Fun_People Archive
11 Sep
A Bit of BONG Bull No. 390!

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 96 22:51:45 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: A Bit of BONG Bull No. 390!

Excerpted-from: BONG Bull No. 390

Copyright (c) 1996 by BONG.  All rights reserved.
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For September 11-12, 1996.  How to collar 5 percent in the polls.  Go to
market for a vice presidential candidate and bring back not a Tennessee
nobody, not a washed-up quarterback, not even magic beans.  Thanks for the
lesson, Mr. Perot, and the Burned-Out Newspapercreatures Guild dedicates
BONG Bull No. 390 to you and your economist!

...

RESUME OF THE STARS (from Oct. 23, 1991).  Few people know that the great
humorist Robert Benchley was a newspaperman for a large and important
segment of his life.  The career included a weekly humor column for the New
York Tribune's Sunday supplement, from which he was fired almost weekly for
chronic tardiness and then finally, in the early days of World War II, for
a vitriolic anti-war column the pacifist wrote.
     But Benchley did join the war effort, says J. Bryan III in his book
Merry Gentlemen (And One Lady), published by Atheneum.  Benchley worked in
Washington as a publicist for the Aircraft Board.  Or more truthfully, an
anti-publicist.  It was his job to keep news about airplanes out of the
papers.
     Benchley, like most humorists, had a pained nature barely concealed by
his satiric ability.  Only his closest friends knew that he went many times
to a little cemetery adjoining Grant's Tomb in Manhattan, to stand near the
tiny headstone of a toddler named St.  Claire Pollock, who died in 1797 at
the innocent age of 5.
     Benchley bawled inconsolably.  His friends stood discreetly off.  And
then one time Benchley finished weeping, composed himself, drew from his
pocket an old envelope, jotted something and slipped it under the door of
Grant's sepulchre.  A friend noticed and retrieved it.
     It said, "Please leave 2 quarts Grade A and 1 pint whipping cream.
U.S.G."

© 1996 Peter Langston