Splitting Hairs

B. Jones

In our culture, we don't always name hairdids anymore, especially the ones for men.  Used to be, a man could go into a barbershop and ask for a flat top or a Chicago box-car, which was a flattop with long sides and a duck's ass in back.  Or he could say he wanted a Prince Valiant, most notably worn by Brian Jones.  Or of course, there was always the Full Elvis, with the pompadour, slicked sides and a d.a. with sideburns.

D. Beckham

And don't forget the traditional wiffle, or buzz, cut.  I don't know where that name "wiffle" came from, but it's what you get when you just run the clippers all over your melon and cut it down to the lowest length.  This look is popular among David Beckham, Sinead O'Connor, and every male member of the armed forces during their basic training.

S.Keezix

Lately I see a lot of guys - mainly in what I refer to as the "non-retired," or "still working" age group - wearing what I refer to as the "Skeezix" haircut.  That's the one where the hair is pretty short all over and the barber leaves enough at the very front to grab and freeze with hair goo, leaving a look like the picture on the button at right.  That's Skeezix from the Gasoline Alley comic strip.  I know it's an old comic, but everything old comes back again, if you give it enough time.

Isn't that right, Moe?

The Do's and Don'ts of Walking

Today on my walk I decided to go for a Theme Walk. So I loaded up the iPod and spun around to the D's: specifically, songs whose titles started with "Do" and "Don't."

Now that I am retired, I have time to think of these things.

Anyhow, here is the bill of fare to which I paraded around the neighborhood:

Do I Love You - The Ronettes
Do It Again - The Beach Boys
Do Wacka Do - Roger Miller
Do What You Do Do Well - Ernest Tubb
Do What You Gotta Do - Tom Jones
"  "   "        "         "     - Al Wilson
Do You Remember These - The Statler Brothers
Do You Know the Way to San Jose - Dionne Warwick
Do You Wanna Dance - Beach Boys
Do You Wanna Touch Me - Joan Jett

and then I skipped over Does My Ring Hurt Your Finger (Charley Pride), Dog and Butterfly (Heart) and Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague (Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention) to get to

Don't - Elvis
Don't - Sandy Posey
Don't be Cruel - Elvis
Don't Change on Me - Ray Charles
Don't Cry, Daddy - Elvis
Don't Dream It's Over - Crowded House
Don't Expect Me to Be Your Friend - Lobo
Don't Fear the Reaper- Blue Öyster Cult
Don't Fence Me In - Bing Crosby
Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away) - Mötley Crüe
Don't it Make You Wanna Go Home - Joe South
Don't Just Stand There - Patty Duke
Don't Let Go - Weezer
Don't Look Back - The Temptations
Don't Make Me Over - Dionne Warwick
Don't Put Onions on your Hamburger - MAD magazine
Don't Say Nothin' Bad About My Baby - The Cookies
Don't She Look Good - Ernest Tubb
Don't Sleep in the Subway - Petula Clark
Don't Take it so Hard - Paul Revere and the Raiders
Don't Think Twice (It's All Right) - Jerry Reed
Don't Waste My Time - John Mayall
Don't Worry, Baby - Beach Boys
Don't You (Forget About Me) - Simple Minds
Don't Try to Lay No Boogie Woogie on the King                  of Rock and Roll - Long John Baldry
Don't You Believe Her - Nat Stuckey

He saved us from Walkmen

That was a good time!  You might call this an eclectic list...but going from, say, Patty Duke (yes, that Patty Duke) to, say, Weezer is like being at a buffet and going from the sweet and sour chicken to the spicy shrimp in one bite.


And just think - tomorrow when I walk, the first song up will be "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" by The Swinging Medallions.

But for right now, so you won't feel left out, here's the original album ("Uncle Meat") cut of Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague.  Please hear my plea!

Boss Tweeds

I guess it's reality TV, if you need to specify the genre, but it doesn't have any Kardashians, and hardly any fishing, and no icy roads at all, so I like to watch "Undercover Boss" when someone interesting is on.

The premise of the show is very simple.  The head cheese of some big company puts on a disguise and works among hoi polloi, so as to get a little taste of life on the other side of the assembly line, pizza oven or fish nets.

The setup never varies.  The show opens with a look at the company involved, and then we meet the HPIC* who talks a bit about how well the company is doing, but he/she thought it would be a good idea to leave the home office for a couple of days and work with people who actually do the work.  So the boss gets fitted for hair extensions, or a toupee in the case of a man experiencing baldness, and they add or remove facial hair, glasses, and color the hair.  Slip Mr or Ms Big into a company uniform or whatever mufti they wear delivering pizzas, and away we go!

They always come up with a cover story for the people on the job site, lest they become concerned as to why there are 27 cameras pointed at them.  They say that they are part of a reality show where one lucky guy just won his own Domino's franchise and is learning to make pizzas and drive real fast with pizzas in his car so as to run the place.   Or that they are shooting a reality show about people whose businesses went under and are trying to get back in the game in this new line of work.


The hitch is, it has to be a huge company for this to work.  I mean, if you're the head sandwich maker at Nick 'n' Tony's Deli, and you come to work one day and neither Nick nor Tony are around but you see someone who looks a lot like Tony prowling around trying to slice prosciutto, you're gonna get wise in a hurry, you know what I'm saying to you here?  But if you are one of 83,000 burger flippers working for Checkers, and the boss looks like the guy on the left above, and then one day a guy in a red shirt and vest is introduced to you as a new trainee who used to run a Blockbuster, you'll go for it, sure as heck.

So, the tycoon reports to work and there's always a problem, always a complaint.  Working conditions are awful, the equipment is so bad that "I have to bring in my own cleaning supplies from home" (Popeye's) or "I can't hear the customers in the drive-thru line" (Checkers.)  We get to hear the personal problems of the people tasked to work with El Supremo, and that comes in handy later.

