I’m Tgreen, and this is Happy Friday, the official sign that your week is completely unsalvageable.

This week Kid Rock gave his endorsement to Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. This is a big deal, because Kid Rock is not known for giving too many things. In fact, the last time Kid Rock gave anyone anything was that time he gave some groupie gonorrhea.

After making an announcement earlier this week, New York Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez plays his last game Friday night at Yankee Stadium. When asked why he played for another week after deciding to retire, he said he’d lost his receipt and would not be able to return his last bottle of steroids so he figured he’d at least try to get some use out of them.

Traffic on the BQE was stopped this week when a tractor trailer carrying Budweiser flipped over and spilled beer everywhere, which coincidentally is also the climactic scene in my spec script for Smokey and the Bandit 4.

Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow announced this week that he wants to pursue a career as a baseball player and will be working out with all Major League Baseball teams. And if this career falls through, he’ll be looking into what it takes to be an astronaut or a cowboy or a pirate or an army man.

A new study claims that book readers live longer than people who don’t read books. Happy Friday readers, on the other hand, often find themselves craving the sweet release of death somewhere around item 6 of the Top List.

In other science news, new research suggests that being lazy is a sign of high intelligence. At least that’s what the article’s headline said. I didn’t bother to actually click through and read the whole thing.

A brain-eating amoeba was found in a body of water in Broward County, Florida this week. Fortunately, since this is Florida we’re talking about, 80% of the population is immune.

This week marked the 25th anniversary of the day the world’s first website went online. Which means that next week marks the 25th anniversary of the day the world’s first porn website went online.

This week Donald Trump said he wants to debate pretty badly. And he probably will.

But really, Trump said he’ll debate, but only if some of his conditions are met. First, all moderators must be from an approved list of people whose last name is Trump. Second, no questions that are not about how great he is. And third — and this one might be the deal breaker right here — no Hillary.

A former aide to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said the governor lied about his knowledge of his administration’s involvement in the George Washington Bridge lane closures. Her proof that Christie was lying? The governor’s lips were moving and there wasn’t a pork roll with cheese in the vicinity.

Christie quickly responded to the accusation with a forceful denial. Said Christie, “You better believe there was a pork roll with cheese in the vicinity, and I’ll punch any man who says otherwise.”

 
The water in two pools at the Summer Games in Rio turned green this week, and no one has been able to figure out why. They also can’t figure out why the water suddenly tastes like Lime Kool-Aid.

This week Donald Trump said that President Obama founded the terrorist organization ISIS. And he didn’t even use it to target poor and gullible Americans to max out their credit cards to register, proving that the President doesn’t know a damn thing about the business world.

Newly-released emails show that there was lots of overlap between Hillary Clinton’s State Department and her work for the Clinton Foundation. Which means that if anyone ever called her an Amazon, they didn’t mean she was a strong fighter. They meant she was the place to go for the best deals in one-stop shopping.

Two parents were arrested this week for trying to smuggle 7 lbs of methamphetamine from Mexico to the US. The would have gotten away with it, too, but officials grew suspicious of the baby’s “Lil’ Heisenberg” onesie.

Police in Toronto responded to reports of an armed man who turned out to be a cardboard cutout of the Terminator. It took the Toronto officers 3 hours to subdue the cutout.

This week a California company announced that it built the world’s largest dildo, which is currently running 14 points behind Hillary Clinton in the latest polls.

A 23-year-old Michigan man drowned this week in a vat of molasses. Slowly.

Former Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders this week bought his 3rd home, a lake house that cost $600K. At least now we know how much it cost to get him to walk away from the campaign quietly.

A man attempted to scale Trump Tower this week, prompting several newspaper editorials that wondered if he was a threat or a menace. And also prompting Trump to take a closer look at the materials he plans to use when he builds his wall.

And finally, a judge ordered online host Glenn Beck to reveal the identities of two sources who told him that a Saudi Arabian student provided the money behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. And even worse for Beck, the judge said that he can’t claim “the voices in my head” for both of them.

Little Known Fact Department: In the original draft of the bible, on the 7th day God built a Death Star. This was edited out because worshippers did not find it very comforting.

There’s a Groupon out there for 42% off admission to a hatchet-throwing place in New Jersey. And if you do it wrong, you can actually end up getting a lot more than 42% off.

As the Olympics come along every 4 years, so do complaints about NBC’s coverage of the games. The main complaint, of course, is that NBC shows too many of the big events on tape delay. We all know why they do it — because someone’s gotta watch those McDonalds commercials that pay for this thing — but still, you have to admit that sometimes NBC goes too far. I mean, Wednesday night they finally played the Men’s 400M Butterfly semifinals from 1996.

Yes, the 1996 Olympics, also known as the Olympics where an 11-year-old Michael Phelps only won 10 gold medals.

It was revealed this week that former Fox News boss Roger Ailes used to hire private investigators to spy on potential rivals, even going so far as to set them up on dates in order to make the spying easier. He did this for years. Is it possible that you were ever considered to be one of those rivals? Did Roger Ailes pull a fast one on you? You’ll find out when you take a look at…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Ways To Know You Dated A Roger Ailes Spy:
10. He kept asking you to come to bed so he could introduce you to Rupert

9. Her Goodreads bookshelf included every book ever written by Bill O’Reilly

8. Every time he made a dinner reservation he made it for “the party of Lincoln”

7. She referred to her genitalia as the “Great Communicator”

6. He couldn’t sleep unless he was on the right side of the bed

5. She unconsciously flinched any time she walked past a picture of Jabba the Hutt

4. He always lost at Scrabble because he refused to use the letters M, S, N, B or C

3. She only ate at restaurants with glass tables that allowed her to show off her legs

2. He couldn’t get aroused until you whispered excerpts from Ronald Reagan’s 1981 Inauguration speech in his ear

1. She asked you to stick your O’Reilly into her Hannity

And that’s all we have time for this week. Until next time, try not to lose a bundle wagering on Olympic Badminton, stay out of the heat, learn that poem, be sure to examine every frame of the latest Star Wars trailer to see if you can spot Jar-Jar’s cameo, put the medicine on the treat, don’t get caught looking for the Messiah while the Women’s Beach Volleyball is on, don’t ride the local, wonder if last night’s meteor shower was the closest some of your fellow commuters have come to a shower of any kind lately, watch out for over-enthusiastic 2nd Amendment, uh, voters and, as always, have a Happy Friday!

T “when are they gonna make mini-golf an Olympic event?” green

I’m Tgreen and this is Happy Friday, your allegedly weekly dose of allegedly humorous content.

The 2016 Olympic Games start tonight in Rio, and athletes are complaining that there will be no Pokemon Go in the Olympic Village. Olympic officials say that the athletes will still be able to catch ‘me all, though, thanks to the 6,000 water-borne viruses lurking in the area.

