Hold the partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, please

Andy Rooney did a bit one Sunday night in which he rounded up all the ingredients in some store-bought chocolate chip cookies and tried to make them at home.  Of course the cookies turned out awful; you have to have a degree in chemical engineering to be a commercial baker any more, and Mom's homemade Toll House delights would never last long enough to be baked, shipped and shelved down at the Bag-Ur-Self.  

Rooney found it tough accumulating enough Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate {Vitamin B1}, Riboflavin {Vitamin B2}, Folic Acid), Semisweet Chocolate Chips (Sugar, Chocolate, Cocoa Butter, Dextrose, Soy Lecithin), Sugar, Soybean Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil, High Fructose Corn Syrup, leavening (Baking Soda and/or Ammonium Phosphate), Salt, Whey (from Milk), Natural and Artificial Flavor and Caramel Color anyway.  These items come in 50-gallon tubs, anyway.  

Here is all you need to make the best chocolate chip cookies right in your own lovely home.  You probably have 1/2 of this stuff anyway in the pantry. Better make two batches; you never know when hungry people will drop by. Hint.

But - do you remember the big kerfuffle a few weeks back when it was revealed that Subway sub rolls contained  zodicarbonamide - and that substance is also found in yoga mats?  Oh the horrors!  

Well, put down your sub for a second and give the yoga a rest long enough to listen to this story on NPR.  It turns out that unless you eat about 27,000 subs per day, you don't really need to fret about the levels of zodicarbonamide you ingest.  Scientists who spend their entire workdays wearing white lab coats and peering into microscopes say they don't fret too much about tiny concentrations in bread being "toxicologically significant" and so now neither do !

However, if you really want to worry about something, ponder the fact that sodium caseinate is found in two substances found in most homes:  non-dairy creamer...and Elmer's glue.  Hmmmmm.

Needs looked into

Colin Hay

Last week on "A Prairie Home Companion," the radio show, Colin Hay was a guest performer.  The onetime leader of Men At Work, now working as a solo performer, told the story of playing to a "packed house of 200" at a theater in his Scottish home town.  He was on the stage between songs when the stage door opened, and from outside came two women, who said that a car was blocking theirs in next door in the alley.  Colin said he told them he was doing a show just then, and they allowed as how they could see that, but that "the car needs shifted right now."

Needs shifted.  I've been hearing that sort of construction lately, sentences in which the infinitive "to be" gets tossed to the ground like that yellow paper that McDonald's wraps around a cheeseburger.  I hear "that wall needs painted," "the price of gas needs lowered," and "the pipeline needs built right away because there is absolutely no reason not to" all the time.  

I hear it when we drive up over the line into Pennsylvania, where the wonderful folks called the Pennsylvania Dutch have a lot of interesting sayings, such as "get the garage red up" (clean up the garage) and "let's put dinner away" (let's wash the dishes and pots and pans.)  But I never have heard it from an English-speaking non-American context, and as they say up in Amish Country, it wonders me!

And for those wondering, yes, this is how I spend my time nowadays, perusing the etymology of words and phrases.  F'rinstance, the appendix of a book...that you might have removed...or your own, which a surgeon may have...in Latin, "appendix" means "the part that hangs." A human appendix hangs off the end of the large intestine; appendices hang around the tail end of books. 

I just learned that, in the appendix of a book.  

Sunday rerun: "The road to hell is paved with adverbs" - Stephen King

Writing in Salon online, Mary Elizabeth Williams drops the bad news that the Associated Press stylebook is now accepting the improper use of the word "hopefully."

Well, you know how those of us who like correct grammar, spelling and pronunciation are reacting to that bomb.  We're the ones who stand there and mutter "and ME"  when someone says, "That DVD belongs to Connie and I."  Our eyebrows shoot skyward when someone sputters, "Who can I talk to about all this?"  We moan over misplaced modifiers, we mourn silently when someone says, "It's a mute point" and we grind our choppers upon hearing, "Splitting infinitives is something that is best to never do."  But the ne plus ultra of things that drive us to distraction is hearing someone let go with, "Hopefully, the pizzas will be here before the kids get home."

(You know what's fun?  Using hopefully correctly!  As in, "Hopefully, I went to the race track yesterday."  People will look at me, and say, "Well did you go, or didn't you?"  And I say, "I did. Hopefully!"  They walk away shaking their heads.)

Hopefully is an adverb, so it should only be used to describe the verb.  Pizzas do not arrive full of hope.  Full of cheese and pepperoni, sure.  You can say, "I hope the pizzas will be here before the kids get home."

Or, now, you can say it incorrectly, and still work for the Associated Press.  Hopefully.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 8, 2014

 You know...we just asked for one sign...one sign...that's all you had to do...but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

How cool it must be to fly around in Holland when the tulips are abloom!

