The Saturday Picture Show, August 9, 2014

Sunset on Mars - no, not a movie, the REAL Mars - taken in 2005 by the Spirit Rover.  Chances are, there are at least two Starbucks and a 17-screen movie theater right on this spot now.

 A man posted this online and said his grandmother stole the knife and fork while a prisoner of the Nazis in World War II - and she still uses it for every meal.

 This is a garage in Japan, where a Japanese person is attempting to fit a full-size SUV in a space made for a microcar.  Hey, if you don't mind, he doesn't mind...

 This would make a nice wallpaper for surf lovers, no?

 I like to Dole out information whenever I get any.  This is how pineapples are grown.  Are you like me, and until just now, you thought they grew on trees?

This is the Chicago Elevated train in 1969 - the same commuter rail line we saw in "Trains, Plains and Automobiles" and the opening to the Bob Newhart Show.

"Women hold up half the sky" - Mao Zedong

I'll admit to being from that generation when everyone's mother was like June Cleaver...home all day, vacuuming and making a nice layer cake while wearing a smart dress and pearls.  It was a different era for women, and for the American family all over the place.

I've told this a thousand times, but now it just seems impossible. In high school I worked for the A&P, a nice union job paying $2.15 an hour.  Guys twice and thrice my age were at the top of the clerk pay scale, earning $3/ hr for 40 hours of work - a gross of $120 a week.  And they were raising kids, buying houses and cars and groceries, on that salary.

Things change, and now the family structure quite often has both Mom and Dad out there working.  Sometimes the mother is home with the kids, and sometimes the father is.  It's whatever works these days.

If you remember the first time you saw a woman in a police uniform who was not a 'meter maid' or matron to protect female subjects, that was a step, along with women doing just about any job there is.  It's been a long time since anyone said anything disparaging about woman doing a "man's job," because there isn't really such a thing.

So it's a little sad to see people in the shoe business expecting women to take backward steps by casting them as man-hunting she-devils in tiger shoes. This shoe company, which I will not name except to say that they are about Nine miles West of reality, puts everything in ancient terms in this ad campaign for the right kind of shoes to wear while searching for a 'starter husband." Yes, companies selling to men use the same sort of sexist approach, but that hardly makes it right.  Women today can do just fine without starter husbands to bankroll them til the right sugar daddy comes along, and they certainly can handle dropping off the kids at kindergarten without dissolving into the puddle of tears in which swim the ghosts of long-ago stereotypes of helpless women.

Becky Hammon

So let this make you feel better about the world we live in today: the San Antonio Spurs basketball team has hired Becky Hammon as a full-time assistant coach, and no one, least of all the men on the Spurs, has been heard to say, "Ewwwww, a girl!"  She's qualified by dint of her experience in college, Olympic, and WNBA basketball, so let her do the job  - in whatever kind of shoes she feels comfortable.

Get the truck out of here

I am making the conscious decision to watch and read less news, because after following world events all my life, now, in my dotage, it is dawning on me that knowing what's going on doesn't give me the power to do anything about it.

So I'm planning to do a lot less with Alex Wagner and a lot more with Honus Wagner.

But one thing I enjoy on the news is the American influence all over the world.  For instance, you watch the Super Bowl and the other championship ball games, and within 3 seconds of the game being over, the winners are pulling on their WORLD CHAMPS t-shirts and caps, which were made up in advance, clearly, for both teams.

This never happened.

Which means that the losing team has a couple thousand shirts and caps that are no longer applicable or wearable.  This apparel is immediately sent to third-world countries, which is why you'll be watching Brian Williams With The News and see a report about a story in deepest Africa and see a guy wearing a t-shirt that says "TEXAS RANGERS WORLD CHAMPIONS"  or a guy in Gaza with a cap saluting the Denver Broncos for being Super Bowl champs in their minds only.

Another thing - advertising companies, take note.  How many stories have you seen in which a Toyota pick-'em-up truck is carrying 17 men and their guns and equipment through some distant war-torn area?  Why is Toyota not using these men to endorse their legendarily tough Tacomas and Tundras?  Have you ever seen a story in which it was reported that a group of terrorists or defenders intended to wage battle, but couldn't,
because their truck needed a hotshot?

The world would be a more peaceful place if everyone planning to fight a war had to drive Ford Explorers.

No Homophones Aloud

Blogger Torkildson

I (knead, need) to tell you that out in Utah, a state in which they (wear, where) those bolo ties without a hint of self-consciousness, a man says he has been fired for writing about homophones in his blog.

Homophones!  Why, the very idea! That may (seem, seam) to be the sort of thing you would discuss in your (cellar, seller) with your closest friends, but using the (phrase, frays) "Modern Homophones" will get your name (tact, tacked) up on the list of Former Employees where this man worked.

I'm sure he feels that everyone is (teeming, teaming) up against him, but he knows what his boss doesn't - that a homophone is a word that has an aural twin, another word that sounds the same, with different spelling and meaning.  For example, when you see someone send a text that says they are sorry for all you've been "threw," that's a sad example to put you through.  To hear Frankie Valli sing the theme song from the 70s musical "Greece" is another one.

