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 February 21, 2005 |
Cutrow, NC Courtesy Scarsby family Scarsby, seen here inadvertently placing in the 1988 Boston Marathon
As hardly a newspaper-reading soul in the country could have missed, Buford was lost for over 45 minutes last August, after wandering off and climbing inside a hollow tree, where he was later found, terrified and smelling of owl. Family members blame the resultant “media circus” on poor communication between Buford-finding family members and the newspaper-calling members of the Scarsby clan.
Scarsby, born in 1886, has live...
his week marks the 119th birthday of Buford “Old Man” Scarsby, the world’s oldest living human and recipient of the 2004 Marco Polo Award for getting lost in a famous way. Despite many spirited attempts on his part to disappear however, the famously lost Scarsby remains found at his family home in Cutrow, North Carolina this week.
As hardly a newspaper-reading soul in the country could have missed, Buford was lost for over 45 minutes last August, after wandering off and climbing inside a hollow tree, where he was later found, terrified and smelling of owl. Family members blame the resultant “media circus” on poor communication between Buford-finding family members and the newspaper-calling members of the Scarsby clan.
Scarsby, born in 1886, has lived a rich and varied life, none of which he remembers. The one fact of which he is sure, however, is that he was born in 1886, thanks to a faded daguerreotype photograph of a newborn Scarsby wrapped in that day’s newspaper in lieu of the expensive blankets or towels of the day. This compelling evidence convinced world standards-bearing organizations to verify Buford’s claimed age, despite the fact no birth records can be found due to no one being sure of the man’s real name.
Family members began calling Scarsby “Buford” in the 1980’s, following the lead of Scarsby’s then-98 year-old wife Emma, who thought she was talking to Buford Cubbins, a local pharmacist. Since his great-grandchildren grew up calling him “Buford,” Scarsby’s real first name is thought to have been lost to the ages. Scarsby himself believes he forgot his name around 1982.
“Lemon time,” explained Scarsby, clutching a packet of powdered lemonade.
Though certainly the most famous, last year’s incident was hardly a first for Buford, who has been wandering off and becoming lost on a regular basis since his early 80’s. In one notable incident in 1992, while on a walk Buford climbed into the back of a mail truck and fell asleep on a sack of letters. Buford was returned to his family later that day, thanks to a return address sewn into his trousers after a similar incident with UPS in 1989.
Some advocates for the elderly have decried Scarsby’s fame, arguing that the media’s handling of his frequent confused forays into lostedness only serve to foster stereotypes about the aged. Relatives, however, claim that Buford’s ways have nothing to do with his age, citing as example the seven years he spent wandering around lost behind enemy lines in Germany during and after WWI.
Buford’s great-grandchildren, who now care for and corral the remarkably aged man, had hoped that Scarsby’s longtime wife and sometimes companion Emma might reveal her husband’s true name on her deathbed in 1993. Emma Scarsby, however, had different plans, leaving the world instead with her immortal last words, “cartoon pussy.”
Though certainly happy that the old man is staying in sight these days, Scarsby’s great-grandson Lewford Scarsby remains guardedly optimistic about the future.
“There’s no way we can keep an eye on him 24-7,” explained Lewford. “But we’ve gotten pretty good at learning this old guy’s tricks and keeping him reigned in. Ain’t that right, Buford?
Buford? Aw, shit.” the commune news lovingly respects the oldest and wisest members of our community, though we would respect them more if they’d kick off already and quit sucking up or social security dollars. Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown remains unimpressed by Buford’s accomplishments, having been born himself a full ten years before Scarsby. That staying alive part, though, the old fart might be onto something there.
