Life of Brine

What do taffy and decaf coffee have in common?

The answer to this and many other riddles that torment us daily will be apparent in just one minute, after I drop this message off to all the news anchors who just two or three weeks ago were singing the blues about how it was still cold and rainy. And now that it's hot and humid and we are getting damaging thunderstorms, they're saying, "Oh! When is it going to cool down, Bob?"

Sometimes you're sorry when you get what you ask for! In fact, if they were making a movie about summer, that could be the title! It's hot and sticky and lots of people have to make do with no power because of the storm damage, but hey! At least it warmed up!

Now back to, "What's He Rambling On About Now?"...

It might surprise you to find that decaffeinated coffee is more or less an accidental find, like chocolate chip cookies and potato chips. That happy cup o' java that won't keep you up all night is in your mug because of German merchant Ludwig Roselius. 

It was 1903, and Ludwig had ordered a shipload (!) of coffee beans that arrived on an actual ship! But the ship foundered and the coffee beans got soaked in salty sea water. 

The Good Ship Maxwell House. It really Sanka.

At first, it was feared that the entire shipment would have to be dumped as waste, or sold to Starbucks. (joke.)  But someone said, hey! Let's brew up a pot and see what it tastes like, and lo and behold, they all slept well that night, realizing they had discovered the basics of decaffeination. 

Truth to tell, they also wound up steaming the beans (another great movie title!) in various acids and bases, and using BENZENE to finish the job of removing all the go-go from the java.

Of course, today we recognize that Benzene is a carcinogen, so sorry, great-great-grandpa. We didn't know that Sanka 1906 would kill ya.

Sanka, by the way, got its name because it was coffee SANs KAffeine.

And how does saltwater taffy fit into this coffeepot? Well, this longtime seaside treat comes to us from Atlantic City, New Jersey, former home of a bankrupt Trump casino. The story of its provenance depends on which story you choose to believe:

• a lazy assistant in a candy store, whomping up a batch of taffy, grabbed a bucket of saltwater rather than fresh
• an overnight storm brought unexpected high tides into a candy shop, covering the taffy in seawater
• one of 33,000 emails sent by a former presidential candidate contained an error in the ingredients in a taffy recipe

Maybe it was a combination of the three stories, but ever since the 1920s, suntanned and windblown people have been dumping boxes of this goo on officebound coworkers on Monday mornings after vacation. "Got ya a little sumpin'!" is the standard excuse, usually answered with, "Oh, you shouldn't have!"

And really, they mean it.

Worldwide Pants

Someone in Southeast Asia who has almost $100,000 that he/she doesn't have much need for just traded that pile of dough for a pile of denim...these 125-year-old Levis. 

Yes, they made Levis way back then. A guy named Solomon Warner bought them in 1893. Warner is described as a "colorful figure from the Old West"  who ran a store in the Arizona Territory. Part of his colorful life included the time he was shot by Apache Indians in 1870, but there he was, 23 years later, buying a pair of blue jeans that he only wore a time or two before shuffling off to that great big clothing store in the sky.

The Asian who bought these pants sent someone to inspect them before an auction run by Daniel Buck Soules from Daniel Buck Auctions, whom you might recall from his 11 years on public television’s “Antiques Roadshow.”

Soules is not allowed to divulge the name of the buyer, probably because who wants the world to know they are willing to pay a tenth of a million semolians for a pair of jeans, but he did understate that, “It’s somebody who loves old Levi’s.”

Well, yeah.

"Jeanealogists" (I will have my daily pun!) have determined that the denim was produced at a mill in New Hampshire, and the jeans were made at the Levi’s Factory in San Francisco. Etymologists will tell you the word "denim" comes from the French term serge denim, meaning serge cloth from the town of Nîmes.

No one can tell us why someone would pay this sort of cash for old dungarees, but I have in my closet some cargo pants (well worn), cargo shorts (same) and several dozen pairs of red socks.  Let the bidding war begin!

Same kind of label they still use! These old jeans had no zipper (they used buttons)
and no belt loops (they used suspenders). Perfect gift for Larry King.

Driving Me Crazy

Is it just me, or is everyone driving like fools these days?

→ I'm heading to WalMart last week (because it's the only place where I can find Luzianne Family Size Ice Tea Bags, since you asked.) I'm in the left turn lane to hang a louie onto Rt 43 and when the light turns green, the car in front of me, being piloted by a person of unknown gender (tinted windows) does not move, even though I gave them a polite wakeup tootaroonie on the horn. Suddenly the person began gesticulating wildly, lifting what was either their middle finger or a pretzel stick, and soon made their intention known by sidling over into the lane to go ahead straight. But because the car was from Pennsylvania, I was able to attribute it to them being "one of those damned Pennsylvania drivers." (It could have just as easily been someone from Delaware or DC.)

