Doug Clark: Raise a glass because these guys are toast

Greetings and salivations, my gleeful monkeys.

Today, we salute the area’s most memorable dubious achievers of 2006 with the 20th running of the Budnick Awards.

This event is not to be confused with the Budnick Awards’ 20th anniversary. That will take place 12 months from now, provided I’m still employed or haven’t been Tasered by a county cop to a medium rare.

The Budnicks began on Dec. 31, 1987. The first award went to an ambitious, but flawed, auto race that was held in the streets of downtown Spokane.

Gentlemen, start your excuses!

Spokane’s first Grand Prix registered more grumbles than rumbles after the race suffered more than a day’s delay when frantic work crews failed to get the track ready.

These formative Budnicks also referenced a certain Gypsy curse that had been placed over Spokane during the fall. Two decades later, the curse is obviously still going strong.

Before citing case evidence taken from this year’s pages of the newspaper, I must once again pay homage to our floundering founder:

I’m talking about Thomas P. Budnick, the former Massachusetts social worker who fell in love with Spokane because our county auditor’s office was the only official agency he could find that would file his Martian mining claims.

And now for the 2006 Budnick Awards:

America, you don’t look a day over 90

The Spokesman-Review’s Fourth of July editorial wrongly dubs the holiday as the 130th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Only 68th? Well, kiss my…

Spokane is America’s 68th-angriest city according to a Men’s Health magazine ranking.

Washington: the Everweed State

Washington drug crops harvest enough marijuana to qualify the illegal weed as the state’s eighth-biggest agricultural commodity.

A shot-and-a-beer kind of guy

“I’m having a bad day, and it’s about to get worse,” declares cancer-stricken Bob Frazier, who then hijacks a Spokane city bus at gunpoint and orders the driver to take him to a Hillyard tavern. Once there, the 69-year-old veteran squeezes off two rounds before he is subdued and disarmed.

The most fireproof river around

The Spokane River is tops among state waterways when it comes to being contaminated with levels of a potentially harmful fire retardant.

Tell us what you really think, Jim

“Peds queers fags your in Idaho now…” warns the hostile, grammatically impaired reader board that Jim Valentine put up to greet drivers passing his Post Falls business.

Lose your parking spot for a swirlie

The principal of Park High School in Livingston, Mont., returns after serving a six-day suspension for giving a student a wedgie.

Look! It’s the wrong arm of the law

With a shout of “Now let’s go inside and get some porn,” Spokane sheriff’s deputies raid and ransack the home of a suspected obscene telephone caller. Unfortunately, as the deputies later learn, a transcription error has led them to the wrong address.

Stupor Troopers – Episode I

Mark Haas, a 22-year Washington State Patrol veteran, faces felony unlawful imprisonment charges for allegedly suggesting during a traffic stop that two women should expose themselves.

Stupor Troopers – Episode II

Washington State Patrol’s Al Larned is put on paid leave for allegedly asking a woman for her telephone number for dating purposes.

Sometimes there is crying in baseball

The Oakland A’s beat the Seattle Mariners for the 15th consecutive time, tying a major league record.

Spo-can’t get no satisfaction

The Rolling Stones play Missoula, skipping the Spokane Arena once again.

State wishes to examine exhibit DD

Jerri Ann Cozza, a Spokane woman, is charged with stealing thousands of dollars from her Liberty Lake employer to get her breasts enlarged.

Only cuz it touched the holy stache

A bloody piece of gauze used to stop Gonzaga University basketball star Adam Morrison’s nosebleed is auctioned on eBay.

Hot lunch mystery meat explained

A frozen cat and a headless chicken are discovered in the boy’s bathroom at Rathdrum’s Lakeland Junior High.

Why would you call Cheney anyway?

The city of Cheney’s telephone number in the Spokane County phone book connects callers to a robotic voice droning: “We’re sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service…”

Vandal, rhymes with manhandle

University of Idaho Vandals miss 24 shots in a row in a humiliating 80-42 home basketball loss to Utah State.

Gotcha, Officer Lead Foot

Dean Sprague, a Spokane police lieutenant who had supervised traffic enforcement, is demoted to detective for twice driving an undercover Mustang more than 100 mph on I-90 while attending a training conference in Tacoma.

Next case: Idaho vs. Constipation

The Idaho Supreme Court upholds a lower ruling that a Kootenai County man’s diarrhea was not a good enough reason for him to miss a court appearance.

Even it can outshoot the Vandals

It’s confirmed that a University of Idaho graduate student dug up a rare giant albino Palouse earthworm.

Pennies for your thoughts?

After 31 months, investors fleeced by the Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities collapse finally get back some of their money– about 9 cents on the dollar.

What a total SayWASHOUT

SayWA – the much ballyhooed cornerstone of Washington’s $442,000 tourism marketing campaign – gets the boot after just six months.

Hanging out in ol’ Spokaloo

A malfunction traps 18 people for more than two hours on the Riverfront Park gondola ride.

He must be smoking our eighth top crop

Keith Gilbert, a former North Idaho neo-Nazi and convicted welfare cheat, tells a Seattle jury he intentionally sold machine guns to a federal informant because he knew his trial would be a venue for challenging gun control laws.

The S-R is hot off the presses

Someone posing as a Spokesman-Review delivery carrier is suspected of committing a string of Spokane Valley arsons using the stolen newspapers as tinder.

Guess they weren’t playing hold-em

Kootenai County prosecutors say they can’t find any state statutes to charge a private Christian school teacher who is accused of playing strip poker with young boys during a camping trip.

Attack of the teenage ninja nerds

Three ninja-garbed students, toting walkie-talkies and a blowgun, are nabbed inside Freeman High School rehearsing some kind of prank for the last day of school.

Meows and purring gave it away

After reviewing video evidence of a cougar sighting at Windsor Elementary School, state wildlife officials proclaim the beast to be – a pussycat.

Insert deputy mayor gag line here

Condom wrappers, cigarette butts, underwear and hypodermic needles litter the brush and trails of Spokane’s infamous High Bridge Park.

Who says you can’t take it with you?

Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries wrongly pays out $255,000 in pensions to a half-dozen dead people.

Brown trout fishermen always welcome

Untold thousands of gallons of raw sewage flows into the Spokane River near Downriver Golf Course, prompting warnings that swimmers should stay upstream.

I still think it’s part of the curse

Spokane’s string of cat mutilations is linked by a top forensic pet expert to coyotes or maybe foxes.

Tasered beef: It’s what’s for dinner

Spokane County deputies kill a stray cow by repeatedly zapping it with a Taser.

All sing: “Jingle balls, jingle balls…”

An 80-year-old grandmother from Athol is arrested on Christmas Day when she allegedly attacks her granddaughter’s husband with a knife after threatening to cut off his testicles.