This Week's Picks: Week One

 

 

Here we are again at the start of another College Football Season.  Things are different this year.

For one thing, there are 18 teams in the Big Ten, meaning there are 8 teams over 10 if my math skills honed at Cobb County Public Schools are good.

The Big Ten was a Midwestern Conference. Now, it has schools from the West Coast—the big ones, the big whoop-de-do schools like Oregon and USC all the way to East Coast (Rutgers).

Nobody is saying it, but it will cost a lot of money to travel in this conference.

Plus, can you see Indiana University ever winning the Big 10?  How about Wisconsin?  Minnesota?

The SEC is a little better. They are adding Oklahoma and Texas, which makes sense, considering they are basically Southern states.

But still, there are 16 teams in the SEC. How much money do you want to bet that Vanderbilt never wins a conference game?

There's a twelve-team playoff that you need a slide rule to figure out. This ensures we won't hear bellyaching from teams like Florida State. For that, we give praise.

This Week's Picks!

 

Jawja vs. Klemsome: Last year, Georgia lost its conference championship to Alabama and was kicked out of the playoffs. Georgia then beat the snot out of Florida State in the Orange Bowl. Clemson had an off year, for them.   I think UGA will win. UGA wins.

 

Bumbles vs Down Town Connector University. Speaking of slide rules, The Bees were buzzing last week in Ireland when they beat FSU which makes it the second Georgia school to humiliate FSU in a year.   Tech looks better than they have in years. They should have little problem with Georgia State. Tech wins.

The Lions of Nittany vs Almost Heaven? West Virginia? Gee, every year someone says West Virginia is going to be all that and a bottle of Mountain Dew. Then they lose. They will this time.  Penn State wins.

Our Lady vs The Ags:  Oh Lord, Notre Dame is the best team until the season starts.  Texas A&M will give them a fight, but Notre Dame has the luck of the Irish, Rudy, The Gipper and all that.  Notre Dame wins.

The State of North Dakota vs Prime:  North Dakota State is an excellent FCS school that should be in the FBS. Colorado gets attention because their coach has a gigantic personality and is a good copy. Colorado wins and Prime picks up three new endorsements.

Jawja Souhurn vs Boyzee State: Georgia Southern (school song: "Pop A Top, Again") welcomes Boise State to Pat Paulson Stadium and the land of the unforgiving gnats.  It is a big-time school.  What the hey, Georgia Southern wins. 

 

My Beloved Owls vs. The Alamo: The real big news is that Kennesaw State starts playing in the FBS, in Conference USA, on Saturday against the University of Texas at San Antonio.  UTSA is a pretty big school and was very good last year. Their most famous alumnus is Santa Anna, the Christmas rapper. The Owls are big underdogs in this one. I'm listening to my heart on this one: Owls win.

 

 

65 And Still Alive

 

Last week, I turned 65 years old.

I remember when that was old. When my parents turned 65, they told of days of yore when they would have to use the outhouse.

They also spoke about the days when they would walk to school uphill, both ways, even in the snow. And they loved it! It was much better than having to ride in a so-called school bus. But who doesn't love a school bus?

I have relayed my tale of woe to my son about how we would have to get up from our seats to "change" the channel when we wanted to watch something else.

We had three main channels in Atlanta. 2 (NBC), 5 (CBS),  and 11 (NBC).  If President Johnson decided to give an address to the nation, you had to forget about "Flipper" that night.

"Flipper" was a TV show about these kids in Florida (no Mom) and they had a "pet" dolphin named Flipper because, really, what else are you going to name a dolphin? Flipper got the kids out of all sorts of trouble because, follow closely, Flipper was "faster than lightning".

Life was tough back then.

One thing the show "Mad Men" got right was how ubiquitous smoking was back then.  Everybody smoked when I was a kid, even the kids. 

Everybody had their own "brand" of cigarettes.

I remember Old Man Manis smoking Winstons because they tasted good like a cigarette should. At least, I think it was Winstons. It may have been Pall Malls.  All of the cigarettes brands sort of blend in together. Except for Virginia Slims, which was marketed for women. Steve Martin said they had breasts.

