Fox news

 A lot of people get all up in arms (their own arms, one supposes) over the dreaded scourge they call "cancel culture."

If you subscribe to a newsletter or podcast or whatever, and after a while you find you don't like the content and have no interest in following any longer, you have every right to cancel your subscription. For instance, I was sure I would enjoy hearing the "Ted Cruz reads Rudyard Kipling" Podcast, but after hearing a few of his mealy recitations, I decided I didn't give an "If."

When things are wrong, it's never too late to correct them. Take the Anne Arundel County School Board. They had some joker named George Fox as their superintendent of schools from 1916 - 1946, and only recently someone pointed out that during his superintendence, he openly opposed equal pay for Black teachers and had plenty of demeaning things to say about minorities as he danced about to the tune called by Jim Crow.

That is not the sort of legacy we would want the community to hold in pride.

But oh buddy!  Someone somewhere along the line thought it would be a great idea to name a middle school after him! George Fox Middle School is in Pasadena, and right on their website, they state their motto is, "We are focused on honoring our past, investing in the present, and being focused on the future."

If you want to honor your past, it's better to have a honorable past. So the school board has now decided to give GFMS a new name.

With a unanimous vote, board members disavowed the school's namesake.

“To have students sit in a building named for a man who championed Jim Crow and segregationist policies and structures does not align with the AACPS core value of All Means All,” said Jamie Hurman-Cougnet, a committee member and vice president of the George Fox Middle School PTSA.

It wasn't until last summer's national racial reckoning that school officials down there decided to look into the school's name heritage. A committee looked into the pros and cons of renaming the school, although it's very tough to see what the cons might have been. They recommended the change and the board agreed.

On they go with the renaming process. The school principal will meet with parents and have suggestion s submitted in writing, then share the suggestions with the board, which will make the final decision.

They cannot name the school after someone currently alive (leaves me out) or someone who died within the past three years. It would be good to make sure that, if they name the place after a person, that said person was not a racist.

For now, they can call it The Middle School Formerly Named For An Awful Man.

Boater Suppression

All around the world, boats carry people and cargo and fishing gear and coolers full of beer.

We also have to make sure they carry liability insurance, because here's what can happen.

Small scale:  Florida police say a 40-foot boat fell off a trailer last week, and blocked several lanes of traffic on a busy interstate for several hours. 

This took place on I-10 in Crestview, FL, the county seat of lovely Okaloosa County.  Police say the boat trailer was swaying violently like a horse dislodging flies as the pick-'em-up truck that was dragging it crossed under State Road 85 and the trailer hit a guardrail.

I hear "I-10 at State Road 85" and I see Waffle House, Waffle Hut, House of Waffles, and Cracker Barrel, all nearby.

Anyhow, the boat broke loose, flipped over a time or two and came to rest on the traveled portion of the roadway, blocking both lanes of 10. The truck wound up in the median.

No one was hurt in all this, except for the pride of the driver and the many irate Floridians who didn't get to the Piggly Wiggly on time to take advantage of the big sale on boiled peanuts.

Large scale: worldwide commerce was drastically affected when a 1,300-foot, 220,000-ton container ship blocked traffic in the Suez Canal for nearly a week, and that ain't peanuts.

The world watched yesterday morning as finally the great ship was freed and once again afloat as we see in the picture above.

The ship is called the Ever Given, and as of lunchtime yesterday it was slowly headed up north in the canal, as thousands cheered. It was a week ago today that  high winds and low visibility lodged the mighty vessel cross-ways in the canal, running it aground. That shut down all ship traffic in one of the world's most vital waterways.

Ever Given has a beam of 200 feet, making it one of the largest container ships at sea, so having the canal clear for others to pass by makes everyone beam!

Billions of dollars of cargo, and everything you and I just ordered from Amazon, has been floating around for a week. Some shipping lines were considering taking the long way around, down by the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of Africa.

Fun fact: the Cape of Good Hope was originally named the Cape Of Storms way back in the 1480s by  a Portuguese explorer named Bartolomeu Dias. Somewhere along the way, some Chamber of Commerce people sat down and said, "Maybe calling it "the cape of storms" is bad for business. Let's hold a contest for a new name!"

The Wright Stuff

We talked before about when an astronaut, against all regulations and good sense, packed a corned beef sandwich in his gear as he went into space. It's not so much that it seemed like a fraternity-prank sort of thing to do, but spaceships really need to have a pure atmosphere, and a little crumb of bread or a caraway seed from the rye bread could cause problems up there. So, no. 

But on the recent excursion that Perseverance took to Mars, they packed up a little surprise for the world.

The little surprise was a small piece of the fabric from the wing of the 1903 Wright Flyer, the first airplane. The helicopter is nicknamed Ingenuity. It rode to Mars along with the rover from Perseverance.

Sometime very soon - between now and April 8 - the plan from NASA is for Ingenuity to take the first powered, remote controlled flight on another planet. In the words of Bobby Braun, the director for planetary science at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, that will be a real “Wright brothers’ moment.”

