Nepo coach

Ms Carlie Irsay-Gordon is the granddaughter of Robert Irsay, the eldest daughter of Jim Irsay, and the sister of fellow Colts co-owners Casey Foyt and Kalen Jackson. She is the CEO and calls the shots after all is said and undone.

She found a Colts cheerleader outfit from the 1950s.

Just her bloodline is enough to make me shun her. Her great-grandmother, mother of Robert "Bob" Irsay, once said that Big Bob was "the devil on earth," and that was before he took our Colts and moved them to some hellhole in a state with towns such as Gnaw Bone, Toad Hop, Floyds Knobs, and French Lick.

She does have people running the team, but she has decided to cosplay as some sort of supercoach. She struts along the sidelines with a hat on and a headset with mic, and is seen taking notes and pulling on the sleeves of the real coach when she has a question or a suggestion. 

Now, a lot of people say she has every right to do as she wishes, since she inherited the team upon the passing of her drug-riddled dad Jimmy.  And I agree. It's her football, so to speak, and she can do with it as she wishes.

And her supporters say she is doing what every business owner should be doing - keeping a close eye on the family moneymaker and learning the game from the ground up.

And then come people such as I, saying that in 1976, Ted Turner, having bought the Atlanta Braves baseball team (with his own money, I hasten to add: he didn't inherit anything but a million dollar-debt when his father died) and finding it hard to watch so many losing games, put on a uniform and managed the Braves for a game. They still lost, and the next morning, cooler heads prevailed, and Ted was back to watching the games from the owner's booth.

I don't care for anyone whose name includes "Irsay" in any form. She does run the place, but just as I wouldn't want to be having brain surgery and having some new owner of the hospital donning surgical garb and peering into my noodle, Ms Irsay does not need to be parading around on the sidelines while people are doing the work they have trained all their lives learning to do. That diminishes their authority. She can take notes like the rest of us do while watching the Colts: half asleep in a recliner. 

What matters more

 Everyone was talking about Usha Vance almost taking a header while coming down the staircase off a helicopter at Joint Base Andrews yesterday. She was toting her  10-week-old infant Alec Neel Vance in a baby carrier. Fortunately, she did not fall, and no one was hurt.

SLOTUS grabbed the banister to right herself, and got back on both feet in no time at all. Listen, I have no truck with her or any member of her family. But she is a fellow human being, and being one of them myself, I cannot figure how the two Air Force airmen who were standing there with their arms at their sides, and the Marine who was saluting, did not make a move to be there to help.

 Now I saw people on social media saying, "oh you have to understand, there is a strict military protocol in these matters and they are duty-bound not to drop that bearing in any circumstance." 

But here I am, private citizen, saying that makes no sense, especially in a day and time when very high ranking gov't officials use the coarsest gutter language in the high gov't office and no one even looks askance at it any longer, and people of great importance carry on unsanctified congresses with people not their spouses and everyone just shakes their head. Man, woman, child, male, female, I believe we help someone who's about to fall especially when they have a baby in their arms. 

What good is protocol if that woman or the baby had been injured?

 

Camping!

Just as I was planning to spend a week hiking a rugged island in the middle of Lake Superior, I read about what happened to Craig Berg, and I changed my mind. From here on in, all my rugged hiking will be done on rugs.

Berg is 70, still a young man, and he left in August to traipse around Isle Royale National Park. It did not go well. 

A park ranger told him, “If something happens to you, it could be several days until somebody finds you.”

That alone would be enough to make me change my mind and stay home. I hate to be alone.

But Berg thought he'd be ok. He had a satellite-capable phone with a mapping app. 

This reminds me of all the people who told me over the years, "I'll be ok...I have four-wheel drive!"

So off he went, and then on Day Four, disappointment set in. He lost his way on what he called "a poorly marked trail," winding up in a swamp. He fell in the muck, drenching his clothes, bag and food. His boots came off but he found them, and you can just imagine how great it feels to put your hooves back in wet muddy boots. And his phone was sucked into the morass beneath his muddy feet.

Lost somewhere in the 207-square-mile island’s network of trails, he began hollering, "Help! I'm lost!"

He estimates he hollered those three words more than 10,000 times before embarking on the worst 11 days of anyone's life. He wandered in the woods, eating some freeze-dried food and drinking the worst water he ever tasted. 

Meanwhile, back at home, his wife Debbie was scared witless, of course, as her thoughts ran to what would happen on that island and images of moose and wolves danced across her thoughts.

Then Berg spotted a pair of kayakers 11 days after he’d gone missing.

When they came ashore, he told them his story and they were surprised to see him, having planned on simply seeing moose walking about. 

So, thanks to heaven for sending two kayakers. They told Berg they wanted beer for their trouble.

We have our priorities.

Sunday Rerun: Body Hacks

 

I found this list...and wanted you to see it.

 You know what they used to say; you can fool some of the people all of the time, but this is a list of ways to fool your body. Having lots of time on my hands, I roadtested them for you last week when we were stuck in the house with the weather outside being all frightful.

Here are the results of that trial. I pretended to be nervous, so I pinched my nose (1). It doesn't say for how long, and soon enough, I ran out of breath, so I got nervous for real, about the heartbreak of asphyxiation. But my nose said "no" when I went for another pinch.

I thought of something that would make me anxious, and that was the tendency of so many people to confuse "eager" and "anxious" ("I'm anxious to see what's in that Amazon box") - when you know very well it's the set of canvas shoebags you've had your heart set on, so you're eager, not anxious.  So I put my hand on my heart and took slow, deep breaths (2). Peggy thought I was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and changed the Music Choice to the John Philip Sousa Channel.

