 (Would-be) DARWIN AWARDS |
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| Paolo Esperanza, bass–trombonist with the Simphonica Mayor de Uruguay, in a bid for an unusual contribution to the cannon shots in an outdoor children’s concert performance of the 1812 Overture, put what amounted to a lit M–80 firecracker in his aluminum straight mute and stuck it in his quite new Yamaha double–valve inline bass–trombone. Later, he explained through bandages on his mouth, “I thought the explosion would make the mute fly like a rocket and the bell of my trombone would protect me.” In fact the mute took off and flew into the conductors stomach and drove him off the podium and into the front row of the.audience. | Luckily, the people in the audience were sitting in folding chairs and the audience member was driven relatively unhurt backwards into two people sitting behind him, who in turn were driven into four people and so on. The sound of collapsing wooden chairs and grunts of people falling on their behinds added to the overall sound of brass cannons and brass playing as constitutes the closing measures of the Overture. Paolo had forgotten that every action involves a reaction. The bell of his shiny Yamaha was turned inside out by the launching of his mute, and he was driven backwards off the riser with a somewhat bruised embouchure by the mute–turned–rocket. |
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The wit of STEVEN WRIGHT |
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| Last night I played a
blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts. |
Just think how much deeper the ocean would be if sponges didn’t live there. | Whatever happened to Preparations A through G? |
| If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil from? | I went for a walk last night, and my kids asked me how long I’d be gone. I said, “The whole time.” | If you're sending someone some Styrofoam, what do you pack it in? |
| After eating, do amphibians need to wait an hour before getting OUT of the water? | Why don’t they just make mouse—flavored cat food? | So what’s the speed of dark? |
| I
just got skylights put in my place. The people who live above me are furious. |
If a cow laughed, would milk come out her nose? | Whose cruel idea was it for the word “lisp” to have an “s” in it? |
| How come abbreviated is such a long word? | If it’s zero degrees outside today and it’s supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be? | Why do you press harder on a remote—control when you know the battery is dead? |
| Why are they called buildings, when they're already finished? Shouldn’t they be called “builts”? | Why are they called apartments, when they're all stuck together? | Why do banks charge you a “non—sufficient funds fee” on money they already know you don’t have? |
| If the universe is everything, and scientists say that the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? | If you got into a taxi and the driver started driving backward, would the taxi driver end up owing you money? | Yesterday I saw a chicken crossing the road. I asked it why. It told me it was none of my business. |
| When two airplanes almost collide why do they call it a near miss? It sounds like a near hit to me!! | I went to San Francisco. I found someone’s heart. | If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke? |
| Why are there 5 syllables in the word “monosyllabic”? | Why do they call it the Department of Interior when they are in charge of everything outdoors? | In school, every period ends with a bell. Every sentence ends with a period. Every crime ends with a sentence. |
| Last week I forgot how to ride a bicycle. | When I erase a word with a pencil, where does it go? | I took a course in speed waiting. Now I can wait an hour in only ten minutes. |
| Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it. | If “con” is the opposite of “pro”, then what is the opposite of progress? | Why is it lemon juice contains mostly artificial ingredients, but dishwashing liquid contains real lemons? |
| Why do we wash bath towels? Aren’t we clean when we use them? | Why do we put suits in a garment bag and put garments in a suitcase? | Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle? |
| Do Roman paramedics refer to IV’s as “4’s”? | The sky is falling…no, I’m tipping over backwards. | Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard? |
| If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes? | I got a garage door opener. It can’t close. Just open. | Yesterday I told a chicken to cross the road. It said, “what for?” |
| I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman,“Where’s the self–help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose. | You know how it is when you go to be the subject of a psychology experiment, and nobody else shows up, and you think maybe that’s part of the experiment? I’m like that all the time. | I was in the grocery
store. I saw a sign that said “pet supplies”. So I did. Then I went outside and saw a sign that said “compact cars”. |
| I have an existential map; it has ‘you are here’ written all over it. | I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side. | It it’s a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny. |