My mom smoked whatever was on sale or those with coupons on the back that you could save and turn in for a prize when you had a certain amount.  I know we redeemed the coupons a couple of times, but I don't remember the item being such a big deal that if Mom had given up cigarettes for a couple of months, she could have bought it at K-Mart. 

Ah yes, K-Mart.  Or as my Aunt Lizabeth called it, "K-Marks".

K-Mark was the Wal-Mart before Wal-Mart.  It was a big deal in Marietta, across the street from the structure that put us on the map: The Big Chicken.

The Grand Opening of K-Mart was a big deal. They had Buck Owens perform. Jayne Mansfield was there, too.  

Mom was not a fan of Jayne's and said Jayne was drunk during her appearance.  I don't know how she could tell because we were standing somewhere in Kennesaw for this grand opening. But when your mom tells you someone was drunk, buddy, you can take that to the bank. 

We all rode in cars that had few, if any, seat belts. But the cars were cool back then.

My cousin had a Corvette.  It was really a snazzy car, particularly for a family that was not into being snazzy.

His twin sisters shared a Corvair, which they got as a graduation present.  Ralph Nader said the Corvair was unsafe at any speed.  It wasn't a pretty car, but they survived having a Corvair.

We were Plymouth people. One year, Old Man Manis brought home a Plymouth Fury, which was as big as the state of Rhode Island. It was a massive car that later both my brother and I drove. 

Mom's car was a Plymouth Valiant with a push-button transmission.  Never let it be said we didn't live in the future.  By the way, this was the car Mom ran over my brother's cat with that honestly was more gruesome than the Mason murders. 

When you reach 65, you begin to look back and feel grateful.  For all of their imperfections and quirks, my parents did the best they could with what they had.  We had meals every day, a place to stay and sleep, and we never had to worry about whether someone would come home.

We didn't worry about crime that much. We rode our bicycles without helmets. As a seven-year-old, I would walk by myself to a convenience store a mile away to get a treat, even though the house was full of treats.

I've survived Atlanta traffic, high school, college, work, play, and various home projects where I didn't know what I was doing.

I've been fortunate to have an amazing wife. We have a great kid, who in turn gave us probably the best baby ever born on earth. 

I was born in the greatest country in the history of man, at the greatest time, with the greatest music and entertainment.  I have no complaints. 

Now, if those kids would just get off my lawn.

 

Weird

 

When I started "blogging" (or whatever you call this), I had to come up with a name for the blog.

My first attempt was to name it "Alan's Alley" since that was the name of a weekly sketch on The Fred Allen Show. It was a radio show way before my time. (Before some smarty boots mentions it, "Allen's Alley," featured a character named "Senator Claghorn," who eventually became the basis for "Foghorn Leghorn" in the Warner Brothers cartoons. Never say this blog is not educational.)

That didn't work out, so I considered some other names before settling on Humor Me. One name was "Wierd."

You may notice this is a misspelling of the word "weird."  The kids at Wheeler could not spell the word weird because they took the "i before e except after c" very seriously.

For some reason, this word appears frequently in my yearbook inscriptions, as in "Alan, you are one weird guy" or something similar. Actually, it read: "Alan, you are one wierd guy."  As Five For Fighting said, "it's not easy to be me."

 
I decided against it because nobody would get the joke except my mid-70s Wheeler classmates, who would argue with me that they spelled the word correctly and that I was a "wierd guy."

Since we are in the "throw anything against the wall and see if it sticks" portion of the election season, it appears the Democrats have found a new word to describe Donald Trump and company.

Weird.

Out with the "existential threat to Democracy," and in with "weird."  Trump's weird. Vance is weird. Six out of the nine Supreme Court justices are weird.  Ninety-nine percent of the people who vote for the Republicans are weird, and they must be made fun of at times.

Over the past ten years, I have come to realize that Trump has acted like Trump for decades if not centuries. The way he acts in 2024 is the way he acted in 2014, 2004, 1994, et al.  When he was bringing money into NBC for his goofy game show, nobody said he was weird.  When he was sending money to Democratic Senate candidates, nobody said he was weird.

