Childhood Banking Situations

“Childhood Banking Situations”. Ever have a phrase that seems to mean something, really doesn’t mean anything, but cracks you up nonetheless? Listening to Jimmy Pardo’s “Never Not Funny Season One”, the collected first season of his podcast (www.pardcast.com), one of the episodes began with this phrase, for reasons I don’t recall. But it cracked me up, and I still can’t say it without giggling.

Top Five Nonsense Phrases:

1.Aggressive Banana Divestiture
2.Wayward Scenic Propensities
3.Long Photographic Sucrose
4.Global Firework Architecture
5.Thermal Removal Security

Pardo’s podcast is available on ITunes, but it has gone to a subscription model. You can get the first 20 minutes for free, but to get the whole thing (about 90 minutes once a week) you need to pay $6.99 per month. The show consists of Pardo, his producer Matt, and one other comedian. The show is adult-there isn’t a chorus of profanity, but an occasional F bomb is dropped, and an occasional R rated story is told. But it is consistently amusing, occasionally hysterical, and well worth the money, to my mind. For $19.99, they will sell you the first 60 episodes as a download. I’ve been listening through them, and I’m currently up to Episode 20. They are very, very funny.

The brilliance of the show is that it really has no theme or purpose-just three and sometimes four people getting together and talking. It sounds dull, of course, but it is impossible to describe. There is tons of ribbing and teasing, and the punning and wordplay is constant-sharp, very bright standup comics riffing on each other. Plenty of 1980s music and television references are made, and somehow each episode flies by and leaves you wanting more. Very highly recommended.

According to my phone, which seldom lies to me, MLB has agreed to begin instant replay on home run calls. I am against it, and not because it will delay the game, although it probably will. I believe all sports are played by humans, and should be officiated by humans, period.

Now, my team has been screwed by bad calls by officials. (See ALCS, 1999.) Yes, it is important that we get the calls right, true. However, I firmly believe that this is part of the mystery of sport-sometimes you get the call, and sometimes you don’t. I don’t think we should use technology to alter this balance.

Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code 785 featured a powerful, moving sound file recorded by two Marines overseas that he morphed into Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing In The Name Of…” in a brilliant way. Powerful radio moment that no radio station would have the guts to broadcast in a hundred years. (Note to self: Add drop.io/dailysourcecode to the blogroll) (Also note to self: Tell Adam how perfectly that worked.)

Interesting how that song (“Killing…”) still holds up, probably ten years after the band broke up. Maybe it’s just Adam and I being almost the same age, but I can’t think of a better song for the place where he put it. Interesting also how a song whose refrain is “F^&k you, I wont do what you tell me/F^&k you, I wont do what you tell me,” still gives me chills at an age when I, frankly, do what they tell me. Repeatedly. Constantly.

Caller on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, referring to Guantanamo detainees: “regardless of whether or not we think they are bad guys, they are still human beings.” Exactly. If I had to sum up my views on the entire issue in one sentence, that’s it. They are human fucking beings. To treat someone otherwise as a matter of official or unofficial policy is monstrous beyond belief.