The Saturday Picture Show, September 19, 2015

It's a perfect day to take a walk in the woods!  Lovely weather, gorgeous scenery.  (Of course, I wrote this two days ago, so in case some bad weather rolled in, sorry!)

Colorful, whimsical piñatas, stuffed with candy and treats and vague promises of great and wonderful brilliant magnificence, are popular games for children's parties, but not so much for adults, who know a big empty papier-mâché effigy when they see one.

Even Bo and Luke need a lift from time to time.

It was just over 20 years ago that, once again, Cal came out to play...

 Pencil shoes.  Get the point?

If you remember the Seinfeld episode "The Jacket," with tough guy actor Lawrence Tierney as Alton Benes...well, his brother was tough guy actor Scott Brady, here demonstrating the family grimace 'n' grunt in a 1950 movie with Baltimore's own Mona Freeman. "Anthony" Curtis, né Bernard Schwartz, later became Tony Curtis, to the delight of millions, including Tony Curtis. I wonder if anyone ever shoplifted this DVD.

No bones about it, these are the sticks that hold us together. This could have been the poster for the movie "Murder Of An Anatomy."

You heard the story the other day about the young man in Texas, Ahmed Mohamed, whose amazingly obtuse teacher mistook the digital clock he so proudly made for extra credit and so proudly displayed to her, only to be handcuffed, arrested and suspended from school, because Texas?  Well, the night the story broke, there was a media swarm outside the Mohamed family home, and Mohamed's parents treated the reporters and camera people to pizza for dinner because kindness trumps stupidity.

Purple Haze

When Chun Hsien Deng was graduated from the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, his yearbook photo caption said, “If people are doubting how far you’ll go, go so far that you can’t hear them anymore.”

None of us can hear Deng anymore, because he was killed by fraternity brothers from Baruch College's Pi Delta Psi chapter during a hazing ritual.  Five young men from the frat are being charged with murder.

It was 2013 when Deng, 19, was beaten unconscious in a frozen field in the Poconos, in Pennsylvania.  Baruch College is on the east side of Manhattan, and is part of the City University of New York, a school named for philanthropist Bernard Baruch, who certainly never envisioned the lethal play of these students.  Who could have?  The school counts among its graduates people such as Jonas Salk and Upton Sinclair.

Pocono Mountain Regional Police are charging the five men responsible with third-degree murder. And, 30-some other participants will face trial for assault, conspiracy and hindering apprehension in connection. A grand jury investigated the entire horrifying incident for a year before handing up the charges. 

Deng was known as Michael.  He joined Pi Delta Psi and was on a retreat far from the campus, playing a game called "The Glass Ceiling."  Blindfolded and wearing a weighted backpack while making his way across a field, he was assaulted and tackled repeatedly by his fraternity "brothers."  At some point in the evening's "fun," Deng lost consciousness.  That'll happen when you are being beaten about the head and neck by a pack of frat boys. 

And as if knocking a man out is not a reason for some of these men to go to jail for a long time, this is:

The others did nothing about his condition for too long a time. Some ran off, as some people will. Some called a national Pi Delta Psi representative, one Andy Meng, who told them to hide fraternity items and marked clothing. And some went online to one of those doctor websites to diagnose Deng’s condition.  After a debate about how much it would cost to call an ambulance to transport and care for the still-unconscious victim, three students loaded him into a car and drove to a hospital, where they claimed Deng had passed out while playing in the snow.

Deng was suffering major head trauma in addition to bruises and contusions, and was placed on life support, succumbing the next day.  The coroner of Monroe County, Wayne Ross, told the local news that the delay in treatment contributed to Deng’s death. 

Of course it did.  And so did getting beaten on the head, which led to "multiple traumatic injuries," including "at least three clear impacts to the head" and a "massive bruise to the back … due to repeated blunt force impacts which resulted in traumatic asphyxia."   That's what the coroner said.  It's the fancy way of saying that the man was beaten to death and denied treatment for far too long a time.

The five facing murder charges are Charles Lai, Kenny Kwan, Raymond Lam, Daniel Li and Sheldon Wong.  

Hugh H. Mo, an attorney for one of the 37 students charged, said in a statement to NBC that the “across-the-board charges against all the young men in the house and outside in the backyard is not justified nor provable,” and added that 36 of the 37 students were “overcharged.”

Meanwhile, the national Pi Delta Psi organization has disbarred the chapter at Baruch, a commuter college with no frat houses, just an office that fraternities share in a classroom building. Meng said that this hazing trip was not a sanctioned frat activity "strictly prohibited by our organization." He is one of the people charged with hazing, hindering apprehension and criminal conspiracy, according to police.

Deng’s family, which has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Pi Delta Psi, had this to say about the charges:  

"Too many families have been devastated as a result of fraternity hazing, with at least one student dying every year from hazing since 1970. Fraternities and their members must be held accountable, and this step by authorities is an important one."

We've all had experiences joining groups, and certain rituals go along with making a new person one of the gang.  Playful, harmless initiation stunts can actually build fellowship and brother/sisterhood.  Felonious assault leading to death should cause us to question why some people went to college in the first place, and how long they should spend in prison, in the second.

