The Saturday Picture Show, February 29, 2020

In my bachelor days, I would often show up and chow down at HoJo's on Clamboree weekends. Sometimes they had an all-you-can-eat special, so I would skip lunch and breakfast and bring a book to my table and start sliding as many deep-fried mollusks down my neck as I could until the waiter refused to bring more. I would always say, "But the sign says, 'All You Can Eat'!" and the guy would say, "Son, that's all you can eat."

Never having been anywhere near Hawaii, I did not know that this is how pineapples were grown. I guess I thought they grew on trees, like other apples.

We haven't had snow in Baltimore AT ALL this year, but up north in New England, some waggish pranksters (possible ne'er-do-wells) rolled this gigantic snowball into the big intersection in town and Officer Obie had to come down and figure out what to do.

These guys are called Mandarin Fish. How perfectly beautiful! Another gift from nature for us.

And then we thank nature by leaving our foul detritus. We should be sent to our rooms without dinner.

A lighthouse on a starry night. Romance is in the air.

Now here's an idea from Italy: a restaurant set inside a lemon grove. These places usually have a choice of steak or fish. I usually have the lasagna. But if you have the fish, no need to ask for extra lemon! Just pluck one, and you're all set.

"Suddenly it's 1960."  If only.  But look at the tail fins on this block-long behemoth, this gas-guzzling land buffalo from Detroit.  They don't make Plymouths any more, and if they did, they would do like all the others do in 2020: make a little car that looks like every other little car on the road.

Happy birthday, every four years

This being a leap year, we have a February 29th, and it comes up tomorrow.

In my life, I have only known one person born on a February 29. The great thing for her was turning 20 on her 80th birthday.

If you're fixing to have a baby tomorrow, that child will be called a leapling, and the odds of being born on the extra day we add on a leap year are 1 in 1,461, or .068 per cent.

There are only about five million leaplings in the entire world. Here in the United States, there are about 187,000, plus whoever gets added to the list tomorrow.


As a matter of fact, a baby has a better chance of being born with 11 fingers and toes than being a leap baby. That's called polydactylism, and the odds of it are 1 in 500, and there's also 100% chance of being charged extra for a manicure.

Famous people born on a Leap Day?  Rapper Ja Rule, born Jeffrey Bruce Atkinson this day tomorrow in 1976. He shares a cake with Antonio Sabàto Jr., actor Alex Rocco (Moe Greene in The Godfather), actor Dennis Farina, and composer Gioacchino Rossini, who gave us a close shave with "The Barber Of Seville."

Oh! And Superman. 

We don't know much about Sir James Milne Wilson, Premier of Tasmania from 1869 to 1872, but here's one thing about him: he was born on February 29, 1812 and died on February 29, 1880.

In all my web searches, he is the only person I found who was born and died on a Leap Day.

I'll just bet he was really a Tasmanian devil.

Stinky

With springish weather upon us, more and more we find ourselves outside, hauling the recycling out to the curb, walking around the block, picking up sticks and branches that fell during the winter.

And while we're out there, a certain pungent aroma might assail our nostrils. No, it's not the scent of spring onions in the field, nor is it time for the farmers to spread manure.  Politicians are still in charge of that.

It's the smell of skunks mating!

The Eastern striped skunk, or Mephitis mephitis, is about the size of a house cat, although they will refuse to snuggle up with you at nap time.

They like to live in the woods or in open fields, and they generally dislike condo living. They do need to live within at least 2 miles of a water source.
They are omnivores, meaning that either Wendy's or Nalley Fresh would suit them as they dine on insects, earthworms, snails, grains, nuts, fruits, reptiles, vegetation, amphibians, birds, eggs, carrion and garbage.

Mmmm garbage!

But this is mating season, and that means that male skunks are chasing females.  It's the same as with humans, except that we fool around every day from January 1 through December 31, with the exception of March Madness and the football playoffs. Striped skunks get busy from right now, late February, through early March, and then after a gestation period of 62-68 days, along comes Pepe, Jr, and Pepetta, and maybe four more skunk babies.

The problem is that, let's face it, all male skunks pretty much look alike. It's not like there are any Leonardo D. Caprio or Idris Elba-level skunk guys.

So they exude a musky scent, spraying the air with the Mephitis mephitis version of Drakkar Noir, for the same reason human males slather on the stink when they hit the bars.

If you see two skunks on a date, please do the cool thing and pick up the tab for whatever they're gnawing on! And in 62-68 days, maybe they'll name a kit after you!

Rock and Roll

The names seemed to ring a bell. Apophis and Bennu. At first blush, I thought they were the names of the attorneys who represented me when I was charged years ago with spreading the Laughing Death malady among the members of the Fore tribe of New Guinea. (I beat the charge when it was brought out in court that I know no one in New Guinea.)

So I Googled Apophis and Bennu and found out they are two well-known asteroids, not attorneys, and A&B are being used to calculate how likely it is that an asteroid will collide with Earth.

