Is This Anything?
Page 19
I’m reading the strip, I miss what the guy says.
“What did he say?
What did that say?
What did that say?
What did she say?”
Which is the news?
The guy or the strip?
Which just happened?
Why can’t the guy just tell me what it says on the strip?
Don’t these idiots that do the news understand?
We don’t want to read.
That’s why we’re watching TV.
Earpiece
Everybody on the news has that little earpiece.
I notice it’s got that expandable, spiral phone cord that goes down their neck.
But why would it need to expand?
How far is this guy’s head going from the top of his shirt
that he needs that much expanding wire?
Is he a newsman or a kitchen phone?
The Crisis
They always feel they should go to somebody
that’s closer physically to whatever it is.
“Maybe they know something…”
So, they go to that person,
“Well, Jim, there’s nothing happening here yet.
There’s no one here.
I have no information.
And I can’t see a god damn thing.
I don’t even know if this is where I’m supposed to be.
Back to you in the studio.”
They go back to the studio
where they’ve already come up with a logo for the crisis.
“We need a font.”
The logo always looks a little bit like the crisis.
If there’s a guy that’s under fire,
you see the guy and you see the fire.
The worst crisis is when the letters in the word “Crisis”
start to crack and break apart.
There’s pieces missing from the “C” and the “R” and the “I.”
That’s a bad crisis.
The word “crisis” is in crisis from the crisis.
And that’s when it’s time to take an instant poll on the Internet.
“Let’s get the perspective of a group of people even dumber than we are.
The general public.”
No News
I live in the fantasy, watching News,
that there still is News.
But what don’t we know?
Nothing.
There’s nothing we don’t know.
Everybody’s on everything every second.
They even start the News saying,
“Well, I’m sure you’ve all seen this by now…”
The word “News” means new.
So, if it’s not new there’s No News.
They used to say,
No News is Good News.
But now,
All News is No News.
Which is,
Bad News for News,
I think.
Which you maybe already knew.
But to me, that’s Big News.
If what we all thought of as News
is now No News,
Huge News.
I mean come on,
the End of News is the
biggest thing that ever happened.
That’s your lead story.
Old News
The Worst News is definitely anything thought of as Old News.
History is fine. But if it’s in the past and not yet history, don’t ever talk about that.
People go, “Oh my god, that was like a week ago, what’s wrong with you?”
Break-in
I need Breaking.
We want Breaking.
Break-in
They always say, “I’m sorry to break in—”
Which they’re not, they love it. They feel important
and they get to screw up the person
they work with and secretly hate.
“But we have a breaking story,
it just broke.
We’re going to go to a break.
Then after the break we’re going to
break it down and we’re going to
go straight through without a break.
Unless something else breaks,
then we’ll have to break away,
break that, which will be
followed by another break
because we’re about
to go broke.”
Weather Girls
And what’s with all the heated up, sexed out, Super Vixen weather girls
wearing insane cocktail outfits on local TV at 9:30 in the morning?
Everyone else on the news looks normal.
They go to weather, it’s like a private Vegas sex club.
Masks and whips and thigh-high boots.
She’s spanking the traffic guy with a riding crop.
The Doppler’s brought to you by Crotchless Underwear.
Turn down the heat.
You got 100 million men in this country
trying to be extremely respectful
while adjusting to new guidelines
just handed down in a very fluid situation.
You can help out a little.
Shoulder your weapons before noon.
Is that fair?
Sports Watch
I love to watch sports.
One of the things I enjoy most about sports is not the game,
but hearing all the things I already know about the game
repeated back to me over and over again
after the game.
I’ve got to watch the postgame show.
The highlights.
The analysis.
The call-in show.
Do I not really believe that I saw the game?
You should see me tearing the paper apart every morning
to get to the sports section,
just so I can go,
“Aha! I knew what I saw is what happened when I was watching it.”
What is this urge to keep finding out information I already have?
It’s like when I drive by a mirrored office building.
I always look at the reflection to see if I’m in the car.
And what would I do if I looked, and there was a small Korean woman driving my car?
If I look at my watch and then one second later, someone asks me what time it is?
