Cheers and Jeers for Friday, April 1, 2005...
By the Numbers:
Days `til "Play Ball!": 2
Days `til we turn our clocks ahead an hour: 2
Days `til `Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith': 48
Percent of men who say they're hard-core baseball fans: 27%
Percent of women who say a ballpark is a good place to find a man: 74%
Average cost of a ticket to a Major League game: $19.82
Percent of pitches the average umpire calls incorrectly: 7%
Calories in a hot dog, beer and bag of roasted peanuts: 1,300
(Source for the above 5 items: Men's Health)
Babe Ruth's highest salary: $80,000 (1931-32)
Your Puppy Pic of the Day "C&J has been promoted to the front page?" "Dammit...now we got nothin' to pee on!"
CHEERS to April. Those who call it the cruelest month have never spent a March in Maine. Besides, baseball starts Sunday, the Masters golf tournament is next week, the flowers are going "Poink!," and the 27th is Administrative Professionals Day. Oh wait...taxes gotta be filed in 14 days. Cruel it is.
JEERS to what you get for a mandate. In today's must-read, Molly Ivins summarizes the White House's energy policy with one amazing factoid: "Next year, the administration will phase out the $2,000 tax credit for buying a hybrid vehicle, which gets over 50 miles per gallon, but will leave in place the $25,000 tax write-off for a Hummer, which gets 10-12 mpg. That's truly crazy." Read the rest here. Now I know why the GOP is scared of building more windmills: they're so stupid they'd probably walk right into `em.
CHEERS to the new kid on the block. Jerry Springer started this morning on Air America, throwing verbal chairs at the lunatic right. Keep this up and we may just forgive you for your TV show.
JEERS to Scandal Man! The DNC has nifty summary of Superjeero Tom Delay's dirty deeds: linkee here. It's an abbreviated list. If they published the whole thing they'd crash the net.
JEERS to scaring people away. USA Today reports that the weak dollar is doing little to attract tourists to America: The story here. Gee...you spend four years re-tooling your country to be a war-loving, gun-, God- and gas-obsessed land of arrogance and those crazy foreigners just turn on ya.
CHEERS to spring cleaning. Time magazine has a handy list of things you should do to keep your lifeline to DailyKos hummin': Click here. As for our crumb-and-booze-encrusted keyboard---we're just gonna send that through the carwash.
CHEERS to April Fools Day. The one day we have permission to put our scruples aside, make up wild stories and play pranks on people. How sad that in D.C. they find nothing unusual about that.
JEERS to real-life Principal Skinners. A student at Providence, Rhode Island's Central High School got a tip that principal Elaine Almagno (condom companies take note: I think that name's available) was sneaking out back to smoke, thus violating a state law about lighting up within 25 feet of a school. The kid secretly took photos of Ms. AlMagno puffing away and posted them on the internet: Oh, naughty, naughty. Long story short: kid was unfairly suspended, fought back, and was un-suspended. Mean Principal Almagno escapes with her name...and not much else.
CHEERS to spotless plates. On this date in 1889, the first dishwashing machine was marketed in Chicago. We got ourselves a new one four years ago. Her name's Molly.
JEERS to the end of an era. Ted Koppel is leaving Nightline in December: click here for link. The father of one of my high school classmates was one of the hostages in Iran, and we sure did appreciate Koppel's fine work on `Nightline' back then. Enjoy your retirement, sir. As of today we promise to cease all Alfred E. Neuman references.
CHEERS to saying farewell. We really thought Pope John Paul II was going to build on Pope Paul VI's legacy and lead the Catholic Church into the modern age. What a disappointment when he turned out to be just another bitter old chauvinist bigot. Now it looks like he'll be shuffling off for a face-to-face meeting with his boss this weekend. Have a safe journey...and may your successor be more enlightened (women priests, anyone?) than you were. Amen.
JEERS to silly stunts. On April 1, 1930, Leo Hartnett of the Chicago Cubs broke some kind of altitude record by catching a baseball dropped from the Goodyear blimp 800 feet over Los Angeles. He caught the ball cleanly but suffered a broken jaw. We think someone should re-enact that stunt on its 75th anniversary. What's O'Reilly doing today?
CHEERS to Daylight Savings Time. All the clocks spring forward an hour this weekend. Except you unpatriotic holdouts in Indiana and Arizona---what's with you people, anyway!?
CHEERS to beautiful music. We noticed this in The Week magazine. Audiocubes sells a flexible, 61-key keyboard for $279. When you're done with it you just roll it up and lock it away. Don'tcha wish they made Republicans like that?
C&J Flashback: April 1, 2004...
CHEERS to smart TV viewers. CNN ratings are down by half. Fox viewership is down by more than a third. And Jon Stewart kicks both their asses when The Daily Show is on. Now we have our answer to "Who do you trust?"
JEERS to `House of Sand and Fog.' I finally caught this flick on DVD. Yes, the acting is Oscar-worthy. But for all the emotional turmoil, death and destruction, the film's message is: open your mail. Well, Duh!
And just one more...
CHEERS to airline safety instructions we'd like to see. Only because we know it's always the children who dole out the sulphur on long flights. Hey...what are y'all pointin' at me for??
Have a great weekend! Floor's open. What are you cheering and jeering about today?