Dr Fine, Dr Howard, Dr Fine

Since we try for the family audience (Addams, Lucchese, Kardashian) I'll try to keep this on the PG, but let's say that there are people who like to spice up their love lives by dressing in costumes. The call it Cosplay, from the days when the Dad would don a Coogi sweater and eat a Pudding Pop, but now, all sort of people wear all sorts of get-ups in the game of love.

And some of them like to dress up as doctors and nurses.

Yeah, that's not weird.

But there's a happy payoff over in the United Kingdom, where there is an entire company devoted to selling medical garb to those who like to strap on the scrubs. They call that company MedFetUK, and they recently got a call from the National Health Services, looking for scrubs, surgical masks and so on so as to equip REAL doctors and nurses in the fight against coronavirus.

“Today we donated our entire stock of disposable scrubs to an NHS hospital. It was just a few sets, because we don’t carry large stocks, but they were desperate, so we sent them free of charge. We don’t usually do politics on Twitter, but here’s a short thread,” said a tweet from the "let's play doctor" group.

Mind you, they went on tweeting, placing the blame for the government's lack of supplies as the coronavirus swept the Isles squarely on...the government.  They said the NHS is "barely able to cope under normal circumstances, much less when faced with the onslaught of a global pandemic. It did not, and should not, have to be this way."

As of this writing, some 20,000 British people - up to and including their Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, have tested positive for coronavirus. 1,228 souls have been lost to the present plague in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

MedFetUK also pointed out that British health officials claimed to have all the supplies they need to face the pandemic, but by reaching out to a kinky costume purveyor, they sort of showed that that was not the case at all.

In Great Britain, as in the US and all over the world, there are going to be years and years of what's called "analysis" of the preparedness for this pandemic, and we all know that it's one thing to be prepared for the normal catastrophe, but when something like this sweeps across the world, a tsunami of suffering and death, there's really no way to have enough stocked up.

The real test is how we process the tasks ahead. We can cooperate, asking off-base sites like this for help (which, in this case, was swiftly given) or we can blame our predecessors, refuse to take responsibility, and act in a jejune manner.

I like the way they do things in Great Britain. And the next time I go in for surgery (the doc said he might need to remove my thesaurus), I am going to ask, "Where'dja get those scrubs?"

Lion around

With the world on lockdown or isolation or quarantine ("corn teen," in Baltimore parlance), we keep hearing animal stories from all over. 

SUCH AS stories of monkeys, usually fed by doting tourists who are no longer touring, running amok on foreign streets, and deer roaming untrammeled in Japan, and antelope playing at home on the range...

AND THEN...in Santiago, the capital of Chile, a wild cougar paraded around the streets for 15 hours.

The streets were empty due to coronavirus curfew.

This was last week. It didn't take long for animal control officials to determine that the cougar had come in from the woods, and was not an escapee from the Metropolitan Zoo, although it's hard to figure how that made much difference in the plan to round him up.

Chilean police and their Agricultural and Livestock Service got help from the zoo though. Specialists told them how to track the big cat as it wandered through neighborhood after neighborhood.

This mountain lion is believed to have left his usual home in the Andes mountains in search of whatever mountain lions are after. Whatever that was, the puma was still looking for it, and after a 15-hour jaunt through Santiago, tranquilizer darts did their job.  The cat was taken to the zoo for rehab and a good meal and will be taken back to the mountains, where he will have quite a story to tell the rest of the pride.

"Man oh man!" (I can hear him now!) "They have these hamburger joints and chicken box carryouts and seafood houses and everyone drives cars and looks at their cell phone all day! There were hardly any of them out on the street, but I think I scared a couple of 'em!"

Bring him to Baltimore! Let's see how tough he really is.

Sunday Rerun (from 2017): Double Whopper

Pictured here is the Burger King restaurant in Denville, New Jersey, where they really take that "Have It Your Way" slogan to heart - day after day.

According to WABC TV, on a recent Friday night, Denville police responded to the Home Of The Whopper for a report of a woman in labor, birth imminent. The parents had been going to the hospital via private auto, but ran into heavy traffic, and, lacking red lights and a siren, drove into the drive-in. Traffic jams in New Jersey are usually the result of shenanigans involving the popular governor of the state, Chris ("Chris") Christie, but we don't know about this one.


At any rate, "It happened so fast," Denville police Detective Scott Tobin told the TV station. That is exactly what the turtle said when he reported being assaulted by a snail, you know.

"We had to take action, and thank God everything worked out great," Det. Tobin also said.

"This baby did not want to wait, though, so we got there and she was actively in labor," firefighter/EMT Shannon Covert said. "Ready to push, and within minutes, the baby came out."

So between the police and the fire department and the father, who probably just ran laps around the parking lot all the while, a healthy son named Ryan became the newest, shiniest New Jerseyite.

"It was a little surreal," Covert said. "I had to actually sit down and think, like, wow that just happened. Because it doesn't happen every day here. It's something that a lot of people in this department have never experienced."

And then...

Everyone in town was still talking about little Ryan the next evening when ANOTHER woman enroute to the hospital pulled into BK because she was PG and her BP was sky-hi and she was ready to deliver.

And the same police got the call to respond! It must have felt like that "Groundhog Day" movie. But there they were, following Friday's labors (!) with a Saturday delivery, right in the parents' vehicle.

This time, the expectant mom was going through severe contractions, with the cord wrapped around the neck and the body, so, "We had to take a little more action to make sure everything was OK," Tobin said. "Thank God everything worked out great."

And the Saturday night special at that Burger King was a little guy name of Braydon.

"This is something that we don't get called to do too often," Denville police Chief Christopher Wagner says. "But they did a banner job on it and were truly heroic in the birth of two healthy baby boys."

That Sunday evening, you can be sure that people kept an eye on that BK parking lot...but nothing. 