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British Nearly Affected by London Terror Attacks ith their famously stoic façade put to the ultimate test, Londoners came through with flying colors this week, failing to register the slightest emotion in the face of stunning terror attacks on the city’s mass transit system that left 50 dead and over 700 wounded. “Oh yes, it was quite a mess,” explained commuter Harold Alburn, who was aboard one of the bombed subway trains and only survived due to being caked in a human cocoon formed by the flaming remains of his fellow passengers. “That rail line’s going to be down for weeks, you have to assume.” Jackson Prosecution Produces Bloody Glove he Michael Jackson trial escalated to the seventh level of hooplah Friday as prosecutors introduced into evidence a bloody sequined gloved that had not been previously revealed publicly. The defense requested a recess, to which the witty judge replied that no one had been good enough to deserve recess, but they would take a brief break. It gave the Jackson defense, led by attorney and Warhol knock-off Thomas Mesereau, a chance to recover from the five-fingered blow. “Blond Highlights the Devil’s Work,” Says Iran, Straight Men Dow Reaches 13,000, Tao Reaches ∞ |
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 December 13, 2004
The Giving HouseCan you believe my neighbor Dale is moving away? Shocked the hell out of me, too. You can never see these things coming. One day, his house collapses into the earth in a mysterious freak geological event, and then the next thing you know, all of a sudden he's throwing in the towel and going to stay with his aunt in Seattle.
It's not like his house was unlivable. Sure, none of the stuff was where it used to be, and most of the rooms had been re-arranged, but there were still plenty of pockets of breathable air in that place. You give me some climbing gear and one of those foil space blankets and I could have made that place livable in ten minutes. It's a good think he didn't take me up on that boast, however, since what was left of the roof caved in last Wednesday and flattened what would have been my main living-cave. Nobody ever said spelunking was without its risks.
Then I get a notice that they're going to be coming over to bulldoze what's left of the place, so could I please get my camping gear out of there. Apparently the city got its tidy whities in a real quake over what would happen if some kids went in there to play and got trapped. I tell you, some people just have to invent things to worry about. I'd already made $300 bucks charging neighborhood kids admission to the "Nuclear Test House" and hadn't had a single problem. Except for that kid that got trapped when the upstairs bathroom fell into the downstairs bathroom, but I'm sure he...
º Last Column: Tales From the Underground
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Can you believe my neighbor Dale is moving away? Shocked the hell out of me, too. You can never see these things coming. One day, his house collapses into the earth in a mysterious freak geological event, and then the next thing you know, all of a sudden he's throwing in the towel and going to stay with his aunt in Seattle.
It's not like his house was unlivable. Sure, none of the stuff was where it used to be, and most of the rooms had been re-arranged, but there were still plenty of pockets of breathable air in that place. You give me some climbing gear and one of those foil space blankets and I could have made that place livable in ten minutes. It's a good think he didn't take me up on that boast, however, since what was left of the roof caved in last Wednesday and flattened what would have been my main living-cave. Nobody ever said spelunking was without its risks.
Then I get a notice that they're going to be coming over to bulldoze what's left of the place, so could I please get my camping gear out of there. Apparently the city got its tidy whities in a real quake over what would happen if some kids went in there to play and got trapped. I tell you, some people just have to invent things to worry about. I'd already made $300 bucks charging neighborhood kids admission to the "Nuclear Test House" and hadn't had a single problem. Except for that kid that got trapped when the upstairs bathroom fell into the downstairs bathroom, but I'm sure he crawled out of there okay. Kids can fit through any opening the size of their head or bigger. It's an adult like me who was really taking a risk going in there.
Nevertheless, they took my cash cow out behind the barn and shot it last week, knocking down the few remaining parts of Dale's house that the earth hadn't swallowed up already. And I'll answer the obvious question before you have to ask it: Yes, the wreckage site did make for an awesome BMX jump course, and I made another $500 off of that before they came and hauled all the debris away.
After that it was just an empty lot with a hole in it, and I was having a hard time figuring out how to turn a buck on that. That is, until I sat down and read a copy of The Giving Tree that one of those kids left behind in the shanty after some of the live swinging electrical cables scared him off. Talk about the perfect book at the perfect time. I had The Giving House sitting right there across my side-lawn, and I was almost too big a fool to take advantage of it. That's when I put up the signs for the skate park.
