Some of the beach

You might be surprised on the beach at glorious Ocean City, Maryland this summer. 

The Beach Patrol lifeguards, in the absence of a (requested) formal opinion from the Maryland Attorney General’s Office on the legality of women sunbathing and ocean-swimming topless in the same areas as unshirted males, are going to look the other way, so to speak, in case of women on the beach without topcover.

Worcester County State’s Attorney Beau Oglesby (doesn't that sound like someone from "Matlock"?) asked for legal guidance, and as of this writing, Beau hasn't heard Diddley. 

A woman named Chelsea Covington, who is from Maryland's Eastern Shore, is a nationally-known figure in the fight for "topfreedom."  It's her mission is to normalize female bare-chestedness, and she is pushing for the right of women to skip wearing tops on the beach. 

"At its core, the topfreedom movement is about equality under the law," she told a Salisbury (MD) television station.

Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan told WBOC, the Salisbury station, "We are waiting for that opinion. We understand Ms Covington's desire to be treated fairly under the Equal Protection Law but at the same time we hope to be able to protect the rights of the thousands of families that visit our beach every year. "

Covington expects an opinion in three to nine months, and hopes that equality will win the day. 

"Maryland's constitution and high court afford the highest guarantee of gender equality in the country with a clearly established 'absolute prohibition' standard against gender classification," she says. "Which means there exists no justification for treating genders differently when making or enforcing law, at the state or local level."

As is so often the case, there are two good sides to this, no two ways about it. On the one hand (yes, let's just talk about "hands" here) there is no reason to treat males and females differently. We all have a body. 

On the other hand, some of us have adolescent males (of all ages) on the beach with us.  So there's that.

Various beaches in other states have set aside secluded lagoons (I think I'll open a Polynesian bar and call it The Secluded Lagoon) for topless enjoyment.  

For now, as Ocean City awaits the Solomonic wisdom, which will please exactly half of the population, it will be interesting to see who is emboldened to seek a full upper-body tan. 

They will likely not be the only ones turning red.

Some people feel OK about parading around in less clothing than others wear.  

And some people need mirrors.

Brushing up on painting

To quote from a great old song by Tompall And The Glaser Brothers, "Someday, I think I'll take up thinking."

And one of the things I'll think about is art.  Not Art Tripp, the former drummer for the Mothers of Invention who drummed under the name Arthur Dyer Tripp III and now drums on people's pinched nerves in Gulfport MS as Dr Arthur Tripp, chiropractor.

But this sort of art is what I am thinking of: 

One of the many tattoo ideas
I once considered for my right arm

This painting, this "masterpiece," as some call it, was untitled by the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. They say it depicts a human face in the shape of a skull. To my untrained eye, it looks like someone found a piece of paper where a child had been playing tic-tac-toe and practicing letters, and drew a face, and then tried to paint over it with blue poster paint, before running out of paint.

The joke's on me! This "masterpiece" sold for $110.5 million at auction in New York.


Sotheby's, which will soon handle the auction of my collection of pictures of dogs playing poker and children with gigantic eyes, said that this was the most loot they ever tricked anyone into shelling out earned for the sale of a Basquiat original.  He painted this in 1982; by 1988 he was dead of a heroin overdose. 

A Japanese collector named Yusaku Maezawa won the right to write that check after a bidding war that lasted 10 minutes. He will display the painting in his museum in Chiba, Japan, alongside another Basquiat marvel, also entitled "Untitled," and also done in 1982.  

I'm noticing a trend here.

My favorite part of the story (along with not having to worry about clearing space on my walls for this canvas) is that it was sold by the daughter of two collectors who bought it for $19,000 in 1984.  They were named Jerry and Emily Spiegel. They both passed away in 2009, and their daughters have been bickering about the family fortunes ever since. 

Their older daughter, Pamela, sold 50 paintings through Christie’s, leaving another 57 to sell off, but bringing in $125 million so far. Younger daughter, Lise, only got one of the pictures to sell, but this is the one, and so she stands to bring in the 110 million semolians.

If you need me, I'll be in the garage with my paints and a brush. Just call me "Clarkiat."

It's the berries

I am always in search of superlatives. Tell me something or someone is the best or the tallest or the tastiest, and I'm right there with you, wanting to know more. 

And if Casey Stengel, a man who once doffed his cap at home plate to allow a bird to fly away off his head, says someone is the strangest man ever to play baseball, that man automatically enters my Hall of Heroes.

Stengel said that about Moe Berg, the polymath who played a almost a decade and a half in the major leagues, but never took it too seriously.  What the backup catcher took seriously was learning, and he did that in 12 languages, reading books and newspapers by the ton.  

I can hardly imagine how happy he would be to be alive today, what with the internet serving a torrent of information with the stroke of a few keys! Plus, he would be 115 years of age, so he'd have that going for him.