The Saturday Picture Show, March 28, 2020

I sift through a lot of pictures to assemble a packet of 8 for every Saturday, but I guess the last time a photograph puzzled me this much was the one showing a pizzeria that closed for lack of business. I guess this means the Devil had an auction in 1867, but beyond that, I don't know what in Hell is going on here.

No Tokyo Olympics this year and the picture tells you why.

The latest construction material for a whimsical deck for your house is called Ostrich Wood.

To be this good at Origami, one need not be Koi.

Thousands of Americans all over the world are stuck in place because of the COVID-19, and for that matter, people from all the world are stuck in America, unable to get home for the same reason. In Nepal, one restaurant is setting a great example, and I'm sure there are eateries here being generous as well.

This is a contemporary photo, but with the light dim and certain filters applied, it sure looks like a street scene from the 19th Century, doesn't it? I mean, as we assume things looked in the 19th Century. None of us were around then.

Here's an interesting flower - it's called the Night Sky Petunia.

I mean, when the pandemic is over, and it will be, the first movie this theater shows will have to be "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," right?  OK. It's over. Go home. Oh wait. You are at home. Good! Stay there!

Bye Bye

Down in Baltimore City (we live in the County, totally separate jurisdiction) they had a mayor, Catherine Pugh, as crooked as dog's hind leg.  She had a racket where she wrote some dumb "Healthy Holly" books and sold them for exorbitant sums, purportedly for distribution to school-age kids in town.  But she sold them to various people and what's more, she failed to produce books that she had sold in bulk, and double-sold others, and then failed to pay taxes on all these ill-gotten gains.

Be honest about it, I thought she lost her mind in all this. When the house of cards came tumbling down around her, she appeared in her office speaking on television in a soporific monotone, and rather than make some attempt at justifying her behavior ("You see, it happened like this...") she unveiled her new line of “Healthy Holly” brand baby clothes and accessories, i.e. bibs, clothing and a baby blanket.

When the scheme fell apart, Pugh resigned the mayoralty and pleaded guilty at her trial in February to conspiracy and tax evasion. She raked in more than $850,000.

So here comes the interesting part. This woman, who seemed so prim and proper and intent on leading the city back from the ruins of the 2015 riots, was sentenced to three years in the Ironbar Hilton, and was told to report for her striped suit on April 13.

And then in the period between when she was sentenced to prison and the time she was to show up, she wrote to the judge and asked for a two-week delay in reporting.

Why?

Her legal wiz, Andrew White, said the extension was to allow herhonor “to remain at her house until her niece, who lives with her at the residence, has completed the current school semester at the University of Maryland Law School.”

And White said that Assistant U.S. Attorney Marty Clarke, who prosecuted Pugh, was ok with this.

So, “in light of the government’s lack of opposition," U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow approved the request.

Pugh is 69. Her mouthpieces said that they only expect her to serve but a bit of her bid, due to recent legislation aimed at cutting down the number of nonviolent, old offenders in federal prisons.

That's fine for her. Shift around the prison term to suit her needs. I just know that if I were convicted of some felony - a pyramid scheme involving the Sphinx, or money laundering with Tide Pods - a team of no fewer than six beefy deputies would have me manacled and shackled by the time the judge cracked down the gavel the second time, dragging me off to some dank cell in the Seventh Circle of Hell as waiting friends and family members sobbed and waved soggy handkerchiefs.  And don't forget the scene where I snarl, "I'll get you for this, you dirty rat!" to some passerby who had nothing to do with any of my sins.

That's how it goes when you're a nobody. Catherine Pugh was somebody, so she can report to serve her stretch when her social calendar is cleaned up.

Prison Love

I'm not the first to point this out, but did you ever wonder why so many assassins go by three names?  Lee Harvey Oswald (John Kennedy's murderer), James Earl Ray (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King), and John Wilkes Booth (Abraham Lincoln), and the list goes on with vermin such as Mark David Chapman, who gunned down John Lennon, and this trio of serial killers...Gary Leon Ridgway, John Wayne Gacy, and Paul John Knowles.

And let's not leave out Jared Lee Loughner, who shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people while doing so. He and his names reside at the Federal Correction Center in Rochester, Minnesota for the next long, long time.

It's even become a weird sort of joke, as in the way The Drew Carey Show on TV had a character named Oswald Lee Harvey, played by Diedrich Bader, so beloved in "Office Space" as Lawrence, whose middle and last names were never revealed (but I'm fairly certain he went by all three).

"Effin-A, man!"

That brings me around to mentioning one of the worst people ever to make the Baltimore-Washington -Virginia landscape bleak, Lee Boyd Malvo. At 17, in the company of three-named John Allen Muhammad, LBM went on a killing spree, leaving 10 dead and three wounded.

Malvo, who makes his home in the fabulous Red Onion State Prison in southwest Virginia, is a newly wed man!

A friend named Carmeta Albarus told the Washington POST that Malvo tied the knot last week.

“Over the past 17 years, he has grown despite his conditions of confinement,” she told the paper. “He has grown into an adult and has found love with a wonderful young lady. ... It was a beautiful ceremony.”

She declined to identify the bride, leaving us to wonder how many names she goes by.

Malvo's future is cloudy. Once sentenced to life with parole, he benefited from new legislation in Virginia giving those who committed crimes under the age of 18 the right to seek parole after serving 20 years. That means he would be eligible for that long-postponed honeymoon in 2024.

Except that he was sentenced to life in prison in Maryland.

I don't mean to make sport of this young man, who seemed to fall under some mesmerizing spell from his older colleague Muhammad. Still and all, he committed the offenses, he killed people, and while he might be entitled to fall in love and be married, I think he should enjoy his new status from within prison walls.

The wedding was not covered in the POST "Style" section, but the paper did report that "rules in Virginia state prisons strictly regulate inmate weddings. Witnesses and guests are restricted to a maximum of six, and any refreshments served must be obtained from the prison vending machines. Also, according to the regulations, a wedding 'shall not result in the granting of any special privileges for the consummation of the marriage following the ceremony or thereafter.' "

So, there's that. A couple of Frescas and a bag of Doritos and no hookup. Good.