As does all the pointing-out-of-problems, because like in last week's episode about Oriental Trading Company - America's #1 source for inflatable golf clubs, giant gag eyeglasses and pink lawn flamingos - the guy loading the truck on a day when the temperature hit 103° told the cheese that they used to get free sports drinks when it was that hot.  The boss is then shown in deep remorse as he realizes that it was his idea, when the economy hit the skids, to cut back on the free electrolyte replacements.  Hey, it's never 103° in the boardroom!

Then all the employees are called to the home office, and the big shot prances in and watches the dawn of recognition break across their furrowed brows.  He/she then earnestly avows to take their suggestions and complaints to heart, hands out money for cars, scholarships and medical bills, and there you are for another week.

Peggy was asking what percentage of the promises of sweeping reform benefiting the working person I thought were actually carried out.  I guess 50-50, but maybe that's high. Or low. I have to figure that at least once, as soon as the camera crew drove away, some boss said, "That guy in Omaha who said I made pizza like a drunken aardvark...get him in here...NOW!"

Tune in next week for our new hit series "Unemployment."


*HPIC= Head Person In Charge

Bag man

We talked a few days ago about the goofy goin's-ons down in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.  Hot-a'mighty, they're going crazy down there!

Place #1, they still haven't replaced the county councilman who left that august body to serve his jail time for tax evasion.  And just as I figured, they seem to be planning to wait until he comes back and takes his rightful place on the council.  Why not? The remaining six members can't break this 3-3 deadlock in the vote to replace him.

That's small potatoes in a county whose chief cash crop used to be tobacco. The big news is that the County Executive, one John Leopold, was indicted recently for such peccadilloes as:

• Having county cops drive him to mall parking lots so he could have sex with one of his lady friends
• Having his police security guards drive him around pre-dawn during the election campaign so he could hop out and pull his opponent's campaign signs out of the ground
• Having his police security guards keep a watch on his hospital room as he recovered from back surgery so that his one girlfriend, a county employee, would not come in contact with his live-in girlfriend
• and finally, as they said in Animal House, individual acts of perversion...so profound and disgusting...that decorum prohibits listing them here.  But then they go ahead and list them: he required his staffers to empty his catheter bag as he continued to recover from his surgery.

Truly, a fine gentleman, this Mr Leopold.

Also being dragged through the fine red mud of Anne Arundel County soil is the Chief of Police, James Teare Sr.  The indictment against Leopold states that the cops forced to do all those dumb duties for Leopold complained to their superiors, including the chief, and their complaints fell on fallow ground. Two police unions have recently taken votes of no confidence on his chiefiness.

It's a sad situation in AA Co, so for a bit of comic relief, let's turn to Councilman John Grasso, who, you will recall, called certain parts of his own county "a ghetto" and questioned the need for diversity - stating that anyone who inferred racism in any comment made by any other person was, ipso facto, a racist.

Robert Duvall will play Leopold in the movie

Uh huh.

So we leave you with Mr Grasso's statesmanlike take on the county executive's philandering in a county car.  He said it was speculation, motivated by the unions.  "It sounds like it's good, juicy reading material," he told the Baltimore SUN.  "But you don't know if it's true or not.  John Leopold is 69 years old. If he can still work it like that at the age of 69, good for him.

Click here to hear the 911 call and subsequent police activity from 2009 when a citizen reported "nekkid" people having sex in a car - reported to be the county executive's car - outside of Nordstrom in Annapolis.  Man, it's really true. You can get anything at Nordstrom's.  
 

Sunday reun: Here's the scoop

This.Is.True.
Next time you run over to Java The Hut for a cuppa' joe, why not order a nice steaming (!) cup of Civet coffee? Sounds great, huh? Make mine strong, please, and plenty of half and half.

In fact, if you're pouring mine, just give me a cup of half and half and hold the civet coffee. As you'll see here, it's pretty daggone expensive stuff. But, you say, coffee is an essential part of my lifestyle, so what does it matter if the price is a little steep? Bring it on, and how about an almond biscotti with that?

Civet coffee is the new rage among the coffee drinkers who really want to be on the cutting edge of the new coffee rage. What it is, is coffee berries that have been eaten whole and then allowed to pass undigested through the digestive system of the civet cat. Then someone who really really hates his or her job a thousand times more than you could possibly despise yours has to pick the berries out and roast them.

Then someone packs the beans in a bag and charges you 25 or 40 dollars a pound for it.
And you ask why I stick with Lipton Tea?

Saturday rerun: 21 Jump Over The Counter Street

I see they're coming out with a movie version of the old TV show with Johnny Depp, "21 Jump Street."  Here's a Saturday rerun from July, 2009, just because...

In Bob Greene's book "Billion Dollar Baby," about his time as a Plimptonian member of Alice Cooper's band, participating as a journalist, there is a passage about the band members meeting some kids from Akron, Ohio. Now, you have to remember, this is all set in 1974...just a few short years past the Summer of Love ('67) and Mac and Katie Kissoon's immortal recording of "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep ('71.) Different times, for sure.

But in this scene, as the local scrabble mobs around Cooper's troupers, the kids are telling the band that they just know they're going to take all the money they earn from record sales, concert grosses, foreign royalties, and the like, and invest it all in peaceful alternatives so that all men can learn to live like brothers, and put an end to war, and then we can like paint rainbows on our faces and dance in the moonlight...after electing Donovan as Secretary of Defense.








This Donovan, not that Donovan...that one plays on offense.
Anyway, the band members (including Mike Bruce,the guitarist best remembered today for a) not being allowed to plug in his guitar during a concert, so maladroit was he as a guitarist and b) being described by Greene as "being built like a cigarette machine") all acted like yeah, man, that was the plan; all this loot was going right to building a great big sky full of love, peace and happiness for all mankind. But, pointed out the writer, the kids would have been crushed to find out that the band's income went directly to the purchase of apartment complexes and shopping centers.

So much for the dream of the big butterfly dropping petals of love across the nation.
I was thinking of all this idealism because I see the hype is already kicking in for the new Johnny Depp movie in which he portrays John Dillinger, the noted gangster/bank robber/murderer from the 1930s. Depp, who lives in France (!), posits that Dillinger was like a Robin Hood, who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. I've been studying Dillinger since I was a kid, and none of this is true. Neither is that other rumor that always goes around, for that matter.

