The Saturday Picture Show, December 12, 2015

This is my all-time favorite Peanuts cartoon, from October 4, 1969.  Truer words were never spoken!

There's nothing like that says "The holidays are here" like when the Wienermobile rolls through The Avenue  At White Marsh.

It's instinctive, really.  Nature teachers mother Cats to carry their young Cats around until they can fend for themselves.

This is Hosny Mubarak, former Egyptian military and political leader.  I'll not say a word about him, except that the pinstripes in his suit spelled out his name.

It's the best part of waking up! A little caffeine-y smiley face in your cup!

It's the time of year for decorating the house for the holidays. Some people go with the Scrooge look (nothing at all) and some go crazier than loons, requiring the local electric company to build new transformers to keep the neighborhood lighted. I'm glad that most prefer a classy look like this.

It was not a big hit movie when it came out in 1983, but it's one of those pictures that became bigger on tape and TV and now DVD than it was at the theater.  Jean Shepherd's "A Christmas Story" is always a highlight.

I had forgotten this kid magazine for years, but I read it every month, back in the day.  Do they still publish "Jack and Jill"?

Altared States

This really happened to a buddy of mine:

He got married years ago.

But wait!  There's more.  He got married in July, and he was therefore suitably attired in the full soup-and-fish...the white suit and tails, with rented patent leather shoes and all.  

Thus dressed, he was on his way to the church for the ceremony when he ran out of gas on Silver Spring Rd. (Note to prospective grooms: fill up the car before the rehearsal dinner!)

Now, I was not there to see this, but according to the groom himself, he saw a man mowing his lawn right by where his car conked out, and he got out of the car and ran to the man running the mower, asking if he could get some gas out of the little gas can in the driveway.  And as the story goes, the man had some sort of Scottish accent and sounded just like Angus Young when he burred, "Nooooo laddie ye cain't 'ave me gas; I'm tryinnnn' ta cut me grass." 

And the quick-thinking man, as the seconds ticked away to his altar appointment, waited until Lord Cheapenberry took his mower around the house to the back yard, and grabbed that gas can, and poured every drop of precious petrol into his car, and drove off, tossing the empty can back into Macbeth's driveway.

He got to church with minutes to spare.

In my dotage, I am often asked for advice by young men about to take their first dip in the matrimonial waters.  I always tell them to take a towel along.  Then after we all finish laughing, I get down to the serious nitty gritty about marriage. Not really about how to BE married; that's up to every participant to work out.  I'm talking about how to GET married, specifically, what to do when you're a man tying the knot with that special someone.

• Pick up your rented clothing well in advance.
• Try on EVERY SINGLE ITEM that comes in the vinyl suitbag...including the tie and including checking that there is a cummerbund (pause for laughter) and enough shirt studs (again).  There is nothing worse than seeing a guy with a bandana around his waist because TuxedoLand forgot his cummerbund, or with his shirt cuffs closed with paper clips.
• On the day of the wedding, show up on time, dressed as you were told, be reasonably sober, and take your place in the background.  As it should be, all the attention will be on your lovely bride.  Your big day will be Opening Day for baseball, or when the monster truck show comes to a coliseum in your town.  This is HER day, so smile and pose and take wet sloppy kisses from Aunt Mildred and dream of Bigfoot.
• Like any other actor, know your lines.  Yours are "I do," "I love you," and "Isn't this the tastiest cake you ever had?"  

Every man who wears a cummerbund gets to feel like he's Benedict Cumberbatch, whether he wants to or not.

The Steal Industry

Crime Scene footage 

Crime Beat: December 14, 2001. It was dark in Los Angeles when actress Winona "Sticky Fingers" Ryder was arrested at the Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills.  Employees of the tony store said they saw her put $4,760 worth of clothes and accessories into her bag.  There was video of her tearing the security tags off of the merchandise and placing the "free" stuff in a bag with items she had paid for.  Facing charges of grand theft, Ryder hired a mouthpiece named Mark Geragos, who promptly said, "It will become clear that there was no theft here. Ms. Ryder had no intent of depriving anybody of any property."

