Orthography Enthusiast @ Dec 20 2007, 11:57 PM wrote:
Tom Lehrer is a retired math teacher. I thought everybody knew that.
He may also be the inventor of the Jello Shot. It depends on how much faith you put in Wikipedia.
If by retired you mean still teaching, then you are correct. And Mr Lehrer was a major influence of Al's in his early years, and still one of his all time heroes.
The Onion A.V. Club periodically seeks out the commentary of singer "Weird Al" Yankovic, whose newest album is titled Running With Scissors.
Tom Lehrer is one of my two living musical idols (Stan Freberg being the other). Even though his lifelong recorded output was not what you would call voluminous, the undisputed brilliance of those songs has inspired hero worship among several generations of fans of satire and funny music. Ive never met Mr. Lehrer in person, but weve exchanged a couple letters and phone calls. (I was thrilled beyond words when he started quoting lines from my movie UHF!) I tried my best to get him to appear on my ill-fated CBS Saturday-morning kids show, but he declined. I knew it was a long shot: Lehrer treasures his anonymity so much that he has never allowed publicity photos to be taken for his albums, and hes successfully managed to avoid the spotlight for more than three decades. Ive always kind of considered him the J.D. Salinger of demented music.
And I believe the wikipedia reference to be true:
A rumor has circulated for years that in the 1950s, Lehrer invented the Jell-O shot, a cup of flavored gelatin infused with booze, which has now become a frat-house favorite. He throws his head back and laughs.
"That's amazing how that got around! What happened was, I was in the Army for two years, and we were having a Christmas party on the naval base where I was working in Washington, D.C. The rules said no alcoholic beverages were allowed. And we wanted to have a little party, so this friend and I spent an evening experimenting with Jell-O. It wasn't a beverage," he says with a shrug.
"And we finally decided that orange Jell-O and vodka was the best. We tried gin and vodka and various flavors and stuff -- of course you can't sample too much. So we went over to her apartment and we made all these little cups and we thought I would bring them in, hoping that the Marine guard would say, 'OK, what's in there?' And we'd say, 'Jell-O.' and then he'd say, 'Oh, OK.' But no, he didn't even ask. So it worked. I recommend it. Orange Jell-O."