Those aren't pillows!!

The other night, just because the times they are a-changin', we went to the large hall at the Sheraton in Towson to hear a presentation about our doctor. We happen to have a really good, fair, honest, learned, patient and well-trained doctor in Dr DeLoskey, and it was with some trepidation that we went to the meeting, because it was about a change in his practice. We were afraid that he was going to switch over to one of those boutique practices where you pay an annual retainer to the doc for the right to be one of his few patients, and then you have greater access, more thorough exams and visits, and other benefits. Nice, if you're Bill Gates, which I clearly am not. And that's how we wound up with Dr DeLoskey, when our previous doctor went to that system. Turned out that Dr D is going for a modified version of that plan; you can go for the big deal or stay one of his regular patients. I told you the man was fair, didn't I? So that's not even what I wanted to write about.

The doctor has hooked up with a company that arranges for practices of this kind. Not a bad idea; why should he add business management to his daily list of chores, the rest of which tend to be more in the medical end of things? But the people who accompanied him to the dais, and the man who runs the company and spoke at great length about the virtues of this plan, that's what is on my mind.

I know that this sort of thing would appeal to many people, going from town to town, every night another hotel room and every evening another hotel ballroom, selling products. This is a perfectly legitimate operation; I'm not saying there is anything even remotely shady about it all. But I thrive on consistency, and I am the King of all Homebodies. Not for me the travel, the highways, the hotels, the chain restaurants for three meals a day. And not to spend evenings here at the Lazy 'C' Ranch with Peggy, hooting at the news, hollering at the ballgames, having fun at dinner, hoofing around the neighborhood, would be too big a price to pay for that sort of work.

If you can do it and you like it and it's congruent with your life, it's all yours! Not putting it down. I just couldn't do it. No Del Griffith, I.

The Ant's Pants

If you're on Facebook, you might have encountered what I guess might be known as the Disappearing Friend Syndrome, or DFS. This occurs when you suddenly realize, whilst reading everyone else's status updates or news feeds, that you haven't seen anything online from good old Ursula lately.

What to do? Do you check your friends list to see if she's not on there anymore? If you do, that only tells you that she's off your list. You then have to enter Ursula Whatchamacallit to see if she's even ON Facebook any longer. If she is, and she's not on your list, and you did not remove her from your list, well, welcome to Dumpville: Population, YOU. As Homer Simpson once said.

If you check and Ursula is NOT on Facebook anymore, then you can at least say, "Maybe she just quit Facebook, and not just me." This brief moment of relief is then tempered by apprehension. What if Ursula was run over by a trolley? Forced to move into reduced circumstances following a scandalous unsanctified congress with a traveling dry-goods salesman from Pittsburgh? Captured by left-wing insurgents from Paraguay? (thanks, Police Squad!) Died of intellectual thirst at a Tea Party?

It's really better not to have these thoughts. Make new friends, and keep the old. One is silver and the other, gold. I think Edgar A. Guest came up with that one.

And while we're scratching around looking for things, what the heck happened to all those "My Top 5 Times Tom Cruise Jumped Up On Something" polls that were all the rage in the summertime? How about those crazy gifts - virtual Berger's Cookies, handcuffs, I <3 NJ t-shirts and hands-free back massages were the ant's pants there for a while, and now you don't see them any more.

Mama Weer All Crazee Now

Well, old Andy Warhol was on to something when he opined that everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. Somewhere in Colorado, both a prosecutor and a t-shirt manufacturer are wondering what the heck happened to all the people getting fired up over Balloon Boy and his schemin' demon Daddy.

Now those whackjobs are last month's news and here comes America's new favorite fun couple...
TV's entire Salahi family. That's Ozzie on the left, and Harriet on the right. The more you read about these people, the more you feel sad about people whose mission in life is all about becoming famous. One stroll through the ocean of muck on her Facebook page is enough to make you pull neck muscles, you'll be shaking your head in such violent disbelief. In fact, belief is not something you ought to lend to her; you'll never get it back. She claims to have been a Redskins cheerleader, and was not one. She claims to have been invited over for supper, and she was not. Hey - maybe that Joe Wilson guy (R.,SC) could stand outside of her house all day and all night hollering, "You lie!" Be nice for him to be right, at long last.

Back to the Facebook you: you see her "In action in and around DC." She actually states "I hope you will join me at the next featured event I support or endorse in the Washington DC region." She namedrops like the names were burning hot pokers, and there is no celebrity this side of David Hasselhoff with whom she will not pose, towering over most of them.

