ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

Minor league team plans unusual Father’s Day promo

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.

A minor league baseball team in Florida has planned an unusual Father’s Day promotion. The team will give out pregnancy tests.

This week Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp have added a second promotion to the usual Thirsty Thursday celebration. They’re calling it the “You Might Be a Father” promotion, which comes with a free pregnancy test.

The team’s website explains it like this: The test will let men know if they should return to the Father’s Day game on Sunday.

General Manager Harold Craw tells The Florida Times-Union the idea was pitched as a “tongue-in-cheek” promotion for the Thirsty Thursday crowd, which tends to be young professionals and college students. He says the tests are only handed to someone who wants one.

Minor league baseball teams have a long history of unusual promotions.

SSLqKinky Boots’ cake walks away with award

NEW YORK

For baker Ashley Holt, nothing about this design competition was a piece of cake. The owner of a Brooklyn cake studio won Best in Show at the annual New York Cake Show on Sunday with a life-size replica of a bright red, high-heeled, over-the-knee boot, complete with gelatin sequins.

The entry, a nod to the Broadway musical “Kinky Boots,” in keeping with the competition’s Broadway theme, took Holt about four months of on-and-off work to make. While the decorations are edible, there’s no cake underneath; it’s meant to be looked at, not eaten.

The show, now in its fifth year, is the brainchild of Lisa Mansour, whose family has a history in the professional cake =-decorating business. Among the 200 cakes were designs referencing shows including “Wicked,” “The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Phantom of the Opera” and “Little Shop of Horrors,” featuring a collection of carnivorous plants in their orange pots.

Coast Guard rescues man from duct-taped boat

JUNEAU, Alaska

Ducks do well in water. A duct-taped boat? Not so much. KTOO reported June the U.S. Coast Guard picked up a 32-year-old man and his dog from an inflatable, duct-taped watercraft when it started to take on water in Gastineau Channel near Juneau.

The Coast Guard says in a release that the duct-taped boat was homemade. The guard says the man, who was not identified, was not wearing a life jacket. An off-duty Coast Guard member saw the unsafe craft and called it in. The Coast Guard delivered the man, dog and boat to Douglas Harbor in Juneau.

Associated Press