Look at the calendar!

Do you know anyone who is staying home today with a bad case of friggatriskaidekaphobia?  Lucy didn't mention it in her rundown of all the phobias in the world on that Charlie Brown Christmas show, but that is the fear of Friday the 13th.  Besides the fact that most firings take place on Friday afternoons, what else is there that makes this day so much worse than any other day?

It's thought of as a good day in some countries, a lucky day! But in Brazil, if you hit a Friday 13 in the month of August, hold on to your hat! And why?  Because the Portuguese word for August is agosto, and that rhymes with the word for sorry (desgosto). 

A lot of the cause for people disliking Fri13 is that Judas, who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th person to show up for The Last Supper.  

That seems a bit of a stretch, considering that the very name "Judas" currently holds the 4,928th place in popularity among American babies. But it should be noted that babies don't get to choose their own names. If they did, there would be many more Floyds and Leons.

And there is also the Egyptian culture to consider. When they were prospering, ancient Egyptians thought that the 13th stage of life had to with the afterlife, so, to them, the number 13 was lucky. Then, after that civilization declined, they associated 13 with death and fear. 

I mean, go figure.  CNN reported on a British couple who bought a lottery ticket on a Friday the 13th. That paid off with a $17 million win...on the same day their mirror fell off the wall and broke.  

That's supposed to bring bad luck.  Unless you broke the window by opening your umbrella indoors.

The local Diner might name a sandwich after him

If you watch enough police-lawyer shows, you can count on seeing some grizzled state's attorney mutter, "You can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich!"

Here in Baltimore County, home of fine fare for all, there's a chance that a man will be indicted because of a grilled cheese sandwich.

Daniel Brian Blackwell, 55, of Dundalk, started shooting one of the 15 guns he owns the other day, which led to a) holes in the kitchen floor of his house b) his wife and three teenaged children running for their lives and c) an hours-long barricade situation, as he held off the attempts of the police to bring him to justice.

It's a mercy that no one in his family was injured.  Blackwell himself was taken to a hospital for minor injuries.

And of course, all this took place for a good reason.  I mean, no one is going to shoot a gun inside their house just over nothing at all.

Especially a man who is not supposed to own any guns at all. Blackwell is not legally allowed to own guns because of prior assault convictions. But he ALLEGEDLY had 15 of them in his house, four of them loaded.

He was taken into custody and charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and various firearms violations.

Police booking photo

Oh yes! We were saying that no would have acted this way without sufficient provocation. Well, Blackwell’s wife told the police that her husband had shot at her through the basement floor "after he became angry when she took a bite out of his grilled cheese sandwich."

The police statement continued: "She said the first shot was fired as she was in the kitchen making dinner. At that point, she went down to the basement to check on her husband, found him surrounded by guns and ammunition and went back upstairs. Soon after, the wife heard three more gunshots, the projectiles of which came through the kitchen floor near where she was standing.”

You know me...if I were running the county hoosegow, what do you think the "guests" would be getting for breakfast, lunch, and dinner this week?

A little dab'll do ya

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the people who write (and often break) the laws that govern us all don't seem to know the first thing about popular culture.

It was Swearing-In Day for Congress (not to be confused with Swearing-At Day), and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was doing the raise-your-right-hand-and-repeat-after-me thing with all the men and women who have been voted into office.  It's quite the august ceremony, although it takes place in January. 

Roger Marshall, M.D. became an M.C. (Member of Congress) as he did the grip-and-grin, being sworn in as his wife and kids beamed alongside him.  

Remember that guy Ken Bone, who was famous for his 15 minutes during the presidential campaign for wearing a red sweater while asking a question?  Marshall's son, who looks like every High-School Harry you ever knew, showed up in a red sweater from the Ken Bone Collection, and it was his task to hold the Bible while his father swore on it to do his part to limit access to health care for tens of millions of his fellow citizens.

It did not go well. Ryan and Marshall poked their hands up and young Cal Marshall broke out the old piano-keyboard smile and dabbed for the camera.

