Lone Ranger

I think of the old Yiddish proverb "God gives burdens, also shoulders" quite a bit. The first time I heard it was election night, 1980, when Jimmy Carter lost the election to some movie actor who went on to confuse "Being the president" with "Playing the president in a movie" for eight years, assisted by his co-star actress wife.

Hamilton with mourning ribbon

ANY way, it comes to mind again these days in the case of Josh Hamilton, outfielder for the Texas Rangers.  Hamilton, at the age of 30, is about at the top of his profession, but it's been a long hard climb to get there.  Hamilton fell victim to drug and alcohol abuse early in his career and actually spent the years 2004-2006 out of baseball, mired in intoxication and dissolution, only to get it back together, kick his habits, and become an All-Star big leaguer. 



I'm not always so easy on people who are given great gifts and yet toss them away foolishly, but Hamilton gets credit for turning his life around.  But the twists and turns are not quite through for him.

Last week, he did what you see ballplayers do all the time after an inning ends. Waiting in the on-deck circle for his turn at bat, he picked up a foul ball and tossed it toward the outstretched glove of a fan.

That fan was Shannon Stone, a 39-year-old firefighter from Brownwood, TX, who had brought his 6-year-old son to the game to see his favorite ballplayer - Josh Hamilton.  In the previous inning, Hamilton had tossed a ball to a little girl in the stands, and heard young Cooper Stone asking for a souvenir of his own.  

The next chance he had to make good on that wish, Hamilton complied.  The boy and his dad were up above him by twenty feet, and maybe the toss was a little short, and maybe Mr Stone just missed catching it.  Who knows.  The horror is that, in trying to catch the ball for his son, Mr Stone fell out of the stands and down to the level below, dying of blunt force trauma.  The photo at right shows the scene from last Thursday.

Firefighter Stone was buried on Monday, and you have to count on Heaven sending angels to earth to help his son deal with what he has just seen with his own eyes.  

And then, the next day...


On Friday, Hamilton, already dealing with the events of the night before, hit a screaming foul into the stands in the sixth inning of a game with Oakland.  That fan got conked on the face, and left the stadium bloodied and needing stitches.

The foul ball aftermath

You understand that major league baseball does not allow the use of aluminum bats like they use in softball and college ball, because when a major league hitter hits a ball pitched to him at 90+ mph, the ball is hit so hard that the added power of the lighter bat would make the position of pitcher way too dangerous to play.  Foul balls also fly off their wooden bats and into the stands with ferocious velocity.

But for Josh Hamilton, one can only feel pity and concern.  We can rationalize that, of course, neither of these accidents was intentional on his part, and he was just there doing what he was supposed to be doing when they occurred.  All true, and yet, we'll need to wait and see if they have an effect on his future performance and his peace of mind. 

These are burdens he has to bear alone on earth, and we pray that his shoulders will support him through his faith.  I have a feeling that he will get help from an angel as well.  We always do!
 

I Witness News

It must be a different thing to say "I witness news" as opposed to the good people at Channel 13 Eyewitness News, where everyone goes by a first name.  If you see crime happening, it is your civic responsibility to tell the police what you saw so that the perpetrators can be brought to court, where the stories of their sad lives can unfold before a sympathetic jury.

For real, you know what you're supposed to do when you see someone stab someone or run out of a bank with a canvas sack full of money and those magnets and measuring cups and rubber discs for opening jars, all those promotional items that banks hand out. You're supposed to stick around and provide information to the law, so that the bad guys can be rounded up for their day in court (if they can clear their bank-robbing schedule.)

The picture given to police

We talked the other day about the violence that broke out in downtown B'more on the 4th of July. Well, the man pictured here is alleged by the police to be the man who broke off a bottle at its neck and stabbed to death 26-year-old Joseph Calo of Opelika, Alabama.  Someone took a picture of the person that is said to be the attacker, and on Saturday morning, 32-year old Marcus Harris of Baltimore walked into Police Headquarters and gave himself up for arrest.  Police are saying that they received a number of calls fingering Harris as the culprit after that picture that someone gave them was publicized all over town.

Here's the thing.  Who hasn't seen one of those courtroom drama movies where, as the just-convicted guy (who always looks like Joseph Campanella) is being dragged off by beige-clad bailiffs, he turns and shouts, " I'll get you, you dirty rat!"?

Joseph Campanella

This was memorably lampooned on The Simpsons when Krusty's sidekick Sideshow Bob went up for trying to kill Bart 27 times, and hollered, "I'll be back!  They can't keep the Democrats out of office forever, you know!" just before he went to share a jail cell with Scooter Libby and Tom DeLay.

Smile, you crook!

That last part about two crooks who have yet to be incarcerated was gratuitous, and I would remove it from this blog, but there is no button on this keyboard that says "erase."  Tom Delay was convicted of money-laundering charges and given three years in the hoosegow, but he is appealing.  Not to me, but to the judge.  Scooter "Scooter" Libby (born Irve Lewis "Scooter" Libby) was convicted of one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and one count of making false statements in a federal trial, but irksome President George Bush stopped clearing brush off his ranch in Crawford, Texas, long enough to commute his thirty-month sentence.  Bush figured that the loss of his good name and reputation was enough of a punishment for Scooter.  I for one felt that "being known as chief of staff to Dick 'Scooter' Cheney" was a blot on any man's good name and reputation to begin with.

Did you ever stop to shudder when you realized that for eight years, your Federal government was in the hands of people named "Scooter"?

I have to hand it to people who are willing to come forward, say what they saw, and then testify in court about it.  There is a part of our culture that eschews this truthfulness as being "snitching."

