Fore!

I have a question.  Actually, I have a lot of questions, but there is one on my mind today, and it concerns golf.

Everyone is all up in arms (another question: where do we get THAT expression?) because at the British Open golf game on Sunday, someone hollered while Tiger Woods was swinging his golf club to hit a golf ball.

Here's the video of the crime scene:

I have watched it 129 times now and I still don't get it. Athletes will tell you that they thrive by focusing on the task at hand: catching a football with 2 people and 4 arms all up in your face, catching a fly ball while wondering if you are about to run into an unpadded outfield wall at full tilt, sinking a free throw to win a basketball game, standing in the batter's box while a man 60' 6" inches away throws a ball at you at a speed of around 98 miles an hour and attempting to hit said ball.

I will share with you some of the irate tweets that irate tweeters twittered:

JL@Bewm24

Whoever yelled during Tiger’s backswing on the 18th tee basically just declared war on America

1:31 PM - Jul 22, 2018

And we see people doing all these things all the time at games everywhere, from little kids to big professionals, with success and great acclaim.

Ben Marsh@b_marshy_

Yelling in the backswing of Tiger Woods is absolutely blasphemous and that guy should go to jail

1:23 PM - Jul 22, 2018

blas·phe·my

ˈblasfəmē/

noun

1. the act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things

So, here is your chance to explain to me why there must be absolute silence while people play golf (not to mention tennis, where the shibboleth against uttering anything louder than a meek sigh is enforced by a strike force of security guards wearing polo shirts and shorts). I mean, Tiger Woods is the one who decides when to swing at the consarned golf ball. He's not waiting for someone to throw something at him; he's the one to swing when he wants to, and he should be focusing on hitting the ball, not worried about what someone is hollering. And this is not just a Tiger thing; every golfer expects surgical quiet.

I've seen grocery cashiers, police officers, firefighters, teachers, truck drivers, and people in dozens of other occupations perform their work quite well with all manner of hollering, screaming, things being thrown at them, and a myriad of other distractions, and it's part of the game.

1. 1. jeremy skeens‏ @tr1gun 17h17 hours ago

      Replying to @_MarcusD2_

      that person should be banned from golf FOREVER

      0 replies0 retweets4 likes

       

       

       
2. 1. Gary L. Hinton‏ @Coach_Hinton 18h18 hours ago

      Replying to @_MarcusD2_

      Who ever screamed is a real horses' ass. This man has been working to overcome a lot. Rooting for him or against people need to respect the effort. Enough said.

      0 replies0 retweets3 likes

       

       

       

I know I will hear from golfers, tennis players and their fans to tell me why speaking out loud at these events is as awful as hollering "Baba Booey!" during a church service. Please tell me the difference between a golfer addressing a ball and a baseball player swinging at a ball with 45,000 fans howling and an organ playing and people doing The Wave.

Disregarding safety

When investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrive at the scene, you know at least two things right off: there has been a tragedy, and humans could have prevented it.

This latest disaster, on the waters of Table Rock Lake near the Missouri tourist town, Branson, is just stunning to me.

31 people got on the Ride the Ducks Branson amphibious vessel as a storm approached, and then a thunderstorm came along, swamping the boat. The boat sank and only 14 of those passengers survived.

Predictably, Jim Pattison Jr, president of the parent company for Ride the Ducks Branson, said the storm “came out of nowhere.”

But it did not come out of nowhere.  The storm was literally on the radar for hours last Thursday, but the boat company either did not pay attention to the meteorologists who had been tracking the storm for hours, giving all hands plenty of time and warning, OR they received the warning and said the devil with it, let's take a chance and not miss out on the revenue.

I would be horrified to find the latter to be true.  But who knows?

“[T]his indirect blaming of meteorologists was old a decade ago and is completely inappropriate in this particular situation,” blogged Mike Smith, a retired meteorologist and former AccuWeather executive. 

The National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm watch, predicting conditions favorable for dangerous storms in the region, at 11:20 a.m. That was almost eight hours before the storm arrived. Included in the watch was the caution of  “widespread damaging winds likely with isolated significant gusts to 75 mph possible.”

The NTSB is investigating, and say it might take as long as a year to get all the facts.