After the blogger, Tim Torkildson, was (shone, shown) the door one recent (summery, summary) day, he told the Salt Lake Tribune that he was fired from (some, sum) school called the Nomen Global Language Center.

This is a school that teaches languages!  And the owner fired him, complaining, "now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality."  He said that because he didn't understand the (dual, duel) meanings, I guess.

I'm not going to (mints, mince) words here...

It just makes you (sigh, psi).

As Herbert Hoover said, "I'll be (dammed, damned)."

[Editor's note: last week when my orthopedist was examining my left (humerus, humorous) bone, I (told, tolled) him I didn't find it funny at all.]

Way off Target

"I don't want to sound complaining, but you know there's always rain in my heart..."   The Beatles, Please Please Me

I really don't mean to sound complaining, but there is something I want to share about the way certain people run their stores.  I don't want to mention any names, but I'm sure I'll hit the Target if I mention the store's name to you.  Everyone who works there has to wear a red shirt, which does not bother me. But it seems like everyone who works there also has to have a 500-watt walkie talkie to exchange information with people one aisle away.  At top volume.

Getting specific, we went to Target the other afternoon, the new one down in Canton.  It's good for us to walk and strutting around a store that size is a nice walk if you do a few laps.  Usually, it's nice and peaceful in a Target, but a few minutes in this store showed me that the establishment is suffering from the heartache of HMS.

You've all seen HMS in action, and, sad to say, many of you have had to deal with it in your own profession.  HMS is my code for Hyper Manager Syndrome and it manifests itself in the big head cheese stomping around barking out orders to his staff like Capt Bligh.  And in the new modern age, he has his walkie talkie (and they have theirs) so he can get things straightened out in Electronics while he's rearranging a display in Home Decor.

And it's not just the almost-constant caterwauling from Barney Fife On The Floor, rebroadcast over a couple of dozen radios.  Other people join in ("ALL DEPARTMENTS  prepare for inventory check" "Congratulations to our Guest Service Team for achieving top scores in the region") and soon the air is full of words, when all you wanted was some peace and quiet, the perfect atmosphere for looking for no-show socks and taco shells. And then everyone from the cashiers to the guy working the machine that brings back 150 carts at a time joins the Roman chorus and chimes in.

As it happened, I had just decided to go hang around Harris Teeter instead.  (They surely have taco shells, and quite possibly, socks.) As I turned to leave, the Loud Logorrheic chirped up with a sprightly, "Are you finding everything ok today, sir?" and I said, "What I hoped to find was a tranquil time to shop, but your radios are loud and annoying," and he said, "Yeah!  Welcome to MY world!"

Or goodbye to it.  Harris Teeter took me in kindly.

The Dollar Store

I don't know the first thing about selling real estate and I doubt that I'd be very good at it, because my sales pitch would be along the lines of "Do you like this house?  Well, then, I think you should buy it" and that might not be enough to get me into the Top Sellers' Club.

But these deals I hear about on the radio...a guy who has made a fortune in the real estate business is coming to town, pitching both his tent and his foolproof plan for making your own million.  All you have to do is get a bunch of people who own houses that they are willing to sell you for maybe $200,000.  Then you turn around and flip that dwelling for $250,000, pocketing the 50 grand for yourself and heading for one of your many vacation getaway spots.

I used to work with a guy who had "figured out a surefire way" to make money by betting on horse races.  He was willing to let me in on the scheme if I would just pony up (get it?) half a hundred G's to get the plan off the ground.

Every so often, someone will come along and offer to let you in on their business, which involves them buying soaps and other home products from a large company and selling it to you so you can sell it to your friends, neighbors and co-workers.  The big company makes a mint, the local distributor makes half a mint, and you make space in your cellar for cases of unsold laundry detergent.

And don't forget this one - a man ran an ad in the National Perspirer or whatever they call it.  The ad said "Make $100,000 in direct mail marketing - send $1 to Box XXX Itchy, Indiana for details."  And people sent off their singles and got back a xeroxed sheet that said "Buy an ad that says "Make $100,000 in direct mail marketing.."

All of these plans rest on the generosity of someone who knows how to turn a dollar bill into a million just like it, and the incredible thing about it all is that they are so willing to share it with you and me, rather than just keeping all the money for themselves and their indolent brothers-in-law!  How very kind.

Sunday rerun! Keep this under your hat!

Maybe it was a pizza shell

What was it, April of this year, when Prince William of Merrie Olde Englande marriede thate nice ladye Kate, who is now known as Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge?

People from here drive through Cambridge all the time on their way to the ocean, and we don't see how anyone from a nice town on Maryland's Eastern Shore would want to move to England, but it's up to her.  There is an opening in Kentucky if she and her husband wish to move down there; he could be the new Duke of Paducah. He could crack 'em up down at the Grand Ole Opry! I can hear him now..."I'm not saying my brother is awkward, but he tripped over a cordless phone! I say! Jolly good!  Cheerio, stiff upper lip, by Jeeves!"

