As promised, The Big Gallery of Bosses was launched over the weekend. Check it out. Do you recognize any of those people? I think I do, specifically (or as she would say it, “pacifically”) the third one down.
Keep ’em coming! This is a fun project, but we need more bosses. More bosses, please!
Also, something new was posted at Mockable today. I hate to brag, but I think Metten and I are firing on all cylinders at that site. I know it’s not to everybody’s taste, but please don’t write it off just yet. Subscribe to the feed, and check it out every once in a while. You might be surprised.
We need a new poll over there. The one about Old Yeller has been up for more than a week. Any suggestions? I haven’t had time to give it much thought.
On Sunday I received the following email from kevindust, under the heading Seeking Permission to Display the Smoking Fish:
Hi Jeff,
I’d like to have your permission to display the Smoking fish logo on the side of my racecar (at no cost to you!). We are a small time race team, out for fun and healthy competition in a low budget four cylinder class. I figure that if I can’t sell all the advertising space on the car, I’d at least like to cover it with an interesting logo and freely promote something I like.
In my debut season (2008) I won rookie of the year and finished 2nd in points so if I continue to do well and win races, there is a good chance that pictures of the car could be posted on the track website this season…making what I feel would be excellent Smoking Fish Sightings.
Since it is oval track racing, that Fish really will “get around”.
Attached were these three photos. And how cool is that?! Incredible. Kevin: You have my permission. And thanks for making my weekend. That’s nothing short of excellent.
Just so you know, I’m in the grip of a powerful Sebadoh jag. Usually these kinds of things only last for two days, tops. But this one is going on Day Four, or so. I just bring them up by artist on my iPod, and click PLAY ALL. Over and over again.
Will somebody please hold me?
Toney has a job that requires her to be inside middle school classrooms from time to time. She told me about sitting in a biology class recently, and every time the teacher used the phrase “woody stem” the boys would start snickering.
The instructor apparently had no idea why they were laughing, and started getting all exasperated — which only made matters worse. Heh, woody stem.
It reminded me of a clueless math teacher I had in ninth grade. She was one of those Aunt Bee-shaped women in her mid-50s, apparently never married. I think she still lived with her mother, if you can believe it, and had many cats.
Anyway, she was all the time saying things that set off the immature laughter, which completely baffled her.
One time she was telling us to multiply the numbers inside some brackets, before multiplying the answer with a number outside the brackets. Or something like that… She stood in front of us, and said, “Remember class, in-out, in-out, in-out…”
Man, the roar of laughter probably could’ve been heard inside passing aircraft. One guy, Tim M., fell out of his chair, and wallowed around in the floor for five minutes. I mean, that one brought down the house.
And she had no idea why.
Another time the same teacher got into a heated argument with one of the resident smartasses. I can’t remember who she was talking to, but he was taunting her, making snide remarks. Finally, she snapped.
“Oh, you think you’re something really special, don’t you?!” she bellowed. “You think you’re the cock of the walk!”
WTF? Most of us had never even heard that phrase, which made it even better. Kids were again free-falling from their chairs, because of temporary laughter-based paralysis. I think Tim M.’s head almost exploded, literally. I remember his face turning blood-red.
And once again, the teacher was completely confused by the whole episode…
And that’s the Question of the Day. Can you remember any of your teachers saying something that inadvertently triggered a mass Beavis & Butthead reaction? If so, we need to catalog it.
Use the comments link below.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you about our excellent warm-weather weekend, and Andy’s encounter with a heroin addict.
See ya then!
Hi!!!
FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Third, for those of you keeping score at home.
Maybe top 5?
Top 5 baby!!!!!!
Juvenile laughter trigger? The German word for the number 6. Oh man, I’d just like to apologize to all the teachers I had through the years. Well, maybe not all of them, and they know who they are.
Sex!!
Did we miss out on the N&N double-secret update from a couple weekends ago? I didn’t get anything. Anyone, anyone, Beuler, Beuler?
Wow that was quite a reading list. I must get to work on a boss drawing (but it would have to be an old boss as I am a stay-at-home without kids to mom. Yay me, huh? Are ex-bosses accepted? Or do I have to lie and say it’s a current boss?
Class stuff: I had a science teacher in Jr. High who had one eye looking outward to his left and the other eye free moving. You could never tell what or who he was looking at as they both worked (just one didn’t move). One time just as he finished a sentence a kid let this humongo fart rip (you know how they rip when you’ve been trying really hard to hold them in, right). Teacher didn’t miss a beat and just said “Exclamation point.” We all died.
