Sure, do an Election Day update. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it only takes a day. There’s no way it could go as badly as the last time you tried it back in 2000. No way at all…

Last night while several battleground states were still counting votes, President Trump prematurely declared victory. If you may recall, Stormy Daniels warned us this was a possibility with him.

What I don’t understand is why so many people were surprised he did it. All signs pointed to this happening, the biggest sign, of course, being that he’d previously said he wouldn’t do it. Saying one thing while he’s planning to do the opposite is kind of his tell.

I think a lot of people voted for Trump because they figured with four more years he might finally — even if completely by accident — release his health care plan.

Granted, most of them voted for him because of the white supremacy, but some did it for the health care thing.

And some did it only for the Tweets:

I wonder if it’s possible for that IRS audit to last another four years, though.

Trump also announced he’s asking for a recount in Wisconsin, which is his right. Candidates have to pay for recalls they ask for, at a cost of approximately $3 million, so I would strongly suggest that Wisconsin get that money up front, if you know what I mean.

Joe Biden, in contrast, has spoken twice about patience. Patience in waiting for all the ballots to be counted. Patience in waiting for him to get his transition team up and running. Patience in waiting for the Democratic Party to become a party people actually want to vote for, and not just occasionally feel like they have to vote for to prevent the GOP from turning the country into an authoritarian nightmare.

To be honest, I’m not sure I can live long enough to see that last one.

Trump is actually threatening at least 3 lawsuits right now, and even Rudy Giuliani can’t handle all of them, so it’s obvious the President is going to need some more lawyers. I wonder if he’s desperate enough yet to give this guy a call…

And that’s all we have time for today. Tune in tomorrow for another Election Day Update, since it’s obvious this is just going to drag on forever at this point.

T “I declare that every Happy Friday Top Ten List in history was hilarious” green

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

Hello and welcome to the Happy Friday Thanksgiving Spectacular, where we define “Spectacular” as “the same jokes as always, but reordered in a special holiday fashion”. And by “special” we mean “barely at all different than any other time we’ve done this”. And by “this” we mean the “joke” we’re going for in this paragraph. And we put quote marks around the word joke because we are legally required to do so since that incident in The Poison Pen that time.

No idea why we’re using the word we, since everyone knows it’s just one guy writing all this. How sad would it be if an entire staff was required to come up with this crap? Sad indeed.

Fortunately, that’s not a mystery you need to ponder right now, and for that you can be thankful. Which is the point of today’s post. Being thankful. Because times have been tough lately, and so you may have reasons to doubt there’s anything to be thankful for right now. Maybe you got caught up in Superstorm Sandy (because it happened to New York, we can’t just call it a hurricane). Maybe you’re a huge Mitt Romney fan (really?!?). Maybe you were holding out hope to find one last Suzy-Q in the Hostess section of your supermarket (coincidentally, a wall of Suzy-Qs could hold back even the strongest flood). Or maybe you read the same article I read this morning that said scientists have discovered that fire tornadoes actually exist and are not just something that you might have expected Superman to fight in a 1967 issue of Action Comics.

I hear you. There’s plenty of reasons to pack it in tomorrow and either hold out for better in 2013 or start rooting for the Mayans the way you root for your favorite NHL team and maybe I could’ve picked a better example there but I’m too lazy to hit the delete key so I’m just going to keep typing and pretend I did not inadvertently just bring up another depressing fact for some of you. But no, we will not give in to any of that. And why? Because we here at Happy Friday Central have spent agonizing minutes coming up with reasons to be thankful this year.

And so tomorrow, as you sit down at the table across from your Uncle Herman with the crazy eye that’s always looking in two directions at once and your Aunt Doris with the snaggletooth and the “friend” she always goes on vacation with because Uncle Herman only leaves the house for major holidays and yard sales, and next to your cousin Shirley who you once dared to drink an entire gallon of milk and with whom you never, ever speak of that day again on one side and your brother Joe who’s had his face painted green for the Jets game for the last 3 weeks straight on the other side, and you try to figure out the odds that there will be any cranberry jelly or stuffing left by the time it’s your turn to fill your plate, just remember that this year, you can be thankful that…

…someone, somewhere is probably trying to figure out a way to cram a 4th NFL game into Thanksgiving Day.

