Draw Me

Well, it's February, so once again the Maryland State Legislature is in session down in Annapolis, which is always good for the economy, especially in the areas of hotel, restaurant, and bar & grill revenues. 90 days in the state capital can only mean boon times for people who serve the fat cats and lobbyists.

Down on the bicameral floor, once again there is talk of passing a law allowing cameras in the courtrooms of our state. I mean, why not? I have always told people with nothing better to do early in the afternoon on a weekday that the finest free entertainment in town takes place in courtrooms, where cases ranging from speeding tickets, assaults, homicide, and I don't know what-all else are heard by a judge, a jury (in Circuit Court) and an appreciative audience of others awaiting their own trials, witnesses awaiting a chance to tell their stories, cops doing the same, and retirees who gave up watching Judge Judy to see the real thing. It is fascinating, and why it can't be on tv for the benefit of shut-ins and those unable to get to the courtroom is something I don't get.

It's not as if these proceedings are secret; they are covered and reported on by the news media. So why not put them on television to compete with The Talk and The Real and The View and that ridiculous Good Morning In The Afternoon, America!

Of course, if this idea becomes law, the people most affected will be courtroom sketch artists, whose charcoal renderings of miscreants from Tom Brady to Bill Cosby to John Gotti amuse us all.

Here's my idea: give them their own show, either before or after the trials come on tv, in which they draw famous people and home contestants guess who in the hell it's supposed to be!



The prize could be, the sketch artists would come to your house and draw a quick charcoal version of the winner.

They could even put THAT on tv!

I'd better go choose a tie right now.

Sunday Rerun (from 2016): Teach Your Children Well

As the Civil War was beginning, Massachusetts troops were marching through Baltimore, on their way south to join the fray. (Just think - if no one ever went and joined a fray, there would be no more wars.)  Anyway, several Baltimoreans died on Pratt Street downtown when they chose to riot in the street as part of their demonstration of Southern loyalty.

A man by the name of James Ryder Randall, then living in Louisiana but a former Marylander, wrote a nine-stanza poem about all this 1861 unpleasantness.  His goal was to urge Maryland to secede from the Union and join the ill-fated Confederacy.

That didn't work out, good to hear, but along the line, the wise solons of the Maryland legislature made that song our state song, putting the poem to the tune of "O Tannenbaum." (aka "Oh Christmas Tree.")

The words to the song are offensive to many and arcane to others.  You have to know your history to know that the despot, the tyrant mentioned in the words was Abraham Lincoln.  And elsewhere, they mention the Union as "Northern scum."


This has to be the only state song that calls for the overthrow of the US Government, unless Oregon recently changed their state tune to something by Ted Nugent.

State Sen. Ron Young, D-Frederick, has filed a bill for the legislature to consider, which would eliminate some of the offensive lyrics and add a verse written by a man from Middletown in 1894.

"This is not a song that should really be our state song," Sen Young said. 

Of course, there is opposition to the opposition to having our state song be so nasty.  Jay Barringer, division commander of the Maryland Sons of Confederate Veterans, said that "Maryland's unique and vibrant history is embodied in James Randall's 'Maryland, My Maryland.'"

People are quick to rise up against changing things on the grounds that they dislike being "politically correct," which is another way of saying they don't mind hurting people's feelings. Mr Barringer says the song is "a history lesson" about which too many Marylanders are unaware.

I can tell the story of some awful people in history - the Hitlers, the Pol Pots, the Agnews - without calling them "scum."  As my dad always said, people who have to call others names and say revulsive things about them do so because they don't know the right words to use.

Teach the children what happened when some people started a riot. But don't make it a glorified part of our history, because it wasn't.

The Saturday Picture Show, February 9, 2019

Secrets of the Male Gender Revealed: There is not a one among us who doesn't see some guy working one of these earthmovers without wishing he could get in the cab and give it a whirl. Guaranteed.

"The beauty and art of nature can oft be seen in its vegetables" - Col. Sanders

The Michelin Man got tired.

Last week when it was so doggone cold in the Midwest, people were throwing boiling water up in the air, just to see it come down to earth as ice pellets. Here's someone's idea for an instantly-frozen cracked egg.

This summer, the minor league Reading Phillies will play several games wearing alternate jerseys and hats identifying them as the Reading Pretzels. They take pretzels very seriously in Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, as the major league Orioles rebuild, they will please a certain part of their base by wearing this special cap on St Patrick's Day.

This is a very cool garden bench! I didn't say it was a very comfortable garden bench, however.

This is part of the "Marilyn Diptych," a series of silkscreen images made by Andy Warhol shortly after Marilyn Monroe died in 1962. He used multiple images to show that she was many things to many people in many different ways.

My advice to youth

"Youth is wasted on the young," said some old man a long time ago, and no one young listened to him either.

But consider what's going on just south of here, down in Virginia.

