Get Off My Planet...NOW!

I miss those old scary movies where there was a trap door in the floor that would open up and dispatch people to a watery death or some unexpected deadly demise.


My choice for instant justice would require a pit full of hungry alligators--VERY hungry alligators.

I have begun keeping a list of folks I deem too repulsive for hanging or strangulation and have reserved my very special Alligator Surprise exclusively for them.



MEMO: Would the following people please report to my alligator pit. (You're on the menu.)

1. All terrorists...I have gone through airport security one too many times because of you a**holes.

2. People who make up needlessly fancy names for ordinary items. For example: "Chabbata" for what is obviously merely a freaking sandwich. Do it and die!

3. The person who invented those idiotic paper towel dispensers that require restroom attendees to "wave your hands" in front of the machine in order for the towels to magically come forth. I have NEVER seen one work properly and feel that such flawed engineering invites the death penalty.

4. Any guy over the age of 15 who wears a baseball hat backwards. INTO THE PIT! NOW!

5. Any person using a cell phone for entertainment. By this I refer to people who forgo a book while waiting in an airport and instead inflict on all within earshot the drone of an inane conversation with another troglodyte cell phone boob.

6. Anyone caught dangling prepositions. (Don't you know that you could go blind?)

7. People who insist on putting an "of" where it doesn't belong. (IE. It was too hard "of" a job. No "of" dammit!)

8. Sales clerks who try to sell me an extended warranty on ANYTHING.


I have more, but this is a good start.

All of you I called, stand right there....... I hope you brought your bathing suit. Al likes a little texture with his vittles.

When 1954 became 1967

We own three cars.

Two people; three cars.

It really is stupid, but I blame it on California. You need a "beater" for just running around and at least one late model ride with a top that goes down so that you can enjoy the sunshine and semi-fresh air that you delude yourself into believing your tax dollars are providing.

As I said...I blame California.

When I was a kid in the Midwest my family had one car and, like most everybody else, it was the car that dad drove to work. I don't recall that any of my pals came from multi car families. Well, the kids of car dealers always seemed to have plenty of rolling stock at the curb, but that was different.

In the late 1960's I, like most baby boomers, was asserting my independence at college and having pretty much the time of my life as I basked in the fresh air of being on my own and away from parental restraint. Doing just enough to get decent grades, I hoped to ride the good time train for just as long as possible before getting drafted. It seemed to work.

I had a radio job that paid decent money. My classes were in broadcasting, theater and film; not exactly a killer curriculum. And, I had the coolest looking bright red Ford Galaxy XL rag top to transport me to all the parties I was physically able to attend. Sweet.

In one of my classes I met one of my best friends of all time, Doug Steckler. Doug is, without question, one of the funniest people on the planet. He is funnier by accident than most people are on purpose. We have remained friends for more than forty years and he still makes me laugh out loud. (Something I rarely do.) He spent time with Chicago's Second City and was one of the key people in the creation of television's SCTV. In the 90's he joined me on the lowest rung of the show biz ladder when he teamed with Tim Conway Jr. on KLSX radio in Los Angeles.

What started me thinking about cars, college and Doug Steckler is this:

Every time I get in my newest car I think of this true story that happened to Doug during our partying days at the University of South Dakota.

In those days all cars started with a key. Today, many cars require a fob to be inserted in the dash where a computer reads a code before allowing a button to be pushed to fire the engine. No key.

Here is the story:

It was a Friday night in the Fall of 1967. Doug and I were at a party having our usual WAY too much fun. We both told ourselves that we needed to call it a night fairly early because we were scheduled to be on a chartered bus early Saturday morning to go to Minneapolis with some theater appreciation class we were both taking for an easy A. No problem.

I can't remember if we were drinking cheap scotch or cheap rum, but we had picked-up plenty of it on our way to the party. I'm told that we had a marvelous time.

I left around midnight and somehow found my way back to my apartment. Doug left around 2 AM and had some trouble negotiating the whereabouts of his car, a 1954 green Chevrolet.

He had been helped to his car by well meaning revelers and miraculously made it home. (Drunk driving was not frowned upon in those days as it is today. Like Andy Griffith's Mayberry, every small town in the Midwest had its very own Otis Campbell.) The next morning I picked Doug up at his home. He was living with his parents and sister at the time. We both were massively hungover, but with the resilience of youth managed to ride the bus to Minneapolis and actually enjoy the play we saw at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater. I still recall that it was something by George Bernard Shaw.