Don't worry. We don't seem to be in danger of a giant rock slamming into one of our major cities, or even Boston. But people who study the skies and the heavens say there's a "near-miss" coming our way in 2029.

Earth to researchers: a "near-miss" is when you get hit. A "near-hit" is much better.

At any rate, some skywatchers, led by former MIT graduate student Sung Wook Paek , have figured out a formula to calculate the mass and speed of an approaching asteroid, and how much time we have to run and hide before the Big Boom.

Just like kids playing war games, the MIT "decision map" gives science three ways to deal with an asteroid: throw stuff at it, send a scout to see how fast it really is, and send TWO scouts to scare its asteroid off.

Speaking of throwing stuff at it, the official plan might involve blowing the approaching asteroid up with a nuclear bomb.  The various types of bombs are labeled Preparations A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.

But science is fairly sure that the best way to deal with asteroids will be Preparation H.

Lie down; you look hot!

One by one, the myths of our childhoods are being destroyed. Chocolate does not cause acne. All aspirin are alike. Lightning certainly can strike the same place twice (why not?) The color red does not drive bulls crazy.

And the average human body temperature is not 98.6°F.

If you can believe it, this was the accepted norm since the 1850s, when a doctor in Germany collected the thermometer readings from 25,000 people, added it up and divided by 25,000 and came up with 98.6.

Recently, they stuck thermometers into 35,000 British people, did the same kind of math (but with a computer instead of an abacus) and came up with a new normal of 97.88°F.

So, is the average body temperature decreasing, because look at how cool we all are?  Might be! Scientists out at Stanford University looked at temp data from Civil War veterans, from people in the 1970s, and some more from the span of 2007 - 2017.

And the numbers didn't lie! Men born back in the day were 1.06°F warmer on a average than today's modern man, and 19th Century women came in at 0.57°F warmer than women today.

Catherine Ley, a Stanford researcher, says we don't know why we're all so cool now. “It’s just an observation,” she says, but “we think it’s a marker for the health of a population.”

And there is no dispute that we humans are healthier than we were in the Civil War era.  We owe this to vaccinations, antibiotics, better hygiene, and the simple fact that we don't have to worry about being shot at by Confederates.

Falling flat

There is a surprising amount of people who believe that Earth is flat.  The rest of us were taught that Columbus sailed off long ago and was warned that he would fall off the edge of the world, which was rumored to be just east of Cleveland.

Since the concept of "Cleveland" had yet to be firmed up in man's eyes in 1492, Chris took off, and no such calamity occurred, so we were able to deduce that the globe is really globular.


Unfortunately, as of today, there is one fewer Flat Earth theorist, following the death of Michael "Mad Mike" Hughes. On Saturday, Hughes took a notion to launch himself heavenward in a homemade rocket and take pictures from way up there to prove that there is no curvature in this pancake-shaped planet we live on.

Well, he got the heaven part. His rocket crashed in the open desert.

Hughes made it to age 64 with this notion, but he will not see 65. He planned to be 5,000 feet aloft, but no. And the "Science" Channel was lending credence to this nonsense, even though no scientist would actively pursue an investigation of a theory that's already been disproved six ways to Sunday.

"Our thoughts and prayers go out to Mike Hughes' (sic) family and friends during this difficult time. It was always his dream to do this launch, and Science Channel was there to chronicle his journey," Science Channel said in a statement.

Here is what Hughes told CBS last fall: "The Flat Earth thing is like everything else to me. I just want people to question everything. Question what your congressman is doing, your city council. Question what really happened during the Civil War. What happened during 9/11."

(What's there to question about the Civil War? The right team won! And don't start in on this "9/11 was an inside job" stuff. It's been almost 20 years, and no new facts have come out of all this speculation.)

Hughes was no aeronautical engineer. He told CBS that he built his homemade rocket mostly through "trial and error," admitting, "You don't get a lot of second chances, though, in the rocket business."

Finally! Something we can agree on.

Listen, I'm not trying to make light of this man and his death. It's just that when we become so fervid about our misconceived beliefs as to endanger ourselves and others, maybe it's time to get some new inclinations, safer ones.

Sunday Rerun: Chore Boy

You might know the name Nikkole Paulun from the days when she was a reality star on MTV, as the leading character in some atrocity called "16 and Pregnant."  

I didn't see it; at the time I was "59 and Completely Uninterested."

But now that her days of riding around in fancy limousines and canoodling with Carson Daly or whomever from MTV are over, she finds herself being 22 years of age, with two kids, a girl and a boy, and she wrote a Facebook post about how she gets her son to do household chores, and the sky lit up with indignancy. 
  
