Save Me

One of my fondest memories of dropping by a social studies class one day in high school (it must have been raining or something) was how the teacher foretold a future in which computers were going to simplify everything, fix everything, take the place of bulky papers and books, and find true love for everyone seeking same.

"Imagine," Mrs Frantz said, "all of the information in your books on a computer!  You won't have to carry any books home with you to do your homework!" 

Not even my pointing out that I was already not in the habit of toting books around with me  could deter her.  On and on she crooned, a soothsayer saying soothing things about a Brave New World where paper would go the way of buggy whips and rumble seats. Everything was going to be on computers, books would disappear, that was it, accept it.

Fast forward to the work environments we know now, where almost everyone has a monitor staring back at them, and a computer terminal, and everything that's done and said is said and done on that terminal...and then it gets printed out and stored in the boxes that the paper comes in, stacked in dusty closets and the former offices of people who swore they'd never learn to use a computer.

You have to print important information out because computers crash, and hard drives stop driving, and thumb drives give you the finger from time to time.  

So Mrs Frantz's prediction of a paperless world never came to fruition (as did her presaging my future as a convicted felon) and that lesson has been learned by almost everyone.  No one trusts just their computer, laptop or mobile device as the sole carrier of any important data.

That's why it was cause for great head-shaking last week when Garth Brooks, country singer of one song I like ("I've Got Friends In Low Places"), and dozens more that I don't, announced that for the last six months, he's been storing ideas and lines and snippets for new songs on his cell phone.  

How many devices did you store the data on?

"Here's where the old guy gets into technology, which is bad," he explained to "Rolling Stone." 

"All the new stuff which I've been working on for six months was on a phone that's been fried, and I can't get the phone to come back up. . . It's like losing your briefcase back in the Nineties!"

Well, Garth, next time, copy and paste and forward it to your email and your wife's email and print it out and store in your freezer in a ziploc bag.  But before you feel too bad about it, consider the case of my hero Mr Garrison Keillor.

In 1974, Mr Keillor, the soon-to-be retired host of radio's "Prairie Home Companion," got the idea to write about radio's Grand Ole Opry, a piece that The New Yorker ran. They paid him $6,000 for it, and he spent that money on a train trip to the West Coast with his wife and son. But on the way, he left his briefcase in the men's room at the Portland train station.  

In the briefcase was the one and only copy of his manuscript for a novel called "Lake Wobegon Memoir," which he thought would be his breakthrough masterpiece.  The briefcase was never returned and the typed pages of the book he dreamed up have been lost from that day to this. 

Always with the red socks

In the summer of 1974, Mr Keillor created the radio show which is still on the air every Saturday evening.  The highlight of the second hour of the show is a monologue, his extemporaneous weaving of the tales of everyday life in a fictional small town in Minnesota. He told the Los Angeles Times in 1985 that he started telling the stories on the radio in hopes that "my lost story would come down the beam and land in my head. Eleven years later, I am still waiting for it."

Type it. Send it. Print it.  Save it.  Bury it. Mail it to yourself.  Just don't make but one copy of anything you might want later.

Looking to whip up some buzz for last year's Man Against Machine album, Garth Brooks got social last November, launching his own Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts in the same week. Less than a year later, though, he's shaking his fist at modern technology. 

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Garth Brooks Garth Brooks Talks Touring and Uncertain 'Machine' Future »
A fried cell phone may have just set back production on the icon's next album. Speaking with Milwaukee's Journal Sentinel before last weekend's pair of sold-out shows at the Bradley Center, Brooks admitted that he's been storing ideas for new songs on a personal cell phone that recently stopped working.


There's also a possible delay on a duets album with wife Trisha Yearwood, who tells the Sentinel that the Christmas collection they're working on won't likely be out in time for the 2015 holiday season.

Meanwhile, the married superstars continue to keep busy on the road, thanks to an ongoing, cross-country tour that's on track to become one of the highest-grossing concert treks of all time. The Garth Brooks World Tour With Trisha Yearwood has stayed within America's borders thus far, with a foreign leg possibly popping up next year. New U.S. cities are still being announced, with Brooks and Yearwood wrapping up their year with multi-show residencies in Cleveland, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and San Diego. 



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/garth-brooks-broken-cell-phone-wipes-out-music-for-new-album-20150929#ixzz3neM18iDM 
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Sunday Rerun: 500 words, due tomorrow

So, what would you do if your boss came in one morning right after Labor Day and told you to write a composition about "How I Spent My Summer Vacation"?

I always wish that someone would do that for adults.  Facebook is fun for sharing vacation pictures, but it can be dangerous to announce to all of your online friends that you are leaving the house unoccupied for the next two weeks while you and the whole family, including Uncle Ambrose, head down I-95 to see South of the Border, including Pedro's Nutte House, with its oddly phallic decorations.  Especially if you mention that the key is under the mat or duct-taped to the third rock from the sunflower in your garden.

But when you get back, post up those pictures.  We love to see where you've been.  A lot of people like to go to places they have never been and explore on their summer weeks off.  They think nothing of loading up the Family Truckster with sleeping bags, a couple of extra pairs of jeans and a shirt or two, some rudimentary toilet supplies, canned food, bottled water, bottled gin, and heading out to Montana or New Mexico.