Ryan didn't know what the youth was doing. "Are you alright?" he wants to know. And Marshall, a man who was graduated from a medical college, asks the world, "Is my hand too high?" while unaware that dabbing was happening. 

"You want to put your hand down?" Ryan asks the young man, dedabbing the kid's left arm. "Are you going to sneeze, is that it?" Ryan inquires.

"Yeah," smiles sonny Cal.

"He’s sneezing," Rep. Marshall states for the record.

As everyone but those two doddering dads knows, Dabbing is a dance move in which one leans into one's elbow as if one were sneezing.  It first came to mass attention when performed by Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, who dabbed when his team did well.  The Panthers went from 15-1 in 2015 to 6-10 in 2016, which was not a record to dab about.

And in case you're wondering, appropriate sanctions were levied against young Cal. 

The grass isn't any greener

If you want to ruin a career in the public eye as a singer or whatever, just be sure to marry America's Sweetheart and then dump her for her best friend when that friend's husband dies in a plane crash.

That pretty much did it for Eddie Fisher, father of Carrie, first husband of Debbie Reynolds, who decamped late one night to run off and become the fourth husband of Elizabeth Taylor. His string of hit records (including "Any Time," "Wish You Were Here," "Lady of Spain," "I'm Walking Behind You," "Dungaree Doll," and "On The Street Where You Live") ended like the Roadrunner flying off a cliff, and he was relegated to "Remember Him?" status until his death in 2010.

I had a boss once who grew up in Philadelphia with "Edwin" Fisher, as he was known them. The boss said that Eddie had nothing but girls on his mind even in junior high school. 

So did I, but I could not sing.

As we know, Carrie died a few days ago, and her mother went the next day, and we have read and heard so much about their lives, it's almost as if we knew them.  I'm thinking that it's too easy to knock the rich and famous Stars of Tinseltown.  Sure, their problems might seem much lighter than those faced by people trying to feed 8 kids on a salary built for 2, but they are still problems.  Consider this quote from Carrie: 

When I was born, my mother was given an anesthetic because they didn't have epidurals in those days. Consequently, she was unconscious.
Now, my mother is a beautiful woman—she’s beautiful today in her 70s, so at 24 she looked like a Christmas morning. All the doctors [in the delivery room] were buzzing round her pretty head, saying: ‘Oh, look at Debbie Reynolds asleep—how pretty.’
And my father, upon seeing me start to arrive, fainted. So all the nurses ran over saying: ‘Oh look, there’s Eddie Fisher, the crooner, on the ground. Let's go look at him.’
So when I arrived I was virtually unattended. And I have been trying to make up for that fact ever since.

Another statement from Carrie, this one concerning her father, shows how it feels to have a famous dad:

“There hadn’t been a note he couldn’t hit, a girl he couldn’t hit on, an audience he couldn’t charm or bring to its feet cheering.”

Eddie, Debbie and Carrie.  He was not such a good
man, but I wish I had that sports jacket.

Not so much about whether there were kids to whom he paid insufficient attention.  

As for her mother, Debbie, Carrie said that several times, dear old Mom suggested that Carrie have a child with Debbie's third and final husband, a man named Richard Hamlett, because the offspring off such a congress "would have nice eyes. It hadn't occurred to her this might be odd. I think she just thought, you know, my womb was free and we're family."

Please keep all this in mind, next time you're paging through The Enquirer and feeling envious. I mean, really.

Crime Never Takes A Holiday. It never even dresses for the holidays.

The United States of America is a vast, huge nation.  Last time I checked (2014), 318.9 million people live here within our 3.797 million square miles. 4,745 of them live in Dardanelle, a city in Yell County, Arkansas. 

And this is the story of one of those people, which left 4,744 people in Dardanelle shaking their heads. 

