[341] in Humor
1987 -- Dave Barry's Year in Review
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jdhinter@MIT.EDU)
Tue Jun 28 20:42:49 1994
To: humor@MIT.EDU, st923457@pip.cc.brandeis.edu, mariadf@MIT.EDU,
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 94 20:35:16
From: jdhinter@MIT.EDU
It's old, but it's funny!!! :-)
-- Jason
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Excerpts from: Year in Review for 1987 -by Dave Barry
January
3 -- Oral Roberts tells his followers that unless they send him $4.5
million by the end of the month, God will turn him into a hypocritical
money-grubbing slimebag.
5 -- In response to growing pressure from the United States, the
government of Colombia vows to track down its major drug dealers and, if
necessary, remove them from the cabinet.
21 -- The Audi Corporation is forced to recall 250,000 cars after
repeated incidents wherein parked Audis, apparently acting on their own,
used their mobile phones to purchase stocks on margin.
28 -- In the Middle East, Syria has its name legally changed to
"Jordan." A welcome calm settles over Beirut as the six remaining
civilians are taken hostage.
February
3 -- In the ongoing war against the federal budget deficit, Congress
gives itself a pay raise.
17 -- In Colombia, police arrest Carlos Lehder for jaywalking and
discover, during a routine search, that his pockets contain 1,265,000
pounds of cocaine. Lehder claims to have "no idea" how it got there.
19 -- Mario Cuomo announces that he doesn't want to be president and
immediately becomes the Democratic front-runner.
23 -- Panic grips the nation as a terrorist group seizes 150,000 new,
improved W-4 forms and threatens to send them to randomly selected
Americans through the mail.
March
21 -The IRS releases an even newer, simpler W-4 form in response to
complaints from a number of taxpayers, all of whom will be audited for
the rest of their lives.
27 -- In what is hailed as a major arms-race breakthrough, U.S. and
Soviet arms negotiators in Geneva agree to wear matching outfits.
April
3 -- In the Persian Gulf, Iranians attack the Islip garbage barge, but
are driven off by courageous flies.
13 -- True Anecdote: In National League baseball action, the Atlanta
Braves' Dion James hits a ball that would have been caught easily,
except that in midair it strikes and kills a dove.
14 -- In Colorado, Gary Hart declares his candidacy for the presidential
nomination, making the official announcement while standing in front of
a dramatic backdrop of soaring mountains, towering pine trees, and four
Miami Herald reporters disguised as rhododendrons.
22 -- Crack U.S. counter-intelligence agents in Moscow begin to suspect
that the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow, constructed by Soviet labor, might
be bugged, when one of them sneezes in the ambassador's office and six
chairs say, "Gesundheit."
26 -- Jack Kemp announces that he is running for president, pledging
that, if elected, he will deepen his voice.
30 -- Following a lengthy and dramatic trial, a confused New Jersey jury
awards custody of a 3-month-old boy to a 6-week-old girl.
May
3 -- Like a raging unquenchable forest fire, the Gary Hart story sweeps
across the nation, as voters are consumed by a burning need to know more
about the candidate's monetary views. Rumors abound that Hart, at
various times in his career, may also have had views on a number of
other issues.
4 -- The Hart story becomes so hot that issue-oriented Phil Donahue
devotes a show to it, canceling the regular weekly appearance of the
sex-change lesbian surrogate-mother nude-dancer ex-priests.
5 -- The Iran-Contra hearings begin with Sen. Daniel Inouye doing his
hilarious two-hour impersonation of a 78 r.p.m. record being played at
33 r.p.m.
6 -- An angry Gary Hart is forced to withdraw from the race after word
leaks out that The Washington Post has obtained documented evidence that
he once proposed tying the prime rate to the Index of Leading Economic
Indicators.
12 -- U.S. drug agents become concerned when aerial photographs reveal
that several dozen Bahamian "islands" are in fact enormous piles of some
kind of white powdery substance.
17 -- The U.S. Navy frigate Stark is attacked by an Iraqi jet, which,
under our extremely clear Mideast policy, causes us to prepare for
violent confrontation with Iran.
29 -- Nineteen-year-old German Mathias Rust, flying a single-engined
Cessna airplane, manages to cross 400 miles of Soviet airspace to reach
Red Square in Moscow, where he narrowly avoids colliding with a Delta
Air Lines flight en route from Pittsburgh to Cleveland.
30 -- Caspar Weinberger orders 5,000 single-engine Cessna airplanes.
June
2 -- True Item: In the ongoing Iran-Contra hearings, the committee
learns that a country named "Brunei" contributed $10 million to help the
Contras, except Fawn Hall or somebody typed a wrong number, so the money
ended up in the Swiss bank account of a total stranger. This helps
explain why, despite all the elaborate assistance efforts with secret
codes and passwords and everything, the only actual aid ever received by
the Contras was a six-month trial subscription to Guns and Ammo.
18 -- A survey of Florida residents reveals that their number one
concern about the state is that "not enough people are walking around
with guns." Alarmed, the state Legislature passes a law under which all
citizens who are not actually on Death Row will be REQUIRED to carry
revolvers.
July
7 -- The central figure in the Iran-Contra hearings, Lt. Col. Oliver
North, becomes an instant national folk hero when, with his eyes
glistening and his voice cracking with emotion, he courageously admits,
before a worldwide television audience, that he is very patriotic.
