Two Half Things for the Price of None

Rob is in Burundi judging a powdered sugar eating contest.  Filling in tonight is Mr. Larry King.

That Hitler was a real so-and-so... I go through more emery boards... If I could be any Pip, I'd be Bubba. He always had a quiet dignity to him... Chicken is A-okay poultry in my book... I wonder what it would feel like if a bee got caught inside my eyelid.... Is it me, or does this Barrack Obama bear a striking resemblance to the Billie Holiday?  I watch the debates, and I keep thinking it's Lady Soul up at the lectern.  Whatever the case, I hope he doesn't steal my wallet!... Scott Turow's latest thrilla, "Operation: Fire Explode" had me on the edge of my seat, because I dropped it on the floor and didn't want to have to stand to pick it up.  I'm old, you know... I just can't say enough good things about the way Billy Crystal finally getting to be a Yankee makes me feel...

Which is as good a segue as any into our next bit (hi, Rob here, back from Africa), in which I tell you about some other legendary funnyviduals who got to live out one dream or another and play professional sports, in some cases when the comedian was way too old and lacked any and all self-awareness, only a tiny amount of which would have been needed for them to see that they were only embarrassing themselves by living out their creepy daddy issues in front of the world--the sports world, no less.

Anyway, here we go.

IN 1978, the Edmonton Oilers gave a ten day contract to an 84-year old Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin had played hockey regulaly throughoout his orphanhood, but had not played in over hafl a century. He pled to let him just sign some autographs or something, maybe even have a big retrospective screening of his works when the weather got nicer, but they would hear none of it and conscripted him into the team. He ended up playing eight games as a third-line wing. What he lacked in size he also lacked in agility, what with being so close to his death by this point, and while he could scrap a little, his stamina was low. His numbers were not very good, but they were not horrible. Probably a lot of Hockey players with brief NHL careers ended up with similar stistics to Chaplin's. Just goes to show you, don't it now?

In 1980, Gallagher joined the Harlem Globetrotters for a a one-week tour of the Carolinas. Promoter Harvey Slickman was hoping to team the two stellar acts for wha he envisioned as the greatest touring entertainment extravaganza since that one huge one that ended in that shocking way that no one is allowed to talk about ever again. The Carolina shows were to be a stripped-down test run. Elementary school gynasium shows, mostly. High schol gyms would have been making too big a deal about it. Slickman wanted it to be subtle and low key. Most of all, he just wanted to see the on-court chemistry between the roundball goofballs and, at the time, the owner and caretaker of America's greatest comic mind.

It was a disaster. Watermelon is much harder to squeegee off the court than confetti. It makes everything wet and slippery, and then it gets sticky, and it gets your shoes sticky, and it's really unpleasant having to listen to people running around in sticky shoes, and then the crowd started shouting radom things, and then Gallagher's giant inflatable sneakers accidentally inflated... It was a nightmare, and it took about an hour before action could continue. They stripped Gallagher of his props, but it only got worse. The guy couldn't make an open fucking layup. He was 0-9 from the field. His one jump shot was a line drive straight into the floor about three feet in front of the basket. He flinched when someone passed him the ball. He cowered and/or ran away from charging offeses, and every time one of the Globetrotters tried to get him inolved in ther playful acrobatics, Gallagher would invariable either clutch the ball and stand with it until someone demanded he "give up the rock", or, a few times, he tried to participate and end up knocking the ball in some totally unexpected direction. One girl in the front row had to get surgery to get her contact remooved from the back of her eyes, another young lady suffered a miscarriage.

I had some other examples, but would it have been worth it?

BONUS FLASHBACK: Creepy comments!