Prove Your Comedy Chops with Moment’s Cartoon Caption Contest
Welcome to the Moment Magazine Cartoon Caption Contest, founded with the help of New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, and drawn by New Yorker cartoonist Ben Schwartz.
Do you have a way with words and humor? If so, look at the cartoon below and send us a caption—or two or three! Plus scroll down to vote for your favorite caption. It’s free and fun!
Winners may claim a free Moment subscription for a friend of family member. Contest open to U.S. residents 18 and above.
Plus: Read interviews with some of our most prolific caption contest contributors here.
Submit a caption for this cartoon by February 10 by writing it in as a comment at the bottom of this page!
Vote for your favorite caption by filling out the form immediately below!
“You’re too late. Sukkot is over.”
—Gerald Lebowitz, New York, NY
“You must be from Congregation Beth Mayflower.”
—William Agress, Lawrenceville, NJ
“So you’re from the Massachusetts part of the family?”
—Michael Lomazow, Riverside, CA
Vote for your favorite! The winner will receive a free subscription to Moment to give to a friend. Any U.S. resident age 18 or older can enter.
Chuckle at the September/October issue 2020 winning caption—and see who wrote it!
“Here’s my elevator pitch: In the beginning…”
—Dale Stout, Colorado Springs, CO
How to Submit Your Caption(s)
Submit as a comment below by February 10, 2021 Finalists will appear in the upcoming issue. To vote for the winner of the November/December 2020 contest (see finalists above), use the vote form.
My wife tells me I am the devil incarnate. She wanted me to ask you about an EXORCISM.
Marvin,
I knew a woman who was confident that she didn’t need an exorcism.
She was very self-possessed.
“We will get there when they call Pennsylvania.”
I confided in my wife that God cured me of my hemorrhoids. She replied, “God has better things to do than act as a proctologist!”
Tell me, how did you find this elevator?
Marvin, but why should hemorrhoids be so bad? Aren’t we taught under capitalism that we should all aim to make our pile?
The horns are blaring outside in celebration of Biden’s winning Pennsylvania.
But is it too early to celebrate? Remember, President Trump will have more than two months in full control of the government before he’ll have (?) to leave, and there is a lot he could do to get even, especially for a man who has always prided himself on wreaking complete revenge against all his enemies. He has always guarded and crafted his own image, hiding all his many failures and magnifying his successes. (He never even released his school records, let alone his tax and other financial documents.) But there is no way he can hide this, and he’ll be provoked to a state of fury, so I hope Dylan Thomas will pardon me for appropriating his lines and saying that Trump will “not go gentle into that good night” or twisting Congreve’s lines to read “Hell hath no fury like a narcissist scorned.”
The frosting on the cake, of course, would be his resigning a few days before January 20, 2021, and then having President Pence pardon him, erasing all his iniquities.
Do I sound like a paranoid?
Paranoids, too, can have enemies and so sometimes can be realists.
P.S. Millions and millions of dollars were wasted on his impeachment trial, plus all the money spent on his ridiculous Mexican wall, but all this money may well be dwarfed by the federal funds that will be used to protest the election result.
But who’s counting? It’s only taxpayer money, right?
Changing of the Guard
Like rats who leave a sinking ship,
Or water that drops down, drip by drip,
Here flow the once-faithful like Chris Christie,
Leading a procession now long and twisty:
There’s Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News
And the New York Post , who’s altered his views,
And even chameleon Lindsey Graham
Who spent his Senate days spreading mayhem.
All except former NYC Mayor Giuliani,
Who’s still loyal to Trump but–alas–no longer canny.
I mentioned to my wife that God asked me, “What do you love besides your family?” I said, “I love art.” She exclaimed, “Some drunk called from the local bar and left a message, ART is waiting!”
Trump will be indicted in New York…that will be fun!
” Put him in solitary confinement. He needs to quarantine. “
If life were a musical comedy, President Trump would now be singing this opening song from Lerner and Loewe’s acclaimed show “Camelot.” (Lyrics altered slightly to fit the situation.)
“I know what my people are thinking tonight,
As home through the shadows they wander.
Ev’ryone smiling in secret delight,
They stare at Trump Tower and ponder.
Whenever the wind blows this way,
You can almost hear ev’ryone say:
“I wonder what the Donald is doing tonight?
What merriment is the Donald pursuing tonight?
The candles at Trump Tower, they never burned as bright.
I wonder what the Donald is up to tonight?
“How go the final hours
As he sees his Presidential powers
Being regally and legally all pared?
Well, I’ll tell you what the Donald is doing tonight:
He’s scared!
He’s scared!
“You mean that a President who fought a dragon,
Whacked him in two and fixed his wagon,
Will be removed in terror and distress?
Yes!
“A warrior who’s so calm in battle
Even his armor doesn’t rattle
Faces separation petrified with fright?
Right!
“You mean that appalling clamoring
That sounds like a blacksmith hammering
Is merely the banging of his royal knees?
Please!
“You wonder what the Donald is wishing tonight?
He’s wishing he were in Scotland fishing tonight!
What occupies his time while waiting to say goodbye?
He’s searching high and low for some place to cry.
“And oh, the expectation,
The most dreaded anticipation
He must feel about the parting night to come.
Well, I’ll tell you what the Donald is feeling tonight:
He’s numb!
He shakes!
He quails!
He quakes!
And that’s what the Donald is doing tonight.”
“Get his access card, his keys and his phone.”
After meeting you, God, and conveying this to my wife, she was ecstatic. She quadrupled my life insurance in expectation of my going to heaven.
This is how the most colossal and fragile ego on the planet deals with losing the US election: he does not deal with it at all.
by Mary Trump
My uncle’s speech late on election night wasn’t just entirely mendacious from beginning to end. It was also deeply dangerous. It’s one thing for random Republicans to call a legitimate election into question, but this was the head of the government. The consequences of that action should not be underestimated.
This is what Donald’s going to do: he’s not going to concede, although who cares. What’s worse is he’s not going to engage in the normal activities that guarantee a peaceful transition. All he’s got now is breaking stuff, and he’s going to do that with a vengeance. I’ve always known how cruel he can be. Shortly after the 2016 election, when I’d see him being particularly cruel, I would think about how he treated my father [Fred Trump Jr, Donald’s older brother, who died of alcoholism at 43]. He took away our family health insurance after his father, my grandfather, died – this was when my nephew needed round-the-clock nursing care, which we then couldn’t afford. That is the kind of man he is.
After January, things look bleak for Donald. He has $400m of debt coming. Why would his lenders pay him any slack?
He’ll be having meltdowns upon meltdowns right now. He has never been in a situation like this before. What’s interesting is that Donald has never won anything legitimately in his entire life, but because he has been so enabled by people along the way, he has never lost anything either. He’s the kind of person who thinks that even if you steal and cheat to win, you deserve to win.
But there is some poetic justice here because he has been cheating for months. Now his tactics are coming back to bite him. He told Republicans not to vote by mail and they didn’t, but the result is he has been experiencing this slow drip-drip of disaster over the past few days. Oh, you have these huge margins! Now your margins are shrinking. Oh, Joe Biden’s ahead. Now his margins are growing. It must have been like slow torture, but he set up this failure for himself.
The fact that the Republicans have done better than expected in Congress and the Senate will have made him extraordinarily angry. It means that people were voting against Donald Trump in this election, but not necessarily against his party. That will have added so much salt to his narcissistic wounds.
Also, his supporters are going away. From what I understand, the thing that really ruined his election night was Fox News – his safe zone – calling Arizona days earlier than everyone else. That burst his bubble. Then Twitter was flagging all his posts and deleting them, and other more legitimate news outlets were cutting away from his speeches.
I worry about what Donald’s going to do in the time he has left to lash out. He will go as far as he can to delegitimize the new administration, then he’ll pass pardons that will demoralize us, and sign a flurry of executive orders. Remember, he will also still be in charge of the US response to the pandemic. There could be a million Americans dead by then under his watch.
After January, things look bleak for Donald. He has more than $400m of debt coming in the next four years. Why at this point would his lenders cut him any slack? He has never paid anyone back. His businesses are in the tank. He has destroyed his brand.
He is going to be a factor in courtrooms in New York City more than he’s going to be a factor in politics, I think. His secretary of defense has already submitted his resignation, and I think there will be more of that. The Republicans might need him for the January run-offs in Georgia, but he could be considered a liability. If he’s acting like a crazy person, senators are going to keep their distance. People will move away from him if there’s nothing in it for them anymore.
It’s not like he has any friends, anyway. It’s grim for him. Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric also know their relationship with their father is both conditional and transactional. I have been saying since 2016 that I was going to have to change my name. I think they’re going to have to change theirs.
As for saying he’ll run in 2024, that’s just a face-saving exercise. It’s a way of distracting him from the fact that he’s probably going to prison. But the worst thing Donald’s looking at isn’t financial difficulties or the prospect of jail. It’s becoming irrelevant. I don’t think he could ever recover from that.
“I appreciate your faire,but I’m Jewish and answer to a higher authority.”
“Bet you can’t eat just one.”
@Michael – nice ones!
Thankyou!
” I told your wife to try the lox.I didn’t say she’s a fox. “
“The Renaissance Fair was last week.”
Try the lox,not she’s a fox.
“The difference between a doughnut and a bagel? One’s sweet, the other’s hard.”
“The only Indians I root for are the Cleveland Indians, but that wouldn’t mean anything to you folks.”
“How do I know if that bird you’re carrying is kosher?”
“My favorite music is soft rock. I bet you folks prefer Plymouth rock.”
@Gerald – a good chuckle!
Congratulations Michael, Yehuda and Dale.
Dale rightfully wins without fail,
And I hope that the two other ones
Contribute a lot and not be hit and runs.
And Stephen, you keep going strong,
With none of your words ever wrong.
You’re our Sylvester Stallone, our Rocky,
Yet humble and modest, not cocky.
Again, congratulations all!!!
Yo Adrian! Say thank you to Gerald.
“Sorry, we don’t have any mayo.”
“At our Thanksgiving meal we eat turkey with bagels & lox. White meat with regular lox bagels & dark meat with pumpernickel lox bagels.”
“We use the turkey feathers to swat flies and tickle little children while they eat. This is called a HAPPY MEAL!”
“Our turkey meals are prepared together with wild vegetables. We cook it all together and what comes out is POT LUCK!”
It’s time to make some progress,pilgrim.
She pulls it off.You look like a putz.
“It’s a Thanksgiving kiddush.”
Your friends are in the next room using one of the bagels in an archery contest.
Is that gluten free?
“You’re too late. Sukkot is over.”
“Tell me, on your voyage here from England, did you ever meet The Mayflower Madam?
(I’m sorry. This certainly won’t win any award, but I couldn’t resist. Perhaps some of you are old enough to remember what was once a big news story.)
“They may look the same, but a doughnut is soft and sweet while a bagel is hard on the outside and only soft when you really get into it.”
I’m just here for the game.
“Be thankful for your meal, but don’t GOBBLE-GOBBLE down your food!”
“You pick your food, we pick your guest, and please nobody PICK my pockets!” (Does anyone NOSE what else not to pick?)
“It’s a Thanksgiving kiddush.”
Ok, I’ll give you 5 bagels for the pie and 8 ounces of lox for the turkey. That’s my final offer.
“I know you folks don’t mean it, but where I come from, to give somebody the bird is not a good thing.”
“This is lame. The Mayflower passing over the pond is a stretch, and these bagels are entirely too light and fluffy!”
“You must be from Congregation Beth Mayflower.”
Where’s the Wild Turkey Liquor?
” Rabbi and Rebbitsen Standish dress up for Thanksgiving.”
If your the ghosts of Thanksgiving pasts,I say do the CAPTCHA to prove your legitimate.
Nice!
Rebbitsen Standish, though, does seem a little standoffish.
“My proud Native Indigenous People should have been invited with top priority to OUR wild turkey & coastal salmon. COWABUNGA!”
“Shalom aleichem, Mr. Adams. I’m Rabbi Lissauer from Chabad Outreach in the New World. The rebbetzin and I welcome you to this area and hope to see you in our shul for services. Meanwhile we hope you enjoy some of the fruits of the land prepared by my wife. You look a little skeptical. You can rest assured that this food was handled under the highest standards of kashruth. Zei gezunt, and be sure to watch out for wild Indians who might try to kill you and steal it.”
(Bill Agress, see what you started? You turned the cartoon around on its ear, making the pilgrims the Jews and the befuddled man the pilgrim, an example of getting outside of the box that you’ve perfected by not being hypnotized by words and concepts. If the above is chosen to receive the $1 million prize for the best–or at least most lengthy– caption, you’re certainly entitled to the money in addition to my gratitude for your inventiveness.)
“Sorry, we don’t have any mayo.”
Is that your horse in my parking spot?
Was that turkey humanely slaughtered?
Turkey,turkey,turkey.How about some antipasto once in a while.
“My diet requires chardonnay or merlot wine for my bland diet. For others who like to really spice it up, there is PEPTO BISMOL!”
“The only way we get invited to these Thanksgiving feasts is because we have these OLD PILGRIM COSTUMES!”
The Mayflower had a few stowaways.
You were expecting SacaJewea?
Sometimes I have impuritan thoughts.
News item: The producers of “Jeopardy” are looking for a replacement for Alex Trebek, the former host who sadly just succumbed to pancreatic cancer. A list of possible candidates is being considered, including one of the former big winners, Ken Jennings. That sounds fine. But another person on the list is a big eye opener: Donald J. Trump, whose credentials are well known.
But maybe putting him on the list is not so much of a stretch after all. He’s put this nation in jeopardy for the last four years and jeopardized almost every person he’s had a relationship with. Wouldn’t his selection be a perfect example of typecasting?
Oh, and one more thing. Jared Kushner will be looking for a job. He’s got three children, a wealthy wife, and a membership in one of New York City’s premier Orthodox synagogues. And references from several prominent sheikhs from the United Arab Emirates.
Can anyone help this poor guy out? Where is your sense of compassion for someone who’ll soon be forced to leave a comfortable place of employment?
They should all be in a jeopardy category called “National Nightmares.”
“Some Thanksgiving feasts have music, but we just have Turkey DRUM STICKS to bang around!”
I wish you would go back to where I come from.
Do I think you are dominating her?My sister used to be a Rockette,for God sake!
We could write a play about this food and call it, “BYE BYE BIRDIE!”
“Turkey, always turkey. Maybe next year you could bring brisket, or some smoked white fish.”
no, Thanksgiving isn’t one of our Pilgrimage Festivals
we have cream cheese here — can you swap that for Tofurky?
Perfect! Hodu means turkey and thanks!
“Good thing this cream cheese is non dairy.”
“We bought the turkey from Shlomo at The Kosher Experience and the pie is parve.”
“You needn’t worry. They’ve given up raiding and now call themselves the Washington Football Team.”
“I can’t accept your food. If you’re not Jewish, you’re an impure-itan.”
(Thanks, Dale. This is the only place I know where I can see diamonds and gold and can steal without having been arrested—-yet.)
They might just be in Purim time.
Israel likes watching the “EMPIRE STRIKES BACK” Star Wars when eating Kosher EMPIRE Turkeys!
“Are you… not liking the spread?”
“I’ll put back the bagel as soon as you explain what’s happening.”
“Larry, Linda—what’s with the costumes.”
“Surf and tur-what?”
Today you can dial up a Thanksgiving message on your iPhone. It is called, “A Wing & A Prayer!”
We have a bigger wild turkey still in the White House
“Retired Dentist.How about you?”
” I can get you 12% on your investments. “
“Yitz and Hadassah, welcome. You really didn’t have to bring anything. Aren’t those the same costumes you wore st the last Halloween party?”
“Tell Trump to stop sending food.It won’t affect the recount.”
Sometimes there are distorted facts about history such as the following:
After Japan was not invited to celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States in 1941, they lost face and wanted respect.
Japanese planes flew over Hawaii on December 7, 1941 and released bombs. The commanding officer in one of the planes, overcome by religious fervor, shouted back over the radio to Japan,
“TORAH, TORAH, TORAH!”
“Is it Purim already?”
“Only if they’re smoked or pickled.”
“Thanksgivukkah already?”
Economists in the U.S. have been debating whether this country is headed toward inflation or deflation. Well, this debate may come nearer to reaching a solution thanks to data provided by Danny Dale, CNN reporter and fact-checker. It seems that White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany sent out a tweet saying that more than one million people attended a protest rally in Washington DC in support of President Donald Trump. “More than one million marchers,” she wrote. This, however, was followed by a tweet from Trump at 3:24 PM: “Hundreds of thousands of people …” And at 12:00 AM, the sleepless Donald had the last words: “Tens of thousands of marchers …”
Are you reading this, Paul Krugman? If this isn’t an example of deflation, I don’t know what is
Thanks for the turkey but the co-op board has some questions about your application.
This year’s turkey is ROADKILL. It was a big “hit” for Thanksgiving to have a freshly killed dinner.
I’ve written so much critical of Trump. I now want to give equal time to someone with an opposite point of view, a beautiful Orthodox woman who has been a a very good practicing dentist for twenty years, a very bright person with solid grounding in science. Jim, as someone with an interest in anthropology, you might find her views interesting. Perhaps you might be able to explain how she could have gotten them. Without further pause, let me introduce Dr. Gila Jedwab:
**********************************
“Monday morning, November 2, feels like two lifetimes ago. Our epic day started like this. It was just barely 9 a.m. when I reached out to my friend Michalli; she shrieked out a “yes!” over the phone when I presented my plan, and an hour later we were cruising in my car down Route 80 towards Scranton with the smell of fresh pizza wafting from the back seat.
“Earlier that morning, I was sitting at my desk trying to make a nerve-racking decision to do something I had never done before in my adult life: Ditch my day. As I was treating my first few patients, I could not quell this excitement whirling around my gut. The sensation organized itself into words that traveled up to my brain. The message transmitted like this. There’s no way President Trump could be in my hometown of Scranton the day before the election and I would miss seeing him. I finalized the decision. Thank you, Rifky, Anna, and Hanna for holding the office down that day.
“Three hours later, in a world-class ‘Only In Scranton Moment,’ we rolled onto rally grounds five minutes before start time and found a perfect parking spot, one block away from the rally, right outside an airport. With that kind of Divine-ease and small-town convenience, I knew I was home.
“Walking towards the rally, we felt the love, unity, and, most of all, the normalcy exuding from the throngs of people huddled around us. As if the crowd walking in lockstep with us understood the absolute hero of this man. They collectively exuded the real subtext of his election: the continuation of freedom in America.
“We made a friend during the rally, a 20-year-old kid with a bona fide Scranton accent that made my heart sing. He had come to the rally by himself. He leaned in close to us and yelled over all the noise, ‘You guys know, corona is over in two days.’
“This young kid understood something profound that more and more people are waking up to: A suspicious virus coming out of China was utilized by the Democratic Party as a means of mind control and behavior control before an election. A weapon of fear that was used to terrify a nation and accomplish one agenda: to create enough chaos to get their candidate elected.
“How do I know this, you might wonder? On Election Day, the CDC issued a statement that people with COVID can go to the polls, in person. The same people with COVID, who had been treated like lepers in hospitals, left to die alone, suddenly didn’t pose a problem at polling places. The same people made to quarantine in sealed rooms in their own homes and be contact traced with all kinds of freedom-stripping horror suddenly became free agents to move about society when they saw Trump killing it on Election Day.
“The twisted plot has finally revealed itself. This chokehold on freedom was never about #stoppingthespread of a virus. Stopping the spread of something invisible had always been an endeavor bereft of common sense, the absolute height of futility. Inside this election is where coronavirus unmasked itself to be a fear-fueled, gas-lit attempt towards disorientation of the masses.
“These past eight months were about preventing the reelection of a man inconveniently standing in the way of a hostile Democratic Party takeover. Only we weren’t supposed to notice because we were afraid of a virus. Our president was the only barrier standing in the way of their steady hypnosis of the masses towards exchanging every personal and religious freedom for an illusion of safety.
“If coronavirus was about an American election, why did other countries fall for it? Other countries saw an opportunity to grab the wheel of a shiny new updated model of communism and take it out for a test drive. This virus offered countries a one-size-fits-all vehicle of dictatorship, for the leaders of the world to give a whirl and steamroll their own vested interests and flatten their people. (Except for Sweden. I’ll never understand Sweden.)
“The virus was a premeditated — we might even say ‘pre-media-tated’ — pre-election distraction. Do not spend another ounce of your precious energy discussing a virus that was used to fool you. A virus that caused medical mismanagement and panicked mistakes. We all know people who got sick; we all heard about people who died. That is called life. We don’t shut down Torah and mitzvot out of fear of things we cannot control. In 5,000 years, we never have.
