“Winners never quit and quitters never win”

That was said by George Armstrong Custer right before about half-a-million Indians shot his ass chock-full of arrows.

A fact I just made up (the quote part, not the ass-full-of-arrows part) because it was actually said by Vince Lombardi who, as far as I know, only encountered Indians on the gridiron (the poorly-and-racistly-named Washington Redskins) which immediately raises the question of why football fields are called “gridirons” and according to Wikipedia that’s because they used to look like this:

Who knew, or in my case, cares?

Anyway…

Seems to me Custer would have been much better off if he quit harassing Indians long before he bought his one-way ticket to the Little Bighorn.

(OK, just looked it up and Custer’s 200 men were attacked by about 3,000 Indians which, if you do the math – 3,000 divided by 200 – still comes out to way too many Indians per soldier and  Custer could have waited for reinforcements, but after having a sideline huddle with Vince Lombardi, decided to keep going because “winners never quit” although, as it turns out, dead people quit all the time.)

History is full-to-the-brim of people who should have quit.

For instance:

Captain Ahab would have been much better off if he quit chasing Moby Dick, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would have been much better off if they quit robbing banks and Francis Ford Coppola would have been much better off if, after the first two, he quit making Godfather movies. (OK, admittedly those are all movies…which we’ll get to again before this is over…but movie history is still history, so get off my back.)

History teaches us sometimes quitting is the best option and one I’m not too proud to take on a regular basis.

So what we have here today are ideas I started writing and then quit because I couldn’t think of an ending or it was time for lunch or there was a ballgame on (being a Student of History I quit pretty easy and I’m guessing about 199 dead soldiers wish I’d been in charge at the Little Bighorn), but I liked the ideas enough to keep them around which is now a problem because 2022 is just around the corner and I’ve resolved to either:

A. Lose 20 pounds.

B. Get all the unused articles off my laptop.

C. Quit making New Year’s Resolutions.

And the smart money is on “C”.

Nevertheless, today we’ll give “B” a shot and I hope you enjoy reading these partially-finished essays assuming we’re not genetically related and you haven’t already given up.  

Movies for the ADD generation

Apparently Sesame Street has trained all our precious children to have the attention span of methamphetamine-addicted houseflies and now movies have to be edited so no scene lasts too long and it turns out (at least according to what I read and I can’t remember where I read it because I have a short attention span) young sports fans don’t want to watch entire games, they just want to see the highlights.

OK, got it.

Today’s generation just wants highlights and I’m all for giving the public what it wants, so let me save our kids some time with highlights from classic movies and we’ll start with two movies I’ve already mentioned:

• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: They die at the end.

• Moby Dick: Captain Ahab drowns.

• The Crying Game: That chick’s a dude.

• Casablanca: Rick doesn’t wind up with Ilsa.

• The Godfather: Michael kills everybody.

• The Shining: Jack Nicholson’s crazy.

• Chinatown: Faye Dunaway gets shot.

And if you think I’ve ruined all these movies by revealing the endings, let me point out that Casablanca came out in 1942 and The Crying Game came out in 1992 so you’ve had a minimum of 29 years to see them and if you haven’t done that yet, I gotta think that’s your fault.

Also:

The combined running time of all those movies is 892 minutes, which works out to 14 hours and 52 minutes assuming I did the math right (and you know what they say about assuming…it makes you an ass) so even if you’re a slow reader I just saved you about 14-and-a-half-hours and now you have time to watch a replay of Game 1 of the 1988 World Series which Kirk Gibson won with a walk-off homer so now you don’t have to watch that either.

You’re welcome.

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy

The above headline is based on Goober Pyle’s imitation of Cary Grant (“Judy, Judy, Judy”) and since Goober was the least funny character to ever appear on The Andy Griffith Show – and that includes Aunt Bee – I have no idea why I used it, but I did, so let’s try to forget my mistake, move on and hope this thing gets better in the next paragraph.

It turns out Rudy Giuliani is in trouble for making unsubstantiated claims of election fraud and the voting systems companies and election workers are suing him and being a brilliant lawyer, Rudy got on the stand (and once people are under oath and can get in actual legal trouble for lying, their stories tend to change) and Rudy’s brilliant defense of his actions came down to this:

Rudy Giuliani felt it wasn’t his job to investigate every piece of evidence given to him before standing in front of microphones and cameras and libeling whomever he was talking about.

And since I actually spend a minimum of 90 seconds looking up stuff on the internet, that means this blog – created by a retired cartoonist with too much time and cheap whiskey on his hands – has higher ethical standards than Donald Trump’s lawyer.

