Bay Area: Last Stop?

(Image from first for women)

I bought Steve Martin's album A Wild and Crazy Guy in 1978 and found this bit to be hilarious:

You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. “Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?”

First.. get a million dollars.

Now.. you say, “Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, ‘You.. have never paid taxes’?” Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: “I forgot!”

The transcript does not do justice to his delivery, which was replete with pregnant pauses, shrugged shoulders, and goofy expressions. Plus, the two-part answer to "how can I be a millionaire and pay no taxes?" that began with "first get a million dollars" struck me as funny, and if you don't agree, dear reader, well, we laugh at different things.

I thought of Steve Martin's routine when I came across an article in the Chronicle about why many of us choose to live out our final years here: How to financially prepare to spend the rest of your life in the Bay Area . Certainly the drawbacks of staying in the Bay Area--or California in general--have been well publicized:

there’s plenty of talk about the bad. You don’t have to look far on the internet to find people blasting California for its high taxes, housing costs and homelessness. California has the top marginal state individual income tax rate at 13.3%, according to the Tax Foundation.

"But that’s not the whole story."

[Estate planning, trust and probate law attorney James] Cunningham broke down the hidden benefits in a post on his firm’s website titled “Why Retiring in California May Actually Be a Smart Idea.” For instance, though marginal rates are high, you’ll pay a lot less on your presumably diminished retirement income compared to some states with flat tax rates. California is one of the states that doesn’t tax Social Security benefits, and doesn’t tax capital gains when a spouse dies. And you’ll dearly miss that Prop. 13 property tax cap if you move somewhere like Texas.

Bay Area retired acquaintances have told me that the primary factor that caused them to stay or leave was the state of their finances. Those who have a paid-up house and enough savings and retirement income to live on (daunting prerequisites, like "first get a million dollars") consider other factors, such as where their children and friends live, the quality of medical care, and, last but far from least, the temperate weather all year long.

If I had to bet, the Bay Area is our last stop, but circumstances can easily change.

Summer, winter, or fall the Foster City weather is nearly the same.

Independence Day, 2025

One path to success is to be the world's best in a sought-after skill. Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams says that the vast majority of us who aren't so gifted should work on our talent stack,[bold added]

developing a variety of skills which combine to make someone a sought-after commodity.

Adams describes his own talent stack in the following terms: “I am a famous syndicated cartoonist who doesn’t have much artistic talent, and I’ve never taken a college-level writing class. But few people are good at both drawing and writing. When you add in my ordinary business skills, my strong work ethic, my risk tolerance, and my reasonably good sense of humor, I’m fairly unique."

Your humble blogger is an adequate accountant--but far from the best--and I have reasonably competent communication skills leavened by a sense of humor.

On this Independence Day let all our talent stacks be good enough to provide a decent standard of living for ourselves and our families.

Wasted and Useful Lives

B. Kliban (1935-1990) was a cartoonist known for his drawings of cats, but it was his talent for making absurd connections that appealed to this fan. I was beginning my white collar career when I came across this gem. It was as funny then as it is now.

I'll Have Some News With Those Jokes

Tyrus gesticulates

On the eve of an election which is again the-most-important-election-in-my-lifetime I'm tuning out all the reporting on the polls. Predictions range from a late break toward Harris to a clear-cut Trump victory. The most common poll result seems to be a statistical tie.

This week I've been watching Gutfield, Fox's late-night humor show. Tonight there was this nugget.

George "Tyrus" Murdoch: You are from the mean streets of Northern California.

Greg Gutfield: San Mateo.

Tyrus: You didn't play.

Gutfield: I cut my teeth at the Hillsdale Mall.

Tonight I learned that Greg Gutfield, like Tom Brady, Kris Kristofferson, and Merv Griffin, is another San Mateo kid who moved away and hit it big.

It's a pleasant surprise when you go to be entertained and pick up some knowledge in the process.

Humorbragging

(Illustration by Verplancke/WSJ)

Humblebragging (“I hate that I look so young; even a 19-year-old hit on me!”) has been around for years. Now there's humorbragging.

