The Saturday Picture Show, December 6, 2025

 

If you can line things up just right, you can use the full moon as your outdoor tree topper!

I haven't had to recently, but this is what it can look like driving in an intense windy snow. You can see better with your headlights off, because each little snowflake acts as a mirror to reflect the light back on you, but then no one can see coming. You have to have the defroster going so the windshield doesn't ice up, and with any luck, some radio station will play "Let It Snow" (Oh the weather outside is frightful) and you'll remember to take it easy and you'll get there. Or drive like hell, and you'll get there.

Someone cut a strawberry and got a love message. 

This guy showed up at 0500 the day after Thanksgiving, expecting a mob scene for the Black Friday sale, but found he was all alone for a while, until other bargain seekers wiped the gravy off their vests and joined him. At first, I thought it was ageless wonder Joe Flacco.

The laws of physics sometimes take a long time to play out. No telling how long it took this mountain water to carve a path on the bed of granite. It's a good example of perseverance, just like Joe Flacco. 

Someone decided to ho ho ho their mailbox, and it turned out looking like Patrick Star is trying to eat their cards and letters.

This coffee cup is Scream-ing for another fillup with java!

All yoga practitioners know the ancient Forward Facing Butterball pose.

Either this door swings both ways, or the owner is determined to be neutral.

This considerate homeowner made a little doorway for Rover and Fluffy when they come home.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

This happened a week or so ago; a man named Gerson de Melo Machado, 19, clambered over a chain-link fence and down 18 feet to begin training for his intended career goal of being a lion tamer.

This all took place at Parque Zoobotânico Arruda Câmara in João Pessoa, a zoo in Brazil. The lioness waited patiently for him to arrive and then mauled and ate him as horrified visitors recoiled.

The zoo later said that the lioness will not be euthanized, as she is healthy, and has not exhibited violent tendencies before, and mainly because she was only doing what lions do when fools invade their homes. 

Remember, kids, whatever training you sign up for, don't start until your instructor arrives.

This brings to mind the recent news that the late comic Jackie Vernon (born Ralph Verrone), always in the public mind in December for having voiced "Frosty The Snowman," had started as many as three families with three women before marrying for the first time to a woman named Hazel, who had no idea how many branches were going to sprout on that family tree. 

As a standup comic, Jackie did a great bit in which he narrated slides from his summer vacation:

• "Here's me starting off on my vacation, driving away in my new car."
• "Here's a hitchhiker on the highway."
• "Here's me stopping to pick up the hitchhiker."
• "Here I am driving along with the hitchhiker in my car."
• "Here's the hitchhiker hitting me, throwing me out of my car, and driving away"
• "Here's me hitchhiking"
• "Here's the hitchhiker stopping to pick me up in my own car.."

The funny thing is that we all understand, on different levels, that bad people are going to do bad things, lions are going to eat you if you're foolish enough to invade their kingdoms, and "Qué Será, Será" (What Will Be, Will Be), a hit record for Doris Day from the movie "The Man Who Knew Too Much."

Looks like some of us don't know enough.

Nature in action!

Brazilian landscape artist Roberto Burle Marx (the long-forgotten 5th Marx brother after Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo) designed a park in Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s.  And look out! Palm trees he planted there all that time ago are just now flowering!

The life of a palm tree can run between 40 and 80 years, but it's not until almost the end of its days that a palm shoots out a central plume all full of millions of tiny white blossoms high above its leaves.

People passing by Flamengo Park in Rio are simply entranced, and they're making a point of going to see the blossoms and take lots of photos.

This particular type of tree is the talipot palm. They originally came from India and Sri Lanka and can grow as tall as 98 feet high. All that reproductive energy over all those decades allows the tree to produce like 25 million flowers when it finally gets around to it.

Aline Saavedra, a biologist at Rio de Janeiro State University, says these trees are happy to live in that "Brazilian rhythm of daylight" so popular in movies such as "Blame It On Rio."

