I Love Don Week: I Love Don Day

In the future, you won't be working on the 11th day of July because "I Love Don Day" will be a nationally recognized holiday. But for now, please observe this great day in your own way. I'll be walking around the halls of my work place and making sure everyone has wished me a happy birthday, mainly.

EATING: Birthday dinners. Last night my wife made me BBQ chicken and baked potatoes, and then followed up with gourmet cupcakes from a gourmet market place. Yup. That's how I roll ...everything gourmet. I stack papers. It was wonderful and tasty and my Dad and his lady friend attended. Prior to 1973, most people knew July 11th as my Dad's birthday, but funny how times have changed.

EATING, AGAIN: Hi, sweetie. I hope you check in on my blog today. Nothing fancy tonight, ok? You out did yourself last night. A simple steak with a garlic infused rice side dish, or shallots and shells with that spicy Italian sausage and heavy whipping cream will do just fine. No need to go all crazy. Thanks. Oh ...and pick up sugar cubes, Rye (that's whiskey), and Angosturo bitters while you're at the store. I'd like to make myself an Old Fashioned.

LAMENTING: For those in the ad biz or any biz that deals with age-cell demographics, you'll understand why this birthday is especially hard for me. With today's celebration of my birth, I've entered the Adults 35+ demo. This is tough. On my way to work this morning I took the Active Rock, CHR, and Hip Hop stations off my radio presets and added a Soft AC, a Smooth AC, and a News-Talk station. Gosh, this is tough. As if spunkybean's "What the Kids Like" feature wasn't alienating enough, now I'm not even sure I'm allowed to read it at all. I'm gonna have to get used to singing the lyrics to classics like this ...



REVIEWING: Old journal entries. Here's a bit that I used to use in my stand-up act. Believe it or not, with a little ad libbing and a little dancing on stage, this got some fairly decent laughs. I always hoped it was 'original.' My fear, always, when doing stand-up was that I'd watched so much TV and seen so many comics throughout the years that the bits I wrote and thought were original were just somebody else's jokes that had resurfaced from deep within my subconciousness. I managed to avoid airline jokes and prop-comedy, but I was never fully convinced anything I said was my own. But here's something that got me some laughs. And it's a philosophy I absolutely believe in.

HOKEY POKEYING (circa 1998): It always saddens me when brides insist their DJs don't play the "Hokey Pokey" (let alone the "Chicken Dance", any "Polkas", the bunny hop, "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang, and other standards). I lecture almost all couples-to-be that, indeed, it is all about the Hokey Pokey and I often cite a bogus statistic that the reason 50-percent of marriages end in divorce is because of the modern phenomenon of not playing the Hokey Pokey at a wedding. So, when I go to a wedding, I bring no less than $100 which I use to bribe the DJ to play the "Hokey Pokey". Only 3 DJs have denied me and only one took the entire $100. Of the 3 weddings I failed to have the "Hokey Pokey" played, 2 of those 3 ended in divorce. Of the countless others where I successfully forced the Hokey Pokey onto the unsuspecting couple. Zero divorces. Yes, its totally true ...I've been to easily 50+ weddings and only two of them have ended in divorce - because I failed those two couples.

*** Edit: Any money leftover goes into the bride n groom's card. So ...if you want $100 ...invite me to your wedding and make sure the "Hokey Pokey" is on your set list so no bribing is necessary and, hence, you get a hundy. ***

Also, and this wasn't in the stand-up act, it's all-American. Why do young brides resist such a great American tradition as the "Hokey Pokey." If you hate terrorism and love America, do the "Hokey Pokey" and dance your ass off to the "Chicken Dance."

And, finally ...people need these standards to get them on the dance floor. Weddings are most fun when the dance floor is packed, men have their suit coats off, their ties undone, and they are sweating through there shirts as they dance along awkwardly to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock n' Roll" or Chubby Checker's "The Twist." Wanna see a dance floor empty in a hurry? Play something by Rihanna or Kanye West. Wanna see the dance floor packed and stay packed? Play the "Hokey Pokey", Del Shannon's "Runaway" or Dion's "Run Around Sue" and follow that up with "Jesse's Girl" and you'll have a packed dance floor until the Knights of Columbus hall kicks you out at 1 a.m.







Holy crap! I'm totally 35. I just posted videos to three super old songs and then screwed up the entire post and couldn't figure out how to make the font size work. Damn these new fangled bloggies. *sigh* And I wear these...