By Jim Szantor
Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric and whimsical observations about the absurdities of contemporary life
- Tennessee Williams and Tennessee Ernie Ford: Discuss!
- I wonder if an Oscar has ever won an Oscar? A Tony a Tony? An Emmy an Emmy? A Clio a Clio? (That's the award that recognizes innovation and creative excellence in advertising, design and communication, for all of you in the blogosphere who are unfamiliar with some of the least-publicized awards in our awards-crazed country.)
- jimjustsaying's Baseball Players Say the Funniest Things items of the month:
- "It was strange. The only words I saw in English were Sony and Mitsubishi."--Former major-league pitcher Bill Gullickson on visiting Japan.
- "Here is something I neglected to mention last night, and it bears repeating."--Former major-league outfielder-first baseman Ron Fairly.
- When you see a guy in cargo shorts and a bad comb-over and a woman in ill-fitting capris and too much makeup, you're looking at a match made in heaven. (Not an uncommon sight, either.)
- Redundancy Patrol: "Component parts." "Free gifts." "Foreign imports."
- Just landed my first screenwriting assignment: Working title: "My Skinny, Scrawny Anorexic Greek Wedding." (It's a comedy.)
- Seems like there's an app for everything these days--for everything you only do once in a while but few if any for what you do daily. Where, for instance, is the bedmaking app? The dishwashing app? The clothes-folding app? The tooth-flossing app? The world is waiting.
- jimjustsaying's Party Ice-Breaker of the Month: "Say [actual partygoer's name here], did you know that Los Angeles International Airport is a city within a city? At more than five square miles, is only slightly smaller than Beverly Hills? Has more than 50,000 badged employees who report to work there each day, many with direct access to the airfield?
- (By the way, LAX has its own SWAT team and employs roughly 500 sworn police officers, double the number of cops in the well-off city of Pasadena and more than the total number of state police in all of Rhode Island.)
- . . . but only one bathroom. (Just kidding. Just kidding.)
- jimjustsaying's Quotes of the Month:
- "Despite the forecast, live like it’s spring."--Designer Lilly Pulitzer
- "Life’s ultimate statistic is the same for all people: One out of one dies."--George Bernard Shaw
- "Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people."--Broadcasting pioneer David Sarnoff
- Obituary headline: "Pharmacist and master cribbage player." Cribbage. Now there's a game for the Facebook/Twitter/Buzzfeed/Instagram Generation!
- jimjustsaying's 10 Best Internet Click-Bait Items of the Month: 10 things you don't know about Dobermans/What your favorite A-list celebrities looked like in high school/What's the difference between white and brown eggs?/40 bad foods for folks over 40/British etiquette rules Americans should adopt/What the world's oldest people eat (or ate)/How you walk may predict early signs of dementia/Signs you should get your thyroid checked/Never, ever use hotel ice buckets--and 10 other germ-ridden spots in hotel rooms/Signs you will age faster than you should.
- And if I had a Lifetime Achievement Award category--which I don't, at least not yet--this would be a contender: Tupac's prison letter shows why he dumped Madonna
- I heard someone the other day say they were diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa. Retinitis Pigmentosa? Wasn't he prime minister of Albania?
- jimjustsaying's Word That Doesn't Exist But Should: Buyercade. The rubber or plastic bar that separates your purchases from the next person's.
- "Although not complete, the Harry Bovard family is now occupying its new residence."--Wellington (Ohio) Enterprise, via "Still More Press Boners," by Earle Tempel
- jimjustsaying's Book Recommendation of the Month: "Duct Shui/a new tape on an ancient philosophy," by Jim and Tim, the Duct Tape Guys.
- I have never had a good feeling about paparazzi. But cover it with a lot of pesto sauce and Parmesan, and it's not half bad!
- The cartoon mascots that appear on cereal boxes, such as Cap’n Crunch and the Trix rabbit, are routinely designed so that their eyes tilt down by 9.6 degrees—the perfect angle to make eye contact with a child standing in the supermarket aisle, according to a study by Cornell University. (Kind of hard to work into a conversation, but there you have it.)
- I've known a farmer or two, but none of them lived in a dell (wherever that is).
- Today's Latin Lesson: Quousque erit hoc fossor esse nostri praeses? ("How much longer will this clown be our president?")
