Yellow Tango

Someone mismentioned the drowsy rock band "Yo Le Tango" and their song "Autumn Sweater." An interesting story, with a correction...

The correction: the band is named Yo La Tengo. That's Spanish for "I have it." "Yo La Tengo" took their name from a famous baseball anecdote. The 1962 expansion NY Mets had timeworn center fielder Richie Ashburn and young Venezuelan shortstop Elio Chacón in their comically inept lineup. That team compiled an amazing record, winning 40 games, tieing one, and losing 120 games. Last season's Chicago White Sox came close to equalling the futility of the '62 Mets, but accidentally won 41 games, losing 121.

Early in that '62 season, Ashburn and Chacón collided in the outfield as both were trying to catch a pop fly. Baseball tradition calls for the guy with the best angle on the ball to holler, "I got it!" as a sign to others to back off. Ashburn had done just that, but Chacón, who spoke only Spanish, had not the slightest idea what he was saying.

Of course, the moment lives on in photos. 

 

The Mets deemed it most propitious to teach a quick Spanish lesson to Ashburn, so he learned to yell "Yo la tengo" when camping out under a popup. And it worked well, until the day left fielder Frank Thomas, unschooled in Spanish, flattened Elio as he chased a fly and didn't recognize the phrase Chacón screamed. 

As Thomas stood up, gathering his cap, glove, and dignity, he turned to ask Ashburn, "What the hell is a 'yellow tango' ?"

We baseball fans have long memories, and so in 1984, when Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley decided to call their band Yo La Tengo, we wondered what took so long.

Yo La Tengo, the band. Gloria gets extra credit for wearing Jack Purcells.

Too steep for me

I've never gone in for coffee at all, with one exception (Ellis Coffee at Friendly Farm) and my reason is the same as given by all those people who customarily leave 1/2 cups of coffee sitting atop kitchen counters, desks, and, yes, coffee tables worldwide: "It tastes like coffee."

So, those of us who make tea our caffeine-of-choice are happy to share our mugs. It's a simple thing for me...I choose black tea. No flavors, no Earl Grey, no decaf, no orange tea. Just hot water and a teabag, and after it steeps a few minutes, a shot of milk. 

And now comes bonus good news: it looks like tea removes dangerous contaminants from the very water it's brewed in!

A new study reported in the Washington Post says that tea leaves naturally "adsorb heavy metals, filtering out harmful water contaminants like lead, cadmium or arsenic. The metals become trapped on the surface of the tea leaves and can be removed by simply filtering out the leaves or tossing the tea bag."

Well. Notice, they didn't say tea leaves ABSORB the bad stuff. ADSORB means the cooties stick to the outside of tea leaves.

“You’re taking the metals out of the water with the tea, but you don’t consume the tea leaves after, which is why it works,” says Benjamin Shindel, the study’s lead author, and a PhD student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Tea leaves, unlike the withered brown leaves under the shrubbery out front, actually do two things for you. They release tasty flavors in your hot water, and they grab harmful metals out of the water.

And since you throw the teabag away, you don't ingest those harmful substances.

Now, can coffee do that?  Didn’t think so.

Shave and a haircut

 In other national news, the New York Yankees, a baseball team, finally announced the end of their ban on facial hair. The edict was placed by their former owner, George Steinbrenner, when he bought the team in 1973, because he was a tyrant who enjoyed bossing people around, diminishing them in the public eye in the belief that humiliation inspires better performance. 

That Steinbrenner was a cranky egotistical martinet is beyond debate; the question is why it took his son Hal fifteen years since the old man's death (2010) to allow people playing a game to wear their hair and beard as they wish.

The John Kruk look is classic. And coming soon to Gotham!

And now, Forbes magazine is saying "the Yankees rule requiring all players to be clean shaven very likely violated New York City employment law, and possibly even federal labor laws."

Not to mention that the silly policy probably caused some free agent players to choose to sign with any of the other big-league clubs, all of which treat their players as adults.

Forbes also correctly points out that if the vice president of the United States can ankle around wearing a beard and guyliner, some joker patrolling left field for the Bronx Bombers can do likewise.

First Time

The words of her representative say a sad truth so well...

"We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” the statement reads. “She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”

Roberta Flack won Grammy Awards in the early 70s with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song." Considered a musical prodigy by age 9, she entered Howard University in Washington, D.C., at 15 on a full scholarship.

She taught music in public schools before beginning her performing career, recording her first album "First Take" in 1969.