A team of researchers have found that “humorbragging”—referring to your accomplishments through a veil of humor—allows people to play up their skills without coming across as smug or conceited. And that makes them more likely to get hired or get their pitch accepted...

The researchers used a series of studies to test the impact of what they called humorbragging. In one instance, they sent out two résumés to 345 companies—but one version of the résumé added a dash of self-promotional humor instead of being purely serious: “The more coffee you can provide, the more output I will produce.” The résumés with the joke got an email or a callback by 156 companies, versus 125 for the others.

Another study got similar results when looking at humorous bragging on the first four seasons of “Shark Tank”—people who used humor to highlight their accomplishments were more likely to get funding than others.

Speaking from personal experience (okay, missteps) it's really tough to be funny, especially in a business setting.

Many subjects should not even be broached, or should be mentioned only within narrow constraints. It's advisable to test-run your humorbrag before a trusted confidant. Because of the consequences of a poor reaction to your humorbrag, follow the advice of grammar teachers regarding commas: when in doubt leave it out.

But I'm Not Going to Correct Them

I think this is me.

Man Unsure If He’s Becoming More Virtuous With Age Or Just Too Tired To Sin https://t.co/shJFS7afwZ pic.twitter.com/uVwxHUDMEK

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) August 31, 2024

Lightening the Gloom

In 2004 at the age of 37 Jane Fraser joined Citigroup and became known for her April Fools' Day pranks. Her predilection for practical jokes doesn't seemed to have harmed her career. In 2021 she became the CEO of Citigroup. Her mischievousness continues.

In early 2022, Citigroup Chief Executive Jane Fraser startled her senior team with a request: Please sign these waivers to go skydiving.

Executives questioned the sanity of the bank’s leaders all jumping out of a plane. Does the board know, one of them emailed. I’m not sure my heart is healthy enough, another replied.

Karen Peetz, the chief administrative officer hired to repair Citigroup’s relationships with regulators, tried to calm the kerfuffle. She said she’d gone with her old bank and it was great.

After watching her team squirm for a while, Fraser emailed again: April Fools’.

It was March 31.

In business it requires excellent judgment to discern when humor crosses the line. Hopefully it's reflective of the judgment that will be needed to overcome Citigroup's problems.

An Offer We Can't Refuse

Cancel Culture: Despite Humanity's Problematic Past, Jesus Still Offering To Cancel Sins Of The World https://t.co/mrjCM7hhJT pic.twitter.com/tklOUTC1n1

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 1, 2024

Holy Week plumbs the depths and heights of human experience. Whether sad or joyful, Christians normally take the whole week seriously.

Good-natured humor not related to the Easter bunny is relatively rare, but the Babylon Bee comes up with a take (excerpt):

But then He did something really strange that didn't make a ton of sense to anyone: instead of canceling humanity, He sent His Son to pay for the sins of the world and offered to cancel forever the sin-debt of those who believe in Him.

Reports indicated that for those who were dead in their sins, "God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross."

However, sources warned that God has canceled humanity once before with water and will do it again with fire one day, for those who reject His offer of canceling their sins forever.

Happy Easter!

We Know It When We See It

The sign on Thursday, October 19th

The owners of Hawaiian Rent-All continue to display their wit at the intersection of McCully and Beretania.

(They rose to attention for their chiding of President Biden's response to the Lahaina fires.)

From the looks of it, they should quit while they're ahead.

Political humor is challenging: one has to be funny without crossing the line into nastiness.

For example, their latest attempt is hardly funny and a little nasty:

We are born ignorant
But taught stupidity.
Explains why politicians
Are so educated.

This joke on the same subject matter, which I just made up, would have been a little funnier:

Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
Those who can't teach
Go into politics.

Humor is subjective, and, like I said, challenging.

Local Boys' 15 Minutes of Fame

I drive by the Hawaiian Rent-All sign nearly every day when I go back to the Islands. On the corner of Beretania and McCully, it's on the way to the H-1 on-ramp that's closest to my parents' house.

