The Saturday Picture Show, November 30, 2024

 

This is Moo Deng (Chinese for "bouncy pork) (no, I'm not kidding!) and I guess it was predictable. All the attention, the fawning, the excess attention paid to this pygmy hippopotamus has spoiled him, and he spends his days between TV appearances stomping his hooves and demanding things. No one can stand a pampered child.

It's too bad that the Orioles already have a player (Jackson Holliday) wearing uniform #7. This bovine would be a natural to pose with left fielder and Rookie-Of-The-Year runner-up Colton Cowser!

Here's Dasher on vacation in Norway, enjoying the Northern Lights.

As I say all the time, America's greatest artists are working in the field of courtroom sketch art. Here's disgraced "America's Mayor," Rudy Giuliani, hollering that he shouldn't pay off the judgements against him for defaming two poll workers because he can no longer treat himself to a cup of coffee. People who marry their cousins often have trouble dealing with reality.

I used to think that J. C. Penney's had tons of display towels. No, it don't work like that, son.

Here's how to turn that leftover straw from Halloween into the cutest little snowman ever!

Nicely done giant wooden prairie dog!

Maybe La Niña will bring us a winter like this!

 

I could see these being very well-received over here. In Korea, you can get a free charge on your device at the public library. Pedal power!

Workers were cleaning years of sooty dirt from a dam in Japan.  They used a power washer to wipe away everything that didn't look like Godzilla.

With a name like Smucker's...

While a lot of people skip lunch altogether, many of us still tie on the noon feedbag every day. Gigantic heaping deli sandwiches, tureens of soup, pizza by the slice, salads, wraps, tacos, quinoa bowls, the list goes on...

I hardly eat any lunch at all, but if I want something while the noon news unravels, I'll get a slice or two of that flourless bread, schmear Skippy and Smucker's Sugar-free raspberry preserves all over everything, and go to town. 

(I don't literally go to town. Town has nothing I need.)

Yes, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are nothing to look down the end of your nose at, now that the mercilessly well-conditioned athletes of the NFL are gobbling 80,000 Uncrustables per week.

In simpler terms, that's equivalent to the weight of three Travis Kelces, who is known to slide Uncrustables down his neck daily.

I've never had one. I'm not out there doing NFL drills every day, so I have time to make my own Sammies.

But in order to keep the hungry maws of both the NFL and the elementary schools of the nation, the J.M. Smucker Co. just built a 900,000-square-foot Uncrustables sandwich manufacturing facility in McCalla, Alabama.

Big sandwich factory 

Smucker introduced the idea of prepackaged sandwiches in 1998 to meet the needs of the many who lack the time to spread PB and J on bread.

Try this toasted!

Happy Thanksgiving 2024

 

However you celebrate, wherever you celebrate and with whom you celebrate, may today be a day of true gratefulness.

How to quiet an uncle

 With Thanksgiving being tomorrow, you might need extra gravy, or a trivia stumper to get Uncle Ferdinand to stop talking about the election. 

Drop this one on the table as you mention the vegetarian options: "What's the only NFL team to have a plant as part of its helmet logo?"

It's the New Orleans Saints. Their fleur-de-lis symbol depicts a lily long associated with the French monarchy. The fleur-de-lis is the state symbol of Louisiana.

Tell Ferdinand that the lily in question is actually an iris, and let him sound off on that a while! 

The Tiniest Drop

 So, if you're ever down in Memphis, look up Dyer's burgers. I have only one piece of information about the joint, and that's their claim that, since opening in 1912, they've not once dumped the oil in which they deep fry their patties.

I don't know...

This system of legacy oil must satisfy the Memphis Health Dept, and the blurb I read online said they're technically using the same oil as in 1912. Maybe there's a molecule or so left suspended in the vat, but it puts me in mind of the guy who said he owns George Washington's original old hatchet from the "George chopped down a cherry tree" myth.

The guy will show you that hatchet and add, "Well, course, times were bad. Came a day the handle broke off, so we went to Ace and replaced it, and after while, the head got worn down from too much honing, so that's new, but this is old George's hatchet, doggone it!"

And who will say him nay?

The big question

 Maryland is three states in many ways. The Eastern Shore, with Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean shorelines, is our vacation destination, seafood supplier, and grower of mighty fine fruits and vegetables. It's also where you go when you have a hankering for muskrat for dinner. 

