Sunday encore! Fascinating facts about Hank Heimlich & his maneuver

Did you know Henry Heimlich turns 95 in February? His Heimlich maneuver just turned 40. This December story began surging this week. I re-read it and it has lots of fun facts about something that’s save countless lives. Hope you enjoy it and have a splendid Sunday.

(788 words)

I wonder if the developer of the live-saving breakthrough ever used what we now know as the Heimlich Maneuver as a pick-up line in the popular discos of the era.

“Hey, baby, I’m Hank Heimlich. How about coming back to my place and I’ll give you a little taste of what I call the Heimlich Maneuver.”

Have you ever been Heimliched? Ever Heimliched anyone else? 

When names become verbs, I feel compelled to investigate. Heimlich has become such a common name for such an uncommonly simple procedure I had to find out more.

Want to know what I learned?

Henry Judah Heimlich is the uncle of “Happy Days!” star Anson Williams.

Who would have guessed an investigation into the history of the Heimlich would lead to a motherlode of “Potsie” trivia?

The Heimlich Maneuver turns 40 next year about the same time Henry Heimlich turns 94.

His maneuver seems as young as its namesake old. It seems like it’s been around forever, but it’s younger than Neil Patrick Harris.

Without the Heimlich Maneuver we would have been deprived of the extended talents of Elizabeth Taylor, Cher, Ed Koch, Carrie Fisher, Dick Vitale, John Chancellor, and Ellen Barkin, all personalities whose lives were saved by timely Heimlichs.

I knew George W. Bush nearly choked on a pretzel in 2002 (no Heimlich was necessary), but I don’t remember hearing Ronald Reagan nearly choked on a peanut in 1980 as he was campaigning to become president. His life was likely saved when aide Michael Deaver Heimliched The Gipper.

Reports say Reagan had taught Deaver the maneuver.

My favorite almost-Heimlich involved actor Pierce Brosnan and the ravishing Halle Berry. The two were filming a racy sex sequence for the 2002 Bond film, “Die Another Day.” The scene was graphic enough that the scene had to be trimmed to avoid being the first R-rated Bond.

Yowza.

Anyway, Brosnan ad-libbed a funny while Berry was eating a fig and the fig lodged in Berry’s throat.

Brosnan said the nearly naked Berry about choked to death as he pondered the propriety of grabbing her from behind and executing a series of aggressive mid-section thrusts, a dainty consideration that betrays a serious mis-reading of the movie-going public’s tastes.

It would have been Brosnan’s most compelling performance since he was filmed trying to carry a tune in “Mamma Mia.” 

It’s a pity, too, to sense the missed opportunity for tabloid headline writers who would have enjoyed a creative challenge to come up with a dandy about a peach of an actress named Berry nearly being felled by a fig.

Speaking of tabloid writers, I was at a table with a bunch of them about 20 years ago when one of them nearly choked to death on an unchewed meatball.

It was at a dinner where some editors for National Enquirer invited me and another correspondent to tag along. There was much laughter, drinking and rapacious eating.

I didn’t even notice Mike was choking. My editor did. He lifted the sizable correspondent out of his chair and with two mighty pumps sent the meatball flying across the table, nearly landing in another editor’s gazpacho.

What I remember most was the thrusting caused the survivor’s bladder to loosen and right there at this swanky restaurant in front of dozens of other shocked diners he peed his pants.

So in one dinner he’d nearly died twice: once from choking, once from mortal embarrassment.

I asked the heroic editor if he’d have given the guy mouth-to-mouth, had it been necessary.

“Not on your life,” was his answer.

I wholeheartedly concur. Another guy would have to owe me a ton of money before I at the crucial moment broke out the Binaca and chose to bestow the breath of life.

So the Heimlich is the perfect lifesaver. I’ll bet my 13-year-old could do it -- and given my sloppy eating habits one day she might have to. Check out the link below to the story about the day I nearly choked to death during a Chinatown dim sum in Manhattan.

