The Saturday Picture Show, April 27, 2024

All right, you Kyles, you know what you have to do. And then grab your friend Katy and head on down to Katy, Texas!

Here in Baltimore, we remember when Luke was an assistant coach with Towson University, and his dad came to a game also attended by Barack and Michelle Obama (her brother coached the other team). That might have been the only time in his recent life that Bill Murray was the third-most-famous person in a room.

This is something 911 operators learn quickly. There are a dozen other ways to help in a frenzied situation, all of them better.

You own a lavender farm. OF COURSE you paint your chair to match!

No, they don't have Big Boy restaurants in the middle of farm fields in Wyoming, but BB himself is there to say hi just the same!

You've never seen a molting cardinal before? You can never say that again!

This is no way to treat a valuable asset, or a rifle.

Thank you to the great Robert Benchley, whose friends David Niven and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr, once arranged for him a European vacation. First they heard from him was a cablegram from Venice reading "STREETS FULL OF WATER.  ADVISE."

We learned that a zoo in Japan has admitted to an error in having referred to the hippopotamus above as a male, whereas it has now been shown to be female. The reason given is that the staff became suspicious the hippo was not displaying male behavior characteristics. I'm not saying another word.

"I'm not expecting to grow flowers in a desert. But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime." ("In a Big Country," by Big Country, 1984.)  This is a lovely desert flower in Utah.

 

Reach Out and Touch Someone

One thing I both liked and disliked about work was that there was structure. One had to be at work on time, dressed appropriately, and carry out the duties of one's assigned position. 

The bad part was having to be somewhere at some arbitrary time, having to dress in more than sweats and a T-shirt, and having to get things done.

Retirement means setting one's own schedule, although I am still an early riser (0505 hours, 7 days a week) because I like getting a jump on the day, and Eddie would just jump on my head if I was still slumbering at 0506.

I should point out to new readers that Eddie is a cat, ten years of age, and set in her ways.

One thing we absolutely will not do is spoil Eddie.

So anyway, being not at work beats being at work. One thing I do miss is seeing friends and co-workers and co-workers who are also friends on a regular basis. Caught up in the daily whirl of working the Jumble, watching the morning news, streaming Gilmore Girls, listening to Keith Olbermann's podcast, having an apple for lunch, it's easy to say, "Oh, I was gonna call so-and-so just to check in, but maybe tomorrow...there's an article about cheese imports I've been wanting to read. 

And that's a good way to have a bad thing, feeling out of the loop. 

So the other day when one of those things that I just had to share with someone from work happened, I picked up the phone and called a friend! And spoke to a friend in live words, not in Instapictures or Facialbook works. It was fun! We nattered on, laughing over memories, passing along new thoughts, having the best time. 

All I want to say is, if you want to feel like you're still in the loop, pick up a phone and get looped in. You'll feel like you never left!

In His Cups

You will recall that several years ago, our nation was riven into two factions: those who agree that a Foot-long Subway sub should measure 12", and those who said that you don't need to measure your lunch, so shut up, already,

And now, from Deep In The Heart Of, a Texas movie-goer is suing the Cinemark movie chain, saying they cheat you on your drinks.

This is currently tying up the federal court in Sherman, Texas.

Outraged consumer Shane Waldrop filed the papers. He paid for a "24 ounce" tub o' suds at the fabulous Cinemark Tinseltown theater in Grapevine, TX. He paid $9.53 (I guess they still take American money in Texas, at least until they make good on their threat to secede) for a draft beer.

Having guzzled same, he took the container outside and measured its capacity at just 22 ozs. Waldrop is claiming he has been "financially injured" by this setback. No word on if or how he might be able to recover. 

His landmark lawsuit claims violations of Texas's Deceptive Trade Practices Act, negligent misrepresentation, common law fraud, and unjust enrichment.

He wants:

• compensatory damages 
• Cinemark to repackage its 24-ounce drinks "with the proper amount of advertised liquid"
• a jury trial  
• "one of them really shiny belt buckles" and a T-shirt that says "I handled the 24 ouncer!"