…it’s past mid-November and the Islanders still have the same chance of winning the Stanley Cup this year as any other NHL team.

…the odds are pretty good that they’ve already made the worst Star Wars movie they’re ever gonna make.

…there’s no legal requirement for you to pay attention to anything Donald Trump has to say.

…they may have taken away the Twinkie, but the McRib could make a comeback any day now.

…Fox News is so mad at Mitt Romney right now it could be months before it remembers it’s supposed to be trashing Obama 24/7.

…you’ll never have to see that Shmuley Boteach campaign commercial ever again.

…Rex Ryan lost all that weight before the Jets play on Thanksgiving night so you probably won’t have to hear a 10-minute-long tribute to the turducken.

…autocorrect knows how to spell turducken.

…seriously, no matter how stupid a thing Trump says, you can ignore it or pretend it never happened or whatever and that’s okay.

…you work for good people who are always on the lookout for your best interests and treat you like an actual human being with your own thoughts and needs and plans. Or, more likely, you don’t but at least you know someone who does. Or, more likely, you don’t even know anyone who does but at least you enjoyed reading that sentence and pretending it’s true. Or, more likely, at least you’re drunk by noon every day.

…it could at least be possible the insurance adjuster might believe that the storm washed away your Lamborghini.

…autocorrect knows how to spell Lamborghini.

…thousands of smart people have spent millions of dollars over decades to create technology so powerful that you can now share a picture of a cat in a bow tie with people all over the world while you’re taking a dump.

…no, I don’t think you understand, Trump is totally ignorable. You don’t even have to try that hard.

…they still haven’t captured and jailed the Cream of Wheat Monster.

…our country can no longer send a man into space, but it can give you 16 different filters for your Instagram photos of space, or more likely of your roommate doing jello shots off of some girl’s ass.

…shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo are setting the bar of fame so low that even your stupid boring ass could be a TV star by 2017.

…Waffle House is open 24 hours.

…your office is not.

…you probably live near a state-of-the-art public transportation system that moves millions of people to and from thousands of destinations every day without a hitch (unless you live in the New York metropolitan area, in which case, no).

…no matter how shitty this list is, if you’re reading it at least that means you finally got your power back.

…even I eventually acknowledge I’m out of material, and then 5 or 6 “jokes” later like clockwork, I close it down.

So that’s all for this time. Enjoy the day off, don’t lose all your Christmas money on bad football bets, keep the cat out of the stuffing and the stuffing out of the cat, try to avoid a meltdown, at least finish your dinner before running out to one of the stores opening Thanksgiving night, don’t trample anyone while diving for a door buster at Walmart, learn that poem, keep your eyes skinned for small ice and growlers, please return your seats to an upright and locked position and, because there’s a giant plate of food planted right in front of you, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

T “I’m getting too old for this shit” green

Hello everybody and welcome to Happy Friday! And just how happy a Friday is it? Well, we’ve got a possible government shutdown looming at midnight, so if you’re like me and you enjoy a good political trainwreck, then it’s pretty damn happy. But what if you’re not like me? Besides being one lucky son of a bitch, where can you go to see your concerns vented? Well, just for today, I’ve got you covered too. Today while we wait out those bastards in DC, let’s take a look at both sides of the story in double Top Ten list form. Which brings us to…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Reasons To Look Forward To A Government Shutdown:
10. No more FCC means someone can finally show Kim Kardashian’s sex tape, which is literally the only reason she ever got famous in the first place
9. How can your payment to the IRS be late if there’s no one there to take in the mail?
8. No government = no chance of ever having to say “President Gingrich”
7. Finally a political story to bump Obama’s birth certificate down a notch in importance (Fox News viewers can safely ignore this one)
6. Jay Leno can go back to his 1995 joke vault, thereby updating his nightly material by at least a decade
5. Vegas will start giving odds on who can resolve things first, Democrats and Republicans or NFL owners and players
4. Chances of us finding a fourth Middle East war to get involved in drop by at least 10%
3. No government means there’s one less thing for Sarah Palin to offer her “expert analysis” about
2. At least now Barack Obama will have some free time to start replying to all those “Congratulations!” emails he got back in November, 2008
1. Finally John Boehner has something to cry about

