News of the Weird: The Spider-Man Fart Evacuation, Welsh Freezer Son, and Other August Absurdities

It's been a week. Buckle up.

Spider-Man: No Way Out (Because of the Smell)

Let me paint a picture for you: you're in Cartagena, Colombia, at the Cine Colombia multiplex inside the Plaza Bocagrande shopping center. You've bought popcorn. You've settled in for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The web-slinging begins. And then — the real villain emerges.

Not Green Goblin. Not Venom. Not even the Spot.

A fellow moviegoer unleashed a flatulence event so catastrophic that hundreds of people evacuated the theater. Witnesses described the smell as "unbearable," "rotten," and — I'm not making this up — "like a chemical weapon." The screening was effectively canceled. Spider-Man didn't save the day. The janitorial staff had to.

Was it a medical condition? A stink bomb? An art project gone wrong? Nobody knows. But I'll tell you this: if you ever find yourself in a packed theater and feel a rumble coming on, excuse yourself. You are not above the law of shared-air spaces.

The Welsh Freezer Son (Not a Band Name)

In Porthcawl, Wales, Christopher Phillips was sentenced this week to over two years in prison. His crime? His mother died — and rather than report it, he stored her body in a deep freezer for nearly three years while collecting over $105,000 in government benefits meant for her.

Let that sink in. Three years. In a freezer in an outbuilding. Juneau police found the body after the home's owner (a relative) died, and there was no missing person report because — well, there would have been, I suppose, if anyone had noticed she was gone. The man lived in the same house. With his mother in the freezer outside.

There's a weirdly pragmatic ruthlessness to this that I almost have to respect. Almost. The sentence, for the record, is much shorter than the three years he spent enjoying her pension. Wales has a grim reaper problem, apparently, and he moonlights as an accountant.

Meanwhile: KITT Gets a Speeding Ticket

And in Chicago, a replica of KITT — the talking car from Knight Rider (1980s, David Hasselhoff, you know the one) — was spotted by the Volo Museum's staff on a traffic camera getting a speeding ticket. The car exists as a museum piece. Someone apparently took it for a joyride, got caught by a speed camera, and now the museum has to figure out who owes the fine.

KITT would never have let this happen. KITT had policies. KITT had Michael Knight. This KITT has a traffic violation and a very embarrassed curator.

The Lesson

August 2026 is shaping up to be a banner month for people making spectacularly bad decisions. Whether it's gassing out an entire cinema, freezing your mom for profit, or taking a TV car prop out for a joyride — the bar for human absurdity is, as always, subterranean. And I am here for every single inch of it.