As its census approaches, the Australian government is concerned that too many people are choosing “Jedi” as their religion. The issue is that having so many people so interested in Star Wars could be a harbinger of a huge population crash when none of them are able to find someone to reproduce with in their parents’ basement.

A veteran this week gave Donald Trump the Purple Heart award he earned in Vietnam, which suggests he earned the medal for a head injury of some sort.

A new CNN poll shows that 57% of voters are not satisfied with the choices in this year’s race. And the other 43% breaks down to 40% too busy binge-watching Stranger Things on Neflix to notice what’s happening, 2% in a coma, and 1% named Trump or Clinton.

This week President Obama celebrated his 55th birthday. Or whatever that is in Kenyan years.

President Obama’s approval rating climbed to 54% this week, which turned out to be a rare occurrence. The last time a President had an approval rating only one point lower than his birthday was when President George W. Bush turned 16.

This week Donald Trump’s ass got a little roomier when New Jersey Governor Chris Christie dislodged himself from it long enough to say that the Muslim-American parents of a fallen US Captain have the right to say whatever they want about the Presidential candidate. He then grabbed himself a pork roll and cheese on a bagel and climbed back in for the duration.

Chris Christie also took some time to substitute for Boomer Esiason on WFAN’s Boomer and Carton show this Friday. Christie said he was happy to do the show but he was not auditioning for a post-Governor position. Mainly because radio hosts are rarely allowed to close down the George Washington Bridge to carry out a vendetta on an enemy, so the job holds no attraction to him.

This week a report cited 19 New Jersey beaches for being contaminated by bacteria. And in sports news, New Jersey just submitted a bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics.

This week it was revealed that pallets of cash totaling $400 million were delivered to Iran at the same time that 4 American prisoners were released by the Iranian government. A White House spokesman called the timing of this delivery a coincidence. He added that when he said “coincidence,” he winked because he had some dust in his eye and not for any other reason so please don’t get the wrong idea.

Though if we did really send Iran money for prisoners, at least this time we got some people back for our money. And the President appeared to actually know that all of this happened. So that’s…progress?

This week Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump said he was not ready to endorse Paul Ryan in his upcoming primary election. Afterwards a Trump campaign spokesman said the campaign does plan to work with Ryan even if Trump doesn’t offer an endorsement. House Speaker Ryan took one look at this week, though, and said, “thanks but no thanks.”

A restaurant where diners eat in the nude is rumored to be opening soon in France. It currently exists in the UK, but will be closing since it turns out that the UK does neither food nor nudity particularly well.

Plans for a similar restaurant in the US fell apart the instant that Burger King expressed an interest, however.

This week, when asked to comment on sexual harassment in light of Roger Ailes’ resignation from Fox News, Donald Trump said that any woman who is sexually harassed in the workplace has the option to leave, and…This just in! Ivanka Trump has resigned from Trump International effective immediately.

This week Instagram introduced a new feature called Instagram Stories, which critics are complaining is essentially just Snapchat. An Instagram spokeswoman said the critics are completely wrong about this, and they will see how innovative Instagram really is when its new product, Instagram’s Book of Faces, rolls out this Fall.

By coincidence, Book of Faces is also the name of HBO’s top-secret sequel to Game of Thrones, which jumps ahead in time to show life in Westeros in the 21st Century.

This week Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager locked her in a room without a cell phone or access to email, telling her that her poll numbers can only drop if she’s allowed to communicate with anyone in any context.

Caitlyn Jenner said this week that she backs the Republican Party but does not “outwardly” support Donald Trump. She keeps that support hidden. Like her penis.

The US economy added 255,000 jobs last month, which was much higher than expected. This is not so surprising, since someone’s gotta put together all those anti-Hillary and anti-Donald memes.

A Georgia man was arrested this week for attacking his girlfriend after she made him a grilled cheese sandwich with 3 pieces of cheese and not 2. His girlfriend should consider herself lucky, though, since no one even knows exactly what happened to the man’s friend who made him a grilled cheese with wheat bread and not white last year.

Researchers in the UK have discovered an orangutan that mimics human conversation. And not only that, he can also trail Hillary Clinton by only 10 points in the latest polls.

President Obama commuted the sentences of 214 convicts this week. And in related news, this week 214 new conspiracy theories appeared on my Facebook feed.

The IOC announced some new sports for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The new sports include Karate, Skateboard, Surfing and Sports Climbing. Left off the list? Beer Pong. Which means I’ll just have to keep sending letters.

This year the USA teams clothes came from Polo by Ralph Lauren. No word yet on who’s providing the hazmat suits.

A Florida woman shot herself in the hand while trying to take a Snapchat video of herself posing with a .40 caliber pistol. Maybe it’s time for one simple gun control rule that bans anyone from owning a gun with a caliber size larger than their IQ score.

And finally, in West Virginia this week, two dogs left in a running car in a Walmart parking lot put the car in gear, drove it into the store’s entrance and rolled down the window. This actually meant they were more productive that 70% of the population of West Virginia this week.

I got an email this week from something called the Microsoft Center of Excellence, which is about the only email sender that sounds even less legit than that Nigerian prince that keeps emailing me. Or the DNC, for that matter.

Remember, it’s all fun and games until we end up with President Kardashian.

This week the IOC banned 118 Russian athletes from competing due to concerns over the use of performance enhancing drugs. And in a related story, A-Rod just joined the Russian Olympic team.

Between the drug scandal and the polluted water and the infrastructure problems in Rio, people are worried that these 2016 Olympic Games are in danger of flying off the rails. And they may be right, because as bad as these problems are, there’s more trouble brewing, as you’ll see when you take a peek at…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Other Problems at the 2016 Olympics:

10. British team keeps voting to Brexit Rio 

9. Track and Field stadium composed largely of recycled email printouts donated by Hillary Clinton’s campaign

8. Official sponsor Coca Cola angry that its product keeps getting mistaken for local drinking water, which is actually two shades darker

7. Roiling pool of toxic human waste formed outside Olympic Village keeps promising to make Brazil great again6. Bob Costas

5. Former President Bill Clinton requested way too many front row tickets for the Women’s Beach Volleyball medal round

4. Men’s Synchronized Swimming not a sanctioned Olympic event for 9th consecutive Summer Olympics

3. Some local NBC affiliates still burning off promo ads for Joey from the 2004 Games

2. Due to clerical error, Sweden sent its curling team instead of its gymnastics team

1. Vladimir Putin keeps offering to participate in Equestrian events with no shirt on

And that’s all we have time for this week. Until next Friday, wish Jack a happy birthday, don’t set the microwave on fire, try not to blow your savings account wagering on Synchronized Swimming, try to figure out who’s younger and more malnourished — the Chinese Women’s Gymnastic team or the laborers who made their uniforms, go see Suicide Squad and halfway through, stand up and shout, “where the hell is…uh…any character that remotely resembles anyone I’ve seen in a comic book any time in the last 30 years and why do they even make movies like this in the first place?!?”, keep it ‘tween the ditches, back away from the election memes, and, as always, have a Happy Friday!