 Look carefully.  Looks like a morning in America...it rained a while ago but now the sun is out and it's a pretty day.  And remember those cars!  They don't make them like that anymore, do they?  Well, as a matter of fact...

The man behind all this is the amazing Paul Michael Smith, who made these phenomenal car and truck models, and then made model houses and sets to take these pictures.  It's stunning.

Courting problems

I don't know Rachel Canning or her parents, Sean and Elizabeth, three people from Lincoln Park, New Jersey, whose family squabble has boiled over from their own kitchen into a courtroom and the national news.

Rachel is an honors student at a private high school; she wants to be a biomedical engineer, but last October, she left the family home.  She says her parents threw her out; they say she left voluntarily because she found it onerous to follow house rules:  be respectful, keep a curfew, return “borrowed” items to her two sisters, manage a few chores, and reconsider her relationship with a boyfriend the parents believe is a bad influence.

The parents, cruel as they are, bought her a car, which is now parked at THEIR house. 

Rachel found refuge in the home of a female friend from her class.  That girl's father is an attorney, and he seems to be the one who suggested that Rachel take the matter to court, where Tuesday she lost the first round of her case. The judge ruled that her parents are NOT responsible for her tuition to the high school or to whichever college she plans to attend in the fall, but only because the high school is willing to forgive the $5300 remaining on her tab for this year.

Mr Canning is a retired local police chief who now works as a township administrator, and he laid down the rules of his house thusly:  "Private school, new car, college education; that all comes with living under our roof."

His lawyer, Laurie Rush-Masuret, read from a statement before the start of the hearing, saying the Cannings "are distraught that their oldest daughter feels that litigation is a better option than living together as a family."

Judge Peter Bogaard said that he "wish(ed) more energy would be spent on reuniting the family than keeping it apart."

The family meets in Family Court

“My parents have rationalized their actions by blaming me for not following their rules,” Rachel said in her court papers.  So, according to Ms Rush-Masuret,  Rachel emancipated herself and removed herself from her parent’s “sphere of influence” by voluntarily moving out of their house “as she did not want to abide by her parents’ rules....”

So this is how it is today?  A child refuses to follow her parents' rules because does not wish to do so, and the parents are to blame for blaming her for not following their rules?

 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 
I, the somewhat Honorable Judge Clark, hereby cite two important precedents:
************************************************************************
Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act,  Penal Code § 11164 et seq. 

(¶) The 12-year-old son of a guy I know called The Law Offices of Ronald M. Sharrow, seeking to file suit against his father, who had refused to permit the youth to watch Wrestlemania 47 on pay-per-view.  The law firm called the parents to ask that they have their child stop bothering them.

Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1963, Pub. L. 93-247, 88 Stat. 4, codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. §§5101–5106. 

(¶) My requests to smoke cigarettes, chew Mail Pouch tobacco, drink beer and be given my own Corvette automobile and Triumph motorcycle were turned down in a landmark decision by my parents, who cited my age (12) and the fact that I was about to be grounded until I was married.

Cool it

At 6 AM this past Tuesday, the temperature at our airport dropped to 4 degrees above zero, or in television weather parlance, "the mercury plummeted" to 4 above.  

This was the time that the weatherman threw down his
clipboard live on CNN rather than explain the weather

Immediately, the town fell into a frenzy, and TV stations dispatched reporters to do live shots clad in Russian cossack gear, holding thermometers and reminding moms to make sure the kids are wearing coats before they head out to the bus stop.

Listen, if we could just stop for a second and think about it ...it's MARCH!  It's still winter.  

The meteorologists claim that March 1 is the "first day of meteorological spring" now, and everyone thinks that on March 1, we're going to be tiptoeing through the tulips and  we're gonna be "...just like a couple of tots, Running across the meadow, Picking up lots of forget-me-nots...

The weather and the calendar are not friends, and they don't synch up.  Baseball is the summer game, but I've worn a parka and down mittens to Opening Day, while football season starts off in the dog days of Labor Day weekend while people are schweaty and shtinky from the heat.

Another thing that tickles me about people is how we complain about the cold in the wintertime, and then as soon as it warms up, we crank up the A/C to get the room cold again.  I thought we wanted it warm!

We never have what we want, we never want what we have.  How about just enjoying what life brings us?  Yeah it's cold this week, and within a month it'll be hot.  Hold on.

Today in History......

I know it seems that I spent a lot of time here talking about old country music stars, but that's only because I do.

Today is March 5, 2014.  On this date in 1963, three of the biggest stars of the genre - Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas - were returning to Nashville by airplane after performing in Kansas City.

Hawkshaw was a big guy, out of the hills of West Virginia, 6" 5" like all good hearted people are (!) and he was known as "Eleven Yards of Personality" on the Grand Ole Opry, where he came to fame singing his theme song "The Sunny Side of the Mountain, " and other hits such as "LOnesome 7-7203."   He was married to fellow Opry star Jean Shepard, who was eight months pregnant with their second child at the time of the crash.  Jean is still singing all these years later (hits such as "Seven Lonely Days Make One Lonely Me" and "At The Time."

