Rain Clouds, New Growth And Leaking Testicles

July 21, 2020
   It wants to rain so bad.

Come on, over here! Over here!

   This is Ratcliff Ridge this morning at sunrise. We never got a drop but it sure looked like it wanted to rain.

Rain clouds and scorched saguaros

   But the good news is, we already have some new growth sprouting up at the base of burnt bushes.

New growth

Meanwhile, Here's The Leaking Testicles Bit:

   I was reading the Hollywood Reporter this morning and they had a virtual roundtable of comedian/actors plugging their shows, including Dan Levy (Schitt's Creek), Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley), Kenan Thompson (SNL) and Remy Youssef (Ramy) and, of course, Ricky Gervais (Afterlife).

   All of them are very thoughtful and really smart, but the knock down, drag out, funniest of them all is Ricky Gervais and he just kills it every time he opens his mouth. The interviewer, Lacey Rose, wants to get into their insecurities, and she asks this: "Do you ever get nervous, Ricky?

   "I don't know, I have anxiety dreams," Ricky says. What kind of anxiety dreams? "Well, I'm on a train and I'm going in and out of a tunnel and my dad spills milk all over my face."

   He also says, at one point, "A big part of my comedy is saying things I do not mean." And, "if there is one person that doesn't get it, I can live with that. . .That someone might take you at face value doing an ironic joke or a satirical joke, well,  yeah, some people try to inject themselves with bleach. There are stupid people in the world."

   When Kenan Thompson tries to explain how he has endured on SNL far longer than anyone, he goes off on this thoughtful advice, ending with "If you're so focused on getting fired every single show, you can't focus on entertaining people. It just doesn't work like that." To which Gervais quips: "No, you've got to try to get fired, that's my advice."

    Nanjiana is horrified. "Ricky, that's terrible advice. . ." Undaunted, Gervais shrugs, "They'll thank me later." (laughter).

   But the best quip, is when they discuss Nanjiani's beefed up body (he is playing a Marvel Pakistani superhero in "The Eternals"). So Ricky says, as if he's relating to the body building, "I had a lot of liposuction, but only in my testicles because that's where I put all my fat. So, I just had enormous balls and I've had them leaked."

One of my cartooning heroes

R. Crumb at his very best.

" He who laughs at himself, never runs out of things to laugh at."

–Epictetus