Want to buy or sell something? Check the classifieds
  • The Fedora Lounge is supported in part by commission earning affiliate links sitewide. Please support us by using them. You may learn more here.

Who was the ODDest person you ever knew?...

HarpPlayerGene

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,682
Location
North Central Florida
Inspired by dhermann1's "oldest person" thread, I though I'd kick this one off. {HAVE FUN, BUT BE CAREFUL NOT TO LIBEL.}

I once knew "Mongo, Prince of Zambodia". When I was in Fort Lauderdale in the early '80s, he'd ride up on his cafe racer and visit the people at the jewelry store where I worked. This was a very fine establishment on Las Olas Blvd. and he'd stroll in barefoot with rings on his toes. He knew the owners.

Hell, he knew lots of people and everyone liked the nut. If he liked you, he'd call you "spirit". He had a bunch of us over to his home once for dinner. A decent place with a multi-car garage full of sports cars and motorcycles.[huh] In the otherwise normally decorated living room, he had a medical skeleton, an American flag on a stand and some 'foreign' flag too. He explained flatly that it was his great-grandmother, Queen of Zambodia, a planet in a distant galaxy (which is where he's from too) and the flag represents same. The dinner was one long riot and at the end of the night he insisted that everyone line up and pass by a big freezer locker so he could load you up a bag of frozen food to take home. I welcomed it - being an art student at the time - but it was kinda' funny when he was shoving these care-packages into the hands of the wealthy set from the store.

The guy got in traffic trouble once and went into court carrying a staff, wearing a loin cloth and some crazy helmet, exclaiming that he wasn't subject to the laws of earth. He got tossed into jail for contempt while wearing that get-up.:eusa_doh: The television show "Real People" featured this guy for these kind of antics. He was the most entertaining oddball I ever knew.

It seems though, that life isn't easy for intergalactic immigrants as I remember checking online about him some years ago and he had been in a lot of legal trouble for bothering neighbors with junk in his yard, etc. I guess I wouldn't want to live next to him but I sure enjoyed him back then.

Here's a link to search results I just did http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=mongo+prince+of+zambodia&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
I haven't looked at these links yet, so we can see what he's been up to together.... :)

Edit: OH MY GOD. I just looked at a couple of the links. These weren't online just a couple years ago. The one from 1981 is just how I remember him. I'd forgotten about the whooping. LMAO!
 

Barbigirl

Practically Family
Messages
915
Location
Issaquah, WA
Vooddo Witch Lady

In the early '90s I worked with a woman who reminded me of the Lousiana swamp voodoo witch lady stereotype. (Like that one in the Depp pirate movies.) She was a total cat lady and once I brought in a picture of my cat and she gushed over "what a lovely PELT he had".

Pelt? I don't know what she was doing will all those cats that lived with her, I don't recall her wearing any fur.

Not as exciting as yours but the best I can come up with.
 

ThesFlishThngs

One Too Many
Messages
1,007
Location
Oklahoma City
During my vagabond stage, desperate for a job and a place to stay, I answered a 'girl Friday' notice in a shop window, only to end up living in the upstairs of a rambling, wallpapered-with-newspapers, crumbly old barn on Steam Farm Lane, in the remaining wilds near Heathrow airport. I and a sweet young gal from New Zealand worked for a bizarre fellow named Robin who wore dirty, baggy jeans and Caterpillar caps, drove a red, white & blue 1970s Corvette, used the toilet in an outbuilding (as did we all), carried a silver metal briefcase with nothing inside (often handcuffed to his wrist for added effect), used loaner cell phones on a free trial basis from High Street shops, turning each in when the trial was over, and moving on to another freebie. He also kept several goats & attempted to teach me how to trim their hooves, fed them with boxes of discarded veg from the market, that he brought to the farm bungeed to the back of his 'vette, and spoke on a daily basis to someone called Sheik Joey in Abu Dhabi. Once the Kiwi and I were assigned to inspect a private jet for sale, and report back on whether it would be suitable for the Sheik....
Robin liked me being from Oklahoma ("Tulsa, that's oil country, innit?" he'd say.) and from the US, because that naturally meant I knew all about American muscle cars.
Possible the most bizarre several weeks of my life.
 