 Now, all of a sudden, Trump is weird. He is strange, man, and not in a good way.

JD Vance has also been tagged as weird. His statement about "childless cat ladies " has caused such a stir that both Chelsea Handler and Jennifer Aniston felt compelled to comment on it.  So you know it was serious. 

For the record, Vance said in 2021, in an interview with Tucker Carlson (oh heavens!), that the country was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

It was a hyperbolic, sarcastic remark, but it didn't say anything about couples unable to have children and being against IVF.  It was cutting, to be sure, but I'm not sure it was weird. 

He didn't say all childless cat ladies are miserable-just this bunch.

But, if people want to get up in arms about it, well, that's politics. Welcome to the NFL, JD.

What was weird about JD's introduction to National politics was a thread about Vance being sexually attracted to couches.

I saw dozens of Vance couch jokes on X and I wondered where in the world it came from.  Someone said it was in his book Hillbilly Elegy.

Well, I read Hillbilly Elegy and I don't remember him expressing interest in couches.  I think I would.

Business Insider tracked down the creator of the Vance and Couches joke.  It was some guy on X that wrote a joke about Vance. That's it. 

"Perhaps, Rick (the X poster) said, whether Vance actually had carnal knowledge of one or more couches is immaterial. Rick suggested Vance making love to a couch may best be viewed as what Werner Herzog has described as the  "ecstatic truth" — in Herzog's words, "a kind of truth that is the enemy of the merely factual," encompassing falsehoods that "make some essence of the man visible."*

In the past eight years, people have correctly noted that Trump has told some tall tales, to put it nicely. When considering this, it is best to acknowledge that if Trump actually lied is immaterial. It is best served by thinking it as "ecstatic truth" because he was trying to make the essence of his opponents visible**.

As for his decision to include a fake citation (Rick listed page numbers from the book) in a post about a man having sex with a couch, Rick claims highbrow inspiration. "Not to  egghead it up," he said, but he was an English major "and I do have  certain literary tastes." Listing page numbers was "in the vein of"  authors Jorge Luis Borges and John Fowles, who used excerpts and citations, real and invented, to lend an air of authenticity to their  fiction. "It's something I've found funny my entire life," he said."***

I'm all in favor of political humor and appreciate a lot of it. I used to read National Lampoon when I was a kid and regularly come across pictures like this:

This was tasteless and not very funny. But, there was truth in it and the truth was the main reason Edward Kennedy never became President. ****

The joke about JD Vance is tasteless and not very funny either. The problem is, at least from a humor stand point, is there is no essence of truth about it.   The joke just says, "I don't like JD Vance because he's from the opposite party so let's post something distasteful and make him deny it. Ha. Ha."

If this is what this election cycle will be like, we're in for a bumpy ride. 

Footnotes:

*Business Insider, July 30, 2024

** That's a joke son, a joke. 

***Business Insider, July 30,2024

**** The cartoon is titled "The Delegate From Chappaquiddick"

Goodbye, Joe

 

 

Last week, I said, "As of today, right now, at this moment, it sounds like Biden, could possibly, maybe, perhaps stay in the race."  

Of course, the next day, Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the race in a letter posted on Twitter, now known as X (or on X, which used to be known as Twitter).  

I'd like to know if Dave Barry ever has days like this.

He didn't really explain why he was withdrawing. He couldn't say, "All my so-called friends don't think I can win. Listen, pal, I could win in a landslide if I wanted."  That would have been rude to Nancy, Chuck, and the Obamas.

Then he endorsed Vice President Harris, which spared us from the "mini-primary," that probably would have ended up nominating George Clooney.

Vice President Harris, who was known simply as Vice President Harris just a couple of weeks ago, has re-energized the Democratic Party's base, which is almost exclusively on X (or Twitter).

She is seen as a combination of John Kennedy, Barack Obama, and George Clooney.

Well, maybe.

Harris is having a honeymoon, no doubt brought on by relief that they no longer have to defend President MaGoo.

