Overhyped 2015 Grammy Awards

I didn't watch the Grammys, I did see some news coverage. Mostly things I already knew and other things that I don't care about......like seeing people in designer outfits they've never heard of and can't pronounce, lip-synching songs to an overdone production and the class idiot Kanye West.

As a singer-musician, I understand the lip-synching and prerecorded stuff for television. Too many things can go wrong to take a chance. There are many singers and musicians that I admire, but I can always see then on YouTube. So, I'm left listening to boring acceptance speeches.

Sam Smith

Newcomer Sam Smith took home top honors for Record of the Year and Song of the Year ("Stay With Me - Darkchild Version"), Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album ( "In The Lonely Hour").

The Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album went to the ageless Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga ("Cheek To Cheek") and Album of the Year went to Beck ("Morning Phase").

From the Grammy reviews, I'm glad I watched reruns of The Big Bang Theory.....
 

The News As I See It: 51 years ago the Beatles made their first appearance in the Ed Sullivan Theater. Now you get the David Letterman show. If you remember the Beatles, then you should ask your doctor if Cialis is right for you.

The only good thing to know about Charles Manson is he's in prison for the rest of his life. He was going to get married. Well, guess what? The marriage has been called off. Well, what happened? The bride finally Googled him. Manson decided he wasn't ready to get married after talking it over with the voices in his head.

This Date In History: 1861; Jefferson Davis was chosen as the president of the Confederate States of America. 1943; The battle of Guadalcanal ended with an American victory.

1950; Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed he had evidence there were card-carrying members of the Communist Party in the State Department. 1964; The Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

1991; Lithuanians voted overwhelmingly for independence from the Soviet Union. 2001; A U.S. nuclear sub struck the Ehime Maru, a Japanese fishing boat.

Picture Of The Day: 56 year-old Madonna keeps reinventing herself and looked great.

Printable Things I Never Told You: 1) With a stolen credit card, who wouldn't go straight to Wendy's to get 2 Double Stacks and a small Sprite? Thanks for asking for ID, lady. 2) My neighbor called my cat fat the other day. It took me two hours to convince my cat that she just had thick fur. 3) Anyone who says their wedding day was the best day of their life, has never had 2 candy bars fall down at once from a vending machine.

4) Men who dislike waking up at the crack of Dawn usually regret drunk dialing Dawn the night before.  5) I accidentally pushed my cat off of the bed while adjusting my blankets. Now she's sitting in the corner sadly humming a Sarah McLachlan song......and that's five !

Today's Horoscope: Aquarius - February 9th: Only love can break your heart, but trans-fatty acids will take a damn good shot at it. Homelessness is a very poor way to begin the year so try to put aside a little for tomorrow.....tomorrow meaning the future, not the party on Wednesday at Shorty's Bar and Grill.

Birthdays: William Henry Harrison, 9th President of the United States 1773, Amy Lowell, poet 1874, Dean Rusk, secretary of state 1909, Carmen Miranda. actress 1909, J. M. Coetzee, novelist 1940, Carole King. pop singer, songwriter 1942, Joe Pesci, actor 1943, Alice Walker, author 1944, Mia Farrow, actress 1945.

Some of the ladies of the Grammys

The AREA 51 Retirement Home Bar And Grill: A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand. He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript.

So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son." He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years.

Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot. So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing, "We missed the R! We missed the R! We missed the R!"

The abbot's forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably. The young monk asks the old abbot, "What's wrong, father?" With a choking voice, the old abbot replies, "The word was 'celebrate'."

A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him.

He asked, "What are all those clocks?" St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move.''

The man said, "I see. Whose clock is that?'' St. Peter said, "That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie.''

The man said, "And whose clock is that one?" St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln 's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life.''

The man then asked, "Where's Obama 's clock?" St. Peter said, "Obama's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."

The Hits Just Keep On Coming: Some women were gathered and the subject of the conversation turned to sex and then birth control. The first woman says, "We're Catholic, so we can't use it." The next woman says, "I am too, but we use the rhythm method." The third woman says, "We use the bucket and saucer method."

The others asked, "What the heck is the bucket and saucer method?" The woman replied, "Well, I'm five foot eleven and my husband is five foot two. We make love standing up with him standing on a bucket and when his eyes get big as saucers, I kick the bucket out from under him."

A father put his 3 year old daughter to bed, told her a story and listened to her prayers which ended by saying, "God bless Mummy, God bless Daddy, God bless Grandma and goodbye Grandpa."

The father asked, 'Why did you say goodbye Grandpa?' The little girl said, "I don't know Daddy, it just seemed like the right thing to do." The next day Grandpa died. The father thought it was a strange coincidence.

A few months later the father put the girl to bed and listened to her prayers which went like this, "God bless Mummy, God bless Daddy and goodbye Grandma." The next day the grandmother died. The father thought, "This kid is in contact with the other side."