And if you don’t agree with all that, maybe you’ll agree with this…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Reasons This Government Shutdown Is A Terrible Idea:
10. Dick Cheney might finally be able to launch his takeover attempt from his secret base on the moon
9. Lack of new government news might mean Fox and MSNBC will have to start airing reruns from the Clinton and Bush years
8. We no longer have Larry King to ease us through this troubled time
7. That unemployment extension check isn’t gonna mail itself, you know
6. All those poor members of Congress who made this happen are going to lose their paychecks and might end up out on the streets…oh, wait
5. Bill Clinton could try to swing by the White House to check up on the current crop of interns
4. Canada might realize this would be the perfect time to launch their secret invasion plan
3. Anti-government crackpots are suddenly gonna have a lot of free time on their hands until they figure out who they’re supposed to hate now
2. Little-known Constitutional loophole reverts control of USA back to England if government shuts down for two weeks, and that might interfere with the Royal Wedding plans
1. Barack Obama will have plenty of free time to Photoshop himself a birth certificate

So there you have it, the pros and cons of the government shutdown, all in convenient Top Ten form. Now go on and do something productive for the rest of the day. If you can pry yourself away from Farmville long enough, that is.

T “point/counterpoint” green

Hello and welcome to Happy Friday!, the weekly blog post that actually appears on a schedule so random that the odds of it actually appearing on a Friday are somehow even worse than 1 in 7.

This week Apple CEO announced record profits for the last quarter, saw the price of Apple shares go above $300, unveiled 2 new MacBook Air models, gave a sneak peek at the next version of the Mac OS, and then met with President Obama to discuss the economy and technology. And he did it all while maintaining one of the top 5 best farms in Farmville.

About the only thing Jobs didn’t do was head on up to his secret base on the moon. Or did he?

This week the Vatican announced that Homer Simpson is, in fact, Catholic, which makes sense because why wouldn’t Homer belong to a religion where they give out free wine every week? Though mostly I think the Vatican announced this just to fuck with the next Dan Brown novel.

It’s good the Vatican cleared this up, because this is exactly the kind of important issue Catholics the world over want the Church to spend time on.

Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione died this week. To honor his memory, men of a certain age will be flying at half mast this weekend.

Former President George W Bush indicated this week that he sees not privatizing Social Security as the biggest failure of his eight years in office. This is a surprising choice, since it doesn’t even make most people’s Top 100 list of his biggest failures.

I guess maybe he considers his second biggest failure to be not finding enough reasons to give speeches while wearing a flight suit. And his third not being awesome enough.

Radio host Rush Limbaugh this week spent some time talking about pictures of President Obama that made the President, in Limbaugh’s words, look “demonic”. Left unsaid was whether the demonic Obama in any way resembled whatever demon Limbaugh signed his soul away to in exchange for the big radio ratings and the gigantic bad of Oxycontin he used to have delivered to the house every month.

New research shows that the popular story of the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world on December 12, 2012 may actually be based on a miscalculation. According to the latest calculations, the world won’t end on December 12, 2012 but will actually end on whatever day the New York Jets appear closest to winning a Super Bowl game.

It was announced this week that President Obama will be appearing on the cable show Mythbusters. Given the way things have gone for him since he got elected, the only way he could appear on a more unfortunately-titled show would be if he was a guest on something like Hooray For The Bestest President Ever Who Has Saved The World And Made The Universe Better For Us All, Yay!, and for better or worse, FOX News canceled that show as soon as Bush left office.

This week Sony announced it’s finally stopping production of the cassette Walkman, once someone realized the calendar hanging in the production factory was left over from 1987.

In a new memoir by a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was revealed this week that during the Clinton presidency, the codes required to launch a nuclear strike were actually misplaced for several months. Though the most logical conclusion to draw is that Hillary was holding on to them in case Bill got out of line again after the whole Monica fiasco.