T “you say potato, I say fire!” green

Aaaaaaaaaand, Happy Friday everybody!

Just like day follows night (or night follows day depending on your perspective), just like jelly follows peanut butter, just like “who goes there?” follows “halt!”, just like Star Trek III follows Star Trek II, just like Mac follows Big or Pounder follows Quarter or McMuffin follows Egg, just like “oh fuck, not another one of these” follows “Happy Friday everybody!”, and even just like shitty reviews follow “starring Ben Affleck,” every four years the political convention of one party is followed by the the political convention of the other party.

And so inevitably, this week the Democrats held their national convention in Philadelphia. Historical note — the Democratic Party’s 1924 convention lasted for 16 days. This one only felt like it.

The stakes were high for nominee Hillary Clinton this week, but really her biggest win would be to skate through the whole week without being indicted for anything. In other words, this week was just like every other week.

Rival candidate Bernie Sanders in his speech assured his supporters that Hillary will break up the banks on Wall Street. At least, the ones that never paid her money. If there are any. Spoiler alert, there are not.

Not surprisingly, the most booed candidate at this year’s DNC was Donald Trump. Second most booed candidate? Hillary Clinton.

New polls from mid-week showed that the 2016 race has taken a turn. Apparently “poked in the eye with a sharp stick” is now leading “swallow a cup full of angry bees” by 7 points.

In the long run I think the Democrats will regret holding their convention in Philadelphia and not getting a speech from Nightman or Dayman. Rookie mistake there, Democrats.

There were some questionable music choices this week as well. At one point they used Love Train to introduce a speaker but that speaker was not Bill Clinton. Talk about missed opportunities.

And in another musical note, somehow the Democrats were able to get Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on the same page, but couldn’t do it for Simon and Garfunkel. A bridge over troubled waters indeed.

One of the week’s highlights was former President Bill Clinton’s speech. The man sure does know how to tell a story. When he opened with a tale about a woman he fell in love with back in 1971, I was on the edge of my seat. I couldn’t wait to find out who he was talking about, and what the hell it had to do with Hillary.

Bill Clinton’s speech ultimately covered the history of his relationship with Hillary (well, more or less…mostly less). No one told me it was going to unfold in real time, though.

This just in, Bill Clinton’s speech has just gotten up to 1987.

Former 2004 candidate Howard Dean also gave a speech this week. It was basically the classic rock tour of convention speeches. It got mild interest and polite applause until he did that damn scream at the end. It’s like his Freebird.

The Democrats spent much of the week trying to win over people who have been ripped off or insulted by Donald Trump, which makes sense because those are some very large groups. If they can get those groups and the group of women Bill cheated on Hillary with, this thing is a lock.

Even if they can just get the women Bill hooked up with while in the White House this is possibly an epic landslide.

According to Neilson, the ratings for the DNC were higher than the ratings for last week’s RNC. Clearly the American public prefers its politics to be deChachinated.

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, in countering a line in Michelle Obama’s speech that said the White House was built by slaves, said that those slaves were well-fed and given comfortable beds. And he’s got his great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather’s log books to prove it.

According to Yelp, three of the top search terms during the DNC were Vegan, Kosher, and Distilleries, which suggests that nobody could agree on what to eat but after the third round nobody cared.

Yelp said three of the top search terms at last week’s RNC were Hawaiian, Hot Dogs, and Gay Bars, which suggests a couple of planks from the GOP 2016 platform may not have made it out of Cleveland intact.

In a tense moment, Vice President Joe Biden had to be talked out of throwing his hat into the ring during his speech after taking a quick look at 2016’s shit show and realizing the opportunity he had missed.

Actress and convention attendee Susan Sarandon said she was having the worst time of her life at the DNC this week. Then party officials moved her out of Bill Clinton’s row.

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg was five minutes late for his speech after stopping in the convention hall to smack a couple of 32-ounce sodas out of people’s hands.

As for Bloomberg’s speech itself, if there was ever a time to bust out his middle-school Spanish, it would have been while he was blasting Trump on immigration. Bloomberg knows how to say “Gringo es loco,” doesn’t he?

Bloomberg actually first asked to speak at the RNC but he failed the mandatory “Your Wallet Must Be This Small or Smaller to Speak on Donald’s Stage” test.

Vice President nominee Tim Kaine’s speech was thrown into disarray at the last minute when he realized Joe Biden had used the word “malarkey” already that evening and he would have to use the even less common “codswallop” instead.

In retrospect, Bernie Sanders spent most of the week looking like he was told he’d get his car back after Hillary was done speaking and not a moment before.

This just in, DNC staffers have finally woken up the last of the delegates who nodded off during Tim Kaine’s speech.

In an unexpected turn of events, President Obama actually referenced Republican icon Ronald Reagan more times than Donald Trump did. And even more surprising, he mentioned Kenya more times as well.

A previously-unknown Clinton scandal was revealed this week when Bill copped to watching all 7 of the Police Academy movies. Which is at least two more than anyone who worked on the movies ever watched.

While giving a speech at the convention the father of a deceased Muslim soldier offered Donald Trump his copy of the Constitution to read. But in all fairness, Trump has already tried to read the Constitution before. He just had to stop after skimming the first couple of sentences and not seeing his name anywhere.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio referred to the DNC as a disaster. And after seeing how well he executed his campaign, I am ready to accept him as an expert on the subject of disasters.

In a sign that he’s not convinced Trump will win in November, this week Paul Ryan added Hillary Clinton’s first impeachment hearing to his calendar for January 21, 2017.

This week’s speech by Hillary Clinton was historic. Not because she gave it as the first woman to accept the nomination from one of the two major parties, though that is historic by itself. No, this one was historic mainly because she charged a discounted rate of $100K to deliver it.

Bill Clinton almost missed his wife’s speech when he had to suddenly run off the convention floor to finish his application for the Katy Perry Fan Club.

You know, it’s 2016. A candidate for President of the United States should not have to mention in her acceptance speech that she believes in science. And yet, sometimes it’s really just that easy to distinguish yourself from your opponents.

As soon as Hillary Clinton said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” the Internet crashed under the weight of right wing tweeters crying “Plagiarism!” True story.

This just in, Bernie Sanders has announced that those damn kids need to get off his lawn now.

In her speech, Hillary said that Wall Street banks will start paying their fair share once she’s President. And if there’s anyone who knows how big a share the Wall Street banks can afford to pay, it’s Hillary Clinton.

