What has 4 legs and chases Katz? Mrs Katz and a private detective!

ZZ Top is that boogeyin' band from Texas that did "Sharp-Dressed Man," "Gimme All Your Lovin'," "Legs," and "Sleeping Bag." They always roared up in an old hot rod with leggy Playboy-type models in their videos. The band comprises guitarist/leader/ vocalist Billy Gibbons, bassist and co-lead vocalist Dusty Hill, and drummer Frank Beard.

Gibbons and Hill have beards that reach to Delaware from here when the wind blows right.  Beard...has no beard.

This is Herbert L. "Larry' Fedora, head football coach at the University of North Carolina.  Though his name is Fedora, I can find no picture of him wearing a fedora-style hat.  He always seems to wear one of those visors.

We know that a lot of names derive from occupations people had while Chaucer was riding to Canterbury, such as John, the guy who made loaves for eating sandwiches, became John Baker, and Stanley, who made barrels, was Stanley Cooper, and the guy who sold them stones for wedding rings was, of course, Jared Diamond. (They went to him way back then, too!)

I remember asking Richard Nixon to fix me a burger and some fries, but he just shook his head and said, "I am not a cook!"

Names can also have NOTHING to do with their bearer.

At 13, tossed on the windy seas of whether I would live to see 14 or not, I madly crushed on a young lady who took care of me at Mercy Hospital:  Nurse Payne. Somewhere there must be a Mr Brewer who can't stand the taste of beer, and I once met a Reverend van Damme.

Moreover, there is no evidence that Marco Polo, creator of a call-and-response game still popular all over America, ever played any sort of mallet game on the back of a horse.

Alexander the "Average"

And, saddest of all, Alexander's wife confided to an early tabloid that her husband was not all that Great.

Today in history!

On this date in 1973, Australia held a referendum on the subject of prices and incomes, according to Wikipedia.  I don't know what that entailed, but I imagine that people voted in favor of higher incomes and lower prices.

15340 days have passed since that day (2191.3 weeks). All around the world, 364,000 babies were born on that day...all of whom are in their 40s now.

Running back John Cappelletti of Penn State won the Heisman Trophy.

Columns like this always mention the price of a gallon of gas or a quart of milk, but trust me, you don't want to know them.

"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John was the #1 record that week, although my favorite record was "Photograph" by Ringo Starr.

It was the 48th birthday of Samuel George Davis, Jr, from Harlem, who is better known as Sammy. And I mean that, man.

That week's TV Guide (15 cents!!!) featured Mary Tyler Moore, Valerie Harper and Georgia Engel from that show about the woman who could turn the world on with a smile.

Another woman whose smile lights my world to this very day married me that day in Towson, Maryland.  We were just a couple of crazy kids in love, and neither of those conditions have changed.

Thank you, Peggy, for your incomparable love and devotion!  It's been a blind date that never ended, nor will it ever!  My advice for everyone who asks is to fall in love with someone who will also be your best friend for life. Peggy, you are everything to me.  Thanks for putting up with me for 42 years!  I love you.

"We could have just sat there and cried, but we didn't"

In California lives a little girl, 12 years old, who has cancer. Lexi Brown is her name, and she is fighting as strongly as any little saint you ever heard of.  She speaks on cancer at schools, and she helped make a Make A Wish ice cream flavor and ran a St. Baldrick's fundraiser that brought in over $34,000 together.

She is not giving in without a fight, bless her heart.  

Now, as it happens, her chemotherapy to combat tumors in her lungs turned her hair and eyebrows white, which signalled other problems.

The doctors said Lexi's heart was working at 15%, and it was off to Mattel Children's Hospital at UCLA for the brave young lady. Her mom, Lisa, and stepfather, Jon, were there too in Lexi's room at the hospital, which faced Fraternity Row at the U of California Los Angeles campus.  Just to get a smile and see what would happen, Lexi and her mom made up a sign that said SEND PIZZA.

Here's the part that reminds me that things are still the way we think they only USED to be.  A member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon house saw the sign and got busy.  

"Five guys come in, and they had a guitar and dozen roses and
a box of pizza," Lisa said. "They introduced themselves and
said, 'We saw your sign; we're here.' They stayed for a half an
hour, they sang this song and I started bawling my head off. I'm
like,'I can't believe these people are here for my child.'"

Lisa pointed out that the frat guys were 18 to 24 years of age, they didn't know the family of the sick girl, and,"... it's just ridiculous."

When the guys found out that Lexi is into soccer, they got a guy from the soccer team to come over and spend time with her. UCLA's quarterback, Josh Rosen, dropped in with passes for a game when she left the hospital.   

And the college people kept on coming.  The men and women from the rowing team, the swim team and the tennis team came over, along with Campus Christian Ministry and some sorority women.

But even beyond the initial visit, after you might think the novelty of visiting the ailing young lady would have worn off...they kept coming to see her. 

"When the brothers got back from visiting Lexi, you could see
that they were all glowing, knowing that they had done
something good for the community," said SAE chapter president
Kevin Autran.

Lisa and Lexi

"It was contagious. And brothers stepped up to go visit her essentially every day. Some just stopped by to give her a little gift like a shirt or a teddy bear, and some stayed for hours to hang out with her."