“The media knew something sinister. They knew if they held a magnifying glass to disease and death it would obscure our peripheral vision. Distraction was the name of the game. But we are waking up. We have our full vision restored and can spot our most precious commodity hanging in the balance, Freedom. We will never again let our freedom be tampered with.
“This election, and all the horrendous fraud that came with it, made me notice an interesting phenomenon about evil. Evil is myopic. It cannot see itself. Evil has tunnel vision. Evil is so frantically over-calculated and hyper-focused that it doesn’t notice the people standing around it, looking right at it with their mouths gaping open. It doesn’t see its own blatant scrambling. Covering windows. Blocking access. Stalling for time. Being statistically and mathematically implausible. Bursting water mains. I mean, ‘C’mon man.’
“One video in particular stood out to me. A video of an ordinary-looking woman filling out a stack of ballots, one by one, while a man captured it all on video above her.
“We are witnessing the banality of evil. I always thought evil looked like the Joker from Batman. Turns out, it looks more like the nice lady from down the block who found herself caught up in something no good.
“But I come to you with good news. I drove home from the Trump rally with a palpable goodness that remains nestled inside my heart as I sit here writing. The goodness of ordinary people joining together with no ulterior motive than to carry the torch for a prosperous and free country to the next generation. I still feel the warm positive energy that coalesced around me on that cold blustery day. I remember the split-second whoosh of masculine energy that emanated from President Trump as he strutted right past me on the tarmac from Air Force One. He was the tall embodiment of alpha energy and strength. Only in Scranton is it that easy to work your way through the crowd and come face to face with a president. Kayleigh, too.
“The internet has shown us weeks of massive grassroots rallies and marches for President Trump, all the way from Beverly Hills to Amish country. When the most innocent and unmanipulated among us hang Trump flags off their horse and buggy, I will get behind that.
“Here’s the good news. That mammoth, worldwide volume of enthusiasm and gratitude towards Trump pre-Election Day is not lost. Einstein said that energy is never lost, only converted. That energy is now being rechanneled and redirected toward G-d. All that love for President Trump and for the freedom he represents is now organizing itself upwards towards storming the heavens for the sake of truth to prevail.
“There is a strong parallel trend on Facebook. The same people who express love for President Trump also speak of how salvation comes to us from one place, Heaven. UncorkedLiving.com founder, purveyor of healthy lifestyle supplements and podcaster David J. Harris, Jr. said it best: ‘I turned off the news last night and this morning. Because for me, as a believer, I have to guard my heart. Guard my peace. I believe there is something very spiritual happening. We have to rest. We have to go pray. We have to really hear from G-d. If you really press into Him, He will speak peace to you. He will give your heart rest. He is at work doing something. We cannot forget the founding fathers all believed and loved the Bible. And because of that, I believe that G-d loves this country. And because you and I are praying for this country I believe that there will be stop-gap placed. We don’t have to see how, we just have to believe.’
“We are praying for our beloved and beleaguered president like never before. Our love, hope, and faith is being registered, unified, and codified by our King of Kings in Heaven. Our job now is to trust G-d’s timing and be loyal to our president, to remember every good President Trump has done for us.
“Understand this. We create reality together with G-d — Asher barah Elokim la’asos. Creation is an infinite verb. Creation is constantly unfolding. How do we know we are part of the creation process? We are called Tzelem Elokim by G-d. He called us by the only name He used for Himself during creation. Why? To remind us we have constant influence over creation. How do we influence outcomes? By using our good mood and robust imagination to think good and know it will be good.
“’Vaya’ar Hashem ki tov — And G-d saw that it was good.’ Hashem’s model for the creation process was presented so simply so we could easily mirror it. Think it, speak it, then stand back and admire how good it came out. Repeat.
“By now, most of us have heard rumors about ballot watermarks and a possible sting operation set into motion by President Trump because he feared this exact kind of voter fraud. When I watched a video about that, I felt a flush of endorphin release into my veins. All I could think was, ‘Hashem, You wondrous Hero. You created the refuah before the makkah.’
“I suddenly remembered a loop of Divine redundancies that struck my eye last week. Three similar-looking alephs from three different places jumped into my field of vision. Aleph points to the master, Hashem, Alufo shel olam.
“The first aleph came from the Lubavitcher Rebbe who predicted 30 years ago that this year would be the year of ‘P’la’ot Ar’enu — wonders I will show you.’
“I spotted the second aleph in Parashat Lech Lecha: ‘El ha’aretz asher Ar’eka — To the land that I will show you.’
“The third aleph reached me from a verse of Tehillim I read on Shabbos afternoon. ‘Zove’ach todah y’chab’danini, v’sam derech, ar’enu b’yesha Elokim’ (Psalms 50:23). He who offers praise, glorifies Me. He who sets his path, I will show the salvation of G-d.
“Let us set our path on the constant praise and glory of G-d. I don’t want to miss a single minute of the miracles He will bring. Hang on tight; the #YearOfAmazement has arrived because the best is yet to come!”
*****************************
Now may I go back to teasing Trump again?
Okay Gerald, I swore I wouldn’t get sucked into another one of these political diversions. This wonderful Caption Contest site is occasionally hijacked. And here we are once again. I wonder how much longer Moment’s editorial staff will indulge us?
I suspect your curiosity was peeked, first by Dr. Gila’s creds buoyed by her medical training as a dentist and second by the ease with which she quotes scripture, chapter and verse. One need to visually experience her rant rallies to understand the flavor with which this op ed might have been delivered. This is available on her various YouTube offerings.
Okay so Dr Gila, from an anthropological standpoint? Anthropology is one of those behavioral sciences that overlap all other disciplines that touch human activity. This includes linguistics, religion, family lineage, economics, politics, a sense of self, a sense of tribe, a sense of the outside world. But most of all it is the study of how these come together to exists in relative harmony, and how this perpetuates itself from generation to generation.
As such, Dr. Gila and her style of Trumpism would be explained better from a sociological perspective than from an anthropological one. And more specifically as a cult phenomena.
For a while now I have believed Trump popularity is best explained as a perfect storm of individual self-interests. There were the “there is no Constitution without the 2nd Amendment” people, the fundamentalist Christians for whom the “Right to Life” was enough to seal the deal. There were the republican legislators for whom the selection of an electable and sustainable candidate remains an existential criteria. And there are the blue-collars whose interests, long championed by the Democratic party, have been abandoned in favor of climate change, immigrant rights, the “Me Too Movement” and “Black Lives Matter”. They ‘believe these distractions, coupled with overly regulating business, cause their jobs to be lost.
Certainly the vast majority of these self-interest Trump supporters agree. He is a poor excuse for a human being. He is a morally and philosophically degenerate, but a degenerate that will advance their agendas.
This doesn’t include a last group of followers, a group that seems to be growing daily. I am sitting here at my computer, and in the background I am listening to a PBS documentary on the massacre at Waco. Dr. Gila’s description of her adoration of the Donald seems very much like what was going on with the Branch Davidians on their road to complete yet irrational devotion. Jim Jones and Charles Manson are two others whose ability to attract and control people whose upbringing and moral backgrounds make understanding what happened difficult. A cult believes the leader is:
• Divinely ordained, miraculous. Opposing the leader offends G_d
• Endowed with super human insight
• Exempt from standard rules of conduct
• Deserving of loyalty that trumps all previously allegiances
• Irreplaceable. Loss of the leader ends the cult
And this is the behavioral science background with which I choose to understand Dr. Gila Jedwab.
Jim, thanks for your wonderful analysis of Trump’s ascension It is much more sophisticated than mine. You were right. The contrast between Dr. Jedwab as a bright, sensitive scientist and her adoration of Trump was what was so startling. Dr. Jedwab’s ancestry, by the way, traces to Jedwabne, a Polish town which suffered terrible pogroms with the rise of Nazism. Those not taken to camps were burned in their homes or shot in the streets by their fellow townspeople. In times of fragmentation and confusion, people look for a savior and often wind up with an authoritarian leader. Remember, Mussolini’s slogan in seeking election was that he would make sure the trains ran on time. Trump followed the pattern of a would-be dictator. He eschewed logic and truth and seemed to rise above ordinary standards, not wanting to be confused by the facts. Anything he disagreed with was fake news. The most unlikely people seemed to bend to him, a force above logic, only to be thrown aside later when he had no more use for them. What mattered most to him was not their human qualities but their allegiance. And he got over 70 million votes.
Do you want to read a marvelous book? It’s “The Art of Psychoanalysis” by Jay Haley, written in the 1960’s. It should be in most libraries. It’s very funny but with very deep implications. Haley worked with and for Gregory Bateson, whom we previously discussed. Please let me know what you think. It’s very worth looking at.
Thanks again for your always perceptive viewpoint and, even more, for your kindness. And thanks to everyone here who contributes to making this a wonderful, humane oasis.
“The Wampanoag were one of the 10 Lost Tribes.”
“I give thanks every day.”
Did you remember to bring the schmear?
No, this is a turnkey breakfast operation.
Are you sharing with the lost tribes this year?
I’m with PBS. I give thanks for NOVA.
That’s an interesting shtreimel you’re wearing, pilgrim.
Oy! Another veritable smorgasbord — turkey or whitefish. Vhat to do?
It’s tradition.
Dale,
How do we balance on the roof? TRADITION! (“Fiddler On The Roof”)
It really is one of the best movies and musicals :^)
What are you talking about? Lox and pumpkin pie is a perfect match!
Questions that need answers for Thanksgiving:
(Q) What do you do after your big meal?
(A) You wash your hands, but don’t lick them!
+++
(Q) What happens to the leftovers?
(A) With the host present, you point at the food you want (right index finger), and (with the left index finger) you point at your stomach!
+++
(Q) What do you do if there weren’t the side dishes you expected at the feast?
(A) When leaving you tell the host, next year I will volunteer to bring (the side dishes missing)!
Obviously there are other questions & answers you should consider. But, you don’t want to appear an ungrateful GLUTTON!
“Good gravy!”
Carol,
Is the opposite of good gravy, VERKOCHTE GRAVY?
“Let’s give thanks for nosherai.”
No Wild Turkey for me. I’d prefer Manischewitz Concord Grape with my bagel.
“Is that an everything turkey?”
Hi Carol-I looked up and my subconscious must have stolen your caption-what a Turkey I am – I’m sorry :^)
Message to Gerald Lebowitz: I don’t seem to be able to REPLY directly to your kind message. Thank you!!
I’ve heard of everything bagels but that’s ridiculous.
Neither a borrower nor a Lender’s bagel be.
I admire your chutzpah.
You have your tryptophan, I have mine.
The best part of a New York bagel is having it My Way.
The right to assemble my bagel shall not be infringed.
This country was founded in order to promote a more perfect bagel.
Another big Thanksgiving event. A SUPERSPREADER with all the trimmings!
A special NUDE turkey for Thanksgiving this year was prepared. It was PLUCKED OUT as the best of the best!
My Bubbe always favored me when serving the turkey. She would smilingly ask, “Would you like the JUICY right breast or the SCRUMPTIOUS left breast?”
Your catering company could use an update.
Deliver that to the White House.We would like them to sleep till January 20.
Sorry,our leader says only KFC allowed.
We voted for bagels and lox,but lucky for you,they were all mail ballots.
Sorry,Trump wants you terminated because he saw you on MSNBC.
“Have you checked with the OU?”
“Whoa now, fella. I was told we’re going vegan this year!”
Our turkeys require a basting, and that is based on how you like to BATTER your victim.
There are many reasons to give thanks on Thanksgiving. But, to say, “NO THANKS” when offered a second helping is frowned upon!
“We would like to trade you this bird and this pie for two of those things with the hole in the middle.”
“Come back at Purim.”
“How is it this bad boy didn’t make it? I hear there will be a lot of turkeys pardoned this year.”
“You’re so predictsble.”
Spelling! !!
“You’re so predictable.”
“They have cranberry filling.”
“What are yams, but overcooked bagels?”
JR, Popeye had a very hard and muscular build. Maybe that’s why he once said, “I yam what I yam.”
Orson Welles improvised the following short speech on the set of his film “The Third Man”:
“In Italy, for thirty years, under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
“We just heard that Manhattan was sold for $24 worth of trinkets to the Dutch by the Indians. What could we get for this food?”
“What you’re eating is bupkis. This is food that would make your bubbe proud.”
“Do you mind if I have a little nibble….and a piece of Turkey too?”
Save a seat at your Thanksgiving party for Eliyahu Hanavi (“Eligah the Prophet”). If he can’t make it, maybe I can.
When you want the best, serve Einstein Bagels. It is a matter of relativity.
Marvin – I Noah what you mean – Einstein’s are the best, ‘relatively’ speaking. The only other place I can get bagels is Costco, and they’re also Einstein bagels, just ‘holesale’.
Dale, that’s a funny concept. “I bought a dozen bagels holesale. I saved a lot of money, but when I opened the package, there was nothing there.”
Thanks.
“I wasn’t Certain if I should try some of Heisenberg’s taters when SchrÖdinger’s cat grabbed a wing and up and died, or not!”
Dale & Jim,
The only Heisenberg “Uncertainty Principal” I can think about at this time of the year, is whether or not I should eat gehakte leber with my Einstein bagels & turkey. After all, if Schroedinger’s cat is going to steal the food, then let him CATegorically enjoy if he can, or not. It may be a wild goose chase, and in the end I am not chopped liver, but I am addicted to delicious “holy” bagels & food.
Next year, I can’t decide between Cajun Turkey from Popeyes or KFC.
Let’s leave politics out of this. Pass the loxbox.
Let us pray (hmm … lettuce? There is a joke in here somewhere). Father give me the strength is resist temptation (especially when Gerald prods me so). And help me confine my comments to the ironic and politically benign. Amen
I’m winging it.
Where’d you stuff your giblets?
Apples, peaches, pumpkin pie…plop, plop, fizz, fizz…
“Did you have to bring cosplay into the holidays?”
“What I’m holding isn’t a bagel or a doughnut. It’s a fully grown Life Saver.”
Gerald,
Do you mean you have a Life Saver Inner Tube? Just don’t BEACH at me for asking.
Turkeys sometimes try to fly the coop. In many cases, reluctant lovers try to fly the coop also when their prospective fathers-in-law chase them with shotguns!
According to Samuel L. Jackson, that one bad Moe’s faux turkey.
Is she wearing the Scarlet Bagel?
Try it, you’ll like it.
“The invitation clearly said ‘dairy potluck’…”
Try going “cold turkey,” if you can’t stand the heat!
When in doubt, baste the turkey with schmaltz. TRADITION!
Dedicated to Dale Stout, a traditional type of guy.
I raise my Schlitz to Schmaltz!
Enjoy your turkey now, because your goose may be cooked later!
“Are turkeys OK to eat for Thanksgiving? Let me prove it to you, with logic that might possibly even convince very skilled lawyers like JR and Michael Lomazow.
“The Hebrew word for ‘Jews’ is ‘yehudim,’ which comes from the root of the Hebrew word ‘hodu,’ or ‘to give thanks.’ ‘Hodu’ also happens to be Hebrew for ‘turkey.’
“I rest my case, in time for you to enjoy Thanksgiving in the new world.”
You’ve convinced me!
So what you are saying is that Tevye might be playing “Hodu in di shtroy” fom his roof top?
Gerald, you always amaze me with your depth of knowledge and willingness to share. Me, not so much. I looked up “straw” on an on-line translator.
Thanks, Jim, but my so-called depth of knowledge is augmented by all the things I can look up to fill the gaps in my sometimes failing memory. All the people on this site never fail to amaze and delight. Dale Stout and Marvin Sager create marvelous word balloons that soar into the sky. Stephen Nadler’s knowledge certainly dwarfs mine, and if his humor therapy might somehow fail, he always has the medical skills to prescribe or give physical therapy. Dinah is a scholar in both secular and Judaic literature, and JR is a legal scholar whose essays are among the best on the internet. Adrian’s great skill sets are in computers and chess. And Michael is a shrewd sports fan and former prosecutor with plenty of stories to tell. I’m just a minor player whose joy is to celebrate the shooting stars that blaze across the skies of this site. I get more than I give, and for that I always say thanks.
P. S. Your gamut of interests, by the way, ranging from engineering to anthropology to politics to human relationships to humor, is proof of a life well-lived and filled with insights and compassion. You would be an asset to any group.
“Thank you for coming to cheer me up,even if are just an apparition.My friends and family are all staying safe in their homes.We speak by phone when we can but its obviously not the same.I hear their may be a vaccine soon but we will have to wait for the roll out.I haven’t seen my son or new grandson as they live out of state and its not safe to travel.Having you visit though is a good pick me up.My best to you and your loved ones this holiday season and I pray for better days ahead. Happy Thansgiving!
“This may turn out to be our best AA meeting yet!”
People have been advised to have Thanksgiving with their NUCLEAR family. Just what we need, another BOMB!
This year I can’t have Thanksgiving in New York because it was canceled. Unfortunately, I can’t make it there! So, I can’t make it anywhere!
“Thanks for the turkey.Most of ours fled to the Hamptons months ago.”
“So you’re from the Massachusetts part of the family?”
A comment on the cartoon in the November/December issue. My answer to the cartoon is “TRADITION! TRADITION!”.
“That turkey may be Butterball, but it’s fleischig nonetheless.”
Michael, it’s obvious by all your contributions here that you’re a skilled pro, that you’ve been writing captions for a long time. May I recommend a wonderful site for you to visit? It was created by our own Stephen Nadler and is called “Attempted Bloggery” and covers art and cartooning and all kinds of humor down through the years. The most amazing thing is that although Stephen has much to brag about, he’s not egotistical at all. A big part of the site lists the many captions that he’s submitted that never won any recognition at all, although they are generally very good. This reminds me of Oscar Hammerstein II, whose first musical with Richard Rodgers, “Oklahoma,” opened to great acclaim after his many flops with other collaborators, prompting him to take out a full-page ad in “Variety” saying, resignedly, “I did it before and I can do it again.” It’s a great site. I’ve recommended it to so many people and they all come back to me, thanking me for the opportunity to enjoy the richness of its contents.
It’s a pleasure to have you here, and let me close by imitating Dean Martin at the end of every 60’s TV show when he said, “Keep those cards and letters coming in.” In other words, please keep writing.
Thanks.
Thank you for your reccomendation.I will take a look.I’m hardly a pro,though.I’m just a retired guy who lives baseball,walks his dogs 4 times a day and enters contests like this.I try and keep my 74 year old brain going strong.I was always too busy to even think of contests before retirement but now,with plenty of time and a pandemic in full force,it helps to pass the time.I volunteer at the local humane society by walking dogs,try and read newspapers and books,and wait for some normalcy so I can visit my son again.Your community is practiced and strong.I’m just visiting.
I think the Brotherhood only wanted scrambled eggs for the morning brunch.
This year all turkeys will be pardoned for Thanksgiving at the White House. In return, there will be a LAME DUCK dinner celebration.
“Come back at Purim.”
Many politicians are atheists, but people around Thanksgiving tell them to KEEP THE FAITH!
“Trump promised him a pardon but after he commented on the polls,he was toast!”
Before he was toast, was he well-bred?
Good One!
Vexatious Litigator=Trump.Look it up.
“I know he’s dead but did he vote ?”
“I’ve got a 66′ Vette for sale.Interested?”
Has the Corvette been vetted?
Yes,the Vette’s been vetted.
“This isn’t 1620 In Plymouth; it’s 2020 in New York City. You made a 400-year wrong turn somewhere along the way.”
“I too used to want to go backward and forward in time, but I found that it made me too tense.”
I used to want to shuttle between the past and the future, but I found that it made me too tense.
If you could go back for one day to any event or time,what would it be?I have pondered this periodically.
Michael, I’d go back to the very day of my birth with full intellectual functioning so that I could confront head-on all the forces that would mold me and be able to shrug off those which I deemed destructive.
Did you ever read that Ray Bradbury short story in which a baby is born with full intellectual capabilities and is so angry at the indignities he is exposed to that he is determined to kill his parents? It is, I believe, called “The Small Assassin” and is Bradbury at his early best.
You always ask good questions, by the way. I could picture you in court, pinning a defendant down with your expert but not necessarily unkind observations, a true artist at work.
I love that answer.I would never have thought of it.
“This isn’t 1620, it’s 2020; somewhere along the way, you made a 400-year wrong turn.”
“Just listen to We Didn’t Start The Fire,and you’ll be caught up.”
Biden’s cabinet choices are in such sharp contrast to Trumps as to startling proclaim,We Are Back.
Yesteryear, you had psychedelic drugs to alter your thoughts. Today you have virtual reality politics (for Thanksgiving) where you TURN ON-TUNE IN-BLOW YOUR MIND
watching all the WILD TURKEYS trotting around the White House.
