Today in American History: Abraham Lincoln Born in a Log Cabin He Built with his Own Hands1

“Be excellent to each other.”

—Abraham Lincoln, San Dimas High School, 1988

NOTES 
1. According to an unknown but now legendary American student that, for all we know, may actually have existed. 

Drunk History

Bowling in the Dark does not condone public drunkenness, unless it’s educational. Or funny. Today we learn a lot about cell phones and tennis shoes, both of which existed, believe it or not, in 1804.

Drunk History Vol. 1 - Featuring Michael Cera from Drunk History     

Drunk History: Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison

“More Drunk History!” you said, a little too loudly and with an awful lot of slurring.

“You’ve got it,” we replied, albeit a bit reluctantly. We wish to make it clear that we do not in any way condone drinking, onscreen vomiting, or learning. But hey, what the hell, here you go anyway:

Drunk History vol. 6 w/ John C. Reilly & Crispin Glover from Drunk History

Drunk History: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass

We at Bowling in the Dark take some pride in our 100% semi-original content. While other bloggers may shamelessly regurgitate other people’s material, we do our best to pretend it all comes straight from us. That’s the Bowling in the Dark Guarantee.¹

Sometimes, though, our hectic work schedule gets to be too much, and we find ourselves with nothing of our own to post. Unlike other websites’ jokes, manufactured by the thousand in dismal third-world sweatshops, each one of our jokes is painstakingly hand-crafted by dedicated sub-Saharan African artisans in clean and sanitary working conditions, and while we love their work, sometimes they struggle to keep up with demand.

So while we wait for our latest shipment of attempts at humor to arrive, please enjoy this American History lesson narrated by a drunk person, courtesy of Funny or Die.

Drunk History Vol. 5 w/ Will Ferrell, Don Cheadle & Zooey Deschanel from Will Ferrell

NOTES
1. Guarantees not legally binding in this dimension.

Today in Rock History, 1981: Radio Star Dies; Video Beats Murder Rap

MTV: active 1981 to, well, 1998 or so.

At 12:01 on August 1, 1981, Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes—who insisted on referring to themselves as “The Buggles,” for some appalling reason—announced, to the dismay of the cable-television-viewing world, that the radio star had been killed. Even more shocking was their claim that the death was, in fact, murder—and that the guilty party was none other than Video, the radio star’s longtime collaborator and sometime rival.

In more recent years, murder and music have intertwined often enough to leave the public jaded and desensitized—Marvin Gaye was shot by his own father in 1984; Tejano singer Selena was murdered by the former president of her own fan club in 1995; rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were killed less than six months apart in 1996 and 1997; famed “Wall of Sound” record producer Phil Spector killed actress Lana Clarkson in 2003; and, of course, the Flaming Lips famously butchered Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody in 2005.

In 1981, however, a more innocent world still reeled from the death of John Lennon (apparently a moderately well-established musician in his own right), and was captivated by the simple fact that The Buggles, for all their dense and timeless lyrical artistry, failed to mention the name of the murdered radio star—so it could have been practically anybody.

. . . well, not anybody. They distinctly used the phrase “radio star” at least a dozen times, which suggests that the victim could not have been, for example, Donnie Iris, Joey Scarbury, The Vapors, or anyone from the Sugarhill Gang or Lipps, Inc. But practically anybody else.

News of Video’s supposed guilt spread rapidly, especially among insomniacs, the jobless, and teenage malcontents watching TV without proper supervision. The accusation caught fire in part because of video’s well-established (and perhaps deserved) reputation as a corrupting influence on the young, a useless degenerate, and a crass defiler of all that used to be good, pure, and right about the world.¹ The radio star, who was heard back on the wireless as early as 1952, had already had its heart broken “by pictures” [that is, “moving pictures,” one of Video’s many aliases], so it was no great leap to conclude that Video was guilty of murder.

Video: Tried and convicted by the media, which is kind of ironic,
when you think about it. Unless it’s not—irony is a tough concept
and we’re not sure we get it. Thankfully, we know you don’t either.

The prosecution’s case, however, could not withstand its star witnesses’ inexplicable assault on their own credibility. They personally urged the jury to “put the blame on VTR [Video Tape Recorders],” and displayed a bizarre and confusing distrust of “machines and technology,” going to far as to demolish the court recorder’s stenotype machine and swallow several of the pieces before being restrained by bailiffs.

The accusers. And yes, we all
dressed just like this in 1981.

