Participants of a certain age may find it helpful to summon up the image of the late actor John Houseman,
the condescending, faux-fusty Professor Kingsfield from Paper Chase and the stern investor in the old E.F. Hutton television commercials ("They make money the old-fashioned way; they earn it!").The most outrageous, obscure, or pathetic tale wins, à la The Aristocrats and that "The Most Interesting Man in the World" ad campaign. Shall we give it a go?
"He may have bilked millions of widows and children out of their few meager pennies in order to provide the necessary capital to expand his chain of South American rodent burger franchise restaurants, but...he lived."
"She may have sacrificed her dream of becoming a urological physician's assistant to marry a diseased toad who had bought her two stale beers at a reunion of matchbook trade school graduates, falsely promising her that he was, in fact, the third cousin of a Moluccan prince, but...she lived."
"He may have retired from his promising career as a Triple-A pitcher in the Dodgers organization to produce a new reality show pilot featuring a team of UC-Irvine snail biologists in their attempt to breed a new species variant of sea slugs that, they hypothesize, will better attract bottom-feeding fish unaffected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but...he lived."
Extra points are awarded for true stories about the person on your left.
