Dear Lady

Not trying to poke fun at this lady, but...you know you're getting up in years when your granddaughter is 69 years of age!

Elizabeth Francis turned 115 the other day, and her family brought her a great big floral-covered vanilla cream sheet cake (that's her favorite flavor!) And they told her to go for seconds on the cake if she wanted to. Why not?

Ms Francis's granddaughter is Ethel Harrison, chairperson of the cake committee. She told her gram to have all she wanted from the cake with  "two ones and a five." 

Ms Francis

Ms Francis ascended to the top of the Who's Got Seniority list in February when Edie Ceccarelli died at 116 in Mendocino County, California. She has slowed down a bit in recent months (Editor's Note:  Who hasn't?) and her voice is but a faint whisper, but, again, at 115, what do you have to holler about? Ms Harrison said her grandma still has a sparkle about her. She shares a home with her only child, Dorothy Williams, 95.

“My grandmother sleeps much more than she did six months ago, but she still says exactly what she thinks and doesn’t hold back,” Harrison reports.

And for those who wish to join her in the Centenarian + Club, here's her advice: “Speak your mind and don’t hold your tongue.”

That confirms that I will probably be around in 2071 at 120 yoa, which is when I will finally get finished speaking my mind about everyone and everything.

The Bird is the Word

Today's English Crime Beat features a thieving seagull named "Steven" (Steven Seagull, get it?) who has pecked away his welcome at the Lyndale Central Store in  Wyke Regis, Dorset. For over six years, Steven has been strutting into the store, snagging a pack of chips with his beak, and flying off.

The owners of the shop have put up signs reminding customers to "close the door" in an effort to curb the crime wave. Store manager Stuart Harmer has trouble "trying to explain to the powers that be that I've got stock loss because of a seagull - they think its a joke" that this bird has flown with 30 packets recently.

Harmer said Steven "comes in the shop when the doors open, puts his head around the corner of the door, nicks a packet of crisps and flies off with it".

FYI, if you have similar theft at the hands, or talons, rather, of gulls, Harmer says Steven is particularly fond of BBQ beef flavored chips.

He described Steven as "very daring and sometimes annoying" but also says he shares his snack with his flock out on the street, once he's pecked the package open.

Harmer's crew even tried putting out those popular red hot spicy chips, but Steven reached right past them with his beak and found what he likes.

I present this to those of you who have birds outside your buildings operating in a suspicious manner.  Take action when the chips are down!

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie

Not that this will keep the Baltimore Orioles top management awake at night, but I am not a huge fan of the Oriole Park at Camden Yards. I know it's the Taj Mahal of baseball, a magnificent edifice constructed on a great idea that former club officials Janet Marie Smith and the late Larry Lucchino had. The state of Maryland had acquired the property at the old Camden railroad warehouse. Smith and Lucchino said, instead of tearing down the warehouse (the longest building on the east coast) let's build right up to it. And they did, and it's a great park. 

But it's downtown, and I'm not. I'm about the most sub-urban boy you'll ever meet. I see plenty of people packing the ballyard these days, since we have a winning team, and that is all good.

Please permit me to wish they had kept the old mid-town Memorial Stadium around so they could play a few games there every year, just for the hell of it. Sure, that place was decrepit and had no swank about it, but there was a certain basebally-ness to it that the new place lacks. I see fans at the games now with crucial moments in the game in front of them, and they are looking at their phones or jawjacking with the people behind them. At the old stadium, you had to pay attention, in case a ball or bat (or fan!) came flying your way.

At the old stadium, for some reason, I enjoyed the smell of some cheap cheroot cigar being smoked, and I never smoked stogies in my life. It just seemed like part of the atmosphere, like the aroma of popcorn and the sound of kids running around stomping on old soda cups. They don't do that anymore, either.

One thing I believe the new park is trying is growing tomatoes. Yes. Tomatoes. This all started back in the 1970s when Earl Weaver, the manager back then, challenged groundskeeper Pasquale “Pat” Santarone to a tomato growing contest. Santarone carved out a little dirt triangle down where the left field foul line met the stands, and Earl planted his Better Boy tomatoes in his back yard garden not too far from where we live now! I'll be glad to drive you past the historic site someday.

