WOW. This has to be my new favorite Andy Rooney clip. Somebody at “60 Minutes” thought it would be a good idea if Rooney used his allotted two minutes to riff about fruit. And this babbling was supplemented with close-ups of his gnarled, liver-spotted, papery-skinned hands as they spread death on produce at a local grocery store. It really is 
something to behold, a disaster of words that ranges from the obvious to the incorrect to the willfully ignorant. I honestly hope heart failure claims me before I sound like this.
“Which came first, oranges or the word ‘orange’ for color? What if we called bananas ‘yellows’? It was hard to get fresh fruit when I was young. Why do we put limes in so many drinks, but not lemons? Lemons can do anything! I don’t want fruit I have to peel. Asian pear? Never heard of that one. I like the taste of peaches, but the fuzzy skin reminds me of fuzzy skin. When we were kids, we’d sometimes use cherries to play marbles. Darned things never rolled straight. Now here’s something I’ve never seen before: a starfruit. It’s shaped like a star! I doubt that’s a coincidence. You just don’t see good rhubarb any more these days. I see you looking at me, watermelon.”
I am seriously considering turning this blog into an archive for Andy Rooney videos. Wouldn’t that be nice? An Andy Rooney archive? The National Archives are important. I went there once and saw the Constitution. The Constitution has some beautiful old lettering. Not like today’s lettering, with its predetermined fonts. If you take the first syllable off of “archive,” you get “chive,” but the Constitution’s nothing like an onion! You wouldn’t want to eat the Constitution, unless you were some kind of insect, maybe. But then if you were an insect who ate paper, you probably wouldn’t eat chives, so that still holds up.
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Every time I see a clip of Andy Rooney on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” I want it to never end. This clip is 37 seconds. I can barely tie my shoes in 37 seconds. When I was younger I could tie them faster, but I’ve slowed down as I’ve gotten older. Seagulls never seem to get old, though. I hear them and I think of the beach, and what kind of garbage they might have eaten yesterday. I can’t remember what I ate yesterday, but it probably wasn’t garbage. That’s the great thing about potato chips — you can eat them.
Oh boy. Someone over at “60 Minutes” let Andy Rooney talk about taxes, and you’ll be shocked to learn that he doesn’t like paying them. Thanks, Andy! Voice of the people, that guy.
Rooney also thinks that individuals’ tax records should be public, which would make people proud of how much they paid, and also make the IRS look patriotic, and when he was a boy, you paid your taxes at the apple cart. America needs more apple carts these days, not those ice cream trucks. Driving an ice cream truck seems like a nice job, but I wouldn’t like to hear the same song all day. If you wrote that song they play on the ice cream truck, you’d have a fortune, but also owe a lot in taxes. You ever see a cloud that just looks delicious?
This was Andy Rooney’s allotted two minutes and change on Sunday night’s “60 Minutes,” and it is a masterwork of oratory.
Days of the week are helpful. Sundays are good, but I like Saturday. Sometimes I’ll write down a day of the week and wonder why it’s spelled that way. “Wednesday” is the hardest day to spell. Sundays are good for pro football, but now football season’s over. People like watching football. It’s so much colder in winter. It would be nice if we could have some warm spring days mixed in the middle of winter to even things out a little. I have a watch that tells me the time, except when the battery dies. Everything dies. That’s why I keep a spare watch battery. Why is a AAA battery smaller than a AA battery?
Seriously, CBS executives: give this man his own show. I want a full half hour — no, hour! — of this. Just put the camera on him and see how long he can do that.
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