"Hey boss..."

Cash with the Tennessee Three

Johnny Cash used to call his backup band The Tennessee Three, but with inflation, we now are proud to introduce you to The Tennessee Twenty!

You hear about this sort of thing all the time, but it really happened for this group of co-workers. They work for an auto parts manufacturing company in Portland, Tennessee, and for eight years, they've all been chipping in to buy Powerball lottery tickets so they could stop working for an auto parts manufacturing company in Portland, Tennessee.

And it finally paid off - bigly! Or bigleague, whatever he says. 

They handle sales and quality control at the auto parts North American Stamping Group manufacturing plant. And the twenty winners will all pocket just a little under $13 million each.

Even the woman who owns the cigarette store where the winning ticket was purchased gets $25,000 as a reward.

Amy O'Neal is the leader of the group, and she says, "We're supporting education, and we're supporting Tennessee." She says that among the 20, they figure that a circle of 500 people will wind up benefitting.  And, they are all planning to help the people affected by the horrible wildfires in Eastern Tenn.

She said the group is so tight, they have often travelled and vacationed together. They've been known to work 24 hours straight on projects...

Speaking of which...they aren't all breaking their necks to punch that time clock one last time, either, as I sure as heck would have been. 

More cash for the Tennessee Twenty

The majority of the 20 say they will stay on the job - for now - and at least stick around long enough to help hire and train replacements.

"We love that company," O'neal said. "I'm not planning on quitting ... [but] I might change my mind."

I've always thought that, for the price of your Powerball ticket, getting to dream about winning is part of the payoff. I used to fantasize about winning a ton of money and then going back to work without telling a soul, waiting until someone asked me to do something I didn't care to do, and then holding out my winning ticket and saying "Naah naah na naaaaaah nah!

Let's see...keep working or stay home and sleep on piles of dollar bills...what a choice!

Sunday Rerun: Just a kind word

Wednesday, I went to the Credit Union.

This is why we have blogs, folks, so we can disseminate important information such as what I did Wednesday.

At the Credit Union, it was just in the middle of lunch time, and there were 6 adult patrons ahead of me...a man with two kids who figured the stanchions were playground equipment...a man and his wife...a county police...a guy with one of those bandanna skull cap things going on...and a woman with two little girls going ring around the rosie with the stanchion back where we were, at the end of the line.

The young mom bailed, rather than wait.  But everyone else was willing to wait. There were two tellers trying to take care of everyone, and there were cars at the drive-thru window with people in them to take care of, and neither of the tellers was standing around eating cupcakes and talking about who had what for lunch yesterday. They were working, we were waiting, and the line was moving.

Although, it didn't move quite as fast as it might have, because one patron, a woman roughly my age (and it has been rough on me) started reproaching the branch manager, who had gotten up from her desk to assist the tellers in getting the rush taken care of.  "You should have planned for this!  You know tomorrow is a holiday! You shoulda you coulda you oughta!" she caterwauled, as the manager tried to tell her that one teller was coming back from her break in just a few minutes and that she, as manager, was not allowed to open a window but was back there doing what she could to help out.

"Well!," explained the irate customer, who then turned on her worn heels and aimed her battle wagon my way.  I ran through my checklist of things she might want to stop and berate me over, but she passed by with a curious, "I guess I showed them! And now my day is made because I shrieked at someone" kind of look on her face.

Of course, her querulous behavior cost the next person in line about a minute of his time; had she just taken her banking stuff with her and moved on, he would have been there all the sooner.  But noooooooooooooo!  She had to be heard, sounding off.

Next stop was the Giant delicatessen for a 1/2 lb. of Pepper Jack cheese, the perfect thing to add little zest to a plain chicken breast sammy.  There, I found myself in line behind one of those people - again, a woman in my general age bracket - who could not be polite.  Does it really take so much more energy to say, "Could I have a half-pound of braunschweiger, please?"  Apparently so, because she cawed, "Gimme a half pound of braunschweiger!" when the young man asked what she would like.

For those unaware, braunschweiger is liverwurst, a sandwich food made from some animal's liver.  If it were the only sandwich filler for sale in this world, I would never eat another sammy.

Have we become a nation in such a hurry that we can't wait for five minutes to be helped at the credit union?  If so, what are we hurrying to get to?  The next thunderstorm?  To go home and watch You Tube videos of people falling off their roof?  To be home in time to see Dr Phil humiliate a neurotic in the name of better mental health for all?

Are we so bereft of the manners we learned in first grade that we can't even say "please" or "thank you"?

There is an old expression in Spanish:  "Cortesía de boca mucho vale y poco cuesta." It means "a courteous word costs little and is worth a lot."

Today, won't you thank someone for slicing some liverwurst for you?  Or, thank them for NOT slicing any liverwurst for you!

The Saturday Picture Show, December 17, 2016

Today I thought we could share some last-minute holiday gift ideas.  The first few are DIY...so if you like, do it yourself and share the joy!

