Morons of the Month - October 2021

 

Okay, truth be told, I am very proud of the fact that I have pretty much ignored late night television since Johnny Carson hung up his microphone.  Oh, sure, I might have checked in from time to time on Leno and Letterman.  But, by and large, Johnny was my guy and I held out my loyalty to him.

What I truly liked about Carson is that he was an equal opportunity offender.  He would lampoon anyone and you really never knew what his political leaning was.  You tuned in to ease out of your day with a couple of laughs and a fun interview or two with the likes of Tony Randall or Suzanne Pleshette.

A perfect way to say good night.

Not any more.   Because, in 2021, late night television is just another way to get somebody else's viewpoints hammered into your skull.  There is no better example of this that the recent day last month where every late night host devoted a show to teaching you all about climate change.  Ha!  If anybody had ever presented this idea to Johnny, he would have shoved his carbon footprint up their collective asses.

To boot, none of the hosts pictured above are worth my time or yours.  Especially coming off a few years where Donald Trump was living rent free in their heads.

Samantha Bee?   As funny as a colo-rectal exam.

Seth Meyers?  Pass.

Stephen Colbert?   Not even technically a comic and he is still basking in his invitation to Barack Obama's birthday soiree.

Trevor Noah?   Token.

James Corden?   Not everything from across the pond is brilliant.

Jimmy Kimmel?  Hmmm.  I am still waiting for the #MeToo brigade to get him.   I know somebody who worked for his show.   I have stories.

Jimmy Fallon, at least, tries to be a little middle-of-the-road but it still pains me that he is working on Johnny's "Tonight Show."

Indeed, the whole late night format has gone to hell in a hand basket.  

It's 11PM.  Do you know where your pillow is?

Dinner last night:  Pizza with good friends Bob and Ellen while watching the MLB Wild Card Game.

This Date in History - October 6

 

You ain't read nuthin' yet.  There's a reason this photo shows up today.  But you'll have to wait until we get to 1927 before I tell you.

105 BC:  DURING THE BATTLE OF ARAUSIO, THE CIMBRI INFLICT THE HEAVIEST DEFEAT ON THE ROMAN ARMY OF GNAEUS MALLIUS MAXIMUS.

Any word from his brother Glutteus?  That simple ass.

869:  ERMENTRUDE OF ORLEANS DIES.  SHE WAS A CONSORT OF CHARLES THE BALD.

Joke coming...

877:  CHARLES THE BALD DIES.

Those eight years without Ermentrude must have been sheer hell.  Meanwhile, who is actually proud of being called through world history "the Bald?"

1582:  BECAUSE OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR, THIS DAY IS SKIPPED IN ITALY, POLAND, PORTUGAL, AND SPAIN.

Does this mean that, if I was born in Italy, my birthday is really February 12?  And, as if the Polish didn't have enough to remember...

1683:  WILLIAM PENN BRINGS 13 GERMAN IMMIGRANT FAMILIES TO THE COLONY OF PENNSYLVANIA, MARKING THE FIRST IMMIGRATION OF GERMAN PEOPLE TO AMERICA.

The egg noodle couldn't have been far behind.  My German relatives didn't show up for another 225 years.  My family was never one to jump on a trend too quickly.

1789:  DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, LOUIS XVI RETURNS TO PARIS FROM VERSAILLES AFTER BEING CONFRONTED BY SOME PARISIAN WOMEN.

On the earliest known episode of Jerry Springer.

1846:  INVENTOR GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE IS BORN.

You can be sure.

1889:  THOMAS EDISON SHOWS HIS FIRST MOTION PICTURE.

And amazingly it came in third place for the weekend box office.

1903:  THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA SITS FOR THE FIRST TIME.

How long did they make them stand?

1927:  OPENING OF THE JAZZ SINGER, THE FIRST TALKING MOVIE.

And, in 2010, there are lots of movies that would be better off with no sound.

1935:  WRESTLER BRUNO SAMMARTINO IS BORN.

My grandmother's idea of an athlete.  She loved it when he used to talk to his fans in his native Italian.  As if she could understand a single word he was saying...

1939:  DURING WORLD WAR II, THE LAST POLISH ARMY IS DEFEATED.

But, in Poland, they are saying this happened on October 7.  If you don't get that joke, you are reading this blog way too fast.