Earl and Pat even went into business together as they argued about the size and quality of their respective fruits. They marketed a tomato fertilizer and I'm sure a lot of people around here have enjoyed homemade pasta sauce and salads much more because they had used the Earl 'n' Pat secret 'mater food!

I have heard that the current club has tomato plants growing out by the bullpen, but it's not the same.

You can travel all around, and you are not going to see things in other cities like you see here!

Pat (l) and Earl

Sunday Rerun: "Holidays and salad days, and days of moldy mayonnaise" - Frank Zappa

 

We're more than 1/2 way through the annual Hades we call summer, with its heat, humidity, mosquitoes, and those cicadas or whatever beating their wings to sound like a scene from "Ramar Of The Jungle."  

If Summer had a Facebook page, I would not "like" it.

But because it's not the time of year when we want a nice hot bowl o' stew or Dixie Pork Chops for supper, it's the time of year when salads can star as the main attraction.  We don't want to heat up the kitchen anyway!

The rest of the year, the salad is something to get down before you hit the beef bar or the sausage station, so that later you can say you ate vegetables.

Salads are great with fresh leafy lettuce - good old iceberg, or Romaine, or what-have-you, and nice Maryland tomatoes and cucumbers, onions, mushrooms, carrots, celery, red cabbage, olives (black or green), anchovies, shredded cheese, beets...the list is as long as the produce department is wide.  

If you'd like to turn that green goodness into a hearty meal, add some shrimp, steak slivers, chicken nuggets, tuna, or just about anything, and you're in tall cotton.

HOWEVER, as a founding member of We Love Salads, I must speak out against the mixed-up medleys that some like.  (Two of these people happen to be kin to me, one being my wife, the other, my sister, and I love them both, but still...) A strawberry is an ice cream topping or a cereal accompaniment.  It does not like to be chomped in the same mouthful as a red onion.  Ditto for watermelon and feta cheese.  Just because things taste great on their own does not mean they go together. 

SBC Salad

And this is why I feel the need to draw the line on further salad experimentation.  The Food Lion website offers this recipe for Strawberry Banana Cheesecake Salad.  

I'll probably be seeing this on a plate near me very soon. 

The Saturday Picture Show, July 27, 2024

 

Some geometry major shows you how to make a more interesting PBJ, what with Back To School so close. You get nine different bite/tastes this way. The rows are jelly, honey, and marshmallow; the columns are crunchy peanut butter, Nutella, and creamy PB. This could lead to sandwiches within sandwiches becoming a deal!

I know I'm going to hear from Wilbur and Orville that this is a perfectly normal part of jet maintenance and I will continue to maintain that it just looks like the nose of the plane is held on with duct tape.

He has a tattoo reading "Born To Kick Ass and Bring Swedish Meatballs"

Pedestrian's socks do not match, but his clothes match the stacked chairs.

It is understood that when Keith Richards's daughters pass on, he will inherit everything.

The Eagle has landed. Repeat: The Eagle has landed. Or whatever.

Why do so many tousle-headed blond (however they get that way) males go on to high office in politics and then set new goals for themselves?

Local officials in Iceland have come up with a way to get the attention of drivers approaching a pedestrian crossing. Painted shadows provide all the depth.

I shared this as a reminder that a) it will be cold again someday and b) fools will be fools again.

In the Old Country, a kid could get a kid-sized beer if he was with his parents. I think that's a good idea, teaching a kid to respect alcohol and be aware of its pitfalls at an early age. I'm sure not everyone will agree.

Change for good

Good old classic-style country music was an endless delight in my younger days. Many of the people who wrote the songs, sang them, and picked the guitars that accompanied them were among the most talented people in their fields, there can be no denying.