But, as happens with many first records, it went nowhere until Clint Eastwood, scouting songs for his movie-directing debut "Play Misty For Me," heard her two-year-old version of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and deemed it just right for his picture. 

The record that went nowhere for two years won the Grammy for Record Of The Year.

And not only that, she won the same prize the next year for "Killing Me Softly With His Song." Not until U2 in 2001-2002 did an act win that award in consecutive years.

Roberta went on to have hit duets with Donny Hathaway, and more solo success. She'll be remembered for singing gentle songs and sweetening many moments on the radio.

The bird has the word

I use one of those sound machines, or tune to on the Sirius channels, as a background to sleep. From the hum of a fan to the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker, I like noises! 

For those who have suggested to me that I move as far away as I can (it happens much more often than you'd think, unless you know me) I have come up with another plan for my Golden Years - a move to Australia, to live among and enjoy the sounds of the lyrebird. Lyrebirds are two types of virtually flightless Australian birds that can mimic sounds - natural and artificial. They say they can duplicate any sound - from another bird or another animal or a chainsaw!

They get the name "lyrebird" from the male of the species having a huge tail in the shape of the musical instrument the lyre, which they fan out in a courtship ritual. It's similar to a male human strutting around in colorful garb, playing a guitar and wailing songs of love.

To me, there's nothing less exciting than looking at nature and hearing nothing.

 

 

Sunday Rerun: As The Years Go By

 Set your Wayback Machine to April 2005, and imagine  Mary Majcunich-Beasley, an air traffic controller at the Savannah, Georgia, airport. It's 10:20 PM on April 15 as Mary finishes her shift and gets into the elevator on the 12th floor, pressing the button for the first floor.

Mary had just worked her eight-hour shift and was seven months pregnant at the time and more than ready to go home and unwind, but the elevator had other plans, grinding to a halt on the way down.

“I didn’t want anything bad to happen,” Majcunich-Beasley told The Washington Post, “because emotions, especially when you’re pregnant, can get the best of you.”

It took an hour, which must have seemed like a dozen hours, for the airport fire department crew to pry open the doors so Majcunich-Beasley could crawl out. After the paramedics checked her out, she was on her way home.

Majcunich-Beasley's daughter Malia Beasley came along that June, and Mary came to believe that the girl's life was saved by the rescue.

So here we are, 18 years later, and Malia is being graduated from high school. And as Ms Majcunich-Beasley was planning the grad party, she took the notion to invite the brave firefighter she credits with getting her off that lift in 2005. At the time of the rescue, he was Sergeant Raymond Sikes, and is now Deputy Chief Raymond Sikes, and he remembered rescuing Majcunich-Beasley from the broken elevator.

Mom, 53 now,  and daughter recently went to the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport to meet up with DC Sikes and thank him again.

“It’s always been on the back of my mind; I wanted to get my daughter and him together,” says Majcunich-Beasley.  “We get so busy in life that we don’t go back and acknowledge that person.”

“We’re there in some of the worst times in people’s lives during emergencies, and I don’t think everybody wants to remember some of those events,” Sikes recalled. “That’s one of the first times that anybody’s ever reached out from an event like that and invited me to something. To me, it was a big deal.”

So they threw a party to celebrate Malia's graduation and the reunion with Sikes, and amid the pasta, peanut butter cookies, and cake, she told the chief she is heading to Montreat College in North Carolina this fall to study criminal justice.

“I guess I’ll see you at college graduation next,” Sikes told mom and daughter.

“Expect that invite!" Majcunich-Beasley responded.

 

The Saturday Picture Show, February 22, 2025

 

I've never tried counting sheep to induce sleep. I do what people who need to sleep fast do when I need a soporific...beginning at my feet, I tense every muscle, hold that clench for ten seconds, and then relax into the sweetest sleep outside of oxycodone.

Katy Perry has clearly arrived at that stage of popular acclaim at which dressing like a cheeseburger on a poppy seed roll seems like just the thing to do.

An English teacher once taught me that this sentence, which seems odd, is actually quite perfect grammatically: "All the coffee he had had had had no effect."

We're a nation that communicates with hat slogans, and tribal colors, like gang warriors. We could be better.

It's a little-known facts of zoology that peacocks keep their living quarters quite orderly by sweeping the place out every night.

Why I love kids: students at a high school in Montana found one of those crazy old laws that are still on the book. It said that if a student rides a horse to school, the principal is obliged to walk and feed the steed. And he did!

Inside the Harley-Davidson factory, 1924.