Others among us go to the same beach or lake with the same people, wearing the same Speedo, and staying in the same room with a 40-watt bulb and a sliver of soap in the bathroom, which you get to share with your own family and that of Cousin Ozzie, with his illbred offspring. 

That's why they call it a vacation - you vacate the office or your workspace for a while so you can come back refreshed and renewed, vowing more desperately than ever to find your ticket out of there.  That first day back, as you plow through the 1,395 emails that have clogged your inbox just as your recent dinners have clogged your carotid artery, you take a solemn oath that by next summer, you will have that dream job as drummer for Journey or personal hairstylist to Prince William.  And as you dream and plot, you click on a phishing email and the entire office network drops dead and you have to wait for the summer intern from InfoServices to come and declogulate your "machine," as he likes to call it.  This takes two hours, which would be much better spent roaming down the corridors of your building, demonstrating your tan and passing out macaroons and salt water taffy that you brought back.

I think I just figured out why corporate America doesn't ask anyone to write those compositions.

The Saturday Picture Show, October 3, 2015

This bird is a "brown boobie."  They are usually found far south of Baltimore, but lately, a pair of them have been seen hanging around our harbor.  Their name comes from the British sailors who found them easy to lure onto the deck, to be consumed for dinner.  I don't think they look all that appetizing, but whatever.

There is something to be said for finding a product that fits perfectly in a little slot.  In my car I have a little LED flashlight that nestles right into a hole in the dashboard.  It's a happy world.

We are expecting some leaves to fall this weekend, what with Hurricane Joaquin flying up the coast.  But don't leave your rake out on the porch or you'll be chasing it, along with the leaves.

Good news for this person, and how about this nice display of gratitude for those who helped him get to this point?

This is Malibu Creek State Park, and it's what's left of the old M*A*S*H television show set.  Speed checked by Radar.

You used to see these all over the place...the "speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil" guys.  It's still good advice.

CBS Sunday Morning had a story about Don Henley and the small town he came from in Texas, and he mentioned having seen this movie back in the day and having to walk home afterwards.  Note also who co-starred with Steve McQueen - Aneta Corseaut, soon to be our beloved Helen Crump on the Andy Griffith Show!

This week's free wallpaper!  Because it's the prettiest time of the year, for my money!

Where's my role?

Young Tierney

If I talk about the late actor Lawrence Tierney a lot, it's because his was an interesting story. He was not a great actor in terms of range, as they say...you couldn't imagine him playing Peter Pan or a poetry-reading prep school teacher or a guy who comes to town selling marching band instruments and uniforms.  New York Times movie critic David Kehr wrote, "The hulking Tierney was not so much an actor as a frightening force of nature." 

No, Tierney (1919-2002) was a tough guy from Brooklyn, Noo Yawk, who gave up an athletic scholarship to college to work in construction.  A big, good looking dude, he modeled for the Sears catalog for a while before drifting into acting.  When people needed a large, menacing man, he was the go-to guy for movies with titles like "The Devil Thumbs a Ride" and "Born To Kill."

The pity is, he could have been more consistent in his acting career had he not spent so much time appearing in real-life courtroom dramas.  He was arrested countless times over the years on various charges, usually involving misbehavior while drunk (he did 90 days in jail for breaking a college student's jaw in a barroom fracas, he assaulted two cops outside a bar, he was knifed in a bar fight in 1973...) and he said this one time while attempting to get on the wagon: "I threw away about seven careers through drink."

It also would appear that, like fellow B-movie legend George Raft, he started taking his roles so seriously that he seemed to go through life acting as if every day was another movie. If you remember the original version of "Arthur" (the good one, with Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli), old Lawrence played the bit part of a cranky customer in the diner demanding his roll ("Where's my roll?")

"The Jacket"

Never was this talent for toughness more vividly demonstrated than when he appeared in the second season of "Seinfeld" as Alton Benes, Elaine's scary father. He did a great job as the flinty, hard-bitten novelist who scared the bejabbers out of Jerry and George in the episode called "The Jacket."  (It's the one where Jerry had just bought a nice new leather jacket but it gets ruined because it's snowing when he and George go to walk to a Pakistani restaurant five blocks away. Jerry wanted to turn the jacket inside out to protect the suede, but Mr Benes says that makes him look "like a damn fool" and that Jerry's "not going to walk down the street with me and my daughter dressed like that, that's for damn sure!")

As Alton Benes

Whether it was great acting or just Tierney being Tierney, it played well on a sitcom, and "Seinfeld" planned to make him a recurring character in future episodes, which would have made Lawrence a tidy salary and a nice legacy in show business, but that never happened because Tierney stole a butcher knife from the Seinfeld apartment set, and when Jerry Seinfeld asked him why he had the knife concealed in his jacket, Tierney raised the knife like Anthony Perkins in "Psycho," but said he did it as a joke. The cast was scared to death.

