Comments on: The Self-Inflicted Coup-de-Grace

By: AL

AL — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:28:56 +0000

Now you’ve done it! You’ve brought up Beverly Byers, whose exploits could fill these pages unassisted.

Beverly used to appear each night with Adam Lynch and Jack Edsel. One night, the nightly news came on, and there was Beverly, alone at the desk.

“Good evening,” she said. “I’m Beverly Byers. Adam’s sick and Jack’s off.”

By: Steve Alber

Steve Alber — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:30:07 +0000

… and lest I forget, speaking of TV personalities. The late Bill Burns, KDKA’s answer to Mrs. Malaprop, uttered this doozie when Emporer Hirohito visited Williamsburg, VA during the latter part of Octoberl:

“Emperor Hirohito rides through Williamsburg in an open carriage, and weatherman Kudzma says there’s a nip in the air.”

By: Steve Alber

Steve Alber — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:23:33 +0000

And my all-time favorite, spoken by ex-news bunny Beverly Byers on WPXI:

“Groucho Marx took a turn for the worse this evening. In fact, he died.”

By: Frank Haller

Frank Haller — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:09:13 +0000

This will be a familiar tale to several readers (and one of the writers) of this blog, from back in the day when we worked at BBDO Advertising. We had a media director named Ray whose foot was never far from his mouth.

At the climax of a major presentation to a big steel client – after all the ads had been shown and the budget proposed, and there was that dramatic pause before the client’s reaction – Ray felt the compulsion to fill in the silence.

“Gentlemen, I assure you that if you run the ads we’ve shown you in the media we’ve discussed, this campaign will stand out like Tom Thumb.”

Since we had some of the best writers in the business, after that disaster we got together for a brainstorm – if we really wanted to find a more catastrophic malaprop than Ray’s, would we be able to think of one? We couldn’t come anywhere near it. The closest we got was,

“You can’t get blood from a turtle.”

By: Rick L.

Rick L. — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:53:44 +0000

My father was a steel mill equipment dealer. It was hard-core, wheeler-dealer, corporate stuff. He got lots of intense business calls at night and on the weekends. One Saturday afternoon when I was a kid he was engaged in a hot argument with a colleague in New York. He obviously said something impugning the character of this guy, who responded, “I’ll have you know I speak five languages.” My Dad replied, “Good training to be a head waiter.”

By: Al

Al — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:04:59 +0000

Incidentally, not that it would have mattered to Ramses, but a little-known fact: bacteria are immortal. They can be killed, but they don’t naturally die; so the microbes that infected the pharaoh could have been around for a hundred million years.

By: Al

Al — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:59:44 +0000

All goodies — and the Lincoln is an all-time great (which I for one had never heard).

By: John DePaul

John DePaul — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:59:24 +0000

Two goodies, plus one all-time favorite:

“Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.” – Samuel Goldwyn

“If we do not succeed we run the risk of failure.” — Dan Quayle

And, drum roll please:

“Smoking can kill you, and if you’ve been killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.” — Brooke Shields

Lastly, while not in the same category of having a shot blow up in the muzzle of your gun, are ripostes that are kind of like throwing a grenade up in the air and running under it, e.g.,

American diplomat, observing Abraham Lincoln attending to his own boots: “Mr. President, do you actually black your own boots?”

Lincoln: “Yes, whose boots do you black?”