Archive for the 'Entertainment' Category

Some History Lessons


A bit of history:

  • One day in the 16th century, a student at Oxford University was sitting in the woods reading a volume of Aristotle, when he was attacked by a wild boar. The student saved himself by shoving the volume down the throat of the boar and choking it to death. He brought the boar back to Oxford, where it became the centerpiece of a great feast. The anniversary has been celebrated at Oxford ever since, with an annual Boar’s Head Dinner.
  • One day in 1934, someone at the University of Rochester decided that Rochesterians should celebrate these anniversaries as well. Ever since, with a few interruptions, the University has been the site of an annual Boar’s Head Dinner, where a member of the University community is called upon to re-tell the story of the brave Oxford student, perhaps with some embellishment.
  • One day in 2005, I was the one who was called upon. The event was filmed, but the sound quality was horrendous. (So was the video quality, but that seems less important.) I’ve therefore almost never shared it.
  • One day a couple of months ago, I mentioned this to my awesome friend Rowan McVey, who volunteered to take the video, improve the sound quality, and add captions. (Note: Rowan was already entirely awesome even before she jumped on this task.)

Herewith the fruits of Rowan’s labors. The two videos linked below are identical except that the first has captions and the second doesn’t. The sound quality is still surely imperfect, but it’s a vast improvement over the original.

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What is an E-flat idiot?

So I was clicking through the stations on Sirius XM and came upon a rebroadcast of an old Jack Benny radio program from 1953, with Bob Hope as the guest star. There is a live and apparently very appreciative audience that laughs expansively at all the “jokes”. (Yes, the scare-quotes are deliberate.) But one instance stands out from the rest: When Dennis Day informs Bob Hope that, having seen all the Road To… movies, he has something to say. And what, asks Hope, is that? The ensuing dialogue goes like this:

Dennis Day: You’re nothing without Bing Crosby!

Bob Hope: You E-flat idiot!

At this the audience laughs uproariously, out of all proportion to all previous laughter, and for what seems like approximately forever (though I now know that it was about 17 seconds).

Having absolutely no idea what an “E-flat idiot” is, I of course turned to Google, where I get several hits — all of them to pages with lists of something like “the longest laughs in the history of radio”, but not one of which leaves me any more enlightened about what an E-flat idiot actually is.

(I realize it’s probably too much to hope that I’ll ever understand why this was funny, but I’d at least like to know what it means.)

Anyone?

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And in This Corner….

How much would you pay to see Paul Krugman debate the irrepressible Austrian economist Bob Murphy?

Murphy isn’t the first Austrian to challenge Krugman to a debate, but I bet he’s the cleverest. He’s calling for pledged donations to help the New York City Food Bank feed the hungry — with the pledges contingent on Krugman’s accepting the challenge. The pledge total is currently around $40,000 and Murphy is hoping to hit $100,000. Then Krugman can choose between facing off against Murphy or denying $100,000 worth of food assistance to the poorest of the poor — an option that in another context, Krugman himself might be quick to label as “callous”. Or worse yet, “Republican”. Here‘s where you go to pony up.

I would love to see this debate, all the moreso after watching Murphy’s two promotional videos, each so entertaining in its own way that they made me want to send him money independent of the Krugman thing. Watch, and enjoy:

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Religion on Trial: The Video

At long last, I have video of the “Religion on Trial” debate between me and Dinesh D’Souza, held at FreedomFest 2010:

I was warned in advance that the audience would be hostile and that I had no hope of winning the final vote. This prediction proved entirely accurate.

Overall, I think we provided good entertainment without pretending that this was any kind of serious intellectual exercise. There are, of course, a few things I’d do differently given the chance, but I won’t indulge the temptation to enumerate them here. Enjoy the show.

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