Vegas Flooded with Leftover America’s Got Talent Contestants

Bad news for America’s Got Talent contestants who find themselves in Vegas with no chance of going on to Hollywood and no chance of getting a plane ticket home either—America’s Got Talent overshot its budget and can’t pay for return tickets. “I just don’t know how this could have happened,” said a tearful Sharon Osborne as she was getting into her luxury SUV holding her uber expensive pet dog. “I do hope they find a way home. Such a pity,” she said to no one in particular as she drove off to catch a flight back home herself.

“Ok,” said Jerry Sprinkler who, along with his his seven kids all were shipped to Vegas to appear in the next round of auditions but were told they just weren’t good enough before even being able to go on stage again. “So the “Tippy-Toe Tappers didn’t float the judges’ boats, I can understand that. But how am I gonna get these kids back to Tennessee?” Similar stories are being told all over Las Vegas.

Casino owners have put signs in their windows “Not Hiring” to keep out the hundreds of singers, dancers and accordion players who still think they have what it takes to make it in Vegas. “There’s been a rash of dash ‘n dines” said one police officer who was called to the same restaurant seven times last night to try and catch hungry performers who were left penniless and desperate, resorting to theft in order to get a decent meal.

The only performers left behind who seem to be making it ok without the extra help are the dozens of illegal immigrants who came to the show hoping to just “blend in” and get a free ride to Vegas where they could hop off and “disappear” into mainstream America without much thought. “It pays to have a half-way decent singing voice,” claims Adalwolf Novak, a lounge singer from the Czech Republic, who auditioned in Chicago just one day after narrowly escaping an INS raid on the restaurant he was working in. “I am now going to find a nice little dive here in Vegas where I can hopefully get some employment doing what I love to do best,” he said.

Unfortunately, it won’t be so easy for the Tippy-Toe Tappers of Tuscarawas, Tennessee.

Iron Men's Quilting Circle Places First in International Quilting Competition

Hunter Comfort

A group of unemployed iron workers from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania have taken first place in the annual International Quilting Bee held this year in Lexington, Kentucky. Quilters from all over the world competed for this year's grand trophy.


The iron workers, calling themselves the "Iron Maidens" won the title with a lovely, yet manly crazy quilt pattern made entirely from various camouflage-colored squares. The quilt was entitled "Hunter Comfort," making a play on the word comforter, which they were told is actually what a quilt is.


One stitcher, by the name of Big Al said, after winning the coveted award, "I'd just like to thank my mother and Aunt Sissy, who taught me how to sew at a very early age." Big Al actually formed the group that would go on to win top honors at the quilting bee. And he claims it wasn't easy convincing a bunch of burly iron workers to sit around a table and sew. 


Many participants were stunned that the Iron Maidens took first place at all, not because they were men so much as the fact that the crazy quilt design they used was such a simple design and wasn't all that pretty to look at. Mary-Bethe Comfort of Missoula, Mississippi, second-place winner with her 'Cairo Calico' Quilt, agreed. 


"The danged thing looked like something you'd hang over a deer blind for cover. The fact that they used poplin material mixed with duck cloth and a polyester blend just threw the whole scheme off, in my opinion."


In fact, the Iron Maidens claim that using it for warmth in their deer blind is exactly what they intended to do with the quilt once they got back home. "There's a method to our madness," said Doug deGrave, a 46-year old father of three, who claims that being out of work for over two years does something to a man's psyche. "All of a sudden," he said, "you start to feel less and less like a man, but like everything else in life, you learn to cope and sewing together little scraps of material into a quilt helped me to cope." He then challenged Mary-Bethe to an arm wrestling match, seeing as her quilting arm was as big, if not bigger than his.


When asked if the Iron Maidens will enter any more quilts in future bees, the men all agreed that once was enough. "We took a lot of ribbing from the guys down at the union hall," claims Big Al. "But just wait till we show them this lovely crystal trophy. We'll see who has the last laugh," he said.

Bonding between Father and Son Can Cause Permanent Scarring

Testors and Testes. To this day, those words are interchangeably woven in my mind, and so, I was ill prepared for the terror they would again conjure when my son, who just turned eight years old, asked the inevitable question, “Dad, where do model airplanes come from?”

It’s the question I’ve been dreading since little Harry, Jr. was old enough to realize that other kids had toys that you couldn’t just go to a toy store and buy, but came from a magical place and were proudly displayed on his friends’ toy shelves. Thinking back to my own childhood gave me the shivers as I recalled one of the most horrific father/son projects of my adolescence.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a decent childhood with one glaring exception. My dad was the klutziest man alive, bar none. Whenever he called us kids to come help him “fix” something, or “hold” a tool for him, or offered to help us with our latest science project, we begged our mom stay in the room with us so that we’d have a witness when our friends told us no way our dad wasn’t intentionally beating the living crap out of us on a regular basis.

