EOCAWKI: When All is Said and Pun...

In 1983 while working in the PR department at what was then Marine Midland Bank in New York, I decided to submit an entry to a relatively new writing competition established by San Jose State University. It was the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, essentially a bad writing competition named in honor of the author who wrote the novel that begins with the phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night."  (No. It wasn't Snoopy.) The contest called for the opening line of a bad novel. My entry was: "Behar's swift feet carried him through the temple as his master, 'The American,' lay dying on a cot in the servant's hut." I entered just for fun and was quite surprised and delighted weeks later to receive a certificate of "Dishonorable Mention." By today's standards, my entry isn't great but I was really happy to get that Dishonorable Mention and I keep the certificate framed in my office to this day.  The contest has evolved over the years and the entries are often quite brilliant and extremely funny. (You can check out the latest at the contest web site, http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2015win.html)
     I also enjoyed those Washington Post competitions that had different criteria each week. For example, one called for removing a single letter from the name of a large company to create something else. So that produced things like "Itibank, for the small saver," and "General Ills, medicinal breakfast cereal."
  There are few things better than words, nicely arranged or altered to make people laugh. On the flip side, unintentionally misused words can feel like cold air hitting a chipped tooth. Someone once told me I was "in the wrong vernacular." He probably meant vocation. And someone once described to a friend how he had something "embezzled" on his belt buckle. Emblazoned, perhaps, or engraved? The comic Norm Crosby has been around forever and built his whole bit on such malapropisms. (More recently, when I heard "alternative facts," I wasn't sure whether to laugh out loud or howl in agony.)
    In any case, artfully misused words, words used in unexpected contexts, or puns can draw a laugh or a good-natured groan.
    Following are a few cringe-worthy examples to prime the pump. I'd love to see more. They don't have to be in any particular format. Anything that takes a word, well-known slogan or catch-phrase and uses or paraphrases it in a different way would be great.  If you have any to share please post them in a comment or send them my way. I think we can all use a chuckle these days, especially since the Cubs lost the World Series last year. Wait. Sorry. How did that alternative fact slip in there?

"He had worked his whole life for this. Now, America's Top Chef he could do what he needed to do -- rid the country of processed food, especially that silly canned cheese that so many people insisted on sprinkling on their pasta. He'd show them how much better it is to buy a fresh chunk and shred it yourself. Yes, he was ready... ready to make America grate again."

****

As a landscape designer, Jake sometimes didn't know who he was working for. This time, though, it was clear. He was sketching out the base paths for a  baseball field that would be part of a new housing subdivision and Dan Webber was well-known among real estate developers for his love of the national pastime. There could be no question about it. Diamonds are for Webber. 

****

"There she was, waiting, just like she said she would be. I drank in those liquid eyes and could almost taste those imploring lips, while her non-stop legs made a round trip to my heart starting from below my belt. She called me Little Caesar because she was hot and I was ready."

EOCAWKI: Kicking the Bucket List

It's been just over 5 months since I retired, capping a 40-year career in financial services public relations. (Imagine me in that field for 40 years?? I know, right?)  Anyway, the one question I hear most these days is, "Are you enjoying retirement?" The second most frequent question is, "What are you doing?" The answer to the first is yes, absolutely. The answer to the second is, I'm really not sure. I haven't been bored at all, but if you ask me what I did on on any given day the answer is likely to be disappointingly mundane. I get the feeling that when you retire, people expect you to immediately start off on amazing adventures from some bucket list. Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not sure that's what retirement is really like for most people. Take today, for example.

Sublime retirement time in the company of people I love!

     Over breakfast Roni and I read the paper and did two crossword puzzles. I went to the dentist for my regular checkup then Roni and I met for lunch. After lunch, she headed off to work and I went to buy this new laptop I'm writing this on. (The old one sort of exploded. But that's another story.)
     Laptop secured, I went to get my first haircut in many, many months. I was getting quite shaggy and figured it was time to chop the curls. (Doesn't "chop the curls" sound like a Brooklyn euphemism for something either sexual or aquatic?)  And so it goes on most days

     Aside from the day-to-day routine, Roni and I have traveled a bit and are planning some more trips. We visited friends in France and spent some time in England and Iceland. Closer to home we met up with friends in DC, rented a house in the mountains for a New Years weekend family gathering and have gone up a few times to see our son and daughter-in-law and other family and friends in New York. (As much as I miss my late dog, I have to admit it's great to be able to leave without worrying about pets. There's our cockatiel, Didgie,to think of, but he speaks English and can fend for himself for a while.)

Roni and I built this table and benches, the first of

many more projects to come.

 We've stayed busy at home, too. We built from scratch a table and benches to go on our new screened deck and, based on our success, we're planning to learn to do more woodworking and furniture building.
     I cook more than I used to and enjoy it more than ever. (Food is good. It makes me happy.) I swim laps and work out in the gym from time to time.  I've learned to meditate and it's made a real difference for me.
     I'm spending some time working for ACTS, a non-profit on whose board I serve as Secretary. It's an organization that provides financial and other support to people facing crises that threaten the stability of their lives and homes. They do amazing work and it's a privilege to do what I can to support them. One of my jobs will be to help beef up their website, ACTSRVA.org.
     I've been tidying up at home, focusing first on our garden shed, with plans to clean out the garage and attic where relics of our life have been accumulating for 26 years.  And, that's really it.
     So, I haven't scaled the Matterhorn but neither have I been sitting on my hands or on my butt in front of the TV.  Yet, for all their regularity, the days seem to fly by faster than they did when I was employed. In the course of those routine days I've met, talked to and learned from some very nice people with all kinds of outlooks on life. Someone recently observed that you never know what impact you're having on the people you meet everyday, even when it seems like you're not having any.  So, who knows. I guess it's  possible that in the course of our travels -- and even in the course of our day to day lives -- we're all in some way having an impact on the world at large. I hope it's a positive impact. The only thing I can say for sure is that so far retirement has been a blast and my shed is clean. That's a start. Let's give it another 40 years and see what happens.