Random Shots: Notes for the Holidays

R.F. Kampfer

CHRYSLER WILL DISCONTINUE production of the Dodge (Mitsubishi) Stealth this year. Popularity of the pseudo-sports car declined after buyers learned that it was not, alas, invisible to highway patrol radar.

Experienced auto workers learn to take their breaks leaning against a car–so that they’ll wake up when the line starts again.

The trouble with union education lasses is that they concentrate on what you can’t do.

Kampfer’s Guide to Parenting

A NUMBER OF Americans have been duped by a scam that proposed to enroll their children in Oxford University. The parents should have known better, but the prospect of moving their kids across the Atlantic clouded their judgment.

You know you have a dysfunctional family when you start to envy the cast of “Roseanne.”

Satan couldn’t be everywhere at once, so he invented children.

Seen at a recent antique show: A girl’s bicycle with Elvis Presley’s face on the seat. We are not making this up.

A Halloween hint for next year: If you answer the door wearing a “Return of the Living Dead” costume, many of the younger trick-or-treaters will drop the candy they’ve already collected as they scream and run away.

Murder, He Wrote (No OJ!)

WATCHING THE FIRST episode of “Murder One” will be the biggest commitment a lot of people make this year.

A good general rule in murder mysteries is that the first suspect will be the second victim.

In “The Lion King,” when Simba sings “I Just Can’t Wait to be King,” does he realize that he’s saying, “I just can’t wait for my father to die”?

More Summer Vacation Snapshots

HARVARD SQUARE HAS to be one of the few places in the world where one can hear “Sounds of Silence” played by an Inca quartet with traditional instruments.

A restaurant in New York City’s East Village offers “Free Internet hookup with dinner.” Is this the future equivalent of “Do you want fries with that?”

Further proof that New York is the specialist’s paradise is given by the opening of a new shop on Bleeker Street dealing in nothing but R. Crumb collectibles.

The recent documentary about the controversial Crumb makes one wonder if he would have produced anything had he come from a healthier family. Of course, there are lots of dysfunctional families and very few artists. The movie, incidentally, features a cameo appearance by the immortal Spain Rodriguez, the only known underground cartoonist to be both an outlaw biker and a member of the Socialist Labor Party.

Did you know?

WHY DOES IT take millions of sperm to fertilize one egg? Because, being males, they won’t stop to ask for directions

The Oklahoma bombing inspired some people to arm themselves against the government and others to arm themselves against the “militia.” In Germany during the 1920s there were four private armies–fascist, Communist, Social Democratic and monarchist–pegging shots at each other and the police.

ATC 60, January-February 1996