Tag: Mishaps

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David Bruce: Mishaps Anecdotes

• During a theatrical presentation of Bulldog Drummond, the villain was supposed to gain possession of a gun, then fire it at Bulldog — but no shot was supposed to fire. Bulldog was supposed to then say, “My good man, I would scarcely have let you amuse yourself with that toy had I not known it was unloaded.” However, one night the villain grabbed the wrong gun, which was loaded with blanks, then shot twice at Bulldog. Real bullets were not used, of course, but the gun sprayed powder onto Bulldog’s chest. The actor playing Bulldog couldn’t say his line about the gun’s being unloaded, and since Bulldog was the hero of the play, he couldn’t “die,” so he looked at the villain and said, “My good man, you’re a damned bad shot.”

• In Amsterdam, Anne-Marie Holmes danced the title role of Giselle. However, the National Ballet of Holland used a different grave than the one she was used to. The cover to its grave opened in the middle instead of to the side. Ms. Holmes wanted to be sure that her skirt would not get caught in the grave cover so she leaned forward; she was successful in that the grave cover did not close on her skirt — instead, it closed on her nose. Fortunately, the stagehands heard her moan, so they lifted the cover enough for her to get her nose free. Otherwise, the otherworldly spirit that was Giselle would have had an embarrassing time in front of the audience.

• When Peter Martins first began performing with the New York City Ballet, he had to learn several ballets very quickly. Often, he learned a ballet during a day and then had to perform it later that night. On one occasion, he was dancing with Suzanne Farrell. He had five entrances and exits. The first four went well, but he forgot about the fifth entrance. For support, Ms. Farrell stretched out her hand, which Mr. Martins was supposed to take, but Mr. Martins was offstage, so Ms. Farrell fell on her face. To the audience, it looked as if Ms. Farrell had committed the fault. According to Mr. Martins, “She was furious with me about that for a whole week.”

• Anton Dolin and Alicia Markova toured the world, bringing ballet to everybody. Of course, mishaps occurred during touring. In Birmingham, Alabama, Ms. Markova fell flat on her back during Act II of Giselle, lying with her legs and her lilies pointing straight up, while she giggled at the indignity of her position. In Dallas, Texas, the stage floor was so slippery that at one point Mr. Dolan told the audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are doing our best and trying to stand up, but neither Miss Markova nor I nor our group are billed as The Ice Capades!”

• Margaret Rawlins appeared in The White Devil, in which a gang of thugs killed her character near the end of the play. During one performance, the actors playing the thugs got carried away and Ms. Rawlins’ gown was ripped to the waist, leaving her topless. (Since this happened in 1947, the audience was in shock.) Trouper that she was, Ms. Rawlins remained motionless until the curtain came down, then she gathered the remnants of her clothing and glared at the actors who were staring at her from the wings.

• Giuseppe di Stefano sang the part of Alfredo in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata. In the second act, he was supposed to throw some stage money into the face of the character Violetta — a deadly insult. Unfortunately, once on stage he discovered that his dresser had forgotten to put the stage money into a pocket — any pocket — of his costume. Forced to improvise, he slapped Violetta. The woman playing Violetta never forgave him.

• One of the great dance teams of all time is Anna Pavlova and Mikhail Mordkin, but mishaps happen even to great dance teams. While touring, they performed in Mordkin’s Legend of Azyiade, based on The Arabian Nights. During a performance, Ms. Pavlova with her usual vigor hurled herself into Mr. Mordkin’s arms, and the sofa he was sitting on collapsed.

• While playing Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Constance Benson once stood on a rather shakily constructed balcony. She was warned not to move around too much, but in the emotion of acting, she forgot her instructions. The balcony collapsed, and she tumbled right into Romeo’s arms.

• French soprano Emma Calvé once had the misfortune of having her knickers fall down while she was singing in the presence of Queen Victoria of Great Britain. Ms. Calvé remained calm and kicked the knickers into the wings as she continued to sing, but Queen Victoria was shocked and did not applaud at the end of the performance.

• Frank Benson once played Hamlet so energetically that when he plunged his sword through a curtain he sliced through the eyelid of the actress playing the Queen. She asked him in a whisper if her eye was put out, and he whispered back that it was not and to please keep the injury hidden from the audience.

