Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Somewhere in Hastings, Nebraska in 1958

Courtesy of eBay
"Good news, Emil!"

"What's up, Verl?"

"I found the money in the budget for a half-page ad in the TV Guide!"


"That's fine, Verl."

"There's a rub, though, Emil."

"And. . . ."


"Well, there's not enough money to get anything printed up at Hasenpfeffer's Print Shop."

"Jesus, Verl, that's not good."

"No, Emil, but dollars don't grow on trees, y'know."

"That's my line, Verl."

"Sorry, Emil. I got carried away with frugality."


"There's hope for ya yet, son. So, what do you propose we do for this TV Guide advertisement, then?

"Well, we still got the picture for Fran's cooking show that we put on the poster in the Hinky Dinky produce aisle that time."


"And. . . ."

"Well, Emil, I been goin' with that gal, Willa -- you know, the new art teacher at the high school."
Courtesy of eBay
"I think I know where you're goin' with this, Verl. Not a bad solution."

"I think it'll work out. But I think all she has would be pens and those new itsy-bitsy kinds of Marks-a-Lots."
"That'll be just fine, son. It'll look just as good as those ads for KETV in Omaha."

"Oh . . . Emil?"

"What now, Verl?"


"Did I mention that Willa has a little bit of palsy?"

Friday, September 20, 2019

Art imitates life imitates art imitates . . . oh, dear

March 19, 1956: I Love Lucy

The Ricardos and Mertzes are in gay Paris. Lucy wants an honest-to-goodness Parisian designer gown. Ricky doesn't want to spend that kind of money.

Lucy has an idea (Here is where everyone needs to run for their lives). She will go on a hunger strike until Ricky buys her an honest-to-goodness Parisian designer gown. Lucy has another idea (If you're still around, you deserve the Armageddon that's about to descend on you and all). She will have Ethel sneak her food, so that the hunger strike actually isn't. Lucy hides the food all over their hotel room.

Ricky feels guilty. Ricky gives in. But then Ricky finds a roast chicken in a camera bag. Ricky grabs the dress box and runs off. Ricky and Fred decide to "show" Lucy and Ethel. Ricky and Fred have Jacques Marcel "designer dresses" made out of potato sacks and put phony Jacques Marcel labels on them. And as a crowning touch, they give Lucy and Ethel a feed bag and a champagne bucket as "designer hats."

People stare at Ethel and Lucy. People laugh at Lucy and Ethel. Humiliation abounds. Ricky and Fred feel guilty. Ricky and Fred buy them real Jacques Marcel dresses (again).

Later . . . Ricky, Fred, Lucy and Ethel see the sack dresses and unique "hats" on models for Jacques Marcel. But Lucy and Ethel had burned their unwitting "designer originals."

Cue face palm from Ricky.


Sept. 20, 1967: D.H. Holmes ad, Baton Rouge, La.

Holy crap.
And that's why you come to this here little blog, folks. There's no absurdity that I won't notice.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Wigged out

July 28, 1970: This. Just this.

It would be a decade, roughly, before I figured out what a deeply, deeply weird place I came from. It would be another decade or so before it dawned on all of us what deeply strange times in which we Baby Boomers came of age.

Aug. 27, 2019: All the incentive anyone needs to open a saving account (assuming we had any money to save) would be . . . interest on our deposits.

Monday, August 26, 2019

I missed all the big events


July 24, 1970: The Antichrist takes up residence at a Baton Rouge, La., appliance store. And I freakin' missed it.

I had no idea that the malevolent ruler of the world had such a fascination with color TV. He and the 9-year-old me would have had something to talk about.

I bet he could have gotten me an RCA AccuColor set long before 1975, when the Old Man finally relented, succumbing to non-stop bitching by me and my mother and admitting that color television was not, alas, a fad. We did not get an RCA from McLeod's, however.

My father was a Magnavox man.

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

How did they sleep?

We should have seen the end coming a half century ago.
It was as plain as a patchwork plague, courtesy of your haberdasher from hell. Which in this case was the 1969 Sears Wish Book.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Holy Hash Pipe, Batman!
One thing never changes, however -- copy editors are always required but never in adequate supply. I'm reasonably certain that the headline above the Red Menace display at left should have read "Family Nightmare."

Thursday, September 13, 2018

A day late and a bunch of dollars short


Science, technology, engineering and . . . squirrel!
 

Try as I may, try as I might, there's no way I could've made this s*** up tonight. Fetch me a Smirnoff Skyball, willya?

Monday, July 02, 2018

Kills all your bugs . . . and everything else, too

Morning Advocate, June 25, 1948

When I was a kid in Louisiana, you went for the Flit whenever bugs needed killin'.

