Odd Man Aus: Special German Edition

Gooten abends, dammit unt herrings, it's time for another special edition of Odd Man Out, this time with a nod to our German neighbors. Just because your narrator is taking on a German theme, it does not mean this quiz will be devoid of laughs.

In fact, I once remember reading an entertainment ad in a periodical, for a revue featuring "Four Hundred Years of German Humor." The ad went on to elaborate, "not just excerpts, all of it!" I think the running time for the show was supposed to be 45 minutes.

Of course, like my earlier ethnically-tinged quiz, Odd Man Oot, this one will feature only a single question on the subject, while the other four will be the usual nonsense. Fair enough? Why, it's the fairest, squarest game on the boardwalk! Okay, here we go.

Group 1

van der Rohe
Goethe
Beethoven
the guy who invented Oktoberfest

Group 2

Brown
Harvard
Princeton
Yale

Group 3

Haystacks Calhoun
Earthquake McGoon
Gorgeous George
Dick the Bruiser

Group 4

unicycle
bicycle
tricycle
pogo-stick

Group 5

Bud Abbott
Lou Costello
Shemp Howard
Larry Fine

Oh, right, now I have to come up with a joke of some kind, don't I? As I did with the Canadian version, let me try to muster up something of an appropriately ethnic nature.

A fellow is about to take a morning dip in the lake by the campsite where he is vacationing. It was his first morning at the site, so he was unsure about the water in the lake.

While he was wondering if he should jump right in or maybe wait a bit, he saw another tourist emerge from the bathhouse, dressed in lederhosen.

"Say, how's the water this morning," he asked the apparent German.

"Luke varm," he heard the German say.

With that, the fellow took a running jump off the pier.

"JESUS H. CHRIST, THAT IS COLD!" he bellowed shortly after he hit the water. "I thought you said the water was luke warm!" he scolded his neighbor as he scrambled frantically for the shore.

"Ja," the German answered, "vell, it loook varm."

Good. Now that we have, once again, emerged from the interlude, it is time for some answers. And here, coincidentally enough, they are.

Group 1

van der Rohe
Goethe
Beethoven
the guy who invented Oktoberfest

The odd man out is the writer and philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The other three are all guys named "Ludwig," including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (who was born in Germany, despite his seemingly-Dutch name) and Relatively Sane King Ludwig I of Bavaria, whose wedding reception degenerated into the very first Oktoberfest.

By the way, in researching which of the Bavarian Ludwigs was the Oktoberfest guy and which was the nutcase, I saw where some English texts refer to the monarchs as "Louis I" and :Louis II." WHAAAAAT? I'm sorry, I meant, "VAAAAAASSSSS?" Did those textbook writers imagine we were too stupid to grasp the name "Ludwig?" If that is the case, why not "Louis van Beethoven?"

Group 2

Brown
Harvard
Princeton
Yale

Okay, they are all Ivy League colleges. Congratulations, Einstein, you got that part right. Now which one is the stickout? While you are scratching your noggin in wonderment, please note that Brown is not located in Brown, Rhode Island. Harvard is not situated in Harvard, Massachusetts. Yale does not dwell in Yale, Connecticut. Princeton, on the other hand...Being the knee-jerk liberal that I am (How many of you are ignoring the "knee" and the "liberal?"), I will also accept Princeton as the OMO because it is the only one of the listed Ivies not situated in New England.

Group 3

Haystacks Calhoun
Earthquake McGoon
Gorgeous George
Dick the Bruiser

Hokey names for professional wrestlers really came into their own in the 1950s. All four of these guys were wrestlers from that decade. The major difference among them is that, while the first, third and fourth guys all wrestled in actual arenas, E. McGoon did his "rasslin'" in the comic pages and the Broadway stage as a character in Al Capp's Li'l Abner.

Group 4

unicycle
bicycle
tricycle
pogo-stick

The wheels on the first three go round and round. The non-wheel on the last one goes boing, boing boing, making it the odd man up and out. You do realize, this one is the bone, don't you?

Group 5

Bud Abbott
Lou Costello
Shemp Howard
Larry Fine

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, quite obviously, appeared in a number of Abbott and Costello movies. So did former stooge Shemp Howard (Moe's brother). Ongoing stooge Larry Fine did not.

Finally, what about that extra-credit question your narrator asked so many weeks ago and then never got around to answering? Remember, it pertained to two athletes who were considered the best at their common position in succeeding decades, and whose names phonetically meant the same thing in two different languages. I later revealed that their sport was baseball.

Okay, here it is. The greatest center-fielder of the 1940s is generally considered to be Joe DiMaggio, right? In the following decade, Willie Mays was at the top of most people's lists as the best centerfielder for that decade. (Yes, I am aware of Mickey Mantle, but Mays was better. Get over it.).

In Italian, the word for the month of May is Maggio. You form the possessive in that language by adding the prefix de or, for a masculine noun, di to the word. Thus, DiMaggio is the possessive of May, making it, in our language, May's. Get it?

I think I have taunted your brain enough. Go take a nap.

Sources

Wikipedia

The National Lampoon

Own imagined knowledge of German