Alaska Ear

This past week, said world was buzzing with news that Bill Allen's daughter, Tammy Allen, paid "slightly more than" $120,000 for an old Pontiac Bonneville ambulance that almost certainly did not carry the body of President John F. Kennedy from Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., to Bethesda Naval Hospital in November 1963.

The blogs say she bought the ambulance from the person who bought it just minutes earlier in a Barrett-Jackson auction. However, convincing evidence collected by the Professional Car Association that the ambulance is a fake was widely publicized before the sale, and Barrett-Jackson backed off its original claim, and now says "maybe" it was the one used.

So, what might the Allens be planning to do with the non-historic vehicle? Tammy runs a business called Allen Unique Autos in Grand Junction, Colo., which, according to Jalopnik.com, includes a museum featuring Bill's car collection.

QUIET DOWN SOUTH . . . Some legislators are pushing for a longer session, but most reports out of Juneau say not much is going on yet. As the late Rep. Richard Foster used to say: "The first two or three weeks of the session is pretty slow, and then it starts to taper off from there."

Of course, he also once said, "I was born in Nome because I wanted to be close to my mother." Ear misses Richard.

NO COMMENT . . . Someone has hired perennial candidate Diane Benson to do public relations. Fairbanks-based Energia Cura, according to the News-Miner.

ON THE MOVE . . . Former Anchorage Police Chief Walt Monegan, known to the Outside world as the commissioner who drove Sarah Palin wild by refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law from the troopers, is taking over as president of the Alaska Native Justice Center. He succeeds longtime president Denise Morris.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ALASKA . . . Earwigs report another movie is getting ready to shoot here -- this one a real Alaska enterprise starring Ed Asner as a criminal defense attorney. "The Doppelganger Effect" is a courtroom drama with a script by Jim McLain. Asner is defending a serial killer, so it's not based on a real story. We haven't had one of those go to trial here. But dare Ear hope the character is modeled on one of Alaska's great old courtroom performers like Wendell Kay, Edgar Paul Boyko, Jim Gilmore or Jim McComas?

Whatever. Shooting is set for March and April in Anchorage with an all-Alaska crew and cast except for Asner, according to Ron Holmstrom, one of the producers. The others are Jan Welt and Tiffany Guinn. Holmstrom says the investors are also Alaskans.

And yes d'Ears, Ear looked up "Doppelganger" for you: It's when someone sees their own double, often a ghostly, evil image.

GPS MALFUNCTION? . . . Earwigs following the Kusko 300 on the Tundra Drums website were alarmed to read the race results:

"Under a blue twilight at about 9:30 a.m. Sunday on the frozen Yukon River, Kasilof musher Paul Gebhardt overcame brutally cold conditions and a local upstart to claim the Kuskokwim 300 sled dog race for the first time in his career."

The Yukon? Well, of course he would come in first there. Everyone else was racing on the Kuskokwim. (That's why it's called the Kusko 300.) The Drums corrected the story a while later.

Q AND A . . . The question is: Why isn't The Omniscient Orifice waxing smarmy over the National Enquirer stories claiming Todd had an affair with a prostitute?

The answer is, "Yuck." Did you see the "story"? Basically, an Anchorage woman got arrested for running a place of prostitution. Someone in her building allegedly told someone they saw Todd. That's it, darlings.

In the latest "news," the Enquirer shouts that Anchorage police had issued a statement. Well, they did. They said everything in the story was a lie, except there was a woman arrested. No Rolodex, no anonymous tipster, no call to APD from the Enquirer to check facts, no connection to "Wasilla resident Todd Palin."

Of course, Ear may revisit the matter if the "facts" change.

REAL CRIME . . . From our favorite Unalaska police department:

"01/18/11. Tue. 09:51 -- Domestic Disturbance -- Police were called to help two grown men mediate a dispute which had started when one asked the other to open the window while smoking, and ended when the other became offended by the assertion that he behaved less than properly with his own mother."

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Compiled by Sheila Toomey. Find Ear online at www.adn.com/ear. Message Sheila at ear@adn.com or 257-4341.