Anyway, we all thought, gee, what a pretty girl he chose to be princess, and possibly queen someday, because it looks like his grandmother Liz is good for another couple of decades, and no one over there seems to want his father Charlie to be king, since that would put Camilla Parker-Carr in the position of queen, and well, we just shan't have that, shall we?

But I imagine it was the usual deal with newlyweds this past weekend when old Willie boy came home and said, "You know, sugarlumps, we have my cousin Zara's wedding coming up on Saturday, I say, jolly good.  Do you have something silly, something that looks like a giant flour burrito, that you could wear on your head?"

Kate and her hat

And she said something like, "No, Your Travesty, but I do have the old satellite dish we used to use to watch "Everybody Loves Raymond" reruns...could I wear that on me 'ead?"

And he said something like, "Sure, m'love, because Zara is going wear a tiara that once belonged to her great-grandmother, whose name was Princess Andrew."

Zara Phillips wore a tiara belonging to her great-grandmother, Princess Andrew of Greece, for her wedding to Mike Tindall in Edinburgh, Scotland

And off to the wedding they went!

The Saturday Picture Show. August 2, 2014

I'd like to say that it's a new month, and maybe we're not all ready for it.  Please wait while I get my bearings.

Lemons are good for a million things, eating and drinking chief among them, but they have other uses.  The sign would be more helpful if it recommended adding a splash of orange juice to your lemonade...it cuts some of the bitterness while adding another delightful citrus taste!

I've never been to Turkey, and while this is an appealing rustic view of a little Turkish farm, I have to figure that it's quite remote and the cable provider would not carry the Orioles, so, no, thanks.

This is Oxford, England, and someone over there is really willing to go the extra mile to shake up the neighborhood.  Jolly good!

This is the only surviving building after the battle of Culloden in Scotland (1746).  It's called Old Leanach Cottage, and people lived there until 1912; now it's kept preserved by the Gaelic Society of Inverness.   It has that lived-in look.

Some people should be put in prism for their crazy jokes!  Here's someone using the full spectrum to keep the thread alive.

Manual Labor

I think I have figured out why there are so many trees growing in your town and mine.  That big old beech tree, the pine down the street, and the weeping Willow Smith in the park...all are signs that we are not cutting down trees like we used to do. 

Because we sure aren't using the trees to make paper to print owners' manuals for new devices!

It was time to upgrade our phones the other day and we are tickled to death with our new Galaxy S5, not to be confused with the curiously misspelled Ford Galaxie popular among Mayberry's law enforcement community.  And it was time to get a new iPod for me.  

Neither of these fine devices came with more than a rudimentary pamphlet that mainly said to turn them on and use them and don't let the battery get all run down, although our friend at the Verizon store did a great job helping us to set up the phones.

The iPod wouldn't sync to the music on my iTunes so I got a cup of iTea and picked up my non-iPhone to call the good people at Apple, where I was greeted with, "Hello, Mark!  I see you recently purchased an iPod Nano...Is this the device you are calling about today?" This is was impressive, and I'll bet you if you were to call KFC, they wouldn't answer with your name or know that  you recently purchased a 12-piece bucket.

And the nice lady served me a nice bowl of Apple sauce and plenty of information. We got the tiny music box 1/2 filled with tunes that you aren't lucky to hear elsewhere, and she reminded me that help is always available on line these days.

I guess printed instruction manuals are passé now, which is good for the trees and the recycling stations. I don't think many people ever read them, anyway. 

Plaque buildup

Only one percent of the men who ever wound up playing major league baseball also wound up in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York,  a town which was not, as is commonly believed, named for author James Fenimore Cooper, but, rather, his father, Judge William Cooper, who founded the sleepy town in 1786.

Only one percent of the people who see recent inductee Greg Maddux's plaque at the HOF will object to the grammar violations contained thereupon, so that's how that goes.  People often tell me that grammar is an ever-evolving thing, fungible and protean.  Well, they don't put it that way, exactly.  What I hear is, "Everybody talks this way, so shove it!"

As fans of excellent woodwork enjoy seeing perfectly-dovetailed joints in a cabinet, as lovers of fine cooking oooh and aaah for the perfect soufflé, as admirers of beauty relish the very sight of a sunrise over a field of lavender, so do I adulate a well-turned phrase, a perfectly-constructed paragraph, a book that I will re-read just for the experience of wading in the words the author chose.  I'm not saying this is for everyone.  If you're happy with John Grisham or James Redfield, fine!

But look at the Maddux plaque.  "Preparation, command and study of batters made him part-scientist, part-artist, winning..."  A part-scientist would be someone involved in the scientific study of parts! A part-artist would be someone making art of parts!   This overuse of hyphens is like the signs on certain auto shops lettered "ALL-TYPES-REPAIR'S   MECHANIC-ON-DUTY" or the one around the corner from us: "FIREWOOD-FOR SALE."  A dash is supposed to be used to set off parenthetical sentence elements, not as a spacer between words. 

