Monday, November 16, 2009
Holidays, politics a bad combination for Bennie
Ben Beagle
The aging, semi-hysterical retired reporter rides shotgun with the greatest station wagon driver of them all down the rocky road of life. Mondays in the paper's Extra section, steady as she goes.
Recent columns
Listen up, you maggots, the holiday season has begun and it's time to be counted.
Sing along with "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" and get in the spirit, for Pete's sake.
So, you only had one trick-or-treater on Halloween and the dog scared him half to death and it seemed to him -- the kid, not the dog -- an awful price to pay for two little plastic bags of M&Ms.
I'm sure he -- the kid, not the dog -- went home and marked your house off of his next year's route.
And don't give me that stuff about when you were a boy M&Ms hadn't been invented and all you did on Halloween was the trick, like pulling up all the wickets on Mr. Hoopnagles' lighted croquet course.
Or carrying Mr. Overberger's swing set down to the bus stop on West Main and Harvey.
I always hated M&Ms. They roll out of my mouth and get lost in the chair cushion or they fall on the floor and we have to be sure the dog doesn't eat them because chocolate is fatal for dogs.
But, let's get on with it or I'll have you picking up butts on the main post until it's time for your retirement party at the enlisted men's club.
From 1 campaign to the next
Listen, you can make it through the holidays without drinking poisoned eggnog.
You got through the election campaign all right, didn't you?
Like those TV commercials in which Candidate A accuses his opponent of having a bad taste in ties and wants to abolish the public school system and -- ah, the touchstone here -- raise your taxes.
As in: "Maximillian Dropcloth wants to pass legislation that would take your dog away the very first time it scared a greedy kid out of his pirate's costume.
"We must not allow this, and similar, erosions of our basic freedoms.
"I'm Luther Frappe and I paid for this ad." (Along with his mother.)
I'm glad that's over, but there are severe tests ahead -- including shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, which has driven a lot of good men to drink.
You have to step up to the plate and go with the flow -- which is to say that you order your wife a barn coat online and when it comes, it would have fit Shirley Temple back in the mid-1930s.
On the dark side of happy holidays is the fact that Sarah Palin may come to town to sign her new book.
Before or after Santa lands at the mall?
You deal with that, pal.
Ben Beagle's column runs in Monday's Extra.