Wilbur and Orville Wright were from Dayton, Ohio, and that's where they have the Carillon Historical Park. That museum donated the postage-size piece of muslin from the plane’s bottom left wing.

In 1903, the Wright plane flew 12 seconds for a distance of 120 feet. This little bit of the wing that went aloft that day just traveled 300 million mile to Mars, And Steve Lucht, curator of the Carillon Park, said the cloth had the blessing of the Wrights' great-grandniece and great-grandnephew.

“Wilbur and Orville Wright would be pleased to know that a little piece of their 1903 Wright Flyer I, the machine that launched the Space Age by barely one quarter of a mile, is going to soar into history again on Mars!” Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright* said in a statement provided by the park.

It's just a wee little helicopter, all of 4 pounds, and the goal is to have it rise 10 feet in the extremely thin Martian air. Imagine controlling that from 300 million miles away. Imagine how long that cord is! 

The swatch is attached to the underneath part of the 'copter's solar panel, seen below. 

*Stephen Wright is not to be confused with comedian Steven Wright, who said, "I went to a fancy French restaurant called 'Deja Vu.' The headwaiter said, 'Don't I know you?'"

Sunday Rerun: Playing the library card

 

There is a town in Texas, a state that seems to pride itself, with the exception of the good citizens of Austin, on becoming a barren land of howling lunatics, called White Settlement.

In 2010, the White Settlement Public Library, in need of cheap rodent control, hired a kitten right out of the local animal shelter. They named him "Browser," this docile grey tabby, and put him to work at once.

He must have been doing a fine job de-mouseulating the joint, and he was happy as a cat in a library until July, when some city hall worker got all worked up because he was told he could no longer bring his puppy to work.

Kwik Kwiz: What did the aggravated city employee do about being told he couldn't bring Poochie Dog to work?

a) he stopped bringing the dog to work and went back to work with renewed vigor and enthusiasm

b) he whined that the people at the library were allowed to have a cat

Elzie (you can see where his cowboy
hat mashed his hair down)

Of course he a) didn't and b) did. And this unnamed local drone got the matter before the White Settlement City Council, and during a meeting which surely rivaled the Philadelphia Congress sessions of 1776, the matter of Browser's continued residency at the libes was taken to a vote.

Only one councilperson, one Elzie Clement, 
 was catty enough to vote for giving Browser the gate. The others weren't feline like sending him back to the shelter, which is paid for by the city kitty.

Now, Mayor Ron White (not the comedian) (I guess) says Browser’s job title is now "Library Cat for Life."

"Browser is still employed and will be as long as he wishes to continue his duties as mascot and reading helper for the children at the library," White said.

(Not to mention his Mickey-hunting duties.)

Hizzoner the Mayor says he's getting litterboxes full of mail and messages for all over with support and offers to adopt Browser.

So it's a happy story all around, and, master storyweaver that I am, I saved the best for last:

Elzie Clements is a councilman no more, having been defeated in a landslide.

Meow.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 27, 2021

 

Oh, we know all about the tortoise and the hare. How about the tortoise and the butterfly, who could just as easily fly away but prefers the free lift?!

If only the car had one of those roof racks to carry a bicycle around...

This is the work of a person whose job it is to clean new houses just prior to settlement. That's in the wintertime. In summer, she mows patterns into the outfields at major league ballparks.

You don't see these together very often, if at all...a rainbow and a lightning bolt.

This kid is my kind of kid! He knows just which mask to wear on eye exam day!

Regardless of what you may have heard, this is the original nickel bag! I always loved Mr Peanut.

"For oft, when on my couch I lie, In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils." A little Wordsworth on a Saturday morning...

People pay top dollar for this oil, made from the fat of that annoying big bird on the Liberty Mutual car insurance commercial. It's supposed to be good for all sorts of ailments, from dry skin to achy breaky hearts. I'll stick with Vap-O-Rub.

The Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC is in full swing through April 11.

With good reason, when I have supped on fine Chinese cuisine at China Taste, I feel like I have Wonton Brain. It looks like this!

Zoo's Blues

The situation: you're at a stuffy dinner party (the year is 2022) and there is a lull in the conversation. After a short period of "ahems" and "erruhhhs" and someone mentioning what cute thing Marmaduke said the other day, here's your chance to get a conversation going again.

Just ask "how long does it take an elephant to notice a damn fool daddy who brings his 2-year-old child into an elephant's den?

(Answer: 30 seconds!)  Just ask José Navarrete. Navarette, 25, fell out of the running for Father Of The Year in San Diego for being so poorly-thought out that he came up with the idea of clambering his way into the habitat of Asian and African elephants at the San Diego Zoo. Of course, as a true fool, he carried his daughter along, although you have to figure she was not up for the idea to begin with. It says here that José was looking to update his FB cover photo. What looks cooler than an enraged 12,000 lb. pachyderm thundering toward you?