Muskrat surprise

Central Maryland is big cities, history, and pro sports for which Baltimore is world-famous. 

Both of these regions share roughly the same climate: hot and humid all the time, except for when it's rainy or sleety or snowy or windy or hurricane-y. The days of White Christmases around here are memories served up on Turner Classic Movies.

Ah, but Western Maryland! The reason they call Maryland "America in Miniature" is because they have mountains out there and weather closer to Pittsburgh and Cleveland. In fact, they root for Pittsburgh teams in Western Maryland, which has always made Ravens-Steelers a matchup to watch. 

The reason all this came to mind was that the other day, a non-meteorologist "weather personality" on the local TV was burbling about Friday's forecast, which included heavy snow for Western Maryland and a flake or two in the central part. This is a forecast we hear all winter long, and yet the glabrous weather guy feigned alarm about how it was going to be cold and windy. 

He actually said this: "You might want to question your life" without apparent irony, as if we should all feel bad about living in a state where it gets cold as fall approaches. 

The only thing to question about all this is why I watch television. 

Sunday Rerun: Anyone for cannoli?

 

We sure do love to talk about tomato sauce here, don't we? I mean, we love anything but the canned stuff, and jarred Ragu. Make it yourself; it's easy! Would Clemenza lie?

Peter Clemenza was a mafia soldier in Don Corleone's army, and his duties were many and varied in "The Godfather." He taught Michael Corleone how to shoot, and drop, a gun, he remembered to bring home the cannolis so his wife didn't kill him, and when the gangs were going to the mattresses (preparing for warfare) he showed Michael how to cook pasta sauce for twenty guys. All good skills to have, in his line of work.

Never break a promise to your wife

So how many times have you heard someone offer you an authentic homemade Italian dinner, with a promise that it's gonna be good because "I follow Clemenza's recipe!"?

Maybe you saw the movie in the theater, where it's hard to take notes, and maybe you saw it on home video, where someone is always walking off with the pencil you leave by the TV, but anyway, here it is, in honor of "The Godfather" 's 50th anniversary.

"You never know, you might have to cook for 20 guys someday."

I believe it was watching the movie over and over again that convinced me, the WASP of all time, that I could try a Sicilian favorite. And even though I have never had to cook for 20 armed and angry people, I have cooked for six or seven peevish ones (names withheld).

You can use this sauce as gravy over pasta or you can use it as the red part of a lasagna.

"You see, you start out with a little bit of oil. Then you fry some garlic."

Get the EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil) hot in the frying pan, but not smoking hot. Saute some garlic along with a fresh sweet onion 'til all is golden brown

"Then you throw in some tomatoes, tomato paste, you fry it; you make sure it doesn't stick. You get it to a boil . . ."

Clemenza uses two large cans of tomatoes (spend a little extra and get San Marzanos) and two cans of tomato paste (it is all the same, no matter how much more they want for the name brand over the cheap Aldi can. There is somewhere in Italy a huge processing plant for tomato paste; they produce giant storage tanks of it, and all cans of all brands come from there.

By "frying" it, Clemenza means to let it simmer just below the point where giant globs leap out of the pan and onto your white shirt, but let it bubble awhile, and then cut the heat way down to "simmer." I leave the lid on so that the condensate goes right back into the pan. Let it simmer while you go watch your show.

" . . . You shove in all your sausage and your meatballs."

Fry the meats a little first before letting them swim in the sauce, what I do. You could always fry them along with the garlic and onions at the beginning and then fish them out of the pan until this step. However you do it, this is where the meatballs and sausage go for a swim awhile while you watch the news.

 "Add a little bit o' wine, and a little bit of sugar, and that's my trick."

Add some wine (cheap Chianti) at this point, then stir, and stick a spoon in it and see how sweet it is. Some like it sweeter than others. If you want to sweeten it, add some of that honey that Aunt Heloise brought you back from Coral Gables instead of the coconut patties you were hoping for.

I saw a Hallmark movie about an Italian restaurant and they were all acting like it's a sin against God to break your spaghetti in half before you boil it. I hereby say it's ok to do that if you want to. I checked with Clemenza and he said it's ok, and he will bring dessert.

