“Hi, dear. How was your day?” “Oh, Ward. Sheriff Williams raided the house again this afternoon.” “That makes the third time this month. What happened?” “You know. The same old thing. The Wilson’s complained about Theodore’s meth lab again. Apparently the fumes coming out of his and Wally’s bedroom floated over the backyard fence and killed their cat. They’re threatening to move out of the neighborhood and Julia told me if it happens again she’s dropping out of the PTA bake sale.” “I’ll go upstairs and have a talk with the Beaver. Maybe I can convince him to go back to his paper route.” *** “Beaver, what’s this I hear…
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Olympic Sports that Never Quite Made the Grade Lawn bowling, hot air ballooning, live pidgeo shooting and other sports that will never see the light of day
Even if you don’t like sports, it was hard not to get excited about the Summer Olympics. The pageantry, the colorful uniforms and swapping pins with spectators from all over the world make it a must-see event. But, they didn’t start out that way. The original competitions have expanded from six simple feats of strength to more than 26 individual events contested on the ground, in the air, underwater, on grass, inside and outside of elaborate, multi-million-dollar athletic stadiums that ultimately wound up taking their place in history as second class bluegrass music venues and swap meets. The Paris Summer Olympic Games of 1900 provided a watershed of athletic hopefuls.…
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With Rentals Like These, Who Needs Friends? Regaining familial tranquility with "Rent-a-Friend"
This started out as a bad year. In less than 6 months, I lost my job, condominium, car and all of my friends. Even the cat packed up her litter box and left. When my parents heard the bad news, they immediately snapped into action: they fled to Boca Raton and dropped me from their Christmas card list. The exodus continued with all of my aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews and my one remaining frat brother. Then it hit me. Friends and relatives are just things. Things you can rent. After the devastation settled in, I made up my mind that I was never going to own friends or family…
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The Wilhelm Scream A good Hollywood scream is hard to find; unless you know where to look
In the early days of the film industry, it was hard to find a good scream. Before the invention of sound bites, directors who needed a blood-curdling shriek from actors often got rather paltry sounding yelps. That is, until Private Wilhelm entered the scene. In the 1951 war classic Distant Drums, a soldier is dragged under water by an alligator as he wades through a treacherous Florida swamp. After the filming was completed, sound engineers recorded a series of screams that were added during post-production. Two years later, in The Charge at Feather River, a soldier named Private Wilhelm (played by Ralph Brooke) takes an arrow in the leg. Similar…
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Tooth Fairies Aren’t Easy How BMWs and laptops have replaced leaving a quarter under your pillow
When my dentist gave me the bad news, I was naturally distraught over the possibility of losing half of my teeth. Even after years of religiously brushing, flossing and wrestling with my Waterpik, the entire lower left-hand quadrant as well as a few other strategically located molars had succumbed to periodontal disease, so eating anything denser than applesauce started to become a challenge. The one redeeming factor was that I’d be partially reimbursed by the Tooth Fairy. I was introduced to the practice of exchanging my lost baby teeth for money when I was 5 years old. My mother told me if I put a tooth under my pillow, the…