Julia Child - Punked???

Found in a vault outside of Newark, NJ - The late, great Julia Child gets practical joked:

America's Funniest Bloopers and Practical Jokes
Episode #56
Segment 4 - deleted

Dick Clark: Now in this next joke, we introduced famed gourmet Julia Child to an "up and coming world-class chef" by the name of "Antoine"(footage of the imposing Julia Child being introduced to a small moustached man in a chef's hat and ensemble in a large restaurant kitchen - the chef is played by a younger Roberto Begnini), but as Julia will soon find out, he's not the skilled practioner we've made him out to be.

Julia Child: Well, it's a great pleasure to meet you Antoine!

Antoine: Merci. The honor is all mine.

Julia: So I understand you're going to make a receipe of yours called Crepes Antoine?

Antoine: Oui! That I am.

(Antoine takes a frying pan out and put it on a stove. He lights the gas burner by lighting a match and then spitting a mouthful of Everclear over the flame an onto the gas.)

Julia: (impressed) Oh, how flamboyant! I'll bet that keeps the kitchen staff on their toes!

(Antoine pulls out an egg and clumsily cracks it with one hand spilling large shell fragments into the pan along with the egg. He ignores this and continues to cook.)

Julia: (confused) Ummm, Antoine... aren't you going to remove the shell from the pan?

Antoine: Non, non... She is part of the meal.

Julia: But, aren't you worried that the diners will complain. I mean, that is a mistake for any chef.

Antoine: If a musician plays a wrong note in a concert, they do not stop and start the piece all over...no?

Julia: Yes, but what if someone gets hurt eating the shell?

Antoine: Ah, but without pain, there is no art!

Julia: (Nervously smiling and looking around) You're a bit of a nutter, aren't you?

(Antoine adds some cream to the egg and shell mixture and whips it about in the pan with an egg-beater. Bits of egg and shell fly out of the pan.)

Julia: (Wiping a bit of shell from her face) Hmm...That's a most unusual technique. Would you care for a whisk or a spatula perhaps?

Antoine: Non...I like the exercise. Plus, the eggshells, they are broken into little pieces.

Julia: (Aside to the camera) I think if I ate that, I'd like to break him into little pieces.

(He adds half a cup of cayenne pepper to the mixture.)

Julia: Good heavens! Are you trying to kill your patrons?

Antoine: They like it like this. It is an aphrodisiac...besides, without pain...

Julia: ...There is no art. Yes, I caught that the first time.

(Antoine adds a half bottle of sherry to the mixture. Sloshing some over the sides, which adds a considerable amount of flame to the mix.)

Julia: (Her eyebrows smoking) I think that if you're going to flambe', perhaps you should do it inside the pan.

Antoine: It's all right, this will all be a reduction.

Julia: For crepes? You don't reduce crepes! What are you, an anarchist?

(Antoine flips the crepe/sherry/cayenne pepper mix as if to turn it. The scalding mixture hits Julia square in the face.)

Julia: Aaaggh!!! Watch what you're doing you crazy, little bastard!!!

Antoine: Oops!

Julia: Oops?? OOPS?!?!?! All you have to say is "Oops?" I'll show you "Oops!" you cretin gastronomique!! I was in the OSS you little twerp! I was taught how to kill a man with my bare hands in only three moves, and as you're French, it'll only take me two!!

(Julia reaches for "Antoine's" neck. The camera is knocked sideways. Sounds of gurgled screaming in Italian.)

Julia: Tippecanoe and Tyler too!!! Remember the Alamo!!!!

(Fade to black)

Beer with a kick like a mule...

...That's the story from MSNBC. A Bavarian brewer has concocted a lager that will not only put hair on your chest, but will burn it off again straightaway.

Described as tasting like a "a quirky mixture of beer and sherry", the new beer, called "Gotterdamerung!" has an alcohol content of 25.4 percent (or 50 proof), twice that of Germany's previously strongest beers ("Blitzkreig" and "Kickenurarsen".)

The brewer, Harald Schneider, stated that "People will only be able to drink two or three glasses, otherwise they'll drop like flies." Obviously, Harald has never been to a major American University frathouse, or an London pub, where, in a few weeks, this stuff will be selling by the truckload.

Reportedly, the German military is looking at the new concoction as a substitute for petrol, given the high oil prices. Unfortunately, the octane level of Gotterdamerung! is too high. Also, when used as a fuel, it emits highly concentrated sherry and hops flavoured exhaust, leading to large quantities of winos trailing behind the military vehicles.

A British version, going by the name "Ozzy" is being considered.

DOUI vs. the FONZ, Act II (A Wretched Hippo)

Well, the Friends of the National Zoo, or FONZ as Ron Howard likes to refer to them as, have not responded to my mail suggesting that Stew publicly came up with the name the baby panda contest idea before their little contest. I suppose it could be blind panic, given that this is as controversial as zoos get, notwithstanding unexplained animal fatalities, which drive Ingrid Newkirk crazy (all right, more crazy.)

Nonetheless, now that we are fully engaged with this massive, marmoset-laden government behemoth, which is fully supported by our tax dollars, I do not intend to back-off. Indeed, I shall fight this battle to the bitter end, which will be spectacularly bitter, given that I seriously doubt anyone at FONZ knows or cares who we are, and might consider feeding us to the piranha in the Amazonia exhibit if it would stop the incessant flood of e-mails (2) to their Inboxes.

Anyway, here is the latest:

Dear Arthur Fonzerelli fanatics,

Judging by your response to my previous message (see below for details), or lack thereof, I can only assume that you are not taking we at The Dictionary ofUnfortunate Ideas(http://unfortunateideas.blogspot.com/) seriously.

