A hundred billion schmillion

 

Because I do a lot of the cooking here at the Lazy 'C' Bunkhouse, I click on a lot of recipe sites.  Some ideas I get are very good and have become regulars on the chow rotation around here. Some didn't quite get as far as the plate.

The dishes above are Marry Me Pasta, Million Dollar Potatoes, and Marry Me Chicken Dip. I'm not much for overselling things. For instance, don't try to see me a pair of shoes and tell me they are the finest brogans ever cobbled. Don't tell me the canned soup you're selling is the favorite of the Crowned Heads of Europe. And don't keep telling me Coca-Cola will clean my bathroom porcelain so that it sparkles like a diamond, please.

I don't know anyone who would marry someone over a plate of noodles, or pay anything close to a million clams for some baked potatoes. You can't beat a well-baked potato, but you can't get me to pay a million for it.

Let's keep it real with the foods. And stop telling me you're serving buffalo wings. Buffalos are large land mammals and they don't fly.

Sunday rerun: Take It Easy There!

 In 1922, one I. I. Cammack, superintendent of the Kansas City (MO) school system, asked his state legislature to ban jazz music. 

I checked, and in 1922, Missouri was one of the 48 United States, whose citizens enjoyed the liberties enumerated in various documents back in the 1700s.

I.I. (it would have been great if he had joined the Navy and said "Aye aye, sir" when either given a command or asked his name) said, "I think the time has come when teachers should assume a militant attitude toward all forms of this debasing and degrading music."

I looked up the most popular songs from 1922 (I have all sorts of time for these pursuits) and I see high up on the chart "I'll Stand Beneath Your Window Tonight and Whistle" by Aileen Stanley and Billy Murray (not THAT Billy Murray!)  Then there was "Three O'Clock In The Morning" by Paul Whiteman, and Aileen Stanley left Billy alone long enough to record "Homesick."

None of these songs seemed bad enough to ruin the morals of young Kansas Citizens. Maybe I.I. was just grumpy that day. Perhaps if he had listened to Al Jolson sing "Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye" he wouldn't have been such a Superintendent Cranky Pants.

I Googled Cammack to see what his deal was, just to be able to write a complete report for you. But the only other reference anywhere was an article he wrote in 1926 about "Aviation In The Public Schools," and access to this piece is granted only to subscribers to a website that keeps the past in mothballs for academics and researchers, not people like me who wish people would stop getting all worked up about everyone else's music. 

I'm sure old I.I. was all in favor of his students getting up in an American Eagle A-101 and flying down to Devils Elbow for the weekend, though.

The Saturday Picture Show, October 24, 2026

 

I have owned my share of long johns but we always had a dryer. The thought of putting my karkus in frozen long underwear makes me want a blanket.

Harry "Parkyakarkus" Einstein was a popular radio and nightclub entertainer who regaled audiences with his witty stories. His greatest gift was that he gave the world a son named Albert Einstein. Not the brainiac, the comedian who changed his name to Albert Brooks!

These two men are running for the same seat in the Missouri House of Delegates. Experts are predicting that the count will be a close shave in the end. By the way, isn't it nice that the English language is so specific as to give us the word "mustached" for a man with a mustache and also "mustachioed" a man with an elaborate Missouri mustache?

Been doing a bit of driving around town this week, and people are really going all-out with the Halloween decorations. Always a good sign!

Well, it's the big day for Tommy the Tortoise, Jr. He is about to embark on the ocean of life, and he knows it's going to be cold out there, so he wore his turtleneck.

I suppose it gets hot in Tucumcari, New MEXICO, but I have never seen air conditioning referred to as "100% refrigerated air." Whatever it takes to get you a good night's sleep!

This is the fall view from Washington State and it is lovely!

Banjo pickers keep getting the chance to be the butt of many jokes. I can stand them, but I would outlaw the pan flute, so it's a choice, ain't it?

What the devil has gotten into poor old Poochie?

Legislation passed in the New York City Council the other night which will, if signed by their great mayor, outlaw the 17th-Century practice of having horse-drawn carriages on the city streets competing with cars and bikes and e-cars and e-bikes and I don't know what-all else. There has been support for ending this practice over the years. This summer, a young man was killed when the horse pulling his carriage ran off wild. Yes, it's romantic and reminiscent of the Golden Era, but so is smoking cigarettes, and both are bad for you.

