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Through this Friday, all available back issues of Wholphin are half off—10 bucks apiece for countless warm evenings of rare films, featuring Miranda July, Paul Rudd, Donald Trump, and a monkey-faced eel.

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H I S T O R Y ' S   N O T A B L E   P E R S O N S
R E C O N S I D E R E D .


BY TIM CARVELL

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SIGMUND FREUD

Perhaps, contrary to a century's worth of psychoanalytic tradition, Freud never meant to suggest that all men want to sleep with their mothers. Perhaps he meant to suggest that all men want to sleep with his mother. (Apparently, Mrs. Freud got around.)

 

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

If, through some freak electrical mishap, Bruce Springsteen's clothing were to be ignited while he was onstage at a concert, how many times would he have to shriek "I'm on fire!" before his bandmates realized that he was not offering a reinterpretation of one of his greatest hits, but a plea for assistance?

I'm guessing four.

 

COLONEL HARLAN SANDERS

Maybe Colonel Sanders wasn't really all that interested in cooking. Maybe everything — the secret blend of herbs and spices, the down-home persona, the hundreds of franchisees — was a cover for the fact that he had a deep, abiding, and pathological hatred of hens.

 

TOM JONES

There must be nights, when Tom Jones is singing "What's New, Pussycat" for the 5,000th time, and the women are shrieking like they do every night and a hail of panties is landing on the stage like thousands of times before, when he just thinks, "Man, I'm getting sick of this." That's what I tell myself, anyway.

 

VINCENT VAN GOGH

I find it remarkable that in all the accounts of Vincent Van Gogh's cutting off of his ear and sending it to his brother nobody has yet suggested that it might have been the result of a domestic accident.

 

J.D. SALINGER

Precisely how much of the joy one takes in reading J.D. Salinger's work comes from the knowledge that he has chosen to withdraw from the public eye for the past five decades? The books would be no less beautiful — not a word would change — but if, for instance, Salinger had spent the past few years drawing a paycheck as a staff writer for Vanity Fair, mightn't that dim the appeal of Franny and Zooey just a bit? Or what if he'd written four sequels to The Catcher in the Rye? What if he'd been, however briefly, the host of a late-night talk show? A guest on "The Muppet Show"? The center square on "Hollywood Squares"?

 

 

OTHER McSWEENEY'S STORIES:
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New Jelly Belly Recipes By Dan Kennedy
Please Quit Calling My Kid "Stud" By Jeff Johnson
A Groomer of Horses, An Interview with Willis Dickson, Former Horse Farm Employee By Aimee Bingham
Wall Street Made Simple By Lawrence Krauser
Internet Hoax Watch By Christopher Painter

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