Nobody ever thinks it's funny to be threatened with a knife assault, so that was it for him on that series.  And his career history shows just five more bit parts in movies after that last big chance. Sometimes, it's easy to get carried away playing a character. 

And that goes for more than just actors.

Pointing the finger

Walker and daughter

I feel sorry for the daughter of the late actor Paul Walker, whose name is Meadow Rain Walker. As you might recall, her father was killed in November, 2013, when he was riding in a high-performance 2005 Porsche Carrera GT car being driven by his buddy Roger Rodas.  I don't know if being "driven" is exactly right; maybe it's better to say it was being "occupied" by Walker and Rodas, and proceeding at a speed estimated by the Los Angeles County Coroner at 100 mph and by the LA County Sheriff as being "between 80 and 93 mph at the time the car impacted a power pole and several trees."

This took place on an office park road in Santa Clarita, California, where the posted speed limit is 45 mph.

But Monday brought the news that Meadow has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Porsche, claiming the car had multiple design flaws. She has an attorney named Jeff Milam putting out a statement that says: "The bottom line is that the Porsche Carrera GT is a dangerous car. It doesn't belong on the street. And we shouldn't be without Paul Walker or his friend, Roger Rodas."

Calvin Kim works for Porsche Cars North America, and he could not comment, beyond saying, "As we have said before, we are saddened whenever anyone is hurt in a Porsche vehicle, but we believe the authorities' reports in this case clearly established that this tragic crash resulted from reckless driving and excessive speed." 

Walker played the part of Brian O'Conner in the "Fast and Furious" movies, and was in the midst of filming the seventh of them when he went for that one last ride. He was 40. 

His daughter and her lawyer say, "The vehicle lacked safety features that are found on well-designed racing cars or even Porsche's least expensive road cars -- features that could have prevented the accident or, at a minimum, allowed Paul Walker to survive the crash." And, their claim is that the car was puttering along "at approximately 63 to 71 mph when it suddenly went out of control."

Another feature that would have prevented the accident would have been if the driver had been following the speed limit. Doing so has been found to be a leading deterrent to running into trees.

Investigators found "no pre-existing conditions that would have caused this collision," according to the death report. Experts from Porsche and Michelin were consulted at the time.

I once bought a sledge hammer for the purpose of hammering some sledge I had to get rid of. On the shaft of that hammer was a decal warning me against hitting myself with the hammer, lest it cause me serious injury.  The big question here is, should carmakers be forced to put decals on the dashboards of cars, decals saying "Driving too fast will cause you to lose control of the vehicle, which could lead to your sudden death" ?

Walker death car

I'm being serious here.  Have we become so lacking in personal responsibility that someone else always has to pay for our mistakes?

Bad guy does something right

There is this fellow named Jonathan Papelbon, a relief pitcher for the Washington Nationals.  He's been around for a while, pitched for some good teams and some bad ones, and what he can do while gripping a baseball with his right hand will pay him $16 million for next year alone, no matter where he plays.

And it's quite certain that he won't be playing for the Nationals, since this past Sunday, when he used his left hand to wrap itself around the neck of their star slugger Bryce Harper, as irritating a man as there ever was.  The best pitchers never use their throwing arms for mundane tasks such as cutting celery or throttling outfielders.

It was a bad week for Papelbon.  On Wednesday, after our Oriole star Manny Machado clobbered a home run to put the O's ahead in a game against the Nats, Papelbon threw a baseball toward Manny's head, and was suspended for that action.  Then came Sunday, a lazy afternoon game for the Nats.  Harper popped out to left field, and failed to hustle down to first.  I mean, I could have beaten him in a footrace, although it would have meant having to drive to our nation's capital to do so, and the roads were still filled with papal stragglers.  Returning to the dugout, Harper found himself publicly chastised by Papelbon for dogging it, and the two soon found themselves in a dugout tussle, or fracas, or donnybrook, or brawl, as it always says in the sports pages.

"What do you mean? Of COURSE I love myself!"

Young Mr Harper is already raking in long green for his lazy style on the field and will doubtless earn more than brain surgeons or plumbers in the next few years. And he is an excellent baseball player when he wants to be, or in sports writer terms, a "helluva player."  But when he says things like, "I mean, it’s just some of the things I do. I’m very genuine with what I say. It’s not like I go out there and I’m an ass. Maybe on the field and between the lines I am. Walking out of the clubhouse, I feel like I’m one of the nicest guys you’ll meet" to Sports Illustrated, and when he fails to exert a little effort running to first base, when he takes his spiked shoe and obliterates the other team's logo behind home plate, and when he acts like a guy who became a millionaire as a teenager for playing a little boy's game, well, you have to give a little nod to Papelbon for pointing out what a butthead young Mr Harper is.

Tangled Web

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive..."  - Sir Walter Scott

The history of the Volkswagen car and truck is interesting, since very few other cars on the road can trace their lineage back to an insane Nazi dictator bent on the slaughter of an entire religion, world domination, and the promotion of a master race. Adolf Hitler was just beginning his rise to power in 1933 when he decided that every German should have access to a economical car to haul the family around, and so he commissioned "the people's car" - Volks wagen. 