Foofoogal

Banned
Messages
4,884
Location
Vintage Land
Barbi. that post reminded me of the lady in 101 Dalmations. lol
--------

Someone that put diapers on cats, ate garlic constantly, pointed light in eyes to strengthen muscles of said eyes and is building a city as in New Jerusalem.
An absolute brilliant mind with some extra rooms. lol
I personally love quirky people.
I was up close to this guy once in Memphis Tennessee that had a real art house and car but cannot remember (pluto, jupiter or something) and a guy in Austin Texas that is very strange on 6th. street.
 

Claireg

One of the Regulars
Messages
167
Location
Wellington,New Zealand
Ok, I am a psychiatric nurse so I have a bit of an advantage here.
In fact i have met so many odd people, both in and out of work that I am having trouble figuring which is the oddest.
So i thought id list a few of my favourites.
No names and no identifying cities.

The man who believed he was a giraffe. He had a very long neck.

The man who lived in a toilet cubicle in the middle of town. He was blind from catarracts but believed glue sniffers crept into him in the night to blow glue into his eyes. He used to have conversations with lamp posts and get cross when they didnt reply.

The woman who bought her children up to believe Prince Charles was their father.

The man who had a "tooth phone" and had trouble figuring out how he could get it to send faxes.

But the best of all was a young woman who let herself into a house,clambered into a random strangers bed one morning and refused to get out claiming she was his future wife. When he asked her to leave she got coy and said "I know you have to say that because the men from another planet are making you - But I KNOW thats not really what you mean. She was there for 3 days.
 

Foofoogal

Banned
Messages
4,884
Location
Vintage Land
The man who had a "tooth phone" and had trouble figuring out how he could get it to send faxes.

ok, that and the giraffe man pretty much wins so far.


oh, I have definitely met the devils wife. Black widows are nice compared to her. I do believe very few true evil people though. You just never hear about the good ones.
Bible says when you see evil to flee from it. I did see it and did flee. thank you very much..I had a Savior and He saved me from her.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,840
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
I know this middle-aged woman who lives alone in a weird little house full of obsolete technology, dotes on her cat as if it were a child, rides around town in all manner of weather on a 70-year-old bicycle, likes to eat dry raw oatmeal right out of the box, talks to herself out loud in the grocery store when she's trying to remember what she came in for, is usually very polite and demure but swears like a longshoreman when that ticket printer at work starts acting up, and...

..oh wait, that's me.
 

Fletch

I'll Lock Up
Messages
8,865
Location
Iowa - The Land That Stuff Forgot
LizzieMaine said:
I know this middle-aged woman who lives alone in a weird little house full of obsolete technology, dotes on her cat as if it were a child, rides around town in all manner of weather on a 70-year-old bicycle, likes to eat dry raw oatmeal right out of the box, talks to herself out loud in the grocery store when she's trying to remember what she came in for, is usually very polite and demure but swears like a longshoreman when that ticket printer at work starts acting up, and...

..oh wait, that's me.
And she's a world-class record collector-scholar. I never met anyone with a serious stash of 78s or ETs who wasn't way off the scope.

Of course, I never met one who wasn't a man, either. So either the rules don't apply to you, or they apply ever-so-much-more-so.

-F., owner of over 100 Columbia Royal Blues
 

ThesFlishThngs

One Too Many
Messages
1,007
Location
Oklahoma City
LizzieMaine said:
I know this middle-aged woman who lives alone in a weird little house full of obsolete technology, dotes on her cat as if it were a child, rides around town in all manner of weather on a 70-year-old bicycle, likes to eat dry raw oatmeal right out of the box, talks to herself out loud in the grocery store when she's trying to remember what she came in for, is usually very polite and demure but swears like a longshoreman when that ticket printer at work starts acting up, and...

..oh wait, that's me.


Lizzie, you slay me. lol lol lol
 

Bruce Wayne

My Mail is Forwarded Here
LizzieMaine said:
dotes on her cat as if it were a child,

Nothing wrong with that. I do the same.

LizzieMaine said:
rides around town in all manner of weather on a 70-year-old bicycle,

I wish I lived close enough to town to ride there. You're lucky

LizzieMaine said:
talks to herself out loud in the grocery store when she's trying to remember what she came in for

I do that everywhere, not just the Grocery store.
 

23SkidooWithYou

Practically Family
Messages
533
Location
Pennsylvania
A few years ago, one of the sales associates that worked in the store proved to be outta this world. She was actually really nice, obviously had some smarts and was so entertaining that I was always late coming back from lunch because I couldn't bare to leave mid story.

