Witness: “Yes, Ford. That is what you asked me, what kind of tractors.”
Lawyer: “Are there four Ford tractors? Is that what there is?”
Witness: “No, no. You asked me what kind of a tractor it was and I said Ford tractors.”
Lawyer: “How many tractors are there?”
Witness: “Four.”
GOOD CALL
Judge: “It is the judgment of this court that you be sentenced to the state prison...for a term of ten years, the maximum penalty.”
District Attorney: “Will that be dangerous or non-dangerous offender, Your Honor?”
Judge: “Well, considering the flagrant nature of his offense, the court finds that he’s a dangerous offender.”
Defendant: “How in the hell can you find me a dangerous offender? There’s nothing in there showing any violent crime. What’s wrong with anybody anyway? You take that son-of-a-bitch and—
When arrested, the average shoplifter has $196 of stolen goods in their possession.
Judge: “That will be it; you’re remanded to the custody of the sheriff.”
Defendant: “You son-of-a-bitch. You bald-headed son-of-a-bitch, when I get out of there, I’ll blow your f———g head away. You no-good bald-headed son-of-a-bitch.”
Judge: “Get that down in the record, he’s threatened to blow the judge’s head off.”
MISTAKEN IDENTITY?
Prosecutor: “Could you point to someone in this courtroom, or maybe yourself, to indicate exactly how close to a hair color you are referring to?”
Witness: “Well, something like hers (points at the defense attorney) except for more—the woman right here in front (points at defense attorney again). Except for more cheap bleached-blond hair.”
Prosecutor: “May the record reflect, Your Honor, the witness has identified Defense Counsel as the cheap blonde.”
HOT WITNESS
Prosecutor: “Did you observe anything?”
Witness: “Yes, we did. When we found the vehicle, we saw several unusual items in the car in the right front floorboard of the vehicle. There was what appeared to be a Molotov cocktail, a green bottle—”
Defense lawyer: “Objection. I’m going to object to that word, Molotov cocktail.”
Judge: “What is your legal objection, Counsel?”
Defense lawyer: “It’s inflammatory, Your Honor.”
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL
Judge: “Mr. E., you’re charged here with driving a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?”
Defendant: “I’m guilty as hell.”
Judge: “Let the record reflect the defendant is guilty as hell.”
According to recent surveys, 22% of Americans are dissatisfied with their jobs.
PRESIDENTIAL TRIVIA
More unusual tidbits from the occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
George Washington wanted Americans to address him as “His Mightiness the President.”
Andrew Jackson, known for his colorful language, apparently taught his parrot to curse. When Jackson died in 1845, the parrot was brought to his funeral. It swore at him through the entire service.
Millard Fillmore was the first president to sign a treaty about bird droppings. It was a U.S.–Peru agreement dealing with bird guano, which has a high nitrate content and is useful in making explosives.
While he was president, Franklin Pierce was arrested for running down an elderly woman in his carriage. He was later found not guilty.
Dwight D. Eisenhower loved to paint but couldn’t draw—so he had other artists outline on his canvas the things he wanted to paint. This led directly to the paint-by-numbers fad of the 1950s.
Grover Cleveland, 22nd president, was the first one to leave the country while in office. But he didn’t really go anywhere: while on a fishing trip he sailed into international waters three miles off the U.S. coast and came right back.
Herbert Hoover was the first president to have a telephone in his office. Earlier, presidents who wanted to use a phone had to use the one in the hall.
After Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office in 1801, he left the Capitol building and walked back to his boarding-house. Several people followed him, giving rise to the traditional inaugural parade every president has had since then.
Bad omen: It was so cold at Ulysses S. Grant’s inauguration that the canaries that were supposed to sing during the inaugural ball froze to death.
President Warren G. Harding exercised regularly...by playing ping-pong.
There are 635,013,559,600 different possible hands in bridge.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING
COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
This piece about one of our favorite comedy ensembles—Monty Python—is from John Javna’s book Cult TV.
