Of all the things people exaggerate—the size of the fish they caught, the size of their bank account, the size of their … let’s move on—laughter might be the biggest one. We say “LOL” when something is amusing. We send an emoji of someone laughing so hard tears stream down its face every time something tickles our funny bone. Or we say we “died laughing” when that is demonstrably false.
Which brings us to Moira Tannenbaum.
“I couldn’t stop laughing over the Fake Ad on page 70 of the April edition,” she writes. “First I saw the ‘typo’ that let you include March winner Christine Dager’s name in the word daguerreotype, then the lack of apostrophe in ‘Colonies’ first exchequer’’ My ‘Fake Ad radar’ was alerting me. Then the highly obnoxious name hit me. I hope most of us in Ann Arbor wouldn’t opt for something named after colonies (except colonies of microbes or bees). Using the daguerreotype of Daguerre himself is truly inspired.”
Maybe she really was overtaken by an unstoppable fit of laughter. Maybe it just lasted a second. Maybe it was a minute, a couple of hours, half of Wednesday, a fortnight. The point is, she said she couldn’t stop laughing—implying that eventually she did.
Well put, Moira. And you were right that using the daguerreotype of Daguerre himself was “truly inspired,” too. The idea was blown into us by a supernatural deity. Literally.
Bob Maddox was feeling punny. “What kind of parents would name their kid Weldon Rumproast?” he asked. “I’m sure that he had a beef with cruel childhood ribbing, which would not have been rare.” When we read that, we laughed until the cows came home.
We received 201 entries, 199 of them correct. John Bean won our drawing and is taking his gift certificate to Zingerman’s.
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Order The Fake Ad Book and I Spy: Ann Arbor Architecture at AnnArborObserver.com/books