I look again.
When you came in here tonight,
How many times did you look at your ticket?
Five?
Eight?
Human brain’s a sieve.
Why do you think they run the same commercial 150 times?
I’m trying to save money on car insurance.
I want to wear an untucked shirt.
I don’t know how to do it.
Gambling in Vegas
I gamble a little.
I’d probably gamble more, but I don’t win so I stop.
I don’t understand gambling addiction.
I don’t find losing money addictive.
My brain works like,
LOSING MONEY: STOP ACTIVITY
MAKING MONEY: CONTINUE ACTIVITY
Besides which, you really think you’re supposed to win these games?
Losing money is what gambling is.
When you leave a building with more money, that’s your job.
Think about what this place would be like if it was easy to win the games.
It would be very different.
You think the traffic’s bad on the strip now?
That beautiful casino out there would be a cinder block bunker with a communal toilet.
You think they’d have nice restaurants?
You’d be lucky to get those orange crackers with the peanut butter in between.
And when you called down to the front desk
instead of them saying, “Have a lucky day,”
they’d go, “Why don’t you just shove it up your ass?”<
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That’s what it would be like if you could win the games.
Cremation
I hear a lot of people say they want to be cremated.
Definitely a shift in how people are looking at their lives.
People used to want a big block of granite.
Their name carved into it with a chisel.
“I was here, god damn it!”
Cremation’s like you’re trying to cover up a crime.
“Burn the body, scatter the ashes.
As far as anyone’s concerned,
this whole thing never happened.”
I would not want to be cremated.
It seems impolite.
I feel the least I can do at my own funeral is show up.
Everybody I know is going to be there.
I want to be there too.
Dead as a door nail.
Laid out like a six-foot party sub.
At a regular funeral, there’s still a chance the person could wake up…
Not at a cremation.
A cremation is like,
“That ashtray’s full.
This party’s over.”
Glad Sandwich Bags
I still can’t believe that every single day of my life
I see people picking up their dog’s defecation with their hands.
Every day of my life.
The confidence they have in that Glad sandwich bag.
Where does that come from?
What do we know about the Glad sandwich bag?
It locks in freshness?
Which, I would think, is the last thing you want to do with a big steaming pile anyway.
I don’t know how human beings make these mental leaps.
“Glad keeps a sandwich fresh, I’ll pick up feces with it.”
I hate just as much, before the event
when I see them walking their dog,
and my eye goes right to that suspicious little tuft of plastic or paper clutched in their other hand.
and I know exactly what’s going to happen…
If aliens are watching this through telescopes,
they’re going to think the dogs are the leaders of the planet.
If you see two life forms,
one of them takes a crap,
and the other one’s carrying it for him…
Who would you assume is in charge of that society?
Nose Hair
I’d like to say something to all the men in the audience about nose hair.
… And that should be all I need to say.
There should be no further comment necessary.
The term nose hair should be a medical term, completely unknown to the general public.
I had a meeting with a lawyer the other day,
and I’m telling you this guy really had a situation.
If a spark came off a match, we could have had a brush fire in there.
This guy’s a lawyer.
Somewhat of a public image profession.
And he’s giving me his opinions.
There’s no opinions when you’ve got scarecrow straw coming out.
There’s only one opinion: Objection.
“You, sir, are beyond the nostril perimeter.”
I want to know how this slipped by final inspection,
before walking out of the house.
If you glanced in the hubcap of a passing car
one could easily see,
… there’s a problem.
Itching, Burning and Redness
Doctors on TV always have these
“Itching, burning and redness” pads on their desk.
With a little check-off box next to each word…
What kind of a doctor gets pads like this professionally printed up?
Goes into a stationery store,
“I need itching, burning and redness pads.
This is happening a lot in my office
and I want to check them off as they happen.”
“Nurse, send in the next patient please,
do you have itching?”
“Yes.”
“Burning?”
“Yes.”
“Redness?”
“Yes.”
“Hold it right there.
That’s all the boxes I have.
Thank you for helping me use my little pad.
(tears off paper and hands to patient)
Good luck with your disgusting situation.”