On a recent Sunday morning down there, says Dardanelle Police Chief Montie Sims, his police arrested an unidentified female following two incidents at Burger King and McDonald's. The female in question entered Burger King, stating she was there to "check on the status of her application." She then, according to witnesses, stole a Santa hat and some garland from the restaurant and made good her getaway, heading for the McDonald's next door, attempting to enter a vehicle on the McParking Lot. That's where she was arrested, to be booked on two counts of disorderly conduct and transported to the Yell County Detention Center.

Grainy surveillance photo

I almost forgot to mention that she was McNaked as she was checking on her job application and as she attempted to take a seat in a car in the parking lot. 

Officials at Burger King say they will not let her have it her way, too.

I mean, no shoes, no shirt, no underwear, no socks, no pants...no job!

Sunday Rerun: Tip Top

I'm not giving away any secrets by sharing this list, which I first saw someone else share.  It's from a site called Tickld, which I never heard of, and it proposes to give some hints for success as a man. But, I say a lot of them are useful advice for either gender, any age, whatever.  Let me tell you what I mean.  I'll add some comments of my own in red, so when things stop making sense, you'll know why.


Go for someone you perceive to be "out of your league." You'll surprise yourself. Single people! You always hear that the really great looking person you're angling toward is sitting home on date night because everyone assumes they are already busy, so they don't ask them out.  This is a rumor started by extremely good-looking people so they can be left alone with their fabulous jet-set lifestyles.

Never hit anyone unless they are an immediate threat. I'll add the words of Harold Ramis in "Stripes": Never hit anyone unless you're absolutely SURE you can get away with it.  

Every hat should serve a purpose. This is why I have no berets. They have no sun visor, and don't protect your ears from the sun. 

Never go to the movies on the first date. It's good to try something a little different, a little quirky.  Why not go down to the BagUrSelf Supermarket and watch them unload the freight truck?  

Always look a person in the eye when you talk to them. Absolutely! What's worse than someone looking at your feet while you're trying to talk to them?  Except if you're a shoe salesperson.  Then check out their Birkenstocks and try to move them up to Steve Maddens, or at least, John Maddens.  

Buy a plunger before you need a plunger. You'll always be glad when things are backing up and running down the hall that you have the tool to deal with it somewhere...somewhere...but where? WHERE?  

Never wear a clip-on tie. This is not good advice for people in occupations in which other people might want to grab them by the necktie and throttle them, such as police officers, jail guards, and oral surgeons.  

Give a firm handshake. I heard this advice a million times: "Don't give someone a wet fish to shake hands with" and finally I realized that fish don't have hands anyway.  

Compliment a love interest on their clothing choice. I used to have an old pair of yellow sweat pants, cut off at the knees, that I used for painting so often that they looked like Joseph's Pants Of Many Colors. I left them right downstairs. I haven't seem them for years.  

Keep a change of clothes at the office. Heck, if you can, keep another shirt, jacket and pants in your trunk.  It can't so any harm, but you just might be glad to have backup pants one day.  That doesn't sound right.  

Buy high quality tools, so you only have to buy them once. Good advice for the most part.  But there are plenty of tools you can get for a dollar at Dollar Tree that are just as good as what you'd pay top dollar for at Costington's, so there you are.  

When you walk, look straight ahead, not at your feet. I used to see people wandering around the cubicle farm where I worked and not paying attention to anything but their own shoes.  Oh, what a surprise, when someone crossed their path.  

No matter their job or status in life, everyone deserves your respect. What other people have learned or accomplished or helped with or seen might surprise you, and religions other than your own have millions of believers.  It doesn't take a brain surgeon to understand that.  Oooops.  

Do what needs to be done without complaining. It won't help speed things up.  It's good to see people who approach massive tasks - clearing rubble and rebuilding small midwestern towns devastated by tornadoes, cleaning dishes and putting everything away after a Turkey and Oyster Dinner at a firehouse, or helping tens of thousands survive after fleeing a civil war in their homeland - who turn to those tasks with a minimum of handwringing and a maximum of hands-on work. 

