Apparently, some intrepid reporter had seen a fictional TV show on the BBC, and took its plot a little too seriously. The show, Misleading Cases, featured a character named Albert Haddock, who attempted to pay his income tax by writing a check on a cow.

For more on this and many other urban legends, go here.

Head over to Calvary Episcopal Church tomorrow at noon for one of their free weekly luncheon concerts, and you’ll feel that sin washed away in no time.

This week’s featured performer is local opera maven Kallen Esperian. People usually dish out big bucks to watch her perform, so don’t miss this rare opportunity to see her for free. If you’re not too hungover, the seafood newburg is on the menu for $6.

For more, check out the Flyer’s searchable listings.

Ditch the kids at the not-so-haunted church trick-or-treat ice-cream social and head to Midtown's historic Annesdale-Snowden neighborhood for a hair-raisingly frightening tour through Nightshade Manor Haunted House.

Designed by haunted-house enthusiast Kevin Gaiman, the eerie warehouse boasts 3,500 square feet of film-quality sets with meticulous attention to detail. He's been working on the design since January.

Cobwebs, roaches, fake blood, and other nasties dominate every inch of space not occupied by an actor or a creepy mannequin. Antique photos of innocent-looking children become holograms of skeletons when viewed from a certain angle, and it's nearly impossible to tell the animatronics from the real actors ready to jump out and frighten their victims.

Tickets are $12 or $10 with a donation of two cans of food. The canned goods and 10 percent of the gross proceeds benefit the Memphis Food Bank.

Nightshade Manor Haunted House, 1301 Heistan Place.

And surprise, surprise, as Gomer used to say: Memphis is nowhere to be seen on the list. The top 10: Gary, Indiana; Youngstown, Ohio; Oakland, California;Cleveland, Ohio; Birmingham, Alabama; Camden, New Jersey; Compton, California; Flint, Michigan; Detroit, Michigan; and finally, the home of the world champs! Go here, for more.

Read the rest of columnist Ron Hart's wry look at dating the old-fashioned way.

Others have voiced serious concerns that what has been described by experts as a 1,500-pound manatee may actually be Denny Hastert, Speaker of the House, attempting to find peace and quiet in the midst of several scandals in Washington, D.C.

Read the rest of Chris Davis' "Fly on the Wall."

It looks like Courtney Love and Co. earned more in the past 12 months from Kurt Cobain’s estate than CKX did from Elvis’. Forbes sixth annual list of top-earning celebrities [http://www.forbes.com/2006/10/23/tech-media_06deadcelebs_cx_pk_top-earning-dead-celebrities_land.html] was released this month, with Kurt Cobain topping the charts. Other top-earning celebrities include Marilyn Monroe, Dr. Seuss, and Albert Einstein.

The Nirvana frontman’s estate made $50 million from licensing deals and marketing campaigns. Elvis has traditionally been the top earning dead celebrity, but came in second this year with earnings of $42 million.

It’s still more money than we’ll ever see in a lifetime.

Previous incarnations of WCC's supremely scary variation on the holiday spook house have brought visitors face to face with top-level demons as well as lowlife scum. Once they even recreated the horrors of a violent kidnapping. With super creepy fun like this, who needs zombies and chainsaws? It's the perfect outing for true believers looking for salvation and arch ironists alike. Not recommended for children 10 and under.

Judgment House, Warren Community Church, 11800 Hwy. 64, Somerville, Through October 31st, 6-9 p.m. Reservations recommended, 266-1437 or 857-0494 after 5 p.m., $3 suggested donation

No wonder Ken Jackson is one of the most popular professors at Columbia. He’s got so much Memphis in him.

Jackson attended East High School, White Station High School, and Memphis State University, leaving Memphis after college graduation in 1961. He went on to make a name for himself as an expert on what makes big cities thrive and struggle. His encyclopedia of New York City is considered the definitive work, and his class at Columbia featuring a night-time bike ride through the city is one of the most popular offerings on campus.

Jackson’s friend Henry Turley introduced us, and I offered to give Jackson a Memphis “reality tour,” sort of like Kramer’s New York reality tour on Seinfeld. He accepted, and we piled into my old Mustang Saturday morning and spent the next three hours driving through Midtown, East Memphis, Collierville, Hickory Hill, the airport area, and Cooper-Young. Jackson still has family in Memphis and his wife is a graduate of Southside High School, but he had not seen much of the suburbs that have sprung up since the days when he traveling by bus to play football against Germantown High School 50 years ago.

He had been in Memphis for nearly a week, and he planned to spend the rest of his Saturday prowling Memorial Park Cemetery for the graves of old relatives and attending the University of Memphis football game. He was an athlete as a kid and remains a big sports fan. Like a good reporter, he carried a yellow notebook on his lap and parried my questions with questions of his own, usually beginning with “why.” Why is there no true downtown medical center in Memphis, why did Baptist Hospital abandon downtown, why are the roads so wide in the county, why is Memphis still hung up on race, why is the FedEx world headquarters so far from downtown, why is the population density of Memphis so low, why did Memphis fall behind Atlanta, why did Boyle Development concentrate on the suburbs instead of the inner city, why aren’t there more restaurants with sidewalk dining?

The overriding question he seemed to be wrestling with was whether suburban sprawl, which he sees as harmful to the density that cultivates urban creativity, is a zero-sum game. In other words, does the rising tide of prosperity lift almost all boats, or are there big losers who get left behind? Jackson is not an ideologue. Clearly he is a fan of densely populated, culturally rich, diverse, walkable cities. But he does not demonize developers who took advantage of the tax incentives (i.e. deductible home mortgage interest) provided by the federal government. As we drove along Winchester in the annexation area past low-end subdivisions, I said something like “far be it from you or me to suggest that these homeowners are not better off here than in the old city” and he did not disagree.

The theme of his talk at Rhodes was opportunities lost and still ahead for Memphis. Our city, he said, was once, along with New Orleans, the leading city in the southeast, but both have been displaced by Houston, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, and Charlotte. He did not pull his punches. He praised Fred Smith as perhaps the greatest strength of Memphis, “compared to his just being here all else in recent Memphis history is reduced to a footnote.” But he singled out FedEx, Baptist Hospital, and Bellevue Baptist Church as important institutions that went with the flow instead of strengthening the inner city. He said Boss Crump stifled political initiative and democracy. He said, only half-jokingly, that he would provide free housing for gays in the inner city because they exemplify the creative class that knows how to rebuild and reinvent and has the disposable income to do it. He sees their acceptance as a statement of a city’s tolerance and its welcoming of diversity. He suggested that entire lanes of suburban roads could be dedicated to bicycles instead of building trails. And he said Memphis needs a true medical center, a slogan, a vision, acceptance of its diverse population, and new political leadership – not the Fords.

Today's Gold Rush episode was filmed at Graceland, and included questions about Elvis, Tom Cruise, and the Bangles.

The winner of this round was Colleen Demark who received $100,000 and a spot in the upcoming Gold Rush finals.

United States Attorney David Kustoff announced the arrest and indictment of ten Hispanic men charged with running the prostitution ring between May, 2004 and October 13, 2006, when the arrests were made.

The women charged $30 for 15 minutes of sex, according to the indictment, which also states that customers were given a bead or poker chip to signify that payment had been made.

Kustoff made the announcement at a press conference Monday along with FBI Special Agent in Charge My Harrison and Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin.

Godwin said police make prostitution arrests all the time, but he was “totally taken aback” at the international scope of the prostitution ring.

Authorities said 150 law enforcement personnel were involved in the case. The women were not charged but they are expected to testify against the men who ran the operation