When all the wild turkeys leave on Jan.20,I’m not sure how long it will take us to appreciate the calmness that will prevail.No more gobble,gobble,but the sweet sound of professional speech and realistic goal settings.I can’t wait.
Follow up to the above entry:
You can get your turkeys at food marts, or stand in long car lines, or you can dial the White House and ask about turkeys. They may answer you by saying, “Our turkeys are ready to go and are stuffed with FOWL TRIMMINGS!”
Yes,foul trimmings and definitely ready to go.
Michael,
Free delivery if you take ALL the turkeys! 🙂
Its 830AM in California and the stock market is bouncing around 30,000.Trump must be pissed.
Michael,
You can TAKE STOCK in it, if you are willing to invest! 🙂
Although I only need to drive about 3 hours to reach Las Vegas,I stay away because gambling doesn’t interest me,or so I tell myself.Yet,I do have stock market investments because I feel safer,and it isn’t gambling.(Ha!)
Trump comes out triumphant about 930,taking credit for the market,not admitting its a reaction to the transition to Biden.I can’t help how much I hate him.Stupid and evil is a bad combination.
I just made up a joke. Many years in the future, thanks to Elon Musk, spaceships are sent out from the United States to explore the universe. One of our ships crashes on a small planet on the other side of the galaxy. There our astronaut is confronted by an alien, who approaches him tentatively. “Where are you from?” the alien asks. “I’m from the planet Earth,” our astronaut answers. “The planet Earth?” the alien repeats, astounded. “Then you must know Louis Cohen of Tallahassee, Florida. Tell me, how is he doing?”
The reason for the joke? It occurs to me that two of the nicest guys on the site here live on the West Coast, in California, James Gorman and Michael Lomazow. We are living in a time of isolation in this age of the coronavirus. It would be wasteful if two very good people who might be living relatively near each other failed to meet at some point.
Just musing, although, of course, it’s really none of my business. Sorry, but I do like to bring people together.
Gerald,that’s very nice of you to say.I would love to meet everyone on the site.Maybe when the pandemic is over we could have a group diner. I do get into New York about once a year to visit my brother and sister.Since I was born and bred in Brooklyn,moving to California when I was 24,I still have ties to the area.I graduated from New Utrecht High in 1964 and moved to California for law school in 1971.Paradoxically,my son grew up in California,moved to the East Coast for law school and stayed in New York for several years,before settling in Seattle.Incidentally, he met his wife to be in the elevator in the building he was moving into.They married a year later.I now have two grandchildren,who I haven’t seen since March.Of all the places I have been,and I travelled quite a bit ,I have always regarded new York as The best.I guess I agree with Woody Allen that new York was the ultimate place.I left for law school in California to experience a change and I stayed in California because circumstances encouraged it but I have often thought that I could have easily made my life in the big apple.However,today its 72 degrees and sunny and it still feels great to be here.
Gerald,I just noticed that you called me a former prosecutor,which is true but I was also a defense attorney for 15 yesrs.After 12 years as a prosecutor,I switched to defense work and with my partner,we established a busy felony defense firm.After 15 years and over 100 trials(including 45 muder trials),I was worn out by 60 hour work weeks and decided to retire.However,my good friend who was the District Attorney of our county,talked me into coming back into the DA’s office while he finished his last term.By this time,the office had grown to 250 lawyers and over 700 total bodies.I stayed 6 more years,finishing my career with about 240 trials.Yes,I have many tales of the cases I handled.When I was a prosecutor,there were 6 of us who comprised the homicide team and we would have a beeper when it was our turn to be notified of a murder.I responded in the middle of the night several times to murder scenes and would then attend the autopsy.The thinking was that the prosecutor should be involved as early as possible.I have countless tales about these cases and suffice it to say,they were memorable for a variety of reasons.Many of my trials involved death penalty litigation which obviously takes its toll.I loved my career but on the very last day,I took a sigh of relief and have tried not to think about it to much.Dog walking is a lot easier.
I
So many turkeys have been pardoned at the White House that a request was sent to the President to BUY THE FARM. The President replied, “Emphatically, NO! I’ve paid enough personal income tax already.”
What is this, a schmear campaign?
Trump just pardoned Corn Pop.
Corn Pop worked at Mar- A- Lago…He was spotted with Alan Dershowitz
First you fast, then we feast, now let’s try some roasted beast.
Pardon me, would you have any Grey Goose?
Can you guess who is coming to Thanksgiving dinner? No, it’s not Rudy Giuliani. We are content to have only one “turkey with his head cut off!”
“I’m afraid John Alden gave you the wrong address. There’s no Priscilla here.”
“Donald,Ivanka,witness protection has outdone itself.”
“I was going to skip Thanksgiving this year,but why not a wing and a prayer.”
At long last! We had to wait until almost the end of President Trump’s term of office to get an announcement from the White House containing more than a grain of truth.
In one of his last official acts, we are told, our president officially pardoned a turkey named Corn for Thanksgiving.
Isn’t that a-maize-ing?
There is a rumor, however, which hasn’t been confirmed, that the turkey is Roger Stone’s uncle.
The Pentagon has expressed interest in recruiting the turkey for service overseas. As you might have guessed, if he takes the job, he will be given the rank of Kernel.
There is a further rumor that Corn has now tested positive for the virus and is currently in isolation with Melania,who has told Trump her doctor has ordered her to have no contact of any kind with him.
Is there a kernel of truth to that rumor?
Corn’s ancestors, by the way, were very interested in baseball, especially from the time his great grandmother was involved in a relationship with Ty Cobb.
Maize,Kernel,Cobb…..genius!
His great grandfather must have been very peckish over the relstionship….Never mind,I’m terrible at this!
Thanks, but not really genius. Just corny.
There you go again!
We have been assured that the pain you experience this Thanksgiving will pass, unless you have LARGE KIDNEY STONES. In this case you will need a lithotripter to send more SHOCK WAVES to your body before relief occurs!
Just got back from our afternoon walk.Truman,Abigail and Winston strike terror in the hearts of anyone who gets too close to us by shrill barks that scare the hell out of all who pass.I’ve gotten real good at apologize and yes,I’ve tried to solve the problem but all three of them were found running on the street and by the look of them,had been fending for themselves for quite some time so they are the product of their environment.They are great dogs however and all have a piece of my heart.Abigail is the boss.
Apologies for apologize
Your dogs present a puzzle of sorts.
Truman is obviously (?) Harry S, the guy who ordered the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Winston is either Britain’s prime minister during the war who was then booted out of office unceremoniously after it ended or the cigarette whose ads once generated a lot of controversy with the words “Winston tastes good LIKE a cigarette should, causing all the English teachers in the world to rise up to object. Churchill, by the way, smoked ten cigars a day and was a heavy drinker and yet lived to the ripe old age of 90—there’s a lesson there somewhere.
Now Abigail poses a problem. Was she named after Abigail Adams, the wife of our second president? Or was that the name you impulsively pulled out of a hat? I once knew a guy whose name was 7 1/8. I asked him how he had gotten that name. He told me that after he was born, they didn’t know what to call him, so they put a lot of names in a hat and someone accidentally pulled out the size.
But I digress.
Winston actually was a mistake naming.I was thinking of the Tom Hanks movie where he was marooned on the island after the plane crash and he was kept company by the ball that has been on the plane.The ball was a Wilson and when I named Winston,I was actually thinking of the ball but got the name wrong.I decided to leave it as Winston when I found out.Abigail was the product of me reading a book about Adams at the time of the naming.Truman was indeed inspired by Harry.I had a golden retriever for 15 wonderful years whose name was Kennedy.
The man named Kennedy certainly had plenty of gold to retrieve but unfortunately not enough years. As Robert Frost put it in an unforgettable line,
“nothing gold can stay.”
Sad. Thanks for sharing.
“If you crossed statelines,you need to isolate.If you crossed timelines,you need to forfeit that bird.”
HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all who share a few words on this blog from time to time. Others can remain the SILENT MAJORITY no matter how “deafening” that might sound. Remember, at this time of the year, “THE BIRD IS THE WORD!” So, munch & crunch for this holiday and be safe!
“How about a shvitz.You can bring the bird.”
“Look,you may be my kids,but I can’t accept any gifts from your crazy cult.”
“Two meshugana and a bird…coming to a theatre near you.”
“What,you come to bury Ceaser,not to braise him?”
Spelling and grammar ain’t my thing !
“What,you come to bury Caesar,not to braise him?”
After the morning walks,my dogs on top of me,kissing.I’m good!
That’s outlandish, Standish…Happy Thanksgiving.
“No,I haven’t seen Pet Cemetary.Why?”
“No,I haven’t seen Pet Cemetery.Why?”
“He made fun of our clothes.He was a mockingbird.”
I live in Riverside California,a desert rural community about an hour from Los Angeles,two hours from San Diego and an hour from Palm Springs,Disneyland and The beaches of orange county.Winter temps are 60-70 while the summers are hot and dry.Vegas is about 3-4 hours away by car.We have palm trees and orange trees lining many streets,with horse ranches a common sight.I have been here 45 years.Brooklyn New York,where I grew up,is obviously vastly different although I do remember farms in 1950’s Brooklyn.I have grown accustomed to the slow pace and enjoy it although I do miss The great restaurants and theatre of new york.I have contemplated moving inasmuch as I am retired but I am a creature of comfort and consistency.Life can be very funny,and as Forrest Gump said about the box of choclates,you never know what you will get.
Would you really always want to know what you will get? After a while it would be a drag and you would be bored by the predictability and yearn for a button marked “surprise” to press. After all, nobody really wants to be pinned down, like a dead butterfly captured in glass or a plastic person who will always say what’s expected.
I absolutely agree!
Do you want to see something ingenious? The following is from a full-page ad in the New York Times sponsored by Patagonia, a reputable fair-trade clothing manufacturer. Read it from the top down and it gets bleaker and bleaker; then turn around and read it from the bottom up and it gets brighter and brighter. Sort of like Dante’s “The Divine Comedy.”
We’re all toast
So don’t tell us that
We can imagine a healthy future
Because the reality is
It’s too late to fix the climate crisis
And we don’t trust anyone who says
We need to demand a livable planet
Because we don’t have a choice
I definitely prefer the bottom up.Very interesting.
Because I’m sure that the people who participate on this site appreciate a good story,I’d like to offer one.About 40 years ago,I received a call from my cousin who lives in Johnstown,PA.He is about my age,a little older so he was in his mid-thirties at the time.Other things about him which fill out the story was that he was,and is,extremely wealthy due to success in a toy business he and his parents turned into a major inport export deal.I’m talking mega rich.Also,some may call him eccentric,but you be the judge.He was single at the time and when he called me,he wanted me to help him complete the purchase of a crypt in the Westwood Memorial Cemetery in Westwood CA.The crypt pon top of Marilyn Monroe was for sale and as Bob stated,”What better way to spend eternity than on top of Marilyn.”I was asked to draw up the deed,reach the final price and make sure the cemetery had all the necessary paperwork.The price was not totally outrageous at the time,about the price of an expensive foreign car.I did my job and Bob was the owner.Magazines and newspapers at the time speculated as to the name of the buyer,with Joe DiMaggio the leading rumor.Apparently,Joe had paid for the delivery of fresh red roses to her grave everyday. Now let’s flash forward about ten years.My cousin,now married,wanted to unload the crypt.Apparently,his wife didn’t like the idea of her husband spending eternity with Marilyn.Again I got the call and I was asked to help sell the crypt.We did sell it,for several times his original purchase price.The only thing I got out of this was a tour of the cemetery,which was fascinating as it’s filled with very famous people.If you ever visit Los Angeles,I highly recommend it as it’s much more interesting than ridiculous tourist attractions.A post-script to this story is that the Los Angeles Times recently published a story about the crypts and estimated that the prices near Marilyn were up to 500,000.Also,my cousin is now divorced!
Fascinating Patagonia blurb
Michael,
Thank you! That was a GREAT story. I could see it as the basis of a very funny set by a comedian like Jerry Seinfeld. Every story has to have a plot, and you provided a cemetery plot, literally. What is that saying? When asked what the three most important requirements for real estate valuation are, a broker once answered, “Location, location, location.” But I’m sure she never dreamed that the value of a burial crypt would be determined by proximity to its neighbors. To be buried on top of Marilyn Monroe for always does strike one as slightly obscene, and I can see why the wife would be jealous. Joe DiMaggio’s friends might even want to vandalize your cousin’s remains for revenge just as a guy might want to kill someone lusting after his wife! By the way, there is a funny story of two men talking, with one of them telling the other that he had come home unexpectedly early to find his wife on the living room couch with another man. “What’d you do?” his friend asked. “I got my revenge,” the man answered smugly. “I made sure that this can never happen again.” “But what did you do?” the friend persisted. “Simple,” the other retorted. “I sold the couch.”
I think you should write a memoir. With your experiences and your gift of words it would be a great read.
“I sold the couch” should be the refrain in any story where the hero strikes out trying to set things right.Like we probably have all done in our lives , flailing at windmills.
Your joke about selling the couch reminds me of a bad joke I heard years ago.It can be any nationalities,but today let’s pick on Italians.Guido and Sal rent a rowboat to go fishing and the fish are coming fast and furious.Sal jumps into the water,goes under, and comes back a minute later.I put an X on The bottom of the boat,he says,so we will find the spot tomorrow..Hey stupid,says Guido,how do you know we’re gonna get the same boat
Kramer could decide he wants to buy it,live there and give tours.
Cryptic Advice
So many who buy stocks and bonds
Complain of being gypped
And run to put their money in-
To houses to be flipped.
The best returns are underground,
Invested in a crypt.
So dig a hole and put your money in…cause years from now when you look again,the five will now be ten
Years from now there may be no more money as we’ve come to know it. It will be seen as having been a clumsy means of facilitating barter and will be replaced by electronic swipes, just as keys are no longer used by many hotels. The use of the credit card will one day be noted by historians as the first step toward the ending of cash as the means of transferring wealth.
Do you think its true that men are more reluctant to use a credit card than women?Are men embarrassed to use it,as if they suspect its unmanly to use it in place of cash while women whip it out like professional gunslinger looking to score an advantage?Getting behind a women at the supermarket may lead to long delays as she pulls the checkbook out while men use cash and hurry you through. (I’m actually MOSTLY kidding!)
Paying for your purchase with a credit card is like getting it for free, a mechanical exercise, not like taking dollars out of a wallet which is painfully personal, like undergoing a blood transfusion. When we come to the point where all transactions are done by data entry, as is now done between the Fed and the treasury, we will be still further removed from reality. I think both sexes approach getting and spending the same way. If you want to know what worries me, it’s negative interest rates coming to our shores. Imagine paying a bank to take our money! Just when I think that interest rates can’t get any lower, they get lower, all to get the heart beating again in an essentially bankrupt economy. Oh, well. As Marvin would say, enough kvetching.
Did you hear about the guy who went to the food mart to get his turkey? Afterwards, he stopped at the flower shop to buy flowers. When he went back to his car, it was towed for being in a no parking zone. So, he called a taxi to retrieve his car. He arrived at the tow lot, and a sign out front said closed for the holidays. Then, he went in the taxi back to the food store to buy another turkey. Finally he arrived home with the turkey. This turkey was some PICK ME UP for Thanksgiving, and you still want to KVETCH over your Thanksgiving?
What,no flowers!
“I’ll look over the compact,but one lousy Turkey is hardly adequate compensation.”
Gosh,I can hardly keep track of my wallet.If we go to electronic swipes,I’ll never keep track of them,unless of course they are inserted into our bodies for easy swiping.Does 1984 ring a bell?We all remember vastly different rates.When I bought my first house in 1978,I think my mortgage was at 9%.I also remember fondly getting a 6% return on a bank CD.I’m sure we will return to those numbers again.The stock market at 30,000 is really something.I read where some experts believe the market will suffer huge losses as we pay the price for the pandemic in the next couple of years while others believe we are on the verge of a 50,000 Dow. I believe in the rule to stay invested but subtract your age from a 100 and the remainder is what % of your money should be in the market.Thus, a 70 year old should be 30% invested and so forth.One thing I’ve learned is that nobody really knows (and experts are a dime a dozen.)
You’re right. Nobody really knows. If they knew, they would do it themselves and make a fortune. They wouldn’t need to scrounge the few bucks they plead for from readers of their post
As far as your rule for investments is concerned, what is the strategy for the person over 100? Should a 105-year-old be -5% invested, for example, receiving money even if he hadn’t put any in?
I could tell you many stories of stock market investment letter writers and how they had 20-20 hindsight and lied like thieves about their past prognostications. Another time.
Be well and prosper.
As for the 105 year old,my guess is that they aren’t concerned with that issue any longer…and G-d Bless them if they get that far,but I know you’re kidding.Completely off topic,I just sent three hours trying to fix my haywire sprinkler system,which refused to go off this morning.I purchased new valves and attempted to install them.After three hours I have decided that I better use a professional before I flood my entire property.I did manage,however,to get the system to shut off.I had some success fixing toilets lately and I got cocky!By the way,Is love to eventually hear your investment stories.
You don’t send Mayflowers, anymore.
I like this one…..makes me nostalgic for Diamond and Barbara.
I let my dogs out in the rear yard,forgetting my morning flood problem and before I picked up on it,I heard squeals of delight coming from them.Looking out,I saw my dogs skidding around the yard,buried in mud up to their eye balls.They were so happy I couldn’t get upset.I used a hose to get the top dirt off(its 80 degrees today)and then put them in the bath.They look good but the tub and bathroom look it has been hit with a dirt storm.My next taskwas this cleanup,while the dogs howledl with delight.
For those of you that settled for Swanson Turkey T.V. Dinners, many prayers were offered for your health.
“My eyes are bad but my sense of smell is good.Is that horse meat and turkey?”
If I were the Greek oracle at Delphi, I’d be without a job right now. For most of my recent predictions have fallen flat.
For one thing, I predicted an easy Trump win. But I hadn’t taken into account how crazy Trump would be in his behavior and in his speeches, telling audiences, for example, that the pandemic was winding down and that people didn’t really need protection, even as the number of people testing positive was exploding. In a way, Biden didn’t really defeat Trump; Trump defeated Trump, in the same way that Trump’s 2016 victory was really a repudiation of Hillary.
My other great predictions were, one, that the coronavirus would wreak havoc, exposing all the weaknesses and cracks in our economy and producing a depression worse than the one in 1929. I didn’t count on the trillions of dollars poured into the economy to shore it up. Second, I predicted that home values, already very high, would collapse, as people would be unable to pay their mortgages and the widespread unemployment would mean that most people would be unable to enter the housing market and take on new debt. Was I wrong! How could I have guessed that the opposite would be true , that with so many people working remotely, it wouldn’t matter where they worked, and so city dwellers would flee the congestion of the cities to the spaced-out beauty of the suburbs, driving housing prices sharply higher. It’s worked out that rents have gone sharply lower as landlords hope to entice residents and businesses to stay in the city.
How can I cash in on my recent spate of failures? I’ve just figured it out. If anyone reading this wants something not to happen, I’ll predict that it will.
For a mutually agreed-upon fee, that is.
How much would you charge to predict that Trump will prosper in the years ahead, avoid a New York indictment,and successfully challenge for the Presidency in 2024?
If I knew that if I predicted that he’d prosper the opposite would definitely occur, then I wouldn’t charge anything. I might pay almost anything. Don’t count him out. He has survived mountains of debt and come out unscathed. He learned to live through a brutal upbringing by his father. He has no conscience. People and situations are to be maneuvered by him like game pieces. To feel is to show weakness. Any obstacle he faces is fake news. He is a human coronavirus which the current vaccines being tested will not eradicate.
There was a Seinfeld episode where Jerry was telling George that he was so screwed up he needed psychiatric help…but one therapist would not due.George,according to Jerry,needed a whole team of psychiatrists,all working exclusively on George.The problem with Trump is that he would never accept any diagnosis as real,just like he can’t accept his election loss as anything but a plot against him.How much of his problems were caused by his environment as opposed to a bad wiring inside himself I can’t appreciate but it is scary that we elected a president who could fill up a mental health manual.
What’s more scary to me is how many prominent and otherwise forceful and accomplished people bent to his will and were cowed by him. Rudy G., for example, was once considered “America’s mayor” for his way of taking charge of New York City after 9/11. Look at him now, groveling like a kept animal in his cage, panting for approval. I think Trump tapped into the raw emotion that lurks inside all of us but is usually blocked from expression by the average society-trained intellectual. That’s as much introspection as I can give you.
Thanks, by the way, for your always great replies.
“Its worth its weight in wampun.”
“My mantra is,’Don’t Ask,Don’t Tell’.”
It’s roasted! It’s baked! It’s boiled!
I would love to know where everyone lives ,ages and what you did or do for a living.My life is pretty much revealed,retired lawyer,age 74 from Riverside CA.You all seem to know each other pretty well and since I’m new to the site,I thought I’d ask.If its too personal a question,I apologize.