Scientists revealed this week that they’ve observed the oldest object in the universe. To do this, they tuned their television to CNN at 9PM Eastern time and there it was, conducting an interview with Snooki.

In other science news, NASA recently unveiled the results of last year’s experiment to find water on the moon, and it turns out there’s a lot more ice and water up there than previously believed. Almost enough, in fact, to serve up cocktails to any aliens drawn here by this…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOVc4TMjHpk

Millions of TV viewers in the NYC area have been missing out on entertainment and sports programming since FOX pulled its channels from Cablevision due to a payment dispute. Picking a side in a conflict like this is kind of like trying to decide who to root for in a fight between the guy who raped you in the prison shower and the guy who shanked you in the prison cafeteria. In other words, you’re screwed no matter who wins.

Fast food mecca McDonald’s recently announce that it’s bringing back the McRib to most of its locations for a limited time starting in November. They’re so excited they’re working on a huge advertising push to make sure everyone has a chance to sample the processed pork sandwich. Of course, when you’re trying so hard to advertise, there’s always a chance you’re gonna burn through some bad ideas before you get to the winning one, as you can see here in…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Rejected McDonald’s McRib slogans:
10. McRib: Those rumors that it tastes just like Soylent Green are totally untrue and slanderous!
9. McRib: We devised a whole Man vs Food challenge around it that got rejected because it didn’t meet the “Food” criteria!
8. McRib: Now at least 87% mouse-carcass-free, give or take a couple of percentage points!
7. McRib: Each McRib grown organically in a lab in Brazil’s rainforest!
6. McRib: Buy one today or we bring back the Shamrock Shake!
5. McRib: The McRib’s special meat is even more special than the special sauce in the Big Mac!
4. McRib: Have It Your Way, as long as your way involves throwing a whole pig into a blender!
3. McRib: Buy two; it’s the tastiest murder/suicide method around!
2. McRib: You can’t handle the truth!
1. McRib: Guess who’s cornered the market on pig anus again!

And that’s all we have time for this week. Until next time, stop eating all the candy you bought to hand out to trick-or-treaters, put the finishing touches on that “The Situation” costume you’re planning to wear, accept the fact that just because you want a scary Halloween lawn doesn’t mean you can bury grandpa out there, and, most importantly, have a Happy Friday!

So after spending a month lost in a writing frenzy, all I had to show for it was a pile of words that may or may not have all fit together and a little picture I added to a blog post to show that I “won”. And that was pretty much it, except for one other cool thing. I could also get a free copy of my book from CreateSpace. An actual, honest-to-God, you can hold it in your hands printed book. I got one one before, when I won NaNoWriMo 2005, and even though I won in 2006 too by writing more than 50,000 words, I never finished the story so I never got my book. This time around, since the free book offer was good until July 2, I figured I’d edit the book, make something presentable out of it, and then get a free copy of that. And so during the week after Christmas, when I was off from work, I went to Staples, got some paper and a binder, printed the whole mess out and set to editing.

Cut to June and I have a binder full of paper I haven’t even finished reading yet, much less started marking it up with red pen. Though honestly I think I’m gonna need a box of red pens to get through this one. But the point is, July 2 is roaring down the tracks, aimed straight at me, and I’ve got nothing but the same pile of words I had at the end of November. So this week I formatted them, slapped together a cover, and sent the whole thing to CreateSpace to turn it into a book. I finished that process tonight, so in a couple of weeks I’ll open my mailbox and find a 122-page pile of words that may or may not fit together, but at least they’ll look like something real. It should be cool, and I’m hoping that reading through this book will finally get me working on this story that at one point I’m sure I thought could turn into something decent. I’ll probably post a picture of the book when it shows up, and maybe I’ll post one of the 2005 book as well. For now, here’s a quick look at the artwork I submitted for the cover:

And you know what the scary part is? With one simple click of a button, I could have this thing on sale at Amazon.com tomorrow. I won’t, because it’s a steaming pile of bad words right now. But I could. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The thing is, now that I’ve spent all this time learning how to design and format a book, I feel like I should find something profitable to do with that knowledge. Hmmm, if only I had a backlog of material that could be slapped together into some kind of book. If I had something like that, like a bunch of emails and blog posts from the last 15 years, I could do something. If only.