And now, the end is nearer

I'm not ashamed to admit that I am much closer to 70 years of age than to 21 (when I really knew everything), but some people in my age group, let's say it's been a while since they knew anything. Or at least acted like they do.

Case #1 - Dan Patrick. That's just his fake name. He was born here in Baltimore as Dannie Scott Goeb, and served in the noble trade I once plied, as a radio DJ at a country music station here in town just months before I arrived.  It was there that he began using the Dan Patrick pseudonym, probably before Daniel Patrick Pugh left Ohio and began calling himself Dan Patrick and becoming a famous sportscaster. The Dan Patrick who worked at WISZ before me was a big favorite with the office staff down there. The ladies in the office used to tell me all about how wonderful he was. They were in their 50s and 60s then, and I wonder if they would still think he was such a great guy if they knew that in 2020, he would think that people our age ought to step off the stage of life and let the economy recover.

Here's what Dan, who parlayed an unsuccessful stint of running sports bars and righty radio talk shows into his current gig as the lieutenant governor of Texas, said the other night on that Foxxxxxx news station:

“My message is that let’s get back to work (sic). Let’s get back to living. Let’s be smart about it,” Patrick told Tucker Carlson. “And those of us who are 70 plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country.  Do we have to shut down the entire country for this? I think we can get back to work."

Dan Patrick seemed to be suggesting that we should go back to work in the middle of this coronavirus pandemic. To heck with the consequences. He mentioned that “grandparents”  - we wheezy old baby boomers at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 -- should walk the plank for the benefit of the national economy.

Patrick and Governor Greg Abbott are resisting calls to have Texans stay home to flatten the curve, the procedure we hear will help stem the virus.  Yeah, what the heck, let's all go to work and stop off at Dairy Queen and go to a ballgame. How could that hurt?

Rep. Donna Howard of Austin used to be a nurse, and she wonders about this idea of old folks falling on their swords.

“The idea that the only option is for us to sacrifice ourselves is really incredulous to me,” said Howard, herself a grandmother. “I mean, there are definitely other routes we can take that make much more sense.”

He seems quite sincere.

But Patrick, grandfather to six, told Focks News, “No one reached out to me and said, ‘as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in. That doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me."

God, I hope not. Oh, I mean, "how noble."

Then comes Case #2. An unidentified man who retired to sunbaked Arizona with his wife is dead today, having ingested chloroquine phosphate.  He believed it would protect him from the coronavirus. His wife took some too, but she survived (but is in critical care).

The man's wife told NBC  they had seen on the news that President Trump thought chloroquine was a good therapy for the virus, even though no testing has been done to support that notion.

However, they did not take the medication form of chloroquine. The woman used to keep koi fish, and had liquid chloroquine around from her days of adding it to the fish water to kill parasites.

"I saw it sitting on the back shelf and thought, 'Hey, isn't that the stuff they're talking about on TV?'" she told NBC. "We were afraid of getting sick."

So, they mixed the chloroquine with some unspecified liquid, and drank it, and shortly thereafter, the man was dead and the woman quite ill.

Friends and neighbors, we are all going to go to that great big diner in the sky someday.  For some of us, that day might come soon. But there is no need to volunteer to go so that WalMart can stay open and sell more Wals, and no valid reason to guzzle ersatz medications because a former real estate mogul said it sounded like a good idea to him.

Curses foiled again

Once all this coronavirus commotion comes to an end, our nation's lawmakers will be back to business soon, and down in Virginia, a bill awaits the signature of Gov. Ralph Northam which will make "profane swearing" illegal in that state.

Until his pen meets that paper, you toss an effer down there, and they can hit you with a fine of up to $250.

The hell you say!

The law has been on the books in the Commonwealth since 1792. Back then the fine was 83 cents. It's interesting to me that the law does not specify just which words are too profane to be uttered in the surf at Virginia Beach or in the tobacco fields outside Richmond or at the Patsy Cline Museum in Winchester.  I'll be damned.

Republican Delegate Michael Webert has sponsored the bill many times over the years, and this was the year it made it through the legislature. Webert is a cattle farmer from Fauquier County, and he points out, "When you're working with cows and a 1,400-pound animal doesn't do what you want it to, or steps on your feet, every once in a while something colorful comes out of your mouth."

Gov. Northam's spokesperson, Alena Yarmosky, told NPR that the governor will likely sign the bill. She adds, "It's past time we swore off the antiquated policies of the past."

Del. Webert finds bipartisan agreement about the bill; he says some Democrats agree with him that the current law violates the right to free speech, and is unconstitutional.

"We don't necessarily see everything eye to eye, but on certain issues like this, when you have somebody that feels the same way in regards to first amendment rights... that makes it much easier to get things through."

On the other hand, two Democratic and five Republican senators voted to defeat the bill. Both the support and the opposition to the bill were bipartisan.

Dang it all!

Warning!

People ask me all the time, "You write about everything under the sun from Darwin's pet turtle to Jack Kerouac, so when are you going to write about the COVID-19 that's going around?"

I guess I have to now, now that Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and I have both about reached our boiling point about how people are disregarding requests and lawful orders about social distancing rules.  Hizzoner went on "Meet The Press" and pressed the point that people are "kidding themselves" by acting like this's a big old spring break or that life is going on just like two weeks ago.

News flash: It ain't. Business as usual is now "No more business as usual."

The gov told Chuck Todd, moderator of "MTP," that social distancing - staying home unless absolutely necessary, and staying six feet away from everyone else on needed forays into the agora - is not being followed, and cited the crowds crowding the Tidal Basin area in DC, all cherry pink in springlike buds, as a prime example.

"We're all taking actions and trying to work together, but yeah, the social distancing is not being enforced and it's a little crazy to see the kind of crowds at the cherry blossoms," Hogan said. "I mean, people have to listen. Those people that are out there, you are endangering not only yourselves but your fellow citizens by not listening to these warnings."