John Dillinger did have a certain flair for the flamboyant public gesture. He knew there was something catchy about vaulting over the counter into the teller's area to scoop up the loot. He would gladly pose with hicktown sheriffs, acting all buddy-buddy. And there were stories about him leaving his overcoat draped over the shoulders of a woman he had, moments before, robbed.


But there is no reason to believe that Dillinger ran around handing out the money he had just stolen from banks in the Midwest to the families of starving farmers and out-of-work accountants. He much preferred lavishing the bucks on ill-bred strumpets such as Billie Frechette, a hatcheck girl who accompanied him almost to the grave, and the purchase of expensive automobiles.
The Alice Cooper Band and John Dillinger were in the businesses they were in for the money, for themselves. Just like any other profit-making enterprise, be it Joe's Corner Deli or General Motors.
Well, you know what I mean.

Here's the scoop

I once got clopped on the head and was paid off in a lump sum.

But here's a woman whose lump sum would bring a smile to anyone.  Meet Louise White, who went to the Stop & Shop up in Newport, RI, on a mission to buy some rainbow sherbet.  While she was there, she bought three Powerball tickets, and wouldn't you know, two of them were no good, except as bookmarks.

But the third one was the third-biggest winner in the history of Powerball, 336 million semolians worth of winner.  Even though she took the $210 million payout rather than the annuity, she still was able to throw the losing tickets away, since she can now afford to hire people to keep track of her place in books, instead of flimsy bookmarks.  In honor of her newfound wealth, she set up the Rainbow Sherbert Foundation to manage the loot.

Check the article closely, and you'll see evidence of one of the great controversies raging in this nation today.  Even more of a puzzle than which of her Cadiallacs Ann Romney ought to drive to her Stop&Shop is the ongoing debate between saying "Sherbet" and "Sherbert."

So here is what we know about Sherbet from the Encyclopedia Brittanica:

sherbet,  frozen dessert usually flavoured with fruit, made from water, sugar, flavourings, and milk or cream. Egg white or gelatin may be added to ensure a fine texture. Sherbets may also be flavoured with wine or liqueurs. By U.S. federal regulation, sherbets must contain a minimum of 1 percent and a maximum of 2 percent butterfat. Water ice, called in French sorbet and in Italian granita, is similar to sherbet but contains no dairy ingredients.
The word sherbet derives from the Persian sharbat, an iced fruit drink; iced desserts were introduced to the West via the Middle East. In the late 20th century there was a revival of the practice of serving a tart sherbet or sorbet between the courses of an elaborate meal to refresh the palate.

We imagine that Americans started saying "sherbert" because there were so many people named Herbert.  Let's see, there was Herbert Hoover, unsuccessful president, and Herbert, the perv on Family Guy, and Herbert Anderson, who played Dennis The Menace's father.

But if Ms White wants to call her trust fund the Rainbow Sherbert Foundation, that's just fine with me. I can think of 210 million reasons why she should.

It's for you

In my line of work, you get

Oh wait.  I no longer have a line of work. 

But when I did work, I used to love to take my cell phone to meetings etc, hoping it would ring.

I don't like the standard ring tones that come with a cell. And as a pensioner (!) I certainly am not about to pay $2.99 for a short segment of "Set Fire To The Rain" by Adele.  How would one set fire to something already soaking wet...never mind.

So what I do is prowl the internet for free sound effects.  It takes skill and pertinacity to search for them.  You Google "free sound effects" and you are rewarded with an aural panoply, sure to drive people nuts.

Let's say you're meeting with some people who have lived on the wrong side of the law.  What better way to instill respect for our criminal justice system than to make "The Theme from COPS" your ring tone.  Click on the words The Theme from COPS and see what I mean here...

A quick subtle reminder of Law and Order is this famous doink-doink sound...

And sometimes, you just might feel like a spoken word ringtone, from a great American with something important to say about our pet population.

Just find the clips you like online, send them to your email, open the email on your phone and save the attached file as music, go to your music and add the file to your ringtones, and select as need be.

Or, pay money to Flo Rida.  My way is more fun, though. 

Arrhythmia Of The Night

The election is over, and I won.

All right; don't panic.  I'm not going to be president or anything.  But the annual Philistine convention, meeting in secret congress, overwhelmingly voted me the least cultured individual on earth.  I narrowly edged out Gary Busey, and observers attribute my victory to my adamant refusal to enjoy "The Phantom of the Opera."

We go back a long time, this musical and I.  In 1988, Peggy dragged accompanied me to New York to see it on Broadway.  I remember walking around the fabled streets of Gotham, having an authentic slice o' pizza and then shuffling into the Majestic Theatre for a matinee. 

And the next thing I knew, some candelabra was plunging toward us all.  Having always associated overly baroque lighting with Liberace, I was stunned at first, so I woke up confused.  The legendary showman had passed away the previous year, and yet here was this shimmering stalactite, swaying six inches from my face.

Down below a pretty woman was wading through what appeared to be a sewer, or the River Styx.  A man with a horrible case of goiter was darting after her.

And there was also a play, right on the stage.  People were singing.  As a matter of fact, playgoers really got a lot for their money, because the lady, the ogre and the guy in a tuxedo were all three singing different songs!  But the crowd really roared with applause when they sang "The Music Of The Night."  And do you know how they sang that show-stopper!

Slowly.

And Gently.

Oh Lord, how slowly.  It seemed to take the rest of the afternoon.

The man in the hat sang

Night time shahpens, heightens each sensation
Dockness stirs and wakes imagination
Silently the senses abandon their defenses

And so I abandoned mine. Speaking of abandoned mines, this whole sorry episode blew up in my face again on Sunday evening, when channel surfing led me to Public Television's broadcast of this dreadful event. Here's a little taste of what I saw, in case you missed it.