Following World War II, Americans who just a few years ago had been in bloody combat with Hitler's Germany started buying the exported model, the early "Beetle." It was good on gas, cheap to buy, seated four, and so they sold like hotcakes over here, although you'd think there would have been more of a Fuehrer made over it. Horrible pun intended.

They're showing Adolf that the motor is in the back

I think that my father and the millions of others who bought those Beetles just had enough of fighting, I don't know. Not for me to say; I wasn't over there. But the rise of the VW at the time that it was just about the only "foreign car" on the road certainly contributed to the reputation of Germany as a technological paradise where machinery of immaculate precision is designed, built, and shipped over here.

With that fact in mind, was it a surprise to anyone that Volkswagen was recently caught in a little deception?  Their diesel cars, sold as being energy efficient and ecologically-wise in exhaust, was rigged to operate that way only when the vehicle emissions test machinery was hooked up to it, so it would meet government standards, and then it was off to the speedy races as soon as the unsuspecting driver drove off.

The number of vehicles affected worldwide is close to 11 million. VW has banked $7.2 billion to fix the problem. Volkswagen’s CEO, Martin Winterkorn, had a can tied to him as soon as the board of directors met over this. Some 30 class action lawsuits have been filed from car owners all over, and plenty more are sure to come from people who plunked down money on a VW, believing it to be highly fuel-efficient.  Now they're stuck with a car that will be hard to trade or sell. 

The discovery of the deceit is attributed to a small lab at West Virginia University. In 2012, researchers there got a $50,000 grant to investigate the claims of emission efficiency made by "clean" diesel cars.   They found discrepancies of 35 times the readings that VW had claimed for their cars. 

The researchers suspected cheating, and the California Air Resources Board got involved, lending a little weight to the proceedings. Soon the Environmental Protection Agency was threatening to block the sale of all 2016 VW diesels in America. Then and only then did VW confess to the scheme, and they have seen their stock value drop by 30 percent.

I'm sorry for those who own the affected cars, and even sorrier for those who work for VW dealerships.  And of course, there's always the possibility that other car manufacturers were up to the same rotten trick.

I guess it's universal, this urge to make money at all costs, no matter who gets lied to or cheated.  Maybe that's the saddest part of all this. 

I wouldn't be without one

People are always surprised when I pull it out of my pants, reacting with shock, and shaken heads.

I'm talking about my bandana, whichever one I happen to be carrying in my pocket that day.  It might be red, blue, brown, grey or green, because I have them in a veritable rainbow of colors, but I always have one.  Count on it.

Only when I can't find a free Kleenex will I use a bandana for wiping Mr Drippynose. There are hundreds of other reasons to tote a piece of cloth 18" x 18" everywhere, a cloth which takes its name from the Hindi word bandhnu, which refers to the method of dyeing cloth using “binds."

I don't know the first thing about Hindi words, or about dyeing cloth, but I know what to do if I need a tourniquet or a sling in a hurry. People used to rob banks using a bandana to cover their faces, but so many of them tripped while making a getaway that they started just covering the lower half of their faces. Cowboys used them like a scarf around the neck for protection from the sun and the dust out there on cattle drives.  They make great helmet liners for motorcyclists, and, of course, gangs use them to identify and represent Bloods (red) and Crips (blue).

People use bandanas for as cords to tie things up, as water filters, trail markers and shelter flags.

Hobo with bindlestick

You can wrap up your personal items or your lunch in a bandana, and tie it on the end of a stick. That's called a bindlestick, and they were traditionally carried by hobos. (When is the last time you heard someone called a hobo? Today they are "people on a journey to find themselves.")

People have been known to use their bandana as a potholder, earmuffs, sweatband, or belt. How about a firestarter? Facial towel? Seat cover? Signalling device? Doggie decoration?

Charmin replacement?

There are more uses for a bandana than there are stones on the beach. And if you want to collect some of those stones to bring home for the aquarium, I think you know what to carry them in!

Sunday Rerun (from July 2014): That Rendezvous

Alan Seeger, Harvard-educated, was killed in war.  He wrote the masterful poem "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" before joining the French Foreign Legion to fight in World War I.  I don't often share poetry here, but I would like you to read this one.

"I Have a Rendezvous with Death"

I have a rendezvous with Death  

At some disputed barricade,  

When Spring comes back with rustling shade  

And apple-blossoms fill the air—  

I have a rendezvous with Death       

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.  

  

It may be he shall take my hand  

And lead me into his dark land  

And close my eyes and quench my breath—  

It may be I shall pass him still.   

I have a rendezvous with Death  

On some scarred slope of battered hill,  

When Spring comes round again this year  

And the first meadow-flowers appear.  

  

God knows 'twere better to be deep   

Pillowed in silk and scented down,  

Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,  

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,  

Where hushed awakenings are dear...  

But I've a rendezvous with Death   

At midnight in some flaming town,  

When Spring trips north again this year,  

And I to my pledged word am true,  

I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Seeger mentions pretty Spring days with apple-blossoms, little signs of new life returning in the flush sunny afternoons of April and May, and he mentions midnight in some flaming town.  We don't get to choose between the two.

