Read Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2 Online
Authors: John Michael Scalzi
Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2 (8 page)
T
immy,” who was twelve,
was misbehaving in school. So naturally Timmy's mom knew that she had to discipline her child to make him understand the consequences of his actions. And of course, that's fine: the parent who won't discipline his or her own child creates a problem child for the rest of us.
Timmy's mom's choice of discipline: Timmy had to rake the leaves in the front yard! Well, that's tough but fair; it's physical labor and something most kids don't enjoy, but at the same time it's something useful, and at least the boy will get some fresh air. So, on balance, a reasonable punishment. Get raking, Timmy!
Oh yeah, one other thing, said Timmy's mom. Timmy would be raking the leaves completely naked. In the rain. With high winds. While the temperatures are in the 40s.
And it's here, alas, that Timmy's mom lost us. And apparently, she lost the rest of the neighbors in her Virginia neighborhood, too, since one of them called the police to complain that a twelve-year-old was out naked in the rain. Timmy was still in the front yard, rake in hand, when the cops rolled up. Shortly thereafter they rolled away with Timmy's mom in tow because she'd been charged with felony child neglect, which, speaking of appropriate discipline, can get you five years in the Virginia pen.
Source:
Freelance-Star
(Fredricksburg, VA)
Dumbing in the Family
O
ne of the stories below has good relations with the truth. Two of them are shady second cousins. Which is which? That's for us to know and you to guess.
1.
Â
The “evil twin” concept, beloved by Hollywood, got a real life workout when Tim Garrity of Dallas, Texas, was cited for disturbing the peace when witnesses saw his truck and a man matching his description tearing up and down residential streets in the early morning hours. But Garrity was home sleeping next to his wife at the time of the events. However, Garrity's identical twin brother, Charlie, who lived with their parents less than a mile away, had keys to both Tim's house and his truck. Upon questioning, Charlie initially denied borrowing the car, but admitted to a drunken joyride after persuasion from his mother, who, as Dallas police officer Wayne McDonald said, “smacked him upside the head and told him to tell the truth.”
2
.
Â
Kids sure love their video games, but some kids like their video games more than others. A lot more. Like, to a dangerously unhealthy degree. Like “Soo,” a Hong Kong thirteen-year-old so wrapped up in his computer game that he hardly noticed when midnight rolled around. His dad noticed the time and came in to tell Soo to give it a rest. Well, Soo didn't want to give it a rest, so dad did that parental thing dads do, and went over to the wall socket
and unplugged the computer. And then Soo did that thing kids do when dads do the parental thing, which was to go into the kitchen, grab a knife, and go after his father with it. Oh, wait, that's not actually what most kids do. Silly us. Well, dad managed to overpower Soo, the police were called and no one ended up getting hurt. But we suspect that's it for video games for Soo. And rightly so.
3.
Â
Aaah . . . the miracle of birth! Typically, it's a typical time for celebratation but an atypical time to get arrested. That's what happened in St. Louis, Missouri, when several relatives of a delivering woman were arrested at St. John's Mercy Medical Center. The mother-to-be had requested that several family members be allowed to observe the birth; the request was initially granted, but “The family members would keep getting in the way,” said nurse Juanita Ocampo, who assisted the doctors. “They were all really casual about it, like they were at a cookout, not a birth.” The doctor eventually asked the room to be cleared of everyone except the woman's husband, but the relatives, feeling insulted, became hostile. How dare the doctor try to remove distractions from the baby's delivery? Of all the nerve! The doc then paged hospital security, who called in the police who escorted the relatives out of the delivery room, so the doctor, could like do his job and stuff.
Turn to
page 329
for the answer.
today's Episode: The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer
Starring in this Episode:
Chi McBride and Dann Florek
Debut Episode:
October 5, 1998, on UPN
The Pitch:
Desmond Pfeiffer (the “p” is pronounced, and played by McBride) is a black, British gentleman in the 1860s who is exiled from Britain for cheating at cards. Desmond moves to the U.S. and finds employment as a butler in the White House of Abraham Lincoln (Florek). Think of it as
Benson,
only during the Civil War.
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Because:
UPN, with its tiny viewership, was carving out a niche with “urban” comedies, and this seemed up their alley. Plus show creators Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan had won Emmys for writing and producing
The Golden Girls.
In Reality:
The NAACP got whiff of the idea that
Desmond
would be deriving yuks from slavery and called for a boycott of the show, which pretty much stripped the show of any “urban” credibility it might have. UPN, somewhat panicked, pulled the pilot episode and started the series with another episode instead. Not that it mattered, as television critic Philip Michaels
commented on
Teevee.org
: “No,
Desmond Pfeiffer
isn't racist. It is, however, unspeakably lame.” Another misstep was to portray Abe Lincoln as a sex-starved, dim-bulb who engaged in “telegraph sex” with strange women; one could argue that, in theory, the show was satirizing the events of the Clinton White House, but it would be a pretty weak argument.
How Long Did It Last?
Four episodes, with the final episode airing October 26, 1998. Nine episodes were completed; five, including the pilot, never aired.
Were Those Responsible Punished?
Some.
Desmond
creators Fanaro and Nathan went on separately to make bad movies: Fanaro wrote the senior-citizen crime caper flop
The Crew
while Nathan wrote and directed the punishingly awful flop
Boat Trip.