Long known for its silly puns (think Dad jokes), the sign recently has included political humor. The latest Hawaiian Rent-All sign went viral this week when it criticized President Biden for his Maui speech (representative tweet at bottom).

The store's owners, the Jung brothers, get a chuckle out of me when they're at their best. I suppose I'll now have to treat their humor with more respect.

#HawaiianRentAll, known online for its witty signage, changed its business' storefront to send #Biden a message

They also noted on @facebook that "sympathy is better than contrived empathy," and told Biden, "It's not always about you"#mauistrong#MauiWildfires #MauiFires pic.twitter.com/aeKg2CBIFU

— JustCallMeYoYo (@but75455972) August 26, 2023

Believe the Science

According to the Babylon Bee, the science is settled: go to church!

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry looks like
he's having fun (Florida Times-Union)

WORLD - According to a breaking news report, you should go to church, you insolent heathen. The report, released this morning, which is Sunday, the day people go to church, indicated that you are still at home playing on your smartphone instead of getting your family ready to go mingle with a bunch of weirdos, eat some stale donuts, and enter the presence of the Almighty God to worship Him and learn from His Word. "The data is clear, and the science has spoken," said one expert who helped run the study underlying the report. "You are not at church, and it is the Lord's Day, and you should be at church. Therefore, if you want to follow the data, you need to get your butt out of bed right now and get your family ready to worship Jesus." Well, folks, looks like the science is settled: go to church!

The above is probably fake news, the giveaway being that the Bee is a satyrical rag. The Bee's stories have been fact-checked and found to be untrue more frequently than stories in the mainstream media.

But I'll still go to church this Sunday.

Free the Tree

"Stanford hates fun" passes for controversy in 2022

Each of the two institutions of higher learning that I attended in the 1970's had a marching band that annoyed alumni greatly. Their halftime shows were filled with iconoclasm, not to mention scatological and sexual humor.

The more that our elders' generation was horrified the better. Halftime shows were a rollicking time, often better than the football game.

50 years later the people who want to clamp down on politically incorrect humor come from within the band, the student body, and faculty. Stanford University is a leader in this role reversal, and its mascot, the Tree, has become the center of a cultural contretemps. During halftime at a game between Stanford and ASU, "the Tree unfurled a 40-foot banner that said 'Stanford Hates Fun.'” [bold added]

The students on the band’s executive committee said in a statement to the Stanford Daily that they suspended the Tree because he used his platform to spread a message without going through the required channels.

"Required channels"? These brilliant students, many of them not old enough to drink, are going to be our future leaders and are already inured in bureaucratic pettifoggery. But it gets worse.

Administrators this year published a 13-page index of words to be avoided on the school’s websites. It suggested “ballsy” be replaced by “risk taker,” “you guys” by “everyone” and “Karen” by “a demanding or entitled White woman.”

The language policing is far more extensive than anything the blue noses attempted to do back in my day. With its multi-billion dollar endowment Stanford asks for but doesn't need my money. And I don't intend to give a another cent, at least until the Tree is free.

You Only Had Not to do One Thing

(WSJ illustration)

Quiet quitting is a new buzzword for an old workplace pheonomenon: doing just enough to keep one's job.

It's reasonable to suppose that "doing just enough" originated sometime during the 20th century, when bureaucracy made it easy to hide one's lack of productivity, but one would be wrong.

WSJ columnist Callum Borchers believes slacking goes back a bit further than that. He channels the first guy to quiet-quit:

I got the help I requested—her name is Eve—but I didn’t expect The Boss to make her from one of my bones. I don’t want to hear about the “blood, sweat and tears” that you poured into your job. Mine claimed a critical piece of my skeleton. After that, I stopped trying so hard.

Eve had a lot to do with it. She’s Gen A but not type A. Sure, she’d help gather apples or weed the orchids from 9 to 5. But stay a little late to check on the new ocelot litter? Forget it. She was, like, “Sorry, I have plans after work.”

All you quiet quitters out there aren’t as original or provocative as you think.

Really? We were the only two people on the planet. She just wasn’t going to go beyond the position’s minimum requirements.