This COVID-19 is a mean respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, and we need to take it more seriously - all of us. As of yesterday, there were 244 confirmed cases in Maryland, and as they say in both the worlds of statistics and pyrotechnics, that's going to skyrocket soon.

"This no longer is just about older people," Hogan went on. "We had a 10-month-old, a 5-year-old who have gotten this disease. So people are kidding themselves if they think they should just go on spring break or enjoy being out there, just as business as normal. We've gotta get people off the streets and out of these crowds. It's absolutely essential."

Three of those 244 have proven to be fatal cases. I don't often agree with Hogan on much, but on this, he is proving to be a nationwide leader for his handling of the virus, and I am 100% in agreement. The fact is, we still see people having a dozen or so friends over for dinner, and failing to take precautions, and the reason they give is always some variation of "I'm young and healthy and this isn't going to get me."

Nuh uh. You may not get COVID-19, but you're not getting the point if you feel that way. By being exposed, you could  - without ever becoming ill yourself - carry the cootie to your workplace, to your parents or grandparents or anyone susceptible.

So let's stop congregating and do what the man asks already, please!

Sunday Rerun: If Only

I think we talked about this list before, written by a palliative care nurse named Bronnie Ware. It's a list of the top 5 regrets of the dying, and I would imagine there are dozens and dozens of things that people just about to shuffle off to Buffalo are sorry about or wish they had done differently.

But among the list (I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me, I wish I hadn’t worked so hard, I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings, I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends, and I wish that I had let myself be happier) I find myself torn between the last two as being most important.

Guess whose face is on the
$10,000 bill?

I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends says a lot to those of us who have been out of school since the schools actually cared if you spelled things correctly, or knew who Salmon P. Chase was. I have to admit, this social media thing might just catch on yet, finally giving us the chance to tweet some of the people we always wanted to tweet. Now listen, I know for sure that there are lots of people who don't care to see how old classmates are doing or whatever happened to that young couple who rented the apartment down the hall when they were just starting out or what happened to the guy who got that promotion they wanted so much, which is why they left the firm and found a new job elsewhere.

If I'm dispensing free advice to the young, as I am wont to do in my dotage, it would be to repeat the old adage about making new friends and keeping the old - one is silver and the other, gold. Staying in touch with the people you really like will be a benefit to you when you're up there in age, and being able to look back with someone who had always been there with you is so much more rewarding than discussing it with the kid who just topped off your crankcase at JiffyLube.

Plus, the practical part of it is, at least in an area like this Baltimore metro, is that if you know somebody, they must know someone who knows someone who can get you out of jury duty. Old friends. Worth it.

I wish that I had let myself be happier. I want to assure all of you who put happiness aside to concentrate on earning more money, having the best lawn on the cul-de-sac, or figuring out why in hell people say "cul-de-sac" when it's a court...all that doesn't matter. You sit and worry about that funny noise the Kelvinator keeps making, or whether your in-laws are going to show up and hang around for a month, or that funny noise that your spouse keeps making, and worry gets you nowhere. The Kelvinator will break down someday and you'll be told by a guy with Norge pants that it needs a whole new pfisteris. Your inlaws will show up, lay claim to your room, monopolize the television and screw up the remote, and you can't do anything about it but get them an afghan so they can snuggle while watching Matlock.  And that funny noise from the spouse is them clearing their throat, reminding you to knock off the worrying.

Besides, one of your old friends probably has an appliance repair business! Call him and have that icebox fixed for cheap.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 21, 2020

Major League Baseball will not start until mid-May, the earliest, they say. And for those who can't wait to see the patterns on the outfield grass at stadiums across America, here's a way to vacuum the living room and make it look like a ballpark.

War of Will won last year's Preakness here in Baltimore at Pimlico. Wherever he is now, he will get to wear his crown a while longer; the race is being moved from the traditional May to September this year because of the coronavirus.

Remember when they came out with vintage Nikes?  I had a pair of Cortez in 1982 when this type of shoe was still fairly new. People used to think I was wearing bowling shoes to the park. How silly! I wore bowling shoes to church!

And this picture shows up every year at this time- the intersection of winter & spring. Spring always wins.

The streets of Dublin were quite quiet this year on St Patrick's Day.

I would love to see this sort of thing everywhere. It's the very definition of America pulling together in a time of crisis.

It's still March, and who knows when we'll be back in our normal lives. I hope people don't have to miss graduations, proms, class trips, and the stuff we always associate with spring leading to summer. This woman was due to be graduated but it was called off due to you-know-what. She dressed appropriately for receiving her sheepskin, but having it handed to her by the registrar wasn't the ceremony she had in mind all these years.

Proving once again that animals are smarter than we, cats are here to demonstrate social distancing.

Bleed and blend

When I was a kid, we were doing some sort of school project about Clothes From Other Lands, and my father's uncle up in Philadelphia, a shirtmaker by trade, sent me a box of fabrics From Other Lands.


And in that box, among the denims (French fabric named for the city of Nîmes where it was produced, called “sergé de Nîmes”), cottons, and corduroys, I found a swatch of madras, from India.

Greatuncle Charles explained in a note that Madras was named for the city in India from whence it came. That city is now known as Chennai.

But the fascinating thing about madras back then was that it was a sort of rough, but lightweight, cotton material, and it was dyed with vegetable dye and sesame oil.

And here's the irony  - it was regarded in India as the clothing of the lower classes, people who couldn't afford the finer clothiers. It was regarded as work wear for the working class.  But in America, preppy guys 'n' gals who had been to Bermuda came home with pants and shorts and shirts and sports jackets and I don't know what-all else, and madras was huge here in the early 60s. People were mad about plaid. It all went well with the advent of what we call "go to hell pants" - loud plaids, madras, and vibrant reds - crimson, rusty, scarlet, vermilion,  greens - teal, pine, mint, and yellows  - canary, goldenrod, lemon chiffon - sometimes with tiny nautical symbols, or crabs, or lacrosse sticks - and we wear them proudly, and those who don't care for them can just go to h-e-double toothpicks.

