Another goody from my beloved Aunt Brenda, conservative Democrat at large.

Students were assigned to read 2 books, “Titanic” & “My Life” by Bill Clinton.

One smart ass student turned in the following book report, with the proposition that
they were nearly identical stories!

His cool professor gave him an A+ for this report:

Titanic: $29.99
Clinton: $29.99

Titanic: Over 3 hours to read
Clinton: Over 3 hours to read

Titanic: The story of Jack and Rose, their forbidden love, and subsequent catastrophe.
Clinton: The story of Bill and Monica, their forbidden love, and subsequent catastrophe.

Titanic: Jack is a starving artist.
Clinton: Bill is a bullshit artist.

Titanic: In one scene, Jack enjoys a good cigar.
Clinton: Ditto for Bill.

Titanic: During ordeal, Rose’s dress gets ruined.
Clinton: Ditto for Monica.

Titanic: Jack teaches Rose to spit.
Clinton: Let’s not go there.

Titanic: Rose gets to keep her jewelry.
Clinton: Monica’s forced to return her gifts.

Titanic: Rose remembers Jack for the rest of her life.
Clinton: Clinton doesn’t remember Jack.

Titanic: Rose goes down on a vessel full of seamen.
Clinton: Monica…ooh, let’s not go there, either.

Titanic: Jack surrenders to an icy death.
Clinton: Bill goes home to Hilary…basically the same thing.

I’ve been keeping really busy for the last several days working on the house I closed on exactly ten days ago and moved into four days later. I mean, I’m transforming this wonderful red brick ranch style house into my permanent home and, being only a semi-patient man, I am doing so at what some might call an accellerated pace.

Jeff has the living and dining room floors about 1/3 done, laying new oak floors in their stead, then he’ll be doing the den. In less than twelve hours, carpeting people will be here to lay 122 square yards of exactly what I want and the next day, DirecTV will be doing a lot of installation work here. Furniture will begin flowing in on Tuesday. So a lot’s going down on my modest 1/3 acre of the planet.

Modest, sure, but at least I have six big trees on my property, and coming from a city/apartment kind of background, that’s a major detail!

But that’s not what I’m posting about, it’s partially a valid excuse as to why I’m still in this scarce posting period but mostly about still another reason I miss the 1960s and 1970s so much.

Early last week I ordered the entire DVD collection of Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts. They arrived two days ago, and I’ve been watching them almost whenever I’m not doing things to the house.

They are male tuxedoed and formal womened groups of top stars of every ilk sitting along a daiz, taking turns giving good natured, super-funny insults to whoever the man or woman of the week happened to be. They were televised.

What I love about them is that most of the toasters and toastees were friends and acquaintances from that era’s Hollywood and ‘Vegas crowds and they were completely confident that they could go as low, as funny or as irreverent as they wished, political correctness{the dreaded “PC”} not an issue.

No one entertained any fear of being sued for their comments at the roasts, which believe you me could be rather extreme, they knew it was all in fun.

We’re talking the likes of Dean Martin(of course), Milton Berle, Ruth Buzzi, Nipsy Russell, Don Rickles, George Burns, Rich Little, Flip Wilson, Foster Brooks, Lucille Ball, LaWanda Page, Jimmy Walker, Phyllis Diller, Jack Benny and so many other comedians of yore who, without using a single profanity, could get as adult as you dare while uttering nothing that a child could be “enlightened” by and behysterically funny utterly hilarious to where your most recent sip of coffee or other beverage spews across the room before you have the opportunity to swallow it and your sides ache from your hard, uncontrollable laughter.

The atmosphere was patriotic, none of the leftist entertainment industry output we encounter today. When those people went wrong, they did so big time.

The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts really bring me back to a time when things were much more clean and honest in the entertainment industry, before they brought on the Marxism and PC many of their number had once privately embraced, to today’s extremes.

Today’s comedy isn’t nearly as original and is, in many cases, too PC, but unfortunately too many of today’s young people don’t even know that, because while it’s out there, they need to give it a chance.

