Thursday Photo Funnies

It's time for the Thursday Photo Funnies, brought to you a day early because that's just how hard we work here at RoundSeventeen Headquarters, formerly in Culver City, now in Pasadena. 

And occasionally in Palm Springs when sprinkler heads get busted, tiles need to replaced in the hot tub, or when searing heat of the Foothills gets to be too much and we need to escape to the more tolerable temps in the desert.

The three digit mercury readings have precluded my daily walks and so my library is not as robust with public oddities. Similarly Pasadena can be a tad more strait laced than eclectic Culver City. Nevertheless I am happy to be away from my former Meth Head neighbor, his dimwitted alcoholic brother, their cantankerous octogenarian mother (that's right, they lived with momma, how cliche) and their equally cantankerous dog, she of the barking 24 hour a day variety.

But enough about my past trivial stressors, let's get to the pictures. Like the Orthodox Jewish man checking out his 4 foot high teddy bear (see above.) It's either for his grand kids but it's big enough to be a sparring partner.

This was spotted in a window front, I believe in Arcadia.

It tickles my 14 year old funny bone.

Also, speaking of my child-like nature,

I found one of those spring horsies at a local park.

"Weeeeeeeeeee"

I also shared the Pulled Pork photo above with my friend Jim, 

also given to 14 year old humor, 

who has been doing some amazing paintings.

This bathroom was not "Sparkling Clean", then again

what supermarket bathrooms are?

I did not alert a friendly team member as

I wanted to get the last of the ripe peaches.

Speaking of bathrooms, the small collection of Caganers and 

knick knacks that have found a home on the ledge of my shower.

For the sake of clarity, 

I'm a one bumper sticker type of person.

Some people are not.

Cloud formations in Palm Springs cannot be beat.

Have I mentioned the airbnb that is available for rent?

Great Mexican food and even greater "false camaraderie" with 

ex Team One members, Matt Bogen and Internationally awarded

Mr. Greg Collins

This requires no explanation.

While this sign posted in the Men's Room at

the Palm Springs Swim Center does.

But not sure I want to hear it.

доброе утро, товарищ

I'm old enough to remember darker times. 

When rock-ribbed Republicans would shudder upon hearing a restaurant patron requesting Russian dressing. When Senator McCarthy and his acolytes would hound writers (mostly Jewish) for daring to challenge the status quo and promoted values (commie values) like sharing, wealth equality and fairness for the working man. When a can of red paint would be harder to find in a hardware store, than an assistant knowledgeable enough or even willing to help.

Perhaps folks have forgotten the phrase "Better Dead than Red."

Just like the Republican Party, once the party of Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery zealots, flip flopped with the Democrats during the Nixon era, it seems they have abandoned their once staunch values. To the amazement, and terror, of anyone from my generation, it appears Captain Ouchie Foot has come full circle and now embraces Mother Russia like a frost bitten Siberian embraces another bearskin blanket.

The headlines don't tell the story. This is not a media war being waged by the so-callled left leaning press. This comes straight from Truth Social.Where, in addition to the Orange Hellbeast posting AI slop depictions of himself as Jesus, or Thor, or as an Olympian Athlete pole vaulting over the Volga, he has posited that Ukraine had started the war with Russia.

This is complete hogwash as even a kindergartener knows, as Vizzini told us in The Princess Bride, "you don't start a land war in Asia." Moreover, why would Zelenssky purpose poke the bear and provoke a super power, albeit one with vodka-sodden generals) that had already seized Crimea. 

How many times has Trump tried to pawn the blame off on Biden? 

"This war never would've started under the Trump Administration?" The obnoxious third party reference notwithstanding, "Putin respects and fears me too much."

If that were the case, why not command Vlad to put the brakes on and pull back?

He can't negotiate a peace here, much less one in 24 hours as he promise on the 2024 campaign stump, anymore than he can negotiate a peace with Iran. In a war that he started.

Oh yeah the other war that has heaped a huge helping of misery on the American economy and sent the price of energy and diesel fuel so high in the sky even Elon Musk can't do anything about it. Well, except deny satellite assistance to our allies.

Trump's tactical errors are cascading. He is to international geopolitics what General Custer was to the Montana Territory.

If you hadn't heard, President Shitgibbon cut a deal with his boss, Vladie, to purchase billions of barrels of diesel in order to ease the shortage and to send prices down (hopefully) to near Biden levels. And what will Russia do with that clean usable cash? They're going to help their ally....wait for it...The Islamic Republic of Iran. 

