Bill Mann

Facing Full Faces: As the man said when opening a can of fish eyes: Things are looking up. 

The grocery stores no longer require masks, nor do many other stores and restaurants. Theaters may soon reopen. Downtown is packed with maskless tourists. You can again see gums n’ noses. 

— Stephen Colbert is back to having a live — and unmasked — audience. He’s a talented physical comic, but doing his CBS late show behind a desk during pandemic severely limited his presentation.

Colbert’s comedy material has improved considerably — especially when he asks his online audience to provide it. 

He recently asked his large Twitter following to provide monikers for the 45th president, with the hashtag #hewhoshallbenamed. (Do check it out on Twitter.) A few funny examples: Fatty Amin; Jabba The Gut; Mango Unchained; The Great White Dope; Girth Vader; Count of Many Criscos; Lord of The Onion Rings; and Hair Fuhrer. 

— Middle Age Riot, on Twitter: “Trump rallies prove that a con man doesn’t have to be smart if his victims are stupid enough.”

— Pullet Surprise: Unintentionally (one presumes) funny marquee at the local drive-in south of town: Now Laying. 

— Most people I’ve asked also don’t care for those odd white wood statues recently strewn around town. These alleged objets d’art look to me like giant chess pieces that have been in a car accident. 

— A strange, but welcome sight seen through heavy fog at North Beach: A passing cruise ship. 

I took my first — and last — cruise 12 years ago. You haven’t lived until you share a table with a corpulent tire salesman from El Reno, Oklahoma who’s on supplemental oxygen and wearing an NRA hat. Lifeboat, please! And check the piece in The Guardian last week about the damage these floating cities inflict on the Alaska environment. 

— Former Letterman writer Gerard Mulligan, an old pal, tweets: “If my call were really that important to you, you wouldn’t have Journey as your on-hold music” (Hey, Gerard, I actually LIKE Journey! And I used to play in a San Francisco golf tournament with them). 

— Creative sign held up by a spare-changer outside Safeway: “Help me pay for DUIs and Child Support.” 

— I like the new nickname for the wack job/Q’Anon Congresswoman from Georgia: Marjorie Taylor “Soylent” Green. 

— Comic Mike Dugan: “Suppressing the Black vote takes endless hours of hard work and the Republicans are burning the crosses at both ends to get it done.” 

— Happy Bastille Day/Bonne Fête Nationale! Regrettably, our local group of francophiles, led by Peninsula College French teacher extraordinaire Mme. Vicky Bétraud of Brinnon, couldn’t hold our jovial annual Bastille Day fest at Old Fort Townsend on July 14 this year because the site was booked. So we had it last month elsewhere. C’est dommage (it’s a shame). The upside: My fellow French lovers weren’t subjected to hearing yours truly again lead the singing of the rousing “La Marseillaise.” Fêtons! Celebrate! Veuve Clicquot pour tous! 

— I like ever-quotable bestselling author/former GOP operative Rick Wilson’s observation about the Jan. 6 white-power insurrection: “Yes, I’m delighted the FBI is arresting the idiots, kooks, slack-jawed yokels, gibbering f—-wits, conspiracy-addled Karens, and Camp Auschwitz fanboys who define today’s GOP. But unless the ringleaders, organizers, planners, plotters, and their direct allies in and out of political office are held to account and brought to justice, it wasn’t a coup: It was a training exercise.” 

— This former Eagle Scout (at age 13) is sorry to see the Scouts losing so many members and also having to pay out $850 million in damages due to sexual abuse. I had years of great experiences in Scouting (snipe hunt!). I was also surprised and delighted to learn that my PT acupuncturist, Piper Dunlap, went to the same Scout camp in upstate New York as I did. Small world … but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it. 

— Finally, this from Middle Age Riot again: “If you are an unvaccinated adult who refuses to wear a mask, I want you to meet my friend Delta.”

(PT humorist Bill Mann welcomes e-mail.  Newsmann9@gmail.com)