In theory, it should work like this — you want to write, so you write. Simple. Believable. Like the song says, it oughtta be easy, oughtta be simple enough. And yet, after banging my brain against the inside of my skull for at least 8 hours a day at work, most nights the best I can do is crank out an email or two, perhaps a Yelp review, and maybe a tweet. Certainly nothing more than that. It’s not to say I don’t have the best of intentions. But those intentions seem to melt away once ass hits couch after the long trip home on the D train.

So in the absence of the easy way, what’s left? Why, a stunt, of course. Last November I wrote a novel in a month, and if you scroll down a bit you can read all about it. This month? Well, this month I’m trying something different, if no less ridiculous. This month I’m writing a 100-page script while participating in Script Frenzy. I’ve never written much in the way of scripts, and don’t have a whole lot of interest in it, but for the month of April, Script Frenzy gives me a goal, a deadline, and hopefully the right amount of motivation to write something more substantial than a Waffle House review.

When I sit down this evening to start my script, I have a few options. I can write a movie script, or a TV show, or a play, or even a graphic novel (high-class-speak for comic book). As I write this, I’ve got no idea which one I’ll choose. I wrote a TV episode script once. It sucked. I wrote 3/4ths of a movie script once. It sucked. I wrote about half of a script that was either an animated movie or a hybrid of live action and animation. It sucked. And while I’ve never bothered to sit down and write a comic book script, I’ve sure created many comics in my day. Some of them didn’t suck.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that I haven’t exactly set the bar terribly high as far as script writing is concerned, so assuming I make it to 100 pages in a month, whatever I write is bound to be at least as bad as all the other crap I’ve done, and maybe it might be a little better. Of course, the dirty little secret in all this is I know going into it that it will be almost impossible for me to get to 100 pages in this particular month. But we’ll get to that later. For now, there’s nothing but good times ahead. Hey kids, let’s put on a show!

So, another year is over, and as midnight approaches you’re most likely sitting somewhere surrounded by strangers, adult beverage locked in a death grip to keep yourself company, wondering just how 2009 got away from you, and worried that if you blink, you’re gonna find yourself in the same spot with the same adult beverage wondering the same thing about 2010. At this point you’re gonna need something familiar to cling to, some comfortable old friend who will remind you that it’s gonna be aaaaaaaaaaaaaaalright. And that’s where old Uncle T steps in. Not me specifically, because I’m about as comforting as some bottom-shelf tequila mixed with Tabasco, but rather, some Top Ten (or so) lists, that are always comforting because they just recycle the same punchlines from the last 14 years, so it’s not like your brain gets a big workout. So while you’re rattling the ice cubes around in your glass to make it look like you’re still engaged with the rest of the world, why not take a quick look back at 2009? Maybe you’ll even be able to pinpoint the exact moment where it all went off the rails for you. Stranger things have happened, as you’ll see when you take a look at…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Awkward Moments At Obama’s Inauguration:
10. Realized halfway through that no one had explained to George Bush that he had to go back to Texas when it was all over
9.  Bill Clinton asked if he could just duck into the Oval Office bathroom for a few seconds
8.  Fox News’ Special Report, The Obama Presidency, A Study in Failure, aired a half hour before the swearing-in even started
7.  Spent nearly an hour wiping off all of Keith Olbermann’s drool
6. Thomas Jefferson’s ghost made numerous attempts to hook up with Mrs. Obama
5.  White House power shorted out by feedback from Dick Cheney’s secret death ray
4.  Forced to stop in middle of first Inaugural Ball dance to break up fight over whether he’s a socialist or a fascist
3. Inaugural motorcade interrupted by Dick Cheney’s secret ninjas
2. First hour in Oval Office spent listening to Hillary Clinton’s explanation of how it was still not too late to dump Biden for her
1. Chemical spill in White House basement accidentally destroyed secret army of Dick Cheney clones

