The Saturday Picture Show, October 24, 2015

 Here's President Eisenhower throwing out the first ball of the 1955 baseball season at Griffith Stadium in DC.  Fans of the movie "Stripes" will wonder if Yankee manager Casey Stengel is about to ask, "How's it going, Eisenhower?"

A chilly, misty gold-dappled autumn morning.  Can't beat it!

Nature has the greatest way of showing us signs of love. For those of us who can't afford a heart-shaped pool, here's a heart-shaped puddle!

Here's a brilliant use of photoshop technology - inserting Calvin and Hobbes cartoons into real life!

A man was taking a picture of the sunset when a water droplet splashed his camera's lens, creating this diffusion effect...

Taken by a construction worker in New York, someone who gets to appreciate the great view from way up high.

The best movie for everyone who ever got the PC LOAD LETTER error code on their printer, or was told that their boss needed them to go ahead and come in on Saturday...

Just a week to go to get that Halloween shopping done! Goobers, Raisinets, Milk Duds, Almond Joy, B-B Bats, Snickers, Mars...Trick or Treat!

Something about a bird

Clark's Nutcracker

You can call them "Clark's Nutcracker" (no relation) or by their biological name Nucifraga columbiana, but you can't call them "birdbrain."  

Clark's Nutcracker is a bird we don't get to see here in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States; they live in high mountains in the western part of North America, from British Columbia and western Alberta in the north down as far as Baja California and New Mexico to the south. If they can't find enough food where they are, they might jot over to Illinois or Pennsylvania for takeout. Wouldn't you think that if they come to PA, they would just wander down to Maryland? But no.  

These guys love to eat pine seeds, in much the same way we love to put pine nuts on our salads, and they don't even need bleu cheese dressing with theirs. Let them near some pine cones and they are happy; they can find all the chow they will need, and carry a lot of with them! They are gray-and-black, with white in the tail and wing. And their bills are sharp. They use them to dig into a pine cone and get the seeds. Clark's Nutcrackers have a sublingual (beneath the tongue) pouch that will hold 50–150 seeds, as well as their car keys and the garage door remote.

But here is why we can't label them as "birdbrains." These birds store seeds, in little piles of a dozen or so. They put them in the ground, and this does two things for them: in the long run, it allows for more pine trees to sprout and grow to provide more food for future nutcrackers, and of course it provides a nice stash of seeds for later use.  

Fly high, Freeeeeeeee Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrd

Bird experts figure that a single Clark's nutcracker can cache away as many as 98,000 seeds per year, and here's the kicker: they remember where as many as 70% of the seeds are planted!  We think birds are dumb, what with their little tiny brains, and yet they remember to sock some food away and they remember where most of it is!

And half the time, I can't even remember where I left my lunch.

Johnny, be better

People in the United States look at South Africa and shake their heads in disbelief because that creepy Oscar Pistorius shot his girlfriend to death, and only sat in jail for 10 months before being released to serve his term out in his uncle's lavish mansion.  And he will be allowed to leave this ritzy "home detention" for the purposes of work, which means he can just take off for any track meet that strikes his fancy.  We say that would never happen here.

It's actually a lot like here, because Pistorius is of the proper race, class, social stratum and level of athletic renown to catch big breaks from the legal system. But still, we look on this travesty with scorn, because we know that there is no question Pistorius shot his girl, Reeva Steenkamp, in the bathroom of the condo they shared. Why it happened, only he knows, but he needs to take the responsibility for his recklessness.

He's asking for money here

Meanwhile, back in the good old USA, here's an athlete who is just setting record after record, but they are all for asinine behavior, not anything on the field. He's Johnny Manziel, benchwarming second-string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, but he also answers to "Johnny Football," a selfmade nickname that he coined in the fashion of Michael Jackson calling himself "The King of Pop."

He's only come off the bench long enough to throw 39 passes this year, completing 21 of them, but he keeps his throwing hand busy by punching out tweets to his adoring fans. Lately, he's been explaining away how he and his girlfriend Colleen Crowley got into an argument while driving on the highway.  He who came out of a ten-week alcohol rehab this spring admits he had "two" drinks before driving off with Ms Crowley.  Someone saw them tussling in the car, the police pulled them over, and even though she had an abrasion on her wrist from him trying to keep her from climbing out of the car he was driving at 90 mph, the police saw no reason to charge anyone with anything, and away they drove, to make up. 

Even though an eyewitness said Manziel's car drove at high speed on the berm on an interstate west of Cleveland, then cut across several lanes of the highway to exit, the police declined to take action when they pulled him over.

The shifty, sketchy look of a loser

The Browns are saying they don't know if Manziel is involved in the NFL's substance abuse program, and they say are handling the matter privately.

While you wonder how long it will be before this young man's alcohol problem causes a serious injury (or worse) to some unfortunate bystander, you might also wish to ponder what would happen to YOU if you acted like he does.  