But when you read the articles such as this one in the Washington POST, you wonder how people have the time to be so involved with a huge family feud over a bankrupt winery, promoting some sort of polo tournament (now there's a idea whose time has truly come, eh, Chauncey?) and wanting to be on reality tv shows. Hey, that's where those goofball parents in Colorado came into the picture!

I worry all the time about some Lee Harvey Jr. hurting the president - or worse. This nonsense, these effete, shallow Salahis, are amusing for a few minutes until one realizes that they could just as easily done Mr Obama harm. We pay the Secret Service to protect the president and we should expect better from them than embarrassment and promises of looking into this breach.

And meanwhile, speaking just for myself, but remember, my name is Legion, I hope you will join me at the next featured event I support or endorse in the Washington DC region. It's a trial to make these people accountable for their conceit and deceit. Let's not forget about them like we did Balloon Boy.

Tiger, Tiger

Just what the heck is going on with Eldrick "Tiger" Woods? I'm not the only one asking that question all of a sudden, but it cracks me up that the local police in his gated community have gone to his house twice, as of Sunday, to ask just what the heck was going on as he roared out of his driveway and hit a tree and a fire plug at 0225 hrs Friday, only to be rebuffed.

In my mind, I picture what would happen if I slammed my truck into several perpendicular solids and, when the cops came around to ask questions they have every right to pose, I had Peggy tell them, "He's asleep now. Come back some other time. How's 2017 sound for you?"

Lookie, I don't know what's going on in Tigerland. I can say that from where I sit, if you're racing out of your million-dollar mansion in the middle of the night and smacking down your ride, sumpin' ain't right. But maybe he was out of smokes and had to run down to the Kwik-E-Mart for some Marlboros. Or, maybe he wanted to get to the Midnite Madness DoorBuster to surprise the wife with one of those big-screen TVs from Best Buy. Or, let's say he was fixing a late snack with some Thanksgiving leftovers and he was all out of stuffing for his sandwich, so he thought he'd just scoot on over to the Winn-Dixie for some StoveTop. Now, let's say he makes it a habit to drive around his community and make sure that no one has left on any unneeded lights. See? There are all sorts of reasons why Tiger was out smashing up his Escalade just past last call the other morning, and surely, as soon as he's all rested up, he will share with us all the details.

Speaking of the middle of the night, I see that Kevin Trudeau fella is back on TV with another deal. You might remember him as the guy who sold about 25 million copies of a book with medical advice of dubious value, positioning himself as a purveyor of inside information that "they" don't want you to know. His setup then was to appear on a fake TV talk show that sort of looked like the Larry King Show. Now he's back, after being so busy settling millions and millions of dollars worth of claims, judgments and settlements with government regulators whose job is it to protect consumers from sending $24.95 to him for a book that claims that sunscreen, not UV rays causes cancer, and that diseases are not caused by viruses or bacteria, but by energy imbalance. Well, it is a free country, and he has every right to publish these books - the latest is on how to get free money simply by going online and asking for it - just as we have the right not to buy them. The setup now is that they make it look like he's on QVC or Home Shopping Club. That's the great thing about a free society - the government can't stop anyone from writing and selling a book. Do you remember the guy who ran an ad saying "Get rich quick - send one dollar for information to PO Box ____" He made a fortune. All he did was send to those who sent in their dollar a piece of paper that said "Here's what you do...run an ad that says 'Get Rich Quick - send one dollar for information...' "

Jenna, Jenna, whom can we turn to?

One of my favorite weekend pastimes is watching the amazing team of Jenna Wolfe and Lester Holt on the Today Show. Let's face it: Garrison Keillor is who he is because there is no one else alive with the same skill set as he, and the same holds true for Jenna and Lester.

First of all, what is the old expression that baseball umpires like to say describes the best part of their job? "You can't beat the hours." Well, if there were some award for working both ends of the bad part of the clock, step right up, Lester, you win! The man does the Saturday morning TODAY show, meaning that he has to get to work at o-dark:30, and then work that show and then come back to be the anchor on the NBC Nightly News that evening! Then he gets to go home for a while and come back on Sunday for TODAY, and then in the evening, when all the world is enjoying the second NFL game, reaching for the butter and getting ready for the third NFL game, Lester has his overcoat on again and is heading back in to do the Nightly news again. I bet you anything when he goes home, he just tosses his overcoat on the sofa, saying he's only going to have to put it on again in a few minutes anyway.

Listen, you don't hear him complaining! It's an honor to be asked to host either one of those broadcasts, and if they ask you to do them both, well, where do I sign? And you have to figure he is amply compensated for giving up his weekends.