Is that the best suit you have?

As a child, I wanted to grow up and become a fireman and a radio DJ.  The Fire Department appealed to me because it was a way to help people out, and the only other profession that regularly helps people out is obstretrics.

Ba ba BOOM!

Being paid to tell corny jokes while playing records - things I did around the house for free! - appealed to me, so I drifted into that work as a young dude, before it was time to hop on the pension-and-benefits train.

Radio isn't like it used to be, and DJs are told what to play and what to say and make it snappy, because there's another commercial to play.  It's just not what it used to be, and really, nothing is.  But some of the people plying that trade ought to report for a reality check.  

For example, take David Mueller.  He used to be a jock in Denver under the name "Jackson." (Please note that my parents outfitted me with a ready-made DJ name at my glorious birth.)  Old Jackson
has filed a lawsuit against singer/songwriter/pop goddess Taylor Swift in U.S. District Court, claiming that he was fired from his radio job after he was accused of grabbing the pop star's bottom at a 2013 concert. 

I once walked Loretta Lynn onstage to a wildly appreciative audience, and never once did it occur to me to touch her inappropriately.  It was a gentler era, I suppose.

Mueller says a picture of him and his oh-so-fortunate girlfriend posing with Taylor shows the three of them smiling happily, and proffers the photo as proof positive that he never touched anyone's ads.

This is a brilliant legal maneuver, and if I ever enter the lucrative field of bank robbery, I'll just get security footage of me walking into the bank and say here I am, no robbery has occurred!  Yet.

Only two people know for certain whether any grabola took place, and when you think about it, does Taylor Swift (2015 income projection: $80,000,000) need to file a false claim against someone like this?

"The radio station was given evidence immediately after the incident," a spokesperson for Swift said. "They made their independent decision [to fire Mueller]."

In any event, why chase after Taylor Swift because your employer fired you?  Wouldn't that be like suing water because you slipped on the ice?  

Make me a judge, folks, and you'll see a need for special jails for guys like this.

Making the best

Katelyn Pavey was born with phocomelia. “She was born with a half arm. Basically, it just didn't develop all the way in the womb," says her dad, Eric Pavey.  

16-year-old Katelyn Pavey, the pride of Lanesville, Indiana, loves playing softball, and is the leadoff hitter for her team, with a high batting average and high hopes of playing college ball.

I like that second paragraph better. 

“People that've never seen her before come to the fence to watch her play. It's almost a novelty to see a one-armed player, but when you see a one-armed softball player that can actually play, there's a little bit of a difference,” Mr Pavey added.

“They're just curious, you know,” Katelyn said.

“I've always seen her catch it, tosses the ball up, takes the glove under her arm and catches it and throws it,” teammate Rachel Ayer said.

You have to admire a person who says, " 'I can't' is not a word at our house," and that is how she was raised.  Katelyn and her father are working on an inspirational book about her life, to be entitled "Life Lessons from Lefty."

When I saw Katelyn's story on the news not long ago, I remembered two men who got to the major leagues of baseball with similar challenges.

Jim Abbott, whose motto is "Find something you love, and go after it, with all of your heart," was born without a right hand, and yet he spent 10 seasons in Major League Baseball (from 1989 to 1999) pitching for the California Angels, New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox, and Milwaukee Brewers.  As a Yankee in 1993, he pitched a no-hitter against the Cleveland Indians.  

Pete Gray, born as Peter James Wyshner, only made it to the big leagues for one year, 1945 with the St. Louis Browns, but that was remarkable enough for a man with no right arm. True, there was a severe manpower shortage at that time, World War II being in its final year, but Gray managed to play the outfield for the Browns and get a few hits.  Like Abbott would learn to do years later, Gray would catch a ball with his gloved left hand, toss the ball in the air while shedding the glove, and then grab the ball to throw it.

One of the curious expressions of baseball/softball is that people will say that a particular fielder or pitcher who throws hard or for great distance "really has an arm" on him or her.  How wonderful when we see people who make that be more than enough.

You don't have to live like a referee

Unless you're just getting back from the Cannes Film Festival or something else far afield, you have seen the video from Texas that shows two high school football players slamming into referee Robert Watts.  John Jay High School, named for our nation's first chief justice, was playing Marble Falls on one of those Friday night games down in the Lone Star State, a state in which high school football is regarded as almost as important as education itself. Remember, textbook publishers desirous of selling their products down there have to include misinformation and distortions in the books, or ring up a "NO SALE." For instance, they have to include Moses among our founding fathers, although there is no reason to believe that The Lawgiver hung around long enough to enjoy a stay in Colonial America.

The investigation is ongoing and may take some time. The players, who are not being identified, have been booted off the football team and suspended from school, possibly to face criminal charges. The players claim that the referee uttered racial slurs, a charge denied by his attorney. 

John Jay officials say that 2004 graduate Mack Breed, an assistant coach for the team and a 2004 graduate of the school, allegedly made a suggestion to the team, a suggestion that the referee "needs to pay for cheating us."  This, of course, leads to the notion that the players took their foolish action in order to please the coach, who is also suspended while all this is sorted out.

