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by Jack Handey from the November 24, 2008 issue of The New Yorker.
 The plan isn’t foolproof. For it to work, certain things must happen: —The door to the vault must have accidentally been left open by the cleaning woman. —The guard must bend over to tie his shoes and somehow he gets all the shoelaces tied together. He can’t get them apart, so he takes out his gun and shoots all his bullets at the knot. But he misses. Then he just lies down on the floor and goes to sleep. —Most of the customers in the bank must happen to be wearing George Bush* masks, so when we come in wearing our George Bush masks it doesn’t alarm anyone. —There must be an empty parking space right out in front. If it has a meter, there must be time left on it, because our outfits don’t have pockets for change. —The monkeys must grab the bags of money and not just shriek and go running all over the place, like they did in the practice run. —The security cameras must be the early, old-timey kind that don’t actually take pictures. —When the big clock in the lobby strikes two, everyone must stop and stare at it for at least ten minutes. —The bank alarm must have mistakenly been set to “Quiet.” Or “Ebb tide.” —The gold bars must be made out of a lighter kind of gold that’s just as valuable but easier to carry. —If somebody runs out of the bank and yells, “Help! The bank is being robbed!,” he must be a neighborhood crazy person who people just laugh at. —If the police come, they don’t notice that the historical mural on the wall is actually us, holding still. —The bank’s lost-and-found department must have a gun that fires a suction cup with a wire attached to it. Also a chainsaw and a hang glider. —When we spray the lobby with knockout gas, for some reason the gas doesn’t work on us. —After the suction cup is stuck to the ceiling, it must hold long enough for Leon to pull himself up the wire while carrying the bags of money, the gold bars, and the hang glider. When he reaches the ceiling, he must be able to cut through it with the chainsaw and climb out. —Any fingerprints we leave must be erased by the monkeys. —Once on the roof, Leon must be able to hold on to the hang glider with one hand and the money and the gold bars with the other and launch himself off the roof. Then glide the twenty miles to the rendezvous point. —When we exit the bank, there must be a parade going by, so our getaway car, which is decorated to look like a float, can blend right in. —During the parade, our car must not win a prize for best float, because then we’ll have to have our picture taken with the award. —At the rendezvous point, there must be an empty parking space with a meter that takes hundred-dollar bills. —The robbery is blamed on the monkeys.
*Note: I have taken the liberty to change the original Nixon masks to George Bush masks for heightened comical effect. ~Richard
ILLUSTRATION: MICHAEL KUPPERMAN I have an embarrassing confession to make. I like making beds. Inexplicable, but for the longest time now I look forward daily to rather meticulously making my bed after arising each morning. And even when I am traveling, I often make my hotel room bed long before the chambermaid arrives. Fact is, I am pretty good at it, too... sigh. So... what is it about me that is revealed by this awkward confession? Have I become an obsessive neat freak? Am I slipping into insanity, senility, or worse -- some dangerous psychotic condition? Do I need urgent counseling? Should I join a support group, like Bedmakers Anonymous? Well, at least I am not a bedwetter. Yet. (Nor a cross-dresser, contrary to appearances in the above photo.) 
 By Rob Hiaasen | Baltimore Sun reporter
June 24, 2008 He was cool. He was smart. He was dirty. And he was relentlessly funny.
Speaking of dead people - the very words the man used in a recent routine on death - George Carlin died Sunday in California. That doesn't sound right or is the least bit funny, but if anyone could riff on death, it was Carlin. No subject was taboo - particularly taboo subjects, such as religion, drugs, sex and death, and sometimes in that order. His trail-brazing social commentary spanned more than four decades, forced a Supreme Court decision on broadcast indecency, and influenced top-shelf comedians such as Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld and Jon Stewart.
Carlin was 71 when his heart finally gave out. His age doesn't seem possible - he either seemed much older or forever young and hip.
Yes, hip.
To appreciate this pony-tailed lion of comedy, think back to the 1960s and the set-up, punch-line routines from Bob Hope, Milton Berle, George Burns and others who dominated TV specials and late-night talk shows. Then came this Irish-Catholic from New York - a former DJ and, yes, marketing director for peanut brittle - appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show in his conservative suit and tie that belied an emerging outlaw comedy. Then came the recurring guest and host spots on The Tonight Show, with Carlin earning an adoring and career-building convert in Johnny Carson. Gone now was the business suit and in its place, Carlin's trademark jeans, pony tail, tie-dyed shirts and earrings.