→ We're going to the Book Thing yesterday and a car passed us on Perring Parkway like they were giving something away down by the Montebello Pumping Station. Every time we came to a red light, there was that car, and he would zoom away when the light turned green, only to be there waiting for us at the next  red light.

→ I could cite examples of people texting and checking their Instagram until the cows came home with their own phones. But that's just what I see as I'm driving. Then I go on Instagram and people are showing action photos of the jerk in front of them, or a coyote ululating on Beaver Dam Rd, or a traffic backup on 83 South, and I realize these are pictures taken from the driver's seat...

→ And Friday night, as I came home from the Giant without Luzianne Family Size Ice Tea Bags, I see an interesting tableau vivant just at the entrance to our court...two vehicles that had just recently played bumper cars, one of which was perched up on the sidewalk where I might have been walking! had I not been at the Giant. I parked at our house and ankled down the hill to get the word. It seems that a car being driven by a female massage therapist was turning in to our cul-de-sac, and in the process of turning in, was struck by a Honda CRV being driven by a man who had the right of way. As I bathed in the exchange between the two drivers and the neighbor who came out because out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, he got up from dinner to see what was the matter, I heard the woman tell the guy who was driving the Honda, "I forgot to look when I was turning."

I recounted to that neighbor as we walked home later that my dad gave me advice when I learned to drive, during the Lyndon Johnson administration. Dad said to drive while assuming that every other vehicle on the road was being operated by a homicidal maniac bent on killing me and all others on the road.

He hasn't been wrong all that often.

Sunday Rerun: 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 Saturday Picture Show, June 16, 2018

I see kiddie bedroom setups like this in IKEA and other places and I think it would have been the coolest way to grow up. I would have needed more bookshelves, though.

This seal is happy as a clam.

This man is happy as a clam, sitting in the upper section of some ballpark, reading his magazine.

In Japan, they have an annual contest among flower shops and nurseries in which they decorate their trucks in landscapes. It really is a big wide world, isn't it?

This classic New Yorker cover shows a June bride thinking about things.

One can always tell a newcomer to Baltimore when they say "Lombard St" the correct way, instead of the Baltimore way ("Lumbered"). This is the Lombard St in San Francisco, but I don't know how they pronounce it out there.

This young man grew his hair long enough to be donated to Locks Of Love, the organization that makes human hair wigs for those who have lost their hair due to illness. What an amazing gift!

Those Venus Fly Traps really do work! I had one when I was a kid, and now here's one that found a lightning bug!

Just Getting Away From It All

Here's a good idea - if you're in the Air Force and you plan to abscond for, say, 35 years, you might want to drop into a local hair cuttery and see if you can get them to give you a different hair style or something.

William Howard Hughes (Howard Hughes?  really?) Jr, pictured twice above, phoned home to tell his parents that he was going to the Netherlands.  That was 1983 and his military task was to test aircraft surveillance systems for NATO. He packed his top security clearance and left his post at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.

And then, when he left Holland after a few weeks, he was not seen again until the Air Force tracked him down at a place where he was living in California. Charged with desertion, and with owning and operating a sparse beard, he now awaits trial at an Air Force cooler. He was living under the alias "Barry O’Beirne," although he doesn't look like any O'Beirne I've ever known.

Just like in all the spy movies, investigators found his car at the Albuquerque International Airport, and inside his home was a to-do list and a list of books he wanted to read.

This should have been a clue. No man in real life has a to-do list, at least not one that he plans to do anything about.

And this was in the early days of everything in life being videoed...investigators found surveillance tape showing him withdrawing more than $28,000 from 19 different banks in the Albuquerque area.

And just like in the movies, his family figured he had been kidnapped, and the Air Force thought he might have gone over to the Soviets.

(For younger readers, there was a time when Russia was considered our deepest, most feared enemy. Imagine.)

His sister Christine said he never would have just split on his own.  "That would be totally out of character for the Bill we knew. We do not feel he disappeared voluntarily.”

He disappeared voluntarily.

After they tracked him down, the Air Force, with some justification, wanted to know why he left the joys of military life.