More about the man: In 1951 he married Jane Murray, the daughter of wealthy ballroom dancing instructor conglomerate Arthur Murray. The pair had four children, one of whom, Phil Heimlich a Christian conservative radio host in Cincinnati who has waged a nearly 50-year-war against his own father. 

He says his own father has engaged in a “wide-ranging history of fraud.” 

Lousy ingrate.

It’s enough to break a thoracic surgeon’s heart.

Strange isn’t it, that the story of a man who’s namesake technique will save untold millions from untimely asphyxiation would leave empathetic readers sort of all choked up.

Related . . .

Long live the spork . . . and me!

A motherlode of Roald Dahl trivia

Home improvements & looming heart attacks

Random thots on baseball, racism, Ebola and one bad movie

I’ll be appearing before about 10,000 people at Fort Ligonier Days in nearby Ligonier this Friday and Sunday.

Saying it like that makes it seem like a big deal. And it is. 

For Ligonier, at least. It’s a huge weekend for the town and people come from all over to enjoy the fall festival.

My role is much more peripheral. I’ll be signing books and saying howdy on the sidewalk outside Second Chapter Books, 139 E. Main St. I’m flattered owner Laurie McGiniss invited me, along with a handful of other writers, to sign books in such a prominent spot on such a busy weekend. I have a family reunion on Saturday so I won’t be there for the busiest day. 

So I’m besieged with various distractions so let’s take a scattergun approach to today’s post.

• Baseball is down to four teams and Pittsburgh’s not one of them. That means I need to concoct an artificial reason to root for a bunch of uniformed strangers who collectively earn as much as $500 million more than I ever will.

I like Baltimore, but lots of Baltimore likes Ray Lewis so they’re out. Kansas City is very appealing because they haven’t been in the playoffs for 29 years. So they’re my American League favorite.

In the NL we have San Francisco and St. Louis. I love San Francisco and have wonderful memories of honeymooning there. I really don’t have anything against St. Louis. They’re a wonderful organization and many of their fans devote their lives to producing malted beverages that make people like me happy. But there’s now video evidence that many of those fans are also bitter racists so I’m pulling for the Giants, with my heart hoping Kansas City wins the whole thing.

• Most of the current movies look too dismal to get me to go to the theater. Even “The Judge,” which looked promising, is out because majority reviews declare it mediocre. So, all I can do for Hollywood entertainment is read and share the hilarious slams witty critics are bestowing on “Left Behind,” the new Nic Cage movie, which is checking in at just 2 percent positive on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

For starters: Linda Barnard, Toronto Star, “Score one for Satan!”

• It’s silly for me to disparage St. Louis based solely on its racist fans. If teams with racist fans were my rooting criteria I’d even have to stop rooting for Pittsburgh. Heck, I’d have to stop rooting for the Latrobe Wildcats. Racism is a defining characteristic of many flag-waving Americans today.

• “Left Behind,” Martin Scribbs, Mixed Reviews, “I can’t wait for Nic Cage to explain THIS one to God on Judgement Day.”

• Still getting great feedback on my latest promo. People think it’s hilarious. There are three versions. This links to the 3:25 one, this to the jumbo 7:34 version. I’m hoping soon it starts getting rave reviews from the men and women looking to book entertaining speakers.

• “Left Behind,” William Bibbiani, Crave Online, “It’s bad alright, but not so bad it’s good. It’s just so bad it’s bad. And that’s too bad.”

• I was having a bad day yesterday, filled with rejection and self-doubt. Then I got an e-mail from a guy I met briefly last year near the Luxor crap tables in Las Vegas. He’d enjoyed my book and e-mailed to say he’d referenced it in an interview that helped him land a job as a PR manager at the Wynn. I told him the only thing that would have pleased me more would have been if the interview had been WITH Wynn. But his story really turned my day around.

• “Left Behind,” Nell Minow, Beliefnet, “The movie is being marketed as ‘Christian Entertainment,’ but it does not qualify in either category.”

• “Many of us pray at night to God that he’ll do something to change the world, while going through each and every day ignoring the God-given powers we have to change the world.” That, I believe, is one of the most profound things I’ve ever written. I use the line in my talks to tell people how we can make or ruin anyone’s day with either a kind or slashing word. My Vegas friend’s note is a perfect example. Try it today with someone you know who could use an encouraging word. You’ll change the world.