You can buy these jars and paint them in festive colors! (Hint for my fellow cheapskates - some spaghetti sauces come in real Mason or Ball jars, so you get a meal first and then you make the gift!)

This is always popular - homemade potpourri.  Print out this card and attach it and the recipient can always make some more!

Nice presentation.

And then, for those who don't feel inclined to make their own gifts, there are gifts to buy...such as the amazing Sushi Bazooka! At last, a use for all that dried seaweed and sticky rice!

Please DO NOT forget to give the teachers in your lives, and your kids' lives, a nice little sumpin' for the holidays.  If you've ever stepped into a classroom and stayed for five minutes, you know they deserve it!

This is perfect for the baker in your life.  Make the batter and bake yourself a little cupcake too!  No more wondering how it tastes, and no more waiting to taste.

Please listen to me.  There is not a man alive who doesn't want, or can't use, a Leatherman tool or a Swiss Army Knife.  Even if they already have one or the other, they need another one.  Trust me.

10 things about month 12

December is such a great month! It gets dark so early, there might be snow, and there are major holidays...and, for those who think this year can't end soon enough, New Year's Eve with all its promises and hopes.

I found a list online of the best things about December.  Holidays are great, and they had them at #1, but look at what else we enjoy in the 12th month:

2. Hot Drinks - I drink hot tea all year long, and even in the hottest dog days of August, I sip the Lipton.  Coffee, not so much, but I like hot tea.

3. Smell - as fall fades away, with the aroma of fallen leaves and crisp air, we get to smell cinnamon and pine and all those winter aromas. Even fake pine air freshener smells better than gardenia air freshener!

4. Winter Clothes - I don't have to modify my wardrobe greatly; it's not a huge deal to switch from cargo shorts to cargo longs. Add a long-sleeve tee under my short-sleeve tee, and you have the complete Brick Heck look that I favor. Timberland boots, Carhartt jacket, a woolen stocking cap and scarf and gloves and I'm ready to go.   

5. Cozy, Cozy, Cozy - Snuggle time is much better than "you're so sticky" time! Pile on the blankets and afghans and turn down the heat!

6. Netflix  We don't Netflix or Hulu or Amazon here.  We do Hallmark Christmas movies with Lacey Chabert and we love 'em! I have installed a Kevin Spacey filter on the cable box.

7. Vay-cay   We are retired.  What would we vacate?

8. Fluffy Snow - yay yay yay!  Let's hear it for those December Snows, which are just practice, rehearsals for those January blizzards.  Any snow that can be swept away with a broom makes the house and yard pretty without straining the back.


9. ABC Family - Again, Marky no watchy, except when "Step By Step" reruns are on. But have you seen "A Family For Christmas" starring Lacey Chabert?  It's on Hallmark, where everything turns out happy in the end and there are no lessons or ponderous morals or symbolism.  In a Hallmark movie, a tree is just a tree, eggnog is eggnog, and nothing is confusing.

10 - A Time for Reflection - In summer we are too busy swabbing sweat off our fevered brows to think about habits to change and new plans to make and resolutions to give up gluten.  December is the perfect time to make those plans.  I hope all of yours work our perfectly.

Please pass the eggnog!

Back it up

It's not about the money.

Sure, Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys is earning $8.5 million this season for playing backup quarterback and not playing. He was injured in a pre-season game and only recently returned to the lineup, and he has an excellent seat on the bench to watch as Dak Prescott, a rookie no one heard of until he was forced to play for Romo, has led the team to their best season since Cowboys rode real horses.

At first, while Romo healed his aching vertebra, the Cowboys' owner, Jerry Jones, averred that Romo was still going to be the starter when he was able to play, but as Prescott starred in game after game, it became clear that he would remain the starter. Romo gave a very gracious statement in a press conference, acknowledged Prescott's primacy, and is seen on the sidelines during games, wearing a baseball cap and offering support to the team.

Which brings me to my thought for the day.

There are 32 teams in the National Football League, and every one of those teams employs a backup quarterback.  In some cases, it's a rookie or second-year guy who is projected to become a starter some day. Some teams hire a worn-out veteran who's been around forever but can still perform in a pinch.

My thought is, how must it feel to be the backup? These are guys who have been the star athlete in their family, neighborhood, school, county and, sometimes, state, all their lives.  Greatness, fame and fortune were predicted for them.  And now they practice during the week and watch on Sunday.  How does it feel to have talent and experience and not use them?

Now, before you weep and wail for the likes of Brandon Weeden (Texans), Derek Anderson (Panthers) and Matt McGloin (Raiders), remember they all make a pretty dollar for not playing, and even have free parking at the stadium on Sunday.  So weep not.  I just wonder how it feels to ALMOST make the top spot and have to be content on the second rung.

