The Spice of Life

Perhaps some of you gentle readers who live far from the Baltimore area could identify a favorite local spice, but to us here in Charm City®, there is nothing like a shake of Old Bay seasoning.  For 75 years now, Old Bay has been reached for more times in Baltimore kitchens than the cook has been (and that's a lot!)

The ingredients are listed right on the can: Celery Salt (salt, celery seed), Spices (including red pepper and black pepper) and paprika. The formula of how much of what, and what are the unnamed spices, resides with the manufacturer, McCormick of Hunt Valley MD.  (In my workin'-at-the-courthouse days, if the wind was blowing right, one could catch an early-morning whiff of what was going on up there; it was right down the road a piece from the factory.  Oregano, Italian Seasoning, or Old Bay in the air was a treat for the schnozz.)

I have a friend who moved to Pound, Virginia for a new job, and the first thing she did after getting home from her first grocery shopping foray was to send home for Utz Potato Chips, Tastykakes and Old Bay...three things Baltimore cannot live without.  We even take it on the road. I do not leave home with my shaker bottle in the car.  Just like Selena's husband in the movie, who carried his hot sauce in a little holster, I know that when I cross the Maryland state line headed north, Old Bay is as unknown as the idea of remaining quiet about things one knows nothing about is to Pat Sajak, so I go packin' the pepper.

If you go to one of those friendly restaurants that hand out free highly-salted snacks like popcorn or pretzels, you do realize that they know you'll be apt to drink more as a result, right?  That's sort of how Old Bay got its start.  You see, there was a time that blue crabs and shrimp were so plentiful in the Chesapeake Bay that saloons gave them away to patrons with their beers...and the saltier and spicier the seafood, the drink-ier the patrons and the higher the sales on suds!

Today, with crabs so expensive as to be something for which you might have to part with a week's salary for a bushel, we sprinkle the Old Bay on any kind of seafood - even a McFish!, and on fried chicken and french fries and popcorn and baked potatoes and veggies and deviled eggs and tunafish salad and chicken salads and Bloody Marys and I don't know what-all else. 

According to the Baltimore SUN paper, the people at McCormick are trying to spread the word (and sales) of Old Bay outside of their basic sales region, bordered by Richmond, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and, well, the Old Bay, and that's a good thing.  But part of their sales approach is "extending the brand" by getting involved with Old Bay potato tots and seasoned fries, and a beer with the spice brewed right in.  

When everyone knows you just sprinkle some in your National Bohemian beer anyway.  No problem!

It's a good time for the great taste

I have not eaten McDonald's for several years now, both as a nod to my nutritive needs and also because I don't like their chow as much as I used to.  How their red meat beef patties come out looking grey is one matter; another is that their rolls, to me, all of a sudden began tasting curiously sweet, like Krispy Kreme donuts or something.  I don't know, but I see that McD's is still doing ok business without me, so that's nice for them.  There is something somewhere for everyone.

Out near us there's a McD's on Belair Road, and when I did go there for eats, I used to puzzle about the houses that were built right behind their parking lot. I mean, right behind their parking lot, so much so that to sit outside one of those houses would mean living with the "WelcometoMcDonald's.. MayItakeyourorderplease" squawk of the drive thru box, and of course the pleasant miasma of cooking oils wafting from the vents. Not to mention the arc lights out back or the car noises...

Now here comes the part where we connect the glory that was ancient Rome to those Golden Arches.  You know that building over there, the Pantheon (not to be confused with the Parthenon of Athens, the Pentagon of Washington DC, or the Pension of every retiree you know)?  It was built as a "temple to all gods" during the reign of Augustus (27 BC - 14 AD), and then rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian, who added vertical blinds, a deck with a smoker grill and Pergo©  wood floors to the kitchen in about 126 AD.  It's almost two thousand years old and still, the Pantheon's dome is the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.  The building has been in continuous use ever since it was built, and has been used as a church since the 7th Century.  It is truly one of the marvels from the ancient age that still stand today and is an object of veneration for tourists and Romans alike.

The square in front of the Pantheon is the Piazza della Rotonda.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do, goes the old saying.  So you can see the Pantheon right up close, if you wish:

or you can catch a view from right across the Piazza della Rotonda while you enjoy a McFish, fries and root beer some sunny day in the heart of Roma...

They're everywhere!

Death in the fast lane

You remember the accident from last November in which movie actor Paul Walker and his buddy Roger Rodas were killed, I'm sure.  Walker was the handsome dude from those "Fast and Furious" movies, which made driving around on public streets at speeds normally reserved for jets in the sky above just seem like a heckuva lot of fun.

Walker and Rodas would be the first to tell you that the 35-mph street sign down on Wistful Vista La is there for a good reason. They would be, but they can't, because they were going over 100 mph on a city street in Santa Clarita, California when they lost control of their Porsche on the final afternoon of both of their lives.  

Some time ago, I purchased a sledge hammer at a hardware store so that I could go around hammering sledges as needed. There is a little tiny decal on the shaft of that hammer that advises me not to hit myself with the hammer lest bodily injury occur.  Just the same way, I'm certain there is a caveat printed the owner's manual of the Porsche automobile advising against the practice of driving 100 mph down Main Street.

And yet...according to CNN: 

Roger Rodas' (sic) widow is suing Porsche for the fatal accident that claimed the lives of her race car driver husband and actor Paul Walker. Kristine Rodas filed the suit against Porsche Cars North America, citing negligence as the cause of death of her husband and the 40-year-old "Fast and the Furious" star on November 30 in Santa Clarita, California. Backed by celebrity attorney Mark Geragos, she is also suing for product liability and wrongful death.

