Fun_People Archive
20 Oct
BONG Bull Bits No. 539!

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 99 16:12:50 -0700
To: Fun_People
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Subject: BONG Bull Bits No. 539!

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Excerpted-from: BONG Bull No. 539!
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      THE BURNED-OUT NEWSPAPERCREATURES GUILD'S NEWSLETTER
                             BONG Bull
        Copyright (c) 1999 by BONG.   All rights reserved.
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GAFFES 'R' US. Moving right along in our task of recording every
double-meaning typo ever published on the four inner planets:
   -- Mike Peterson of The Post-Star in Glens Falls, N.Y., attests, "A local
faux-Mexican restaurant had problems with the ad department at a paper where
I used to work (no names, please!). An ad that was supposed to wish people
a prosperous new year in Spanish didn't have that nice little doohickey over
the N in 'ano,' which meant they were wishing them a Prosperous New Anus.
Well, OK, few people in that corner of the world read Spanish anyway, and
fewer who do would go to that restaurant, so fine and dandy.
   "But you didn't have to be bilingual to pick up on the error when we put
an 'O' in place of the 'E' in 'Home Style Soup.'  No, it didn't say 'Stylo.'
The other 'O.'"
   -- The Akron Beacon Journal's Jim Kavanagh
<jkavanagh@thebeaconjournal.com> declares, "This story may be apocryphal,
but it's fun to contemplate. A colleague who once worked at the Auburn
(Ind.) Evening Star (Scott Gilbert, where are you?) told it to me: Seems
one day a year was designated 'Proclamation Day' in Auburn, when the mayor
would sign all manner of documents lauding various civic groups and
individuals. A photographer dutifully went down to city hall and snapped
the smiling mayor at his desk, with some ladies auxiliary group gathered in
a semicircle behind him. The smiles, which usually look so frozen in such
shots, took on a new quality when the headline over the photo was kerned
just a little too tightly: 'Mayor's pen is busiest in town.'"
   -- Liz Babcock <lizbab@ridgenet.net> of the News Review in Ridgecrest,
Calif., avers, "One of my favorites among newspaper gaffes I have seen
occurred when I was working for The Rocketeer, a house organ of what was
then the Naval Weapons Center at China Lake.  The editor wrote a cutline
for a photo showing the commander of the air facility cutting the ribbon
for a new snack bar. The cutline, of course, read 'Cutting the ribbon for
a new snack bar is Capt. Bob Moore, commander of the NAF Snack Bar.'
Fortunately for our editor, Capt. Moore had a sense of humor. He did say,
however, that our editor owed him a drink. Seems Capt. Moore had to stand
his fellow officers to a large number of drinks to celebrate his
'promotion.'"
   -- Gerard Farrell <grf67@hotmail.com> asserts, "Jim Bishop, now Executive
Editor (the exception to the rule that only boneheads get that high) of The
Victoria (Texas) Advocate, loves to tell the story of a wedding announcement
(and photo of the happy couple) concerning the daughter of a prominent local
businessman (and therefore presumably a deep-pockets advertiser) which
through a succession of screw-ups and oversights, failed to appear for three
or more consecutive weeks in some upstate N.Y. paper or other. Finally, the
editor himself resent the item to composing the night the Lifestyle section
was going to press, topped with a direct order to the paste- up folks: 'Must
get it in tonight!'  "Need I say whether or where the imprimateur appeared?"
   -- Adam Lisberg <lisberg@together.net> of the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press
confidentially states, "I probably shouldn't mention any goofy heds from my
current job, and I still have friends at the Daily Southtown in Chicago
(which once ran a vacuum cleaner ad titled 'Nobody sucks like we do' and a
wire story hed about Kurds fighting Turds), but I have no qualms about
picking on TV. A new ABC newscast here in Burlington, Vt., must have still
been getting used to its equipment when, in its first week on the air, it
juggled two stories about the odds of winning the lottery and about Yeltsin
firing Kremlin leaders. The sad-faced Russians were captioned 'New York
Lotto losers.'"
   -- Ken Hedler <ken_bh@yahoo.com> forwards a note from Sandy Griffith
<sandyg@gv.net>: "The Union (Grass Valley, Calif.) in about 1993-4 when the
local theater's ad read 'The Mighty Dicks' and the managing editor's
response to the totally humiliated typesetter was, 'Imagine if you'd made
a slightly different typo ... i.e., the Mighty Fucks'. End of subject."
   -- Jeremy Condliffe <Jeremy_Condliffe@compuserve.com> of the BONG Blighty
Bureau recalled, "The Financial Times once ran a list of schools and their
performance in exams -- we're big on that in the UK -- and there in the
middle was the Hugh Janus school.
   -- SScully474@aol.com sayeth, "The Greene County (Va.) Record featured
an ad sponsored by a local gift shop in the annual Christmas tab with a
touching Nativity scene with the large headline 'Peach on Earth, Goodwill
to Mankind.'"
   "I think it was the Daily Telegraph that ran a birth announcement which
ran something like: 'Rexshun: to Ann and James, a son Hugh Gee.'"

© 1999 Peter Langston