This Can't Be Broccoli

After reading an interview with Donald Trump on ABC News, it seems that Charlie Sheen has some competition for dumbest quotes of the month. Don't believe me? When asked about the possibility that he would run for President, Trump started sounding off about the Middle East, President Obama, and how he gets along really well with poor people. I'm not making that up, he actually says-- "You know the funny thing, I don't get along with rich people. I get along with the middle class and the poor people better than I get along with the rich people" When does this man even come in contact with poor people? Is he talking about Star Jones on Celebrity Apprentice? "I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I'm very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put $600 million myself. That's a huge advantage." He's basically saying--Watch me buy this election. Isn't that an advantage? That I can just buy the whole damn thing and not even p...

I guess we all have that gift. The gift we never wanted from a well-meaning relative. An ugly sweater. A hideous vase. A picture of the person who gave us the picture in the first place. My gift is...the clown. When I was a kid, I went through a five-second phase where I was slightly interested in clowns. This was followed by a twenty year period (still ongoing) where I found clowns to be creepy. Unfortunately, my grandmother missed the deadline. For my sixth birthday, she bought me a clown doll. Keyword: Doll. This was not a toy. It was not something you could play with. One of my grandmother's favorite hobbies is giving gifts to children that they can't touch. "Leave it in the box," she yells, "That's going to be worth money someday!" None of the "leave it in the box" gifts my grandmother has purchased for me or my siblings over the years has ever ended up being worth anything, and most of them ended up getting lost ...

There's a story I love about a leader who arrives on the first day of his new job to find two letters from his predecessor. He is told to open the letters only when there is an emergency. When the first emergency occurs, the leader opens up the first letter. It says-- "Blame everything on me." So the leader blames his predecessor and everything is fine. When the second emergency occurs, the leader opens up the second letter. It says-- "Sit down and write two letters." The story is funny, but not all that absurd. The Two Letter Technique has become perfected at a time when voters are fickle. In go the Democrats to fix what the Republicans have broken, and out go the same Democrats when they fail to make an impact. All the politicians seem to agree on is one thing: It was the fault of the person before me. This does not exist purely on a high level of government. If anything, it seems worse the farther down you go. All the shake-ups in t...

I have a new pet peeve that's developed over the past year as I post more of what I write online. I call it the "No Comment" syndrome. It occurs when someone feels the need to comment on an article they've read by saying, essentially, that they don't have an opinion about it but just felt like commenting anyway. For example, I wrote a post about a reality television show I watch to have someone respond by saying-- "I don't watch television. Nothing good on it." Ooooookay. So why did that person feel the need to tell me that they have nothing to add to what I said? I don't mind a good discussion, or even an argument, but commenting on an article only to say you have no opinion on it seems sort of pointless, doesn't it? It makes me wonder if these people actually thought about how they'd sound saying something like that in a social situation. If you were at a party, and a group of guests were talking about New York and yo...

It's that time of year again. Dancing with the Stars has unveiled the cast for its twelfth season, and the reaction? Eh. DWTS has become known for its ability to give us a diverse line-up of celebrities--albeit from the D-List. This season it looks like even the D-List refused to return their calls. Oh sure, we still have the playmate (Kendra Wilkinson), the sports legend (Sugar Ray Leonard), the 80's child star (Ralph Macchio), and the fallen actor/actress (Kirstie Alley), but the rest of the group doesn't seem poised to guarantee big ratings. A random dj, a model, and Romeo? Where's the octogenarian a la Florence Henderson? Where's the tabloid star a la Bristol Palin or Kate Gosselin? Where are the people I'm supposed to root for??? (Okay, maybe I'm rooting for Ralph Macchio, but don't tell anyone.) The producers of DWTS seem to forget that there's no assurance that the most interesting contestants will stay on the show very lo...