So all right, I prefer Stripes to A River Runs Through It, and the only Iron Lady I recall seeing was a woman at the State Fair who caught a cannonball in her plush solar plexus.  I can't be the only person who doesn't see the deal with POTO.

Can I?

In the name of the Father

I'm going to open the floor to comments from my Catholic friends on this one.  The story comes from Xfinity, written by Brian Rademaekers:

A lesbian woman and others were in disbelief after a Maryland priest refused to give her Holy Communion at her mother’s funeral service.

The Washington Post reports that The Rev. Marcel Guarnizo denied Barbara Johnson Communion during her mother’s funeral service at St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, Md. The church is a member of the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. 

“He put his hand over the body of Christ and looked at me and said, ‘I can’t give you Communion because you live with a woman, and in the eyes of the church, that is a sin,’” she told the Post. 

Guarnizo apparently learned about her relationship just before the service, and Johnson attended the Feb. 26 funeral with her partner of 19 years.

The priest also left the altar during Johnson’s eulogy for her mother, and did not attend the burial service afterward. 

Now, Johnson and her family are calling for Guarnizo to be removed from the church and sent a letter to the priest decrying his actions.

Johnson received a letter Feb. 28 from a high-ranking member of the archdiocese apologizing for the incident, which was described as violating policy.
Johnson told the Post she was comforted by the letter, but that she would not be satisfied until Guarnizo was removed.

While the incident has outraged members of the gay community, some Catholic bloggers have defended the move.

Rev. Guarnizo, you do understand, this was the woman's mother's funeral over which you were presiding, am I wrong?

Kindly Rev Guarnizo

Would it have killed you to just let her take communion and dealt with your feelings about what you consider to be her sins a little later on?

I really need to know why a church official - no matter what the religion, how large the faith - would feel it's ok to hurt someone like that in the name of Jesus Christ.

I'll now stand back and have it explained to me.  Who's first?

Angels and Demons

Having only recently joined the ranks of people who get to stay home all day, I have just found out that there are TV shows on the cable all day for people who are home all day.  And these shows teach us many interesting things about our fellow citizens.

This show called "Today" taught me the other day that today, a man named Hooker, 43, a former high school teacher, left his wife and three kids for an 18-year-old that he taught - in the same school that one of his daughters still attends.  She left her home too, and now the two crazy love birds are shackin' up out there in Modesto, California, home of the minor league baseball team the Modesto Nuts.  The young lady's mother is handling this in the perfect 2012 fashion.  She didn't go to the school board, nor did she call the police.  She has opened a Facebook page calling for something to be done.

The guy's daughter is a junior in the high school.  You don't think she's having a very good spring semester, do you? 

And the young lady in question, Jordan Powers, is planning to go to nursing school, which ought to come in handy in future years.

And then, watching a show called Good Morning, America, I learned that in Dunwoody, GA, a man, name of Hemy Neuman, killed a guy named Rusty Sneiderman.  Sneiderman, up until his death by shooting in the parking lot of a preschool, was married to Andrea Sneiderman. Neuman was really into old Andrea.  They flirted via email, hugged and spooned on business trips, but Andrea did not do the one thing that would have made her available for Neuman: she did not leave Rusty. So Neuman gunned Rusty down. Hello, Neuman!

Typical story, heard dozens of times, right? Well. no, because the difference here is that, according to defense attorney Doug Peters, Neuman believed he had been visited by an angel and demon in the forms of Olivia Newton-John and Barry White, respectively, who told him that Sneiderman's children were his and that he needed to protect them by killing her husband.

Olivia Newton John appeared to him, as if in a vision, and told him to off this other dude.  A demonic Barry White concurred.

What I have learned so far by staying home is that staying home is the only safe way to stay safe.  That's the first thing I learned, and the last. And everything.

Heart of Glass

To the thief who broke into my car the other day while I was at work, two days away from retirement: I want you to know that all you did was break the window out and steal my hangtag.  That's all.  You shattered the glass, but not my faith in the goodness and decency of most of mankind.

You know how you go through the dozen eggs in a carton at the Shop A Lot to make sure they're all omelet-worthy (not cracked)?  Well, culling through humanity is a lot like that process.  Among every few dozen good eggs, there is a bad egg here and there. 

I called the guy who sold me the car.  He put me right in touch with a service advisor, who got me all set up.  And because our dealer -  the magnificent Jones Toyota of Bel Air MD - provides free loaner service for its customers, I was given the use of a BA Dodge SUV  - and that car has Sirius radio, so I got to listen to Howard Stern in the morning.  

So, Mr Thief (I guess you are a male), all you stole was property and all you broke was glass.  You can't steal my happiness and you can't break my spirit. 

But you should read what they say about Karma!

Why should I have to prove I'm not a robot?

You go to comment on someone's blog, and you have to fill out a little quiz...

So you have to type the two words that aren't really words so that the computer knows you are human.  I can't for the life of me believe that the computer world needs to monitor comments being made to a site that shares recipes for lasagna made in cupcake tins, but whatever.

I think, and this is just I saying this, but I firmly believe that there are people behind this...somewhere they sit and come up with words for us to type, and change our passwords while we sleep.  And then when we write back and say we forgot our password, they come up with our new password:

293~`{+}49DM*PDA)OMG

and send that to us, inviting us to change it to something else...if we dare.

I see a world in which we all have one password, good for all our sites.  And then, one grocery store card, good at all grocery stores.  I almost need a new pocket down at the knees to carry all of them around.

Jackie Oh!

I know a Jacquie, a Jaci, a Jacki, and many Jackies of both genders, and I am writing today to say that I never met a (person whose name is one of those, however the spelling) that I didn't like a whole big lot!

One of my cousins married a really cool girl named Jackie, and what I liked about her was that, as a young married woman, she was still nice to a goofy kid of 13 or whatever I was.  No one likes a 13-year old boy, least of all a 13-year-old girl, but thanks, Jackie, for talking to me like I mattered.

