I’m crossing the street with two of the grandkids when some jackass blows through the stop sign and head towards us. I pulled the kids back to the curb and, in a moment of pique, I chuck my water bottle at his car.

One of my better throws, too, because he’s about 100 feet down the street and the bottle hits his rear hatch with a resounding thud. Not accurate enough to reach home plate from center field, but absolutely good enough to grab his attention. And it does, too, because he suddenly remembers that his car came with brakes (standard equipment these days) and he screeches to a stop. He gets out of the car, leaves it in the middle of the street, and heads toward me—and the grandkids—while traffic backs up behind his SUV.

I’m right at my building, so I shuffle the kids in to a safe spot and turn to face the guy. He is furious, yelling, and extremely angry that I damaged his MERCEDES. Not his car. His MERCEDES. He reminds me many times that he is a MERCEDES owner and he will not tolerate some guy throwing a water bottle at his, did I mention, MERCEDES.

Eventually, he notices that a crowd has gathered to watch the MERCEDES OWNER screaming at an old guy wearing a U.S.S. Nimitz hat. He’s bigger than me and younger than me, and much angrier. I checked my surroundings and I already know how he’s going down, but I’ve got two frightened kids waiting for me and I don’t need the aggravation. Finally, he storms off and I go inside to restore some sense of safety for the children.

As I calm myself down, I’m thinking about guys who think their cars give them some sort of special license. Mercedes is a status car, like Beemers and, in ancient times, Cadillacs. They’re the cars that get vanity plates like, UNVME and BIGTIME and YESIATA. “Never in my life,” I said to myself, “will I ever be one of those guys.”

Full disclosure: I had a couple of Trans Am models that I referred to by brand name and I had license plates that said, “DADSV8.” That said, I was compensating for my lost youth, while my new friend was clearly compensating for, um, something else.

At the time of this incident, I was driving a 21-year-old Lexus sedan that I was determined to get past the 200,000-mile mark. I was close, too, until a fine young man drove his fine old car into mine and ended that quest. Back in the car market after well over a decade, I spent more than a month on the hunt and ended up with…you guessed it…a Mercedes.

It’s used, not new, although the price I paid at Autohaus on Edens got me much closer to new-car smell than I think was reasonable. Maybe the extra bucks were penance for all the times I’d mocked MERCEDES owners in the past. Who knows? As of now, I am a MERCEDES OWNER.

Now that I’m really, really special and a few levels above all the rest of you, I’m blowing through stop signs all day long. I wait for lights to turn red before I step on the gas. I take up at least two parking spaces in every parking lot I enter. It’s good to be the king.

JK. Nothing has changed inside the car, although I know people are making assumptions about me the same way I have done (almost 100% correctly) about status-car drivers in the past. Maybe I need to get a vanity plate that says, “NOTTA.”

That’ll work, right?
 
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The world has changed, but not in a good way, and it’s getting pretty painful to try to keep score…

• Sir Mix it Not. I’ve always been a free-speech absolutist. I grit my teeth and put up with the hate speech and the pornography and even that damned Kars for Kids commercial. But even I have my limits and I am 100% in favor of a total ban on remixes. If the original was so good that someone wants to copy it, then it was too good to be copied. Done.

• Needing dispensation. I really like nice pens and I’m really cheap, so I have a shameful tendency to kinda, sorta, mistakenly, purely-by-accident forget to return the pen if the restaurant server hands me a keeper with my credit card slip. Most of the time, though, the server’s pen came from someplace other than the restaurant where I’m dining, so re-stealing the item they stole is less of a crime, right? It’s like I’m the Robin Hood of writing utensils.

• Dreams of donuts past. I miss Dunkin’ Donuts. Yes, I know there are still stores with that name—half of it, anyway—but it’s not the same as in the old days. At the start of my work commute, I’d roll up to the drive-thru at Dunkin’ Donuts for the sustenance that would carry me downtown. Always a large coffee with a Boston Crème and a Chocolate Frosted, made on the site by an immigrant family staking its claim to the American Dream. Then they decided to make the donuts in a giant warehouse and truck them to the shops, just a bit colder and harder and staler. Even the company that owns the chain is so embarrassed they don’t even have Donuts in their name anymore. Can’t blame them.