“No one told you this was a dairy potluck?”
“Is that turkey Kosher?”
“What’s a brunch without a bagel and a shmear?”
Oy, the food here is terrible…and such meager portions.
I think something went wrong with ancestry.com
“Didn’t she used to be Trumps education secretary?”
Another story.Let’s call this How I Became A Movie Star. Years ago,in a galaxy far away,I came to Los Angeles with my wife to attend law school.It was 1971 and we settled in a Hollywood apartment(155.00 rent per month).While I attended school and drive a tram at the L os Angeles Zoo to make some money(another story),my Harvard educated wife took a job as a teacher of special education in a private school.She became very friendly with a girl who was also teaching but who had designs on a Hollywood career.They are still friends to this day.Eventually,I moved with my wife to Riverside,about 50 miles away while this other girl pursued her career.She started in casting,doing assistant jobs to gain experience and eventually went out on her own.As would be expected,she started with very small films,even doing Spanish language stuff.She progressed to grade B films and was hired to cast Psycho 2,the next chapter to the very famous original Psycho movie.As it turned out,the writer of Psycho 2 needed help to write the courtroom scene that opened the movie.Our friend Jackie contacted me and asked if I could provide assistance.I readily agreed and went to Universal Studios to meet the writer.I was able to help him write a plausible scene.While there,I met the director who asked if I would be willing to be in the movie and recite the one line I had written for the prosecutor.I was surprised and happy to agree.Months later,I went to Universal for the filming.There I met the stars of the movie,Anthony Perkins,Vera Miles,Robert Loggia,etc.Vera Miles asked me if I preferred to be called Mike or Michael and when I said I didn’t care,she said she would call me Michael,her son’s name.Anthony Perkins was sitting in the fake courtroom we had set up and upon seeing me asked if I had seen Saturday Night Live a couple of days before.Indeed I had and told him so as he had been the guest host.He told me, “I showed them,I showed up stoned on …..and he named a bunch of illegal drugs.They were all very friendly,taking pictures with me and signing my script.Vera even invited me to sit with her at lunch,which I did.Years later I was shopping with my wife in a clothing store in Lo s Angeles.As I exited,Anthony Perkins was coming in and we came face to face.He obviously didn’t remember my name but said,Prosecutor,Psycho 2.I thought that was remarkable that he would remember me.Incidentally,he died of AIDS years later.To go back to The movie,I went to Universal Studios for the premiere.The director came up to me before it started,put his arm around me and said that since I wasn’t a real actor,what he was about to tell me wasn’t as difficult as it could be but they didn’t appreciate how strong my New York accent was when we did the movie.According to him,since it was supposed to be a California courtroom,a prosecutor with a new York accent seemed incongruent.(what was of course funny wash that I was as real California prosecutor with a new York accent!)Therefore,they decided to dub my line of dialogue!Watching the movie with my mouth moving and someone else’s voice was and still is hysterically funny to me.That’s how I Became a Hollywood star!I did get paid and every year since I get residual checks when the movie is played on TV.Incidentally,my wife’s friend went on to become one of Hollywood’s major casting directors,doing movies such as Breakfast Club,Die Hard,Dick Tracy,Predator and a host of Schwarznager movies,etc. She is still active.I hope you enjoy this story.
Enough with the turkey already. You said you’d bring the lox this time.
Gerald, you posted a comment a few weeks ago where you asserted “Turkeys are OK to eat on Thanksgiving”. I wrote the following at the time but didn’t post it believing it was too biographical. Recent comments by new captioneers have embolden me, so I will add on to your turkey string with the following:
In our home we always baste with butter. And that may or may not be kosher. Plant based cooking oils are acceptable, as is schmaltz, I assume. Turkeys do not give milk, and the dairy/meat prohibition, as I understand it, may or may not apply. Opinions vary.
Okay, disclaimer here, I am representing. I am a goy, completely outside my lane. Raised a Christian but for a time believed Judaism more closely reflected my monotheistic thinking. Christianity was confusing with the Holy Trinity, a pantheon of saints and a view of the afterlife informed by “Dante’s Inferno”. These seemed wrong or superfluous at best. And as much as I appreciate the teachings of the apostle Paul and later thinkers they too may or may not be regressive.
2nd disclaimer. At times I am not sure. Not an atheist but agnostic, a nondenial denial denigrated by theist and atheist alike. In the binary world of today everything is “true or not true, “all or nothing”, “with me or against me”, a zero or a one. Politics are pushing in that direction, but religion has been there from the beginning, and I suppose by its nature always will. In this one-or-zero world I choose neither. I choose 0.5. I am a confident, almost militant 0.5er.
My dilemma is that I have an angel and a devil sitting on my shoulders in the personas of two of my heros, Christopher Hitchens vs. Rabbi David Wolpe: The Great God Debate – YouTube This is a wonderful video that I referenced while commenting on the previous cartoon. I am shameless. Christopher Hitchens passed a few years back, so I suppose he knows for sure . . . or not. A classic Schrödinger Cat problem.
Initially I came to this site following another hero, Bob Mankoff, and then stayed because I enjoy the intellectual exchange manifest in what I have come to know as Jewish humor, although much of it is just mishigas. Oh, and when I read some of the magazine articles, I found them awesome, an adjective those of us marginally educated in the public school system use as a placeholder when we can’t find a more awesome word to expresses our approval. The British use “brilliant” which, to me, sounds just awesome.
Have I crossed the Rubicon? If the editors choose to remove this comment I understand. In fact, I almost wish they would. I am a self-quarantined high-risker with way too much time on my hands. Call me a shemendik, but I just can’t help myself. And yes, I looked that one up.
So bring it on editors. I dare you.
You know I was just sitting here thinking. There are two topics that are a buzz kill at every party. Politics and religion. That and the guy that just insists on steering every conversation to himself. When the next issue comes out I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t get an invite.
“This gobbler is special. Before he was roasted he was happy to participate in Yom Kippur’s kaporos ceremony.”
Better:
“This gobbler is very special. Before he was roasted, he volunteered to participate in the kaporos ceremony on Yom Kippur.”
Good gravy, that’s falafel.
I suppose she uses stovetop stuffing.
Since so many pardons will have been issued, the National Bird should be the TURKEY!
“We don’t need any biographical information.Just leave the turkey and get out.”
. . . too much sharing ?
No comment
The new security briefings have been shared with the President Elect Joe Biden. He just learned that we are at war with Turkey!
Donald wishes Joe a speedy recovery and to break a leg :^)
After the recovery, would Joe Biden need a REBOOT?
” Freindships need to be cultivated and harvested.What don’t you understand? “
Spelling…..Friendships
“Friendships need to be cultivated and harvested.What don’t you understand?”
“$1.50 per pound!?You must have just read The Art Of The Deal.”
“Hello Dr.Gotlieb.Why don’t you perform the Bris and then you can carve the turkey.”
. . . . OUCH !
You know if the Apostille Paul had not allowed his congregation to opt out of various Jewish traditions, he might have disenfranchised exactly ½ of his converts. And doing so, Christianity would have lost the entire Old Testament. And that could have been the deal breaker.
Wouldn’t be funny if the whole path of western cavillation could be attributable to the squeamishness of a few gentile yutz ?
Should that have been “attributable” or just “attributed” ? And “yutz” or “yutzes” ? I wish I were better educated. Wait, “wish I were” or “wish I was’ ? Uggg ! I need to get a life !
“Thanks for coming but when I said ‘Take the Bird,’ I meant American Airlines.”
“You say this bird participated in the last high holiday kaporos ceremony? Then how can I possibly eat him? If I do, I’ll take in all the blasted sins he sacrificed himself to absorb!”
“The Meh Flower, huh?”
The Pilgrim is obviously ahead of his time.I hear he has opened a new restaurant called The Turkey Burger.
Ha! :^)
Thanks for not hamming it up.
“Congratulations for being ahead of your time.”
The assigned turkey wasn’t allowed to go to the moon with the astronauts, because it was considered TOO CHICKEN!
“Sorry,we can’t sell you Rhode Island.”
The new Washington, D. C. Cook Book just released its best Thanksgiving menu. Wild Mannered Turkeys with Wild Stuffed Geezers. Also, Apple Gobbler for dessert.
Pilgrim, Schmilgrim — let’s eat!!
Like!
“The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty? You’re too late. Your competitor, Meals on Wheels, just delivered this nosherai to me.”
There’s a song sung by the king in “The King and I” which goes, “Oh, sometimes I think that people going mad / Ah, sometimes I think that people not so bad …” I want you to read something written by a Jewish Orthodox student, scholar, humorous, amiable young man that makes me agree more with the king’s first statement. Read it and weep and maybe see how the mind of one of the more than 70,000,000 people who voted for Trump works. The author is Yochanan Gordon:
“Joe Biden reportedly fractured his foot last weekend playing with one of his dogs. Now, I am not questioning that the incident involved his foot, which makes perfect sense, as you will see a little later on in this piece. If anything, I’d question the manner in which he fractured his foot, as I didn’t know the president-elect has a dog. To me, it is reminiscent of the “scape-dog” responsible for eating my homework during my school years.
“A headline I came across online says the race is on to have Joe Biden completely healed before the inauguration. I just hope that they don’t rush to declare him cured as quickly as states rush to certify the fraudulent results in the middle of the litigation process over serious aspersions of voter fraud and irregularities in the handling of this year’s election.
“The Ba’al Shem Tov teaches that everything a person hears or sees during the course of his or her lifetime was Divinely ordained for a specific purpose — a lesson in his or her avodas Hashem. So when I pointed out to my friend that Joe Biden fell and broke his foot and would in all likelihood be the first president in history to attend his inauguration in a cast if this fraud is not overturned, G-d forbid, I was trying to prod my friend into unearthing the significance of that event.
“He responded empathetically by saying that it is not exactly Biden’s fault that he broke his leg. My intention was not to blame him for breaking his foot, but rather to lead my friend to figure out the irony in Biden being the one to break his leg, particularly in the context of this contentious election season.
“Although you don’t usually read about hashgachah pratis in a satirical article, the truth is that G-d permeates all things, including satire. Think the milsa divdichusa, which is the humor with which our sages would commence their teachings in order to expand their intellectual faculties to be able to grasp the material. In all seriousness, however, there is no question that G-d had ordained Biden’s broken foot, particularly within this set of circumstances, to send a particular message.
“In addition to the teaching of the Ba’al Shem Tov, there is another Chassidic teaching that exhorts us to live with the parashah of each week. A thought occurred to me last Shabbos when reviewing the parashah, specifically about Yaakov working seven years in order to earn Rachel’s hand in marriage, only to realize that his conniving shver switched the bride on him and even justified it by saying that it is not appropriate to marry the younger daughter before the older one. It struck me as interesting that while this electoral heist is playing out right before our eyes, the Torah is discussing the paradigmatic deceiver in history, Lavan the Aramean.
“So when reports circulated about Biden’s fractured foot, it was as if G-d had planted a ma’amar Chazal in my mind; it was a wonder to me that nobody had thought of this, not even my friend who is very learned in his own right, much more so than myself.
“Chazal in masechta Shabbos teaches us that the difference between emes and sheker is that sheker has no legs to stand upon. In the original Hebrew it is: “Sheker ein lo raglayim.” This means that if you look at the letters that comprise the word “emes” — aleph, mem, and tav — all have multiple legs to stand upon, while “sheker” is comprised of shin, koof, and reish, all letters that have only one leg to stand upon. As such, when I read that Joe Biden fractured his foot, it occurred to me that the embodiment of falsehood and deceit is being forced out into the public to show off his great deception while he limps about on one leg like his counterpart sheker, which also only has one leg. The 1969 edition of the Hebrew dictionary, Even-Shoshan states that deceit has no endurance and the liar will ultimately be revealed, as we see taking place before our eyes.
“While the litigation process is currently ongoing, Joe Biden is appointing his government the way many people pick their fantasy sports players prior to each season. It is my fervent hope that the Supreme Court stops this fraudulent election in its tracks, and allows truth to reign.”
Dinah, please tell me how a man of such obvious intellect could accept as fact such an untenable premise?
Gerald….nothing surprised me when it comes to Trump backers
Haven’t you already given me the bird?
Time to remember Thanksgiving:
(Q) What did the wild turkey say to the forest hunters?
(A) NO PAIN-NO GAME.
+++
(Q) What did the religious turkey say to the butcher?
(A) A FOWL POX on your profession!
+++
(Q) What did the indignant turkey say to the politician?
(A) I’m not your average TOM, DICK, or HENry!
Remember: I trust you enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday even if you WOBBLED & TALKED TURKEY! 🙂
“A bagel for your thoughts.”
“Its Kool-Aid.It goes great with turkey. “
I like it ! L’chayim !
L’chaim to you!!!!
“500 straight years of attendance…can you prove that?”
“Thanks for coming.We didn’t know if your invitation,posted on the internet,would get to you.”
“We are honored you came although you should have R.S.P.V.D.”
“We are honored you came although you should have R.S.V.P ‘d.”
“Your lucky.Its karaoke night.”
” Thanks for coming.Your mother isn’t getting any younger. “
Dinah hasn’t yet weighed in. She if probably thinking about it. In the meantime, let me offer this:
Gerald, you have delivered us another accomplished, highly educated individual also adept at quoting scripture. He has above average intelligence yet believes the opposite of everything you and I know to be true. It gives one pause, doesn’t it, and maybe even makes us question what we think we know. And if we are fair, it should. On the other hand, consider this . . .
Some of the 50% to 75% Trump voters who say they believe the election was fixed, firmly buy into his claim that voting machines and accounting algorithms are fixed, that massive amounts of ballots have been hidden or otherwise waylaid, that whole armies of illegal voters have voted, and that mail-in votes are inherently compromised, this despite the fact that most swing state elections are overseen by Republican Secretaries of States, and many of his closest advisors telling him to give it a rest. But this first group of hard-core skeptics may not represent even the greater portion of election deniers.
What I think is really happening is this. A second, larger group believes the election results are fake, but not necessarily false. None of the above accusations account for the shortfall. There is a greater truth at work. In order to not count the fake votes, you have to back up the constitution to a time when “America Was Great”. The last true constitution ended with the Bill of Rights. But for now, let us go back, amendment by amendment, and eliminate these fake votes.
1971 – 26th Amendment Lowers voting age to 18 – younger voters tended to vote for Biden. Let’s get rid of those.
1964 – 24th Amendment Eliminates the poll tax – originally adopted under LBJ when poor blacks and other minorities were excluded from voting due for economic reasons. Another batch of votes.
1920 – 19th Amendment Gave Women the right to vote – There was a greater than 30 point difference between men and women voters in the 2020 election. Women favored Biden over men. Keeping count?
1870 – 15th Amendment Gives the right to vote to all males regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude – ‘nuff said here.
1868 – 14th Amendment says persons born within the USA are citizens of the USA and the state within which they are born. Eliminate this one and we can take away all those anchor baby votes.
Better stop here. If we include the 12 Amendment we get rid of the Electoral College and Trump loses two elections,
Eliminate all these fake votes and it’s another Trump landslide.
I suspect your student falls within the latter group of Trump supporters. He seems like a really smart kid.
I pre-predict a possible winner for the Cartooncollections.com contest, which is currently up for voting. There is a roomful of 55 gallon drums and a couple sitting together. The guy is looking at his phone and says to his wife “Do we have enough oil for the Chanukah lights and latkes ?” I think it’s a winner. Carol? Dinah? Or? Bonne Chance.
“I know the highways are crowded,but 500 years late makes your excuse suspicious!”
“I’m agnostic so I’m not sure I believe you.”
“Yes,I did see Weekend at Bernie’s.Why?”
“it’s not actually a feast, just a little nosh to break fast”
To the people at Moment…Thank you for opportunity to meet new people and participate in the contest.It has certainly helped to lessen the tension inherent in being isolated during the epidemic.Happy holidays to everyone!
“What a coincidence! I just finished your book, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress.'”
There was a Mayflower Compact in the beginning, but most women used their own devices.
” I didn’t make the holes.They just are. “
“So your Moishe,the Jewish Pilgrim.Who knew!”
Jim, thanks. You’re the genius around here.
I don’t personally know the young man whose essay I quoted, but I know of him through others. I’m told that he is very bright and sensitive, which makes his comments harder to swallow.
What I think is happening is that the Industrial Revolution started a new society in this country at the end of the 18th century which took most of us away from the land into the dog-eat-dog atmosphere called capitalism, where nobody could grasp the whole picture anymore. Today a small group of people own most of the wealth, and a large part of the population are simmering, not trusting so-called reason to explain away their dissatisfaction. The pandemic completely erased even the little trust they had in government to set things right. In effect, there’s been a movement away from reason, away from dialogue, into emotional crusades like Black Lives Matter. And Trump came along with his bluster and his mantra of fake facts at exactly the right moment, in the same way that Hitler came along just when Germany was most split and desperate. There’s an old saying that the intellect is a good servant but a poor master, and the pendulum is swinging away from capitalism and the rule of the intellect with all of its rationalizations into a new system, just as feudalism once morphed into capitalism in the late middle ages when the black plague took away many of the feudal lords and warfare took away many of the serfs. I don’t know where we’re going, but we’re headed toward an era of new vitality with less dependence on words and arguments and more on action to transform our society.
Incidentally, the Chinese had a saying meant ironically as a curse, “May you live in interesting times.” And we certainly are, exemplified by that most interesting rascal, Donald John Trump. Even his last name is a caricature which Dickens would appreciate.
Your wonderful, perfectly crafted comment deserved better than this reply. Thanks for it again.
Jim, one more thought. The era of big, overpriced universities is also coming to an end. Even before the pandemic, people were questioning the value of spending so much time and money in universities when they could pick up tailor-made educations taking the courses that were more pertinent to them. For example, Harvard university has the largest endowment of any educational institution in the world, totaling more than $40 billion, I think, and it recently announced cutbacks because of a lower enrollment, caused by the pandemic as well as disillusionment.
Bob Dylan was righter than he knew. “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
Bob Dylan song,Masters of War,has words which look like they were written for Trump… “Is your money that good..Will it but you forgiveness..Do you think that it could..I think you will find,when death takes its toll,all the money you made will not but back your soul”
Will not buy back your soul
I love the way you can find something current and relevant to say, and then reach deep down inside your bag of quotes and punctuate if perfectly.
But with your Bob Dylan reference you’ve opened the door for me to sneak in another bit of the dreaded biographical . . .
1965, 11th grade, my high school buddies and I get jobs ushering at the Hollywood Bowl. We worked the Beatles, Beach Boys, some high-brow stuff, and Bob Dylan. The times they certainly were a changing. But the most controversial issue our little minds were concentrating on, and this was a big deal in the day, folk singer Bob Dylan abandoned his acoustic guitar and had electrified his band!
“The futures so bright,I gotta wear shades.”
The futures so bright,I gotta wear shades is a song published in 1986.
Trump in Georgia……Screwtape went down to Georgia..The surest road to hell(discussed 0n Morning Joe,today)
On the Mayflower, many men had BELT BUCKLES on their hats & shoes. But, what kept their pants on tight?
Fat!
Sorry, FAT HEADS is not the answer!
Yes,but fat stomach keeps a lot of pants up…but I’m guessing your talking about something else!
“So the Airlines bought that emotional support turkey nonsense!”
” Please leave the turkey.Don’t be an Indian giver. “
“I’ve always been a dreamer.”
“You’re obviously not a Turkey Whisperer.”
“You’re too late. Meals on Wheels just delivered this stuff.”
NEWS ITEM: “Most Republican voters believe that Trump will be sworn in for a second term on January 20 despite losing to Biden.”
Have we all fallen down the rabbit hole in the Lewis Carroll novel?
I use to think that the American people were too smart(or at least smart enough)to be taken in by someone like Trump and the obvious racist undertones of the Republican Party.74 million votes later tells me how wrong I was.There are times I am embarrassed that the world now regards us with much less esteem than had previously been the case.We deserve the down-grade.
“The Turkey Trot is our traditional celebration,so start motoring,pilgrim.”
“Thanks for Giving!!!” Two treats to share are better than one”
“Thanks for Giving!!! Two treats to share are better than one”
Pilgrims came to the New World on a ship seeking freedom of religion. They accomplished this by PREYING on the Native American People!
They got Indian Casino’s.What more do you want.(sarcastic,by the way!)
African Americans want reparations.Do you think that’s the right thing to do ?If yes,what form should it take…..free college,cash in their pockets,etc?
Oh, you want the Wampanoag tribe meal. This one’s Ashkenazi.
“That’s some bad hat,Harry.”
Above quote from the movie, Jaws,when the Chief addresses an elderly man on the beach wearing a shower cap.