You may rest assured of this truth:  if I ever lose my grip and go into a store and shove as many Jackass T-shirts, Bing Crosby CDs and cans of wasabi peas as I can into a sack, and try to leave Cheap-E-Mart without paying...and there are 17 customers and employees all saying they saw me pulling off the caper...if there is HD video from 13 different cameras, none further than 3 feet away from me, all showing me furtively secreting the goods in a false-bottom bag...if a priest, a rabbi and a minister were headed into a bar next door, saw me purloin the items and immediately offered me absolution, forgiveness and a raffle ticket for a new Buick in exchange for my confession...if a courtroom sketch artist had been in the store and immediately pulled out a sketch pad and pencil to make a crude charcoal rendering of the crime in progress...if the heavens open to reveal Moses standing above me with two stone tablets in his hands, and he is pointing to Commandment #8 and shaking his head at me...and if a little urchin appears on the sidewalk with a tear running down his grubby face as he wails, "Say it ain't so, Mark!"...it will not fail that my lawyer will plead me "Guilty as hell, your honor!" and I will descend into a lowly place at the Ironbar Hilton.

Ryder (l) and Jacobs

And...
One of the items she ripped off that day almost 14 years ago was a $760 Marc Jacobs sweater.

And...
Four days ago, Jacobs, who writes "fashion designer" in that little "occupation" space in the income tax form, said that he has hired Kleptosaurus Rex Ryder as the face of his line's new beauty campaign.

So to all the lovely women I know who want to be models, this is not how I recommend you get into it.  

I hope he pays her in free sweaters.

What has 4 legs and chases Katz? Mrs Katz and a private detective!

ZZ Top is that boogeyin' band from Texas that did "Sharp-Dressed Man," "Gimme All Your Lovin'," "Legs," and "Sleeping Bag." They always roared up in an old hot rod with leggy Playboy-type models in their videos. The band comprises guitarist/leader/ vocalist Billy Gibbons, bassist and co-lead vocalist Dusty Hill, and drummer Frank Beard.

Gibbons and Hill have beards that reach to Delaware from here when the wind blows right.  Beard...has no beard.

This is Herbert L. "Larry' Fedora, head football coach at the University of North Carolina.  Though his name is Fedora, I can find no picture of him wearing a fedora-style hat.  He always seems to wear one of those visors.

We know that a lot of names derive from occupations people had while Chaucer was riding to Canterbury, such as John, the guy who made loaves for eating sandwiches, became John Baker, and Stanley, who made barrels, was Stanley Cooper, and the guy who sold them stones for wedding rings was, of course, Jared Diamond. (They went to him way back then, too!)

I remember asking Richard Nixon to fix me a burger and some fries, but he just shook his head and said, "I am not a cook!"

Names can also have NOTHING to do with their bearer.

At 13, tossed on the windy seas of whether I would live to see 14 or not, I madly crushed on a young lady who took care of me at Mercy Hospital:  Nurse Payne. Somewhere there must be a Mr Brewer who can't stand the taste of beer, and I once met a Reverend van Damme.

Moreover, there is no evidence that Marco Polo, creator of a call-and-response game still popular all over America, ever played any sort of mallet game on the back of a horse.

Alexander the "Average"

And, saddest of all, Alexander's wife confided to an early tabloid that her husband was not all that Great.

Today in history!

On this date in 1973, Australia held a referendum on the subject of prices and incomes, according to Wikipedia.  I don't know what that entailed, but I imagine that people voted in favor of higher incomes and lower prices.

15340 days have passed since that day (2191.3 weeks). All around the world, 364,000 babies were born on that day...all of whom are in their 40s now.

Running back John Cappelletti of Penn State won the Heisman Trophy.

Columns like this always mention the price of a gallon of gas or a quart of milk, but trust me, you don't want to know them.

"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John was the #1 record that week, although my favorite record was "Photograph" by Ringo Starr.

It was the 48th birthday of Samuel George Davis, Jr, from Harlem, who is better known as Sammy. And I mean that, man.

