Kook's tale

A very little known fact is that during the filming of The Three Stooges 1969-70 Kook's Tour, the director filmed a segway at one of the lodge cabins which resulted in a flooding of the iconic lake.

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  Jim Banholzer This resulted in the building of a special ark, but there was a slight problem with the passenger manifest.
  

  
  

  

  Yesterday at 9:14pm · Like
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  Jim Banholzer The ancient & wise ark managers discovered it was healthiest to house certain pairs of animals in the Olympic terrace sector of the ark.
  

  
  

  

  Yesterday at 9:20pm · Like
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  Jim Banholzer ...and that is your fractured fairy tale for the evening...
  

  
  

  

Three Banholzerian Stooges

A short while back, I discovered that there was a Banholzer aboard the Hindenburg. Not only that, but also, he was a mechanic! Now I’m thinking this can’t be good news for the Banholzer legacy; especially since discovering that at Banholzer’s North Mississippi Beer brewery a worker drown in a vat of beer, almost bankrupting the company.

Those two tales reminded me of dubious Banholzer #III, who had a hankering for telephone inventions and what they might do to improve life for humankind:

Perhaps the goofiest invention appeared in 1916. Paul P. Banholzer received a patent for a gadget for which the claim was made that “this instrument will further introduce the dot and dash system of telegraphy, which can be understood by any wire operator. Furthermore, the sound it produces is unmistakable and carries much father than the voice.” This device was merely a telegraph key clamped to the upright stem of a candlestick phone. By mechanical action the dots and dashes could be heard over the phone.

No possible application of the thing sounds reasonable, except that it might be used by student operators to practice with each other over the phone.”

Something old under the sun

When I worked at a Sun Valley newspaper, it was often made it clear that neither we nor were any of our advertisers to infringe upon the famous copywrited Sun Valley logo. Apparently S. V. Co. even sends out covert agents to inspect various local gift and T-shirt shops to ensure nobody is pinching their logo or shielding their sun in dark shadows.

Imagine my surprise then, when I came across the exact same logo on page 170 of Graham Hancock’s anthropological tome Supernatural. It’s a woodcut from 1566 and portrays some unknown flying objects of the sky.

Mysterious hockey pucks in flight?

My first instinct was to create a fake interoffice memo regarding S.V. Company’s mission to find the descendants of this piece of art and sue them or at least force them come into compliance with their sunny rules. The memo could even include a reference to the large Hadron collider and Sun Valley’s intensive intent to transport a spokesperson back in time to straighten out things. Then some wintry Saturday before a hockey game, lay out a few copies of this phony memo on side tables outside the Dew-Daw room for unsuspecting patrons to pick up.

In the past, this strategic spot has gotten in the craw of management. The reason I say this, is that for years, our delivery crews had unfulfilling experiences with their overseers. While part of S.V. administration was constantly pleading for us to lay out more magazines and newspapers in all of their lobby locations, another faction kept asking for reductions, with Mr. A threatening to throw our publications away (not recycle them), if we continued delivering them –even though they were the best guides to activities at their own venues. After some reports from concerned citizens seeing Sun Valley’s staff actually toss some of our newspaper bundles into the dumpster, I set up next to the River Run fireplace, secretly peeking through two slits in my newspaper and when I caught a culprit throwing away our product; threatened police action if I caught him doing so again.

Once, Mr. A even read me off a list of approved magazines; so thereafter whenever I encountered a stack of non-approved magazines, I automatically relayed this important mssg to his secretary, chirping in a sincere jerky voice that I felt it was my duty to inform him of the following infractions and read off a detailed list.

One day while standing in their lobby, the idea struck me that, we should feature an article about their famous hallway. How could they deny our magazine, if it featured their precious wall of fame lined with photos of Olympic celebrities, movie stars and Presidents? I passed this on the editor and viola a few months later, our magazine came out with the tactical article. This seemed to patch things up for a bit. However, soonafter, a New York Times reporter wrote a review regarding poor bell service. Although the stinging review of the guest worker behavior was accurate, the lodge management did not find their tarnished image funny and thus began a new information clampdown.

A few months later, I wrote a column called Seriously Embracing Zany Stooges. Included was the following passage:

“Recently the Farrelly Brothers (of Dumb & Dumber fame) and 20th Century Fox held some positive negotiations, enabling a new Three Stooges film to come one step closer to eye-popping reality. Some of their script was refined a few summers ago here in the serious writing atmosphere of Sun Valley, including rehearsals of an operation on a nun using an electric toothbrush and vacuum cleaner in one of the Lodge rooms. A rib-tickling scene develops with the discovery of a wishbone inside the semi-conscious nun. This ensues in a wrassling match over the examination table to break off the largest piece for good luck.”

