I’m fascinated by this one, though: $500K Seized: Strange Situation at Nuclear Plant.
Yeah, so. Big truck full of stuff. Nuke plant. Five hundred grand in small bills. Trucker with no ID. This sounds like the beginning of a Bob Trout story. One hopes the nuke plant is a coincidence and it’s just the usual drug deal/money laundering gone wrong.
Or maybe if you mix your crack with plutonium it’s even better!
In 1997 I got a contract job working for Sprint in Kansas City. I’d never done out of town contracting, but this was attractive: good money for work I find easy, in an inexpensive town. I set off for a cross-country drive on Interstate 40 at a leisurely pace, stopping for the night in Flagstaff and again in Tucumcari, NM. After a long day of 80 mph in the rain and mud and cowshit up Highway 54, I arrived in the late evening at my destination.
I’d plotted out an inexpensive motel on the north side of town for the night, since I was moving into an apartment the next day. Of course I got lost. Since KC is surrounded by a ring road I went around the city a couple of times, got off on the south side instead of the north, wandered various neighborhoods, got back on the ring road, and finally stopped for gas and directions late at night in a North Kansas City service station.
The night guy at the gas station was probably no more than 25, but was missing several teeth and had a worn look to him. His skin was at once greasy and dry, and he sat like potatoes in a huge black sweatshirt. He had two knives on his belt and stank of cigarettes. He was delighted to meet me, especially when he found out I was from California. After giving me (accurate) directions to the motel, he explained himself.
“I really want to get out to California. I’m about half saved and then I’m gonna go west.”
“What’re you going to do there?”
“I’m a biker. I got to get into one of those biker gangs out West, the Angels. You know the Angels.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“It’s my dream, man. I want to ride with those guys. And I really like the violence. I want to fight, you know, I wanna stomp someone.” He smiled at me with the innocent toothless mouth of an infant.
“Damn. That’s, uh, kinda hardcore.”
“Damn right. I’m Italian, I got Mafia in my blood. I want to get in it. You know, out West it’s for real, those guys. I gotta get there and prove myself.”
“You know,” I said, “California is a lot more expensive than here unless you’re in the middle of nowhere.”
He pointed to his eyes. “I know, and I’m ready. I can take care of myself. I can do a job here and there, you know. I’ll always survive. I just got to get where the action is.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to the guy. “Well, take care of yourself, man. I hope you do okay.”
He flashed that wonderful grin again. “Hey, no worry! I’m headed there and I’m gonna kick some fuckin’ ASS!”
He shook my hand, welcomed me to Kansas City, and sent me cheerfully on my way. Nicest wannabee murderer I ever met.
At a baby shower gone terribly wrong, shootings and beatings occur, affecting the lives of Aristotle Garcia, Jazz Rivas, and Cheryl C. Claprood.
The world is a fever dream lately.
Man faces jail time for selling crack
A City of Poughkeepsie man faces a stint in jail for dealing crack in the city last year.
Landocalrissan Butler, 25, of Winnikee Avenue, entered a guilty plea Tuesday in Dutchess County Court to attempted criminal possession of a controlled substance, a felony. Butler told Judge Thomas J. Dolan he had five small bags of crack in his pocket Dec. 22 when police arrested him on Morgan Avenue. He said he intended to sell the drugs.
In exchange for his plea, Butler was promised a sentence of six months in jail and five years on probation. He will also be required to forfeit a cell phone and $432 police said he obtained through illegal drug sales.
Butler remains jailed pending his sentencing, scheduled for April 4.
Someone broke into one of my credit card accounts online. I discovered this because I got email confirming my mailing address change. My… what? I signed on and had to reset the password, which had been changed. This can’t be good. Hey! I have an address in New York City now?
I called them up and after some confusion we confirmed that I do not live in New York, nor did I buy anything from eBay today. They’re sending me a new card. More unfortunately, the rep told me that whoever changed my address had the security code from the back of the card, indicating that they’d either had physical possession of the card at one time, had sold me something online, or had cracked some database at Chase (he didn’t mention that last possibility).
Punchline: The account that was compromised only had $160 in credit available on it.