All right, I made the last one up.

But I think the takeaway here is that you can drink draft beer in the movies in Texas.  Be glad for that, Tex.

I wonder if he'll say he's like Nelson Mandela

 Andrew Wilhoite, 41, an exemplary citizen from out of Lebanon, Boone County, Indiana, is so public-spirited that he ran for, and won, a primary election for a seat on his township board.

You can't beat a prison mugshot.

His candidacy has been made all the more noteworthy in that last week, he was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter for killing his wife by striking her with a flowerpot days after she filed for divorce in 2022.

She had just recently finished chemotherapy treatment for cancer.

Police looked his way when 41-year-old Elizabeth “Nikki” Wilhoite did not come to work one day, and Andrew admitted to them he killed her during an argument, then dumped her body in a creek near her home.

Meanwhile, the wheel of politics continued apace in Indiana, and out of 276 total votes for Republicans,  Andrew received 60 of them. 

Only three candidates were in the running for three slots on the Clinton Township Board.  

Andrew was a lock to get on the board, and now, when he is sentenced on June 4, he'll find out that he's locked up for 10 to 30 years in the stony lonesome.

No word on whether he will be sworn in to the board when he's released. 

I'm sure it was a witch hunt.

 

Money Talks

 

Several things are true at once about basketball, among them:

• The rise in popularity of Caitlin Clark, soon to be a rookie in the WNBA with Indianapolis, has contributed mightily to the rise in popularity of women's basketball.
• Even non-basketball fans follow and support Caitlin, the #1 draft pick in the women's league, while most non-fans could not tell you the name of last year's top pick in the male league (Victor Wembanyama)
• Wembanyama made $12.16 million for his first year, while Clark will make $76,535 for her rookie season.

Forbes magazine, the bible of capitalism, is asking, "Can Caitlin Clark fix the WNBA and NBA pay gap?"

That's asking a lot from one person.  As Kareem Abdul-Jabbar points out, the NBA is a $10 billion business with teams playing 82 games per year.  The WNBA teams play 40 times, and the league itself rolls in $200 million worth of hard-earned fan dollars.

And the women are working under a contract that allows them to carve out just 10% of that pie, whereas the men slice 40% out of their league's much bigger pie. The women's contract is not up for renewal until next year.

You could look it up - baseball players and football players did not make the huge salaries everyone envies these days. People love to say that yesterday's heroes were much better than today's players, well, you had to be among your sport's immortals to crack $100,000 in the 1960s. 

The Baltimore Orioles' greatest pitcher ever was our beloved Jim "Pancakes" Palmer, who, as a 20-year old, won Game Two of the 1966 World Series, shutting out the heavily-favored Los Angeles Dodgers. 

Palmer earned $7,500 that year and spent the offseason selling suits to men at Hamburger's Clothing downtown - he needed the extra $150 a week "to pay for groceries, hot water and electricity.”

As the 70s dawned, it dawned on a labor lawyer named Marvin Miller that the baseball clubs were raking in astronomical amounts of money and saving most of it for themselves, while putting on the old poor mouth and feigning poverty. Miller got the owners to have to open their books and show their profit-and-loss statements, and the next thing you know, the Lords of Baseball had to split their Golden Egg omelet more fairly.

The WNBA players are going to generate a lot of money. They play a much more entertaining and watchable game, to my mind. That will translate to ticket, TV, and cable revenues, and if they find the Marvin Miller of the 2020s, these tall women won't be playing for short money soon.

 

"Judgment is merciless to one who has not shown mercy"

If you saw the docudramaseries (See? Anyone can make their own homemade portmanteau*!) "We Own This City," you remember the rampant crime family that terrorized the city of Baltimore for several years. City police were reluctant to do anything about these marauders because...the marauders were themselves city police.

