THE YEAR IN BRIEFS

Let’s take time out this New Year to be thankful for the many wonderful things that happened in 2012. They were truly a blessing, but to be honest I don’t remember any of them. What I DO remember are the weird, wacky and wild stories that made us all cringe, the ones that made you glad that you were not vacationing in a foreign country when they broke, so that you didn’t have to fake a bad British accent so that people wouldn’t point a finger at you and whisper something snide in another language. Let’s relive those moments.

The Tanning Mom
If you could picture a catcher’s mitt with bright coral pink lipstick, you still couldn’t do justice to that face, a face incredulous against the scrutiny of a “concerned public,” a face that anthropologists long believed existed but never had seen. After this story, it was apparent to most responsible Americans that all catcher’s gloves should have coral pink lipstick on them so you can see where the hell you are throwing the ball.

Clint Eastwood Talks to Empty Chair at Republican Convention
No one has ever mentioned the possibility that someone had been sitting in the chair, and that after Eastwood rattled on for about 20 minutes about nothing, got up and left. I call him Chairman of the Bored.

“Fifty Shades of Grey”
When I first heard about this, I thought it was a book about my hair. Instead, it’s about a woman who falls in love with a 26 year-old billionaire who spanks her. I laughed, I cried, I was never the same afterwards, and that was just doing my taxes; I haven’t read the book. By the way, I have never seen a woman reading the actual book. Instead, they read it on Kindle, where you every book looks the same as “War and Peace.” I once had a girlfriend who was into that kind of B & D stuff- she eventually gave me a restraining order and I didn’t’ know what to do.

Squid Inseminates Woman
While eating a partially boiled squid in North Korea, a woman reported a burning sensation in her mouth, and went to the hospital. There doctors found that the squid had squirted its spermatophores into her cheeks. If she had eaten an ovulating female squid right before that, she would soon be expecting the pitter-patter of little tentacles around the house. At least she took the squid to dinner first. By far the most disgusting aspect of this story is that the squid must have been SUPER turned on by being eaten, and it was the strangest sexual experience the squid had had this year, except for a couple of dates from ChristianMingle.Com.

Lindsay Lohan Breaks Every Law in Alphabetical Order
This was not a great year for the struggling actress, but it turns out to be a FANTASTIC year for her lawyer. Her usual defense is that she is a target for those looking to get their “15 minutes of fame” by picking a fight with her. Lindsay is smarter than that now, and never spends more than 10 minutes in any one place. Overall, she has been sentenced to 186,452 hours of community service. But have you seen her community? The place is SPOTLESS! Every weed in the park is plucked individually with an eyelash tweezer.

Daredevil Jumps to Earth from Stratosphere
In October stuntman Felix Baumgartner became the first man to jump out of a balloon in outer space and fall safely to Earth. It was thought that he may burn up when passing through the blogosphere and Twittersphere, or that he might spin out of control like a Kanye West quote and be powerless to right himself, or that at the last minute someone might stick a trampoline underneath him, sending him back into space. The jump, however, was successful, and upon reaching the ground without incident his first words were, “I just KNEW my luggage was somehow going to end up at La Guardia.”

Tightrope Walker Traverses Niagara Falls
When I read my own headline I thought: OMIGOD he fell? But then I remembered he did not; Nik Wallenda became the first man to cross directly over Niagara Falls, the voice of his father calmly talking him through. How Dad resisted the urge to yell, “LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU! HAHAHAHA!” I will never know. Wallenda was forced to use a safety tether by ABC, who threatened to refuse to televise the event otherwise. He made the journey across to Canada without mishap, but then was killed by the mob when they found out he was wearing a wire.

Incidentally, the most talked-about story of the year is one which thankfully did not take place. On December 21st the end of the world was scheduled on the Mayan calendar. The Mayans actually used a system of three calendars, the Haab, a 19-month, 365-day solar count, the Tzolkin, a 260-day system, and the Long Count, which was used to track longer term astronomical events.  Naturally most Mayans put off their Christmas shopping until the last minute. Many people spent the 21st in bomb shelters, hoping that it would only be the end of the TOP of the world. Others phoned up girls that they normally would have NO SHOT with, hoping to catch them at a vulnerable moment. There are still approximately sixty-two ends of the worlds that we still have to get through, predicted by various prognosticators. By the way, “Congress Appreciation Day” is also on the Mayan calendar, and that never happened either. 