• While singing in Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, tenor Enrico Caruso was supposed to throw a gun on the floor, at which time a stagehand would fire a blank offstage. Mr. Caruso did throw the gun on the floor, but there was no gunshot — so Mr. Caruso said loudly, “BANG.”

• On one occasion, Alicia Markova, while dancing in the role of Giselle, started to pull some lilies from the stage, only to discover that the stagehands had mistakenly nailed them down. With a mighty effort, she wrenched them free, then continued to dance.

• At the 1986 Federal Express St. Jude Classic, Gary McCord hit five shots in a row into a pond. Finally, he looked at his club. He was using a 4-iron instead of the 3-iron he thought he was using.

• Ballet dancer Anna Pavlova loved to swim, although she was not very good at it. She liked to dive into the water and once knocked herself out with a dive.

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David Bruce: Mishaps Anecdotes

• At the Chicago Herald-Examiner, John J. “Jack” McPhaul once worked with a female reporter who was dedicated to meeting deadlines. Once, they were working together on a murder case. They waited for a coroner to finish his work on the murder victim so they could report on the findings. Their deadline for the first edition was fast approaching, and growing impatient she walked into the coroner’s office. A moment later, the coroner appeared and beckoned to Mr. McPhaul. Two bodies were lying down. One was the murder victim; the other was the female reporter. Mr. McPhaul asked what had happened, and the coroner replied, “She tapped me on the shoulder, and when I turned it was just in time to catch her. Out like a light. Guess the job was a little messier than she had expected.” The female reporter regained consciousness, looked at Mr. McPhaul, and said, “Jack McPhaul, if you ever tell a soul, I’ll kill you.”

• Cerys Matthewswas the lead singer ofCatatonia and now records solo albums. One of her best friends is fellow Welsh singer Tom Jones, who gave her the best advice she has ever received—and followed: “Tom Jones told me not to drink before going on stage. You grow up with all these myths about rock ’n’ roll behavior, even if the stars are on a rollercoaster to hell. His advice was so simple, but it really does work.” She had her most embarrassing moment on stage in the days before Mr. Jones gave her this advice, when she fell over a monitor during a concert in Germany. She remembers, “I might have got away with it if I hadn’t been mid-note.” Ms. Matthews has thought about death, as all of us have, and she would like to be remembered “with a good sentence on a gravestone. I’m still working out what it would say. Gravestones are like Twitter—you need something short that will amuse people.”

• Linda Ronstadt has sung some operetta and opera. For example, she has sung the role of Mabel in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. Doing this was hard work because she wasn’t used to acting while singing. For example, during rehearsals she sometimes did not understand where to walk. A few times, at the end of a song in rehearsal she found herself standing in the place marked off for the orchestra pit. Co-star Kevin Kline also once pointed out to her during a rehearsal, “This is Gilbert and Sullivan, Linda—you can’t say, ‘Git!’” She also worked in La Bohemewith some other people who were new to opera. One musician even was heard asking during an early rehearsal, “Isn’t there any dialogue in this show?”

• Actor Michael Landon seldom ate breakfast or lunch; instead, he would eat supper and often add a late-night snack. One night, at around 1 p.m. he made himself a plate of spaghetti and took it to his and his wife’s bedroom, but discovered that he had forgotten the grated cheese. He put the plate of spaghetti, which was covered with tomato sauce, on the bed and left to get the grated cheese. His wife turned over in bed and woke up when her hand hit the plate of spaghetti. She turned on the light, looked at her hand, saw what she thought was blood, and started screaming. Michael ran to the bedroom and calmed her down.

• In 1958, when Larry King first left Brooklyn and went to South Florida, he hit John F. Kennedy’s car. Senator Kennedy was pretty steamed about it, saying, “How could you? Early Sunday morning, no traffic, not a cloud in the sky, I’m parked—how could you run into me?” Unfortunately, Mr. King did not have a good excuse—he had simply been gawking at the fancy Palm Beach boutiques. Mr. Kennedy did offer to forget about the accident—if Mr. King promised to vote for him in the Presidential election. Mr. King did, and Mr. Kennedy drove away—after telling Mr. King, “Stay waaay behind me.”

• During the filming of The Wizard of Oz, a few mishaps occurred. For example, the teacher who taught child actors thought that the adult midgets who performed as the Munchkins were children and tried to round them up and take them to school. And one wardrobe lady asked an adult little person to undress, saying, “I have a little one just like you at home.” When the little person undressed, she realized from the physical evidence that she was in the presence of an adult male.

