POPCORN

                                                              By Jim Szantor

Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric 

and whimsical observations

about the absurdities of contemporary life

• If Norman Rockwell were still alive, do you think there's anything he'd want to paint?
• You know you’ve had too much to drink when you twist the cap off that last bottle of beer . . . and discover it wasn’t a twist-off-cap type of bottle.
• Spring is finally here, and, as usual, I’m at two with nature.
• Old age is when everyone you meet probably reminds you of somebody else.
• “Rice is a great food when you’re really hungry and can eat about two thousand of something.”--Mitch Hedberg
• Looking for a new breed of dog? A recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel classified ad yielded this strange mutation: Cockaliearapoos! (What, no Doberman Pinscherapoos? No PitBullapoos? I’ll be on the lookout, so watch this space.)
•  I’m highly amused when Green Bay Packers fans say, “If we win this week . . . .”
• We? Didn’t know you were on the active roster. Incredible for your age!
• That’s a pronoun violation--and a common one, folks--so face reality! THEY play and earn millions; YOU watch and pay through the nose. A fan is offering his Club Level seats for next season in an April 5 Journal Sentinel classified ad: Nine games. Price? $626 per game for two seats. That’s only $5,634 for the set, and “you,” not “they,” will be forking over the green (and in this case, also the gold).
• Speaking of sports, herewith a recent headline: “MLB teams extend beer sales after the new pitch clock rule shortens games.”
• So now it appears that they’re finally admitting what the REAL national pastime is: Getting ----faced! You can see it when the camera pans the stands and you see behavior you wouldn’t see most any other place. (And then there are those who could have saved a lot of money if they had stayed home to be glued to their cellphones. They could be at a soccer game or a lynching for all the attention they pay to the on-field action.)
• The first team to extend beer sales past the 7th inning? Three guesses and the first two don’t count. It figured to be—and, in reality, was—the Milwaukee (“Burp”) Brewers, the very team whose most famous announcer--who by his own admission was a mediocre ballplayer—is still inexplicably known as Mr. Baseball. (How low was that bar?)
• Yes, the Brewers, the team that has a Lederhosened oaf slide down into a gigantic stein of beer when a home-team player hits a home run. Dignified! Yeah, hey! (And why the team is still known as the Brewers when most of the big breweries have left town has never been explained to me.)
• All those who knew that King Gambrinus was the Patron Saint of Beer, raise your hands (or, in Wisconsin, your steins). In the name of all that is sacred and holy, I would gladly delve into the matter of why beer has or needs a patron saint, but more urgent matters of state currently occupy my attention.
• The Brewers’ announcing team is already in midseason form in committing language/usage errors.
• Memo to the Oracles of the Broadcast Booth:
• --You should say Player X has 10 home runs “for” the season, not “on” the season, contrary to your apparent belief that all prepositions are interchangeable. They’re not.
• --A pitcher dodging a comebacker didn’t make “a reactionary” move, guys; he made a “reflexive” move (the word “reactionary” having one meaning only—being politically conservative/rightist/ultra-right). A most common error.
• --“A trio of Brewers is atop the RBI leader board.” Wrong again, gents; that’s a collective noun violation. Trio (or quartet, etc.) means three people doing the same thing at the same time, a la The Kingston Trio or the Dave Brubeck Quartet. As I wrote in the Chicago Tribune Style Book when I was a contributing editor, “Sometimes the best synonym for ‘three’ is ‘three.’ Save your attempts at elegant variation for when you actually know what you’re doing. “ (It’s too bad announcers can’t be sent down to the minor leagues to polish their game.)
• Oversized eye-glass lenses of any shape are a cry for help. (And if the frames are some garish color as well, an ambulance may be in order.)
• Political Quote of the Decade (a bit dated but still hilarious): "Mitt Romney acts as if he learned his foreign policy at the International House of Pancakes, where the menu and architecture rarely changes.--Thomas L. Friedman (three-time Pulitzer Prize winner) in The New York Times
• jimjustsaying’s Law of Car Buying: Never buy a used car with more than six bumper stickers on it!
• Call it “Revenge of the Nerds, but "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” opened with $38.5 million in U.S. and Canadian movie theaters over the first weekend. The sleeper hit, based on a notoriously niche tabletop game, is a rollicking comic action-adventure, with a star-studded cast and a 91% "fresh" score on Rotten Tomatoes.
• Which brings me to my long-held disdain for the movie industry as a whole, it being the most parasitic “art form.” Reason: For every original screen play of any quality, there are thousands of films based on books (“Gone With the Wind,” by Martha Mitchell; “The Godfather,” by Mario Puzo; “The Grapes of Wrath,” by John Steinbeck; “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” a Truman Capote novella; “The Graduate,” by Charles Webb, who wrote the novel in 1963 shortly after he himself was a college graduate; and even “Midnight Cowboy,” the first X-rated flick to win a Best Picture Oscar, based on a novel by James Leo Herlihy, to name but a few.)
• Musicals? No Hollywood creations there! “My Fair Lady,” “The Sound of Music,” “West Side Story,” “Oklahoma,” “A Chorus Line” and many others graced the “silver screen” only after they originated on a Broadway stage.
• Chances are, today’s original screenplays are more likely to be special effects extravaganzas such as “Star Wars” and its many “franchise” iterations, “Jurassic Park” and stuff based on Marvel Comics superheroes--(Batman, Spiderman, The Green Hornet, et al. (And if a book isn’t “sexy enough,” they will just add a gratuitous love scene or two . . . or put a dog in it!)
• And now, Hollywood, in a lather over competition from streaming outlets such as Netflix, is grasping at straws with upcoming artistic creations such as a “Barbie” movie (not kidding!) and even—wait for it—"The Super Mario Brothers Movie,” a movie based on a video game! I’m sure the likes of Orson Welles, John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman are writhing with envy in their graves.
  