I don't know if this Mr Harris is guilty of anything at all. I sure as heck was not downtown when all hell broke loose down there the other night, so "idk" "wtf" went on.  Let's hope that the truth comes out without anyone having to fear retaliation.  Chances are, Harris doesn't have high-ranking friends like Tommy and Scooter do.

Scooter.  I mean, really.

You Never Know

My sister had a very close friend who passed away the other day following a long battle with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease.

She was a wonderful woman, friend to hundreds, mother, wife, grandmother, mother-in-law - just about everything she could be to everyone she knew.  She is gone, and the only good part about is that it did not come suddenly, so people had the chance to say goodbye, at the very least.





It worries me that every morning, no one has the guarantee that they will be around to see the evening of the sun.  And a lesson I have learned over the years is to leave nothing unsaid, especially if it's good.

How many times have we all lost someone suddenly, and the first thought we have is that we wish we had taken time to tell them we love them, appreciate them, are grateful for their help and support, or even something as simple as, "Thank you for brightening the day."  

I was watching the Beatles movie "A Hard Day's Night" for the ten-thousandth time the other day. Remember the old guy who played Paul's grandfather and stirred things up all time?  They said, "He's a mixer."  I guess that's the polite way of saying "He's an agitator."  

I like to stir things up, if only to engender the lively discussions that ensue. I might get into rather heated political dialogues online and elsewhere, but please don't think for a second that I allow a political or sociological difference to shade my personal opinion of people.  There might be people with whom I am totally in line, ideologically, and yet I don't find them all that appealing as people - and there are lots of men and women with whom I find no common ground when we talk about the news, and I like them personally and respect them deeply as well. 

I'm saying this just for one reason, and that is, if you like a person, it doesn't matter if they agree about what it takes to make a good president.  And if you like a person, it's best to let them know it.  

Even if you're cheap like me, it doesn't cost a nickel to pay a compliment.  Thanks for reading this, and unless you are both a reader and a heartless murderer, thief or sex abuser, chances are very good that I like you and love you!

Just be careful today and every day.  We all need all the friends we can keep.  

Rolling right along

I walked into the supermarket across the street from work, and on the way, I saw a jerky guy put his bags of food into his car and then let his cart just sit there.  It took about 3 seconds for it to roll away and bang into the bumper of a Buick.  The jerkface drove away without a care in the world.  After all, it wasn't his ox being gored, or his Buick getting bumpulated.  (He drove a Jeep Jerkface.)

So on into the store I went, and when I got to the checkout line, the cashier was willing to treat me to a short treatise on her views of the American Immigration Crisis.  "We went to Orlando and asked for towels at the motel and it took three hours, 'cause the girl at the desk didn't understand English.  What is this country coming to?"

I suggested that next time she finds herself in Disneyville with a drippy child, she simply call the front desk and say, "¡Más toallas, por favor!"  But, hey.

She still didn't walk away with the title of the Jerkiest Person At The Supermarket because that honor goes to the fool who came up with the new cover of Newsweek magazine.  Now, I understand that this magazine, which people actually used to buy and read, has suffered a huge decline in circulation over the past few years.  It's probably nestled in the magazine popularity charts between "Modern Plumber" and "Buffalo Nightlife," but still, this is just awful.  They superimposed a picture of the late beloved Lady Diana of England into a snapshot of her daughter-in-law, the former Kate Middleton.  And they used computer graphics - pretty cheap ones, at that - to age Diana, so she is not the lovely young lady we recall, cool as a rose.  They have her looking like some artist thinks 50-year-old women look like.  This is all ghoulish and creepy, if you ask me.

A lot of people will look at this and think that Diana and Kate met, or think that Diana didn't really die in a Paris car wreck in 1997, or whatever people think.  This is a news magazine with a made-up cover story.  Nice.

I'm going to show you the cover, but I hope it doesn't have the effect of making you want to run out and buy it.  I will be willing to bet that Mr Letshiscartroll is already home reading his. 

I wanted to share this with you...

I just had to share this.  I got it from my dear friend Sue Haddox.  I met Sue twenty years ago when she was teaching Head Start kids and I went to speak to her class about public safety, and I loved the kids so much that I went back a few times just to help out.  


This little online essay packs a lot of wisdom into a few words.  I'll only add to it by saying that if you are one of those who is so concerned with what shirt to wear and what the other kids will think if you do this and don't do that, please try to remember that you are only here to please yourself and the one you love.  What other people think of us is none of our business!


I don't know who wrote this, but I sure do like it!  Please share it with the ones you love, as I just did.

As I've aged, I've become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend...  
 
 I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.
 
 Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM or sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60 & 70's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love... I will.
 I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set.
 
 They, too, will get old.

I know I am sometimes forgetful.  But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things.
 
 Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
 
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face.

So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.

 As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore...
 I've even earned the right to be wrong.
 
 So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever.
 
 But while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it).

 MAY OUR FRIENDSHIP NEVER COME APART ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART!

Gun your engine

So, the other night, as we paused mid-year to let our patriotic fervor reach its full flower, 600 Baltimore City police flooded Baltimore's Inner Harbor...not quite enough to prevent one death by stabbing (broken-off booze bottle to the neck of someone), one shooting (people here just love to fire those handguns on holidays and New Year's, and the bullet this time came down in the body of a four-year-old boy), one hit-and-run pedestrian accident, and one mini-riot that someone shot with a cell camera and put on YouTube. Police officials figure that with a crowd estimated at around 100,000 people, they need around 100,000 police, or one for each person, so that people will not stab each other to death with broken-off bottles, shoot their phallic substitutes into the night air, run each other over, or run rampant in the streets.

Yet, people are being urged to continue going downtown and dining, shopping and dodging bullets in these melees.  And the civic minded say it's safe down there, and plenty of people came home unscathed the other night.  Don't be afraid, they urge.  Feel safe!  It's all in the perception.