The court documents filed by Kristine Rodas describe the 2005 Porsche Carrera GT that her husband was driving as a an "ultra-high-performance-super-sports car for the road," that goes from zero to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds and has a top speed of 205 miles per hour. The complaint argues that such a high-powered sports car should have a higher standard of crash protection, and that a mechanical malfunction forced Rodas to veer off the road.

So, you get in a car that can go 205 and you only get it up to 100 before you lose control in a 35 zone before you crack it up.  This is clearly the fault of:  a) the carmaker  b) the car driver  c) Kim Kardashian.

Sorry as I am for the survivors of those two foolish young men, their deaths are not the responsibility of the car company that made the car any more than Gillette is to blame for the nicks on my neck I got from shaving too fast.

Way Back When

We use the term "Neanderthal" to disparage a brute, a boor, an unsophisticated knave.  "Oh, he's just a Neanderthal!" we exclaim as a guy races by us in his jacked-up pickup, throwing beer cans and caution out the window.  "Irv wouldn't stop and pick up dinner for Grace on his way home; what can you expect from a Neanderthal like him?" we say.

What do we really know of Neanderthal man?

We know his brain was bigger than ours, which has to mean something! And for another thing, he was European, and today we associate that with grace and élan.  To us, a European drives a race car, drinks the finest brandy, wears a beret, says witty things while eating tidbits of cheese and sipping champagne.  Or she's a slinky fashion model or actress walking a pet ocelot along the beach at Cannes.

To be technical about it, these folks are known as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis,  and they paraded around from about 100,000–40,000 BC, at which time they were replaced by the Eurasian early modern humans known as Cro-Magnon man, although it is widely felt that a small contingent of Neanderthals still live in the Oakland, California area (photo left).

There are small hints here and there in the research into Neanderthals that lead one to believe that these people were maybe a couple pineapples short of a luau.  For one thing, we have uncovered their primitive cell phones, and they apparently knew nothing of taking selfies, their playlists were redundant, relying heavily on the throbbing disco sounds of the 45,000 BCs, and they could not for the life of them figure out how to add new names to their contact list, so everyone, to them, was "Ogg."

Neanderthal skull, still waiting
to be seen in a Neanderthal HMO.

And there was this: The very name "Neanderthal" was first proposed for forerunners of us brainy Homo sapiens by the Anglo-Irish geologist William King in 1864, and it's a good thing he came up with the idea to name them after a German river valley, because two years later, one Ernst Haeckel proposed calling them Homo stupidus.

And that would be hard to live with.

Sunday Rerun: Too Young to Have Sacks

Hello!  Back to school time already! Time to run to the Try 'n' Buy for school supplies.  Don't forget 3-ring binders, paper, pencils, calculators and brown bags for lunches.

Not so fast on the lunches.  After decades - centuries!- of schoolkids toting lunches to school, along comes this article on WebMD, which I found by reading the great Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids site.  Something else to worry about, lunch-fixers.

For all twelve years of my public education, I carried a brown bag containing a home-made sammy, either PB & J or roast beef or ham and cheese. (I abhor loaf lunchmeat.)  Also in the sack was a Tastykake pie or cupcakes, and a cut-up apple. At the luxurious cafeteria, I would get a 1/2 pint of milk, and that made for a nice lunch.  The lunch sat in my locker from the minute I sauntered into the the school building until the blessed lunch bell rang, and not once did I come down with any dreaded diseases for lack of an Ice-EE-Pak or Likwid Ice in the bag.

In fact, the only time my lunch ever involved anything harmful was in the high school days, when I would take my milk outside and chow down on the sammy, apple and Tastykake and smoke a cigarette or two in the fashionable outdoor smoking area at dear old Towson High, proud alma mater to Divine, Michael Phelps and dozens of other notables.

I don't smoke anymore and neither should you, is my advice.  But please!  Mom and Dad! Pack a sack and quit fretting about it!  If you need something to worry about as concerns Sis or Junior's education, worry that some misguided educator will try to tell them that the "new" way of spelling  - where close enough is good enough - is ok.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 17, 2014

 Machu Picchu man!  I'm just a....no wait, you're a llama, and we pronounce that "yama" instead of "lama" if we want to be consistent, since we say "torteeya" instead of "tortilla." I know I won't win this long-running argument, but I'm just sayin'.

I looked at this and thought, that's a nice painting.  But as is usually the case, I was wrong.  It is nice, but it's no painting.  This is a rice field in China, and those are all rice plants of different strains of grains, planted painstakingly so that the mature plants will look just like a Sengoku warrior.  In a similar display of artistry, I once arranged the over 600 tiny little time pills in a Contac capsule in the shape of the Blue Oyster Cult logo, using only a radio station console, a BIC pen, and the length of time it took to play the ABC radio newscast.

"Merry Christmas, Johnny!  Smoke up!"

John Agar was the first husband of Shirley Temple, but when that marriage flopped, he became a B movie actor.  Nothing says "You're in a B movie" like "You're starring in 'Tarantula!' "

Here's a barker drumming up sideshow business at the State Fair in Rutland, Vermont in September, 1941.  Within three months, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the chances are good that by the next time they had the State Fair, this fellow was in uniform, fighting for the USA.  But on this sunny day he was selling his nickel cokes and tickets to see the odd animals and loving life.