The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts are so completely, awesomely hilarious to watch without all the PC baggage and otherwise lawsuit-motivated sensitivity that they easily bring back a more pleasant era that existed before the liberals in America decided that it was time to separate Americans from one another by emphasizing their differences and controlling their use of the English language and its vocabulary.

Young people who were born within the last quarter century have absolutely no idea how funny those Rat Pack era comics could be, they need to go here ASAP and get a clue.

Game show host Pat Sajak’s got an amusing piece going at JWR today.

The time has long since passed when I could be of any use to my teenage son when it comes to the matter of math homework. I’m fairly useful in the fields of English and History, less so with Science and Latin, but totally superfluous in the bizarre world of Algebra.

That point was driven home again the other night when he introduced me to an imaginary number, or, as those wacky mathematicians like to call it, i. Here is the issue, as I understand it, and I’m not at all sure I do. There is no real way to find the square root of a negative number, because any number multiplied by itself would be positive. So, you might logically assume that, since a number can’t exist, there’s no point looking for it. Well, you’d be wrong. Apparently the inability of a number to exist isn’t a sufficient reason not to find a way to pretend it exists.

I can sympathize with ya’, Pat. I’d be more lost than you are.

My friend GM, of Gm’s Corner, cross-posted this one from Winds of Change, a great site I’ve had blogrolled since I first began blogging, and being an American born Jew who grew up in a time when Yiddish and Jewish humour, courtesy of our immigrant parents and grandparents who were alive and well in the family I simply could not resist cross-posting it in turn.

It is simply brilliant!

‘Twas the night before Hanukkah and all over the place There was noise, there was kvetching Soch ah disgrace!
The Kinderlach, sleeping,
uneasily felt
The chocolate rush
from the Hanukkah gelt

And me in the easyboy,
so stuffed with latkes,
I stretched the elastic
which held up my gatchkes

When up on the roof
(and it has a steep pitch)
A fat alte kakker
was making a kvitsch.
I jumped up real quick
and I ran to the door,
Was it a bandeet,
or only a schnorrer?

He wasn’t alone;
he had eight ferdelach,
And called them by name
as he gave a gebrach:

“On Moishe, on Yankel, on Itzik, on Sam,
On Mendel, on Shmendrik, on Feivush, on Ham;
My kidneys are kvelling;
do you give a damn?”

He had a white beard
and payyes to boot,
And to keep out the cold,
he had such a nice suit!

A second from Peerless,
I could tell at a glance,
But the cut was okay,
and so were the pants.

He was triple XL,
a real groisser goof,
So I yelled out,
“Meshuggener! Get off from Mein roof!”
He jumped down and said
as he shook hands with me,
“Max Klaus is the name.
You have maybe some tea?”

So I gave him a gleisel,
while he shook his white mop,
Mutt’ring, “Always the same thing,
They’re dreying my kopp!”

From Vancouver to Glace Bay,
Outremont to Reginek,
Every shmo in the world
hakks meir a cheinik!

They’re screaming for presents,
and challah with schmaltz,
And from Brooklyn alone,
the back pain, gevaltz!”

So we sat and yentehed,
and we spun the old dreydels,
(He took all of my money,
and one of my kanidels)

He said, “Business is not bad,
a living I make,
But I’m getting too old
for this Hanukkah fake;

And the cell phones, you see
how my pacemaker dings?
For two cents I’d quit,
and move to Palm Springs!”

And he gave a geshrei
as he fled mit a lacht,
“Gut Yontiff to All,
Vey is Mir, Such a Nacht!”

(Author Unknown)

This column by Mark Bazer is not only funny, but it also rings pretty true when you look at the average “running scared” corporate response to today’s rampant and ridiculous litigious environment.

And this one just in from my beloved Aunt Brenda.