So now José is facing a child cruelty charge for *allegedly* bringing his child into an elephant habitat at the Zoo on Friday, say San Diego police.

No one, human or otherwise, was harmed.

San Diego Police Sgt. Ariel Savage said the elephant was agitated when the intruder and his child appeared, and the peanut-eater seemed to be getting ready to charge.

It was a witness, Matthew Passiglia, who told the TV news that only took about 30 seconds for the elephant to notice Navarrete. "A lot of people froze and didn’t know really how to take it in, then immediately everyone was pleading with him and then it became frantic and hysterical," Passiglia said.

"It was a big roar. [The elephant] stuck its head up in the air and its tusks and he started trotting toward them," Passiglia said.

Passiglia says people were trying to help Navarette get back on the side of sanity and safety, but the poor fool tripped and dropped his unlucky child, as the mighty beast got within 5 feet.

"I didn’t think it was going to end well. There was a moment when the elephant had the option and luckily the elephant took a second guess and there was confusion right there on the floor with them," Passiglia said.

And then, just before the elephant got to the fence, Navarrette scooped up his child and got back over the fence as the Loxodonta africana stuck his giant tusks through the fence.

Arrested on child cruelty charges, Navarette is being held on $100,000 bail and will be arraigned on March 30.

He should be glad I'm not the judge.

 

Crab Goes On a Trip

Just the other day we talked about a walrus who hitched a ride on an ice chunk from the Arctic Circle all the way to the coast of Ireland. I assume someone gave him a lift home. 

But now comes the story of another marine animal - a thousand times smaller and tastier - who took a sea voyage. It's Maryland's own “Chesapeake blue crab,” a native of the Western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico which somehow turned up on Dollymount Strand recently.  Dollymount Strand is a beach, and blue crabs go to beaches all the time. But this beach is in Dublin, Ireland!

And Ireland's National Biodiversity Data Centre says the CB crab is bigger and more competitive that local Irish crabs, and that the female can lay up to six million eggs a year.

So, if enough Blue crabs wind up in Ireland, the Irish crabs would lose, and we would have to start shipping mallets, National Beer, and Old Bay seasoning to the Emerald Isle. They have their own newspapers for use as tablecloths.

As attempts to interrogate the crab proved fruitless (who likes fruit with crabs, anyway?) the Irish are still stumped as to how the crab wound up over there. Actually, there have been two sightings at Dollymount, but the hope is that it was the same crab, seen twice. 

And they are hoping that blue crabs will not feel so welcome in their area. By comparison, the Chesapeake Bay, and of course the Gulf, are much warmer than the Irish Atlantic Coast, so maybe this will one will text his family members back home here and tell them not to swim over.

Irish officials say that maybe someone released the crab over there, hoping they were doing the right thing, but if they were to proliferate, it could disrupt an entire food chain, so "never release a non-native into the wild."

And we need them over here this summer, so don't send them to Ireland, please.

 

It's on tape

I still have a couple thousand audio cassettes around the house, as well as the equipment to record and play them. The technology is far from perfect, but I come from the days when we were thrilled to have a record player and if you liked a song, you had to go get the record of it.

Cassette recorders changed all that, and we have a man named Lou Ottens to thank for their creation.  He just died a couple of weeks ago at age 94, over in the Netherlands. Without him, our music was just a stack of records, but once he figured out how to put tiny tapes in a tiny shell, we had our mixtapes and playlists!

Yes, we had reel-to-reel tapes, but the word for them was clunky and large. I guess that's two words. But they were not so practical to carry to the beach, or to provide background music at a reception, and they needed to be threaded, and all that mishegas. I worked with reel tapes, and they were usually major PITAs (or PsITA). A nice cassette recorder, with some blank tapes and fresh batteries, you could record anything, from the sound of the seashore to your cousin's wedding, both of which got a little salty.

So it was that Ottens, head of new product development in Hasselt, Belgium, for the Dutch Philips technology company, set out to shrink those big reels in the 1960s. 

A man named Zack Taylor (not to be confused with the 12th US president) has made a movie about the cassette story, and he says, "Lou wanted music to be portable and accessible."

Besides coming up with the great idea, Ottens wanted his product to be inexpensive and accessible to all. To this end, he persuaded Philips to allow all other manufacturers to use cassette technology for free, which allowed the new format to go global in no time at all.  It's true, we are seeing huge corporations sharing work and information on the coronavirus vaccines, but not with too many other products. When video tape cassettes became the logical child of Ottens's audio tapes, two different formats, VHS and Betamax, vied for the top slot, which meant that a lot of the "special" tapes your buddy had in that box in back of his basement were not usable anymore, because they were Betamax and no one had a Betamax player. There went the viewing parties for "Saturday Nut Fever." 

My favorite part of the whole deal was that Ottens, in trying to create something that really didn't exist, came up with a wooden block that would fit into a pocket easily. He used the wooden chunk as his ruler to make sure that whatever he and his team devised would be that small. That was the key!