Never stop learning.  I once heard of a man of a modest station in life who had been in England during World War II and became interested in the days of the Roman Conquest of England. He read everything he could find about those days and saved his money to go to historic sites to explore.  You never know everything, but you can learn almost everything.

Don't change yourself just to make someone happy, unless that someone is you.  The people who wrote this list put a star on this tip to designate it as the most valuable one. I agree, this is good, and I see young people willing to do anything to try to please some dude or dudess who wouldn't offer them a Kleenex if they sneezed. So, don't.  Be you, and be the best you can be you.  

Luck favors the prepared. Branch Rickey, who brought Jackie Robinson to the big leagues, had a saying: "Luck is the residue of design."  Ever notice how the "lucky" people are also the ones who aren't sitting around watching "Gomer Pyle" all day long?

No one is on their deathbed wishing they spent more time at work. Enjoy your life. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge all year, not just on Christmas Eve.  Do your work, whatever it takes to put a meal over your head and a roof on the table in front of you.  Or the other way around.  But enjoy the meal and be thankful for the roof, and go live a little.

The Saturday Picture Show, January 7, 2017

Happy New Year! Keep staring at this picture.  Some people - maybe one in a thousand - report that it seems odd or jumpy.  If you notice that, you are that one in a thousand.

We have spent approximately $73,000 on toys for the cats. It turned out, one evening when a friend put her hair ring doodad on the coffee table (she was drinking coffee), Eddie (Edwina) grabbed the hair ring and that's all she will play with now.  She likes to stockpile them on the dining room floor, as shown above. Deanna is still involved with her fake mouse on a string on a stick.

When it's too cold to listen to cool jazz.

This is the only way I like marshmallows, in case anyone asks.

I love it when we get snow before the lights come off the tree. Hasn't happened for a few years, though.

Is this a bird who lives in a little tiny city inside a birdcage...or is this the birdcage inside a giant house with many more small birdcages inside the birdcage?

This guy was riding his motorcycle in Africa.  The noise of the motorcycle bothered the elephants who were strutting about. They became agitated.  So he apologized.

The Christmas season is over, and the staff is already planning for next year's big toy. Here's where they are kept!

Konfusing

Grayson Allen displays
tripping technique

His name is Krzyzewski, but you don't pronounce that first "K." That's not the only thing that's confusing about Mike Krzyzewski, the basketball coach at Duke University whose job is to mold young men into upstanding, mature members of adult society. In any situation in which a young man needs guidance and a firm hand on his shoulder to point him in the right direction, we can count on K to be a pillar of rectitude. As one writer (Chris Chase) says, "In a situation where everybody was expecting the least of the Duke coach, he managed to outdo even the lowest of expectations."

Allen displays penitence

I don't care for basketball at all, since it seems to me that of all the big four sports, it lacks well-thought-out strategy, in favor of being 8 feet tall. But whatever; it's fine for those who like following it. These days, K has a player named Grayson Allen, whose idea of strategy is to stick his size 32 shoe out and trip the other players. This is what is done on playgrounds and in kindergartens all over, but this kid Allen is playing bigtime college basketball and behaving like an infant.

Not just once. Not just twice, after getting a strict warning. Three times he has done this, the most recent event being in a game against Elon College when opposing player Steven Santa Ana hit the hardwood. Kryszewski, a man of probity and goodness, stepped up and issued an indefinite suspension for the wayward player.
Then, while the rest of us ignored this childishness over the holidays, Duke played Virginia Tech and lost.


And suddenly, wise old Coach K realized that young Grayson surely had learned his lesson, and put him right back out on the floor.

Length of the indefinite suspension turned out to be definitely one game.

It would be good to point out that K is a West Point graduate, is the coach of the USA Olympic team, and is supposed to be a charitable man.  

He's going out for back surgery anyway, so while he's home on the mend, I recommend that he reads this article from American Thinker. It details the events of November 1963, when Joe Namath, star quarterback for the U of Alabama, admitted to taking a few sips of beer at a diner.  Word of this got back to his coach, the legendary Bear Bryant.  