So, despite the fact that the DNC got high ratings, that it managed to nominate Hillary Clinton before she got sent to jail for something, that Bernie Sanders offered an endorsement without requiring so much arm twisting that it left visible marks, or that Bill Clinton kept his hands to himself, there were still a few things the Democrats stumbled over, as you’ll see when you take a look at…

Tgreen’s Top Twelve Missed Opportunities at the 2016 DNC:
12. Didn’t settle Bernie vs Hillary feud on an episode of Lip Sync Battle

11. Didn’t hand out shots every time someone on Fox News said “Lewinsky”

10. Had no one on stage who could out-yell Trump or Giuliani

9. Failed to capitalize on Republican ire over Bradley Cooper’s appearance at the DNC by featuring other movie stars Republicans thought were on their side, like Darth Vader, Dracula or Mothra

8. Passed on appearance of Dukakis in a tank that could’ve reminded everyone the party has done worse

7. Were unable to get #Donaldisapoopyhead trending on Twitter

6. Couldn’t get Lin-Manuel Miranda on board for Hillary — An American Musical

5. Forgot to ban selfies of people standing next to Tim Kaine in the mistaken belief he was a lifeless statue

4. Cancelled previously scheduled primetime version of “Pin a Charge on Hillary”

3. Missed out on obvious Steve Guttenberg endorsement

2. Could not lock down whether or not Vince Foster’s original autopsy report was ever on Hillary’s email server

1. Couldn’t find anything to offer Hillary if she’d just step back and let anybody else run

And that’s all we have time for this week. Until next time, renew that passport, finalize your escape plan, don’t open any emails from Hillary that look like they have Cyrillic letters in the subject, decide if you wanna see no evil or hear no evil or speak no evil when we blast ourselves into our inevitable Planet of the Apes future, try to figure out a distinguishing feature about Tim Kaine in case you’re ever asked to identify him in an emergency, figure out if there is possibly a way you can boo and vote at the same time, stop it with the Fight Song already and, as always, have a Happy Friday!

T “these jokes were way better before Russia hacked my email” green

While we sit in between the two party conventions this weekend, kind of like we’re in the eye of the shitstorm, I thought it would be fun (and lazy) to take a quick peek into the old Happy Friday Archives to see what the first appearance by our 2016 candidates looked like way back when. A couple of disclaimers. First, the old Happy Friday Archives are kind of a mess and I’m pretty sure I’m missing a lot of them from the first couple of years. And second, it looks like all the Hillary jokes at the beginning were more jokes about her husband and I lost interest in trying to find the first shot that wasn’t mostly at Bill. Perhaps some other day. And third, damn, I came out of the blocks running on the Trump hate, huh? With that in mind, fire up an episode of Friends, break out the Crystal Pepsi, grab a Chalupa and read these two jokes that are both shorter than this whole damn introduction:

From Happy Friday, May 31, 1996
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton shocked the nation this week when she told Time Magazine reporters that she and the President are considering adopting a child. Their plans may have hit a snag a few days later, though, when they visited several local adoption agencies and found that the majority of the infants up for adoption bore a remarkable resemblance to the President.

From Happy Thursday, February 17, 1997
A gunman opened fire at the Empire State Building this weekend. Unfortunately, neither of the building’s owners, Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley, were there at the time.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, Happy Friday everybody! Any big news this week? Anything going on? Anything? Oh yeah, that’s right. This week the city of Cleveland hosted the 2016 Republican National Convention, or as it’s more commonly known, Scared & Angry Lives Matter.

Actually, with Trump running the show this week, this convention was less typical politics and more like the worst episode of The Apprentice. It’s tied for that honor with every other episode of The Apprentice. Though to be fair, any random episode of Celebrity Apprentice had more famous people than all 4 nights of this convention.

And that was an issue. The Republicans did have some problems with their guest list this week. Tim Tebow was invited to speak, but he turned them down. Tim Tebow, who played for the New York Jets, finally found a group too lame even for him.

Apparently Trump wanted Don King to speak but the Republicans said no. No one’s sure if he wanted King there to prove he actually does have a black friend, or to prove that there are worse haircuts out there than his.

The big story from the start of the convention was Melania Trump’s speech, which included passages borrowed from a speech given by First Lady Michelle Obama in 2008. After a couple of days of denials, a Trump speechwriter finally claimed responsibility for the plagiarized parts of the speech and offered to resign, but Trump rejected her offer. He also rejected resignations from Hillary Clinton, My Little Pony, the words “a”, “and” and “the”, and the English language itself, all of whom were blamed at one point or another for this nonsense by the Trump campaign.

After the flare-up over Melania Trump’s speech, Donald Trump Jr’s speech also came under fire for being plagiarized. However, in this case the Conservative writer who wrote the speech explained that he also wrote the article Trump Jr allegedly cribbed from, so there was no plagiarism involved. Now if only he hadn’t copied the speech’s themes from 1954.

And in honor of Melania Trump’s speech, I promise that this week’s Happy Friday will only be 7% plagiarized, because Chris Christie says that’s an appropriate amount. Though I only ever steal from my own stuff and Trump Jr’s speechwriter says that’s okay, so look out! There’s gotta be an OJ joke in this mess somewhere.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie used his speaking time at the RNC to roast Hillary Clinton over numerous offenses for which she has never been legally punished. Because if there’s anyone who knows anything about committing numerous offenses and not getting punished for them, it’s Chris Christie.

Christie also said that if elected, Donald Trump will immediately seek to purge the government of officials appointed by Barack Obama. That should take all of two seconds. It’s not like Congress ever let any of them get appointed in the first place.

Many photos of row upon row of empty seats at the convention have appeared online this week, but the situation is even worse than the pictures suggest, since the arena was even emptier before someone set it up as a Pokemon Go stadium.

And there were problems even when they found people to aim a camera at. I don’t want to say that some of the Republican politicians in attendance weren’t happy to be there, but I’ve seen more enthusiastic smiles in a hostage tape.

You know, I don’t think Rudy Giuliani yelled quite so much back when he still had the combover. Just saying.

During his acceptance speech, Trump talked about how he’s going to create jobs in this country, and he’s probably telling the truth about that. The man knows how to create jobs. I mean, he managed to get all his kids on the payroll and a couple of them don’t appear to be overly employable, if you know what I’m saying.

Actually, Trump isn’t even President yet and he’s already created a ton of new jobs. Every major media outlet in the country has been forced to triple its fact-checking department just to try to keep up with him.

I kid, of course. Everyone knows Trump is immune to fact checking like he got the vaccine for it. Really, he created all those jobs when Canada put a second and then a third shift on the construction of their border wall.

