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I'm Back for More Cash: A Tony Kornheiser Collection Because You Can't Take Two Hundered Newspapers - Hardcover

Kornheiser, Tony

 
9780375507540: I'm Back for More Cash: A Tony Kornheiser Collection Because You Can't Take Two Hundered Newspapers
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 037550754X ISBN 13: 9780375507540
Verlag: Villard Books, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

A compilation of humor from the "Washington Post" columnist and radio-TV commentator takes on the world of politics, social institutions, technology, and the media.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tony Kornheiser is a columnist at The Washington Post. As if that’s not enough, he hosts a daily radio show on ESPN and cohosts a nightly television show on ESPN. Oh, and he also does those web chat things. (Can you say, “Overexposed,” boys and girls?) He’s pretty much in a constant state of exhaustion. If you invite him over, he’ll fall asleep on your couch.

Aus dem Klappentext

<i>I think it’s really cool to be on a jury. Take the O.J. jury―the people on that jury got book deals, and they got on </i>Nightline<i>, and some of them even got to meet Greta Van Susteren! They were always being written about in the newspapers: “Juror No. 1, a thirty-six-year-old Caucasian male with a master’s degree who works for a high-tech corporation.” Throw in a line about how “he likes to hunt and fish,” and you’ve got </i>The Dating Game<i>.<br><br>I wonder what they’d write about me. “Juror No. 4, a fat, bald, old, whiny Caucasian man who dresses like a vagrant and has complained incessantly about the texture of the toilet paper in the jury lavatory.”<br><br><br>I try to diet, but unfortunately I’ve come to the point in life where nearly everything disgusts or disappoints me except food. <br><br>And so I eat all day long. If I had a family crest, at this point it would be a man with a chicken breast in one hand, a cheeseburger in the other, and a garland of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips around his head.<br></i><br><br>Tony Kornheiser is back. The celebrated Washington Post columnist and ESPN radio and TV personality relates his experience as an OnStar user, a proud new owner of the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ, and a “phone-a-friend” on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. And in between, he dishes out political commentary on Monica and Bill and Al and George W. <br><br>Read all about his quest to fit into size 36 Dockers and his struggle to buy holiday gifts. And know that in the process you’re handing this Kornheiser guy the dough for these columns twice.<br><br><br><i>I got into the stock market late. I was deep in my forties and I still had all my money in the bank, earning 2 percent, like it was low-fat milk. My friends laughed at me. Even the people at the bank laughed at me―they had all their money in the market.<br><br>So I gave my money to a financial adviser, who promised me he would get me a greater return than the bank. <br><br></i>A baboon could do that, Tony.<i><br><br>Yes, but would a baboon give me steak knives?</i><br><br>―from I’m Back for More Cash

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Disney on Fear

I recently got back from a family vacation at Disney World. Family vacations are great. I got to spend quality time with two teenage children, who love and respect me. (I rented them. My own kids wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near me. At the Animal Kingdom I overheard them plotting to push me out of the halftrack in the hopes I would be trampled by a gnu.)

Obviously, I have decided to write about my vacation at Disney World—at great personal risk, since the radio show I do on ESPN is part of the Disney empire. So in a way I am biting the hand that feeds me.

And in the case of the “character breakfasts” at Disney World—where people dressed up as lovable Disney characters, like Chip and Dale, come up to your table and paw you incessantly while you eat—I considered literally doing that.

In fact, at one breakfast when Goofy began sucking on my head as I was eating my scrambled eggs, I flirted with the idea of whipping out a Zippo and setting him on fire.

How many years on a psychiatrist’s couch do you think the average five-year-old would have needed after seeing a Goofy flambé?

(Hey, I’m joking. I wouldn’t actually set Goofy on fire. The Little Mermaid, maybe.)

I’ve got nothing against Disney characters, but what explains their powerful attraction for me? Do I look like such a dork that I’d want to have a photo taken with a grown adult wearing a Styrofoam chipmunk head? Plus, the breakfast is crawling with kids, whose idea of a buffet is to grab anything with sugar and glaze on top—and drown it in syrup. These kids are stickier than Monica Lewinsky’s closet. And then they run to Chip and Dale, and rub their gooey hands and faces on them. And I’m supposed to snuggle up to these oozing fur balls? I’d rather be locked in a room with Roberto Benigni.

After breakfast we headed for the theme parks and the rides. At the entrance to each ride there’s a sign that tells you how long a wait you have before you ride. You get on a line and walk through a complex, serpentine system of ropes until you either: (1) reach the ride, or (2) your bladder is the size of the Hindenburg.

