As we all know, cranky dickhead Andy Rooney passed away this weekend. And since my send-off wasn’t exactly the nicest eulogy, I figured this video might be a more fitting tribute. In Season 9 of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” Mike, Crow, and Tom Servo don bushy fake eyebrows and engage in an “Andy Rooney-Off.” The topic is soup, which seems like the Andy Rooney-est food possible.

You know, now that he’s dead, maybe the best way to remember his is by using his name as an adjective. Something’s Andy Rooney if it’s bland and inoffensive yet somewhat inscrutable for a simpleton. Like magnets — how do they work? OH MY GOD ANDY ROONEY WAS A JUGGALO. I mean, check out the lyrics to “Miracles”: “I fed a fish to a pelican at Frisco bay / It tried to eat my cell phone, he ran away.” It’s like an Andy Rooney essay with swearing. Well, except for the part about owning an cell phone.

[video via BuzzFeed]

Crotchety rambler Andy Rooney has passed away, just one month after his final “60 Minutes” appearance and slightly more than a week after suffering complications from minor surgery. In honor of his passing, I’ll be just as respectful about his death as he was about Kurt Cobain’s.

Rooney was an unremarkable, cranky bore whose bitching about simple annoyances struck a nerve with other aging white people who were frightened by or opposed to change. His view of America was essentially a collection of Rockwell paintings, and he complained about any facet of life that strayed from that impossible vision. When technological developments improved commerce or people’s lives, Rooney only saw the inconvenience of learning something new. In every TV appearance of his that I saw, he came off to me as intellectually incurious, and he happily took a paycheck from CBS for 60 years while brushing away the fans who sent him letters or tried to approach him in public. I don’t understand why people who didn’t know him should stop and mourn a man who never cared for people he didn’t know.

Rest in peace, Andy Rooney. The world has moved on.

Just three weeks after his final “60 Minutes” ramble, Andy Rooney almost died. At least, that’s what I’m inferring given CBS’s terse statement.

Rooney underwent minor surgery last week and suffered serious complications. For that reason, he remains in the hospital, but his condition is stable.

The Rooney family asks that their privacy be respected at this difficult time. [CBS]

I don’t mean to be insensitive, but the man is 92 YEARS OLD. His skin is like loose parchment draped over rotting meat. There’s no such thing as MINOR surgery for someone this old. He could probably bleed out from a paper cut. That’s why I mailed him a “get well” card in the freshest, sharpest envelope I could find.

There was some excellent TV journalism on “60 Minutes” last night, none of which had anything to do with Andy Rooney. If you want to learn or see something worthwhile, I recommend watching the piece about the relationship between Fort Bragg and the tsunami-ravaged city of Otsuchi, or the jaw-dropping life of Alex Honnold, the best solo free climber in the world.

But of course the big news is that Andy Rooney closed the show for what we hope will be a final time (above), which was preceded by a 13-minute interview/retrospective puff piece about the curmudgeonly 92-year-old (video of that below). And here’s the short version: Andy Rooney is a real dick. He’s not just a grump on TV, he also resents being recognized by fans, refuses to sign autographs, and doesn’t respond to any fan mail. So if you see Andy Rooney on the street or in a restaurant, don’t say hello. Tell him “f*ck you.”

Oh man. This is a great mash-up of “Andy Rooney saying Andy Rooney things” by Holy Taco. Listening to a collection of random Rooneyisms is only slightly less coherent than his regular stream of consciousness. I love it.

“That’s a strange name, Holy Taco. What kind of meat would be in a holy taco? I guess it depends on your religion. Christians might have fish, I suppose. Jews don’t eat pork or shellfish, and I’ve heard that Muslims don’t eat pork either, but I’ve never confirmed that. I don’t like tacos, but I still attend church every Sunday. I enjoy the scripture, but I’m not much of a singer when it comes to hymns. I like hymns, though. I find them soothing. Today’s music isn’t soothing, it’s loud and percussive. If you ask me, it doesn’t even sound like music. Whatever happened to a pipe organ and four-part harmony? That works just fine for me, and you know what they say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Do you ever get tired? I do. I get tired a lot. I used to just get tired at the end of the day before falling asleep. Sometimes I’d get tired in the middle of the day, and I’d drink a cup of coffee or take a nap. But now I’m tired a lot more often. I’m even tired right after I wake up! That’s why this Sunday will be my last regular appearance on “60 Minutes.” They say I can come back any time I want, but no one seems very enthusiastic about that. So I guess I’m retired.

That’s a funny word, “retired.” Re- means again, and tired means tired, so I guess I’m tired again. Lots of other words begin with “re-.” Remain. Recite. Review. Repeat. Resist. Return. Rebuff. Receive. Remember. I remember a lot of things, but sometimes I forget. Lately I’ve been forgetting a lot of things, like where I put my wallet or… there was something else, but I forget. And now that’s another thing I forgot!

