MWN: The bottom of the Barrel

So today, I thought I would try rousing myself to humor by going to the VERY LAST stories on the front pages of my usual victims, and see what comedy news might lie there.  I was encouraged in this by the first one, at least....


Fox News: I just wanna know why she was directing traffic


Headline:  Chilean mayor sprints to avoid reporters, says she was surprised by her ‘aerobic capacity’

64 year old Evelyn Matthei, the mayor of Providencia in Santiago, was discovered by reporters in a yellow safety vest directing traffic in her neighborhood.  She did take a few questions; but tired of being a lightning rod for critiquing both the government's handling of recent protests, as well as the violence of the protesters, she took off jogging.  The reporters followed, as she would slow down to let them gain, and then tale off again, leading one journalist to say that despite being an athlete (he practices karate), it was hard to keep up with the major.

“It was funny, I did not get what was happening,” he said. “She ran at least two blocks… she had great acceleration.”

Afterwards, she took to Twitter to congratulate some of the more creative meme-makers from the incident...

BBC:  Because it gives a great new market for night-vision goggles

Headline:  Why Hatton's Win 'was great for British and European golf'

Tyrrell Hatton is the golfer in question, a 28 year old who just claimed his first win on the Euro tour in two years in the Turkish Open.  The best part of the story, he won a six-man, four round playoff under floodlights set up on the 18th, some seven hours after play started that day. 

More by accident than design, the tour may have stumbled across something for the future. The images of golf under the lights - with the players repeatedly taking on the 18th - created a real sense of occasion and spectacle as Hatton emerged last man standing.

Yeah, we saw that with Phil Mickelson and Justin Thomas last March.  And yet, "stadium golf" still seems to be a ways off.  Not to mention, not sure I really want to be out after dark in Belek, Turkey right now...


Moscow Times:  What, no Starbucks?

Headline: Our Top 10 Cafes Around Patriarch's Ponds

So what is Patriarch's Ponds?  Well, it is in the rich section of Moscow, and there is just ONE pond, although sometime between being a swamp and a chic place to go, there were three ponds...

Apparently it got remodeled down to one after Napoleon torched the city in 1812.  The top ten list has a lot of nice looking candidates (although I was disappointed that the one named "Nude" referred to the 'industrial' decor and not the waitresses), but I would have to say the one I would be most likely to patronize would be the #10.  It's named, "I Love Cake."


Japan Times:  Maybe you should try a wall

Headline: Trade war frontlines are friendlier than you think

This is a story about a Japanese (unless you are South Korean, in which case it's a South Korean) island right smack dab between the two nations, called Tsushima.  Now, if you're Russian, you might recall Tsushima as the place where the Russian Baltic Sea fleet sailed 18,000 nautical miles in 1905 only to be sunk by the Japanese Navy.  Today, it is a cross-cultural meeting place- at least it was until Japanese PM Abe decided that he wasn't going to apologize to the Koreans over their use of Korean girls as "comfort ladies" during WWII, and since he was insulted by the request, cut off a lot of crucial trade on the grounds that "it might be used by the military."  On the ground, where people try to ignore the governments (something we oughtta try), everybody gets along.  The Russian Navy gives it a wide berth, though.


Xinhua: I hope that didn't translate to "Bubbles"

Headline:  Chinese movies to be screened on 41st Cairo International Film Festival


So if you're a movie buff and think that Cannes is a bit too safe, check out the festival in Cairo, where Chinese films will be headlined by "So Long, My Son", which as far as I can figure involves a couple whose son, nicknamed Xingxing, gets pushed into a reservoir and drowns.  They then move, and adopt another boy, whom they also start calling Xingxing- and he runs away.  They get over it, get rich, then the now-grown boy who pushed Xingxing #1 in the water comes to visit and apologize.  Apparently, what happened to Xingxing #2 and if the other kid apologized because he was sad or because they were rich is left for the sequel, "My Yuan, My Yuan".


Deutsche Welle: Well, they're Turks, so...

Headline: EU targets Turkey's oil drilling off Cyprus coast


For those who don't know their Cyprus history:  Back in the 70's the Greek majority on Cyprus elected an Orthodox Archbishop to run the country (Makarios, which I learned at church means "happy").  Turkey feared that Archbishop Happy would happily turn the whole island over to Greece.  So they did as they usually do- they invaded, "conquering" the Turkish-majority side of the island and naming it an independent nation (which nobody but themselves recognizes).  They somehow, in the same deluded logic that brought you "the Armenian genocide that never happened", the Turks claim that the waters off the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" are THEIR territorial waters, and thus they can drill for oil.

Still waiting for that "Turkish Republic of Northern Syria" so they can drill there, too.