Indeed, I suspect that the very mention of us around the office provokes one of the following responses:

A) Laughing so hard that the all-natural llama milk in favor at zoos these days shoots out of your nose like a sticky tongue out of a chameleon.

B) A shrug of the shoulders and then the dawning realization that the e-mail you immediately deleted a week or so ago was not a one-time occurrence.

C) A slow shaking of the head, followed by a double dose of Advil.

D) B. followed immediately by C.

E) Multiple restraining orders.

F) An offhanded reference to Lemony Snicket. (No, no,no!!!)

Nonetheless, we still contend that your "Name the BabyPanda" contest(http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas/NamePandaCub/) is a complete copy of the contest my colleague and jai-alai partner Stew Miller promoted in his posts ofAugust 2nd(http://unfortunateideas.blogspot.com/2005/08/its-boy-thats-umbilical-cord-mr.html) and August 4th (http://unfortunateideas.blogspot.com/2005/08/first-annual-panda-naming-contest.html) with the exception that you didn't even let people pick the bleeding names. (China/Washington Magnificent?? Frank Zappa named his kids better than that!)

It is still not too late to reach a compromise. We will be perfectly satisfied if you simply announce that the winner of the contest is "Stew Miller Panda Magnificent China/Washington Mountain Dragon Magnificent." As a public entity, I think you will find that this is in keeping with the grand traditions of government. You can even claim a committee came up with the idea, just to keep it real.

Also, we're sure the parents won't mind, and if they do, just bribe them off with a few extra stalks of bamboo. It's like crack for pandas. (I was at the National Zoo in August and saw the male panda. He was devouring the stuff the way Roger Ebert goes through Raisinettes.)

Please respond as soon as you can, in between feeding the golden marmosets (of which you seem to have thousands) and the hippo, who I understand can be a bit cranky.

Yours etc...
Earl Fando Co-Editor and Contributor, (still)
The Dictionary of Unfortunate Ideas
http://unfortunateideas.blogspot.com/

Good to hear from Stew...

...and not just because I held a lit Sterno to his head and demanded a post or I was going to fry him like Paris Hilton's brain.

(Brief interlude - Commercial:

A hand holds up an egg.

Announcer: This is your brain.

The hand cracks the egg and empties the contents into a hot frying pan, where they sizzle and pop.

Announcer: This is your brain on drugs.

The street containing the house containing the stove on which the frying pan containing the sizzling egg is completely vaporized by a thermonuclear warhead detonated by a massive earthquake. A mile-wide asteroid slams in the smoldering radioactive ruins. A small dog, highly frazzled from the multiple disasters, walks up to the exact point in the smoking wasteland where the frying pan once was and pees on it.

Announcer: This is Paris Hilton's brain on drugs...or sober. Who can tell?

This Ad sponsored by The Foundation for a Better Tomorrow and Hardees.)

So anyway, it was good to see Stew's post. Juan Carlos and Zimpter, I expect you to keep pace. Chico and Linus, where the hell are you lads?

Thank you for reading this.

Stewmiller is still dead!!!

Not really, but it sure feels like it from here. I have had the unfortunate luck (what's that?!?!?) of becoming the ISO 9001 sucker, um sorry, manager for the people who pay the bills. Please spare me the Dilbert jokes. This short post is here to warn you that I will be back up and running next week. Get ready for a scathing expose of all things ISO. Good night Gracie.

Little Buddy!!!

Bob "Gilligan" Denver, AKA "Maynard G. Krebs" has passed on.

No more shall we make jokes along the lines of how the castaways would have got rescued much faster if Gilligan wasn't always stoned on peyote, or that it was a good thing the professor never figured out how to make meth in that bamboo chemistry set of his.

No more shall we tease this likeable neo-hippie about how the only differences between him and the beatnik character of Maynard G. Krebs, that he played on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, was that Maynard kept his reefer-smoking private, and could actually grow facial hair.

No more shall we playfully ask how much he and the underestimated Chuck McCann were paid to endure Far Out Space Nuts. (My favorite moment: The scene where they are supposed to fly up to a high window on jet packs or summat. We see the interior window they are supposed to be flying into. We see their shadows as they wait for the director's cue to jump down from the window, where they are waiting to jump down as though they've just flown 100 feet into the air.)

To paraphrase William Shatner, "He's gone, gone, gone, gone..."

We shall miss his voice cracking with emotion (think Peter Brady singing "Time to Change"), whether crying out "Skipper" or "Work!" We shall miss the mental riffs where he loses himself in thought and a torrent of childlike speech until brought out of his reverie by the sound of Dobie's frustrated voice or the beneficent authoritarian force of the Skipper's hat. We shall miss his ageing attempts to keep pace with the Harlem Globetrotters as they challenged a force of super robots. We shall miss his earnest efforts to treat the replacement Ginger as though she were actually one-tenth the self-indulgent sexpot named Tina Louise. We shall miss the quiet surreptitious leers at Mary Ann when he thought the camera wasn't on him (It's there I tell you! Look more carefully!!)

Bob, old bean, you were a bit player in the world of comedy TV, but you brightened up many a day chasing men in gorilla suits, caucasian actors embarrassly dressed as Polynesian warriors, and Zsa Zsa Gabor and her yacht. You bore Thurston Howell III's elitist nonsense with grace and charm. You played patsy to the Professor's psuedo-scientific Disneyland of bamboo and palm contraptions (including what surely must be the closest to real life anyone has come to creating the Flintstones' sedan) with a befuddled, yet subtly ironic dignity. You wore the beat up old sailor's hat well.

We'll miss you little buddy.

If I didn't hate coconut, I might very well have a coconut cream pie in your honor, but I loathe it. You can't have everything you know.