A Super Controversy

This blog has always tried to tackle the controversial topics of the day. Today is no exception, despite how much I wanted to pass on the "Deflategate" saga of New England Patriots. I even considered punting and running a "Best of " Humor Me or even handing off and allow my trusted assistant and Vice President of Humor Me Inc, Gracie Manis to write this week's blog. However since Gracie is a cat and technically does not know how to read, write, or type, I called an audible.

It is imperative for this blog to comment on "Deflategate" because it involves the most important subject in the history of mankind: The Big Game. (This blog is not a sponsor of The Super Bowl and therefore cannot use the words "The Super Bowl" unless I want to have the blog shut down by "The Super Bowl". Please do not tell "The Super Bowl" that I used the words "The Super Bowl" in a post about "The Super Bowl". Thank you.)

This is the story. In a pro football game, there are twenty four (24) different footballs used. The home team provides twelve (12) and the visiting team provides twelve (12). The footballs must all weigh 12.5 pounds per square inch (psi).  Eleven (11) of the footballs provided by the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis-But-Still-Baltimore-Colts-To-Me were under the league requirement of 12.5 psi. A ball that weighs under 12.5 psi is supposedly easier to grip by the quarterback and easier to catch by a receiver.

This is what we are interested about in America today. Air pressure.

I've wondered what has been "driving this story" as we people in the media (even those that wear sweatpants while they write with their cat, er, Vice President, in their laps) say.  I've come up with a few reasons for the constant attention.

One and to deal with the biggest elephant in the room, we are a country of twelve year olds.  The word "balls" is a slang term for testicles/gonads and we laugh at anyone who says it.  I have a friend that was on an intramural football team in college called "The Nads". Their cheer: Gooooooooo Nads! The story always cracks me up.

It is the same with this story. Everybody on television is talking about "balls" and soon you see everyone beginning to get a little smirk on their faces. Even the Vice President of The United States:

I don't know whether to be happy that we're not all so uptight or worried that we have to ask the Vice President of The United States about under inflated footballs.

I think the biggest driver of this story is that everyone hates The New England Patriots and especially Coach Bill Belichick and Quarterback Tom Brady.

There are basically two opinions about Bill Belichick. One: he is an amoral pirate who is only interested in winning football games and would run over his own grandmother if it meant he would win the game. Two: he is a total jerk in a hoodie sweatshirt. He is one of those humorless adults that only thinks about one topic and unfortunately for the rest of us, he is a genius about that topic.

The thought that Belichick would try to bend the rules is not something that is out of the question. He videotaped the Jets in 2007 trying to figure out their defensive signals in something called "Spygate". He was caught and it cost The Patriots some draft picks and a fine.

You know what happens when you get caught: no matter how many times you apologize, people are not going to believe anything you say. That's were Belichick is now.  Since it doesn't involve wins and losses, I'm not sure he cares.

Tom Brady is another issue. I'm secure enough in my masculinity to say he is a good looking young man. I wished I looked like Tom Brady when I was a young man. I wished I looked like Tom Brady now. My wife says so too. (Wait a second...)

Besides having three Big Game rings and playing in two others, Brady was a player, if you know what I mean. While he was "dating" one Super Model (and making her pregnant) he began dating another Super Model, which puts him in The Horn Dog Hall of Fame. A man that cheats on a Super Model with another Super Model is a man who apparently thinks these quaint little things called "morals" are actually malleable and you could see him bending the rules to make it to The Big Game because he's not getting any younger.

Belichick and Brady held a joint new conference. Belichick, of course, threw Brady under the bus, because maybe he was jealous that he didn't think of deflating the balls first. Brady, for the first time in his life, just seemed like another dumb jock.

However, just because you are an amoral pirate and/or a guy that was a cheater on a Super Model with another Super Model doesn't mean you actually did anything wrong. This time.

Robert B.Charles, a former assistant Secretary of State has published an article showing that the deflated balls were an act of physics and not an act of malice aforethought.  You can read it here.http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2015/01/24/physics_clears_patriots_really_98133.html

Okay Bill and Tom, if you say you didn't do anything wrong, I believe you. But, I've got my eye on you.