Here is her side of it (I happen to agree with her, but I am perplexed about her use of ampersands (&) and then the switch to "and" 1/2 way through her screed):

I teach my son to cook & do household chores. Why? Because household work isn't just for women.
Because one day he might be a single man, living on his own, who will actually know how to do laundry & not eat take out every night.
Because one day he might want to impress a significant other with a meal cooked by his own hands.
Because one day when he has kids & a spouse, he's going to need to do his fair share around the home.
Because I live in a generation of people who complain that school didn't teach us how to cook, do laundry, tie a tie, or pay taxes.
Because teaching my son how to do these things and be a productive member of society both outside the home and inside, starts with ME.
Because it's okay to let your child be a child but still teach them lifelong lessons along the way. My son will never be too "manly" to cook or do chores.
He will be the kind of man who can come inside from changing a tire to check on his pot roast. Who can properly sort his laundry and mow the lawn too. Remember parents, a man who believes he shouldn't have to cook or do chores was once a boy who was never taught any better.

Since she wrote it, she's gotten over 140,000 likes, and 60,000 people have shared it.  It would appear that most of the moms who replied think Nikkole is on the right path here. 

"I teach mine the same thing," said one mom. "He helps with laundry, vacuums, washes windows and does yard work. They'll only be great men if we teach them how! I wish I could love this post!"

I'll interject here to say that I learned a lot about cooking from my mother, who recognized early in my life that I was going to be spending a great deal of time in home kitchens, garnishing, sauteeing, baking, frying, fricasseeing and roasting. I leave julienning to others, and I blanch at the thought of doing my own blanching. At home I also learned some basic needlework and so I can replace buttons handily. Mopping floors, I learned at the firehouse, and as for yard work, my father conducted a master class in transplanting, lawn mowing, mulching, and, of course, leaf raking.  

I never assign a gender to skills like this.  I think everyone ought to know how to do general household skills, and frankly, if I call in someone highly skilled for specialized skills in plumbing, electricity or dermatology, I don't care if the person is male or female.  

Young Mark, harvesting 'taters

Apparently, some people do, and complained to Paulun that changing tires and mowing lawns are traditionally male jobs. Well, I see plenty of women pushing lawn mowers here in Painan Acres, and I've long felt that changing a tire should be part of the driver's license test. So, no. Paulun said to that, "Yes my daughter will know how to do all of those things. She's just too young to teach still. They're raised seeing me do both since I'm a single mother."

And then there was the mother who confused "having a child learn to fend for themselves while helping around the house" with "being held in slavery," who said Nikkole should not have her kids "be your slave. Or to do the chores that you yourself don't want to do." 

Here's a funny thought, the very notion that I would have sat down with my parents and gone over my list of chores and pointed out that they made me haul out the trash cans and cut the grass and trim the hedge and stir the compost heap just because THEY didn't want to.  It would have been the only time in my father's life that he ever said, "Duh!!!!"

The Gallop Poll

I'm lucky enough to have a couple of nice online friends in Australia, where the brutal heat and uncontrolled brush fires have made this a horrible summer down under, but I hope they can weigh in on this story I found.

A man in New South Wales has pleaded guilty to a charge of using a hand-held phone while...riding a horse.

The man is 30 years of age, and he and his horse were stopped by police in October. Eagle-eyed cops had seen him with the cellphone up to his ear as the horse cantered along a rural road, according to the Tenterfield Star.  One would assume that a man of 30 years, and a horse of at least 2 or 3, would be safe enough without being saddled by overofficious law enforcement.

The local version of Barney Fife hauled horse and rider before the Mudgee Local Court magistrate judge, who said “under the road rules a horse is a vehicle…and he didn’t have a hands-free device fitted to the horse,” the paper reported.

"I've had someone charged with being drunk on a horse before - but just one," the judge said. He admitted this was a first and did not explain how DWI on a horse connects to cell phoning on a steed.

Tim Cain is the man's defense lawyer, and he saw his client plead guilty “because he concedes that the horse was in motion," but Cain also said the matter was "trivial - in the extreme - especially in a rural area where animals are a form of transport," Cain said.

But the man, whom we'll call Midday Rider, was told the charge would be expunged from his record if he keeps his nose, and that of his horse, out of trouble for three months.

Here in Maryland, it is illegal to drive a car while yammering on a hand-held cell, and also to rob banks.  Both laws are broken with impunity.

What could have been, chapter 683

I love the obscurities, the small pebbles between the cobblestones that line our paths.

And finding out a tiny factoid makes me happier than learning the national tree  of Moldova is the sour cherry or the walnut, although I am planning to bake a cherry-walnut pie on Moldovan Independence Day (August 27).

And that brings us nowhere near close to today's topic, which is a rock 'n' roller from the early days, Mr Billy Lee Riley, from Pocahontas, Arkansas.

Nothing ever worked out right for Billy Lee. He was one of the first singers signed to Sun Records in Memphis, and had minor hits with "Rock With Me Baby" and "Flyin' Saucers Rock and Roll" in 1956.  Fellow Sun musician with the same middle name Jerry Lee Lewis played piano on his records, and Billy Lee seemed ready to break big with "Red Hot" in the fall of 1957.

You probably recall studying these lyrics in a poetry appreciation class. Billy wrote them, likely inspired by Edgar A. Guest:

My gal is red hot - your gal ain't doodley squat!
Yeah! My gal is red hot - your gal ain't doodley squat
Well she ain't got money, but man she's really got a lot.
Well I gotta gal, six feet four, sleeps in the kitchen
With her feets out the door but,
My gal is red hot - your gal ain't doodley squat!
My gal is red hot - your gal ain't doodley squat!
Well she ain't got no money, but man she's really got a lot.
Well she walks all night, talks all day
She's the kinda woman gonna have her way, but
My gal is red hot - your gal ain't doodley squat!
My gal is red hot - your gal ain't doodley squat!
Well she ain't got no money, but man she's really got a lot.
Well she's the kinda woman who's a lounge-around
Spreadin' my business all over town, but
My gal is red hot - your gal ain't doodley squat!
My gal is red hot - your gal ain't doodley squat!
Well she ain't got money, but man she's really got a lot.
Well she's a one man's woman which is what I like
Not a wishy washy woman change her mind every night, but
My gal is red hot - your gal ain't doodley squat!
My gal is red hot - your gal ain't doodley squat!
Well she aint got money, but man she's really got a lot.

I would say this tender ballad holds up well in the light of Shelley, Byron and Burns.

But things were not about to go the way of Billy Lee Riley's dreams. In them, he had the big smash hit record with "Red Hot," the appearances on Ed Sullivan, the fan clubs, the movie deals. 

Instead, Sun Records told him they were going to promote Jerry Lee Lewis and his smash hit "Great Balls Of Fire" instead. Jerry Lee Lewis - the guy who played piano on Billy Lee's records!  He got the big breaks and the big hits and his career took off in a zoom.  What happened to that is a story for another day.

Billy Lee Riley moved around after that disappointment, winding up playing harmonica on records such as "Please Let Me Wonder" by the Beach Boys in 1965, By 1970, he gave up music and was back in Arkansas, starting a construction firm.

Even his chance at a comeback was snuffed out. A young man named Robert Gordon cut "Red Hot" and "Flying Saucers" in 1978, and as the rockabilly revival swept the nation, it swept right past Billy Lee. Even the endorsement of Bob Dylan couldn't put him on top.  Dylan was a longtime fan who helped arrange for BLR to record an album called "Hot Damn!" in 1997, but don't feel bad if you didn't buy it.  Very few people ever heard of it, and fewer yet bought it.

Dylan offered this elegy to Billy Lee after he was gone:

He was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don't stand a chance. So Billy became what is known in the industry—a condescending term—as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who's got 20 or 30 hits behind him. And Billy's hit song was called "Red Hot," and it was red hot. It could blast you out of your skull and make you feel happy about it. Change your life.

More: 2005, he fell on the slippery floor in a store and needed several surgeries. He passed away from colon cancer in 2009.

And when you go to YouTube to hear "Red Hot," you see a picture with the song, a picture of a guy named Charlie Gracie, who recorded the mellow hit "Butterfly."

Billy Lee couldn't win, but we can salute him every time we meet a 6" 4" woman who sleeps in the kitchen with her feets out the door.

not Billy Lee Riley, YouTube.

Say it ain't so, José

Some good news from California here, as the Long Beach Little League and East Fullerton Little League will no longer have kids playing on teams named the Astros, what with the major league Houston Astros being disgraced as their sign-stealing cheating crookedness came to light this winter.

The people who run these little leagues don't want the lying Astros to be an example of good.

"Parents are disgusted," Long Beach Little League president Steve Klaus told the Orange County Register. "They are disgusted with the Astros and their lack of ownership and accountability. We know there's more to this scandal. What's coming tomorrow? With the Astros, you've got premeditated cheating."

Mike Fiers, who used to pitch for the Astros and now works on the Oakland A's mound, told the world that the swindling Astros used a center-field camera to steal opposing catchers' signs in 2017, and bilked their way into a a World Series win by having someone bang on a big Rubbermaid trash can to tell the batter what kind of pitch was coming.

Baseball suspended then-Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch, and both men were fired that same day.

To think, I once respected this Altuve.

Now the Astros are the besmirched team in baseball with good reason, although their owner says that even though they cheated, it did not help them win that World Series.

“Our opinion is this didn’t impact the game,” the Astros owner, Jim Crane, said last week as his reprobates started spring training. “We had a good team. We won the World Series and we’ll leave it at that.”

55 seconds later, Crane came out with this:  “I didn’t say it didn’t impact the game."

Asked if sign stealing helped his team’s batters, Crane stated, “It could possibly do that. It could possibly not.”

He was kind enough to say “how sorry our team is for what happened.”

Listen, Jimbo, come to Baltimore City, where the former mayor pled guilty to all sorts of crookedness and now has her lawyers asking for a light sentence, on the grounds that the public humiliation and shame have been quite enough of a sentence, yes sir.

The thing is, if this Crane and his ballclub, and disgraced ex-Mayor Pugh HAD any shame or humility, none of this dishonor would have visited them.

But they don't, and it did.

Weed rather have a good team

In a landmark case bound to reverberate across the legal landscape nationwide, the State Medical Board of Ohio has ruled that Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals fans can’t legally use medical marijuana to get over the stress and agony of having two subpar football teams in their state.

The board members did vote to move autism and anxiety each a step closer to the status of being conditions that would qualify sufferers to have their doctors prescribe medical marijuana.

Maybe the point is that being a Browns fan or Bengals supporter will induce great anxiety in most people. From what I see, next fall, the Bengals will hand their starting quarterback job to this Joe Burrow fellow out of Louisiana State, and they'll be back in the playoff chase, while the Browns, whose uniforms are my favorite kit in the whole world of sports, will continue to sputter with their 83rd head coach and 147th different lineup.

Vincent Morano is a longtime Bengals fan who submitted a request to be allowed to puff the magic draggin' to get over his team's maladroitness.  You can see his legal paperwork, if you wish.

"We’ve been suffering for 30 years, all of us,” Morano told the Cincinnati news. "Come Monday, everybody’s got the blues and that could ease their pain away."

Is he speaking from experience???

He hasn't attended a Bengals game for a long time, but offered this sage comment from the comfort of his home:

"People think sports do not affect people’s mental state but it obviously does."

I can't help but call him "My Cousin Vinny." He says he is a longtime advocate for legalizing marijuana, and is not trying to belittle anyone.

Morano

“I know some people think it was maybe wrong because there are real medical conditions,” Morano told cleveland.com last month. He also said it only took him 15 minutes to fill out the application, and I have to figure, the first 10 of them were spent listening to Def Leppard or something.

“At the same time, could it help? Yeah. Could it be considered a medical condition? Sure.”

We'll resist the urge to ask for his medical bona fides for now. You can support the legalization of marijuana if you wish, or not; that's your beeswax. But don't drag the poor downtrodden football teams of Ohio into it!

George Straight

Today is Presidents' Day, formerly Washington's Birthday.  But old George got shunted off in 1971, when the government reorganized every holiday they could get their hands on and made every famous day a Monday.

Technically, the holiday is still designated as Washington's Birthday, but now we forget how we used to celebrate the natal day of the man who was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen: February 22. Now we just make the holiday the third Monday in February.

Now, the day is set aside to allow people to have a day off in honor of the presidents of the United States.  There have been 44 great men to hold the office.

When it was just still plain old Washington's Birthday, stores would hold big sales on 2/22 and sell shirts for 22 cents and entire living room furniture sets for $222.22.  The deluxe set would always include an ottoman, that little tiny low-sitting chair that sat in front of the easy chair.  You could put your feet up on it while the whole family clustered around to watch "Dobie Gillis," or if it was a holiday and kith and kin came from all over to get some ham and green bean casserole, your cousin Bernard would be sitting on the ottoman, telling you that it took its name from the Ottoman Empire, rulers of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries.  Apparently, the Ottomans (Ottomen?) enjoyed putting their feets up after a hard day of conquering and whatnot.

Baltimore County schools are open today because it was supposed to snow one day in December so everyone stayed home on that day and celebrated "Ooops, Wrong Guess Day."  One supposes that the day will be spent on educational pursuits in keeping with the spirit of the day.

Perhaps they will discuss the Ottoman Empire!

Sunday Rerun: God Saved The Queen

There used to be a country song containing the lyrics, "When you're lookin' at me, you're lookin' at country."

Would that it were so simple to categorize us all. We're all a lot of things, many of them surprising to people who only look at the superficial. I mentioned the other day that it was the 40th anniversary of the release of their first single, and several people registered shock that I dabble in such outré music.

In my case, since I have no piercings, no hardware protruding from my face, not so much as a tattoo that won't wear off, people are often surprised to hear that I am a huge fan of The Sex Pistols, the original 70s punk band from Merrie Olde Englande.

True, not many of their admirers look like I do, but I dare anyone to listen to Anarchy in the UK, God Save the Queen and Pretty Vacant and not be moved to some fervent toe-tappin'. Just as music - and rest assured, the grubby individuals in the band had little to do with making the music on the records - it's powerful stuff.

Johnny Rotten, who was seriously voted
one of the 100 Greatest Britons in a
nationwide poll in 2002. 

The lyrics, poignant at times, were mostly written by singer Johnny Rotten, born John Lydon in London (1956). His vocals did not make anyone forget Bing Crosby, or David Crosby for that matter. But no one else brought on the fervent angst that Rotten-Lydon sang with (and still does.)

Anyway, I like 'em, and those three songs above are to be found on any compilation of my favorite tunes. But the movement they led, the nihilist rejection of anything commercial or mainstream, was never to be taken too seriously. I mean, they made and sold records and concert tickets and all the rest, and were never photographed refusing money for these enterprises.

They were founded, in fact, as a sales and marketing tool by one Malcolm McLaren, a British impresario who could have sold more spots to a leopard, given half a chance. McLaren operated a trendy boutique called "SEX" and formed the band to promote the store, in the same way McDonald's hires clowns to enchant the children. 