Tarrant County sheriff Dee Anderson, who has refereed high school and college ball for over 30 years, said, "I had to play it back a couple of times just to believe what I saw. We all understand that you get hit out there, but this is so violent and so premeditated that I believe it deserves some very stern consequences."

Back in 1905,  President Theodore Roosevelt, a fan of the fairly new game of football, brought people from the major universities to the White House to discuss how their teams  could improve the game of football, "especially by reducing the element of brutality in play," The Washington Post wrote in an article in October of that year.

In 1905, at least 18 people died and more than 150 were injured playing football.  It's accepted as truth that, had the president not intervened at that time, the game might have ceased to exist, and then we would be facing life with an unemployed Terry Bradshaw on our hands, and we wouldn't like that at all. 

It will take a lot of testimony from a lot of people to get to the truth of all this, whether in fact the referee made offensive comments, or whether the coach was angered by some tough calls the ref had made or whether other factors were at play. We know what happened, all right, but we don't know why.

We could use another Teddy Roosevelt to straighten this all out.

Holding Back the Truth

There is a local angle to this story, but the focus of it should be worldwide.

Henrietta Pleasant Lacks was an African American woman from Virginia who moved to Turner Station, an African American section in southeast Baltimore County, in 1941. She came up here with her husband, who relocated after finding work at the Bethlehem Steel plant in Sparrows Point. Ten years later, she died at Johns Hopkins Hospital after fighting cervical cancer for many months.

While she was undergoing radiation treatments, doctors removed cell samples from her cervix - from the healthy part and from the cancerous section. I don't even pretend to know how this worked, but these cells became the "HeLa (named for her) immortal cell line," and were used in biomedical research - research that medicine used to develop the polio vaccine, in vitro fertilization, HIV/AIDs research, and other major scientific breakthroughs. Here is an article to help clarify what the cells were used for; suffice it to say they have been amazingly helpful in many ways for many years.

However, and this is a BIG however, the cells were taken from Mrs Lacks without her knowledge and consent, and it was not until just a few years ago that her family became aware of all that, and they are now being given some say in the matter of who gets to use the cells' DNA code, and for what. They also now receive acknowledgement in research papers.

Ms Sims

The latest wrinkle is that Jackie Sims, a mother in Knoxville, TN, whose 15-year old son was assigned to read the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks feels that the book is pornographic.

That's right. She went there. Ms Sims says that the sections in the book that describe the gynecological problems that led Mrs Lacks to seek medical attention are pornography.

"I consider the book pornographic," she told WBIR-Knoxville. "There's so many ways to say things without being graphic in nature, and that's the problem I have with the book."

The book is scientific in nature, written by a science writer named Rebecca Skloot, and is not on the level of the average Danielle Steel potboiler.  But Sims feels that the story should be told in a "different way."

Ms Skloot took to Facebook to say, "Just in time for ‪#‎BannedBooksWeek‬, a parent in Tennessee has confused gynecology with pornography and is trying to get my book banned from the Knoxville high school system...I hope the students of Knoxville will be able to continue to learn about Henrietta and the important lessons her story can teach them. Because my book is many things: It's a story of race and medicine, bioethics, science illiteracy, the importance of education and equality and science and so much more. But it is not anything resembling pornography."

Just so we're clear, here, pornography is generally defined as the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexual arousal.  The simple mention of one's nether regions is not pornography.

Ms Sims is entitled to feel the way she does, although she is probably considered foolish by those who understand a) education and b) the normal reading and viewing material of 15-year-old boys.

But it seems wryly sad to me that the Lacks family was treated so shabbily by the doctors and researchers in the days before biomedical ethics and racial discrimination became more than passing thoughts to most in the majority, and now, here is a woman trying to hold back the truth all over again.

Sunday Rerun: You're in the picture

When a buddy told me about this website that shows real pictures that real

Daytime Armed Robbery
(Short-armed Robbery, to be precise)

people find on Google Street View, I had to stop and tell him that anyone who seeks the Street View of our palatial dwelling, the legendary Lazy 'C' Ranch, will see the house and grounds in all their glory...and our recycling, down at the end of the driveway.

it must have been a Tuesday when the Google Camera Car came by, because that's when we bundle up squashed beer cans, old newspapers, magazines, junk mail, yogurt cups and "tin" cans for the county to haul away.  We have single-stream recycling, and that's handy. 

What if I had been checking the mail while
wearing a ratty bathrobe or something?

But I like to use old cardboard beer cartons for packing up the goodies.  And so, when you look at the picture from the front of our place, you see
a couple of packed-up National Bohemian beer boxes and some other beer box, and a paper box full of who-knows-what.  Charming, I know.

But take a second and click on this site and see pictures from all over of people doing amazing things as the Google Camera Car lurched through their neighborhood.  They see everything! Including, as you see here, E.T. wearing a doo-rag and waiting for a parade to come by.

I know that many of you are at work as you read this.  This would be a great time for you to signal to your boss and invite her or him over to your monitor so they can see what's so dad-blamed funny!