And one of the nice things is that he gets to hang around with Jenna Wolfe on the Sunday TODAY shows. My admiration for Jenna is unbounded. We had not seen too much of her in her previous career as a sports reporter, as she was primarily local to New York or else doing sports that I don't care about so much. But she wound up on the TODAY show, likely as not because some shrewd bigwig up there with a keen eye for talent knew that this lady was greater than all the jai-alai tournaments and what-all else the sports world needed her to cover. Like the best of the hosts in the long history of TODAY, Jenna can intelligently interview a senator, a small-town law officer with a missing child case on his hands, or rival debaters embroiled in an argument over one of the issues of our times (gay marriage, abortion, etc) in one segment, and then come back in the next to help cook a brisket or participate in a bell choir concert at 30 Rock. And there is no one better at the bread-and-butter TODAY show filmed package stories: Jenna goes back to her alma mater! Jenna enters an air-guitar competition! Jenna sings with Barry Manilow! Her engaging manner, throaty laughter and all-American good looks (even though she was born outside of this country, thus dashing my dream to have her run for president some day) make her perfect company for your coffee, Danish and omelet on a Sunday.

So much so that when my sister and her husband returned home recently from a trip to New York and she told me that one of the 130 pictures she took showed Jenna walking down the street, apparently heading to NBC, I tore through those pictures like an Secret Service agent goes through the White House state dinner guest list looking for Ms Wolfe, whose confident stride and workpersonlike backpack are on display above. Right on Jenna, and Lester! Sunday would really suck without you!

And I offer that slogan free of charge to the NBC publicity department.

Hey Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaady!

Many people don't care for the comedy of Jerry Lewis, but just to think of him with a drinking glass stuck in his piehole makes me guffaw like Bristol Palin at an Abstinence Rally. And as his birthday approaches (3/16/26, as if you didn't know, but do you want to wait to plan this at the last minute?!) it is altogether fitting and proper to pay homage to the comic genius known to the few kids who would play with him on the playgrounds of Newark, NJ as Joseph Levitch. I said "homage" because that's the French word for cheese, right? How dumb would it be to pay "fromage" to the man idolized for having so much Gaul?

Jerry's parents were in vaudeville; his father called himself Danny Lewis and he was to climb the ladder of success to but middling fame, if that, in his career. But he elevated himself to top-rung status in the field of picking on his son. (After Jerry really hit the big time, he bought his father a Cadillac, only to hear the bitter old man say,"What? You couldn't afford a convertible?") Thanks to this constant humiliation from Danny, we have been left to deal with Jerry's need to "make us laugh, make us laugh" for many years. Jerry was doing pantomime to popular records in the mid-40s when he was noticed by a young singer from Steubenville, Ohio, named Dino Crocetti. Crocetti later changed his name to Dean Crocetti, but still never became famous. Just kidding! Jeesh! He changed his name to Dean Martin and took a liking to Jerry, whose last name fit perfectly with the dream they both shared of being a comedian named Martin N. Lewis.

The "N" stands for not funny, you're saying. Bear with me. Martin and Lewis were the zaniest of the post-war zany comedians, a group that included Abbott and Costello, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and Richie Nixon. They were all over the place in a partnership that lasted exactly ten years, until July 25, 1956, when Martin stormed out, claiming that "Jerry had begun acting silly of late."

Dean Martin later became a respected college administrator, and Jerry Lewis went on to star in movie after movie. The very picture of a modern egomaniac, he's known for referring to himself in the 3rd person so often that a movie was written about that trait. Who can forget Joseph Cotten, as Jerry, in "The Third Man"?

Spot Three Horrible Puns in this entry - Win Big Prizes!

From Wikipedia –

Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiae or synaesthesiae)—from the Ancient Greek σύν (syn), "together," and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), "sensation"—is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes.

If you read the rest of the article, you will find all about how some people see numbers as colors and months as having distinct personalities. Well, bulletin for the scientific community – we all have a touch of this! Especially for days of the week. Who doesn’t see their Monday as wreathed in funereal pallor, if it’s the first day of your work week? (All this goes out the window if your job involves rotating days off. It’s awful when everyone else’s Friday is your Monday, but the sweet revenge comes when your Friday is their Monday. But you need a special calendar for this sort of thing.)

Tuesday registers as kind of blue to me; at least you’re in gear for the week. And if it’s a week of vacation, then you can say, ”Hey! It’s only Tuesday! There’s plenty more fun ahead.”

Wednesday has a beige sort of affect. Middle of the week, time to think about the weekend and start checking the weather forecasts, usually some decent shows on TV that night.

Thursday to my mind is kind of green, ripe with expectations. To the social set, Thursday is now the new Friday, with the bar scene hopping like a Saturday night. This also accounts for my sunny bright mood on

Friday! When hardly anyone still goes to work, or so it would seem. Smooth sailing to the office, weekend ahead, all is golden.