One of them, a feller who came along in the early 70s, was Dick Feller, who wrote and sang all sorts of songs: novelties, love ballads, any and all. Among them:

The Credit Card Song

Biff, the Friendly Purple Bear

Makin’ The Best Of A Bad Situation

Any Old Wind That Blows

Lord, Mr Ford

The Thing That Kept Me Goin'

East Bound and Down

Some Days Are Diamonds (Some Days Are Stones)

One day several years ago, I was rummaging through my iTunes and I wondered whatever happened to Dick Feller? And so I rummaged through Google, and found that Dick Feller was now Deena Kaye Rose, having undergone surgery to become a trans woman in 2014. She wrote her autobiography, Some Days Are Diamonds, in which she came out publicly as a trans woman and adopted her new name.

Since everyone has the right to their own decisions in the matter, I was happy to read the book. It was sad to find that she had struggled with her identity for many years, even while married and the father of a daughter. I recognize the strength it took to do this. Denying herself womanhood must have been daily torture, and it was nice to read that she no longer had that agony to deal with.

She also mentioned that the song "Some Days Are Diamonds," written years ago and recorded by not only Feller but John Denver as well, revealed her thoughts very well in its final verse:

Now the face that I see in my mirror

More and more is a stranger to me

More and more I can see there's a danger

In becoming what I never thought I'd be.

Imagine looking in the mirror and not recognizing, or appreciating, the reflection therein. And then, imagine a day and age when it was not possible to rectify the situation, and being forced to "live" with it. Deena's transgender journey was the trip to contentment.

It's only words

One of my favorite lines (and there were many!) from the motion picture "Private Benjamin" was when fish-out-of-water Private Judy Benjamin, having joined the US Army for lack of anything better to do with her life, finds herself in basic training with the hilarious Hal Williams as Sgt. Ross, who tells his squad of trainees:

"Beware, there are mine fields out there. Most of them are inert. However, some are ert."

A deep, thorough knowledge of our mother tongue would seem not to be a requirement for army non-coms, but anyway, in coining a new word, Ross makes a valid point that the soldiers might well recall on the mine fields...some mines might not be inert, so be careful!

I bring all this up for no good reason, as always, except that to say "inert" has a cousin-word, that being "inept," and there is a back-formation that allows us to mean the opposite of ineptitude and call someone "ept."  If you want to, that is. "Ept" is in the dictionary, defined as competent or skillful, and no less a wordsmith than the great E. B. White of The New Yorker once wrote:

“I am much obliged..to you for your warm, courteous, and ept treatment of a rather weak, skinny subject.”

E.B. White; Letters of E.B. White; Harper & Row; 1976.

Note: I came across this because I subscribe to the brilliant A.Word.A.Day site, and if you love words, I encourage you to join me there! It would be very ept of you!

https://wordsmith.org/awad/index.html

Roses are red

Roses are red and so are lobsters, but every once in a while one turns up orange. And so it was that the Red Lobster restaurant in the seafood haven of Pueblo, Colorado, had an orange one in their regular shipment of future dinners the other day.

And an experienced employee who has climbed the corporate ladder to dishwasher and Head Biscuit Maker happened to be unpacking some new residents of the lobster tank, and he saw something off-color about this guy. He called in the managers and they decided that, instead of winding up on the plate of a guy wearing a bib with a picture of a lobster on it, the Orange One (nicknamed Crush after the Denver Bronco defense of long ago) deserved to swim in the Downtown Aquarium in Denver. 

“Myself and many of my team are born and raised Denver Broncos fans, so as soon as we saw that orange color, we knew that Crush would be an excellent representation,” said Kendra Kastendieck, the restaurant’s general manager. “And we all want our defensive line to be that good again.” She packed old Crush in with ice packs in one of those styrofoam coolers and took him to his new swimming hole.

After 30 days, Crush will have a veterinarian check him over, and then he'll be in the exhibit with other cold water North Atlantic Ocean species.

I guess I'm the bad guy. I wish Crush well, but I picture myself with a bib on, and him on a plate with a baked potato and some broccoli.