In his acceptance speech Trump also promised that at his convention, there would be no more lies. Then he wrapped things up five seconds later to give himself a fighting chance at keeping that promise.

Probably the worst thing to come out of this convention, besides the fact that we weren’t allowed to actually watch Chris Christie get the news that he wasn’t going to be the Vice President nominee, is the idea that Scott Baio has opinions about politics that rate interviews on legitimate news programs. Because he does not.

Though the sad thing is, Scott Baio actually lifted the fame level of the convention guests to a solid D+.

Senator Ted Cruz caused a big uproar when he chose not to endorse Donald Trump during his RNC speech. Instead, Cruz urged voters to vote with their consciences. Or, alternatively, to not vote at all until 2020, when maybe a dashing, youngish, Canadian-born candidate might catch their eye and rate a second look, maybe.

Chris Christie called Cruz’s decision pass on an endorsement “totally selfish,” and if there’s anyone who knows anything about being totally selfish, it’s Chris Christie.

Even worse than the snub from Cruz, the Trump campaign was dealt a huge setback when only 3 Horsemen of the Apocalypse endorsed the candidate.

Perhaps the most uncomfortable moment in the convention was when the representatives from WomenTrumpCheatedOnHisWivesWithsylvania were refused the chance to speak. This despite the fact that they had more delegates than, say, New Hampshire.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell got booed during his time on stage this week. Said McConnell, “If I wanted to get treated like this I could’ve just stayed at home.”

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker had an awkward moment on stage when he used part of his speaking time to say, “It’s just sad in America that we have such poor choices right now.” Oh, wait, sorry, that’s what he said before he got the invitation to speak at the convention.

When the state delegates announced their votes for Trump, Chris Christie allowed his son to announce for New Jersey. Which is appropriate, because if there’s anyone who knows anything about letting someone else do his job while he’s busy holding Trump’s jockstrap, it’s Chris Christie.

Newt Gingrich left Cleveland without being the worst thing about the convention. In a statement released after he left town, Gingrich explained that he was as surprised as you are by this turn of events, and he will just have to try harder next time.

The convention ended rather suddenly when, immediately after his acceptance speech, Donald Trump shook hands with car accident survivor Johnny Smith, who seemed visibly upset by the encounter and ran from the stage with an intense look in his eyes.

Not every speech in Cleveland was at the RNC. In a speech given outside the convention, Caitlyn Jenner said this week that it was harder for her to come out as a Republican than as transgender. In large part this was because it’s so hard to figure out which bathroom to use during an anti-LGBT rights rally.

While not at the convention or even in Cleveland, former New York governor George Pataki was also busy this week, announcing his four-point plan for building the perfect burrito bowl at Chipotle.

In media news, Fox News founder Roger Ailes resigned from the network this week in the wake of a sexual harassment suit filed by former correspondent Gretchen Carlson. While battling for his job over the past two weeks, Ailes expressed surprise at the problem, claiming that Bill O’Reilly never complained even once at any of the sexual advances, and actually claimed to enjoy them.

The theme to this week’s RNC was “Scare America Shitless Again,” because the GOP always goes with what works. But after a week of piling on the fear, in his acceptance speech, Donald Trump offered himself as the one man who could save us from such horrible ends. It took him a little over an hour, but he managed to list every threat he stands ready to defeat, as you’ll see when you take a look at…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Things Donald Trump Promised to Protect Us From:

10. Return of the Burger King from those old commercials

9. Creepy clowns in sewers

8. Man buns

7. Sharknados

6. Reboot of Star Trek: Voyager

5. Billy Ray Cyrus comeback tour

4. Any more pictures of him grabbing at Ivanka’s ass

3. Facts

2. Opportunities to discuss legitimate problems in anything longer than a shouted slogan that blames immigrants

1. Secretary of State Gary Busey (wait, sorry, that’s one of Tgreen’s Top Ten Things Trump’s Totally Gonna Try To Make Happen If He Gets Elected)

And that’s all we have time for this week. Until next time, stock up on orange spray tanner, build that wall, try not to let work ruin a perfectly good Friday, don’t waste too much time worrying if his $80 million payout is enough to get Roger Ailes through his golden years, win Powerball, stay out of the heat, try to figure out if Reince Priebus is a politician’s name or a rare Pokemon, go see that new Star Trek movie and stand up in the middle of it and shout “where the hell is Scotty?!?”, try and figure out how many times I’ve made that same “joke” in the last 20 years, don’t fuck with Leslie Jones on Twitter, bust out your DVDs of The Apprentice and wax nostalgic over the good old days, don’t lay a finger on Chris Christie’s Butterfinger, and, as always, have a Happy Friday!

T “wait a second, I have to watch another week of this shit? Goddammit” green

Donald Trump’s wife Melania gave a speech on the first night of the RNC this week and immediately came under scrutiny when part of her speech seemed to have been copied from a speech Michelle Obama gave at the DNC in 2008. And the similarities are unmistakeable. However, upon closer review of the speech it appears that there was more plagiarism involved than anyone initially thought, as you’ll see when you take a look at…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Other Lines From Melania Trump’s Speech That May Have Been Copied:
10. Just say no

9. Ask not what your country can do for you

8. I am not a crook

7. We hold these truths to be self evident

6. This is a day that will live in infamy

5. I did not have sexual relations with that woman

4. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name

3. May the force be with you

2. Say hello to my little friend

1. It’s easy to grin when your ship comes in and you’ve got the stock market beat; but the man worthwhile is the man who can smile when his shorts are too tight in the seat.