And Lou Ottens's creation, the compact cassette, came out in 1963 and revolutionized the world of sound duplication. And Ottens was quite unsentimental about his brainchild. Over the years to come, as over 100 Billion cassettes were made and sold worldwide, he devoted his time to working on compact discs, and stated publicly that cassettes were "primitive and prone to noise and distortion" - problems not found in digital CDs.

And I would love to show you the original piece of wood that he used as a yardstick for his invention, but he smashed it, using it as a leverage prop for his jack while changing a tire on his car.

I hope he was listening to "Free Bird" on a cassette while he changed that tire!

Lucky

It would appear that people visit the Potawatomi Hotel & Casino in Wisconsin from all over the country. Even in these pandemic times, that's a lot of visitors, enough that someone there at the Potawatomi found enough time and visitors to poll 1,000 guests about what the #1 superstition is back home.

If you ask me, the #1 superstition in Maryland is "being on I-95 with a Delaware driver on your tail," but that one didn't make the list.

Think about all the things you'd sooner die than do (or not do): throwing salt over your shoulder when you spill the Morton's? holding on to luck pennies? freaking out when a black cat crosses your path? Knocking on wood to ward off evil spirits?

The casino poll shows that 65% of Americans believe in superstitions. And remember, this was a survey conducted among people who go to a large place and wager on cards, slot machines, and roulette wheels. And the location of the plebiscite might explain that 83% of their patrons believe in good luck, and only 50% say there's such a thing as bad luck.

I've never gone in for this throwing salt over my shoulder (except when the driveway is icy) but it is the most common superstition in 17 states! That's the odd thing about this game. Spilling salt means nothing to me, but lots of folks seem to feel that if they don't toss some sodium chloride over their left shoulder as soon as it happens, all sorts of horrible things will happen to them.

On the other hand, out of 50 US States plus DC, 17 of them have a large population going around spilling salt.

Anyhow, here's the breakdown of top misbeliefs and hoodoo all across the US:

Alabama - Throwing salt over shoulder

Alaska - Throwing salt over shoulder

Arizona - Owls are a bad omen

Arkansas - Throwing salt over shoulder

California - Lucky pennies

Colorado - Friday the 13th

Connecticut - Throwing salt over shoulder

Delaware - Throwing salt over shoulder

D.C. - Friday the 13th

Florida - Ladybug landing on you

Georgia - Good luck ladybug

Hawaii - Throwing salt over shoulder

Idaho - Throwing salt over shoulder

Illinois - Good luck horseshoe

Indiana - Lucky rabbit's foot

Iowa - Lucky pennies

Kansas - Throwing salt over shoulder

Kentucky - Throwing salt over shoulder

Louisiana - Lucky rabbit's foot

Maine - Throwing salt over shoulder

Maryland - Throwing salt over shoulder

Massachusetts - Four leaf clover

Michigan - Lucky prime numbers

Minnesota - Friday the 13th

Mississippi - Lucky rabbit's foot

Missouri - Lucky prime numbers

Montana - Bad luck comes in threes

Nebraska - Bad luck comes in threes

Nevada - Lucky prime numbers

New Hampshire - Bad luck comes in threes

New Jersey - Good luck ladybug

New Mexico - Lucky prime numbers

New York - Black cat crosses your path

North Carolina - Black cat crosses your path

North Dakota - Throwing salt over shoulder

Ohio - Throwing salt over shoulder

Oklahoma - Owls are a bad omen

Oregon - Owls are a bad omen

Pennsylvania - Good luck ladybug

Rhode Island - Throwing salt over shoulder

South Carolina - Black cat crosses your path

South Dakota - Bad luck comes in threes

Tennessee - Friday the 13th

Texas - Lucky pennies

Utah - Throwing salt over shoulder

Vermont - Bad luck comes in threes

Virginia - Friday the 13th

Washington - Lucky rabbit's foot

West Virginia - Throwing salt over shoulder

Wisconsin - Bad luck comes in threes

Wyoming - Throwing salt over shoulder

7777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777

I think I would choose Wisconsin if I had to live somewhere based on old husbands' tales, because I don't like odd numbers of anything. When I was on the radio, I didn't like to play records by the Three Degrees. I thought they should either add another singer or talk one into quitting. 

Be Less Miserable!

Any nugget of apparent wisdom that flows from me is quite accidental, I assure you. I don't take myself, or life itself, seriously enough to sit about opining and sharing deep and profound thoughts.

But one occurred to me the other day and I thought I'd run it up the flagpole to see how it unfurls. 

A friend of mine was done dirty by someone, and my first thought was that it was an act that resulted from a cry of jealousy. My friend has a lot of the qualities that might make one envious, although that is not any good reason for doing nasty things to a person.

But, just like the time that someone decided that a peanut butter sandwich could only be made better by adding a little jelly, I had one of those  A-Ha! moments, and it occurred to me to say that miserable people lead miserable lives, and that is their punishment.