And here's another angle on the madras story. Brooks Brothers was among the first to sell the clothing here, but for reasons best known to the Brooks Brothers, their early customers were not told about the "bleeding" part of bleeding madras.  Back in those days, those inexpensive dyes would run and fade all other the place when washed in hot water. Brooks Bros were supposed to tell people to use cold water only, but they didn't, and they faced a lot of angry customers...

until a wise ad man named David Ogilvy entered the picture. He was smart enough to know that, rather than deal with complaints about all the blurry runny shirts, it would be better to tell customers that that was what was SUPPOSED to happen with madras. He made "guaranteed to bleed" a household expression, at least in the laundry room. And that turned a defect into an advantage!

He wrote this for the catalog:

Authentic Indian Madras is completely handwoven from yarns dyed with native vegetable colorings. Home-spun by native weavers, no two plaids are exactly the same. When washed with mild soap in warm water, they are guaranteed to bleed and blend together into distinctively muted and subdued colorings.

So just like a comfortable a pair of khakis or that old "US Olympic Bongo Team" sweatshirt from the beach in the early 60s, madras gets to be soft and faded and eternally comfy.

Or, it used to. They use colorfast dyes now.  But still.

Look up!

There used to be a show on the public radio called The Dinner Party Show. It came on Saturdays around 4 PM or so, just ahead of the weekend edition of the news and the Prairie Home Companion.

The point of the show was to put us in the mood to attend the salons and high-tone gatherings that awaited us on Saturday evenings, and as we looked around for our cummerbunds and shirt studs, the Dinner Party Show imparted information and factoid tidbits that we could sprinkle into the conversation that evening. 

I mean, rather than everyone sitting around the living room whinging about the prices of things, it's always better to be able to tell people that Charles Darwin had a pet who died in 2006.  Darwin, the naturalist from whose teachings came the wonderful world of evolution, died in 1882, but he brought back a turtle named Harriet from the Galapagos Islands, and that pet lived until 2006.

Drop that into the dinner conversation and everyone will go home and Google it!

I bring this up so that in case you are having company (ten guests or fewer, six feet apart please) for equinox tonight, you can let them all know that this will be the earliest arrival of Spring since 1896.

CBS News points out that, while the Spring equinox usually occurs on March 20th or 21st, "complicated reasons for 2020's earlier equinox involve leap years, centuries and the length of time it takes Earth to revolve around the sun."

If you want to set your watch by it, the equinox will occur at 11:50 PM EDT tonight. That is when the Sun's rays will shine directly on the equator.

With the axis of Earth not tilted toward or away from the Sun today, that gives us exactly 12 hours of daylight, and 12 hours of darkness. This also happens in September, when Autumn begins.

That's what equi-nox means: equal amounts of day and night (nox). And now, every day until the Summer solstice in June, there will be more and more daylight as we roast beneath the merciless Sun.

Some parts of nature are predictable. We know those facts about daytime and nighttime. Some parts of nature are unpredictable. We have no idea when the coronavirus will be controlled, or when schools will reopen.

Life is interesting. Enjoy it! But use sunscreen and sanitizer as you do.

Get in line

Last week, we saw America in a food fight unlike any since the days of Animal House, but only in rare cases did it turn violent.

Americans were storming from store to store in search of food and non-food items such as meat and milk and toilet paper, disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer.  It was crazy, almost like people were calling for a hurricane or blizzard, with the likelihood of being stuck at home for hours on end.

What started it was the coronavirus commotion, and a rumor that spread like wildfire on social media.

I think we can agree that it was a problem for the people at the top of the federal government not to take the virus seriously at first. Claiming that we would be down to zero cases in a matter of days, or that the warm weather in April would chase the virus out of town, delayed preparations and led to confusion on the part of citizens.

But that happens a lot these days, mixed messages from 1600 Pennsylvania Av. 

Some misguided joker started a rumor that we all needed to "stock up” on two weeks of supplies; it went around the internet faster than lightning. The rumor falsely claimed that a “mandatory” nationwide quarantine would soon go into effect because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unfortunately, the old expression is true: A lie can get around the world twice before the truth even gets its pants on.

Some versions had a text or instant message with a screenshot of a fake memo saying " within 48 to 72 Hours… The president will order a two week mandatory quarantine for the nation. Stock up on whatever you guys need to make sure you have a two week supply of everything. Please forward to your network.”

People who perpetrate this sort of fraud like to make it look all legitimate and everything, so various versions of the message attribute this falsehood to something apparently real: “military friends,” the “DC mayor,” and “a physician at the Clev. Clinic.”

The  National Security Council shot down the rumor with a tweet: "Text message rumors of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown.”

As usual, it didn't take long to read far enough to see a syntax error that indicates the person who came up with this legerdemain is not exactly an official official. Some versions of the fake mention the Stafford Act, a federal disaster relief law.  But instead of saying that the president would invoke the Stafford Act, the phony message said “within 48 to 72 Hours the president will evoke what is called the Stafford act.”

That sort of thing always evokes laughter from me. Stay healthy!

The Wearing Of Green

You're darn Tuten

Why does every story with the words "longtime", "Alabama," and "sheriff" wind up sounding like there's a movie coming up, with Matthew McConnaughey playing Sheriff Jim Bob?

Here's something from the Associated Press:

ATHENS, Ala. (AP) — Lawyers for a longtime Alabama sheriff seeking a delay in his theft trial wrongly claimed the officer was being tested for the illness caused by a new coronavirus.

With Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely set to go on trial on felony charges, his attorneys told a judge in a court document filed March 6 he was hospitalized and being tested for COVID-19.

But testimony during a rare Saturday hearing showed the 69-year-old Blakely wasn’t being tested for the illness, and Circuit Judge Pride Tompkins criticized the defense for making claims that could cause a public panic, The News Courier of Athens reported.

I don't like it if he lied to the court, but you gotta love that hat.

