WEDNESDAY, May 19, 2010

WASHINGTON D.C. (BBC) - US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has promised a complete overhaul of the agency that was supposed to be regulating offshore oil drilling,  called the Minerals Management Service or MMS.   The new agency will be renamed the CBDATHIG -- the “Closing the Barn Door After the Horse is Gone” department. 

SANTA MONICA, CA (AP) - Former Food Network TV chef Juan Carlos Cruz, host of “Calorie Commando” featuring low-calorie recipes, is accused of hiring a hit man to kill his wife, an attorney.   Okay, so conspiring to murder a lawyer is only a misdemeanor, but he’s still in big trouble.

TANZANIA COAST (BBC) - The HMS Chatham, a Royal Navy warship serving Nato,  confronted, boarded and scuttled two pirate ships in the Somali Basin.  All crew members aboard the ships were captured except the captain who somehow managed to swim ashore with a waterlogged peg leg and a wet parrot on his shoulder.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) - In the war on childhood obesity, General Mills, Kellogg, and Kraft Foods have pledged to cut 1.5 trillion calories from their products by 2015.  Already Capt’n Crunch has signed on with Jenny Craig, Snap, Crackle and Pop are on Nutri-System and Tony the Tiger will be a contestant on “The Biggest Loser.”  

RICHMOND, VA (BBC) - Pfizer, the makers of Viagra, will soon close fourteen plants  and lay off  6000 employees, almost a fifth of its total workforce.  Said company president Nat Ricciardi, “The market is soft and we face stiff competition from Cialis.  Believe me, this is hard on everyone in the company." 
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Excerpted From THE LAUGH MAKERS  

Following the monologue, we set the stage for our obligatory customs sketch — always surefire in a foreign country — featuring Hope, Barbara and Florence as themselves confronted by an ultra-suspicious customs officer played by Charo.

(Up on busy airport lobby)
ANNOUNCER: “Will the Bob Hope party please report to Customs?”)

(Barbara Eden and Florence enter the arrival area and move toward a long table with a sign reading:  AUSTRALIAN CUSTOMS.)

BARBARA: What’s taking Bob so long? I’d sure like to get to the hotel.

FLORENCE: It takes time to organize a spontaneous demonstration.

BARBARA: I think I saw him signing autographs. It’s ten dollars an autograph.

FLORENCE: He gets ten dollars an autograph?

BARBARA: Oh, no. He pays it.

(Hope enters dressed in an Australian safari outfit: bush jacket, shorts, long stockings and a hat with the brim turned up on one side as is the Australian custom)

HOPE: Okay, mates, billy me bloke, let’s go pick up a cobber and a jackeroo and catch us a dinkem boomerang, huh!

FLORENCE: Bob, what are you saying?

HOPE: I don’t know, but five stewardesses thought it was hilarious.

This is a classic gag formula that appeared in many Hope sketches. We called it the “I don’t know, but... ” setup. In a sketch at the Air Force Academy, Hope enters and says “Cadet Hope reporting as ordered, sir!  Flaps up, wheels down, zeroes at eleven o’clock, coming in on a wing and a prayer, bombs away, A-OK, roger, over and out!”  Loni Anderson asks, “What does all that mean?”  Hope says “I have no idea, but it sure made a star out of Jimmy Stewart.”

BARBARA: Are you sure it wasn’t your legs?

HOPE: Owww, there’s so much jealousy in this business. (bangs on table) How about some service here!  (to the girls)  Now let me do the talking. I know how to handle these Australian accents. (calls out) What say in there, cobbers?  How about some service!

(Charo enters dressed as a customs officer: short shorts, white blouse with the buttons unfastened. She looks gorgeous)

Charo had been discovered at age sixteen by band leader Xavier Cougat.  Her drop-dead Spanish beauty coupled with an accent that tended to pummel the English language into submission, had insured many return visits to 'The Merv Griffin Show," where she became well-known to viewers — most of whom were stunned when learning for the first time that she played classical Spanish guitar like she’d been raised by Andre Segovia.  Charo was a Hope favorite and would appear on our World Series special later this same year.

CHARO: What’s going on out here? (to Hope) What are you, a hooligan? I am Inspector Charo. I will inspect your bags, look in your socks, feel in your shoes, open your shirt...

HOPE: Keep going. I may stay at the airport.

CHARO: What is your nationality?

HOPE: I’m an American.

CHARO: You can’t be American. You don’t talk like me.

HOPE: Who does?

CHARO: I must fill out this form. Please indicate the province, state, kingdom, territory, principality or protectorate from which the applicant originally immigrated. (deep breath)

HOPE: Could you read that again?

CHARO: What’s the matter, you don’t understand my inflections?

BARBARA: That’s just the problem. He can’t take his eyes off of them.

FLORENCE: Bob, tell her where you were born or we’ll be here all day.

HOPE: I was born in England. Here’s my birth certificate.
(hands it to her)

CHARO: (looks at it) Wow! It’s not every day you see something signed by Queen Victoria!

HOPE: Isn’t that incredible? She was dead forty years at the time.

Interestingly, it was just about this time that we began using Hope’s advancing years as a joke topic. Previously, he’d been sensitive on the subject, but now that he’d reached seventy-five, it seemed silly to keep pretending he was sixty. While age would never become the driving force in Hope’s routines as it would for George Burns, more frequent references to it would find their way into our scripts.

CHARO: Now I must examine your passport.

HOPE: Here you are, darling. (hands it to her)

CHARO: (looks at it) This is a very good likeness.

BARBARA: It should be. It’s by Michelangelo.

HOPE: Wouldn’t you help a starving art student who needed the work?

(Continued tomorrow when Charo discovers some interesting items in Hope's suitcase.)

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Also available in an unabridged audio version read by the author: 

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