  
  
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• Ryan Gosling on the set of the “Barbie” movie. (The end of civilization
•  as we knew it?)

• Speaking of Welles, it’s a matter of pride that the man who cowrote the screenplay (with Herman T. Mankiewicz) for “Citizen Kane,” considered by many auteurs as the greatest movie of all time, is from my hometown of Kenosha. In fact, I tracked down the home he grew up in (6311-7th Ave.) and have a picture of it somewhere. Welles’ speech teacher, John Davies, was still on the faculty when I attended the same high school.
• Original screenplay authorship can get messy. No fewer than four people claim that the script for an Oscar-winning movie, “The Deer Hunter,” was theirs. The matter went to arbitration, and all four wound up getting an Oscar Nomination for their efforts.
• Sad sidelight to this emotionally wrenching movie: All of the scenes with John Cazale, co-star Meryl Streep’s real-life love and Fredo in both “The Godfather” films, were shot first because of his terminal lung cancer. He died soon after the shooting and never saw the finished film. Cazale was considered all but uninsurable by the studio due to his illness, jeopardizing his participation in the film, but, according to Streep, the costs were paid by costar Robert DeNiro, who wanted Cazale to be in it.
• You can tell you're an old-timer if you refer to a train as "the iron horse." Or if you remember a day when buying pre-ripped jeans would be unthinkable lunacy, not trendy (and inexplicably pricey). As P.T. Barnum famously said . . . .
• How exactly do you return a pair of pre-ripped jeans? (“Hey, these jeans look . . . too nice!!! Not ripped enough! I want my money back! You want me to leave the house actually looking respectable?”)
• “Those French! They have a different word for everything!”—Steve Martin
• I had this dream: Jenny Craig was on an ocean cruise and decided to indulge herself a little at the buffets. But she didn't go overboard!
• People who pick up food and actually eat it while still surfing the buffet table should be deported to the most desolate region of Afghanistan.
• “Why do Storm Chasers drive their custom-equipped vehicles around chasing tornadoes? Why don't they just sit in a trailer and wait for one?”--The Vent at AJC.com
• Fortune Cookies Enter the 21st Century: "Your present plans are going to succeed. Want more? Visit: www.myfreefortune.com."
• If you could pinpoint when society's biggest problems (drugs, gangs, poor scholastic performance, the teen pregnancy epidemic, etc.) really took hold, my guess would be that it coincided with two things: the end of the military draft and the end of the Stay-At-Home-Mom era. I'm confident most sociologists/anthropologists could connect those dots fairly easily.
• (Does anyone really think that you can take two weighty societal elements like those off the table without any significant consequences? Deterioration of the work ethic, unemployment, gangs, drugs, teen pregnancy and more all took hold as a result, it says here, and the statistics back me up.)
• All-Overrated Club, Comedy Dept.: The “G” Team--Kathy Griffin and Ricky Gervais. (George Lopez can wait in the lounge till something opens up.)
• I'm sure Bram Stoker, author of the “Dracula” novel that inspired the 1931 movie starring Bela Lugosi, never, in his wildest imaginings, envisioned he would inspire a dreadfully un-nutritious but apparently very popular children's breakfast cereal!
• Sign on store counter: “Gift cards available—all denominations.” Wow, how ecumenical! Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, whatever . . . they will accommodate you. Even during Ramadan!
• Redundancy patrol: "Continue on," "convicted felon," "pre-order."
• I'm so old, I knew Captain Kangaroo when he was a civilian.
• Did you know that crossword puzzles are not found in Chinese or Japanese publications? The nature of their languages makes such construction impossible.
• Ever notice that little girls are almost always dressed in pink, whether they like it or not? As one young mom told me recently, "That's about all you can find these days." (She's probably right. I mean, there are no Goth toddlers! That comes later.)
• "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."--St. Augustine
