Look up!

For the first time in a long time, what everyone around our town was talking about watching last Thursday night was not The Voice or the Golden Bachelorette or even the news. 

It was The Northern Lights, which put on quite a show visible to everyone in town except on our court, where we are seemingly hemmed in by too-tall trees or something. Peggy went out to look for the NLs and saw nothing in the sky except for a passing police helicopter (which is usually the #1 cause of excitement around here.)

Facebook and Instagram filled up with northern lights pictures, so I looked into the matter of what they are. It took a while to get a response, because the search engines were full of people trying to find a way to work a sponsorship deal, projecting advertising for car dealers, bariatric weight loss, and same-day floor covering services into the sky.

So here is what I found: It's all because of a solar storm, and believe me, you won't want to be outside when chunks of the sun come raining down. The sun is not doing that (yet) but it is releasing solar flares and coronal mass ejections, and these are showing up much farther south than usual in an effort to reach that vital mid-Atlantic market.

Look back in your diary for this past May. We had another solar storm then, but no one paid much attention to it because spring was springing and it was so nice out. That May storm was much more intense than the one last week. 

When the sun gets busy (!), that causes these auroras.  Auroras dance around the earth's poles, causing Northern Lights (aurora borealis) in this hemisphere, and southern lights (aurora australis) which shine brightly in the southern hemisphere. This is not to be confused with Aurora, Colorado, which shines brightly in the shadow of Denver.

And what's with all these vivid colors? They occur because energized particles from coronal mass ejections (expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun's corona) come to Earth’s magnetic field and want to show off a little, so they come in contact with atmospheric gases and presto! Different colored lights in the sky!

 

What's today?

  

Indigenous Peoples' Day is a holiday celebrating and honoring Native American peoples by commemorating their histories and cultures. After all, they were here first! It's time to recognize and pay them respect; this is a holiday in Baltimore City and all across the nation this second Monday in October. It is an official city and state holiday in various localities.

Sunday rerun: What fore?

 I remember playing golf a few times with some friends back in my carefree teens. I usually did pretty well, although a couple of times, I couldn't get the doggone ball past the little windmill and through to the hole.

Kidding. I did play 18 holes of golf, and only fell asleep once or twice.  

I get a lot of looks for saying this, but I think golf is deadly boring. In fact, any smart detective who wants to pin some sort of crime spree on me needs only to lock me in a room with a TV and a broken remote that's stuck on the Golf Channel. I'll confess to whatever I'm falsely accused of, and also help clear up cases that have baffled the local gendarmes for decades, just to get out of watching Bubba and his pants smacking a little ball around while a rapt crowd stands, well, rapt, and silent.  Until the guy sinks a two-foot putt, and a wave of polite applause ripples through the crowd.

If you play baseball, a sweaty man 60' 6" away is going to throw a small white ball toward you at 90-some miles per hour. Football players have to tackle a man the approximate size of Delaware as he lumbers down the field toting a ball, and basketball players get thrown around like toothpicks battling for rebounds.

And all of that is happening while tens of thousands of people hoot and ululate and holler.  

Have you ever heard a ballplayer say, "I was going to catch that fly ball, but a rude fan in the left field bleachers said something derogatory about my parentage and I lost concentration, so upset was I"?

No, and you haven't heard of a football player asking that the crowd sit on their hands while he tries to make a 47-yard field goal.  "You pays your money and you speaks your mind" is the law of the ballpark.

But oh no! Golf, and tennis, another game requiring funny pants, require total stillness while play goes on. In fact, they probably ask that you be totally silent while you're driving to the match, just to get quiet enough.  I don't get this, and since I wouldn't pay to attend a game during which I could not boo or cheer or razz someone, I turned to the good old internet to find out why the ban on volubility exists at The Snootington Tennis Club or Morning Wood Country Club.

"Etiquette," said United States Golf Association historian Robert Williams in the Florida Times-Union. "Golf has been a gentleman's game from the very beginning and players treated each other with respect. During the early tournaments such as the British Open and U.S. Open, the spectators were almost 100 percent golfers themselves so they all practiced etiquette and the tradition has carried on ever since."

"You know, despite what happened, I-I'm still convinced you have many fine qualities and I... I think you can still become a gentleman some day if you understand and abide by the rules of decent society."  - - The words of Judge Smails to Danny Noonan in "Caddyshack."

Judge Smails to Al Czervik: "You're no gentleman!"
Al Czervik to Judge Smails (as he dances away): "I'm no doorknob, either!"  (op. cit.)

You know what?  I'm with Al!

"It looks good on you, though!"

The Saturday Picture Show, October 12, 2024

 

If I may translate..."Juan Carlos, you cheated on me. Now all of Rosario (a city in Argentina) is going to see your nudes." The women in Rosario do not mess around! Run for it, Juan. Pronto!

Is this intentional, or just a happy accident, that the Aldi cow is happy to offer you some tasty nut-sweet Swiss Cheese?

Sunrise in Maine, where the blueberries and the mosquitoes grow large and juicy every summer.

The next time you're down at the State Fair in a state other than Maryland, where the state inspectors are notably fastidious about making sure amusement rides don't wind up putting funseekers in emergency rooms, make sure the Crazy Mouse is not propped on 6 x 6's.

This Mandarin Duck is preening for you at home in Cornwall, England, and he wants you to know that the American singer and entertainer known as Bobby Darin was born Walden Robert Cassotto, but took his stage name from the name of a Chinese restaurant called the Mandarin House. Your Picture Show staff spans the globe to bring you timely information.

Storm prep for Milton involved boarding up windows and saluting Milton Waddams and his Red Swingline Stapler, both stars of "Office Space."

