In anticipation of the New Year the Jester offers up his prognostications for the next twelve months. If any of this stuff actually happens the Jester will happily take full credit and/or eschew (gesundheit) all blame.
January-
The New Year starts not with a bang but with the proverbial whimper as Wall Street continues its headlong dive and the Dow goes into negative numbers. China cashes in all her US Treasury notes; fortunately the dollar is so devalued by the umpty gazillion dollars printed up for the occasion that we actually pay out only $1.57. China retaliates by flooding the ailing American auto market, selling its hottest domestic car for three cents per vehicle. American drivers are ecstatic at the car’s reported 200 miles per gallon until it is revealed that the car is powered by gassy dissidents. All this happens before noon on January 1st.
On January 20th Washington, D.C temporarily becomes the most populous city in the world as an estimated 700 million people from around the world gather on the Mall to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama, America’s first African-American President. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. looks on with a smile of approval.
The entire population of Kenya descends on Washington, having run the entire distance, including the Atlantic Ocean, in preparation for the 2012 Olympics.
In protest of the Inauguration, White South Carolinians once again try to secede from the Union until someone, talking very slowly, reminds them of what happened the last time they tried that.
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and their ilk (and I do mean ilk) eat their metaphorical hearts out and continue to pretend to be relevant.
Tornado force winds wreak havoc around the world and panic ensues until it is realized that it’s just a planet wide collective sigh of relief at the end of the Bush administration.
February-
On February 2nd prognosticating groundhog Puxatawney Phil emerges from his burrow and sees his shadow, foretelling an early spring. He is not allowed to reenter because his home has been foreclosed.
Black History Month becomes blessedly irrelevant as America finally becomes aware that every month is Just Plain Whoever The Hell You Are History Month.
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln roll over in their respective graves as they wonder why their names and likenesses would be used to sell everything from new cars to used nose rings.
Valentine’s Day goes as it always does as men all across America do exactly the wrong thing, as usual.
March-
Daylight Saving Time takes effect on March 8th, once again demonstrating that Americans will fall for anything.
Saint Patrick’s Day riots break out in cities all across the USA when Irish revelers finally have their fill of all the drunks pretending to be Irish. Unfortunately the Irish are vastly outnumbered and too drunk to put up much of a fight.
Spring is cancelled in protest of Puxatawney Phil’s eviction. The homeless groundhog checks himself into rehab, saying that he is “just a shadow of his former self.”
Consequently, groundhog puns are outlawed and alleged humorist Lamar Deal is hauled away for a richly deserved thrashing.
April-
Benjamin Franklin’s adage, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes”, becomes eerily true when the U S Congress, in a desperate attempt to finance what has come to be called the “Good Lord, Now What? Bailout” passes a law making it illegal to die without paying a Death Tax of $1,000,000 per person. In protest, millions of indignant citizens refuse to die. A new ethnic group, Zombie-Americans, suddenly becomes the largest voting bloc in America.
Easter once again leaves tens of millions of children wondering why anyone would crucify the Easter Bunny and why the Calvary was so slow to respond.
May-
A horse named “Oh Crap I Can’t Believe I Bet The Mortgage On That Three Legged Mule” wins the Kentucky Derby. Delbert F’nortnoy, the only person to bet on the two hundred billion to one long shot, wins just exactly enough money to pay the tax on his winnings, which by a strange coincidence is the same amount as the collective Death Tax for all those Zombie-Americans still lurching around the country. They continue to refuse to die.
Cinco de Mayo becomes the most celebrated holiday in the country even though most gringos think it honors a sandwich spread. One celebrant sums up the popular sentiment: ”I’ll celebrate anything as long as there’s beer involved.”
Mother’s Day is renamed “Guiltapalooza” to reflect the true nature of the day.
New rules requiring cars participating in the Memorial Day classic Indianapolis 500 race to be pedal-powered make Lance Armstrong the winner by default after only one lap.
All across America the end of the school year is marked by a morbid dread of the next school year and an even more pervasive and realistic dread of the real world.
June-
A global rice shortage forces weddings to forego the ancient tradition of throwing rice at the bride and groom. Thousands are maimed as well-wishers instead hurl potatoes at the newlyweds.
The most popular Father’s Day gift this year is a Jerry Garcia tie so ugly that merely looking at it causes sterility. Jerry Garcia remains dead and, one presumes, grateful.
July-
A heat wave sweeps the planet, with 100 degree (Farfegnugen) temperatures recorded at the North Pole. The Antarctic ice cap melts away, raising the mean sea level hundreds of feet. Rush Limbaugh drowns in his penthouse radio studio denying to the very end that global warming exists. Al Gore issues a press release, which states in its entirety, “Neenerneenerneener, told you so.”
A surprise announcement on the Fourth of July reveals the long awaited capture of Osama bin Laden. America celebrates by administering a fireworks enema to the terrorist leader.
August-
Heat, heat and more heat. To correct a long-standing injustice, the “Dog Days of August” are renamed the “I Didn’t Poop On The Rug, I Didn’t Eat Your Homework and I’m Not Responsible For The Freakin’ Heat and Humidity Days”.
Washington in August is as empty as a politician’s heart and thus can do little harm. Nonetheless, they’ll be back and God help us all.
School starts back much too early and yet another generation feels the dank hand of conformity tapping on its shoulder. That generation sighs and gets right to work.
September-
Labor Day becomes ever more ironic. Period. I mean, dang.
The first crisp autumn day arrives with temperatures in the low 140s. Sweat soaked celebrants fail to burst into flame, causing a deceased Rush Limbaugh to exclaim from beyond his watery sepulcher, “I told you so!”