• the governor either did or did not pose as either a guy in blackface or a guy in Klan robes in his med school days
• but as he denied being in the now-famous picture, he freely chirped up with the info that he entered a Michael Jackson dance contest while wearing Jacksonian regalia and with his face cosmetically darkened
• the lieutenant governor, his putative replacement, is accused of sexual assault
• the attorney general, next in line for the governor's mansion, also volunteered that he donned the facepaint and clothing in order to pay tribute to Kurtis Blow back in his college days
• that would leave a man named Kirk Cox to run the state, because...and get this....last year's race for the state House of Delegate seat from the 94th District was declared a tie, so...
• an elections official pulled the name of the incumbent, David Yancey, out of a ceramic bowl designed by a ceramicist at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as the tiebreaker.

I know what you're thinking; this sounds like the news as read on "Hee Haw," but it all seems to be happening right now.


So, here is the advice I have for you, dear gentle young readers:

Don't be involved in costumery that degrades and humiliates other people.
Be wise and careful about your romances.
And don't think that the dumb stuff you do right now won't come back to bite you on the asterisk* years from now.

"I don't know anything about what I like. All I know is art."

Andy Warhol, American artist born Andrew Warhola (1928 - 1987) was a leading figure in the art world, specifically, pop art, which he "pop"ularized in the 60s with his "Campbell's Soup Cans," a collection of 32 superrealistic pictures of various cans of soup.

Even as a teenager at the time, soon to be employed in the field of stamping prices on cans of soup at the A&P, I knew great art when I saw it. He followed that with a picture of many pictures of Marilyn Monroe, and reproduced the cardboard boxes in which Brillo pads were shipped to the A&P.


I brought one of the real Brillo boxes home from the A&P, after first stamping a price in purple on the boxes within. I kept socks in it for years.

My thoughts turned to Warhol the other day when a commercial for Burger King appeared on the Super Bowl. Burger King got the rights to the pop art movie "Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger," which was one of the 66 scenes in director JØrgen Leth's 1982 film "66 Scenes from America."

"I still remember the first time I watched the complete length of the film of Andy Warhol eating a Burger King Whopper, and my head exploded," Fernando Machado, Burger King's global chief marketing officer told Ad Week magazine. "I was like, 'Is that really Andy Warhol; why is he eating that? What's happening there?'"

Here's what was happening there. Leth is an immigrant, a Dane, who says that he sees the hamburger as the "great social equalizer in America. People, regardless of their socio-economic status, can enjoy them."

When he wasn't busy duplicating the art of others, Warhol was known for saying witty and wise things, and one of them is worth thinking about:

"A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too." 

That's the point of the American homogenization that's been going on for years. The point of Burger King, and all other fast food chains, is that a Whopper is prepared the same and will taste the same in New York City or Kankakee.

And just think, if you eat burgers, you're eating just like the president of the United States and the championship college football team. 

And for those asking what the point of the commercial was, there you have it.

Occasional language rant, #12

My new policy is not to complain about grammar, spelling, or punctuation until I see or hear the same mistake made at least half a dozen times.

It usually doesn't take very long.

Lately, I have heard people on radio, television, and at the seafood counter at the Giant say, for example, "The Patriots are a shoo-in to win the Super Bowl."

That turned out to be accurate, but the problem is when people write the word, rather than saying it. Too often, they type "shoe-in."  And why?  What about being the overwhelmingly presumptive winner of some race, or ballgame, or election, makes people think it has anything to do with their footwear?  I don't get that.

When you are trying to get a fly away from you at a picnic, you wave your hand and hiss, "Shoo, fly!" 

When you want to get a pack of dogs away from you, you holler, "Shoo!"

The only connection to shoes is to think that people are swatting the flies with their left Converse All-Star, or throwing a loafer to get the dogs to go.

And before you shoo me away, the aforementioned Super Bowl featured the Patriots versus the Rams. Versus. Against.  A two-syllable word from the old Latin, originally meaning "toward."

So why do people say it as "verse"? 

My answer is, the same reason that veterinarian becomes "vetnarian," meteorologist becomes "meterologist," temperature is "tempacher," and, most awful of all, February becomes "Febuary."

It must be that we're in too big a rush to finish speaking so we can watch "Dr Pimplepopper" on TV.

Just a good ole boy

I recall being at a restaurant in Ocean City (MD) in 1980 at Halloween time. The wait staff all turned up in costumes, including one gangly white kid who decided it would be fun to go around as a gangly black kid in a basketball uniform. He had it all; the Afro wig, blackface makeup. He even was dribbling a toy basketball as he went from table to table.

Reactions ranged from dumbfounded to, sad to say, some mirth among those who find this sort of mockery funny. He wasn't our server, so I didn't have the opportunity to share my thoughts with him, not that he would have liked them.

In all these years, I don't think I've seen anything quite so blatantly insensitive in public, and now we see that the governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, either was or was not dressed in blackface and/or a Ku Klux Klan getup in his yearbook in 1984.

I hasten to add, this was not his high school yearbook, where stupidity can be blamed on the callowness of youth, or his college yearbook, where it can often be due to overindulgence in drugs or alcohol. No, this was a medical school yearbook, from a school called the Eastern Virginia Medical School. Click on the link to be taken to their website to see how they are scrambling to form advisory committees to make sure nothing this embarrassing occurs again in this school until a whole bunch o' seniors get all juiced up and go off a-hootin' an' a-hollerin' this spring.