That week's TV Guide (15 cents!!!) featured Mary Tyler Moore, Valerie Harper and Georgia Engel from that show about the woman who could turn the world on with a smile.

Another woman whose smile lights my world to this very day married me that day in Towson, Maryland.  We were just a couple of crazy kids in love, and neither of those conditions have changed.

Thank you, Peggy, for your incomparable love and devotion!  It's been a blind date that never ended, nor will it ever!  My advice for everyone who asks is to fall in love with someone who will also be your best friend for life. Peggy, you are everything to me.  Thanks for putting up with me for 42 years!  I love you.

"We could have just sat there and cried, but we didn't"

In California lives a little girl, 12 years old, who has cancer. Lexi Brown is her name, and she is fighting as strongly as any little saint you ever heard of.  She speaks on cancer at schools, and she helped make a Make A Wish ice cream flavor and ran a St. Baldrick's fundraiser that brought in over $34,000 together.

She is not giving in without a fight, bless her heart.  

Now, as it happens, her chemotherapy to combat tumors in her lungs turned her hair and eyebrows white, which signalled other problems.

The doctors said Lexi's heart was working at 15%, and it was off to Mattel Children's Hospital at UCLA for the brave young lady. Her mom, Lisa, and stepfather, Jon, were there too in Lexi's room at the hospital, which faced Fraternity Row at the U of California Los Angeles campus.  Just to get a smile and see what would happen, Lexi and her mom made up a sign that said SEND PIZZA.

Here's the part that reminds me that things are still the way we think they only USED to be.  A member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon house saw the sign and got busy.  

"Five guys come in, and they had a guitar and dozen roses and
a box of pizza," Lisa said. "They introduced themselves and
said, 'We saw your sign; we're here.' They stayed for a half an
hour, they sang this song and I started bawling my head off. I'm
like,'I can't believe these people are here for my child.'"

Lisa pointed out that the frat guys were 18 to 24 years of age, they didn't know the family of the sick girl, and,"... it's just ridiculous."

When the guys found out that Lexi is into soccer, they got a guy from the soccer team to come over and spend time with her. UCLA's quarterback, Josh Rosen, dropped in with passes for a game when she left the hospital.   

And the college people kept on coming.  The men and women from the rowing team, the swim team and the tennis team came over, along with Campus Christian Ministry and some sorority women.

But even beyond the initial visit, after you might think the novelty of visiting the ailing young lady would have worn off...they kept coming to see her. 

"When the brothers got back from visiting Lexi, you could see
that they were all glowing, knowing that they had done
something good for the community," said SAE chapter president
Kevin Autran.

Lisa and Lexi

"It was contagious. And brothers stepped up to go visit her essentially every day. Some just stopped by to give her a little gift like a shirt or a teddy bear, and some stayed for hours to hang out with her."

And the hospital looked the other way when the guys took to hanging around until midnight, keeping Lexi company. And wouldn't you know, they loved to play a card game with her, a game called "Speed" - and she won every game. 

Lexi's hospital view

   

The SAE house always gets decorated with tons of lights for the holidays.  So one night, they lit her name on the roof facing her room with yellow light spelling out her name.

And then...when they found out her favorite color is purple...they changed the bulbs and they now say LEXI in that color. With a beating red heart above that.

The lights are still on at the frat house, while Lexi is back home in Santa Maria, California, continuing the fight.  Autran said the lights will stay up for her. 

"We're going through hell right now," Lisa said. "But we don't treat Lexi any different than we do our 14­ year ­old son, or these boys. It has just been a joy in a time when we could have just sat there and cried, but we didn't. I can't even tell you."

"I never knew that so many young adults had it in them."

I found this story over the past weekend, when it seemed like, for the umpteenth time in the past few years, the world was going to hell in a very fast handbasket.  I am really glad that I did.

Sunday Rerun: What do I know?

If you've a) never seen a movie called "Ghost World," and you b) plan to see it and c) hate spoilers, you might as well mosey over here for something to read today.