Kurt Cobain was usually depicted as dour and gloomy, but it seems that was not quite accurate.  I recently read that the Nirvana leader, besides being a prime mover in the grunge music era, was also a big pop music fan, and enjoyed the likes of Abba.  And he liked to ride a go-kart and wear Jack Purcells. Plus,  any time you find a guy wearing red socks, you have a really good guy.  All the best men wear red socks...

Channeling frustrations

Here at the Lazy 'C' Ranch, where the dear and the cantaloupe play, Sunday evenings are pretty much reserved for all of Peggy's favorite TV shows - "Once Upon A Time," whatever's on Masterpiece Theatre, and this new "Penny Dreadful."  I find another corner to watch football or baseball or I don't know what-all else, and all is well.

We don't live in North Dakota, which I guess is pretty much the northern end of Tornado Alley, the section of the United States where those big twisters bedevil the land and its residents.  But if I did live in North Dakota, I know these two things to be true:  A) I would still be an Alabama fan, and 2) I would pay attention when the news came on and told me of an impending twistolola that was about to take me and the whole farm and send us twisting after Miss Gulch.  I would be glad to get such warnings.

But, last Sunday, as ABC unrolled the thrilling finale to this year's twisted ham-fisted melodrama thrilling series of well-acted non-piffle OUAT shows, KSFY-TV out in Sioux Falls broke in with news of a real life tornadic outbreak which was about to rudely interrupt their favorite show.

And people reacted to this by 1) thanking the station for saving the lives of many who might have been affected  or 2) calling and caterwauling that they were missing vital moments of the show, and how could they get through the rest of their lives without knowing that the Mayor was eating children alive, or whatever it was that she did.

Nancy Naeve in regulation
anchor pose

The answer, my friends, is 2.  They called to complain that meteorologist Shawn Cable (the greatest name for a TV performer since "Charlie Channel") had busted up their fun, and the next thing you know, here comes news anchor Nancy Naeve to give them what-for and how-do-you-do.

Sheriff Lobo (right)

I remember the day that American inaugurated former poor movie actor Ronald W. Reagan as president, and the Iranians set our hostages free, and the father of a person I know called Channel 11 to complain that the news of those hostages coming home was knocking "Sheriff Lobo" out of his evening lineup.  We didn't know it then, but it turned out that Reagan himself would have preferred to watch "Sheriff Lobo" too.

Surrender "Dorothy"

Seems to me that no one ever likes their hair, what there is of it.   Compliment a woman's long flowing curls, and she will likely say, "I worked for hours to straighten it!"  And then a woman with straight hair will tell you they rolled it and curled it and wadded it up in italics for hours, only to have it go straight again.

Most men, as long as their bangs don't block their view of whatever screen they're looking at, do not care.

But how about their names?  Do people like their first names? Well, the high school class of 2032, 18 years from today, will have a lot of boys named Noah ( a whole flood of 'em!), Liam, Jacob, Mason, William, Ethan, Michael, Alexander, Jayden and Daniel. Noah just bumped Michael out of the top spot for the first time since 1960.

Over in the girls' locker room, they'll be answering to Sophia, Emma, Olivia, Isabella, Ava, Mia, Emily, Abigail, Madison and Elizabeth.  Sofia with an 'F' is # 13 and moving up fast, especially among viewers of Modern Family.

Now, a hundred years ago in 1914, the top boy names were names by which every person my age knows a dozen of each, at least: John, William, James, Robert, Joseph, George, Charles, Edward, Frank, and Walter.  For girls in the nineteen-teens, you had Mary, Helen, Dorothy, Margaret, Ruth, Anna, Mildred, Elizabeth, Frances and Marie.  All lovely names, worn by some mighty wonderful people.  #100 that year for boys was Irving, and you don't meet too many of them anymore, but Sophie was #100 for girls then and it's still around in various iterations.

Tito Puente

What names made the biggest jumps in popularity, you're asking me?  Well, say hi to Jayceon (#262).  That's the birth name of the rapper known as The Game, and he has a reality show on VH-1, so his name is out there and being given to lots of little Jayceons.  For girls, it's Daleyza (#585), the name of the young daughter of Larry Hernandez, a Mexican-American singer with a show called "Larrymania."

Tito Tito

All I know is, I wished my folks had named me either Leon or Tito. How cool would that be, to call somewhere and go, "This is Tito.  I'm on the way over.  Have everything ready."

And you know, they would!

Toriano "Tito" Jackson

John Patsy "Tito" Francona

Last Sunday morning, the sunshine felt like...

Local hero Clevenger (45) gets
 local pie as reward

This past Saturday, it was rainy and stormy around our town, so it was a good day to handle some home chores.  I cleaned my bathroom, cleaned up the fans that we use upstairs to move the air around, tinkered with a couple of other projects-in-progress, and did a couple of loads of laundry.  It rained early, and then it stopped long enough to allow me time outside to grill some turkey burgers for dinner, and then later it poured again, causing the Orioles to go into a rain delay in their ballgame against the Houston Astros.   But after the rain stopped, the O's came back and won the game, with local guy Steve Clevenger driving in the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning.  We went to bed happy and tired, but it had been a great day and we had got a lot done.

Also on that Saturday, the St. Louis Rams of the National Football League chose Michael Sam, a defensive end from the University of Missouri, to join their team this fall.  Sam thus became the first openly gay player in the NFL, which bothers a few of our benighted bigots, not a few of whom are probably overreacting to finding a certain appeal in Sam's lifestyle.

