Infamous South Beach street artist Jonathan Crenshaw, 46, attracts a lot of attention in Miami among tourists, who watch him paint on a canvas -- using his feet. Crenshaw does not have arms and is homeless. Profiled in a local newspaper in 2011, Crenshaw told of a difficult childhood (he also claimed Gloria Estefan had given birth to 200 of his children). He landed in the headlines again after stabbing a Chicago man with a pair of scissors on July 10. According to the Miami Herald, Cesar Coronado, 22, told police he had approached Crenshaw to ask for directions, when Crenshaw jumped up and, using his feet, stabbed Coronado. Crenshaw's story is that as he lay on the pavement, Coronado punched him in the head -- so he stabbed him, tucked the scissors into his waistband and walked away. Police found Crenshaw, who has a lengthy arrest record, nearby and arrested him. [Miami Herald, 7/12/2018]

Bold Move

Faith Pugh of Memphis, Tennessee, had a date to remember on July 14 with Kelton Griffin. Her casual acquaintance from high school "just out of the blue texted me and asked me to go out," Pugh told WREG-TV. They took her car and stopped at a gas station, where Griffin asked Pugh to go inside and buy him a cigar. But while she was inside, "He drove off. I came outside and my car was gone," Pugh said. Shortly, Pugh received a text from her godsister, telling her Griffin had just asked her out on a date. He picked up the godsister in Pugh's car and headed to a drive-in movie. "He didn't even have any money," Pugh said. "She actually paid their way to get in the drive-in just so I could get my car back." Pugh alerted the police to the car's location, and they arrested Griffin for theft of property. "I hope he's in jail for a long time," Pugh said. [WREG-TV, 7/17/2018]

Mystery Solved

On Jan. 25, 71-year-old Alan J. Abrahamson of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, went for his regular pre-dawn walk to Starbucks. What happened on the way stumped police investigators until March, reported The Washington Post, and on July 13 they made their findings public. Images from a surveillance camera show Abrahamson walking out of his community at 5:35 a.m. and about a half-hour later, the sound of a gunshot is heard. Just before 7 a.m., a dog found Abrahamson's body, lying near a walking path. Police found no weapon, no signs of a struggle; he still had his wallet and phone. Investigators initially worked the case as a homicide, but as they dug deeper into the man's computer searches and purchases over the past nine years, a theory developed: Abrahamson had tied a gun to a weather balloon filled with helium, shot himself, and then the gun drifted away to parts unknown. A thin line of blood on Abrahamson's sweatshirt indicated to police that "something with the approximate width of a string passed through the blood on the outside of the shirt," the final report says. As for the balloon, investigators said it would likely have ascended to about 100,000 feet and exploded somewhere north of the Bahamas in the Atlantic Ocean. [The Washington Post, 7/15/2018]

Bright Idea

It's time once again for minor league baseball promotion fun and games! This time, however, the Montgomery (Alabama) Biscuits managed to tick off a whole generation of baseball fans. The Biscuits announced Millennial Night on July 21, featuring participation ribbons just for showing up, a napping area, selfie stations and lots of avocados, reported Fox News. While some Twitter users thought the promotion was insensitive, others were more philosophical. Dallas Godshall, 21, said, "More than targeting millennials, it's sort of targeting older generations who like to make fun of millennials." Pitcher Benton Ross weighed in: "If it's insensitive, maybe they should just have thicker skin." [Fox News, 7/20/2018]

Revenge, Texas-Style

The Austin American-Statesman reported that on June 17, RV park neighbors and longtime adversaries Ryan Felton Sauter, 39, and Keith Monroe got into a heated dispute about an undisclosed subject. Later that day, Monroe saw Sauter leaving Monroe's RV and asked him why he had gone in without permission, to which Sauter replied, "You'll see why." Going inside, Monroe soon spotted a 3-foot-long rattlesnake. "I freaked out," he said. He used a machete to kill the snake, which strangely was missing its rattles. Turns out Sauter had bitten off the snake's tail, with its signature warning sound. Sauter has been charged with deadly conduct and criminal trespass. [Austin American-Statesman, 6/29/2018]

