RRCBlog

From forum member Philo Bedo:

That’s it for me.

After seven years at this, I’m hanging up “The Horns”. I’m moving on to another project: Round is Funny. You can read a more detailed explanation over there, but the short version goes like this:

There’s only so many ways a guy can make fun of goofy-looking band dudes–yes, even with those guys below this post. I simply don’t find it fun anymore. So I’m quitting. To paraphrase Air Supply: I’m All Out of Douche.

The RRC forum still thrives in spite of me. I will continue to administer and post there. I can’t go completely cold-turkey. The site will remain up, as will the blog, for the foreseeable future, thereby preserving the laffs for future generations. (”Mommy, what is ‘backwards hair’?”) As for me, I’ll be blogging at the other place now. Drop by if you like reading about cats and aging.

One brief moment of seriousness: I want to sincerely thank each and every one of you that ever took the time to stop in and have a laugh, leave a comment, or spread your Komedy Kancer. You have inspired and buoyed me through periods of darkness and despair. I have become friends with many of you in real life and on the Internet and I will cherish those friendships and connections always.

Now, as Sealab’s Captain Murphy once said, “Sniff you jerks later.”

These guys are repping several genres of Douche. They’re like the Village People of Douchebags.

Submitted by Douche Patrol

These come from my dad’s dad:

Apropos of nothing, my grandmother asks my grandfather “Jack, do you ever wonder if you could have done better than me?” My grandfather, sensing a set-up, replies “Nope.” He was right about the set-up. My grandmother pounced immediately, hissing “Why can’t I say the same?” Never taking his eyes off the television, my grandfather answered “You could if you were as big a liar as I am.”

My grandfather had one household chore to do: clean up dog shit in the yard. Everything else was relegated to my grandmother, my father or my aunt. Because he only had one job, my grandmother pounced on every opportunity to badger grandpa about it. “Jesus Christ, Jack! When are you going to clean up all of that dog shit, anyway?” she asked him once. He answered “Not yet. I’ve almost got enough for a new wife.”

My father and I are sitting in the waiting room at his doctor’s office. In walks a middle-aged woman pushing an impossibly old woman in a wheelchair–mother and daughter, we assume. It’s the old woman’s first visit, so she has to fill out the requisite reams of paperwork. The middle-aged daughter asks the questions, the impossibly old lady croaks out the answers and the middle-aged daughter dutifully records them. The impossibly old lady can barely hear so the questions and answers are loud enough for my father and I to hear. “WHAT DID YOUR FATHER DIE OF?” the middle-aged woman asks.

“WHAT?” asks the old lady.
“WHAT KILLED YOUR FATHER?”
“OH! CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE!”
“AND WHAT DID YOU MOTHER DIE OF?”
“WHAT?”
“WHAT KILLED YOUR MOTHER?”

My father leans close to me and softly says “I’m gonna say ‘Indians.’ ”

– Fall has fallen and I’m sure advertising agencies hired by car companies are swarming every curvy road in the northeast to film “luxury sedans” swooping gracefully around the bends, leaving trails of flying leaves in their wake.

– Speaking of luxury sedans, this isn’t exactly fertile ground, but after watching Saturday night’s Ohio State vs. Penn state game, a couple boring NFL games on Sunday, then last night’s Green Bay vs. Denver game, I am mighty tired of car and beer commercials.

– Here’s an excellent story about a sports writer by the sports writer’s son. The more “literature” I read, the more I admire old-school reporters.

– Sasha Frere-Jones of the New Yorker thinks indie rock is the whitest bunch of white to ever white. Village Voice music editor Rob Harvilla disagrees. Normally, I would disagree with Harvilla as I do think indie rock is too white (and I don’t mean Caucasian, I mean lacking in any discernible ass-shakability) but, since I believe Harvilla’s taste to be above reproach, I happily defer. Also, I haven’t listened to anything “new” in nearly two years. Also also, I love the term “Blog rock”. I’m not sure what it is, but I know I hate it.

– Why are we in Iraq again? Duh.

– Speaking of Iraq, this is great. And people wonder why I want all of those men and women to come back home. Here’s another reason.

– These jams killed my face off.

– How much is a chicken? Do you know? I certainly didn’t. I asked my good pal Uck how much he thought a chicken was. He didn’t know either. We guessed around twenty bucks. What brought this up? A woman sent out an “all-employee” email to everyone at my place of employ offering a rooster for sale. She was asking five dollars for Mr. Rooster. I asked my dad how much he thought a chicken would be. He said about eight bucks. I asked him how he came to that price. He said “Well, chickens at the store are around six or seven bucks.” I hadn’t even thought of it that way. Here’s how chickens reproduce. Here’s a chicken FAQ. Chicken arise!

– This is nifty if you’re into design.

– Finally, an answer to everyone’s question: This Halloween, I’m dressing up as a grownup who lays on the couch on Wednesday night and watches TV until eleven, at which point, he goes to bed.

EDIT: So long, Mr. Goulet.

In my family, we have an expression; when you are near death, you are said to be “on the roof”. I haven’t the slightest idea what it means but we use it nonetheless. Well, according to this site, entertainer Robert Goulet is “on the roof”.

I’m pulling for Goulet because he is one of the rare “old school” performers whose career took a trajectory from sixties-era stardom to seventies-era supper-club performance to eighties-era irrelevance to nineties-era ironic self-parody. Goulet was one of the guys who “got it”. He seemed happy not only to collect a paycheck, but to affably go along with the joke.

From his appearance in Naked Gun 2 1/2 in which his character was asked by Leslie Nielson’s Lt. Frank Drebin “I’m sure that we can handle this situation maturely, just like the responsible adults that we are. Isn’t that right, Mr… Poopy Pants?” to his guest spot on Comedy Central’s short-lived TV Funhouse, Goulet was not afraid to poke fun at himself and his image, a rare trait among entertainers of his era.

So, I’m pulling for Mr. Goulet. In his honor, I include one of my favorite Goulet sketches from SNL:

It is my hope that this letter finds you well. Enclosed, please find a photograph of the gents and I which we intend to employ as a means of promotion. I felt to strike a pose with the canyon as a backdrop would convey the serious nature of the group. As you will no doubt decipher, it was necessary for me to clamber as near to the photographic machine as possible so that I might be right and properly recognized as the leader of our ensemble. Would that you could have seen the faces of Misters Fontaine and Ernst as I posed recumbent at the front of the group. The envy was palpable to such a degree that I stifled a guffaw for fear such a disturbance might send me headlong into the abyss.

In two days time, I hope to meet in Falls Church with a gentleman who wishes to procure for us an agreement which will enable us to commit our songs to phonograph. If such a dream were to come true, my darling, I can assure you our wealth would be equal to that of John Jacob Astor himself such would be the demand for our recordings.

Pray that the arrangement comes to pass.

Yours,

Horace

From the collection of Vomelet

I’ll be forty-two before the year is out. I recently saw an optometrist about a new prescription for glasses. The eight-year-old pair I’d been wearing had become woefully inadequate. He slung the goggles on me, ran me through the “Better? Worse?” drill and wrote me a new, stronger prescription. He also told me I could benefit from bifocals. “But what if I don’t want bifocals? Can I get away with not having them?” I asked.

“You can get away with it, but I guarantee you’ll be back in a year asking for bifocals.” he replied.

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