Humor / Possible Captions
Possible captions
• No seriously, I’m running for president.
• And this is my nephew and Secret Service agent, Ralph.
• No, the real estate seminar is across the hall.
• I ask you: What other candidates can also do hand puppets?
• No, it’s Barr with two ‘R’s.
ben.alper@onlineoffbeat.com
Politics / Humor - Top Stories
Top five things superdelegates are telling Hillary Clinton when switching support to Barack Obama:
• It’s an interesting theory but I still think Obama can win without the Ku Klux Klan vote.
• Barack Obama will never agree to a steel-cage death match.
• My advisors assure me there’s no way you’ll be able to count votes from Ontario.
• That flaming bag of dog poop on my front step was not enough to convince me.
• It was nice that your husband could stop by but my secretary is still missing.
The political advisor chosen by John McCain to run the Republican National Convention this summer was forced to resign when it was revealed that his lobbying and public relations firm once represented the Myanmar government. Fortunately, he will be replaced with the president of the American Friends of Robert Mugabe Association.
Barack Obama said on Thursday he has not ruled out selecting Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate. He also has not ruled out Mike Gravel as his Ambassador to Mars.
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Humor / Possible Captions
Possible captions
• I’ll explain this one more time; sushi is a sliced raw fish.
• No, Saddam Hussein did not give Michelle away at our wedding.
• Let me get this straight: If I get my bowling score up to 250, you’ll vote for me?
• And the farmer says to the salesman, “No, I don’t have any Grey Poupon but you can sleep with my daughter.”
• It was during the Irish Potato Famine that my Great Great Grandfather Padraig O’Bama brought his family to America.
ben.alper@onlineoffbeat.com
Politics / Humor - Top Stories
Hillary Clinton’s embracement of John McCain’s summertime gas tax break gimmick is a last ditch attempt to get working-class support -- and it’s working! But why stop there? Here’s how she can keep the pander-fest going.
• Pledge to reduce the price of pork rinds during NASCAR season.
• Promise to order the National Gallery of Art to dedicate an entire wing to Elvis-on-black-velvet paintings.
• Add the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to her MySpace Friends list.
• Deliver groceries to a poor family living in a trailer home/crystal meth lab.
• Continually mention in passing that she always wears her American flag bra strap pin.
John McCain said he didn’t mean to imply that the U.S. involvement in the Iraq war had anything to do with America’s reliance on foreign oil. He added, “We shouldn’t even be thinking about that until we’ve been there at least 75 years.”
Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in presidential caucuses on Guam -- in spite of vicious rumors that his actual name is Biff Johnson.
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Advice - Spike Sez offers no-nonsense, practical advice for the lovelorn, lost, and stupid. If you feel you fit into one of these categories and have a related question, submit it to spike@onlineoffbeat.com, and if he feels like it Spike may respond.
Spike is NOT a licensed therapist and has NO training whatsoever in psychology or human behavior, but as he frequently says, “the fucking President has no qualifications for his job either, and look how well he’s doing.” Spike Sez is not affiliated with Spike TV, Spike Lee, or anyone else purporting to be named Spike.
Dear Spike — It seems like every time I go out to a bar I end up talking to some stranger who decides to tell me all his problems. I don’t know what it is about me that attracts these guys. Maybe I have a friendly face or look trustworthy or something, but it’s really getting annoying. I just want to go out to relax and have a drink and maybe get laid, but instead I get sucked into these long conversation where I feel like Dear Abby.
I don’t want to be rude, so how do I tactfully extricate myself from these situations?
— Troy, Chelsea, MA
Dear Troy — Way to bum Spike out. Just when he thought his readers were all from affluent communities you have to go and send a letter from Chelsea. And not even one of the good Chelseas, like in Manhattan or London. The Chelsea under the Mystic River Bridge! Spike didn’t even know people there could write. Thanks a lot.
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Politics / Humor - Top Stories
Heading into the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, Barack Obama said, “There's no doubt that a campaign has to continually fine-tune itself.” Here are some suggestions that may help push him over the top:
• At the very least, wear a Reverend Wright “God Damn American” lapel flag.
