Randy Cassingham's Blog

Wanted Poster

A teen boy and two girls stopped in at Tony's Old Time Portrait Studio in Victoria, B.C., Canada, where clients can dress up in period costumes for photos. Tony's staff spent 40 minutes dressing the kids up for their photos. They sat for the portraits, looked at them, and then "took off like a bat out of hell" without paying their C$84 (US$82) sitting fee, owner Tony Bohanan said. Bohanan didn't get mad, he got even: he released the portraits and asked the public to help identify the thieves. Once the photographic evidence hit the media, the three teens turned themselves in to police; one of the girls also paid the fee, and apologized to Bohanan. "We saw our pictures plastered all over the place and it made me feel like a crook," she told him. The boy's father brought him in to apologize too. Bohanan, 79, said he's waiting to hear from the third desperado. (Victoria Times Colonist) ...Bohanan didn't make her feel like a crook. Her actions did.

Expose Yourself to Art

The Hampton Roads, Va., Virginian-Pilot newspaper held its 36th annual "Student Gallery", an art contest for area students. The judges included the director of the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary, and a director from the Chrysler Museum of Art. But their winning choice was rejected by the newspaper as "inappropriate" -- the 17-year-old girl who painted the portrait posed for it herself -- without clothing. "There's nothing showing!" complained a Chrysler Museum official, but the newspaper liaison sniffed the paper is "thinking about the audience, and all the kids and the younger siblings who will see these pieces." The painting did not violate the rules of the contest. OK, so on to the second choice of the judges, a sculpture. It was rejected by the newspaper too, for the same reason. Two "judges" from the newspaper awarded the $1,000 first prize to a third student. Chrysler Museum officials were so bothered by the rejection that they raised $1,000 to give to the judges' first choice, Nancy "Beth" Reid, a senior at Churchland High School in Portsmouth. Her painting is still hanging at the Chrysler. (Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot) ...The ultimate victory: the Pilot had to report on its staff's own stupidity.