And then,  imagine if he was any good at playing football, instead of just being famous at it.

Do you like Kipling? I don't know; I've never Kippled

There was a time when I would have worn the shocked, disheartened, stupefied look you see on the young man at left, just because of how a football or baseball game or presidential election turned out. 

He is a fan of the University of Michigan, probably a student there, and his team (coached by Jim Harbaugh, onetime Raven quarterback and brother of Ravens head coach John) was 10 seconds away from beating archrival Michigan State on Saturday afternoon.  All they needed to ice the victory was to punt the ball away and let the clock run out, but their punter, Australian émigré Blake O'Neill, couldn't handle the low snap of the ball.  Then, instead of just falling on the ball, he tried to get the punt off anyway, and, well, if he had, you never would have heard another word about it all.  But no.  Michigan State's Jalen Watts-Jackson grabbed the loose ball and scooted in for a 38-yard game-winning touchdown as the clock ran out.

And then, things went all crazy

Hey, it's a football game, and things happen. Snaps are poorly snapped, easy passes get dropped, balls get deflated by cheaters. Things don't always go the way we want them to, so the best way is to treat triumph and disaster, those two impostors, pretty much the same. Rudyard Kipling wrote that in his poem "If" and that would be good reading for the Michigan fans who have taken to sending young O'Neill hate-filled emails and death threats over his faux pas.

Yes, it's happening. On Twitter, someone who calls himself @jaaake_f1 recommended that O'Neill should "jump off of a cliff into a pool of spikes and cyanide."  

Sean Kenzel (@SeanKenzel), who probably has never punted in a football game outside of his own back yard, said this:   @blakewoneill I hate you. I. Hate. You.

And then there's Twitterer TheEricTaylor1, who encouraged O'Neill to go to the equipment room and "start chugging that bleach my friend."

"I'm asking that our community not lose this game twice by condoning thoughtless comments," MSU interim athletic director Jim Hackett said in a letter to the school's students and fans.

I am sad to see that there are people in this world who would suggest that another person needs to die for the results of his playing a football game. It's one thing to care for your team and hope they do well, exulting in victory, but it's quite unreasonable to put forth a death wish because someone didn't kick a ball all that well.
  

Radio signoff

It's the habit around here at the Lazy 'C' Ranch for Peggy to watch her "Once Upon A Time" (which I always call "One Day At A Time") on Sunday evenings, and then a couple of shows she follows on PBS - those English dramas - and maybe something on the Oprah Network.

For all I know, she could be running a printing press and running off bogus twenty-dollar bills all that time, because I am up here in my den listening to "The Big Broadcast" on WAMU-FM, the American University radio station from DC.  The show consists of tapes of old radio shows, such as "Dragnet" and "Gunsmoke" and "The Great Gildersleeve."   

The host since 1990 has been a fellow named Ed Walker, who has been around WAMU since they signed on in 1951 as a campus AM station.  Things have changed for sure! Now they carry NPR programming during the day, and are usually the top rated station in DC.

Without fail, the top rated show on Sunday nights is "Big Broadcast," and Ed, as I say, has been there for 25 years.  He took over from John Hickman, who realized in 1964 that people would like to hear old radio shows again.

Before hosting this Sunday show, Ed teamed with Willard Scott, whom you'll remember from the Today Show with his weather forecasts, jam and jelly commercials, and birthday greetings for people who turn 100 or so.  They were a radio comedy team called "The Joy Boys," until 1974, when they were replaced by Dick Cheney and George Bush.

At 83, Ed Walker, born blind, is battling cancer and has retired to enter a skilled nursing facility. As a young man, he listened to the radio and found a future in it. “Radio was everything to me, not being able to see,” he told an interviewer on WAMU.

Ed Walker

“The sound on radio was important. Radio took the place of comic books and newspapers and the funnies and all that stuff. So I grew up with it.”

Radio is often described as the theater of the mind, and has no visuals to put its message across.  That puts both sighted and visually impaired people on the same footing as listeners, and Ed always found people he worked with at radio stations helpful in getting his commercial copy put into Braille. Listening to him, one could never tell he could not see...and still, he could hear like you and I and everyone else could as well, and that's all radio is.

The last time we'll get to hear Ed, for now, will be on his final recorded broadcast, this Sunday the 25th, 8 til midnight, on 88.5 FM, or online at WWW.WAMU.org.

Listening to the old radio shows will be something interesting if it's your first time hearing them, or if you remember hearing the radio version of "Ozzie and Harriet" during the late 40s and early 50s. Trust me, it was a whole different world then. I'm just glad someone saved the tapes from when radio was everything.

Office Spaced

You know that you can get all sorts of helpful advice from your government - local, state, federal, moon - about everything from raising delphiniums to filing your own will.  Governments publish all sorts of public publications, usually for free - the local Farm Bureau, for instance, puts out pamphlets on how to enrich your soil, and they are dirt cheap.

