Sunday Rerun: Sir Mixup a lot

My first name is Mark, which plays into this story because when my wonderful Peggy and I moved into the first version of what I call the Lazy 'C' Ranch, the good people at Verizon gave us a new phone number...one that had just previously been the number of a man named "Mark."

And in those pre-Caller ID days, I answered the phone every time it rang, and the conversation often went like this:

Me: "Hello?"
Caller: "Mark?"
Me: "Yes..."
Caller: "Why won't you let Charlene use the car to take the kids to the doctor?"

or: "You cheating bastarrrrrrrrrrrrd...did you really think you could fool everyone?"

Well. I don't try to fool anyone, and I am sorry, but I was not that Mark.  I have often wondered how that family drama all played out, but not for long.

Baby got the wrong #

But that memory helped me relate to Jonathan Nichols, a Seattle lawyer who went to the Verizon kiosk in a mall out there and got himself a new cell phone when he was going to law school.  They gave him the number that used to belong to Verizon customer and Seattle native Anthony Ray, who is best known to music fans, and anyone who has attended a wedding reception in the last 15 years, as Sir Mix-a-Lot, who gave us the unforgettable love ballad "Baby Got Back."

For instance.

Well, it didn't take too long before Nichols got a lot of calls from people he didn't know...calls from luxury car salespeople, sexts from women with callypigian buttockular regions who wished to have others see their rear view mirrors, offers for backstage passes...it went on and on.

He started replying to the calls and tests, telling people he was sure they wanted someone else, but it wasn't until August 12, which as we all know is Sir Mix-a-Lot's birthday, that he figured it all out.  

Dozens of texts and calls wishing Mix a happy birthday gave it away.

None of the articles I read on this mentioned what the phone number is; Nichols apparently still uses it. It's not 900-MIXALOT, though (I checked!)

Now kick them nasty thoughts.

The Saturday Picture Show, October 20, 2018

Trompe l'oeil is the French expression meaning "Fool the eye." It was first used in America in 1969 when I was attempting to convince my French teacher that I was really in her class in 7th period the day before, and not hanging around Gino's as reported by someone whose eyes were easily tricked. A lot of guys looked just like me! And now that term refers to a style of painting meant to fool you into thinking that a giant wasp is on your wall.

From far above, the Colorado River when it's cold.

Fans of the movie "Snakes On A Plane" starring the great Samuel L. Jackson were probably listening intently to the story this week of the gold prospector who fell into a mine in Arizona, breaking his legs and finding himself dealing with three rattlesnakes at the bottom of the shaft. This happened on a Monday, of course.

This would not make a morning great, to see this message on a passing freight car. But the other advisory is also interesting. Apparently, people were going around hammering on railroad cars to such an extent that the railroad bosses ordered decals for the cars ordering people not to do so. Hammer Time!

This week's free wallpaper takes us to the woods that look like a box of Froot Loops.

I had to do some digging to find out just that this is a picture of, and it turns out that it shows baby asterisks, just born and ready to be inserted into essays and photo shows all over.

Interesting. We had our first morning frost this week, and this shows how the sun melted off everything that wasn't in the shadow of the chair.

And with the first frost comes a reminder from the American Nose Warmer Council never to let your proboscis go uncovered!

Making Up For Shortcomings

I'm not about hunting, but if you're interested, go right ahead. It's your life; if you feel like shooting defenseless animals, be my guest, and please accept my firm and hearty disapprobation.

And I know a guy who goes out and reduces the deer population of Pennsylvania every autumn and then donates the venison to homeless shelters all over, so that's for the good.  What's for the bad is senseless killing, which brings us all the way to Africa by way of Idaho.

Blake Fischer, an Idaho Fish and Game commissioner (we're on a great skein here, with people whose names match their jobs) decided there weren't enough animals to kill for his liking in that state, so he oozed over to Africa and shot up the joint, bragging on social media of killing “at least 14 animals in Namibia*” including “a giraffe, leopard, impala, sable antelope, waterbuck, kudu, warthog, gemsbok (oryx) and eland.”

Seemingly unable to stuff his gigantic hubris into any normal-sized container, he went on, “I shot a Leopard. Super cool, super lucky. The Leopard is one of the big 5, as in one of the 5 animals in Africa that will kill you before you can kill it. Crazy cool animal. They are normally super nocturnal, so this was really unique.”

Well. You must be one proud Blake.

And when the complaints piled up faster than dead animal bodies, the governor who appointed him, Butch Otter (name!) happily accepted his resignation.  Of course, Fischer went the "this is not who I am" route:

“I recently made some poor judgments that resulted in sharing photos of a hunt which did not display an appropriate level of sportsmanship and respect for the animals I harvested. While these actions were out of character for me, I fully accept responsibility. … I apologize to the hunters and anglers of Idaho who (sic) I was appointed to represent.”

Baboons NOT killed by this Fischer person

Fischer sent a lot of photos in the mass email, showing himself and his wife, Beth, posing with numerous animals that were happily living until the Fischers arrived. Fischer chirped that this was Beth's first trip to Africa, according to the message, and she wanted to watch him and "'get a feel' of Africa."