How do we know this? Again, not because we heard it on CNN Fake News or on MSDNC, we know this because he said so on Truth Social.

"Russia is doing very little to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared with what it could be doing — if it is doing anything at all..."

Oh, they said so! That's reassuring.

Pardon the low hanging fruit of rhetoric, but Russia, and Iran, have us over a barrel.

Vote Blue Bigly on November 3rd.

Fuck Donald Trump! Sideways!

  

Time for a new battery

A long, long, long time ago, I was a freshman in college. A freshman in college who finally found some freedom from my parents, who were control freaks before the term was invented. 

As such I took every opportunity to color outside the lines. I barely attended classes. I smoked weed, if you can call it that. More often than not it was this weak strain grown by one of the dorm guys at his upstate NY cabin, Adirondack Green. And like every other 18 year old boy on the floor, I drank. To excess.

On one particular night, we were shouting out the window of our dorm to the losers in the dormitory just 50 yards away. It was snowing heavily, which it did a lot in Syracuse. I opened my mouth to let loose with what I thought would be a clever insult and...my flipper, a denture device to fill the gap in my upper jaw fell out of my mouth. I watched as it tumbled down 75 feet and buried itself in the 3 feet of fresh lake snow drift.

It was 2 AM. I ran to the payphone in the lobby.

"Dad, sorry to wake you up, but my teeth fell out the window."

Without hesitation or empathy (not really his strong suit), he replied, "What do you want me to do? I'm not a god damned dentist."

CLICK

That's how parenting was done back then. 

Last night, my 30 year old daughter texted me about her smoke alarm, which had been beeping on and off for the past three days. On this night it wouldn't stop. Determined not to repeat my father's approach, I walked her through a solution which included replacing the 9 volt battery (if she had one) or disconnecting the wire clip that was feeding it the low voltage electricity.

If all that failed, get a broomstick, I told her, and smack the shit out of it until it fell to the floor.

Being an only parent of adult children is not easy. Especially for someone whose past role was more about providing: safety, food, financial security. That was my bailiwick. 

Now it is less rigidly defined and more confusingly nuanced (not my strong suit.) Requires more patience (again not my strong suit.) And a softer approach (ditto.)

But, with the help of Snippet Therapy -- 3 minute curated Tik Toks on the topic of adult parenting -- and some sage advice from Michael O'Keefe, Jon Hamm's father in Your Friend and Neighbors, I'm getting better at it. And sometimes that requires letting her figure it all out.

That's my smoke alarm.

Aaaaargh!@

Not that anybody cares, but I missed a posting yesterday. My apologies. I also apologize for immodestly thinking anyone out on the interwebs even cares. Or as Ms. Muse so aptly put it, "I'm sure the cybersphere will be raging for hours!"

OK, sarcasm, noted.

By way of a brief explanation. While in Palm Springs, fixing the house that will never be completely fixed, I was attempting to download an app to go with my new Schlage Smartlock. Simply put, I was asked for my password. As is always the case, I was not sure which password they wanted. My email password? My computer entry password? My apple ID password (which may or may not be the same as my iCloud password?) I have no way of knowing. As my latter years in advertising went, the answer was easy, but figuring out the question was the hard part.

And so I did what I hate doing, I clicked the Forgot Password link and started sliding down a slippery slope into Hades IT Headquarters. 

And could not get out.

As I often mumble to myself, "I'm such an idiot."

Which by no coincidence brings us to today's real topic, IDIOTS. 

If you listen to Trump long enough -- I believe 11 years is long enough -- you'll hear a very subtle pattern in his rhetoric. Maybe it's not so subtle. When he hears a question or feels the need to degrade another person with whom he disagrees, you will often hear him say, "You are a Low IQ individual." 

He's fond of leveling that at women. At journalists. At black people (or in his disgusting vernacular "The Blacks.") He's especially fond of dropping this pejorative at black female journalists. And will for the purpose of mixing it up, also throw out a "Quiet Piggy."

In addition to being rude, obnoxious, misogynistic and racist, it's also completely unwarranted. I don't think you could get a minion of brain cells, even in the remotest swamps of Alabama or Tennessee (sorry Greg) that would agree Trump is a High IQ individual. 

And being able to spot the difference between elephants, tigers and rhinos on the Montreal Cognitive Test is not the flex he thinks it is. Not by a long shot.

I believe, no, I know, my IQ is higher than his. In fact, if you've read this far, which is way shorter than the Pentagon's daily briefings which he doesn't read or can't, I can safely assume your IQ is higher than his, as well.