Think about it! How many times have you known someone so captious and objectionable that they demean and deride everyone and everything? They're the people with the nasty bumper stickers. They're the people calling talk shows, yammering about things of which they do not know. They're the ones standing up at the PTA meeting calling for an end to sex education and same-sex dating and an end to being asked to volunteer for committees. They're the ones who try to get away with ethnic jokes because "Hey, I can say this, I'm a _______ myself!" They are the people who will steal a neighbor's newspaper or trash can; they're the porch pirates; they're the ones who don't tip servers and food delivery people. They're the ones who begin their restaurant order with "Gimme a _____"; they're the ones who take up two parking spots at the supermarket and then let their cart roll away freely. They're the ones who don't RSVP to a wedding invitation, or do reply in the affirmative and then don't show up. They click pens, rattle pocket change, and snap their gum.

They're the ones who steal from the charity collection bowls, or show up at food drives and load up on free chow, even though they are in no particular need.

And then when you wind up in the company of these people, you find that they have no grace, no warmth, no music, no comedy, no pet, and certainly very few friendships except with people of their own ilk - but they usually can't stand to be around them any more than you and I can!

They're sad and lonely people; even when they're with others, their hollow existences hold nothing. No one likes a mean person, not even other mean people.

So if you are the person who wronged my friend, keep wallowing. The good people always walk right past people like you, and miserable people sit by the wayside, jealous and looking for petty revenge.

If you're happy in life, that's the reward you get for being happy! And if you're miserable, you can always change, but you have to do it. The rest of us are too busy being happy to send you invitations.

Sunday Rerun: Musical Depreciation

 This happened a few years ago, but it still seems like it could happen today. Paula Dawning, the school superintendent of Benton Harbor, Michigan, would not allow the McCord Middle School marching band to play their version of rock classic "Louie Louie" at a Blossomtime Festival parade because, well, "Louie Louie."

"Louie Louie" is a song, originally written as a calypso tune in the 1950s by one Richard Berry, but when a group from Portland, Oregon, The Kingsmen, recorded it in 1963, it became a big to-do for this main reason. It was cheaply, and poorly, recorded. 

I mean super cheap, in a boxy room with one microphone hanging from the ceiling, which is why it sounds like singer Jack Ely was in Milwaukee phoning in his vocals. It would appear that only one take was made; 56 seconds into it, drummer Lynn Easton drops a drumstick (you can hear him shout a curse) and the whole thing just sounds shoddy on a technical level. On a musical level, at 2:02, Easton slams out a drum fill that has nothing to do with the beat or the melody whatsoever. And let's say that the guitarists and keyboard players were not exactly headed for glory either.

Again, because the record sounded so crappy, it was easy for the rumor to take root that the lyrics were really, really filthy. I remember guys in junior high passing around pieces of three-ring binder paper with the "real" lyrics scribbled on them, lyrics that took the song from one expressing the wistful wait for a love to come from another shore to this one and made it sound like something out of "Caligula."

We had nothing better to do, in that era after the Cuban Missile Crisis and before the Kennedy Assassination.

People love to think they're "in the know," getting the "real lowdown" from a guy who knew a guy whose sister dated the cousin of the bass guitar player from Frankie And The Frenchmen, who were such a hit last summer at Hampton Teen Center, until the drummer got grounded and Frankie's dad said he was tired of driving the band all over Towson every Friday night.  

Of course, this would never happen today, since the wise hands of true statesmen and stateswomen guide our ship of state, but the Federal Government of the United States of America, in the entities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Postal Inspection Service, and the Federal Communications Commission spent two years and plenty of tax dollars looking into the matter of whether Sis and Junior were being ruined by these lascivious lyrics.  You can see the fruits of their labors here in the official, heavily redacted, files.  

Back to the Michigan misunderstanding, Superintendent Chalmers Dawning, as all good leaders will, blamed her staff for allowing the kids to even practice the song in the first place. "It was not that I knew at the beginning and said nothing," she said. "I normally count on the staff to make reliable decisions. I found out because a parent called, concerned about the song being played."

Ah. A PARENT called!  The bane of educators everywhere! A parent called and said this song is smutty and trashy, and without any further investigation, the marching band was forced to yield. 

Do you recall what was revealed, the day someone finally told you the real words?  

Louie, Louie, oh no, I said we gotta go
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I said
Louie, Louie, oh baby, I said we gotta go
A fine little girl, she waits for me
Me catch a ship across the sea
Me sail that ship all alone
Me never think how I'll make it home
Louie, Louie, no, no, no, no, no, I said we gotta go
Oh no, I said
Louie, Louie, oh baby, I said we gotta go
Three nights and days I sail the sea
I think of girl constantly
On that ship, I dream she there
I smell the rose in her hair
Louie, Louie, oh no, I said we gotta go
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I said
Louie, Louie, oh baby, I said we gotta go
Okay, let's give it to 'em, right now!
Me see
Me see Jamaican moon above
It won't be long me see me love
Me take her in my arms and then
I tell her I'll never leave again
Louie, Louie, oh no, I said we gotta go
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I said
Louie, Louie, oh baby, I said we gotta go
I said we gotta go now
Let's get on outta here
Let's go!