And, remember, this was a true story, not something made up in Hollywood. The leader of the syndicate that operated as the "Gun Trace Task Force" was a preening strutter named Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, whose main goal was amassing a huge fortune by stuffing the steel cans buried in his backyard with stolen money. Jenkins, now known as "#62928-037," is a guest at a federal prison in Kentucky But another officer in the motley crew, Daniel Hersl, was regarded as the nastiest of the nasty, a boy who came up from the rough streets of East Baltimore, donning blue and brutalizing his former neighbors to an extent that even surprised his fellow cops. 

When the merciless beg for some mercy.

Hersl is serving an 18-year federal prison sentence, and last year, he was given the worst news: terminal cancer is killing him. So last fall, he asked a judge if he could be excused from prison because he wanted to spend time with his young son before death takes him away.

The judge turned him down.

So now, back comes Hersl. He says he wants to take responsibility and apologize for what he did on the streets and courtrooms. Remember, these rogues went down for racketeering (for stealing money from people), lying to investigators, filing false paperwork and making fraudulent overtime claims.

Federal court records show an email Hersl sent to his attorney containing these words:   

  "This horrible disease has allowed me to do some soul searching, and I believe that, at this point in my life, it is time to do what is best for me and so many others that the GTTF may have affected. I'm truly sorry for the way myself and others that I worked with acted and treated others during our time as police officers ... I know it has been over seven years since the GTTF scandal occurred, and, to my knowledge, I have still not heard anyone apologize to the public or to the justice system for our actions."

So he decides to be the bigger man, saying, "I accept full responsibility for my conduct."

The time to accept full responsibility for his actions was the day he pinned on the badge he soon disgraced. Today, he is accepting the results of his failure to do so.

* a portmanteau is a term for a new word created by fusing two old ones, such as "breathalyzer" (breath analyzer) or "fortnight" (two weeks of fourteen nights).  Originally, a portmanteau was a French suitcase that opens into two parts.

Sunday Rerun: He's Finnished

 Let's turn to the News From All Over The World:  The deputy mayor of the capital of Finland is in a legal jam. People want him to  pay compensation for damages and to quit his deputy mayorship, because he was caught spray-painting graffiti in a railway tunnel.

The guy's name is Paavo Arhinmäki, he is one of four deputy mayors in Helsinki, and the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency says it's going to cost them 3,500 Euros ($3,830 American) to sandblast the graffiti.

It's not like he's 13, the average age of someone with a can of spray paint in their hand. This dude is 46 and holds a responsible position, and now it seems he is responsible for the damage to a rail tunnel.

Finnish art experts appraised his work and say it looks like he was inspired by New York City sprayed damage from the 70s.

And this being 2023, Arhinmäki couldn't wait to get on Facebook to talk his way out of it, or try to. He admits to being a graffitier in his younger days and supporting "street art," that field of endeavor in which the artist confuses public property for his own canvas. 

Oh, and he apologized for his "stupid fooling around."

Finland’s largest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, showed off the deputy mayor's handiwork in a tweet.

This is in a tunnel used by cargo trains, so it's not like he chose a "canvas" where his genius would be shared with many people, just a conductor and a hobo or two.

“I have committed a crime and bear full responsibility for it,” Arhinmäki said, but he also said he refuses to quit.

Every year, Helsinki spends almost 3/4 of a million dollars to remove illegal graffiti in that city of 650,000 residents, whose lives are not measurably improved by having a politician spraypaint all over the place.

 

The Saturday Picture Show, April 20, 2024

 

At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, this is known as The Immovable Ladder. It's been there since the church was built in the Fourth Century. Nothing about the church can be moved without the agreement of the six branches of Christianity, so the ladder stays, as anyone who ever tried to organize a bazaar and bake table at a church can tell you.

If you're a boy this age, your only thought right now is not "should I?" but "Will I get caught?"

For $100, a man bought a wrecked plane and has turned it into a treehouse. Oak-Kay!

Your breakfast comes with a little added kindness.

I'm not at all sheepish about making the obvious joke!

That dude looks like he's snagging popcorn with his tongue to keep his hands non-buttery. He knows What It Takes to Walk This Way.

If you're into Dungeons and Dragons, this is the garage in Wisconsin where the game was invented, many millions ago.

Don't tell me animals don't smile!

We understand that it is, or at least used to be, a longstanding tradition to have an oil painting portrait of the great people of business, law, commerce, and what-have-you hanging in the very space where once The Great One worked. But this one! I haven't the foggiest who this is. I'm sure his name is something like J. Wellington Turnipbroth, but I have to ask if they couldn't have found a better way to memorialize him than to hang a painting of him saying, "Now see here, Porter..."

A drone's-eye view of trees recently felled by a storm.

.

The Kids Are Still Alright

One thing I look forward to every year is the chance to be one of the Experienced People interviewing members of the junior class at my old alma mater and stomping grounds (literally!), Towson High School. 

Every April, every junior prepares a résumé, dresses up as if going to an interview, and reports with their English class to the school library, where they spend 15 minutes or so with one of us, doing a mock interview. Since everyone will be interviewed for something down the line, be it for college admission, military enlistment, or a job, it's best to have a tryout before the real fastballs of life come at you.

I enjoy this every year. With very few exceptions, the students take it very seriously, and do a heck of a job. As someone who still largely clings to his teenaged sensibility, I relate to 17-year-olds, and these folks are at that wonderful age: old enough to drive a car and register to vote, but still young and full of hope, without it being clouded by cynicism. They have the technological advantage of being born with computers and cell phones at their fingertips from the start, and they want to make it a better world. I think they will, if earnestness and sincerity are any indicators.

Tell you the truth, I get a lot out of this annual exercise too. It recharges my belief that the future is very bright, with these guys taking over. This bunch had the COVID awfulness hit them while in 7th grade. Several of them told me they were alone in the house with parents at work and their only connection was their computer, and they did great on their schoolwork because teachers and parents cared enough to keep things reasonably together for them. They've seen sadness and rough times but that teen sheen is still on them, and I hope it never leaves.

Thank you, THS '25!

PS - Speaking to us superannuated types - the school is still full of lockers. The students don't use them! They tote their books and Chromebooks and water bottles and healthy snacks in backpacks just slightly smaller than the ones used for Admiral Byrd's expedition. I wish we had had them!

PSS - There was a certain waxy smell about the library entrance when I first paraded down that hallway in September, 1966. It still smells just the same. I think the school must have purchased a lifetime supply of Johnson's Library Hallway Wax. I'm sure they'll be running out sometime...

 

Burnt

All of a sudden, I hear people talking about the Burnt Toast Theory and I wonder how they knew that I have decided, if I ever get back on the radio, to go by the fake name "Burt Toast." Perfect for a morning deejay, eh?

No, and anyway, they're talking about some sort of Tik-Tok meme about burnt toast, and as a non-Tiky-Toker, I have not seen what they mean, but what I read is that if your toast burns one morning and you have to take time to pop in two more slices of Pepperidge Farm, it might not be the worst thing ever to happen.

I think of the girl who was a year behind me in junior high and high school who, ten years later, was driving down Falls Rd and was hit by a bullet fired by some kids who had found a gun and played with it. The woman was pregnant, and as I recall the story, they saved the baby, but the mom died from the bullet wound, and it led to thinking that if she had been at that exact spot one second earlier or one second later, it would not have happened.

But it did, proving the veracity of Alan Seeger's words about having a rendezvous with death at some disputed barricade.

And on the brighter side, the minutes you spend re-toasting might give you time to think about a new idea for your job, a new way to tell your partner about how deep your love is, a chance to sing "We Want Mine" while the Toastmaster General does its thing... 

Enjoy your extra moments. We all want ours!

Left To Remember

Among my many ( 27 and counting) rituals and daily habits is a nightly half-hour listening to "The Great Gildersleeve" as I perform my nightly ablutions and prepare for another night of golden slumber.

It's an old radio comedy from the 40s and 50s, centered on the antics of a smalltown bachelor water commissioner, his niece and nephew whom he's raising, his cook and housekeeper, his coterie of lady friends, and the members of his social club: the police chief, the town judge, the barber, and the druggist. 

Try it, you might like it. I never try to talk people into hearing it, because it is most definitely not modern or classically witty or cool at all, but I love it because I am none of those myself.

For those who like American History (✋) it's interesting to look at America during the war years. They mention rationing of food and gasoline because they were facts of everyday life. A lot of the shows feature ads for margarine and Velveeta, two food products that came off the bench during the war to fill in for butter and cheese, which were in short supply. The alternative to gasoline, also scarce, was walking to work. Different world.

But while I say it was a different world, and so long ago, I got to thinking about one episode in particular. The show was broadcast live on NBC radio with a studio audience, and if the jokes weren't getting laughs, there was no one to sweeten the sound with more ha ha ha. What was said, and the live audience reaction, was what went over the air.

In the episode I heard the other night, from 1947, there was a man in the audience with one of the most unusual laughs I ever heard...kind of a blend of a bray and a guffaw, like when George W. Bush would chortle, only louder. And what made this man's laugh so noticeable was that many times he was the only person laughing, so you'd hear this "Haw Haw" randomly throughout the show. There was nothing offensive about it, he didn't seem to have ill intent, he just had a nutty laugh, captured on the primitive audio tape of the day.

And I would have to assume that the cracked-up cachinnator has gone to his reward by now, but how interesting that his unique laugh still lives. I tell you, whoever he was, he left his mark in the most natural of ways: just by being himself. 

Swinging Sammy

Let's have a race. I bet that if I give you time enough to assemble the makin's of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (PB, jelly, two pieces of bread) you could make one faster than the time it will take you to read about how you should make more of them and buy fewer Lunchables.

Ready? Go!

I know it's easy (but not cheap at all) to toss a Lunchable snack kit in the kid's lunch box or your own tote or purse. Such variety! Turkey and Cheese and Ham and Some Other Cheese and Pizza and Nachos and Cracker Stackers and Buildable Gumy Candy (don't ask!) !!! 

Sure they are easy, but Consumer Reports wants you to consider two other things they are - high in lead and sodium. Their tests say that various Lunchables and the various imitators have way too much sodium, lots of lead, and high amounts of cadmium, which is a heavy metal you don't want to listen to.

Lunchables Turkey and Cheddar Cracker Stackers have the most, followed by Lunchables Pizza with Pepperoni, Lunchables Extra Cheesy Pizza, and Armour LunchMakers Cracker Crunchers Ham & American.

A good rule of thumb is, the easier a processed food is to plop on a table or toss in a bag, the less healthy it tends to be, so take five minutes, smear a little nutter butter on some 143-grain bread and send the kids off smiling!

  

A massive disappointment

I find a lot of recipes online and in the newspaper because I am always up for trying new ways to cook the foods we like.

I might have to reconsider that. Last night I went with a dinner recipe from Instagram that everyone and their brother was clicking on to say how great it was. "It" was Crockpot Orange Chicken. 

The beauty of it was the simplicity of it, I thought in my simple mind. Just cube some boneless chicken (on sale 1/2 price last week) and toss together BBQ sauce, orange marmalade, corn starch, soy sauce and the zest of one orange, throw it into the slo-cooker, and come back in six hours.

I should have thrown it directly down the disposal. I knew it wouldn't be as good as Chinese Carry-Out Orange Chicken, where the cubes are deep fried and then bathed in orange-garlic-honey sauce, but I thought this could be good, save the mess of frying, and settle in happily over a nice nest of white rice.

Friends, I gotta tell you, it was like "Rapper's Delight" up in here... 

Ever went over a friend's house to eat and the food just ain't no good?

I mean the macaroni's soggy, the peas are mushed, and the chicken tastes like wood

This is what I pictured for six hours.
I won't even show you what I cooked.

This chicken tasted so much like wood, I was thinking of making a little birdhouse out of it. This was the worst meal I have ever cooked and I hereby apologize to Peggy, whose only comment was, "Well, it was edible." At least it was on sale.

I can come back from this, but my shame and self-loathing are at all-time highs.

Sunday Rerun: Good for the goose

 Like all health-conscious adults of a certain age (and I am certain of it!), I have had to stop and look at my dietary choices.  Gone are the days when a whole cheeseburger sub, an order of fries and a quart of beer made for a proper supper.

Of course, when I ate like that, I was 19 and weighed about 150 lbs, so go figure.

The good people at Comcast have a Lifestyle blog written by Audrey Morrison, and the other day the blog listed 14 "superfoods" that are supposed to stretch your budget and boost your health.  I scanned the list, and what do you know? It does not list Doritos, Ding-Dongs or Diet Sprite.  

But here's what's odd.  I actually LIKE a lot of the foods on the list!  To wit:

Beans - this musical fruit encompasses a large family of low-fat protein sources. I like kidney beans in a salad, and even though I love baked beans such as Bush's and even Campbell's, they load them up with enough sugary stuff as to make them not so good for me, so I just take the canned kidney beans, throw a little mustard and horseradish in there, and heat them up!  The website says beans have a lot of potassium, magnesium and iron.  It's a wonder I don't have magnets stuck to me.
Blueberries - During my Opie-like childhood, I used to pick berries of all sorts and gobble them right down. I'm confused about blueberries.  For one thing, they taste great, but they're still good for you because they have "antioxidants."  I thought oxygen was a good thing.  
Broccoli is described in the blog as "nature's perfect food," and it is, as long as it is covered in nature's perfect topping - cheddar cheese (not on the list, oddly.)
Green or black tea - I love tea more than coffee, but here's the deal if you prefer tea with your breakfast in a restaurant.  Coffee drinkers, sure, they wheel out a big 2-gal Tub O'Mocha Java for you, but if you want tea, they give you 1 (one) tea bag and a cup of hot tap water, and if you want another cup of tea, you get the MER* and a mighty sigh.  I'm thinking of coming out with a brand of orange tea called "Mighty Sigh," endorsed by John Boehner.
Oats contain B vitamins, fiber, protein, zinc, copper and potassium, the website says.  The great thing is that oatmeal is easy to nuke, and when you're finished with the box, you have a little drum with a picture of a Quaker on it.
Oranges confuse me too, because everyone know they have Vitamin C, but they are also loaded with "flavinoids."  "Oids" sounds funny, especially the ones from the "Hemorrh" family.
Pumpkin is full of good things but, frankly, are you going to buy a can of pumpkin in May, or order a pumpkin spice lattadoodle from Sbux in August? Pumpkin works from October through New Year's Eve and takes off the first nine months of the year.  Pretty sweet deal!
Soy, not so much. Love the sauce, though.
Spinach makes the list and that's good, but I wonder if the other greens, such as turnip greens, collard greens, mustard greens and kale are just as good, because they are much tastier and fresher tasting to me, and I'm the one who has to eat them.  You can have my spinach.
Tomatoes, long thought of as part of the lettuce-tomato-mayonnaise trio that serve as dressing on cold cut sandwiches, have a life of their own, and proudly walk around all full of "lycopene, a carotenoid and phytonutrient that’s also found in other red fruits like strawberries, watermelons and cherries," according to the blog, and lycopene may be helpful in lowering the risk of lung, stomach and prostate cancer.  All this, and you couldn't have marinara sauce or pizza without them.  Well done!
Turkey is good for more than just one dinner and 27 lunches in November. I prefer ground turkey or chicken (and they are all ground animals: they cannot fly) in burgers or tacos, and the fact that turkey is full of iron, vitamin B and zinc is beside the point.
Walnuts are good nuts to put in salads and other foods or just to munch on. And of course they bring to mind that certain "Dick Van Dyke" episode.
Wild salmon is loaded with vitamins and good nutrition, and when you have one on your plate, you're having dinner with a fish who was strong enough and amorous enough to fight his way upstream to spawn.  And now look.
Yogurt contains probiotics, live bacteria that aid in digestion.  If you're serious about your nutrition, avoid amateur biotics and stick with the pros.