Most bizarre, though, was Trevor Horn’s obvious mental unraveling on the stand. Asked to describe the scene of the murder, Horn, confused or possibly deranged, claimed that it took place “In my mind . . . and in my car,” thus either implicating himself in the crime or inadvertently suggesting that it was all a product of his troubled imagination.

Charges against Video were eventually dismissed. The long-awaited coroner’s report stated that the radio star died when its motorcycle crashed into a helicopter, having lost control after suffering from a heart attack induced by choking on vomit. The coroner's toxicology screen showed that the radio star’s blood contained fatal levels of alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin, paint thinner,² dihydrogenous oxide, hydrochlorothiozide, and perhaps the most unpredictable and concentrated drug of the middle decades of the twentieth century—half a pint of Ozzy Osbourne’s blood.

The death was ruled an accident.

The radio star was 27.

One small step for [a] man (right), one giant waste of man’s time (left).

NOTES

1. Opinions expressed at Bowling in the Dark do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the staff at Bowling in the Dark.

2. Or possibly Everclear. Chemically speaking, they’re essentially the same thing, although it’s possible that drinking paint thinner is less dangerous.

July 21, 2011: One Small Step Backwards

Early this morning, the shuttle Atlantis touched down at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, putting an end to both NASA’s thirty-year Space Shuttle program and, for perhaps the next decade, its ability to send astronauts into space. Until a replacement for the shuttle program is found, getting Americans into space will require paying the Russian space program some sixty million dollars per passenger to hitch a ride on fifty-year-old Soviet space technology—rather than, say, something developed by this country, or in this century.¹ Constellation, the project originally intended to replace the shuttle, has essentially been scrapped; plans to return to the Moon and establish an extended human presence there are more or less on indefinite hold; and the idea of a manned mission to Mars has rarely seemed so unlikely as NASA “faces [its] biggest crisis since its formation in 1958.”

Kids of the 1980s who grew up fascinated by space travel are about a dime a dozen,² so my lingering childhood attachment to the space program is nothing special—except, of course, to me and my fellow nerdlings. I remember wishing I’d been born early enough to remember the Apollo 11 landing, or the first spacewalk, or the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous, instead of just reading about them in books that didn’t have enough pictures.³

And I’m certainly not the only kid born in the 1970s who dreamed of being an astronaut. I think I would have made it, too, had I not been unfairly held back by nearsightedness, mathematical ineptitude, poor coordination, poor reaction time, an aggressive vomit reflex, dislike of hard work and/or getting dirty, and general overall cowardice. I’m lucky I can balance a checkbook or successfully navigate a staircase; operating a billion-dollar piece of machinery in a deadly environment—without throwing up—was out of the question long before I realized it.

It’s possible, then, that I’m taking this a touch harder than I really should, that instead of seeing the somewhat mundane reality, I’m seeing only the childhood dream that’s being whittled away to a nub, and taking it personally.

Not too long ago⁴ I wrote that the space program once inspired us to be ingenious, intelligent, clever, and courageous,⁵ and maybe cutting budgets, shunning the notion of exploring the unknown, and laying off hundreds of NASA workers is ingenious and courageous in its own right.⁶ To me, though, the end of the space shuttle program—with no replacement in sight—and the apparent public and governmental disinterest in space exploration powerfully reinforce the notion that there’s no dream we can’t effectively defer by being sufficiently myopic, small-minded, foolish, and afraid. 

The sky, at the moment, really is our limit.

NOTES

1. Of course, the Space Shuttles weren’t designed in this century, but they were at least American-made. So that's one for two.

2. Not adjusted for inflation.

3. We reserve the right to switch from the “editorial we” to the first-person singular whenever it suits me. We just hope that I avoid doing so in mid-sentence, because we worry about the odds that I will confuse myselves.

4. Yesterday.

5. Or something like that. I wasn't really paying attention.

6. It’s not.

July 20,1969: One Giant Leap

Forty-two years ago today, Apollo 11's lunar module, Eagle, touched down on the Moon. The first human steps taken on another world—taken the following day by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin—were the culmination of one of the most stirring and enduring achievements in the history of the human race, and powerfully reinforced the notion that for a people visionary, ingenious, intelligent, clever, and courageous enough, even the most improbable goals can be achieved. 

Decades later, this remarkable event still inspires awe, even among those who might not have been alive to see it happen.

Silly, humorous awe still counts as awe,
as far as we're concerned.

