Sunday Rerun: Somebody's watching me!

I always think these things I read about are on satire sites, but the way you can tell is, when they have detailed schematic drawings of the robots that will soon control us all  the plans for new technology, and the article is written without a sense of irony or humor, then it's "emmis" - the Yiddish word for truth.

So, believe it or not, you might want to take a change of shoes to troop through the Magic Mouse Kingdom in the Happiest Place On All The Earth.  Disney is developing a system that will take pictures of your shoes when you stroll through the front gate. And then, special Mousecomputers will obtain your name and hometown, and favorite Disney character, food, and ride.

And then robots will be garnering more info as you parade around the acreage, stuff like how long you wait in line, where you go in the park, and they say they will take this intel and customize your visit by matching it up with your interests.

This is the future: while you are visiting an amusement park, robots know where you are and what you're doing.

They use facial recognition technology now, you know, and I just have this terrible fear of a guy in a polyester uniform, seated in a dark control room before a giant bank of video monitors, suddenly pausing and zooming in on an image of me giving the stankeye to one of his robots, and then having me rounded up and brought to his Goofy Gulag underneath Tinkerbell's Beef 'n' Beer.


Gone are the days when we could just be anonymous, but I don't like being followed just because of my footwear.





Tracking you every step of the way!

Although, there was a day when I came home from a long day at work and kicked off my kicks in the garage, only to notice that I had worn a left Reebok and a right New Balance.


That'll mix Mickey up!

The Saturday Picture Show, December 8, 2018

This kid was photographed in depression-era Baltimore; the picture was in black-and-white and then later colorized. My surmise is that his name was either Spike, Sluggo or Muggy.

This is an Italian sword from the year 1100. Italian soldiers had the option of running through enemies with one end of this weapon, or scratching their backs with the other.

I saw this the other day and I remembered reading it in 5th grade, the donut machine, and the Longest String contest. Do kids still read books like this, or just Harry Potter?

Everyone was teasing him, says this little boy, but he grew enough hair to donate to Locks Of Love. He would have no idea what you meant if you told him he looks just like Zac Hanson.

77 years ago yesterday the world saw darkness.

If you see this at your favorite watering hole, you might need to take a break a while.

Oh! Today is our 45th anniversary! Thank you, Peggy, for marrying a guy who, when we decided on this date in 1973 for the nuptials, thought it was a lucky harbinger to be married on Sammy Davis, Jr's birthday (his 48th.) Today, Peggy and I are still a couple of crazy honeymooners, but we lost Sammy to those damned cigarettes in 1990. He's 93 today, just not here.

When this guy bought a house, he made sure to have enough parking spots for two vehicles, and his giant Lenin head.

The new Bananarama

We all know the "I can't hear you, there's a banana in my ear" joke, but have you heard about the bananas that bring a message to kids?

It happens at Kingston Elementary in Virginia Beach, VA, where Stacey Truman is the cafeteria manager. Every morning, she takes a Sharpie and writes some wise words on 60 or so bananas for the kids who will descend on the cafeteria at lunchtime.

“Not all those who wander are lost.” "If you can dream it, you can achieve it." “You get what you give.” “Never give up.”

It's messages like this that make a difference for a youngster, if you ask me. Every day, Ms Truman fills several trays with wisdom-bearing fruit. As the article in the Washington POST said, it's a lunch choice offering both positivity and potassium.

It all started when Ms Truman packed lunches for her own kids, Mackenzie and Kayleigh. She figured that her daughters got a lift out of reading bananagrams, and maybe the Kingston Kids would as well.

“I want them to succeed in life and have an awesome day at school," she said. "Whenever I can put a smile on all of those little faces, I’ve done my job.”

There are 540 students at Kingston, and only about 10 percent of them plop a banana on their tray on any given day, but even those who skip the yellow fruit option see the messages, says principal Sharon Shewbridge.

“She’s helped the kids to make healthier choices,” said Shewbridge. “But it’s more than that. Stacey genuinely cares and wants them to know they are loved. What I especially appreciate is that she does this without being directed or asked.”

Truman says she got the idea of fruit-borne messages in the days when she was working nights as a waitress to bring in extra money for the family.  She didn't always get to see her girls in the morning - her husband gets them up and off to school after Mom leaves for work - so she tried to make up for the time she missed with them by writing messages.

