Whimsy: January 2009 Archives

James Lileks, reporting from a Caribou Coffee outlet:

It's just a coffee shop. It's the modern version of the neighborhood bar, except that everyone's wired instead of sloshed, no one's smoking, no sad drunk is playing the same song over and over on the jukebox, and the window does not consist of a 3-foot-by-2-foot slit bricked up with glass blocks.

On the other hand, this is no place to drown your sorrows. You can't drown your sorrows at a coffee shop. All you can do is wake them up and jab them with a sharp stick and make them run around. Drowned sorrows never stay dead, but at least they stop moving.

Capt. Leland Stottlemeyer, on last night's episode of Monk:

Don't you have an off-switch, Monk? Here, have mine. Beer: Nature's off-switch.

In no mood tonight for anything but silliness, so here's a funny bit of subtitling from Earnest Pettie:

As if the pride of Oklahoma weren't sufficiently wounded:

Oklahoma's junior senator in Washington soon will be belting out a rendition of the Elton John hit "Rocket Man" after losing a bet with a colleague from Florida.

Sen. Tom Coburn and Florida Sen. Bill Nelson placed a wager on Thursday's night's BCS National Championship game between the Oklahoma Sooners and Florida Gators.

Since Florida won, Coburn agreed to sing the song during Nelson's next constituent coffee, a traditional weekly meeting between a senator and residents of his home state.

Had Oklahoma won, Nelson would have had to sing "Oklahoma!" during Coburn's next constituent meeting.

"Rocket Man" was selected because Nelson was an astronaut who traveled into space in 1986 aboard the shuttle Columbia.

Although Coburn's daughter, Sarah, is a well-known opera soprano, Coburn himself "doesn't profess to have a tremendous singing gift," his spokesman, John Hart, said Friday.

Hart said no date has been set for Coburn to make good on his bet.

"He's a man of his word," Hart said. "And I'm sure Senator Nelson won't let him forget."

You don't have to be a singer to perform "Rocket Man," as William Shatner proved in this unforgettable performance at the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards (introduced by Bernie Taupin, the song's co-writer):

Maybe Dr. No should have just bet some Oklahoma steaks against some Florida oranges.