Lessons in Fighting

Never underestimate the cunning of people fueled by nicotine.

Just as the nonprofit SmokeFreeOhio submitted 185,000 signatures to the Secretary of State in order to get a statewide smoking ban on the November ballot, a competing nonprofit, Smoke Less Ohio, filed a complaint with Franklin County Court, accusing its competitor of election fraud.

While SmokeFreeOhio wants to see a comprehensive ban on the ballot this year, Smoke Less Ohio is gathering petitions for a more lenient measure that would exempt all bars, bowling alleys, and restaurant smoking sections, as God intended.

Franklin County Judge David Cain ultimately deemed more than 43,000 of SmokeFreeOhio's signatures invalid because they were collected by paid employees, rather than volunteers. In the meantime, Smoke Less Ohio was busy collecting 323,000 signatures for its August 9 deadline.

SmokeFreeOhio has responded to its competitor's tactics with return fire. Executive Director Tracy Sabetta said that Smoke Less Ohio, which cites R.J. Reynolds as a supporter, chose a similar-sounding name just to confuse voters. The group even launched a radio ad asking voters not to sign its competitor's petitions.

But spokesman Jacob Evans says there's nothing deceitful about Smoke Less Ohio's name. "First of all, we're both putting forth smoking-ban proposals, so we both needed to put something about smoke in the name," he says. "Our policy is about less smoking, so it's a very appropriate name."

As far as SmokeFreeOhio's policy goes, Evans sees little difference between its proposed ban and Prohibition. "Ohioans have shown they prefer a more moderate proposal and that's what we're giving them," Evans says. "[SmokeFreeOhio] is just another attempt at prohibition, and judging from the past, it won't work."

Fashion Faux Pas
Apparently, some people have mistaken our esteemed paper for a fetish rag. After the trendy boutique Devereaux in Westlake placed an ad featuring a supercute, slim teenage model, the store started receiving creepy phone calls.

"Are you wearing thongs or briefs?" a man named Mike asked the salesgirl who answered the phone. Then he called back, asking if the girl in the ad "liked to get her feet kissed."

Owner Patti Devereaux told Mike never to call back again. But to ensure that he doesn't, she's prepared to launch Operation Anti-Perv.

"I joked that next week I'm going to put a picture of the fattest girl I can find in the paper and write, 'How do you like that one, Mike?'" she says.

No word from Mike on whether he has a fetish for heavy girls as well.

Jail Bird
Our favorite kook heads back to the slam.
Give Elsebeth Baumgartner credit for her tenacity.

While she awaits trial in Cuyahoga County for charges of intimidating a judge -- for which she could spend the rest of her life in prison -- Baumgartner's taking a little 45-day vacation in the Erie County slammer ["The Pest," May 3].

Judge Richard Neper handed down the sentence after Elsebeth refused to shut up during her Erie County trial for getting into a car chase with police. She was also caught talking to the jurors before the start of the trial.

"She just went off," says Special Prosecutor Dan Kasaris, who is also prosecuting Baumgartner in the Cuyahoga case. "She tried to subpoena 20 to 30 people that had nothing to do with the case."

That's business as usual for Baumgartner, who for the past eight years has accused judges and other public officials of everything from keeping sex slaves to smuggling guns.

Besides sending her to the can, Judge Neper called Baumgartner "delusional" and ordered her to get a psychiatric evaluation, which could probably be done for little or no cost by the guy bagging sandwiches at Quizno's.

Boobs, the sequel
Three weeks ago Lyz Bly, a freelance art critic for the Free Times, resigned because she was fed up with the paper's apparent fascination with the female anatomy. Her main complaint was a cover story titled "Blood, Babes, and Bankroll," which Bly found offensive because it waxed poetic about the strangulation, drowning, and mutilation of babes in films by two area directors.

Yet, despite Bly's very public critique, the Free Times doesn't seem to have learned its lesson. Last week's paper featured an enormous photo of a bra-clad Victoria's Secret model with the caption; "Don't you DARE feed a baby with those! That's NOT what they're for!" The accompanying article, ostensibly about Victoria's Secret's treatment of nursing moms, appeared under the headline "Whip 'Em Out."

Bly, needless to say, was not amused. She pointed out that the paper seems to assume its readers are all men who will get the joke. "It's horrible," she says. "It's like Howard Stern."

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Judge Whitey
Because of a USDA judge's coke habit, the iguana got whacked.
If USDA Judge Leslie Holt hadn't been so busy honking down the Peruvian Marching Powder, Lorenzo Pearson's collection of exotic animals might have been saved.