I probably picked a bad week to go to Disney World, it being spring break. I don’t want to say the place was crowded, but as we walked out the door of the hotel I saw this sign: from this point you are 8 hours from any ride. in this heat and humidity, by the time you get there you’ll be sprouting moss like a chia pet.

I should confess that I am not an “action ride” guy.

Tower of Terror, for example, isn’t for me. You’re sitting in a bucket, it’s pitch-black dark, and suddenly you drop thirteen stories in less time than it takes to say Slovakian Milosavitch, er, Slobodan Rostopovich, er, Jackie Chan. I would rather be trampled by gnus.

I don’t like anything that moves fast or goes upside down or scares me in any way. And I’m easily scared—seeing Madeleine Albright early Sunday mornings on Meet the Press terrifies me.

I like gentle rides. I want to go to an “assisted living” amusement park.

I love the Pirates of the Caribbean ride because it moves slowly and it’s underground, so it’s cool. There is nothing even vaguely exciting about this ride, which may account for why there was no waiting line. I rode in a boat with three women just slightly older than the Inca mummies.

Somehow, I let my daughter prevail upon me to join her on the Extra-Terrestrial ride, in which you are strapped into a chair in pitch-black darkness, and cautioned that something has gone terribly wrong in a scientific experiment, and a carnivore that has been transported through time and space is about to rip out your pancreas. At this point your seat drops with a thud, everyone around you shrieks—like they’ve just seen Linda Tripp nude—and something wet and cold (that you hope is water) sprays the back of your neck.

I don’t remember much after that because I passed out. But I must have done okay, because my daughter said that now we had to go to the Star Wars ride. So we walked over, and by then I was feeling pretty good about myself, so I didn’t pay as much attention to the warning sign in front of the Star Wars ride as I should have.

The sign advised that because the ride had “dramatic visual effects simulating changes in altitudes,” and had “sudden movements” and made “rocking motions,” that certain persons should not ride. As I recall, these included “pregnant women,” “people who suffer motion sickness,” “people with heart problems,” “people, people who need people,” and “Pat Buchanan supporters.” Inexplicably, I missed the line that said “fifty-year-old bald, white men who are afraid of airplanes and scared of the dark should not ride. This means you, Tony Kornheiser.”

So I followed my daughter on. I strapped in. The room went pitch-black. (What is with this pitch-black darkness on every ride? Who designs these things, an opossum?)

And then, suddenly, a field of stars came up on a cyber screen, the seat felt like it was whooshing forward—and we hurtled into deep space, bucking around like that cow in Twister.

I was terrified. I tried to sing a familiar tune to calm myself down. Sadly, all I could think of was “Tell Laura I Love Her.” Every pore opened and leaked enough water to float the Sixth Fleet. By the time the ride ended I was sitting in a pool of sweat. I looked like I had come from the log flume ride. People stared at me, wondering how come I was so wet and they weren’t. They felt cheated.

My daughter did what teenage girls do when their fathers embarrass them: She pointed at me and laughed.

I stood up, soaked, thinking: Where the heck are Chip and Dale when you need them?

Experiments in Terror

Each of us has a certain phrase that makes us cringe the moment we hear it. For many folks, it’s “Oh, look, Al Gore is doing the macarena!”

For me, it’s “science fair.”

I can still see the smug smiles on my classmates’ faces as they brought in their fussy science fair projects—which their NASA scientist fathers spent weeks working on in the basement. (God, how I hated the kids who rolled their projects in on dollies!) I came in carrying pathetic scraps of colored paper in a cigar box. And my teacher snickered, “What’s your project supposed to prove, Tony?”

“Um, that I should consider a career in the lucrative field of pizza delivery?”

I know nothing about science. I don’t associate with people who know anything about science. My friend Andy, for example, once did a science fair project on erosion. Talk about sophisticated: Andy fastened sod on one side of a poster board and plopped dirt on the other side. He ran a hose on the thing. The dirt turned to mud and spilled on the floor.

When his teacher asked the point of his project, Andy chirped, “We need grass to prevent erosion.” I’m surprised MIT didn’t send a limo for him. Rest easy, America, our agricultural system is safe. Andy is now a sports-radio announcer.

Regrettably, my son Michael’s eighth-grade class wasn’t permitted to make mud at their science fair last weekend. They were assigned a Rube Goldberg project: Build an elaborate contraption with pulleys, levers, fulcrums, slides, and weights that eventually causes toothpaste to be squished from a tube and fall onto a toothbrush. (And you wonder how America keeps its edge in the new technology.)

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Verlag
Villard Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
037550754X
ISBN 13 
9780375507540
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
379
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Verantwortliche Person
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