Hughes said he was “depressed about being in the Air Force.” That's why he left, becoming  O'Beirne, setting up a whole new world right in "plane" sight (He was in the Air Force, remember!) while all the while, his name was bandied about every time the there was some sort of catastrophe that could be blamed on the Russians, the idea being that the Russians were behind the space shuttle Challenger disaster of 1986, and the explosion of the Ariane rocket in French Guiana with info they got from the Man With Two Names.

The Air Force eventually admitted that Hughes was not carrying specific documents at the time of his disappearance, and they are not even sure IF anyone leaked classified information.

Linda Card, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, says the case remains under investigation.

“Until we have the whole story,” she said, “we don’t have the story.”

If they find Hughes/O'Beirne guilty, he could serve five years of confinement, forfeit all his pay and be dishonorably discharged from the Air Force.

But at least they FOUND him.

Boom!

People who get all het up over "dirty words" they hear on television are quick to file complaints about it.

And it comes as a surprise to them that the Federal Communications Commission has nothing to do with what they say on ABC.  The individual local stations that carry network shows are left holding the bag if fines are going to be handed out over events such as what happened on the Good Morning America broadcast on ABC on May 24.

On that day, the Disney-owned network had report # 12,954 on the horrors of Disgraced Movie Mogul Harvey Weinstein (that is now his full legal name, until the happy day when some prison awards him a number instead.) Reporter Eva Pilgrim used a clip of an interview that Howard Stern had done with actress Gwyneth Paltrow in which they discussed how the filthy scum Weinstein leched on her in the 90s and her then-boyfriend Brad Pitt threatened to make sure that Harve would be totin' an ass whuppin' if he did it again.

I was listening to the interview on Sirius XM, a pay service that I pay for, so Howard can speak as he wishes. But he said a bad word (to the ears of some) about what Brad said, and Eva and her people should have excised those four letters, and they didn't. WJLA, WMAR here in Baltimore, and all the East Coast stations that carry GMA broadcast the word, which absolutely no one had ever heard before.  I was watching GMA that morning (I multi-task) and I enjoyed seeing Robin Roberts go apoplectic over the word, and I could only imagine how high the plank was that the tape editor was forced to walk.

I laughed, but The Parents Television Council has filed a formal FCC indecency complaint against WJLA, channel 7 in Washington, over it.

As I say, it's only the local stations that are subject to the FCC's indecency rules. They are responsible for what goes out on their air no matter where it comes from, and profanity is verboten from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Showing mutilated bodies, starving orphans, neglected victims of natural disasters, mistreated animals, ghouls, zombies and demons (real or fictional) is ok, and, in fact, any sort of human or animal misery, and images and sounds thereof, are regarded as sure ratings boosters, so no problem.

But a good old word about something done under the consent of the king is just oh, so wrong.

They don't usually make a deal of it if someone effs up on the news, but,
"While we recognize that there is a news exemption from indecency laws, we believe that that exemption should only apply to live interviews where there is little opportunity to appropriately edit out indecent material," said the PTC. "That was not the case here. The word occurred during a taped and edited package segment. The network had every opportunity to edit the word out before it went to air. We are asking the FCC to look into this matter and apply existing broadcast decency law."

A few years ago, these dedicated guardians of the public weal went after The Muppets, calling for a boycott of some sock puppet for "not meeting family viewing guidelines," for such horrors as mentions of plastic surgery, and the Muppets in a bar consuming alcoholic beverages.

Like that random lady on The Simpsons is always crying out, "Won't someone think of the CHILDREN?"

The FCC could stick Channel 7, owned by Sinclair here in Baltimore County, with a fine of $397,000.

The PTC also took time out from pointing fingers to raise their hand in salute to CBS for saving the world from hearing Robert DeNiro say a bad word on the Tony Shalhoub Awards on Sunday.

The person in charge of deciding what will offend us on television, radio, and is named "Kay."  These awful words that no one ever uses are just the worst thing! You should say something to her, if you see Kay.

Requiescat in pace

There is a lot to say about this. First of all; it is real. It appeared in the Redwood Falls Gazette, one of America's newspapers.

Her family left no one to wonder how they felt about Kathleen, and that alone started some commotion in the small town in Minnesota known as Redwood Falls.

Some people had conciliatory words (“The good Lord loves you more than anyone else ever could. You are in heaven now with our savior. R.I.P.") said one online contributor, and another said, "What a life she lived. Hope you find peace."

No one has heard from Gina or Jay. There are fewer than 700 people in their hometown, so you have to figure on this being a major topic of conversation down at the Dairy Queen this summer.