Turns out the "Bricks 'n Chikz" skate park was fairly short-lived, and not just because I didn't think of the fact that none of the skate park walls were really rounded, so kids just kept slamming into the basement walls and breaking their skateboards and faces and stuff whenever they tried to do any tricks. Nope, I had to tear down the wall murals and take out the cash register early just because some Einstein-o-Trump actually bought the crumbling hole in the ground and set up plans to build a new house there. I guess it's like they say, location means everything, and there's obviously a line of suckers a mile deep just itching for a chance to live next door to Omar Bricks.
But don't take this setback to mean that your old friend Omar has failed to learn the lesson of The Giving House. Far from it. As soon as they get some of the framing and electrical up, I'm going to be giving moonlight tours of the Bricks Building Museum and Gift Shop for ten bucks a head. I'll be goddamned if the kids in my neighborhood are going to grow up without any culture.
Bricks out. º Last Column: Tales From the Undergroundº more columns
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|  May 9, 2005
Short TakesAt some time during the course of every man's life, he is asked a profound question. One which he can spend decades pondering and considering the ramifications of, swimming in the sea of possibilities that arise from such a profound query. Other times, a man is asked a whole bunch of stupid questions that take about four seconds to answer. Guess which kind of week I'm having?
Are dogs colorblind or what?
This is a very common misconception. It's actually cats that are colorblind, and penguins. While this fact is of little consequence to black and white birds living in the blank white expanse of Antarctica, it does, however, make housecats truly terrible players of Candyland and gives most an annoying preference for old B&W movies. Researchers in Minnesota actually discovered the colorblindness of cats in the 1960's when teaching the cats to drive, which ended tragically since the cats were worthless at reading traffic lights and proved too oddly-shaped to be properly restrained by seat belts in the resultant hair-raising collisions.
Dogs, on the other hand, are actually totally blind from birth. Nature has helped make up for this appalling oversight by giving dogs a happy-go-lucky nature that makes them seem like affable, clumsy simpletons rather than the utterly sightless creatures that they are. Dogs do, however, make up for their lack of sight with a highly directional sense of smell, and a radar-like sense emitting...
º Last Column: The Longest Word in the World (Part Two)
º more columns
At some time during the course of every man's life, he is asked a profound question. One which he can spend decades pondering and considering the ramifications of, swimming in the sea of possibilities that arise from such a profound query. Other times, a man is asked a whole bunch of stupid questions that take about four seconds to answer. Guess which kind of week I'm having?
Are dogs colorblind or what?
This is a very common misconception. It's actually cats that are colorblind, and penguins. While this fact is of little consequence to black and white birds living in the blank white expanse of Antarctica, it does, however, make housecats truly terrible players of Candyland and gives most an annoying preference for old B&W movies. Researchers in Minnesota actually discovered the colorblindness of cats in the 1960's when teaching the cats to drive, which ended tragically since the cats were worthless at reading traffic lights and proved too oddly-shaped to be properly restrained by seat belts in the resultant hair-raising collisions.
Dogs, on the other hand, are actually totally blind from birth. Nature has helped make up for this appalling oversight by giving dogs a happy-go-lucky nature that makes them seem like affable, clumsy simpletons rather than the utterly sightless creatures that they are. Dogs do, however, make up for their lack of sight with a highly directional sense of smell, and a radar-like sense emitting from specially-evolved testicles known as sonards.
Dude, what's up with those Easter Island heads?
Numerous theories over the years have sprouted up to explain the mysterious monolithic stone heads found on Easter Island, all of them utterly false. In actuality, the heads were part of an Easter Island homeland defense initiative in prehistoric times, aimed at creating a series of threatening stone heads that would ultimately form together into one giant robot, which would stomp the island's attackers into goo.
