Darwin Awards, a late candidate

[Robbie Honerkamp <robbie@opus.shorty.com>]

Paolo Esperanza, bass-trombonist with the Simphonica Mayor de Uraguay, in
a bid for an unusual contribution to the cannon shots in an outdoor
children`s concert performance of the 1812 Overture, put what amounted to
a lit M-80 firecracker in his aluminum straight mute and stuck it in his
quite new Yamaha double-valve inline bass-trombone.

Later, he explained through bandages on his mouth, "I thought the
explosion would make the mute fly like a rocket and the bell of my
trombone would protect me."  In fact the mute took off and flew into the
conductor's stomach and drove him off the podium and into the front row
of the audience. Luckily, the people in the audience were sitting in
folding chairs and two audience members, in the front row, were driven
relatively unhurt backwards into the row of people sitting behind them,
who in turn were driven into four people and so on. The sound of
collapsing wooden chairs and grunts of people falling on their behinds
added to the chaotic sounds of brass cannons and the general bombast that
constitutes the closing measures of the overture

Paolo had forgotten that every action involves a reaction.  The bell of
his shiny Yamaha was turned inside out by the launching of his mute, and
he was driven backwards off the riser with a somewhat bruised embouchure
by the mute-turned-rocket.