So it was a little surprising that McLaren's son, Joe Corre, found his father's wealth so repugnant, and the commercialization of the supposedly free-for-all music so hard to take that he recently held an event called "Burn Punk London" in which he burned over six million dollars worth of memorabilia, including one-of-a-kind acetate recordings, the pair of bondage trousers he wore as a child (?!), live punk recordings, and a pair of Johnny Rotten’s pants.

The grande finale of the protest was when Corre rigged up dummies to represent Prime Minister Theresa May, and former Prime Ministers David Cameron and Tony Blair, dressing the effigies in Sex Pistols t-shirts and loading them up with fireworks that went boom in the night in front of signs of global corporations.

Sex Pistols guitarist Glen Matlock did not approve. "I want to paraphrase Monty Python, in that he's not a savior, he's a naughty boy and I think Joe is not the anti-Christ, I think he's a nincompoop."

What a show! (photo cred, Getty Images)

For his part, Corre said, "The Queen giving 2016, the Year of Punk, her official blessing is the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard. Rather than a movement for change, punk has become like a (expletive deleted) museum piece or a tribute act."

As they say in The New Yorker, there will always be an England.

The Saturday Picture Show, February 15, 2020

One of my regrets in life is that the one time we found ourselves in Greenville, S.C, we did not go by 1262 Pendleton St, the onetime home of a liquor store owned by baseball immortal Shoeless Joe Jackson. This water tower in that charming city reminds us to take action. Next time, I will!

A super camera shot of snowflakes on a crow's tail.

American pop art meets American flora and we all win.

This is Kent Calfee, a Republican serving in the Tennessee House of Representatives, representing District 32. Apparently Rep. Calfee is quite the joker. He took an old Hershey's Syrup bottle, washed it out, and uses it for his water bottle on the floor of the Tenn. House.  If he has any sense of humor at all, he should fill up a water bottle with chocolate syrup. Just sayin'.
If you've ever tried to get rid of bamboo in your yard, you know you're up against a mighty foe. Here in Kyoto, Japan, they have learned to enjoy it.

This is a honey of a bee.

This was the week that thousands, maybe millions, of us were bamboozled by a rumor that "NASA announced that February 10 was the day of the equinox that meant the earth was perfectly aligned so that brooms will stand on their own."  If your broom would do that on 2/10, it will also do so on 10/2, and if it wouldn't, it won't.

Why buy one of those expensive canvas car covers, when you could just move to Montreal and let nature coat your Camry?

Dog Phones have collar ID

On those rare occasions when my beloved and I are both out of the house during the day, we leave the radio on, tuned to WBJC-FM 91.5, where the finest music presenters in town keep the cats happy with vivid, tender classical music. It doesn't take much to please a cat - two meals, some kibble to gnaw on, water, a litter box and some hugs and nuzzles.

It seems that the canine population is the finicky pet! So now Spotify, the music streaming service, has come out with playlists and a special podcast to be played when the hoomans are not home.

Spotify's research showed that 74% of pet owners played music for the pooches when they left the house, and the other 26% let them listen to Rush Limbaugh, although animal rights activists have thrown a penalty flag, charging that is cruelly unusual and unusually cruel.

The podcast will feature soothing music, and - dig this - “dog-directed praise” and "messages of affirmation and reassurance narrated by actors to alleviate stress for dogs who are home alone."

They also said that 25% of dog owners claim to have seen Rover dancing to music.

So, I looked through my playlist for you, and offer you these ideas to start your own Dog Show:

"Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron" - Royal Guardsmen
"Bird Dog" - The Everly Brothers
"Hot Dog" - Led Zeppelin
"Black Dog" - Led Zeppelin
"Can Your Monkey Do the Dog" - Rufus Thomas
"Dog and Butterfly" - Heart
"Who Let The Dogs Out" Baha Men "Get Down" - Gilbert O'Sullivan
"Hey Bulldog" - The Beatles
"Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom)" - Perry Como
"Hound Dog" - Elvis Presley
"I'll Be Doggone" - Marvin Gaye
"Mr. Bojangles" - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
"Me And You And a Dog Named Boo" - Lobo
"Puppy Love" - Donny Osmond
"The Return of the Red Baron" - The Royal Guardsmen
"Walkin' My Cat Named Dog" - Norma Tanega
"Hound Dog Man" - Fabian
"Walking the Dog" - Rufus Thomas
"Your Bulldog Drinks Champagne" - Jim Stafford

You should be able to download most of these doggone songs, but if not, try buying the records at a...flea market.

Sue Sue Heck

As Valentine's Day approaches, I like to help Cupid sort out the better dates from the ones who really need a little more seasoning before hitting the social whirl.

So, to all women in Austin, TX, looking for Mr Right, I must advise you to avoid Mr Brandon Vezmar of that city.

Brandon recently went on a date to see Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2.  He paid $17.31 each for two tickets: one for himself and one for his date.

