This And That

Musings For Your Amusement.

DO YOU REALIZE that come November the two largest cities in Arizona will have mayors named Skip and Molly? What are they going to do after they have a mayors' meeting, go to the malt shop?

How is anybody ever going to take us seriously? We have Jane Dee Hull-met Hair for governor, Gomer Kyl for senator, and Ed Should-Have-Been-Put-Out-To Pastor for congressman. Now Skip and Molly.

In retrospect, that was Pat Darcy's biggest mistake in his failed bid for the Democratic mayoral nomination. He should have changed his named to Scooter.

THOSE OF YOU who Labor Day-ed in San Diego missed out on something. The radio station which calls itself The Point (or, since this is Arizona, it should be The Pointe) had an all-'80s weekend. It was (let's see, what was the term back then?) bitchin'. Far out? Spaz-oid? Aw hell, it was cool. Of course, they played A Flock of Seagulls, which nobody liked then and nobody likes now, but it's sooo '80s. On the upside, they also played "Jungle Love" by The Time and "A Love Bizarre" by Sheila E. This immediately put them two black records ahead of KHYT, the official station of the '70s, a decade when, according to K-HIT's playlist, no black people recorded any music at all.

THE SELF-PROCLAIMED Watchdog Group of the Week came out with some headline-grabbing claim that playing football and/or soccer can cause long-term and possibly permanent brain damage to participants who sustain head collisions with other players or, in the case of soccer, the ball. According to the Cassandra-like warning, players can suffer irreversible brain damage, leading to memory loss, lower IQ, and an inability to maintain mental focus. This is ridiculous. I played football in high school and college and...no black people recorded any music at all.

ABC-TV IS absolutely giddy over the success of the late-summer phenomenon known as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Shown several nights per week during its limited run, the show racked up record-high ratings for the month of August. Network executives were thrilled with the viewership, but how hard can this be to figure out? On CBS they're showing the third rerun of a Nanny episode that nobody watched the first two times around, and Fox has prime-time wrestling featuring women who couldn't get laid in prison.

Starting with a question for $100 and then pretty much doubling every step thereafter, contestants have to answer 15 consecutive multiple-choice! questions to win the million bucks. Plus, they have three special options available to help them along their way. Once each they can poll the audience for help, have two of the three wrong answers eliminated, or they can call a friend or relative on the phone to ask for help.

To dumb things down even further, contestants are allowed to see the questions and answer choices before they decide to move on. Still, nobody won the million dollars, although one guy did take home $500,000. (He passed on the big prize question, a fairly easy one involving Jethro Tull's dubious Grammy for Hard-Rock Group.)

The whole thing is remarkably cheesy, but it's not without some saving lowlights. One guy called his mom for help on a $200 question!! But the best was the stock analyst who blew the $100 beachball-sized first question. This dolt thought that, while attempting to sneak up on Rome from the north, Hannibal and his troops crossed the Alps on llamas! Dude, if someone is smart enough to cross the Atlantic to get llamas, why bother attacking Rome? Go plunder South America.

Can you imagine what would happen if you missed a $100 question on national TV? You'd have to quit your job, move to another town, and try to get into the Witness Relocation Program.

AND NOW FOR the audience participation segment of our program: A man in New London, Connecticut, was turned down for a job on the city's police department because he scored too high on the IQ part of the entrance exam. Please provide your own punchline here.

THE ABSOLUTE MEANEST thing ever shown on TV has got to be E! Entertainment's "show" featuring the hideous Joan Rivers and her daughter, Hideous Jr. This mother-daughter anorexia act shows up at movie premieres and the like (this past week they were at the Emmys), and they criticize people's appearances. Joan, you've got no right to say anything about how other people look. You're so damn thin you've only got one side. Your husband committed suicide, for cryin' out loud. He was probably tired of getting paper cuts from your hip bones during sex.

And now you drag your no-talent daughter into this sordid mess. You should be ashamed of yourself. Hey, shame burns up calories! Try it. Then you can have an extra radish for dinner.

AND ISN'T IT almost obscenely delicious watching congressional Republicans stagger around after they learn that the vast majority of Americans greatly prefer a lowering of the national debt and the security of long-range entitlement programs to the bloated, stillborn GOP tax cut?