Hey! Hey! Hey!

...IT'S COS'S BIRTHDAY TODAY!Can you believe Bill Cosby turned 70 today?  His b-day is easy to remember from one of his classic routines from the ‘60s:  "July 12th—my birthday…it was 104 degrees—in the shade. Not a snowball in sight…"  Sadly, the man has become rather aloof in his later years—now he’s MISTER Cosby instead of just plain Bill like he used to be.  Although I certainly don’t disagree with his "crusade" about changing certain elements of Black culture, etc., he’s become too professorial and jaded for my liking.  Some of it is certainly understandable—losing his only son the way he did would make anyone bitter.  I wish he’d at least lose those damn Ray Charles sunglasses he always wears nowadays—as brother Russell would say, "NO class!"

But let’s not forget that this man was brilliantly funny at one time, and he’s right up there with George Carlin and Richard Pryor as one of my all-time favorite stand-up comedians and he's far and away the best comedic storyteller of all-time.  I have just about every last one of his albums from the ‘60s and early ‘70s memorized verbatim, and "Fat Albert & The Cosby Kids" cracked me up when I was a kid.  It was one of the better animated kids’ shows of all-time because it managed to be funny and teach a lesson at the same time without losing its cool and getting preachy, and I'd like to think I'm a better person for having watched it.  "The Cosby Show" had its moments too, but I grew rather tired of the overall tone of that show over time because it got too heavy-handed and message-y—a prime example being pompous symbolic Black consciousness crap like naming the twins "Nelson" and "Winnie".

We can forgive all that though, because you have to admit that Cosby’s overall contribution to the world of comedy is pretty darn "o-bee kay-bee".

HYPOCRISY REVISITED
I just can’t help but point out the disingenuousness of Johnson County D.A. Phill Kline even considering seeking the death penalty for the punk accused of killing Kelsey Smith.  For the uninitiated out there, Mr. Kline (for whom one ‘l’ apparently isn’t enough to spell "Phil") is the over-zealous anti-abortion former Kansas Attorney General who tried to circumvent female patients’ privacy rights in order to go after certain abortion doctors in the Land of Oz.

Funny, but I thought conservatives were so dead set against "activists" in the legal profession…

SHE DIED AGAIN?!?Former President Lyndon Johnson’s wife Lady Bird died yesterday at age 94.  Not to make fun, but I honestly thought the former First Lady Bird was already dead!  Hell, LBJ died what, 34 and a half years ago?  I figured she had died a long time ago, but she still missed Bess Truman’s all-time record for longest-living First Lady by about three years.

CLASSIC MISHEARD LYRIC #39
"Night Moves"—BOB SEGER & THE SILVER BULLET BAND (1976)  My ears totally butchered this song when it first came out.  "Tight pants points hardly reknown."  I thought they were "Hollowing out".  "We were just young and restless and bored/Living by the sword…" sounded more like "And everybody saw…"  "We weren’t searching for some pie-in-the-sky summit."  Summit sounded like "Something". Dammit Seger, enunciate, will ya!

TAKE IT OUTSIDE!
The NHL is kicking around the idea of staging another outdoor regular season hockey game, this time at Buffalo’s Ralph Wilson Stadium between the Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins on New Year’s Day.  Great idea, unless you want TV viewers to actually watch the game!  Memo to NHL:  January 1st is wall-to-wall college football bowl games—why not schedule the outdoor game for that misbegotten weekend prior to the Super Bowl when there’s nothing but poker games and spelling bees on sports TV?

IT'S NOT A SPORT!!!
I keep forgetting to comment on that silly Hot Dog Eating contest they held last week on the 4th.  Just like this current Ultimate Fighting Champion fad crap, this thing will continue to grow in popularity until somebody dies while doing it, which is only a matter of time.  As for eating contests, I say make it a challenge.  Instead of competitively eating something tasty, why not hold a fruitcake eating contest?  Anyone who can get all the way through one fruitcake would be the champion!