| You know how it is when you’re reading a book and falling asleep, you’re reading, reading…and all of a sudden you notice your eyes are closed? I’m like that all the time. | Someone sent me a postcard picture of the earth. On the back it said, “Wish you were here.” | War doesn’t determine who’s right, just who’s left. |
| I spilled spot remover on my dog. Now he’s gone. | “Did you sleep well?” “No, I made a couple of mistakes.” | My socks DO match. They’re the same thickness. |
| Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. | What’s another word for Thesaurus? | You can’t have everything. Where would you put it? |
| A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I’m afraid of widths. | If you can wave a fan, and you can wave a club, can you wave a fan club? | Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country. |
| When I was in boy scouts, I slipped on the ice and hurt my ankle. A little old lady had to help me across the street. | I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They said, “What for?” I said, “I’m going to buy some sugar.” | I made a chocolate cake with white chocolate. Then I took it to a potluck. I stood in line for some cake. They said, “Do you want white cake or chocolate cake?” I said, “yes”. |
| I had amnesia once or twice. | How many people does it take to change a searchlight bulb? | Smoking cures weight problems …eventually. |
| You know how it is when you decide to lie and say the check is in the mail, and then you remember it really is? I'm like that all the time. | I brought a mirror to Lovers' Lane. I told everybody I’m Narcissus | |
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REVIEW OF A KENNY G. CONCERT from “The Other Paper”, Columbus, Ohio “Getting Down With The Milquetoast Maestro” by John Petric |
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| A whole lotta people paid a whole lotta money to witness a whole lotta meaningless breathing exercises done through a musical snorkel. Saturday night at the Columbus Convention Center. Kenny G — the mayor of mayonnaise music, the milquetoast maestro, the woodwind weasel — played his saxophone to roughly 5000 people at $25 per head. That adds up to a $150,000 gross and boy, gross it was. G is the latest and most successful instrumentalist with a slight jazz pedigree to hit the big time. However, in G’s case, it’s with an authenticity so questionable he may as well document it with a fancy diploma from some phony offshore jazz school in the middle of the Caribbean. Even Zamfir comes with better jazz credentials. Ornamental romantic themes ruled the night’s jazz lite hell. Goopy, chimey electric piano usually introduced his poodle on.Prozac. | The Thin White Duke of Puke’s solos were the color of air. His improvisations improved none at all as the long night dragged on. His chops consisted almost entirely of pyrotechnic finger exercises and obnoxious minutes—long sustains that had the crowd whooping and hollering. Sadly though, the long—winded G has all the fiery jazz imagination of, say, Richard Clayderman, the French dude. (He’s French, for BEEEP sake, need I say more?) After the G—weasel committed atrocity after atrocity in the name of jazz, pulling tunes off his seven—album catalog, the question remained: Why is this weenie doing so well? Opener Peabo Bryson joined G for a song in the middle of the headliner’s set. It was the best part of the show. If Holiday Inn motel art could come to musical life, it would sound like G’s “Forever in Love” or “Sister Rose” or “Sentimental,” all horrible crap from “Breathless,” his bezillion—selling album on.Arista. |
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THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER (percussionists perspective) |
| Oh, say can you BOOM, CRASH By the dawn’s early BOOM, CRASH What so proudly we BOOM, CRASH At the twilight’s last gleaming? |
| Whose broad
stripes and bright BOOM, CRASH Through the perilous BOOM,CRASH O’er the ramparts we BOOM, CRASH Were so gallantly streaming? 3 & |
| 1...2...3... 2...2...3... 3...2...3... 4...2...3... 5...2...3... 6...2...3... 7...2...3... 8...2...Oh, |
| BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOOOOMMMM; BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOOOOMMMM; BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! |
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Jackie Mason on STARBUCKS |
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| Starbucks is the best example of a phony status symbol that means nothing, but people will still pay 10x as much for because there are French words all over the place. You want coffee in a coffee shop, that’s 60 cents. But at Starbucks, Cafe Latte: $3.50. Cafe Cremier: $4.50. Cafe Suisse: $9.50. For each French word, another four dollars. Why does a little cream in coffee make it worth $3.50? Go into any coffee shop; they’ll give you all the cream you want until you’re blue in the face. Forty million people are walking around in coffee shops with jars of cream: “Here’s all the cream you want!” And it’s still 60 cents. You know why? Because it’s called “coffee.” If it’s Cafe Latte - $4.50. You want cinnamon in your coffee? Ask for cinnamon in a coffee shop; they’ll give you all the cinnamon you want. Do they ask you for more money