During the filming of The Seventh Seal, Gunnar Bjornstrand and Max Von Sydow relaxed between scenes by:
a. sharing knock knock jokes.
b. downing flagon on flagon of ale and giggling.
c. waging a Bibi Andersson impersonation contest judged by Bibi herself.
d. thumb wrestling.
e. doing all of the above.
The new assignment was to add a sentence to the following in order to complete the tale:
Princess and Alvin Triceratops drove off in their reinfected mobile storage facility to purchase innards.
The 3 sentences to earn the grade of A were:
1. Disappointed to discover that the innards store had gone out of business, they committed suicide.
2. They changed their minds and had their socks galvanized instead.
3. Their plan was foiled by a clever astronaut posing as a loaf of bread.
As instructed, all of the suspects have been gathered in the drawing room. You enter, your face an efficient blank.
‘Good evening,’ you begin. ‘You may all rest assured that I have solved the murder, but indulge me for a moment and allow me to reveal how I came to my conclusion. First, Lady Biveridge, you were not in fact skiing in Aspen, Colorado when the murder took place. You were in Prague, Czechoslovakia disguised as a streetcar conductor and having simultaneous affairs with a board game manufacturer and the zoo’s snake handler. Therefore, of course you couldn’t have committed the crime. Lord Biveridge, please control yourself and resume your seat. Your Lordship proved to be no more truthful about your whereabouts than Her Ladyship. You said you were examining potsherds in the Egyptian desert when, to be accurate, you were in Perth, Australia having a three sided affair with an acrobat, a dance instructor, and a Nepalese eye doctor. Thus, you, too, are eliminated as a candidate for murder. That leaves only you, Chiffers.’
‘Balderdash,’ says Chiffers, the butler.
‘Balderdash, is it?’ you smirk. ‘Let me just ask you then, Chiffers, how would you like it if I opened that door next to the bookcase there?’
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ says Chiffers.
‘Oh, wouldn’t you?’ you say, a satisfied smile of superiority dancing on your lips.
You approach the door. You open it.
There she is. You die.
Loon: As a special treat for today, the Lords of the 4th Dimension are supplying me with a mystery celebrity ghost. I am to try and guess who it is by asking 3 questions. The ghost is here now, and I can see her, but I can’t identify her by sight. So here goes. Mystery ghost, you look to be from the olden days of the 1920s or so. Were you ever President of the United States?
Mystery ghost: Listen. Does insanity run in your family? At the very least it must walk briskly.
Loon: I guess that’s a ‘no’. So let me ask something else. Let me see … Uh …
Mystery ghost: Take it easy. You don’t want to strain your brain cell.
Loon: I’ve got it. You’re Annie Oakley!
Mystery ghost: Annie Oakley? (waves ghostly hand in front of loon’s eyes) Those aren’t just for decoration, are they?
Loon: You’re not a president, and you’re not Annie Oakley. What other possibility is there?
Mystery ghost: Brother, you got me. But not for long. (floats away through ceiling)
Loon (shrugs): Too bad. I was going to guess Dorothy Parker next. I wonder if that was it. I know the Lords of the 4th Dimension won’t tell me. They’re like that.
Like a thread of chewing gum a child stretches in idle play from her mouth, the state road picked its dainty way through the hills.
That proud sentence is from Summer in Williamsburg.
Janet was quite the sight marching through the woods with her attendant parade of 7 geese trailing close behind her.
While working on Sunrise, F. W. Murnau’s brilliant and strange expressionist silent movie about a sweet little farm wife and her deeply disturbed husband, Janet Gaynor relaxed by:
a. swimming in Lake Arrowhead with Murnau’s pet albino hippopotamus.
b. knitting sweaters for owls.
c. undergoing experimental self-induced comas.
d. marching in circles leading her geese.
Snoopy, the landfill beast
looked north, then south, then east.
He sighed an audible sigh
directed at the sky.
‘Why must I live in this trash?
If only I had enough cash,
I could dwell in marble halls
with paintings on the walls.’
He shrugged and resumed his eating
of a tire and some rusty sheeting.
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Doc's Lunacy
5 of 5 stars to The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton goodreads.com/review/show/55…
