Today’s post won’t mean much to you Millennials, Gen Z-er’s, Gen X-er’s, or whatever other ridiculous name is currently in fashion. These days everyone is required to have a stupid label but let me assure you here and now that my generation was limited to only two labels/pronouns, Him and Her. I know that’s going to cause a great deal of confusion for all of you WOKE youngsters out there, but I don’t really care.
I’m now considered to be an “old fart” whose opinions and thoughts are out-of-date and no longer relevant to this modern era. I’m not the least bit insulted by that and actually take it as a true left-handed compliment of sorts. I hope all of you “labelled” individuals out there are able to read the following lists without voicing your unimportant opinions in a disrespectful manner. Be patient because it’s a long list but well worth reading.
Close your eyes… and go back…
Before the Internet, before semiautomatic pistols and crack and Mac-10’s.
Before SEGA or Super Nintendo or X-Box.
Way back…
Red light, Green light, 1 2 3.
Chocolate milk, lunch tickets, penny candy in a brown paper bag.
Hopscotch, butterscotch, double Dutch, jacks, kickball, and dodge ball.
Mother May I? Hula Hoops and Sunflower Seeds, jawbreakers, blow pops, Mary Janes.
The smell of the sun and lickin’ salty lips.
Wait, there’s more. . .
Catchin’ lightening bugs in a jar, playin slingshot and Red Rover.
When around the corner seemed far away, and going downtown seemed like going somewhere.
Climbing trees.
Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, sittin’ on the curb, jumpin’ down the steps,
Jumpin’ on the bed, pillow fights.
Being tickled to death, runnin’ till you were out of breath.
Laughing so hard that your stomach hurt.
Playing catch with your best friend for hours or until your arm hurt.
I’m not quite finished just yet…
Licking the beaters when your mother made a cake.
Getting hundreds of kisses from a gang of puppies.
When there were two types of sneakers for girls and boys (Keds & PF Flyers), and the only time you wore them at school, was for “gym.”
When nearly everyone’s mom was at home when the kids got there.
When you’d reach into a muddy gutter for a penny.
When girls neither dated nor kissed until late high school, if then.
When your mom wore nylons that came in two pieces.
When all of your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done, every day.
When you got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, for free. And you didn’t pay for air, and you got trading stamps to boot!
When any parent could discipline any kid, or feed him or use him to carry groceries, and nobody, not even the kid, thought anything of it.
Don’t stop reading yet…
When it was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents.
When they threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed…and did!
When being sent to the principal’s office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited a misbehaving student at home.
Basically, we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn’t because of drive by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Disapproval of our parents and grandparents was a much bigger threat!
Decisions were made by going “eeny-meeny-miney-mo.”
“Race issue” meant arguing about who ran the fastest.
Money issues were handled by whoever was the banker in “Monopoly.”
Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening.
Kids only received trophies when they actually won something.
Almost finished, be patient…
Being old, referred to anyone over 20.
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was cooties.
It was magic when dad would “remove” his thumb.
It was unbelievable that dodge ball wasn’t an Olympic event.
Having a weapon in school, meant being caught with a slingshot.
Nobody was prettier than Mom.
It was a big deal to finally be tall enough to ride the “big people” rides at the amusement park.
Abilities were discovered because of a “double-dog-dare.”
Saturday morning cartoons weren’t 30-minute ads for action figures.
“Oly-oly-oxen-free” made perfect sense.
Spinning around, getting dizzy and falling down was cause for giggles.
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team.
War was just a card game.
Running naked through the sprinklers on a hot day.
Water balloons were the ultimate weapon.
Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle.
Now that the new year has begun and the obligatory resolutions have been posted, I thought it would be nice to return to one of the mainstays of this blog, LIMERICKS! I have a large and varied collection but today I’ll be reaching way back to 1979 for some inspiration. I hope you enjoy them.