• My decision to pass up the a chance to sell books on the busiest day of a popular festival in favor of drinking and farting with my cousins is yet another example of why I seem destined to be impoverished by my priorities.

• “Left Behind,” Liz Braun, Jam! Movies, “When you are following in the footsteps of Kirk Cameron, nothing good can come from that.”

• If the previous quote about God-given powers is, indeed, one of the most profound things I’ve ever written it’s only because the competition is so slim. I for years thought my most profound line was this: “I’m becoming convinced the greatest faith isn't the belief in God. The greatest faith is when Curly yells, ‘Hey, Moe! Hey, Larry! Help! Help!’ and believes the situation will actually improve.”

• “Left Behind,” Brian Truitt, USA Today, “‘Left Behind’ seriously could have used some divine intervention.”

• Being paranoid about Ebola is understandable. It’s scary. But right now the most sensible step most Americans can take to prevent the spread of Ebola is to donate to a worthy organization like Doctors Without Borders. The philanthropic is full of altruistic healers who are understandably paranoid about Ebola to ensure the  paranoia you’re displaying today will always be a silly overreaction. 

• “Left Behind,” Bill Gibron, Film Racket, “(Ticket buyers) will be praying for salvation from this awkward apocalypse.”

• Interested in seeing a really funny movie that might have slipped under your radar? It’s “Enough Said,” with James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Val and I just laughed and laughed. It was wonderful. Rotten Tomato critics agree and gave it 96 percent.

• I wonder if what America’s top critics would say about my cheesy promo. I think they’d score it about 82 percent fresh, which is good.

• Stop by and see me on Friday or Sunday (not Saturday) at Ft. Ligonier Days! Buy a book. Buy two!

Don’t get left behind.

Shuffling off the shuffle: a "new" way to appreciate music

(1,010 words)

Reason and experience have made me among the planet’s most humble beings. I never feel compelled to boast I’m outstanding athlete, possess a keen intellect or have the lovemaking abilities of the mythical Zeus.

To do so would be crass and, besides, I’m confident that one day soon my wife will post a catch-all tribute to me on Facebook and I wouldn’t want to spoil her surprise.

Any day now.

But there is one realm in which I do feel superior.

I am among the world’s most tasteful music aficionados.

I have an appreciation for country, folk, jazz, classical, and every genre except hip hop and that’s okay because hip hop doesn’t count and I can say so because I am among the world’s most tasteful music aficionados.

Given all that, I, of course, have great knowledge about the most important genre in recorded history. That being classic rock ’n’ roll.

Some will argue the music of Beethoven, Mozart and their contemporaries is the most important. They are mistaken. Sure, it was good and enduring music, but it didn’t inspire the revolutionary passion of great rock.

And no one ever held up a Bic lighter and toked on a fat Doobie and yelled “Wooo!” when a baton-wielding guy in a powdered wig kicked off  “Symphony 7, Allegretto, Movement No. 2.”

That’s why today I’m taking the time to inform you I’ve starting a movement of my own, one that has nothing to do with stringed instruments.

I want everyone to start listening to albums.

This is more radical than it sounds. I’m not talking about vinyl or suggesting a costly format switch.

I’m talking about listening to albums in the order they were released.

See, I’ve noticed in the past few years my iPod has surreptitiously turned me into something I’ve always mocked. I’ve become a greatest hits listener.

Listening to the greatest hits of any artist is the most superficial way to enjoy every artist. You miss context, depth and and the magnificence of what used to be something special back when people cared more about the music than the devices that play the music.

It used to be a real event when one of the great bands released an album, particularly what used to be called a double album. People would wait outside the old record stores while FM radio stations would play the entire album in order over and over again.

What happened?

We became a nation of cherry-picking playlist listeners.

We don’t listen to albums. We listen to the songs we like from the albums we like if we bother to buy the album at all.

To my everlasting shame, that’s what I’d become.

