xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
New Frontiers in Advertising:
–In February, a British ad agency began paying college students about $20 for each three-hour stint in which they walk around in public with a company’s logo semipermanently tattooed on their foreheads.
–In December, another British agency signed up Sony Ericsson to pay for draping its advertising messages over large dogs (St. Bernards, Great Danes) whose owners accepted free dog-walking service in public parks in exchange for allowing the “moving billboards.”
Stanley Jollymore, 90, was written up in Toronto’s National Post for the “ball” he made out of 139,620 metallic wrappers from cigarette packages from his 70 years of smoking (February).
Gary Duschi, 52, was written up in the Virginian-Pilot (Hampton Roads, Va.) for his 8-mile-long chain of chewing gum wrappers (38-year habit, a million wrappers) (March).
Carl Masthay, 62, was written up in Riverfront Times (St. Louis) for compiling (over the last 12 years), and self-publishing, an exhaustive, 757-page dictionary for translating between French and the Illinois Indian Kaskaskian dialect (a language no one has spoken for hundreds of years).
A 39-year-old driver, celebrating his car’s 100,000th mile with a bottle of champagne, accidentally smashed into a tree (Boulder, Colo.).
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD