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The Week’s Most Slippery, Zippery, and Yom Kippury Headlines

REDUN-DUNCE
When it comes to humor, there’s commitment to a bit, and then there’s Tommy Cooper.

Cooper was a 6’4″ pudgy alcoholic chain-smoking British stand-up comedian with an incredibly mediocre act (he’d pretend to do magic tricks that would purposely fail, sort of like when the British government pretended to be able to save Poland from Nazi invasion, except that was way funnier than anything Cooper ever did).

In April 1984, Cooper was appearing on a live TV show intended for the Queen’s amusement (’Er Bleedin Majesty’s Night o’ Japery on BBC Two). Shortly into his routine, Cooper grabbed his chest and sank to the floor, to tremendous audience guffaws. They thought it was a joke, but in fact he’d dropped dead in front of 12 million viewers and possibly ’er bloomin’ Majesty ’erself.

As he expired, his death rattle brought down the house (no joke—the video’s here).

His heart attack was the funniest thing he’d ever done, and for a comedian it’s unclear if that’s a compliment or an insult. Cooper’s comedy partner Bernard Cribbins was so upset by the onscreen demise that he ceased working for several years. Cribbins was best known for novelty songs like “Right Said Fred” (yes, that’s where the 1990s “I’m Too Sexy” band got its name) that mocked British labor redundancy. Redundancy is when a union demands one nonworker for every actual worker (i.e., while Clive digs the hole, Ian sits in a lawn chair and gets paid the same).

It’s what The Sopranos called “no shows,” jobs that unions give Mob guys who get paid without having to show up.

Last week, the U.S. longshoremen’s union threatened to go on strike to “cripple the economy,” and in a twist so comedic it’s almost as funny as Tommy Cooper’s expiration, the threat resulted in widespread awareness that for every longshoreman who works, there’s one who doesn’t while getting paid for doing nothing. 50,000 salaried meatheads, 25,000 of whom spend the day watching Netflix at home. And if the union had been content with that without threatening a strike, the public would’ve been none the wiser.

Faced with the bad publicity, the union called off the strike in humiliation. And the real tragedy is that Bernard Cribbins—not an alcoholic or chain-smoker, who died in 2022 at age 93—didn’t live to see the best redundancy gag ever.

AMSTER DAMNED
California was the first state to ban smoking in restaurants and public places. Initially, in the early 1990s, the state left the decision to cities. But in 1995 Sacramento decided to stamp its foot and declare that all smoking was banned everywhere in public.

How times have changed! Last week Governor Newsom, aka “if Kamala loses I’ll never stop holding it over my party,” officially okayed “pot restaurants,” Amsterdam-style marijuana cafés where potheads can smoke all they like while munching on munchies and drinking coffee, tea, or designer water. Sure, pot smoke harms the lungs just like tobacco smoke, but isn’t a little emphysema worth it if in return you can publicly groove out to Phish coffee-shop Muzak?

“Smoke up the streets all you want,” says Newsom, “as long as, at the same time, you’re killing your brain cells and becoming an unproductive vegetable.”

Turns out the smoking ban was never about lung care. It was about, like, chilling, dude, with munchies, man. Huh-huh-huh. Maybe if Tommy Cooper had smoked joints instead of Pall Malls, he’d have still dropped dead in front of the Queen, but at least he’d have been laughing as much as the audience.

According to the local papers, the snack-shop drug dens are needed in order for California’s legal weed industry to keep up with the black market.

Yes, a genius plan. In a state filled with dine-and-dashers, stake everything on pot users buying expensive, heavily taxed weed, then buying overpriced snacks, then paying their bill and tipping generously.

Every week, it seems like California can’t get dumber.

And every week, such sentiments are proven wrong.

LASSIE, COME…HOMO!
According to a new survey, 3.3 percent of high schoolers identify as transgender.

The other 96.7 percent identify as “not wanting to meet Joshua Freyermuth.”

Freyermuth, aka “Vicki,” is a drug-addled tranny in Alliance, Ohio. A week ago Freyermuth was arrested after trying to lure kids into his car. Cops found meth inside his vehicle, but he was released anyway (nice work, Schmuckeye State), and he apparently resumed his search for boys, prowling neighborhoods and spying an 11-year-old playing with his dog on the front lawn of his house.

Decked out in a dress, lipstick, high heels, and a blond wig, “I’m-not-a-guyermuth” ran toward the child and tried to grab him.

