My tribute

When I was younger, I tended to see things as absolute. Love baseball and football, don't like basketball or soccer. Love pizza and cold-cut subs, won't touch brussels sprouts or okra. Love an ocean beach, don't care for mountains. Like beer, no hard booze.  And I would rather have a Welch's grape juice than the finest wine you can squeeze out.

As I have matured (pause for laughter) I have found some moderation in a moderate amount of things. F'rinstance, at one point in my life, I thought that Jerry Lewis could do no wrong. I thought every thing he did in the movies was a riot, and I centered Labor Day weekends around his Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon, just to marvel at how he introduced a cascade of "mahvelous pehfohmas" from the likes of Sammy Davis, Jr, to some to Vegas comic or "chantoosie" with the same enthusiasm. And of course, he would work his own act into the show, leaving me apoplectic.

He was born a hundred years ago today as Joseph Levitch, son of a half-way famous "niteclub singer" who went by the name Danny Lewis. Danny, instead of encouraging his vastly more talented son, criticized, demeaned, and humiliated young Jerry. One story tells it all: Danny always wanted a Cadillac, so Jerry got him one as a gift, led the old man out to the driveway and presented it to him. Danny said, "What? You couldn't afford a convertible?"

Inside the entertainer who ran amuck on stage and film, acting like a child with no controls or filter, there you found a man who created equipment and techniques still used today, and a man completely in charge of his productions. But when things went wrong, and they will, and people told him to take it in stride and keep going, he had a most interesting reply, "You can say that. You don't have to live with Jerry Lewis."

This most generous of men (his efforts on behalf of the MD charity added up to billions) referred to the inner Jerry as "that miserable bastard." If only he could have been half as happy as he made so many of us feel. 

Jerry once said, "Going unnoticed has never been my strong suit." People such as he need, demand, the attention and love they felt they never received. In return, they will give you the gift of a laugh. It sounds like a fair deal to me. 

I hope he's happy up above. I'm not sure he ever was, down here. Happy birthday, Jerry!

Sunday Rerun: Tomb It May Concern

 You know the old joke about the guy who was so important at his job, he had several hundred people under him? 

He cut the grass at the cemetery.

Well, the TODAY show introduced us to Haley Hodge, who is fixing to have her fourth child. She has a husband name of Rivers, and the three kids: Finley (10), Crew (3) and Banks, (16 months.)

So where to come up with that crucial fourth name for the soon-to-be new member of the Hodge fund?

Cemeteries. Read the tombstones in the field of stones!

“I know some people might find it creepy, but my mother was a history buff and when we were growing up, she would take us on field trips to cemeteries,” says Mrs Hodge, a physical therapist. “You can learn so much about cultural aspects of the past."

After all, she points out, her sister Cooper got her name from a tombstone. And does she have a daughter named Alice? I guess not, or they would have said.

Mrs Hodge was in Southport, North Carolina, prowling the Smithville Burying Ground, and she came up with two ideas for her daughter-on-the-way...Galloway, and Salem.

Good luck to the Hodges and the new little one. I used to take my turn mowing the lawn at the little cemetery in Providence, and I don't remember any names being particularly inspiring, except for Jehoshaphat, and I don't see that one making a comeback soon.

The burial plot of Jerry Lee Lewis, (there are three names for you seekers!) who said, "Don't put a headstone on my grave. I want a monument!"

The Saturday Picture Show, March 14, 2026

Oh, I think the men in the crowd will get this one all right: the stairs are for sitting down to put on your socks when you leave the tub!

Squirrels are known to prefer dunking their fries in catsup, but when the chips are down, they will take them without. 

Hanging around with a red-shouldered hawk!

This looks like some sort of impressionist painting, but it's a photo of the Kīlauea volcano erupting in Hawaii. Nature puts on a show.

If you're whompin' up a salad, make mine with Romaine, please. And tomatoes and carrot strips and celery and bleu cheese and black and green olives and a few anchovies swimming on top, if you will.

I didn't mean to alarm you with this fisheye; I only did it for the halibut.

Down here on the ground, we might not realize how big an eagle's talons are. Now you know.

The true song of spring is the irritating cacophony these trucks bring. Can't blame them; they have to let the kids know it's time to grab some money and get ready for Fake Mr Softee!

Meteorologists are always telling us there's a blizzard watch, or a blizzard warning. Not being educated in the field, we need help figuring what each situation means. I think Alena Lee from WBAL TV 11 had a great idea: gathering crabmeat, eggs, cracker crumbs, Worcestershire sauce, Old Bay seasoning and parsley means the ingredients are on hand to form crabcakes, while mixin' all those fixin's means grab a plate. What a great way to tell us the difference!

 Here's a news rack from 1942 with reading material for a world and a nation at war. Notice the headline on the SF Chronicle: ROMMEL DRIVES ON DEEP INTO EGYPT.  That bit of war news about the "Desert Fox" was later turned into a collection of poetry by SF-based writer Richard Brautigan. 

Fox News

Did you know that the average fox in the wilderness can jump higher than a house?

It's true, but to be fair, the average house cannot jump.

But...jump up to New York City, where a red fox that somehow jumped onto a westbound ship was nabbed after he got here. Customs officers took him off to be re-homed, as the current expression for "adoption" has it.

He apparently boarded the ship in Southampton as part of a Titanic deception and is thought to be about two years of age. 

He got here Wednesday, weighed in at 11 lbs, and now awaits more permanent quarters than what he's been given for now at the Bronx Zoo, whose spokesperson said,  "The  Zoo regularly works with officials to help rescue wildlife that is illegally trafficked through nearby ports and airports." 

