POPCORN

                                                                   By Jim Szantor

Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric 

and whimsical observations

about the absurdities of contemporary life

• What's the difference between a dingus, a doohickey and a thingamabob?    (If you don’t know, ask what’shisname.)
• If St. Patrick were to come back to life, I hope he would drive all the snakes out of office!  (But . . . where do you start???)
• Remember when your biggest concern at school was whether you would pass algebra or geometry and not whom you would encounter in which bathroom?
• There are two types of men in the world:  Those who carry pocketknives, and those who don't.
• Whose job is it to make sure there's at least one partially green potato chip in every bag?
• Speaking of jobs: I've never seen anyone in grocery produce departments putting those confounded stickers on apples and peppers, but there they are!  How do they get there?  Is there a machine? If so, how does it apply said stickers without damaging the items? If it's done manually, that's got to be one tedious task.  (Where is “60 Minutes” when we really need it?)
• The one-stop-shopping concept has been honed to a fine edge in northern Wisconsin.  You can rent a video, get a hunting or fishing license and buy a bag of night crawlers--all in the same store!  Try doing that in Midtown Manhattan!
• (Actually, there are plenty of night crawlers in Midtown Manhattan, but they’re not the kind any self-respecting fisherman would want to be seen with.) 
• Overheard: “I hate to spread rumors, but what else can you do with them?”
• jimjustsaying’s Party Ice-Breaker of the Week: "Say, [actual partygoer's name here], did you know that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis pronounced her first name in the French way: Zhack-LEEN?" (Feel free to drop this in during any lull in any conversation.)
• Why you're running late:  According to a recent study, traffic can slow even without heavy volume, because of driver reaction time. Even when the number of vehicles shouldn't tax a road, "a small perturbation—such as a slight deceleration by one car—can ripple through the cars behind them, as they brake in reaction." 
• Japanese researchers assigned roughly two dozen drivers to cruise along a closed circular track at about 20 miles per hour. After some time, a jam developed, and the cars within it ground to a halt--even though no one ahead of them actually stopped!
• jimjustsaying’s Doofus Driver of the Week:  His car had a bumper sticker reading "Why am I the only person on the planet who knows how to drive?" His car--I think you're already ahead of me here--collided with a guard rail on a New York City highway and flipped over.  No serious injuries resulted.
• Quiz answer:  Ray Flaherty.  (The quiz question appears later in this column.)
• “I broke a mirror the other day.  It’s supposed to bring seven years of bad luck, but my lawyer got it down to five!”—Steven Wright
• “Nothing in life is as important as you think when you are thinking about it."—Nobel Prize winner D.J. Kahneman, in the best-selling "Thinking, Fast and Slow."  (He calls it The Focusing Illusion.)
• Wouldn't it be funny if two speed-readers met while speed-dating . . . and their first date was running a marathon together?  Talk about a whirlwind romance!
• Redundancy Patrol:  Cease and desist, fellow classmate, native habitat.
• “Mrs. Gunther said that Mr. Thomas, her boarder, was just like one of the family. He was practically no bather at all.”—Denver Post, via “Still More Press Boners,” by Earle Tempel.
• jimjustsaying’s Word That Doesn’t Exist But Should of the Month: Exaspirin. n. Any bottle of pain reliever with an impossible-to-remove cotton wad at the top.—“More Sniglets,” Rich Hall and Friends.
• Another entry in the Wisconsin Town I Didn't Know Existed Until I Saw it Mentioned in a Newspaper Obituary Sweepstakes:  Cecil, Wis. Previous entries: Athelstane, Walhain, Duck Creek, Breed, Anston, Sobieski, Amberg, Osseo, Angelica, Brazeau, Waukechon, Sugar Camp, Kossuth, Lessor, Kunesh, Pulcifer, Cato, Florence, Greenleaf, Eaton, Poygan, Hofa Park, Hilbert, Hollandtown, Beaufort, Glennie, Harshaw, Bessemer, Crooked Lake, Tigerton, Goodman, Readstown, Kunesh, Dousman, Butternut and Montpelier.
• Recent headline: “TV shoots plummet in Los Angeles, signaling fewer shows.”  Who said there’s no good news anymore? 
• Speaking of TV shows, the original title for one of the most popular in the medium’s history was not “I Love Lucy” but “I Love Lopez,” starring Lucy and Larry Lopez. 
• Bit Part dept.: Before Cher became a household name, her mother, Georgia Holt, made a memorable--but brief--appearance in a 1956 “Lucy” episode where the crew goes to Paris and is baffled by the avant-garde fashion. At the end, Holt is seen walking by as a model in an outfit inspired by the potato sack.
• I sometimes get the feeling that owners of hybrid autos are secretly glad when gasoline prices surge so they can justify having spent an extra $10,000 just to save a few bucks each week at the gas pump (all under the guise of “saving the planet,” of course).
• "In a thousand years, archaeologists will dig up tanning beds and think we fried people as punishment.”--Actress Olivia Wilde
• Misnomer note: There's no such thing as a lead pencil.  They're made of graphite. 
• DRUDGING AROUND: California cops fatally shoot double amputee trying to run away on stumps  . . . Shorter people may live longer. . . Digital humans could replace supermodels . . . SHOCK:  You’ll soon be able to talk to dead relatives in metaverse . . . Bots recreating celebrity voices for racist rants . . . UPDATE:  Florida high school athletes may have to submit menstrual histories . . . VIDEO:  “Sex Workers” soliciting outside Calif. Elementary school . . . College degrees losing more career clout . . . Streisand memoir more than thousand pages long . . . SCARE:  Laptop fire forces United flight to land, hospitalizes 4 . . . ”Winnie the Pooh:  Blood and Honey.”  Inside micro-budget slasher hoping to slay box office . . Miami teacher paints kids in blackface for lesson . . .  NH students protest urinal ban in gender debate . . . Woman shows up at Israel’s Western Wall in her underwear . . . Giant wind turbines keep mysteriously falling over . . . Nausea, wobbling, confusion:  Dogs getting sick from discarded weed . . . German ballet director smeared dog feces on critic’s face after bad review . . . Pastor dies attempting 40-day Jesus fast . . . Man killed by aggressive pet rooster . . . Tijuana sewage pours through San Diego border canyons . . . Cow sex allegation leads man to kill fiancée. (Thanks as always to Matt Drudge and his merry band of aggregators.)
• It appears to be that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may be making the same mistake a lot of presidential contenders make:  Peaking too soon.  (Hello, Pete Buttigieg!)  I’m hoping that’s the case for the chief executive in the High Humidity, Insane Traffic, Culture-Barren, Monster Insect State.  (No state income tax, but precious little services, either).  So much for my annual paean to the Rightwing Paradise.
