Fifteen Seconds of Fame

I was listening to a baseball game on the radio today when a fan ran onto the field. The announcers always downplay that type of thing because they don’t want to encourage it, but c’mon, it can be entertaining seeing someone get arrested, especially if the game is not close. Everybody likes a good chase scene where the bad guy gets what's coming to him. That got me to thinking: Does the guy running onto the field think he’s not going to get caught? It’s a walled stadium, right? Where’s he gonna go? How does he hope to escape? He’s got about as much chance of getting out as my childhood overweight hamster had of escaping his metal cage. His only chance of not getting caught is to have a couple hundred others join him on the field and that never happens. Secondly, the guy always runs on the field during a stoppage in play. C’mon! If you’re gonna run out on the field and get arrested and all, at least try to make a play. Run out there and catch a pop-up or something.  

There’s gotta be that one case though, when the guy ran out on the field, and a scout saw how fast he was, and the guy ended up getting a tryout. I bet that's happened and they’re not telling us.

Duck Duck, Couscous

What’s with these names with repeating identical syllables? Are we to take these folks seriously?

•          Bishop Tutu – A name I would love to get in Charades
•          Honey BooBoo  – I never took her seriously
•          Boutros Boutros-Ghali – Was once introduced as Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali
•          BooBoo Bear – Totally overshadowed by Yogi
•          JohnJohn Kennedy –JohnJohn dropped the second (or was it the first?) John as he got older. This can also be done with the name Joe, but do NOT do this duplication thing if your son’s name is Barry.

This brings us to couscous. This is a North African dish that has found its way to North America. Now, before my Moroccan and Egyptian readers write to us, I want to assure you that I find couscous to be delicious. But, can we drop the second “cous” already? I mean, is there some meaning in the second “cous” that is not conveyed in the first?  

Hospital John

I used to work for this guy named John who could be very funny at times. One day John visited our mutual friend in the hospital. The friend was a former boxer and he looked it. Picture De Niro as Raging Bull. John found the guy’s room. There was no one in the room but he noticed that the bathroom door was closed so he figured the patient was in there. As he was waiting for the patient to come out of the bathroom, dinner was served. The nurse placed it on that adjustable table thing that pulls over the bed. Well, John saw the opportunity and jumped at it. He climbed into the guy’s bed and pretended to be eating the dinner to surprise the patient when he came out of the bathroom. Well, the patient was surprised all right. He had no idea who John was. Sure enough, John was in the wrong room. 

The good news here was that this patient did not resemble De Niro in Raging Bull (or Sitting Bull for that matter). There was no fight. And he did not have a heart attack. And John did not have a heart attack. John put his clothes back on and quietly left the room.

OK, OK. I made the clothes part up. But the rest is true.

Roll Over, Chuck Barris

Two famous Chucks died last week: Chuck Berry and Chuck Barris. They died within 3 days of each other. Have two celebrities with such similar names ever died so close to each other? Could somebody look that up? 

Singer-guitarist Chuck Berry was famous first. Barris came along later as the host of “The Gong Show”, a talent show where they banged a gong when they wanted you to stop performing. Berry HAD to have hated Barris, right? I mean, Berry already had the name, and he wasn’t exactly known as a kind, loving guy. Plus, people, not many, but probably a few, showed up at his concerts thinking they were going to see some version of “The Gong Show” with Chuck Barris, and instead they get this old Chuck Berry guy singing “Johnny B. Goode”. And they probably yelled out “Hey! Gong this guy! Next act!” Berry no doubt hated that.

I think I’ll go out and host a game show and call myself George Cloonis. It doesn't seem fair, does it?   

Ball of Fame

I heard something on TV the other day about the Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester. Now, I’m not here to rip on Rochester. It’s a great city that’s had to overcome a lot with the loss of Kodak and all. There are a lot of smart people in Rochester. But this toy place sounds like one of those museums that cities fight to get but eventually the cities end up having to support them with tax dollars.

The guy on TV said that one of the recent honorees of the toy museum was the ball. That’s right. A ball. So yeah, they’ve got a ball exhibit there. Now, this is not something I can get too excited about, especially for a $19.50 admission price. I’m not sure I’m gonna drive all the way to Rochester for that.

But maybe I’m missing something here. Could you maybe take your kid to see the balls and then NOT have to take them to Baseball or Football or Basketball Halls of Fame? “Dad, can we go to Cooperstown to the Baseball Hall of Fame?” “Whataya mean, Timmy, I took you to see those balls in Rochester already. C’mon!” 

Hmm. Maybe they’re onto something…

Threemail

Have you ever sent an email containing three or four questions and the recipient responds but only addresses one of the questions? That’s irritating, isn’t it? So, after you get their response you have to ask again. You never know if they didn’t answer it ‘cause they didn’t read the whole thing, or maybe they didn’t know all the answers or they chose for some reason to intentionally not answer all the questions. Do they have some incredibly short attention span that they can’t address more than one question?

I actually had someone tell me once that one way of mitigating this situation is to ask only one question per email. Yeah. I can’t believe he said it either. Wait. What? You gotta be kidding me. We are adults here. Yeah right, let’s just triple our number of emails. We have cars that drive themselves but we can’t answer an email containing more than one question?  

The solution may be to create “Threemail”, a new concept which would tell the receiver up front that they are receiving emails with at least three questions that need to be answered. Works for me!