So Much For Satire

Like most hard hitting socially relevant satirists, I have refrained from commenting about Islamic extremism because I am very attached to my head and would like to ensure that it stays on my neck.

Therefore, I choose to mock, make fun, sneer, taunt, jab, put down and generally deride any group whose response would be a sharply written letter rather than a bomb. The fact that these groups tend to be middle class, Protestant and white just happens to be a coincidence.

However, the attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was a game changer. Even us in the humor world have to acknowledge that the people killing other people due to cartoons are not Methodists or even Southern Baptists, but rather, radical Islamic extremists. 

First, a little English lesson. When someone says "radical Islamic extremists" that are not saying "all follwers of Islam". In other words, it is really cheesing me off when someone says the Charlie Hebdo attack was the work of radical Islamic extremists but not all followers of Islam are radical. Um, duh, that's why we add "radical" and "extremists" to the word "Islamic".

No wonder they are not scared of us. We don't even understand the language we speak.

Last Sunday, The New York Times reported "More than a million people joined over 40 presidents and prime ministers on the streets of Paris on Sunday in the most striking show of solidarity in the West against the threat of Islamic extremism since the Sept. 11 attacks". You might have seen it on television.

The report lists "world leaders — including President François Hollande of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain — joined the march in a solemn line."

It is funny. One country's leader is not listed because he was not there.

Okay, you can make an argument that there are security concerns wherever the President of the United States goes and he just can't flit off to Paris like he can Five Guys Burgers. But he has other people he can send like, oh, say, a Vice President who would have loved the attention. Or a Secretary of State who fancies himself as French so much you almost are surprised that he's not wearing a black turtle neck sweater and a beret.

He could have sent Attorney General Holder who was already in Paris. I don't know, maybe Attorney General Holder was waiting to see what Al Sharpton had to say about the attacks.

This is how big of mistake not sending the President or a major senior official in the administration to the Paris March was:  The White House admitted they were wrong.

I was trying to think of another time when a major world leader seemed so feckless on the world stage. For some reason, Neville Chamberlain comes to mind.  It was just surreal to see the United States so disengaged from such a major event.

You Might Need To Google This, Kids

The President seemed more passionate about one of his faculty lounge buddies getting hassled by THE MAN than he did about the attack of Charlie Hebdo. He is supposed be an expert on The Constitution and should feel strongly about freedom of speech and the press. But, he just seemed sort of miffed that it took attention away from his latest and greatest BIG IDEA: Free Community College.

Then we were treated to the spectacle of people saying Charlie Hebdo had it coming because they offended people.

As a matter of politeness and courtesy, of course people should refrain from making fun of people's deeply held religious beliefs. But, if they do, and this is important. you do not have the right to shoot them. I thought everybody knew this.

Over the past five years of Humor Me, occasionally I've heard negative comments. My favorite: "It was a very biased article". (It is a blog, skippy, not a term paper. It is supposed to be biased.) I've had a couple of people imply that I was a racist because I didn't support President Obama. And don't make a joke about anybody's favorite college football team. Trust me on this one.

Yet, I've never worried about the reaction to my blog. Maybe I should start.

The Best

The Marietta Daily Journal (Motto: It Comes Out Daily. In Marietta) recently in a supplement did a "Best of Cobb County". You know: "Best Pork Chop", "Best Place to Get A Slushie", etc, that type of article.

I would like to add a category: "Best Human Beings Ever To Step Foot In Cobb County". The winners would be my graduating class of 1977 at Wheeler High School.

It has been almost 40 years since I've graduated high school. Back in 1977, if you asked me what my life would be like in 2015, I probably would have said I would have a jet pack and be not nearly as sexy.

What 1977 Me Thought 2015 Me Would Look Like

Well, here it is 2015 and if you have an elastic definition of the word "sexy", I'm doing pretty good. However, still no jet pack.

My class was unique. It was really the first graduating class of the great migration. The migration of Northerners to Cobb County. I have always felt a lot of sympathy for those folks.

