What time is it, anyway?

 Here in Baltimore, there are two discussions you can expect toward the end of October every year. #1, what is it with Lamar Jackson? You can hear from every amateur physical therapist and bone surgeon and family counselor on this topic. Lamar says he's hurt, who am I to dispute him, especially without direct knowledge of anything!  (Not that that ever stopped anyone from opining.)

"Be back Sunday."

The other thing is, as the end of Daylight Saving Time mercifully approaches, here come the Howling Hildas and Grumbling Gusses. Yes, it will be dark around 5 PM this coming Sunday, and unless and until Congress does something foolish such as making DST year-round, that's how it's gonna be. Take a flashlight.

Just as you can't take a foot off the end of your blanket and sew it to the top and expect to have a longer blanket, there are only 24 hours in a day, and the sun is tired from baking us all summer long, so he starts working shorter hours.

Just go with it, as the kids used to say, until everyone started actually going.

My Book Report

 I love reading biographies and autobiographies, so I borrowed Hayden Panettiere's memoir from the library, and it left me very sad, not just because she died from drugs earlier this year, but because she was sad before she ended her life.

I have to say, I wasn’t in the audience for her tv shows and movies. I saw more of her in the Neutrogena commercials she did for years, but that company quietly fired her for seeking therapy because she suffered from postpartum depression following the birth of her daughter. Neutrogena consumers, be advised, that company is concerned about skin care, but not emotional care. 

The book tells us she had one of those stage mothers who pushed to get her in front of cameras as soon as she was out of diapers. Soon she was being bullied and her mom took her out of school, which, naturally, stunts social development. She got on the series "Heroes" and was happy for the first year, after which, she said, the writers quit writing and the show became dreck. 

Along the way she played roles in a few good movies, but her career lost its spark when she developed jaundice from too much alcohol intoxication.

She fell in love with a boxer from the Ukraine and she thought it was true love at last, but she was saddened to learn that his fights came first, so even on the few occasions he had time to visit her in the US, his face was in his phone all the time. Next she found a guy who seemed perfect at first, but then he started beating her and leading her down the road of drug abuse added to the physical.

When she died this spring, it was in that guy's apartment in Greenville, SC. The autopsy determined the cause of death to be fatal intoxication by use of fentanyl, 4-ANPP, alprazolam, methocarbamol, and quetiapine.

The people who prey on young, unsophisticated, improperly guarded children should really plan on answering for a lot when they get to the gates. I'm very sorry that I read this book. It makes me sad that people gifted with so much can't find happiness.

Next up: "A Writer's Life" by Gay Talese. That should be easier on my heart.

Go on, take a puff

During World War II, the story went around that Lucky Strike Cigarettes had changed their package color from green to white because the copper-based green pigmentation they used to make that famous green pack was urgently needed for painting tanks and ships to help the USA win the war.

That story was started by the American Tobacco Company bending over backwards to color itself in red-white-and-blue patriotic glory. And everyone said, How wonderful that these selfless cigarette sellers are voluntarily changing the colors of their smokes so that our nation can launch more ships and tanks.

Great story, except for it not being true at all.

Women started puffing on tailor-mades - packaged cigarettes - in the 20s, but they shied away from buying Luckies because the green and red pack clashed with their clothing. American Tobacco even tried changing the fashions to make their cancer sticks acceptable, putting on a “Green Ball” at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where the influencers of the day (!) paraded around in green dresses.

That didn't work. Green was not cool, although the cigarette vendors longed to make piles of the long green of dollar bills.

World War II came along as American fretted. They saw a great opportunity to wrap themselves in glory and any old color except that pea-soup green, changed to white packs, and told the world "Lucky Strike has gone to war!"

Imagine, a tobacco company lying to the public. 

 

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.