Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Holy moley, guacamole, Jeff Spicoli, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Hello, my name is . . . oh forget it
An Indiana man woke up in a garbage truck after passing out drunk just as the compactor was about to crush him. I’d hate to be the speaker after this guy at the A.A. meeting.

Oh goody
Kathy Lee Gifford has been hired to host the fourth hour of “The Today Show” This is great news for Frank Gifford, he can start dating flight attendants again.

Be careful
An Oregon man claims he is pregnant. Guys, this is what can happen if your wife takes your Viagra by mistake.

It adds up fast
Sen. Hillary Clinton and former President Clinton reported more than $109 million in income since 2000. Or as Hillary sees it: over 237, 000 pantsuits.

On to bigger things
A California ski resort, Mammoth Mountain, disclosed Stevie Wonder took skiing lessons; Stevie was looking for a new challenge after he trounced Barack Obama in bowling.

A California ski resort, Mammoth Mountain, disclosed that Stevie Wonder took skiing lessons; Or as Mammoth Mountain is called by Hollywood, Kirstie Alley.

Them too
The Clintons disclosed their tax information and in eight years they have donated over $10 million to charity. Yeah, and, in addition to Charity, Bill has also donated to Tiffany, Bambi, Chrystal, Amber, Brandi and Roxanne.

What is he thinking?
New York Giant QB Eli Manning is getting married, that’s good, he’s young, good looking, rich, he has a Super Bowl ring, Dude, are you out of your frickin’ mind? Two words: Tom Brady. The rest of us slobs have to get married, but you? What are you thinking? (Just kidding, Hon)

Not so much
Kathy Lee Gifford has been hired to host the fourth hour of “The Today Show.” I’m not sure this will work, those cute stories about Cody might not fly now that he is 19 and the tattooed leader of a biker gang.

Not a big guy
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he will not attend the opening ceremony of this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing unless China opens talks with the Dalai Lama. And they have to provide him with a booster seat.

A sure sign
A study reveals that New Yorkers are getting fatter. I think it’s true, the last time I was in New York my cab driver had stuffed his turban full of corndogs.

That’s nice
In the NCAA semis, Memphis beat UCLA. Memphis and UCLA are different. Memphis is down-home southern and the Bruins are Hollywood and hip. For example UCLA has gone green and now they recycle all of their trash talk.

Since you asked:

Is it just me or do journalists really, really suck? Make no mistake, as a writererer I have confessed many times that I am no rocket surgeon. Nobody mixes more metaphors and there, their and they’re than I do. If you pointed a gun at my head I might be able to tell you the difference between who’s and whose. And then and than continue to vex me and me alone.

But when I find a story with a headline I want to write a joke about and the actual information in the headline is nowhere in the article, I feel that writer has gone out of his or her way to suck.

And or piss me off.

After Kansas won the NCAA, I counted at least ten articles that had Rock Chalk referenced in the headline. Some yump named Michael Rosenberg wrote the title “Rock Shock” but didn’t explain it in his story. There were clever headlines like “Rock Chalk Walks the Walk” and “Memphis Balks at Rock Chalk” Not one of them even bothered to explain what the hell Rock Chalk meant. How in the world did it not occur to them that people might want to know what they put in their own damn headline?

This is even more annoying than the evening news promo-teasers that say “What is in your home that might give you and your family terminal cancer . . . tonight on News Nine at Eleven.”

One clown, Eddie Pell, is an Associated Press National writer. One of them wrote for MSNBC. My daughter is nine and although she is a great writer for her age, she is still only in the fourth grade and it would never, ever, occur to her to title a piece with something as eye-catching as the unusual words Rock Chalk without even mentioning it. You could say you have no idea what the hell Rock Chalk means, but at least say that.

It took some deep Google ogling for me to find out that Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk is a chant the Kansas fans use. Nobody is really sure exactly what it means, but it is a chant. Some say it’s because the campus sits on top of a limestone quarry and that limestone is used to make chalk. One woman had the interesting theory that rock refers to hip slang for a basketball, chalk is the coaches instructions on a blackboard. And they sound catchy when combined with Jayhawk.

This Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk deal is by no means an isolated case. In supposedly reputable newspapers and online sites, I spot a news topic that might work as a joke and I go looking for the who, what, when and where they teach alleged journalists when they come out of the womb. And I don’t even give a rat’s hump about the why.

“Montana Man Files to Marry His Goat” shouts the headline.

Great, there have to be ten jokes in that story alone, right? What is the guy’s name? The first three stories don’t say. What was the goat’s name? Was it at least a girl goat? Was the goat at least cute? Was it related to him? Where will they go on their honeymoon? Nothing. It took me ten different articles on the same topic to find all the information I needed just to write one stupid lame-ass joke.

One time a movie critic – they are supposed to be writers, right? – titled his piece “The Ten Worst Movies of all time” You want to know how many movies he discussed? Four. I’m no math whiz either, but I am pretty sure four is not the new ten.

These evil journalists are more annoying than those soulless knobs on the Shop NBC who yammer excitedly about one horrifically ugly and tasteless piece of jewelry after another. These people need to be quarantined for their, and our, good. (When our remote goes hinky, it always defaults to these horribly evil Channel 00 trolls making my frustration even more torturous. "Have you ever seen anything as beautiful?" Yes, because it is a total piece of crap)

OK, sorry about that rat hump thing.


"Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooon river"

"Out by San Birdo way"

"Oh, Judge, don't kid yourself, you're a tremendous slouch."

These old "when he was still funny" quotes from Chevy Chase are to be used as a reminder that anyone, no matter how funny, can become not funny if they take themselves too seriously. Like going off on a tirade against journalists, for example.

"I'm not falling for that banana in a tail pipe thing again"

Right, Eddie?