And in case you were getting ideas about corralling a couple of talipots for your back yard, environmental laws say you can't, so just run on down to the local nursery and be happy to get a Loblolly pine, a tree that allows you to walk around your yard saying "Loblolly" a lot.

 

Out with the old

I am an unhappy resident of Hululand right now, because the Hulu streaming service removed "NYPD Blue" from its bill of fare, and Peggy and I enjoyed the drama provided by Andy Sipowicz and company. I wish they hadn't taken it off, but whaddya gonna do?

Meanwhile. I get an email from Hulu Headquarters telling me I could win a trip for two to the New Year's Rockin' Eve "Experience" in Times Square this 12/31, and even though the email promises a chance at a "VIP experience," "overlooking the excitement of New Year's Rockin' Eve" with a "view of the world-famous New Year’s Eve Ball Drop, the confetti shower, and the thrilling energy of the Times Square crowd below: it's going to be an unforgettable New Year’s Eve! Flight and accommodations included" my interest in going is nil.

Year after year, we sit and watch the people thronging "The crossroads of America," as Times Square likes to be called, on New Year's Eve, and year after year we raise higher the estimates of what it would take to entice us to stand there glute to glute with several million strangers, none of whom have been able to visit a restroom since about 4 o'clock.

And here it is, almost midnight.

How could they stand it? I guess it Depends. 

To get us to go, I would want a personal spot-a-potty with sink and heated towels, concierge meal and snack service, and ear plugs.

I'm not entering the drawing, but even if I win, I will gladly award the prize to a friend so we could stay home, watching on ABC, ready to say, "Oh look! There's Jim Bob now!"

Three

 I'll admit it; things confuse the dickens out of me. What have I decided to do about it? I stew on them one at a time, and then I bring them to you, the Court of Special Public Opinion, for a final ruling, which I will then appeal to the US Supreme Court and see if Justice Amy Comey Farrah Fowler will see things my way. Spoiler alert: She never has.

Anyway, what's on my mind?

✅ watching a movie set in a high school, some kids were sitting at a table in the cafeteria discussing the need for a favorable balance of trade or some such, and I notice there's a ketchup squeezie bottle sitting right there. You know, those red plastic bottles (yellow ones hold mustard). I suggest to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that the writers of this show have not seen inside a high school cafeteria since the days of fender skirts on cars and ankle-length skirts on women. "Hey, tomorrow is Red Shirt Wednesday!" 

✅ every time a "massive storm" "sweeps" across the "heartland," dozens of cars and trucks wind up in piles of fifty or so cars and trucks.  Back East here, people who have lived among the Nebraskans always say, "You guys here always make such a big deal of a couple of feet of snow! Back home, due to being so burly and all, we know how to drive in this!" Well sir, if that's the case, and all these folks are the greatest snow drivers since Santa Claus, how does it come that they have these interstate fifty-car pileups, huh?

And it's not even all that snowy!

✅There may be very good reasons for these questions that torment me until all hours, but why do the television news people all always say "the storm is wreaking havoc on the roads"? And why do they all nod their heads as they are being introduced by the anchor, back home and snug in the studio?

Could they balance it all out in springtime by saying "the 68° temps on this sunny morning are wreaking pleasure on the roads today"?

It's Magic

Do you know your home WiFi password? You can bet the kid down the block knows it, but when you go to log your 47th mobile device into your home network on Christmas morning, the pressure's really on!

You might have punched it into one of those Dymo labelmakers tapes and stuck the tape on the side of your router. Trouble is, one sultry day, that tape fell off and got suckulated by the vacuum cleaner, so there went that great idea.

Here's good news if you're a Comcast Xfinity customer. And no, the good news is not that they have finally decided to go by just one name. The corporate thinking is, as long as Verizon Fios is dual-named, CX will stick with two too. That's 2.

The good news: this will make you look like quite the Wizard (and I don't mean the supremely bizarre Jeff Goldblum.) I mean, you can dazzle the family AND the kid down the street by grabbing your remote, pressing the MIC button, and saying, "What's my WiFi password?" and in a trice, the information will appear on your screen. 