This is the purest example of what I call the "If he were a doctor" question.  For all of you who are so reviled by someone else's sexual preference, ask yourself this: If you were choking to death on a pretzel and a man came along who was a doctor and could save your life - but you knew he was also a gay man - would you still let him save your life?

Michael Sam learned to play football and now he has the chance to play the game for a living.  He will be paid by the Rams for his ability to pass rush, sack quarterbacks, and stop ballcarriers. Whom he loves at his house or wherever has nothing to do with that, although people such as some clown named Jack Burkman say that “The NFL, like most of the rest of American business, is about to learn that when you trample the Christian community and Christian values there will be a terrible financial price to pay.”

I think Jack's a little off on that.

And anyway, on Sunday, the day dawned bright and sunny and clear, and life went on.  Most of us were happy enough, and Jack will just have to live with that.

Men call it S, S and S

Someone once advised me that I just should not write about things that were none of my beeswax.

Like I would listen to advice.

I stumbled across an article in the New York TIMES recently which told of women who are facing the world every day with their own real face...no makeup.  To tell you the truth, I don't see how women can get up early in the morning to apply false eyelashes and eye and cheek makeup.

But the key thing is, if a woman (or a man) wants to go around just as they appear as they drip out of the shower, only a little drier, then what the heck?  If you feel comfortable with your look, that should be all that matters.

Years ago, I was at a grocery store early on a Sunday morning (I think we were out of Hostess Do-Nettes, the little powdered-sugar belly grenades that I used to love so much) and I ran into the woman who cut Peggy's hair in those days.  She recognized me and flew into a panic.  She burbled, "Oh, of all days to run into someone I know, and me without my face on!"

I pointed out that she need not worry, her face was right there in front of her head, but that did not allay her concerns. (My batting average for concern-allaying has been dismal over the years.) But, she looked fine without all the paint and powder and eyeliner and eye shadow and I don't know what-all else.

Another field of interest for those who regard PEOPLE magazine as a news source is pictures of celebrities without makeup.  As the photo at right shows, a little of the old Maybelline does wonders...

I salute those women who feel comfortable enough in their own skin to meet the world as nature sent them out here.  And I equally salute those who feel better with the expensive creams and powders.  I just want everyone to feel comfortable as they wish to.  My own extensive beauty regimen remains unaltered: Brush the choppers, shave now and again, shower with hot water and Pears' soap, followed by a brisk nap.

Wooden it be loverly

The best thing ever for people who sell lumber in 2 x 4's and nails and the like is the biannual mania around here known as "Election season."  

Our local laws permit outdoor advertising of political candidates for 60 days prior to an election, and with Maryland having a primary election at the end of June, the wooden supports with colorful signs are all over town.  Often, people who live in well-traveled locations wake up to find that overnight, a 4' x 8' "O'Hoolahan for County Council" sign sprouted on their front lawn - a sort of immaculate erection. No one asked them, but someone sent a sign crew over at 3 AM to post the sign.

And then, this being Maryland, you get the dirty tricksters who go around stealing the other candidate's signs.  People involved in this nefarious activity tend to be volunteers or buddies with pickup trucks and nothing else to do, but, this past Saturday, according to the Baltimore County Police via the Baltimore SUN paper, the perpetrators included a high-ranking government official.

Maryland Commissioner of Labor and Industry J. Ronald DeJuliis, a man who is often referred to as J. Ronald DeJulius, was allegedly involved in removing campaign signs belonging to incumbent District 42 Senator Jim Brochin from a sidewalk area over by the BelLoc Diner at Joppa Rd and Loch Bend Drive. 

DeJuliis's wife, Connie DeJuliis, is running against Brochin in the June primary.  She told the police that her campaign had permission from the property owner to mount her signs on his land, and that her husband figured Brochin's campaign signs had been placed there improperly.

"I say it's much ado about nothing," said Connie DeJuliis in the newspaper. "It was clearly a misunderstanding."

Marc Lazerow is Brochin's campaign manager, and he said he found the destruction in progress, got into a verbal hassle with J. Ronald DeJuliis and called 911.  When the police arrived, all participants were still on the scene, and charges of misdemeanor theft were filed against JRDeJ. Lazerow is going back to the courts to file charges against two men who were with the commissioner at the time.

According to the SUN, Ronald DeJuliis's duties as Commissioner of Labor and Industry include overseeing workplace safety, employer compliance with wage laws and the regulation of apprenticeship programs.

That's where you know his name from!  All elevators in the State of Maryland bear his signature on their annual permit, mounted right by the buttons.

And that's a good sign.

Sunday Rerun: something from November 2010

Ed. note: This entry is from November 2010 and mentions a "job" and a "truck," neither of which I still have, and one of which I miss...


After years of careful consideration, we have arrived at a conclusion.  The biggest problem facing America must be stanky cars, or else why is the car air freshener (or "freshner," as at left) industry now the #2 commercial venture in our nation, right behind the business of supplying hair gels for Ryan Seacrest?

I mean, the stench from our cars must be overwhelming.  Everyone has these little trees, or the tiny crowns, or the little sachet envelope stuck under the seat right by the crumpled McD bag, to alleviate the miasma within their vehicles.  

There are two remedies.  First, if those of us who habitually apply malodorous substances to our skin - cheap cologne, oils from tropical fruit husks, powders that claim to smell rainbow fresh - will refrain from doing so, along with giving up tobacco and Juicy Fruit gum - widely held to be the stankiest cavity-causer anywhere - the interiors of the various minivans, coupes and sedans will be much more pleasant to the olfactory scents (lousy pun alert!)

