The Week in Review

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 18: Ending an epic, 11-year battle with the Pappas family, the Las Vegas City Council voted unanimously to pay the folks $4.5 million for property taken from them in 1993 for the Fremont Street Experience garage--yeah, that garage, the one veritably teeming with tourists chomping at the football-shaped, margarita-filled bit to glimpse the Eighth Blunder of the Hurl, the Fremont Street Experience. The current council was somewhat repentant as it forked over the money, but iron-jawed former Mayor Jan Jones remained unmoved. "[Taking the land by eminent domain] was the right thing to do to protect the economic base of downtown Las Vegas," she told the R-J. Lactating industrial solvent, she then continued to breastfeed her cyborg Rottweilers.

THURSDAY, AUG. 19: Richard Reid, the Al Qaeda district manager who popularized the Nike Air Flaming Fuselage with Horror at 60,000 Feet gel insoles, sued over prison conditions, which, apparently, are suddenly worse than being blown up in the middle of a transatlantic flight. The infamous shoe-bomber claims officials at the "Supermax" prison in Colorado deny him calls to relatives and block him from certain prison jobs. For our civil liberties-minded readers, we offer this culturally sensitive translation: "Waah! Uhwaaah! Waaaah!"

FRIDAY, AUG. 20: Regis Philbin has spent a lifetime in front of TV cameras, slow-baking under studio lights for so long it's no wonder he looks like a juicy rotisserie chicken. Seriously! Friday's broadcast of "Live With Regis and Kelly" garnered the talk-show host the Guinness world record for most hours on camera--15,188 hours, to be exact, if you're that lady with the fat ankles in line ahead of us at SprawlMart who would seem to be interested in such things, judging by the way you devour your copy of People while the checker searches for the UPC code on your pallet of Chunky Monkey and you pay with a goddamn check. Haven't checks been outlawed under the PATRIOT Act? Get one of those check cards already; you can even order one with a frickin' picture of kittens in the basket of a hot air balloon. Note to self: check card! Check card! We beg you!

SATURDAY, AUG. 21: WAIT! Don't go deleting your "The Scream" wallpaper on your PC just yet. Er, yeah, art restorers just might need it as a reference to make a Lite Brite replacement for the priceless original. Brazen armed dudes stormed into an Oslo museum Saturday and stole Edward Munch's famous painting that depicts the horrors of dentistry under a socialist government. The museum was later criticized for its light security, which consists of jovial Norwegian men carrying spatulas.

SUNDAY, AUG. 22: Terrorists want to blow us up. The Immigration and Naturalization Service worker, Macon Gladwell McLazy Jr., is just tired and doesn't feel like checking those visas too closely because he's thinking about his afternoon break so he can eat a Caramello and rest his corns. Put the two together and you've got TERROR. That sums up the findings of the 9/11 commission as it finished up Saturday, when it discussed how lax enforcement of INS rules gave the 9/11 hijackers a leg up in their mission of evil. Scorecard update: INS 0, Al Qaeda 1. Scorecard concept getting kinda old update: 10.

MONDAY, AUG. 23: To more richly express the mass bafflement that has greeted the new overtime pay rules that took effect Monday, Week in Review must deploy its rich, interactive multimedia element: Glue your time card to a cinderblock, strap the cinderblock to your boss's foot. Now let him kick you in the face. That's what critics say the new overtime rules do; labor unions claim that more than 6 million workers will lose out under the revised system. The moral of the story, clockwatchers and cube monkeys: Laugh not at the late-night Struthers infomercial promising a career in TV/VCR repair!

TUESDAY, AUG. 24: First Amendment, you have met your match: a lush, green lawn. A federal judge Tuesday rejected an anti-war and Arab-American rights groups' request to protest the Republican National Convention in New York's Central Park. See, this is no regular, suburban schlemiel lawn fit merely for barbecues and kiddie pools. This is Central Park's Great Lawn (horn fanfare!), which was restored in 1997 at a cost of more than $18 million. Free speech, the judge reasons, would destroy the grass, which marks a low point for the First Amendment: It is now officially a weed.

--ANDREW KIRALY