Hey, listen, I am listening to The Outlaws Green Grass and High Tides while I type this, so of course, I am trying to keep up with their tempo and falling a bit short.  Good jokes sometimes have to be sacrificed for fast ones.

Anyhow, an official government agency, back in 1944, put out a book about how to operate the organizational aspects of a business, and it might be fun to look at the list below and see how many of them apply to the place where you work:  My unasked-for comments follow in red:

• “Insist on doing everything through channels. Never permit short-cuts to be taken to expedite decisions.”  And repeat the magic words "But we've ALWAYS done it this way!" as often as possible
• Make speeches. Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your ‘points’ by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.” Because nothing says 'tomorrow' like 'yesterday.'
• “When possible, refer all matters to committees, for ‘further study and consideration.’ Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.” An elephant is a horse, as designed by a committee.
• "Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.”  Ever notice how a trained paramedic working at the scene of a gory auto accident doesn't concern herself with whether the driver was wearing a seat belt, or who ran the red light, or anything that does not involve the immediate situation?
• “Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, and resolutions.”  Yes, for the love of all that's good and holy, make sure the minutes of last month's subcommittee meetings reflect fully the views and opinions of somebody's nephew who only works here because the carwash is closed for winter.
• “Refer back to a matter decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.”  Nothing is ever final, finally.
• “Advocate ‘caution.’ Be ‘reasonable’ and urge your fellow conferees to be ‘reasonable’ and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.” When deciding whether to use blue/black or jet black ink on the logo of the internal company newsletter, take your time deciding! Communicating information can wait!
• “Be worried about the propriety of any decision. Raise the question of whether [it] lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.” Argue endlessly about whether the instant matter should be handled by Budget or Finance or Budget & Finance.

And now comes the big surprise I didn't tell you about.  If you recognize some of these management practices from your office or carwash or whatever, it is definitely time to revamp the way you all do your business, because these were all taken directly from a book written in 1944.   And it's not so much that they are therefore even older than ballpoint pens.

These are all business techniques published in a document called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual.” The U.S. Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to the CIA) put it out as a fake guide for our European spies to leave lying around, the better to undermine the Axis powers we fought.

It's like leaving a recipe out with instructions to use half a cup of cayenne pepper in your bread pudding.  Someone who didn't know better would follow the directions exactly and cause the top of Aunt Millicent's head to come off at Sunday dinner.

There's a good chance that handing out inane advice helped us win World War II.  So show this to your boss, point out the error of his/her ways, and then go back and get your resume ready.  You'll be sending it out soon!

Sunday Rerun: Nickel-and-diming him

Some people just don't think about the consequences of their actions.

Out in Los Angeles, a man named Andres Carrasco, apparently an upright clean-living citizen, retired bus driver, used to have his car insurance through Adriana's Insurance, but one day he went to their office to find out why they had dropped him.

An employee of Adriana's Insurance attempted to explain the situation to Mr Carrasco by bodily throwing him out of the office.

So Mr Carrasco went to the courts to sue the insurance company, and he won a settlement of $12,000.

So the good people over at Adriana's decided that the best way to shell out that kind of change would be to send over that kind of change.

Eight paint buckets full of American coins were delivered to Mr Carrasco by eight goons working for the Adriana firm.

His attorney, Anthony Gallo, said he can't even lift the buckets and he doesn't feel that Mr Carrasco, recently recovering from hernia surgery, should even try.

"I am disappointed by the way Adriana's treats their customers and the elderly," Carrasco told KNBC-TV. "We might be poor, but we are people too."

Even if he were not poor and elderly, and I wish he weren't either one of them, Mr Carrasco has a right not be assaulted by insurance agents.  It doesn't sound like Adriana's is a firm with which I would do business.  My car insurance company has a cute little gecko and Little Richard doing their commercials; Adriana's just doesn't seem to care how many people hear about their nastiness.  It cannot be good for their business to treat the gentleman this way.

The one bright note in all this is that Mr Carrasco now has 8 paint buckets!  You can never have too many of them around the house.

The Saturday Picture Show, October 17, 2015

This is labeled "A Proper English Breakfast." I will consult with my Experts on England on this matter. The ham, sausage, toast and egg are all parts of my breakfast buffet. Tomatoes, mushrooms and beans are all more lunch-y to me, but what do you think? I'd give this a try any day!  (Need one more egg, please!)

At the first break of dawn, crabbing vessels head out to net the day's catch. By nightfall, crabs will be caught, steamed and seasoned, and served up in restaurants all over our area.  

If you lived here, you would want to balance the great view, especially at this time of year, against the risk of living in a cabin on stilts on a mountainside.  Decisions, decisions.

This Wednesday, October 21, marks the 46th anniversary of the day Jack Kerouac took his final road trip.  His books are still good to read.

