Entertainment
“The One-Man Vaudeville Show”
“I will now give an imitation of three Hawaiians. This is one (whistles), this is another (plays ukulele), and this is the third (marks time with his foot). I could imitate four Hawaiians just as easily, but I will tell you the reason why I don’t do it. You see, I bought a horse for $50, and it turned out to be a running horse. I was offered $15,000 for him, and I took it. I built a house with the $15,000, and when it was finished a neighbor offered me $100,000 for it. He said my house stood right where he wanted to dig a well. So I took the $100,000 to accommodate him. I invested the $100,000 in peanuts, and that year there was a peanut famine, so I sold the peanuts for $350,000. Now, why should a man with $350,000 bother to imitate four Hawaiians?”
— Joe Cook, vaudeville performer
Okay, the Second-Greatest
A flight attendant once asked Muhammad Ali to fasten his seat belt.
Ali said, “Superman don’t need no seat belt.”
The attendant replied, “Superman don’t need no airplane, either.”
Too True
Secretary: It must be hard to lose your mother-in-law.
W.C. Fields: Yes, it is, very hard. It’s almost impossible.
No Laughing Matter
Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz served as an infantry squad leader during World War II.
Every year on June 6 he used the comic strip to memorialize his comrades who fell at Normandy.
“Apocalypse Hoboken”
Best entries in The Canonical List of Weird Band Names:
- Alcoholocaust
- The Ass Baboons of Venus
- The Couch Slugs
- The Dancing French Liberals of 1848
- Dick Duck and the Dorks
- Ed’s Redeeming Qualities
- Ethyl Meatplow
- Hell Camino
- Individual Fruit Pie
- Lavay Smith and The Red Hot Skillet Lickers
- Lawnsmell
- Mussolini Headkick
- Rash of Stabbings
- Stukas Over Bedrock
- Technosquid Eats Parliament
A few are designed to look good on a marquee, like FREE BEER AND CHICKEN and HORNETS ATTACK VICTOR MATURE.
Ozzy’s Top 10
Ozzy Osbourne’s all-time top 10 favorite rock albums, as told to the British newspaper The Observer in June 2004:
- Revolver – The Beatles
- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – The Beatles
- Band on the Run – Paul McCartney & Wings
- So – Peter Gabriel
- Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd
- Abbey Road – The Beatles
- Imagine – John Lennon
- Blizzard of Ozz – Ozzy Osbourne/Randy Rhoads
- Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin
- Machine Head – Deep Purple
Say Good Night
Gracie Allen: On my way in, a man stopped me at the stage door and said, “Hiya, cutie, how about a bite tonight after the show?”
George Burns: And you said?
Gracie Allen: I said, “I’ll be busy after the show, but I’m not doing anything right now.” So I bit him.
“All I had to do was say, ‘Gracie, how’s your brother?’ and she talked for 38 years,” Burns once remembered. “And sometimes I didn’t even have to remember to say, ‘Gracie, how’s your brother?'”
What’s in a Name?
Michael Caine’s real name is Maurice Joseph Micklewhite.
He originally took the stage name Michael Scott, but his agent learned that another actor was using it and asked him to choose another one quickly.
Caine was standing in a phone booth in London’s Leicester Square. He looked around, saw The Caine Mutiny playing at the Odeon cinema, and suggested Michael Caine.
He once told an interviewer that if he had looked the other way, he would be known as “Michael One Hundred and One Dalmatians.”
Separated at Birth?
Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende is nicknamed Harry Potter.
Guess why.