CSotD: Levenity
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I just made up that word, a portmanteau of "leavening" and "levity," both of which I'm in the mood for this morning. And then I took the "A" from "leavening" so it could also include Sam Levenson, a Borscht Belt comedian who, checking Google, is a lot more obscure than he deserves to be.
Levenson had a TV show with a theme song that, to use Stephen Dedalus's term, "I am almosting."
The problem is that it was so close to a Fred Rogers style that, just as I'm getting close, either "It's a good feeling" or "You are my friend, you are special" jump into my mind and won't shut up and let Sam's song come through. But, as he would have said, "Mox nix."
Anyway, no sermon today. Here's some random stuff:
This is floating around on the Intertubes and nobody seems to know who did it. Somebody with a sense of humor, I'd guess. It didn't take mad skilz, just general madness.
Still on the subject of untraceable humor, this morning's Zits steps out of "oh, those kids today!" mode and into something more universal.
The untraceable part is that, when "Comedy Central" began, in the midst of the Great Standup Craze, they had a show called "Short Attention Span Theater" that showed clips of stand-ups, which was great because it featured only the best gags, but was well-named because I can rarely remember who did what.
Anyway, one now-anonymous comedian spoke about someone taking a hamster to the vet and said, "That's like repairing a Bic lighter."
Laces on sneakers are another thing that we don't repair, like televisions and microwaves, but, in this case, it's because the laces generally last longer than the shoes, particularly if you don't tighten them or tie them at all. I've bought new laces for dress shoes, but it's been awhile since I've bought them for sneakers.
I wouldn't mind finding a pair of sneakers I loved that much and which hadn't either fallen apart or begun to stink to high heaven by the time a lace broke.
Dick Tracy is just starting a new adventure, which brings B-B Eyes, Mumbles, Doubleup and Flattop's widow together in a scene that reminds me of a whist game I was in back in college.
It wasn't even real whist, the forerunner of bridge with bidding and such. We were just tossing out cards and collecting up tricks while we talked and while a dance went on in the next room. Thing is, that casual game was a great favorite in the inner city and I was the only white guy in the game and maybe at the dance.
The guy to my left said something to me, but it was so unintelligible that I went into a full white-guy-guilt mode that Richard Pryor or Dave Chappelle would have loved to see. Thankfully, before I had to attempt a reply, the fellow to my right snapped, "Talk up, Mumbles — you mumblin'," and the girl directly across the table began to giggle.
Oh. Yeah. Hence the name.
Not sure which of us she was giggling at.
Okay, yes, I am.
Once Dick Tracy had put me into nostalgic free-association, I was primed for today's Big Nate to send me back yet one more year to my senior year in high school. Potsdam State had sent down three or four student teachers, who, rather than commute the 80 mile round trip each day, rented an apartment in town.
They weren't Swedish and they weren't, to my knowledge, moonlighting as bikini models, but at least two of them were remarkably hot, including the one assigned to my French teacher.
And the other two were quite cute as well, but, of course, whatever teacher/student ethics might have prevailed, we were high school kids and they were juniors in college, which meant we could enjoy having them around but, well, we were high school kids and they were juniors in college.
Until the night they decided to check out the local bar and were so unhinged by the pickup attempts of some of the considerably older and even more considerably well-lubricated patrons that they latched onto our table and became our dance partners and dates for the evening. Still nothing happened, but if I thought it was fun going to French class, going to the bar that night was considerably moreso.
And then one of them got hepatitus and they all disappeared. That was really great, because it left things open-ended, which was twenty times as good for a 17-year-old Master of Delusion as it was going to get anyway.
Friend-of-the-Blog Richard Marcej has a Pekar-esque (another portmanteau!) blog/strip that I have just started following again after having lost the bookmark at some point, and it's worth putting on your list.
Specific to the current entry, I was self-disciplined enough this year to avoid the post-Easter sell-off, but I've always been amused by standing in the express checkout and imagining that people were bringing up collections of things that they intended to use all at once.
Richard and I may be the only people on earth who think this way.
At least, the time the guy in front of me was buying two heads of lettuce and a quart of 10W30, my saying, "I think that's the wrong kind of oil," just got a puzzled, semi-hostile look.
And, finally, everyone knows that GoComics' Bloom County reruns are all Sundays at the moment, right? Apparently, either they only saved the black-and-white layers, or else it's not worth the hassle of overlaying the color plate. Doesn't really matter.
This one seemed apt, particularly for anyone still recovering from all that self-employment IRS paperwork. The only thing worse than paying taxes on a creative salary is seeing what a pathetic a.g.i. you're working with.
Never have so many paid so much on so little.
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