There came a day when a small web-based company of no particular note in a small city of no particular interest found itself on the brink of losing two of its biggest clients. The spark was gone, the work was bland, and the clients were cheap. It was a dangerous combination and the small company could not afford to lose both clients. It couldn’t afford to owe either one, really, but there was a secret contingency plan to lay off half the company and do some anonymous side work for one of the more reputable porn sites until better clients could be landed. The three execs who knew of this plan didn’t ever want to have to implement it, but each one of them had large mortgages and unhappy marriages to support and they were willing to sacrifice whatever was necessary in order to keep that money coming in.
One of the middle managers at the company, a harried man of 40 named Gil, took it upon himself to get an outside perspective. Since he didn’t know about the secret contingency plan he didn’t know that he was one of the lucky ones who would not be laid off. He also didn’t know that this would prove to be a mixed blessing because he was actually a paying customer of the reputable porn site in question and it would have taken no more than three days for this information to work its way through the now much smaller company. But without knowing any of this, he came to the office one day with a plan to fix things and a new consultant to potentially fix more problems in the future.
It soon became obvious that while his coworkers were happy to have the idea that solved the immediate client problem, none of them appreciated that Gil was now bringing in an outsider on a regular basis. Some of them didn’t want the competition and some of them were afraid the consultant would be able to take one look at them and see just his little they did anymore. And others just didn’t want to be bothered learning another name and sharing the office snacks and having another person whose weekend they now had to ask about. And so the first meeting with Lou the consultant went poorly. No ideas were shared and no weekends were laughed about and no plans were made to put together a Happy Hour to welcome the new guy.
Gil felt responsible for this problem, because he was, and so he set out to fix it. Since he’s fixed the original client problem, he thought maybe he was on a roll and it was probably best if he struck now while he was on a hot streak. He set out to gather his brain trust around him to come up with a plan on how to deal with Lou, realized he didn’t have a brain trust, and so he forced the people who reported to him to gather in a room late one afternoon to discuss the situation. Within minutes he learned that while the group had several different reasons for not liking Lou, the one thing they all agreed on was that Lou knew nothing about their business, and possibly knew nothing about any kind of business. Kevin, who’d taken on the role of ringleader at this meeting, kept calling him an idiot savant without the savant, and it only went downhill from there.
“Where did you even find this guy?” Kevin asked.
“I met him at a party,” Gil said. “We got to talking about work and I mentioned some of the problems we were having and he had some good ideas. So good that I asked if he’d be interested in a consulting gig. And he was.”
“You seriously offered him a job after meeting him at a party?” Kevin said.
“Yes.”
“That was a terrible idea.”
“Why?”
“No good has ever come from anyone you meet at a party.”
“I don’t agree,” Gil said.
“I met my wife at a party,” Martin said from his seat at the end of the table.
“There, see?” Gil said with an air of triumph.
“See what? He’s agreeing with me,” Kevin said.
They all looked down the table at Martin. “Who were you agreeing with?” Gil asked. “Me or him?”
“Him.”
“There, see?” Kevin said. “It’s unanimous. Get rid of him.”
“The two of you agreeing doesn’t count as unanimous,” Gil said.
“Then let’s take a vote.”
“No vote.”
“Oppressor.”
“I’m not oppressing anything. It doesn’t matter who wants to get rid of him. The contract is ironclad. If we fire him we still have to pay him everything.”
This was true. What Lou lacked in business acumen he made up for with his uncanny ability to negotiate a good contract. Besides guaranteeing his fee, plus a fat early termination penalty, his contract stipulated he was only required to come to the office once a week, he didn’t have to answer every email he received, and while he was expected to offer advice and solutions, he didn’t have to offer good advice or solutions, or say anything that was remotely helpful. It could be argued that by signing this contract the company was proving it deserved every hit it had taken recently, but Gil refused to consider that possibility.
“All I want you to do is talk to the guy when he’s here,” Gil said. “He offered me good advice at the party, so he’s not a moron. Maybe he’s just unmotivated. Maybe he just needs to loosen up and feel more comfortable with us.”
“Yes,” said Phil from his seat at the other end of the table.”
“See, Phil knows.”
“No, it’s not that;” Phil said as he held his phone up for all to see. “I knew that advice he gave you sounded familiar.”
“Let me guess, he got it off of one of those motivational poster sites,” Kevin said.
“No, not even close,” Phil said.
“See, give me some credit here,” Gil said.
“He got it off an episode of The Office,” Phil said. “I’ve got it queued up right here if you want to watch it.”
“We’re taking our business advice from episodes of The Office now?” Kevin said. “Is that ironic or pathetic or some new level of bad we’ve never seen before?”
“Was it at least a good episode?” Carol asked. She rarely spoke up at these meetings because she had a hard time masking her contempt for Gil’s management style. In truth, she was usually so quiet Gil would forget she was even present, and today he spun his head around in surprise at the sound of her voice.
“Trick question,” Phil said. “There are no good episodes of The Office.”
“That’s not true,” Carol said. “It was really good for a couple of years.”
“British version was way better,” Kevin said.
The debate continued for the better part of an hour, and only ended when Kevin noticed that it was time to go home. They were unable to agree on the quality of The Office or which version was better. They also realized that the debate about The Office had distracted them completely from the matter at hand, and left them with no strategy on how to handle Lou’s upcoming visit.
“How can I even talk to the guy now that I know his advice came from a TV show?” Gil asked. “You guys are gonna have to talk to him.”
“How can you not talk to him?” Kevin asked. “Will you just hide all day?”
“Maybe I should call out sick.
“If you call out sick I’m calling out sick too,” Phil said.
“How can you do that? You won’t even know if I did it until you come in to the office yourself,” Gil said. “You can’t call out sick once you’re already here.”
“I’ll just say I’ve got whatever you have.”
“Like an epidemic,” Kevin said.
“Don’t say epidemic,” Gil said. “Not after last time.
The last time the office thought there was an epidemic came the day after Karen from Accounting threw a Game of Thrones season finale party that ended in one case of alcohol poisoning, a half dozen sick calls, and a rumored pregnancy scare. Pictures from the first half of the party were featured on the company’s social media page. Pictures from the second half were almost universally deleted upon viewing. Since no one was willing to admit how far things had gotten out of hand, though, everyone claimed to have a virus and the HR department came within an hour of implementing the company’s pandemic plan. This plan involved a contact with a company in Mumbai that promised to seamlessly continue the company’s work with an expansive group of outsourced employees. Ironically, it was later acknowledged that had the pandemic plan actually been implemented, the company would have turned the largest quarterly profit in history. Thus there as an unspoken rule that no more than three employees could call out sick at the same time.
“I’m reserving the right to call out tomorrow,” Gil said. “So you bastards better show up. You too, Carol.”
“You can’t include her in the blanket bastard statement?” Kevin asked.
“I’m just playing it safe. I’m not sure where HR came down on that one,” Gil said. “I failed their last two quizzes so I feel like I’m on very thin ice with them. Best to behave myself.”
“But calling out sick to avoid your contractor is fine?”
“It’s a strategy.” Gil gathered his tablet and his notepad and stood. “I trust you guys to talk to Lou and get something out of him. Then, when I’ve recovered from my 24-hour flu, we can discuss it at length and figure out our next step.” Before anyone could say anything else, he hurried from the room. People could say what they wanted to about Gil, but he could leave a room faster than anyone else in the company when he was motivated.
The rest of them looked at each other, wondering who was going to call out sick tomorrow and help start the next epidemic scare.
“You think this guy watches The Walking Dead too?” Carol asked.
“Why?” Kevin asked.
“Maybe he could offer some advice from that show.”
“Okay, now we’ve got a plan,” Kevin said. “Good meeting, everybody.”

