More than one

The other day, I saw a woman at the self checkout who had selected Spanish as her language, so the machine was talking to her in the words she understood best, and I hoped that no one would come over and start berating her to "Speak English!"

And it was a reminder that not everyone speaks English first, or even second.

I read in the Washington POST that learning a new language is good for your brain, and that's good for any brain at any age anywhere.

They went on to explain that being conversant in another tongue offers mental stimulation, and that keeps the old noodle active and sharp. They're even thinking that knowing more than one language may delay a diagnosis of dementia, or stop your brain from aging (or at least slow that down!)

Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished research professor emeritus of psychology at York University in Canada, has looked into this for more than fifty years. She says that some people might practice music for a couple of hours a day, but the study of new language(s) is "intense and constant," so that's like strength training for your brain.

And even if you aren't actively speaking your second language, your brain has it "on" at all times.

Que será, será’!

And please remember, when you are hearing someone speaking haltingly in English, it's probably their second language! 

Sunday rerun: Belief

 It's the middle of August, what I call Elvis Week, and once again, our crepe myrtle in the back yard is fully ablaze in pink!

Funny tree, or shrub, or bush, whatever it is. Some people spell it Crepe Myrtle, some go with Crape Myrtle, and now and then you'll see Crepemyrtle.  However you spell or name it, its blooms appear right in the middle of hellish summer heat, long after the forsythias and azaleas have lost their luster and retreated back to stubborn green.

Ms Myrtle waits until all the other bloomers have had their turns, and then she does her thing. And with her blooms at the top of long tall branches, they wave majestically at the people piling into their SUVs to get back-to-school shopping done.

(Kids - ask your folks if they had Trapper Keepers back in the day! They drove teachers nuts, for some reason.)

We planted our CM shortly after we moved in, maybe 2001 or '02. And every year since it took a notion to bloom, it has done so in this very week. Like being able to expect people to say, "The Ravens will never win a Super Bowl with Lamar," it's as dependable as an Accutron watch. 

Except for one year, and I will tell you this with my hand on a Bible if you wish...

D.

In 2014, that sad June, my mother (who bought and brought the little plant to us) died, and in July, our dear Deanna went to be with the Lord. Deanna's funeral was in Phila on July 19 that year, and when we got home that night, we looked out back and the crepe myrtle was gloriously pink and waving greetings from above.

A month early.  And it never happened before then, or since.

I believe in signs and messages. This is one that lives with us every day.

The Saturday Picture Show, August 1, 2026

 

It turns out that some of the funniest writers in the world work in the field of clothes labels.

Squirrel with catsup looking for another with fries. Object: matrimony.

The US Department of State put out this chart showing aid expenditures in Africa. Big surprise: every nation on the chart was incorrectly identified. Bigger surprise: they used AI. I think AI is as useful as a sundial in a blizzard.

Nice idea, Tom! I like this! I also like using cash register receipts, the checkout receipt from the library or bookstore where the book came from, any of the 51 playing cards left in the pack since you lost the Ace of Spades, or one of the billions of bookmarks the library hands out so we won't dogear a page. That's a criminal offense, you ask me.

Live coverage on ESPN with your hosts Tony Romo and Cris Collinsworth, Sunday at 8!

If this is the Colton High School in Riverside, CA, be aware that they are ranked the 975th best high school in the state! 

We loved The Beatles in A Hard Day's Night, and crusty old Wilfrid Brambell played Paul's grandfather ("He's very clean.") Crusty, he was. Old, he wasn't! He was 52 when they made this movie. 

"This is Friday. I already heard."

Don't do drugs! Stay in school! But for the love of Pete, get a better pencil!

I think it's a cat thing, liking the sunbath in the middle of the day. Enjoy yourself, Tabby!

Neither A Borrower...

This is not really a "guy thing," more a "woman thing," but here we are.

Oprah Winfrey was on the Keke Palmer podcast (available wherever you find your podcasts under "Baby, This Is Keke Palmer") the other day and she astonished millions by saying she and herbestfriendGayle (it's all one word) do not share clothes.

Oprah and Gayle have been hanging together since the days they worked together here at Baltimore's WJZ-TV.  They vacation together, they shop together, they dine together, but they don't have a common wardrobe area.

In fact, Oprah says, “I don’t share things. Once you take something of mine, keep it.”

