Try This Some Time:

When a phone conversation is dragging on way longer than you’d like, say: “Listen, I gotta run. I need to find out what a cranky, old preacher who Obama knew many years ago might be saying.”

BILL

What?! We haven’t defeated terror YET?!

C’mon, troops! Step up your game! I’ve defeated many intangible concepts all by myself!

BILL

Begin Being Self-Absorbed Again

So this otherwise fine film – “Begin Again” - ends. (Or does it?) Goes to complete black. “Written and Directed by John Carney” in white on black.

CUT TO: The movie continues but only on the right half of the screen. The rest of the credits of the entire cast and crew (excluding John Carney of course) are on the left side of the screen (maybe vice versa; I don’t recall). But none of us are reading these because we’re still watching the movie!! How disrespectful to everyone else who worked on “his” film.

BILL

Let's Start a Movement!

Don’t send money to universities until they wear only two different football/basketball uniforms: home and away. Their doing otherwise is a smoking gun of: “We have plenty of cash to spend. See?“

(Pass it on.)

BILL

Never Thought I'd Write These Words

But the moment I’m supposed to feel pride in my country has degraded to sheer embarrassment, that being the singing of the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. Two minutes of solemn reverence for country and for those who have fought and died for our freedom has corroded into a self-indulgent, cringe-inducing endurance spell of “What’s about to happen?” Will the singer show off his or her – and oh how I wish I coined this phrase: “vocal gymnastics” in a shameless display of “it’s all about me, not my country?” (Why ask: we know they will.) Will booze-filled rowdies yell out in drunken, Pavlovian response when the video screen shows their favorite player? (Why ask: we know they will.) Will Bill go on and on about this? (He doesn’t have to; you get the point.)

GRAMPS

PS: I concede that this does not apply to the great majority of fans. Yet the embarrassment adheres. Whitney Houston, RIP.

Little Caesar’s Bacon Wrapped Pizza

Because, America, we don’t think you’re fat enough.

BILL

Man, I'm an Idiot!

I just found out what a “nip slip” is. I thought it was what GIs said if a Japanese soldier tripped during World War II.

BILL

Let’s Start a Rumor!

“UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion is named after comedian Pauly Shore.”

(Sure, the timeline and spellings don’t match, but since when have rumors been fact-based?)

BILL

The other day I was asked:

“Do you believe the earth is round?”

I responded: “I’m going to punt on that one since I’m not a scientist and there still exists a Flat Earth Society.”

BILL

"Today I'm Gong To STICK IT TO THE MAN!!!"

This was the thought with which I awakened until realizing I work for a major Southern Californian financial institution, whereupon I shuffled off to the kitchen and brewed my typical morning pot of coffee.

BILL

In My Ongoing Effort to Spend Eternity in Hell

I love telling jokes to Alzheimer’s patients. They laugh again and again and again and again….

BILL

Twitter: @BillBekkala

Now-now, Little Kanye

I think someone needs a timeout. A “swift” timeout. Get it? Swift? Where’s baby’s binkie? Wheeeeeeeeeeeeere’s baby’s binkie? THERE it is! OK, back into your playpen, little Kanye, until you learn to behave.

BILL

Infernal Affairs

I see ISIS now burning someone alive in a cage and I think to myself “Wow! What sort of ‘mind’ set would unleash such primitively barbaric cruelty upon another human being?” before coming to my senses and realizing the answer, of course, is “religion.”

Silly me.

BILL

Home of The Brave Alert

NEWS ITEM: A 9-year-old boy who boasted to a classmate that he could make him vanish has disappeared himself – from school. Fourth-grader Aiden Steward was suspended from his elementary school in Kermit, Texas, on Friday, one day after making the alleged “terroristic threat,” as the Odessa American describes it, of promising another child he’d render him invisible with his fictional “one ring” from the J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy series The Lord of the Rings.

EDITORIAL: Texas. It’s like a whole ‘nother country.

BILL

A Bug In His System of Dating

There would be no second date. Fenster knew this beyond all certainty, fair Claudia having nuzzled him along his ear, only to discover his pet cockroach, Barney.

BILL

WHAT was Pete Carroll THINKING??!!!!

“I want three shots at a touchdown. Three plays.”

Pass on the first play, i.e. second down. If incomplete, clock stops.

Run on second down. Not even necessarily Lynch. If stopped, burn your last time out.

Run or pass on fourth down, letting the chips fall where they may.

“Three plays to go one yard and if we can’t make it, maybe we don’t deserve to win.”

Doesn’t seem so crazy now, does it? All of it, however, is predicated upon not being intercepted on that first play, which unfortunately for Pete, happened. That’s why I concede the first play is a MAJOR gamble and, while no one is expecting it, no one expects you to punt on first down either.

My only thought is I’m not sure I would have chucked it into eleven yards of congested territory but to state this is the very essence of Monday Morning Quarterbacking which I tend to look down upon. Cut me some slack.

BILL

PS: Oh! And in case you’re wondering, I was rooting for New England.