I hope there's not a third

I almost got to see Brian Wilson, touring with the Beach Boys in 1965, but he was hors de combat by the time the band played at the Baltimore Civic Center (which has changed its name 19 times, but not to me!) so they had a replacement on bass and high harmonies. Fella named Glen Campbell.

We East Coast kids didn't know nuttin' about no surfin', but we learned the lingo and loved the songs from California with the Beach Boys and Jan And Dean. "Surfin' USA" sent us running to the dictionary (no Google in 1963) to find out what huarache sandals were.  Along with the surf music, there were car tunes ("409", "Little Deuce Coupe", "Shut Down") and songs about being cool kids ("Be True To Your School", "Fun Fun Fun") and songs about love going well ("Don't Worry Baby", "She Knows Me Too Well") and love not going well ("Help Me, Rhonda", "Let Him Run Wild") and, well, songs about who knew what? ("Heroes And Villains").  

I never owned or operated a pair of huarache sandals, but I did have a bushy bushy blonde hairdo. Never had a little deuce coupe, but I found true love, and through every stage of my life from teendom on, the Beach Boys were either on my speakers or in my head.

I hope I'm not speaking too esoterically, but Sly And The Family Stone were all that Love with Arthur Lee could have been. Sly Stone - Sylvester Stewart should thank the grade-school classmate who transposed the "y" and the "l" that gave him his nickname - accomplished what Arthur was trying to do, blend rock and soul and jazz and even a little country, and create a whole new music. "Dance To The Music", "Stand", "Hot Fun In The Summertime", "Everyday People," "Family Affair"....so many great songs, and not once did you say, "That sounds just like their last one."

How sad it was that both Sly and Brian are gone in the same week, both aged 82. Both flourished brightly while young, and both fell prey to the traps and trappings of stardom and plenty of money. I'm not the first to try to figure out how to put this in words, but their music will be around as long as there are radios and speakers and whatever medium is available. I can't think of a better way to kick off a dance than with "Dance To The Music," or a better way for a couple to reassure each other than "She Knows Me Too Well."

Nobody asked me, but here is my favorite Beach Boys song out of all of them, from the "Beach Boys Today" album in 1965, listen to "Please Let Me Wonder." 

For so long I thought about it

And now I just can't live without it

This beautiful image I have of you.

 

Three simple lines that share emotions every feeling heart has known.

High Seize

 Scrolling through Instagram,  I saw a video from St. Kitts or St. Catt's or some exotic port of call that I've never called. One of those BA cruise ships, the Liberty Of The Seas, was at the dock, idling, or whatever you call it when it's a boat, waiting for two passengers to get on board before they set sail for St. Joseph's, where aspirin is made. 

According to the 'Gram, the couple showed up over 30 minutes late, by which time the mighty ship had cast off its moorings and was a couple dozen nautical yards away from the pier as the man and woman glowered, shopping bags in hand.

It would be a scream if the shopping bag contained a t-shirt that said "My aunt and uncle missed their ship departure because they stopped to buy me this shirt."

Seriously, what is it with people? Why can't we seem to be on time? It's not just a matter of being discourteous to the other passengers, who were eager to get on the road, as it were.

It's also self-respect. I don't see how one can feel like an efficient member of society by being non-prompt all the time. 

Set the alarm on your phone, strap on a Timex, carry a sundial. Just be on time, please! 

Never the twain

 If you remember the great Albert Brooks movie "Lost in America," you might recall a scene in which Albert is firming up the deal for the new Mercedes-Benz he wants. Brilliant as ever, Albert plays the salesman on the phone (crediting himself as "Hans Wagner") and says there's just one little thing David, the buyer, might want to add...

"Just leather, that's all you'd have to add, nothing else"; David was astounded: "Really?...It doesn't come with leather?" - the dealer specified: "It's what they call Mercedes leather"; David asked about the inferior leather: "What would that be?" - and he was told: "It's a very thick vinyl, a beautiful seat."

That was 40+ years ago, and the lies just keep on coming. "Vegan cheese" is not cheese, "Vegan leather" is vinyl, faux suede isn't suede, and just today, Peggy pointed out to me a book about the life and career of Lee Krasner, the widow of splatter-art king Jackson Pollock. 

It's up to you if you want to call whatever Pollock dripped on canvas "art." He sold this one (painted in his barn) called "Lavender Mist" for $1500 in 1950, and later, someone found $2,000,000 in sofa coins and bought it for their barn.

