My favorite movie of the year

As it turns out, the average American movie theater made more money off the sale of JuJuBes and Junior Mints than on ticket sales from the recent movie "The Catcher Was A Spy."  According to the movie business papers, it made $114,771 from 49 theaters in its opening weekend, for an average of $2,459 per venue. Fortunately, the star of the movie, Paul Rudd, also stars in "Ant-Man And The Wasp," which took in about $2,549 from every single American citizen, even those as yet unborn.


I didn't even expect it to do that well. I didn't even think the movie would even get produced, although a movie about it was being talked about for some years. In a world (as they say in the movie trailers) in which people flock to see Avengers movies and Incredibles and Deadpool and Jurassic World pictures, who would care about a movie about Moe Berg?

Right here, Dude. And maybe it's because I love the whole legacy of Moe Berg, and maybe because I share his love of eccentric behavior, but I loved the picture, which we saw on the pay-per-view the other night.  Peggy loved it too, even though she is not such a fan of idiosyncratic behavior, since she lives in a house full of it.

First, who was Moe?

Morris "Moe" Berg (March 2, 1902 – May 29, 1972) was New York born, son of a pharmacist, brother of a doctor and a schoolteacher. Moe went to Princeton, Columbia U. Law, and the Sorbonne in Paris, placing him leaps and bounds ahead of the average baseball player, which he also was.  So great was he in college that he went to the big leagues, where he made a nice living as a catcher for 15 years. He was never a star, and one reason for that was that he really was not as interested in baseball as he was in his other activities: learning things and going places.

He spoke a dozen languages and made it a habit to read 10 newspapers every day, as well as the suitcases full of books he traveled with. He wore black suits and white shirts every day. He would not read a newspaper if anyone else had read it before him, and he cultivated a habit of disappearing from view suddenly, even if he were in the middle of a conversation.

Because Japanese was one of the tongues he spoke in, he accompanied some other American ballplayers to Japan for a tour and series of exhibition games, and Moe dressed in traditional kimono to visit a hospital - but instead of visiting anyone, he climbed to the roof and took aerial footage of downtown Tokyo.

But his baseball career ended as World War II began, and he offered his extensive knowledge of pretty much everything about everything to his country. He served the war effort as a spy. The movies he brought back from Japan served very well as background information for the generals, who also asked Moe to look into whether Germany was building an atomic bomb.

And thereby hangs the tale of the movie, which we enjoyed a lot. I guess it was a good idea to have the movie be about spy stuff rather than Moe and his bizarre habits. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor for his valor during the war, but refused to accept it (his sister accepted it for him after his death.)

A baseball fan until the end, his last words were, "How did the Mets do today?"

It's dumb to be stupid

Every now and then, lyrics to certain songs, most of them oldskool country, rocket through my mind in response to what I see as I career through the world.

This past week being the 242nd annual celebration of our nation's liberty, most Americans enjoyed parades, cookouts, hikes in the park, hugs in the dark, swims in the cove, snacks in the grove, and rented canoes. All good clean American fun.


And then some find it fun, in spite of pleas from dog owners and veterans dealing with PTSD, to re-enact great aerial bombardments of the past, with weapons of mass destruction smuggled in from Pennsylvania or points south. I am certain that if you asked the people who put on these Backyard Beiruts if they consider themselves to be law-abiding citizens, most of them would holler in the affirmative. And yet..

Backyard Fireworks Are Illegal In Maryland. The use of fireworks is illegal in Maryland, unless the fireworks are part of a public display for which the State Fire Marshal has granted a permit. ... Violators who possess or discharge illegal fireworks are subject to a misdemeanor fine of up to $250.

They go on, risking (and often suffering) burns, fires, amputation and blindness, just for the thrill of making a big loud boom.

And maybe you saw the meme going around that said, "Kids, don't mess with fireworks! Let the adults set them off after they've been drinking all day!"

Did you hear that as of this morning, nine world citizens have been injured by bulls in the annual Running Thereof In Pamplona, Spain, a week in which people who can't find enough stupid things to do in their home town travel to sunny Spain to have this happen to them:

All of this comes to mind on a day when we were on the way home from a shopping trip and wound up at the red light around the corner from our house.  We sat at the light, waiting to make our right turn, and before the light turned green, a guy in front of us, seeing no other cars around, suddenly hit the gas and zoomed off across Joppa Rd.

I've seen people run yellow lights that reddened at the very sight of them, and I've seen people completely fail to see that there's a signal whatsoever, but in all these years of pushing cars around this town I have never seen a guy who said, you know what, nothing's coming, I got to go and go NOW! The hell with the laws.

Maybe he was in a rush to blow up some fireworks.

The country song I have in mind today is "Georgia On A Fast Train," by the estimable Billy Joe Shaver.