Sorry, No Anthony Weiner Jokes Today

Anthony Weiner (D-NY).
Stop snickering.

On June 6, 2011, U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) admitted that the inappropriate photograph sent to a West Coast college student was indeed of his own crotch—which he’d previously denied, sort of—and that he, rather than a hacker, was responsible both for the photograph of his equipment and for sending it along.

Bowling in the Dark hereby declares that we plan to continue to go against the grain of childish media and blogosphere coverage by refusing to make cheap jokes capitalizing on the similarity between the Congressman’s name—Weiner—and the popular slang term for male genitalia.

That term, by the way, is “wiener.”

Wiener wiener wiener.

We refuse to describe Rep. Weiner’s situation as a pickle, or his foolish and self-defeating antics as “pulling a boner.” We will not discuss Weiner’s irritated reaction to the constant media scrutiny as “testy,” or point out or that if he hopes to be re-elected, he’s sure to encounter stiff competition. We resolutely refuse to turn this situation into an opportunity to observe how there’s now even more pork in Washington than before, or suggest that Representative Weiner needs to be more frank with his constituents.

In keeping with this small effort to return the internet to a state of dignity and decorum, we will also refrain from mentioning the following politicians if—or more likely when—they find themselves embroiled in humorous and embarrassing dick-based scandals:

• Andrew Johnson
• Lyndon Johnson
• Richard M. Johnson
• Spiro Agnew¹
• Dick Armey
• Dick Cheney
• Dick Lamm
• Dick Posthumus
• Dick Swett
• Peter Murphy
• John Boehner
• Frank Schmuck
• Ben Bushyhead
• George Bush
• George W. Bush
• Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick
• John Cox
• Harry Baals

And it should go without saying that we won’t ever stoop so low as to make a cheap joke out of mentioning such non-politicians as Wee Willie Keeler, Bobby Cox, Dick Trickle, Beaver Dick, Jerk Meat, or Dick Hertz from Holden.²

We appreciate your understanding in this matter as we try to return class and good manners to the blogosphere. Our firm stance on wieners may be hard for you to take, but rest assured, putting our foot down on wieners hurts us far more than it hurts you.

NOTES

1. The name “Spiro Agnew” may not be funny in and of itself, but you can rearrange its letters to spell “grow a penis,” and that’s just great. Thanks, Dave Barry.

2. An old roommate from the east coast once told us that he’d looked in a Holden, Massachusetts, phone book and found “Dick Hertz” in there, but we’re inclined to believe now that he was making it up. What kind of person makes things up? People like our old roommate, we guess. His name was Ollie Tabooger.

May 5, 1961: A Red-Letter Date for the Lowest Bidder

Alan Shepard in his Mercury capsule. It’s even less roomy than it appears.

On May 5, 1961, American Alan B. Shepard and his Mercury capsule Freedom 7 rode a Redstone rocket to an altitude of 116 miles above the Earth. While the U.S.S.R.’s Yuri Gagarin had made history less than a month earlier by becoming both the first person in space and the first person to orbit the Earth, Shephard’s journey into space highlighted one of the Russian space program’s most thorough and embarrassing failures: in more than thirty years of operation, from the late 1950s to its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet Union consistently failed to launch even one single, solitary red-blooded American into space.¹
 
While Shepard followed Gagarin’s spaceflight by mere weeks, Gagarin’s orbit of the Earth occurred nearly three and a half years after the first living creature made the trip. A dog named Laika—which translates from the Russian as “dead frozen space dog”²—was launched into space by the Soviets on November 3, 1957. Public knowledge of the circumstances of her death in space (which was expected and, in fact, inevitable, once she got up there) have evolved considerably over the decades. Official reports at the time stated that she was painlessly euthanized after about a week, before her supply of oxygen ran out; this story was probably not widely believed because for several decades it was just plain silly to believe most anything reported by the Soviet Union.³ Evidence suggests that Laika in fact died only a few hours after liftoff, from a combination of overheating and stress.

We appreciate the effort, comrades, but Don Bluth didn’t mean that
all dogs literally go to heaven. We kinda wish we’d said something earlier.

 
It took the United States of America more than three years to counter the Soviets’ daring leap forward by launching into space—and, even better, recovering safely—a chimpanzee named Ham, who was quite nearly nearly Laika’s equal in both overall cuteness and utter ignorance of the terrific dangers of his situation.

“People keep handing me fruit, I get to wear underpants, they’re not
making me drink TANG . . . this place is great. I think I’ll. . . . Wait—what?
You want to send me where?”