And when I would ask my Yankee wife to fetch me some Flit, what I'd get instead was a look somewhere between quizzical and "Are you suffering aphasia because you're having a stroke?"


I'm lying. The look was more like "I married one of Those People why, exactly?"

Flit
Flit. FLIT, dammit! Don't you speak you some English, yeah? F-L-I-T. FLIT! To kill dem damn red wasps!

Now, by the time I got married to an uncomprehending Nebraskan, Flit-brand bug spray wasn't exactly a household name or found on store shelves when you were out makin' groceries. (Forget it, it's not important now.)


BUT WHAT'S important is that it's easier than saying "bug spray" or "insecticide." You save -- at a minimum -- four letters and any number of syllables. That saved time just might be the difference between life and welts when the red wasps done got all stirred up.

So, just now I asked Mrs. Long Suffering exactly what the hell they called Flit in Omaha.

"I don't know," she replied. "Bug spray? Raid?"

Well, that's fine if the kind of Flit you want is Raid. But what if you want Black Flag Flit?

It's like when you're thirsty. Sometimes, you want Co-Cola Coke, but other times, the kind of Coke you want is Seven-Up. Maybe Pepsi Coke.

And maybe the kind of damn Coke you want is Dr. Pepper. Usually around 10, 2 and 4 o'clock.


Also Flit

OR MAYBE you just need the damn Flit, because them flying, red sons of bitches are coming for you . . . and you don't care whether it's Raid, Black Flag or sarin gas.

But no. You needed the Flit, and all you got was an annoyed and confused look from your strangely uncultured spouse. And now it's too late.

All you need to get now is some ice out of the Frigidaire.

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

3C&T: Always first with products for today

Click for full-size version

From Vox:
Mueller’s team describes Papadopoulos as a “proactive cooperator.” That’s a big deal.

Here’s why: Mueller purposely sealed the indictment and kept the arrest secret so that others wouldn’t know Papadopoulos was working with his team — because the probe might be using Papadopoulos to obtain even more information on possible Trump-Russia collusion.

The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale reports that when prosecutors consider someone to be a “proactive cooperator,” it could signal that that person was wearing a wire. And if that’s true, that means Papadopoulos might’ve talked to Trump campaign officials with a wire on. That’s still speculative, of course, but it could pose a serious problem for Trump if officials with secrets to keep unknowingly divulged information to a wired-up Papadopoulos.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Feed your head, feed your head

Click on ad for larger version
Don Draper for Magnavox, 1963.


Click on ad for larger version
Don Draper for 3 Chords & the Truth,
after that one party in Malibu.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Sept. 18, 1941: The divorce epidemic begins


"Spring a surprise on your hungry husband tonight. . . ."

And the formerly hungry husband will spring divorce papers on his shocked wife tomorrow.

I think the clueless soon-to-be-former missus watched the family "go for" something, just not the batter-fried weenies beneath a glop of Heinz ketchup. Yes, it's true that men "rave about this full-bodied condiment Heinz cooks from plump 'aristocrat' tomatoes, Heinz Vintage Vinegar and a deft dash of fragrant spices."

They also rant.

Especially when the Heinz is hiding half-assed corndogs disguised as dinner.

Today, we find the American family in deep crisis amid the epidemic of divorce and the general collapse of marriage. Sadly, it turns out that "happy housewives" of the early 1940s brought this ruin upon their own damn selves.


Lord, have mercy.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Tom Snyder's alive & well & wrangling hurricanes in Florida


TV legend Tom Snyder, of Tomorrow fame in the 1970s, died a decade ago at age 71.

Well, that's what he wants you to think.

But Revolution 21 has it on good authority that the impish, acerbic NBC anchorman and interviewer -- last seen enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke and wearing a tan leisure suit -- actually snuck off to sunny Florida in 2007.

But he didn't stray far from a TV camera and a microphone.

How?



WELL, we're not sure of all the how-tos and wherefores, but a highly reliable source at a Macedonian investigative-news website says the "death" and re-emergence of Snyder went something like this:

Tom Snyder
Snyder, about 15 years ago, stumbled across the Florida location of Ponce de Leòn's fountain of youth, reputedly located in a remote, uninhabited area somewhere between Cypress Gardens and Legoland. The whole "cancer diagnosis" was a ploy that allowed him, after preliminary planning, to disappear from the public eye. And with his "death," attention shifted away from the one-time media icon who did battle late nights with everyone from Johnny Rotten to Rona Barrett.

Sometime late in 2007, he made his way to central Florida. At some point, he immersed himself in the rejuvenating waters of de
Leòn's lost wonder of the New World, then took up meteorology.

