Comedy Calendar

July 13, 2011

    This is National Farrier's Week, honoring all the men and women who keep our horses shod. Somehow, I suspect the horses would prefer that all these people get lost, and somebody would come up with some nice horse Nikes or Reeboks.
     And if you don't believe me, trying nailing your shoes on this morning.

     U.S. patent #92,528 was issued for the velocipede on this day in 1869. The velocipede was a giant wheel you turned by hand while riding inside it. If you did it right, the wheel would turn and you wouldn't. The problem was it didn't have any brakes -- to stop, you had to run into a tree.

     Confederate cavalry hero Nathan Forest was born on this day in 1821. Commander Forest was skilled in camouflage and often hid undetected in the woods. Which is where we got the old saying, "You can't see Forest for the trees."

     Harold Fielden set a world tobacco-spitting record in Central City, Colorado, on this date in 1973. Harold spat (sput?) 34 feet for the title of Superspitter.
     Another spitter spat twice as far but was disqualified because he used special liquefied-helium aerodynamic spit.

     Father Flanagan, founder of Boys' Town, was born on this day in 1886. Boys' Town was a place for delinquent boys to go when they got kicked out of their homes. Kind of like the mall today.

     On this day in 1881 Pat Garrett shot Billy the Kid. Apparently, Billy was killed with a shotgun, because his graves are all over New Mexico.

     On this day in 1976 four students at Churchill School in Salisbury, Rhodesia, set a world record by completing 100 hours of continuous bagpipe playing. Needless to say, the audience had already gone home.

     The only thing worse than a bagpipe concert would be four guys with long fingernails scratching an electric chalkboard.

     The Feast of Lanterns begins today in Japan when all good Buddhists know the dead return for a visit. They tried to get some of the dead to appear live on Jerry Springer, but the dead said, "No way!"
     Over their dead bodies.

     By the way, Buddha was not Buddha's real name. His real name was Guatama Siddhartha; he lived in the 5th Century B.C., and he once said to his yoga teacher, "It doesn't bother my back, but my feet keep going to sleep."

     The Black Hills Corvette Classic is this week in South Dakota. Hundreds of Corvettes will travel the 400 miles from Sioux Falls to Spearfish, and they award prizes for everything: fastest time, best gas mileage, most bugs on the windshield.....

     Former NBA guard Spud Webb was born on this day in 1963. Spud is living proof you don't have to be tall to be short.
     Spud was so short, they allowed him to park in the handicapped space during basketball games.

     One of history's least successful acts of heroism occurred in Sherman Oaks, California, on this day in 1978 when a bandit with a bag he claimed contained a bomb walked into a bank and demanded money. But when a teller laughed at the bandit, he panicked and ran out the front door, where a passerby gave chase, tackled the bandit, took the bag away from him, and promptly returned it to the bank. Where it exploded and filled the entire bank with tear gas.
     Needless to say, everybody cried.

     Singer Louise Mandrell was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, on this day in 1951. She's the Mandrell sister with the big ... eyelashes.
     Louise has come along way for somebody who spends so much time just fiddling around.

     Louise began taking fiddle lessons when she was five, but the family couldn't afford to buy her a fiddle, so she practiced on the cat.
    Which took a lot of guts.

      In an editorial in the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley wrote on this day in 1865, "Go west, young man, go west." So all the young men went west and Greeley stayed east and made a fortune.
      He also had more dates than ever.

      The first Society Security checks were mailed out on this day in 1936. Social Security checks give working people a reason to retire. And the meager amount of the checks gives retired people a reason to go back to work.

     Actor Harrison Ford was born on this day in 1942. After playing the hero in all those Indiana Jones movies, it must be really embarrassing at the supermarket when he can't get his shopping cart unstuck.