To be honest, my list of eccentricities is so extensive as to disallow buying or wearing used clothes. I mean, if I were over at your house and somehow wound up with a gallon of marinara sauce down my shirt and pants and socks (you would be amazed at how often this happens!) and you offered me an old sweatsuit so I could go home with at most an eighth of my dignity intact, I would probably go with it (probably) but I'm not going to ask to wear your sweater because it would look perfect with my new shirt.

A, I have a sweater, and 2, I haven't had a new shirt since little Bush was president.

On the other hand, if there is some particular item in my closet that you find enchanting, you can have it, and you can keep it, except for my orangish red sweater that I wore in 1988 when we went to see "The Phantom Of The Opera" on Broadway.

I love that sweater. It reminds me of one of the best afternoon naps I've ever had, and I've had many.  I was sawing a log, dozing away when some stupid chandelier came crashing down out of the ceiling. 

Oh hear my tale of woe

 Say, how would you like to be famous? I mean, not just known in the neighborhood for handing out dog treats to every passing hound, but really show-biz famous like this Robert Pattinson, an actor in no movie I ever saw.

But lots of people took my place and saw him in most of his dozens of movies. I know he played an ashy-faced guy in the Twilight movies, and I know he must be English because he has two middle names. They must have a lot of time over there to paste monikers like Robert Douglas Thomas Pattinson on a baby.

I would like to think that, given an extra ten minutes to fill out my birth certificate, my parents would have given me an extra name like "Tito" or "Leon," but they ran out of time.

Anyway, Pattinson is a big star in the world and people in his shoes get lots of email and mail mail and messages from their fans. I imagine it can be a hassle, having fans chase after you with offers of undying love as they tear your clothes off. But he seems to be a practical man, because - in his words:

You see what he did there? He pulled back the velvet rope that some of us have to separate us from the rich and famous, and let the fan see that it's not all that great to walk around all pasty-faced and handsome all the time.

I would love to see his list of kvetches (a term for a constant flow of gripes, from the Yiddish word kvetshn, meaning "to squeeze or press") but I would imagine it's  basically similar to everyone's list, just that the cold coffee that bothers him, or the car that broke down, are a lot more expensive than yours or mine.

I Yam what I Yam

People my age are often told to make serious plans for their final arrangements, which is the kind way of saying, "Figure out what kind of box you want us to shovel you into, old man." 

I will leave that to future generations. I plan to live to be a ripe old age, so I'm only 3/4 of the way through.

What I plan to so is settle just how I'll shuffle off to Buffalo, and that is going to be a long, slow shuffle. I used to tell our doctor, while he was listening to my staccato heartbeat or probing you-know-where, that I thought it would be fun to die of rickets, or scurvy, if I couldn't find somewhere to catch a case of rickets. He told me to cut down on limes.

Tell you one thing for sure - I won't go the way that American frontiersman Daniel Boone  <<<  is supposed to have gone. One legend (thoroughly disputed) says that ole Dan'l died from eating too many sweet potatoes in 1820. That will not be my undoing. I can't stand sweet potatoes, so they won't get me unless someone throws a bag of them right at my head.

Again, though, I have a long way to go before I settle my bills. I always like to leave people with a smile on their face, so let me think about it. 

Buy him some peanuts and Cracker Jack!

Watching the Orioles in Detroit last night also offered a little nature study along with the old ballgame.

In the middle innings, a black squirrel appeared on the field, offering to be a pinch runner or whatever. 

Later in the game, fearing an attack on a player resulting in rabies or whatever, home plate umpire Bill Miller got the grounds crew and several of the Orioles outfielders to do a big roundup and chase the varmint back to the bullpen area where he lives. If you sent out to a Hollywood casting director and asked for a typical baseball umpire type, what you would get would look exactly like Bill Miller: benignly gray, barrel-chested, and loud of voice, which is what he used to address the crowd and ask them to give a hand for the crew that sent Squirrely Joe off to his domicile. Nice touch!

The black squirrels are outnumbered by the common gray, or fox, squirrels by about 10,000 to one. And they are not a separate species or anything, not at all. They are just regular old squirrels born with a genetic trait known as melanism, which gives their fur more dark pigmentation.

They do appear frequently in cold northern area such as Ontario and Michigan, where that dark fur absorbs and retains heat in the winter.  And you have never seen a black squirrel wearing a down vest, so there you go.

