My latest entries in The Comedy Notebook | Mann Overboard

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— From NPR’S witty “Says You,” which, pre-pandemic, would make an annual visit to Chimacum High from the East Coast to do shows, comes this funny sign, supposedly from a Shakespearean REI: “Now is the winter of our discount tent.” 

“Says” airs on Seattle’s KUOW (94.9) Saturday nights at 6. 

— Once the name Trump blessedly fades, the mother lode of comedy will be mined out. Joe Biden is not great comedy fodder. Tough luck, late-night talk show hosts.

— The New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz offers this headline: “Republican Party Declares Moral Bankruptcy.” Also: “Trump to Defend Self After Receiving Law Degree From Trump University.”

— MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, post-impeachment: “The next time Trump will hear the words NOT GUILTY will be when he enters his plea in Fulton County, Georgia.

And the next time he’ll hear the word GUILTY is when the jury’s verdict is announced.” 

— Also on impeachment, comedy writer Gerard Mulligan’s take on Trump’s gimcrack impeachment legal team: “One under-reported side effect of that trial was that all the ambulances in Philadelphia went unchased.” 

— Middle Aged Riot on Twitter: “Each and every one of the Capitol insurrectionists should have the book thrown at them — once it is explained to them what a book is.” 

— New York-based comedy writer and author Merrill Markoe, who invented ex-beau David Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks segment, told me one day at Sunrise Coffee here that she was interested in buying a place in PT. The pandemic has, alas, delayed that. She had this funny line on Twitter recently about wacko Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — and cats: “When the dust settles and we learn the truth about the Jewish space laser, I hope we can talk the regional managers into adapting it for global cat entertainment.” 

— PT’s real-estate market is en fuego right now, with urbanites from Seattle and elsewhere deciding that since they’ll be working from home from now on, might as well settle in pleasant, non-urban, and politically liberal areas. That would be us. As soon as “For Sale” signs go up here, they quickly vanish. I worked at home for years, watching the tube for a living. When asked the best thing about being a newspaper TV columnist, I said it let me spend 24 hours a day in a bathrobe. 

— Buy you lunch? There’s a term in Hollywood for someone who won’t pick up a check: “He has short fingernails.” But I like the famously witty Dorothy Parker’s line better: “He throws nickels around like manhole covers.” 

— Sounds Like PT?: New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has an interesting comparison with SF school officials and ... deer in town. 

“The reason deer are so comfortable lollygagging through our yard and multiplying like rabbits is that they know from experience that they have no predators — no hunters, no mountain lions here. So, they do all sorts of stupid stuff, like walk into the middle of the road and get hit by cars, rub the bark off tree trunks and eat all our flowers. (Sound familiar?) 

“Well, those deer are like the San Francisco Board of Education when it recently decided — in a self-parody of political correctness — to prioritize renaming public schools that had been named for people who, it argued, had exhibited racist behaviors in their lifetimes, including Abraham Lincoln. Such nonsense happens because, like my deer, San Francisco’s school board has no political predators. Liberal Democrats dominate politics there, so there’s no serious threat.” 

— There are people fixated on finding misused apostrophes on store fronts, which is common. One website has these photos of apostrophe abuse: “No Dog’s Allowed”; “Thank You Veteran’s” ; and one if my biggest peeves, an all-too-common one: “Perfection  Has It’s Price.” I see “it’s” and “its” misused a lot, even by those who should know better. Its (sic) shameful. 

— Speaking of Honest Abe as we were above, how’s this for a great book title: “Lincoln: The Man, The Car, The Tunnel.” 

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