My mother's recent death came between the deaths of two other people, two friends who left entirely too early...In April, a friend was taken in a house fire, and just the other day, a young woman very dear to us succumbed to meningitis.  As opposed to Mom's passing, which came after years of battling several debilitating conditions and four-score plus years of a sweet and happy life, both of the others were taken by foes that came out of nowhere, like thieves in the night, carrying away lives, loves and futures.

We don't get to choose.  It just doesn't seem to matter how many times we get a reminder that when we bid a friend or loved one goodbye, it might be the very last chance we ever get to do so. We'll still fret about stuff that won't mean doodly in two weeks or two minutes, or get steamed because someone butted up in line at the carwash, or envy the neighbor's new vacation getaway in the Gilligan Islands.  A precious child is killed in a freakish wind-and-rain storm,  while at the same time, people are spending time arguing about some stupid political matter.

We don't get to choose. We'd all like to go in our sleep, or just after a great round of golf (Bing Crosby) or just dashing through a field of a field of forget-me-nots on a spring day "when the first meadow-flowers appear."

We don't get to choose. We have no options as to the time of year or the time of your life, so you might as well go have the time of your life right today. That's the message I keep getting from beyond.

The Saturday Picture Show, September 26, 2015

This is a seaside scene from Dorset, England.  The waves were combing the beach so much, it looked like a real comb!

This would make a pretty wallpaper for your mobile device or lap.

 It really is a simple game, isn't it?  Just do what you're supposed to do and try to be nice about it.

We have contracted with a tree service to trim the ash trees and the pear tree so that my neighbors will be spared seeing me up on a ladder like this goof.  He is opening a new branch office.

Imagine a life without books.  Remember the wise words of Emily Dickinson: "There is no Frigate like a Book, To take us Lands away."

On September 24, 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game ever at Ebbets Field, and moved to a small town in southern California.  This usher's uniform hat and untorn ticket are among the remaining souvenirs of a great time in baseball.  "Brooklyn, " the borough of New York City, derived its name from the Dutch Breukelen, meaning "broken land."  As a first name, Brooklyn is now #26 in popularity for little baby girls, edging perennial favorites "Agnes" and "Mildred."

Thank heaven for pretty gulls.

Free Wallpaper Of The Week is this future cider!  Have a great weekend, and try to get out and enjoy a nice Fall!

Not a stand-up guy

It's another sign of my unfortunate out-of-the-loopness that I have never heard of Steve Rannazzisi, who apparently forged a nice little career for himself as a stand-up comedian.  His story was, he was a guy who gave up a nice career working for Merrill Lynch after escaping from the 54th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, and now shares his wit with an awaiting world.

There's just one problem with this scenario.  It's all a lie, including the part about him being witty. Rannazzisi never worked for Merrill Lynch, and was not near the WTC on 9/11.

Other than that....

Normally, I would use a picture of the subject of my
blog, but I don't want to give this goofball any free
publicity, so here's a picture of some cute
kittens instead

Rannazzisi and his wife moved to Los Angeles in 2001 so that he could get into show business. His act consists of telling jokes about his wife, and about coaching Little League.  He taped a Comedy Central special called "Breaking Dad" before the truth about him came out, and Comedy Central went right ahead and ran it last weekend anyway, because that channel has almost as many viewers as the average traffic accident has rubberneckers.

Someone found out about his desperate lies, and he was forced to come clean, so he had his publicist tweet a series of contrite tweets, including this mea culpa: 

“It is to the victims of 9/11 and to the people that love them — and the people that love me — that I ask for forgiveness.”  

Rannazzisi, 37, added that for years, he wished that silence “could somehow erase a story told by an immature young man.”

“Saturday Night Live” cast member Pete Davidson, who lost his firefighter dad Scott, a member of FDNY Ladder 118 who died in the tower collapse, tweeted a slam that Rannazzisi didn't quite get.

“It's ok @SteveRannazzisi people make mistakes,” wrote Davidson. “Can't wait to meet my dad for lunch later.”

Rannazzisi, unaware of Davidson’s story, tweeted back thanks. 

“I think you missed the point,” replied Davidson, who was 7 when his dad, along with five other firefighters, ran up the stairs to their sad fate.

Pete Davidson went on a radio show to say that Rannazzissi is not sorry, but is sorry that he got caught.

Amazingly, there have been others pushing this lie. Tania Head, a Spaniard who was never in the US until 2003, concocted a story of her escape and even became the leader of the World Trade Center Survivors' Network before her hoax was revealed in 2007.

On the other hand, Brian Williams.

As a young man, I learned something I never forgot.  Just as hoping that a broken-down car engine will somehow heal itself, the passage of time does nothing to heal a lie.  It only makes it worse, and this alleged comic ought to find a way to repay society for having cashed in on the unspeakable misery of others.

The Song's Wrong, but...

Mr Richards believes in frequent naps.

