The hottest selling video in the country right now is the sleeper “RESCUE 911: Too Sad For TV”, a compilation of stories with some hilarious goofs that weren’t aired on the original Rescue 911 series on CBS. Released a month ago, it has climbed to the top of the sales chart, passing Spiderman and selling three million copies over the past week.
“We’re extremely pleased with the sales numbers,” said Kenneth Martin, a CBS spokesman. “We’re seriously thinking about releasing a series of themed RESCUE 911 videos – like kids trapped in wells that die, old guys falling in bath tubs that die, and of course, youngsters that play with explosives and die.”
The current 2-hour video features eight stories, including a guitarist who was somehow impaled on his music sheet stand. While on the phone, the 911 operator jokes with the man, “I guess you’ll be playing the blues, hey pal?”
“That’s what’s so great about this video – the stories are funny,” Martin said.
Another story involves a man who had a stroke. Arriving paramedics watched the dead man as he lay hunched over a lamp. “It was weird,” said one of the medics, “He was perfectly balanced on top of this lamp. We bet how long he would stay up. Six and a half minutes later, he fell. I made 30 bucks.”
“Oh, those goofy paramedics and their wild shenanigans,” remarked Martin. “It’s great that we have a tape that can make us laugh at death.”
Another story involves a 14-year-old boy who shoots himself in the head. On the way to the scene, the paramedics got into an argument. “We were arguing over the year Stevie Wonder’s ‘Innervisions’ came out,” said the driver. “So we stopped by a record store and found it. Needless to say, I was right – ’73. When we arrived at the house, the kid was pretty much dead anyway. Lead poisoning.”
Martin believes the human error factor will keep the stories fresh.
“You gotta love these paramedics,” he said. “They make mistakes, just like all of us. That’s what makes the stories so darned funny.”