AFTER THE ELECTION*

Now that the dust has settled after the elections, one thing seems clear: we have a lot more dust than we thought. I exercised my right to vote, and now I have a cramp. State senators, assemblymen, district judges, what do all these people do? I guess we need circuit judges, for instance, since circuits pretty much all look alike to me.

The voting process is different now: it basically resembles a multiple choice test, so I’m pretty sure I failed it. You fill in a box with a number two pencil. I tried to copy my answers from the guy next to me, but an old lady from across the room wagged her finger at me. My fly was also down, so it might have been because of that. If they had made it a true/false ballot I think I would have done better.

You used to pull a few tabs and then pull on a lever, like a one-armed bandit, which always amused me because it made the whole thing seemed like a huge gamble, and you never knew if you won or lost until 2 or 3 years into the term. Maybe we should vote using a pair of dice.

My voting choices were limited by the behavior of the candidates. A politician named Justin Wagner had THREE old ladies call my home one day while my power was still out from the hurricane. They will probably tell you that they learned a few new words that day. He was the only candidate that I was not on the fence about.

I have to admit that I’m glad we don’t have a president named “Mitt.” “Barack” does nothing for me either, but Mitt sounds like it might be short for “Mittens,” leading me to believe that Romney might have two black feet like my neighbor’s cat. I don’t even want to think about a president named “Newt.” Presidents named after pets is just wrong for America.

I am happy that I will no longer have to hear politicians try to guess what is right for America. Several Republicans weighed in with their knowledge of women’s private parts. The consensus seemed to be that abortions can be condoned if a woman is raped by a ghost, or a cartoon character who is a registered Democrat. Women’s private parts should STAY private, and they should be password-protected.

Many states voted to allow the use of marijuana, a direct result of the powerful Doritos lobby. You can have all the Tea Party you want, but it’s going to be a snorefest unless somebody brings something to smoke up with. Most states agreed that it should be for medicinal purposes only, although these same states have accepted “rockin’ pneumonia & the boogie-woogie flu” and “Bieber fever” as legitimate ailments. Some municipalities are also considering medicinal crack.

We elected our first openly bisexual member of Congress. Doesn’t that seem like a little more than we need to know? What’s next? How long until we elect our first member of Congress that likes anal? And how open is “openly bisexual”- does it mean that virtually NO ONE is immune from receiving sexually harassing texts from this person? When will we finally elect an openly bipartisan member of Congress??

On the negative side, we are fast approaching the “Fiscal Cliff,” a Congress-invented taxpocalypse that is supposed to frighten itself into making a bunch of compromises that are just as bad as whatever is at the bottom of the cliff. What the press does not tell you, is that as soon as Congress settles that issue, looming on the horizon is the “Fiscal Up Shit’s Creek Without a Paddle,” and even worse, the “Fiscal Mongolian Clusterfuck.” Both involve draconian measures designed to take money out of one of your pockets and put it into another one that has a hole in it.

Incidentally, the ascendency of “superpacs” has resulted in a firestorm of controversy regarding the funding of political campaigns. “Restore our Future” raised over $131 million dollars to get you to vote for Romney. If you were going to vote for him anyway, you should give some of it back. “Winning Our Future” drummed up about $24 million for Gingrich. Gingrich did not win, so it’s doubtful that your future did either. “Texans for America’s Future” supported Obama to the tune of about $650,000. It seems to me that all that money for the future would make one nice present.

*Disclaimer: I am not one of those annoying political people that can’t talk to you about anything else, although I am clearly annoying for other reasons; this column is for entertainment purposes only

HURRICANE SANDY

The last thing anyone would want to do is try to make light of a dangerous and heartbreaking hurricane, so I will not attempt to do that. In the northeast, we haven’t seen anything even closely resembling a hurricane since, well, last year.

I thought about leaving before the storm got here, in order to protect my home and family, since an emergency situation is when I would be most likely to do something stupid that would harm them. My wife suggested a few places I could go and promised to write to me. In the end, we stayed put, but our electricity evacuated to higher ground.

This was not the time to “ride it out.” Those who did actually rode it right out of town and ended up in another state. The weather system was downgraded to a “superstorm,” but it was long and scary. And still, it could have been worse: what if it had become a “super-duper storm??”

After last year’s weather drama we finally went out and purchased a generator, and we have been generating since Monday. We had the electrician wire it into the circuit-breaker panel, and each time we turn something on, the generator groans like, “Dude, did you just turn on the oil burner? Was that ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY? Ever hear of a SWEATER?”