In the meantime comes information from people who know of such things that these duck boats were built to be amphibious military landing crafts, not a conveyance for almost three dozen people on a pleasure cruise. Their very construction makes them easy to breach, and the canopy on top, so helpful in keeping the sun and rain off the riders, serves to trap people aboard a sinking duck boat.

The saddest thing of all, and I know I harp on this every summer, is that people boarding the duck were told they would not need life preservers. The Law, in its infinite wisdom, does not require them.

And one of the people who left shore in a boat from the marina to try to rescue these 17 souls said that when he got to the site of the accident, there was nothing there at all...except for life jackets, unused, ironically floating on the lake.

Sunday Rerun: Voldemort is not a large city in Maryland

It's just me talking, but I am not a Harry Potter fan.  I don't think that all the inconveniences in life can be solved by casting spells, and speaking of spell, I wish that people would learn to! Muggles and mugworts and people named Petunia do not exist in the real world, and even as a kid, I was all about learning facts, not imagining how great it would be to be at Gryffindor.  

But hey!  If you're into it, it's fine.  When we started reading in elementary school, I went right for books about history and the wars and the presidents.  Other kids were reading novels and short stories, and today's kids still do, which has made Joanne "J.K." Rowling, author of all those Harry Potter books, a very very rich woman over in England.

But it was charity that made her a rich woman, no longer very very rich.  Sure, she made a pretty bundle, but high British taxes and her penchant for making charitable donations ($160 million and counting) pulled her off the Forbes magazine billionaire list.

I know we live in a world where one of Warren Buffett's deal snags him $8 per second, and a senator's daughter makes $18 million a year for denying lifesaving medicine to people.  

But giving $160,000,000 to people in need is the better way to go. Not saying that Warren Buffett isn't similarly generous, but the point is, I think that life gives us gifts and opportunities. It's what we do with them that counts. For example, Ms Rowling has the ability to come up with these story ideas and weave her tales into books that people want to read and movies that people want to go see.  

But she's not about to sit in some castle, counting golden coins and hiring someone to walk ahead of her strewing rose petals in her path (that was Mick Jagger) or feeding her dogs Kobe beef sauteed in truffle butter. You know how they ask for a dollar at the supermarket checkout to fight childhood diseases now and then?

Imagine shelling out a dollar 160 million times!

Good for her.  And Ms Rowling, don't feel too bad.  I'm not on the billionaire list either.

The Saturday Picture Show, July 21, 2018

I'm starting to see these Little Free Libraries here and there and I think it's a cool idea - just a little box where people can drop off (or take) books for free! This is a deluxe model with lights, no less!

 Yes! We boomers can do anything! Except spell "guerrilla."

The guy who invented the hammock had me in mind. Anyplace where a nap can be enjoyed is a good place in a pretty garden.

We always heard the Romans had a very advanced culture, but until this long-lost photograph surfaced in a recent archeological dig, we had no idea that they had a fully-functioning mass transit system! Or cameras.

July 1946. I like to picture people on beaches all across America in that first post-WWII summer, looking for 2 square feet of beach to plant themselves and read the latest New Yorker.

This is an abandoned train in Siberia. I wonder what happened here. Did they just quit running the whole railroad and walk away, or what?

You younger people don't know the joy we used to get every fall when we had to switch over to snow tires for pleasurable winter driving, and then when it snowed, we needed chains anyway. This is actually a photo of a car tire with a set of chains being installed by a very tiny mechanic.

So the urge to run out into the streets to celebrate when other people win some athletic competition is worldwide. This is Paris, the City Of Lights, where people set fires because France won the World Cup.

"Be sure you're right, then go ahead"

It's summertime in Baltimore, hon, and that means hot, humid days and late afternoon thunderstorms, which means creeks will rise and flood roadways.

And that means that someone will try to drive their car down a road where the water's a-risin', and need to be rescued.

At right is the photo from the TV helicopter which hovered overhead as firefighters rescued the unidentified driver on Philadelphia Rd in Cowenton on Tuesday. Please. Listen to the people who tell you "Don't drown, turn around!"

It's usually someone in a 4-wheelin' SUV who is pretty sure the guy at the Dodge dealership told him his Durango came equipped with water wings who thinks that cars can ford streams just like it's a Marky Mark movie.  People who drive through water get a cold shower of their own when they find out how expensive it will be to overhaul an engine, electrical system and transmission that were recently baptised by muddy waters.

Think! Think twice!

A little farther from home, up in Wisconsin, a woman was riding a bicycle and came to the Menasha Drawbridge.  The lowered barriers and red flashing lights did not seem to faze her in any way. She must have seen The Blues Brothers movie that very afternoon, because she took the notion that she could Evel Knievel that gap on her Schwinn.

If you haven't seen the video, it's right here.  And the story said that she failed to notice that the draw was cranking UP when she kept on pedaling and fell into the gap.

She was luckier than smart, for sure, because onlookers raced to help her and the bridge operator said "Whoa Nellie!" to the bridge (I happen to know that bridge operators address their bridges in that manner) and got it to stop.

Progress is our most important product, as General Electric used to say in their commercials, but sometimes, it's a good idea to look down the road a bit before progressing on. You want to make sure there even IS a road to take!

The 37-year bicyclist was treated at a local hospital for facial injuries and damage to her pride.

Coin Toss

I really get upset when people knock the police, because I have found over the years that the overwhelming majority of them are dedicated public servants who just want to do their job, help people, keep the laws enforced as well as they can until they get the perpetrator to court and everything goes to hell, and also go home after their shift.

And it goes without saying that most of us don't have to worry about getting killed while working. The average grocery clerk doesn't have to make split-second decisions about life and death, and they make almost as much money as police do.

But there I go, generalizing, and that's what I'm talking about. Yes, to be sure, police make mistakes. They are human. And there are mistakes made when dealing with citizens who are not at their most rational. Add weapons and anger and diminished lack of clarity because of alcohol, drugs and mental challenges, and that's when things go sideways.

And as I write this, I am envisioning police that I know reading it, and police haters that I know reading it. Everyone knows someone who hates police because they got a ticket 17 years ago, right?

And I think that there is one case in which all of us can find agreement, and that's the deal with these two women from Georgia, officers who had stopped a woman who was speeding (85 in a 45-mph zone!). The officers then discussed what to do with the woman and decided to haul out a coin-flip app to determine her fate.

Brown (l) and Wilson

In case you hadn't seen this on the news, I'll say it again: these officers had a woman who was driving at approximately twice the legal posted speed, flouting the law and placing all others on that road in tremendous peril, and they play a game to decide whether to give her a ticket or take her into custody.

Sarah Webb is the driver in question; she told these officers she was late for her job at a hair salon as an excuse for speeding. The police involved are Officer Courtney Brown and Officer Kristee Wilson. Brown said she did not have speed detection equipment and Wilson said she was on patrol without her ticket book, but between the two of them they decided to pull out the coin flip app and see what that told them to do.

They arrested Ms Webb and charged her with speeding, reckless driving and driving too fast for conditions, but after the game the officers played with her came to light, the charges were dropped.

"These are people who are supposed to protect us, and instead are treating our freedom and our lives like games," Webb, 24, told NBC News. "It’s disgusting. It’s scary to think police officers do stuff like this."

Roswell Police Chief Rusty Grant has launched an internal investigation and placed both officers on paid administrative leave.

"This isn't a police procedure, to bring a coin flip — whether it's an app or an actual coin toss — that’s not part of that decision making to decide to take someone's freedom," Grant said, adding that the officers'  behavior is not representative of the standards of the Roswell Police Department. "I have much higher expectations of our police officers and I am appalled that any law enforcement officer would trivialize the decision making process of something as important as the arrest of a person," he said.

Webb said she's not satisfied with the officers being put on administrative leave, which she called "a paid vacation."

"I would like to see them fired, because they shouldn't have been playing with my freedom on a flip of a coin," she said.

 And I'm not satisfied, because we have a case of a woman driving like a homicidal maniac, and she is beating the charge because the officers handled the arrest so poorly.

And I'm not satisfied either, because this misbehavior just gives the police critics more to chew on.

As I'm sure their chief will point out, police work is serious business every minute, and if he allows them to continue their employment, they need to work hard to show that they get that.

