I hope you all are sitting down, because I have some unbelievable news. According to a poker buddy of mine, who heard it from his bowling teammate, who read it on a fortune cookie, I am on the short list for the Nobel Prize for Literature! It is all thanks to my hilarious, only moderately offensive satirical coloring book, I’m So Sick of White Guys – available at fine bookstores everywhere, as well as a few fly-by-night operations I’d suggest steering clear of.
While my endowment is not yet official, I figured I should work on my acceptance speech, so I’m fully prepared when I do get the call. To be honest, I did not see this coming. Oh, sure, I figured I’d eventually win a Pulitzer for my award-deserving humor writing. Heck, my piece called Don’t Let Your Dishwasher Destroy Your Marriagealone should have garnered me that trophy. But a Nobel? Now you’re making me blush.
I’ve long envisioned receiving that life-changing call from the Nobel Committee. I’ll admit, in my mind I was being honored for my accomplishments in a more popular category, such as physics or chemistry. If only I’d stayed awake during chemistry class or even audited a physics course. I blame my high school guidance counselor for leading me astray astray toward majoring in the Humanities.
What I really had my heart set on was the Peace Prize – the big enchilada. Talk about impressing my racquetball buddies! But the committee probably gained access to my pre-school transcript (I thought it was sealed) and learned of my recess scuffle with Cindy O’Connor. That undoubtedly took me out of contention. I maintain I was within my rights to pull her hair and put a frog in her lunchbox after she gave me a card with hearts drawn all over it. Yuck! But I digress.
Back to my acceptance speech. It’s merely a first draft, so I’m open to any suggestions to punch it up a bit.
“Dear Nobel Committee, friends, esteemed guests, View from the Bleachers readers, United Nations General Assembly, my new Bestie President Obama, the original cast of Glee, and Cindy O’Connor, whom I hereby formally forgive for giving me a mushy card.(more…)
Do you know the distance from my house to the South Pole? Of course, you don’t. But I do. That’s because I recently erected a giant sign pole complete with weather vane in my front yard that displays the direction and distance to several far-flung places, including the South Pole. How far is it from our house here on Camano Island, Washington to say, Cape Town, South Africa? Glad you asked: 10,199 miles southeast. Distance to Pitcairn Island? 5,022 miles almost due south. Moscow, Russia? I have no idea. But I can see Russia from my back door, so no matter.
For years, I’ve been fascinated by those rustic towering poles with signs pointing to remote locales like Timbuktu (yes, that’s an actual place). Maybe it’s the wanderlust in me or my long-held interest in maps. Or perhaps I’ve read too many National Geographic articles about the lost tribes of Borneo. Whatever the reason, I decided to plant one of these (poles, not Borneans) in our yard as a fun conversation piece. Prior to this project, the only thing quirky about our house was my wife’s husband.
I asked my wife if she’d be okay if I built one of these and gave it a prominent location on our front yard. To my amazement, she did not protest in the slightest. Even when she woke from her nap, and I asked her again, she was still moderately amenable. She had just two conditions: first, I had to promise to not do a sloppy job. Second, I could not try to conscript her assistance with this fool’s errand. Deal, I said, knowing all too well there was no way I would live up to the second condition.(more…)
I recently took a trip back in time, and it did not require inventing a time machine or ingesting any hallucinatory drugs. I simply drove ten miles to a quirky, iconoclastic place in the middle of nowhere called Chumleighland in the Woods. It was named in honor of its owner, Reverend Chumleigh – who, I soon discovered, is not an actual reverend nor is that his real name. So why is it called Chumleighland? Heck if I know. Why did God make the Duck-Billed Platypus? There are some questions to which we may never find the answer.
What a fascinating, strange visit it turned out to be. My wife and I had seen small ads in the local newspaper about this odd-sounding place hidden away in the forest near the southern tip of our island. We had no idea what to expect. We followed Google Maps but when it announced, “You have arrived,” we could not locate anything resembling a building, a park, or even traces of previous human contact.