And here's a little thing I do on Friday mornings.  I call it "Buying a baker's dozen bagels on the way to work in a paper sack and leaving them in the truck all day long."  

Guaranteed, when you get in the truck to go home, you will love the air within.  A truck that smells like a bagel is a nice place to drive.

Now everything is solved, except for those who wonder why I am going to work in a paper sack.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 10, 2014

 So you wanna be a minimalist, huh?  Then I would suggest cutting down on the number of copies of the same book!

 Seal photobombs penguins while smiling.  Gotta love it!

 This is the blueprint for a favorite treat of mine, the Egg Cream. It contains neither egg nor cream; go figure.  It has only the calories from the little glob of chocolate syrup (tradition calls for only using Fox's U-bet syrup from Brooklyn Noo Yawk) and the milk.  Seltzer water has no calories, no sodium, no sugar.   Why not try one tonight?

 You have to look at this for half a mo before you figure out that it's a big Earth sandwich these friends made.  A slice of bread in Iceland, Earth, lettuce, tomato, New Zealand.  Did you want that to go?

 If you recall the thrilling bobsled races in the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo...here's how the bobsled track appears now. It's fallen into disuse and disrepair.

You work all your life to amass a pile of bills and then one day you realize it was only money...

Celebrities give the best medical advice

Shailene Woodley is quite a gifted young actress. I've enjoyed seeing her in several pictures.  She brings a certain relaxed natural style to whatever part she plays.  She won awards for her performance in "The Descendants," with George Clooney, and I've also seen her in some TV roles.  Shailene has lovely almond-shaped eyes and a great voice and laugh, which along with a witty personality make her a great guest on Letterman.

Now, this is a free country, and we can all believe what we choose to sink our minds into, but Shailene likes to eat clay.  If you ever saw "Raising Arizona," you remember this prison dialogue with Nicolas Cage and his "ear-bending cellmate": 

Ear-Bending Cellmate: ...and when there was no meat, we ate fowl and when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand.
H.I. McDonnough (Cage) : You ate what?
Ear-Bending Cellmate: We ate sand.
[pause]
H.I.: You ate SAND?
Ear-Bending Cellmate: That's right!

In fact, Shailene says that clay is "one of the best things you can put in your body" because it removes heavy metals as it, shall we say, leaves the body.   She says a cab driver told her about this and said that pregnant women in his African home town eat clay.  Of course, medical science has a name for this practice: geophagy (eating of earth). It is a horrible shame that there is insufficient food available in all corners of the earth, leading women to eat clay as a nutrient supplement, but it raises the question of whether a well-to-do young woman in Los Angeles, California, is doing herself any good by emulating the practice - or doing her young admirers any good by recommending it.

Those who know far more about clay than I say that while there are certain minerals in it that might make up for the lack of iron or dairy calcium, there is still not a good reason to make the infield at the local baseball diamond part of your daily food plan.  For one thing, those in the know cannot find proof that clay really removes toxicants from the body.  And we have kidneys and livers to do that job, anyway.  

Add to that the fact that ingesting clay also means those who partake might also be consuming arsenic, lead and other toxicants in that dirtburger.  

So I'll just say "no" to the clay when it's being passed around, but I'm thinking....I put the name Shailene Woodley into the Adele Dazeem Name Generator and got the Travoltafication.  Tell me, if this had been someone by the name "Sophie Wooodsz" talking about chowing down on Dirt du Jour, would we even listen for half a second?

If you'll excuse me, I have to keep my appointment with Dr Jenny McCarthy now.

High School Hi-Jinx

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, students at South Philadelphia High School who cut more classes than they were allowed to  - and they are allowed to cut 20 classes per year - are not being allowed to attend their senior prom unless they make up CARE packages for soldiers overseas.

These acts of grace have a good outcome, at least.  The students run out and procure $25 worth of beef jerky, nuts, sunflower seeds, granola bars, Crystal Light singles and lip balm, and the USO is paying to ship the boxes to soldiers in Afghanistan, one of whom is a 2012 Southern graduate.

South Philadelphia High, known as Southern High up in the City of Brother Lee Love (the name of a DJ who used to work there at WFIL) is the alma mater of many a luminary of our society, such as Al Martino (born Jasper Cini), Frankie Avalon (Francis Thomas Avallone), Fabian (Fabiano
Anthony Forte), Mario Lanza (Alfred Arnold Cocozza), Jack Klugman (Jacob Joachim Klugman), Joey Bishop (Joseph Abraham Gottlieb), Chubby Checker (Ernest Evans) and James Darren (James William Ercolani).

From this, we have learned two things: the principal of South Philly High, one Otis Hackney III, has a very strict policy as regards skipping classes, and students are only allowed to cut 20 times before feeling the ruthless hand of Hackney's Law on the back of their rented tuxedos.

Eddie Fisher (center) poses with his
first (r) and second (l) wives.

That's 20 cuts, friends.  20.

But this seems appropriate for a school from which no one seems to be graduated under their own name.  Say hi to Edwin John "Sonny Boy" Tisch from the class of 1946.  You knew him as Eddie Fisher.

Airport!

I love my friends and l love driving my car and I love doing the opposite of what the GPS ladyvoice says to when I'm driving to the airport to pick up a returning friend.

I do love picking people up at the airport but every time I go, I give thanks for the fact that Peggy and I don't travel far enough to need to be leaving on a jet plane.