“We are all looking forward to the backstory.”
“Thanks for the food. Your turkey will be gone in a day, unlike the turkey that was delivered to us in 2016 and has lasted four years.”
“Oy, I’m a vegetarian, and Hanukkah is coming up. I wish you had harvested some wild potatoes and made latkes instead.”
“The big difference between Hanukkah and Christmas? For one thing, there are no Hanukkah seals.”
‘I’ll give you a beautiful dreidel for your food. You can trade it with the Indians for at least 200 acres of land.”
“I’m glad you brought this feast. Originally I’d planned to give up meat for Thanksgiving, but I found that I couldn’t quit cold turkey.”
“Thanks. Now I’m going to have to give you both something for Hanukkah. If I don’t, I’ll have a gelt complex.”
“On the first day of Chanukah,the Pilgrim said to me….”
” If I knew you were coming,I’d have baked a cake,Gooble Goo,Gooble Goo,Gooble Goo.”
Prayer: “Give me better days without DISEASES, POVERTY, WARS, FRIGID WINTERS, LACK OF MEDICINES & MEDICAL STAFF, ETC. AMEN. Now who is the TURKEY who ate my food?”
“On the first day of Chanukah,the Pilgrim gave to me,one Kreplach,two Matzah Balls and a Turkey from a pear tree.”
” On the first day of Chanukah,the Pilgrim gave to me,one golden turkey,two sumptuous Kreplachs,three Matzah Balls and a pint of Hagen Daz Ice cream.”
Did you stuff that Turkey with shallots or ballots?
“Red wine goes with everything.”
Congratulations, Carol Lasky, on the very clever caption you sent to the Cartoon Collections contest (how’s that for a string of alliterations?).
Please never neglect us. Thanks.
“I like you…You’re no fowl weather friend. “
The Pilgrims taught us about the wilderness of a new land without proper clothes, adequate available food, inaccurate weapons, climate change, no maps, many enemies, little medicine, no hope of relief, etc. The main lessons are to STAY HOME, WASH YOUR HANDS, KEEP YOUR DISTANCE FROM OTHERS, and WEAR A MASK TO HIDE YOUR UNHAPPY FACE & TEARS! You can read about it in the PILGRIM’S PROGRESS!
The second patient in Britain to receive the covid-19 vaccine was an 81-year-old man from Warwickshire named William Shakespeare. What’s in a name? The genius of the original man with that name lies in the fact that he had never been vaccinated, never been shielded from any feeling that man could experience. Therefore he could write about everything, having had nothing separate him from the world, and can still remind us today what it is to be fully human.
May today’s William Shakespeare come through in good health.
Gerald,
Speaking for those who contribute to this Cartoon Caption Contest, you are by far the Shakespeare of writing for this MOMENT (no pun intended). Keep up the great work with all your enthusiasm!
Marvin, thanks for the kind words, but I can give you three quick reasons why I am not Shakespeare. First, he was said to have never blotted a line, that his mind and his heart were so connected that his spirit just poured out in his words with no corrections needed. I blot every line. Second, his famous statement in “King Lear” is “ripeness is all.” I disagree. I think that kindness is all. We don’t need any more cold geniuses or masters of logarithms to move us around like chess pieces because we fit a pattern. Third and most important of all, of course, is that he was a genius. I am an appreciator of people like him and like all those on this site who possess great talent and wit and always amaze me not only with fresh thoughts but with fresh ways of expressing them.
So it really all comes back to you, Marvin. May your fountain never run dry. Thanks again as always.
“Anyone who says that Hanukkah can’t hold a candle to Christmas doesn’t know how to count.”
“Your G.P.S. on the fritz?”
Its a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neghborhood…won’t you be my neighbor? Happy Holidays to everyone
Happy Hollandaise.
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indigestion.
The opposite of stomach upset is not a belly rub, it’s ALKA SELTZER.
No, they aren’t donuts.
Prior to the pandemic,a group of six couples would meet once a month at each other’s homes for dinner and good times.We have been doing this for years,rotating homes,and maintaining our friendships,even going on trips together.We would fill the evenings with good food,wine and the closeness that takes years to devrlop.Each get together also involved a story telling componet.Two people were selected to try and tell a story about themselves that no one had heard.We got unbelievable biographical information,some sad,mostly happy,but always interesting and helpful in our understanding of the friend doing the reveal.That’s why I am such a fan of the great reveal!It tells us things we could never know about the person,and allows us to fully appreciate their psyche.When Jim Gorman offers info about religious thoughts and follows up with a story about working at the Hollywood Bowl,I can almost hear the music of the Beach Boys and The Beatles fill the room.I thought this site was perfect for that type of story so I offered a couple which I don’t think was received as I intended.I am a big fan of your would be stories.I like your academic discussions,because you are all so bright,but In would certainlybwelcome more “biographically ” info as its more interesting.Telling the story,I believe,is a life affirming attempt to capture the life you have lived,reveal it and embrace your experiences.I will take my cue from you…I will not tell if you will not tell.
Michael, I am sure I cane on too strong when I said some things after you suggested sharing addresses and means for getting together. You have come to be a valuable member of this community, and a friend of mine. What I was questioning was the wisdom of putting information out here on this very public forum that could prove dangerous.
In the time leading up to this last election, there were cars of people driving through my neighborhood taking pictures of houses with Biden signs and cars with Biden bumper stickers. We have all heard horror stories of people victimized by contacts they made on the net. We need to be careful here. Both with the “friends” we meet here and the lurkers whose minds we can’t even begin to understand. I have often thought it would be nice if Gerald and I, for instance, could email and take some of our back and forth offline. but maybe that is just not to be. Anyway, I just wanted to explain myself.
I really appreciate you explaining that to me.I am probably way to naive about the dangers of providing too much information on the net,probably the result of my age and relative inexperience with its use.I found this site to be a breath of fresh air,with very smart people writing very informative things.The captions,although a lot of fun,become a secondary benefit of participation.I will continue to monitor the site but will be more careful with personal information.I really enjoy your dialogue with Gerald.You are both so bright.Its exhilarating.
Message to Dale Stout: No worries! There’s room for lots of turkey at this table.
Thanks, Carol! :^)
To Carol Lasky,
First of all, let me express the profound gratitude of everyone on this blog for your contributions! In order to properly respond to someones’ comment, you need to type your message in the (1) COMMENT site at the end of this page. Next, hit the (2) REPLY button under the name of the person you want to deliver a message. Then, hit the (3) POST COMMENT button to have your words delivered to the right person. ( The design of this Moment Outline changes from time to time, and it may take several tries to find your way. I get lost myself as my computer skills are mostly non-existent to say the least. There is another option, you can send any message to me if you like, and I will pretend you reached the right person!) ENJOY! GOOD LUCK! 🙂
Testing, testing. Thank you, Marvin+Sager!!
To Carol Lasky,
There is a secret solution to just about any problem. So glad to assist you at any time. Enjoy your weekend!
I’m not sure if this is in good taste, but it tastes good.
“You Pilgrims mean well, but you don’t have a clue as to what a Jewish person really wants to eat for Hanukkah, the holiday without any nutritional benefits whatsoever. There’s crisp potato latkes, sugar sprinkled donuts, a spread of salt, fat, sugar and starches swimming in oil, especially gribenes, which are a mix of onions and chicken skins fried in their own fat.
“And what did you bring me? A turkey and a pie!”
Love,love,love gribenes which I haven’t had in years and years
“In other words, Hanukkah is a holiday to die for—literally.”
At the First Thanksgiving, Pilgrim women had the following privileges:
(1) VOTE+++++++++Yes. They had the right to vote for what meals their family were to eat.
(2) DRIVE++++++++Correct. They had the responsibility to drive the sheep, cows, pigs, etc. to pasture especially when the men were away.
(3) Complain+++++++Indeed. They could complain to the other women when the men weren’t around.
(4) Divorce++++++++Religious. Until death do you part. (No longer married.)
Summary: Who said women didn’t have rights? Not me of course, I am just the messenger.
“Welcome Pilgrim,your search has ended.”
“Yes,I can tell you how to get to Sesame Street.”
A Pilgrim studied the trails of the Indigenous People. He became a ROAD SCHOLAR!
The contest is over so I can tell you the truth.Your ugly and your mama dresses you funny!
Marvin,
Do you want to know who would dislike me immensely if he could see this site? None other than Ralph Waldo Emerson, that great American poet, essayist and philosopher of the last century. Do you want proof? Here are his very words:
“Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know”
Oops, I did it again, didn’t I?
Gerald,
Where is Waldo? Ralph Waldo Emerson went by his middle name. To be honest, more of his quotes refer directly to you in more positive ways than you will admit. But, who am I to judge? I will quote a few of my favorite Waldo quotes and let you make the comparisons.
(1) “To be great is to be misunderstood.”
(2) “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
(3) “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.”
(4) “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
There are many more quotes from Waldo if you need them!
Marvin,
“To be great is to be misunderstood.”
That Emerson quote reminds me of the exasperated wife facing her husband across the dinner table.
“You’re greater than Einstein,” she suddenly tells him.
The beleaguered husband is stunned, for they had just had a quarrel. “Why do say that?” he stammers.
“Well,” the wife says, “they say that only a couple of people in the whole world understand Einstein.”
“But,” she continues, “absolutely nobody understands you.”
Sorry, not the last century, the century before. Emerson lived from 1803 to 1882, respected and revered by almost everyone.
There is no more meat on the bones, so I will have a VEGETARIAN POT PIE!
Scene: Large hotel lobby in Manhattan. Woman accidentally bumps up against President Trump.
Woman: “Oh, pardon me?”
President Trump: “That should be no problem with a check for between one and two million dollars, depending on what the charge against you is, made out to the Republican National Committee.”
(Please pardon me for this feeble attempt at levity)
Quiche me.
Marvin,
Have you seen the once very popular series of art puzzle books by Martin Handford called “Where’s Waldo?” The books were popular in England and appeared in some Sunday comics pages here many years ago. But of course you don’t need to search for Waldo. You’ve already found him.
My knowledge of “Where’s Waldo?” is limited (another example of a poor pun). Martin Hanford liked to draw crowd scenes and produced books for children around the 1980s. I was always intrigued by Waldo’s red & white knit hat & his red & white pullover. Once you start looking for Waldo in the cartoons, you may spend more time and effort than you think. I’m sure many people sought out Ralph Waldo Emerson when he was alive, and invested a lot of time & effort in their pursuit! With a name like Waldo, you probably don’t want to be found! 🙂
When it comes time for New Years resolutions and wishes this year,I already know that my wishes will include the end of the epidemic,for success for our new president and for the time when we will no longer hear about Trump.I know he has plans to hang around and exert authority from his perch in Mira Lago,but I’m hoping that he is so tied up in litigation that he somehow fails to excite his followers and he fades in importance.Can you imagine a world without Trump?Just click your heels together,close your eyes and cross your fingers.
If I clicked my heels together and closed my eyes, all I’d have to do was add the fascist salute and I’d bring Trump BACK to life in whatever setting I was in. It’s been said that Trump was tyrannized by and yet drawn to his moody and tyrannical father, and that is why he was attracted to people like Putin and North Korean despot Kim Jong Un. Hero worship unbecoming the president of the United States.
Forget the salute…..as in the Wizard of Oz,close your eyes,click your heels together three times,and you’ll be home…….add safe and secure in the loving embrace of family and friends,without Donald Trump.
Without Donald Trump AND without Joe Biden. Behind the curtain and their outward characteristics, I think they’re basically the same. And no matter who’s at the head, the government moves along, with each official guarding his or her own turf. At the end of the film, the wizard is revealed to be a fraud, and Dorothy learns that she could have always returned home on her own.
(I wish Pfizer could have developed an anti-Trump vaccine, though.)
Be well.
Biden is a mensch;Trump is a narcissistic sociopath….and I’m not just parroting TV talk shows….I honestly believe TRump is so damaged that he is a danger to us all…I don’t really care how he got this way…His father,his mother.who cares…I am sure that we are now in sane hands….I’m not saying Biden is so smart and capable that we have nothing to worry about..I’m saying that we needed to get rid of the cancer.Criminals would point out the environmental reasons that they murdered or stole or raped at their sentencing,hoping for leniency.My reaction was that the victims don’t care and need to be protected.Trump is a menace.We are his victims.
Trump is not finished yet. There is a lot of damage he can inflict before January 20. And he is so full of rage at losing the election while a lot of other Republican candidates won and at seeing the stock market hit record highs after his defeat (adding a further indignity) that he can crash the bus with all of us on it. He is, after all, still the Head of State.
And yet practically of the ultra-Orthodox Jews that I know swear by him (the same Orthodox Jews who refuse to wear masks or practice social distancing because they answer to a higher authority (inadvertently borrowing from Jesus in the King James Version: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s …”).
God help us all.
Michael, here are some statistics for you from the Orthodox community:
Mishpacha magazine reported in its November 11 issue that Boro Park voted 82% for Trump. Monsey was 5,562 for Trump and 144 for Biden. New Square, Kiryas Joel, and Kaiser-Vizhnitz reported similar Trump landslides.
Now why do Orthodox Jews support Trump so vociferously? Here are some things they praise him for, as far as I’m able to gather:
*Recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the placement of the U.S. Embassy there, and recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan
*Withdrawal from the dangerous Iran deal
*Enactment of the Taylor Force Act, ending U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority until they stop their longtime practice of paying money to terrorists and their families.
*Closing the PLO mission in Washington, D.C.
*Ejection of pro-BDS groups
*The brokering of peace agreements between Israel and Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Kosovo.
*Establishment of the Religious Liberty Task Force within the Justice Department, which successfully protects the constitutional religious rights of all Americans.
*Support for school choice, an issue especially dear to Orthodox hearts, which the president has declared “the civil rights issue of all time in this country.”
*An executive order fighting antisemitism on U.S. college campuses
*Support for deeming houses of worship “essential”
Now all you’ll have to do is counter their arguments if you’ll even be able to open your mouth. Good luck!
I was born and raised in Boro Park.It was starting to become ultra-orthodox when I left in 1964 for college. There were Mikveh’s on every street and temples on every corner.The Koussevitzky brothers led services at Temple Beth El and Temple Emanuel,located only a couple of blocks from each other.My orthodox grandfather wrapped Tefelin (sic) each morning and dragged me to services because he feared for my apparent disinterest.We lived in a two family house with my grandfather on one floor and my family in the other.I was a sports fanatic who didn’t observe Shabbos so I would bounce my ball down the street in Saturday on my way to the school yard.More observant jews ,thinking I wasn’t jewish,asked me in to turn on or off a light they had forgotten to deal with.One vivid memory was walking to my future wife’s house in the evening to visit,and in a snowstorm,and hijacked by nine men at the corner temple who needed me to be the tenth.The memories are wonderful.Living with an orthodox grandfather on the one hand and my irreligious family on the other is perfect TV sitcom.
I actually respect those arguments and certainly appreciate their reasons for voting Trump.We all have to evaluate self interest vs.community interest.I know some people who have greatly benefited financially by the Trump administration who would not consider a Biden vote.I understand it..
By the way,your list of reasons as to why orthodox Jews support Trump is terrific and very educational.I am going to save it.
Just because your food taste GRITTY, there is still no need to GRITS your teeth at me!
I want to recommend a new book. It’s called “A Wealth of Pigeons,” a cartoon collection by Harry Bliss and Steve Martin. Harry Bliss is the New Yorker cartoonist, and Steve Martin is the comedian, and they were introduced at a party by Francoise Mouly, the art editor of the New Yorker and the wife of cartoonist Art Spiegelman, and they decided to collaborate. The book is full of odd but funny cartoons and comic strips.
Picture, for example, a dog standing in front of a small box on which are laid three rows of playing cards, obviously suggestive of the con-game three-card monte. A sign a few feet down says “Be Wary of Dog.”
Or two storefronts side by side. One says “Fresh Pizza” and the other says “Dominos, Sale Board Games.” Neither seems to be doing any business. In the banner underneath, in large letters, are the words “How It Began.”
I think you get the picture. If you like, you can get the book.
Gerald,
I agree, “A Wealth of Pigeons” is a greatly funny book. I read as much of it as I could standing at the Barnes and Noble today, until the Ignoble Barnes threw me out – just kidding-I slinked out on my own volition. But it is a great book. Harry meets Steve could have been an alternate title. I’d like to get a double autographed copy, if anyone has an inkling on how to make that happen. A gift in time for Hanukkah?
The Pilgrims had many BUMPS in their everyday existence. But, now in modern times what BUMPS didn’t they have?
(1) Fist BUMPS.
(2) Elbow BUMPS.
(3) BUMPING their heads up against the political authorities.
(4) Getting a BUMP in salary.
(5) An Artificial Insemination future baby BUMP for the women.
(6) BUMPING in food lines.
(7) BUMPING UP the vaccine productions.
(8) BUMPer cars.
(9) Goose BUMPS & mosquito BUMPS. (Modern day BUMPY BUMPS.)
NOTATION: The Pilgrims had their BUMPS, and modern people have their many BUMPS! So, just be careful who you BUMP the wrong way! 🙂
Bumping the wrong way can get you arrested!
Too many bumps can be a real grind!
Is that bumps or trumps?!
Hey Guys,
I neglected to mention to you that I have a BUMP-STOCK RIFLE and it can easily BUMP-OFF anyone who BUMPS me the wrong way!!!!! Just Saying! 🙂
I’m leaving town in my Bumper car.
Sounds like you should be BUMPED-UP on my wanted to investigate list! I trust you will not BUMP into me on the road!
I will take my Lumps and avoid you,naturally avoiding all Bumps in the road.I will Dump all evidence against me and hide out until after Hump wednesday.
What about the bumps and grinds of the burlesque queens of old, like Gypsy Rose Lee?
I’ve heard of bumper stickers, but what you guys have come up with is a bumper crop of bumper snickers!
Gypsy had bumper to bumper lack of coverage!
Now which one of you guys claim to be the BUMPkin on this site? I see you raising your hands (all of you, hmmm…)!
Jim,did you catch Springsteen on Saturday Night Live?Still rockin!
Michael, very good. Your line certainly trumped (pardon the expression) mine.
I didn’t. Too bad. I usually record SNL, but didn’t this time for some reason. I think the current cohort is the best in years. Really great writing too.
You can probably get it on youtube.I always look forward to SNL
William Barr’s resignation letter is the new standard bearer for obsequious behavior.
After all the BUMPING on this blog; after the corona virus vaccine has arrived, and after the new President has finally been acknowledged, we should all sing “KUMBAYA” My Lord. A prayerful plea to God “Come By Here.” ( Relief is here, Yay! Now go back to sleep and behave yourselves. )
Unfortunately,the Republican party,probably to be in control of the senate,will be doing everything it can to obstruct Biden’s agenda.Mitch McConnell and his cohorts are already planning for 2024 and the american people be damned,so I’m not ready to sing Kumbaya.I am honestly worried about us.
Al Kelly was a vaudeville comedian known as an artist of double-talk. He died in 1966. However, he has a worthy successor, Republican senator Keven Cramer from North Dakota. Here was his answer when asked whether Joe Biden is really the president-elect:
“Well, it seems to me that being elected by the Electoral College is a threshold where a title like that is probably most appropriate and it’s, I suppose you can say official, if there is such a thing as official president-elect, or anything else-elect. And there’s an inauguration that will swear somebody in and that person will be the president of the United States, but whether you call it that or not, you know, there are legal challenges that are ongoing — not very many — probably not a remedy that would change the outcome but, so, I don’t — again I don’t know how a politician refers to another politician, but it does look to me like the big race is really between the inaugural committee and the Justice Department at this point, so we’ll see how the emails turn out.”
Of course, maybe I’m being too generous with him. Maybe he’s not a comedian at all. Maybe it’s just a case of Trump-induced Alzheimer’s.
North and South Dakota,their citizens and representatives,are illustrative of the insanity that now grips are political processess.Has it always been this way?The big decline for me started when Dan Quayle was named VP.(or was it Spiro Agnew)But the candidacy of Sara Palin was the real eye opener.Obviously,McCain and Bush did a terrible job of picking running mates.It then seemed that any moron could be elevated.They were the forerunners for Trump;same intellectual incapacity and elected by a nation who no longer could evaluate their possible leaders.With Trumps win,the doors are wide open to anyone,without credentials or brains,to run.Kanye West now becomes a candidate.Oprah is discussed as viable.Trumps grifter kids are now potential candidates.Marion Williamson makes the debates.Herman Cain tried for the job.Trump has devalued the presidency.
