Category — Weird

LAS VEGAS NV – (Alleged) murderer/long-time criminal (oh yeah, and former football star/actor) O.J. Simpson was arrested Sunday on charges related to an armed robbery involving sport memorabilia, police said.

Simpson was arrested shortly after 11 a.m. and is being brought to a police office, Capt. James Dillon said. Police are still determining charges against Simpson.

Several police officers were seen entering the hotel where Simpson is staying; a security guard said police took Simpson out a side door shortly after.

At least one other person has been arrested and police said earlier Sunday that as many as six people could be arrested in connection with the alleged armed robbery that occurred in a room inside the Palace Station casino-hotel on Thursday.

Simpson, 60, has said he and other people with him were retrieving items that belonged to him. He told police no guns were involved.

Police said two firearms and other evidence were seized at a private residence early Sunday.

Walter Alexander, 46, of Arizona, was arrested Saturday night on two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit robbery and burglary with a deadly weapon.

Watch the video of O.J. leaving a wedding Sat. night in Vegas; listen to the song he’s whistling!

JOKESTARTERS:

• Sure, no guns were involved, but did they check for any knives?
• According to authorities, Simpson plans another huge defense. He’s already exhumed the body of the late Johnny Cochran to serve as his lead defender/smelly rotting corpse.

SOURCE:

• Seattle P-I

KATHMANDU, NEPAL – Usually when you’re traveling via airplane and your flight is delayed for mechanical reasons, you can look out the terminal window and see mechanics busy working on the aircraft.

Imagine traveling on Nepal’s state-run airline recently, being told about mechanical problems with a Boeing 757, then looking out the window to see officials sacrificing two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god!

Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks due the problem.

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft Sunday at Nepal’s only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said.

“The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights,” said Raju K.C., a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been.

Local media last week blamed the company’s woes on an electrical fault. The carrier runs international flights to five cities in Asia.

It is common in Nepal to sacrifice animals like goats and buffaloes to appease different Hindu deities.

JOKESTARTERS:

• I know a guy who works at Boeing, and they actually have a Hindu-based manual that shows the proper, technical method of severing a goat’s neck to appease Akash Bhairab. It’s a common fix for 757s.
• In a related incident, officials recently sacrificed a sheep in Washington State, after accidentally having sex with it.
• “Ladies and gentleman this is your captain speaking. Today we’ll be serving your choice of snacks, drinks, and the fresh warm blood of Billy the goat. Have a pleasant flight…”

SOURCE:

• Reuters

HILLIARD, OH – A suburban Columbus high school student says he’s been suspended for tricking rival football fans into holding up signs that together spelled out, “We Suck.”

Hilliard Davidson High School senior Kyle Garchar says he and two friends spent three days plotting the trick, which was captured on video and posted on YouTube:

Garchar says he was inspired by a similar prank pulled by Yale students in 2004, when Harvard fans were duped into holding up cards with the same message.

The 17-year-old placed about 800 black and white cards in seats at Crew Stadium before an August 24th game with Hilliard Darby High School.

Directions instructed fans to check that the number listed on their card matched their seat number.

Darby supporters were told the sign read “GO DARBY.”

So…should Kyle have been suspended? Please add your thoughts in Comments below…

SOURCE:

• WTOL-TV

by S.A. ‘Scott’ Robinson

A recent medical study at the University of Maryland School of Medicine indicates that laughter appears to cause the tissue that forms the inner lining of blood vessels, the endothelium, to dilate or expand in order to increase blood flow. This is good news for most people, unless of course you have just suffered a nasty cut whereupon you could bleed out while you guffaw at a particularly hilarious pratfall or gag. And to date, there is apparently no form of joke, boner, slapstick or rib-tickler that can restrict blood flow, so if you’re a funny person already, then it’s probably prudent to be a bit glum and unfunny around hemophiliacs or the accident prone.

Writing comedy isn’t easy.

If it was, everybody would be doing it and nothing of a serious nature would get done around here. Thank goodness there are plenty of plain, dull and boring people to handle that stuff. And analyzing humor, it is said, is like dissecting a frog: Few people are interested and the frog dies as a result. So at the risk of boring the reader, or offending biology students, we can begin.

If you are like the majority of schlubs walking the street that have no comedy chops to save your life, then a few tips are in order. The first rule of comedy writing is:

1. There are no rules – Sure there are subjects that could never be funny, like, say f’rinstance a rash that won’t go away or a vicious dog bite. At least, they aren’t funny when they happen to you. Anybody else is fair game.
2. Keep it simple, Simon – It doesn’t matter who Simon is, as long as you don’t complicate your story, joke, sight gag with too much build-up or collaterol information. And don’t try to remember ridiculous acronyms like KISS, since Kissing really has nothing to do with comedy, unless you’re very bad at it, or you decide to kiss an animal like a monkey.
3. Humorous Subjects – Monkeys…they might be poor defenseless primates, but historically, they make people laugh. Should we ship them all back to the jungle just because they can’t seem to get regular jobs or hold political office? Two words: George Bush. Other subjects that lend themselves to natural silliness are, in no order of importance, breast implants, drunks, strange accents of speech and hats. A monkey that looks like a drunken French politician with large breasts and a fedora can’t miss.