• My cup underflows. I decided to give up on K-cups and micro-plastics in my brain, so I bought an actual, real-live coffee pot. And then I bought ground coffee to complete the set. The ground coffee package says to use two tablespoons per cup and the coffee machine says one tablespoon per cup, and that’s only half the challenge. Neither one says how big a cup is supposed to be. Yes, I know that technically a cup is eight ounces, but it turns out a cup on my coffee pot is really six ounces, while my coffee cup is ten ounces. I think this is what they mean by new math.

• Lost meaning. I’m confused by much more than cups these days. My medicine bottle says I need to take my morning pills with a full glass of water, but they fail to mention how large a glass I’m supposed to fill. In the laundry room, I still can’t figure out what a Quick Wash is supposed to include and I have no idea whether my socks have light soil, heavy soil, or medium.  Whatever choice I make, anything that goes wrong will be user error and, it occurs to me that this was the plan all along.

• Vanishing history. People my age can tell you where they were when they heard that JFK was shot, where they were when the towers collapsed, what kind of television they were watching when Neil Armstrong set foot (allegedly!!!!!) on the moon. For most people walking the Earth today, those are dates on the pop quiz, nothing more. Like potato chips and beef jerky, every world-altering event has an expiration date, replaced by a new line of demarcation that will fade away in time.

• Missed connections. I lost my cellphone a few weeks ago and I suddenly realized how much I need this thing, even if it’s only to receive all those 6-digit PINs I get when I’m trying to log in from my computer. Nobody makes phone calls anymore, so it’s really just an app machine and, if you’re not using an app, it’s pressuring you to do so. it was a stark reminder that we are, in fact, The Borg. (Don’t get too excited here. Seven of Nine has left the building.)

• Infringed benefits. Eavesdropping would be my guilty pleasure, except that I don’t feel guilty about it, at all. As a blog writer, I’m conducting research by listening to the voices of the unheard and the rhythm of the streets. Overly poetic, but true, and here’s what I’ve been hearing recently. When parents compare notes about their kids’ careers, they don’t ask each other about titles or offices or, in your dreams, administrative assistants. Nope, the big question is, “Do they get insurance?” Really, we’ve sunk so low in the gig economy that some parent can tell another their kid was just hired as a manager at a major company and it’s not a certainty that insurance comes with the job.

 
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It’s such a pleasure to be miserable again, absolutely bathing in the onslaught of terrible weather that’s made this the winter of hell in Chicago. I cannot tell you how delighted I am, really, as I stare out the window at 500 shades of gray and watch the steam rising off our polluted river.

It almost makes me giddy.

There was a time, boys and girls, when winters like this were the norm. Back when I was young and dinosaurs ruled the earth, we accepted 20 below zero—not a wind chill, an actual temperature—as our lot in life. It built character, we said. It made us more grateful for summer, we said. It made us tougher than all those wimpy New Yawkers who wept at the first sight of Jack Frost. (Not to be confused with that Jack Frost cosplay guy in Times Square who’s so creepy that everyone cries.)

I took pride in my toughness, my stoicism, the frostbite that flared up when my feet eventually thawed. I took care not to make any friends in Minnesota or Canada or any of the Dakotas, because I did not want to feel the scorn I heaped on others. I was a very happy man.

Yes, I still resented my grandparents for taking the train to Chicago after they cleared Ellis Island. The Atlantic Coast Line Express would have brought them to Tampa and I’d be a Florida Man today. I’d be wrestling alligators and blowing up beer bottles and achieving my life goal of becoming a meme, if only  Morris and Anna had the courage to do the right thing.

They didn’t rise to the occasion, though, and I ended up in Slush City. I grew up in the mean streets, bringing a sled to the Jewel for our classic rations of milk, eggs, and bread during the 1967 snow, putting card chairs in the street after we shoveled out a parking spot for dad’s car, and learning to be a cold-weather snob.

I’d be on the phone with a friend from the East Coast and they’d be complaining about their weather and I would find a way to make yawning sounds into the phone. Someone from Boston would tell me about the snarled traffic in the latest “snowstorm” and I’d start telling them how weather-privileged they were. My life was complete.

And then, global warming ruined the whole thing.

Without warning, our vaunted hellscape headed east, every January included one day in the 70s, and Boston became the city of destiny. Snowdrifts reached 8,200 feet, temperatures dropped low enough to freeze all the Sam Adams, and I was forced to be sympathetic when my Beantown friends started whining about winter.

Suddenly, I was the weather wimp and the humiliation was intense. I’ve spent the past decade a broken man, stripped of the bravado that I’d earned in the cryogenic chamber of my youth. Friends in Arizona would ask me about the weather and I’d be forced to admit it wasn’t that bad.