So Northam was 25 when he was graduated from this school, and the yearbook shows the racist pictures, about which he said on Friday he was one of those pictured and then on Saturday said he wasn't, although he did put shoe polish on his face to take place in a Michael Jackson dance contest that same year. His wife gave him the raised eyebrow when he was about to demonstrate the Moonwalk at the press conference.

Good thing she was there or he might have started talking like Stepin Fetchit for the press.

Other interesting pictures on his yearbook page show him wearing a cowboy hat, and posing languidly in front of a Corvette. Hardly the sort of image one seeks when choosing a pediatric neurologist to treat a child.

His political career is finished, although as of now (Monday morning) he has refused to resign the governorship because he feels he is the man for the job and can regain the trust of the public, because that's how blind a person can be who once thought that dressing up like this was amusing.

And what kind of medical school publishes yearbooks like this? Is there anyone with any sense in charge down there?

A cup to go with more than coffee in it

On the one ear, we are subjected to the intemperate braying of an orange poltroon, but listen to the words of Breanna Zolfo in your other ear, and let them wash over your soul....

"Believe there is good in the world. Be the good" is what she says.

Breanne owns the Café Fresco, out in Crown Point (where they once bragged of having an escape-proof jail, until the night John Dillinger checked in, and, finding the amenities lacking, checked right out again), Indiana.

You know those little cardboard cup sleeves that are that stand between your fingers and second-degree burns from a hot cuppa mocha java? Well, Breanne and her team write little inspirational slogans on theirs, to send people off into the world with a cheerier mien.

(Ironic that a word pronounced the same as "mean" can also stand for sweet politeness, eh?)



Breanne is 31, used to be a nanny, and gave up changing diapers for changing coffee filters six years ago when she opened the Café.

One day, according to what she told CBS, it just seemed like a good idea to add some inspiration to the caffeine.

"Well, I just hoped that it would, like, add some positive light to their day. Because it's not everyone gets to experience that in the day," is how she put it.

Well, it went over well, and so she moved to step two...she challenged her customers:  perform one of those random good deeds, and get a free cup of jitter juice.

Now, Breanna estimates she's poured out thousands of cups of covfefe for those who poured their heart out to others, and reported making contributions to charities, treating the next person in line to their morning jolt.

What's more, there is a tip jar on the counter at her spot, and that tip money goes out to the community every month in various ways.

Zolfo has surprised grocery shoppers by paying for their chow, things like that.

And once, she bought a bike for a homeless guy, and that worked out very well!

"We had this one person that, he was homeless, and we had bought a bike for him. And he came back two years later after we had purchased the bike for him, and he said, 'You don't know how much you've changed my life. Like, because you bought me a bike, I got a job, and I got an apartment.' And even talking about him makes me cry," Zolfo said.

Breanne says, "I hope that it's spread positivity throughout, like, not just this community, but other communities that are around us … and for us to play a small part in a lot of people's lives is the most amazing feeling."

Every now and then it's good to wash out our eyes and ears like this.

Sunday Rerun: Advice from Richard Gere

Richard Gere makes a lot of sense to me, in many ways.  This is from the Richard Gere Online Facebook page...

"My friend's mom has eaten healthy all her life. Never ever consumed alcohol or any "bad" food, exercised every day, very limber, very active, took all supplements suggested by her doctor, never went in the sun without sunscreen and when she did it was for as short a period as possible- so pretty much she protected her health with the utmost that anyone could. She is now 76 and has skin cancer, bone marrow cancer and extreme osteoporosis.
My friend's father eats bacon on top of bacon, butter on top of butter, fat on top of fat, never and I mean never exercised, was out in the sun burnt to a crisp every summer, he basically took the approach to live life to his fullest and not as others suggest. He is 81 and the doctors says his health is that of a young person.
People you cannot hide from your poison. It's out there and it will find you so in the words of my friend's still living mother: " if I would have known my life would end this way I would have lived it more to the fullest enjoying everything I was told not to!"
None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an afterthought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else."

Mmmmmmmmmm Bacon!

I remember shortly after John Lennon was gunned down, his widow, Yoko Ono, said that she and John had been trying to eat very healthy food so as to foster a long life, and that after John's murder, she told her son Sean, "Eat what you want...it doesn't matter."

And of course, I am one who often repeats the fact that Jim Fixx, a healthy man who wrote "The Complete Book of Running," died of a severe, sudden heart attack after his daily jog in 1984, which meant that he did not live long enough to read about how Keith Richards mixed his father's ashes with cocaine and snorted them.

Before we focus on the dietary advice above...and no, I am not recommending that we all begin eating duck fat wedged into Krispy Kreme donuts...let's also pay attention to the part about jumping into the ocean and walking in the sunshine and saying your truth.  