October-
October 12 is Columbus Day, commemorating the luckiest voyage by the luckiest idiot ever to command a leaky fleet. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain financed the trip in the vain hope that Columbus would die at sea and thus shut the hell up. No such luck. Not only did the Admiral of the Ocean Sea survive, he managed to inflict the Old and New Worlds with what has been called the most infamous trade in human history: whiskey and syphilis for tobacco and gonorrhea. Native Americans celebrate by belatedly enacting more stringent immigration laws.
Children across the nation practice being scary for Halloween. Their best efforts fall far short of the news on any given day.
November-
Daylight Saving Time ends on November 1st proving once again (say it with me) that Americans will fall for anything.
Veterans Day once again begs the question, “Why?” No good answers are forthcoming.
Thanksgiving Day falls on a Thursday this year. Native Americans regret, yet again, not poisoning the first Thanksgiving feast. Tofurkey, a processed foodlike soy meat substitute, makes steady inroads toward becoming the traditional processed foodlike soy meat substitute of the holiday, making Native Americans regret that decision on poisoning all the more.
December-
The holidays Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are combined to create the first American super holiday, Christmakwanzanukkah. Emergency rooms nationwide are swamped as millions of well wishers seek treatment for sprained tongues from trying to pronounce the occasion.
The most popular toy this year is “Don’t &#*# With Me Elmo”, followed closely by “Crack Ho Barbie” (rocks and crack pipe sold separately).
On December 26th the 2010 holiday shopping season officially begins.
The year ends on a high note with all of us wishing all of you a Happy New Year.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Odd Blurtings
"I smelled a Smurf because that's how I roll!" This from one Roseanne Rosannadanna, no relation to Gilda Radner's classic SNL character except for an unfortunate henna rinse in the 70s. I think I'll put this in a file called, for the nonce, "Odd Blurtings".
Also in the file: "Moose, moose, doublehead! Color the binyawn!" ; submitted by Chicago Bruce. More about him later…
Also in the file: "Moose, moose, doublehead! Color the binyawn!" ; submitted by Chicago Bruce. More about him later…
Monday, December 15, 2008
Keep Out
I read an article recently about a supposedly new phenomenon which isn’t new at all: the Man Cave. The article said that men are starting to create hideaways for themselves; a place to get away from it all. The lady who wrote the piece had discovered a whole new facet of human behavior, or so she thought. I’d hate to be the one to break it to her, but guys have been hiding from their womenfolk since Adam found a nice quiet cave where he could embrace his Inner Slob.
Every man on Earth either has, or wishes to have, a space of his own. There’s no way I can know that, of course, but I can’t believe that the man exists who can put up with the female half of the species twenty four hours a day, every day, all the time. That would make any man a gibbering, drooling wreck in pretty short order.
Don’t get me wrong. I love women in general, and I love my wife in particular, more than I can tell you. I firmly believe that women are superior to men in almost every way. They’re smarter, they live longer, they certainly have better morals and they smell better than men. Men are stronger, but women generally have some guy to do the heavy lifting for them. Our job is to take out the trash, move the heavy stuff and kill spiders. Beyond that, after helping (in our limited way) make the babies, we’re just in the way.
Let’s be honest. Ninety-nine percent of the things you do annoys your wife and you never know what will get on her nerves until you’ve done it and then it’s too late. You’re in the doghouse.
Which brings us back to the Man Cave. The Man Cave is the doghouse minus the dog. It’s where you can be you, scratching those places that you can’t scratch in front of her, emitting various noxious emanations and generally being gross and disgusting. In short, the Man Cave is where you can be a man.
Batman had his Bat Cave. Superman had his Fortress of Solitude. The comics hit on something pretty basic there, some primordial need for “alone time”.
The Man Cave gene kicks in early. Young boys will roam the woods or back alleys looking for the perfect spot for a “fort”. A fort is not a clubhouse. A clubhouse implies a club, which implies recruiting members. A clubhouse invites company. A fort keeps people out. The most important thing about a fort is that it’s located where no female would ever think to look. I can’t tell you where that would be. If I did, the men would have to kill me, and rightfully so.
A tree fort is best. If your father or, heaven forbid, your mother helps you build your tree fort… well…that’s just wrong. You’ll know when you’ve found the right tree. It’ll look like there should be a tree fort in it. A proper tree fort is constructed of stolen and discarded materials. I’m not advocating theft, I’m just saying. I didn’t invent the rules. Any local construction site can “donate” the proper materials. So I hear.
Ideally your arboreal hideaway should look as if a gentle breeze could blow it to Oz. A board or two should be hanging loose in apparent ignorance of the laws of gravity. That helps keep anyone sane enough to be believed by your parents (such as a sister) from rooting around in there.
As I say, a tree fort is best, but an underground one will serve just as well. Just dig a hole and cover it with boards. Cover the boards with pine straw or leaves to camouflage the thing. Basically, this is the same plan you might use for a tiger trap. If you’re lucky some big kid who‘s been giving you grief will ride his bicycle over your underground fort and fall in. Try not to be in it when this happens.
“But, Jester,” you say, ”We already did all that when we were kids. What about grownup Man Caves?” Right. Well, a Man Cave is the same as a fort except it has POWER TOOLS! Yep, due to a stunning lack of judgment by the powers that be, men are actually allowed to own and operate power tools totally unsupervised! Hard to believe, isn’t it?
Décor for the Man Cave is whatever your spouse won’t allow in the Woman Cave (otherwise known as “the house”). In my case that would include my genuine Okefenokee Swamp alligator skull, my Simpsons collection, my Napoleon Dynamite Talking Action Figure (don’t ask) and just piles and piles of junk.
So the next time you need some peace and quiet, go to your own personal Fortress of Solitude and fire up that circular saw. You’ll be glad you did. Unless you cut off a finger or two.
Every man on Earth either has, or wishes to have, a space of his own. There’s no way I can know that, of course, but I can’t believe that the man exists who can put up with the female half of the species twenty four hours a day, every day, all the time. That would make any man a gibbering, drooling wreck in pretty short order.
