The Saturday Picture Show, June 21, 2025

Six great ideas as we skid toward the end of the sixth month! I hope to accomplish all of them.

Not so long ago, Lou Christie (center) replaced the late Bobby Rydell on the Golden Boys Of Rock 'n' Roll, a touring show that featured Bobby along with Fabian (left) and Frankie Avalon (right). Now Lou has left us; taken by a sudden onset illness this spring. All of the Gypsies cried.

There is a Mack Town in the Bahamas (the paint on this building sort of tells me this is there) and there's Mackenzie, British Columbia - a town nicknamed Mack Town, and there is a young man named Mack Town who is a high school ballplayer from Peachtree Corners, GA, so as the sign says, you are welcome to all of them.

This looks like an esthetically pleasing mural of some sort, but this is actually a wall in Seattle where people make a habit of sticking their chewed gum, which is not pleasing to any sense.

Let's see...we have 12 knives, 12 forks, and 13, 923 spoons. Come over and stir something up!

You would think someone would have thought of this way to make a wet floor sign fun, but finally, someone did.  

Looks like a nice place to get away from it all...if they have decent cable...

You might remember, last fall Hurricane Milton literally blew the roof off of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays. This year, as a consequence, they are playing major league games in a minor league ballpark down there, a park where the Yankees have their spring training.  All things considered, everyone is making the best of it. It's odd for big leaguers to play in a stadium without a second seating deck.

This is a Raven eating a piece of a walnut. Notice how little he looks like the yellow-beaked bird on the Baltimore Ravens' helmets, but he's ok. He's got his walnut lunch.

I'll leave you with a bit of good luck today - these are five-leaf clovers, so that's an extra helping over four. June 21 was a great day for my luck, too...it's the day I met Peggy, and we fell deep in the happy sea of love.
 

Well-deserved

The great national treasure Dolly Parton is about to add an Oscar statuette to her trophy case. Come November, she will be given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscars’ annual Governors Awards. 

Among Dolly's good works is Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which gives free books to kids from birth to age five. She's been quietly buying band uniforms for Tennessee high schools for years.  She used the songwriting royalties from "I Will Always Love You" to purchase a strip mall in Nashville to honor and support the Black neighborhood it's in. And when COVID-19 hit, it was her million dollars that provided seed money for Moderna to create a vaccine. Dolly's philanthropy is a daily blessing, but, “I don’t do it for attention,” she said when receiving the  Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.  “But look! I’m getting a lot of attention by doing it.”

And don't forget, she is always the first to donate money and supplies after natural disasters. She's just an all-around good person who believes in sharing. 

Who was Jean Hersholt? Hersholt (1886 - 1956) was a Danish American screen and radio actor. He served as president of the Motion Picture Relief Fund for 18 years. He was credited with playing a large part in establishing the Fund, now known as the Motion Picture and Television Fund. Its purpose is to give help to Hollywood industry employees - not just actors, but people in all facets of the business out there. They help those in need due to illness, old age, or whatever challenges they may face. To honor Hersholt's philanthropy, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - the Oscar people - established the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to recognize an "individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry." 

Wonderful things can be said about Dolly and Jean, and of course, I would be remiss if I failed to point out that Hersholt was the paternal half-uncle (by marriage) of actor Leslie Nielsen. Surely, you remember him.

 

 

Moon Shot

 One of my hobbies is listening to old radio shows on the internet. I particularly like The Great Gildersleeve, a wholesome family comedy from the 1940s and 1950s, a time when we still had wholesome families.

Just kidding! I know your family is wholesome...

Anyway, the shows were live then, and many times they were interrupted by important news bulletins about World War II. Listening back to them today, the juxtapositioning of Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve's crazy madcap adventures raising his niece and nephew while serving as water commissioner in the mythical town of Summerfield and dating every single single woman who crossed his path with the invasion of Anzio was a contrast, for sure. The announcer would cut in, deliver the breaking news, and then go back to the program as, surely, millions of Americans with family in the service said an extra prayer.

My thought today is that, in those days, when people like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite came on with news, you could believe what they said. Today, one must be more judicious, and evaluate what you read and hear, because of things like this... 

Dan Driscoll, the U.S. Secretary of the Army, was on some channel called Fox News (correct me if I got their name wrong) last week, hyping the upcoming military parade in Washington, D.C. 

Here is a direct quote from the man who runs your Army:

 “As young Americans across the country get to see all of the amazing things that the army has done, whether it’s helping with floods in North Carolina or wildfires in California, or, we talked to an astronaut yesterday who’s on the moon who’s a soldier.”

OK, listen, I know the schools are closed, so Sis and Junior can't ask Ms. O'Hoolahan about it, so let me assure you that no American has been on the moon since Eugene Cernan walked on the green cheese in 1972. I look at it every night and see no one trucking around.

So we are left with the big question: Was someone left behind when Apollo 17 came home? Does Driscoll know more than he lets on? If someone is up there, how will they calculate his overtime pay? Or was there a recent moon shot, possibly when one of Elon's rockets didn't blow up?

Driscoll, who will be played in the inevitable movie by Gary Busey, might have been thinking about Jonny Kim, who is not a soldier and is not on the moon, but is a former Navy SEAL on an eight-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). He's been sky high since April 8 and is expected back on earth this fall.

Unless Driscoll knows something he's not letting on....

