It was twenty years ago today
Happy Friday taught you all to say,
“We don’t want to see those lame-ass lists.
“Their lack of humor leaves us really pissed.”
But on this anniversary
Here’s jokes you’ve read for years and years
Happy Friday’s Crappy Top Ten Lists

It’s Happy Friday’s Crappy Top Ten Lists
We know you won’t enjoy this show
It’s Happy Friday’s Crappy Top Ten Lists
The jokes you hated years ago
Happy Friday’s Crappy
Happy Friday’s Crappy
Happy Friday’s Crappy Top Ten Lists

It’s a surprise to be here
It’s certainly a shock
We thought we killed this damn thing off
You know you didn’t miss these jokes
You’d like to make them stop

I don’t really want to start this show
But I thought you might like to know
The writer’s giving jokes a spin
And he wants you to pretend to grin
So let me warn you all right now
The one and only Tgreen’s here
With Happy Friday’s Crappy Top Ten Lists

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand Happy Friday everybody! Yes, I know it’s technically Tuesday but since this is the actual anniversary of the first Happy Friday email, we’re just going to pretend that it’s Friday. Just like you used to pretend you laughed at all those Top Ten lists. The only difference now is you still have to go to work tomorrow. Shitty jokes and a Wednesday staring you in the face right after? No wonder I didn’t call this thing Happy Tuesday way back when.

This week actor Charlie Sheen revealed that he’s HIV positive. Doctors say there’s no way of knowing how Sheen got the disease because not only is he the first patient who was ever able to check off every possible way to get it on a lifestyle survey, he also added three other possibilities they’d never even heard of.

There was an embarrassing moment in the White House this week when President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize fell off a shelf and accidentally launched 10 drone attacks in the Middle East.

This week the latest poll results have Ben Carson and Donald Trump leading in the GOP race for the 2016 election, which is a rare case where the story is actually its own punchline.

Former President Bill Clinton this week live-tweeted the second Democratic Presidential debate and showed his support for Hillary by using the hashtag #Imwithher, which is the first time he’s ever admitted to being with a woman without the involvement of a subpoena.

In response to the terrorist attacks in France, this week the United States announced new travel rules for Syrian refugees. From now on they’re only going to be allowed one explosive device and one automatic weapon in their carryon luggage.

In other Syria news, it was noted this week that Apple founder Steve Jobs’s father was a Syrian migrant, prompting Fox News to pull its app from the Apple App Store in protest.

This week aging mobster Vincent Asaro was acquitted of charges that he was involved in the 1978 Lufthansa heist. Jurors said Asaro couldn’t possibly have been guilty because his character never showed up in the movie Goodfellas.

In a biography released this week, former President George H. W. Bush said that his son’s advisors gave him some bad advice in the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. When asked to respond to the charges, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he had no hard feelings toward the former President and then offered to prove it by taking him on a special hunting trip.

In other Sith Lord news, Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens on December 18th. So if you think you may have some business to take care of on the Internet, you might want to take care of it on the 17th. Because after that the Internet is going to be used exclusively for complaining about Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the next 2.5 years.

And that’s enough News Roundup for this week.

Thanks to recent events I’ve seen a bomb-sniffing dog at my local train station. I can’t say whether he’s ever going to smell a bomb there, but I know for sure he’s never going to smell an on-time train in that station.

I’ll tell you, if the New England Patriots keep winning, everybody’s gonna want to put their hands on Tom Brady’s soft balls. Which is just how he likes it.

Last week I took my first Uber ride. My driver was a nice guy from Kenya named Benson. And I’ll admit it made me think about all the opportunities we have in this country. I mean, here was a guy born in the middle of Kenya who managed to pull himself up and move here and get a job he loves driving a car in San Antonio. Granted, it’s not as great a story as the guy born in the middle of Kenya who managed to pull himself up and move here and get a job he loves as the President of the United States, but it’s still pretty cool.

The previous paragraph was brought to you by Trump for President, 2016.

Us children of the 70s have an interesting month coming up. We’re going to have the opportunity to see a new Rocky movie with Sylvester Stallone playing Rocky, and then a new Star Wars movie with Harrison Ford, Mark Hammill and Carrie Fisher playing Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. And then of course there’s the rumor that John Travolta was spotted getting fitted for a white suit.

And while we’re on the subject of Star Wars, the new movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens takes place 30 years after the end of Return of the Jedi. This means that some of the new merchandise is quite different from what traditionally comes out for a Star Wars movie, as you’ll see when you take a look at…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Examples of Star Wars: The Force Awakens Merchandise:

10. Han Solo Blaster/AARP Card Combo Pack
9. Jabba the Hutt Slimming Undergarments
8. Large Print Movie Novelization
7. C3P0’s Twitter to English Translator, for Confused Grandparents Everywhere
6. The Chewbacca Hair Piece (formerly known as The Trump)
5. Princess Leia’s You’re My Only Hope Botox Cream
4. Imperial Walker
3. Jar-Jar Binks action figure (they really made at lot of these in 1999 so please just buy one already)
2. Lando Calrissian’s Cloud City Walking Shoes — So Comfortable You’ll Think You’re Walking on a Cloud
1. Luke Skywalker’s May the Force Be With You Male Enhancement Pills

And that’s all the time we have this week. I’m not entirely sure what the traditional present for the 20th Anniversary is, but I’m guessing it’s a crappy Top Ten List, right?

A brief historical note, if you’ll indulge me. The first Happy Friday did actually go out 20 years ago today in email format to a bunch of friends who’d just gotten email at work. Many of those people are still out there right now reading this, probably on a mobile device that no one could’ve predicted in 1995. I can only imagine it’s because they’re still waiting for me to write a good joke, in which case I might as well tell them I’ll see them all for Happy Friday’s 40th Anniversary, beamed directly to the brain implants we’ll all no doubt have by then.

If I counted up all the times I ended Happy Friday for good, never to return to it again, I’d get a higher number than George Pataki gets when he counts the people who’d vote for him in 2016, but despite that low bar it is a pretty high number. So thanks to those of you who do still show up whenever I find a few minutes to crank out one of these. And now Happy Friday is going to slip back into retirement for a bit. But Happy Friday will return on a regular-ish schedule next year to cover the 2016 Presidential Election. Sorry, there’s nothing I can do to stop that.

So until next time, stop encouraging Trump, celebrate your Thanksgiving with a Pizza Hut Triple Bypass, er, uh, Triple Treat box, stand up in the middle of that new Star Wars movie and shout “where the hell is Scotty?!?”, cower in fear as I decide whether I want to rerun all my old OJ Simpson jokes when that new OJ Simpson show comes on, go check IMDB to prove that I’m not lying about that OJ Simpson show, wonder if I made that reference just because Happy Friday doesn’t seem like Happy Friday without an OJ Simpson joke, realize that’s exactly why I did it, accept the fact that I’m using a very generous definition of the word “joke,” go to the store and buy Chris Christie a nice “sorry you won’t be President” card, ponder which is more presidential — Trump’s hair or the old Giuliani combover, be forgiving of the fact that this paragraph ran off the rails a lot of words ago and, as always, have a Happy Friday. Or Tuesday. Or whatever day you get around to reading this.

T “anyone know when that Poison Pen 30th anniversary is supposed to happen?” green