I was walking around BWI - Marshall Airport the other day and it was like when you see one of those bees-under-glass things at honey shops (we have plenty of them!).  If you're not actively engaged in going to Santa Fe to see your cousins or you're not jetting off to a vacation in the Great Dismal Swamp or winging it to Allentown to meet the Gurneys and a dozen gray attorneys, you're kind of in the way.  All the purposeful, resolute people regard you as an interloper and play Dodg-'Em with their Suitcases On Wheels as you stand like a cigar store Indian and watch the hurly burly hurl right on by.  They all have wrinkled brows and firm unsmiling mouths.  And wheeled luggage.

And talk about a captive marketing experience...I chanced to pick up an umbrella for sale at a newsstand. Don't worry about it if you're coming to Baltimore for the rainy season.  Before you even leave the baggage claim area, you'll have the chance to buy yourself an umbrella, just like the ones back home at SmartMart that you can get for $3.95.  You'll pay $24.95 at the airport, but at least they won't hit you for $25.  Antihistamines, cough drops, air sickness pills and pain relievers, same deal.  Just a little higher in price, is all.

Oh!  And I was looking for directions to the American Airlines terminal, so I ankled up to a TSA agent and said, "May I ask you a question...?" And she said, "No!  Psych! Go ahead, what is it?"

I should have said "Does this bomb I have in my underwear make me look terrorist-y? Psych!" but these people are not noted for their senses of humor.  Although the maintenance man walking by got a laugh at her "joke."

Speaking of maintenance men...are they ever going to FINISH this airport?  Every ten feet there was construction, deconstruction or reconstruction in progress.  Baggage-go-round #9, which was supposed to be bringing out the checked luggage on my friend's flight was occupied by a beefy repairman, who was sprawled upon it, going over a schematic diagram with a yellow hi-liter.  Their belongings were to be shooting down chute #7 instead.

One final thought.  If you're looking for work and you want the kind of job that requires standing behind a counter, staring at the middle distance with a sort of blank countenance, get right on down to the airport at once. They have dozens of people doing just that, and some of them seemed very tired.

It was fun to go meet my friend and drive away from the airport.  I just hope never to fly away from the airport.

Quizzical

I stumbled over this list on a site called "edating.com" because it was on the other end of a link advertising a list of questions to "keep the conversation going."  For shy people, it must be the hardest thing on earth to spark a conversation into a roaring blaze of chatter and laughter and promises of future conversations.  "What am I supposed to talk about?" they ask, standing there with their phone in one hand and someone's phone number scrawled on a torn piece of paper.

Well, let's look at the list! some of you are saying, along with my idea of the answer you hope to hear:

Do you have any crazy internet dating stories? Hope for "not really" because a Yes might involve more weirdness than you're ready for
What is your most embarrassing moment? Hope the answer has nothing to do with "this one time, at band camp..."
Best way to relax? Please say, "Sitting around reading quietly!"
Favorite movie star?  If it's Johnny Knoxville, good. Keanu Reeves, not so much.
Dog or cat? Can't go wrong with either.
Do you exercise?  Best done alone...sweating on dates is just wrong.
What is the weirdest thing about you? Keep your fingers crossed that the answer to this does not involve any sort of implant or after-market body part.
Favorite all time movie? Look for anything with Die Hard in the title.
Beer, wine or coffee? Two out of three ain't bad~
If you could retire tomorrow what would you do? Hope that the answer to this is outside the realm of being a South American military dictator.
Super powers you wish you had? You want to hear "Levitation" and "transmutation of water into beer"
What would you do with your lottery winnings? Listen closely for your name!
Are you neat?  If the preceding answer contained your name, disregard this question!
What is one food you will never give up? If they say cous-cous or hummus, you're golden, because you don't want any of that, right?
What compliment do you usually get that doesn’t have to do with your looks? Ok now about your looks.  Look for "everyone talks about how generous I am and how I'm willing to overlook little faults in others."  About the looks, if they say "I'm often mistaken for (Mila Kunis/Bradley Cooper)," no more questions needed!
Do you have a nickname? Ever had one?  Run, if it's "Skankface"
What’s one thing that if your mom knew about you, she would freak out.  "That I finally forgave her for making me wear auxiliary underwear all through high school" is a definite deal-breaker.
If Hollywood made a movie about your life what would it be rated and who would be the star? Who cares about the rating as long as the name "Mila" or "Bradley" comes into play?
Tell me a secret.  You're on your own here...
Do you like the taste of beer? Tricky.  If it's "yes," good.  If it's "I don't care for it, but let them take it who choose to do so." is also good, but "Only the worst type of human would drink a beer" means run for it!
Do you have any tattoos?  If it has the names of 7 or 8 previous lovers inked over, that might be cause to keep a-lookin'.
Do you have any piercings? Anything is cool except a pierced thorax.
Do you work out? You want "toned," but not "so musclebound as to be unable to walk right"
If you could travel anywhere in the world where would you go? "My getaway in Afghanistan" might be a problem.
Play an instrument?  Banjo, accordion, guitar, drums, saxophone are all winners.

Good luck, diving into the dating pool!

Respecting My Elders

Every time I drive past a certain corner in Hampton, St Francis Rd and Westellen Rd, to be exact, I think about something that happened there in 1968 and I wonder how far we have come since then.

I was in the Fire Department then, and we got a call for a woods fire at the location shown in the yellow oval above.  When we arrived, we found, not a woods fire, but a large pile of yard debris - about the size of the foundation of the average house.  A very large pile of felled logs, trimmed limbs and old branches, burning merrily on a humid Saturday night, and a man standing there with a rake.

He told our captain that he was burning off yard materials, although he had no burning permit, and that we needed to leave his property right away because he was a close friend of Spiro T. Agnew, who at that time was the former Baltimore County Executive, current governor of Maryland, and was just a few months from being chosen to run with Richard M. Nixon as #2 on the Republican ticket for the White House.

Our captain used the radio to call for police.  While we waited for the cops to arrive, I recognized the man as a big shot from our church, the father of a girl who used to go to school with the rest of us but somehow had been transferred to the newer high school, the dreaded Dulaney High.  I had heard people talk of how connected he was, what a fine, staunch family man he was, a local businessman, with a sterling reputation and on and on and on.

Yet, here he was, throwing his influence around, illegally burning in violation of county law and bothering his neighbors with his smoke and soot.

The cop came and told the man he needed to go inside and let us put the fire out.  The big shot stepped right up to the officer and said the question that all public officials love hearing: "Do you know who I am? I could have your badge for this!"

The cop said:  "You can have my badge, but you still can't break the law as long as I'm wearing it.  Now step back, sir, or you're going to get awfully wet."

We put the fire out and went back to the station feeling like we had overturned a rock and seen something sort of...slimy.  Or like we had been walking past a house whose walls suddenly fell down and we were seeing a nasty family fight in progress.

Spiro T. Agnew went on to serve almost two terms as vice president before resigning from office in the face of a bribery scandal.  Like some two-bit local highway official in the middle of some backwater village, he had been taking canvas sacks full of bribe money from paving contractors in the county courthouse, in the State House in Annapolis, and in his White House office.  Shortly after his resignation, he was disbarred in our state for being "morally obtuse" in the eyes of his fellow lawyers, and he claimed that Richard Nixon and Alexander Haig, another top White House factotum, had planned to assassinate him.

These are the sort of people that I was expected to respect.

Sunday Rerun: Take Me To The Other Side

If you get the chance, please click here and go to the New York TIMES website to read a very nice article about Steven Tyler, and how his "rock 'n' roll affability" is doing so well replacing the acerbic Simon Cowell and his tight t-shirts as star judge in the star chamber known as American Idol.  It's funny; Peggy and I watched AI faithfully for many years and so far this year, we haven't tuned in.  For one thing, the early shows feature a succession of oddballs, lunatics and plain old nutbags, and you sort of feel as if you're picking on the village fool for watching people who are clearly deluded about their ability to carry a tune.

Then again, many people with similar delusions are earning a handsome dollar singing on records, in concerts and in nightclubs, so what do I know?

And when they get down to the serious competition among the two dozen or so finalists, we will probably watch again.  But one night we happened to tune in to the last few minutes of the show.  We were getting ready to watch FOX45 News At Ten.  There must have been a snowstorm going on and we figured it would be a way to see the weather forecast and also get a good look at Keith Daniels standing at a salt dome as front-end loaders loaded up the back ends of dump trucks with enough salt to line every tequila glass from here to Juarez.  At the end of the Idol show that night they showed a young man whose fiance had been in a car crash and is now, so sadly, afflicted with huge physical challenges.  The TIMES article goes on about the affecting way that Steven Tyler (real name: Stephen Tallarico) had of greeting the woman and encouraging her. He was most kind, and he showed the bearing of a man who has met thousands of people and put them at ease.  The paper goes on to say that he knows how to do that because he is a professional.

To me, there are few words of higher praise than to be called a "professional."  It indicates that someone has been down this road a few times and knows what she or he is doing, and can handle the unexpected as well as the expected.  Let's face it: everyone loves young people and hopes they do well as they embark on their careers, but who wants to be the first patient for a brand-new brain surgeon?  Put me in the hands of someone who knows what to do when something goes south.  

A pro is one who can handle everything that comes their way with equanimity and grace.  That's when you can really spot a professional: when a curveball comes their way.  I think of that goofy weather guy Chad Myers on CNN when Katrina was hitting the Gulf and how he tossed a little hissy (and his clipboard) as Carol Costello literally begged him to explain things in terms that could be understood by breakfasting Americans who do not hold advanced degrees in meteorology.  Watch him - it's the best definition of unprofessionalism I can offer.  

A professional is where he or she is supposed to be at the time he or she is supposed to be there, trained, prepared and ready.  Have you ever had an appointment with someone who was not there at the appointed time, and then strolled in fifteen minutes later, wheezing about the traffic, or the lack of dry towels at the gym, or who parked in their private parking spot?   

So, big ups to Steven Tyler.  He was really nice to another person, and that's a rare thing.  You can see the entire sequence right here and know that he's the kind of man who can step out of his flamboyant persona and reach out to another person who really needs a boost. 

The Saturday Picture Show, May 3, 2014

I'll bet that I have tried to eat with chopsticks over a hundred times in this life o' mine, and have met with no success whatsoever. I always give up and grab a fork, and then look around the House of Chow to see some guy eating soup with sticks.

 Snoqualmie Falls, Washington.  Hello? (Larry King voice)

 Just to show what a big old world this is, with so much the same and so much different...if I said this is an old New England town with several shoe factories and a scrappy high school football team that always does well in the regionals, you might think so, but there would always be someone to say, "Hey no!  This is Vilnius, Lithuania!"

 We've seen those 3-D chalk artists on the streets all over the place, but here in New Zealand, they do these amazing 3-D stunts on the sand.  Which is your favorite?