So it turns out that I love most of these foods that are good for me.  I am officially the healthiest person in the room where I am writing this right now.**

*Maximum Eye Roll
** I'm all alone

The Saturday Picture Show, April 13, 2024

 

The debate rages on as to whether animals have a sense of humor, or sadness, or either. I think all we need to do is play a little bit of "Put On A Happy Face" to cheer this little froggie.

Omelet you figure it out...they're all the same inside.

Final Exams at Electric and Phone Line Climber School

Imagine how happy the local birds were when the corn crib car on the train had a little hole in it.

After the security camera shorted out a few times, the building maintenance crew decided that maybe it was not quite mounted in the right place...

Life has not been the same for this fella since they banned plastic straws.

He does commercials for other products...you'd think that Ice-T selling iced tea would be a natural fit.

Funny misunderstandings from childhood: when I heard people talking about their summer home being "right on the water," this is what I pictured.

Progress in Baltimore Harbor: the giant container ship that knocked down the Key Bridge is being emptied of its cargo of 4,700 cargo containers. Progress will be slow but we will rebuild.

The sad reality hit home when Google Maps removed the Key Bridge from its depiction of Baltimore highways. And by the way, if WAZE shows you the way, they still think the bridge is there, so, just no.

Wha' happen'?

Got a minute for something interesting? Well, listen anyway ha ha, because this story has twisties and turns. 

My senior year in high school began with one particular song all over the radio, a silly little thing called "Little Arrows" by a guy called Leapy Lee. Listen and shake your head, but check back in ten minutes and maybe you'll see it was catchy enough to be on the radio day and night. So much so, when it faded in favor among music lovers, you sat back and waited for the inevitable follow-up hit record.  

But wait...there wasn't one.

Leapy was born Graham Pulleyblank, and I'm certain that's the most British name you'll hear all day, unless you encounter Sir Bainbridge Cholmondley in your travels. "Little Arrows" was a huge hit all around the world for a guy who, before getting into the show business, had found work as a Bingo caller and wheelbarrow boy. 

None of his attempts at a follow-up went anywhere here or in Britain, although we did play a song called "Every Road Leads Back To You" on country radio in 1975, inevitably accompanied by questions of "Where has Leapy been, huh?"

Here's where. He was arrested in 1970 following a bar brawl involving his friend Alan Lake (a British actor and the third husband of bosomy actress Diana Dors, who was born Diana Fluck, and who chose future "Family Feud" quizmaster Richard Dawson as a second husband.) Leapy claimed that Diana framed him in the matter, in which he was eventually found guilty of "unlawful wounding" (British Law!!!) and served three years, but his English reputation and career were over.

Once out of prison, Leapy moved abroad and was last reported living in Santa Ponsa, on the island of Mallorca off the southern coast of Spain. 

I am not kidding about any of this, especially Diana's birth name. Trivia is my life.

Waiter, waiter, Don't Tell Me

Well, I've never been to Spain, and I am a stranger to the streets of Paris as well, but lots of people go there and have fun.

Why, here's a perfect example! Paris has revived the century-old tradition of the Course des Cafés (Cafe Race), in which French waiters dash down the capital's streets with full trays in one of their hands. 

They ran the race last month, and thousands of people showed up to watch 200 waiters, dressed in white shirts, black pants, bow ties, and aprons, carrying each a tray with a croissant, a glass of water, and an empty coffee cup, dart along the streets for 1.2 miles.

As with any race, the goal was to get to the finish line first, but without running, or spilling anything, or ever using two hands at once.

"Through the streets of the Marais, you will have to slalom with agility, avoid obstacles with a skill worthy of Opera dancers and demonstrate speed without haste," said Eau de Paris, the city's public water company and sponsor of the event. "It will not only be about speed but above all balance."

