I’m your typical old American white guy – I don’t dance.

I can appreciate it as an art form, applaud wildly at the end of a well-executed ballet and am capable of forcing a smile when the neighbors’ kids show off their latest attempts at dance steps.

But on the whole, the less dancing I see or am forced to take part in, the better the world is for it.

For years I’ve taken guff from the wife, who would just absolutely adore taking dance lessons and having her husband take her out dancing. Personally, I’d just as soon kiss a chainsaw running on “max high.”

Ironically, I’m a fan of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire movies and can truly appreciate their hoofing talents.

However, when it comes to having to put up with dancing as if it were running on a continuous loop, I’ll side with the elder townspeople in “Footloose.”

Of course, lately, in typical bend-over-and-take-it-up-the-wazoo fashion, we non-boogieing folk have been inundated with more dancing than anyone should have to endure in a lifetime.

It’s as if “Dance Fever” was impregnated by “Soul Train” and the progeny was cast as an extra in “Dirty Dancing.”

When I’m not seeing ads for “Dancing with the Stars,” or “So You Think You Can Dance” or “Dancing with the Stars Who Like to Think They can Dance” or all of that nonsensical contest crapola, ad nauseum, I’m being barraged by one commercial after another that feature – what else – dancers.

There’s one in which everyone and his dog is dancing their asses off, doing flips and handsprings and flopping on the ground and running up walls and I almost had a coronary just watching the damn thing.

For about the first 300 times I saw it I never knew what the commercial was for because I was sweating so profusely just watching these goings-on I had to turn it off. It turns out it’s for some dot-com company that buys used cars.

So, naturally, it makes sense to advertise it by enlisting hundreds of Alvin Ailey Dance Troupe rejects to simultaneously throw fits in front of a camera.

Kinda makes me want to sell my used car, but only after break dancing on the sidewalk for half an hour.

Better yet is another ad, this one for Nissan (and I actually had to watch this tripe recently just so I’d know what car company it was -the sacrifices I make for my millions of readers), that features some suave and debonair couple going through their elegant dancing paces all over town, waltzing through a parking lot and pirouetting on a city street before sashaying out of the way of an oncoming tractor trailer.

I might briefly consider shopping for a Nissan if Fred and Ginger wound up kissing the truck’s grill, but since that didn’t transpire I guess my chances of joining the Nissan-shopping market are zip and zero.

Once again, I don’t have the slightest clue what these Arthur Murray dropouts have to do with the quality of the automobile they’re shilling for, but these days, it seems, as long as you’re dancing some schmuck somewhere is watching - and preparing to vote on line.

Then, of course, you have the recent movement afoot (pun intended) to add ballroom dancing to the slate of the Olympic Games.

You know I’m a potential captive audience for that, especially considering they’ve already put the kibosh on such sports trivialities as baseball, softball and wrestling.

Yes sir, nothing like the cutthroat, live on the edge, faster than the speed of light world of the ballroom dance.

My competitive juices are spilling all over me just thinking about it.

Folks, it’s freakin’ dancing, as if the world needed more. You do it at proms and the occasional wedding and then you leave the rest to the 37 or so background dancers of just about any female singing act in the world.

I don’t want to see it in ads; I don’t want to see it as a competition.

And most of all, I don’t want to do it. And I’m not alone.

Don’t believe me?  Just ask any old white guy who ignores the desperate pleas of his wife.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the “I’m Number One and Nobody Else is Even in the Top 10 Department” comes this item:

A family of four – Mom, Pop and sons aged eight and four – were on a flight from Denver to Baltimore and all was just peachy keen, sunshine and lollipops.

That is, until the in-flight movie began.

The movie, a PG-13-rated film starring Morgan Freeman entitled, “Alex Cross,” somehow did not go over too well with mom and dad.

The duo, reportedly, were aghast at some of the film’s opening scenes, which presumably featured way too much of either of the two best things in movies, sex or violence, and asked the flight attendants to turn off the monitors showing the movie that were closest to their toddlers. The attendants responded by telling mom and pop that crew members had neither the authority nor the ability to turn off the movie.

