The Reverend WILLIAM ABERNATHY earned his initial fame from his participation in the famed March on Washington in 1963, and his subsequent fame from holding his breath for five minutes while immersed in Jell-o.
KEITH ALLEN recently finished developing his Death Ray, which he claims can "instantly vaporize all the foolish mortals who doubted my supreme power." He is currently waiting for patent approval.
The multitalented Miss LAUREN ASHER's next movie is called Trout. It is set on a trout farm in Trout, Kentucky. Miss Asher portrays a deadly, nuclear-tipped trout.
An unopened parachute and a can of fruit cocktail were all that were found of daredevil IAN ATLAS after his attempt to jump from a plummeting aeroplane into Oprah Winfrey's hair.
The star of the hit Broadway musical Fromage!, TIKI BILL BAKER lists his hobbies as electric trains, general dentistry, and something about cattle prods.
Once one of Easton, Pennsylvania's most sought-after ingenues, JESSICA L. BENJAMIN counts climbing the Matterhorn and removing a pair of Tonganese stink-beetles from her cat's anus among her most romantic experiences.
PAUL BRAGDON was recently sold at a white slavery auction in Tangiers.
MATEO BURTCH was once described by Vanity Fair magazine as "an unholy amalgam of canine by-products."
Plucky REBECCA "BECKY" CHIAO boasts a full set of kidneys, taken from neighborhood children during a particularly intense game of Chutes and Ladders.
JOHANNA COLGROVE made her first hundred million as the CEO of TeleBioDynaInfoSys, a dot-com startup that enables Fortune 500 corporations to send email about penile enlargement. She is now Chief Technologist at the official Britney Spears website.
One of the renowned "Three-and-a-Half Tenors," BOB COMBS was Grand Marshall of the 1988 Scottie Days Parade in Falmouth, New Hampshire. Scottie Days celebrate the Scottie dog breed by putting as many of the little dogs as possible into a big pipe and then shooting it off a pier.
AMANDA COTTEN owns Fecal Publishing, whose line of books concerns only . . . oh, I can't even say it.
People who know DAVE DALY know that he is equally at home at the opening of opera season or strapped to a gurney, awaiting the removal of his gonads for "reasons of state security."
DAVID DEVINE runs The Double D, a fly ranch near Billings, Montana that provides flies to most of the upper Midwest.
Despite the loss of her head and upper body during a whist accident as a child, ANNE DICKERSON-MOSS continues to delight tourists near her Alamos, New Mexico home with the small sculptures she makes out of recently deceased domestic animals.
LIZ ECKHART teaches jewelry making to mice as head of the University of the Clatsop River's Department of Cheap Labor.
STEVEN FALK is a legend in certain islands of Micronesia, where he introduced the natives to canasta.
ANN FOX writes from England that she "is stuck on this goddamn island" and has "nothing to eat."
RICHARD FURUTA continues his obsessive search for the one-armed man who stole a stalk of celery from his dinner plate.
As the Johnny Cash song goes, ADAM GREEN once "killed a man in Reno / Just to watch him die." Actually, Green didn't kill the man, but he did give him a deep thigh bruise, just to watch him limp.
During the Gulf War in 1991, ESTEBAN GUTIERREZ once parachuted in behind enemy lines in order to relieve himself.
CHRIS HALLSTROM's work with Save the Lungfish has earned him accolades, awards, and a trip to the principal's office.
BARRET HANSEN's syndicated radio program, "The Doctor Demento Show," was recently bought by Fox News and retitled "Let's Kill the Liberal Traitors."
MILES HOCHSTEIN received a Ph.D. in Endocrinology in March. Never actually enrolled in a graduate program, Hochstein earned the degree by repeatedly shooting his pancreas across a crowded room.
"The Divine One." That's what folks call JOANNE HOSSACK, whose dead-on imitations of common table condiments have entertained audiences from Melbourne to Canberra.
Millionaire tycoon MARTIN JOHNSON announced the recent acquisition of the American Shingle Company, which manufactures hemmorrhoids.
THE REVEREND JIM JONES is semi-retired, making turquoise and silver jewelry for tourists in Yuma, Arizona.
DINA KEMPLER is well known to America's newspaper readers for her daily advice column, "Recent Advances in Otolayrngolic Pathology Detection Procedures." She lives in Portland, Oregon, with a complete stranger.
Look for GREG LAM among the daisies and sunflowers of the Upper Adirondacks, where he was unceremoniously dumped by irate taxpayers.
NORA LEIBOWITZ doesn't even think about the antennae any more, and usually goes out with a hat on, anyway.
Actress AARIN LUTZENHISER can be seen in an upcoming episode of the television series COPS.
In 1987 the Navy submersible U.S.S. Incredible Mister Limpet, diving to a depth of almost 10,000 meters, discovered CHRIS LONDON near the mouth of a volcanic vent spewing gases at nearly 900 degrees. The vent was spewing the gases, not Mr. London.
EVE LYONS has been the Defensive Coordinator of the Tennessee Titans for the past three years. She is also the club's Color Coordinator and is responsible for the team's new uniforms, which feature tan slacks, tassled pennyloafers, and V-necked cardigans.
