Say what?

He thinks there's a country called "TanZAYNia"

The old radio announcer guy in me fumes and seethes about people on radio and TV who mispronounce words. I mean, for most people, it's their own choice to pronounce things correctly, but ever since I heard a news anchor say, "It's important to pronounciate things right!" I have fulminated and chafed about this vexing problem.

And it reached an apogee of aggravation when I heard someone say something was "aggavating," and when I heard POTUS45 and every single man and woman on the air say that it's "infastructure week." You all run along; I'll just be back here, inserting the first of three r's into infrastructure.

I don't mean to be preachy, but I do take you more seriously when you say things correctly.  My free idea: you know how, when we're typing a text and spell something wrong, a red line appears under the word, encouraging us to try again?

How about a device that makes a red line appear in the air in front of our mouths when we SAY something wrong?

The air would be filled with red when we ask the restaurant server for "Workestersheer" sauce for the fith, sixt, or twelth time, and awful words excape our lips! It can be very fusstrating, expecially for members of the Clue Klux Klan who are also loyers, trying to file addidavids on a snowy Febuary morning.

Later, over lunch at the athaletic club (tuner salad sammidges with mannaise, and sherbert or Eyetalian ices for dessert, with assorted amond or peecan tarts and gooey carmels), we could have disgust the meeyuns and beeyuns of other mangled words we hear, until one of us gets all mischievious and comes down with respitory failure.

On the way out, let's ax the server for a couple of expressos. That's just the perscription. I guess I get the pitcher now, or else it's just a mute point.

I feel bettor now.

When the lights came on

Billy Bush has told the Hollywood Reporter magazine that he has "done a lot of soul searching" in the past seven months since the tape of his stupid 2005 conversation with Donald J. Trump surfaced.

You remember the tape; you saw it 107 times last fall right before the election. Trump and former entertainment reporter Bush are on a bus discussing the liberties Trump felt entitled to take with women on the grounds that he was a "star."

And Billy Bush, given the opportunity to stand up like a man and show a little respect toward women, instead chose to act like a giggly sycophant.  The word everyone used was that he "egged" Trump on.  Note to self: look up why we say people "egg" each other on, instead of saying we "bacon" or "cheese" each other on...

His downfall was swift; he lost his job hosting part of the Today Show. If you are ever looking to hide out from me, just take a job on the weekday funfest on NBC with Hoda and Kathie Lee and the rest of those sillyhearts.

But Billy got the ax, and had to go home to explain to his wife and three daughters what sort of man he was 11 years before. It could not have been easy. It made me think of the guy I worked with who was fired for stealing county property. How do you go home and face your family after that?

At least Bush wound up with a big settlement from NBC, and there are no signs that he's looking for work as the guy who rounds up shopping carts at the BuySumMor. And we all know what happened to the other man on that bus.

"Looking back upon what was said on that bus," Bush told The Reporter, "I wish I had changed the topic. [Trump] liked TV and competition. I could’ve said, 'Can you believe the ratings on whatever?' But I didn’t have the strength of character to do it."

John Wooden, the legendary longtime basketball coach at UCLA (he was the man whom Sarah Palin confused with John Wooden Legs, the tribal president of the Northern Cheyenne) once said that "The true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching."

During his time in the valley of despair, Bush fell in with one of those healing seminars. He spent  $5,000 of his settlement on a healing program in Napa Valley, CA. For his 5 Gs, he was given the opportunity to get in the floor with a baseball bat and a pillow, "literally bashing these negative patterns" he had identified in his life.

Now he is planning to get back into television. I recommend maybe doing a morning coffee klatsch in Kankakee, or celebrity bowling in Sheboygan. Once people see he has made his penitence whole, he'll be back on national syndication, telling us all about what Beyonce wore the night before and whom Steven Segal is dating.

It's a living.

Billy Bush thought no one was watching that day on the bus, so he allowed his better judgement to be clouded by his desire to fall in line with the bumptious utterances of a swaggering oaf. The lesson for all of us is twofold:

• everything you do or say is probably being photographed or videoed or recorded in some manner         and 
• it's better to be faithful to one's values all the time.  That way, you don't have to remember what you said to whom.

Weather or not

As a proud public servant for 30 years and a volunteer for years before getting on the payroll, I take no small umbrage when I hear people hopping on that anti-government train.  

And just the other day, I saw the bizarre ramblings of a man who in one simple post said that "the government is totally corrupt and messed up and incapable" and then added that he feels "the government" is involved in massive schemes to winnow the population through various means.  First, as we all know, "the government invented AIDS" and spread it, and now, "the government" is getting everyone hooked on opioids so that lots of people will pass away from overdoses, thereby cutting down on the surplus population.

And these people, the ones who believe these things, vote and drive and own property and take vacations and might be sitting on the same boardwalk bench as you and your family this summer, eating a soft ice cream sundae and believing nutty notions.

Don't worry; it's a hoax.

Trust me on this. The average gov't employee is too busy trying to get his or her job done with fewer supplies and support personnel to sit around dreaming up population-control schemes, let alone implementing them.

But, no matter how people feel about the government, when there's a fire, when someone needs arresting, when the neighbor turns his front yard into a used-car lot, when someone needs emergency medical services, when people want to vote or get a flu shot or have the kids play rec league soccer, the government is there to serve.

That said, I thought it might be a good time, with the Atlantic Hurricane Season starting last week, to point out that there is no one in charge of the two federal agencies who deal with hurricane preparation and aftermath.

The current occupant of the White House has been on the job and on the golf course for five months now, and no one has been confirmed to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Someone was nominated to run FEMA in April, without any action on confirmation yet.  And there has been no action from the White House on hiring a new boss at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  NOAA operates the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service, whose forecasts and advice before and during major storms is sort of important.  

The people who still work at NOAA are calling for an above-average hurricane season, but nonetheless, the administration budget calls for cuts for FEMA and NOAA, so we can spend more money on a wall that will keep out illegal immigrants about as well as a sand castle will keep out a hurricane.
  

What's Your Name, 2016 version

334 times in the year 2016, parents of newborn baby boys in the state of Maryland said, "Let's call him 'Noah'!"

"Noah" rode his ark to the top and joined 308 brand-new "Ava"s in Maryland last year.

I know we didn't have a blizzard, or even a significant cable outage, to spike baby business, so there's no big rush to choose baby names later this summer/early fall, but still, if you're in the family way, you might want to think now about a moniker for little Leon.

Leon is one of the names I wish my parents had given me instead of Mark, which continued its slide down the popularity chart and is at #195 this year, a sure bet to drop below the mythical Top 200 list.  I also would have been thrilled with "Jackie," or "Elvis," but oh well.

For the entire nation, there was not a lot of change in the top 10 names list.  Elijah is in the national top 10, but only #17 in Maryland, where if you lean your head out the window far enough on a statewide drive, you can hear 211 of 'em hollering out loud.

Here's the top 10 new boy names for our state last year (number of babies in parentheses:)

Noah, 334
Mason, 307
Liam, 284
Ethan, 282
Daniel, 279
Michael, 279
Jacob, 273
Benjamin, 266
Dylan, 266
James, 264

And the girls' list: 

Ava, 308
Olivia, 299
Emma, 257
Charlotte, 253
Sophia, 249
Abigail, 237
Isabella, 215
Harper, 204
Elizabeth, 200
Emily, 187

If you'd like to go check your name (and the one you WISH you had, just go here to see the Social Security Adm. list).

It will definitely make you feel really old to hear that the name Kehlani is way up there for girls, and similarly, Kylo had the largest jump for boys.

And then they explain that someone named Kehlani Parrish is a singer and songwriter who is hugely popular, and there was a Kylo character in the Star Wars movie "The Force Awakens."

And "Donald" is currently 488th in America, but even though "Ferdinand" is #487, Donald still claims to have more votes. No bull.

Sunday Rerun: Edwina Farrell Browning?

We stopped at the Goodwill store the other day on the way home from BJ's just because you never know what you'll see there.  And everyone who walked in there that day saw a real live portmanteau!


"I didn't know they had pets at the Goodwill store!" some will cry. 

You know portmanteaus if you've ever watched "I Love Lucy," stayed at a roadside place on the way home from a trip to Lake Chaubunagungamaug, picked up Labradoodle poop from the lawn, or stirred your Vodka-and-Clamato with a spork.  Or watched "Titanic" for all those scenes with the rich people's luggage being loaded onboard. (Poor people, played by Leonardo D. Caprio, used their left pocket as their luggage.) Those giant two-part suitcases that look like wardrobe closets with handles on top? Those are called portmanteaus, a French word made up from combining the words "Porter" (to carry) and "Manteau" (an old word for clothing). French linguists in need of a word to describe two-part luggage came up with "portmanteau."  English linguists in need of a word to describe two-part words came up with stealing "portmanteau" from the French, who immediately invited the English over for a turducken dinner.

So it's a portmanteau to say "motel" (combining motor and hotel), "DesiLu" (Desi and Lucy), "Labradoodle" (Labrador retriever and poodle), and of course, the deadly "spork," scourge of high school cafeterias all over, is an eating implement that's 1/2 spoon and 1/2 fork and completely useless as either.


Egg-Free Brunch? Emergency Food Bank?
This portmanteau for sale at the Goodwill looked like the one pictured here, but it had the initials "E F B" neatly painted in Times New Roman on the top.   And ever since, Peggy and I have played the EFB game, trying to figure out who he or she was.  Elbert Fabian Bolton?  Elinor Federica Bonaventura? Employee Fringe Benefit?

Imagine the places that portmanteau has been and been seen in, and now it sits in a Goodwill store in Perry Hall, Maryland, yours for $300.  Perfect for your friend Earleen Fay Bailey, who always liked to end her day with a nice Eucalyptus Foaming Bath!

The Saturday Picture Show, June 3, 2017

The snow-capped mountain looks down on the blossoming tree and promises to send some water down later when things get hot.

Apparently, the biggest deal from the recent G7 Conference was all the acclaim garnered by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's socks. He rules, and so do his socks.

This is an unretouched photo of fog sliding in over Cape Town, South Africa.

