The Talented Cafe

Methinks he was a crazy man?

Cologne, Germany
08 May 2007 01:32
A man cut off his own head with a chainsaw after stabbing his 70-year-old father to death in their apartment in the German city of Cologne, police said on Tuesday. The body of the offender (24) was found headless when police raced to the apartment Monday after an emergency call, apparently from the dying father, had been broken off in mid-sentence. Alf Willwacher, a senior prosecutor, said an electric chainsaw was next to the son’s body. “We do not believe any third party was involved,” he said. Neighbours said the father and son had been reclusive since the death of the mother, allegedly by suicide, several years ago. — Sapa-dpa What do you think?

DanceEast is looking for teachers to start weekly work from September 2007, teaching the following styles and ages:

• Creative Dance:  Ages 7 – 11 years, 11 – 14 years
• Jazz:  Age 10 years +
• Hip Hop:  Age 10 years +
• Contemporary technique: Age 16 years +
• Parents and Tots

Competitive hourly rates with reasonable travel reimbursements available.  

CRB disclosures dated within the last two years essential.

Subsidised Child Protection, Safer Dance Practice and First Aid training available.

Please send CV’s to Emma Reed, Northgate Arts Centre, Sidegate Lane West, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP4 3DF, or e-mail to emma.reed@danceeast.co.uk. 

Deadline for applications Friday 25 May 2007

The position of Community Dance Artist and other teaching opportunities in the eastern regional Centre for Advanced Training (Ipswich) will be advertised shortly.  Please contact DanceEast for more information on 01473 639230, or regularly check their website www.danceeast.co.uk.  

Call us if you’re interested

Up-coming Music Producer seeks a female vocalist to perform on a ready-to-go dance track (the lyrics are provided and melody line mapped out). 

Ability to work distantly (via the internet, due to being an international project) - this would require you to have own home studio/or access to a studio for recording of your vocals. Upon completion, the track will be pushed for a commercial release &/or licenced out. The singer will be fully credited for her work. This is an excellent opportunity for an up-coming young singer looking to get their foot in the door and be heard! 

Interested singers, please send a short mp3 vocal sample or a direct link to your samples, to: 

LV-Productions@hotmail.com

By the way seeing funny videos, this is a cool way to travel, don’t you think?

 Saudi Skating

Was that good or are they just plumb loco?

Newspaper conned by fake Gucci model

Some people will do anything to get in the papers, but few have the audacity of a man in Switzerland, who conned one of the country’s biggest media companies into publishing a two-page advertisement he created of himself posing semi-naked beside a bottle of Gucci perfume.

The man, who claimed to represent the Italian fashion giant, called up the Swiss weekly SonntagsZeitung last week to book the expensive colour spread in Sunday’s edition, a spokesperson for the paper said.

Christoph Zimmer said on Tuesday that the man asked for the 60 000-Swiss-franc (about R352 000) bill to be sent to Gucci.

“We’ve spoken to Gucci and apologised for the mistake,” Zimmer said. “We’re going to try and get the money back from this guy, but we don’t rate our chances.”

The Milan-based Gucci, owned by luxury goods group PPR SA, could not be reached for comment.

Zimmer said the paper fell for the scam because the call arrived too late for the advertising department to check whether it was genuine.

It was not the first time that the mysterious model — a dark, handsome man appearing to be in his late 20s — had tried to sneak into the limelight.

According to the Zurich-based daily Blick, the man attempted to book concert venues by passing himself off as Puerto Rican singer Chayanne. The paper said it narrowly avoided also being conned, but was tipped of the hoax by record company Sony BMG, which represents Chayanne.

The man is under investigation for alleged fraud, said Meinrad Stoecklin, a spokesperson for police in Basel.

Butt

Melanie Mills, a.k.a.Elisabeth von Hullessem, a.k.a. Lisa Hackney

In late 2000, Writer Beware began to receive reports of a new literary agency: M.W. Mills Literary Agent, of Myrtle Beach, SC, run by a woman named Melanie Mills. The agency charged a $350 upfront fee, and required clients to provide their own query letters (a marker for an unprofessional agent). Later, it implemented a paid editing scheme, whereby Mills’s own editing services were offered to clients based on a false promise of publisher interest. Editing costs ranged from $800 to more than $1,500.

In 2003, Mills announced a writers’ conference to be held over Memorial Day weekend in Myrtle Beach (Writer Beware staff was not only invited, but offered an honorarium of $1,000 apiece–we found this pretty amusing, given that Mills was well aware that we were watching her, and had several times written us angry letters denouncing our warnings). In early May, the conference was abruptly canceled with no reason given. A reschedule date was promised, but never provided. Then, in June, clients of M.W. Mills were shocked and grieved to learn that their agent had been killed in a car crash in Germany. The agency was closed down; clients were released from all obligations.