Down at the finish line, judges checked the trays for spilled water or broken dishes. Most contestants finished the race in less than 20 minutes. The winners?  Samy Lamrous took home the trophy in the men's division with a time of 13 minutes and 30 seconds, and Pauline Van Wymeersch led the way for the women  at 14 minutes and 12 seconds.

In other French news, Bart Simpson's great grandfather Pépé Bouvier once sailed with the Merchant Marine.  According to family lore, the 1972 Looking Glass hit "Brandy" is based on his life.

His lawyers earn their money!

This is a post about Morgan Wallen that is not about Morgan Wallen.

By now, you have read about the intemperate country singer  Wallen, throwing a chair off a sixth-floor roof of a bar in Nashville. And if you read that sentence over again, you may notice that nothing about those words seems not to make sense. We can all believe that this young man is up to stunts such as throwing a chair off a roof six floors in the air, because he has a track record of bad behavior and repeated apologies and pledges to do better and all the rest of the celebrity feet-shuffling his handlers have him do.

So I am not talking about him. Until he gets some help and guidance in his affairs, he will continue this spiral. Notice that in the mugshot he posed for in the Nashville lockup, he is grinning like an alley cat who just found a discarded Filet-O-Fish. I'm sure that as he was being arrested on three felony counts of reckless endangerment and one count of disorderly conduct, someone mentioned that the chair he tossed to his own great amusement missed hitting (and probably killing) two police officers three feet away. He doesn't care. He laughs.

What's on my mind is the stupid reply I saw on Facebook on Monday. Some woman wrote as a comment to the original story that "That's just Morgan...he's just a big kid having fun...he's only 30! Leave him alone."

I assume that woman was speaking for others as well as her own foolish self, and that's what bothers me. This bumpkin Wallen is going to career along on his dissolute path until he or someone else winds up dead or maimed. 

But meanwhile, the rest of us have to live in a country where a certain amount of people regard throwing a chair off a roof, regardless of who or what might be below, as good clean fun, something to be allowed because "he's only 30."

I don't know how old those two police were, but it's only by the grace of God that they will be around to see their next birthdays. Let's not normalize heinously dangerous behavior.

(Steps aways from pulpit.)

Interesting...

"Reader's Digest" used to have a page called "Points To Ponder." Maybe they still do; I don't know....I'll have to think about it.

But this would be a nice fit for that column. An Englishman named Harold Nicolson, described everywhere as a "politician, diplomat, historian, biographer, diarist, novelist, lecturer, journalist, broadcaster, and gardener," once took time from all the above pursuits to point out, diplomatically, that "99 out of 100 people are interesting...and the 100th is interesting because he is not."

By Jove, he makes a point! Sometimes we have to dig and dig to find it, but just about everyone has a story to tell. 

And when you find that one-in-a-hundred whose personality is as lively as a wax gong, your consolation is that you will meet 99 more people before you meet your next dud.

Mr Machine

News Item:  Apple has reportedly launched a hush-hush project to develop a personal robot as the iPhone maker seeks to find “the next big thing” after its failed foray into manufacturing an autonomous electric car.

This is the news we have been waiting for. I'm still not sold on electric cars, since we hear all the time about people having trouble making the battery charge last long enough to find an outlet, if you will, for their hobby machine. There just doesn't seem to be a sufficient quantity of charging stations, and then, when you do get the battery juiced up, they tend to catch fire, leaving your car a charred pile of rubble.

But a home robot! Now, you're talking! Imagine having a full-sized, real-life Mr Machine clanking around the house. Think of the things I could have him do, saving precious time to do I don't know what-all!

• empty the dishwasher
• make our morning tea and coffee
• go out and get the newspaper off the driveway
• fry my bacon and eggs
• clean the pan and plates
• wipe off the countertop and stovetop
• make sure my tablet is charged and my seltzer tumbler is full

And that's just before lunch! Playing with Eddie The Cat would still be my job. I'm not giving everything over to this mechanical wonder, after all.