Michael, remember good old Dan Quayle, who served as VP under the first President Bush? This is what I remember. In New Jersey in 1992 He led a spelling bee for sixth-grade kids. When a boy spelled “potato” on the board, Quayle “corrected” the boy, making him add an “e” to the word, incorrectly spelling it “potatoe.” No one ever let the poor vice president forget his gaffe. Actually he could have saved himself by instantly making the word plural, coming up with the word potatoes, which would have been perfectly correct. Be grateful that he never had anything to do with the creation of Mr. Potato Head, which earned a fortune for its creators but which he might have transformed into a joke.
As for Kanye, if he won he would at least give this country direction. Remember newspaper editor Horace Greeley’s injunction “go west”? Would that make a good slogan for Kanye? Kanye think of a better one?
Kanye dig it?
That’s Sugar Bear, talking smack.
Great slogan for him!
Kayne is just Biden his time until he can Trump the Presidency! ( I’m not politically inclined, but I need to make sense of this conversation! )
Biden his time…good one!
Cross-cross applesauce, where’s the latkes?
Speaking of Dan Quayle—-the man who was made to quail by the simple word “potato”—–the incoming vice president, Kamala Harris, has something to thank him for. In his time in the vice president’s mansion, Quayle had a beautiful hot tub installed, which Harris has said she is very much looking forward to using. So the former vice president did make a lasting contribution to life on the hill after all.
Do you think Pence ever used the hot tub?!Maybe he and Zelensky Of The Ukraine sat in it discussing U.S.military aid to them if They could do a through job of investigating Biden’s son.
Was that Monica Zelensky in the hot tub?
Monica Lewinsky probably knew her way around hot tubs but she was definitely the victim of Bill Clinton.
Carnac predicts a major snowfall in New york,etc starting Wednesday.I don’t know if anyone is left in New York City to suffer as many have fled the virus.
Michael, Bill Barr’s “resignation” reminds me of a man I once saw, obviously drunk, standing in front of the door in a moving subway train and waiting till the train reached a station and then, with perfect timing, would yell the words “open sesame” just before the door opened, pretending power by aligning himself with the inevitable. Bill Barr knew that his “door” was slated to be closed, so he made it seem as if was his own agency that did it. Poor man. He sacrificed his integrity and reputation to serve a man who has ruined the lives of almost everybody he’s touched, Trump being a sort of reverse Pied Piper of Hamelin, catching adults instead of children.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt,which he doesn’t deserve,you could say”that he fled the virus. “Twitter says today that it the new head of the A.G.’s office,Rosen,won’t appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hunter Biden,he will fire him as well.Apparently,if a special prosecutor is appointed,the next president can’t terminate the process.The insanity never ends.Like you said in a prior post,Trump still has time to do damage.Talk about a small man…
Some years ago a guy I knew, a very talented classical guitarist who had studied at Juilliard, was hired by Trump to play at an event at Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles, but after his performance, which was praised by all, including Trump himself, the Donald refused to pay him. “You should pay me,” he yelled at him. “Look at the exposure I gave you.” The guy told me he just walked away. He didn’t want to face Trump’s phalanx of lawyers and take on great expense and time to get justice, just like the countless others who were stiffed by the future president of the United States.
Anybody who works for him without getting at least a retainer up front is nuts.
I take it that you read Michael Cohen’s book, “Disloyal,” about his working as Donald Trump’s attack dog attorney until Cohen, like everybody else associated with Trump, got his comeuppance and was sent to jail.
It won’t surprise anyone that Michael Cohen went to one of the worst law schools in the country…He was picked by Trump as a person who would do anything Trump wanted.Trump has a knack for sniffing out this type of individual.Yes,he got what he deserved and his mea culpa attitude is ridiculous.(but he still gets on TV and financially benefits from his criminality.He will probably make a good witness because although swarmy,he’s believable.
NEWS OF ACHIEVEMENT: CAROL LASKY
On behalf of all contributors to this blog, we need to congratulate CAROL LASKY for her winning cartoon entries on the Bob Mankoff Cartoon Caption Contest.
She has won 1st place, along with 2nd & 3rd place entries.
You can check out her winning cartoon captions: BobMankoff<bob@cartooncollection.com
Other past winners include Dale Stout & Dinah Rokach ( perhaps others, but I am not sure of this list. )
CONGRATULATIONS CAROL LASKY! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!
Excellent!Congrats!
Yes, congratulations to Carol and Dinah on their success at Bob Mankoff’s Cartooncollections.com caption contest. Carol may be the winningest person in the contest. I wish them continued success -it’s a great website.
Marvin,
As you know, there are many ways used to judge a person, from reading his or her palms to even touching the bumps on his or her head. I’m going to establish a new science, not reading the person’s horoscope but reading his or her captions, and from Carol’s offerings I see a person not only with a mischievous, light sense of humor, but with a warm heart, slightly bemused by the world. We’re all fortunate to have her here.
“What if you could do it all over again” a piece written by Joshua Rothman in the newest New Yorker magazine,examines the question that fascinates some of the oldest of us as we have time to contemplate and examine our lives.If you could go back,knowing everything you know now,would you live a different life?
“What if you could do it all over” is the exact title
Michael,
You always ask good questions, and your latest does not disappoint. If I could go back knowing everything I know now, I wouldn’t be the person I once was, so my choices would be different from the ones I made. I can’t really regret the things I did, for I see that being the kind of person I was, I couldn’t have done anything else. We are more shaped by our surroundings than we care to admit. I didn’t create my brain, my nerves, my parents, and those are the things that still influence me and continue to evolve. What is right for me now may not be right for me tomorrow.
( If I were asked to choose between free will and predestination, I would freely choose the latter. )
How about a narrower question…..Without telling us the change,was there anything you did,any decision you made,which you would like to correct?Does anything stand out above all others?Conversely,can you point to a decision you made,which if not handled correctly,would have changed your life negatively?I’m talking major decisions.
SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS
After being on this blog for an extended period of time, I decided to summarize all my emotional feelings in one word. (Don’t ask me to spell it again, because my fingers ache from punching it on my computer the first time.) The word is at the top of this page (by a miracle spelled correctly). The word sounds sophisticated even if you don’t know the meaning. So, from now on whether I am right or wrong or indifferent on any issue, at least I have one of the longest vocabulary words for an answer possible. Time now for me to pat myself on my back while I commence drinking my brandy. Enjoy your evening while you contemplate a possible reply!
What brandy do you enjoy?
#1 choice———- Gautier Cognac 1762 (Still waiting for my ship to come in!)
#2 choice———- French Cognac Brandy
(A) Hennessy
(B) Courvoisier
(C) Martell
#3 choice———–Any Brandy or Cognac (especially when offered free!)
Victor Hugo called Cognac the “LIQUOR OF THE GODS.”
V.S. (very special).
I looked up Gautier Cognac…..I’m going to trybit!
If this word expresses your state of mind,I congratulate you.You must be content and happy.Good for you.
See below
Sorry,my comment wouldn’t print below your blurb on that long word…….
Michael,
It’s hard for me to answer your question. It seems to me that you’re trying to create an artificial distinction between what happens to us and what we do. We are taught to differentiate life into voluntary and involuntary activities. Do we beat our hearts? No, our hearts beat irrespective of our desires. Do we digest our food? No, also. It just happens. But then what about breathing? Is breathing voluntary or involuntary? True, breathing goes on while we sleep, while we might be in a coma, so it must be involuntary. But you could very well see it as voluntary. We voluntarily take breaths. Everything that has happened to me can’t be different from what I have done. In a way, this can be beautiful. In a way I am lighting the sun. You would like a more definite answer, but life is all of a piece, not really chopped up into little pieces and then joined again, like billiard balls colliding with each other.
I guess that if we were in court right now, you would throw up your hands in exasperation?
If we were in court,after my question,the judge would have asked me what the hell was I talking about.
“Wealth may now give you an EASY LIFE. But, a day in court later may get you a prison HARD LIFE!”
This is a possible quote from Michael Cohen or some other Michael (guess who).
Did you know that there is nothing in the Constitution which prohibits someone with a felony conviction from being President.Donald Trump could spend the next four years being prosecuted,convicted and imprisoned in New York and still be your president in 2024!
Trump getting more crazy each day.What Russian attack?New committee to investigate voting fraud.Wants to confiscate all voting machines for inspection.Nothing about COVID deaths…..Pathetic doesn’t even begin to describe our state of affairs,with this guy as our leader.
Riverside California 80 degrees and sunny….almost makes you feel like everything is normal.
The “April rains bring the May Flowers. The Mayflower brought what? The Pilgrims.” Even John Wayne recognized them later on in life.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2021. It’s coming, and I also need another reason to drink my brandy! CARPE DIEM! 🙂
Happy New Year to you and everyone!
I generally don’t like to repeat myself if possible, but we have a lot of new people here, including that great guy Michael from California, and I want to make a point as we approach the new year, that most of the time we are flying blind, not really knowing what we are doing, not really knowing whether anything that we do or wish for will really be good for us. So let me repeat a story I told once before that illustrates this point.
There was a Chinese farmer who owned several beautiful horses which he kept in a corral. One morning he got up to find that the horses had jumped the fence and escaped. “Oh, how terrible,” said his neighbors.
“We’ll see,” said the farmer.
Next day the horses returned, bringing with them a new herd of beautiful wild horses. “Oh, how wonderful,” said the neighbors.
“We’ll see,” said the farmer.
Next day his son tried to ride one of the new horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. “Oh, how terrible,” said the neighbors.
“We’ll see,” said the farmer.
The following day the emperor’s soldiers came by to recruit soldiers for a new war but rejected the farmer’s son because of his broken leg. “Oh, how wonderful,” said the neighbors.
“We’ll see,” said the farmer.
The fact is that we do not really know whether anything that happens will really be for our benefit or not. A friend of my son managed to find a rare parking space on the morning of 9/11 so that he would be able to attend an important breakfast meeting at the Windows on the World restaurant on the top floors of the World Trade Center. He sent my son a happy e-mail bragging about his luck. He was never heard from again after the terrible attack. But his remains were found in the rubble.
I’ve read many stories involving people being granted wishes. They usually begin by wishing for beautiful, grand things. But in the end they are sorry and many use the remaining wish to wish not to wish again.
Let me break the rule, however, and wish everyone that reads this and everyone who doesn’t a good year.
Gerald,you reminded me of the Stephen King novel,11-22-63.If I recall it correctly,the time traveler tried to prevent the Kennedy assasination,thinking it would set the world up for wonderful things.Under one scenario,the assassination doesn’t take place and Kennedy goes on to take us into a horrible future.Could we or would we stop the Vietnam War,prevent the AIDS epidemic and the current covid saga to name only a few,or is that only for G-d to decide?As for your son’s friend,the story makes me wince.
This is from my Facebook page today…………Married 51 years as of today!!G-d ,what I’ve had to put up with!!
It could be worse. At least you didn’t post something like “I’ve been in love with the same woman for 51 years, and if my wife ever finds out, she’ll kill me.”
Are you due congratulations on your marriage or admiration for your endurance or a hearty laugh at your humor?
My wife laughed at my Facebook post as I knew she would.She has been laughing at me all these years!Wait a minute,that doesn’t sound good but you know what I mean.
Actually, that would make a not-too-bad caption for a New Yorker cartoon. Two intellectuals at a bar, one saying to the other: “It took me 51 years to realize that my wife was laughing at me, not with me.”
Excellent caption!By the way,my wife and son think I’m third in line for funniest in the family.This argument has gone on for many years and according to them,they are way funnier.
“Happy Wife – Happy Life.” This is especially true when the wife is never wrong! If you have any doubts, then ask the Mother-in-Law if her daughter can do no wrong.
Do you married men need any more advice? Or, are you resolved to ” TOW THE LINE ?!” (God bless the fairer sex, as I know my place in life with brandy in hand!)
T ow the line is the safest course.
Marvin…..do you drink your brandy with it without ice?
With or without
My position is if you want a beverage chilled or cold, then you put the bottle & glass in the refrigerator or in a bucket of ice. When you put ice in your drink then all you accomplish is a diluted drink. Now for example, I enjoy my wine chilled, and only until recently no connoisseurs of wine or sommeliers wanted to accommodate me. Wine is stored in a wine cellar at around 57-61 degrees, not at 72-75 degrees room temperature. Therefore, right from the cellar the wine is poured & is chilled. The open bottle still could be placed in an ice cooler to keep it properly chilled. In France, they drink wine mostly because they can’t drink the water. If they want water, they drink bottled water. They don’t like to chill their wine, because it is inconvenient. So, others from foreign countries adopted this wrong method of wine consumption. In Ireland, the people in several locations drink warm beer. In my case, I enjoy chilled beer (with no ice included). When wine is properly chilled, then you can taste the “fruity flavors” of the darker grapes. But, the bottom line is drink your beverages the way that pleases you the most!
For those of you that disagree with my opinion, no rebuttal is necessary. I’ve already heard enough replies from other people in the past.
Thanks for the lesson.
Trump continues to wreck havoc but no one is surprised.The last few days of his presidency will be a benchmark for crazy.Buckle up!
What a pleasure to be educated about the pleasures of the spirit world in the dialogue between Michael and Marvin, two very bright, cultured, educated , generous souls!
I was thinking about the ultimate difference between them, and here is my spin:
One passed the bar, and the other went in.
I raise a glass to Marvin and Gerald!
To Gerald,
On behalf of my learned colleague Michael & myself, permit me to say that your SPIRIT of good thoughts permeates everyone on this blog. Michael & I gain our SPIRITS from medicinal alcoholic beverages that we consume in moderation. You POUR OUT your sentiments for all to admire, while Michael & I POUR OUT our drinks in tribute to your many accomplishments and knowledgeable contributions.
Now that we have your attention, Gerald, it is imperative for Michael (in his BAR REVIEW and DISCOVERY) what brandy you prefer to drink, and whether or not, you use ice in your glass. You need not mention all the modern decanters & fancy crystal bottles that are used especially in wines. May I add that wine glasses can be frosted in the freezer, and to aid in keeping the wine chilled, it is advisable to hold the wine glass by the stem so as not to warm the glass. We now anxiously await your esteemed response! THANKS!
Marvin,
Thanks for your kind words, but I’m afraid I’m going to very deeply disappoint you. My favorite drinks are grape juice and lemonade, and my favorite decanter was Ed Decanter (Eddie Cantor, born Isidore Itzkowitz in 1892 and a comedian, dancer and singer). His wife was I Decanter (Ida Cantor), who was very forbearing in light of her husband’s many infidelities. In those days comedians often changed their names. One day a man approached George Burns and said, “Hello, Mr. Burns. My name is Jacob Burns. Are we related?” And George Burns answered, “I don’t know. What was your name before?”
Marvin, your and Michael’s names will always symbolize intelligence and graciousness and humor.
Marvin,
I can’t even claim to be a teetotaler because I don’t drink tea.
I do drink Poland Spring, although I have my doubts as to how all the water it sells throughout the world can be as pure as it claims. Oh, well, you can’t question everything. As the song goes, “Some things man was not meant to know.”
Whitney Houston sang “How will I Know if he really Loves Me.” Whether its the masculine or feminine sentiment,that’s the question men or women need to know.
“For the love of G-d,just get out of our lives.” (Internet Post)(re Trump)
Santa is being held hostage at Mira Lago until he agrees to testify that he interfered with the mail ballots.
To Gerald,
In retrospect of this holiday time of the year, you shall be the DESIGNATED DRIVER of good will on this blog. You are always ready to provide SOBER thoughts to those who need encouraging words. As it is early in the morning, I shall drink a frosty glass of grape juice to you to toast another successful year to come! L’Chaim to you and all who know you!
Marvin, Michael and Everyone Else,
Whether you drink or choose to abstain,
May your new year be filled with real joy
And sham pain.
And many more marvelous posts.
Thanks.
There’s one thing I want……I know this for sure…….It’s a shot in the arm. And I’ll travel and tour……I’ll get on a plane…….with nothing to fear……..and I’ll visit the kids. And stay for a year…..So if I want joy. In this upcoming year…..We will all defeat covid ………..and shed no more tears
Happy New Year to my new Moment friends
Of all the casualties of the coronavirus, there was one, strangely enough, that was beneficial. That was the defeat of Donald J. Trump caused by the virus and his mishandling of it. Trump is a man you could serve loyally for a lifetime and then refuse to agree with, causing you to be banned for life from his favor. Now he has pivoted at the last moment and screwed his own party in his fury at his belief that the GOP has not been objecting strongly enough to his loss in the last election. The people screwed the most, of course, are the two hapless candidates in Georgia, who have been slavishly campaigning for the senate and espousing his views, especially touting the $600 per person benefit that Trump himself had not disagreed with until the last moment, and are now left dangling in the wind.
Michael, it’s a joy to have you here. And that applies to everyone.
Thank you Gerald.The Georgia run-off will be fascinating.I’m sure Trump is also angry that the Republican candidates for the senate did better than he did.Maybe their loss would make him feel less unworthy.It’s his good fortune that he has picked a new profession,politics,where the quid pro quo culture resembles what he dealt with in his real estate ventures.It’s the fact that he can’t completely control the political process(too many variables,unlike his real estate deals)that causes him the ultimate frustration.He was raised to believe that anything could be manipulated and he lashes out if he hits a roadblock.He is the ultimate psychological victim of his life experiences and teachings.
I don’t think Trump will choose politics as a new profession. I don’t think Trump ever left his old profession. And I don’t think real estate was ever his profession. His profession has always been show business, legerdemain, conjuring, making believe. Making believe he was a successful real estate entrepreneur when he kept failing at almost everything he attempted. Putting on a front to make believe that he was confident in front of his father. He has always been so attracted to tyrants, to dictators, to athletes because they are what he would like to be instead of the hollow man who is always putting on a show.
Today I felt somewhat depressed to hear about the bombing in Nashville, Tennessee and the continued devastation of the Covid-19 virus on the world population. Also, so many people are out of work in the U.S., as many people do not have money to pay rent or buy food. This striking event occurred to me was when I was watching a T.V. commercial news advertisement today. It was advertising juicy pictures of Omaha Steaks for sale. Now I don’t know you, but this sends a message to me that only the privileged people in this world can act as if there are no problems in the world (no disrespect to Omaha Steaks). I enjoy a steak on occasion, but now is not the time to advertise these things on national television including new homes, jewelry & new cars, etc. when so many people are miserable. I still look forward to 2021 for better times to come! Let us strive to join together and respect the feelings of others. ( Another reason for my MEDICINAL BRANDY at night! ) Please be well & safe!
Those steaks look awfully good but I totally agree with you that the disparity between the haves and have nots is alarming.Trump wants to pass tax legislation that will totally allow deductions for two martini lunches.Even in good times that would be wrong but in times like we are going through it is disgusting and tone deaf.I really have no more words for the dumbest,most disgusting president in American history.74 million Americans voted for him….what does that say about us?
I mentioned the comedian George Burns in a previous post. He lived to be more than 100 years old. When he was 96, a reporter asked him whether any of his habits had changed after entering his 90’s. Burns paused, taking his cigar out of his mouth. “Nothing I can think of,” he said. Then he added, “Except that I no longer buy any green bananas.”
I always loved George Burns and use to watch him and Gracie on t.v.He was a guy you wished you knew personally.I wonder if his totally laid back persona was real and if so,was one reason he lived so long.
George Burns in real life was supposed to be the same as his persona. His best friend was Jack Benny, whom he could make laugh by merely raising an eyebrow. He was married to Gracie Allen for over forty years. She had the funny lines and he was the straight man when they performed. He loved her deeply but cheated on her during their marriage. After she died he would visit her grave regularly in Forest Lawn to tell her what was going on in his life and to keep apologizing for all his infidelities when they were married. He was very quick with a quip, which of course you knew. But I can tell you one thing which you might not have known. He started smoking cigars when he was fourteen years old. Fourteen years old. I knew a lot of people who were super-careful about what they did and ate and denied themselves so much and yet died at much younger ages than he did.
After you mentioned him,I went to Wikipedia to read about him.He was quite a guy.
George Jessel was another fascinating figure of past times. A former vaudeville entertainer, he was part of the crowd that met daily at the Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles along with George Burns, who regularly played bridge there up to, I believe, two days before he died. Jessel was known as the Toastmaster General because he would deliver eulogies for anyone. He didn’t even have to know them. One day, the story goes, a man timidly approached him and said, “Mr. Jessel, my wife had a little poodle she was crazy about who just died. It would very much please her if you would do the eulogy at the dog’s funeral.” And of course he said yes.
Michael, in 1963 your Sandy Koufax was roasted at Hillcrest, where Jessel called him “without question, the most important Hebrew athlete since Samson.”
I read up on Jessel,who I also remember from T.V. performances.His personal life was much more chaotic than that of George Burns.As for Koufax,a Boro Park boy for many years,he was my childhood hero,about 11 years older than me.I saw him pitch at Ebbetts Field in Brooklyn about 1955 when my father took me to a game.