And so, as a retired man with no hobbies but scratching out some words, swimming or fixing houses, I decided to take the issue to Google's Gemini AI...

Interpersonal instinct, he has the charm of a hyena. 

Brand marketing, he bankrupted 6 companies and sells shoddy watches.

Pragmatic dealmaking, oh yeah he "solved" 8 wars.

The results are inconclusively conclusive.

At least to me.

Fuck Donald Trump.

Ooooops

 

RoundSeventeen will return to regularly scheduled rants, useless tidbits and shameless oversharing tomorrow.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

On tenants and toilets

 

Had to make a trip out to Palm Springs to attend to some minor repairs. And when I say had to, I mean I had the opportunity to come out here. Trying to rephrase my life in a more positive direction. Even though this post is about the banality and relentless joys of home ownership. Not to mention the Mercury-like heat that has literally baked some of the drought-resistant desert plants.

While preparing for the tasks at hand I found this (see above) amongst my late uncle's many tools and thousands of drill bits. I swear he must have thought they were going to stop making drill bits so he bought every last one he could find.

As my 9 loyal readers might recall, the house been broken into recently. So I quickly installed some Ring cameras on the perimeter. No one told me the batteries were insufficient so I had to purchase some solar panel for back up power. Given how much sunlight is out here, the cameras should be operational long after Trump's planet-melting nuclear war.

Yes I was looking forward to basking in the glory off of my proper installation and the fact that I was able to master the plastic expansion anchors and drill clean holes in the near century old stucco. Of course god or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, depending on your faith, doesn't close one jammed window without opening a creaky door. 

Pardon the stretched metaphor.

As I returned the tools to the garage I slipped and almost fell on a puddle of water near the water heater. There was a leak in the supply line connector hose.

Hell, I thought, I can do that. Just turn the valve off, use the pipe wrench to remove the old hose, run to Lowe's and get a new non-leaking hose. Oddly enough as I walking my dog from her twice daily constitutional I noticed there was nearby garage sale. Not just any garage sale. 

The owner was contractor who was moving back to Oregon. His yard was a menagerie of tools and parts including...

Yep, he was selling a connection hose for my water heater. What are the odds? 

Then my amygdala kicked in and said, "Rich this could be a little above your pay grade as a Jewish Journeyman Handy Guy. Also, $5 for a used hose, how do I know it didn't leak to?"

I called a plumber and he fixed me right up. And dropped a phrase I wasn't expecting to hear this weekend, "Let me swap out those galvanized nipples."

Yes, please do.

As I write this, I'm still attempting to get my smart locks back online. I don't know what is so smart about them. Half the time they don't lock properly. The other half the time, they don't unlock because one of the EIGHT batteries has crossed over to the other side of the battery rainbow. 

Finally, and there really is no finally because home ownership and the maintenance of multiple homes always produces problems...I mean...opportunities, in my haste to attend to these fixes (and multiple others that don't themselves to humble bragging) I left my charging cable for the Mustang EV back in Pasadena.

This left me with the unsavory notion of public charging, which for you combustible-engine types, can be like navigating the Strait of Hormuz. 

First you have to find an available machine. Then you have to get there before anyone else does. Then you have to hope it works. And then you have to start praying that it's a compatible Non-Tesla Supercharger, lest you sit in your car and wait 9 hours while sweating off all of September's carbohydrate calories.

The gods or the Flying Spaghetti Monsters have shined on me and located a Tesla supercharger, compatible with my EV, that added close to 200 miles of range in less than 45 minutes. And that oasis was near a Starbucks. With misters. 

Sure Palms Springs has the heat, but it's a satisfying-getting-shit-done heat.

Goodbye All

 

My dearest friends and family on the coast of the beautiful Atlantic, home of our nation's beloved capital and that great Gotham City that sits in all its glory surrounded by the Hudson, East River, and the Harlem River and my beloved Bronx, where I came into to this world 3 score and 8 years plus ago, in the shadow of Yankee Stadium.

Time is of the essence and I must write this missive in haste. 

As you know by now, General Stable Genius has made an exceedingly generous offer to the enemy, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who stand poised to unleash their evil and satanic forces upon us at any moment.

At a rally in Alabama, at the Buford T. Bodean Junior High School, our fearless leader who has once again assured us of his High IQ and his direct lineage to longtime professor at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in Math, Chemical and Nuclear, has proffered Los Angeles and San Diego, essentially all of Southern California and its 20+ million souls to our pesky foes in the Fertile Crescent.

