Month: August 2016

Cops and Courts

One dead, another critically wounded in shootings last night at Texas Roadhouse in Fort Wayne; and a man killed at Taco Bell drive-thru in Lorain, Ohio

The latest crime news across the world of 48,000 restaurants*; updated 2:30 p.m.

Crime scene tapeAt the Fort Wayne Texas Roadhouse, the shootings started late last night with a fight between two groups of men inside, then spilled out into the parking lot, according to the Journal Gazette newspaper and WANE-TV.

Andrew Cassady
Cassady

Police have now made an arrest in the case, according to WANE: Andrew Cassaday, 29, has been preliminary charged with aggravated battery and unlawful possession of a firearm.

It all began around 9:30 p.m. at the restaurant on West Washington Street.

After the first victim was shot outside, one group of men put him into a car to be taken to the hospital. As the vehicle drove around the restaurant, the occupants again encountered the rival group. At that point, someone inside the vehicle fired a shot at the opposing group, striking the man who was later pronounced dead, police spokesman Chris Felton told the newspaper.

Police took several people into custody, according to WANE. The victim taken to the hospital was in critical condition last night.

Lorain robbery gone awry

At the Taco Bell in Lorain, the man was killed in an apparent robbery attempt in the drive-thru after 11 p.m. at the 3671 Oberlin Ave. restaurant. Details were very sketchy this morning, including the victim’s manner and place of death, according to Fox 8 TV.

Police were searching for the assailant, after he fled the scene on foot.

Attempted theft at Texas Taco Bell

In Corpus Christi at 2:30 this morning, police say a man in his 20s got away with an undisclosed amount of cash after telling employees he had a weapon and demanded money. No injuries were reported, according to KIII-TV.

That robbery came after a man matching the same description attempted to rob a Little Caesars Pizza around 11 o’clock last night. Detectives say the man in that robbery left the location without any money.

* Yum has 43,000 KFCs, Pizza Huts and Taco Bells in nearly 140 countries; Papa John’s has 4,900 outlets in 37 countries, and Texas Roadhouse has 485 restaurants across the U.S. and in five other nations. With that many locations, crimes inevitably occur — with potentially serious legal consequences for the companies.

The Jennifer Lawrence Diary™

Happy 26th, Jennifer Lawrence!

The Oscar-winning actress was born in Louisville Sept. 15, 1990, and celebrated last year literally in bed with the Ma Barker of reality TV:

 

Lawrence became a household name in 2012 when she played Katniss Everdeen in the first installment of the “Hunger Games” series, according to News Hub. “Catching Fire” was released in 2013, “Mockingjay Part 1” in 2014, and “Mockingjay Part 2” last year.

She now commands eight-figure salaries. She was paid $20 million for the sci-fi adventure movie “Passengers” co-starring Chris Pratt. The move about a 5,000-passenger luxury spaceship on a 120-year journey to an interstellar colony is set to open Dec. 1.

The first still photos from the movie are dribbling out, including this one from Entertainment Weekly on Friday:

Lawrence and Pratt Passengers still

Latest Headlines

Hooded U.K. youth whacking Papa John’s drivers with eggs; and singer Fergie’s got milk for her ‘primal’ spicy Taco Bell craving

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:14 a.m.

PAPA JOHN’S: Police in south England are investigating a string of recent attacks where hooded youths are pelting motorbike-riding Papa John’s delivery men with eggs, causing at least one serious crash that sent  a driver to the hospital with a bruised shoulder and black eye. The latest incident in south England came after the same driver was attacked with 10 eggs several weeks ago in Cheltenham an hour west of Oxford.

“Even I have had eggs thrown at me,” the store manager there said. “It’s very dangerous, you do not know what is going to happen next. My staff say it is not safe out there” (Gloucestershire Live).

Back in the United States, Panera Bread claims the former top IT executive who left to work for Papa John’s this month wiped his work computer of critical trade secrets, a statement a federal judge said justified a temporary restraining order barring the executive from joining the Louisville pizza giant. In a lawsuit filed in its St. Louis hometown, the bakery chain says the executive, Michael Nettles, will use the secrets to compete for business from young consumers drawn to the latest ordering technology. Nettles’ LinkedIn profile says he was Panera’s vice president for enterprise architecture and IT strategy (Courier-Journal).

Meanwhile, in the Detroit area, the pizza chain was advertising yesterday for delivery people with a “keen sense of direction with the ability to read a map or use GPS” (Craigslist).

PIZZA HUT was also advertising for drivers — “awesome people,” in fact — to make $12-$15 an hour delivering pies in Cincinnati (Craigslist, too).

TACO BELL: Singer Fergie is still a huge fan of super-spicy Taco Bell food, turning a meal into what a British newspaper today called “absolutely carnage,” citing an interview in NME magazine. The 41-year-old megastar behind the recent hit “M.I.L.F.$” told NME: “It’s a binge meal for me, so I don’t do it all the time. But when I do, I go hard.” She added: “I’m like, primal.”

