The Sultan of Spectacles

On July 17, a 38-year-old Illinois man named Jerry Lowery allegedly robbed a suburban Milwaukee optical store at gunpoint. After leading police on a high-speed chase through local neighborhoods, Lowery escaped, but later turned himself in to authorities. He is also charged with the armed theft of two other optical stores since April.

Lowery has admitted to a bizarre eyeglasses fetish in which he "really likes to be around glasses." Lowery told police that this fetish has plagued him for the last fifteen years, saying that he likes to put on the glasses, pose in front of a mirror, and then dispose of them. In the burglary of July 17, Lowery stole 575 pairs of eyewear.

This is a fetish so weird that it doesn't even have a Web site yet.

Yet what fascinates Mount Drinkmore is not the heretofore unheard-of eyeglasses obsession that deserves an entire DSM-IV of its own, but rather the unsettling resemblance of Lowery to Hall of Famer Hank Aaron.

Even more disturbingly, these thefts occurred in and around Milwaukee—where Hank Aaron spent two thirds of his Major League career.

You might say that Jerry Lowery is the Hank Aaron of armed-glasses theft.

After all, he did steal 575 pairs of glasses on this caper...and while that's still far short of Hank's 755 home runs, it puts the 38-year-old Lowery on pace to pass Aaron in a few years. (Remember that Hammerin' Hank aged like fine wine and swatted 116 homers after his 38th birthday.)

Lowery, who was on parole at the time of his arrest and owns a laundry list of armed-robbery convictions, faces a maximum of 123 years in jail. But if he can cut his sentence down to, say, two years with good behavior and a switch to contact lenses, Very Bad Jerry will still be young enough to catch Bad Henry upon his release from prison.

So let's keep a close watch on this guy, because, one day, we all might be saying, "There's a new eyeglasses thief of all time...and it's Jerry Lowery!"
(Mugshot photo courtesy Fox Point Police. Hank Aaron baseball card copyright Topps, Inc.)

They're Special, So Special, Alright...

The following concert information was cut and pasted from today's Ticketmaster site. Chrissie Hynde et al have finally mastered complementarity and can now appear in two places at once. The European Organization for Nuclear Research spent more than €3 billion constructing the Large Hadron Collider...and The Pretenders beat them to it with a pair of Stratocasters and a stack of Marshall amps.


The Pretenders Tower Theatre Upper Darby, PA Thu, 08/13/09 07:30 PM Find Tickets

The Pretenders The Electric Factory Philadelphia, PA Thu, 08/13/09 07:30 PM Find Tickets

The Pretenders have always ranked among rock's most scientifically progressive bands. Over their long and distinguished career, they have dabbled in alchemy ("Brass in Pocket"), general chronology ("Time the Avenger"), and radio astronomy ("Tattooed Love Boys"). Chrissie's uncompromising commitment to melding a post-punk aesthetic with empirical research has yielded some of the most melodic eggheadism since Enrico Fermi's classic Gone Fission LP.

Now, The Pretenders have truly revolutionized both rock music and quantum physics. By performing in two places at once—no easy feat, especially considering the endless parade of stoplights in West Philly—Chrissie and the boys double their ticket sales, not to mention cut their touring costs in half. What practical application this will have on the larger world remains to be seen, but it certainly means good news for aficionados of Martin Chambers' sideburns.


For further reading on the two-places-at-once phenomenon, see the Mount Drinkmore post of January 7, 2007 ("E = AFC²"), which goes well with a Beaujolais and some Cheetos.

Home Despot?

So, I recently bought a home and entered the ranks of suburban, lawn-mowing life. The house had very few glaring problems, so I figured the amount of repair time initially would be minimal. Not so. Every project becomes an endless string of trips to Home Depot, sometimes several a day. One afternoon, I made three trips.

Now for some reason—I do not know if it is some subconscious brilliance or just hallucinations brought on by exhaustion—but every time I approach the building, I read the sign as Home Despot. Is this some philosophical statement being made by my subconscious to illustrate how my new home and this store are controlling my life? I never see Office Despot when I go to Office Depot...