And then, finally, our weather turned retro and now, I’m back, baby!! I need spiked boots to survive on the sidewalk. My black SUV looks light gray from the salt caked on it. I’m running out of chemical heating inserts for my gloves. There’s frost on the inside of my patio door. God is good.

So, go ahead. Ask me about the weather here. Tell me you cannot imagine living in a place that’s so miserably cold and dreary. Ask me if I’m suffering from seasonal affective disorder. Give me the opportunity to mock you for your weakness, to scoff at your sympathy.

In truth, I am absolutely miserable, and I couldn’t be happier.

* TBH, the mercury has soared since I wrote this and it got to be a balmy 50 here the other day. Up until then, though, I was an absolute weather stud and I'm going to take the win.

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Am I allowed to say I’m just feeling super-duper today, or will that violate some copyright or sacred pact or one of those secret laws they inserted in Donny’s Big Beautiful Bill when nobody was looking? I’d certainly be super bowled over to learn I had transgressed and I might spill my soup bowl while watching THE BIG GAME.

That’s a lie, really. Not as bad as when I cheated on my score at the SUPER BOWLing alley on Diversey, but definitely not on the up and up. I won’t be watching THE BIG GAME today, even if it costs me some cultural-literacy points at the office water cooler tomorrow.

First, there is no water cooler in the office I no longer work at and, second, everyone is working from home on Mondays and, tertiarily, almost all the culture happens around THE BIG GAME, not in it.

As everyone knows, I am a football fanatic. I live and breathe the sport and spend so much time and energy on it that I even created a guide for mere mortals who need help keeping up. And yet, I really don’t need to watch THE BIG GAME to know all the critical details and plays. That’s because I am also a master of efficiency who knows—absolutely, for sure, no question—that I’ll see the most important 47 seconds of this 12-hour marathon on every site I visit between now and my trip to the water cooler. (If I had a water cooler, which careful readers know I absolutely do not.)

Let’s face it. THE BIG GAME is only meaningful to people who are fans of (Note: remember to find out who’s playing before posting this.) For the rest of us, it’s a good excuse to drop in on whatever friend has the biggest mega-screen and really great wings. And beer. And nachos. You get the idea.  You’ll miss most of the action while you’re noshing and sloshing, but it’s no big deal. Every play will take four seconds and you’ll see at least 27 minutes of replays from multiple camera angles.

The biggest high-stakes competition of THE BIG GAME is the advertising, which is always a laughfest of immense magnitude. Some of the world’s largest companies will be spending $8 million for just 30 seconds of ad time and they’ll blow most of it trying to be cute or funny and, dang, forgetting to mention the name of their products. Granted, $8 million is less than a day’s pay for any respectable CEO, but it’s still more than I make in an entire year.

We might also see some ads from self-made millionaires who think they’ve made the big time if they have a THE BIG GAME ad to brag about at the club, and those are sometimes the funniest of all.
Even the losing coaches are likely to have a job on Monday, but hundreds of advertising execs might not. Introducing a new advertisement at THE BIG GAME is like opening your one-man show on Broadway; just a few steps into the danger zone.

Even that drama has been marginalized, though, because we already know what the ads are going to be and we can already see them, along with commentary, on sites like Specific Edge. If you work in advertising/marketing and you haven’t bought a spot, feel free to relax and enjoy the spectacle. It might be a good idea to have AI draft a few notes of condolence to a few friends.

That leaves the half-time show, which is the wild card, and you really need to watch it. That’s because you’ll never know what happened unless you see it yourself. Apparently, some furriner from the Russian (Chinese? Canadian? Mexiconian?) territory of Puerto Rico is performing instead of a good ole ‘Murican and everything you hear about this thing will be recast in politics.  There’s even an alternative half-time show with some guy nobody knows outside of Magaland, plus the undeniable cuteness of the Puppy Bowl.

The official half-time show is going to be the focus at the water cooler (see earlier notes) tomorrow, but every replay you’ll see after THE BIG GAME will include deep fakes, AI lyrics, and wardrobe malfunctions. The only way to know what’s what is to watch the damned thing.

Still, the half-time show runs about 15 minutes, which is not a ton of time for cultural literacy. Add in 20 minutes for replays of the most critical moments in the game and another 20 to view all the ads and, voila, the 12-hour extravaganza is reduced to a single therapy session.

How will you spend all the extra time I’ve freed up in your schedule? Take a nap, connect with your kids, send a few $million to Dad Writes…totally your call. Maybe you can get an early start on next year’s THE BIG GAME by buying yourself a water cooler.