"My girls sacrificed because I only saw them on the weekend, other than when I'd sneak in while they were sleeping to kiss them on the forehead," she said. "When I was getting their lunches ready the night before, I started writing little notes on their bananas to let them know I was thinking of them and wished I could be there."

Ms Truman's parents divorced when she was young, and she knows the importance of supportive encouragement.  "Writing on a banana is such a simple thing, but it has an impact,” she says.

The good people over at Dole Fruit saw pictures of Truman's messages on Twitter, and sent over a banana for each student one day last month. On that day, she got the PTA and some friends to help her fill out each banana: "otherwise, I'd have still been writing when school let out."

One of her favorite expressions is “Shoot for the moon — if you miss, you’ll end up with the stars.”

I think she's up there already! What a great idea!

Easy as 1-2-3

There is no sweeter sound to us than the sound of our own name.

Therefore, there is nothing worse to do in front of a person than to mock them for their name.

Abcde (pronounced AB-sity) Redford is five years old, and that's far too young to have to learn how nasty older people - people older than, say, five - can be. 

She was with her mother last week at the John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, when her mom, Traci, heard a gate agent goofing on Abcde's name.  The two were getting ready to fly back to El Paso when they heard the name critics having at it.

"The gate agent started mocking my child’s name, laughing, pointing at me and my daughter, and talking to other employees," Redford told KABC. "So I turned around and just said ‘Hey, I can hear you. If i can hear you, my daughter can too. I’d appreciate it if you’d just stop.'”

Not content with ragging on a little girl in public, the Southwest agent took a picture of Abcde's boarding pass, and, of course, put it right out there on social media.



Southwest Airlines says they have "followed up" with the employee involved, but they're not about to say just what was done in the wrist-slapping.

"We extend our sincere apology to the family," said the airline. "We take great pride in extending our Southwest Hospitality to all of our customers, which includes living by the Golden Rule and treating every individual with respect, in person or online."

Someone took the time to look on the the Social Security Administration website, and it turns out that "Abcde" is not ranked in the list of 1,000 most popular names for any year since 2000.

But someone else took the time and found there are 333 people in the United States named "Abcde," and there is only corporation named "Southwest Airlines," so there you have it.

Down on their heels

Do you understand the appeal of paying more for something, far more than you know very well it's worth?  Does that make you feel good? I don't get it, any more than I get paying a lot of money to wear "designer" clothing with some clothing company's name on it, so that you become a walking billboard, parading around with LEVI'S on your chest or a Kenneth Cole Slaw logo on your whatever.

Marketing studies have shown time and again that if a product is placed out for sale and the price is low, people tend to think it's not worth it...so if the price goes up, they will line up to buy it.

Here's the proof:  You've seen a Payless store if you've even been in a mall anywhere on this planet. It's not far from Auntie Anne's Pretzels, Candles And Things, and that place where they sell beds with a "sleep number." 

Payless has a lot of stores. They had a lot more before they filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and permanently pulled the door down on almost 700 stores, but they still have about 2,750 stores in North America and 3,500 all around the world.

I guess it's a sign that things are going better for them, because they recently found time to play an elaborate practical joke.

First of all, there is such a thing in this world as being an "influencer."  These are the people who wake up one day and decide to wear their underwear OVER their clothes, or use a Hefty trash bag as a rain poncho, and make sure someone takes a picture of them doing so.  Next thing you know, people all over are following the lead of their "influencers."

So Payless found an Armani store that closed up (lack of business) and invited a group of these "influencers" to the grand opening of a "high-end" (meaning low value for high prices) designer shoe emporium. They called it "Palessi."  Like Payless, but it sounds Italian, ya know?

And the gag was, all they sold was regular Payless merchandise, same as you can get when you go the mall and pass by Florist Gump, Bread Pitt, and the Asian Food Court: Pho King Tasty, Wok This Way, and Thai Me Up to get to the shoe store.

And of course, instead of the usual $20 - $40 price, people were breaking their necks to shell out $200 to $600 for boots, hi heels, flats, pumps, and sneakers.

Palessi raked in $3000 in the first hour. One shopper with a whole lot more money than sense spent $640 for a pair of boots marked up 1800%.