I have not died yet, but I have lost people I love, and the signals I get from them above are unmistakable.  You'll regret the things you didn't do much more than those you did.  It doesn't cost you a nickel to tell someone they look nice today, and who knows?  It might be the first time they've heard it today!

Meanwhile, who wants some bacon?! 

The Saturday Picture Show, February 2, 2019

I can't tell if this was made at a beach or a sidewalk or a backyard but it's a pretty doggone good picture of the world we share!

In Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Sharalee Armitage Howard had to say goodbye to her big tall 110-year-old black cottonwood tree. It was dead, rotten, inside, but rather than part with it, she had the top cut off and turned the rest into one of those little neighborhood magical libraries.

This one is for my great niece Izzy, who loves giraffe pictures. This is some swanky giraffe hotel- great breakfast service!

My free craft item for you: here's the art for get-well cards for your 17 friends who have had sniffles, coughs and colds this winter.

Speaking of first-class accomodations, here's your chance to sleep in a wigwam, should you want to. I like my rooms rectangular, with wifi, please.

We found out, the best way to be a cat family is to have two cats. So here is two cats in one! Not the same at all, though.

And look at the option available on the new Plymouth! A kitten to keep you company!

Nature has its ways of making some animals blend in with their surroundings, and then some would stand out anywhere. Believe it or not, this is a pink Malaysian orchid mantis. If you never saw one, perhaps Katydid.

On the other hand

I have a friend - police officer by trade - who is such a polymath that he can explain anything from the workings of a car engine to what the people behind the counter at an Asian carryout are saying as they prepare your moo goo.

He has always enjoyed spotting people with what they believe to be Chinese letters tattooed on their lower back, left bicep, or iliac crest, letters that they were told meant "wisdom" or "patience" but actually stand for "dumbass."  He no longer points this out to people, however, having grown tired of being hollered at about it.

That brings us to Ariana Grande, the former star of "Sam And Cat" and singer of a dozen or so big pop hits. She has a habit of running to the tattoo parlor, for Pete's sake, every time something big happens in her life, and so, to commemorate the release of her new song "7 Rings," she had "7 Rings" tattooed on her hand in Japanese kanji characters.

But she didn't; the characters of her left palm actually say "small barbecue grill."


She put the above photo up on her Japanese Twitter (and if you've never had a Japanese Twitter, you don't know what you're missing!), but those letters say “shichirin,” and that's a small charcoal grill in Japanese.

The website Kotaku says that "the tattoo symbols technically mean 'seven' and 'ring,' but when you add those characters together, they take on a whole different meaning: '七輪 (shichirin) is a ‘small charcoal grill’ and not ‘seven rings,’ which is written differently in Japanese.”

The correct expression of  “seven rings” — 七つの指輪, or nanatsu no yubiwa — does appear in the music video for the song.

This is a lot like the time when egomaniac Chad Johnson, late of the Cincinnati Bengals, said he wanted his uniform number 85 for his name in Spanish, but he thought that 85 translated as "Ocho Cinco" instead of the correct "Ochenta y cinco."

Back to Ariana's hand, she tweeted that she “left out ‘つの指’ which should have gone in between” the symbols, but “it hurt like *%#!" so she told the tattoo artist to stop then and there.  And what's more, she likes teeny grills, so there's that.

I still plan to get "I'M THE ONLY HELL MY MOTHER EVER RAISED" on my right forearm. Watch this space!

Donnie Wahlberg's wife is not a trusted source of medical advice

Measles vaccine was introduced in this country in 1963. By 1970, our public health officials were able to declare the disease eradicated.

Now, in the Northwest US, people are scrambling to stop a measles outbreak from spreading further.  35 people in Oregon and Washington State have come down with the measles since the first of the year, and 11 more cases are suspected.

The people coming down with measles are mainly under 10 years of age, the children of people who, for reasons best known to themselves, have refrained from having their children vaccinated against a disease that can result in severe complications, such as pneumonia (lung infection) and encephalitis (swelling of the brain). It can result in death. Perhaps one out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia, which is the most common cause of measles-related death in young children.

But, people are turning down the chance to save their children from such dire consequences because Jenny McCarthy and other Hollywood luminaries told them to.

The problem with the vaccination rate of Clark County, Washington being 78% is that is well below the percentage required to shield people with compromised immune systems, or people unable to receive the vax because of legitimate medical reasons, or the simple fact that they are too young.

Dr. Alan Melnick, Clark County public health director, says that people are getting bad information from social media.

"What keeps me up at night is eventually having a child die from this completely preventable situation," he said. "It's still out there, even though it's been debunked, that the measles vaccine results in autism. That's nonsense."

("But Doctor, all you did was go to medical school! And my best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.")




Dr Melnick, a man who knows what he is speaking of, tells us that before mass vaccination came to be, 400 to 500 people in the United States died of the measles every year, 50,000 people were hospitalized and 4,000 people developed the type of brain swelling that can cause deafness.

In this latest outbreak. there were almost 50 locations where people could have been exposed, from the Portland Airport to a Trail Blazers game.  Since measles had not been eradicated in other parts of the world, people coming from other areas can bring it here with them, where unvaccinated people become ill.

