Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2

by John Michael Scalzi

  All that was left was for Post Editor-in-Chief Col Allan to grovel. “We unreservedly apologize to our readers for the mistake,” Allan wrote in a statement, which did not otherwise explain how such a monumental flub could have happened at one of America’s largest dailies. Later rumors suggested it was the owner of the Post, Rupert Murdoch, who passed along the information (and who was going to disagree with him?)

  Oh, well. As they saying goes, “Today’s news is tomorrow’s fishwrap.” And in this case the Post has the advantage that the story already stunk.

  Source: Editor & Publisher, Associated Press,

  New York Daily News, New York Post

  The Annals of Ill-Advised Television

  today’s Episode: The Chevy Chase Show

  Starring in this Episode: Chevy Chase hosting his own talk show.

  Debut Episode: September 7, 1993, on Fox

  The Pitch: Pretty Simple: Comedian Chevy Chase turns into a talk show host and interviews other famous people and then does comedy bits, sort of like he did on that other late night show he did, what was it called? Oh yeah, Saturday Night Live.

  It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Because: Back in 1993, people were still laboring under the impression that Chevy Chase was amusing and might be worth watching for an hour a night. Also, the early ’90s were a time when late night talks shows were undergoing upheavals—Jay Leno replacing Johnny Carson, David Letterman going into direct competition with the venerable Tonight Show, and unknown Conan O’Brien squatting in Letterman’s old digs. If there was ever a time for the Fox network to throw a late night talk show into the mix, this was going to be it.

  In Reality: Chase, who was relaxed and goofy enough on SNL, started The Chevy Chase Show with a flop-sweat, deer-in-the-headlights look of transfixed terror—a look that would stay with him during the entire run of the show. Chase’s interview skills were remedial, and, aside from a fake news report (a leftover from his SNL days), his comedy bits were painfully unfunny. Fox, which had invested millions in the show and even renamed the theater the show took place in as “The Chevy Chase Theater” had a monumental turkey on its hands. “Chase’s show became eerily fascinating to watch once the specter of Totally Lost Cause took over,” Washington Post critic Tom Shales noted, after the show was mercifully canceled.

  How Long Did It Last? Six weeks, which by most estimates was five weeks and four days too long.

  Were Those Responsible Punished? Eh. Chase went back to work as a film star, kicking out progressively more mediocre efforts through the ’90s and ’00s (Cops and Robbersons, Vegas Vacation, Snow Day). However, he’s still Chevy Chase, and you’re not.

  CHAPTER 13

  Romancing the Stoned

  Despite all the public service announcements, some people continue to just say, “yes,” which is why we suppose this next chapter exists. Full of tales of self-inflicted wounds from the drug wars, the following stories are great examples of the perils of unclean living. So stay away from the drugs or run a reasonably good chance of showing up in a future edition of this book. We think that’s enough motivation for anyone.

  When Not to Call the Police

  It all started when “Eddie” notified the Payson, Arizona, police that he’d been robbed and thieves had taken his bag. There he was at a gas station, minding his own business, when all of a sudden he’d been pushed to the ground and robbed. Eddie was quite naturally worried about his bag.

  Well, the good news was that the bag was found—another person found it in the nearby Safeway parking lot. For reasons of natural curiosity, and possibly to determine the identity of the owner, our good Samaritan opened the bag to see what was inside. He didn’t find any personal identification, but he did find something else of passing interest: about $5,000 worth of methamphetamine. At which point our Samaritan thought that maybe the police might be interested in this little bag.

  And, of course, they were. Once they had it in their possession, they brought in Eddie, who identified it as his bag. To which the police said, more or less, well, okay—and is the 100 grams of crank in the bag also yours? To which Eddie said something like “Oh, that. That’s not mine. I was just holding it.”

