THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 6, 1996 TAG: 9605040037
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
I'M GOING to breeze through this column for you because I have to mail my ballot into the Pickle Packers International by midnight tonight.
Yep. . . a fanfare if you don't mind, maestro. . . I am an official balloter for the Glass Pickle Award.
This is the 9th year the Glass Pickle Award has been given to people or groups who have found themselves in a pickle.
Past winners include Tonya Harding, Hillary Clinton and Roseanne. Now I've got to pick a nominee in a hurry.
If I don't. . . goodbye complimentary jar of dills.
Here are some people already nominated:
Hugh Grant. I won't elaborate on this one. It's enough to say that in the great game of life he was caught with his pants down.
Connie Chung. She should have minded her own peas and q's instead of asking Newt Gingrich's mom to spill the beans about what her son called Hillary.
The National Football League. Which has no loyalty to fans in any city with an NFL franchise. If the present trend continues teams will slink from city to city each year like David Janssen. And have names like The Fugitives and The Vagabonds.
Kato Kaelin. Gotta love this guy. Named for the Green Hornet's chauffeur, Kato looks like one of the children who flew out the nursery window with Peter Pan. Only he stayed in Never-Never Land. He has changed his story about O.J.'s behavior on the night of Nicole's murder so often he has given mere perjury a good name. Forget Burger King. When it comes to the home of The Whopper. . . it's wherever Kato hangs his elf hat.
Pat Buchanan. Buchanan??? Yep, Pat's been nominated and I don't get it. He may be a pickle. But he's not in one. Poor Bob Dole is in a pickle because Buchanan won't get off his back. Thereby proving that a Pat on the back isn't always a good thing.
Another highly questionable nominee is - someone catch me before I faint - Mother Nature. I can't believe the PPI allowed that nomination. It was likely because of our bad winter of mud, snow, sleet, and wind. Well of course Mother Nature is in a pickle. She created pickles for Pete's sake.
I think: ``Here I am trying to be a serious balloter and the PPI is tossing in Mother Nature.'' What will it be next? The aurora borealis? Get out of here!
Well, I think it would be good if I could find someone here in Hampton Roads who is in a pickle. Give a little recognition to the region, you know.
But I can't think of anyone here who's really in a pickle beside me. My instruction sheet that comes with the ballot must have been written by someone named Phister Phawcett. ``On the ballot is a plethora of possibilities for the picking,'' it says.
Pwecious.
But there's a blank space where I can choose my own nominee. I'm inclined to cast it for Dennis Rodman, the Chicago Bulls' referee-bumping rebounder who is is always in a pickle with the NBA. His Hairness is so outrageous he makes tasteless run-of-the-mill freaks like Don Imus and Howard Stern look like tea dance escorts for Martha Stewart.
But I don't know. . .
Betcha Peter Piper could have picked a peck of pickle papers. But not us, of course. Guess I'll just have to nominate an out-of-town newspaper: The Ely Standard in the United Kingdom. My friend Tony Germanotta passed along a correction that sheet printed recently. It went like this:
``We apologize for the error in last week's paper in which we stated that Mr. Arnold Dogbody was a defective in the police force. This was a typographical error.
``We meant, of course, that Mr. Dogbody is a detective in the police farce.''
Yep, that should do it. The Ely Standard it is. ILLUSTRATION: Color AP photo
Pat Buchanan
by CNB