And also, as Mr Olbermann said, the look on Mr Maddux's face on the plaque is like the look he'd have if someone walked up and said his car was on fire outside.  

The Hall of Fame will have to do better by the time Adam Jones is inducted!

A sweet little vignette from a summer afternoon...

There's a family up the street from us here on the court; we hardly know them at all.  It makes me sad to realize that's how things are in America 2014, because when I was a kid, everybody up and down the street knew everyone else down and up the street.  It was great then, but it's not that way anymore, and why even talk about it?  We're fortunate to have good neighbors on either side of us, and no one is throwing hams at our house like the people who live next to Oz E. Osbourne have to put up with.

One thing that hasn't changed, never has and never will...boys and girls, they will get together. This family has a daughter; I guess she is maybe 13 or 14. She walks past our house during the school year, going to or coming from school, and the poor thing carries so many books, and I guess a laptop, a printer and a French horn in her backpack that she resembles nothing quite as much as the cover to Led Zeppelin IV.  

She usually has the dour expression of someone sentenced to middle school, for which I really can't blame her, but I always try to say something encouraging or at least pleasant when I see her mosey by.  Talking to people who may or may not wish to talk back is an old family habit.

But the other day, it was all different.  I raised the garage door just as she walked by with a male kid about her age.  In the time-honored fashion of 7th graders, they were giggling and goofing.  I was headed for the Bag 'N' Save, and as I drove down the hill, I saw them turn to make sure they were out of eyeshot of curious eyes located inside her house, and they gave each other the most chaste little peck and hug around the neck you ever saw. It was just the cutest thing you ever saw.  Older kids, you see them saying goodbye to each other at mall dropoff points and high school detention halls, and it looks like a four-armed amoeba eddying around, osculating and schqueezing and so on. But not these youngsters, not at 13.

And even though Hamas and Israel are bombing the hell out of each other and big old jet airliners are being blown out of the sky and the Russians can't get along with themselves and 21,000 children die around the world every day and the ecology is all shot and the bee population is being wiped out, two kids are going to flirt and hold hands and exchange a sweet little kiss on the sidewalk in front of the house down the street.  

The good parts, somehow, survive.

By Any Other Name

I think it all started with Bruce Boxleitner.

Boxleitner, the actor, came along in the 1980s and if he wasn't the first, he was among the first of the people from "fair and frantic Hollywood" who did not change their name to something more...more...show-bizzy, like "Brice Box."

Even before that, performers were breaking their necks to run to the courthouse to change their names, which is why you never heard anyone talk about Arnold George Dorsey, the noted singer. He only became "noted" after he changed his name to Engelbert Humperdinck, ripping off the name of the German composer who tossed "Hänsel und Gretel" into the musical oven.  Humperdinck the singer became popular in the 60s, the decade in which it became fashionable to stop naming movies "Dark Obsession" and start calling them "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad."

Listen, I lived through all that and I never did get the point. Anyhow, time was when a guy named Arthur Kelm showed up to try his hand at movie acting, and some guy behind a desk puffing on a Cheroot said, through a veil of smoke, "All right, see?  We'll call you 'Tab Hunter'!"

Bernard Schwartz

Thus did Roy Fitzgerald become Rock Hudson, Bernard Schwartz became Tony Curtis, and Aaron Chwatt became Red Buttons, although I think there would have been a certain great value in going around being named Aaron Chwatt, Man of A Thousand Gags.

Women?  Same deal. Tula Ellice Finklea = Cyd Charisse. Shirley Schrift = Shelley Winters, and Lucille Fay LeSueur = Joan Crawford.

I think there needs to be a Name Commission to decide these names, because I think that "P.J. Clapp" is a far better name for the man we know and love as Johnny Knoxville.  The Knoxville name should have been saved and given to someone who desperately needed a fake moniker.

So hold on, Benedict Cumberbatch!  We'll think of something!

Would You Believe..?

As if there wasn't enough else to worry about in the mid-to-late 1960s, people liked to sit around inventing crazy stories, one of which was that Paul McCartney had been slain in a bloody car crash.  That story amused swingin' London for a week or two in 1967, buttressed by shreds of facts (McCartney's car was in a wreck, but it was being driven by someone who worked for him, and he did wipe out on his moped, chipping a tooth and scarring his otherwise stiff upper lip.  He grew a mustache to hide the scar) and people's natural love of pure bullhockey.