It was so bad that my mom had a weekly grocery list she kept on the refrigerator door, and I can’t remember a time when band-aids wasn’t on that list. Band-aids and mercurochrome, we went through the stuff faster than corn puffs.

There’s one incident in particular though that I can honestly say scarred me for life and is the reason my son will never get the opportunity to bond with his dad over the building of a model airplane. It started innocently enough with a trip to the hobby store where I picked out a P-51 Mustang with really cool shark’s teeth decals. We also bought a couple of bottles of Testors paint and a tube of what should have been labeled “lethal weapon to bring every dad to his knees,” but instead just read “quick-drying model cement glue”.

At any rate, I knew this was gonna be the best model airplane ever built and couldn’t wait to get home to start building it with my dad. Little did I know that the “bonding” we’d be doing would take on a much more sinister meaning than either of us would have imagined. Not only that, but the “cuss jar” was about to be filled to the brim in less time than it took to say, well, cuss words.

All projects were done on the workbench in the basement and, back in those days, most basements were poorly ventilated. Ours was no exception, but building a model plane on the kitchen table was just out of the question. So, down in the basement we went. As I was taking all the parts out of the box, my dad was ready to puncture the tube of glue to ready it for assembling the airplane.

Normally, all one had to do is unscrew the lid to the glue, turn it upside down and insert the pointy end into the glue tip and voila, glue. But remember, my dad wasn’t normal, he was cursed. Even though he should have anticipated a flaw, he was just so darned happy to have gotten the lid off without incident, that he was unaware of the tiny little tear in the side seam of the tube. As he gripped the tube with one hand and tried to push down on the tip with the pointy cap, the entire tube of glue exploded in his hand. “Damn it, damn it, damn, damn, damn,” he yelled. I quickly calculated—“you cussed 5 times, $1.25 in the cuss jar,” I immediately shouted, not realizing this was not the time to show off my mathematical skills. “Not now, dammit,” my father yelled. I silently calculated $1.50.

“Grab me that towel over there, quick,” my dad yelled. I ran for the towel and without thinking, I threw it at him and yelled “catch.” Without thinking himself, he grabbed for the towel with both hands and missed, causing him to slam the gluey hand into the other, permanently bonding his two hands together. “Holy sh*t, what the hell?” screamed dad as he tried furiously to get his hands unclenched. “$2 in the cuss jar,” I muttered under my breath. “What?” he yelled, “Look just pick up the damn towel ($2.25) and bring it the hell over here ($2.50), and help me get this sh*t ($2.75) off my goddam hands. ($3.00) “Kaching!” I thought as I grabbed the towel to do my father’s bidding.

As I tried to wipe the glue from my father’s hands, I had another unthinking moment and used my other hand to try and wrest the tube of glue from his partially clenched fist, and in doing so, my little fingers instantly stuck to the bottom of his palm. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he cried (while I silently pondered whether this was just one cuss word or three or if it was not really a cuss word at all…oh well, I decided, I’d add another $.75 to the calculations and could always subtract it back out in case I was wrong, $3.75). “Harry, for Chrissakes, Harry, get with the program,” screamed dad as he was edging me toward the shelf that held the turpentine. “Reach up there and grab that can of turpentine,” he cried. I did his bidding but not before I added that last Chrissakes to the pot…$4.00.

Just barely able to reach the turpentine, I got it down from the shelf, and dad and I shuffled back to the work bench to try and help each other get the cap off the turpentine. Once off, dad asked me to carefully pour a little bit of turpentine on our hands with my one free hand. I did as he said, but just as the turpentine was about to hit our hands, I felt the slip and right then, my already loose pants began to slide halfway down my butt and were now poised to take the final plunge to the floor. The only free hand I had was taking matters into its own hands and was now pouring turpentine down the front of my skivvies. I was now the one screaming the obscenities, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” I yelled, silently thinking that was the safest one because I still wasn’t sure if it was a curse word and on the chance that it wasn’t a curse word, I’d break even.

Dad was screaming, “Helen, Helen get down here fast, Harry’s pouring turpentine down the front of himself!” My father’s yelling snapped me back into the present and I yelled,“Bring the cuss jar with you!” In the meantime, my dad had gotten his hands free in time to start pulling my skivvies off my body, but in doing so, squeezed the last of the glue from the tube right onto my privates. “Dammit, damn, damn, dammit,” he screamed. “Helen, hurry, the damn kid’s got glue all over his fu*kin’ privates and everything is getting glued together!” Did I hear him right? Did he say the “F” word? That was an automatic bonus of $1. I couldn’t count fast enough. I decided to keep my Jesus, Mary and Joseph in and just let dad pay for it later. After all, he’s the one who was squeezing glue all over my privates, potentially scarring me for life.