I’m on a break right now. Not that you really care but it’s just a break from another project I’m working on. My eyes were strained beyond belief from three hours staring at that project, so I decided to lighten things up with a little humor and jokes from the 1980’s. It seems that the decade of the 80’s easily supplies silliness and nonsense to last me for many years. Let’s get started.
How did you get to see the official bird of New York City. Cut somebody off in traffic.
Is it wrong to have sex before you’re married? Only if it makes you late for the ceremony!
When should you stop masturbating? When the smoke alarm goes off!
Why don’t girls like to drink beer on the beach? Because they get sand in their Schlitz!
What did the one lesbian say to the other lesbian? “Your face or mine!”
What you get when you cross an anteater with a vibrator? And armadildo!
What’s the hardest thing about the sex change from a man to a woman? Inserting the anchovies!
What happens to boys that lie? They get girls!
How do women get minks? The same way that minks get minks!
If you have VD, what do you know for sure? Urine trouble!
To all of the baseball lovers out there, here’s a little trivia that goes back seventy-two years. It’s nice to know that the tradition of the game remains as frustrating and fascinating as ever.
In baseball there is no clock. A pro basketball game lasts 48 minutes while hockey and football games last 60 minutes. But as the old saying goes, a baseball game (or the inning) isn’t over until the final out. A game on May 21, 1952, between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers proved the old saying true.
The first half-inning had lasted one hour. Twenty-one batters had gotten hits and seven walks, and two batters had been hit by a pitched ball. Fifteen runs had scored, and three men were left on base. The following day the New York Times printed some of the records the Brooklyn team had broken in that that first-half inning:
Most runs scored in one inning (15)
Most runs scored in the first inning (15)
Most runs scored with two outs (12)
Most batters to bat in one inning (21)
Most batters to reach base safely in a row (19)
This last record may be the most amazing of all. Only the first batter and the last had not gotten on base safely. The 19 batters in between had all made it – even the man who was put out on the basepaths for the second out. The Times confessed it couldn’t be sure that 19 batters in a row was a record, but if any major league team ever did better, no one remembers the occasion.
Here is another installment of some moderately disgusting 1980’s humor. How can you not appreciate the “good old days” and their “unwoke” attitude?
Why are women like pianos? When they’re not up right, their grand!
What do you have if you use Kaopectate, Clearasil and birth control pills? No runs, no zits, no errors!
What’s the difference between a hold-up and a stick-up? Old age!
What are the two stages of being a husband? When you want to be faithful but are not, and when you want to be faithful but cannot!
What is it in the spring air that causes girls to get pregnant? Their legs!
How many men suffer from wet dreams? Nobody suffers from wet dreams!
What’s the difference between a porcupine and a Porsche? The porcupine has the pricks on the outside!
Why did the girl take a bath in peroxide? Because she heard that on the whole gentlemen prefer blondes!
What is French asthma ? You can only catch your breath in snatches.
What’s the difference between a genealogist and a gynecologist? A genealogist looks up your family tree, but a gynecologist just peeks inside your bush!
Here is one of my all-time favorites.
What’s the difference between frustration and panic? Frustration is the first time you find that you can’t do it the second time, and panic is the second time find out you can’t do it the first time!
It seems that sports are on everyone’s mind currently between basketball finals, the NFL draft, and the newly published NFL season schedules for 2024. I thought I’d participate a little myself. I like some sports but not all, but I like humorous and odd stories regardless of the sport even more. Today I’m going to touch on golf and baseball for some interesting trivia and a few smiles and laughs.
Harpo Marx
George Burns
Hillcrest Country Club in California has long been a favorite of Hollywood entertainers. One August day comedians George Burns and Harpo Marx came to the club to play a round of golf. The thermometer registered over 100° and the two decided to play without their shirts. But then the course officials heard about the shirtless golfers and rushed out to find them. “Rules are rules, you can’t play without a shirt and there are no exceptions.” they exclaimed. The comedians put their shirts back on and started to play. The officials made their way back to the clubhouse. A few minutes later, someone came rushing in with the news, “Burns and Marx are playing without their pants!” Again, the committee raced out to the course and sure enough Burns and Marx had their shirts on, but they had removed her pants were playing in their undershorts. Harpo Marx reminded the committee of the rulebook. It says we can’t play without shirts. But show me the rule that says we can’t play without pants. The officials were licked, and they knew it. There and then a new rule was made: All-male players could take off their shirts, but they had to wear pants at all times. I love it when a plan comes together.