 

  

The Saturday Picture Show, November 23, 2024

 

We've all seen so-called auto graveyards, where the '62 Bel Air is parked next to a '77 Maverick until rust do they part. I guess there are eternal rest spots for aging unsafe airplanes (except for the ones that hung around long enough for those budget airlines to make the important Cincinnati to Cleveland run. 

"Paper Roses" was a top-five hit for Anita Bryant in 1960 and a pop-country crossover for Marie Osmond in '73. I'm thinking these well-made paper flowers cost more than a floral bouquet!  

Nature meets spray paint in this outdoor mural. 

I've cracked hundreds of chicken eggs, but never found the ultra rare triple-yolker.

I like to think that the worn path seen here winds between this bucolic residence and some really good neighbors. 

This old shell is making a cameo appearance today. 

If you're like me, you can't see the Peanuts gang ice-skating without hearing the glistening "Skating" song from the soundtrack. 

Did you know...jigsaw puzzle makers use the same templates over and over? Blend your favorites! 

Guess who's back?

They say you can move heat that's hanging around by the ceiling down to where you're sitting by reversing the flow of your fan. Do you know anyone who actually does this? I'd love to hear about it! 

 I like to read and share this column every year on this day. You'll forgive me for being nostalgic for a time when our leaders were, let's say, different from what they are now.

And so were our journalists. This is the column that Jimmy Breslin wrote in the New York Herald-Tribune after he was sent to Washington to cover the funeral for President Kennedy. He realized that every other reporter would be talking about the people in suits and fine clothes at the funeral. Breslin's genius was that he went in another direction, and gave us a slice of life we might otherwise not have seen.

‘It’s An Honor’

New York Herald Tribune, November 1963

By Jimmy Breslin

WASHINGTON — Clifton Pollard was pretty sure he was going to be working on Sunday, so when he woke up at 9 a.m., in his three-room apartment on Corcoran Street, he put on khaki overalls before going into the kitchen for breakfast. His wife, Hettie, made bacon and eggs for him. Pollard was in the middle of eating them when he received the phone call he had been expecting. It was from Mazo Kawalchik, who is the foreman of the gravediggers at Arlington National Cemetery, which is where Pollard works for a living. “Polly, could you please be here by 11 o’clock this morning?” Kawalchik asked. “I guess you know what it’s for.” Pollard did. He hung up the phone, finished breakfast, and left his apartment so he could spend Sunday digging a grave for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

When Pollard got to the row of yellow wooden garages where the cemetery equipment is stored, Kawalchik and John Metzler, the cemetery superintendent, were waiting for him. “Sorry to pull you out like this on a Sunday,” Metzler said. “Oh, don’t say that,” Pollard said. “Why, it’s an honor for me to be here.” Pollard got behind the wheel of a machine called a reverse hoe. Gravedigging is not done with men and shovels at Arlington. The reverse hoe is a green machine with a yellow bucket that scoops the earth toward the operator, not away from it as a crane does. At the bottom of the hill in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Pollard started the digging (Editor Note: At the bottom of the hill in front of the Custis-Lee Mansion).

Leaves covered the grass. When the yellow teeth of the reverse hoe first bit into the ground, the leaves made a threshing sound which could be heard above the motor of the machine. When the bucket came up with its first scoop of dirt, Metzler, the cemetery superintendent, walked over and looked at it. “That’s nice soil,” Metzler said. “I’d like to save a little of it,” Pollard said. “The machine made some tracks in the grass over here and I’d like to sort of fill them in and get some good grass growing there, I’d like to have everything, you know, nice.”

James Winners, another gravedigger, nodded. He said he would fill a couple of carts with this extra-good soil and take it back to the garage and grow good turf on it. “He was a good man,” Pollard said. “Yes, he was,” Metzler said. “Now they’re going to come and put him right here in this grave I’m making up,” Pollard said. “You know, it’s an honor just for me to do this.”

Pollard is 42. He is a slim man with a mustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd Engineers battalion in Burma in World War II. He is an equipment operator, grade 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of the last to serve John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was the 35th president of this country, was a working man who earns $3.01 an hour and said it was an honor to dig the grave.

