Engvall, Mayberry bring laughter, Midland brings the bucks to Children's Rehab Center in another hugely successful fundraiser

• Confirmed Certified Certifiable Twit. Please do drop in, do a simple sign up and follow along. Fun stuff.
• Bill Engvall was hilarious Saturday night at Chap Center. His stories of aging and marriage were dead on perfect. That he changed up his show completely from the last time he was here was especially impressive. And Jack Mayberry, who preceded Engvall, had people rolling in the aisles. The Lubbock native's take on West Texas was right on target ("In West Texas, you have towns like Brownfield ... Levelland ... Plainview ... people out here hold no illusions about where they're from"). And you've just gotta like a comedian whose very first words of his act are "Guy walks into a bar ..." Great stuff. I'd pay to see Mayberry by himself if he ever came through here again. And congrats to the Midland Children's Rehab Center, which raised $228,000 between the golf and comedy Saturday.
• I've never been an early voter. Dad taught me to vote on Voting Day. That's pretty much why it's called Voting Day. If you don't like waiting for The Day, early voting begins today in Midland on the $15 million hospital bond issue.
• Jacoby Ellsbury's straight steal of home in Sunday night's Red Sox-Yankees' game was the highlight of the baseball season so far. Too bad it was over in about two seconds and you never really had time to appreciate Jon Miller's excited call of the rare play. The Red Sox manhandling of the Yankees sure made it seem like the Evil Empire's regime continues to fade. Posada didn't even seem to see Ellsbury's crafty theft work, and Derek Jeter, the lasting image of the Yankees' World Series teams of the 1990s, seemed slower than the glory days a few years ago.
• Be prepared to panic sufficiently: the network morning shows are impressively building up the threat of the swine flu. Matt Lauer asked a health official this morning what has to happen before America begins to cancel activities and enact widespread closures. It's a certainty it wasn't the only alarmist question of the morning. I have no doubt that it is a potential disaster, but it seems like maybe the best advice is to just tell people what your mama told you years ago: Just wash your hands.

Comments

[JennP.]

After watching the Today show this morning, I was more worried about contracting swine flu than about the final I was headed to go take... but maybe I was praying to get a rapid onset and even faster recovery in order to skip out on the final-- how bad can swine flu be for 2 hours? ;)

[TOK]

I think what JennP has is called the WHINE flu. And after finals it will be called the WINE flu.

[Jimmy]

Someone at a twitter page somewhere jokingly suggested we change the name of the Swine Flu to Mexican Influenza to be sensitive to those Jewish and Muslims who may contract the disease.

What, Jenn whine? Ha.

[JennP.]

I just hope that the WINE flu doesn't have a sudden, unexpected onset!! If we change the name of swine flu to Mexican Influenza then we need to change the name of our red and white blood cells to Native American blood cells and Caucasian blood cells just for that added PC... I'm tellin ya, that political correctness really gets ridiculous sometimes!!