The Saturday Picture Show, September 12, 2015

I saw on a restaurant website that some servers don't like it when people do origami and fold up their tips.  I think that even more, servers don't like it when you tip them a dollar.

Ah, for the days when 98 cents would buy a woman an armful of Woolworth's acetate tricot panties with frothy embroidery!  (PS - That's not the customary way to wear them.)

To be printed and scotch-taped to refrigerators all over town.

There are times in every life when nothing will do but a taco.

Only through the miracles of advertising could people have been persuaded that sucking hot smoke down their throats and into their lungs was protective of the throat and lungs.

This is a true bird's-eye view from above. I think I'd rather walk.

The first day of school means time to snap a million pictures of the kids in their starchy new pants and new backpack.  And to blend photos, as this young lady did, of the first day of Kindergarten and the first day of senior year at high school!

It's possible to set my iPod on shuffle and go from Tex Ritter to Andy Williams to The Sex Pistols.  I love the Pistols, have since 1977 for both their sheer power in music and for lyrics that bring to life such metaphors as "We're the flowers in the dustbin." That's what I call turning a phrase.

What's on YOUR flower?

Sometimes, something will make you stop and think out loud.

I happened to see a friend post on Facebook a picture of something her middle-school-aged daughter did on the first day of class.  Each child was given a printed picture of a daisy, with their picture in the middle.  On each petal (there were about eight) the students wrote what they were interested in.  I think my friend's daughter had things like dancing, acting, lacrosse...the wholesome activities of a young lady on her way to the top.

And then, after enjoying the thought of seeing people grow up to be so splendid, I started to think about what I would have written on my petals at her age...and now.

What strikes me most is that, while I may have added a certain layer of sophistication, I am pretty much the same goofy goober I was at 14.  I still like the same music, many of the same books, and most of the same TV shows and movies. Now as then, I obsess over grammar and spelling and historical accuracy, and could not care less about people who try to impress me with their possessions and importance.

Teenagers are more inclined to take risks, because they haven't had the experience that makes older people think twice before trying to leap from one roof to another ten feet away. On the other hand, some adults would do well to throw a little caution to the wind now and then and take a chance on love or lottery tickets.  You never know...

As teens, we sometimes feel the need to give in to peer pressure, and as fully-realized adults, we feel more confident about making our own decisions.  The difference is that when you're 14, you vote for the most popular or best-looking kid for class president because "everyone else is," and as adults, you can make clear choices about whom to vote for because the vote is not taken by counting raised hands in homeroom.

I once told a young lady who was in fifth grade to be sure to look at what the guys in her class laughed at that year, because it would be the same stuff they'll laugh at when they file for Social Security. It's true.

The point is making sure to keep that sense of humor, that authentic childish sense of wonder and amusement and pleasure at being part of this world. I promise you, if you keep a little of your 14-year-old self within you, you will never become an old grumplepuss.

My petals are reading, writing, watching sports, taking my daily 6,000 step walk, laughing, staying in touch with friends old and friends new, playing with the cats and being happily married.  How about yours?

Toy Boy

I don't know much about corporate law (except that I break all the ones I can) but it seems to me that if you are in the business of making little toys that bear the names of famous people, your corporate lawyers ought to put down their third martini long enough to get that person's autograph on a contract.

But let's start with 1923, when Hillel, Herman, and Henry Hassenfeld founded Hassenfeld Brothers to make and sell pencil cases and school supplies. Things really took off for the bros when they got into plastics in the 1940s and produced a toy which I recall fondly.  After changing the name of the firm to Hasbro, they brought forth into this world Mr Potato Head!

(It might come as a surprise to today's potato heads, but the original set contained eyes, mouth, ears, a hat and eyeglasses, little plastic pieces, and you had to supply your own potato!)

Here in the year 2015, Hasbro has been making a cute little toy line called the Littlest Pet Shop.  Someone decided that a really good idea would be to make a tiny toy hamster and name it Harris Faulkner.

And that's all there is to that.

Except...that there is a woman named Harris Faulkner who works on FOX News.  She's been there for 10 years, hosting a daytime show called "Outnumbered" and anchoring a Sunday evening newscast.

She does not take kindly to a toy bearing her famous name, and sort of looking like her, so she has filed suit against Hasbro.   She wants more than $5 million dollars, but then again, so do we all. Faulkner says the toy "wrongfully appropriates her name and persona, harms her professional credibility as a journalist and is an insult."

As I skillfully pick my words so as not to taint my account of all this with so much as a scintilla of a hint that merely working at FOX News is harmful to one's journalistic credibility, I have to say she has a pretty good case.  The name is a definite straight-up copy, and, well, look at the picture.  "Hasbro's portrayal of Faulkner as a rodent is demeaning and insulting," says the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in New Jersey. The suit goes on to claim that in addition to sharing her name, the toy bears a physical resemblance to Faulkner's traditional professional appearance, including its complexion, eye shape and eye makeup design.

You be the judge!