How Government Works

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert.
Congress said, “Someone may steal from it at night.”
So they created a night watchman position and hired a person
at $18,000.00 a year for the job.
Then Congress said, “How does the watchman do his job
without instruction?”
So they created a planning department and hired two people,
one person to write the instructions for $22,000.00, and one
person to do time studies for an additional $22,000.00 per year.
Then Congress said, “How will we know the night watchman is
doing the tasks correctly?”
So they created a Quality Control department and hired two
people. One to do the studies for $31,000.00 and one to
write the reports for an additional $31,000.00 per year.
Then Congress said, “How are these people going to get paid?”
So they created the following positions, a time keeper for
$35,000.00 annual salary, and a payroll officer for an
additional $35,000.00, then hired two people.
Then Congress said, “Who will be accountable for all of
these people?”
So they created an administrative section and hired three
people, an Administrative Officer at $155,000.00 per year,
Assistant Administrative Officer $125,000.00, and a Legal
Secretary for an additional $100,000.00 per year.
Then Congress said, “We have had this operating for one year
with a budget cost of $574,000.00 and we are $18,000 over
budget. We must cutback overall cost.”
So they laid off the night watchman!

French rower finishes ‘record-breaking’ solo Pacific crossing: team

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - French rower Emmanuel Coindre ended a landmark 129-day solo voyage across the Pacific Ocean between Japan and the United States, setting a new record, according to his team.

Annnnnnd:

His reported feat comes 14 years after fellow Frenchman Gerard D’Aboville became the first person to row across the Pacific, rowing from Choshi, Japan, to Ilwaco in Washington state in 134 days.

It would seem that the French have this market cornered, wouldn’t it?

Could these folks actually be taking part in a secret military experiment on behalf of the French Navy, who may have decided that they needed a second option in their arsenal of combat tactics?

I mean, so far, the only tried and true tactic in the French military strategy manual, which of course includes their navy, has been the Surrender Option, usually the wisest course for implementing the saving of their skins, so perhaps now they’re experimenting with a back-up plan, that of a Retreat Option, in which case these personnel seem to be succeeding in their quest:

They’re discovering doable ways by which the French Navy can escape the necessity of surrender, by bravely beating feet across the sea, away from the looming menace of any violent confrontations.

Go, France!

And keep on going..

Some funny stuff to get our Wednesday off to a cheerful start includes the great fisking of one of Bob Herbert’s uniformly inane, too liberal to be believed NYT columns at Vince Aut Morire  and gua-run-teed lotta laughs in a lookalikes gallery at Cosmic Tribune, hat tip there to Sister Toldjah

Enjoy!

In today’s Jewish World Review, John Stossel has an amusing commentary on the grim realities of food labelling.

None of the food companies that used the deceptive labels would talk to me about this, which is too bad because I’d love to know how an olive company came up with 1.5 olives as its serving size. A jar of smaller olives, which lists 14 as a serving, seems a lot more honest. Who would ever eat 1.5 olives? The folks we talked to at the mall wouldn’t. “What, are you going to throw away half of it?” one woman asked.

Read the column here.

James Lileks has this account of John Bolton’s first day on the job.

Now that John Bolton has been installed as United Nations ambassador — by the time-honored recess appointment or the power-crazed overreach of King Emperor Bush Fuhrer, depending on your point of view — one can only wonder how he’ll do. Here’s a hypothetical workday. (Note that he’s made it out of Washington without some senators throwing themselves on the train tracks to keep him from leaving. Or, rather, having aides throw themselves on the tracks. Make that interns. Aides might say things under anesthesia.) Anyway. The limo pulls up to the glistening U.N. building at 7:59 a.m….

You know, when I read these comic sketches, especially by those with the savvy of Lileks, I can actually picture them as possible reality. I mean, after what we’ve seen of totally out-of-the-park statements by liberal politicians, Congressional propositions from the left and the reaching of the Mainstream Media in their continually weakening endeavors to undermine American patriotism, values, religious beliefs and our very survival, it’s unfortunately very difficult not to be able to picture these comic applications as possibilities.

Noon — Bolton presents his credentials to Kofi Annan, who is sweating and nervous. The lunch is amiable until Bolton, his hand still aching from a vigorous game of handball, makes a fist and cracks his knuckles, whereupon Annan takes a stack of papers from his desk, stammers that it has all the details on the oil-for-food scandal, and begs not to be put in a cell next to his son. “He snores,” Annan begs.

Check it out.

4:07 — At the cafeteria, Bolton gets a doughnut and a cup of coffee; the cashier informs him she’ll put it on the U.S. tab. Bolton insists on paying himself; she shrugs and asks for $428.26.