The Saturday Picture Show, March 20, 2021

 
They still make foldaway cots, and they are handy to have around when your buddy Mel gets tossed out of his house for being so Mellish or for when your cousin from Cleveland is in town for a job interview and needs a free flop. This one goes way back  - it was used by General Geo. Washington when he was leading our army against the British. You know those signs that say "Washington Slept Here"? He may very well have been dozing on this foldaway!


This walrus gained worldwide fame this week. Having apparently fallen asleep on an ice floe in his native Arctic Circle, he woke up after rafting all the way to the Irish Coast...just in time for St Patrick's Day!

Ok, I don't want to see the creature that wove this web, but on the other hand, it looks like it could serve as a backstop down at the Little League field this summer!

You've heard of garden apartments, right? Well, this is the high-rise version, in Italy.

Say hello to my favorite Korean guitarist, formerly of DNCE.  This is Jinjoo Lee. A unique name, you say? I thought so, but someone else with the same moniker is a financial reporter for the Wall Street Journal, which puts her at the top of her profession. Still, I reckon that writer couldn't play "Cake By The Ocean" like the original Jinjoo does!

Friends, I have done and seen some things in my day. It's probably best not to go into detail about all that now, but I warrant, I have never stood on a toilet, or heard of anyone else doing so!

I don't know where this magnificent steel grinder is located, but it turns those old wrenches and lag bolts into useful chains!

We used to like to talk with the women on The Talk, but over the years, we stopped watching because Sharon Osbourne far too often talked far too much - but just enough to let us see a malevolent streak just beneath that accent of hers. It was not a surprise to find out that she came out swinging in defense of the boorish Piers Morgan in the Meghan Markle spectacle, and in doing so, slagged her own co-worker Sheryl Underwood.  The show is "on hiatus" while the CBS brass figure out a way to grease the skids and send her back to hollering at Ozzy.

When these critters get together, everyone wants to referee!

You had to figure, this would end up here. See you next week!

And....you're out!

If you've been a baseball fan for a while, you will remember Johnny Damon, a well-traveled outfielder who played up on his resemblance to the GEICO caveman during his days playing for the Royals, A's, Red Sox, Yankees, Tigers, Rays, and Indians.

Besides coming in 54th place in the all-time hit leader category, Damon is chiefly remembered for being one of those guys who just didn't when to go home. The Indians let him go in August, 2012, and it wasn't until 2015 that he stopped pestering those few clubs that hadn't previously employed him, begging for another chance to come back again.  

And his baseball success did not help him do well in season 26 of Dancing With The Stars (2018). He was the first person eliminated. No man of grace and manners, he. 

But that doesn't matter on the baseball field, where the result is all that matters, and manners and grace are not recorded in the ledger.

If you're wondering where old Johnny wound up, well, here you go: On February 19, Damon was arrested in Windermere, Florida. The charges were DWI - driving while intoxicated - resisting an officer (without violence). The Windermere PD say Damon had a blood alcohol content (BAC) of .30, which would be almost four times the legal limit of .08. And that measurement was taken two hours after the police stopped him.

The police showed the footage of Damon and his wife, Michelle Mangan-Damon, pointing out that their license tag from has the "Blue Lives Matter" slogan. Damon is seen on the video claiming, "Guys, we are all for cops."

At one point during the early-morning traffic stop, we see Damon stating, for absolutely no reason, “I know people are trying to target me because I’m a Trump supporter.”

An officer replies, “I don’t think that has anything to do with it," to which Damon responds, "Yeah, it does."

Damon agreed to take a field sobriety test, but he didn't seem to bring much sobriety to the effort. He stumbled during the part where the cops had him demonstrated the ability to walk, and could not follow a red light with his eyes while keeping his head still.

So, for the evening, the box score reads: Damon, charged with resisting and driving under the influence of alcohol and running a stop sign. Mangan-Damon was also arrested and charged with battery on an officer and resisting with violence.

Just a lovely couple.

All I can add is that is the "the police don't like me because I'm a trump fan" argument did not wash with the police. Let's see how the judge rules.

 

Comeback Kid

With the baseball season right around the corner, I thought I'd share the story of a guy who made it to the major leagues against incredible odds. He only had one leg!

His name was Bert Shepard, and he was a pitcher, making his way through the minor leagues in the early 1940s when World War II service called him away. He was a fighter pilot, flying his P-38 Lightning over Germany when he was shot down on May 21, 1944. He crash-landed in a farm field and found himself surrounded by irate German farmers toting pitchforks, only to be saved by an Austrian named Ladislaus Loidl.

Bert wound up in a German hospital, unconscious, and with his right leg  amputated below the knee. He left that hospital for a camp for wounded POWs, where a Canadian medic rigged up a makeshift artificial leg. 