There was an ironclad rule on the Alabama football team: no alcohol during the season. Not "no alcohol, but a few sips of beer would be ok if you're the star of the team."  None. Nada, zilch. 

So the Bear called Namath into his office and said Joe Willie could keep on playing, but then, he (Bryant) would have to resign, because it would violate his principles to back down on a well-understood rule.  Namath accepted his punishment, missed a final game against Miami, and the Sugar Bowl, and then came back the next fall, going on to great fame and acclaim, a better man for having learned his lesson.

Men are known by the company they keep.  Here's
 K with Joe Paterno.

By all accounts, Grayson Allen is the best player on the Duke team. One can't help but feel that if were a benchwarmer, K would have thrown him off the team for good "in order to teach everyone a lesson about sportsmanship and following the rules." Instead, Krzyzewski taught us all a lesson about how much the rules mean to him.

Carey me back

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, that's one thing.  Just don't forget to make sure you're ready to sing when you go on live TV.

Peggy and I were flipping the channels on New Year's Eve when Mariah Carey, modestly and elegantly clad as usual, strutted out onto Times Square and began performing on the Dick Clark Rockin' New Year's Eve Starring Ryan Seacrest Show.

She got through the Robert Burns hit from 1788, "Auld Lang Syne," but her own hit from 1991, "Emotions," got the better of hers. She was complaining that she couldn't hear the background music, and danced around with her backup dancers, telling the crowd and the millions of home viewers waiting for 2017 to start, "I want a holiday, too. Can I not have one? I'm trying to be a good sport here."

The show must go on, so they played the next song, the 2005 hit "We Belong Together." It was then that she committed the cardinal sin of lip-synching - she took the mic away from her face but the sound of her singing continued! 

"It just don't get any better," she said at the end of the song.

Shortly thereafter, she stormed off the stage, saying, "That was...amazing."

A woman named Nicole Perna has the daunting job of being Mariah's spokesperson, and she tried to pick up the pieces, telling Billboard magazine: "She was not 'winging' this moment and took it very seriously. A shame that production set her up to fail."

Perna said that Mariah had told the crew her earpiece wasn't working, and that the crew told her it would all be ok once she got out there on the stage.

(This is SO like when you buy a pair of pants and the salesman tells you they'll fit a lot better once you leave the store.)

All parties involved are going back and forth about the earpiece, whether or not it was malfunctioning.  There is no question that she was performing to a "backing vocal track," and Perna said, "it is not uncommon for artists to sing to track during certain live performances".

So she wasn't lip synching, you understand...she was singing along to a recorded track.

The suggestion that Dick Clark Productions set Mariah Carey up to fail is absurd.  Why would they want to turn their own show into a laughingstock?

Especially when Mariah Carey was there and willing to do it for them.

Color Me Surprised

In a mountain greenery,
Where God paints the scenery
Just two crazy people together. 

- Mountain Greenery (Rodgers & Hart)

Well, the wait is over, and for those who thought the election results would never be final, relax...the Color Of The Year has been chosen.

The other colors are all green with envy, because this year,  the good people at Pantone - "the authority on color, provider of color systems and leading technology for accurate communication of color" - have decided that Greenery is the color of the year.

It's a yellowish green, to be sure, "refreshing and revitalizing" in the words of Pantone, and "symbolic of new beginnings."

I've had plenty of new beginnings, and none of them reminded me of this color. What's more, we say someone is "green" when they are inexperienced, callow. 

Rougned Odor (r) finally had
his fill of Bautista as well.

As a lover of all things Autumn and Winter, I'm more of a brown and orange kind of guy. Spring does not thrill me because it inevitably leads to the horror we call summer, with its heat, humidity, broiling sunshine, mosquitoes and Jose Bautista.

