Here is the July 18 Top5 List (https://www.top5list.com/top5-for-7-18-24/).
My winner:
* Dr. Lecter’s Missing Hearts Club Band
My losers:
* Dead Side Story
* A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The House on Elm Street
Reasons You Weren't Picked as a Candidate For Vice President
My No. 1 appearance
My Losers:
(IP attorneys please avert your gaze)
Not a week goes by that someone doesn’t click on this.
This fascinates me because it is exactly how I read the obituaries. And it draws a few clicks a month.
Jon Carroll was, prior to his 2015 retirement, simply the best personal newspaper columnist in America. Take that Anna Quindlen. Once a month, he indulged himself and enterained us with Cat Columns. I could scour the SFGATE archives and find more, but there are the ones I plugged in my column: Jon Carroll Cat Columns.
“Isn't it obvious? More cats, fewer people. We walk lightly on the land; we carefully bury our waste; we require neither paper products nor petroleum derivatives. Why don't you all blast off for the moon and leave Earth to us?
"So I hide their food bowls in the refrigerator. Childish, I know, but I had to show them who's the boss. Who is the boss?"
I have been dining out on my anecdotes about the Harvard freshman course Humble Brag 101 since 1974. This mandatory course teaches them to say, “I went to school in Cambridge.” And to mention it within 20 minutes of meeting any new person. Turns out I went to school in Cambridge too, and got a better education. Details: False Modesty
Things Overheard at the Paris Olympics
I made theTop 5 List!
My winner:
My losers:
LinkedIn, of course, is just crowd-sourced content. It claims a billion members (most of whom don’t speak English). So, it is like the infinite monkeys at typewriters that will theoretically produce the works of Shakespeare (not). In this case, it produced some pretty good dad jokes.
* Engineers have made a car that can run on mint. Hopefully, they can make buses and trains run on thyme.
* It’s called gross pay because it’s disgusting to see how much money you would have made before taxes. (I know... should this be a trigger warning? LOL)
* An SEO expert walks into a bar, bars, pub, tavern, public house, Irish pub, drinks, beer, alcohol place, drinking spot, place for beer, beer now.
* Which day do potatoes fear the most? Fryday.
* Why did the Apple Watch lose the fight to the grandfather clock? The clock had hands.
In particular, my former colleague Ian Gertler succeeded in making a joke I’ve been after for years, as I’ve frequently mocked Arnold’s pronunciation of his biggest catch phrase. A little shaggy, but worth the effort:
Sylvester Stallone said he wants to make a movie about classical music. He says, "I will be Beethoven."
Jean-Claude Van Damme says, "Okay, l'll be Mozart."
Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "I'll be Bach."
A half-century ago, I had the privilege of briefly collaborating with one of the most brilliant creators I have ever met, Michael Wildermuth. It was his short story I adapted into the musical tragedy, Sam Patch. I was thinking of a song parody of his, for a “product” called Squirrel Swirl Ice Cream, made by the same company that made Bearly Audible, the ice cream for the deaf, with a chunk of bear in every bite. Here it is, to the tune of Circle Game:
Yesterday a squirrel came out to wonder
What the factory in the valley's s 'posed to do.
Too close to the factory he did wander
And now the Captain's bringing him to you.
And the swirler it goes 'round and 'round
And Sammy Squirrel goes up and down.
He's captured in a carousel of cream.
He can't return, he can only look
Behind to where he's been
And go 'round and 'round and 'round making squirrel ice cream.
Squirrel Swirl, I'm game!
His other “products” included Buffalo Chips, Sheep Dip, Traffic Jam, Rabbit Ripple (with a chewy chunk of rabbit in every bite) and "Ammonia Bacon Ice Cream - Smells like ammonia, tastes like bacon; top it off with a little Liquid Chicken and you'll have an ice cream treat you won't forget!"
The column to the right on this blog contains permanent content, most of which has appeared at one time or another in the main body. I’ve decided to include a reminder.