Joke of the Day (Edwin Newman, on a Method for Dealing with Rainy Weather)

“These are The Times that dry men’s soles.”—TV newscaster and language maven Edwin Newman (1919-2010), on using newspapers to absorb moisture from wet shoes, quoted by Margalit Fox, “Edwin Newman, 91, Newsman, Defender of English and Partisan of Puns, Is Dead,” The New York Times, Sept. 16, 2010

I loved this pun anyway, but using it in this space felt mandatory today, considering that this is the third straight day of prolonged precipitation up by me in the Northeast.

TV Quote of the Day (‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ In Which a High-Level Leaker Is Not Just Caught Out But Embarrassed)

[Sir Humphrey Appleby makes several highly indiscreet, "off-the-record" statements regarding government policy on unemployment and the media during an interview for a BBC radio documentary. implying the government lacks courage and that the true, harsh nature of unemployment policy is hidden. A tape of this outtake is sent to Humphrey, and the Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, obtains it, using it to blackmail Humphrey, turning the tables on his often-manipulative Cabinet Secretary.]

James Hacker [played by Paul Eddington, back turned in picture]: “How did your broadcast go?”

Sir Humphrey Appleby [played by Nigel Hawthorne, facing in picture] [quickly]: “Oh, very well, very well.”

Hacker [smiling, waiting to pounce]: “What did you say?”

Sir Humphrey: “Oh, nothing in particular. I think I pointed out some of the difficulties in allocating responsibilities as between [waving hands quickly] politicians and civil servants.”

Hacker: “But you were discreet?”

Sir Humphrey [more nervously]: “Why do you ask?”

Hacker: “Were you or weren't you?”

Sir Humphrey: “Yes!”

Hacker: “Yes you were or yes you weren’t?”

Sir Humphrey: “Yes.”

Hacker [prodding, with a cunning smile]: “Humphrey…”

Sir Humphrey: “Oh yes. Well, didn’t you expect me to be discreet?”

Hacker: “Well, yes, of course.”

Sir Humphrey [quickly trying to conclude this]: “Well, there you are, then!”

Hacker: “Well, that's all right, isn’t it?” [Sir Humphrey relaxes and smiles, thinking he’s escaped danger.]

Sir Humphrey: “Why do you ask, Prime Minister?” [He starts to sit down at last.]

Hacker: “Well, it's just that the BBC sent me a tape…” [Sir Humphrey shoots out of his seat, alarmed.]—Yes, Prime Minister, Season 2, Episode 8, “The Tangled Web,” original air date Jan. 28, 1988, teleplay by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, directed by Sydney Lotterby

I wonder if a variation of this scene occurred recently on this side of the Atlantic Ocean? You know how the Trump Administration used a Politico story to justify denying it access to the White House grounds—all because of it having allegedly “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods”?

Well, guess who the (once anonymous) source of that story was? None other than J.D. Vance, who, according to this Daily Beast article, wanted to put a positive spin on ongoing peace negotiations with Iran.

It all goes to show that when it comes to secrets divulged, Washington leaks from the top. Vance would just be the latest member of what the late great syndicated satirist Art Buchwald, back in March 1983, referred to as “the National Council of Office Leakers,” which meets weekly “and is chaired by a very high White House source.”

TV Quote of the Day (‘Maude,’ Giving a Quick English Usage Lesson to Her Husband)

[Walter Findlay doesn’t like his wife’s new male friend.]

Walter Findlay [played by Bill Macy]: “Maude, we are not having dinner with that guy tonight! I told you, I can't stand him! Guy gets some special pleasure reminding me that I didn't graduate high school. Like last time in front of everybody, giving me that lecture on the difference between 'infer' and 'imply,' as if I didn't know.”

Maude Findlay [played by Bea Arthur]: “Come on now, Walter, he just gets impatient with ninnies who constantly misuse those words.”

Walter: “Are you inferring I'm a ninny?”

Maude: “Of course not, sweetheart. I'm implying you're a ninny; you were inferring.”—Maude, Season 3, Episode 12, “Maude's New Friend,” original air date Dec. 2, 1974, teleplay by Rod Parker and Elliot Shoenman, directed by Hal Cooper

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Licorice Pizza,’ As a Sister Fights With a Sibling)

Alana [played by Alana Haim, pictured] [during a fight with her sister]: “Este, don't you even look at me! Don't you even look at me! You're always looking at me!”

Este [played by Este Haim]: “Oh, my...”

Alana: “What are you doing?”

Este: “I didn't even say anything!”