As further proof that I have nothing better to woolgather about, I also wonder how it feels to have been The Best Singer in youth choir, high school chorale, and college Glee Singers, only to find oneself singing "Eight hundred five eight eight, two three hundred...EMPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRE!" on a carpet jingle instead of being the singer of classic American tunes such as "Hallelujah."

Which track to take?

Maybe I shouldn't even think about it. Maybe the JingleAires all make wonderful salaries and are even happier to get to sing without all the silly public acclaim that comes with singing Leonard Cohen songs.   No one knows what kind of nutty trajectories their career paths will take once they leave the starting gate.  

If anyone would like to apply to be the backup writer for this blog, by all means, let me know. You would be paid exactly one half of what I earn. 

That's it.  You'd be paid half of zero.  But we'll have fun!

God Saved the Queen

There used to be a country song containing the lyrics, "When you're lookin' at me, you're lookin' at country."

Would that it were so simple to categorize us all. We're all a lot of things, many of them surprising to people who only look at the superficial. I mentioned the other day that it was the 40th anniversary of the release of their first single, and several people registered shock that I dabble in such outré music.

In my case, since I have no piercings, no hardware protruding from my face, not so much as a tattoo that won't wear off, people are often surprised to hear that I am a huge fan of The Sex Pistols, the original 70s punk band from Merrie Olde Englande.

True, not many of their admirers look like I do, but I dare anyone to listen to Anarchy in the UK, God Save the Queen and Pretty Vacant and not be moved to some fervent toe-tappin'. Just as music - and rest assured, the grubby individuals in the band had little to do with making the music on the records - it's powerful stuff.

Johnny Rotten, who was seriously voted
one of the 100 Greatest Britons in a
nationwide poll in 2002. 

The lyrics, poignant at times, were mostly written by singer Johnny Rotten, born John Lydon in London (1956). His vocals did not make anyone forget Bing Crosby, or David Crosby for that matter. But no one else brought on the fervent angst that Rotten-Lydon sang with (and still does.)

Anyway, I like 'em, and those three songs above are to be found on any compilation of my favorite tunes. But the movement they led, the nihilist rejection of anything commercial or mainstream, was never to be taken too seriously. I mean, they made and sold records and concert tickets and all the rest, and were never photographed refusing money for these enterprises.

They were founded, in fact, as a sales and marketing tool by one Malcolm McLaren, a British impresario who could have sold more spots to a leopard, given half a chance. McLaren operated a trendy boutique called "SEX" and formed the band to promote the store, in the same way McDonald's hires clowns to enchant the children. 

So it was a little surprising that McLaren's son, Joe Corre, found his father's wealth so repugnant, and the commercialization of the supposedly free-for-all music so hard to take that he recently held an event called "Burn Punk London" in which he burned over six million dollars worth of memorabilia, including one-of-a-kind acetate recordings, the pair of bondage trousers he wore as a child (?!), live punk recordings, and a pair of Johnny Rotten’s pants.

The grande finale of the protest was when Corre rigged up dummies to represent Prime Minister Theresa May, and former Prime Ministers David Cameron and Tony Blair, dressing the effigies in Sex Pistols t-shirts and loading them up with fireworks that went boom in the night in front of signs of global corporations.

Sex Pistols guitarist Glen Matlock did not approve. "I want to paraphrase Monty Python, in that he's not a savior, he's a naughty boy and I think Joe is not the anti-Christ, I think he's a nincompoop."

What a show! (photo cred, Getty Images)

For his part, Corre said, "The Queen giving 2016, the Year of Punk, her official blessing is the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard. Rather than a movement for change, punk has become like a (expletive deleted) museum piece or a tribute act."

As they say in The New Yorker, there will always be an England.

"Free advice costs nothing, and it's worth the price" - Allan Sherman

One thing I like about REALLY old people is that they become REALLY honest!

Take Tony Bennett, if you will. The longtime saloon singer, born Anthony Dominick Benedetto 90 years ago, was a guest on NPR's "Fresh Air" not long ago, and the host, Terry Gross, asked him what could be the reason for the longevity of his career.

"Talent" was his one-word answer.  

Yes, it takes talent to stay popular in show business for over 65 years; Bennett's first hits came in 1950 - 51. That's a while.  And you know what?  There are plenty of singers just as good as Tony Bennett.  I'll daresay there are many, but he knows something that has kept him around a long long time.

He went on, in the radio interview, to tell Ms Gross that Jack Benny and Bob Hope (who advised him to change his name) gave him lots of advice in the early stages of his career. In fact, he said the best advice was telling him that it would take him a few years of knowing what to do before he learned the more important lessons - knowing what NOT to do.

I've told a million people, seven of whom actually wanted to hear it, that a great lesson I learned as a supervisor was that if you did a favor for one person, the others would not say, "Wowie! What a great guy he is!"  Nope.  What they said was, where is my slice of that pie, please.  And who can blame them?