Saturday is made of what Vin Scully calls “the sky of cerulean blue,” as he basks in the warmth of Los Angeles sunshine to call an afternoon ballgame at Chavez Ravine, home of the Dodgers. For the rest of us baskers, Saturday usually means a chance to get out in the yard and check the aspidistra. While doing that, we can see if the foliage needs any attention as well.

Sunday is of course, the same color as the beams of sunlight that illuminate the congregrations around the world. There’s also a little tinge of purple in there for the Ravens and orange for the Orioles.

There’s also a thing about this---ever notice how when you think of your old high school, you can still smell the floor wax in the hallway, the gravy in the cafeteria and the stanky sox in the gym?

It’s all for the good. Senses help us place the places and times that mean the most.

Put down the keyboard, hand me my mic Here's my poem about the things I like!

Time for me to say my thanks
for Presley, Elvis and Zappa, Frank.
For cool winter mornings and shady summer days
And because “things just turn out that way,”
For friendships and pizza and multi-grain bread
And that certain Love song that gets stuck in my head
For red pickup trucks and Friendly Farm ducks!
Plaid shirts, sweatshirts, jeans, Jami Gertz
Hominy grits, hominy canned, bacon bits and peace in the land
Garrison Keillor, none of the Steelers, and Blaze Starr, Baltimore’s favorite peeler
Cal Ripken, Junior and Cal Ripken, Senior, both high on the list:
and have your seen your
Señor Wences puppet (check the end of your wrist!)
Stewie Griffin, Stuart Little, R.C. Owens, Y.A. Tittle,
God-daughter, great nieces, great nephew and kin
What an encompassing family we’re in!
Coffee and iced tea, cold beer in a glass
With a Domino’s flatbread, what more could I ask?
And speaking of tea, my favorite must be
The brand called Punctuali- (see?)
Christmas lights, snowy nights, peace on earth, heavyweight fights,
Johnny Knoxville, Memphis Slim, Cleveland Brown (we’re missing him)
Red fire engines, Richard Benjamin, Paris Hilton’s fitness regimen,
Newspapers, New Yorker, Timonium Fair,
Bing Crosby, Bing cherries, ribs (short, and spare)
Laughing at Bam and Nigerian e-scams,
Early Beatles, Buddy’s Crickets, Mr Dylan: that’s the ticket!
For computers that work, and lies that don’t, and Willie Clinton (I bet he won’t)
Digital cameras, mp3s, Olbermann nightly on the tv,
70's songs that still mesmerize, and the great Dr Connolly who Doctors My Eyes,
Shopping for lip balm, always a thrill; when a duck waddles in, put it on his bill!
homemade granola, jukebox Rock-Ola, I went cold turkey on the old Coca-Cola,
magnets and flashlights and heavy key rings: (keys are a few of my favorite things!),
Peggy’s hugs and Peggy’s kisses,
It’s no mystery: she’s my Mrs!
DVRs and VCRs and free salad bars,
iPods, cell phones, pea pods and ringtones,
poems without meter, scan or good rhyme
Just like this Thanksgiving doggerel: mine!

That's Comcastic!

This is not my TV or my house! Stock photos for lazy blogger!


I DVR Keith Olbermann every night, so I can watch "Countdown" while I munch my breakfast in the morning. Procedure is the same: watch show, delete.

Except for that Friday the 13th (!) when the show simply would not delete. I call Comcast, Comcast tells me they never heard of this happening and then the guy asks for the serial number on my cable box. I ask where is this number. He says on back of cable box. I tell him there are so many numbers back there it looks like a men's room stall wall. He does not laugh. He tells me to call back to make a service appointment.

I made the service appointment, and then, no fewer than three times did Comcast call me to make sure that I still wanted the guy to come. I guess they do this for every service call, but I certainly would have called to cancel if the problem had healed by itself which, to my experience, happens but rarely in electronics.

Anyway, Cable Guy shows up Saturday morning and I tell him there is a show on the box that I have watched and tried to delete and it will not delete. He said he had never heard of that. "That's a new one on ME!," he exclaimed. That's a sentence you don't want to hear from your cable guy, or your doctor, or your wife. But I showed him that the show just would not go away. After we made some predictable jokes about how "Keith Olbermann must really be a stubborn guy; he won't go away!" he tried it himself. I love that. That's sort of the same thing as someone coming along and pushing the elevator button when you have already done so. But it didn't work for him any more than it did for me, so I said, "maybe we need to reset the box; do you know how to do that?" And he said, "Yeah, let me make a technical adjustment over here..." and he reset the box.