• In 2006, six weeks after Melissa Rivers, the daughter of Joan Rivers, had given birth, she attended a televised event (with a celebrity red carpet) at which someone looked at her and asked her when her baby was due. Fortunately, George Clooney came up to her. Melissa says, “He put his arm around me and said I looked amazing. That made me feel so much better.”

• A career in opera can end quickly. French mezzo Simone Berriaux once choked on a peppercorn while eating a beefsteak. Although she coughed repeatedly, she could not dislodge the peppercorn from beside her vocal cords. The next morning a surgeon removed the peppercorn, but it had damaged her vocal cords so badly that she was forced to retire from opera.

• As a student, Arthur Mitchell once happily danced a Military Tap Salute at his public school; unfortunately, midway through the number, he forgot his routine. He handled it well. He simply told the audience, “You’ll have to excuse me. It could happen to anyone. It’s because I’m not a professional.” (Later, of course, he became a professional.)

• Not all good deeds work out. For a performance by ballerina Maria Tallchief and the New York City Ballet, Japanese stagehands waxed the stage floor. Of course, this resulted in dancers slipping, sliding, and falling. After that one ruinous performance, the stage floor was restored to its usual scuffed lack of splendor.

• DavidByrne, former front man for the Talking Heads, is a cyclist. In 2008, he crashed on West 14^thStreet in New York City. Two police officers arrived and asked him two questions: 1) Were you drinking? and 2) Are you David Byrne? Both questions had the same answer: yes.

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David Bruce: Mishaps Anecdotes

• Before George Cehanovsky started singing with the Metropolitan Opera, he sang the title role in Eugene Onegin. During the scene where he was supposed to shoot and kill the poet Lensky in a duel, his gun would not fire. (Later, he discovered that he and the singer playing Lensky had picked up the wrong guns — the singer playing Lensky had the gun with the blank in it.) The singer playing Lensky decided to fall over “dead” anyway, and when he hit the floor, the blank in his gun went off. Mr. Cehanovsky asked Eugene’s second, “Is he killed!” The second replied, “He died of a heart attack.”

• Early in her career, soprano Leslie Garrett appeared as Cupid in Oronteafor Musica nel Chiostro (Music in the Cloisters) in Batignano, Italy. Little money was available for costumes, and as Cupid Ms. Garrett wore only some silver cycling shorts and a strategically placed towel. At a dress rehearsal attended by local villagers, the towel somehow flew off, angering the local matrons but gladdening their unmarried sons. After that near-riot dress rehearsal, Ms. Garrett glued the towel to her chest.

• German contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink once wore a train on a formal gown while singing in a concert. Unfortunately, while walking on stage, her train caught on a steel tack and pulled loose. She responded well to a situation that would have embarrassed many singers. Ms. Schumann-Heink simply picked up the train, draped it across the piano, and said to the audience, “Vell! unt vhat doo you teenk off dot!” This endeared her to the audience even before she had sang a note.

• When Richard Burton was starring at the old Vic in Hamlet, John Gielgud stopped by his dressing room after a performance so that they could go out and have supper together. However, Mr. Burton took a long time changing out of his costume so Mr. Gielgud said, “I’ll go on ahead. Come when you’re better — I mean, when you’re ready!” In his book Acting Shakespeare, Mr. Gielgud calls this one of his favorite theatrical gaffes.

• While singing Siegmund to Birgit Nilsson’s Sieglinda in the first two performances of Die Walküreduring the 1974-1975 season at the New York Metropolitan Opera, Jon Vickers withdrew the sword from the tree with such force that the sword flew from the handle and into the safety net protecting the orchestra. Afterward, Ms. Nilsson said that if she hadn’t stepped back, she would have lost part of her nose.

• Bluesman Robert Lockwood once went into a town to look for himself. He played in Elaine, Arkansas, then went back home, where he heard that fellow bluesman Robert Johnson was in Elaine. Mr. Lockwood wanted to see Mr. Johnson, so he went back to Elaine, where he discovered that a mistake had been made. A man had seen Mr. Lockwood playing and had thought that Mr. Lockwood was Mr. Johnson.

