Color Drenching

I try to keep up with all the trends in fashion and home decor. I mean, I see the trends, but I don't act on them personally, for fear of being accused of being a follower.

I follow a lot of websites and FB pages that offer decorating advice. I didn't need any of it when it came to decorating my den in the popular Early Baseball motif. 

But I have seen this thing they call "color drenching" and I wondered about it. Taken literally, it would seem that it involves soaking your furniture, knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, and objets d art in a huge vat of Sherwin-Williams's finest. 

However, it's not that deep. They just mean drenching the surfaces all in one color. The website OliveandJunehome.com defines color drenching this way: 

In a nutshell, color drenching is the art of using one single color across every surface—walls, ceiling, trim, and even furniture if you're feeling extra.

Speaking of nutshells, Sherwin-Williams has a color called Nutshell (SW 6040). It looks like this, if you want to drench your living room: 

But if that's not your cup of nuts, there's always "Agreeable Gray (SW 7029). 

Go try it! Let's be extra, whatever that means.

Reach out and touch

I was reading about a man named Nick Epley. He's a behavioral science professor, and that's a great field to study. Dozens of people over the years have made a science of trying to get me to behave (and only one has succeeded). 

Epley has written a book called "A Little More Social," and he stresses that just chatting to people - even strangers - has a way of making us feel better and happier. A longtime subscriber to the theory that a stranger is just a friend we haven't met yet, I have never had a problem talking to strangers. I mean, what does it hurt to say hey to someone and ask them about how they like the weather, or how about those Orioles, or do they think this spot on the back of my hand looks like something to worry about.

Just kidding with that last one.  As a Medicarian, I have semi-annual dermatology visits in which every square inch of my epidermis is examined as if it were the hide of a long-frozen yak from the Tibetan plateau.

Start making the first step to reach out to others, is what Epley advises, It's a sure cure for loneliness!  And by doing so, you make new friends. I can't tell you how many times a stranger with whom I shared but a brief interlude in some office building has gone home and told their family, "I met a most interesting fellow today. He asked me to look at the back of his hand..."

Sunday Rerun: Stop! In The Name of Love!

 People are always using arcane laws to try to get a legal toehold in their crackpot cases. You read about someone who sues their neighbor for trespassing when all the guy did was walk up to their door, collecting for a canned food drive, or the guy who sued Michael Jordan for looking too much like him, or the odd case of the man from Minnesota who sued David Copperfield and David Blaine, noted magicians, for using his "godly powers" in their acts. This same man also claimed to have been married to Katie Couric and Celine Dion, so there's that.

But for real, there is a law that dates back to the days when women were considered property. A law known as "alienation of affection" allows a dumped husband in Hawaii, Illinois, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota and Utah to seek damages (namely, money) from a guy who wins the affections of his erstwhile wife.

The present case involves a man from North Carolina whose wife took off with a member of the Philadelphia Eagles football team. The man filed court papers that said that up until his wife met the athlete on a business trip, they had a perfect marriage and it all went to hell only because she met the ballplayer.

Son, let me tell you something. If someone loves you completely and fully, they will love you no matter what. Even though the toilet keeps making that funny sound and the car needs tires and the orthodontist wants to be paid and "happily ever after" seems like three words on a Hallmark card, if two people are really in love, they ain't goin' nowhere.

Likewise, if the love isn't there, no amount of gold-plated toilets and Yokahama yk580 tires and perfectly dentulous children will keep it together.  

Even The Captain And Tennille couldn't stand each other after 39 years, for crying out loud.

I'm sorry for the man whose wife left him, but it's like in high school when someone doesn't want to go out with you...no amount of cajolery will change that.  I refer to the great sage Yogi Berra, who reminded us that "if people don't want to come to the ballgames, how are you gonna stop them?"

The Saturday Picture Show, May 30, 2026

 

If you're a full moon, all you have to do to earn the coveted Blue Moon status is be the second one in a month. Tomorrow's moon (5/31) will just sneak in there!