Yesterday morning, at 11:15, Jacqueline Kennedy started toward the grave. She came out from under the north portico of the White House and slowly followed the body of her husband, which was in a flag-covered coffin that was strapped with two black leather belts to a black caisson that had polished brass axles. She walked straight and her head was high. She walked down the bluestone and blacktop driveway and through shadows thrown by the branches of seven leafless oak trees. She walked slowly past the sailors who held up flags of the states of this country. She walked past silent people who strained to see her and then, seeing her, dropped their heads and put their hands over their eyes. She walked out the northwest gate and into the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. She walked with tight steps and her head was high and she followed the body of her murdered husband through the streets of Washington.

Everybody watched her while she walked. She is the mother of two fatherless children and she was walking into the history of this country because she was showing everybody who felt old and helpless and without hope that she had this terrible strength that everybody needed so badly. Even though they had killed her husband and his blood ran onto her lap while he died, she could walk through the streets and to his grave and help us all while she walked.

There was Mass, and then the procession to Arlington. When she came up to the grave at the cemetery, the casket already was in place. It was set between brass railings and it was ready to be lowered into the ground. This must be the worst time of all, when a woman sees the coffin with her husband inside and it is in place to be buried under the earth. Now she knows that it is forever. Now there is nothing. There is no casket to kiss or hold with your hands. Nothing material to cling to. But she walked up to the burial area and stood in front of a row of six green-covered chairs and she started to sit down, but then she got up quickly and stood straight because she was not going to sit down until the man directing the funeral told her what seat he wanted her to take.

The ceremonies began, with jet planes roaring overhead and leaves falling from the sky. On this hill behind the coffin, people prayed aloud. They were cameramen and writers and soldiers and Secret Service men and they were saying prayers out loud and choking. In front of the grave, Lyndon Johnson kept his head turned to his right. He is president and he had to remain composed. It was better that he did not look at the casket and grave of John Fitzgerald Kennedy too often. Then it was over and black limousines rushed under the cemetery trees and out onto the boulevard toward the White House. “What time is it?” a man standing on the hill was asked. He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes past three,” he said.

Clifton Pollard wasn’t at the funeral. He was over behind the hill, digging graves for $3.01 an hour in another section of the cemetery. He didn’t know who the graves were for. He was just digging them and then covering them with boards. “They’ll be used,” he said. “We just don’t know when. I tried to go over to see the grave,” he said. “But it was so crowded a soldier told me I couldn’t get through. So I just stayed here and worked, sir. But I’ll get over there later a little bit. Just sort of look around and see how it is, you know. Like I told you, it’s an honor.”

Forget it

Susan Smith, at the age of 23 in 1994, decided that her husband and two sons presented an immovable barrier to her future happiness. So she strapped the boys into their seatbelts and let the car roll into a South Carolina lake. 

It didn't take long for the cops to track her down. Now, 30 years into a life sentence, she appeared before the parole board yesterday to ask for a second chance at the life she denied 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex.

I'll bet it didn't take long for the board to rubber stamp DENIED all over her paperwork. 

She asked the parole board to overlook the fact that she was caught doing the hibbidy-dibbidy with prison guards and that she, well, killed her children.“I know that what I did was horrible,” she tearfully told the board.

That's the biggest understatement since Mr. Otis thought his elevator might be a good idea. 

You have to wonder if she seriously believed she had a chance to shop for turkey and all the fixin's this weekend. Next hearing: two years. She should live so long.

A little test

 I thought I'd get back to the Blog by trying a quick experiment. 

In 1976, I was working at WISZ radio in Baltimore. That summer, the Orioles traded away a relief pitcher named Grant Jackson. Jackson went on to have an 18-year career in the big leagues; this trade to the Yankees was his third team of seven.

I thought, and said out loud,, that the most fascinating thing about Grant, or "Buck," as he liked to be called, was that he was born in Fostoria, Ohio. 

A guy I worked with, Les Bagley, added to the conversation that Fostoria is the location of the world's deepest hole. Now, that's grist for my mill. I love that sort of information. In fact, I often lead with it, in any conversation involving deep holes or Ohio.

I think of that conversation every time I see this picture: 

And here is the experiment. Les and I are still friends on Facebook. Will he remember that conversation after 48 years?

 

Tuesday rerun: Up Euphemism Creek

   I'm a big fan of Chris Elliott (we have our annual convention in a very tiny room) so I watched the "Schitt's Creek" show when it started out. Back in those days, it was on the beloved TV Guide Channel, which then became Pop TV when people realized that most of us figured The TV Guide Channel was something that showed what time the King of Queens rerun came on.

I liked the show, the whole fish-out-of-familiar water premise, and the trademark Chris Elliott snark went well with the goofiness of the Levys père et fils. I lost the show somehow, heard that Chris had left, and somehow managed to go on with my life without "Schitt's Creek."

I've heard that it was on Netflix now and very popular, and I thought it was nice to hear the other night that the show, and the actors on it, won every Emmy award for this year. 

And then came the morning TV shows, when all the network people shied away from naming the show. On the Today Show, Hoda Kotb grumbled mildly that she was not allowed to say the name of the big winner because NBC only allows them to say "that word" once.

In a nation where the president spews indelicate profanities with the zest of a longshoreman, in a world where any sort of language can be heard on the playgrounds and radio shows and classrooms, it seems to be almost quaint to see Hoda and Savannah with their knickers in a spin over a homophone for poop.

Please don't Bowdlerize my news! 

I can hear you saying, "I would never Bowdlerize your news," but that's a term derived from a Dr Thomas Bowdler (1754 - 1825) an English physician of whom it can be truly said that he was born in a town called Box, near Bath, and is buried in a place called Oystermouth.

And oh yes, he found it necessary to produce expurgated versions of great books written by others. He removed all the words that might make one giggle or blush from fine literature written by that naughty Mr Shakespeare, and others, and for his inane efforts he will be remembered with the word "bowdlerize," meaning to "remove 'offensive' material from the writings of others, rendering the work less meaningful."

Another person whose name became a verb was Horace Fletcher, a 19th century man who, with no background in medicine or physiology whatsoever, proclaimed that we should chew every bit of food 32 times ("one for every tooth"). Fletcher became known as the "Great Masticator" and to this day, chewing your food 32 times is called "fletcherizing" it.

I hope I gave you something to chew on.

Monday rerun: Rakish

 We all look forward to riding around looking at the pretty fall leaves in October and November.

Raking them up is not quite so appealing, leading many people to just let them lie there and eventually blow onto my yard.

Whatever your fall pleasure, don't rush out just yet.

The Weather Channel (what did we ever do without them?) says our rich autumn golds and browns will be here a little later this year. Blame the warmer temperatures of September.

And on the other hand, the Weather Channel, the good people who sponsor Jim Cantore's visits to wherever it's really hot or cold or snowy or rainy or floody, says that because it was a wet summer before it became a hot one, the foliage (pronounced "foilage" in Baltimore) will be really, really vivid, unless it gets windy.

Things change first in Western Maryland, where Garrett County Forester Melissa Nash reports that a sugar maple in New Germany State Park "… is telling us fall is just around the corner! If these warm days and cool nights keep up along with intermittent rain we should get some good color this year."

So count on the peak of pretty leaves to hit Garrett and Allegany counties in mid-October.

I have to look this up every autumn, because I forget, but it's photosythesis - your old friend from 7th grade Science class - that begins the process of leaf color change.  From spring until fall, the leaves on the trees make chlorophyll, the chemical that allows a tree to make its own glucose for nourishment. Chlorophyll being green, the leaves are as well - or so it would seem.

Actually, the colors of the leaves in October are the true colors of the leaves! And once they stop being all chlorophyll-ish, gone is the green and here comes the brown and yellow and what-have-you.

The same substance that makes carrots orange (beta carotene) makes some leaves orange, and something called anthocyanin makes them red, and flavonol, which sounds like something from a commercial ("Try Certs! Now with added flavonol!") makes them yellow. 

And nothing about any of these facts will help you rake them. Enjoy the fall!

Rerun: Cute Triangle

 One day, it's Liv Tyler, and then it's Paris Hilton, or Ariana Grande, and who knows who the current "It Girl" is in American pop culture? It changes almost every day, and it's always the same: a young woman, blessed with looks and sometimes a certain amount of talent, is suddenly all over the place, famous for being famous.

Imagine how it was when the mass media consisted of daily newspapers, and no "Entertainment Tonight" or E! channel or Instagram to make the unfamous famous overnight.

Evelyn Nesbit was the It Girl of the early 20th Century, a young lady from Philadelphia blessed with a gorgeous face.  She became a model in the very early days of mass advertising, and performed in Broadway musicals, where she caught the eyes of Harry K. Thaw and Stanford White.  White was a very well-known architect, a man who designed many famous buildings of the day (including the Lovely Lane Methodist Church in downtown Baltimore.) White both created beauty and appreciated beauty, and he took up with young Evelyn, becoming both her lover and her generous benefactor. They never made it to the altar, though.

Harry K. Thaw sounds more like a man of these days...rich by inheriting a ton of moolah, leader of a dissolute lifestyle, an avid drug abuser, and severely mentally deranged.  Thaw liked the ladies too, and to his voracious sexual appetite, he added the fillip of being into bondage and whips and so forth. So when he fell for Evelyn, she refused his hand in marriage for four years, since she knew that he valued chastity in the women he sought to debauch and defile.

Evelyn

But they later married, when his ardor overcame his puritanical weirdness.  That was in 1905.  The top of Thaw's head probably would have come off had he known that his dream girl had done the hibbidy-dibbidy with others besides White, most notably John Barrymore, the greatest actor of the time, and Drew Barrymore's grandfather, to connect this sordid tale with today.                   

Thaw's obsession with the man who had "ruined" (his term) the lovely Evelyn overtook his life, and at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden on June 25, 1906, during a performance of a musical called "Mam'zelle Champagne" (as the cast sang "I Could Love A Million Girls") Thaw approached White, brandished a pistol, and fired three shots at White, killing him instantly, while Thaw hollered  "You've ruined my wife!"

Harry

The trial that followed was that century's Trial Of The Century, and Thaw was found to be insane.  He wound up in a mental institution, until he escaped in 1915 and paid off enough people to get a new trial, at which he was adjudged no longer insane. In the 1920s, he moved to Clearbrook, Virginia, lived on a farm and  joined the local volunteer fire company, dying in 1947 of a coronary thrombosis.

He was insane, all right.  He was crazy about old Evelyn.

Rerun: Canned Laughter

 It's almost axiomatic that anytime after Christmas is over, if you see a blue metal tin that used to hold Danish Butter Cookies sitting around someone's house, it contains someone's sewing kit. You know, a pair of dull scissors, two dozen random spools of off-color thread, a jar with 27 buttons, none of which match, and half of an iron-on patch for mending knee holes.

It stands to reason that a lot of people buy the tin of cookies and toss the contents to have room for all the sewing impedimenta that's been inhabiting the junk drawer for so long. They need the room for more dead batteries and the remote to some long-broken appliance.

But if you like tin boxes, say hi to Yvette Dardenne, a woman from Belgium who has rounded up 60,000 tins in a collecting career lasting thirty years.

Tins? She's got 'em! Former canisters of chocolates, toffees, coffee, rice, tobacco, talc and shoe polish, from all over the world!

Ms Dardenne is 83, and she needs four houses to hold all her stuff. The whole thing started when she came into possession of a Cote d'Or chocolate box replete with a painting of a blonde girl wearing a blue hat. She keeps that one in the medieval waterfall that stands next to her house.

And, as so often happens with collectors, one tin became a dozen, and then hundreds of dozens, and, next thing you know, there you are with 60,000 of them!

"I haven't been anywhere. I was not travelling. People still think I have travelled a lot. It quickly became known (that I collected boxes). Sometimes, right after my husband left for the office, someone would show up to offer me something," said Dardenne, a resident of Grand-Hallet in Belgium's Liege province.

Lithography is the process of applying a picture or image to a hard surface through chemical reactions. Those who know such things believe that the first lithographed tin box dates to 1868 and features a logo of two horses, the symbol of the biscuits (cookies) made by Huntley & Palmers of Reading, England.

Guess who owns that treasure?

What's more, Ms Dardenne's collection may be viewed by anyone, provided they ask for an appointment.

It would be very nice to bring her a new addition to the collection. How about this oatmeal tin from 1991?

 

Rerun: Marc: My Words

 My friend Liz from work commented the other day when I put up a quote ("Life's a gas - I hope it's gonna last!") from Marc  Bolan as my Facebook status. Bolan was a guy, born Marc Feld in England in 1947, who became known as the leader of the rock band T Rex, who gave us memorable records such as "Bang A Gong (Get It On)," "Jeepster," "Mambo Sun," and my favorite, "Raw Ramp." I mean, who could not love music with an insistent boogie-woogie backbeat, conga drum percussion and albums with titles such as "My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair... But Now They're Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows." And how was I to know, way back then, that the phrase "Baby, I've got metal knees!" would take on added significance in my life, what with having knee replacement surgery and all.

