19 THINGS IT TOOK ME 48 YEARS TO LEARN

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”

3. There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness.”

4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

5. And when God, who created the entire universe with all of its glories, decides to deliver a message to humanity, He WILL NOT use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle.

6. You should not confuse your career with your life.

7. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

8. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

9. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.

10. Never lick a steak knife.

11. Take out the fortune before you eat the cookie.

12. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

13. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

14. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

15. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.

16. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

17. The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.

18. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)

19. Your friends love you anyway.

Gallows beefcake: Mortician of the month

Mortician Ken McKenzie is trying to put some fun in the funeral business.

The Long Beach mortuary owner has created “Men of Mortuaries,” a full-color 2007 photo calendar designed to help bury the notion that U.S. funeral parlors are staffed by pallid, humorless stiffs.

Its cover features hunky, shirtless morticians holding shovels while other muscle-flexing funerary workers lower a casket into the ground.

Inside, the months of the year are illustrated by photographs featuring a mix of dark humor and dazzling smiles.

Glamorous grins – not graveside gravity – was the goal, according to McKenzie.

And that turned out to be a challenge, too.

McKenzie drew 276 responses when he placed an ad in a funeral industry trade journal seeking morticians to pose for the first-of-its kind calendar. But most of those sending in photos of themselves with their applications looked a little, well, grave.

“Some of them wouldn’t smile,” McKenzie said. “Our industry is so scared of what people will think. They say this is a serious business, and people expect funeral directors to be serious.”

When McKenzie assembled the winning participants earlier this year for the calendar shoot at Long Beach’s Sunnyside Cemetery, two of the models froze, refusing to crack a smile.

The calendar’s art designer was forced to digitally remove the grim-faced pair from the graveyard cover photograph. In their place were added a shirtless McKenzie and another last-minute fill-in, photographed separately and carefully manipulated into position.

All was not lost, though. The photo retoucher was also able to buff up the calendar boys.

“We added a few abs to some stomachs,” admits McKenzie, 40. “We got rid of some flab.”

The shipment of 50,000 calendars is expected Friday from a print shop in China. McKenzie intends to donate $2 from each sale to a newly organized group that will provide one-time grants to breast cancer patients who need assistance paying for such things as child care.

The KAMM Cares Foundation was set up after McKenzie’s sister, 38-year-old Katherine Alyce McKenzie- Meadows, found herself in a financial pinch two years ago as she underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer.

It was his sister, McKenzie said, who first suggested the calendar after seeing similar ones featuring firefighters and Chippendales dancers. “She was joking and asked, ‘Where are the morticians?”‘

A PLANE good idea…

A mock-up of a plane crash is displayed as part of a Halloween display in the garden of a home in Los Angeles October 20, 2006. Los Angeles police visited the scene after thinking the crash was real. The homeowner is an aircraft mechanic in training and the parts are from a real Gulfstream jet.

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