Alana: “What are you doing? What are you thinking, huh? ‘I'm Este. I work for mom and dad. I'm perfect! I'm a real estate agent. Alana doesn't have her life together. Alana brings home stupid boyfriends all the time.’"

Este: “I mean...”

Alana: “I knew it! I knew that was what you were thinking. You're always thinking things, you thinker! You thinker! You think things!”— Licorice Pizza (2021), written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Movie Quote of the Day (‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,’ on ‘A Man With Ideas’)

J. Pierpont (Ponty) Finch [played by Robert Morse, right]: “Sir, if you had a man with ideas….”

J. B. Biggley [played by Rudy Vallee, left]: “Ideas? That's what I look for. I keep hiring a lot of fellows who are supposed to have brilliant ideas, but not one of them will ever do what I tell him.” — How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), based on the novel by Shepherd Mead, adapted into a Pulitzer and Tony-winning musical with book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, movie written and directed by David Swift

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Simpsons,’ on the Ingredient Behind ‘Bart the Genius’)

[After cheating on an IQ test, Bart Simpson is assigned to a school for gifted and talented students. His father speculates on what led to this outcome and how it might be duplicated within the family.]

Homer Simpson [voice of Dan Castellaneta]: “Frosty Krusty Flakes are what got him [Bart] where he is today. It could be one of these chemicals here that makes him so smart. Lisa, maybe you should try some of these.”

Marge Simpson [voice of Julie Kavner]: “Homer!”

Homer: “I'm just saying, why not have two geniuses in the family? Sort of a spare in case Bart's brain blows up.” —The Simpsons, Season 1, Episode 2, “Bart the Genius,” original air date Jan. 14, 1990, teleplay by Jon Vitti, directed by David Silverman

Quote of the Day (P. G. Wodehouse, on a Desperate Young Man)

“A young man with dark circles under his eyes was propping himself up against a penny-in-the-slot machine. An undertaker, passing at that moment, would have looked at this young man sharply, scenting business. So would a buzzard.” — English humorist P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975), The Luck of the Bodkins (1935)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Desperate Housewives,’ In Which Gaby Assesses Her Husband’s Life Change)

Gaby Solis [played by Eva Longoria] to her suddenly socially conscious husband: “Carlos, you help the poor and downtrodden... a group with a very flexible schedule.”— Desperate Housewives, Season 8, Episode 23, “Finishing the Hat,” original air date May 13, 2012, teleplay by Marc Cherry, Jason Ganzel, and Brian Tanen, directed by David Grossman

Joke of the Day (Tina Fey, on a New Form of Plastic Surgery)

“There's a new procedure I'm doing a lot where they freeze your fat off you, then make it into a whipped dessert, and you eat it again.” — American actress and screenwriter Tina Fey, quoted by Dan Snierson, “Tina and Amy Boss Us Around (And You Love It!)”, Entertainment Weekly, Dec. 20, 2013

Joke of the Day (Oscar Levant, on His Morning Routine)

“First I brush my teeth and then I sharpen my tongue.”—American pianist, actor, author, and savage wit Oscar Levant (1905-1972), asked about his morning routine, quoted by Erskine Johnson, “Erskine Johnson’s Hollywood Today,” Santa Cruz Evening News, Sept. 26, 1940

TV Quote of the Day (‘Family Ties,’ As a Young Lady Tells Alex What She Did for Love)

Jane [played by Michelle Meyrink]: “Alex, I've had a desperate, passionate yearning for you ever since I was a little kid….I used to watch you across the playground when you were playing with the big kids. And in high school when you ran for Student Council President, I voted for you. 300 times. I'm sorry you didn't win.”

Alex Keaton [played by Michael J. Fox]: “Well, you did all you could.”—Family Ties, Season 3, Episode 11, “Don't Kiss Me, I'm Only the Messenger,” original air date Nov. 29, 1984, teleplay by Ruth Bennett, directed by Will Mackenzie

I wouldn't be the least surprised if Mike Lindell is convinced that Jane voted in the GOP gubernatorial primary for his opponent, Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, and she got all her friends to do likewise.

After all, Jane already had voted as a youngster for a Republican, Alex Keaton. With 40 years and lots of practice, she could have put her candidate of choice over the top at last!

TV Quote of the Day (‘Frasier,’ Calling in a Marker To Get Time Away)

[Niles refuses to sub for Frasier on his radio show during his vacation.]

Frasier Crane [played by Kelsey Grammer]: “Very well. You leave me no alternative but to call in my marker.”

Niles Crane [played by David Hyde Pierce] [nervously]: “What marker?”

Frasier [ominously]: “Oh, I think you know.”

Niles: “You wouldn't.”

Frasier: “I would.”

Niles: “You can't!”