1945:  BILLY SIANIS AND HIS PET BILLY GOAT ARE EJECTED FROM WRIGLEY FIELD DURING GAME 4 OF THE WORLD SERIES - THE ALLEGED BIRTH OF THE BILLY GOAT CURSE.

Yeah, the Cubs' futility ever since has had nothing to do with a lot of bad pitching, expensive player contracts, and poor management.  You're still a dirtbag, Ron Santo!

1977:  POPE JOHN PAUL II BECOMES THE FIRST PONTIFF TO VISIT THE WHITE HOUSE.

He brought a simple cheese strudel.  Rosalyn Carter made Sanka.

1981:  EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT ANWAR AL-SADAT IS ASSASSINATED.

Not everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when the news of Sadat's murder broke.  For some bizarre reason, I do.  P.S. the story isn't particularly interesting.

1987:  FIJI BECOMES A REPUBLIC.

And later on, a bottled water.

1989:  ACTRESS BETTE DAVIS DIES.

I really hope she was cremated.  What a fitting final tribute.

1999:  WRESTLER GORILLA MONSOON DIES.

On Bruno's birthday??  My grandmother would have been heartbroken.

2000:  YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC RESIGNS.

Gee, if he lived in either Italy, Poland, Portugal, or Spain, this may never have happened.

2019:  COMIC RIP TAYLOR DIES.

Buried with or without the toupee?

2020:  MUSICIAN EDDIE VAN HALEN DIES.

For me, he was a hero mainly because of who his wife was.

Dinner last night:  Chinese food at the NY apartment.

For Your Spam Folder

 

Okay, I need to provide some back story before I get to the crux of this film review.

If you're even remotely aware of Broadway, you will know that "Dear Evan Hansen" was the big hot musical several years ago.   Tickets were scarce as teenagers and their parents flocked to see this story about a depressed teen surrounded by suicide and social media.   I'm convinced that you could buy Lexapro at the concession stand during intermission.

Now I didn't see the Broadway edition, but I managed to score a ticket for the national tour at Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theater.  I sat up in the balcony and, given the intimacy of the show, it didn't work for me high in the rafters.   It also didn't help that every single song sounds exactly like the last one sung.   

So, as a result of my lukewarm theater experience, I wanted to see if the film version worked better for me when you could see faces and emotions close up.  Plus the movie stars the stage's original lead, Ben Platt, who was a product of the prestigious Harvard Westlake private school.  I'm going to have a better time, right?

Wrong.

Somehow from the balcony in a theater to a stadium seat in the local cinema, the show gets lost again.   Now it's actually too much of a close-up and you see the show's warts at a microscopic level.   

And you can start with Ben Platt, now 27 and way too old-looking to be playing a high school senior.  While Platt has a terrific voice, he is an overactor to the Nth degree.   He plays with a lot of facial tics and mannerisms that are incredibly distracting.   Plus every moment is overplayed as if there is a gun being held to his head.   Of course, there's no doubt he was going to be cast in the movie version.   I mean, one of the executive producers is Marc Platt.   Connect the dots, please.

The supporting cast featuring the always welcome Julianne Moore and Amy Adans does a good job, but, still at the core of this all, is a rather depressing story which is not exactly uplifting like "Bye Bye Birdie," which was also about teens.  But, unlike in this dreary adaptation, those kids had "a lot of livin' to do."  

So, I've seen "Dear Evan Hansen" from afar and close-up and neither way worked for me.  And, oh yeah, every song seems to sound alike.   Still.

LEN'S RATING:  Two stars.

Dinner last night:  Pork with dan dan noodles from PF Chang's.

Monday Morning Video Laugh - October 4, 2021

 "The Pink Panther" music makes this video of a drunk walking up hill even funnier.

Dinner last night:  Grilled chicken sausage.

The Sunday Memory Drawer - Bracing Myself for Dental Work

 

Last week, I took you through my earliest years of dental care.   Now it gets a little more complicated.

I was a kid and I was hearing it every day from the other yokels in my school.

"Eh, what's up, Doc?"

"How fast can you eat an ear of corn?"

"Can I show a movie on your two front teeth?"

Years later, screw all of you!

Yes, I had two big ole buck teeth.  The Bugs Bunny look all the way.  And, as I progressed through each grade in Grimes Elementary School, the nasty comments increased at geometric intervals.  Probably because the overhang of my top dental plate kept getting bigger and bigger.  I was starting to look like the upper deck at Tiger Stadium.