One of the first things I learned in my lifetime of driving everything from cars to trucks to fire engines is that you can see an car approaching with its turn signal flashing and the driver's arm out of the car giving a back up signal.  I don't care if the driver hollers out the window "I'm turning here! Go ahead and pull out!" I'm not going anywhere until he/she clears the intersection...not that I mistrust my fellow drivers.  I just don't trust them, you see. I remember the sage words of my father, who taught me to assume that every other car on the road was being driven by a drunken sociopath, out to kill me.  

Half the time, he has been proven right.

Knowing what NOT to do pays off.  Frying an egg? Adding three more minutes of pan time is something to avoid. Speaking before a crowd? Don't keep speaking any longer, once you've seen two people stick out their wrists to check the time. Washing your brand new white polo shirt and your brand new blue jeans? Unless you want a periwinkle colored shirt, better make that two trips around the Maytag.


Take it from Steve Harvey <<< or Tony Bennett and me: two old men who will tell you, it doesn't matter if you're repairing a Singer sewing machine or trying to be a professional singer, knowing what NOT to do is something to do.

A latte to do over a little

Divine (l), Phelps (r)

My beloved home town of Towson MD is like Anytown USA. It's the kind of place they use in movies and situation comedies for mid-to-upper class suburbs where things are usually going pretty well for most people, and the two most famous graduates of its high school are Divine and Michael Phelps.

They both did swimmingly after high school.

But there is a problem bedeviling some of our citizens of late.  The main road that bisects the town and the county is York Rd, which runs from downtown Baltimore into (you guessed it) York, Pennsylvania. Drive it and you will see the seething teeming city at its lower end, then you'll drive through a suburban town and then before you know it, you'll be in farm country, seeing race horses and cows meandering and galloping, not in that order.  And then you'll get to Pennsylvania, and that's a whole 'nother story.

The story I have for today is this:  when you drive through the south part of Towson, not far from the city line, you're in an area where stores, banks, service shops and food joints line the sidewalks like a Potemkin village, only real. And the side streets are packed with houses, and the houses are packed with moms and dads and kids and uncles who really ought to get a job and move along.

For real, it's a fine suburban community, but in the past several weeks, many of its denizens have become upset by the impending arrival of a Starbucks coffee joint at the intersection of York Rd and Regester Av.

Mind you, it's not that they will have a place that sells overpriced, undertasty coffee and foamy associated products that has them in high dudgeon.  No sir.  It's the fact that the S'bux will have a drive-through, don't you see.

I understand that current policy in the United States calls for a ★bucks to be built approximately every fifteen feet along major roads.  Why people can't make their own coffee at home and save 30-40 dollars a day is beyond me, but they flock to these joints like ants to a dropped Popsicle. 

And so having a 🌠💲💲in their neighborhood is ok, but the problem they see is that some kids in middle school and dear old Towson High have to walk past that intersection, and some people are sure chaos will reign and no one will remember to look both ways.

Mind you, even without an S.B. outlet selling their caffeinated mess at that corner, there would still be cars zooming up and down York Rd, and turning into Regester Avenue to go wherever.  So the only difference seems to be that cars will be turning into the drive-thru pocket, and that is dangerous to pedestrian traffic.  The cars racing by and turning in and out of all the other side streets along York Rd?  No problem.

I see a teachable moment for the very few kids who do not receive personal chauffeurization to and from school.  Their parents can sit them down and remind them not to step off the sidewalk unless they're sure no cars are coming.

By the way, there were kids toting signs among the dozen or so protesters who eddied about in that very intersection on Friday. Police report no fatalities.

And that's the sort of progress we can ALL feel good about.

Teach your children well!

Sunday Rerun: My Secret Shame

I've lived with this long enough, and now it's time to bring it into the open.

No, I'm not talking about my unwavering devotion to the music and persona of Britney Spears.  This is something even more inexplicable.

To say that I try to live by standards is no exaggeration.  In 1970, the operator of a gas station down the road apiece refused to honor the tax-exempt status of the volunteer fire company, and he cursed at me when I tried to explain how it worked.  I told him then and there that I would never spend another nickel in his establishment for the rest of my life, and 43 years later, I have not patronized that Citgo station.

I have never ever voted for a member of a certain political party.

And I would consign myself to fiery perdition before I would cheer for any accomplishment of the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees or the Pittsburgh Steelers.

But...

Peggy and I stumbled upon an Italian-cuisine restaurant in a resort town near where we go for vacation some years ago. Why we keep going back there every single year is what I am sore about.

The restaurant lacks atmosphere, their idea of decor being giant posters of uncooked noodles or an Al Hirschfeld caricature of Luciano Pavarotti.  The walls were freshly done in Kem-Tone Industrial Beige #5 in about 1975.

The background music is screamin' opera at max volume.