Dream big.
 
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I’d like to tell you I’m the first to admit last week’s post was decidedly unfunny, but roughly 5,898,4306 subscribers beat me to it. Almost to a person, the readers who contacted me over the past week complained about the half-funny jokes and the half-witty wit that made that episode one of the worst in 2026, so far. (The year is young, though, so I’m sure to exceed your expectations very soon.)
 
In my defense, it’s not my fault, because I asked ChatGPT to help me, but my new bot let me down bigly. AI can understand what makes something contradictory, but misses the point when it comes to “funny.” I took pity on the tyke, though, because it’s so new and I didn’t have to pay for it and, TBH, because I wanted to squeeze at least two posts from this stupid idea.
 
So, instead of conceding failure and coming up with something clever and original and, quite possibly, tolerable on my own, I pivoted from funny stuff about celebrities and culture to absolute gems about politics and politicians.
 
From the days of Thomas Nast and Will Rogers, Richard Nixon (“I am not a crook,” gets me every time.) and Dick Cheney, politics has been an unending source of humor. Even better, political humor is what has and continues to bring us all together as one harmonious American family. Like my investment in dissolving umbrellas, this idea could not possibly fail.
 
Did Sam Altman’s baby rise to the occasion? Did the chatbot come up with a steady stream of rib ticklers and knee slappers and funny boners? You bet it did. Just take a look at these predictions for the mirthful year ahead:
 

1. Trump sues a poll for “emotional damages.”
2. Musk declares that democracy should have an “edit button.”
3. Mike Johnson accidentally becomes Speaker again after no one else clicks “accept.”
4. Trump claims he invented term limits.
5. A bipartisan bill fails because everyone argues over the font.
6. JD Vance accuses coastal elites of controlling the weather app.
7. Trump forgets he already announced something and announces it again, better.
8. Congress forms a committee to investigate another committee.
9. Musk polls X on whether polls should exist.
10. Trump claims he won an election that hasn’t happened yet.
11. Trump releases sneakers for the Supreme Court.
12. Mike Johnson insists the House is “very close” to functioning.
13. Musk says legacy media is dead, posts link to legacy media.
14. Trump demands equal time with himself.
15. Trump praises a crowd that isn’t there.
16. Trump claims the Constitution is “very pro-Trump if you read it correctly.”
17. JD Vance says elites drink oat milk, pauses for applause.
18. Trump claims he passed a bill just by thinking about it.
19. Trump insists polls are fake except the good ones.
20. Musk asks if the Constitution should be open source.
21. Congress passes a bill naming a building.
22. JD Vance says the elites hate him, checks donor list.
23. Trump claims he fixed a problem no one mentioned.
24. Congress schedules a vote, reschedules it, cancels it.
25. Mike Johnson says the House is united, everyone disagrees.
26. Trump demands loyalty from an inanimate object.
27. Trump insists he’s been treated worse than anyone in history, ever.
28. Congress adjourns dramatically.
29. Mike Johnson says next week will be different.
30. Everyone says 2027 will be calmer. Everyone is wrong.

 
So, did anyone notice anything interesting about these predictions? Yes, they’re all more true than funny and, yes, they aren’t actually funny in a way that anyone with a sense of humor would appreciate, but I also noticed a distinct lack of Democrats in the forecast. Now, as much as I’d like this to blow up into a viral battle that breaks the internet, let’s consider more than one possibility, including:
 

• ChatGPT finds Republicans much more interesting than Democrats.
  
• ChatGPT couldn’t find Democrats taking any actions worth noticing.
  
• Republicans are loopier and, therefore, more mockable than Democrats.
  
• Democrats have no power and, as is the case with Tiny Tots baseball, there’s a slaughter rule.
  
• The app knows I’ve always felt left out when someone publishes a politician’s “Enemies List” and I’m not on it, so this is a way to correct that oversight.
  
• ChatGPT is a left-wing terrorist organization that would drive a car into a group of ICE agents if Elon Musk would give it a car.
  
• ChatGPT hates America.
  
• ChatGPT loves America.
  
• The app has no sense of humor because, gee, maybe because it's an app.
  

 
I don’t know the real answer here, so feel free to adopt whatever option fits the opinion you knew you were going to have before you read a single word of this post. Taking the path of least resistance is a great way to conserve energy and maximize couch time and, frankly, I need a nap now. I’ve milked this AI thing like it’s a 22-year-old cow and the pressure’s on for me to produce something original next week.
 