Today's beautiful nature scene shows where all the great colors come from...certainly not a can of paint!

This is a TV Guide from 1961, showing Captain Kangaroo, a kiddie TV show host from that era.  Big extra points for the cool old helmet, too. By the way, every now and again, people with nothing better to do with their time pass around a story saying that Lee Marvin went on the Tonight Show to say that Bob Keeshan fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima with him and was the bravest man Marvin ever saw.  But this could not have happened, as neither of them was there at the time. Both of them served in WWII.  And that should be enough anyway!

 "I don't care what anyone says, I want a window in my office!  Now, make it happen!"

This is taking place at a Kroger store in the midwest...they grow mushrooms right there in the produce department.  Next summer, I hear they are thinking of putting in corn.  We shall see...

Getting Randy in his old age

The Quaids In Court

You remember Randy Quaid, the quirky character actor who was in The Last Picture Show, Independence Day, The National Lampoon Vacation movies, and the wonderful Kingpin. He also did a great job playing Lyndon Johnson in the tv movie "LBJ: The Early Years."  Probably he is best known as Cousin Eddie in the vacation movies...everyone's bumptious relative.  

"It's full, Clark!"

Well, as you might recall, he and his wife Evi took it on the lam in 2010 after Los Angeles authorities wanted them for illegally squatting in a home they apparently could no longer afford.  You know how that stuff works.  So they booked out to Canada, where Randy has worked steadily in the burgeoning field of not shaving his face ever since.  And then they tried to sneak back in here through America's back door - Vermont - and were tossed in the can as fugitives last week, until yesterday, when a judge cut them loose after they made court appearances.  It was the old story...there was a clerical error on a charging document.

I tell you this here and now: that would NEVER happen to me. If I'm hauled in front of a court for aggravated aggravation, every possible document filed will be used later in textbooks, they will be so perfectly typed and filed.

Anyway, the Quaids' attorney says the couple planned to stay in Vermont because Evi's father was sick. A quick check of Hollywood shows that Jack Black is now playing all the parts that Randy used to, although not quite as well. So off they went into the glorious Vermont afternoon, still wearing their prison jumpsuits, headed to an uncertain New England future. 

"I've always known the facts are what they are and that they're in our favor," Randy said. "I've never worried about being found guilty."

Or a lot of things, it would seem. 

Lincoln VFC

Randy also said he hoped to enjoy the Vermont foliage and maybe even join the Lincoln Volunteer Fire Company in Lincoln, where the Quaids plan to reside except for when Randy is down at the fire house spinning tales of his movie star days, and showing the other guys how to empty the commode of an RV right into the sewer. 

I of course totally support anyone who wants to join a volunteer fire company.  I wouldn't trade my days at Providence for anything. But this news story from WCAX TV says that Lincoln only has 8 firefighters on their roster, so Randy would make 9.

Climb aboard that big red pumper, big guy! They need you there!

With Mallets Toward None

Billy the Kid (born Henry McCarty, but that doesn't sound like a name for a legendary gunslinger) was a pretty tough hombre in America's Wild West days, the days when people walked around with guns, shooting at each other. (Can you even believe such a time ever existed in our country?)

He became a hero, a well-known name in cowboy lore.  There is even a kid's clothing line named after him, which leads me to wonder why no one ever came up with "Lil' John Dillinger" suits, overalls and jeans for America's youth.  

The original Billy was a common crook, a thief and murderer, and he met his maker at the age of 21 in a gunfight.  He died as he lived, with a gun in one hand, and possibly a croquet mallet in the other.

No kidding. Historians have just authenticated a photograph as being of a group that included BTK.  He is seen in the picture playing croquet with his posse ("The Regulators") in New Mexico in 1878.  It was taken after a wedding that summer, just a month after the gang took part in the brutal Lincoln County war, a dispute between rival factions over dry goods and cattle that was resolved by having people shoot guns at each other repeatedly.

Having been imported from England, croquet became popular in 19th Century America. There is even a letter from Gen. George Custer to his wife, asking that she procure and bring him a croquet set so he could play the game with his Army buddies in Kansas. There's no word on whether he took that equipment to his final battle at Little Big Horn.

Billy's other picture

A fellow named Randy Guijarro paid $2 for the picture in a junk shop in Fresno, CA, in 2010, and it's on the auction block now, expected to bring in a few cool million bucks.  The only other picture we have to keep the young felon's dear memory alive is the picture taken in 1880, the one where he looks like a member of Blake Shelton's entourage.  