The staff, male and female, generally look like they just spent the weekend at the beach and it's Monday morning and time to go to work, never mind that there are two-day-old sauce stains on your apron and your tattered black pants cuffs are dragging around your filthy Nikes.

The owner and his wife stand by the cash register with unfriendly scowls.  Every so often, the phone will ring, and one or the other will answer with the name of the establishment and then, milliseconds later, he or she will growl, "We don't take reservations." And they hang up. I used to try to tell them how much we enjoyed the food as we left.  The husband would look at me in much the same way as the archbishop would look at a choirboy who just spilled wine all over the altar, so I gave up on that.

This did NOT happen there.  But the atmosphere is identical. I always check behind the toilet for a revolver.

And I just gave it away.  Q). Why do we go there, to this dank, unwelcoming restaurant that might just as appropriately be called "Boehner's Dungeon" ?

A).  Because the food is so good.  The pasta, the veal (I mean it!  try the veal!), the Caesar salad, the meatballs, the ravioli...to dine there is to sup with the gods.  The sauce - and they dole it out as generously as they spooned out the porridge where Oliver Twist grew up - is a tomato-based nectar that has as much to do with Ragu as Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" has to do with "Turkey In The Straw."  You get just enough sauce to make you want to come back next year.

And we will.  Consarn it.

The Saturday Picture Show, December 10, 2016

Long since her death (1962), Marilyn Monroe continues to enchant us, and we find new ways to recreate her magic image.

"Highway to the moon? Sure?  Take the interstate down to where the sun meets Saturn, and turn left."

Today's Special - salmon and veggies!

The other night, NBC TV presented a new live version of the "Hairspray" story, which centered on a Baltimore teen dance show with a segregated audience.  All this occurred when I was a Baltimore pre-teen, and so I have enjoyed every version of the John Water story (1988 movie, 2007 musical movie, and this) very much. 

From the original movie: Divine as Edna and Ricki Lake as Tracy. Divine went to my high school when he was still known as Harris Glenn Milstead. Divine was the best of the Ednas, for my money, while the young lady on the show this week, Maddie Baillio, played the best Tracy.  Just my opinion.

Christmas cookies? Make mine chocolate chip, please.

This could be a picture to use in a contest called "Write An Essay About What's Happening Here."  She has clearly been a participant in a recent wedding, and after that, it's anyone's guess.

They call this "pancake ice" and it would seem to be a regular sight in Antarctica. Do these little tiny icebergs suddenly merge and become giant sheets of ice the size of Nebraska?

"There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either." - Robert Graves

Imagine being alive in the days of Ancient Greece (roughly 500 BC - 600 AD) and trying to figure things out.  With no smartphone, World Book Encyclopedia or cable television to explain why the grass is dewy in the morning (they said it was because Memnon was killed in a fight with Achilles, and Memnon's mother, the goddess of the dawn, wept tears that became dew) and why the seasons change (because Persephone, the daughter of the goddess Demeter, who was kidnapped by Hades, and was torn between being a protected girl and loving her husband) the Greeks were smart enough to make up mythology to explain things they didn't have the resources to know about. 

Robert Graves, a British poet and scholar of more modern times (1895 - 1985) said, "Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask, such as 'Who made the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death?'…The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs."

To a certain extent, we still use mythology today to explain things that might be difficult for the young among us to comprehend (where babies come from, why all those crime scene investigation shows are still popular.)  

But lately, we are dealing with a backward phenomenon in which people make up an untrue fact and then create the myth to justify it.

There is no way that people really believe that white people are the superior ethnicity, yet there they are, making that false claim to justify their klanishness.  

In the long history of the papacy, there has never been a pope who made an endorsement as regards an American presidential election, yet millions of us were snookered by a fake story that claimed that Pope Francis had come out for a certain real estate developer this fall.

Not one single scintilla of a shred of an iota of evidence has been presented to verify the involvement of one of the people who ran for president this year in some heinous child prostitution ring operating out of a pizza restaurant in the Maryland suburbs of the District of Columbia.  Not one. But people make up these fake stories and this leads to a self-appointed volunteer policeman shooting up the pizza place in his demented search for a truth that does not exist.

If it's ok with you that people are making up silly myths to cover up lunacy, be my guest.  But I have friends in other parts of the world who are starting to wonder what's going on in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, and I'm running out of explanations.



  

Modern Family

If you wait until you know enough about being married to get married, you'll never get married.

And that would be a shame. If you wish to get married, my fortune-cookie advice to the contrary, go ahead and get married and apply for the on-the-job training program.

Today is December 8, the 43rd anniversary of the sleety day in 1973 that Peggy and I met at the altar at Towson United Methodist Church and tied the knot. Jumped the broom, said "I do," took the plunge, exchanged rings. 

Between the two of us, we were hardly a threat to the Fortune 500.  We didn't have money for lottery ticket and raffles, but we did get our first couple of cars on chances...chances that finance companies took on us.