But today I don't want to write about his baseball exploits, or how he went on a tour of Japan in the 1930s to spread the love of baseball worldwide and wound up taking home movies of Japanese defense plants and munitions storage that wound up being used by US spy agencies in World War II, or that he parachuted into Yugoslavia as a spy, or that he did not speak to his brother, Dr Sam Berg M.D. for over 30 years, or that Moe trained as a lawyer and worked for several of the big firms in New York during baseball offseasons, but gave up the practice of law because he found it boring.

No, I want to give gardening advice, because one of my favorite stories in one of the books I've read about Moe, and there have been a few, came from The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg, written by Nicholas Dawidoff and published by Pantheon Books in 1994.

And in that book we learn that Moe's sister Ethel, who was a kindergarten teacher for many years and served as a trainer for new teachers, had the habit of roller skating through the halls of her school. And that she raised raspberries in her home garden, raspberries so tasty that she would regularly trade a quart of them for a meal at New York's finest restaurants, where the pastry chefs used them for their finest pies and tarts.

And that the secret to her great raspberries was that she lived a block away from a mounted police stable.

Watch it!

The beauty of our First Amendment is that it allows the publication of both the Bible and Hustler magazine.  

We may not like it, but we have to allow Hustler on the newsstand, or we have no liberty at all. This doesn't mean that you have to like that foul magazine, have to buy or read it, or approve of it when you see it on your brother-in-law's coffee table. 

All these issues come to the surface every so often, and lately we've seen "comedian" Kathy Griffin rig up a fake beheading of the current occupant of 1600 Pa. Av, hopeful of getting some laughs and getting very few. Or "comic" Bill Maher, using that most awful racist term in an effort to get some laughs from people who might enjoy his post-ironic lingo.

Actually, it's wrong of me to put quotation marks around the descriptors for Griffin and Maher. The fact that I have not once laughed at anything either of them ever said doesn't mean that others don't find them wonderfully hilarious. She just seems so desperate to be amusing, and he seems so desperate to be wry and shocking.  

BUT...I don't say they should be fired. Part of the wonderful freedom of choice that we have here means we vote with our remotes when it comes to television. I don't care to spend my New Year's Eves watching Kathy Griffin torment Anderson Cooper with her silly badinage or my Friday evenings watching Maher making his snide remarks, and I guess the ratings reflect that. 

I wish Norm MacDonald
had his own show. I
would watch that!

An easy rule of thumb for me is to consider whether or not I will learn anything, or at least get a laugh or two, from listening to or watching some show or another. But that's a choice everyone gets to make, and with the cornucopia of shows available on radio and tv, there is something for everyone.

I think of something my father taught me from his Navy days, when a common slogan among the crew of the USS Delta was, "They can't make you do it, but they can make you wish you had."
No one has the right to tell Griffin or Maher what they can say, but CNN and HBO have the right to make them wish they hadn't.

Raise high the roofbeam, carpenters, and HURRY!

I was coming from that most dreaded early-morning task - having blood taken for a physical BEFORE breakfast - and I saw a sign from above that meant, to me, that Heaven was rewarding me for being a big boy and not whining (too much). That sign read: WAWA COMING SOON.

I drive past the construction site now and then, and holler at the workers to encourage them to step up the pace a little. After all, the faster they build it, the sooner I will have my hands wrapped around Wawa Shorti Hoagies and breakfast Sizzlis.

Up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, you can't swing a tire chain without hitting a Wawa, which is a convenience store with eats and drinks fit for the gods and over 700 outlets in six very lucky states.  They are very popular up in New Jersey, so much so that a man named Mike Han decided to name his store Dawa. Or not. Han claims that he was not trying to co-opt the beloved Wawa name, and just using a word in Korean that means "come in, you're welcome here."

Heaven right here on earth

Well, there was a flurry of court activity about all this, and Han has agreed to change the name of his store. Wawa spokeswoman Lori Bruce said that the company has an obligation to protect the brand name and ensure consumers aren’t confused, and added that they tried to convince Han to change the name without getting all legal up in his grille.  But going to the court is what it took, after all. 

"We wish them nothing but success,” Bruce said. “Just without our name included."

Wawa’s name comes from the Lenape tribe’s word for Canada goose.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get some new clothes so I can be ready for the grand opening of Wawa on Joppa Rd. I think I'll try J.C. Denney's or Dordstrom.

Sunday Rerun: Playing the symbols

This admission won't come as a surprise to anyone, but I have to admit, I am rather dense in certain areas.

Birdbrained, boneheaded, chuckleheaded, dense, dim, and slow... all of these apply to me in certain fields.  Interpreting modern dance, appreciating modern art, and enjoying a mime show are all areas in which I am markedly deficient.  Anyone who has ever seen me shaking my head as I walk away from such events realizes that.

But what people might not know is that I am the one and only person in the United States - a country with a current population of 320,000,000 some-odd people (some much more odd than others, but anyway) - who does not get symbolism in books, movies and TV shows, even when it's so heavy-handed as to drown out the plot.

People read "A Christmas Carol" by Chuck Dickens and marvel at the old Victorian's ability to symbolize the evil that took place at the firm of Scrooge & Marley by understanding that the chain Marley "forged in life" was made of "cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel."  I read that and came away figuring that whoever took Marley to his fate just grabbed the heaviest steel stuff sitting around the office, and then I am happy for Bob Cratchit that they didn't take away the coal scuttle.

