Sunday Rerun: When I Grew Up

 We had some sort of after school activity that sunny afternoon, so my mom had to get in the Plymouth and drive to Towsontown Junior High School to pick up her 8th-grader.  I clearly remember that the Beach Boys song "When I Grow Up To Be A Man" was playing on WCAO on the way home.  

It was the fall of 1964, and in the spring of that year, I was supposed to die.  Not at the hands of an irate teacher or some greasers on Ameche's parking lot, you understand, but from some mystery virus that had me sicker than Peter Graves in "Airplane," minus the flatulence.  No one knew why I got sick, but a priest was kind enough to come in and give me the Last Rites.  "Father, I'm not Catholic," I pointed out.

"My son, it can't hurt," he countered.  And then he sat with me and talked about how I might be going to another place, another experience, and asked if I were ready for that.

I was 13! So there were lots of things I hadn't done yet that I have often enjoyed doing since, since I'm on borrowed time.  A week after my conversation with the priest, I was back in school.  Two months later, I was ill again, but this time, no priests came to see me.  I did crush on a nurse named Miss Payne (for real) but I guess she married Dr Kildare or someone because I never heard from her again.

And then whatever virus or -osis I had never came back, but again, that fall, the Beach Boys were singing about how it would be, when I grew up to be a man.  And so far, so good.

"When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)"  By Brian Wilson and Mike Love

When I grow up to be a man
Will I dig the same things that turn me on as a kid?
Will I look back and say that I wish I hadn't done what I did?
Will I joke around and still dig those sounds
When I grow up to be a man?
Will I look for the same things in a woman that I dig in a girl?
(fourteen fifteen)
Will I settle down fast or will I first wanna travel the world?
(sixteen seventeen)
Now I'm young and free, but how will it be
When I grow up to be a man?
Oooooo Ooooooo Oooooooo
Will my kids be proud or think their old man is really a square?
(eighteen nineteen)
When they're out having fun yeah, will I still wanna have my share?
(twenty twenty-one)
Will I love my wife for the rest of my life
When I grow up to be a man?
What will I be when I grow up to be a man?
(twenty-two twenty-three)
Won't last forever
(twenty-four twenty-five)
It's kind of sad
(twenty-six twenty-seven)
Won't last forever
(twenty-eight twenty-nine)
It's kind of sad
(thirty thirty-one)
Won't last forever
(thirty-two . . .)

Checking the scorecard, yes, I still do dig the same things that turned me on as a kid.  All men still laugh at what they laughed at in 5th grade!  I can say that for the most part I don't wish I hadn't done what I did.  I mean, sure, egrets, I've had a few, but then again...always with hot sauce.

Snowy egret

As you can see, I still joke around and I still dig the same
sounds - including this very record!  And I stopped looking for things in a woman less than a decade after this song came along, having found the girl of my dreams in 1973.  I settled down fast, having no inclination to travel the world.  We never were to be blessed with kids, but for the kids and kin I know and love, I hope they don't think I'm a square.  I'm not Justin Timberlake or anything, but then again, I'm not Dick Cheney, for crying out loud.

And finally, yes, I still have my share of fun, although cherry bombs and hitchhiking have very little role in it anymore.  And of course I love my wife, for the rest of my life.

That's why I have all this fun!

So I figure I did all right.  In a few short months, that song will be fifty years old.  I guess it's time to sing it again!

The Saturday Picture Show, December 21, 2024

 

This cool candle holder will be easy to make. One can find old silverware in any antique store,  and the fork and spoon will be easily bendable with a vise and vise-grip pliers. Sand and stain a block of wood and there you have it!

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is quite a deal. I can't look at it without thinking of Holden Caulfield and Sally Hayes ice-skating at Radio City, but that's my nostalgia.

Even the monks way up in the Himalayas count on Amazon. 

Here's your proof: camouflage clothing works!

This guy can hear people whisper two counties away!

This chrysanthemum is to remind you warm-weather fiends that spring will be here according to plan.

Remember the early days of pc's, when every time you went to do something, this goofy google-eyed guy popped up?

A real Tasmanian Devil is not cute like the cartoon version. These are nasty little critters! 

I wouldn't be the holidays without Magoo and razzleberry pudding! 

Early each morning, these bears meet for a strategy session for the day. It will be decided that Yogi will be in charge of stealing pick-a-nick baskets.

Oh, Rats!

Kelly Lambert found something very interesting recently, namely, that rats would rather drive than walk. I'm talking about real rats here, not that guy who stole your parking spot at the Bi-So-Lo the other day. 

Kelly is a professor and neuroscientist down at the University of Richmond. She rigged up tiny cars to see if rodents could get behind the wheel and scoot on down the road.

“Unexpectedly, we found that the rats had an intense motivation for their driving training, often jumping into the car and revving the ‘lever engine’ before their vehicle hit the road,” Lambert wrote in an essay last week.

Of course,  this wasn't some carnival attraction she was working on.  Dr. Lambert is exploring how animals relate to their environments,  how we develop cognition study aims to explore the relationship between animals and their environments, how their cognition develops, and how they process new skills. The rat-driving research went viral in 2022 and even wound up featured in a Netflix documentary.

Dr. Lambert says the joy the rats felt at driving could be partially attributed to the Pavlovian response of getting a little rat treat (a Froot Loop) for their stint behind the wheel, but also, she noticed that even without their Loop, the rodents just loved to drive for the sheer thrill of it all.

“Rather than pushing buttons for instant rewards, they remind us that planning, anticipating and enjoying the ride may be key to a healthy brain,” she wrote.

I keep hearing that teenagers are not in a particular hurry to learn to drive these days, and frankly, I don't blame them. A couple of miles around the Beltway is enough to make me want to call a cab.

Maybe they would send a tiny car with a rat driving. 

Save me a cup!

 I'll bet you enjoy looking at webcam images as much as I do! There are billions of sights you can see from your phone or pc...eagles' nests...your kid's school yard...Times Square...the line for Thrasher's French Fries in Ocean City, MD...a beautiful sunset 1/2 way around the world..and you can see all this majesty for free! (as long as you pay your internet access bill.)

You won't be surprised to learn that it was some pioneering computer guys, Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky, who were working the Trojan Room, the computer lab at the University of Cambridge, who developed the first webcam.

It was 1991. Stafford-Fraser and Jardetzky were given the task (I refuse to say "they were tasked") of helping the other brilliant men and women in the lab find out if any coffee was available in the communal Mr Coffee. These were busy people! Walking to the coffee room, only to come back with an empty mug, was a colossal waste of time, so S-F and J rigged up a digital camera, pointed it at the drip-o-lator, and fed the live image to everyone's screen.

Eventually, the entire world wide web knew if there was coffee to be had, and the idea went world-wide.

Dag. Coffee lovers are serious about getting their Java jive!

Stop in the name of the law!

Baltimore County school transportation officials have installed cameras on county school buses to get nice souvenir photos of jerkface motorists who just race on by as school buses stop to drop off or pick up kids (hereinafter known as "students.")

At first, police only handed out warnings - law enforcement's version of a school deficiency slip - but since November 4, maleficent motorists have been opening their mailboxes at home to find a real $250 ticket in there amidst the junk from Omaha Steaks, Ollie's Bargain Outlet, Old Navy, and O'Reilly Auto Parts. 

So far, they've sent over 7,400 citations for this asinine and potentially homicidal behavior. Last year, before the advent of the cameras, they wrote 148 citations. 

Don't even try to tell me you didn't know you had to stop your car to allow students to get on or off their buses. The flashing sign sticking out of the side of the bus tells you to STOP 🛑.

I know, you're in a hurry to get to the office for that all-important conference call with the home office, or to get little Agnes to the orthodontist, but just STOP for a stopped school bus, please. 

Stocking up

 Quick quiz: what do Maryland, Alaska, and Rhode Island have in common? 

Beside "seafood," it's beer!

As in, we are one of the three states where beer drinkers can't ankle into a grocery store and stock up on suds. We are also among the group of ten states where one can't buy wine and Worcestershire sauce at the same time. No oenophile, I, so it hardly makes a Ripple of difference to me.

We finally have a governor, Wes Moore, who sees the error in all this. He's going to ask his Buds in the legislature to straighten out this Schlitz and support a proposal that would allow beer and wine  purchases in grocery stores. It's an issue that comes up every year or so here.

“We are the only of our neighboring states to ban the sale of either in grocery stores — resulting in less consumer choice and putting our stores at a disadvantage,” Moore said in a statement. “Lifting this ban puts the consumers first, and ensures fair competition in the marketplace.”

Maryland law restricts alcohol sales to liquor stores owned by Maryland residents.

Quick quiz # 2: who would oppose making it easier for us to buy the beer and wine we enjoy with dinner? Ah. That would be the people who own liquor stores.  Of course they're fighting the governor on this, because if I can grab my Natty Boh along with my nectarines and Navy beans, I won't need to stop at Hi-Price Discount Liquor on the way home. 

Everyone loves capitalism until they don't. So here's my free advice to the soon-to-be-heartbroken liquor store owners: sell me my beer for less than the grocery store does! Maybe you'll have to cut your vacation in the South of France down from two weeks to one, and hang on to the Bentley for another year, but let's crack a cold one to celebrate your decision to stay in business! 

Eternal

We have a lantern outside, over the basement door. The incandescent bulbs I used to put in it lasted about about as long as a Kardashian marriage, 'til the day I replaced the fixture and used one of those new (at the time) LED bulbs, and I can't even remember how long that bulb's been aglow, but it's been a good while now. 

Climbing up ladders and replacing burned-out bulbs is one of those concepts long since relegated to the dustbin of history along with caroling door to door on snowy Christmas Eves, and snowy Christmas Eves. Bulbs burn forever now (watch this one go dark tonight, knowwhaddimsayin?) And while I hope this has not been a hardship on the people who work at light bulb factories, it's probably saved many a choredoer many a climb and fall.

But out in Livermore (you can picture someone saying, "Livermore" but who says, "more liver, please!") there is, at Fire Station 6 (4550 East Ave) an old time incandescent bulb that's been lit since 1901, with some exceptions, such as the 1937 firehouse renovations, the time in 2013 when the uninterruptable power supply died, and when it was moved to its present location.  So, except for those minimal gaps, this bulb has been on the job for 123 years, and who among us can make that claim? 

The bulb originally glowed at 60 watts' worth. Today, if you were trying to read this under the eternal bulb, you'd only get 4 watts of light, and its main purpose, beside being a tourist attraction, is as a nightlight for Station 6.

They have a Webcam so you can see it for yourself: http://bulbcam.cityofpleasantonca.gov/view/view.shtml?id=116787&imagepath=%2Fmjpg%2Fvideo.mjpg&size=1

Whoever bought the bulb in 1901 certainly got their money's worth!

Sunday Rerun from 2008: Things I Learned from Andy Hardy Movies

 Today was a good day to relax, so after I went to physical therapy and burned off some ham and pie, Peggy and I had a nice dinner and enjoyed watching "The Courtship of Andy Hardy"  on Turner Classic Movies.

This was the twelfth in the series of Hardy Family 

movies, and I while I wouldn't recommend them to anyone seriously studying American mores and folkways of the 1930's and 40's, they are just swell for lolling away a lazy afternoon.

And what you can learn!

First of all, you get Mickey Rooney as Andy Hardy, and life mirrors art as he struts his way through all sorts of trouble with the young ladies in his life. Rooney himself (born Joe Yule, Jr in 1920) is still around, and has been in show business since 1921, so even when he was making this particular movie in 1942, he had been performing for 21 years already. I think he has been married like seven times or something ridiculous. 
So, you watch the guy, and you're seeing a ton of talent.

From the movie, we learn that Melodie ,played by the lovely Donna Reed, is considered a drip - a real "drizzle-puss" - by Andy and his school buddies. Melodie is so hideous that Andy, whose father, the judge, strongarms  him to take this repulsive mess to the school dance, has to pay his friends to twirl her around the dance floor on their first date. Come the second date, and Melodie has learned a lesson. She simply puts her hair up and all of a sudden, all the guys realize she is quite pretty. Modern-day corollaries to this include sitcoms where some woman takes off her glasses, shakes out her hair, and suddenly, the handsome bachelor in the office goes, "Why, Miss Framingham! Without your glasses, you...you're...STUNNING!" And then they go and do it someplace.

Another common myth spun by Hollywood writers who have never lived among us but write about us as if they had is the legend of the Pretty Girl Who Sits Home On Saturday Night because everyone thinks she is all dated up and they don't even dare to dream to ask her out, so she sits at home with her hair up in italics, knocking back Diet Sprites and fudge. Son, that does not happen, and hookers don't have hearts of gold like in "Pretty Woman" and nobody participating in Roman chariot races wore a wristwatch like that one guy did in "Ben-Hur."

And, when Andy's know-it-all sister goes out on a date with a fellow who is known for being "fast" (he should have been known for being "loud"; he drove around in a car with a huge PA system so he could call out to people in houses and other cars - sort of like a pre-Nokia one-way cell phone) the guy gets shafahzed and Andy's dad throws the contents of a pitcher of water (which every kitchen always has sitting right there, right?) on the guy's melon, and of course he sobers right up and comes to his senses about this alcohol problem he's not going to allow to get the best of him.

