NEW YEAR…NEW ME (1/5/21)

At around this time every year I usually like to make my New Year’s resolutions.

My 2020 resolutions backfired on me.

I had planned to be drunk and bloated every minute of 2020. I was willing to lie to others (and myself) about fixing my shortcomings and improving my life.

The fact is no one loves temptation more than I do.

Last year I resolved to go on my own personal diet in 2020. I was going to eat more fat, more fried foods and consume more delicious empty calories. I also planned to devour more sugar, corn syrup and rid my diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, whose tastes and value are greatly overrated.

I resolved to pour salt on everything until my blood pressure popped out of the top of my cute bald head. I planned to salt capers, anchovies and even Campbell’s Soup, which is 95% salt and 5% water.

I resolved to start smoking again. I was going back to two packs of unfiltered Camels and eight cigars a day.

Then along came Covid-19. The next thing I know I was stuck in my house 24 hours a day.

You wake up at 10AM and you walk around the house for hours in your pajamas until it’s 1PM. You shower, put on a fresh pair of pajamas, and there goes another day.

237 days in the house and outside of my family, my 3 dogs and 2 birds, my closest friend was the FedEx guy, who came to my house five times a day.

After 237 days I got bored and lost my taste for drinking.

I got tired of eating and I’ve lost 25 pounds and now I’m merely fat and barely grotesque.

I’m a new person.

2020 did it to me. So in 2021 it’s goodbye to suits and white shirts and ties and dress shoes.

I love pajamas. Everybody loves pajamas.

In fact, the only clothing area that people are buying these days is called “loungewear,” which is a fancy way of saying upgraded, more expensive pajamas.

The new me will be wearing pajamas…everywhere.

OK, if I have a formal business meeting, I will throw on a bathrobe.

And don’t knock it. I know of two very successful people who wore pajamas 24 hours a day.

One was Playboy’s Hugh Hefner, and he was always surrounded by beautiful women who were anxious to take off his pajamas.

The other was Vinnie (The Chin) Gigante, a Mafia crime boss who was always surrounded by cops who were anxious to put him in the slammer.

But The Chin avoided going to jail because he showed up in court wearing the same blue bathrobe, striped pajamas and a golf cap and slippers.

That’s it, if pajamas were good enough for Hefner and Vinnie the Chin, they’re good enough for me. And admit it – you’ve spent the last 10 months in pajamas and nightgowns, too…and you kind of like it, don’t you?

What’s more, I’ve decided to stop making fun at those people who are politically correct and are determined to change our world.

I can’t beat them so I’ve decided to join them.

I’m going to be as “woke” as the next person.

At first I laughed when I read that the British woke people had a petition to change the name and take the word “white” out of “The White Cliffs of Dover.” Honest, they did.

Then of course a woke person decided it was time for the Masters golf tournament to change its name.

A woke spokesperson said: When you hear “Masters,” you think of slave masters in the South.

I don’t know about you, but when I hear “Masters,” I think of Tiger Woods.

And then it dawned on me.

I’m Italian and I’m proud of being Italian and why can’t I be the leader of the Italian woke people.

Here’s what I mean:

A while ago I was driving on the Long Island Expressway and my car had a blowout or a flat tire. As I tried to ride it on its rim, every time the tire rolled it made the same sound:

WOP….WOP…WOP…

I can’t tell you how offended I was to hear my Goodyear tire calling me a WOP.

That night I cried myself to sleep. How could the Goodyear people be so unthinking as to have its tire, when it blows out, make that slur on the proud Italian people.

Charles Goodyear, the inventor of the tire, has been dead since 1860 and we proud Italians want any statutes of him ripped down immediately.

I want the Goodyear scientists to work day and night to come up with a different sound for their tire to make when it’s disabled. And they must never reverse the WOP sound to be POW.

POW derives from a curing ritual, originated in one of the Algonquian nations of the Northeast Indians.

Don’t mess with the Italians and the Indians er…er…Native Americans…er…er…Indigenous Peoples.

Now let’s talk about guinea hens.

That’s a fowl name that has to go, too.

And finally let’s talk about “The Godfather,” an anti-Italian movie about the so-called Mafia that’s on TV every night.

We woke Italians are calling on them to change the name of this hurt-filled movie from “The Godfather” to “The Grandfather.”

And we insist the movie has to be reshot immediately so that the crime family is no longer named the Corleones.

It must be changed from the Corleones to the Olofssons, a Swedish crime family.

Let’s let the Swedish woke people worry about that in the future.

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