• Would the person who threw Mike Pence’s hat into the ring for 2024 please retrieve it?  Thank you!
• She said it: “When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”—Nora Ephron
• He said it: “Having a 2-year-old is like using a blender with the top off.”--Jerry Seinfeld
• People who say "ek cetera" instead of "et cetera" should be strangled with one of Donald Trump’s extra-long red ties.  (There’s probably a Freudian interpretation for the length of those ties, which will not be explored in this circumspect forum.)
• Speaking of language misuse, it amazes me to witness the number of academics, pols and other talking heads on TV who pronounce the “t” in “often.”  Didn’t we learn in about the 3rd Grade that the “t” was silent?  Are these infractions an indictment of the education system or the person’s general intelligence?  We all have our blind spots, but to mispronounce a word used as often as “often” is beyond the proverbial pale.  My view: Sloppy speech, sloppy thought.
• Expanding on the curious car-name phenomenon in the February Popcorn:  We're also in the era of Aveo, Traverse, Flex, Element, Azera, Borrego, Sedona, Evora, Outlander, Cube, Murano, Kizashi, Yaris, Venza and Passat, along, of course, with the alpha-numeric soup of A6, RL, TL, Q5, STS, CR-V, LX, RX and MKS. 
• How long before they run out of names . . . and start naming vehicles after body parts?  ("Hey, Ralph, still driving that Kia Kidney?"  "No, Bob, I got me a new Pontiac Pancreas.  It was between that and a Mitsubishi Mitral Valve.")
• Then, of course, you enter the ostentacious exotica of car colors:
• Me: “Hey, Ralph, I understand you got a new Toyota.  What color is it?”
• Ralph:  “Um, I think it’s called Crystal Quartz Metallic.”
• Me:  “ . .. . .oh. . . . okay "
• Oxymoron of the Ages:  "Friendly fire."
• Baseball Spring Training Puzzler for Popcorn Fans:
• Who is the only person to have played against Babe Ruth and been active when Henry Aaron made his MLB debut? That would be Phil Cavarretta, former Cubs batting champion and National League MVP (both in 1945) and later the team's manager, who played against Ruth in 1935 when the Sultan of Swat was with the Boston Braves.  Cavarretta had been fired as Cubs manager and caught on with the crosstown White Sox when Hank Aaron debuted in 1954. (Of course, it helps when you come to the big leagues, as Cavarretta did, at age 17!)
• One thing people forget when comparing baseball across eras: 
• They didn’t throw the ball out of the game every time it hit the dirt (standard practice now!) in Babe Ruth’s day.  If it didn’t go into the stands in some manner, they kept using it, no matter how dirty or scuffed. 
• Tell me that didn’t give the pitchers more of an advantage back then--along with the higher mound, the legal spitball, the absence of batting helmets, batting gloves and all that body armor.  Plus, they didn't all have the "hitters' backgrounds" that are commonplace today; batters were often looking into a sea of white shirts.
• Still, Joe DiMaggio managed to amass a 56-game hitting streak in 1941 that has endured nearly 70 years, among other remarkable offensive feats attained when giants walked the Earth! Harrumph!  And harrumph again!  (And how oh how did they do all those things without walkup music?)
• "Every crowd has a silver lining."--P.T. Barnum
• Book Title of the Week:  "How To Really Get Postal Jobs."
• Hmmm.  Time was when postal jobs--never mind how unglamorous or pedestrian (no pun intended)--were valued because of their "job security." But with reduced mail volume, the closing of numerous post offices and the specter of discontinued Saturday delivery, such jobs have lost their best feature.  Not surprising, given that even teaching and police/fire department jobs--other bastions of "job security"--are falling victim to layoffs, furloughs and "early retirements."  Oh, and don’t forget “burnouts.”
• jimjustsaying’s Rule of Thumb No. 28:  Whisper anything you want remembered.
• Ever wonder why computer models have such strange, alphabet-soup-sounding names?  It's no accident, says Steve Fox, vice president and editorial director of PC World magazine. 
•  Complex names (such as Widget-Tech Huzzah 5097B-15iJ Laptop) make it almost impossible to demand that Big Box Store A match the sale price at Big Box Store B and also makes online price comparisons virtually impossible.
• Writes Fox:  "Dozens of models; thousands of configurations; indecipherable, protean prices?  Don't sweat it; just click the Buy Now button."
• What a world.   It's hard to believe that increasing customer confusion is an effective marketing strategy.  How can you ask for a product by name when the name is quirky and complex--or changes every month?  (As if instant obsolescence isn't enough, we now have omnipresent obfuscation.  Lovely.)
• Quiz answer question:  In 1935, Flaherty, a New York Giants (NFL) receiver, became the first athlete to have his number retired. (In this case, appropriately, No. 1.)
• Strange but true: Did you know that Ernest Hemingway was dressed and raised as a girl until he was 3? (His mother tried to pass him off as the twin of his slightly older sister!  (What's the joke here—"The Daughter Also Rises”?)
• Most amusing (and unfortunately, most telling) statement in a New Yorker article about the uneasy relationship between politicians and the press: “Each party is willing to accept a degree of hypocrisy on the part of the other.”
• (Back in 1976, even after Vietnam and Watergate, 72 per cent of the public said they trusted the news media. Today, the figure is 34 per cent.  Fox “News,” take a bow!­)
• The people with the most expensive watches are always late.
• Strange that I would run an item about composer Burt Bacharach’s father (February Popcorn) only days before the son’s death.  The obituary contained a great line from the great composer Sammy Cahn, who dubbed the handsome BB “as the only composer who didn’t look like a dentist.”
• I love it when someone prefaces their answer to a question with, “To be perfectly honest with you . . . .“ So everything you said before was . . . what?  Partially honest?  A baldfaced lie?  Total BS?  You can hear this multiple times daily on any of the cable news stations.
• Lent:  A period when people try to be virtuous not because they want to but because somebody said they're supposed to.  Six weeks later, normal life resumes. 
• Say it isn't so:  That it's the time of year when folks who don't know a jump shot from a rhesus monkey have to "fill out their brackets."  This was especially hilarious years back when a woman in our office picked the teams based on nicknames and uniform colors and won our Final Four pool.  
• How much commercial productivity is lost due to this ludicrous exercise? March Madness, indeed.   This "blight of spring" has gotten way out of hand.  If all the dilettantes donated their office pool money to charity, the world would be a better place.  But that would be a March Miracle.
• jimjustsaying's Basketball Barb of the Month:  It has been said that the NCAA tournament is played largely by a bunch of juniors and seniors who weren't good enough to already have jumped to the pros.  That's a March Matter of Fact.
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• FORT WALGREENS