First chance we get, we'll have to ask Herbert how he's doing.

The perfect last-day-of-school gift for a teacher. I would have had bakeries working around the clock in my schoolboy days. Yes, I know, you're surprised. I talked a lot.

The Spanish is not accurate but for what the mortgage shell-out must be every month, let them have their joke!

This sad banana has a future, and it involves banana bread!

I don't know if this is meant as a joke or if it's a Freudian slip, but this is the decor that one sees in a certain colonoscopy clinic.

I don't know. If you want to live on a boat, why not just do that, rather than building a boat-like house?

I will never again trust a brush manufacturer.

No, these are not those confounded clacker balls from the 1970s. This is a rural fire suppression idea. If a fire breaks out in a barn, when it gets hot enough, the glass globes will break and drop a fire-retardant chemical, thereby putting out the flames. I'm still calling the Fire Department.

Manhattanhenge was this past week, when the setting sun aligns perfectly and naturally with New York's street grids. All of Gotham is agog and takes a break from shooting, robbing, and indicting each other for a moment to gawk, then it's back to the regular.

Eat Read Watch Baseball Sleep

Yesterday was a day for odd names.

A country singer told me that Luke Bryan, who has been responsible for such unforgettable tunes as "Love You, Miss You, Mean It", "Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day," "Country Girl (Shake It For Me)" and the song that really sums up Luke's appeal, "Drunk On You," has come out with a new release that seems to need a verb or two to make sense. It's named "Fish Hunt Golf Drink," and if that doesn't make you want to shake your head, then I can't help you with that rattling!

My friend says the song is possibly the worst thing ever to happen to mankind, and I can't dispute that one little bit. My once-lyrical country music is now reduced to a point where the words to songs are just lists of nouns and verbs. 

Here, I'll start you off and you can finish this song, and if Luke Bryan or Bryan Luke or one of those good ole boys cuts it, you and I can split a bundle!

"I wake up in the morning, and I got three things to do

The second one is being sad and the third is missin' you

I guess you guessed the first one, I stumbled down the hall

And that old mirror tells me I'm still crying after all."

A list of things is not enough lyrical content, especially when it's a list very similar to one of your other songs, and when the music is so insipid. But maybe it's AI! "Hey Google, write me a snappy country song!"

If you want to hear this mess, point your Google to this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXMirYiC61E

On the other hand, it was a surprise to find that Robin Strasser, an actress whose work I know because she played Coach Fox's boss in "Coach," was born on May 7, 1945. We history nuts know that day was the day in World War II that Germany surrendered to the Allies. Ms Strasser's parents gave her this name at birth: Robin Victory In Europe Strasser. How cool is that? She will never be without something to talk about to strangers!

The only way this could be better would be for Luke Bryan to have a daughter and name her Wailene Please Daddy Stop Singing Bryan. 

I'm not counting on it.

Harper's Not Bizarre

Did you ever find that you had been doing something for eons, only to find out that you and maybe two other people on the face of Earth do it?

I'm sort of proud to be in the elite company of Philadelphia Phillies star slugger Bryce Harper, who did one of those GRWM (Get Ready With Me) posts that are so popular now since Farmville got boring. 

The internet was simply aghast to find out how Bryce Harper brushes his teeth:  Harper puts his toothpaste tube into his mouth, squeezes out what he needs, and then sticks his wet toothbrush in there and has at it.

Apparently, the approved method is to squeeze that Colgate right onto the brush. 

Would you care to guess if anyone else you know uses the Harper method?

It is I. Right here, done that for years. You see, Peggy and I have always had separate bathrooms, with the exception of about one year,  before we finished my salle de bain in our first house. So, I don't have to worry about anyone else's cooties on my tube of whatever toothpaste Dollar Tree had that week. And it seems like a wasted step to put the paste on the brush first. Efficiency is my watchword! So a dab on the tongue, then in goes the electric brush, and at a rate of 30 seconds per quadrant, I'm clean as a hound's tooth in 2 minutes!