A counterculture hero was born.
Carlin introduced a TV generation to Al Sleet, the hippie-dippie weatherman. "Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely scattered light toward morning." Carlin fans know that line by heart.
Carlin the DJ for "Wonderful WINO" and this pearl: "The Beatles' latest record, when played backward at slow speed, says Dummy! You're playing it backward at slow speed!"
Who among a certain generation didn't own Carlin's top-selling comedy albums, FM & AM and Class Clown? In the early 1970s, few bought comedy albums before Carlin broke from the gate. He didn't have punch lines - just this novel brand of comedy called observational humor. Carlin, who was a disciple of Lenny Bruce, built on that comic's biting deconstruction of human behavior in all its silliness, contradictions, beauty and ugliness. All of a sudden, comedy wasn't routine anymore thanks to Bruce, Carlin and his inspiration, Richard Pryor.
For Carlin, his stuff hit the fan in 1972. He was arrested in Milwaukee for "disturbing the peace" after performing his "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" routine, which was recorded on his Class Clown record. The seven words - and no was more mentally adroit with word play than Carlin - were judged "indecent but not obscene," and the case against Carlin was dismissed. After the routine was played on a New York radio station in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court would later uphold the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language. (Sirius radio's main headliner, Howard Stern, was the unwelcome beneficiary of such FCC fines. Along with comedian Richard Belzer, Stern paid tribute to Carlin during his Monday show.)
 Today, Carlin's "seven dirty words" are still taboo on broadcast TV (see YouTube embed below). But the routine made him famous and rich. In 1975, he was the first host of a new late-night live variety show called Saturday Night Live. Over the decades - which were marked by career fits and starts, a sturdy drug addiction and three heart attacks - Carlin produced 23 comedy albums, appeared in 16 films, 14 HBO specials, wrote five books and had more television appearances than Wikipedia can count. He performed as recently as last weekend in Las Vegas, and in November, he planned to receive the 2008 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
George Carlin was a cross-genre comedian - from political satire to word play to black comedy. But don't call it topical humor.
"I don't like it, it's dumb, it's too easy," he told The Sun in 2004 before his concert at Pier Six.
Carlin, as explained by Carlin, was never easy on us humans. "What I have that's often mistaken for anger is a disappointment and disillusionment, a severe disillusionment with my species and my culture."
There is, thanks to the Internet, a memorable and recent Carlin riff on death.
"Speaking of dead people, there are things we always say," the comedian says. Someone, back at the house, always back at the house, and after a few drinks, will inevitable say, "I think he's up there now smiling down at us. Now, first of all, there is no 'up there,' " Carlin says. "And why doesn't anyone ever say, I think he's down there now smiling up at us?"
All right, Carlin. That's another funny smart point. You are neither smiling down nor up at us. Although you joked about this, too, you are in our thoughts this week. Sorry, but as you knew as well as anyone, we humans can't help ourselves sometimes. WARNING: The following YouTube video is not for kids.... 
BEIJING - Beijing has dispatched 8,000 toilet maintenance staff, each responsible for a specific public restroom in the city and trained in hygiene standards and techniques, Olympic knowledge and practical English expressions, Xinhua said on Friday. There will be selective inspections every week and the results will be posted on the Web site of the Municipal Utilities Administration Commission, said the news agency. The city was also struggling with which style of commode would be best, noting Westerners prefer seated toilets, which are more comfortable and convenient for the elderly or infirm. The squat toilets widely used in Chinese public facilities are considered more hygienic as there is no direct contact with body, it said.  At more than 30 test events held by the Games organizers, the squat versions drew frequent complaints from foreigners, said Xinhua.
"Not all of the toilets will be changed, but those for journalists, athletes, and VIPs will be," Xinhua quoted Yao Hui, the deputy director of venue management, as saying. My Comment: What's it matter? Either way, it's the same ol' shit anyway, right? (Pardon my French, please.)
Thumbing through the dictionary
Have you noticed how many body parts have made the leap from noun to verb? Here are a few things you can do with your body parts as verbs:
Shoulder the burden.
Face the music.
Arm yourselves!
Foot the bill.
Stomach an awful movie.
Finger the suspect.
Elbow a pushy jerk on the subway.
Neck with your girlfriend.
Tongue her if she’ll let you.