I noticed this when I was trying to brainwash my little girls into becoming as musically tasteful as their dear old man.

I’d want them to appreciate Bruce Springsteen so I’d play them “Thunder Road,” but not “She’s The One.”

With the Stones, I’d play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” but not “You Got The Silver.”

The worst was playing them the Beatles. How can you play “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and not play “She’s Leaving Home?” In fact, to sever any part of “Sgt. Pepper” or “Abbey Road” from the glorious whole would be like removing a limb from the Venus de Milo.

Well, one of the remaining limbs.

Then I began to realize how little I’m listening to albums in order. 

This became apparent thanks to two artists who’ve released great sequential albums in the past months. They are Quinn Fallon and Tom Petty.

Quinn’s my buddy, the Columbus bar owner, about whom I’ve written so much it’s beginning to annoy mutual friends of ours about whom I never write a word (hello, Kyle Alexander!). But Quinn’s always newsworthy. His band, Los Gravediggers, is releasing a great new album called “Get A New Ghost.” He’s written several songs inspired by things I’ve said (see YouTube link below) and Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys has recorded with him.

How could I not write about a guy like that? In fact, I’d probably draw a more substantial readership if I changed my blog’s name to, “Eight Days To Quinn Fallon.”

And if you haven’t heard of Petty, just google “America’s greatest rocker.”

Both have said how much consideration they’ve always put into album sequence and how they should play the way a novel reads.

I realized with my shuffle, random and scattered playlists how much my listening habits had changed. When it came to music, I’d been guilty of disorderly conduct.

So I decided to begin listening to albums in order all over again.

Truly, listening to any of the great Beatles or Stones albums piecemeal is a sort of blasphemy. Same goes for Springsteen albums like “Born to Run” and “The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle.”

Even better is it’s like being on a musical treasure hunt. My iTunes library said it’d been five years since I’d played “Caribou,” the mediocre ’74 Elton John set that includes two huge hits (“Bitch is Back” and “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”), and about four or five stinkers. Ironically, one of the unheralded good songs is called “Stinker.”

But there’s a dark gem on there called, “Ticking.” It’s a very disturbing, but a beautifully produced and moving song about spree violence from back when spree violence was still newsworthy.

It’s been a revelation to reconnect with albums like Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” Stevie Nicks’s “Bella Donna, Joe Ely’s “Letter to Laredo” or “Muswell Hillbillies” by the Kinks.

My musical conduct is no longer disorderly.

Plus, it freed my mind to think of more important things rather than what the next song’s going to be, if it’s going to be good or bad or if it’s one I’ve already heard about 500 times.

Meaningful things like what it’ll be like the day my wife writes on Facebook how great it is to be married to a swell guy like me.

Related . . . 

What Chris Rodell & Quinn Fallon have to say about each other (1:23 video)

Listening to classic rock with my senile Mom

Petty on vinyl & who’s better? Him or Springsteen?

Roll on, Stones

For Boss fans only: A Springsteen retrospective

In praise of rock’s double albums

My 25 most played songs (2010)

Blaming a conservative for nearly killing our dog

(764 words)

There’s a persistent belief among my friends and family that I hate my dog. 

I believe this misconception stems from an Oct. ’10 post I wrote titled, “I hate my dog.”

But Saturday night marked a turning point in the tumultuous relationship I’ve had with the 9-pound rescue dog our daughters named Snickers.

Saturday night I said urgent prays that Snickers wasn’t dead. I prayed that my conservative friend Joe hadn’t killed him.

A competent conservative is a formidable force.

The problem is the conservative movement is freighted with too many men like Joe, uninformed old white guys who think Sarah Palin has all the answers and are so incompetent that when you leave him in charge of a 9-pound dog he almost kills both the dog and himself.

But Joe’s always splendid company on a golf course or in a tavern so we’re together all the time.

It was near 10 p.m. Me and the family were snuggled in our beds in a comfy Kent, Ohio, hotel. We’d just spent the day with an old Ohio University buddy of mine whose family’s owned a popular apple orchard since 1870. It was a glorious fall day.

