Ask a Stand-Up Comedian
Have you always wanted to know the secrets to life? To a happy relationship? How to drive the big rigs and experience the fulfilling career you've always wanted?
No one affiliated with this Web site knows any of those things, but if you send in your questions, we'll be glad to answer them in a completely useless and at times cosmically insulting way. WARNING: These columns get raunchy sometimes. Read at your own risk.
The other day I saw a new license plates from Alabama, one of those
pretty red and white ones with the slogan "Stars Fell on Alabama." Stars?
What up with that?
-- A concerned citizen
Adam Ruben: I'm glad you asked. Alabama's new license plate slogan is actually excerpted from a Birmingham Post-Herald headline, "Stars Fell on Alabama, Killing Twenty." This astronomical tragedy befell the citizens of the Yellowhammer State in 1971, when the lower half of Ursa Minor accidentally toppled onto the American southeast, wreaking carnage throughout the Birmingham metropolitan area. Then-Governor Albert P. Brewer thanked a concerned nation but reminded his fellow citizens that "it is, after all, only Alabama." The event, which resulted in twenty deaths and the injuries of hundreds of Alabamians, was selected for use on the license plates because of its status as a legitimate high point in the state's history.