Power was so haphazard in our town, with every other street lit up, that it seemed like it had been wired the same way as a string of Christmas lights.

The utility crews came from far and wide. We had been without power for days, and every time my wife saw a truck of any kind she started to exhibit signs of hysteria, and wanted to stop the car and promise them things if they would restore our power. Nice things, things I have been asking for for years.

The lack of electricity cast a pall upon normal activities. Peoples’ smiles just weren’t as bright, mostly because they could not charge their electric toothbrushes.

I always like to look at the bright side of things, since that is where the power is back on. For instance, after the storm we didn’t have to rake the leaves. They were still on the trees, which are across our back lawn. All we have to do is cut up the branches and haul them away.

Many people have been displaced by the storm. I hope they don't give them those FEMA trailers like they did after Katrina- the ones that they found all this mold in the walls? When they got rid of those they should have thrown away the mold- you hardly need me to tell you that.
                                                                                                     
Around Thursday or so things started getting a little dicey trying to find gasoline. By Friday it was like a Mad Max movie. I went out to the bar to smuggle some alcohol out to mix with my gas. I felt like a gasoholic- I’d hide a little here and there that my wife didn't know about.

On top of that, I drove around wasting precious petrol because no one had bothered to place a sign at the beginning of a road that you couldn't get through. A lot of people just plowed right through the yellow tape and tried to drive under the downed utility poles; in some cases it was a tight fit. I drove past a barrier once or twice myself but only after somebody else did it first. I didn't stop to read the yellow tape- It’s possible that I drove through a crime scene- I might have even left some DNA.

We have learned a lot from this storm. We learned NEVER to name a storm something that might prove to be prophetic. Hurricane Sandy dumped three feet of sand in the middle of every town in the Northeast. Thank god they didn’t call it Hurricane Dick.

We learned to keep things in perspective: for those of you whose mortgages are the only things underwater, it could be a whole lot worse....

I am a big fan of the Jersey Shore (the shore, not the show), and it was sad to see an entire amusement pier vanquished into the ocean. Maybe it will become a water park. For miles around all you can see is devastation, except for a few places where there is only havoc. But the shore is still there, and when the summer rolls around, I will be there too.

Our electricity came back we embarked upon an orgy of power consumption. We turned the dishwasher and the clothes dryer on at the same time in a defiant message to the gods: “WE STILL HAVE NOT LEARNED OUR LESSON!”

I wanted to perk things up so I bought some flowers on the way home from work today. My wife’s face lit up, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that they were for the tree guy.

And to those of you in neighboring unaffected states, our sediments are with you.

 
Incidentally, there have been more powerful storms in the Northeast throughout history. The “Long Island Express” of September in 1938 blew sustained winds of 120 miles per hour through Massachusetts, making a decent game of tennis virtually impossible. Hurricanes Carol and Edna struck within two weeks of each other in 1954. Hurricane Katrina of 2005 remains the most expensive in U.S. history, costing an estimated $75 billion. It seems to me that with a little haggling we could have gotten it for less, but it’s too late now.

MY NEW CAR

I sold my car about a year ago, figuring that I would just waltz right out and get a new one. After about 6 months I realized two things: 1.), that they don’t currently manufacture a car that I wanted to buy and 2.), that I can’t dance very well. 

The car had to be relatively inexpensive. I see a lot of people driving around in Escalades or Mercedes that don’t look like they could pay the mortgage on a refrigerator box. With the bass turned up so loud that some of the fillings in my teeth fall out when they roll by. I like to pull up next to them playing the same song only with the treble boosted to 10, so I can get a decent mix. 

It had to have some styling. Did you ever see a Scion? It looks like you’re driving around in a Kleenex box. And that little Chrysler thing that looks like a tiny little gangster car for little tiny gangsters. I can’t be in a pookie car; I’m a 6’2” guy, and I can’t be in any car that says “Mini” right in the name. A Smart Car? If you get hit by a pickup truck in that thing it’s going to smart. 

I like a sports car, since I play tennis. The sports car has never really helped on the court, but we also have a sports utility vehicle, and it’s very convenient for storing my sports utilities, which are a can of balls and a tennis racquet. 