When we returned to South Dakota that evening Doug was in for a big surprise. His dad was waiting for him at the door of their house and looked more than a little put out. The state police had just left the Steckler abode and that was just the icing on the cake. It seemed that the night before Doug had driven a brand new 1967 Plymouth home to the Steckler garage. In his impaired condition, Doug had pointed to the new Plymouth when being "helped" to his ride and the key to his '54 Chevy HAD WORKED! What were the chances???!!!!

A million to one? I'm sure a car guy could hazard a reasonable guess, but not me. About the only good news that Doug got that evening was that the law student who owned the Plymouth had decided not to sue or press charges. I seem to remember that there were witnesses to some rather unbecoming party behavior on the part of the future barrister.

I hope that you youngsters take a lesson from two old reprobates like your Uncle Ken and Uncle Doug. The next time you find yourself "over served", point to a yellow taxi cab when somebody asks "which car is yours?".

Just don't try the '54 Chevy, that one is Doug's...I think.

"At Hope" ?? How About GET REAL!

Washington state senator Rosa Franklin thinks she has the answer to what to do with that state's "disadvantaged" or "at risk" children. She wants to soften the stigma that comes with those descriptions by replacing them with a new one, "at hope".

The Democratic, (there's a surprise), legislator thinks that negative labels are hurting children's' chances for success and that ditching "at risk" for "at hope" is just the ticket for these kids.

"We can really put too many negatives on our kids," said Franklin, who is the state Senate's president pro tem. "We need to come up with positive terms."

Of course this kind of nonsense does NOTHING to help troubled children, but the senator and her like minded liberal minions will feel better about the whole thing. It's the same kind of mentality that has given us a generation or two of people who expect a blue ribbon just for showing up. "Everyone's a winner!" "Don't pay any attention to that mean man who said you weren't good enough to make the team......EVERYBODY MAKES THE TEAM!"

Unadulterated crapola reins supreme in our society and it is already manifest in a public school system that refuses to flunk students who can't add, subtract, or write a simple declarative sentence. How we pay for it is in our face every day. Ever notice the little pictures of hamburgers and french fries on fast food cash registers? Those are for the kids we wave through graduation who somehow never learned how to make change.

When young men used to get drafted into the Army many a moron was saved through the tough discipline of a hardened veteran drill sergeant. No man who experienced basic training could fail to laugh at the idea of being treated as an "at hope" project. To a drill instructor, all recruits are "hopeless maggots", "dip shits" and worse. The inspiration and motivation of the soldier depends almost entirely on the knowledge that if he is successful in learning to fight and win he will never ever have to repeat basic training. If he flunks, the hell starts all over again until he succeeds.

"No fair" is the common lament of children. Somehow they think that life has a referee who makes sure that all of our ups and downs are distributed in an even handed manner. It hurts when they learn that isn't the case, though some never quite grasp the obvious.

A couple of hundred years ago the folks who didn't catch on to this basic truth wound up eaten by bears. Today we have beepers on trucks to alert people who are too stupid to get out the way when the vehicle is in reverse. Pathetic.

Idiotic politicians and political correctness do no favors for kids or society in general. At risk kids are AT RISK and not At Hope. It is only when we acknowledge a problem that we begin to fix it. Children need to know the score and to understand that they alone are responsible for their own success or failure. The longer we attempt to make ourselves feel better by denying the unmistakable truth the more our country is AT RISK.

What Do Women Want?

Apparently...women want a guy with a tragically bad rug.

Nothing else could possibly explain the success with the ladies enjoyed by Obama White House budget director Peter Orszag.
In spite of the presence of what looks like a bad wham-o toy perched on his dome, this tool has just announced his engagement to ABC news babe Bianna Golodryga. WHAT?????
And, just to make things even more fascinating, toupee boy has fessed up to fathering the brand new daughter of shipping heiress Claire Milonas, Tatiana Zoe.



(Milonas and Orszag)

(Golodryga & Orszag)

Though Ms. Milonas gets custody of Orszag's new daughter, Bianna will now be able to claim Peter's hair hat as a dependant when she files her taxes.

The lesson all middle-aged males can take from this is that if you're fairly good at math, or no good at all if you are a democrat, you can do very well indeed with people of the feminine persuasion if you staple a cat's ass to your bald head.

Here is the mug shot of Bianna Golodryga taken after her DWI arrest in 2000. Perhaps she'll sober up when she figures out it's a LID.