Roy Exum
Back in the 1980s, this before we had the grand search engines on the Internet, some people from the Usenet news group started collecting hysterical clippings of mankind’s stupidity. They would then award a “Darwin,” named in memory of Charles Darwin, who is regarded as the Father of Evolution. The award was given because each idiot had taken themselves out of the human gene pool.
Some years later a genius in molecular biology from Cal-Berkley, Wendy Northcutt, went to Stanford as a promising neurobiologist. She had already gotten involved in the Darwin Awards and soon the study of stupidity was a lot more fun than disease. In 1998 she started coming out with a book of every year’s honorees and www.darwinawards.com got millions of hits every month.
There have been many famous winners – who can forget “Lawnchair Larry” who, after outfitting his garden chair with helium-filled weather balloons as a joke, suddenly soared to 16,000 feet over Long Beach, CA? (He was arrested for violating air space. Seriously.)
And then there were the would-be robbers who decided to pull a fast one on European soccer star Duncan Ferguson. They had no way of knowing that the soccer bully had four convictions for aggravated assault and had spent six months in Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison. (One would-be robber was hospitalized for four days.)
My personal all-time favorite was when a bunch of country boys were drinking a lot of beer on the back deck of one’s house and saw the dog chase a raccoon down a storm drain. They raced to the pick-ups and got their guns while the host poured five gallons of gas down the angled shaft. When the animal didn’t come out, the host yelled “Watch this!” and snaked his body down the 30-foot concrete pipe.
He couldn’t see the coon so “Einstein” struck a match to force the critter to come out. Instead, the five gallons of gas exploded with such might it blew the poor guy out of the pipe like a Titan rocket. The only thing his friends could do was watch wide-eyed as his body quite literally sailed over the deck, the house, and the parked trucks on the other side.
This week a copy of the 2016 winners whirled around the Internet but the website appears not to have been updated since 2014 – we’ll just have to guess if these are factually the winners:
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THE 2016 DARWIN AWARD WINNERS
EIGHTH PLACE -- In Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing his head and one shoulder through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.
SEVENTH PLACE -- A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he ran", accidentally jogged off a 100-foot high cliff on his daily run.
SIXTH PLACE -- While at the beach, Daniel Jones, 21, dug an eight-foot hole for protection from the wind and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom, when it collapsed, burying him beneath five feet of sand. People on the beach used their hands and shovels trying to get him out but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.
FIFTH PLACE -- Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed as he fell through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth to keep his hands free, rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.
FOURTH PLACE -- Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.
THIRD PLACE -- After stepping around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door, a man walked into H&J Leather & Firearms intent on robbing the store. The shop was full of customers and a uniformed officer was standing at the counter. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, and several customers also drew their guns and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from seven different weapons. No one else was hurt.
2016 HONORABLE MENTION -- Paul Stiller, 47, and his wife Bonnie were bored, just driving around at 2 A.M., so they lit a quarter stick of dynamite to toss out the window to see what would happen. Apparently they failed to notice that the window was closed.
2016 RUNNER UP: (This award goes to one still-living person each year) -- Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from a local bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more excited, and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 AM. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge, they discovered that no one had brought a bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, volunteered and pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable lay nearby. They secured one end around Bingham's leg and then tied the other to the bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the icy water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. Bingham's foot was never located.
AND THE 2016 WINNER IS.... Zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn , Germany) fed his constipated elephant 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally got relief. Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive-oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded. The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock as the elephant continued to evacuate 200 pounds of dung on top of him.
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THE QUOTE OF THE WEEK
When Rob O’Neill, the former Navy SEAL who takes credit for killing Osama bin Laden, was asked what were his thoughts about “Mad Dog” Mattis becoming Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense, he told the reporter: “General Mattis has a bear rug in his home but it is not dead. It is just afraid to move.”
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WISDOM FROM MARY TYLER MOORE
* -- “Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.”
* -- “You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.”
* -- “Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers.”
* -- “And then Dick called and said, ‘I'm going to do a special called Dick Van Dyke and ‘The Other Woman,’ that would be you, because every time I try to check into a hotel with my wife, they look at me as though I'm cheating on Laura.’”
* -- “I'm an experienced woman; I've been around ... well, alright, I might not have been around, but I've been … nearby!”
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DURING AN INTERVIEW WITH VALERIE HARPER
In 2013, Mary Tyler Moore was seated next to her best friend and co-star Valerie Harper, and was asked what is was like for “Mary Richards” to work alongside “Rhonda Morgenstern” from 1970-1977:
"Almost any scene we ever did, we could look into each other's eyes and be comforting or uplifting for each other," Mary said, adding as she turned towards Valerie, “Just thinking back to some of those moments, those visuals, looking in your eyes … oh … you are crying …
"I know!" said Harper.
royexum@aol.com