CSotD: Father’s Day Funnies
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Well, obviously.
Father’s Day is kind of weird, because while men want acknowledgement I don’t think they’re as much into presentation as women, so that flowers or breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day is a good thing, but ties and coffee cups on Father’s Day don’t make much of an impression.
The best Father’s Day I can remember was in 1980, when my sons, father-in-law and I went to a Denver Bears baseball game. IIRC, I bought the tickets and he bought the hot dogs and the Bears clobbered whoever they were playing. In fact, Jerry Manuel was at bat when my father-in-law went off to get refreshments, and there was quite a line at the stand, but Manuel was at bat when he returned.
“Still?” he asked, to which the answer was “Again.” The Bears were the Expos farm team and had a pretty awesome lineup that year.
Still on the topic of Canadian sports, Kearney marks a jaw-dropping disaster, as Hockey Night in Canada ends after 74 years. It’s hard to think of Canadian television without Hockey Night in Canada, which was must-see TV there and in the American borderlands where I grew up. It wasn’t necessarily that we stayed home, because — long before “sports bars” — the game was on at every bar.
Hockey today is not a great sport for TV because the line-changes make it hard to keep track of who’s on the ice, but back in them thar days, there were — as the Good Lord intended — only six teams: Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Boston and New York, which made it easier because all the players were super-stars and you always knew who was on the rosters and who played on what line.
In later years, it made a household name of Don Cherry, a flamboyant loudmouth who proved sports commentary could be both accurate and nonsensical, and I don’t have to tell you which of these two guys the obnoxious showboat was. But well before that, Hockey Night in Canada made stars, because Robert Goulet was singing about DuMaurier cigarettes in the ads long before he appeared in Camelot on Broadway and blew the lyrics to the national anthem (ours, not his) in Lewiston.
And the game was followed by our pet, Juliette, who compensated wives and girlfriends for all the shouting, cursing and cheering they’d just had to put up with.
Maybe that sounds sexist, but it’s Father’s Day and, besides, it’s accurate. Anyway, the CBC is replacing HNiC with some sports thing about Olympic events, which reminds me of a night I had a party and we ended up with the guys standing around in the kitchen talking while the wimmenfolk were riveted to the TV in the living room watching the figure skating from the Calgary Olympics.
Turnabout is fair play, I suppose.
Here’s another chance to get into all sorts of sexist chatter, but Sipress, rather, raises the question of why women show so much flesh, which could spark a far more interesting conversation than the predictable “My eyes are up here” issues it might raise.
I don’t think he’s addressing that side of it, or he’d have drawn a “fabulous babe” rather than an average-looking woman. He seems to know that women are not dressing to attract male attention, but that still leaves the question of why guys wear baggy, knee-length cargo pants while women tight-fitting short-shorts.
Insert the word “most” as often as you need to, but we aren’t entertaining “not all” kvetching today.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I don’t have the Student Dream in which I have to take a final exam in a course I haven’t been to. For one thing, my ADD hyperfocus meant I could buy the book and write a B+ paper on it the night before it was due, and, for another, I never cared about grades.
Also, I’ve already lived a variation of the Student Dream in college: I once went to the first seminar of the semester, but skipped the second, where apparently they announced a room change, because when I showed up for the third meeting, there was nobody there.
So I dropped out of school and moved to Colorado.
However, I have periodically had a high-school-based dream where it is time to clean out our lockers and I have no idea where mine is. My version of the dream also assumes that I somehow got a second locker mid-year and have lost them both. And don’t know my combination.
Which is ridiculous. My gym locker was 28-0-28 and my upstairs locker was 32-12-38, and my upstairs locker was second from the end, so I could slip around behind the row and make out with Maryalyce where Mrs. Climenson wouldn’t see us.
I remember the things that mattered.
I have a pair of step-in Skechers which I wear frequently but shouldn’t. I know this because, having had both hips replaced, I’ve run into enough physical therapists to know how agitated they get over Skechers, which provide no lateral support at all, leaving your feet wallowing around.
I do have a pair of Asics that provide terrific lateral support but are a pain to put on and some high-top Chucks that are even more bothersome to put on and lace up.
Fortunately, back when I was 33, light and trim and fit, I discovered that running blows up the bursa sacks in my feet and I’m sure at this stage would do even more damage, so I can view the whole controversy as a noncombatant.
Geez, I kind of hope it is. I’ve rounded the clubhouse turn and reached the age where you start looking at your roots and trying to figure out how far it is to the finish line. My dad checked out at 67 and my mom made it to 101, which gives me very little useful data to obsess over, since I’ve long since passed him and can’t afford to match her.
And I’m too late for this song, which about everybody in Nashville covered but that Faron Young did first, back when I was five and Hockey Night in Canada was three:
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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