I've been to Georgia on a fast train honey
I wudn't born no yesterday
Got a good Christian raisin' and an eighth grade education
Ain't no need in y'all a treatin' me this way

And Billy Joe could not pick and write like that if he had blown:
a) his fingers off with fireworks
b) the chance to avoid being gored by not chasing bulls and
c) one too many red lights.

Sunday Rerun: You're damn Skippy!

Cheapskate that I am, I am always looking to save a dollar so I can double my vast fortune.  And we love peanut butter around here, so I make sure to buy the BA jars of Skippy (there might as well be no other brand).


The cheapskate part comes in when the peanut butter is gone.  I don't throw the plastic jar away, no sirree.  I rinse it out, and clean it in the dishwasher (making sure to use the "air dry" setting, not "heat dry," which melts the plastic into an amorphous blob resembling the Orioles' vanishing playoff hopes.)


And then I reuse the empty jars for storing grits, flax seeds, sesame stix, peanuts, Wasabi peas, pretzels, nuts, bolts, pencils, glue sticks, touch up paints poured out of a gallon can, and 1,001 other things.  I am careful to label each jar if there's a chance of confusing Kitty Treats with Uncle Sam Cereal, just to avoid gagging either myself or the cats.


I use plastic because I have no clay jars.  (That would make a great DJ fake name, though:  "Just about 5 o'clock on your way home with The Beatles on WXXX!  This is Clay Jars with ya...") They had clay jars way back in the day, though.  Let's go back to the days of the Kingdom of Judea, some 3,000 years ago, when Judean date palm trees were abundant in that part of the world, cooling the desert with shade and yielding that sweet fruit called dates.



The tree is mentioned in the Bible several times.  The Hebrew name for the tree is "Tamar," and that is what King David named his daughter.


But when the Romans invaded Judea in 70 AD, there were vast forests of palms, and then just as now, people, in their inexplicable urge to pave over earth's bounty, destroyed the palms.  They were extinct.


Or WERE they...?


In the early 1960s, explorers who really dug Herod the Great were rooting around under his palace in modern Israel, and these archeologists found a clay jar with an expiration date of 2,000 years ago, which was far too long ago to take the contents - a pile of seeds - back to the ancient supermarket.  So the seeds sat around in someone's desk drawer at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, until ten years ago, when a botanist named Elaine Solowey planted one of them, expecting nothing all the while.

Not seedy anymore

"I assumed the food in the seed would be no good after all that time. How could it be?" - Elaine Solowey

The old seed sprouted, all right, and it flowered in 2011. And now it seems to be flourishing. 


So, they might cross it with another tree and see what fruit it bears, or they just might let nature takes its course. 


But if it goes to seed, I will be more than glad to send over some empty Skippys so that your grandchildren's grandchildren's great-great-great grandchildren can find those seeds centuries from now!

The Saturday Picture Show, July 7, 2018

Beautiful sunset scene such as we often enjoy at this time of year, but remember the insect repellent, because mosquitoes are enjoying a banner year in Maryland.

Peggy was kind enough to snap this one for me as we made our way down Belair Rd one sunny afternoon. What's more American than a fervent prayer for God to bless America with a nice set of Firestone retreads?

One thing about inventors is, they can't stop. Inventing the Slinky was great, and tens of millions of us chased those coils all over town. But inventing toys to use to play with your toy was like piling a strawberry shortcake on top of a milkshake.

I love old LIFE and Saturday Evening POST magazines from the days when there were undercover commies all over the place and young men wore bowties to take their best girl to the malt shop.

But back then, when you got the big 64-pack of Crayolas, you never dreamed that American Crayon Technology would enable such wondrous carvings as these.

At one time, it was the thing to get married and plant two trees astride the walkway, and then merge the two unto one.

This is the original Star-Spangled Banner that flew over Baltimore's Fort McHenry in 1814, inspiring our national anthem and, later, the creation of Space Force.

I'll leave this here and wait for the art historians among us to tell us which school this artist came from. The exquisite photorealism of the face and the impressionism of the surroundings make quite a contrast.

Take me out of the ballgame

Colby Ryan Rasmus, age 31, out of Columbus, Georgia, is trying to tell the world something.

He signed a pro baseball contract after attending college at Auburn and then went on to make the major leagues after the obligatory tour of the minors, and as a big-leaguer played for the St. Louis Cardinals, Toronto Blue Jays, Houston Astros, and Tampa Bay Rays.

While a member of the Rays last year, he suddenly felt the need to step away from playing baseball in July, and went home to reconsider his future. He was coming off a left hip injury at the time but was supposed to be ready to play again, but quit instead. That meant walking away from $2.2 million in salary. Rasmus, back home, said: "Man, it wasn’t fulfilling me with all the happiness in the world... Chasing the dream, chasing the money – leaves you kind of empty. So I wanted to go home and just enjoy the time away."

Over the past winter, as a free agent, came a change of heart, and he said, "Just felt like I wanted to give it another go," so he signed with the Baltimore Orioles for $3 million for the 2018 season, with another $2 mil in incentive pay if he achieved certain levels of accomplishment.

That did not occur. Rasmus started the season as right fielder, complained of more hip problems, went on the disabled list for two months, came back and played a little bit, and last Sunday, called out sick.

Monday was an off day as the team traveled to Philadelphia to play the Phillies, and Tuesday afternoon, Colby told manager Buck Showalter he was throwing in the towel on his career again.

"Colby talked to me this afternoon, and said he made a decision to go home and discontinue playing, and we’re going to honor that and give him the privacy that he’s due,” Showalter told the Baltimore SUN. “I hope everything is for the best. We wish him well, and we’ll see what the future brings. But I’m not going to get into a lot of details in our conversation.”

I can't think of a more clear example of the old saying about walking in another person's shoes. Nature gave this man the ability to play the greatest game on earth, and he doesn't want to play it anymore.  Chances are that even as a player who was never considered a star of any sort, he has made enough money to preclude having to run the register at Dollar Tree anytime soon.


Not that there's anything about working at the Tree to look down upon! The point is, millions and millions of American kids dream of playing major league ball, and there are 750 jobs like that in all the world (30 teams x 25 players each.)

An opening presented itself on the Orioles roster, unexpectedly, and outfielder Joey Rickard will come up from the minor league to be one of the 750, and Rasmus will go home to his wife and children and ponder what's next.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives, but time after time, we see proof of how wrong that cynical statement is. For all we know, Rasmus is happier now than he's been for years, and will enjoy decades of happiness with his family, and maybe he will get to a point at which we can say that being a big league ballplayer who gave up being a ballplayer is the SECOND most interesting thing about him.

Road Hog

I love having friends all over the world. As they explain to me the customs of their faiths and cultures, they in turn listen rapturously as I explain the goins-on in Baltimore and Maryland. A lot of the times they think I make stuff up, I'm sure, but such is not the case. Just look at the news!

One thing people overseas, not to mention the rest of the United States, can't figure out is this Baltimore Chaise Longue situation. That's the one that happens every winter when it snows and someone shovels out a parking place for him or herself on the street where they live, right in front of their cottage.

And then they go to work or to the Bi-So-Lo or Honest Herman's Liquors, and come home to find someone parked in THEIR parking spot which they feel THEY own because THEY dug it out and marked their turf with a chaise longue which Norm from two doors down moved so he could park there.

I tell you honestly, the police have had to be called in on these deals many, many times. There is a certain thing that is whispered in the ear of each and every lil' Baltimore baby upon emergence from mom's womb: "The street out in front of your house is YOURS."

It's not so, but many believe it to be.

Another interesting facet of life here in Mobtown is that the physical features of Maryland are interesting. The state is virtually bifurcated by the Chesapeake Bay, and many on the Eastern Shore side of that split wish that it were more so, and that no one had ever built that bridge to take us and our money to the shoreside.

But I like everyone over there fine, and I point to the following story as evidence that maybe they are all a little like Baltimore anyway.

Down in Willards, MD, on the way to Ocean City, a local resident, one David Catrino, was recently arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and littering with a weight exceeding 500 pounds. The Wicomico County Sheriff's Office says he blocked a road.

Again, please? He blocked an entire ROAD?

Booking photo

The sheriff says Catrino, 50, somehow placed one-ton (2,000 lbs)  concrete road barriers to block off completely the 7000 block of State Street in Willards.

No Chinese restaurant worth its chopsticks would erect won-ton barriers.

It's a dead end road, this State Street ("that great street, I just wanna say") and the barriers stopped people living on the far side of the street from...living on the far side of the street.

Catrino lives there too, and he told the sheriff that he put down the barriers because he believes he owns the street.

Well, I believe that the Orioles will play in the World Series, so beliefs are a funny thing, but State Street is a county road, owned by the town of Willards.

The deputies had to call in heavy equipment to move the concrete barriers while Catrino argued with the police and became disorderly, earning himself a free trip to central booking.

No one has been able to figure out how Catrino built his mini-Stonehenge, but it will all come out at his trial, scheduled for August 9, when he will face charges of dumping/littering over 500 pounds, and disorderly conduct.

All of this is just an allegation, mind you. The judge will decide.

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Fourth!

I hope that wherever you are in America, you find a way to celebrate Independence Day like we do in my hometown, with a cool parade!

I've never seen a turkey wrestle, but I've seen a chicken box

I often reminisce about the time I was a kid visiting a friend's farm up in the country, and met a mad rooster, who was apparently provoked by my wardrobe of cutoff jeans, a striped short and and a beanie with the slogan "Don't Go Away Mad, Just Go Away" on it.

Yes, I was an early member of Mötley Crüe.  And an avid viewer of Tommy Lee Goes To College, for that matter.

I'll be doggoned if that rooster didn't peck me right on the knee! Yow! And I told him as he strutted away that I would take it to the streets, and exact my revenge at every KFC and Popeyes and Wendy's and every other chicken joint in the continental US.

Then I ran to the farmhouse to put some Texas Pete on the abrasion. I was one tough kid, I wanna tell ya.

And I wanna tell you that raising chickens is now a very big deal! We have a wonderful friend who has quite a flock of hens and roosters, and she loves it! Lots of people do, and according to last week's New Yorker, it's the coolest thing out in Silicon Valley to have chickens, although they sort of do things up a lot fancier out there.

These are the people who designed the very screens you are reading this on, and the software to make the pixels spell out these words, and Johan Land is an example of that. He's the lead project manager at Google's Waymo division - that's the self driving car that will be banging up your fender any day now. It would be sooner than that, but Land is wise enough, according to the Washington Post, to work less and enjoy life more.

“It’s a fascinating thing to sit and watch the animals because instead of looking at a screen, you’re looking at the life cycle,” Land told the paper. “It’s very different from the abstract work that I do.”


Yes, because computer screens don't leave manure all over the place! Not literally, anyway.

And Land isn't into this as deeply as some of his techie colleagues, who spend up to $20,000 for a chicken coop and hire personal chefs for old Foghorn Leghorn out there. Land has 13 chickens and three sheep.

So as part of my ongoing effort to share my moneymaking schemes with you, here is today's Big Business Idea: Move to Silicon Valley and sell:

•  live chickens. They shell out (!) $350 for a laying hen that fetches $15 in the real world.
• chicken feed. These people are putting a diet of organic salmon, watermelon and steak out for the chickens, and I bet it's been weeks since I had the salmon/steak/watermelon combo platter.
• veterinary services. You can just imagine if Rhode Island Reds coughs one morning. These people will have you out there looking down his throat in five minutes.
• coops. They are into redwood coops that match their own houses, or chicken "shacks" made of reclaimed materials. They also go for solar panels, automatic doors, electric lights, and video cameras so they can check in on the brood at the office.  Their office, that is. And you can bet those coops have Wi-Fi so the birds can follow their favorite teams...The Eagles, The Cardinals, even the Orioles.

We all do what we can, as we can. If people out there in California have this kind of money to spend to avoid going to KFC, more power to them. And just don't go out there and try to rustle other people's chickens...they don't like a Chicken Pot Pirate.

A fortune awaits you

Out in the mausoleum where my parents are resting in eternal peace, there is a set of three or four large tall shelves filled with vases left behind following services to send off the departed. I suppose they are up for grabs if anyone needs a place to display their delphiniums or show off their Shastas or host their hostas, but I'm going to look them over a lot more carefully next time I check in because...

This happened in Paris. A bulb-shaped vase made in 18th Century China turned up in a French woman's inheritance, so she stuffed it into a shoebox, protected only by some newspaper, and took the train and the metro subway and a walk to get to the offices of Sotheby's, the auctioneers of fine items.

Well, they oohed and aahed there, they did. The vase is said to be painted in delicate shades of green, blue, yellow and purple, and os supposed to be "an exceptionally well-preserved porcelain vessel made for an emperor of the Qing dynasty."

Seen on the vase are deer, birds, and woodland animals, and there is gold embroidery around the neck, always a classy touch. A Sotheby’s spokeswoman said: “They knew it had some value but nothing like that, nor that it was from the Qing dynasty.”

Well, neither did I, but I can tell you when National Beer started using Chester Peake as their mascot, so that has to count for something. I don't know anything about the Qing Dynasty, among other things.

So this valuable vase had spent a long time in the family attic over there in France, and imagine how many times someone came up to the attic looking for their ballon de football or le manteau de l'oncle Pierre and rested their baguette on the vase.  Good thing it never broke, because after 20 minute of furious bidding (can you just imagine the frenzy?) it was auctioned to an Asian who wishes to remain anonymous, and $19 million poorer.

I happen to have in my boxes of priceless memorabilia downstairs a set of National beer mugs, glass, from the 60s, along with a plastic nut dish bearing the detailed likeness of Mr. Peanut. 

Hello, Sotheby's?
 

Sunday rerun: I wouldn't be without one

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


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

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

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

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

Hobo with bindlestick

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

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

Charmin replacement?

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

The Saturday Picture Show, June 30, 2018

The Orioles Pride logo for this year. Some people had objections. Some people always have objections.

"Gone With The Wind" was published on this day in 1936, and Rhett Butler and I still don't give a damn.

I don't know if this is even real; it looks like a tiny version of a goldfish bowl.

Ribs and rings and fries and mac and cheese, hello!

"Those doggone kids painted the rock again!"

We don't often think of baby dinoasaurs, but this toddler's skeleton recently turned up in Alberta, Canada. It's in such good shape (as skeletons go) that paleontologists determined his manner of death to be drowning.

Continuing my fascination with the insides of things, here is what it would look like if you were tiny enough to fit inside a cello.

Tammy Waddell was a teacher in Forsyth County, Georgia before her recent death. She asked that, in lieu of flowers or other gestures, people bring backpacks with supplies for students. As her cousin put it, "A teacher to the end." What a wonderful idea!

Up in the sky

Today being June 29, a lot of people are looking at tomorrow not only as the birthday of a really great American (a 6' 5" graduate of Towson High School named Michael Phelps) but as the end of the fiscal year.

This is a scheduling oddity, this fiscal year business, set up to make it easier for accountants to juggle the books on corporations before taking the months of July and August off.  It is also known as the "physical year" in Baltimore, where June 30 is actually known as "June 31st."

But please, enjoy the 30th of June because it is supposed to be the last 30th of any month ever, says a group with a 100% record of being totally wrong in these matters.

They call themselves "End Times Prophecies" and they have announced - with some certainty, mind you! - that the world will come to an end on July 29, owing to a chain of events resulting from something called a "Polar Flip."

And you're like me, thinking a Polar Flip is a new treat at Dairy Queen, but no. There's even a video, should you have 17 minutes with nothing at all to do, and it's on YouTube, so you know it's verified to be accurate.

They report on the totally non-bogus Armageddon News, and the report says, "The polar flip will make the stars race across the sky, and the vacuum from the reeling of the Earth will pull the atmosphere along the ground, trying to catch up, creating what is known as a roll cloud."

For those of you so unfortunate as never to have fallen in love, that's exactly what it feels like, so try to make it happen before the end of July. And consarn it, if Pete Davidson can get with Ariana Grande, there is hope for everyone! 

All of these goin's-on in the sky above seem to stem from a big deal of a blood moon that is due to make the end of July really something to remember, so to speak. There will be a lunar eclipse, the longest one of the 21st Century, lasting almost two hours and starting a blood moon (in which the moon has a red tinge.)

Look up! Now look up "phony predictions!"

This is similar to the story put out by wacky ministers John Hagee and Mark Biltz, who said back in 2014 that four consecutive lunar eclipses which began in April of that year with six full moons in between comprises a "tetrad" - - and that meant the end of earth as described in the Bible in Acts 2:20 and Revelation 6:12.

The tetrad ended in September '14, and the Orioles made the playoffs that October, so I know the world did not end.

However the tetrad ended in September 2014 and we're all still here.

These same fools at End Times Prophecies, earlier this year, called for a BA collision between asteroids and Earth in May, and that Barack Obama would reveal himself to be the Antichrist in June. 

And if you've ever had asteroids, you know how irritating they can be.

She had style! She had flair! She was there!

All of a sudden, it seems like Fran Drescher is everywhere, and I don't mind that one bit.

It's not the recent release of Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, the blockbuster followup to Hotel Transylvania and Hotel Transylvania 2, in all of which she voices the part of Eunice, that catches my attention, because my attendance at movies such as that is, well, totally sparse.

But I always loved that show called The Nanny, in which savvy Noo Yawk tootsie Fran always got over on the uptight CC and won the hearts of the butler, the kids, and the starchy English dad. It was always a good sitcom for those of us who love to see things wrapped up neatly in 30 minutes, and even today, fashion fans who loved seeing Fran wrapped up in haute couture have the Instagram account "What Fran Wore" to look back fondly on all those outfits. I don't know Versace from Vitameatavegamin, so that's not my thing, but if it's yours, gawk away!


Fran was in Saturday Night Fever, a quick scene with John Travolta on the dance floor, and The Hollywood Knights, Doctor Detroit, The Big Picture, UHF , Cadillac Man, and as Bobbi Fleckman, the publicist, in This Is Spinal Tap.

And she has had roles in other sitcoms, tried a talk show or two, appeared on Broadway and at Lincoln Center in Camelot.

Along the way, she became a health advocate after being successfully treated for uterine cancer, and wrote a book about her experiences, characteristically entitled "Cancer Schmancer."

I saw her last week on Good Morning America promoting that latest Transylvania picture, and I have to say she is just as appealing as ever, and I know she might not be everyone's idea of appealing. But I always like this woman of 60 years, born for real as "the flashy girl  from Flushing" as Francine Joy Drescher.

And why? Because she has a voice that can be described as the ultimate New York nasality, nails on chalkboard, tin cans being dragged down an alley, all those cliches about voices...Fran is proof for sure that it's best to stick with the cards you're dealt. All right, so she's not working with a voice like Lauren Bacall's or Meryl Streep's, but she owns it, she sticks true to her voice and she makes it work.

After Dizzy Dean could no longer play baseball, the old Cardinal Hall of Famer turned to broadcasting, bringing with him boxes of country expressions and mangled English. Called on the carpet for using improper verb forms and reminded that the past tense of "slide" is not "slud," and that "ain't" is not good grammar, old Diz reminded his bosses that "a lot of guys who ain't saying 'ain't,' ain't eating."

On a less engaging personality, Fran's voice would be career poison, but she's doing fine with it, and I hope she's making movies well into the age of Grandma Yetta and beyond.

Oh Bouyant!

I love it when I get to pretend to be Paul Harvey for a day. So let me tell you the story and then go right to the REST of the story without pausing for a :30 sec commercial for AYDS, the diet candy, or Banker's Life.

The scene is Kuwait and the year is 1964 and the month is November. I have no idea what the weather was like, never having been anywhere near Kuwait, but I do know that a Dutch ship, the Al-Kuwait, sank just off the coast of that Persian Gulf nation one day in that month and that year.

The Al-Kuwait had been delivering a cargo of 6,000 sheep for a big cookout to be held that weekend.  Well, that was ruined, and so would be the drinking water for everyone in the oil-rich nation, because their water comes from the very harbor where the sheep met their doom, and so getting that ship up off the ocean's floor so it could "limp into port," as nautical tales always put it, was imperative.  And the Kuwaiti government's plan to raise the ship with cranes would have taken too long and may have also caused the ship to break anyway.

Well, there are many good Danes, but here is one really Great Dane - an inventor named Karl Krøyer. Mr Krøyer invented the process for continuous conversion of starch into glucose syrup, as we all know, and bicycle wheel rim linings, and a non-skid highway surfacing material. He was a real "idea guy." 


So off Krøyer went to the scene of the wreck and soon he came up with an idea. He ordered 30 million tiny (the size of peas) polystyrene balls - 65 tons worth. Divers connected a tube to another ship carrying the pellets and in no time at all, they filled the Al Kuwait and she bobbed to the surface, preventing an environmental catastrophe, by making the sunken hulk buoyant again.

"Hello, BASF Corporation? Yeah, I'm gonna need 30,000,000 white plastic balls to go..."

Krøyer became a worldwide hero among shippers and fans of clever solutions, and earned a handsome dollar from his idea and the execution of it.


BUT...

When Krøyer applied for a patent, he was turned down!

And that was because Huey, Dewey, and Louie, nephews of Donald Duck in the comic books, had the same idea (using ping-pong balls) in a comic book, in 1949.


And, as Paul Harvey would say, Good DAY!

Register under the name "Will B. Counted"

It's Primary Election Day in Maryland.

I always hate to see Election Day roll around, because it means saying goodbye to some of my favorite television commercials. They are truly the apex of American advertising, these ads that a campaign runs showing their candidate strolling among the people, allowing the multitudes to be healed simply by touching the hem of their garment.

And then the opposition searches high and low for a picture taken right after the other candidate sneezed, making it look like they are the sort of person who would rip children from the arms of their impoverished parents.*

But 18,700 Maryland voters will be disappointed, should they show up at where they think they should be to vote, only to find that the state election authorities failed to update their records. Voters who changed their address or party affiliation on the Maryland MVA website or self-service kiosks at the MVA between April 22, 2017, and June 5, 2018 will find that the changes did not go through.

Oooopsie.

But affable Governor Larry Hogan wants you to know that all is well, and all votes will be counted.


“Every single person is going to be able to vote,” Hogan told Channel 13 over the weekend. “They’re doing everything they can to address it.  It shouldn’t have too much of an impact, but it’s an inconvenience.”

“There was a glitch between the MVA computer system and the state Board of Elections computer system,” Hogan told the news.

Politicians running for office on both sides of the primary ballot were quick to cry foul, and voter suppression, and disenfranchisement.

My thoughts are two:  how many of the 18,700 will even vote? It irks me every time there's an election how many people don't. It's one of the greatest things about America, and you should ask people from countries where voting isn't even an option if they would show up at the polls, given the chance.

The other is the term "computer glitch." I've worked with computers for many years, and while my expertise is not much above the level of "regular user," I got plenty of info from Info Tech techs, and their slogan was always "GIGO," meaning "garbage in, garbage out."

Don't blame a "computer glitch" if the people on the MVA computers failed to establish the proper interface with the people on the SBE computers, or, having set up the transfer of information, failed to enter it in the first place.

I'm just speculating here; I have no idea what happened. But I do doggone well know that when "they" want to get those tax bills and speed camera tickets mailed out, they make sure all the connections are in place.

It's an efficient system when people plan for something to happen, set it in motion, and then CHECK to make sure it happened!

Blaming your computer for having a glitch is the modern equivalent of "my dog ate my homework."


