It is two sunrises before New Year's Day, and eight twilights after the end of the world.
If you're reading this, rejoice! The apocalypse didn't happen as scheduled, which is cause to celebrate, unless you're one of those "doomsday preppers," in which case you're stuck with 2,000 boxes of Hamburger Helper, five 200-gallon drums of rice and nobody to invite over to the bomb shelter because you've alienated all your friends.
You can't trust anybody these days.
Dec. 21, 2012, was supposed to be the last Friday humanity would ever spend at happy hour or stuck in holiday traffic trying to score the last LOL Elmo in Northeast Pennsylvania. So said the Mayan calendar and those troubled souls who plan their lives around unhinged interpretations of the dubious artifacts of lost civilizations (or blithely engage in the gratuitous use of adjectives).
Why didn't the world end? Well, the Mayans aren't around to explain. They had a habit of sacrificing each other to appease their bloodthirsty gods. They essentially wiped themselves out trying to put off the apocalypse. The Mayans were a primitive civilization, however. We can make babies in test tubes, send robots to Mars and pay for our Starbucks Eggnog Frappucinos by passing our cellphones over infrared scanners.
So what's our excuse?
There are too many to list here, and we are tasked today with recapping a handful of the strangest stories of what was supposed to be the year to end all years. Instead, 2012 unfolded pretty much like any other here in Northeast Pennsylvania:
- A naked, blood-streaked man attacked a woman he had never met and gnawed on her head.
- An escaped bull trampled a grandma in a wheelchair as a rodeo clown on horseback scrambled to end the stampede.
- "The Trouble With Cali" premiered at an Arizona film festival and was panned as a waste of film and taxpayer money, a 400-pound gorilla was stolen from a Carbondale home and riddled with bullets and a man was arrested for DUI after calling state police and reporting himself too drunk to drive.
Good, bad and just plain sad, these are the odds and ends of 2012:
EXTREME MUNCHIES
A naked, blood-streaked man who "screams like an animal" is a fixture on every other corner in Scranton on St. Patrick's Parade Day, but on the quiet streets of Hawley on a September morning, such public displays of intoxicant-driven insanity are thankfully rare.
So you can imagine how surprised Ann Monaghan and Nancy Dean-Corino were when a naked, screaming, blood-streaked man tackled Ms. Dean-Corino and began gnawing on her head.
Yep.
Gnawing.
On her head.
Police say the gnawing was done by Richard Cimino Jr., 20, of Doylestown. They say he broke into a Hawley home and jumped out of a second-floor window, severely injuring his arms and legs. He then attacked the aforementioned women, who escaped without injury.
State police found Mr. Cimino in a ditch, bleeding profusely. He was charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, indecent exposure and criminal mischief, burglary, criminal trespass and defiant trespassing.
State police speculated that Mr. Cimino was high on bath salts on the night in question. Mr. Cimino's attorney admitted his client was under the influence, but insisted he had not consumed bath salts.
He refused to say what substance may have spurred his client's bizarre behavior, saying only that Mr. Cimino is "a good kid who screwed up that night."
Let he who has never gotten crazy high, stripped naked, jumped out a window and gnawed on a stranger's head cast the first stone.
OLE!
A bull took the Harford Fair by the horns in August.
The big hunk of beefcake got loose from its handlers as they tried to load him into a trailer and bounded straight for wheelchair-bound Doris Henke, trailed by a panicked rodeo clown on a horse.
The 71-year-old paraplegic was watching her grandkids steer their bumper cars when she was broadsided.
"I was sitting there waving to them and I turned and this bull - this big bull - is coming real fast and a clown on a horse is chasing him," Mrs. Henke said. The bull kicked her in the head and knocked over her wheelchair.
"I felt his foot go right on my head," she said.
Raymond Henke, Doris' husband of 49 years, was leaning on the back of her wheelchair when the bull arrived, knocking him down, too. He was not injured, but he was understandably alarmed when someone screamed, "He's (the bull) coming back!"
"Everybody was hollering, 'Where's a cop? Somebody should shoot him,' " Mr. Henke said. "I thought there was going to be at least three or four people killed.
"They weren't prepared. How are they going to stop this thing with a clown on a horse? ... It was bedlam."
In all, police reported 14 injuries caused by the brief stampede, but none was serious. A dozen stitches were required to close a cut on Mrs. Henke's head, but the devout Baptist said it was "a blessing from God" that she wasn't badly hurt or worse.
Bonnie Bell Hilfiger, a Troy Twp. resident who witnessed the bull's brief tour of the midway, said she found at least some humor in the situation "because the bull had its moment of freedom, and you don't see that every day at the fair."
LAST CALL
You went out and got a load on, but you neglected to bring along a designated driver.
What do you do when the room is spinning and the bartender is no longer interested in your take on "Boardwalk Empire"? Does Nucky really trust Eli? Maybe, but the more pressing question is, "How are you getting home?"
In April, state police said Nicholas Lucke, 23, of Hamlin, called the barracks to report that he was too drunk to drive. They found him sitting in his running - but stationary - Kia Spectra and arrested him for driving under the influence. Next time, he'll probably call a cab.
GORILLA POACHED
Where does a 400-pound gorilla sit? Anywhere it wants, of course, and Patricia Rudalavage said Greystone was "happy" on his concrete perch in the front yard of her Carbondale home.
When the simian statue was snatched in August, Mrs. Rudalavage offered a $100 reward. A gift from her husband, Conrad, the hand-carved, one-of-a-kind Greystone has immense sentimental value, she said.
City police began a gorilla hunt, but turned up few leads. A break in the case came when a pair of men pulled up to the Rudalavage home with Greystone in the back of a pickup truck. The men, who identified themselves as "Carl" and "Kevin," said they found the statue at a shooting range in Carbondale Twp.
Greystone had numerous gunshot wounds that would have been fatal if he were not made of stone.
"He didn't deserve that," Mrs. Rudalavage said.
Carl and Kevin refused to accept the reward, saying Mrs. Rudalavage shouldn't have to pay for the return of her property.
"Did they take it? I don't know," she said. "As long as he's back, I'm happy."
'CALI' BOMBS IN ARIZONA
Al Micka had sat through his share of terrible movies, but never one he helped bankroll.
"If we're waiting to get our money back on that (film), it's going to be a long wait," the Jefferson Twp. resident said after the February world premiere of "The Trouble With Cali" at the Sedona Film Festival in Sedona, Ariz.
Al, 68, and his wife, Donna, 65, who own a second home in nearby Glendale, paid $24 for their tickets to the premiere of the alleged feature film, which was financed in part with $500,000 in Lackawanna County taxpayer money.
"It was bizarre," Donna said. "If I had known it would be this bad, I wouldn't have come."
The film, which was shot in and around Scranton in 2006, missed many target dates for completion set by director Paul Sorvino, leading to questions about his dedication to the project. Prior to its first and only known public screening, Mr. Sorvino said he had been vindicated.
"What will they say now?" he said of critics who predicted he would never finish the film.
"What now?"
Well, they said the movie is an embarrassing disaster. Festival voters judged it a disturbing, disjointed mess. One voter asked if she could rate "Cali" a zero. The ballot-taker explained that "1" out of a possible "5" is the lowest rating.
There has been no news on the film since February, and it seems unlikely to be screened again any time soon. Al Micka said taxpayers are even less likely to see any return on the investment.
"It's a bad B-movie at best," he said. "Like I said, we've got a long wait ahead of us."
And because Mr. Sorvino isn't legally bound to pay his investors a dime, he has all the time in the world.
See you next year.