But you know what? Love will get you through times of not much money better than money will get you through times of no love.

Plus, Peggy was a good money manager and house keeper, and a remarkably loving wife and mate and best friend. I brought cooking skills, a love of purchasing and preparing groceries for consumption, and, of course, the ability to reach stuff way up on the top shelf, to the pairing.  With her hard work as a legal assistant, she brought home a nice check, and with my work as a country radio deejay, I brought home a decent check and a veritable plethora of Conway Twitty records.

We were much younger
when we got married

And we made it and we had big fun and we never once went to sleep mad or forced the other to do dumb crap.  

Maybe that's the best advice I can give to the Newlywed Class of December '16: Don't force the other person to do dumb crap.

We got married and we had no business doing so, at the ages of 22 and 19.

But that's the point! Getting married is not a business. It's a pleasure. Thank you for every day of it, Peggy!

Ars longa, vita brevis

There is an intersection where art meets commerce. One can be a tremendously skilled artist, painter, singer, composer, whatever, but no one will send you a cheese sandwich and a place to shower and sleep just because you're so good at your art.  No, you have to make a living somehow and buy your own sandwiches, soap and sleepgear.

There is also a place where commerce meets safety. This warehouse in Oakland, where artists rented space for their artwork, but wound up living in what became a literal hellhole, never should have come to the unspeakable end that it met last weekend. 36 people are dead, following an electronic music show during which a fire sparked up and you know the rest.

It was no surprise, then, that cities all across the nation swiftly moved to do what Oakland should have done - investigate these old shabbily-rehabbed buildings for code violations and make sure that people are not endangered by living there. 

Here in Baltimore, a do-it-yourself art studio (spaces rented to be used as artists wished) and performance space known as the Bell Foundry was visited by fire marshals, who boarded the place shut when they saw the conditions inside. As of now, the artists who worked there are not being allowed back in to get their stuff.  

Battalion Chief Roman Clark of the Baltimore Fire Department said his department and the Housing  Authority received a complaint, which led to the inspections, which turned up numerous violations, leading to the building being condemned.

"We have to think about the safety of people, especially when we receive a complaint," Chief Clark told the City Paper. "We have to act on it. That's what we did."

Clark (no relation) would not confirm a connection between the Oakland disaster and this action in Baltimore, saying only that the city was acting on a complaint received.

I am torn in this matter, able to see both sides. I relate to the artistic community as a matter of wishing to be able to do what they do. As it is, the only thing I can draw is money out of the bank, and we all know there is not enough money in all the banks in all the world to bring back a life lost to fire that should have killed no one, given a proper sprinkler system and means of egress.

But when the sprinklers are not there, and people try to extinguish a blaze with cups of water and who knows what else, and the "stairs" leading down from the second floor of the Oakland deathtrap are not stairs at all, but a pile of wooden pallets, it's just too sad to do nothing.

I have to favor safety over art and the convenience of crashing in a rented workspace.  And by saying I favor safety, that also means I favor people being able to keep living to create more art, and I don't see the other side of that at all.

He mighta been big league

Today, let's talk about John Dillinger, and not for the reason you might have been thinking...

John Dillinger was a bad guy in the 1930's, when being a "bad guy" meant sticking up banks with guns and driving away really fast in a Ford V-8 car while shooting a gun. This was very tricky stuff, considering that all Fords in that era had manual transmissions.

Of course, to be a really bad guy nowadays, you need to be a global terrorist, or a banker.

Which leads us back to Dillinger, who was also in the business of removing bank deposits and re-depositing them elsewhere. Like his pockets.

But he might have gone down another path - he might have played major league baseball, so talented was he at American's pastime!

Dillinger in uniform for a town ballclub
(he's the player farthest right, top row)

In those days, the path to the big leagues ran through each of the little town across the nation, all of whom had a town baseball team that would play the team from the next town over on a Sunday afternoon. From those games, scouts would pick the best prospects and sign them to play in Kankakee, Ashtabula or Terre Haute, with a chance to get to the majors someday.

In 1924, 21-year-old Dillinger finished playing for his local nine and fell in with splendid companions named “Pete” Pierpoint and Edgar Singleton, who was actually JD's cousin, although twice his age, and an umpire in the baseball league. In September of that year, Singleton and Dillinger robbed a grocery store in Mooresville, Indiana.  During the robbery, Dillinger conked the grocer with an iron bolt. The man was not seriously hurt, but the two crooks were "nabbed" and sent to the Big House.  Singleton had a prior record but only received a sentence of 2-14 years, while the younger Dillinger, a stranger to the justice system theretofore, was sent up for 10-20 years.

At Pendleton State Reformatory, Dillinger worked in the shirt factory (but that isn't where the Pendleton shirt was invented) and played on the baseball team, getting known around the Indiana State Prison Baseball league as a pretty good ballplayer.