While Ham’s flight was not without incident—several hours of pre-launch delays were followed by an in-flight loss of cabin pressure, a higher-than-expected peak velocity, and a subsequent return to Earth some 130 miles from the targeted landing area—Ham’s survival and the knowledge gleaned from his flight showed NASA that a larger, less-hairy primate might well survive the same conditions, with the added benefit that he would actually understand the dials and levers in front of him.⁴

The successes of Shephard’s flight and the flights that followed were built on a foundation of daring, dedication, ingenuity, and even (to some degree) thrift. According to then-NASA flight director Gene Kranz,

“When reporters asked Shepard what he thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he had replied, ‘The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.’ ”⁵

NASA, nearly three years behind the Soviet Union at the Launching Ignorant Creatures stage of the space race, had closed the gap to a scant three weeks by the time of Alan Shepard’s flight, and eventually surpassed the Soviets to become the first nation to place a man on the moon.

Forty years later, STS-135, the last launch of the venerable Space Shuttle program, is scheduled for July 2011. No comparable replacement for the shuttle is expected for at least five years, and quite possibly much longer. While space agencies worldwide now generally work in cooperation with one another rather than in competition, and while NASA will still have some limited means of manned space flight, it’s a shame to see that, for perhaps the first time in four decades, American space exploration is taking an undeniable step backward. Perhaps as disappointing is that public interest in keeping the space program going doesn’t seem to be particularly high.

If the best and most noble elements of of humanity, such as Alan Shephard’s courage in the face of the unknown—or of the barely-known but obviously dangerous—can’t manage to keep our interest anymore, maybe NASA needs to bring back the monkeys. Who doesn’t love monkeys? This country would pay through the nose to see monkeys on Mars.⁶

NOTES

1. Although they did allow us to chill out at their place back in the summer of 1975, which was pretty cool of them.

2. This is absolutely not true, but we like the sound of it. We don’t speak a lick of Russian.

3. Notable exceptions to this rule were statements such as “Dear Poland, we are coming to visit. See you at about noon. Sincerely, Josef Stalin.”

4. NASA was also keenly interested in finding a telegenic astronaut who could interact with reporters in a way that didn’t involve throwing feces.

5. This quote may be familiar to those of you who were unfortunate enough to have seen Michael Bay’s Armageddon, which incorporates Shepard’s statement into Steve Buscemi’s dialogue in one of the few moments when the movie is not viciously brutalizing the laws of science.

6. Yeah, yeah, we know. Apes are not monkeys.

Obama's "Real" Birth Certificate Fails to Prove that Hawai'i Isn't in Kenya

Skeptics also note that the “Birth Certificate” fails to include any traditional form of identification such as a driver’s license, credit card or ATM card, DNA map, retinal scan, or stool sample.

In a disappointing but perhaps inevitable concession to the deafening jabbering of some of the most batshit crazy people in our nation’s history,¹ President Barack Obama released his long-demanded long-form birth certificate on April 27, 2011, adding another layer to the colossal mountain of evidence in support of the well-established fact that he was, in fact, born in the United States of America, just as he and the handful of sensible people left in the country—Democrat, Republican, and miscellaneous—have maintained all along.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, in a stunning display of gall that would be hilarious to imagine but an embarrassment because it actually happened, succeeded in distorting his perception of reality to the point where he was actually willing to blame Obama for the distraction this non-issue has caused:

“The president ought to spend his time getting serious about repairing our economy,” Priebus said. “Unfortunately his campaign politics and talk about birth certificates is distracting him from our number one priority—our economy.”²

The good news, though, is that now that Obama has finally decided, once and for all, to stop accusing himself of being born in Kenya despite all the common sense and evidence to the contrary, hassling himself for answers to questions that he shouldn’t have been silly enough to raise in the first place, and interrupting reasonable discussions with his half-baked nonsense about conspiracies, he can get down to finding answers to the real questions at hand.

Those real questions are, of course (1) how could Obama possibly have known, forty-six years before his election, that his future presidency would depend on creating a perfect forgery of both the official birth certificate and the long-form version, and (2) how could he have not only produced such a document but also managed to infiltrate the Hawaiian government offices where such records are kept and insert the birth certificate(s) and all the necessary ancillary paperwork without being undetected, just a few days after he was born? What kind of superhuman infant was he?

