Forget it

Susan Smith, at the age of 23 in 1994, decided that her husband and two sons presented an immovable barrier to her future happiness. So she strapped the boys into their seatbelts and let the car roll into a South Carolina lake. 

It didn't take long for the cops to track her down. Now, 30 years into a life sentence, she appeared before the parole board yesterday to ask for a second chance at the life she denied 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex.

I'll bet it didn't take long for the board to rubber stamp DENIED all over her paperwork. 

She asked the parole board to overlook the fact that she was caught doing the hibbidy-dibbidy with prison guards and that she, well, killed her children.“I know that what I did was horrible,” she tearfully told the board.

That's the biggest understatement since Mr. Otis thought his elevator might be a good idea. 

You have to wonder if she seriously believed she had a chance to shop for turkey and all the fixin's this weekend. Next hearing: two years. She should live so long.

A little test

 I thought I'd get back to the Blog by trying a quick experiment. 

In 1976, I was working at WISZ radio in Baltimore. That summer, the Orioles traded away a relief pitcher named Grant Jackson. Jackson went on to have an 18-year career in the big leagues; this trade to the Yankees was his third team of seven.

I thought, and said out loud,, that the most fascinating thing about Grant, or "Buck," as he liked to be called, was that he was born in Fostoria, Ohio. 

A guy I worked with, Les Bagley, added to the conversation that Fostoria is the location of the world's deepest hole. Now, that's grist for my mill. I love that sort of information. In fact, I often lead with it, in any conversation involving deep holes or Ohio.

I think of that conversation every time I see this picture: 

And here is the experiment. Les and I are still friends on Facebook. Will he remember that conversation after 48 years?

 

Tuesday rerun: Up Euphemism Creek

   I'm a big fan of Chris Elliott (we have our annual convention in a very tiny room) so I watched the "Schitt's Creek" show when it started out. Back in those days, it was on the beloved TV Guide Channel, which then became Pop TV when people realized that most of us figured The TV Guide Channel was something that showed what time the King of Queens rerun came on.

I liked the show, the whole fish-out-of-familiar water premise, and the trademark Chris Elliott snark went well with the goofiness of the Levys père et fils. I lost the show somehow, heard that Chris had left, and somehow managed to go on with my life without "Schitt's Creek."

I've heard that it was on Netflix now and very popular, and I thought it was nice to hear the other night that the show, and the actors on it, won every Emmy award for this year. 

And then came the morning TV shows, when all the network people shied away from naming the show. On the Today Show, Hoda Kotb grumbled mildly that she was not allowed to say the name of the big winner because NBC only allows them to say "that word" once.

In a nation where the president spews indelicate profanities with the zest of a longshoreman, in a world where any sort of language can be heard on the playgrounds and radio shows and classrooms, it seems to be almost quaint to see Hoda and Savannah with their knickers in a spin over a homophone for poop.

Please don't Bowdlerize my news! 

I can hear you saying, "I would never Bowdlerize your news," but that's a term derived from a Dr Thomas Bowdler (1754 - 1825) an English physician of whom it can be truly said that he was born in a town called Box, near Bath, and is buried in a place called Oystermouth.

And oh yes, he found it necessary to produce expurgated versions of great books written by others. He removed all the words that might make one giggle or blush from fine literature written by that naughty Mr Shakespeare, and others, and for his inane efforts he will be remembered with the word "bowdlerize," meaning to "remove 'offensive' material from the writings of others, rendering the work less meaningful."

Another person whose name became a verb was Horace Fletcher, a 19th century man who, with no background in medicine or physiology whatsoever, proclaimed that we should chew every bit of food 32 times ("one for every tooth"). Fletcher became known as the "Great Masticator" and to this day, chewing your food 32 times is called "fletcherizing" it.

I hope I gave you something to chew on.

Monday rerun: Rakish

 We all look forward to riding around looking at the pretty fall leaves in October and November.

Raking them up is not quite so appealing, leading many people to just let them lie there and eventually blow onto my yard.

Whatever your fall pleasure, don't rush out just yet.

The Weather Channel (what did we ever do without them?) says our rich autumn golds and browns will be here a little later this year. Blame the warmer temperatures of September.

And on the other hand, the Weather Channel, the good people who sponsor Jim Cantore's visits to wherever it's really hot or cold or snowy or rainy or floody, says that because it was a wet summer before it became a hot one, the foliage (pronounced "foilage" in Baltimore) will be really, really vivid, unless it gets windy.