Some morning, you'll have to come over and see how I take a shower.

Amateur Night and Day

One thing of which this nation will never have a shortage is people who think they know they're doing, when, in fact, they don't have the sense God gave 'em.

If you're ever at the scene of a large building fire, there will always be some sidewalk fire chief saying, "they shoulda done this!" or "we need more water over heah!" 

Of course, you need look no further than Facebook to meet dozens of people every day from all walks of life who are actually experts in staffing and managing a big-league baseball team. Just ask them!

Police detectives spend years learning their trade from the ground up, beginning as beat patrol officers, and then spending time in technical training courses. But now, with the advent of true-crime podcasts and YouTube videos, crimes that have baffled police from Keokuk to Kennesaw Mountain are being resolved by dedicated amateur sleuths.

And so we meet one Alec Wysopal, from Tucson, Arizona. Wysopal is 38, and if he's the same Alec Wysopal who listed his availability on a house-sitting opportunity website, he definitely should be regarded as more than capable. Here he lists the reasons why one should hire him to house-sit:

Nice to meet you! My name is Alec Wysopal. I'm seeking a house sitting provider job in Tucson, Arizona. I'm aiming to contribute my abilities as a House Sitting Provider. Flexible scheduling for clients.

Service Abilities:

I am comfortable doing pool maintenance, mail collecting, and light landscaping. I have personal transportation available. With respect to prior history, I have previous experience.

I remember poring over job applications back in my day, looking for a specific person for a specific job, and reading that "with respect to prior history, I have previous experience" would be enough to seal the deal for me.

Assuming that there are not two Alex Wysopals trooping across the desert of Tucson, this is the same guy written about in the New York Times, and he has set up a livestream to share his results with an anxious world as he investigates the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie's mother. 

People are setting up camp around the Guthrie house.

And recently, he announced to his stunned audient (I can't say how many people actually watch his activity) that he found a bone on a dried-up river bank near the Guthrie residence.

 He called 911 breathlessly with his important find.

And sure enough, among those who ghoulishly devote time to the deaths and disappearance of well-known people (or their parents) there came a frenzied murmur that at last, a break had come along for those who have looked for Ms Guthrie mère.

The excitement died aborning, though, when James T. Watson, curator of bioarchaelogy at the Arizona State Museum and an expert on prehistoric remains, examined the bone, and said it came from the days between between 650 and 1250 A.D., when the Hohokam people tended farms and lived in the area.

So now the legbone, rudely removed from its sacred resting spot, will be brought back to the Native American archaeological site that Wysopal had no business digging in.  

From what I read, people with nothing better to do with their days are hanging around Phoenix these days, playing Columbo Jr for reasons I have yet to understand. 

Ain't Miss Agnes hot!?

The happy fellow you see here beginning a jaunt around all four bases on the field at Oriole Park is Colton Cowser, an outfielder whose season has not gone well at all this year. In fact, even though he hit a walkoff home run against the Rays on Sunday, he took a .191 batting average to the plate with him in the 13th inning of yesterday's Memorial Day matinee.

Wouldn't you know it?! He hit another game-winner, and maybe this is what will get him off the dime on the diamond this year! I hope so. He's a nice, earnest young man, and we are happy for this burst of success.

AND...if you were watching the Orioles telecast, you heard announcer Kevin Brown chirp, "Ain't the milk cold!" as Cowser connected. Cowser's nickname is The Milkman, because of you know why. COWser!

And the other part came from one of the all-time greats in the sports announcing business, Chuck Thompson, whose voice was the sound track to thousands of Baltimore evenings listening to ballgames. Chuck had a great voice and an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball and football. His two pet expressions were: "Go to war, Miss Agnes!" when something exciting happened, and "Ain't the beer cold!" when something great happened.

