 Choreographed cops? Police have to put up with assorted scoundrels, ne’er-do-wells, mischief-makers, scalawags, black sheep, scamps, drunks and assorted other bad eggs.

It’s the job, unfortunately.

Loud stereos? Around a college campus, that’s a certainty as well.

Occasionally, they even laugh about it?

OK, you read it here first:

Saturday night in Normal, police were reported to have a (Read more…)

Letterman has a great time with his stupid pet tricks, but let’s be honest — aren’t recent headlines about Dave himself proof that humans are just as entertaining?

Yes, in our never-ending competition of humanity at work, these are the stories that make our latest News Is Stranger Than Fiction competition, as culled from the wires and papers:

• In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., an 83-year-old mayoral candidate was arrested after he became upset with a daughter for endorsing the other candidate and showed up at her house to confront her at the door with a gun.

• At a Family Christian Book Store in Simi Valley, Calif., a store employee who was trying to secretly install a peep camera inside a store bathroom first accidentally taped (Read more…)

So we just observed the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down and the so-called “re-birth of freedom” in eastern Europe.

We just celebrated Veterans Day in America where, as one placard at a downtown celebration proudly proclaimed: “Thanks to our soldiers’ sacrifices, freedom reigns!”

In Iraq, the country’s new parliament has voted on a “long-awaited law” that, as a story in this paper put it the other day, paves the way “for all new freedoms never before seen.”

Yes, freedom has been a big topic in the news as of late and I am, of course, very happy.

It also makes me wonder:

Isn’t it time for someone to proudly speak up for non-freedom, (Read more…)

 The Secretary needs one: So Hillary Clinton graces the cover of Time this week and makes history, too, this being her 16th time as an 8½-by-11 glossy there.

If you think about it, is anyone more accomplished these days?

Has anyone ever been First Lady, a U.S. Senator and U.S. Secretary of State, all in 10 years?

Which of those, of all such posts, also keeps you busiest?

If you ask Bloomington’s Patsy Henderson Bowles, a close pal of Hillary’s since (Read more…)

FLICK FLAK, random thoughts on road construction, bank thermometers, David Letterman and other such life obsessions:

 At a prison, would the most hated night of the year be the one in which we turn the clocks back an hour? Haven’t they already served that hour once?

 Considering all the rain and cold in October, is it safe to assume only Humpty Dumpty is having a great fall?

 OK, how many times more on the nightly news do we have to watch yet another close-up of someone getting a needle in the arm? Isn’t there anything else to show? Is an anti-flu-shot-video vaccine available to the public yet?

 So the cost of a college education has gone up 21 percent — in just six years? Is College-Tuition Reform perhaps needed next?

 At Thanksgiving time, you ever wonder if doctors occasionally refer to our insides as giblets instead?

 Yet another endangered species: When’s the last (Read more…)

“War is so much different today. Communication is different. Medical help is different. Even coming back is different. Today you get on a plane, come home from being in hell and two days later, you’re shopping at the mall.”

— McLean County Circuit Court Judge Robert Freitag, and a veteran of Iraq.

In the antiquated World War II film clips and old war movies, the soldiers always dug into trenches, fired their rifles, talked to each other via walkie-talkie and endlessly pulled out grenade pins with their teeth.

Dental health was different back then and flossing with rusty metal rings more accepted.

War?

It was hell, unadulterated hell, as it still is. But everything (Read more…)

 Is that Lil’ Bo Peep? Yes, Halloween has come and gone again, and Hazel Sampen, of Normal, will just have to wait another 52 weeks before going out to trick or treat again.

That’s Hazel pictured here, as she appeared the other night, as son, Kurt, took her around on the anointed Halloween rounds so others could enjoy her latest Halloween get-up, too.

Hazel Sampen, 92

Hazel is only 92.

 Today’s deep thought
As mulled by Connie Haney, of Carlock:
“Has anyone noticed that in Bloomington-Normal, East Street runs north/south, North Street runs east/west and South Drive runs east/west?”