And the hospital looked the other way when the guys took to hanging around until midnight, keeping Lexi company. And wouldn't you know, they loved to play a card game with her, a game called "Speed" - and she won every game. 

Lexi's hospital view

   

The SAE house always gets decorated with tons of lights for the holidays.  So one night, they lit her name on the roof facing her room with yellow light spelling out her name.

And then...when they found out her favorite color is purple...they changed the bulbs and they now say LEXI in that color. With a beating red heart above that.

The lights are still on at the frat house, while Lexi is back home in Santa Maria, California, continuing the fight.  Autran said the lights will stay up for her. 

"We're going through hell right now," Lisa said. "But we don't treat Lexi any different than we do our 14­ year ­old son, or these boys. It has just been a joy in a time when we could have just sat there and cried, but we didn't. I can't even tell you."

"I never knew that so many young adults had it in them."

I found this story over the past weekend, when it seemed like, for the umpteenth time in the past few years, the world was going to hell in a very fast handbasket.  I am really glad that I did.

Sunday Rerun: What do I know?

If you've a) never seen a movie called "Ghost World," and you b) plan to see it and c) hate spoilers, you might as well mosey over here for something to read today.

Birch and Buscemi

OK?  Still with me?  All right. I've been hearing about "Ghost World" since it came out in 2001, and as I sit in myrecliner de rehab, scanning the channel guide for anything to keep from falling into my old Young And Restless addiction, I found it on the MGM channel and DVR'ed it and watched it.


There is a famous event in our history, had to be fifteen years ago, in our old house, Peggy and my Dad and I were watching a movie called "Rambling Rose."  Laura Dern was in it.  I sat there for the entire length of the movie, and then the closing credits spun up on the screen and I found myself hollering, "What the hell HAPPENED? Nothing HAPPENED!"  


I guess something happened, all right, but Dern if I know what.  It's all cloaked in symbolism, you see.  So I watch this Ghost World, and of course I tell Peggy that Steve Buscemi was once a New York firefighter, which means that he was once a member of the best fire department in the world, before he became an actor.  And the movie was interesting, and Thora Birch, the young actress who shared top billing with Buscemi and Scarlett Johansson, was quite impressive as an alienated, confused teenager with issues to work on.  So she has to take an art class in order to be graduated from high school, and she has talent in that field, but as her final project, turns in a grotesquely offensive sign she got from an R Crumb sort of oddball she met through a nasty prank, and she gets a scholarship but loses it and flunks the course and she does the oddball but he loses his job and she gets on a bus and rides away.  


I ought to work for TV Guide, capsulizing plotlines, huh?

Thing is, I guess you were supposed to think that when she got on the bus, she was committing suicide, because an old guy used to sit at the bus stop and he got on the bus after saying he was moving away, so you have to figure she's gone now?   

I guess I'm too obtuse for symbolism.  I'm always being told that I miss things in literature because I only read the words and don't see the meanings behind them.  Same with the movies.  When my more intelligent friends and wife discuss things, I overhear nuggets such as,"When he reached for the bread knife, he was symbolically castrating himself" and, "That scene where the cousin dropped a framed photograph of his mother and the maid had to vacuum up the glass while "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" played on the old Victrola was a brilliant representation of the cousin's repressed Oedipal desires."   

And Mr Literal here just figured that the cousin wanted to get with the maid.  Please  - spell it out for me!

The Saturday Picture Show, December 5, 2015

This is a seriously old ginkgo tree.  It's in the Gu Guanyin Temple, Zhongnan Mountains, Xi’an, in the Shaanxi province in China. The temple itself was built in 628, during the Tang dynasty.  It’s said this ginkgo tree was planted by Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong himself.  And here I have trouble getting a dogwood tree to take root.

Mark Zuckerberg  and his wife Priscilla Chan welcomed little baby girl Max to the wonderful world of Facebook this week.  There is absolutely nothing to 'dislike' about that!

Yes, this is just what it looks like...an Outback being towed by an Outback and the driver stopped for lunch at an Outback, and parked Outfront.

What we see here is a reflecting lake, still as glass, and reflecting what's above it...I saved this picture to the Cloud just in case.

I know the trend in restaurant service is to put everything in the computer. This is probably a great thing, and helpful in getting the right Kobe burger out to the right people.  But even if, in your mind, you think of your customers as "OLD," "BLK," or "PREGO," you might not want to put that on the bill where they will see it. Magdalena, there is much more to everyone than any one-word descriptor can express.  So how about going with "BLUE SHIRT" or "WIRE RIM GLASSES" next time?

I guess this guy has the right to compare himself with Abe, because he is Ralph Lincoln, 16th descendant of the 16th president. Honestly!

Ice covers speed limit sign and slides right off.  Someone ought to make a movie about this and call it "Frozen."

This is just part of the great Christmas train garden at Baltimore City Engine 45 on Cross County Bl and Glen Av. Information is on this page.  I've been going to this since I was in high school and it's an annual holiday highlight!

Look Ma, no hands!

Google thinks they're really ahead of the curve with the driverless cars that they're testing, but there was a man 50-some years ago who drove a magic car that folded up like a briefcase when he got to work.

