POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR 

Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric and whimsical observations about the absurdities of contemporary life:

• Why are the "comedians" on cable TV's "Comedy Central" always dressed like the guy who empties your septic tank?
• It's getting harder and harder to find a good palm reader. (Hmm, I wonder if Consumer Reports has ever  done anything . . . .)
• Sudden thought: What if they found out that an endangered animal was eating all the endangered plants?
• Book Title of the Week:  "From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time."
• Memo to Oriental buffet restaurants that serve "pizza":  Stick with what you do best.  There's no Moo Goo Gai Pan at Pizza Hut!
• "Jimmy Fallon, meet Arsenio Hall."
• If vampires don't cast a reflection, how do they shave or do their hair and makeup?
• Fifth entry in the Wisconsin Town I Never Heard Of Until I Saw It Mentioned in a Newspaper Obituary sweepstakes: Breed, Wis. (R.I.P. Lois M. Scott, Green Bay Press-Gazette, July 23, 2010).  Previous entries:  Athelstane, Walhain, Duck Creek and Anston.
• Baseball should have a Hall of Moments for guys like John Paciorek.  He played just one game in the major leagues (Houston Colt 45s, 1963), but he went 3 for 3, scored 4 runs, drove in 3 runs and also walked twice.  (Other than that, as the late Hall of Fame broadcaster Jack Brickhouse would have said, he didn't do a thing!)
• (Why just a one-game career?  He had a bad back, but his day--literally--in the sun is the envy of all who never got even that far.  That is, the rest of us.)
• And always remember, sports fans:  Odds are, the star of today's game could well be the first-base coach of tomorrow.
• The Law of Unintended Consequences will never be repealed.
• Entertainers you probably thought were dead but were still (at this writing) with us:  Tony Martin, 97; Kay Starr, 87; Doris Day, 86; B.B. King, 84; Tony Bennett and Chuck Berry, 83; Patti Page, Andy Williams and Fats Domino, 82; and Vic Damone and Eddie Fisher, 81.
• SZSEZ advice: Never play poker with a man named Doc, never eat at a place called Mom's--and never go into a store called a Shoppe.
• Why the jobs picture is in the toilet:  CEOs see profits down 30 percent and the payroll-plus-benefits tab down 40 percent, and say, "Why hire?"  (Hey, you wouldn't hire, either, if the roles were reversed! But people always want to expect noble deeds from people that they would never perform themselves.)
• Life is getting too complicated, what with innumerable passwords and PINs (not to mention the number and price of ink cartridges our printers take . . . and take . . . and take.) 
• When was the last time you saw a pink bubblegum cigar?  (Probably about the last time you saw someone using a cigarette holder!)
• Kitti’s Hog-Nosed Bat, which lives only in Southeast Asia, is the smallest living mammal--less than three-centimeters long and under two grams.  (Kind of hard to work into a conversation, but there you have it--your Science Fact of the Day.) 
• Three things no one has ever had a craving for: Water chestnuts, bean sprouts and Worcestershire sauce.
• "You can have an opinion on the New York mosque, for or against. But there aren’t two sides to the question of whether Obama is a Muslim. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, 'Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.' ”--Maureen Dowd in The New York Times, Aug. 22, 2010
• Today's Latin lesson:  Vestri praecessi may discrepo. ("Your mileage may vary.")
• There will never be a Richard Belzer Lookalike Contest.