Don’t get me wrong. I love women in general, and I love my wife in particular, more than I can tell you. I firmly believe that women are superior to men in almost every way. They’re smarter, they live longer, they certainly have better morals and they smell better than men. Men are stronger, but women generally have some guy to do the heavy lifting for them. Our job is to take out the trash, move the heavy stuff and kill spiders. Beyond that, after helping (in our limited way) make the babies, we’re just in the way.
Let’s be honest. Ninety-nine percent of the things you do annoys your wife and you never know what will get on her nerves until you’ve done it and then it’s too late. You’re in the doghouse.
Which brings us back to the Man Cave. The Man Cave is the doghouse minus the dog. It’s where you can be you, scratching those places that you can’t scratch in front of her, emitting various noxious emanations and generally being gross and disgusting. In short, the Man Cave is where you can be a man.
Batman had his Bat Cave. Superman had his Fortress of Solitude. The comics hit on something pretty basic there, some primordial need for “alone time”.
The Man Cave gene kicks in early. Young boys will roam the woods or back alleys looking for the perfect spot for a “fort”. A fort is not a clubhouse. A clubhouse implies a club, which implies recruiting members. A clubhouse invites company. A fort keeps people out. The most important thing about a fort is that it’s located where no female would ever think to look. I can’t tell you where that would be. If I did, the men would have to kill me, and rightfully so.
A tree fort is best. If your father or, heaven forbid, your mother helps you build your tree fort… well…that’s just wrong. You’ll know when you’ve found the right tree. It’ll look like there should be a tree fort in it. A proper tree fort is constructed of stolen and discarded materials. I’m not advocating theft, I’m just saying. I didn’t invent the rules. Any local construction site can “donate” the proper materials. So I hear.
Ideally your arboreal hideaway should look as if a gentle breeze could blow it to Oz. A board or two should be hanging loose in apparent ignorance of the laws of gravity. That helps keep anyone sane enough to be believed by your parents (such as a sister) from rooting around in there.
As I say, a tree fort is best, but an underground one will serve just as well. Just dig a hole and cover it with boards. Cover the boards with pine straw or leaves to camouflage the thing. Basically, this is the same plan you might use for a tiger trap. If you’re lucky some big kid who‘s been giving you grief will ride his bicycle over your underground fort and fall in. Try not to be in it when this happens.
“But, Jester,” you say, ”We already did all that when we were kids. What about grownup Man Caves?” Right. Well, a Man Cave is the same as a fort except it has POWER TOOLS! Yep, due to a stunning lack of judgment by the powers that be, men are actually allowed to own and operate power tools totally unsupervised! Hard to believe, isn’t it?
Décor for the Man Cave is whatever your spouse won’t allow in the Woman Cave (otherwise known as “the house”). In my case that would include my genuine Okefenokee Swamp alligator skull, my Simpsons collection, my Napoleon Dynamite Talking Action Figure (don’t ask) and just piles and piles of junk.
So the next time you need some peace and quiet, go to your own personal Fortress of Solitude and fire up that circular saw. You’ll be glad you did. Unless you cut off a finger or two.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Time
Strange to think that once upon a time, time was divided only into day and night. One cave guy would ask “Hey, Og! What time you got?” and the other cave guy would stick his head out of the cave and answer, “It day, Bonehead.” Other times were flexible, such as dinnertime. Dinnertime was whenever you managed to kill some critter before it could kill you.
After an eon or two Og and Bonehead began to notice that sometimes there was a long stretch of cold weather and food would be scarce and at other times it would be hot and food was just everywhere. In the cold times the cave persons would wonder where the food went so it was called “Winter”. (Cave guys weren’t known for their spelling skills.) In the hot times they would remark, “Here’s some strawberries” or “Hey, there’s some rutabagas” so that became known as “Summer”. The cave dudes only recognized two seasons because they only knew two numbers, which they called “this many” and “that many”. This was called a base two system, which is still used in countries too poor for enough bases to play baseball.
Many more eons went by. The cave people somehow became Ancient Egyptians and decided to build the Pyramids and thus would need more than two numbers. When the cave people decided to become Ancient Egyptians they knew they would have to move to the Nile River. I don’t know how they knew but they did. They noticed that the Nile flooded just as the “summer” was about to start and the “winter” was over. They called this period a “year”, as in “Year comes them floods again.” (It was bad puns as much as anything that brought down the Ancient Egyptian Empire. They no longer speak of that particular plague.)
The Ancient Egyptians came up with a numerical system based on their gods. This occurred in the year Birdhead Snake Jackal Jackal at about Osiris o’clock. By this time Og and Bonehead had decided to change their names to proper Ancient Egyptian names. Og became Tut-Ankh–Set. Bonehead became Tut-Ankh-Ptah, but insisted that everyone call him “Bucky”. Since they had moved up in the world they had more leisure time, which they divided into “hours”, as in “This leisure time is ‘hours’, so go away”.
At any rate the Pyramids got built. Originally the Pyramids were a timekeeping device, but somebody (and I’m not naming any names, but it rhymes with “Yucky”) forgot to tell anybody else how to read the dang thing and there you go. After “Rhymes With Yucky” lost the instructions, the Pharoah died so they stuck him in there with his Mummy and Daddy, who were named Mr. and Mrs. Pharoah, but everybody called them Ed and Louise, although those were not their real names. No one knows why. That is just one more reason that Ancient Egypt was known as the “Land of Mystery”.
More eons went by. Ancient Egypt was up to its asp in eons. That is when The Cavemen Formerly Known As Og And Bonehead roamed northward to become Romans. The Romans used letters for their numbers:
M=1,000
D=500
C=100
L=50
X=10
V=5
I=1
Pretty simple, huh? Right. Here’s how it works. If you want to indicate the number two just add I+I=II. Now II+I=III. III+I should equal IIII, right? Nope. To signify “four” you have to subtract one from five, thusly: II+II=IV. Six is V+I=VI. Nine is IX, eleven is XI, ninety-nine is either LXXXXIX or IC, I think, and so forth until your brain starts to bleed.
