26—jack Kemp announces that he is running for president, pledging that, if elected, he will deepen his voice.

30—Following a lengthy and dramatic trial, a confused New Jersey jury awards custody of a 3-year-old boy to a 6week-old girl.

2—Late at night on a Washington street, four Miami Herald reporters on routine patrol notice that Gary Hart appears to be spending the weekend with an attractive woman who is not his wife. The reporters confront Hart, who explains that there is no woman, and he hardly knows her, and she is actually his uncle, and the voters don’t care about candidates’ private lives anyway. Satisfied, the reporters decide to write a story about Hart’s monetary policy.

3—Like a raging unquenchable forest fire, the Gary Hart story sweeps across the nation, as voters are consumed by a burning need to know more about the candidate’s monetary views.

4—The Hart story becomes so hot that issue-oriented Phil Donahue devotes a show to it, preempting the sexchange lesbian surrogate-mother nude-dancer ex-priests.

5—The presidential campaign of Gary Hart experiences another “close call” when a Miami Herald reporter receives a tip that Hart spent a night in Bimini aboard a boat named Monkey Business with an attractive woman who is not his wife. Fortunately, Hart is able to explain that he has never been on a boat and there is no such place as “Bimini” and the person who went there with the woman was actually a being from the Planet Buppo who is able to take the form of leading presidential candidates. Satisfied, the reporter writes a lengthy analysis of Hart’s views on the NATO alliance.

6—An angry Gary Hart is forced to withdraw from the race after word leaks out that the Washington Post has obtained documented evidence that he once proposed tying the prime rate to the Index of Leading Economic Indicators.

7—Citing alleged “bisexual activity,” officials of the Assemblies of God Church vote to have Jim Bakker defrocked. Then they hastily vote to have him frocked again.

16—Rita Hayworth dies moments after confiding to Bob Woodward that his forthcoming book, Veil, would be out “just in time for Christmas gift giving.”

29—Nineteen-year-old Mathias Rust, a German, flying a single-engine Cessna airplane, manages to cross 400 miles of Soviet airspace to reach Red Square in Moscow, where he narrowly avoids colliding with a Delta Air Lines flight en route from Pittsburgh to Cleveland.

30—Caspar Weinberger orders 5,000 single-engine Cessna airplanes.

1—The public responds with massive displays of sympathy to reports that a number of totally unsuspecting Dade County politicians were cruelly tricked into believing that a private duplex where a man allegedly sold stolen suits was in fact a major department store. “It was a mistake that anyone could have made,” said a police spokesman, “provided that he had the IQ of Cheez Whiz.”

2—True Item: In the ongoing Iran-contra hearings the committee learns that a country named Brunei contributed $10 million to help the contras, except Fawn Hall or somebody typed a wrong number, so the money ended up in the Swiss bank account of a total stranger. This helps explain why, despite all the elaborate assistance efforts with secret codes and passwords and everything, the only actual aid ever received by the contras was a six-month trial subscription to Guns and Ammo.

5—Another True Item: In Venice for the European Economic Summit, President Reagan, unaware that his words are being broadcast over an open microphone, tells a joke wherein God gradually reduces a gondolier’s intelligence until the gondolier switches from singing “O Sole Mio” to

“When Irish Eyes are Smiling.”

7—Brunei receives 314,334 urgent personal mail solicitations from TV evangelists.

8—In the most dramatic Iran-contra testimony to date, Fawn Hall, played by Farrah Fawcett, testifies that, as justice Department investigators closed in, she and Oliver North stayed late in their White House basement office and “colorized” a number of classic black-and-white films.

13—After a highly controversial trial in New York, “subway vigilante” Bernhard Goetz is acquitted in connection with a subway shooting incident wherein he claims he was attacked by a gang of prominent Wall Street investors.

18—A survey of Florida residents reveals that their No. 1 concern about the state is that “not enough people are walking around with guns.” Alarmed, the state Legislature passes a law under which all citizens who are not actually on Death Row will be required to carry revolvers.

22—Fred Astaire dies in the arms of Bob Woodward.

24—In a ground-breaking experiment, medical researchers reduce a gondolier’s intelligence to the bare minimum required to sustain life, and the gondolier says: “Everybody that can remember what they were doing on August 8, 1985, raise your hand.”

29—In Wimbledon action, John McEnroe kills a line judge and is given a stern warning.

1—In a contest sponsored by a pesticides company, a Broward County insect is declared the largest cockroach in the country, narrowly edging out Phyllis Schlafly.

4—The Hormel Company marks the 50th anniversary of Spam in festivities featuring a full-size, fully functioning suspension bridge constructed entirely out of the popular luncheon substance.

7—The central figure in the Iran-contra hearings, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, becomes an instant national folk hero when, with his eyes glistening and his voice cracking with emotion, he courageously admits, before a worldwide television audience, that he is very patriotic.

9—Oral Roberts reveals that he can raise the dead. He is rushed to the White House.

11—The Iran-contra hearings reach their dramatic peak when Lieutenant Colonel North, his eyes glistening and his voice cracking with emotion, makes a sweeping patriotic hand gesture and knocks over his bottle of Revlon Eye Glistener.

15—The giant Citicorp bank announces that it has agreed to forgive Mexico’s

$56.3 billion debt in exchange for 357.9 gazillion chickens.

18—In Hollywood, plans are formulated for a major motion picture, based on the Oliver North story, starring Sylvester Stallone as North, Fawn Hall as herself and Helen Keller as the president.

21—The discovery of “superconductors”—materials that offer no resistance to electricity even at relatively high temperatures—creates a worldwide stir of excitement among the kind of dweebs who always had their Science Fair projects done early.

24—In the ongoing Iran-contra hearings, the committee hears two days of dramatic testimony from Mario Cuomo, who explains that he has decided to stay out of the presidential race so he can fulfill his obligations as governor of New York.

27—Officials at the National Zoo in Washington are saddened by the death of the tiny infant cub of rare giant pandas Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, who are described as “distraught” by their close friend, Bob Woodward. Edwin Meese is linked to the Lincoln assassination.

30—In Moscow, the Embassy spy scandal deepens when it is learned that for the past six years, the “wife” of the U.S. ambassador has in fact been four male KGB agents wearing what State Department officials describe as “a very clever disguise.”