The other day on Teri Gross's radio show "Fresh Air," they re-ran an interview she did with Keith Richards in 2010, and as always, Mr Richards was a font of fun and facts, such as...did you know that his guitar parts to "Street Fighting Man" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash" were not played on electric guitars, but on acoustic guitars jacked into early-model cassette recorders, with all the overmodulation and audio compression and so forth? This is why I try never to miss "Fresh Air."

People are always dancing at weddings to "Crash Into Me," by that Dave Matthews Band. Check the lyrics next time! "Afternoon Delight" is not about a snack and a nap! "Turning Japanese" and "Summer of '69" are not innocent either. Yikes!

During the interview, Teri remarked that the song "Under My Thumb," a song that's sexist and chauvinistic and awful in its depiction of the role of the woman in a relationship was just that....a horrible song lyrically, yet such a catchy tune that she would find herself singing along it! She chuckled, he laughed, and quickly pointed out that he did not write the lyrics. Mick Jagger did.

It got me to thinking about songs I like that are wildly inappropriate in text or context. Such as the time in my country deejay days, when a listener called and asked for a certain song to be played. "It's really important," he importuned. It was a special day, the 25th anniversary for him and his sweet pooh-bear, the love of his life, the lucky lady who shared his hearth and heart. I said ok, what's your special song for your special lady?

"Your Cheatin' Heart"! he proudly crowed.

Somewhere, those two crazy kids are together today, I just know it.

Speaking of kids, you might want to ask yours if they know what some of those songs they sing along to are all about.


People are always dancing at weddings to "Crash Into Me," by that Dave Matthews Band. Check the lyrics next time! And, "Afternoon Delight" is not about a snack and a nap! "Turning Japanese" and "Summer of '69" are not innocent either. Yikes!

The only Pistols I carry around

People who pick up my iPod and set it to shuffling are often wont to remark that there may not be another music player with songs that jump from Andy Williams to Hank Williams to Paul Revere and the Raiders to AC/DC to the Sex Pistols. People remember the Pistols as being in the forefront of punk rock in the late 70's, and there are three songs on their first album "Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" that still play nicely for me: Pretty Vacant, God Save the Queen, and Anarchy For the U.K.  Well sir, I am not vacant, I am actually thoroughly here. I have nothing against the Queen as a person, and the British are certainly entitled so spend their money on royal trappings if they see fit. And I despise the notion of anarchy anywhere at any time. There are rules in a decent society.

But there's no rule that says I can't love the music! Those tunes just soar! So if you see me walking past with headphones on, you have to wonder why I'm smiling!

"It's not personal, Sonny. It's just business." - Michael Corleone

When I was a child in the 50's (the 1950s, that is) there was nothing more respected in America than The Businessman.  Oh, he (and it was almost ALWAYS a male, white, with a white dress shirt and a tie in a Hart Schaffner Marx dress suit) was the object of veneration.  It was assumed that he had Made It when he was seen tooling around town in a Cadillac, shopping at all the right stores, golfing at the right course, sending his 2.3 kids to the right schools.

That .3 of a kid was tough to teach, though.

It was all part of the comfortable environment of those days.  We kids went to school, learned math and science so we could beat the evil Russians to the moon, participated in atom bomb fallout drills (we were assured that getting in the school hall and covering our heads with our elbows would keep us safe from the effects of nuclear detonation) and did all we could as young citizens to make the world better.  The businessmen built and developed huge corporations to employ our dads, feed us, sell us cars and all was good.  We watched "Leave It To Beaver" and we felt good about things, because things that were out of the norm, such as alternative lifestyles, were swept into a corner as being only for "weirdos."  Just picture Red Forman from That 70s show.

Something happened somewhere along the line, though.  The line itself was blurred and people were hopping along either side of it. Just yesterday, I turned on the news in the morning to see that:

• The head of a peanut business in Georgia, knowing that his product contained salmonella, told his subordinates to ship it anyway so he wouldn't lose out on the sales.  Now he himself is being shipped off to the stony lonesome for 28 years, and his lawyer whines that that is like a life sentence for a 61-year-old man whose foul peanut butter killed nine and sickened hundreds.
• A company called Turing Pharmaceuticals jacked up the price of Daraprim, a medicine used for treating a food-borne illness suffered by AIDS patients and others with compromised immune systems, from $13.50 per pill to $750 overnight. That's a rather large markup, but Turing chief executive Martin Shkreli dismisses his critics as "people who don't think logically," and, when asked via Twitter how he manages to sleep at night, replies, "You know. Ambien."



Pharmacy Boss celebrates himself

• Just a few years after Hitler and his atrocities threatened to obliterate the world, the Volkswagen car he had commissioned became popular the world over. Plenty of men who had fought World War II were driving VWs to work by 1960, little suspecting that in 2015, that corporation would be found to have cheated emissions control tests on 11,000,000 vehicles that were sold to people who thought they were environmentally sound.  

Don't get me wrong.  There are plenty of businesspeople doing honest business and improving the public weal.  Bill Gates, without whom I would be writing this with a pencil (and you'd never see it) is not only the richest man around but also the most generous, and companies large and small live in harmony with the world and its people and its environment.