As I say, art is in the eye of. But words should be precise, which is why I scoffed, guffawed, and winced when Peggy told me the book about Krasner is "historical fiction."

As Sheriff Andy Taylor used to say, "they ain't no such a thing" as fiction, where history is concerned. Fiction is not fact, and the fact is, I'm not reading a book that doesn't know the difference. 

Answer the question!

Richard Thomas (no, not the actor!) was a wildlife technician, and like so many of us, he devoted a great part of his childhood to asking, "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”

But, being a man of action, he didn't just SAY it. He got off his fat sofa and did the math. His rough estimate came to around 700 pounds, and who among us can gainsay that?

First off, a woodchuck is also known by the similarly-appealing name "groundhog."  Word experts feel that we got "woodchuck" from the Algonquian people, who used the word "wejack" to mean groundhog.

Later, they developed the word "Sajak" to mean game show host.

Back to the story...in 1988, the Associated Press press reported that Thomas had calculated the amount of dirt in a typical 25–30-foot long woodchuck burrow and had determined that if the woodchuck had moved an equivalent volume of wood, it could move "about 700 pounds on a good day, with the wind at his back". 

In Cincinnati, Joe Burrow can throw a football with 700 pounds of Ravens hanging off of him.

While in Alabama, the Tuscaloosa. But that's entirely irrelephant.

Sunday rerun from 2011: How to spend $203,150

 Here it is Saturday, and your paycheck is still warm in the bank, and maybe you have some spare dollars to spend.  Let's say you have $203,150 to spend.

"You have $203,150 to spend."

Now let's say you can't really buy a great house with that, and that sum is too much to spend on a car, although you could get a nice car and a great RV with that much, and hit the road for a while.

You could give it to any number of deserving charities.

You could really spruce up your wardrobe, or get new furniture for the house, or have a brick pizza oven installed in the living room. 

OR you could have bought the original color portrait, done by Norman Mingo, of Alfred E. Neuman, which appeared on MAD magazine issue #30 in 1956.  The original brought in, at an art auction in November, 2008, that sum: $203,150, from some guy with a REALLY mad wife.

I bet he hung it in his den and his friends come over all the time to see it and his friends' wives hang downstairs with his wife, all going, "WHAT?  He bought WHAT?"

What, him worry?  If you have that much money for that picture, you surely have enough for some other things.  But I'd love to see that picture!

 

The Saturday Picture Show, June 7, 2025

 

Joining heat, humidity, mosquitoes, and sweatiness on my list of reasons not to like summer very much are these blobs, called sea nettles or bay nettles or jellyfish or their scientific name, Chrysaora quinquecirrha. If they sting you, the cure is Adolph's Meat Tenderizer. Really. Or Texas Pete Hot Sauce.

Just as we were promised, grocery prices are really coming down!

"Auntie Em! Auntie Em! Uncle Earl says he won't come down the storm cellar until he finishes the back yard!"

All right, it's not a great foot massage, but it's an OK foot massage.

The owl doesn't give a hoot about the cats watching him. Which they will.

So the first goldfinch says to the second goldfinch, "Did you hear about that owl over on Elm Avenue?"

Thailand's entry in the Miss Universe pageant, Sueangam-iam, wore a gown made of discarded soda tabs to honor her parents, who were refuse collectors in Bangkok. That said more than a lot of words would have.

The convicts who escaped the Orleans Parish Prison in Louisiana left behind taunting notes and cartoons. One hopes that when they are all rounded up, they will attend English classes.

Extra for me, please.

People try to re-create this weathered look, and they come mighty close, but the best way to have your exterior wall look this distressed is to paint it twenty years ago.

D-Day Rerun - D-Day is today

 Today, June 6, marks the day in 1944 when the fortunes of the world took a great turn for the better. That was D-Day (the D stood for nothing but "Day," signifying how much was riding on this military operation), the invasion of France by beach landings in Normandy to defeat German troops occupying France. Planning for it began in 1943, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of the entire operation, which all might have been scuttled in that very year except for one man's nearsightedness.

An early version of the plan blew out a window that summer in London's Norfolk House, but a man who picked the papers off the street couldn't read them without his glasses and could only see the large type, indicating that they had some military import, so he dropped his find off at a military post.