Yakety-yak

 What I think:

If you really know what you are talking about, that will come through to your listener or reader. There are topics on which I could declaim endlessly (or so it would seem!) and not have to hem and/or haw, or make stuff up.

On the other hand, ask me to write or speak about how nuclear fission works, or how digital music turns numbers into notes, or why the earth revolves, and I can't say much. In fact, my knowledge of the solar system is no minute as to fit into a thimble. I must have been out sick the day that was explained. 

I bring this up because I saw a guy on television the other morning, and in virtually every sentence, he said, "Do you know what I'm saying?" or "You know what I mean?" 

My problem is, I am quite a literal person, meaning that if you ask me a question, you will get an answer if I have one. So, saying "Do you know what I mean?" only slows matters down, because then I answer, "Yeah, so far so good" or "Not a clue" and it slows the conversation. Sometimes it slows it to a halt.

My fear is that the person who asks if I know what they are saying is not so sure of what they are saying at all, hence the need for reinforcement.

So here's a deal - you keep talking and I'll keep listening (or reading) and if I can't figure it out, you will be among the first to know. Proceed apace until I ask for clarification.

Heartache is real!

With the wisdom that I gained from many years of being a country music radio DJ, I know a thing or two about broken hearts.

But I thought they were all in the head! No, that's not true.

Turns out, "Broken heart syndrome" is a real heart condition. It can be brought on by dealing with tough times and emotional extremes. As Elvis sang, "When you find your sweetheart in the arms of a friend, buddy, that's when your heartache begins." Getting the old heave-ho is hard on the ticker.  

The doctors say, broken heart syndrome goes away eventually for most...but some people never get over it, apparently. Or they accept the pain as part of their lives and slump along from day to day.

Really, the physical part of this is that sufferers of BHS may all of a sudden report chest pain as the syndrome causes the heart to change the way it pumps blood.

This is a sign that, if sadness overwhelms you, you might need to seek help from mental health providers as well as medical doctors.

And listen to light symphonic music for a while! No country, whatever you do. 

 

Shiny

Lately, the Baltimore Orioles tv broadcasts have had annoying commercials for some energy swill called "Celsius." So I thought I would be "Fair, And Hype" this new product.

There is no depth to which I will not pursue a bad pun. And I don't know any good ones.

So anyway, this energy drink...in the commercial, all sorts of cool people are guzzling it with alacrity, and I want to be cool, but not as much as I wish to continue enjoying my usual tipples - hot tea, iced tea, seltzer water with cranberry juice.

We decided to see what was in this joy-giving elixir, and here's the story:

Celsius energy drinks contain a blend of ingredients designed to boost metabolism and provide energy. Key components include carbonated filtered water, citric acid, taurine, guarana seed extract, green tea extract, caffeine, and various vitamins and minerals like B vitamins, vitamin C, and chromium. They are also formulated without sugar, high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, or artificial colors or flavors. 

And then came this caveat: while Celsius is pitched as a healthy alternative to traditional sugary energy drinks, some individuals may have bad effects from the caffeine and other stimulants, especially if you swig too much Celsius or are sensitive to stimulants.

Looking at what's in the can, ok, carbonated water is my drink, and what is Taurine? Doesn't sound tasty, or salubrious, or even healthy.  Sure, every adult needs a certain amt. of guarana seed extract...and then get this part...CHROMIUM! 

Like hello? You're gonna look like the front bumper of a 1957 Plymouth? Chromium? In my drink? 

I'm gonna say no, thanks. I am not cool enough for Celsius.

Sunday Rerun: It's The Berries

 I am always in search of superlatives. Tell me something or someone is the best or the tallest or the tastiest, and I'm right there with you, wanting to know more. 

And if Casey Stengel, a man who once doffed his cap at home plate to allow a bird to fly away off his head, says someone is the strangest man ever to play baseball, that man automatically enters my Hall of Heroes.

Stengel said that about Moe Berg, the polymath who played a almost a decade and a half in the major leagues, but never took it too seriously.  What the backup catcher took seriously was learning, and he did that in 12 languages, reading books and newspapers by the ton.  

I can hardly imagine how happy he would be to be alive today, what with the internet serving a torrent of information with the stroke of a few keys! Plus, he would be 123 years of age, so he'd have that going for him.

But today I don't want to write about his baseball exploits, or how he went on a tour of Japan in the 1930s to spread the love of baseball worldwide and wound up taking home movies of Japanese defense plants and munitions storage that wound up being used by US spy agencies in World War II, or that he parachuted into Yugoslavia as a spy, or that he did not speak to his brother, Dr Sam Berg M.D. for over 30 years, or that Moe trained as a lawyer and worked for several of the big firms in New York during baseball offseasons, but gave up the practice of law because he found it boring.

No, I want to give gardening advice, because one of my favorite stories in one of the books I've read about Moe, and there have been a few, came from The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg, written by Nicholas Dawidoff and published by Pantheon Books in 1994.

 And in that book we learn that Moe's sister Ethel, who was a kindergarten teacher for many years and served as a trainer for new teachers, had the habit of roller skating through the halls of her school. And that she raised raspberries in her home garden, raspberries so tasty that she would regularly trade a quart of them for a meal at New York's finest restaurants, where the pastry chefs used them for their finest pies and tarts.

And that the secret to her great raspberries was that she lived a block away from a mounted police stable.