The Saturday Picture Show, March 22, 2014

 I don't exactly where this was taken, but it seems like a lot of people suddenly slam on their brakes the second they get a look at the majestic mountains ahead.  This is a pretty part of the USA.

 I saw this the other day and it reminded me of the old expression that maturity comes when we learn to appreciate the things that are in our lives and learn to let go of the things that are not.

 If you've been trying to find the perfect wallpaper for your screen, one that will remind you of the beach, here 'tis.  This is sand under heavy magnification.  Who knew that some grains of sand look like tiny ears of corn or peppermint candies?

CBS used to call themselves The Tiffany Network because they felt they only presented high-class programming.  Then two things happened:  they presented the nation with "Two Broke Girls," and they went into the billboard business.

Do You Like Good Music?

I'm talking about a man who dropped out of high school (and later was graduated at age 21), a man who became a songwriter, performer, arranger, singer, actor, voiceover actor and radio host, and then left far too soon.

I'm talking about Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr.  As a songwriter, he and his partner David Porter came up with great stuff for Sam and Dave, such as "Hold On, I'm Comin'", "When Something is Wrong with My Baby", "Soul Man" and  "I Thank You". He first came to the attention of pop fans with the theme song from the movie "Shaft" in 1971. But back up a couple of years to 1969, when his album "Hot Buttered Soul" came out, with a long version of "Walk On By," the Burt Bacharach / Hal David song on which Dionne Warwick had the first hit.  I can't hear this without remembering WWIN playing it on their overnight show as I labored at the A&P, stocking shelves with peanut butter, macaroni and floor wax.   And if you liked Dionne's version of "I Just Don't Know What To Do (With Myself)," check out his take on it and see if it doesn't move you a little bit more!

And I don't know what you had planned for the next 18 minutes and 40 seconds, but you could do a lot worse than to spend it listening to Isaac make you forget that Glen Campbell also recorded "By The Time I Get To Phoenix." Then you can also compare his "Close To You" to the Carpenters'.

Isaac's Baltimore connection was that he was one of the owners of the Memphis Sounds basketball team which was moved to Baltimore in 1975, but folded before their season even began.  He did better with other things.

Other things such as...acting.  He was the newspaper photographer Angel Dupree in "It Could Happen To You," the 1994 movie with Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda.  He played an Isaac Hayes impersonator in an episode of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and was Chef for many years on "South Park."

And, he was a DJ/radio host on WRKS in New York in the late 90's.

If you ever find yourself in Tennessee, where Isaac was born in 1942, look for a section of Interstate 40 known as the "Isaac Hayes Memorial Highway".   His songs have generated more than 12 million plays on the radio, and when you watch "The Blues Brothers" or listen to any disco, hip hop or rap music, you hear Isaac Hayes all over the place.  He passed away in 2008, the victim of recurrent strokes, but while he was on the earth, he made the most of his talents, and that's about as much as we can all hope to do.

Grimm's Fairy Jail

Every development built since some alert legislator noticed that all sorts of junk was flowing right into the Chesapeake Bay has one of those drainage ponds...down on the corner, surrounded by a rotting wooden fence, full of weeds and Capri Sun containers, and a lot of water, after a storm. They fulfill a good purpose, although it's not exactly like living next door to a field of lavender waving in the spring breeze if your view includes the local sediment dump.

Mr Grimm

The reason I bring this all up...meet Paul David Grimm, of Severna Park. (Longtime readers, Severna Park is in Anne Arundel County, always the funniest of Maryland's 23 counties.)  Mr Grimm, whose mugshot shows that he always tries to live up to his name, has been upset lately over the construction of a drainage pond in his neighborhood. He was railing at the contractor doing the work on behalf of the county, and the contractor notified the county councilperson for that area, whose name is Dick Ladd.  Ladd showed up at the job site last week for a reasonable discussion of the issue, but that did not occur.  According to news reports, Ladd was talking to Grimm's daughter and Grimm used his pointer finger to alert Councilman Ladd and mentioned “taking him out.” He implied a weapon.  Feeling that he wasn't in enough trouble yet,  Mr. Grimm then spoke of Maryland Senate President Mike Miller and House Speaker Mike Busch and said that he would “take them out” too. As he rambled on, Grimm said “it would be a fantasy of his to see Mike Miller and Mike Busch” knock on his door because “they would come out in body bags."

