Joe Bob's Week in Review

NEW YORK, June 17 (UPI) -- Pepsi Blue, a cola drink dyed the color of Windex, hit the market in answer to Vanilla Coke, which was an answer to Mountain Dew Code Red. The only unexploited color in soft-drink marketing is puke yellow, but Orange Nehi is almost there.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared "Oreo Cookie 90th Anniversary Day" at ceremonies on the site of the bakery where the Oreo was invented in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, and the City Council officially declared it the "favorite cookie" of New Yorkers. Colin Powell, the New Yorker most identified with the Oreo, sent his regrets.

F. Lee Bailey, disbarred in his home state of Florida for mishandling $6 million worth of a stock for a client doing a life prison term, was suspended from practicing before the U.S. Supreme Court. The court gave him 40 days to say why he should not be permanently barred from practicing law.

The Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial in downtown Annapolis, Md., was dedicated, memorializing the African slave who allegedly arrived in Annapolis in 1767, and the author who plagiarized his story and falsified his genealogy in "Roots." The memorial cost $750,000 and features a bronze statue of Haley reading a book to children of three different races, along with 10 granite markers featuring quotations from "Roots."

Ten thousand bagpipers all played at the same time during the first Tartan Day Parade on New York's Sixth Avenue, and no one committed suicide.

Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia apologized for the forced sterilization of 7,450 people between 1924 and 1979, calling it a "shameful effort that must never be repeated" and ensuring the descendants of the ... oh, right ... uh ... never mind.

Kathryn Gannon Gilley, better known as porn star Marylin Star, pleaded guilty to two counts of trading on insider stock-market information passed along to her in the bedroom by James J. McDermott, former chairman of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. The actress was charged in December 1999 but had been fighting extradition from her native Canada.

Steven Seagal says he was shaken down by the Gambino mob and forced to pay $150,000 per movie, which is why he became a fat pony-tailed unemployable Buddhist.

Madonna, currently appearing in the London play "Up For Grabs," forced fellow thespian Boy George to remove a song from his West End musical "Taboo." His spoof of "Vogue" included the lyrics "Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, that Madonna, dyes her hair." Not funny, said the Material Mom, who raised hell with the producers and then barred all journalists from her opening-night party, presumably because they had all agreed that her acting was "mechanical" (that was actually the nicest thing they said)."

Iceland stormed out of the International Whaling Commission meeting and started sharpening its harpoons again, furious at being rejected for full membership in the body. Look at a map, people! If any country deserves to be in the Whaling Commission, it's the one with the geysers and the fjords, not to mention the scrumptious whale sashimi.

Peter Likins, president of the University of Arizona, banned tortilla-tossing at commencement ceremonies this year, saying the school tradition is "an offensive notion that when people are hungry all over the world, and not so very far from our own campus, that enormous quantities of food are just thrown in the air, thrown away, so to speak."

Continuing our pattern of signing treaties and then saying "Whoops! We don't like that one after all," the Bush administration said it would not cooperate with the new International Criminal Court that's about to begin work at The Hague. Both President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld expressed outrage that the court's definition of "criminal" included all nationalities, EVEN AMERICANS.

Last year 80,000 African-Americans listed a "black slavery credit" on their income tax forms -- and the Internal Revenue Service actually PAID $30 million for these legally non-existent line items. Most of the cases are being treated as "negligence," not criminal intent, on the theory that someone making up a tax deduction that doesn't exist is just one of those unlucky people who FORGETS he's not entitled to $43,000, which is the most common amount requested by the "black slavery" filers.

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