Unfortunately, they also didn’t have the authority to tell these two nimrods to shut the hell up, sit down and look at the passing clouds.

Now, going on the assumption that mumsy and dadsy felt there was something objectionable in the film and that their two obviously pure and overly sheltered tots should not be subjected to it, the best option would have been for the two disgruntled parents to mumble to themselves, punch an armrest or two and begin diverting their kids’ attention from the film by, perhaps, giving them some attention.

Naturally, mom and dad decided to ignore Option A and instead morphed into the biggest pains in the ass since GEICO began making TV commercials.

Offended that their pleas to the flight attendants proved fruitless, the parents of the year went to the plane’s captain looking for satisfaction. Once more, they were rightfully ignored.

About an hour later, the remaining passengers, whose only transgression was boarding a plane with Mr. and Mrs. Pay Attention to Me, received an announcement that the flight was being diverted to Chicago.

Bottom line, the protective duo believed it was the airline’s duty to play parent, instead of performing that duty themselves.

How many times, as parents, do you find yourselves and your young children in delicate or uncomfortable situations? Now, how many of those times are you actually moved to take action?

Even though it might be the right thing to do, do you offer to disembowel the buffoon in a crowded room who just happened to step on your seven-year-old’s foot? Do you run through the Electronics Dept. at Sears, knocking over customers and screaming to have the display TVs turned off just because they’re showing Rambo wasting a few commies?

Chances are, unless you’re reading this from Cellblock Six, you’ve dealt with these situations by walking away, diverting your children’s attention and going about with your life.

That’s what Mom and Pop Perfection should have done.

Instead, a plane full of innocent travelers wound up adding a couple of extra hours of inconvenience to what should have been a by-the-numbers flight from one city to another. Mr. and Mrs. Listen to Me or Else were booked on a different flight.

In the aftermath, the airline did what one would expect in today’s politically correct world - vow to inspect their in-flight repertoire of films, while the two douche bags who created this tempest in a teapot groused about the plane’s captain abusing his power by diverting the flight.

Had these two chuckleheaded parents condescended to actually do something parental, about 40 or so airplane passengers would have had a peaceful, uneventful ride through the friendly skies instead of a bad, one-act fiasco while on their way to the wrong city.

 

 

 

Remember when fast food was fast food and not expected to help you live to see your 100^th birthday?

McDonald’s, that bastion of better living through caloric intake, is the latest to suffer an identity crisis, and has declared that its Egg McMuffin will no longer include eggs containing yolks.

From now on, Ronald’s version of the breakfast burger is going to be yolkless, which means it drops from 300 calories to 250, and contains less cholesterol.

This is just the latest brain fart from boobs who are operating under the delusion that fast food should somehow be healthy.

And that just ain’t the way it’s supposed to be.

If you’ve ever driven about 10 miles in any direction, you’re certain to have discovered a vast array of restaurants, from greasy spoons to silver spoons, any number of places to attach the feed bag whether you’re clad in cut-off jeans or an Armani tux. And in your travels, when you choose to park your butt in a fast-food nook, you know what’s on the menu. And it isn’t Duckling a L’Orange, red-skinned potatoes and baby limas.

It’s called fast food because it’s delivered relatively quickly at a price that even folks working in the local bowling alley can afford. And from Day One of the emergence of the fast-food restaurant no one considered the cut of meat they were getting or the amount of animal fat it was cooked in. Like bovines to the trough, the public dug in and was grateful it could chow down without the formality of a dinner table (if so desired), and at a cost that would not require a second mortgage.

And everyone waddled home happily.

Ah, but then came the age of the dual-provider household, when both dad and mom were required to work in order to make ends meet and where once-commonplace activities such as family meals had become as rare as cathedral bell-ringers.

The last thing either mom and dad wanted to do after a day’s work was cook a meal, so little Bobby and little Mary were carted off to the fast-food restaurant for dinner, or whatever meal fit the time of day.

And because fast-food items such as French fries and chicken fingers turned out to be such kids pleasers, little Bobby and Mary not only didn’t complain about fast food, they clamored for more of it.