Things change first in Western Maryland, where Garrett County Forester Melissa Nash reports that a sugar maple in New Germany State Park "… is telling us fall is just around the corner! If these warm days and cool nights keep up along with intermittent rain we should get some good color this year."

So count on the peak of pretty leaves to hit Garrett and Allegany counties in mid-October.

I have to look this up every autumn, because I forget, but it's photosythesis - your old friend from 7th grade Science class - that begins the process of leaf color change.  From spring until fall, the leaves on the trees make chlorophyll, the chemical that allows a tree to make its own glucose for nourishment. Chlorophyll being green, the leaves are as well - or so it would seem.

Actually, the colors of the leaves in October are the true colors of the leaves! And once they stop being all chlorophyll-ish, gone is the green and here comes the brown and yellow and what-have-you.

The same substance that makes carrots orange (beta carotene) makes some leaves orange, and something called anthocyanin makes them red, and flavonol, which sounds like something from a commercial ("Try Certs! Now with added flavonol!") makes them yellow. 

And nothing about any of these facts will help you rake them. Enjoy the fall!

Rerun: Cute Triangle

 One day, it's Liv Tyler, and then it's Paris Hilton, or Ariana Grande, and who knows who the current "It Girl" is in American pop culture? It changes almost every day, and it's always the same: a young woman, blessed with looks and sometimes a certain amount of talent, is suddenly all over the place, famous for being famous.

Imagine how it was when the mass media consisted of daily newspapers, and no "Entertainment Tonight" or E! channel or Instagram to make the unfamous famous overnight.

Evelyn Nesbit was the It Girl of the early 20th Century, a young lady from Philadelphia blessed with a gorgeous face.  She became a model in the very early days of mass advertising, and performed in Broadway musicals, where she caught the eyes of Harry K. Thaw and Stanford White.  White was a very well-known architect, a man who designed many famous buildings of the day (including the Lovely Lane Methodist Church in downtown Baltimore.) White both created beauty and appreciated beauty, and he took up with young Evelyn, becoming both her lover and her generous benefactor. They never made it to the altar, though.

Harry K. Thaw sounds more like a man of these days...rich by inheriting a ton of moolah, leader of a dissolute lifestyle, an avid drug abuser, and severely mentally deranged.  Thaw liked the ladies too, and to his voracious sexual appetite, he added the fillip of being into bondage and whips and so forth. So when he fell for Evelyn, she refused his hand in marriage for four years, since she knew that he valued chastity in the women he sought to debauch and defile.

Evelyn

But they later married, when his ardor overcame his puritanical weirdness.  That was in 1905.  The top of Thaw's head probably would have come off had he known that his dream girl had done the hibbidy-dibbidy with others besides White, most notably John Barrymore, the greatest actor of the time, and Drew Barrymore's grandfather, to connect this sordid tale with today.                   

Thaw's obsession with the man who had "ruined" (his term) the lovely Evelyn overtook his life, and at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden on June 25, 1906, during a performance of a musical called "Mam'zelle Champagne" (as the cast sang "I Could Love A Million Girls") Thaw approached White, brandished a pistol, and fired three shots at White, killing him instantly, while Thaw hollered  "You've ruined my wife!"

Harry

The trial that followed was that century's Trial Of The Century, and Thaw was found to be insane.  He wound up in a mental institution, until he escaped in 1915 and paid off enough people to get a new trial, at which he was adjudged no longer insane. In the 1920s, he moved to Clearbrook, Virginia, lived on a farm and  joined the local volunteer fire company, dying in 1947 of a coronary thrombosis.

He was insane, all right.  He was crazy about old Evelyn.

Rerun: Canned Laughter

 It's almost axiomatic that anytime after Christmas is over, if you see a blue metal tin that used to hold Danish Butter Cookies sitting around someone's house, it contains someone's sewing kit. You know, a pair of dull scissors, two dozen random spools of off-color thread, a jar with 27 buttons, none of which match, and half of an iron-on patch for mending knee holes.

It stands to reason that a lot of people buy the tin of cookies and toss the contents to have room for all the sewing impedimenta that's been inhabiting the junk drawer for so long. They need the room for more dead batteries and the remote to some long-broken appliance.

But if you like tin boxes, say hi to Yvette Dardenne, a woman from Belgium who has rounded up 60,000 tins in a collecting career lasting thirty years.

Tins? She's got 'em! Former canisters of chocolates, toffees, coffee, rice, tobacco, talc and shoe polish, from all over the world!

Ms Dardenne is 83, and she needs four houses to hold all her stuff. The whole thing started when she came into possession of a Cote d'Or chocolate box replete with a painting of a blonde girl wearing a blue hat. She keeps that one in the medieval waterfall that stands next to her house.

