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Alison Cook looks back at 1996: Year of the Rat

Continued from page 6

On Saturdays, they attend Temple Emanu El
Dwayne Bohac, a Republican candidate for state representative, solicited Catholic votes with a campaign letter identifying him as a "pioneer member" of St. Ambrose Catholic Church, even though another piece of his campaign literature identified him and his wife as "active members of Second Baptist Church."

Calling Dr. Freud
After city Controller Lloyd Kelley called Councilman Joe Roach "a little hypocrite," Roach, who is a dwarf, called Kelley "not man enough" to fill his office in a professional manner.

He thought everyone's working conditions were like his own
An unflattering profile of his boss prompted Congressman Steve Stockman's spokesman, Corey Birenbaum, to write to the author, Houstonian Mimi Swartz, telling her she got her job at Texas Monthly "for reasons I would refuse to speculate upon in polite society. (Hope your knees have healed up nicely.)"

They don't call him "Honest Phil" for nothing
After Phil Gramm touted his IRA plan at a kitchen-table meeting crowded with three Bellaire couples, six photographers and two reporters, the senator's spokeswoman claimed the get-together was totally unrelated to his re-election campaign.

And nix the beard
Visiting judge Pat Lykos told an Orthodox Jew to remove his skullcap or he wouldn't be allowed to testify as an expert witness.

And they got all the questions on polynomials wrong, too
More than 29,000 Harris County voters in the November elections had their ballots thrown out because their ballots were marked for two or more congressional candidates.

Wise Guy
Montgomery County Sheriff Guy Williams was challenged in the Republican primary by David Van Williams, a police captain who appeared on the ballot as D.V. "Guy" Williams, claiming he got the nickname when people began calling him on the phone and asking, "Hey, guy, what's up?"

His friends used to ask, "Hey, Jack, what's up?"
Gary A. Brooks, a heavy-equipment operator from Uvalde, tried to run for Congress in the 240-mile-distant Gulf Coast district once represented by Jack Brooks, applying for a ballot listing as G. Jack Brooks. After an Austin judge decided he should be listed as G.A. Brooks, he withdrew from the race.

Who says legislative oratory died with Barbara Jordan?
State senator and handgun proponent Jerry Patterson, incensed that Metro banned concealed handguns on its buses, said he might carry a hidden gun aboard and "then I'll go to Metro and say, 'Nah, nah, nah nah nah! Rode your bus, rode your bus!'"

World o' Lawsuits

The bus driver thought she was Jerry Patterson
Alicea Zickert, who tried to board a Metro bus on the way to the vet with her cat Payawaacket, sued when the driver ejected the cat and carrier after a struggle; Zickert stood in front of the bus until a passenger got off and yanked her aside.

He used his special Pablo Casals grip
A mother and son sued HISD after a music teacher paddled him with a broken cello for being tardy.

Do injuries to our aesthetic sensibilities count?
Lawyer Bernie Strauss solicited clients with a newspaper ad that inquired, "Have You Been Injured Due to the Collapse of a $5 White Plastic Stack Chair?"

See, doctor, when I was five ...
A family sued Continental Airlines after their five-year-old daughter was terrorized in flight by a six-foot python, which escaped from a passenger who used the snake as therapy for a past episode of sexual harassment.

Look at it this way: It could have been a python, or one of your boss's movies

Claiming she was traumatized when a plane's engine shut down after ingesting lavatory fluid in flight, an employee of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino's production company sued Continental Airlines.

Fred has retained Johnny Cochran
A Spring couple sued the animal dealer who sold them Fred, a chimp that knocked one of his new owners to the ground, pinned and mauled her legs and shredded her jeans. According to the dealer's lawyer, the chimp had assaulted his previous owner's wife, "but otherwise the guy couldn't say enough good things about Fred."

They've replaced it with a large velvet painting of Wayne Dolcefino
The Elvis Presley estate sued Houston's proudly cheesy Velvet Elvis bar for trademark infringement and unfair competition, demanding that it change its name and remove a large velvet painting of Elvis in a white jumpsuit and oversize belt buckle.

After the settlement, they all went to the Velvet Elvis for a drink
A lawsuit by dining demigod/Anthony's proprietor Tony Vallone forced Anthony Russo to switch the name of his two-year-old Cafe Anthony to Russo's Cafe Anthony; during proceedings, Vallone admitted he had legally changed his own name from Joseph to Tony, not Anthony.

The Angst of Sex

Anna Nicole's Very Big Adventures, Continued
Pneumatic widow Anna Nicole Smith filed for bankruptcy, lost her legal bid for the fortune of late hubby J. Howard Marshall, modeled large-size jeans for Lane Bryant, suffered tissue damage from her breast implants and was the subject of a Globe cover story headlined "Anna Nicole Smith's Boobs Explode."

Even that Anna Nicole headline didn't slow traffic
Houston became a major distribution hub for the smuggling of silicone gel breast implants from abroad, a thriving black market business since their safety was questioned in an epidemic of lawsuits.

Proud member of the Texas Bra Association
Paul Looney, the lawyer who briefly claimed to be representing Oklahoma City bombing defendant Timothy McVeigh, was sued for legal malpractice by a client who accused him of demanding sexual favors and declaring to her in a recorded phone call, "You got too nice of tits to go to jail. I can't let those tits go to jail."

His lawyer is Paul Looney
Gino Barone sued the city for $105,000 after the police department destroyed about 480 rubber dildos, vibrators and sex toys confiscated from his two adult video stores.

Her new job: pilot on a Liberian freighter
The Men's Club had to fork over $30,000 to a ship captain who ruptured his Achilles tendon at the club's well- lubricated golf tournament, when

stripper Lindsay Pepin flipped over the pair's golf cart, landing the captain in a drainage canal.

Wrong side of the tracts
Webster city fathers fended off an attempt to open the region's first all-nude restaurant on Bay Area Boulevard, ruling that it would be too close to a Christian Science reading room.

The thought of Stevens & Pruett naked scares us, too
Shock jocks Stevens & Pruett were denied permission to hold their charity biker rally in Montgomery County after their producer asked if the sheriff would have a problem with nudity at the event.

Where are those Plexiglas barriers when you need them?
Bentley Nettles, a primary candidate for Fort Bend county attorney, sent out fliers accusing incumbent "Bud" Childers of disrobing to his underwear in front of 250 people -- an episode that occurred as part of a live auction-style show at which Childers sold off his tennis shoes, warm-up suit, Olympic shorts and Special Olympics T-shirt to benefit the Richmond State School.

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