The project ultimately failed, however, due to the fact that actual robot technology was thousands of years away, and the stone heads were only good for pushing down hills at advancing armies. In the end, though, this hardly mattered since no outsiders even discovered Easter Island until long after its inhabitants had starved to death from offering up all their food to the stone heads, in hopes of encouraging them to "robot up" and kick some ass.
Is the Tooth Fairy totally made up, or was there ever a real one and the bitch just died at some point?
By the "Tooth Fairy," I'm assuming you don't mean the fictional serial killer or the famous gay dentist from Toledo, but rather the magical little flying woman who eats your children's teeth and bribes them with hush money tucked under their pillows. This Tooth Fairy, you'll be surprised to learn, never actually existed. You moron. In truth, she was invented by parents tired of keeping track of the literally hundreds of tooth-disposal superstitions that existed up until the 1920's, including but not limited to feeding teeth to mice, throwing them over the house, baking them in pancakes, burying them in hopes of growing a profitable tooth tree, smoking teeth in a pipe, carving them into funny tooth action figures, leaving them on a teacher's chair like a thumbtack, or sticking them up your nose.
The invention of the Tooth Fairy left parents with only one implausible story to remember and justify, and left some irresponsible parents with the option of terrifying their children into obedience by telling them that if they misbehaved, the Tooth Fairy would come while they were sleeping and eat their fucking eyeballs out. º Last Column: The Longest Word in the World (Part Two)º more columns
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Milestones1954: November 11 is changed from Armistice Day to Veteran's Day to honor veterans of all wars, and mostly to prevent huge national embarrassment as Americans repeatedly fail to pronounce "armistice" correctly.Now HiringPlay Director. Experienced Broadway/Off-Broadway veteran sought to bring life to boring old commune Thanksgiving production without mentioning syphilis and genocide. A good show will guarantee you a spot directing our multi-denominational Hanukkah-Ramadan-Christmas Kwanzaganza.Top Auto Crash Excuses| 1. | Distracted by Butt-Rock | | 2. | Cell Phone Tainted Brain Meat | | 3. | Marbles on Road | | 4. | AC Apparently Doesn't Mean "Autopilot Car" | | 5. | Friggin' Daihatsu | |
|   North Korea Pissed Their Real-Life Hunger Games Nowhere Near as Popular as Movie BY Roland McShyster 12/9/2002 Hello, Young America! Time to saddle up and get on the Entertainment Train one more time, and this time we're going to ride it all the way to Not Wasting Your Money City. I hope you brought plenty of trail mix and travel Yahtzee and stuff, because… have you ever ridden on a train before? Talk about slow. I mean the director's cut of a DOGME film slow. You'd think in this day and age they could kick it in the ass with some rocket boosters or wings or likewise for the trains, but train people are like some weird branch of the Amish or something—totally resistant to change. So you can thank your lucky ass we're not actually getting on a real train and I'm just being colorful in my language. Let's get on to the movies:
In Theaters
Hello, Young America! Time to saddle up and get on the Entertainment Train one more time, and this time we're going to ride it all the way to Not Wasting Your Money City. I hope you brought plenty of trail mix and travel Yahtzee and stuff, because… have you ever ridden on a train before? Talk about slow. I mean the director's cut of a DOGME film slow. You'd think in this day and age they could kick it in the ass with some rocket boosters or wings or likewise for the trains, but train people are like some weird branch of the Amish or something—totally resistant to change. So you can thank your lucky ass we're not actually getting on a real train and I'm just being colorful in my language. Let's get on to the movies:
In Theaters
About Shit
It's long been a growing trend to have trailers for films that tell you jack about what's actually in the movie. We probably should have seen it coming that movie titles would eventually follow suit, as evidenced by Jack Nicholson's latest dance with the devil. The title tells you nothing, of course, and the trailer is just one long shot of Jack standing there, scratching his nuts. Though this is probably an effective tactic for drawing in viewers whose nuts itch, I'm not sure it's going to attract the throngs of teenage girls who make movies successful. The film itself was fine, with Jack walking around and being all old, and it'll probably win him plenty of awards since, after all, he is only like 25 in real life.