On her own

I can offer four (mine and Peggy's) hearty thumbs up to the miniseries "Under The Bridge" on Netflix. It's about some teenagers in British Columbia who ganged up on one girl who was trying to fit in with the crowd, and I won't say any more. I don't like it when people drop spoilers and then holler "Spoiler Alert!" when it's too late.

We recommend the series and I wish you would take note of how fine an actress Riley Keough is. She plays the writer who comes back to her home town to write about the girl who tried to fit in. It might not mean anything to some people, and it might mean everything to others, but Riley is Elvis's granddaughter, the child of his only offspring, Lisa Marie.

Since her grandfather died in 1977, it might not be such a deal to people born more recently, and that's why she stands on her own, and goes a fine job in the show.

It must be hard to be the child of a famous family. Riley's grandma Priscilla was an actress of sorts ("Dallas" on TV and "Naked Gun" movies), but she did not cause anyone to confuse her with Meryl Streep. Elvis made a couple of dozen movies, all featuring him playing Elvis under different names. 

It seems that Riley went out and just learned to act, and even though when I see her on the TV in our living room I see her grandfather, grandmother and mother in her features, she is out there alone, and that's to her credit.

They had her in stitches

Every town has its official gossip - the official chronicler of all the romances and weddings and divorces and births and foolin' around that goes on. She (face it, it's usually a woman who writes all the gossip. Men KNOW it but never commit it to paper) has friends all over the place who fill her in.

The New York City version of this reporter is Cindy Adams, widow of comic Joey Adams, and she writes a column in the New York POST fishwrap, so her words get out to many more people than, say, a hairdresser in Bugtussle.

Cindy is 94 years of age now, but still getting around well and she's always up for something new...such as finishing high school.

It's not like she quit school to run off and play the south end of a horse in a costume party. She was not allowed to finish because she did not sew her graduation gown!

She said she was "stunned" one day last week to be receiving that diploma "800 years too late."

Cindy was attending Andrew Jackson High School in Cambria Heights in Queens but, “In those days, we had a thing called Home Ec., short for Home Economics. I had a 90-something average, I graduated in three years instead of four but I couldn’t sew the dress.”

It was a requirement for women in the class to sew their grad gown. Cindy could not do that, but her mother took it to a professional tailor. The principal saw this the ruse and said, "She didn’t make this dress. She doesn’t graduate. She doesn’t get a diploma. She can’t go to college.”

So Cindy's friends, including "Judge Judy" Sheindlin, the mayor, the governor, and the president of the American Federation of Teachers all showed up to toss praise her way.

“If you had had that opportunity to graduate, you could have gone onto college,” Governor Kathy Hochul pointed out.

Cindy was born in 1930, so all this took place in the late 1940s, which is not all that long ago, comparatively. Imagine a school district having a stupid rule like this today!

And I wonder if there was a similar requirement for the boys in the class, but I think we know the answer, don't we?

Sunday Rerun: Horrible pay, but you are off on Sundays

 To be quite honest, as I always am, it's not the super piety that annoys me about Chick-fil-A. I mean, their "We're so religious, we're closed on Sunday, but you sinners just go right on over to McDonald's or something" is pretty sad, and their charitable endeavor, the WinShape Foundation, donated millions of dollars to organizations seen by LGBT activists as hostile to LGBT rights.  As a longtime stockholder in the firm of Live & Let Live, this offends me.

And I ate lunch there one day with an old friend who assured me I would love it. In the hour lunch break that we shared, I guess I spent about 10 minutes talking to him. The rest of the time, I had to deal with the hyped-up hostess, who kept bopping over to our table every 37 seconds to see if there was "Any little thing I can do for you all!" 

But I am not so pure of spirit that I would drive past Home Depot if I needed some lag bolts if going all the way over to Lowe's would cost time and gas, even though the Depot supports the reelection campaign of Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.),  who in turn supports the white-supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. 

That reminds me, I might need nuts for those lag bolts.

No, I can overlook a certain amount of corporate politics just because I am not apt to align with any huge profit machine. My objection to CFA is simple: their food disgusts me. Greasy slabs of chicken on a spongy hamburger roll? No thanks. 