Frasier: “I will.”

Niles: “That was three years ago!”

Frasier: “I don't recall there being any statute of limitations. I distinctly recall that when you asked me to go out with Maris's sister, you said that you would ‘owe me one forever.’”

Niles: “But you only spent one evening with Brie. That hardly compares with what you're asking me to endure.”

Frasier: “Oh? Shall I refresh your memory? Midway through the opera her ermine muff began to tremble. As it turned out she had used it to smuggle in her adorably incontinent Chihuahua. Just as I thought we'd reached the low point of the evening I suddenly felt a sandpaper tongue licking my earlobe. Alas it did not belong to little Hervé! Fortunately my shriek coincided with the on-stage murder of Gondolfo! Roz will expect you on Monday at two.”

Niles: “For your information, Brie had a very tough row to hoe growing up. It's not easy going through life with one nostril.”

Frasier: “Did I mention she had a cold that night?”

Niles: “Monday at two it is.”—Frasier, Season 4, Episode 5, “Head Game,” original air date Nov. 12, 1996, teleplay by Rob Greenberg, directed by David Lee

TV Quote of the Day (‘Soap,’ on Reluctance to Yield to the Will of the People)

[Burt has just received the election recount results.]

Burt [played by Richard Mulligan]: “Prentiss got caught stuffing the ballot boxes, so I won, I am the sheriff.”

[Everyone congratulates Burt.]

Danny [played by Ted Wass]: “How 'bout that? Sheriff. And I get to be deputy, right, Burt? Me, deputy, me. Please?”

Bob [played by Jay Johnson]: “I'm gonna be the deputy.”

Danny: “You are not!”

Bob: “Am too!”

[Danny and Bob argue before Mary breaks it up.]

Mary [played by Cathryn Damon]: “Burt, what's the matter?”

Burt: “Well, it's Prentiss, he won't give up the office. Yeah, he's holed up in the armory with enough weapons to quality as a Third World nation. He says he will not be taken alive and my first assignment is to take him.”

Danny: “Let's go get him.” 

Burt: “Danny, this Prentiss, he won gold medals for marksmanship and he is now in a fortified stone building.”

Bob: “On second thought, I don't want to be deputy.”—Soap, Season 3, Episode 20, original air date Mar. 13, 1980, teleplay by Susan Harris and Stu Silver, directed by J.D. Lobue

I must confess that when I heard that bit here about someone who “won’t give up the office,” I had a flashback to January 6, 2021—and especially one person involved that day. I bet some of you felt the same way.

Believe it or not, it looks like, since no legal or electoral price was paid for that refusal to accept the results of an election, other politicians want to get in on the act. A New York Times headline from the other day, about the major and several council members in rural Avenal, CA, who lost a recall election, says it all: “They Were Voted Out. They Refuse to Leave. Now What?”

Now what? Better pray that anyone else who gets this idea doesn’t get their hands on weapons, as Prentiss did in this Soap episode.

This scenario seemed the height of nuttiness 47 years ago. Now…

Quote of the Day (Russell Baker, on Summer’s Power ‘To Make Us Suffer and Like It’)

“What must the fish make of it as they pass the American coast with its banks packed with sunning carnivores? There they lie in the millions—their flesh broiling, their hides oiled, their hair stiff with salt, their blankets stained with mustard, their skins bitten by insects, the grit of sand between teeth and toes, their great masked eyes staring blankly into Proust, electric guitars throbbing into their earplugs, and the boredom as thick as crocodiles on the Zambesi. Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American reporter, humorist, and memoirist Russell Baker (1925-2019), “Observer: The Strangest Shores,” The New York Times, June 27, 1965

Joke of the Day (Emo Phillips, on Him and Technology)

“A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.”—American stand-up comic and actor Emo Phillips in “Quotes on Technology,” Reader’s Digest, June 2009

Maybe true back in 2009. But if the edge lords of today’s tech world have anything to say in the matter (and they will, they will), you can bet that they’ll be crowing about the athletic ability of their latest AI-driven projects before long—even promoting a Computer Olympics.

(The image accompanying this post, of Emo Phillips opening for Weird Al Yankovic at the Apollo Theater, was taken on Mar. 22, 2018, by slgckgc.)