The whole thing has also been bruited about among the staff of the Gazette:

More and more, I sound like one of those old Geezer Butlers going on about the olden days, but there were never any death notices back then where the family torched their non-dearly departed like this. In fact, every effort was made to put the best face on things, even when the subject of the obit lost his life by being run over by a streetcar while running down the street with his pants in his hands. If you catch my drift.

So no, I wouldn't have written or submitted a death notice, but then, I don't know what it feels like to have a mother get in the family way by a member of the family. And it's Jay and Gina's story to tell.

Some day, I would give anything to hang around the Pearly Gates for an hour or two, just to see and hear some of the incoming.

In Tribute

Someone dies, and soon (sometimes within minutes) people rush to the scene of the death or some location significant to the deceased and leave flowers, candles, and stuffed animals, sometimes with a note or card.

Of course, I'm referring to the throngs showing up at Brasserie Les Halles, the French restaurant where Anthony Bourdain plated Coq Au Vin and sauced Onglet A L'echalote several decades ago.

Make mine crêpe, s'il vous plaît.

Bourdain chose to step off the planet, which was his decision...his last one, to be sure. Kate Spade, the same, in the same manner, they say.

We're hearing now that Ms Spade was consumed with the suicide of Robin Williams, and followed his lead.

All this speaks to the need for mental health care in this nation and around the world. It's funny (in a mordant way) that we will break our necks to seek professional help when he have a sore neck, or, for three or four days, take to our beds with a cold in the head (men only.)

But when something is wrong with our minds, our emotions, we tend to say, "Oh, I have to deal with this on my own."  The stigma against seeking psychological help is a strong one, but if these suicides teach us anything, maybe it will be the lesson that these feelings can be helped by qualified, trained persons.

The first step is to know the number for help: 1-800-273-8255.

The second step is to be brave enough to share the number with people you know to be in need of the help they offer at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. All weekend long, we heard time and again that the misperception that simply talking about suicide will lead someone to commit suicide is just that, a misperception. Talk to people! It just might keep them around.

And while I'm up here on this bar of soap, I'm going to say this: If you have money enough, and feeling enough, to run out and buy flowers and/or candles and/or stuffed animals in honor of Anthony Bourdain, that's fine.  But if you have that money to spend, you also have money to buy flowers and/or candles and/or stuffed animals for some lonely person in your family, workplace, acquaintanceship, or neighborhood at the same time.

Surprise THAT person with a sweet gift while they're still here to appreciate it with you.

Roil fashion

I'm the last guy whose fashion advice you'd want to take, having dressed more or less the same since Eisenhower was president, and having never been invited to participate in any of the hoopla involving the British royal family.

And I know we step on sticky wickets, or wicky stickets, when we Americans marry into that family. In fact, for years, it just wasn't done. You will recall that in 1936, Edward, Prince of Wales and the next in line to climb onto the throne, gave it all up, abdicating because the British found out he was marrying one of the Simpsons.

All right, not one of THOSE Simpsons, but a twice-divorced woman named Wallis Simpson (born Bessie Wallis Warfield). The fact that she was from Baltimore also rubbed against the Royals, since their navy had been received so unpleasantly at Baltimore's Ft. McHenry in 1814.

Meghan was a briefcase girl

David Spade was heard to say that we really have the English fooled because "they seem to think that Meghan Markle is some sort of big star over here."  Truth to tell, no one here except for rabid viewers of Hallmark Movies, or "Deal Or No Deal," where she opened briefcases, even knew who she was.

She seems like a nice woman and from what I can tell she loves Mr Prince Harry and is fitting well in her new role as Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.  I wish her all the best.

And speaking of fitting well, she certainly has a nice wardrobe now, and yet, here she is, married three weeks, and she goes in a horse carriage to the annual Trooping the Colour Ceremony in London over the weekend, and the howling began before anyone got a chance to clean up behind the horses.

The Queen's birthday is in April, but they celebrate it in June, when the weather is better, along with a 250-year-old tradition of military troops showing off their flags while marching around the Buckingham Palace square. To view all this grandeur, old Meg showed up in an off the shoulder, sleeveless dress, and wouldn't you know, the Fashion Police about lost their shift, crying on Twitter that her duds where “inappropriate” for Queen Elizabeth’s annual birthday parade.


Pictured here (from left) are Camilla Duchess of Cornwall, Kate Duchess of Cambridge, Meghan Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

I would have thought that the real commotion would have stemmed from the fact that she wore the same pink hat she wore on her first royal engagement a couple of weeks ago.  But since I have been wearing the same Orioles cap since the Orioles were good, I can't call her out at the plate for that.