Some years ago, a celery-colored color called Celadon was briefly popular.  This was just after all doctors were required to outfit their waiting rooms in mauve and gray shades, but before all rooms were decorated in the color known as "stainless steel."  I liked celadon.  I like celery, the negative-calorie food (you burn more calories grinding on it than you take in.  It's sort of a reverse milkshake in that.)  Celery adds the green to shrimp salad and the crunch to a tossed salad, too.

They're trying to make this greenery look like mint, but mint is the one crop that grows well here at the Lazy 'C', and it's much darker than this "greenery."  Home gardeners, and lovers of iced beverages, I recommend that you visit your local greenhouse in spring, buy some potted mint, and plant it down by the shed or near the spigot.  You'll snip leaves of tasty greenery-goodness forever, and be delighted as they add that certain zest to your iced tea.


And I hereby nominate "iced tea" to be color of the year for 2017.

You never sausage a dent

I noticed this years ago when we drove to Florida.  To look around at the shops and stores, we could have been in our own neighborhood! There were Walgreens and CVS and Home Depot and Barnes & Noble and of course, McDonald's and Burger King everywhere. There seem to be no more purely local stores, or, at least, not many of them.

And apparently, the old saying about "people being the same everywhere" is true after all, just like your old Uncle Gustav used to say.

A case in point is this story from Neubrandenburg, Germany, where a man was driving his BMW too fast for a man who was trying to cross a street with his son in tow.  The angry German hollered "Stop!" as the car zoomed by, but the car failed to slow down, so the man threw a foot-long sausage at it.

The story concludes with the news that the sausage dented the back right-hand door of the automobile.

OK...to sum up:  What have we learned?

• Some Germans drive too fast, just like some Americans
• You can dent the door of a BMW with a sausage
• Germans have been known to walk around while carrying foot-long sausages heavy enough to dent steel

I have to admit, the same thing could have happened right here in Baltimore, Bakersfield or Beaumont.  The best idea is to drive slowly...you never know what people are toting around on the sidewalk!

Good Deed

You get to my age, and you go to the "D" section in your phone, and it's all doctors. It seems like I'm there at the Medical Center two or three times a day (James Daly and Chad Everett are my personal physicians, as well as Dr Kelly Brackett, Dr Joe Early, and Nurse Dixie McCall) and just run home for meals in between appointments.

So the other day I was meeting with my primary care physician. I wanted to discuss my latest blood test, which came back marked "bloody good"! While we conferred, Peggy was talking to a friend who works upstairs and then we met in the lobby and went on to Trader Joe's.

Peggy told me an interesting story that had taken place while I was in the exam room with my shirts off, taking deep breaths and coughing. (Later I did all that again when the doctor was in the room.)  She said that a distraught older lady had come into the waiting area, looking for her leather coat. It was chilly, so she was going to need that coat to go home, and she also said her wallet and keys were in the pockets, so she really needed that coat, and she was upset.

She asked the people waiting if they had seen a brown leather coat and became quite fretful when no one said they had. People were asking her what room she had been seen in, and she was sure it the same suite where she was looking. Peggy said there was quite a stir; people were buzzing about trying to help her, and the more time that went by without the coat turning up, the more disquieted the lady became.

One of the receptionists behind the big desk took over, asking which doctor she had visited (she couldn't remember his name) and if she was sure she had been in that particular suite.  There are four offices on each floor.  The young lady took the lady out of that suite and spent some time with her, going office to office, until the found the jacket, contents intact, around the corner at another room.  The lady went on her way happy.

When Peggy told me about this, the old supervisor in me came out, and I sat right down at these very keys and batted out a short note (I know; it should have been hand-written, but I wanted her to be able to read it) to salute the receptionist for having the goodness in her to get up and help. It would have been so easy to shrug it off and and say, "It's not here, I dunno." But she didn't do that, she got up off her asterisk and helped. And I think that's noteworthy.

I dropped off my little note a few days later, and the receptionist blushed and said, "Thank you! I didn't think anyone noticed!"

Ah, but we do, and we should more often.  Kindness and goodness are out there in abundance, and it's my goal to look out for more and more of it, and share it when I can.

Happy New Year 2017!