For instance the year 2008 in Roman numerals is MMVIII. The year 1976 is MCMLXXVI. 1,000.000 is MMMMMMMMMM and so on until you have 1,000 (or M) M’s. One could also write 1,000,000 as M with a line under it, but that fell out of favor and couldn’t get up. .
The Romans were superb engineers and built many ruins, such as the Coliseum and Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.V or some such number).. How were they able to accomplish these amazing engineering feats with such a complicated and confusing numerical system? Easy. They conquered other countries and used their numbers. Once a country was conquered it stayed conqued because the Romans had taken all their numbers in tribute (a Latin word meaning “stolen loot”).
The Romans proceeded to invent the “minute” because all those tribute numbers were stacking up like pancakes and they had to do something with them. They put 60 minutes in each hour because they knew it would look good on clocks when somebody got around to inventing them.
The Cavemen Formerly Known as Og and Bonehead went on to invent Capitalism. They were trying to invent Communism but forgot to carry the one. Karl Marx got a copy of their flawed manifesto, corrected it, and became known as the Father of the Marx Brothers. Og and Bonehead survived until the present day and are now doing television commercials for a major insurance company.
Well, that’s about all the time I have for now. I’ll write more on the subject in a future installment that I have tentatively titled, ”Daylight Saving Time or What Were They Smoking When They Came Up With That?” If you have any historical type questions for The Jester just click in the Contact icon. (Note: I am not responsible, generally speaking.)
After an eon or two Og and Bonehead began to notice that sometimes there was a long stretch of cold weather and food would be scarce and at other times it would be hot and food was just everywhere. In the cold times the cave persons would wonder where the food went so it was called “Winter”. (Cave guys weren’t known for their spelling skills.) In the hot times they would remark, “Here’s some strawberries” or “Hey, there’s some rutabagas” so that became known as “Summer”. The cave dudes only recognized two seasons because they only knew two numbers, which they called “this many” and “that many”. This was called a base two system, which is still used in countries too poor for enough bases to play baseball.
Many more eons went by. The cave people somehow became Ancient Egyptians and decided to build the Pyramids and thus would need more than two numbers. When the cave people decided to become Ancient Egyptians they knew they would have to move to the Nile River. I don’t know how they knew but they did. They noticed that the Nile flooded just as the “summer” was about to start and the “winter” was over. They called this period a “year”, as in “Year comes them floods again.” (It was bad puns as much as anything that brought down the Ancient Egyptian Empire. They no longer speak of that particular plague.)
The Ancient Egyptians came up with a numerical system based on their gods. This occurred in the year Birdhead Snake Jackal Jackal at about Osiris o’clock. By this time Og and Bonehead had decided to change their names to proper Ancient Egyptian names. Og became Tut-Ankh–Set. Bonehead became Tut-Ankh-Ptah, but insisted that everyone call him “Bucky”. Since they had moved up in the world they had more leisure time, which they divided into “hours”, as in “This leisure time is ‘hours’, so go away”.
At any rate the Pyramids got built. Originally the Pyramids were a timekeeping device, but somebody (and I’m not naming any names, but it rhymes with “Yucky”) forgot to tell anybody else how to read the dang thing and there you go. After “Rhymes With Yucky” lost the instructions, the Pharoah died so they stuck him in there with his Mummy and Daddy, who were named Mr. and Mrs. Pharoah, but everybody called them Ed and Louise, although those were not their real names. No one knows why. That is just one more reason that Ancient Egypt was known as the “Land of Mystery”.
More eons went by. Ancient Egypt was up to its asp in eons. That is when The Cavemen Formerly Known As Og And Bonehead roamed northward to become Romans. The Romans used letters for their numbers:
M=1,000
D=500
C=100
L=50
X=10
V=5
I=1
Pretty simple, huh? Right. Here’s how it works. If you want to indicate the number two just add I+I=II. Now II+I=III. III+I should equal IIII, right? Nope. To signify “four” you have to subtract one from five, thusly: II+II=IV. Six is V+I=VI. Nine is IX, eleven is XI, ninety-nine is either LXXXXIX or IC, I think, and so forth until your brain starts to bleed.
For instance the year 2008 in Roman numerals is MMVIII. The year 1976 is MCMLXXVI. 1,000.000 is MMMMMMMMMM and so on until you have 1,000 (or M) M’s. One could also write 1,000,000 as M with a line under it, but that fell out of favor and couldn’t get up. .
The Romans were superb engineers and built many ruins, such as the Coliseum and Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.V or some such number).. How were they able to accomplish these amazing engineering feats with such a complicated and confusing numerical system? Easy. They conquered other countries and used their numbers. Once a country was conquered it stayed conqued because the Romans had taken all their numbers in tribute (a Latin word meaning “stolen loot”).
The Romans proceeded to invent the “minute” because all those tribute numbers were stacking up like pancakes and they had to do something with them. They put 60 minutes in each hour because they knew it would look good on clocks when somebody got around to inventing them.
The Cavemen Formerly Known as Og and Bonehead went on to invent Capitalism. They were trying to invent Communism but forgot to carry the one. Karl Marx got a copy of their flawed manifesto, corrected it, and became known as the Father of the Marx Brothers. Og and Bonehead survived until the present day and are now doing television commercials for a major insurance company.
Well, that’s about all the time I have for now. I’ll write more on the subject in a future installment that I have tentatively titled, ”Daylight Saving Time or What Were They Smoking When They Came Up With That?” If you have any historical type questions for The Jester just click in the Contact icon. (Note: I am not responsible, generally speaking.)