Suddenly, I spied a tiny sliver of a clearing in the woods, barely wide enough for a refrigerator, with a closed gate. Then out of the thicket emerged an older chap with long grey hair and a scraggly beard. He gave off a Gandalf meets Jerry Garcia kind of vibe. He donned a t-shirt that read “It’s Mueller Time” and featured a cartoon rendering of Robert Mueller in cool-looking sunglasses. “Do you know how we get to Chumleighland?” I asked uncertainly. “Just drive into the grove. Park anywhere and follow the torches. Oh, and watch out for the cats.” That was my introduction to the good Reverend Chumleigh.
We parked by a massive oak tree, as there was no parking lot. Dutifully, we followed the torch-lit path, which meandered beside a miniature train track, like what you’d see at a children’s petting zoo. “Oh, the train should be running again by next week. I just have to clear some felled trees,” explained our ebullient host. Somehow that almost made sense to me.(more…)
In the past two years, our nation has become increasingly polarized. We’ve become a divided nation, with people firmly rooted in one camp or the other. There appears to be no end in sight to the name-calling and stereotyping. We’ve even taken to unfriending people on Facebook simply because they don’t agree with us on this fractious issue.
I am, of course, talking about the seismic upheaval created by perhaps our country’s most contentious debate: Which is better, pie or cake? If you’re expecting me to be the voice of moderation, forget about it. Because the answer is so obvious. CAKE IS WAY BETTER THAN PIE!
Go ahead and disagree if you like. That just means you’re dead to me. You clearly are living in Crazy Town! To all those Piehards out there, I say: LET THEM EAT CAKE!
Now let’s get one thing out of the way right up front. You pienosaurs tout the slogan “as American as apple pie.” Nice try. That saying became popular back in the 1850s. You know what else was popular back then? Slavery – something no cake aficionado would ever condone.
If you love America, then in this food fight you’d choose cake. Oh sure, pie was pretty cool once – back in the 1920’s, sitting on the window sill of your great grandmother’s kitchen. But wake up. It’s 2018. Pie is so 20th century. If you ask me, pie is nothing more than a glorified, overstuffed pop tart. Cake, on the other hand, is almost a euphoric experience. You think I’m half-baked making that claim? Then you’ve never tasted red velvet cake. What a pitiful life you must lead.(more…)
Allow me to introduce myself. I am Tim Jones. I’m unique – just like the other 58,730 people in the world with the exact same name. No, wait. I’ve just been informed that another Jones family in Topeka, Kansas has christened their newborn Tim. Okay, so make that only 58,731 Tim Joneses.
Having such a common name is more of an annoyance than you might think. First, it is utterly uninspiring. Do you recall the Civil War hero Tim Jones? Or the movie star? I thought not. Great men throughout history possessed distinguished, memorable monikers – like Alexander the Great and Stonewall Jackson and Winston Churchill – not that I’d have preferred being a “Winston”, mind you. But you get my point.
It’s just that the typical response to hearing the name Tim Jones is an irresistible impulse to yawn. Let me prove my point with a short story:
Once upon a time there was a poor, old Italian fisherman. Every day he would row his crusty rowboat out to sea, in hopes of catching just enough fish to feed his family. He did this for several years, fighting the high winds and rough waters, until finally, he no longer had the strength to do it anymore. So, he decided to retire, began collecting social security and moved to a condo in Arizona to be close to his grandkids.
Okay, that’s a pretty lame story. But let me ask you a question: If you had to guess, what would you say was the fisherman’s name? Take your time. Aha! I bet you concluded it probably was Tim Jones! Didn’t you? Wrong. The fisherman’s name was Antonio Vespucci. Why in the world would an Italian fisherman be named Tim Jones? Not exactly a Sherlock Holmes, are you? Which reminds me, now that’s a memorable name! But I digress.
My last name is so prosaic that my own wife, a world-class artist, opted to keep her own – refusing even to hyphenate it as Rushworth-Jones. And who could blame her? Which would you rather own, an original Rushworth painting or an original Jones? It’s kind of an oxymoron anyway – an original Jones.(more…)
I hope you all are sitting down, because I have some unbelievable news. According to a poker buddy of mine, who heard it from his bowling teammate, who read it on a fortune cookie, I am on the short list for the Nobel Prize for Literature! It is all thanks to my hilarious, only moderately offensive satirical coloring book, I’m So Sick of White Guys – available at fine bookstores everywhere, as well as a few fly-by-night operations I’d suggest steering clear of.