"So I shot a whole family of baboons.  I think she got the idea quick." the email read. "After we left all of the animals in Africa that were still alive we pretty happy we were on a plane headed home!" (sic) (sick).

This hell of a man is proud of himself, and his online autobio says he is the owner of  B.A. Fischer Sales Co., Inc. in Boise. He says he is active in Big Brothers Big Sisters and was recently named Big Brother of the Year by BBBS. And he wants to address the decline in the number of people hunting. 

I'm not at all certain the world needs more Blake Fischer-types. But I do feel that Blake Fischer could use some emotional therapy.
_____________________________________________________
*Trump calls this nation "Nambia."

Tense matters

The world bade goodbye Monday to entrepreneur and investor Paul Allen,  cofounder of Microsoft with his high school buddy Bill Gates.

Allen was the "idea guy" of the personal computing empire while Gates was the man of action who brought those ideas to life. A college dropout, Allen was writing code for another computer firm when it dawned on him that every American - every everyone! - should have a computer at home, and one for the office, and one to operate the ordering system at restaurants, and, well, he knew before we did that  everything everywhere would be better off with a computer brain running it much better than ours can.

Allen resigned from the firm he named Microsoft in 1983, after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, in pursuit of other opportunities in business, music (he was known as an excellent guitarist), sports (he owned the NFL Seattle Seahawks and the NBA Portland Trailblazers),
research (he purchased a yacht called the Octopus for rescue and research missions. It was over 400 feet long and had two helipads, a pool, and its own two submarines) and developments geared toward getting the entire world online.
His philanthropy started foundations in medical research, visual and performing arts, community service, and forest preservation. Just this year, he invested $30 million in a homeless center in Seattle. In 2014, he spent $100 million to combat Ebola in West Africa.

Allen lived on Lake Washington's Mercer Island, near Seattle. Once estimated at around $40 billion, his fortune stood at around half that when he passed away on Monday. He never married. He lived in a 10,000 square foot mansion on Mercer Island in Washington state, among other dwellings around the world.

If you are reading this, you are still among the living, which Paul Allen, for all his goodness, for all his accomplishments, yea for all his money, cannot claim to be. Notice that everything above is in the past tense. We are in the present and we should enjoy being that way.

Rock and role

If you've been using an old rock as a doorstop, you might want to check and see it's actually a valuable old meteorite.

A guy in Michigan bought a farm "in Edmore, about 30 miles southwest of Mount Pleasant" (like that really helps me figure out where it is) in 1988, and he noticed a 22-lb rock holding open the kitchen door, and the farmer told him that it came to earth sometime in the 1930s, as did Elvis.  The farmer went on to say that he and his father dug out the big rock while it was still warm, and put it right in the kitchen, where it stayed except for all the days when his kids took it to school for Show And Tell.

So after having the rock underfoot for 30 years, the owner sent it off to Mona Sirbescu, a geology professor at Central Michigan University, who has been asked to verify dozens of rocks over the years for meteorite status.

"For 18 years, the answer has been categorically 'no' -- meteor wrongs, not meteorites," Sirbescu says, but when she saw this little boulder, "I could tell right away that this was something special."

It's a meteorite, all right, 88.5% iron and 11.5% nickel. This hunk holds the proud status of being the sixth-largest recorded meteorite ever found in Michigan. 

Professor Sirbescu says this is "the most valuable specimen I have ever held in my life, monetarily and scientifically," and that it's likely worth over $100,000, now that the Smithsonian Institution verified a slice of it as being the real deal.

Now there might be a bidding war for the boulder, as the Smithsonian and a mineral museum in Maine are both considering purchasing the meteorite for display, according to CMU. The owner promises to give 10% of the loot to the university for the study of earth and atmospheric sciences.

In other news, I had a relative whose kitchen door was held open by a big rock. He had it checked. The rock was worthless, but it turned out the door was worth a fortune!

"Mediocre" is a mediocre word

All except the most hidebound and unlettered among us admit by now that there must be something to this climate change talk.  And even though the head of the EPA - the Environmental Protection Agency - doesn’t believe carbon dioxide is the primary reason for climate change (which it is), he is just playing to the philistines. You get the impression that deep down, he knows there's a good reason for those nagging sea levels and water temperatures.

Wagner

But up in Pennsylvania dwells a man named Scott Wagner, a state senator running for the governor's seat. Wagner made his bundle hauling other peoples' bundles away; he owns and operates trash hauling businesses. Which is fine.  What isn't fine is that when asked about his opinions on climate change at a candidate forum, he replied, “We have more people. You know, humans have warm bodies. So is heat coming off? Things are changing, but I think we are, as a society, doing the best we can.”

So, to sum up, Scott Wagner attributes climate change to all the hot sweaty people on Earth. And he believes the earth is moving closer to the Sun.

It feels like it in August.

At one of his campaign stops, Rose Strauss, a young woman studying Earth Sciences asked Wagner, "You've said that climate change is a result of people's body heat, and are refusing to take action on the issue. Does this have anything to do with the $200,000 that you have taken from the fossil fuel industry?"