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• This illustration is from a fascinating New York magazine piece (excerpted in the The Link Tank portion of jimjustsaying.com) that sheds light on the shoplifting epidemic that is the scourge of retailers everywhere.  Especially alarming is the rubber-conscience “rationale” offered by “boosters,” who sell their items for pennies on the dollar to pawn shops and other “fences,” almost always to support drug habits. 
• These vermin consider their thievery “karma-neutral” and say we should be thankful that they are not robbing us at gunpoint, removing the catalytic converters from our vehicles or selling their bodies to generate income.   “We actually keep crime down,” declared one brazen full-time shoplifter. (Hmm, Hitler and Stalin, et al., also had what they thought were righteous-sounding rationales.) Think of this next time you need to summon a clerk to procure a $2.69 tube of toothpaste.  What a world!
• Cut-rate kittens!  (and Another Animal Breed I Didn't Know Existed Until I Saw it Mentioned in a Newspaper Classified Ad):  Tonkinese.  ("Adorable and Gorgeous," Normally $400, Special: $175.)  
• But wait, there's more, as they say:  Another Dog Breed I Didn't Know Existed Until I Saw It Listed in a Newspaper Classified Ad:  Chiweenie, which, it turns out, is a cross between a chihuahua and a dachshund. 
• You know you're dealing with incompetent fraudsters when their Web site ends with dot.con.
• jimjustsaying’s Newspaper Obituary Headline Nickname of the Month: “Papa Bear.”  As in, Donald J. “Papa Bear” Bieschke,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,Feb.19, 2023.  R.I.P., “Papa Bear.”
• Today's Latin lesson:  Vos can non planto is thema res sursum.  ("You can't make this stuff up!")
  
  
  Special thanks to Sherman Oaks, this month’s Popcorn intern.