(And now that I write that sentence, it really doesn’t seem all that surprising.)

An appeals court suspended Giuliani from practicing law in New York because he made false statement while trying to get the courts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the presidential election and as you might suspect Rudy didn’t agree and went on his radio show and said:

“This is happening to shut me up. They want Giuliani quiet.”

Which is probably the most accurate thing Rudy Giuliani has ever said in his entire life, because I believe most of Sane America – which may or may not be a majority – would like Rudy Giuliani to shut up.

Also, Judge is somewhat disturbed by people who speak about themselves in the third person.

Bullfights and “sporting rifles”

I lived in San Diego for two years and being that close to Tijuana went there on a semi-regular basis before it was considered risking your life and the possible basis for a Made-For-TV movie involving kidnapped Americans forced to work as sex slaves (which depending on the health benefits I might not mind) and one of the things I wanted to see was a bullfight.

Fortunately, I had a coworker who knew something about bullfighting – and I won’t call it a “sport” because it’s actually more of a ritual – and he encouraged me to read about it before I went so I’d understand what I was seeing.

Explaining what’s going on at a bullfight and how another culture views it would require a completely different article and maybe some time I’ll write it, but today is not that day.

In any case…

Part of the ritual or pageant or fucked-up-cruel-animal-abuse event (your call) is the matador facing Death, which the bull represents (even though I’m pretty sure nobody explained his role to the bull beforehand) and the matadors want to face Death with bravery and have a variety of maneuvers to show their courage.

Like the “Telephono” which is pretending you just got a phone call and resting your elbow on the bull’s head while you pretend to talk on the phone. (Hey, these guys are brave…nobody said they were MENSA candidates.)

No idea what this next move was called, but I’ve seen it performed live: the matador slaps the bull in the face and then turns his back and struts away like he doesn’t give a damn about Death.

Which is pretty impressive or some really screwed up macho behavior depending on your point of view, but if you’re pro-bull you might be happy to know that a not-uncommon bullfighter injury is in the perineal area (the space between the anus and the genitals) and I personally believe some of those injuries happen when the bull thinks:

“Wait a minute…did that asshole just slap me in front of all these people?”

And jams a horn up a matador’s ass.

(I totally made up what the bulls are thinking, but it seems logical to me and until Dr. Doolittle starts his own blog to explain what bulls are actually thinking, I’m sticking with my version.)

Think what you will about bullfighting, but the bulls do have a decent chance of punching some serious holes in matadors and I found a 2011 LA Times story that said between 1994 and 2004, out of 750 bullfighters that performed in Guadalajara, Mexico, 68 required emergency help during the bullfight.

So when 68 out of 750 deer hunters get gored in the ass by a deer, feel free to call an AR-15 a “sporting” rifle.

Now try it without depth perception

Since having an eye operation last March my vision is still not 100 percent in my left eye and it mainly shows up in a lack of depth perception which has seen me break the existing Guinness World Record for knocked over cups and missed attempts at picking up small objects and in one memorable instance, thinking I’d parked right next to a gas pump, getting out of the car and realizing the gas hose was about a foot-and-a-half short of reaching my vehicle.

So I’m looking up bullfighting pictures and come across this one…

And whatever you think about bullfighting, you gotta give this guy credit (or demerits) for doing it without depth perception.

“Yeah, I’m gonna go in over the horns and stab the bull with this flimsy-ass sword and I’m not 100 percent sure where the bull is.”

And if I read the stories correctly, this matador lost his eye when he got gored in the head and immediately joins our list of people who didn’t know when to quit. People are truly amazing, which is less of a compliment than it sounds like first time you hear it.

You too can be a Pulitzer nominee…  

I was watching a movie when one of the characters playing a reporter established her credentials with the police by saying she’d been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, which — as it turns out — means pretty much nothing.

Unless they’ve changed the rules since the last time I checked (and it’s been a while) anyone can nominate anyone (including themselves) for a Pulitzer Prize.

So as long as you’re willing to go through the entry requirements, go ahead and send in your last expense account, nominate yourself in the Fiction category and next time you’re in a bar trying to pick up chicks or dudes or in some cases both (I mean let’s face it, if you’re bisexual your odds of getting laid would have to double) you can start pickup conversations with:

“This reminds me of the time I was nominated for a Pulitzer.”

In conclusion…

OK, that’s it for today and as I’ve already confessed; when the going gets tough, I look around for a comfortable place to sit.

In other words:

I quit.

Again.