Well now.  The news story went on to say that the police verified this information by interviewing people present at the scene as well as examining other evidence obtained. So,  Homeland Security and Anne Arundel County PD detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Grimm, and arrested him without at his residence, charging him with 3 counts of Threats to State Official. That's against the law here.  I mean, who does he think he is, Chris Christie?


“We take criminal threats against our elected officials very seriously,” said Anne Arundel County Police Chief Kevin Davis. “We will act expeditiously when someone detracts from the capacity of the people’s representatives to safely represent our communities.”

The other Grimm

In his 58 years of treading this earth, Mr Grimm has not learned yet that he can't get his way by playing the big bully.  I think it's for the best that schools are finally cracking down on overly aggressive kids.  Perhaps by the time that little wiseacre currently tormenting the other third graders gets to be that old, he will learn to deal with his frustrations and leave the petty threats of violence against others where they belong, like the United Nations.

I once heard agoraphobia called "Al Gore phobia"

We had a few errands to run on Saturday and I had no idea what sort of fun we would run into when we left the house.
First stop was at Dick's Sporting Goods, and just to set the bar high for the day, nothing went wrong there at all.  Peggy had something to buy, she ran in and bought it, and off we went to


Barnes and Noble, the bookstore.  Nothing wrong with them and Peggy was kind enough to let me use one of her seemingly innumerable gift cards to purchase the Treasures of AC/DC souvenir compilation because all men my age like to duckwalk out to the mailbox every afternoon singing "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap."  And then do "For Those About to Rock" on the way back in.

But while we waited in line to buy that priceless heirloom which I hereby bequeath to (name withheld), some guy was giving the old rigamarole to a cashier at the bookstore.  He had ordered some expensive books about architecture, gone to the store, and slunk behind the cashwrap area to get the special orders off the shelf.  He had removed the plastic wrap from one of them and was about to open the other when the lady approached him, told him (gently) that he was not supposed to go behind the registers and take merchandise off the shelves, and then when she asked if he intended to buy the books he had ordered and presumably come to retrieve, he said he didn't have enough money.  So why would he order books and then come to the store to get them, without enough money?  Who here thinks he was fixin' to rip them off?  

So we leave there and are headed to pick up dinner to go at Carrabba's. First, I call Carrabba's to order the pick-up dinner.  The phone rings 147 times before someone answers with: "ThankyouforcallingCarrabba'sinFullertonMarylandwhereyourdinnerisAlways HandPreparedandAlwaysMadeFromScratchpleaseholdon."

I told him I wanted to put in an order for pickup but I was talking to muzak because he had put me on hold without even telling me.  After a very brief five minute wait, a female picked up the phone and began a series of questions, each of which made me ask her to slow down and repeat what she said (what make and model and color of car are you driving, what is your phone number, what is your name) to the point where I had to ask her to let me talk to someone else because I could not understand one word she was saying.  And this is nothing to do with ethnicity or accent or poor diction or anything other than that adolescent habit of combining insanely rushed speech cadence with UPTALK at the end of a sentence and the vocal sizzle that drags out the end of a wordddddddddd.  Another young lady got on the phone and took the order with alacrity.  We left the shopping district to pick up dinner.

 I get behind a car down by the police station,  a car festooned with bumper stickers like buttons on a TGIF server.  The buttons have the following theme:  protect my "traditional" marriage by not letting people of the same gender have a marriage, I love America and all it stands for (and I will be the one to decide what it stands for) and don't listen to the liberal media.  The guy is in such a hurry to get to his destination and be a good American that he runs a light that turned red as  he reached it.  I thought he would have been happy to sit and bathe in that red glow, but no.

We got to Carrabba's and of course the order was screwed up. The chicken parm is supposed to come with a side of pasta, as chicken parm traditionally does.  The girl who brought the bag out to the car said, when I asked about the noodles, said, "Someone else was asking about that."  She said she would be back with the answer.  Instead, a male came out and said we should have had pasta and he would be right back with it.  Apparently, they had to send someone over to the Buy'N'Save for pasta, because as darkness fell over Baltimore and the rest of our dinner cooled, we waited for a bowl of noodles that took nine minutes to be brought out of the kitchen and into my waiting hands and I realized that some days, it's better just to stay home.

The name for the game

I found it interesting the other day that right below a headline saying "Native American Groups Renew Push To Change Redskins Name" the comments poured in from hoi polloi, many of them stating that "Native Americans have no problem with the Redskins name."  Dude, it just said that Native American groups are pushing to change it? And you say none of them have a problem with the name?