And the plans called for the invasion, which brought 156,000 troops or paratroopers ashore (73,000 from the U.S., 83,000 from Great Britain and Canada) to take place on June 5, but bad weather forced a 24-hour postponement.  When June 6, 1944, dawned clear, Eisenhower told troops: “You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you.”

1,900 Allied bombers attacked German lines, dropping seven million pounds of bombs that day.

10,521 combat aircraft flew a total of 15,000 flights, with 113 lost.

The naval bombardment was delivered by seven battleships, 18 cruisers, and 43 destroyers.

By the evening of June 6, 20,000 vehicles and 150,000 soldiers were in place on French soil to begin pushing German forces all the way back to Germany, leading to the merciful end of the war in 1945.

50,000 German troops were in place to counteract the invasion, but several things hampered them.

For one, the Germans were deceived by a fake army of dummy camps, planes and tanks built further up the English coast at  Kent and Essex, leading the Germans to figure on an invasion at Calais.

For a second, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. the man in charge of defending German holdings in northern France from any invasion, was not around. His staff told him that the English Channel was far too rough for a landing, so he was in Germany, celebrating his wife’s 50th birthday.

And for a third, Adolf Hitler, Chancellor and Fuhrer of Germany, was also back home, sound asleep, and his aides so feared waking him that they let him sleep in, which severely delayed getting additional troops sent in. 

Nice work, dummkopfs. Thanks!

And speaking of using dummies...Eisenhower and his men were truly geniuses, thinking of everything as they planned. On the morning of the 6th, as the invasion began, they had planes flying over other locations, dropping DUMMY paratroopers to convince the Germans that the invasion was taking place elsewhere.

Oh for the days when brilliance and fortitude saved the world!

If you have a spare minute today, think a minute today about what it felt like for all involved, from the newest private to Eisenhower, to know that failure would have cost the world its freedom, and think of the men invading that beach, and be glad they did, and mourn those lost.

Behave!

 I'm not a very smart guy, but I am at least smart enough not to wade into the current Broadway imbroglio involving Patti LuPone.

It all started with a profile on the legendary LuPone in the New Yorker magazine in which she complained about loud noise from a loud show in the theater adjoining the one in which she was enchanting audiences. She did not like this and said so. But she did so by calling the other actress a beyotch, but not like that. I read the article when the magazine wound up in my mailbox as soon as the mailman had figured out the Caption Contest winner, and it thought it unwise of her to be unkind.

And then the other actress had a friend who defended her and the whole thing went back and forth online.  And with the broadcast of the Tony Awards (named in honor of Tony Danza, did you know that?) coming up on Sunday, people are all worked up about this, and saying they hope it all be resolved in time for the curtain to go up Sunday evening and maybe they can open the show with the two combatants duetting on "Getting To Know You" and doing “You Don’t Know/I Am the One” from Next to Normal as the show-stopper.

From reading the article about LuPone, I see she has that self-centered philosophy that many people in her line of work have...nothing matters but her and her act and you had better get out of her way while she sings or dances or acts.

Again, it's not any of my beeswax, but Patti is 76 yoa - older than I, even! - and she should know better than to call people nasty names. These showbiz types will hug each other tight and talk about being best friends forever, so let's keep that face on and stop being such a nasty lady, all right? 

The world is in a lot of turmoil spinning around and we don't need the very people who are paid handsomely to entertain us acting like children. We have children for that. 

Ooooh that smell

Inquisitive minds want to know, and so do I:  What's the deal on all these wildfires in Canada? They send smoky, ashy air way down here to Maryland, and it's like when Spicoli and his friends roll up on the parking lot at Ridgemont High.

I put on my Google goggles and looked it up. These fires are out of control across Western Canada. The reasons are the deadly triumvirate of an ongoing drought, warmer-than-usual temperatures, and lack of rainfall.

The big one going on now started late last week in British Columbia and has quadrupled in size since it flamed.

The drought has dried out forests, and led Saskatchewan and Manitoba to declare provincial emergencies.

And the outlook for the immediate future is not so rosy, either. You hear the meteorologists talk about upper-level winds and the jet stream, and they are spreading the smoke out of Canada eastward and southward, and that's how we wind up with it.

Not only that, but the smoke is causing air quality issues in many areas. The Air Quality Index in lot of places (not Maryland yet) has reached unhealthy levels. And...the visibility is being reduced with all the hazy skies.

Smoke is expected to keep on billowing down on our way for the next few days.

The only good thing about all this is that we haven't heard any more silly talk about Canada becoming the "51st State." 