Which then allowed us to delete the show, so keep that in mind, Comcast people! That's the secret when something gets stuck...reset the box.

So I asked him what was the secret technical thing that he had to do to reset the box and he said, "I unplugged it."

Could this be the next movie story for Bridget Fonda and Nicolas Cage?

Before we get to Today's Top Story, I have come up with a term that I would like to submit for your consideration as an addition to the everyday lexicon:

How about this to describe the area where one's gaze goes when one is bemused, besodden or beset by confusion or anxiety...and you kind of stare off, not into the next block, more like the next room:

"Wistful vista"

It's either that or the name of a road in Columbia. Could be both. Now, this news:

From the wires of the Associated Press:
HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) - A woman quietly left $40,000 worth of rare U.S. coins near a Catholic shrine for safekeeping so the Virgin Mary could watch over her life savings while she was out of town, and apparently it worked: The money was returned to her when she got back a week later.

Operators of the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes near Emmitsburg thought they had been blessed with a big donation when a groundskeeper found the two plastic freezer bags filled with gold and silver while raking leaves.

But Shrine Director William Tronolone said the woman approached him after a noon Mass Sunday, six days after the discovery, to ask whether anyone had found some coins she had hidden beneath fallen leaves at the site on the campus of Mount St. Mary's University.

"I said, 'Why did you leave it there?' And she said, 'Well, I had to go away and I was afraid to leave it and I wanted the Blessed Mother to watch over it for me _ and evidently she did because you found it,'" Tronolone said.

By then, university officials had had the coins appraised, notified police and placed the money in a safe while awaiting word from investigators.

Tronolone refused to identify the woman. He said she had been out of town about a week.

After the school's security director returned the coins Monday, he accompanied the woman to her bank and persuaded her to put them in her safe deposit box, Tronolone said.

The shrine, about 50 miles northwest of Baltimore, features a replica of the grotto in Lourdes, France, where Catholics believe Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared to a French schoolgirl named Bernadette several times, beginning in 1858. The Emmitsburg replica draws more than 200,000 visitors annually, Tronolone said.

Grotto visitors often leave anonymous donations, including a $3,000 cash gift two weeks ago.

"Up here at the grotto, you get a lot of people that are very, very faithful," Tronolone said, "and they do things you and I would never even attempt to do."

We'll cross that, Bridget, when we come to it

Her father was Peter Fonda, who made Easy Rider. Her grandfather was Henry Fonda, who made dozens of great movies. Her aunt was Jane Fonda, who made a lot of great movies and also dabbled in politics, made a ton of weight-loss exercise videos, and exercised her free speech rights a time or two. She's married to Danny Elfman, musical composer for everything from The Simpsons to Pee Wee's Big Adventure to Good Will Hunting, and whose nephew is married to Jenna Elfman.

Dag if you didn't guess it right! Say hi to one of my favorite actresses, Bridget Fonda. Bridget gave us starring roles in "It Could Happen to You" and "Point of No Return." ICHTY was the one where she played a down-on-her-luck waitress who accepts the tip of 50% share of a lottery ticket from henpecked NYPD cop Nicolas Cage, who guffaws his way through another whole movie. Her luck sure changes!

PONR was the one where she was a street thug in DC, known as Scooter Libby. No, seriously, she played Maggie. And when she was arrested, a secret government entity took her away, teaching her everything from martial arts to etiquette (taught by good ole' Mrs Robinson herself, Anne Bancroft.) Trained to kill in 17 different ways, she was sent out into the world to do the bidding of this mysterious organization, and then a lot of people's luck changed, mostly for the worst. Diving down a laundry chute to avoid a rifle-launched surface-to-air missile, killing a bad guy with his own breakfast, and taking care of the real-life father of the guy who played Mike Damone in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," Bridget was everywhere in this movie.

And then she made a few more movies and she retired in 2002, and has not made a movie since. I'd like to see that change next year. Not gonna happen, but I'd like to see it! She left the movies about the same time Peggy and I did: she because she had tendered enough money to be able to retire from making talkie movies for theaters, and we because we were tired of people eating chicken tenders while talking during a movie in a theater.

And did you know that the real-life guy upon whom the nerdy Mark "Rat" Ratner was based in that FTARH movie was a real-life computer geek named Mark Rathbone, who later wrote "Windows for Dummies" and made a fortune?

Bridget Fonda already had a fortune, I guess, so she doesn't need to make any more movies. I wish she would. Then I could get all worked up and say, "Oh boy I can't wait til that new Bridget Fonda movie comes out... on pay-per-view so we can enjoy it in peace and quiet without cell phones ringing, people conversing, people chewing chicken tenders in my ear, and all the rest of those things that drove us out of the theater in 2002!"