Writer Beware was skeptical. There’d been signs that the agency was in trouble, and this wouldn’t be the first time a questionable agent had attempted to duck financial obligations and angry clients by faking her own death. Mills’s con games hadn’t been limited to literary scamming, either. According to the North Myrtle Beach Police Department, which we contacted on a tip from an victim, she’d also been involved in eBay auction scams and real estate rental scams.

In August 2003, we began to receive reports of a writers’ conference scam in Banff, Alberta. The conference’s organizer, Elisabeth von Hullessem, had announced a lavish event, accepted money from would-be participants, then canceled the conference and absconded with the proceeds. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police caught up with her in British Columbia on Oct. 30, arresting her on seven counts of fraud, two counts of false pretenses, and one count of theft. She was hauled back to Alberta to stand trial.

When news of the Banff scam first broke, Writer Beware was struck by the similarities to Melanie Mills’s fake writers’ conference in North Carolina, and also by the similar writing styles of the solicitation letters sent out by “Elisabeth von Hullessem” and correspondence we’d seen from “Melanie Mills”. Once Hullessem was arrested, we contacted the RCMP to inform them of our suspicions that Hullessem and Mills were the same person. They were already investigating the South Carolina connection, but we were able to fill them in on Mills’s activities there and also to put them in touch with the North Myrtle Beach police detective in charge of Mills’s case. In return, they told us that Mills’s/Hullessem’s real name was Lisa Hackney, and that she was wanted in Arkansas on six charges filed in 1999–including battery in the first degree, aggravated assault (Hackney allegedly attempted to murder her mother by running her over with a car), theft, possession of stolen property, passing bad checks, forgery, and failure to attend court (she spent 28 days in jail and then jumped bail, relocating first to Missouri and then to South Carolina, where she began her career as a literary scammer).

Lisa Hackney was able to broker a plea bargain in answering the charges in Canada, and was sentenced to time served (less than a month in custody awaiting her hearing) in exchange for a plea of guilty. She promptly went to ground, and–except for a bizarre posting on eBay, in which she attempted to auction off a copy of her vanity-published, semi-autobiographical novel Sins, plus “lunch with a fugitive author” for $10,000–appeared to have vanished for good.

But the saga continued. On March 23, 2004, Hackney was arrested in Victoria, British Columbia on an outstanding Canada-wide warrant of extradition. The arrest was accomplished by the Victoria Police Strike Force with the assistance of the RCMP Major Crime Unit, on a tip from a pair of Victoria realtors. Apparently Hackney had contacted the realtors, claiming to be best-selling author “Melanie Mills”, in town to purchase a multi-million-dollar estate. The realtors agreed to work with her, but were suspicious enough to do an Internet search, which turned up the Writer Beware website, among others.

While being held in jail, Hackney made an apparent suicide attempt, and subsequently claimed amnesia. A brief psychiatric assessment was ordered, and the extradition hearing was held over until April 1. On that date, with Hackney still claiming not to know where or who she was, the judge ordered a full-scale psychiatric evaluation, which concluded that her amnesia wasn’t genuine. On April 23 she appeared again, and a bail hearing was set for the following week.

On January 7, 2005, a Supreme Court judge in British Columbia ruled that Hackney should be extradited to Arkansas to stand trial on the charges she fled in 1999. Hackney fought extradition, but the following December she was delivered by US marshals to Arkansas and transported to Fayetteville, where she was officially booked into the Washington County Jail on Dec. 22, 2005, her 51st birthday.

On February 10, 2006, she pleaded guilty to all six charges, and was sentenced to two prison terms in the Arkansas Department of Correction, one of 15 years and one of 10 years, to run concurrently. All but 23 months of the 15-year sentence was suspended, and all but 22 months of the 10-year sentence was suspended, and she was credited with the 23 months she served in Canadian jails awaiting extradition. She was deported back to Canada, where she holds citizenship–but there was nothing barring her from returning to the USA, which she quickly did.

She’s now living on the West Coast and calling herself Roswitha Elisabeth Melanie (Remi) Mills-Hackney, and trying to market her memoirs. Scammers don’t generally change their stripes; we expect we’ll be hearing from her again.

This is one of those things that goes to disprove the theory that “ALL” women cannot park a vehicle. You can hear every lady shouting “Ohhhh Yesssss!” and they are NOT having a you know what …Are they?

Women can Park a Vehicle