Voting Station

Alan Abel

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Oddity

The Resume

    (August 2, 1924-September 14, 2018)
    Born in Zanesville, Ohio
    Media prankster
    Notable hoaxes included:
    Forming the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA) to protest against unclothed animals (1959)
    Creating Omar’s School for Beggars, a fictional school for professional panhandlers (1975)
    Faking his death well enough to get the New York Times to publish his obituary (January 2, 1980)
    Organizing a mass fainting among the audience at a taping of Donahue (January 21, 1985)
    Offering euthanasia cruises ‘for people who want to expire in luxury’ (1993)

Why he might be annoying:

    He was a frustrated stand up comedy wannabe.
    While working at the AAA, he would give deliberately roundabout directions to unsuspecting motorists.
    He appeared in the HBO documentary ‘Private Dicks: Men Exposed’ (1999) claiming to have the world’s smallest penis (one inch when erect); he avoided stripping like other interviewees by telling the film crew he would disrobe only if they could conduct group sex after shooting.
    Many of his 2018 obituaries included a ‘this time, it’s for real’ tag.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was married to Jeanne Allgeier for 59 years.
    He gave Buck Henry an early gig posing as the president of SINA.
    He returned donations sent by supporters of his spurious causes. (Although he admitted to spending a few minutes ogling a $40,000 check sent to SINA before sending it back with a note that the organization’s bylaws barred him from accepting money from strangers.)
    He made media appearances on behalf of Omar’s School for Beggars for over a dozen years, despite the ‘school’ being repeatedly exposed as a hoax.
    He demonstrated how easily the press can be manipulated.
    The New York Times noted about his ability to attract media attention, ‘At the spate of news conferences he orchestrated over the years, the frequent presence of comely women, free food and, in particular, free liquor did not hurt.’
    The Washington Post called him ‘a forerunner to satirists such as Stephen Colbert and Sacha Baron Cohen.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 9 Votes: 88.89% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 4 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 123 Votes: 53.66% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 21 Votes: 47.62% Annoying