Welcome Back, Reader

Happy birthday to Welcome Back, Kotter's Gabe Kaplan, born on this day in 1945. In 2003 I went back to teach at my old high school. What resulted was the worst two years of my life and the cancelation of the short-lived spinoff, Welcome Back, Kreider.

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Chris Rock- "There's math, and then everything else it debatable." From Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, 2013

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The Guardian- ‘Chris Rock did the brave, smart, toughest thing’: comics on that Oscars slap

Haha! Great line, and after someone threw a glass at him. "If I’d known I was going to the zoo I’d have bought my bananas.”

Comedian Shaparak Khorsandi:

When you come at a comic, you come at a professional who has been booed off and slapped off and dealt with worse than you. Before I did standup, I was in the audience when someone threw a pint at Dave Fulton’s head. It smashed behind him and he just said: “If I’d known I was going to the zoo I’d have bought my bananas.” I thought: “If I can have this career, I would die happy.”

I’ve been a fan of Will Smith for years but I felt so proud of Chris Rock. When it goes wrong, we still have a job to do. Sometimes, it’s telling jokes, sometimes it’s fighting fire. Rock showed his mettle as a standup. He stayed on stage, the camera closed up on his face and he was thinking: “Fix this, deal with everything later. Everyone in the room is expecting me to make everything OK again.” It was not about him, not about the fact that he’d been assaulted, it was about the crowd.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/mar/31/chris-rock-did-the-brave-smart-toughest-thing-comics-on-that-oscars-slap

March 31, 2022

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My God, we were all just in the living room minding our own business when Zuzu quietly got my attention and pointed towards our big front window. A four-year-old neighborhood kid was just standing there staring in. A zang of fear went through me. He might as well have been Jack Torrance immediately after chopping up Hallorann, wrapped up in The Brood, mixed with "It's all for you Damien." I'm going to have nightmares.

March 31, 2022

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"Going bananas" is a euphemism for "going ape shit." Get it? Bananas... ape shit? Banana goes in, ape shit comes out. Apes go crazy, see? Most people never realized the connection before, and that's probably because I made it up. Or discovered it? It's probably true though, right??? Either way, put it on my tombstone.

A friend of mine called me last week and reminded me that I posted something about the banana/ape shit connection about 10 years ago, and he asked me if I ever got to the bottom of the origin. I'm almost embarrassed to say that I just researched it for about a half hour, and apparently it stems from bananas just being kind of a comical fruit.

March 31, 2022

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I'm looking very forward to the Ken Burns documentary on Hemingway. I hope it includes the anecdote about a friend challenging him to write a 6-word short story. He came up with, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." It has a beginning, a middle, an end, and elicits a sense of mystery. A sad, sad story. 

I've been wondering what 6-word short story would best encapsulate Trump's presidency. Here's the best I could come up with, a mystery story. 

"HUUUGE lies, triggered death, revolt, and...?"

Care to share yours?

March 31, 2021

Eric Holtry- very stable genius accelerates empires decline 

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Pretty sure an Amish farmer just ended a phone call with me by saying, "You da man."

March 31, 2017

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Snoop Dogg is a dead ringer for Gandhi.

March 31, 2015

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Ben can't wait to introduce Gretel to the Phillies.

March 31, 2014, Opening Day

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Let history not forget that Emma Eck is a world-class foosball player.

March 31, 2013

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Betty Draper was recounting a conservation she had with her dad in which he asked something like "What will happen when I get to Heaven and both of my wives are there?" A great question! And what's the answer?

March 31, 2011

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Daylight savings time was introduced on this day in 1918.

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The Motion Picture Production Code was instituted on this day in 1930, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film, for the next thirty-eight years.

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On this day in 1934, St. Paul, Minnesota, John Dillinger, Homer Van Meter, and Billie Frechette shot their way through a police trap. 

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Lyndon B. Johnson surprised almost everybody on this day in 1968, when at the end of this televised speech, "Steps to Limit the War in Vietnam," he announced, "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."

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On this day in 1969, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five was published.

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The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries. Do you doubt it? 

Rene Descartes was born on this day in 1596. 

He said that, "The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries."

He also said, "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."

I have taken that very seriously. It's the foundation of all knowledge. Without that starting point we'd all be suicide bombers or belong to the Westboro Baptist Church.

He was, therefore "I think, therefore I am."

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Johann Sebastian Bach was born on this day in 1685.

Douglas Adams- "Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe."

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The humorist, Henry Morgan, was born on this day in 1914.

"A kleptomaniac is a person who helps himself because he can't help himself."

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The motivational speaker Leo Buscaglia was born on this day in 1924.

"I exist, I am, I am here, I am becoming, I make my own life and no one else makes it for me. I must face my own shortcomings, mistakes, transgressions. No one can suffer my non-being as I do, but tomorrow is another day, and I must decide to leave my bed and live again. And if I fail, I don't have the comfort of blaming you or life or God." 

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Look What Thoughts Do, was a hit single by Lefty Frizzell, also born this day, in 1928. He was a massively influential country music star who rivaled Hank Williams in his day.

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Christopher Walken joined us on this day in 1943. If he was remembered for nothing else, I'd remember him as Annie Hall's psychopath brother.

