Discovery Channel's Nutjob Finally Loses It

I am LOOKING for solutions so that we may not NEED electricity and all that stuff."

- James Jay Lee, 1/29/08

What you cannot see in this picture is the actual Discovery Channel building.

Hey, everyone! I just got back from a lovely weekend in Maine with my wife, and not even halfway through my first day back, there's a lunatic threatening to blow up a building two blocks from my office.

Being the voyeuristic type, I ran out to check it out, and took a few decidedly unexciting pictures, such as the one at right. I swear, it was mayhem: I heard nothing but sirens for two straight hours. The sound, apparently, of every single emergency vehicle in MoCo being scrambled to Ellsworth & Georgia Avenue. I got yelled at by one cop for being in the wrong place, but otherwise, nothing happened in my brief time at the scene.

The web, being what it is today, had already done all the sleuthing work necessary to give a detailed history of the individual involved here. God help me if my name ever makes the news in the wrong way. He goes way back with Discovery.

Silver Spring Singular, a blog about the town not called Silver Springs, has lots on this guy.

In March 2008, he threw around thousands of dollars at passersby, causing mayhem! That sounds awesome, actually. I wish I had been there.

A month before, he had organized a protest of Discovery, but by "organized" what he really did was pay homeless people to protest. I kinda remember this.

He tries to recruit people to his lunatic fringe on weird chat groups. He blames Discovery Channel for most of the world's ills:

"I disagree. Discovery is hugely responsible for what is happening and their ineffective programming must be protested and dealt with. The time for pussy-footing around the subject is done. It's time to protest them until they start changing their stupid message. They ARE glorifying the damned fishermen who are overfishing the planet and I would think that you would see that for yourself instead of defending them."

-- James Jay Lee, 1/24/08

As of now, he has posted a rather insane list of demands that mostly center on Discovery Channel programming. This list is on his web site here as well - but too much traffic to get it from the source as of this posting.

Demand number 4 is among my favorite:

"Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down!"

This could be a very long hostage crisis....

It's worth reading, though, and the list itself is a very compelling argument against too much sugar in children's diets.

In all seriousness, I hope everything works out OK, and that this is not one of the last photographs ever taken of the Discover Channel Building. As of right now, there are hostages being held. I am crossing my fingers that this ends peacefully.

Another lame photograph taken during the crisis that might as well have been taken on a random Sunday morning, for all the activity you can make out. At this point I went back to work, realizing I would learn a lot more online than a block from the Discovery Channel.

Update: Suspect Shot, Hostages Safe!

At 4:50 PM, police shot the suspect. All hostages are safe, it's over! Good work MoCo police. This ended much better than Die Hard.