It had to have a well-appointed cockpit. It seems to me that a cockpit should have an altimeter. If I notice that I am driving at 2,000 feet above sea level I’d like to know why. I’m not sure exactly when cars started having cockpits. It used to be called the front seat. I have four sisters and a brother and you had to get out to that car quick, possibly the night before, if you wanted to sit in that front seat. I picture the co-pilot of a plane busting ass to get out there early before all the passengers try to sit in the front.  

It has to get decent gas mileage. I wanted to decrease my carbon footprint, while increasing other parts of my carbon anatomy, if you know what I mean. I can’t wait around for more fossils to become fuel. And by the way, it irks the crap out of me that somebody a million years from now is going to be driving around in a Kleenex box with gas from MY FRIGGING FOSSILS. Shame on you. 

I already have a separate GPS so I didn’t need that, and I purposely did not order the “voice-activated command center.” I could picture the GPS telling the voice-activated command center to do things, just to yank my crank. The GPS has already sent me down a one-way street RIGHT IN FRONT of a police station- no lie. And when I looked at it it was like, “Dude that was an honest mistake but you have to admit it was funny.” The car salesman asked me whether I had a Bluetooth, which was weird because my dentist asked me the same question. 

The salesman was very low-pressure, I have to give him that. He didn’t even seem to think that I needed a new car at all. He gave me the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, and he suggested some other prices to add onto that. I had a couple of suggestions too, which I would rather not repeat here, but I made an offer and he disappeared to go check with his manager. It turns out he WAS the manager, so we struck the deal.

He handed me a goofy plastic thing instead of a key. It opens the locks, closes the locks and has an alarm signal to call for help. It’s huge, like having a trout in my pocket. So if you happen to ask me, “Is that a trout in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” the answer is probably both. 

Warranties are much better than they used to be. My first car had a warranty for 3 years or 6 months, whichever came first. My second car was a Nissan Sentra which came with extensive "power train" protection, but I just knew they would never honor it. The car had about 120 horsepower soaking wet, and I pictured them dickering about if that could actually be considered a "power train." This car comes with one year of "roadside assistance," and I have already used it, since I needed some help with the leaf raking. 

I love driving the car; it handles well, I like the turbo-charger, once you get used to it. A couple things: I have all kinds of allergies, and I drive with my knees about 70 percent of the time so I can sneeze. This car has so much crap mounted on the steering wheel that when I am in the middle of an allergy attack, I change the radio station, set the cruise control and open the gas filler cap. 

So I get the car home and go to back it into the garage, and I can’t get the damned thing into reverse. I tried jamming it hard, I pushed down on the lever, I pulled, I yanked it hard to either side, I even considered that they had installed the knob upside down- nothing I did would make it go backwards. I was about to key my own car, but all I had was that stupid thing that looks like a trout, so I hit the alarm signal, and my wife came out of the house. “Did you press the release button to get it into reverse?” She asked. “Of COURSE I pressed the release button! I PRESSED and PRESSED the release button! Do you happen to know where the release button is?” I don’t know if you’ve ever been whacked on the head by a trout but it hurts. 



Incidentally, the car I ended up buying is a 2013 Dodge Dart. My family owned not only a Dodge Dart when I was in High School, but a Dodge Dart SWINGER! It was neon yellow, and it was a great make-out car because it had bench seats. You stick a girl on one side of the thing, and if you don't have enough time to bother with foreplay, you just make a hard right and she slides into your lap for a threesome with the gear-shift lever, and both of you end up fighting over her. It was a great car- the "slant-6" engine with a "three-on-the-tree" automatic. I liked the car more than the girl, but one summer I deflowered both the girl and my mom's garden while my parents were away for the weekend, and the Dart was involved in both.
 

THE REPLACEMENT REFS

They have finally reached a deal to replace the replacement referees in the National Football League, and NO ONE is more upset about this than I am. I was watching the game on Monday night, and the calls by the officiating crew at the end of the contest were so comical that I actually laughed out loud. I was guffawing! I woke up the cat, the dog and the eel, which may have already been awake; it’s hard to tell. Good comedy is hard to come by on network TV, and this was good.

It was the last play of the game, and Seattle was down by 5 points since Green Bay had tried an unsuccessful 2-point conversion earlier. You have two choices in that situation: 1.) you can go for a running play where you combine the games of “Keep Away,” “Hot Potato” and “Kill the Carrier.” The person with the ball waits until he is about to be hurt very badly, then throws the ball at the last minute to someone else who notices that he is also about to suffer bodily harm, and this goes on for ten or fifteen minutes while the team with the ball moves steadily in the wrong direction, since you are not allowed to throw the ball forward, only backward. Or, 2.) try a “Hail Mary” pass, where you throw the ball 50 yards into the end zone, where 20 people have gathered to try to catch the ball, some not even on the team.