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Al Gore and Rhea Perlman we're both born on this day in 1948. A meaningless coincidence.

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Other notable birthdays- Cesar Chavez (1927), Anita Carter (1933), Shirley Jones (1934), Ewan McGregor (1971)

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John Donne left us on this day in 1631.

"Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes."

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Ronald Clark O'Bryan was executed in Huntsville, TX on this day in 1984. You probably never knew his name, but you know his crime- he killed his 8-year-old son with cyanide-laced Pixy Stix. He handed out four more but his son was the only one who died. Why did he do it? He wanted to cash out his son's life insurance policy, of course.

His last meal- T-bone steak (medium to well done), fries with ketchup, whole kernel corn, sweet peas, a lettuce and tomato salad with egg and French dressing, iced tea, sweetener, saltines, Boston cream pie, and rolls.

His last words- "What is about to transpire in a few moments is wrong! However, we as human beings do make mistakes and errors. This execution is one of those wrongs yet doesn't mean our whole system of justice is wrong. Therefore, I would forgive all who have taken part in any way in my death."

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Another notable deathday- Jesse Owens (1980)

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I read this today: "The first rule of introvert club is, there is no introvert club. Thank God." Haha.

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The Onion- Mark

http://www.theonion.com/articles/mark,31846/

Super short article, very worthwhile.

March 31, 2013

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Andy Borowitz- Indiana Governor Stunned By How Many People Seem to Have Gay Friends

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/indiana-governor-stunned-by-how-many-people-seem-to-have-gay-friends?intcid=mod-most-popular

March 31, 2015

Postscript- And that governor would later go on to become one of the greatest heroes in American history, single-handedly having the courage and wisdom to save us from a dictator taking over!

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Yahoo News- Are we getting the leaders we deserve?

Gary Hart paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson and the end of his speech dropping out of the 1988 presidential race: “I tremble for my country when I think we may in fact get the kind of leaders we deserve.”

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/are-we-getting-the-leaders-1397064998158390.html

March 31, 2016

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New York Magazine- Diplomats Say They Were Told Not to Make Eye Contact With Rex Tillerson

That's the same reason Kenneth Kendall didn't care for Montgomery Clift... or so I've been told a handful of time at about 3am.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/diplomats-told-not-to-make-eye-contact-with-tillerson.html

March 31, 2017

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Mother Jones- The Trump Files: “Always Be Around Unsuccessful People,” Donald Recommends

I don't know, doesn't sound like a winner to me.

“You’ll find, when you become very successful, the people that you will like best will be the people that are less successful than you, because when you go to a table, you can tell them all these wonderful stories and they’ll sit back and listen. Does that make sense to you? Okay? Always be around unsuccessful people, because everybody will respect you.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/trump-files-donald-recommends-always-be-around-unsuccessful-people/

March 31, 2018

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Quarantined with Norm Macdonald (with Bob Saget)

Always so enjoyable.

March 31, 2020

Postscript- Unimaginable that these two would each be dead within two years.

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Comicbook.com- Star Wars Fan Creates Animated Version of Colin Trevorrow's Duel of the Fates Script

This would have been a 100% better film.

https://comicbook.com/starwars/2020/03/30/star-wars-9-duel-fates-animeted-movie-colin-trevorrow/

March 31, 2020

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There's no journalist that I respect more than Fareed Zakaria, and he has an interesting take on the Ronna McDaniel controversy. Great article. In part:

"We’ve heard so much about this that we sometimes get numbed to its importance. So let me remind us all: Trump was the first president in American history to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power. He incited a crowd to intimidate his own vice president and Republican legislators. And he managed to get a majority of Republican members of the House to vote against certifying the election results of 2020 despite the fact that they had been duly authorized by 50 states and D.C. and affirmed in dozens of court rulings. This is a big deal.

"But here is the problem: Ever since then, about one-third of Americans said they believed the 2020 election was not free and fair. That’s more than 85 million adult Americans. How do we approach them? How do we approach the people who have led them to these beliefs? Do we cancel them all? Should no one who has these views be allowed to speak on NBC News? I think the executives at NBC were trying to find a reasonable way to have the views of 85 million Americans represented on their airwaves.

"McDaniel in a recent NBC interview affirmed that Joe Biden was the legitimate president of the United States. Should we encourage this kind of return to normalcy, or forever punish those who once espoused conspiracy theories?"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/29/mcdaniel-nbc-trump-liberalism-threat/

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Marcus Aurelius, Meditations- "In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business."

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Bertrand Russell, New Hopes for a Changing World- ”The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good.”

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Thomas Paine, 1804- “That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up…

The christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense. Why is man afraid to think?”

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Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion- "There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it."

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Daniel C. Dennett, Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness- "Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares."

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John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces- "I really don't have the time to discuss the errors of your value judgements."

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Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass:

O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;

Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;

Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;

Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;

That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

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Dumb Short Joke of the Day:

I have the heart of a lion and a lifetime ban from the Toronto zoo.

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Steven Wright- "First you don't exist. At all. Then you're born, and you live your whole life. Then you die. Then you go back to not existing again, forever. So... first you don't exist. Then you exist. Then you don't exist. So this whole thing is just an interruption from not existing."

I attempt to consider this daily.