It didn’t take long before kids were willingly gorging themselves on food items that no one ever proclaimed would guarantee health and long life. And before you could say, “Oprah Winfrey,” 200-pound seventh-graders were the norm and threatening the support beams beneath school hallways.

“How horrible,” the parents, suddenly rationalized, refusing to look in the mirror.

But still not willing to take the time to actually prepare healthy alternatives to the fast-food circuit, parents decided to do a reenactment of the temperance movement and toss their guilt-ridden darts at the restaurants themselves.

“The food we’re forcing our kids to eat must be healthy,” they screamed. And so, armed with all sorts of dietary facts and figures yanked off the internet, they began their assault on the fast-food troughs.

As a result, perfectly good Chicken McNuggets, once consisting of both white and dark meat, became “improved” and morphed into tasteless, all-white meat substitutes for cotton balls that flat-out required flavored sauces to be remotely edible, while salads and low-fat, fill-in-the-blanks became fast-foot menu staples.

At no point did the critics of fast food consider suggesting that parents actually cook healthy meals for their children or at the very least suggest taking them to restaurants that don’t include a 911 number as part of its dinner menu.  And under no circumstances will they encourage parents to, perhaps, deny their kids trips to Burger King.

No, they’ve decided to fight this disease of their own making by disinfecting the hospital.

And so those of us who enjoy eating the slop and grease of the fast food we grew up knowing and loving, with no concern about caloric content or percentage of fat within, get stuck eating bland crap that’s good for your heart but that has all the appeal of moldy cheese.

If I want to eat healthy, I know where to go, and it ain’t to McDonald’s.

Perhaps, instead of insisting that restaurants that never proclaimed to cook healthy begin cooking healthy, they might insist that people who proclaim to be parents begin acting like parents.

In the meantime, pass me another yolkless egg, or a piece of all-white chicken or a burger that is made with all-lean beef.

I feel like eating healthy today.

 

 

 

 

 

Nancy Pelosi is a horse’s ass and example No. 2,627,188 of why the rich should be individually flogged at least twice a month.

Here we are, the general public, the great unwashed, the scratching post for those One-Percenters who believe with every fiber of their beings that having 281 billion dollars is preferable to having 280 billion and would happily squash some Mom and Pop store to add on that extra billion, and we’re about to become poorer.

Yeah, I know, stop the presses, the poor are getting dumped on again – please pinch me so I can awaken from this mind-numbing, once-in-a-lifetime event.

But you know what campers, this time we’re not sliding down Excrement Alley solo.

This time we’re going to have company.

Yep, if sequestration rears its ugly head in our general direction, and we seem to be flying toward it faster than Daddy Warbucks can recite the account number of his Swiss bank account, we’re all going to feel the pinch – even, and wait for it, we may never see this phrase again in our lifetimes - the rich are going to suffer, too.

Keep in mind, we’re talking about people who tip bellhops the amount of cash most of us would nail our tongues to the table for, but yes, some of their incomes will be negatively altered.

This brings us back to Ms. Pelosi.

But first, a brief Mouseketeer Roll Call.

Pelosi is the House Minority Leader, who, like most government officials couldn’t spell “Poor” if you spotted her the “P” and the “O.” Good ol’ helpful ,down-to-earth, just-plain-folk Nance got wind of this sequester thing and was aghast, at least as aghast as a rich government official with a real estate mogul for a husband can get.

Nance thinks this idea of trimming her $174,000 a year Congressional salary, along with the $174,000 salaries of all her fellow members of Congress, is just downright insulting.

“I don’t think we should do it,” Nance said while contemplating which house servant she might have to let go. “I think we should respect the work we do. I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.”

Now, I don’t know what a lot of that means, but it sounds to me as if Nance actually believes that on the human Respect-O-Meter, she and her Congressional cronies are head-and-shoulders above the folks she purports to represent. They are better than us.

In other words, we should agree that we couldn’t survive without their wisdom and leadership and we should be genuflecting with our noses in the general vicinity of their southern-most orifice.