And Wagner's answer came back:

"Well, I appreciate you being here. You're 18 years old. You know, you're a little young and naive. But are we here to elect a governor or elect a scientist? Okay? I'm here to be the governor. I appreciate - and I understand - the question. But I have one for you, Rose."

And then he went on to discuss water quality of the Susquehanna River, without posing the promised question.

Talk like that reminds me of the good old days of 1970, when Richard Nixon nominated a third-rate jurist to the Supreme Court.

(The more you learn about history, the more you see it repeating itself, you know what I'm saying to you here?)

The Supremes

The dud judge was G. Harrold Carswell. Nixon tried to put Carswell on the Court after Clement Haynsworth, his first choice to replace Abe Fortas as one of The Supremes, did not attain Senate approval. But Carswell was also found wanting for reasons of a 58 percent reversal rate of his decisions as a district court judge, and his support for racial segregation and white supremacy when he had run for the Georgia legislature in 1948. He also opposed women's rights (no surprise.)

Hruska

But in the Senate hearings on the Carswell matter, Senator Roman Hruska (R, Neb) responded to charges that Carswell was at best a mediocre judge with words that ring even yet today in my ears:

Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.

It may well have been that people in power felt that way for years and years, but not until Hruska admitted it did one of the 100 people in the US Senate come out and admit that Velveeta was just as good as Stilton, a couple of kids with harmonicas were up there with a Haydn string quartet, and a cheap backstreet affair was a parallel to true love.

Mediocrity is its own punishment, and not to be settled for if at all possible. No, we can't always have the best, but we suffer for not striving for it.

Deeeeelightful!

The worst type of
country music ever

I wrapped up my radio days doing the overnight show at WPOC in Baltimore, and this was in 1983, when country music still had at least a tiny tinge of country left. Sure, there was the evil Dave and Sugar influence, but George Jones and John Anderson and Hank Williams, Jr, and Ronnie Milsap were still making hits in those days, and I actually enjoyed listening to those songs all night long, waiting for sunrise over Hampden.


One of the bigger hits that spring was by a band called Alabama.Those guys were a money machine for RCA Records back in those days, cranking out hit after hit after hit. Their tune "Dixieland Delight" was outside the norm for country songs. Sure, it was all about going out "On a Tennessee Saturday night
Couldn't feel better
I'm together with my dixieland delight
Spend my dollar
Parked in a holler 'neath the mountain moonlight
Holdin' her up tight
Make a little lovin'
A little turtle dovin' on a Mason Dixon night
It's my life
Oh so right
My dixieland delight..."

But there was a fiddle finale and a change in tempo at the end of the record, which was not the norm then.

Well, now, even though the lyrics mention going out in the mountain moonlight on a Tennessee Saturday night, the song became a fourth-quarter favorite at the Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where the U of Alabama Crimson Tide entertains their fans, 101,821 at a time. The stadium sound system would play the song, and every would sing the lyrics exactly as performed by the band on the record, and all was well.  Good night!

Well, no.

It got to where the fans sang along, and added war cries about the opponents, things along the lines of "The heck with Auburn!" and "We don't care for Clemson any which way."  And then it got even saltier, so much so that they haven't even played the record since the Auburn game of 2014, in which Alabama was able to eke out a 55-44 win. They stopped playing "Dixieland Delight" because profanity was raining down from the stands on an Alabama Saturday afternoon!

But Alabama's Athletic Director, Greg Byrd, told the kids that they would play the song again, and if you were watching Saturday night, you heard the stands rocking to the song as the Tide rolled over Missouri, 39-12.  It took appeals from Byrd, running back Damien Harris, Coach Nick Saban’s wife, Terry Saban, and the student body president to get promises from fans just to sing the the “Dixieland Delight Done Right” lyrics: “ROLL TIDE” and “BEAT AUBURN, AND LSU, AND TENNESSEE TOO.”

Big Al, the mascot, lives in Alabama, where the Tuscaloosa.

From all I've heard, there were no major outbreaks of scurrility or obscene language among the faithful, and that would mean that a precious tradition has been restored.

And for other colleges seeking to engender a little enthusiasm in the stands, Alabama (the band) had dozens of other hits for you to play. If the score of your game is a bit too tight for comfort, how about "The Closer You Get"?  or if your team makes a big comeback, you could salute them with "Can't Keep A Good Man Down"!

Meanwhile, Roll Tide, I say! 

Sunday Rerun: Playing the library card

There is a town in Texas, a state that seems to pride itself, with the exception of the good citizens of Austin, on becoming a barren land of howling lunatics, called White Settlement.

In 2010, the White Settlement Public Library, in need of cheap rodent control, hired a kitten right out of the local animal shelter. They named him "Browser," this docile grey tabby, and put him to work at once.

He must have been doing a fine job de-mouseulating the joint, and he was happy as a cat in a library until July, when some city hall worker got all worked up because he was told he could no longer bring his puppy to work.

