One bright spot last week was a phone call from my niece Mylène with her Portuguese family in the car on their way back from Newport, including her dad, Antonio, an irrepressible free spirit who, though monolingual, walks into bars and cafes and shops and sprays Portuguese in all directions as if everyone was an old pal of his.
Boy, am I getting nostalgic in my old age. Every Saturday evening at six sharp I turn on the radio but now there are only idiots and fools talking.
I said to my wife, I said, "Lena...can't you tune in to something other than FOX News?!" She said, "Ollie, this is 1954; there is no FOX News yet! That's Walter Cronkite."
"Oh," I said. "Well then I'll just go down to the kitchen and have a nice piece of that apple pie."
"The h*ll you will!" Lena said. "That's for AFTER the funeral."
Thank you for today’s lovely column, GK. A great Joy it is to greet this day with a new smile!
I now have this very clear image in my mind of a clown car rolling up to the steps of the US Capital and an almost endless host of buffoons disembarking from the tiny conveyance, spreading comic chaos throughout the hallowed halls of our nation’s seat(you know what’s contained therein!) of democracy, while visiting onlookers stare in shock and disbelief, as if some manner of insurrection was taking place, all the while knowing that perhaps nowhere more than politics is the truth too often stranger than fiction.
Although it mocks a great love song, I'm reminded of "Send in the Clowns, don't bother they're here", as applied the the non-funny clowns among Republican Congress Representatives.
The fun-loving M. Sanson, official executioner during the Revolution, could slip a block into the slide down which the blade descended, and torment the victim, letting it drop two or three times but stopping just above his or her neck. I'm reminded of this as I watch Donald Trump lurch, apparently inexorably, towards the White House. One just wants to get it over with.
An old man on death bed smells a pot roast cooking. He ask his wife for a little piece of it and she says, no, that is for the wake. Old jokes never die, they just are reborn in a new form.
My favorite...Ole & Lena wondering where to park the car during city winter parking rules. If you already know it G, you don't need to contact me. And, if you don't contact me, I still thrive on most of your daily "guides for a saner life in the midst of chaos"!! 🤗😵💫
Seems like the high school yearbook committee is back together for one last bit of hilarity. I remember it so well, some of the kids getting into UofM, others being shipped off to Vietnam, a few heading west to San Fran, reciting Ginsburg and chugging red wine, my brother coming home from freshman year talking SDS and revolution and Johnson's a baby killer, and my grandparents' house where they cried watching tv and the riots at the convention in Chicago, on Michigan Avenue, of all places, and to this day I can't remember a time when the world seemed more hateful and tense and trigger-ready than it does today. So this has been a nice escape from the coming troubles. So many years later, we forget that we once believed we all knew everything on that yearbook team. I wonder where they are, if they're even still with us, and if they still know everything. I persist in believing they'd still laugh at the same jokes, even though they might not laugh much anymore.
Tell Antonio that the next time he is in Newport he should take a side trip to nearby New Bedford or Fall River, MA where almost everyone has at least some Portuguese ancestry and many people still speak the language.
The guillotine joke is good, but as retired engineer, I like another version: a doctor, a lawyer and an engineer, in that order, are to be put to death during the French reign of terror. The guillotine malfunctions for the first two, and they are set free due to single jeopardy guillotine etiquette. At this point the engineer speaks up: "Wait, I think I see the problem!"
Thanks for the “taste” of Portuguese! As the “little brother” to Spain on the Iberian Peninsula, the languages are strikingly similar. I remember, in Rome, once, in a line to enter a cathedral and put my hands on a Saint figure’s shoulders, the folks ahead of me in line were speaking Portuguese. I turned to them and said “Eo Fala Portugees” ( A Lie! That’s about all I knew, from having a Brazilian Girl Scout stay at our house while she visited upstate New York!) They started talking away happily. Spanish and Portuguese are so similar that I could follow them with at least 90% comprehension. I’d just reply in Spanish – which they may have known as a separate language – and their replies made sense.
I’ve had a similar experience with Italian, too. I think, having these “communal experiences” with others helps in terms of broadening our outlooks. If we’re “Strangers in the Land,” and suddenly we can find “friends” unexpectedly, it wouldn’t surprise me if the “Vigilante” in our brain, saying “Be On Guard,” lessens the pressure somewhat! And when we don’t feel that guillotine blade over our heads any more, we can lean back and take the people we’re with as “People”, not “threats to our safety!”
Dear Host – you travel a lot. Are there any hints you could give us, your public, about “Breaking The Ice” when the “Road” seems particularly “Rocky?”
Garrison, Garrison, why is it you could substitute Democratic for Republican in this essay and still feel you have conveyed the truth. Sadly we are in days of little humor and great sadness. I pray that God's testing will someday end, but probably not in my life time. Keep at it Brother, but spread some kindness.
Loved the Ollie and Lena jokes on PHC joke shows!
Boy, am I getting nostalgic in my old age. Every Saturday evening at six sharp I turn on the radio but now there are only idiots and fools talking.