A few weeks later, as I drove the Train Truck up to the Lodge Entrance to deliver some new magazines, Mr. A. swiftly intercepted me. As he saw the truck park next to the ducks, he started waving and flailing, “Excuse me! Excuse me! But what are you here for?” I showed him the new guidebooks to which he replied, “We already have some!” This of course was impossible, because they had just come off the press and I was the only one delivering them.

I didn’t have to deal with this nonsense much longer as I quit delivering magazines after one million. I noticed that winter that nobody kicked Mr. Farrelly off the hockey ice, for his previous smearing of the Lodge’s name, when he came to play goalie against the Suns. It must be that Sun Valley Company respects his refined approach to humor more than they do mine. Either that or he broke off the largest piece of that old nun’s wishbone. After all, his team won that hockey game, defeating Sun Valley in sudden-death.

Nyuck-Nyuck!

Seriously embracing zany Stooges

Commentary by Jim Banholzer

Original Url at: http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005109847&var_Year=2006&var_Month=05&var_Day=10

I stumbled into a pal recently, who pointed out that some babes would try to tell you that they just do not like the Three Stooges. These gals think that the only times those mugs put "the ladies" up on a pedestal is when they've accidentally released mice into a room. I say, "Don't mind that lamebrain calling you babe, toots, you just ain't watched enough episodes yet." Call me a knucklehead, but I have seen repeatedly girls claiming to be anti-Stooge, improve their outlook on life with proper indoctrinations from Drs. Howard & Fine.

A recently converted Stooges aficionado is my friend Laura. She had adamantly claimed that there was nothing likeable about those ignoramuses. Then one day a swayback horse episode came on TV. Being a lifelong horsewoman, this lassoed her attention. The three best jockeys were all hanging on to the same horse for dear life—wildly galloping in fast-motion circles, around a 1920s arena. A smiley creak emanating from Laura's lips soon sprung into convulsing laughter, resulting in a strata-stupefying conversion of her attitude towards the Stooges.

I met another gal in town who works at a store selling music and DVDs. She is a recent transplant from the south of France and has barely heard of Stooges high-jinx. What in the world ever made the French want to filter out Stooges from America? They adore Jerry Lewis, but don't know about Moe? Fancying myself a professor of happiness, I demonstrated some nifty tricks with my fists, explaining how they knock each other about until reaching a "poirfect" head-conking epiphany. After tossing in a few nyuck-nyucks, she too showed a slight hint of amusement. Determining that she was not one of those "do not call me a chick" chicks, I felt an HDTV ray of hope towards her future enjoyment of being floored from hilarious whirling Curleys.

There have been volumes scribed about the convincing healing power of comedy. Grief-stricken folks who have lost a loved one —some who have not laughed for a year or more are sometimes gently brought back into a more bearable world with help from the good turpentine of Stooge-like slapstick. If more shows of this nature illuminated in world theatres, perhaps opposing parties could lay down their weary arms, relax their knuckles and share a few hardy chuckles. We might even learn that to lob unordered cream pies into each other's faces only makes for a horrifying mess to mop up.

Cartoonists and comedians sometimes jangle keys to powerful vehicles of peace without even realizing it. Just as the unique beacons of enlightenment that poets, artists and athletes valiantly race with, it will be a bumpy, jalopy ride down robotic frontiers before ethereally bolted lunkheads could ever match the true staying power of the original Stooges. If the Stooges could come back, how hard would they laugh at the Random Joke Generators of today? Would they guffaw with me for being silly enough to think that they would laugh at my antics?

Recently the Farrelly Brothers (of Dumb & Dumber fame) and 20th Century Fox held some positive negotiations, enabling a new Three Stooges film to come one step closer to eye-popping reality. Some of their script was refined a few summers ago here in the serious writing atmosphere of Sun Valley, including rehearsals of an operation on a nun using an electric toothbrush and vacuum cleaner in one of the Lodge rooms. A rib-tickling scene develops with the discovery of a wishbone inside the semi-conscious nun. This ensues in a wrassling match over the examination table to break off the largest piece for good luck.

This is not the first connection to Idaho in Stooges history. Their last actual film was "Kooks' Tour," made in the Montana and Idaho wilderness in 1970.

Local stores in Idaho that rent or sell CDs and DVDs can special order you hot towels full of Stooges episodes. I hope that this column has corralled potential converts, to sway back some horse sense for the French chickie-baby. When she travels back to Stooge-starved France, she can start encouraging her sphere of the world to stop, look and listen to the profundity from the simple-minded good words and deeds of these three wise guys. Perhaps even the authoritative judgie-wudgies that oversee Medecins sans Frontieres will start recommending, "Take three Stooge DVDs and call me in the morning."

Dedicated to Mattie 'Dudeges' Mckenzie -- Idaho's best Curley impersonator.