Can I do it? Stay tuned.
 
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Two major events converged at the end of the year, and I decided to make the most of the opportunity. First, I was tired and lazy* at exactly the same time I was scheduled to work on my 2026 Year in Review, an annual blockbuster post that generates billions of hits and convinces Dave Barry to hand over his Pulitzer in recognition of my unparalleled wit. 
 
Second, I finally got around to downloading one of those large language models all the cool kids are using when they finally get home from the dispensary. LLMs are both the apotheosis of civilization and the harbinger of our demise (Note to self: insert Schrodinger joke.) and I was at the tail end of the adoption curve. Getting ChatGPT to write my predictions seemed like the kind of no-brainer that made me the world's foremost authority on not using my brain. 
 
And so, I downloaded ChatGPT and asked it to, “Make a humorous list of 100 celebrity, entertainment or cultural events that could occur in 2026.” Within seconds, the world’s favorite LLM returned with 100 ideas that are absolutely guaranteed to slay. You want proof? Here’s a sample:

1. Disney releases a live-action remake of a movie that was already live-action.
2. Reality TV contestants now arrive with personal PR teams.
3. Influencers begin posting “authentic candid moments” filmed with a 12-person crew.
4. A celebrity memoir reveals shocking secrets already known from podcasts.
5. Hollywood declares AI writing “over,” while quietly using more AI than ever.
6. A famous actor insists they are “not on social media” while posting daily.
7. TikTok users revive a trend from 2016 and call it “vintage.”
8. A movie trailer drops for a movie delayed until 2029.
9. A podcast host becomes more famous than the celebrities they interview.
10. A biopic is criticized for casting someone “too attractive.”
11. A celebrity’s dog gets more brand deals than most humans.
12. A music festival lineup sparks outrage, nostalgia, and confusion simultaneously.
13. A celebrity documentary reveals the celebrity “just wanted to be normal.”
14. A streaming service introduces ads for its ad-free tier.
15. A reality show contestant becomes a motivational speaker.
16. A celebrity feud is settled in court, then reignited on Twitter.
17. A celebrity announces a tech startup that immediately pivots to lifestyle content.
18. A movie trailer spoils the entire plot and half the post-credits scenes.
19. Leonardo DiCaprio Reportedly “Considering” Dating Someone Over 30
20. Musician Announces Retirement, Returns Before Fans Finish Tweeting
21. Celebrity Memoir Optioned for Film Before Being Written
22. Weeks-Long Pop Culture Debate Ends With No Conclusion
23. Actor Becomes Meme Against Their Will
24. “Final Tour” Extended Indefinitely
25. Experts Confirm 2026 Was “A Weird Year”

 
So, in addition to all the people I know who cannot tell a joke properly, I’ll add my new artificially intelligent friend. The chatbot can’t tell the difference between a normal progression in a series and the twist that has us all rolling in the aisles. Yes, it was funnier than 47 seasons of Saturday Night Live and, yes, I didn’t have to pay any writers to come up with this dreck, but I wasn’t entertained, either.
 
I was relieved, in a way, because Sam Altman has raised more than $500 trillion for OpenAI and this is as close as his baby can come to being funny. I’m not funny for a fraction of that cost, which is not exactly the achievement I’d hoped to be trumpeting at this point in my life, but you get what you don’t pay for.
 
It’s frightening, though, because I learned during Covid that people are much lazier than I’d thought previously and my in-box is about to get overloaded with AI-generated jokes that, to be fair, will still be funnier than 47 seasons of Saturday Night Live and, again, most of my friends. (Sorry, Harry, but it’s true.) Worse, all the jokes will be revisions of prior versions of the same jokes, because that’s what iterative models do. In fact, every time I asked ChatGPT to do a better job, it sent back mostly the same stuff with slightly different words.
 
Did I give up after this experiment? Of course, not. Only quilters quilt, which is, fun fact, the reason they’re called quilters. The same applies to quitters, of which I am not one. Also, carrying on this nonsense gives me the chance to have AI write at least two posts for me.
 
And so, I asked ChatGPT to come up with some humorous predictions from the political world. How did he/she/it/they/them/those do? Tune in next week for the incredibly obvious answer.
 
(*Regular readers know I am always tired and lazy, so it might seem like this was not really a major event, but that’s the whole point. I was too tired and lazy to think of a funny major event, so I just phoned it in with that whole “tired and lazy” thing. And it worked. Right?)
 
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