Remember the scene from "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" when the philosophical choice was proffered between two unpleasant outcomes?  It's got to be one or the other in this life, my friend.  Either the Native Americans have no objection, or they do.  

And I don't pretend to speak for them, but I do remember this from many training sessions at work.  It's NOT "well we've always done it this way!" that matters.  I found an interesting blog called Wry Wing Politics, which made this point last summer: 

If you are an American woman, racial minority, religious minority, or gay person, your rights are much more secure now than they were in colonial times.   Quaint little colonial customs like slavery, hanging for sodomy and Native American genocide are, thank goodness, things of the past.  For the most part, state and federal laws no longer treat American women like legal incompetents, akin to children and criminals.  States like Massachusetts no longer ban non-Christians from holding office...

You do want to avoid the trap of saying "We always did it like this."  One respondent wrote "Where were they in 1933 when the Redskins first got their name?" as if something wrong in 1933 must be allowed to remain wrong for all time. 

I am not Native American, nor a fan of the Washington NFL team, so I guess I don't have a nickel in this argument, but as someone who looks out for the rights of all, I think that we need to take a more reasonable look at the argument over the team's name.   

And one more question, since I'm so full of them:  knowing that people are hurt by something, how can you support its continuance?

Pat him down

Remember the time you said, "Who would want to live in that part of town?" only to be told by the person you were speaking with that THEY live in that part of town and happen to like it very much?

Or the time you said, "No one in their right mind drives a Prius" and then someone you know and like drove by in their brand new Prius?  Or when you said, "Oh, this is the worst-looking hat I ever saw. What, when you buy a hat like this I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh?"

"Oh, it looks good on you though."

Slips of the tongue, words we wish we could have back, all that.  But it's one thing to say something foolish in idle chatter, and another to have a really dumb, racist, mean-spirited and thoroughly inappropriate thought dart across your brainpan and then say,"Hey!  Where's my phone?  I need to put this stupidity on Twitter so the entire population of the world has access to the cobwebs that clutter my thoughts!"

It would seem that this is what happened to Congressman Pat Garofalo (R, MN) who grabbed his mePhone the other day to share this thought with all of us:

On the off chance that this was a one-in-a-million brain cramp, I looked through some of the other tweets that have spewed forth from the mighty mind of Pat Garofalo, and as they say, a walk through the ocean of his soul will hardly get your feet wet.  Here are some of his earlier posts from March: (spelling and grammar are his)

 I would rather drink hot paint laced with cyanide as opposed to watching the Oscar's.  Oscar's what?

My fraternity Lambda Chi Alpha, did this along time ago.  Good for SAE.  Hazing is not a part of brotherhood.  A long time ago, people knew the difference between a long and along.

My joy in seeing Dale Jr lose the lead running out of gas is tempered by the fact that über-snob Keselowski ends up winning. Bum toke dude.  Apparently, who wins and who loses a car race affects him a lot.

But, of course, as with all politicians who find themselves using Vaseline to try to remove their big ol' foot from their mouths, here comes the non-apologetic apology:

To those NBA players and others who are unfairly categorized by my comments, please accept my apologies.

So, this man that some residents of Minnesota sent to DC along with Michelle Bachmann to represent them in Congress states his theory that professional basketball players, whose average salary the last time I looked was $5.15 million per year, would be out there jacking cars and mugging strangers if it were not for their team still being in existence.  He told the local paper out in Minneapolis, as he backpedaled all over town, that he was “talking about the NBA’s high arrest rate and that they are the only major pro league that testing positive for marijuana is not a substance abuse violation.”

Furrowed brow indicates depth of thought

He really has trouble stringing together coherent thoughts, does he not?

But let's see.  A lot of his tweets have to do with his support for medical marijuana.  He introduces toking in a conversation about a NASCAR race.  And now the NBA's drug testing policy is intertwined with his bigoted "they're a bunch of criminals" theory.

Anyone seeing a trend here?  I guess he writes what he thinks.

Sunday rerun: Spike The Punch

What I wouldn't pay to have a suit like this!

First of all, please remember that this song was recorded back in another era, so its gratuitous reference to random violence and stereotypical mother-in-law jokes must be regarded as coming from an era when people would take a baseball bat to the movies.  It's Spike Jones and His City Slickers, with their song "Happy New Year" and here is where you can see it on the YouTube, and below are the words!