I've never seen one in my part of the world here in Baltimore County, but we were up at Mariner Point Park in Joppatowne, Harford County, and we saw a slew of them running around. 

I hope this little guy comes back out for the next two games up in MoTown. The Orioles won because a squirrel put the hex on the Tigers!

Up In My Memories

 This one is just for fans of really old movies, or The Andy Griffith Show, or really sweet secrets.

I think that covers most of us.

Let's work backwards. Episode 9 of season 4 of the Andy Griffith Show aired on December 2, 1963 -  some 10 days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was entitled "Up In Barney's Room," and was the episode where we got to see Deputy Barney Fife's living arrangements with Mrs Mendelbright, who rented him a room in her boarding house. The plot goes that Mrs Mendelbright kicked Barney out of the house for cooking chili in his room, but the real reason was that she had fallen under the spell of the old charmer J. Pat O'Malley, who was only trying to rip her off. She wanted Barney gone so she could move Oscar Fields (O'Malley) in. Big surprise: everything worked out in the end.

Bigger surprise: Enid Markey, who played Mrs M, was one of the original stars of silent movies, having played Jane in the first two Tarzan movies fifty years earlier. She also performed in vaudeville and in stage productions, and after being injured making a movie, she decided she really wanted to learn to act by appearing on Broadway shows. She was to do 29 shows on the Great White Way all together, beginning in 1919 with a play called...."Up In Mabel's Room."

The writers of that Griffith episode, James Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, wanted to salute one of the grand ladies of American theatre, so they swapped in Barney's name and wrote a nice tribute that way.

Life is full of little treats like this!

Here's Enid Markey as Mrs Mendelbright and Don Knotts as Barney Fife, as the landlady catches the deputy using a 75-watt bulb, against her rule requiring bulbs no brighter than 40 watts. She also accused him of being afraid of the dark.

Sunday rerun: When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie

 Not that this will keep the Baltimore Orioles top management awake at night, but I am not a huge fan of the Oriole Park at Camden Yards. I know it's the Taj Mahal of baseball, a magnificent edifice constructed on a great idea that former club officials Janet Marie Smith and the late Larry Lucchino had. The state of Maryland had acquired the property at the old Camden railroad warehouse. Smith and Lucchino said, instead of tearing down the warehouse (the longest building on the east coast) let's build right up to it. And they did, and it's a great park. 

But it's downtown, and I'm not. I'm about the most sub-urban boy you'll ever meet. I see plenty of people packing the ballyard these days, since we have a winning team, and that is all good.

Please permit me to wish they had kept the old mid-town Memorial Stadium around so they could play a few games there every year, just for the hell of it. Sure, that place was decrepit and had no swank about it, but there was a certain basebally-ness to it that the new place lacks. I see fans at the games now with crucial moments in the game in front of them, and they are looking at their phones or jawjacking with the people behind them. At the old stadium, you had to pay attention, in case a ball or bat (or fan!) came flying your way.

At the old stadium, for some reason, I enjoyed the smell of some cheap cheroot cigar being smoked, and I never smoked stogies in my life. It just seemed like part of the atmosphere, like the aroma of popcorn and the sound of kids running around stomping on old soda cups. They don't do that anymore, either.

One thing I believe the new park is trying is growing tomatoes. Yes. Tomatoes. This all started back in the 1970s when Earl Weaver, the manager back then, challenged groundskeeper Pasquale “Pat” Santarone to a tomato growing contest. Santarone carved out a little dirt triangle down where the left field foul line met the stands, and Earl planted his Better Boy tomatoes in his back yard garden not too far from where we live now! I'll be glad to drive you past the historic site someday.

Earl and Pat even went into business together as they argued about the size and quality of their respective fruits. They marketed a tomato fertilizer and I'm sure a lot of people around here have enjoyed homemade pasta sauce and salads much more because they had used the Earl 'n' Pat secret 'mater food!

I have heard that the current club has tomato plants growing out by the bullpen, but it's not the same.

You can travel all around, and you are not going to see things in other cities like you see here!

Pat (l) and Earl

The Saturday Picture Show, July 25, 2025

A welder made a rear bumper step-up and got something that people will notice as he drives along merrily.

The sun says, hold the electricity, I'll light up this lantern for now!

The company that does the road striping on Eutaw Street in downtown Baltimore has a whimsical bent that helps to zip things up nicely!

I imagine a lot of people would look at this and wonder if this giraffe is wearing false eyelashes. 

Be careful where you park on your first day at Toronto Fire Station 143!

It's only fitting that Pennsylvania, a state named for "(William) Penn's Sylvania," would be the home of this lush greenery. 

Note to backyard gardeners: keep on eye on the vines, or the squash will try to sneak out through the fence!

Someone took a freeze-frame of a Monopoly game and the table on which it was being played and covered the whole thing in a half inch of Epoxy and now it's forever.

Down in Ocean City, a shark obligingly poses for a photo as a Beach Dad works on his relocation. And now, you've got that Baby Shark song going on in your head!

 You have to wonder what happened here - why not give every apartment a balcony? I don't know; something about this whole building gives me the willies something fierce.

Hooking Up

 Being an old geezer retiree, I am able to keep up with the world because of my finely-honed computer skills, the most notable of which is being able to ask young people how to do computer stuff.

But I have a computer, scanner, cell phone, tablet, all the things that help me stay up on things, if you will.

I worked for Baltimore County, and every month since my golden retirement day of 3/1/12 I have received, via US Mail, a pay stub of sorts covering my pension check and the deductions, etc. That has been handy for Peggy to keep up with the financials around here.

But they don't do that anymore; as of this month retirees have to go online to a county portal and print out their "advice" (as they call that monthly printout.) It's no problem for me, but what about those who don't have a computer to keep their records straight? 

It's like this creeping disappearance of shows that used to be on regular tv, but now you need cable. I guess it won't be long before all the NFL games are on cable only, along with the playoffs and Super Bowl.

We invented and developed and created ourselves right into a hole. What once was so simple ain't so much anymore.

Here's the wrong way to get connected...

Just the tip, just for a second

With the Whirled Cup in our rearview, and real football still about a month away, the talk on the sosh media this week has been all about "do I need to tip at a carry-out place?"

I'll say this. If the person at the counter gives exceptional service (helps you out the door, tosses in some extra hot sauce packets, etc) sure, that's worth a little something.

But people are saying that they go to the counter at Pete Sirria's to grab the xtra-lge pepperoni they ordered online, and when they go to pay, the screen lights up with "Do you wish to tip?"

Tip whom? The computer that took the order? 

Now some people are saying that it's nice to tip the counter person, and one would hope that they would divvy it up with the people who made the pizza. But you can't know if that will happen.

In a restaurant setting, where a server brings you the menu, answers questions, makes suggestions, brings water, appetizers, entrees, sides, coffee, dessert, and another fork after Uncle Nutzy drops his, that's where tipping is appropriate.

How about tipping the person in a clothing store who helps you find just the right tie? How about the cashier at Try'N'Save who rings up your order, shares the local gossip, and tells you the joke about the traveling preacher from Keokuk? The guy in the money booth at the gas pumps with a sign about you must be born before this date in 2005 to purchase tobacco? 

The 911 operator who takes your call about the brush fire down the street? The firefighters who extinguish same? The teacher who taught little Abercrombie how to solve quadratic equations? Your life insurance salesman? Your favorite actor? the president of your community association?  The guy who writes a blog you have read more or less daily since 2007?

Just ideas, you understand.

Stick It

Can you drive a stick shift? The answer, more than likely, is "no." A lot of people will tell you they can drive one, but you get two blocks down the street and the car is hugging and chugging and stalling and the "driver" says, "Well, it's been a long time..."

If you can really drive a stick, you don't forget how. Put the clutch down, move the lever, let out the clutch and go...two or three times, and then start all over after you stop.

I mean, now you have cars you don't even have to drive, so changing the gears is hopelessly passé, I guess.

And this, for stick shifters: last year, less than 1 percent of new vehicles made for the U.S. market in 2025 were stick shifts. 

The commonly accepted wisdom used to be that you saved gas by shifting at just the right time, but now those engineering wizards have gotten the automatic transmission working so well that you can't top their fuel efficiency.

What's more, the average new car today with automatic tranny has seven (7!) forward gears, and you wouldn't want to shift that many times yourself. Let the automatic handle it!

Plus, you don't see people zipping around in the little sports cars of yesterday. More and more, you see SUVs on the streets and the parking lots, and just try to find yourself a manual transmission in a RAV4. They haven't made them like that since 2022. Toyota only make three cars now with the option for a stick.

And think of this - if you do drive a stick, don't plan to drive it to a lot with parking valets.  An 18-year old is not going to know what to do with that third pedal on the floor.

I would be willing to trade stick-shifting lessons for lessons on how to tie a bow tie, though. Not that I'm going anywhere wearing a bow tie, and you're not buying a manual car. 

It would just be a secret between us.

Nothing to Snicker about

Members of the rock band Van Halen used to insist that all the brown M&Ms be removed from the jar of candy they wanted in their dressing room.  They had nothing against brown M&Ms. They just wanted to make some poor soul go through all that candy with tweezers, because being annoying is pretty much what Van Halen did, day in and day out.

That's not going to be an option for anyone soon, because the makers of M&Ms have promised to eliminate artificial dyes from their candy pellets, but they are having trouble getting rid of the blues and the browns. The candymen told the Wall Street Journal, it's turning out to be "expensive" and "difficult."

Two more words that describe Van Halen, if I may say so...

Mars, the people who make M&Ms, were able to make red, orange, and yellow dyes out of natural ingredients like turmeric and beets. (How tasty!) And they came up with a real natural green, but nothing works to make a blue candy coating. They even tried spirulina  - a blue-green algae - as a replacement for blue, but it turned out to be a giant hassle.

And didn't we just go through a whole thing about green algae? And would you want it on your candy???

Getting M&Ms coated in brown uses a lot of blue dye, surprise to hear, so there will be no more brown or blue M&Ms soon.

When the new dye-free M&Ms come out on your grocery shelves, there will only be red, yellow, orange, and green.

Van Halen tribute bands will have to find something else about which to be peculiar.

Up for sale

Do you enjoy prowling thrift stores as I do? I would probably buy all my clothing that way, but my size is hard to come by at Goodwill.

I have to find out where the Ravens drop off last year's wardrobes and go there.

Anyhow, there's a guy named Quinn Brown who knows how to go mining at Value Village, a thrift in his town of  Tigard, Oregon. 

He even goes on Senior Day, although, at 19, he is way short of the discount. It doesn't matter. 

Quinn was there with his twin sister Ellie when he found that diamond in a junk heap that everything would love to encounter. 

Quinn actually find such great things at the thrift shops that he re-sells them at profit. He has turned over nearly 10,000 items over the past four years. But this day, he saw a another teenager pick up a yellow item and then toss it back in the bargain bin.  

Quinn swooped in and grabbed it up, paid $3.07 for it, and it has since been verified as basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain's Los Angeles Lakers warm-up jacket from their 1972 championship run.

He didn't know Wilt Chamberlain from Neville Chamberlain, but with the size of this jacket, he knew it was custom made for a 7-foot man, so he figured he was onto something.

 

Sotheby's has verified the provenance of the jacket. It's legitimate, and is going up for auction soon and might bring in a quarter of a million dollars.

Pretty nice return for a $3.07 investment!

Sunday Rerun: The Sound of a Fury

 The past few Septembers have been dotted with a non-specific sort of agitation, as if something somewhere were missing in my life.  I took inventory of my emotions (confusion, mild rage, skepticism, scorn, delight, joy, happiness and pure bliss) and found them all intact, and then it hit me.

September used to mean new TV shows and new cars.  And not any more, for the most part.

Man, I'm telling you, the time was that TV networks would show promos for new shows coming on right after Labor Day and excitement reigned.  "They're making a 'Dennis The Menace' situation comedy," people screamed! "How many more days must I survive until the premiere of 'CPO Sharkey,' starring Don Rickles?" pondered many.  "I can't wait until that new 'Maury' show comes on!" cried many.  And then it came on, and many more cried.

Now, instead of three networks with new shows that no one wishes to watch, there are 237 networks, and the only shows that people are looking at feature poorly-educated, un-shaven-and-shorn rustics.  We revere televised individuals from whom we would move away, were they to sit next to us in a diner.

This is a Plymouth Fury.  It was not a rocket ship.

And, even worse, do you remember the tiny thrill you got when the new cars came out!  "The new Plymouths have tail fins the size of half a cow!"  "Dad wants to go down to Rustee Ford to look over the new Galaxie 500 XL!" "Is it a Falcon or is it a pickup?"  All these huzzahs rang out every September, in a country not that far away, not that long ago.

Today, the Toyota Camry changes the door on the gas cap every couple of years, and that's about it.  The NASCAR cars all look like the same non-NASCAR cars.  And can you tell me three differences between a Corolla and a Civic?  What in the devil is a Passat, a Tiguan or a Touareg?