All the Rage
If there’s any one thing that elicits a strong reaction among us geezers, it’s saggin’ pants. Truth is, they really don’t bother me that much. If anything, they’re funny. Some time back I observed a young couple sitting on a bench at the mall. The young man stood up and his pants fell to the floor and he didn’t even notice. His wife had to tell him, “Honey, your pants fell off.”
A guy knocked on my door once to ask me if he could do some yard work. Before he could ask, I noticed that his pants were at half-mast and he was clutching them to hold them up. Alarmed, I said, “The bathroom’s in there.”
As I understand it, the sagging pants thing is an attempt to look tough; “thug chic”. How effective are you as a thug if you have to hold your pants up with one hand? How are you going to rob somebody if you’ve got a gun in one hand and your pants in the other? Where are you going to put the loot? Between your teeth? It seems to me that thuggery is much more effective with both hands free. I imagine cops are perfectly happy with the lowrider style. A crook is easier to catch if he’s tripping on his pants. “You’re tripping!” gains a whole new meaning.
If you are truly bothered by somebody wearing their pants so low that you can see all of their underwear, just think back to when you wore your pants so tight that folks could tell whether or not you were wearing any drawers. If it really, really bugs you, next time you see one of these wannabe thugs riding low, just sneak up behind him, grab him by the BVDs and haul ‘em up high and tight. That’s right; give him a good old fashioned wedgie. And don’t worry about retaliation. If you do it right he’ll be too busy getting himself unwedged to even think about killing you.
I often hear older women tsk, tsk, tsking over what young girls are wearing these days. Ironically those clothes are almost identical to what those old ladies were wearing in the 60s and 70s: skintight hiphugger pants, midriff-baring tops, crazy hair and scary eye makeup. I won’t go into the whole tattoo and piercing thing here. That’s weird enough to warrant another whole column.
Styles change, although most people seem to think that whatever was in style when they were young and hip should still be the style. That miniskirt that looked good on you when you were twenty does not, I repeat, does not look that good on you now. And no, you can’t pass off varicose veins as patterned hose. Hot pants are not so hot after “a certain age”. That hoochie Wonderbra is for those young enough not to need it. On an older woman it looks like her bosoms are trying to escape.
And guys? That ruffled tie-dyed disco shirt unbuttoned to the sternum? No. A hairy chest at 30 may be sexy to some women, but gray chest hair is just creepy. Platform shoes are proof that drugs were way too available in the old days. Not to mention parachute pants, Nehru jackets and countless other fashion abominations.
Judge not, lest ye be judged. Somewhere in a dusty photo album is a picture of you in all your bell bottomed, pointy collared, paisleyed, platform shod, long haired glory.
Greetings from World Headquarters
If you've stumbled onto this site you may be asking yourself, "Just who the hell is this guy and why should I care?" Okay, maybe you wouldn't ask yourself that. I would ask that, but then who am I? You begin to see where that line of questioning can go.
I'm just some schlub who has dabbled in this and that, as opposed to having had any kind of realistic goals. As child of the Space Age (that was before the MySpace Age) I wanted to be an astronaut, until I found out that actual work was involved. Then I wanted to be a cartoonist, largely because I was the best cartoonist at Byron Elementary School. Sad to relate, I spent the next 25 years pursuing art as a career only to discover that I had pretty much peaked in the third grade. Still, I managed to make some money along the way.
I jumped on the standup comedy bandwagon in the early 1980s in Atlanta and took mediocrity to a whole new level. This was at the urging of my good friend Dr. Emil Fazuil*, who was drunk at the time. So was I. I worked with a lot of pretty big names before they became famous. One or two of them might remember me vaguely, vague being a fairly accurate description of my act. I might have succeeded but for a lack of insane ambition. I had the talent, I think, but I wasn't willing to work to acquire the skills.
I was 27 when I first got the comedy bug. At the outset standup comedy looks like a pretty good deal. It's the only job I know of that allows you to drink on the job, it's a great way to meet women and, at the top, the pay is crazy good, hundreds or even thousands of dollars per hour. Even on the lowest rungs you can make 20 or 30 bucks a minute. The downside is sometimes you might have a 14 hour drive to work. A few years of that and a day job starts to look not quite so horrible. See, the thing is, from out there in the audience, standup looks easy. It ain't.
*Names have been changed to protect the guilty. I don't know very many innocent people.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Gobble Gobble Gobble
When I was growing up in the 1960s the only time we ate turkey was Thanksgiving and maybe Christmas. Now you can be sick of turkey year round. Smoked turkey, oven roasted turkey, pressed turkey, turkey pepperoni, turkey chili, turkey meatloaf, spaghetti and turkey, turkeys with breasts that would shame Dolly Parton--enough already!
I don’t mind the occasional deli type turkey sandwich. Sometimes nothing else will do. But turkey meatloaf? No. Meatloaf implies meat and meat, to me at least, has to have had a working nervous system at some point in its existence. Domestic turkeys have devolved to the point where tofu has more actual meatlike qualities. Turkeys have been so successfully bred for stupidity that a Vegan could eat one with no guilt whatsoever. They’ve also had the flavor bred out of them.
Or maybe it just seems that way because I have turkey every other meal. Time was this ubiquitous “meat” was a low priced substitute for ground beef. Now it’s being touted as a healthy substitute, so the price went up, in many cases higher than lean ground beef or pork sausage. That’s worth it, you say, because ground turkey has less fat than ground beef and turkey sausage has less fat and sodium than pork sausage. Right?