LA radio host arrested on suspicion of kidnapping
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — A radio host and Hollywood music consultant was released on $1 million bail after being arrested at a nightclub for investigation of drugging and attempting to kidnap a 14-year-old girl, police said Sunday.
Chris Douridas, a KCRW-FM disk jockey, was arrested Jan. 6 outside a Santa Monica nightclub after witnesses reportedly saw him put a substance in the unidentified girl’s drink and carry her out of the club, said Santa Monica police Sergeant Jay Trisler.
The girl became ill and was treated at a local hospital before being released, Trisler said. It was unclear why she was inside the club.
County prosecutors were still gathering evidence in the case and awaiting toxicology results before deciding whether to charge Douridas, Eva Jabber, a deputy district attorney, told the Los Angeles Times.
An e-mail sent to Douridas, 43, of Pacific Palisades was not immediately returned Sunday night, and phone numbers listed under his name were disconnected. A message left with KCRW also was not returned.
A second man, whose name was not released, was also arrested as a possible accomplice to Douridas, Trisler said.
Douridas hosts KCRW’s “New Ground,” a Saturday program featuring new music. He’s also a music supervisor and consultant for film and television. He helped compile the soundtracks for movies such as “Shrek 2,” “As Good As It Gets” and “Grosse Pointe Blank.”
Douridas was nominated for a Grammy for his work on the soundtrack to “American Beauty.”
He also was a one time host for the PBS series “Sessions at West 54th Street.”
From Phast Phreddie, via my friend Julie DuBrow:
Dear Friends,
This morning my brother, who works in the Richmond, Virginia area, called and asked me if I knew Bryan Harvey.
I was familiar with The House of Freaks when the group was based in LA, and Gutterball with Steve Wynn; and I ran into Bryan and his wife from time to time when I was down in the Richmond area visiting my brother and/or Stephen McCarthy (of The Long Ryders, who has played in several bands with Bryan since they both moved back to Richmond in the late eighties). Twice I saw Harvey dressed as Presley when he sang in the band Fat Elvis–with McCarthy (it may have been Fat Elvis’ only two shows).
My brother told me that he had just read in the paper that Bryan and his family were found dead in their home.
Bonus points for: “One of my colleagues recognized him immediately”, “Nguyen Van Phuc”.
Max sentence is 5 years there, but I imagine the Vietnamese prison Western Nation prison correspondence is like dog years.
Some of you might remember the strange doings in the insurance office upstairs from the patio. The youngish woman who’s apparently the daughter of the insurance agent using the office at night, lots of comings and goings of obviously freaked out addicts, bad scenes with people waving knives and yelling and kicking things. We were on the verge of calling the cops, mostly because she had her young son around for all this fun and because there are a lot of children on the patio who really shouldn’t have to deal with tweakers flailing about waving sharpened screwdrivers.
And then it all stopped. She still showed up but seemed to be doing legit daytime business stuff, and had a guy with her who looked like he had a job and was nice to the kid, and I thought “well good, she stopped dealing”.
Last night she was there with That Guy Who Gets Arrested On Cops, and they were playing yell at each other and slam the door for an hour or so. It wasn’t clear what was going on, but we started to wonder if she was trying to leave and he kept slamming the door on her. Or whether the quiet bits meant that she was being strangled. Or whether the kid was there. Around the time we were thinking seriously we should call the cops, the door opened and Loser Boy appeared. His first act was to dump a cup of ice from the second floor balcony on to bruisedhips which was a mistake, because that’s when the cops got called.
They showed up in about 30 seconds and were oddly casual. While both of them were talking to her inside, Arrest-Me-Now popped off his keychain, slipped down the stairs, and disappeared. Sierra pointed out that he probably lost the keychain so he could hop the fence in back more easily, because Sierra is O.G. from H.B. and thinks that way. Obviously Bluto didn’t want to talk to any cops at length last night.
No idea what happened to her. Part of me sympathizes with her obviously wretched life and wants Things To Get Better, but considering what she’s putting her kid through it might be better if she spent some time in the snicker while Grampa raised Junior. Whatever’s going on, it’s not the six-year-old’s fault.
I’m mostly a small-L libertarian about “drugs”, but speed is such a terrible, terrible thing.
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