• Rita Thunderbird performed as a human cannonball throughout the United Kingdom while wearing a gold lamé bikini. On one occasion in 1977, however, she remained in the cannon after it was fired although she was supposed to fly across the River Thames. However, this didn’t stop the show — flying across the River Thames without her was her gold lamé bra.

• In Washington DC, the stagehands let the curtain down right in the middle of a pas de deuxby Maria Tallchief and André Eglevsky, leaving Ms. Tallchief in front of the curtain and Mr. Eglevsky behind the curtain. Mr. Eglevsky remained calm and simply rejoined Ms. Tallchief on stage, where they bowed to the audience and called the dance finis.

• While singing in Tosca, Plácido Domingo has had bad luck crying out “Vittoria! Vittoria!” Once, he fell flat on his nose, creating a pool of blood; fortunately, he managed to finish the opera. On another occasion, he threw his head back as he cried “Vittoria! Vittoria!” — and broke the nose of the supernumerary standing behind him.

• Tenor Franco Corelli takes music seriously. At home, Mr. Corelli became so frustrated while trying unsuccessfully to play a certain phrase that he jumped up from the piano then smashed his fist through a closet door. He and his wife were unsuccessful at freeing his arm, so they were forced to call a carpenter for help.

• The Grant food chain once attempted to create a hot dog without cancer-causing nitrates. It sent a package of the healthy hot dogs to the United States Department of Agriculture so they could be tested, but an official there thought that they were a gift, so he took them home and had a weenie roast.

• During a performance of Macbethon a very hot evening, Sarah Siddons ordered a beer. A boy went out, bought the beer, and carried it back to the theater. However, Mrs. Siddons was not where she had been. Looking around, the boy saw her acting on stage, so he walked on stage and delivered the beer to her.

• During a performance of Electrawith Birgit Nielsen at the Paris Opera, the lights went out due to a power failure. When the lights came on again, Richard Lewis picked up the performance where it had ended by singing his next lines: “Lights. Lights. Is there no one here to light them?”

• In the mid-1950s, Gene Bozzacco, who was a musician with the Metropolitan Opera, remembered a funny performance of Forzain Brooklyn. Both men about to have a duel forgot their pistols, and they were forced to run off the stage in different directions to get them.

• Filming The Texas Chain Saw Massacrewas dangerous. In one scene, Gunnar Hansen (playing Leatherface) was running with a whirling chain saw when he slipped. The whirling chain saw flew in the air and landed a few inches from Ms. Hansen’s body.

• At her all-female college, Katherine Hepburn played men’s roles in the plays the theater department put on. During one play, she put a hand in her pants pocket, sat down, and couldn’t get her hand out again.

• The Reverend Sydney Smith drank some ink by accident, then said, “Bring me all the blotting paper there is in the house.”

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David Bruce: Mishaps Anecdotes

• If famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright had a weakness, it was his designs for furniture. When he designed the Johnson Wax Administrative Building in Racine, Wisconsin, he also designed three-legged chairs that unfortunately tipped over frequently, spilling the occupant onto the floor. The company president asked him why he had not put four legs on the chairs, and Mr. Wright replied, “You won’t tip if you sit back and put your two feet on the ground because then you have five legs holding you up. If five legs won’t hold you, then I don’t know what will!” Earlier in his career, Mr. Wright designed chairs for another building he had designed: the Larkin Company Administration Building in Buffalo, New York. His chairs were called “suicide chairs” because they tipped over so frequently. Although Mr. Wright thought — correctly — of himself as a genius, even he admitted that his chairs were far from comfortable. He once said, “I have been black and blue in some spot, somewhere, almost all my life from too much intimate contact with my own early furniture.”

• Franco Corelli used to carry around hidden sponges on stage while singing so he could occasionally wet his lips. Birgit Nilsson remembers that during the 1961 revival of Turandotat the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Corelli suddenly turned his back on the audience, reached into the front of his pants, and, in Ms. Nilsson’s words, “began fooling around.” Of course, she was understandably worried about what he was going to do, and she was understandably relieved when he finally pulled out the sponge he had been searching for and wet his lips.

• During Tosca, a fire started on stage while Geraldine Farrar was performing. The prompter started to throw a fire extinguisher to Ms. Farrar, but she motioned to him not to do it. Instead, she acted shocked, then beat out the fire with her hands. Later, she explained that a modern fire extinguisher did not belong in Toscaand she preferred to injure her hands rather than to do violence to the opera.