People and Their Pets

Tina Ballard, 56, of Okeechobee County, Florida, was arrested in North Carolina by Linville Land Harbor police on July 16 after fleeing there to "hide (her pet) monkey so that state officials could not take that monkey from her," assistant state attorney Ashley Albright told WPBF News. Ballard's troubles began in May, when the spider monkey, Spanky, jumped out of a shopping cart in an Okeechobee Home Depot and grabbed a cashier's shirt, "leaving red marks on the cashier's shoulder and back." In June, Fox News reported, another Home Depot employee spotted Spanky in the parking lot, having escaped Ballard's truck and dragging a leash. Spanky was spooked by the store's sliding doors and bit the employee on the arm, grabbing her hair and running away. The employee gave chase and eventually caught Spanky, but not before suffering more bites and scratches. Spanky was in the car when Ballard was arrested and extradited back to Florida; the monkey will be placed in a primate sanctuary. [Fox News, 7/18/2018]

People Different From Us

A Russian man who has covered more than 90 percent of his body -- including his eyeballs -- with black-ink tattoos underwent surgery on July 14 at Jardines Hospital in Guadalajara, Mexico, to remove his penis, testicles and nipples because they spoiled his body art. Adam Curlykale, 32, of Kaliningrad, an albino, was diagnosed with cancer and started the tattooing process 12 years ago to cover scars left behind from the disease. "I always knew that I was different from the rest of society," Curlykale told The Daily Mail. "My favorite color, for example, has always been gray, in different tones, and that's why my current skin color is graphite." He plans to finish the process by inking his remaining un-tattooed skin. [Daily Mail, 7/19/2018]

Mistaken Identity

A man in Tameside, Manchester, England, is trying to figure out who painted "Pay your bill, you b

Walt Dean King, 69, just wanted to take a look at a used car for sale on July 4. But when he approached the vehicle in the small California town of Tracy, about 60 miles east of San Francisco, he was suddenly knocked off his feet by a bull that had gotten loose. King felt the bull's horn go through his side and crawled between a bush and a house as the bull stood over him snorting for about 20 minutes. FOX40 reported that King underwent three hours of surgery, after which doctors told him his belly fat had saved him from worse injury. King believes karma kept him alive: "Back in the '70s, I had pulled a lady out of a burning building, so now I think I'm being paid back, by not dying," King said. [FOX40, 7/6/2018]

People With Too Much Time on Their Hands

-- Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who have made their fortunes in tech-related fields have discovered a spiritually enriching new guru, Jess Magic, a ukulele player and singer who calls herself a "heartist." At Magic's intimate, invitation-only "Soul Salons" (and now on a 10-city national tour), participants share their energy and join in "songversations" -- philosophical rap and improvised music and dance -- a process Magic calls "a play date for your inner child." Andrew Hewitt, creator of Game Changers 500, explains: "For people who live most of the time in their head, this feels like magic." The New York Times reported that Magic believes her appeal is in response to the spiritual hollowness wealthy executives feel. "People forget that they are human beings rather than human doings," she said. [The New York Times, 6/29/2018]

-- Patriotism inspired Rain Wiggand, 22, and Zane Liles, 21, of Collins, Ohio, to construct an American flag using more than 2,000 Budweiser, Bud Light and Miller Lite beer cans. Wiggand posted pictures of the "beer flag" on Twitter on July 4. "It was a rough month of work for Zane and I," Wiggand confessed, adding that they "averaged somewhere around 14 beers a night for 28 days straight." Six other friends helped, he said, but they only drank on Thursdays to Sundays. Liles told BuzzFeed News, "It was a monthlong hangover that nothing could cure." However, he said the project had not ruined beer for him. "I can still drink beer with the best of them." [BuzzFeed News, 7/5/2018]

