Name: Eccentric Civilian Guests Collection on Letterman, 1982-1991
Uploaded: 2021-03-07T21:22:39.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Eccentric Civilian Guests Collection on Letterman, 1982-1991' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-03-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Eccentric Civilian Guests Collection on Letterman, 1982-1991' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-03-07. Transcript available.

Eccentric Civilian Guests Collection on Letterman, 1982-1991

The University of New York City, New York City and New York City.
My next guest is an American who has lived in Belgium for eight years.
He is not a diplomat. He's not with the government.
Believe it or not, this gentleman runs the world's only potato museum located
in Belgium.
He started the museum in 1975 as a tribute to his favorite vegetable.
Here now, the curator of the museum, Mr. Tom Hughes.
Hi, Tom. How are you? Have a seat, if you will.
You seem like a reasonable sort, just generally.
This, to me, is a little...
I guess people ask you, of course, and I will now also, why a museum for
potatoes?
The potato is the world's number one vegetable, and it deserves to be honored
in a museum, and I've done it.
But, you know, what about celery, carrots?
Well, per acre, if you plant potatoes, rice, wheat, whatever, per acre,
potatoes give more food value and nutrition than anything else.
And it feeds people, it makes people happy, and it makes civilizations possible.
Let's cover number two. How does it make people happy?
Well, there are all sorts of toys at the museum that we play with and we let
visitors play with.
One of the top toys that, in England over the years, was a little toy pistol.
We have one right here that you can shoot potatoes with, or I have one in my
pocket.
You can shoot potatoes.
All right, and here it is. It's called a spud gun, or a potato pistol, and I'm
not, I'm just gonna...
Okay, there we go.
Good heavens.
And so...
Load one of those up, let me try it.
All right.
Okay, it's a gouging effort, and there you go.
A gouging effort, and it's a...
I'm...
And you gotta pump it hard.
Okay.
There you go.
And I guess this is the kind of thing we could see in the museum if we...
Yes?
...came up with the airfare to fly all the way over.
Well, no, I brought some of the museum with me, and I'm traveling around with
it,
and I hope that many Americans will be able to see the exhibit in their area.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, again, I'm gonna try once more.
At what point in your life did you decide you needed to devote your remaining
years to the potato?
I think it came when I first saw my first potato plant, and I realized how
beautiful the flower is.
Now, that's...
Now, you're just being silly there, aren't you?
Yes.
I was impressed with the beauty of the flower, and seeing a plant that I had
never seen before,
but had eaten its product.
Mm-hmm.
I also, when I moved to Belgium, when I'm a school teacher, and I was teaching
there,
I talked to people.
All my neighbors were growing potatoes, like we grow flowers, we grow tomatoes.
Mm-hmm.
They were growing potatoes.
And I said, "What is this?"
And they said, "Well, during the war, we've had to live off potatoes."
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, you can live off potatoes, they told me, and I didn't know that.
So I asked my students to research this subject.
Another person suggested that Ireland, whose history has forever been changed
by potatoes,
should have a museum about potatoes.
And I thought, "A museum about potatoes, perhaps this is what I should do."
Mm-hmm.
And I did it.
Has this made you a wealthy man?
No, it has not.
But it's certainly given me an interesting life.
Because let me tell you, if you have a potato museum, and you go to Russia, as
I have, or to Poland,
you get a lot of vodka toasts, because the potatoes are very important.
People.
What are the Polish people living on right now during the crisis?
You know, they're standing in line waiting for a lot of other things.
What is supporting them?
Potatoes.
Okay.
You could live off potatoes.
People have.
Yeah, I know, I think we can, sure.
Now we have some slides that, what are we going to see here, Tom?
Okay, we have some things from the museum.
This is the inventor of the potato chip, on the left.
Chief.
He's a great man in American history, because the potato chip is more American
than apple pie,
and potato chips are just portable potatoes.
Now, who?
Portable potatoes.
Right.
Carry them in your wallet.
Now, who were those?
Who were they, actually?
He was the man who was in Saratoga Springs, New York, and he invented the
potato.
It was an accident.
It was dropped in, a piece of the peel was dropped into the fat one day, and it
was served
up to a wealthy customer, supposedly, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who liked them.
Funny, they didn't look like they'd be eating potatoes, you know?
Who's next here?
Well, we're going to have, I think, you can, oh yes, this is a potato dance.
You said you're going to have a lot of fun with potatoes.
Yeah, they're having the time of their lives, aren't they?
Nothing I like better than having a potato rolled across my face.
Right.
Well, some people have done the, do the mashed potato, which was a big twist
number in the
fifties.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Yeah.
But the potato, the potato has everything in it but fat.
Did you know that?
No, I didn't know that.
It's gonna be a high source of potassium, B9, but very little calories.
Yeah.
And quality potatoes go into everything, and we can live off them.
All right, we have another photo.
Is this more of these?
That was, uh...
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
The potato is even a source of energy.
Properly, properly rigged up, you can light a light bulb with the electricity,
the power from
potatoes, and this is not, uh...
And potatoes are even used to make ethanol fuel now.
Well, the ethanol fuel I understand, but how I don't understand the electricity
coming
from a potato to power.
Well, you're gonna have to come to the museum, and we will let you fiddle with
the wires
and the light bulb, just like we let the other visitors, and, uh, you will
produce some
electrical current.
Actually, electricity.
All right, we have a brief amount of time to cover some of these other items
here, Tom.
Here's potato jewelry.
This is a potato chip bracelet.
Here's potato...
Potato necklace.
Oh, the potato necklace is nice.
Yeah.
This...