And about that time, the fumes hit. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this before, but when turpentine and model airplane glue are mixed in just the right amount in just the right circumstances, i.e. at close range with little to no ventilation in the room, well, funny things start to happen. All of a sudden my father’s words started to slur and he was yelling Sheeshush Crisht, Helen, get thuell down her fasht, I think I’m gonna fuggin’ pash out, which to me is still cussing even though it isn’t crystal clear, so I went ahead and added another $400 to the cuss jar total because at that point, I wasn’t thinking too straight myself. By the time my mom got to us, she found my dad passed out next to me with, I swear to Lord God Almighty, ($.25) his hand glued to my testicles.

Meanwhile, a crowd had formed outside the one small window in our basement and I could see out of the corner of my eye, several neighbors trying to clean a spot on the glass to see what all the yelling was about. The ambulance came, and getting us both onto that gurney was pretty tricky. We also found out just how sick and twisted our neighbors’ imaginations are. All in all, it took doctors and nurses a full two hours to apply anti-adhesives to my privates and eventually pry my dad’s hand off them. At some point, I, too, passed out from the fumes and was told that when I came to, was yelling for my mom to go and get the fu*king cuss jar.

And to this day, you honestly cannot say the word Testors without literally bringing me to tears.

Banker Injured in Fall from Collapsing Pile of Money

Scene of Accident

David Sassetts, a wealthy Wall Street banker was rushed by ambulance to St. Anthony’s Hospital when the pile of money he was sitting upon collapsed. Doctors report that Sassetts suffered fractures in both hands as well as his coccyx and is expected to spend several days in the hospital.

Asked how the accident happened, Sassetts says he’s not quite sure. “Last thing I remember is sitting atop my pile of money, sipping cognac and reading the business section of the Wall Street Journal like I do every night after dinner. Suddenly, I felt a shift underneath me. Before I could escape, the pile of money collapsed and I went hands-first onto the basement floor.” Sassets was visibly upset saying he was uncertain whether or not his maid would ever be able to get the cognac stains out of his expensive white California shag carpet.

This is the first time the money pile has collapsed beneath him, according to Sasssets, although he had a close call in the early 90s during the dot.com bubble when the pile he built one evening began to shift sideways; however, it did not fully collapse.

While he builds his money pile every night the same way, Sassets believes the recent recession has actually caused him to have more money stacks than ever before, and he believes that the extra money in his pile caused it to become less stable this time and made it quite a bit more dangerous to climb onto.

Although the accident occurred at home and involved Sasset’s own money, he claims the accident is still work-related and anticipates filing a workmen’s compensation claim.  

“Had I not made all this money during the housing and mortgage crisis and getting all that bailout money from the government, my pile of money would have been significantly smaller and would not have posed as large a safety hazard as the one I ultimately fell from,” Sassets said from his hospital bed.

Glenn Beck Trades Fancy Fox Set for Soapbox and Bullhorn

Last week, Glenn Beck hosted his last show on the Fox News Network. While he won’t admit he was fired for his lack of ability to tone down the batshit crazy rhetoric he is so famous for, he does say that his firing has opened a new doorway to allow him to get his message out to the people on a more personal level.

Holding an impromptu press conference immediately after leaving Fox, Beck welcomed the chance to try out his new method of delivering his message. “I’ve decided it is time to get back to my roots,” said Beck, as he put a makeshift soapbox on the ground, stepped up on it and began speaking through a bullhorn.

“Don’t weep for me, faithful Beckkies. This is not the end. It is just the beginning. I welcome the change that Roger [Ailes] has offered me. The ability to walk away from a lucrative salary and just hit the streets with our founding fathers’ message.

Beck told the three or four people who had gathered to watch him leave the Fox News premises that he has been busy writing a series of speeches entitled “The Soapbox Diaries,” and intends to give the speeches in various cities throughout America, reaching as many patriots as he can one-by-one.

“Hell, if it’s good enough for the hallelujah boys on the street corners, then it’s sure as hell good enough for me,” Beck shouted, alluding to that fact that he was now left with nothing more than an opinion. With that, Beck stepped back down off the soapbox and started to leave.

One bystander asked Beck if he’ll miss the bright lights and big corporate news set, not to mention his giant blackboard. Beck stepped back up on the soapbox and responded through his bullhorn, “It’s not about appearing in front of a television camera and reaching millions of viewers; it’s not even about having fancy props like giant blackboards and a whole new box of colored chalk. It’s about going into neighborhoods and shouting at the top of my lungs, “Give me back my liberty,” he said. “You just can’t do that in a studio. Believe me, I tried. They told me to pipe down.”