As I have mentioned before, I will always remember seeing a "new" girl being introduced to the class. Her name ended in a vowel. She was from Massachusetts and she spoke an entirely different language than we did. It was a form of English-an English that ignored the letter "r".

Oh, there were others. People who came from Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, and we always seemed to have a boat load of people from Ohio. They all seemed to be well-to-do and just a little bit better than us originals.

But actually, they were just kids and they were something that a lot of kids, even back in the good old days, were not:  they were nice.

I don't know if it was the water. I don't know if it was the planets all aligned and created an Age of Aquarius  in that zip code. I don't know if it was the parents. I knew someone the parents. Many of them were great. Many of them were nuts.

But the 70's are long gone. Joe Cocker died a couple of weeks ago. John Belushi, who did a spot on impression of him, died 32 years before.  East Cobb, while parts of it are still very tony and nice, the neighborhood Wheeler is in, is showing its age.

The other day, my wife and I met a guy I went to high school with for dinner. He was in town for a funeral, Another member of our class was there too.

I was sitting there thinking, "I'm finally sitting at the cool table".  My two classmates are doing well. One went to Duke. The other went to Georgia Tech. While little old me went to Kennesaw State.  But here's what was great. There was none of this "pretension" of "Oh, you went to that little school on I-75". Rather, it was acceptance of who I was and who I am.

As you might have guessed, I didn't have the greatest self image back in my high schools days. Back then, people really didn't care. I always thought, and I have the numbers to back this up, that I just wasn't good enough.

What I didn't know then is that all the kids felt this way, for some odd reason. We just had different ways of trying to cope with it. Some took drugs/booze. Some went sex crazy. Some turned to God. Some turned to trying to be the smartest student on earth. Some turned to making snide snarky remarks in the back of the class.

But now we are at the other end of life. And I look back and I realize I can't think of anyone I went to high school with that I don't like. They just are all great people. The best.

My classmates have encountered significant challenges. Their lives have not been "easy" by any stretch of the imagination. Their challenges were just different than mine. I am happy to report that if I had to grade their responses to their challenges, I would have given each one an "A". But, then again,  I am prejudice.

What Men Really Think

Do not let anyone tell you that the internet is not helpful. There is a website called What Do Men Really Think.com. This website states it offers "advice on love and attraction, dating and marriage".

The home page of this website is very instructive. It has several links which give important love, attraction, dating and marriage advice. Such as: "Top Ten Cute Nicknames Men Love".  One cute nickname is "Cuddle Cakes". I've been married for almost twenty nine years and I have no idea what that means. If my wife called me "Cuddle Cakes", I'd think she's making a crack about my weight.

I can verify that men do love cute nicknames. Which is better than the usual nicknames our loves call us like "Noisemaker", "Flush The Toilet, Why Don't You", "Limpy" and, of course, a name that rhymes with "Gas Pole".

Here was something I found interesting. They had a "tip" section for creating a nickname. That says more about the American educational system than any SAT score. It says, "You can make a nickname out of his name, but be careful as some guys might find it offending. For example, Miggy for Miguel and Jake, Jakey for Jacob and Dally for Dallas".  But the writer goes on to say this: "You can also consider a combination like 'Ally Bear' or 'Ally Poo' for Alex and 'Andy Roo' for Andrew." 

For the record, my closest, oldest friends call me "Poo" for "Ally Poo" which was given to me by my college roommate. It was an experimental time.

The problem with the nickname "Poo" is "Poo" is now a term for excrement. Girls, you might want to wait on nicknaming your boyfriend something that reminds others of feces until after you break up with him.

Inside The Male Brain

One link is titled "How To Know If A Man Is Checking You Out."  Again, don't mothers teach this to their daughters?

One tip: "He Stares At You". Great, this guy is either the love of your life or a psychotic axe murderer.