Where the auction is

I collect old LIFE magazines, Baltimore Colt and Oriole memorabilia, and the occasional bit of ephemera, such as a Blue Öyster Cult guitar pick and some Japanese WWII Navy equipment my Dad brought home (don't ask.)

World War II was the saddest time, the darkest days in our history, and yet, there is interest in things once used by Adolph Hitler. People who should be ashamed of themselves instead are wearing Nazi regalia and lining up to see Hitler's car in a carnival.

And, apparently there is a market here for underwear that once was worn by Adolph Hitler and his wife of 36 hours, the delightful Eva Braun.
That fun couple really knew how to do it up under their forbidding Nazi regalia!

I'm sitting here trying to figure out why someone shelled out $4,000 for a pair of lacy purple panties that Braun once wore. I mean, really. I can't imagine. But that's the fee they brought at auction.

And now someone has paid $5,000 for Adolph Hitler's underwear, boxer shorts to be exact about it. They really look like a strait jacket for the nether regions of the most murderous madman ever to do evil on earth.

The drawers were left behind in April of 1938, after the Fuhrer stayed for a few says at the Parkhotel Graz in Austria. I'm sure this has happened to even those of us who didn't have our minds occupied with plans to kill six million people soon. That madcap Adolph probably had a hard time getting his suitcase closed, the hotel towels were so fluffy, and when he saw the draws still on the bed, he probably said, "Scheiß die Wand an," German for "The hell with it."

In case you wanted to know, Adolph wore a size 39 waist in his boxers, which were made by the Schüler Company in Berlin. And his initials are embroidered near the fly, because you can imagine those sleepovers with Richard Glücks, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler getting wild, and no one wanted to be caught running Adolph's banana hammock up the flagpole at SS Headquarters as a prank.



The people who owned the hotel found the bloomers and kept them in a nice box, all wrapped up in tissue paper, for some eighty years before the novelty of owning this disgraceful fabric wore off, and they put it up for auction.

Some day I am sure I will understand parting with 5 G's that could have been used to help people in order to purchase Hitler's knickers. But that day is not today.

Splish Splash, I was not taking a bath

For years, until I had cataract surgery, I couldn't see much without my glasses, which mainly meant that I was grateful for the glasses.  But now that I can see at distance well enough to pass the driver's test and see the alarm clock from across the bedroom, I have plenty of time to see things more clearly.

I realize that most of you have never seen me take a shower, and that's been good for all of you. But it's quite a procedure. True to my OCD, the same bits get washed in the same manner in the same order every time. Then the thorough rinse, and I'm ready for another day as soon as I dry everything in the same order.

But not having to remember what to wash, and how and when, means I have plenty of time to think random thoughts, and just the other morning I was reliving the happy moment in May when ABC's "Good Morning America" dropped a major F-bomb.  We talked about it already and it just became another moment in the cavalcade of laughable Howard Stern events.

But this one could not be blamed on Stern. Unlike golf matches or other broadcasts that need to be livened up somehow, or newscasts that offer the chances for non-real spokespeople to speak up to people, this was just a case of ABC taking comments made by Howard and actress Gwyneth Paltrow (she likes to be identified as as "Oscar winner") about this loathsome Weinstein creature, and Howard said the nasty word, and ABC played it as part of their story, and Robin Roberts looked like it was the worst thing she had ever heard.

Well, the usual happened. The recriminations, the apologies, the reporter who did the story (Eva Pilgrim) is all of a sudden transferred to the London Bureau (don't know if that's a punishment or what) and you may be certain that memos were issued, oh yes, and manuals were updated and retraining was held and promises were extracted. Everyone who works for ABC - including the people who run the floor buffers at night - has now been told that THAT WORD is not to be said out loud.

Baba Booey! Baba Booey!

And here's the ah-hah moment that came to me as I lathered and slathered in the shower. The chances are that the technicians and editors who worked on that story, cutting the Stern clips to be used as part of the "package," are probably young, in their 20s or so.

