Concrete Balls

After John Gilbert Graham blew up a plane with 44 people in it (including his mother), Lenny Bruce declared that, "The American people are really losing their sense of humor. Anyone who blows up a plane with 40 people and his mother can't be all bad."

Now, some 50 or so years later, the Germans have lost their sense of whatever they think is humor. A couple of enterprising German youths who, according to this story, had a nice little idea of their own, only to run afoul of the cops:

BERLIN (Reuters) - Police in Berlin said on Wednesday they had arrested two men on suspicion of placing cement-filled soccer balls around the city and inviting people to kick them. At least two people injured themselves by kicking the balls, which were chained to lamp posts and trees alongside the spray-painted message: "Can you kick it?"

Police said they had identified a 26-year-old and a 29-year-old and had found a workshop in their apartment where they made the balls. The two are accused of causing serious physical injury, dangerous obstruction of traffic and causing injury through negligence, police said.

I don't see anything there that is worthy of a criminal record. It sounds to me like the young men found a market for a product and set out to capture said market. Isn't that the same thing young Joel Goodsen did in Risky Business? Was he arrested? No, in fact he won a prize at school for his ingenuity. Filling a soccer ball with concrete is at least as good as turning a home into a brothel, and my boys did it in an apartment, which must be even more difficult.

I think they should have arrested the two people who kicked the balls on suspicion of being a dumb ass.