I’m not too cool to enjoy a good celebrity sighting. Most are fun but uneventful encounters where no words are exchanged.

But every once in a while, things turn from an idle sighting into an interesting story.

I watched a lot of TV as a kid. Primetime or decades-old reruns, it didn’t matter. I hung out quite a bit with Maxwell Smart and 99; Lucy and Desi Ricardo; George and Weezy Jefferson; Captain Stubing and Julie, your cruise director; Gomez and Morticia Addams, and many more.

I loved and trusted these characters and countless others, as they entertained me and occasionally taught some valuable lessons.

But they also did something else: they lied. To you, to me, to all of us.

Society is always changing. So it makes sense that our attitudes toward some behaviors should change too. With that in mind, I propose that the following examples are not problematic, and should be not only accepted, but normalized.

CIVIL COMPLAINT

PLAINTIFF: Christopher Stanton

VS.

DEFENDANT: Summer

COMPLAINT

Plaintiff Christopher Stanton (“Stanton”) appears before this court seeking damages in excess of $1,000,000 from Defendant Summer (“Summer”). Such damages arise out of Summer’s: (1) deliberate infliction of physical harassment and anguish; (2) deliberate infliction of mental harassment and anguish; (3) forcible detainment against Plaintiff’s will; and (4) malicious actions that caused Plaintiff financial loss.

Inside each of our skulls is a squishy pink blob that controls everything we do. For the most part, we don’t know how this thing works.

Consider consciousness. No one’s got an explanation for it. Everybody’s justifiably concerned about AI, but we don’t even have a firm grasp on where our own I comes from.

Ay yi yi.

So, who’s really running the show? Because they’re committing some truly deranged acts.

I sometimes feel like I was born in the wrong era.

I’ve seen every Marx Brothers movie countless times. Same with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, together and apart. I became obsessed with Frank Sinatra at a very young age. I have strong opinions about who should wear fedoras and when.

Another way this condition manifests itself is my fascination with the Algonquin Round Table.

Infatuated with its history, I’d stayed at the Algonquin Hotel before. Then, 21 years ago this week, I used some vacation days to write there.

Things did not go as planned.

Regular TV commercials are like a friendly golden retriever trying to coax you to play ball. Political ads are a different breed. They’re more like rabid Dobermans brawling to the death.

Sensing there’s an edge to be gained, some brands are starting to pivot to this more aggressive strategy, mimicking the cutthroat ads that people love so much from their elected officials.

Here’s a sneak peek at a few scripts that are currently being tested.

With the summer Olympics underway in Paris, it seems like a good time to shine a light on a longstanding-yet-uncelebrated competition here in the U.S.

The Corporate Martyrdom Games are a year-round event where millions of people compete against each other with stories of the self-imposed sacrifices they’ve made for their jobs.

Fueled by caffeine, a lack of boundaries, and a dearth of hugs when they were children, these warriors work around the clock while neglecting their personal lives and health. But something they never neglect is the chance to one-up each other with tales of missed school plays, angry spouses, and sleepless nights bathed in PowerPoint’s soft, sad glow.

Throughout our lives we’ve all been told certain phrases over and over, usually to make us feel better. We repeat them over and over, usually to make someone else feel better.

These sayings are so engrained in us that we never stop to think about whether they’re actually true, let alone helpful.

Well, I did stop to think. What I found is that we lie more than George Santos on Tinder.

As you age, three things are true:

* Hair starts to grow in places where it never dared to before.

* The Weather Channel takes on an oddly important role in your life.

* You think music has gotten soooo much worse since when you were young.

That last one has been going on for generations. It’s not necessarily true, it’s just that no music is ever as meaningful as the stuff you listened to from about ages 12-25.

Having said all that, today’s music does seem to be missing something that made many songs in the past great: impenetrable lyrics. I don’t understand why everything today is so understandable.