Talk about clever… did you hear about the baseball fan who came up with a way to watch the World Series in person without having to shell out hundreds of dollars for a ticket? Instead of paying for a seat he donned 4-foot stilts and watched through the steel gates.
Twenty-nine-year-old Brian Harpster told news reporters that from his spot on his stilts he could see the outfield, the pitching and any balls hit in play, but he couldn’t see the batters on Saturday night during his attempt to watch the Tigers’ first World Series game in 22 years. (By the way, Harpster told reporters he stuck with nonalcoholic beer to keep his balance.)
“I think after this, it’s going to be a whole new thing,” Harpster’s friend Brooks Rodriguez told reporters. “He’s a pioneer.”
Speaking of pioneers… (or crazy people) there’s a man in Australia who is grabbing news headlines for his creativity as well. According to news reports, an Australian prisoner went on a crash diet so he could squeeze his way out of his jail cell… he succeeded, but was quickly recaptured by authorities.
According to prison wardens, Robert Cole fasted and used laxatives to lose some 30 pounds before he squeezed through a hole he had chiseled with a butter knife to escape from a hospital in a Sydney maximum-security prison. (I think I saw this in a movie once… “The Shawshank Redemption??” Okay, not quite.)
When authorities caught up with Cole three days after he escaped, he weighed just 123 pounds. Cole told police that he squeezed through the hole he had made between brickwork and a window frame, scaled a razor-wire fence, walked along a prison wall and then jumped to freedom.
Cole’s lawyer told reporters that his mentally ill client — jailed on theft and assault charges — had acted naively after failing to convince authorities he was fit for release. Additionally, Cole’s sister Denise Roberts, an Australian actress, said he had long suffered from drug-induced psychosis. She said her brother has put on a lot of weight since his recapture and remains in jail. Meanwhile, a judge ordered Cole to 21 months behind bars as punishment for his escape.