This is my New Year's resolution:
When my mother-in-law begins to yell and shout
Through the window I would like to throw her out.
But I resolve not to do it, here is why:
I'm afraid of hitting someone passing by.
This is my New Year's resolution.

When I'm at the movies watching a love seen 
And a lady's hat is blocking half the screen
I resolve not to shout, "Take off that hat!"
I'll remove it gently with a baseball bat.
This is my New Year's Resolution.

When I take a lovely lady out to eat 
And she orders caviar instead of meat
I resolve to let the lady have her fill.
And of course I'll also let her pay the bill.
This is my New Year's Resolution.

When I'm sitting with my wifey on a bus 
And a dear old lady stands in front of us
I resolve to be a gentleman discreet.
I'll politely offer her my wifey's seat.
This is my New Year's Resolution.

When my mother says, "Come in, it's time to eat." 
And I keep on playing games out in the street
I resolve to rush right home now when I'm called
Cause my pop just got a hairbrush and he's bald.
This is my New Year's Resolution.

On the radio this year I hope to score 
With some funny jokes you've never heard before.
I resolve not to tell a corny joke.
Hello, what's that? The church burned down? Holy smoke!
This is my New Year's Resolution.

In this coming year I'm going to be discreet. 
Have the Slickers playing music soft and sweet.
I resolve to treat Tchaikovsky tenderly
And set his second movement with TNT.
This is my New Year's Resolution.

And for those who read all the way through the lyrics, here is Today's Celebrity Surprise!  Spike Jones was the uncle of the actress named Judy Strangis, whom you will remember as Helen Loomis in "Room 222," Dyna Girl in "Electra Woman and Dyna Girl" and also as Mean Mary Jean in the Plymouth commercials.  

I just found this out and could not wait to share it.  Don't feel too bad; Peggy couldn't remember her either and wonders why I do.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 15, 2014

 This is either sunset or sunrise, I don't know which, but I know it's a pretty picture of St Petersburg, Russia.

 It's probably not so good for the old diet, but while I was scooting through Russian picture sites (I go to all ends of the earth, scouring the web for pictures!) I found this Russian sausage site, and I say Russian salami must rule.

 Edith Macefield was a woman in her 80s when some bigshot developer in Seattle bought up all the land around her house to build a five-story office complex, which probably has a Starbucks on every floor.  She told the developer to take his money and invest it deeply within himself, and she continued to live in her house for two more years until she passed away at 86. She willed the house to the construction superintendent on the office building project because he had been kind and respectful to her throughout. Since her passing, the supe sold the house for $310,000; the house has been raised (not razed!) and a park sits beneath it, and was the site of the first annual Macefield Music Festival last fall.  Hold on to things that are important to you.

If you'll permit a personal note about things that are important to me...I've always been fascinated by letters in bottles, corked and tossed into the drink to await being found who knows when and where.  I found this picture of German fishermen who came up with a bottle that was sent adrift in 1913, which was the year my late father was born.  Funny how often that year bobs to the surface in my reading.  And on the first day Peggy went back to work after Dad's funeral, a truck passed her as she walked to her office from the bus.  The truck had "Established 1913" painted on the back panel.  Enjoy your weekend!

The Muenster Mash

Cheese in a packet - so handy!

Now look at what the Europeans are hollering about!  The European Union wants us to stop using European cheese names like parmesan, feta and gruyere for cheese made here in the United States.

I did not know, until I read this article, that they call it Parmesan cheese because they first made it in Parma, Italy.  Well, there's a Parma in Ohio!  And I bring that up, knowing that it means nothing in this argument, but it was a pretty cool song for Drew Carey in the day.  Also, it said that Feta cheese should only be from Greece, although there is no such a town as Feta, Greece.  There is an Alexandria in Greece and also one in Virginia, so let's call Feta cheese Alexandria cheese and make everyone happy.

Mr B

The Europeans are saying that our cheese is not as good as their cheese and maybe that's so, but then again, how good do you want your cheese to be?  A cup of fine imported Parmigiana that rode to the pizza shop on a boat from Italy still won't taste as good as three cups of gooey white Wisconsin pizza cheese. 