Within the first few hours of the grand opening, “Palessi” made about $3,000. One overexcited shopper dropped $640 on a pair of boots at an 1,800% markup.

Sarah Couch is the Chief Marketing Officer for Payless, and she told AdWeek magazine, “The campaign plays off of the enormous discrepancy and aims to remind consumers we are still a relevant place to shop for affordable fashion."

As it turned out, 80 "influencers" showed up for the shindig, and were told about the ruse, and got to keep their shoes AND got their money back.


The day I pay 640 simoleons for a pair of boots will be a frosty day in August, but I would consider shelling out a dollar for peanuts.

Anyway, I guess this says a lot about us as a nation, but I'm not sure it's something we want to hear about us.

2018 kid names

For the benefit of all of you planning to have babies soon (and for those of you NOT planning any such thing), here they are: the most popular baby names for the year.  Jackson has been #1 for naming boys for the last 6 years, and Olivia has reigned at the top of girl names for nine years running. Well, not running. Babies don't run; the best you can get out of them is a crawl.

I notice that the Heather-Jessica-Nicole era for girls and the Justin-Josh-Jason days for boys are over for now, and also the craze for giving children names that have to do with vocations or avocations - Hunter, Fisher, Rider, Walker. I don't recall that it ever got to where kids were named Jogger, although Waylon Jennings had a son named Shooter.

And once again, I bemoan the lack of little boys named Elvis, Ralph, Earl, or Leon. And whatever happened to little girls named Trixie, Cookie, and Harriet?

They grew up and married Ralph, Earl, and Leon.

Herewith, the Top Tens:



     BOYS                               GIRLS

1. Jackson                      1. Sophia

2. Liam                          2. Olivia

3. Noah                        3. Emma

4. Aiden                        4. Ava

5. Caden                       5. Isabella

6. Grayson                    6. Aria

7. Lucas                        7. Riley

8. Mason                       8. Amelia

9. Oliver                       9. Mia

10. Elijah                       10. Layla

Do us part

Beatles fans will recall the name of the band that Ringo Starr played in before getting on with the Fab Four...Rory Storm And The Hurricanes.

Rory Storm! And the Hurricanes! The guy's name always cracked me up as a kid, and it was interesting to hear Ringo telling Howard Stern the other day about his days with that band.

Rory (l) and Ringo

Rory's real name was Alan Ernest Caldwell, and his band floundered after Ringo swam away. When Howard asked Ringo where Rory is now, the answer came back, "Dead."  And a little research shows me that he died in 1972, and at the time Ringo was asked why he didn't come to the funeral for his old mate.

"I wasn't there when he was born, either," came his reply.

Maybe it's just the way I roll, but I don't mind showing up at funerals and viewings to pay respects to the departed and to console the family. When friends and kin came to our side when my parents and several friends died, it was more of a blessing than they probably knew, to have someone stop by with a handshake or a hug and some comforting words.  Or a joke or a story, whatever, it helps.

On the other hand, it's kind of a sting when you lose someone dear and people don't acknowledge it. Yes, I know that going to funeral homes is rough for a lot of people, and some people just have terrible associations with the whole process, but I would urge one and all to try to put those feelings aside for half an hour, and just be there for your friend. 

The great sage Yogi Berra taught us, "Always go to other people's funerals, or else they won't come to yours."  That's a little levity for a serious topic, but please keep it in mind. There is no "fun" in funeral, but there is love in a simple gesture such as supporting others.

Sunday Rerun: Dave's Not Here

I used to love recording David Letterman and watching him in the yawning while I made breakfast and put away the dishes, whether or not I had remembered to run the dishwasher.  His monologue was always hilarious, his Top Ten lists were so great that some of them were collected in two books, and his interviews with celebrities, people who did stupid human tricks, and people whose pets did funny things were always superb.  I guess his sense of humor meshed perfectly with me.  What he thought was funny was what I thought was funny.

So Dave retires and I tried the others.  Gave them all plenty of chances to amuse me.  And none did.

Stephen Colbert took over the late night slot on CBS.  He lost me years ago when he started calling himself ColeBEAR instead of COLEburt on the grounds that he was playing a character. Uh huh. I watched and watched, and nothing he did struck me funny...even when he raised one eyebrow like that The Rock guy.