One of the best parts for me was I didn’t think about Snickers once until Joe, who was watching him for the first time, called and matter-of-factly said Snickers was gone.

That’s just how he said it: “Well, he’s gone. I took him outside and he just took off.”

It was the worst phone call I’ve received since Mom called to tell me Dad had died.

He said Snickers was on his leash and dashed off when Joe’d stumbled on the stairs.

What was troubling was he seemed to infer he’d done all he could. He’d yelled once or twice for him to return and when he didn’t he went back inside to resume watching “Big Bang Theory” reruns.

It was like we’d left Snickers with Dick Cheney.

I turned to my daughters and said, “Snickers ran away from Joe.”

It was the first time in my life I’ve ever had to deliver news to my daughters that I knew would instantly break their hearts. The room filled with their sobs.

Me, I said a prayer and began preparing for the unavoidable. We had to head home. We gathered up our stuff like the hotel fire alarm had just sounded and started for the parking lot. Fully dressed and now all wide awake, we were just about out the door when my phone rang.

It was Joe.

“He’s back. Some neighbors found him and brought him back. He’s fine.”

Joe was very brusque. Either he’d hurt himself in the fall or the “Big Bang Theory” rerun must have been particularly compelling.

I spent much of the sleepless night thinking about my rocky relationship with Snickers.

I’ve described him previously as high-strung and nervous, the Andy Dick of dogs, the kind of dog more likely to ignite blazing fires than cuddle up beside them.

But I felt surprising pangs of honest dismay when I thought of the nervous little yip dog roaming the streets all frightened and confused.

I now realize I don’t hate Snickers. 

What I hate is disturbance. 

It disturbs me when an otherwise peaceful Sunday afternoon is spoiled when Snickers barks every time a leaf outside falls from a tree and lands on our lawn. It disturbs me when he scratches at the door every 90 minutes when his thimble-sized bladder fills and needs release.

And it disturbs me when I’m lying on my back dozing in the bed and Snickers runs clear from clear the other end of the house and leaps right onto my testicles like someone had painted a bullseye on the bedsheets.

Joe now theorizes that Snickers just hates men.

This is contrary to his previous theory which was that I’m a crybaby liberal who is too candy-assed to control a whiny little dog.

I don’t know who appeared more relieved there on Joe’s porch, our daughters at being reunited with Snickers or Joe at being rid of him.

I asked Joe what he was going to do the rest of the day. He said he was going to de-stress. My conservative friend spent 22 hours with Snickers and it about killed him.

I’ve spent four years with him and thoughts of de-stressing are never far from my mind.

Maybe that’s why, despite our philosophical disagreements, Joe and I enjoy each other’s company.

We both understand the need at times to overcome life’s disturbing little Snickers.

Related . . .

I hate my dog

Daughter, 7, says Bible says I have to love our stupid dog

Santorum’s correct: Man marrying dogs in Wisconsin!

Casey, our bum-sniffing dog

A dog gone celebration

My advice to tomorrow's critics

(685 words)

I’ve been asked to share my advice with Ohio University journalism students about how to be a good critic. It is in essence this:

Try not to be too critical.

That’ll be the thrust of my talk next Thursday when I appear via Skype in a place I’d hoped to appear in person.

Alas, my cheapskate alma mater is apparently too stingy to spring for room and mileage.

See, that’s exactly the kind of criticism critics should avoid. It’s petty, mean-spirited and adds no perspective. Thus, it’s typical of trends I see in professional criticism.

The problem with most critics is they are warped by their titles.

Call anyone a critic and they feel duty-bound to be negative, snarky — critical. Thus, calling someone a critic is handing them a license to be lazy.

“I said the new Adam Sandler movie sucks, ergo, I did my job.”

Sure, that’s critical and likely factual, but no good critic should be satisfied presenting criticism that’s conceived with even less passion than the latest sucky Sandler film.

Better is this: “Anyone who says puns are the lowest form of humor has yet to see the latest Adam Sandler film.” I

It’s a line I use anytime an sassy insolent criticizes one of my lazy puns.

