Penny wise

At 6' 3", Michael Andrew "Duff" McKagan, former bassist for Guns N' Roses, towers above many people, especially where moolah is concerned.

Duff

His name is not the inspiration for Homer Simpson's favorite beer (Duff, Duff Light and Duff Ice all come from the same vat); McKagan said the Simpsons used his name and the creator of the Simpsons, Matt Groening, says he never heard of a Duff McKagan.

He's not the richest Roser; that would be William Bruce Rose, Jr, better known as Axl Rose.

He doesn't have the coolest name in the band; that honor has to go to Izzy Stradlin, né Jeffrey Dean Isbell.

And McKagan has been thrice married, meaning that he's had three mothers-in-law, and they are all proud of his financial acumen, because in 1994, at the age of 30, Duff was told his time on earth would be measured in weeks, not years, if he didn't give up his dissolute way of life.

Here's the Paul Harvey Rest Of The Story - in order to use up the time that he used to spend on intemperance, McKagan enrolled in college, took a few business courses, and scraped together $100,000 that he had not yet snorted up his nose or run through his liver, and bought stock in three nascent businesses: Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks....all local Seattle firms.

Since he bought those stocks,  Starbucks is up 5,337.14%, Microsoft is +2,347.92%, and Amazon is +21,934.67%.

Had you stopped spending all your money on acid-washed jeans and Zubaz pants in 1994, and scraped together $10,000 to buy shares of Amazon, you would be worth $2,203,467 right now.

And we would still love you!

Current estimates of McKagan's wealth range from $30 million to $90 million. 

What's so funny?

Q: What happens once a year and is not nearly as much fun as it used to be?

A: April Fools' Day!

What happened? Have we grown more jaded, more cynical, not so ready to fall for the old switch-the-sugar-and-the-salt gag that I personally got from Dennis The Menace and pulled off successfully in third grade?

The time was, people would go to great lengths to pull off great pranks on this most special of foolin' around days. Hugh Troy (1908 - 1964) was regarded as the greatest practical joker of all time, because his stunts required planning and execution. (I planned my salt-and-sugar bit so well that I was nearly executed, but anyway...)

Troy would buy a large pile of newspapers when a huge event was in the headlines (Lindbergh lands, WWII ends, etc) and save them for a year or so, and then he would take the papers and hand them out to people riding the bus home from work, asking the people to whom he gave the papers to read them intently. Imagine the laughs a couple of April Firsts later when people were shocked to see old news again.

He would buy a park-type bench from, I don't know, Wards or Sears, and take it to a park, sit down and read his paper until he saw a policeman, at which point he would pick up the bench and carry it off, surely to be followed by a cop, for whom he would produce the bill of sale for one park bench.

Today, not so much. Fast food places go on Facebook to announce that they are no longer going to sell their most popular items, and will carry kangaroo burgers instead. Stuff like that. Not up to the standards of Hugh Troy, for sure.

The Washington POST made a weak attempt to claim that gondola service would soon be available in the nation's capital. But nothing has been funny for several months there...

Nice try, but weak.

Keep your orders in order

 I never worked in a restaurant in my life (and at this point, it would seem doubtful that I ever will) but I love restaurant stories, not so much about the food - I can cook my OWN food - but the tales of crabby customers and stingy tips, and the opposites too. 

I know the tips can be good for a server who is willing to go the extra mile. They often find that customers will go the extra twenty bucks with their tip in response. It really takes just a little bit of friendliness in the greeting, a little hustle on the service, and looking out for the little things like topping off water, bringing extra napkins, and so forth. Still, I know it's tough, because when you are greeted by your server, he or she may be a person who was just treated rudely by some lout. It's all part of the wonderful game we call "leaving the house."

And, from what I glean from following the Facebook page "Restaurant workers Be Like," it's not just churlish patrons who give the staff a hard way to go. Owners and managers can be pretty tough to work for as well, how about that? Check this out:

It brings back to my mind the advice I have given a lot of young people who were not smart enough to get away from what I was droning on about, but anyway, one more time: When you have a job, you are hired to perform a service, be it slinging food in a diner, sawing wood at a lumberyard, changing oil in auto engines, whatever. You are paid for that work and that's the deal. So many people think that if they work an extra 30 hours a week, someone will notice this and reward them with a new company car and a trip to the south of France before they move you into the corner office with your name on the door and a carpet as thick as a 30-dollar tenderloin. It just doesn't happen, at least not often enough to make it a good investment of your time.

What's more likely is that you will suffer the fate of poor Frank, above, working hard and doing a great job, and then crossing the Jordan one sad day, and your boss, Chris, is so suffused with sadness over it all that he gives you a standard two-line goodbye before turning your eulogy into a help-wanted ad to bring in the next beloved line cook.

Do your job and then go home and live your life. Don't combine the two. The boss does not care. 

Full of himself

 The legend of Morgan Wallen's obstreperous behavior wrote another chapter over the weekend. The moderately talented country singer did his two tunes from the upcoming album he was on Saturday Night Live to promote, and then walked off the set at the show's close.

You've seen the show end for 50 years now. Guest host says "thanks and good night" while the musical act and the other performers form an eddying mob. But on Saturday, the bumptious Wallen just lumbered off as the music played. Later he posted a photo of his private jet, captioned "Get me to God's country," presumably meaning that the Good Lord does not exist in New York City.

