Beijing Fake Smile Campaign
Beijing residents are being urged to practice their best fake smiles, in preparation for the 2008 Olympics:
"We hope Beijing residents will join in the smile campaign to turn the city into a city of smile," Liu Jian, one of the committee members, was quoted as saying on Monday. What happens to those who refuse to smile?
Clown Crushed To Death, Audience Applauds
No reason to doubt this story isn't true, but it does seem like a real-life version of the
Hippo Eats Dwarf tale (minus the dwarf and hippo), particularly the way the audience thinks the accident is all part of the act:
A hot-air balloon caught fire during a circus stunt, killing a clown acrobat as dozens of children watched, police said Tuesday... Witnesses said the man, dressed in a clown outfit, was hanging from a cage suspended by ropes and a hot-air balloon inside the canvas tent. When the balloon exploded in flames, the cage fell on top of the man... many people in the audience initially thought the falling cage was part of the act.
'The Hoax' Trailer
The movie version of Clifford Irving's
Autobiography of Howard Hughes hoax will be in theaters in November, and
a trailer is online now. Looks like it may be pretty good. Richard Gere actually looks kind of like Clifford Irving. I think I've said before that stories about hoaxes often make very good movies.
A Pregnant Man
36-year-old Sanju Bhagat of India certainly looked pregnant, but while he did have a fetus growing inside him, he wasn't pregnant in the conventional sense:
Bhagat, they discovered, had one of the world's most bizarre medical conditions — fetus in fetu. It is an extremely rare abnormality that occurs when a fetus gets trapped inside its twin. The trapped fetus can survive as a parasite even past birth by forming an umbilical cordlike structure that leaches its twin's blood supply until it grows so large that it starts to harm the host, at which point doctors usually intervene. So the world still waits for a true
male pregnancy. (Thanks, Kathy)
Comments
http://www.smiles2006.com/
Anyone know the book?
I didn't know "applause" was a verb.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Cooper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Shawn
Good catch. I hate it when I make mistakes like that. :red:
They get a funeral-service-with-a-smile!
I remember an X-files episode where a guy grew up with a little parasitic twin. They were in the circus. It was unhappy and didn't want to be his brother anymore, but it could detach itself from him, so it was running around digging holes in people to try and bond with them. Everyone called it the Figi Mermaid, because they didn't actually know what it was. And then it tried to attack the weird tattooed guy who eats lightbulbs and screws and raw fish, and he ate it. At the end someone commented that he looked a little gassy, and he said "Yeah, must have been something I ate."
Perfect X-files episode. Impossible in reality, insanely creepy, and cool.[/sidetracked]
I'm also getting sidetracked, but it was a good book, you should read it 😊