Tony Deyal, Contributor
THE ENGLISH expression to "be in the pink" seemed to have worked for Beyonce. She opened the Grammy Awards performing "Purple Rain" with "TAFKAP" (The Artist Formerly Known As Prince).
However, when Beyonce is performing and flashing pink underwear who wants to look at TAFKAP? Having lost his Sting, he might as well be Pink Floyd.
Whether her underwear did it or just her natural talents, Beyonce went on to win five awards. Pink underwear, however, did not help habitual car-thief, Keith Lucky Stratton. Despite his middle name, and for the second time in a year, Stratton was recaptured after an unsuccessful prison escape just months before his release. According to Court TV (from which the cases in this column are drawn), the brazen break, which took place on Stratton's birthday, was foiled when someone spotted Stratton, 32, in his jail-issued pink underwear. It was a fashion emergency and a tip from the public that ended the inmate's birthday run.
MAN WITH PINK UNDERWEAR
Stratton was apparently having trouble keeping up the brown pants he was wearing. A little more than two hours after his escape, someone called 911 and reported a suspicious-looking man with pink underwear running behind a furniture store. Instead of five Grammys, Stratton would be lucky if he got less than five months additional jail time.
Stupid criminals are not uncommon anywhere. Last month in Trinidad a man reputedly attempted to mail several packages of cocaine through the postal service. There have been cases of thieves falling asleep at the scene of their crimes, most times after guzzling the homeowners' stock of alcohol. However, increasingly in the United States, sex and stupidity seem to be converging in criminal activities, and no business can be funnier than doing business in the open.
A Tennessee couple, Dan Gilchrist, 45, and Paula Parris, 44, were charged with public intoxication and indecent exposure after a neighbour allegedly spotted them in a grassy grope-fest on the front lawn of their home. Perhaps they might have been trying to see whether the grass was greener on the other side but whatever the motive, according to the police report, Gilchrist was allegedly clad only in his underwear, while Parris had nothing on below the waist. "She was bottomless with a gray sweater over herself," an officer wrote.
Then a daring duo took the notion of unsafe sex to new heights. John Meyers, 44, and Brenda Orme, 45, scaled a 215-foot water tower in a quest to have relations "on top of the world" according to a police statement. The pair was booked on criminal trespassing and disturbing the peace by being intoxicated in public. Meyers also was charged with criminal negligence for putting himself and Orme in a potentially dangerous situation. "I went out there and this tower was very high up and these people were trashed," said Slidell police Lt. Rob Callahan. "They could have slipped and fell. Instead, they kind of slipped and had sex." Accor-ding to a police statement, Slidell Police Chief Freddy Drennan referred to the elevated escapade as "the poor man's version of the 'mile-high club'." One thing that was not disputed is that they were both high.
Then a 40-year-old registered nurse was found guilty of public lewdness for engaging in a menage a trois with relatives on a moving Long Island Rail Road train last September. The jury determined that Dennis Greene copulated with his sister-in-law, Francine Greene, 40, while she was performing oral sex on her husband, Lyle Greene, 41, a plumber. Dennis Greene denied his involvement in the sexual escapade, saying he slept through most of the ride. Several disgusted passengers complained to the conductor, but the Greenes carried on even after the conductor told them to stop, authorities said. Lyle Greene denied that being a plumber had anything to do with the incident.
RESTROOM RENDEZVOUS
And if that is not bad enough, a pair of bogus cops is accused of trying to profit from a couple's restroom rendezvous.
Tyson James Farkas, 22 and Tina Marie Robichaux, 28, each were charged with extortion and impersonating an officer after they threatened to jail a couple they caught having sex in the women's bathroom of a restaurant.
The two allegedly told the ladies' room lovebirds that they would be jailbirds unless they handed over $100. The couple's names have not been released and they were not charged. What is known is that they seemed to be in extraordinarily good health and quite flushed when they emerged from the washroom. In the pink, to be exact.
Tony Deyal, was last seen on the Long Island Railroad pretending to be a plumber. He claims that all you need to know about plumbing is the difference between a wrench and a wench.