The Twitterverse went right wild right away, with people getting their fingers busy, a-typin' about Meghan's royal shoulders.  Apparently, it's some sort of rule not to have one's shoulders hanging out of one's dress when one's 92-year-old grandma-in-law is afoot.

Here's my plan for all those offended by the sight of a lovely young lady's nekkid shoulders: Come walk any American mall, grocery store or college campus.

Just start walking and don't come back! Leave the woman alone.

Sunday Rerun: Who, what, where, how, and Venn

Do you remember (waking up in Math class and they were discussing) Venn diagrams?  Those overlapping circles that proved that different sets have some things in common? 

Venn diagrams were used by
Algonquin J. Venn
to keep his girlfriends from
finding out about each other

The textbook definition of a Venn diagram says it's "a diagram representing mathematical or logical sets pictorially as circles or closed curves within an enclosing rectangle (the universal set), common elements of the sets being represented by the areas of overlap among the circles."

Think of it this way.  You might like pepperoni pizza, steamed crabs, cheeseburgers and steak for dinner.  (And you would be welcome here any time!)  Your neighbor, a pescatarian, eats fish but no meat, so his meal chart includes steamed crabs, broiled tilapia, cod, and something else, just for the halibut. 

You have something in common, namely, eating crabs, so a Venn diagram would show your two food circles with crabs being the mutual area of overlap.

And, keep eating plenty of pizza, and there will be another area of overlap, I wanna tell ya...



The idea of a Venn diagram came to me the other day when I saw this chart about religion. You see, the more you talk to people about what they believe, the more you find in common. I'm no expert on religion - I may be the only kid who ever had to go to Summer School for Sunday School - but I have spoken to many people about their faiths, and I find that it doesn't matter where or how or when you practice your religion, you want to live your life and not have people get all up in your grille as you do. 



Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.



Simple, and yet...

The Saturday Picture Show, June 9, 2017

I remember studying Egyptian History as a kid. When I did well on a test, my mummy was always proud.

There is a science for stacking rocks for photos, all right. I'm not sure there's a need for it, but it can be done.

I just had another in my long series of ideas of how to make soccer interesting.  In fact, two ideas: two balls in play at all times, and each team has to have someone in mascot garb playing for them at all times.

Remember the old joke about the guy with hardly any hair having to pay double for a haircut since the barber had to find his hair first? You can bet you'll pay far more for these than for a whole pair of jeans.

Say hello to the newest member of the litter-gettin' machines in Baltimore's harborfront waterways.  This is Captain Trashwell, reporting for duty.

This is a colorized version of a photograph of a very famous actress in one of her early movies ("Dream Of Love," from 1928.) I shan't mention her name while you figure out who she is, but here's a hint: she really, really hated wire hangers.

So, you take a Baltimore crabcake and dip it in beer batter and deep fry it, and you have your Baltimore Crab Fluff. I haven't had one in years and I need to change that!

There is an entire community online of people who like to prowl around in abandoned houses and buildings and whatnot. And they take pictures of where they've been and post them for all to see, like this picture of the abandoned barber shop in an abandoned prison. Prisoners with razors...what could go wrong?

What matters most

As so often happens, it was just a flash of one of those TV news headlines that caught my attention. It was on Good Morning America, and the promo for an upcoming story said

"MAN SHOT BY DANCING FBI AGENT SPEAKS OUT"

It wasn't until we saw that story that most of us even knew the Federal B of I was hiring 14-year-olds as agents, because anyone over 15 (except Plaxico Burress) knows better than to stick a gun in one's pants and go to a go-go. 

They should have been playing that "Disco Duck" song at that club in Denver. "Disco! DUCK!"

My point, and thanks for waiting around long enough to hear it, is that armed law enforcement agents ought to take themselves a little more seriously. Only a fool does backflips with a gun in his pants. And you'll notice, I said "his" pants. I can't remember the last time I saw a story where a woman acted similarly foolishly.

And then the Kate Spade story. I know she was enormously popular in the field of purses and women's clothing and had sold her line for 2.2 Billion With a B dollars, and yet did not find either happiness or a way out of the gloom of depression. Gee, maybe it is true that money is not the ticket to happiness, and what is also true is that when someone we love is fighting mental illness, we have to get closer to them and send unceasing love and support. These things need to be taken seriously.