There's a bonus for you: the judge's name is Judge Pride Tompkins! Hot a'mighty!

And the judge said, "I don’t know what your tactic is, but it’s condemned by the court. And the court won’t tolerate it.”

The sheriff is being represented in court by attorney Robert Tuten, and with a straight face,  he told the judge that he simply made a mistake about the sheriff's health, and wasn’t “trying to pull a fast one.” The fact is that Blakely was in a hospital, complaining of a respiratory problem, but they brought a doctor to court who said no way was it COVID-19, and no testing was required.

Can't you just hear Tuten saying this: “There are apparently several different kinds of coronaviruses, but all we had to go on was what we knew at that moment”?  That's what he said.

That physician was Dr. Maria Onoya, who testified that Blakely was tested for several things, influenza and walking pneumonia among them, with all the results negative. She added that the sheriff had shown up at the ER three times.

Blakely, who has been the sheriff for 36 years, was indicted last year on multiple felony counts and one misdemeanor count, alleging that he stole campaign donations, got interest-free loans because of his job status, and solicited money from employees.

I have no idea if he's guilty or not, but this must have Hollywood screaming over who will produce the film. Hint: It won't be Harvey Weinstein.

Sunday Rerun: Oh Rochester!

Baseball used to be such a simple game, at least where the uniforms were concerned.

The home team wore white and the visitors wore grey, because that saved them on laundry fees on the road. Really!

But then along came the multi-hued uniforms and things changed.

Meanwhile, someone came up with a brilliant idea.

Seeing that fans would shell out the money for the official caps and jerseys that the players wore, the team owners figured out that if a fan already had the white jersey and the grey jersey, there would be nothing to stop them from purchasing the orange "alternate" jersey and the black "alternate" jersey and the jersey with the pink logo for Mother's Day and the camo logo for Memorial Day and before you knew it, your closet was bulging with jerseys.

And the bank accounts of the owners were also bulging with jersey money, so it's all good.

And down in the minor leagues, anything goes. They will don most any crazy hat or shirt to get attention, and now the Rochester Red Wings, former AAA farm club of the Baltimore Orioles (currently affiliated with the Minnesota Twins) have partnered with the Seneca Park Zoo to celebrate the Naked Mole Rat.

Yes, fans, Monday, July 16 is "Naked Mole Rat" night at the ballpark, as  part of their upcoming "Animals of the Savanna" Expansion coming in August.

The first 1,000 fans to mob the stadium will walk away that evening wearing Naked Mole Rat hats that show the little varmint curled around the side of the Red Wings "R".

The team will also be wearing the same caps, and they will be auctioned off to benefit the Seneca Park Zoo Society.

Besides just being so cuddly and adorable, there is a suspicion that Naked Mole Rats have in their genetic makeup extraordinary abilities to resist cancer and diseases related to old age.

And you have to figure, if there is anything more fetching than a baby NMR, it's an old one.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 14, 2020

This beautiful blue bird is not a bluebird; it's a grandala. The males are the bright blue ones. Their habitat is the northeastern Indian Subcontinent and the low-to-mid altitudes of the Himalayas. That's all I know about grandalas, but they sure are pretty!

For your Thanksgiving planning, here's the Canadian cranberry harvest looking fine!

This is a terrific hill on a street in San Francisco. I think the best way to travel it is by flying, like the birds do.

Next time you have some rice for dinner, think of how happy this fellow was to raise it for you.

I love those photorealistic paintings. The hours and the training that it must take to create this art! And in 1/64th of a second, you could take a photograph.

You don't have to be a great baseball fan to know who wore this legendary raiment. The Babe was Baltimore's gift to the world.

Sorry this is a day late. Yesterday was Friday the 13th, for the superstitious among us.

They really used to make hats to last back in the day. This was worn by an ill-fated passenger on the Titanic, and left behind, where it stayed preserved for decades.

It's a Schock

You might remember this fellow, Aaron Schock. Just a few years ago, people thought he was the Next Big Deal in Republican circles. Why,  he started buying real estate in high school, took a position on the local school board at 19, became an Illinois legislator at 23, and then took a seat in the U.S. Congress at just 27.

Along the way, he was famous among readers of Men’s Health magazine in 2011 after he posed to pictures showing his well-developed physique, and famous across the country among staunch fiscal conservatives for his eagle-eyed watch- dogging of government spending.

"Eagle-eyed watch-dogging" is the sort of metaphor-mixing that drove many a creative writing instructor to drink.

It goes without saying that he was also a staunch Republican, an opponent of marriage equality, the quaint notion that other people have every right to marry whomever they wish.

If you remember Aaron Schock for anything, it would probably be for the jackpot he found himself in for spending a king's ransom on taxpayer-paid office renovations, as he apparently attempted to have his Capital Hill workplace look like the main shack on "Downton Abbey." His spending on interior deco and lavish air travel ended up costing him his career as a politician; he was out on his asterisk in 2015, awash in a sea of indictments.

And then...last year his extremely religious family saw pictures of him attending that Coachella hippiefest out in California. After that, he was on the way to his family home to come out to his parents, and his mom called him to say don't bother coming home.

He was banned from Easter dinner.

So he came out publicly, which was probably not an easy thing to do, and said that his opposition to gay marriage was just an effort to align himself with the stance of 2008 presidential nominee John McCain.

“That fact doesn’t make my then position any less wrong, but it’s sometimes easy to forget that it was leaders of both parties who for so long wrongly understood what it was to defend the right to marry,” Schock says now, adding that if he were back in office now, he “would support LGBTQ rights in every way.”

The only contact he has with family members now is when they write to him trying to interest him in this thing called conversion therapy, where they pray the gay away.

And the flashback?

“Aaron Schock's statement fails to acknowledge the years of hurt that his votes against hate crimes protections, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and more caused LGBTQ Americans,” GLAAD tweeted.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-NY, said that Schock “needs to own up to his misconduct in office & apologize to all who fought (over his opposition) to win him his new found rights," but added that he should be welcomed.