In February of 1945, he was back in the United States via a prisoner exchange, and was recuperating at Walter Reed General Hospital when the undersecretary of war, Robert P. Patterson, stopped by to visit him. Patterson asked him what he wanted to do once he returned to civilian life, and Shepard said he wanted to pitch again.

Patterson said, "Well, you can't do that, can you, now?"

Shepard said, "Yes, I can."

At the time, the DC Baseball team was the Senators, also called the Nats. Patterson, in more of a goodwill gesture than telling the team about a hot prospect, called the team owner, Clark W. Griffith, and told him the tale of the young man who just wanted a chance.

“This is the thing I dreamed about over there for months,” Bert told the press. “Sure I’m serious about playing ball and I believe that I can.” 

“Hero of European Bombing, One Leg Off, Seeks Baseball Fame With Nats,” ran the eight-column headline in The Washington Post. Remember, manpower was short for baseball teams during the war. Pete Gray, a one-armed outfielder, played rather well in that 1945 for the St. Louis Browns, helping the team to the last winning record they would ever post before becoming the Baltimore Orioles in 1954.

That March of 1945 found Shepard in spring training with the Senators, and his tryout drew a lot of attention from the press and fans alike, so much so that he was given a contract as a coach, and kept around for pitching batting practice and appearing in exhibition games. He proved his worth quite well, and by the end of summer, he finally got the chance to pitch in a real major league game.

His turn came against the Red Sox on August 4. In the second game of a doubleheader, with Washington losing by 12 runs, Manager Ossie Bluege summoned Shepard from the bullpen to face George “Catfish” Metkovich (not to be confused with Jim "Catfish" Hunter), and Shepard struck him out, earning a standing ovation from the crowd of 13,000 home fans. 

And Shepard finished the game, in his only official major league appearance. He pitched five more innings, giving up just one run on three hits and a walk.

After the season ended, Shepard toured army hospitals with the message that "a fellow with one leg or one arm isn’t necessarily relegated to the sedentary life." He even flew his own plane and let the other vets see him running a 60-yard dash and dribbling a basketball. 

The next season, he didn't make the majors, with the top talent back from the front, and so he spent a couple more years trying to get back to the top by playing minor league ball, with no luck. 

He said many times that if he had tried out for another team under an assumed name and found a way to conceal his prosthesis, he might have made it. Who knows? His story as is was fascinating enough for me.

Happy St Patrick's Day (rerun from 2016)

 Well, here we are again, March 17, St Patrick's Day.  Since I don't care for green beer or corned beef and cabbage, and I look like a lawn in green clothing, I thought I would spend the morning finding out just who Patrick was, and what he did.

Patrick (c. AD 385–461) is the foremost patron saint of Ireland.
Saint Patrick's Day has been an official religious holiday since the early 17th Century. By the way, I used to work with a woman from Ireland, and every March she recoiled in horror at the dissolute way in which Americans guzzle and gobble their way through what is, in Ireland, a very sacred religious holiday.

But that's none of my beeswax. The original point of celebrating Patrick's day was to commemorate the arrival of Christianity in Ireland and shed a light on Irish culture and the goodness of their people.  There are parades in many cities, and people wear green clothing and shamrock decorations. 

Patrick was born in Britain, in the days of the Roman occupation, and became a missionary in Ireland after being kidnapped as a teenager and taken in slavery to Gaelic Ireland.  He was a shepherd there for six years and had a dream in which God told him to flee to the coast, where he would find a ship to take him home.

He did get home and went a seminary, becoming a priest.  Later he returned to Ireland and, in his missionary work, led thousands of pagan druids to Christianity.

Remember hearing that "St Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland"?  Well, guess what?  Ireland never has had native snakes!

The legend was spun that he was in the middle of a 40-day fast and some snakes attacked him, so he chased them into the sea. What he chased away was the paganism, after all.

This legend was likely made up and spread by people who know nothing about snakes, because those of us familiar with slithering reptiles know doggone well they don't respond to being chased or even to being hollered at (no ears).

Scientists figure that it was the most recent Ice Age that froze the snakes out of Ireland.

But Patrick died on this day, March 17, 461, and is recognized for what he did do - bringing modern Christianity to a pagan land - as much as for what he didn't do - driving snakes away.  

Enjoy your day, have a good time, and be safe!

Free Advice Costs Nothing, And It's Worth the Price

The rich and famous have much different courtship rituals than we reg'lar folk. Those of us with a mind to marry meet someone they care to be around, stay around them for a period of time to make sure they aren't maniacs, or Blake Shelton, and then set a date at the faith place or the courthouse, hire a band, and have a good old shindig.

Then, after a getaway to the Gilligan Islands, it's back home to begin life as a married couple.

Or, they skip ahead to life together without the preacher or judge. It's really the same thing. All is well as long as there is commitment and love and everlasting happiness.

AND THEN, there's the celebrity way. News item from the weekend:

Alex Rodriguez Confirmed He's "Not Single" Amid Jennifer Lopez Split Reports

Hours after refuting breakup reports, Alex Rodriguez decided to double down on his relationship status with Jennifer Lopez. On Saturday afternoon, photographers stopped the former baseball pro on his way to the gym in Miami, asking him if he was single.