  
Recently I updated the music on my iPod Shuffle for the first time in a couple of months. I’ve got a long playlist named “Commute” that I add songs to every now and then, and when I think of it I hook up the Shuffle and sync it and see what I end up with. The other morning while walking from the train to the office I got “Child of the Wild Blue Yonder,” an old one from John Hiatt that I haven’t heard in awhile, and it took me back.
It’s a good song. Not my favorite from Mr. Hiatt but the first one I ever heard. And I realized I could remember the first time I heard it. I was in my old office in the library at school, some time in 1990, and WNEW played it. And something about the song registered enough for me to pay attention at the end to find out whose song it was. And then, since these were definitely pre-Internet days, I had to look the song up the only way I knew how — walk over to the Wiz on Fulton St. and see if they had the cassette. Yes, I heard a new song on a radio station in NYC and walked to a store to purchase the song as part of an entire album on a cassette tape. The only thing that story is missing to make me feel completely ancient is a reference to a pet dinosaur.
But after the Shuffle had moved on and I’d made it to work, it was that old office that kept coming back to me. I was going to an engineering school at the time. Back then it was called Polytechnic University, but it’s something else now. Part of NYU in fact, based on the alumni donation solicitations I get. They want my donation they can send me a diploma that says NYU on it. Otherwise, no dice. 
In 1990 I was working for the school library as a technical writer. The Dean had scored a contract with IBM where we had to write a user manual for some electronic library database system. The system and the original documentation came from Germany, so we were starting from scratch as far as English instructions went. I helped put together a team of 3 other writers, which was easy since by then there were only 3 other writing students in the whole program who I could stand. And they took a room in the back of the main library and gave it to us as an office to write in.
The office was tiny and crowded and, during the months when they were building a campus outside, it was actually dangerous. So much dirt and dust got kicked up by the construction that every couple of weeks we had to get our printers serviced to clear out all the gunk. I’m not sure we ever considered what that gunk was doing to us. More likely we figured we were made of stronger stuff than those IBM behemoths.
We had a mini fridge because I stole it from the upstairs library and wouldn’t return it when they caught me. It was stocked with sodas and a nice collection of beers hidden behind them. We had filing cabinets stocked with liquor, all filed under “L”, I’m sure. Or maybe B for booze or R for Rotgut, because I could not afford anything one would call the Good Stuff back then. We had a professional-grade dart board to ensure we always had an excuse to blow off work. Some days a picture of the Dean was tacked to it for added incentive, and I got caught red-handed in the middle of that kind of game at least once. We had three or four desktop PCs that nearly always had some virus or other thanks to the pirated video games installed on them. They also rocked Windows 3.0 because we were on the cutting edge of technology.
There were knives, stun guns, nunchucks and a couple of items I probably still shouldn’t talk about stashed along with the booze. We had a giant white board that existed mainly for us to draw nasty pictures and write nonsense and, most importantly, to provide a steady supply of dry erase markers for sniffing. There was a fight to get that board budgeted and I doubt we ever used it for even one of the long list of reasons we provided for why it was vital to the project. Unless we somehow convinced someone that the project required us to use it to mark people’s heights for fake mug shots, because we did that a lot. And also, that board held the original Defcon settings that ultimately turned up on my cubicle walls at Smith Barney and one day got adapted to the Treetop Lounge Security Advisory and then the QA Classic Alert System. Thank you, library budget, for the tools I could abuse for comedic purposes.
This was the office where one night, out of sheer desperation and more than a little laziness I invented the Vodka and Gatorade and then immediately regretted it. And then we debated whether it was bad because it was really cheap vodka or because it was just a horrible idea. Spoiler alert: it was both. This was also the office where I mixed enough kamikazes and Long Island Iced Teas to at the very least qualify to play Isaac’s second cousin on any Love Boat revival.
We had a phone so the upstairs office could keep tabs on us, but all that did was give us free access to the outside world, since this was years before the cell phone and I never carried around more than one quarter to use in a pay phone. That semester the phone number got printed in the campus phone directory as the library’s main number. I told them they would regret it if it wasn’t fixed. They said if I made them regret it they would fire me, which in theory I would regret because I was supporting a very large bar tab at the time. And so we waited to see what would happen. And what happened was no one with access to the directory ever bothered to call the library for anything, because I don’t think that phone rang more than once.
And the one time it did ring? It wasn’t library business. It was one of my professors calling to bust me for skipping a final. Now, I did not intentionally skip a final. What happened was, they changed the exam room at the last minute and didn’t post the new room. So half the class showed up in the wrong place and half showed up in the right place and to this day over a quarter of a century later I don’t know how that one half found out about the change and got to the right room. But the professor, who never had much use for me, called to bust me and tell me I was likely to fail because I’d skipped the final. I explained what happened and she was not impressed. She repeated several times that half the class found the right room and so it was my own fault for missing out. When I finally got a chance to speak, I pointed out that if half the class could find the new room, that meant half the class could not. This argument ultimately got us a second chance to take the test.
It was a good room to hide out in for several reasons. For one, most of my friends didn’t know exactly where I worked so if I needed to sneak off for awhile after torching someone in the old Coverup Report, this was the safest place I could go while still staying on campus. Also, the upstairs bosses didn’t come down too often because of all the stairs. We had a boss right next door to us but he was barely out of school himself and mostly all he wanted to do was play video games and pretend he was a burgeoning cyber criminal, so he was usually preoccupied. The best reason to go there, though, was the fact that any time I was in the office I could, in theory, be working and therefore could, in theory, be billing, and I liked the fact that it was so easy, in theory, to earn money.
It was also easy to find amusing diversions on the days we were legitimately working. That boss who had the office next to ours had his own coffee maker. He also had a door with a lock that we could crack open with a large paperclip, so you could say we also had our own coffee maker. This meant nothing to me, because I don’t drink coffee, but the people I worked with appreciated the convenience. And so one day, I’ll call them coworkers A & B to protect the guilty, decided they wanted a coffee, so I popped the door for them to go to it.
Now, I don’t know anything abut the history of the fancy flavored coffee we have now, but back in 1990 it must not have been too common because the one thing they all talked about was mixing some fancy chocolate milk mix into the coffee while it was brewing. The thought was that this combination would produce something delicious. And so this one morning while the boss was upstairs and A & B were looking for coffee, it was decided that this would be the day to finally create this wonderful concoction.
It did not go well. For some unexplained reason, the combined chocolate and coffee didn’t produce a pot of chocolately goodness. What it did was clog the filter and cause hot water, coffee and chocolate to explode all over the small office, including the boss’ desk, chair, and computer. Needless to say, it was going to take awhile to clean this up, so I was sent upstairs to create a diversion. I found our boss and the Dean in the Dean’s office and I walked in and announced that the project was way behind schedule and we needed to fix it right now. Was this true? Probably, because we were always behind schedule, but no one ever wanted to fix it because everyone wanted a taste of that sweet, sweet IBM money.
But I put on a good act and told my two bosses how much of the problem was due to their screwups and we hashed out a plan of attack that we probably all forgot about ten minutes later, but I kept them both busy long enough to get the call that the office was cleaned of all evidence that there had been a coffee mishap.
I went back downstairs with my boss and he called the three of us into his office to discuss the day’s schedule. When he was done, he asked if anyone wanted some coffee and of course A & B said they did. And as the boss set about preparing to make a pot, I suggested that maybe this would be a good time to try adding the chocolate to the coffee, because everyone had been talking about it for so long and we should at least find out if it even tasted any good. And the boss agreed. And A & B both gave me looks that by rights should have killed me right then and there.
We three cleared out of the office while the coffee brewed and we went to our room to wait for the inevitable. It didn’t take long before we heard the boss screaming, so we ran in to see the same destruction that A & B had just finished cleaning up. The boss was swearing up and down as he tried to wipe coffee residue from his keyboard and his desk and his lap. And I watched him try to deal with this mess and all I had to say was, “Yeah, this is the same thing that happened when A & B tried it.” And then I went back next door to continue whatever story I was writing.
Because yes, I did use the computers to write my own stuff. I couldn’t help that. I didn’t have a computer of my own so this was the best place to get a lot of writing done at once. I could crank the radio, do some work, play darts, write whatever story I was writing, and then cycle through the sequence a couple of times a day. To this day it’s still one of the better writing setups I’ve ever fallen into. It’s second to living a block off the beach and walking out to the boardwalk to write during my work breaks, but it’s streets ahead of scratching out a couple of paragraphs during NJ Transit delays.
As it turned out, that office was a good place to go on those nights where you just didn’t want to go home right after class but money was too tight to go anywhere else to drink. When I think back now I realize there were more of those nights than I remembered. It was a tough school to go to. On the first day one of my professors said that half the people we were sitting with wouldn’t be back for a second year. It took me into the third year myself before I had to switch majors to avoid starting over more or less from scratch anywhere else. And once I made the switch, I mostly slipped into survival mode. I was there to get a degree and stay sane, in no particular order.
The Coverup Report was born in that office, and written more or less exclusively in there. The Coverup Report begat The Poison Pen which begat Happy Friday which begat the Treetop Lounge which begat Greetings from Shokanaw which begat all these shitty Trump jokes I post on Facebook which, I assume, will begat something else somewhere down the line. But that cramped room, which was kind of like the bunker for those of us who had the keys to it, was the one good place to go when you needed some time to figure out how you were going to survive today’s bullshit and prepare for tomorrow’s. We were a commuter campus so we didn’t have dorm rooms. This was as good as it got.
We didn’t have dorm rooms and we didn’t have decent lab equipment and the library’s collection was generously considered out of date and if you got right down to it we didn’t have any facilities that were worth a damn. We had crack houses around the corner and a high school across the street whose students seemed to major in mugging students from my school. The main building was a former razor factory that still strongly resembled its original form, though without the same charm. Few professors appeared to care about the students and the administration was so actively useless that it might as well have run for Congress. I have gone on record for years saying I was miserable almost every waking moment I spent in the place.
But there were good people there. Good friends. I may have hated the place but I have to admit that I found a way to have about as much fun as one could have there. It just took some work. And that office, which they never should have given us and where they never should have allowed us such free rein on a daily basis, was the luckiest thing any of us could have stumbled into in the middle of that hell hole.
It was bad. Very bad in a lot of very basic ways. But it was good too, if that makes sense. It probably doesn’t. If you went to school and had a blast and look back fondly on most of it, I cannot relate, and I cannot explain what I had. We’re speaking two different languages. I know this is true because I’ve had this conversation before. I met good people there. People who walked away with the same lesson I did — that life was nothing but problems and no one was going to solve yours for you, so you’d better get to work. This might not have been the lesson any of us set out to learn, but you don’t get to choose. We learned that too.
I’m only speaking for myself, of course. I mean, I know the majority of my friends hated the place too because we’ve talked about it, but it’s likely we all hated it in our own ways. And we all found our own way to stay a little sane too. One of mine was music, and since my musical taste ran more to the redneck than anyone I knew, I was pretty much on my own with that one.
And yet one day a combination of things had me at my desk with the radio tuned to the right station at the right time to hear that song that I still listen to today. And 19 John Hiatt albums in my iTunes library later, there’s still a connection to that one song and that one day and that office where work occasionally got done when there was absolutely nothing better to do. So here’s to all the shitty offices in shitty situations that grind us down while we hold on to live another day, and all the crazy people who made surviving it a little easier, even if they all had worse taste in music than you.

