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Now itıs certainly funny to drop things. Especially mass-produced things that seem to be manufactured to become junk anyway and plastic heavy things certainly have great explosive appeal. I think I would have tried a dead TV. But then youıve got to stop and think: manufactured objects are first just objects, then become touchstones in our lives, and finally become objects of nostalgia, veneration, social and personal history. The typewriter drop was almost NOT funny, because some writer somewhere will have seen it as the destruction of part of his life. I have a collection of brittle old radios from the 30s and 40s. They would explode spectacularly and certainly from the vantage point of the 50s and the 60s they were junk. Now theyıre not. Do you suppose anyone ever dropped a Duesenberg? _____ I worked in a music store during the 80s, selling ³combo² (the music retail industryıs term for popular instruments like drums, guitars, sound systems anything but band instruments/orchestra instruments). The owner of the store was an ex-trombone player with a great deal of nostalgia for the big band era (commendable) and absolutely no real interest in anything else other than its profit potential (not so commendable). Near the end of the heyday of the home piano and organ scam era, he had pursued that market with all the greed (considerable) and business acumen (minimal) he could muster. The result was that he continued to order dinosaur organs and occasionally take in trade absolute electronic whiny wheezy nonmusical auto-playing band-in-a-box pseudomusical junk instruments by manufacturers like Kimball, Baldwin, Lowrey, and other companies who should have known better. These things would NEVER sell. Those of us who worked for him often suggested their promotional value would be great if we advertised an Organ Drop sale. Weıd take all the organs to the roof of the store in Lancaster, Ohio, gather a crowd in the street, and take bids. We figured folks would offer a higher bid to see one dropped than to buy it but if the high bidder did WANT the thing, weıd tote it back down unharmed. All the owner could see when he looked at one of these monstrosities was the money he had given in trade-in value (to the penny) never realizing they had NO value because he would have offered the same discount had the customer had no trade in. We never had an Organ Drop sale. (We did have Guitar Stud Contests, but thatıs a different story.) ____ One night the band I was playing in had a gig at an absolute hell-hole in Parkersburg WVa called The Wheel Club. We were fired halfway through the second night because our guitar player sat down to play George Bensonıs ³Masquerade² while the patrons were shouting for ³Free Bird² and ³Okie From Muskogee² alternately. (Actually, the firing had as much to do with what the guitar player told the owner of the club he could do with his stinking hellhole over the mike.) Naturally, we werenıt paid at all for the second night. We were in a foul mood. While packing up, we found next to the dumpster behind the club a Magnus chord organ from the 60s. Probably weighed about 25 pounds, cheesy pressed wood cabinet, lots of plastic. We tossed it in the cab of my truck and figured weıd chuck it into the Ohio River as we crossed the Parkersburg bridge. Our immensely fat drummer was following behind the pickup in his old Impala when the psychotic guitarist rolled down the passenger window of the truck and gave the Magnus a mighty heave. Instead of sailing between the struts (or whatever theyıre called) of the bridge, it hit a particularly solid beam and exploded magnificently. As far as the guitarist and I were concerned, this was as good as making a splashdown in the Ohio. As we watched the pieces scatter in the rearview mirror, we also saw the fat drummer sawing wildly at his steering wheel to avoid debris. At the post-mortem at Rosieıs Grease Pit Trucker Diner, the drummer told us he had actually been laughing so hard he almost wrecked. I figure a Magnus chord organ at 50 mph had to have at least as much terminal velocity as the objects dropped by Renssalearıs crew. Sorry no pictures, but at least we should get credit for having anticipated the Drop procedure at least 15 years ahead of its time. I just hope Magnus chord organs donıt become enormously collectible in the future, so I wonıt have to bear the guilt of having chucked history onto US 50 crossing the Ohio.