MONDAY, JULY 21
Like so many weeks of the past two years, this week kicked off with bad news for the Catholic Church--specifically, the Archdiocese of Boston, named today in a bevy of court documents filed by the alleged victims of Reverend Paul Shanley. Contain-ing 21 affidavits, today's filings paint the darkest portrait yet of one of the Catholic sex scandals' ickiest figures. Among Shanley's alleged atrocities: the routine molestation of several young male parishioners (whom Shanley allegedly passed among friends) and the pimping of several others, including two male cousins whom Shanley allegedly rented out at Boston's Greyhound bus station, then forced to strip at a gay nightclub. (To Shanley's credit, the affidavits allege that certain molestees were paid $50 for their services, while the alleged rent boy/dancers were allowed to keep all earnings.)
·· Speaking of evil forces preying upon children: Today Michael Jackson took a break from the wanton lunacy that has characterized his adult life to speak out--lucidly and with a minimum of baby-dangling--against the evils of imprisoning music downloaders. On July 16, U.S. lawmakers introduced into the House of Representatives the Author, Consumer, and Computer Owner Protection and Security law, which would make illegal downloading of copyrighted materials a felony. Today Jackson spoke out against the severity of the proposed law, issuing a statement from Neverland Ranch. "I am speechless about the idea of putting music fans--mostly teenagers--in jail for downloading music," said Jackson. "It is wrong to illegally download, but the answer cannot be jail." Upon completion of the first sane statement he's made in 22 years, Jackson immediately retreated to his psycho wonderland, where love means never having pubic hair and noses look like bleached Fritos.
TUESDAY, JULY 22
Today the Seattle Post-Intelligencer offered the lowdown on the gang-style clobbering that went down the previous Thursday outside Kent, Washington's Meridian Junior High School. That's where six summer-school students, aged 14 to 17, were attacked by a horde of teens with golf clubs. "Various people have said 30 people attacked them," said Kent police spokesperson Paul Petersen to the P-I, adding that authorities have descriptions and nicknames for 11 suspects. According to the mother of one of the victims, the two groups of boys had previously clashed at Kent's Meeker Junior High, where they were attending summer school, and the dispute began when her son criticized another boy for the disrespectful way he was treating a girl. For daring to defend his sisters, the woman's son received a golf-club-induced concussion, while his five friends escaped with a variety of cuts and bruises.
·· In other bad news for sons: Today Uday and Qusay Hussein--sons of Saddam, tyrants of Iraq, and the U.S. military's "high-value targets" numbers two and three--were pronounced dead after a fierce gun battle with the United States' 101st Airborne Division in northern Mosul.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 23
Just in time to counterbalance the ascension of homosexuals to the forefront of life and culture (fueled in equal measure by Lawrence v. Texas and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy), today the world thrilled to the murderous maneuvers of a good old-fashioned gay psycho: 31-year-old Othniel Boaz Askew, who shot and killed 41-year-old Brooklyn city councilman James Davis this afternoon in Manhattan's City Hall. Initial reports focused on the crime's tragic but relatively simple irony (as a city councilman, Davis distinguished himself by crusading against urban violence). But follow-up reports delved fully into the excessively strange muck surrounding the murder of Mr. Davis, a former-police-officer-turned-public-official known for his passionate public speaking and cutthroat politics, by Mr. Askew, a former model who had once been arrested for attacking his boyfriend with a hammer and had recently set his sights on Mr. Davis' 35th Council District seat. Mucky highlights: After growing up in a working-class Long Island neighborhood and graduating with a degree in accounting from Long Island University, Othniel Askew held a variety of jobs (keeping books, selling pharmaceuticals), served in some capacity in the U.S. Air Force, established himself as a beautiful face in New York's gay nightlife scene, and filed for bankruptcy in 1997. In the months leading up to today's killing, Askew attached himself to James Davis, waffling between following in Davis' mentoring footsteps and trying to convince the FBI that Davis was waging a "campaign of intimidation" against him. This morning, Askew accompanied Davis to a barbershop, where Davis got his hair cut while Askew watched; then the pair went to City Hall, where Askew shot Davis several times in the chest before being fatally shot by a City Hall security guard. The rest, unfortunately, is silence.
THURSDAY, JULY 24
Last week, Last Days reported on the appearance of not one but two public nudists. This week, both of last week's nudists were arrested, starting with Monday's capture of Joseph Tremato, the alleged felon who fled Harborview in the nude (apprehended Monday at a convenience store on First Hill) and concluding with tonight's arrest of the naked guy walking around Westlake Center, apprehended late this evening at Westlake Center.
FRIDAY, JULY 25
After nearly 35 years as a sentient human being living in the United States, Last Days sometimes fears that we have lost the ability to be shocked. Today this fear was obliterated as the Associated Press reported on another elderly driver who plowed his car into another farmers' market. Today's septuagenarian slip-up occurred in Flagler Beach, Florida, where 79-year-old Louis Nirenstein accidentally plowed his car into six people at the market's peach and strawberry stand. The six victims were taken to various hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries (thank God), and the U.S. government raised the nation's elderly-menace alert to orange.
SATURDAY, JULY 26
Nothing happened today (unless you count the completely unsurprising yet still hilarious breakup of Liza Minnelli and David Gest).
SUNDAY, JULY 27
Nothing happened today (unless you count the completely unsurprising yet still sad death of Bob Hope).