Yes, we got cheated out of a nice snowstorm this week. It went South, and with it, our chances of building snowpeople. But I will save this picture for a sweltering August afternoon. 
Bicycle parking spot at the Paleontology museum in Cuenca, Spain.

The album "Whipped Cream And Other Delights" was the easy-listening sound of 1965. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass sold millions of them, and so this cover picture of Dolores Erickson, a 30-year-old model dressed in whipped cream, was in millions of homes worldwide. She still looks lovely today as she approaches the age of 90 later this year.

Boom!

 Not that long ago, everyone was all worked up about some Venezuelan Killer Mud Wasps or something that were making a beeline for the United States. The threat was in all the papers, it was all over the interwebs, and the hosts of the Today show blanched and gasped about the possibility of millions of us being stung to death in stories inevitability titled "Swarm Of Doom: American Nightmare."

In those days, we believed in, and turned to, science, so entomologists cooperated with local and national disaster control staffs, and the problem was negated. Crisis averted, and the Today show went back to speculating about whether Taylor and Travis will be marching down the aisle.

But now that the emphasis is being taken off of science and credence is being lent to purveyors of semi-science and whipped-up fear, we're just not going fret about Asteroid 2024 YR4, a near-Earth asteroid in an orbit that will have it come near Earth’s region of the Solar System. This big ole rock is the size of a mansion and there's a chance it will hit Earth on December 22, 2032.

Not much of a chance, you understand, but the chance is greater than 1%, so we had to report the big space rock to all agencies involved in planetary defense, plus the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group and the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs. We follow the protocols of the International Asteroid Warning Network, although hardly anyone's cable system carries their shows, which include "Watch Out!", "I Think It's Gonna Land On The House!" and "Did You See That?"

I wouldn't worry too much! You'll be seven years older by then.

Never learned

You probably remember the man pictured below. 

His name was Edgar Maddison Welch. In 2016, what there was of his mind took the absurd notion that the people who run the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant in Washington, DC were also running a child sex ring organized by Hillary Clinton.

You remember the term "Pizzagate" (every scandal in Washington, real or made up in a very sick mind gets that     "-gate" suffix appended within 45 minutes, by congressional decree) because it was an early bellwether of the lunacy that's come to poison our politics. People with more time than brains came up with this conspiracy, and Welch, sittin' down there in North Carolina, swallowed it whole. Arming himself with two guns for his fight against the ruination of young girls in our nation's capitol, he drove to the pizzeria believing the claims of chubby podcaster Alex Jones that Mrs Clinton was murdering, chopping up, and sexually assaulting children.

According to the lies, all this took place in the basement at Comet P-P, so as the brainy Welch burst in firing his weapons, he demanded to be taken downstairs. Confusion mixed with the smell of gunpowder as the astonished staff tried to help Welch wrestle with the concept of basement-less buildings. 

Hauled in by DC Police, he went to jail for four years, apparently without receiving the lifestyle transformation promised by hardened penologists.

Last month, back home in Kannapolis, Welch was pulled over after being spotted driving by officers who knew he was wanted on a warrant for violation of probation. 

He pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the officers, the final mistake in a sad 36-year-life dotted with errors.

Some people never learn.

Unwound

How many times have you heard someone say, "I don't have a clue..."?

How many times have you known someone who didn't have a clue, but still went on blithely as if they did?

Enough questions for now, so let me share an interesting fact I learned.

Do you have any clues as to where we got the word "clue"? It goes back to the Greeks. They had the myth about Theseus, who went to the labyrinth to slay the minotaur, the creature from mythology who looked just like some Raiders fans when they still played in Oakland.

Minotaur

Oakland fan

Anyhow...old Theseus was pretty clever. He took a clew into the maze to look for the beast, a clew being a ball of string. Theseus unwound the string as he entered the labyrinth so he would be able to find his way back out...

So he made sure to have a clew so as to have a clue about how to get home. We turned a clew into a clue so that people would have a clue what we were talking about. 

Language is fun when you get all the...clues.

What's So Funny?

 I was sorry for those in our area who lost power on Sunday night. First, it was a cold night,  and when huge gusting winds take down huge trees, it takes some time - measured in days - for power crews to make things right again. Let's hope those without electricity flowing to their houses are back in service very soon, and have found warm accommodations in the meantime. 