Another tip: "He Is In Awe Of You". The writer says, "Guys do get awe struck when they see a beautiful girl in their vicinity. It is quite common for them to gawk with an expression that says “wow”. It’s almost like he is in a trance, because as soon as you look at him directly he will snap out of it and almost look embarrassed. Most guys don’t have the ability to stay conscious when they are struck by the attractiveness of the opposite sex – so they just go blank for a while and stare like a sheep".

Just a word, ladies. The fellow described in the paragraph above may have a medical problem.

To make this article fun, I've added the letter "r" and the word "breasts" at the end of each tip. "He Stares At Your Breasts", "He Is In Awe Of Your Breasts", etc.

Hey, I'm just cutting to the chase ladies. I have been a man all of my life and that's about all men think about.

I am not exaggerating but men think on a constant basis about every women they have ever seen topless and this includes pictures in National Geographic.

Not all men are obsessed with breasts. We call these men "deceased".

Besides breasts is there anything else men think about? Why, yes, thanks for asking.

Men think about sports. A lot. They have very passionate feelings about sports. I once worked with two guys that got into a shouting match over the best defensive back in the NFL. It was during the off-season.

Men think about their job. Mainly how much they hate their job and wish there was some job out there where you could just sit around and do nothing. Like they did when they were teenagers and didn't have girls looking at the internet wondering what is on their minds.

Men think about traffic. I obsess over traffic and how I wish everyone would just stay home and let me drive.

They think about other men. They place other men into three categories: "I like him", "He's okay" and "I hate his guts".

That's about it. Just remember gals, you're not dealing with an highly evolved intelligent creature. You're dealing with a man. You may want to smack him in the nose with a newspaper.

 



 

2014: #It Could Have Been Worse

What can you say about the year of our Lord 2014?

The year started off with a "Polar Vortex" which means "cold weather" which apparently happens in "the winter". This cold weather led to a Snowpocalypse Event in the Atlanta area and caused the mother of all traffic jams. There are some people still in this traffic jam.

Your humble correspondent's commute from work, which is usually 20 minutes, took 9 hours. The need for voiding his bladder began 8 and half hours into this commute. When he finally made it home, he went to see the most important person in his life:  his toilet.

What the Polar Vortex proved was this: if ISIS ever gets an ice making machine, the Atlanta area is screwed.

Speaking of ISIS,  I don't ever remember hearing about this group of thugs in 2013. They spent much of 2014 cutting off people's heads which caused the Obama administration to leap into action after they read about it in the papers.

In 2014, we did hear a lot about people who are a definite threat to freedom: Florists who refuse business to Gay Weddings.  We also heard a lot about the Kardashians, who, in case you do not know, have big rear ends. Their step dad, Olympic great Bruce Jenner, is divorcing their mom and trying to become an ugly old woman.

In 2014, many famous people won awards but I can't remember who they were. I went to one movie at the theater this year: The Penguins of Madagascar. The only new song I remember liking the first time I heard it was "Sweet Amarillo" by Old Crow Medicine Show. The song was taken from a Bob Dylan outtake 42 years ago.

In 2014, I was very glad that I did not have a four year old girl or I would have watched Frozen a lot.

I am so glad I've never seen this

In 2014, The Republicans won the Senate, kept control of the House and won a majority of the statehouses. The President responded by basically flipping a bird and granting Amnesty to people who knowingly broke the law and/or don't even care that there is a law.  The basic rationale is: There are so many people "living in the shadows" (really?) that we just might as well make them legal to show them that we are not racists.

In 2014, the 2016 Presidential race became clearer when Jeb (Not Another) Bush has declared that he might/maybe/probably will run for the Republican nomination, if he feels okay about it. Right now he is leading in the polls, although polls right now should be called "Hey, have you heard of this guy?"

Look, sure we're brothers, but it is not like I see him that much

In 2014, Hillary Clinton became a grandmother and also wrote a book that nobody wanted to read.

Speaking of Frozen

In Sports, The Seattle Seahawks won The Super Bowl. Derek Jeter retired from The Yankees. The 2013 Heisman Trophy winner shoplifted some lobsters. Lebron James decided to move back to Cleveland, which has to be a first. Donald Sterling got into trouble for talking nasty to his hoochie girl.