THE BASIC JOKE

There are million jokes in the big city, and a few of them will kill every time. There are long drawn-out gags and there are one-liners, but The Zinger is my favorite, and sex is a popular topic:

A man goes to the doctor, “Doc, my wife complains about, you know…my sexual performance…” then he adds quickly, “But hey, it’s not been so good for me, either. For the last six months, I’ve been faking an erection.”

Good jokes come in lots of styles, but most of the best of them consist of three parts. The set-up, the act and the punchline.

The proto-typical ‘man walks into a bar’ joke is a good example:

The Set-up:

‘A man walks into a bar and sits down next to a lady and a dog. The man asks, “Does your dog bite?”. The lady answers, “Never!”

The Act:

The man reaches out to pet the dog and the dog bites him. The man says, “I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite!”

The Punchline:

The woman replies, “He doesn’t. This isn’t my dog.”

While this old gag might be funny to some, it’s a lot better when you change a few items around:

A man walks into a bar and says, “Give me a beer before problems start!” Again, the man orders a beer again saying, “Give me a beer before problems start!” The bartender looks confused. This goes on for a while, and after the fifth beer the bartender is totally confused and asks the man, “When are you going to pay for these beers?” The man answers, “Ah, now the problems start!”

For the English majors in your audience, there is this variation;

Shakespeare walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a beer. “I can’t serve you.” says the bartender. “You’re Bard!”

And as an example of how weirdness can be funny:

A grasshopper hops into a bar. The bartender says, “You’re quite a celebrity around here. We’ve even got a drink named after you.” The grasshopper says, “You’ve got a drink named Steve?”

Another great way to break the ice in a pre-comedic setting is the story-joke. But it’s important to try to keep the joke fresh. And jokes are like recipes; stale ones seldom go over well. So if the joke is old, instead of just reheating it, try to update it or change some of the ingredients.

A cop parked behind a billboard sees a car full of nuns was driving really slowly. He whips out and pulls them over and asks why they were going so slow. The head nun replies “Well, the sign over there says 23, so… I was going 23 miles per hour.” The officer chuckles a little and says “No, M’aam, thats the Route number not the speed limit, you can go 55 miles per hour.”

The nun then says “Well that explains why the nuns were yelling at me earlier today…we just got off Route 125.”

OFFENSIVE, RACIST AND DIRTY JOKES

Some comedians build their careers on blue comedy, pseudo-racist jokes or just plain offensive material.

But the payoff is difficult to justify.

Michael Richards’ recent fall from grace is evidence of this, and while someone like Chris Rock can get away with all manner of ‘white cracker/honky’ jokes and making fun of African-Americans, the laughter is generated mostly out of discomfort with the subject matter.

Still, many people regard Lenny Bruce as a comedy great and Bruce considered no subject untouchable.

Offensive jokes are more generalized and often offend across races or gender equally.

Examples are below, if you dare to try them, but for my money, there are plenty of funny things to joke about without crossing these lines.

The Dirty Joke:

Little red riding hood runs into a wolf in the forest.
She asks, ‘Mr. Wolf, why are your eyes so big?
The Wolf glares and says, “Get out of here kid, I’m trying to take a sh*t.”

The Racist Joke:

Why dont they have the Olympics in Mexico?

Because anyone who can run jump or swim is already accross the border.

The Offensive Joke:

What do you call a rape victim that doesn’t contact the police?

A good sport.

Simple jokes aside, you can write comedy for films, TV, print or for a stand-up act.

Writing a good, funny movie script requires much study and perseverance. But the rewards can be huge. The Coen Brothers stand out as exemplars in this.

TV comedy needs to be quick and to the point since TV audiences, equipped with remotes, generally have the shortest attention spans.

My experience is mostly in print, and it seems easier to stretch your legs in a written piece. It’s nice to be able to write a humorous short story because you can take your time and really tweak it for best effect. But for a quick fix, there’s not much that beats a comedian who is really on his or her game.

I once saw a clever, Seattle comedian named Matt Reidy do a thing called an ‘attitude switch’ which brought down the house:

A woman was sitting so close to the stage that one of her feet was resting on the raised platform. Matt stopped in the middle of a bit, focused on the woman and said sweetly, “Are you into comedy?…Studying to be a comedian?” The woman giggled and shook her head, no, whereupon Matt shot back, ‘THEN GET YOUR GAWDAMN FEET OFF THE STAGE!”

The element of shock worked so well that the audience howled for nearly five minutes.

(S.A.’Scott’ Robinson is an author, writer and columnist who occasionally has something to say that could be construed as humorous, which can often be found at http://eunoterpsia56.blogspot.com).