Cultural Diversity

In Ghana, the reaction of mourners at a funeral is a measure of the deceased's position in the community. But for family members who are unable to express their emotions openly, professional mourners will cry on their behalf. A leader of one team of criers told BBC Africa in July that they charge based on the size of the funeral, and the Kumasi Funeral Criers Association offers different styles of crying, such as crying with swagg, crying and rolling on the ground, and crying and vomiting. Ghanian funerals also feature dancing pallbearers and giant billboards to announce the funeral arrangements. [BBC Africa, 7/1/2018]

It's a Compulsion

In 1985, Tosya Garibyan of Arinj, in Armenia, asked her husband, Levon Arkelian, 44, to dig a pit under their home where she could store potatoes. But once he got started, Radio Free Europe reported, he just couldn't stop. Twenty-three years later, the underground oasis Arkelian created is a tourist attraction. Working as many as 18 hours a day with only a hammer and chisel, Arkelian created seven rooms, stairwells and passages running as deep as 65 feet and adorned them with carvings and decorations made from found objects. Arkelian passed away in 2008, and his widow welcomes tourists to her museum, which includes his shredded work boots and tools. But she says the couple argued about the project. "He ruined his health because of this hole," she told RFE. [Radio Free Europe, 6/20/2018]

Wait, What?

Brigadier Gen. Gholam Reza Jalali, the head of Iran's Civil Defense Organization, announced in a press conference on July 2 that Israel is manipulating the weather over Iran to prevent rain. "Israel and another country in the region have joint teams which work to ensure clouds entering Iranian skies are unable to release rain," Jalali posited, according to YNet News. "On top of that, we are facing the issue of cloud and snow theft." However, the head of Iran's meteorological service was skeptical: "It is not possible for a country to steal snow or clouds. Iran has suffered a prolonged drought, and this is a global trend that does not apply only to Iran." [YNet News, 7/2/2018]

Weird Science

If summer's heat is making you anxious about body odor, you might want to investigate a helpful gadget launched on July 1 by Japanese health tech company Tanita: the ES-100, an odor-sensing device that will detect body odor or too much perfume or cologne. IT Media reported that the user simply points the sensor toward the underarm area (or other problematic spots), and in 10 seconds a numerical score will appear on the LED display. If you're a 10 ... you're not a 10. [IT Media, 6/20/2018]

Compelling Explanations

-- In Madison, Wisconsin, an unidentified 19-year-old driver flipped his car after overcorrecting in traffic on July 3. The Wisconsin State Journal reported that the man left the scene and removed some clothing, then pretended to be a jogger who happened by when police questioned him. Police said he was not impaired; he was later charged with leaving a crash scene and driving without a license. [Wisconsin State Journal, 7/5/2018]

-- A 62-year-old security guard named Ramdin in the city of Kanpur, India, told doctors he was robbed in June of about $722 (proceeds from the sale of his motorbike) by muggers who attacked him and knocked him out. When he woke up, Ramdin was suffering from severe abdominal pain, which brought him, 10 days later, to Rama Hospital, where a scan revealed a steel cup lodged in his abdomen. Senior surgeon Dr. Dinesh Kumar told Metro News: "It seems that the metal cup was inserted into Ramdin's rectum by the goons, and it got stuck near the intestines." Doctors couldn't remove the cup using the route it went in, so they had to operate. Ramdin was discharged from the hospital on July 4. [Metro News, 7/9/2018]

Ewwwww!

In what can only be a testament to curiosity, a Staffa, Ontario, Canada, man has created an eBay listing for the McDonald's meal he placed on a shelf in his home six years ago to see what would happen. CBC Radio reported on July 5 that Dave Alexander also set aside a homemade burger and fries, five years ago, in order to make a comparison. The McDonald's meal held up much better: "The fries are stunningly good looking," Alexander said. "The burger itself has darkened a little bit. The bun is about as hard as a hockey puck, but it looks just like it's brand-new cosmetically." Alexander is downsizing and listed the meal -- "original owner, never eaten" -- for $29.99. "We live in the country and we've never seen a fly land on it. Ever," he said. [CBC Radio, 7/5/2018]

Oops!