But so will Jeff Goldblum, if you're not fast enough.

Sunday Rerun

 According to strength and conditioning coach Mike Antoniades, there is a definite speed at which jogging becomes running. That speed is 6 mph. So if I go by Joppa Rd, the county courthouse is 6 miles away from our house. 

Algebra question: Mark leaves his house at 8:13 AM, running at 6 miles per hour, westbound on Joppa Rd. What time will the ambulance get him to the hospital?

Forget it. I don't run, and the only thing I "jog" is my memory. But I guess Antoniades has a point, not that I even know who he is. You jog fast enough, you're not jogging any long; you're running. 

So let's set some other rules for when one thing becomes quite another:

• after six Buffalo wings, wings are no longer your "appetizer," they are your "entrée."
  
  
  
• you step into the walk-in cooler at O'Hoolahan's for some barley, wheat, and yeast juice and then up the register. It's cool in there. That's a "draft." But when you're stuck waiting for the MTA in a sleet storm and little icicles are forming on your nose and eyelashes, that's a "CHILL!"
• You do four laps walking around the high school track. That's a "stroll." You walk to the Bay Bridge (unless you live at that McDonald's down there) and that is "hiking" for sure.
• A surgeon lances your boo-boo at an "outpatient surgicenter." That's a ''procedure." A year later, you have a major organ transplant. That's an "operation!"
• The weather forecast calls for a foot of snow, so you run to the Try 'N' Save and stock up on Doritos, clam dip, hamburgers, hamburger rolls, frozen pizza, milk, bread, toilet paper (of course) and sidewalk de-icer. The forecast changes in the morning; we wind up with an inch of rain and 54°. You put all that extra chow in the freezer. The next week, they call for rain, and the front stalls and colder Canadian air rolls in, so we get a foot of snow and you're right back at the freezer, getting out all your chow. That's called "Baltimore weather!"
• Finally: you're in line at the delicatessen. An attractive person takes the number following yours and lingers near the corned beef. You ogle her/him for 30 seconds. And that's "enough!" Or so her/his significant other says.

The Saturday Picture Show, November 29, 2025

 

He wants you to appreciate the irony, and toss some popcorn in the air.

The good people at Paul Newman are looking out for your carbohydrate consumption by making their pizzas much smaller than their boxes seem to indicate. 

I may be the only person you know who actually likes these cookies! We keep our stitch-it-up kit in something else.

There's not any way this scene from "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" could be more heartfelt and poignant. John Candy and Steve Martin, great comedians, were also fine in dramatic scenes. Remember,  those aren't pillows!

This is the exit from Hoover Dam. Tell me why there is one.

No frost on this pumpkin!

I'll save you the trouble of figuring. It took 200,000 Legos to make this model World Trade Center. 

So many pictures of the view of the Statue of Liberty. This is the view FROM the Statue.

"Your kids" should be a new streaming series on Netflix. 

This man moved to Florida and is writing to friends back home about how safe it is.

Annual Miracle Returns

Tomorrow is the day the Christmas and Holiday season takes Baltimore in its happy embrace! Our world-famous holiday tradition of Miracle on 34th Street will turn on its many lights at 6 pm tomorrow night, November 29, for the 76th time.

There may be many numbered streets around town, but you need to be on 34th Street in North Baltimore's Hampden section.

The lights are on from 6 pm til 10 pm Sundays through Thursdays, and until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.

Those attending can enjoy food, shopping, and music while they gaze at the holiday lights.

Enjoy the miracle clear through New Year’s Day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Happy Thanksgiving! Print this out, hand out markers, and have a family coloring event! It'll be fun for everyone, even your emotionally distant third cousin from who knows where.

It's fine with me

The folks down in Chickasha, Oklahoma (OK!) have the right idea for the holidays. They have a deal called Food For Fines, and the municipal court and the library will take food donations to cover (or partly cover) fines for traffic violations and overdue books.

There are 17,000 people in Chickasha, so you have to figure any number of them are getting speeding tickets or failing to return library books at any give time. Hey, some of them might get caught speeding trying to get their overdue copy of "Love, Look At Us Now" back to the library on time. 

I know I would!

Here's the scoop, from the city's website:  

“Each non-perishable food item donated will result in a $10 deduction of fines, up to a maximum of $100 per participant.”

 Chickasha is 40 miles southwest of Oklahoma City.

The fine print says that "Items must be delivered to the Municipal Court by the individual who the ticket was issued to in order for credit to be received.” I assume that one would have to get out of the car and carry the chow inside, so don't forget to feed that meter!

If you happen to be motoring through Chickasha any time soon, throw an extra can of Spaghetti-Os or some snacks in the car. If you get stopped for speeding, just hand the police a giant box of Cheez-its and be on your way. 

Be sure to let me know how that goes.
 

A boy named Susie

From all accounts, Epping Forest is a lovely neighborhood in Anne Arundel County. It's a waterfront community of some 300 homes, almost a hundred years old, and it has strict bylaws and community standards.

This past Saturday night, three 12-year-olds from the Forest went out Christmas caroling, to spread a bit of holiday cheer. It's an old-fashioned tradition that I wish was more popular nowadays.

The crime-ridden streets of Epping Forest, where a man needs to be armed against the roving packs of ne'er-do-well carolers.

What happened next is not likely to spur the growth of caroling: less than a quarter mile from the home of one of the young people, they knocked on the door of another home and, according to the Baltimore Banner, "a man appeared in a bay window next to the front door and pointed a handgun directly at them,  Anne Arundel County police wrote in charging documents."

The kids fled back to one of their homes, a parent called 911, and in the 1700 block of Point No Point Drive, police met with a man named Paul Brian Susie, a 58-year-old banker who occupies a dwelling with his wife and who was described by police as "belligerent."

According to the police, Susie “confirmed through his admission that he was the male subject involved in this incident.”

The police learned he has a handgun permit to defend himself from marauding 12-year-old carolers. The cops removed his gun from a safe. Susie did acknowledge having at least one drink while watching TV with his wife.

The police report went on: “Given Susie’s reckless behavior in pointing a loaded firearm at a group of non-threatening twelve year old’s he could clearly see on his well-lit stoop, his loud and belligerent behavior during my conversation with him, and his admission of consuming an alcoholic beverage I know through my training, knowledge, and experience Susie was likely under the influence.” 

So they arrested him, charging him with three counts each of first-degree assault, second-degree assault and reckless endangerment, plus one count of wearing and carrying a handgun while under the influence. He was bailed out on Sunday on a $10,000 unsecured bond.

Gun "enthusiasts" will pardon my wondering why a grown man would point a gun at kids, to wit, kids trying to sing Christmas carols to an old grinch named Susie. I think the whole story stinks, beginning with the claim that the couple was watching Television. Everyone knows there's nothing on on Saturday night, nothing to appeal to a 58-year-old banker with some sort of fear of children. 

Some sweet day, the responsible gun owners (there must be some somewhere) will realize that clowns like this Banking Barney Fife are the reason why so many of us scoff at their claims of needing to be armed to the hilt to protect themselves from Pentatonix impersonators wreaking aural havoc on a well-heeled community of Topsider wearers. 

Let me know. Until then, the scoffing continues. And I hope this mannish boy loses his right to wave a pistol around. 

As if we don't have enough problems...

...now the lifestyle experts want us to try "dark showering," which does not mean you have to listen to someone reading Poe or or Cormac McCarthy while you suds up and off. No, not at all. Just take off all your clothes, turn off all the lights, and hop in that shower.

Here's why it's good, according to Nidhi Pandya, a NAMA-certified advanced ayurvedic practitioner and bestselling author of Your Body Already Knows. 

 “Unlike [an early] morning shower, which is typically bright, energizing, and focused on cleansing and awakening the body, a dark shower is a ritual for the nervous system. By dimming or turning off the lights, you create a sensory cocoon that signals the body to unwind.” 

And here's why it's bad. Why are you taking a shower in the first place, I ask rhetorically? Are you trying to get clean and ready for the new day, or are you trying to get into a "sensory cocoon"?

Most of us are just trying to get last night off our faces and be clean enough to put on some clean clothes. We are not trying to tell the body to unwind. We are saying, hey, we're up, might as well face the day and not be stanky.

Advocates of taking a shower with no lights on claim it reduces stress (except when you can't find your washcloth, shampoo, or towel), it improves sleep (we just got up!), it resets your mood (but you can get it back), and it enhances mindfulness ("When the lights are low, your mind has fewer distractions. You start to notice the sound of water, the sensation on your skin, the rhythm of your breath.")

The hills are alive with the sound of water! Turn on the light real quick, please, I need to get the soap out of my eye. I am very mindful about how much it stings! 

Sunday Rerun: "Remember, it's a holiday, not a holi-week!"

 For years, the greatest part of Thanksgiving dinner was always when Uncle Tonoose, full of Natty Boh and holiday happiness, took a nose dive into the mashed potatoes. 

Oh, the hew and cry from everyone as they pulled him out of the creamed spuds, and his tie out of the gravy tureen, and gently placed him face-down over the ottoman. Not that the concern was all about Tonoose's welfare (he'd be fine in the morning, back at the lumberyard) but for the mashed potatoes themselves, because one of the best parts of the whole weekend was the subsequent meals after the big dinner on Thursday.

Don't throw away those mashed patooties! In the morning, stir them (2 cups) up with an egg, and a cup of flour, some diced onion, salt and pepper, and then make patties to fry with your b'fast. Ain't that just like living! Potato Cakes!

Baltimore has always been big on leftover sandwiches, too, and if you're skillful you can make a great one on rye bread with turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and a tad of sauerkraut (dried by pressing down a paper towel, or one of the shirts Tonoose left behind, to soak up excess kraut juice).

And I credit Baltimore with the invention of what I am calling "Stwaffles," which are waffles made of stuffing on the waffle iron. How could anything be better?

I do have to share this from Wisconsin, speaking of Thanksgiving chow. There is a restaurant there called the Dreamland Supper Club, and their year-round specialty is french-fried turkey breast.

This is not like chicken-fried steak, in which a thin steak is dipped in the flour and seasonings and breading that is used for fried chicken, and cooked that same way. No sir, this is a hunk of turkey breast dipped in sweet batter and deep-fried, and served with melted butter and a baked potato.

The sweet batter would suggest some powdered sugar and syrup, but no. This is a very big deal in Wisconsin. According to some reviews I read, this Dreamland is a popular place for holiday celebrations.

Wisconsin, thank you for your beer and cheese, but I'm going to pass on this Turkey Twinkie. 

The Saturday Picture Show, November 22, 2025

The day he dressed as a Blues Brother, did he dare to dream of being Pope one day? He got there!

I figure this chicken decided that this disguise would keep Colonel Sanders far away.

This is a color picture, but it's of a stage where they were presenting a play that was set in the days on black & white movies. 

Remember the early days of the Simpsons, around in 1989 or so, when everything Bart said became a sticker or magnet or patch? Here is an obvious counterfeit and poor translation of the one where Bart says, "Eat my shorts, man!" I just decided that my new favorite snappy phrase is going to be "Eat pant!"

At my advanced age, I just learned that the raised ridges on the back of ice scrapers are there to allow the poor frozen motorist to score the ice on his/her windows, the easier to break it up thereafter. Or, just wait until April.

"Hello, Produce Department? Do you have any apples?"

In Towson, over by Calvert Hall, there's a sign where two roads zip together. The sign says "Alternate merge area." It took me years to realize they meant to have us read "alternate" as a verb. I thought there was a choice about it. But how about this sign from Tulsa? By the time you figure out what they meant, you'll be in Oklahoma City.