By 1929, Dillinger was eligible for parole, and the day before his hearing he played very well in a game that was watched by the governor of Indiana, Harry Leslie, who is said to have commented that JD should have been playing major league ball. Parole was denied, and Dillinger became embittered about the notion that he was kept in prison because of his baseball talent - and a certain credibility was given to this thought because, the next year, he was transferred to the largest prison in the state, Michigan City - which was similar to making the big leagues in baseball.  They even wore stripes, but not pinstripes like the Yankees.

Prison humor is a sideline I enjoy. I often call people on their cell phones to share it.

In a turn of events that was bad for baseball and bad for his own longevity, John Dillinger refused to play ball for the new prison, spending his time instead consulting with older, more experienced crooks and bandits, taking the Master's Degree in Advanced Hooliganism.

At a trial, handcuffed to a deputy

So it was that Dillinger finally obtained his release in 1933. Right away, instead of grabbing a bat and glove and getting out there on the diamond, he a) helped ten prisoners escape from Michigan City (one of them was a former baseball teammate)  b) began robbing banks all around the midwest and c) attending as many Chicago Cubs games as he could.  

The Cubs finished 3rd in the National League that summer of '33, and were on their way to another bronze finish in '34 when they lost their #1 fan. John Dillinger, who was so angered by being kept in prison that he quit playing baseball, should have gone to the ballpark on July 22, 1934, instead of going to see a crummy Clark Gable movie called "Manhattan Melodrama," because the FBI gunned him down as he left the Biograph theater in Chicago.

It might have been nice had the Indiana prison system been as interested in Dillinger's rehabilitation and re-entry into polite society as they had been in his athletic ability. But then again, it would have been nice if he had confined his stealing to second or third base, so there you go.

Doin' the wave

Why do we make the same gesture when we approach friends that we make when we leave them?

We wave with our hands up high, palm extended toward the person to whom we draw near. In the movies, this takes place in a crowded airport or train station, and of course the other person sees you right away, instead of being occupied staring at the candy machine, trying to figure which flavor of LifeSavers to get.  No, they see you, give a little wave back, and then, in a trice, the two of you are hugging or exchanging spy information with an undercover agent or shaking hands and heading down to get a cheese sandwich for lunch.

I watch too many old movies on TCM.  I mean it.

Cat o'nine tails

Anyway, I got to thinking about waving and shaking hands and all that, and it turns out that both of them came from the desire to tell the person you were meeting that you didn't have a gun or sword or a cat o' nine tails or herpes. A hand waving freely in the air means you couldn't have anything in...that hand.  

These ancient customs don't have to be accurate, just ancient.

Along the same lines, how about shaking hands?  There is research to indicate that this practice goes back to Greece in the 5th Century BC, and that was long before the discovery of the vast lake of whipped alcohol we now call Lake Purell.  

'Tis said that we shake hands in order to show the other person that our hand has no weapons, but, again, the left hand could be hiding who-knows-what all the while. It's odd.  While you're shaking hands to make sure the other person doesn't have an Asian Throwing Star << meant for you in their hand, the hand you're grasping is full of any number of microbial pathogens, and you could wind up with scabies, cooties, or worse.

But at least while you're home getting over the H1N1 virus, at least you know nothing bad was going to happen to you.

This is why I'd rather fist bump!

Sunday rerun: Who's Yer Daddy?

When my father was just a little kid, he was in downtown Baltimore with his dad, and some sort of parade through the streets carried an open car with the President of the United States, Warren Gamaliel Harding, who reached out and shook my dad's hand before hurrying back to the White House to bend his girlfriend over a barrel and show her the fifty states.

(It was in the movie!  Well, it is now!)

You'll usually find Harding's name in any list of the Ten Worst Presidents, although you'll have trouble seeing him at first, as he is hiding behind a Bush.  But enough of that.  The big news about Harding is that, after all these years, it has finally been proven by DNA testing that he fathered a child by a woman not his wife in 1919,before he was president but after he married a woman to whom he had sworn he was sterile, due to a childhood case of the mumps.

I tell you, this guy really covered all the angles.

Nan and
Elizabeth Ann

Nan Britton was a woman from Harding's home town in Ohio. She was never elected to any political office, but she did enjoy many an unsanctified congress with Harding in hotel rooms, lovenests, hideaways, and a White House pantry. She had developed a crush on old Warren and chased him until he caught her.  One of the surefire techniques he employed was writing her 50-page love letters while sitting at his desk on the floor of the US Senate.

All In The Family

But when the child, Elizabeth Ann, was 4, Harding suddenly cashed in all his chips, and Nan and her daughter, who had been taken care of financially by the president, suddenly were out in the cold, a relocation that forced Nan to write a scandalous book to raise money.