When I think of good critics, I think of words that involve light and vision. They’re insightful, enlightening, illuminating. They take something I’ve yet to see or understand and bestow it with clarity.

That’s what Roger Ebert did.

It’s said no one’s ever built a statue in honor of a critic and if that’s true it’s only because Ebert’s been dead just 18 months

He had a way of criticizing films that somehow wound up exalting humanity.

His criticisms were never cruel or lazy. Here is some of his review of one of my favorite movies, “Airplane!” from 1980: 

“‘Airplane!’ is sophomoric, obvious, predictable, corny and quite often very funny. And the reason it is very funny is frequently because it’s sophomoric, predictable and corny.”

The delightfully deft lines simultaneously acknowledge and revel in what less gifted critics will cite as weakness.

Then there’s this:

“Movie comedies these days are so hung up on being contemporary, radical, outspoken and cynically satirical they sometimes forget to be funny.”

I include those last lines because they could easily be paraphrased to describe what’s wrong with so much of today’s criticism.

Too many critics relish writing about mere mediocrity with the dark rhetoric that should be reserved for evils like prejudice, ISIL and Roger Goodell. 

Too many critics aspire to be Anton Ego. That's him up top.

He was the malevolent Parisian food critic from “Ratatouille,” the splendid 2007 Pixar movie. Once-splendid dining institutions would close the day after publication of his venomous reviews.

It’s a wonderful movie because in the end he has a change of heart and begins to appreciate that magnificence need not be pretentious. 

The snob's transformation is so complete the movie concludes with shots of him enjoying humble fare in simple surroundings with the full knowledge his meal was prepared in a kitchen full of toque-wearing rodents.

Interested in reading a talented food critic who can criticize without cruelty? Check out Melissa McCart in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She writes with a tender understanding that the subjects of her reviews are people who pour their hearts and souls into everything they do. 

Like any good critic, she praises where worthy and encourages improvement without the soul-souring bitterness so evident in less skilled writers.

So that’s my advice to tomorrow’s critics.

Never forget you’re dealing with people, the good kind, the dreamers and creators who for the most part are eager to make the world a more beautiful place.

Do less than this and you’ll wind up in hell with the six percent of Rotten Tomato film critics who inexplicably said “It’s a Wonderful Life” sucks. They are there right now, condemned to spend eternity crammed in the same crowded room with the broken TV that plays nothing but “Friends” reruns.

Of course, that’s just my opinion.

I don’t mean to be critical.

Related . . .

All we are saying is give puns a chance

Oscars bore, movies suck: The sequel!

True Grit and no-grit DeNiro: A Hollywood two-fee

“Breaking Bad” vs. “Sopranos;” and the winner is . . .

“fathermucker” A Cleveland PD book review by Chris Rodell

The Boss for God: a Springsteen concert review

September tweet feast

Sorry I didn’t have time to write about the Pittsburgh Pirates and their one-game play-in contest versus the S.F. Giants today, but I figured today’d be a good day to catch up on some stuff and that means lazy tweet round-up. I don’t know why I always feel compelled to sort of grade my monthly efforts. August, I thought, was great; September not so much.

Oh, well, it’s not like Twitter’s going to expel me for not keeping up to their standards. Follow me if you like at 8days2amish.

My prediction for the Pirates v. Giants? I think the Bucs are gonna sweep ‘em!

• All you need to know about the appeal of broccoli is no one's ever tried to make booze out of it.

• Wonder how much money I could make if I told people I could sell 'em skinny pills & sold 'em bottles full of pills with really slim waists.

• I sometimes wonder what God says when Jesus sneezes.

• Maybe people would read and observe the Bible more if it had more exclamation points. Agree? Yes!!!!!!!! 

• Asking an 8 yr old to convey with brutal honesty the flaws in her father's appearance is a mistake a grown man makes just once.

• August "tweets of the month" lead me to believe I'll one day catch Kutcher: just 16,438,314 followers to go!

• RIP Joan Rivers. It never would have suited you to be in "serious" condition for long.

• Daughters mocked when I said I used to have #McCutchen hair. Told them skepticism healthy. Grounded each 6 weeks. 

