Jest Awful

When Orson Welles pulled his 1938/10/30 invasion-from-Mars hoax, a terrified 1/6 of the US public found it credible that Martians had deliberately moved to New Jersey. When Russia genuinely took the first photograph of the Moon's backside, 1/6 of the US public deemed it a fraud. At the lowpoint of Nixon's Watergate disgrace, even after the tapes of his self-buggery were exposed, 1/6 of the US public still believed in him.
Question: Are these the same people? (DIO 2.1 [1992] ‡1 §A1 [p.3].)

No Apologies to Bud&Miller&Schlitz&etc. OK, OK — But Can MadAve WALK ON the Stuff?:
What's so supernatural about water→wine-conjurer Jesus convincing people that water was alcohol?
Hell, ads for the US' homeopathic idea of “beer” have been pulling that trick for decades.
[The 1st known exposure of Jesus as just a magician-conjurer was by Giordano Bruno. His charge did not go without answer!
He was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. Specifically for this crime, avers the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article on Bruno, anxious to divert from the suspicion that it was heliocentric astronomy that lit his pyre.]

Fox's Five were asked on 2018 Thankgiving: if you were a float in todays' Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, what character would you be?
DR answer: the Invisible Man.

Entertainment-films' idea of doing history is notorious for shall-we-say “surpassing” mere reality. But there are excesses that cross the line into comical perversity:
[1] When choosing an actor to play leftie-batting leftie-throwing Lou Gehrig in the 1941 bio, Cried in the Hankees, Hollywood picked rightie-batting right-throwing Gary Cooper. For playing leftie-batting leftie-throwing Babe Ruth in 1948's Babe Ruth Story, the star was rightie-batting right-throwing Wm.Bendix. OK, you point out that it's hard to find lefties among the general citizenry. Fine, so why, when it was time to choose an actor for 1957's Fear Strikes Out, the bio of rightie-batting right-throwing Jimmy Piersall, who's the natural choice? Leftie-batting leftie-throwing Tony Psycho Perkins. Was this all part of some secret industry joke?
[2] For the 1984 film version of the Fletcher Christian 1789 Bounty mutiny, WASPish-looking women were chosen as the-Fletcher's love interest and for the film both went as topless as a Polynesian native. But, for the Brando 1962 version, the fem-lead was pure native, who didn't. So filmdom has the Polynesian star acting non-natively demur, esp for 1789, while the normally-modest WASPies go native. Hey, didn't the intro to this item warn of perversity?

Serious Toplessness:
It's fun to ask folks whether they know all four of the Flashin'-Fashion Foursome — the quartet of usually-elegantly-overattired First Ladies who in recent decades opted to peel 'em off and go topless in public: Jackie, Carla, Kate, Melania.
Then, once you've got your listeners' minds in the gutter, you can ask: name the SERIOUS true pioneers of the toplessness-art — the four queens from centuries past that went topless in public.
If your victims don't get it, then clue 'em with event-dates: 1536, 1542, 1587, 1793. If that doesn't work, then reel-off the respective decapitees: Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Mary Queen of Scots, Marie Antoinette.

Barbara Rawlins is outraged at all those Hillary-skeptics whose irrational hatred actually leads them to suspect that she chose a private email server for sneaky stuff, and is secretly making deals in return for the millions she's getting from her Wall Street owners. After all, every rally for Hilla the Hun (B.J.Clinton's private name for her) is studded with signs, banners, T-shirts, placards --- all openly telegraphing passionate dedication to her Wall Street puppeteers:

After Tsar Nicholas 2 abdicated in 1917, he complained that what he most missed was: shooting. Upon hearing of this pathetic deprivation, Barbara Rawlins commented: so, in 1918, didn't the Bolshies give him just what he wanted?

What's the difference between FDR and GWB-aka-Shrubya? FDR was crippled below the neck.

And heart.

More Questions
(Others already above and at DIO 8 [1998] p.47):

What's the difference between our two best acting clinics, Congress & prison?
Good acting gets you into one — and out of the other. (DIO 2.3 [1992] p.91.)

What's worse than a premature ejaculator? A premature ejacuearlier.

Whenever asked to imbibe alcohol, Dracula — with his rather limited diet — would excuse himself by saying he never drank. Wine.
In response to an equestrian offer, did tomcat JFK — his physical activity partially curtailed by a bad back — ever wink and make a parallel comment? “I never ride. Horses.”

