This one’s for all my poker-playing friends:

Poker’s a game I love to hate. It’s not just about the cards you’re dealt, but how you play them. I don’t do such a good job at playing them.

As a reward to myself for paying off all my debt, I recently signed up for XM Satellite Radio. It’s awesome. I love the ability to listen to loads of music that matches my mood exactly.

My top channel is XM 44 — also known as “Fred” — which plays “alternative” music from 1978-1988. We didn’t call this alternative music back then. I don’t know what we called it. Some of it — Duran Duran and their New Wave kin — found wide airplay on the radio, but most of it — The Cure, New Order, early U2 — did not. The station is awesome.

I also like channel 84 — XM Chill — which plays chill-out music. (Chill-out music is basically mellow, light jazz (not “smooth” jazz) and electronic music.) The third station that sees heavy rotation is channel 4 — the 1940s station.

I still love early American popular music. Though my plans for a site devoted to the subject are on permanent vacation, I listen to recorded music from the 1890s to the 1940s all the time. XM Channel 4 plays mostly stuff from the 1940s, but sometimes squeezes in tunes from the 1930s or even the 1920s. It’s great.

Anyhow, the whole reason I’m telling you this is that they just played a 1949 song called “Happy New Year” by Spike Jones and His City Slickers. I’d never heard it before. According to some quick Googling, this was the B-side to the immensely popular “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth”. The internet — this amazing series of tubes — actually yielded a version of the record being played on a 1956 Philco:

This song is hilarious. Enjoy!

Wow. I never thought the dead baby jokes would hit such a sore spot. I grew up listening to these, and so I just assumed everyone else had too. And like anything a person grows up with, I’m inured to the literal meaning of the stories and have learned to take them for what they are meant to represent. I apologize for those who found them distasteful.

By way of compensation, I’ve dug up some other jokes — some (mostly) non-offensive jokes — from a past entry.

Person 1: Knock knock.
Person 2: Who’s there?
Person 1: Control freak.
Person 1: Now you say “control freak who?”

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says “Does this taste funny to you?”

A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says: “That’s the ugliest baby that I’ve ever seen.” The woman goes to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her: “That driver just insulted me!” The man says: “You go right up there and tell him off — go ahead, I’ll hold your monkey for you.”

Why do ducks have flat feet?
To put out burning camp fires.
Why do elephants have flat feet?
To put out burning ducks.

Two atoms are leaving a bar when one realizes that he left his electrons back in the bar. His friend asks, “Are you sure?” “Yes,” he replies. “I’m positive!”

Q: Someone that knows three languages is trilingual. Someone that knows two languages is bilingual. So what do you call someone that only knows one language?
A: An American.

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator says: “Calm down, I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: “OK, now what?”

Little Red riding Hood is walking through the forest on the way to see her grandmother. She sees the wolf crouching down beside the track. “What big eyes you have!” she says. “Get lost,” says the wolf, “I’m taking a crap.”

How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
THAT’S NOT FUNNY!

And, finally, here’s one that Dana told to foldedspace readers way back when:

A mathematician, a biologist and a physicist are sitting in a street cafe watching people going in and coming out of the house on the other side of the street. First they see two people enter the house. Time passes. After a while they notice three people leave. “Well, look at that,” said the biologist. “They must have reproduced!” “No,” said the physicist, “the initial measurement wasn’t accurate.” “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” said the mathematician. “If one more person enters, it’ll be empty!”

Funny stuff!

On a whim, we met Celeste & Nicki and Rhonda & Mike for dinner at Gino’s last night. It was a damn fine meal with damn fine friends. Gino’s can be hit-or-miss, and last night was definitely “hit”. The food was hot, the portions were enormous, and the conversation was hilarious.

The highlight of the evening wasn’t actually the clams, as one might expect, but a brief departure into Dead Baby Jokes. Kris loves Dead Baby Jokes, and I can’t say I disagree. She told our two favorite, and they had me gasping for air.