As if he knows.

No need exists to go into detail about the rudeness of a man who throws a folding chair off a roof toward a crowded street.  He's not as talented as he is obnoxious or as popular as as he is disrespectful of all others, so maybe his career will be as short-lived as his frequent promises to behave better. 

Oh, this new album he's promoting has a perfectly harmoniously suited name: "I'm The Problem."

Sunday rerun from 2010: Ill-gotten gains

 To those who have only recently moved to Maryland, the news that the county executive in Prince George's County, which is down near DC, was arrested along with his wife and charged with various corrupt activities must have been quite a shock.  People were shocked - shocked! - to hear of frantic phone conversations with the man and his wife as he told her to flush a check down the toilet and put cash in her bra, as feds were pounding on the front door.

Not for nothing did National Lampoon magazine label Maryland as the "Cradle Of Graft" back in the good old days.  And a man named Spiro Agnew took our area to the top of the junk heap of crooks.

Agnew, as a local politician, began shaking down contractors and builders.  You want to do business here, you give me 5% of what you take, was the plan, and so contractors and builders started showing up with envelopes and canvas bags full of money.

Nixon (r) picked Agnew. Agnew (l) picked pockets.

Running on a platform of unbridled ("You've seen one slum, you've seen them all") racism, Agnew became governor of Maryland and after two nonglorious years in that office, was chosen to be vice-president of the United States, for crying out loud, by Richard Nixon.  This was 1968, six years after Nixon lost the California governor's race to Jerry Brown's father, and Nixon promised at that time that he would not run for office ever again anywhere.

So much for that.  He took Agnew along for the ride and won election as president in '68, and thereafter let Agnew be his mouthpiece for spewing out hateful, albeit alliterative, rhetoric.  Agnew referred to those who opposed any Nixonian policy as "pusillanimous pussyfooters", "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history".  This man, who went around taking cash kickbacks as a government official, had the nerve to call opponents "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."

Guys like that always hate people with intellect, and intellectual honesty.

It was funny;  you never saw Nixon and Agnew doing anything together.  Even Nixon must have found his company undesirable, I don't know.  And when Nixon's Watergate chickens came home to roost, Agnew would have been next in line to be president, presumably the first president to be receiving foreign dignitaries and heads of state AND men bearing canvas sacks stuffed with loot in the Oval Office on the same day.  Yes, he could have moved into the White House!

Except that back home here, federal prosecutors were going over the books of some of the guys who had bought Agnew off, and they were more than willing to sing like canaries to avoid having to move to the Big House.  They talked, Agnew walked, and lived out his days in infamy as a disgrace to our area.

But whenever crooks gather and talk about the greats of the past, that's when they bring up his name, and his canvas sacks, and his ignominious deeds.  His wife never had to hide cash in her bra!

The Saturday Picture Show, March 29, 2025

I always wondered just what kind of nonsense old Ralph though I was up to. But since he was gone long before I was born, he should be resting assured that I've ne'er surrendered my serenity. 

When your pants are strapped around you just south of your sternum, the only acceptable thing to do is to call them "trousers."

These are balconies on adjoining apartments in Egypt. The advantage is, if you have pizza and want to share a slice with your pal from six or seven apts. away, you can just pass it right on through. 

Ducklings learn to share, and why not? How much can a duck eat?

I don't know that I would feel comfortable sitting on a settee that looks like it might get up and walk away.

A lot of Marylanders have visited this spot. It's a high view of Harper's Ferry, WV, from the Maryland side. The picture was taken for the National Geographic magazine in 1962.

I guzzled more than my share of Coca-Cola in my day. I probably had your share and your sister's too. I liked it, but the sugar and empty calories turned me away. I like full calories, like those found in grits and gravy.

We cat lovers admire their feline courage. Whether it's a fully grown tiger or an even larger man, they do not back down.

146 people, the great majority of them women employed as sweatshop seamstresses, died because their employer put profits above human decency and safety. Because workers stood up for what's always been right, unions forced management to do what's right. Power never concedes without a demand.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed there are eleven pictures today, instead of the customary ten. That's a tip of the cap to former student and longtime friend John Gross, who recently passed away far too young. When I started the Saturday Picture Show, I always used four pictures. John, always one to push others just as hard as he did himself, challenged me to do ten every week, which I've done ever since. John was a proud native of Havre de Grace, Maryland, and this extra picture of that town's noted lighthouse is for him to enjoy up beyond the sunset, where health concerns don't roil our souls. Say hi to our mutual friends up there, J.D!

 

Free advice

 As graduation time draws near (I see that the University of Maryland is having Kermit The Frog as their commencement speaker, the reason I bring this up) I have advice for our young people who will be beginning careers that will bring them daily heaps of happiness, financial compensation beyond their wildest dreams, and personal benefits such as contentment and satisfaction. (Pause for applause and shouts of joy).

Invest in a bunch of these notebooks and, every night when you skip home on wings of joy after work, jot down the magic moments you're going to want to look back on in your dotage.

As you sit back happily retired, on the rare days that you don't have to go to a doctor's office or a physical therapy appointment, you will derive pleasure from reminiscing about the time that someone threw a tureen of coleslaw at the holiday party, or the person who did the payroll didn't notice that you took a week of vacation in April, so you wound up with five extra vacation days at the end of the year...

Magic moments!