If you are a person named “Mary” sitting in the bleachers you stand a statistically equal chance of catching the ball for a touchdown as anyone on the field, given a margin of error of three percentage points.

So the quarterback makes his desperate heave, and everyone queues up in the end zone to try to catch it. Everyone is there except the two replacement officials, one of whom is doing his taxes and the other is watching a cat video. Meanwhile as the ball is in the air, the players are all engaging in bad behavior. There is some name-calling, some pushing, some disorderly conduct, some aggravated assault, and even some on-line bullying and troublesome tweets. NONE of these things are allowed, and at the last minute the Seattle player simply shoves the defender out of the way while one of the referees is busy lining up three beanbags. The offending Seahawk doesn’t even catch the ball with more than one hand and part of his chin. The Green Bay guy has two hands and an ear on it for the apparent interception, and they hit the ground like a pair of Siamese twins. Ten players are on the ground with the twins trying to perform that difficult operation that may save their lives, where they extract the ball without anesthesia.

By this time the zebras have galloped into the area- one referee waves his arms over his head for a touchback, and the other hikes them straight in the air for a touchdown. Even as they are making these signals, they are two feet from one another, looking into each others’ faces and thinking, “YOU A-HOLE! You have just cost me an official’s job that I never officially had had!”

One year at the TV network where I work, the stagehands went on strike, and we management personnel had to fill in and do their jobs. We schlepped scenery, we dressed sets and we adjusted lights. I was told to man the catwalk, and I thought I was going to get to model something. We got yelled at by directors, lighting directors, and goofed on by Connie Chung.

We were useless enough, but I remember thinking, WOW- what a lot of pressure to be management personnel at a hospital during a doctors' strike. I just know I'm going to drop that goddamn gall bladder on the floor and look like a total dipshit. What about when the hookers go on strike? That is NOT going to have a happy ending.

The NFL during this infamous period has taken on the flavor of a high school math class with a substitute teacher. The players were all pushing the envelope of unacceptable conduct, trying to figure out exactly what they can get away with.

They held, they encroached, they ran into the kicker. Why would you run into a kicker? It's almost suicidal unless you run into him with your car on the way out of the stadium. They falsely started, they roughed the passer, and they illegally used their hands. Mind you, these football players aren't just flagged for using their hands against the rules of football; whatever they are doing with them is actually ILLEGAL! God only knows what mischief four fingers and a thumb can get into. They deliberately batted or punched a loose ball. Enough said there.

And they got away with just about all of it.

Whenever my high school had a teacher’s illness they would call upon the ever-vigilant Mrs. Levy, who seemed about 100 years old, but in reality was only 90-something. Usually if there was a substitute teacher you would just skip the class, but you would NEVER skip Mrs. Levy’s entertaining appearances; you might miss something good.

I remember one time we pulled the old “bee swarm” routine, where someone pipes up a subtle buzzing sound, and one-by-one the rest of the class picks up the cue, until an ersatz plague of biblical proportions engulfs the room. That was the day we found out that Mrs. Levy was pretty close to completely deaf. We continued to attempt other minor assaults on her remaining senses, and finally concluded that she was completely senseless. Still, you couldn’t get away with much. She seemed to have eyes in the back of her head, but it turns out her wig was on backwards.

Meanwhile, Green Bay refused to come back for the kicking of the extra point, and had to be coaxed out with a dog biscuit. The crowd was definitely abuzz, but it could have been the old “bee swarm” gag, who knows?

Incidentally, there have been many labor actions that have changed the course of history, and others, not so much. There was an actors’ strike in 2001, where those filling in the roles were only acting actors. In 2008 there was a communications strike in India. For one magic day, people could understand how to fix their computers. The city of Leeds in England saw a refuse workers strike in 2009. The city asked for them to come back to work but they refused.

CRUISING THE HUDSON (part II)

So where was I? Oh yeah- the wife and I went on our annual Fourth of July boat ride to historic Newburgh, New York. The holiday fell on a Wednesday this year, so we went the weekend before. Why can’t we always observe the Fourth of July on that Monday, so that we can take a long weekend and celebrate the birth of our nation the way our forefathers did: drunk?

