Bob Fenster - Twisted: Tales from the Wacky Side of Life

ONE
The Dear John Infomercial: Strange Strategies for Dealing with the Weird Challenges of Life

TWO
The Endless Kiss and Other Odd Accomplishments of Ordinary People

THREE
Bizarre Breakdowns: Rare Occasions When Things That Should Work Dont

FOUR
Ancient Wristwatches: What Were They ThinkingIf at All?

FIVE
The Man without a Pencil: Unusual People and Their Bizarre Talents

SIX
$7 Million for Cats and Other Odd Ways to Get Rid of Money

SEVEN
Milo, Put Down That Tree: Weird Ways to Die

EIGHT
Running Downhill and Other Strange Lessons They Wont Teach You in School

NINE
The Twenty-Five-Year-Old Teenager and Other Ways We Get It Wrong

TEN
The Egg Writer and the Reluctant Rower: People Who Mambo to the Beat of a Different Drummer

ELEVEN
The Emperors Barber and Other Odd Jobs

TWELVE
Into the Harem and Other Twisted Surprises

THIRTEEN
Imaginary Pebbles and Pet Lobsters: The Weird Habits of Highly Strange People

FOURTEEN
Redesigning the Sky: Twisted Egos of the Stars

FIFTEEN
On to Paradise: Hidden Meanings and Odd Origins

SIXTEEN
Inside Hollyweird: Behind the Scenes in La-La Land

SEVENTEEN
Driving in Turkmenistan: The Odds Against Us

EIGHTEEN
Aimless Wandering and Other Obvious Things That Are Not What They Appear to Be

NINETEEN
A Level 5 World: How Theyre Making Our Future Even Stranger

TWENTY
The One-Day President and Other Odds and Ends

TWENTY-ONE
Different Lives

TWENTY-TWO
Get Twisted: Moments That Have Made My Life a Little Stranger Than It Had to Be

Never make people laugh, Congressman Thomas Corwin advised. If you would succeed in life, you must be solemn, solemn as an ass. All the great monuments are built over solemn asses.

Congressman Corwin was being funny when he advised against being funny. He knew that laughter is the opposite of making sense.

If you listen to the volunteer hall monitors of the world, everything makes perfect sense. But thats not where the interesting thinking goes on. For those moments in life that make you laugh, you need the eccentrics, the original thinkers, the congressmen, and other nut-jobs. Fortunately, the human race is the worlds leading producer of the twisted and the wacky.

This book is a collection of the funny things people do when they stray from the line and tap into the 90 percent of the mind that we dont usually use.

Going off-center gets us originals like these:

J ohn Norbury and John Parsons, two Irish lawyers of the 1700s, were riding in their carriage past a scaffold upon which a criminal had been hung.

If we all had our deserts, Norbury challenged his companion, where would you be?

Parsons glanced at his friend and said, Riding alone in my carriage.

F rench scientists established the Guzman Prize in 1900, putting up 100,000 francs for the first person who could establish communications with extraterrestrials.

The scientists who served as contest judges ruled that contacting Martians would not qualify for the prize, because that was too easy.

No report on how much money the Martians offered their scientists for discovering intelligent life on Earth.

Life isnt always funny. We learn this from watching TV sitcoms. The serious parts of life are easy. You cant miss them, and they probably wont miss you. Real-life comedy? A little harder to find. But life is funny when you least expect itand when you probably need it the most.

Perhaps youre rich, beautiful, and adored. But probably not. Perhaps you have something people usually arent adored for: a twisted mind. You will never get elected president of the In-Crowd. But you are ready to join the Pantheon of the Eccentrics. Look at the company youll keep:

O riginals like the seventeenth-century French scholar Baron de Montesquieu, who pointed out, If triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.

O r painter Salvador Dali, who once gave a speech all politicians should memorize. He stepped up to the dais and said, I will be so brief I have already finished. And he was.

O r Korean distance runner Kitei Song, who trained for the 1936 Olympics by running in baggy pants, his pockets filled with sand, and rocks tied to his back.

Just as stupidity is good for the economy, wackiness is a growth industry. Comedians would be unemployed if they didnt have fools and idiots to make fun of. Newspapers would be blanks with ads.

But well be OK as long as we listen to the odd ones, like comic Monica Piper who explained why juries scare her: I dont want to put my fate in the hands of twelve people who werent smart enough to get out of jury duty.

Life doesnt have a laugh quota. Grab as many as you can. If you miss a few, remember what my uncle Jackamon Jakowski told me when I went into this funny business. Bob, he said, theyre going to call you crazy. And theyre probably right.

When you start from that position, its hard to go wrong.

My search for the comedy of real life began with a stupid idea: I wondered if the dueling forces of progress and absurdity were stretching our minds in two directions at the same timeso that the stupidity of the human race increased at the same rate as our intelligence?

Since my books draw their laughs from real life, people often ask if the world is going to run out of material for me. And I say, Not if you pitch in and do something funny today.