Roads are clear today, folks.. other than a new menace on the road, some guy in a NIIIICE- looking Challenger, who drives entirely too fast, there are no hazards to report. We STILL do not have reportable depths of snow, but icy conditions this morning were only 35 degrees away… if you want to be REALLY safe, you could chain up, but it isn’t recommended. (Newbs: That was entirely JUST a hilarious joke: Please do not chain up. Not today. Seriously.)
I love a good practical joke… today on the radio, I heard about a good one, pulled off by a couple of pranksters in Texas.
These two college students noticed that in this McDonald’s restaurant that they were dining in, there were a number of large poster- type pictures hanging on the wall. The subjects in the pictures were random people enjoying McDonald’s food. However, these guys noticed that there was one wall in the dining room that was simply bare… no picture hanging there.
So these two enterprising pranksters went out and took a picture of themselves enjoying McDonald’s food. They took measures to ensure that the picture fit the theme implied by the other pictures hanging in the restaurant (no, “I love weed” hats, no Burger King billboards in the background, but polo shirts galore, for sure…). Next, they sent the picture to a company that enlarged the print, and mounted it on solid backing, as the other pictures on the wall were formatted.
Finally, one of the guys found a McDonald’s shirt at a secondhand store, and, wearing that, he posed as an employee. He walked into the restaurant with a toolbox, and the picture… and he mounted the picture on the wall.
This was about two months ago… And, as of a few days ago, the picture was still hanging in the restaurant… epic practical joke!
The guy who wears my boxers has got a history of performing practical jokes. I can’t claim anything as brilliant as that one, but, still… I’m no slouch when it comes to these things.
Here’s a good one: I didn’t invent it, as my brother is the one who gave me the idea. However, it was so brilliant that I had to do it!
I’d kept an eye out for a while, looking for a pile of broken safety glass… the type that results when a car window is shattered. It’s not sharp or jagged, for the most part, but is more like rounded pebbles of gravel. It’s not terribly uncommon to find this type of broken glass, and one lucky day, sure enough: I found some at the scene of a fender bender that had resulted in a broken window. I collected some of this in a jar, and saved it for just the right opportunity.
Opportunity knocked a few days later, when I noticed that a co- worker had left his car keys on his desk. When he stepped away from his desk, I swooped in like a hawk with grand theft auto intentions. I went out to the parking lot, used the keys to roll his driver’s side window all the way down… and then I sprinkled a generous amount of the safety glass all around the driver’s side of the car, including a little on the seat, just to add to the effect. Then I returned the keys to his desk, and waited for somebody else to notice Josh’s car. I did not have to wait long.
Within a couple of minutes, an observant employee came in to inform Josh that it looked like somebody had broken his window. Josh rushed out to the parking lot. Happily, he was quite unhappy. I went out with him, to commiserate, and to offer moral support to my poor friend whose car had been broken into. Of course, he wanted to call the police… usually a good idea in situations like this, but I needed to try to persuade him not to. I dragged out our conversation, I delayed him, and I stalled him, in order to selfishly revel in the misery I was causing, for as long as possible. However, finally, Josh said he wasn’t waiting any longer: He was calling the cops… it was time.
My next move was to simulate a, “light bulb moment,” as though I had just remembered some amazing thing.
“Wait! I read somewhere recently that some cars have a ‘spare window glass’ feature, for situations like this. I wonder if your car has that?” He looked at me as though I were a lunatic, and I’m not going to claim that I am NOT, but, in any case, when I asked him for his keys, he nonetheless skeptically complied. I plugged the key into the ignition… and have never seen anybody as astonished as Josh was, when I rolled his window up. He was utterly, completely, totally speechless… in fact, the speech was ENTIRELY nonexistent, in spite of the open mouth. I just told him that it was really nice that his car had the ‘spare window glass’ feature. I tossed the keys to him, and went back into the office… like it was NBD. I’m pretty sure it took him another ten minutes of standing there before he even moved, mostly because his jaw was planted on the ground.
Oh, and here’s one more… this one wasn’t played by me, but by my OTHER brother. Dang… seems like this runs in the family. Anyhow, it was a pretty good one, so it’s going on the record here.
When my other brother was in the Navy, he was on an aircraft carrier, floating around on the open seas, sometimes for months at a time. One day, he took an old pair of boots, and some old pants, and set them up in a bathroom stall, to give the appearance that somebody was in the stall, having themselves a little sit- down time. He then locked the stall door, and employed his contortionist skills to crawl out from under the stall door.
Next, he began his campaign of casually mentioning to other shipmates about how awesome that new toilet in the end stall of the third deck latrine was. “Man… that thing is GREAT,” he’d explain… the best thing that ever happened on that ship. He told them about the automatic warmer on it, the video screens on the wall, and how comfortable the shape and fit were. I think the toilet paper dispenser even automatically dispensed satin wipes (even if satin is not that great for wiping, according to data from the Poo Research Center). He extolled its porcelainic virtues at every opportunity… it was a throne fit for royalty.
Then, he sat back to reap the rewards… after planting the seeds of lavatorial curiosity, from that point on, he was able to listen to people complain about how badly they wanted to try that toilet out… but that there was ALWAYS somebody else using the thing! Every single time that one person or another went in there for a test drive… there was always some other sailor in there, taking his sweet time, and it seemed that nobody else ever got to try the thing out.
My brother got out of the Navy 20 years ago… and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that those boots are still in that stall, on a ship with a crew of men who each wish that they could have a crack at that new, awesome toilet.
Okay, one more: A year ago, I had the opportunity to attend a “red carpet” event, near Hollywood. It was a mostly- exclusive affair, as a few celebrities were in attendance. At one point, I was approached by none other than Dustin Hoffman, who asked if I would go “help him get something” from the car. I was a little surprised, as I figured that huge celebs like this just had, “people” for this kind of thing, but, apparently, they sometimes just ask REGULAR “people,” who obey like good dogs. I am a good dog.
I followed him out to his car (an SUV), and saw that he had what appeared to be a child’s coffin inside! He told me not to worry, that this was a surprise for somebody… no dead children inside. Fine… I reached into the car, and tried to pull it out of the car, but it was very, very heavy… I could not budge it. I sort of leaned in, laid on my stomach, and my feet came off of the ground as I pulled. At that point, in an effort to assist me with the coffin extraction process, Mr. Hoffman then grabbed onto my leg, and started pulling on it…
Just as I am now pulling yours.