By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jul 2, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET  Today I learned that if you wake up from a dream in which you drank down 3 full glasses of water and 3 bottles of water and were looking for another cup of water to guzzle when you awoke, chances are high that when you wake up you will discover that you feel thirsty.
And it is likely you will get out of bed and stumble sleepily into the kitchen and quickly drink one and a half glasses of water and half a glass of lemonade. And then go back to bed and turn off the light.
Turn on the light again after 2 minutes. Stumble back into the kitchen and drink down another half a cup of really cold ice water. Then post about the experience on Facebook. And calculate that in the past 20 minutes you have drank a total of 8 and a half glasses of liquids, real and imaginary. You then make a mental note to yourself that it isn’t as difficult as you had thought to drink 8 glasses of water a day, as everyone seems to recommend — although admittedly 6 of your glasses of water were drunk during a dream and shouldn’t really count.
You will then get back in bed and turn out the light.
And still feel thirsty.
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Jul 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET Lawyer jokes are low-hanging-fruit – everyone knows at least a few, and it’s far too easy to make fun of ambulance-chasing caricatures or frivolous lawsuits against fast food outlets when people spill things on themselves. (Although I do have one favorite: A priest, a rabbi, a nun and a lawyer walk into a bar, and the bartender says, “What is this, some kind of a joke?” But I digress . . . )
Some of my best friends really are lawyers, and they do everything from defending homeowners against wrongful evictions to the mind-numbingly-dull paperwork on which most small businesses depend. (Admission: My father was a small business contract lawyer, and when I was trying to decide whether to go into law or show business, he informed me that while law was a noble profession, “what separates humans from animals is our ability to appreciate art.” He then added “plus you don’t get applause in court.”)
Suffice to say, while I didn’t end up going to law school, I firmly believe in the power of law to protect people, and I understand the vital role played by lawsuits. However, John Boehner’s threat to sue President Obama for some yet-to-be-specified-disregard-of-something-he-hasn’t-figured-out-yet bears no resemblance to a valid lawsuit – instead, it sounds like when a 10-year-old threatens to run away from home because his parents are so mean, they won’t let him do, uh, whatever it was he wanted to do but forgot.
So this week’s song combines my general understanding of law with the show business career toward which my lawyer father pointed me . . .
Note: Show Lauren we need more entertainers and fewer lawyers by supporting her new CD, a compilation of greatest hits from these videos. You can hear clips and learn more here.
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jul 1, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET Definition: “I am sooo over that (or him or her).”
Something people say when they are still obsessed about some event or person and aren’t really over it (or him or her), but don’t want others to suspect they are still completely obsessed and have been seeing a therapist twice a week for nearly a year-and-a-half to work through the issue and have made little progress.
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 Story of my life.
At airport and huffing and puffing carrying two stuffed bags, one on each shoulder, and neither with wheels.
How do other people know about these much simpler and better options?
I know they exist. I just can’t imagine myself every being particularly orderly and organized. But when I get back into this position I always regret not being. For about 15 minutes.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jun 30, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET Word of the day
Coherent–a degree of clarity sufficiently clearer than anyone is capable of on a Monday morning.
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Kudos to the US Postal Service!
I still check the Post Office Drop Box to make sure the letters I just dropped in and am trying to mail didn’t get stuck in the chute.
And counting the letter I just mailed tonight—for 51 consecutive years— not a single letter has ever gotten stuck!
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“Hey body,” you will say to yourself one day at around age 50, “I’m really sorry I did that to you.”
And after a long pause you will hear your body say back, in almost inaudible tones, something you can’t post on Facebook.
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Jun 27, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
I am all for ease and comfort. I am a fan of both, in fact.
But an irtitating feature in new cars is that every time the driver plops into the driver seat, the seat begins moving automatically to “self adjust” into just the right position for the driver.
The entire experience starts and ends in about 4 seconds and is supposed to be some sort of luxury addition. But it scares me every time I get in my car and I then wait impatiently as I am manuevered electronicly back and for…th until I am delievered into, what my car believes, is my “optimum seated position.”
First, I feel like I am not going to be doing a lot of different tasks other than driving while seated in my car so there really isn’t a need for multiple position options. I’m not going to sun bath or take an eye exam or anything like that in my car. The only time I need to reposition my seat is when I have dropped something under it and can’t reach it. And no need really to move the seat then. I have been squating beside the driver seat and sticking my arm under it to successfully find things for 35 years without a complaint.