The Harris Faulkner toy rolled out of the Hasbro factory last year, according to the lawsuit, and was part of a package deal as the pet hamster of a terrier named Benson Detwyler. But the news anchor says she was never asked for permission, nor did she grant permission, for the toymaker to make a rodent in her image.

Other toys in the popular line include animals named Pancakes Watkins, Puffball Petrovsky and Pepper Clark.

Hey, wait a minute! Pepper Clark, according to their website, is a "starry-eyed little skunk pal," and wasn't I occasionally known as "Stinky" as a boy?  Get my lawyers on the phone!

Pillow Talk

Every year, the new students at the United States Military Academy, "cadets," as they are known, take the opportunity to blow off a little steam at the end of their first summer of training to become America's military leaders by participating in a giant pillow fight.  I mean by that, a pillow fight involving over a thousand young men and women, battering each other with pillows, which is supposed to build camaraderie and certain character traits that surely will come in handy later in classrooms and battlefields the world over.

This year's headrest mêlée took place on August 20, or 20Aug in military terms, but what happened was not reported until this past weekend.  Clearly, the USMA was not in a rush to let the world know about it, but the New York Times broke the story about how the heretofore innocent feathered frolic turned bloody this year when cadets swung pillowcases packed with hard objects. 30 cadets were injured, 24 with concussions.

West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, Jr. said that besides concussions, other injuries sustained by cadets included a broken nose and dislocated shoulder.

“While these spirit events do occur, we never condone any activity that results in intentional harm to a teammate,” Caslen said. “Although the vast majority of the class appears to have maintained the spirit of the event; it is apparent that a few did not.”

Upperclassmen overseeing the fight ordered cadets to wear helmets, but video shows many did not. And because today's young people have been taught by yesterday's young people to question every order and look for loopholes in everything, it appears that some cadets took the order to use helmets to mean they should put their headgear in their pillowcases and beat the hell out of their classmates.

And then, because even people with a broken neck will break their necks to brag about their foolish behavior online, there was this Tweet from an Army freshman:

"4 concussions, 1 broken leg, 2 broken arms, 1 dislocated shoulder, and several broken ribs. That’s one hell of a pillow fight. #USMA19."

And this brilliant observation from an upperclassman on Yik Yak:

“My plebe was knocked unconscious and immediately began fighting when he came to. I was so proud I could cry.”

Caslen said that a military police investigation which began the night of the incident is “ongoing.”  I don't think it will take Columbo to figure out what's wrong here.

It's not unlike 18-year-olds to
become rowdy and act in inappropriate manners.  In fact, it's almost expected of them, which is why we don't allow them to hold either alcoholic drinks or elective office at that callow age.  Put any group of young people, all testosterony and estrogeny, in a physical situation with nonlethal weapons, and you're going to have some interesting results.

The problem I see is that the upperclassmen, supposedly in charge of this waste of tax money, rather than making sure the pillow contained nothing harder than duck down, ducked down themselves and let the fracas fly.

And now the military brass whom we pay to train the next generation of Army officers is now harrumphing and saluting and referring to rules and investigations and issuing statements steeped in the same kind of public relations hoo-hoo that car companies use when their sedans are shown ricocheting off each other on highways because they have no brakes and the accelerators get stuck:

“West Point applauds the cadets’ desire to build esprit and regrets the injuries to our cadets,” Lt. Col. Christopher Kasker said. “We are conducting appropriate investigations into the causes of the injuries.”

Aren't these people supposed to be studying or something? More to the point, is breaking some kid's nose the best way to build esprit?

Another reason for brownbagging

In the first place, before we get to the "meat" of this story, I have to say that of all the fast food joints that dot the nation's highways and boulevards, I have to rank Arby's down toward the bottom, and Five Guys at the top, for taste and snappy serving.  Five Guys cooks each burger to order, and Arby's might have slapped together that Chicken Bacon Swiss yesterday morning, for all you know. 

And another reason not to like Arby's so much is the way they refused to sell dinner to a police officer in Pembroke Pines, FL last week. Sgt. Jennifer Martin says she ordered up at Arby's drive-thru on Tuesday night. Windowman Kenneth Davenport, 19, took her credit card, but restaurant manager Angel Mirabal, 22, stuck his head out of the window without a bag of food in his hand, saying, "[Davenport] doesn't want to serve you because you are a police officer." 

So the police officer, whose only offense was ordering meals from these goons, went back inside to get the refund on her card and ask for the employees' contact information. She says that Mirabal laughed, and said Davenport was allowed to refuse her service. He gave her back her money and his contact info, but Davenport refused to give his name.

Remember this, if you plan to invest a million bucks into a franchise selling roast beef loaf and reconstituted chicken sandwiches:  all that money, all that marketing and promotion and work to build up a business, can be undone by turning over the keys to some 22-year-old whose main qualification for the job is being able to clean out the grease trap in the Fry-O-Lator.

Sgt Martin reported it to her chief, the local news got involved, and the HMFIC* of Arby's, one Paul Brown, wrote a corporate PR statement of apology, and offered a free combo meal to any officer in the area last Friday.

Wow!  A free combo meal! You could get a Grand Turkey Club AND a small fries AND a small drink just to make Paul Brown feel the sweet satisfaction of expiation!