Lloyd Estel "Cowboy" Copas, from Blue Creek, Ohio, was not only a fine singer but also a very talented guitarist, as you can see by watching him do his "Alabam" in this old clip.  Or this version of "Roly Poly" from 1947...

Both country and pop fans were familiar with the songs of Patsy Cline.  Hits such as "Crazy" (written by Willie Nelson), "She's Got You," "I Fall to Pieces," and "Sweet Dreams" are standards by any measure, still played on jukeboxes, radios and old record players all over.  Patsy's sound was instrumental in popularizing the new Nashville Sound that helped take country from only being popular in rural America (and my room!) and her "Walkin' After Midnight" shows her with one foot in both of those styles, new country and old.

You know what else is purely American, besides blended musical styles, is the willingness to run to the aid of other people.  Just at the end of 1962, a DJ named Cactus Jack Call had been killed in a car crash in Kansas City.  There has always been a strong bond between country performers and the DJs who play their records, and so Patsy, Copas and Hawkshaw thought nothing of running out there to play a benefit show for Call's family.

They were coming back to Nashville in a Piper Comanche piloted by Randy Hughes, who was Copas's son-in-law and Cline's manager.  Hughes, like the young man who flew Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens on their final trip four years earlier, was not qualified to fly, and when the plane flew into a storm near Camden, Tennessee, 90 miles from Music City, it crashed into a forest, leaving no survivors among a group who had flown west to help survivors of another crash.

My vegetarian friends will excuse me...

If you've read this far but you practice a vegetarian lifestyle, you have my total respect and admiration, but the rest of today's blog will not interest you at all, as it concerns wardrobe choices for Matthew McConnaughey's training staff, a helpful sampling of ideas for mixing paint colors at home, and a couple of dozen photographs of Richard Nixon, from gridiron glory to White House disgrace.  Pretty boring stuff, and I'm going to write it as soon as I can and then take a nap.  We'll see you tomorrow, ok?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

They add butter just because butter.

All right, carnivores.  We've talked before about Joseph Mitchell, the great writer for The New Yorker who wrote about a dream that somehow eluded him and then quit writing about anything from 1964 until his death in 1996, although he still went to work every day.  Very sad story, but in his better days he wrote marvelously about all sorts of things, one of which is the New York custom of "beefsteaks" - not a piece of steak, but a party devoted to the avid consumption of grilled meats.  I recommend that you read the article, reproduced on the smokinjoesbbq website, remembering, as you read, that it was written in the different world that was 1939...

I just stumbled across this article from The New York Times from 2008, and so we know that the custom survives in New York and New Jersey (insert Chris Christie joke here.)  In Baltimore, we call them bullroasts, and they might also feature oysters fried, steamed or raw, but the concept is still the same...you get together with some friends and family, and for 50 bucks you chow down in royal fashion.

Happier than they would appear to be

In spring and fall, Baltimore is also the place for turkey and oyster dinners at volunteer fire companies, church halls, veterans' posts, and "wherever particular people congregate," as the packs of Pall Malls used to say.  "In Hoc Signo Vinces" is how they said it in Latin, but I don't know that they'd have a Baltimore-style bull roast in old Rome.  And speaking of ancient days, Mr Mitchell points out that men would wear their older suits to these affairs, because they used no silverware, the meat being served in slabs on lightly-toasted bread, and so grease spots on the old herringbone were inevitable. Now, of course, if a guy gets beef goo on what he wore to the bullroast, why, he can always get another T-shirt that says, "Without ME, it's just AWESO!"

Picture Frame

I'm going to throw a couple of questions into the air here and I don't even pretend to have the answers to them.

It's more like one question, asked in two different arenas, with Constitutional implications and local reverberations.

Item 1: Just about every weekend night at around 2 in the yawning, crowds of college-age people throng the main drag of my home town, formerly rustic Towson, MD. Used to be, you could roll cannon balls down York Rd after 7 PM and not hit much of anything, but someone figured out that a tidy profit would be earned by opening 87 bars and saloons, and so at closing time, the local police have to break up melees, fracases, donnybrooks and eddying mobs of intoxicated youths, most of whom are wearing Bob Marley hats and silly grins. Last Saturday, as the roiling mob made its amoeba-like procession back toward the dorms full of unread textbooks, a budding Michael Moore in the crowd began making a cellphone video of the arrest of several D&Ds (your choice: dumb & dumber or drunk & disorderly).  It's his right to do so, the law says so, and police were supposed to know that. But an auxiliary police sergeant, an unpaid volunteer, chose to get all testosterony about it, and got up in the camera guy's grill, hollering that he had lost his right of free speech.  And how about this? We have seen the video of that imbroglio for five nights on the evening news, and  the chief of police had to state publicly what every sensible person knows, mainly that the kid has his rights, and the auxiliary cop overreacted...