Her next big test is picking a running mate, which should be easy.

Harris has to pick Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania because she has to win Pennsylvania to win the election.

She might pick Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, who is a former astronaut and the husband of Gabby Giffords, who survived a shooting.

He might bring Arizona, but I wonder if he can bring in Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania to the fold. He might, but what do I know?  I couldn't see Biden withdrawing a month ahead of the Democratic Party convention. 

After hiding for a couple of days, Biden appeared before the nation to explain his withdrawal from the race.

Apparently, Biden was cruising to re-election when he realized he could just hand off to a new generation to defeat The Existential Threat To Democracy and let the new generation defeat The Existential Threat to Democracy.

Why didn't he think of that before?

He said he thought he deserved re-election, but gee, that new generation needs to have their turn at bat. So, out of the kindness of his heart, he withdrew and hoped everybody remembered what a swell President he was and forget about having to pay $7.00 for a family bag-sized of potato chips. 

There was nothing in his speech about his age or health. He was just the type of guy to give up the Presidency because it was the right thing to do, whatever it was.

Joe is going to focus his attention on his remaining months as President, trying to figure out a way to pardon his son, who, let's face it, is kind of sketchy.

He's going to go back to Delaware, eat ice cream, take a nap, and turn in around 9:00, so not much will charge.

The guy who has been on the national scene since I was in eighth grade at East Cobb Junior High is leaving the stage.

 Goodbye, Joe, we really knew ye. 

 

 

That Was The Week That Was

 

A little inside baseball.  I try, really try, to write three Humor Me blog posts a month.

Believe it or not, it can be a little tricky.

First of all, I have a "job" that takes up a lot of my time, and a lot of it is spent typing. Frankly, sometimes I'm just "too pooped to pop" as my mom would say and the thought of sitting behind another computer banging out a post is too much.

Then, I have something called "a life." I have a wife, a son, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. My wife wants to see our grandson as much as possible, so we have to travel from the palatial Manis Manor in Cobb County to my son's house in the wilds of Paulding County.

We also go to church, the gym, and the grocery store.

You get the picture. Unlike talented writers, I have to think about a topic before I write about it. In addition, my actual writing is hindered by my general lack of knowledge of grammar and my problems with spelling.  Pro tip: if you take up writing as a hobby, learn how to spell. 

Since my blog is not about one specific thing, I must search for topics.  Last week was the week I had too many things to do, so I didn't write. Of course, that is when some kid tried to kill Donald Trump by blowing his head off but instead almost blew off his right ear. 

I remember where I was when I first heard the news: I was in the Chick-fil-A drive-through. I know, big surprise.

My wife and I watched the coverage of the assassination attempt on television.

Trump was talking in that way he talks. He grabs at his ear. The Secret Service grabs him. He pumps his fist and is rushed to his car. This scene was replayed over and over again.  At least with the Kennedy Assassination, it took several years for the Zapruder film to be shown. 

For someone my age, it was just Deja Vu all over again.  Kennedy, King, Kennedy, Wallace, Ford (twice in one month), and Reagan.   

Of course, there is a long string of mistakes and failures.  The Head of The Secret Service said, with a straight face, that the roof where the shooter had a clear sight line of Trump, only a football field and a half away, was slightly sloped and presented a safety concern for the agents, who, you know, are supposed to jump in front of bullets. So, we couldn't be expected them to be actually on the building like the shooter.

First, it is "pitch" instead of slope when discussing a roof. Second, the shooter made it up there with no problem.  Finally, when the shooter was killed, he didn't fall off the roof.

If you are going to say, "The buck stops with me," like you are some latter-day Harry Truman, you cannot offer up a lame, mealy-mouth excuse for what was clearly a mistake.

Of course, the internet speculated that it was "staged" because, for all its usefulness, the internet is also the place where stupid people hang out.

My favorite debate on X (Twitter) was about Trump's ear bandage.  You would be amazed on how many ear bandage experts there are on X. 

The attempted assassination eclipsed the latest Media game of trying to run President Biden out of the race because we have just learned he is old.

