Politics 101

Good evening, and welcome to another session of Let’s Talk to Anyone with a Gizmo.  I’m your host, Kathy Minicozzi.  Our guests today are two of the most famous political figures in the world: Her Majesty Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and His Majesty Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France.  Welcome.

CLEOPATRA:  Thank you.

NAPOLEON:  Merci.

Let’s begin with you, Your Majesty.

CLEOPATRA:  Call me Cleo.

Alright … Cleo.  If you were to advise a beginning politician of today, what do you think is the most important thing you would say?

CLEOPATRA:  Two things.  Get rid of any siblings and give yourself to a powerful man.

You are talking about Julius Caesar, right?

CLEOPATRA:  Who else?  He had the power and I had … well, you know what I had.  If you’ve got enough of it to take a smart, powerful man and turn him into a quivering mass of jelly who will give you anything you want, it’s stupid not to bring it out and flaunt it in his face.

 

... and hope the powerful guy looks like this!

You were in Rome when Caesar was assassinated, right?

CLEOPATRA:  Oof!  Yes.  I wasn’t expecting that to happen.  It was just supposed to be a nice, romantic interlude in Italy.  I had to get away fast before someone came after ME.  I went back to Egypt, where I was queen and people had to do what I told them.  It was safer that way.

It certainly was, and we are glad you escaped.  Your Majesty, Emperor Napoleon, what advice would you give to today’s inexperienced politicians?

NAPOLEON:  Mon Dieu!  What did she say about getting rid of siblings?  No.  You don’t do that.  You build up an army, go into neighboring countries, conquer them and put your brothers on the thrones of those countries!  Family is everything.   It’s hard for a country to rebel if your brother is the king.  You hear that, Joseph?  Don’t say I never did anything for you!

Well …

NAPOLEON:  And I was the most powerful man!  I did not have to seduce anyone in power.  Women fell all over ME!

Yes, well, I guess the Italian family tradition was strong in your case.

NAPOLEON:  Are you crazy?  What Italian tradition?  I am French.  Corsica was owned by France when I was born there, and it still is.  Fifty million Frenchmen say that I am French, so it must be true.

Yes, certainly.

NAPOLEON:  Don’t forget that.

I won’t.  Your Majesty … uh, Cleo … after the death of Caesar, you took up with Mark Anthony.  What was the result of that?

CLEOPATRA:  Well, I thought I had picked another winner, but I miscalculated.  That’s one of the dangers of politics.  You make what you think is a good decision, and you wind up behind the 8 ball.  It happed to Marky and me.  He killed himself, so I did it, too.  I didn’t want to fall on a sword like he did.  That would really hurt, and make a mess.  We had some snakes around for an emergency, so I used one of them.  Much easier.

Your Majesty the Emperor, you were eventually defeated in Russia, and you were finally, once and for all, defeated at Waterloo.  What advice would you give?

NAPOLEON:  Stay away from the Russians.  They don’t mess around.  That place is BIG and it gets really cold in winter.  You have never seen such snow and ice.  They don’t share their stuff with invading armies, either.  Don’t expect them to welcome you with a nice bowl of borscht, unless they are trying to give you a bad case of stomach gas.

Hmmm.

NAPOLEON:  Be careful of the British, too.  They’re tougher than they look.  Wellington wasn’t just a pair of boots!

Well, our time seems to be up.  Thank you, Queen Cleopatra and Emperor Napoleon, for your time and your expertise.

Please join us next week when we will feature some unknown but hilarious humor writers who need people to buy their books.  Until then, good-bye.

Relatively Speaking

Some Ancient Italian or Other

You know that show on PBS where the host has different celebrities do a DNA testing, then sometimes tells them they are related to some famous person from the past, such as Abraham Lincoln or Richard the Lion-Hearted?

I decided to do one of those DNA tests, and I’m sorry that I did.  I’m not related to anybody famous, but apparently I am related to some infamous characters.   My family tree has more bad apples than a corner grocery store after a 7-day blackout.

Apparently, the Minicozzis and the McNeelys are responsible for most of the evil in the world.