Kwik Kwiz: What did the aggravated city employee do about being told he couldn't bring Poochie Dog to work?

a) he stopped bringing the dog to work and went back to work with renewed vigor and enthusiasm

b) he whined that the people at the library were allowed to have a cat

Elzie (you can see where his cowboy
hat mashed his hair down)

Of course he a) didn't and b) did. And this unnamed local drone got the matter before the White Settlement City Council, and during a meeting which surely rivaled the Philadelphia Congress sessions of 1776, the matter of Browser's continued residency at the libes was taken to a vote.

Only one councilperson, one Elzie Clement, 
 was catty enough to vote for giving Browser the gate. The others weren't feline like sending him back to the shelter, which is paid for by the city kitty.

Now, Mayor Ron White (not the comedian) (I guess) says Browser’s job title is now "Library Cat for Life."

"Browser is still employed and will be as long as he wishes to continue his duties as mascot and reading helper for the children at the library," White said.

(Not to mention his Mickey-hunting duties.)

Hizzoner the Mayor says he's getting litterboxes full of mail and messages for all over with support and offers to adopt Browser.

So it's a happy story all around, and, master storyweaver that I am, I saved the best for last:

Elzie Clements is a councilman no more, having been defeated in a landslide.

Meow.

The Saturday Picture Show, October 13, 2018

I've been ready for fall since spring! Now I've found the pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow.

It must be a great feeling for a home canner to see the pantry all stocked up for the winter.

I suppose that down in the southwestern US, they don't have the chance to see fall leaves turn to pretty colors, as we do. But they have rainbow cacti.

How many of us have felt like this duck early in the morning?

I remember reading that it would only take five CVS register receipts to reach the moon. Here's someone who turned theirs into a nice snug scarf.

Multicolored outdoor lights! There's nothing cooler EXCEPT snow-covered multicolored outdoor lights!

Cool as it might be to live in this mountainside A-frame house, I would really have loved to see it being built!

If you look at advertisements from the olden days, it seemed that very few Americans WEREN'T walking around stinky, with bad breath and unruly hair. Fortunately, someone invented soap, toothpaste, and Brylcreem hair goo.

Sweets for the sweet

If it's October, it's time to get the candy for the kids who may or may not show up at your door for Halloween!

It's a shame that we can't bake cookies or brownies or make homemade treats of any sort for the kids, but tampering incidents in the past have made people too wary of anything unless it's manufactured and sealed in a factory far away. A real shame, it is.

So you give out candy or you sit inside watching "Law and Order: SVU" in the dark, hoping that no one will knock on the door. If you choose to go the candy route, again, there are two choices:

• Get the candy you like, the good stuff, that kids will like. This way, if you have leftovers, you have candy all winter, so when you come in from shoveling the driveway, you can grab a Snickers and munch away.
• Get the candy you don't like, so that when you have leftovers, you can take it to work and leave it on the desk in the reception area. The bonus here is that you get to see that person from Accounting - the one suspected of pilfering lunches in the break room - gobbling an Everlasting Gobstopper outside his cubicle.

I like to find and share this list every year about this time. CandyStore.com, a bulk candy delivering service, runs data from all the states and figures out the three most popular Halloween candies in each. They get the figures from candy manufacturers and distributors. 

Once again here in Maryland, the #1 candy is Milky Way. You'll find Reese's Cups in second place, and Hershey Kisses in third. Those first two spots are the same as last year, but in 2017, Blow Pops came in third.

I mean, really. Who wouldn't rather have a Hershey Kiss?

For the record, our favorite, Milky Ways, aren't even in the top 10 nationally.  They roll out this way:

Skittles
M&M's
Snickers
Reese's Cups
Starburst
Candy Corn
Hot Tamales
Hershey's
Tootsie Pops
Jolly Ranchers

And once again, the horrible candy corn ("neither candy, nor corn" - Lewis Black) sneaks into the top 10. I cannot explain some things.

Fizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Do you still drink soda?  Or pop, or whatever they call it where you live? Coke and Pepsi and Royal Crown and root beer and orange and grape and all their diet varieties?

I don't think they sell as much of that stuff as they used to, because that's why all of a sudden you see seltzer for sale, and man, do I love seltzer. No calories, no sugar, no sodium, just water with carbonation. You get that bubble-up tickle on the tongue and gullet without all the stuff that Coca-Cola crams in their cans: CARBONATED WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CARAMEL COLOR, PHOSPHORIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVORS, CAFFEINE.

Does anyone ever have LOW fructose corn syrup?

Who needs all that when you can have a seltzer, and for my money, store brand cheapo seltzer is just as good as the high-test brands, where they soak you for water.

Take the LaCroix brand. Never heard of it a few years ago, and now they are selling at the rate of nearly $1 billion a year, and tripling their profits to $149.8 million since 2015.

So of course, here come the lawsuits and the legal mishegas. First came the SEC (and in that case, that means the Securities and Exchange Commission, not the South Eastern Conference.) The SEC wanted to look at the cannery's sales "metrics," even though we are not on the metric system here.

And then came a lawsuit, claiming that LaCroix is fibbing when they say they are "all natural" and that their seltzers are full of “chemical compounds that have been adjudged synthetic and/or artificial by the Food and Drug Administration.” One ingredient, linalool, is “used as a cockroach insecticide,” the lawsuit says.

