Dateline: EnglandThe staff at London’s historic Victoria and Albert Museum has canceled an experimental concert by British grindcore band Napalm Death over fears the noise could damage the 104-year-old building. The show was to be a collaboration between ceramic artist Keith Harrison and the famed death metal musicians. The band’s high-decibel set was supposed to be played on a sculptural sound system which was intended to disintegrate under the stress. Unfortunately museum officials called off the one-time performance at the V&A’s Europe Galleries over architectural concerns. “A further safety inspection has revealed concerns that the high level of decibels generated by the concert would damage the historic fabric of the building,” they said in a statement. Napalm Death, which has released 14 albums over the last 30 years, had hoped the innovative project would merge extreme metal and art.Dateline: EnglandThousands of speeding tickets issued along a stretch of the M42 motorway outside of Coventry were in danger of being dismissed—because traffic signs there allegedly used the wrong font. According to London’s Telegraph, a group of lawyers was challenging all speeding tickets issued in the area over the past six years. An official “Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions” document was produced by the government in 2002. The 447-page document sets standards to which new, digital, variable speed limit traffic signs must adhere. Since the signs in question, located on two sections of roadway west of Coventry, used a skinnier and slightly taller font than the one mentioned in the directions, a group of lawyers and traffic consultants said tickets issued to motorists based on those signs could be null and void. After an eight-week investigation, during which no speeding tickets of any kind were issued, police determined the signs were within government parameters. A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service told reporters, “We do not believe that any convictions will be overturned. All of the convictions related to these signs were legally sound.” Dateline: KentuckyEveryone knows you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded room. Well, apparently you can’t yell “Bingo!” in a crowded bingo parlor—certainly not when you don’t have bingo. An off-duty police officer working security in Covington, Ky., cited 18-year-old Austin Whaley for disorderly conduct after he entered a bingo hall packed with mostly elderly women on Feb. 6 and yelled “Bingo!” “This caused the hall to quit operating since they thought someone had won,” Park Hills Police Sgt. Richard Webster wrote on his citation. “This delayed the game by several minutes and caused alarm to patrons.” Whaley was asked to apologize to the angry bingo crowd, but he refused and was issued the citation. “When [the players] realized it wasn’t a real bingo, they started hooting and hollering and yelling and cussing. People take their bingo very seriously,” Webster said. Whaley appeared in Kenton District Court earlier this month and could have faced 90 days in jail or a $250 fine for his outburst. Instead, District Judge Douglas Grothaus suspended the sentence and ordered Whaley not to say the word “bingo” for six months. “He was remorseful in court,” Grothaus told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “He was obviously a good kid who hadn’t been in trouble before. With all the other things that happen in the court system and the families you’re dealing with, you’ve got to keep a sense of humor.”Dateline: PennsylvaniaA high school is asking teenage boys to knock it off with the Axe Body Spray. Freedom High School in Bethlehem reports one of its students was taken to the hospital after being exposed to the heavily fragranced aerosol deodorant. Now officials are ordering students to stop coating themselves in Axe while at school. A statement posted on the school’s website explained, “The purpose of this posting is to make all parents, staff and students aware of a medical issue involving a Freedom High School student having an extreme allergy to Axe Body Spray. This allergy is potentially life threatening for this student. Most recently this student has been transported to the hospital by ambulance for emergency medical treatment due to this student being exposed to Axe Body Spray while attending school.”
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. Email your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