The fact of the matter is that those birth certificates and records are there, plain to see, and are indistinguishable in every possible way from real ones—so he obviously pulled it off somehow. But before you start going on about how such Machiavellian scheming, complex motor skills, and mastery of language, government paper stocks, and ink mixture are rare even among children born to supervillains with giant, pulsating brains, you should consider the far more reasonable option: obviously, the current-day Barack Obama simply has access to a time machine, and he traveled back to 1961 and explained these convoluted plans to his younger self in a language that only he and others from his home planet would be able to comprehend.

Honestly, use your heads, people. It’s so simple, a child could have figured it out. Especially one with a giant, pulsating brain. Private citizens had access to time-travel technology as early as 1985; a sitting President could easily have gotten his hands on it.

When this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour, you’re
going to see some serious shit.

NOTE

1. To be fair, not everyone that wondered about Obama’s birthplace is necessarily batshit crazy. It’s quite possible that a great many of them were sane, but too intellectually lazy to do the very few minutes’ worth of online research required to throw plenty of light on the fact that the claims put forth by birthers have been uniformly ludicrous. Really, we’re trying to be serious here. We know several decent, reasonable people who had their doubts about Obama’s citizenship—friends, some of them, although they might have changed their minds after reading this—and still others who joked about it but, we suspect, didn’t actually buy it . . . and yet we still have no idea how this line of thought is possible in a reasonable person.

2. “Obama releases birth form, decries ‘silliness,’” Denver Post, April 27, 2011.

Trump Considers Republican Presidential Bid; Democrats Wet Pants with Glee

 

Real estate mogul Donald Trump continues to act like, or at least mimic the words of, a man gearing up for a presidential campaign. While he continues to play coy about his actual intentions, he has insinuated in recent interviews that he is inclined to run as a Republican, but, if he runs and fails to win that party’s nomination, he may consider running as an independent.

Trump, if he has a passing familiarity with American history, will be aware that almost exactly one hundred years ago Theodore Roosevelt broke from the Republican Party, watched the Progressive Party (or Bull Moose Party, courtesy of a choice phrase from the eminently quotable Roosevelt himself) spring up around him, and ran for president as its nominee. While Roosevelt lost the 1912 election to Woodrow Wilson, the fractured Republican Party and its ineffectual incumbent, William Howard Taft, lost to both. To this day, Theodore Roosevelt remains the only third-party presidential candidate in American history to defeat one of the two major parties in either electoral or overall votes (having finished second in both).

It’s quite possible that Trump, in a perfectly believable avalanche of high self-esteem, sees himself as a sort of twenty-first century incarnation of Roosevelt, a visionary maverick willing to buck the system to bring the country what it needs: namely, Donald Trump. To be sure, the similarities between Trump and Roosevelt—centuries apart in our minds, but not in our hearts—are hard to avoid:

ROOSEVELT: spent decades of his life as a civil servant, first as a New York state assemblyman, then later as New York City Police Commissioner; he spent just shy of a year as Vice President of the United States, and then seven-plus years as President. On top of that, before his presidency he served in not one but two branches of the U.S. military, first as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, later resigning from that post to serve in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War.

TRUMP: builds hotels and casinos, several of which have failed to go bankrupt.

ROOSEVELT: grew up as an easterner but lived as a rancher and a hunter, coming to love and admire and even eventually embody the spirit of the American West; was an accomplished naturalist with an ear for birdsong; published nearly three dozen books on military history, ornithology, biography, political commentary, and American history; had enormous personal charisma that often left even his political rivals disarmed, touched, and filled with reluctant admiration; and possessed an astounding breadth and depth of knowledge that would have qualified him as an expert in half a dozen wide-ranging fields.

TRUMP: has his own reality TV show, where he seems to be playing an unconvincing caricature of himself.¹

ROOSEVELT: won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1906, back when actual accomplishments, rather than anticipated accomplishments, were required for that sort of thing.

TRUMP: in 2004 filed a trademark application for the words “You’re fired,” just in case there was money to be made from other people losing their jobs.

Roosevelt’s and Trump’s own words also help to highlight the stunning similarities in their characters and the quality of their thought processes:

“Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”²

—Theodore Roosevelt, 1912

“I’m a really smart guy. I was a really good student at the best school in the country.”  

—Donald Trump, 2011

Trump has claimed to be concerned that American has become “the laughingstock and whipping post for the rest of the world.” At almost exactly the same time, however—and with no apparent understanding of irony—he has flung himself willingly onto the birther bandwagon, questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship in a shameless appeal to the nation’s craziest common denominator.

