Strange but True

DALLAS — A resident has a message for his city: Pull up your pants.

Ron Price, a Dallas school board member, has asked the City Council to look at strengthening a law to go after people who wear baggy pants and expose their underwear.

"I think it’s disrespectful, it’s dishonorable and it’s disgusting,” said Price, who made the recommendation last week. "I have no problem with the top of your Hanes label being shown. My problem is when grown men walk about the city with pants below their buttocks.”

Council members have asked the city attorney to look into the issue. City Attorney Tom Perkins said this week he’s investigating the legalities and will report back to the council.

But experts say that such a law might not hold up, so to speak.

It would be too vague, said Robert Jarvis, constitutional law professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He said that for a criminal law to be constitutional, a person of average intelligence must know what’s being prohibited.

"Who’s to say how baggy pants can be before they’re ’baggy pants,”’ he said. "There’s just no way to regulate these things.”

Such proposals haven’t made it too far in recent years. In Virginia, the Senate dropped a bill last year that would have fined those with pants so low their underwear was exposed. A similar bill from a Louisiana state representative failed to pass in 2004. And such proposals haven’t faired well at the city level either.

Smash-and-grabs

HOLTSVILLE, N.Y. — If money could buy happiness, these thieves would be overjoyed. They stole the ATM.

Packs of thieves have been swiping the cash machines from drugstores and mom-and-pop shops around Suffolk County, most recently before dawn Friday. They smashed the front window of Dario Rodriguez’s deli in Holtsville, withdrew the automated teller machine and fled. Rodriguez said police told him there had been a dozen such smash-and-grabs recently.

"They break in, take the whole machine and are gone by the time the cops get here,” he told Newsday.

The crooks crack open the ATMs, which can hold thousands of dollars each, remove the Andrew Jacksons and deposit the empty machines in the woods.

Detective Sgt. Frank Stewart said several of the thefts had been solved with a recent arrest.

Calendar men

MANNING, Iowa — A superintendent who posed as a nearly naked "Mr. August” in a charity calendar is rebuffing critics who say it amounts to soft-core pornography.

Roger Schmiedeskamp, superintendent of the Manning school district, joined other men, including bankers and insurance salesmen, in appearing in a 2007 calendar that will be sold to raise money for the local Rotary Club. The men appear partially disrobed in a spoof of the 2003 movie "Calendar Girls,” in which 12 women appear naked to raise money for a hospital.

In the Manning calendar, Schmiedeskamp’s image is superimposed in an old schoolhouse room in front of a chalkboard and behind a desk. He is shirtless and his legs are bare under the desk, creating the image that is naked in an empty classroom.

"When I saw it I was so angry at the setting,” said Kathy Swanson, a parent and grandparent of students in the school district. "A kid is supposed to be safe in the classroom. This does not portray safe. It’s sickening.”

Brian Irlbeck, Manning school board president, said the board supports Schmiedeskamp. Schmiedeskamp said he appeared in the calendar only to raise money for the Rotarians.

"I didn’t see anything that was inappropriate about it,” said Schmiedeskamp, who wore a swimsuit during the photo shoot. "I think it’s a worthwhile cause to raise some money to help the community.”

Robo-trout

GREENVILLE, Maine — Anglers, don’t be alarmed if you catch a trout with an antenna coming out of its belly. It’s just a "robo-trout.”

About 75 transmitter-equipped trout have been released in Moosehead Lake and its tributaries by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife as part of an effort to track them and maintain the right mix of fish.

Three of them have been caught by anglers, including Ken Snowdon, who nabbed one of the unusual fish back in January. The fish, sans transmitter and antenna, won first place in a fishing derby and is being mounted at a taxidermist shop.

The trout Snowdon plucked from the icy waters was a trophy fish that was 23 inches long and weighed 5 1/2 pounds. It also had a thin, 10-inch antenna protruding from its orange-red belly that was transmitting a signal.

The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife let Snowdon keep the fish but not before retrieving the $200 transmitter.

Snowdon asked a taxidermist to use a line of dark thread to mimic the antenna that was protruding from its belly.

Once it’s mounted, it’ll look like it did when Snowdon caught it, with the antenna-like thread coming from a small incision.

"It will be a conversation starter, that’s for sure,” he said.<