Redundant Redundance:
What's the difference between a crooked lawyer and a crooked politician?
One you pay to lie to others, and the other you pay to lie to you.
(See DIO 8 [1998] p.51 n.20 [p.51], which adds an even-worse genetic joke.) Further DR-on-lawyers: elsewhere here, also Astronomy 1981 Sept.
[Most of us have heard the oldie: How do you know a lawyer is lying?
See if his lips are moving.
Another traditional one: what's the difference between a catfish and a lawyer? One's a scum-sucking bottom-dweller. And the other is a fish. See also at DIO 4.2 [1994] ‡9 §D2 [p.78].]

Question: How do safely-grazing-careerist academic sheeple resemble Bach's 250 cantatas?
Answer: Herd one, herd 'em all.

Question: In politics, what side are you on?
Answer: Regicide.

Question: You don't play a musical instrument, do you?
Answer: Sure I do. Phonograph.

Question: What's your sign?
Answer: No Smoking.

Question: What do you do?
Answer: Well.

Greeting: Nice hat!
Response: The rest of me is better.

The difference between DR and AAS-Hysterical Astronomy Division politicians: one kicks what the other kisses.

Re-Writes:
Film-Titles:
Nutcase Frances Farmer 1982 cinebio Frances → Funny Farmer.
Tom Hanks as fumbling feebee detective in the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can → Forrest-Gumpshoe.
Underfed negligeed Naomi Watts' 2005 King Kong → Undiana Bones.
Hitchcock's Psycho → Normy&Mummy.
Lou Gehrig 1942 bio Pride of the Yankees → Cried in the Hankies.
Child-actor Macaulay Culkin's family lent him out to Michael Jackson's bed, earning him top billing in the 1990 film Home Alone. Or should it be: Homo Loan?
Jurassic World 2015 features flying reptiles lunchmunching touristas, the ladies frantically running for their lives IN SPIKES (even in mud!) → DinersSoaring aka Meals on Heels.
Errol Flynn's 1941 comedy-of-extreme-unhistoricity- They Died With Their Boots On → They Died With Their Boots On — Though … Not for Long.
Howard Hughes' micro-fussedover 1951 beefcake-brawnanza His Kind of Woman → Hughes' Kind of Men.
Kate Winslet's Titanic → Titanic. [See DIO 8 [1998] ‡5 §P7 [p.61].]
The Cormanesque Philippine-set bazookas&bazoomas-set-in-ladiesjail quickie takeoff (on Tony Curtis&Sidney Poitier's The Defiant Ones), where two chained-together nubile escapees don convent garb between bloodlettings, Black Mama White Mama → The Defiant Nuns (with no apologies to Sidney Poitier & Tony Curtis).
Hitchcock's 1945 hilariously overstraightfaced shrinkoprank Spellbound → Hello Dali — Goodbye Responsiblity.
The 3rd Bond film (where easy & totally naked Shirley Eaton dies of a total-goldpaint-job [which won't kill unless it's total] by totally-lucky “OddJob” [Goldfinger's artistically meticulous henchman] after capping a 1-nighter with Bond James Bond), Goldfinger → Gilty As Sin (Barbara Rawlins).
Merging puzzlemaster Kalaf's standard heft and Frank Gorshin's giggly stock-sass-line for the fledermausian Caped Crusader, retitling Puccini's ultimate masterpiece is too easy: Turandot → Riddle Me This, Fatman.
Othello → Does Hanky Prove Panky?
[For the ultimate Othello performance of all time, miss not Derek McGrath's intense 1983 realization in Cheers Season 2 Episode 4: “Homicidal Ham”.]
Scarlet Pimpernel → The Gentler Abe Lincoln. (Raymond Massey was the towering, sneering, bloodthirsty Frenchie villain of 1934's Scarlet Pimpernel and played equally tall iconic hero Lincoln in 1940's Abe Lincoln in Illinois.
But —but shouldn't someone remind everybody that enormous Abe killed way more people than the entire French Revolution's Terror? See DIO 4.2 [1994] ‡8 n.23 [p.76] vs DIO 16 [2009] ‡4 §B3 [p.41].)
[Lightening up and not neglecting fans of the reeeeeally subdwarf-low end of nonsense-black ``humor'': if Abe had been shorter, could Booth have missed?]
Slogans:
Re-write to encourage tempering present over-flood of kids born into fatherless, moneyless, semi-literate, druggy, crime-zone environs,
“We Shall Overcome”→“We Shall Undercome”
Latest candidate for re-write is the newer Civil-Rights slogan which is shocking in its unthinking-insensitivity to the most deserving race in the history of the world, and thus in need of immediate re-write:
“Black Lives Matter”→“Af-ri-can-Am-er-i-can Lives Matter”
Hey, let's show some RESPECT here!