He said he got "Go to war, Miss Agnes" from a golf buddy who never cursed and used that as a substitute epithet. My mother, who was from the same generation...let's not say she never cursed (she did live in the same house as I, so that was a reason right there) but she did limit it. And her version of that was, "Holy go to war, Miss Mitchell!"

I don't know if the expression had anything to do with World War II. Chuck Thompson served as a sergeant in the US Army in the Battle of the Bulge, and if you know history, you know that was "going to war."

And Baltimore is a beer-guzzling town, and the baseball team was owned by National Brewing, so "Ain't the beer cold!" might have reminded people to celebrate with a cold one.

Hats off to Kevin Brown for knowing that expression and working it into the game so well yesterday! 

Memorial Day 2026

 

Today is Memorial Day, the day set aside to honor those who gave their lives in service to the American dream of liberty and prosperity and peace for all. Not to be blunt, but remember, it's not Veterans Day (November 11) or Armed Forces Day (May 16).

Let's not lose perspective about those who died to keep us free, and try to keep a thankful thought for those men and women.

Sunday Rerun (from 2015): Going My Way?

 After we got our pneumonia shots the other day (retirement is a continuing series of thrills!), Peggy and I headed down to my old high school to walk around the track four times and get fresh air and exercise.

As I love to do, I reminisced about my high school days, and showed Peggy where the sub shop and delicatessen called Smetana's used to stand on York Rd.  And how, after detention, I would hurry to get there to join the crowd for a cold cut sub, chips and soda, and how after that I would walk up to Read's Drugstore for an ice cream before cutting through Hutzler's and Towson Plaza so I could get to Goucher Boulevard and Providence Road and hitchhike home for supper.

By the way, I weighed 140 lbs at the time, and had to run around in the shower to get wet.  I could not drink from a straw, lest I fall in.

Anyway, that word hung heavy in the air. Hitchhike! When is the last time you saw someone hitchhiking around here?  Man oh man, the time was that you would see guys and the occasional teenaged girl with their right arm and thumb akimbo, waiting for a ride from a suburban mom in a Buick Estate Wagon, a businessman with time to tell a young person his theories about personal and business success ("And one thing I learned from taking that course is, no matter what you think you're selling, be it cars or buggy whips, you're really selling yourself !"), or a three-time loser with nothing else to lose, driving a stolen Dodge.

Sorry.  That last one was from Dragnet.

Maybe this kind of movie ruined everything

If you moms of teenagers can even think of it, yes, there was a time when we got around by hopping into cars driven by total strangers, without a cell phone or tracking device of any sort on us for our parents or Inspector Flanagan from Police Headquarters to track us with. I know the last time I saw someone thumbing a ride, gas was about 45 cents a gallon but I still didn't pick the guy up.

Frankly, I don't know who stopped hitchhiking first - the kids who were afraid to get in the car of Harry Homicide, or the innocent driver scared to death to stop for Stanley Slasher with his algebra book and his looseleaf notebook with "ME + YOU = ?" on the front in magic marker.

Good times.  Good times.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 23, 2026

 

So, wait a minute before you go shopping for bathing suits, Nebraskans!

This is Korea, 1954, Marilyn Monroe cheering up the troops as only she could. But this scene was the first crack in the marriage of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn, which lasted from January until September of that year. Marilyn was never as confident in her ability as an actor as Joe was about his baseball stardom (he insisted to the end of his life on being introduced as "America's greatest living baseball player") and she was truly on top of the world with the ovation the GIs gave her. "Oh, Joe," she said happily, "You never heard such applause."  His cold reply: "Yes, I have." 

Happy birthday tomorrow to the one, the only Bob Dylan, who will see 85 candles ablaze that day. Look out, indeed!

A great example of micro art is this person's tiny oil paintings of cats, using bottle caps. Purrrfect!

We who appreciate hot sauce simply LIVE for the moment when we might see a Sriracha vending machine!

Science Does Not Make Sense: Ornithologists, please explain how this bird is called a Red-Bellied Woodpecker and its belly is pale while its head is red, and how does it come that there is a Red-Headed Woodpecker who does have a red head! I'm so confused.

