July 27: Elephants in green socks

 There is a funny story about a lady who had never seen an elephant before.

There she was, living her elephant-free life, when an elephant escaped from the zoo. Well, as luck would have it, Mr. Elephant trampled into the lady's backyard and decided to have a feast on her flowerbed.

The poor old lady saw this and promptly freaked out. She picked up the phone and called the police.

"There's a great big grey beast in my flowerbed," she tells the 911 dispatcher. "It's picking flowers up with its TAIL!"

"And what is it doing with the flowers?" The dispatcher asked.

"You're not going to BELIEVE what it's doing with the flowers."

So ha ha ha.

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Let's watch one of the most traumatic nightmare-inducing sequences in the entire Disney canon:

The Simpsons once joked that Walt Disney had the "evil gene." When I look back at this bit, which seemed so out of place in Dumbo (a movie older than my dad) I tend to agree. Disney might pride itself on making family films but it's like the animators have a secret mission to throw in something that will scare the living daylights out of little kids (see Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians.)

By the way, does anyone else think that Pink Elephants on Parade was a direct influence on the Eukeriah sequence from the Grinch's Halloween special?

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There was a lady in Stettler who collected elephants.

By that, I mean that she collected elephant statues. She had dozens of 'em in her living room. All the elephants had their trunks up. She said that was a sign of good luck, but only if the elephants were facing the door.

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Since this note is youtube happy, here is my favourite elephant sequence of all time. (My regular readers will note that it is not the elephant scene from the James Bond movie, Octopussy.)

Yeah, that's Henry Macini's best work. Better than the Pink Panther for sure.

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Unfortunately, none of the elephants I mentioned above are wearing green socks. I will alleviate this by resorting to fiction.

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SHORT STORY BY SHTEEVIE

Once upon a time there was a famous figure skater named Kurt Iginla. Kurt was off to the World Figure Skating Championships, which he wanted to win really really bad. He had been training for years because he really wanted to beat Jarome Browning, who had won the World Figure Skating Championship for the past 83 years. 

So Kurt trained really hard with his coach, Josh Long, who really liked the Beatles and had co-authored a book called What Shat That. Finally, after months of practicing the triple axle spinaround move thingee, Josh Long said that Kurt Iginla was ready to beat Jarome Browning.

So Kurt got on an airplane and flew to Trenton, Ontario, where the World Figure Skating Championships were taking place. He landed at the Trenton airport and there was a great big red carpet reception that was attended by all sorts of celebrities including Dee Snider from Twisted Sister, the guy who played Screech on Saved by the Bell, and Optimus Prime from Transformers.

As Kurt Iginla climbed into his limosine, there was an announcement over the PA system.

"Pay attention everyone," said the announcer. "We regret to inform you that Jarome Browning will not be competing in tomorrow's World Figure Skating Championships. The reason for this is that he died of old age. That is all. Oh yes, and whoever is driving an orange Datsun with license plate number DGW-183, you left your lights on."

This made Kurt Iginla very sad. He hoped that whoever owned that orange Datsun turned their lights off in time so the battery wouldn't die like Jarome Browning did.

To make himself feel better, Kurt Iginla went to the world famous Trenton Zoo. There were lots of animals at the zoo. Here is a partial list of the animals that could be seen there:

- Cows

- Monkeys

- Flies (not an actual exhibit but they could be seen there, especially on the cows)

- Human beings (Darwin teaches that human beings are animals, even though they wear clothes mostly unless they are showering or being in movies that are bad)

- Wombats

- Snakes

- Platypi (Darwin can't explain that. Or maybe he can. Who knows?)

- Elephants.

It is to the elephants that Kurt Iginla ventured. There were three elephants in the pen. One of them was peeing. The other two were eating leaves off trees. All of them were wearing green socks. There is no reason for this except that they have to be wearing green socks or this note is a failure.

Kurt Iginla was so inspired by the elephants that he decided right then and there that he wanted to change his figure skating music to Henry Mancini's Baby Elephant Walk. His old music had been the Ethiopian national anthem as played by the Yukon Boys Bagpipe Band. he thought that a touch of Mancini might help him win the gold medal.

Well, as history shows, Kurt Iginla DID win the gold medal that day. In fact, he became the first figure skater ever to finish with the tournament with a perfect score of 236.7. His prize was $100 and a box of Frosted Flakes. Since Kurt Iginla was diabetic, he took the Frosted Flakes to the Trenton Zoo and fed them to the elephants. They dropped dead immediately because they were diabetic too. The moral of this story is never feed Frosted Flakes to elephants because you never know if they're diabetic.

The moral also might be that I am a moron.

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I will close by sharing yet another Youtube video of what might be the funniest elephant story ever (well second funniest after mine.)