And then came 1969, when a fool named Tim Harper (who had like totally, heard all about Paul being dead from a friend who knew a guy who knew the coroner...) wrote a "news story" which appeared in the Times-Delphic, the student newspaper of the Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Next thing you know, a DJ who should have known better, one Russ Gibb, on WKNR-FM, took a call from a listener who said that Paul was dead, and if Gibb would simply play "Revolution 9" backwards, everyone could hear the Beatles chant “turn me on, dead man.” And then, someone wrote an article in another college newspaper about this great plot to cover up the death of Paul McCartney, and Russ Gibb, seeking an easier way to turn a quick couple of dollars than doing one more teen dance, produced a radio documentary, laying out all the made-up facts.   For weeks, an anxious nation - yea, the world - awaited confirmation that the man who later wrote "Silly Love Songs" was alive to sing them.  Clues were discussed - he was the only one walking barefoot on the Abbey Road album! - the license tag was 28IF, meaning he would have been 28 IF he had lived! - Lennon mutters "I buried Paul" because who would mumble the words "Cranberry sauce" on a record?!

As was often the case, nothing was clear until LIFE magazine came out in November, with proof that Paul was alive and well and living among many sheep on a farm in Scotland.  In the magazine, McCartney told fans that “Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” paraphrasing Mark Twain. “However, if I was dead, I’m sure I’d be the last to know.”

You can add "the last to know" to the people in our town who choose to believe and spread ridiculous myths, the two most often-repeated of which are that a politician and newscaster got busy and had a baby, and that a ballplayer beat up an actor in a jealous rage.  You ask for evidence, and all you get is "I knew a guy who talked to a guy whose uncle was like totally there!" People who believe and retell these stories always quote a high-ranking police officer as the source of their veracity.

Sergeant Pepper.

Sunday Rerun...from January 2011...Peanut Butter and Traffic Jam

Wow, is all we could say.  On Wednesday, the Baltimore area had a once-in-a-lifetime weather and traffic mess, which will give us something to chatter about in malls, office lunchrooms, hair "saloons" and small claims courts for years to come.

The day dawned with a couple of inches of snow dappling our landscape, and if you haven't had your landscape dappled lately, let me tell you, you're missing out.  The weather people had been saying that it would start to rain overnight and rain like all get-out during the day, so it snowed instead and then the sky turned rather pouty and rainy.  Then the weather people said it would start to snow just about the time everyone left to go home from work, but we took a wait-and-see attitude  toward that.  I get off at 3:30, and when I headed home it was raining sort of hard.  I stopped for gas on the way, and the wind kept blowing my hood off my hooded chore jacket, and then by the time I got back to the Lazy 'C' Ranch here, it was sleeting.

Peggy and I enjoyed a nice dinner and, unable to take our usual 20-minute after dinner walk on the court we live on, we took walks around the house we live in.  I was going up and down stairs for exercise, walking through the house, and had the odd experience of running into Peggy as she left the dining room.  "Hi there, " I said, with an amiable nod.  No, we're not insane.  Really.

So, with nothing on TV, I was idly thumbing through Facebook and started seeing messages from people who were stuck in huge traffic jams on the beltway and other highways.  I mean, it was like 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, quarter to ten, and they had left their work at 4, 4:30, 5!  Seven hours became the commute home for many people, and no, they were not cheered to think that on another night - most ANY other night - they could have shuffled off to Buffalo in that much time!

What happened was the perfect storm, the one with no Geo. Clooney.  The snow got fierce just as the traffic did, and how are you gonna get a snow plow through to plow the snow off streets already clogged with SUVs? Reports of people waiting two hours on a Beltway exit ramp surfaced.  Our favorite traffic reporter Candace Dold reported that it took her 7 1/2 hours to get to work - a normal 30-minute ride.  Highways were shut down, cars were abandoned, people slept in hotel lobbies.  And one person decided to go the wrong way on a major highway.

And then later, the streets were clear!  Zipadeedoodah!

This seems like a good time to remind one and all living in areas prone to snow of several things. First, sneak out of work early when a big snow is headed your way! (Not applicable to public safety personnel, news reporters, and grocery store cashiers!) Second, in the winter time, keep the car full of gas as much as you can - lots of people ran out of gas on the beltway. And it's a good idea to keep some granola bars, peanut butter doodads and bottles of water in the car just in case.

And also - an empty water bottle.  You'll see why!

The Saturday Picture Show, July 26, 2014

Here's an interesting picture from when Dick Cheney was much younger...we call it "Just Two Guys Who Went Hunting By Bicycle"

A lifetime of advice on one simple license tag.  You never know how far it is to the next WaWa.

So many people show those "Keep Calm and Carry On" signs from World War II as the English demonstrated how to keep a stiff upper lip.  But there is always a "but" to these things.  2.45 million copies of the signs - this one, "Keep Calm and Carry On" and "Freedom Is In Peril. Defend It With All Your Might" that England printed were never distributed!  After they were made, the British government decided that the mottoes were patronising and divisive, so they sat in storage until being pulped for other paper uses.  A few copies survived, someone posted one in an antique shop, and millions of copies were made, setting off the craze for memories of things as they never really were.

 I love the name of the "Drug City" drugstore in Dundalk, MD, but this one from Hollywood, CA, from 1965, shows a similar cool name.

A fellow named Bill Holsten took this shot of a Chestnut-mandibled Toucan and you have to say this bird looks happy in his domain!         (http://www.billholsten.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=104520324)

Three cheers for the opera parking lot in Estonia, where they have a sense of humor about the gate blade.  But I also take cheer from knowing that Estonians can enjoy a double-meat footlong BMT before enjoying "The Barber of Seville."