Showing that the Alysa Liu hairdid is still popular...

Sofia blocked this guy and the best way he knows to get back with her is to stick a note on her windshield, which blew away on the parking lot in maybe 5 minutes. The best way is to show up at her door with a gift and a winsome smile, saying, "You and I can MAKE it baby, I know we can!"  That way, he might get to meet her new boyfriend. Girls named Sofia do not give second chances.

The Beatles once took turns drawing caricatures of each other. The more I look at these, the funnier they are!

Print this out, glue it on a magnet (over the ad for the cesspool cleaner) and stick it on your fridge. And then read and heed!

Forget it

We just had a nice steaming bowl of axolotl stew on Monday, and someone said it was horrible, and tasted like imitation axolotl!

How dare they! That was first-class imported Albanian axolotl, and it was great! We even had some left over and made axolotl pudding for dessert the next night.

The axolotl is sort of salamander mole that can re-grow lost or damaged body parts. Very helpful, if you are one.  And many of them have achieved fame in both athletic competition and in the field of entertainment. I'm sure you remember the lead singer for Guns 'N Roses, the great W. Axolotl Rose.

But that guest slagging me on the stew brings me to the point I had planned to make before I went off the point. I won't soon forget that insult, because the human brain remembers insults for up to 20 years, but forgets those kind compliments in just 30 days.  

It's because of your daggone amygdala, you see. That's the part of your noggin near the sneeze reactor which is your primary emotional processing center. It holds on to stuff, I want to tell you. 

They say that gratitude journaling - writing down every good thing that comes to you - is helpful.  Tell you what: get a legal pad and write down all the nice things people say to you in a month, and then ask yourself if life isn't the greatest thing going.

I'll start you off with two compliments: You look marvelous today! And your amygdala is a liar.

All Aboard (and stay there!)

Last June, the unthinkable occurred (on a cruise ship, of course) when a little girl fell off a Disney Dream ship. 

Her father had thought it a good idea to have her pose in front of an open porthole, and the report released afterward said the 5-year-old "climbed on the railing and sat down" and then "lost her balance and fell backward off the railing into the ocean.”

Her father jumped right in after her, and they both were pulled from the water by a trained Disney rescue team and returned back aboard.

The father was injured; the child was not.

The police investigated, finding that the railing in front of the porthole (window, as landlubbers would say) was 47" high. The parents felt that Disney should be responsible. Disney, naturally, felt otherwise.  What's more, the Broward County State Attorney’s Office declined to file charges of neglect against the parents.

I feel like the parents have a duty to keep an eye on their kids, and even if a kid wants to do something as dangerous as hang in front of an open window, someone has to be the adult in the room, or on the ship, as it were.

I'm glad everyone survived and will tell the story to generations yet unborn. And I hope to find out that various member of the Disney rescue squad dress like Walt's beloved characters as they perform their lifesaving work.

It wouldn't be too Goofy.

Brushing up

I really prefer to shave with a sharp razor and a faceful of lather worked up by a real shaving brush. And now that I have arrived at an age where I don't care what anyone thinks about my stubblebeard, I get around to shaving every three-four days, tops. And anyone who has compared the shave one gets from a razor, as opposed to an electric shaver, will tell you there is no comparison at all, to be honest about it. That electric face smoother just can't get in there and slice the whiskers off at the root, no matter what the commercials say. Here's the test: when you want to get the shave of your life, you go to a nice barbershop and have Floyd swaddle your mug in moist warm terrycloth, followed by a layer of foam he just whipped up in a mug. And then comes the blade, recently honed on a leather strop to shiny perfection. In a trice, your face is free of even a hint of whisker. A splash of Bay Rum and you're on your way to that job interview or wedding, the equal of any man anywhere. Or, use the electric one, which has a lot in common with that industrial floor buffer the building maintenance guy pushes around the office late at night. It's your choice. By the way, my prized shave brush is a sweet tuft of badger fur, donated by a badger whose natural life had come to a glorious end. He had spent the morning badgering a weasel, and then the weasel chased him away. He made good his escape, but realized it was a really close shave.

