Deliriously Happy (10 page)

Mayor Ed was beat red by the time he paddled over to the cheap seats, where the
Times-Caveat
's
Ron Peterson
, citing his journalistic credentials as a
real
reporter from Manhattan's
real
weekly, refused to “become part of the story.”
Wag
didn't mind one bit, though, and when our top public servant further requested “a pinch to grow an inch,” we promptly complied—and Wag'll be damned if His Honor didn't grow an inch, at
least
…

In town just for the B-bash: the mayor's former college bunkmate and longtime companion,
John Travolta
. The up-again-down-again-up-again-down-again-up-again actor made a point of letting everyone know how much he loved banging his female wife, who couldn't make it. His Honor the B-day Boy appeared a tiny tad put out by this hetero-than-thou display, but hey, it's his party, he can poop if he wants to…

Later, in a private gathering closed to the media, His Poutiness bachelorpartied until nearly 1:00 a.m., male celebonding with Travolta, former Indiana
sen. Larry Craig
, and
the Scissor Sisters
.

Still Dying:
Perky
Siobhan Mitchell
rallied out of her coma once again last week to make yet another bizarre last wish: to kiss the hand of billionaire songbird
Justin Bieber
. Don't get
Wag
wrong—we'd love to lick the lad's delicate digits ourselves—but what made frisky little Siobhan's wish curious was that she last emerged from consciousness back in
December 2006
, before Bieber's very first YouTube assault.
It's a miracle
, or something.

Well
, no sooner than you could say “Front-page banner in the Manhattan
Times-Caveat
,” Master Bieber's private jetcopter was touching down in
Scott Johnson
's soybeans about 150 yards from Manhattan's own
Ronald McDonald
House. Master Bieber and his
enfantourage
sprinted to the feisty tyke's side only to find they were too late—former childcrooner
Justin Timberlake
had beaten them to the photo op, and the weekly
T-C
had long gone to bed itself, not to mention plucky Siobhan, who had slipped back into her accustomed twilight…

Doctor My Thighs: Old Doc Thatcher
's practice sure has picked up since he got certified by the Board of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. Recent visitors, according to the doc's poorly guarded records:
Amy Roberts
, who, after giving birth to four of
P. Greg
's melonheaded offspring, decided it was time to put a little creative tension back into the marriage; middle-aged
Paris Hilton
, who, while in town to sleep with someone in the 60950 zip code, had the bags under her eyes removed and put into quick turnaround as nuboobs; and
Emilio Estevez
, who hopes that with a few minor alterations he'll be able to find work as a
Charlie Sheen
impersonator.

Self-Wagellation:
Just last month,
Wag
predicted that a certain music teacher's frequent duets (and, in one case, a quartet) with members of the pop/rock/metal/reggae/rap/emo/new age/folk contingent would prompt the federal
Centers for Disease Control
to open a branch office here. Well, the recent
Ke$ha
tour clinched it. “This is a situation that bears watching,” says
Dr. Sanford Mickle
, the epidemiologist assigned to head up the new office, “particularly with school starting up soon.” The CDC outlet will mean five new jobs for the area…

Wagola:
Due to the recent transfer of all new
Chevy Volt
production to Manhattan's “sister plant” in Puerto Negro, Mexico,
UAW Local 289
will be holding its annual Labor Day parade at
Jessy's Budweiser Sign and Dance
.

Waggings: Ben Finestein
, Manhattan's own
Jew
, denies rumors that his deli, or Jewish-style restaurant, serves
moth balls
. He says they're called
matzoh balls
(pronounced “Mott's-O,” like the applesauce) and are harmless boiled balls of dough. Jews consider them a delicacy, Ben says… Those rumors about
Nancy Grace
moving to Manhattan are totally unfounded. The
Wag
hears they were started by an unscrupulous real estate agent hoping to incite panic sales… And that wasn't
Erma Bombeck
spotted signing books at
Kym's Kards and Gyfts, Etc
. last Saturday. She's dead. It was
Michael Moore
. Kym apologizes for any misunderstanding…

The Last Wag:
What pop-ular adult website (and Exhibit T&A in a current court case) features hot young up'n'cummer
Roni Lynn Lords
, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Manhattan's own 2009 Dog Queen,
Pegi Peterson
—or, as she is known around the Peterson Playhouse,
Princess Sweetpea
?

Fran Stephanie Trutt, convicted of trying to bomb the president of a Connecticut surgical equipment company, said yesterday that she has visited her dogs four times since April as part of the previously undisclosed terms of her plea-bargain.

“I've seen my little ones, and that's the only reason why I took the plea-bargain,” Trutt said during a telephone interview from the Niantic State Prison for women.