• A dentist should be the name of a person who fixes dented autos. What we call a dentist should be called a mouthist.

• Many dads criticized for being helicopter parents, always hovering. Not me. I'm more of a sidecar parent, just along for the ride.

• If people who revere the Grateful Dead are called “Deadheads,” what does that make those of us who revere “Moby Dick?”

• I wish Apple would cease making new iPhones and instead develop an engine that runs on all the iPhones they’ve snookered us into discarding

• The world would be much more serene if no one bothered to look in mirror until we’ve all had at least three good blasts of booze.

• A good mime can be safe, but never sound.

• Folding female underwear always reminds of incomprehensible game of 3D chess Spock played on Enterprise rec deck. 

• Some might consider putting fancy prosthetics on injured animals faux paw.

• How can a man be as secure in his masculinity as I am in mine and still feel sheepish about eating a banana in public?

• If I were a heroic crime fighter, I'd love to have Super Vision. But as a regular guy, I hate any supervision. Can't stand it.

• ”Spare the rod, spoil the child" responsible for more Biblically-justified wanton violence against innocents than any 6 words in history

• Ravens suspend Ray Rice. Know what that means? His agent arranging a seance with late owner Al Davis about getting client an Oakland tryout

• Join me in crafting more sensible spellings: let's all spell hyphen ... hy-phen!

• NFL thinks it can teach America about domestic violence? NFL attitudes CAUSE domestic violence.

• I’d like to know what goes on in the mind of a rabbit when it’s running along and suddenly comes smack into a really long cyclone fence.

• Every operational decision every gastroenterologist makes is in some way gut-wrenching.

• I couldn't believe NFL commish was fallible. Then I realized I'd been misspelling his name. I always thought he was GODell.

• We love “Seinfeld!” We love “Curb Your Enthusiasm!” Would Seinfeld have been funnier if Larry David had starred as himself/George?

• Anytime you hear of anyone dying suddenly, it should reinforce the need to ensure you're always living suddenly. #NeverForgetSeptember11

• The name causes some confusion among those casual about Egyptian folklore, but most Mummies were Daddies.

• Hash #tag you're it!

• That which does not kill me usually leaves me with a pounding hangover.

• All-you-can-eat restaurants are places where the crowd never thins.

• Good news: NFL commish Goodell no longer media whipping boy. Bad news NFL star in news for whipping boy.

• Many people pray to God to change the world and ignore the God-given powers we all have to change the world.

• Cynics who do nothing but predict gloom and doom are misfortune tellers.

• FYI: The band Quiet Riot was neither.

• Too many people bury the hatchet and immediately begin looking around to see where they left the shovel. 

• Join me in my quest to make the phrase “and so on and so forth” even more moronically redundant! How about: “And so on and so forth and some such…”

• Most big box stores don't bother to sell big boxes and it's impossible to order chains at a chain restaurant.

• You’d think they'd know better, but people in the publishing industry are most apt to judge books by their covers.

• I doubt PETA would approve by I enjoy confusing the dog by barking out a loud fart when he's trying to poop.

• Celebrated 18 years of being married to a perfectionist. Know what that makes me? Too perfect to brag.

• Sing it with me! "Where have you gone, Derek Jeter? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you! Woo! Woo! Woo!”

• What I tell my daughters ev'y night: "May tonight you have the world's greatest dreams and may tomorrow all those dreams begin coming true!”

• I’m so Old School I remember when bar codes were unwritten rules about how men and women behaved in places that served alcohol.

• How much more advanced will humanity be when we select mates based on intelligence instead of how nice one’s ass looks in tight jeans?

• Yes, it's a long way to Tipperary, but if you're in Kilfeacle you can make it on foot in about an hour.

• Join me in crafting more sensible spellings: let's all spell hyphen ... hy-phen!

• I wish ill on no one, but for the sake of our collective cool I hope Ringo doesn’t become our longest living Beatle.

Related . . .

October ’14 tweets

I am now The Pond’s official twitterist

75 best tweets of ’12!