In the intro to Raw Ramp, we hear this verse, which has ricocheted across my tender brainpan countless times since 1972:

"There was a time everything was fine,
we got drunk on the day like it was wine,
and all the children, they put flowers in their hair
and all the grownups, they put daggers there instead."


Which totally explains Dick Cheney's baldness.

But Bolan, who was not only a marvelous lyricist and great singer, was also a fantastic guitarist, good enough to play on sessions for the likes of Ike and Tina Turner, and David Bowie.
 
Ike and Tina Turner

He was only two weeks away from turning 30 when he died, one month after the passing of Elvis and one month before the death of Bing Crosby. It was a car crash that claimed his life; he was riding in his own car that was being driven by his girlfriend. The car hit a sycamore tree and Marc, who never learned to drive because he feared that he would die in a car crash, died in a car crash.

So. Am I the only person who thinks of him when people talk about riding the commuter line known as the MARC train? There must be someone else who would sooner ride the Maryland Area Regional Commuter Train than drive a car. Get it on, or get on it, whichever. Let's go Bolan.

Rerun: Cheddars Never Win

 We called him "Cheese Man" for obvious reasons, but how sad it was that he chose to behave in a manner that led to him being given such an unflattering sobriquet.

We were in the supermarket down by the park and stopped for some deli to make a sandwich.  A man ahead of us in line had ordered some cheddar cheese slices, and when the clerk handed him the bag with the cheese in it, he looked and reacted as if she had handed him a bag of floor sweepin's or rotten salami.

"I can't have cheese like this!" he exclaimed.  "This is all wrong!"

Well, he got my attention.  I love seeing public demonstrations of jackanapery, so I was right there watching.  

As he whined and whinged, it turned out that he did not like the way the cheese was sliced. It was too thin and the slices broke in half.  Cheddar cheese is like that.  That's because it's not like American cheese, which is also suitable for use as spackle, if you're patching a hole in the wall.  Cheddar's not all rubbery and bendy.  

The lady tried again to slice his cheese...a little thicker ("That's too thick!") and then a little thinner ("But it's breaking in half again!") Finally, he saw a male deli guy up the way by the pizza oven and said, "That guy knows how to slice cheese!" and so "that guy" dropped what he was doing to slice the same cheese in the same way and hand it to Mr Cheese, who then went into an unrequested soliloquy about how important it was for his cheese to be sliced just ever so.  And of course, he did not say he was sorry for being so picky. Just slice it my way and do it now, see?

And we can only assume that he was planning to put this cheese on a sandwich and shove it all down his neck, so who cares if the cheese was broken?

After he (mercifully for us) departed, I talked to the women behind the counter. One of them said she was brand new and in training for the deli job, and in her eyes I saw the look that meant she was already hoping to go sell yoga pants somewhere. The other women said that sort of thing happens a lot, and it was suggested that maybe Cheese Man is bossy at work and then brings that with him to the deli line.

Not that it matters, but I have a different slant. This objectionable fellow did not look or dress like the sort of man whom someone had placed in charge of anyone else.  Rather, he seemed like the kind of guy who spends his days feeling oppressed because other people keep telling him what to do all day, and he really enjoys stopping for a half a pound of cheddar so he can assert himself and push someone around, as he feels he is.

Of course, I might be wrong, and he might have replaced Ben Carson as chief of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, but then, he wouldn't be likely to be wearing flip flops and shorts on his way home from work, would he now?

Rerun: Not worth it

Hello - I'm running some reruns while I'm under the knife for knee replacement surgery....back to new posts soon! 

There was a time when we saw something we wanted a picture of - a sunset, kids on the beach, Lyndon Johnson showing his gall bladder surgery scars- and we grabbed the old Kodak Instamatic, snapped a snapshot or two, and then took the film to the drugstore for processing.

And we waited, and waited, to get the prints back.

The middle of next week, someone stopped off at Drugs-So-Lo and picked up the 4 x 6 pictures, and then we took them home, sent one in the mail to Aunt Gladys in Kankakee, and put the others in a shoebox.