SHAWN MCGILLIVRAY was the subject of a recent, exciting discovery by paleontologists in the East African Rift Valley. One researcher descibed McGillivray as the possible "missing link" in a chain of breakfast sausages.
Barrister ANDY MCLAIN's most famous victory came in Fosman v. State of Ohio, where he defended the state of Ohio against charges that it had slipped a barbituate into Enola Fosman's drink and then rifled through her purse while she slept. Judge Henry Tesher called McLain's performance "unforgettable" before sentencing him to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
MARK MCLEAN claims he owes his success to "a punishing regimen of chewing and swallowing."
PAUL MANSON owns an extensive art collection, including a number of paper clips used by Jackson Pollock during a meeting with a real-estate agent, and a napkin with chicken-grease stains that once belonged to Henri Matisse.
While the Space Shuttle Columbia circles overhead, WILL MORGAN is back on Earth, eating or sleeping.
BILL MOSS's amazing natural sheen allows him to work as a part-time parabolic mirror. His hobbies include grinding corn for neighborhood crows and swimming, quietly, in bed.
In a series of wacky misadventures, MADRONA MURPHY was spotted recently hanging from the Eiffel Tour with a briefcase full of uranium and what appeared to onlookers to be the lower half of radio personality Kasey Kasem.
Returning to London after the recent Plague, mathematician SIR ISAAC NEWTON was recently sighted squiring diva Jennifer Lopez around St. Paul's Cathedral. Mr. Newton describes the couple as "deliriously happy" and calls Miss Lopez "bootylicious."
After a deadly plane crash in the Andes, HIROSHI OGURA was discovered by rescuers to be in amazing physical condition and to have someone's finger between his teeth.
Hiking, skiing, bicycling, running, swimming—you name it, and avid outdoorswoman SARAH PERRAULT does it. She has been locked out of her apartment since 1997.
In 1997, KEVIN POOLE garnered the prestigious Fengley Award for Academic Excellence after paying over $400 for it.
Troubadour PAT PRUYNE's soaring harmonies and superb acoustic fingerpicking technique have long been the centerpiece of his traditional folk trio, The Vomit Nipple Sewage Explosion.
Audiophile and raconteur JIM QUINN once climbed a tree "this big." Jim writes that he has been walled up in a basement with a cask of amontillado since 2002 and is "taking things one day at a time."
It's no surprise that KATIE REMPE was voted Most Likely to Succeed by her classmates at Ethel Rosenberg Junior High School, after she successfully opened up the passenger-side door of her mother's mini-van.
Blood of the Penguin is the 16th installment of DON ROGERSON's popular Inspector Flambeau mystery series, all of which is set in a Dubuque, Iowa clothes hamper.
Demolitions expert, super-spy, gourmet cook ... JOE SCOTT is a man's man with only one weakness: his abdomen. If you push hard enough, he practically geysers.
CANDACE SCHAFFER lives in Orange County, California, where she works as a person.
Dublin, Easter, 1916. On a foggy morning, a lone figure marches up to the seat of British rule in Ireland and nails his "96 Theses" to the door of the main hall of Trinity College. It is STEPHEN SCHWARTZ, and his demands—home rule, the revival of the Gaelic tongue, new socks, and some of those little ketchup packages—will serve as the foundation for the Free Irish Republic, at least until the Theses are removed by a passing janitor.
Adventurous KATHERINE SHER is a vivacious mother of two who recently led police on a high-speed chase through the ladies' unmentionables section of K-Mart. She works for the state of California as a wall hanging.
Indefatigable ANNE SIGRUN began the Socks for Drugs needle exchange program ("Bring Your Needles and Receive a Sock") in 1998, and it has since grown to include three other people.
Friends commend ROSEAMBER SUMNER for her calm and warm presence and for the collection of pine nuts that she keeps in her hair. "Rosie," as she is called, was married for 12 years to a magnificent Canadian white heron, whom she calls "the love of my life." The couple broke up over Rosie's refusal to have any more eggs.
The State of Georgia recently named HANA TREISMAN the 2002 Teacher of the Year, due to a clerical mistake.
NARA VAUGHAN. This stylish dame-about-town was the inspiration for thecharacter Miss Dallyrimple in Virginia Mackton's Roadside Geology of Kern County.
THE PLANET VENUS is reportedly distraught over a breakup with longtime paramour Neptune. Friends report the anguished, cloud-swathed inner planet has put on several billion metric tons of late.
KEN WARD runs his own dairy in the Midwest, using the traditionalAmish milking method of slaughtering the cow and cutting open her udders to retrievethe milk.
Economist RUTHANNE WILLIAMS was appointed to the Securities and Exchange Commision in July, where she will work pulling the brain stems out of live Enron executives.
BEAR WILNER once was hit on the forehead by an apple tossedby comedian Eddie Murphy.
Former President of the United States WOODROW WILSON was discovered in a motel in Rahway, New Jersey, sharing a bed with what police described as "several gun-toting, hotpants-wearing monkeys."
In February of this year, physicist STEVEN WOODS announced the discovery of the "mekon," a subatomic particle made of formica.