A Mickey Mouse Operation

You know how all sports and entertainment venues are now "sponsored?" Stadiums are called by their sponsor in most cities: "Cellular One Field" or "Lincoln Financial Field" or "Metropolitan Life Stadium."

Let's take privatization to the next level! Why not sell the rights to storms which the Weather Channel now names anyway! So heavy rain in California is brought to you by Allstate Insurance. The snow coming to Minnesota and Wisconsin is "The John Deere Plow Blizzard!" I can think of at least 10 companies that would jump on tropical rains and hurricanes. And if the government took over the naming rights? We'd pay off the national debt in a month.

I saw an ad for an "interactive meal."
Note: food should not be "interactive."

I've always been bothered by the disparagement, "Mickey Mouse Operation," or people saying "what a Mickey Mouse business" to trivialize or make something insignificant. I guess it stems from the fact that Mickey is always dealing with crisis, usually helping his friends get out of never-ending hopeless situations. But Mickey Mouse is the literal face of the Walt Disney Corporation, which is worth some 85 billion dollars.

That's billion with a “B.”

So I think I'll try being a "Mickey Mouse Operation."

I've never chased celebrity or notoriety. I have no desire to be fawned over by fans, and I won't be wasting money on a public relations firm. When I die, there will not be hundreds of thousands of strangers showing up at my funeral with stuffed animals and candles. Nobody will have to do "benefit" performances to pay off my bills or keep my family clothed and fed. This is not because I don't have a following - I do, and I'm thankful and I'm blessed. But unlike celebrities, the people who support what I do have LIVES. They have families, jobs, and they're busy. Good!

Being a regular viewer of 'Homeland' or 'Saturday Night Live' or 'Top Chef' is at least as important to most of us as being a Democrat or Republican.

Look, if some company or car manufacturers start making really great driver-less cars, I'm all in. I have a very good reason: have you noticed that there seem to be more car accidents these days? Lots of young men. And I attribute this to a generation that has grown up with computer monitors, Nintendo and X-box, so they drive their cars using the same video-game physics they learned playing these games instead of real-world centrifugal force, traction, and reaction time. It's hard for them to stop and turn and parallel park, too.

I am really bad at irony (I had to think about that before I wrote it, for example) which is annoying. But it's a good lead-in to one of the most talked-about issues in the country.

Some of us still read the newspaper. We like the tactile feel, the substance, the ink on our fingers. There is truth there, no doubt, but for the most part it's only part of the truth.

This goes for television news, or the 'net, or magazine articles. You get a version of a truth, or a partial truth, or a half-truth. What has come to be known as "fake news."

In 2017 you have to accept information with a degree of irony. You literally don't know what to believe. I think only about a quarter of the country "gets" irony (me being one example), meaning most folks take data at face value. Which is pretty much ironic in and of itself. Not to mention kind of odd, don't you think? But that explains beer commercials, teensexploitation movies and TV programs, and "reality" television.

Reality TV, by the way, has just the same number of 'producers' and writers as a basic sitcom. If there are producers and writers, how "real" can a show be?

A couple of definitions.

WELFARE: giving money (and time) to people and expecting nothing in return.
CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION: giving money to people and expecting ... wait a minute!

Is the purpose of the minimum wage to give people who work a chance for a possible living?
OR
Is the purpose of living to give people who work the minimum wage?

A great marketing scam is the story of antacids. All the heartburn-relieving meds are a great con. Zantac. Prilosec. Tums. Why? We are a nation of fast-food eating, potato-chip-indulging, high-calorie loving people who chow down on all this stuff and then we have to take pills to overcome the eating of that kind of food! BRILLIANT!

Do you know what "Pork Barrel Politics" are?
PIG GOVERNMENT.

I'm performing at The Comedy Cabaret in Doylestown this Saturday, February 25. Tix here: http://comedycabaret.com

Happy New Year and thanks for reading!
Taylor