Which leads me to the real reason I think I resent this new “automatic self- adjusting” driver seats. I fear they are manufactured by the same company that makes those stair case
seat lifts. And that my car seat is just a starter version.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jun 26, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
 So let me tell you about what I’ve been reading lately –not!
If you frequently drive around clients in your car, you have to be careful not to leave every self-help book you happen to be reading in plain sight in the back seat.
Clients sitting in the back seat will notice them even if you tell yourself “Oh, they probably didn’t see that.”
And they will either make an unflattering assumption about you or ask to borrow the book from you. Neither of which is desireable.
It is much better if I client finds out about the self-help books you are reading by you posting pictures of them on Facebook. That way they won’t ask to borrow them. And if they make a snarky remark to you about what you are reading, you can tease them about still being on Facebook at their age. (Of course, they might find that comeback from you ironic and buy you a few more self-help books.)
And if all else fails you can tell them you bought the books to help you learn better how to cope with them. That is a good line for saving face–and losing clients.
It just makes better business sense to talk about the weather.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jun 25, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
Comforting thoughts…
Friends are great.
A few years ago I began griping about aging causing my memory to fade. But when I was sharing this concern with a good friend who has known me for many years, he wasn’t terribly sympathetic.
Finally, after about the third time I was whining to him about my memory loss, he chimed in abruptly –but constructively–“You know, John, you were never all that smart to begin with. I think part of the problem is you are imagining that you had a much better memory than you really did. I can’t tell any difference in you at all.”
But I am smarter than he gives me credit for. I don’t ever complain to him anymore about memory problems. I only complain to other people who haven’t known me for very long.
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Jun 25, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET here are a variety of theories attempting to explain the relative minority status of women in comedy, ranging from socialization (women are raised to laugh at others, not to tell the jokes) to courtship (men want to be the ones to make others laugh) to good old-fashioned sexism (club owners tend to be men and think men are funnier). At any rate, women tend to be less comfortable with, or at least less proficient at, off-color humor – which is why it’s so startling when they do get down & dirty (part of Sarah Silverman’s huge appeal is that she looks like a fresh-faced girl-next-door and talks like Lenny Bruce).
I don’t know if it’s my gender (female, duh), my age (not telling, duh, which tells you I’m old enough not to want to tell), my upbringing (raised by a feminist mother who forbade Barbie dolls because they fostered an unrealistic body image, and an intellectual father whose idea of a joke was offering to do his Millard Fillmore impression . . . . but I digress), or my Ivy League education, but I’d always believed cerebral wordplay was infinitely superior to potty humor. My one near-break as a comedy performer was an invitation to audition night at The Comic Strip in LA, after I’d won some cabaret awards in San Francisco. I did a couple of my witty, Noel Coward-esque songs about current events, to polite applause, but then the man after me impersonated the male sex organ having its first orgasm, complete with sound effects. Needless to say, he totally killed and got invited back. (To be fair, this was almost 30 years ago. Don’t bother doing the math, let’s just say I was old enough to rent a car – but barely!)
I never had to wrestle with whether or not to adjust my highbrow ideals, because shortly after that I started a family. Turns out, the biggest influence on my sense of humor has been having two sons, particularly once they hit puberty (and especially once Husband 2.0 came on the scene, whose brilliant plan to cure the boys of using foul language was to have ‘swearing night’ at dinner so they’d ‘get it out of their system.’ Instead, they both just enlarged their vocabularies!) Between language, rating each other’s burps, and Family Guy, I’ve pretty much surrendered to a frat house environment.
I still try to keep my weekly songs witty and informative – which means usually my sons ignore my videos (apart from my 17-year-old reassuring me that ‘over 100 views is viral for old people’ – cue rimshot). But this week, I’ve succumbed to a sophomoric tone, at least in part – which means my sons think this week’s song is actually cool.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jun 24, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET C’mon people. Enough already with these outdated homophobic attitudes.
If one man compliments another man on his physical appearance (e.g. “You look really trim. Have you lost weight?” or “That suit looks fabulous on you and really makes your eyes pop”), it doesn’t mean he is gay.
It simply means that if he were gay, he would probably be really into the guy he is complementing.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jun 23, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET Thought for the day
The more often I say, “I don’t know,” the more likely I will learn something new.
And the more likely I will be right.
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I have observed that people who cherish their opinions over their friendships tend to have many more of the former than the latter.
And I have observed that the reverse seems to be true for those who cherish friendships over their opinions.
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I’ve just been informed that my smartphone has “data leakage.”
Phew!!
And I was complaining because I thought it was my credit card that had “AT&T leakage.”
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