So I say, I don't go there, and I don't think they care. But here is another reason to view them with a gimlet eye.

One of their "stores" in North Carolina tried a new way to get their work done. They asked for “volunteers” willing to be paid in crummy chicken sandwiches, rather than money, for working at their drive-through.

“We are looking for volunteers for our new Drive Thru Express!” the outlet in Hendersonville, N.C., put on Facebook the other day (and then they took it down).  “Earn 5 free entrees per shift (1 hr) worked. Message us for details.”

This sort of "volunteer employee" status would appear to conflict with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the federal law that says employers have to pay employees for the work they do.  You really wouldn't think such a law would be necessary, but then again...

The CFA in question says this is not a job, so sireee Bob! This is a “volunteer-based opportunity” intended for people who “think it’s a good fit for them,” so that ain't like no job or nothin'.

“We’ve had multiple people sign up and enjoy doing and have done it multiple times,” the store posted. “People who sign up for this chose it voluntarily.”

A spokesperson for Chick-fil-A corporate, down in their Atlanta headquarters, told The Washington Post that the Hendersonville store had “decided to end this program.”

“Most restaurants are individually owned and operated, and it was a program at an individually owned restaurant,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “This was not endorsed by Chick-fil-A, Inc.”

Meanwhile, the manager at the said he had no comment, and suggested that the medic contact the corporation...the same people who said go ask him. 

Jennifer Haigwood, director of communications for the North Carolina Department of Labor, said the FLSA’s requirements regarding private for-profit employers “are clear that there cannot be an employee who provides ‘volunteer’ work for that for-profit employer.”

“Generally, labeling a worker as a ‘volunteer’ will not remove the employer from its FLSA obligation to pay the required wages if that individual performs work that benefits the for-profit entity,” Haigwood said.

The CFA in question once employed Madison Cawthorn, recently unelected for a second term in the US Congress. Now that he will be out of work soon, perhaps volunteering at his old place will help him land a solid job that he can keep for more than two years!

Back home here, I am compiling a list of dream jobs I would like to volunteer for:

• Orioles first-base coach
• Being the "Big Al" elephant-suited mascot at Alabama football games
• Beef taster at Ruth's Chris
• Grand Ole Opry singer
• Circuit Court judge
• Graffiti installer
• Game show host or booth announcer ("It's a lifetime supply of Turtle Wax!")
• Tattoo parlor spell checker
• Maître d' at a fancy steak restaurant where bigshots vying for a table will palm me folded double-sawbucks
• Fortune cookie writer
• Roller coaster tester
• Google Street View driver
• Professional, paid blogger

And that's when I woke up.

 

The Saturday Picture Show, July 20, 2024

 

It would be wonderful to have this sort of national unity again. A ticker-tape celebration for the end of World War I made it look as if it had snowed!

Potato chip aficionados have long recognized that the chip that gets doubled over in the frying process gives us extra dipping power and the ability to deliver more clam dip to our waiting maws. Double the fun!

The late-60s Psychedelic Era meant that celebrities, such as John Lennon and his son Julian, could feel free to drive around in inconspicuous Rolls-Royces like this. Nothing to get hung up on.

Those who celebrate the gift of Free Will, given to us by a God curious to see what we'd do with it, can point to the festival of San Fermín, that week-long annual celebration in the city of Pamplona, Navarre, Spain. The Festival allows people to be up close and personal with nature by running through the streets accompanied by massive bulls...and getting run through by bull horns. My idea? Bring over a couple of American guest grand marshals. How about Shannon Sharpe and Al Gore?

This week's free wallpaper shows another summer day coming to a beautiful close.

This painted turtle is seen leaving a courthouse after testifying as a witness to an assault near his home. Asked by the prosecutor to describe the events as he saw them, he said, "It all happened so fast!"

I 

I like living in a world where a Sikh built a mosque for his Muslim friend who needed a place to pray. 