What no one is talking about is why people have nothing better to do in the middle of the night than a) get D&D  and/or b) hassle and taunt police who are trying to deal with a) and get home in one piece.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood, Kristen Bell, formerly the star of the Veronica Mars TV drama and soon to be seen on the big screen in the Veronica Mars movie, is all up in arms over the paparazzi mobs taking pictures of her kid and the kids of other celebrities.  I've not seen this sort of stupidity myself firsthand, but apparently actors, singers and other famous folks can't even walk down the street without oily men and women with cameras leaping out of them to take pictures from six inches away.

The parent/celebrities point out that having their picture taken is all in the name of the game of the fame they pursued, but their children should be spared the commotion, and I have to agree.  Ms Bell and others are asking that we support them by boycotting the celebrity magazines and those shows that come on at 7:30 showing the new carpeting in Halle Berry's hallway and things of that nature.

Big question is:  do you need to see pictures of Kristen Bell's child?  Do you need to take video of two drunk twenty-somethings getting pinched in the middle of the night in Towson, MD?  For what purpose does either image exist? And what purpose is served by banning them?  

As I said several hundred words ago, I don't know.  I'd love to hear from you, and then we can figure this out.

Sunday Rerun: LL Cool Jail

Since no one else will do it, I am going to step up to the plate here and say a few words in support of someone whose embattled status has made them an object of scorn, and I don't know why all this had to happen.
Speaking of Lindsay Lohan here. I happen to think that she is a very talented actress, and I base that on seeing her in two movies and around ten thousand celebrity-based "news" shows, websites and YouTube extravaganzas. In her day, she was an exceptionally lovely  young lady, and those good looks, coupled with the ability to assume a different persona as an actress, should have led her to a successful career, with professional advancement and personal contentment.

But no. Didn't happen. Young Lindsay was a child model and actress, and her first starring role as a movie actress was in the remake of "The Parent Trap," a new version of a movie that I saw as a kid myself, with Hayley Mills in the lead. Lindsay was amazing in that film, and I was not the only person who felt that she surpassed Ms Mills in playing the twin roles as separate kids, not just two kids with different accents. The fact that she was cute as a bug when she was little, and so charming in the movie, led moviegoers (and cheapskates such as I, who watched it on Encore years later) to feel that LL had a bright career path ahead.

Next time I saw her was in the movies, and Peggy and I actually went to a theater to see what I call "Mr Keillor's movie," the film version of "A Prairie Home Companion," the radio show that 90%** of the world listens to on Saturday evenings from 6 to 8 pm on a public station near you. Mr Keillor is Garrison Keillor, and he hired Lindsay to play Lola Johnson, daughter of Meryl Streep, for the movie. LL sang a great version of "Frankie and Johnnie" in the picture. Mr Keillor said that he was not really aware that she was a tabloid media sensation at the time of the filming, and said she showed up on time, knew her lines, sang her song live and got it right on the first take, and was no problem on the set at all. Ms Streep, who for all her greatness does occasionally fall back on the arcane jargon of her trade, was quoted as saying, "She's in command of the art form" and "completely, visibly living in front of the camera."  Which is like having Jimi Hendrix say that you can play a guitar pretty well, or Bing Crosby attesting to your singing ability.

Maybe Lindsay should spend more time in front of movie cameras and less in front of snappin' paparazzi, because her talent is really wasted lately. Let's be honest: it appears that she became a drug and alcohol abuser , and those wondering why need look no further than her mixed-up family life. Her mother is a former Rockette who pushed her kids into show business, her father has substance abuse and criminal problems of his own, and Lindsay was probably the grown-up of the family by the time she turned 11. Seems to me that a kid can only handle so much of that pressure before they crack under it, and so many times you see kids living in an all-adult world making money in a year that most adults won't make in a career, and they are pushed from all sides until they finally come out, broken and messy. It would appear that LL broke, fell in with fast companions, partied it up til Tuesday, and now this. She failed to attend enough of the alcohol diversion classes she was sent to by the court following a DWI arrest, and so she was hauled into court. Except, she failed to appear in court and sent her mouthpiece to the hearing with a lame excuse about LL's passport being stolen, and she's stuck in France. And then Saturday, whoops, here's the passport, here comes Lindsey home, and she goes to the hearing and pitches a fit because she will have to wear a secure continuous remote alcohol monitor, better known as a SCRAM anklet. And her attorney tries to tell the judge that LL is making a movie and having to wear the unsightly monitor will hold up production, especially on those shots where camera lovingly pans the ankles of the star. And of course, if she can't drink without the telltale tale-teller strapped to her ankle...

