TV: Midseason Replacement Shows

Why are the midseason shows always better than the Fall shows?

• "Briers' Remorse - genial English actor Richard Briers apologises for all the terrible, terrible things he's done through the years ("Spice World", this Polaroid commercial, killing a hobo).
  
• "America's Next Top Hat" - young milliners compete to design a "Topper" that will make this headgear fashionable again.
  
• "Camo Mile T" - contestants must catch Mr. T before he travels a mile-long course dressed in camouflage.
  
• "Beck And Caul - arch-conservative Glenn Beck and ultra-liberal Simon Caul debate the issues of the day. (Need to find an ultra-liberal named Simon Caul first. Or Billy Caul. Or Cawl or McCaul.)
  
• "Chippendale's Sketch Survivors" - Jan Hooks, Kevin Nealon and Mike Myers, as the last surviving cast members of the cursed comedy sketch, sit around waiting for the inevitable.
  
• "Camo Meal T" - Mr. T tucks into a hearty three-course dinner dressed in camouflage.
  
• "Jay @ 25" - NBC tries to save face by moving Leno's show to "25 o'clock", and explains that viewers need a special TV antenna and time-space continuum to watch it.
  

Video: "Take On Me"

Literal version of aHa's "Take On Me".

Religion: Yom Kippur

Last year on Yom Kippur, I went to see a Keira Knightley movie with a rabbi and the Prime Minister of Israel. The ticket collector at the cinema let them in, but then put out her arm to stop me following. "I'm sorry, sir," she said, "but this is the Jewish day of 'Atonement'."

Magazines: Punch

Project Guterberg has some old issues of Punch available for your perusal, including December 29th, 1920. It includes such rib-ticklers as this:

A woman informed a London magistrate last Tuesday that her husband thrashed her at Easter, Whitsuntide and on August Bank Holiday. Our thoughts were constantly with her during the recent Yuletide festivities.

It is stated that rabies does not exist in Ireland. Our opinion is that it wouldn't be noticed if it did.

"Leather is now much cheaper," we read. Yet we have noticed no drop in the price of restaurant steak.

A vast improvement on 1892:

A Gentleman, whose name is well known in scientific circles, vouches for the following fact. He was, he says, passing a poulterer's shop, when he actually saw a hare buy a rabbit!! He subsequently added, that much depended on the way of spelling "buy."