These are the prettiest sunsets of the year, for me, and the great thing is, they're all over and done with by quarter to six!

I stared and stared at this picture until I realized that it shows a leaf that got a heart tattoo!

On this day in Dallas in 1963, the world we knew ceased to exist, replaced by a world of international evil and universal mistrust. They called the Kennedy Administration "1000 days of Camelot," because it truly seemed that we were living in an enchanted time. We've never had such a sweet time since, and I doubt that anyone or anything is going to bring that feeling back. I'm sorry if you missed it. You wouldn't believe how great it was.
 

Rerun: A view to a cemetery

I like to read and share this column every year around this time. I'm a day early this time, and I hope you'll forgive me for being nostalgic for a time when our leaders were, let's say, different from what they are now.

And so were our journalists. This is the column that Jimmy Breslin wrote in the New York Herald-Tribune after he was sent to Washington to cover the funeral for President Kennedy. He realized that every other reporter would be talking about the people in suits and fine clothes at the funeral. Breslin's genius was that he went in another direction, and gave us a slice of life we might otherwise not have seen.

‘It’s An Honor’

New York Herald Tribune, November 1963

By Jimmy Breslin

WASHINGTON — Clifton Pollard was pretty sure he was going to be working on Sunday, so when he woke up at 9 a.m., in his three-room apartment on Corcoran Street, he put on khaki overalls before going into the kitchen for breakfast. His wife, Hettie, made bacon and eggs for him. Pollard was in the middle of eating them when he received the phone call he had been expecting. It was from Mazo Kawalchik, who is the foreman of the gravediggers at Arlington National Cemetery, which is where Pollard works for a living. “Polly, could you please be here by 11 o’clock this morning?” Kawalchik asked. “I guess you know what it’s for.” Pollard did. He hung up the phone, finished breakfast, and left his apartment so he could spend Sunday digging a grave for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

When Pollard got to the row of yellow wooden garages where the cemetery equipment is stored, Kawalchik and John Metzler, the cemetery superintendent, were waiting for him. “Sorry to pull you out like this on a Sunday,” Metzler said. “Oh, don’t say that,” Pollard said. “Why, it’s an honor for me to be here.” Pollard got behind the wheel of a machine called a reverse hoe. Gravedigging is not done with men and shovels at Arlington. The reverse hoe is a green machine with a yellow bucket that scoops the earth toward the operator, not away from it as a crane does. At the bottom of the hill in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Pollard started the digging (Editor Note: At the bottom of the hill in front of the Custis-Lee Mansion).

Leaves covered the grass. When the yellow teeth of the reverse hoe first bit into the ground, the leaves made a threshing sound which could be heard above the motor of the machine. When the bucket came up with its first scoop of dirt, Metzler, the cemetery superintendent, walked over and looked at it. “That’s nice soil,” Metzler said. “I’d like to save a little of it,” Pollard said. “The machine made some tracks in the grass over here and I’d like to sort of fill them in and get some good grass growing there, I’d like to have everything, you know, nice.”

James Winners, another gravedigger, nodded. He said he would fill a couple of carts with this extra-good soil and take it back to the garage and grow good turf on it. “He was a good man,” Pollard said. “Yes, he was,” Metzler said. “Now they’re going to come and put him right here in this grave I’m making up,” Pollard said. “You know, it’s an honor just for me to do this.”

Pollard is 42. He is a slim man with a mustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd Engineers battalion in Burma in World War II. He is an equipment operator, grade 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of the last to serve John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was the 35th president of this country, was a working man who earns $3.01 an hour and said it was an honor to dig the grave.

Yesterday morning, at 11:15, Jacqueline Kennedy started toward the grave. She came out from under the north portico of the White House and slowly followed the body of her husband, which was in a flag-covered coffin that was strapped with two black leather belts to a black caisson that had polished brass axles. She walked straight and her head was high. She walked down the bluestone and blacktop driveway and through shadows thrown by the branches of seven leafless oak trees. She walked slowly past the sailors who held up flags of the states of this country. She walked past silent people who strained to see her and then, seeing her, dropped their heads and put their hands over their eyes. She walked out the northwest gate and into the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. She walked with tight steps and her head was high and she followed the body of her murdered husband through the streets of Washington.