McBride went on to act in a better TV series (
Boston Public
) and was most recently in the summer movies
The Terminal
and
I, Robot.
Dann Florek retreated back in the
Law and Order
universe that had made him famous; he plays a captain on
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
“Teach your children well,” says the song. Well, that's not what happened in this chapter; in this chapter, we've got people teaching children very, very poorly. Although to be fair, the kids do their part as well. But hey! They're kids. They have an excuse. The adults in this chapter, on the other hand, we have to wonder about. How did they get out of high school? (We have some theories, but they're not very nice.)
Â
I
n Orlando, Florida, there's this great program
for kids called, “The Game of Life, The Game of Golf,” that aims to introduce underprivileged youngsters to the sport. But an additional part of the class involves teaching kids to make smart life choicesâlike, for instance, being careful around loaded weapons.
Enter “Agent Smith,” from the Drug Enforcement Agency (better known to us as the DEA) and his .40 caliber duty weapon. During the class, Agent Smith took out the gun, removed the magazine, and then pulled back the slide to clear the chamberâindeed, he had one member of the audience of about fifty adults and children come up and confirm that there was no bullet in the chamber.
As a brief interruption, we'd like to say that we don't know much about handguns and the handling thereof, but we do know not to ever,
ever
take anyone else's word on whether a gun is loaded or not. They could be lying, they could be idiots, or they could miss that one last little bullet. Treating every gun as if it's loaded is the smart way to go. Now, back to the action.
Once the audience member confirmed there was no bullet in the gun, Smith released the slideâwhich caused the bullet in the “unloaded” gun (surprise!) to blast out of the barrel and imbed itself in Agent Smith's thigh (it was only a flesh wound). A spectator who brought her nephew to the class related to the
Orlando Sentinel:
“My first thought was that it was part of his presentation. I thought it was a blank and he was trying to make a point about how easy it is to fire, to get
the kids' attention. But then I looked at the agent's face and he looked surprised.”
The good news is that Agent Smith's pain was not in vain since he did get through to those kids about the dangers of loaded weapons, just not in the way he had originally planned. The spectator also noted, “The point of gun safety hit home . . . after seeing that, my nephew doesn't want to have anything to do with guns.” We suspect Agent Smith doesn't either.
Source:
Orlando Sentinel, The Washington Times
Â
T
here's nothing funny about nut allergies.
But in the
particular,
there's not a thing amusing about someone having an allergic reaction so instantaneous and severe that their breathing passages constrict, anaphylactic shock sets in, and only a fast jab of adrenaline keeps someone on this side on the Styx (the mythological river, not the band).
This may be why the South Orange school district in New Jersey suspended a sixth grader for three weeks after the student allegedly threatened a teacher with . . . a package of Nutter Butter cookies. It seems that the teacher had a severe nut allergy, and the student in question had an unopened pack of said cookies in class
and
had made some untoward suggestions to other classmates regarding the application of said cookies to said teacher.
For discussing assault with a deadly cookie, you can get suspended these days? Yeesh. We can see how an actual attempt to rub said cookies on the teacher would certainly have been a problem. Hard time for the kid and a refusal of admittance to all the Ivy League schools (well, except maybe Brown) would have been an appropriate punishment. Better yet, if he dove across the cafeteria, peanut butter cookie in one hand, a small bust of noted peanut scientist George Washington Carver in the other, he'd still win points for creativity, but still meet with a suspension, too. But suspending a kid for just talking about the Nutter Butter's capabilities as a weapon? That's harsh, man. (We can remember some of the comments we made about our teachers. We'd be looking at jail time nowadays.)
This is also a reminder to teachers out there: telling a class of middle school kids about potentially fatal allergies you have is like giving yourself a nasty paper cut and then swimming in the shark poolânot a good idea. If you're going to tell them you're allergic to something, tell them you're allergic to BMWs. Or Brad Pitt. Let's see the kids smuggle one of those into class in their backpacks.
Source: Associated Press
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W
hat do we want, hope, and expect from a middle school basketball coach?
Optimally, we'd hope for one of those coaches who can take a collection of raggedy kids and diligently craft them into a team of players that trusts each other as they take to the hard courtâand take on life. Realistically, we'll settle for anyone who makes sure the players shoot into the right basket at least 80 percent of the time.
“Chad” who coached basketball for a Pleasantville, New Jersey, middle school, appeared to lack proper motivational skills. For some reason, Chad believed that public humiliation is what makes the junior high athlete great. The evidence for this came when Chad presented one of his players with a very special award at the annual team banquet. Was it for most team spirit? Best bench warming? Most pronounced ability to draw the foul?
Nope, it was an award for the biggest crybaby on the team. Presenting a trophy with a crying baby on it to the thirteen-year-old recipient, Chad recounted how the boy “begged to get in the game, and all he did was whine.” To add insult to injury, the boy's name was misspelled on the trophy.
Chad would later maintain the award was a joke. But oddly enough, the school board had difficulty in finding the nugget of humor in that particular act, and voted to keep Chad from ever coaching again in Pleasantville. In addition, he had to publicly apologize to the student and take sensitivity training classes. That's a start.