She'd come to work in silk 1980's poufy sleeved, peplum waist dresses that were splitting at the seams and tell me they were Chanel or DVF or Dior. Her hair was about 2" long and damaged from overprocessing yet she could talk about spas and salons like she was a VIP client. I suspect that at some point in her life, she may have led an upper crust life or been exposed to one via a relative, but how she landed in PA working retail is a mystery.

Some of her best:

Her great, great Uncle built the theatre where the Oscars are held so she and her family have standing invitations for the annual event.

She was a close, personal friend of Bob Mitchum aka "Mitch".

She was invited to stay at a wealthy pals mansion, in their elaborate pool/guest house at the same time they were hosting a formal dinner for some Arab oil tycoons and royalty. Another Hollywood persona was there and when she mentioned "Mitch", the actor didn't believe her, left the table to make a call and returned saying "Mitch" said to say hello.

She and her husband adopted a police trained German Shepherd Dog who jumped on a parked car in CA, growling, snarling and alerting to narcotics. Her husband told the owner to get out of there before he called police. ???

Her husband was supposedly a very successful psychiatrist who donated his time to counsel people after natural disasters where everything was lost. Yet, he'd get into insane verbal shouting matches with actual customers when he was in our store.

She left for a few months once and came back saying her husband bought a buffalo ranch that he fell in love with and that they'd be bicoastal in order to manage the ranch.

The best, by far, is that she got Micheal J Fox his start in show business, was his first manager and that what everyone was reporting as Parkinson's at the time was an addiction to controlled substances. She was trying very hard to get him into rehab...according to her delusions.

Real or imagined, she was in touch with how the other half lived and expected to be treated and had impeccible manners with our customers and offered the type of personalized (run your butt off tyring to find everything the customer wanted to see) service.
 

Amy Jeanne

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,858
Location
Colorado
LizzieMaine said:
I know this middle-aged woman who lives alone in a weird little house full of obsolete technology, dotes on her cat as if it were a child, rides around town in all manner of weather on a 70-year-old bicycle, likes to eat dry raw oatmeal right out of the box, talks to herself out loud in the grocery store when she's trying to remember what she came in for, is usually very polite and demure but swears like a longshoreman when that ticket printer at work starts acting up, and...

..oh wait, that's me.

lol lol lol

You stole my idea because I know this 34 year old gal who only wears dresses from 1930s patterns and does her hair in weird old lady styles and always wears this pink old lady cardigan she got at Goodwill.

But other than me, the ODDEST person I ever knew was also probably a former manager. She loved to create drama and would tell one person in the office that another person in the office was saying "XXX" about them. She loved to create animosity and tension between all of us. She wasn't happy unless there was drama of some sort. Also, one day the IRS came in looking for her and she flipped out on all us office gals, threatening to write us up (because she was in trouble with the IRS? We did nothing wrong...) I only took the job because it paid decently and I was desperate :eek: Thankfully, I was only there for 4 months until I found the job I'm currently in today. Looking back I just lol lol lol lol
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,840
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Speaking of ODD bosses, I had one in radio who was a serious head case -- an obsessive-compulsive Felix Unger type. He had worked at NBC in New York -- or so he claimed -- and he constantly went on about how his biggest thrill in broadcasting was firing Bill Cullen from WNBC. ("Look where he is now, and look where you are now," was my impolitic response after hearing this story for about the eightieth time.)

He got along with nobody at the station, had a generally malignant and malicious personality, and made so many ill-advised changes in the format that he alienated all our advertisers -- which in small-town radio you can't afford to do. And he drove us all nuts with his fussiness -- he once blockaded himself in the station's only bathroom for an hour while he scraped the caked-on soap that had dripped from the soap dispenser off the sink with a razor blade. We used to have great fun after that by giving the dispenser an extra knock every time we used it. The morning man used to like to torment him by going into his office each morning before he arrived and moving everything on his desk half an inch to the right or left -- he'd sit there looking puzzled, knowing something was wrong but not being able to figure out what it was.

I was the last of the original station crew to quit -- and as with all the rest, it was not on good terms. The final day I was there, I went down to the station's cellar, and shoved half an orange into the ventilation pipe directly under his office. A week later, I am told, his office was awash in fruit flies and he was driven nearly insane trying to figure out where they came from.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
109,688
Messages
3,086,656
Members
54,480
Latest member
PISoftware
Top