Billy also went by the moniker "William H. Bonney." It would seem that he had more names than good qualities.  He was a horse thief, cattle rustler, and murderer of at least eight people (although he claimed to have killed 21) and was not missed at all by anyone who liked it peaceful and crime free.  Still, in the inexplicable way we have of turning scoundrels into folk heroes, his name alone inspires people to reach for their checkbooks to buy the original tintype of this photo for their den walls: 

This picture for sale

That's Billy on the left in this closeup

By the way, the historians went to a lot of trouble to make sure this is not a picture of a Billy the Kid impersonator or something. In the course of a year-long investigation, they where it was taken: Chaves County, New Mexico. They even dug up the remains of the building shown. Jeff Aiello, director of a National Geographic Channel documentary on this story, says, “We found the old lumber underneath. We found those exact rock piers are still there.”   There will be a TV show about this later this month.  

137 years from now, Keith Richards, who will still be alive, will be hosting a TV special about a VHS tape that someone just found that shows Tonya Harding's wedding night, and people will pay billions for it.

A sharper look at razors

Men from the age of puberty (that's when you're old enough to go to a pub) know the face pain that no other gender faces, and we face it on a daily basis (until we retire, and the only other person we might see from the outside world is the letter carrier or the crew on the recycling truck.)

Stubblebeard

Of course, we are talking about shaving here, and here's the deal. When you don't need to shave, when your face is still all peachfuzzy, you can't wait to grab some steel and drag it across the plains of your cheeks, upper lip, and neck.  Then you get out of high school, and unless your name is Don Johnson, you have to shave, more or less every day.

And that's when you learn about the styptic pencil. According to Wikipedia, "(s)typtics cause hemostasis by contracting blood vessels."  Hemostasis is defining as the stopping of a flow of blood. Blood is defined as the red stuff that you get on the one and only clean dress shirt you are wearing as you hurriedly shave and dress for a job interview or date or some other such event.

Cousin Eddie in court

Of course, some guys beat the shaving deal by just letting everything go, but that just makes it easier to spot you trying to sneak back into the US via the Vermont/Canada border.

The reason all this comes to mind is that I see that DollarShaveClub.com, a new online business that ships you razors through the mail, is cutting into (sorry) that business once monopolized by Schick and Gillette.  I have no reason to believe their product is any better or worse than the longtime industry leaders, but I notice from their website that they also sell a toilet paper replacement called "One Wipe Charlies" (sic), a hair goo called "Boogie's Hair Clay," and "Dr Carver's Easy Shave Butter."  

I am particular enough about my wizened old face that I do insist on buying name brand razors instead of cheapie BICs that come 48 to the package, but the day I start putting butter on my face is the day I join the No Shave Club.

We'll never run out

Over the years, we Americans have faced shortages with bravery and strength and kindness and resolution.  During World War II, food and metal and gasoline were needed for the war effort, so those items were rationed to make sure that everyone got no more than what they needed.

In the 1970s, owing to global politics, we faced a gasoline shortage in '74 and '79 that we dealt with by paying through the nose for gas after lining up to get it.  And suddenly, the oil companies felt no need to hand us a coffee mug or stuffed animal or deck of cards to get us to fill up at their station.   

I even remember Exxon running an ad justifying the huge price increase for gasoline by pointing out that catsup was much more expensive by the gallon than their gasoline, as if we needed to purchase catsup by the gallon anymore since the Exxon station down on the corner no longer hands out hot dogs with every tankful.

Now they are saying that this year's pumpkin crop will be a little short, and once the demand (?) for pumpkin pie filling is met, don't look for any can can can of Libby's Libby's Libby's pumpkin until next year.  This will mean more blueberry, cherry and lemon pies for me, so this is a plus.

One thing that we as proud Americans can count on forever is that we will not have a shortage of horse's patooties among us. You saw one the other day, driving a car with a shot suspension and a bumper sticker reading "My kid can beat up your honor student."  They are everywhere at the supermarket, elbowing their way into the express line with 47 items bulging out of their cart, and running their cart into your ankle just because they are in such a hurry.

And they attend ball games.  And they jump out of the stands and run onto the field, like this bozo the other night during the Sunday Night Football game with the Giants and the 49ers.  He was wearing a red jersey in 49ers colors, and as he made his way around the field, half a dozen New Jersey state troopers rounded him up like a stray calf and herded him to the exit.

It happens everywhere

But, since only a true horse's patootie can take this sort of foolishness to the next level, he decided that his next best move would be to headbutt a cop.  So he did that, and it led to him being toted away with one officer on each arm and each leg and schlepping him off the field and into a nice cozy cell.

I was at the Colts game in 1971 when a bozo ran onto the field and grabbed the football, only to have his timbers shivered by the forearm of linebacker Mike Curtis.

It's hard to believe that anyone would undertake this sort of behavior while totally sober. But whatever fuels it, don't worry.  There's plenty more of it.  

You never know

Because I feel sorry for the wife of the police officer who was shot to death in Texas on August 28, I don't see the need to name her, or her husband, here.  Perhaps a little respect for her tragedy will help us forget the parts we should, and remember what we should about it.  You may read all about it here if you're so inclined.