Everybody watched her while she walked. She is the mother of two fatherless children and she was walking into the history of this country because she was showing everybody who felt old and helpless and without hope that she had this terrible strength that everybody needed so badly. Even though they had killed her husband and his blood ran onto her lap while he died, she could walk through the streets and to his grave and help us all while she walked.

There was Mass, and then the procession to Arlington. When she came up to the grave at the cemetery, the casket already was in place. It was set between brass railings and it was ready to be lowered into the ground. This must be the worst time of all, when a woman sees the coffin with her husband inside and it is in place to be buried under the earth. Now she knows that it is forever. Now there is nothing. There is no casket to kiss or hold with your hands. Nothing material to cling to. But she walked up to the burial area and stood in front of a row of six green-covered chairs and she started to sit down, but then she got up quickly and stood straight because she was not going to sit down until the man directing the funeral told her what seat he wanted her to take.

The ceremonies began, with jet planes roaring overhead and leaves falling from the sky. On this hill behind the coffin, people prayed aloud. They were cameramen and writers and soldiers and Secret Service men and they were saying prayers out loud and choking. In front of the grave, Lyndon Johnson kept his head turned to his right. He is president and he had to remain composed. It was better that he did not look at the casket and grave of John Fitzgerald Kennedy too often. Then it was over and black limousines rushed under the cemetery trees and out onto the boulevard toward the White House. “What time is it?” a man standing on the hill was asked. He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes past three,” he said.

Clifton Pollard wasn’t at the funeral. He was over behind the hill, digging graves for $3.01 an hour in another section of the cemetery. He didn’t know who the graves were for. He was just digging them and then covering them with boards. “They’ll be used,” he said. “We just don’t know when. I tried to go over to see the grave,” he said. “But it was so crowded a soldier told me I couldn’t get through. So I just stayed here and worked, sir. But I’ll get over there later a little bit. Just sort of look around and see how it is, you know. Like I told you, it’s an honor.”

Word of the year

If you think that Taylor Swift is a close friend, and that you will probably be throwing rice at her and Travis Kelce when they come a-stepping down the aisle, congratulations to you!

Not that Taylor could pick you out of a police lineup (although she might have to try to one day) and not that you should run down to Ann Taylor Loft to pick out a getup for the wedding, but at least you are now part of of the Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year!

The winner this year is "Parasocial," defined as "a relationship felt by someone between themselves and a famous person they do not know."

Because Taylor writes such marvelously touching lyrics that most everyone can relate to, and because her fella, Big Trav, is such a plain old downhome easy-going guy, it's easy to relate to them and figure, hey, they're just like me and my significant other, so let's just say we're friends.

Travis talks things over with Coach Andy Reid

Even more amazing, there is a trend in which people are becoming close to bots on their phones and share deep emotions with cyber creatures.

This didn't just start the other day.  As far back as 1956, American sociologists noticed that television watchers were involving themselves in "para-social" relationships with people on TV. 

TV was fairly new in 1956, and movies had been around for a lot longer. But you didn't see women walking around (outside of asylums) under the notion that Clark Gable or Jimmy Stewart was their boyfriend, or men certain that Dorothy Lamour was the pot of gold at the end of their delusional rainbow.

Back then, we had to put on pants, leave the house, and go to a theater to see the stars. TV came along, and we can dream our sweet dreams of love with a total stranger. Back then, it was Ricky Nelson or Clint Eastwood, right there in the house on a flickering 11" screen.

So, let's stay real. People on television or singing on stages or running with footballs are professionals paid to entertain us. Along with riches beyond measure, luxurious lives, and public acclaim, they get to marry people like Travis Kelce.

I always say, nothing is ever perfect. 

