The Saturday Picture Show, December 21, 2024

 

This cool candle holder will be easy to make. One can find old silverware in any antique store,  and the fork and spoon will be easily bendable with a vise and vise-grip pliers. Sand and stain a block of wood and there you have it!

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is quite a deal. I can't look at it without thinking of Holden Caulfield and Sally Hayes ice-skating at Radio City, but that's my nostalgia.

Even the monks way up in the Himalayas count on Amazon. 

Here's your proof: camouflage clothing works!

This guy can hear people whisper two counties away!

This chrysanthemum is to remind you warm-weather fiends that spring will be here according to plan.

Remember the early days of pc's, when every time you went to do something, this goofy google-eyed guy popped up?

A real Tasmanian Devil is not cute like the cartoon version. These are nasty little critters! 

I wouldn't be the holidays without Magoo and razzleberry pudding! 

Early each morning, these bears meet for a strategy session for the day. It will be decided that Yogi will be in charge of stealing pick-a-nick baskets.

Oh, Rats!

Kelly Lambert found something very interesting recently, namely, that rats would rather drive than walk. I'm talking about real rats here, not that guy who stole your parking spot at the Bi-So-Lo the other day. 

Kelly is a professor and neuroscientist down at the University of Richmond. She rigged up tiny cars to see if rodents could get behind the wheel and scoot on down the road.

“Unexpectedly, we found that the rats had an intense motivation for their driving training, often jumping into the car and revving the ‘lever engine’ before their vehicle hit the road,” Lambert wrote in an essay last week.

Of course,  this wasn't some carnival attraction she was working on.  Dr. Lambert is exploring how animals relate to their environments,  how we develop cognition study aims to explore the relationship between animals and their environments, how their cognition develops, and how they process new skills. The rat-driving research went viral in 2022 and even wound up featured in a Netflix documentary.

Dr. Lambert says the joy the rats felt at driving could be partially attributed to the Pavlovian response of getting a little rat treat (a Froot Loop) for their stint behind the wheel, but also, she noticed that even without their Loop, the rodents just loved to drive for the sheer thrill of it all.

“Rather than pushing buttons for instant rewards, they remind us that planning, anticipating and enjoying the ride may be key to a healthy brain,” she wrote.

I keep hearing that teenagers are not in a particular hurry to learn to drive these days, and frankly, I don't blame them. A couple of miles around the Beltway is enough to make me want to call a cab.

Maybe they would send a tiny car with a rat driving. 

Save me a cup!

 I'll bet you enjoy looking at webcam images as much as I do! There are billions of sights you can see from your phone or pc...eagles' nests...your kid's school yard...Times Square...the line for Thrasher's French Fries in Ocean City, MD...a beautiful sunset 1/2 way around the world..and you can see all this majesty for free! (as long as you pay your internet access bill.)

You won't be surprised to learn that it was some pioneering computer guys, Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky, who were working the Trojan Room, the computer lab at the University of Cambridge, who developed the first webcam.

It was 1991. Stafford-Fraser and Jardetzky were given the task (I refuse to say "they were tasked") of helping the other brilliant men and women in the lab find out if any coffee was available in the communal Mr Coffee. These were busy people! Walking to the coffee room, only to come back with an empty mug, was a colossal waste of time, so S-F and J rigged up a digital camera, pointed it at the drip-o-lator, and fed the live image to everyone's screen.

Eventually, the entire world wide web knew if there was coffee to be had, and the idea went world-wide.

Dag. Coffee lovers are serious about getting their Java jive!

Stop in the name of the law!

Baltimore County school transportation officials have installed cameras on county school buses to get nice souvenir photos of jerkface motorists who just race on by as school buses stop to drop off or pick up kids (hereinafter known as "students.")

At first, police only handed out warnings - law enforcement's version of a school deficiency slip - but since November 4, maleficent motorists have been opening their mailboxes at home to find a real $250 ticket in there amidst the junk from Omaha Steaks, Ollie's Bargain Outlet, Old Navy, and O'Reilly Auto Parts. 

So far, they've sent over 7,400 citations for this asinine and potentially homicidal behavior. Last year, before the advent of the cameras, they wrote 148 citations. 

Don't even try to tell me you didn't know you had to stop your car to allow students to get on or off their buses. The flashing sign sticking out of the side of the bus tells you to STOP 🛑.

I know, you're in a hurry to get to the office for that all-important conference call with the home office, or to get little Agnes to the orthodontist, but just STOP for a stopped school bus, please. 

Stocking up

 Quick quiz: what do Maryland, Alaska, and Rhode Island have in common? 

Beside "seafood," it's beer!

As in, we are one of the three states where beer drinkers can't ankle into a grocery store and stock up on suds. We are also among the group of ten states where one can't buy wine and Worcestershire sauce at the same time. No oenophile, I, so it hardly makes a Ripple of difference to me.

We finally have a governor, Wes Moore, who sees the error in all this. He's going to ask his Buds in the legislature to straighten out this Schlitz and support a proposal that would allow beer and wine  purchases in grocery stores. It's an issue that comes up every year or so here.

“We are the only of our neighboring states to ban the sale of either in grocery stores — resulting in less consumer choice and putting our stores at a disadvantage,” Moore said in a statement. “Lifting this ban puts the consumers first, and ensures fair competition in the marketplace.”