My sister's longtime friend Jaci has been a friend of mine since forever, and she has cool kids and cool grandkids now, none of them named after her, but there's still time.  Jaci has been putting up with my bad jokes even longer than
Jacquie has.  Jacquie was in my class in high school, by which I mean she was there at the same time.  I'm sure she spent more time in the classrooms than I did, I who put the "true" in "truancy."  (And the "sent" in "absent," because a certain vice principal who shall remain nameless often sent me to the Thomas and Thompson Pharmacy with a dollar and his standard order:"Get me a pack of Kents and large coke, and get yourself something...")  Jacquie was one of those cool and pretty girls who nonetheless always had a kind word for goofs such as I. Jacki is a police dispatcher with whom I worked, a very nice person and a real professional. Jackie did the news while I was a DJ back in my radio days, and we're still in touch on Facebook.  She has moved 3,000 miles away and now lives in The Land That Time Forgot, because she has not aged a minute since we worked together, and that was when Disco was big, if you want to know the truth.

Martling

Famous Jackies? I got a million of 'em.  Jackie Robinson, the bravest man on a ball field.  Jackie Gleason, dubbed by Orson Welles "The Great One" and he never ever argued that point.  Jackie Chan from the movies, Jackie Earle Haley who played "Guerrero" on Human Target and Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears, Jackie Coogan, who was Uncle Fester, and two more: Jackie Wilson, singer of "Reet Petite" and Jackie "The Jokeman" Martling, the man who fed Howard Stern gags for years and years, one of which became the last joke I ever told my father.

I'll have to tell you that joke someday. I think I've told all the Jackies.

Taylor-Made Joy

I'm telling you right here and now, Taylor Swift turns out to be everything she seemed - and more.  I am fascinated with her and the way the younger people with vulnerable hearts are so touched by her music, and the way she genuinely cares for her fans and the world at large.  If she were faking it, she would have slipped up somehow by now, and there would have been tabloid coverage of her wild bacchanalian nights with noted Hollywood swingers like David Duchovny or something. 

But old Taylor has been in the public eye for, what, four years now, and never is there anything about her that doesn't seem pure and good and wholesome.  And her songs!  Who hasn't been ranked out by someone being "Mean," and who hasn't cried out in anguish, "You Belong With Me" to that elusive inamorata?  She speaks for a generation, and that generation spans a lot of ages.

Not that I pretend to be objective anyway about anything,  but I frankly adore Taylor Swift for her goodness and her songs and the way she lives.  And never more so than last weekend, when she replied to a young man with leukemia who had asked her via Facebook to be his prom date.  No, sorry, she was busy on prom night, she answered...but would he like to be her date for the Academy of Country Music Awards in April?

Say what you will about Taylor.  You might not like her kind of music, but the world needs more people with her kind of heart.

All hands look out below; there's a change in the status quo

The career of country singer Jim Reeves, sad to say, ended in July 1964, when the small private airplane he was piloting got tossed about in a storm.  Before he left this mortal coil, Reeves recorded a song called "This Is It."

Well, my career with Baltimore County, Maryland, ends today.  This is it for me. I have retired; there will be a cake and punch thing at the office for all of us who went out on this early retirement incentive program, and off I will ride into the sunset along with a couple hundred other young old-timers.

I won't go into detail about what I did and where I did it, except to say that it has been a privilege to serve the citizens and visitors of our wonderful county. I mean that. I have come in contact with thousands of people since May 9, 1983, and there have been some interesting citizens among them. Oh, I could weave tales and spin stories about crooks and bad people and abusers and cheaters and grifters, but what I will take with me is the memory of people who said, "Thank you.  You saved a life."  Sometimes, they added something about how they always heard The Government was unfeeling and uncaring and unkind, but not the government where I work(ed)! 

And the people I work(ed) with - I'm not going to name names, because I don't want to leave anyone out inadvertently. The people at work become a sort of large family while you're there.  That means you pull together and get the job done, and the mutual goal is met.  We've had fun together, we've laughed and cried together, and now some of us are moving on. 

But I'm not going to be a stranger. I'm not going to be that retiree who shows up all the time and just plops down in the chair of whoever is out that day, but then again I'm not going to be the one who moves to Arizona and starts sporting a tan and a turquoise bolo tie, either.  I'll be running around the house, doing something about the 150 boxes of stuff I put down in the basement when we moved in back in '99 (I told Peggy, "I'll take care of this as soon as I get a chance" and guess what! My chance is here!) and visiting the great nieces and nephews and who-all else, and I'm going to take some time to exercise and some time to enjoy my life with the simple difference of not having to worry about this meeting or that trial.  And I can make Peggy's life easier by handling all the household chores (vacuum/dust/launder) while still cooking dinner...just a bit earlier in the day. 

Stewie watched Mr Belvedere and now I'm going to try to be Mr Belvedere. And, according to this new arrival, life is more than mere survival.  Thanks, everyone.

Ailin' Ladd

Anne Arundel County, MD, is known for several things.  The City of Annapolis, our state capital, is located therein, as is the US Naval Academy.

It is the county with the most miles of shoreline of any county in the United States, being a peninsula that butts right on out into the Chesapeake Bay.

Most people call it by its real name, Anne Arundel, but many use the local term "Anne Darundel," and no one can figure out why that is.

It's a big place, running from just south of Baltimore City all the way down to the farm fields of Calvert County. 
 

I have some friends who live down that way, none of them members of the Anne Arundel County Council.  Certainly, my friends do not number among them one Richard "Dick" Ladd, who, at a recent meeting of the council, found it necessary to use a racial slur to describe the Asians he encountered while fighting in Viet Nam.  He is a member of the county council, you understand. He is a Republican from the Broadneck area, home to gigantic traffic backups in summertime when people wish to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, but can't for a while due to traffic.

 

The big deal on the Council now is that a member lost his seat when he went to jail for five months because he did not file a tax return.  At the rate at which things are moving, that councilman, Daryl D. Jones, might be back in town and out of the hoosegow before the remaining members can settle on a successor.  Citizens from the area he represented need to have a replacement in place so that their concerns can be heard, but right now, the last two meetings of the council have been snarled up with votes on the matter, all ending in a 3-3 deadlock between supporters of former state Sen. Michael J. Wagner from Ferndale, a Caucasian guy, and Peter I. Smith, a Marine reservist from Severn who is African-American as is Jones.