It is unclear whether Trump is aware of the yawning disconnect between his concern for America’s reputation and his endorsement of one of the stupidest conspiracy theories in its history. It’s hard to say whether it’s occurred to him that a blowhard television personality with no political experience may not be the best way for the nation to turn the corner on that whole “laughingstock” thing. What should be fairly obvious—not to mention disappointing and depressing—to the rest of us is the yawning gulf between what gets called a presidential candidate in 2011, and what qualified just one hundred short years ago.

NOTES

1. Other folks with television shows: the Thundercats, the Smurfs, the Transformers, and any number of other cartoonish boobs with political experience similar to Trump’s. It’s to their credit, though, that they were not part of a reality show. Frankly, we’d also probably prefer President Snarf to President Trump.

2. The famously verbose Roosevelt spoke for approximately ninety minutes—a rather long time by the standards of the stunted modern attention span; rather longer yet when you consider that he had a fucking bullet in his chest.

Sacagawea: An American Icon

On August 31, 1803, the Lewis and Clark Expedition left Pittsburgh to, in the words of President Thomas Jefferson,

“explore the Missouri River and such principal stream of it as by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river that may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent for the purpose of commerce.”

Among the expedition party—and arguably its most famous member, surpassing even Lewis and, er, that other guy—was the Shoshone woman Sacagawea, who not only served as the expedition’s interpreter and guide across thousands of miles of unfamiliar, unforgiving, and potentially hostile wilderness, but also did everything the other explorers did, except backwards and in high heels.¹

While genuine biographical facts about Sacagawea are limited,² her presence on the Expedition was not only integral to its success but also remarkable in that she joined the expedition while pregnant, gave birth in the middle of it, and carried on until the end with a newborn son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, in tow.³ It’s known that she later had another child, Lizette, with Toussaint Charbonneau; in 1811 she survived an attack on Fort Lisa, North Dakota, that took the lives of fifteen men; and in 1999 she became, by a wide margin, the least-butch woman ever to grace U.S. currency.
 

The sparse but commonly accepted history suggests that that Sacagawea died of a “putrid fever” on December 20, 1812, at only about twenty-four years old, at Fort Lisa, North Dakota. However, an alternate theory has been put forth that suggests that she long outlived this purported 1812 death, married into a Comanche tribe (after either a separation from, or the death of, Toussaint Charbonneau), and survived into the 1880s. This theory also suggests that, in addition to Jean Baptiste Charbonneau and Lizette Charbonneau, Sacagawea had five children by her second husband, a man named—according to this alternate theory—Jerk Meat.

I’ll repeat that more loudly, for those of you in the cheap seats: Jerk Meat. Please stop snickering—history is serious business.

It’s quite possible that naming conventions in nineteenth-century Comanche society didn’t fully anticipate the prevalence of the Beavis and Butt-head mentality of early twenty-first century American culture, but . . . seriously, Jerk Meat? How much did that poor guy get picked on as a kid?

If this alternate theory is to believed, there’s one trend that Jerk Meat’s parents did fully anticipate, and that’s the urge to give a poor, unsuspecting, defenseless little kid a ruthlessly stupid name. It’s unclear whether famous people gravitate towards this kind of name more than regular folks or it just seems that way, but famous people’s stupidly-named children are certainly easier to track down, so those are the ones I’m going to point out:⁴

• Kal-El: Son of Nicholas Cage, who apparently dreams of launching his boy out into deep space. I guess if you’re going to name your kid after a comic-book character, you could do worse. “Spawn” comes to mind.

• Pilot Inspecktor: Son of Jason Lee, former skateboarder and star of My Name is Earl, a show in which his wife’s son, Dodge, got his name because his (at the time) unknown father drove a Ford. The silly-name theme extends even to fiction.

• Fifi Trixibelle: Daughter of Bob Geldof, singer of the Boomtown Rats’ lone hit “I Don’t Like Mondays,” and later star of the movie version of The Wall. For all we know, he may also have other accomplishments in the last twenty-eight years.

• Apple: Daughter of Gwyneth Paltrow and that dude from that band that wants to sound like U2. No, the other band. No, the other dude.

• Prince Michael Jackson/Prince Michael Jackson II: Michael Jackson, one of his generation’s most gifted musicians and lyricists, apparently met his match when it came time for him to think up two measly boys’ names. So, in a stroke of genius, he named his boys after himself and their mother, Rogers Nelson.