The Minicozzis missed being related to Julius Caesar by a hair.  Good old Julius was supposed to have a wild week on Capri with our distant ancestor Caecilia Pectoris, the busiest call girl in Pompeii, but he missed it because he got himself killed before he could get out of Rome.  Caecilia filled his time slot with a local chariot race bookie to whom she owed money, and got knocked up by him instead of by the leader of the whole Roman world.  Caecilia never got over it.

Caligula comes up in the Minicozzi family tree, because we are related to his nephew, Nero.  Nero liked to lead gang raids at night.  He was a singer-songwriter who was always quick to kill any criticism, along with the critic.  He enjoyed setting fires, making Christians take the rap and using them as lion food.  He killed his mother and one of his wives.  Aside from that, he was a fun guy.  He could throw a great orgy.

Before we leave the Minicozzis, I have to mention that we are also kin to the Borgias, of quick acting poison fame. The Borgia family kitchen and wine cellar were legendary, and the secret ingredients were to die for.

If this guy asked you out, you'd best bring an antidote.

Of course, none of today’s Minicozzis would ever do any of those things.  We have become tame to the point of being boring, just like the McNeelys on my mother’s side, who were better known for herding cattle in the Old West than for doing away with people, with one exception.

Jedediah McNeely, better known as “Black Jed” was the leader of a band of outlaws that robbed trains in Nevada back in the 1870s.  They were caught after Jedediah’s wife Lizzie found him skinny dipping in Lake Placid with a local saloon girl named Good Time Gladys.  Jedediah’s wife clobbered him to death with a carpet beater, and turned the rest of the gang in to the authorities.  There was a price on old Jed’s head, and Lizzie was given the reward money just before she was hanged for murdering him.

Maybe if I have this whole DNA thing done over again, they’ll find out that I am related to Michelangelo and George Washington.  That would be worth telling people.

PS:  If anyone in my family is reading this, I made it all up because I thought it would be funny.  Please don’t hurt me.

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For more of my funny writing, go HumorOutcasts.com

Ruining History for Everyone 2

I couldn’t just stop with debunking Davy Crockett on Humor Outcasts.  I’m on a roll now, so watch out.

Some more historical debunking:

1.      Paul Revere didn’t finish his famous ride.  He ran into a British patrol and had to stop and explain what he was doing out at night, riding a horse, yelling and waking people up.  A couple of other guys who were doing the same thing that night got through and finished the job.  The thing was, Paul Revere’s name was easy to fit into a poem, which is what Henry Wadsworth Longfellow did.  This was great PR, and Paul Revere became a legend even though he actually got caught by the people he was trying to warn everyone else about.

2.    

NOT one of General Washington's
dinner guests

  George Washington didn’t live in a hut with his men at Valley Forge.  He was the General, so he lived in a comfortable, warm house, within view of the soldiers who were living in huts.  They still thought he was a hero and they didn’t see anything wrong with this, which just goes to show you something, although I don’t know what.

3.      Catherine the Great did not die from trying to have sex with a horse.  She died of a stroke, because she was an old lady.  People who didn’t like her thought it would be great fun to make up a scandalous story so they could laugh at her.  Catherine already had a juicy reputation for dalliances with men and everyone knew all the stories, so it took a tall tale like this to even make people pay attention.

4.      Vikings did not wear horned helmets.  They didn’t have to.  They were frightening enough without them.

5.      Marie Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake.”  Even if she wanted to say it, nobody asked her.

6.      Most educated people in the Middle Ages knew that the earth was round, and nobody really thought that Columbus was going to fall off the edge of the earth, although it might have been better for a lot of Native Americans if he had.

7.      This has not been proved for sure, but there is a good chance that Columbus was not Italian.  He might have told everyone that he came from Genoa to hide his real identity, for fear of winding up in jail or dead.  Apparently, he had a past that the King and Queen of Spain would not have found funny.  I hope if they do finally prove that he wasn’t Italian they won’t tell anyone.  Italian-Americans would have to find another hero to celebrate once a year, and Lee Iacocca Day just doesn’t have the same kind of punch.

8.      Speaking of Italians, opera legend Enrico Caruso did not die onstage in New York City in the middle of a performance.  He died in Italy, where he had traveled, hoping to recover from surgery on an abscessed lung.  Instead, he caught a fresh infection and died – in bed – at the age of 48.

I’ll shut up now.