Look, not all 80-year-olds are alike. Mick Jagger can still strut around and sing like he did when he was 30. Biden, on the other hand, is looking more and more like Mr. Burns.  I half way expect him to end a speech by say, "Smithers, release the hounds!"

He commented three times on the attempt on Trump's life. All three times, he seemed to imply that maybe Trump wasn't such an existential threat to all that is kind and good after all, and everybody should cool it.

He spent the rest of the week shouting about what a great president he was and that he was not going anywhere.

Then he got Covid, and it sounded like all the Big Wig Democrats were finally ready to join in one big chorus: Joe Must Go (If he feels like it, which he really should, if he wants). They even came up with a plan in which they would have a mini-primary system in which everybody could participate and select a candidate that would energize the party.

As of today, right now, at this moment, it sounds like Biden, could possibly, maybe, perhaps stay in the race.

The Republican Convention was this week. Trump announced his new VEEP pick: JD Vance of Ohio, who has been a Senator for a couple of weeks.

Vance wrote the book Hillbilly Elegy, which is a good book.  He was a big-time Never Trumper in 2016, but he's walked the aisle and is now a Trumpster like no other.  Trump loves him some people that grovel.

He brings some intellectual heft to the ticket. He also has a PWT background. It is refreshing to have a Republican who wasn't on the Day School Polo team in eighth grade.

The Convention went on as planned, and it seems that the Republicans were unified.  They let some regular people speak, and everything was honky-dory for the GOP for the first time in a very long time.

 Then Trump spoke.

He spoke for 96 minutes. For the first 30 minutes, he was the human all his children and grandchildren said he was. For the remaining 66 minutes, he was cranking out the greatest hits.

At least it answered the question of whether the assassination attempt changed Trump.  Answer: No.

That's a lot for one week. I'm too pooped to pop. 

President Gaslight

 "Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

As you all know, I majored in college in history (like a doofus). But you don't need to be a history major to understand that President Biden put in the worst debate performance by anyone in a Presidential debate. Ever.

That includes Ford (liberating Poland), Carter (discussing "new-clear" war with his daughter), Dukakis (answering a question about his wife being raped and murder while looking like he was doing a Sodoku), and Bush I (looking at his watch)

I don't think you can minimize how awful Biden looked, acted, or spoke in his debate with Former President Orange Dictator.

It was beyond description.  Biden's performance was a dumpster fire wrapped in a train wreck during a massive poop storm.

If Trump is such a "threat to Democracy" that Democrats have been saying, for the good of the party, country, and world, President Biden should withdraw from the race and allow his party, the party he loves so much, to nominate someone else. 

Even Vice President Harris.

Though I disagree with Harris about 99.9% of the time, I'm pretty sure she knows what day it is. I think.

But, you know, history has shown that it is hard to get somebody to bow out when they get to that level.

In 1944, President Roosevelt looked sick. Because he was! He was in very ill health. But he thought he was the indispensable man. He "agreed" to be nominated and won reelection running against Tom Dewey, the last Republican with a mustache.

He served 82 days of his term before dying in office.  He was 63 years old. 18 years younger than Biden is now.

After Nixon released the "transcripts"  of his secretly recorded tapes, it was obvious that he was going to have to go. But he hung on as long as he could. Finally, Barry Goldwater and a couple of others had to walk into the Oval Office and get Nixon to scat.

But over the last 30 years, Presidents have hung tough.  I still don't know how Clinton made it after he wagged that crooked finger at us and said he didn't have sex with that woman. In case you forgot, Clinton did have some form of sex with that woman, although I'm not sure Clinton counted it as sex.

Who can forget all of the issues Trump had while he was President?  He just hung tough and survived two impeachments.

This time, it is a little different. It is about basic honesty.

The White House, The Democratic Party, and the mainstream media have not been honest with us about Biden. What they have been doing is gaslighting us.

According to the interwebs, "Gaslighting is the action of repetitively (and often brazenly) lying to someone to manipulate."