Finished with her shopping at the Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, Walmart in late June, an unnamed woman returned to the parking lot and drove off in the black rental car she had just picked up. Two weeks later, when she returned the car to the rental agency, she complained about the car's messy condition and the set of golf clubs left in it. Nation Valley News reported the "slightly confused" manager informed her the car she had rented was a Nissan Sentra, but the car she returned was an Infiniti. Sure enough, the Infiniti owner had reported his car stolen from the Walmart parking lot, and when the woman and the agency manager returned to the lot, the Nissan was still parked there. The Infiniti owner got his car back, the woman was a "wee bit embarrassed," and the Cornwall Community Police Service reported on July 8 that there was a "happy and funny ending to the story." They also urged citizens to "not leave your key fobs in your vehicle when not being operated." [Nation Valley News, 7/8/2018]

San Diego photographer Mike Sakasegawa prides himself on seeing the beauty in mundane objects, The Washington Post reports. But something about his latest subject took social media by storm. On July 11, as Sakasegawa returned home from his morning run, he noticed a round, yellow object rolling down the street. "I thought it was a tennis ball or something," he said, but in fact it was a lemon. So he did what any self-respecting photographer would do: He captured video of the fruit as it continued its journey to the bottom of the hill, then posted his 1.5-minute documentary to Twitter. Within 24 hours the video racked up more than 2.5 million views. "I post stuff that's similar to this all the time," Sakasegawa said. "Most of the time, it floats on by." By the next day, the lemon video had gained more than 100,000 likes, was retweeted tens of thousands of times, and a literary agent had contacted Sakasegawa, wondering if he'd like to make the lemon into a children's book. [The Washington Post, 7/12/2018]

Least Competent Criminals

-- Rye Wardlaw, 40, chalked up a big FAIL on July 8 at NW Escape Experience in Vancouver, Washington, when he broke into the business in the pre-dawn hours. According to The Washington Post, Wardlaw tried and failed to enter through a back door using a metal pipe, then knocked a hole through the wall. After climbing through, he knocked over a set of lockers. Then, carrying a burrito and a beer he nicked from the company's refrigerator, he wandered into the "Kill Room," an escape room dressed to look like a serial murderer's hideout. Among the blood-spattered walls and fake cadavers, Wardlaw got scared, but he couldn't ... escape. So he called 911 (four times) and pleaded for help. Clark County Sheriff's officers accepted his confession and charged him with second-degree burglary. [The Washington Post, 7/12/2018]

-- In Mesa, Arizona, two troopers with the Arizona Department of Public Safety were surprised to find themselves being pulled over on State Route 51 by a black Dodge Charger on July 11. The troopers were in an unmarked Mustang and had spotted the Charger behind them sporting law enforcement-style emergency lights, reported ABC15 Arizona. A registration check revealed the car was registered to a private citizen, who soon activated his flashing lights and pulled the troopers over. When the (real) troopers approached the Charger, they found 44-year-old Matthew Allen Disbro of Mesa wearing a security uniform and a gun belt with a handgun, cuffs and pepper spray. The car also contained a siren box, police radio and a vest with a baton and knife. Disbro was arrested for impersonating an officer. [ABC15 Arizona, 7/13/2018]

Fun Suckers

Organizers of Bats Day, a special celebration at Disneyland for the goth community, have called it quits, citing the loss of available tax deductions under President Trump's new tax law. The annual event began 20 years ago and grew to attract more than 8,000 goths each year, with Disneyland offering discounted tickets and hotel rooms for participants. "We did a lot of research," Bats Day founder Noah Korda told Vice, "and, unfortunately, it just wasn't feasible to actually continue ... with the way that we run the event." On May 6, about 800 goths showed up for a final group photo in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle. [Vice, 5/8/2018]

Awesome!