Yeah.
This is a bowl.
Too bad you can't get it any bigger.
That, it's a...
This is a bowl made from potatoes.
The bowl's not, is made from potatoes, but the potato chips are not.
They're made from wood.
These are made from wood.
And we're gonna...
And, uh, can I show this?
Here's Marilyn Monroe wearing a potato sack.
And this made her career.
This, um...
This, before that, she was an unknown actress, but, uh, the potatoes, potatoes
did it for her.
That put her over the top.
That's right.
Fascinating.
The potato museum located in Belgium.
That's right.
Tom Hughes.
Thank you, Tom, for being generous.
We'll be right back with more of the show, okay?
Thank you, Tom.
Thank you, Tom.
Thank you.
Welcome back to the show.
We've pretty much restored order.
Later on in this extravaganza,
two gentlemen who have written jokes for presidents,
Vic Gold and Bob Orban.
That's not all they do,
but it'll be a fascinating area of discussion.
Also a man who, among other things,
suggests we ought to be eating insects.
That's what this guy thinks.
Not a guy.
Well, he is a guy, but he's a professor.
So he's a real guy.
He's from Cornell.
This gentleman's name is Professor Edgar Raffensperger,
and he'll be joining us a little bit later.
Sonny gets two points for poise.
Now, my first guest is going to take us into another dimension
since she is the co-founder
of the 28-year-old Yanarius Educational Foundation.
She is a cosmic visionary,
has lived on Mars,
speaks regularly with the Space Brothers,
Tommy and Dickie,
and is responsible for coordinating
their upcoming space landing.
Would you please welcome,
she's already here,
Uriel Norman.
Is that correct?
Thank you.
Thank you very much for being here.
I know we had you scheduled one other time,
and we ran out of time,
but it's very nice of you to come back now.
Let's just get right into this, shall we?
Your home planet is Aries.
Aries, yes.
That's a very spiritual world.
I mean, a very high-frequency world.
The people that live there
are not atomic-structured
like the people on Earth's world.
That's my original planet.
But I have lived
and worked on many, many, many worlds.
People who have worlds
who have had conditions
just like this Earth world does now,
the near-war conditions and all.
I have helped many, many different worlds
out of their situation,
and I have been in contact
with my space brothers
for 28 years,
ever since this mission was started.
And I came to Earth
with this purpose,
for this very purpose,
to help bring the spacecraft to Earth.
We'll have a space armada,
a landing of 32 craft.
And this is no joke.
This is fact.
This is the truth.
And so help me God.
Okay.
This mission has been going on
for many thousands of years.
Let me interrupt here a second.
We'll clear up a couple of these points.
You lived on Aries for a while,
then you moved to Mars.
Now, is there anything you can tell us
about living on Mars?
Yes, the people on Mars live underground.
It is very thickly populated,
but they have plenty of room
to grow their substance and all.
I made a film.
We make films, our organization,
as well as write books.
And I have a film
on the underground cities of Mars.
And the people are rather short
in structure there.
Well, you'd have to be.
It's just bumping your head all the time.
Well, the ceilings aren't that low.
And if the people who went to Mars
to investigate,
if they had stuck around a while
and did a little investigating,
they could have received messages,
especially mental messages.
Now, this mission you referred to,
the Space Armada,
what exactly is going to happen
when they land here?
There will be 33 spacecraft.
They have been made to interlock,
interjoin.
They have been created
so they will interlock and join.
And that will form
a gigantic structure.
It will be a college
where people can come
from all over the world.
I have over 500,000 students
throughout the world
that have been studying this science.
It's a very definite,
factual science
dealing with self-healing.
We teach people
how to heal themselves
through looking into
their past lifetimes.
So they're going to build a college
when they get here?
They will.
These space fleets
are the college,
will be the college, yes.
And I'm sorry
that some people feel,
or maybe you, Dave,
feel this is a joke.
You will find
that it's a very helpful thing
to the earth world.
And if something isn't done
to help the earth man,
he will destroy himself.
Well, that's certainly true.
But, now you must,
now I'm not laughing.
We have some,
just a couple of people
in the audience.
But now,
let me just make a point here.
This can't come
as a surprise to you
that folks find this amusing.
I never heard anybody
find it amusing before.
I've heard people
that didn't agree.
Didn't agree.
But I've never heard
anybody laugh,
but I guess you have
laugh cards up for them.
No, we don't.
No, we don't.
We don't.
I don't see how anybody
can think it's a laughing matter
when we have ways
to save your world
from destroying itself.
I have to go.
Look, I'm with Ruth
on this, folks.
No, we don't.
We're not.
We don't have laugh cards.
I can assure you of that.
Or the first bit
would have gone much better.
We're going to pause here.
We're going to take a look
at some film
that you have, videotape.
Yes, a little clip
that I took in my center.
Okay.
And we'll be right back
with Ruth Norman.
Thank you, Paul.
We're, uh,
thank you.
We're chatting
with Ruth Norman
who is a cosmic visionary
and she has told us
that people are coming,
Space Armada's coming
to build a college.
It'll be in the Big Ten
and we're talking more
about that now.
How is it, Ruth,
that you know this
and I don't know this?
Where did this information
come to you?
Well, I have prepared
for many thousands of years
my consciousness,
my mind.
I can attune
and hear mentally
or psychically
beings on the other worlds.
You hear them now?
Can you hear them now?
No, I'm not attuned
with them now.
I'm in tune with you.
I see.
When I open my consciousness,
I extend my antenna
and it functions
exactly the same
as the radio
when people understand
what the mind is
and the energy body,
man functions
the same as