Easy, Lay's

 So, how do you feel about mixed signals? As in, you ask your partner if they want to go to the Fall Festival or the Book Thing or the football game on Saturday, and they say, "Oh sure, okayyyyyy...." but there's a tone in there and you don't know whether they meant to say OK or what.

For a person such as I, this is a problem, because I am constitutionally incapable of saying yes and meaning no, or vice versa. So much so that I am also incapable of saying "vice versa," the Latin adverb meaning "in reverse order." We only have so many days to be alive on this crazily spinning earth, so why waste time saying things we don't mean, and meaning things we don't say?

You can have all of this that you want, but I don't want to mix up my poor overworked taste buds. Pineapple on pizza? Horseradish on an ice cream sundae? Caramel gravy on roast beef? Or, as Neil Diamond pondered, "Ah, but porcupine pie...It weaves its way through my dreams...And I do believe...I'm gonna get one...And leave enough room for dessert....Chicken ripple ice cream!"

It is in this spirit that I share with you the plans of the good people over at Lay's  to bring you a Holiday filled with chocolate-covered potato chips!

Milk Chocolate, and try new Dubai - Style Dark Chocolate!

I mean, really. 

Bum steer

 We're a long way from the cattle drives in Kansas here in Baltimore, but yet...

Someone needs to be told "you're up pasture bedtime" because this bovine was roamin' the old Baltimore Beltway yesterday afternoon. Yeah, I-695 became the stomping grounds for this big ol' Bessie, who got on around the Reisterstown Rd exit and had traffic all snarled up.

County police went to a neighborhood in Pikesville and were told "He went thataway!" So they wound up on the interstate and roped him with a lariat they keep in the police car for people rescues.

It's not unheard of to have future hamburgers afoot (or ahoof, I guess) in Baltimore. There's an abattoir in South Baltimore, and every once in a while some animal gets a glimpse of a short future and makes a run for it, but in leafy suburban Pikesville, you don't see too many cows. It's just unherd of.

I know I've told you about my rustic upbringing, and that there were really cow pens on Cowpens Av, which runs into my old street. All sorts of cattle roamed around there in my childhood. Then they built houses and Spiro Agnew moved in.

I stewed about it for years. 

Anyhow, the cow is back home now and no longer wants to jump over the moon. 

Normal

 If you've ever met me, you know it didn't take long before I started nattering on about how great I always thought Norm MacDonald was. He created the kind of jokes that were far above the average "I'm not saying he's fat, but..." wisecracks.

Norm is dead now, but there's a new documentary on Netflix that shows examples of his wit and philosophy. And if you watch it, you'll see countless examples of how funny and smart he was. 

The documentary shows Norm's memorable appearance on the final David Letterman Show, in which he said "Mr Letterman is not for the mawkish, and he has no truck for the sentimental." "Truck" in this sense has nothing to do with anyone's Tacoma or F-350. It became English from its start as the French word troque, which meant business dealings, or trading. At first, after becoming English, it was neutral, and meant good or bad business,  but over the years it's come to where it refers to things we'd rather avoid.

It's one of the quirky expressions that make me love written and spoken English. It's easier to have no truck with those who don't. 

Empty your pockets!

People were asking about this sign...

...because what possible difference could it make if I carry my Parker T-Ball jotter around in a titanium factory?

And as a man with titanium knees, thank you for leaving that pen in the car. This is why: The teeny rolling ball in your standard Bic ballpoint pen tip is made of tungsten carbide, which is extremely hard, as you will remember from the time in 8th grade that you and that Wellington kid finally popped the roller out of your Papermate and tried to coat it with some mercury secreted from the science lab. You'll have to get a fire underneath tungsten that's 6,192°F to melt it, while they only have to heat titanium to 3,400°F. The deal is, if your pen falls into a molten titanium vat, the tungsten will not melt.  

And while that might not bother you (you can always get another free pen at the Credit Union), that teeny bit o' unmelted tungsten would get into jet airplane rotors or aircraft frames and even something that little can cause a lot of problems, such as fatigue cracks and other performance problems.

There was a guy at work once, went out at lunch came back with a cold cut sub. He asked for "everything" on the sandwich, and when he bit into it, he found more than everything...there was the plastic glove that the sandwich maker had been wearing until it fell off in the middle of my buddy's sandwich.

That's the parallel I draw for unwanted foreign items. Not blaming anyone, but check your lunch carefully (unless you packed it!)

And leave your pens outside whenever you find yourself at a titanium plant!