Oddly Enough Blog

Crawling into bed with Hitler?

What’s up, Blog Guy? You look disgusted.

I am. Regular readers of this blog know I have little patience with the idea of buying things that belonged to evil people, just to own a bit of history.

To me, a dumbass is a dumbass, whether we’re talking about Lee Harvey Oswald’s coffin or Bernard Madoff’s underwear, both of which have been auctioned in the past year.

So has another dumbass hit the auction circuit?

Yeah, the biggest. Adolf Hitler’s personalized bed linen, complete with swastikas and the crazy dictator’s initials, are expected to fetch around $5,000, maybe more, at a sale in Britain.

I mean, really? Hitler’s fricking sheets? You know what people do on sheets, and you still want Adolf Hitler’s bed linens? By comparison, bidding on Madoff’s underpants sounds almost normal.

How I spent my macho vacation…

Blog Guy, I need some of your famous travel advice. I’m a fairly dimwitted guy who never really grew up. Life hasn’t gone my way, and I need an experience to make me feel like I’m somebody.

So you’re looking for something you can brag about on Facebook, no matter how shallow it is, to keep your pathetic imitation of life going for another year?

You bet! All I have left now are shabby, contrived experiences!

This is your lucky day. We’ve just published a list of “extreme holiday adventures.” And by “extreme” I think we just mean very, very sad.

Bring ‘em on!

Okay, how about a “mountain safari,” in a helicopter whizzing right past lofty peaks that other people have actually climbed. Our story says it seats only two guests, and is “a downright romantic trip, allowing you to score major points with your girlfriend while conveniently involving superslick machinery.”

Who’s more fun than drunk people?

Blog Guy, I’m planning a vacation and I’m looking for ideas. Generally I like to go where I can see a lot of dumbasses.

Really? I guess that’s one way to go. I would highly recommend Ukraine, then.

I’ll see a lot of them there?

I suspect so. The country’s environment minister has found it necessary to “free all bears kept in restaurants for entertainment purposes.”

Bears? In restaurants for entertainment purposes? I don’t get it.

Yes. Apparently drunken customers make the poor creatures drink vodka for laughs.

And the Sportsman of the Century was…

It’s a vintage Rolls Royce convertible, bristling with firepower. A mounted machine gun, a Lantaka swivel cannon, a double-barrel high-caliber Howdah pistol. And it used to belong to James Bond, right?

Nope, it just belonged to some dumbass.

Readers of this blog know I’m always amazed that people will spend tons of money to own stuff touched by a genuine dumbass. A Jesse James autograph, Lee Harvey Oswald’s coffin, Bernie Madoff’s underwear.

Well now, for $1,000,000 or so you can bid on the car that the Maharaja of Kotah hunted Bengal tigers in during the last century.

I’ll just let that sink in for a minute. The man hunted tigers from the comfort of a Rolls Royce.

Oh, and it gets worse. When I say hunted tigers, according to our story on the upcoming auction, the maharaja would take the car to a place where his servants, who had already captured the tiger, were holding it so he could shoot it. I am not making this up.

I have a beef with your roast…

Sometimes I wish I had just arrived in America from Estonia or Honduras or someplace, which would at least give me a better excuse for not understanding the things that go on here.

For instance. Comedy Central has just announced that the subject of their next TV roast is Charlie Sheen.

I am not making this up.

Presumably Sheen was a last-minute choice after Anthony Weiner, Bernie Madoff and Osama bin Laden were unavailable. But who on earth would watch something like this?

It’s probably just my own ignorance, but I always got the impression that these roasts were supposed to be good-natured ribbing of lovable people.

I can’t begin to imagine what kind of jokes you make about somebody who actually said, “I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available. If you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”

How much for the Unabomber’s chemistry set?

Blog Guy, I’d really like to own something that belonged to a famous dumbass, but I couldn’t afford that autograph of Jesse James that went for $51,000. Is there a more affordable dumbass sale going on?

I’m sorry, but genuine dumbass stuff is expensive. For example, the U.S. Marshals Service, the folks who sold Bernie Madoff’s underwear a few months ago, is auctioning off personal stuff belonging to Ted Kaczynski.

The Unabomber?

Yep. Kaczynski, who killed three people and injured many others, doesn’t need the stuff anymore, what with serving a life sentence in prison.

The online auction still has two more weeks to run, and bidding is already very competitive. A hand-written copy of his nutjob “Manifesto” has offers of over $15,000, and his hoodie and sunglasses have 19 bidders so far, with a top offer of over $20,000.

Wait a minute. There are at least 19 people who want the Unabomber’s hoodie and sunglasses?

Five tips that could save your marriage

Maybe you saw that actor Nicolas Cage was arrested in New Orleans after an argument with his wife. He was booked on suspicion of domestic abuse battery, disturbing the peace and public drunkenness.

What intrigued me was that the police said Cage and his wife were standing in front of a home and arguing about whether it was where they lived.

Well, I can get behind that in a big way. If there’s one thing my wife and I always argue about, it’s which house is ours.

Honey, this is our place! No, our house is on another street! Hold on, it’s that green one! Wait, this isn’t even our city!

Because I’ve been through this so often, I’ve devised some helpful tricks. They’ve saved my marriage, and maybe they’ll work for other guys:

• Look in your pocket. If you have a key to the front door, it’s probably your house.
• Check the address on your diver’s license to see if the numbers match the ones on the door.
• Use your cell phone to dial your home number, then listen carefully for a ring inside the house.
• Go to nearby homes and ask the neighbors if you look familiar.
• Stumble back to the bar. Another drink could help jog your memory.

And this is from my dumbass collection…

Blog Guy, recently you wrote about an upcoming auction where they were going to sell a rare signed photo of the outlaw Jesse James for an expected $20,000 to $30,000. When is that auction?

It’s over. It was this week, and they had autographs of Somerset Maugham, Pope Alexander VII…

So you’d say the auction was kind of a Maugham and Pope operation? Get it?

No, I would only say something that outrageous if I wanted readers to switch immediately to another blog.

Sorry. Did the stuff sell for a lot of money?

Less than I would have thought. A book signed by Maugham, a great writer, went for $427 and one signed by Walt Whitman, a great poet, went for $1,098.

A letter signed by Henry Clay, a great statesman, went for $146, and an autograph of Helen Keller, a great inspiration, went for $488.

Two and a Half Morons?

Faithful readers of this blog know that I have pitched some high-concept ideas for movies and television shows in the past, stories like The Love Market! and that extra bonus season of “24.”

Surprisingly, Hollywood has kept me at arm’s length, mostly through restraining orders, but that will change when they see my latest treatment for a TV sitcom.

Welcome to “Mel ‘n’ Charlie,” the story of two feisty but lovable eccentrics who always speak their mind.

I see it as sort of “The Odd Couple” meets “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” as we watch the antics of these two crazy, quirky roommates.

Heck, it practically writes itself!

FADE IN:

So if a dumbass just signs his name…

Here we go again.

Having recently blogged about people willing to spend lots of money for stuff like Lee Harvey Oswald’s actual coffin and Bernard Madoff’s actual underwear, I now learn that a very rare autographed photo of Jesse James will be auctioned, probably for something north of $20,000-$30,000.

I just don’t understand stuff like this.

This is the same Jesse James whose Wikipedia entry calls him an “outlaw, gang leader, bank robber, train robber and murderer.”

But because he took a break from those activities for long enough to sign this one photo of himself well over a century ago, it’s now a hot item?

How do you suppose that lone autograph even came about, anyhow?

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