Maryland law restricts alcohol sales to liquor stores owned by Maryland residents.

Quick quiz # 2: who would oppose making it easier for us to buy the beer and wine we enjoy with dinner? Ah. That would be the people who own liquor stores.  Of course they're fighting the governor on this, because if I can grab my Natty Boh along with my nectarines and Navy beans, I won't need to stop at Hi-Price Discount Liquor on the way home. 

Everyone loves capitalism until they don't. So here's my free advice to the soon-to-be-heartbroken liquor store owners: sell me my beer for less than the grocery store does! Maybe you'll have to cut your vacation in the South of France down from two weeks to one, and hang on to the Bentley for another year, but let's crack a cold one to celebrate your decision to stay in business! 

Eternal

We have a lantern outside, over the basement door. The incandescent bulbs I used to put in it lasted about about as long as a Kardashian marriage, 'til the day I replaced the fixture and used one of those new (at the time) LED bulbs, and I can't even remember how long that bulb's been aglow, but it's been a good while now. 

Climbing up ladders and replacing burned-out bulbs is one of those concepts long since relegated to the dustbin of history along with caroling door to door on snowy Christmas Eves, and snowy Christmas Eves. Bulbs burn forever now (watch this one go dark tonight, knowwhaddimsayin?) And while I hope this has not been a hardship on the people who work at light bulb factories, it's probably saved many a choredoer many a climb and fall.

But out in Livermore (you can picture someone saying, "Livermore" but who says, "more liver, please!") there is, at Fire Station 6 (4550 East Ave) an old time incandescent bulb that's been lit since 1901, with some exceptions, such as the 1937 firehouse renovations, the time in 2013 when the uninterruptable power supply died, and when it was moved to its present location.  So, except for those minimal gaps, this bulb has been on the job for 123 years, and who among us can make that claim? 

The bulb originally glowed at 60 watts' worth. Today, if you were trying to read this under the eternal bulb, you'd only get 4 watts of light, and its main purpose, beside being a tourist attraction, is as a nightlight for Station 6.

They have a Webcam so you can see it for yourself: http://bulbcam.cityofpleasantonca.gov/view/view.shtml?id=116787&imagepath=%2Fmjpg%2Fvideo.mjpg&size=1

Whoever bought the bulb in 1901 certainly got their money's worth!

Sunday Rerun from 2008: Things I Learned from Andy Hardy Movies

 Today was a good day to relax, so after I went to physical therapy and burned off some ham and pie, Peggy and I had a nice dinner and enjoyed watching "The Courtship of Andy Hardy"  on Turner Classic Movies.

This was the twelfth in the series of Hardy Family 

movies, and I while I wouldn't recommend them to anyone seriously studying American mores and folkways of the 1930's and 40's, they are just swell for lolling away a lazy afternoon.

And what you can learn!

First of all, you get Mickey Rooney as Andy Hardy, and life mirrors art as he struts his way through all sorts of trouble with the young ladies in his life. Rooney himself (born Joe Yule, Jr in 1920) is still around, and has been in show business since 1921, so even when he was making this particular movie in 1942, he had been performing for 21 years already. I think he has been married like seven times or something ridiculous. 
So, you watch the guy, and you're seeing a ton of talent.

From the movie, we learn that Melodie ,played by the lovely Donna Reed, is considered a drip - a real "drizzle-puss" - by Andy and his school buddies. Melodie is so hideous that Andy, whose father, the judge, strongarms  him to take this repulsive mess to the school dance, has to pay his friends to twirl her around the dance floor on their first date. Come the second date, and Melodie has learned a lesson. She simply puts her hair up and all of a sudden, all the guys realize she is quite pretty. Modern-day corollaries to this include sitcoms where some woman takes off her glasses, shakes out her hair, and suddenly, the handsome bachelor in the office goes, "Why, Miss Framingham! Without your glasses, you...you're...STUNNING!" And then they go and do it someplace.

Another common myth spun by Hollywood writers who have never lived among us but write about us as if they had is the legend of the Pretty Girl Who Sits Home On Saturday Night because everyone thinks she is all dated up and they don't even dare to dream to ask her out, so she sits at home with her hair up in italics, knocking back Diet Sprites and fudge. Son, that does not happen, and hookers don't have hearts of gold like in "Pretty Woman" and nobody participating in Roman chariot races wore a wristwatch like that one guy did in "Ben-Hur."

And, when Andy's know-it-all sister goes out on a date with a fellow who is known for being "fast" (he should have been known for being "loud"; he drove around in a car with a huge PA system so he could call out to people in houses and other cars - sort of like a pre-Nokia one-way cell phone) the guy gets shafahzed and Andy's dad throws the contents of a pitcher of water (which every kitchen always has sitting right there, right?) on the guy's melon, and of course he sobers right up and comes to his senses about this alcohol problem he's not going to allow to get the best of him.

The Hardys all dressed up big-time for dinner, at the dining room table with the solemn old judge carving and serving. Today, many families sit in their underwear, guzzling Coors Light and eating pizza, while watching "Deal Or No Deal." I am so worn out now, just from trying to get a visual on Judge Hardy tipping a Domino's guy, I think I'll put on my suit and fedora and go to bed.