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Claverack, NY – This
sleepy Hudson River valley town, right in
the middle of the old Dutch New York that
Washington Irving celebrated in such
stories as “Ripabod Van
Crankschaft” and “The Legend of
Sleepy Winky, the Farting Dutchman,”
has been shaken up by the claim of an
archaeologist that he has discovered the
original headless horseman that inspired
Irving’s story.
In that
story, as every schoolboy will recall, the
lanky schoolteacher, trying to elude his
shrewish wife and marry the wealthy Katrina
van Tassel so he can quit teaching and loaf
around, is chased away by her other suitor,
the handsome and robust, though headless,
Brom. While hiding in the Catskills, he
drinks gin, falls asleep and wakes up 20
years later, next to a beautiful woman
whose black velvet choker conceals the fact
that she was beheaded during The Terror of
the French Revolution. When Ripabod shakes
her by the shoulders to demand his morning
hot chocolate, her head rolls downhill into
a game of nine-pins, which, on closer
inspection, turn out to be excise tax
collectors transformed into chess pieces by
a Moorish magician from Alhambra, Calif.
The story
was filmed in 1966 with actor Ichabob Crane
(of “Hogan’s Van Heroes,”
a comedy about WWII Dutch furniture
movers).
The
Claverack site was excavated by Ichabod
Crane and Backhoe.
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LEFT: Fossilized
remains of the bony schoolteacher Ichabod
Crane, left, next to those of the Headless
Horseman, right, in hot pursuit.
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LOS ANGELES –
Filming is expected to start here soon on
“Conan the Librarian,” financed
with seed money from the Governor’s
Council on Reading Books About Me. Gov.
Schwarzenegger, who starred in the original
“Conan the Barbarian” (1982),
said he hopes this sequel will
encourage more young people to read about
him. In its climax, the hero, trained as a
ninja in the secret Shaolin branch of the
Dewey Decimal System, breaks into the main
public library in Stockton, Calif. and
single-handedly alphabetizes the S section
in “Recent Bestsellers.” The
producers fought hard to keep a PG-13
rating.
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NEW YORK – Bobservatory
Chief Information Officer Mel Cooley, while
on a recent business trip here, claims he
discovered the discovery of the Northwest
Passage.
“The passage was clearly marked
as such, so the two men must have been
Lewis and Clark. Clark seemed intent on
further discoveries, maddened by
wanderlust. Lewis, on the other hand, was
so maddened by the discovery that he
started dancing like a whirling dervish
practicing the Peppermint Twist for an
upcoming ecumenical dance hop. He was
dancing so hard, one of his legs flew off.
It’s lucky no one was seriously
injured.”
Mel noted
that the Northwest Passage was conveniently
located in Grand Central Station.
“I
don’t know why people have had such a
hard time discovering it until now.”
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LEFT: Mel Cooley
(bottom right) recently discovered the
discovery by Lewis and Clark of the famed
Northwest Passage. The elusive Clark (left)
left to further explore the passage while
the effusive Lewis (middle) broke into a
spontaneous dance.
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