Yet The Boss loved her just as much as He loved me. I know, I know. That’s His whole brand. Still, it was a harsh realization after all my hard work. I started coasting like Eve.

Even when Adam "started coasting," the Boss wasn't going to fire him. All he had to do was not do one thing, and he couldn't even not do that.

Of course, he blamed it on his teammate, and both were escorted out of the office with no severance and no medical. Some might call it karma, but that's the compensation system from a different company.

We Are Not the Demographic They Were Looking For

Beyond Menu is a website through which customers place take-out orders. The website and app are useful for smaller restaurants that don't wish or can't afford to build ordering-and-payment features into their own sites.

Your humble blogger is no marketing expert, but the logo "BM" next to pictures of delicious dishes to which he is lactose intolerant does not convey a positive impression.

(NIH: "In the United States, about 36 percent of people have lactose malabsorption.")

Additional note: the meaning I'm attributing to "BM" is only the fourth most popular definition, so perhaps it will recede even further as geezers pass from the scene.

Destination Wedding (2018)

Misleading: there's little smiling.

Sometimes tiring of too much saccharine, I switch off the Hallmark Channel and go to Netflix and Amazon Prime for romantic comedies, where the visuals are PG-13 but the language is R-rated.

Expectations were middling for 2018's Destination Wedding, currently streaming on Netflix, but with leads Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder there was a good chance the production wouldn't disappoint.

The movie begins as many Hallmark scripts do, with two strangers clashing at the airport. Making things worse, they find that they're both going to the same wedding at a winery in Central California.

Unlike a Hallmark plot, there's no guarantee that Frank and Lindsay will end up together. The dialogue is spirited, and the topics often dark and misanthropic. The only subject on which they agree is their loathing for the groom, Keith, who is Frank's brother and Lindsay's ex-fiancé.

Comments:

I liked the movie.

The repartee was sharp and Neal Simonesque; Keanu Reeves, not famous for his erudition, got off words like "avoirdupois" as if they were natural to his vocabulary.

Distracted by the cinematography that showed off Paso Robles and the hubbub of people at the airport, hotel, and wedding, it took me 20 minutes to notice that it was a two-person play; Frank and Lindsay had the only speaking parts.

The music and transition from various pre-wedding activities to the wedding itself helped to lighten the atmosphere and give the audience a break from the intense dialogue. I don't mean emotionally intense, but pay-attention-to-every-word intense to catch all the humor and cultural references.

The question that loomed from halfway to the end was whether the conclusion would be heavy (Pygmalion) or Hollywood (My Fair Lady). Which way do you think it went, dear reader?

The script made funny, subtle references to some of Keanu Reeves' famous action-hero characters. In the clip below, he can't tear open an airplane snack because "there is no notch."

Closer to the Funny Bone

(Deadline image)

Further proving the Streisand effect (when Barbra Streisand tried to suppress a photo of her Malibu mansion, her action just called more attention to it), the protests surrounding Dave Chappelle's comedy special on Netflix caused me to check it out.

Comedy is very subjective--what one person finds uproarious can elicit alarm, disdain, or indifference in another.

To your humble blogger standup comedy is about the only free-speech zone left in America; people are free to laugh at thoughts that could not be expressed anywhere else. And yes, I do find some humor offensive, especially when targeted at my race, faith, or sex (but not when it's clever, another subjective measure), but that's the price we pay so that we can listen to humor that offends others, a kind of mutually assured suspension of civility.

So I watched The Closer and found most of it humorous. Let me caution at the outset that many black comedians pepper their monologues with the "n" word, the "b" word, and sexual and scatological references that most people have automatically suppressed from their speech.

David Chappelle is no exception, and it took a minute or two for this listener to become desensitized. He was playing to a mainly black live audience, who didn't mind that a black speaker was using the "n" word. After a while I realized that he was calling every guy in his stories, regardless of race, a n*****, and every woman was a b****.

In the best comedic tradition he brought up patterns and contradictions in the way we think. Because liberal and progressive values are dominant, he had riches to choose from.