America in the 1990s was a nation gone insane, as seen here in a courtroom where a married couple, two purported adults, are dividing their Beanie Baby collection.

Men, a good hair stylist can help you avoid the heartache of tonsorial tragedies like these.

Hey! Good news! Someone bought out the old Pizza Hut and they're gonna turn it into a new Pizza Hut!

Too old for Scooby, too young for assisted living

I think I mentioned the comedian who claimed to do a spot-on impersonation of President Millard Fillmore. So who is going to argue that the voice and mannerisms he adopts to play our 13th president are not accurate? No one but some tall trees and a few Galápagos Giant Tortoises are still alive from Millard the F's days around here. So for all we know, he's got the Fillmore moves down to a T.

Speaking of moves, a note from a friend still in the radio business pointed me to this:

"Night Moves" was the song that finally - FINally! - made a star of Bob Seger, after he had been on the periphery for so many years. It came out in autumn of 1976 and has become a mainstay of the "Heartland Rock" genre on classic rock radio. "Against The Wind" was a hit in the summer of 1980 and was about Seger's time as a cross-country runner in high school. At that, it was featured in the "Forrest Gump" soundtrack when Forrest took to running cross country. The Gump movie came out in 1994, so by my simple arithmetic, Tod's east coast Italian writer friend was 13 at the time, and he would have been among the only 283 Americans who did not perch in movie houses in 1994 giving his tear ducts a workout to the Gump story. I don't buy his claim, not that he offered it up for sale, but if you have been within a hundred yards of a radio or TV or random speaker, you've heard those songs.

But there are the decisions that radio programmers live and die by (job-wise). If you're not playing the songs people want to hear, or, worse, if you're playing songs they DON'T want to hear, your boss will soon show you to the door and not want to hear about it.

Were you ever in a group, talking to friends, and suddenly someone's friend comes out the blue and starts speaking Lithuanian to his friend, and you're standing around dumbfounded? It happened to me the other night, in English, not Lithuanian. But I am a baby boomer, and this Scooby-Doo show came along after I was out of high school and (presumably) concentrating on more important things.

Gunnar and his bat

So I do not know anything about Scooby and his fun pals, but Gunnar Henderson of the Baltimore Orioles seems to! He took his Scooby bat to the All-Star game the other night and stopped by to deliver his Scooby-Doo impersonation while competing in the homerun hitting contest.

I don't know if it was a good mimicry; the announcers seemed to like it. For all I know, that's what Millard Fillmore sounds like.

The voices

It happens a lot at this time of year.

Our house, centrally air-conditioned, is nice and cold in the basement, fine on the main floor, and kinda hot upstairs when the merciless sun bakes the roof. To keep the air moving, we use a couple of fans up there.

Sometimes, early in the crepuscular gloom of four in the yawning, I lie awake and hear the fans speaking. It's odd; it sounds like people are talking, but no radio or TV is on, and the cat is clammed up, and Peggy is asleep, so where...are...those...voices...coming...from???

In case you were wondering, no, I am not insane. I'm not hearing voices because of being a lunatic. This a phenomenon called pareidolia. It causes us to "see" or "hear" things...the face of Jesus Christ on a tortilla, a man's face in the moon, or a crowd of people reading aloud from the works of John Grisham.

You see, the brain does a lot of work that it doesn't have to. When it receives what they call nebulous stimulus, instead of throwing its hands up in the air, it imposes a seemingly meaningful interpretation of that cloudy stimulus, because a brain has no hands.

So here's the process: fan makes murmuring noises, brain says, Hey, it's the opening pages of "The Firm"! Let's listen in!

The psychologists call it "apophenia." The term was coined by Psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in 1958, one night when he had had an extra helping of strudel, and had trouble sleeping. 

You hear them talking, don't you?

Shoot me your phone number and I'll call you next time and hold the phone up so you can hear it, too!

Underground Hero

You never know. You go spelunking one day - or maybe you explore caves, who knows? - and you wind up helping a poochie dog. A couple of weeks ago, Dave Jackson and Jesse Rochette, from Colorado, went to explore Giant Caverns in Giles County, western Virginia (not West Virginia.)