It could happen to me!

That awful day in Dallas

The 1950's ended on this day in 1963. Even though the country had "transitioned" (a noun that had yet to be verbed then) from the befuddled, grandfatherly presence of Dwight D. Eisenhower to the vigorous and youthful John F. Kennedy, we were still young and kind of innocent then. The innocence was stolen when Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK that day in Dallas, 36 years ago.

We had gone back to our 7-M homeroom at the close of the school day to get our report cards. Even as we went through the halls, some people had already heard the news, and there was a murmur in the heart of the crowd. Not until the principal's voice came on over the intercom system and made the announcement that the president had been shot and we would now be listening to the radio coverage of the event did the rumor become the news.

But here we are, 36 years later, and we still wonder about so much. The very basis of any story - the who-what-when-where-why is pretty much filled in. Our youthful president was the who, his murder the what, the when and the where is established, but we don't know why. We don't even know for sure if Oswald acted alone or had help, or at least advisors and co-conspirators. He had been a troubled man, drifting in and out of the Marines and various political persuasions, but we will never know with certainty all the details.

Two days later, while being paraded around for the press like a Derby winner or something, Oswald was gunned down by a shady nightclub impresario who went by the name Jack Ruby. This remarkable episode of police ineptitude gave the nation its first live-on-TV death that Sunday morning, even as we headed for church with the burden of grief. Or was it police ineptitude, or the playing out of a grand scheme to use this patsy Oswald to do someone's bidding and then wipe him off the map before he could talk too much?

Of all the people involved - the Kennedys, his successor Lyndon Johnson and his family, Texas Governor Connally and his kin - only Oswald's widow, Marina, survives, and she doesn't seem to have any information about all this anyway. The only thing we do know for sure is that the nation changed tremendously that day, 36 years ago. Our national sorrow continues, and I feel it still, most powerfully on this day every year.

Underneath it all

Not to generalize, but there are two types of people in our nation today. Those who think that underwear should be either brand-new or just about brand-new, and men.

Any time I want to stir up a lively debate, I can just mention Peggy's oft-repeated lamentation that I really shouldn't wear those boxers any longer. Women are only too glad to tell the tales on their men, how they insist on wearing briefs, boxers and t-shirts that more than anything else resemble swiss cheese or Frank Gusenberg. The old caution about being sure to wear nice undies in case one is hit by a car or, as in the case of Frank Gusenberg, shot 14 times by the Capone gang, and being taken to a hospital just doesn't fly with most guys. We reason that, if we're going to be in the emergency room with hoses, tubes, IV lines, EKGs, EEGs and medical personnel all over us, our underwear is going to be way, way down on our list of things to fret over.

But, today as I write this, let it be known that I have broken out a new pair of Jockeys, and I don't mean Eddie Arcaro and Willie Shoemaker. I didn't go crazy. I bought these in a two-pack some time ago at an outlet mall; the original price said 26 semolians, but the day I spend 13 clams on a banana hammock is the day I stand in line to meet Sarah Palin. The little orange sticker that reads "CLEARANCE $6" is my assurance that I invested wisely. This is, what, 2009? This pair of boxers won't even be broken in til 2012!

They often call me Speedo, but my real name is Mister Earl

As Bart Simpson once said, "Far be it from me to tell Springfield's top cop how to do his job." But I do have this advice for my local gendarmerie:

You know that speed enforcement zone over on Joppa Rd near Spring Ave? There is such an interesting dynamic there. Actually, make it two interesting dynamics (they're small.) First, now that the radar zone has been in place for so often for so long, everyone who lives in the area knows very well to slow down when approaching that stretch of road from either direction. The problem is that it's a very wide stretch of road in that area, and it tends to make some motorists feel as if they are on the highway, so they hit the gas, scattering pedestrians and Smart Cars in their wake.

Wisely, the police slow them down by setting up enforcement. It's almost Pavlovian now; people get to where the police are usually perching in wait, and they slow down, and then, once they get past that point, it's back to trompin' the pedal. That's dynamic #2...people think the law is back there in the last block, so here we zoom! So, why not have another zone in the next block? Once would-be speeders think it's safe to speed again, then nail 'em a block away.

This could also work for a variety of other crimes. I haven't worked out all the details yet, but I am available for consultation.

Kenny wasn't like the other kids

I was very sad to hear that former MTV game show host and comedian Ken Ober passed away the other day. He was only 52. He was the host of "Remote Control," which was a postmodernist phenomenon in the late 80's. It was sort of like Jeopardy or Split Second or any one of those game shows hosted by slick unctuous hosts in the early TV days, but with a witty twist.