They have enough problems to deal with already.

This map shows how many Americans are listening to Céline Dion at any given moment.

 

The fates

You're probably smarter than I, and more prone to picking up on the little cues that life sometimes offers. I wouldn't necessarily think it's a bad omen if I tripped over a sidewalk crack or or found a coin face down in the gutter. 

But if things kept happening to me, I would get out of the town where they happened. 

So, like, if I went to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York and got bopped on the melon by the gigantic Cat In The Hat balloon and wound up in a coma for a month, I would not go to that parade again, or any gathering with inflated felines being toted around by men and women on the other end of long ropes.

That's what happened to Gothamite Kathleen Caronna in 1997. She was watching the floats at 72nd Street near Central Park West when the Cat hit a lamppost. The lamppost knocked her lights out for a month, as I say, and the lawsuits were flying before she got back to her husband and eight-month-old son. 

She sued and won an undisclosed amount from Macy's and the city. It was enough for her and her husband and son to move on up to a deluxe apartment in the skyyyyyyyy. 

And then in 2006, New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle was piloting a private plane that crashed into her new flat - on 72nd and York Avenue, several blocks east of where she met the big cat.

Lidle's private jet had taken off from New Jersey and crashed into the Belaire Apartments in Manhattan, killing Lidle and his flight instructor, Tyler Stanger. The  engine of the Cirrus SR20 landed in Caronna's bedroom, causing the apartment to be consumed by flames right away. Fortunately, Mrs Caronna was not home just yet, but she was on the way, and arrived shortly thereafter to this: 

21 people in the building were injured.

I hope Mrs Caronna took the advice of her sister-in-law, Lisa Brown, who told the Daily News paper, "How do you go through two major things like this? It’s spooky. It’s very spooky.”

One final twist: the flight instructor, Stanger, had a friend named Bob Cartwright, who was supposed to have joined him and the Yankee for this flight. 

Luckily, Cartwright changed his plans and did not go, and survived.

For a month, until he was on a plane that crashed, and he died.

So, when you hear a voice telling you not to do something, listen!

Fame's the game

 I'm no stranger to the celebrity set. Why, I once stood right next to the legendary performer M.C. Hammer at an Orioles ballgame, and I once browsed for cut-price books with John Waters, although you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who's been in Baltimore for more than ten minutes who can't say that.

So, I thought it was just another cog in the Wheel Of Well-Known People when I got a friend request from Carrie Underwood, the famous singer. I thought about how much fun it was going to be, sharing vacation photos and clips of favorite country songs with "Car," as she likes me to call her.

My close friend 

Of course it was a fakeout, and it really made me sad, not because Carrie Underwood, from Broken Taillight, Oklahoma, didn't really want to be my boon companion in real life, but because underneath all this is some person, probably male, sitting in a tub of pudding with a laptop and a desire to bask in adulation, even if that adulation is not meant for him.

Or maybe "her," I don't know.

I do know that celebrity status in America is quite an odd thing. If you saw the news a couple weeks ago when some deluded maniac tried to drive his car through the heavily fortified gate at the home of Jennifer Aniston, you saw the conditions under which she lives: high walls on the perimeter of the property, remote controlled steel gates, armed guards on duty around the clock.

From the air, it looks a lot like a building near where I worked, but that was the Baltimore County Detention Center, and even though I'm certain that Ms Aniston's home is appointed with the finest of furnishings and objets d'art, what she has in common with the denizens of the county hoosegow is that she just can't up and go to Trader Joe's any time she takes a notion to, either. 

Being famous is a prison with velvet bars, and it's quite sad that anyone would voluntarily pretend to be there.

Sunday Rerun: Fast Times at New Brunswick High

 I can't help it. I am still living in what the late humorist Doug Kenney called "a homeroom of the mind." I love everything about high school culture - the easy availability of ice cream sandwiches, having a stash bin locker for my stuff, lots of friends to talk to, exercise in fresh air, and, occasionally, learning something. 

I will readily admit that I would be spotted as an outlier, were I to try to blend in and fake being a high school student again. Gray hair and an unsteady gait would give me away at once. But hats off to Hyejeong Shin! She's 29 and faked them out for a whole week, posing as a new student at New Brunswick High School in New Jersey before the school administrators got wise to her fake birth certificate.

It's not as if Ms Shin was trying to make up for missed education. She is a graduate of Rutgers University, for crying out loud. Her attorney says she knows she goofed, but it was all out of her longing to have the kind of friendships she had in high school that made her do it

See what I mean?

Shin is a South Korean citizen who was sent here at 16 to attend a private boarding school, and she just missed that atmosphere.  The pep rallies! The smoke-filled lavatories! The Geometry quizzes! The morning announcements! 

Her attorney, Darren Gelber, said, "At no time was anyone or any student in danger and this entire case is more about my client wanting to return to a place of safety and welcoming and an environment that she looks back on fondly and nothing more." 

Maybe he gets paid by the word.

I think this is a serious case of hyperprosecution, but she has been indicted by a grand jury and been charged with issuing false documents and hindering her own prosecution in the third degree. Through her attorney, Shin says she is hoping to be accepted into a  pre-trial intervention program and serve no time.

Gallantly, the New Brunswick Police released a statement, saying their investigation found nothing to indicate her enrollment was part of a plan to bring harm or violence to anyone. 

Gelber says as soon as this is over, Shin wants to return to South Korea, after 13 years in the US.

Maybe if I dye my hair and buy the cool clothes that kids today wear, I could pull it off...

 

 

The Saturday Picture Show, May 31, 2025

 

Mannequin arm and hand, plus an old busted-up guitar equals something funny enough to entertain the British.

Democracy in action. I don't know doodly about Emmer, but this fellow has every right to oppose him. That's what makes us the greatest country on earth, not slogans and hat mottoes. Unless someone starts cutting back on our freedom, we have the right to speak and vote as we see fit.

This is the flower you've heard so much about. It's called the "forget me not," but I can't remember why.

Great couple of pictures here of a great couple: the Monroes, Jim and Marilyn.

Your free wallpaper for today is this walking path by a railroad track. 

Somewhere in Baltimore, you'll find this neat, clean, patriotic side street. It's the perfect spot for a block party or crab feast.

As the Southern Hemisphere prepares for autumn, we Northies get ready to slather on the SPF-40. Here comes summer!

Like most of us, I was not too interested in the first half of the term "charcuterie platter." "Platter" suggests an ample quantity of food, but "charcuterie," even though it starts off with the pleasant word "char," trails off into something cute, and that's not we dedicated snackers want. But all systems were "go!" when we found out it's all good eatin'!

Why, yes, that is a baby West African dwarf crocodile hatching its way into your heart.

And wrapping up our picture party today, here's a homemade Crocalzone, that delightful cross of a crocodile and an alligator and a calzone. Like this well-baked meal, I hope your weekend will be packed full of good things.

Sic semper

It was easy to identify the dead body of John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed Abraham Lincoln.

He had his initials JWB tattooed on his wrist. 

That body is interred right here in Baltimore, if you can dig it, at Green Mount Cemetery.

Whatever you do with this information, please, don't tell Lainey Litton about it.

Lainey is a little girl of three from down Tennessee way. She took a trip with her family to Washington, D.C. At Ford’s Theatre, she saw the exhibits concerning Lincoln's murder. Later on the trip, she recognized the statue of the 16th president at the Lincoln Memorial and has since developed a deep fear of Booth, the Confederate loyalist who did him in.

Her mom says,“We were at church one Sunday, and the preacher was talking about how Jesus loves us. She looked at me, and she said, ‘Mommy, I love Jesus.’ I said, ‘That's awesome. I'm glad you do,'" Cassie recalls. "She said, ‘Jesus loves us.’ I said, 'That's right.' She said, ‘You know who we don't love? I said, ‘Who?’ She said, ‘John Wilkes Booth.’ "

“It's not something that we tried to bring up to her, but she's aware that John Wilkes Booth was not a great guy.” 

Like any three-year-old, Cassie has a little trouble understanding that Booth, having taken his final bow in 1865, no longer presents any danger to her. 

In my own case, I've never feared Booth, and years of meditation helped me over my notion that Charles J. Guiteau, the disappointed office-seeker who shot President James Garfield, and Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist whose bullet ended the life of President Wm. McKinley, had ill intent toward me.

But I can't shake the suspicion that Elon Musk has my Social Security #.

So you wanna work here?

It was not my favorite part of being a supervisor to conduct job or promotion/transfer interviews, but it gave me, as an inveterate observer of mankind, a great chance to see people in action. Oh, the stories I could tell! (I have told them!) 