And do you spend much time with people in their teens and 20s? Do you notice that they pepper their billingsgate with salty language like that all day and all night? Do you understand that they use that word with each other, in front of their parents, their co-workers, with literally everyone?  They're so used to saying it with impunity, without feeling like it's any worse than saying "the heck with it," that it's in the daily lexicon of younger people, and that's why I figure when these video editors got hollered at for not cutting it out, they sort of shrugged and looked at each other like, "What's the #(!@ing problem, dude?"

Either that, or an entire group of people went deaf at the same instant.

"Just like The Hunger Games, only fluffier!"

I like to imagine certain things that take place at certain workplaces. F'rinstance, every time I see a office with a sign that says "Furpenfloofer and O'Hoolahan, Attorneys at Law," I imagine it's someone's sad task to answer the phone with "Furpenfloofer and O'Hoolahan, how may I direct your call?" 147 times a day.

That can't be fun. And meetings! The worst part of any day. Man oh man, I dreaded having to go to meetings for my entire working career, so much so that I often fell asleep in them.

But one meeting that must have been interesting was held Friday for sure at the World Build-A-Bear Headquarters, the subject of which was "Just whose idea was it to hold a promotion for a day in July when all kids are out of school and have them show up at our stores with the promise that a four-year-old can make a teddy bear for four bucks?"

Because, you know what happened, and if you're older than four, you already knew what would happen with such an idea!

Predictably, the first step, after Thursday's debacle at mall after mall, which saw lines of sobbing kids and seething moms and dads queuing up for hours for a bear they would never get to make, was to trot the boss out on morning television to eat a little unstuffed crow.

"I am sorry that we were not able to provide the service that we wanted," CEO Sharon Price John told Hoda Kotb and Willie Geist on the "TODAY" show.

"We are doing our very best and we are staying very focused on making sure that we do the best we can to make it right for people."

It seemed like a great idea, but the turnout was immense, with reports of people waiting on line for up to nine hours. By mid-afternoon, the company pulled the plug early over "crowd safety concerns."

"There was no way for us to have estimated the kind of impact, those kind of crowds,'' John said. "It far surpassed anything we ever could've known. We did see it wind up in social media, and we did put a notice out for people that we thought the lines could be long, and we worked with the malls, but it was beyond anything we could've ever imagined."

So, after waiting in line for hours all the way down by Auntie Anne's Pretzels and That Potato Place, kids did not get to make a bear, but did get to see harried managers handing out vouchers good for 15 dollars off a bear when they get around to returning.

Thursday's ill-fated deal was an offshoot of the company's popular "Count Your Candles" birthday program. which enables kids under 14 to "pay their age" to build a bear during their birthday month.

Even the British were disappointed

"If I could do it over, if there was a way to extend the day to just make sure that we service everyone, I would've loved to have seen everyone be able to get a bear, but it was the sheer amount of crowds and how much time we had in the day ... we couldn't possibly move everyone through the process,'' John told TODAY.

Ms John also said, "It's heartbreaking. I'm a mom of three, I know that the most disappointing moment is when a kid is super-excited and something doesn't happen."

I hope that some of the parents of the kids who stood in a mall on a beautiful summer day were able to remind the kids that life does not always work out the way we want it to, and someday they, too, will have jobs and meetings and bosses who want to know, "Whose screwy idea was this?"

Ain't life great?

Sunday Rerun: Got to cerebrate it

I'm always on the alert for changes in our language since Sarah Palin, former half-governor of Alaska tried to explain her use of "refudiate" by saying that English is a living language.

It won't be living for much longer, with people misusing it and then comparing themselves to Shakespeare.  And to noted wordsmith Geo. W. Bush, who coined "misunderestimate" for us.

But my friend Jennifer Lantz pointed out that there is a divide between the younger generation and, well, the, uh, older generation, in terms of the word "swag."

For reasons best known to themselves (I called Chris Brown to ask, but got no answer) the younger set uses "swag" when they mean "swagger" or "sharp appearance.  As in, "He showed up for his first day on the job rocking a lot of swag."

For those of us who were speaking English before it "b came OK 2 rite n e damn way u wanna," the word "swag" refers to the proceeds of an operation, with a hint that the operation was not quite on the up-and-up (burglary, piracy, embezzlement, bags full of bribe money handed to Spiro Agnew when we was vice-president of the United States.)  Add to that the fact that crooks and pirates tend to swagger around when they talk, and you can see how the words are being conflated.