 

It may be that each of these men, Wagner and Smith, has three strong supporters on the council, all voting strictly on the basis of their qualifications.  It would be nice to think so, but...

 

The other day at a community forum to discuss all this, "Dick" Ladd was asked questions about diversity on the now-all-white-all-male council, and, as the Baltimore SUN reported, Ladd "stormed" out.  Give him props for showing up in the first place - he was the only member of the county council to do so - but then, when the questioning got too hot for him, he paraded on out upon being asked to explain why he used a disgusting word for people of Asian descent.

 

"I don't believe there is a racist or biased bone in my body," said the man who called people "gooks." "There's nothing I can do that's going to please some of you here in this room. … I think I better leave before I say much more — before I incriminate myself."

The newspaper also reported a curious statement made by his fellow Republican council member, John J. Grasso, from Glen Burnie.  The SUN said Grasso said he was invited to the forum but forgot to attend, but was "saddened to have missed it. I would have enjoyed a challenging debate, particularly with the folks who were picking on Dick Ladd, because … every time you bring up race, that's a real big sign that you're a racist yourself," said Grasso. "It's all for one and one for all in Anne Arundel County."

Ah ha.  We've seen this before.  Someone points out something offensive, and the defense is that that someone must be doing the same thing in the first place.  It's like, you see a guy rob a bank, and you call 911, and they say, "Oh, you must be into robbing banks yourself."

OK.  Once and for all, Mr Grasso, I'm pretty sure that calling someone out for being a racist does not make one a racist.  

The shoe doesn't necessarily fit.

Back to those who were actually at the debate, Ladd was asked why he would use such disparaging language, at a government function no less, and he said,"I was asked to come here to explain my role in government knowing full well I might be asked questions of this sort. Perhaps I made an error in judgment. I do apologize to the Asian community. I should have known this was going to blow up in my face."

Then, even though he was looking down as he paced and spoke, he really stepped into it.  A man named Mark Chang, a community and constituent services representative from the county executives's office who is Asian-American, was there at the forum. And so Ladd turned to Chang and said, "I am very, very sorry to you."

For those who might not live, work or shop in a diverse society, this is that sort of over-the-top association by designation that is so off-putting.  It's like asking an African-American friend to show you how to moondance, or asking an Italian-American friend for their spaghetti sauce recipe - just because they are African-American or Italian-American. That's the difference.  You don't find the one person in the room who happens to be of the race you calumniated and apologize to them on behalf of all similar people everywhere.  It's another form of racism to do that, to my mind.

Richard "Dick" Ladd

So Ladd left, saying, "I am clear that I angered some of you today. This is a very difficult issue for all of us…Maybe I was ill advised to come down."

No, sir.  You were ill-advised to demean people with your ill-chosen language, and ill-advised to make grandstanding, apparently insincere apologies, and maybe ill-advised to enter politics.  And I think you do have some racist or biased bones in you, but I'll tell you what.

Do something to prove that wrong, and I will apologize to you.  Not to all fools, but you and you alone. 

Sea-lebrities

It's the end-of-winter doldrums period for America's celebrities.  Oh sure, it's Academy Awards time and time for new TV shows to be produced for this fall and all the spring movie releases ("Gone With The Wind II" starring Joe Pesci, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Dr Oz - in theatres soon!) are planned out. 

America is a fascinating country.  There are people living here who are willing to reach into their pockets and shell out money for a copy of the National
Enquirer, a publication of such indignity as to put a picture of Whitney Houston in her casket on its cover.

But after all, it is a World Exclusive, don't you know.  Scads of other magazines vied for this thanatological nightmare, but only the Enquirer had the werewithal to show you a photo of the late pop star, following in their ghastly tradition of doing the same for Elvis and John Lennon.

Extant celebrities are doing what all of them do in late February, which is to put on bikinis and have someone photograph them on the beaches of Mexico.  LeAnn Rimes, shown here, apparently will need to run around in the shower to get herself sudsed up, so ectomorphic is she.  And heaven knows, it's not like she is too busy entertaining people to take a minute to eat something. 

For regular people, taking a photographer to the beach is not part of our vacation routine.  Oh sure, someone always shows up with a camera, but that's just nutty Uncle Nutsy. He's like that.   

People start gearing up to become celebrities when they are very young, learning to sing and dance and tell jokes in an amusing fashion.  Then they get to be famous, or, worse, famous for being famous.  Along the way, they do all they can to get attention, and then, once they have attention, they demand to be left alone.

What a world.

Itz 2 dummmm

It takes a mighty serious topic to get the Alabama House of Representatives to vote unanimously, and they found one: the issue of texting while driving, which is about as stupid a thing as a person can do.  I even think it's a dumber thing to do than speeding, but it's a close call. 

When you read the article about the Alabamans voting to make the practice illegal, you'll see that one fellow recently changed his mind about it all.  Imagine!  "I used to be for it, but I changed my mind."

I can take issue with the proposed ban on talking on a cell phone, especially with headsets or BlueTeeth.  After all, people talk while driving, with their spouse or girlfriend or girlfriend's spouse in the car.  People talk to the guy in that damn Oldsmobile ahead of them in the drive-thru line all the time, although he can't hear a word they're saying because he is listening to the Books On DVD version of "The Devil Made Me Do It - the Rick Santorum Story."  And look at what people do already as they drive...they eat cheeseburgers, they dip nachos, they shave, they apply eye liner..and that's before they even leave the driveway!

Not to generalize, but it's usually not pappy old guys like me who text while driving.  The texts we receive usually have to do with remembering to go the Credit Union or pick up some American cheese.  Cool, sleek, lovely young women: some of these are your serial texters. 

And the crazy thing is, they are so concerned about their health that they will text their BFF and tell her they are driving on the way to the gym.

If they get there.