HOW “MONTY PYTHON” STARTED
In the mid-1960s, David Frost—one of England’s most popular TV stars—began work on a series called “The Frost Reports.” The staff of young writers he hired included Michael Palin and Terry Jones (who’d performed together since college), John Cleese and Graham Chapman (who’d toured together in Cambridge University’s comedy revue), and Eric Idle, a Cambridge student. It was the first time the five of them had worked together.
When Frost’s show folded in 1966, they went their separate ways, but they sometimes met and discussed the possibility of doing a program together. When Terry Gilliam (an American friend of John Cleese’s) moved to England, he became part of the group. Cleese helped get him a job in the BBC.
A Show Is Born. In 1969 BBC comedy producer Barry Took tried to team Palin and Cleese in their own show. But they refused to do it unless all six of the group were hired. Took decided they’d complement each other as performers and went along with it.
The BBC had been running a religious program late on Sunday nights, and no one was watching it...so the network decided to replace it with “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” On October 5, 1969, anyone who tuned in for religion would have seen John Cleese instead, announcing, “And now for something completely different.”
At first, Monty Python was on so late that almost no one saw it. But eventually it attracted a cult following, which meant, according to the Pythons, “it was seen by insomniacs, intellectuals, and burglars.”
American audiences didn’t see the “Flying Circus” until years after its British debut. In 1974, Public Broadcasting Station KERA in Dallas picked up the British series, and it became one of PBS’s most popular imports.
Maryland has 325 doctors per 100,000 citizens—the most of any state.
THE NAME
The group came up with a number of names before deciding on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” They almost used:
• “A Horse, a Spoon, and a Basin”
• “The Toad Elevating Moment”
• “Bunn, Wackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot” (an imaginary soccer team’s forward line)
• “Owl Stretching Time”
• “Gwen Dibley’s Flying Circus” (Gwen was Michael Palin’s music teacher when he was 11). Soon Monty Python—a name they made up—replaced Gwen Dibley. At first the BBC rejected the troupe’s crazy name, but when the Pythons threatened to change their name every week, the network relented.
“I BEG YOUR PARDON?”
A few samples of Python humor.
Graham Chapman: “I think TV’s killed real entertainment. In the old days we used to make our own fun. At Christmas parties I used to strike myself on the head repeatedly with blunt instruments while crooning. (sings) ‘Only make believe, I love you, (hits himself on head with bricks). Only make believe that you love me, (hits himself). Others find peace of mind...’”
Railroad Passenger (who thinks he’s been let off at the wrong stop): “I wish to make a complaint.”
Porter: “I don’t have to do this, you know.”
Passenger: “I beg your pardon?”
Porter: “I’m a qualified brain surgeon. I only do this because I l
ike being my own boss.”
Passenger: “Er, excuse me, this is irrelevant, isn’t it?”
Porter: “Oh yeah, it’s not easy to pad these out to thirty minutes.”
Narrator: “It was a day like any other and Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Brainsample were a perfectly ordinary couple, leading perfectly ordinary lives—the sort of people to whom nothing extraordinary ever happened, and not the kind of people to be the center of one of the most astounding incidents in the history of mankind...so let’s forget about them and follow instead the destiny of this man (camera pans to businessman in bowler hat and pinstripe suit)... Harold Potter, gardener, and tax official, first victim of Creatures from another Planet.”
The U.S. had 8,915 handgun killings in 1989. Great Britain had 7.
Candy Maker: “We use only the finest baby frogs, dew picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.”
Government Hygiene Inspector: “That’s as may be, but it’s still a frog.”
Narrator: “Dinsdale was a gentleman. And what’s more, he knew how to treat a female impersonator.”