Tom Snyder, born again in the magic waters, took on the identity of "Matt Devitt," it is said. The old TV fixture -- once so ubiquitous and recognizable that Dan Ackroyd built a career parodying him on Saturday Night Live -- had undone most telltale signs of his old existence.


Matt Devitt
But not all.

He could lose the leisure suits and the cloud of smoke. He could lose the groovy '70s hairdo. He could lose the past several decades, and lose the public's attention. He could lose his old specialty and pick up a new one.

What he couldn't leave behind, though, was that voice. The mannerisms. His way with words. The impishness.


"Matt Devitt," WINK television weatherman. Yeah, whatever you say "Mr. Devitt."

We'll play along. But you're not really fooling anybody . . . Tom.

We've learned to recognize fake news when we see it. And we damn well know that Tom Snyder will never die. He'll just go to Florida and dunk himself in the old explorer's saving waters as needed.

But don't worry, Tom. We won't tell Rona where you are.


Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Meanwhile, at the Russian Embassy. . . .


That Donald Trump. He's such a card.

You say covfefe, I say covFEEfay

Click for full size
Things have come to a pretty pass
Our patience is going fast,
For you tweet this and the other
While we sit here aghast

Goodness knows what the end will be
Oh, your shit is just so bat
It looks as if our POTUS is quite plowed
Please, God! Not a mushroom cloud!

You say covFEHfay and I say covFEEfay,
You say GAMMA RAY! and I say YOU'RE CRAY-CRAY!
CovFEHfay, covFEEfay, gamma ray, you're cray-cray
Let's call the whole thing off!

Saturday, April 29, 2017

Potholes are an imperialist plot

If you're Omaha's mayor, it's probably not such a good thing when a rare drive-by video comes out of North Korea, and the first thing that pops into people's mind is "Our streets are a lot worse than Pyongyang's."
Kim Jean-Un
Jean Stothert
Maybe if Jean Stothert got one of those Kim Jong-Un hairdos -- Kim Jean-Un? -- that would be the one little thing that turned things around for her. Either that, or we could just threaten to incinerate Council Bluffs unless. . . .

No, I think we're just screwed.

Wednesday, February 08, 2017

South Louisiana personality test

 
Coffee.

The way God intended it to be made and consumed.

☐   Yes
(Perfectly normal)

 
☐   No
(It's bad, bad)

Tuesday, February 09, 2016

Look what she's done to my show, Ma


Cap, this right here is why Steve Harvey is hosting Family Feud. And you ain't.

It's the worst contestant in the history of television game shows giving the worst answer, and then a worser answer, and then back to the first worst answer, and then the worser one again . . . and they're all answers that have been given already.

Oh, Lord have mercy, if that had been me, I would have burned my face off in a klieg light, while sticking a fork into a 220-volt outlet. While standing in a tub of water . . . I'd want to make sure.

And Steve turns it all into comedic gold . . . most of which will be edited out of the final program.


Enjoy.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

And that's the way it @#$%*&!!! is . . . .


Alrighty, folks. This is your NSFW video of the day.

Here, at wits' end dealing with a producer back at the station, British reporter Jonathan Pie gives us the real news. Which is a lot closer to the truth than the "official" news.

"Jonathan Pie," alas, is really comedian Tom Walker, as reported by the Russian-government website Sputnik News. Which is just as well, I suppose. Pity the real TV journalist who gets fed up and tells the unvarnished truth . . . and then has the outtake go viral.

Now, what I'd like to see is a real newscast by American and Russian anchors who get good and cranky, then cut the official propaganda of each superpower to shreds . . . thereby arriving at something like the truth.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

If you or a loved one has been hurt by Leonard Fournette. . . .


I don't care who ya' are, this is funny.

In a related class-action development, I understand that pursuers who inhale the dust in Leonard Fournette's wake also may be at high risk for mesothelioma. If you or some linebacker you love develops mesothelioma after playing football against LSU and Leonard Fournette call State, War Eagle and Orangemen at 1 (800) TOO SLOW.

Geaux Tigers!

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Screwed by the weather again


"I tell ya, the East Coast's gettin' the shaft."

The eighth-grader in me finds this AccuWeather forecast map hilarious. So did the WGN morning-news crew. Meanwhile, in other Chicago television news, Floyd Kalber is reported to be spinning in his grave.

More hump-day weather after this word from our sponsor . . . Trojans, keeping the East Coast dry since 1916.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Do the Freddy


We bid a fond farewell to Mad Men in a manner that we hope might earn Roger Sterling's enthusiastic approval. Sal Romano certainly would have loved it.

So let's all do the Freddy.

Well, not literally. Eww.