How dare her hallowed position be insulted by the thought of lowering the numbers on her paycheck.

Now, forget for a minute that $174,000 is four or five times more than the average American makes in a year, and let’s just focus on what perks Congressional members are entitled to just because they’re Congressional members.

Let’s start with the most comprehensive healthcare program imaginable, 75 percent of which is paid by us scratching posts. Their government pension? It’s better than any pension you can find on the planet, and we pay 80 percent of that.

Life insurance? It’s so good you probably get paid if you and your family stay in perfect health - and we foot the bill for one third of that.

Oh yeah, they get to travel anywhere and everywhere in the world when they so desire – and they do so free of charge (of course it’s not free for us post-scratchin’ taxpayers).

Cost of living raises, you know those things that haven’t existed for the working man since Hope and Crosby were making road pictures, members of Congress get ‘em religiously, every first of the year. And none of this graft even includes the sporadic windfalls from lobbyists and special interest groups with which they line their collective pockets on a regular basis.

Essentially, hundreds of millions of dollars go into the federal budget every year just to pay for congressional perks – all for a collection of dickheads who can’t agree on what year of merlot to sip with lunch, let alone anything that might make life better for the working American.

Their behavior follows the Rich Person Playbook to the letter – get rich and make sure no one else gets richer but you.

Our Gal Nance is at the head of the line when it comes to Rich Person etiquette. She’d just as soon vote herself a pay raise as do something productive for us minions.

And by her figurin’  we should be grateful she’s alive and looking out for our best interests.

How dare she have to take a pay cut.

 

 

 

 

 

In a society where money is placed above all else, considered even more vital than getting laid, you just knew this was a foregone inevitability.

And it’s about time.

Some angel named Megan Thode, a University of Pennsylvania graduate student, is suing Lehigh University and a professor of that same institution, for a grade she believes was unfairly given to her, a grade she says prevented her from becoming a licensed therapist, with its accompanying mega-salary.

Thode claims that grade, a C-plus, prevented her from filling the educational requirement necessary to advance to the next academic stage toward becoming a therapist.

Thode, or should we just call her Sue, says this unfair grade has cost her $1.3 million, and she wants some satisfaction.

Now, as you would expect, Sue is claiming all sorts of prejudice was heaped upon her by the prof, saying she was penalized for speaking out in favor of same-sex marriage, among other things.

The prof, meanwhile, stands by the grade, borne out of a score of “zero” she gave Sue for class participation. Prof said Sue often acted like a complete ass, shouting out repeatedly in class and even breaking out in tears on occasion.

Should Sue win her suit, and in a land where true justice is handed out as often as teenagers clean their rooms, she’s got a good shot, I’ll skip the Viagra that day. In fact, I’ll be that very conspicuous old white guy pogo-ing down the street, sans pogo stick.

Just think of it, retroactively I can gather so much moolah I can have Warren Buffet licking my Sketchers, after he chauffeurs me around town on my late-night champagne and hooker runs.

Let’s see, that “C” I got in Fiction Writing back in college, that was a complete travesty. I did all the required work. True, I didn’t read a single textbook before taking the final, but what difference does that make? I was made a victim by that professor, who had it in for me because I chose to play pinball at the local “Hoagie Heaven”  instead of attending his class.

You talk about being wronged, my case makes Rosa Parks look like a spoiled buttinski. Because I was denied the “A” I so richly deserved in that class, I was denied that interview at the “New York Times.” That, undoubtedly, contributed to my not being considered for that opening at “Newsweek” that prevented me from fulfilling my lifelong goal of covering those African tribes for “National Geographic.”

Hey, if I had been treated fairly, I could, as we speak, be checking out all the naked breasts imaginable, and make Scrooge McDuck’s bank account look like the savings of a schmuck working the midnight shift at Pizza Hut. If it wasn’t for that lackey pretender of a college professor, I could have been a contender – in Africa, up to my Nikon in uncovered female flesh.

I’ll bet that unfeeling scum is sipping his retirement margaritas somewhere, still chuckling at the misery he has put me through.

I want some retroactive justice. No, I demand it.