At which time, one of Roger Ailes’ assistants approached Beck demanding he surrender the Coke crate and bullhorn he’d taken from the Fox News prop room.

One Millionth Elvis Impersonator Honored in Las Vegas

Las Vegas, NV– This week marked a milestone in Las Vegas as one lucky lad had the great fortune of becoming the one millionth person to get his own show in Vegas as an Elvis impersonator. Gruud MacPhereson, or Mac as he’s known--an out-of-work whiskey kegger from Glasgow--couldn’t believe it when told the news by the owner of the Grand Golden Jackpot Hotel, Casino and All-You-Can-Eat IncrediBuffet.

“Actually,” said MacPhereson, “I wasn’t pure lookin' tae bide in Vegas mair than a coople ay days, when a bodie spotted me blooter'd oan th' stage in th' middle ay th' nicht singin' mah rendition ay hoonddog an' said ah was a deid ringer fur Elvis. Noo I’m daein' mah ain shaw an' everythin'. It’s a dream cam trew.”

[Translation: Ackshelly, I waddna rally lookin’ ta stay in Vegas more en a coopla days, when someone spotted me drunk onna stage in th’ middle a th’ neit singin’ ma rendition of Hoondog en said eye was a dead ringer fer Elvis. Now I’m in ma own show an evre’thing. It’s a dream cam trew.]

Sponsors of the “Never Too Many Elvis Impersonators” contest claim that MacPhereson is about the closest thing to Elvis they’ve seen so far, and also one of the most entertaining, both sober and drunk. The only thing that sets him apart is his red hair. MacPhereson is standing firm on that.

“Eye ain’t gonna dye ma hair black fer no one,” said Mac.

MacPhereson really stands out, nevertheless in his white, rhinestone-studded sleeveless t-shirt and plaid kilt. Also, he is the only Elvis Impersonator who is accompanied by a bagpipe.

“You’ll not hear a more stirrin’ rendition of ‘Love Me Tender’ than when Mac sings it with the bagpipe in the background,” said one of MacPhereson’s loyal fans.

Most people are under the impression that Elvis impersonators are from the United States, particularly southern states such as Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, but in reality, about a third of the now million impersonators come from foreign countries.

“We once had a fellow from Turkey whose stage name was Ahmed Pressley. What a hoot. You couldn’t understand a word he said, but when he started singing like Elvis, man you could close your eyes and think the king was right there on stage. Ahmed always closed his shows with ‘Tank you veddy much, my friend.’ He was one of our all-time favorites and a very polite person as well,” said Eddie Spiggetti, General Manager of the Grand Golden.

MacPhereson hasn’t said how long he plans on staying in Vegas now that he’s won the award, but his friends say he’s not in that much of a hurry to get back to Scotland. Ironically, his wife left him because she couldn’t take another Elvis song.

Her loss, Vegas’ gain.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Claims Luck Helped in Choosing Perfect Victim

Dominique Strauss-Kahn smiled broadly for the cameras as he and his wife left a NY courtroom Friday after being told by a judge that he was being released on his own recognizance. The dark veil of accountability for his actions in allegedly raping a hotel maid had lifted somewhat, allowing Strauss-Kahn to enjoy his own Independence Day celebration.

An unidentified aide spoke on the condition of anonymity about how Strauss-Kahn was feeling upon his release. “He is elated. What dumb luck he had choosing this particular victim. Turns out, she was seeking asylum in America and had a few skeletons in her closet regarding her alien status,” said Jacques Laffoon, Strauss-Kahn’s personal assistant. “Not only that,” he said, “but she took too much time to think about whether or not to report the rape, leading prosecutors to doubt her sincerity about the crime.”

Laffoon claims the victim’s lies have all but ruined her case. “Dominique could not have chosen a better victim if he tried,” Laffoon said proudly.

Asked if the forensic evidence found in at the scene of the alleged crime corroborating the maid’s story that she was brutally raped by Strauss-Kahn regardless of the lies attributed to her didn’t worry his boss just a tad, Laffoon laughed and said “No, not in the least.”

“You obviously do not know how much trouble we have gone to to discredit this woman. We were lucky that she lied about so many things. Who cares if there is physical evidence of an alleged rape. Who is going to believe a liar? For all we know, she probably bruised her own vagina.”

Laffoon did state that he wonders when Strauss-Kahn’s luck will run out. “One of these days Dom is going to rape a woman who has a squeaky clean past and who is willing to stand up for herself. Thank goodness, the woman at present isn’t able to do that.