Had an English teacher in high school misspell public as pubic on the board one time. She couldn’t understand why she lost control of the class to fits of laughter and everyone was laughing too hard to tell her. Someone finally walked up to the board laughing and underlined the word for her. She died laughing with us.
I took a Mechanical drawing class in high school and the guy teaching it made us keep all of our supplies in a plastic box. He was forever preaching about how important it was to keep your “box” clean. Even the girls laughed at this phrase. A few of them even commented, “Oh, I can assure you my box is clean.” I really don’t think he ever caught on.
you should really put some sort of warning on the bunker cam photos – i’m eating my lunch here!
i think i will do an ex-boss. i really like my boss now, so i wasn’t going to do one. then the ex-boss came to mind…..so much material, so little paper…..
10 ish
#12 Yahoo!!!
Thats so funny that Beavis and Butthead was referenced with those teacher remarks, because when I was reading them, I totally pictured my middle aged ass snorking and giggling that way. You know what would be the ultimate Smoking Fish pic? I think Jeff should tattoo it on his chest, and the light from the cig could be his left nip. That would be hot.
When I was in college, I had one of the sweetest professors ever. He was just such a nice guy – grandfatherly. He was going over some journalism terms. At the bottom of a column in a newspaper, it’ll say “Story, refer to 8A”, to let you know the story continues. That line is called a “reefer line” (not “refer”). Well, hearing the word “reefer” come out of this professor’s mouth send me into fits of giggles. Then, I couldn’t stop. It was a small class and we sat at a round table. You can imagine the stares I got. I just know he’d probably never heard of a reefer, so he probably had no clue what set me off.
I have a relative that can drop phrases like that. She is baffled becuase she is old school and thinks that everybody has their full and undivided attention on the problem and thats it. No mind wandering, no siree, not allowed. Concentrate, etc. blah blah blah…
Good Afternoon Surf Reporters…….
I’m anxiously awaiting the Andy(Snoop Manny Man) / heroin addict story. I can tell that is going to be classic!!
During grade 7 I returned to school late from lunch one afternoon due to a visit to the doctor. As I got to class I noticed the lights were turned down, so I was expecting to interrupt a film-strip. Instead waked into the dimly lit room where Mr. Steers (the resident science and health teacher) was standing in front of the class furiously rubbing a fluorescent tube with a furry mitt. I instantly lost my shit and hit the floor laughing. Mr. Steers (who had zero tolerance for jackassery) just kept yelling “What is so dammed funny?!” After a few minutes my sides were in real pain, but I managed to reply “If you don’t know you shouldn’t be teaching health”. When I recovered I was invited to go to the office where I was rewarded with a three day vacation for confusing a lesson in static electricity with reproductive biology.
As a footnote, Mr. Steers always kept a thermos of tea on his desk. One lunch hour a few weeks after the above incident my friend Russell “borrowed” the thermos when Steers was on yard duty and took it with him to the bathroom. Russell never admitted what exactly he did with it, but told us to expect Mr. Steers to complain his tea was too salty.
In high school, we had a history teacher / coach that had his desk centered in the middle of the chalk board, facing away from it. Some kid named Marco did something to piss him off so he drew a little circle on the board and told Marco to put his nose in it. The idea was humiliation, I guess. Anyway, the circle was about 4 feet off the ground, and a little left of the, now sitting, teacher.
After about 5 minutes, Marco started writing insulting phrases and then drawing arrows pointing to the teacher’s head, a la Ferris Bueller. Just as old teach was finishing off a sentence, Marco was dotting the i’s on his first creation, “douchebag.” The classroom roared, to a bewildered teacher. After the laughter started dying down, he started looking on some notes and with a sly smile, REPEATED the last sentence before the eruption.
By coincidence, Marko was again finishing his latest compliment, “Moose Cock” [?] followed by an arrow. The crowd was crying by this point. I think I remember actually having to stand up from getting a stomach cramp.
This happened another 5 or 6 times (“Pedophile,” “Drag Queen,” “Party in my Mouth,” [my favorite]…etc.) before he told Marco to sit down without even looking back.
Marco, calmly picked up an eraser, and with a few swipes, the evidence was destroyed. He then innocently took his seat.
That was the only time I can remember actually fearing death from too much laughter. I realize now, that the only person NOT laughing was Marco. What a master of self control.
A million years ago when I was in the 7th grade at St. John’s our teacher was Sister St. Gertrude who was at least 80 years old and so old-world that she addressed us as Master…… or Miss…….. This resulted in ongoing group detentions because of outbursts of class-wide hysteria. Gregory Bates sat in front of me.