Several weeks later when the girl was going to bed the Dad heard her say, "God bless Mummy and goodbye Daddy." He practically went into shock. He couldn't sleep all night and got up at the crack of dawn to go to his office.

He was nervous as a cat all day, had lunch and watched the clock. He figured if he could get by until midnight he would be okay. He felt safe in the office, so instead of going home at the end of the day he stayed there, drinking coffee, looking at his watch and jumping at every sound.

Finally midnight arrived. He breathed a sigh of relief and went home. When he got home his wife said, "I've never seen you work so late. What's the matter?"

He said, "I don't want to talk about it, I've just spent the worst day of my life." She said, "You think you had a bad day; you'll never believe what happened to me. This morning, my golf pro dropped dead in the middle of my lesson!"

That's it for today, my little mom and popsicles. Remember, the Swiss were never overly concerned about war. They included a corkscrew in their army knife.

More on Wednesday.

Stay Tuned !

Navin R. Johnson Is Alive and Well

The movie "The Jerk", begins with Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin), a befuddled homeless simpleton, directly addressing the camera and telling his story. He is the adopted white son of black sharecroppers, who grows to adulthood naïvely unaware of his obvious adoption.

He stands out in his family not just because of his skin color, but also because of his utter lack of rhythm when his adopted family plays spirited blues music. One night, he hears the staid and starchy Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra song called "Crazy Rhythm" on the radio and his feet spontaneously begin to move with the urge to dance.

He sees this as a calling and decides to hitchhike to St. Louis, from where the song was broadcast. On the way, he stops at a motel, where a dog wakes him up by barking at his door. Navin thinks the dog is trying to warn of a fire and decides to name the dog "Lifesaver."

He wakes up the other hotel guests to rescue them, but when everyone realizes it was a false alarm, one of the guests angrily suggests he call the dog "Shithead," which Navin takes literally. He inspires a salesman to invent special glasses and eventually meets and marries a woman named Marie (Bernadette Peters).

The movie is a subtle, tongue-in-cheek comedy and is basically a "rags to riches to rags" story and Navin ends up broke. Navin is now alone and poor, living on the streets. His story now told, he resigns himself to a life of misery and memories without Marie. But to his joy and amazement, she suddenly appears, along with Navin's family, to take him home.

There's more good news: Having carefully invested the small sums of money he sent home throughout the film, his family have become wealthy themselves. They pick him up off the street, and he and Marie move back home into the Johnson's new house — a much larger but identical version of their old, small shack.

The story ends with the entire family dancing on the porch and singing "Pick a Bale of Cotton", with Navin dancing along, now having gained perfect rhythm.

I can relate to this story because there is a part in the movie where Navin becomes very excited when the new phone books arrive because his name is in it. This amused me at the time but I realized this very week that I look forward to Thursdays, when Publix Supermarket prints their new weekly ad.

Moreover, I'm relatively sure that I may have dated a woman strikingly similar to the intimidating daredevil biker chick named Patty Bernstein (Catlin Adams) with whom Nathan had a sexual relationship with, finally realizing what his "special purpose" was for. Fortunately, Johnnie Walker Black clouds my mind.

I guess there's a bit of Navin R. Johnson in all of us.

The News As I See It: Obama gave a speech on immigration last night and none of the big four TV networks aired it. Even television wants to distance itself from Obama now.

Fifty percent of the nation is covered in snow. Record low temperatures, a very cold autumn so far. But on the bright side, you're one good ice storm away from getting out of Thanksgiving with the in-laws.

Google has developed image-recognition software that can accurately capture what’s happening in a photo. But it still has some bugs. It described Kim Kardashian's recent photo as "Woman being chased by two Butterball turkeys."

Larry King and Jodie Foster both celebrated birthdays this week. birthday. King and Foster are very different, of course. One is a grizzled showbiz veteran who's bedded hundreds of women and the other one is Larry King.

This week was also the holiday known as National Day of Monaco. Monaco is independent, but they're defended by France. In other words, they're on their own.

I don't know if you know this but Hitler was a painter and one of his watercolor paintings is being auctioned off. It's expected to sell for over $60,000. So if you're looking for a wedding gift for Charles Manson....

Obama's new immigration plan will focus on deporting violent criminals. So, this could impact your fantasy football team.

This Date In History:1783; With the Marquis d'Arlandes, Pilâtre de Rozier made the first free flight in a balloon, reaching a peak altitude of about 3,000 ft and traveling about 5 1/2 mi in 20 min. 1789; North Carolina became the 12th state.

1922; Georgia's Rebecca Felton was sworn into the U.S. Senate, becoming the first woman U.S. Senator. 1934; Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes opened in New York City. 1969; For the first time since 1930, the U.S. Senate rejected a Supreme Court nominee, Clement Haynsworth.

1973; The 18 1/2 min gap in the Richard Nixon Watergate tapes was revealed. 1991; Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali was chosen to become secretary-general by the UN Security Council.