Yuck-o

Oh, and they fired the manager but "as a company that highly values trust and fairness, we ultimately found that the crew member (Davenport) was not involved other than to attempt to remedy the situation," the corporate geniuses said.

Davenport's grandfather told a local TV news station that the whole thing was a joke, and that young Kenneth's words were "taken out of context and blown into something much bigger than what it should be."

Ha ha.  What a hilarious remark!  You can't have the dinner you just paid for because you're a police officer!  

As Homer Simpson would say, "Be more funny!"

And as I would say, you're a part of the reason your grandson is a jerk, gramps.

*Head Man For Internal Correspondence

Happy Labor Day!

Sunday rerun: What they don't know

Except for suits and other bespoke apparel, I get all of my clothing from the good people over at Eddie Bauer (shirts) or LL Bean (jeans and pants), so I don't know from American Apparel. I certainly don't believe they'd have the sort of retired-guy-casual clothing that I favored long before becoming an actual retired guy, and it would be like repeating my Zumiez experience if I were to ankle into one of their stores.  I needed to purchase a gift card for a young friend of ours once, and entered a Zumiez store, only to be regarded like a cheeseburger in a punchbowl at a high-class party.  The kids working there, in speaking to me, managed to lower one eyebrow while raising the other, no mean feat.

But this weekend, AmAp made a BooBoo that you need to be aware of in case you need an excuse for not knowin' stuff. To salute the Fourth of July, they ran a picture on Tumblr of the 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion, with a red sky as background, and hashtags “#smoke” and “#clouds.” 

Of course, as anyone with 1/2 an education knows, this is the picture that shows the Challenger being blown to bits, taking seven brave souls with it.  It was in all the papers and everything, but this person with a position of importance in this company did not know that.  The company hastened to blame it all on his/her youth:

So, while we take a moment to shake our heads at just what these smarty-pants kids DON'T know and don't seem to care about not knowing, it now looks like you can be blissfully unaware of the following events, if they took place before you assumed your place among the quick:

The Magna Carta, Marco Polo's travels, the Renaissance, the bubonic plague, the Canterbury Tales, the Gutenberg Bible, Columbus's voyage to the New World, Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, the Gregorian Calendar, the construction of the Taj Mahal, the Industrial Revolution, Mozart, Beethoven, the US Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Revolutionary War, Darwin's "On the Origin of Species," the telephone, the electric light, the airplane, the theory of relativity, World War I, the birth control movement, the Bolshevik Revolution, the “Spanish flu” epidemic, television, the U.S. stock market crash, World War II, Atomic bombs, the electronic computer, the discovery of DNA's structure, and Brown Vs. Board of Education. 

The Saturday Picture Show, September 5, 2015

How sneaky can you get?

This is a colorized picture of a woman from the 1920s spiking her Coca-Cola with booze she hid in a fake cane. Yes, there was a time when people had decided that the way to get people not to drink was to make them carry their hooch in orthopedic supplies.

It's hard to imagine the early days of Glenn Langan's career, when he eked out a meager existence in the movies by playing a diaper-clad monster in B movies.  Since then, of course, he has scaled the heights of Hollywood, and the annual Langanfest convention fills a small diner in his hometown.

This ram was on the news the other day; he is Australian, goes by the name "Chris," and went unshorn for five years until he went to Hair Cuttery the other day and divested himself of 93 pounds of wool - enough to make suits and scarves for most of the Republican presidential candidates.

I know the guy in the front is an ant of some sort.  I guess the rest of the picture is a package of alfalfa sprouts, but I could be wrong.

People aspiring to careers in the secretarial field used to practice shorthand by listening to records on which people dictated fake letters.  For extra credit, let's discuss the following terms now relegated to disuse:  "secretarial," "record," and "letter."

I'm sad every Labor Day now because of the unceremonious way that the MDA Telethon dumped Jerry Lewis as its host, after all he had done for them over the years.  I have come to understand that Jerry is not to everyone's taste, but for years and years, nothing said "Labor Day" like Jerry in a tuxedo introducing Sammy Davis, Jr. in a tuxedo by calling him a "mahvelous pehfohmeh!" Show biz at its peak.

Today's free wallpaper is this seaside view of a late night drive. Enjoy your weekend!

It's only words, and words are all I have

As sure a sign of September rolling around again as new network TV shows that will be seen twice, and then disappear forever, is the arrival of a list of new words now seen in the Oxford English Dictionary, which is quite the authority on the mother tongue.

Reflecting the worldwide obsession with putting as much food down our necks as we possibly can, a lot of the new words come from Food World:

fast-casual, adj.: denoting or relating to a type of high-quality self-service restaurant offering dishes that are prepared to order and more expensive than those available in a typical fast-food restaurant.  To be used to signify that Panera is so much better than McDonald's.

cakeage, n.: (informal) a charge made by a restaurant for serving a cake they have not supplied themselves.  I would only pay this charge if I showed up with a panful of cake batter and asked the restaurant to bake it for me while I gobbled my fried clam platter.

hangry, adj.: (informal) bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger  The good people who make those little packets of Lance Crackers used to have as a slogan "Don't Go 'Round Hungry!" and I have tried to follow that advice.

awesomesauce, adj.: (US informal) extremely good; excellent Awesomesauce is a dumbword which I wish I'd neverheard.

