Buzz

Party pooped
Well, this is just great. Just when we thought we had our New Year's plans down, The Turn: America at the Millennium goes belly-up and Buzz faces greeting the end of the century with Dick Clark and a bottle of cold duck.

Frankly, we hesitated at taking a shot at The Turn, Dallas' $30 million end-of-the-century party, which was canceled last week because of a lack of sponsors. Why whiz on someone's grand dream of building a massive dome over Fair Park and offering loads of corporate exhibits? Sure, the plans seemed pie-in-the-sky, and the hype--sponsored by The Dallas Morning News--was silly. But would Buzz kick The Turn's organizers when they're down?

Oh, yeah, you bet.
It's not that we're snide. We're disappointed. We were really looking forward to some of the nifty exhibits: AT&T and TCI cable present "Monopoly 2000: Turning Back 100 Years of Antitrust Regulation."

Plus, Buzz can't ignore the irony of the situation. The Turn's organizers had raised only $1 million of a needed $12 million in corporate sponsorships, while the Morning News spent $1.7 million promoting the party while cutting staff and compensation.

"I think we were perhaps too ambitious for the times we live in," News publisher Burl Osborne said of The Turn.

That can't spell good times ahead for us corporate wage-slaves in the new century. Maybe we'd better make that two bottles of cold duck.

Pick up the clue phone
Let's be up-front about it. We don't have children. We don't like children. So admittedly we are entirely unqualified to ask the following: What were the parents who sent their children to Denise Day's daycare in Plano thinking?

Day was sentenced to prison for abusing two children in her care in 1997. The abuse came after several warning signs--including strange injuries to children--that all was not well at the home.

"Part of you doesn't want to believe you have to go out and find someone else...so you stay a little longer," one of the victim's parents told the News' Sherry Jacobson. Jacobson displayed the discipline and objectivity of a good daily reporter by not following up with the question "What are you? Nuts?"

Club fed
Prison apparently is agreeing with Evelyn Ann McLaren, the wife of the Republic of Texas' self-styled ambassador and all-around loon Richard McLaren. Evelyn McLaren, who is serving 27 months in a federal pen in California for her part in a fraudulent-check scheme led by her husband, has taken up aerobics in the big house, a source tells Buzz.

McLaren, his wife, and several ROT cohorts were convicted last year of issuing bogus "warrants" drawing on the Texas treasury, claiming that the state was actually an independent nation illegally annexed to the United States.

Here's another hint on staying healthy behind bars: Don't use any ROT warrants to try to buy smokes or jailhouse hooch from your fellow inmates. We've seen Caged Heat about 30 times--you might wind up with a shiv in your ribs.

--Compiled from staff reports by Patrick Williams