We packed up the bikes and the Cookie-dog and motored up the river. We passed under the Bear Mountain Bridge, cruised by West Point and lingered near Pollepel Island, where the majestic ruins of Bannerman’s Castle dominate the landscape.

My wife noticed an inordinate amount of mud churning around the back of the boat. “Is that supposed to be there?” she asked. “Beats me- could be something down there causing that disturbance, maybe a flock of eels or something.”

Turns out it was our propeller, looking around for a rock to hit. It found one, our starboard propeller was cooked, and we had to limp into the marina at Newburgh on one engine at about one mile an hour. Finally at the Newburgh Yacht Club, we were told that because it was low tide, we wouldn’t be able to get into the slip. I assured him that whatever was on the bottom of our boat wasn’t there any more, possibly including the bottom of our boat.

By this time my wife and my dog were not speaking to me, so they communicated with me by Morse code, tapping out messages on my head with the fisherman’s gaff. Once in the slip our neighbor, kind enough to lend us the electrical cord we had forgotten, pointed to the side of the boat, where water was cascading out a small hole.

My wife saw him pointing, and, still a little on edge, politely asked, “WHAT! WHAT! WHAT! WHAT?” He said, “Your bilge pump is running.” “Is that good or bad????” “Depends,” he said. “Good that it’s running. Not so good it’s running right now.” “HOLY CRAP WE’RE TAKING ON WATER!” I yelled, and prepared to abandon ship by walking over to the vending machine. My wife accused me of going overboard, and my dog took a crap on the poop deck.

I pictured Gilligan’s boat sitting on the beach with a big hole in the bottom, and cursed myself for not thinking to bring a trunk full of money and a transistor radio. He said, “I think it’s just a puncture in your outdrive bellows- lower your propeller and you should be okay.”

Things were a little tense. I suggested we get some dinner and a few drinks, and possibly smoke some crack, and things would seem a little better with a clearer head. We went to Billy Joes’s Ribworks on Front Street, and after a couple cocktails I tried to lighten the mood with a joke or two. “Billy Joe’s Ribworks,” I said. “That’s more than I can say for our propeller.” That went over like a lead balloon. “Do you think that thing has sunk by now?” My wife asked, hopefully. “No, it’s low tide so it’s probably actually a couple inches higher than it was,” I assured her.

The next day we decided to chance the trip back to Cortlandt. We were in for a four or five-hour ride, chugging along on one engine. Even though it was sunny out, nasty weather was in the forecast, and a humongous barge was behind us. We had about 1/8 of a tank of gas, and now a headwind was picking up. I calculated that we had just enough fuel to make it to the narrowest part of the river just as the barge was positioned to overtake us before we ran out of gas in a thunderstorm.

We made it back to our marina, against the wishes of our marina.

The next day Dave and I went over to the boat to assess the damage. Ours is a “twin-screw” boat, which sounds like a hell of a lot more fun than it actually is. I said, “Dave, I think one of our twin-screws is screwed, so we’re going to need at least a screwdriver.” Dave sits in the engine compartment and looks over the motors. He calls out the names of tools and I hand them to him, like a nurse, only with more attractive shoes. “Pliers…. Phillips-head…. Hemostat….” If he asks for suction, I wonder what I would do.

The propeller was cleaned completely free of all three blades. Dave looked at the forlorn-looking item as if it was a dinosaur bone, muttering “I have never seen anything remotely like this….” Which I assume was a tribute to my thoroughness. All I could think was, thank god I wasn’t piloting a plane.



Incidentally, George Washington’s headquarters was located in Newburgh, at the Hasbrouck House, during the last days of the Revolutionary War. He announced the “cessation of hostilities,” which sounds kind of smelly, but actually just meant that the war was over. It was here also that George Washington received a letter from the officers of the army suggesting that he be installed as king of an American monarchy. Washington felt that this letter needed to be addressed, why, I don’t know, since it got to him. He quickly dispelled any such notion, replying that it would be one of “the greatest mischiefs that can befall my Country.” Plus he could make zillions of dollars on a speaking tour, and each one would have his picture on it.

OLYMPIC RECAP

I hope you are enjoying the Olympics as much as I am- I wish you could watch it here on my sofa with me. Sometimes I get so excited I can hardly contain myself, and I have to put some of myself into a different container.