Not necessarily. Awhile back my wife, in her never ending quest to inflict healthy food on me, brought home some turkey Italian sausage. It didn’t taste too awful; in fact it barely had any taste at all. I added some to pot of vegetable soup I was cooking and danged if that didn’t turn out to be about the greasiest soup I ever tried to gag down. I compared the nutritional information on the label to a package of the brand of pork sausage that I had quit buying for health reasons. And guess what? The total fat content, both saturated and un, was almost exactly the same. In fact the pork product had less sodium and it cost less per pound. Neither one was especially good for you, but at least the pork tasted good.
Other Thanksgiving and Christmas staples seem good primarily because you only get them during the holidays. Even though pumpkin pie filling (the sole ingredient in the can is listed as “pumpkin”) is available all year round and nobody I know has ever used fresh pumpkin guts as filling, you only see pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everybody makes a big show about how good it is, but I’ve never seen anybody go for seconds. Folks make a big deal about it because Dear Old Aunt Sukey went to all that trouble to make it, bless her heart. The fact is, either Dear Old Aunt Sukey only makes it because she thinks everybody actually likes the stuff or she’s having a good laugh at your expense. (That’s what I intend to do when I get really old, assuming that miracle comes to pass; mess with your mind just like Dear Old Aunt Sukey,)
Cranberry sauce is another item that only graces the table during the holidays. If you buy too much one year, the extra cans will patiently bide the years unmolested until you blow the dust off of one of them and blop the contents out onto a plate. Cranberry juice you can get all year, but the only way I can stomach it is to dilute it with vodka.
Sweet potato casserole with marshmallows is another holiday “treat”. That stuff is so sweet it makes my dentures hurt. It’s kind of like candy that doesn’t taste good; the candy corn of holiday fare. Nobody really likes it but it’s traditional. Well, so is the death penalty.
Most families have holiday foods that are peculiar (and I do mean peculiar) to that household. In our family it was my father’s infamous Cracker Salad. All it was was a chilled mixture of crushed saltine crackers, diced tomatoes and mayonnaise. It actually tasted pretty good, but it looked like a chainsaw accident in a bowl. No guest would eat it or even look directly at it, and no one in the immediate family would eat it out of sheer embarrassment. Daddy would tuck right in, extolling its virtues while the rest of us silently shuddered in horror.
Nobody enjoys eggnog at Thanksgiving. Nobody enjoys it at Christmas either, even though everyone pretends to. Let’s face it, eggnog is vile. Basically eggnog is a mixture of raw eggs and booze, a perfect recipe for vomit. Throw in a likely case of salmonella and voila! the kind of hangovers they serve in Hell.
Fruitcake? A practical joke that got out of hand.
Yet somehow each Thanksgiving and Christmas average Americans manage to gain enough weight to throw the planet’s orbit out of round clean into the New Year. And somehow Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners still manage to be the essence of Heaven right here on Earth.
I don’t mind the occasional deli type turkey sandwich. Sometimes nothing else will do. But turkey meatloaf? No. Meatloaf implies meat and meat, to me at least, has to have had a working nervous system at some point in its existence. Domestic turkeys have devolved to the point where tofu has more actual meatlike qualities. Turkeys have been so successfully bred for stupidity that a Vegan could eat one with no guilt whatsoever. They’ve also had the flavor bred out of them.
Or maybe it just seems that way because I have turkey every other meal. Time was this ubiquitous “meat” was a low priced substitute for ground beef. Now it’s being touted as a healthy substitute, so the price went up, in many cases higher than lean ground beef or pork sausage. That’s worth it, you say, because ground turkey has less fat than ground beef and turkey sausage has less fat and sodium than pork sausage. Right?
Not necessarily. Awhile back my wife, in her never ending quest to inflict healthy food on me, brought home some turkey Italian sausage. It didn’t taste too awful; in fact it barely had any taste at all. I added some to pot of vegetable soup I was cooking and danged if that didn’t turn out to be about the greasiest soup I ever tried to gag down. I compared the nutritional information on the label to a package of the brand of pork sausage that I had quit buying for health reasons. And guess what? The total fat content, both saturated and un, was almost exactly the same. In fact the pork product had less sodium and it cost less per pound. Neither one was especially good for you, but at least the pork tasted good.
Other Thanksgiving and Christmas staples seem good primarily because you only get them during the holidays. Even though pumpkin pie filling (the sole ingredient in the can is listed as “pumpkin”) is available all year round and nobody I know has ever used fresh pumpkin guts as filling, you only see pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everybody makes a big show about how good it is, but I’ve never seen anybody go for seconds. Folks make a big deal about it because Dear Old Aunt Sukey went to all that trouble to make it, bless her heart. The fact is, either Dear Old Aunt Sukey only makes it because she thinks everybody actually likes the stuff or she’s having a good laugh at your expense. (That’s what I intend to do when I get really old, assuming that miracle comes to pass; mess with your mind just like Dear Old Aunt Sukey,)
Cranberry sauce is another item that only graces the table during the holidays. If you buy too much one year, the extra cans will patiently bide the years unmolested until you blow the dust off of one of them and blop the contents out onto a plate. Cranberry juice you can get all year, but the only way I can stomach it is to dilute it with vodka.
Sweet potato casserole with marshmallows is another holiday “treat”. That stuff is so sweet it makes my dentures hurt. It’s kind of like candy that doesn’t taste good; the candy corn of holiday fare. Nobody really likes it but it’s traditional. Well, so is the death penalty.
Most families have holiday foods that are peculiar (and I do mean peculiar) to that household. In our family it was my father’s infamous Cracker Salad. All it was was a chilled mixture of crushed saltine crackers, diced tomatoes and mayonnaise. It actually tasted pretty good, but it looked like a chainsaw accident in a bowl. No guest would eat it or even look directly at it, and no one in the immediate family would eat it out of sheer embarrassment. Daddy would tuck right in, extolling its virtues while the rest of us silently shuddered in horror.