I haven't seen such unalloyed bliss on anyone's face since they came and told me that there would be a "Jackass Forever." Musk looks like he's in a bliss frenzy over there, and even the guy on the left looks less dyspeptic than usual. We simply must get to Butler, PA, and see what's in the water up there.

There are words that just sound...yuck. "Phlegm", "moist", "mucus", "ointment", "ooze", and "seepage" lead my list, and let's not forget "membrane." Still, I like pumpkin seeds.

This shot has become a popular one for directors of live sports broadcasts - hands on head, stunned expression. This Tennessee fan modeled it for me last Saturday as his team lost to Arkansas (the team with a hog on its helmets) and so I was ready to wear this look later that evening when Vanderbilt beat Alabama (no photo available).

I might as well come out and admit to being a Gilmorean. Mark Consuelos said he streamed all 153 episodes of Gilmore Girls last summer, and every day when I go downstairs and ride my exercycle, the darn thing takes me right to Stars Hollow, a magical land of enchantment. I'm about 1/2 way through now. I love the GGs and I am proud to tell you so!

Ars Gratia Artis

I see videos from a mythical place called Katz's Delicatessen where sandwich makers make great pastrami and corned beef sandwiches. Say what you will about these sandwiches - they are big, they are expensive, they are not diet-friendly...but you will admit, they are works of art, however temporary they are.

Art is funny like that. It's all in the eye of the beholder. If you like corned beef sandwiches, these sandwiches are at the top of the heap - and what a heap that would be!

Speaking of art...someone threw some art in the trash at a Dutch museum. The "art" in question here was a pair of abandoned beer cans. Or, more accurately, homemade fake beer cans.

"All The Good Times We Spent Together," a 1988 artwork by French artist Alexandre Lavet, sure does look like a couple of empty suds cans, but no!

 "However, a closer look reveals that these dented cans were meticulously hand-painted with acrylics, with each detail painstakingly replicated," the LAM museum in Lisse said in a news release.

So the museum displayed this art in their elevator shaft. And someone - the elevator technician - thought they were real empty cans, and threw them out.

"The theme of our collection is food and consumption," said Sietske van Zanten, the museum's director. "Our art encourages visitors to see everyday objects in a new light. By displaying artworks in unexpected places, we amplify this experience and keep visitors on their toes."

This, my friends, is art. OK?

Alert museum staffers saw the cans were missing, and rummaged through the nearest trash bin, finding the art just in time. Mr  Van Zanten said the tech on duty that day was filling in for the regular elevator tech, a man with a greater appreciation for the treasures displayed there.

"He was just doing his job in good faith," he said. "In a way, it's a testament to the effectiveness of Alexandre Lavet's art."

I would like to invite Mr Van Zanten to my house on any Sunday evening. That's the night I take the recycling bin out to the curb for Monday morning's pickup. He can root through my old beer cans, seltzer bottles, newspapers and junk mail, and who knows? He just might find himself a winner!

Leave the neighbors to rest

In Baltimore City, leaves will continue to fall from trees every year, but soon, people will have to find another way to move them from the ground to a pile in the yard that some kid will want to jump into, because the City Council, by a vote of 10-5, voted to ban gas-powered leaf blowers. By this December 15, all city employees and contractors will have to stop using them, and residents will have a phase-out period: Landscape companies and residents can use gas-powered blowers between Oct. 15 and Dec. 15 of 2025 and 2026, and then they'll have to go electric or battery as the ordinance goes into effect year-round.

Supporters of the bill offered this statement from the National Audubon Society: 

In one hour, a commercial gas-powered leaf blower emits as much pollution as driving a car for 1,100 miles and four times as much as commercial lawn mowers. 

The only leaves I handle anymore are romaine, but in the day, I fiddled around with a gas blower or two. They are devilish little machines, and the wee two-cycle motors wanted more TLC than I felt like devoting to them, so I switched to an electric, which would have been great if I had hired someone to drag the cord around and keep me, and it, unentangled. I know they make great little battery-powered blowers now.

Speaking of "blow," neighbors have actually come to blows over someone's whiny Husqvarna at 7 AM on a Saturday. 

Speaking of Husqvarna, 74% percent of people buying them only chose that brand so they could go back to work on Monday saying, "Yeah, we had a mess o'leaves this year, but that Husqvarna is a burly machine, and Junior and I had them cleared up by the time "It's Academic" came on."

And the others in the office crooning, "Ohhhhhh! He got a Husqvarna!" 

Just the tip

People have become fond of giving advice prefaced with the phrase, "Pro tip!" As in, "Pro tip! Don't use a butcher knife as a toothpick!"

Well, for all you would-be bank robbers, Pro tip! Don't run off with a bag o' bank bucks and then stop for breakfast on the way!

But a guy in Brooklyn, New York, made that mistake the other day. He ankled into the TD Bank on Fourth Ave. near 39th St. in Sunset Park, told a teller he had a gun, and demanded (and got) money.

Pro tip #2! They put tracking devices in those bags, duh! So it wasn't long before cops showed up at the New Kim Tuong Restaurant on Chrystie St. near Hester St. and arrested the fool. 

I'm sorry.  Alleged fool.

Let the record show that the suspect, rakishly clad in a stained gray shirt and blue trousers, was tucking into a breakfast of shrimp fried rice as he was pinched.

He did not have a gun on him at the time of his arrest. A search of his pockets turned up several packets of duck sauce.

Bank robbery suspect and gourmet diner

According to the New York Daily News, the suspect told police, “You got the wrong dude, man. That’s my money. That’s my Social Security. I got a $50 million loan from the bank.”  

He should have just waited! It said on the news over the weekend that Social Security is going up 2.5 %.

Shrimp Fried Rice for everybody (except bank robbers!)