Scatter Brained

C H A P T E R   4

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106
S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
✖  ✖  ✖
Germans can enjoy a bit of 
schadenfreude in that their re-
union, despite its troubles, has 
already lasted far longer than 
that of Elizabeth Taylor and 
Richard Burton, who remar-
ried  in  1975  after  having 
 divorced one another just 16 
months prior. Th
  ey were back 
on the marital bliss wagon for 
less than a year, redivorcing in 
1976  after  Burton  fell  off  the 
not-drinking-alcohol wagon.
✖  ✖  ✖
Forget today’s modern Civil 
War reenactments; they’re as 
meaningful as a Disneyland 
Ice Capades show compared to 
the fi rst reenactment, one of 
history’s greatest reunions. In 
1913, fi fty years after the mo-
mentous Battle of Gettysburg, 50,000 Confederate and Union 
veterans returned to camp together on the fi elds where they 
had once been locked in mortal combat. Th
  e highlight was a 
reenactment of the infamous Pickett’s Charge, in which more 
than 3,000 men died in a matter of minutes. But this time, 
instead of meeting one another with bayonets and artillery 
fi re, the old men threw down their weapons and embraced 
one another. Now that’s a story that warms our hearts. And 
speaking of hearts . . .
Art Who?
If anyone has broken up and got-
ten back together more times 
than Taylor and Burton, it’s Si-
mon & Garfunkel. The fi rst  time 
was in 1964, before they even 
had a career to speak of. Their 
fi rst  album, 
Wednesday Morn-
ing, 3 AM,
 had fl opped  big-
time, and they only decided to 
reunite when their single “The 
Sound of Silence” unexpectedly 
became a massive hit. When Art 
Garfunkel started to pursue act-
ing in favor of his musical col-
laborations with Paul Simon, they 
broke up again, in 1969. Since 
then, the cantankerous couple 
have reunited (if only briefl y) four 
times, most famously at a 1981 
concert in Central Park, attended 
by 500,000 rabid fans.

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