Birch and Buscemi

OK?  Still with me?  All right. I've been hearing about "Ghost World" since it came out in 2001, and as I sit in myrecliner de rehab, scanning the channel guide for anything to keep from falling into my old Young And Restless addiction, I found it on the MGM channel and DVR'ed it and watched it.


There is a famous event in our history, had to be fifteen years ago, in our old house, Peggy and my Dad and I were watching a movie called "Rambling Rose."  Laura Dern was in it.  I sat there for the entire length of the movie, and then the closing credits spun up on the screen and I found myself hollering, "What the hell HAPPENED? Nothing HAPPENED!"  


I guess something happened, all right, but Dern if I know what.  It's all cloaked in symbolism, you see.  So I watch this Ghost World, and of course I tell Peggy that Steve Buscemi was once a New York firefighter, which means that he was once a member of the best fire department in the world, before he became an actor.  And the movie was interesting, and Thora Birch, the young actress who shared top billing with Buscemi and Scarlett Johansson, was quite impressive as an alienated, confused teenager with issues to work on.  So she has to take an art class in order to be graduated from high school, and she has talent in that field, but as her final project, turns in a grotesquely offensive sign she got from an R Crumb sort of oddball she met through a nasty prank, and she gets a scholarship but loses it and flunks the course and she does the oddball but he loses his job and she gets on a bus and rides away.  


I ought to work for TV Guide, capsulizing plotlines, huh?

Thing is, I guess you were supposed to think that when she got on the bus, she was committing suicide, because an old guy used to sit at the bus stop and he got on the bus after saying he was moving away, so you have to figure she's gone now?   

I guess I'm too obtuse for symbolism.  I'm always being told that I miss things in literature because I only read the words and don't see the meanings behind them.  Same with the movies.  When my more intelligent friends and wife discuss things, I overhear nuggets such as,"When he reached for the bread knife, he was symbolically castrating himself" and, "That scene where the cousin dropped a framed photograph of his mother and the maid had to vacuum up the glass while "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" played on the old Victrola was a brilliant representation of the cousin's repressed Oedipal desires."   

And Mr Literal here just figured that the cousin wanted to get with the maid.  Please  - spell it out for me!

The Saturday Picture Show, December 5, 2015

This is a seriously old ginkgo tree.  It's in the Gu Guanyin Temple, Zhongnan Mountains, Xi’an, in the Shaanxi province in China. The temple itself was built in 628, during the Tang dynasty.  It’s said this ginkgo tree was planted by Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong himself.  And here I have trouble getting a dogwood tree to take root.

Mark Zuckerberg  and his wife Priscilla Chan welcomed little baby girl Max to the wonderful world of Facebook this week.  There is absolutely nothing to 'dislike' about that!

Yes, this is just what it looks like...an Outback being towed by an Outback and the driver stopped for lunch at an Outback, and parked Outfront.

What we see here is a reflecting lake, still as glass, and reflecting what's above it...I saved this picture to the Cloud just in case.

I know the trend in restaurant service is to put everything in the computer. This is probably a great thing, and helpful in getting the right Kobe burger out to the right people.  But even if, in your mind, you think of your customers as "OLD," "BLK," or "PREGO," you might not want to put that on the bill where they will see it. Magdalena, there is much more to everyone than any one-word descriptor can express.  So how about going with "BLUE SHIRT" or "WIRE RIM GLASSES" next time?

I guess this guy has the right to compare himself with Abe, because he is Ralph Lincoln, 16th descendant of the 16th president. Honestly!

Ice covers speed limit sign and slides right off.  Someone ought to make a movie about this and call it "Frozen."

This is just part of the great Christmas train garden at Baltimore City Engine 45 on Cross County Bl and Glen Av. Information is on this page.  I've been going to this since I was in high school and it's an annual holiday highlight!

Look Ma, no hands!

Google thinks they're really ahead of the curve with the driverless cars that they're testing, but there was a man 50-some years ago who drove a magic car that folded up like a briefcase when he got to work.

So what if it was George Jetson!  Your point being?