The show's setting, and its entire setup, was that it took place in the fictitious Ober basement, at young Ken's house (address: 72 Whooping Cough Lane) The set had easy chairs for the contestants, and whoa! watch out! If you were the first player to get eliminated, you and your recliner went flying out into the ozone void, off stage literally and figuratively.

I say it was postmodern, because while the premise had everything to do with mocking, gently, the cheesy game shows of the past, the overall sum of its parts was a tribute to the cheesy game shows of the past. Ober's dais was overlooked by framed 8 x 10s of legendary show hosts Bob Barker, Bill Cullen, Bert Convy, Monty Hall, and Tom Kennedy. And who can forget the episode in which Bob "The Newlywed Game" Eubanks sat right at Kenny's side, coaching him in the finer points of quiz- mastery? Well, I can't, is all I know!

But all this wittiness took place on MTV - it was the first non-musical show they had - from 1987 to 1990. That was a long time ago. People who were conceived while their parents were watching that show are now driving cars, stuffing iPods full of Lady GaGa, and becoming parents themselves. Perhaps someone should start a new game show that somehow gently mocks and honors Ken Ober at the same time.

Think about this: Happy Days was a big hit in the 70's, sending up the 50's. That was a 20-year gap. It's now been over 30 years since the heyday of Happy Days, so it's high time for a show in the 2010's about people in the 70's watching people in the 50's.

Or maybe not. But if someone told you there was a show in which Martha Stewart's daughter and her daughter's friend watch Martha's show and try to duplicate Martha's recipes and crafts, all the while goofing on Martha on camera, and you thought they were goofing you, I'd tell you to watch "Whatever, Martha" on the Fine Living Network, Tuesdays at 9.

There are a lot of networks and they need a lot of shows to fill the time!

That's a real estate you got there, son!

We love to go leaf-peeping in autumn. We drive along the country roads that loop around our town like fettucine around a meatball, and for a week or two in late October / early November it's glorious to see the color spectrum spread across the sky...especially the red/orange/gold/brown part of the spectrum. Even the air is awash with the fragrance of falling leaves and withering mountain greenery, "where God paints the scenery."

But I'll be doggoned if we don't see some other things that just make me want to scratch the cranium. The choices some families have made about houses can boggle the average already-boggled mind. And I'm not talking about who can afford what, or whose idea of elegance it is to make a brick-and-mortar mini-Taj Mahal to house their mailbox, or whose collection of wooden yard doodads, bendovers and metallic reflecting balls atop former birdbaths merits another look.

First, I see houses with very steep front yards sometimes. It's like, the house is way up in the clouds from the street, and the practical side of me wonders about how to get in and out of the driveway on a snowy icy morning. Then you wonder, if you're out there tossing the old baseball or football around, you'd better make sure to catch the ball, or it's going to roll to North Carolina once it gets going down that hill. And cutting the grass! I've seen guys who stand at the top of the hill and let the mower down gradually on a rope to mow their lawns. I wouldn't find that enjoyable, but maybe some do. It's their choice.

And then there is always the question, asked for generations now, "Would you live next door to a McDonald's?" And I mean, literally, your side yard and deck adjoin Mickey D's parking lot, meaning that as you sit out on the deck on a mild evening, your conversation is punctuated with raspy intercom caws of "WelcometoMcDonald'sMayItakeyourorderplease?" You can go a little farther down the block in this neighborhood - and these are all nice houses, all built AFTER the Golden Arches bloomed there - and you wouldn't even know that Big Macs® were sold mere yards away. A real estate agent told me that the house that butts up against the burgertorium parking lot sold for just as much as the houses way down the block.

I don't know. You hear about people who buy houses down by the airport and don't mind going outside to get the paper as the gleaming underbelly of a 747 glides earthward twenty feet overhead too. There's a toll bridge a few miles up route 40, and southbound traffic zooming by has an unencumbered view directly into the upper floors of a newly-built house that is so close, if the traffic stops, people in the cars can catch a couple of plays of a ball game on TV inside.

I know it's everyone's choice. I know a guy who loved the way his house was right behind the beltway; he said the traffic helped him sleep at night.

So there you go!

East is East, Vest is Vest

Another thing that happens every year at this time is seeing people, mostly young people with highly developed senses of style and fashion, rushing the season a bit by wearing their winter coats long before it's time to do so.