Top 20, OK just markin ma spart, muv er lung nah yaz hear…
5th grade, a woman, that looked much like yours Jeff, but was married and had kids. Anyway, she was talking about the old days when people were poor and spouted off something like, “We didn’t have balls like you kids do, we had to make our own balls.
Balls, teehee. It still makes me laugh.
Jason, you feeling better today? no flu, right?
12th grade history. Teacher writes “Attorney General” on the chalk board. Except he made the mistake of making the lowercase Ts a little too tall and then lazily crossing them both with the same line.
Thankfully, this was pre-Lewinski, or the added visual of “A Horney General” running around DC would have probably killed a half-dozen of us.
Great stuff today.
Mrs. Whipple…sophomore English. What a GREAT lady. All the while we’d file in, she acted busy at the blackboard never looking at us as we filled up the room. Whitout turning turning around, she’d say ” I know it’s cold outside and a little chilly in here but everybody please take your hat and jacket off”. She’d then turn around and just stand there with folded hands, raised eyebrows and a silly little grin.
kevindust…well done Sir! VERY COOL!! Hey Jeff…I’m off to bowl Nationals, some side tourneys and a Pro-Am or two. I’ll be adding a new ball to my arsenal. Ok if I get the logo put on it.? Eaisly done, it’ll ‘get around’ and I don’t suck.
The hilarity I experienced never came from a teacher, but rather inadvertently from students back when I taught ESL to college-age kids who wanted to study in the US. One Japanese student got up to introduce himself and when he said his name, all the Korean girls in the class giggled uncontrollably, while the Korean boys nodded and smiled in admiration. Given the reaction, I had to ask. It took a while before one of the girls, embarrassed, quietly whispered in my ear. Apparently the Japanese name translated to something akin to “huge cock” in Korean. It took months before the giggling wore off each time I called on the Japanese boy. I figured the kid should wear his name like a badge of honor and refused to call him anything else.
In another incident…. we were having an international day at the language institute and students had a chance to bring in their favorite foods from home. Each one got up and explained what they had brought. One girl from Taiwan brought in some buns filled with, as she put it, “penis paste”. Stifling my own laughter and giving the stink-eye to others who were giggling, I said “No, I don’t think that’s what’s you meant.” Since I spoke some Mandarin, I asked her for the Chinese word. Turns out, she meant “peanut paste”. Later, I quietly gave her a pronunciation lesson and explained what she had said. She was so embarrassed that for the next few weeks she would say “pea-NUTS, pea-NUTS” every time she saw me in the hallway.
In 5th grade, our teacher developed a rather elaborate science lesson in which students holding various playground balls, basketballs, baseballs, etc, were supposed to represent the solar system. She kept saying things like “Bring your balls over here,” “Raise your balls higher,” and finally “OK, everybody, hang on to your balls!” There had been low-grade snickering all along, but it was this last one that caused everybody to lose it. Only in this case the teacher knew why we were laughing, and was utterly and completely disgusted. “Do you think I don’t know the other definition of the word ‘balls?!'” she shouted. Which only made us laugh harder. This little escapade led to bigtime across-the-board punishments, as I recall.
It feels good to bring a smile to someone that makes all of us smile so often. Jeff, thanks for your permission and thanks for posting.
Cheers!
Only thing I can remember from school was that we had a 62 year old teacher in high school that always wore white Go-Go boats and a mini skirt. We use to call her Mrs Elephant legs.
Alice in WV,
Thanks so much for asking. I got the aches and pains last night, then the burning bottoms. I saw Geraldo going on and on about the Mexican Mad Pig Disease, or whatever, and I was convinced that I had it. Now I’m feeling fine. Must of been something I ate.
I went to a friend’s house at 2:00 today and his power went out. We drank his beer before it got hot, like we were saving it from going bad or something. It doesn’t make sense now that I think about it. But I ended up having about 7 beers. If there was any Mad Pig Disease I think I kilt it.
Our football coach used to refer to everyone as “homosexuals”, as in: “pick it up, ya homosexuals.” It was somewhat funny, but not really.
I had a teacher in middle school that used to give us what she called ‘quizzies’. One day we came in and she said that today our quizzie was more of a testies.
When I was a freshman in high school, I had a general business class with a teacher named Mr. Esperseth. He was an older gentleman, and quite obviously gay. Now, way back in the mid 80’s, when I was 15, someone being gay was hilarious to me.