The big medical news in 2014 was Ebola, which is either very, very very, very, very, very, very serious or nothing to worry about.

Two planes disappeared this year. Justin Bieber is still making news. An intruder runs across The White House front lawn and manages to get inside. The TV show "24" was shown in 13 hours.

In "They Mean Well" news, people in 2014 poured buckets of ice water on their heads in order to challenge other people to do the same OR to contribute to a charity to fight ALS.  How exactly this was suppose to cure ALS was not really explained, but hey, it is the thought that counts.

People went Hashtag crazy in 2014. In the old days (2007) the Hashtag (#) was called "the pound sign". Now all of us old people are going Hashtag crazy. Particularly on Facebook where a friend will post a picture of a yacht they just bought and post "The Lord provided us with the means to buy this luxurious yacht and we are going to sail around world making Jesus famous. #blessed". What this post really means is "God likes me better than you because I'm cool. #noteverybodycanbechosen"

In personal news, 2014 saw the son move back home, get a job, and become engaged. He is also buying his own gas and paying off his student loan, which means we must have done something right. #Blessed.

An Inconvenient Christmas

I can honestly say I have had some awful jobs in my life.

I had a temp job once. For an entire week, my job was to put twist ties in boxes of plastic garbage bags.  It is not as exciting as it sounds.

I was also a high school substitute teacher. Now that is a terrible job.

One, the teachers don't really have anything to do with you except when they need someone to babysit  substitute. Two, the kids think it is party time.

One time I was substituting in a class and I heard a girl exclaim, "EW GROSS!" A young man then raised his hand and said, "Mr. Manis, do you know what (the technical term for a particular sexual act which I am too chicken to write) is?"

For once, I said the right thing.  I said, "Yes, I know what it is, but it would be better for you to discuss this with your parents."  I should have been put into the Substitute Teachers Hall of Fame right then and there.

The last time I ever substituted, it was the last day for Seniors to attend class. I was subbing in a home room of Seniors, that were SO READY TO GET OUT OF HERE, MAN. One guy, in fact said that: "Man, I am so ready to get out of here."   I said something deep like, "Yeah".  He continued, "I failed four times".  I asked, "How old are you?"   He said, "Twenty-two".  I was twenty four.

The worst job I ever had was working in a convenience store at Christmas time. A lot of people in retail complain about working at Christmas time. I can assure you that working at Christmas time in a convenience store, particularly in a small town, is truly the pits.

One year, I drew the short straw and had to work the worst shift in the invention of work. The graveyard shift. 11:00pm Christmas Eve to 7:00am Christmas Day.

This is the shift that gets the REALLY last minute shoppers. Also, and this may come as a surprise, but  there are many who celebrate the birth of our Lord by getting drunk.

Around midnight,  a guy came in who was already three sheets in the wind. He placed his beer, (like he needed it) near the cash registrar, and began telling me and everyone who happened to be in the store, a long story, in graphic detail, about his love life. He was a local and his wife worked at the bank where I had an account and I saw her every Friday when I deposited my check   I could never look at the lady again.

At around 1:30, all of the customers were gone, except for one guy.  He was at the magazine rack

This little store did not sell magazines. It sold pornography. Some of the filthiest, nastiest publications ever printed. Playboy was probably the cleanest magazine we sold, aside from The Auto Trader. I can't remember all of the titles of the magazines, but one was called Boobs and Buns. It was a boutique publication for a niche audience. 

So there I was, at 1:30 on Christmas morning with a person with some obvious spiritual/psychological problems when this older man walked in.

You know the type of old man that thinks you need to hear what ever floats into his brain? Yup, that was this old guy. What he was doing out at 1:30 on a Christmas morning, I have no idea, although I have a strange feeling alcohol was somehow involved.

This guy talked and talked and talked. None of it raised above the level of inane. Soon, he showed me what he got for Christmas. It was a carton of cigarettes still wrapped in the Christmas wrapping paper. There was a problem. It wasn't his brand. He asked if he could exchange it.  I did, hoping/praying that he would go away. He did.

