Uncle John's Presents: Book of the Dumb Read online

  Art didn’t get a second interview. Apparently they don’t give points for initiative. Or audacity.

  Source: Reuters

  DUMB MOVIE FESTIVAL: KANGAROO JACK (2003)

  Our Entry: Kangaroo Jack, starring Jerry O’Connell and Anthony Anderson

  The Plot (Such As It Is): Two witless mob couriers (O’Connell and Anderson) travel to Australia (accompanied by many utterances of “G’day” and Men at Work tunes) where they promptly lose $50,000 of mob cash to a computer-generated kangaroo. Thenceforth follows a chase across the continent with O’Connell and Anderson being outsmarted by the kangaroo every step of the way.

  Superhot model Estella Warren shows up as a naturalist primarily to give the targeted nine-year-old male audience a head start on hormonal urges. Despite being presented as a kid’s film, the flick is full of adult-style violence and groping. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, known for super-violent, super-dumb action films.

  Fun Fact: Cowritten by Steve Bing, better known to most of the world for being the guy who denied impregnation of Elizabeth Hurley. He owned up to this, however. Odd value system, there, Steve.

  Total North American Box Office: $66,723,216 (source: The-Numbers.com). Yes, it was actually a hit. Weep for civilization.

  The Critics Rave!

  “Virtually every shot of the kangaroo was digitally created, and perhaps that was an insurance policy masterstroke. Forcing a real live one to act opposite these co-stars could have easily constituted animal cruelty.”—Village Voice

  “I couldn’t find a plot here with a gun to my head, but it has something to do with a white hairdresser, a black street hustler and a kangaroo named Jack. A reward is promised if you can tell them apart . . . I’ve had more laughs and bigger thrills in a petting zoo.”—New York Observer

  “My four-year-old nephew can write his own name. This puts him several steps above the folks who wrote the screenplay for Kangaroo Jack . . . O’Connell and Anderson have all the comic instincts of Leopold and Loeb.”—Nitrate Online

  “It’s a scientific fact that nothing hits the sweet spot of your average 10-year-old kid like the sight of a kangaroo in a red Brooklyn jacket and sunglasses boogieing down to ‘the hip, hop, the hippety-hop.’ The more pressing question is: Will parents be able to sit through Kangaroo Jack without plunging sharp sticks into their eyes?”—Boston Globe

  “Why there is a genuinely menacing gangster subplot in what advertises itself as a lighthearted family entertainment (overlooking the alcohol abuse, women-bashing, casual indifference to the law, beating of old men, and uncomfortable racial dynamic) is a problem that comments not only on the fact that Kangaroo Jack probably began life as an adult entertainment, but highlights the alien-ness of the kangaroo foolishness in the proceedings.”—Film Freak Central

  “I’m not sure which news is more distressing, that this movie cost $65,000,000 to make or that it took in over $67,000,000 in box office receipts.”—DVD Town

  THE REALLY STUPID QUIZ: WACKY WORLD LEADERS

  Time for another Really Stupid Quiz! Remember: one of these stories is true. Two of them are false. All are stupid. You decide which seems more realistically stupid to you.

  1. Fun-loving Fidel Castro pulled a fast one on Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez when the two of them were in Paraguay for the swearing in of that country’s new president. Castro convinced a Paraguayan minister of parliament to warn Chavez about a possible ambush, and when Chavez walked through a doorway, Castro jumped out at him from behind the door, badly startling his fellow head of state. Later, Chavez said it was just “a joke amongst friends.”

  2. Cherie Blair, the wife of British prime minister Tony Blair, was offered a recording contract by Madonna’s Maverick Records after a cheeky club remix of Mrs. Blair singing the Beatles song “When I’m 64” became a surprise hit in the U.K. and Spain. “The idea would be to have her sing some classic tunes and do some spoken word bits, like that “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen)” hit Baz Luhrmann had a few years ago,” a Maverick Records executive said. Mrs. Blair reportedly turned down the offer, citing other commitments and a desire to avoid conflicts with her husband’s job.