In this case, 31 of the confirmed patients had not been been given measles vaccination.

And this adds to last year's 17 outbreaks, and 350 confirmed cases of a disease that we once had conquered, only to have people who don't know what they're talking about talk others out of it.

Ah. America.

Tom foolery

There came a time when we had to take my grandfather's car keys away, and it was sad, but he was a danger to himself and to others on the road, so we ran errands and took him and my grandmother where they needed to go and it all worked out for the better.

That scenario, which has been played out in millions of families over the years, comes to mind when I see Tom Brokaw and his latest televised fiasco.

He is known now as "NBC News special correspondent and former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw," a nod to his anchorman emeritus status, and he appeared on "Meet The Press" this Sunday and made remarks about Hispanic assimilation, and those comments set off a backlash.

The panel was talking about all the hassling about building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, Brokaw chose to say this, rather than remaining silent and letting people think he still had all his marbles: "On the Republican side, a lot of people see the rise of an extraordinary, important new constituent in American politics, Hispanics, who will come here and all be Democrats. Also, I hear, when I push people a little harder, 'Well, I don’t know whether I want brown grandbabies.' I mean, that’s also a part of it. It’s the intermarriage that is going on and the cultures that are conflicting with each other."

He did not give the name of any people who had spoken in such hateful terms to him.

AND THEN, as if he hadn't already stuck both Weejuns in his mouth, he persisted: "I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation. That’s one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time. You know, they ought not to be just codified in their communities but make sure that all their kids are learning to speak English, and that they feel comfortable in the communities. And that’s going to take outreach on both sides, frankly."

PBS correspondent Yamiche Alcindor was on the panel and she answered this way: "I grew up in Miami, where people speak Spanish, but their kids speak English. And the idea that we think America can only speak English, as if Spanish and other languages wasn’t always part of America, is, in some ways, troubling.

I'm not going to pretty this up in any way. Right away, as soon as Brokaw got home and put his slippers on, here came the tweeted apologia: "i feel terrible a part of my comments on Hispanics offended some members of that proud culture."

And then he tweeted over and over again, culminating with this attempt at speaking in street patois:


As of this time (Monday morning) there has been no comment from NBC as to whether they still think it's a good idea to allow Brokaw to make appearances on news discussion shows. 

I don't have a nickel in the matter, but I think it's time to take his keys.

Built Ford tough

It's often been said that there is no greater fool than a fool with a smartphone.

All right, so I'm the one who says it often. It's still true! And here's just the latest example of Americans who get cheesed off about something and vent their vitriol on THE WRONG PERSON!

This comes up all the time, someone gets mad at the president and tweets about it to Donald Trump  - the one who lives in Danvers, Wyoming and does not have orange skin or Strawman hair. Or they don't like a joke that Steve Harvey made and they choose one of the other 27 Steve Harveys in the phone book to holler at.

In this case, the object of disrespect is Dee Ford, a rather large man who plays linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs. The fact that he went to Auburn University should in no way be used to disparage him. Lots of people play there when they aren't quite good enough to play for Alabama, the superior college in the great state of Alabama.

So Ford was playing in the AFC Conference Championship against the loathsome New England Patriots, and when he lined up offside on a crucial play, the resulting penalty nullified an interception, giving the Patriots the chance to win the game and go play in this Sunday's Super Bowl.

Game over for the Chiefs, and that's that, right?  Nope. Irate Chiefs fans decide to tweet Dee Ford about how upset they are.

Except they got the wrong person entirely. "@DeeFord" on Twitter is Dee Ford, a woman from Gillingham, Kent, England, and she was exactly 4,373 miles offside that night - the distance between KC MO and Kent.

She is used to this; the first time she got a tweetbarrage from the USA was when football Dee did something else boneheaded while still wearing the orange and blue of Auburn.

             Dee Ford                                         Dee Ford


"The phone was going off literally nonstop," Ms Ford told the Kansas City Star. "Some of the things were quite vicious. The things they're saying - he doesn't deserve it."

In fact, after that first time of getting misdirected tweets, she befriended the hapless Ford, and met him and his family when the Chiefs played a game in England.

Here are some of her charming responses to the non-charming tweets that overflowed her inbox: 

Dee
@dee_ford
I’m not sure I will. You enjoy summer though. Perhaps read a nice, calming book or something until Dee takes you back to the best game you’ve had in 49 years?

Suzie
@DaysofCondor
I haven't forgiven you @dee_ford. You ain't getting off this easy. Hope you suffer the entire summer knowing u let your team down.

Dee
@dee_ford
No, Barry, we’re not with you, we’re not.

Sanders Barry
@MManyo83
@dee_ford Listen man Brady knew you were offside the ball wouldnt have gone there if he didnt have a free play so you didnt cancel up an int cause it wouldnt have happened if you werent offside in the first place...you with me?

Ms Ford has 5,500 followers and here is what she said to them after this latest goofiness:

 "I just wanted to say, that over the past week, I have had the kindest, funniest, most wonderful tweets. Despite the nasty ones, the nice ones have far outweighed them. A few amazing Auburn and Chiefs people have made time to DM and make sure I'm ok, and have made me laugh to the point of happy tears, particularly those in the #AUfamily."

And she says this of the American Dee Ford: "He's genuinely one of the nicest people. He's always been good about this. He's a really humble young man."

As someone who is often mistaken for Bradley Cooper, I understand how she feels.

Hot Dog!

My fair and frantic Baltimore, to paraphrase Earl Leaf, becomes the most frantic when our food is involved - specifically, if one of our favorite comestibles is taken away from us.

And now we are losing two of our beloved foods!

If you haven't heard about this, I hope you're sitting down, eating a hot dog.  Chances are, it's not an Esskay Oriole frank, a local favorite around here for many a year, because they ain't making them no more.

The name Esskay goes a long way back here, back to 1919 William when William Schluderberg and Thomas Kurdle merged their meatpacking plants to form Esskay Meats. S-K, OK?

And all was fine until Esskay was bought out by Smithfield Meats, and now Smithfield will only produce Esskay brand deli meats and chipped beef. They sold their hotdogs under the Oriole logo and did great business for years.

To be quite honest, we switched to Nathan's here at the Lazy 'C' Ranch a couple of years ago, because they looked so tasty on the Fourth of July.

“Our organization has made the difficult decision to discontinue Esskay hotdogs,” said Chad McFadden, Esskay brand manager for Smithfield Foods, in an email to the Baltimore Sun. He went on to say that Esskay frankfurters represent less than 1 percent of the volume of the company’s packaged meats. And based on that, maybe it wasn't all that difficult a decision, but we'll miss them at the ballpark.

Maybe the Orioles will start having Nathan's hot dogs at Oriole Park!

And for another bygone treat, remember getting those little candy hearts at Valentine's Day? Oh man, I remember them!





But I never saw this brand.  The ones I got had slogans such as NO and NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS and GET AWAY FROM ME, I MEAN IT!

But they still tasted just as sweet, and didn't even begin to dampen my ardor.

Because what good is dampened ardor?

The deal with the candy hearts is that they will return to your favorite store next year.  It's all involved with the sale of their manufacturer, New England Confectionery Company, makers of the dreaded NECCO wafer - the only candy that is also suitable for use as poker chips.

The company that bought the candy hearts line from NECCO is also the company that makes Dum-Dum Pops, but they didn't acquire the brand until September, and that did not leave them enough time to meet this year's candy heart demands.

Give your love a Dum-Dum! Just don't call him or her "Dum-Dum" or else you'll be sad-sad.

Sunday Rerun: All A Twitter

According to an article I read, Kevin Jonas of the Jonas Brothers, a pop rock band that never quite managed to find a place on my iPod, is sitting on a fortune of 18 million semolians, none of which he earned selling me CDs or concert tickets or anything else he had to peddle.

So, since $18,000,000 might not be enough to keep him in the sort of unusual clothing and hair product he favors, he has entered into a new commercial venture, commercializing his life by selling sponsorships of his tweets.

Young Jonas and his ex-hairdresser wife recently welcomed a baby they named Alena Rose into this crazy old world.  Millions of babies are born around the world every day, but very few of these births are accompanied by messages on Twitter reminding other young parents to wash the kids' swaddling clothes with a certain detergent that is paying this fellow and his wife cash money to intermingle their blessed event with a cheap payday.

He would want me to mention the name of the detergent here.

It got me to thinking.  Not that I am of a commercial-type mind, but what if my parents had decided to commemorate the important events in my young life with tie-ins to brands, services and products?  As the impressionists would say, I think it would go something like this...

My first letter home from a teacher (the one in which Mrs Reed alleged that I viewed every classroom as my personal stage) would be brought to you by BIC, the pen that writes first time, every time.

The first huge gooey pink bubble that I blew would be sponsored by Bazooka Joe and all the good people over at Dubble Bubble, whose tiny cartoon inserts provided me with jokes and gags that I use to this day ("I can always tell you the score of a ballgame before it begins - Nothing to nothing!")

Sponsorship of my first shaving experience would go to Band-Aid and English Leather.  Other sponsors lining up to cash in on my teen days would include the makers of Tackle!, an acne preparation that made its users smell like the vast chemical warehouses of Linden, NJ, and the producers of National Beer and Boone's Farm Apple Wine, which we counted as a fruit for our diet choices.

Plymouth, makers of the first car I owned, and the Hot-Shotz Corporation, makers of the jumper cables that I always carried so I could get the Plymouth started, would certainly leap at the chance to advertise on my tweets, had there been such a thing back in the days before the Jonas Bros. started doing whatever it is that they do.

One last tie-in - the various makers of Canadian bacon can slide in on this ad...the one that says I would have breakfast with Michael Buble for five days in a row before I would read another story about any Jonas brother.

The Saturday Picture Show, January 26, 2019

This is the sort of thing that people find out about pets when they open their hearts to them.  You might remember a book about a library where a stray cat showed up and became the house cat for years, beloved by many. His name was Dewey as well (for the Decimal System).