Bone her once her parents go to sleep.
Mouth along with the music.
Head out of here.
Skin a cat.
Scalp the cat’s owner.
Back out on your commitment.
Eyeball the hot girl at the club.
Lash out against injustice.
Hand over your cash.
Knee a mugger in the nuts.
Thumb your nose at the President.
Nose around in your boss's private affairs.
Butt out when he discovers it.
Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their
collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays.
These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across
the country. Here are last year's winners:
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently
compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like
underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy
who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those
boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high
schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of
those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was
room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just
before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because
of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a
formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling
ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled
with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie,
surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy
comes on at 7:00 p. m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry
them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the
grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left
Cleveland at 6:36 p. m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19
p. m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that
resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had
also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the
East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one
that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in- law Phil. But unlike Phil,
this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating
for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but
a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or
something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg
behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with
power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if
she were a garbage truck backing up.This is so much like what happened to me a few times on my China trip last fall, I decided to share it below:
In a Chinese hotel room, he picked up the phone -- and somehow they connected.
By Jim Benning
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, April 9, 2006; Page P06
I've always considered my hotel rooms to be refuges -- places where, no matter how foreign the culture around me, I could retreat and unwind, free from the challenges and confusion of the outside world. That was particularly true in China.
I'd arrived with only a few words of Chinese at my disposal: "hello," "thank you" and, as a result of an ill-fated attempt at a community college Mandarin course, "I like to eat rice." While I had little trouble procuring a bland, starchy lunch, other tasks, such as asking for directions or buying a train ticket, often evolved into exhausting games of charades. The language barrier felt as insurmountable as the Great Wall, and at the end of each day, my well of patience having run dry, I would escape to the safe confines of my hotel room.
That's exactly where my wife, Leslie, and I wound up, beat, after exploring the northern city of Xi'an late one afternoon. So when the telephone suddenly rang, intruding upon our sanctum, I was in no hurry to answer it.
None of our friends knew where we were. Not a soul at the hotel's front desk spoke English. And I had no interest in proclaiming, yet again, my great love of rice.
I considered ignoring the phone, but when the caller didn't relent after nearly half a dozen rings, I flopped down on the bed and picked it up.
"Ni hao," I said.
A woman at the other end uttered something in Chinese, her voice rising in a way that suggested a question.
"I'm sorry, but I don't speak Mandarin," I replied in English, assuming that would put a quick end to it.
As I was about to hang up, she said something else, this time exhaling between words, as though she were pedaling an exercise bike.
"What's that?" She offered a few more words in a warm, soft voice and then breathed into the phone, this time in a way that evoked not a sweaty gymnasium but a romantic, candlelit bedroom. I had no idea what she was saying, but I liked the way she was saying it.
Leslie, standing across the room, shot me a quizzical look. I pulled the receiver away from my lips and whispered, "I think it's a prostitute, but I'm not sure. She doesn't speak any English." Leslie shook her head, then wished me a good time and disappeared into the shower.
I remembered reading something about Chinese prostitutes occasionally calling hotel rooms to seduce potential clients, but I'd never received such a call myself.
On the streets around our hotel, amid the noodle joints and mom-and-pop markets, we'd seen a number of curious shops with barber poles, hazy pink lights and young women inside. Was this woman calling from one of them? Was she hoping to lure me in?
"I'm sorry," I said, "but I just don't understand what you're saying." She said something back, her breathy voice rising and falling seductively.
I summoned my most charming, debonair voice and said, "Wo xihuan chi fan." I like to eat rice.
My phone friend giggled with delight and cooed, as though I'd just whispered a sweet nothing in her ear.
I felt as though I'd unlocked the door to some alternate Forbidden City where gibberish was an aphrodisiac and young women had nothing better to do than to giggle and coo and flirt on the phone with strange men. I liked it.
I picked up my Mandarin phrase book and rifled through it, searching for another bon mot.
"Wo yao zu yiliang zixingche," I said. I want to hire a bicycle.
My friend laughed. Then she whispered something else -- her soft voice revealing, I was almost sure, a deep and heretofore unspoken yearning.
A picture was forming in my mind of a young woman who looked not unlike Lucy Liu, flaked out on a sofa in one of those pink-lit rooms, twirling a finger in her long hair, smiling coquettishly. When she replied this time, I could swear she was telling me, "I know a great place where we could share a bowl of rice." Or maybe she was just saying, "My prices start at a very reasonable 300 yuan." Whatever. The important thing was that she seemed to be into me.
