In Windsor, Va., a robber entered Red`s Supermarket with a note announcing, ”This a holdup.” The lame sentence was too much for a store clerk, who started laughing and couldn`t stop. The robber, possibly embarrassed but certainly unnerved, ran off with some cheap cigars (for the next time he blows smoke, presumably).
LET`S JUST FORGET THE WHOLE THING, OK? His robbery note worked fine in Kentwood, Mich., but a guilty conscience exerted a stronger message. A contrite shoe store bandit soon called police to report abandoning his booty at a gas station. ”We`re thinking he . . . decided to give the money back with the idea that he`d get out of it,” theorized police Chief Terry Tobias. Not a chance. Charged later with attempted armed robbery was James Brueker, 20, a philosophy student at nearby Calvin College, a religious institution.
A GAME SPIRIT? YOU BET Eight years ago, Nicholas Pericles Katsafanas-better known as Pittsburgh TV celeb Nick Perry-rigged Pennsylvania`s 666 lottery by injecting liquid in weighted Ping Pong balls he used to determine winners of a $3.5 million game. (For two years in prison, the inmates called him ”666.”) Now 71, Perry has a chance to do what he did so well for most of 31 years in local TV:
Anchoring a game show. Said Perry, host of ”Jackpot Bowling” on cable: ”You can`t stay on the shelf forever.”
NOW-THE TV NAME YOU`RE WAITING FOR For those not in the know (nearly everyone), Mary Tyler Moore finally has settled on a title for her new series-too late for most TV guides, which couldn`t fill in the blanks for their October listings. It`s ”Annie McGuire” (not Mary-something-or-other, which is MTM`s history). The show stars Moore as a Manhattan pol`s employee and a just-remarried mother. It`ll premiere Oct. 26 on CBS.
MY WAY OR IT`S HOG CITY, NEIGHBOR ”I`m just a poor old country boy trying to make a buck,” insists Bill Auble, a developer who smells profit in Trumansburg, N.Y. Auble wants a shopping center and apartment village on his farm, which would require annexation for sewer and water hookups-not easy in Trumansburg, an artsy-crafty village that treasures pristine surroundings. Auble was snubbed in April. The next day, he converted his back forty into a hog farm. Turning magnanimous in August, he sold the hogs. Now he`s petitioning for annexation and making no secret of the consequences if he`s rebuffed: More hogs.
”Pigmail!” cried resident Jules Burgevin, a university professor. Nonsense, retorted the farmboy, ”I`m just using the land the way they want me to-agricultural.” (If Auble is a poor old country boy, Robin Givens surely is a choir girl.)
SEWER GAS . . . A GIRL`S BEST FRIEND? Smelling like hogs but turning romantic is sewer gas. The Navy has found a way to grow diamond crystals with methane gas tapped from the District of Columbia`s sewage system. ”I don`t think we`ll be able to grow diamonds of gemstone size and quality in the near future,” said chemist James Butler at the Naval Research Laboratory, envisioning industrial use soon. Some day, though, imagine the revolution (or revulsion) in finger snobbery . . . .
CUPID FLIES ON A PRUSSIAN STRING Love floats over the Berlin Wall. Kerstin Vockert, unable to marry Peter Rozinat because he`s in the East and she`s in the West, is floating balloons with romantic messages. One is from Shakespeare`s ”Romeo and Juliet”: ”With love`s light wings did I o`er-perch these walls . . . for stony limits cannot hold love out.” Vockert, 29, said she has no choice. ”I am no longer allowed to go over and see him, and Peter can`t get out.”
A PRESLEY FOOTNOTE: SHE`S PREGNANT Expecting sometime next spring is Lisa Marie Presley, 20, now honeymooning with musician-husband Danny Keough in the Caribbean (and due to inherit a $50 million estate on her 25th birthday). Said Mom, the ex-Mrs. Elvis: ”I couldn`t be happier for the two of them at this very special time in their lives.”
JUST BRUSHING UP ON COLOR, CONSTABLE Over on the hardly pacific Pacific, Alf`s Imperial Army is waging guerrilla warfare with New Zealand Telecom over phone booth colors in Christchurch. Telecom likes blue and has a legion of painters following orders. Alf, a group of amateur military historians whose members don historic uniforms, is repainting them red, the traditional color. One box changed colors five times in 24 hours.