The White House, The Democratic Party, and the mainstream media have acted like there was nothing wrong with Biden, and there is something wrong with you if you think the President is infirm.

What am I? A doctor?  No, I'm not. I'm not able to make a medical diagnosis of Alzheimer's or dementia.  However, I will note that it didn't prevent the Twitter-verse from diagnosing Trump as a narcissist.

But I have known elderly people, and I'm getting there myself.  The presidency is a tough job, and it requires firing on all cylinders.

Can anyone honestly, in your heart of hearts, say Biden's firing on all cylinders?

He is not.

Anything is possible in politics and Biden might be able to win. But it doesn't look like it.

 

Prop Bets For The Debate

 

 

A post about Prop Bets from a Baptist may sound a bit odd—almost as odd as "Baptist Sipping Whiskey" or a calendar featuring "The Sexy Women of The WMU".

First, I need to define a Prop Bet. A Prop Bet is a bet which "may or may not have a direct bearing on the final score."  It happens all the time in the betting world, especially for a big game like the Super Bowl, where people bet who wins the coin toss and/or how many times Taylor Swift is mentioned in the broadcast. (In the last Super Bowl, if you bet Taylor Swift was mentioned 480 times in the broadcast,  you won.)

There will be a Presidential debate between President Magoo and ex-President Current Felon Orange, the apparent nominees of the major parties.

This is highly unusual because 1) It is in the middle of the summer, and 2) the parties still need to nominate them officially. 

I think this is because, deep down, both Democrats and Republicans want this election to be over as quickly as possible. Plus, both parties hate us.

This debate, down the street from me in Atlanta, has the political world in a tizzy because the political world thinks debates help decide elections, except when they don't help decide elections

I'm not sure how many people will watch this debate. There's always baseball, and Netflix has a seven-part documentary on The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. Of course, I would never watch a documentary on beautiful young women hopping around in hot pants when I could watch two 80-year-men yell at each other.

But I have listed several prop bets if you want to make a little scratch on the side. Remember, this is for simple entertainment purposes only and if you have a gambling problem please seek immediate attention before College Football season starts and you lose a lot of dough.

How many times will Trump say "rigged"?

How many minutes into the debate before Biden wanders off stage?

How many times does Trump keep talking after they turn his microphone off?

How many times does Biden use the word "Democracy"?

How many times will the CNN panel of Jake Tapper and Dan Bash fact-check Donald Trump?  "No, Mr.Trump, this sky is not the most amazing blue you've ever seen in your life."

How many times will Trump mention the border?

How many times will Biden refer to Trump as a felon?

How many times will the CNN panel of Jake Tapper and Dana Bash fact-check Joe Biden.  I already know this one. The answer is ZERO. Even if Biden starts in on one of his patented tall tales like he was once the starting quarterback of the Green Bay Packers and/or that he co-wrote Dr Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech.

How many times will Trump say something that is rude, crude, and socially unacceptable?

How many times will Biden claim the economy is "not really that bad"?

How many times will Trump say "Drill, Baby, Drill"?

How many times in the debate will Biden challenge Trump to a wrestling match?

How many times will Trump refer to illegal immigrants as vermin and how many times will Biden refer to them as "friends we haven't met yet"?

How many questions from the CNN panel of  Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will be about the growing budget deficit and debt?  (Answer: Zero)

Will both men be asked about Catlin Clark and the WNBA?

How many times will Trump refer to the rioters of January 6th as patriots, "including the guy who pooped on the floor" and promises to pardon them, but he hasn't decided on the guy who pooped on the floor because, "even I would say that was kind of gross". 

How will both men answer the question "the person they most admire"?  (Trump: "Me".  Biden: "My dad because he would always say, 'Joey, don't worry about people who dress up in animal costumes and make out. That's another subgroup that you can exploit for your own electoral  advantage'. He was always saying things like that back in the days when they had bumble bees on quarters and you could take a dollar and tell the guy at the cash registrar that you wanted 'four bees, please' because I was a cool guy back then and all the chicks loved me.  Then I would tell that guy to look out for Corn Pop because he was a bad dude."