  3. President Arnold Ruutel of Estonia had an emergency trip to a Tallinn hospital when a comedy skit for Estonia’s popular “Everybody’s Laughing” TV show went awry. In the skit, Ruutel sat for a mock press conference (during which he jokingly declared war on neighbors Finland and Latvia) and at the end was smacked in the face with a pie by the show’s host. Some of the pie filling worked its way underneath one of Ruutel’s contact lenses, abrading his cornea and necessitating a hospital visit. Damage was minor, although doctors made Ruutel wear an eye patch for a week. At a real press conference the next day, Ruutel laughingly announced his retirement from show business.

  Which one is really stupid?

  Answer page 311.

  Source: Ananova

  “Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be ‘too clever by half.’ The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.”

  —John Major

  “I’ve had a lot of experience with people smarter than I am.”

  —Gerald Ford

  “So dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.”

  —Lyndon B. Johnson, speaking of Gerald Ford

  MONEY FOR NOTHING

  Here’s another pop quiz for you. You go to your ATM to take out some money. Upon receiving your money, you take your receipt and see that your cash balance is $500,418.02, which is roughly half a million more than you were aware you had. What do you do next? a) go to the bank to let someone know about the error, or b) engage in a mad rush to spend as much of it as humanly possible before the bank catches the error?

  If your answer tends more toward the second option than the first, let us delight you with the cautionary tale of “Darren,” of Ogden, Utah. In July 2003, a Denver title company wired some money to a bank account, and accidentally punched in the wrong account number. Presto, a cool half million magically appeared in Darren’s bank account. And Darren allegedly did something he shouldn’t have; he started spending that half million. He bought three cars, for a grand total of $116,000. He spent another $114,000 on miscellaneous stuff.

  Thing is: just because some money is in your bank account doesn’t mean it’s yours. And sooner or later the people who it belongs to are going to want it back, and they’re likely to ask for the help of local, state and federal authorities. Which is exactly what happened in this case: the cops finally caught up with Darren in Salt Lake City and arrested him on the charge of felony theft, which is what it’s called when you spend $230,000 that’s not yours. The cars?

  Impounded. Let’s hope it was fun while it lasted.

  The moral: Free money isn’t free. Darren’s probably going to be paying for his for a while.

  Source: Associated Press

  I’M APPLYING FOR THE POSITION OF BANK ROBBER

  “Albert” had a lovely résumé—too bad he wrote a bomb threat on the back of it. Al used the résumé and the bomb threat to rob a Fort Worth, Texas, bank. Once he got the cash, he fled the scene, foolishly leaving the résumé behind. He’d covered up the personal information by taping paper over it, but let’s suggest that tape is easily dealt with. As was Albert, who was nabbed soon after.

  Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  “Most fools think they are only ignorant.”

  —Benjamin Franklin

  THE HIGH COST OF SITTING

  You see a bench at a park, you figure, that’s someplace I can sit. After all, that’s what benches are designed for. Unless you tried to sit on a certain bench in the Botanical Gardens in Munich, as “Rolf” found out.

  While strolling the gardens, which he intended to revisit with his kid later that week, Rolf took at a seat on a bench near a playground. Suddenly—police! Of all the benches in all the botanical gardens in the world, it seemed that this was the one that you couldn’t sit on.

>   Arrested for Resting

  The reason—it was next to a playground, and adults weren’t allowed to sit there unless accompanied by a child. The regulation was to make sure kids weren’t harassed by creepy lowlifes who like to hang out in parks. Fair enough, but as Rolf noted later to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, there were no kids in the playground. He was just resting his feet.

  It didn’t matter: he came away with a fine of 150 euros (about $150). At his court date, the judge compromised and let Rolf donate 75 euros to charity, but no matter how you look it, that’s a lot of cash for the simple act of sitting down. So be careful where you sit at the Munich Botanical Gardens. But don’t blame the bench—it’s not the bench’s fault.