And from the other side of the desk, I could tell you things I saw other people do in interviews, too, such as a supervisor telling a female applicant she was "very pretty." Uh, no. Can't so that.  

But in case you find yourself going to, or conducting, a job interview, you should know that these questions are also forbidden.

 1. What's your age?

This question is out of bounds because some employers might have a thing about not hiring someone over a certain age, or under a certain age. "What's the point of hiring someone who's just gonna go ahead and retire in three years?" is in the same family as "She's just gonna quit anyway when she starts college." The only time frame that should matter to the employer is how well this person will mesh with the organization right now.

Plus, it's demeaning to tell someone they "look too young" to do a job. And if you say that, the other person should have the right to come back with, "Well, you look too stupid to do yours, so where does that leave us?"

2. Are you married?

The answer to this is personal. One's marital status has not a thing to do with their ability to do a job, and has no place in the judgement of their qualifications. Since I was employed by county government, I did not see this happen, but some workplaces pay men different salaries than women for the same job. The unbelievable stupid justification for this is, "Well, he has a family to support." And a woman might not, huh?

I know that sort of thing goes on out there, but, I mean, really? Same job, same pay, makes sense.

3. Do you have kids?

This comes up when they want to worry about whether the applicant is sufficiently devoted to the job. which is their way of saying, "People without children can be expected to work late because they have nothing else to do." 
You don't want to work for people like that, anyway. I always look askance at people who said they thought nothing of staying around the office until 8 or 9 pm just because of their superior dedication to the cause. I felt that people who couldn't get their job done in the time allotted were not...superior...

Plus, having kids around for Take Your Child To Work Day is a blast. Today's kids are tomorrow's adults, not an inconvenience or a scheduling problem.

 4. Where are you from?

It can cut two ways to ask a person where they are from. We'd like to assume the question stems from an honest interest in the person's background and the provenance of their delightful manner of speech.

But it's also likely that the question plays into prejudice, such as, "Whaddya, from Schenectady or somethin'? Because my cousin married a girl from Schenectady, and man, what a loser she was!" 

Remember, they are looking to hire someone to do a job now and in the future, and where a person was born has nothing to do with their ability to do it, unless they are from the moon and cannot function on Earth. 

5. What's your religion?

Of course, they can't refuse to hire you on the basis of your faith, and they can't ask if you go to church. Or where. Or if you play bingo, or are a member of Hadassah, or the Sodality, or the Luther League. Your religion, or non-religion, is protected under the law.

Whichever side of the interview desk you sit on, the only purpose of the interview is to find the most capable person to do a job. Whether that person has children or Chesapeake Bay retrievers, drives a moped, hails from Cincinnati, whatever, that has nothing to do with it.

Good luck! 

Horton Hears The Who again

 What was this one, the eighth "Mission: Impossible" movie that just opened over the weekend? And Tom Cruise is asking us to trust him "one last time"?

How many "No, We Really Mean It This Time!" Farewell Tours did The Who have? Every time you turned around, there's Roger Daltrey and Peter Townshend packing their suitcases and bringing the magic of windmill guitar to Akron, Poughkeepsie, and Des Moines. 

We started talking the other day, the better half and I, about Jamie Lee Curtis and her 47 "Halloween" movies. All I know about those pictures is that Peggy loves them and that I don't. But she said there won't be any more, because in the last one, they stapled Michael Myers to the bulletin board or something. Whatever, he's done for, and he's not the Austin Powers Mike Myers. Yeah, baby!

But I told my loving spouse that the movies are in business to make...not great movies, but great money! Just wait a couple of years, and watch. It will turn out that the killer Michael Myers has an identical twin, Milton Myers, who was just released after serving thirty years in prison for failing to answer a subpoena. Freed and feeling out of sorts, he comes to town and sets off a whole passel of mayhem.

And yes, there will be more commercials with that guy Mayhem for auto insurance. Some things, they don't even bother to claim they're over with.

Untrue tales

There's an interesting article from NPR by Elizabeth Blair. It reminds me of a way a teacher I knew used to find out if her students actually read the books they claimed to have enjoyed. She would ask if, for example, Holden Caulfield learned a lot by spending a summer working as a mechanic in a beach town.

As soon as a student began sputtering, "That was a good way for Holden to learn about human nature, helping people get their cars running again..." she knew she could reel in another imposter.

And now we deal with fakery even worse than some high school Harry pretending to have read a book.  And some newspapers, including the Chicago Sun-Times and  The Philadelphia Inquirer fell for it, publishing a syndicated article with a summer reading list that lists made-up books by real authors. Horrible.

