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!

    

Fly me

Bosses like to say, "There are mistakes, and there are mistakes." Take the case of the errormaker at Alitalia Airlines in 2006. This person was supposed to key in the price of a ticket to fly from Toronto to Cyprus as $2,558.

For some reason, he or she entered the price as $33, which meant that 509 people got tickets at that low-low price before the bosses noticed something wrong in Toronto. 

Getting to fly for 1.29% of the regular price is a pretty sweet deal.

That's why I hang around Jersey Mike's, waiting for a mistake in the price of a giant sized #13 (Provolone, ham, prosciuttini, cappacuolo, salami, and pepperoni) which is enough for two dinners for the two of us. 

That's a lot of gabbagoo for very few buckaroos!

Sunday Rerun: Head East!

  I can't tell you what I was listening to the other day, but I heard someone mention the town of Atlantic, Iowa.

I'm no geographer, but I know Iowa is a state pretty much in the middle of these United 50 States. It seems odd to mention the Atlantic Ocean, way out there in corn-fed Iowa, like when we Marylanders find ourselves in Iowa, being offered "Maryland crab cakes" for dinner. 

I didn't have anything better to do, so I looked it up.  Atlantic is the county seat of Cass County and sits on the banks of the mighty East Nishnabotna River. Last time anyone counted noses (2020) they tallied 6,792 Atlanticans, which was down from 7,257 (2000).

The books tell us that Atlantic was founded in October 1868 by Franklin H. Whitney, B.F. Allen, John P. Cook, and others. 

And they're still arguing about where the name for the town came from. Best guess is that the town fathers figured they were halfway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, maybe a tad bit closer to the Atlantic.

That little pointer is pointing to Atlantic, Iowa.

What I think, Ocean City, Maryland, should invite the entire town of Atlantic to come east for a weekend and see the ocean for which their town is named. 

The Saturday Picture Show, October 17, 2026

The guys in the warehouse said Gary called out sick today and they
don't want to handle it without him...so wait 'til Monday.

Mama Celeste started selling her pizzas nationwide in 1969, and I would estimate that in my salad days, I oven-baked, and later nuked, at least 200,000 of them. Of course, I preferred the Meat Lovers pizza...and a salad. They're gone now :(

You'll recognize this if you live in Baltimore County and you like the pure goodness of food from the Amish Market in Cockeysville. This mural is on the wall outside the restrooms and it depicts a tranquil life.

I guess at some time we will all have to answer this question. The next question is "Where?"  Try to get that one right.

This is America in 2026.  Suburban Virginia, nice houses - mini-mansions, one might say - right next
 to a data center. The good thing for the residents is, they no longer need reading lamps in the 
living room. They can read by the glow in the air.

Hurricane Isaias was pretty tough on some places down South, and yet, not as devastating as it might have been. On his way out, he played Scrabble with the Waffle House highway sign.

My favorite time of the year is here, so I find lots of autumn pictures to share.

I have never eaten a persimmon, and don't intend to, but I like the way they come scored with e-z cutting lines nicely marked for the persimmonizers out there!

Baltimore gets lit up purple this time of year for the Ravens!

This is Reno, Nevada, in 1963. Not so remarkable to see a man in clown motley at a lunch counter.  We've all seen that, right? But how about a turkey dinner with "all the trimmings" for 69¢? That's just like living!