Nobody enjoys eggnog at Thanksgiving. Nobody enjoys it at Christmas either, even though everyone pretends to. Let’s face it, eggnog is vile. Basically eggnog is a mixture of raw eggs and booze, a perfect recipe for vomit. Throw in a likely case of salmonella and voila! the kind of hangovers they serve in Hell.
Fruitcake? A practical joke that got out of hand.
Yet somehow each Thanksgiving and Christmas average Americans manage to gain enough weight to throw the planet’s orbit out of round clean into the New Year. And somehow Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners still manage to be the essence of Heaven right here on Earth.
Boomboomboomboom
The scariest fact I know is this: My g-g-g-g-generation is now in charge of the planet. That’s right, the Woodstock nation is here. Those of us who tuned in, turned on and dropped out now have to tune out, turn off and drop right back in. Be afraid. Be very afraid
That dashiki and bellbottom wearing, Afro-sheened, muttonchopped, Fu-Manchu mustachioed, granny glasses wearing, pot smoking (and don’t pretend you didn’t inhale, because you did) revolution spewing bulge in the gut of the great demographic Anaconda that is Baby Boom America is large and in charge and God help us all. We were going to live in solar powered underground dome homes and grow our own organic food and drive electric cars and clean up the environment and make love, not war. We actually used to greet each other by saying ”Peace, Brother”.
Barbara, my lovely wife (who is always right), says that I was merely affecting a style, just dressing the part, talking the talk while she was walking the walk. And walk the walk she did, protesting the war in Vietnam, racial injustice, the Bomb and other causes. I may not have been there marching but I did my part by scrambling my neurons to a fare thee well, and I’ve got the CAT scans to prove it.
And oh yeah, sex and drugs and rock and roll, man.
If we’d actually done that stuff, we might be a lot better off today. I don’t mean the clothes or the hair. Outside of giving our children a really good laugh in the photo album, no harm done. Our kids will someday look just as silly to their kids, except their youthful folly is etched into their skin and will require massive amounts of laser surgery to remove.
As for the music, well the whole point of popular music seems to be to make the last generation cringe. My parents listened to Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and their parents didn’t get it. I listened to Bob Dylan and acid rock and my parents didn’t get it. Our kids listened to grunge and we didn’t get it. Their kids listened to rap and so on and so forth. Whatever their kids listen to will be even worse. All parents have this in common: the phrase ”Turn that noise down!”
No, what I mean is, what if we had built those solar powered underground homes? What if we had converted to electric cars and committed to an Earth-friendly lifestyle? What if we had kept that commitment? As Elvis Costello put it, “What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?”
Maybe if we had, we might not be hostage to OPEC today. We might not be involved in two wars half a world away, hemorrhaging billions of dollars and oceans of blood and untold goodwill around the world.
Once upon a time America was admired and emulated by emerging nations. Whatever good third world karma we had built up was severely depleted by the Vietnam War and now the members of this administration, most of whom managed to avoid serving in that war, has pissed the rest of it away.
As for sex and drugs and rock and roll? The sex is infrequent; the drugs keep us alive and frankly I’m bored to tears with the rock and roll.
* With apologies to John Lee Hooker
That dashiki and bellbottom wearing, Afro-sheened, muttonchopped, Fu-Manchu mustachioed, granny glasses wearing, pot smoking (and don’t pretend you didn’t inhale, because you did) revolution spewing bulge in the gut of the great demographic Anaconda that is Baby Boom America is large and in charge and God help us all. We were going to live in solar powered underground dome homes and grow our own organic food and drive electric cars and clean up the environment and make love, not war. We actually used to greet each other by saying ”Peace, Brother”.
Barbara, my lovely wife (who is always right), says that I was merely affecting a style, just dressing the part, talking the talk while she was walking the walk. And walk the walk she did, protesting the war in Vietnam, racial injustice, the Bomb and other causes. I may not have been there marching but I did my part by scrambling my neurons to a fare thee well, and I’ve got the CAT scans to prove it.
And oh yeah, sex and drugs and rock and roll, man.
If we’d actually done that stuff, we might be a lot better off today. I don’t mean the clothes or the hair. Outside of giving our children a really good laugh in the photo album, no harm done. Our kids will someday look just as silly to their kids, except their youthful folly is etched into their skin and will require massive amounts of laser surgery to remove.
As for the music, well the whole point of popular music seems to be to make the last generation cringe. My parents listened to Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and their parents didn’t get it. I listened to Bob Dylan and acid rock and my parents didn’t get it. Our kids listened to grunge and we didn’t get it. Their kids listened to rap and so on and so forth. Whatever their kids listen to will be even worse. All parents have this in common: the phrase ”Turn that noise down!”
No, what I mean is, what if we had built those solar powered underground homes? What if we had converted to electric cars and committed to an Earth-friendly lifestyle? What if we had kept that commitment? As Elvis Costello put it, “What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?”
Maybe if we had, we might not be hostage to OPEC today. We might not be involved in two wars half a world away, hemorrhaging billions of dollars and oceans of blood and untold goodwill around the world.
Once upon a time America was admired and emulated by emerging nations. Whatever good third world karma we had built up was severely depleted by the Vietnam War and now the members of this administration, most of whom managed to avoid serving in that war, has pissed the rest of it away.
As for sex and drugs and rock and roll? The sex is infrequent; the drugs keep us alive and frankly I’m bored to tears with the rock and roll.
* With apologies to John Lee Hooker
Gunfight Erupts at City Commission Meeting, Dozens Injured
The Mayor and the Chief of Police stood back to back, weapons drawn. “This is it,” said the Mayor, “the moment of truth!” The City Commissioners surrounded them, fangs bared and nerves taut, ready to spring. Suddenly a shot rang out!
The Mayor fired as he dove for the window, both .45s spitting death. The Chief vaulted the rostrum, sweeping the room with his trusty Glock. The sudden attack only fueled the Commissioners rage.