"I'm not single," he replied back in video footage obtained by TMZ.

Earlier in the day, Lopez and Rodriguez released a joint statement, announcing that they're still together, but are "working through some things." The couple also said reports of them splitting up were "inaccurate."

Just when I thought those two crazy kids had found happiness in each other's arms, or at least in each other's limousines and yachts!

Friends are saying she is off working in the Dominican Republic and he's hanging around in Miami, and quarantines and COVID are keeping their together time to next to nothing, but they "want to stay together."

No one is sure how the rumors of their breakup even started. You have to figure the fact they are in two separate countries helped the story get going.

And here's a quote from a "friend" - "Jennifer was ready to end things with Alex several months ago. After fighting for weeks and living separately, Jennifer was done. But Alex convinced her that he would be better."

JLo and ARod have been together for four years, engaged for two, and no one seems to know where they are headed - either marital bliss or Splitsville. 

Speaking from the perspective of one who's married since Nixon was president, I can offer this advice:

If you want to be with another person, the polite thing to do is to tell them so. If they want you to stay around and they want to stay around with you, they will tell you right back.

This conversation should take place in person between two adults who are on the same continent at the time.

I'm being a bit snarky, but here's the thing: two people who want to make a relationship work will make the sacrifices and...make it work.  Otherwise, why bother? Get together and have fun when you're in the same town, and then go off singing and dancing and whatever it is that AR does for a living now. 

When the other person becomes more important to you than you, the other pieces fall right into place.

Otherwise, they fall in two places.

Poppa Woody

As hilariously related by CB songster Cledus Maggard in the 70s, there is nothing on earth funnier than a kid with weak kidneys having to stop at every Texaco while Dad's trying to get the family on a vacation in their Oldsmobile.

Who remembers CB radios? Cledus Maggard? The 70s? Oldsmobiles? Vacations?

Everyone knows, a big iced tea for lunch and a bumpy stretch of road equals agony...but there is a creature who has no problems in that area!

They never have to go to Tinkle Town! Say hi to the Alaskan Wood Frog! They can hold their urine for up to eight months.

Part of it is, they have no indoor plumbing, so they have to choose between leaving their hiding places and getting cold, or just rolling over and waiting 'til May.

They do what many of us felt as if we did for the last 12 months: they hibernate. And for these frogs, it's good to do so. They get energy from not going #1.They have special belly enzymes that turn the urea in their liquid waste to nitrogen.

And not only do they "hold it in," they actually freeze, inside and out, the entire time! Science believes this is because LL Bean does not make a down jacket small enough to fit them, so they just thaw out after winter ends.

Nature sure knows what she's doing! 

Sunday Rerun: Frankly

 Prior to 1954, everyone thought it was impossible for a human to run a mile in less than four minutes.  Then, an Englishman named Roger Bannister, age 25, scooted around the track four times in 3:59.4.

And then everyone thought, that will never be topped.  Top this!  Hicham El Guerrouj is the current men's record holder with his time of 3:43.13. 

The only time any male has ever run faster than that was the time at age 13 when I stumbled onto a cache of dirty magazines, Marlboro cigarettes, Atomic Jaw Breakers and cherry bombs owned by some older guys down the road. But that's another story for another time.

We always expect to do better at our endeavors then the last guy who tried it. Just ask Kris Humphries! Or Joey "Jaws" Chestnut who recently had 75 hot dogs for lunch to win the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.

40 years ago, in 1980, in the same ten-minute time period, the winner ate 10 franks.  Athletes will train and do better, and surely "Jaws" will aim for 76 tube steaks next year, if there is one. (A year, not a hot dog contest).

But there seems to be a limit to everything, with the possible exception of the Kardashians. As we often do, let's turn to a physiologist ("a biological scientist who studies how plants and animals function under both normal and abnormal conditions," as we all know). James Smoliga is a physiologist from High Point University, and he has done all the figurin', and he says that upward limit of Nathan's famous dogs on rolls that a human can gobble in ten minutes is 83. To arrive at this goal, Smoliga used to mathematical formulas that he also uses to figure out peak athletic performance in the field of track and, uh, field.

In frank-gobbling or sprint-running, it seems to be a common trait that at first, competitors's scores go way up at first. and then the rate of increase becomes more gradual. That makes sense. That score of ten dogs 40 years ago seems minuscule now, but at first, it was topped by a large margin every year, and now Chestnut is gasping to get #75 down his gullet.

"Jaws" Chestnut, left, and Mike Sudo.

This year's female champion, Miki Sudo, got down 48 1/2 dogs.  If you want to challenge her next July 4th, here's her regimen: high-volume foods, like soup, heads of broccoli and “enough kale to kill a horse.” She knows that this will stretch her belly a little at a time, like when you get gauges in your ear and gradually add larger ones until you can put a nice fresh hot dog in your lobe and wear that to dinner.