News of the Weird
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LATEST RELIGIOUS MESSAGE
“Someone’s getting a new spinal cord tonight!” yelled Canadian tent-revival preacher Todd Bentley in July during his crusade in Lakeland, Fla. (also telecast on GodTV and the Internet), according to an Associated Press observer. Miracles are “popping like popcorn,” he promised, punctuating each hands-on salvation with an Emeril-type “Bam!” His unorthodoxy extends to sometimes roughing up the afflicted, he admits, because that’s what God tells him to do, e.g., kneeing a “cancer patient” in the stomach, banging a crippled woman’s leg on a platform. Anyone in need of healing should, Bentley shouts often, “come and get some!”
SCENES OF THE SURREAL
The president of Japan’s Osakana Planning Co. told attendees of the Japanese Seafood Show in July that his tuna makes superior sushi because his company administers acupuncture to each fish prior to its death, in order to reduce stress.
A Welsh oil painting, “Newport Nudes,” which was mothballed 60 years ago for being too brazen for public display because the model is naked, drew fresh criticism when reintroduced in July at a public gallery in Wales but this time only because the naked model is holding a cigarette.
INCOMPETENT CRIMINAL
In June, police in Spokane, Wash., arrested Calvin Robinson, 19, who had set up inside the lockable family restroom at a mall because he needed an electrical outlet to run the color printer he had just bought for $100 (in real money) in order to make counterfeit $10 bills. Police recovered a sheet of uncut, poorly made copies, which Robinson said he had intended to use to buy “90 dollars” worth of marijuana.