The Bananas Top Twelve

Brat Ladies Get Just Deserts

Lynn, Lynn, city of…eccentric cranky old biddies? 80 year old Claire Butcher (Bird Lady) and Marguerite Puleo (Rat Lady) were sentenced to hard labor at the Ingalls School community garden. (Bird + rat = Brat, get it? Well, it really equals birdrat, but that doesn’t sound so good.)

Forced to live with each other next to the garden in Puleo’s residence, Ms. Butcher can only feed the birds in Puleo’s backyard. The resulting bird feces will be allowed to decompose so it can later be used as fertilizer for the garden.

Stay tuned to Fox News, as Butcher will be providing fodder for that network’s viewers sometime in the near future.

New Trash Ordinance Trashed by Chamber

A new trash ordinance was passed. “Henceforth, all receptacles for unwanted, used, and otherwise worthless pieces of garbage shall be cylindrical in nature and designed to hold no more than the maximum of all trash produced by a household divided by 3 or an apartment complex divided by 6. Furthermore all commercial enterprises shall abide by these very same limits and can only employ either 3 or 6 trash barrels to contain their waste. We won’t say which number, you decide and we’ll hand out the tickets based on whether we like you or not.”

A new trash ordinance was literally passed and flushed down the toilet. All that straining and hard work for nothing. Back to the drawing board!

Darts After Hours

Bar owners are taking aim at City Hall and refusing to shut down before midnight this New Year’s Eve. They can’t serve alcohol, but they will be sponsoring an all-night dart tournament in protest. Faces of current and former License Board Commissioners will be super-imposed on targets. Winners will be granted chicken dinner, but no bar will be allowed to serve the victors liquor. The event is being dubbed “Target Practice.”

First Triple Abortion

Lynn truly is a city of firsts. It happened at Three Yolks Breakfast Restaurant during the Monday morning breakfast rush. Both Planned Parenthood and the Roman Catholic church were all over this one. I’d like my abortion sunny side up please.

Phelan Appeals to Pre-civil rights era Values

We regret we didn’t clip and save Tim Phelan’s full page campaign ad in the Lynn Urinal. In it he claimed a lot of recent positive developments as his own and stood for a return to 1950’s values. Tim is the Wally Cleaver Wonderbread politician we love to hate. He also got the most votes in the Councillor at-large election this year. Tim, if only you’d use your considerable powers for good instead of fear-mongering, we might like you.

Controversial Practice of Canning Called into Question

The mayor and the booster clubs found themselves at loggerheads over the controversial practice of canning to raise money for school athletics. Canning, otherwise known as Beaning, consists of threatening to hurl cans of Del Monte green string beans through the windows of passing cars unless the driver forks over whatever coins are stashed in the cupholder. No coins, no mercy.

School System Breaks

A heavily sobbing parent could be heard in the halls of the Lynn Public Schools. “It’s not fair! She broke our school system! Why is she allowed to keep on playing with it!”

“I did not! He did it!” came the response.

“Well, both of you have lost your priviledges,” said the state.

“I’ll take good care of it,” said Kipp.

Avenue King Crip and the Deuce Boys Create New Jazz Genre

It wasn’t the kind of artistic breakthrough downtowners were hoping for, but another Lynn first was recorded in the Neal Rantouille Blackbox Theatre where Avenue King Crip and the Deuce Boys launched what would come to be known as revenge jazz. As a result, the entire city was blocked off by yellow police tape. Nobody could get into or out of Nahant for 5 days.

Chip Clancy’s Computer Found in Dredged Goldfish Pond

The normally stately Goldfish Pond revealed its deep dark secrets in September when the renovation of its retaining wall forced most of the water to be drained. Not only was Chip’s missing City Hall Computer found, but the infamous Goldfish Pond scrolls were recovered and set out in the sun to dry.

Lynnfield St. Traffic Light

Breaking News Flash!!! New traffic light doesn’t work so well on first day. Government fucks up again. Can’t do anything right.

Creation of Downtown Marts District

What, you didn’t see this coming? The city clerk all in a hurry to get this new proclamation written, copying and pasting from this document and that one, nobody proofreading the final draft. The mayor blithely signing it into law in a big ceremony? Sorry, spell checkers don’t catch these kinds of mistakes.

Yeah, so now we’re stuck with this stupid Marts district. Isn’t that what we already have with that Shaw’s strip mall, all those mini marts, dollar stores and storefront churches?

This smarts. We’re lucky we didn’t create a shopping carts district or a farts district. Tarts district anyone? Parts?

Incestuous Relationships Pervade City Goverment

The Item did another one of it’s famous exposes. Only this time, instead of salaries, they went over all the incestuous relations working for city government or in some way getting fed off the public teat. What with all the Phelans, Coppingers, Bartons, Cyrs and other “life-long Lynners” around here, it’s a wonder anything gets done. Oh well, at least we have Hong Net this time around.