My energy levels range from somnambulant to near-hysterical, so I splashed cold water on my face while taking a brisk walk (3) to bring up the recycling tub. It being 13° at the time, little flecks of ice were forming on my chin and cheeks by the time I got back, so I energetically grabbed a warm towel.

My nose is stuffy at all times. I think my adenoidectomy needs to be redone. But I tried putting an ice cube on the roof of my mouth (4) but unfortunately it came too close to the Vicks Vapoinhaler in my nose and suddenly everything tasted like peppermint patties.

I don't know what it means, not to be able to sleep (5). I did try blinking rapidly, but I wound up straining an eyelid muscle, and it's the darndest thing, getting an Ace bandage on that!

Maybe the people who put out that list need to try a different test pilot.

The Saturday Picture Show, October 3, 2026

The homeowners asked online what to do with this architectural error. I say, make it a tiny stage for Junior to practice his oratory skills on the subject of poor house design. 

It is October and time to trot out the Halloween Snoopy decorations! 

What happened here was, all the years of glue holding advertisements to the billboard provided a perfect breeding ground for mushrooms!

Just think - these leaves, and several trillion like them, will soon be on your front yard. And the side yard, the back yard, and the driveway. And the porch.

There's no sign-up sheet, just go! or should I say just went?

I wondered what happened to the querulous woman and the sassy cat. I see, they wound up on this guy's calves!

You know, there will be some who come in and ask for the Oil Change Latte!

Just tell the kids they're for keeping Dad's cigarette package dry, and hope he doesn't go in and ask for one that fits a Camel.

If you've been fortunate enough to go to Amish Country, you've seen this sort of sight...the hoss burns oats, not gasoline...

Looks like the KMart where you used to get that popcorn and an Icee, right? But look at the quarter by the door...it's a perfect model!

Shplish Shplash

 

Do you enjoy going through a carwash? Not the little squirty kind, but the Big Boy with the spinning brushes and the water jets and the foamy foam and then the liquid hot wax, all topped off with a final rinse and super blower to dry you off.

Well, the car. But you might be wet inside if your equilibrium was rattled by that feeling that the car is moving forward (but it isn't). You might have even spilled your Big Gulp over that.

Well, someone had a great idea up in Detroit, and no, I don't mean the Ford Pinto. Up at the Fast Splash Car Wash, they've got hobblin' goblins all over you as you and the Biscayne move on down the line. They tap on your window, try to open your doors, and cackle like demons  - and that's while you're still in line!

 Come this time of year, Fast Splash takes those giant brushes and mitter curtains (those flappy things that shimmy and shake all over your Gremlin to get the road crud off) and turns them into a hell of a frightful scrubdown.

They have whole chain of these carwashes - 260 of them from Alaska to Wyoming, seasonally re-named "Tunnel of Terror." The marketing manager behind all these spooky suds is Joel Fullmer, with Tommy's Express, a car wash chain out of Holland, Michigan.

"This is going to be the biggest year we have for this," says Joel Fullmer, who says they have a ton of these carwashes in California, but that he first heard of them in Virginia and Florida.

Well, of course, Florida...

"Our car wash is known for being bright and open, not the claustrophobic brick tunnel feeling," Fullmer says. "But for this event, we black out the windows, we turn down the lights, we run fog machines. Our team members will dress up in costumes." 

Not surprisingly, Fullmer himself has dressed as a ghoul and worked the line. Remember, he's in marketing. It's his job to scare up business.

Slice of Life

I have to tell you, I love bread. This goes back to my A&P days when, under the trade name Jane Parker, the store sold really good bread, old fashioned sandwich bread, and the wrapper called it "a hearty, firm-type loaf." 

I think that awkward wording about their fine products contributed to the A&P's demise. I mean, who calls their bread "a hearty, firm-type loaf," for crying out loud?

Sometimes, I'd rather have the bread than the sandwich. I like rye and sourdough the most - anything but that spongy white Wonder bread nonsense.

And when I'm at Lidl or Aldi or Weis, I don't mind shelling out a little extra for my toast, if the bread is good.

But I have to draw the line at this bakery just recently opened in New York City's chi-chi Soho neighborhood. The bakery is called Rye, and the question should be, "Rye are you willing to pay $60 for a loaf of bread?"

But that's the ticket price, and according to all up there, people are breaking their neck to get a loaf or rye sourdough advertised as having just four ingredients:  water, flour, salt and time.

The co-owner of this breadatorium, Tim Auer, says they have to charge 60 simoleons because it's a big loaf for sale in a pricey area.

“First of all, it’s a lot of bread,” he says. “It’s about 3.3 pounds, and we not only sell the whole loaf for $60, but we also sell half a loaf or a quarter of the loaf for either $30 or $15.”

“The price is also the result of all the efforts and costs that went into this, whether that’s importing the organic rye flour from Austria or baking it right here on site on Lafayette Street,” he adds.

And the time aspect, Tim? 

“You need to ferment the rye sourdough,” he says. “You need to feed it every day. That takes about 24 hours before you can use it again. Then you need to make the dough, ferment the dough, shave the bread, ferment the dough again, bake it, and then you have to let it rest.”

“The thing with rye sourdough bread is that when you take it out of the oven and try to cut it right away, it’s not going to work well,” he continues. “You’re going to basically rip it apart while doing so. It’s a bit like cutting dough. ... And so, it needs to rest for at least eight, but more about 12 hours, before you then can actually sell it or eat it.”

Sell it? Eat it? For 60 bucks, I might have to frame it!