By the way,Sandy was born Sanford Braun but took his step-fathers name,Koufax,after his mother’s divorce and remarriage.His step-father,Irving,a lawyer was his dominant male figure.
My favorite Jessel story is about the time he was asked to give a eulogy for a prominent Los Angeles industrialist. There was a crowd of over 250 people present for the service, and Jessel mesmerized them for over 45 minutes, talking about all aspects of the deceased’s life in glowing terms. When the service was over, someone came over to Jessel and complimented him on the breadth and emotional impact of his talk.
“Oh, that,” Jessel said. “I could’ve done much better if I had actually known the man.”
*****************
Speaking of eulogies, there once was a man who died about whom nothing good could be said. The relatives flailed about, trying to find someone to say something positive about the deceased. Finally a rabbi appeared and offered to speak. Gratefully the relatives accepted his offer. The rabbi got up on the podium, looked at the gathering, and uttered only four words before leaving:
The words were: “His brother was worse.”
Have you heard the terrible joke about a naval ship,getting word that a guy named Jones father had died.The captain saw Jones and said, “Jones,your father’s dead.” Horrified about the awful way the news was passed,the Chaplin said he would handle death notifications from now on.A couple of weeks later,word was received that Smith’s father had died.The Chaplin called all the men on deck and said, “Everyone with fathers,please step forwsrd.” All the men,including Smith stepped forward.The chaplin,seeing this said, ” Hey Smith,where are you going. “
So Trump signed the covid bill,after days of delay.Only reason is that he was promised Congress would take another look at voter fraud and he knew that only he would ultimately be blamed from withholding money from needy voters.He doesn’t care about anyone but himself,a total waste of space.
I think he signed the covid bill because Mitch McConnell told him he was fracturing his own Republican party by objecting to a bill that they had worked so hard on without any input or objections from him during the negotiations. Trump realized that by not signing he would be dynamiting his own base and would have no springboard from which to run again if he so desired. Like it or not, we’re living in an oligarchy rather than a democracy, a government run not by Democrats or Republicans but by the PACs that keep money flowing into the parties. The old English proverb has never been truer: “Money makes the mare go.”
His motivations always come back to what is good for him,never what is good for the people.That’s the story of his life.I hope we can stop talking about him eventually.
To borrow some of the words of an old Cole Porter lyric,
no matter what we think about Trump, we think about Trump.
Very true,but hopefully lessen with time.Can we expect to watch the news,say a year from now,and not have to hear his name?Of course,if hearing his name involves him.being indicted,I can deal with that.
Riverside California is cold(for us)today but spectacularly beautiful.Sunny,about 60 degrees with a cool breeze.The sky is a beautiful blue with puffy clouds visible.What makes it gorgeous is the snow level in the San Gabriel Mountains,down to what looks like 3000 feet.The mountains are visible throughout the city and after the rain in Riverside yesterday,the snow level in the mountains becomes the highlight soon after.It looks like a postcard.
Michael,
Are you sure you wouldn’t want to have a second career as a meteorologist? Or at least as an advertising copywriter? Your description is beautiful and very tempting.
When I was much younger, my friends and I were interested in whether forecasting. When we’d meet a girl, we’d always ask ourselves whether …
(If you were a weatherman, Michael, and you wanted to go someplace for a drink after work, I guess you’d go to an isobar. Sorry, Dale.)
Michael,
Michael,
Sorry to bring up your bete noir again, but thought you’d appreciate the hypocrisy:
“Despite the raging coronavirus pandemic that has killed at least 330,000 Americans, the president’s annual black-tie New Year’s Eve party at his Florida resort is still on. President Trump’s year-end parties at Mar-a-Lago are lavish affairs, the Palm Beach Post reported, often drawing hundreds of guests. While there’s no official word on the size of this year’s guest list, CNN reports that ‘a member of Mar-a-Lago… heard buzz that at least 500 reservations have already been confirmed.’ While Palm Beach County has an ongoing mask mandate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a close ally of the president, banned local governments in September from enforcing fines for violating coronavirus guidelines.”
If I was a weatherman,I’d be interested in BARometric pressure.As for Trump,he constantly raises my pressure,and lowers my expectations,already rock bottom.
If I was a weatherman,I’d be interested in BARometric pressure.As for Trump,he constantly raises my pressure,and lowers my expectations,already rock bottom.
The mention of bars made me think of my first date with my wife,circa 1968.After a movie,we went to a bar called “A guiet little table in the corner,” which was on 37th and Madison.All the booths were separated by glass beads and the sound of quiet jazz permeated the room.You couldn’t see the other patrons.Very sophisticated.We were so young.
Mary Pickford was a very famous early movie actress and producer who enjoyed acclaim for over 50 years. She was a great friend of Charlie Chaplin and told the following story:
“Chaplin was one day at a fair in the United States where the principal attraction was a competition as to who could best imitate the Charlie Chaplin walk. The real Charlie thought there might be a chance for him, so he entered the contest minus his celebrated mustache and boots. He was a frightful failure, and came in twentieth.”
I guess the moral of the story is to be oneself, not imitate oneself, for although it’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it does not come across as a genuine or innocently spontaneous act, which is what we all love to see. When a child does something artless, we all praise her. But when she sees what approval she gets and repeats her act in order to get attention, we dismiss her as being contrived. That is the supreme challenge: how to be spontaneous on purpose.
Charlie should have done the moon-walk.
Michael,
If he had done the moon walk, he might’ve solved the mystery that’s haunted this country since the 1930’s and found the missing Judge Crater.
Judge Crater apparently suffered a similar end as Jimmy Hoffa.
Actually, Chaplin on the moon would not have been such a stretch. In an early review, one critic called his work “a very funny kind of luna-cy.” (Hyphen mine.)
Chaplin was obviously a lunarian.
I want to tell a story and will, unless someone objects. I’ll wait five minutes and then proceed unless one of you stops me. (Time passing) Well, I’ve given it the minutes and haven’t heard from Stephen or Michael or Marvin or anyone else, so I’ll assume that you don’t object to hearing my tale:
All the organs of the body decided to have a meeting to determine which was top dog, the most important. The two loudest voices belonged to the stomach and the brain. The stomach claimed that he was the most vital by virtue of the fact that he took in all the food and did the work to process it so as to provide enough energy for everybody so that they could perform their functions. “Without me, you would be nothing,” the stomach concluded.
Then the brain spoke. “You are,” he said to the stomach, “only the forerunner, as John the Baptist was when he came first to prepare the world for Jesus. “I’m the most wise one who finds the food, who tells you what is good and what is bad for you, who directs you toward prosperity.”
Who was the winner? Obviously neither one, as both are essential in order for the body to function. Unfortunately, Mitch McConnell has never learned this lesson. He shot down the proposed increased stimulus package on the grounds that it was an example of creeping socialism, that it would benefit the wealthy, that most of the money would go to the blue states. Is he crazy? Wasn’t subsidizing three-martini lunches enough of a gift to them? As for the cost, he never blinked when he approved funding of Trump’s ridiculous and utterly useless wall which has kept out no immigrant who really wants to enter this country.
If there is a moral to the fable, it is that every part of the body is essential, just as doctors have learned, say, that removing a gall bladder can set up unforeseen changes that have to be dealt with.
Michael, you’re smarter and more dispassionately analytical than I am. Tell me, please, how can so many people in our social body support people like McConnell—and Trump? I can only conclude that they are part of a mass madness that I never experienced before.
Authoritarian personality syndrome is a state of mind characterized by a total belief and obedience to one’s s authority.The syndrome is often triggered by fear,making it easy for leaders who exaggerate threat or fear monger to gain their allegiance.My take is that a good part of Americans are fearful of their lot in life…decreasing job security and unhappiness which causes them to blame migrants,minorities and liberal democrats for their decreasing satisfaction with their plight.Trump,with his overt and hidden bias,appeals to the sensibilities of these “forgotten” people,who look to successful people to represent their anger with the world around them.Trump is a manifestation of years of dissatisfaction by an unsuccessful American populace.
Michael,
Thanks. You completely answered my question. Society is changing, and reactions to events are changing, almost like an earthquake that erases expectations just as it does the landscape.
Incidentally, I just read that a Sandy Koufax rookie card recently sold for over $93,000. He remains the youngest player ever to be elected to the Hall of Fame. If I remember correctly, he was once known as “The Left Arm of God.”
Not bad for a Jewish kid from Brooklyn. Too bad his marriages were not as successful …
Koufax turned 85 yesterday,Dec.30.He looks like a guy 20 years younger.His highest salary was about 135,000.If he was pitching today,he would make at least 35 million per year.Most of his money since retirement has been made from signing at baseball card shows and from Koufax products sold at the shows.I have a beat up rookie card worth maybe 100.00.If it was mint,then you get big money.Like all baseball fans from the 1950’s to 1960’s,I had plenty of great cards as a kid,now long gone.A Mickey Mantle rookie card in mint condition is worth a fortune.A Honus Wagner Tobacco card,of which there are only about 15 known survivors,has sold for about a million dollars.I spent my youth purchasing,trading and collecting cards,now all gone but the memories are priceless.
I just looked up the Wagner card……3.25 million!!!!!!
I will answer your elegant observations about President Trump, Mitch McConnell, and others in two words, GREED & POWER! That’s how Adolph Hitler was elected Fuhrer in the most advanced country in the world (Germany) in science, literature, art, etc. Hitler was able to kill anyone he disliked and destroy any countries he chose. Even his closest comrades were condemned to death in the end. We in America, along with other countries, have not learned the lessons from history.
Gerald, my question to you is how do we tolerate the cigarette companies (among others) that are purveyors of death? Their products for decades have caused misery & slow-agonizing death to all who choose to use them. There are no redeemable properties of tobacco (cigarettes, cigars, pipes, snuff, chewing tobacco, e-cigarettes, bongs, hookahs, etc.)! On top of all this, the tobacco companies have been lying to the America people & world countries since the beginning. In their last appearance, 6 tobacco CEOs came to testify under oath in Washington, D.C. to Congress. Each CEO testified to one question. Is nicotine addictive? Each CEO (under penalty of perjury) testified that nicotine is not addictive. As a matter of fact, their individual tobacco company research proved years prior that nicotine is not only addictive, but nicotine is more addictive than cocaine or heroine! No tobacco CEO was charged with perjury or fined. They left Washington, D.C. with not even a rebuke, and flew back to their individual state on their private jet plane. GREED & POWER!
Despite all of this, I wish you all a Happy New Year!
Marvin,
I have before me an early Newsweek magazine with a full-page ad saying, “20,679 Physicians say ‘Luckies Are Less Irritating Because They’re Toasted,'” followed by the words “Your Throat Protection Against Irritation and Against Cough.” There were vigorous, healthy, fun-loving people in the cigarette ads of the time–including, of course, sports and entertainment celebrities as well as physicians and other people of science. Thanks for your elegant and wonderful observations. You’ve got not only a brilliant sense of humor but a mind always on target. Many thanks!
Did you know? Steven Spielberg has the most expensive life insurance policy in the world … at $1.2 billion.
I don’t know about you, but I’d feel uncomfortable having life insurance worth more than I was.
1.2 billion is an amount unfathomable to almost all Americans but not to Spielberg.
Watching the ball drop in Times Square is easy for Californians who see it happen at 9PM,PST.No midnight madness for us!Watching Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen do their thing and then sleeping by 930.
Michael and Marvin,
Thanks for your invaluable insights. You know, I had always operated under the assumption that people would always do what was best for themselves. For instance, would you vote for me if I said that if I were elected I would do away with your job?
What I failed to realize is that some people prefer obstacles, prefer pain. The whole Protestant ethic pushes hard work, discipline, frugality, almost as if one is saved the more one sits on the head of a pin–suffering means grace. Remember the old interchange? Masochist to sadist: “Please hit me!” Sadist: “No!” Today society is changing rapidly and people look to dictators, strong leaders, to tell them what to do to avoid confusion. Frank Abagnale was a con man, an imposter, a check forger and swindler who wrote the best-seller “Catch Me If You Can” that was made into the movie starring Leo DiCaprio. Abagnale is now a security consultant with a net worth of over $10 million. In an interview, he was once asked how he could get people to go against their best interests and do what he asked. He said, “The secret is that you’ve got to get them to like you. The more you can build some kind of intimacy, the easier it is to manipulate them.” Trump is the quintessential con man, speaking conspiratorially to his followers, demolishing all criticism by calling it fake news. And before you knew it, you had paid good money to sign up for a shitty course at Trump University, or worse.
Sorry for rambling, but I don’t think I’ll be too surprised again at the self-destructive things a lot of people may do.
Dismayed, yes. But not as surprised as I used to be.
Thanks, guys. Happy New Year to ALL.
Picking a jury is a good example of the manipulation process.Besides trying to weed out those,based on their life experiences,who would be adverse to your interests,you are also attempting to humanize yourself,an attempt to have them feel comfortable with you,so that you are sub-consciously pushing the idea that you would not lie to them.Trust me,and therefore my client.A good trial lawyer needs to be good at it.
Michael,
Your post reminds me of another quote by George Burns: “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Now when I see it, I’ll think of trial lawyers choosing a jury.
Shakespeare once asked, “What’s in a name?” I wonder what he’d make of this:
Last May, Elon Musk and his girlfriend, musician Claire Boucher, had a child
and named him X AE A-12.
Is that a Jewish name? Was he named after someone? What will his nickname be in the future?
The questions abound
Marvin,
“Around 1,000 to 4,000 orchid plants are used to make a single kilogram of salep, a beloved drink in Turkey that is like a cross between hot chocolate and rice pudding.”
Marvin? Marvin? Marvin?
Oh, I guess he ran out to make a airplane reservation.
If you want diet salep,can you cut the number of orchids down to 500?
Gerald,
Salep is a famous drink in Turkey sometimes used for digestive problems and as a winter staple. It is actually made from orchid tubers mixed with other products as you mentioned. If you are inclined to try this brew, then I have a comment from Frank Sinatra:
“I feel bad for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.”
I must hurry now, for my reservation includes a trip to my home bar and to indulge in a drink of brandy that satisfies me just fine!
Marvin,
Hmmm–if drinking is what makes you the way you are—so smart and funny and compassionate–maybe I ought to consider it. Thanks for everything.
Gerald,
May I suggest a chilled glass of Beaujolais Nouveau to represent the new year 2021. But, don’t tell anyone that I drove you to drink!
I need others to tell me that I am smart and funny and compassionate, so enjoy your HAPPY NEW YEAR drink of choice and keep the accolades on coming!
Your kind remarks are always appreciated. THANKS for all you do to enrich everyone’s lives!
My taste buds are definitely unrefined.I am very happy with a 5.00 dollar bottle of wine from trader joe’s.It is something I look forward to each day,with lunch,fter the dog walk.One large glass of wine to keep the heart beating.One bottle lasts about three days since my wife doesn’t drink.Today it’s Chinese chicken salad with a glass of wine.Yum.
Michael,
Glad to hear you are keeping your (GOOD HEARTED) HEART in tip top CARDIAC CONDITION!
For New Years get the biggest wine “bang for your bucks!” CHEERS!
(Does your wife keep you on short CHANGE, I mean a short chain?)
My wife has actually never tried to control me….nor me her.Both of us are Brooklyn born and bred,totally uncontrollable.
Maybe not overtly, but any two people living together get used to each other’s boundaries (limits) and so each is held in check by the other, even though the borders are not explicit and they might not be aware of it. They know how far they can go with each other. We’re all constrained by the very nature of being in a family, in a society. Even Trump was formed by family interactions.
Reminding me of the story of the husband and wife taking a vacation in Amish country one summer and the husband looking out of the window at some Amish going by in a horse-drawn carriage. The husband looks at his wife and says, “Look at that wagon. Why can’t you and I travel over the highway of life like those two horses pulling their load?”
“We can’t,” the wife says without a pause, “because one of us is a jackass.”
There is no record of the poor husband’s reaction to his wife’s remark.
Best for the new (minus-Trump) year.
While we are obviously sensitive to each other’s like’s and dislikes, on the main issues of someone’s paths through their lives,in who they choose to be,who they are comfortable with,their major decisions regarding what are usually seen as important in getting through one’s life,like family,money,jobs,friends,etc.,we let each other alone to make their decisions.The small things are the things you would be sensitive to as a matter of decency while the major issues are the one’s where self restraint is important.Everyone has the right to live their own lives,unencumbred by pressure from even their closest relationships.
I know a couple who have a very balanced relationship. He chooses the approach to problems like how much the government stimulus checks should be, whom to vote for when elections are held, and when elected officials need to be criticized. Her choices are much more limited. She only gets to choose the small things like where to live, whom and how much to tip during holidays like Chanukah and Christmas, and what foods and furniture need to be purchased for their house, which she picked out, by the way, since he’s more concerned with the macro-picture involving international relations. While she’s concerned with the household budget these days, his time has been taken up with the hostilities in Afghanistan. The wife doesn’t seem to mind the greater scope of her husband. They never step on each other’s toes.
Whatever works for them.
Trumps phone call,released today,is further evidence of criminal behavior.Asking the Republican official to find additional votes in his favor,is evidence of attempted election interference and despicable on its face.His suggestion that the official could be on the hook for criminal problems if he does nothing is laughable.Also,all the attorneys in the room with Trump,government lawyers at that,should and could be prosecuted.The thing that makes this so prosecutable,is how stupid Trump is.His failed attempt to make the call kosher is hilarious.If he pardons himself,and I think this will definitely spur him on to do that,we will have a future supreme court case on the pardon power.
Trump is a rotten Georgia peach…rotten to the core.
Michael,
There are two things to know in order to understand Trump. First, he never pays for anything, always having used all sorts of tax dodges so that everything he spends is a business expense to be deducted from taxes owed. Second,an axiom of his is that he is never supposed to lose. A legion of people who have played golf with him, for example, have reported how blatantly he cheats, without any embarrassment. He was always cushioned from the world by his father’s wealth and is living in a world of his own. If not for the devastating destruction caused by the coronavirus and his childish denial of the severity of the plague, he would have won. Imagine how his children have been shaped. Ivanka has been described as cold-blooded. Why wouldn’t she be, growing up to be a sex object for a father whose affections could turn ice cold at any time. Her brothers were brought up to feel stupid, lacking in intelligence, and so have been brought up do anything to get into their father’s good graces. But with Trump there is no real closeness or intimacy, only a sense of using or being used.
And of course the supreme irony is that more than 70 million people, starved for emotion in a world of inequality and seeking a savior, voted for him.
What will put history books say about his presidency?I know the whole story is yet to be written,but you may have put your finger on the answer.He was a figure who inspired allegiance,even when the overwhelming evidence pointed to his stupidity and criminality.Like famous figures in history,his followers will claim he was misunderstood,and in any event,they were just following orders.
Some people squirm at the possibility of sending an American President to jail.My take is that sending him to prison is the surest way of restoring the rule of law to American Politics and to American jurisprudence generally.If I was the judge,asked to decide guilt and punishment,I would have no problem convicting him and sending him to prison.His attempt to threaten the election official is clear on its face.How anyone ever voted for this clown,or expected a different result,is worthy of a psychiatric paper.I already opined on this so I will leave it alone.Can their be any doubt that we elected,with plenty of warning,the most unprepared and dumbest president in history?Only the American public is as dumb.We are a nation of imbeciles.
I don’t think we’re “a nation of imbeciles.” I think we’re a nation of people tied down, desperate, hungry for genuine emotion and financial equality, having been confused for so long by the doublespeaking media and politicians whose words and rules we’re told to read and listen to and obey. George Orwell would understand. When Trump came along, his head above the clouds, he was like a messiah breaking through the screen, mocking all our realities and promising a bright and clear future. It’s telling that Trump himself never reads, only watches TV and tweets. Even though Trump will soon be gone, he’s brought us to a new order. What will it be? We’re living in frightening but interesting times.
tv
to
You say potato,I say potatoe
NEW CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST
“Throw the BUM OUT!” (I was referring to 2020, but it could apply to others.)
“Give him BIG SHOTS of COVID-19, as he earned it!” ( All BIG SHOTS deserve this action.)
“LOCK HIM UP, LOCK HIM UP, LOCK HIM UP! I’ve been saying this all year!”
“He may be an illegal alien!”
“Give my regards to Broadway,Donald.”
” You promised me a doctorate,Donald. “
“Make sure you change his diaper to kill some of the stink!”
“You definitely overdid it.”
” That ‘s some fine mess you’ve gotten me into. “
“Give him the Presidential Suite at Rikers Island Prison!”
“So long,farewell,auf wiedersehen,goodbye.”
The story of Donald Trump’s relationship with his kids reminds me of the following Zen tale, which I hope you enjoy. Many thanks to Michael and Marvin for their always wonderful and thought-provoking posts.