Henry Heitman
If there is a record for the shortest major league career by a pitcher, it belongs to a right-handed pitcher named Henry Heitman. On July 27, 1918, Heitmann started a game for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the St. Louis Cardinals. The first four batters all hit safely and Heitmann was sent to the showers immediately. A few days later he enlisted in the United States Navy and never played major-league baseball again. That’s what I call a short career.
Bobby Jones
Bobby Jones was one of the greatest golfers ever, winning dozens of tournaments before he retired in 1930. One day in 1920, playing in the Southern Amateur Tournament at New Orleans, Jones found himself with an unexpected problem. One of his drives landed inside an old shoe that was resting on top of a workman’s wheelbarrow. After deciding not to take a penalty for dropping the ball out of the shoe, he found a novel solution to his problem. He played the shoe. The immortal Bobby smacked the shoe which flew off the wheelbarrow and the ball flew out of the shoe and kept rolling, finally stopping only a few feet from the green. Jones chipped onto the green and holed out for a par. Professionals always find a way.
I thought I’d pander to my readership today since so many of you love information about celebrities and Hollywood and blah, blah, blah. I won’t be writing too much on the current list of celebrities that everyone seems to adore but will step back into the near past for some actual interesting trivia. I don’t care who they’re currently dating, I don’t care what they have to say about anything, and least of all who they might or might not be sleeping with. I find historical trivia when it comes to the Entertainment industry much more interesting. Here we go . . .
The American chemist Robert Hare discovered that a blow pipe flame acting upon a block of calcium oxide, which is lime, produces a brilliant white light that can be used to illuminate theater stages. We speak of someone who faces the glare of publicity as being in the “limelight”.
In the mid-1960’s, the motion picture director-producer Stanley Kubrick wanted from Lloyds of London an insurance policy protecting against losses should extraterrestrial intelligences be discovered before completion and release of his far-out motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey. Lloyds declined.
By 1929, two years after the introduction of the “talkies”, motion pictures in the United States were attracting 100 million patrons every week.
Northwestern University once conferred an honorary degree on a dummy of the wooden variety. On ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s dummy, Charlie McCarthy.
The English indirectly owe the preservation of Shakespeare’s birthplace to P. T. Barnum. In 1850’s, the Stratford-on-Avon cottage was neglected, and Barnum began to negotiate to acquire the house and have it shipped to his museum. The English were horrified and banded together to buy it and turned it into a national monument.
In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Charlie Chaplin was probably the most celebrated man in the world. During a visit to his native London, the motion picture comedian received 73,000 letters in just two days.
Acting was once considered so frivolous an occupation that authorities in Virginia, in 1610, forbade immigration of actors from England. Because of the evils that were thought to be associated with the craft, the cast of the first English play in colonial America in 1665 was arrested in Virginia, but later acquitted.
The stellar cataclysm in the motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey was filmed by Stanley Kubrick in an abandoned corset factory in New York City. The cataclysm was a close-up shot of paint dripping in a bucket.
There are songs in all of Shakespeare’s plays except for Comedy of Errors. That play was the basis for a Broadway musical in 1938 that won the Pulitzer Prize: The Boys from Syracuse, by Richard Rogers and Larry Hart.
In 1957, Frank Sinatra was quoted as describing “rock-and-roll” as “funny and false and written and played for the most part by cretinous goons”. But when Elvis Presley finished his Army stint three or so years later, Sinatra paid him $125,000 to appear for 6 minutes on a television special.
Trivia . . . more trivia . . . Here’s some interesting retro trivia from those good old days that we’ve always heard so much about. You can decide if they were as good as we’ve always been told.
