Pope Mania
Muslim clerics complain of the commercialization of the holy city of Mecca during the annual hajj pilgrimages, but for Pope Francis’ visits to New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia in mid-September, shameless street vendors and entrepreneurs already appear to be eclipsing Mecca’s experience. Merchants said they’d be selling, among other tacky items, mozzarella cheese statuettes of the pope ($20), a "pope toaster" to burnish Francis' image on bread, a Philly-themed bobblehead associating the pope with the movie boxer Rocky, local beers Papal Pleasure and YOPO (You Only Pope Once) and T-shirts (“Yo Pontiff!” and “The Pope Is My Homeboy”). The Wall Street Journal quoted a Philadelphia archdiocese spokesman admitting that “you have to kind of take it in stride.”
Bright Ideas
“And Another Thing, Dad”: Michael May, 44, was arrested in Lincoln County, Ky., in August after the Pilot Baptist Cemetery near Stanford reported that he had tried to dig up the grave of his dead father “in order to argue with him,” according to Lexington’s WLEX18-TV. May told officers his dad had died about 30 years ago. (Alcohol was involved in the decision to dig.)
More Things to Worry About
■ Under a 1981 treaty, at least 50 countries, including the United States, have banned their militaries from employing flamethrowers (as “inhumane”), but entrepreneurs have begun to market the devices domestically for $900 to $1,600 each (based on the distance of the flame, at 25 feet or 50 feet). Federal regulators appear uninterested (as the contraptions are technically neither firearms nor explosives), and only two states prohibit them outright, though a few jurisdictions believe flamethrowers are illegal under fire codes. The Ohio startup Throwflame has sensed the need for marketing savvy and describes flamethrowers as primarily for “entertainment.” (Recent news reports indicate a slight run on sales under the suspicion that authorities will soon realize the danger and outlaw them.)
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■ After two women accused Sheffield Village, Ohio, attorney Michael Fine of “hypnotizing” and sex-talking to them during office consultations, police and the county bar association opened an investigation in November 2014. Though Fine was being consulted on a custody matter, he was secretly audio-recorded (according to one woman’s lawsuit) touting “powerful whole body orgasms” and suggesting that he was “the world’s greatest lover”—among details the client recalls only vaguely if at all. The bar association later said as many as 25 women may have been victimized. Though no criminal charges have been filed, Fine’s lawyer said in August that his client had voluntarily given up his law license and was seeking “medical” help.
Great Art!
■ Former Massachusetts Institute of Technology lecturer Joseph Gibbons was sentenced in July to a year in prison for robbing a New York City Capital One bank in December (while operating a video camera) in a heist that he had insisted all along was merely “performance art.” (He had been suspected in a similar robbery in Rhode Island in November.) His biography on the MIT website described him as “blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, self and persona…with a contradictory impulse to confabulate and dissimulate.” The Queens Museum in New York City has offered to screen the footage of the robbery as an art piece.
■ Artist Anish Kapoor initially denied that his 400 to 500 tons of stones, called “Dirty Corner,” were “problematic,” but later conceded that they might have “multiple interpretive possibilities.” The installation, which ran through the summer at France’s Palace of Versailles with five other large sculptures, was arranged in the form of a huge vulva and represented, he said, “the vagina of a queen who is taking power.”
New World Order
In July, Mexican customs officers detained an American and a Mexican on the bridge between El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, with 13 pounds of marijuana the two allegedly were smuggling into Mexico to sell. (The month before, Juarez officials arrested another El Paso woman with a kilo of crystal meth allegedly destined for Mexican sale.)
© 2015 CHURCK SHEPHERD