BATHROOM ETIQUETTE
In the Middle Ages, it was considered sufficient to step “an arrow’s flight” distance into the gardens before doing what had to be done. Royalty apparently even thought this unnecessary—one English noble was appalled to find that the visiting king and retinue defecated wherever they chose throughout his castle—and during a conversation with a young noblewoman, he was surprised to hear tinkling water and watch a puddle spreading across his floor beneath her long dress.
Though officially banned as early as 1395 in Paris, it was a centuries-long practice throughout Europe to empty bedpans from high windows into the street. Oft-ignored etiquette demanded that they first shout the classic warning “Gardez l’eau!” In Edinburgh you could hire a guide to walk ahead of you and shout, “Haud your hand!” to people in the windows above.
One of history’s earliest etiquette books, penned by Erasmus of Rotterdam (1465-1536), laid down several laws about behavior concerning bodily functions. “It is impolite,” he wrote, “to greet someone who is urinating or defecating.” He then advises the person in need of “breaking wind” to “let a cough hide the explosive sound....Follow the law: replace farts with coughs.”
Sixty thousand people attended South Carolina’s “World Grits Festival” in 1991.
ELVIS LIVES
Who really believes Elvis is still alive? Plenty of people. As RCA Records used to ask: Can millions of Elvis fans be wrong? BRI member John Dollison wrote this piece so you can judge for yourself.
Early in the morning on August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley and his girlfriend, Ginger Alden, returned to Graceland from a late-night dentist appointment. The two stayed up until about 7:00 a.m. Then Alden went to bed. But, according to one source, “because he had taken some ‘uppers,’ Elvis was still not sleepy.”
So the King retired to his bathroom to read a book. That was the last time anyone saw him alive.
THE OFFICIAL STORY
• When Alden woke up at 2:00 in the afternoon, she noticed that Elvis was still in his bathroom. So she decided to check up on him.
• When she opened the door, she saw Elvis sprawled face forward on the floor. “I thought at first he might have hit his head because he had fallen,” she recalls, “and his face was buried in the carpet. I slapped him a few times and it was like he breathed once when I turned his head. I lifted one eyelid and it was just blood red. But I couldn’t move him.” The King was dead.
• Elvis was rushed to Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, but doctors could not revive him. He was pronounced dead at 3:00 p.m. The official cause of death: cardiac arrhythmia brought on by “straining at stool.” (The actual cause of death: most likely a massive overdose of prescription drugs.)
• That is what is supposed to have happened. Nevertheless, Elvis aficionados across the country see a host of mysterious circumstances that suggest that the King may still be alive.
SUSPICIOUS FACTS
• The medical examiner’s report stated that Elvis’s body was found in the bathroom in a rigor-mortised state. But the homicide report said that Elvis was found unconscious in the bedroom. In The Elvis Files, Gail Brewer-Giorgio notes: “Unconsciousness and rigor mortis are at opposite ends of the physical spectrum: rigor mortis is a stiffening condition that occurs after death; unconsciousness, a state in which a living body loses awareness. Bedroom and bathroom are two different places.”
The average jellyfish is 95% water.
• The medical examiner’s report lists Elvis’s weight at the time of death as 170 pounds; he actually weighed about 250 pounds.
• Elvis’s relatives can’t agree on how Elvis died. His stepbrother Rick claims Elvis suffocated on the shag carpet; his stepbrother David thinks Elvis committed suicide. Larry Geller, Elvis’s hairdresser and spiritual adviser, claims that Elvis’s doctors told Vernon Presley (Elvis’s father) that the King had leukemia, which may have contributed to his death. Some theorists charge that the confusion surrounding Elvis’s death proves that the star faked his death—if the King is really dead, why can’t his loved ones get their stories straight?
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Elvis’s fans want the answers to the following mysteries:
Did Elvis Foresee—or Fake—His Death?
• Elvis didn’t order any new jumpsuits—his trademark outfit—in all of 1977. Why not? Did he know he wasn’t going to need any?
• On his last concert tour, Elvis was overheard saying, “I may not look good tonight, but I’ll look good in my coffin.”