Every kid could tell you the difference between the Chevies..the el cheapo Biscayne, the moderately-priced BelAir, the top of the line Impala, and the top of the Impala line, the Impala Super Sport.  Ford, Mercury, Plymouth, Dodge, and the rest of the GM line (Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Cadillac) of cars all had major changes from year to year, and the new models all came out every September, while Liberace never did.

The Saturday Picture Show, July 18, 2026

 

When life was so much simpler...Times Square at night, 1949.

Say hey to "Gus"! He's a 67 million year-old T-Rex skeleton who recently fetched $50.1 MILLION dollars at an auction. And that was just a bare-bones offer.

She decided to beat the high cost of movie snacks by smuggling in her own. It was easy to see through her plan, though.

Here's a debate I will always entertain. When you park in a garage, you're going to have to use Reverse at some point, am I wrong? Why not get it done early? It's easier to leave that way, but the head-first crowd won't see that far into the future.

It would seem that this person has made some bad choices over the years, and wishes to help you avoid his pitfalls. There was a guy around the corner from us who had signs on his yard complaining about the poor quality of his car. Next thing you know, he went out and bought the new model of the same car. There's a lot to say for brand loyalty!

If I were this bird, I would ask for a name upgrade! It's the Common Loon.

Canadian Wildfire smoke is vacationing in the Northeast USA this summer. Please stay indoors and read!

Here is a combination that blends one of our favorite things - a Little Free Library - with the packaging colors and design of Baltimore's own Old Bay seasoning (yes, we put it on everything!)

We are lucky that Maryland borders Pennsylvania, because 80% of American pretzels come from there, and we love our pretzels!

All the ships at sea

I relate to Michael Scurr, a long-time volunteer at Britain’s National Archives. He spends a morning every week foraging through old papers and documents to have them in sort sort of order so that future researchers have easier and more organized access.

I too love to rummage through old papers, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever figure to find something like he did! 

He was sifting through the letters of an 18th-century Royal Navy captain this past May, and came upon a report dated Christmas Eve 1776, when the American privateer (a government-sanctioned non-military boat asea for the purposes of piracy) Dalton was captured. Scurr opened a paper attached to that report (I wonder what they used before paper clips and staples) and saw the word DECLARATION printed on the top of it.

Sure enough, that piece of paper so long stored away has been positively identified as a rare early copy of America’s founding document. It was printed just days after the original was signed on July 4, 1776, and declared to all that the 13 colonies had cut off all ties to Britain.

It is one of just 11 original copies of the so-called Exeter printing of the declaration that are known to exist, and the only one identified outside the United States, the British National Archives said.  This version was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, between July 16 and 19, 1776.

John Hancock's John Hancock on the paper authorized the ship to disrupt trade and do battle with the British Navy.

And that turned out pretty well, for us.

 

 The thinking is that the captain of the Dalton read the Declaration to the crew of his 18-gun vessel to let them know that they were in the fight and why.

 I would write more today, but I'm going to the basement to go through some old boxes.

Cash Patel

 It was Wednesday, it was warm in Baltimore, and I needed some groceries and prescriptions. I got the Rx'es just fine, but when I went to pay for the food, things went down the disposal.

The young male cashier roused himself from his daze so he could tell me the total: $31.35.

I said fine, here's what I'm going to do. I gave him a 50, a one, a quarter and a dime. He looked as if I had tried to pay with ancient pieces of eight from a treasure chest, so I tried to coach him, saying, just enter the amount I gave you and see how it comes out.

Next thing I know, he's digging in the drawer for a ton of change. I said there should be no coins involved here; you owe me twenty flat.

"But I forgot to ring up the dime, so your change is $19.90 because I can't go back and add it in."

I looked at him with disbelief. He wasn't arrogant or anything, just monumentally unconcerned with doing his job.

I said, "Take that dime out of your hand. Put it in the drawer along with all that change you were trying to give me. Hand me a twenty-dollar bill. Then you're square and I'm square and we can all go on with our lives."

He did just that. Now I have to see a chiropractor because my neck hurts from all this headshaking.

The Gums of Navarone

 Elvis Presley became the King of Rock because he brought something to this earth that blended many types of music with his own talents as a singer and performer.