Lindsay. You don't know me, but I like your acting and I think you still have something to offer to the world. And the great part of writing this is knowing that you're about as likely to see it as I am about to see any of the SAW movies, but I send this thought to you across the miles...Look down at that monitor. It's on your ankle, right above your Achilles heel, and for you, that should serve as reminder of the many figurative Achilles heels that are sending you to hell on earth right now. Forget the family weirdness, the fake friends, the booze, the drugs, the all-night lifestyle. Be the actress you were born to be. If there's a Prairie Home Companion II or a Parent Trap, Junior, I will be there and so will Peggy, and there's your comeback ticket.

The great philosopher Mr Lou Diamond Phillips said, "Stars don't fall from the sky." Prove it!


**rough estimate based on what I wish was true.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 1, 2014

 Real Estate sales people would find it easy to sell one of these places.  Even if the house for sale only has one bathroom, or the plumbing and electric is way out of date, you can always say, "But look at the view!"  And then, just imagine the new happy homeowner and his drunken buddies hauling the sofa up those steps!

 I give up. I can't think of a snappy caption that does not involve the phrase "lyin'
around."  But remember, the lion cubs are at the Baltimore Zoo, and they would love to see you.  Just call and ask for Mr. Lyons.

 I have significant disagreements with educators, usually over the fact that too many young people don't know too many facts.  I know, parents are to blame as well.  But I ask you, teachers.  Why would you spend $3.49 for a bag of 100 fake pennies when you can get 100 real ones for $1?

 Pork medallions wrapped in bacon could be only be better with a slice of Taylor's Pork Roll on top and some pulled pork bar-b-q on the side.

This could be a photo showing snowflakes descending gracefully earthward...or it could be evidence that aliens are beaming thousands of snowballs at us through their cosmic snowray guns.  You decide.

Hi, Guy!

More than most people, who spend time thinking about how to accomplish great things, earn a pile of loot and, in some nutty cases,  make it legal to discriminate against other people on the basis of whom they love, I like to learn things, and I find the learning trail almost as interesting as what I learn.

Benchley

Here's an example.  I've long been a fan of Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945), the American humorist, drama critic, writer, actor and bon vivant.  Even back in high school, when I was supposed to be learning about Pythagoras, I smuggled in books of Benchley's essays, the end result being that I couldn't figure out the area of a triangle with more precision than to say, "It was right here a minute ago."

A recent happy find on Amazon for me was a book called "Robert Benchley's Wayward Press," a collection of his press review columns from The New Yorker magazine back in the day.  Benchley reviewed the local media (which consisted of 10 daily papers in New York and the radio stations, before tv, cable tv, the internet and what-have-you) for the magazine under the name "Guy Fawkes."

He also called himself "Guido" Fawkes

Guy Fawkes is one of those names that you've heard of, but I wasn't sure about who he was or what he did, so I reached into my pocket and pulled out the whole internet and found that he was a guy who was the leader of a group of guys who planned to blow up King James I and the Parliament in 1605 in an attempt to return England to Catholic rule.  James objected to this, as you might imagine, and old Guy was caught on November 5, 1605, with 36 barrels of gunpowder in the cellars under the Palace of Westminster, the meeting place for Parliament. He signed a confession and was executed the following January.  Now, every year on the  5th of November, England has fireworks displays and bonfires to remember the "Gunpowder Plot" and the King's escape from a fate worse than, or equal to, death.

This just burns a Guy up

AND - part of the fun of the bonfires is that they will dress an effigy in raggedy clothing and burn it.  The effigy is made of old raggy clothing, stuffed with newspaper, with a Guy Fawkes mask, and is known as a "guy," which became a word in English English meaning an oddly-attired man.

When the word "guy" came to American English, it lost the connection to the oddly-dressed and just came to mean any ...guy...that you might meet. 

All of this in no way explains the popularity of, or presence in our culture, of oddly-coiffed chef Guy Fieri.  Some things just can't be explained.

I guess he knows now!

I was just a 14-year old baseball fan when the Orioles made a trade that changed the face of the franchise forever.  Prior to the 1966 season, they traded pitcher Milt Pappas (a fascinating man, born Miltiades Stergios Papastergios in Detroit, where he attended Cooley High - the one from the movie. Pappas  opened a restaurant in Baltimore that burned down a month afterward, his wife later disappeared and was found dead in her car five years later, and he pitched a no-hitter for the Cubs that was one pitch away from being a perfect game) and several other lesser lights to the Cincinnatti Reds for outfielder Frank Robinson, whom the Reds described as "an old 30."

I was 14!  So of course I figured 30 was old.  Now, of course, I realize that 63 is old, and it goes up every year.

Frank turned out to be just what the Orioles needed in 1966.  He won the Triple Crown, leading the league in batting average, homers and runs batted in. The team sailed through the season and went into the World Series as underdogs to the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the O's won that in four straight. It was a great season for all, and Frank showed himself to be a veteran leader, which is what every winning club wants. 