Cannibalize That
Turns out the American public just can't get enough of that face-eating crybaby Robert DeNiro. I thought the first movie was a cute idea, having DeNiro running around and gobbling up stockbrokers and whoever, then running to his shrink and crying about how he can't sleep at night and gets all emotional watching cooking shows and all that. But do we really need to go on that ride again? I may still go, just in case there are any surprise Mohawk freak-outs in this one, but if he doesn't eat Billy Crystal at the end I'm definitely going to demand my money back.
The Hot Chick
My first thought upon hearing about this one? If this ends up being about a cute little pig, somebody's gonna get their ass killed. Thankfully for that somebody, they didn't make the Babe mistake twice, but they did pull off something almost as awful by switching out the hot chick from the title for Rob Schneider half-way through the movie, like we weren't going to notice. Call it artsy if you want, but people have been shot for less than that. And I know it's hard to find hot babes who are funny, or comedians who are also hot babes, but when you use a movie title like that you're making a pact with the audience that you break the second you let some washed-up former SNL boob ooze his way onto the screen. If the audience wanted that, they would have paid to see Rob Schneider and Some Tits That Talk, and I didn't hear anybody asking for that at the ticket window.
Maid in Manhattan
Jennifer Lopez was born to wear one of those little French maid outfits, though I hear they had to take some of the poof out of the back end so that she could fit in the elevator. This is yet another installment in the fine tradition of maid-themed pun movies, a lineage that includes Maid to Order, Maid in the U.S.A., the worst TV movie ever The Devil Maid Me Do It!, the Innerspace rip-off Maid Up My Mind, the cross-dressing mafia farce Maid Men, the Korean love story I Was Maid for You, and Kirstie Alley's terribly misguided Maid for TV. This one's about par for the course, and though at first I was pissed to see that J-Lo had made another movie, I quickly realized the upside is that making it probably kept her too busy to burp up any more songs to torture my radio this year. With any luck she'll land a sitcom soon on a channel I don't get.
Star Trek: Eminemisis
Faced with lagging interest in a series that has become increasingly irrelevant in the face of flashier and less embarrassing fantasy films, the producers of Star Trek decided to beam up a hot new commodity as their latest villain: offensively white rapper Eminemineminemi… emin… Slim Shady. Though the results definitely kicked some new life up the ass of this tired franchise, the question remains as to whether the pasty faithful are ready for the film's coarse language, which is enough to make a Klingon blush. The film's theme song alone should be enough to weed out any theatergoers who thought they were going to get some Muppets talking in French: "Eminem steppin' in again/to save the whole goddamned world and give it a spin/I got Gene Roddenberry's head in a pickle jar/rolling around like Tom & Jerry in the trunk of my car/you damn right bitch, you better beam me up/watch me bitch-slap the computer till she shuts the hell up/I don't need no rubber mask to act like some space retard/But my jumpsuit's all scarred because Picard makes my dick hard-Ahh!"
That's all we're going to squeeze out of the turnip this week, folks. In the mean time, I'll be keeping an ear open for more rumors about the all-naked remake of Flashdance that's in the works, and you'll know some time after I know. Unless someone out there has been going through Joe Eszterhas' garbage, in which case you should probably give me the word. Because you know Roland McShyster's one to make it worth your while with a free Entertainment Police tee-shirt and other fabulous shwag. Not that we actually have tee shirts printed up or anything, but I could hook you up with something from my private stash, no problem. Something I don't wear anymore, and chances are I probably wore it some time when I was writing the column or at the movies or something. Right now I'm thinking the Budweiser frogs shirt, It's starting to look like that joke's probably run its course. Though if it ever becomes some kind of kitsch collector's item and you sell it, I want half.   |
