JOKES NO ONE TELLS

Why do teenagers like face piercings?

It gets rid of one pimple.

I'm quite sure there was another book called BIGGER AND BETTER BONERS, and illustrated by Dr. Suess too.

Students were unable to comprehend, in the days before television, and video games and all those other distractions people blame for a child's inability to understand simple logic, spelling, intuitive leaps, structure, and other learning demands. Today we blame of the current problems on being in the 21st century.

JOKES NO ONE TELLS

Why do people drink at NASCAR Races?

So they don't forget the plot.

There's this book called MOUSE TALES, which is about some infamous stories involving the growth of Disney's empire and Disneyland and some unwanted overlooked deaths that have happened on various rides in the Magic Kingdom. I was fascinated by this paragraph, from page 27.

"Schedualed for a six week run the "Mickey Mouse Club Circus" opened on Thanksgiving Day 1955, heralded by a circus parade down Main Street. But this wasn't to be the Greatest Show on Earth. It was doomed from the first performance. During the parade, a black panther grabbed the paw of a tiger in the next cage and chewed it off. When the procession of circus wagons entered the big top for the first performance, the second vehicle clipped one of the tend pegs and an entire section of the roof caved in . During the trapeze act, a well endowed artist's halter strap broke and her top fell. And since she had to hold onto the trapeze, there wasn't m,uch she could do about it. Finally two llamas got loose and ran through the bleachers. The crew chased them down the railroad track and captured them at the Main Street Station. Walt, sitting in the front row with the Mouseketeers, buried his face in his hands."

Does a film of this exist? We all would like to see it...It was Disney's usual documentry compulsiveness that had him trail everything that was going on in the studio, so there are documentry films going back as far as "Snow White". Bet the studio has employees who dust it off from time to time and watch it with lots of unchecked giggles.

MOUSE TALES.A behind the ears look at Disneyland. by David Koenog Bonadventure Press 1994.

And every now and then I read something very odd...

"I had a personal hand in making a mask that perhaps is one of the most famous in movie history. Dawn got a skull from a medical surplus house and let me help him with his project. A new skull is bright white because it's been bleached. We had to age the skull by putting yellow and brown lines on it, then rubbing them off. Because the mask was Anthony Perkin's mother in PSYCHO, we had to put hair on it." page 78.

Jerry Mathers, writing in "...And Jerry Mathers as 'The Beaver'", explaining how he worked on the set of Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO, and his contribution to movie history. I also recall the "Beav" was hired by Alfred Hatchplot for the movie THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, which was his initial role before he got on that show.

Trivia. Good trivia.

WHO CLEANS UP AFTER CLIFFORD?

The big red dog is about to go...!

I saw the DVD of THE PACIFIER recently. This is the vehicle starring Vin Diesel as a baby sitter/Navy seal/talent director...This is also one of the films that makes no sense if you start asking questions about it, or wonder how one sequence led to another. I can't fault the actor too much. He had been out of a job, presumably, for requesting too much money, and this Jackie Chan reject for Disney was a step up. Let's see--as a Navy Seal, he is directly involved in the death of a man who is important to National Security. As a result, he has to take care of the guy's kids, while Mom has to search a bank vault in Switzerland...

And the more you continue to dig into the plot, the less sense it makes. The film was okay on the big screen. One of a series of loud cinematic explosions with a paper thin set of characters. Transferred to the home screen (19 inches), it seems like a blip.

There's a duck in this movie. I suspect if there was a dog, there would be some confusion with the lead. Vin Diesel still looks like a shar pei with all the wrinkles removed.

DVD extras aren't much either.

One of a series. Still funny, after nearly a century.

Anyway, there are a few other odd books. One is called A VOID, which is by Georges Perec, and was written without the letter "e". What makes this a feat worthy of some admiration is that it was written in French and translated into English. Perec also wrote an essay using only words with the letter e. This essay has yet to be translated.

Several reviews of the novel were published, smirkingly written, avoiding the letter e.

Then there's THE TRAIN FROM NOWHERE by Michel Thaler, which was written and published that has no verbs. It is also a book in French. It currently has not been translated, perhaps because it has no action. A description of it says it is about unlikeable people on a train. The french have all the luck.