I looked at the clock. It was 3:30 in the morning. The guy was still at the magazine rack. He looked at his watch, said, "Oh", put down his porn and walked out the door. Time flies when you are looking at porn.

I thought about what a sorry Christmas I was having. Everybody else was asleep in their beds while I was with these two losers. Then I remembered why we were having a Christmas in the first place.

 

The World Premier of A New Christmas Song

Today's focus is on Christmas music. There are two types of Christmas music: The sacred and the secular.

Sacred Christmas music is what is sung in churches and is usually about the actual birth of Christ. However, some songs are kind of strange, like "Good King Wenceslas", which is not about Christ per se, but it does show a Good King motivated by his faith to help those less fortunate than himself on The Feast of Stephen, which we didn't celebrate in our house.

It is usually hard to mess up a Sacred Christmas song. Even Bob Dylan did okay on "The Little Drummer Boy".

I know, I know. There are two types of people in the world: People who think Bob Dylan is the greatest living songwriter/musician and those people who are not clinically insane.

Secular Christmas music is a mess, in my opinion.

In the past, I have criticized the secular Christmas songs because they usually fall into two categories: 1) Made up crap about Santa  or 2) Let's use Christmas to beg for sex.

I'm not against people having sex. I'm definitely pro-sex, ask my wife (especially on my birthday, yeah come on). But, it seems like there are a lot of songs that are begging people to have sex, or as we said in the 70's: "do it".

Like "Winter Wonderland". Honestly, find one mention of Christmas in that song. It doesn't even mention the month of December. "Winter Wonderland" could take place in Minneapolis in February for all we know.

Then there is all of that "conspire" by the fire nonsense.

I went to Wheeler High School in the mid-70's. The boys of Wheeler knew which girls would "conspire" and which girls would not "conspire".  It was a topic of constant conversation in December.

Friend: "Dude, I went to Janie's house and we conspired by the fire. Dude."

Me:  "Dude. How was it? Dude."

Friend: "Dude. It was awesome. Merry and bright. Dude."

Me: "Dude."

The Boys of Wheeler, 1975 (as we saw ourselves)

As the conversation shows, we knew what was going on in that Christmas song. By the way, what really happened most of the time was instead of actual 70's teenage sex, it was the guy and girl watching The Six Million Dollar Man with her parents.

But I'm not the kind of guy to just criticize. Nope, I'm going to try to come up with a solution. Particularly a solution that could make me a lot of money. So I decided to write my very own secular Christmas song.

This is problematic. For one, I have the musical ability of a cocker spaniel. Secondly, I couldn't think up any new crap about Santa Claus. He lives on Santa Claus Lane and he's coming to town. He sees you when you are sleeping and knows if your awake. He's our personal NSA.

I decided to write a country Secular Christmas song. I can just imagine Merle Haggard or Kenny Chesney singing this. (But not Florida-Georgia Line. I have my standards.) I have come up with the lyrics and I'm asking those of you out there in blog land to come up with the music. It is called I Didn't Get What I Wanted For Christmas.

I didn’t get what I wanted for Christmas,

Just a sorry silent night.

My comfort and joy

Ran off with the little drummer boy.

Santa, that just ain’t right.

I’ve been a good boy all year

You can tell by the presents I gave.

It just don’t make no sense:

I gave her gold, myrrh and frankincense

And I got Old Spice aftershave.

I didn’t get what I wanted for Christmas,

Just some sorry silver bells.

Frosty and Rudolph,

Said they’re taking the season off

And Santa might as well.

I’d wish me a Merry Christmas

And a Happy New Year.

But my stocking's got a lump of coal

And it is too warm for snow

And I drunk up all of my holiday cheer.

I didn’t get what I wanted for Christmas

Just a sorry silent night.

O little town of Bethlehem,

What is wrong with them?

Santa, it just ain’t right.


I know that brought a tear to your eye. Now if you can write some music to it, maybe it can bring a dollar to both of our pockets. Dude.