• Was Elvis imitating his manager, Colonel Tom Parker? As a young man, Parker also faked his death. An illegal immigrant from Holland whose real name was Andreas Van Kujik, Parker left Holland without telling his relatives; they thought he was dead.
Is the Corpse in Elvis’s Coffin Really Elvis’s?
• Country singer Tanya Tucker’s sister LaCosta was at the King’s funeral, and she was shocked at the body’s appearance: “We went right up to his casket and stood there, and God, I couldn’t believe it. He looked just like a piece of plastic laying there. He didn’t look like him at all...he looked more like a dummy than a real person. You know a lot of people think it was a dummy. They don’t think he was dead.”
• Some observers said they thought the corpse’s nose looked too “pugged” to be the King’s. They speculated that even if the King had fallen forward and smashed his nose at the time of his death, it would have naturally returned to its original shape, or would at least have been fixed by the undertaker—if the body was really Elvis’s. (The Elvis Files)
Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark.
Is the Corpse in Elvis’s Coffin a Wax Dummy?
• Some theorists believe that Elvis’s coffin weighed more than it was supposed to. Brewer-Giorgio reports receiving a letter from an Elvis fan who claimed to have “personally” known the man who made the King’s coffin. The coffin maker revealed that the casket was a “rush” order—and that “there was no way” the coffin could have weighed 900 pounds, as the press reported—even with the King in it. So what was in the coffin with Elvis that made it so heavy?
• According to Brewer-Giorgio, the discrepancy between the coffin’s actual weight with Elvis in it and its weight at the funeral is about 250 to 275 pounds, “the weight of a small air-conditioner.” “Was there an air-conditioner in the coffin?” Brewer-Giorgio asks, “Wax dummy? Something cool to keep the wax from beading up?”
• To many witnesses, Elvis’s corpse appeared to be “sweating” at the funeral. Brewer-Giorgio says she asked Joe Esposito, Elvis’s road manager, about TV reports that there were “beads of sweat” on Elvis’s body. “He said that was true, that everyone was sweating because the air-conditioner had broken down. Except that dead bodies d
o not sweat.” But wax melts.
Why Did the Mourners Act So Strange at the Funeral?
• Parker wore a loud Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap to Elvis’s funeral and never once approached the casket to say farewell to the King. Elvis’s fans argue that if Elvis were really dead, Parker would probably have shown a little more respect.
• Elvis’s hairdresser claims that he saw Esposito remove Elvis’s TCB (Takin’ Care of Business) ring from the corpse’s finger during the funeral services. Why would he remove one of Elvis’s favorite pieces of jewelry—Elvis would surely have wanted to have been buried with it—unless the corpse being buried wasn’t the King’s?
Janis Joplin was nominated “Ugliest Man on Campus” while in college.
Is Elvis in the Federal Witness Protection Program?
• In 1970 Presley—a law enforcement buff—was made an honorary Agent-at-Large of the Drug Enforcement Administration by President Nixon after a visit to the White House. According to some theorists, Presley became more than just an honorary agent—he actually got involved in undercover narcotics work.
• In addition to his DEA work, Elvis may have been an FBI agent. During the same trip to Washington D.C, Elvis also wrote a letter to J. Edgar Hoover volunteering his confidential services to the FBI. Hoover wrote back thanking Elvis for his offer, but there is no record of him ever taking it up. Still, Brewer-Giorgio and other theorists argue, the government may have been keeping the King’s government service a secret.
• According to Brewer-Giorgio, Elvis was also “a bonded deputy with the Memphis Police and was known to don disguises and go out on narc busts.”
• Elvis took his law-enforcement role seriously. More than one biography details the time that the King ran out onto the runway of the Las Vegas airport, flagged down a taxiing commercial airliner, and searched it for a man whom he believed had stolen something from him. Elvis looked around, realized his quarry wasn’t aboard, and gave the pilot permission to take off.
Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Page 22