There is one I have never heard, but it makes sense:
Mx, n.: a title used before a person's surname or full name by those who wish to avoid specifying their gender or by those who prefer not to identify themselves as male or female. We still need words to replace "he/she" and "his/her" when we are speaking in the abstract and can't be gender-specific. Any ideas?

There are new words which I wish were not necessary:

fat-shame, v.: cause (someone judged to be fat or overweight) to feel humiliated by making mocking or critical comments about their size.  And there are other -shames, which is a word-shame.

butt dial, v.: (US informal) inadvertently call (someone) on a mobile phone in one's rear trouser pocket.  And then there could be purse dial or pocket dial or Freud dial, as in when a man calls his wife when he means to call the sure thing he met via Ashley Madison.com

Speaking of butts:

butthurt, adj.: (US informal) overly or unjustifiably offended or resentful. This is a word I have seen in writing but never heard out loud, and never wish to.

cat cafe, n.: a café or similar establishment where people pay to interact with cats housed on the premises.  Just another type of cathouse I avoid; how could I explain it to Edwina or Deanna if I came home reeking of some other cat?

fatberg, n.: a very large mass of solid waste in a sewerage system, consisting especially of congealed fat and personal hygiene products that have been flushed down toilets.  This is for my friends in Public Works. Also, yuck!

MacGyver!

MacGyver, v.: (US informal) make or repair (an object) in an improvised or inventive way, making use of whatever items are at hand.  I am never without a Leatherman tool and another knife I carry about, so I am always ready to MacGyver something, but we Simpsons fans know MacGyver as Aunt Selma Bouvier's favorite TV show. When it was over, she always lit up a cigarette, which led to the end of her brief marriage to Sideshow Bob.

manspreading, n.: the practice whereby a man, especially one travelling on public transport, adopts a sitting position with his legs wide apart, in such a way as to encroach on an adjacent seat or seats  See also: Larry Craig Scandal.

mic drop, n.: (informal, chiefly US) an instance of deliberately dropping or tossing aside one's microphone at the end of a performance or speech one considers to have been particularly impressive.  Anyone who thinks that dropping a microphone is a prudent way to treat a microphone is going to spend a lot of money purchasing replacement microphones.

mkay, excl.: (informal, chiefly US) non-standard spelling of OK, representing an informal pronunciation (typically used at the end of a statement to invite agreement, approval, or confirmation) Mkay, it's hard to believe this needs to be in the OED...

rage-quit, v.: (informal) angrily abandon an activity or pursuit that has become frustrating, especially the playing of a video game. As in, when did you ever see a game of Monopoly actually come to an end?  Doesn't it usually just sort of stop being played when some irate cousin flips the board and the game pieces and the Get Out Of Jail Cards in a huff?

NBD, n.: (abbreviation) short for no big deal  Similar:  BFD (Baltimore Fire Department)

This time you gave me a mountain

That's quite a trip

Alaska, the state from which you can see Russia from your kitchen, is also the home of North America's tallest mountain peak, which has always been known to native Alaskans as Denali ("the high one," in the Athabascan language.) The mountain is in Alaska, so you wouldn't think that the people of Ohio would have a nickel in the argument about what the official name of the mountain would be. In fact, I looked it up, and it's a journey of 3,133 miles from the mountain to the lovely town of Cincinnati, home of both Jerry Springer and putting chili on top of spaghetti. The city was originally named Losantiville after the Licking River, which is a tributary of the mighty Ohio River. The name Losantiville means “opposite of the mouth of the river.”

So the only reason that people in Ohio have anything to say about the mountain which was known as Mt McKinley since 1896 is this: It was named Mt McKinley by a gold prospector who supported the presidential campaign of Ohioan William McKinley, who won the election that fall but was assassinated in 1901. Mt McKinley became the official name in 1917, but this, as with so many things in our history, completely ignored the feelings, history and culture of the native people who lived around the mountain. To remedy this, the Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the mountain's name to Denali, to reflect what local residents called it anyway.  But in 1975, when the Alaska state legislature asked the United States Board on Geographic Names to make the change official, the request was blocked by Ohio congressman Ralph Regula.  Coincidentally or not, "Ralph Regula" was the name on the first fake ID I ever owned.

President Obama and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, two people who realize that the people of Alaska ought to have the final say in what their mountains are called, have officially changed the name of the 20,237-foot peak to Mt. Denali.

Meanwhile, people back in Ohio, who were so thrilled when Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson changed his name legally to Chad Ochocinco to (improperly*) reflect his uniform number, should just busy themselves naming their own mountains, if they have any.

The 2017 McKinley 4x4

And if they do, to even things up, General Motors might rename their Denali truck line the "McKinley."

 *  Johnson's number was 85.  Ochocinco means 8-5. "85" in Spanish is ochenta y cinco.

