably already heard of Paul and Sue Rosenau of Waseca, MN. They are the lucky couple who won a $180.1 million Powerball jackpot over the weekend, and they’ve been interviewed pretty much all week. I think they’re generating more interest than other lottery winners because they seem like a genuinely nice couple, plus they’re intent on raising awareness of Krabbe disease.

Krabbe disease is a genetic disorder that only occurs in 1 out of every 100,000 births. It attacks the nervous system, resulting in a loss of mental and motor skills. Krabbe disease is mostly fatal when it occurs in babies younger than 2 years old, but some patients, notably Hunter Kelly, son of Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly, end up living longer. (Hunter Kelly succumbed to complications from Krabbe disease in August, 2005 at the age of 8.)

Anyway, the Rosenaus lost their two-year-old granddaughter Makayla to Krabbe disease, and are anxiously awaiting screening results from new granddaughter Allison.

Let’s hope the second baby is ok, and that the Rosenaus use at least part of their $60 million lump sum payment to help fund research for Krabbe disease.

(AP Photo)

Deborah Jean Palfrey, the woman convicted just a couple of weeks ago for running a high-end prostitution ring that catered to senators and other D.C. power players, has committed suicide. Known as the D.C. Madam, Palfrey’s body was discovered hanging from a nylon rope in a shed on her mother’s property in Tarpon Springs, FL (20 miles NW of Tampa).

According to preliminary news reports I’ve read, the DC Madam had apparently vowed during an interview last year that she would never go to prison for “one day” on charges relating to her escort service. However, she was facing 57 to 71 months in prison after her recent conviction, and was scheduled to be sentenced on July 24, so I guess this was her way of ensuring that she stayed out of jail.

Police reportedly found a suicide note at the scene, but refused to elaborate on its contents.

This was not the first suicide associated with the DC Madam and her prostitution ring. In 2006, Brandy Britton, a former University of Maryland (Baltimore County) professor of sociology and anthropology, was arrested for prostitution charges. She, too, subsequently committed suicide (by hanging) in January of 2007 before her case went to trial.

Hmm, I can’t figure out why anyone would kill themselves over the possibility of going to prison for 57 months (less than 5 years). The articles I read hinted that humiliation might have been a factor, but come on. People would forget about her after she was locked away anyway, right? She could have started a brand new life after being released, in a place where people wouldn’t even recognize her. Suicide doesn’t make sense here….

(Image from ABC News)

If you follow the Cubs at all, then you’ve probably seen people wearing these “Horry Kow” Kosuke Fukudome t-shirts at Wrigley Field or around town. The t-shirt has the usual Cub head logo, but the bear has slanted eyes in this version, as well as oversized Harry Caray glasses and oriental-style writing.

A lot of people complained about the racist nature of the shirt after the Sun-Times wrote an article about it. Cubs officials took action today by confronting the vendor selling these unlicensed products, and were successful in getting the guy to pull the shirts (probably by threatening him with legal action for copyright infringement).

I usually don’t get offended by crap like this, but I have to say I’m glad the shirts won’t be sold outside Wrigley anymore. I mean, if anything, the shirt looks like something poking fun at someone of Chinese origin, not Japanese, which I guess reinforces the racist element of the whole thing.

Of course, now that there’s controversy surrounding the Horry Kow shirts, I’m sure the guy will make double the money by selling them on eBay!

Why is it that some people don’t mind airing their dirty laundry in public? Have they no sense of shame? I seriously don’t get it.

I’m specifically talking about Tricia Walsh-Smith, an ex-Broadway actress who is currently mired in nasty divorce proceedings with her husband Philip Smith, president of the Shubert Organization. Walsh-Smith was so incensed about her husband’s attempts to evict her from their Park Avenue apartment that she retaliated by posting a video tirade on YouTube. I guess she’s trying to humiliate the guy or something, but in reality, she just came off looking like a horribly petty, desperate person.

Anyway, the video is six boring minutes of Walsh-Smith prattling on about problems she had with her husband. For example, she says that they never had sex, yet she found Viagra, porn, and condoms in her husband’s possession. She also pulls out their wedding album and disses her husband’s sister.

The video is crap and is not worth all the buzz it’s generating, IMO. You’d think this woman could have done a better job with it since she intended to post it on YouTube all along. But no, she flits from subject to subject, there are weird cuts throughout, and it just makes her look like a whack job. Why she would want to make this public is beyond me….

This is an interesting story. I just read about how women who follow the so-called DASH diet end up lowering their risk of heart attack and stroke compared to women who don’t eat according to the plan.

The results come from a major 25-year study in which researchers followed the eating habits of some 88,000 healthy women. Those who followed the DASH diet were 24 percent less likely to have a heart attack and 18 percent less likely to have a stroke than those who didn’t — pretty significant margins.