 Richard Gere is making a movie in New York; he plays a homeless guy.  The lady shown here is a French tourist who thought he was a real homeless guy, so she got him a slice of pizza.  For an actor, this is a two-faced coin: his acting is good enough that she bought him in the part, but she didn't recognize him! In a story I've told a thousand times, Gere was here in Baltimore County making that "Runaway Bride" picture when my mom's friend's son ( a movie prop man) took both ladies to the set at the church in Long Green from where the runaway bride...runs away.  She said Gere was as normal and down to earth as the guy who works at Sears changing tires, but the crew were not allowed to make eye contact, nor speak directly to, Her Majesty Miss Julia Roberts, who at last report was still only tangentially in show business.

This is a radio tower in Shanghai.  Is that rust I see on that one piece of metal?  How sure can he be that it's not all rusty and about to give out?

In a moment of youthful ignorance

Jameis Winston, student and athlete at Florida State University, is in trouble again.

There was the time he was supposed to be involved in a BB-gun fight on the FSU campus, the time he was accused of stealing soda from a Burger King, and, most troubling, an accusation of sexual assault against a female student.

Ah, but the first two offenses were just swept under a big red carpet, and the State Attorney for Florida "declined to bring charges" in the alleged rape, because of "lack of evidence."

It's just like any college kid to fool around with a BB gun, and he certainly was not the first ever to get the idea to take a ketchup cup and fill it with unpaid-for Pepsi.  And since neither you nor I were present during the encounter with the female student, we can't say what happened that night in December 2012.

But.  This past Tuesday, young Winston, the sophomore, reigning Heisman trophy winner, quarterback of the national championship football team, and a very good pitcher and designated hitter as well for the baseball team, admitted to walking into a Publix grocery store down in Tallahassee, ordering $32.72 worth of crab legs and crawfish, and then just walking out without paying, and going home for a big ol' seafood fest.

The store called the police, the police went to Winston's apartment, and he said that he "forgot" to pay.

I'm sure we've all done that, right?  Oh, I FORGOT to pay for this Toyota I just drove off the lot!  This case of beer, this pizza, this I don't know what...

Serving suggestion

Here is the second-worst part of this whole thing: the police down there, in an effort to cut down the crime rate, have just changed what it takes to have something considered a crime.  This would be like the Fire Department claiming to have lowered the amount of fires by just not counting fires in brick buildings, or those that occurred between midnight and 7 AM.  It cuts the amount of crimes way down if you stop calling every crime a crime.

The worst part for me is that Winston's lawyers drafted a statement to hand out to the press, allegedly his words: "As reported in the news, last night I received an adult civil citation for petit theft from a local supermarket. I went to the supermarket with the intent to purchase dinner but made a terrible mistake for which I'm taking full responsibility. In a moment of youthful ignorance, I walked out of the store without paying for one of my items.

"I realize that I am in the public spotlight and my conduct needs to be above reproach. Over the last year I've learned that my accomplishments on the fields can be a wonderful thing for my school, teammates, friends, and family. At the same time, I must realize that my mistakes are magnified and can bring great embarrassment to all those who support me every day. I make no excuses for my actions and will learn and grow from this unfortunate situation. I hope and pray my friends and family will view me as the 20-year-old young man that I am, and support me through this unfortunate situation.

"I am grateful to be able to participate in the adult citation program where I will complete community service."

I love sports as much or more than anyone else around, but what happens when a young man is told, from the age of 8, that he is special because he can throw a ball or hit a ball or catch one?  He gets the feeling that the world owes him $32.72 worth of seafood. And the "adults" who ought to be showing him otherwise stand back and wait for the next football game to start.

And you lawyers?  Could you at least TRY to make these words you put in the mouths of your defendants something even close to words they might have said?  Do you have to do EVERYTHING for them?

"What I Am" is "The Boxer"

Paul Simon has had quite a career in the music industry.  From his early days recording poppish almost-hits with Art Garfunkel as "Tom and Jerry," to his early-sixties days as a member of Tico and the Triumphs ("Motorcycle," 1962) to his more important contributions to the folk-rock era with Simon and Garfunkel, he has been involved in musical culture for over half a century.  In fact, you might say that no song more perfectly reflects the nature of folk-rock than S&G's "The Sound of Silence," recorded first in 1964 in a pure acoustic version- without commercial success - and then, reproduced with drums and electric guitars and bass, it was re-released as "The Sounds of Silence," and became a #1 hit. 

And from there, they went to record many other popular songs, and then came the inevitable decline from popularity, and Simon's "I can't be embarrassed by this because I am playing a guy who is embarrassed to be wearing a turkey costume on Saturday Night Live" era, followed by the saddest days of all: touring with Sting.

Yes, that is Paul Simon.  And have
you met his wife Edie (r)?

Now 72, Simon spent Monday afternoon in court in his current hometown of New Canaan, CT, after he and his wife, singer Edie Brickell, 47, were booked for disorderly conduct on Saturday night. There was a dispute between the two, so the story goes, and then Edie's mother decided to call the cops.   His lawyer put the weight on the mother-in-law for dragging the law into it, and Edie herself said, “I got my feelings hurt and I picked a fight with my husband. The police called it disorderly. Thank God it’s orderly now.”

Yes, Edie (last famous in 1988), the police will tend to regard as disorderly any conduct they are called to handle with people flailing away at each other, verbally or otherwise.

I mean, for crying out loud, can't you people sit up there in Connecticut with your money and your old records and behave yourselves?  If I have to come up there and straighten things out, I'll give you something to be sorry for!  I'll bring Sting (left) with me!