And, as so often happens with collectors, one tin became a dozen, and then hundreds of dozens, and, next thing you know, there you are with 60,000 of them!

"I haven't been anywhere. I was not travelling. People still think I have travelled a lot. It quickly became known (that I collected boxes). Sometimes, right after my husband left for the office, someone would show up to offer me something," said Dardenne, a resident of Grand-Hallet in Belgium's Liege province.

Lithography is the process of applying a picture or image to a hard surface through chemical reactions. Those who know such things believe that the first lithographed tin box dates to 1868 and features a logo of two horses, the symbol of the biscuits (cookies) made by Huntley & Palmers of Reading, England.

Guess who owns that treasure?

What's more, Ms Dardenne's collection may be viewed by anyone, provided they ask for an appointment.

It would be very nice to bring her a new addition to the collection. How about this oatmeal tin from 1991?

 

Rerun: Marc: My Words

 My friend Liz from work commented the other day when I put up a quote ("Life's a gas - I hope it's gonna last!") from Marc  Bolan as my Facebook status. Bolan was a guy, born Marc Feld in England in 1947, who became known as the leader of the rock band T Rex, who gave us memorable records such as "Bang A Gong (Get It On)," "Jeepster," "Mambo Sun," and my favorite, "Raw Ramp." I mean, who could not love music with an insistent boogie-woogie backbeat, conga drum percussion and albums with titles such as "My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair... But Now They're Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows." And how was I to know, way back then, that the phrase "Baby, I've got metal knees!" would take on added significance in my life, what with having knee replacement surgery and all.

In the intro to Raw Ramp, we hear this verse, which has ricocheted across my tender brainpan countless times since 1972:

"There was a time everything was fine,
we got drunk on the day like it was wine,
and all the children, they put flowers in their hair
and all the grownups, they put daggers there instead."


Which totally explains Dick Cheney's baldness.

But Bolan, who was not only a marvelous lyricist and great singer, was also a fantastic guitarist, good enough to play on sessions for the likes of Ike and Tina Turner, and David Bowie.
 
Ike and Tina Turner

He was only two weeks away from turning 30 when he died, one month after the passing of Elvis and one month before the death of Bing Crosby. It was a car crash that claimed his life; he was riding in his own car that was being driven by his girlfriend. The car hit a sycamore tree and Marc, who never learned to drive because he feared that he would die in a car crash, died in a car crash.

So. Am I the only person who thinks of him when people talk about riding the commuter line known as the MARC train? There must be someone else who would sooner ride the Maryland Area Regional Commuter Train than drive a car. Get it on, or get on it, whichever. Let's go Bolan.

Rerun: Cheddars Never Win

 We called him "Cheese Man" for obvious reasons, but how sad it was that he chose to behave in a manner that led to him being given such an unflattering sobriquet.

We were in the supermarket down by the park and stopped for some deli to make a sandwich.  A man ahead of us in line had ordered some cheddar cheese slices, and when the clerk handed him the bag with the cheese in it, he looked and reacted as if she had handed him a bag of floor sweepin's or rotten salami.

"I can't have cheese like this!" he exclaimed.  "This is all wrong!"

Well, he got my attention.  I love seeing public demonstrations of jackanapery, so I was right there watching.  

As he whined and whinged, it turned out that he did not like the way the cheese was sliced. It was too thin and the slices broke in half.  Cheddar cheese is like that.  That's because it's not like American cheese, which is also suitable for use as spackle, if you're patching a hole in the wall.  Cheddar's not all rubbery and bendy.  

The lady tried again to slice his cheese...a little thicker ("That's too thick!") and then a little thinner ("But it's breaking in half again!") Finally, he saw a male deli guy up the way by the pizza oven and said, "That guy knows how to slice cheese!" and so "that guy" dropped what he was doing to slice the same cheese in the same way and hand it to Mr Cheese, who then went into an unrequested soliloquy about how important it was for his cheese to be sliced just ever so.  And of course, he did not say he was sorry for being so picky. Just slice it my way and do it now, see?

And we can only assume that he was planning to put this cheese on a sandwich and shove it all down his neck, so who cares if the cheese was broken?

After he (mercifully for us) departed, I talked to the women behind the counter. One of them said she was brand new and in training for the deli job, and in her eyes I saw the look that meant she was already hoping to go sell yoga pants somewhere. The other women said that sort of thing happens a lot, and it was suggested that maybe Cheese Man is bossy at work and then brings that with him to the deli line.