In Britain, they are called "urban foxes" because urban sprawl squeezed them out of their rural homes, and now they ride double-decker buses and eat fish and chips! There are tens of thousands of them darting through the streets, many of them walking the streets of Soho in the rain.

Oh wait, sorry. That was a wolf.

 

Good afternoon, Mrs Cleaver!

I don't understand human psychology, let alone that of animals. I mean, it's one thing to analyze human behavior (as if behavior happens anymore), because we can gain insights by talking to the other humans.

Question: "Why did you steal your mother's car?"

Answer: "She looked at me funny when I was 7."

Everyone has all the reasons and all the justifications, but you wonder how right they are.

I bring all this up, because the other day, someone asked if anyone else watched, or left on, the Leave It To Beaver channel on Comcast, which plays nothing but old "LITB" episodes 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The show premiered on October 4, 1957, which became a memorable day not only for introducing us to Beaver,  Wally,  June and Ward Cleaver, but also for the launch of the first Russian Sputnik, which kicked off the Space Race. America won the race by putting a man on the moon in 1969. 

You understand, in the days before cable and streaming and DVRs and whatnot, if you wanted to see the Beaver, you had to be there on Saturday night (or Wednesday night or Friday night; they jumped around a lot!) in front of the TV when it was on, or you missed it!

In October, 1957, I had just begun first grade, and when the last new "Beaver" ran in spring of 1963, I was finishing my sixth grade at Hampton Elementary, so that fit nicely.  And six years later, just after I scraped through high school, that's when the Americans got to the moon, in spite of what your loony friends tell you about it all being a Disney fakeout.

So yes, leaving the Streaming' Beave on Channel 4164 all day suits me fine. And we make sure to leave it playing for Eddie Cat when we go out, so she will feel right at home with Gilbert and Larry and Eddie Haskell and Lumpy and all the rest.

It's comfort food for the mind! 

It shouldn't happen, but it does

Do we chalk this up to a stupid local custom, or to national stupidity? You probably saw this on the news - a high school teacher and golf coach in Georgia, Jason Hughes, was killed when a stupid juvenile prank went horribly wrong. 

It's prom season down there, and the local custom in Gainesville GA is for kids to "roll" the houses of teachers and what-have-you, which means covering the dwellings in hundreds of sheets of two-ply Charmin.

Mr Hughes, 40, was said to be excited about the prank, and was skulking around in his own yard hoping to "catch" the kids in the act, according to his widowed wife.

It was raining last Friday the 6th when the kids did their prank, and Hughes came running toward them, and slipped on the wet road, and got run over by a pickup truck driven by Jayden Ryan Wallace, 18, according to local sheriff’s office.

The story is that the students got out of their vehicles and tried to help Hughes until medics arrived, but you know how that went.

The New York TIMES reports that Mrs Laura Hughes is also a teacher at the same school, North Hall High, and she says her husband and the students all loved each other.

 

Aware of the annual tradition, Hughes was approaching them, not to be confrontational, but to be part of the fun with them.

Mrs Hughes says the family supports dropping the charges against all the kids,

These are the charges:  Wallace is up on a felony charge of homicide by vehicle in the first degree, as well as charges of criminal trespass, reckless driving and littering. Four other individuals involved in the prank face charges of criminal trespass and littering.   

The school district put out a warning about prom season pranks just days before the incident:

“While we understand that prom is a time for celebration and creating lasting memories, we must emphasize the importance of responsible behavior and respect for others and their property. In previous years, some pranks during prom season–sometimes referred to as Junior/Senior Wars– have gone too far, resulting in damage to property.”

I don't even know how to think about this. Of course, you can already hear people saying, "Never in anyone's wildest DREAMS did the thought occur that someone would be injured, let alone KILLED, by a seemingly innocuous bit of fol-de-rol..."

Any time you have moving vehicles and six people running around them, plus wet streets, you run a horrible risk.

I'm not trying to be Mr Buzzkill. I'm trying to be Mr Find A Better Buzz.

Great moments

And so, we add another name to the "99 Club," for those who fall a year or so short of living to 100 years of age.

But this man deserves all the glory and honor, for he was Alexander Butterfield, a former Nixon White House aide, who passed away in his California home yesterday morning. During his time working in that disgraced administration, Butterfield was involved with the installation of a covert voice-recording system that recorded the voices of the president and All His Men.  “Everything was taped … as long as the president was in attendance,” Butterfield testified on July 16, 1973, at a hearing of the Senate Watergate Committee panel, led by Sen. Fred Thompson, a Tennessee GOP lawmaker and chief minority counsel to the Watergate committee. 

TV viewers will remember Fred for playing District Attorney Arthur Branch on "Law & Order," where he chewed scenery for five seasons, attempting to be a down-home country lawyer running the prosecutions in Manhattan. Bad fit.

I was watching the Watergate Hearings myself that day, and when Butterfield bravely broke ranks and told the truth, I leaned my head toward the window in the direction of Washington, D.C. because I was sure I heard the sound of lawyers running and subpoenas being typed. All the Nixon chicanery, dirty tricks and lies, so long suspected and rumored, were actually recorded! 

55 weeks later, his last pitiful defenses shattered, Nixon stepped down into ignominy, and the courage of Mr Butterfield largely made that possible. 

When they finally dug out the tapes, I'm sure there was one with Nixon going, "Butterfield said what????"