40 to 50 feet down below, someone spotted a dog, alive but needing help. Several experts at bringing the dog back up failed, and then Rochette, who says he's a "Dog guy," rapelled down and tempted the doggone dog with a piece of salami.

That worked. The dog went for the tube meat, and once fed, was wrapped up in space blankets, an old jacket they found in the cave, and taken to safety.

And then, with some rescue gear the explorers carried, they got the dawg to safety.

So remember, next time you're going under, make sure to stuff your pockets with salami!

And while we're on the subject of salami, did you know there is such a thing as a "salami cave"? The French invented it so they would have a place to hide their sausages and slice them when party time beckoned, or when someone gets the sausage cravin'. 

The Maginot Line threw them for a loop, sure, but they got the sausage equipment like you've never seen before!

 

Sloppy effort

Last week, Michael Kopech of the Chicago White Sox, a relief pitcher, did something no other ChiSox pitcher had done since 1923. He threw what was only the second  “Immaculate Inning” in the team's history. 

An "Immaculate Inning" is a rarity indeed: to accomplish it, a pitcher has to get the other side out 1-2-3, with three strikes per batter, no balls, nothing but strikes. Only three Orioles have ever done it: Jimmy Key (1998), B. J. Ryan (1999), and Kevin Gausman (2018). 

Kopech was once supposed to be a great starter in the big leagues, but that didn't work out so well for him. However, of late he has been effective as a reliever, so maybe that's his future.

His past includes a divorce from Canadian actress Vanessa Morgan, who plays Max in the CW series "Wild Cards." Of her acting, it can honestly be said that she is in the same business as Meryl Streep. 

Back to the White Sox: you might remember (if you are very, very old) that the last guy on that team to turn in an immaculate inning was Hollis “Sloppy” Thurston back on August 22, 1923. "Sloppy" got his nickname because he was an immaculate, well-turned-out dapper dresser. In the manner of men since forever, a debonair dude is called "Sloppy," just as a slim guy goes by "Tubby." 

Nor should we confuse him with other famous Thurstons: Thurston Howell III from "Gilligan's Island," Frederick Charles "Fuzzy" Thurston, the great offensive guard from the Green Bay Packers of the Lombardi era, and "Thirsty" Thurston, the besotted neighbor of Hi and Lois in the funny pages.

I've got to go to the store.

All Rise!

Years ago, someone in his audience asked TV comic Steve Allen, "Do they get your show in Oakland?"

Quick as always, "Steverino" said, "They SEE my show in Oakland, but I'm not sure they GET it!"

This makes me wonder if they see American TV shows in other countries. Sure, they see those "Real Housewives of Omaha" and "ER" and all those Chicago shows and Law & Order and what-have-you, but I mean the day-to-day stuff like "Judge Lauren Lake" and "Judge Hatchett."

Lately I find myself dawdling over the breakfast dishes to see what sort of human drama is dragged out in front of those two women. Just the other morning, Lake handled the landmark case of a woman whose daughter dropped a dookie in her friend's swimming pool.  With her customary grace, she handed down a ruling that didn't even mention "Caddyshack," which would have been my go-to from the get-go.

And then the judicial wheel turned to the courtroom of Judge Hatchett, in which a guy named Omar was accused of bringing a meatloaf challenge to his workplace. The loaf was stuffed with ghost peppers, and the challenge was to survive eating it. One guy ate some, but was gripped with paroxysms of coughing that caused internal injuries. The meatloaf purveyor viewed all this with a certain amount of glee, even though his coworker was in the hospital for surgery and three weeks of recovery. Big fun, huh? Judge H threw the book at him - a judgement for the plaintiff to the tune of $5,000.

And remember, I have always told people who have nothing on their calendar for any random weekday morning or afternoon, the best free show in town is in your nearest District Court, where protestations of innocence rival the best theatrics of Gielgud and Barrymore (or Nicolas Cage, for you youngsters.) But what if people in distant lands can tune in and see our judge shows and form an impression that Americans are always running around deucing in the pool and creating foods to blow out their co-workers' esophagi?