Q: What’s the difference between a truckload of bowling balls and a truckload of dead babies?
A: You can’t unload the bowling balls with a pitchfork.

Q: What’s sadder than a dead baby nailed to a tree.
A: A dead baby nailed to a puppy.

That last joke brought the house down. Or at least our little corner of it. “It’s hilarious on so many levels,” Kris said on our drive home. Just thinking about it made me laugh again.

I’ve been trying to decide what makes Dead Baby Jokes so funny. I think it’s because they’re just so wrong on so many levels. They violate taboo. They shock. They provide unexpected juxtapositions.

The real problem with Dead Baby Jokes is that they’re difficult to craft. There are thousands of these on the internet, and maybe one-percent of them are funny. Most are just dumb. Some go for intentional gross-out, which is not the same as humor. I can’t believe that of all the Dead Baby Jokes I’ve read, these are the only two that I really like, but it’s true.

The best way to generate new Dead Baby Jokes? Set the dingoes loose!

Bonus joke:

Q: What do vegetarian dingoes eat?
A: Cabbage patch kids.

Yeah, I know — it’s more of a groaner than a laugher, but still…

Over the past month, Kris has developed a new hobby: dancing. She sort of mocked my obsession with Dance Dance Revolution at first, but it didn’t take long for her to push me aside and take over as Queen of the Dance.

As with other things we enjoy, we’ve become evangelists for this game. This is strange, I know, since it’s been around for year. But it’s new to us, and new to most of our friends. Now when we have company over, they’re generally required to dance for their supper.

Here, for example, are Nikki and Celeste just learning to play:

Poor Nikki has the lousy pad in that video, and it slips and slides beneath her. (Since then we’ve added a carpet pad, which prevents potentially dangerous spills.) At the end of our last book group discussion, we dragged people to dance. A formal dinner party is no excuse — even then we put our guests to the test.

Pierre and Mike get their groove on (photo by Amy Jo)

Rhonda reports that she is now stuck on the same song I am. In “groove circuit” mode, you’re able to unlock new venues and songs. But the difficulty level makes a mind-boggling leap with the song “Super Samurai” (or whatever it’s called) comes along. Kris and I have been practicing other songs, working from Basic level to Difficult. Each song is rated by a number of “bombs”. “Super Samurai” has six bombs — we’re able to do songs with four bombs.

I guess we’ll just have to dance some more.

Here’s one last batch o’ fun before our vacation. I’ve spent far too much time over the past few weeks watching old Whose Line Is It Anyway? clips at YouTube. Here are some of my favorites.

Tears. falling. from. eyes.

Mike Banks writes:

Isn’t this photo worthy of a post? Maybe a “caption this” for a prize?

He’s right. Here’s the photo:

Here’s the prize: your choice of one Bob’s Red Mill product. I’ll pick up a case of it from the Bob’s Red Mill store and either deliver it the next time I see you, or mail it to you (in case the winner is in Bogota or something).

Giddy-up!

I keep finding things that would be perfect for Vintage Pop, if that site were actually a going concern at the moment. Anthony Lane has an overview of Barbara Stanwyck’s career in the current issue of The New Yorker. I discovered a new CD compilation series featuring music from 1890-1920. And, most of all, I’ve been overwhelmed by the quantity of good material on YouTube.

For example, here’s a handful of videos I found this morning through casual browsing. The first few simply show scenes of 1920s recreational life (primarily dancing) while set to some jazzy tune or other. The last couple focus more on the Charleston (a popular dance step) and on a couple of my favorite songs from that era. (”Caldonia” is actually a big-band song from the mid-1930s, but so what?”)

Though I’d love to be sharing clips like these, and writing about them, I guess I’ll have to be patient, to just wait until I have time to focus on more than just a few sites.

I dedicate this entry to Kris and Rhonda, and to the Goddess of Light.

The women of the OSP crime lab — my own personal super-heroes!