Well, the family dog was havin’ none of that. Rex became Wrecks as he started biting the crap outta Freyermuth. Forget Pedigree dog food; that hound prefers Pedogree.

Freyermuth, meet Rover-mouth; the dog treated the shemale with unnecessary ruffness. After giving the dog a bone, this old ma’am went limping home.

No word on the breed of the dog, but it was likely from the “that’s-not-a-her-ding” family. Men in dresses might fool college professors and Democrat politicians, but they can’t fool dogs (of course, that’s an unfair comparison, as college professors and Democrat politicians have smaller brains).

The above was how the story was initially reported. Surprise ending: Turns out the boy, who’s black, made the whole thing up. No kidnapping attempt, no dog bites. The black kid just wanted to mess with a grotesque white tranny.

In hindsight, police should’ve been skeptical from the start. No black dog’s gonna eat cold Freyermuth.

FLAP JACK CITY
For 34-year-old Precious Williams of North Miami Beach, there’s no better way to spend an evening than going to IHOP for the all-you-can-eat Pan(cake)-African dinner complete with Marcus Gravy.

Because if Precious loves anything, it’s maple syrup straight from the tree (Precious—based on a novel by sap-phire).

But things took a bad turn last week, as Precious’ dinner was rudely interrupted by the presence of a white family in the establishment. Apparently, the family was (in her words) “talking badly,” and by God if there’s anyone with the skills to know “talking badly” when they hear it, it’s an obese weave-wearing ghetto black named Precious.

That white family put her right off her eggs-over-Eazy-E (it was either that or sunny-Liston-side-up), so what else could she do? She waddled over to the table and angrily smacked the white family’s 14-year-old child.

Precious—based on a novel by slap-ire.

A brawl ensued, with Precious hitting the whites with syrup and ketchup bottles. The mom tried to pull Precious away by grabbing her hair, not realizing that, much like how the North American skink sheds its tail in a fight, the fat-bellied ghetto ho (aka the North American stink) sheds its weave. As seen in this video, that hair came right off, and in an instant Precious went from looking like a female Charles Dutton impersonator to looking like Charles Dutton.

When the cops showed up, Precious begged to be able to finish her Rooty Tooty Fresh Prince ’n’ Fruity dinner, but she was hauled away (her weave faced a judge in a separate hair-ing).

Stunningly for “law-and-order” Florida, the state offered Precious a deal so sweet she lost a foot from diabetes—one year probation and an anger management course. Even more stunningly, she rejected it, a move her attorney saw as a major mistake (Precious—based on a book by gaffe-ire).

Her weave took the deal. It’s now living comfortably in Tyler Perry’s closet.

FIRE, RETARDANT
Sometimes the fireman puts the fire out, and sometimes he puts you out.

It was a normal Friday night for Oklahoma State University student Colby Parsons, a big lovable John C. Reilly look-alike, and his best gal, cute little blonde Katlyn Loubiere. Sitting in Parsons’ dorm at 2 a.m., they were doing what comes naturally for Oklahoma kids of that age—discussing corn and its amazing versatility.

All that talk about “nibbling on ears” and “stripping away husks” made the young ’uns hungry, so off they went to the 24-hour campus diner, Jud Frycook. Unfortunately, also out for a walk was local firefighter Luke Fields, the “hero rookie” of nearby Moore Fire Dept., who, in his short tenure, had already won the department’s “Lifesaving Award.”

Apparently, that station is big on irony.

Fields, a buff white guy with a mustache so gay anuses bleed in its presence, was out with his young blond male companion, and—seeing two hetero Okies enjoying the night—he became enraged, launching a bottle at Parsons’ head and, when that failed to fell him, tackling him and beating him to a pulp, breaking his leg and fracturing his skull.

Turns out that “Lifesaving Award” was for resuscitating a man Fields himself had nearly killed.

Magnum FD and his youthful ward were arrested, and as for Parsons, there’s a bright golden haze on his head…ow!

Meanwhile in California, Mendocino County fireman Robert Hernandez was arrested for starting five fires during the summer’s devastating wildfire season. While it’s not uncommon for firemen to start fires so as to appear heroic by putting them out, Hernandez told investigators that his motive was more deeply rooted in his Mexican heritage: “I wanted to blow thee leaves, but there was too many of them, señor. So I burn thee leaves. I hate thee leaves.”

Hernandez is being held at Mendocino County jail, where, thanks to him, the exercise yard has never been more well-mowed.