So that means you won't find a cockroach in your Pamplemousse.

Anyone who watches lawyer shows on television ought to find a new hobby knows that you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and anyone can file suit against anyone for any reason.

So just because someone filed a suit does not mean it's valid.

It turns out that the three ingredients mentioned in the lawsuit—linalool, limonene, and linalyl proprionate are derived from natural sources.

Remember, tobacco is a natural substance.

They squeeze Limonene from citrus peels. Some say it fights tumors. Linalool comes from more than 200 different species of plants, and we use it as a spice or scent.

How many times have you walked into someone's house and asked what the delightful aroma was, and they say "Linalool Candles!" ?

And Linalyl proprionate comes from kumquats and is therefore a hilarious word. It also might inhibit prostate cancer, and it's fun to say "kumquat."

The late mayor Rob Ford of Toronto
tried to drink Canada Dry.

So to sum it up, none of those three things are known to be harmful to humans, and while the people who study these things at USC agree that linalool is used as a pesticide, they also remind you that just because it will off a roach doesn't mean it will harm you.

National Beverage, makers of LaCroix, contest the lawsuit’s allegations.  “Natural flavors in LaCroix are derived from the natural essence oils from the named fruit used in each of the flavors,” the company said. “There are no sugars or artificial ingredients contained in, nor added to, those extracted flavors.”

I recall a certain person I know delivering to me a pithy lecture about the snack foods I enjoy and how harmful Cheez Doodles could be. The fact that he was hooving on a Marlboro at the time only added to my amusement.

Have a seltzer and a smile! It's the real thing!

On the wing

I've heard of Gilbert Bates (Beaver's friend), Gilbert Gottfried (former AFLAC duck voice), Gilbert Arenas (basketball player), and Irish singer Gilbert O'Sullivan, but I'm sure I'm not alone again, naturally, in saying that I've never heard of Gilbert, Minnesota.

But if you aren't seeing as many birds winging around your house these days, it might be because they are all flying up to Gilbert, MN, where the town cops report that birds are getting stewed on fermented berries.

Last week, the Gilbert PD went on Facebook to warn the public that they're receiving "reports of birds that appear to be 'under the influence’ flying into windows, cars and acting confused.”

Here is a robin noshing on a crabapple.

There was an early frost in Minnesota, and people are figuring that the berries got chilled and now are fermenting, and that makes them alcohol-ish.

The Washington Post talked to one Matthew Dodder, who calls himself a “bird guy” from Palo Alto, California, and he says you can spot a drunked-up bird by looking at the way they fly. (There is no such thing as a birdie breathalyzer.)

“They’ll be flying kind of erratically,” he said. “We typically see them flying lower than usual through traffic. They’re just careless and they’re not looking for cars or other obstacles.”

Dodder says robins, cedar waxwings and thrushes are just the types of  birds to get gerschuntken, since those are the berry-eaters up there. And he goes on: “They just get sloppy and clumsy. They have actually fallen out of trees on occasion.”

The Gilbert Police Department, which clearly has very few felonies or other major crimes to handle, says on Facebook that we can expect the birds to sober up soon, so there is no need to leave out mugs full of strong coffee for them.  In other words, please don't call 911 unless you see “Angry Birds laughing and giggling uncontrollably and appearing to be happy” or “Tweety acting as if 10 feet tall and getting into confrontations with cats.”

The Audobon Society recommends that you put decals on large windows to keep birds from flying into them.

This wonderful world. There's something for everyone.

It pays to live longer

I need to get to Missoula, Montana and have dinner at the Montana Club, where they have a special deal when it's your birthday: they give you your age off the bill, expressed as a percentage.  So let's say you turn 40 ("you turn 40"), and now let's say you tie on the feedbag at the club. Your salad, baked patootie and steak will be served with a savings of 40%!

So the older you get, the more you save at the Montana Club! A geezer such as I can really clean up, sure, but how about Helen Self?

She was 100 when she went for a birthday ride on a Harley.

At 108, she made the exclusive list of "the two oldest people in Montana."

So now, she's 109, and off she went to the Montana Club. She had the breaded shrimp platter for $14.99, which came with a salad, a loaded baked potato and coleslaw. 

Nick Alonzo is the owner of the Club, and true to his word, he gave her a dollar and change and charged her nothing!

In return she gave him a kiss on the cheek.

On her way out, Self was heard to say, “I’ll come back next year,”  according to her daughter Shirley Gunter, 86. “Don’t tell his wife I kissed him.”

You gonna bet against her being there?

If You Knew

Last Monday, Peggy Sue Gerron died at University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas at age 78.

If her name sounds familiar, it must be because you've heard it sung a couple of thousand times since 1957, when Buddy Holly and the Crickets cut a hit called "Peggy Sue." You know her as "pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy Sue."

Buddy sang, "Oh how my heart yearns for you" but his heart was actually yearning for his girl, Echo McGuire.  Peggy Sue was the girlfriend of the drummer in the Crickets, Jerry Allison.