Eiffel Awful About All This

Just the other day we were talking about that movie "Arthur" in which there is a scene where Arthur (Dudley Moore) takes a woman to a fine restaurant and she reminds him of her profession, to which he sputters, "You're a hooker! Jesus, I forgot! I just thought I was doing great with you!"



The French version of Arthur, although much older and bearing more of a resemblance to an aged Armand Assante, is that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, one time head of the AMF  I mean IMF, who got into trouble in a New York hotel and also seems indisposed to behaving himself in the finer Parisian hotels.



(I will admit, the one and only reason I would ever want to go to Paris would be to ask them, "How is it, how you say, 'shower' in French?" and then giggle when they answer.)

DSK, as he is known in sunny France, is under questioning in sunny France for involvement in parties held in rooms full of naked women. It seems logical to assume that some of the women were paid to attend the parties, although the vast personal magnetism of Monsieur Strauss-Kahn, pictured here, must be regarded as another reason for the large turnout of jeunes filles.



According to the Washington POST, several prostitutes who have already been questioned said they had sex with DSK at a restaurant in Paris as well as hotels in the French capital and in Washington D.C, the Associated Press reported. Strauss-Kahn has denied any knowledge that the women were prostitutes, although he has admitted to attending “sex parties” in several cities across the world.

“He could easily not have known, because as you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you’re not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman,” his lawyer Henri Leclerc told French radio Europe 1 in December.

This was dubbed“The Carlton Affair” by French media after the hotel where several meetings allegedly took place.  Police are investigating whether prostitutes were paid corporate funds from a French construction company to entertain guests at sex parties around the world.

While consorting with prostitutes is legal in France, supplying them to others is not, nor is the misuse of company funds.



So remember this excuse - "Just because she was naked in a hotel room, how was I to know she was a prostitute?" - if you're ever jammed up.



A random check of 100 random wives showed a strong disinclination to believe that story. In fact, an even 100 of them said they wouldn't fall for it, and 87 of them were already on the phone to their attorney - the firm of Bicker, Back & Forth.

Kitsch-en Nightmare

You'll want to make sure to be in front of a TV set (or set your DVR, if you're going to be in front of something else) at 8 o'clock tonight, Friday, February 24.  FOX will show the latest installment of Kitchen Nightmares, and this time it focuses on Baltimore's own Cafe Hon.

We talked about this place before and as it happens, both Peggy and I like the food and the ambiance there. The owner got in trouble with the city a couple of years ago over the matter of being required to have a sign permit for the ginormous flamingo that adorns the front of the joint.  All of the neighbors and all of the customers backed up the owner in this fight, which was soon handled when the mayor stepped in and "cooler heads prevailed," as rarely happens.

So, fresh off that public relations victory, Ms Whiting, proprietor of the Cafe Hon, tries to copyright the word "hon" and regulate anything corny or Baltimorey.  Predictably, people got royally peeved and the Cafe's business took a dip, so off to the rescue comes the Belligerent Brit, the Churlish Chef, Gordon Ramsay.

It didn't take a genius to tell her to drop the lawsuits and the legal maneuvering and get back to selling hot roast beef sammies with gravy, but let's tune in tonight and see how it all went.

Gordon Ramsay is available to help one and all with image problems.  I hear he's headed to Italy to work with a certain sea captain.

Wave it bye-bye

I'm so CONFUSED!

I thought flag-burning was WRONG at all times, but here's a dad from Wyoming, Michigan who found it necessary to burn a New Jersey flag.

Here's the story:

A Michigan man whose son died in Iraq has burned the state flag of New Jersey after New Jersey flew its flags at half-staff in memory of Whitney Houston last week.

"They're watering down the term of what a true hero is these days," John Burri told ABC News. "I thought it was offensive to every family's fallen solider out there, and it cheapens the meaning of lowering the flag."

The 60-year-old's decision to torch the New Jersey flag on his Wyoming, Mich., patio grill came after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie ordered flags flown at half-staff to honor the singer Whitney Houston, a Garden State native who was buried in her home state on Sunday.

Burri believes flags should only be lowered for those who died serving their country.

"My intention was not to hurt anyone, especially the residents of New Jersey," said Burri. "My intention was to show Gov. Christie how offensive it was."

The governor has defended his decision, calling Houston a "cultural icon."

"Her accomplishments in her life were a source of great pride for many people in this state and for the state as a whole, and so on that basis I think she's entitled to have that recognition," Christie told reporters last week.

After seeing Christie's comments on the local news, Burri said he set out on a mission to honor his son, Army Spc. Eric Burri, who died in 2005 when an explosive device detonated near the Humvee in which he was patrolling.

Burri bought a replica New Jersey flag, tied it to the back of his car and drove around two veteran memorials in Grand Rapids, Mich. He then stopped at his son's burial site before going home and burning the flag.

"Best $12.95 I've ever spent," said Burri.  "Sometimes, you have to do something drastic and extreme for people to listen," he went on. "I just hope it made a point that maybe someone will pick this up and get a new law made for flag etiquette."

Federal law gives governors of American states power to have flags lowered for residents or state officials.

There is no law requiring that person to have served in the armed forces.

According to the Associated Press, Christie's office has ordered flags flown at half-staff 42 times, including for Morristown coach Harry Shatel and E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons.

Burri still believes Houston could have been honored in another way.

"I have some peace now. This is done. The word is out there," Burri said. "I hope and pray something is done to prevent this from ever happening again."

Mr Burri, I have no doubt that you regard yourself as a patriotic American dad.  I join with millions - hundreds of millions - in being sorry for your loss.  Your son went to war and lost his life.  That has to be a monumental sorrow in your life, something that affects you every day as you try to go forward. 

This just burns me up.

But sir, you kind of goofed up.  By turning your sorrow into an act of outrage, you have defiled the sorrow of the Houston family, and before someone writes back to tell me that a soldier is worth a hundred singers, I say right here and now, we don't make that sort of value judgement.  Everyone stands alone here. The governor of New Jersey, a man with whom I very rarely agree, is nonetheless the governor of New Jersey.  It's within his purview to do what he did.  As they say in New Jersey, you gotta problem with that, already, go call the governor.