• Forget the debates; challenge Hillary Clinton to a drinking contest.
• Every new campaign ad must contain at least one Monica Lewinsky subliminal message.
• Reach out to the working class. Propose a law that says “Jeopardy” cannot be harder to play than “Wheel of Fortune.”
• End every speech with “…and if they don’t like it, they should go back to where they came from!”
Hillary Clinton has challenged Barack Obama to a Lincoln-Douglas style debate. Obama said, “I’d love to but my stove pipe hat is at the cleaners.”
The Washington Post reports that President Bush’s plan to contract federal jobs to the private sector has fallen short. However, Wal-Mart is still accepting part-time applications for Secretary of Interior.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
Buddy returned to the apartment a couple of hours later, looking rather ashen.
“Jesus, that guy Paulie is a piece of work,” he said as he sat across from me. “Where the fuck did you meet him?”
“We used to work together at Blue Cross-Blue Shield,” I answered. “He got fired for calling customers ‘Poopsie” over the phone.”
“He had me make a bunch of stops on the way to his house, Stop and Shop, CVS, a couple of other places. He said he had a phobia about going into stores alone, so there I was going in with him. And I must have loaned him about fifty bucks,” Buddy shook his head.
“What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever run errands with a guy dressed like a butterfly before?” I laughed. “I’ll pay you back the fifty, because believe me, Paulie never will.”
“You think this is funny? He said he had a line of credit at a club near Kenmore Square, and I let him drag me in there with him,” Danny said, coughing. “I was being polite because he’s a friend of yours. It was Alternative Lifestyle Night at the place, and we only left because Paulie was embarrassed about wearing the same outfit as another guy.” I really started giggling now, holding my gut and bending over.
“And when we got to his flophouse,” Buddy continued, “he didn’t have a key, and his landlord was nowhere to be found. So I climbed the fire escape and broke into Madame Butterfly’s room, because again he had a phobia, a fear of heights.”
“He has a fear of everything except driving other people up the wall,” I explained.
“And those other people who were here today,” Buddy said. “They all seem like cooked birds, too.”
“Well,” I replied, scratching my chin, “Sven is okay if you don’t piss him off, but that's a bullshit story about his so-called dueling scar. He really got cut up by a whore in Hamburg. Now, Doris, she’s your basic career panhandler, which may be morally repugnant but which doesn’t meet the clinical definition of insanity. And Daniel grew up Catholic but went to public school, and I think he actually wanted to have his ears boxed by nuns like a lot of the other kids he knew. So now he’s compensating by literally being more Catholic than the Pope.”
“I think I mentioned something about being roomies when we were drinking last night,” Buddy said. “But maybe living with you on a regular basis would be a little too -what’s the word?- ‘bohemian.’”
“Sure, I understand, Buddy,” I said, doing my best to act disappointed.
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Boston Outsider / Humor
I talked to Paulie for a couple of minutes and returned to my stool. Duke, a WWII veteran, ex-boxer, and former bookmaker, was regaling Buddy with an anecdote.
“My division was sent to the Philippines after the Germans surrendered,” Duke said. “There were nationalist guerillas in the hills, so we got combat pay, but all we ever did was eat bananas and go bowling. One guy I knew made a pet of a monkey, and he cried his eyes out when he couldn’t bring the thing back to the States with him. I heard he ended up marrying a woman who looked like a chimp.”
Buddy squirted some beer out of a nostril as he laughed at this. Duke insisted on giving us one last round on the house, and after drinking it we took our leave. As we were walking back to my apartment, I asked Buddy what he thought of Whitman’s.
“I know the place is kind of a halfway house for unattached male nuts,” Buddy answered. “But it’s a panic!”
The next day, Sunday, at a little after 4:00 p.m., Buddy and I were watching a football game when my doorbell rang. I pushed the intercom button and asked who was at the door.
“Let me in, you philistine,” a familiar voice announced.
“Come on up,” I said, pushing the door release. “It’s my friend Paulie,” I said to Buddy. “He drops in once in a while.”
“That’s cool,” Buddy shrugged.