Jimmy Fallon, over on NBC, wound up with the job when they booted Jay Leno off the latenight bus.  Fallon is a tremendous talent.  He can play guitar and sing, and he can do impersonations and take part in skits very effectively.  He can't seem to tell a joke without giggling about it, and overall he gives me the feeling that he's like a kid in 8th grade who got to host the school talent show and is being a little show-offy.

I revered ABC's Jimmy Kimmel when he was cohost, along with the lots-less-funny Adam Corolla, of The Man Show, which gave the world the exposure it needed to William Wallace Foster - the beloved "Fox," as well as hundreds of other amusing bits, most of them off-color, but some of them on. Doggone if Jimmy didn't go over to the other side - the "It was so cold out there today I saw an ear of corn wearing an alpaca sweater, I wanna tell ya..." school of humor.  And instead of sending The Man Show Boy out on stories, Jimmy now gives us his cousin Sal. 

I know there are other shows - Conan O'Brien, Trevor Noah, James Corden, Seth Meyers, Carson Daly, Tavis Smiley, Larry Wilmore.  Any day now, the GEICO Gecko will have his own couch and desk and start interviewing Colin Farrell and Demi Lovato, "with musical guests Macklemore and Ryan Lewis."

The Saturday Picture Show, December 1, 2018

 One thing from the early 90s that I still enjoy seeing (along with "Blossom" reruns) is these Magic Eye pictures. Tell me what you see!

 This is what it's like in Autumn, when the roads are warm from the day before so the snow doesn't stick, and the leaves are still unraked but the snow sticks to the trees.

 This nonsense of presidential candidates promising the moon didn't just start. Way back in 1928, Herbert Hoover ran (and won) with an ad campaign that promised "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." This chicken didn't hear the part about every chicken having a pot to float in.

 Another cool autumn picture with a rough-hewn fence.

 This might look like some sort of prehistoric Flintstones bird (the one that played records) but it's alive in 2018. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Baby Blue Heron.

 Sometimes, if you're going to decorate, you have to go ahead and take the plunger.

 Speaking of Christmas trees, here is the second-best use for a stand-up bass. There is no third best.

If you never got to see Ricky Jay perform, or read about him, or read his essays on the history of magic and deceptions, you can still see him on video and read the words, but the man himself passed away last weekend. He could do anything with a deck of cards, from making "your card" appear in a wine bottle to impaling a watermelon rind (“the thick pachydermatous outer melon layer”) with an ace thrown at 90 mph. Google him, YouTube him, whatever, but be prepared to see the best ever at what he did.

Noises on

"I'm officially at the age where I hate loud and unnecessary noises."

That was a tweet from someone that was re-posted by a friend of ours, a young woman we like a lot. And it got me thinking.

I really dislike noise when others are playing their music loudly on stadium-sized speakers, disturbing others for miles around. That's a sign of inconsideration.  And frankly, the music that others play is rarely the music that I want to hear. So no, just spare me from the latest by Marshmello and Bastille. Or the Captain and Tennille, either way.

On the other hand, guys like noises, and since every man of every age is just a larger version of what he was in 5th grade, we like noises all the time. My wonderful perfect wife often stares at me in wonderment as I amuse myself with gargling noises, cracked knuckles, and the amazing air-driven noises I can make just by squeezing my palms together.

Not to gender-generalize, but let's just say I don't know a lot of women who laugh at noises men make...

But any man will tell you, a crashing, breaking tray, dropped in a diner, accompanied by a crescendo of tinkling china and clattering silverware, delights us like few other things. We look around the room and wait for the chortling to begin.

Popping popcorn, sizzling bacon, a baseball being hit by a wooden bat and being sent on a trip of 450 feet, popping bubble wrap, wind in autumn that makes the drying leaves on a tree rattle and sigh, thunder, rain on a metallic roof...these are a few of my favorite things!

Ironically, when a comedian launches a joke that falls with a thud and no one is laughing, it's said that all that's heard in the room is the sound of crickets.  And even that is worse than silence!

One from Column A, one from column B

Stop me if you've heard this one before...

An elephant walks into a Chinese inn.

That's it! That's the joke, folks. I know you're out there, I can hear you breathing. What is this, an audience or an oil painting?

But, what happened was real, and here are the facts. A wild elephant did indeed wander into a Chinese inn, and he spent about four hours feasting on corn and oranges.