While the windstorm billowed, many whose power remained "on" watched the SNL50 special, a tribute to Saturday Night Live, which debuted in 1975. I would like to add my name to the list of people who found the show self-indulgent. They did a "Deep Thoughts" bit in which the deep thought turned to be deep appreciation for how much money the show has raked in for producer Lorne Michaels and NBC. They brought back cast members old and new, and had massage therapists on standby in case anyone pulled shoulder muscles patting themselves on the back. Sabrina Carpenter made a point of pointing out how young she is, after Paul Simon mentioned how old he is.

I'm not saying that the show isn't still occasionally funny. But the weekly show can stand on its own, without a multi-hour Look How Funny We Are spectacular spectacle.

On and on went the witty repartee. At length, I let my mind wander back to 8th grade, when we were given the assignment to create a magazine. I went with the safe choice of a news magazine in the style of "TIME" (thirteen-year-old Mark called it "EMIT." I was backwards about many things then.) 

But two guys - one with a typewriter and one who could draw - tried their hands at a humor magazine à la "MAD" (they rejected my suggestion to call it "DAM" out of hand.) As I recall, it was not great. Our teacher, Mr Luette, made a point of saying that forced humor is never very good.

I wish he had gone to work at NBC. 

Not President's Day. Not Presidents' Day.

 Heads up, as it were. Today is legally known as Presidents Day. Once a year, by order of Congress, we throw away the grammar book and salute 44 great men.

Sunday Rerun: How do you call Mike Rowe? Use a Mike Rowe Phone!

 I know.  It's cool, it's sassy, it's smart-assy.  

You top someone in a match of wits, you "drop the mic."

You retire from playing soccer, and announce your future plans to visit Bourbon St, you drop the mic twice in one evening.

Abby Wambach, soccer player, did that just the other night, and while I take nothing away from her brilliant career in the most boring game in the world, and while I don't blame her at all for making a flamboyant exit, I wish she could have said what she had to say and handled the mic properly.

Same with musical performers and others who top someone else and strut off after dropping a microphone.

To the generation that so loves to use the adverb "literally" for every verb, I ask you to not literally drop microphones.


Microphones are sensitive electronic equipment.  As someone who made a living speaking into one, I believe they should be cared for and respected.  The symbolism of someone dropping a mic onto a stage floor or a soccer field reminds me of those who would love to take the microphone of speaking freely away from us, and that's not good. 

Not to mention this. What does that say to the audio tech or concert hall sound rigger who has to pick up that mic and clean it off, hoping to be able to use it again?  It's disrespect, almost of the highest (lowest) form.

Thanks for listening to me on this vital topic. (* leaves mic on stand, bows humbly, and walks off smiling*)

The Saturday Picture Show, February 15, 2025

 

I know this looks like part of a Smithsonian exhibit called "America's Westward Expansion: To The Prairie and Beyond," but this is the homemade home of Theodore John Kaczynski, a/k/a the Unabomber, a homegrown terrorist whose own brother ratted him out. The FBI keeps his crude hut in a warehouse.

We can put the football season to rest by noting that for the Eagles to win, they almost certainly had to count on something no one ever saw before: a bad game by Patrick Mahomes. It's likely the last such outing you'll see for a long time, if ever. 

"Hey look! I'm in the book!"

All the reasons for not letting the office humorist know where the label maker is kept here.

 

Say hello to our friend the Cassowary, a big, flightless bird from Australia known as the second most dangerous bird in the world, the first being the turkey that your cousin Harry cooked in the hot oil fryer two Thanksgivings ago.

I'll bet you anything, when he comes up for dinner, he's wearing a alligator shirt.

He's a literal RINO: Rhinoceros In Name Only 

Something  tells me there won't be an LGBTQ Night at the ballpark this year. What a sad way to go.

For years, the symbol for Coca-Cola was this little sprite with a bottle cap for a hat
 No one knew why.

So many  things to love about Denmark: Danish pastry, Danish ham, and these pretty Danish woods.

Wrap it up

In my working era, there were jobs which required ties, and jobs where no one cared what I wore, as long as I was a) there and b) capable of speaking. I guess everyone had that kind of situation now and then. 

I had them all!

Most 9-5 office jobs used to require men to wear ties, and women to dress at a similar level of dressiness, but, ladies and gentlemen, we're going casual now. I think that started with Casual Friday, an offshoot of Hawaiian Shirt Day, and now it's all week long! 

And maybe there's medical science behind the open neck movement. In 2018, a study revealed that wearing a necktie can reduce the blood flow to your brain by up to 7.5 per cent. These symptoms are similar to falling in love, in that they  can make you feel dizzy, nauseous, and headachy. You wrap that cravat too tightly, and up goes the pressure in your eyes. And ties can carry germs around, depending on where you have lunch.

