Off-Kilter
May I Have the Envelope Please Department: As usual, we are bored to death by this year’s Nobel prizes, mainly because we think they should be handed out on a special TV award show featuring choreographed musical numbers, long thank-you speeches and perhaps a scientist swimsuit competition.
That’s why we prefer Boston’s annual Ig Nobel ceremony, which honors achievements that “cannot or should not be reproduced,” such as the recent Harvard University study on “Feline Reactions to Bearded Men,” in which 200 cats were shown photos of hairy-faced humans (results: Cats disliked men with long beards and were indifferent to ones with short whiskers).
Other previous Ig Nobelists include a panel of scientists who measured the effects of chewing different-flavored gums on people’s brain waves, a Pennsylvania university team that found out elevator Muzak boosts the human immune system and might prevent colds, and a group of Japanese researchers who trained pigeons to tell the difference between paintings by Picasso and Monet.
This year’s event featured a duct-tape fashion show, a duct-tape opera and the usual assortment of strange awards. The winners included a Journal of Analytical Psychology study on a boy who deliberately passes gas as a self-defense mechanism, a Pennsylvania zoologist who tried to increase happiness in clams by feeding them Prozac, and a Lancet medical journal article titled, “A Man Who Pricked His Finger and Smelled Putrid for Five Years.”
You Are Getting Sleepy . . . Sleepy: The Amazing Kreskin, a mentalist who really isn’t that amazing but persists in calling himself that, has released his list of this century’s “top 10 mesmerists,” people who exert an almost hypnotic influence over mass audiences. President Clinton is ranked 10th, behind John F. Kennedy (No. 1), Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Arthur Godfrey, Bishop Fulton Sheen, Walter Cronkite and Eva Peron.
Arthur Godfrey?
Bumper Sticker Patrol: One of the most famous religious bumper decals of the era is “In case of Rapture, this car will have no driver.” It refers to a belief among some Christians that the Lord will abruptly remove his followers from the planet shortly before the antichrist takes over and all hell breaks loose.
Now there’s a spoof of that slogan, spotted in Denton, Texas: “In case of Rapture, can I have your car?”
Random Statistics Bureau: If Gray Davis is elected on Nov. 3, he’ll be the first California Democratic governor not named Brown since Culbert L. Olson’s election in 1938.
However, that still won’t earn him a spot on the top 10 mesmerists list.
Shameless Self-Promotion Department: Pick up Sunday’s Life & Style section for our special report on the private lives of the Jolly Green Giant, Count Chocula and other product mascots.
Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Saddam Hussein Orders 60 Cases of Viagra!” (Weekly World News)
* Roy Rivenburg can be reached by e-mail at roy.rivenburg@latimes.com.
Unpaid Informants: https://www.improb.com, Charles Downey, Kiwanis magazine, Bob Sipchen, https://www.ship-of-fools.com, William Smith, Hotline
