Construction Worker Mistaken for Panhandler – Doris Day’s Dog Chases Ball Out of Window – St. Joseph Statue Sells Dump

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/sister-my-cup-ain-t-empty-20211005-p58x9t.html

 Sydney Morning Herald, 5 October 2021

 Column 8

 Sister, my cup ain’t empty

Ian McNeilly of Darlinghurst reckons that with the impending return of international travel, “we need to learn how to behave when overseas. I was with my friends Fiona and Greg in New York. Fiona had been a tad wary of the pan-handlers constantly thrusting their coffee cups in her face begging for loose change. After about a week, she grew in confidence, and when she saw a guy with his cup out, she thrust a dollar bill into it. Feeling good, she looked back expecting to see a happy face. Instead, she saw a bemused construction worker, picking a sodden dollar bill out of his full coffee cup. Fiona marched on.”

[Other versions I have seen feature a coin or coins dropped into the full coffee cup, which would make for a more satisfying splash than a bill.]

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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-diary-stars-dog-dies-another-day-7lm33cmhf

The Times [London], 6 October 2021

The Times Diary: Star’s dog dies another day 

Patrick Kidd

A memorial service was held at St Bride’s in Fleet Street yesterday for Paul Callan, the flamboyant tabloid journalist who was described by a former editor on the Mirror as “the very best of exuberant rascals”. Many tall tales were shared, some of them even true, but Jeremy Deedes scotched one. Callan did not kill Doris Day’s dog during an interview, he said: he merely showed her how to do it. The interview was in her penthouse and as the photographer snapped away, Callan entertained Day’s dog by bouncing a rubber ball for it to jump and catch.

Two days later a tearful Day called him. She had tried to recreate the trick but in catching the ball her dog had leapt out of the window and fallen 21 floors to its death. Seeing in all tragedy an opportunity, Callan took her out for a drink to sympathise and they ended up in a bar singing Que Sera Sera as a duet.

[A contemporary legend often told by Truman Capote.]

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Stephen J. Binz, St. Joseph, My Real Estate Agent: Patron Saint of Home Life and Home-Selling (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publications, 2003), 113-4.

“There was a seller who bought a St. Joseph statue and was very excited; he just knew that his home would sell for sure now. […] After three months the seller was frustrated and threw St. Joseph in the trash. A few days later the frustrated seller opened the newspaper and saw the headline, ‘Local Dump Has Been Sold.’”

Dog Retrieves Dynamite (1981 comic)

Bruce Jones (script), Tor Infante (art), “Fetched.” House of Mystery #298, November 1981. The plot of this 7-page story is just an excuse for the climax, a variation of “The Loaded Dog.” A man who is caught dynamite fishing on a rich woman’s property charms her, eventually marries her, and then murders her. The victim’s dog unwittingly exacts revenge. 

 

Fool’s Errand (Fallopian tube) – Suppressed Invention – Microwaved Poodle (1979 movie reference)

 “Humor in Uniform,” Reader’s Digest, Dec. 2020/Jan 2021, p. 83. Fool’s errand: Fallopian tube.

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“Power Wheel,” Unusual Tales #24, Oct. 1960. “I’ll bet really great revolutionary sources of power aren’t used because the big oil and coal men wouldn’t allow it!”

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Early on in The Driller Killer (Abel Ferrara, 1979), before all the bloodshed starts, a New Yorker, played by Carolyn Marz, reads from an unidentified newspaper. “Oh, God. Listen to this. ‘Mrs. Patricia Adams of Queens Village gave her poodle a bath and, being late for a beauty parlor appointment, placed the dog in a microwave oven to dry it off. When she turned the oven on, the poodle exploded. The woman died of a heart attack.’”

 

Poodle Licks Peanut Butter Off Man’s Penis (1994 cartoon)

 Steve King, “Exceedingly Gross Conversations I’ve Overheard #1,” Slutburger #4 (Drawn and Quarterly, 1994).

 

Clare Dwiggins, School Days (folk beliefs in two cartoons from the 1920s)

Clare Dwiggins, School Days, “In the Clinic” (1922). Boys discuss various wart cures. In Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams, eds., The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977), 138.

Clare Dwiggins, School Days, “The Conductor” (1923). A housewife sends a dog outdoors during a thunderstorm because “his tail draws lightnin’.” In Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams, eds., The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977), 138.