I mean confl8ed. Sorry. That's the 411. TTYT.

Sunday Rerun: I guess that's why they call it the blues

The Saturday Picture Show, July 14, 2018

This picture reminds me of those memes you see all the time asking if you could live here for a year with no wi-fi and no cable, and I say, sure, because I would just spend all my time mowing the roof.

Redheads always have to put up with people coming up on them and running their hands through the scarlet mane "for luck." At least this fellow is going to raise money for cancer research. In fact, I would pay a buck just to avoid running through someone's hair.

I saw this and figured it was a collection of small pebbles from a beach, but no! It's dried beans that need to soak overnight in the big yellow bowl and get turned into bean soup!

TV's Ed O'Neill got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, accompanied by his two TV wives, Peg Bundy and Gloria Pritchett. Only Gloria seems to be happy to be there.

Lichtenstein Castle, Germany, where for centuries, people have wondered if they could have built it just a tad bit closer to the edge. Makes me wonder...

If you're from New Jersey, Philadelphia, Delaware or Baltimore, you know what this is. It's a Taylor Pork Roll sandwich with cheese and egg. Pork Roll, often referred to as "Taylor's Ham," is a regional treat that we enjoy five or six times a week here.

After we had a pork roll sammy for breakfast, we'd go to Hutzler's to shop. No Dupont T-64 polyster pants for me, though; I only like natural fabrics, but I'll take the BALTIMORE Colts pennant. And who else thinks that calling pants "slacks" sounds like you're about to put a Jackie Gleason record on the hi-fi and pour a highball?

Today is July 14, Bastille Day in France, commemorating the storming of the Bastille on this day in 1789, an event which signalled the beginning of the French Revolution. But getting through those walls proved to be difficult, because the prison walls had been fortified with the bastille they could find.

Feels like snow

I'm one of those nuts (and some would say the sentence could end right here) who insist on knowing about as many weather forecasts as I can read, hear, or see on television, because a) I'm always looking for a reason to plan to wear shorts  and b) I would hate to be the one standing in line at the Giant as a torrential downpour soaks our town, saying, "Gee! Were they calling for rain? I hadn't heard anything about it!"

So it's July, and a perfect time to begin planning for this winter's weather.

Are you sitting down?

Some projections are calling for a lot of snow this winter!

And you didn't even get a chance to turn your pajamas inside out!*

You see, they take the weather seriously in Washington, D.C. because an accurate forecast enables the president of the United States to plan all of his 496 annual golf outings without causing disappointment to his wife and son.  The newspaper down there, the Washington POST, has a weather team called the Capital Weather Gang, and they share three reasons for getting the snowblower in good working order by Thanksgiving.

1. The National Weather Service has posted an El Niño watch, calling for Señor Niño to be "weak to moderate" this winter. Doesn't sound like much, but 2/3 of the time when El Niño is weak to moderate, meteorologists around here are reaching for their yardsticks.
2. The Pacific Ocean is warming, which gives an extra boost to the jet stream, bringing in that delicious cold Canadian air that's a key ingredient to snowmaking. Even if we place a tariff on cold Canadian air on the grounds of national security...
3. The sun - that big old yellow skylight - is entering into a quiet period with reduced sunspots, and that means more high pressure zones in the high latitudes, which means colder air than normal in the Eastern US and Western Europe.

We've already had the longest day of the year, and soon the sun will set earlier, leaves will change to golden hues and fall in gentle piles, the air will turn crisp and even a bit chilly, and with any luck the snow will cover up all those unraked leaves, and pile up a foot or so and there will STILL be people running to Home Depot or the Lowe's to buy snow shovels, driveway salt** and windshield antifreeze.

 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
*Note to foreign readers: American schoolchildren hoping for snow (which will close schools!) go to bed at night with their pajamas on inside out, a superstition which is supposed to make it snow. Accuracy rate varies.
**Note to foreign readers: So avid are we to get in our cars and go during massive snowfalls that we treat our driveways to a coating of rock salt, so we can get in our cars, drive a block, and sit in a mammoth traffic jam because the roads are not nearly as well-plowed as our driveway.