From the opening ceremony I was hooked. The spectacle of the lighting of the torch, the pageantry of the parade of nations, (warning: any time you hear the word "pageantry," you can hit the snooze alarm....).

If I was the President, which would be the best thing for this country, believe me, I would rename the country AAAmerica. That way, you're the first into the stadium and boom: you get a great seat right next to the third base dugout. Make yourself comfortable, fire up the grill, and let all the other nations parade around like idiots while you make a hot dog. By the time Vanuatu strolls in you'll be eating a Chipwich from the cooler for dessert.

Some of these countries- are they really legitimate countries when there is no Olympics? Djibouti, for instance, is only in it because people like saying the name out loud. Togo sounds less like a country than a dinner order. Micronesia is too small to be seen by the naked eye. Saudi Arabia had one athlete- shooting of course. The Syrians had a guy in the torture medley event. Trinidad never goes anywhere without Tobago- it’s embarrassing.

I got engrossed in the swimming, and I really wanted to root for this Ryan Lochte- fantastic athlete, huge dimple, seemed nice. Then he puts in these diamond dentures, and I thought to myself: INSTANT DOUCHEBAG! My sisters had shit like that in their mouths for two years and couldn't wait to get it out! The more I thought it through, I figured out that a bunch of diamonds in my mouth cut at sharp angles? You could devour a whole Angus steer carcass in 15 minutes, even medium well. You could puree a pesto on the side, and make crushed ice on demand for a margarita. Then I pictured a peanut butter sandwich, and the deal was off.

In the swimming events they just dive right in and no one says "Jesus Christ that is goddamn freezing!" Would the rest of the swimmers wait for me while I wade in a little at a time from the shallow end? I guess you are allowed to run by the pool all you want in the Olympics, I never once heard the lifeguard bust anybody's balls about it.

I was watching women’s weightlifting at a bar. I turned to a girl next to me and said, “Those Chinese girls have some snatch, don’t they?” Guess she didn’t think so.

The women’s track events had Muslim contestants for the first time, covered from head to toe. It's not really fair; these women are from countries where if you hear a gun go off you run REALLY fast just from habit.

I got sucked into the synchronized swimming again. I like the legs, but the smiles are disturbing. It’s the kind of pasted-on smile that bespeaks of a serious lack of oxygen. I swear it looks like these girls had to be heavily medicated to get them to do this. Whenever I see somebody wearing a smile THAT disingenuous, I usually have to shell out thousands for a new car. Which I cannot afford, since it’s only been four years since the last Olympics.

Someone told me that water polo is played on a seahorse, don't know if that's true or not. They didn't mention anything about Marco Polo.

I felt sorry that the guy with no legs didn't win his race, but they had him in the wrong events. I picture him on the trampoline, or maybe diving. Instant medal. It was the first time a guy from the Paralympics competed with prosthetic devices. The closest thing before that was a sprinter with fake boobs. She didn't win a medal, even though she had a great time. I think next year you will see a horse with those prosthetic legs in the jumping competition.

Those badasses of badminton were caught cheating by intentionally losing. Hey- if Chris or Jonas wants to throw me a match here and there at tennis, I promise no charges will be filed.

Watching the medal ceremonies made me so proud that we had a National Anthem that nobody knew all the words to. I can read lips, and athletes were "twilight's last gleaming" where they should have been "gallantly streaming." It got worse when I thought I saw some of the Lord's Prayer. One gal looked like she was singing the second verse to "Rocky Raccoon," and another guy, bits of "the Thong Song."

In a flash it was all over, and the closing ceremonies were upon us, meaning that I would have to go back to watching "The People's Court" every damn day. The highlight of the party was the reuniting of the Spice Girls. When I look back at all the great British rock & roll acts that might be reunited, the Spice Girls were right there on the list tied with Milli Vanilli.

Incidentally, the first Olympics in Greece was thought to take place in the year 776 BC. The pentathlon that year consisted of the broad jump, where the contestants leaped over several women from the audience; wrestling; foot race; javelin; and discus throw. The discovery of marijuana resulted in the invention of "ultimate discus." In the interest of reviving the games centuries later, Baron Pierre de Coubertin formed the International Olympic Committee in 1890, and the first modern Olympics were held in Athens in 1896. French and English are the official languages of the Olympic Games although extensive cursing can be done in German, Russian and Braille. The International Language of Love may also be used if rooming next to the Swedish volleyball team.