Guns, guns, guns.

Then, some guy wearing flannel in July decided to point his phallic substitute at a guy working a speed camera car for the State, causing the road from here to DC to be shut down for three hours.  Drug dealers, gun runners and others who depend on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to keep their commerce flowing freely were thoroughly inconvenienced.

I have to wonder about society sometimes.  Actually, a lot. The death of Caylee Anthony and the sloppy investigation of her murder enraged millions, and Facebook groups were started to protest all that, and people were leaving their porch lights on for Caylee.  That's all good, but what about this poor guy from Alabama who came downtown the other night for the fireworks and will go home in a coffin?  Still sad, how about the little boy who will spend the rest of his life wondering if some other fool will shoot him in celebration.  We want verdicts overturned and we burn with anger when courts go against the popular grain, and then we overturn police cars and burn down liquor stores when a basketball team wins a game.

I guess the counselors are right.  If we thought about how many Caylees got tossed into how many shallow graves in any year, it would be horrible to contemplate.  Natalee Holloway goes on vacation and is murdered, but if we knew how many murders like hers took place, it would be staggering to ponder.  We focus on one or two such cases at a time, but they are just microcosms of the world.

If I might humbly suggest this, how about we all take a long hard look at our behaviors and vow to fix the ones that might be harmful to ourselves and others?  That might be a good first step.  I'd like to think that we can still celebrate our nation's declaration of independence by becoming free of the fear of dying in a crowd just because someone else in the crowd cannot behave.  Then, once again, we could feel safe.  It's all in the perception.

I Take A Teenage Quiz

 1. Who introduced you to the person you like?
Sam and Maura on a blind date

2. Where were you at four today?
gently dozing someplace, I'm sure

3. Would you rather sleep at a friend's or have them over?
It all depends.  Most of the time, when a friend sleeps over, it's because they fell asleep watching tv after dinner, and we don't wake them up because we were asleep too

4. Last thing you spent money on?
Some sort of painkiller, I'm certain

5. What is on your wrists right now?
Right arm: wristwatch.  Left arm: I don't know. What do you think that is?

6. What's your favorite season of the year?
My favorite seasoning is always Old Bay

7. Do you hate when people call you when you're sleeping?
Yes so please don't call after 6 pm

8. Do you cry a lot over the opposite sex?
Haven't cried in so long, it would be hard to imagine the cause of it being a female

9. Have your ever wasted your time on someone?
Sure

10. Where did you get the pants you are wearing from?
These shorts are from the Clearance rack at WalMart

11. When is your birthday?
6/30

12. Are you one of those people who obsess over hollister?
Rafe Hollister was that mountain man moonshiner on The Andy Griffith Show who had a naturally great tenor singing voice.  I enjoyed hearing him sing, but my interest stopped short of being an obsession.

13. What are you wearing on your feet?
Those little quarter sox and slippers

14. Do you think a lot of people think bad things about you?
All the Republicans do, or should

15. Is it easy to annoy you?
much, much harder now

16. Can you commit to one person?
Have since 1973.  Nixon was still president.

17. Have you ever met someone who turned out to be amazing?
See #16

18. Currently liking anyone?
I like almost everyone!

19. How many times have you dyed your hair?
I was born a blond with white teeth, now I have white hair and blond teeth

20. Name of the last person to text you?
it was either Richard E. Normus or Hugh Jass

21. Does someone like you right now?
I certainly hope so

22. What does the 15th message in your inbox say?
"Greetings to you kind friend, I am Barrister Algonquin J. Wilberforce. I represent the estate of a late Nigerian prince who decided to leave 1.2 $ US to you because he chose your name on the World Wide Web..."

23. Have you ever gone up to a car thinking it was yours and almost got in?
Yes and it was a police car

24. When was the last time you were in a car with someone besides family?
See #23

25. What would your name be without the first three letters?
k

26. Do you want to see somebody right now?
Sure, why not

27. Where was the last place you fell asleep other than your bed?
my recliner, my sofa, my kitchen chair, my dining room chair, the chair in the hallway, the driver's seat in my truck

28. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone?
The young lady who takes reservations at Bonefish

29. The person you have the strongest feelings for dies, do you care?
Uh yes

30. Have your ever slept in the same bed as your friends?
Oh not for years!

31. What are you listening to?
"The Great Gildersleeve" on Old Time Radio

32. Have you kissed the last person you texted?
If I did that, he would not let me buy beer at his liquor store anymore

33. Do you think you can last in a relationship for 3 months?
38 years is a lot of months

34. Do you think someone is thinking about you right now?
Yes and I want Sarah Palin to stop that!

35. Name one person you wish you could fix with, and why haven't you?
Rush Limbaugh. He still owes me for some oxycontin.

36. How have you felt today?
Marvelous

37. Was this summer a good one?
Hot

38. Would it be hard seeing someone else kiss the person you like?
Only if I were awake

39. You receive 500 dollars without any reason, what do you spend it on?
What 500 dollars?

40.Would you be someone's girlfriends/boyfriends right now if they asked?
What an enchanting notion.  Must say no.

41. Do you believe your first love can be the only love in your life?
My first love was Sandra Dee.

42. Do you like your school?
It seems like a nice place for the kids in this neighborhood to hang around all day

43. Do you love coffee?
Decaf after dinner

44. After taking a shower, do you change in the bathroom or in your bedroom
I strut around the house in my naked glory until Peggy reminds me we have company

45. How many people could comfortably sleep in the room you're in?
If I'm there, no one else would be comfortable

46. Whats the last thing you searched for on Google?
pictures of chipmunks

47. How would you react if your mom got a lip piercing?
I would be mad at the people who run the senior high-rise where she dwells

48. Do you start the water before you get in the shower or when you get in?
Long before .

49. Are you happy with your life?
yes !

50. You have 1 hour left to live, describe what you are doing.
Leaving for a one-hour drive with Lindsay Lohan

51. What kind of earphones do you have for your iPod?
The ones that came with it.  Is this a trick question?

52. What is your current favorite song?
A tie between "Tik-Tok" (Ke$ha) and "The Clock on the Wall" (Tommy Collins).  No matter the genre, I am time-conscious. 

53. What nationality are you?
WASP but interesting

54. What is your desktop wallpaper on your computer?
It's a picture of Britney Spears.  Do they make other wallpapers?

55. You have to be an animal for a day, which would it be?
A Raven or an Oriole

56. Its 7:30pm on a Sunday evening. What are you doing?
I'm halfway through "60 Minutes"

57. What are your plans for the rest of the week?
I don't make long-range plans at my age.

58. You found a wallet on the side of the street. What do you do?
I return it.

59. Pick a lyric from the song you're listening to.

If you got a Cadillac, boy,
And a forty room shack, boy
A bucket full of money
And a tree full of honey
But if you're gettin' no huggin'
No smoochin' or muggin'
Well, if you ain't lovin'
Then you ain't livin'!  (by Faron Young)

Faron Young

60. Where is the person you like/ love?
Downstairs on the phone

61. For you next birthday, what would you like your parents to get you?
I have all I need!

62. What was the last movie you watched with your mom?
Jackass 3-D.  She did not enjoy it.

63. You're in a food court, what do you feel like eating?
Just something to tide me over til I get to the diner

64. What are you excited for to happen within the next few months?
Seeing Sarah Palin being asked serious questions and giving her usual stupid answers

I still have my nametag somewhere

Everyone drove Mustangs to the A & P

In the spring of my senior year, just before my graduation from the exclusive Towson High School (admission by zip code only!) I went to work for The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, also known as the "A & P," and that's pronounced "Ann P" around these parts.  I had hoped to start out as District Manager or Vice-President of Sales, Grocery Division, but it seemed that the only openings they had were for "clerk," so I took that, figuring on biding my time for the inevitable promotions that never came.

Rat Fink t-shirt decal

Some interesting facts about that job: we had to wear a white shirt and tie and pants that could be any color but could not be jeans of any fabric.  We got around the shirt thing by wearing t-shirts underneath with various slogans and depictions of cartoon characters.

My starting salary was a whopping $2.15 per hour, not bad when my classmates worked at Gino's or McDonald's for fifty cents.  In fact, top pay on the clerk scale was $3, and there were full time guys there, working 40 hours, grossing $120/wk, and raising families and buying houses, cars and cheap beer on that pay. We wore red aprons and name tags. The store sold all the national brands, of course, but we had our own - in fact, the tea bags were called "Our Own" tea bags - brands, such as Jane Parker baked goods and Ann Page canned foods.  I used to wonder about the people who worked in the packaging end.  Working the early shift, I would be stocking the bread aisle and found it endlessly humorous that Jane Parker's Old-Fashioned Home-Style Bread carried the description "A hearty, firm-type loaf."  And one of my best buddies on the crew, Charlie (known as "Cholly" in BalMoreEse) had a younger brother whose detestation of cole slaw was so thickly ingrained in his diet that he carried the sobriquet "Slaws-A-Balls."

Please don't try to understand that nickname unless you are 18 and male.  That's the only way it's funny.

Tool of the trade

We would set this to 2/69¢!

I didn't usually work a cash register, so it was not to be my fate to have experiences like John Updike wrote about in his short story "A&P," but I would never have acted like the guy in that story anyway.  We had our share of pretty girls parading through the store in various states of deshabille and decolletage, and there was lots of ogling going on in the time-honored manner of adolescent males.  I spent a lot of time unloading freight trucks and placing items on the shelves for sale, so I always had one of those box-cutter knives and a Garvey price kerchunker ready for business.

Sometimes in the evenings, taking the trash out, or having a smoke break, we would see two cars pull up and park, and then a woman would get into a car driven by a man, and they would drive away, casting furtive looks as they left.  Of course, as major-league suburban sophisticates, we knew something was up.  We just didn't know what, to tell you the truth.  And in the apartments behind the store - now torn down and replaced with apartments - I don't know why either - there lived a woman who was quite uninhibited in her manner of dressing, which is to say that she paraded around naked and stood in the bathroom window, providing endless amusement for the easily amused.  We don't know where she got her groceries, because she did not come into our store.  We did know that she got her clothes at the same place The Emperor did!

So that part of my career lasted through my college days and then I took a cut in pay to go into radio, but I am writing today because the A&P chain is done in Baltimore as of today.  All the stores are closed; some will reopen as Shoppers' Food Warehouses, and some as Shop-Rites, and some will remain empty, corpses of a company that shot itself in the foot time and again changing its name from A&P to WEO ("Where Economy Originates" - snappy, huh?) and then SuperFresh, where they tried to be all things to all people.  Gourmet foods? Sure! Cheapie no-name brands?  Aisle 5, I think! Sit awhile and have some pizza and a soda?  Steam that shrimp for you?  Power tools, aisle 16!

Back in the day, we addressed customers as 'Sir' and 'Ma'am' and we thanked them for shopping with us and the acceptable answer to any question about where an item was shelved was never, "Gee, I don't know!"   But I heard that a lot lately in SuperFresh, and while I am sad to see them go, I can tell you this about Baltimore:  we like to eat food,  and you have to be pretty lousy at running a food store to drive people away like this chain did.

Shame, too.  They did have tasty cheese rolls.

Not Guilty?

Please don't think I am minimizing the awful feelings so many have toward tot mom Casey Anthony, but the second thing to come to mind, right after the OJ verdict, when her verdict came down was Bart Simpson, who has escaped justice for years and years by this simple credo:

"I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove anything."

Everyone is so upset, hollering that the jury didn't do this and the defense did that and the prosecutor should have done thus and such, and it would be good to remember this basic fact:

Casey Anthony was not on trial for being a liar, or a party girl, or even a bad mother. 

She would probably agree, in her heart of hearts, that she is all of the above.

The prosecution needed to get twelve people to believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that she killed her little girl.  They did not do this.

Casey was on trial for killing her little girl, and the prosecution failed to prove that she did that.  Just like a tenth-grader who has 101 excuses for a lousy grade in Algebra (The room is too hot.  The room is too cold. I'm too close to the chalkboard.  I can't see the chalkboard from where I sit. The teacher has it in for me. The other kids hate me. I missed class because I got suspended for truancy...) all it took was for Casey's mouthpiece, José Baez, to muddy the waters enough for the jury to admit that they had some doubts. 

Also, Casey was not on trial for not being properly distraught while her daughter was missing, nor for not being grief-stricken once the little girl's remains were found.  There is no law, except that ethereal quality of common decency, forbidding the mom of a murder victim from getting a "La Bella Vita" tattoo, or going out dancing and doing the Horizontal Two-Step.  All that was easy enough for the defense to explain away- everyone deals with tragedy differently, they said.  Add the well-served, but not proven, allegations about her father molesting Casey earlier in her life, and about him possibly having an affair while the search for Caylee went on, and the jury stopped blaming Casey and started blaming her father, who was made to look like a bad guy.

I don't know what kind of guy he is.  I don't know what kind of woman Casey is, or her mother.  I don't know what kind of woman Caylee would have become, but I do know that she will never have the chance to find out for herself, and I don't know who took that chance away from her.

Twelve men and women say it wasn't her mom. 

Chirpy Chirpy Cheap Cheap

It's funny how every time some tv or movie director wants to give us the ambiance of a quiet evening out under the stars, they always dub in the sound of crickets.  I don't know about the crickets who inhabit your neighborhood, but here around the Lazy 'C' Ranch, we don't hear them outside until mid-July, the earliest.  And even then, they stay pretty quiet until after dinner, unlike the chattering birds who start howling every day just before 5 in the yawning.

And tell me, how many nights have you lain awake, wondering why people like me fret about the correct past participle of "lie" just how doggone hot it is outside?  So, you get up; it's 3:22 AM, since you were going to get up soon anyhow, and you get about two feet across the bedroom floor when you find that thumbtack you dropped the other day.  Bare feet are the best thumbtack-finders you'll ever need. Hopping like a person with a thumbtack sticking out of their foot, you get down to the kitchen, to check the thermometer.  But by this time, you don't really even care that much what the temperature is outside.

Cricket

Friends, there is an easier way. Just count the chirp of a cricket for 14 seconds - and you've got your watch right on your wrist! - and then add 40! So, if you count 30 clicks in those 14 seconds, the temperature outside is 70°! What could be easier?  That's for Fahrenheit.  The formula for telling the current Celsius temp is somewhat more confusing, which could not be more appropriate.

Buddy Holly & The Crickets

This is all explained scientifically somewhere, but here's a link to the Old Farmer's Almanac - so popular with all of us old farmers - that will let you listen to crickets chirping.   We don't know why crickets chirp more frequently as the temperature rises, but don't worry.  Crickets don't know why we can't rub our legs together and make a noise, unless we're wearing corduroy pants.

Don't be chicken, come on and dance!

One aspect of American culture that sets us apart from the rest of the world, and there are many, is our willingness to have fun in a don't-take-yourself-so-seriously vein.  While the rest of the world does their formal dances at wedding receptions, bull and oyster roasts and Weltanschauung festivals, we can change the way we view the world, and the person standing next to us in it,  by asking one simple question:

"Do you chicken dance?"

 Well, do you?

Before the unfortunate injury that was to deny me the chance to ride in the saddle of a Derby winner, I was born and bred for this sort of dancing.  I was once long and lean, with hands that could hold a sixpack each, and arms that went on 'til Tuesday.  But I lost my boyish figure when I gave up the beer, subs and clam dip that were dietary staples of my bachelorhood in favor of green vegetables and lean meats, and there went my chances at Chicken Dance stardom.

You gotta admit, it's catchy!   Click here to hear the music - which you have heard if you've been to a wedding in Baltimore in the last thirty years - and then click here to see some kids who really know how to Chicken Dance.  The first video above was made by someone who dubbed Chicken Dance music onto a Lady GaGa/Beyonce video, so that's not the real dance.  The second one shows lots of people snapping their beaks, flapping their wings, shaking their tail feathers and clapping their mitts in the time-honored fashion.

Feel free to print out the steps and take them to the next gathering you attend, so you can join in the barnyard fun:

1 - Make little beaks out of your hands and snap them open and closed four times

2 - Pull your arms back behind you and flap them like wings

3 - Stick out your J-Lo thang back behind you there and shake it, but don't break it, while knee-dipping a bit

4 - Stand up straight again and clap four times

5 - This brings you to the bridge in the song, so cross that bridge now that you've come to it by linking arms with your partner and do-si-do'ing around eight steps one way, then eight steps back

6 - Time to make beaks again, and then the song will get faster as it goes along, so step lively, please!

You can click on the YouTube and see people ranging from random wedding guests to Chad Ochocinco stepping on it for you.  It's fun, and as Dick Cheney would tell you - he's a big fan! - it is not possible to keep a petulant sneer on your mug while doing this dance!  Look at how happy Dick was in his younger days.  >>>>>>

Should have kept on flapping those wings, Dick.  

 

They Do Things Differently in Sunny Californy

May I just ask one question of the people who arrange adoptions of children in Los Angeles, California?

The question is: who's in charge out there?


Here's the headline:

Denise Richards Adopts a Baby Girl!

As if we needed further proof that no one needs Charlie Sheen to get things done.

Denise Richards is now a mother of three after recently adopting a baby girl from the U.S., her rep confirmed Wednesday to E! News.

But even though the former It's Complicated star is doing the single-parenting thing these days, the adoption was a family affair: Daughters Sam and Lola were tasked with giving their little sister a name!

 

" Eloise Joni Richards is named after Denise's mom (Joni) and Denise and her daughters Sami and Lola chose the name Eloise," the rep said. "Denise and Eloise's big sisters couldn't be happier and feel incredibly blessed."

Ironically, the Richards and her kids were staying in the Eloise Suite at the Plaza Hotel when Sheen suffered his famous "allergic reaction" down the hall and scared the socks off a porn star last year.

But at least now we can assume that Sam and Lola remain unscarred and remember their time in New York fondly.

Congrats to Denise and her little ladies!

And oh well, now, I mean, really!  Assuming that the people who decide who gets to adopt whom out there are "tasked" (remember: verbing weirds nouns) with choosing suitable parents for foundlings and orphans, does anyone think they could find a better Mom - perhaps a woman unable to bear children, or one who has lost a child of her own - than the woman who could not bear to live with childish Charlie Sheen?  That whole Hollywood status/power trip is fine when it comes to getting seats in a restaurant or having the valet parking guy run and fetch your hybrid LandBuffalo right away.  

This is a human life we are talking about here, a little baby girl joining two other little girls in the life of a 40-year-old sort-of movie star, who five years ago vented her anger at two photographers by throwing their laptops off a hotel balcony, hitting two women below, aged 80 and 91.  Sure, we've all wanted to throw laptops off a hotel balcony, but most of us have the self-control not to do so. 

I think the best outcome would be for Denise's career to do really well so she is off making movies all over the globe, allowing the child to be raised by a succession of nannies, housekeepers, cooks, maids and butlers.  And I hope that those caregivers would be smart enough to take her to the zoo or a museum when Charlie drops over to see her sisters.

Bragging rites

My friend at work said she doesn't go on Facebook too much because "it's all these people bragging about what they did and where they've been."

I happen not to agree with that.  I love Facebook because it's a conversation, and people share things in a conversation.  It is possible to say, "I'm just back from spending three days in Halifax" without being a braggart about it.  Now, a braggart would say, "I just came back from being in Halifax and you'll probably never get to go there in your whole entire mundane life!" and then you can slug him a good one.

I had a buddy named Dave back in the 911 days - still a friend, although we each work elsewhere now - and there was another guy there who bragged just for the sake of bragging.  First he lost a lot of weight, and bragged about losing weight ("You guys need to get rid of those Hostess Ho-Hos and switch to celery!").  Then he quit smoking, and bragged about quitting smoking ("I smoked five packs a day for 20 years and if I can do it, so can you!") but, as Dave pointed out, we could never get him to quit bragging.  Or drinking, because he was sent home from work one night for showing up with a snootful, and then got popped for DWI on the way home.  We never heard from him after that, not that I'm bragging about it.

Bragging is usually the sign of insecurity.  Think about the times you have seen masters of their crafts at work.  I don't care what the task is: playing a violin, rewiring a lamp, hitting a baseball.  The ones who know they can do the job just get up there and do it.  No one needs to hear about how well you can play the violin, if you'll just pick the thing up and play it.  

All the bragging in the world isn't going to light up a room.  A rewired lamp will, however.

And if you can hit a baseball and then run 90 feet, please contact Mr Buck Showalter, c/o Oriole Park at Camden Yards. 

So, I don't know that bragging is the same as just talking about something.  There's a fine line 'twixt the two. 

 Now, if you're talking about doing something that others don't get to do, and you get to because you're a BFD, well, that's bragging.  Take Newt Gingrich.  

Neither can I, but here's his tweet about having a dinosaur noggin in his office. 

America's Most Beloved Adulterer was just subtly pointing out that he was able to get a Dino skull to display, but it's all right, because I listen to T Rex on my speakers in my office (or use headphones to feed it right into my skull.)  And he stole a line from Casey Stengel, who said the parks are full of statues of guys that everyone used to say were indispensable.

We all have our vices, our strengths and weaknesses.  It's good to see someone give up a pernicious habit, like that guy at work.  He gave up junk food and cigarettes and picked up an addiction to bragging.

Maybe that became his new habit, to replace eating and smoking.  Gotta have something!

Keep on Truckin'

At 75 (! really?) Glen Campbell is set for a farewell tour this fall, with an added touch of poignancy.  His wife told People magazine that he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and she wanted fans to know that might be the problem if he flubs a lyric or appears confused at these final shows.  

That's a nice touch, I think, because people do tend to assume otherwise when a performer messes up.  No one accuses the guy who forgot to fill the Xerox machine with paper of hittin' the sauce during lunchtime, and when someone wires the ceiling fan to the garbage disposal switch when a house is being built, the rest of the crew figures it was a mistake, which all humans make from time to time.  So, let's thank Glen for fifty years of fine music, and send him along happy.  Don't forget that he was known as an excellent musician before he had all those hit records, and you hear his guitar on all sorts of songs on the radio without knowing it was he pickin' on those hits.


One of his lesser hits, but one of my favorites, was a number called "I Love My Truck" (..."it's right outside....ain't had much luck....but I sure got a ride!")  Heaven knows I loved all three of my pickup trucks, the last one most assuredly.  Until the day that a careless motorist slammed into a careful motorist who slammed into a helpless motorist who slammed into me, that 2000 Tacoma 4WD never let me down once.   And wherever it is today, I bet it's running fine, just with a smashed-up bed and a tilted rear end.


