Playboy mag overlooks UI again

Several UIdaho alums at Huckleberries Online were surprised that their alma mater wasn’t included in the Playboy’s latest list of the nation’s Top 25 party schools. After all, Washington State was No. 16. And even my alma mater, Chico State University (Calif.) was there, slipping from a No. 2 ranking in 2002 to No. 20 this year. Some thought Hugh Hefner’s bawdy mag had suffered a lapse in judgment, until John Austin chimed in: “I remember when Playboy compiled their list in the mid-70s and failed to include the U of I. Many thought it was an honest oversight seeing as how the lower Idaho drinking age encouraged a flood of Wazzu students to cross the border. Anyway, when someone checked with an editor at Playboy, they said they couldn’t include the U of I on their list because they only recognized “amateur” party schools! Made sense to us after that.” That, or the Vandal partiers have suffered the same fate as the sports teams since UIdaho’s jump to Division IA.

Hike nekkid?

First, you should know that residents of Appenzell Inner Rhodes, Switzerland, voted overwhelmingly to ban naked hiking in their neck of the Alps. Seems the hills in the picturesque region are alive with the sight of dozens of Germans, hiking in their birthday suits. The tiny canton will impose a 200 Swiss franc ($176) fine on violators. The German nudes might like to know there’s a place in North Idaho that would welcome their strolls au naturel – Priest Lake. Last week, Pecky Cox/As The Lake Churns provided photo proof that someone in her ’hood favors hiking in the buff. Along the Priest Lake Beach trail on the west side of lake, a crooked, handmade sign proclaims: “Hike Naked.” Berry Picker JeanieS dismisses the concept: “It’s one thing to enjoy the beauty of nature; then a naked fat woman with several necks and very dangly bosoms would walk in front of your view. I would need therapy.”

17 again

You may think that’s an old guy driving an old car when you see Rick Cooper/Coronado Classics at a stoplight. But he’s inside the vintage rig, looking at life through the eyes of an 18-year-old. Rick tells Huckleberries Online: “That is what drives the collector car business. Most people either want the first or favorite car in their lives or want the one they couldn’t ever have, but always wanted, and left it to the rich kid down the street” … You probably know by now that a six-story condo complex will be built at the old site of Senor Froggie’s, Seventh & Sherman. But no one seems to know whether the ghost that haunted the basement of the old Mexican fast-food eatery will move to the new digs. Guess we’ll have to wait for the new tenants to shriek when the lights go off …

Huckleberries

Poet’s Corner: “In warm April sun/while birds sweetly sing,/look – on that tulip –/the first slug of spring” – The Bard of Sherman Avenue … The aforementioned Pecky Cox found the following during a clean-up cruise of her beloved Priest Lake shore: 3 big plastic bottles, 2 small plastic bottles, 6 candy wrappers, 5 plastic bags, 76 – 76! – cans, 1 unopened beer can (“next time please leave it in a bucket with ice and lime on the side”), 2 beer bottles, 1 CD, 1 piece of carpet, (and a partridge in a pear tree?) Sez Pecky afterward: “Jeez!” … In a “Twilight Zone” moment, a sheriff’s deputy announced to scanner listeners recently: “I’m out on Loch Haven looking for an address that doesn’t exist.” R.I.P. Rod Serling … In a recent Huckleberries Online poll, Merry Hucksters proved how divided we are when 100 of 214 (47 percent) awarded President Barack Obama A’s and B’s for his performance during his first 100 days in office, and 94 of 214 (44 percent) gave him D’s and F’s.

Parting shot

A Berry Picker had a close encounter with two city workers who were cleaning up the beach between the Coeur d’Alene Resort and Independence Point one recent Sunday morning. Seems the worker bees had driven onto the wet beach sand – and were stuck. After noticing the rig’s bad tires, the Berry Picker offered to pull them out with his 4-by-4 pickup and a tow rope. The Berry Picker said he could do so without driving onto the beach and tearing it up further. But the city workers declined the offer, stating they’d call in help from elsewhere. You can bet the truck will be gone and the sand manicured before Duane Hagadone’s Coeur d’Alene Resort ushers in the tourist season.