Stupid News - Hair patrol: La. barber ticketed for Monday work !

Stupid News - Hair patrol: La. barber ticketed for Monday work !
HOUMA, La. - Police in this town wouldn't cut a break for a barber who ran afoul of an obscure law barring him from working Sundays and Mondays.

Clyde Scott had opened his shop May 19 just to trim up a few students getting ready for their graduation ceremony when an officer gave him a citation.

A law on the books in Houma for decades bars barbers from working Sundays, Mondays, any of several holidays and even the day after Labor Day.

"I didn't know it existed," said Scott, 32, who has owned Clippas barbershop for about two years. "It's crazy."

Parish Council Clerk Paul Labat said he didn't know exactly how long the law has been on the books, but that it dates to the years before the parish and city governments merged in 1981. "It's still an active law," he told The Courier of Houma.

Houma police spokesman Lt. Todd Duplantis said police discovered the ordinance after receiving complaints about people loitering outside the barbershop, and an officer was instructed to issue a summons. Duplantis said it was the first time he had heard of such a ticket being written in his 23 years with the department.

District Attorney Joe Waitz Jr. won't be prosecuting the case. In fact, he's asking the parish council to repeal the law as unconstitutional.

"It's our job to prosecute criminals, not barbers," he said.

James Adams, president of the Louisiana Board of Barber Examiners, the state licensing agency for barbers and their shops, said he thinks the law is a vestige of "strong-arm" tactics used by a barber's union in the 1950s and '60s.

"I'm surprised such a law is still on the books," he said.

Stupid News - Chicago students seek Obama's haircut, speedy spud, Weird Al

CHICAGO - Dozens of students from the University of Chicago returned Sunday from a four-day multistate trek dubbed the world's largest scavenger hunt after trying to find Barack Obama's haircut and a car horn that plays "La Cucaracha," among other things.

The list of 269 items includes having "a Nobel Prize winner or 'Weird Al' Yankovic witness your organ donor registration" and trying to get "Obama's haircut at Obama's barbershop."

Teams get points for the items they bring back to campus, tasks they complete or questions they answer correctly. The scavenger hunt, in its 22nd year, includes a road trip as far as 1,000 miles from Chicago.

"This allows us to take another kind of brain power and put it into frivolous, trivial but completely enjoyable tasks," said senior David Pisano, 21.

Winners had not been posted as of late Sunday for this year's challenges, which included having "a potato break the sound barrier" and finding "a disgruntled beekeeper."

Some participants headed to Las Vegas in search of celebrities to photograph, while others contemplated weaving a basket underwater, building a working light bulb from scratch, or locating or constructing a bust of Abraham Lincoln made out of pennies.

In 2000, the list called for a live elephant, which students were able to procure for judging.