Here's what's been on my mind lately.

Item 1. The new high-backed chairs in my coffee shop are kind of freaking me out. They are made from a blue velvety material and they have tall, wide backs that face the door. Every time I look up, I expect them to slowly swivel around to reveal a couple of grinning corpses or something. It's spooky. I don't like them.

Item 2. I thought I saw Clint Eastwood on an episode of The Golden Girls, but I can't be sure. I was at the gym, and the television was way over on the other side of the room, near the free weights that I never use. It's hard to imagine how the writers would have worked Clint Eastwood into an episode, clever as they were. He was probably dating Blanche, just like every other guy on the show.

Item 3. Also while at the gym, I caught a local news filler about space technology spinoffs. They flashed a short bulleted list on the screen, highlighting some of the great things our society has been blessed with as a result of space research. These are the benefits they listed:

1. athletic shoes
2. MRI/breast cancer detection
3. aerodynamic golf balls
4. cell phones

Hmmm. Clearly, this in order of importance. Who could argue that athletic shoes are the single greatest gift that space science has brought to us? I mean, only half the world's population need concern themselves with breast cancer detection, right? But everyone wears athletic shoes! And while those cell phones may come in handy when our Ford Pinto has crashed and burned on the side of I-70 for the umpteenth time, are they really as useful to us as, say, aerodynamic golf balls? I remember the days when golf balls used to be cube-shaped and full of lead—not aerodynamic at all. Golf was a pretty tough game back then. (Tiger doesn't know how lucky he has it.) Now if only the smart guys and gals at NASA would bend their massive brain power toward developing one of those machines like in the movie Sleeper (you know which ones I'm talking about). Cause there's only one thing better than athletic shoes.

Item 4. It occurs to me that in terms of show business ancestry, Rodney Dangerfield was probably the comedic lovechild of Milton Berle and Harpo Marx.