We hear all the time about flag burning when political candidates want to earn their Patriotism Merit Badge and loudly proclaim they are against the consecration of the cloth, the high-flying flag, the emblem of the land we love, the home of the free and the brave.  I can see their point to a certain extent, but also think it's the sort of an issue that really needs not come up.  I mean, do you really need to burn a flag to make your point?

And here's where the confusion comes in...all the big tough guys with the bumper stickers about "don't you dare burn my flag or I'll kick your ass" - does that only apply to the US flag, or to the flags of the individual states and territories?  You don't like Whitney Houston, so beloved for singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl at the very beginning of Bush the Elder's Desert Storm?  You loathe her so much that you burn the flag of her state?

How about this, Mr Burri?  How about, you find a way to honor the memory of your boy?  Maybe a scholarship fund, something like that?  And then, maybe you could crack a book and see why this country does not revolve around what just one person believes. 

Because I believe you need to apologize to the Houston family.

Book him

The jury is back in the deliberation room today down in Charlottesville VA in the case of how to punish George Huguely.  Well, let me restate that.  They are still deciding on his guilt or innocence, but no one is denying that he stormed into his girlfriend Yeardley Love's apartment on a day when he had consumed some 20 drinks and got into a violent fracas with her.  When he left, there was a hole in the wall made by her head, and she was deceased.  So, we can't call him a murderer yet.  Even though there was a well-witnessed previous melee in which he choked her, and even though there was that email he sent her that contained the phrase "I should have killed you" for going out with some other guy, even though old George did not have a spotless record of faithfulness.

Huguely in an earlier mugshot

From all indications, his defense team put on a slipshod exhibition, which surprised me quite a bit. They are well-to-do people who sent this horror of a son to a prep school that costs $36,000 a year, and then to the University of Virginia, where he studied lacrosse, dissolute living and violence over a four-year stint that included several arrests.  Perhaps the plan all along was to mount a 1/2-assed defense so that the appeal would go more smoothly.  I don't know the legal ins and outs of all that, but I figure that today, if the jury gets started reviewing all the facts by 9 or 10 in the morning, they should be able to get to the salad bar down at Ruby Tuesday's by noon, their duty done.

See you around, George.  And don't drop your soap!

Sofa, so good



Once upon a time...



There was a song by Stonewall Jackson back in the day, entitled "If This House Could Talk."  Old Stonewall was really given that first name, and his family claims descendancy from the Civil War general.  Stonewall became one of the cornerstones of the hard-driving honky-tonk country sound of the late 50s and early 60s, and you hear his songs on county radio these days about as often as you'll hear Pavarotti, sad to say.

But listen to Stonewall sing about that old house if you will, and think about how it feels when all you lived for has come to mean nothing, and the house is for sale and no one wants the knick-knacks and framed pictures of wide-eyed kids and dogs playing poker.  And those sad old "Family Circus" and "Love Is..." cartoons, so lovingly clipped from the Comics page of the paper after Uncle Bob finished working the Jumble ("that scrambled word game").

I am a bit melancholy over a sofa.  Specifically, I am sad about the sofa that someone tossed away on Perring Parkway, just inside the city line (which means it might lie there forever) near the Northern Parkway off ramp.  It's sort of a nondescript burnt orange sofa, in the style known as Early Room Store. And whoever owned it last, and was finished with it, just dumped it there, quite unceremoniously.

Is there something like anthropomorphism, in which people assign human characteristics to animals ("My dog has a sense of humor") for objects such as furniture?  What I'm saying is, how do we know that this sofa doesn't have feelings, memories, opinions and thoughts?  Perhaps this couch can recall times when the kids were bouncing up and down on it, playing "Chutes and Ladders" and tossing a Nerf ball off the balding pate of Uncle Bob, who soon put an end to that.  Maybe the couch saw sad times too, like when everyone came home from Charlene's funeral and mourned, sitting around with crockpot chili and cole slaw, the gentile version of sitting shiva.

Sis sat there on a Saturday, waiting for her date to arrive. All the babies posed there too, and everyone prayed that they'd thrive.  Salesmen, pastors, sellers of home repairs, the neighbors, the nappers, everyone wound up there.

The mother is always the first to notice the little shred marks on the legs of the divan, where the old tomcat that moved in some time ago would keep his claws honed.  And the center pillow had a stain on it from the time that Uncle Bob got so worked up doing that Jumble that he spilled his Pepsi when he figured out the answer to "What's green and sold millions of records?" was  E L V I S   P A R S L E Y. No use turning that pillow over, either; the other side was all threadbare from the days when Levi's had real brass grommets on the pockets.

First, the sofa went down into the basement, where the kids would hang around the water heater and the furnace, stashing numbers behind the loose brick and texting love notes to the new girl who transferred in from the Catholic school. It really took a beating down there for four years, so much so that when Alan moved into his off-campus apartment with that girl from the Catholic school, he almost didn't take it with him, but he did, and it spent four more undergraduate years in that basement apartment with the mildewy scent and the dripping toilet.  Alan and his bride have both been graduated now, and recently moved into a condo with two private parking spots and elevator service.  The new decor that he and Mary Teresa settled on is sort of a Southwest/Greek fusion theme, meaning that there are many lithographs of cactii, and a futon.  In the kitchen, the salt and pepper shakers are miniature habanero replicas, and there is a Navajo blanket for a tablecloth. 

You still see these...

So, even though it was of the right color, the sofa just did not fit into Alan and MT's plans, and Mom and Dad certainly didn't want it, and Uncle Bob has gone off to that big old family room up yonder.  Therefore, they called on their shiftless cousin Brattleboro, the one who has the pickup truck with "Forget, Hell!" license tags, and he was supposed to take the old couch to the dump, but what do you know?  He saw there was a big sale at Sears, and he jettisoned the settee right there by the off ramp.

And that's all I know about it, and anything else is pure conjecture.