Devout fans of this column, please forgive us for not presenting any morons last week. You see, a deluge of moronic behavior cascaded through our newsroom, jammed our fax machines, and overloaded our circuit boards.
We've mopped it all up just in time to narrow a football squad-sized crowd of deserving candidates down to a stellar cast of six. There's a distinctly classic feel to this week's lineup:
6. Corinne Oltz, who is clearly better at bustily serving onion rings than at keeping exotic animals.
We gotta admit it: Every time a captive cougar, tiger, or orangutan attacks the redneck who kept it locked in a cage for profit, some deeply-buried, dark and vengeful part of us pops open a Schlitz and does a touchdown dance.
Corinne Oltz was a Hooters waitress and a Playboy model. Her boobs never wounded anybody. Then, for some reason, she decided to buy Kendall's Wild Animal World, making her the custodian of several exotic animals. In 1999 and 2001, her big cats attacked people. In 2006, one of her leopards took a bite out of a 4-year old girl's face at a Coral Gables birthday party. In July 2007, she was charged with culpable negligence and keeping wildlife in unsafe conditions.
She was acquitted. (So was O.J. Just sayin'.)
Yesterday, several animals, including monkeys, parrots and snakes, were killed in a fire at Oltz' wildlife center. Somewhere in Las Vegas, a lemur forced to wear a white rhinestone vest sharpens its teeth and plots its revenge.
5. Rick Korch, UM football spokesman, sentenced to three years for keeping child pornography on his work computer.
Can we all just take a long gander at Korch's cached faculty page- note that he has 10-year old twin children- and barf a little on our space keys? Very cathartic.
4. Anthony Figueroa, sentenced to 45 years for "killing the wrong man".
The fact that he murdered some random dude thinking that it was his girlfriend's ex meets the minimum requirements for moronhood. But really, we just wanted to highlight this line from the Miami Herald account:
So Figueroa killed the wrong man. Did he at least whack the right bunnies?
Police said that in December 2005, Anthony Figueroa, 22, shot and killed Johnny Cuevas, 18, whose truck then plowed into a Little River house's yard, also taking the lives of at least four caged bunnies.
3. Claudia De La Rosa, who called and e-mailed bomb threats in order to delay her boss' flight from Miami International Airport.
Yeah, so apparently De La Rosa had made her boss late for the flight, and in order to keep him from missing it, she called in a bomb threat. Then she e-mailed the same threat in case they didn't get the gist over the phone. And now when you Google her name and the word "idiot," you get 31,800 hits.
2. West Miami Mayor Cesar Carasa, who racked up $70,000 in international phone calls on his city cellphone.
He's been charged with exploiting his official position and suspended by Gov. Charlie Crist, who sure has done a lot of suspendin' lately. Carasa's defense? He "did not have an official car, a good salary or other perks."
Ladies and gentlemen, behold your 13-year old little sister, trapped in a 49-year old mayor's body.
1. Tyrone Green, a South Carolina sexual assault fugitive nabbed trying to escape on a Miami Carnival cruise ship.
When did fugitives become such freakin' pussies? They used to hot-wire rusty Ford trucks and head to Tijuana, leaving bodies in their wake. Now they want to drink daiquiris, read Dean Koontz by the deck pool, and eat overcooked fish dinners at 5 pm. What was his disguise going to be? A "Jamaican Simpsons" T-shirt and tightly-beaded white-girl corn rows?