I guess what's on my mind today is that some things need to be taken more seriously, such as gun safety and emotional disturbances, and we can find the way to do that by taking some of the things we take soooo darn seriously a little less so.

Like a little mess in the corner, or an untucked shirttail, or the need to attend every single "important" social event. "Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it," said the wise Oscar Wilde, who knew a thing or two about everything, and only lived to be 46.

The worldwide king of taking oneself too seriously.
Bono's real name is Paul Hewson, but he calls himself
"Bono Vox" because that is Latin for "good voice."

So that's my goal: pay more attention to what matters, and let the rest sort itself out. Not shooting other people, for instance, matters. Never hearing another U2 song in my remaining years does not matter one whit to me.

Oscar Wilde also said, "What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us."  I'm going to try to use what I learn more and more.

One hell of an idea

We don't often discuss religion here, because there is no faster way to get into a big bruising brouhaha than to talk about the various ways we humans have of worshipping the supernatural forces that dropped us here, expecting us to play nicely.

And look how that turned out.

Just speaking for myself here, I believe that whatever you believe should be respected, and I wish you and your faith the best every day in every way, and you are welcome to practice as you see fit. I happen to love people representing most of the major faiths of the world, with one exception being that Baltimore is notoriously short on Slavic Neopaganists.

But if I knew any, I would tip my cap to them and wish them peace and love.

Yes, any and all religious activity is fine with me, except for Jesse Duplantis. 

Up until a couple of weeks ago, who had even heard of this silver-haired sinbuster from out of Destrehan, LA? I hadn't.

But now we know him as the man who wants his followers to shell out to the tune of  $54 million to buy him a jet plane, so that his ministry "can go anywhere in the world in one stop."

He must really be in a hurry!

Jesse (you don't think his middle name could be "James," do you?) is one of those preachers who preach the "prosperity gospel," which holds that the practice of faith involves lots of loot for the parson, or as my favorite Robert Tilton used to say, "God don't want you following no poor preacher into Heaven" (sic).

His reasons for his flock ponying up for 54 million semolians involves a donkey. "I really believe that if the Lord Jesus Christ was physically on the Earth today, he wouldn't be riding a donkey," Duplantis says. "He'd be in an airplane flying all over the world."

So buy him an airplane, which he calls "an amazing tool for evangelizing the world" in a tweet.

Not that Duplantis is taking the next donkey himself on his evangelical travels, mind you. He already has three private jets and has been "burning them up for the Lord Jesus Christ," as he puts it, in language that surely pleases the Lord Jesus Christ.

His current ride is a Dassault Falcon 50, but he is coveting (Commandment #10) a Dassault Falcon 7X, known as "the benchmark for the 21st century business jet."




Duplantis wants you to understand that God is behind this scheme. I love how these cats always tell you that God whispers in their ear while they're digging into the Chateaubriand. Duplantis says God told him, "I want you to believe in me for a Falcon 7X."

I hope it turns out that it's all a ruse and that Jesse Duplantis will rake in his $54M and then go out and spend it on the lame and halt, the helpless, the homeless, the hopeless.

I also hope that Ariana Grande will show up to sing Happy Birthday to me on June 30, and that ain't happening either, I bet.

This Day of Days

Today marks the day in 1944 when the fortunes of the world took a great turn for the better. This was D-Day (the D stood for nothing but "Day," signifying how much was riding on this military operation), the invasion of France by beach landings in Normandy to defeat German troops occupying France. Planning for it began in 1943, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of the entire operation, which all might have been scuttled in that very year except for one man's nearsightedness.

An early version of the plan blew out a window that summer in London's Norfolk House, but a man who picked the papers off the street couldn't read them without his glasses and could only see the large type, indicating that they had some military import, so he dropped his find off at a military post.

And the plans called for the invasion, which brought 156,000 troops or paratroopers ashore (73,000 from the U.S., 83,000 from Great Britain and Canada) to take place on June 5, but bad weather forced a 24-hour postponement.  When June 6, 1944, dawned clear, Eisenhower told troops: “You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you.”

1,900 Allied bombers attacked German lines, dropping seven million pounds of bombs that day.

10,521 combat aircraft flew a total of 15,000 flights, with 113 lost.

The naval bombardment was delivered by seven battleships, 18 cruisers, and 43 destroyers.

By the evening of June 6, 20,000 vehicles and 150,000 soldiers were in place on French soil to begin pushing German forces all the way back to Germany, leading to the merciful end of the war in 1945.

50,000 German troops were in place to counteract the invasion, but several things hampered them.

