Color Drenching

I try to keep up with all the trends in fashion and home decor. I mean, I see the trends, but I don't act on them personally, for fear of being accused of being a follower.

I follow a lot of websites and FB pages that offer decorating advice. I didn't need any of it when it came to decorating my den in the popular Early Baseball motif. 

But I have seen this thing they call "color drenching" and I wondered about it. Taken literally, it would seem that it involves soaking your furniture, knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, and objets d art in a huge vat of Sherwin-Williams's finest. 

However, it's not that deep. They just mean drenching the surfaces all in one color. The website OliveandJunehome.com defines color drenching this way: 

In a nutshell, color drenching is the art of using one single color across every surface—walls, ceiling, trim, and even furniture if you're feeling extra.

Speaking of nutshells, Sherwin-Williams has a color called Nutshell (SW 6040). It looks like this, if you want to drench your living room: 

But if that's not your cup of nuts, there's always "Agreeable Gray (SW 7029). 

Go try it! Let's be extra, whatever that means.

Reach out and touch

I was reading about a man named Nick Epley. He's a behavioral science professor, and that's a great field to study. Dozens of people over the years have made a science of trying to get me to behave (and only one has succeeded). 

Epley has written a book called "A Little More Social," and he stresses that just chatting to people - even strangers - has a way of making us feel better and happier. A longtime subscriber to the theory that a stranger is just a friend we haven't met yet, I have never had a problem talking to strangers. I mean, what does it hurt to say hey to someone and ask them about how they like the weather, or how about those Orioles, or do they think this spot on the back of my hand looks like something to worry about.

Just kidding with that last one.  As a Medicarian, I have semi-annual dermatology visits in which every square inch of my epidermis is examined as if it were the hide of a long-frozen yak from the Tibetan plateau.

Start making the first step to reach out to others, is what Epley advises, It's a sure cure for loneliness!  And by doing so, you make new friends. I can't tell you how many times a stranger with whom I shared but a brief interlude in some office building has gone home and told their family, "I met a most interesting fellow today. He asked me to look at the back of his hand..."

Sunday Rerun: Stop! In The Name of Love!

 People are always using arcane laws to try to get a legal toehold in their crackpot cases. You read about someone who sues their neighbor for trespassing when all the guy did was walk up to their door, collecting for a canned food drive, or the guy who sued Michael Jordan for looking too much like him, or the odd case of the man from Minnesota who sued David Copperfield and David Blaine, noted magicians, for using his "godly powers" in their acts. This same man also claimed to have been married to Katie Couric and Celine Dion, so there's that.

But for real, there is a law that dates back to the days when women were considered property. A law known as "alienation of affection" allows a dumped husband in Hawaii, Illinois, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota and Utah to seek damages (namely, money) from a guy who wins the affections of his erstwhile wife.

The present case involves a man from North Carolina whose wife took off with a member of the Philadelphia Eagles football team. The man filed court papers that said that up until his wife met the athlete on a business trip, they had a perfect marriage and it all went to hell only because she met the ballplayer.

Son, let me tell you something. If someone loves you completely and fully, they will love you no matter what. Even though the toilet keeps making that funny sound and the car needs tires and the orthodontist wants to be paid and "happily ever after" seems like three words on a Hallmark card, if two people are really in love, they ain't goin' nowhere.

Likewise, if the love isn't there, no amount of gold-plated toilets and Yokahama yk580 tires and perfectly dentulous children will keep it together.  

Even The Captain And Tennille couldn't stand each other after 39 years, for crying out loud.

I'm sorry for the man whose wife left him, but it's like in high school when someone doesn't want to go out with you...no amount of cajolery will change that.  I refer to the great sage Yogi Berra, who reminded us that "if people don't want to come to the ballgames, how are you gonna stop them?"

The Saturday Picture Show, May 30, 2026

 

If you're a full moon, all you have to do to earn the coveted Blue Moon status is be the second one in a month. Tomorrow's moon (5/31) will just sneak in there!

First chance we get, we'll have to ask Herbert how he's doing.

The perfect last-day-of-school gift for a teacher. I would have had bakeries working around the clock in my schoolboy days. Yes, I know, you're surprised. I talked a lot.

The Spanish is not accurate but for what the mortgage shell-out must be every month, let them have their joke!

This sad banana has a future, and it involves banana bread!

I don't know if this is meant as a joke or if it's a Freudian slip, but this is the decor that one sees in a certain colonoscopy clinic.

I don't know. If you want to live on a boat, why not just do that, rather than building a boat-like house?

I will never again trust a brush manufacturer.

No, these are not those confounded clacker balls from the 1970s. This is a rural fire suppression idea. If a fire breaks out in a barn, when it gets hot enough, the glass globes will break and drop a fire-retardant chemical, thereby putting out the flames. I'm still calling the Fire Department.

Manhattanhenge was this past week, when the setting sun aligns perfectly and naturally with New York's street grids. All of Gotham is agog and takes a break from shooting, robbing, and indicting each other for a moment to gawk, then it's back to the regular.

Eat Read Watch Baseball Sleep

Yesterday was a day for odd names.

A country singer told me that Luke Bryan, who has been responsible for such unforgettable tunes as "Love You, Miss You, Mean It", "Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day," "Country Girl (Shake It For Me)" and the song that really sums up Luke's appeal, "Drunk On You," has come out with a new release that seems to need a verb or two to make sense. It's named "Fish Hunt Golf Drink," and if that doesn't make you want to shake your head, then I can't help you with that rattling!

My friend says the song is possibly the worst thing ever to happen to mankind, and I can't dispute that one little bit. My once-lyrical country music is now reduced to a point where the words to songs are just lists of nouns and verbs. 

Here, I'll start you off and you can finish this song, and if Luke Bryan or Bryan Luke or one of those good ole boys cuts it, you and I can split a bundle!

"I wake up in the morning, and I got three things to do

The second one is being sad and the third is missin' you

I guess you guessed the first one, I stumbled down the hall

And that old mirror tells me I'm still crying after all."

A list of things is not enough lyrical content, especially when it's a list very similar to one of your other songs, and when the music is so insipid. But maybe it's AI! "Hey Google, write me a snappy country song!"

If you want to hear this mess, point your Google to this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXMirYiC61E

On the other hand, it was a surprise to find that Robin Strasser, an actress whose work I know because she played Coach Fox's boss in "Coach," was born on May 7, 1945. We history nuts know that day was the day in World War II that Germany surrendered to the Allies. Ms Strasser's parents gave her this name at birth: Robin Victory In Europe Strasser. How cool is that? She will never be without something to talk about to strangers!

The only way this could be better would be for Luke Bryan to have a daughter and name her Wailene Please Daddy Stop Singing Bryan. 

I'm not counting on it.

Harper's Not Bizarre

Did you ever find that you had been doing something for eons, only to find out that you and maybe two other people on the face of Earth do it?

I'm sort of proud to be in the elite company of Philadelphia Phillies star slugger Bryce Harper, who did one of those GRWM (Get Ready With Me) posts that are so popular now since Farmville got boring. 

The internet was simply aghast to find out how Bryce Harper brushes his teeth:  Harper puts his toothpaste tube into his mouth, squeezes out what he needs, and then sticks his wet toothbrush in there and has at it.

Apparently, the approved method is to squeeze that Colgate right onto the brush. 

Would you care to guess if anyone else you know uses the Harper method?

It is I. Right here, done that for years. You see, Peggy and I have always had separate bathrooms, with the exception of about one year,  before we finished my salle de bain in our first house. So, I don't have to worry about anyone else's cooties on my tube of whatever toothpaste Dollar Tree had that week. And it seems like a wasted step to put the paste on the brush first. Efficiency is my watchword! So a dab on the tongue, then in goes the electric brush, and at a rate of 30 seconds per quadrant, I'm clean as a hound's tooth in 2 minutes!

Some morning, you'll have to come over and see how I take a shower.

Amateur Night and Day

One thing of which this nation will never have a shortage is people who think they know they're doing, when, in fact, they don't have the sense God gave 'em.

If you're ever at the scene of a large building fire, there will always be some sidewalk fire chief saying, "they shoulda done this!" or "we need more water over heah!" 

Of course, you need look no further than Facebook to meet dozens of people every day from all walks of life who are actually experts in staffing and managing a big-league baseball team. Just ask them!

Police detectives spend years learning their trade from the ground up, beginning as beat patrol officers, and then spending time in technical training courses. But now, with the advent of true-crime podcasts and YouTube videos, crimes that have baffled police from Keokuk to Kennesaw Mountain are being resolved by dedicated amateur sleuths.

And so we meet one Alec Wysopal, from Tucson, Arizona. Wysopal is 38, and if he's the same Alec Wysopal who listed his availability on a house-sitting opportunity website, he definitely should be regarded as more than capable. Here he lists the reasons why one should hire him to house-sit:

Nice to meet you! My name is Alec Wysopal. I'm seeking a house sitting provider job in Tucson, Arizona. I'm aiming to contribute my abilities as a House Sitting Provider. Flexible scheduling for clients.

Service Abilities:

I am comfortable doing pool maintenance, mail collecting, and light landscaping. I have personal transportation available. With respect to prior history, I have previous experience.

I remember poring over job applications back in my day, looking for a specific person for a specific job, and reading that "with respect to prior history, I have previous experience" would be enough to seal the deal for me.

Assuming that there are not two Alex Wysopals trooping across the desert of Tucson, this is the same guy written about in the New York Times, and he has set up a livestream to share his results with an anxious world as he investigates the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie's mother. 

People are setting up camp around the Guthrie house.

And recently, he announced to his stunned audient (I can't say how many people actually watch his activity) that he found a bone on a dried-up river bank near the Guthrie residence.

 He called 911 breathlessly with his important find.

And sure enough, among those who ghoulishly devote time to the deaths and disappearance of well-known people (or their parents) there came a frenzied murmur that at last, a break had come along for those who have looked for Ms Guthrie mère.

The excitement died aborning, though, when James T. Watson, curator of bioarchaelogy at the Arizona State Museum and an expert on prehistoric remains, examined the bone, and said it came from the days between between 650 and 1250 A.D., when the Hohokam people tended farms and lived in the area.

So now the legbone, rudely removed from its sacred resting spot, will be brought back to the Native American archaeological site that Wysopal had no business digging in.  

From what I read, people with nothing better to do with their days are hanging around Phoenix these days, playing Columbo Jr for reasons I have yet to understand.