Year in Review: Oddest Stories of the Year
Most anywhere else, breaking an election tie with a game of high card would almost certainly rank as one of the strangest stories of 2010.
In Nevada, it happened twice in five months.
Call it coincidence or karma. Call it the inevitable result from decades of atomic testing.
We prefer to think of it as job security, particularly for the guy who puts together this story every year.
What follows are the seven most unusual stories of 2010, as compiled by the Week in Review staff. Strange we didn’t do a Top 10, isn’t it?
7. Running afowl.
Sue Lowden seemed like the ideal GOP candidate to unseat Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, until her campaign went to the birds.
In the midst of the health care debate, Lowden suggested those in need of medical care barter with their docs, much like the olden days when folks traded chickens for checkups.
Despite attempts to clarify, her feathery faux-pas pecked at her heels the rest of the campaign.
It even led to a constitutional debate over whether a person is allowed to cast a ballot while dressed in a chicken suit.
County election officials eventually decided to let the chicken people vote, and Lowden lost in the primary.
But she still managed to land on her feet. Lowden now serves on the State Board of Medical Examiners.
6. Hoop dreams.
Downtown Las Vegas was gripped by its own constitutional crisis, when it appeared the City Council was on the verge of banning Hula-Hoops.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada came out against the proposed ban, which also sought to establish "free expression zones" on Fremont Street to corral street performers and people soliciting donations.
A compromise has since been struck allowing Hula-Hoops and megaphones while protecting sanctioned entertainers and the flow of pedestrian traffic.
There’s no word on the constitutionality of hooking yourself to a zip line and flying over the heads of Fremont Street visitors.
5. July. Las Vegas. Hot.
Of course.
But locals never saw a month like this.
July 2010 went down as the hottest month ever — a month when no single day broke a record, but every single day topped triple digits.
The average daily temperature of 96.2 degrees was the highest since record keeping began in 1937 and blew past the previous record of 95.4 degrees set in July 2007. The record temps were boosted by nighttime lows that just didn’t fall that low, including a five-day stretch that never saw the cool side of 90.
So, to those of you who survived the hottest month ever, pat yourselves on your backs. Surely your sunburns have healed by now.
4. The accidental governors.
One former Nevada chief executive died, and the current one was seriously hurt in a pair of freak accidents.
Respected two-term Gov. Kenny Guinn fell to his death while clearing pine needles from the roof of his Las Vegas home on July 22.
Two months later, current Gov. Jim Gibbons broke his pelvis in several places and narrowly missed being paralyzed when he was thrown from a horse north of Reno.
Given Nevada’s frontier past, it seems unlikely that Gibbons is the first governor to fall out of the saddle. But he did make history this year by losing in a primary and then getting divorced while in office.
3. The first dude.
A porn movie actor known as "Markus" became the first licensed male prostitute in Nevada history when he was put out to stud in January. The move generated international publicity for the Shady Lady Ranch brothel in Nye County, but it attracted few customers and lasted only about two months.
It wasn’t a total loss, though. Markus helped popularize a whole new word: prostidude.
2. Lost in her own home.
Family and friends figured Billy Jean James had wandered off.
Police dogs searched her home. Searchers scoured the nearby desert. "Missing" posters went up.
Yet four months passed without a trace of the 67-year-old political activist, movie buff and hoarder. Not until her husband, Bill, removed more than 5 tons of clutter from a tiny room in the house was Billy Jean’s body found. He recognized her shoes poking out from the mess.
1. The shaky D.A.
Two months before he resigned in disgrace, Nye County District Attorney Bob Beckett was arrested for drunken driving after he was found passed out behind the wheel of a county vehicle. But that’s not the crazy part.
The Sept. 7 incident marked the third time in two years that Beckett found himself under arrest, including the time in 2008 he was booked in California for drunken driving after he crashed two vehicles in six hours on the same desert highway. But that’s not the crazy part either.
The latest arrest for Beckett was prompted by an apparently random report of a suspicious vehicle. And who placed that call? Heidi Fleiss, of course.
Week In ReviewMore Information
NUMBERS
1,245
The number of Review-Journal articles in 2010 that contained the name “Harry Reid.”
545
The number of Review-Journal articles in 2010 that contained the name “Sharron Angle.”
441,443
Webpage views for the Review-Journal’s most popular story of 2010: An account of a brawl between Reid and Angle supporters at a candidates’ forum in September.
467
Review-Journal articles in 2010, excluding wire reports, containing the word “foreclosure.” That’s up from 410 last year in a city that ranks as the nation’s foreclosure leader.
QUOTES
“Man up, Harry Reid.”
Sharron Angle
GOP Senate candidate, during the race’s only debate. Reid heeded her advice, winning his fifth term by a wider-than-expected margin.
“If I’d known it was him, I never would have called the police. I would have told him to lay down in the guest house and sleep it off.”
Heidi Fleiss
Former Hollywood Madam turned Pahrumpian, after her 911 call about a suspicious vehicle near her house ended in the drunkEN driving arrest of Nye County’s District Attorney.
“I’m not done with that horse yet.”
Gov. Jim Gibbons
A few weeks after he was thrown from a horse and broke his pelvis on Sept. 21.
“It’s the way he would want it. Kenny was not what you’d call a quiche and white wine kind of guy.”
Former Gov. and U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan
While enjoying the Average Joe menu of hot dogs and Bud Light at former Gov. Kenny Guinn’s funeral reception.
“We look down all the time. It’s awesome.”
Mason Gus Gomez
A worker on the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge, when asked whether he avoids looking down from 800 feet above the Colorado River.
“One notch above a grapefruit is what you’ve got to be to do something like that.”
Mark Boatwright
An archaeologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, summing up the vandal or vandals who spray-painted over prehistoric rock art at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
“You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.”
President Barack Obama
Drawing the ire of tourism officials and civic leaders for the second time in a year by bad mouthing the gambling capital of the world.
“There is no place better to have fun than Vegas.”
President Obama’s mea culpa in a letter he later sent to an angry Sen. Harry Reid.
“F—ed.”
Rep. Dina Titus
Giving her blunt assessment in January of Congressional Democrats’ re-election chances if they didn’t focus on getting unemployed Americans back to work. She would be voted out of office in November.
MULTIMEDIA
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Year in Review videos, slide shows