But, as so often happens to high school love affairs, they were rent asunder as she began her senior year because her parents moved the entire family to Sacramento. That was all happening as the Buddy and the band started becoming nationally prominent.

Buddy wrote the song originally as "Cindy Lou," for Holly’s niece. But the producer didn't like the way that name made the tune sound like a cha-cha. Allison came up with an idea to give the song a straight-ahead rock beat...and change the name from Cindy Lou to you-know-who.

And it just so happened that they debuted the song in a concert at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. Allison called Peggy Sue when the band got to town and invited her to the show, and you can bet she was plenty surprised when she heard her name in a song!


“I think Buddy was playing a little bit of Cupid there,” Gerron told the Austin American-Statesman in 1999, referring to the Sacramento performance.

The song lasted far longer than Peggy Sue and Jerry's marriage, which ended after nine years. But while the times were still good, Buddy wrote a song called "Peggy Sue Got Married" for them. It was one of the songs he wrote and recorded on a home tape recorder in his apartment in Greenwich Village before leaving on tour with the Winter Dance Party, where he met his fate on February 3, 1959. Posthumously, the band filled out the guitar-and-voice track Buddy recorded and made the record.

After her marriage to Jerry Allison, she moved to California and became a dental assistant, and married a man who set up a plumbing business called Rapid Rooter before divorcing him and moving back to Lubbock to care for her mother.

You know what's great about American lives? You take away the rock and roll notoriety in this story, and this could be any other group of American high school friends as they wended their way through life.

Sunday Rerun: Next in sight

It must have been raining or something, because I stopped by a psych class one morning to hear the story I've never forgotten. We heard that a woman who had been in a catatonic state at Baltimore's Sheppard Pratt Hospital was taken for a car ride one day, and on the way back the car in which she was a passenger suddenly veered off the road on one of those bad curves on Charles Street.  The woman either fell out of the car or hit her head inside the car in some way; however it happened, the bump on her noggin took her out of catatonia and back among the sentient!


The guy sitting next to me in class fell out of his chair just then, but he didn't have the same luck as the lady in the car.


I bring this up because I saw something similar happened to Mary Ann Franco, a 70-year-old lady in Florida.  She injured her spine in a car wreck in 1993 and gradually went blind thereafter.


Then, last August, she took a spill in her home.

Ms Taylor

“I was in my living room, going over to the door. My foot caught on a tile, and it flipped me. I hit my head in the back, and hit it on something else, maybe the fireplace,” she said.


As if being blind wasn't enough to deal with, the fall incapacitated her, and she had to wear a neck brace until a four-hour operation earlier this year.


You know how you feel all groggy and mixed up when you come out of a deep sleep, right?  Well, Ms Mary Ann woke up confused...


And she looked at the foot of her bed at a woman standing there, and she said, "Hey, lady in purple, get me something for pain!"


The lady in purple was her niece.  And it was then that she realized she could see again, after all these years!


Her neurosurgeon, Dr John Afshar, said this was totally unexpected: "The restoration of Mary Ann Franco's vision is a true miracle. I really don't have a scientific explanation for it."


He added that one theory could be that the accident could have affected an artery, restricting blood flow to the part of the brain which controls vision.


There's another theory.  But you have to believe in angels and miracles!

The Saturday Picture Show, October 6, 2018

It's good to encourage kids to find good people in whose image they can grow to be fully-realized adults. Say hey to this young lady from Columbia, who got a nice letter from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg after The Notorious RBG saw her getup.

It's a wonder to me that porcupines have never made it to the house pet level in the animal hierarchy.

Of all the seasons of all the years, give me autumn, please!

This week in our series New Uses for Old Buses: two old buses form a bridge.

Either Gogh big or get in your Van and Gogh home!

Happy birthday (#44) to Jeremy Sisto, who is a good actor because he has been in comedies (Clueless, Suburgatory) and dramas (Law and Order, The FBI) with equal ability.

There was one of these burger-and-pancake spots near us when I was a kid, and every time I drove by him, his right arm reminded me that I wanted a hamburger, and his hair reminded me that I wanted a Dip-Top cone from Dairy Queen or Tastee Freez.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time for that most regal of all American fall desserts, the noble Apple Dumpling. Slop that sauce on top, please.

One day at a time

They say that even a blind squirrel stumbles over an acorn now and then, and a stopped clock is right twice a day, so it must follow that there is ONE thing on which Donnie J. Trump and I agree, and it is this: we both feel that alcohol (and drug) abuse are debilitating to body and soul.

It was just the other night that the Bloviating Blonde brayed for the 342nd time that he abjures alcohol. He didn't say why, but we Trump observers know that it has everything to do with his brother Freddy, eight years older, who died a dissolute mess at age 43 in 1981.

Mother Trump with Freddy

Seeing one's own brother throw his life away for the next Jack and Coke would, or should, be enough to make most people swear off the hooch. If you can't handle it, you shouldn't handle it, and for all his other manifold shortcomings, we must say the president can't blame any of them on being drunk.