Of course, Obama wasn’t the only political story of 2009. Sarah Palin continued her drive toward 2012 by writing a memoir that immediately shot to the top of the bestseller lists. There were immediate concerns that the book wasn’t 100% accurate, as you’ll see by checking…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Reasons To Question The Validity Of Sarah Palin’s Memoir:
10.  First five pages of biography appear to have been lifted from a book about President Lincoln, with only the names changed
9. Chapter on foreign policy experience includes four different French fry recipies
8. Section on everything she plans to accomplish as governor of Alaska hastily whited out
7.  Even with a year to think about it, still lists Bazooka Joe comics as her major source for news
6. Among things she trashes John McCain for is “did lousy job of picking VP nominee”
5. Every anecdote about life on the campaign trail ends with a moose getting killed — even the one that takes place in Hawaii
4. Continues to ignore George Bush’s friend requests on Facebook
3.  Refuses to apologize for giving Levi Johnston his 15 minutes of fame
2. Claims first anti-crime campaign she ever launched when she was mayor was against the Hamburglar
1.  Her list of favorite movies includes Caddyshack II and Ernest Goes to Jail

But it wasn’t all inaugurations and bestsellers in 2009. No, we had some national tragedies to deal with too. Like the whole Michael Jackson thing. Not that his death was as much a tragedy as something everyone had been expecting for at least a decade. But the way he was instantly turned from sort-of-creepy old dude who’d been riding the goodwill from Thriller for more than 2 decades into national hero was tragic yet completely expected. Which brings us to…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Highlights of Michael Jackson’s Funeral:
10.  It was the most lifelike he’d looked since at least 1992
9. Coffin needed a sidecar for all his old noses that were buried with him
8. Tribute by children who visited Neverland over the years and weren’t touched inappropriately was understandably short
7. Finally gave Tito a chance to prove to the world that he’s still alive
6. Forced MTV to play more than 3 videos in a row for the first time in a decade
5. Fans were able to vote on favorite Jackson album, favorite Jackson song, and favorite Jackson skin tone
4. Joe Jackson set new record for fastest transition from “Where Are They Now?” list to “Yeah, Still A Douche” list
3. Gave Emmanuel Lewis some much-needed screen time
2. Slash probably got some royalties from all the new sales of Black & White, which means he made more money off that than Axl Rose made off the last Guns ‘n Roses album
1.  Proposed afterlife duet with Elvis called off due to fact that Elvis is still alive

Now, if you want to talk about tragedies from 2009, you don’t have to look past the Fall TV schedule. Talk about a nightmare of “President Palin” proportions. It’s like every network executive took every opportunity to make every possible mistake, and then put it on the air for us to watch. Did they finally go too far? Can network television possibly get any worse? See what you think after reading…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Ways Network Television Could Still Get Worse:
10.  Law & Order: Jay Leno Division
9.  Celebrity Twister, starring Betty White
8. The Newshour with Paris Hilton
7. Survivor: Newark
6. Love Boat: The Next Generation: The Next Generation
5.  Celebrity Rehab, Muppets Edition
4. Kelsey Grammar in, Nope, Still Not Playing Frasier Crane, But Please Watch For A Couple Of Weeks Anyway
3.  AfterScrubs (oh wait, that’s one of Tgreen’s Top Ten Ways Network Television Has Already Gotten Worse)
2. Man vs Food vs Kelly Ripa
1. XFL Classics

And if you thought TV was bad, the Internet was even worse. There are actually, if you can believe this, people who think that they can slap together a page of poorly-thought-out Top Ten Lists and call it entertainment. Fortunately for all of us, more often than not they run out of time before they can really do damage to our psyches. Just imagine the horror if we’d been subjected to…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Top Ten Lists That Might Have Appeared Here Today If I Hadn’t Gone Out To Lunch:
10. Top Ten Movies Based On Comic Books Nobody Remembers
9. Top Ten Things William Shatner Says After Sex
8. Top Ten Ways Your Boss Is Screwing You Even When You’re Not In The Office
7. Top Ten Episodes of According to Jim
6.  Top Ten Obama One-Liners On Fox News
5. Top Ten Rosie O’Donnell Sex Tapes
4.  Top Ten Other Wars Dick Cheney Tried To Start
3. Top Ten Soups That Are Orange
2. Top Ten People Having A Better New Year’s Eve Than You
1. Top Ten Lunches To Buy Tgreen To Keep Him From Writing Any More Top Ten Lists For Awhile

