Highly Qualified Man

It is rare in this era of conformity to encounter a gesture of defiance but that’s what we have today.

It concerns a gentleman of the old school — let’s call him Sabatini — who some months ago fell out of a building. At least that’s what they told him.

He
has recovered with the help of AA, and the other day went in pursuit of
a job as a restaurant checker. This involves checking the food and
drink waiters take out of the kitchen and bar. During the lunch and
dinner hours the pressure is intense. Naturally his prospective
employer inquired as to his qualifications.

Did Sabatini meekly plead for a chance? Did he say he would get a testimonial letter from his high school principal?

Not Sabatini. He said, "Mister, this job it a breeze. I handled the parlays for the biggest bookie in Hollywood for two years!"

RECENT MENTION here of the mad language emanating from computersville, it turns out, barely tapped the surface.

Deep
thinkers in the nuclear reactor field, it can be told, have named their
computer programs Trixy, Topsy, Mug II, Angie, PDQ-2, GNU-II, Zoom,
Moonshine, Percolator,Tugwit and LYI Abner. 

Other irrelevancies in the computer catalog, furnished by Bob Forest of Burroughs Corp. in Pasadena, are Mamat, Swac, Flac, Illiac, Mobidic launched, one report notes, "on a sea of data" I and a proofreader’s nightmare. Haystaq, which is not designed to locate needles.

Man, this is from endsville.

NO, THANKS
Interplanetary travel? Me?
Why, Ferris wheels unravel me.
–TERRI McDANIEL

THE CONVERSATION around a lunch table the other day turned to pixie telephone calls and someone recalled the time Robert Meltzer, a movie writer, was looking up a number in the directory and came upon the name Werbizerk-Piffl, Gisella.

Seized with an irresistible impulse, he phoned her number and when she came on the line he asked, "Are you the Gisella Werbizerk-Piffl I knew in Cleveland in 1917?

Miss W-P, who proves to be a German actress, replied, "No, I’ve never been to Cleveland in my life."

"Oh, I’m sorry," Meltzer said, "it must have been another Gisella Werbizerk-Piffl."

A PERSONABLE stranger
came to Lew Allison’s home the other day and asked if Lew minded
telling him how much he’d paid for his 1953 Chevrolet. Lew told him,
$600, but was curious why he wanted to know.

The man told this
sad story: Six months before Lew acquired the car last May he’d bought
it from a different dealer for $1,000. He’d paid $425 down and made two
payments of $37.50 each when he suffered a broken back. That was $500
for three months’ use of the car. On his failure to make the third
payment the car was repossessed. Now a collection agency is trying to
collect an additional $268.

Lew doesn’t understand it either.

REMEMBER WHEN little
boys yearned to become locomotive engineers, policemen, firemen,
athletes and, more recently, airplane pilots? Adolph M. Brown tells of
a boy of 3 who was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up and he
replied, "A sign." The elders thought they’d misunderstood but that’s
what he wanted to be — a highway sign. Maybe the kid’s smart. At least
he’d know where he was heading.

MISCELLANY —
Oops, a press release states, "A 49-star American Flag commemorative
stamp will be issued by the Post Office Department on July 4. An
initial printing order of 120 million new flag stamps has been
authorized." Hawaii today, boys? . . . A man strolling along W Olympic
Boulevard was wearing a brown derby . . . Mrs. Ben Ray asks a
typographical posy for an unknown cabby. Her daughter, Betsy Ann, 6, got lost on Hollywood Boulevard, hailed the cabby, who, although she had no money, drove her home, where she calmly awaited her frantic mother.