6/11/2005: Random kudos and weirdness
Quentin Tarantino
Kudos to the usually dopey-acting guy, who did something classy at the MTV Movie Awards when his Kill Bill Volume 2 won the Best Fight award. He brought to the podium and introduced the real winners of the award, Zoe Bell and Monica Staggs, the movie's stunt doubles for Uma Thurman and Darryl Hannah. He went on to act dopey and incoherent as usual, but acknowledging the real fighters was a nice touch.
Yoshio Yamakawa and Tsuzuki Nakauchi
Probably the last two WWII Japanese soldiers still hiding out in the jungle were discovered last week in the Philippines. The two men wanted to return to Japan but didn't know the war had ended and were afraid of being court martialled. The 87- and 83-year-old win the perseverence prize.
Pam Hearne
The Floral Park, NY resident heard a "loud crash" and discovered a human leg in her yard, complete with Adidas sneaker and sock, hip and spine. Apparently someone had tried to stow away in the wheel well of a jet en route from Johannesburg, South Africa to New York via Senegal and was uh.. cut in half. When the wheels were lowered for landing at JFK, half of the guy fell out and onto Ms. Hearne's lawn.
Brian Collins
The Ball State University broadcasting student was gutsy enough to go on Letterman and air his humiliating tv debut, where he nervously fumbled his way through his first on-air sports report on a student news show. But he included four words in the sad tv report that have caught on and are in use in sportscasts around the country: "Boom goes the dynamite." Watch the video
New Old Bill
A York, England hospital has ended a rash of crime and violence by posting life-size cardboard cutouts of police in the lobby.
Thomas Stefanelli
An attempted robbery ended with the 37-year-old Tampa, FL pizza delivery dude getting shot in the thigh, but he continued and finished his route, delivering four more pizzas before going to a hospital.
Some get in, some don't
22-year-old Canadian Gregory Despres showed up at a border crossing in Maine carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles, and a chain saw that appeared to have blood on it. Immigration officers took the weapons and let him into the USA. The next day the decapitated body of a 74-year-old country musician was found in Despres' New Brunswick kitchen. His head was in a pillowcase nearby, and his wife was dead in the bedroom. Despres was subsequently arrested in Massachusetts, where he was wandering down a road wearing a shirt with red and brown stains.
Meanwhile, 40-year-old Cuban Rafael Diaz Rey spent weeks converting a 1949 Mercury taxi into a freedom raft. He and 13 others crossed most of the 90 miles from Cuba to Miami in the turquoise cab, only to be intercepted by the US Coast Guard 15 miles short of their target. Rey, his wife and two children have proper documentation and will be allowed to stay - the other ten taxi passengers will be sent back to Cuba.