Xu Hongwei is the owner of the place.  It's in Yunnan Province. Xu said he told guests at the inn to remain on the second floor at about 4:30 the other morning, on the grounds that there was a wild elephant on the first floor. And what's more, Mr Xu is a member of the local elephant patrol team.

I have to say that again: the local elephant patrol team. There are such things, I guess, and I'll bet they have really cool hats and jackets. Maybe even a basketball team!


I'm going to call him "Jumbo."  Jumbo tied on the feedbag for four hours, chowing down on corn, oranges and other food stored inside.

According to Xu, this elephant was known to the locals from the previous times when he wandered into the eateries in town. Rather than trying to cajole Jumbo to leave, they gave him some time to stroll and gobble, while they held up traffic outside. 

There were no injuries to anyone, either with two legs or four really really big legs, during Jumbo's time out. but he did leave behind a big mess, according to Xu.

Turning to the horticultural news, residents of Yunnan Province are reporting larger-than-everrrrrrr tomatoes and corn this autumn.

What'll it be?

Sometimes I let my fingers do the walking through the internet, and here I am. I just stumbled across a site called "mindbodygreen," which is all about "mindfulness, health, food, movement, beauty, home, parenting, the planet..." and more.  Apparently, one can stay on this site forever; there is hardly a topic they don't touch on, with the possible exception of Jim Palmer's lifetime statistics (268 wins, 152 losses, with a 2.86 earned run average.)

And they talk about coffee and tea, two topics I enjoy. I love tea, hot and cold. Coffee, I only take when we dine at Friendly Farm; all other coffee tastes like bitter dishwater to me.

But the "mbg" site talks of a study in Scientific Reports, which says that we choose coffee over tea (or vice versa) based on our ability to detect bitterness. But...you'd think that sensing bitterness would point a person toward drinking more tea, since coffee is bitter, but Northwestern University and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Australia did a study of over 400,000 participants, and that's what they found.  The more sensitive a person is toward bitter taste, the more likely they are to say, "Make mine Maxwell House."

The conclusion is that it all in your genes; your genetic background determines how much bitterness you can take. "The findings suggest our perception of bitter tastes, informed by our genetics, contributes to the preference for coffee, tea, and alcohol," Marilyn Cornelis, assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told Science Daily.

None of this makes any sense on any level to me. It's like saying if you don't like tomatoes, you'll probably love tomato soup. And the researchers say that by all rights, none of us should like coffee, because our minds tell us, when our tongue tastes something bitter, that this is a warning that what we're tasting might be harmful.

The brainiacs behind this study posit that we love the jolt of caffeine (from coffee, which has twice the caffeine of tea) so much that we have rewired our brains to make us like coffee after all.

Now, I need to conduct a study about coffee drinkers to tell me why they never finish their cup o' joe! Look around any coffeehouse, office, shipping dock or Woolworth Luncheonette, and you'll find half-drunk cups of coffee left behind.  I'm guessing the #1 reason will be that people don't finish drinking their coffee because 1/2way through it, they realized it tastes like coffee!

This bugs me

Weren't we just talking about there always being two sides to every story?

Baseball fans (and boxing fans) will remember José Bautista as a good hitter as a right fielder with a poor throwing arm.  He once played for the Orioles, then spent eight years being annoying in Toronto with the Blue Jays, and then last year he drifted from the Mets to the Braves and the Phillies, like the uncle whom nobody wants around but everyone takes him in for a couple of months. He is currently a resident of Washed Up Island but might find some team foolish enough to offer to pay him for hanging around in right field this summer.

I never cared for him because he was a hot dog who always demonstrated poor sportsmanship, acted sullen or braggadocious, went out of his way to slide into other players, and the usual other jerky things that the non-great do.

The picture below is from 2016, just after Bautista slid into Texas second baseman Rougned Odor (say it OhDOOR) and Odor offered him some lessons in better baserunning. Odor used his own right hand to show José how to avoid needless collisions so hard that Bautista is seen here punching himself in the beezer with his OWN right hand.



AND THEN comes news from Canada that Jose Bautista has a new namesake!

Entomologist Bob Anderson of the Canadian Museum of Nature has bequeathed upon a newly discovered species of beetle the scientific name Sicoderus bautistai after you-know-who.