So what if it was George Jetson!  Your point being?

Back to real life, one of the Googlemobiles was stopped for driving too slowly last month...this took place in California where police stopped a car with no driver for driving 24 mph in a 35-mph zone.

Can you just imagine the officer walking up to the car and seeing no one at the wheel?  "Uh...invisible license and registration, please..."

I have no idea why Google is spending a fortune on driverless cars. How useful can they be?  How can they pay tolls - by having a saucer full of change on the front seat, and having the tolltaker reach in and take the fare?

How do they talk to the drive-thru window person at McDonald's?

How do they roll down the window to holler at other drivers? Oh that's right.  There is no one to do the hollering.

Google says its cars have a "library of various sirens" and they have an inner app to identify them, so when an police car, fire engine or medic unit come up on them, the car will "drive more conservatively until it has a better sense of where the
sirens are coming from." And the automatic autos have cameras for eyes to "see" flashing lights at an intersection, so they will yield to the emergency vehicle.


That's nice.  I still don't get the point of replacing a human driver who would work for $50,000 a year with a device that costs $50,000,000, but that's just me.

Google says their robot cars have been on the roads for 6 years, have driven over 2 million miles, and have had 17 "minor incidents," which is what I told my father it was when I skidded on ice that time.  They also say that their driverless cars have never been the cause of an accident, which, again, is what I told my father that snowy morning.

Here's what I really love about the Googlenews on this brave new world of unmanned Impalas. Last week, they received a patent for a device that will equip its cars with robotic hands to make hand gestures.

This is science following mankind!  I see people making gestures all the time with their hands, or sometimes, just one finger.

Poetry in motion

The other night, the Baltimore Ravens won a Monday Night football game in a most improbable way.  Just as it appeared that the Cleveland Browns were about to kick the tie-breaking, winning field goal as time ran out, that did not happen.  That kick was blocked by Ravens defensive end Brent Urban, and I cheered as safety Will Hill picked up the bouncing ball and ran it back for the winning touchdown.

I cheered for Will Hill for several reasons, first of which being that the Ravens won the game, in a season that has only seen that happen four times now.  And because he has had his setbacks, personal and professional, so it's good to see him in the spotlight.

And also because his name rhymes.

There are not many of us who go through life with names that rhyme, and while I haven't met all of the others, I am quite certain that they have all the experience of telling their name to restaurant hostesses, police officers, and the kid handing out study hall passes, only to hear the other person say, "Hey! Your name...it rhymes!"

Hey, no kidding!  No one ever told me that before!

It was a handy thing to have a memorable name when I was a radio DJ.  People often asked me if I were using a fake name, and in my more puckish moments, I would claim to have been born 

"Lee V. Mediately."

My little joke.

Anyway, just for the sake of Mr Will The Thrill Hill and the rest of us, here are some other rhymin'-Simons...

Movie actress from Fay Wray. The star of the original King Kong and not much else.

Jack Black, who was in the remade version of King Kong, the one that apes the original.  

Harry Carey, who played in cowboy movies for a long time.  And he is not the same as baseball announcer Harry Caray, although Harry was born Harry Carabina.

Cheri Oteri, for whom we all cheered when she played a cheerleader on Saturday Night Live.

Jacques Chirac, who was President of France from 1995-2007.

Shaquille O'Neal, who played basketball, and now does commercials for every product that requires endorsement from a very large man.

Wavy Gravy, who was the partially toothless hippie who announced breakfast in bed for 400,000 at Woodstock.  His real name is Hugh Romney, and even though I desperately wish that he were Mitt Romney's long-lost brother, that is not the case.  (Mitt Romney, therefore, serves as his own brother.)

Faye Dunaway, who was Bonnie to Warren Beatty's Clyde.

Your dress seems familiar...

If you travel around these here United States, you might wind up in a LaQuinta hotel in Houston, Kingston, Texarkana, Monterey, Ferriday, Santa Fe, Tallapoosa, Glen Rock, Black Rock, or Little Rock, as the old song "I've Been Everywhere" said.

So after your long hard day making sales calls or installing mainframe computers or building new Toyota dealerships, you come back to your hotel room after dinner at Cracker Barrel and you slide off the sateen upholstery of the "easy" chair in your room and turn on the news.  And you notice something...the female meteorologist is wearing the same dress as the female meteorologist was wearing in the last town you visited.

Those who are on the road will tell you that there is hardly anything to distinguish one city from another anymore.  The same hotels, the same banks, drugstore chains, burger joints and muffler replacement shops are there in every town.  The only way to tell where you are is by seeing what football jersey or ballcap most of the locals are sporting.

And this dress thing, while not part of an organized campaign to get all the women who do the weather to dress in uniforms, is the result of a few needs they have. Lyndsay Tapases, from WBTV in Charlotte, NC, told BuzzFeed News,"The goal is to look polished, professional, and credible. But finding business casual that is also flattering, stylish, and comfortable can be difficult — especially since most women are also looking for dresses with sleeves."

The Homeyee Women’s stretch tunic pencil sheath dress fills the bill, and it only costs $22.99 on Amazon. (The woman who tells you about the cold front over Akron is not yet making Oprah money, and saving money on wardrobe is a must.)