For one, the Germans were deceived by a fake army of dummy camps, planes and tanks built further up the English coast at  Kent and Essex, leading the Germans to figure on an invasion at Calais.

For a second, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. the man in charge of defending German holdings in northern France from any invasion, was not around. His staff told him that the English Channel was far too rough for a landing, so he was in Germany, celebrating his wife’s 50th birthday.

And for a third, Adolf Hitler, Chancellor and Fuhrer of Germany, was also back home, sound asleep, and his aides so feared waking him that they let him sleep in, which severely delayed getting additional troops sent in. 

Nice work, dummkopfs. Thanks!

And speaking of using dummies...Eisenhower and his men were truly geniuses, thinking of everything as they planned. On the morning of the 6th, as the invasion began, they had planes flying over other locations, dropping DUMMY paratroopers to convince the Germans that the invasion was taking place elsewhere.

Oh for the days when brilliance and fortitude saved the world!

If you have a spare minute today, think a minute today about what it felt like for all involved, from the newest private to Eisenhower, to know that failure would have cost the world its freedom, and think of the men invading that beach, and be glad they did, and mourn those lost.

How do you say "float" in French?

Yesterday we talked about California real estate, and it's only fair to talk about home sales on the east coast, up a couple miles from here in the land our ancestors called "New Jersey."

There is lots of beachfront up there, and last summer their soon-to-be former governor, Chris "Chris" Christie, parked himself on some of it while the beaches were closed to hoi polloi during a budget shutdown. To make up for his oafish gauchery, C "C" C treated the world to an untrammeled view of his thighs.

 

Five summers before that, lovable "Chris" got into hot salty water with his own party for the unpardonable offense of working with a president from the other party to obtain federal funding for his residents and businesses who suffered such terrible damages from Superstorm Sandy.

In fact, they are still dealing with some of that damage, and with hurricane season just beginning again, it's always best to be prepared.

Another Sandy beach tale bobbed to the surface recently across the big pond.  Diane Turton, a realtor in Brielle, New Jersey, had a "FOR SALE" sign on a house in that seaside town when Sandy hit in 2012. The original sign blew out to sea in the winds and the rain...and it just came up for air (or wine) in Bordeaux, France, the other day.

A man by the name of Hannes Frank was beachcombing and found the remnants of the sign, which was possibly used as a surfboard for "les poissons" over there in Bordeaux.


"Having our signage wash up in France on the beach truly proves that Diane Turton, Realtors is a global real estate company," the realtor claimed on Facebook.

Perry Beneduce, the firm's marketing director, and a man who is ever so grateful that his parents chose not to name him "Danny," said that M. Frank sent him photos from France, one of which we proudly share here. 

I guess they replaced the sign that floated off; the house was sold in May, 2013, and if that sign could talk, oh what stories it could tell!

I'm changing my name to "Tony Laguna"

Any realtor (they love it when you put a capital "R" on that, but now, I mean, really, nuclear physicists, brain surgeons, and third-base coaches don't get uppercased) will tell you that the three things that matter are:

1. Location
2. Location
3. Location

and any speech teacher will say "locution, locution, locution..."

But if location is what matters to you, and you wish to live just five blocks from the majestic Pacific Ocean in tony Laguna Beach, California, well, sir, do I have the place for you.

And how does this sound? You'd be living on Lombardy Lane near Anita Street (I think she was in my Spanish class in 9th grade) in the fashionable Cheney's Point neighborhood.

I always thought that Cheney's Point
could be covered by a cowboy hat.

You shouldn't plan to take all your stuff with you - those old surfing magazines will have to go to Goodwill - because this house is a liiiiiiiittle on the cozy side.  It's 595 square feet total, inside.

But it was built in 1941, back when they really knew how to install plumbing and electricity, so you have that going for you. Your new love nest has no air conditioning, but you have that indescribable sea breeze coming in from just five blocks away, so who cares?

Here it is...




You'll need to contact the listing agent, Gary Boisen of Surterre Properties, who wants you to know that it has been in the same family for nearly 50 years.  And as a caveat to all emptors - don't plan to tear it down and rebuilt; you'll never it get through code approval.

If you're sitting down in some much larger abode right now, I'll tell you the asking price.

$998,900.

What's a million dollars when you'll be right at the beach?

Sunday Rerun: If a farmer eats at a restaurant and takes the leftovers home, is that farm-to-table-to-farm?

When no one was looking, restaurant owners came up with a new term for their cuisine..they said, "Let's call it Farm To Table, and then people will figure that the string beans they are eating were hanging on a pole in some farmer's back yard three hours ago.