  Well, seems the police have a term for holding someone else’s drugs; it’s called possession. Which is what they charged Eddie with, as well as possession of drug paraphernalia. But what about the robbery? It turns out that it didn’t happen—Eddie’s bag wasn’t stolen, he had just dropped it. We guess Eddie thought that if he reported it as stolen, the police would move on it quicker, and might not think to ask what was inside the bag. He was right about one of those.

  Source: The Payson RoundUp

  What if You Gave a Party and Nobody Came, Dude?

  Here’s a funny thing about people who are enthusiastic about marijuana: they sure like to talk about it a lot. Just ask them—and then try to get them to shut up. But when it comes time for action, they can be a bit lackadaisical. This may have something to do with their favorite herb, which does not exactly inspire a frenzied burst of activity; indeed, if it inspires any activity at all, it’s usually 25 to 30 minutes of plucking at the same note on an out-of-tune guitar followed by the deeply introspective ingestion of two-thirds of a bag of Cheetos, followed by a nap.

  Nevertheless, when British cannabis enthusiasts planned a festival of appreciation of and for Mary Jane at a park in Birmingham, police were on hand to handle the crowds. In Great Britain, pot has been downgraded to a Class C drug, which effectively means that you’re no longer an automatic candidate for arrest. The police may look upon you with extreme disapproval and sniff haughtily at your knitted cap and Hacky Sack, but they won’t arrest you. You would think this would encourage people to come out and celebrate their favorite smokable.

  But let’s remember that cannabis makes you mellow. Really mellow. Which may be why the attendance at the 2004 Birmingham cannabis festival was just one guy named Mark, who had come up from Chester. Not even the organizers showed up. The one guy who did show up noted to the BBC: “Cannabis users aren’t the fastest starters, are they?” Apparently not. Maybe someone should have offered free Cheetos.

  Source: BBC

  Not Too Subtle

  Whipping up highly illegal drugs is usually an activity that most people try to hide. If the local police take an interest in your activities, it’s unlikely that you’ll turn a profit and avoid jail time.

  This is why we’re puzzled at the tactics of “Jed,” an alleged methamphetamine producer from Sarpy County, Nebraska. Jed wasn’t actually out on the lawn, stirring up batches of meth, but he did something pretty close. He parked a 9,600 gallon tank of anhydrous ammonia out in front of his house, and snaked a hose from the tank into the house.

  In addition to being very suspicious—anhydrous ammonia is used to make fertilizer, methamphetamines, and explosives—this substance is very dangerous. Spill a little bit of the stuff and you run the risk of caustic burns to your skin, eyes and other body tissue; breathe it in and you’ll suffocate in relatively short order. No matter what you’re up to with it, law enforcement is going to take a keen interest in the fact you have a lot of it around. So Jed’s prominent ammonia display is certainly one of the dumbest things he could have done if he was trying not to get caught.

  Jed’s dumbness rewarded him with being hauled away on charges of meth possession and intent to sell, as well as possession of anhydrous ammonia, which was hauled away by a hazmat crew. Let’s hope everyone in the neighborhood is breathing just a little bit easier.

  Source: TheOmahaChannel.com

  Smuggler’s Blues

  We don’t pretend to be experts in the practice of smuggling drugs (and our mothers are grateful), but we hear things. And one of the things we hear is that there really is no good place on your body to smuggle them. Those customs people, they’re not afraid to investigate in places you’d prefer they didn’t. This was lost on “Brad,” who had it in his mind to smuggle 1.2 kilos of cocaine into Australia. H
is super-magnificent plan to elude the customs people and the drug-sniffing dogs: he’d hide that two and a half pounds of coke in his underwear.

  Now, let’s think about this. First, we’re pretty sure that to pull this off, you’d have to wear briefs, because boxers are just a little too loose for this kind of transport work. Second: what sort of idiot thinks 1.2 kilos of powdered substance in your tighty whities isn’t going to be noticeable? Try this at home: go to your pantry and take out two and a half pounds of powered sugar or flour. Now stuff it down your pants. Now try to walk. Waddle much? Think walking down an airport runway like you’ve got an extremely full adult diaper wouldn’t be noticed?

