Sunday rerun: When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie

 Not that this will keep the Baltimore Orioles top management awake at night, but I am not a huge fan of the Oriole Park at Camden Yards. I know it's the Taj Mahal of baseball, a magnificent edifice constructed on a great idea that former club officials Janet Marie Smith and the late Larry Lucchino had. The state of Maryland had acquired the property at the old Camden railroad warehouse. Smith and Lucchino said, instead of tearing down the warehouse (the longest building on the east coast) let's build right up to it. And they did, and it's a great park. 

But it's downtown, and I'm not. I'm about the most sub-urban boy you'll ever meet. I see plenty of people packing the ballyard these days, since we have a winning team, and that is all good.

Please permit me to wish they had kept the old mid-town Memorial Stadium around so they could play a few games there every year, just for the hell of it. Sure, that place was decrepit and had no swank about it, but there was a certain basebally-ness to it that the new place lacks. I see fans at the games now with crucial moments in the game in front of them, and they are looking at their phones or jawjacking with the people behind them. At the old stadium, you had to pay attention, in case a ball or bat (or fan!) came flying your way.

At the old stadium, for some reason, I enjoyed the smell of some cheap cheroot cigar being smoked, and I never smoked stogies in my life. It just seemed like part of the atmosphere, like the aroma of popcorn and the sound of kids running around stomping on old soda cups. They don't do that anymore, either.

One thing I believe the new park is trying is growing tomatoes. Yes. Tomatoes. This all started back in the 1970s when Earl Weaver, the manager back then, challenged groundskeeper Pasquale “Pat” Santarone to a tomato growing contest. Santarone carved out a little dirt triangle down where the left field foul line met the stands, and Earl planted his Better Boy tomatoes in his back yard garden not too far from where we live now! I'll be glad to drive you past the historic site someday.

Earl and Pat even went into business together as they argued about the size and quality of their respective fruits. They marketed a tomato fertilizer and I'm sure a lot of people around here have enjoyed homemade pasta sauce and salads much more because they had used the Earl 'n' Pat secret 'mater food!

I have heard that the current club has tomato plants growing out by the bullpen, but it's not the same.

You can travel all around, and you are not going to see things in other cities like you see here!

Pat (l) and Earl

The Saturday Picture Show, July 25, 2025

A welder made a rear bumper step-up and got something that people will notice as he drives along merrily.

The sun says, hold the electricity, I'll light up this lantern for now!

The company that does the road striping on Eutaw Street in downtown Baltimore has a whimsical bent that helps to zip things up nicely!

I imagine a lot of people would look at this and wonder if this giraffe is wearing false eyelashes. 

Be careful where you park on your first day at Toronto Fire Station 143!

It's only fitting that Pennsylvania, a state named for "(William) Penn's Sylvania," would be the home of this lush greenery. 

Note to backyard gardeners: keep on eye on the vines, or the squash will try to sneak out through the fence!

Someone took a freeze-frame of a Monopoly game and the table on which it was being played and covered the whole thing in a half inch of Epoxy and now it's forever.

Down in Ocean City, a shark obligingly poses for a photo as a Beach Dad works on his relocation. And now, you've got that Baby Shark song going on in your head!

 You have to wonder what happened here - why not give every apartment a balcony? I don't know; something about this whole building gives me the willies something fierce.

Hooking Up

 Being an old geezer retiree, I am able to keep up with the world because of my finely-honed computer skills, the most notable of which is being able to ask young people how to do computer stuff.

But I have a computer, scanner, cell phone, tablet, all the things that help me stay up on things, if you will.

I worked for Baltimore County, and every month since my golden retirement day of 3/1/12 I have received, via US Mail, a pay stub of sorts covering my pension check and the deductions, etc. That has been handy for Peggy to keep up with the financials around here.

But they don't do that anymore; as of this month retirees have to go online to a county portal and print out their "advice" (as they call that monthly printout.) It's no problem for me, but what about those who don't have a computer to keep their records straight? 

It's like this creeping disappearance of shows that used to be on regular tv, but now you need cable. I guess it won't be long before all the NFL games are on cable only, along with the playoffs and Super Bowl.

We invented and developed and created ourselves right into a hole. What once was so simple ain't so much anymore.

Here's the wrong way to get connected...

Just the tip, just for a second

With the Whirled Cup in our rearview, and real football still about a month away, the talk on the sosh media this week has been all about "do I need to tip at a carry-out place?"

I'll say this. If the person at the counter gives exceptional service (helps you out the door, tosses in some extra hot sauce packets, etc) sure, that's worth a little something.

But people are saying that they go to the counter at Pete Sirria's to grab the xtra-lge pepperoni they ordered online, and when they go to pay, the screen lights up with "Do you wish to tip?"

Tip whom? The computer that took the order? 

Now some people are saying that it's nice to tip the counter person, and one would hope that they would divvy it up with the people who made the pizza. But you can't know if that will happen.