Listen, I know there is a diffy-diff between fresh chow and something that has Libby's Libby's Libby's on the label label label. Why, young barefoot Mark would run to the back 40 and grab corn off the stalk, shucking it on the way back to the house, once the water was boiling in the big stockpot, so when I gobbled corn on the cob back then, the corn was as fresh as could be.  That was the great thing about the life in the real Farmville...our house bordered a big farm and we were able to get corn and berries and melons and pay the farmer at his stand down by the church on Sundays. 


You will never get that much flavor out of a can or frozen bag o'corn.


And beyond certain curiosities such as New York City eateries being able to offer "local" honey because there is a certain goodness from the pollen gathered in Central Park and all those high-rise flower pots on the Lower East Side, all that gourmet grindage you enjoy at Chez Quis comes from somewhere. Assuming that the lumps in your crabcake did not come from the chef's crabtraps on Middle River, does it matter if they are lumps from Carolina or Florida or elsewhere?


It didn't take long for a reporter from the Tampa Bay Times to investigate the claims of farm-to-tableness and find many of them bogus.


My thing is, having heard so many stories about diners substituting cutout circles of shark for scallops (and this is really awful when they use a pool shark!) or lobster bisque that is totally devoid of lobster, just serve me what I order and don't try faking me out by claiming it's local or never frozen or never canned. 

And, yes, please, I will need a go-box.

The Saturday Picture Show, June 2, 2018

This was a crowd gathered in Baltimore, fifty years ago this coming week, to say goodbye to Robert F. Kennedy as the slain senator and presidential candidate was carried to his grave by train.

You've seen this sign before, but not looking like this. The city of Las Vegas, improbable home of a pro hockey team that in its first year is in the finals for the Stanley Cup, changed their welcome sign to all lower case letters because their Golden Knights are playing the Washington CAPS!

I saw this and thought it was a bowl of hominy, but no, it's sodium chloride, what my native people call "NaCl." Take that with a grain of salt.

As jolly as these gummy bears may appear, I'd chew on tar before I'd eat one. But I know a lot of people love them!

Almost every week here, I find a use for a quote attributed to Yogi Berra, who may have been the first to dispense the wise advice, "If you come to a fork in the road, take it."

We've had a week of intense humidity and rain, and I remind you that all we have to do is suffer through June, July, August, September, and October and then November will be here.

This week's "What the heck is THAT?" picture is a high close of a favorite treat served with butter and syrup and sausage and bacon and Leggo My Eggo!

My God, Martha! Run for your life! I-I-It's ALIVE!!!!!

Across the sea

We saw and marveled at the courage and the agility of a Malian immigrant in France who saved a 4-year-old boy from falling to a likely death from his apartment balcony.

Let's face it; a lot of people would have wanted to climb the outside of the building to save the little boy.  But wanting to do and doing are two different things, and that's why Mamoudou Gassama was there, placed by heaven to keep the little boy from arriving in heaven long before his time.

Now they're calling Gassama "Spider-Man" with good reason.

He had been across the street watching a football (soccer) game on tv when he saw the boy hanging from the balcony, and decided to help. “I ran. I crossed the street to save him,” he told French President Emmanuel Macron. “When I started to climb, it gave me courage to keep climbing. God helped me, too," he said. “Thank God I saved him.”

Once again, France demonstrates how people should be treated. Macron granted Gassama French citizenship, gave him a certificate of bravery and dedication, and appointed him to a firefighter job.

Meanwhile...where was the father of this 4-year-old? Well, it seems that the father, as yet unidentified, had left the apartment and was playing Pokemon Go.

The rescue

First, he left to go shopping, and on the way home was distracted by getting into chasing those stupid Pokemon people around the streets of Paris while his son's life literally hung in the balance. Chief Paris prosecutor François Molins said that the father has been charged with "failure to meet parental obligations." 

Macron and Gassama

"The father left the apartment (to go) shopping and then decided to play Pokemon Go in the street which took a little time before he returned home,” Molins said, adding that a window had been left open, which allowed the boy access to the balcony.

The father could be sentenced to two years in jail when he appears in court in September. The child has been placed in foster care. And the boy's mother, according to Molins, couldn't be bothered with taking care of the child because she was visiting France's Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean.

Some things are universal. Heroism, valor, parental neglect. The world would be better to be more like Gassama.

Pokemon Go, for crying out loud. An adult neglecting a child to play a child's game, for crying out loud.