HAUL TALK 3782

Haul, Speed Racer, Haul!!!

It's likely ontario legislators had a specific kind of offender in mind when they recently enacted legislation to catch and penalize street racers. It's less likely they envisioned that one of the first violators ensnared by the law would be driving a commercial garbage truck.

An Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer clocked the 26-year-old driver going 112 km (75 miles) per hour in a 60 km (35 miles) per hour zone, a small stretch of two-lane blacktop in Goderich, Ont., about 200 km northwest of Toronto. Police said the truck belonged to a private waste hauler and that the driver was on duty at the time. The truck was impounded, and the driver's license was suspended. He faces one count of racing and one count of failing to inspect his vehicle, not to mention what is likely to be a very uncomfortable meeting with his soon-to-be ex-employer.

He'll also likely field questions from physicists and mechanics, curious to know precisely how he got a garbage truck to go 75 mph.
Source: Canwest News Service

Costume Drama

Trash bags are not the best storage medium for valuable clothing. Demetrios Bonaros, managing director of the Hipgnosis Theatre Company, learned this the hard way while his off-Broadway theater was staging a production of Bertolt Brecht's “The Caucasian Circle.” Bonaros, show Co-Producer John Castro and a friend were transporting several piles of garbage bags containing period costumes and props from Bonaros' Astoria, N.Y., home to the theater for an upcoming dress rehearsal. Given the large number of overstuffed, unwieldy bags, several piles were temporarily left on the curb awaiting loading into the trio's truck while they went to drag more out of storage.

By the time they returned, the bags were gone. The first thought? Theft. The second? Sanitation. This second theory was confirmed when the men tracked down a garbage truck a few blocks away. Unfortunately, it was not the truck that had collected their bags, which they learned was now 10 blocks in the other direction. The proper truck was eventually found and the apologetic crew permitted Bonaros, a notorious clean-freak, to dig through its unpleasant load for half an hour, netting him roughly half of the lost costumes. The rest were consigned to fate … aka the nearest landfill.

The moral of the story? The show must go on … but not before the costumes go to the dry cleaners.
Source: New York Daily News