11 -- The Iran-Contra hearings reach their dramatic peak when Lt. Col.
North, his eyes glistening and his voice cracking with emotion, makes a
sweeping patriotic hand gesture and knocks over his bottle of Revlon Eye
Glistener.
15 -- The giant Citicorp bank announces that it has agreed to forgive
Mexico's $56.3 billion debt in exchange for 357.9 gazillion chickens.
August
3 -- Political activist Donna Rice, in her continuing effort to avoid
publicity, sells her story to ABC television.
6 -- As "Ollie-mania" continues to sweep the country, one of the most
popular video-arcade games in the country is a new one called -- this is
true -- "Contra." The way it works is, there are are two soldiers on
the screen, and when you put in a quarter, it never gets to them.
10 -- The U.S. space probe Meanderer II, after a journey of six years
and many millions of miles, passes within 400 miles of the surface of
Neptune, sending back dramatic color photographs of a Delta Air Lines
jet.
22 -- Rumors circulate that Gary Hart will re-enter the presidential
race. Johnny Carson places his writers on Full Red Alert.
25 -- In what is hailed as a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court decides,
by a 7-2 vote, that you cannot count three oranges as one item in the
Express Checkout Lane "unless they are all in the same package."
27 -- Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn announces that he doesn't want to be
president. Cuomo challenges him to a debate.
28 -- In the Persian Gulf, tensions mount as a U.S. gunboat engages in a
scuffle with actor Sean Penn.
September
2 -- In Washington, reporters notice that at some point -- possibly
during a speech by Sen. Inouye, when everybody was asleep -- the ongoing
Iran-Contra hearings turned into the ongoing confirmation hearings for
Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.
8 -- Researcher Shere Hite releases her scientific new book, "Men Are
Scum."
12 -- In the ongoing hearings, Sen. Joseph Biden pledges to consider the
Bork nomination "with total objectivity," adding: "You have that on my
honor not only as a Senator, but also as the Prince of Wales."
17 -- The market-savvy McDonald's corporation, capitalizing on the
popularity of the movie "Fatal Attraction," introduces a new menu item,
Boiled McRabbits.
21 -- Professional football players go on strike, demanding the right to
"have normal necks." Negotiations begin under the guidance of mediator
Mario Cuomo.
28 -- Tensions ease in the Persian Gulf as a Delta Air Lines flight, en
route from Boston to Newark, successfully lands on the U.S. carrier
Avocado.
October
3 -- Sen. Joseph Biden is forced to withdraw from the Democratic
presidential race when it is learned that he is in fact an elderly
Norwegian woman. On the Republican side, the spectacularly Rev. Pat
Robertson announces his candidacy for president, buoyed by strong
popularity among humor columnists.
8 -- Three hundred prominent law professors sign a petition stating that
Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork has "a weenie beard."
15 -- In an effort to establish that she is not a bimbo, Jessica Hahn
appears nude in Playboy magazine. We are pretty sure we must have made
this item up.
25 -- The Senate Transportation Committee recommends that the federal
speed limit should be raised on highways going through boring or ugly
areas, so drivers can get through them quicker. "In Indiana, for
instance," the committee says, "it should be 135 miles per hour."
November
1 -- In the ongoing heroic effort to trim the federal budget deficit,
House and Senate conferees agree not to order appetizers.
15 -- In their continuing heroic deficit-reduction efforts, House and
Senate conferees agree to continue working right through their 2:30
racquetball appointment.
22 -- In ceremonies marking his retirement as secretary of defense,
Caspar Weinberger is presented with a pen-and-pencil set, built by the
General Dynamics Corp. for $352.4 million.
29 -- The world financial community's faith in the U.S. economy is
restored as heroic House and Senate conferees hammer out a breakthrough
compromise deficit-reduction measure under which $417.65 will be slashed
from the $13.2 million pastry budget of the Federal Bureau of Putting Up
Road Signs With Kilometers On Them.
December
2 -- In a widely hailed legal decision, the judge in the bitter divorce
dispute between Joan Collins and Peter Holm orders them both shot.
Mikhail Gorbachev appears on "Jeopardy."
5 -- In a cost-cutting move, financially troubled Eastern Airlines
announces that its domestic flights will operate without engines. "Most
of them never take off anyway," explains a spokesman.
8 -- In Washington, the long-awaited U.S.-Soviet summit meeting gets off
to an uncertain start as President Reagan attempts to nominate Soviet
Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to the Supreme Court.
9 -- The summit concludes on a triumphant note as, in the culmination of
10 years of negotiations between the superpowers, Gorbachev and New York
Gov. Mario Cuomo sign a historic agreement under which both sides will
move all of their mid- and short-range long-term strategic tactical
nuclear weapons 150 feet to the left.
15 -- Under intense pressure from the U.S. to reduce the trade deficit,
Japanese auto manufacturers agree to give their cars really ugly names.
18 -- Playboy magazine offers Tammy Faye Bakker a record $1.5 million if
she will promise never, ever to pose nude.
27 -- Oscar C. Klaxton, an employee of the U.S. Department for Making
Everybody Nervous, wins a $10,000 prize for dreaming up the concept of a
deadly "hole" in an invisible "ozone layer."
Copyright 1987 Knight-Ridder Newspapers
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