Not that it matters, but I have a different slant. This objectionable fellow did not look or dress like the sort of man whom someone had placed in charge of anyone else.  Rather, he seemed like the kind of guy who spends his days feeling oppressed because other people keep telling him what to do all day, and he really enjoys stopping for a half a pound of cheddar so he can assert himself and push someone around, as he feels he is.

Of course, I might be wrong, and he might have replaced Ben Carson as chief of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, but then, he wouldn't be likely to be wearing flip flops and shorts on his way home from work, would he now?

Rerun: Not worth it

Hello - I'm running some reruns while I'm under the knife for knee replacement surgery....back to new posts soon! 

There was a time when we saw something we wanted a picture of - a sunset, kids on the beach, Lyndon Johnson showing his gall bladder surgery scars- and we grabbed the old Kodak Instamatic, snapped a snapshot or two, and then took the film to the drugstore for processing.

And we waited, and waited, to get the prints back.

The middle of next week, someone stopped off at Drugs-So-Lo and picked up the 4 x 6 pictures, and then we took them home, sent one in the mail to Aunt Gladys in Kankakee, and put the others in a shoebox.

Now, we all carry a wonderful camera right in our hand, with a smart phone.  It's too bad the qualities of being "smart" don't necessarily rub off on the smart phone user, but it seems that the phones are a lot smarter than we.

The most recent tragedy occurred last weekend, when Sydney Monfries, 22, a senior at Fordham University just weeks short of graduation, fell 30 feet in the bell tower of the school, landing at the bottom of a stairway in a horrible, sad, death.

She actually fell through an opening in a stairway landing at Keating Hall, plunging down the inside of the clockworks.  The tower is supposed to be locked at all times and is strictly off-limits to students, who are told from day one at Fordham to stay away, but, according to the student newspaper, The Observer, climbing the tower is a "rite of passage" for seniors.

“There are no words sufficient to describe the loss of someone so young and full of promise — and mere weeks from graduation,” university president Rev. Joseph M. McShane said in a statement.

Why was Monfries up there? Early on Sunday, just before her fatal fall, she was posting video of the great view of New York to Snapchat.

There have been several fatal falls among tourists at the Grand Canyon this year, people who leaned over just a bit too far to get that perfect picture.

I hope these warnings don't fall on deaf ears, but there is no Snapchat, no Instagram, no picture or video whatsoever that is worth risking your life to get. Ms Monfries was set to receive her degree and start law school in the fall, and now she is gone for not a very good reason at all, unless her loss is enough warning to save others.

And you can bet that Fordham will install a new security system on that bell tower, just three months or so too late.

Sunday Rerun: Look Out!

 Irony! We don't see it coming and that's what makes it so fun. Irony is when you steer your car away from a pothole ahead in the road, only to have your car swallowed up by an unseen crevasse about the size of Delaware, just down the road a piece.

Irony is NOT when you go to a movie and see your friend in line to see the same movie. That is coincidence.

Call this what you will, but the death of English daredevil Bobby Leach (1858 - 1926) was odd.  Bobby was the second person to make his way over Niagara Falls in a barrel. He was ten years late to be first to do so;  Annie Taylor did that very thing in 1901, while it took a decade for Leach to make the plunge (1911). 

That nutty feat does not come without medical complications. Leach was in the hospital for six months, getting over his two broken kneecaps and his one fractured jaw.  A veteran stuntman with the Barnum and Bailey Circus, Leach owned and operated a restaurant where he would hold forth with his customers, bragging that "Anything Annie can do, I can do better."

Bobby Leach the barrel he rode over Niagara Falls, 1911.

To capitalize on his local fame, Leach moved to Niagara Falls, New York and opened a pool hall in 1920. When he was in his sixties, he thought it would be a great idea to swim the noted whirlpool rapids around the Falls. He never succeeded in this endeavor, but one William "Red" Hill, a local riverman, saved his bacon every time. Perhaps Hill should be famous for this.

For all his derring-do, it was a piece of fruit that ended Mr Leach's life. He slipped on an orange peel, the cut became infected, gangrene set in, the leg was amputated, and complications from all this killed him two months later.

So, riding over the huge falls in a barrel, minimal injuries. Orange peel, death.

Life's like that sometimes, and then it isn't.

The Saturday Picture Show, November 9, 2024

 

Hi folks. I'm Jack, the Ghost of Halloween Past, and I'm here to remind you it's time to take the Halloween decorations down and pull out the pilgrims and turkeys.

Shooting a movie and you don't have the money to pay for a stadium-sized crowd of spectators? That's where these guys come in. They're the Inflatable Crowd company, and they'll fill the seats with balloon people.