What is the DASH diet? Well, DASH stands for “Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension”, so the meal plan was originally formulated to help people lower their blood pressure. The DASH diet heavily favors fruits, vegetables, and grains, and limits red meat intake.

For more info on what’s included in a DASH diet, visit the website for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

My last post about needing new eyeglasses drew in a bunch of readers searching for something entirely different: Dick Cheney’s sunglasses! Apparently, White House PR people posted some outdoorsy photos of the veep on their website, and you can see a (seemingly) strange reflection in one of Cheney’s lenses.

This has led to wild speculation about what Cheney might have been looking at (especially since he had a pretty big grin on his face at the time), with several bloggers guessing that it was a naked woman!

So the White House followed up with a hi-res photo that showed the reflection in Dick Cheney’s glasses to be nothing more than him holding a fishing rod in his hands.

Wow, how does something so innocuous end up causing such a stir? The Internet, I tell ya…!

I’m talking about Robert Salisbury of Jacksonville, Oregon. I just read an article about how this guy was the victim of a Craigslist hoax that led to his home and barn being looted. Apparently, someone posted an ad on Craigslist saying that the owner of the home had to leave town immediately, so his stuff was free for the taking.

By the time Salisbury got home and realized what was going on, most of the items from his barn and front porch had been taken.

Even when he confronted looters and said he was the owner, they told him they had a right to be there — just because they printed out the Craigslist posting.

Good lord, what is this world coming to? Did Salisbury piss someone off or was he just a random target? I can’t believe people were telling him that they had a right to his stuff since it was posted on Craigslist. Wow.

I almost wish this story hadn’t been publicized. It’s just going to give a lot of people new ideas about how to screw someone over big-time.

We don’t really do much for Easter at our house. Just a few chocolate bunnies and a small egg hunt, but I know that a lot of you out there celebrate in style (whether religiously or secularly). So I just wanted to wish you and your families a very happy Easter this year!!

When I was in junior high and high school, I was convinced that I wanted a career on Wall St. as an investment banker. I went so far as to research different firms that I thought I’d like to work for, and Bear Stearns was one of them. Sure this was just a teenage pipe dream that petered out after I discovered other interests, but for a few years, it was all I could think about.

So when I heard the news this week of the collapse of this once-formidable Wall St. institution, I was shocked beyond belief. I have no true ties to Bear Stearns or anything like that, but I still feel as though the firm played a big role in my life. You remember how everything seemed so important when you were 14, right? What can I say… my heroes weren’t athletes, they were investment bankers.

The Reuters photo above says it all… $2 per share… wow.

In an effort to keep up with changing times, the Vatican has updated its views on what it perceives to be “new sins” of the modern age.

According to Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary (a tribunal responsible for forgiveness of sins, among other issues), some of the new sins today include genetic manipulation, mind-altering drugs, and the growing imbalance between rich and poor.

That’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff, is it? I mean, as far as I know, the Church and the Pope have always been against drugs (your body is a temple), and also have spoken out against genetic manipulation ever since Dolly was cloned back in 1996, right? And John Paul II used to speak out against poverty all the time, so nothing new there…

Instead of rehashing this stuff over and over again, I wish the Vatican would address the seriousness of all the sex scandals and abuse claims that continue to rock the Church. I hate the way they say they’ll deal with it on their own, and that priests need counseling or whatever. These are criminal matters, and the Church should open the process up to secular authorities to prove that they’ve got nothing to hide.

I just read an article in the Tribune that says some Illinois organizations are working to change the law that allows police officers to confiscate driver’s licenses for a traffic violation.

You know how that works, right? You get pulled over for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign or for driving 15 mph over the posted limit, then the cop takes your driver’s license, gives you a court date, and that’s that.

Well, apparently, some activist groups are complaining because in today’s world, a DL is too valuable to have to give up for a month or two. You need your DL to board a plane, write checks, cash checks, etc. It sucks to have it taken away for a stupid traffic ticket.

So now a few areas are experimenting with e-ticketing, whereby violators would be able to pay traffic fines on the spot via credit card.

I have mixed feelings about this. First of all, I do agree that the law has to be changed because I hate surrendering my driver’s license. Also, I had no idea that giving up your DL isn’t actually required. But none of the cops who have pulled me over in the past ever bothered to explain my options. Big surprise.

But I’m not sure I’m completely behind e-ticketing and paying on the spot with a credit card. With that system, fewer people will take their cases to court to challenge tickets, and police departments will get higher “conviction” rates.

This would especially be true for lower-income individuals who can’t afford to miss a day of work to go sit in court. They might be tempted to pay for a violation, even if there are extenuating circumstances, just so they don’t have to show up in court.

That could lead to abuse, right?

I just don’t know about this….