You saw this story on the news: the officer pulled into a gas station to fill up his cruiser and was gunned down.  A woman who was at the gas station was seen crying over the officer, saying that he was her "best friend."  

And now it turns out that the woman has been having "consensual sexual contact" with another officer from the same department who has been the lead investigator in the case, until he was relieved of duty last Friday.  AND she says she was having a romantic relationship with the slain officer for the fifteen months prior to his death.

This now casts doubt on whether or not the officer was on duty at the time he went to the gas station, according to prosecutors. Of course it raises the possibility of a romantic triangle.  

And the defense attorney for the man arrested as the murderer says that arrested man was found mentally incompetent to stand trial on felony assault charges in 2012.

What seemed at first to be another random shooting of a police officer now is wrapped in conspiracies and odd circumstances.  

Crime scene surveillance image

And it works both ways.  There are times that things seem all bent out of shape and crooked, and you find that the arrows were straight all along.  And then there are stories like this one.  Please remember, no matter who did what to whom here that may have led up to the policeman's murder, he is still gone forever.  No one deserves that, no one.

It just reminds us of all the times that we find things just aren't what they seemed to be. Sometimes we meet a new friend and they seem to be just a little breeze right out of heaven, only to find that they more like hot air straight outta hell. 

And sometimes that drunken galoot down the street turns out to be a hell of a nice guy.   I don't know what else to say.

Sunday Rerun: Barking up the wrong tree

Every time I hear a really poor jingle on the radio or TV, I always think that the singers were always the best singers in their junior high and high school and church choirs and choral groups, and had then headed off to NY or LA or what-have-you to reach the upper brackets of show bidness, such as being one of the backup singers for Beyonce before being discovered and having big hit records of their own.

Or, alternately, winding up singing "800-588-2300...emPIRE!!!"  Or ..."LUNA!!!!!!!!!!!" or some other jingle. 

I have time to think about a lot of things, you see.  And I feel sorry for the people who shot for the moon and wound up in Cleveland, singing on McDonald's jingles.

And then there are those who go into broadcasting, hoping to produce the Letterman show or be a camera operator, twirling knobs at the FOX News, trying to bring Steve Doocy's face, if not his thoughts, into focus.

Many people who had dreams of being involved in television for humans are going to have to settle for jobs on the newest network to come along. 

Yes, friends, it's DOG TV, where for just $9.99 per month, old Poochie or Fido or Dizzy or Hammerhead can sit in front of the TV all day while you go out and earn another $9.99 to pay for it.  If you click on the link, you can see a little promo on YouTube and get to envision what Snoopy will see when he plops down. 

Of course, competitive channels will pop up, and they will show dogs how to get a better grip on the mailman's pants and how to hide behind the tire of a Chevy to get the drop on that squirrel that shows up every morning.  And then someone will have The Cat Channel and Parakeet TV and Ferret Place and where will it end?

I thought dogs liked to watch old sitcoms anyway.  This old dog does!

The Saturday Picture Show, October 10, 2015

I remember this picture in an old Huey, Dewey and Louie comic from when I was a kid...Uncle Scrooge McDuck, diving into his safe full of money. In those days, the love of money was regarded as something to laugh at.

Dressed in a skirt and singing atop a bar, Paul McCartney shows he will do anything to draw attention.  Not all the patrons are enchanted.

In the days before alarm clocks, this was a job in cities like London...a guy who went around at the time you paid him to, to tap on your window and wake you up!

If you haven't seen this new show "Best Time Ever" with Neil Patrick Harris and Nicole Scherzinger, I urge you to check it out. It's sort of like "Let's Make A Deal," a lot like "Hellzapoppin' " and somewhat like "Oprah" in the way they hand out cars and prizes.

There's no way to keep mum about it...it's Autumn!  Yay!

So many people ask what hominy is, I thought I'd show you...the best dried corn breakfast there is!  (tied with its cousin, grits.) It's best served on a chilly morning with some sausage and toast. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

The name "Bridget Fonda" came up in conversation the other day, and I wish she were still making movies like this one.  As a bonus, Isaac Hayes played the news photographer/narrator!

The words "Popeye's chicken box" came up the other day, and here is a picture of Baltimore's favorite center fielder with Baltimore's favorite poultry dinner!

The wonderful world of Luke Gatti

This young man, this juvenile named Luke Gatti, is getting famous for all the wrong reasons.  You may have seen the video of the now-former student of the University of Connecticut berating the manager of a student cafeteria the other night.

But if you see it for the first time, it won't be the first time or the last that you have seen a kid act this way. Gatti is 19, a year older than the average freshman, but that's because he started college last year at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, only to be arrested twice in the first month of classes and sent back to his family home in Bayville, Long Island, where he is known as a Mets fan and ski racer. During those arrests for disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer, young Gatti used all sorts of profane language and racial slurs.  Nice kid. And his parents had to put up with him all year before shipping him off to UConn, and now this.

