Gentle Humor

Suzanne Olsen's Humor Blog - I don't offend some of the people most of the time

Category: Entertainment

Happy Martian

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On March 7, 2021

In Computers, Entertainment, Humor

I made this short animation movie in a Flash class in 2010 as my final project. My instructor must have had a sense of humor because he gave me an A. This thing took many hours and days to make. Recently I’ve been getting alerts from Adobe – the creator of Flash – that Flash Player has some kind of plague now and Adove wants everyone to not only stop using it, but to get it off their computers completely. They came on my computer at all hours with messages like this one: Please remove Flash Player from your computer, then set it on fire, bury it in the backyard in an unmarked grave, and pile some big rocks on it. DO IT RIGHT NOW!!!!

It’s been 10 years since I made this project, and I’ve never done anything with Flash since, but I was worried I wouldn’t be able to watch this little movie again, so I needed to edit it in order to upload it to YouTube, and I couldn’t remember anything about how I made it. So a lot more hours went into revising this, mainly because my old Flash program kept crashing.

Not to get too geeky on you, but when something on your computer just quits, that’s called – in technical terms – stupid, because just about everyone in the world says, “Stupid” computer. Some people say other words too, particularly the one starting with “f.” Anyway, when a stupid program stops working on your stupid computer, it’s really f… I mean, annoying. That’s what Flash kept doing when I tried to export this little animation into a movie I could put on YouTube. Hence the hours and hours of frustration – I’d do one thing but that would break something else.

Finally, after copious notes because I couldn’t remember what I’d done up until the next screw-up, in case I had to start over, I got this little movie exported to a file that YouTube would let me upload.

So here it is for your viewing pleasure. There are lots of nuances – smile turns to frown, stars twinkle, moon waxes – little things. By the way, some snot-nose kid could have probably made this in a couple of hours. That doesn’t diminish any of my ecstatic joy at my own accomplishment!

The Girl and the Piñata

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On May 3, 2019

In Entertainment, Kids

I was at the high school tutoring in the second floor library on a warm, sunny day so the windows were open. I could hear a commotion outside, and when I looked out, I saw a class full of students in a half-circle yelling at a blindfolded girl who held a stick and stood in front of a piñata hanging from a tree.

I could understand the class being outside and soaking up some rare Oregon rays, but I couldn’t figure out the piñata. What did that have to do with economics or health? Maybe it was Spanish class, but it wasn’t even Cinco de Mayo, which I’ve been told means “put the empty mayonnaise jar in the sink.”

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Facebook Scares Me

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On April 12, 2019

In Entertainment, Humor, Social Media

Facebook scares me. I don’t go on very often but I get emails when someone posts a picture with me in it. I go check it out and get sucked in to the black hole of all those millions of posts.

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Fighting Hummingbirds

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On March 22, 2019

In Entertainment, Pets

The hummingbirds are fighting at my feeder again. They fight all day long. I’ve discovered that there’s always a bully, and his sole purpose in life is to keep others from taking a drink from his feeder. If another hummingbird zips up and tries to get just a drop of liquid sugar, the bully swoops in, attacks, and chases him back to where he came from, and sometimes chases him all over the place. Selfish little buggers. 

Sometimes while the bully is driving another one off, a third hummingbird zooms in and gulps a sip. Instantaneously the bully knows and darts back to defend his feeder, chasing the third one off. Then they all leave for a few minutes, until it starts over again. Aggressive little brats.

Hummingbirds snatching a drink outside my kitchen window

I have the feeder outside the kitchen window, about six feet from my front door. I can see the bully lying in wait in a bush a few feet away. He’s on the alert, policing his territory. Sometimes when I go outside it feels like he’s attacking me. For something so small, his wings make a lot of disturbing noise, especially when they’re right by my head. The sound is something like a freight train coming straight at me, with the volume turned down slightly. I worry he’ll drive that long, pointed beak right into my temple. I have to crouch when I walk by the front of my house. I know good and well he’s doing it on purpose. Spiteful little creatures.

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Why Green Book deserved the Oscar

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On March 15, 2019

In Entertainment, inspiration, Movies

This post isn’t funny, but the movie is so that’s how I’m justifying this little dab of serious writing.

I can’t understand why people are having such a hissy fit over Green Book winning as Best Picture. I know the Oscar usually goes to a film that is stylistically different, so different, in fact, that common movie-goers like you and me leave the theater scratching our heads, wondering what the heck the movie was about. 

People denounced Green Book’s win, saying it was nothing more than a buddy movie. Oh, please. Yeah it’s about two guys from totally different backgrounds who, over the course of many amusing and dramatic experiences, come to accept and respect each other. But it’s definitely not “The Hangover.”

You’ve got a white man who chauffeurs a black man around the segregated south in the early 1960’s for three months. Where’s the humor? It’s in the characters – the white man is a street-wise, New York Italian nightclub bouncer, Tony, who talks like a gangsta with his mouth crammed full of Kentucky Fried Chicken, throws the bones out the window, doing and saying things that make us laugh though he’s not trying to be funny. A family man who loves his wife so much that he writes these just awful letters to her. When he’s approached by real mob types who offer him big money to work for them, he says no. So un-stereo-typical that it makes Tony intriguing on a much broader level than stoner, drunken buddies who get in outrageous situations designed for comedy.

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My First Square Dance

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On April 18, 2017

In Entertainment

Square Dancer

When my girlfriend Kerry emailed asking if I wanted to sign up for square dance lessons with her, I thought, “Not no but hell no!” I’d never seen square dancers in person, but the ones on TV are rather, well, square. I pictured them just like you’re probably doing right now, and nowhere did that image fit in my idea of a good time. But I like Kerry and I decided, what the hey? We’ve been going for the last several weeks, having fun tripping over our own feet. Last night was something different, though – a real dance away from our familiar surroundings.

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Beer Bottle Billie Jean

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On February 4, 2015

In Entertainment, People

I’d never seen anything like this video, and as I was watching I wondered how these guys came up with using beer bottles to make a song. The following scene unfolded in my head as if I’d been there with them.

Disclaimer: This is all made up. I don’t know these guys or anything about them. I have made all of this up. None of this is true.

It’s a Sunday morning. A bunch of fraternity boys like the ones in Animal House are sprawled like rag dolls on couches and chairs, empty beer bottles everywhere. The one who doesn’t get hangovers is awake. The remote control is too far away, so he starts blowing into an empty bottle to entertain himself.

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Copyright © 2021 by Suzanne Olsen