(Am I all alone in thinking that a "pencil sheath" is something to use to carry writing implements around?)

“More than 50 of us purchased the dress, so if you travel and watch the news, you might see something familiar,” Jennifer Myers from Dallas’s Fox 4 wrote on Facebook.

Ms Tapases said that the dress comes in bold, fun colors, and the word got around the private Facebook group for female meteorologists that this dress was a great buy and fits in with station dress codes for on-air staff.  Many stations frown on patterned fabrics, and most do not wish their personalities to display decolletage, even on men.

You'll notice no one is wearing the green version of the dress, if one even exists.  Notice the green screen behind them as they work; that's the chromakey effect that allows them to be superimposed over a map of Greater Cedar Rapids.  So, no green clothing if you're on TV, even on March 17.

None of these women are old enough to realize how much their outfits remind me of Jackie Kennedy.

You're the only one

I have a prized record album among my many treasures, a 1964 concert recording called "Jerry Lee Lewis: The Greatest Live Show on Earth."  The first words you hear on the record are the emcee of this concert saying, "Live! from the Birmingham Municipal Auditorium, in the WVOK Shower of Stars, the one...the only...Jerry Lee Lewis!"

And then, Jerry Lee comes out and sings and plays.  I got this record in high school and now own it on CD as well, and so as a conservative estimate, I would say I have listened to that concert 17 million times over the years, or fewer.

But it wasn't until just the other day that I listened closely enough to hear what the DJ said at first.  (It had to be a DJ; no one else talks like that!) 

"The one...the only."

And it dawned on me, a little late because I'm dim that way, that we are ALL the ONE and ONLY whoever we are.  You are the only YOU!

Even Jerry Lee Lewis, the rock 'n' roll pioneer born in 1935 in Ferriday, LA, who is often confused with funnyman/philanthropist Jerry Lewis (born Joseph Levitch, Newark NJ, 1926), is the only Jerry Lee Lewis, as far as fame and accomplishment go.  It is entirely possible that there are other people named Jerry Lee Lewis running around, but that's not my point.

What is my point (and you knew I'd get to it sometime today) is that there is only one of each of us.  Each human has his or her strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, private joys and sorrows and public versions of the same as well. I talk to young people a lot (they are the only people I can find who haven't heard all my tales and yarns) and one point I try to make to them is that their individuality is so important.  If we see each other as cookie-cutter versions of everyone else, that means we are only looking at the surface.  What's in each cookie...each person...is what makes us unique.  We have two cats.  Eddie runs to the door when company comes, ready to show off and be adored.  Deanna runs to the basement, peering up the stairs to see when it's safe to come out again.  Two sister cats; two personalities.  

I like hominy and sausage, art that looks real, and music from the heart.  I despise lies, and meanness, and sad goodbyes.  We all could go on and you're not ever going to find someone else with all the same favorites and dislikes, and how wonderful that is.

Thank you for being the one...the only...YOU!

Blame it on Rio

It's never too soon to start tryouts for the 2016 Summer Olympics, being held next August in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  One leading contender for the high jump team is Joseph Caputo, 22, of Stamford, Connecticut, who is appearing in federal court this morning after being arrested on Thanksgiving Day, a holiday he chose to celebrate by jumping the totally impenetrable fence surrounding the White House.

Always on the alert, the Secret Service dropped everything they were doing, and hauled young Caputo off to detention, shortly after he landed near Mrs Obama's vegetable patch, near where Sam Donaldson used to deliver his news reports while hoping his toupee would not blow off. 

Caputo's the first to jump the fence by using his own two feet since spikes were added to the fence in order to make it completely unjumpable.

The Secret Service, reeling from a cascade of news stories about drunken agents smashing up patrol cars and consorting with prostitutes, was quick to claim credit for tackling Caputo, and also wants us to know that the blimps that used to fly over Northeast Maryland only allowed one mailman from Florida to land on the White House grounds in a gyro-copter.  Later, one of the blimps decamped, and the other deflated quicker than the Ravens' playoff chances.

Apparently believing this to be a suicide mission, Caputo left behind a note reading, in part, "Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around us who transform into the Force." 

I'm told that this is a reference to "Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith."  I wouldn't know anything about that.  I will shuffle off to Buffalo not having a second of my life invested in any Star Wars movie, anything to do with Star Trek, or Indiana Jones, or an pasted-together teen zombie romance with brooding pasty-faced romantic teen zombies.


Nor will you find me in DC wearing the American flag as a cape, carrying a flash drive in the shape of a Captain American shield, weightlifting gloves, or a pocket guide to the Constitution, all things Caputo had on his person when he leaped into history.

However, if I am apprehended and charged with aggravated pluralism, I can explain it if I am carrying a bag with CDs by Enya, Adele and Yo-Yo Ma. Trust me; they are gifts.

Sunday Rerun: The Department of Redundancy Department

Here's an interesting word: "tautology," defined as saying the same thing two or more times. The word comes from the Greek words “tauto” (the same) and “logos” (a word or an idea).  Saying that "applesauce is a sauce made of apples" would be an example.  