The Canadian view of autumn splendor.

Macaws or toucans? Nope. They're Oriental Pied Hornbills. You know, as in "Four and twenty blackbirds.."

Do you recognize this man? He and Donald Trump have something in common. Tell your History teacher about it!

Our beautiful national symbol.

I'm not encouraging you to run off and join a traveling troupe of hedonists, but certain things remind us to go find our joy and hold it close!

We had a bug matching this description flying around the kitchen this week...or was it another new bug every day? Only saw one at a time. And look how nicely he blended in with the paint!

Just in time for holiday mirth-making - your own private nog dispenser!

Godfather fans will recognize this scene as Clemenza's house. Cannoli fans will recognize being told not to forget the cannoli!

Vacation, all I ever wanted

 I don't know much about current music, but I know Olivia Rodrigo is popular in that field, so good for her. She's a strong, smart woman at 21, and I was thoroughly impressed to read that she has a question she always asks guys on a first date.

Here's the question:  “I always ask them if they would want to go to space.”

Warning to potential Olivia daters: give the wrong answer, and there is no second date.

Hint to potential Olivia daters:  “And if they say yes, I don’t date them.”

And I love her explanation:  “I just think if you want to go to space, you’re a little too full of yourself.” 

It's rare to find a young person whose attitude matches mine perfectly, but really, she does in this case. For all I know, that's all we have in common, philosophically.

This is just my thinking, and yours is probably different, but there is a lot to see and do here on what we still call Earth. There are sights to look at and music to hear and art to appreciate and food to taste and the lovely aroma of cheese bread baking. None of these treats are available in space, except for the music, if you take your MP3 player. 

I understand it makes me an outlier or even an outcast, but as far back as I can remember, I didn't see the point of men walking on the moon while women were back here doing worthwhile things. You go to the moon, you get moon rocks, but if you go to the beach here, you get rocks tumbled to pretty perfection over the years in Davy Jones's locker AND you get some of the greatest pizza in this world, and a chance to get a nice tan. 

And the trip home from the moon? Not a WaWa in sight, so you just have to hold it til you get back.

Go ahead, go to the moon. Olivia and I will miss you a lot.

Don't worry about it

 There are things I wonder about....

You know how you'll be paging through Facebook or whatever else and see a post with a message such as, "Facebook doesn't want you to see this. Let's make sure it keeps going."

And it's perfectly innocuous picture of a little child praying or something else completely anodyne.

Why is it that some people love to feel like they're being trampled upon? Does daring to post something that no one is trying to ban make them feel better, or stronger, or what?

I was thinking about the days of COVID 19...the very early period. Someone I know shared a meme that said, "COVID 19 stands for Chinese-Origin Viral Infectious Disease #19." This allowed people to blame something on people from far away, which is always a popular option.

As far back as the ancients making up myths to explain things they had not developed means to understand (the weather, the origin of the world, the lives of the gods, the meaning of various social customs, etc) because people just want something to cling to.  A good example is when parents who lack the information to explain what thunder is tell their children who ask what thunder is that it's "God bowling." 

But as far as believing that Mark Zuckerberg is sitting in his Barca-Lounger Xing out pictures that have religious themes, don't count on that happening. But as to why people like to feel that it is, you got me wondering too.

Meanwhile, according to his posts and pics, Zuckerberg is dealing with a house full of girls who are all getting into ballet, and wearing jewelry himself, so post what you want and feel good about it!

Lost and loss

A neighbor noticed that a package on the porch had not been taken in, and alertly notified the police.

Up in Alexander, Maine, John Helmstadter, 82, and Pamela Helmstadter, 72, had gone for a woodsy walk. They didn't take cellphones; perhaps they didn't plan to be that long out there on the trail, but then John fell, and was unable to get back on his feet. So Pamela went walking to get help, but she became lost. For four days and four frigid nights she was in the woods, and thank the stars that her dog was with her. When the Maine Warden service found her,  she was “severely hypothermic but alert with her dog by her side.”. They added that the lowest temperatures in Alexander that week ranged from 26 to 44 degrees Fahrenheit, according to AccuWeather.

Sad to say, after Pamela was found over a mile from their home, her husband was found dead half an hour later about 200 yards away.

Sgt Josh Beal of the Warden Service said that when she was found, “her dog (Lucy) was being very protective of her and even laid down on top of her on her chest. It sounds like that’s what the dog would do at night as well, to help keep her warm.”

Sgt Beal added, “She did very well to survive for that long,” and that Pamela's body temperature was 90.7°, and she said she had given up hope of being found and surviving.

