CSotD: The Wait-What School of Humor

My distaste for awards is sort of a running gag here, and this Sherman’s Lagoon (AMS) pretty well sums it up.

It reminded me of an item in the late Charley Stough’s “B.O.N.G. Bulletin” — a periodic on-line roundup of news, gossip and jokes from the mythical Burned Out Newscreatures Guild — about a for-real memo from the New Jersey Press Association, instructing award winners on how to get on stage in groups to have their photos taken without tying up the place too long.

Apparently the only person at the banquet not getting a plaque was the guy taking the pictures of everybody else.

Charley’s gone but there’s a somewhat creaky remnant of the B.O.N.G. Bulletin here. I couldn’t find the NJ story, but I did find this:

And also this:

And this, but it’s in poor taste so I won’t share it:

Point being that, if today’s CSotD posts a little late this morning, I was researching.

As for awards, I remember Lou Grant’s classic critique of one of Mary’s productions: “It didn’t stink.”

She was delighted, which shows she’d finally come of age in the news business.

 

Speaking of laughing at things I already knew, Daddy’s Home (Creators) made a point I’ve often harped on, which is that the seats in the economy section don’t tilt enough to even take the weight off your spinal column. People who bitch about tilting seatbacks either haven’t been on an airplane in 20 years or are flying first class.

Either way, they’re out of touch with the Common People, which reminds me of this classic Southern Airways ad from 1970:

Times change. I just booked my flights for the AAEC Convention this October. They charged me an extra $22 per seat not because I chose extra legroom but I guess because they wanted to add $88 to my fare without me catching on. Every seat on the plane was an extra $22. (No straphangers.)

 

I’ve complained about this before, too, but leafblowers — as seen in this The Other Coast (Creators) — were a bigger issue during the decade I worked from home. Now that I’m retired, they’re only an issue at nap time, which, come to think of it, pretty much matches my previous work hours.

At least if somebody wants to chase that last leaf around for another 15 minutes with a rake, I don’t have to listen to it. And the fact that the operators wear noise-canceling headphones is proof that they know how annoying they are.

They should have to buy, like, 20 sets of headphones and pass them out to the neighbors.

Worst part is that I promised my mother I’d never become Andy Rooney in my dotage, and yet here I am.

 

Even before my dotage. This F-Minus (AMS) brings to mind the first time I stood in the shower and noticed that the shampoo bottle said, “This product has not been tested on animals.” I thought it was a warning rather than a boast.

I’ve since gone bald, so maybe it was.

 

This Flying McCoys (AMS) didn’t get a laff and a wait-what? from me because I genuinely don’t get it.

After Father’s Day, there was a raft of complaints on social media from people whose fathers hadn’t been around, which I guess is like people who complain about Valentine’s Day because they’re single, but I’ve never heard anyone complain because his father did things with him.

There’s an auto supply store here with a young woman behind the counter who will come out into the parking lot and install your wiper blades faster than you could have gotten them out of the package on your own. Her name tag reads “Jolene” and I’m guessing she was handing wrenches to her daddy since she was old enough to lift them.

Good for her. Good for him.

And I’m sorry for anyone whose complaint is that his father included him in things.

Here’s a picture of a little girl from Maine whose daddy runs a string of sled dogs, only, by now she’s about 16 and probably has her own string.

I doubt she regrets the time she spent helping him. She sure was having fun that day.

 

Man Overboard offers a more pure Wait-What? gag, because I had a moment of stunned silence followed by a guffaw.

I don’t know the cartoonist’s religion, but, having been raised Roman Catholic, I was well aware of the concept of Original Sin, which was part of the banishment from Eden. We’re all born with this inherent sinfulness on our souls, and that’s what Jesus took away. Sort of. You still have to get baptized. Think of it as a theological software update.

During my brief post-RC Episcopalian transitional phase, I played the role of Beelzebub in “The Harrowing of Hell,” one of the 15th Century Mystery Plays from York, which were short pieces enacted on wagons, such that a person could stand in one place and see the entire Bible played out as the wagons passed by.

The play — mostly a dialogue and then a sword fight between Christ and my boss, Satan — was about Jesus descending into Hell after his crucifixion to redeem the souls of the worthy, like Adam and Eve, Noah and so forth.

However, as seen here, there’s a competing theory that, rather than to redeem our sinful nature, Christ died for our immediate, personal sins, which isn’t what the Bible says but, then again, what does scripture have to do with religion?

BTW, “Original Sin” doesn’t mean coming up with some abomination that nobody else ever thought of.

And I don’t know if God scores on degree of difficulty anyway.

 

Finally, Watson riffs on our self-imposed technological dependency. It’s not enough that we no longer know anybody’s phone number or how to find our way from A to B without a little voice telling us how to get there and when we’ve arrived.

We used to rely on observation and common sense to know the weather, but today — Sorry, Bob — we do need a weather app to know which way the wind blows.

Fortunately, we also have George Wallace, as this Atlanta morning show discovered when he dropped by to promote a local appearance: