Halloween Rerun from 2019: Small World

 

A bindle

It's Halloween, so I have to reminisce about my old days running around the neighborhood dressed as a hobo with my bindle over my shoulder, tramping around collecting Bonomo's Turkish Taffy, and Chunky ("What a chunk o' chocolate!"). And always, always, the little milk carton went with us, collecting coins for UNICEF.

Having been established in 1946 in the wake of the worldwide devastation of World War II, UNICEF (the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) was developed with the aim of "providing lifesaving health care, clean water, nutrition, education, and emergency relief to children and their families." Of course, people were only too happy to drop some coins in the cartons for those needy kids. It felt good!

I see that "Trick or Treat for UNICEF!" is still a thing, bit I honestly cannot remember the last time a kid came to our porch in their Halloween getup and asked for coins. But, they're still in business, doing good things, so that's good.

Now then. Since it's Halloween, it's a good time to remind everyone that it was
the lovely and talented actress Téa Leoni, star of stage, screen, and TV's "Madam Secretary," whose grandmother, Helenka Pantaleoni, co-founded UNICEF.  Téa's father, Anthony Pantaleoni, was once board chair of UNICEF USA, and the actress herself works for the charity as the third generation in her family to be involved.

Not only that...but guess who her great uncle was! Téa's mother, Emily Ann (née Patterson) was from Amarillo, Texas, and her uncle was the great actor Hank Patterson, known for playing roles in 192 different movie and TV productions, most notably Fred Ziffel on "Green Acres," the husband of Doris Ziffel and the "father" of Arnold Ziffel.

Arnold

It's a small world, and crazy. Someone ought to sell tickets.

Think of others

I was never a big fan of "Friends" because it seemed unrealistic to have six people roughly the same age and level of attractiveness living together and randomly coupling on and off. That only happens on "The Young And The Restless."

But I was a fan of Matthew Perry and his comic acting. Like a great many people, he seemed to have trouble coping with success. He knew how his bread got buttered ("My house has a lovely view. That's because I was on 'Friends'") and he was honest about his struggles with substance abuse.  He even moved out of his house and turned it into Perry House, a place for addicts to live while they got help.

He was honest about his life and his problems. He needed help and got it and then offered it to others.  And he once said something that I think bears pondering. That was, "When you’re having a bad day, the best thing you can do is call somebody and ask them how they’re doing and actually pay attention and listen to the answer to get out of your own head.”

And I would add that it's also a good thing to do when you're having a GOOD day. I look around at the world today, the Middle East, Ukraine, the border, and so many people are suffering all overI. The sky is beclouded by gloom and sorrow, but if we each make it a point to call or text someone every day, just to say "hey, how are you?..."
maybe a little light will start to come through the clouds.

Sunday Rerun (10/1/09): Record Time

 I heard that oldie "Popsicles and Icicles" by the  Murmaids on the way down the road this afternoon - didja know it was written by a young David Gates before he started baking  Bread? - and I wondered how I would match up against the hero of the song. How many of the things he loved do I love? And this matters, why, now?

But here are the lyrics:

Popsicles, icicles, baseball and fancy clothes
These are a few of the things he loves
He loves Levis and brown eyes
And wind blowin' through his hair
These are a part of the boy I love

If you put them all together
Much to your surprise (oh tell me what)
You'll find a bit of heaven
Right before your eyes

Bright stars and guitars and
Drive-ins on Friday night
These are a few of the things we love

(May be) silly but still he is
Just what I dream about
Yes, he's the boy that I love

If you put them all together
Much to your surprise (oh tell me what)
You'll find a bit of heaven
Right before your eyes

Bright stars and guitars and
Drive-ins on Friday night
These are a few of the things we love

(May be) silly but still he is
Just what I dreamed about
Yes, he's the boy that I love

Popsicles, icicles
Popsicles, icicles, hmmm

And how did I score? Well, let's check the old National Beer Scoreboard! Popsicles -haven't had one for decades, so fearful of brain freeze again am I, but I guess I liked 'em in my day. Icicles were cool (get it?) when you were a kid and could run around the yard faking like they were daggers. Not so cool when you're Mr Homeowner, and you have to worry about one falling off the rain spout and impaling the guy who's walking up the steps to deliver a package or a pizza or a subpoena. So unless your name is Vlad, and mine isn't, I have to give a big no to icicles. Baseball? You betcha I like that, and fancy clothes...this new suit of mine is not all that fancy. I mean it doesn't have any ruffles on it, and no silk paisley lining. So no, I don't go for fancy clothes.

I love Levi's as a generic term for blue jeans: nothing is more comfortable for goofing around, but I save by buying LL Bean jeans. But, since I still wear jeans, that's a yes. Brown eyes? Oh you'd better believe I love my Peggy's brown eyes - the same color as Root Beer Barrel candies! Now, as far as wind blowing through my hair is concerned, I have to say no. Even when I had long hair (it was required by law in the 70's) I hated having it messed up by wind. Also by earth and fire. I solved all this by going to the buzzcut that I currently sport.

Bright stars? Remember what Will Rogers used to say? (Remember Will Rogers?) He said everybody's stupid, just in different subjects. My understanding of the planets, the solar system, the sun, the moon, the heavenly bodies is just below that of the average 3rd-grader. For this reason, I tend not to look up, for fear of spotting a meteorite or asteroid or stalactite and not being able to identify it. I suppose the stars are still up there, but I have to say it's my academically deficient area.

Guitars, couldn't be a bigger yes. Love 'em. Hendrix. Rick Neilsen. Duane Allman. Making pretty music, and still being openhearted. Yes on guitars.

Drive-ins on Friday night? This could refer to drive-in movies, where young couples of the past would "make out" to the accompaniment of movies starring "Frankie Avalon" in someone's father's "Buick" until someone was "late"...either "late" getting home, or the other, way more serious kind of "late." Or - it could mean one of those burger joints where you pulled up in your car and a young woman on roller skates rolled up to your rolled-down window to take your order, and then brought back food that you sat and ate in your car, on trays that hung off the windows. If you're having trouble picturing either of these concepts, just make sure you don't mix them up in your mind and expect something more than a burger, fries and coke from the woman on skates. I know I did.

I count myself as liking 6 out of 10 things, for a score of 60%. Which is passing, right? Hey - there's something else I like!

The Saturday Picture Show, October 28, 2023

 

Beloved character actor Burt Young ("America's Brother-in-law") died last week. He was in over a hundred movies and TV shows, most notably as "Paulie," in all 57 Rocky movies.

Set your Atomic Disintegrator to 400 and let the other kids know you're not fooling around!

Today's "Gee, isn't fall pretty?" picture is from Eastern Pennsylvania.

The place where Julius Caesar was assassinated is now a refuge for cats. This is a sanctuary for strays in the place where a man who reportedly was ailurophobic - afraid of cats - met his end.

The tiny Italian van that brings books to tiny Italians and full-sized Italians.

Today you just pull "your number" from a strip, but in the days of the Takacheck machine, there was a reassuring clunk when you pushed on that red knob that let the world know, you were # 47! And then you looked up and saw the sign: NOW SERVING #26.

Daring predictions! Strange but sort of true!

If there's anything cuter than a little toy hedgehog, it's a little toy hedgehog wearing socks.

One seed can find its purchase and grow to something lovely. You just never know.

One of the rules at any radio station was always that the list of the hot records in town was typed by someone who knew nothing of the hot records in town, hence "Alone Again, Maturally," "Crocodlie Rock," and "Song Sun Blue." But what a great year for hot hits was 1972, huh?

Lord Help Me I Can't Change

Well, you can't say this is one of those penny-ante crimes, no sirree. But here's the breaking news out of Philadelphia, where federal authorities have charged four men with stealing more than 2 million dimes earlier this year. 

A truckdriver had just filled his trailer with the coins from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, and he decided to take a little snoozaroni before leaving for Miami. While he peacefully dozed in a parking lot, thieves made off with some of the money, and left thousands of dimes scattered all over the parking lot.

The Philadelphia Inquirer says that prosecutors are saying the crooks got $234,500 in stolen dimes - that's 2,345,000 dimes  — as part of a crime wave that also saw people  - possibly that same gang - ripping off frozen crab legs, shrimp, meat, beer and liquor.

Police say they have a video showing six guys wearing hoodies breaking into the truck in the wee small hours of the morning and carrying dime bags to a smaller truck.

No, not dime bags. Bags of dimes. Fixed it.

The indictment says that the money was converted to dollars at coin machines in Maryland and deposits at banks in Philadelphia.

There's no truth to the rumor that the crooks were caught because someone asked them if they had change for the parking meter and they said, "Sure do!"

Hold the press

Long ago, there was a song called "Cherokee Fiddle," written and sung by Michael Martin Murphey, and others. It was about a Choctaw-Irish fiddler named Dean Kirk, who played for passersby at the train station in Silverton, Colorado.

The song describes Kirk as someone always there to play the fiddle, and how things used to be one way, and then changes came, and...

Now, the Indians are dressing up like cowboys

And the cowboys are putting leathers and turquoise on

And the music is sold by lawyers

And the fools who fiddled in the middle of the station have gone

Change changes everything. The Baltimore SUN, long the main newspaper in our town, was composed, printed, and delivered to homes and newsstands all over town from a huge building on Calvert St for many years. 

But they moved their printing operation to a new building on the Baltimore Peninsula (where South Baltimore meets the Harbor) in 1988, and things were still smooth. They even sold the big building in town and moved their offices and newsrooms to the Peninsula in 2018, and had planned to develop their sixty acres of land into an office park, but that all fell through.

Not that many people buy newspapers, not like they used to, and the SUN gave up printing their own paper in 2022. Now it's printed in Delaware, for crying out loud, and shipped down the road in trucks, which is why it doesn't land in my driveway until the sun is high in the sky. I used to have to take a flashlight outside to find it, but not any more.

The new digital age is upon us. News comes to us on our tablets, phones, and computers in the form of webcasts and blogs and fan pages, and for those of us who still enjoy holding a paper paper to see what Beetle Bailey is up to, too bad. They're raising the price of home delivery as high as that Sun up in the sky, and I think they would be just as happy not to print a paper anymore at all.

Just read it online, that's the trend. But what are we to use for tablecloths at the crab feast? 

Check This Out

I speak to you today as a former (long ago) professionally trained grocery store cashier, and I am here to tell you, I don't like to use the self-checkout lines anywhere. 

It's all they seem to have in some stores, or next to all they have, as one solitary plugger pounds on the keys in one of the lanes. There is always a long line there, and you feel like you could save time by just doing it yourself.

But you can't, because sure as sugar, some item will be a stranger to the system, and the register will not recognize it, and the machine will bleat "Please wait for help," and someone will eventually saunter over with the magic swipe card on a little pulley attached to their apron, regard you with a look of frank disgust, and set everything right again with a few key keystrokes. 

I don't like the whole deal. No surprise here, I like to talk to people, and the machine will not talk to me except to say, in a rather arch tone, "Please place your purchases in the BAGGING area," the same way a young parent tells little Pequod not to stick his fork in the electric outlet.

I've never had the nerve to try this one, but I want to show up with some highly personal self-care item and have the machine say, "Please move your OINTMENT to the bagging area."

Ointment is the funniest word in the world. Spread it around.

When You Gotta Go

So you plan on an airplane trip. Let's say the pilots show up sober and the flight crew is able to fight their way through the mob demanding more peanuts, seat upgrades, peace and quiet. And away you go! Or here you come.

Now, let's say you are landing here in Baltimore at the Baltimore/ Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.  And I will say, welcome to Baltimore, hon, and have a looky-loo at the loo (men's or women's) because, ahem, BWI's new bathrooms are among the best in the nation!

I know, you're thinking of the standard pee palace where the soap dispenser actually laughs at you instead of handing you a little dollop of foam, the towel dispenser is empty because the sign says "We're fighting paper waste" and the hot air machine blows even less hot air than Sean Hannity.  And some wise guy even scratched "Dry Hands On Pants" on the instructions.  But B/WITMA has a chance to win the coveted  "America's Best Bathroom" plaque for 2023.

It's all part of a $55 million facelift that I, as a Maryland taxpayer, was delighted to chip in for, because I feel that airline passengers deserve a nice Tinkletown. I just never dreamed we'd make "Architectural Digest." 

IF YOU GO...look for restrooms gleaming white with a blue accent. Stalls have have full-length doors, equipped with red or green lights to let the world know you're in there.  The urinals are spaced widely enough to allow room for a rolling bag to fit next to you. Sensors will alert custodians when the towel dispenser or the soap machine are running low.

And Natural Light comes in through honeycombed privacy windows.

I think that's really nice, to get a new beer while you're getting rid of the last one. 

Bread! Milk! TeePee!

We wait all year for this - truly, from March on, I am looking forward to the next winter as if summer isn't even going to happen.  And the good folks at NOAA are doing their part for us snow lovers.  

They say an El Niño will make a mild winter likely in the North and a stormy one in the cards across the South. And...here it is...winter is likely to bring stormy and rainy weather to Florida and the Gulf Coast, below-normal snowfall in the Plains and Great Lakes, drought relief for the Mississippi River valley and the chance of big snowstorms along the Eastern Seaboard*, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasters.

* That's us! 

Two major weather machines are at work as we look for the scarves and boots: El Niño is getting stronger, and the oceans are getting warmer. That's all it take to throw weather systems and patterns up in the air.

There is this standard backoff: “Other outcomes are always possible, just less likely,” said Jon Gottschalck, chief of the Climate Prediction Center’s operations prediction branch.

Gottschalck says El Niño is “the predominant climate factor driving the U.S. winter outlook this year. ” But he points out that like any other mischievous child, Niño has been known to act erratically in recent decades.

If you have above-normal ocean temperatures in the Pacific, that changes global weather patterns, and the result is floods, heat waves, droughts, and fires.  

That could lead to more chances for big East Coast snowstorms.  

 Looking back over some of our most notable shovel-breakers, they came during El Niño conditions.  Remember Snowmageddon in February, 2010? El Niño. The big one in January 2016? El Niño sent Pacific moisture across the Southern US, which then headed north up the Atlantic coast, met Arctic air, and there you have it, Katie get the shovel out, Pa, get some rock salt on the drive!

There's no guarantee that you'll be sledding a lot this winter. Just don't say we didn't mention it!

 

 

Sunday Rerun (9/4/13): From the world wide spider web

 I've often been told that I should write a book about my experiences working in 911 and public safety.  I am loath to compete with brilliant wordsmiths such as Debbie Macomber, J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown, so I keep nixing the idea.  But here is a story that I like.  It concerns 911 and it has a happy ending, and you rarely see that combination.

It started for me when someone told me that "it was on the news - some teenaged girl called 911 because there was a spider in the house."  I figured I'd look into it, and I'm awful glad I did, because my friend missed a couple of important pieces of the story.

Here is a link to the story on ABC News.  The first thing you need to know is that the young lady, 17-year-old Makenna Sewell, gets around in a wheelchair.  She has muscular dystrophy.  Right away, that puts the story in a different light.

Second thing: she was alone in her house when she spotted the spider, the biggest one she ever saw.

It's believed that the spider was a brown recluse spider, not too rare where Makenna lives.  Days before all this, her mom had been bitten by a brown recluse, which is a venomous type of spider.  Makenna has a compromised immune system, due to her MD, and that makes it all the more important that she avoid being bitten by one.

Makenna tried to call her mother, her father, the friends her parents were with, her own friends and two neighbors...all to no avail.

She realized that if she made a swat at the creature, it would fall to the floor and scuttle away, only to come back out again.

She needed help.  She called the non-emergency police number and asked - asked - if someone could help.

Ms Sewell

 And the police responded after their dispatcher sent them, and they dispatched the spider to Kingdom Come.

Makenna Sewell of Forest Grove, OR (which sounds like a place where spiders and other woodland fauna abound) did the right thing, so did the dispatcher, and so did the police who responded.

Kindly compare that with the young lady who called our 911 several years ago, haughtily informing the calltaker that her father was a big shot, well connected in the county government.  She said her boyfriend had come back from fishing and had been cleaning his flounder on her porch, leaving scales and fish innards all over the porch.  And she demanded - demanded -  that the Fire Dept. send an engine to hose off her porch.

Quick- name the supervisor who suggested she try another plan, involving buckets of water and Ajax!

No, spider extermination is not part of the standard protocols for 911, police, fire, or EMS.  But intelligent, reasonable public service is.  All those folks in Forest Grove ought to be proud!

The Saturday Picture Show, October 21, 2023

 

The one, the only Dolly Parton is out with a book about her styling and her wardrobe, including the sage advice she got from Chet Atkins at RCA Records when she was starting out that she would "never get anywhere with that gaudy image." At least he was man enough to admit he was as wrong as a bus station scale.

The problem many golfers have is a lack of concentration. When you're putting, you should be one with the putter, concentrate on putting that biscuit in the basket, and think of nothing else. So what if the clubhouse is burning down? You can always join Bushwood!

This banana chunk is not at all certain that he wishes to float in your Corn Flakes tomorrow morning.

Oh, the many uses of gourds! They can be turned into utensils, cups, bottles, scoops, ladles, fishnet floats, birdhouses, and musical instruments. How many nights did we thrill to the dance music of Slatts LaMonica and His Musical Gourd? 

Autumn in Vermont! Soon to be followed by Winter in Vermont, and little kids on sleds.

I remember kids eating radishes in their school lunch. Their mom would wrap up a pinch of salt in wax paper, because you have to have salt on your radish. This monster radish, you might as well get the whole package of salt ready!

The Orioles kicked off their playoff series against the Rangers with our beloved superfan Joan Jett's version of the Star Spangled Banner. That was the highlight of the series...

If you saw Pete Davidson's cold open to last week's SNL, you saw the side of him that has appealed to me for years...nonchalant comedy mixed in with very serious thoughts about life. Who better, indeed, than Pete Davidson to talk about terrorism? Total respect. 

Courtesy of our local channel 11, clip this and hook it to your April wall calendar! Everyone who is not on trial on 91 felony charges will want to go outside and not look up.

In my working days, I enjoyed using scary pictures as screensavers to ward off invasions of people going desk-to-desk looking for highlighters, Wite-Out, hole punchers, sticky notes, three-ring binders, printer paper, County stationery, wrapping paper, manila folders, interoffice envelopes, pens, pencils, erasers, staplers, staples, paperclips, pushpins, scissors, glue, Scotch Tape, and Scotch. One look at this toothy visage was enough to send them running!

 

Mercy Me?

Presented without comment:  Detective Daniel Hersl of the Baltimore City Police and his fellow convicted members of the Gun Trace Task Force have cost the city $22.2 million ...and counting....across 39 settlements related to the task force’s misconduct.    

These men and their crimes were seen on TV news, smacking the city in the face with another bruise. Armed with weapons, they literally stomped on citizens, and, figuratively, their constitutional rights, all under the direction of Sgt. Wayne Jenkins. Ostensibly, the task force was set up to get guns off the streets, and violent criminals into prison cells. But the corruption ran rampant as the members of the unit set people up for baseless searches., or robbed them, or they carried toy guns and planted them as phony evidence to cover up their assaults. And they bragged about stealing money in the form of putting in for overtime they did not work - and were, in some cases, not even in the city that was paying them at the time.

 

  

Hersl at the scene of a lawful public assembly in 2015.The stances of the other officers in the picture would indicate that he is the only one who saw it as a combat situation.

Most of this pack of rogues seemed interested solely in garnering as much money as they could steal or extort, in some cases burying metal cash boxes in their yards. But Hersl was known all over for pure brutality. He took fiendish delight in demeaning his victims, not content with just taking their money. He broke a woman's arm. He poured beer on one woman and then hit her in the face with a bottle. 

Found guilty on racketeering charges in 2018, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison. 

In February of this year, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which has metastasized to his lymph nodes, liver, and lungs. Scott Moose, the medical officer at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, attests that Hersl, 53, has less than 18 months left to live. And now he has filed a motion seeking compassionate release, hoping to spend his remaining days living with his 16-year-old son.

I am so, so glad that I am not the person who will decide whether this...this gut-wrenching, foul person...deserves early release from prison. 

Sweet Home Alabama

There is a picture book for children titled "Read Me A Story, Stella" about a little girl name of Stella who reads to her younger brothers to get them to know how wonderful reading is. It's part of a series that has sold 2 million copies in 10 languages; this is volume 7.

How wonderful reading is! Yes.

Patrons of the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library in Alabama will not know how wonderful reading this book is. In their finite wisdom, the nabobs who run that library system put the book on their list of "potentially sexually explicit books" that might be removed from the children's section of their 10 branch libraries.

I know you want to know the reason why such an anodyne book for kids is to be forbidden to kids.  And here it is: the book was written by a woman named Marie-Louise Gay.

“The inclusion of the author’s name was the result of a keyword search to identify potentially targeted subject areas,” said a library official.

As the dumbing down of America continues apace, this is a good time to let you know that my real name is Hal D. Duuti.

 

One swing, one hit

Jeannie Mai is a TV favorite of mine, ever since the days when she hosted a tv show that brought on ill-clad people. Jeannie would go over their sad wardrobes and get rid of the old duds by putting them in a huge air tube. (The clothes, not the people!) I think the show was called "Say Goodbye To Your Tie," if I'm not mistaken.

The other night, CBS broadcast the first installment of "Raid The Cage," her new show in which she stars with Damon Wayans Jr. It reminds me of "Beat The Clock," "Supermarket Sweep," and "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire," except this is sort of a mess. People compete in pairs...one of them answers trivia questions, and based on how many correct answers the "gabber" gets, the "grabber" gets to go inside a prize cage and grab up as much loot as he or she can scarf. Danger! The grabber has to be out of the cage before time is up or all is lost.

This is the type of inanity that the networks are forcing down the TV tubes, since the actors we all miss so much are on strike. This very show should be enough for compel the National Labor Relations Board to step in and force an end to that strike. Pay Donnie Wahlberg as much as he can stand, just get him back to work. 

Sorry, Jeannie.

But we did catch "The Burial," a movie on Amazon about a skilled attorney who steps in to help a businessman who almost lost it all to a slickster. This is the part that Jamie Foxx was born to play. The movie will keep you on the edge of your seat the whole time, no fooling. Four hearty thumbs up!

The topper

Back in 1983, Michael Jackson revolutionized the world of music and dancing when he was performing on a Motown TV special. He was truly at the height of his celebrity status then, and when he tossed off his black fedora and began moonwalking to "Billie Jean," the hat landed off to the side of the stage, and no one has thought much about the topper since then.

But now, it's been up for auction in Paris at the Hotel Drouot, with the hoped-for pricetag of $64,000 to $107,000.

Arthur Perault of the Artpeges gallery has some 200 items of rock memorabilia to sell off, and he will tell you, the prices of Jackson-related relics have fallen lately "due to the sale of fakes and the accusations against him." 

Those allegations of child sexual abuse will continue to dog Jackson's legacy, sad to say. 

The story on this hat is that a man named Adam Kelly picked it up from the stage, figuring that one of Jackson's people would come and take it back, but they didn't, and after several years, he sold it off, and it's passed through the hands of several collectors since.

I love museums and that sort of thing. Seeing old bits of history is interesting to me.

But...there's the old story of someone claiming to own the hatchet with which young George Washington legendarily chopped down a cherry tree. Someone was selling it, goes the story, but admitted that the handle broke years ago, and was replaced, and then the head, having been honed and sharpened so many times, was really down to nothing, so a new one was installed on the new handle. 

Same hatchet, though!

I hope it's the same hat, for the sake of interested buyers.

 

Just saying...

I interrupt my daily meanderings and ramblings about baseball, the best meatloaf in town, and the greatness of Jerry Lee Lewis AND Jerry Lewis, to bring you a picture of a little boy named Wadea Al-Fayoume.

Wadea looks perfectly happy in this picture, apparently taken on his 6th birthday. There's a can of Coke, some gifts, a happy birthday greeting on the TV, one of those sweet "HOME" decorations,  Wadea is wearing a novelty top hat, and the photo was snapped in the home he shared with his mother in suburban Chicago.

The switch to past tense, sad to say, is because Wadea was killed on Saturday. Police have arrested the landlord, one Joseph M. Czuba, 71, and charged him with killing the boy and seriously wounding the lad's mother. 

That's the "what," and here's the "why": the boy and his mom are Muslim. Palestinians, to be exact, and, “this was directly connected to dehumanizing of Palestinians,” said Abdelnasser Rashid, a Democratic Illinois state representative who is Palestinian American.

So because of their religion, Czuba allegedly stabbed them dozens of times with a seven-inch serrated blade. He is being held on charges of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of a hate crime, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

I'm not going to get preachy about this, and please don't @me with who else did what else to whomever, or any other nonsense designed to offset the fact that an old man decided that a boy (and his mother) have no place on this earth because of their religion. It's not for any of us to decide who lives and who dies.

But if you happen to believe that this little boy - or any person of any age - deserves to be killed because of their religious inclination, then you'd better take plenty of ice water with you when you go.

Sunday Rerun (2/25/22) Donut Make My Brown Eyes Blue

 There is a term in the mean world of politics: "Yellow-Dog Democat," meaning that the person to whom this adjective is directed will, without fail, vote for the Democrat in any election, no matter who the opponent is, even if the candidate proffered by the Democrats happens to be a yellow dog.

In response, some moderate-to-illiberal Democrats began labeling themselves "Blue-Dog Democrats," meaning that they would be willing to stand in the middle of the spectrum.

Meanwhile, in Russia, there is an actual pack of actually blue dogs roaming around, and while residents of Dzerzhinsk at first feared some bizarre gene coding gone berserk, turning brown dogs blue and other extreme changes of nature, there is a simple explanation, so don't panic.

These poochie dogs were hanging around the old Dzerzhinskoye Orgsteklo cluster of chemical factories. That business went kaputsky in 2015, but no one bothered to clear out what was left behind.

The poor hounds had rolled around in copper sulfate, which, mixed with water, turns things blue. 

“Dogs are running around the area,” said Andrey Mislivets, the bankruptcy manager of Dzerzhinskoye Plexiglas. “Perhaps, in one of the buildings, they found some kind of chemical residue — copper sulfate, for example, and rolled in it.”

I wish all dogs had happy homes to play in instead of abandoned chemical factories.

By the way, the world of music recently lost the great pianist Hargus "Pig" Robbins, who played piano on hundreds of records you've heard over the years, including Crystal Gayle's "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."

Robbins got that nickname as a child growing up in the Tennessee School For The Blind, where a supervisor knew where to look for him when he was not around: out on a fire escape, "getting dirty as a pig."  He was universally known by that sobriquet by all but Bob Dylan, who found it too disrespectful.

Dylan called on "Mr Robbins" to play on his "Blonde On Blonde" album to get that "Salvation Army band" sound on songs like "Rainy Day Women # 12 and 35."

It's not every day that we can tie Russian dogs to Nashville session piano players, but that's the world we made. Don't be blue about it.

The Saturday Picture Show, October 14, 2023

 

Do you remember the great sitcom "Becker" and the episode where his new girlfriend is planning a party and needs seating, only to find that "Chairs, Chairs, And More Chairs" was out of chairs? Here's their storage area in Instanbul!

Just gotta run into the Try 'N' Save and pick up a pumpkin and a jar of Del Grosso sauce...

There's that golden moment every autumn, as people look across the way and say, "Well, the leaves are changing, Edna." 

I like the focus of this picture, which makes a 1960's Chevy C-10 half-ton pickup its focal point.

My fascination with people doing people things while wearing animal suits takes us back to a dance at Princeton University in 1949, where the school's mascot was seen doing the Charleston. 23 Skidoo!

The results of the Fattest Bear In The World competition are in, and this year's prize goes to Grazer, who lives in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve and pretty much eats anything she wants to.

Bob Uecker had fun while he was a ballplayer, especially when someone showed up with a camera...f'rinstance, he was a right-handed batter, but posed for his baseball card batting lefty...or the time he and Bob Gibson were holding hands in the team picture and no one noticed it until about half a million copies were printed up...fun!

Men, you can always be perfectly dressed if you have this many oxford cloth button-down shirts, a few club ties, a couple of pairs of khakis and a couple of blazers. I will never understand wearing a t-shirt with a suit.

I like to look at power lines stretching across the countryside and think of how nice it is to have electricity to light the house and power our appliances.

It's not exactly a "hut," but this is where the gigantic Pizza Hut chain started way back when... 

Dressed for success

If you have an interest in athletic uniforms, you already know that baseball jerseys and pants used to be made of woolen flannel. The main reason why ballplayers were so reed-thin in the days up to the 1970s was this simple: imagine lugging around a sweat-soaked shirt and pants in the heat of a July afternoon! That's a workout, I tell you. Since the Pirates began the trend in 1970, the uniforms are Nike synthetic fiber, double-knit polyester, lighter and easier to maintain.

Speaking of which - ballplayers traditionally wear white uniforms at home games and grey on the road, for the most part. This was not a choice made by a fashion designer, but, rather, laundry services. Clubs on the road would wear their uniforms day after day rather than seek out a laundromat, so grey was chosen to hide the dirt better. 

If you think like George Carlin did (and more of us ought to!) you wonder why baseball managers and coaches wear the same uniform as their players, and you laugh at the thought of Bill Belichick having his fits on the sidelines in a Patriots uniform instead of one of his ratty hoodies. Dressing as if you were a player only takes place in baseball, and the official reason is the time-honored "We always did it this way!"

But flannel, double knit, burlap, whatever the fabric, it did not matter in Ancient Greece, because in the days of the Ancient Olympics, athletes ran around naked! Fact is, our word “gymnastics” derives from the old Greek words “gumnasía” (“athletic training, exercise”) and “gumnós” (“naked”).   

This being nekkid was to "achieve closeness to the gods" and also help detox skin through sweating. I bring this up in order to inform married guys who are being told to "go put on some pants" are now free to say, "I'm getting close to God and detoxing, honey!"

Results not guaranteed.