Of course, all of these delicious dreams mean nothing if the judicial system drops the ball and denies Sue her just desserts.

All I need is some typical American justice, and I’ll be playing the real-life version of “Monopoly,” complete with monocle, as I should be.

Finally, after all these years of being the sucker that was taught being a good, well-behaved citizen and working hard (well, most of the time) resulted in a comfortable and blissful life, I can join the ever growing list of half-speed, ne’er-do-wells who’ve made their fortune the American way – by suing somebody’s ass.

Megan Thode, you’re my freakin’ hero.

You go, girl.

 

If you want a good laugh these days it’s not necessary to watch “Comedy Central,” “FOX News” or even an interview with Ted Nugent.

All you need do is spend about 10 minutes on an internet news site.

Because it’s necessary to continually grab the viewer’s attention, and the average Y Generation slug – their target audience - has the attention span of a Bounty paper towel, these sites, whether they be AOL or MSN or Bing or Bong or whatever brain candy that passes for a news service in this day and age, find it necessary to change what they deem news about every 15 minutes.

Considering the dubious source, every once in a great while, believe it or not, there appears a link worth clicking on, for subjects like devastating volcanoes, new national legislation being pondered or the daily massacre by a firearm.

But the vast majority of the crapola that appears on these sites is just that, garbage that even a J.P. Mascaro truck would drive past. Things like the dating habits of reality-show skanks, the dating habits of royal skanks and the dating habits of any skanks deemed famous come immediately to mind. There are piles of cow dung in the middle of a 700-acre spread in Wyoming that are more worthy of interest than the latest celebrity “baby bump” and who’s boffing who and what the Kardashian family has to say about it.

Admittedly, it’s rare, but every so often you come across a nugget that makes the whole process worthwhile, one of those under the radar items that are not only entertaining, but funnier than a Republican Party primary debate.

For example, and even a jaded old coot like me wind up pissing my pants over this stuff, there is some patron of the arts who decided to spring for a replica statue of Michelangelo’s famous “David” statue and place it in a park in the burg of Okuizumo, Japan.

Now, for those of you who actually consider the reality-show skanks newsworthy, here’s a small history lesson – “David” is one of the world’s great pieces of art, and I mean actual art, not to be confused with the latest Quentin Tarantino movie. The problem, apparently, in the eyes of the folks in ol’ Okuizumo is that “David” is a sculpture of a naked man with his penis clearly and largely exposed.

 Now, to the shock of absolutely no one, the 15,000 residents of this tea leaf of a town are requesting, nay, demanding that Davey find himself some underwear – and quickly.

Yepper, the folks of Japan, who once insisted Godzilla be given an honorary Oscar and who happen to wake up in one of the world’s infamous hubs of trashy porn so hardcore it would make Jenna Jameson lose her luscious cookies, are insisting on finding a large pair of Fruit of the Looms to cover up one of the world’s great artistic treasures.

I’m telling you, boys and girls, you can fry your brain for hours and not make stuff like this up.

Here you are, blessed with the rare opportunity to see, albeit a replica of, one of the great works of art ever created, and your first inclination, the first chestnut of a thought in your mind, is to cover it up.

I guess these jugheads’ first reaction to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon would be to trim them, then to shear off the tops of the Pyramids for exceeding the town’s height ordinance, but not before  insisting on crocheting a suitable shawl to cover up the Mona Lisa’s cleavage.

It’s art, folks, not an artifact from the adult film classic, “Field of Wet Dreams.”

The reason given by these pillars of the community for dumping on a great piece of sculpture is that the subject of the statue has his genitalia exposed, and not only is that against the law in Japan, this heinous act is going to corrupt little Takahiro and Natsuki and all the other young ‘uns of Okuizumo.

Now, this is something that’s always baffled me about self-proclaimed, puritanical do-gooders, no matter what neck of the woods they insist on saving. I actually can understand being averse to the naked human form, if said form or forms are entwined in an act of passion. They may result in questions from five-year olds, who may not be mature enough to understand the answers.

But the solitary human form?