because it’s cinnamon? It's the same price for cinnamon in your coffee as for coffee without cinnamon — 60 cents, that’s it. But not in Starbucks. Over there, it’s Cinnamonnier — $9.50. You want a refill in a regular coffee shop, they’ll give you all the refills you want until you drop dead. You can come in when you’re 27 and keep drinking coffee until you’re 98. And they’ll start begging you: “Here, you want more coffee, you want more, you want more?” Do you know that you can’t get a refill at Starbucks? A refill is a dollar fifty. Two refills, $4.50. Three refills, $19.50. So, for four cups of coffee - $350. And it’s burnt coffee. It’s burnt coffee at Starbucks, let’s be honest about it. If you get burnt coffee in a coffee shop, you call a cop. You say, “It’s the bottom of the pot. I don’t drink from the bottom of the pot.” But when it’s burnt at Starbucks, they say, “Oh, it’s a blend. It’s a blend. It’s a special bean from Argentina.....” The bean is in your head. And there’re no chairs in those Starbucks. Instead, they have these high stools. You ever see these stools? You haven’t been on a chair that high since you were two. Seventy—three year old Jews are climbing and climbing to get to the top of the chair. And when they get to the top, they can’t even drink the coffee because there’s 12 people around one little table, and everybody’s saying, “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me...” Then they can’t get off the chair. Old Jews are begging Gentiles, “Mister, could you get me off this?” Do you remember what a cafeteria was? In poor neighborhoods all over this country, they went to a cafeteria because there were no waiters and no service..continued |
And so poor people could save money on a tip. Cafeterias didn't have regular tables or chairs either. They gave coffee to you in a cardboard cup. So because of that you paid less for the coffee. You got less, so you paid less. It’s all the same as Starbucks — no chairs, no service, a cardboard cup for your coffee — except in Starbucks, the less you get, the more it costs. By the time they give you nothing, it’s worth four times as much. Am I exaggerating? Did you ever try to buy a cookie in Starbucks? Buy a cookie in a regular coffee shop. You can tear down a building with that cookie. And the whole cookie is 60 cents. At Starbucks, you’re going to have to hire a detective to find that cookie, and it's $9.50. And you can’t put butter on it because they want extra. Do you know that if you buy a bagel, you pay extra for cream cheese in Starbucks? Cream cheese, another 60 cents. A knife to put it on, 32 cents. If it reaches the bagel, 48 cents. That bagel costs you $312. And they don’t give you the butter or the cream cheese. They don’t give it to you. They tell you where it is. “Oh, you want butter? It’s over there. Cream cheese? Over here. Sugar? Sugar is here.” Now you become your own waiter. You walk around with a tray. “I’ll take the cookie. Where’s the butter? The butter’s here. Where’s the cream cheese? The cream cheese is there.” You walked around for an hour and a half selecting items, and then the guy at the cash register has a glass in front of him that says “Tips.” You’re waiting on tables for an hour, and you owe him money. Then there’s a sign that says please clean it up when you're finished. They don’t give you a waiter or a busboy. Now you’ve become the janitor. Now you have to start cleaning up the place. Old Jews are walking around cleaning up Starbucks. “Oh, he’s got dirt too? Wait, I’ll clean this up.” They clean up the place for an hour and a half. If I said to you, “I have a great idea for a business. I’ll open a whole new type of a coffee shop. A whole new type. Instead of 60 cents for coffee I’ll charge $2.50, $3.50, $4.50, and $5.50 Not only that, I’ll have no tables, no chairs, no water, no busboy, and you’ll clean it up for 20 minutes after you’re finished.” Would you say to me, “That’s the greatest idea for a business ever heard! We can open a chain of these all over the world!” No, you would put me right into a sanitarium. Starbucks can only get away with it because they have French titles for everything. And I say this with the highest respect, because I don't like to talk about.people. |
VINCENT GOGH FAMILY TREE |
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| His obnoxious brother.............Please Gogh | His magician uncle...............Wherediddy Gogh |
| His dizzy aunt.........................Verti Gogh | His Mexican cousin..............Amee Gogh |
| The brother who ate prunes.....Gotta Gogh | The
Mexican cousin’s American half brother ...........Grin Gogh |
| The constipated uncle ............Cant Gogh | The nephew who drove a stage coach.............Wellsfar Gogh |
| The brother who worked at a convenience store.................Stop–n–Gogh | The bird lover uncle.......Flamin Gogh |
| The grandfather from Yugoslavia......Hugh Gogh | A sister who loved disco........Go Gogh |
| The cousin from Illinois.........Chica Gogh | The ballroom dancing aunt.......Tan Gogh |
| His nephew psychoanalyst........E Gogh | The fruit loving cousin..............Man Gogh |
| An aunt who taught positive thinking.......Wayto Gogh | The little bouncy nephew.........Poe Gogh |
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