Blame It on the Dog Read Online Free
Author: Jim Dawson
everyone’s eyes. As Mr. Methane headed out to entertain people on the street, Stern declared, “I am gonna bring him to Broadway.… This guy deserves to be seen. He’s the greatest superstar that ever lived!” Mr. Methane’s segment aired nationally on cable TV’s E! channel on January 9, 2002.
Returning triumphantly to Europe, Mr. Methane opened an art exhibit in Switzerland entitled
Smells of the Alps
, in which he performed traditional Swiss songs, first karaoke-style and then with the horn section from the Bern Philharmonic. (No, his ass didn’t yodel.) He also appeared on a BBC TV special, blew out the candles on a birthday cake in front of 6,000 people at a gala in Paris, burst a balloon on a woman’s head with an ass dart on French TV, toured Australia several times (where he has become a sensation), and finished a TV pilot for a Mr. Methane animation series. More recently, he has been conferring with one of his fans, Irish singer Sinead O’Connor, about doing a parody duet on “Nothing Compares to Poo,” a takeoff on her hit song “Nothing Compares 2 U” (with hopes that the song’s composer—the artist formerly known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince—isn’t too tight-assed about it).
Since his Macc Lads days, Mr. Methane has also opened for dozens of musical artists, including Kiss of the Gypsy, reggae legendDesmond Dekker, and the Super Furry Animals. But he says the people who appreciate his act the most are the sound engineers. “Once here in the U.K., a sound tech was killing himself laughing at a show, not because of the farting but because he had a gig working with [singer] Kylie Minogue coming up,” he said, “and he was going to give her the same microphone. I think that this sort of sound tech japery, giving the mic to someone of note at a later date, happens quite a bit.”
Despite his other successes, Mr. Methane’s Broadway show has not come to pass. “I haven’t been to the U.S.A. for some time now; the mood has changed considerably post-September 11,” he said in late 2005. “But probably more significant is the Janet Jackson incident. Even Howard seems to have been reined in. Once again farting seems to be taboo on the airwaves, which in a sense is a good thing, as that’s what gives it the impact and longevity and creates the folklore in many ways.”
So please don’t worry about Mr. Methane. He’s never at loose ends for long.
CREPITUS EX MACHINA
B ack in 1930, Soren Sorensen “Sam” Adams, the New Jersey prankster who invented and marketed Cachoo Sneeze Powder, the Joy Buzzer, and the Dribble Glass, made a really dumb decision: he turned down the rights to a Toronto rubber company’s air-filled bladder that, when sat upon, made the sound of a long, loud fart. “The whole idea seemed too indelicate,” Adams said in the 1940s, “so I passed it up.” Sixty years later, however, when a Florida inventor approached Adams’s descendants with a battery-powered farting machine, they were savvy enough not to make the same mistake.
This particular practical joke goes back centuries to the “fool’s bladder,” a balloon made from a pig bladder that jesters reportedly used to entertain royalty. But it didn’t have any commercial value until 1926, when a “musical seat” appeared in a mail-order catalog from Johnson Smith & Company in Wisconsin. Looking like a small drum with a bellows attached, the unwieldy contraption “sounds like you sat on a cat,” according to the catalog. A couple of years later, the JEM Rubber Co., in Toronto, came up with a smaller, more joker-friendly, green rubber version with a wooden mouth, which it first called the Poo-Poo Cushion and the Boop-Boop a Doop (inspired by the popular Betty Boop cartoon character and the singer Helen Kane, on whom she was loosely based). Then, around 1932, in the depths of the Depression, when people needed something to whoop about,JEM renamed its impudent little wheezer the Whoopee Cushion, taken
Returning triumphantly to Europe, Mr. Methane opened an art exhibit in Switzerland entitled
Smells of the Alps
, in which he performed traditional Swiss songs, first karaoke-style and then with the horn section from the Bern Philharmonic. (No, his ass didn’t yodel.) He also appeared on a BBC TV special, blew out the candles on a birthday cake in front of 6,000 people at a gala in Paris, burst a balloon on a woman’s head with an ass dart on French TV, toured Australia several times (where he has become a sensation), and finished a TV pilot for a Mr. Methane animation series. More recently, he has been conferring with one of his fans, Irish singer Sinead O’Connor, about doing a parody duet on “Nothing Compares to Poo,” a takeoff on her hit song “Nothing Compares 2 U” (with hopes that the song’s composer—the artist formerly known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince—isn’t too tight-assed about it).
Since his Macc Lads days, Mr. Methane has also opened for dozens of musical artists, including Kiss of the Gypsy, reggae legendDesmond Dekker, and the Super Furry Animals. But he says the people who appreciate his act the most are the sound engineers. “Once here in the U.K., a sound tech was killing himself laughing at a show, not because of the farting but because he had a gig working with [singer] Kylie Minogue coming up,” he said, “and he was going to give her the same microphone. I think that this sort of sound tech japery, giving the mic to someone of note at a later date, happens quite a bit.”
Despite his other successes, Mr. Methane’s Broadway show has not come to pass. “I haven’t been to the U.S.A. for some time now; the mood has changed considerably post-September 11,” he said in late 2005. “But probably more significant is the Janet Jackson incident. Even Howard seems to have been reined in. Once again farting seems to be taboo on the airwaves, which in a sense is a good thing, as that’s what gives it the impact and longevity and creates the folklore in many ways.”
So please don’t worry about Mr. Methane. He’s never at loose ends for long.
CREPITUS EX MACHINA
B ack in 1930, Soren Sorensen “Sam” Adams, the New Jersey prankster who invented and marketed Cachoo Sneeze Powder, the Joy Buzzer, and the Dribble Glass, made a really dumb decision: he turned down the rights to a Toronto rubber company’s air-filled bladder that, when sat upon, made the sound of a long, loud fart. “The whole idea seemed too indelicate,” Adams said in the 1940s, “so I passed it up.” Sixty years later, however, when a Florida inventor approached Adams’s descendants with a battery-powered farting machine, they were savvy enough not to make the same mistake.
This particular practical joke goes back centuries to the “fool’s bladder,” a balloon made from a pig bladder that jesters reportedly used to entertain royalty. But it didn’t have any commercial value until 1926, when a “musical seat” appeared in a mail-order catalog from Johnson Smith & Company in Wisconsin. Looking like a small drum with a bellows attached, the unwieldy contraption “sounds like you sat on a cat,” according to the catalog. A couple of years later, the JEM Rubber Co., in Toronto, came up with a smaller, more joker-friendly, green rubber version with a wooden mouth, which it first called the Poo-Poo Cushion and the Boop-Boop a Doop (inspired by the popular Betty Boop cartoon character and the singer Helen Kane, on whom she was loosely based). Then, around 1932, in the depths of the Depression, when people needed something to whoop about,JEM renamed its impudent little wheezer the Whoopee Cushion, taken
Readers choose
Leslie Leigh
Harold Schechter
Eryn Scott
Wanda E Brunstetter
Sherry Thomas
Julian Stockwin
Jo Robertson
Wessel Ebersohn
Scott Weems