I don't know if it's genetics, or one's disposition, or what it is that makes some of us able to have a beer or two and move along with our lives. I'm grateful to be one such person, but I know plenty of folks who are not so lucky.

Such as the person in this piece from the Baltimore SUN:


Baltimore City police have fired an officer who was found intoxicated and slumped over in his patrol vehicle near Pigtown.

Officer Aaron Heilman, working and in full uniform, was found slumped over behind the wheel of his marked patrol vehicle in the 700 block of Washington Blvd. on Tuesday around 1:40 p.m.

Heilman was taken to the Central District under suspicion of being under the influence, police said. A Breathalyzer revealed his blood alcohol level was 0.22.

0.22 means almost three times drunk; in this state, you're considered impaired with a blood alcohol of 0.08 grams per deciliter or higher.

The article goes on to say that Heilman is charged with DUI-related offenses, and that Interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle fired him the day after his arrest, saying, "His actions represented a safety issue for himself and the community. I simply won’t tolerate it.”

And this officer was not an old-timer, tired of the world and everything in it and seeking solace from a bottle. Quite the contrary, Heilman is described as a new man, still on probation, and he had been on the clock for three hours when found sitting in his car, parked on a street in Pigtown, with his emergency flashers signaling. He had just been off for the two days prior. Another officer was seen removing Heilman's gunbelt, two others had to prop him up to walk to another patrol car, and a fourth had to drive his car back to the precinct.

I think of so many things. First of all, I'm not holding the man up for being a bad policeman. There are far too many good ones to let this one bad hire taint the majority. For all I care, he could have been a new young school teacher, architect, farmer, fisherman, shoe salesman, warehouseman or photographer.  It's not his profession that matters; it's how he blew the chance to succeed in it by succumbing to demon rum.

I think of his parents, significant other, family members, friends, all so proud when he was graduated from the police academy just months ago. Did any of them know he has problems with intoxicants, and did someone try to get him to help, or look the other way?

It's not enough to look at a person wasting their chances on substance abuse and decide not to go down that road. There is help available for people who need it, and I think the best thing is to take that person where the helpers are.

The Nicks of Time

The Baltimore Ravens have a defensive coordinator (coach) named Don Martindale.  Naturally, his nickname is "Wink" because of the deejay and game show host Wink Martindale, born Winston Martindale.

We tend to rubber-stamp nicknames. Just because of the comic strips, any guy with the surname Sawyer gets called "Buz," and everyone with the last name Mullins is "Moon."

(I'm going parenthetical to tell you that there was a country music pianist named Moon Mullican, and when Ernest Tubb had his producer, Owen Bradley, play piano on a record, he pointed out that Owen was only half as good as Moon by calling him "Half Moon. And ET had a guitarist in the band whose given name was Tommy Paige, but he was best known as "Butterball.)

Butterball.

At some point in their lives, everyone who works with radios and electronics is "Sparky," every tall guy is "Stretch," every tall, skinny guy is "Beanpole," or every big hugger is "Tiny" and every diminutive man is "Big Guy," just to change things around.

There are no acceptable nicknames for a woman who is tall or short or anything physically, trust me.

All bumbling law enforcement officers are "Barney Fife," people who nictitate excessively are "Blinky," people who dance clumsily are "Bushel Foot," and anyone who has dinged the fender on their car in the last six months is "Crash."

This is new - deflated names, like Jennifer Lopez becoming "JLo", and combined nicknames, such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie being called "Brangelina," which always reminded me of Thumbelina, which is still not a good nickname for a very tiny woman.

Just ask 4th-grade Mark, or "Marky Mark," as I was called by my grandmother, a long time before the Mr Wahlberg took time out of his busy pants-dropping schedule to steal my nickname.  But all Marks go by that.

I've heard of stone crabs, but this...?

You know about the big stinkeroo down here in Maryland, where the PETA people put up billboards exhorting us to be kind to crabs by not steaming them alive and eating them with lots of Old Bay on them and corn on the side and a few ice cold Natty Bohs.

I like beer! I drank beer in high school and I still like it!

But it took a lot more than that to keep me off the Supreme Court. A lack of a law degree and a tendency to catcall people on the bench also contributed, and I'm not even here to talk about that right now.

They love their lobsters up in Maine, and I don't blame them. That is some tasty shellfish, served up with melted butter and an ice cold beer or two. Lobster tastes good.

But there is a woman up there who owns a restaurant called the Lobster Pound who had an interesting way of making the lobsters a little calmer before they got steamed, and now the state health inspectors are investigating her setup, because she was mellowing them out with marijuana before killing them to be served, cracked and eaten.

The Pound is still open, but you can't order the smoked variety for now. Charlotte Gill is the woman who owns the joint, if you will. She is a  state-licensed medical marijuana caregiver. And she is interested in making the world a kinder place, she says.

Meanwhile, no one knows for sure if getting a lobster stoned has any effect on how it's going to feel when they get the steamer treatment.

Emily Spencer is a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, and she won't say if the state had asked Gill to halt such sales.

This whole thing is sort of cloudy to me.