His family is now represented by one Navarone Garibaldi. Navarone is Elvis's first wife Priscilla’s son with her second husband. Navarone is also the half brother of Elvis's only child, Lisa Marie.

Last week, Navarone started a GoFundMe out of his driveway in Los Angeles. He wants your money to help him kick off an “affordable organic pizza” business.

He's looking for $5,500 to buy an industrial pizza oven. Naturally, given the fortune that the Presley family sits on, people are wondering why he doesn't just go to his mom with his hand out and ask for a handout.

Priscilla and Navarone.

People just jumped all over him on Instagram after he put out the GoFMe, and Navarone said, “Haters gonna hate… and I’m sure I’ll have to explain this many more times to ignorant people who think I should ‘ask my mom’ or that I have money….. YEAH, I also have a lot of bills, I also have a budget.”

And he told TMZ, “She loves the idea but I can’t ask for money for every whimsical idea I have or we both would be broke.” 

He also told TMZ he is confident that once he has that pizza oven up and cranking out the pies, his 81-year-old mother will swing by for a slice or two.

Our National Pizza Desk will keep an eye on this story for you. Meanwhile, up in Heaven, Elvis must be heaving a mighty sigh, baby.

 

Just can't take it

 Boy howdy, those farm stands really have everything nowadays! Tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, chard, lettuce, onions, carrots, blueberries, raspberries, video cameras....

Ooops! The man you see here heaping fruits and veggies into a tote sack did not know about that last thing, or he would not have tried to rip the farmer off by loading up with produce and hitting the road.

The cameras worked great, and so did the shaming, because the farmer showed the videos on Facebook and asked if anyone knew this man, wearing Fire Department hat and shirt, and by the next morning, the farmer was able to report that the guy showed up and paid his debt.

It was interesting to follow along on Facebook. Most people said it was shameful, and represented that certain sense of entitlement to which no one is entitled, be they firefighter, police, teacher, whatever.  You don't get to steal food.

But some people were saying that maybe the man was confused and thought the stuff was out there for free. This is the new style of bending over backward to adjust our moral compasses that many are employing. 

"It's ok to steal from where I work because it's part of my pay, or should be."

"Everyone is cheating on their taxes/vehicle registration/final exams/spouse, so why should I be the only one not doing it?"

"It's only a crime if you get caught."

"It's a victimless crime anyway; no one gets hurt."

"They expect a certain amount of shrinkage or pilferage anyway and they adjust the prices up, so I'm already paying for it."

"I give them plenty of business all year; time for a freebie."

To which I say, no, no, no, no, no, and no. I hope this guy, even though he finally paid up, is being shunned by his friends who work and pay for what they get.

I'd be ashamed to know him.

She had it her way

 You see this ten-story office building in Glen Burnie, Maryland? 

It's called Empire Towers, and this is an old picture of it. A new picture would show zero cars on the parking lot and barricades all around. The building was deemed structurally unsafe last week. Apparently, people have been working on the underground parking garage and the building's moorings are not quite up to holding the building up, so even if there's a bank branch in there, no one can hold that up either. It's a huge deal down in Glen Burnie, legendary home of Maryland's Motor Vehicle Administration and 47 car dealers in a two-block radius. Nearby businesses are closed until someone figures it all out.

You see the Burger King right next door (also currently closed)? Therein lies a tale. I worked around the corner at  WISZ  AM-FM from 1973 to 1978. I started out on the evening shift. Most nights I would pack some sort of lunch - a little salad, some lunchmeat, Potato Stix (I still love them!), maybe a Pop-Tart. BUT every now and then, I would skip packing a lunch and hit the BK for something substantial, maybe a Double Whopper, large fries, a vanilla shake.

I packed about 160 lbs on a 6' 5" frame then, so calories were not a concern.

You know the drill at places like the King: order, pay, and wait to get your chow in a bag. And so it was that one day I was waiting for my BA order, along with a hippie-looking girl who ordered a plain hamburger and a soda.

My order came up, the guy slid it across the counter at me, and BAM! The freakazoid snagged my bag the way Brooks Robinson used to pick up hot ground balls, and then she ran out the door like Ed Reed after an interception. 

The guy at the counter looked like this was not a first. He remade my order and I was on my way to play Conway Twitty records very happily, and as far as I know, her original order is still sitting there.

If Burger King ever opens up, if Empire Towers doesn't collapse, it's probably still there waiting for her.