Bag of Randomness for Friday, June 10, 2016

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  • I’ve always wanted to take part in an open-mic night at a comedy club. I think I’d fail, hard, but it’s one of those things I just want to experience – alone on the stage, all eyes and ears are focused on you, and you get to see if you are genuinely funny or just getting courtesy laughter. In some ways, I guess it wouldn’t be all that different from preaching a sermon (written in sarcastica).
  • At one point in my life, I really, really wanted to preach or deliver a sermon. But then it hit me that my motivation was nothing but selfishness, and delivering any message from God should be done in humbleness.
  • Mark Cuban is either humbly loves Dallas, is good at PR, plotting something, or a mixture of the three – Mark Cuban ‘didn’t hold anybody hostage’ in negotiations for new Dallas practice site:
    • “In terms of my negotiation with the city and playing one municipality off another, it didn’t happen,” Cuban said. “I didn’t ask for a penny. I didn’t want a penny. I didn’t hold anybody hostage and say, ‘Listen, so and so has offered me land.’ And I was offered land. This city or this municipality offered to do A, B or C. None of that whatsoever. There’s a time for that type of thing. But in this particular case, I feel like I owe the city of Dallas more than they owe me. And they don’t owe me anything.”
  • Muhammad Ali will be buried at the same cemetery as:
    • Colonel Harland Sanders of KFC fame
    • Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. … who created the Kentucky Derby
    • Patty Hill … who wrote the “Happy Birthday” song
    • Pete “The Gladiator” Browning … the baseball player who popularized Louisville Slugger bats
  • Priceonomics – Henry Ford’s Campaign to Make America Great Again
    • In the 1924 presidential election, the most hyped candidate was an egotistical and fabulously wealthy businessman who many politicians did not believe would really run. That man was legendary carmaker Henry Ford, and the resemblance between his political un-career and Donald Trump’s is striking. Ford was impulsive, hated experts of any kind, and refused to commit to a platform, specific policies, or even a political party. Instead he ran—for Senate in 1918, and (kind of) for president in 1924—on his reputation as a captain of industry and force of nature.
  • If you are a fan of Nate Silver, FiveThrityEight.com, and polling, this Wired article might be of interest to you – The old-school American political polling industry is in crisis. The reason: People have simply stopped responding to phone polls.
  • The Strange, True, Tragicomic Story of EGOTHow a Miami Vice star and a 30 Rock writer made a nonsense acronym into the entertainment industry’s highest achievement
  • My neighbor, Scott, should make this a weekend project – 100% Handmade Baseball Glove Leather Watchband‏
  • I had no idea this was a dude – Imgur – This guy transforms himself into Disney princesses
  • Nice idea, but I doubt she wears it more than once – People Love This Teacher’s Creative Way To Remember Her First-Grade Class
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  • Sadly, Baylor continues to be all talk and very little action. Here’s a tweet from a Waco reporter yesterday:
    CarlostweetbayorCapture
  • I’ve heard several people state that the mugshot of Stanford rapist Brock Turner reminds them of Sandy Hook Elementary shooter Adam Lanza. I guess it’s the eyes and facial expression.
    brocklanzadafe
  • Even “20 minutes of action” can lead to dire consequences – USA Swimming bans former Stanford swimmer convicted of sexual assaultBrock Turner is no longer eligible to be a member of USA Swimming after being convicted of sexual assault charges.
  • North Yorkshire news – Restaurant that killed customer with nut allergy sends apology email advertising new dessert range
  • GIF – Tiger stalking a cute redhead at the zoo
  • Jerry Seinfeld did his third Reddit Ask Me Anything earlier this week. Here are several answers he provided (context of the question is in the answers) that may or not interest or entertain you. Hey, I think I found a new slogan for my BoN – BagOfNothing.com – stuff that may or not interest or entertain you.
    • I believe in detailed notes and jokes, and also winging it onstage. But, not for your first open mic. For your first open mic, my advice to you would be to make sure you have what you’re gonna do memorized, to the point that one of your friends can gently slap you across the face, and you’ll still be able to get it out of your mouth.
    • I don’t do movies because I think generally the size of that content does not lend itself to great comedy; it lends itself to people saying, “Hey, I made a movie.” To me, the funniest things are shorter, so I think TV series or comedians in cars, I think I have a better chance of making you laugh.
    • I think the best Seinfeld episode idea I ever contributed was that George pretending to be a marine biologist would find Kramer’s golf ball in the blowhole of the whale. Believe it or not, we were doing both of those stories without seeing any connection that Kramer was gonna hit golf balls at the beach, and George was gonna be pretending to be a marine biologist. And it was in the middle of the week that it suddenly hit me of a way to connect the two stories. So, I think that’s probably the best joke I ever thought of on the series. But, I love when people say “regift” or “giddyup”, or “yadda yadda”. The real and spectacular…I was a very big fan of the show.
    • I have often wondered if there’s a way to teach being funny or comedy, and George Stephanopoulos actually got me wound up enough at one point that we were going to contact, I think his name was Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia, and we were gonna go in there, and I was going to teach a course on comedy. Because I know a lot about it, but I just don’t know if it’s teachable. I’m still wrestling with the idea if you can teach someone to be funny.
    • I actually have quite a bit of it, and we’re looking for a museum that wants to display it. I have the couch, I have the two blue stools, I have the table and chairs; the coolest thing I have is the door, which we never repainted in nine seasons. It has every scuff mark that Kramer put on it with all those crazy entrances.
    • I do often talk to the cast, but not as often as when we were doing the show. Remember when you were in high school? Remember those people? It’s like that.
    • That was the most fun I ever had. The coolest part of that episode, that you couldn’t see, was the head of the secret service explaining to me what was going to happen if someone started shooting at us. What they would do to the president and where they were going to throw me in the back of a van. That was really exciting Bourne Identity stuff.
    • When I was in first grade on the last day of school, Mrs. Stafford, our teacher, said, “I want to give out a special present today, to a kid in the class who has tried so hard to improve his handwriting.” And she’s going through this whole speech about this kid; I’m staring at this kid that I knew that she liked, and I just hated him, and I was getting more and more angry. And then at the end, she said it was me! The present was a Dr. Seuss book, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, that I have since thrown out. But I remember it was in purple cellophane wrapping, and I still consider it the greatest honor to have received that gift. So, that was my favorite book.
    • The best advice I ever got was from Rodney Dangerfield, who when I asked him a question about something in comedy, just looked at me for a second and then went, “You’ll figure it out.”
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