Blog #112

Thank God Whoopi’s back.  My wife loves The View and watches it religiously.  I watch it religiously too – I get down on my knees and pray that the cable goes out.  But now with Whoopi back, that means less Joy.  And less Joy gives me more joy.  Hey, I know many of you love The View, but it’s ok if I don’t like what you like, isn’t it?  I’m guessing there are plenty of things I like that you don’t, like Moby Dick and John Milton and those little canned wieners we used to call Vienna Sausages.  They’d come five or six in a can packed in some slimy goop.  You’d grill them on a piece of aluminum foil, turning them over after they started to blacken.  Then cut them in half and slice up pickles so the pickle was the same size as the wiener pieces.  Fork a pickle and a wiener together and plunge them into your mouth.  Carol would not touch them, thought they were disgusting.  Mmmm, delicious!

Sorry, I got carried away.  Where was I?  The View.  I think Carol plays it on purpose just to torture me.  It’s less messy than water-boarding.

The View is too horrid to mention

It’s hard to keep paying attention

To make this old boy

Watch Whoopi and Joy

Is against the Geneva Convention.

Hi there and welcome back.  Did you celebrate May Day?  You had two choices.  You could have celebrated May Day as a traditional Spring Festival by marching around the Maypole strewing flowers and singing songs.  Or you could have celebrated May Day as the Communist International Workers’ Day by going to a Bernie Sanders Rally.

If you missed celebrating May Day, there’s always Cinco de Mayo.  That’s next Sunday, and everybody in the United States will be out partying and drinking and celebrating this Mexican holiday.  How many people down in Mexico are out partying on July 4^th?  Not uno!  But we Americans will embrace any excuse to party and drink.  Tomorrow, actually, is National Two Different Colored Shoes Day.  I thought that was every day!  Seriously, tomorrow really is the day set aside to wear two different shoes, so put on a brown and a black and keep them on until Sunday when everyone will be too drunk to notice.

But the Cinco de Mayo thing, I think, is actually sinister.  Why should we, a country whose national language is English, be celebrating a foreign holiday with a Spanish name?  The way things are going, by 2030 Cinco de Mayo will be a national holiday in America.  By 2040 Independence Day will be called Quatro de Julio.  By 2060, my English as a Second Language class will be taught because our first language will be Spanish.   So feliz Cinco de Mayo, amigos.  Enjoy your Margaritas and Dos Equis and Coronas.  Oh, and I love your shoes!

Let’s see, what has happened this week?  Well, my friends Linda and Tom from Florida told me they were coming in town for a wedding that’s going to be held in a cave.  A cave!  Can you believe that?  I know some marriages are dark and airless, but getting married in a cave is a bad start.  If it’s a Jewish wedding, they’ll call it a BAT Mitzvah.  Even so, I imagine they’ll have lovely, romantic memories of the dark event.  I can hear them now, celebrating their 20^th Anniversary:  Hey, Marge, remember when you were wiping guano off your ear while the preacher said “I now pronounce you Stalagmite and Stalactite?”

I had my yearly visit with Dr. Pacemaker.  Everything’s great, but each time, when they start slowing down or speeding up my heart by pushing buttons on a computer on the other side of the room, it just makes me feel so . . . digital!  Like I’ve lost control of my actions – like Robbie the Robot or R2D2 or Howdy Doody.  Who knows what they could program me to do without my knowing it?  When I got home, Carol asked me how it went and a deep voice emerged from the left side of my chest.  It said “S’awright!”

Didn’t get that?  You must be under 70.  Just go to Google and type in “S’awright”.

The next day I went to Dr. Tooth, and she told me I needed to have a tooth extracted.  It’s the lower one on the extreme left.  I guess that means I won’t be able to eat at an Extreme Left restaurant for a few days.  All the Democrats are opening new restaurants, you know.  There are:

Col. Bernie Sanders' Socialist Fried Chicken

AOC’s Green New Meal

Elizabeth Warren’s Come On In And Pull Up A Cherokee

Mayor Pete’s Coffee

Even Joe Biden is starting one.  It’s called Squeeze n’ Sniff.  At least they have a variety.  All the Extreme Right has is White Castle.

Last week I was upset because my fortune cookie was empty.  Now I’m distressed because of this White Privilege and People of Color thing.  I’m not a Person of Color.  I’m an old white guy. Is that a bad thing?  At least give me a better label.  How about a Person With No Fortune and No Color?  It has a ring to it.

Plus, I have a bad name.  I mean Michael is a fine name that’s been around forever.  It’s the name of an Archangel, the name of a Saint and the name of such renowned and important superstars as Jackson and Jordan and Phelps.  It’s the name of a songbird (Bublé), a Monkee (Nesmith) and a snake (Avenatti).  But it’s just so normal and vanilla.  Why couldn’t I have one of those great names like Alfred North Whitehead or Genghis Kahn or Winston Churchill or Jawaharlal Nehru or Rudyard Kipling or Desmond Tutu?   Or the best name of all time:  Benedict Cumberbatch!

Well, whatever your name is, you made it through another one.  I’m proud of you.  Stay well, count your blessings, don’t drink too much on Cinco de Mayo and come back next week.  I have no idea what I’m going to talk about, so it’ll be a surprise to both of us.

Winston                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com