Watercooler Stories

Judge orders wall in feuding couple's home

NEW YORK, July 6 (UPI) -- A New York judge ordered a couple to divide their home with a wall but an attorney for one half of the couple says they already live "like there was a wall."

Pinchs and Nechama Gold, an Orthodox Jewish couple, have been married for 21 years but Nechama Gold says her husband verbally abuses her and their five children, the New York Post reported. Judge Eric Prus Thursday ordered the Golds to divide their 3,000-square-foot home in two while the divorce proceeds -- giving them two weeks to decided where to put the wall or leaving it up to the court to make the decision, the newspaper said.

Abe Konstam, an attorney for Pinchs Gold, told the Post: "They've been living like there was a wall up for two years now. This just helps them completely avoid each other."

Pinchs Gold alleges his wife has exiled him from their bedroom and he has had to sleep in the dining room for two years, the newspaper said.

After the judge directed the couple to put up a wall in the house, Nechama Gold's lawyer, Brian Perskin, said: "It's a large house, so I think we can come up with some sort of agreement. But she wants him out."

Pinchs has come up with a plan that would give his wife and their children about 700 more square feet than he would get, the Post reported.

Lady Di 'hair jam' on exhibit, for sale

LONDON, July 6 (UPI) -- A surrealist art show in London features jars of jam supposedly made with the hair of Diana, the late princess of Wales, the exhibit's creator says.

Creator Sam Bompas, founder of catering company Bompas and Parr, said the jam was made by infusing a speck of Diana's hair with gin and combining that with milk and sugar to create a product tasting like condensed milk, the Metro reported.

Bompas said he paid a U.S. dealer $10 for the hair on the auction Web site eBay.

The organizers of the Surreal House at the Barbican Art Gallery asked Bompas to conform his contribution to the exhibition's surrealist theme by using food as his medium, the Metro said.

"We thought about it and the most mundane food of all is jam," he said. "So we made it a surreal object."

The Diana jam is part of Bompas and Parr's "occult jam" series for the show, which features spreads infused with sand from the Great Pyramid in Egypt and wood from Horatio Nelson's ship Victory. The Lady Di jam is on sale for $7.50 a jar in the gallery's gift shop.

Homer & Marge denied at Wales wedding

CARDIFF, Wales, July 6 (UPI) -- Models of cartoon couple Homer and Marge Simpson weren't stately enough to attend a gay couple's civil wedding, Cardiff, Wales, city officials said.

Even though Homer and his blue-haired bride didn't make the ceremony recently, Glyn Stott and partner Roy Culliford did walk down the aisle as the theme song of the popular U.S. cartoon show filled the air, The Mirror reported.

"It was a real shame. I really wanted Homer and Marge by my side," Stott told The Mirror. "We still Simpsoned it up by having the wedding cake and the theme song."

The models Stott wanted to use -- a 7-foot Marge and a 5-foot Homer -- were among 1,500 collectibles created when "The Simpsons Movie" was released.

A Cardiff Council spokeswoman said the registrar's office "should always insist upon the seemly behavior of the parties and their witnesses. All ceremonies -- marriages and civil partnerships -- should therefore be solemn and dignified. It is Cardiff Council's view that this request was outside that definition and could not be permitted."

Movie date can be dinner date for bedbugs

NEW YORK, July 6 (UPI) -- Moviegoers in New York could be snuggling up with bedbugs, bug experts say.

Experts warned theater seats pose a bigger bedbug threat than clothing racks, despite last week's reports about bedbug infestations at two popular clothing stores, the New York Daily News reported.

"In a movie theater, you are sitting in one spot for 2 hours. They have the opportunity to feed on you," said Jennifer Erdogan, director of Bell Environmental Services, a pest control company that fumigates movie theaters, offices and stores.

The Daily News said none of the pest control experts it contacted would say which theaters or stores have been treated for bedbugs, citing confidentiality agreements. But they all agreed that New York's bedbug problem has crept beyond apartments and into public spaces.

"This shouldn't be a surprise. We have more homes infested by bedbugs. All those people go to school, the office. (Bedbugs) go wherever people go," entomologist Richard Cooper, a member of the city's Bed Bug Advisory Board, told the Daily News. "It is a crisis. Virtually any place in New York City is at risk."