Random Thoughts while waiting for the ice storm...
...I'm sitting here listening online to the late, great Jean Shepherd
, whose late-night radio show kept me and millions of others up late! The show I'm hearing is from November 23, 1971, and he discusses a trip to the Grand Ole Opry, where country music lovers can still hear the amazing singer Jean Shepard (no relation). At this time of the year, people like to watch the movie A Christmas Story, based on Shep's stories about the holidays and that coveted Red Ryder b-b rifle, but the body of his work, spoken and written, goes far beyond that mo'on pitcha. Check it out on podcast: http://shepcast.blogspot.com/ ...Just yesterday, Peggy and I asked a dear friend if her son and his lovely girlfriend had made any wedding plans. As of 2 PM, the answer was no, but we got a heartwarming late-night bulletin via magical email - and congratulations to Chris and Molly -they are engaged! As a man who has been happily married for 34 years, all I can say is, marriage is the BEST thing to ever happen to me, and I wish nothing but love and joy for those two happy kids!.. Today's weather forecast is calling for what "they" call a "mixed bag." Snow, sleet, freezing rain, rain, and marshmallows are all supposed to be, well, raining down on us tonight and tomorrow. Back in March, we had a surprise snowstorm around St. Patrick's Day, to the sorrow of bar and tavern owners all over town, and within a couple of weeks after shoveling snow and ice, I was right back out there moving the lawn. Here it is December, and today I spent time blowing, mulching and bagging the last of the autumn leaves so they won't be encased in ice tonight like one of those prehistoric bugs in amber...What a surprise dep't: How about those gasoline prices going way up high just before Thanksgiving? And then coming down? And don't you want to bet they'll go up again in time for Christmas? Seems to me the oil companies were disappointed this summer when the forecasts for several major hurricanes failed to come true - disappointed because oil companies love natural disasters such as Katrina, because disasters enable them to raise the price of oil to hitherto-unprecedented levels. I get the feeling that this summer, they said, "Oh the hell with it; let's just raise the prices because we can...and because the president 
is a bible-thumping oil baron (I stole that one from Zippy the Pinhead, and it remains my favorite sobriquet for the Current Occupant), who's going to stop us?" I hear people complaining all the time about the high price of gasoline, yet not a word from "W"...Add two more items to the list of foods I like that most others shun...egg nog and fruitcake. I guess most people will sip some egg nog to be sociable at the holidays - it is the most popular nog of them all - but fruitcake has more cheap jokes being hurled at it than the cast of "Dancing With The Stars'' and I wonder why. This rich, moist hunk of heaven with nuts and fake fruit is one of the reasons I wish December started in September and lasted until August. If you receive a fruit cake for Christmas and do not wish to consume it, just let me know and I'll come 'round and pick it up and give it a good home...Christmas shopping is fun and I love the whole spirit of the malls and the Avenues and the specialty shops. All except for the big electronics stores like Best Buy, because going in there constitutes an assault on the senses. But I'm going to give a shout-out to the WalMart in Towson, because two different clerks in two different areas of that store went well out of their way to help me find just the right items last Saturday night. I know it's tough, working retail, and I know the hours are horrible and the pay is not great and the patience it takes to deal with some of the customers suffering from rectal-cranial inversion while shopping is incalculable. Beyond saying thanks to the young lady who helped me get ready to celebrate the holiest day of our faith by finding a video that features mayhem and disorder of the type usually seen only on a city bus, I find that most stores, if you go to their website, have a comments section where one can express their gratitude. If you have something good to say about a person, why in the world would you keep it to yourself?...Congratulations to Officer Doran, who used to work with me and recently transferred to the county Police Dept. He just graduated from the Academy on Thursday evening, and starts his patrol career on Monday - working the same precinct as his sister, who also left my workgroup to become a police, and has had a sterling career for four years there. I don't think I would have made a good police officer, lacking patience as I do. But having worked at 911 for a long time, I have a lot of friends who are police, and it's often a thankless job. David Spade says, when you watch "COPS" on FOX TV, notice how many shirtless people gripping cans of beer in the living rooms of their poorly-appointed homes are not surprised to see a police officer in their living rooms. People ought to behave, simply stated. But they don't: hence the need for police. If you don't speed when you drive, if you don't make it a habit to rob convenience stores or shoplift from large electronic stores - no matter how troublesome their throbbing aural and visual assault - the chances are, you won't come in much contact with the police...What's your favorite Christmas song? I vote for Bing Crosby's "Do You Hear What I Hear?," but whoever wrote that Christmas Shoes song should have to listen to it over and over and over and over.