• WNBA star Rebecca Lobo’s most embarrassing moment on the basketball court came when she was a first-year player for the University of Connecticut. She had forgotten to tie the drawstring of her uniform shorts, and when she jumped to block a shot, she became entangled with the other player, and her shorts ended up around her ankles. After that experience, she remembered to tie the drawstring.

• As a youth, Marvel Comics maven Stan Lee worked in a movie house on Broadway. Once, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the theater, and Mr. Lee had the privilege of showing her to her seat. He walked down the aisle with his head held high, and he tripped over the leg of a patron and fell. Mrs. Roosevelt put her hands on his shoulders and asked if he was all right. (He was fine — except for his pride.)

• Language can be ambiguous. While a priest was giving a homily in a Catholic school, a little boy started talking. Not wanting the homily to be interrupted, a Sister asked one of her young pupils, “Go up there and tell him to stop talking.” The young pupil walked past the talking boy, went up to the priest who was giving the homily, and said, “Sister said you should stop talking.”

• Chubby Wise played fiddle for country singer Hank Snow. During a concert, Mr. Wise’s bow caught Mr. Snow’s toupee and flung it out into the audience. Someone in the audience went home with a very unusual celebrity memento. (Once, Mr. Snow got too close to the edge of the stage and fell off. He said, “Goddamn it, Chubby. Why don’t you watch where I’m going?”)

• The funniest typo that ever occurred in a work by children’s book writer Phyllis Reynolds Naylor appeared in a short story titled “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Instead of reading, “Marvin Migglesby sat by the fire roasting chestnuts and feeding them to the dog,” the last line read, “Marvin Migglesby sat by the fire roasting the dog.”

• In 1952, the Oklahoma Sooners had a wonderful football team, but way too many fumbles, especially in the first half, led to a loss against Notre Dame, although the Sooners were favored to win. At halftime, an Oklahoma drum major threw a baton high in the air, but missed catching it when it came down, and it tumbled crazily on the ground. A fan told Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson, “I see you coach the band, too.”

• Hugh Laing once was in the middle of a dance with Alicia Markova in Alekowhen she fainted — she was so graceful that the faint seemed part of the dance. Mr. Laing did not stop dancing, but he gathered Ms. Markova in his arms, danced offstage and gave her to some people who could help her, then danced onstage again.

• Early in her career, when she was still a student, artist Edna Hibel was enthusiastically working on a fresco, standing on a big block to reach high up on a wall. Unfortunately, she stepped too far back to view her work with the result that she fell to the floor. Ms. Hibel says, “That’s one time my enthusiasm hit bottom!”

• Early in her career, choreographer Agnes de Mille danced in the play The Black Crook. One night, her partner accidentally kicked her and broke her nose. Ms. de Mille reported, “The sound, a kind of wet scrunch, carried to the back of the theater, but, I am proud to say, neither of us missed a step.”

• Mishaps occur even in the lives of famous authors. Poet Arnold Adoff, author of Eats and Chocolate Dreams, was once eating peanut butter while writing at a typewriter. He was careless, he got peanut butter in the typewriter, and he was forced to hire a repairman to fix the problem.

• Around 1914, while performing in New Orleans, Ma Rainey sang, “If you don’t believe I’m sinkin’, look what a hole I’m in.” At that moment, the stage she was standing on collapsed. (Fortunately, no one was hurt.)

• A Washington newspaper printed a headline with a typo: “CHURCHILL IN BED WITH SLIGHT COED.” President Franklin D. Franklin sent Prime Minister Winston Churchill several copies of the newspaper.

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David Bruce: Mishaps Anecdotes

• Alice Cooper frequently gets “killed” by zombies as part of his act. He also uses a lot of stage props—something that sometimes results in accidents. For example, he used to “hang” himself on stage—a wire kept him from actually breaking his neck in the noose. Alice remembers, “We’d made the thing ourselves, and used piano wire as the support cable. But what we didn’t figure is that if we used it 300 times, the wire would eventually lose its strength. Then one night in London it snapped. Fortunately, I instinctively put my neck up and slipped right through the noose. I fell six feet, hit my jaw. Man, was I lucky!” A live prop was a boa constrictor that once suffered from onstage diarrhea—something that made his stage crew, who were onstage dressed as clowns, vomit. (After the concert, Johnny Rotten said, “Alice, that was the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”) Alice also stabbed himself in the leg with a sword—accidentally. He remembers, “I looked down and thought, ‘Well, it’s already in there, so I might as well carry on.’” Alice realized the importance of stage props from his days as a high-school student: “One of my teachers had a guillotine, and if you were late, he’d put your head in it. I was late all the time.”