  Source: Ananova

  A STUPID EXCUSE THAT WASN’T

  In the mood for a refreshing change of pace? Here we have a story of a stupid excuse that wasn’t. It’s got everything: Drama! Accusations! Redemption! And burritos. Especially burritos.

  Our story begins with Adam of Nebraska. Adam was serving a 364-day sentence for driving with a suspended license, but he was allowed to work in the real world during the day. One day after work, Adam tested out with a low level of alcohol in his system, which was a violation of his work-release agreement. Wham, he’s in court, and the prosecutors are accusing him of knocking back a few during the work day.

  But Adam had an excuse: it was the burritos. It seems that one of his coworkers had brought in burritos made with meat that had been soaked in alcohol before it was cooked. Adam, apparently a man of prodigious appetites, claimed to have eaten four of these burritos, and that, he claimed, was what was responsible for the alcohol. Yeah, that’s it.

  Fine, said Lincoln County district judge John Murphy. Bring me the recipe. And a burrito.

  Exhibit B for Burrito

  Adam did. At the next court hearing, he presented Murphy with the recipe for the burritos, a recipe that called for one bottle of red Irish beer, 1 1/2 cups of tequila and three-quarters of a bottle of dark ale. That’s some very drunken meat. And Murphy agreed, even to the point of forgoing chowing down on the burrito itself. “It is unnecessary to conduct a taste test of the burritos,” Murphy wrote in his ruling. “The list of ingredients indicates that there is sufficient alcohol in the burritos for a preliminary breath test to register positive.”

  Also, Murphy noted, the utter ridiculousness of Adam’s “It was the burrito!” excuse ultimately worked in his favor. “No rational person would use a ‘burrito’ defense as a means of covering up the consumption of alcohol during a period of work release,” he wrote. This is, we think, an excellent point. So congratulations, Adam. The truth is stranger than stupidity.

  And now we’re really in the mood for burritos. What was that recipe again?

  ��

  Source: Associated Press

  DUBIOUS ACHIEVEMENT IN ALCOHOL

  German police pulled over a man who was driving erratically and ordered him out of his car to administer a sobriety test. When the man exited the car, so did his dog, a West Highland white terrier. As the police gave the man commands for the sobriety test, the dog performed them as well. The man failed the test. The dog, on the other hand, performed all the commands flawlessly, including a 360 degree turn, which caused the man to fall. Left unanswered, of course, is who trains his dog to pass a sobriety test?

  Source: Reuters

  THE HURTINGEST MAN IN THE WORLD

  Depending on who you are, this is a story that is either too sad for words or a prime example of how the karmic boomerang will come back and bash you right across the face the very first chance it gets. Only you can decide which group you belong to.

  Our tragic hero/karmic-boomerang victim is “Otto,” a disabled man living in the city of Tilburg, in the Netherlands. Otto discovered somewhere along the way that sex helped to ease his pain without medication. So, he figured, the local municipal council should grant him a monthly sex allowance, for its healing medicinal properties.

  Not Your Father’s HMO

  Now, this might seem like a profoundly wacky idea, especially to Americans. But in the Netherlands you can walk down certain streets and see women in windows posing in lingerie—and they’re not selling nighties. So Otto actually got a judge to buy his line of reasoning, and in 1997, after a seven-year legal struggle, Otto’s local government was ordered to shell out the equivalent of about $125 a month for Otto’s sexual healing.

  Let’s Do It Under the Table

  Ah, but here’s where the karmic boomerang comes around for the smackdown. In August 2003, De Telegraaf reported that Otto was having an extremely difficult time with his “therapy.” It’s not that prostitutes were hard to find, it’s just that none of them was willing to give Otto a receipt, which he requires in order to get reimbursed for his adventures. You see, if prostitutes provide a receipt, then the income is taxable, because the government has a record of (ahem) “services rendered.” Prostitutes, who are in it for the money, prefer whenever possible not to split that money with the government.