• George Jr., George III, George IV, George V and George VI: Sons of boxer George Foreman. I refuse to mock George Foreman for his name selection, on account of the fact that the guy has been punched in the head more times than I’ve gotten out of bed.⁴ Plus, I’m quite certain that he (at sixty-one years old), any of his sons, and most of his daughters could beat the shit out of me. So name your kids whatever you want, George, I’m not going to say a word.

• Moon Unit, Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen, Ahmet, and Dweezil: children of musician and composer Frank Zappa. When “Ahmet” is the most normal name your kids end up with, maybe you should rethink your priorities. Technically, Dweezil Zappa was born Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa—pretty darn normal, by Zappa standards. He grew up being called “Dweezil,” however, and didn’t learn of his legal name until he was five. He wanted to be Dweezil for real, and had his name legally changed. This is all fine and good, but come on, he was five. Can you really trust a five-year-old’s judgment? When I was five, I wanted to be a train.

• Sage Moonblood: Son, or perhaps daughter, of Sylvester Stallone. This isn’t any sort of commentary on Sage Moonblood Stallone’s masculinity or femininity, it’s just that Sage could be a man’s or a woman’s name, and I’m too lazy to look it up. And yes, I know how easy it is to look things up on the internet.

• Moxie Crimefighter: Child of Penn Jillette, the noisy half of the magician and comedian duo Penn & Teller. If I weren’t in the middle of griping about how awful it is to give kids names like these, I might admit that “Crimefighter,” as a middle name, is pretty fucking awesome.

• Tallulah, Scout, and Rumer: Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. I’m tempted to be complain that the least they could have done was spell “Rumer” like a real word,⁶ but I don’t think it’d do any good.

To be fair, regular unknown folks also do give their kids unusual names, although it’s a lot easier to find them when those kids get famous: Coco Crisp (baseball player), Peerless Pryce (American football player), Soleil Moon Frye (former child actress), Zooey Deschanel (current grown-up actress), Milton Bradley (baseball player/grouch). And Dane Cook, while he does not have children, has considered naming his children “Megatron” and “Optimus Prime.”⁷

While unfortunate names like these can (or did) lead to tough times growing up, these kids can take solace in knowing that their futures are not necessarily dim. History tells us⁸ that their spiritual predecessor, Jerk Meat, may well have led a very meaningful and satisfying life, if he actually existed; married a strong and beautiful woman, unless she’d actually died years before; lived to a ripe and joyous old age, as far as we know; and probably drifted blissfully off into the next life surrounded and supported by his loving children, Horseradish, Dick Head, Ted Nugent, Fatty Fatty Fatpants, and Mortimer Julius Underbuttocks III.

NOTES

1. It’s possible that we’re confusing Sacagawea with Ginger Rogers. You’d be surprised how often this happens.

2. According to a Wikipedia article I just skimmed and essentially plagiarized. Their sentence reads, at the moment, “Reliable historical information about Sacagawea is very limited.” I rewrote the sentence as it appears above so I can pass it off as my own scholarship, which is why you will find no reference or link here to any Wikipedia article.

3. Take that, Meriwether Lewis, you non-childbearing pussy.

4. I got most of these names here.

5. And he’d back me up on this: "If you're in boxing, too; you heard of Muhammad Ali, Kenny Norton, Joe Frazier. Evander Holyfield. They all hit me on the head. How many names am I going to remember?"

6. Roomer, ruler, tumor. Pick one, they’re all real words.

7. This could easily be interpreted as part of a comedy routine, except that it is yet to be determined whether Dane Cook has ever tried to do anything funny.

8. Or it could, if it wanted to.

Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, Part 2

Day two: Give me liberty, or give me drinks

The Research Department here at Bowling in the Dark recently completed an exhaustive cross-cultural national survey, compiling detailed information about average Americans’ familiarity with their nation’s history. We’ve learned that despite a significant emphasis on American history at all levels of public schooling, most Americans’ grasp of their own national origins can be disappointingly spotty.

For example, the following are some of the better-informed answers we received regarding a short list of prominent figures from the American Revolution:

George Washington: believed to have chopped down a cherry tree and then thrown it across the Potomac River, President Washington prevaricated before a Congressional inquiry into the subject, stating that “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘cherry’ is.”

Thomas Jefferson: In-depth research has shown that Thomas Jefferson may have slept with one of his slaves. A tiny community of pedantic nitpickers¹ said something about Jefferson writing something or other, holding some sort of office, and maybe hanging out with, like, French people or something, but honestly, we couldn’t find any real Americans who actually gave a crap. As the director of the Thomas Jefferson Institute explained, “Dude, he was having sex. That’s fucking awesome.”