Dan Snyder owns the Washington team in the National Football League.  I'm not going to get into the whole thing about the team's name, which many people regard as offensive, but Snyder, whose name comes from the Greek words "Sny" (smug) and "der" (rich guy), is on the record as saying "The name of the team is the name of the team," which makes me wanna holla, and shout, and call out, and shriek.  Repetition is unnecessary and uncalled for.  Do you see what I mean, do you understand?

I'll tell you why that sort of verbal excess annoys me, and that's because it's usually done in an attempt to pose the speaker as some great thinker.  The first person who said, "It is what it is" must have thought they were really onto something.  Now it's the catchphrase for when we don't know what to say.  Your boss came in and laid down an order banning use of your personal social media during the workday? "It is what it is!"  You were making a nice roast for dinner but the timer didn't ding and now that rump roast is a smoldering cinder?  "It is what it is."  You wanted to have a picnic, but a tropical storm swept through your town?  "The weather is what the weather is."

This old songbook hangs around in my den,
where I do no algebra (and hardly any geometry!)

In my 10th grade Algebra II classroom, the teacher, Mr Dittmar, had a huge banner across the breadth of the chalkboard.  In freehand calligraphy, the banner read "Any number multiplied by zero equals zero." When I took Algebra II again that summer, that fact stuck with me, as it does today, every time I use algebra in my daily life. 2(3h-1)+4h=10(2-3h)+38h, you say?   That's a long way of saying "h=11."

Why not just say h=11 in the first place?

The Saturday Picture Show, November 25, 2015

I think we've all been in this position...you get to somewhere really cool, but all the while, you're wondering how you're going to get out of it!

This is no way to make friends, but it will be snowy season here in Baltimore soon enough.  Time to gather tiny doll-sized hats, scarves and gloves to make a little snow family of your own!

In the tradition of overstuffed holiday food...to go along with the Turducken (a chicken within a duck within a turkey) we present for your approval the piecaken: apple, pecan and pumpkin pies baked within a cake.  Your doctor said, "Go ahead...it's fine!"

I don't know where this is, but it looks like the setting for one of those "It was a dark and stormy night" mystery stories!

A man in Russia decided that the best way to keep his money safe from thieves was to put it in plastic bags and hide the bags in his giant jars of raspberry compote.  But the juice turned so tart, the bags and the money dissolved!

Best part of Thanksgiving dinner is leftover sandwiches, with cranberry sauce and stuffing and turkey!  Ummmmmmmmmmm!

This had to be 1965 or '66.  If you don't remember the name "Norma Tanega," you certainly remember her big record, "Walking My Cat Named 'Dog' "!

A tobacco barn in Kentucky.  I saw on the news that medical science is working on a cure for HIV by growing certain proteins on tobacco plants, thereby giving a plant that has caused so much sickness over the years a chance to end so much sickness.  It's a remarkable world!

Adding injury to injury

It's a tough life if you are a player in the National Football League, especially for quarterbacks, who often find themselves being tossed around like sacks of flour by large men wearing different colored jerseys.

Or having their knee torn up by being rolled over by a large man wearing the same colored jersey.

Either way, it hurts to get hurt. We only get one brain, and because we are prone to conking ourselves, the brain was designed to be protected from impact by cerebral spinal fluid. But if you slam the melon hard enough, you get a concussion. That's when a blow to the head causes the brain to hit the skull.

The league has clear rules and protocols for when a player "gets his bell rung" and is staggering about on the field like your cousin Ronnie that time he was 13 and found some beer in the basement. That's how St Louis Rams quarterback Case Keenum looked in the closing minutes of Sunday's game against the Baltimore Ravens.

The policy is clear. Twenty or more medical staffers are paid to monitor players during games, and there is a spotter up in the press box who can stop the game, and have removed any player who needs to be checked for concussion.

So why did the Rams allow Keenum to grab his helmet (a sure sign of an aching head) and reel about woozily as the game was coming to end and they were trying to win over the Ravens?

Fisher

"There is no TV replays on our sideline, and we did not see it on our Jumbotron," Rams head coach Jeff Fisher said. "Had we seen that, we would have taken a different course of action. But we were not aware of that."


So the League was holding a "mandatory conference call" the other day to holler at the athletic trainers. No one will ask Jeff Fisher to take time from his busy Grecian Formula-applying schedule to explain why he failed to replace the reeling Keenum for even one play. As it happened, Keenum was not at his best, and who knows if a substitute would have turned the ball over to Baltimore in the final minute, allowing the hapless Ravens to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

And as that game wound down, Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco suffered a serious knee injury at the hands, or more accurately at the feet, of a teammate who rolled back over him.  Flacco finished the last several plays, putting the Ravens in position to win with a field goal, even though he had a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and a torn medial collateral ligament (MCL).

This meant that for the first time in his career, Flacco will miss games because of injury.  That's called being short on luck (SOL).

I wish him the best, and salute his courage.  Most of us would have been calling out sick with that sort of hurting.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hip Huggers

Haggis, I guess

Lutefisk, I suppose

I have to realize that with every topic I might talk about here, there's a chance that someone out there might be...involved...with what I'm writing about.  For instance, I might talk about how I am not interested in eating haggis or lutefisk, but someone out there somewhere might be a big fan of "pudding containing sheep's pluck (heart, liver and lungs); minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock" (that's haggis, a Scottish delicacy) or "dried whitefish treated with lye" (that would be the Minnesota favorite lutefisk).

