··Speaking of idiots: Today James "Omari Tahir" Garrett, the Central Area lunatic/2001 mayoral candidate accused of felony assault on Mayor Paul Schell, attended his bail hearing at the King County Jail. Among those present to support Garrett's controversial claim of innocence was Garrett's friend Eos Mandisa, who insisted that it wasn't Garrett who hit the mayor. "The spirit of Aaron Roberts hit the mayor," Mandisa hollered at the hearing. "The spirit of Malcolm X hit the mayor. The spirit of Huey Newton hit the mayor. The spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. hit the mayor." While Last Days is happy that the ghosts of slain civil rights leaders have banded together in the afterlife, we are dismayed that their combined passion and knowledge could devise no better plan than smashing Paul Schell in the face with a megaphone.
TUESDAY, JULY 10 After years of playing the heavy (shopping for police chiefs, flogging rioters, shooting brown people), today the Seattle Police Department offered up a bit of whimsy, putting on a show of almost Keystone Kop proportions this morning on north Capitol Hill. The yuk-fest began with two police cars (henceforth known as Car #1 and Car #2) hot on the trail of a stolen police vehicle. Car #1 had the stolen car in its sights, but lost it while stopping briefly at an intersection. Car #2 soon came upon the same intersection, and, mistaking Car #1 for the stolen vehicle, rammed into Car #1. The driver of Car #1, having been rammed by a maniac in a cop car, understandably assumed he was being attacked by the stolen vehicle and started shooting. All in all, three officers (two in one car, one in the other) fired more than 39 rounds at each other before discovering their error, while the stolen car zipped away on northbound I-5. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and a firearms review board will investigate whether the officers are horrible shots or just really good duckers.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 11 Backstreet Boys fans around the globe continued to reel in shock and horror today following Boy A. J. McLean's admission of alcoholism on Monday's Total Request Live. In the most laboriously wrought public relations document since Vatican II, McLean's publicist said the 23-year-old singer "will immediately undergo a 30-day treatment" for depression and alcohol abuse. Cheers to McLean for getting help, jeers to his managers for lamely blaming the drunkenness of their client (a sex-drenched zillionaire with the world at his feet) on the death of his grandmother.
THURSDAY, JULY 12 Good news: Today a 34-year-old farmer in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, was reported in fair condition after sawing his own arm off just below the elbow as he was being pulled into a hay-baler. Reuters reports that farmer Jarrod Wagner was removing a clump of hay from the machine on Tuesday when his left arm got caught and he felt himself being dragged in. "It was kind of sucking my whole body in," Wagner told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, "So I figured it was either my whole body or my arm." The fearless Wagner used a metal piece from his headset (!) to perform the crude surgery, and while the amputated arm was recovered from the baler, it was too mangled to be reattached. Last Days sends our best wishes to the recuperating Wagner and his family. There but for the grace of God and the lack of a hay-baler go we.
FRIDAY, JULY 13 Friday the 13th lived up to its bad-news reputation today as hundreds of beautiful people crowded into Belltown's pinball 'n' booze emporium Shorty's for a farewell party for two beloved Stranger staffers. Ms. Traci Vogel, books editor for the paper since Matthew Stadler invented and vacated the position in 1997, is heading down to beautiful Oakland, California, to serve as editor in chief of an alternative newsweekly. Mr. Jason Pagano, calendar editor since Traci ditched out of that position in 1999, is heading over to Philadelphia to watch his girlfriend go to nursing school, and to make sweet, sweet love to her at the end of each day. Last Days will greatly miss both of these smart and attractive people, and we wish good luck to the sorry suckers roped into filling their luminous shoes.
SATURDAY, JULY 14 Terrorism against the Maccabiah (a.k.a. the Jewish Olympics) got off to an early start today when the bodies of two Palestinians were found less than a mile away from the stadium where the games are set to begin in Jerusalem on Monday. The Associated Press reports that the two men were apparently assembling a bomb for a terror attack, but the device exploded prematurely. While this will certainly not be the last bit of terrorism to mar the Maccabiah, Last Days eagerly looks forward to the games, featuring the world's top Jewish athletes competing in thrilling Chosen People events (Tal-Mud Wrestling, Shabbat-Put), while the world's top Jewish doctors test the competitors for evidence of performance-enhancing pork.
SUNDAY, JULY 15 If there's one thing that makes Last Days grateful to live in the 21st century (besides CD burners, DVD players, and protease inhibitors), it's the stunning advances made in the field of science. Today we visited Seattle's illustrious Pacific Science Center, to bask in the glory of what must certainly qualify as the greatest scientific achievement of our age: Laser Zeppelin. Blending the eternally mind-blowing music of the often imitated but never duplicated Led Zeppelin (a band Last Days ignorantly dismissed during our Smiths-soaked youth) with a bunch of laser-generated geometric shapes, Laser Zeppelin is an AV treat for the laser-loving Zep fan in all of us. True, the sound system sucks, the song selection's iffy (no "When the Levee Breaks" or "Heartbreaker"?), and the band's Lord of the Rings lyrical leanings continue to embarrass and annoy. But who cares? Anyone who fails to delight in a room packed with scorching lasers, soaring music, and scores of baked Zep heads--all less than a mile away from the hotel where Zep stuffed that groupie full of fish--well, that someone is no one we ever want to know. Go. (P.S. You really can't be too high.)
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