The answer was an easy one.  Braces for you, young man. 

Over the next four years, I'd be making regular visits to the big building on the right of the photo above.  10 Fiske Place in downtown Mount Vernon, New York.  The daytime home of my orthodontist, Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player.  That's exactly how he introduced himself to me.   And anybody else he talked to.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player."

Ha ha.  The joke got stale pretty quickly.

Upon my very first meeting with Dr. Ash, it was apparent to both of us that we'd been spending a lot of time together.  And that we might be able to get that backyard swimming pool from the money my parents would have to cough up to get their son de-rabbitized.

The first step in the process is the immortalization of your miserable overbite.  A cement mold is made of your bite and Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player was so proud of this that he had a whole wall in his office devoted to displaying the miserable dental structure of unsuspecting teenagers all over Mount Vernon.  It was the Grauman's Chinese Theater for bicuspids.  Mine quickly joined the display window.

After one long look at Len's Red Cross Disaster of a mouth, Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player designed a very aggressive and protracted plan of attack.  It was going to be the heaviest of artillery.  Full braces on the top and the bottom.  For a while, rubber bands attaching it all.  Then bite retainers.  Three years of 10 Fiske Place and Rome was built quicker.

The first volley was pounds of US Steel thrown across both the top and bottom of my mouth.  Cemented into little studs that surrounded some of my teeth.  I no longer had a smile.  I had a 1965 Buick Skylark.

It took some getting used to all the chrome I was now sporting.  There were foods I had to avoid.  Gum was verboten.  And goodbye to salt water taffy on our annual Atlantic City vacations.

Even with all the glue and paste adorning my cheesy grin, snafus could still occur.  One weekend summer afternoon, I was watching a Charlie Chan movie on TV with Grandma.  Suddenly, I felt a pop and then the sharp jagged edge of a wire in my cheek.  Uh oh.

The top brace had escaped its mooring and was now embedded in the inside flesh of my mouth.  It was time for an emergency visit to 10 Fiske Place.  Except...

"Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player is on vacation.  He'll be back a week from Monday."

D'oh!

Now, most families would immediately seek out whoever the replacement doctor was.  Not my folks.  Quicker action was to be taken.

My father took a wire cutter and gave me immediate relief.

The rubber band era didn't have such dire repercussions, but there were bumps in the road nonetheless.  A loud, raucous laugh would also widen my mouth and then, suddenly....

SNAP!!!

Ow!!!

I quickly became an expert at being able to demonstrate all sorts of loud noises without opening my mouth more than a fraction of an inch.

You don't see it happening when you're in the middle of a relationship with an orthodontist, but the treatment does eventually work.  At first, Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player could fit his whole thumb into my overbite.   Slowly, less and less and less of his thumb would fit.  He'd pull my cement choppers from his display case and show them to me.  The quintessential before and after you normally see in Jenny Craig ads.  Except, Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player was so proud of his work on me that he would share it with strangers in the waiting room.  I became a major part of his resume.  If this happened today, I'd undoubtedly be the first mouth you'd see on his website.

"Wow, your teeth were really that bad?"

Yes, they were and thank you, Doctor, for the wonderful boost in my self esteem.

When my teeth were pronounced straight and the novelty of my mouth wore off, Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player and I ended our weekly trysts.  He removed the dental shackles and, at last, I would be able to smile and show everybody my new never-had-a-cavity-before teeth.

Except, now braceless, food bits from meals of three Thanksgivings ago reappeared in all their glory.  Along with all the bacteria and plaque that went with them. 

I was not done with regular visitations to 10 Fiske Place.  Indeed, I was just moving down the hall.  To my new regular dentist.

Enter Dr. Paul Cipes.

To be continued...

Dinner last night:  Popcorn at the movies.

Classic TV Commercial of the Month - October 2021

 Should you offer some Anacin?   Or simply call Social Services?

Dinner last night:  Ramen noodles.

Presenting Your October 2021 Mugs

 

You may not need drugs, but you sure do need a lawyer.

Let's hope the thing lying on his head is dead.

"I'm not on drugs.  Really.  I'm not."

Oh, my God!  They've arrested Whitney Houston's corpse!

Obama hopes you eventually change.

"Shit.  And I was registered to vote and everything."

Celebrating America's independence, look who lost theirs.

Comb please to Cell Block H.

So, was the pack of gum worth it?

"Damn new razor blades."

Dinner last night: Nachos.