But it's not all kids. I saw a man with his his own kids on Saturday, all dressed up as if he were ready to go on an arctic expedition. The weather? Well it was cloudy, but the temperature was in the upper 50s, maybe even 60-something. It was all finished, the rain was. The outfit? One of those wool, red-and-black checked baseball-style caps that we normally associate with Darryl or Darryl from "Newhart." The boots were fawn-colored NuBuck Timberlands, left open at the ankle so that the jean cuffs could flop around foppishly. But the topper was the heavy Norwegian-style fisherman's sweater worn UNDER one of those hefty, chunky, burly, husky down-filled vests. I'm telling you, he had to be roasting underneath all that, but I guess the kids would have ragged on him mercilessly if he had starting divesting himself of, well, the vest.

So when I got home, I got out the Oslo, Norway, telephone directory, and called the following people: Arvid, Asbjørn, Canute, Didrik, Edvard,and Ludvik, and none of them could see the sense in wearing a Norwegian fisherman's sweater when no real Norwegian fisherman is wearing one yet. It's about 39°F in Oslo these days, and if they can handle that, we can handle a trip to Shoppers Food Warehouse and Home Depot without bundling up.

Right?

To Everything There is a Season (Turn, Turn, Turn)

Oh, how I wish that Chuck Berry still wrote songs nowadays, especially those car songs he used to write so well. "Maybellene" and "No Particular Place To Go" were great songs, and we could use some more along those lines.

If someone could write "Hey It's A Turn Lane, Not Your Personal Lane," that would be marvelous. First, they could write a new title, but we are seeing more and more people pulling out of side streets into packed traffic and just bopping along in that center lane as if it were paved and striped off just for them and their little jitney.

The other morning, I'm schlepping off to work, and here comes a blue car doing that number on the main road. Both westbound lanes were occupied steadily with cars going to work or school or wherever, and The Impatient One just had to get somewhere, so zoom! here came that blue streak, right in front of me.

When we got to Harford Rd and the stop signal, I looked over into the car with my practiced baleful look, designed to help the miscreant remember, the next time they have an urge to cut someone off in traffic, the last time they cut someone off, and that guy in the pickup with the Stewie stickers looked at them with daggers shooting out of his eyes like Sarge looks at Beetle Bailey. The driver was a slightly-abashed looking mom, but her son, backpacked and ready for another day in the grove of academe, looked at me like, "Yeah, I know, mister, she drives like holy hell."

Then it dawned on me. We learn our driving habits from our family, because it is their fenders which we dent first. And worst. But chances are, this woman had a mother or a father who drove as if they were in a demolition derby, too, and that's where she learned that devil-may-care way to drive.

Since she lives right around the corner from us, I guess I'll be running into her again, as it were. Do we really suspect that the devil may, in fact, care?

Adeste Fideles, Ye Merry Gentlemen

Well, it happens earlier every year around here, and no, I'm not talking about Native American Summer or the first snowfall.

The first Christmas lights are up in our neighborhood.

Second week of November, and those red, green, blue and yellow C-9s are blazing away in the house down around the corner in that part of the main road that got cut off and turned into a court. But I cut through there on the way to the grocery store or drug store, and I was surprised to see the lights on so soon.

The other night at WalMart, we saw the new Peanuts® Front Yard Nativity Set, perfect for holiday decoration. I can't wait. Even more so than the first day of school, the holidays are really the most wonderful time of the year.

Feliz Novemberdad!

I'm Positive

Terri challenged her entire Facebook family to put nothing but positive posts on FB all day long today. I don't know if this is related to it being Friday the 13th, or if someone just decided that it was time to be upbeat and supportive.

Friday the 13th is one superstition that never has troubled me. I have my various little habits, such as always putting on my right sock and then the right shoe first. I can't tell you where that got started or what it would do to my day to start with the left foot. Probably, nothing, but who wants to take that chance?

It could never happen on the 13th of a month, but the department where I work has a policy. Every time there is a 5th Friday in a month...and it happens four times a year, like clockwork (or calendarwork)... we wear jeans and t shirts or sweat shirts and clean up the office, throw away old files, get rid of stuff that's been sitting around since we moved in (2002) and so forth. You might want to try it at your office. It's not only a great way to get junk disposed of regularly, it's also a morale booster to see what kind of t shirts your coworkers will show up wearing.

I should mention that I always thought Terri was a terrific coworker. We happened to be working together a lot when it came time for me to leave my previous department, and she wound up covering for me many times without complaint when I was leaving the workplace to go to Human Resources to fill out transfer paperwork and what-have-you. She was a great supervisor because she had been a great employee at the entry level position of 911 calltaker. Her excellence got her promoted and her excellence made her a compassionate boss, and I was proud to know her then and now.

So who knows? Maybe all this positivity will catch on. Like ions, maybe we'll get a charge out of it.