Listen to my jokes bomb while testifying in Olympia

I know, I know, you are already flooded with stories about House Bill 1361. You know, the one that impacts the following professions: animal massage therapist, auctioneer, boxing announcer, fish food or game fishing guide, landscaping architect, manicurist or horse teeth floater.

If you are one of those, as I am, you have to register in the state of Washington. This is the kind of oppression that will cause a lot of people to throw themselves onto a jerry-built raft, get into the current and hopefully make it to Florida.

Related: This is what it sounds like when the Curley’s go rat hunting

Anyway, if you’re in any of those occupations, you had to be registered, go through some licensing stuff and the state would somehow be able to follow up on whether you were doing a good job. The policy is about 40 years behind the times.

What HB 1361 tries to do is open this up to create a government website like Yelp, so the customers would actually be the ones that respond to whether or not the person is doing a good job. The number of people who complain about landscape architecture goes up every year single year, but how many times has the state sent somebody out to look? Answer: Zero.

Sounds smart, right? Tom Tangney says no. He’s wrong, but here’s why he thinks that.

But more important than Tom’s ignorance: I went up to Olympia to testify in front of the House Bill and Financial Services Committee. I cracked this zinger first:

It took a bit, but the joke eventually got there. Then I tried again:

Come on! That Lt. Brad Owens playing the saxophone is comedy gold. I have sold that so many times at different auctions – that is like right down the middle. One chuckle?

Maybe I should have taken a pie in the face and squirted Representative Kirby with some seltzer water. Maybe next time.

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