They're not right about your rights

As football training camps open, we find that people who choose to discriminate and make ridiculous statements about others are already in mid-season form, forcing the rest of us to double up on our intake of slurs and innuendoes, just to stay up with the dumb utterances of people such as Lauren Cox and Tony Dungy, the latter of whom I used to respect a lot.

We start with Mrs Cox, the wife of a man with the greatest job in the world, save for Charlie Watts, the drummer for the Rolling Stones.  Morgan Cox is the Ravens' long snapper, which means that he gets a good sideline seat for all the games and only has to get off the bench when there's a kick coming - a field goal, extra point or punt.  When called upon, he uses his natural ability to hunch over and hike a football backwards from between his legs, to the holder or punter a few yards back. Then he blocks opponents as needed and goes back to the seat he only recently vacated and watches the rest of the game, or eats a hot dog, or whatever.

Cox is married to the former Lauren Bell, who writes a blog she calls "The Nomad Notepad."  You might expect that she would write about how great it is to have plenty of money, good health and all the advantages of living in prosperity, but nooooooooo! Last week, she chose to complain about the ESPY awards, and how Drake was making jokes about athletes fooling around with loose women. She was aghast that anyone would make a joke about such things!  Why, she has “shed tears with so many friends over the issue Drake mocked tonight”!

Maybe your friends need to choose better husbands, is all I'm saying.

She writes like a high school kid who just found out about Pearl Harbor ("Some may think that the families of these players just disappear from August to January while our men are hard at work providing your entertainment as we eat our Thanksgiving meals alone, but you are extremely mistaken.") Poor Lauren, pickin' at a wishbone while trying to scrape by on the $630,000 salary her husband makes.  

And speaking of Pearl Harbor, she makes an inapt comparison when she says that Michael Sam is like Hitler and the 9/11 terrorists, because Sam, who only wants to be an NFL player and an out gay man at the same time, believes he is doing what he has the right to do, and so did Hitler as he killed "hundreds of thousands of people" (only off by about 5.5 million there, Lauren) and so did the Twin Towers murderers.  Anyone who believes they are doing the right thing winds up in the same sin bin, to her.

You can read it for yourself if you wish, and even enjoy her unapologetic apology ("I apologize for those that I have have offended") if you want.  You'll think you're back in Creative Writing 11,   I tell you. 

And then Tony Dungy, the former coach and current TV analyst, winds up and opens up his thoughts about how he would not have chosen Michael Sam to play on his team.  "Not because I don't believe Michael Sam should have a chance to play, but I wouldn't want to deal with all of it,” Dungy said.  “It’s not going to be totally smooth … things will happen.’’

Dungy

So many groups, so many individuals, have been kept out of so many things for so many years because "things will happen."  And Dungy is the man appointed by the league to be Michael Vick's personal mentor when Vick got out of prison after serving a sentence for his unspeakable cruelty to animals, and the man who once said he embraced a constitutional amendment making same-sex marriage illegal. 

But in the world where Lauren B. Cox and Tony Dungy live, gay people, Hitler, the 9/11 hijackers and every other sinful thing are all mixed up in this big conspiracy to derail their happy little world where all couples have to be boy-girl and no one gets to live the way THEY want to without checking with the Dungy-Cox Committee On How You Have To Live.

Vested Interest

Mark Ramiro, 30, of Baltimore, will be a guest in the city's hoosegow until sometime in August, awaiting trial on first-degree murder, second degree murder and two gun charges.

Unlike most people charged with murder in The City That Reads, who tend to be murderers who kill rival drug dealers or people who have failed to show them sufficient respect in their day-to-day billingsgate, Ramiro finds himself cooling his heels because he and his late friend Darnell Mitchell came up with the idea, at four in the morning of July 16, to make a "Jackass"-style video.

"Jackass" movies and TV shows are fun to watch because they present talented, idiotically fearless stunt performers snorting wasabi, crawling nekkid through a room full of set mousetraps, and launching themselves skyward on giant human slingshots.  I watch them, I laugh like a ninny, and I have no more interest in recreating those scenes than I do invading France to re-do "The Longest Day."  Most people realize that there is a difference between the PERFORMERS in a show and the AUDIENCE of the show.

Messrs. Ramiro and Mitchell seem not to have understood. When they hauled out the old video camera to capture images of themselves licking a toilet, that was one thing.  But then Mitchell put on a bulletproof vest and announced that he was ready to be shot with a "deuce-deuce" (a .22 revolver, popular with gun lovers who enjoy shooting their friends.) According to city police, Ramiro pulled the trigger as the video rolled, and the bullet he fired missed the vest, but not his friend, whose life ended right there and then.

