Wasting Water is Not Funny! Or is It?
It’s too darn hot. Those lyrics music genie Cole Porter wrote for the 1948 musical Kiss Me Kate. They’re sadly truer today than they were back then, thanks to a fossil-fueled phenomenon called climate change.
Yet, despite living up in the perspiring Big Apple, my playful son Andrew still maintains a fluid sense of humor. I guess it helps him keep cool installing phones and security systems in homes and offices there.
I’m sure he’s thinking as Porter etched and kvetched:
I’d like to sup with my baby tonight
Refill the cup with my baby tonight
But I ain’t up to my baby tonight
‘Cause it’s too darn hot
So, one hot summer day he water-skies me some straight lines via email during a prolonged dry spell up in that sweltering asphalt jungle he calls home, workplace and occasional showplace, New York City.
He was trying to sprinkle some humor on record-breaking temperatures. Sure, Some Like It Hot, but unless Billy Wilder directs and Marilyn stars, I don’t!
Like a comedic Tarzan, after work Andrew’ d love to swing on vines onto stages around Manhattan to do standups at comedy clubs, like one I used to represent. For “The Laugh Factory” near Times Square, I once did a street promotion handing out bright orange toothbrushes to FIGHT GLUM DISEASE.
But this time he emails me straight lines for me to swing on like a slapstick comedian now living way down south in that chic Florida town, Boca Raton, named after, pardon the translation, a rat’s mouth. He writes: Dad, should I . . .
- let the water run while brushing my teeth?
- water the grass during a drought?
- flush the toilet every time I use it?
He was playing the traditional straight man, giving the comic in me a chance to haul off with jaw-breaking punch lines.
“Running water while brushing teeth is a huge no-no,” I belt out, “punishable by 3 to 5 years on a River Cruise going up and down the Danube confined to a windowless cabin with no a/c and no time off for good behavior to take the land tour de jour!”
Next . . . “Never water the lawn when it’s raining! Penalty is 3 to 5-year sentence gutter cleaning on steamy Long Island standing on a rickety old ladder.”
And my boy, you can flush toilets less often by drinking fewer beers after work, I told him fatherly with a wry twist.
Cheers, from your just as hot dad in ridiculously sunny funny Florida, now hurricane ravaged by yet another reckless, crackpot hurricane. Why do we name them after people we love? I have a wonderful great grandson named Ian and before him, it was Andrew that devastated this vulnerable state of mine. Can’t we give them more deserving names? Instead of Hurricane Dennis . . . make it Hurricane Menace. Hurricane Bastard. Wouldn’t shoreline residents evacuate a hell of a lot sooner if they knew a bastard was heading their way?
So, as we celebrate World Mental Health Day today, can we stop naming catastrophic hurricanes after people whom we may be burdening with mental health issues by having their names forever associated with death and destruction, not to mention those depressing aftermaths of victims dealing with unimaginable loss.
It’s not Ian’s fault. It’s all our faults for letting climate change out of the bottle by our blind addictions to fossil fuels.
Well, my eyes have finally stopped watering thinking of how hot my poor son must be working up in that city that never sleeps . . . and now never weeps.
Why? Because weeping wastes water! (Laugh track)
Tom Madden is a hot author of countless published articles and five books, including his latest, WORDSHINE MAN, available on Amazon. He also creates TV series like his latest Xtra Terresla whose main character is modeled after Tesla founder Leon Musk. He has another TV series in the works called Mar-a-Lago Empire. Madden is the founder and CEO of TransMedia Group, an award-winning public relations firm serving clients worldwide since 1981.