I met Paulie Gomes at the door of my third floor walk-up. He was accompanied by Sven, a tall man with a shaved head and an ugly scar on his left cheek; Daniel, a middle-aged guy in a rumpled suit; and Doris, a mature woman who dressed in ragged clothing and carried four shopping bags filled with books, papers and other bags. Sven and Daniel were fellow insomniacs I knew from an all-night diner. Doris was a familiar figure who had a regular begging station in front of the local Baskin Robbins.
“I bumped into some friends!” Paulie smiled. He was a tiny fellow, about a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, and on this occasion he was wearing a butterfly costume, complete with antennae, wings, black tights, and little slippers.
“Is that your Sunday best you’re wearing?” I asked.
“I’m doing a children’s play at a little venue in Inman Square,” Paulie said. “I want to stay in character as long as possible. And since lepidopterans don't carry luggage, I left my street clothes at the theater after today's matinee. I'll pick them up on Tuesday."
“Oh, you’re a character all right,” I replied.
I asked everyone in and introduced them to Buddy, who didn’t seem overly fazed by Paulie’s manner of dress. Paulie and Sven sat on the futon-couch, Daniel and Doris sat on the loveseat facing them, and Buddy and I sat on metal folding chairs on either side of my stereo, along a wall that was perpendicular to the other furniture. Paulie had assembled quite a crew. Sven was a reputed deserter from the French Foreign Legion. Daniel belonged to a quasi-Catholic sect whose members believed that the true pope was a twenty-year-old short order cook who lived with his mother in a dilapidated house near the Forest Hills MBTA station. Doris the bag lady was actually quite well off, but sometimes I gave her a buck in the hopes that she’d leave me something in her will.
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Politics / Humor - Top Stories
The New York Times reports that the Pentagon used a group of high-ranking retired military officers, each now a military contractor, to appear on news shows and promote the Bush Administration’s Iraq policies. Here are some of their comments that didn’t make it on the air:
• Pay no attention to that Bush flunky clutching my balls.
• The United States has no chance winning in Iraq without my new combination night vision goggles/electric toothbrush.
• To show you how well my WMD detector works, we’ve hidden a nuclear bomb under one of your seats.
• Tim, I’m wearing a pair bullet-proof underwear and loving it!
• Oprah, let me just say this: You get a tank, and you get a tank, and you get tank and you get a…
A Washington Post article questions whether John McCain’s bad temper will prevent him from getting elected or affect his ability to govern. It might if his first State of the Union Speech begins with: My fellow Americans, you want a piece of me?
Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope to visit an American synagogue. He was greeted with cries of “Wow, now that’s a Yamaka!”
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Cartoons / Humor
Boston Outsider / Humor
For five years during the 1980s, when the People’s Republic of Cambridge still clung to a vestige of socialism, I lived in a rent-controlled, 1.5 room studio apartment just east of Harvard Square. It was cheap, and I didn’t own much of anything, so it wasn’t a bad arrangement. One Saturday night, as I sat in my tiny abode watching “Twilight Zone” on a New Hampshire UHF station, I got a call from my friend Buddy Feeney, who lived in Revere.
“Hey, Jimmy,” Buddy said. “I've got a big favor to ask. Would you mind if I stayed at your place for a while?”
“Shit, Buddy,” I answered. “You’ve seen how small this place is. Are you having problems at home again?”
“’Problems’ isn’t the word,” he replied. “If I stay here much longer, you’re going to be reading something awful about me in the Herald.”
“All right,” I said. “Just for a week or so. And make sure that somebody knows where you are.”
Buddy arrived the next night, toting a small suitcase. I gave him my visitor parking card so that his car wouldn’t get towed, and he settled in. After using the bathroom, he came back in the main room with a big smile on his face.
“I just took a piss with the bathroom door open,” he said gleefully. “I haven’t done that in eight years!”
“I’ve been pissing with the bathroom door open for quite a while now,” I said from my perch on a folded futon . “And it’s no big deal. Maybe I’m just jaded.”