  So that creates an interesting catch-22 for Otto: the government pays for his sex, but because the government pays for his sex, he can’t get any. That karmic boomerang, it’s a painful thing.

  Sources: Expatica.com, De Telegraaf

  HAVING HIS “MAN CARD” REVOKED

  A Croatian man really didn’t want to have sex with wife, and apparently the excuse of having a headache just wouldn’t work. So he tried something else to avoid his connubial duty—he set fire to the woods behind his house. It worked, in that he and the wife had to be evacuated from the house while firefighters tended to the blaze. But then he also had to go to jail. Hey, that gets him out of having sex, too.

  Source: Ananova

  A CHEESY AIRPORT SECURITY STORY

  Okay, these days it’s not a bad idea for the security guys at the airport to be a little paranoid about everything. Why? Well, as just one example, as we were getting ready to write up this particular piece for the book, CNN was blaring out a story of a nine-year-old’s teddy bear that went through an airport scanner with a loaded pistol tucked inside its adorably cuddly belly. The kid said he had no idea how that gun got into the teddy bear; it’d been a gift from a girl he met at the hotel where his family had been vacationing. The point is paranoid airport security people have reason to be paranoid. That’s okay by us.

  Still, let’s also admit there’s a difference between nabbing a pistol-packin’ plush toy and what happened to Norwegian-born Tore Fauske as he got ready to board a plane in Brussels for a trip back to England, where he resides.

  What a Cheesy Gift!

  While in Brussels for a business trip Fauske was presented with the Norwegian delicacy geitost (it’s pronounced “yay-toast”)��a type of goat cheese that the Web site Cheese.com assures us has a “sweet, fishy, caramel flavor that is really irresistible.” (We’re pretty sure that any food that is described as tasting both of fish and of caramel is something we could resist, yeah, with a vengeance, even.)

  Clearly Fauske did not have the same problem; he happily received the cheese and stuffed it into his carry-on bag, which apparently didn’t have anything in it that would suffer from smelling like fishy cheesy caramel after a long flight. Off he went to the security gates. As his carry-on went through the security checkpoint, a funny thing happened: Fauske was stopped and everyone behind him in line was shooed off to other checkpoints. Then security people asked Fauske to open his bag. “The guards visibly took a step backward when I unzipped it,” he told the Stavanger Aftenblad newspaper.

  An Unexplosive Situation

  There sat the geitost, brown and hard and, clearly, suspected of being some sort of explosive device. (Which it might very well be if you’re lactose intolerant.) Fauske tried to explain to the security guards what the substance was, but as you might imagine, anything smelling both of fish and caramel might not strike the uninitiated as edible. Eventually Fauske had to eat some in front of the guards. “It wa
sn’t until I demonstrated that it clearly was something edible that they relaxed,” he said.

  The moral of the story: If the airport security guards are worried you might explode, don’t be afraid to cut the cheese.

  Sources: Stavanger Aftenblad, Aftenposten English Web Desk, Cheese.Com

  THAT’S ONE LUCKY MAN

  So, how much spending money does one human being need on him at any one time? If you’re an average person, you can probably get by with a hundred bucks or so, maybe a little more if you’re planning a big night on the town and need to tip the waiters and the pole dancers.

  Don’t believe us? Ask Jack Whittaker, who won the Powerball lottery in 2002, netting himself a tidy $170 million lump sum (before taxes). So this isn’t a fellow who has to worry about a dropped $20 bill here and there. But even Mr. Whittaker had cause for alarm when someone broke into his SUV and made off with a bit of cash he had in a briefcase in the passenger seat. It wasn’t much. Just $545,000. Well, to be fair, it wasn’t actually a half million in cash. About half was in the form of cashier’s checks.