Get Cynical

For a few seconds the stadium was plunged into a baffled silence. Everyone knew what Caltech was. It was that little Pasadena technical college down the road from the Rose Bowl stadium. What no one could figure out was what its name was doing in the middle of Washington’s flip-card show. Throughout the United States, a million minds simultaneously struggled to comprehend this enigma.

In fact, only a handful of people watching the game understood the full significance of what had just happened, and these were the Caltech students who had labored for the past month to secretly alter Washington’s flip-card show.

A great way to get back at those noisy neighbors! Give them a taste of their own medicine with any one of these 20 ear-splitting sound effect tracks. Anyone who’s ever lived in an apartment will really appreciate this hilarious CD. Earplugs supplied for your listening pleasure.

Okay, you want God? Let’s talk about God. Your religion is bogus. Fundamentalism, the facile belief in the unexplained and un-researched, is something you born-agains (couldn’t get it right the first time, huh?) share with Al Qaeda, whose ideologues doggedly adhere to religious misinterpretations every bit as silly and dangerous as yours. Just like you, Muslim fundamentalists long to impose an unrealistic and intolerant pseudo-Calvinist morality on the world. In fact, America’s religious right has so much in common with the Shiah, it’s a wonder you guys don’t invite them to join the Rotary. Born-againsters look for the face of Christ in the wallpaper; fundamentalist Muslims hallucinate the voice of the 12th Imam; but aside from that (and extremely divergent attitudes toward pork), you both hate the same stuff–homosexuality, pacifism, Jews, education, uppity women, enlightenment, short skirts, gangsta rap, tattoos, infidels. … (They also share your love of super-lethal weaponry.)

That night, Charlie and Addie Sparks had to make the most difficult decision of their circus careers. After all those years with Mary they had become so attached to her, but they couldn’t take a chance that she might harm a circus patron. They decided to have her destroyed.

But how were they to destroy a 7500 pound elephant? Shooting her in four soft spots on her head might have worked but was too risky with the crowd of curiosity seekers that the story attracted. She was too smart to eat food laced with cyanide. In 1903 an elephant had been electrocuted at Coney Island, but that was with the help of Thomas Edison. Kingsport or Erwin did not have enough electrical power for an electrocution. Clinchfield could use two engines to crush Mary, or the derrick could be used for hanging her.

Pictured above is the cover of the 1930 edition of the DeMoulin Bros. & Co. catalog titled “Burlesque and Side Degree Specialties, Paraphernalia and Costumes.” We believe that this was the last “fraternalism supply” catalog the DeMoulin Bros. produced, as this company suffered the same fate that many businesses did with the onset of the Great Depression. Today, they are one of the largest suppliers of marching band uniforms in the country.

To millions of children throughout the world in the seventies and eighties, that name was synonymous with a funny, cuddly and ultimately loveable fuzzy blue monster from Sesame Street. For many of us, Grover was hands-down the best character on the show: bringing laughter, intelligence and a certain irreverence not seen in other 2-dimensional children’s programs of the day. And he was cute, too.

But what many of us didn’t see behind that brave exterior was a monster cowering in the face of his own insecurities, a monster so unsure of himself he wouldn’t even watch his own performances, and a monster who ultimately allowed his own weaknesses to overcome him and nearly ruin his career. A genius, a tyrant, a womanizer or just a washed-up drunk? It’s time to expose Grover- the monster behind the myth.