John Paul Jones: Sea captain, scourge of the British Navy, and Led Zeppelin bassist, 1775–1980. Remarkably well-preserved for a 263-year-old.² When ordered by the captain of the HMS Serapis to keep the noise down, he famously replied, “I have not yet turned on my amp!”

Benjamin Franklin: a famous colonial inventor, writer, publisher, statesman, and amateur kite-flyer, Franklin was the first to prove the theory that, when electrocuted, the average American shits his pants in a most undignified manner. To hide his shame, Franklin moved to France, where became famous for wearing a fur cap.

Nathan Hale: Gave one single measly life to his country, and has spent the last two hundred fifty years dining out on it. “I regret that I blah blah blah something, something, whatever.” Why don’t you just shut up and pay your own bar tab once in a while, you big fat freeloader.

Abraham Lincoln: Despite being born more than three decades after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln is warmly remembered as a hero of the American Revolution. An experienced attorney and a splendid orator, Lincoln first gained renown for his spirited presidential debates against the 2'4" Stephen Douglas. The towering Lincoln, with a confident grasp of the issues at hand, a wealth of knowledge at his command, and a charmingly rustic delivery characteristic of his rural upbringing, crushed the diminutive Douglas in their final debate with a single blow from his massive, gnarled fist.

John Adams: Star of the movie musical 1776, this often-marginalized hero of the republic was reintroduced to the American public and a whole new generation of awestruck schoolchildren as the voice of a talking car.

Samuel Adams: the Beer Guy. Yep, that’s right, probably the most recognizable hero from the American Revolution—except, of course, for the dude that had sex—is Samuel Adams, the guy that makes that beer. Rather than delve into the complex and probably disappointing reasons why this is the case, or get into a tirade about the state of the American educational system,³ let’s just recognize this for what it is—a really convenient segue into discussing today’s beer selection:

Samuel Adams Coastal Wheat, Boston Beer Company, Boston, Massachusetts (or possibly Cincinnati, Ohio).

While I rarely refuse a wheat beer if one is offered to me, I don’t usually go out of my way to order them. I don’t generally mind the flavor, but something about their murkiness is off-putting. A clear drink (such as last installment’s Carlsberg) is trustworthy: you can tell there’s no disgusting little floaties in it. And a stout—Guinness, for example—is fine too, because frankly it could be filled with a handful of hammered little tadpoles swimming every which way, and I wouldn’t have any idea. So that’s fine. A wheat beer, on the other hand, seems actually designed to be hazy—as if it’s taunting me—and I’m not a big fan of that.⁴

Sam Adams’ Coastal Wheat did indeed come out of the bottle a touch cloudy, though not as much as I’d expected. I sensed a slightly fruity odor, and sure enough, a quick glance at the label confirmed that this is a “Wheat Ale brewed with Lemon Peel.” The label fails to explain, however, why the beer is brewed with the shittiest part of the lemon, the part that nobody ever, ever eats. I suspect that the Redcoats took all the genuinely edible parts of our colonial lemons, leaving stout patriots like Adams to throw whatever scraps they could find into their beer. We’re lucky the Boston Beer Company chose this recipe; research indicates that Samuel Adams had also developed brews that made use of fish heads, newsprint, and tea leaves dredged back out of Boston Harbor.

That said, though, Samuel Adams Coastal Wheat is a pretty good beer. It’s a refreshing break after a long day of whatever the hell it is I do all day. While I may not go out of my way to buy it for myself any time soon—in part because I still have almost 90% of the Mystery Case left—I certainly wouldn’t turn one down if it were offered to me.

Some Guy’s abitrary but indisputably accurate rating for Samuel Adams Coastal Wheat: Two (2) lanterns hanging in the steeple of the Old North Church.

For more of Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, check here: Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6

NOTES
1. I think they described themselves as “historians,” whatever the hell that means.
2. He must be Haitian.
3. Or the possibility that I may have simply made up one or two of the above facts about our founding fathers, and the American public’s beliefs about them. It’s also possible that I made up the survey . . . and also our Research Department.
4. I drink pulp-free orange juice, too, which at least means I’m consistent. I don’t see any reason why you’d need or want to know what kind of orange juice I drink, though, which is why I’ve put it here in the footnotes. Don’t tell me you actually waste time reading the footnotes.