“Curse you, Mr. Mayor!” cried the Commission Chairperson, “Curse you and all your kind!”
“I’m hit!” sobbed the District Four Commissioner, falling into a pool of his own blood.
“Got your back, Dude!” shouted District Three. “They’ll pay! Oh, yes, they’ll pay!”
Bullets rent the air; shots flew wild. “Democracy ain’t always pretty, Chief!” yelled the Mayor, “But it’s the best system of government of the people, by the people and for the people ever invented!”
“You betcha!” replied the Chief. “You dad-blame betcha!”
That’s the story I would have liked to write. But, noooo, everybody has to be all civil and nice. Parliamentary Procedure my eye! Robert’s Rules and all that lot. Who is this Robert guy anyway? And just where did he get those rules? Where’s the drama in that?
There’s quite a bit of drama in that, actually. A well run meeting has its own quiet, dignified beauty. There’s a cordial give and take of opinion, without overt rancor, that I have come to admire.
Once upon a time I regarded all politicians as lazy, self serving scumbags interested only in self promotion and self aggrandizement. Having become involved in politics this past election I’m here to tell you: Whatever their reasons for seeking office, avoiding work is not one of them. City and county commissioners can’t even walk down the street without encountering some disaffected citizen who needs a road paved or a zoning variance approved or some such thing. I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to tugging at the sleeve of some poor bedeviled public servant. When the crew paving the road in front of my house fell behind due to wet weather, I was on the phone bugging the daylights out of my county commissioner. He deftly informed me that paving takes as long as it takes because of any number of factors, etc. and blah de blah blah. Well. Fact is, he was right and he was way more civil in his reply than I was in the asking.
Then there’s the sheer amount of information that the average public servant has to master. Part of my job as a journalist is to ask questions of these folks that I myself couldn’t answer right off the top of my head, or even off the middle or the bottom. We ask them, and if they hesitate or hem and haw we ride them like circus ponies. A good politician (and there is such a thing) will not only remember your face (even though he or she only met you once, at the Joe Whosit reception in Gooberville, Tennessee back in 1999), the astute politician will also know your name, your wife’s name, that your mama was down with the gout and what your views were on the Boogersnatch Amendment.
Not only do they have to remember all that, they have to be able to recall at a moment’s notice Section 1, Subsection 17, paragraph 322 (h) (amended) of the Wonkwonkwonkwonk Protocol until the whole mess starts to sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher doing that trombone talk thing that she does.
I don’t see how they do it, but then, more than once I’ve spent thirty minutes looking for my car keys with them in my hand, so what do I know. I do know this: There’s a lot more to politics and politicians than I ever suspected.
Not that there aren’t some real grifters in both parties. I personally believe that we as a nation won’t be politically mature until we have corruption in several parties instead of just the two that we’re used to.
Meanwhile, back at the City Commission: “Meeting adjourned!”
The Mayor fired as he dove for the window, both .45s spitting death. The Chief vaulted the rostrum, sweeping the room with his trusty Glock. The sudden attack only fueled the Commissioners rage.
“Curse you, Mr. Mayor!” cried the Commission Chairperson, “Curse you and all your kind!”
“I’m hit!” sobbed the District Four Commissioner, falling into a pool of his own blood.
“Got your back, Dude!” shouted District Three. “They’ll pay! Oh, yes, they’ll pay!”
Bullets rent the air; shots flew wild. “Democracy ain’t always pretty, Chief!” yelled the Mayor, “But it’s the best system of government of the people, by the people and for the people ever invented!”
“You betcha!” replied the Chief. “You dad-blame betcha!”
That’s the story I would have liked to write. But, noooo, everybody has to be all civil and nice. Parliamentary Procedure my eye! Robert’s Rules and all that lot. Who is this Robert guy anyway? And just where did he get those rules? Where’s the drama in that?
There’s quite a bit of drama in that, actually. A well run meeting has its own quiet, dignified beauty. There’s a cordial give and take of opinion, without overt rancor, that I have come to admire.
Once upon a time I regarded all politicians as lazy, self serving scumbags interested only in self promotion and self aggrandizement. Having become involved in politics this past election I’m here to tell you: Whatever their reasons for seeking office, avoiding work is not one of them. City and county commissioners can’t even walk down the street without encountering some disaffected citizen who needs a road paved or a zoning variance approved or some such thing. I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to tugging at the sleeve of some poor bedeviled public servant. When the crew paving the road in front of my house fell behind due to wet weather, I was on the phone bugging the daylights out of my county commissioner. He deftly informed me that paving takes as long as it takes because of any number of factors, etc. and blah de blah blah. Well. Fact is, he was right and he was way more civil in his reply than I was in the asking.
Then there’s the sheer amount of information that the average public servant has to master. Part of my job as a journalist is to ask questions of these folks that I myself couldn’t answer right off the top of my head, or even off the middle or the bottom. We ask them, and if they hesitate or hem and haw we ride them like circus ponies. A good politician (and there is such a thing) will not only remember your face (even though he or she only met you once, at the Joe Whosit reception in Gooberville, Tennessee back in 1999), the astute politician will also know your name, your wife’s name, that your mama was down with the gout and what your views were on the Boogersnatch Amendment.
Not only do they have to remember all that, they have to be able to recall at a moment’s notice Section 1, Subsection 17, paragraph 322 (h) (amended) of the Wonkwonkwonkwonk Protocol until the whole mess starts to sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher doing that trombone talk thing that she does.
I don’t see how they do it, but then, more than once I’ve spent thirty minutes looking for my car keys with them in my hand, so what do I know. I do know this: There’s a lot more to politics and politicians than I ever suspected.
Not that there aren’t some real grifters in both parties. I personally believe that we as a nation won’t be politically mature until we have corruption in several parties instead of just the two that we’re used to.
Meanwhile, back at the City Commission: “Meeting adjourned!”
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