One must wonder, perhaps in desperation for a glimmer of hope, how a country whose military and weaponry have been "totally decimated" and who have been "defeated strongly" at least 38 times since the conflagration had started way back in February, on the very day of my aforementioned birth, would carry out such a bold offensive attack. 

But who are we to question our leader, our very High IQ leader, who went to the Empire State's most expensive military school and captained the senior bowling team and their clutch comeback win over the Skaneatelas Strikers in 1963.

If vaporizing the very best of California from Castaic Lake in the north to the radish and onion growing fields of Imperial Valley to the south, and thinning the herd of 25 million citizens, including my former MethHead neighbor, is what it takes to end this "Small Potatoes Excursion" and bring the price of hamburger meat to pre-2024 level, then who am I , or we, to stand in the way President Vonshitzenpantz and the ushering in of America's Golden Age.

USA, USA, USA!!!

I loved my job

My daughters don't love their jobs. I hear about their travails and their ups and downs and feel compelled to remind them, it's a job. That's the way of the world for 98.4% of the planet. 

With the benefit of hindsight, I was lucky enough to be in that rarified 1.6% who did love their job. With every passing day of not getting paid to do what I did, I'm learning how lucky I was. In retrospect I'd go so far as to say I hit the vocational lottery jackpot.

I'm not talking about the shitty jobs at the beginning. And there were plenty. From washing pots and pans in a hospital kitchen. To driving a forklift at a warehouse in Compton. And even suit and tieing it as an Accounts Receivable clerk at my father's crappy office near the Meat District in NYC.

But when I became a copywriter, more specifically a copywriter at Chiat/Day (pre-Holding Company nonsense), arguably one of the top five creative agencies in the world, I was in heaven. 

If only I had been wise enough to realize it.

My sagacious friend Jim and I have made a habit of exchanging Gratitude Lists, at least 3-4 times a week. If there is one constant thruline, it is that we both managed to make a living doing what we love best -- writing. (though this piece hardly reflects anything remarkable or noteworthy.)

We are both equally grateful that we, as most writers do, discovered this path at a very early age, during our formative years. It felt predestined. As if anything or anybody (like my father) were going to stop it. I imagine it's a similar calling experienced by priests, rabbis, or imams. But without that silly Flying Spaghetti Monster stuff. 

Jim is now painting. And I'm...well floundering.

I suppose I can keep churning out these blog posts, but can't feeling there's something else I need to do. 

Maybe it's pursuing my athletic career as a senior swimmer. Or maybe it's something I could do without 3000 meters of swimming every morning before the sun rises and can be accomplished from the ergonomic comfort of my well worn Herman Miller chair.

I hope it's the latter.

  

  

Medically Engineered™

It has come to this. As an empty nester who often chews too fast, shouting out Jeopardy answers to no one in particular, I have decided to make a $40 investment into a device I hope I never actually need.

This was not the case a couple of years ago. 

Ms. Muse and I had accepted an incredibly generous invitation from our friends, the Gelbergs, to attend a show at the Music Center in DTLA. I believe it was for Annie, but I could be wrong as most Broadway-type musicals sound alike to me. And I don't remember anything anymore.

But I do recall the meal we had prior to the show. Mostly because at some point, while gobbling up my thick, medium rare NY steak, I was convinced it would be my last meal.

I would tell you what we were talking about but my hearing went dead. As did my peripheral vision. My breathing grew shallower and shallower. And the world around me felt like it was closing. 

A meaty chunk had lodged itself in my breathing tube and the oxygen shortage had already affected my brain function because I didn't want to interrupt the conversation or bother any of the other patrons at this fine upstanding restaurant.

So I bit my tongue and pushed my seat away from the table. Something was very wrong. And it wasn't the soggy asparagus. Somehow, perhaps because of my excessive time on the Peloton or the aerobic miles spent in the pool, I was able, by shear force and my desire to see what was for dessert, to evict the Grade A beefy assailant.

Years ago, I wrote a headline for some steakhouse restaurant chain we were pitching that read: If God Didn't Want Us to Eat Beef He Wouldn't Have Made Cows So Easy to Catch.

Perhaps this was the universe paying me back. 

I have since eschewed the NY Steak from my diet. And as seen above, taken the necessary precautions. 

There are many ways to exit this world. Lying on my living room floor, in one of my CostCo wifebeater T-shirts (3 for $9.99), the victim of insufficient mastication, is an indignity I am determined not to suffer.