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Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

In March, the Saunders County (Neb.) Board of Supervisors reaffirmed that it would not reimburse Register of Deeds Don Clark for the price of a sandwich he ate while out of town on business, even though Clark insisted there was money in his office's budget to cover it. The board said its own rules supersede Clark's budget and instructed the county attorney (who seemed to oppose the board) to hire an outside lawyer to deal with the matter.

Toronto, Ontario, artist Jason Kronewald, 29, creates claylike portraits of celebrities, but using hundreds of pieces of used chewing gum instead of clay, according to a March profile by Reuters news service. He said he doesn't chew, himself, but buys gum and asks his friends to chew it. "I'm not into picking it off seats in the theater. I like the gum to be mine." His "Gum Blondes" series includes Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson.

Another Toronto artist, Istvan Kantor, won one of the country's most prestigious awards in March even though he (called "Canada's leading shock artist" by The New York Times) is best known for bloody performance art scenes, such as wearing the dripping carcasses of cats as a hat and posing himself in various positions to allow blood to drip from body apertures in a series that one critic said was a tribute to blood as "the spurting, contagious prima material of life."

A February BBC News profile touted Madras, India, artist Shihan Hussaini's dedication to using blood to paint 50 portraits of his hero, a Tamil Nadu state official named Jayalalitha. At one point, Hussaini was drawing so much of his own blood that he had to hire a nurse.)
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

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