Says who?

Wasn't it Spiro Agnew who first said, "There are fools, and there are damned fools."

I think we have plenty of evidence of people who belong in that second category. Submitted for your approval:

I mean, have you ever? I suggest that this woman visit her local shock-trauma center.  A three-minute conversation with any nurse or doctor will swiftly disabuse her of the notion that "most accidents are minor fender benders anyway."

And she doesn't know of anyone who's been in an accident with their baby in the car. Oh. I have never known of anyone who was injured jumping off a Beltway Bridge at morning rush hour, so that must be safe as well. (Disclaimer: I have never known anyone who jumped off a bridge, anyway, but that means no one I know was hurt by doing it.)

It would seem that this woman read in some hippie magazine that Container Baby Syndrome is harmful. That's what happens when a baby is put into too many restrictive devices.

But I don't think any sentient human would consider a child safety seat too restrictive, even if they are a really safe driver, and how can it hurt little Agamemnon to fly around inside the Buick for a while after a collision? It's probably only a little fender-bender anyway.

There is always someone who will tell you that their grandpa smoked ten packs of Raleighs daily, guzzled rotgut, and ate nothing but salami three times a day. ("And HE lived to be 47!")

Somewhere along the path of civilization, someone decided not to listen to the experts. Remember the great sage Tony Dukoupil taking over the CBS Evening News and saying he wanted to report on what the everyday people were saying and not listen to the experts so much?

There's a reason why experts are experts, and people like this safety-seat skeptic are not. 

Bloody well right

The other day, on line, where you see everything you never thought you would, I saw someone patiently explain to someone else that there were no dragons roaming the earth in real life. Ever.

Well, oh yeah, came the response! How come the Titanic was carrying dragon's blood in its cargo?

Here's another case of a popular misunderstanding being taken as fact owing to constant repetition, like the way people think a Filet-O-Fish is like a real seafood dinner, or the one spread by Owen Wilson in "Wedding Crashers" about people only using ten percent of their brains. The reality is, we use almost all of our brains. It's just that we don't need that much of it when listening to Owen Wilson.

Dragon's blood, in this case, is a sap, a resin, from a palm tree native to the Canary Islands. It is bright deep red, and it is used in medicine, in art, and in spiritual practices. We talk about antioxidants and anti-inflammatories, and this sap was doing that for doctors long before we even knew how great it was.

Powdered Dragon's Blood 

By the way, the Canary Islands were not named for the yellow birds that came from there. The islands took that name for dogs! There were a lot of BA dogs when the islands were first explored, so early people took the Latin word for dog (canis) and named the islands Canariae Insulae or "Islands of the Dogs."

I love facts! The fact is, I wish I could remember more of them.

Sunday rerun: It's c-c-cold!

  With outside temperatures hovering in the balmy 10° - 14° range this week, thoughts turn to ice cream and that traditional Baltimore favorite, the snowball (known in some areas as a sno-cone).

Whatever your pleasure, be it frozen milk or cream or just good ol' ice, shaved to bits and doused with flavored syrup (make mine egg custard, please), cold treats require proper mouth management, or you will suffer the heartbreak known as "brain freeze" or "ice cream headache."

The reason this happens is that your brain has very little idea what the heck you are up to. It spends its days trying to maintain a nice core temperature for you, and you treat it like this? For shame.

Because, dunking ice or ice cream on the roof of your mouth sends a signal to your brain..."Hey! It's cold in here!"

In turn, your brain tells the blood vessels in your head to constrict, in an effort to maintain a robust core temperature. This is called a "survival reflex," like when you're flipping around on the TV and land on a channel showing nature films or Harry Potter or Snoop Dogg E. Dogg. You can't change the channel fast enough, and that's what your blood vessels do...they get smaller until the cold goes away.