—
As far as you probably got

Trutt is just one of millions of American felons participating in experimental criminal justice programs across the country designed to explore innovative ways of combating alarming increases in criminal activity, which in some cities, such as Detroit, now exceeds the amount of noncriminal activity.

“Despite the fact that state and federal law-enforcement agencies have been very good at getting out the message that certain behaviors are illegal and that people who engage in those behaviors will be punished if caught and convicted, we're still seeing a lot of illegal behavior out there,” said Peter Pratt, professor of penology at Michigan State University and editor of the
American Journal of Criminal Justice Theory and Practice
.

“Clearly,” Pratt said, “something more needs to be done.”

Something more is being done. According to
Crime and Corrections
, a national newsletter advocating noncruel but unusual punishments, novel ways of dealing with lawbreakers are multiplying nearly as fast as the prison populations themselves. Kevin Dradd, editor of
Crime and Corrections
, estimates that the average convicted felon today “would have to get twenty-five years to life just to be able to take advantage of all the programs available to him.

“But this is good,” hastened to add Dradd, who has no official affiliation with any academic or law-enforcement agency but describes himself simply as a “penal buff.”

“What's
really
cruel is punishment as usual,” Dradd quipped. “They say you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Well, the same goes for inmates, except, of course, they're already caught. Perhaps a better way of saying this is that an unhappy, bored criminal is a recidivist criminal.”

Variety, and not boredom, is indeed the spice of prison life today. At the Joliet State Penitentiary Petting Zoo just southwest of Chicago, inmates convicted of violent crimes are encouraged to touch and form emotional bonds with dogs, cats, and other small mammals provided by the local anti-cruelty society. On a recent afternoon in the Petting Yard, one burly resident, weighing three hundred pounds and covered with sexually explicit tattoos, spent nearly forty-five minutes gently stroking a large brown-and-taupe Angora rabbit that seemed to almost disappear into the hollow of his cupped hand.

“He's soft,” said Jacob Jason Blazz, serving seven consecutive life terms for chopping up a downstate family of four into cubes approximately two inches long on each side, and then attempting to conceal the crime by reassembling the pieces into an entirely different family of five.

“The zoo is very popular with our long-term residents,” said Pam Glipp, a spokesperson for the correctional center. “We believe it is helping them to develop an appreciation for the sanctity of life. The hope, of course, is that this will extrapolate out to non-pet animals—humans in particular.”

In many cases, it is not inspiration but necessity that has become the mother of inventive penal reform. In Broward County, Florida, which recently saw a 160 percent increase in the number of activities defined as illegal, prison officials have been forced to adopt a “Weekends Off” policy for long-term inmates in order to accommodate the massive influx of white-collar criminals and artists serving weekend sentences.

One state official, whose name was not known at press time, called the program an unprintable expletive.

However, another source close to the program, in an anonymous telephone interview, said of the new “Weekends Off” policy, “We're receiving a lot of complaints from our regulars that they come back Sunday night only to find their cells a mess and valuables missing.”

Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of pioneering correctional tactics has been welcomed as at least worth a try. Many actually have been worth that try.

For example, Massachusetts has abandoned its traditional weekend furlough program in favor of a buddy system; early indications are that crime by prison buddies on furlough will be 25 percent less than both individuals would have been expected to commit separately. Intrabuddy violence is a problem but not a concern, officials there say.

And in Baltimore, the district attorney's office stopped prosecuting cases altogether when it was determined that accused lawbreakers were seven times more likely to commit repeat offenses while out on bail than if they were simply set free.

“When they're bailed out, they feel like they're on somebody else's time” was one explanation offered off the record.

The new policy seems to be working; for the first time in many years, crime in the city is rising only arithmetically.

Perhaps no program has been more successful at reducing crime than the highly successful crime-reducing program launched in Madison, Wisconsin, one of the few remaining bastions of progressive thought in the Midwest, and home of the University of Wisconsin Badgers. The Madison Program, as it is called, is based on the principle that “you should punish the crime and not the criminal,” according to Susan Grunn, a local resident.

“Our philosophy is that rules are made to be broken,” Grunn said the other day.

Since Madison rescinded its entire penal code in April, effectively making nothing illegal, the city's official crime rate has dropped to zero.

“Obviously,” Grunn added.

News item: Stock market in toilet; foreclosures at all-time high; “worse than Great Depression.”

C
ANNED
F
OODIES
Top chef recipes for gourmet meals using Campbell's Soup, Spaghetti-O's, etc
.

B
ABY,
I
T'S
H
OT
I
NSIDE!
Free heat alternatives. Household objects, furniture rated for combustibility, toxicity
.

T
HE
O
THER
M
EATS

Should move on these before things improve
.

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