I have seen a few odd things just around the college campus were I attend, the occasional unicyclist or student dressed in full pirate regalia, but one of the things I found funniest is another vehicular story.
I was driving down a road that, well I wouldn’t exactly call it a ‘back road’ but it was little traveled enough that four-way stops were more common than stoplights. As I approached one of the afore mentioned stop signs I saw on the other side a car pulling out of a driveway. I am no expert on cars, I know a car when I see one and in general that is as far as my knowledge goes, but even I could see that this was the type of car that you could put a ‘0 to 60 in X seconds’ bumper sticker on and not be overcompensating, clearly an expensive sports car of some kind. Anyway this car peels out of the driveway backwards, pulls a 270 to face my direction (towards the four way stop), pauses and starts revving the engine. After revving the engine he peels out again, tires spinning and smoke curling, the whole deal. He puts the full acceleration power of this car into speeding up to 35MPH (the speed limit on the road) and carefully approaching the stop sign where he puts on his left blinker and politely waits for the right of way.
Maybe its just me, but I found this quite hilarious.
My MIL once witnessed a middle-aged black man walking down 38th street wearing an NBA Jersey, his pants around his knees (he was walking very carefully), and brand new tighty-whities. She said you could see the full length of his thighs above his pants and below his undies.
At San Francisco’s Vesuvio Café/Bar I joined a merry group of spectators at the front window watching an expensively-dressed, impeccably-coiffed woman attempting to extricate her high-end Mercedes from a too-small parking place. Her method was to back up until she hit the car behind her, then pull forward until she hit the car in front of her. A driver of minimal skill could’ve gotten out in three or four moves, but it took this woman about 20 attempts over about 10 minutes. At some point, she managed to get one of the rear wheels over the curb, and it became a betting matter whether she would hit the car behind her or a street sign first when she backed up. The crowd was making sound effects and yelling, “Hit him again!” For the aging hippies and various degenerates enjoying their Irish Coffees in Vesuvio’s, there was something very satisfying about watching this rich bitch who was completely unable to handle her expensive vehicle.
I worked in this bar one time, and there was this strange guy who would come in, sit by himself, drink a beer, and apply Chapstick to his entire face. He probably did this once a week for two months.
I know I posted once before, but it was such an If-it-weren’t-for-that-horse moment, it bears repeating.
Where I work there is a long hallway with a bunch of portraits lining the walls. Each portrait is a black and white photograph blown up to poster size. And each one is of a single person. The subject of each portrait is a great thinker of some sort or another. Einstein, Schweitzer, Jung, etc. There is only one portrait that has two people, Helen Keller and Polly Thompson.
So these women were walking down the hall one day, and looking at all the portraits. As I said, the portraits were of great thinkers, and it became obvious to me that I would not see portraits of these women, based on the discourse I overheard.
Anyway, one looked at the portrait of Keller and Thompson, and said “Ooh, look, this is a good one.” To which the other replied “Ooh, that is a good one! But how come there are two of her? Oh wait, I get it. In one, she’s not wearing her glasses.”
At my previous job, I worked at a branch of the company a continent away from Corporate Headquarters.
On the wall near the entrance to the workplace, images of all the current Corporate Executives were displayed in tasteful, framed, black-and-white headshots. One day, as I was walking out, a couple of relatively new employees were standing there, looking at the wall portraits. I overheard the following conversation as I passed.
Person #1: Who are all those people?
Person #2: (in hushed tones) Those are all the past Presidents of the company. They’re dead now.
Person #1: (reverently) Wow……
[del]Many[/del]Several years ago I was on a business trip to Palm Springs, CA. I was eating in a mexican restaurant there, and I happened to glance over at a young woman seated a couple of tables away. She looked like a typical college student, around 20 years old or so.
When the server brought her food, she dug in her purse and brought out a pair of chopsticks to eat her mexican dinner.
I was at a busy intersection on the way home from work, several cars back. When the light turned red, a guy in the front car got out and ran to the car behind him with a worried look on his face. He handed a banana through the window, then ran back to his car.
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, but there is an area of the lake called Party Cove. Party Cove is like spring break for young drunk people and older adults with large, nice boats to hang out on the water. I was with my parents and my mother’s old coworker and his wife on their 40-something foot Sea Ray cruising Party Cove a few years back. Sometimes, this preacher with a huge boat would sit out in the cove and blast sermons over his speakers to all the ‘wrong doers’ or whatever. His boat was out, and a boat full of young people cruised by and all the guys on the top deck of the boat dropped their trunks and danced around as they passed the preacher boat. Everyone around was laughing and hollering.
Coast Guard came right up and nabbed em.
Then, we saw a boat full of young people attempt to, I suppose just stop (which you can’t really do in the water unless you’re stopping and tying up to something, as boats don’t have brakes) and run right into a bunch of trees and a cliff on the edge of the cove. Half the boat was engulfed by trees and they got stuck. Boating drunk = no good.
One year in college I lived in a small apartment complex across the street from a sorority house. During Pledge Week, every hour during the day the sorority girls would come streaming out of the house, wearing frilly pastel dresses and heels, to line both sides of the sidewalk to the house. Whenever a pledge arrived, they’d sing the sorority song as the pledge walked up the sidewalk to the house.
This got old real fast. The manager of my apartment complex got some big honkin’ speakers, brought them outside and pointed them at the sorority house. Whenever the girls started singing, he started playing an album by the Kazoo City Orchestra at top volume. This upset the girls; they’d stomp their feet and give us dirty looks – some of them started crying. Then they called the police.
The police were pretty cool. No doubt they put up with a lot of truly stupid shit during Pledge Week. Apparently they couldn’t tell us to stop playing the kazoo music without telling the sorority girls to stop singing. However, the sorority girls had said we were yelling obscenities at them (not true), and the police were politely telling us not to yell at the girls.
Suddenly a pick up truck with about 20 buck naked fraternity guys in the back came barreling down the street. The guys were whopping and hollering and mooning the sorority. The police cut short their lecture to us to take off after the truck.
I’ll leave aside the obvious joke about whether he repeated the act, or how long it took, Nor will I ask you to confirm the decade in which the act took place.
That aside, was he the boss of the hot dog joint at the time?
I’m not sure which would be cooler, “yes” or “no”.
In Jerusalem, my bus pulled up beside this guy riding a camel, dressed in full “Arabian Nights” regalia - calmly chatting on a cell phone. I was so sad I didn’t have a camera on me.
