Biden, Joe(b. Nov. 20, 1942), 47th vice president of the United States. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden spent his formative years in Wilmington, Delaware, where, at the age of 12, he walked in on the mother of a school friend while she was changing and then asked if she really wanted him to leave. Biden graduated high school in 1961, but for three years afterward periodically hung out in the parking lot of his alma mater in his 1957 Ford Del Rio station wagon (the back of which he had converted into a cot and mini bar) in order to, in his words, “check out the fresh crop of sweet peaches.” Following a successful career selling Cutco knives door-to-door, Biden was elected to public office in 1970, when he won a seat on the Wilmington City Council by running on a platform of “gas, grass, or ass—no one rides for free.” Political success at the federal level soon followed, and Biden served seven terms as a U.S. senator from Delaware, often saying the highlight of his legislative career came in 1981 during a goodwill trip to West Germany, when he held a closed-door backstage meeting with Klaus Meine and Rudolf Schenker of the rock band the Scorpions, attended also by at least a half-dozen young women who couldn’t afford tickets to the show. Among Biden’s other accomplishments are the invention of a firework he named the “Tijuana Bumble Bee” (created by twisting together the fuses of two cherry bombs and a large bottle rocket), having at one time been the largest breeder of albino Burmese pythons in Delaware, and acting as the spokesman for Brut aftershave from 1992 to 1995, a contract he lost after referring to Asian-Americans as “Orientals” 39 times during a promotional appearance at a Miami boat show. The vice president, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, was last seen in the vicinity of a decrepit Streamline trailer on a derelict lot in downtown Washington. After the camper mysteriously caught fire, local law enforcement discovered it was filled with counterfeit designer handbags.