, whose late-night radio show kept me and millions of others up late! The show I'm hearing is from November 23, 1971, and he discusses a trip to the Grand Ole Opry, where country music lovers can still hear the amazing singer Jean Shepard (no relation). At this time of the year, people like to watch the movie A Christmas Story, based on Shep's stories about the holidays and that coveted Red Ryder b-b rifle, but the body of his work, spoken and written, goes far beyond that mo'on pitcha. Check it out on podcast: http://shepcast.blogspot.com/ ...Just yesterday, Peggy and I asked a dear friend if her son and his lovely girlfriend had made any wedding plans. As of 2 PM, the answer was no, but we got a heartwarming late-night bulletin via magical email - and congratulations to Chris and Molly -they are engaged! As a man who has been happily married for 34 years, all I can say is, marriage is the BEST thing to ever happen to me, and I wish nothing but love and joy for those two happy kids!.. Today's weather forecast is calling for what "they" call a "mixed bag." Snow, sleet, freezing rain, rain, and marshmallows are all supposed to be, well, raining down on us tonight and tomorrow. Back in March, we had a surprise snowstorm around St. Patrick's Day, to the sorrow of bar and tavern owners all over town, and within a couple of weeks after shoveling snow and ice, I was right back out there moving the lawn. Here it is December, and today I spent time blowing, mulching and bagging the last of the autumn leaves so they won't be encased in ice tonight like one of those prehistoric bugs in amber...What a surprise dep't: How about those gasoline prices going way up high just before Thanksgiving? And then coming down? And don't you want to bet they'll go up again in time for Christmas? Seems to me the oil companies were disappointed this summer when the forecasts for several major hurricanes failed to come true - disappointed because oil companies love natural disasters such as Katrina, because disasters enable them to raise the price of oil to hitherto-unprecedented levels. I get the feeling that this summer, they said, "Oh the hell with it; let's just raise the prices because we can...and because the president 
is a bible-thumping oil baron (I stole that one from Zippy the Pinhead, and it remains my favorite sobriquet for the Current Occupant), who's going to stop us?" I hear people complaining all the time about the high price of gasoline, yet not a word from "W"...Add two more items to the list of foods I like that most others shun...egg nog and fruitcake. I guess most people will sip some egg nog to be sociable at the holidays - it is the most popular nog of them all - but fruitcake has more cheap jokes being hurled at it than the cast of "Dancing With The Stars'' and I wonder why. This rich, moist hunk of heaven with nuts and fake fruit is one of the reasons I wish December started in September and lasted until August. If you receive a fruit cake for Christmas and do not wish to consume it, just let me know and I'll come 'round and pick it up and give it a good home...Christmas shopping is fun and I love the whole spirit of the malls and the Avenues and the specialty shops. All except for the big electronics stores like Best Buy, because going in there constitutes an assault on the senses. But I'm going to give a shout-out to the WalMart in Towson, because two different clerks in two different areas of that store went well out of their way to help me find just the right items last Saturday night. I know it's tough, working retail, and I know the hours are horrible and the pay is not great and the patience it takes to deal with some of the customers suffering from rectal-cranial inversion while shopping is incalculable. Beyond saying thanks to the young lady who helped me get ready to celebrate the holiest day of our faith by finding a video that features mayhem and disorder of the type usually seen only on a city bus, I find that most stores, if you go to their website, have a comments section where one can express their gratitude. If you have something good to say about a person, why in the world would you keep it to yourself?...Congratulations to Officer Doran, who used to work with me and recently transferred to the county Police Dept. He just graduated from the Academy on Thursday evening, and starts his patrol career on Monday - working the same precinct as his sister, who also left my workgroup to become a police, and has had a sterling career for four years there. I don't think I would have made a good police officer, lacking patience as I do. But having worked at 911 for a long time, I have a lot of friends who are police, and it's often a thankless job. David Spade says, when you watch "COPS" on FOX TV, notice how many shirtless people gripping cans of beer in the living rooms of their poorly-appointed homes are not surprised to see a police officer in their living rooms. People ought to behave, simply stated. But they don't: hence the need for police. If you don't speed when you drive, if you don't make it a habit to rob convenience stores or shoplift from large electronic stores - no matter how troublesome their throbbing aural and visual assault - the chances are, you won't come in much contact with the police...What's your favorite Christmas song? I vote for Bing Crosby's "Do You Hear What I Hear?," but whoever wrote that Christmas Shoes song should have to listen to it over and over and over and over.
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