Speaking of noses, this weevil has a long snout. But Anderson was moved to honor the rightfielder with such a distinction because he (Anderson) can't seem to stop reliving that magic moment in 2015 when Bautista hit a home run to put the Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series, flipping his bat like a high school Harry as he did.

Anderson says, "It was one of those moments in Toronto baseball sort of lore where he hit this big home run. And I thought what a great way to kind of recognize his contributions to Blue Jay baseball and to Canadian baseball, really, as a whole."

A tiny black weevil, the Sicoderus bautistai is found in Bautista's native Dominican Republic.

Anderson, who says this makes 120 weevils that he's named over the years, adds, "One of the nice things about this is that you have some latitude to do something kind of quirky," Anderson said. "(Naming) sort of builds on a history and the names tell little stories."

Maybe his 121st bug will be one that is bigger and tougher than Sicoderus bautistai, and he can name it for Rougned Odor.

Thrown to waste

As the great sage George Carlin taught us, no two ways about it, there are two sides to every story...

Like this Christian missionary John Allen Chau. Who could oppose the idea of bringing religion to North Sentinel, which is the very definition of a forbidden island? Sitting out there in the Andaman Sea, near the eastern Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, it's a island where outsiders are not only not welcome but also actively attacked for trying to set foot on that land.

There's a very good reason for this long history of repelling outsiders. The Sentinelese have had no contact with the outside world and their aim is to keep things that way - free of our diseases and our modern technology. North Sentinel is about the size of Manhattan, but the Indian government says no outsiders know the language or the customs of the people there.

Here comes the other side of the coin. Mr Chau would not accept their desire to remain isolated, because it was his desire to bring Christianity to their world.  Admirable, sure, on the surface, I suppose, but in practical terms, the Sentinelese saw this as a deadly intrusion, and put him to death. And why did they feel so? Because it would have been deadly for him to enter their space and bring his Space Age American germs and cooties into their pristine world! They don't study anatomy and physiology and all the other things our advanced medical culture has brought us, but they seem to know innately that their immune systems are no match for modern microbes.

It's important to the Indian government that these people live unmolested, so much so that they maintain regular marine patrols to keep the curious and the otherwise motivated at bay. But apparently, Chau was able to hire some local boaters to ferry him onto North Sentinel.

It seems that the locals set upon him with bows, arrows, and spears, and used the same weapons to keep away police who approached the island to find and return Chau's body.

“The Sentinelese were watchful,” Dependra Pathak, the area’s police chief, told the New York Times. “They were patrolling the beach, at the same spot John was killed, with weapons.”

“Had we approached,” he said, “they would have attacked.”

Again with the two sides of everything: Indian law says the North Sentinel culture should be left totally alone and no outsiders are allowed there, but it also calls for murderers to be punished. 


So Chau martyred himself for the cause he lived (and died) for, and who knows what kind of good work he might have done in the future among people who were more receptive to the message he sought to bring?

Chau must have realized he was in over his head. He left behind a 13-page letter, saying in part, “I don’t want to die. Who will take my place if I do?”

Exactly.

And yet, in that last letter, Chau left definite instructions: “Don’t retrieve my body,” he wrote, underlining it. “This is not a pointless thing — the eternal lives of this tribe is at hand.”

If only he had realized that earlier.

Sunday Rerun: Down in the dumps

My wedding ring has gone everywhere I have gone since it was installed on my left hand on December 8, 1973. And trust me, it's not about to come off.  It's maybe a size 8 ring on what is now a size 11 finger, so it's permanent.

I see people who are able to slide their hardware on and off their fingers, and I worry about them losing their rings (and shortly thereafter, their minds!)

So it was that Shannon Lombardo of New York City removed her carat carrier and band to clean them.  And wrapped them in a paper towel.  And threw away the paper towel.

"I had just cleaned them and I had them in a paper towel. I think I got distracted with the kids, it's hard to figure out, and I think I just crumpled it up, and I didn't feel the weight of them and I threw them out," is what she told WABC-TV.

She called 311. "I was thinking, it's New York City Sanitation, there's no way I'm ever going to be able to track down my ring. I was just very skeptical, but I had nothing left to lose."

So the Sanitation people said they would wait to pick up the trash from her apartment building while she and her husband Jim dumpster dove, to no avail. That meant a trip to Fairview, New Jersey, where New York trash is parked awaiting a trip to whatever landfill it will soon occupy.

Workers at the debris depot narrowed the search field down to 800 bags recently dumped by the truck that worked her neighborhood, and it only took an hour of pawing through stuff no one else wanted to find the two things Mr and Mrs Lombardo really did. 

Apparently, this sort of thing happens all the time in The City That Doesn't Sweep. "When it's a ring, you start to think, wow, that's a small item, but we've done it before, we're trained how to find it," Sanitation Supervisor Gabriel Moreno said.

Now, she can smile again.

Mrs Lombardo took an admirably philosophical stance. "These people went above and beyond -- amazing people," she said. "Now, that's what the ring symbolizes: that there's hope and goodness in the world, and against the odds it can happen -- even in a garbage dump."

I'm sure the Lombardos were glad that this took place in March, and not August. 

The Saturday Picture Show, November 24, 2018

Here's a cat in a shark costume on a Roomba vac, not a Shark vac. Cats love this sort of thing.

This picture of the final moments of the Baltimore Orioles' World Series victory in 1966 was painted by Graig Kreindler. It's remarkably close to the original black and white photograph but the oil paint adds a certain extra touch.

It keeps happening. Please make it stop.

You can bet there is absolute silence in this public library in Berlin. People are probably so awestruck as to be rendered speechless.

Any good Thanksgiving leftover sandwich will a) be on a leftover dinner roll and b) contain stuffing and cranberry sauce along with the turkey.Oh yeah!

Every year, the U of Alabama meets second-rate Auburn for statewide supremacy. Later today, the Auburn Tigers will face the Alabama Crimson Tide at 3:30 PM at fabled Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa.  I predict an Alabama win, as always, just like I did in 2013 - and look how that turned out.

The kid who did this has clearly been raised with the right kind of feeling about right and wrong.

Outside of dreaming about eating a footlong hot dog outside the Washington Monument and falling into a hole while being chased by someone who looks like your first serious girlfriend, this picture of skydiver Felix Baumgartner being is caught by the hand of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro wins the World Series of Symbolism for this year.

Black Friday rerun: The calendar makers save the prettiest pictures for this time of year!

You know it's Thanksgiving time when you're running to Mars late at night for more pie crusts, Granny Smith® apples and egg nog.

You know it's Baltimore when you say you're "going to Mars" late at night and everyone knows you're going to the grocery store, and not some distant planet.

You also know it's Baltimore when you find a parking spot at Mars and a nice lady gets out of her minivan and walks to the store with you and, as you step back to allow her to enter first, she calls you "Hon."  And she has a bumper sticker on the back of that minivan saying "Angels Are Watching Over Me."

"Thanks, Hon" is as Baltimore as the sauerkraut on our turkey dinners, the curiously adenoidal backwater 'O' sound that true natives bestow on words (to hear sportcaster Keith Mills call out baseball's Magglio Ordóñez is to hear a symphony of vowel sounds in the key of F-flat major) or the acceptance of the glee of civic leaders that it took until Thanksgiving week for the city to reach 200 homicides this year.

It's the same thing every year, and it's beyond the point of being a tired cliché to say that we are rushing around early and late, dashing to Mars or Big Lots! or the indescribable Ollie's Bargain Outlet, a chain of stores that vies annually for the shopping dollar of cheapskates such as I with the legendary Good Stuff Cheap stores, and making ready to make merry through the holidays. 

The good folks at Lifetime Movie Network and Turner Classic Movies will show you lots of celluloid examples of Rich Famous Good-Looking Actors portraying Everyday People Doing Wonderful Things, but we can't always be watching TV.

I know.  Try as I might, sometimes I have to put the remote down.

And I'm glad I do, because then I go to Mars and have a nice lady call me "hon" just because I stepped aside and allowed a lady to pass, as my father taught me to do when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and then I read about people who give up their day off to prepare and feed a multitude of hungry, sad strangers, and then I come to work and talk to a friend who, for every holiday, rounds up this widower guy she works with and brings him home for dinner with her family.  These are the angels who are walking among us, my father included, and showing us a better way than Lifetime could ever depict.

I am fortunate and glad to have you in my life.  I know and love a lot of people, and although I wasn't blessed with a lot of talent in a lot of areas, I surely was given all the love one heart can hold. Thank you for putting with my old jokes, arcane references, bluntly-stated political opinions and did I mention, old jokes? I can't remember.  I am the luckiest man in the world, to have friends such as you, the most wonderful wife - my Peggy! - and all the joy of the holidays to share with you.

Ready?  Let's go!

Meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, and thank you for meaning so much to me all year.

Happy Thanksgiving 2018!

The whole tooth

Every now and then, we see someone so seized with Holiday Fever that they do something they will regret later. Not much later, in most cases.

Like the guy who chooses the office Christmas party to tell the boss what he really thinks about some of the boss's rules and regulations...or the one who decides to plant a big smackeroo on the new coworker from Accounting.  Both of these failed plans usually come after a few sips of the dew, as they like to say, and both of them will make for sadness later, not to mention unemployment.

And the legends always sprout about the guy who cuts a hole in his ceiling so he can display, in all its yuletide glory, a 12-foot Christmas tree in a ten-foot living room.

And the less said, the better, about people who get "Super Bowl Champs!" tattoos saluting their favorite team before a game their team goes out and loses.

Now comes a warning from Mobile County, Alabama, telling us not to glue fake fangs in our mouths if we are going for Halloween as a vampire.

After Anna Tew spent three American dollars to add the phony choppers to her outfit, she came home from the revelry and went to brush her real teeth, and couldn't pry loose the store-bought fangs.

Halloween night was ruined for her. In fact, she was up until 2 AM with wire cutters and other home tools trying to remove the man-made molars.

At length, she sought professional help, winding up in the chair of Dr. John Murphy at Alabama Family Dental. Dr Murphy told WKRG TV that sometimes, imitation eyeteeth can stuck because of the natural shape of our real teeth and gums.

“He talked about drilling. They had a saw, talked about taking them off in sections, and they couldn’t numb it because they were scared they would actually pull my teeth out,” Ms Tew told the news outlet. “So he went in and picked and pulled and I squealed like a baby and they got them out.”

Demonstrating that there's no lesson like one hard-learned, Tew says she will never again use simulated teeth for comic effect.

“I will never do it again,” she told WKRG. “I will never put anything like that again in my mouth.”

Good, because she was really gonna play hell eating corn on the cob next summer.

It's all in the arithmetic

It was funny when Jack Benny, deep into his 60s, claimed to be 39, and who hasn't heard stories of 19-year-olds with fake IDs trying to buy beer?

We're talking about you, Brett.







Between the extremes of young people wanting to be old and old people wanting to be young, most of us settle down and acknowledge our ages, even if we don't always act them.

But now and again, along comes a fool who just won't own up to how many years he owns.

Meet Emile Ratelband.  He's 69, but he claims that he identifies as 49 years old.

Oh. Well, Emile, sometimes I identify as Jerry Lee Lewis, even though the only keyboard I pound on has 26 letters instead of 88 notes.

It's better to be who you're supposed to be, and not fake an age, which is right up there with combovers and facelifts in the How Pitiable Can You Get? competition.

Not a surprise, Emile, a Dutch retiree, wants to shave off two decades so he can A) go to back to work  and B) make it with lots of women from Tinder.

Yeah. You look 49 like I look like Bradley Cooper.

His arguments, which probably sounds a lot like the bloviations many will hear from funky uncles on Thanksgiving, is that if transgender people are allowed to change sex, he should be allowed to change his birth date.

After all, Emile avers, he has the body of a 45-year-old.  Doctors told him so! 

Ratelband said: "I have done a check-up and what does it show? My biological age is 45 years. When I'm 69, I am limited. If I'm 49, then I can buy a new house, drive a different car. I can take up more work. When I'm on Tinder and it say I'm 69, I don't get an answer. When I'm 49, with the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position."

So he has filed legal papers to get his local government agencies (in the city of Arnhem in the eastern Dutch province of Gelderland) to amend his age on legal documents.

The judge hearing this absurdity (he didn't mention his own age) says he understands the "if transgendered people can do it, why oh who can't I?" angle, but brings up one of his own: What about the years between 1949 (when his mother bore him) and 1969 (when he began boring us)?

Stand by for news from the Dutch courts.