In these exclusive extracts from his classy memoir, the Anchorman opens his head and shares his biggest memories
Ron on hair1. My hair is called Andros Papanakas. It is not. I have no name for my hair.
2. My hair was bestowed upon me by the gods. This one is hard to dispel. It would have been just like Zeus to make such a gift, or Hermes, but even though I have called on these two gods many times I have never been told specifically by either one that I was given my hair, so I have to say no to the gift-from-the-gods theory.
3. My hair is insured by Lloyd's of London for $1,000. Nope! It's fifteen hundred, thank you.
4. My hair won't talk to my moustache. This is basically true but I would hardly call that a myth.
5. My hair starred in the movie Logan's Run. It was definitely up for the part of Logan but that eventually went to Michael York. He did an excellent job in the film and to this day it's still considered the best film of all time.
6. My hair on my head is the exact same as the hair on my crotch. Don't I wish!
7. My hair was the principal cause of the overthrow of the Chilean government in '73. This one is true. Look it up.
8. Each strand of my hair carries the DNA for not only a complete Ron Burgundy clone but also a duck-billed platypus. This is incorrect.
9. Scientists at Georgetown University studying my hair strands have detected the DNA from eight different semi-aquatic mammals. The platypus is nowhere in sight.
10. I wear a toupee. Sure, I wear a toupee, and women don't have vaginas and cats don't have dongs! Seriously, this is not a myth, just an insult. Stop it. This is my hair. You can't have it. You can't buy it. You can't burgle it, but you can enjoy it on top of my leathery oversized head.
Ron on jazz fluteFor us, growing up in Hagglesworth wasn't all fistfights and terror. There were many days and nights of pure unabashed fun. For instance, for some unknown reason that really makes no sense at all, Haggleworth had the finest jazz supper club west of Chicago. It was called Pinky's Inferno. It made very little sense – it's almost unbelievable really – but there it was, a jazz club in a town of 300 in the middle of nowhere. At age 11 I got a job as a busboy in Pinky's and a passion was born in me, a passion so strong I feel it to this day whenever I make love to a woman or see a sunrise or smell thick-cut Canadian bacon cooking, or whenever I report the news. It's a passion for jazz flute. It all started for me in 1951 at Pinky's Inferno. Diz, Bird, Miles: they all came through Haggleworth, unbelievable as that sounds, to play at Pinky's. Even typing it now seems stupid. I was there at the time and I still want to fact-check this. I made my first flute out of a length of steel pipe my brother Winston tried to beat me with. Winston was my least-favorite brother, and that's saying a lot. He would beat you while you slept, clearly against the rules, but he didn't care. He was a union strike buster for many years before he was brained by a rock. Now he sells pencils in a little wooden stall in downtown Omaha. I buy 20 every Christmas. They say hatred and love are two sides of the same golden coin.
I loved that homemade pipe flute. Dizzy Gillespie used to make me get up onstage with him and play that thing until my mouth would bleed. Maybe I'm misremembering this part. I'll fact-check it one more time before I finally commit it to paper, though. Dexter Gordon, Art Blakey, even the older guys, Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, came by. Hey, I get it, if you don't want to believe any of this I can't blame you. Anyway, I picked up a little something from each one of these jazz masters. You know what? I think the whole "jazz flute" stuff should stay out of the novel, come to think of it. It's too ridiculous even if it did really happen. I will simply say this: Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan taught me, an 11-year-old boy, the rudiments of jazz improvisation in the alley behind Pinky's Inferno one night in Haggleworth, Iowa. That's solid enough information that is very believable. (I have no idea if this is going to hurt or help my credibility here, but just down the alley from us Jack Kerouac was getting a blow job from Allen Ginsberg. More than likely this can be corroborated in their own writings. Those guys wrote an awful lot.) With all these hep cats coming through Haggleworth in the 50s I became the source for their drug habits. I had an in with some of the dealers in the area and I would score smack for the musicians in exchange for music lessons. I quickly learned to cook it so they could fix up before their sets. Forget it. This sounds impossible to me. I know what happened but none of this reads real. I'm just going to go with this: I have a passion for jazz flute. I got it from somewhere. It's part of who I am. There.
Ron on eaglesOver time I have come to understand the Animal Kingdom as one great hierarchy. The noble eagle sits at the top. He is God's greatest creation, soaring through the skies with magnificent splendor and grace! His watchful eye looks over us all. I am in awe of the eagle and I believe one day when the skies fall and great chasms of doom open up to swallow mankind, it will be the eagle that rescues and guides those of us worthy (that would be me and my news team for sure) into the next land. I have several wood carvings of eagles in my home for this reason. One of them has a removable head and a hollowed-out body where you can hide some keys or half pencils like the kind you get at a golf course. If the noble eagle is at the top of the Animal Kingdom, then surely the lowly sea otter is at the bottom. They are the dumbest, most stupid animals out there. I can't even imagine what kind of hell we would be in for if the sea otter ever took control of the world. Simply put, they would ruin it. I don't hate them but I sure wouldn't trust them with maintaining order. Baxter confided in me once that talking to sea otters was like talking to aerobics instructors. I don't doubt it. They are self-centered and boring and all they want to talk about is fish. Meanwhile Baxter tells me that most eagles think like ancient Greeks with minds sharper than Socrates's. Baxter has also told me on several occasions that eagles intimidate him. His small dog brain is no match for the cerebral majesty of the eagle.
As a kind of sidebar I would like to say wild eagles do not make great pets. I was offered a wild eagle by a Russian I had come to know through the world of high-stakes archery. We both had an interest in falconry. (I have owned several world-class falcons over the years.) This man – I will call him "Glavtec" because he would definitely not want me to reveal his true identity – had six bald eagles in the trunk of his car that he was trying to unload. He was in to me for a lot of archery money. I really wanted one of those eagles but I knew it was illegal to own a bald eagle in this country. I decided if I kept the eagle inside my house no one would be the wiser and I could have my cake and eat it too. I threw the eagle in a pillowcase and took him home. Well, day one the eagle tore up everything in my house. Day two he scratched up Baxter and me pretty badly. Day three he got caught in a fan and while trying to rescue him I got scratched up worse than before. Day four he sat on the couch almost lifeless, watching TV and possibly contemplating suicide. Day five he began working on a strategy for escape. Day six he was polite and even ate dinner with us at the table. Day seven he allowed me to place a small Uncle Sam hat on his head and posed for a picture with me and Baxter in our red, white and blue swimsuits. Day eight I taught him to drive a miniature fire truck in a comical way and he looked like he was enjoying himself. On the ninth day Baxter and I decided to take our new best friend for a walk on the beach. The minute I opened the door he flew away. He had been planning it all along! He was just playing with me to get free. Ingenious! He still, to this day, attacks me when he sees me. I'm forever watching the skies. He is a magnificent bird.
Extracted from Let Me Off At The Top!: My Classy Life And Other Musings by Ron Burgundy, published in the UK by Century, 19 Nov, £16.99
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