The rescue crew, after finding the lady and her valiant dog.

She promised her husband that she'd be back, but the story went another way. During those four harrowing days, she was eating peat moss to stay alive, Pamela says she felt  “a lot of sadness and grief.  We were married for 31 years, and we had a good life together.”

We can all take from this a quick suggestion to plan for trouble by taking a cell phone and some provisions when going out, but the larger message is to make sure we enjoy our days together while we can still be together.

E Day

 It looks like a record turnout for this crucial election. Please don't be the only person you know who fails to go vote. It matters!

Why Tuesday?

From the Reader's Digest, which reprinted an article from the Smithsonian...here's the skinny on why Election Day is always a Tuesday.

No day was designated as voting day when the Constitution was ratified (1788), so for years, each state would set their own day, and you know what you're going to get with some of these states around here, which shall remain nameless, but rhyme with Blurginia...

Congress got right on it and took action in 1845. 57 years is not an unreasonable length of time, is it? 

OK. Sunday, no way. Monday also, no go, because people just had the buggy out to go to meetin' on Sunday, and they weren't about to get old Bessie out again. Wednesday was a big day for farmers to haul their goods to market, so that was no good, and, well, same for Thursday, if they were just getting back from the market.

And, this will sound like current-day America, but they didn't think people wanted to be bothered with things like voting or working on Fridays. And don't even think about Saturday, for crying out loud! Saturdays were for going to the town dance and coming home for a bath before Sunday services.

That left Tuesday, so tomorrow is your day to vote, if you have not done so already!

Sunday Rerun (from 2021): "You know, I read on Bookface that..."

 Sometimes it seems there is more misinformation out there than actual information. There are people among us who believe the Titanic was a fictional story about a ship that sank. 

Many people still believe that the moon landing the rest of us watched on a Sunday night in July, 1969, was not real, but no more than a Disney production.  And that is really Goofy!

Until 1800, people thought that California was an island. To this day, there are people who believe that a tobacco smoke enema will cure people of diseases.  It won't, but it will enable the recipient to blow interesting smoke rings.

Lots of people think that 5G cell technology causes cancer, although they won't say why it's ok to use 4G. 

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, many people think the earth is only 5,000 years old. 

Does she really mean this?

People who don't know they don't know will say that lightning never strikes the same place twice (these are usually people who call it "lightening"). The old rumor about people only using 10% of their brains is invalid. Even people who say nasty untruths have to use their noggin to come up with nonsense such as the stories about the Bermuda Triangle having more shipwrecks or mysterious disappearances than other waterways.

And this will make some parents mad at me, but you do not need to wait an hour after eating to go in swimming. You're not going to cramp and drown.

I was running all these falsehoods through my noggin, because last week, someone told me that the government started COVID-19 so that everyone would have to stay home and vote by mail only, thus enabling "the government" to rig elections.

The backbone of all these notions is always broken by simply asking the speaker for any shred of a scintilla of an iota of proof. There is none, just their beliefs, to which they cling like the lifejackets that they think will save them even if unworn.

The Saturday Picture Show, November 2, 2024

 

As proof of the current drought in the Northeast US, this bridge in an old New Jersey reservoir has not been seen for years and years.

Your free wallpaper for this week is this lovely picture of a Dutch lake.

Illuminated golden leaves at nighttime make a pretty canopy.

Trust in this simple law of nature: There's always going to be one.

This is one-time ER physician (really!) and current hilarious comedian Ken Jeong examining his star on the Hollywood Walk of Famous Stars or whatever they call it. "Oh, he does that from time to time." (If you know what I mean.)

The rabbits have had a great summer and fall and are now looking for their winter homes.

Maybe it's because of all the election commotion, or maybe it's because there are just so many natural calamities in the era of climate change, but there was massive flooding in Valencia, in Eastern Spain, this week, and I didn't see anything about it on the news until three days later. 

These men were preparing their itinerary for a business trip in 1969. They were the Apollo 11 crew, going for that moonwalk once they got there.

Mookie Betts, of Los Angeles, California, took a business trip to New York City this week and was assaulted by several thugs who attempted to rob him of a baseball and his glove, and also pull his arm out of its socket. One of the oafs told ESPN that everyone knows he "patrols that wall." Sure, son.

Don't say we didn't warn you! Take a fallback position tonight.

Growing Up

Perhaps this will be a key moment in the maturation of Tyrique Stevenson. Tyrique is 24, and is a cornerback for the Chicago Bears, who had just taken the lead Sunday over the Washington Commanders in exciting National Football League action. With mere seconds left, the Commanders lined up for a last-ditch attempt at a longshot touchdown pass. 