Back to real life, one of the Googlemobiles was stopped for driving too slowly last month...this took place in California where police stopped a car with no driver for driving 24 mph in a 35-mph zone.

Can you just imagine the officer walking up to the car and seeing no one at the wheel?  "Uh...invisible license and registration, please..."

I have no idea why Google is spending a fortune on driverless cars. How useful can they be?  How can they pay tolls - by having a saucer full of change on the front seat, and having the tolltaker reach in and take the fare?

How do they talk to the drive-thru window person at McDonald's?

How do they roll down the window to holler at other drivers? Oh that's right.  There is no one to do the hollering.

Google says its cars have a "library of various sirens" and they have an inner app to identify them, so when an police car, fire engine or medic unit come up on them, the car will "drive more conservatively until it has a better sense of where the
sirens are coming from." And the automatic autos have cameras for eyes to "see" flashing lights at an intersection, so they will yield to the emergency vehicle.


That's nice.  I still don't get the point of replacing a human driver who would work for $50,000 a year with a device that costs $50,000,000, but that's just me.

Google says their robot cars have been on the roads for 6 years, have driven over 2 million miles, and have had 17 "minor incidents," which is what I told my father it was when I skidded on ice that time.  They also say that their driverless cars have never been the cause of an accident, which, again, is what I told my father that snowy morning.

Here's what I really love about the Googlenews on this brave new world of unmanned Impalas. Last week, they received a patent for a device that will equip its cars with robotic hands to make hand gestures.

This is science following mankind!  I see people making gestures all the time with their hands, or sometimes, just one finger.

Poetry in motion

The other night, the Baltimore Ravens won a Monday Night football game in a most improbable way.  Just as it appeared that the Cleveland Browns were about to kick the tie-breaking, winning field goal as time ran out, that did not happen.  That kick was blocked by Ravens defensive end Brent Urban, and I cheered as safety Will Hill picked up the bouncing ball and ran it back for the winning touchdown.

I cheered for Will Hill for several reasons, first of which being that the Ravens won the game, in a season that has only seen that happen four times now.  And because he has had his setbacks, personal and professional, so it's good to see him in the spotlight.

And also because his name rhymes.

There are not many of us who go through life with names that rhyme, and while I haven't met all of the others, I am quite certain that they have all the experience of telling their name to restaurant hostesses, police officers, and the kid handing out study hall passes, only to hear the other person say, "Hey! Your name...it rhymes!"

Hey, no kidding!  No one ever told me that before!

It was a handy thing to have a memorable name when I was a radio DJ.  People often asked me if I were using a fake name, and in my more puckish moments, I would claim to have been born 

"Lee V. Mediately."

My little joke.

Anyway, just for the sake of Mr Will The Thrill Hill and the rest of us, here are some other rhymin'-Simons...

Movie actress from Fay Wray. The star of the original King Kong and not much else.

Jack Black, who was in the remade version of King Kong, the one that apes the original.  

Harry Carey, who played in cowboy movies for a long time.  And he is not the same as baseball announcer Harry Caray, although Harry was born Harry Carabina.

Cheri Oteri, for whom we all cheered when she played a cheerleader on Saturday Night Live.

Jacques Chirac, who was President of France from 1995-2007.

Shaquille O'Neal, who played basketball, and now does commercials for every product that requires endorsement from a very large man.

Wavy Gravy, who was the partially toothless hippie who announced breakfast in bed for 400,000 at Woodstock.  His real name is Hugh Romney, and even though I desperately wish that he were Mitt Romney's long-lost brother, that is not the case.  (Mitt Romney, therefore, serves as his own brother.)

Faye Dunaway, who was Bonnie to Warren Beatty's Clyde.

Your dress seems familiar...

If you travel around these here United States, you might wind up in a LaQuinta hotel in Houston, Kingston, Texarkana, Monterey, Ferriday, Santa Fe, Tallapoosa, Glen Rock, Black Rock, or Little Rock, as the old song "I've Been Everywhere" said.