Just do your job!

On Monday, the US Supreme Court denied the request of Rowan County (KY) Clerk Kim Davis for a stay of an order that she issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Her appeals are exhausted, and as of now, her choices are either to do her job and issue marriage licenses to all who seek them under the law, or face being held in contempt.

Now, I happen to think that any two humans who want to live together as married people should be able to do so, and nothing anyone can say would change that opinion, just as nothing is going to change the minds of those who feel otherwise.

Which is fine!  No problem if you don't agree with the Supreme Court.  Lots of people don't agree with lots of Supreme Court decisions.  In Korematsu v. United States, in 1944, a 6-3 decision upheld internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. But 1954's Brown v. Board of Education ruled that separating black and white students in public schools is unconstitutional. That was a unanimous 9-0 vote.

More controversy?  Right here:   Loving v. Virginia, 1967, was a 9-0 decision invalidating state laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

To put that in modern terms, 48 years ago, states still had laws saying that black people and white people could not be married. Think that over for a minute. 

And the case that gets dragged out every so often: Roe v. Wade, the 1973 7-2 decision that said women have a constitutional right to an abortion during the first two trimesters.

Certainly controversial, and likely to stay that way.

But I understand that schools are not much for teaching civics as thoroughly as they used to, so many people (including some people who wish to be president) do not know that in the legal system of the United States, the Supreme Court is the final interpreter of federal constitutional law.

It's like a baseball game:  they can go to the replay, but when the umpires watching the tapes at baseball headquarters call someone safe or out, the argument ends there. 

Ms Davis is paid by the people of Rowan County to issue licenses, including marriage licenses.  

She happens not to agree with the rights of same-sex couples to marry.

She says that as a Christian, she is following God's authority, so she has been refusing to issue marriage licenses.

If you happen to agree with her stance on this, then surely you wouldn't mind if

...you called 911 to report your house being on fire but the operator said that his Zoroastrian faith included fire worshipping, so he could not countenance putting out the fire...

...you called the local Recreation and Parks office to reserve a soccer field for your child's coed soccer league, only to be told that the local rec supervisor belongs to a faith that forbids mingling between the genders, so no field for you...

...you call the Health inspectors so you can get clearance to open your pork bar-b-q carryout, but the inspector who comes out is opposed to the consumption of pork for reasons owing to both her faith and her belief that pork is unhealthy, so too bad...

Public Service?

...you are in the throes of cardiac arrest but the paramedic who arrives states that as a male he cannot administer life-saving CPR to a person of the opposite gender...

All ludicrous examples, I know, and don't think for a minute that any of those made-up scenarios take place.  They don't, because 911 operators, Rec and Parks staffers, Health inspectors and paramedics are civil servants, who understand that their job is to SERVE CITIZENS, not to impose their religious beliefs, no matter how deeply held, on others.  

And anyone who encourages Ms Davis to continue her foolish, illegal behavior is encouraging foolish, illegal behavior, and that's foolish.

The sad side of sports

There are few things more enjoyable on a summer evening than to watch a major league baseball game.  Baseball is probably the greatest game ever devised, and when you're watching big leaguers do their stuff, you're seeing the most talented people in the world play the American game.

Baltimore's old Memorial Stadium used to sell bleacher seats for a dollar, and we would often see Johns Hopkins students and other young professionals camped out in the cheap seats, sometimes even reading a book or newspaper while enjoying a ballgame on God's green earth in front of them on a pleasant evening.

The secret to enjoying baseball is knowing how the game works well enough to think along with the managers and players as a game unfolds.  And then see if the manager calls for a steal or sacrifice bunt when you do.  

You go out to a ballgame, you can have some food ranging from hot dogs and popcorn to pit beef and crab cakes, and a beer or a soda, and just have a whale of a time. Enjoy the game!

However, it's best to stay calm.  It was sad enough to hear that a spectator at Saturday night's Yankees-Braves game in Atlanta fell over a barrier some 50 feet and was killed in the accident, but as reports emerged that he had been at the barrier hollering down on the field at Alex Rodriguez, the tarnished Yankee slugger, and lost his balance in his agitation, leading to the fall, it became too tragic for the sports news, often referred to as "the toy department of life."

“When they called A-Rod coming to bat, he got all excited, and his momentum took him over (the railing),” fan Marty Burns told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"You pays your money and you speaks your mind" is an old slogan around ballparks. Within reason, a fan may holler as he or she sees fit to encourage their team or deride the opposition.  This alone is enough to make baseball a much better sport to watch than tennis or golf, sports in which so much as an ill-timed sneeze can get one banished or hollered at by Eldrick "Tiger" Woods.  As long as the fans keep their language somewhere on the civil side, and don't interfere with others, baseball fans can give vent to their emotions.  

Stunned shocked faces of the crowd

But safety and common sense have to be kept in mind!  The reports say that the Atlanta fan, 60-year-old Gregory Murrey of Alpharetta, Ga. The Braves say he was a season ticket holder for 23 years.

It's often said of avid fans that they live and die for their team. It is simply too sad when that becomes the literal truth.