THURSDAY, July 15, 2010

A group of Christian demonstrators protested the proposed building of a Muslim mosque near New York’s Ground Zero -- the same group that turned out last spring when an Iranian cleric applied for permission to stone an adulteress at Rockaway Beach.

A woman in Bishop, Texas won four separate lottery drawings for a grand total of $21 million, defying odds estimated to be one in 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 -- in layman’s terms about the same odds of Mel Gibson being named “Humanitarian of the Year” by the N.A.A.C.P.

A recent survey of worldwide communication systems concluded that there are now over 5 billion cell phones in use -- 14.6% of which have been used by Naomi Campbell as a missile to discipline a domestic.

Census Department data shows that obesity is most common in the state of Mississippi and rare in Colorado.  No surprise here.  The only Colonel Sanders in the Rocky Mountain state is a former Green Beret working as a ski instructor in Aspen.

As the City of Los Angeles proclaimed “Pat Boone Day” to celebrate the career of the 1960s teen icon, his signature white buck shoes were put on permanent display at the Dr. Scholl Footwear Museum in Cleveland.     

Excerpted from THE LAUGH MAKERS

At his home in Toluca Lake, Hope had a display-room in the gate house where we sometimes met with him. In the display-room were glass cases chock full of memorabilia — dancing shoes that had belonged to vaudevillian Eddie Foy whom Hope had played in “The Seven Little Foys“; the NBC microphone he had used on radio covered by a sheepskin sheath;the oversized cowboy hat he’d worn in The Paleface; a vial of crude oil from the well in which he and Bing had invested; a silver money clip autographed by Richard Nixon; golf scorecards signed by opponents such as Dwight Eisenhower, Sam Snead and Ben Hogan; ID cards he’d been issued by the Defense Department to tour the war zones; honorary Academy Award statuettes; Peoples Choice Awards; and myriad plaques, engraved cups and commemorative plates.

But the most interesting items were souvenirs that he’d been given by Allied forces at the end of World War II — personal property confiscated from captured Nazis that included an S.S. officer’s ring with a skull-and-crossbones;  a Nazi general’s dress uniform hat; ID cards, insignia and medals taken from members of the Gestapo; daggers with markings of the Third Reich and assorted machine guns, rifles and Lugers. He even had stationery used by Hitler and his staff with a swastika embossed at the top. (which he’d sometimes hand out to guests as souvenirs).

But Hope kept the most valuable Nazi artifact in a walk-in vault off the secretaries’ room where filing-cabinets filled with jokes and scripts dating back to radio were stored. It was a solid-gold liquor decanter caddy about the size of a small mailbox — with remnants of brandy, vodka and scotch still in the bottles — an ornate jeweled handle and hooks on which hung small glasses embossed in gold leaf. The story was that the caddy had been discovered in Hitler’s bunker seconds after Allied troops overran it. Two glasses were beside the decanter, partially filled as though they had been used just before the Nazi officers escaped. 

As impressive as the decanter was, it wasn’t Hope’s favorite wartime gift from the military. That honor went to a faded, black-and-white photograph that he kept under lock- and-key and brought out proudly for any guest getting a personal tour of the display room. It was a picture of General George Patton using the Rhine as a urinal.

Tomorrow:  The first time I met Bob Hope

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