Category Archives: Comedy

Western Novelist in the Making

Posted on by
Reply

141

Writers have to look the part. That’s a problem for me. As a comedy writer, what do I do, dress like Rob Petrie? I can’t do Red Skelton’s hair, or Jack Benny’s horn-rimmed glasses.

When my daughter took me horseback riding at the ranch she worked on, I stopped for this photo op. By the looks of things, I’m on my 18th western novel by now. I think the title is “Shootout at the Starbucks.”

The opening line in the book goes like this:

“Forget about paying for the coffee for the chump behind you. Bart Slackline was here for his morning brew, and all of these coyotes surrounding him just made it that much harder. He was ready to horsewhip the barista when suddenly …”

Maybe westerns are easier to write than comedy, after all.

It’s just that during the photo shoot I  shouldn’t have squatted with my spurs on.

Spanktites

Posted on by
Reply

image

Matt and I were discussing the new cave tour for next year:

“We will probably put in switches along the way so the tour guide can turn off lights behind the group,” said Matt. “That way the guides can keep the tour moving along,” he beamed.

“I’ve got a better idea,” I replied. “Why don’t we grow some Spanktites in the cave?”

“What are ‘Spanktites?” Matt wanted to know.

“They’re like Stalagmites, and Stalactites, only they grow horizontally,” I answered. “The Spanktites could be spring loaded to swat the lollygaggers in the parotid,” I offered.

Matt wasn’t real sure if we should be artificially growing things in the cave. The spanking part didn’t seem to bother him, though.

I thought it was all better than the “Impale-tites” I was going suggest.

I’ve got a few months to work out the bugs.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get a pliers to bend some stalactites.

`

No Banjos at the Bank

Posted on by
Reply

DSCN0858

Yesterday I stopped into the bank for some transactions and a cup of coffee. I thought it would be a good idea to use the restroom before standing in a long line.

As I walked to the restroom I saw a sign under the restroom sign that said “banjos”.

Being a pretty fair banjo player myself, I wanted to check out the bank’s banjos. There must be a great collection of them here at the bank.

But the banjo sign led me right into the restroom. “They must be mounted on the wall,” I thought to myself.

To my dismay, I never found the banjos. I looked everywhere. Under the sink, above the paper towel holder, and inside every stall. What a rip off.

Oh well. It’s late at night and I’ve got to get to bed. As they say in Mexico, “Bonus nachos!”

NASA Saved by Comedy Writer

Posted on by
Reply

DSCN0448

The other day I was giving one of my comedy cave tours at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. I average one joke every 30 seconds on my tours.

I pointed to a gaggle of stalactites on the ceiling and said, “Take a picture of these, save the photo, and turn it upside down. You will see a city on Mars.”

As I stood back and observed, the “ooohs” and “aaahs” erupted with timed precision.

When they died down, I said, “Now I want you to email your photos to NASA, and have their marketing department overlay them on those boring pictures of Barstow, California they keep sending out.”

Laughter.

Apparently, one little girl did just that.

NASA took the photo and did the overlay.

Then NASA set up a press conference, and announced to the world that they had discovered signs of past life on Mars.

“Speaking on condition of anonymity,” one NASA official said that they even found an empty Starbucks coffee shop in every building.

In a genius publicity move, NASA did what they learned from National Geographic. Remember when National Geographic had a picture of a fossil “lizard-bird” on their front cover a few years ago?

The “lizard-bird” fossil turned out to be a fake from China, and they had a small retraction later on. But by then it was too late. Millions of museums around the world will refer to that photo as a proof of evolutionary transition.

So NASA has proof of past life on Mars even though it was retracted in a small statement on page 7 of the Wakarusa Tribune’s annual “Best of Hog Prices” edition.

Intelligent life in outer space.

NASA is raking in the bucks now that it is piquing the interest of the public. The federal budget for NASA has increased 380% per year, compounded daily, for the next 50 years.

The Space Program can breathe easy and coast for a while.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go screw some loose stalactites back onto the ceiling.

How to Leverage Wheaties at the Grocery Store

Posted on by
Reply

Leveraging Wheaties is a lost art form.

One evening Caleb and I stopped  by the store for a few groceries.  We noticed that there was a pallet of the new Wheaties “Fuel” cereal on sale, at a substantial discount. We grabbed two boxes, and a few other items and proceeded to the self checkout. When we scanned the boxes of Wheaties, an automatic coupon popped out. “$2.00 off on your next grocery store purchase” read the coupon.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty good.”

“You know if you hit the ‘BACKSPACE’ button on the screen now, you could use that coupon, Caleb said.”

“That can’t be right,” I replied. “You could forget these other groceries, and buy a $4.27 box of Wheaties for only 87 cents.”

“Correct,” said Caleb.

We stared at each other for a moment. Then we tested the system. Sure enough, Caleb could buy one box of Wheaties, use the store discount, manufacturer’s coupon, plus the auto coupon, and buy a box of Wheaties Fuel for only 87 cents. The catch? You had to buy exactly 5 boxes at a time.

Being 8:30 at night, not having anything else to do, and having a pocket full of cash, we began a very strange process: Caleb brought 5 boxes of Wheaties to the self checkout, performed the weird purchase, and I took the cart out to the Subaru, and loaded it up. I was running carts as fast as I could.

As first, we tried to be discreet. But cashiers being who they are, they noticed me on about the 3rd or 4th trip I took out the door. After answering their question about the quantity of purchases with “We really like Wheaties,” we decided to go into overdrive and pretty much clear out the store as fast as possible.

Caleb was loading up carts as fast as he could, and I was running them out the door.

Did I mention that blueberries were on sale at a substantial discount, too? We pretty much cleaned out the blueberry section. I believe I commented to the store clerk how much we like blueberries on our Wheaties Fuel.

Then the store Manager showed up.

Caleb heard the clerk ask a distressed looking manager, “Can they do this?” The store manager wasn’t exactly sure at that moment. Meanwhile Caleb  smiled at him while I ran Wheaties out the front door like a squirrel tearing across the lawn with a wad of nuts in my mouth.

When it was over, we had collected 100 boxes of Wheaties. And cases of blueberries.

We set the Wheaties up like dominos at home and played with them. The blueberries ended up on cereal, and a thousand smoothies.

Next time we might try Snickers bars…