If you're serving either of these gastronomic ghastlies, please include me out!

Now, then. (Ever wonder where that came from? Now is not then, nor is it right the other way around.)  At any rate (6.86%) I don't think I know anyone who has engaged the services of a professional cuddler.

They do exist. A fella named Evan Carp up in Pennsylvania opened it up a couple of years ago, and there are others in operation...one of them in Anne Arundel County, MD. 

Mr Carp has a disease that causes extreme pain in his hands and feet and was so alone that he said he only went out once a month, and that was to go to the doctor. He had heard of other cuddling operations around the country, felt that cuddling would help him in physical, emotional, and financial ways, and started a company to handle the business.  And it's going strong.

He now has 30 employees taking in $80 per hour ($400 all night) for totally platonic snuggling.  Most of them are women whose customers are men.

You might want to sit down and catch your breath after that news.

Lonely businessmen, widowers, people who just abandoned their campaigns for president: all of these types are naturals to part with 80 clams to lie down with a woman whose nails are drying anyway for the next hour.

They guarantee that nothing untoward happens at these cuddle palaces, and I believe it. It's just a sad, lonely world when people can't find other people willing to hold them in their arms for a while and listen to NPR or some old records or watch anything or work the Jumble ("That Scrambled Word Game").

Julie Swope, a psychologist, says there's a benefit to snuggling, and that it can change the brain. “It increases the endorphins, and endorphins are the substances that help us feel good, so we get a jolt, we get a glow, we get a smile” said Swope.

This is for all the lonely people.

A Tale of Two Blood Samples

Peggy goes to the Q. Diagnostic Center:

The whole way over to Towson, her car is borne aloft by the wings of angels, and it seems to park itself in the giant garage, where a team of valets waits to detail the Corolla in the 4 minutes she will be away from it.

She steps into the lobby as a man in a big red coat and snappy uniform hat holds the door for her.  An elevator attendant has the car ready for her to step into.  A sofa is in the elevator for her to rest while she rides up four stories, and then she steps off the elevator just as a smiling employee holds the door, offers her a nice cold water and takes her right back into the blood draw area, which has opened long before the scheduled 7:30 start just because.

Robert Wagner, wearing a velvet blazer with a silk scarf and shirt, is there waiting for her with a dozen mixed roses.  They chat amiably during the 13 seconds it takes to select a vein and draw enough blood.  As she leaves the room, Celine Dion music is on the radio, and Peggy wafts back to the car on an ocean breeze of love and good feeling.  On the way home, cars seem to part like Moses and the Red Sea, and she is home in minutes.

Mark goes to the Q. Diagnostic Center:

Every nutball between here and Towson is out this morning, making left turns from the right lane, pulling out of Dunkin Dognuts with a Bavarian Creme in their right hand and a Mocha Chocolata YaYa in the other while steering with their knees, and speeding like it's Indianapolis.  OF COURSE the person pulling into the garage ahead of me miscalculates how to pull up to the parking ticket dispenser, so they have to get out and take 20 minutes to get their ticket.  Once parked, I get in the elevator and get to the blood center at 0704.  Minutes later, a lady comes along to be second in line, but she asks if I am in a hurry because SHE has to go to work and it doesn't look like I have to. And then along comes a senior couple, and the lady starts jawing with them about how there didn't used to be a bench to sit on but now there is and her daughter moved back in with her two kids and a baby and the dogs and she had to teach her daughter how to roast a turkey so they did that yesterday and for Thanksgiving she is making the Lithuanian side dish that everyone loves so much, and also a pie, but pumpkin this year because apple is too sugary, and we had a pecan pie and we were going to freeze 1/2 of it but we kept eating until there wasn't enough to freeze and isn't a shame about Joe Flacco.

They run through every vegetable, appetizer, side dish and entree that has ever been served at any Thanksgiving dinner.  Of course, because I have to fast, hearing about great heaping plates spilling over with turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy does not bother me a bit.

The receptionist opens the door at precisely 7:30 and we file in. No phlebotomist is around, but she walks in at 0733 with a cheery greeting for her coworker ("What you opening early for?" "I didn't!") and five minutes later calls me back with this pleasant invitation ("Clark!  Room 1!").

"In The Air Tonight," the most deadly horrible of all the awful songs in the Phil Collins canon, is pounding off the walls and into my ears as I sit gently upon the Throne Of Blood.  The phlebotomist can't get enough red stuff out of my right arm and mumbles that I need to drink more.

Finally! Just what I've been waiting to hear!  And from a medical professional, no less.  I go home and take her advice.

Fun and Games in Pittsburgh

RayRay

Oakland Raiders player Aravious "Ray-Ray" Armstrong, 24, is in trouble in Pennsylvania. His offense?  He lifted his jersey and pounded his chest at a dog who was attending the game at mustard-colored Heinz Field in Pittsburgh.

To be correct, the dog was at the game because he is a police K-9 pooch whose handler was on duty there. I mean, who would choose to go to a game there?

It is a third degree felony in that state to taunt a police dog.

