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Newsgrinder Important events as reported by daily newspapers and summarized by staff and contributors. Thursday 9.28.00 Sebastopol masseur Wayne Kowalski has to keep his hands to himself. Busted for the sexual battery of a client during a massage session in his home last year, Kowalski opted for six months in the pokey rather than five years of probation, mandatory counseling, and treatment for sexual misconduct, because Sonoma County Judge Allen Hardcastle also forbade him to practice massage therapy, reports the Sonoma West Times and News. By serving the sentence, Kowalski is not subject to the terms of probation and will be returning to clients upon his release in six months. Wednesday 10.4.00 Richard J. McClean doesn't have such a clean record anymore. Booked for "home invasion and the theft of marijuana plants," the 22-year-old reefer robber couldn't be reached for comment since he's busy reading the book that got thrown at him--a veritable War and Peace of incarceration at six years and eight months in the slammer, according to the Petaluma Argus-Courier. McClean manhandled the Mary Jane away from Petaluma's Burt Lane last August with fellow pot-plunderer David Delasantos. The hemp hijackers were armed with a gun and knife--the weaponry equivalent of wearing a belt with suspenders. The report did not indicate whether or not the cannabis caper's homegrown horticulturist got stung or if the Petaluma Police Department got stoned and simply forgot about it. Delasantos was also sent up for robberies in Santa Rosa and a kidnapping in connection with one of the robberies. He's still awaiting sentencing but will soon be in the weight room with his old bud buddy doing the McClean and jerk and discovering new definitions for "head shop." Saturday 10.7.00 Butt paintings resurfaced in Marin last week. The fabled art form that put Sonoma State University's fledgling experimental psych department in the crapper in the '70s, earning it the moniker "Granola U," found a new advocate in San Francisco artist Laura Lengyel. Using paint and asses as a printing means, Lengyel's work was on display at the 87th annual California Society of Printmakers exhibition on the College of Marin campus in Kentfield. Lengyel told the crowd, "The idea of body painting sounds like a whole bunch of fun, but for me it translates to a whole lot of work." Emphasis on "but." Lengyel slathered paint on the posteriors of two nude models as the crowd shouted lines penned by the artist: "What is art really? Art is really what? What is art?" Knowing Lengyel, I'd say her response was cheeky and aloofa. . . . Sunday 10.8.00 San Anselmo's "Twinkie Defense" shrink Martin Blinder was stabbed in the chest by his ex-wife, Dorothy Braco of Rohnert Park, last Friday. Blinder survived the attack. Braco, however, washed ashore in Pacifica the following Sunday morning--an apparent suicide, reports the Marin IJ. Blinder gained fame in the late '70s during the trial of mayoral assassin Dan White (the gun-toting ex-supervisor killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978), who was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder owing, in part, to Blinder's testimony that a junk-food diet of Twinkies and Coca-Cola adversely affected White's behavior. Though an autopsy has not determined Braco's snack-food predilections, Blinder's besmirched romantic history may point to a motive (Braco is Blinder's second wife to commit suicide). Blinder is the author of Lovers, Killers, Husbands and Wives (a collection of interviews with convicted murderers) and Choosing Lovers (subtitled "Patterns of Romance: How You Select Partners in Intimacy, the Ways You Connect and Why You Break Apart"). Tuesday 10.10.2000 Dogs will have a new friend in Santa Rosa's Depot Park in Railroad Square come December. A 4-foot-tall bronze Charlie Brown is being installed in honor of his creator, the late Charles Schulz, reports the local daily. Commissioned by the city of Santa Rosa, the new doggy pissoir will be cast in bronze and cost a quarter of a million bucks in public funds and private contributions. Good grief. [ North Bay | MetroActive Central | Archives ]