At the end of his post, Schock pays tribute for those who opened the world up for those who just wish to live as they see fit:

“I can live openly now as a gay man because of the extraordinary brave people who had the courage to fight for our rights when I did not,” he said.

I haven't learned all that much as I wander this earth, but one thing I know for sure: that thing that people deny so strenuously usually turns out to be the thing they really want.

Oh, and also that people can love as they wish, and adults should be free to consent to their own choices.

Taking arrest

A guy named Brendan McLoughlin became a New York City police officer, and somewhere along the line he met Miranda Lambert, the country singer who used to be married to that Blake Shelton guy.

Last month, McLoughlin retired from the cops and now works as a security guard for his wife, Miranda Lambert! How about that! Those crazy kids got married a year ago and now he's traded in his NYPD Blue for an official Miranda lanyard.

"His current duty status is retired," Sergeant Jessica McRorie, an NYPD Deputy Chief for Public Information Spokesperson, told Fox News.  He had been on a leave of absence since last summer.

Now, wherever she goes, and performs, he's more than just the guy holding her purse while she tries on frocks and more than the guy in the front row cheering and waving a tshirt with her picture on it.

She's on her "Wildcard" tour, and former officer McLoughlin is right there on the security team. And if you're lucky enough to be invited to a meet and greet for a grip and grin with Miranda, he's the guy who lets you into the inner sanctum. He checks the eddying mob backstage and looks through everyone's purses and bags before they meet their favorite singer.

"Brendan was the security guard right before you go in to meet Miranda for her meet and greet," some eyewitness told Foxxxxx News. "Other members of the security team told fans, 'No photos with Brendan.'"

Is there a demand for pictures of the star singer's husband?

And then, another eyewitness told F. News that McLoughlin was part of  Lambert's security team at her Dallas concert at the American Airlines Center. .

"Brendan was one of the security guys checking fans and when it was your turn it was actually Brendan asking if fans had anything they wanted Miranda to sign," said the witness. "Brendan was overheard telling one fan, 'Have her sign your boot!'"

The witnesses happily told Fox "Brendan wears a lanyard representing he's on Miranda's team and he even wears a little earpiece."

I guess he's got the whole Secret Service affect down...wire frame sunnies and furtive looks all over the crowd.

Miranda performed and Brendan did security duty for the 2020 Coors Light Birds Nest which, as we all know, took place during the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament in Phoenix, Ariz. in late January.

Say what you will about my disdain for golf, but you can't tell me a better name for a golf tournament than The Waste Management Tournament."

I guess he was smart to hold onto his regular police job while they went through that crucial first year of marriage, but I would have to wonder if he doesn't feel a bit...marginalized, going from respected community server to patting down people waiting to tell a singer that they have all her albums "and everything!"

We're in an epoch now in which we can all take turns feeling canalized, moved to a less important lane. I remember being in a little resort-town sandwich shop when a male and a female were working behind the counter making subs.  Apparently she had decided that he was going to take a less important role in the upcoming lunch rush, but, "You're not going to marginalize ME!" he inveighed.

And that was over a matter of who made the BLTs and who fried burger patties.

Whereas, this is a matter of hefting purses, looking for revolvers or other weapons.

Of course, he probably got a nice raise. I hope there's some job security, working security.

Born Every Minute

There is actually something worse to worry about than the coronavirus.  And that is that good old Swindlin' Jim Bakker, the horny televangelist, is trying to tell people that the silver potion he is hawking can cure the coronavirus.

And there's something even worse than that.

People are buying it! They're sending money to that charlatan as soon as they get home from BuySumMor with 137 bottles of Purell, cases of toilet paper, and 35-packs of water.

Bakker's latest endeavor is The Jim Bakker Show, and it's among seven companies sent warning letters by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for selling unapproved products and treatments.


"The FDA considers the sale and promotion of fraudulent COVID-19 products to be a threat to the public health. We have an aggressive surveillance program that routinely monitors online sources for health fraud products, especially during a significant public health issue such as this one," FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement.

Johns Hopkins University, where people who know what they're talking about work, reports that there are no vaccines or approved drugs to treat or prevent the coronavirus. COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, is responsible for  at least 24 deaths in the U.S. as of Monday. More than 3,800 have died around the world.

"There already is a high level of anxiety over the potential spread of coronavirus," FTC Chairman Joe Simons said in a statement. "What we don't need in this situation are companies preying on consumers by promoting products with fraudulent prevention and treatment claims. These warning letters are just the first step. We're prepared to take enforcement actions against companies that continue to market this type of scam."

Bakker is selling nostrums that he claims contain silver, such as "Silver Sol Liquid," and he says this stuff will diagnose or cure COVID-19. He admits that his product hasn't been tested on COVID-19, but he does allow that God sent it to us.

A proud moment, when Jim swapped his expensive suits for prison jumpsuits

Some of you were not around for the Bakker heyday. Although he claims to be a minister, he is not a graduate of any college or university that offers divinity degrees. Instead, he is an evangelist, which anyone can be. He started out in the 60s with Pat Robertson's network and formed his own in the 70s. By the 80s, when cable tv brought both Ozzie and Harriet reruns and godless men of God to our living rooms, Bakker was rolling in dough with his daily "PTL Club" show. We knew people who were sending him a couple of hundred bucks a month, and "Jim and Tammy" (his then-wife was the oddly-made-up Tammy Faye Bakker) became America's new religious icons, rolling in ill-gotten gains.  They even had an air-conditioned dog house, and the now-defunct Heritage USA, a Christian themed amusement park in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

It all ended in the most 80s way possible. A bosomy church secretary, Jessica Hahn, charged that he paid her hush money (sound familiar, Donald?) to keep their affair a secret. That led him to resign from the "ministry." And then Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy, after which  Judge Robert Daniel Potter sentenced Bakker to 45 years in federal prison and imposed a $500,000 fine.  He served 5.