America, where is our precious dignity?

 

 

Sunday Rerun: Bah bah baaaaaah

 We love you, Barbara Jean Fassert, wherever you are.

Barbara Jean had a brother by the name of Fred, a member of The Regents, a doo-wop group from New York City. In 1961 he wrote a song using her name that went to #3 on the Top 100 chart.

Four years later, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was working on his soon-to-be-legendary "Pet Sounds" album, but with Christmas season coming up, his record company was all over him to come up with an album and a single for gift giving time. Geniuses such as Brian don't do well with time constraints, and he was not about to rush songs like "Good Vibrations" and "God Only Knows" until he had perfected them.

But he had another idea. How about, he said, "if we go in the studio with some musicians and friends and pretend to have a party, record the whole thing, and put that out?" That's how the "Beach Boys Party" album came to be. Santa brought me a copy that December and I still have it.

It's not a classic, it broke no new musical ground, but it was fun to listen to, and the single was a new version of "Barbara Ann." By The Beach Boys, not The Regents. 

Well, sort of. 

The Beach Boys and Jan And Dean were close friends, and Brian asked his record company if it would be OK to have them as guests at the "Party."

Nothing doing, came the answer, unless you can get a guarantee from THEIR record company that The Beach Boys can be guests on a Jan And Dean record. And that was never going to fly.

So it was that by pure coincidence (!) J & D were recording across the hall the same day the "Party" was going on, and during a 15 minute break, Dean Torrence, the falsetto voice on so many great records, slipped over to say hi, and the first thing you know, Brian invited him to sing incognito.

(But he would rather sing falsetto, ha ha.)

Dean offered to take the lead on "Barbara Ann," the song was completed in two takes, and he hustled back across the hall, swearing up and down that he did not lend his voice in song.

Listen at the very end here. You can hear Brian Wilson say, "Thank you, Dean!"

Oh well. Some secrets can't stay secret for long!

The Saturday Picture Show, July 13, 2024

 

What would we do without a nature closeup around the Picture Show selection squad? White pine with a fresh dewdrop, right here, just for you!

That's duckwalking AC/DC guitar star Angus Young, who always describes himself  as a "wee lad," walking with his wife and their bodyguard on the Highway to Baskin-Robbins.

It's a shame that the Oakland Athletics are moving out of Oakland, with plans to be homeless until a baseball palace fitting their needs can be built in Las Vegas. Until then, they will share a minor-league ballpark in Sacramento starting next year. This ponderous pachyderm resides at the Oakland Zoo and has no plans to move. The Athletics have proudly had a white elephant as part of their logo since 1902, when a rival manager dismissed the team as a "bunch of white elephants," and that tradition continued along as the team moved to Kansas City in 1955 and Oakland in 1967, and now sets their sights on Sin City with the peanut eater still on their jersey.

Some may object, and I am sorry, summer lovers, but for those of us counting the days until August...I might make this my wallpaper.

I'd be lying if I said I knew what crop this is, but there sure is a lot of it! 

Raise your hand if your family room looked like this. Look at all those hands! Plenty of recliners, cozy lamps, a giant ashtray, glass-topped coffee table with no coffee on it...the good days!

Some Babylonian from Ur feels he got ripped off on a load of copper, so he said, "Hand me a clay tablet and a stylus! I'm filing a formal complaint!" People have always been the same.

We've never taken our Eddie to the beach, but if we did, I know her eyes would be like saucers, taking in the largest sandbox she ever saw!

A classic 1964 Chevrolet parked next to one of those Tesla pickups that looks like an aluminum dumpster, or the "aerodynamically sound" race car you drew in 4th grade instead of working on your guzinthas. I said it and I'm glad.

It's in his blood, for sure. Honest! Say hello to Ralph...Lincoln...11th cousin of  of...Abe Lincoln. He is four score and seven years old...I guess.