* Sometimes this one works.

a/k/a Permit Patty

Every so often (I try to time it to the reappearance of Halley's Comet) Peggy and I will get into one of our driving machines and cross the city line, entering Baltimore City, where the pace of life moves as fast as the ambulances and police cars can move it along.

We take our own water, but in case we didn't, there are plenty of corners in the city where people of all ages stand on hot days alongside giant foam coolers full of ice cold bottles of water.  And for a dollar, you can buy one.

If you've ever been hot and thirsty as only Baltimore can make you, and you don't have a bottle of water handy, paying a buck for one hardly seems steep at all.

And I've seen bottled water for as little as $2.88 for a pack of 30 bottles, which means a cost to the purveyor of 9.6 cents each, meaning that if you can get a dollar for it, your profit is 91 cents, minus the cost of ice. Not bad money for standing in the miasma of summer heat and exhaust gas.

I see this as one of those deals where everyone makes out fine.

But out in Oakland, California, a lady named Allison Ettel (since dubbed Permit Patty, to play on the B-B-Q Becky trope for a woman who complained about people firing up a grill) called the police when a little 8-year-old girl was hawking water to raise money for a trip to see Disneytown.  And it wasn't so pretty, once the word got out that Ettel was whining to the police that a child was vending water on a hot day without a permit.

The very IDEA!

Ettel, who was involved in the curious industry of making and selling marijuana-laced dog treats, saw her entire world crumble in the course of 24 hours. First, people who had been selling her doggie delights dropped her as a business partner right off, and then some other women who are making a film about women entrepreneurs in the burgeoning marijuana industry announced that she was being cut from the film.

Just as predictably, Ettel apologized, sort of, and says she acted out of stress and hopes that people will not judge her harshly, since she feels she is the victim of discrimination.

At least she didn't blame it on Ambien.

People are sick and tired of others calling the police on minor matters that don't even rise to the level of crime. If people are having a cookout and you don't care to be there, haul your buns and hotdogs to another location.  If a little girl is selling water, buy a water and walk away.

Just keep walking; we'll tell you when to return.

Sunday Rerun: "I'm 18, I get confused every day" - Alice Cooper

Someday, I hope to understand how certain people think, and how, when they go to think about something, they forget what they were like when they were 18.

Now, I love people of all ages, and 18 is a pretty good age.  It was for me. I finished high school (owing in no small part to a reluctance among the faculty to see me looming in their classroom doors again that fall) and I had a union job at the A&P that paid pretty sweet and I had friends to run around and guzzle beer meditate on the meaning of life with and I was a volunteer firefighter and that summer alone, I had three different women ask me to get married.

The fact that they were my mother, my sister and my grandmother takes nothing away from what a happy dude I was at 18.

But I was not responsible enough to get behind the wheel of a big rig semi and roar across the nation's highways, no Siree Bob. 

However, right now, some people in Congress (I won't mention what party they're with, but you can guess) are proposing to change the regulations that so far have kept you and me alive to allow people as young as 18 to roll 18 wheels under 16 tons.

Right now, you have to be 21 to drive a truckload of turnips to the Buy Bye Bye warehouse, but these senators want to allow an unlimited amount of contiguous states that join together in "compacts" to drop the age limit to 18 for interstate trips. 

That means if Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania sign such a deal, that goofy kid down the street could be pushing a big Mack from Portsmouth to Williamsport, from Hershey to Harrisonburg, or from St Mary's PA to St Mary's County, MD.  And probably without stopping or even slowing down very much!

The Senate plan would allow them to start careers careering up and down the roads, and then after four years, the Secretary of Transportation would be required to see whether teens have "an equivalent level of safety" in comparison with older truckers.

In 2013, drivers aged 18-20 were in 66 percent more fatal traffic accidents than drivers 21 and over.

But there's a shortage of truck drivers, because everyone these days is breaking their neck to enter the burgeoning fields of computer repair, forensic investigation at gooey crime scenes, and running for US president.  So, instead of trying to get mature individuals to stop watching "Judge Mablean" all afternoon and start driving truckloads of velour track suits to WalMarts so people could dress right for the casinos, the trucking industry is choosing to get the Senate to allow callow youths to drive 82 hours a week behind the wheel of a giant tractor-trailer.


The hope here is that Congress will hear from the public and let teenagers drive their parents crazy in every state, instead of driving trucks along the interstate.

The Saturday Picture Show, June 23, 2018

I have to be honest; I only have two things I don't like about modern country music. One of them is the way the songs sound, and the other is the way the performers dress. Here is old school hero Porter Wagoner showing how to dress, and listen here  to hear how it used to sound.

It's always cool to see old cars being kept alive by Cubans and their ingenuity, but did you know there was a ski resort just outside Havana?

This is not from Baltimore, but it should have been. We do love our Pink Flamingoes.