• Astounding fact about a Major League Baseball player: An above-average slugger named Mark Reynolds (1,688 games with eight teams from 2007 through 2019, including the Brewers and a total of 298 home runs) was legally blind and managed to keep it a secret for his entire baseball career. (And here you thought it was just the umpires!)
• You can get Amazon on the phone rather easily (and a real person right away--I’ve done it a number of times), but don’t bother trying to look up Facebook’s phone number--it doesn’t exist! Not the main reason I gave up on that platform long ago, but it reinforces my opinion of Mark Zuckerberg and the cultural monstrosity he created. (See “Why won’t corporate America answer the phone?” in the Quote Rack section of jimjustsaying.com)
• The answer: Political strategist, insurance-claims adjuster and forensic blood-splatter expert. The question: Name three occupations that no child has ever fantasized about!
• jimjustsaying’s Best Name for a Car That Was Manufactured But Never Made It to the Showroom Floor: The Pontiac Banshee (circa 1965).
• According to Benjamin Hunting of The Drive: Corporate political clout at GM wielded by the Chevrolet Division quashed the model’s release, fearing it would steal the thunder from its flagship Corvette.
• Memo to Donald Trump: I doubt that they have Big Macs and Kentucky Fried Chicken at Riker’s Island. (Sudden thought: Will the Secret Service have to sample his prison food before he eats it?)
• Jewish guy to his Mexican wife: "Oy vey, Maria!"
• It rankles me no end when I hear athletes—and often, politicians--blaming "the media" (their favorite whipping boys--and girls) for their various misfortunes. But what is the very first thing they do--or try to do--when they retire or get released or leave office? Right--try to get a job in TV or radio.
• Or they will want to "write" a book--if they haven't done one already. No hypocrisy whatsoever in pro sports or politics.
• Speaking of media, herewith another Media Word—a word you hear or read in news reports but never hear any normal person use in actual conversation: "Spearhead” (as a verb).
• Speaking of language, it’s a rare day when this retired editor doesn’t hear numerous violations of the less/fewer rule.
• Spokesmodel: “It [brand of fabric softener] leaves your clothes with less wrinkles.” Wrong—fewer wrinkles. You use “fewer” with things that can be easily counted or seen; “less” is used with entities more abstract. Therefore, Marianne has fewer apples than Jane, but Jim has less integrity than Chuck. Not that hard, but . . . . (Tip: If using “fewer” seems awkward, simply recast the sentence. Put “fewer” after the noun, not before. Class dismissed.)
• I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy!
• Well, well-- it turns out some of Subway's foot-longs aren't really a foot long. I guess someone outed them to the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Sandwiches.
• We all know about the humorous side of Mark Twain, but the tragic side is even more extraordinary. Three of his six siblings died from disease while they were still children, and his father died of pneumonia when Twain was 12.
• Later, while training as a steamboat pilot, he invited his younger brother, Henry, to work with him on the riverboat Pennsylvania. Henry was killed when one of the boat’s boilers exploded; Twain was not on board at the time, but he blamed himself for the rest of his life.
• jimjustsaying’s Party Ice-Breaker of the Month: “Say [actual partygoer’s name here], did you know that Samuel Clemens’ pen name came from his years working on the Mississippi River, where boatmen would cry out ‘mark twain’ to indicate a depth of 2 fathoms (12 feet), which was safe for a steamboat to navigate?” (Very difficult to work into a conversation, but perhaps the opportunity will arise. Stranger things have happened.)
• jimjustsaying's Word That Doesn't Exist But Should of the Month: "Tatercrater." n. The hole dug in mashed potatoes to keep the gravy in.--"Unexplained Sniglets of the Universe”--Rich Hall and Friends
• It's hard not to laugh when you see someone drive off with their purse or their briefcase on the roof of their car.
• jimjustsaying’s Obituary Headline Nickname of the Month: “Dancing Chuck.” As in, Charles “Dancing Chuck” Franzke, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 2, 2023
