Avondale Mugger: Do You Have 50 Cents?

Someone was mugged at about midnight last night on the sidewalk around 2710 N. Artesian in Avondale. Apparantly the mugger went up to the guy and was like "Do you have 50 cents?" When the victim produced 50 cents, the mugger brandished a gun, and told him "That isn't enough." At that point, the victim produced a dollar bill, then split. No shots were fired. The victim called Police, and they apprehended a suspect about a block away from the scene of the mugging.

IN Attorney Arrested After Bringing Bottle Of Whiskey To Court

Attorney Peter Katic was arrested and charged with public intoxication after allegedly arriving at a Tippecanoe County courtroom drunk yesterday. Katic is a former Lake County, IN commissioner and former Hammond, IN city judge. Katic, 53, arrived yesterday at the Tippecanoe County courthouse in LaFayette, IN for an 11 a.m. juvenile court hearing. When officials noticed Katic's bloodshot eyes, flushed face and slowed movements, they gave him a portable breathalyzer test, on which he registered a blood-alcohol content of 0.201 percent, more than twice the 0.08 legal limit for driving in Indiana. Officials apparently also found a bottle of whiskey in Katic's coat pocket.

Wall Street Journal: Our View Of Men Compels Men To Limit Interaction With Kids

The Journal recently ran this interesting piece, which posits that much of men's limiting their interaction with kids they encounter is due to fear of being characterized as a predator. Not only did the men who gave input say that they were mortified when they accidentally bumped into a child they didn't know, but even felt compelled to avert their eyes when children were around and felt as though they should not hold their own child's hand in public.

Student Suffering Stroke Denied Emergency Care Per School Policy

I guess we can all agree that high schools should all be like jails, but at least in the clink you can eventually get paramedics if you have a stroke. Earlier this year freshman Mariya Fatima suffered a stroke while at school at Jamaica High School in Queens, NY. School staff declined to call 911, because they had been forbidden to do so by their superiors. Specifically, former Jamaica Assistant Principal Guy Venezia sent a memo to Jamaica High School's deans on April 12 banning 911 calls "for any reason." Why? Because 911 calls create permanent paper trials that could reinforce Jamiaca H. S.'s reputation as an unsafe school. We at The Avondale tip our hat to our educational system's concern for our children's safety.

Seattle Times: No Sympathy For Female Sex Abusers

There have been two reported instances of female teachers sexually abusing their students in Washington state in recent months. Jennifer Leigh Rice, a 31-year-old former Tacoma teacher, was recently charged with having sex with a 10-year-old boy who had been in her fourth-grade class. And earlier this year, former Tenino math teacher Dawn Welter, 38, was charged with second-degree sexual misconduct after spending the night at a motel with a 16-year-old female student. And that's nothing new. The only unusual thing here is that The Seattle Times is running a story actually commenting on how absurd it is that we collectively give these women a pass since they, as women, must be cultivating some valuable "relationship" by boning these apple-juice drinking, back pack-wearing tykes. Just a couple years ago, the press would still be giving you the tragically naive "by definition it's impossible to sexually abuse a male" argument.

Logan Square "Mega Mall" Burns Down

The Mega Mall in Logan Square burned up in a four-alarm fire on Saturday night. The Mega Mall is basically a flea market/pay day loan place in a warehouse, and the Logan Square community has always been divided over its value. Saturday night, as a few of my friends were hanging out on the roof of their place in Avondale, they saw a massive cloud of smoke to the south and opined that it must be coming from somewhere around Diversey. Nope; it was the Mega Mall. Fire inspectors are still investigating the cause of the fire, but the building's owner suspects that it was caused by vandals.

What's The Best Way To Meet Women In Chicago?

These guys are my heroes.

SC Teacher Pleads Guilty To Charges Of Having Sex With 5 Male Students

Allenna Williams Ward pleaded guilty yesterday to charges stemming from her amorous liasons with five male middle school students. At the time of the conduct Ward, 23, was a seventh-grade language arts teacher at Bell Middle School in Laurens County, South Carolina. Ward pleaded guilty Thursday to six charges--three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor and three counts of lewd acts on a minor. By pleading guilty Ward admits that she had sex with several students in cars, parks, a hotel and at the school where she taught. Police said that Ward had sex with at least five boys: three 14-year-olds, and two 15-year-olds. The boys were students at Bell Middle School and another school that was not named.

First Season Of "30 Rock" On Shelves

Everybody knows that Tina Fey is the most talented (read: hot) person in TV right now, and "30 Rock" is a perfect picture of her comedic brilliance. If you're not hip, I'll catch you up on it: Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is a young third-wave feminist head writer on a women-centric live comedy show called "The Girlie Show" taped in NYC's famed 30 Rockefeller Plaza TV studios. Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin, or simply "Baldwin"), head of the Microwave Oven Division in the corporate conglomerate that owns NBC, has been put in charge of television broadcasts and decides to punch up "The Girlie Show" by hiring mentally disturbed black movie star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) and changing the show's name to "T.G.S. With Tracy Jordan." Hilarity ensues. The first season of "30 Rock" is full of all that stuff that made Fey's Mean Girls script so awesome--glamorous women and their charming insecurities; straight-faced white liberal race comedy ("Two-fer is a two-fer; he's a Harvard guy and a black guy"); and enough physical comedy to make Amanda Bynes blush: spit-takes, spills, awkward dancing, stubbed toes: you name it. The first season of this Emmy-studded contemporary Mary Tyler Moore show hit shelves yesterday, and I walked a half a mile in the rain after an all-day deposition to buy it. Yes; it was worth it, and I haven't even checked out the special features yet.

Universal Studios, Unrated, Retail price: $49.98

A Word Of Advice: Don't Fuck With 114

Yesterday my friend Rob and I decided to have our own little barbecue, because everyone else had gone back to Crystal Lake for Labor Day. Before we went to the Mexican grocery store to buy steaks and so on, we took the bus down to Foremost Liquors to get drinks. When we got there, we milled around for a bit, not sure what to get. We both wanted whiskey, and Rob was leaning toward Bourbon, but nothing was jumping off the shelf at us. A handle of Evan Williams? Sounds kind of yucky. A fifth of Jim Beam Rye? Rob wasn't interested. Then it hit me: sitting on the top shelf, next to all of the pricey premium brands was a cognac bottle-shaped fifth of Old Grand Dad 114. It had never before even occured to me to try to fuck with a bottle of 114, but at that moment our boredom with the bourbon selection, and the fact that 114 only cost $22.00 (I had never priced it before) made buying that bottle seem like a really good idea. And it was; the whiskey tasted great, diluted with the requisite amount of tap water. Rob and I were both impressed. Here's the only thing: after like 2 reasonably-sized glasses of the stuff, Rob and I were both so groggy and wasted that we both decided to go to sleep at about 6:00 PM.