But you know, New Year’s Eve isn’t all about looking back. No, it’s a good time to look forward, to make resolutions, to figure out how to be better next year than you were last year. It’s also a time to take stock of your possesions and figure out how to cram even more junk into your house next year. Which brings us to…

Tgreen’s Top Five Products You Know You’ll Buy When They Go On Sale In 2010:

5:

4.

3.

2.

1.

And that’s it for 2009. See some of you back here in January for more of the same. Hope you all had a good 2009, and that 2010 has nothing but good stuff for you. As the man said, “here’s to the new year. Let’s hope it’s a damn sight better than the old one.”

T “have I said Happy New Year to you yet?” green

Hello and welcome to Happy Friday, the weekly blog post that’s got a treat for you if you’ve got the right trick.

Nine months after leaving office, former President George W. Bush made his debut Monday in his latest incarnation: motivational speaker. He spoke for nearly 26 minutes on a variety of subjects, including one of the difficult decisions he was forced to make as President. No, not the war or the economic bailout or homeland security, but something even harder than that — picking the right Oval Office rug to reflect his optimism. That sure explains a lot, doesn’t it?

The former President is writing a book about the 12 hardest decisions he had to make while in office. Me, I’m looking forward to the chapter on “paper or plastic”.

Popular social network Facebook reminded members that it will “memorialize” profiles of the dead if their friends or family request it. These special accounts won’t have friend suggestions and won’t be available to people who weren’t already friends with the deceased, but it will still crank out regular updates on the deceased’s Mafia Wars and Farmville progress, because apparently even death can’t stop those posts.

Two Northwest Airlines pilots were using laptop computers in the cockpit as they flew past their Minneapolis destination last week, according to federal regulators. The pilots claim they flew for 78 minutes without speaking to controllers because they became so engrossed in a new computer program that arranges pilot schedules. Do you understand, they were using their laptops to check pilot schedules, not to look at porn. You can get porn on your computer? Wow, that’s nice to know, but these pilots were engrossed in their schedules. Not porn. Seriously, not porn.

A Paris court convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud and fined it more than $900,000 this week, thus guaranteeing that Tom Cruise will never visit France again, and making me wonder how no one in this country ever thought of this obvious-in-hindsight way of getting us a break from Tom Cruise.

A new study shows that children are more than twice as likely to be killed by a car while walking on Halloween than any other night of the year. And children wearing the controversial new “Johnny Traffic Cone” costume are more than four times as likely to be killed by a car.

In sports news, Mark McGwire is back in baseball, reunited with Tony La Russa as the St. Louis Cardinals’ hitting coach. And also, backup team doctor, based on his skill at delivering injections.

According to a new government report, nearly 650,000 jobs have been saved or created under President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan. Unfortunately for the President, 90% of those jobs are anti-Obama commentators on Fox News, and the rest are really just people who replied to that “Earn $2,000 per week working from home” e-mail that makes the rounds every now and then, and probably shouldn’t even count.

A man was caught by Norwegian customs carrying a tarantula in his bag, while also having 14 royal pythons and 10 albino leopard geckos taped to his body. Customs agents became suspicious when the man’s crotch began incessantly asking if they wanted to save money on their car insurance.

U.S. researchers reported this week that people with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people with a different DNA sequence. That variant? Two X chromosomes.

Hey-oh!

This week in an interview with People magazine, tennis star Andre Agassi admitted that he used crystal meth periodically for “a year or so.” Which finally explains the whole Barbra Streisand relationship.