Luke showed up at that cafeteria the other night with an open bottle of alcohol.  There was certain evidence that he had already poured a certain amount of alcohol down his neck prior to being stricken with hunger pangs that could only be sated by gobbling a nice helping of Jalapeño-Bacon Mac and Cheese.  The manager of the place denied him service for carrying the open container, and then the donnybrook was on.

Watch the video to see a few things.  Yes, he gets arrested again, and is hauled away like the sack of waste he is.  This past Tuesday, he was seen loading his stuff into his father's car for his annual Autumn Ride Home After Being Thrown Out of School.

The complete lack of respect he shows for the manager, his fellow students, and (not that this matters much) himself is evident from the tape.  The manager tells Gatti to “think” and tells him to leave, and Gatti says, “you’re going to look like a f------ tool.”

Because who dares deny Luke Gatti food?

I don't know the first thing about this jackanapes but I can tell you he was not raised right.  It's the same thing you see day after day from kids who, moments after emerging from the womb, are hugged and told how there was great doubt that the world could survive much longer without their arrival.  And then they go to school, where there are no longer distinctions between students who achieve and students whose main achievement is keeping a chair warm with their glutei maximi. Everyone gets a participation medal, everyone is on the all-star team, every kid is the best at everything, everything is indulged and little faults like behaving like a galoot are ignored and ascribed to lack of breast feeding.

Then, little Luke goes to college time after time and on a weekend bender he runs into a guy he thinks he can demean because he is but a member of the servant class, here to bring starchy spicy food to His Majesty. In the video, you see the manager being ridiculously tolerant, and only when The Crown Prince of Lukistan shoves the manager does another employee introduce the conceited nincompoop to the floor.

2015.

His parents can display his annual mugshot
the way other families put out
school pictures.  This is 2014.

It's not really so troubling that a young man had too much spirit in him to behave in a contumacious manner.  What turns me inside out to watch this is knowing that the world is full of people just like him. Someday he will finish college, if he ever gets started in one, and go on to own a pharmaceutical corporation that raises the prices of lifesaving medicines by 1500%, or he will become a lawyer that specializes in foreclosing loans on widows and orphans, or he will become a candidate for office and claim that only members of the religion that he affiliates with should be elected, in violation of everything legal and right.

At 19, Gatti is already a blight upon society.  But, given room to grow, he will become even worse, unless some judge steps in and sentences him to growing up by learning to serve others, rather than demanding that they serve him.

And I know other people his age who act like perfect gentlemen and ladies.  It would be wrong to label all 19-year-olds as being the same, when one like this clown is more than enough.

Still doing book reports!

My childhood ended a long time ago, chronologically.  But since I still live close to where it all took place, I can drive up Providence Road and see the firehouse where I spent so much time, the little store that's now closed and is part of an assisted living home, the houses with the giant front yards where we played ball, and the holiday fun.  Ours was the little town where Santa Claus rode around on top of the fire engine on Christmas Eve (he still does!), where we raked autumn leaves into smoky piles, where we put baseball cards in the spokes of our bikes to make a sort of engine sound, where the ladies made caramel apples and popcorn balls for the kids on Halloween, and where the same bunch of us started in first grade and stuck together for twelve years of schoolin'.

I feel like I have the best of both worlds because I have those memories AND I have this computer, which connects me with a lot of the wonderful people, places and things of the good old days. Here is something really cool: One of the girls I grew up with became a standup comic and playwright and novelist, and the tales she weaves have threads of real life and real people from my golden childhood.

Her name is Rootie Simms, and I just read and enjoyed her latest: "The Last Great Halloween" (Wilder Things Publishing, available on Amazon.)  This is her third book, following 2012's "Wilder in the Everglades (Volume 1)" and last year's "My Childhood Christmas: Christmas 1959, When Only the Strongest Kids Survived!"  Rootie's alter ego in these books is the lead character, Trudy McFarlan, and this book finds Trudy planning her Halloween party, and her costume, at that poignant moment we all had when we found ourselves with one shoe in childhood and one in the adult world.  She wants to dress up for Halloween and have a great party, and she wants to date a guy from the neighborhood, too.  And check out page 21 in the book.  I was invited to the party! What a proud moment!

Rootie's Christmas book turned over a lot of the same kind of memories...the stores at Towson Plaza, our classes at Hampton Elementary School, and the sweet fun of being a kid at that sweet time of life when Camelot was in the White House and hope was still in our hearts, hearts that had yet to experience how bumpy the world was to turn out to be. While I'm reading these books, it's like childhood never ended, and I smile at some memory on every page.

Rootie's dad, Leo, drove the fire engine for our volunteer fire company now and again, and if I even thought for a moment as I hung on the back step on the way to a fire that these wonderful moments would come back to me in books written by a schoolfriend who was the daughter of the man driving, I never would have believed it.  