Readers are very familiar with the Chilean-American novelist Isabel Allende, but she never wrote "Tidewater Dreams," which this artificial-intelligence list called her "first climate fiction novel."

The 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to Percival Everett. But it's pure fiction to say that Everett wrote a book called "The Rainmakers," about a future town out West "where artificially induced rain has become a luxury commodity."

The list of summer reading holds 15 titles; five of them are real books. This reflects badly on the newspapers that fell for the deception perpetrated by King Features, a unit of the Hearst Newspapers, and on the list's writer Marco Buscaglia, whose journalism career should be over tonight. Replying to NPR's questions about it, he wrote, "Huge mistake on my part and has nothing to do with the Sun-Times. They trust that the content they purchase is accurate and I betrayed that trust. It's on me 100 percent."

Reading a real book

Yeah, it's on you, buddy, and the shame is that this seems to be part of a trend in which real librarians and book reviewers are replaced by this insidious AI. I can't stand it. Artificial intelligence is no substitute for the real thing, and if this keeps up, how can anyone trust anything they read is real?

I hope someone will ask Buscaglia how this happened, and I hope that the next thing he writes will be a postcard from his new job detasseling corn in Kansas.

Memorial Day

 

 Please remember to think a few good thoughts for those who gave their lives in battles to save our nation. 

Sunday Rerun: Magnificent Mane

 You really have to admire commitment, even if it's just to one's mullet.

And in the case of Tami Manis, here is the depth and breadth and length of her mullet commitment: she is 58 and has spent the last quarter century growing her magnificent Mississippi mudflap. At 5 feet, 8 inches, her mullet is four inches longer than she is tall, and here she affirms her commitment with a promise to take that tribute to Billy Joe Cyrus with her into the afterlife:

 “At my memorial, they can take it off then, and drape it across my urn."

Guinness World Records, which began as a publication to settle bets among people drinking Guinness over just such things as "who has the longest female mullet ever?" named Ms Manis, a nurse from Knoxville, as the crowned record holder in that category.

 

She reflects:  “Growing the longest mullet never really started out as anything other than it was the ‘80s and everybody had a rattail. And I started growing mine, and over the years, it’s just kept growing, so I’ve kept it.”

She names February 9, 1990 as her "mullet birthday." She was getting a haircut that day and while her long tresses were being shortened, she asked the stylist to leave a rattail back there to honor Aimee Mann of 'Til Tuesday, who did that song "Voices Carry" with a long McGyver down her back.

Aimee Mann is still around, performing a solo act these days, and so is Manis's mullet, kept in shape with every-other-day shampoos and a weekly application of leave-in conditioner, and a weekly braid done by a friend, which is the only way to keep that tassel off the floor.

She says it gives her patients something to focus on while she is treating them, which is good. 

"Gimme a head with hair. Long, beautiful hair. Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen," they might say.  

The Saturday Picture Show, May 24, 2025

 

It's ok with me if you wish to be a Numismatist. In fact, you are free to follow whichever religion makes you feel comfortable. Just don't put a Wheat Penny in the collection plate; they are sort of collectible and rather interesting.

I don't know; I just kind of liked the look on this mountain goat's face. He was looking like "Yes, I'm surefooted and sturdy, but there's a warm side to me too..."

Sad story with a happy ending. This woman ordered a white pizza online and asked for as many black olives as the shop could give her without anyone getting fired. She mentioned that it was her birthday and that no one, not a single soul from her family, had gotten in touch, and she was sad about that. I hope the little message brightened her day considerably!

Big surprise: I was that kid in school who asked a million questions. Someone once told me I asked too many questions and I asked why they felt that way. 

This is sort of like when the guy at the computer store can't find your order because his computer...is down.  A fire at the fire lookout tower is out of the ordinary.

Floral experts will know this is a Spicy Vanilla Iris, and their friends will want to know why the flower's name sounds like a stripper's name.

And if you've been wondering why they call that color "Robin's Egg Blue," here you go.

The damage from the tornadoes in the midwest was awful. This house lost all of its back wall.

I have asked a lot of people, and now I should ask whomever does the printing for WalMart bags, but why wouldn't you use Spell Check when you're about to run off a couple of million paper sacks?

Who likes an undecorated tissue box? This is the prize winner for this year. It almost makes you look forward to your next sniffle.