Another “re-” word that bothers me is “recycle.” My granddaughter says we have to recycle, because that’s the only way to save the Earth. But I don’t know. I like throwing things away. I’ve done it all my life, and I don’t see why I should change now. That’s how we’ve always done it. You have something, then it gets old and boring, so you throw it away.

…I guess I’m being thrown away now, too. But that’s fine. I wouldn’t want to be recycled.

Flame tanks get my panties wet.

One of my favorite programs of last year was History’s “WWII in HD,” a documentary that unearthed astonishingly vivid color video of the Second World War. Now, History has greenlit a follow-up called “WWII in HD: The Air War” that will focus on the American 8th Air Force’s battle with the Luftwaffe leading up to D-Day. From THR:

Sean Astin, Chris O’Donnell and Elijah Wood are lending their voices to historical participants in the wartime drama. Rob Lowe narrates. The miniseries uses largely never-before-seen color footage of air battles that has been remastered to HD-level quality.

But wait, this is the best part:

One of the stories being told will be that of 60 Minutes veteran Andy Rooney, who was a reporter for Stars & Stripes during the battle.

Oh, I’m sure Andy Rooney’s story will be fascinating. “Air battles weren’t easy to report. Ground battles I could report on because I was on the ground, but air battles were in the air. I could look up into the sky and squint, but I could hardly tell which planes were which. Mostly I just stayed in a bunker drinking tea. The British soldiers were always drinking tea. I prefer coffee, but I I drank tea to fit in. I always had mine with two sugars because of my sweet tooth. I would have liked it with milk, but fresh milk was in short supply, and powdered creamer hadn’t been invented yet. Can you imagine that? Scientists were working on the atomic bomb, but there was no creamer for my tea.”

“The Air War” will air November 10th. Watch the chilling trailer from the original “WWII in HD” below.

Andy Rooney caught wind of the report that claims three-fourths of Americans will be obese by the year 2020, and he had something to say about it. Nothing that made any sense, but he had something to say. Specifically, he’s going to lose 20 pounds by Halloween. That’s 20 pounds in three weeks. Watch the more-rambling-than-usual video below.

“The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sure is a fat name, says that three quarters of Americans will be obese by 2020. That’s a lot of overweight people. Three quarters used to be a lot of money, but now I can’t even buy a 20-ounce soda with it. Why did sodas get so big? Weren’t cans big enough? The old Coca-Cola bottles only had eight ounces. Two bits got you and your date colas and the special of the day, which I loved unless it was liver. Never cared much for internal organs, even though they’re supposed to be good for you. Isn’t that the problem? Everything that tastes bad is good for you, and everything that tastes good is bad. I get paid to make these conclusions.”

[via Eater]

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on Andy Rooney, the official dementia-ridden rambling old man of Warming Glow. And while this missive against unnecessary developments in technology that deprive him of the joy of getting lost isn’t as epic as the time he realized he wasn’t average, it IS remarkable in that he (a) somehow still does this every week and (b) is still alive.

“I have a lot of gadgets in my office, but I don’t like them. I don’t know what they do, and I don’t like the word ‘gadget.’ Sounds like one of the Kaiser’s words. Now there are cars that are syncing up with our gadgets, and I don’t like that, either. Cars are supposed to be simple black means of transportation, like Henry Ford used to make ‘em. We’d be a lot better off listening to Henry Ford — now there was a man who knew how to keep the Jews away from his stash of gold. But now cars are green instead of black, and green doesn’t even describe the color of the car. When did green become something besides a color? That’s like the color orange and the fruit orange — which one was named for which? Maybe there’s an app that could tell me, but I don’t want it. Things were better when we didn’t have the answer to eveyrthing. Forced us to be more creative. A stick — now THAT was a good toy.”

(YouTube link here)

Andy Rooney cooked up his standard recipe on “60 Minutes” last night: one large chunk of old man grumpiness, three ladles of stroke-induced confusion, and a sprinkle of rambling dementia. The target of his ire this week was desire, which he called a “serious and constant defect in the human character.” Rest assured, Reverend Rooney is a sinner like the rest of us, helpless against his basest instinct to eat extra cookies after lunch.

“The medical industry makes pills for headaches, constipation, and high cholesterol, but they still haven’t invented an anti-desire pill to stop me from wanting cookies. Delicious chocolate chip cookies. I only wanted one, but I took two and ate them both. It used to be standard to put walnuts in chocolate chip cookies, but somewhere along the way that stopped happening. I guess Americans just wanted something sweeter. Where did the walnuts go? Does the government subsidize those walnut farmers? Think about that: being paid not to grow something. I’ve been not growing things my entire life, and I’ve never gotten a dime for it. Of course, a dime won’t buy you much these days. Why is that? I remember buying a Coke and a hamburger with a dime, but things slowly got more expensive. Now if you have a dime, it might as well be a penny. Why does the government still make pennies? Probably to pay the walnut farmers.”

TAKE HIM TO THE VET AND PUT HIM TO SLEEP ALREADY.