Apparently, none of the participants watched the warning at the beginning of the real Jackass movies. (left)
  
Ramiro's attorney, Christopher Flohr, said in court, as bail was denied Ramiro,  "It was a tragic, tragic accident between friends fueled by alcohol and drug abuse," Flohr said. "There's no way to explain people messed up on drugs and alcohol."

Well, there is always the explanation that people messed up on drugs and alcohol operate with impaired judgement...

Inseams to me, pants aren't all that important anyway

Every July, for three of the hottest days since they unhinged the doors to Hell, Baltimore hosts a large outdoor art shindig known as Artscape. There are usually cases of people passing out from the heat, there are free-bottled-water handouts set up 20 yards from the guy selling cold bottled water for a buck a pop, and there are misting stations where you can get even wetter than the sweat has already made you so you can return to looking at the attractions.

Well, this year, the entire mid-Atlantic region was bathed in cooler, drier weather for mid-July, which came in handy to give the local meteorologists something to burble about and something for the wry, seen-it-all news anchor to opine about ("I guess this portends a cool, dry winter, huh, Bob?") while trying to figure out how to pronounce Auchentoroly, as in Auchentoroly Terrace, a street down near the zoo. (It's AWKen-trolley, btw.)

Well, fearing that Baltimore's many art lovers would have nothing but art to discuss at Artscape, a band of people opposed to wearing pants managed to avoid having everything come apart at the seams. You can't hem them in, that's for sure. And as fast as they could, they dropped trou and paraded around in their undies. For a public exhibit which once featured as art a car completely covered in glued-on bottle caps, this was enough to generate some attention.

Justin Bieber?  Mindy Kaling?  You tell me!

The group calls themselves "No Pants No Problem" and you can see their Facebook page right here.  They put together a flash mob, no pun intended, and had a big time at Artscape.

If they were hoping for public acceptance, they got it.  Who really cares if someone is browsing through art while wearing a bikini bottom or a pair of plaid boxers or some tighty-whiteys?  Those who would say it's immoral or improper haven't been to a beach or a high school since The Partridge Family was on.

Jump in, if you know the words

You never know from day to day what's going to happen to you, but you can minimize your chances of falling off a 33-story building by not getting on the roof of a 33-story building and fooling around by the edge.

It's really up to you.

Likewise, if you juggle sharp knives or whirring chainsaws, you stand a much better chance of needing many more Band-Aids than someone who is reading, and needs fear only the occasional paper cut.

Dr. Petty

It's your choice.  Which brings us to Dr John Petty, 63, formerly of Longview, TX.  An educated man, clearly, and a fan of scuba diving and underwater photography.  

I'll bet you a dollar there were lots of pictures of coral reefs and sunken ships and passing angelfish all over the waiting room of his chiropractic office back home in Longview.  Going underwater and taking pictures of what you see - that's a cool hobby.

Last Sunday, Dr Petty added "swimming with sharks" off the Bahamas to the hobby, and after a 64-hour search over 4600 miles, the Coast Guard suspended their search for his remains.  His diving vest and some other gear, shredded by you-know-what, were recovered.

I don't mean to make light of the man's passing, but this was totally preventable.  Some of us seem to get an adrenalin rush from cheating the hangman, running with the bulls in Pamplona, jumping into the lion's den at the zoo, taunting the sharks where they live.

Dude.  It's their ocean.  Jump in, and they might feel threatened, and bite your head off.  It's the underwater version of Stand Your Ground, and that's the only place it makes much sense.

Same pew, different church

Born and bred Methodist, I recognized early that part of the Method was not to be too flamboyant about the practice of religion.  Through childhood into young manhood, I sat through hundreds - thousands - of sermons, ceremonies and Sunday School lessons and never heard a raised voice, never saw a raised hand or heard any instrument besides an organ or the occasional acoustic guitar or lute for "folk services."

And none of those services ran for more than three hours, or, frankly, left me wanting more of the soul-cleansing music and words like I heard at the Baptist homegoing of our dear Deanna the other day at the Mt Sinai Baptist Church in Lansdowne, PA.

At the service, there was music, with many, many voices accompanied by, yes, an organ, but also electric guitar and bass, and drums. And this was the loud, spirit-lifting, animated singing...one of the bases of what the kids call "rock and roll," ya know?

Take away the music, and you can say the same for the preaching. This was not the "Verily, I say unto you..." sort of preaching, no sir.  This was the impassioned importuning of men leading their flock to see that their beloved Deanna has served her mission on earth and was called home.  These were the words of men who reminded us that yes, this loss is tough and it will cause pain, but not to worship the pain, to keep an eye on those better tomorrows.  The sort of funeral (that word wasn't even used on Saturday, in favor of the far more appropriate "homegoing") I am used to was all about lugubrious tones of " from dust we come and to dust we go," which is fine for as far as it goes, but it fails to celebrate what we do between those dusty days.

Deanna

No.  What we attended the other day was a celebration of the life of a woman who, in the words of Pastor Thomas, "didn't have time for bitterness."  In the year or so that we knew her, we never saw Deanna say a bad word for or about any one or any thing. 