Things did not go swimmingly. In fact, “It was kind of a first date from hell,” Brandon told the Austin American-Statesman newspaper. Only a short while into the film, his date pulled out her smartphone and began texting.

Mr Vezmar  says that is “like one of my biggest pet peeves.”

So he sued her!

He got so peeved after she got on the phone 10 - 20 times in 15 minutes, texting and checking her emails etc that he asked her to stop.

This was not such a good idea, since (and we don't know why) she was the one driving.

She left the theater and left poor Brandon  to find his own way home.

When he finally got home, he called her and asked her to refund to him the price of her ticket. At first she said no, and then the Alamo Drafthouse, the theater involved, offered poor Brandon a gift card to settle him down.

And then the woman, who will probably refrain from going on dating sites for the rest of all time, said Look, I'll give you your money if you'll find a way to forget my name, address, phone number, email addy and instagram handle.

”The date just didn’t work out and I would love to give you your $17.31 if you can just leave me alone,” she told the man.

So she did and, we guess, he is leaving her alone.

What a guy.

I feel so Cupid

If you take your date out for dinner on Valentine's Day this year, remember, it's a Friday night, so the restaurants will be packed!

And being the classy person you are, you won't be in a place where the term "Super Size It" is even in play.  If you try to get off cheap, you will find yourself playing a role in a new production of "The St Valentine's Day Massacre."

No, you'll be at O'Hoolahan's, or The Holy Roman Empire, or Veganville, waiting for a table in a serpentine line.

But don't worry! You can impress your date, not to mention the couple behind you, praying desperately to see their pager light up like a police car real soon.
Impress your date, I say, by telling the real story of Valentine's Day, celebrated every year on Feb 14.

We send love, and candy and flowers and granola and I don't know what-all else on that day, because long ago, there lived a priest named Valentine.

He was a priest in the Rome diocese in the third century A.D.

Written in 1477, this is the earliest instance of a Valentine love note in English.

It is also the last known Valentine not to feature Snoopy, or chubby cherubs, or pictures of love messages printed on little candy hearts.

Claudius II was the emperor at the time. Known for wearing a red baseball hat with the slogan "Make Rome Great Again," he upset a great many people, mainly because baseball had yet to be invented.

And Claudius thought that married men made for bad soldiers.

(Insert your own joke here.)

Valentine the priest thought this was unfair, not only to the men and women who wanted to get married, but also to his brother Anthony, owner and operator of Rome's largest chain of banquet halls and wedding reception venues.

So Valentine arranged and performed weddings in secret, with a spread that included an open bar, fix-your-own-ice-cream-sundae table, and the Chicken Dance.

One can only get away with such defiance for so long. Claudius found out what Valentine was up to, and threw Val in the cooler, sentenced to death.

This is really starting to sound like a Lifetime movie, but in jail, Valentine fell for the jailer's daughter.

And as he was hauled off to be executed on February 14, he sent that lucky lass a love note signed "from your Valentine."

What's sad is, if the jailers had only realized that it was Valentine's Day, they never would have iced him on the 14th.

So don't YOU forget it either!

Lower and Lower

It's wonderful to see good news, and certainly, seeing two Anne Arundel County Police detectives recover from gunshot wounds suffered last week as they attempted to arrest a murder suspect was a cheery note.

Detectives Scott Ballard and Ian Preece returned to their homes on Saturday after being shot, ALLEGEDLY by one Joseph R. M. Willis, who in his 22 years on this earth has managed to acquire a lengthy criminal record and an upside-down cross tattoo on his face - always a smart look for today's trendy anti-Christian.

Willis faces murder charges for the crime he was being sought for to begin with, as well as charges of attempted murder in both AA County and the City of Baltimore.

So, we see the story. Bad guy murders someone and then attempts to do the same to the police brought in to bring him in. 

And we are happy to see things going as they should, but then hang on a minute.

It never fails that from the morass of human tragedy and sorrow, up from the ground comes a-bubblin' crudeness.  Just like in the Beverly Hillbillies, but the opposite.

Because what oozed out of the depths of humanity these last few days was someone or someones so low as to set up a fake Go Fund me page, purporting to raise money for the families of Ballard and Preece.

“The families have not authorized any of these efforts, nor has the Anne Arundel County Police Department,” the police department tweeted.

Suspect Willis

In fact, they didn't even wait for the detectives to be released and back home before trotting out this horror show.

The AAPD did take time to give thanks for the support the community has shown them during "difficult times," and also said if the family does seek “any such support” in the future, the police department will make an official announcement about it on its website.

I'll editorialize here long enough to say that anyone who seeks to cash in on the suffering and torment of others is the lowest form of life. When you divide the animal kingdom into phylums, you start with the phylum porifera, multicellular hermaphroditic animals which self-fertilize.

They are sponges.

And so are people who set up fake Go Fund Me pages to reap rewards off the pain of others.