Quote of the Day (Noah Baumbach, Imagining Keith Richards’ Desert Island Disks and Dinner)

“DAY ONE. Rigged a distress flag with me gypsy scarf, but it droops like Mick's jowls. While waiting for it to fly, played all ten disks. Ate a peanut-butter-and-Fluff sandwich that the missus packed for me dinner and washed it down with me new poison of choice: Stoli and Sunkist. Smoked a Marlboro Red and watched the sun go down. Was lulled into me forty winks by the island's own music, the flop flop of the waves and the caw caw of the parrots.”—American screenwriter-director Noah Baumbach, “Shouts and Murmurs: Keith Richards’ Desert-Island Disks,” The New Yorker, Nov. 22, 1999

Quote of the Day (Jimmy Breslin, on the Original Mets as Lovable Losers)

“You see, the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is a team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn't maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a t-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurence Rockefeller?” —Pulitzer Prize-winning American columnist and novelist Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017), Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?: The Improbable Saga of the New York Mets' First Year (1963)

In the late 1970s, when Jimmy Breslin accepted an award from my college newspaper, he described the astounding experience of covering the 1962 New York Mets, or, as he called them, “the worst baseball team in the history of the universe.”

As the above paragraph indicates, that version of the Amazin’s acquired a certain cachet as classic underdogs. Nothing could help them, as they staggered to a 40-120 record, 10^th and last in the National League, and so far from first place (60½ games!!!!) that they could have used a telescope to find it.

As this year’s major league baseball trade deadline approaches, the 2026 squad doesn’t remotely approach it in ineptitude, but it doesn’t come near it in lovability, either. 

As I type this, their record stands at 44-62, placing them last in the National League East, 18½ games behind their divisional rivals, the Atlanta Braves. With hyperexpensive (signed to a 15-year, $765 million) right fielder Juan Soto going on the injured list for a second time this season, the squad is extremely unlikely to make a late-season run for anything except the exit ramp.

Owner Steve Cohen must be gnashing his teeth over his dismal return on investment. Their sorry mid-season mark comes for a franchise that, at $367.9 million, ranks second only to the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers as having the highest payroll in major league baseball, even surpassing that of their hated crosstown rivals, the New York Yankees.

The 1992 Mets season was so disappointing (a $45 million payroll combined with a 72-90 record) that few people could argue with the title that sportswriters Bob Klapisch and John Harper came up with the following year for their account: The Worst Team Money Could Buy. One hates to think of the title for any prospective postmortem of this year.

TV Quote of the Day (Reiner and Brooks, With the 2,000-Year-Old Man on Ancient Matrimony)

Carl Reiner: “We know that many, many hundreds of years ago, most men had more than one wife.”

The 2,000-Year-Old Man [played by Mel Brooks]: “Yeah!”

Reiner: “Did you practice polygamy in those days?”

The 2,000-Year-Old Man: “I never practiced it. I was perfect at it!”—Reiner and Brooks with their “2,000-Year-Old Man” routine, The Hollywood Palace, Season 4, Episode 2, original air date Sept. 24, 1966

I had heard bits of the classic Carl Reiner-Mel Brooks routine (captured on five albums released between 1960 and 1997) but was reminded of this short section when I was recently visiting the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY.

Though I have gone through this wonderful museum a couple of times before, this was the first occasion I had to see their section on Reiner.  It was a great reminder of just how influential he was, on TV and film, over several decades.

Influenced by the example of his longtime friend Reiner, Brooks is also turning over many of his artifacts to the comedy museum. Once its curators have had a choice to sample these wares, the resulting display should be something to see.

TV Quote of the Day (‘Friends,’ in an Apartment Trivia Game)

[The friends are engaged in an increasingly high-stakes apartment trivia game.]

Ross Geller [played by David Schwimmer]: “What is Chandler Bing's job?”

Rachel Green [played by Jennifer Aniston] [long pause] “Oooh... oh gosh, it has something to do with numbers...”

Monica Geller [played by Courteney Cox]: “And processing!”

Rachel: “And he carries a briefcase...”

Ross: “10 seconds or you'll lose the game.”

Monica [frantically]: “Something to do with transponding...”

Rachel: “Oh oh... he's a trans... a transponster!”

Monica: “THAT'S NOT EVEN A WORD!”—Friends, Season 4, Episode 12, “The One With the Embryos,” original air date Jan. 15, 1998, teleplay by Jill Condon and Amy Toomin Straus, directed by Kevin Bright

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Legally Blonde,’ As Elle Grills the Star Prosecution Witness)

Elle Woods [played by Reese Witherspoon]: “Isn't the first cardinal rule of perm maintenance that you're forbidden to wet your hair for at least 24 hours after getting a perm at the risk of deactivating the ammonium thioglycolate?”—Legally Blonde (2001), screenplay by Amanda Brown, Karen McCullah, and Kirsten Smith, directed by Robert Luketic

Twenty-five years ago this month, the uproarious comedy Legally Blonde premiered. I don’t think the legal profession has quite recovered in the years since!