Also, the Europeans are getting mighty protective of words such as these for non-cheese items: bologna, Greek yogurt, Valencia oranges and prosciutto, among other foods.  So Joseph Bologna will now change his name to Joe Lunchmeat.  We'll call it "Greek-style" yogurt and we'll skip prosciutto and just use Virginia ham.

Va. Ham

Didn't they date for years in high school and beyond - Skip Prosciutto and Virginia Ham?  They always had something salty going on.

I'm being snarky about this, but only because the Europeans won't play fairly.  You can't just take back the name of a cheese after all these years.  What if we said, OK, you can't say "Computer" anymore?  And what if we did so by email? How would they know?

Leave it to Bieber

"Everybody complains about the weather, " complained Mark Twain, "but no one does anything about it."  

Same with Justin Bieber.  This kid is really starting to annoy me.  You might have seen this tape from his recent deposition.  His bodyguard smacked a photographer, and there is a price to be paid for this sort of thing.

Bieber's body language and the way he screws up his face and spits out answers like he had just eaten something foul tell all you need to know about a young man who should have been punished for being such a horse's patootie a long time ago.

He came to the Maryland State Fair to perform two or three years back, and there was an incident in which he was spraying water on Maryland State Police troopers from a Super Soaker.  Nothing was done, no one stopped him, no one busted him over the head with a squirt gun because he is to be regarded as foreign royalty or something.  

I urge everyone who has anything to do with aiding the progress of a young person to pay attention to young JB; he is the perfect example of a spoiled child and brother, you don't want one of them around.  No one ever told him no, no one corrected him when he acted out as a child, no one told him to knock off the smartyboy attitude.  I feel sorry for anyone who has to deal with him on any level.

And think of his attorney; sure, he's clocking hundreds of bucks per hour for holding the young man's hand, as it were, through the questioning.  But when the lawyer was a young man, he saw a course for his life that included college and law school.  I'm sure he never dreamed that his career would involve babysitting King Snot, and doing an oral Wite-Out when his client said that he (Bieber) was "detrimental" to his own career.  

Yes, just not enough, yet.

If you don't like the facts, make up your own!

I don't know how you stand on the gun control issue, and that's not the issue here. Talking about mass murders in America, Peter Lanza, the father of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza, tells The New Yorker magazine, "With hindsight, I know Adam would have killed me in a heartbeat, if he had the chance." He also said he knew Adam had killed the children at Sandy Hook before police announced the name of the shooter. That's bone-chilling, when you think about hearing breaking news like that and knowing right off that your offspring is behind the enormity.  

Again, there is no question about the who, the what, or the when and how. Lots of questions will linger eternally about the "why."  I can't wait to get my New Yorker in the mail this week and read Mr Lanza's thoughts.  I read online that he said not an hour of any day goes by that he doesn't think about that awful day in December, 2012.

There are other people who can say the same thing, but I have to wonder "why" about them, too.  They are the people who claim that the massacre at Sandy Hook School did not take place, that it was a hoax perpetrated by the government for reasons that are only clear within the murky depths of their own minds.  A teacher at some college called Florida Atlantic University, who probably was nowhere near Connecticut on the day in question, nonetheless questions what went on there that day.  The man who offered shelter to six children who fled the school in terror as the shooter carried out his hellish mission is harassed by "truthers" who claim he is a paid actor playing a part in a government coverup, covering up who knows what.  Even the parents of kids killed in the school receive mail and phone calls from nutbags who say they are part of a gigantic mass deception.  And the mother of Victoria Soto, a teacher who died in her classroom trying to protect the children, has a Facebook page dedicated to the memory of her daughter.   Don't go to the page if you are easily made nauseated.  A woman recently sent a Paypal donation of 1 cent to the site toward a memorial for Vicki Soto, and blasted the martyred teacher's mom in the most vile terms possible for her part in the "hoax."  

And of course, some denier has produced a video that purports to show all the inconsistencies and fake facts behind the scam.  You can buy a copy of the video for just $25.  Making money off the sorrow and pain of others is such a nice way to feather one's nest.

Speaking of feathers, there was another myth floating around in the Greek mythology days, a tale in which Icarus, the son of master craftsman Daedalus, attempts to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. He ignored instructions not to fly too close to the sun, and the melting wax caused him to fall into the sea where he drowned.   This is how they told each other that pride and too much self-confidence, not to mention failure to follow directions, lead to a fall from grace.

Greeks made up myths to help themselves understand the incomprehensible. Apparently, so do some Americans.

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:
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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?
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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.