Reach out and touch someone

Schools are full of questions. I remember being asked, "What is the value for x in this equation?" "What were the causes of the Civil War?" "¿Dónde está la
biblioteca?" "What are some examples of alliteration in 'Romeo and Juliet'?" and, "What were you doing outside smoking during fifth period?"

There are good answers for all of these, except the last one.

But recently a troubled young soul in a Denver high school scribbled a question on a bathroom wall, and rather than let her voice ring out in an empty room, a teacher stepped in to help her get answers.

Ashley Ferraro, an English teacher at Golden High, saw this message on a girls' room wall recently:

 "Is life worth all the Bulls..t?"

And Ms Ferraro came up big. She invited students to write words of encouragement on sticky notes and sticky those words where the original questioner could see them.


And in less time than it takes Jennifer Lopez to change her clothes seven times, more than 50 notes encircled the original, all with worthwhile words.

One note says, "Yes, because you will find love in your future...in yourself...and in your favorite things to do and the small things in life."

Someone else contributed, "Life is worth it because even if it's bad there is always a good. We were all put here for a reason, we all go through something tough. It always gets better."

"I was really impressed with how many kids participated," Ms Ferraro said. "And the ones you would never expect to participate... did."
 
Next up is the plan to move the notes from the lavatory to the hallway adjacent, where all the students and staff can share, and add, and take heart from the words of others.

"My hope is that it isn't such an isolated feeling -- so people don't think they're the only ones feeling that way and to reach out for help," Ferraro said on CNN. "It provided an opportunity to help someone in pain."

She relishes working with the type of kids who see another student in pain -- and choose to help.

And now, Golden High student Hannah Blackman plans to take the hope engendered at Golden to even bigger "walls"  - the worldwide wall of the world wide web.

"When I saw the sticky notes, I thought it would be something amazing to start a movement. I figured I could use social media to spread the word even further about suicide prevention and giving help to those that need it."

Hannah is a sophomore, and she is starting a Facebook fundraiser for Suicide Prevention and Crisis services.

Please don't try to sell me on the notion that young people today are unfeeling, uncaring, solipsistic horrors. I see this sort of reaction and I feel better about the future.

Sunday Rerun: Playing the library card

There is a town in Texas, a state that seems to pride itself, with the exception of the good citizens of Austin, on becoming a barren land of howling lunatics, called White Settlement.

In 2010, the White Settlement Public Library, in need of cheap rodent control, hired a kitten right out of the local animal shelter. They named him "Browser," this docile grey tabby, and put him to work at once.

He must have been doing a fine job de-mouseulating the joint, and he was happy as a cat in a library until July, when some city hall worker got all worked up because he was told he could no longer bring his puppy to work.

Kwik Kwiz: What did the aggravated city employee do about being told he couldn't bring Poochie Dog to work?

a) he stopped bringing the dog to work and went back to work with renewed vigor and enthusiasm

b) he whined that the people at the library were allowed to have a cat

Elzie (you can see where his cowboy
hat mashed his hair down)

Of course he a) didn't and b) did. And this unnamed local drone got the matter before the White Settlement City Council, and during a meeting which surely rivaled the Philadelphia Congress sessions of 1776, the matter of Browser's continued residency at the libes was taken to a vote.

Only one councilperson, one Elzie Clement, 
 was catty enough to vote for giving Browser the gate. The others weren't feline like sending him back to the shelter, which is paid for by the city kitty.

Now, Mayor Ron White (not the comedian) (I guess) says Browser’s job title is now "Library Cat for Life."

"Browser is still employed and will be as long as he wishes to continue his duties as mascot and reading helper for the children at the library," White said.

(Not to mention his Mickey-hunting duties.)

Hizzoner the Mayor says he's getting litterboxes full of mail and messages for all over with support and offers to adopt Browser.

So it's a happy story all around, and, master storyweaver that I am, I saved the best for last:

Elzie Clements is a councilman no more, having been defeated in a landslide. 

Meow.

The Saturday Picture Show, February 8, 2020

Chiefly due to the vast German heritage in Baltimore, a great many breweries popped up here. We do love our beer. The Bauernschmidt American Brewery is long gone, but a neighborhood down along Back River Neck still survives, known as Bauernschmidt Manor.

Here's a fun idea for a craft project, if you can still find a clothesline anywhere.

A mural with a message: this is the ceiling someone painted over an outside smoking area.

Add this one to your list of workplace snafus: they built an entire Burger King backward. Can you just imagine the memos going back and forth, and the lawsuits?  It might be easier to move the street around.

If there had been a Super Bowl in 1963, the halftime entertainment would have been The Ronettes, and we'd STILL be talking about that one!

These are the chewing gums I remember even better than the Wrigley products: Beemans, which had pepsin for the digestion, Black Jack, which was aniseed flavored (sort of like licorice, but even worse) and Clove, which would be the one gum you'd use to decorate a baked ham. Interesting...

These houses on the Faroe Islands have the kind of roofs that apparently need to be mowed, rather than shingled.

If you could choose a bird's-eye view of any place, any time, how about Holland, during tulip season?