But... instead of preparing for the play, Tyrique spent time waving to the DC fans, taunting them even after the play began.

It gets worse. The fans hooted back at him, gesticulating that he would do well to turn around and play football with the other 21 men on the field, because the play was underway.

That he did, and it seems that it would have gone better for the Bears had Tyrique continued his antics, because when he did get into the action, he tipped the toss-up pass into the waiting hands of Washington receiver Noah Brown, who scampered into the end zone to win the game.

Of course, the twitterverse took Stevenson to task, and he replied: "To Chicago and teammates my apologies for lack of awareness and focus," he wrote. "The game ain't over until zeros hit the clock. Can't take anything for granted. Notes taken, improvement will happen."

Stevenson added Monday, "I let the moment get too big and it's something that can never happen again and won't ever happen again."

Moments have a way of taking on the size we allow them to have. Meanwhile, I'm saving that phrase for the next time I forget to check the catbox or buy too many pork chops or say something untoward: "Notes taken, improvement will happen."

Doesn't sound like me, but I won't let the moment get too big.

What's with these people?

I'll tell you the difference between the politicians of today and the politicians of yesterday,

The Nixon/Ford Administration, still the all-time leader in presidents forced to resign, had an Agriculture Secretary named Earl "Rusty" Butz. Earl was a farmer, born and bred, and was severely lacking in tact and discretion, but he only told his racist jokes to Pat Boone, who was a singer, and Sonny Bono, who certainly wasn't. The press over heard it. The joke he told those two aboard a commercial flight to California after the 1976 Republican National Convention was horribly offensive and racist that Butz was forced to resign and go back to Indiana.

Today, they pack Madison Square Garden and have "comedians" tell disgusting Puerto Rican jokes and I don't know what it takes to show you the complete lack of anything good there.

Whatever happened to respecting our fellow Americans? 

Decided

All the contumacious campaigning and the rowdy rallies and bellicose begging for votes are finished, and I am happy to tell you, the election is over.

No, not that one (yet!) I'm talking about the coveted Best Sandwich in Maryland title, decided by the greatest website I've not heard of before, Love Food. They have three million Facebook followers as they go on and on about "food, recipes and reviews." And based on reviews on line, awards, and "the first hand experience of their (their) team, "the best sandwich in Maryland is.....the the pit beef sandwich from Chaps Pit Beef, with locations in Baltimore,  Aberdeen (Harford County), and Glen Burnie (Anne Arundel County)."

Chaps's sandwich is the real deal, Baltimore style, medium rare and served on rye or a kaiser roll, with available toppings of barbecue sauce, sliced onions, and horseradish.

All over the country, especially in the South, they go on about barbecue, in which they swelter meat for a period of days in a low-heat oven until it gives up and disintegrates. Maryland Pit Beef is cooked over a hot coal fire rapidly and sliced while still hot.  You can really only find it in Maryland (unless other places are copying it) and I hope you get a chance too very soon!

 

 

 

Looky-loo!

Besides the festival of slurs and insults they threw at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, there was something even more fun going on in New York City.

They had a Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest, and guess who showed up?

Timothée Chalamet! He walked right on through the crowd assembled, took off his mask, and revealed himself to be himself, in front of the thrilled throng.

The actor happily posed with the people who tried to look like him, people dressed as the characters he played in movies like "Wonka" and "Dune."

He's sporting upper-lip fuzz now, which is said to be for his role in a movie called "Marty Supreme" that he's making with Gwyneth Paltrow, who named her daughter Apple and was not joking.

One of these people is said to be Chalamet. Congratulations to him for being the best Timothee.

No need

In Howard County, Maryland, a student at Howard High School was arrested recently and charged with the murder of a 26-year-old man who was shot at the local mall. 

This led to a new rule voted on by the Maryland State Board of Education,  mandating that when students accused or convicted of violent crimes transfer to new schools, the school they leave is obliged to the new school to...how about this...LET THEM KNOW!

Up until now, it was optional for the student's old school to tell the new one. Optional!

When the student was arrested, he had a loaded, fully automatic ghost gun in his backpack, and was wearing an ankle monitor. He was under arrest for an attempted murder that has left his victim paralyzed.

I remember getting in trouble for not wearing official white sox in phys ed. I should have told the teacher I had to cover up my ankle monitor, and white would clash.