Or let's say we're watching a movie, and for the 427th time, I have to watch "The Wizard Of Oz" and when it's over, the cinema buffs go on about how Dorothy’s walk down the Yellow Bricks stands for her spiritual quest, Toto the dog represents the "incredible unanimal mankind" side that Cummings described, and the haggy Wicked Witch of the West is the symbol for the repressed dark thoughts of the subconscious, and I just sit there saying I can count 17 people who could play Miss Gulch today.

When you see this hamburger chain logo, you are
supposed to get the subliminal message that her
collar says "MOM."  I don't.

And of course, amateur psychologists had a field day with Bill Clinton's cigar, trains going into tunnels in Fellini movies, and even the silver and black of the Oakland Raiders uniforms inspire their players and fans to adopt pirate personae during games.

I don't look too deeply into things, but I get a boot out of people who do.

A boot. You know what THAT stands for, don't you?

Oh no.........

The Saturday Picture Show, June 10, 2017

We used to rent an apartment that had one of these latches, but in those days, you just slid the chain and unhooked it. I don't know if I'd care to be solving this maze if I were trying to leave in a hurry.

In this fanciful painting, we are to believe that Mr and Mrs Cat are out for a cup of coffee. Everyone knows they prefer tea!

A woman at work was always reading these bodice-busting novels, always with three-word titles such as "By Love Possessed," or "Torn With Desire."  People in them were always yielding to the stirrings deep within themselves, or scaling peaks of ecstasy. Not without a helmet! 

I have not solved for "X" since College Algebra (and chances are, I didn't solve for it there!) Math lovers will tell you that we use algebra without even realizing it, and I wonder "Y."

Early June is when China administers the National Higher Education Entrance Examination. It's a big deal there; a high score entitles a student to entrance into a university, and a chance at prosperity, while a poor grade dooms a student to a life outside the realm of success, and often leads to depression and suicide. So high is the stress that ambulances are stationed right outside schools to deal with people who lose consciousness during the tests.

I've always loved paisley for its rich colors and patterns.

For those who like to repurpose old things, consider the 1970 Milwaukee Brewers, who had been the 1969 Seattle Pilots, a failed expansion team. But the league didn't move the team until about five minutes before the new season began, so they ordered new hats, removed the Pilots wordmark from the jerseys, and stitched BREWERS on the shirts. Cheap, cheap, cheap.

American cereal manufacturers have to load up the corn flakes with sugar, salt, tapioca, and malt flavoring, or the kids won't eat it. Another trick is to sell the cereal with cartoon characters such as Captain Crunch, or the adorable offspring of a tiger, who, in the real world, would rather eat you than a bowl of this non-nutritious junk. This is from 1952, so this did not just start the other day. And by the way, Captain Crunch never served a day in the Navy.

Enough

I hardly feel like I have standing in this matter, but you know me; I'll weigh in on it. It's just that the matter of race relations here in America '17 is kinda...bad.

And when you have a guy like LeBron James, basketball star, with money, fame, power, prestige and a physical presence like few others in the world, and he can be shaken by the cowardly actions of some bigot with a can of spray paint, then something is way out of whack.  Not that it's ok to spray-paint racial slurs on anyone's property, you know? But someone did that to a house LeBron owns in Los Angeles.

And what can he say, but, "being black in America is tough" to that?

James went on to say, "As I sit here on the eve of one of the greatest sporting events we have, race and what is going on comes again. On my behalf, family's behalf, I look at this as if this sheds a light and keeps the conversation going. My family is safe, that's most important."

"Just shows that racism will always be a part of the world, part of America. Hate in America, especially for African-Americans, is living every day. It is hidden most days. It is alive every single day... No matter how much money you have, how famous you are, how much people admire you, being black in America is tough."

And it's not just whoever attacked LeBron this way. It's the noodniks who hung a noose off a middle school lamppost in Maryland. It's the human slug who left a noose behind as he oozed out of a display room at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC.

I read that LeBron paid $20.9 million for this house in LA, 9400 square feet of a domicile that his ability to play a sport bought him.

And yet, he can't buy - at any price - the peace of mind that he and his family will not be abused in this way, or have a bag of peanuts thrown at him, as the Orioles' Adam Jones did, or be murdered, like the man in New York who happened to cross paths with the guy from Baltimore who went to Gotham for the sole purpose of killing a black man.

I understand that anytime you have a nation of 300+ million people, you are going to have some people who are just plain vicious, just plain insane, just filled with ten pounds of hatred in a five pound bag.

And I realize that a certain amount of those people who are not bundled up just right have a lot of jealousy for guys who earn a king's ransom for playing a game while they're sweeping up at the cereal factory (not that there's any shame in that).

But your envy of LeBron and Adam, and your dislike for the people who fought and died to bring equality to a country that still needs a heaping helping of same, does not mean that you get to act this way, so please, knock it the hell off.