  So what happened to Brad? Well, he was caught, of course. Once he landed in Melbourne, the customs folks frisked him and found his kilo of cocaine contraband. If he was hoping the Aussie customs folks wouldn’t pat him down down under, he was sadly mistaken.

  Source: Herald Sun (Australia)

  Everybody Must Get Paranoid?

  One of the more unpleasant side effects of heavy pot smoking, beside the weight gain from all those munchies, is a little thing called paranoia. Paranoia is no fun; thinking people are out to get you all the time dulls your ability to determine when people actually are out to get you.

  With this in mind, lets us suggest that “Herb” seems to us to fit the model of a long-time toker, because his paranoia seemed to be fairly advanced—advanced enough for him to believe one night that he was being robbed. It was also advanced enough for him to call 911 and communicate this belief to the operator, who duly dispatched Bozeman, Montana, police to Herb’s pad. Herb directed the police to his closet, where he claimed the robber had stuffed himself in an attempt to escape detection.

  The police went to the closet. They didn’t find any robber, which was good news for Herb. On the other hand, they couldn’t help but notice the two marijuana plants in the closet. That was not good news for our friend Herb, because that meant Herb was then quickly arrested for felony manufacturing of dangerous drugs. How could Herb forget about the closet stash? Well, another side-effect of prolonged pot use: short-term memory loss.

  So remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Especially when you help them.

  Source: Daily Chronicle (Bozeman, MT)

  Crack Is Wack

  We could go into long and boring detail to provide you with all the reasons why you should never do crack cocaine. But let’s just cut to the chase—not only is crack an illegal substance, it also can render a person quite dumb.

  Which brings us to “Betsy,” of Ashland, Ohio. Betsy apparently had a hankerin’ for some crack, so she picked up a friend’s cell phone and made a call. To whom was she making the call? Well, she wasn’t quite sure—later tapes of the call (that’s a hint) have her asking the people near her, “What number was I just calling?” Well, we don’t know who she intended to call, but who she did call should have been obvious to her when the person on the other end of the line picked up the phone and said, by way of greeting, “Ontario Police.”

  And yet, Betsy missed that. You ask, well, how can you miss someone actually saying “police?” Let’s go back to our original thesis that crack makes people stupid. So not only did Betsy completely miss her phone partner’s self-identification as a member of the law enforcement community, Betsy went on to have a chatty little conversation with the fellow before asking him, “Do you have 80?” meaning $80 worth of crack rocks. Our law enforcement professional, rather more on the conversational ball than Betsy, allowed that he might have. Betsy then asked if the stuff was good.

  Our officer allows that the stuff he has is indeed good (you think he’s going to say, “Nah, it’s pretty bad”?), so Betsy arranges a pickup. She’s so eager to settle the deal that when she’s disconnected, she calls back, exhibiting the sort of focus one doesn’t usually attribute to the strung out. The police get her to admit she wants to buy crack and then they arrange to meet in the parking lot of a fast food joint.

  There, the policemen found her and her friends and took them into custody. Betsy, “thinking” fast, proclaimed that she was just there for some food, but the $80 in her pocket—the agreed-upon amount for the deal—suggested otherwise. Betsy’s response to the discovery of the exact sum of the drug deal in her pocket: well, that’s not my money. Did we mention that crack makes people stupid?

  The final tally on Betsy’s charges: felony soliciting (for asking the cops for crack), attempting to commit an offense, and disorderly conduct. All that could get you a year in the can. “It’s the worst case of a misdialed phone number I’ve ever seen,” said one member of the Ontario police force. And one of the easiest drug busts they’ll ever have.