She and her goodness are up above now, along with another friend of mine and my Mom.  This triumvirate of loss since April comes to an end now, and no service or private contemplation can change that.  I'm not a man given to grieving, believing that heaven is its own reward for believers, but the service Peggy and I attended on Saturday showed me a new way to regard death. Every church, every person, has their own way of saying farewell, but I have to say, I like this emphatic sort of service.  People were involved, singing along, calling out as they wished, getting on their feet and moving to the spirit.  

In the staid, sobersided services of my childhood, if anyone left their pew, it was assumed that they had fallen asleep and slid off. Again, not a criticism.  There are different ways of doing things. What we saw Saturday was soul-stirring.

Sunday Rerun: How's your Vade Mecum doing?

Not to get too personal, but you do have a vade mecum, and to some people it's vital to have it around.

I had never heard the term before seeing it the other morning in my daily Merriam-Webster Word of the Day feed.  Here's how they define "vade mecum:"

"Vade mecum" is Latin for "go with me" (it derives from the Latin verb "vadere," meaning "to go"). In English, "vade mecum" has been used (since at least 1629) of manuals or guidebooks sufficiently compact to be carried in a deep pocket. But from the beginning, it has also been used for such constant companions as gold, medications, and memorized gems of wisdom.

It's probable that not so many people carry around any sort of pocket manual any more.  Even doctors no longer tote their 85-lb volume of the Physician's Desk Reference, which lists vital information for physicians: medications, their recommended dosages and possible interactions, and tee times at leading golf clubs.  All this information is now an app; just buy it at the App Store and download it on your phone.  Very handy.  Same thing for other handbooks and manuals.  Even the Bible is available to download.

In its other meaning, we all have Vade Mecum in the sense of stuff we Don't Leave Home Without. Wallet, keys, pocket change, pocket knife, bandanna, cell phone: that's mine, everyone has their own, and here's a big shout out to the person who invented pockets! Because we don't have but two hands!

The Saturday Picture Show, July 19, 2014

 The ninja warriors here posed for this picture in 1860.  It was colorized all these years later.  In case you thought flip-flops were a modern day invention, check out what they are wearing on their feet.  Why the guy on the left was wearing what looks like half a cinder block, I can't tell you, but it was 1860, you understand.

 Taken with a cell phone, somewhere on vacation in this wild summer of crazy weather.

As the story goes, this fellow was fishing for carp at a large reservoir when he accidentally dropped his billfold into the water.  He saw one fish grab it in his mouth, and then the fish just swam near the shore, seemingly inviting the man to come out and get it.  As soon as the man got close, the fish spit out the billfold and sent it to another fish.  Again, the man went after it, and that fish spat it to a third fish, and so on until the man gave up, realizing that he was the first known victim of carp-to-carp walleting.

 When you see it...you'll see how sometimes we get more out of a situation than we put into it.

It's all fun and games when people dress their cats up as people, sure.  But when they insist that Buttons play the part of a mushroom, you have to wonder how much fun the cat is having.

This is a picture of what they call the "Old Jail" in my hometown, Towson, MD.  Built in 1855, it's a two-story Italianate style stone building, 52 feet wide and 62 feet deep.  It was used as a jail until 2006. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 26, 2009.  Now, it's been turned into offices, which must be a good feeling for workers who feel they are being held against their will.  Back in the day, they would schedule the public hangings on a Saturday at noon, so that people could come and pack a picnic lunch and enjoy the festivities.  Well, I guess all but one guy there enjoyed them.

Daffy Moon

No decent blog, written by a person with any taste of sense of elegance, would devote a day to such an unsavory topic as mooning.

And so, I would like to turn to the topic of mooning.  Our friend April caught this great picture of the supermoon the other morning. As we all know from reading Wikipedia, "a supermoon is the coincidence of a full moon or a new moon with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit, resulting in the largest apparent size of the lunar disk as seen from Earth. The technical name is the perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system." 

 Daphne Moon of "Frasier"

Like we didn't all know that. Even as I write, I'm gettin' syzygy wit it, and I welcome you to join me.

Mooning is described as "the recreational act of baring one's ass in public with the intention of it being seen by people who don't want, or expect, to see it."  It was practiced by many young men of my generation, who would wait for the light to turn red at Dulaney Valley Rd & Pot Spring Rd and then stick their buttocular region out of the window of Bob P's English Ford, leaving people driving Buicks aghast, I tell you.

Bart

Angus does this at
every show

I can't mention any names; I wasn't there anyway.  I was home studying.




Modern followers of hangin' a moon include Bart Simpson and AC/DC madcap Angus Young, who hedges his bet with self-promoting underwear.  As I mentioned to our April the other day, Peggy and I were married for a few years before she announced that she had never once mooned anyone and certainly had no intention of starting now.

I understand that the habit of pressing ham against a car window began when our parents, using the old-school definition of the term, told us, "You can't sit here mooning over that girl, you know" and so we went elsewhere to do our mooning.  I mean, they went elsewhere.  I stayed home studying my hypotenuse.