Picture Of The Day: Navin R. Johnson and his adopted family.

Printable Things I Never Told You: 1) I've been holding my stomach in for about 3 years now, so don't talk to me about dedication. 2) I put peanut butter on both sides of my toast so that if the toast falls, I won't be disappointed. 3) She said that she was dying to have sex in the worst way, so I did her standing up in a hammock. 4) Two eyebrows are better than one. 5) I don't my burn bridges but I loosen the bolts a little each day.....and that's five !

Today's Horoscope: Scorpio - November 21st: Don't trust little birdies, most of them tell lies. Love comes in all shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, all the good shapes and sizes are already taken. Bread, lightly cooked and buttered. Today's horoscope was sponsored by Toast.

Birthdays: My sweet pal Tamara - Happy Birthday Baby 19XX, Voltaire, French Philosopher and Author whose name was François Marie Arouet de Voltaire 1694, Rene Magritte, painter 1898, Coleman Hawkins, jazz musician 1904, Stan Musial, baseball player 1920 Goldie Hawn, actress 1945, Beryl Bainbridge, writer 1953, Tina Brown, magazine publisher 1953, Björk singer, songwriter 1965, Troy Aikman, football player, TV commentator 1966.

The AREA 51 Retirement Home Bar And Grill: One day a golfer accidentally overturned his golf cart. Elizabeth, a very attractive golfer who lived in a villa on the golf course, heard the noise and called out, "Are you okay, what's your name?" The golfer replied, "It's John, and I'm ok, thanks."

Elizabeth said, "John forget your troubles. Come to my villa, rest a while and I'll help you turn the golf cart back over later." John answered, "That's mighty nice of you, but I don't think my wife would like it." "Elizabeth was very pretty and persuasive. She said, "Oh, come on!" John finally agreed and added, "but my wife won't like it."

After a restorative brandy, and some "driving and putting" lessons, John thanked his hostess and said, "I feel a lot better now, but I know my wife is going to be really upset." Elizabeth said with a smile, "Don't be silly! She won't know anything. By the way, where is she?" John said, "Under the golf cart!"

Mendel Rosenblatt was very old and suffering from a rare disease and could drink only human milk. Mendel asked the doctor, "How can I get human milk?" The doctor said, "Well, Ethel Goldstein just had a baby, maybe she'll help."

So every day Mendel went to Ethel's house for his daily feed. Ethel was a dark-eyed, big breasted lady, who, in spite of herself, gradually became aroused as Mendel lapped at her ripe breasts.

One day as he quietly lay suckling, she whispered to him, "Tell me Mr. Rosenblatt, do you like it?" Mendel sighed, "Mmmm, wonderful." Ethel, her lips parted and eyes aglow, said hesitantly, "Is there anything else you'd like?"

Mendel replied, "As a matter of fact there is," Ruby asked breathlessly, "What?" Mendel licked his lips and said, "Maybe a biscuit?"

The Hits Just Keep On Coming: A man calls home to his wife and says, "Honey I have been asked to go fishing at a big lake up in Canada with my boss and several of his friends. We'll be gone for a week. This is a good opportunity for me to get that promotion I've been wanting."

He continued, "Would you please pack me enough clothes for a week and set out my rod and tackle box. We're leaving from the office and I will swing by the house to pick my things up. Oh! Please pack my new blue silk panamas."

The wife thinks this sounds a little fishy but being a good wife she does exactly what her husband asked. The following weekend he comes home a little tired but otherwise looking good.

The wife welcomes him home and asks if he caught many fish? He says, "Yes! Lot's of Walleye, some Bluegill, and a few Pike. But why didn't you pack my new blue silk panamas like I asked you to do?" His wife replied, "I did, they're in your tackle box."

A man stumbles up to a bar and asks the bartender for a drink. Noticing the only other man at the bar, he tells the bartender to buy him a drink. The first man then asks, "Where are you from?"

The second man replies, "I'm from Miami, but my Dad was born in Alabama." The first man says, "What a coincidence my Dad's from Alabama too! Let's have another round to Alabama." The second man says, "Good idea!"

Curious, the first man then asks, "Where in Alabama is your Dad from?" The second man replies, "Tuscaloosa." The first man says, "I can't believe it. My Dad's from Tuscaloosa too! Let's have another drink to Tuscaloosa." The second man says, "For sure!"

Curiosity again strikes and the first man asks, "What school did you go to?" The second man, "Hialeah High school. I graduated in '64." The first man says, "This is unbelievable! I went to Hialeah High too and graduated in '63!"

About that time in comes one of the regulars and sits down at the bar. The regular says the bartender, "Hey Tom, what's going on?" The bartender says, "Nothing much, same old thing. Mondays are slow and the Sullivan brothers are drunk again."

That's it for today, my little cupcakes. Remember, the people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon and all the less important ones just never go away. Stick a fork in me, I'm done and heading for AREA 51.

Have a great weekend and more on Monday.

Stay Tuned !