  Source: ChannelCincinnati.com, NorthCentralOhio.com,

  Port Clinton News Journal (OH)

  A Case of Bad Crack

  Meet “Hugo,” of Chalmette, Louisiana. Hugo had a taste for the crack and had settled on a barter system to acquire some from his local dealers. He traded his microwave oven for a rock. But when he got home, he discovered that he’d been totally ripped off. There was a small rock of something in his crack pipe, but it wasn’t made out of cocaine.

  What to do? As you know, cocaine is illegal so it’s not as if there’s a customer service hotline one can call to complain about quality. Not only that, but now Hugo was down one microwave oven. So Hugo had a “brilliant” idea; he could call 911 and complain to the cops that someone had sold him bad crack.

  And so Hugo invited the cops into his place, explained the situation, and asked them if they’d like to see the rock in question. Well, of course the cops wanted to see it. So Hugo offered it up for their observation, still lovingly cradled in the crack pipe. This is when the police arrested him for possession of drug paraphernalia. Maj. Marcel David, chief of the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s special investigations division, noted that it was “the first I’ve heard of” a drug user allowing a cop to look at his drug paraphernalia.

  The rock turned out, indeed, to be totally coke free. And that’s good news for Hugo. Possession of drug paraphernalia is a misdemeanor. Drug possession is a lot more serious. Of course, what really stinks is that Hugo still doesn’t have his microwave back.

  Source: New Orleans Times-Picayune

  She Flipped the Bird, He Flipped the Cuffs

  We encourage all people to be nice and courteous on the road. For one thing, it’s just the polite thing to do; sure, the jackass who thoughtlessly cuts you off in traffic should probably be brained with a wrench and his carcass left to fatten the crows, but you’re a better person than that. For another thing, not every car on the road has a driver who will take rudeness sitting down.

  “Brenda” from Arizona would have been well-advised to keep her cool on the road, for several reasons. One, she was driving with a suspended license. Two, there was marijuana in her car. Three, there was also some methamphetamine and various drug paraphernalia. All which well-nigh screamed, “Do Not Draw Attention to this Car.”

  But Brenda couldn’t help it. As she tooled down Arizona’s Highway 70 with some friends, a car behind her attempted to pass her. Brenda was having none of it and blocked the passing attempts as they occurred. Eventually the car managed to get ahead of her, and as it passed, Brenda felt motivated to honk her horn at the car and flip the other car’s driver the bird. Her satisfaction at flipping off another driver was short-lived, however, because after Brenda turned into the parking lot of a nearby convenience store, the other driver pulled up and revealed himself as a cop, who had been driving an unmarked car. Surprise!

  Brenda was arrested on charges of possession of marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale, transportation of marijuana for sale, possession of a dangerous drug, and possession of drug paraphernalia. Noted the arresting officer, “It’s hilarious. I was trying to go home. They totally brought it on themselves. I wasn’t even looking for them.”

  So please, be nice on the road. Even if you d
on’t have a car full of illegal drugs.

  Source: The Eastern Arizona Courier

  The Map to Idiotville

  Have we mentioned yet that smoking a lot of marijuana can lead to memory loss? No? Well, if you do smoke marijuana, how can you be sure? See, that’s our point. When you have gaps in your memory thanks to habitual toking, it can lead to all sorts of trouble.

  “Dirk” and “Burke” were two “agricultural entrepreneurs,” shall we say, who one day were driving near the Kentucky-Tennessee border when they noticed they were being followed by the cops. This was bad news, since the two men had some joints in their possession at the time. The duo tried tossing the pot out of the car, but strangely, the cops directly behind them seemed to catch on to that little ploy.

  After pulling the two over, the police noticed maps in the car. On the maps were several locations on both sides of the state line, marked with large “X”s. And X marked what spot? Well, the spots where marijuana plants were growing in un-suspecting farmers’ fields—120 plants in just one location. The total street value of the haul was estimated at about $50,000. See, if these guys hadn’t had big gaps in their memories, they wouldn’t have needed the maps. Sure, everyone uses maps, but if ever there was a time when one would wish to commit a location to memory, this would have been it.