There is what fancy speakers call a "disconnect" among people whose jobs involve keeping track of people's misbehavior. It reminds me of the case in my Baltimore County, in which a young girl was slowly and systematically beaten to death by the muscleman boyfriend of her mother.  A social worker knew all about this torture, even brought her cases notes to the trial when summoned, but said that it was not part of her job description to notify the police that a child was being murdered slowly.

She said it was a family matter and no one else's business.

It became police business, of course, and court business, but she tended to her own knitting and kept it all in the family for reasons that still elude me. 

Sunday Rerun: Soul Finger! Soul Fingerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

 Got a minute for a little pop/soul music history?

I'm glad you do. More and more I find my mind drifting away from the current times anyway. How about 1967?  

In April of that year, along came a hit record, an instrumental, by a new group called The Bar-Kays.  They were on Volt Records, part of the Stax/Volt company out of Memphis, and this was their first single release, called "Soul Finger."

The band had been noodling in the studio, rehearsing to "But It's Alright," the song by J.J. Jackson.  As instrumentals often do, the band started with a melody (this time, it was the eight notes of "Mary Had A Little Lamb") and built the tune from there.

And in the studio that afternoon so long ago was none other than Isaac Hayes, about whom I could write three blogs, about his careers as a musician, producer, and actor. Isaac was an idea man, and he came up with a beauty for this record. First, he said, let's call the song "Soul Finger" (which must have been a tribute to James Bond, the double-naught spy from "Goldfinger").

And then, Isaac said, let's get some kids to help us out here by having them holler the title! David Porter, Hayes's production partner, knew whom to ask, when he saw kids out in the street in front of the Stax studios in Memphis, playing hopscotch, tag, chasing each other around on bikes...the usual kid stuff.

Porter went out and asked the group of kids if they wanted to help make a record...and he sweetened the deal by offering Coca-Cola for everyone! In came the kids, down went the soda, and the next thing you know, the kids are screeching "Soul Finger!" right on cue!

And the record was an instant hit, reaching # 3 on the U.S. Billboard R&B singles chart and # 17 on the Billboard Hot 100, with the B-side "Knucklehead" also getting some airplay.

As joyous as the sound of this record is, 1967 ended horribly for the Bar-Kays. Chosen by Otis Redding to go tour as his backup band, four of the band - guitarist Jimmie King, organist Ronnie Caldwell, saxophonist Phalon Jones, and the great drummer Carl Cunningham - died along with Redding and one other man when the star's airplane crashed into Lake Monona, near Madison, Wisconsin.

Other musicians continued playing as the Bar-Kays, notably on Isaac Hayes's "Hot Buttered Soul" album, but "Soul Finger" remains their essential legacy, and it's all due to some kids in Memphis, all sugar-rushed on Coca-Cola and hollering their hearts out! 

The Saturday Picture Show, October 26, 2024

 

There is a poem called "Fallow Fields" by H.E. Alexander. It starts off, 

The fallow fields of empty dreams

engulf my mind with barren schemes,

drying my thoughts like arid streams.

I look at fall quite differently. All spring and summer, the fields and forests gave us their bounty, and now it's their time to rest. It's also the best time to visit the fields!

How old am I? Old enough that this dental setup looks just the operatory of my boyhood dentist, Dr. Pullem, down on Plymouth Av. But for real, someone found this office abandoned in an old house in which the dentist, now presumably drilling in heaven, also had a homemade radio station. I guess that's where someone got the idea to play dentist office music....Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Christopher Cross. No Spooky Tooth, though.

We leaf-peepers wait all year for this!

If anyone was ever wondering, fingernail art shows up like this on an x-ray. Go ahead and make a costume out of this!

 She's Keiko Fukuda, she is 97, and she is now the first woman ever to earn a 10th degree black belt in Judo. I feel challenged, but not that much.

This woman, Sable Sky Atelier. of Fargo, N.D. has been asking people to send her their DVDs of the movie "Wedding Crashers." When she has collected 1,000, she is going to watch the movie, which she has never seen. She can't have my copy - the first ten minutes are too good to say goodbye to! I wonder if she's seen "Fargo."

The Ritter family continues to entertain. It all started with Tex, on the left, star of 459 Western movies and a few dozen singing cowboy hit country records. His son, John, lower right, was so beloved in "Three's Company, " and John's son, Jason, is on the new CBS version of "Matlock" which is so good that I can't even tell you why, but check it out. Starting with the pilot...

True facts, cool cats.

Great myths and fairy tales often told to mislead the working class, # 1.

Everything about this picture says "1973" - her glasses, she's smoking a cigarette, she's barefoot at an Allman Bros concert. Good times! You should have been there.