 Doodie calls? So we endured the era (Read more…)

COLUMN DIARY, a check of big headlines, small wonders and other worldly events:

October 2009

1. Legislators in Springfield re-portedly all getting their flu shots so they “won’t miss any sessions this winter.” No immediate word if that’s good news or bad.

2. Olympics 2016: Chicago not their kind of town.

3. David Letterman lists No.1 reason for Occasionally Also Wishing You Were Not (Read more…)

 `Well, one of them is 8-feet tall, and real ugly, and has a spike through his neck, and …’ : When a resident called Bloomington police at 2:30 a.m. the other morn to report a fight along East Jackson Street, the dispatcher asked the caller to describe those involved, at which point she said she frankly couldn’t.

It was a Halloween party where the disturbance was occurring.

Those fighting were in costume.

 Today’s deep thought

As mulled by Ben Rogers, of Normal:

“Do they NOT have any trash cans in a major league dugout? All you see are cups and trash on the ground of the dugouts. Is it not (Read more…)

So here I am, at my office desk, wearing a great-looking mask.

It’s one of those medical masks, in fact.

On my hands are long, flesh-colored gloves.

They’re latex.

Yes, it’s Halloween dress-up time again.

But who’s talking about Hal-loween?

I’m just trying not to get the flu!

I don’t know if the flu itself is a pandemic yet, but the fear of it surely has become that.

It’s just not the flu, either.

Have you also noticed the irony of it all right now … ?

It’s Halloween, a special time about fear, fright and being (Read more…)

FLICK LITE: Our latest listings, as offered by the readers and your resident Lite Boy:

 Most amazing new retail find
Introduced by Mattel, and available for your Christmas buying, is the newest entry in its hugely popular American Girl doll collection, this one named Gwen and billed as (this is not a joke) the “first homeless doll.”

According to literature that will accompany the (Read more…)

So there are the “Ways To Know You Are An Illinoisan” and “The Laws of Living In Middle America” and most recently, “The Rules of Rural Illinois.”

A reader, Bob Dennison of Normal, sent me that last one the other day and as a hopeless sucker for such, I read the entire thing.

Yes, thanks to the Internet, which has everything, we now have all sorts of the regional rules, laws, ways-to-know, etc.

Except for Bloomington-Normal!

Until now!

Yes, after surveying all sorts of B-N types to see what they think (Read more…)

 For your next random sighting …: So a year after actor Matt Damon spawned multiple photo-ops for Central Illinoisans while filming “The Informant” in and around Decatur, apparently that also could just be the start.

Reportedly readying to film this fall and/or winter is “The Conspirator,” an indie film that will deal with “a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln” and, according to reports around the area and in the blogs, also will shoot scenes here in the heart of Lincoln land.

James Solomon (”The Bronx is Burning”) penned the screenplay, and the team of Greg Shapiro, Rob Stone and Brian Peter Falk are producing it, and actor James McAvoy is said to be a lead.

Oh, one other name … the director will be Robert Redford.

 Today’s deep thought

As mulled by Karen Hosack, of Bloomington: “Given David (Read more…)

People pay big money these days to get good comedy.

And to think a newspaper like this one still only costs 75 cents!

A check of recent news stories, culled from the wires and leading papers and neatly wrapped as our latest installment of News Is Stranger Than Fiction:

 At a home in Martinsburg, W.Va., where a 19-year-old broke in and stole two diamond rings, he was caught when on his way out, he noticed the family’s computer, sat down, logged into his Facebook account and forgot then to log himself out.

 At a Plants and Planters store in Richardson, Texas, where managers noticed items were continually missing the next morning, officials set up surveillance cameras to discover the thief — it was a monkey that had been climbing a fence in the middle of (Read more…)

Of all the Halloween parties in Central Illinois this year, and you know there will be many, one will be at Wendy and Marty Striegel’s place in a highly rural, corn-enshrouded stretch of western McLean County.

There will be a bonfire. They’ll have a wiener roast. There will be a “spook trail.” They’ll bob for apples, decorate in blacks and oranges, and have lots of treats.

Oh, and one other thing:

They’ll do it without clothes.

Totally.

OK, except for maybe a mask.

Yes, if you’ve ever asked the question — what do nudists (Read more…)