NEWSCAST
by Leslie Generic, 9/15/00

Leslie: Here now the news, I'm Leslie Generic. In Britain and Europe, farmers and truckers are banding together to paralyze roadway systems in major cities as a protest over high gas prices. German trucker Hans Dietrich Von Shtumpf explained how the strategy will lead to less expensive fuel.

(sfx: horns)

Hans: (german garble)

Interpreter: It has been said that this is extortion, but No! It is not that. It is simple, economics, the time honored principle of supply and demand. We supply an irritant, an emergency, and then make our demands!

(sfx: horns out)

Leslie: German trucker Hans Dietrich Von Shtumpf. Although they were invited to join the economic protest, American farmers and truckers declined because they are still waiting for their tires to be replaced.

After the release of a long awaited government report showing how Hollywood studios market violent and sexual films to audiences too young to attend them, motion picture executives resolved to adopt better behavior in the future. Tyler Flinty is Vice President for Marketing at Borderline Entertainment.

(sfx: reporter hubub and cameras)

Flinty: This very fall, during children's Saturday Morning cartoons, we at Borderline Entertainment will only promote our upcoming animated feature The Tale of Fuzzy Bunny and the Wood.
Under no circumstances will we attempt to lead children to our the upcoming R rated blockbuster Chainsaw Bunny and the Warren of Doom, a provocative story of greed, lust, betrayal, orgiastic abandon and homicidal impulse, the first major motion picture ever made with absolutely NO wardrobe budget at all!

(sfx: reporter hubub and cameras out)

Leslie: Tyler Flinty of Borderline Entertainment. Scientist and explorer Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreck of the Titanic, has now found signs of ancient human habitation submerged 12 miles off the coast of the Black Sea. The site may well be all that remains of a little-known culture suddenly forced to flee by rising water, and may be tied to Biblical and other ancient stories of a mammoth flood. Expedition member, Dr. Brenda Cartwright, chair of the Antiquities Department at Indiana Jones University, said the flood was likely caused by melting glaciers.

(sfx: ocean waves)

Cartwright: The extra water in the Mediterranean overflowed into what we now know as the Black Sea, and this find makes Dr. Ballard the world's leading discoverer of things that were ruined in one way or another... by icebergs. Whether they flooded it, fell on it or just got in the way, it's all he does and he does it well!

(sfx: ocean waves out)

Leslie: In a widely expected merger of competing financial services companies, Chase Manhattan will acquire J.P. Morgan in an all-stock deal valued at close to 36 billion dollars. The amounts of money involved in these modern corporate mergers has become so large most people are unable to comprehend it's magnitude, according to Gene Golly of the descriptive clarification firm, End to End Economics.

Golly: Let's make it a little easier to picture. If laid end-to-end, all the dollars involved in this deal would reach from New York City, home of the new company, all the way to San Fransisco, then back to Akron, South to Birmingham, up around and across the North Pole and down through central Kabul, over the Himilayas, through the Dalai Lama's former residence in Tibet, back through the Pacific Ocean and across the continental US to Cape Canaveral, where the line of dollars would then stretch into outer space itself, reaching all the way to Alpha Centauri, a star that so distant, most people can't see it properly through the haze from the western forest fires.

Leslie: There's another fairy tale in the news. Forrest Grimm reports.

Forrest: A local prince is in police custody after he walked uninvited into the castle of a neighboring kingdom and kissed a sleeping princess. Police say the prince made it past a number of soldiers and subjects and even the Royal Couple to get to the chamber where the princess lay sleeping. Constable-in-charge Trudy Buxom-Wench.

Buxom-Wench: The suspect has not been able to explain his presence in the castle. He says he kissed the sleeping princess "because she was so beautiful." I find it hard to believe that in this day and age anyone can think they're entitled to a kiss because they happen to believe something or someone is "beautiful."

Forrest: The prince's attorney, Sir Reginald Fawning-Toady, promises a spirited defense.

Fawning-Toady: There is ample evidence that the princess, the royal court, the servants and all the animals had been sleeping in that place for 100 years! No work was done! No leadership, nothing. And a score of other young princes were impaled on the thorny hedge outside! My client did everyone a great service by marching into this place and demanding that someone wake up! That he did it with a kiss is not important! It was about time!

Forrest: The princess believes her long sleep was brought on through a spell cast at her birth by a disgruntled sorceress who was not invited to the baby shower. Sir Fawning Toady says his client is considering legal action against the sorceress as well as the prince and her parents for seriously bungling the guest list and place settings. Behind the thorny hedge, I'm Forrest Grimm!

Leslie: And that's the news. I'm Leslie Generic.

Dale Connelly Reporting Home