PHUK KIEU

It's dangerous to say Phuk Kieu, and it's dangerous to KNOW Phuk Kieu.

The 24 Hour Comedy Record Marathon

Congratulations to Al Roker, for ROKERTHON!

I don't know the specifics (bathroom breaks, nap time if any) but I know how TIRING such a thing is.

Well before I wrote "Comedy On Record" and "The Goldmine Comedy Record Price Guide," I set some kind of record via "The Comedy Record Marathon." I took over the turntables at WSCR and played nothing but comedy records from 10am to 10am.

I was both the DJ and the engineer, so the longest break I could take was about 20 minutes...one side of an album. But since I didn't bring an alarm clock or a timer with me, I couldn't risk taking a break and falling asleep! So it was indeed, 24 solid hours.

Just why I thought of doing this, I have no idea. I'd never stayed up all night in my life. I just figured that if Dick Van Dyke (that sitcom episode, "The 100 Terrible Hours") wasn't punchy until the second or third day, I could survive one day.

Things went pretty well until around 9pm, when I realized I still had a half a day to go. A slight panic attack set in, as I wondered about my back-up plan. Coffee? Tea? I was never a coffee drinker. I most certainly never took ups (or downs). I hadn't even thought of asking people to bring up a lot of Pepsi (there was no Red Bull back then). So all I could do was settle in for the long, solitary hours. I'd made my bed...an upright chair in a radio station...and I'd have to sit up in it.

I think around 6am, 7am, I knew the worst was over. I had only a few hours of reel-to-reel tape, so I was conserving it by only recording myself for about 10 minutes at a time. I haven't heard the recordings in years, but I remember that my voice was very weary (this was no longer funny!) and I was a bit spaced out. "This is Ronald L. Smith, and I've been Ronald L. Smith for 20 hours now..."

I also remember trudging back to my room, lying down, and NOT being able to fall asleep. Not for a little while, anyway.

Like Al Roker, the main comment I had after it was over, was two words: "Never again!"

Spelling is not in their vocabulary

There was an inspirational piece in the London Daily Fail, er, Mail, today.

It was about Jennifer Bricker, 27, who was born without legs. She hopes to put together a dance act, in addition to her current work as a motivational speaker.

Speaking of the handicapped, it's nice of the paper to hire one-eyed proofreaders.

About that KIM KARDASHIAN NAKED ASS cover on PAPER magazine

"The Big Zuckerberg" - using Facebook to "Go Viral"

"Let's make it GO VIRAL."

It's the phrase that's replaced Mickey Rooney shouting to Judy Garland, "Let's put on a PLAY!"

The idea is that you create some lame comedy piece, sing some ridiculous novelty song, or hoist some "cute" video of your pet to YouTube...and then NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK on Twitter or Facebook and magically get infected. Uh, "go viral."

Let's see. You can have 5,000 Facebook "friends," most of whom never look at your page because they just collect "friends" to have, not to read. But those 5,000 are going to...watch your video and push it to the "viral" level of 100,000? 500,000? A MILLION HITS?

Sorry, "The Big Zuckerberg" (annoying your friends on Facebook) is not going to make it. Tweeting isn't going to do it, either. Most of the YouTube videos I see don't even get 50 hits. 2,000 (which I don't think even reaches "monetization" level) is probably the average. Steal somebody's song and post it, and maybe 20,000 people will check it out, if it isn't already on Spotify.

It seems pretty naive to think "networking" will make it so. Yet every day a brief glimpse at Facebook posts yields some giddy, pie-in-the-sky post that's the equivalent of crap on my shoe:

How awfully cynical, too, that big corporations are using this ploy: "Make a commercial for us. If yours GOES VIRAL, you WIN." Win what? Well, you win the contest, that's all. It's like the Jimmy Kimmel game: "Tell your kid you ate all his candy. A thousand kids will be crying and howling in agony, but we might pick five that pout and are funny. Those five...get bragging rights."

Not that I want to crush anyone's inane dream. It goes like this:

"Let's all get together and help somebody we don't even know BECOME A STAR! Let's watch somebody's TV commercial. Bad song. Awful comedy routine."

"Hey gang, Old Blind Pew wants to be a movie critic. If enough people watch his demo review, I just know we can persuade "Entertainment Tonight" to sign him up! Come on, gang! Make it GO VIRAL!"

This is the new paradigm: reach for the brass ring by throwing your time and effort into uploading something onto YouTube. The odds are 50 million to one, but "you got to be in it to win it."

What can you do? You hit the BLOCK button. If you want to be dishonest, you say "Thanks, I'm doing it RIGHT NOW." If you say you don't appreciate blatant "networking," or point out the long odds and the waste of time involved, you'll get a torrent of abuse for being a spoilsport, a killjoy, a bastard..." all the synonyms for A REALIST.

You sure can't let 'em know: "I think it wouldn't interest anybody, outside of a small circle of friends..."

DAILY NEWS DOES IT AGAIN - The Great Proofreading Cliche

Oh, PLEASE, Daily News...this one again?

When will proofreaders put up a moratorium on this?

November 5th, 2014, a story about a triple amputee (prosthetic legs, handless arm, etc.) who somehow killed his parents.

A few words on ANDY ROONEY, who died November 4th, 2011

Ever notice that people tend to remember the day you were born, and not the day you died? Why is that?

Why is it people will say, "Hey, today would've been Andy Rooney's 103rd birthday." As if you could feed cake to a corpse. Isn't it more important to say "Hey, today, November 4th, Andy Rooney died?" After all, you were around when he died, not when he was born, right? And which was the more emotional and painful experience? Except for Andy Rooney's mother, it would be the death date.

Ever wonder what people would say about you, oh, three years after you died? Anything at all? Maybe "Remember the bushy eyebrows?" "There are no more curmudgeons." Nevermind, they said that when Bea Arthur died, too.

Sometimes, I think about Andy Rooney in the summer, when "60 Minutes" was in re-run. Did he have nice summers? Were they nice because he knew he didn't have to complain about something every seven days? When women think about "the curse," do they feel glad they weren't Andy Rooney, who was on this weird cycle of having to moan and groan EVERY seven days for most of the year? Did it get worse for him late in life when he perhaps had to whine and grimace AND remember to slip some protective pad into his underwear?

I wonder about these things.

They say the evil that men do lives after them, and the good is oft in turds with their bones. Something like that. Can anyone remember a good Andy Rooney line? If they can, does that mean it's evil, because it lived after him?

After November 4th, 2011, why didn't they just call the show "58 minutes," and leave the last two minute for a blank screen as a tribute? Sort of like a moment of silence? Would that be asking too much? I mean, aren't we sick of that tick-tick-tick noise throughout the show?

I wonder how many people still have a sense of wonder.

Andy Rooney made you wonder. First, he made you wonder how he got that job. Second, he made you more "aware" of things. You became aware of how easily most anything could get on your nerves. Especially him. Did you notice that? I did.

I share Andy Rooney's sense of wonder most every day. I question everything. Would it be in poor taste to raise money for Oscar Pistorious on Kickstarter? Does "election day" provoke a lot of Viagra jokes in Chinatown? Shouldn't they wipe the soundtrack to DVDs of "silent" movies? Why did I get a free flu shot yesterday via Obamacare when my name isn't Obama? Can you easily do this too, just come up with whimsical, annoying, deliberately querelous misconceptions on most anything and everything you see and hear?

I wonder about these things, on the day Andy Rooney died, November 4th. Do you?