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo isn't going to spend her summer sitting in a stuffy office. Instead, she announced on July 14 that she is holding summer office hours at state beaches, beginning with Scarborough State Beach in Narragansett. She and members of the Office of Constituent Services, who will help connect residents with state services, started their new schedule on July 16. The governor told the Associated Press she looks forward to hearing directly from residents while visiting some of the state's most popular destinations. [Associated Press, 7/14/2018]

Hey, It's Florida

-- Indian River County (Florida) sheriff's officers stopped Earle Stevens Jr., 69, on June 27 after another driver called 911, complaining that Stevens' Mercury Grand Marquis kept tapping her bumper in a McDonald's drive-thru lane. The officers noted "a strong odor of alcoholic beverage emitting from his breath ... His speech was slurred and his eyes were red and glossy." He also had an open bottle of Jim Beam bourbon in a brown paper bag on the passenger seat. Stevens, of Vero Beach, struggled to produce his ID and said he's never had a valid Florida driver's license, according to Treasure Coast Newspapers. He also explained he was not drinking while driving, only when he stopped for stop signs and traffic signals. After failing several field sobriety tests and a breath test, Stevens was charged with driving under the influence and driving without a license. [Treasure Coast Newspapers, 7/12/2018]

-- Florida Highway Patrol officers pulled over a Nissan sedan on May 16 on I-95 after observing erratic driving, reported the Miami Herald. Indeed, Port St. Lucie, Florida, resident Scott Allen Garrett, 56, smelled of alcohol, had an open bottle of 92-proof Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum on the passenger seat, was slurring his words and had "red, very glassy and bloodshot eyes," according to the police report. Garrett then told officers his dog had been driving -- which would have been notable on its own, but was particularly interesting considering there was no dog in the car with him. Garrett was charged with DUI. [Miami Herald, 7/6/2018]

Undignified Behavior

City Councilwoman Carol S. Fowler, 48, of Huron, Kansas, made a splash in the news when Atchison County Sheriff's deputies tried to arrest her on June 29 for failure to appear on an outstanding warrant. Fowler put up such a fight deputies had to use their tasers on her, and she was arrested for interference and battery on a law enforcement officer. But Fowler was just getting started, according to the Atchison Globe. On July 2, as jail workers tried to remove her jewelry and personal items, Fowler bit one of them on the thumb hard enough to break the bone. Fowler now faces three felony charges of battery on a law enforcement officer and a charge of interference with a law enforcement officer. [Atchison Globe, 7/5/2018]

Bright Idea

In Nashville, 20-year-old Antonio Freeman knew he had a problem on June 25 when three police officers approached him as he rolled a marijuana cigarette. He also knew there was a bigger problem in his pocket: a plastic bag full of cocaine. In a bold move, according to the Tennessean, Freeman pulled the bag out of his chest pocket, crushed it in his hand and sprinkled cocaine over Officer Ryan Caulfield's head and into the air in an attempt to destroy evidence. The officers were able to salvage about 2.5 grams of cocaine and charge Freeman with tampering with evidence along with possession of a schedule IV drug and unlawful use of drug paraphernalia. [Tennessean, 6/26/2018]

Bold Move

A cheeky seagull embarked on a life of crime on July 14 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, by plucking a man's wallet from the top of a pizza box and carrying it onto a nearby roof. Phil Peterson was on a cherry picker hanging lights nearby and offered to retrieve the wallet, which was being picked apart by two baby seagulls "literally trying to eat (it)," Peterson explained. He tried to distract them by throwing bread at them, but that only turned their attention to him. "It was like the movie, '(The) Birds,'" he said. "I was afraid they were going to pick my brains." Quick-thinking bystander Mike Ramos borrowed a flashlight from a police officer and used the the strobe feature to "discombobulate" the birds long enough for Peterson to sneak in, grab the wallet and bring it back to Earth. "It was just the craziest thing I ever saw in my life," Ramos told New England Cable News. [New England Cable News, 7/14/2018]