However, there's this. You can now call out sick from work or blind dates just by claiming you've come down with a bad case of “sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.” That's doctor talk for brain freeze.

Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 16, 2026

 

Running water, some treacle (dark syrup) and vinegar will either cure you of the plague or make you wish you had it! 

What I wouldn't give to prowl through this store! The picture is from 1948, and probably, a lot of the junk they offered for sale is still available!

This week's free wallpaper comes from the sky above, in a state of change...

When Atty. Daniels was in law school, she majored in Apartment Shootings. I don't know where she is located, but maybe that's for the good.

This is Reykjavik at midnight these days. No dark until late August, no matter how late you stay up. 

We have a front door that acts as a prism, but I am not about to sit nekkid in front of it just to get a rainbow photo of me. 

You will have a devil of a time getting this stuff off your mitts.

This is a new thing - getting tattoos that correspond to the body part being inked. For instance, here's a calf on a calf. You could have a 12" ruler on your foot, or maybe a male donkey on your derrière!

You will meet these people in a large auditorium.

I have to eat more chicken because the people coming to see this cow take up half the traffic lanes!

Are you ready

 On Facebook, a woman posted that she wants to get enough signatures on a petition to be placed on the ballot for the upcoming election. She wants to run for Baltimore County Sheriff. The incumbent is not running, and she wishes to toss her hat in the ring, so to speak.

I thought it only fair to ask if she would delineate her qualifications for the job. In our county, the Sheriff, and his/her deputies, while technically law enforcement personnel, do not do police patrol work. Their duties concern court operations, serving legal processes, governmental building security,  prisoner transport, executing warrants, and sheriff's sales.

 I got no answer from the would-be candidate, but someone else replied that all she is asking for is a spot on the ballot. I'm all for giving people a chance, but I don't see any point in endorsing her petition for the ballot if she is not qualified to do the job if elected. And again, she did not reply to the request. For all I know she is eminently qualified and would serve the office well, if elected. 

There is an awful lot of that spirit going around these days, people feeling they are ready to do any job they come across. Maybe it stems from those TV shows in which anyone can be a star. 

Anyone can sing, and when enough people want to hear you sing, you are a star. But let's see some experience in law and court procedures before we hang the sheriff's star on your shirt, please.

(FYI - the Battle of North Point took place on September 12, 1814 during the War of 1812.  Wells and McComas were American sharpshooters credited with firing the shots which killed British commander General Robert Ross, a loss which led to an American win in this battle and in the defense of Ft. McHenry two days later, a battle we still sing about in The Star Spangled Banner.)

So Sue Me

I have heard of Dua Lipa often enough to know that she is a female singer. However, if you begged me over the course of several weeks, I could not pick a picture of her from an array of other young women singing pop songs. 

But she is all worked up because Samsung put her picture on the cardboard boxes that their TVs come in. She is suing Samsung, alleging that the tech company used her image without her permission.

The lawsuit was filed in California federal court on Friday. Lipa uses the magic words "copyright and trademark infringement" and - this is a new one on me - "violating her right of publicity" by sticking her mug on the box that TVs come in.

She says someone took the picture backstage at the Austin City Limits Festival in 2024, and she owns that picture, doggone it!

No way I'm using a picture of Dua Lipa! I don't want to be sued.

But $15 million in damages will help her get over herself.

The hook is that she is claiming that Samsung did this "to improperly capitalize on Ms. Lipa's hard-earned success to promote and sell Samsung's products," the lawsuit alleges. 

And she goes on to claim that the picture deceives customers, so, some guy standing at Best Buy, choosing between the Samsung XLBFD 47" tv and the Visio KMFA 47 incher will say, "Oh look, this Samsung has a picture of Dua Lipa, so that's the one for me!"

OK. I promise you that if Samsung had called Dua Lipa when she was just getting started doing whatever it is she does in show business and offered to put a photo of her on their TV boxes, she would have turned cartwheels for that kind of publicity. Now, she's all, "Pay me!" about it.