You'll remember that he ended his playing career as player-manager with the Indians, the first black manager in baseball, and to this day is Executive Vice President of Baseball Development for Major League Baseball. Along the way he managed Cleveland (1975–1977); the San Francisco Giants (1981–1984); the Orioles (1988–1991); and the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals (2002-2006).

My point in writing this biography on F Robby, as we called him in B'more, is to let those of you who don't know from baseball that he is one of the legendary figures in the game.  Accordingly, it must have been quite a surprise to Oriole manager Buck Showalter when Frank was good enough to address the O's in spring training the other day and Buck gave a rookie outfielder, Josh Hart, the chance to meet Frank...and Hart didn't recognize Frank.  

Buck, then and there, became one of the coolest men in history by telling Hart to go research just who Frank Robinson is and write a paper about him!  The Oriole manager assigned homework to a kid who probably has never done much homework! 

Oh, if only ...!

The Playin' People vs the Plain People

Just across the state line into Pennsylvania, one finds oneself in "Amish Country," a peaceful land where the Amish dwell and wish that people would leave them the heck alone.  

Descendants of German and Swiss-German heritage, they try their best to blend with the people with whom they share Lancaster County PA and other enclaves around the country, e.g. New York state and Ohio.  They don't use electricity or operate machinery, but they do pay taxes like everyone else and are entitled to use the roads like everyone else.

When you're up in their part of the woods, as Mr Al Roker would say, you see how they cooperate.  No, they are not driving the kids to school in a humongous SUV.  Their kids walk to school or ride non-mechanical gliding scooters, so they get their day started without watching Sponge Bob or anything.  But when they are on the roads, they do their best to have their horse and buggy off to the right so cars may pass on the left.

Sad to say, every now and then, someone is in a big hurry to get somewhere because they are very important and the world revolves around them, so there are crashes between car and buggy rigs.  It happened just the other day; people were injured and the horse had to be put down.  

Tell me you wouldn't love to ride in this.

There were the usual comments from people unwilling to let the Amish live as they see fit.  "They need to get outta my way!" was the theme of the comments, although most people who followed up said that they were sorry for the loss of the horse and how regrettable it is that people often act like the south end of a northbound horse. 

Every now and again I read what someone writes about how their life is crazy, how rushed they are, how their tablet, smart phone or computer is on the fritz, and I think of the times Peggy and I have been in Lancaster, enjoying the slow pace, the wonderful food, the kindness and decency of people who want to be left alone while still wishing you the best of everything, and I wonder just which society is the more advanced.

Men talk it over

Outside our motel room in Amish Country, PA (the town of Bird-in-Hand, to be precise) last week gathered some men.  We were checking out and preparing for the ride home, and they had done so too.  From what I could figure, there were three couples from upstate New York, and the men were standing in three quarters of a circle, kind of rocking back and forth on their heels as men will do, rattling their pocket change and talking about...highways.

"Yeah, we got on 87, took that on down to 84, picked up 81 right outside Scranton and that dumped us right into 78, and..."

Men of all ages are fascinated by roads and where roads will take them, and it gets to where we ascribe certain characteristics to highways ("smooth," "bumpy outside of Schuylerstown") and to drivers from other states ("Yeah I was making good time; then I got stuck behind a Sunday driver from Delaware..."). We recognize the best times to travel ("got to hit the Beltway before 7 or you might as well just stay put"), how good the local crews are at salting and plowing ("213 was clean as a whistle, but then once we got on the county road, they hadn't even TOUCHED it") and, of course, where the gendarmerie are on the prowl ("Sonny was sailing down 50, right outside Sudlersville, and that state boy was sittin' right by that diner we used to stop at.  Got him for 75 in a 55").

Other topics men are likely to cover as they stand around rattling their quarters and dimes would include gas mileage in their cars (always inflated), how much they paid for their house (also inflated) and how much they paid for their cars (always deflated.)  The Orioles' chances at another World Series victory, the best places for steamed crabs, and how judges in traffic court "give everyone else in the world a break but throw the book at me" are also talked almost to death every single time.  Just ask Sonny.

There was that old country song "Forever and Ever, Amen" by that old country singer Randy Travis, in which he talks about "...as long as old men sit and talk about the weather, as long as old women sit and talk about old men..."  I guess that's what women talk about in a cluster.  If I were among them, it wouldn't be an all-woman group, and so the collective intelligence level would go down.

All right, Hamilton!

So!  How about that President Alexander Hamilton!  What a guy he was during his term!  He settled the war with Mexico by giving them half of Texas, he authorized explorations that led to our annexing North Dakota so we could have a matching set of Dakotas, and it was he who planted the large apple groves in the back yard at 1600 Pennsylvania Av - formerly owned by the Boone Family - that gave America its national drink, the revered Boone's Farm Apple Wine.