Oh, Rochester!

Baseball used to be such a simple game, at least where the uniforms were concerned. 

The home team wore white and the visitors wore grey, because that saved them on laundry fees on the road. Really!

But then along came the multi-hued uniforms and things changed.

Meanwhile, someone came up with a brilliant idea.

Seeing that fans would shell out the money for the official caps and jerseys that the players wore, the team owners figured out that if a fan already had the white jersey and the grey jersey, there would be nothing to stop them from purchasing the orange "alternate" jersey and the black "alternate" jersey and the jersey with the pink logo for Mother's Day and the camo logo for Memorial Day and before you knew it, your closet was bulging with jerseys.

And the bank accounts of the owners were also bulging with jersey money, so it's all good.

And down in the minor leagues, anything goes. They will don most any crazy hat or shirt to get attention, and now the Rochester Red Wings, former AAA farm club of the Baltimore Orioles (currently affiliated with the Minnesota Twins) have partnered with the Seneca Park Zoo to celebrate the Naked Mole Rat.

Yes, fans, Monday, July 16 is "Naked Mole Rat" night at the ballpark, as 16 as part of their upcoming "Animals of the Savanna" Expansion coming in August.

The first 1,000 fans to mob the stadium will walk away that evening wearing Naked Mole Rat hats that show the little varmint curled around the side of the Red Wings "R".

The team will also be wearing the same caps, and they will be auctioned off to benefit the Seneca Park Zoo Society.

Besides just being so cuddly and adorable, there is a suspicion that Naked Mole Rats have in their genetic makeup extraordinary abilities to resist cancer and diseases related to old age.

And you have to figure, if there is anything more fetching than a baby NMR, it's an old one.

I need to go to Rhode Island!

Down here in Maryland, we don't know much about Rhode Island, except that it's our tiniest of the 50 states, and that Family Guy is filmed there, featuring a local family from Quahog with a brilliant baby, a talking dog, an idiot dad and a mayor who was once Batman.

Huh? It's a cartoon? Whaaaaa?

Well, alls I knows about Quahog, the town in which Family Guy takes place, is that they seem to have a great educational system, with a high school named in honor of local resident and one-time movie actor James Woods, and Buddy Cianci Junior High, named for the former mayor of Providence, R.I., who had to resign from office twice due to felony racketeering convictions.  Twice! That's a record for Baltimore politicians to aim for. I mean, anyone can be escorted out of the mayor's office in handcuffs once, but twice! Go Buddy!

He is gone, as a matter of fact, having passed away in 2016, but not before he got out of prison after four years and started a spaghetti sauce company. A friend of a friend got me a jar of his tomato gravy, and I have to say it was molto saporito! (Very tasty!)

Meanwhile, among the living, in North Providence, the mayor, Charles Lombardi, ordered Dr Anthony Farina to tear down a building Farina owns, claiming that it's a public health hazard, since it's filthy in hizzoner's opinion.

Farina is not a man who cares to be told what to do with the building he owns, but he did try to spruce things up a bit by painting the building, and hired Paul Morse to do just that.

Morse went to work and, at Farina's direction, painted a tribute to the mayor on the outside wall.



Morse told the local news,“I hope the mayor is not too mad at me.” 

NBC 10 contacted Mayor Lombardi, who was out of town and had not seen the magnificent mural, to see how he liked the artwork.

“He has the right to, you know, how I can say, ‘showcase,’ if you want to call it, his property. It doesn’t bother me," Lombardi replied.

“In a longstanding dispute with the doctor and some of his actions in the past, this doesn’t surprise me,” Lombardi told NBC 10.

“Good stuff,” says Morse, reaping the whirlwind of artistic notoriety.

There has been no further comment from Dr Farina, who seemingly wishes to let the painting he commissioned speak for him.

And the fight over whether the building should be demolished still goes on.

One last tidbit about Buddy Cianci: he claimed that the profits from the sales of his spaghetti sauce would go toward the education of children, but once the company went out of business, their ledgers showed a net profit of $3. No word on what they bought with it...maybe some paints to encourage future artistic endeavors in Rhode Island, a state that might be called "Baltimore In Miniature"?