In 1968, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention released their version of a "Sgt Pepper" type album, complete with photo spoof. After all these years, I can still call the names of the great Mothers line up from those years: Frank Zappa, Jimmy Carl Black ("the Indian of the group"), Roy Estrada, Billy Mundi, Don Preston, Bunk Gardner, Ian Underwood, and Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood.  But I can't tell you the name of someone I met last Tuesday. 

Of course, this is the Beatles record that Zappa parodied. The members of the Beatles at that time were John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and that other guy, Pete or Perry or something.

Your Coast Guard warns you to beware phony floating S'bux Coffee Shops, even the ones that promise to make you "internet famous."

If you've never had these, you haven't had the best Fries in the world. They're from the boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland, in a tiny shop where perspire-y teenagers stand watch over bubbling cauldrons of peanut oil while julienned potatoes meet their fate.

This Italian pizza oven shows that it is possible to create heaven right here on earth.

I hope she's not related to Jerry Mathers

"Actress" and nude model Dani Mathers is a household word only in households where you and I don't want to live.  We talked about her last year when she was charged with cyberbullying. What she did, she was working out in an LA Fitness Gym in LA, taking a rare break from her studies of Chaucer, and she saw an undressed 71-year-old woman in the locker room.

So Dani, who thinks everyone should be as nude as she gets for the camera, snapped a nudie you-ie of the other lady and slapped it on Snapchat with the b-i-itchy caption "If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either."

The photo also showed Dani feigning disgust at the lady's appearance, when in fact she should have been gagging over her own behavior.

Dani is now 30 and has received the honors being Playboy’s "CyberGirl of the Month" in January 2013 and "Playmate of the Month" for May, 2014, and then - the ultimate glory! - the coveted "Playmate of the Year" award in 2015.

In her most recent public appearance, she wore clothes to plead
no contest to misdemeanor invasion of privacy for making the Snapchat post.  In the best Hollywood tradition, she was signed for a role spending the next 30 days scrubbing graffiti around Tinseltown.  She will also serve three years of probation, and I guarantee you, this is as famous as she will ever be for "acting." She could have been given six months in the Walled-Off Astoria and a fine of $1,000.

The LA City Attorney is Mike Feuer, and he says, "The issues that surround body shaming can be devastating — not only to daughters and mothers, but also to sons and fathers, members of the LGBTQ community, to a trans kid who might be struggling with identity, to people who are disabled. The message today is clear: body shaming is not tolerated in the City of Los Angeles."

For those of you who, like me, collect Statements From Attorneys As Their Clients Finally Accept Their Fates, here is her mouthpiece, Dana Cole, with a remark that he will probably be able to Xerox and re-use many times: "I think she wanted to be done with this and accept responsibility for what occurred."

LA Fitness operates 800 gyms across the nation, and Dani is now welcome in none of them. But she apologized with what is now the standard American "I'm sorry" - 

"I know that body-shaming is wrong. That is not the type of person I am."

Just like the thug billionaire congressman-elect who slammed a reporter around and then said, "This is not the person I am..." I think we have a problem in this country. Nobody knows who the hell they are anymore.  

Someone tell this lawyer no one
wears their hair like this anymore.

Hurt someone, injure someone, do whatever you want with impunity, because you can always claim that the person who did these things - namely YOU - is not really YOU.

I think.

Cashmere outside, how bow dah?

It's been cool and rainy here in Baltimore, although the temperature flirted with the 90° range a couple of weeks ago (that sort of flirtation should never be encouraged), and I sit here, all jealous of people in Australia and other points below, because they have lived through summer and will soon enjoy winter. 

I really think the best way for me to live is to move to Australia from April through October every year, the way I dislike summer heat and humidity.

I love winter and heavy coats and wool sox so much that others have suggested I move to Denmark, full time.

Still others have suggested that I move anywhere, full time, as soon as possible.

But there is a word from Denmark that is becoming popular here, and who wouldn't like feeling "hygge"? It's not easy to pronounce, but it's easy to like.  You say "hoo-guh," and just think of "a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being."  That's the Oxford English Dictionary speaking, and there is no greater authority on our native tongue than they.


The etymology of the word says it comes from a sixteenth-century Norwegian term, hugga, meaning "to comfort" or "to console," and it's related to the English word "hug."

The Danes have used the word forever, but it's only becoming a thing in the English-speaking word just now.  There are books about it; I even saw one on the shelves of the library the other day where I went to hygge out for a while. British journalist Helen Russell wrote a book called "The Year of Living Danishly," and she says hygge is all about "taking pleasure in the presence of gentle, soothing things," like a freshly brewed cup of coffee and cashmere socks.

I prefer hot tea, and if you want to get a head start on your Christmas shopping for me, Brooks Brothers is offering a pair of cashmere socks for just $298. Red, please.

Danish doctors advise their patients who come down with colds to try "tea and hygge," and they say it's ok to wear your hyggebukser, which are those worn-out pants that people tell you never to wear outside, but feel so good because they're just worn perfectly. 

I think we all understand.  Snuggle up with your hot tea or coffee and your flannel blanket and get all hygge-y. It's only a few short months until winter comes to America.  Blessed, beautiful, winter.