The inflated 1965 film Battle of the Bulge featured the 1944 December Winter Solstice war in the Ardennes. Was it made primarily to amuse astronomers? Many of the battle scenes feature tanks casting unextended shadows that would be utterly impossible in December in the Ardennes. They look more apt to June's Summer Solstice.

Chicago Cub History: Just Goating or Just Kidding? Think it's easy being the 2003 Chicago guy who deflected the baseball which (like that 1945 whipping-goat) is blamed for maybe costing the once-feckless Cubs a World Championship? Well — let's put it this way: Salman Rushdie refused to trade places….

Two Circles:
[1] Women love shopping.
Shopping so they can buy fash threads.
To look in-fashion when they're doing what they do,
during most of the time they're wearing fash-threads.
Namely: shopping.
[2] Skeptics poke fun at fundie-religion toob-ministers since each spends alot of time asking his old-doll audience to send money, in order to keep him on the air — so he can ask for more money….
But why don't skeptics also ask why the same TV-preachers can't stop begging for them&theirs to be smacked in the face with a cheese-pie quiche-Lorraine? Typical prayer: “god loves YEEOU and he is bount-ee-ful and saves all. Oh, ans-wer our pray-er — oh, CHEESE-us.”

DR's advice for solar eclipses and transits of Mercury & (2012/6/5-6) Venus:
Never stare at the Sun — all you'll see is a doctor.

TV stations used to sign off in the A.M. after playing the national anthem. Not any more. Most stations switch to infomercials instead. TV abhors a vacuum. Excepting the attentive skulls it's nourished by.

Who coined the phrase, “Jesus is coming”?
Mary Magdelene?

In 1980, in the state of Washington, dozens of simmering-volcano Mount St.Hell neighbors blithely ignored scientists' warnings and so were soon lavingly roasted.
Monday-morning-quarterbacking suggestion: could the dolts have been IQ-jumpstarted by bullhorn-replays of Belushi's food-fight casus-belli-alert in Animal House?  “I'm a ZIT! GET it?”

Pure Bull:
Dennis Rawlins on astrology:
“astrology was evidently born in Mesopotamia … doubtless under the sign of Taurus.… If astronomy is the oldest science and prostitution the oldest profession, then surely the prostitution of astronomy must be honored with a unique niche in the chrono-superlative book of records.” (Queen's Quarterly 91.4 p.969 [1984].)

Question: What do you call the following threesome: a regular hexahedron, JFK's least fave Western Hemisphere nation, and a 1920s-fash painter?
Answer: Cube, Cuber, Cubist.

On 2005/4/4, TV 'snews gave numbing promo-coverage from VatCity as the world's late top superstition-promoter's bod was

Hey, wasn't that CondiParrot's job?

Fur Out:
The only fur our friends wear is their cellphones' Beethoven-ring: Für Elise.
[Think that's bad? How about:
the sole unique service that real fur ever brought to humanity was at the 2005 GOP inaugural ostentivities — when the fur coats were the only non-fake part of the show.]

Standing Up for the Little-I:
If you had an anti-abortion-fanatic's brain, you too might hysterically oppose the killing of microscopic life.
[Further on idealistic foetus-hugger cults and their cynical exploiters:
DIO 4.3 [1994] ‡13 §C4, n.16, & §E [p.115-117]; DIO 8 [1998] ‡5 §§E2&7 [p.47].]

Level Playing Field = Nastia.

The 1974 transition from I'm-not-a-crook Dick Nixon to pratfalling Gerry Ford: the Presidency went from a standing joke to a non-standing joke.
(See DIO 11.3 [2002] ‡6 n.9 [p.71].)

Hips-Vs-Lips: Hey, a Pound Is a Pound:
Marie Osmond keeps earnestly TV-advertising that Nutrisystem ripped 50 Lbs off her hips — omitting to note that implants added 49 Lbs to her lips.

Spielberg is PC. So why didn't his 2005 film War of the Worlds refer to the incoming Martians as: “undocumenteds”? — just seeking a better life….

Unlike Europe (with its ubiquitous filthy newsrags & TV), the US establishment thankgod stoutly mans the video barricades, to keep images of topless women away from the sight of the very young. Europe isn't advanced enough to understand one of US puritanism's most epochal discoveries:

How can you spell ``water'' with only 4 letters? Answer: Lite.