Volkswagen stock prices took a slight dip when the news came out

But reading about those horrible people who sell poison food, raise the price of life-saving medicines by 1500% and sell cars geared to cheat on emissions tests makes me shake my head in sorrow for the way we used to think things were.

Tip Top

I'm not giving away any secrets by sharing this list, which I first saw someone else share.  It's from a site called Tickld, which I never heard of, and it proposes to give some hints for success as a man. But, I say a lot of them are useful advice for either gender, any age, whatever.  Let me tell you what I mean.  I'll add some comments of my own in red, so when things stop making sense, you'll know why.


Go for someone you perceive to be "out of your league." You'll surprise yourself. Single people! You always hear that the really great looking person you're angling toward is sitting home on date night because everyone assumes they are already busy, so they don't ask them out.  This is a rumor started by extremely good-looking people so they can be left alone with their fabulous jet-set lifestyles.

Never hit anyone unless they are an immediate threat. I'll add the words of Harold Ramis in "Stripes": Never hit anyone unless you're absolutely SURE you can get away with it.  

Every hat should serve a purpose. This is why I have no berets. They have no sun visor, and don't protect your ears from the sun. 

Never go to the movies on the first date. It's good to try something a little different, a little quirky.  Why not go down to the BagUrSelf Supermarket and watch them unload the freight truck?  

Always look a person in the eye when you talk to them. Absolutely! What's worse than someone looking at your feet while you're trying to talk to them?  Except if you're a shoe salesperson.  Then check out their Birkenstocks and try to move them up to Steve Maddens, or at least, John Maddens.  

Buy a plunger before you need a plunger. You'll always be glad when things are backing up and running down the hall that you have the tool to deal with it somewhere...somewhere...but where? WHERE?  

Never wear a clip-on tie. This is not good advice for people in occupations in which other people might want to grab them by the necktie and throttle them, such as police officers, jail guards, and oral surgeons.  

Give a firm handshake. I heard this advice a million times: "Don't give someone a wet fish to shake hands with" and finally I realized that fish don't have hands anyway.  

Compliment a love interest on their clothing choice. I used to have an old pair of yellow sweat pants, cut off at the knees, that I used for painting so often that they looked like Joseph's Pants Of Many Colors. I left them right downstairs. I haven't seem them for years.  

Keep a change of clothes at the office. Heck, if you can, keep another shirt, jacket and pants in your trunk.  It can't so any harm, but you just might be glad to have backup pants one day.  That doesn't sound right.  

Buy high quality tools, so you only have to buy them once. Good advice for the most part.  But there are plenty of tools you can get for a dollar at Dollar Tree that are just as good as what you'd pay top dollar for at Costington's, so there you are.  

When you walk, look straight ahead, not at your feet. I used to see people wandering around the cubicle farm where I worked and not paying attention to anything but their own shoes.  Oh, what a surprise, when someone crossed their path.  

No matter their job or status in life, everyone deserves your respect. What other people have learned or accomplished or helped with or seen might surprise you, and religions other than your own have millions of believers.  It doesn't take a brain surgeon to understand that.  Oooops.  

Do what needs to be done without complaining. It won't help speed things up.  It's good to see people who approach massive tasks - clearing rubble and rebuilding small midwestern towns devastated by tornadoes, cleaning dishes and putting everything away after a Turkey and Oyster Dinner at a firehouse, or helping tens of thousands survive after fleeing a civil war in their homeland - who turn to those tasks with a minimum of handwringing and a maximum of hands-on work. 

Never stop learning.  I once heard of a man of a modest station in life who had been in England during World War II and became interested in the days of the Roman Conquest of England. He read everything he could find about those days and saved his money to go to historic sites to explore.  You never know everything, but you can learn almost everything.

Don't change yourself just to make someone happy, unless that someone is you.  The people who wrote this list put a star on this tip to designate it as the most valuable one. I agree, this is good, and I see young people willing to do anything to try to please some dude or dudess who wouldn't offer them a Kleenex if they sneezed. So, don't.  Be you, and be the best you can be you.  

Luck favors the prepared. Branch Rickey, who brought Jackie Robinson to the big leagues, had a saying: "Luck is the residue of design."  Ever notice how the "lucky" people are also the ones who aren't sitting around watching "Gomer Pyle" all day long?

No one is on their deathbed wishing they spent more time at work. Enjoy your life. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge all year, not just on Christmas Eve.  Do your work, whatever it takes to put a meal over your head and a roof on the table in front of you.  Or the other way around.  But enjoy the meal and be thankful for the roof, and go live a little.

Keep on truckin'

"If memories were all I sang, I'd rather drive a truck"
                                   Rick Nelson, "Garden Party"

Fig. A

It's not easy, pushing a big truck across the nation's highways.  I see guys wheeling 40' tractor-trailers through city traffic and around suburban roundabouts, and I marvel.  Some people have a hard enough time getting their Kia Rio from home to work without riding up over a curb or plowing over a fire hydrant (figure A).

Fig. B.

