Not all the news was bad; some of it was funny

Press, 24 January 1984, Page 23

Not all the news was bad; some of it was funny

NZPA-AP New York One gorilla outperformed a half-dozen Texas sports writers in picking pro football winners, while another, King Kong, ended up flat on his back in New York’s Central Park.

Fat Daddy’s Doughnut Shop in Colorado tried to make a go-go of it with topless dancers — mixing pastries with pasties — and some Massachusetts schoolchildren learning about finance were raided by state bank examiners.

Don’t forget the cabbage patch doll craze that swept the Christmas season. Shoppers belted one another trying to buy the chubbycheeked dolls, psychologists tried to analyse their appeal, and a four-year-old who held a doll on the cover of a national magazine had to make a special plea to get one. The unusual, the off-beat, the brighter side of the news in 1983 helped lighten the headline-dominating fare of wars, crime, and despair. Kanda the Great, a gorilla at the Dallas Zoo, gained attention in November when it picked nine of 14 week-end pro football winners, beating all six sports writers of the “Dallas Morniw’ News.” But 'after the lowland gor-

illa was asked to expand to roulette wheels and Wall Street, and the zoo was besieged by requests for television and newspaper interviews, officials decided enough was enough. Kanda went back to being just another animal in the zoo. Bill Stewart, the zoo’s marketing director, said he knew things had got out of hand when anonymous calls started coming. “I’d pick up a phone and hear some gruff voice say, ‘Who’s the ape got this week?’ ”

King Kong, in the form of an 25m-high balloon, took its traditional spot atop the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan after workers wrestled high winds for six days. It lasted a day and a half before the wind tore a hole in the great ape and left it dangling like an empty garbage bag.

A week later the 1500 kg ballon was inflated and stretched out on its back in Central Park as hundreds of visitors converged for a look. Park vendors sold bananas for 35c.

At Fat Daddy’s in Thornton, Colorado, the owner, Gene Alarid, tried to help the business’s bottom line by hiring topless waitresses. “This is a real slow location,” Mr Alarid complained

about his spot in the suburb north-east of Denver. But even that innovation didn’t help, and he dismissed the waitresses in October. In Massachusetts last May, children at Easton Middle School were learning about banking when they got an unexpected lesson in banking laws. State examiners shut the scheme after finding interest rate violations.

“They were charging 400 per cent a year,” said Mr Paul Bulma’n, State Commissioner of Banks and Banking. He said examiners found the young financiers were lending 75c for lunch money and charging 8 per cent interest each week.

Mr Bulman said, “The teachers wanted to create a bank in the school, and there is no state permission to do that.” Elsewhere in 1983: • Andrew Ransom showed up at Redford High School in Detroit in September, ready to fill in for an absent janitor. But he reported to the school's main office and was mistaken for a substitute teacher, given a lesson plan and sent to social studies class where he taught all day with no-one realising the mistake. “They all say he did a good job,” said the chief

custodian, Mr Charles Gilmore. The principal, Mr Walter Adams, called it “a one-in-a-million incident.” ® Michael Mackay, aged 31, a counsellor on a leave of absence, and Ron Kistler, aged 25, an unemployed truck driver, climbed down last June from a tent on a billboard near Allentown, Pennsylvania, after 261 days and claimed prizes worth about $30,000 to each.

“It feels good,” Mackaysaid before the two went off for showers and a steak and champagne breakfast. The length of the contest, sponsored by a radio station and mobile home company, exceeded all predictions, including those of the contestants.

• Darrell Samuel Dellinger, aged 29, was cited on a charge of driving while impaired during the Lincolnton, North Carolina, annual Christmas parade. His driver's licence was suspended for 10 days. Dellinger was driving a horse. • In Baton Rouge, Louisiansa, United States District Judge John Parker called James E. Sanders "the most inept counterfeiter I ever heard of.” Sanders was sentenced to five years probation for cutting the corners off a $2O note and pasting them op a $1 note.