JFK is best remembered for forceful public speeches, e.g., at the Berlin Wall: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Well, just as Europe reserves the name “Amerikaner” for the grossest, most glutton-seeking ice-cream cone known to manperson, so the fattest jelly doughnut is called “Berliner” in Germany. (We thank Cönnie Goessman for this bit of foreign intelligence.) So numerous Germans wondered at the time why the US press went wild with apocalyptic fervor when its President chose to announce to the world: “I am a jelly doughnut.” Musing on this while our families were walking in Baltimore's inner harbor (1994/7/23), a friend (who has the unDIOesque decency to prefer anonymity) … noted that if the symbolically-divided city of Germany had been different, the saying might have been: “Ich bin ein Frankfurter.” With a more northern German city in mind, I responded by suggesting that a worst-possible-taste black-humor photo-caption for the fatal shot in Dallas could be: “Ich bin ein Hamburger.” (DIO 4.2 [1994] ‡8 n.3 [p.72].)

DR visits Europe every year and learns a few more German words. At his present pace, in 300 years, he'll have the vocabulary of an 8 year-old German.

Years ago (c.1980), DR was involved in a public debate with a prominent Creationist — one of whose surprise tactics was his denial of the existence of vestiges (e.g., the human tailbone). So I asked him: “what about the male nipple?” Which drew no coherent response. When I mentioned this incident later to a very bright friend, he responded: “And the female brain.”
[This, in the presence of both our extremely intelligent wives, who seemed to take it in the intended jocular spirit. The genius-creator of this barb prefers anonymity, in a P.C. age.]
So now, whenever I get pseudo-sexist with my wife, I just tell her not to worry her pretty little vestige.… And she, in the same vein, says that if our friend really means there are differences between the male & female mind, she'll scratch his eyes out.
(From DIO 4.2 [1994] ‡9 §K2 [p.82].)

The Howdy-Doody Syndrome?
On 2003 November 19, it was sad to hear that, during a public event, Egypt's US-State-Dep't-beloved ruler Mubarek suddenly had difficulty standing.
Tangled strings?

Yes, DIO has even (inspired by the world's most reluctant alimony-payer, O Simpson) stooped to limericking (DIO 8 [1998] ‡5 n.21 [p.51]):

DIO's brief history of the Dork Ages (apologies to fans of the old Casey Jones spoof):

And DIO's 4-line Dutchboy-dike coverup summary (DIO 6 [1996] p.4) shows precisely as much poetic sensitivity as the foregoing:

Our great White House Cap't Bill Jefferson Ahab's totally nonsexual harpooning of an irresistible great white sperm-whale was just as irresistible to DIO. (See “Oval Sex in the Oral Office” [ruminations on BJ and his Adventures With an Ellipsoidal Phallivore] at DIO 8 [1998] pp.50-55.)

How to halve top sports-scum numbers: get O.Simpson a date with Tonya.

There's an oldie that the ideal Nazi was: slim like Göring, handsome like Goebbels, tall like Hitler, & blonde like Himmler.
Facts:
[1] This goresome foursome killed over 30 million people in order to replace them with volk meeting standards that would have eliminated themselves.
[2] All four committed suicide (between 1945/4/30 & 1946/10/1).
Don't these data suggest that the four's only crime in modern Nazis' eyes would be that the suicides should have been before not after the war they screwed up so disastrously?

Les Is More: Foam-Rubber Chastity-Diapers, Anyone?
We all know the oldie about the guy who went down to the Civic Center to see a fight but a hockey game broke out.
How about a newie? —
the voyeur who went to the college gym to watch girlpersons hug and pat each others' butts hundreds of times — but a volleyball game broke out.

GOP Terrorism-Era Fantasy Review
— Scene Secretly Deleted from 2005's KING KONG:
Bush-successor-aspirant Rudy Giuliani was asked what his very 1st thought was, when he saw romper Kong killing hundreds of NYC citizens, and Rudy said: “I immediately thought how glad I was that Geo.Bush is President.”

1. Was the creature who really killed Nicole Simpson even human?
   (See DIO 6 [1996] pp.49-50.)

2. If two wrongs don't make a right, then: what about the inverse?
   (See DIO 8 [1998] p.47.)

Finally, what no reader of the complete foregoing can possibly deny
(DIO 16 [2009] ‡4 §H1 [p.46]):

If aging and getting-mature were the same, DR would live forever.