• Being one of the Three Stooges—Moe, Larry, and Curly—sometimes involved sacrifice. In 1936, the Stooge made the comedy short Ants in the Pantry. In it, the boys are pest exterminators, but business is slow, so their boss finds a way to get more customers, “If they don’t have any bugs, give them some!” Therefore, the Three Stooges start putting mice, ants, and moths in future customers’ houses. During filming, a container of red ants broke in Moe’s pocket, and they started swarming inside his clothing, leading to a lot of squirming by Moe. The director, Preston Black, loved it, saying, “Great, Moe! Keep up that squirming!” Moe remembers, “It was very funny—to everyone but me.” Also in 1936, the Stooges made Slippery Silks. In this short, over 150 pies were thrown, and Moe ended up with a sore arm and a sore face because the pies that he did not throw were thrown at him. The other Stooges also suffered injuries: Larry lost a tooth in one short, and Curly once got hit in the head and had to be attended to by a doctor. The doctor cut away some of Curly’s hair so he could attend to his wound, and then he glued back the hair so Curly could resume shooting the short.

• Maya Angelou once visited Senegal, where a friend named Samia invited her to supper. While she was there, she noticed that none of the guests was walking on the carpet. This made her angry because, she says, “I had known a woman in Egypt who would not allow her servants to walk on her rugs, saying that only she, her family and friends were going to wear out her expensive carpets. Samia plummeted in my estimation.” Therefore, to make a point, she walked back and forth a few times on the carpet as “[t]he guests who were bunched up on the sidelines smiled at me weakly.” Later, she regretted her action. Servants rolled up the carpet she had walked on, put down a fresh carpet, and then put food and plates and eating utensils on it. Samia then said to her guests that in honor of Maya Angelou, she was serving a very popular dish from Senegal. The guests then sat on the carpet. Ms. Angelou realized that in her ignorance, she had been walking on her host’s tablecloth, and she says that she was “on fire with shame.”

• Monty Python Terry Jones was friends with Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe books. One story that Mr. Adams used to tell was of being at a train station with a Guardian newspaper and a package of biscuits (British for cookies). He sat down with a cup of coffee and put down the newspaper. In the middle of the table was a packet of biscuits. Another man was already at the table, and he very calmly opened the packet of biscuits and ate one. Mr. Adams was annoyed but remained silent, and he ate a biscuit. The other man then ate a biscuit, followed by Mr. Adams eating another biscuit. Mr. Adams was still annoyed, but he made an effort not to glare at the other man. When it was time to leave, Mr. Adams stood up, picked up his newspaper—and discovered his packet of biscuits underneath the newspaper.

• Claudiann Hart of Virden, Illinois, once donated a purse to Goodwill, but neglected to take her calling card, money and some important papers out of a zipped-up compartment in the purse first. She immediately called Goodwill, and Ann Clemmons, an employee there, was able to find and return Ms. Hart’s important possessions to her. In a letter to The State Journal Register of Springfield, Illinois, Ms. Hart writes, “Thank you to all the good and honest people working at Goodwill.”

• Christa Miller co-starred as the character Kate in The Drew Carey Show. One day, she complained about an odor in her trailer. She had checked the refrigerator, but the odor was not coming from there. Another co-star of the show, Ryan Stiles, asked whether she had checked the microwave. She had not, and when she did check the microwave, she found roast beef that had been sitting there—and rotting—for over a week.

• Terri Elders once enjoyed a delicious blue raspberry treat before teaching, and she was happy that her students were paying very close attention to her as she spoke. Unfortunately, after the class was over, one of her female students handed her a compact and said, “You might want to have a look.” She looked, and she saw that her raspberry treat had turned her lips, tongue, and teeth blue.

• Dancing in an open-air theater has its challenges—bats, for example. Another danger is picnickers. Tanaquil Le Clercq once danced an adagio in an open-air theater in Colorado with a hot-dog wrapper made sticky with mustard clinging to her tights.

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