The Hardys all dressed up big-time for dinner, at the dining room table with the solemn old judge carving and serving. Today, many families sit in their underwear, guzzling Coors Light and eating pizza, while watching "Deal Or No Deal." I am so worn out now, just from trying to get a visual on Judge Hardy tipping a Domino's guy, I think I'll put on my suit and fedora and go to bed.

The Saturday Picture Show, December 14, 2024

 

Those foggy days we had this past week still seemed sort of festive. Because it's the most wonderful time of the year!

The next time someone calls you a big mouth, ask if they're comparing you to a great white shark. 

It's the law of nature...most creatures fear a leopard, but even a leopard is afraid of something! 

Daily agenda: get up, make bed, sing "Eye Of The Tiger," get dressed. In those four simple directives we find the meaning of life!

It makes no sense that the hapless driver of this Mansion On Wheels is wedged tightly in a drive-thru, especially since there's a full kitchen in that RV and he should cook his lunch right there!

This week's free wallpaper shows a bleak landscape of bare trees and telephone poles.

Even if you don't have the loot to buy a Christmas tree, you can still string up some lights, and who's gonna know? 

Here's where Clark W. Griswold parked the Family Truckster.

Sad to hear the US government has declared the Monarch Butterfly endangered, in spite of its resemblance to the Maryland state flag.

Good night, everybody!

Looks just like ya!

It's happened again in the MidEast, this time in Syria, where the despotic government of President Bashar al-Assad was toppled over the weekend, as were statues of al-Assad.

This seems to be a common practice in that part of the world, where cruel rulers measure their terms in office by decades, but also leave their limousines running outside their palatial homes, since their terms in office tend to end shortly after the formation of enraged mobs. They need to get away pronto!

I do have to say, the statue makers of Syria have something in common with American bobble-head manufacturers, in that nothing looks like the guy it's supposed to depict. Or guys.

Head East!

 I can't tell you what I was listening to the other day, but I heard someone mention the town of Atlantic, Iowa.

I'm no geographer, but I know Iowa is a state pretty much in the middle of these United 50 States. It seems odd to mention the Atlantic Ocean, way out there in corn-fed Iowa, like when we Marylanders find ourselves in Iowa, being offered "Maryland crab cakes" for dinner. 

I didn't have anything better to do, so I looked it up.  Atlantic is the county seat of Cass County and sits on the banks of the mighty East Nishnabotna River. Last time anyone counted noses (2020) they tallied 6,792 Atlanticans, which was down from 7,257 (2000).

The books tell us that Atlantic was founded in October 1868 by Franklin H. Whitney, B.F. Allen, John P. Cook, and others. 

And they're still arguing about where the name for the town came from. Best guess is that the town fathers figured they were halfway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, maybe a tad bit closer to the Atlantic.

That little pointer is pointing to Atlantic, Iowa.

What I think, Ocean City, Maryland, should invite the entire town of Atlantic to come east for a weekend and see the ocean for which their town is named. 

Easy does it

 There are all sorts of cookbooks and blogs about "cooking for one" so I'd like to share some thoughts about "cooking on one leg." I'm supposed to get up and strut around the house in my post-surgical era, and Peggy is doing so doggone many things, including taking care of the cat, the financials, hauling me around from therapy to doctor visits, sorting out my meds, etc, that I can at least prop myself and my walker in front of the stove long enough to turn out some chow.

So, I saw this idea on "Simply Recipes" and I thought I'd share it. Splash down some tomato sauce as a bed for non-frozen ravioli pillows, cover with more sauce and meat if you will (I will) and finally a layer of shredded mootcerell (aka mozzarella).

Bake it till dinnertime and enjoy! Tell them you made lasagna.  Who doesn't like lasagna? 

Her name is a musical term meaning "with sweetness"

Some of the great staffers at the physical therapy place that's like my second home again and I got to talking about the college football playoffs the other day. I mean, after we exhausted the topic of my new metal knee.

We talked about the playoffs and the likelihood that Alabama wouldn't be invited to participate, so as to make room for a traditional powerhouse team, Southern Methodist U. 

And, I mentioned that when the College Football Playoff series began in 2014, former Secretary of State and noted college football fan Condoleezza Rice was on the selection committee along with 12 others.

Remember, in those days before a championship system was put in place, you had people arguing all through the off-season that their team should have been recognized as the nation's best "because we won the Tostitos Bowl last year."

Ms Rice and the dozen others were tasked with choosing four teams to play in the national semifinals and seed them accordingly, with the winners of two preliminary bowl games meeting for the official national championship.

Her expertise was garnered by being the daughter of a football coach, a lifelong Alabama and Cleveland Browns fan, and through her supervision of Stanford University athletics during her days as that school's provost.

On the selection committee, she served alongside such football luminaries as former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne, former quarterback Archie Manning, Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez, USC Athletic Director Pat Haden, and former Stanford and Notre Dame head coach Tyrone Willingham.

There is an entirely different system now, so keep an eye on the bowl games to see who advances to the championship game. Condoleezza Rice will be watching, as will the the Crimson Tide of Alabama.

Lay down

You've probably wondered why people hold up lighted cigarette lighters at concerts (or glowing cell phone screens, in venues where the fire marshal wisely banned open flames).

It goes back to Woodstock and it started with Melanie, the folksinger. As she told it, "I didn't go on until after Ravi Shankar. It started to rain. I finally got on. I went on stage, totally terrified. Right before, an announcer made an inspirational announcement about passing out candles. Somewhere in there, I absorbed all of that.



"And then, I had an out-of-body experience. I did. I really did. I left my body. I watched myself.

At some point, I was back in my body. I felt this incredible glow of human connectedness. I was not afraid any more. I sang my heart out for a half-hour. I did 'Beautiful People.' I was all inspired. I left that stage with 'Candles in the Rain' in my head. Because I was an unknown and went on that stage as an innocent, and I left that stage as an instant celebrity."



So we went from flickering candles at Woodstock to waving our cells at venues nationwide, and we give credit to Melanie, who passed away earlier this year at 76.

Sunday Rerun: This is whey too crazy

 I think that the people who sit in the bigwig offices at America's leading corporations sometimes sit around and think too much.

Witness this latest legal action, filed by Kraft Foods.  Kraft is the manufacturer of Cracker Barrel cheese.  This is the leading brand of big-chunk cheddar cheese; they make 20 styles of it in wedges and bars, and, God bless our laziness, they will even sell it to you in cracker-sized slices, saving us the arduous task of taking a knife and actually slicing our own cheese.

They've got their Roquefort in an uproar because the popular Cracker Barrel Country Store chain is planning to get into the grocery business, selling lunch meats, glazes, jerky and summer sausage.

(By the way, for all those so indignant about making English the official language of these United States, by cracky, you have to stop saying "jerky" now to describe your inedible dried-meat-that-tastes-like-leather.  The word "jerky" comes from the Spanish "charqui," meaning burned meat, so you are forbidden to say that anymore, capiche?)

So, the big cheese wheels  have decided that you and I are so dumb that we wouldn't know the difference between Cracker Barrel cheese and Cracker Barrel Sliced Liverwurst.

Cracker Barrel Cheese came into being in 1955; the restaurant chain started in 1969.  I have been an avid consumer of the former since I was just a little sharp cheddar, and have dined sumptuously at the latter since, I guess, the 1980s, when they opened shop around this way.

Maybe I'm unaware, but I have never confused the two entities.  Cheese at the grocery store and the highway-side restaurant with the great breakfasts and marvelous grits are two totally different things, clearly.  Have you ever thought they were one and the same?

Here's my idea:  have the lawyers from both sides meet up at a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store halfway between the two corporate offices.  As soon as everyone tucks into a nice Momma's Pancake breakfast (above) all this wrangling and feuding will seem like it was a long, long time ago!

The Saturday Picture Show, December 7, 2024

For those of us who love everything about winter, there's nothing prettier than  a cold, bleak, stark, snowy landscape. 

Darlene Love performed her classic "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) for years on the Letterman show...this was the last time, in 2014.

You tv contest fans recognize this...it's the Masked Singer.

2001 was the kind of year when someone thought it was a good idea to tape the Teen Choice Awards because *someone* would want to see it again as the years went by.

No further comment needed. 

The cool kids always light up the night. 

Tonight on Hallmark Channel: "A Very Astigmatic Christmas"

In gun-crazy America, you can sneak a gun into a theater, but you can't sneak in your own snack. But the wise guys figured a workaround. 

That would be an epic reversal! 

We look forward every year to the Fireplace App on cable...and so does the scoreboard operator at Fenway Park.