But Gill told the Press Herald newspaper that “after being contacted by the state, and upon reviewing its present laws and codes applicable to this arena, and then making a few minor adjustments to our procedure, we are completely confident that we will be able to proceed as planned”.

“I imagine we will still have a push back from the state on our hands,” she said, “but we are confident that we will be able to field any issues they may have with us, and do it with grace. These are important issues and ones that can also benefit not only the lobster, but the industry as well. Truly we are not trying to go against [the state’s] wishes and would love to work with them in order for us all to make this world a kinder place.”

Spencer said it's time to drag another agency -  the Maine Medical Marijuana Program - and let them figure out if their program is meant to benefit shellfish. And that agency won't even say if they are looking into the deal. 

So, to sum up: a woman wants to drug lobsters, and the Health Dept. won't confirm anything, and neither will the medical marijuana task force, and no one knows if the practice will benefit anyone but the marijuana farmer.

I used to think I would like it in Maine, primarily because of the climate, but now I'm not sure. Just give me a plain old lobster and hold the dope.

From Penn State to State Pen?

In the wild world of college football this past weekend, the Alabama Crimson Tide managed to squeak past the Ragin' Cajuns of Louisiana-Lafayette by 56-14, and Penn State lost a 12-point lead in the final seven minutes to Ohio State and lost, 27-26.

I know it's wrong to root against Penn State just because of that awful Jerry Sandusky / Joe Paterno child sex abuse stuff of years ago.

I have lots of friends who went there and root for them, so it's nothing against them.

But I see stories like this, and I just have to share them:
(From the York Daily Record)

A Penn State offensive lineman, who was recruited as one of the best in the nation at his position, faces charges in connection with the theft of a bicycle.

Christina Milian, who always shows up in
Christmas movies I love

The player is a freshman from Waldorf, Maryland, down the road in Charles County, home of the Madden brothers, Joel and Benji, from the band Good Charlotte, and the town where the lovely singer/actress Christina Milian grew up. Christina is in half of the Christmas movies on Hallmark and is also the singer of the haunting ballad "Dip It Low."

Back to the football player, he was charged with theft and receiving stolen property  for an incident that occurred Sept. 11, according to the Penn State police.

Here's the crime: the football player stole a mountain bike to ride back to his dorm room BECAUSE HE DID NOT FEEL LIKE WALKING.

Surveillance cameras show him ripping off a bike near the Lasch Football Building - where there is a camera set up to record just this sort of thing - and leaving it in the grass near the residence hall.

The tired athlete is 18, and he has a preliminary hearing scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Oct. 31 before District Judge Carmine W. Prestia Jr.

Since that day is Halloween, perhaps he could come to court dressed as a copy of Vittorio DeSica's 1948 movie "The Bicycle Thief."

Since the arrest, he has continued to play for Penn State, although coach James Franklin told the Centre Daily Times that the matter would be "taken care of like we’ve handled every discipline issue in our program since we’ve been here."

Oh, and this would be a good time to tell you that the name of the football player who was too tired to WALK a couple of blocks back to the dormitory is Rasheed WALKER.

And know you know the rest of the story.

Living on Easy Street, dressing like Skid Row

I tend to spend a lot of time perched on the stool at our kitchen island, so when the first stools we had started getting wobbly, we went to Gardiner's to get new ones.

Out-of-towners might recognize that furniture store as being the one that promised that everything everyone bought the day before the Ravens won the Super Bowl in 2012 if a Raven ran back the opening kickoff of a half. Thanks to Jacoby Jones, a lot of people are now sitting on sofas and La-Z-Boys they got for free.

But I digress. When we ordered the stools, the lady said we could get them in pristine condition OR pre-distressed, with signs of wear. We went that way, to save me the trouble of beating the stools up by myself. They fit right in with our kitchen decor, which closely replicates a Cracker Barrel.

But stools are one thing, and sneakers are another. People just go nuts about their kicks. I have seen people buy shoe protectors to keep their ADIDAS all ADIDAS-Y, in much the same way generations of Baltimoreans have covered their sofas in clear vinyl so their bare legs will stick to them.

OR - people go out of their way to muck up their brand new sneakers. I remember in phys ed, everyone howled if you showed up with blinding white Jack Purcells, so you deliberately walked in mud (or what you thought was mud) on the way to the locker room.

It seems that some of us want to have others look at us as if we are down and out while all along they know we're rolling in it. I've never been sure of the reasons for this, but the good people at Nordstrom are here to help.

For just $530, they will sell you a pair of sneakers that look like they have been worn since 1975, and are being held together by tape.

No, really! And they are selling like crazy! Which is somehow appropriate.

The website describes the Golden Goose brand shoes as featuring
 "crumply, hold-it-all-together tape" and "a grungy rubber cupsole."


Responding to critics who say this is just another way to marginalize the impoverished by mocking their shoe wardrobes, Nordstrom said, "We're always looking to bring in new, different, and unique products. We realize taste is subjective and not every customer will like every product we carry."

I love offering choices, and for anyone willing to go $530 for a pair of ratty shoes, I will sell you TWO pairs of my well-worn Rockports for the same low-low price.