I posted this link to the song but it doesn’t seem to work consistently, so if you really want to listen, and you should, go look it up on YouTube.

 Guy walking through Madison Square Park wearing a gorilla costume and carrying a cell phone. All while being filmed by his own personal crew. 

Today marks the official opening day for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the 7th episode in the Star Wars saga. After the poor reception the prequel trilogy received, fans around the world have been understandably nervous about what to expect this time around. Reviews and early word of mouth are positive, but the only way to really know if the movie is any good is to go see it. I’ll be seeing it later today, but before I go I got to thinking about all the ways this movie could go wrong. I’m not one of those fans whose life will be ruined by a bad Star Wars movie, but still, I’m hoping that when the trailers are over and the John Williams music kicks in, I don’t see any of…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Ways They Can Screw Up Star Wars: The Force Awakens:

10. New cantina scene takes twice as long as necessary because everyone at the bar is too busy taking selfies to advance the plot

9. Princess Leia takes another crack at that English accent from the first Star Wars movie

8. Han Solo shows up riding an old fashioned motorcycle while blasting a Beastie Boys song (oh, wait, sorry, that’s one of Tgreen’s Top Ten Ways They Can Screw Up Star Trek Beyond)

7. Cameo appearance by Jar-Jar Binks’ annoying grandson Jar-Jar Urkel

6. Corporate synergy requires new Stormtrooper outfits to include Mickey Mouse ears

5. In an effort to hook today’s texting-addicted kids, the opening crawl includes emojis

4. Product placement deal ends with Apple logo plastered on new Death Star

3. Reveal Luke Skywalker has been hiding out with the ghosts of Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman’s characters from the Star Wars Holiday Special

2. New bad guy turns out to be two Ewoks in a black suit

1. Subplot has newly-empowered Emperor Palpatrump initiating a ban on all Jedi coming to Tatooine “just until we can be sure about them”

Until next time, go out and see Star Wars and halfway through stand up and yell, “Where the hell is Lando?!?”, get the large popcorn for a quarter more, please silence your cell phone, don’t fall asleep in those comfortable reclining chairs and, as always, May the Happy Friday be with you.

T “Top Ten Lists would be way easier if they only had 5 or 6 items” green