Language
• Baseball manager Casey Stengel was known for speaking Stengelese, which occasionally sounded like sensible speech but often was not. Following an interview with Mr. Stengel, Joe McGuff, a sports reporter, asked Ernest Mehl, a sports editor, “What did he say?” Mr. Mehl replied, “I haven’t the faintest idea, but it must be a heck of a story, and I’m going to write it.”
• Ludwig van Beethoven was capable of making good puns and of giving credit where is due. After hearing an overture by Carl Maria von Weber, he said, “S’ist eben gewebt” or, in English, “It is nicely woven.” (“Weber” means “weaver.”)
Makeup
• Kevyn Aucoin had adventures in makeup even before becoming a rich and famous Hollywood makeup artist.
1) When he was in the 7thgrade, a friend named Michelle came to class with new and interesting eyes that sparkled and glistened. He was amazed and asked, “What did you do to your eyes?” She replied, “I plucked my eyelashes.” He thought that if that had worked for her, it would surely work for him, so he plucked a few eyelashes with painful and swollen results. Of course, he soon realized that Michelle had plucked her eyebrows, not eyelashes.
2) When he was even younger, he and his brother often played outside and got mosquito bites, resulting in the application of an anti-itch calamine lotion that dried into a cakey paste with a whitish-pink color. When his mother took him shopping for school clothes, young Kevyn saw a woman who seemed as if she had been bitten by many mosquitoes and had to smear calamine lotion all over her face. He said, “Ma’am, look! My legs have calamine lotion all over them, too!” His mother hushed him and took him outside, where she explained that the woman had been wearing foundation makeup, not calamine lotion. As an adult, Kevyn realized that the choices in makeup in 1967 were quite limited.
3) The adult Kevyn learned that applying liquid eyeliner to your own eyes can be quite difficult. He once tried to teach his mother to do that with the result that she used up a large bottle of makeup remover. Actually, the two — mother and son — used up two large bottles of makeup remover. Kevyn was used to applying liquid eyeliner to other people’s eyes, and he did not believe that applying it to your own eyes would be difficult, so his mother made him try to apply it to his own eyes.
4) The very young Kevyn once got into the family medicine cabinet in search of his mother’s orange lipstick, which he thought would taste like candy. He took a bite and discovered that it did not taste like candy, then he tried to give the lipstick the shape it had had before he took a bite out of it. The lipstick ended up in one hand, and the lipstick tube ended up in another hand. One thing led to another, and the adult Kevyn wished that he had a photograph of his mother when she walked into the bathroom and discovered that everything was orange.
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Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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