Remember these from art class? Was there a kid in your class who got confused about the word "gum" on there?

For my friends who live in warm climates and never get to play with snow, this is a classic American snowman!

 This is an example of the school of art and painting known as "hyperrealism," which is Latin for "I don't have a camera."

 It's true - they really are cute when they're young!

 I believe this to be a 1952 Chevrolet Fleetline Deluxe sedan. I don't know if it careered off a roadway and dug itself its own grave, or if someone dragged it here. The driver, Prince Philip, was unable to say what happened.

 What on earth is prettier than what's on earth?

This 1956 CinemaScope classic featured Mariska Hargitay's mother, along with Tom Ewell, so that maybe people would think it was like his previous movie "The Seven-Year Itch," but Jayne Mansfield was no Marilyn Monroe.  The eponymous theme song was done by Little Richard and it's worth the price just to hear him sing it!

As the nosy landlady said, "I heard a roomer"

When my father reached his dotage, he was still holding up pretty well for someone well into his 80s.

But one thing that went afoul for him was his hearing.  He used to say that he could no longer hear high-pitched, annoying sounds, like the little hourly chirp on his digital watch, and the phone ringing, and being called to do something when all he wanted to do was read his newspaper.

He made hearing loss a gain! Who wants to be disturbed by shrieks, human or otherwise?

And now comes news of a woman named Chen over in sunny China. She has a hearing disorder that is making her the envy of women all over the world: she can no longer hear men’s voices.

Forbes reports that she woke up one day and just couldn't hear her boyfriend speak.

There is a name for this, and I see lots of you looking it up right now. Google "reverse slope hearing loss" and find out that it means she can't hear low frequencies, such as male voices, and the sound of  – which includes the average male voice, Forbes reports.

“She was able to hear me when I spoke to her, but when a young male patient walked in, she couldn’t hear him at all,” said Chen's doctor, Lin Xiaoqing.

It can be a genetic thing, just as if your parents didn't have any children, you can't either. But doctors who know stuff tell us that reverse slope hearing loss could also come from stress and not getting enough sleep.  And being stressed over not getting enough sleep.

Chen has been told that her condition is temporary and she should recover fully. She knows that because a female doctor told her so.

I'm notifying my HMO that a large contingent of female patients will soon descend upon their physicians' offices, complaining of not hearing a word their husbands are yakking.

I say! Bit of an accident here, jolly well.

The New Yorker has long had a tradition of printing small stories about crazy life in the British Isles under the headline "There Will Always Be An England Dept."

It's also obvious that there will always be a Prince Philip, from the looks of things.

He's 97, the husband of Queen Elizabeth, now known fully as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, having been born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark.

But he's 97, so maybe he shouldn't be driving. 

On January 17, he pulled his Range Rover out of a side road, into the path of a car occupied by Emma Fairweather, her friend (the driver) and the driver's daughter, a 9-month old baby boy.  The picture below shows the detritus left behind.

Other aftermath of the crash: As of this writing, Ms Fairweather, who suffered a broken wrist, is still waiting for an apology from the royal family.  And Phil is out driving again in a brand-new Range Rover, and doing so without using his seat belt.


"I'm lucky to be alive and he hasn’t even said sorry," Ms Fairweather told a London paper. "It has been such a traumatic and painful time and I would have expected more of the royal family."



"It could have been so much worse," Fairweather went on. "Prince Philip apparently said to a witness that it was the sun that dazzled him, but I can’t see how that could be true when it was overcast.”

What seems worse is that last week, Buckingham Palace  said Philip and the queen had privately contacted the people in the crash and exchanged good wishes. Fairweather says that did not happen.

"I still haven't had any contact from the royal household," she told the paper. "Maybe he should prioritize that over test-driving his new car."

It's nice to see that England has the same problem we have over here with the superannuated refusing to give up driving, even though they are way past expiration date for piloting several tons of metal on roads occupied by others, while dealing with deficits in attention, vision, hearing and reflex.

To be honest, some 97-year-olds are still sharp as tacks. Some aren't. But here in Maryland, every time some legislator even dreams of submitting a law for consideration which would require people over a certain age to be re-tested every so often, the Gray Lobby rears its gray head and beats the measure down to defeat.

And then they drive home, hoping that some geezer doesn't pull out on them and send them to the emergency room.

Very simple: if you're old, please show that you're still competent to drive. If you pass, keep driving! If not, call a cab.

Where does the time go?

It was baseball great Satchel Paige who advised us, "Don't look back: something might be gaining on you."

And he had an elementary school named for him in Kansas City!

It's been interesting to see this latest internet fad, the "10 year challenge."  It's also sometimes called the "How hard has aging hit you?" challenge, and the deal, obviously enough, is to dig out a picture of yourself from 2009 and another from this year so we can all see how the passage of time has made you look.

There is a scientific theory that if you throw decks of cards in the air enough times, eventually you will wind up with two equal piles of cards at your feet. (And then what will you do?)  