Or not.

Well anyhow, do you Groupon?  Because Groupon, which I take to be an online coupon that you don't clip and lose in your wallet, but rather carry around on your phone to wave at the cashier at the hookah bar, had a Presidents' Day promotion that honored the man on the ten-dollar bill by giving users ten dollars off 40 bucks spent at a local business.

"The $10 bill, as everyone knows, features President Alexander Hamilton -- undeniably one of our greatest presidents and most widely recognized for establishing the country's financial system," Chicago-based Groupon says on its webpage.

Apparently those people at Groupon, who did correctly identify Hamilton as one of the founding fathers and the first Secretary of the Treasury, are a group of smart Alex.

Hamilton was noted for saying
"Burr, it's cold out here!"

The dude was never president.

The Chicago Tribune asked Groupon about it and got this back from a Grouponer:  "Groupon is always very serious about helping our customers save money, and saving $10 is no laughing matter."

Later, the company averred that the mistake was an intentional stunt.

Would you like to bet ten bucks on it?

Sunday Rerun: I wanted an Ümlaut, but whaddya gonna do?

If you don't have an IKEA near you, I'd consider moving. Of all the great Swedish furniture stores that we have in the greater Baltimore area (JC Torkelson and Montgomery Gottfrid spring to mind), IKEA is the greatest. They have a scratch-and-dent room where a handy man, or I, can buy wood shelves that fell out of a bookshelf for 50 cents and make our own bookshelves, or not. They have all sorts of furniture and home items. They even have Swedish food for sale - grog! salmon! loganberry juice! And a restaurant with Swedish meatballs and cold salmon plates. It's the sort of a place that's suitable for a family field trip, and I think that just being there makes one feel, I dunno, sort of Ikea-ish.
IF YOU GO, you'll notice the brand names on everything from sofas to light bulbs are not you're used to seeing down at Value Village. Hearty, stocky Swedish names! Vivika! Komplement! Furuskug! Ofelia! Fortunately, if you have any questions, you can ask Courtney, Lauren or Justin, who all work there along with Jessica, Nicole and Matthew.

But I found this site on which you simply enter your own first name and the amazing computer machine, right over what your president calls "the internets," will bestow upon you your own Ikea brand name. That's mine, right above: Markind, a walloping, hearty meatloaf of a table. Hope you like yours!

The Saturday Picture Show, February 22, 2014

There was a football player named Otis Sistrunk whose bald head was steaming during a cold night game when he took off his helmet.  Alex Karras, part of the Monday Night Football crew, said that Otis's alma mater was "The University of Mars."  Just for Otis, here is a picture of sunset on Mars.

 Visitors to the Leaning Tower of Pisa always take pictures outside the place, often with hilarious results as they pose in such a way as to appear to be propping the tower up.  But I've not seen a picture of this before.  These are the marble steps in the tower, showing the wear of thousands of Gucci loafers over the centuries.

 This "photobomb" looks a little bit set up, wouldn't you say?  I mean, who takes a photo of their wife and baby in a liquor store?  Unless you see an out-of-work actor hanging around and say, Nic, I have an idea for a picture in which you could star!

 All winter long, people around here longed for summer weather. Here's a reminder of what summer brings us, along with humidity, mosquitoes, stinkbugs and reruns. On the other hand, baseball.

I wonder what he did when he saw the "WET FLOOR" sign.

Rice gets steamed

It's kind of sad, sometimes, how things can turn around in a year.  Last February,  Ray Rice was the star running back for the Baltimore Ravens.  He and his team had just won the Super Bowl, and he had had another great year on the field, his fifth in the league at a position where most guys are lucky to limp away in one piece after no more than four.

And then, this past season, Ray had the worst season of his career, running for 600-some yards and scoring only four touchdowns as the Ravens failed to make the playoffs for the first time since he's been around.  But off the field, he gained respect from millions for his advocacy of anti-bullying campaigns.  He was on Twitter and Facebook a lot, speaking out on the topic in general and offering viewpoints on specific cases.  There was one in which a young lady from Howard County committed suicide after being the victim of a putdown campaign from some dipsticks in her school.  Rice took the lead on the response to that and led a Saturday seminar of high school leaders to promote healing and better behavior.  In short, it was a year when a football hero became thought of more for his anti-bullying efforts than for what he did on the football field.

And then, the other night in Atlantic City, just before 3 AM on Saturday, Ray and his fiancée were arrested, each for striking the other in some sort of physical mêlée outside a casino.  Both were released from custody and face misdemeanor charges in New Jersey, and neither of them have spoken publicly. We don't know all the facts and should not come to any conclusions, but I have to point out again that nothing good happens after midnight when you're out. Believe that.  

