sorry about the poor taste....

Poststructural Pub
21

Funny? It IS funny. It’s a classic, in fact.

You need a little background in terms of the crew at WKRP, and you need to understand just how dense Arthur Carlson was, and you need to understand just what an eccentric little fussbudget Les Nesman was . . . and once you have all that in place, you’re watching along innocently and . . . Les Nesman’s delivery hits (along with those first turkeys) . . . that scene is exquisitely funny.

It’s the closest I’ve ever come to peeing in my pants.

They were supposed to toss out gift certificates for a frozen turkey, but Arthur decided to do one better and toss out real turkey-farm turkeys. “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”

22

Hot damn and what not!! It’s on YouTube – Thanksgiving Turkey Drop

Next to Tim Conway talking about the “siamese elephants” at the circus on the Carol Burnette show, this is my all-time favorite TV bit.

(Go potty first, Lambchop. It’s every bit as funny as you remember it.)

23

Hey! Now you’re picking on Carlson. I always liked him. I thought he was a lovable character. Only someone like Carlson would have a heart big enough to have hired a neurotic little twerp like Nesman, or any of the other strange inhabitants at WKRP, for that matter. And anyone smart enough to hire Loni Anderson as his personal secretary is okay in my books. :wink:

djm

24

Those Hindinburg takeoffs are excellent! The Huge Manitee! hee hee hee

Tom (a recovering WKRP fan–Johny Fever was the coolest!)

25

OK, where’s the link to the siamese elephants?

26

I spent an hour looking and couldn’t find one. No luck.

27

Maybe they got sepparated.

T

28

Not funny.

You know they recorded the radio announcer’s
voice as he said those words. I’ve heard it. People
on fire jumping to their deaths.

Hey, maybe we can do
one of these about 9/11. How bout a contest
for the best 9/11 related perfume ad.

‘Firestorm Perfume!
A fire you better not try to put out!
Starting in the heavens, then smoldering
down to earth.’

Kool! Top that, anyone?

29

Point taken, Jim. I guess I can laugh about the Hindinburg because it was so long ago, the people who suffered from it are (mostly) no longer with us, and the horror has passed from the experience. I simply see these as very clever bits of satire, that’s all.


Tom

30

Jihad

Feel the passion.
Feel the fire.
Feel the burn.

Jihad

Get a free makeup case with a 35 dollar purchase only at Kohl’s.

31

I want a link to siamese elephants. :imp:

32

Wild turkeys can fly. They are even dropped from airplanes to reintroduce them back into the wild. Free-range heirloom turkey varieties can be let loose in the barnyard without having to be watched constantly and can fly about as well as domestic chickens. Domestic mass production variety turkeys are so stupid, they have to be protected from the rain, otherwise they look up in confusion and drown. They have to put marbles in the food, so the newly hatched turkeys peck at the shininess and figure out how to eat in the process. A real radio station did actually use live mass production breed turkeys in a promotion and they did drop them from a helicopter. The turkeys flew as well as lawn darts. Some car windshields were obliterated. Some cars were rendered unusable due to the fact turkeys traveling at near terminal velocity explode from the force of the impact and the resulting mess is impossible to completely remove from absorbent material inside the passenger compartment. I read about this in an old addition of the Whole Earth Catalogue. Apparently, that was the inspiration for the WKRP Turkey Drop!

Rod

33

Wild turkeys fly quite well, although not for very long distances. They often roost in trees at night, and they can fly well enough to escape predators.
I’m not sure, but I don’t think that domestic turkeys can fly well if at all, hence the helicopter incident… they’ve been bred for such bulk that they’re not aerodynamic at all.

34

There is little resemblance left between “wild” turkeys and their domestic brothers. I"m sure you’ve heard the term “box of rocks” to describe brain capacity? A domestic turkey has a pebble.

35

or able to do many other normal things, like mating.

36

Turkeys may not drown in the rain, but apparently it is dangerous for them:
http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/turkey.htm

And here’s another art imitating life example of the turkey drop
http://radio.about.com/library/weekly/aa112002a.htm

37

New book out this month: “How Wet is My Blanket” - by Jim Stone

As I understand it, the sarcasm is about the ridiculously over-the-top melodrama the reporter was trying to whip up in his story, not in the event itself which was, of course, a tragedy. You don’t hear anyone making jokes about the Hindenburg incident itself, only of the reporter’s monologue. Of course, there is always some holier-than-thou type looking to snipe at others having a bit of fun.

djm

38

The scene: 40 miles east of Armpit, British Columbia, in the Cariboo Mountains, a tiny hidden ranch at the end of a logging road.

On a third-hand tip, and using 3 maps of varying levels of innacuracy, Don and I go in search of Little Wolverine Lake, home of Walter the giant rainbow trout. On one of our many false-turns, we end up driving the truck and boat-trailer into a farmyard, devoid of people but filled with about 400 large, nasty, hungry domestic turkeys.

I hop out to lock the hubs and direct Don as he backs the trailer around, and the turkeys descend on me. These ones had apparently been trained how to eat, or at least peck with all the violence of 20+ pound fattening-up machines.

By the time I was back in the truck, having probably broken some drumsticks in my mad dash, I was bleeding freely from at least 30 leg punctures, and there were several holes in my heavy leather boots.

Fishing was shot for the day, and the good folks at the Likely clinic patched me up and dosed me with a tetanus booster and 2 kinds of antibiotic. The SPCA and the Mounties had a helluva time finding the place to check on it, but it turns out it was an ‘off the grid’ homestead that did not exist on any map, tax roll, nothing. It didn’t exist, and the ‘owners’ had taken a vacation and just left the livestock.

The turkeys were given to a large turkey farm, and the staff at my school took the rest of the livestock and three dogs into foster care through the SPCA.

I’ll never forget the moment when the mild amusement of “hey, look at all the stupit birds” turned into hopping around like my pants were on fire, yelling “SHOO!” at th top of my lungs.

Don hadn’t stopped laughing when we reached the clinic.

Never let the turkeys get you down!

39

Those were the relatively sharper heirloom variety turkeys that can fend for them selves with some help from their keepers.

It’s the mass production type turkeys that can’t even slow down when dropped from a great height, mate on their own, deal with simple rain or figure out how to eat without help.

Wild turkeys aren’t that bright, either, really. They are just so twitchy, not much can sneak up on them!

40

Is that why US Presidents have been known to hunt them? And miss?