And then I was watching the news and had a horrible thought!  You know you always see truckloads of men in all those mid-Eastern nations where chaos reigns, eight or ten guys wearing burnooses and sun glasses...carrying rifles...shouting slogans...in the back of 2000 Tacomas.

Missing "inaction"

So if you're watching Brian Williams one night and they show a bunch of insurgents in some far-off war-torn land, riding with sinister looks in a pick-'em-up with stickers reading "Cape May NJ" and "I Brake for Elvis," well, great.  That will mean my truck is finally seeing the world!

Gangster Wrap

We demand tighter national security, but when a 95-year-old terminal cancer patient is detained for 45 minutes at an airport in Florida and subjected to all sorts of searches, we say that's going too far.

Unless she had turned out to be a real granny, but had something planted on her by Al Qaeda.

Or, say, unless she had been a Birther terrorist male dressed up like a 95-year old female, carrying WMDs in his BVDs.

Then, if a disaster was averted, everyone would have said how great the airport security was.  Or, had the worst happened, everyone would be hopping up and down, saying, "You just can't TAKE that kind of CHANCE!  with peoples' LIVES!  so we need to screen everyone! Except me, I'm in a big hurry to get to Cleveland."

Meanwhile, out in sunny Cali, on-the-loose mob biggie James J. "Whitey" Bulger hid from the FBI for 16 years by shacking up with his dental hygienist girlfriend.  In fact, that's how the Feds got him...when they came to the door of his apartment in Santa Monica, they said "Open!" and he leaned his head 'way back, mouth agape.  From then, it was an easy matter to take his bib off and slip on the handcuffs, although the aging mobster did ask if he would be allowed to rinse.

But, it turns out now that he frequently crossed the Mexican border to go to Tijuana and purchase heart medicine.  Tight security there, eh?  The most wanted fugitive for the last 16 years slips in and out of the country more often than Michele Bachmann crosses that Illinois/Oregon border.  She does have a problem with geography, claiming that the shots fired in Lexington and Concord took place in New Hampshire, when in fact, any school kid could tell you that happened in the run-up to the Revolutionary War in Massachusetts.

Then this week, she shows up in Waterloo, Iowa, the place where she was born (although she has denied my repeated requests to see her birth certificate - so what is she hiding?) and claimed that John Wayne was born there.  Which he wasn't, but do you know who used to live there?  John Wayne GACY!

I'm hoping we can get more of this sort of humor from a woman who blamed the 1976 Swine Flu outbreak on a president who took office in 1977.  It's better than watching more "How I Met Your Mother" reruns.

Our sewers, ourselves

It's a little-known fact (probably because I just made it up) that Ralph Kramden was named for Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote essays on self-reliance and such.  Our fifth-grade teacher made us rewrite Emerson essays as punishments, in lieu of the tradition of writing "I shall not perform distasteful dance steps when Coach Apicella makes us square dance in phys ed" a hundred times.

Ralph Kramden was the central character in The Honeymooners, the great sitcom of the great Jackie Gleason back in the great days of television. Ralph drove a city bus; his buddy Ed Norton worked in the sewers.  But I'm certain that Norton was never part of this...

Modern Science now has the ability to take a spoonful of sewer water and test an entire city for drug use. As many a nervous job applicant with his pants in one hand and an empty specimen cup in the other has fretted, certain biomarkers are left behind in one's waste matter after one ingests certain drugs.

This testing is an important step forward, I guess, if you're out to test for such trends, but could there be a more yucky job?  Whether you're the person reaching down for a  jug o' sewer slop, or the one in a lab coat actually performing the test, you have to wonder: is this why I went to school and studied so hard?

And working in the wastewater treatment plant is no picnic either (figuratively or literally).  Working in the factory where they make cat food, being a hot-tar roofer or a penguin guano remover...none of these hold appeal for me.

I know that many people have these jobs and some might even enjoy them.  I am just glad that someone does them, so I don't have to!

So far, that is.

Scalias of Justice

The Supreme Court decided that banning the sale of violent video games to children would constitute curtailing the freedom of expression so cherished by the creators of BloodBath and Beyond and Die, Neighbor, Die and the other video games that young people of all ages spend hours on daily.  So this must be good for the kids.

Meanwhile, you can't get into a movie to see two people making love until you're of a certain age.  Justice Scalia, scribbling the majority opinion in the video game case, said that while the video games are disgusting, disgust is not a qualifier here.  So again, a couple of people get all nekkid and start doing the hibbidy-dibbidy on screen, and whoa, Nellie - you can't see that when you're only 17!  Nor can Nellie's partner. 

So the kids can't go to a movie, and wind up going home or someplace (do they still have Lover's Lanes?) and doing something else. 

Then they go home and break out the Xbox and fire up NARC or God of War.

And please, tell me again how if teenagers are not allowed to see the horizontal high jump, they will never think about sex!  Teenagers think about sex while they're doing algebra, while they're ringing up orders at Burger World, and even when they're not thinking about sex.

Teenagers who will spend time thanking Justice Scalia (seen at right making a disgusting gesture) tomorrow will be in line to buy the new Grand Theft Auto game tomorrow night.

Which half of that sentence is right? 

High School Consequential

I see on the TODAY show that some high schools are getting rid of the yearbook page whereupon the senior class makes predictions about which kid will wind up being a success and who will have the most kids and which incipient relationship will turn into a long-lasting marriage.

People who know about these things insist that being billed "most likely to succeed" puts unnecessary stress on a person, and they're quick to point out that Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and other richguy bigshots were not so designated at eighteen.  We don't know for sure how many people have taken the slight of not being chosen most-likely-to-succeed, and used it as a driving force to do well in their chosen field and earn big-time bucks just to show the yearbook staff that they don't know nothin'.