The singer-songwriter pledged undying love to the fast-Mexican chain six years ago in her smash hit single “Glamorous,” singing: “I still go to Taco Bell/Drive through, raw as hell/I don’t care, I’m still real/no matter how many records I sell” (Sunday World). Watch her (NSFW!) M.I.L.F.$ video: Continue reading “Hooded U.K. youth whacking Papa John’s drivers with eggs; and singer Fergie’s got milk for her ‘primal’ spicy Taco Bell craving” →

Jobs

All fired up! You, too, would be grinning if you got a fatty bonus just for signing up to be a reefer driver

time-clockBoulevard reports extensively on executive pay at big local employers. But we also look at what folks make down in the trenches — and off in the more unexpected corners of the Internet. After buzzing through recent Craigslist Louisville help-wanted ads, we’ve unearthed openings for truck drivers, sign spinners, trivia game emcees, and Asian egg donors (and we’re not talking about chickens, either).

Truck driver

The duties: Talk about smokey and the bandit! Could trucking for a living be any easier? Not according to Swift Refrigerated, which promises: “No gimmicks, no contracts, no run-around. Just open road and a career path you can meet head-on.”

You won’t spend your entire life away from home, either. Over-the-road drivers are typically out for 10-14 days at a time. Regional drivers will have varied home time, based on freight demand. And some even have daily home time, with consistent schedules!

What it pays: Swift offers a $2,500 sign-up bonus; more details when you contact the company. Employment site Glassdoor says Swift drivers make between $42,000 and $45,000 a year, but that’s based on just a handful of reader posts. In a 2012 story, CNN said truckers earned a median $37,930, with the top 10% making more than $58,000.

Related: Here’s every imaginable marijuana slang term.

Photo, top: That’s the 100% unretouched illustration Swift trucking uses in its Craigslist ad. Continue reading “All fired up! You, too, would be grinning if you got a fatty bonus just for signing up to be a reefer driver” →

Books

Hillbilly legacy: Is the cellphone to blame for turning Kentucky from blue to red?

Hillbilly Elegy book jacketIn “Hillbilly Elegy,” according to a new book review in The New York Times, author J.D. Vance offers “a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion, particularly the ascent of Donald J. Trump. Combining thoughtful inquiry with firsthand experience, Vance has inadvertently provided a civilized reference guide for an uncivilized election, and he’s done so in a vocabulary intelligible to both Democrats and Republicans.”

Vance, 31, now a Silicon Valley investor, knows hillbilly Kentucky. He was reared 136 miles northeast of Louisville, in Middletown, Ohio, a now-decaying steel town filled with Kentucky transplants, including his own family from Breathitt County.

“Economic insecurity, he’s convinced, accounts for only a small part of his community’s problems; the much larger issue is hillbilly culture itself,” the Times says. “Though proud of it in many ways, he’s also convinced that it ‘increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it.’”

The review continues: “His frustration with the non-working white poor is especially acute. He recalls being a cashier at a Middletown grocery store and watching resentfully as his neighbors, who had creatively gamed the welfare system, jabbered on their cellphones as they were going through the checkout line. He could not afford a cellphone.”

J.D. Vance
Vance

Vance writes: “Political scientists have spent millions of words trying to explain how Appalachia and the South went from staunchly Democratic to staunchly Republican in less than a generation.” He suspects those cellphones have a lot to do with it. “I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off of government largess enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.”

—
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis; 264 pages. Harper. $27.99.

Latest Headlines

Now the real contest begins: Who wins Olympics star Biles’ pizza endorsement? (Odds favor Papa John’s, according to Slate); plus, KFC chicken supplier says off with their heads

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 11:15 a.m.

PAPA JOHN’S and PIZZA HUT: Slate magazine handicaps the race to sign Olympics gymnastics golden girl Simone Biles to an endorsement contract, given her love of pepperoni pizza: She eats some after every competition. The likely winner, at even money? Papa John’s, says the online publication’s Justin Peters.

Simone Biles.jpg
Biles

“The chain has a vast national advertising budget and a history of using famous athletes like Peyton Manning and J.J. Watt in its commercials,” Peters says. “The tag line writes itself: ‘Better ingredients, better pizza, better vaulting: Papa John’s!'”

Panting four spots back in the race, at 30-to-1 odds: Pizza Hut. “The Hut isn’t a front runner here,” he says, “and the only way it will stand a chance of signing Biles will be if it can present a compelling artistic vision for an ad campaign” (Slate).

Columbus native Biles, 19, is the the Rio games’ individual all-around gymnastics champ. “In doing so, she joined Mary Lou Retton, Carly Patterson, Nastia Liukin and Gabby Douglas as American all-around winners” (New York Times).

KFC: Tyson Foods has fired 10 employees caught on video by an animal rights group punching, kicking, flinging live birds, and even crushing the head of a live one under his boot. The Arkansas-based supplier to KFC and McDonald’s also said it will retrain workers who handle live poultry on animal welfare policies. The footage, recorded in May and June, was posted online by Compassion Over Killing, which fights for animal rights and encourages vegetarianism. Tyson, one of the world’s largest meat processors, said it was “disgusted by the actions of the individuals in the video” (Mirror). Posted two days ago, the video’s already been viewed more than 50,000 times:

In other bad news, the inevitable backlash has started against KFC’s newly unveiled U.K. gravy fountain:

Behold its wonderful awfulness: