The Saturday Picture Show, April 17, 2021

 

This is from the 1960s school of humor that thought posting "Don't pee in our pool; we don't swim in your toilet!" signs in the paneled clubroom was a riot. Charlie was the life of every party.

I know we've had a lot of rain these last few weeks. Trust me, when beauties like this, and lots of corn and whatnot come in this summer, it'll all be worth it!

I think we can date this cuneiform wall art to the Mesopotamians. Charlie and Claire Mesopotamian, that fun couple from the next street over.

And here is an extreme close up of a red pencil making a big X on my math quiz.

The fabled cobblestone streets of Philadelphia. One can only speculate as to how Amazon delivery trucks, fire engines, and other essential vehicles traverse them, but they sure look quaint.

So, a guy is tearing up the old wall-to-wall carpet in the house he bought, and it turns out that the people who just sold it to him were really into Monopoly. Think of the iron, race car, and thimble you have to tote around on it!

Miami Beach. Then, as now, largely unmasked.

It's the obstinate side of me that finds real beauty in weeds. To me, this dandelion is as pretty as an orchid, and you can make wine, if you have several hundred of them.

How great would this look, hanging on the living room wall?

It's the sign of maturity when one can accept the world as it is and make the best of it. So the only place they could find on your wall to hang the fire extinguisher is right on the main wall? Think of a creative way to deal, and look at the result!

Riders On The Storm

 Whoever coined the term "Dumb bunnies" didn't know these rabbits!

 Dateline: Dunedin, New Zealand: Three rabbits saw floodwaters rising fast, and they knew they had to take action, since they don't a) own surfboards  or  b) know how to swim.

So what they did, they jumped onto the backs of some sheep who were also seeking to avoid getting flooded out, and hitchhiked to dry land.

Ferg Horne, 64, is a farmer in New Zealand, been at it for almost 50 years, and he has never seen anything to match it.

His neighbor was off on vacation, so Ferg was caring for the sheep next door when wind and rain came ripping through the Taieri Plains on New Zealand’s South Island.

That was Friday afternoon, and Ferg was held at bay by the high water until Saturday morning, and when he got to where the sheep were standing in three inches of water, two of them had riders on their backs. 

Well, Ferg figured that the sheep were carrying some flood-borne debris or something, but, "the closer I got, I realized it was rabbits,” he said. Two on one sheep, one on the other.

But being 64, he's no technowizard, and when he went to snap a photo of the free-riders, he wound up shooting a video. But he wanted to show the world what was happening, because he didn't think people would believe him otherwise.

"It's a Samsung or a smartphone or whatever you call it. I swear at it every day," he told the news. "I'm absolutely useless with technology." In that cool New Zealand accent!

He did figure out how to forward the video to his son, and from there, it all went, well, viral, if it's ok to say that.

And, "From then on it's just gone crazy," he said.

And yes, he did take the sheep to the safety of higher ground after all this commotion. 

"They were as happy as can be, those rabbits; they were warm and dry, snuggled up," he told The Press newspaper in Christchurch, the South Island’s largest city.

And, just for the capper of it, Ferg says the rabbits "fell off by the time I got to where I was shifting the sheep to dry land, but I did look back, and they were climbing up [a] tree.”

Maybe they had had all their fun for the week.

"Cinderella story, out of nowhere, former greenskeeper, now about to become the Masters champion"

 I make it a habit to try to watch the very end of the Masters Golf Tournament every April, because it's a Festival Of Clichés every time. The donning of the Holy Green Jacket, which brings to our Sunday evening television screens a formal ceremony that is rivaled only by a papal investiture for pomp-ish circumstance, always brings me back to a couple of lines from Bob Dylan's 1965 liner notes for "Highway 61 Revisited":  "...the subject matter -- though meaningless as it is -- has something to do with the beautiful strangers . . . . the beautiful strangers, Vivaldi's green jacket & the holy slow train." 

Augusta National Golf Club is just full of beautiful strangers. The crème de la crème of the entire Southern beau monde are all there, and one can almost smell the aroma of microfiber polo shirts through the screen. The winner gets to wear his green spring jacket, and it's a shame that golf has not seen fit to create wardrobe choices for the other Three Seasons.  

And heaven knows golf matches move with the speed of a holy slow train. But with all the players trooping around with their caddies dressed in jumpsuits, playing a game as boring as an entire afternoon can be. But it was Dorothy Parker who said, "The cure for boredom is curiosity, and there is no cure for curiosity."  So I tried on Sunday to find something to be curious about, and I found it when Jim Nantz, the voice of CBS Sports, said that the winner, Hideki Matsuyama, a man from Japan, had "fans from halfway around the world watching him compete."

Well, now. Augusta is 6,945 miles from Tokyo, which is really all the way around the world. You can see the antipodes (the direct geographical opposite) of any address on https://www.antipodesmap.com/ and that site shows us that the antipode to Augusta - where you would wind up if you started drilling down at the 18th hole, all the way through Earth - is just west of Perth, Australia, south of the Indochinese Peninsula.

And by the time I figured that out, Matsuyama had his green jacket and I had a delicious pan of barbecued chicken to chow down on, so until next year, so long, Augusta!

Cheerios are not English!

I am a big breakfast fan. I prefer to fuel up with a proper eye-opener, like bacon and eggs, or fried ham and potatoes, or hominy and sausage. Fill up the tank for a big day, pause for a light lunch (apple slices with peanut butter, maybe a granola bar) for lunch, and then all hell breaks loose for dinner.

It must be my English heritage! Over there, they have what's called the Full English breakfast. And there's a Facebook page called Rate My Plate, on which a woman named Stacie E shared her morning meal.

Stacie E got the beatdown of the century, probably because she put gravy on her breakfast. Gravy!

She served up three link sausages, one fried egg, two plum tomatoes, three rashers of bacon (the English call a slice of bacon a "rasher"), a scoop of baked beans and a slice of buttered white toast.

And then she ladled on a cup or so of gravy.

She took a picture for Facebook, and captioned it "Full English with Gravy by Stacie E."

About the nicest word that anyone used to describe her morning vittles was "vile."  It seems that English breakfast lovers do not believe in slopping gravy on their meals, and also, people were pointing out that the real deal would have mushrooms and blood pudding.

Blood pudding, if you haven't heard of it, is "made from pork blood, with pork fat or beef suet, and a cereal, usually oatmeal, oat groats or barley groats." That's how Wikipedia defines it.

It's a sausage, and you remember the old adage: There are two things you don't want to see being made: Laws, and Sausages. 

Breakfast, anyone?

Across the Universe

 

If you enjoy listening to radio from all over - over in the next county or over across the seven seas - I recommend a free app that will give you hours of fun listening!

It's called Radio Garden and you access it via http.radio.garden on a mobile device or a desktop. Once you're there, you navigate a globe that appears, zoom in on the green dots you'll see spread out on a map background (each dot is a radio station) and you'll be transported miles away.

It even gives you the feel of tuning in an old radio. You hear slight static and crackle as you scan the dial, and then you'll hear small-town stations playing the same music you hear on major stations and then you'll hear major stations from New York or London playing the same song - or you'll hear songs you never heard before. If you like a station, click on the heart symbol and that station will be saved on a list you can easily click on again.

Studio Puckey is the name of the outfit that came up with this idea. They're in Amsterdam, and I tell you, if this technology had been available when I was a lad, I would have whiled away many an hour, or entire day, let's be honest. 

The 3D Google Earth interface is what shows you where are you, so to speak. Radio stations that wish to participate (and why wouldn't they?) simply have to beam up a signal converted to streaming editing. 

Moving around the globe, one can listen to music, news, talk shows (people are just as vapid elsewhere as here) live sporting events and even distant commercials!

I've heard live radio dramas from northern California, World War II speeches and plays from Britain, a talk show from Sri Lanka, a high school station from Delaware where the principal spins some of his favorite records one hour a week, and two interesting sites: a station from London that plays bird calls (and nothing but) 24 hours a day and AmbiNature Radio from Zurich, Switzerland, which gives a steady diet of nature sounds all day. That station is marvelous background for an afternoon nap.

Or so I am told.

Calling Dr Yankem

Whoa! Don't tell your favorite dentist - or any hooker - but "paid escort" is not really the oldest profession in the world, although books and advice columns always present it as such.

No, it turns out that people have been doing dentistry - although maybe not with fancy offices and Muzak and outdated Yachting magazines in the waiting room - since people first had teeth.

Scientists now have evidence of teeth being drilled in skulls that dates from 7,500 to 9,000 years ago.

Ogg and Mogg, the prehistoric couple, had holes in their teeth made by some sort of prehistoric bow-drill.

Researchers at the University of Bologna, Italy examined a 14,000-year-old skull and found that "one rotten tooth in the jaw had been deliberately scoured and scraped with a tool," says the BBC. That makes dentistry one of the oldest recorded professions and is definitely a reason to smile.

Imagine if you will, a world without toothpaste, toothbrushes, dental floss, and toothpicks. And then imagine Barney Rubble with a bow drill, saying. "Say ahhhhhhhhh, Fred!" 

Ancient bow-drill, as used by ancient Egyptians

"Look, Ma, no cavities!"

Sunday Rerun: The Bird Is The Word (from 2016)

 If you remember the meeting just after the election when the president-elect met with the current president, there were so many cameras clicking in the room as the men met the press that you could hardly hear what they said!

It must have been about that loud up at the Conowingo Dam, the hydroelectric power plant that takes the flowing water of the Susquehanna River and generates electricity to light up the little lamp by your sewing chair.

The crowd gathers

There's a park up there called Fisherman's Wharf & Park, and last week they held their fourth annual Eagle Day for avid birdwatchers and photographers. There's something about the tall, tall trees and craggy topography of the area that makes a happy home for America's feathered national symbol.  The area and the dam and plant are owned by Exelon Generation, the good people who are powering the computer I'm pounding away at right this minute.

More than 1,100 people showed up on a chilly Saturday in Northeastern Maryland, cameras and binoculars in hand, because, "It's the best place to see eagles," said Exelon spokeswoman Deena O'Brien. 

There were demonstrations and lessons from wildlife organizations to help people better appreciate the wonders of nature, and from all accounts, it was a fine time for all.  Fishermen and women have long trooped up there to have a chance to catch dinner, and while you won't go home with anything but film or digital images from Eagle Day, it must really be something to be in the right spot when one of them swoops in for breakfast on some perch or shad.

The papers said that bird enthusiasts came early, stayed late, dressed snugly and prepared with all sorts of camera bags and coolers, camp chairs, portable gazebos, lunch boxes, and supplies. I ought to get involved in this next year, because I would love to go out in that sort of clothing - the shirts, pants and vests with all sorts of pockets and carabiners and slots and zippers all over the place. That's for me.  And getting to see an eagle is a pure bonus! 

PS - if you go...the thing to do is to wait to hear a fellow birder holler "Right overhead!" and then look up!  There goes one now!

The Saturday Picture Show, April 10, 2021

 

I often wonder, while filling up the cat food, how anyone can stand to work in the cat food factory, given how bad their product smells? So here is the opposite of that - a job raising incense!

Words from a very wise principal. Remember, even Bill Gates needs brakes on his car, and Elon Musk needs someone to launder his socks. No one is alone here.

It really does exist! It's in Florida, which is why so many of the superannuated migrate there.

A wise sign in Northern Ireland. 

I'm stumped if I can think of a better place for a fox to take a snooze and avoid watching fox news.

This crocodile went to the pool and insisted on taking his inflatable.

This Wednesday the 14th will mark the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, at Ford's Theater in D.C. He wore this top hat that evening.

This is an Arabian silver coin, struck in 1693 in Yemen. It was recently found in the ground at a farm in Middletown, R.I. and is believed to be part of the loot stolen by 17th-Century English pirate named Henry Avery, who sailed the seas under the colorful nickname "Long Ben," apparently because that sounds so much cooler than "Long Henry."

So many of us skip our vital midday naps. Doing so leaves one at the risk of being overly tired when it's time for the afternoon nap.

Those chilly mornings are over for now, sad to say, but remember how nice it is to see your breath fogging up in front of you?

With six you get a free eggroll

When I worked on the midnight shift in the Baltimore County Courthouse, I spent many a lunch 1/2 hour roaming the building. Just reading the legal notices that were posted in accordance with law was a fascinating pastime, and the postings of people who paid $110 to change their names legally were the best. 

A lot of these were women who were divorced and wanted their original name back (that should be free, IMHO) and some were people who disliked being called "Poindexter" or "Jor-El" or whatever, and some were the kind who were into spending that kind of money for a joke, such as the newly-christened "Bud" Wiser or "Dixie" Normus.

But would you change your name for sushi? Over in Taiwan, people have been changing their names, but enough is enough, say the local officials.

There is a sushi chain called  Akindo Sushiro. They offered free chow on Wednesdays and Thursdays to "whole tables of customers named Gui Yu, or  'Salmon'." All you had to do was to make "Salmon" part of your name. Local media called the resultant commotion "salmon chaos."

By the end of the first day, dozens of people had gotten their free suppers, and more than a thousand had eaten at half off just for changing their names to a name with aquatic associations. 

And the government offices reported that about 150 "mostly young" people had come in to change their names. 

"Salmon Prince," "Meteor Salmon King" and "Salmon Fried Rice" got their meals for free, and one freeloader changed his name to something that set the Taiwanese name for all-time longest name: "Chen Loves Taiwan, Abalone, Tuna, Salmon, Snow Crab, Sea Urchin, Scallop, Lobster and Beef, Mayfull, Palais de Chine, Regent, Hilton, Caesar Park, Hotel Royal."

One college student went with "Explosive Good Looking Salmon," and he and his squad gobbled $235 worth of sushi.

Another student who changed their name and their friends ate about $460 worth of sushi.

"I do not think we will want to eat salmon again for a while," they wrote online, per the local news.

Predictably, Taiwan officials didn't find all this very amusing as they coped with all the red tape. Deputy Interior minister Chen Tsung-yen said that the changes for free food were wasting time and causing unnecessary paperwork, according to AFP.

"I hope everyone can be more rational about it," Tsung-yen told reporters.

Diners with new names were telling reporters that were going to change their names back to their original non-sushi names after the free meal. The process fee for a name change and new ID card is less than $3.

And Taiwanese official Ann Chovy took to the airwaves to urge residents to "be careful to take good care of your name." 

The Royal Dos and Don'ts

Since I have mountains of time on my hands, I decided to click 147 times and read one of those lists of things that Kate Middleton, Duchess of Whateversville, is not allowed to do. I thought I should share them, because who knows? You might be invited to high tea with her and her hubby Prince Willie any day now!

Kate seen with estranged family member

Kay? Here we go...

• No Autographs - although she could just write "K8," but nooooo.
• She Is Forbidden To Profit From Her Work, so you can't offer to pay her for endorsing your tank tops or craft beer. 
• Queen First. She cannot precede the Queen walking out of anywhere. Her Majesty goes first, so she can get the first cab.
• No Mussels Or Oysters, because they have been known to cause instant death, or worse. Filet-O-Fish, no problem.
• No Flashy Nail Colors. Her color palette includes a choice of two colors and zero Lee Press-on-Nails.
• No Social Media, because can you imagine seeing "Kate Middleton loved this" after you put up a picture of a kid schmearing ice cream all over himself?
• No PDA means you will never see her and Willie doing the vertical bop at a record hop.
• Strict Dress Code excludes anything from Frederick's of Hollywood. Nothing see-through, no torn knees, no tees with profane slogans. No tube tops, and certainly, proper foundation garments are required.
• No Provocative Dresses means she can't have anything low cut to look down upon or short cut to look up.
• Minimal Black Clothing means when she travels, she wears light colors, but they have to pack mourning clothes in case someone buys the ranch while they're away and she has to go say goodbye to someone to whom she never said hello.
• Monopoly Is Not Allowed because The Duke Of York said it's a vicious pastime in 2008. It is perfectly acceptable to play "Clue," with Prince Philip acting the part of Col. Mustard
• The Royal Family Can’t Travel On The Same Plane, Boat Or Train, and anyone who has ever gone on a trip with their own family cheers this veto.
• She Must Go To The Beauty Salon Frequently because a Duchess must stay well-groomed and her husband is not the person from whom to ask for hair advice.
• She Can Only Be Protestant Anglican but she is allowed to play BINGO
• Christmas Together is a very big deal with the Royals, especially when Charles leans out of the window and hollers at a boy playing in the snow, "An intelligent boy. A remarkable boy. Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there? Not the little prize; the big one." And then sends the penniless lad off to buy the great bird with just his smile.
• No Crying In Public means she is not allowed to dice onions for company.
• Jaw Placement Is Key For Photographs. It actually states that "When royal women pose for photographs they should be concerned about keeping their jaws parallel to the ground." No wonder so many royal types have emotional problems. They have to hold a protractor to the side of their faces all the time.
• She Must Walk Two Steps Behind William. So let's see...she has to be behind her grandmother-in-law and her husband as they file out of Woolworth's. A lot of women would just peel off and head in the opposite direction!
• The Stock Code. This floors me. Kate has to watch for the Queen's signals like she was a runner on third base. If Elizabeth has had enough for the evening, she puts her bag on the table, and that means "Five minutes and we gone, Kate!" When Eliz. puts her fork down, that means everyone is through chowing down. And when she touches the bill of her cap and rolls her eyes, that means the hit-and-run is on.
• One last one: The Queen dislikes garlic, so ain't nobody eatin' garlic.

All of this just goes to show that I would still be a Royal PIA!

The Homestretch

  

The way they used to write in the newspapers back in the day...very formal, very flowery language. 

F'rinstance, this, from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle: "The grim reaper paid a sensational visit to the Belmont Park track yesterday,” in an article from 1923.

And it was accurate, although ponderous. What happened at Belmont that June 4 has never happened before or since: Frank Hayes, a 22-year-old jockey, brought home a winner in the one and only race he ever entered, up on a nag named Sweet Kiss.

Oh sure, lots of people have jockeyed just one race and lots of people have only won one race, but all the others lived. Frank Hayes did not.

He was a stablehand and at the last minute, he was asked to fill in for the regular rider. Sweet Kiss went off at 20-1 odds that day; the crowd was backing a hoss named Gimme.

They figure that sometime in the latter part of the race, Frank Hayes died in the saddle from either a heart attack from the excitement or from complications of going from 142 lbs to 130 in a very short time.

Sweet Kiss was owned by Miss A. M. Frayling, who, not knowing that her jockey was no longer with us, went to congratulate Hayes after the steeplechase race. Sweet Kiss had thundered down the home stretch and won by a head.

“The exertion and excitement proved too great,” said the New York Daily News, which also described Hayes as “well-liked … favorite in the saddling room and stable and took a great pride in his calling.”

Reflecting on Hayes's weight loss, the Buffalo Morning Express said, “He was confronted with the task of taking off nearly 10 pounds in 24 hours. This morning he spent several hours on the road, jogging off surplus weight. He strove and sweated and denied himself water and when he climbed into the saddle at post time he was weak and tired.”

Miss Frayling is believed to have retired Sweet Kiss, who never raced again, but was tagged with the rather unfair nickname "Sweet Kiss Of Death." 

One week later, they buried Hayes in the racing silks that he wore for his one and only race. 

It was surprising to me that people went on those crash diets 98 years ago. They are still dangerous.

"Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters"

All across America, citizens realize that parking meter overtime violations are just one of the ways that governments tax us to raise money. Those roads and bridges and new fire engines and softball field maintenance and COVID-19 clinics have to be paid for, ya know?  

I went to get gas the other day and there was a small, tastefully hand-scrawled sign on the window with words to the effect that due to recent tax changes in Maryland, cigarettes are now about ten dollars a pack (so quit hollerin' at the cashier about it!) I mean, hot a-mighty! And people are still smoking them! I doubt that raising the tax another ten bucks per pack would stop them. One of the small pleasures in life is telling a young puffer that "in my day," ten bucks would have bought 40 packs of Kools. And then they all give me that look that only says one thing: Shut up, old man.

But parking meters bring in a lot of revenue for a city - when they are working. Detroit, Motor City,  has come to realize that they are losing a bundle because while they have 3,404 parking meters planted in the cement here and there, fully half of them are broken, so parking is free at that spot and no money flows to the city. 

Last year, Detroit became the largest American city to declare bankruptcy, and they figure that they could rake in $6 million in revenue every year if they would just get the rest of the meters working.

And you knew I would be coming in with an ironic twist to all this, and here it is: the city inflicted this wound upon itself. They tried to cheap out and cut back on the quality of batteries that run the electronic meters. They used to use Duracell batteries ("Dura, as in durable. Cell, as in power cell") but some high muckety-muck decided to swap them out for cheap unreliable batteries to save a buck. 

City workers used to go to each parking meters twice a year to swap one Duracell for another, but switching to El Cheapo means the meters don't hold a charge and parking is free at that meter - and no quarters come into the city coffers.

AND, not only that, but the city recognized some time ago that they needed to upgrade the cylinders on the locks for the little battery doors. The old ones are vulnerable to seizure from water or gunk getting in them. But "someone" said to wait a while before investing in the new brass locks that are needed, and now the city has a lot of batteries they can't even get to to replace with good batteries if they want to!

Sometimes, you have to spend a buck to earn two bucks.

A Giant of a man

The Baltimore Colts football team meant a lot to those of us in Baltimore in the 1950s and beyond. I mean, there are guys running around this town with names like Gino Marchetti Jones, Alan Ameche O'Hoolahan and Johnny Unitas Jackson. People named their children after these guys.

Let me tell you something about Gino Marchetti if you have a minute. He was the 6-foot-4, 244-pound defensive end who played 14 seasons in the NFL and retired after founding a hamburger chain that I still miss. To this day, I would drive past 5 McDonald's to get one Gino Giant, but that's another story.

He passed away two years ago at age 93 and was a good man to the very end.

There's a picture of him on an ambulance gurney, taken toward the end of the 1958 NFL Championship Game. He had broken his leg, but insisted on remaining on the field as long as possible to see his team win. That's tough.

But here is the most impressive thing about Gino. He played for the University of San Francisco, and I don't even know if they have a football team anymore, but in 1951, Marchetti's senior year, they went 9-0 and earned a trip to the Orange Bowl in Miami.

Ollie Matson

Burl Toler

I should say, they earned an invitation to the Orange Bowl. They did not take the trip. That USF team had a pile of great players. Eight of them went on to play pro football. That was appealing to the Orange Bowl people.

Two guys on the team were Black men (Ollie Matson and Burl Toler.) That was not acceptable to the Orange Bowl people, who insisted that the invitation was contingent on leaving the African-American men behind.

Things were like that in 1951.

Gino was the team captain. He took a vote. 

"Nobody on that team ever said that they regretted the decision that we had made," Marchetti said. "It was 100 per cent in favor of not playing. So, we didn't go. I went home and went back to work."

Within months, he was drafted by the Dallas Texans, the team that became the Colts, and the legend grew. 

Gino, and Ollie Matson as well, went on to play a long time in the NFL. Burl Toler injured a knee in a College All-Star game, ending his chances to play professionally, but he did became an NFL referee for many years.

I mentioned before that life was that way in America in 1951. But in 1944, American forces participated in The Battle Of The Bulge in World War II. Gino Marchetti, at the age of 18, fought in the US Army in that battle, which is widely regarded as the toughest of all WWII fights.

After that, having fought against fascist forces that sought to overturn all that we stand for in terms of liberty and justice, Gino Marchetti came home and enrolled in college. 

After what he had seen as a younger man, standing up for his fellow Americans against the redneck hicks on the Orange Bowl selection committee could not have been much of a challenge.

Sunday Rerun: Salad Daze

 Can someone explain the thing about getting kids to eat salad? I mean, sure, asparagus looks like something the weedwacker dragged in, and beets are purple death balls, and lima beans, brussel sprouts and cauliflower are best bought in frozen plastic bags to be applied to sprained wrists, but you pile up some lettuce, tomato, shredded carrot and green cabbage, some olives and croutons and bacon bits in a bowl and that's what you call your basic salad and that's tasty.

Maybe it was easier for me; I love salads and always have, although you have to add some meat or seafood if you're going to think of it as anything other than an appetizer.

Just as with books - some kids will take to reading and do so avidly for the rest of their lives - with salads, choosy moms know, you have to find a way to get some green stuff into the kids, so Kraft Foods (makers of fine wholesome nutritious products such as Cool Whip imitation whipped cream, Country Time imitation lemonade, Jello-O, the sweetened processed flavored collagen-based dessert, Kool-Aid imitation Country Time drink mix, Kraft Singles pasteurized prepared cheese product, Lunchables mystery meat and cheese in a box for busy moms and kids, Miracle Whip imitation mayonnaise, Tang imitation Kool-Aid, and Velveeta, the Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product) now introduces their latest contribution to American haute cuisine: Salad frosting.

I said Salad Frosting.

This is not really an advancement in food preparation, but, rather, an adventure in misnaming something that is as laden with chicanery as fake apple pie made with Ritz crackers or Krusty Brand Imitation Gruel.

Kraft has brought out "Salad Frosting," and it's just a tube of ranch dressing!

The goal is to make kids think they're putting sweet frosting on their salad as if it were a cake, but it's just dressing.


And they're not even trying to make it sound like it's even remotely healthy for Junior or Sis to put the stuff they think they want on the salad they know they don't. Their press kit accompanying the product says, "Kids will eat anything with frosting, right? It's a match made for dinnertime bliss."

Not to drag science into it, but there are 110 calories,11 grams of fat, and 290 milligrams of sodium in 2 Tablespoons of ranch dressing.

The same amount of vanilla frosting has 140 calories, but only 5 grams of fat and and just 70 mg of sodium.

So, in some cases, you'd be better off by spreading cake frosting on a tomato and telling your kid it's a salad.

Then for dessert? A nice slab of baloney pie!

The Saturday Picture Show, April 3, 2021

 

It's very nice of the owner of this pair of sneakers to make room for the one to be a frog condo. If the frog goes a-courtin', he can move his wife in right next door! 

This chart shows the home base for all the baseball teams, except they forgot the poor Chicago White Sox! Now the Orioles don't have to feel so bad about having such a tiny fan base.

Salt cellars are becoming popular again, just when you thought people were so heart-conscious that they weren't even using that much table salt. This example will only cost you $1150, but it is sterling silver.

It now comes to light - 6 years later - that Madonna, rather than posing for her picture herself, used the picture on the right and glued her own head onto it for an Instagram picture. The woman whose head was removed is Amelia Goldie, and she is mad about it, now that she has found out what the Immaterial Girl did to her. In fact, she is so irate, you might say she lost her...temper.

Who among us is not crazy about Mona Lisa Vito from "My Cousin Vinny"? Is she qualified to answer questions about automobile? "Well, my father was a mechanic, his father was a mechanic, my mother’s father was a mechanic, my three brothers are mechanics, four uncles on my father’s side are mechanics..." Yeah. She's chahming!

I saw this picture of a little duck and image-searched it. It comes back as some sort of Russian duck logo, so now we can picture Russians standing around wearing polo shirts with this little guy's picture, along with Madras shorts and Topsiders.

I don't know where this is either, but I am not going down those steps, no sirree. Plus, it seems to be a smoking area just outside the doors of Hades.

I'll let you in on a little secret. All cats think of themselves in high positions, trust me. Where do you think we get the word "lionize"?

As closely as I can figure it, this is a turtle who picked up a hitchhiking frog, who had picked up a hitchhiking snail. Later on, when they asked the turtle what was going on, he said, "I don't know! It all happened so fast!"

This week's death of G. Gordon Liddy, the "mastermind" of the bungled burglary at the Watergate building, reminds us that for want of a nail, the horse was lost...etc. Because Liddy's bumbling fools taped down a latch bolt to allow them to sneak back into the Democratic Nat'l Committee offices, alert Security Guard Frank Wills, who earned $80 a week in 1972, spotted the whole caper, alerted the DC Police, and all that led to the dethronement of Richard Nixon. From the National Archives, this notation in Will's nightly log book records a tiny moment that soon loomed large.

