Today, we celebrate a birth and mourn a frankly weird death. First, let’s be clear that we are adults and are not going to be sniggering at anyone’s name, even if it’s unusual. No, we are quite reasonably noting the political achievements of a gentleman who is 75 today:
That sign’s from his first run at the job in 2010:
After the election, he said so many students nicked them
I didn’t have to pick up a single yard sign. It was great.
His full name is Young Jacob Boozer III, because his father was Young Jacob Boozer Jr. Obviously. His great grandfather was a Boozer who married a Young. So they combined their names. Of course.
Apparently, Young Jacob Boozer III has worries, though…
I looked this up. It’s funny(ish) in the US, because a fifth of a gallon used to mean a standard size bottle of spirits there, because — to paraphrase Mr Tarantino — they got the Imperial system over there. They don’t know what the fuck 750ml is.
You may enjoy these names, too:
Not forgetting…
So, onto the serious and sad news: the 40th anniversary of Jimmy ‘The Beard’ Ferrozzo dying while having sex on a nightclub piano when the hydraulic lift normally used to lower a topless dancer went up and squeezed him fatally against the ceiling.
The Condor Club was — indeed, still is — a bar in San Francisco, which became famous in 1964 for having topless dancers, one of the most famous being Carol Doda, whose trademark was to descend from the ceiling on top of a spangled grand piano.
Jimmy, the 40-year-old assistant manager of the club, was… entertaining his 23-year-old girlfriend — or, as the San Francisco Chronicle put it,
crushed to death … when an elevator piano accidentally rose to the ceiling while he was entangled atop it with a young woman.
The accident “happened between 4 and 6 a.m.”, apparently, and
the club’s janitor, found the couple pinned between the piano and the ceiling 15 feet off the ground at 7:30 a.m.
Theresa Hill, the other half of the couple survived the experience. She was, apparently, treated for bruises. None of the news reports I’ve found mention it, but she was, presumably, traumatised too — not least because
Firemen were unable to free them until about 10:15 a.m.
Police theorized Ferrozzo may have accidentally tripped the piano’s ‘up’ button. It takes about 90 seconds to reach the ceiling.
The problem Ferrozzo had, which presumably Hill didn’t, was that, at a reputed 240lbs, he was not a chap Cliff Richard would have opted for a photo with.
Anyway, join me tomorrow, when we stay with the world of showbiz for a theatrical disaster and a triumph which occurred in the West End on the same day 68 years apart…