• On cable news/talk shows, I always cringe when a guest begins his or answer to the host’s question with, “Well, look, . . .” Sounds more than a bit condescending, doesn’t it? As if to say, “See here, you idiot . . . .” But you hear it all the time.
• Forensic science doesn’t look like a fun job. In a recent “Forensic Files,” I saw a guy in a white lab coat going through a huge mound of vacuum cleaner bag filth with a tweezers looking for a rapist’s pubic hair. Some fun. (The guy’s probably saying: “I did six years of college for this? My idiot brother-in-law with a GED is probably making more money than I am driving a damn beer truck!”)
• And there are, of course, other unusual occupations.
• Partygoer: "And what do you do for a living, Ralph?"
• Ralph: "Oh, I'm a cobra-venom extractor."
• Partygoer: "Oh . . . really . . . ."
• I think I've finally put my finger on what Hillary Clinton's wardrobe reminded me of: Indoor-outdoor carpeting! (Cheap shots sometimes feel oh so good!)
• Remember when your favorite baseball team had two uniforms: White for home games and those "gray traveling uniforms," as announcers used to call them? Now they've got 5 or 6 sets, from "throwback unis" to camouflage outfits (for all you veterans out there) to the new “hometown unis” and whatever. You turn on a game and are a bit puzzled about who really is playing. And they swing pink bats on Mother’s Day or during Breast Cancer Awareness Week. (But never green bats on pay day!)
• And then there's April 15, when every player on every team wore No. 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson. What they should have been wearing: Number 9.2, to reflect the appallingly low actual percentage of Black players on Opening Day rosters this season (69 out of 750, if you do the math).
• He said it: "I was the kid next door's imaginary friend."--Emo Philips
• She said it: “You wouldn’t worry too much about what other people think of you if you knew how seldom they did.”--Eleanor Roosevelt
• I had a litmus test the other day. Unfortunately, I need a litmus transplant, but my insurance won't cover it!
• Why do people scratch their heads when they're trying to think of something? (Or stroke their chins?) Do they think they're activating the hippocampus memory-recall section of the brain? How do things like that get started anyway?
• DRUDGING AROUND: SHOCK CLAIM: Couple decapitate themselves with guillotine in ritualistic sacrifice . . . Humans will achieve immortality in eight years . . . Metaverse quickly turning into mehtaverse . . . Dumb phones on rise as GenZ seeks to limit screen time . . . Real-life exorcist sees patients levitate, spit nails . . . LA blasting classical music to drive homeless away from subway station . . . Man charged after taking platypus on train ride, shopping trip . . . Signs of life in mummy exhibit in Mexico have experts worried for those who get close . . . Fed up with LA pothole, Schwarzenegger fills it himself . . . National Guardsman caught trying to moonlight as hit man . . . Thieves steal entire homes, leaving owners with legal nightmare . . . South Florida flooding to bring boom of mosquitoes. (Thanks to Matt Drudge and his intrepid aggregators.)
• The Hard-to-Categorize Film Fact of the Month is this capsule description of one of the films shown at the Milwaukee Film Festival last month: “ ‘1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture,’ an award-winning documentary diving into the fact that the word homosexual didn’t appear in the Bible until 1946 — and how it got there.” (Popcorn reached out to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for comment but hasn’t heard back.)
• Still more miracle drugs being hawked on the airwaves: Epclusa, Otezla, Breztri, Keytruda, Kesempta, Cibinqo and Vraylar. (Name all of them in alphabetical order and win valuable prizes!)
• “In a spelling match, students of Fresno State College spelled “esctasy” 38 different ways.”—LaCrosse (Wis.) Tribune via “Still More Press Boners,” by Earle Tempel.
• ‘Overheard: “I was going to buy a copy of ‘The Power of Positive Thinking,’ but then I thought, what good would that do?”
• Getting federal tax dollars is like having a blood transfusion from one arm into the other … and spilling 40 percent of it on the floor.—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• Today’s Latin Lesson: Cum faci inghetata (“I could give a rat’s ass!”)
  
  
  Special thanks to Gerry Mander, this month’s Popcorn intern.