No time to relax? Try speed golf. Sprint through 18 holes without a caddy and you can finish a round in 45 minutes.

Gerald Ford said, “I know I am getting better at golf because I’m hitting fewer spectators.”

At a 1987 party, Oxford philosopher A.J. Ayer confronted Mike Tyson and demanded he stop harassing Naomi Campbell.

Tyson said, “Do you know who the fuck I am? I’m the heavyweight champion of the world.”

Ayer replied, “And I am the former Wykeham professor of logic! We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.”

No word on whom Campbell left with.

Hollywood has stopped developing The Incomparable Atuk, a comedy about an Eskimo hunter adapting to life in the big city. The project is said to be cursed — four successive actors died after being offered the lead role:

• John Belushi
• Sam Kinison
• John Candy
• Chris Farley

Farley also showed the script to Phil Hartman in 1998, encouraging him to take a co-starring role. Hartman was murdered later that year.

To find the actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, MGM shot 149,000 feet of black-and-white test film and another 13,000 feet of color with 60 actresses, none of whom got the part.

Vivien Leigh eventually got it, but MGM also considered Katharine Hepburn, Norma Shearer, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Susan Hayward, Carole Lombard, Paulette Goddard, Irene Dunne, Merle Oberon, Ida Lupino, Joan Fontaine, Loretta Young, Miriam Hopkins, Jean Arthur, Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Bennett, Frances Dee, and Lucille Ball.

“With drunkenness, gambling, and dancing, theater-going dates from the beginning of history, and with these it is not only questionable in morals, but it is positively bad. Every one who knows any thing about the institution of the theater, as such, knows that it always has been corrupting in its influence. Not only those who attend the theater pronounce it bad, as a whole, but it is frowned upon by play-writers, and by actors and actresses themselves.”

— J.M. Judy, Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes, 1904

During the Depression, spinach farmers in Crystal City, Texas, erected a statue of Popeye — the cartoon character almost singlehandedly saved the spinach industry.

Addresses of fictional characters:

Dr. John Dolittle
Oxenthorpe Road
Puddleby-on-the-Marsh
Slopshire, England

Clark Kent
344 Clinton Street
Apt. 3B
Metropolis, USA

Leopold Bloom
7 Eccles Street
Dublin, Ireland

Miss Marple
Danemead
High Street
St. Mary Mead

Hercule Poirot
Apt. 56B
Whitehaven Mansions
Sandhurst Square
London W1, U.K.

Lucy Ricardo
Apartment 4A
623 East 68th Street
New York, New York

The Simpsons
742 Evergreen Terrace
Springfield, USA

In 1908, Jim Garside, the landlord of Leeds’ Adelphi Inn, was called before the local magistrate. In places where alcohol is consumed, English law permits betting only on games of skill. Garside had been permitting bets on darts. Wasn’t that a game of chance?

Garside summoned a dartboard and local champion William “Bigfoot” Anakin, who proceeded to hit every number the court named.

Garside was discharged.