How, may I ask, can the same parts of the human anatomy that these precious little tykes see attached to themselves as they strip off their jammies every morning be considered unwatchable?

If they are, then does that mean that their own bodies are “dirty,” and not to be looked at?

And you wonder why there’s a skirt-grabbing pervert on every street corner?

Meanwhile, back in Okuizumo, there’s a mad search underway for oversized undergarments.

I wonder if anyone has thought of rummaging through Godzilla’s cedar chest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For years I’ve told anyone who would listen (and their numbers are rapidly dwindling) that the only common sense left in the world is the amount I see in my paycheck every other week (common “cents” for those knotheads still scratching their noggins – and geez, folks, I can’t keep explaining these things).

There certainly is very little left anywhere else.

It used to be – and we’re not talking pre-Industrial Revolution here – that there was such a thing as folks who actually acknowledged that guns kill people, and that it might not be a bad idea to make guns and other weapons a little more difficult to obtain than, say, a gallon of milk.

These days?

Ho hum, 26 people, including 20 children, snuffed before their lives begin by some scumbag carrying (drum roll, please) shotguns.

Now, back when it existed, common sense would suggest that many of the people tucked away in body bags at an elementary school in Connecticut would be alive today if said ass wipe wouldn’t have been armed with deadly (are there any other kind?) weapons.

These days?

Oh, another tragedy? Just count up the bodies and ratings points and turn the channel, there’ll be another massacre coming up soon enough.

Anesthetized? Christ, we’re lobotomized. Every single person capable of producing even the smallest thought in their head has to know what guns do. That is their purpose, the reason they exist. Wouldn’t it be, ahem, common sense to make sure that as few people as possible had them in their possession?

Instead, you can bet your private parts the NRA and all those other Ted Nugent-type morons are circling the wagons, standing firm behind the second amendment, which when adopted in 1791 gave the militia the right to keep and bear arms, but since has been amended to allow even non-military personnel to pull triggers at their leisure.

Let’s again turn to our pal common sense to reconstruct how such an amendment would even exist.

Hmmm, let’s see, 1791? According to the wayback machine, that would be around the time the bulk of the general population resided in log cabins in the middle of nowhere (kind of like modern-day West Virginia). In order to do such mundane things as chopping firewood, picking a few berries or answering nature’s call, Mr. Colonial Settler had better be armed, lest he run afoul of Mr. and Mrs. Grizzly.

Gun. Protection. Living to see tomorrow sans bear or wolf claws up your ass.

Check.

Perhaps I don’t get out as often as I used to, but I can’t recall the last time I was confronted by a wild beast when I found it necessary to piss on a tree. Kinda expect most wild and woolies would have a whole lot more to do with their four-legged lives than terrorize some poor old white coot urinating in their woods.

Common sense, then, would suggest that most citizens in today’s world would not require slingshots let alone some of the arsenals full of assault weapons some jerk-offs find it necessary to store in their gun vaults.

I’m not a hunter and never will be, but I’m really not against the self-called sportsmen who can’t get a full erection until hunting season rolls around. I’d prefer to appreciate the beauty of nature rather than blow off its head, but that’s just how us pansy liberals are.

I do, however, think it’s common sense that if someone comes into a store to purchase an instrument that can end a life with a simple finger movement, it might not be a bad idea to do an extensive check on that potential buyer, and perhaps make them wait a while before handing them an Uzi. In other words, make it difficult to become a gun owner. In some states it’s harder to vote than it is to be a gun owner, right Mr. Kasich?

But for a lot of reasons that’s not what happens these days. Instead, in the aftermath of the tragedy in Connecticut there will be just as many people screaming for fewer gun restrictions as there will be for tighter ones – even with 20 not-yet-cold kids lying in the ground.

So stay tuned, folks. There’ll be more mass murders, more homes, schools and movie theaters shot full of holes to come. Guns are made for one purpose. And whether it’s justified, self-defense or just some wackadoo who didn’t get enough momma’s milk wielding a weapon, more innocents are going to be dead.

That’s a fact.

And common sense would suggest that CNN, MSNBC and all the others can’t wait.