Hundreds of years ago in the Chinese province of Huizhou lived a master thief, too clever to ever have been caught. He was getting old and decided to retire. But before he did, he vowed to teach his son the craft, so he invited the boy to come with him on his next job. Entering a house, he pointed out a large, ornate chest to his son. He motioned for the boy to jump in while he explored the rest of the dwelling. But the minute the boy got in, the father closed the lid and locked it and ran away. Terrified, the boy screamed for help. Hearing the racket, neighbors rushed in and opened the chest, and the boy jumped out and ran, followed by the villagers calling, “Thief!” “Thief!” With speed and cleverness the boy was able to finally elude his pursuers and get home, breathless and exhausted, to find his father contentedly smoking his pipe before the fire.
“Ah,” said the father. “I have nothing more to teach you. You’ll do fine on your own.”
Very interesting but we don’t want to give Trump too much credit..He was never as clever as the successful thief,but he did manage to steal and screw a lot of people in his time.
” Trump,Rudy,Pandemic…You never had a chance. “
Congratulations to Dale Stout for his winning excellent caption.Good for you!
Thank you so much, Michael :^)
“Make sure he doesn’t get bail.”
“Don’t count on a pardon.”
” I told you the pandemic was a step too far. “
Dale Stout (THE PUNdit MAN):
To my colleagues on this blog, please join me in giving Dale a RAISE in reference to his recent win. (Referring to the ELEVATOR caption.)
(No other RAISE necessary, if you don’t object.)
CONGRATULATIONS Dale! ( We expect continued exceptional entries in the future.) THANKS!
I already did,just above your post,but I certainly think he deserves a 2nd shout-out!!…so congratulations again!!
Thank you, Marvin! I think I may go out and get a shooter of Brandy :^)
Dale,
Since your STATUS has been RAISED (no pun intended), you should buy at least a bottle of brandy and celebrate your success in style! 🙂
And congratulations to Gerald, William, and Michael for achieving finalist status. I’m glad we’re keeping it in the family.
Thankyou!
Stephen,
Thanks, as always, for your good wishes.
We’re all in the family, winners or not.
“You belong in the CLINK, where others like your STINK!” ( I should write a poem, but it would probably smell too bad!)
“Your senility defense is unconscionable!”
“Skip prison. Take him straight to quarantine.”
“Book ‘im, Danna!”
I like this one!
“You could have put on a jumpsuit.”
“Boy,you really squandered your time.”
“We taxpayers have to pay for your incarceration! Oy vey!”
” Say hello to 1918 for me. “
“We could send you to Iran, but they might respond with a nuclear bomb attack.”
“It’s got to be Fruit of the Loon.”
“Don’t worry.I’ll call Trump about a pardon.”
“Sedition! Sedition! Your claim to fame!” (Enjoy your prison notoriety.)
It’s been announced that Bill Novak will be talking today for “Moment” on humor, which made me again question what it is. My theory is that most human beings crave order in life, and when something comes along to unsettle them, they try to regain their balance. What we call humor is our attempt to right the scales, no matter how uncomfortable the situation might be.
For example, a friend of mine went to a lecture on spirituality given by a rabbi who was, improbably, grounded in Eastern philosophy. After the lecture he went up to the speaker and, somewhat exasperated, asked, “Tell me, rabbi, do you believe in God?” The rabbi answered, “If you do, I don’t. If you don’t, I do.” The purpose of laughter is to smooth over the wave of uncertainty.
Or consider the story of the English clergyman who was asked for his concept of the afterlife. “Oh, ” he said, “when I die I have no doubt that I will find myself in Heaven, sitting around a tree and listening to God’s detailed explanations of why all things happened. But let’s stop. I don’t want to dwell on such a depressing prospect.”
Or , last, consider the story of the chairman of a multinational corporation who gathered his corporate board members and family together before the annual shareholder’s meeting and said to them: “If I’ve done or said anything at all this past year to upset you or hurt your feelings, all I have to say is—-you’re too sensitive.”
In these situations you’ve got to admit that it’s easier to bring back your balance with laughter than with tears.
Humor is our attempt to demonstrate that the sun will come out tomorrow.
“A little rachmanus would have helped.”
“I’m the one with true 20/20 hindsight.”
“How did you think you could get away with all your crimes and misdemeanors? No matter what happens, my year will trump Trump.”
“Be careful.He’s got bone chips.”
‘You should never have gotten involved with Trump.”
“KLAATU BARADA NIKTO! Only a spaced-out trouble maker like you would understand this message!”
“Before you go in,lose the sash.”
“I just won the Senate.How do you like those apples?”
A black guy and a jew both run for the Senate in Georgia…Finish the joke
“You qualify as a BONE HEAD & BAD TO THE BONE!” (This is more complex than a simple medical diagnosis.)
“The emperor has no clothes.”
” Your not too sexy for your clothes. “
“Can I have your watch?”
“Don’t give me that adar aleph bull.”
“Did you ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?” (Gene Hackman wants to know.)
Congratulations to Michael for winning the Cartoon Collections Caption Contest #107, an extremely challenging one. The contest results will be posted here (when they get around to it): https://more.cartooncollections.com/cartoon-caption-contest-winners/
Congratulations! Michael Lomazow
To all concerned: Michael placed #1 in the latest Bob Mankoff Contest. (He must be drinking brandy now to celebrate!)
I didn’t know until I saw Stephen’s post.Meeting people like you on-line is the chief satisfaction.Thank you for the shout-out.
Thank you Stephen…I didn’t know the result until I saw your post!Winning is great but participating is what I enjoy the most….so many great people to meet on-line..The contests are fun and functional in that they keep my brain active.
“Don’t count on a pardon. He’s got other things to do before January 20.”
Michael, congratulations on your Cartoon Collections win. I look forward to seeing the caption when it becomes available. Stephen finds out about these things early because he has access to inside information, a little like the members of Congress who make fortunes trading stocks because they know what’s going to happen before everybody else.
By the way, if you’re looking for an agent, I’m available. I’m well worth the 15% of your winnings that I’ll charge. With your talent and my skill at making deals (I read Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” nine times for an education in what and what not to do), I’m confident that we can make a ton of money together.
I’ll make a reservation for a flight to California as soon as I get my Covid shot. Best.
I didn’t even know until I saw Stephen’s post.Of course it feels good to be recognized but truthfully the opportunity to talk to people like you on-line is worth much more to me.By the way,you can be my agent anytime!
Michael,
Congratulations for your captions with Moment Magazine and for winning at Cartooncollections – more brandy!
Great movie line
Thanks Dale…Coming from you,it’s meaningful(I read your profile in the Magazine)
Every single protestor has been inspired by and given support from our so called president.He called out for this to happen.If violence ensues,it was forseeable.It would never happen but he should be regarded as a co-conspirator in any criminal act that occurs.
Michael,
I just saw the cartoon caption that won you the contest! It’s great and even more praiseworthy given the fact that the cartoon itself was tricky and difficult to caption. I told you you were a pro, and although you denied my praise, you’ve long since proven my word to be true. Of course you had inside information which was helpful to you in solving the cartoon in that you were an almost pro basketball player yourself and on your college team.
You seem to sink every basket here. Congratulations again!
One guy I guarded in high school was Dave Newmark,a Jewish 7 foot kid who went to Lincoln High School in Brooklyn.Since I was 6’3,you can imagine it didn’t go to well for me or my team.He went to Columbia University where he became an all American and then into professional basketball for a few years.I was the tallest player on my team which was very short,even in 1964.The shortest guy I guarded all year was 6’6.The captain of my team went to Harvard on a full scholarship and eventually became the captain of their team.I cherish those days.
By the way,I was hardly a pro.I was an OK player on a losing team.
“How do I HATE you, let me count the ways.” (Even Shakespeare would have difficulty counting that large number.)
Marvin,I am in complete lock step with you.
Trump is the guy who supplies the fireworks,lights the fuse and fades away as his brethren are left holding the bag.
Gerald, Imbeciles.There,I said it again.
Trump called the thugs and rioters in Washington heroes. Trump is toast. No one of note will support him again.
Let’s see if I’m wrong again.
A black guy and a Jew go into a bar in Georgia.What did the bartender say?”What can I get you,Senators?
“I won’t have to do anything to be way better than you.”
“You were once young and innocent like me. Was it the coronavirus or Trump that finally did you in?”
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Who’s calling who pampered?
You’re getting the 25th amendment.
This too shall pass.
A new movie is being arranged. The temporary name will be the DERANGED GODFATHER. The following episodes will be included:
(ARREST)+++++++++ “As you are in dire need of psychiatric help, you have been assigned a prison cell with Dr. Hannibal Lecter.”
(EXAM)++++++++++++”FBI agent Clarice Staring will try and put the PIECES of your life together!” (This occurs after Dr. Lecter has done his thing!)
(CONCLUSION)++++++++”Godfather, your bad deeds will be OVERCOME & CONSUMED after being thoroughly digested!”
++++++++++++++++++++(Dr. Lecter has satisfied his appetite for research!)
Review: This movie should be seen by all who enjoy gory scenes with violence. Rated XXX!
“Can we have your tax returns now?”
” I will take it from here. “
“Your new sash says ‘Prisoner’.”
” Ask for the Kosher diet. “
“Rudy says to ask for conjugal visits.”
Michael,
Surely you appreciate the irony. Four years ago Donald Trump stormed into office railing about the illegal aliens ruining this country and saying that his first priority would be to build a massive wall to keep them out. Now at the end of his presidency he has revealed HIMSELF to be the illegal alien that had to be feared and the wall would have to be erected not along the U.S.-Mexico border but around the capitol–to protect our seat of government from—–him.
Want some humor from all this? I took a slogan that President Trump and all his many enablers from the Republican Party should adopt: “We Have Met the Enemy and They Are Us,” from Walt Kelly’s wonderful old syndicated comic strip “Pogo,” which followed the adventures of its funny animal characters and which was set in the Okefenokee Swamp located in, of all ironical places, the state of Georgia!
I do appreciate the irony, now that you pointed it out.On a more serious side,it strikes me as totally disastrous and incomprehensible that law endorsement was not much more prepared for the invasion of Trumps followers.You could see it coming.It was a total unprofessional law enforcement job.Further,Trump bears ultimate responsibility.He inspired,cajoled and lite the match.It’s amazing he always gets away with his conduct.Having him as president has been a giant stain on our country ,a stain which will not wash out easily.His supporting senators and congressmen should never win another race,which would be ironic in that their support is obviously self serving.I am so disappointed with our country.How could they not see the deficiencies in their hero.As I said before,it’s because they refuse to deal with their own shortcomings.
“Let me guess.It was a very bad year.”
” The kids say no to bail money. “
” So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye. “
“Two years in the hole or four years no golf.It’s up to you.”
” You owe me twenty days. “
“Swallow some bleach.It will shorten your sentence.”
Truth is always stranger than fiction. So read this:
“Outgoing president Donald Trump tweeted out a video Monday night that had a Nobel Prize superimposed over it, though he’s never won one.
The video didn’t include the correct medal, either. The clip tweeted by the president — who has so far refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election to President-elect Joe Biden — lauds him for ‘[standing] for America,’ among other things. The unexplained Nobel Prize appears toward the end of the minute-long video, after a title card that declared, ‘Trump stands for peace.’
Notice, Michael, that when trouble breaks, when there’s violence or danger, his kids are always nowhere to be found, having scattered like clouds.
P.S. He really does believe that he was robbed of the Nobel Peace Prize, which he feels he richly deserves. Go figure.
One last thought: Trump’s offspring have generally been viewed as decorative ornaments, valued only in their proximity to him. Jared, as I guess you know, went to the religiously prestigious Frisch school in Paramus, New Jersey, where he was not viewed as particularly intelligent or accomplished. The people there were astonished that he was entrusted to handle so many delicate assignments in the Middle East, for which, to repeat myself, the Donald genuinely feels that he is entitled to a Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe a place CAN be found for him in the future, right after Attila the Hun.
(Attila himself was known to have a warm, fuzzy, romantic side. It was even said that in private his wife called him “honey.”)
I don’t think Melania calls him honey!Maybe she says, “I need money.” You’re right.His kids do vanish when trouble brews.I’m worried about Donald Jr.,who has designs on the presidency.I wouldn’t have worried about it in the past but Trumps win proves anything is possible.As for Trumps designs on a Nobel,he actually believes he has pulled the wool over enough eyes to have a shot.He regards us all as pawns to be manipulated.Wasn’t there some talk from him a couple of years ago about including him on Mt.Rushmore?After all,according to him,he just completed the most successful first term in history!I hope he lives long enough to see history regarding his time for what it has been…..a disaster.
I mentioned the whole Mount Rushmore thing before you came onto the site. I think I said that in a way this was an appropriate step because he often seemed half-stoned while executing the duties of the presidency. But you have to admit that contacting South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to explore the possibility was a classic definition of chutzpah.
A side note: Trump was never as successful a businessman as he has pictured himself to be, so carving his likeness on Mount Rushmore would not be the first time he had been chiseled or taken for granite. ( Sorry, I couldn’t resist the puns. I’ve got what’s known in the medical textbooks as the Dale Stout condition.)
If you want chutzpah,listen to his speech tonight where he claims he was just trying to make sure that elections were being conducted in a kosher way…among a bunch of other lies…..enough to make you throw up.
In medical terms, if I should feel ail, I’ll drink some Dale’s Pale Ale and if that doesn’t work, there’s always Guinness Stout – or brandy :^)
Dale,
You could be an Extra Stout Person by consuming plenty of HOPS & ALCOHOLIC “PUNCH” LINES.
But, I would recommend a Stout Hearty Brandy, because you deserve the best “BUZZ ZINGER FOR THE BUCK!” 🙂
“You should have purchased some billboards.”
“With the passage of time even you will be forgotten. “
“Unforgetable, is what you are… “
“Normally, in prison you are allowed 2 showers in a week. But, in your case you will be required to have 2 showers in a day.”
(That’s right, when you STINK that bad, emergency measures must be used!)
“So whose the baby now?”
” I told you that you couldn’t pardon yourself. “
Trump is hearing talk about impeachment and of possible criminal charges for inspiring the violence so he’s starting to panic a little.As a result,we get his speech tonight where he speaks of his distaste for the rioters,talks about making sure that there will be a smooth transition and about how he just wanted fair elections.He is unbelievable!! and thinks we are a nation of fools.Then again……
All the rats are leaving the sinking ship. Even the despicable Lindsay Graham. Talk is that Ivanka and Jared presumably spent more than $32 million on a very secure island property near Miami. The smoke and mirrors of the last four years are slowly dissolving. Remember Shakespeare?
“Our revels now are ended.
These our actors,
As I foretold you,
Were all spirits
And are melted into air,
Into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers,
The gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples,
The great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant fade,
And leave not a rack behind.”
I won’t miss it.
Will you?
Gerald,you have an unbelievable store of knowledge.It is a pleasure to read your posts as I learn so much….and they are interesting to boot!
Michael,
Whatever my responses are, you always call them forth with your always very rich comments. So at least half the compliment should go to you.
Thanks.
“Maybe he could just do TED talks about social distancing and wearing a mask. “
“Because of your Delusions of Grandeur, the United States now ranks #1 highest in mental illness in the world!”
(Another world record for the U.S.!)
Marvin,have you heard Of The book,The Three Christ’s of Ypsilanti,about three patients in a psychiatric hospital in Michigan who all believed they were Jesus.They were put together in an experiment to try and cure them.It is a true story.
Michael,
A great story! I looked it up to verify my recollection: This was a case of a psychiatric hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan that spent about 2 years housing 3 “crazy” patients. The pshycologist Milton Rokeach thought these men would learn by being together that their mental problems of believing they were the real Messiah would be debunked. How asinine is that to think mentally disturbed people could be cured living together. Since that worthless experiment, a movie, stage play, and other events were based on this event. There was another experiment were women were put together in a living environment at another psychiatric hospital to convince them that they weren’t the Virgin Mary. To say we live in a “CRAZY WORLD” is an understatement!
Marvin,
Your great post reminds me of solipsism, the philosophy stating that the self is the only reality. I would love to see a convention of solipsists. Imagine all those people trying to prove which one was real!
Thanks for all your submissions, by the way. I always look forward to reading them
Definitely impeach him.You can’t let him get away with this crap.I don’t care he only has 12 days to go.You must put down markers for totally unacceptable behavior.As I previously stated,a prosecutor can make a strong case against him for inspiring and encouraging the activity at the capital.There is even a case to be made for him to be charged with the murder of the officer.If it is reasonably foreseeable that your abetting could result in the crimes committed,you can be a principal.I know it will never happen but a very aggressive prosecutor could file those charges.With the type of language Trump and Gulliani used to spur on the rioters,it would not be beyond the pale to argue that the resulting deaths were reasonably forseeable.I would have loved to argue the issue.
Mahatma Gandhi was a noted Indian activist and leader. He was also a vegetarian on the grounds that he did not want to take life. A few years before his death, however, the results of a scientific study were published, indicating that plants themselves had rudimentary nervous systems. Gandhi waved the study away.
“At least,” he said, “they don’t scream so loudly.”
Newspaper headlines here have all complained about the “lawlessness” that took place in the Capitol the other day. There has always been lawlessness in the Capitol, although done furtively behind closed doors with money changing hands in the dark.
I wish there could be a study of how much the net worth of members of Congress changes from their time as freshmen until they retire or are defeated. That would, I’m quite sure, prove my point.
The problem, then, is that the rioters screamed too loudly.
Now that’s a defense I would like to play with.Mr.X,so your invasion and destruction at the Capital was the result of the past lawlessness of house and Senate members.Spreading feces on Ms.Pelosi’s wall was because of this fact.Stealing her computers,breaking Windows and destroying property was your way of showing disgust,or was it that your hero,Mr.Trump ,got screwed in the election.Oh,it was both.Did You see the officer assaulted or where you too busy on the floor of the house at that time.Did you hear the president,Guilliani or DonaldvJr. Speak.How did they inspire you.
“Yesterday,all your troubles seemed so far away,now it looks like they are here to stay.”
“Don’t be a stranger,you hear?”
“Please, for the love of God, be a stranger.”
Children are very perceptive. They sense what their parents are really like underneath the words they use and then model themselves around this essence. (Emerson once said, “Your actions speak so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying.”) The problem comes when the parents deny what their children sense and punish them for acting out. The Capitol is not a peaceful place. It is filled with wheelers and dealers and people who are governed not by altruism but by self-interest, skirting the law whenever and however they can regardless of any kind of morality. The people who marched were people in frustration, fed up with the hypocrisies encountered in everyday life and determined to end the inequalities that gnaw at them. This is not to excuse them, merely to try to explain the harshness of their actions.
Donald Trump lit the match. But the flammable material was ready to catch the flame and spread it. Healing can only begin when we bravely admit who we really are and what we really expect without all the Charles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi pretensions of nobility and go forward trying to be honest to ourselves and our children so that there are no more discrepancies between how we act and what we say.
I don’t have your empathy.I regard the people at the capital as criminals.Yes,frustrated,not by inequalities but by their own making.You Gerald,however are a mensch but I would have put you off my jury trials if I was a prosecutor and embraced you if I was defense counsel.
Toy Story 5
(With apologies to Pixar)
Trump’s had his tantrums,
But he’d never been a quitter
Until his toy was taken away,
Forever banned from Twitter.
This is really an amazing thing.POTUS banned from twitter.You tend to just file it away,another piece of info relating to this president but thinking about it,it’s incredible.By the way,did you hear that when Trump knew that our congressman were still under siege on the floor of congress,he called in and spoke to one legislature and suggested that everyone should leave,evidently feeling that if they left,they couldn’t certify the election results.
Police found guns and bombs in a truck at the capital….just breaking news.Also,there were plans to harm legislators.Plans also for future attacks.No sympathy from me.
” The times,they are a changing. “
As supporters of President Trump laid siege to the Capitol building on Wednesday, Ivanka posted — then deleted — a tweet in which she called them “American Patriots.”
(No comment necessary)
“Sorry,no do-overs.”
STUPIDITY & HATE++++++++++++Your worst enemies. (Your Achilles wound. HEEL yourself!)
EDUCATION & LOVE+++++++++++Your best friends. (The pearls of life. Don’t WEAR them out!)
HUMOR++++++++++++++++++++The most luxurious commodity you possess that doesn’t cost you anything!
This post is dedicated to Gerald Lebowitz
(A man of many talents with education & love! Also, he tries to put up with my nonsense.)
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court.”
“Your cellmate is Dr.Lector.He’s ready for you with some fava beans and a nice chianti. “
I know there are certain captions that could never win but are too much fun not to post.
“You promised you would drain the swamp.Instead,we are covered in grime.”
“Your name will be unwritten from the Book of Life.”
“At least you bought me Tesla.”