I scoured the transportation section of my phrase book for another enchanting line.
"Moban qiche jidian kai," I said. When is the last bus?
My friend giggled. I laughed.
Just about then, Leslie stepped out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her, patting her damp hair. She looked puzzled.
"You're still on the phone?" she said.
I smiled and shrugged.
Leslie furrowed her brow and then cracked a smile. She couldn't decide whether to be annoyed or amused. I wasn't sure whether to feel guilty or stupid.
It was, in an odd, small way, not so different from the confusion I've often felt traveling in a country where the culture and language are not my own. I arrive eager to make sense of everything. But the more time passes, the more I'm reminded that this is not so easily accomplished and that the world is an impossibly complicated place. And then, as hard as it is, I try to make peace with my confusion and even, on rare occasions, embrace it.
I decided it was time to get off the phone. I searched my phrase book for a few parting words. Then, in my best Mandarin accent, I said, "Is there a lifeguard on duty?" My friend giggled. We giggled together. Then I gently hung up the phone.
Jim Benning is a Southern California freelance writer and coeditor of the online travel magazine WorldHum.com.
Peggy- "Tell me you love me, Al"
Al- "I love football, I love beer, let's not cheapen the meaning of the word."
~Al Bundy
The funny thing about driving your car off a cliff, I bet you're still hitting those brakes.
~Jack Handey
If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, great. If not, it's probably having dinner with someone more attractive than you
~Bill Greiser
Next Thanksgiving, here is a fun trick to play: When the mashed potatoes and turkey are being served, take some of both. But hide your turkey under your mashed potatoes. When your family asks "Don't you want some turkey?," pull the turkey out from under the mashed potatoes and yell "I tricked you!!"
~Jack Handey
If I ever went to war, instead of throwing a grenade, I'd throw one of those small pumpkins. Then maybe my enemy would pick up the pumpkin and think about the futility of war. And that would give me the time I need to hit him with a real grenade.
~Jack Handey
I bet if you reached total enlightenment while drinking beer, it would make beer squirt out your nose.
~Jack Handey
BLANCHE: Can I borrow your mink stole?
COCO: It's Miami in June. Only cats are wearing fur. Are you going out?
DOROTHY: No. she's going to sit here where it's a hundred and twelve degrees and eat enchiladas.
BLANCHE: I need some cucumbers to put on my eyes.
DOROTHY: You'll have trouble seeing, Blanche
BLANCHE: It's very good. It reduces puffiness.
ROSE: Does it work on thighs?
BLANCHE: I don't know. I don't need it on my thighs. (SHE EXITS)
ROSE: Who is she going out with?
COCO: Harry, again. (COCO EXITS)
DOROTHY: "Who is this Harry?
ROSE: All Blanche said was he still has his teeth and his hair.
DOROTHY: It's wonderful dating in Miami. All the single men under eighty are cocaine smugglers.
ROSE: I'd kill to be twenty again.
DOROTHY: I'd kill to be forty again. You know, I got the shock of my life today. I was in the teacher's lounge talking to some girls in their twenties. They were so pretty. At that age you don't even have to be pretty and you're pretty. Anyway, we were all talking and laughing together and I completely forgot I was older. I just became one of the girls. And I had such a good time, too. Then I got into my car and caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror and almost had a heart attack. This old woman was in the mirror; I didn't recognize her.
ROSE: Who was it?
DOROTHY: It was me. |  |
A man's only as old as the woman he feels.
A woman is an occasional pleasure but a cigar is always a smoke.
I must confess, I was born at a very early age.
If I held you any closer I would be on the other side of you.
Why was I with her? She reminds me of you. In fact, she reminds me more of you than you do!
Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?
Why is it that whenever anyone takes a picture of me, I almost instinctively draw a humongously deep breath and hold it until I hear the shutter click, or see the flash go off? I mean, who am I trying to fool? Do I really think for a moment that people will consider me a flat-bellied athlete when they see the result? Shouldn't I consider that the pained look of a grown man holding his breath and sucking in his belly might be more horrific than that of an adorable, albeit flabby, dude smiling normally into the lens? Well, I will try to change, but I cannot really do anything about the dozens of photos floating around that show me for what I am -- an obese wretch reaching for miracles to hide the obvious.
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