 

C'est Dommage

A long time ago, at work, a computer guy showed me something he should not have...it was a printout of all the passwords of everyone who worked there.

He wanted me to see how many of the passwords were filthy. That was hardly surprising, given the general tone of the billingsgate in that workplace. We were told over and over to make sure that no one could guess our password, so as to make sure no one did a dirty deed in someone else's name, but I'm here to tell you, a good 60-70% of the signons were terms for favorite activities among the highly libidinous. I think they were easy to guess, but I never tried.

The other surprising thing was how many people thought that something like "BOBBYD" would be hard to guess, if your name was Bob and your last name started with a D (made-up example).  Or for the guy who hummed "Stairway To Heaven" to choose "LEDZEP."

I'm walking down memory lane as a way to get around to telling you that the French people are looking into the $multi-million ripoff at the Louvre, and they found that the most famous museum in all the world used "LOUVRE" as the password to their security system.

I mean, sacre bleu! 

Not only that, but France’s National Cybersecurity Agency first was made aware of this foolish choice in 2014, when they reported “serious shortcomings” in the Paris museum’s security systems, such as two-decade old security computer software.

 “An attacker who manages to take control of it would be able to facilitate damage or even theft of artworks,” the agency said in 2014.

But here we are in 2025, and no one saw fit to do something about the situation.

French riot police stand near the Louvre Museum's glass pyramid 

And on October 19th, thieves entered the museum, stole the nation's crown jewels, and made good their escape within eight minutes.

If only the people in charge of guarding the jewels had known!

 

Write it down

 I saw an Instagram post that said something about handwriting. Uh oh.

For one thing, they tell me that kids don't learn cursive handwriting anymore. I know why they call it "cursive." Everyone who tries to read what I've written winds up cursing. Even before I got the "arthuritis" in my wrists and thumbs, my handwriting was atrocious. One reason: I am lefthanded.  Another reason: I don't know why. It just is.

Maybe - I just thought of this - I had heard that one day we would communicate via texts and emails. They foretold all this on "The Jetsons," so I didn't bother learning to write very well.

My father did amazing calligraphy with great detail in ink and watercolor. Here is but one example. 

When he left me lists of chores to do around the house ("Wash car, put snow tires on Plymouth, sweep up sawdust") they looked a lot like this. My mother won award after award in high school for her perfect Palmer method handwriting.

My grocery list once fell into the wrong hands and the FBI showed up at the supermarket, convinced that my itemized notes were coded plans for an invasion of Taiwan.

So please don't judge me for my handwriting. If you agree not to, I will send you a neatly typed thank-you note.

Sad songs

I am sorry, Karen Carpenter.

I'm sorry that I didn't pay more respect to your talent. Your voice is timeless and just perfect, and like all the best singers, it just seems to flow from you with the least bit of strain or struggle. Bing Crosby is a great example. It seemed that you could drag Bing or Karen into a room with a crowd or a microphone at 10 in the morning and they would be at the their best without bellowing or turning redfaced. 

Every note in tune, every word clear as a bell. Every musical note, that is.

Her personal life was a slow-moving car wreck. Her parents seemed to think that her brother Richard was the genius, and while he did co-write some of their songs, and arrange the music, all that would have been for naught if he didn't have his sister singing those songs so well in her one-of-a-kind three-octave contralto voice.

There's a documentary about Karen's life and her battles with anorexia (shortly before her death in 1983, she was down to 70 pounds), and her ill-advised marriage to a man who promised her the children she hoped for. Well, that was not about to occur, what with him having had a vasectomy he forgot to tell her about while he drained her bank account.  It's all there, and it's all sad, until she sang.

There are those who said that "Goodbye to Love" was Karen's true anthem, the melancholy words of someone who seems to believe that love has passed her by for the last time. How sad it must have been to have all that ability and none of the joy of performing with it.

The documentary is on Amazon; it's good to watch and sad to watch all at the same time. I wish we had all treated her better when she was here.

Sunday Rerun: "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.