I can believe anything now, including the power of the past to make the present happier and the future brighter.  Please give Rootie's books a chance, whether you grew up with us or not. I promise you will find your own memories on these pages!

You Bet!

It doesn't seem enough anymore for a football fan to go to the stadium, buy a ticket, a hot dog and a beer, or sit home in front of the TV, and watch a game for the enjoyment of it all.

No no! Now we have to make it more interesting, and nothing interests Americans more than being told they can make a million dollars while sitting on their hindquarters.

So that's why we have FanDuel and DraftKings and an unregulated, multi-billion dollar daily fantasy sports industry.  "Fantasy" is so much a nicer term than "betting," wouldn't you say?  And that makes it sound like your dreams alone about Xavier O'Hoolahan running for more yards this Sunday than Jim Bob McBurly can win you that cool million. No, you have to take some of the money you work all week for and wager it with these sports betting sites, and now, just four weeks into the NFL season, along comes a major scandal.

DraftKings admits that confidential data was leaked by an employee. And, how do you like this? That employee took this private information and won himself $350,000 with it at FanDuel.
What he took was information that “showed the prevalence of particular players across all submitted lineups” for the MillonaireMaker game that DraftKings runs. That's not public information, and since you and your buddy and everyone else who participates in this junk are members of the public, that would mean that you are being cheated by someone else having an edge over you.
It comes down to this:  if you know which players everyone else was putting on their fantasy teams, you could pick players that offer a higher payoff.  That is not fair.

DraftKings and FanDuel say they are aware of what's going on, but deny “misuse” of insider data, while promising to “review our internal controls.”

Because this is regarded as a game of skill and expertise (the ability to choose between this player and that and predict who will do better week to week) there is no government regulation, but there is something called the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, which claims to keep everything on the up and up with a voluntary “code of conduct."

There once was a showman named Phineas T. Barnum, who knew how to turn a dollar in more than a hundred ways.  Although he is often credited with saying "There's a sucker born every minute" he really did not say that.  What he did say was "Every crowd has a silver lining," and he knew how to separate people from their silver.  He ran a sideshow called "Barnum's American Museum," a popular attraction where people would pay to see little person Tom Thumb and other interesting things.  But he had a problem! People would pay to come in, and they'd hang around, keeping others from paying to come in.


So Barnum put up a sign on the exit door reading "This Way To The Egress" and all day long, people who believed the egress was like a platypus or some other exotic species, went through that door and found themselves on the outside looking in.

You can bet that Barnum is proud of those sports gambling people.

The Name Gain

It's true that I was born and christened with a perfect name for the career that I first worked in.  Radio DJs who were born with names like Brian Anthony Hummelfinger had to call themselves Brian Anthony, but I just worked as myself, which made it easier for family and bill collectors to follow me from station to station.

However, I often wonder what it would be like to be named something different.  Leon. I'd love to be named Leon.  Leon is always a guy you can count on ("Leon said he'd be around later with the truck to help you move") and Angus suggests a certain Scottish stockiness ("Angus said he'd be around later to help bring the cattle back to the barn") and Ernest just sounds so...earnest.

Of course, this was not a well-known name at the time I was born, but Elvis is a great name for baby boys.  Just sayin'...

Enzo to the rescue!

There's a blog called SheKnows that featured a list of great ideas for names of baby boys.  How about Thorn?  Enzo - that was the name of the baker in The Godfather who stood fast with Michael at a time of danger, his only weapon his bare right hand in a pocket.  Brooks - well, this is Baltimore, hon - the world capital for kids named after Brooks Robinson.  They suggest Nixon as a boy name...I met a little boy named Nixon.  At the age of 3, he already needed a shave, he kept hunching his shoulders and raising his arms, and he seemed, I don't know, shifty.  They mention Lincoln as a first name, which is cool, and Porter, which is of course the name of the great country singer Porter Wagoner, so the kid with that name also gets to wear a really cool suit.

Mr Porter Wagoner

The inartfully named Shitastrophy blog makes these points for new parents looking for a name for a male baby.  They recommend against professional names (Baker, Sheriff, Carpenter...although I would love to meet a kid named Tirechanger or Pizzabringer) and money names like Cash, Kash and Million. It's a bad start for a kid to be thinking of moolah at an early age.

Their research of census documents (hey!  how about naming the kid Census?) shows that some parents are going with names from nature, like Cove, Boulder, Granite, Moon, Moss, Sun, and Woods. Take this advice, please: do not name a child Moon.  You'll be glad later.

Car names?  Audi? Lexus?  Rolls-Royce? Why not Impala or Rav4?

It might be good to remember that the lead singer of The Showmen and The Chairmen of the Board was the late General Johnson, but still, I wouldn't be in a rush to name a little guy Captain or Commodore or some other military title.

And I don't know if a little guy named Waldo can stand to have people looking for him all day.