"She was only a jockey's daughter, but all the horsemen knew her"

If you were a horse, and you were thundering down the backstretch at Old Hilltop, what you would be seeing in front of you would look totally different from what the jockey riding you sees. And it has nothing to do with how much mud is on the jockey's goggles.

They're big and brown, a horse's eyes, but they work differently from our peepers.

At the University of Exeter, they researched horse eyes and found some differences that go beyond just being interesting - they affect racetrack safety.

So if this helps you win at Pimlico someday, remember to duke me in! 

F'rinstance, race people thought it would be a good idea to paint crossbars on fences and hurdles orange, because we see orange and it alerts us to be careful.

But Professor Martin Stevens, who lectures on sensory and evolutionary ecology at Exeter, has shown that to horses, orange shows up as sort of green, meaning that horses see orange as looking like grass, so they get no warning.

And Dr. Janel L. Jones, a cognitive scientist, says that what humans can see from 30 feet, a horse can only see from 20 feet.

And Mr Ed is the only horse who could get away with wearing glasses.

"A horse has to be 50% closer to see the same details," Dr Jones says. "A 50% deficiency is enough for any rider to consider...even in sunshine, the horse's view of a jump is blurry, hazy, dim, vague...all the adjectives you'd rather not ponder as you're galloping 30 feet per second towards a big oxer (fence) that could ruin your day."

So, people at the U of Exeter tried painting obstacles and such white and yellow. This did not help the horses see the fences any better, it helped them jump better.

And of course, the hope is that jockeys and horses will be safer from falls and spills and the injuries they cause because of all this work. 

Prof. Stevens explains that whereas we humans have three types of cone cells in our eyes, horses only have two.

So, "Basically it means they can only see colors that we only perceive as blues and yellows and they can't tell the difference between reds and greens," he said.

Which is why you never get a Christmas gift from a horse! They don't see all the red and green decorations!

April Fooled

The great comedian and social commentator Lenny Bruce was hounded unmercifully (as all houndings seem to be) over his desire to express himself onstage in the ordinary language of the people. He was hauled into court so often that he started to believe he was the victim of unjust persecution. But he still could turn a joke, as when he suggested that "one of these days, a guy with a camera and a microphone is going to come out from behind some curtain and say, 'Wow, Lenny! You've really been a good sport! This whole thing has been a huge practical joke, and you played it just great!'"

Lenny was referring to a TV show called "Candid Camera," in which average people were filmed having practical jokes played on them. Practical jokes. The phrase has the word "joke" in it, but it's not always funny, depending on whose face is getting plastered with a cream pie. Hitting a stranger with a pie? Not all that funny. That's why the revered and beloved "Jackass" movies and shows work so well - for the most part, they get each other with pies and locked portapotties on giant springs and rooms to crawl through while nekkid and dodging mousetraps and bullfighting while blindfolded and I don't know what-all else. Sure, the foil is some stranger when Johnny Knoxville climbs a tree on a golf course and lets loose with an airhorn just as some golfer swings, but that's a golfer! Is there any other sort of person who's just begging for a good pranking than a golfer?

High school was always a fertile field in which to plant practical jokes. I remember a lot of us bringing in alarm clocks and stashing them in our lockers, setting them to go off during class. Or signing up for Library Study under the name "Richard E. Normus." Or rolling someone up in the wrestling mats and dropping me off in the girls' locker room, a Trojan Horse, if you will. I mean dropping "him" in the girls' room. Him, not me. I wasn't there. (ahem.) 

April Fool's jokes can be elaborate, and take hundreds of people working in concert to bring them off. As an example, the state of Georgia, where one would suppose that the leaders want as many people as possible to vote, recently came up with some bogus laws meant to make the public believe they were trying to limit voter turnout! Because the governor, who once appeared on television as the younger brother on "Those Doggone Kemps," a short-lived sitcom on the CW, was able to act like he was serious, the public actually believed that the Georgia Legislature made it illegal to give a person who had been standing in the southern sun for five hours, waiting to vote, a bottle of water.

In this recent photo, members of the Georgia legislature's republican caucus meet outside after lunch to plan their next humorous stunt.