Donna Lethal

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — It wasn’t just the caffeine that gave an Iowa woman an extra jolt after she had her morning coffee. It was also the bat she found in the filter. The Iowa Department of Public Health says the woman reported a bat in her house but wasn’t too worried about it. She turned on her automatic coffee maker before bedtime and drank her coffee the next morning. She discovered the bat in the filter when she went to clean it that night. The woman has undergone treatment for possible rabies. Health officials say that the bat was sent to a lab but that its brain was too cooked by the hot water to determine whether it had rabies.

Wasn’t too worried about it? I’m guessing she had already popped her Ambien. Or she’s Morticia Addams. It also reminds me of Twin Peaks: “Catherine, there’s a fish in the percolator.”

(Italics mine.)

My friend TJ and I are thinking along the same lines. I noticed this trend in jewelry ads of late:

Daria digs in

Drew chews

Kate salivates

See the originators of jewelry eating here.

aka Melinda McGraw. I thank my lucky stars for “Mad Men” every Sunday.

This, and other great pix at the Mad Men site.

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian woman who worked as a part-time judge as well as a lawyer was substituted by her identical twin sister in court so she would not lose out on legal fees when she had two simultaneous engagements.

The 54-year-old twins from northern Italy have now been charged with fraud and will go on trial in January, Italy’s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, reported Friday on its website.

One of the twins, identified only as Gabriella, worked primarily as a lawyer but also as an honorary judge, a part-time, paid position that entails helping full-time judges when their case load is heavy.

When Gabriella was called to be a substitute judge she sent her sister twin Patrizia to stand in for her at an existing engagement as a defense lawyer elsewhere in the Milan area.

The problem was that sister Patrizia was not a lawyer like sister Gabriella but charged the clients anyway.

The clients discovered the sister act and are now suing both for damages. Prosecutors have charged both with fraud, the paper said.

“Oh, really!“

I haven’t done a Saint of the Week in a long time. Here’s a good one:

Saint Genesius of Rome

An Actor hired to work in a play that made fun of Christian Baptism. In the middle of the performance he suddenly received a word from God, suddenly realized the truth of Christianity, and converted on stage. He refused to renounce his new faith, even at the emperor’s orders, and was beheaded by order of emperor Diocletian.

Talk about stealing a scene! The other actors must have wanted to kill him. Is that why he’s the patron saint of comedians?

Wait, here’s more:

Two actors then entered, one playing a priest and the other an exorcist. When they asked Genesius what he wanted, again he repeated his heart’s true desire for baptism. He said, “I wish to receive the grace of Christ. I long to be reborn and set free from all the sin that lies around me.” The actor priest then baptized Genesius. The Emperor Diocletian could not stop laughing, and began to send small gifts of gold, food and wine up to the players. Genesius was then dressed in white and led before an actor playing a Roman judge. As other actors played soldiers, Genesius was now interrogated just like an actual Roman trial of Christians. But Genesius was no longer acting.

The Oscar of saints - a beheading!

NEW YORK (AP) - Robert Wagner’s marriage to Natalie Wood was known to all. His love affair with Barbara Stanwyck was a secret - until now. In his new memoir “Pieces of My Heart,” Wagner writes of his four-year romance with the star of such classics as “Stella Dallas” and “Double Indemnity.” They met on the set of “Titanic,” released in 1953, when he was 22 and she 45 and divorced from actor Robert Taylor.

“I would say she gave me self-esteem,” writes the actor whose successful TV series included “It Takes a Thief” and “Hart to Hart,” but the relationship didn’t hold. They were both too busy working and the age difference was too great. Stanwyck eventually broke it off. (!)

“I would always have been Mr. Stanwyck,” Wagner, now 78, writes, “and we both knew it.”

Here’s a pic of Babs from “Titanic” - still a Ball of Fire!

I had to be on camera yesterday and wasn’t happy about it! We all know the camera adds ten pounds and it’s impossible to lose twenty pounds overnight. To help raise my spirits, I of course turned to Princess Luciana. From “The Beautiful People’s Beauty Book,” chapter 8, ‘Being Photogenic’:

‘There is even a trend today to have models look like “people” rather than anonymous perfections or vehicles for all those gorgeous clothes. Many a fashion photographer can tell you there is a glut of highly trained models who are impossible to use any more because they are specialized morons.’

Her epitaph reads: “She did it the hard way.”

Bette wishes you love.

first Raquel, now this …
thanks Tony

From one of my favorite things ever, the “Raquel!” TV special from 1970 (I think):

Best. eyebrows. ever.

Cross-dressing thief leaves fake breast behind

Wed Sep 3, 3:09 pm ET

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. – Police in Port St. Lucie are on the lookout for a cross-dressing man who snatched a 74-year-old woman’s purse. As if that weren’t odd enough, they’re depending on a strange clue. The suspect left behind a condom filled with water he had been using as a fake breast.

The woman said she believed the thief followed her while shopping. A witness told investigators he was wearing a short denim skirt and black tube top, and fled in a silver car with two other male crossdressers.

Police are processing the condom for fingerprint and DNA evidence.

That’s an interesting fake boob. The drag queens I knew used balloons filled with water or styrofoam beads.