So after your long hard day making sales calls or installing mainframe computers or building new Toyota dealerships, you come back to your hotel room after dinner at Cracker Barrel and you slide off the sateen upholstery of the "easy" chair in your room and turn on the news.  And you notice something...the female meteorologist is wearing the same dress as the female meteorologist was wearing in the last town you visited.

Those who are on the road will tell you that there is hardly anything to distinguish one city from another anymore.  The same hotels, the same banks, drugstore chains, burger joints and muffler replacement shops are there in every town.  The only way to tell where you are is by seeing what football jersey or ballcap most of the locals are sporting.

And this dress thing, while not part of an organized campaign to get all the women who do the weather to dress in uniforms, is the result of a few needs they have. Lyndsay Tapases, from WBTV in Charlotte, NC, told BuzzFeed News,"The goal is to look polished, professional, and credible. But finding business casual that is also flattering, stylish, and comfortable can be difficult — especially since most women are also looking for dresses with sleeves."

The Homeyee Women’s stretch tunic pencil sheath dress fills the bill, and it only costs $22.99 on Amazon. (The woman who tells you about the cold front over Akron is not yet making Oprah money, and saving money on wardrobe is a must.)

(Am I all alone in thinking that a "pencil sheath" is something to use to carry writing implements around?)

“More than 50 of us purchased the dress, so if you travel and watch the news, you might see something familiar,” Jennifer Myers from Dallas’s Fox 4 wrote on Facebook.

Ms Tapases said that the dress comes in bold, fun colors, and the word got around the private Facebook group for female meteorologists that this dress was a great buy and fits in with station dress codes for on-air staff.  Many stations frown on patterned fabrics, and most do not wish their personalities to display decolletage, even on men.

You'll notice no one is wearing the green version of the dress, if one even exists.  Notice the green screen behind them as they work; that's the chromakey effect that allows them to be superimposed over a map of Greater Cedar Rapids.  So, no green clothing if you're on TV, even on March 17.

None of these women are old enough to realize how much their outfits remind me of Jackie Kennedy.

You're the only one

I have a prized record album among my many treasures, a 1964 concert recording called "Jerry Lee Lewis: The Greatest Live Show on Earth."  The first words you hear on the record are the emcee of this concert saying, "Live! from the Birmingham Municipal Auditorium, in the WVOK Shower of Stars, the one...the only...Jerry Lee Lewis!"

And then, Jerry Lee comes out and sings and plays.  I got this record in high school and now own it on CD as well, and so as a conservative estimate, I would say I have listened to that concert 17 million times over the years, or fewer.

But it wasn't until just the other day that I listened closely enough to hear what the DJ said at first.  (It had to be a DJ; no one else talks like that!) 

"The one...the only."

And it dawned on me, a little late because I'm dim that way, that we are ALL the ONE and ONLY whoever we are.  You are the only YOU!

Even Jerry Lee Lewis, the rock 'n' roll pioneer born in 1935 in Ferriday, LA, who is often confused with funnyman/philanthropist Jerry Lewis (born Joseph Levitch, Newark NJ, 1926), is the only Jerry Lee Lewis, as far as fame and accomplishment go.  It is entirely possible that there are other people named Jerry Lee Lewis running around, but that's not my point.

What is my point (and you knew I'd get to it sometime today) is that there is only one of each of us.  Each human has his or her strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, private joys and sorrows and public versions of the same as well. I talk to young people a lot (they are the only people I can find who haven't heard all my tales and yarns) and one point I try to make to them is that their individuality is so important.  If we see each other as cookie-cutter versions of everyone else, that means we are only looking at the surface.  What's in each cookie...each person...is what makes us unique.  We have two cats.  Eddie runs to the door when company comes, ready to show off and be adored.  Deanna runs to the basement, peering up the stairs to see when it's safe to come out again.  Two sister cats; two personalities.  

I like hominy and sausage, art that looks real, and music from the heart.  I despise lies, and meanness, and sad goodbyes.  We all could go on and you're not ever going to find someone else with all the same favorites and dislikes, and how wonderful that is.

Thank you for being the one...the only...YOU!