I still insist on wearing the full boatload to funerals (the rule is, "you die, I wear a tie") and it's nice to attend weddings not looking like a recent graduate of a delousing, but for day-to-day, what needs a tie? Who are you, already, Tony Curtis or something? 

Lend me a dime

Mr Preparedness here, the kid who taped a dime inside his binder in elementary school and junior high, in case I needed to call from the pay phone for a ride home or bail money.

Today's kid: "What's a binder? What's a dime? What's a pay phone?"
They still know what a ride home is, though.

One of the oldies stations played "Too Much Monkey Business" by Chuck Berry the other day, and the verse that said "Pay phone, something wrong, dime gone, will mail; I ought to sue the operator for telling me a tale" rang true. I remember the pay phone days, back to when it cost a dime or two nickels to call for a ride, and the various tricks people used to fool the poor phone (stuffing thin plastic strips down the quarter slot while dropping a penny in the nickel slot was said to give you a call for that one cent, although I wouldn't know anything about it.)

I Googled "closest pay phone to me" and the answer I got was for a monastery clear on the other side of town. There has to be one closer to here, but where there used to be a million of them, I'd be surprised if there remain a dozen.

But we have it made now, right? Everyone has their phone right in the pocket or pockeybook (Baltimore style, hon!) Except, what if you don't? What if your phone is lost or stolen or broken and you need to make an important call?

I wonder what the protocol is there. Has anyone ever asked you to let them us your phone for a minute to call someone in such a pinch?

I'd like to know. 

In the barrel

Earlier today, someone mentioned the old Panzer pickle company located here in Baltimore, and just the mention of that name made me smile. Baltimore is a big delicatessen town. The very word delicatessen means a place to get tasty foods, and just walking into one of our neighborhood delis means you'll be hungrier just being there than you were before because of the sights (all those hams and pastramis and cheeses, lined up for your inspection) and the smells (the piquant cheeses hanging up, the fresh yeasty loaves of bread, the spices!

Just by getting some cold cuts on a roll, some chips and a dill pickle that, moments before, was swimming in a briney barrel, puts you in food nirvana like few places will. 

But, what accounts for the fact that we can still remember the aroma of pleasant things? Not just food...once you've sniffed a bough of honeysuckle, it stays with you, like spring rain, like freshly cut grass and so many happy smells.

The word for memories forever stamped in our noggin is "eidetic,"from the Greek meaning "seen." Some people have that photographic memory, meaning that once they see their grocery list, they won't forget the corn flakes when they get to the Try 'N' Save.

But eidetic memories are more than visual. We save in our minds (what's left of them) details about senses of hearing, and feeling, as well as taste and smell.

Panzer and Co. went out of business years ago, but ask anyone from our town how great their food tasted and smelled! 

"Not for me, not to me"

 Hello football fans! Were you happy with the Super Bowl? This is a good time of year to turn the sports page, as it were. Football, college and professional, is over until August, it's time for baseball to come out and blossom, and everyone can indulge in the fine art of what-iffing.

Such as...what if the Chiefs' big pass-catching threat Travis Kelce hadn't dropped those passes? What if Kelce had planned to ask Taylor Swift to take his gigantic hand in marriage, but changed his mind in the sadness of defeat? What if, what if...

If you saw the game, you probably knew it wasn't Kansas City's night within, oh I'm gonna say the first two minutes. Some you win, some you lose...

With no hugely dramatic plays to talk about all day Monday, the talk on-line and, I guess, in all the corner cubicles turned to the half-time show, which featured music star Kendrick Lamar, a whole passel of dancers and featured performers, and a 1987 Buick Grand National. 

I only saw glimpses of Lamar's act, being involved with my patented Lazy Guy chili (sautéed onion, ground beef, add 3 cans of Rotel, two cans of kidney beans, chili powder...let it simmer...and serve with plain yogurt and Fritos) cleanup, so outside of hearing music, and catching flashes of dancing out of my eye corner, I can't talk knowledgeably about his show. I'm far removed from being in Kendrick's target audience and that's OK. I have respect for a performer who attracts an audience that size, at the venue, and more important, in the global TV audience. I hope everyone enjoyed it. I wish those outside Kendrick's audience could stop disparaging his act, because it's likely that many of those doing so spent the second 1/2 of halftime up to their wrists in clam dip anyway. 