“Listen,” Buddy said as he sat on a moth-eaten loveseat. “I know you think I’m a jerk for being here instead of with my wife and kids. You’ve seen Dragoslava lately. She’s still a hot little number after having three children, but life with her has turned into one, big pain in the ass. She and her relatives are the only Zaglavakians this side of Chicago, so my in-laws use my house as their own personal ethnic club. They come and go as they please, playing accordions and drinking plum brandy. And when they run out of plum brandy, they help themselves to my beer.”
“Call up ‘National Geographic,’” I laughed. “They can go to your house and film a special.”
“It’s no joke,” Buddy said, lighting a Marlboro. “You know what it’s like at Easter? A priest with a beard three feet long comes over and stinks up the place with incense. It’s supposed to be an exorcism. The whole tribe goes in the back yard and roasts a pig, and at the end of the night they dance around dressed like garden gnomes while Dragoslava’s grandmother lights firecrackers.”
“Don’t you remember?” I asked. “I was at one of those parties. The roast pig was delicious.”
“The pig tastes wonderful until you find out how much you’re being porked,” he replied, not cracking a smile.
I decided not to give any lectures about the sanctity of the marriage bond. The next six days passed smoothly. Buddy worked the night shift at UPS, and I worked days at a health insurance company, and we barely saw one another. Saturday evening rolled around, and I wondered when I should broach the subject of Buddy’s checkout time. At about six o’clock, I asked him if he wanted to go to the Square for a couple of beers.
“All right,” he said, enthusiastically. “Brewskies in freaky Cambridge!”
I brought Buddy to Whitman’s, a little watering hole that I often visited on J.F.K. Street. On the way there, as we were walking along Mass. Ave., a man in an Uncle Sam costume rode by on a unicycle.
“What’s with that character?” Buddy asked. “July Fourth was three months ago, and Halloween isn’t for another three weeks.”
“That guy always dresses like that,” I said calmly.
“You know, Jimmy,” Buddy answered. “You belong in this neighborhood.”
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Humor / Possible Captions
Possible captions
• And then he’s driving me to Disneyland. What a country!
• One chocolate, one vanilla, both with jimmies.
• When you see a guy reach for stars in the sky, you can bet that he's doing it for some doll.
• And finally I said, “Okay, you can drive the Popemobile.”
• No matter what I say, that stupid grin never leaves his face.
ben.alper@onlineoffbeat.com
Cartoons / Humor
Advice - Spike Sez offers no-nonsense, practical advice for the lovelorn, lost, and stupid. If you feel you fit into one of these categories and have a related question, submit it to spike@onlineoffbeat.com, and if he feels like it Spike may respond.
Spike is NOT a licensed therapist and has NO training whatsoever in psychology or human behavior, but as he frequently says, “the fucking President has no qualifications for his job either, and look how well he’s doing.” Spike Sez is not affiliated with Spike TV, Spike Lee, or anyone else purporting to be named Spike.
Dear Spike — I don’t really need your advice, but I want your opinion on something.
The other night my husband and I had a party with some friends and colleagues. While we were having cocktails the subject of political sex scandals came up (Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton, in particular). Much to my surprise, the men were much more adament in their condemnations than the women. The women all seemed to feel that mistakes happen and that while cheating is wrong, it doesn’t mean that a politician can’t still do a good job. The men, on the other hand, felt that cheating was evidence of poor character and judgment and therefore made the guilty parties unfit for political office.
Why do you think men are less forgiving of politicians’ infidelities than women? I would think it would be the other way around since in all of the instances we were discussing the wives were the victims.
I should probably tell you that all of our guests were married and ranged in age from early-40s to late-50s. It was a pretty even mixture of Republicans and Democrats. Most of the women, like myself, are stay-at-home moms and most of the men work in finance, earning fairly substantial salaries.
Any insights? And by the way, which candidate are you supporting for the Presidential election? Just curious.
— Enid, Weston, MA
Dear Enid — Wow. Last week a letter from Wellesley and this week a letter from WESTON! Who knew that Spike was so well read by the Boston-area elite? Spike feels just like Florence, the maid on “The Jeffersons”: still doing the same crappy job, but at a much better address.
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Cartoons / Humor
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