Now, we all carry a wonderful camera right in our hand, with a smart phone.  It's too bad the qualities of being "smart" don't necessarily rub off on the smart phone user, but it seems that the phones are a lot smarter than we.

The most recent tragedy occurred last weekend, when Sydney Monfries, 22, a senior at Fordham University just weeks short of graduation, fell 30 feet in the bell tower of the school, landing at the bottom of a stairway in a horrible, sad, death.

She actually fell through an opening in a stairway landing at Keating Hall, plunging down the inside of the clockworks.  The tower is supposed to be locked at all times and is strictly off-limits to students, who are told from day one at Fordham to stay away, but, according to the student newspaper, The Observer, climbing the tower is a "rite of passage" for seniors.

“There are no words sufficient to describe the loss of someone so young and full of promise — and mere weeks from graduation,” university president Rev. Joseph M. McShane said in a statement.

Why was Monfries up there? Early on Sunday, just before her fatal fall, she was posting video of the great view of New York to Snapchat.

There have been several fatal falls among tourists at the Grand Canyon this year, people who leaned over just a bit too far to get that perfect picture.

I hope these warnings don't fall on deaf ears, but there is no Snapchat, no Instagram, no picture or video whatsoever that is worth risking your life to get. Ms Monfries was set to receive her degree and start law school in the fall, and now she is gone for not a very good reason at all, unless her loss is enough warning to save others.

And you can bet that Fordham will install a new security system on that bell tower, just three months or so too late.

Sunday Rerun: Look Out!

 Irony! We don't see it coming and that's what makes it so fun. Irony is when you steer your car away from a pothole ahead in the road, only to have your car swallowed up by an unseen crevasse about the size of Delaware, just down the road a piece.

Irony is NOT when you go to a movie and see your friend in line to see the same movie. That is coincidence.

Call this what you will, but the death of English daredevil Bobby Leach (1858 - 1926) was odd.  Bobby was the second person to make his way over Niagara Falls in a barrel. He was ten years late to be first to do so;  Annie Taylor did that very thing in 1901, while it took a decade for Leach to make the plunge (1911). 

That nutty feat does not come without medical complications. Leach was in the hospital for six months, getting over his two broken kneecaps and his one fractured jaw.  A veteran stuntman with the Barnum and Bailey Circus, Leach owned and operated a restaurant where he would hold forth with his customers, bragging that "Anything Annie can do, I can do better."

Bobby Leach the barrel he rode over Niagara Falls, 1911.

To capitalize on his local fame, Leach moved to Niagara Falls, New York and opened a pool hall in 1920. When he was in his sixties, he thought it would be a great idea to swim the noted whirlpool rapids around the Falls. He never succeeded in this endeavor, but one William "Red" Hill, a local riverman, saved his bacon every time. Perhaps Hill should be famous for this.

For all his derring-do, it was a piece of fruit that ended Mr Leach's life. He slipped on an orange peel, the cut became infected, gangrene set in, the leg was amputated, and complications from all this killed him two months later.

So, riding over the huge falls in a barrel, minimal injuries. Orange peel, death.

Life's like that sometimes, and then it isn't.

The Saturday Picture Show, November 9, 2024

 

Hi folks. I'm Jack, the Ghost of Halloween Past, and I'm here to remind you it's time to take the Halloween decorations down and pull out the pilgrims and turkeys.

Shooting a movie and you don't have the money to pay for a stadium-sized crowd of spectators? That's where these guys come in. They're the Inflatable Crowd company, and they'll fill the seats with balloon people.

The Canadian view of autumn splendor.

Macaws or toucans? Nope. They're Oriental Pied Hornbills. You know, as in "Four and twenty blackbirds.."

Do you recognize this man? He and Donald Trump have something in common. Tell your History teacher about it!

Our beautiful national symbol.

I'm not encouraging you to run off and join a traveling troupe of hedonists, but certain things remind us to go find our joy and hold it close!

We had a bug matching this description flying around the kitchen this week...or was it another new bug every day? Only saw one at a time. And look how nicely he blended in with the paint!

Just in time for holiday mirth-making - your own private nog dispenser!

Godfather fans will recognize this scene as Clemenza's house. Cannoli fans will recognize being told not to forget the cannoli!