I think that being asked to make such predictions is a huge stress on the yearbook staff, anyway.  It's been my experience that a lot of the goofball heads from high school turn out to be the huge achievers in life, while many of the grinds who did all the homework, joined the right clubs and excelled all through senior high school find themselves high as a kite as they approach the era of senior discounts.   It's always hard to generalize.

See what I mean?

But, because I have a little extra time today, I thought I would give a little help to next year's yearbook staffs with this list of easily-voted-upon predictions for the class of 2012:

• Most likely to be sorry for buying so many crappy cars
• Most likely to spend a lot of time calling sports talk shows on AM radio, averring that their son could play third base better than the incumbent third baseman for the local nine
• Couple most likely to be married most often
• Most likely to appear on a reality show
• Most likely to watch a reality show
• Most likely to wear a t-shirt under a pinstripe suit
• Most likely to eschew proper foundation garmentry
• Most likely to find the happiness in life that comes from building healthy relationships, developing a rewarding vocation or avocation, and living the life that so many dream of, and very few seem to find

It's just my opinion, but that last one is the one for which high school seniors should aim.

And the great thing about life is, you can still aim for all that, no matter how long it's been since you finished high school (or not!)

Sunday Rerun: You Asked For It

Today I felt like Woodward, or Bernstein, maybe a little of both. It was strongly suggested to me, in quite an odd manner, that I ought to blog about certain events currently transpiring in the lives of two people I know. I tossed it around inside the old melon (only current other thoughts in there: another heartbreaking Orioles loss, and how good Kunzler All-Beef Franks are when grilled in beer and wrapped in a wrap) and figured, what the heck, the whole world needs to know this story, and if some hearts get broken along the way, well, remember: some will win, some will lose, and some are born to sing the blues.
I guess the way to begin weaving the tale is to illuminate the differences between the two people involved here. She was just a small-town girl, living in a lonely world. Later on, she took the midnight train going anywhere, and we all know where that leads! As for him, well, he's a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit. He was also fated to take the same midnight train going anywhere, but at least we know where he started out!

Well, they got involved with each other. Some say they met in a revolving door at the bus depot and just started going around together. But all the ingredients were there...a singer in a smoky room, a smell of wine and cheap perfume, and that's tough, because you can't smoke inside rooms any more, and have you ever tried getting the aroma of wine and cheap perfume out of a denim jacket? We heard later that she was working in a redundant position at a free dental clinic, because according to one of her postcards, "For a smile they can share the night... It goes on and on and on and on" (italics mine.)
The night can be a lonely place, and the heart is a lonely hunter. She saw strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard, their shadows searching in the night. Apparently, some of the people she met worked as support poles for nocturnal illumination outlets, because in a email to his cousin Francie, he described "streetlight people, living just to find emotion, hiding somewhere in the night." It is very hard to hide when outfitted as a light pole, as Allen Ginsberg could have told you.

On the Fourth of July last year, we got word that someone had seen him on ESPN in that hot-dog eating contest at Coney Island, where he reported that he was working hard to get (his) fill. He told interviewers that it was true that everybody in the crowd wants a thrill at such an event, but when total abdominal stretch-out has been attained, the experienced competitive eaters among us are out there paying anything to "roll the dice" (euphemism for tossing one's cookies, as it were) just one more time.

Some WILL win, and some WILL lose, but only Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley and (debatably) Barry Manilow were born to sing the blues. Last we heard from our Greyhound lovehounds, they were attending a Matthew McConnaughey cinematic retrospective, where it truly seems like the movie never ends: it goes on and on and on and on.
Don't stop believing, you two crazy kids. Hold on to that feeling. Glad to be able to share your story, if only out of coercion.

And for the sake of the PowerPoint presentation for this saga, here's one of those charts that are often the last thing someone attending a daylong training session can remember from the post-luncheon part of the class:

"If you're so nostalgic, take a bicarbonate of soda!" - Joe E. Ross

I guess I am prone to nostalgia, so I find myself watching That 70's Show because I miss the 90's so much.  That's when the show debuted, after all, 1998.  What a great decade!

But when you look at those old 70's reruns, and see the cast, I remember when the shows were all new and we all thought that Ashton Kutcher would wind up being the biggest star to come out of that bunch.  Now he is getting ready to replace Charlie Sheen in another sitcom.

Laura Prepon, tall and lovely Donna Pinciotti.  What's she doing lately? Haven't seen her.





Hyde?  That Danny Masterson guy?  Witness relocation, for all we know.





Topher Grace, Eric Forman.  He's in movies now and then; he always seems to be playing a young, conflicted college graduate.

Lisa Robin Kelly, Eric's promiscuous sister Laurie, is now appearing in North Carolina police mugshots for DWI.

Wilmer Valderrama, who was Fez, is now the voice of Handy Manny.  The woman I know who so closely resembles Donna Pinciotti, although much prettier and more capable, has a son who watches Handy Manny.  The circle is complete, my friends.



And so, as James Lipton would say, that brings us to the marvelous Mila Kunis.  Milena "Mila" Kunis, when she was trying out for the part, was told that all the actors had to be at least 18.  She said, "I'm going to be 18!"  Which was true.  Also true: she was 14 when she said that.

I am crazy about Mila Kunis, who was born in the Ukraine in 1983 and moved here in 1991 and learned to speak English by watching Bob Barker on The Price Is Right!  Mila Kunis, who not only played Jackie on the 70's Show but also is the voice of Meg Griffin on Family Guy, and if you don't think she is a great actress, well, think of how unattractive Meg is - Mila can even make herself sound haggy! That's acting, is what that is!  And she has been in movies such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Black Swan, and Extract.

She only got to this country twenty years ago and I'm glad she did!