The man has the talent to catch the attention of tens of millions of people. I think it's foolish to dismiss his performance and say,  "I don't understand this, therefore it's not valid." Mine is the very generation that asked to be heard when we were coming up. Now, we're saying, "I don't want to hear younger people"? That's foolish. 

 Maybe sometimes it's good to read about new things, or ask someone to clue us in.

Congrats!

 OK, I'm writing this on Sunday afternoon,  or "yesterday," as English-speaking people put it. The Super Bowl is still hours away, but I don't know which team will win, of course. To be honest about it, I'm rooting for the Eagles.  Their quarterback Hurts went to Alabama; that's the main reason, although I might add that I think we've all seen enough of the Kelce family stomping around in victory. Feel free to disagree with that. 

But here’s something I want to say. It's getting tiresome to see so many posts saying that "the referees are all in for the Chiefs." That's an easy way to explain how your team lost to the Chiefs, instead of giving credit to Mahomes & Co. for being great players.

People with lots of time on their hands have even photoshopped pictures of referees with little KC logos on their striped shirts.

Of course, no one ever comes forward with any evidence of chicanery at all. It's just something to say.

Congratulations to the winners, and let's not sully their accomplishment by ascribing it to anything but hard luck and skill.

Sunday Rerun (from 2022): One Shining Moment

 I'm not a basketball fan but I do know enough about the college game to know that Indiana U is a traditional power. But last Thursday night, they got their Hoosiers handed to them by the mighty Gaels of Saint Mary's College in the NCAA tournament, and I wouldn't even be talking about it, except for the fact that the two best Indiana people in uniform that night were not on your scorecard!

Indiana was ranked 12th in the nation before that loss, but by now everyone in the world with a TV has seen the heroics performed by Nathan Paris and Cassidy Cerny. You see, what happened was, the basketball got stuck between the backboard and the shot clock, some 13 feet in the air, and nothing was going to happen unless that ball was retrieved. 

They tried hollering at it, poking at it with a broom handle, and asking 6' 10"  Saint Mary's center Matthias Tass to reach up and grab that thang, and nothing worked.

Paris, a senior cheerleader from Floyds Knobs, Ind. (add that to the list of towns we have to visit someday!) offered to get on a folding chair to go for the ball, but the refs nixed that as being too risky

So Nathan said, I have an idea! I'll just lift my cheer partner Cassidy (a sophomore from Avon, Indiana) skyward, as we often do during football and basketball games, and let's see if she can reach it...

 

Nathan and Cassidy were on the tv Friday more than the My Pillow guy, and let's say hooray for them! They are a nice couple of young people, from all appearances, and I will go so far as to say if Cassidy ain't cute, grits ain't groceries! 

Too bad it was the worst game of the year for Indiana, but because of our hypermedia world, Mr Paris and Ms Cerny had 24 hours of fame that they certainly didn't expect when they put on their socks Thursday afternoon!

And they can look forward to sharing their time in the sun with their children and grandchildren in the years down the road, as part of the innumerable "Whatever Happened To...?" stories we'll see!

The Saturday Picture Show, February 8, 2025

 

You have to feel a little sorry for Jaden Smith. He's tried and tried to get our attention over the years, through music, acting, and I don't know what-all else. So, the other night at the Grammy Awards, rather than sucker-punching a comedian like his father did,  Jaden showed up in a house hat, and everyone said, "Ohhhhkay."

This is said to be one of the last, if not the last, photos of Buddy Holly before his ill-fated plane ride in February 1959. It's been skillfully colorized and shows the native Texan in his element. Was he important to rock and roll? A couple of English fellows named John and Paul named their band The Beatles because Buddy's group was The Crickets. 

You won't see the offensive phrase "End Racism" in the end zone tomorrow night because a certain politician doesn't like those words. But...if you are against ending racism...hmmm.

In America, we have Rama Lama Ding Dong, by The Edsels. In Australia, you have to choose between Borroloola and Bing Bong. Decisions, decisions. 

The ancient art of Origami turned one piece of paper into a real doll.

This looks like a scene right out of some fantasy movie, but it's a real place in Watkins Glen, New York.

I'm so confused! 

Reminds me of that door I see at the mall which says THIS DOOR MUST BE LOCKED AT ALL TIMES as it sways gently in the breeze. But surely no unauthorized personnel could get past this checkpoint, Charlie. 

Did you find any? Me neither.

America wanted to know how to split one sandwich three ways. America's skilled geometry corps went to work with their protractors and compasses, and here you have your answer.