But lately we have seen a spate of truck driver problems in which the driver does fine out on the road and all hell breaks loose at the end of the trip.  Consider this one:  earlier this month in Hermitage, PA, Thomas Young, 58, of Cass County, IN, was steering a milk tanker truck that he drives for Neimeyer Milk Transfer.  He was almost finished his run, and was taking the last pull on a can of Dr Pepper when he began to choke on the soda, and ran off the road into the parking lot of a car dealer.  

He wrecked 23 cars in the process, which had to be a new record for destruction done by Dr Pepper, eclipsing the old record of destroying my appetite with its odd cherry-cola-root beer flavor. 

Imagine how Mr Young felt, choking on the official soft drink of Texas as his milk tanker careered 600 feet through a grassy area, eventually smashing into a building (see Figure B) at Montrose Buick-GMC-Cadillac.  22 cars were wrecked outside, and one was pushed into the showroom.

I've always wondered how they get those cars into the showrooms!

And then...

Fig. C

A firefighter with the Weirton WV Fire Department was driving the engine out of their Station 3 on Pennsylvania Avenue the other night, and a compartment door was left open. He was only pulling up to do a little maintenance on the engine, but that flapping door caught the support beam between the bay doors, and, well, look at figure C.

Firefighters call moments like this "Dear Chief" moments, as the driver involved writes a memo to the boss about a) What Happened (I smashed up Engine 3 and Station 3) and b) How This Could Have Been Prevented (I could have taken the day off.)

 Accidents will happen, just not always out on the road!

Sunday Rerun: Brakin' The Law

Hello, there. I'm the guy you glare at, because I get to the intersection of Northern Parkway and The Alameda at about 7:05 AM, and the sign says "No right turn on red, 7 AM - 4 PM, so I don't turn right on the red light.

So honk at me all you will and give me all the fingers you need to. I don't like to break the law. For a liberal, I take a most illiberal stance on breaking the law.

I don't even like to patronize the farm stands who break the law. In our county, farmers are allowed to pack up their produce in the ol' pick-'em-up truck and sell it along the streets and roads, as long as they keep moving. Setting up a permanent roadside sales venue is not allowed, because it's not fair to the guy who built a brick-and-mortar produce stand or grocery store and has to pay taxes and so forth. But on the other hand, I'm not the one breaking the law if I stop where the farmer has pulled her pickup over on Putty Hill Avenue (if you're reading this in Kankakee or Keokuk, do you think we have oddly-named streets?) to get some sweet corn and tomatoes. I just hope that if the police dept. sends around their undercover Produce Squad, I don't get busted and wind up with my name in the newspaper ("....also being held at the Towson Precinct and charged with patronizing an illegal roadside stand, and violating the Taft-Hartley Act, was...") because they always put in your mug shot and I don't look my best in this heat.

I didn't look so great in the cold last winter either, if you want to know the truth.

But I am really on my high horse about this thing, this Stretch Spelling. When I first heard of this, I thought it must refer to Tori Spelling's really tall younger brother, for surely we know that there is no way to strrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeettttttttttttcccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhh the correct spelling of a word. Click on that website and find out what they are saying...stretch spelling is inventive spelling, Kid spelling, phonetic spelling, temporary spelling. Now this really rankles me, the more I read about it. I keep reading this sentence over and over, and still, I am rankled. Stick with me for a second:

"As children are encouraged to express their thoughts and ideas on paper, stretch spelling allows children to experiment with written language without feeling the restraints of the correct rules of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling."

Oh for the sweet love of all that is good and holy! The words of Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Byron, even Mickey Spillane and, heaven forbid, Vachel Lindsay are to be cast aside so that the class can learn more about how young Marmaduke or Mildred feel. Good-bye, Ernest Hemingway! Farewell, Garrison Keillor! Ave atque vale, John Milton! We have entered that Brave New World! Orwell, we knew it was coming. Written language is now a place to experiment. If you don't feel like spelling words correctly, pheel phree 2 mayk upp ur oan wayz too wright. Wee R pleezed 2 hav a chantz 2 cher ur pheelings. And punctuation? Why bother? Capitalization, sorry, go join spelling and pronunciation on the unemployment line. And be quick about it so that wee Wilberforce here can give us his thoughts on this one time when he went to the meadow and there was this cal and the hoarse chased the cal and we went for a hey ride.

Ring Lardner wrote like that as a parody, to show how the unlettered would express themselves. He did not mean for people to start writing like that for real!

Kids, if you are within the sound of my voice, run as fast as your little legs will carry you away from this madness. One day you will leave school and be out in a world in which people will expect you to punctuate, capitalize and spell properly. There is no stretching here in the real world; there is only the right way to punctuate, capitalize and spell. If you fall short of these standards, your words will be regarded as those of lesser import.

And I don't even blame the kids. They are the unwitting victims of a society that has forgotten what made it great. We worked, we learned, we earned the right to use the English language that was our inheritance from our forefathers. I was encouraged to express myself in writing (people seemed to prefer it to hearing from me vocally). But no teacher of mine ever encouraged me to use creativity in punctuation, spelling, grammar or pronunciation.

Ask your teacher, if he or she says it's ok to spell things wrong as long as you're expressing yourself, if it's all right to say that 4 times 5 is 19. Really, how close can you get?