Has anybody not seen this video yet?

I think I am personally responsible for a dozen of the 1.1 million views this video has racked up on Vine and YouTube. I was turned on to Rachel Olson’s precocious quest for celebrity only this week by my 12 year-old. Seeing how the video was posted 7 months ago, I am apparently late to the party. But I don’t have any incentive to break the next “Charlie Bit My Finger.” I’ll happily tuck in behind my son’s digital slipstream. Let him bird dog the good stuff, separate the wheat from the chaff. I have no hound in this hunt.

And as a 45 year-old “adult,” I don’t even hunt. If I’m the one in my family introducing the latest “toddler in the backseat on laughing gas” video at the dining room table, well, that would be an issue. A red flag. A warning sign. I’m far too sophisticated and mature for that sort of thing.

So instead, like a virtual Turkey Buzzard, I will pick over the carcasses of these digital funnies until they are stripped bare of anything even remotely resembling comedy. My brain is already hard-wired for feasting on 140-character Tweets and 6-second Vines. I don’t need much provocation. If something tickles my funny-bone, I beat it to death. I can’t help myself.

Hot water burns baby. ‘Course it’s 10 minutes to Wapner. Charlie Babbitt and I share the same spectrum, at least when it comes to a comic riff that I just cannot shake.

To my credit, I rarely just repeat it over and over. I’ll change the cadence, the intonation, the facial expression with which it’s delivered. And towards the tail end of the riff’s useful life (to me, anyway), I’ll resort to layering in a foreign accent. Introducing an English accent will usually extend the riff by a week. Maybe longer. The good news is that if, by the time I get you in my tractor beam with a rendition of the Jerky Boys in brogue, we’re near the end. Hang on for a little longer. I’m just about done. Squeezing every last ounce of life out of it.

Scanning my meager memory banks right now, I realize that I am still giving currency to odd little ditties from when I was maybe 10 years old.

Yikes.

I obviously need to refresh my repertoire. Dig up some new material. Or at least cultivate some new foreign accents. A Swahili “click cluck click” rendition of “Heeeey, I Want to be famous”? Hmm, that just might work, or at least buy me more time. I just need another couple days, most likely, until my bird dog chases another social media nugget out of the hedges.

Thanks for reading.