By this, I mean that after enough people are given this challenge, a certain amount of people will show pictures of themselves that will make people go, "WOW! You look better than ever! The years have been so kind!"

And there will be those who have lost most of their hair, gained 247 lbs, and gotten swastikas tattooed on their foreheads, in contrast to 2009, when they looked like the young Ryan O'Neal.

Time is good to some of us, and harsh on others, and I don't think it's a big deal. As someone with a 50-year high school reunion coming up, I can look back and see plenty of people I knew well who no longer walk this earth with us, so a few less hairs or a few more gray ones shouldn't be such a big dadburned deal.

Celebrate you!  Be proud of yourself and love yourself and think about gifts for Mariah Carey on her next birthday (#50 on March 27): a calendar and a watch. Time may be something she does not acknowledge, but I think it's time she learned.

The razor's edge

Now that the War On Christmas is ever, the first shots are being fired in the War On Masculinity.

I'm being facetious, as always. Some super-Christians stir that nonsense every year about there being a war on Christmas, citing as reasons a perfectly sensible policy among merchants of wishing customers a happy holiday, rather than a Merry Christmas, and an equally sensible rule against displays of religious symbolism (e.g. nativity scenes) on public property.

That's simmered down now until November. Remember someone defining America as "325 million people in search of something to be mad about"?  Now it's a razor commercial that's got them all worked up!

Gillette has this new commercial on TV that encourages the end of toxic masculinity, and some people are finding that bothersome.

I don't know if that's just a reflexive reaction to a commercial that shows men leering at women and grabbing them without permission.

I know, when you're a star, they have to let you do it.  But for the average man, these things are not all right. The test is to check and see if that sort of behavior is ok when someone does it to your sister...or mother...or wife.  Not good.

The commercial shows men laughing at pantomimes of sexual assault, and kids teasing an epicene kid. Those are examples of bad behavior. But it also shows men being good fathers to daughters, actor and former football player Terry Crews, saying, “Men need to hold other men accountable," and random men breaking up fights.  Those are good things.

There's an old expression: "A guilty conscience needs no accuser."  It seems to me that the men getting their knickers in a knot over a razor commercial that shows boorishness, assault, and ungentlemanly comportment might be showing their hands.

If I see on the news that the police are searching for some guy who robbed a bank or ran over a pedestrian and drove away, I'm not going to start hollering about robbing banks and making bowling pins of people walking down the street should be acceptable. I'm not involved so I don't react personally.

Mona Charen, a conservative writer, said the commercial is valuable because "Some men are behaving really badly — harassing women, bullying each other, and failing in their family responsibilities."  If you can deny those things, then maybe it's time to reassess what you see in society.

Those who find the commercial annoying might be saying that they think it's ok to do the things portrayed in it. I hope not, though. It's never wrong to act like a gentleman.

Carefully Taught

By now we've all seen the video and seen the comments about the jejune actions of some students from a Northern Kentucky Catholic high school at a rally in Washington on Saturday. Church and school leaders, along with federal and state leaders are condemning the way the "kids" treated an honorable Native American in Washington, D.C.

In the video, we saw a young man sporting a Make America Great Again hat crowding the man, who just happens to be a Viet Nam war veteran. But in order to intimidate the veteran, the youngster got right up in his grille and flashed the sort of cocky grin that just begs for adjustment by a process other than orthodontia, if you're with me here.

And don't think this coarse youth acted alone; he was egged on by his squad of red-hatted galoots.

Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills and the Diocese of Covington(KY) were quick to apologize for the behavior of their students, pointing out that “the behavior is opposed to the church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.”

The students had been sent to DC to take part in the March For Life, but failed to apprehend the point of life itself, especially, the part about being decent to people already born. After they marched to protest a woman's right to choose, they chose to crash the Indigenous Peoples March and bother Native Americans.

The Indigenous Peoples March put out a statement saying the bad boys from Covington were among over 30 others who "aggressively surrounded” Native American elder Nathan Phillips on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

To their credit, Covington Catholic and the Diocese of Covington offered their “deepest apologies," adding, "The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion. We know this incident also has tainted the entire witness of the March for Life and express our most sincere apologies to all those attended the March and all those who support the pro-life movement.”

Two things, as we wait for the field trip to end and the school to take their promised action:

• We will undoubtedly hear (in fact, we already have) from apologists and conservatives who will claim that "the boys were just funnin' around with the old Indian." You will note that these are the same people who lost their shift about disrespecting veterans when Colin Kaepernick took a knee, and who now don't mind that Elder Phillips fought in a war for this country, only to come back and be humiliated by childish children.
• Please remember the song "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught," from the Rodgers and Hammerstein play "South Pacific."  I'll put the words right here: 

You've got to be taught to hate and fear

You've got to be taught from year to year

It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear

You've got to be carefully taught

[Verse 2]

You've got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made

And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade

You've got to be carefully taught

[Verse 3]

You've got to be taught before it's too late

Before you are six or seven or eight

To hate all the people your relatives hate

You've got to be carefully taught.