He makes more money on every autumn Sunday than you and I do, unless we're lucky in Lotto or at the casino he was visiting. It's taken Ray six years in Baltimore to build his reputation as a great player and a generous neighbor and part of the community.   In just a few minutes on the boardwalk in a chilly seaside resort, he managed to undo a lot of that good will.  It's not too late to get it back, but how nice it would have been not to lose it in the first place. 

Hegel was right when he said, "We learn from history that man can never learn anything from history" - Geo. Bernard Shaw

“And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”  Mark 16:17-18 

So, I read about this pastor down in Kentucky, Pastor Jamie Coots, who took this passage from the Bible and handled poisonous snakes as part of his "method of worship," as the National Geographic channel said in their letter about him, written after Rev. Coots died this past Saturday.  From being bitten by a snake.

Rev Coots had a show on NatGeo called "Snake Salvation," and on the show he regularly wrestled with reptiles to prove a point, the point being that he would not die from being bitten by a snake.  So much for that...

Rev Coots and acolytes

This "method of worship" became popular in the rural South in the 1940s, leading Tennessee to ban it in 1947, but that didn't deter Rev. Coots, who also got in trouble last year (a year of probation) in that state for bringing in some wriggly killers.

He and his followers are 100% totally entitled to their belief that God will protect them from death by snakebite.  After all, Rev. Coots was bitten eight times in the past, and always lived through it.  It was that ninth time that got him.

I'm no expert on the Bible or anything else, but I've never seen it pointed out in the Bible where God tells people to take foolhardy risks in His name. 

Rev Coots's work will be carried on by his son, whose name is Little Cody Coots.

Canadian Bakin'

Having been an equal participant in the firm of Clark and Clark since 1973, and since even before then, a stockholder in the firm of Live and Let Live,  I have to speak out when I hear people like this Ted Cruz fellow, who formerly appeared on TV's "Hee Haw" as the man on the far, far right in this quartet.  

Ted

Cruz, a Canadian by birth, is all in a twist because, in America,  people love each other and wish to live together.  I can only assume that somewhere in the Lone Star State dwells a Mrs Cruz, whose life consists of listening to Ted and wishing he were as much fun as the one in the movie.  Instead, he's running up a big laundry bill, mopping the torrent of tears from his teary face with his burlap handkerchiefs . 

I seriously wonder about how it's any of my business who spends their time with whom, so in order to hear how this works, I tuned in one of those rightwing radio stations last Saturday night.  The host mentioned that someone in Kansas is trying to pass Bill 2453, which would segregate people by sexuality, allowing government officials like police officers to deny citizens help and care based on their sexual inclination.

So a same-sex couple is denied service at a hamburger stand...or gas station...or cardiac rescue site.  This is what the Bible teaches?  No.

The host, who is also an attorney, opposed the bill on constitutional and moral grounds, correctly likening it to those sad days in our past when people of non-majority races were denied service at hamburger stands...gas stations...and cardiac rescue sites.  

And you think, well, this is some goof out there.  No one would ever stand up for that sort of nonsense.  So he opened the phone to take calls on the topic, and the bile of society rose within the gullet of America to claim that they didn't "want to be in no diner and have to sit there and watch two men kissin' and all."  And that to be in the same diner, zip code, county or state when two people whose shirts button up on the same side cast admiring glances at each other condemns us all to perdition.  And that, as one learned gentleman queried, "How'm I s'posed to teach my son about what's right and wrong without all them (gay slurs) parading around like they have the right to be queer?"

The discussion became quite contentious, and it made me so sad to see there are still people among us with so much pure hatred in their hearts.  What happened to the dawning of the age of Aquarius, when peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars?

I know I'm beating the same old dead horsehockey here, but I'm still stumped. I guess that's my right.

It suits me

Beatles forever!

Peggy says I dwell a) on the same things too much and b) in the past.  I'll plead guilty to both charges, but still, I have a point to make about the way performers dress nowadays.

1963

Seeing that awe-inspiring Beatles show on TV last week got me to thinking about this topic.  Messrs. Starr and McCartney reported for work on the day of the taping dressed up nicely.  This reminded me of the early Beatles, known for wearing matching suits and looking sharp.

Hank Williams's
stage suit

ET, phone home!

I know I often quote the words of the great Ernest Tubb as if he were a candidate for sainthood, but he was a dedicated entertainer of the old school in country music, and he always said that since people would get a babysitter and buy tickets to a show and drive to the venue to see their favorite Grand Ole Opry stars perform, it was important for the performers to dress up a little.  "Always dress a little better than your audience, just don't act like you're better than them," was how he put it.

From the wardrobe of
Porter Wagoner

And in the golden days of country music, you could see your favorite singers dressed to the nines.  Now, you pay a king's ransom to see Keith Urban, and he comes onstage dressed like he just finished cleaning out the basement and was on his way out to powerwash the deck.

Thanks for dressing up and all.

And there are, without doubt, people sitting in the audience dressed up more than he is!  

End of rant.  For now.