Two hundred years ago: For kissing his wife in public on a Sunday after just returning from a three-year voyage, a Boston ship captain was made to sit two hours in the stocks for “lewd and seemly behavior”.
The first Cadillac, which was produced in 1903, cost less than the original model T Ford. Their prices, respectively, were $750 and $875.
The bathhouse in the late medieval town became the habitat for loose women and lecherous man as family life deteriorated. The medieval word for bathhouse, “stew,” has come down in English as a synonym for brothel.
The average married woman in 17th century America gave birth to 13 children.
One-third of all automobiles in New York City, Boston, and Chicago in 1900 were electric cars, with batteries rather than gasoline engines.
In 1909, Annette Kellerman, the Australian swimming star, appeared on a Boston beach wearing a figure- fitting jersey bathing suit with sleeves shortened almost to her shoulders and trousers ending 2 inches above her knees. She was arrested for indecent exposure.
Life expectancy at birth for Americans was 34.5 years for males and 36.5 years for females when George Washington became president in 1789.
As late as 1890, nearly 75% of Americans had to fetch their mail from a post office. A community had to have at least 10,000 people to be eligible for home delivery, and most people then lived in towns or on farms.
The Puritans, considering buttons a vanity and used only hooks and eyes.
In colonial days it was legal to smoke tobacco in Massachusetts only when the smoker was traveling and had reached a location that was 5 miles away from any town. In 1647 Connecticut passed a law forbidding social smoking and limiting the use of tobacco to once a day, and then only when the smoker was alone in his own house.
It’s kind of a rainy day here in Maine. It’s gray and miserable which makes me feel even lazier than I normally do. With that thought in mind I thought I’d reach all the way back to the year 1984 for some retro riddles. As you read them keep remembering these were written in the 1980s which might help you put them into their proper context. Here we go . . .
What’s the difference between a gigolo, a doctor, a Rabbi, a girlfriend and a Quaalude? A gigolo is a penis vendor, a doctor is a penis mender, a rabbi is a penis ender, a girlfriend is a penis tender, and a Quaalude is a penis bender.
When did the madam realize that the guy with no arms and legs on the front porch of the brothel wasn’t fooling around? When she figured out how he rang the doorbell!
What did the dentist say to the lady after she told him she’d rather have a baby then have a tooth pulled? “Make up your mind, I have to adjust the chair!”
What did the German general do when he heard that Napoleon wore red into battle so his troops wouldn’t panic in the event he was wounded? He ordered a brown uniform!
Why should you think twice before you marry a girl with hair down to her waist and boobs that stick out to here? Because in 10 years her boobs will be down to her waist and her hair will stick out to there!
Why can’t a man win with his wife? Because if he comes home early, she accuses him of being horny. If he comes home late, she suspects that he’s been out getting some. And if he comes home on time, she figures he’s got it already!
Why do girls rub their eyes when they wake up in the morning? Because they don’t have testicles!
What’s a liberated woman? A woman who has sex before marriage and a job afterwards!
What’s the difference between a pig and a musician? A pig won’t stay up all night trying to fuck a musician!
What’s a platonic relationship? A relationship between a guy who wants to have sex and a girl who doesn’t!
How about I just throw a little of everything your way on this fine Friday morning. I’ll start with a few apparently unedited newspaper headlines. I certainly hope the editors that approved these don’t get paid too much.
War Dims Hope for Peace
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges!
Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors
Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile
Next on my list for today are a few retro bumper stickers. They seem to make more sense than these headlines did.
I Don’t Break for Pedestrians
Learn From Your Parents Mistakes-Use Birth Control
I’m Not a Complete Idiot-Some Parts are Missing
He Who Laughs Last Thinks Slowest
See, I told you they were better than the headlines. And last but not least, a quote you should be glad you didn’t make. I’m not a fan of either Nancy Pelosi or Barabara Boxer but the award for the stupidest quote goes to Barabara. She won by a nose.
“Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, “Thank God I’m still alive.” But of course, those who died – their lives will never be the same again.”
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