What remarkable things have you found in unexpected places?
1. Real beauty: oil stains left by cars in a parking lot.
2. Shoe shine stand that looked like thrones in Brazil made of scrap wood.
3. False teeth in pawnshop windows in Reno, Nevada.
4. Great acoustics: in jail.
5. Best food: Airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
6. Most gift shops: Fatima, Portugal.
8. Most unlikely location for a Chicano crowd: Paul Morrisey concert.
9. Most poverty: Washington, D.C.
10. A homeless man with a beautiful operatic voice singing the word “Bacteria” in an empty Dumpster in Chinatown.
11.
12. Best night’s sleep: in a dry riverbed in Arizona.
13. Most people who wear red pants: St. Louis.
14. Most beautiful horses: New York City
15. A judge in Baltimore in 1890 presided over a trial where a man who was accused of murder and was guilty, and convicted by a jury of his peers…and was let go. When the judge said to him at the end of the trial, “You are guilty sir…but I cannot put in jail an innocent man.” You see, the murderer was a Siamese twin.
16. Largest penis (in proportion to its body): the barnacle
Tom, you love words and their origins. For $2,000…what is the origin of the word ‘bedlam’? It’s a contraction of the word Bethlehem. It comes from the hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem outside London. The hospital began admitting mental patients in the late fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century it became a lunatic asylum. The word ‘bedlam’ came to be used for any madhouse — and by extension, for any scene of noisy confusion. What is up with your ears? I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong — I have audio illusions. I guess now they say ADD. I have a scrambler in my brain and it takes what is said and turns it into Pig Latin and feeds it back to me.