Tammy Faye divorced him, and after laying low for a few years, he remarried and started a new hustle called the Jim Bakker Show, from the Morningside Church in Blue Eye, Missouri.

Besides "cures" for coronavirus, he also peddles survival food in "Bakker Buckets."  His "50-day Survival Food" sampler bucket contains 154 meals. He wants $135 for it, but when the world comes to an end and the Apocalypse is nigh, you'll be sitting pretty on your Bakker Bucket with freeze-dried dinners and your silver solution.

Stranger than...

So, a friend posted this on Instagram:

I feel like I'm in season 5 of my life and the writers are just making ridiculous (ish) happen to keep it interesting

On one level, it's sad but true. Anyone who has ever enjoyed a TV series for a long time looks back ruefully after the fifth or sixth year as the characters age and the situations on a situation comedy become much less comedic.  "Modern Family" is a great example of that; it's a show that rarely missed in its early days and now, as it limps across the finish line in its eleventh and final season, the laughs are just not there so much.

When you think about it, nothing is really funny after eleven years, except for seeing some pompous stuffed shift take a pratfall on the icy sidewalk outside a diner. That never fails.

Ask and I will tell it

<<<<<<< And my English hitchhiker joke.

Drama shows seem to do better as they age, but still, they can grow stale. One good thing that the "Law & Order" shows - the original, the SVU, the Criminal Intent, whatever  - do is, they change the cast every so often to keep things fresh, so with the exception of Mariska Hargitay and Ice T, you never know who will be around.

One of my favorite memories of the Diane Rehm radio show- which, by the way, was on for years and years until the host decided to give it up, and was still just as fresh the day it left as the day it began - was when Alan Alda said he didn't like fiction because, as he said, "You can tell they're just making it up as they go along."

I don't enjoy fiction for that reason, my reason being that there are 65 billion facts I have yet to learn, so why read something someone created, instead of real stuff? 

Take any of the stories in the news these days...a virus spreading, threatening to be a pandemic, a mom and her new husband (whose wife died under mysterious circumstances) can't explain where her children are, a long war is supposed to end with a truce that lasts two days, a Hollywood mogul goes to prison for crimes against women, a member of British royalty and his wife no longer wish to be part of British royalty and the world recoils in horror...who could make up these scenarios and have them be so interesting?

I chews Bazooka

Do kids still chew bubble gum? I was quite the Bazooka enthusiast as a kid, much preferring it to the sweeter taste of Dubble Bubble. I enjoyed loading up on two chunks, maybe three, and blowing a bubble big enough to use as a weather balloon.

By the time I gave up gum, Bazooka had gummed up the works by adding flavors. How absurd! Bubble gum should taste like bubble gum! But here came "Strawberry Shake," "Cherry Berry," "Watermelon Whirl," and "Grape Rage."

I guess the kids that followed in my path had to try all these flavors out.

Of course, for your penny (!) you also got a Bazooka Joe comic! Beside priceless humor that was repeated in classrooms and playgrounds from Portland to Portland, the comics were worth prizes. How many packs of youngsters planned to chew how many packs of gum to get enough comics to get a free camera? And how many cavities did how many dentists fill?

Bazooka gum came out in 1947, in the days when there was chewing gum and bubble gum and not much else in the form of gooey mouth stuff. But now, there are dozens of gums and things such as Trident and Ouch and Thrills and Razzle, the candy that becomes chewing gum. So, they don't sell as much Bazooka as they used to, and when that happens, who's first to go? The people who make the comics!

Those artists and gagwriters were let go in 2012, when the firm announced that the wrappers would now include brain teasers and codes to unlock video games and whatnot.  But, like the original Chef Boy-Ar-Dee canned ravioli and Dr Pepper made with real sugar, all these products once consigned to the scrap heap are brought back eventually, and they say we can find the original good old Bazooka with (reprinted) original comics at WallyWorld and other fine retailers near you.

By the way, on the comic, where it said "Bazooka Joe and His Gang," that meant the following cast:

Pesty  - we always figured he was Joe's little brother. He wore a sombrero.

Mort - the tall lanky kid who covered his mouth with his turtleneck sweater

Toughie - a wannabe hood with a sailor hat. In the 50s and 60s, someone in every pack of guys wore a sailor hat, sometimes inverted like Gilligan

Hungry Herman -  Joe's husky pal

Jane - Joe's girl

Walkie Talkie - the doggie dogg (again, there was always one in the crowd)

Sundar Rerun: Never a boast or brag

I'm here to tell you something about men.  None of this will come as a surprise at all to any woman, who all know everything about men right off. Nothing can fool a woman.

But for those who don't know it...here's a rule of thumb.  The more a guy talks about how great he is/was about something, the less great he really was. 

You find these guys everywhere...and their stories are nowhere. They will change the topic of conversation around to how they once bagged a bull moose with a cap pistol and six feet of twine...how he scored the winning touchdown on Homecoming against crosstown rival Spiro Agnew High School with five would-be tacklers hanging on for dear life as he carried the ball into the endzone...how they rescued that carload of teachers and orphans that plunged into the Great Suwahaheanowmee River...how they can bench-press someone their own weight and the bench that person is sitting on...how the fish just give up and jump into their boat as soon as they drop in their line...and how many women they have been with in a lifetime of carnal conquests...

A great place to spot these dudes is at a high school reunion, where the urge to show off their accomplishments is paramount. Time after time, I've seen guys boasting about their fabulous lives at a reunion, only to leave later in a 1989 Chevrolet Caprice <<< beater that needed a hotshot to get off the lot.

Women know that the men who actually accomplish things are too busy accomplishing things to stand around talking about accomplishing things.

And at the same time, the reunion talk will turn to someone who didn't show up for the reunion.  Where is "so and so" now? Guess he couldn't make the reunion because he's too busy running the news division of a TV network or being an emergency room trauma surgeon or...even better...he's out doing something good for needy members of his community with his devoted family.

That sort of thing is the best success of all, but when did you ever hear someone boast about it?