I said to my wife, I said, "Lena...can't you tune in to something other than FOX News?!" She said, "Ollie, this is 1954; there is no FOX News yet! That's Walter Cronkite."
"Oh," I said. "Well then I'll just go down to the kitchen and have a nice piece of that apple pie."
"The h*ll you will!" Lena said. "That's for AFTER the funeral."
The world definitely needs more jokes and joke tellers right now.
Thank you for today’s lovely column, GK. A great Joy it is to greet this day with a new smile!
I now have this very clear image in my mind of a clown car rolling up to the steps of the US Capital and an almost endless host of buffoons disembarking from the tiny conveyance, spreading comic chaos throughout the hallowed halls of our nation’s seat(you know what’s contained therein!) of democracy, while visiting onlookers stare in shock and disbelief, as if some manner of insurrection was taking place, all the while knowing that perhaps nowhere more than politics is the truth too often stranger than fiction.
Bless you, Sir.
Although it mocks a great love song, I'm reminded of "Send in the Clowns, don't bother they're here", as applied the the non-funny clowns among Republican Congress Representatives.
I think this observation is great--it applies to all, Democrat and Republican.
The fun-loving M. Sanson, official executioner during the Revolution, could slip a block into the slide down which the blade descended, and torment the victim, letting it drop two or three times but stopping just above his or her neck. I'm reminded of this as I watch Donald Trump lurch, apparently inexorably, towards the White House. One just wants to get it over with.
No, no, no….stretch it out like the French Revolution executioner….
My current favorite:
“On a scale of 1 to 10, what are the chances this is in binary.”
[Courtesy xkcd.]
One of your best, Garrison! Great humor and lovely Portuguese words and loving sentiments about your family.
Thanks for this pick-me-up!
Translate please!
An entire column of recycled jokes. Bravo!
OLD but timeless jokes! None better, especially when Garrison is doing the telling.
An old man on death bed smells a pot roast cooking. He ask his wife for a little piece of it and she says, no, that is for the wake. Old jokes never die, they just are reborn in a new form.
My favorite...Ole & Lena wondering where to park the car during city winter parking rules. If you already know it G, you don't need to contact me. And, if you don't contact me, I still thrive on most of your daily "guides for a saner life in the midst of chaos"!! 🤗😵💫
Seems like the high school yearbook committee is back together for one last bit of hilarity. I remember it so well, some of the kids getting into UofM, others being shipped off to Vietnam, a few heading west to San Fran, reciting Ginsburg and chugging red wine, my brother coming home from freshman year talking SDS and revolution and Johnson's a baby killer, and my grandparents' house where they cried watching tv and the riots at the convention in Chicago, on Michigan Avenue, of all places, and to this day I can't remember a time when the world seemed more hateful and tense and trigger-ready than it does today. So this has been a nice escape from the coming troubles. So many years later, we forget that we once believed we all knew everything on that yearbook team. I wonder where they are, if they're even still with us, and if they still know everything. I persist in believing they'd still laugh at the same jokes, even though they might not laugh much anymore.
Tell Antonio that the next time he is in Newport he should take a side trip to nearby New Bedford or Fall River, MA where almost everyone has at least some Portuguese ancestry and many people still speak the language.
GK-
The guillotine joke is good, but as retired engineer, I like another version: a doctor, a lawyer and an engineer, in that order, are to be put to death during the French reign of terror. The guillotine malfunctions for the first two, and they are set free due to single jeopardy guillotine etiquette. At this point the engineer speaks up: "Wait, I think I see the problem!"
Fred Barker, Burbank
That's the one I remember, too!
Thanks for the “taste” of Portuguese! As the “little brother” to Spain on the Iberian Peninsula, the languages are strikingly similar. I remember, in Rome, once, in a line to enter a cathedral and put my hands on a Saint figure’s shoulders, the folks ahead of me in line were speaking Portuguese. I turned to them and said “Eo Fala Portugees” ( A Lie! That’s about all I knew, from having a Brazilian Girl Scout stay at our house while she visited upstate New York!) They started talking away happily. Spanish and Portuguese are so similar that I could follow them with at least 90% comprehension. I’d just reply in Spanish – which they may have known as a separate language – and their replies made sense.
I’ve had a similar experience with Italian, too. I think, having these “communal experiences” with others helps in terms of broadening our outlooks. If we’re “Strangers in the Land,” and suddenly we can find “friends” unexpectedly, it wouldn’t surprise me if the “Vigilante” in our brain, saying “Be On Guard,” lessens the pressure somewhat! And when we don’t feel that guillotine blade over our heads any more, we can lean back and take the people we’re with as “People”, not “threats to our safety!”
Dear Host – you travel a lot. Are there any hints you could give us, your public, about “Breaking The Ice” when the “Road” seems particularly “Rocky?”
Garrison, Garrison, why is it you could substitute Democratic for Republican in this essay and still feel you have conveyed the truth. Sadly we are in days of little humor and great sadness. I pray that God's testing will someday end, but probably not in my life time. Keep at it Brother, but spread some kindness.