Tag Archives: las vegas

Imponderable #101: Las Vegas

19 Jul

July 19, 2013
medical milestones

Mr. Belvedere was an American sitcom that ran on ABC from 1985 to 1990. Christopher Hewett played Mr. Belvedere,  a proper British butler who unexpectedly showed up on the doorstep of a typical boorish American family. Hilarity ensued. Quite honestly, George Owens, the head of the family and Mr. Belvedere’s comic foil, was Bob Uecker’s greatest role. And I’m counting the films he played himself in.

The show is almost 30 years old now and I don’t even know if it is in reruns any more, but a small part of the show lives on. In an episode of 30 Rock from just a few seasons ago, Liz Lemon, talking about one of her stupider coworkers, said “I was there the time he Belvedered!” While no explanation was given, I can tell you the story, and what it means to Belvedere.

Christopher Hewett was on set rehearsing a scene one day when he sat down, and suddenly screamed in pain, jumped up, and then collapsed. An ambulance had to be called to take him to the hospital. Did his appendix burst? Did he have a cerebral aneurism? Had he simply gone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs? No, he sat on his own testicles.

Sorry Mr. Belvedere, that's not the right place for that compress.

Sorry Mr. Belvedere, that’s not the right place for that compress.

And now, with that bit of Hollywood background, on to the 101st Imponderable.

I’ll link to the story at the end, I prefer to tell this one myself.

Wesley Warren Jr., not a small man, rolled over in his sleep one night and, in what is a million to one chance, he Belvedered. Totally crushed the ol’ circus peanuts. He was rushed to the hospital where he was given antibiotics for his swollen sac, but they continued to grow, and grow, and swell, and swell, until – hang on to your hats!- his balls reached 140 POUNDS. How this man’s scrotum did not explode is beyond me. Even The Incredible Hulk’s testicles bulk up in proportion to the rest of his body.

Yes, this man had big balls, massive balls, his balls were the biggest balls of them all!

Just hit play and let that song go on as you read.

Anyway, and while this is no laughing matter I am laughing my head off, to go outside, Wesley Warren Jr. (not to be confused with Wesley Warren the football player  who plays for the hysterically named Jacksonville Gamecocks) had to find an alternative for pants, because by now his testicles were larger than most watermelons. So what did he do?

Did he:
A- Cart them around in a wheelbarrow?
B- Design a sling so that he could support his balls with a rope around his neck?
C- Hire a young boy to help hold his balls as he walked?

Correct! The answer is none of the above. What he did was wear a hoodie sweatshirt as pants, with the hood supporting his testicles.

Yowtch!

Yowtch!

I wonder if he simply considered a dress. Well, eventually even this fashionable solution proved to be too little help, as his daily life got worse and worse. I can only imagine this guy trying to use a urinal. Anyway, he eventually got an operation to remove his testicles and turn him back to a normal man.

A normal man with a one-inch penis. (And no testicles.)

And as you can imagine, he is suing. I assume he is suing the doctors, not his swollen sac. (Which, BTW, he wanted to put on eBay.)

If there is a lesson in all of this, it must be this: DO NOT SIT ON YOUR BALLS.

test2

You can find the whole funny tale here: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/4977903/Man-with-10st-testicles-unhappy-as-removal-leaves-him-with-1inch-penis.html

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Dean Martin And Jerry Lewis: Old-School And OTR

6 Jun

June 6, 2013

Now: Dean Martin, booze-hound member of The Rat Pack, world-famous crooner, deceased.
Then: Up and coming singer performing in small clubs, still developing his style.

Now: Jerry Lewis, icon to the French, former longtime host of the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, movie star.
Then: Up and coming comic performing in small clubs, still developing his style.

mandl

In the era of radio, with movies and Las Vegas far in their futures, Martin and Lewis had gone about as far as their careers were going to go. Martin back then was good but not great. Lewis’ act seemed to have reached a peak. Working separately, and in fact not even knowing each other, they were finding it harder and harder to find bookings. So one day, a nightclub owner decided to put together his two weak acts and see what they could come up with. That night, after just having met, they totally improvised an act that set the crowds to laughter and so a team was born.

In my mind, a weak team. I realize that they were an amazing popular radio act, lasting from 1949 to 1953. On the surface they were an Abbott and Costello style act: smooth straight man and childlike jokester. The problem was, Abbott and Costello had refined their act until they were a well oiled machine, doing classic and time tested vaudeville acts while Martin and Lewis were tossed together out of the blue. I always found their shows an uncomfortable fit.

martin_and_lewis_comic_book

Even the cover of this comic knows they are a strange fit.

Often, shows would simply be Martin as an emcee, introducing guests and singing, while being interrupted by Lewis doing some kind of manic-moron act. Other times they would be thrust into some sitcom-like skit that served neither well as Martin was always apologizing for his sidekick, whom he invariably called a moron. So why were they together?

Their styles never meshed. Martin didn’t fit into Lewis’ style of wackiness and Lewis’ attempts to fit into Martin’s suave milieu were generally uncomfortable failures. In many shows,  it seemed as if Jerry Lewis was simply there to (badly) croon parodies of Dean Martin songs. (Ironically, it would be Lewis’ impersonation of Martin that propelled The Nutty Professor to huge box office numbers years later.)

But despite what I see as an awkward and ill-fitting pairing, the team did well, moving from TV to movies and always finding success. Eventually, as with Abbott and Costello, the Beatles, and the Soviet Union, they broke up. And is it an accident that after the break-up each went on to greater heights? Dean Martin found fame and fortune alongside Frank Sinatra on the Las Vegas stage, while Jerry Lewis continued to make movies and become a comedy icon. (For my money, The King of Comedy is his greatest role.)

So if there is a moral here I leave it for you to find. All I see is that you can never predict success. And a lot of people like Martin and Lewis more than I do. (One person who hates them both is Sammy Petrillo, but that is a blog for another time.)

That's Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin, wannbe King of Comedy.

That’s Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin, wannabe King of Comedy.

 

Want to hear some episodes of The Martin and Lewis Show? Click on this link (http://www.relicradio.com/otr/series/martin-and-lewis-show/) and listen to a few episodes at Relic Radio and while you are there, poke around a little. there is a ton of great stuff there.

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