Baseball parks always have an interesting backdrop for the hitter to deal with as he waits for the pitch. Imagine playing in Montana and to hit one toward this view!

My favorite pizza place gives those punchcards so that when you've bought enough pizza and get totally punched out, you get a free pie. This place gives you magnetic fridge decorations as you work toward the freebie.

This stained-glass blue crab greets visitors at Baltimore-Washington Airport. The person who took this picture and posted it said, "I want someone to love me as much as people from Maryland love being from Maryland."  And we do, even though your luggage is in Denver.

The people at IHOP spent about a gazillion dollars promoting their name change to IHOB, just so you would remember to get a burger next time you dine there. Early results indicate that they would have had more success by investing their money in some better burgers.

If it were my job to trim the ivy in this graveyard, I would be very very careful around the ears headstone.

If only

I think we talked about this list before, written by a palliative care nurse named Bronnie Ware. It's a list of the top 5 regrets of the dying, and I would imagine there are dozens and dozens of things that people just about to shuffle off to Buffalo are sorry about or wish they had done differently.

But among the list (I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me, I wish I hadn’t worked so hard, I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings, I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends, and I wish that I had let myself be happier) I find myself torn between the last two as being most important.

Guess whose face is on the
$10,000 bill?

I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends says a lot to those of us who have been out of school since the schools actually cared if you spelled things correctly, or knew who Salmon P. Chase was. I have to admit, this social media thing might just catch on yet, finally giving us the chance to tweet some of the people we always wanted to tweet. Now listen, I know for sure that there are lots of people who don't care to see how old classmates are doing or whatever happened to that young couple who rented the apartment down the hall when they were just starting out or what happened to the guy who got that promotion they wanted so much, which is why they left the firm and found a new job elsewhere.

If I'm dispensing free advice to the young, as I am wont to do in my dotage, it would be to repeat the old adage about making new friends and keeping the old - one is silver and the other, gold. Staying in touch with the people you really like will be a benefit to you when you're up there in age, and being able to look back with someone who had always been there with you is so much more rewarding than discussing it with the kid who just topped off your crankcase at JiffyLube.

Plus, the practical part of it is, at least in an area like this Baltimore metro, is that if you know somebody, they must know someone who knows someone who can get you out of jury duty. Old friends. Worth it.

I wish that I had let myself be happier. I want to assure all of you who put happiness aside to concentrate on earning more money, having the best lawn on the cul-de-sac, or figuring out why in hell people say "cul-de-sac" when it's a court...all that doesn't matter. You sit and worry about that funny noise the Kelvinator keeps making, or whether your in-laws are going to show up and hang around for a month, or that funny noise that your spouse keeps making, and worry gets you nowhere. The Kelvinator will break down someday and you'll be told by a guy with Norge pants that it needs a whole new pfisteris. Your inlaws will show up, lay claim to your room, monopolize the television and screw up the remote, and you can't do anything about it but get them an afghan so they can snuggle while watching Matlock.  And that funny noise from the spouse is them clearing their throat, reminding you to knock off the worrying.

Besides, one of your old friends probably has an appliance repair business! Call him and have that icebox fixed for cheap.

Righting Some Bad Czechs

Your knowledge of Czechoslovakian politics will be complete once you read about their president doing something that I wouldn't be surprised to see ours do.

The president's name is Milos Zeman (theirs, not ours) and he was mad at a group of artists in the Czech Republic. An artist collective (I get the impression this consists of a group of people in smocks, smoking pipes and drinking a whole lot of coffee) named Ztohoven had done all they could do to scotch Zeman's chances of re-election, but it didn't work out, and he won.

And boy, was he steamed at the Ztohoven people, because they called him "the man who is not ashamed" (hmmm) and found a gigantic pair of skivvies to symbolize him. It seems they choose red boxers because he is friendly toward the Chinese and the Russians and opposes immigration. (Hmmmmmm.) 

Prague Castle

The artists drove Zeman nuts every time they could with this...in 2015, members of the group climbed to the roof of Prague Castle, lowering the Czech flag and replacing it with the BA drawers waving in the sky.

And then they made little badges and stickers with pictures of the giant red boxers and displayed them everywhere they could.

It started to remind me of those mind games that some people play on each other, mailing them pictures of turkeys, turkeys, turkeys.

So, always looking to make a score even, Zeman had reporters assemble at the Prague Castle  - a building that they STARTED building in the year 870 and FINISHED in 1929 - and they all stood agog as Zeman told his chancellor to bring out the underwear.

Chancellor Vratislav Mynar pulled out the crimson BVDs and unfurled them, and he and Zeman handed them to firefighters, who set them on fire.

Zeman intoned these words for the ages to the press and amused spectators:

"The time of underwear in politics is over."

If only this sort of wisdom could emigrate to the United States.