Deputy Maria Watts told a Pittsburgh TV station that Armstrong was hollering, "Hey dog!  Hey dog!" as he came out of the locker room for the pregame merriment.  The dog, known as Bandit, became agitated at this, so Armstrong toyed with it a bit more. And then Deputy Watts filed charges.

This increased the dog's angst level, which was already considerable to begin with that day, considering that Michael Vick was also there.

Two things about this:  a) when I walk around our neighborhood I encounter two dogs within fences who bark their fool heads off as I ankle by.  My customary reaction is to bark back at them.  I speak fluent dog.  And this generally settles them down, as they are not used to having people speak their language.

2) it is so good to know that all the crime in Pixburgh is under control and that no miscreants are at large, thus allowing Deputy Watts to pursue felony charges against a man for speaking to a dog. 

Bandit-Bandit

My free advice to Ray-Ray's attorney would be to point out that Bandit The Dog needs glasses, so how can we be sure that Armstrong is the one who called him a dog?

Sunday Rerun: Book 'Em!

My dear friend Amanda Sheridan-Stokely, as kind a person as there is on this earth, challenged me to name ten books that have stayed with me. Well, I sat down and listed ten books without even blinking, and then, with a moment's thought, typed five more titles and thought I'd better slow down.  Sorry to exceed the request, but books are my friends, and have been since I figured out that's where all the information was. Who can limit the number of friends they love?

My list follows:

The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger - Show me a teenager who hasn't read this, and I'll show you a teenager who hasn't read it yet. It sums up everything there is to say about being between Phoebe's age and Holden Caulfield's parents' ages, with nod to the ageless Allie, somewhere between the two forever.

The Ring Lardner Reader - Ring Lardner - The master of American colloquial writing, Lardner was an expert chronicler of baseball, war, and life among the hopeful and hopeless.

How To Talk Dirty and Influence People - Lenny Bruce -When I was a kid, people said Lenny was a "dirty" comedian, which is like describing the Mona Lisa as an "old" painting.  Lenny skewered the hypocrites, the racists, and the warmongers like they had never been skewered before or since.

Up In The Old Hotel - Joseph Mitchell - Mitchell wrote for The New Yorker about life on the more seedy and salty sides of New York from 1938 - 1964, although he remained in the employ of the magazine until his death in 1996. He suffered 32 years of writer's block, never publishing another word after his final book, "Joe Gould's Secret."  Fascinating man.

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote - Capote took the notion of writing about a real crime as if it were a novel in the story of the murders of the Clutter family in Kansas in 1959. Not a whodunit or a how-did-he-do-it, more of an example of great writing and investigation.

Yes, I Can - Sammy Davis, Jr. - If this story of a man who never attended school or had formal instruction in singing, dancing, acting, doing impressions or playing music, and yet became a master of all those arts, had been fiction, people would have considered it too far-fetched. There was only one Sammy, the man who once said "There are only three people who matter to me: Sammy, Davis, and Junior."

The Keillor Reader - Garrison Keillor - The Bard of Lake Wobegon recently published this collection of radio transcripts, speeches, newspaper columns and the like.  A multi-talented man, much like Sammy, but with the ego pointing inwardly.

Washington Goes to War - David Brinkley - Longtime NBC news anchor, and the man for whom the word "wry" seems to have been invented, wrote about DC in the World War II era.  His autobiography is also fascinating, if only for being the only autobiography I can recall by a person who said his mother just didn't seem to like him very much.  Hey, I guess it happens.

Chips Off The Old Benchley - Robert Benchley - Essayist, Broadway critic for The New Yorker, movie actor, and wit. In all his comic essays, he portrayed himself as a whimsical semi-fool, hiding the fact that in real life he was a serial philanderer and serious alcoholic.  I'm grateful for not having known that when I fell in love with the words of the bumbling semi-fool.

On The Road - Jack Kerouac - The beatnik bible, the story of the man who fell under the spell of wanderlust in postwar America and started an entire new trend in writing.

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby - Tom Wolfe - speaking of new trends in writing, this is the first volume collecting former newspaperman Wolfe's writings as he led the way into the New Journalism - telling the facts with pizzaz and lots of onomatopoeia.  Bang!  Zoom! You gotta read this book! Here is one sentence from his article on stock car racer/moonshiner Junior Johnson: "Cars, miles of cars, in every direction, millions of cars, pastel cars, aqua green, aqua blue, aqua beige, aqua buff, aqua dawn, aqua dusk, aqua Malacca, Malacca lacquer, Cloud lavender, Assassin pink, Rake-a-cheek raspberry, Nude Strand coral, Honest Thrill orange, and Baby Fawn Lust cream-colored cars are all going to the stock car races, and that old mothering North Carolina sun keeps exploding off the windshields."  Not the sort of writing we had seen before.

Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters - John Waters - Baltimore's gift to oddball living shows his versatility: filmmaker-turned-essayist.

The Entertainer - Margaret Talbot - I love this book, written by New Yorker staff writer Talbot about her father, character actor Lyle Talbot, the eternal sidekick in movies and TV (and also father of Stephen Talbot, who played Gilbert on "Leave It To Beaver" and is now an award-winning documentarian). Lyle's career began in tent shows and medicine shows and circuses, and the story is the story of American show business in the 20th Century seen through the eyes of someone who worked in most aspects of that business.