In a restaurant setting, where a server brings you the menu, answers questions, makes suggestions, brings water, appetizers, entrees, sides, coffee, dessert, and another fork after Uncle Nutzy drops his, that's where tipping is appropriate.

How about tipping the person in a clothing store who helps you find just the right tie? How about the cashier at Try'N'Save who rings up your order, shares the local gossip, and tells you the joke about the traveling preacher from Keokuk? The guy in the money booth at the gas pumps with a sign about you must be born before this date in 2005 to purchase tobacco? 

The 911 operator who takes your call about the brush fire down the street? The firefighters who extinguish same? The teacher who taught little Abercrombie how to solve quadratic equations? Your life insurance salesman? Your favorite actor? the president of your community association?  The guy who writes a blog you have read more or less daily since 2007?

Just ideas, you understand.

Stick It

Can you drive a stick shift? The answer, more than likely, is "no." A lot of people will tell you they can drive one, but you get two blocks down the street and the car is hugging and chugging and stalling and the "driver" says, "Well, it's been a long time..."

If you can really drive a stick, you don't forget how. Put the clutch down, move the lever, let out the clutch and go...two or three times, and then start all over after you stop.

I mean, now you have cars you don't even have to drive, so changing the gears is hopelessly passé, I guess.

And this, for stick shifters: last year, less than 1 percent of new vehicles made for the U.S. market in 2025 were stick shifts. 

The commonly accepted wisdom used to be that you saved gas by shifting at just the right time, but now those engineering wizards have gotten the automatic transmission working so well that you can't top their fuel efficiency.

What's more, the average new car today with automatic tranny has seven (7!) forward gears, and you wouldn't want to shift that many times yourself. Let the automatic handle it!

Plus, you don't see people zipping around in the little sports cars of yesterday. More and more, you see SUVs on the streets and the parking lots, and just try to find yourself a manual transmission in a RAV4. They haven't made them like that since 2022. Toyota only make three cars now with the option for a stick.

And think of this - if you do drive a stick, don't plan to drive it to a lot with parking valets.  An 18-year old is not going to know what to do with that third pedal on the floor.

I would be willing to trade stick-shifting lessons for lessons on how to tie a bow tie, though. Not that I'm going anywhere wearing a bow tie, and you're not buying a manual car. 

It would just be a secret between us.

Nothing to Snicker about

Members of the rock band Van Halen used to insist that all the brown M&Ms be removed from the jar of candy they wanted in their dressing room.  They had nothing against brown M&Ms. They just wanted to make some poor soul go through all that candy with tweezers, because being annoying is pretty much what Van Halen did, day in and day out.

That's not going to be an option for anyone soon, because the makers of M&Ms have promised to eliminate artificial dyes from their candy pellets, but they are having trouble getting rid of the blues and the browns. The candymen told the Wall Street Journal, it's turning out to be "expensive" and "difficult."

Two more words that describe Van Halen, if I may say so...

Mars, the people who make M&Ms, were able to make red, orange, and yellow dyes out of natural ingredients like turmeric and beets. (How tasty!) And they came up with a real natural green, but nothing works to make a blue candy coating. They even tried spirulina  - a blue-green algae - as a replacement for blue, but it turned out to be a giant hassle.

And didn't we just go through a whole thing about green algae? And would you want it on your candy???

Getting M&Ms coated in brown uses a lot of blue dye, surprise to hear, so there will be no more brown or blue M&Ms soon.

When the new dye-free M&Ms come out on your grocery shelves, there will only be red, yellow, orange, and green.

Van Halen tribute bands will have to find something else about which to be peculiar.

Up for sale

Do you enjoy prowling thrift stores as I do? I would probably buy all my clothing that way, but my size is hard to come by at Goodwill.

I have to find out where the Ravens drop off last year's wardrobes and go there.

Anyhow, there's a guy named Quinn Brown who knows how to go mining at Value Village, a thrift in his town of  Tigard, Oregon. 

He even goes on Senior Day, although, at 19, he is way short of the discount. It doesn't matter. 

Quinn was there with his twin sister Ellie when he found that diamond in a junk heap that everything would love to encounter. 

Quinn actually find such great things at the thrift shops that he re-sells them at profit. He has turned over nearly 10,000 items over the past four years. But this day, he saw a another teenager pick up a yellow item and then toss it back in the bargain bin.  

Quinn swooped in and grabbed it up, paid $3.07 for it, and it has since been verified as basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain's Los Angeles Lakers warm-up jacket from their 1972 championship run.

He didn't know Wilt Chamberlain from Neville Chamberlain, but with the size of this jacket, he knew it was custom made for a 7-foot man, so he figured he was onto something.

 

Sotheby's has verified the provenance of the jacket. It's legitimate, and is going up for auction soon and might bring in a quarter of a million dollars.

Pretty nice return for a $3.07 investment!