Just one example: people are angered, or at least bemused, by blackfaced whites pretending to be black, but why aren't people allowed to have a similar negative reaction to men pretending to be women? They aren't real women, a declaration received to much applause.

Of course, we know that one can have a serious discussion about the differences between the two situations, but comedy is built upon often-unfair juxtapositions. Once the thought is expressed, the laugh is generated, and it's off to the next quick take. Yes, it's unfair, just like linking anti-vaxxers with anti-abortionists (so now you want to control your own body?). Tough, conservatives have had to sit there and listen to these quick takes for 20 years on at least five nightly shows, and the oft-heard response is they shouldn't be offended because it's just comedy.

Comedians often close their act on a serious note. Dave Chappelle spoke of a transgender comedian whom he befriended. She rose to his defense when he provoked "T" activists, who turned on her. She committed suicide shortly thereafter, though Dave Chappelle was careful not to attribute the death to the braying Twitter mob.

My standup favorites are old-timers Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Seinfeld, and Dana Carvey. In terms of funniness I place David Chappelle below that group but above the majority of standup comedians currently on Netflix. But IMHO the Closer is worth watching also to see where the ever-moving lines of our culture are drawn today.

When We Said It, Some of Us Really Meant It

Over the decades the subject matter has changed. Initially we talked about our companies, spouses, and travels.

Later, as certain members of our class achieved lift-off (allusion to William Shatner, who showed that frontiers are not the province of the young), the conversation shifted away from worldly success to children, aging parents, and those who were not present this weekend, or sadly, forever.

I've only gone to a few reunions of my high-school or university classes--the big ones ending in "0" and the 25th--but the passage of time, catalyzed by the coronavirus, brought a change in perspective.

The average age of our graduating class is in the mid-70's, so despite its being a "minor" reunion year, I signed up for the Saturday night dinner. Who knows when, or if, I might see any of them again?

Psychologists say that a normal human response to our mortality is laughter. There was a lot of laughter this evening, and when we parted with a "let's have dinner (or lunch) again," some of us really meant it.

Turn Off, (Don't) Tune In, Drop Out, and Live Longer

For the past five years I've achieved a measure of peace by not tuning in to television news, which--only a slight exaggeration--pushes outrage 24/7. (I also include late night comedy, which has substituted putdowns of half the country for lighthearted laughs about the human condition.)

Internet news is toxic in a different way. Researchers have established that popular sites like Tik Tok and Facebook quickly figure out the subjects and opinions that individual users like to read about and feed them more of the same. Anger is often the by-product.

Within our cocoons it's easy to become outraged at the injustices done to "our" side by the ignorant and evil people on the other.

Do yourself a favor. Use the off switch and add years to your life.

Fake and Funny

Today is April Fool's Day, and the web is rife with hoaxes that are variations of fake pictures, videos, words, in fact any information that can be digitized. (Google's April Fool's "MentalPlex" antic is from the year 2000.)

Personally, I most admire practical jokes that were concocted before the Internet era, such as the famous Caltech pranks that included assembling a running Model T Ford in a dorm room, or the one where a student's door was plastered over so his room "disappeared."

The following isn't really an April Fool's joke because it originated a month ago and (almost) everyone knew it was fake from the beginning. WSJ: Stressed Over Getting Into College? Just Invent Your Own School

In the Reddit chatroom the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

Southern Rhode Island Institute of the Arts is the most exclusive college you’ve never heard of. Why? It’s not real.

It is, however, perfectly suited to this high-anxiety moment for high-school students around the country waiting to find out if they have been accepted to college. The fake school’s founders channeled their college admissions stress into inventing a university of their own.

High school seniors from different parts of the country were commiserating over the stress of college admissions, and SRIIOTA was born. The website material grew spontaneously as more participants added to the joke.

Boomers shouldn't worry: the country is in good hands.

The Apotheosis of the 21st Century

Rickrolling meets monetary policy meets deepfake technology.

Ask and it shall be given: pic.twitter.com/FcnwtuAJQT

— Trevor Chow (@tmychow) March 11, 2021