The Little Engine That Could - Platt and Munk - The first book I ever read, and it gave me encouragement to read more, so I haven't stopped.

Webster's Dictionary - Noah Webster et al -  Because, every word in the other books is in this one, too.  It's just a matter of arranging them nicely.

And now that I finish, I realize I left out Jean Shepherd, John Updike, Studs Terkel, Roger Kahn, E.B. White, and dozens of authors I also love.   

Let's do this again soon!

The Saturday Picture Show, November 21, 2015

50% of the people who live in our house love accordion music.  I even have a CD called "Legends of Accordion." Nothing beats a squeezbox for fun music, and yet, here's what some people do to a helpless accordion.

Grapes are such a versatile fruit.  They can turn into alcohol (wine) or just a plain beverage (grape juice) but I like them best when they get jammed up with peanut butter on a sammidge.

When the miracle of TV came along, and flickering black-and-white images on a tiny screen were the top of the line in techno, who would have dreamed that in a few decades we could still see football played on a screen that was almost lifesize?

I love the impedimenta of ceremonies, like the giant check that charities receive as donor and recipient grip and grin, and also these huge scissors that they use in our county to cut the ribbons to open a new road that was built solely to help me get to Geresbeck's faster.

Thanksgiving dinner by Rockwell...but does anyone understand why they would carve the bird at the table?  Makes more sense to slice it up in the kitchen and put it on a platter, but that's just me...

A friend asked me for a recommendation for a romance movie. There's never been a better one than "Casablanca," if you ask me.

Traveling this week, are you?  Happy Thanksgiving!  Tell Mr Griffith I said hi, if you meet him on the road...

I've been eating sweet potato pie since before Patti LaBelle was a Bluebell, and for my money, it's better than pumpkin pie any day...especially this Thursday!

He's no hero

Dinner is served...

When Jared Fogle was arrested earlier this year, Peggy and I looked at each in the same way that millions of others looked at it. We knew he was nerdy; we didn't figure on the pervy part.


But off he goes now for 15 years in the federal prison system, after committing sex crimes that would make both Caligula and Charlie Sheen cringe and shudder with dismay. 

There will be no Subway subs, no five-dollar foot loooooooongs, for Fogle until the year 2030.  The BMT will not be stopping by his cell.  As it said in the New York Daily News, "(t)he Federal Bureau of Prisons’ national menu only offers a bland buffet of daily options that make a Subway restaurant seem like five-star dining."

If you're new to the story, the sandwich chain was paying Fogle a king's ransom for advertising their products, since he said their turkey and veggie subs helped him pull down a 245-pound weight loss. Turns out he was pulling all our chains.

But in the Big House, he'll be served about 2,200 calories a day, more than he'd be getting on his old diet, and more than Dr Oz would recommend also.

But while he sits and stews and doesn't get to eat stew, it might be good if he beefs up a little more, because his attorney said in court that losing all that weight set off "insatiable hyper-sexuality." And what recourse does a hypersexual have, but to get into kiddie porn and sex with children?   

He'll be seeing a lot of bean soup and baked fish, boiled eggs and PB & Js for the next decade and a half.

I'm no expert in this matter, so all I can say is, if losing weight gets us all that worked up, maybe we all should keep our fat pants on. 

Poor Jared will be dressed in orange for fifteen years. I hope it seems to take 15 decades.

Hu said coffee is good for you?

Everyone's got a deal, and here is mine: It's just like the weather...if you hear something is bad for you, wait ten minutes and someone else will come along and tell you it's ok.

Red meat bad!  No, red meat is ok as long as you don't grill it! Wait a while; red meat is ok but chicken is bad and eggs are worse!  Undercooked pork used to be bad and we were told we'd get lockjaw, and maybe some of us should have, but trichinosis turned out to be less of a threat to us than slipping on banana peels, which was a staple of cartoon fun, but you never saw it happen to anyone in real life.

And now, for those who were told that coffee and its caffeine would send you to the Pearly Gates Starbucks way too soon, you can sip easily. Harvard University did a study and they say that coffee drinkers are likely to live longer.  They followed 200,000 java junkies for almost 30 years and find that those who guzzled 3 to 5 cups per day had a lower mortality rate - up to 15 percent lower! - than those who made do with Postum or water or whatever.

Frank Hu, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H, is the author of the study, and he says the reason for this kick in the years is a powerful antioxidant called chlorogenic acid, which is super abundant in coffee.

Dr Hu also says that those who average swallowing half a Big Box of Joe from Dunkin Donuts are 37 percent less likely to die from a neurodegenerative disease such Parkinson's, and 36 percent less likely to die from suicide, compared to nondrinkers.

Insert obvious joke about people who can't get their coffee fix ending their lives way too soon...

Dopamine seems to be the key here...all that coffee produces a ton of dopamine for you, and a large feature of Parkinson's is a lower level of dopamine, the chemical that plays a large part in both animal and plant lives. And plenty of dopamine means plenty of nerve transmitters in your brain, and that produces an antidepressant effect. And that's a good thing.

Dr Hu did not answer the puzzling question about what would happen to a person who drinks coffee while listening to Adele. For some, that's really having it all!