The book, entitled "Fifty Shades Of Grey" "The President's Daughter" caused quite a little scandal when it was published in 1927, the height of the Roaring Twenties.  People in the Harding family suffered pulled muscles and sprains as they broke their necks to deny the truth of the child's provenance, but there was no DNA testing in those days.  Although, one look at the wide face and hooded brow of young Elizabeth Ann, and you just know  you've seen that face before.  On the president.

It was the Harding family who recently put it out there for the testing company Ancestry DNA to answer the question once and for all, and tests were done on two Harding descendants and Nan's grandson.

Boom. Nan is vindicated. Although she died in 1991, the truth lives forever.

The Saturday Picture Show, December 3, 2016

I note the huge popularity of adult coloring books, and here is my gift to you. Just print this out and go to town! Then, when you get back from town, grab your colored pencils and color it in.

Test drive complete, this car shopper is ready to sign a four-year lease on a Lincoln.

The moon has a house, like all the rest of us.

I was never a fan of Dr Seuss but there is nothing dorky about black eyeglass frames, right, Buddy Holly?

Let's hope this is the one and only time we see a Hipster Manger.

This is the rare bear, offspring of the natural congress of a polar bear and a grizzly bear. They call him a "grolar."  I didn't even know there was a place for polar and grizzly bears to meet. Probably, it's one of those new apps that allowed them to hook up.

For extra holiday fun, print this picture and take it with you to your local McDonald's, order a Big Mac, and then compare what they slide across the countertop to you with what you have pictured.  Ask the manager why the two don't look much alike.

We all want to try on another's shoes now and then.

Chow down

Two big bits of news from the world of food, a world where we all dwell, this week...

On the upper end of the food spectrum was the news that America's Next Top President and his chief of staff, a man named Reince Preibus, dined in fine style with Mitt "Mitt" Romney, a man who derogated them both loudly for the past several years.  The hatchet was buried, along with garlic soup, frog legs, and diver scallops for appetizers, prime sirloin for Trump and Priebus, and lamb chops with a mushroom bolognese sauce for Romney's vittles. 

All three had chocolate cake for dessert.

(Does anyone else find it to be a little too cute to say "a" mushroom bolognese sauce?  When you're wiping your chin after wolfing down a Big Mac, do you say you're removing "a" special sauce?)

The deal at the joint where these three swells tied on the feedbag - Jean Georges - is, you choose from a selection of prix fixe (French for "way too expensive") menus. The cheapest way to get out of there is the three-course blue-plate special, ticketed at $138 a person. There are also two six-course tasting menus for $218 a person, and a two-course lunch for $58 each.

And that brings us to the sad passing of Michael "Jim" Delligatti, the inventor of the Big Mac (50 cents then, $3.99 today).  He was running a McDonald's in 1967 and one day, it came to him to pile two all-beef patties, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions and special sauce on one colossal sesame-seed-bunned sandwich.

He only lived to be 98, and to the end, he had a Big Mac at least once per week.

TBH, would you rather have a Big Mac, or garlic soup and frog leg?

I knew it!

Love is a clean windshield

It's all because I was lucky enough to marry the most patient, lovely, wise, kind, patient, good-natured, patient, intelligent and patient woman in the world...but I have been married to that angel for 43 years almost, and I think I've learned a thing or two about being married.

Young people about to be married often  come to me for advice have to listen to me going on and on about marriage, how it works best, the little pitfalls to avoid, and so forth.  The fact of the matter is, no amount of advice from anyone really matters very much in an area like this. Advice is good for learning how to carve a turkey, change a tire, plant a tree, refinish that old dresser that Aunt Mabel left you.  Those things are sprints, one-time deals; marriage is a marathon, a series of a million days and all the events that make up those days.

As I so often do during my Speeches To The Young, I'll share a little story with you. I'm Facebook friends with a married couple who really seem to have things going well...both of them work, and his work at this time of year is very busy, so he has been burning both the midnight and the early-morning oil, working all sorts of crazy hours. 

It's also the time of year around here when it's still humid, but it gets chilly overnight, which means frosty windshields on the cars (readers in Southern California, just imagine a frosted beer mug) in the early mornings.  

And the wife goes on Facebook, saying that even as big a rush as he is in to get to the office, he still took time that morning to scrape her car windows so that she wouldn't have to do it herself.

And that's my point for today: marriage is not about giant diamonds and imported luxury cars and trips to the Gilligan Islands.  Not at all!  If that's all it took, the Kardashians would have no show, hot-shot divorce lawyers would be doing taxes and selling real estate from offices over top of beauty salons, and marriage counselors would be looking for other work.

Nope, marriage (or keeping any relationship together for a long time) is not about the grand gesture; it's all about the little things. It's emptying the dryer, it's bringing the other person a cup of tea now and then, it's remembering to put the seat down and keep the litterboxes clean.

It's taking five minutes to clean off the other's windshield, doing it quietly in the pre-dawn hours and going off to work.  

Do something like that every day, both of you, and the years will go by happily.