I remember one specific class where my friend Debbie and I were sitting in the back, next to each other, and were giggling about Mr. Esperseth’s lisping. He got tired of hearing us, as split us up. That didn’t help. All we had to do was look at each other, and we’d start laughing again.
That was probably the hardest I ever tried to stifle a laugh. It was torturous. My cheeks hurt so bad by the end of the class.
Ms. Bohn (pronounced bone) called rubber bands “rubbers”. Needless to say the smart assed boys in the class, of which I was of course one, were constantly working rubber bands into conversations. We’d ask each other in loud voices if we could borrow a rubber. We’d ask Ms. Bohn if she had any rubbers in her desk we could use.
She once brought in a big bag of rubber bands from the supply room which led to a long hilarious discussion about why Ms. Bohn needed so many rubbers. The males in the classroom were in tears and laughing hysterically but oddly enough the girls in the class didn’t find it amusing. A girl named Jessica (rule of thumb-girls named Jessica are always trouble) finally spoke up and told Ms. Bohn that rubber was a term for condom. Bitch.
Oh and this woman also had a habit of pointing at things on the blackboard with her middle finger. That was some good comedy material as well.
My 4th grade Social Studies teacher’s name was Mrs Weiner. no more need be said.
Nowait – I think it’s Aunt Bea, not Aunt Bee. Right or wrong – I put I to the great commenters of the WVSR.
I could no longer complain about my son watching Beavis and Butthead since he learned the definition of haiku from the show. Another proud parent moment.
I was in “Consumer Education” class in High School, and the teacher was putting topics on the overhead projecter while he was talking about them. He wrote “WARRANTIES” in all caps at one point, and the edge of his hand accidently brushed away the “leg” on the bottom of the second “R”, leaving “WARPANTIES” instead. This, of course, triggered numerous calls of “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” and “COVER ME, I”M GOING IN!”
I had a math teacher named Richard Kuntz. He preferred to be called Dick thus making him a perv.
I took a pottery class at a community college with a bunch of kids barely out of their teens who I swear have reverse engineered my maturity level. One day the professor was instructing us on the fine art of “pulling a handle”. With the first fateful yank of clay the room instantly went from plain Red Bull-hyper to complete roaring insanity. What does “pulling a handle” entail, you ask? You Tube, take it away….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir41NQmUfTs
I thought it was Aunt Beet. Dandy, Aunt Beet, and Dopie.
@kevindust
That completely rocks, Sir! Bravo!
All day long I read back credit card numbers and order numbers.
Hearing a gal from MN say “Oh” when reading off several zeros on her credit card makes me laugh.
Add:
The never ending giggle of hearing number 69 in any form
…………………………………..
OH and Jeff—
Smoking fishes on the way smileeseger and I hit Savannah, GA with your new evil twin shirts on.
hang tight.
I am a teacher and avoid most of these. When I do say something like that, I laugh and say “Grow up” and they laugh and we press on.
Today I saw a science teacher talk about shaking hard and stiff things. I was in the hall and I lost it. Her students lost it also, and they yelled at me to me to “Grow up”
I had a teacher that taught a class in high school called Principles of Technology. We all called it POT class. To make matters worse, his name was Maury Baulser. (pronounced “Balls her”) That class was pandemonium. Every second was a joke about his name “more he balls her the more he loves her”, or pot.
I don’t remember any classroon stories but I was working at a small market TV statio in the ’80s. We had this airhead anchor who also did the weather. One night she said “it’s going to ne rainy tomorrow but no wind, so if you go outside you may get wet but you won’t get blown.” We all lost it in the control room and were barely able to roll the commercial break that came up shortly after.
Relevant to Jeff’s current musical affliction, I have had the phrase “stump-jumping drunk from the get-go” more or less stuck in my head on repeat for the last week.
Did Aunt Bea ever “lose a pump” while shooshing Goober?
Although her name was Beatrice, she was known as Aunt Bee. Believe me, I know. I can barely figure out how to lift the hood of my car, but I’ve got the important things covered.
http://www.mayberry.com/tagsrwc/wbmutbb/anewsome/private/auntbee.htm
Tiff and Jeff,
There might be a small deviation that may or may not be relevant. Might only be an accent thing but one I’m sure you both are familiar with…as am I…mayun…
AINT Bee
Remember when New Yorkers were considered tough? Now, one little airplane flies over and they’re screaming like a bunch of little school girls.
To borrow a phrase…. whatta douche! Pass the MAN nuts.
At the bottom of the link Jeff provided on Aunt Bee there’s a link for:
“Mother Figure” Chapter – Huntsville, AL
WTF?