Stick It

Can you drive a stick shift? The answer, more than likely, is "no." A lot of people will tell you they can drive one, but you get two blocks down the street and the car is hugging and chugging and stalling and the "driver" says, "Well, it's been a long time..."

If you can really drive a stick, you don't forget how. Put the clutch down, move the lever, let out the clutch and go...two or three times, and then start all over after you stop.

I mean, now you have cars you don't even have to drive, so changing the gears is hopelessly passé, I guess.

And this, for stick shifters: last year, less than 1 percent of new vehicles made for the U.S. market in 2025 were stick shifts. 

The commonly accepted wisdom used to be that you saved gas by shifting at just the right time, but now those engineering wizards have gotten the automatic transmission working so well that you can't top their fuel efficiency.

What's more, the average new car today with automatic tranny has seven (7!) forward gears, and you wouldn't want to shift that many times yourself. Let the automatic handle it!

Plus, you don't see people zipping around in the little sports cars of yesterday. More and more, you see SUVs on the streets and the parking lots, and just try to find yourself a manual transmission in a RAV4. They haven't made them like that since 2022. Toyota only make three cars now with the option for a stick.

And think of this - if you do drive a stick, don't plan to drive it to a lot with parking valets.  An 18-year old is not going to know what to do with that third pedal on the floor.

I would be willing to trade stick-shifting lessons for lessons on how to tie a bow tie, though. Not that I'm going anywhere wearing a bow tie, and you're not buying a manual car. 

It would just be a secret between us.

Nothing to Snicker about

Members of the rock band Van Halen used to insist that all the brown M&Ms be removed from the jar of candy they wanted in their dressing room.  They had nothing against brown M&Ms. They just wanted to make some poor soul go through all that candy with tweezers, because being annoying is pretty much what Van Halen did, day in and day out.

That's not going to be an option for anyone soon, because the makers of M&Ms have promised to eliminate artificial dyes from their candy pellets, but they are having trouble getting rid of the blues and the browns. The candymen told the Wall Street Journal, it's turning out to be "expensive" and "difficult."

Two more words that describe Van Halen, if I may say so...

Mars, the people who make M&Ms, were able to make red, orange, and yellow dyes out of natural ingredients like turmeric and beets. (How tasty!) And they came up with a real natural green, but nothing works to make a blue candy coating. They even tried spirulina  - a blue-green algae - as a replacement for blue, but it turned out to be a giant hassle.

And didn't we just go through a whole thing about green algae? And would you want it on your candy???

Getting M&Ms coated in brown uses a lot of blue dye, surprise to hear, so there will be no more brown or blue M&Ms soon.

When the new dye-free M&Ms come out on your grocery shelves, there will only be red, yellow, orange, and green.

Van Halen tribute bands will have to find something else about which to be peculiar.

Up for sale

Do you enjoy prowling thrift stores as I do? I would probably buy all my clothing that way, but my size is hard to come by at Goodwill.

I have to find out where the Ravens drop off last year's wardrobes and go there.

Anyhow, there's a guy named Quinn Brown who knows how to go mining at Value Village, a thrift in his town of  Tigard, Oregon. 

He even goes on Senior Day, although, at 19, he is way short of the discount. It doesn't matter. 

Quinn was there with his twin sister Ellie when he found that diamond in a junk heap that everything would love to encounter. 

Quinn actually find such great things at the thrift shops that he re-sells them at profit. He has turned over nearly 10,000 items over the past four years. But this day, he saw a another teenager pick up a yellow item and then toss it back in the bargain bin.  

Quinn swooped in and grabbed it up, paid $3.07 for it, and it has since been verified as basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain's Los Angeles Lakers warm-up jacket from their 1972 championship run.

He didn't know Wilt Chamberlain from Neville Chamberlain, but with the size of this jacket, he knew it was custom made for a 7-foot man, so he figured he was onto something.

 

Sotheby's has verified the provenance of the jacket. It's legitimate, and is going up for auction soon and might bring in a quarter of a million dollars.

Pretty nice return for a $3.07 investment!

Sunday Rerun: The Sound of a Fury

 The past few Septembers have been dotted with a non-specific sort of agitation, as if something somewhere were missing in my life.  I took inventory of my emotions (confusion, mild rage, skepticism, scorn, delight, joy, happiness and pure bliss) and found them all intact, and then it hit me.

September used to mean new TV shows and new cars.  And not any more, for the most part.

Man, I'm telling you, the time was that TV networks would show promos for new shows coming on right after Labor Day and excitement reigned.  "They're making a 'Dennis The Menace' situation comedy," people screamed! "How many more days must I survive until the premiere of 'CPO Sharkey,' starring Don Rickles?" pondered many.  "I can't wait until that new 'Maury' show comes on!" cried many.  And then it came on, and many more cried.

Now, instead of three networks with new shows that no one wishes to watch, there are 237 networks, and the only shows that people are looking at feature poorly-educated, un-shaven-and-shorn rustics.  We revere televised individuals from whom we would move away, were they to sit next to us in a diner.

This is a Plymouth Fury.  It was not a rocket ship.

And, even worse, do you remember the tiny thrill you got when the new cars came out!  "The new Plymouths have tail fins the size of half a cow!"  "Dad wants to go down to Rustee Ford to look over the new Galaxie 500 XL!" "Is it a Falcon or is it a pickup?"  All these huzzahs rang out every September, in a country not that far away, not that long ago.

Today, the Toyota Camry changes the door on the gas cap every couple of years, and that's about it.  The NASCAR cars all look like the same non-NASCAR cars.  And can you tell me three differences between a Corolla and a Civic?  What in the devil is a Passat, a Tiguan or a Touareg?

Every kid could tell you the difference between the Chevies..the el cheapo Biscayne, the moderately-priced BelAir, the top of the line Impala, and the top of the Impala line, the Impala Super Sport.  Ford, Mercury, Plymouth, Dodge, and the rest of the GM line (Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Cadillac) of cars all had major changes from year to year, and the new models all came out every September, while Liberace never did.

The Saturday Picture Show, July 18, 2026

 

When life was so much simpler...Times Square at night, 1949.

Say hey to "Gus"! He's a 67 million year-old T-Rex skeleton who recently fetched $50.1 MILLION dollars at an auction. And that was just a bare-bones offer.

She decided to beat the high cost of movie snacks by smuggling in her own. It was easy to see through her plan, though.

Here's a debate I will always entertain. When you park in a garage, you're going to have to use Reverse at some point, am I wrong? Why not get it done early? It's easier to leave that way, but the head-first crowd won't see that far into the future.

It would seem that this person has made some bad choices over the years, and wishes to help you avoid his pitfalls. There was a guy around the corner from us who had signs on his yard complaining about the poor quality of his car. Next thing you know, he went out and bought the new model of the same car. There's a lot to say for brand loyalty!

If I were this bird, I would ask for a name upgrade! It's the Common Loon.

Canadian Wildfire smoke is vacationing in the Northeast USA this summer. Please stay indoors and read!

Here is a combination that blends one of our favorite things - a Little Free Library - with the packaging colors and design of Baltimore's own Old Bay seasoning (yes, we put it on everything!)

We are lucky that Maryland borders Pennsylvania, because 80% of American pretzels come from there, and we love our pretzels!

All the ships at sea

I relate to Michael Scurr, a long-time volunteer at Britain’s National Archives. He spends a morning every week foraging through old papers and documents to have them in sort sort of order so that future researchers have easier and more organized access.

I too love to rummage through old papers, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever figure to find something like he did! 

He was sifting through the letters of an 18th-century Royal Navy captain this past May, and came upon a report dated Christmas Eve 1776, when the American privateer (a government-sanctioned non-military boat asea for the purposes of piracy) Dalton was captured. Scurr opened a paper attached to that report (I wonder what they used before paper clips and staples) and saw the word DECLARATION printed on the top of it.

Sure enough, that piece of paper so long stored away has been positively identified as a rare early copy of America’s founding document. It was printed just days after the original was signed on July 4, 1776, and declared to all that the 13 colonies had cut off all ties to Britain.

It is one of just 11 original copies of the so-called Exeter printing of the declaration that are known to exist, and the only one identified outside the United States, the British National Archives said.  This version was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, between July 16 and 19, 1776.

John Hancock's John Hancock on the paper authorized the ship to disrupt trade and do battle with the British Navy.

And that turned out pretty well, for us.

 

 The thinking is that the captain of the Dalton read the Declaration to the crew of his 18-gun vessel to let them know that they were in the fight and why.

 I would write more today, but I'm going to the basement to go through some old boxes.

Cash Patel

 It was Wednesday, it was warm in Baltimore, and I needed some groceries and prescriptions. I got the Rx'es just fine, but when I went to pay for the food, things went down the disposal.

The young male cashier roused himself from his daze so he could tell me the total: $31.35.

I said fine, here's what I'm going to do. I gave him a 50, a one, a quarter and a dime. He looked as if I had tried to pay with ancient pieces of eight from a treasure chest, so I tried to coach him, saying, just enter the amount I gave you and see how it comes out.

Next thing I know, he's digging in the drawer for a ton of change. I said there should be no coins involved here; you owe me twenty flat.

"But I forgot to ring up the dime, so your change is $19.90 because I can't go back and add it in."

I looked at him with disbelief. He wasn't arrogant or anything, just monumentally unconcerned with doing his job.

I said, "Take that dime out of your hand. Put it in the drawer along with all that change you were trying to give me. Hand me a twenty-dollar bill. Then you're square and I'm square and we can all go on with our lives."

He did just that. Now I have to see a chiropractor because my neck hurts from all this headshaking.