Suicide Bomber
My favorite suicide bomber’s the guy
who accidentally blows himself up without injuring anyone else in the area.
A Jihad E. Coyote kind of guy.
I guess I just wish we could see that moment of,
“Is it the red button, then the green? Oh no, wait…”
Eventually they’ll have roller skates.
Huge rocket on the back, trying to light it.
“It better work this time.
The last one I did a loop-de-loop right into a wall.
Then I slid slowly down it totally embarrassed.”
Terrorist Monkey Bars
One of the things we do have on our side in this war is
we seem to have a lot of films of terrorist groups in their training camps.
I don’t know how we got these films but we got them.
And I think one of the main things we can learn from watching these films,
is the tremendous emphasis the terrorists place on the monkey bars.
Has there ever been a war where the decisive battle was fought on a children’s playground?
“I need a volunteer to gain control of that horse with the giant spring underneath it.”
I think we ought to focus more on the seesaw.
We’ve got so many fat kids in this country,
that could sit on one end and keep those skinny terrorists up in the air on the other.
You threaten to jump off of the bottom of a seesaw.
That’s some terrorism.
“Hey, let me down, let me down.”
“Let’s see your shoe bombs work now.”
Slightly Nazi
There’s a particular motorcycle helmet I see a lot on the streets lately that I don’t get.
And I’m sure you know the one I’m going to say.
It has that unmistakable flare around the back.
I wouldn’t say that it’s full Nazi,
but it is definitely slightly Nazi.
And these are not hardcore bikers I’m talking about.
I’m talking scooters, with the little knees-together riding position.
How do seemingly normal people get themselves into a Nazi shopping situation?
You walk in the motorcycle store, the man says,
“May I help you?”
You go,
“Yes, I need a motorcycle helmet.”
He says,
“Well, I have these regular ones here.”
You go,
“Ahh, what else is there…?”
He says,
“Well, let me ask you this…
How do you feel about the Nazis?”
You go,
“To tell the truth, I wasn’t crazy about the genocide, hatred, racism and mass murder.”
He says, “What about the helmets?”
“The helmets weren’t bad.
I can’t really say I had a problem with the helmet as a stand-alone item.”
And interestingly, there is another type of helmet I’ve seen
that is kind of a small black plastic circle,
which actually looks like the yarmulke that religious Jewish people wear.
I think I see a theme emerging here…
I guess if you’re a motorcycle rider,
and you’re a WWII fan,
and you’re in the market for a motorcycle helmet,
we got you covered either way you want to go.
Car Horn
People love the car horn bec
ause they know they could never think of enough curse words
to last as long as they can just hold that button down.
“Wait’ll they hear THIS…”
We also believe for some reason that the harder we actually push our finger on the button,
the more effect the horn is going to have.
I love when we try and affect inanimate objects that way.
Like when the car doesn’t start,
people always try turning the key really hard.
Like the key is going to go,
“Oww, alright. I get it.”
Directions Voice
When people give you directions in the car they use different voices too.
They have a story voice and a directions voice.
“I don’t think I even want to go out with her again.
Make a right at the next corner.
I think she might be a wacko.
Watch this guy pulling out. He doesn’t see you.
I’m really just sick of dating at this point.
The bridge is out. We just went off a cliff.
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll call her.
The car’s a huge ball of flames. Our lives are over.”
OnStar
Or the
“OnStar service,
available now on GM vehicles.”
OnStar satellites orbiting the Earth.
OnStar technicians wearing headsets
at the Command Control Center
beaming signals back and forth across the galaxy,
all because you can’t keep from locking yourself out of your own damn car?
Is this really why we conquered space?
To help out all these puddin’ heads in mall parking lots,
looking in their car window going,
“… Oh, there they are.
(calling across parking lot)
They’re in the car…
That’s why it’s still running.
No, forget the two-cent wire hanger.
I’ll contact a zillion-dollar Deep Space Communication Center instead.
They bounce a signal off of Neptune.
It’s a lot easier that way.”
OnStar…
They should call this service, Moron Star.
That’s what it really is.
You hit the button.
They answer,