It’s Halloween as I write this, which means most of you are either out there Trick or Treating, or getting ready to go to a party tonight. For you last-minute costume shoppers, it’s very easy to end up with a really bad costume, as you’ll see when you look at…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Worst Halloween Costumes Still On Sale On Halloween Evening:
10. Bernard Madoff
9. Transexual Mexican Wrestler
8. UFL halfback
7. American Godzilla
6. Vampire from deleted scenes on True Blood DVD set
5. Open-minded Mormon
4. Gay Hitler
3. Narcoleptic cat
2. Mayor of Saskatoon
1. Laid-off GM employee

And that’s all we have time for this week. Last time I mentioned something about Happy Friday taking the month of November off. Is that still happening (after today’s edition I’m sure that idea has a certain charm)? Watch this space for more info starting November 1.

Until next time, don’t eat too much candy, watch out for the apple with the razor blade in it, don’t forget to tip your waitress and, as always, have a Happy Friday!

T “great balls of fire” green

Hello and welcome to Happy Friday, the weekly blog post that’s feeling so tired tonight. So, so tired.

Last week rock band Def Leppard has canceled the final leg of its North American tour “due to unforeseen personal matters.” Those matters? Someone in the band apparently realized it was not, in fact, still 1988.

First Lady Michelle Obama appeared on Jay Leno’s new show on Friday. She apparently wanted the advantages of appearing on TV without the worry of having an audience watching and somehow Leno’s was the first name that came up.

On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer accidentally introduced Jesse Jackson by calling him Al Sharpton. And in a related story, Contessa Brewer will now be working for Fox News.

While Jackson was visibly unamused by the incident, Sharpton was willing to let it pass. “Hell, we’re both puffy black dudes who are always complaining about something. Even I can’t tell the two of us apart sometimes,” Sharpton said.

This week it was revealed that the ninth-season winner of Big Brother told a federal agent that he used his $500,000 prize to buy thousands of oxycodone pills and resell them, prompting Rush Limbaugh to call CBS and offer his services should they ever decide to do Celebrity Big Brother.

Apple this week surprised even optimistic speculators by posting a 47% increase in profit in the fourth quarter. Industry insiders are telling investors they can’t expect similar performance next quarter because the competition is stronger now that Microsoft has released the Zune HD and Windows 7. When asked to comment on that forecast, Apple CEO Steve Jobs bought Australia.

In other Windows 7 news, in honor of the new software release, Japan was lucky enough to play host to Burger King’s exclusive Windows 7 Whopper. Seven stacked beef patties extend the Whopper to over five inches in height all for appropriately ¥777 ($8.55). But it’s still better for you than Windows Vista.

A Texas man who confessed to sexually abusing a child over a three year period has been sentenced to 80 life sentences. But the good news is the Pope has already pardoned him.

It’s a big time of year for sports fans. The football season is in full swing, hockey just started, basketball is about to start, and baseball’s World Series is just days away. But what if you’re not a sports fan? How do you navigate this time of year without becoming a social outcast? Never fear, my sports-deprived friend, you can learn all you need to know by reading…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Ways To Fake Being A New York Sports Fan In October:
10. Never, and I cannot stress this enough, never mention the New York Mets, as they are all home watching football by October
9. Sprinkle your daily conversation liberally with “A-Rod”, “Jeets” and “Swishalicious”, in no particular order
8. While technically there is a team called the New York Islanders, you don’t have to worry about ever bumping into anyone who wants to talk about them
7. Without warning, grumble “Fucking Eli” several times every Monday morning
6. Mention that you can’t believe you’re saying this, but you sometimes find yourself missing the Mad Dog
5. Say bad things about Philadelphia – it’s almost always appropriate
4. First half of October, ask, “Think the Jets can do it this year?”; second half of October, ask, “Think the Jets can do it next year?”
3. Mention that you can’t believe you’re saying this, but you sometimes find yourself missing Billy Martin
2. If stumped by someone’s sports-related question, say you missed the game because you’re too busy training for the NYC Marathon (just don’t be 300 lbs when you say this)
1. Complain about how expensive a beer was the last time you went to a game

And that’s all we have time for this week. Tune in next time for, if not an explanation for the lousy scheduling of late, then at least a compelling excuse for why Happy Friday may need to take November off. It’s a legitimately good reason, though, so you should be proud of me for that.

T “dammit Eli!” green