For it's 1-2-3 strikes, you're out!

Q: Who are Sean Gilmartin, Drew Jackson, Richie Martin, and Branden Kline?

a) four guys your sister went out with in high school
b) four guys you went out with in high school
c) four attorneys who represented the guy who ran into your minivan that time on the parking lot at Burger King
d) four guys among the 60 vying for spots on the Baltimore Orioles 2019 roster

If you said d, you're onto me.

Gone from the Orioles roster are names like Manny Machado, Adam Jones, and Jonathan Schoop.  Machado was traded to the Dodgers amid great hoopla and did not exactly make them forget Pee Wee Reese (or Pee Wee Herman.) He recently signed for all the money in the world to play for the Padres, and will wear out his welcome in San Diego by mid-July, it says here. Adam Jones's contract expired, and as of this writing, he remains unsigned, and Schoop was sent to the Brewers in exchange for some prospects, had a horrible 2nd 1/2 of the season and wound up with the Twins.

It all boils down to this, as my third-grade teacher used to say. The Orioles can only get better, and this is the year that will start. Sales of scorecards will be brisk this year down at the park, because a rotating case of candidates, much like ABC's "The Bachelor," will be trotted out this season and given their chances to pitch, hit, field and run the bases like big leaguers.

The problem might be that some fans will look back 30 years.

In 1988, the Orioles had bottomed out almost as horribly as last season's team, starting off the year losing their first 21 games and becoming a worldwide symbol of futility. By the time Billy Ripken was seen clobbering himself on the melon with a Louisville Slugger, he had already seen his Dad, Cal Ripken Sr, get fired after the first six games, and there were three more losses to go on the way to a 54-107 record.

And last year the Orioles were even worse than that at 47-115, so hopes for a WHY NOT season like they had in 1989, when they challenged for the pennant all year long until caving at a best-forgotten weekend in Toronto, might be a bit out of place.  Sure, this year's team will feature all sort of spunky guys getting their first real chance to make the big time, rather than last year's sorry collection of worn out, phlegmatic non-hustlers, so let's just sit back, enjoy the games, and see what happens!

As I said for the whole time we went without a football team around here, having the worst team is a billion (bee-yun) times better than having no team. And it will be fun to see them get better!

A night at the theater

You know how stuff you hear from childhood sticks with you all your life? Like the first time you hear that pickles are shrivelly cucumbers and raisins used to be grapes, and the startling realization that your parents know, and once used, the same off-color words you think someone just made up...

I was ten when the Civil War Centennial started. You Dixie-fried readers know that struggle as the War Of Northern Aggression. But just after it ended, a disappointed Confederate sympathizer shot Abraham Lincoln to death while the 16th president enjoyed an evening at Ford's Theater.

Well, at least he enjoyed it up until John Wilkes Booth cunningly slipped past a missing drunken guard to enter the presidential loge and fire his Derringer.


The play that evening at Ford's starred Laura Keene (an English actress whose real name was Mary Frances Moss) in "Our American Cousin," a comedy about uncouth Americans. As an actor himself, Booth had seen the play, and knew exactly what the big laugh-getting line was.

I heard about this as a kid and it's one of the factoids that lodged itself in my noggin, along with Chuck Estrada's pitching record for 1960 (18-11, with a 3.58 ERA) and the formula for water (two atoms of hydrogen in a molecule of water).
The laugh-getter was when Asa Trenchard says this to Mrs. Mountchessington:

Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal — you sockdologizing old man-trap.

I suppose I had other things to do, but it took a few years before I found time to find out what "sockdologizing" means. (I knew what a man-trap was, having seen plenty of Katharine Hepburn movies.)

"Sockdolager" was a word that came to our language in the early 1800s, combining "sock" for a knockout blow and a mangled form of "doxology," which is the word for the final part of a hymn. "Sockdolager," meaning an exceptionally crushing punch effect, was then boiled down a little more by Tom Taylor, the playwright behind "Our American Cousin," to mean that the character toward whom the word was lobbed was an overwhelming force. That's what linguists call a nonce word, a word made up for just one occasion.

If that was the funniest line in the play, the whole audience must have been out cold when it was said, and Booth's plan was to fire his pistol while the audience convulsed over it. Then, in true theatrical fashion, he jumped off the balcony, shouting  “Sic semper tyrannis!” (“Thus ever to tyrants!”– then, as now, the Virginia state motto).

But, in non-theatrical fashion, Booth caught his spur on the American flag bunting draped over the president's box, and landed so awkwardly on the stage that he broke his leg and limped off to ride away on his horse.

154 years later, America still mixes show business with politics, and still with disastrous effect. But at least we know a sockdolager when we see one now!

Walk This Way

More and more pedestrians are being killed in traffic, and there's no way to make a light story of this. And it's not just local either; the pedestrian death rate is higher all across America.

Odd thing is, for the last decade, ped fatalities had been on a steady decline for the past ten years, and then all of a sudden, the trend is going the other way. The facts are in from the Governors Highway Safety Association, and they show there haven't been this many pedestrians dying in the last 30 years.

In fact, 6,200 pedestrians bought it on U.S. roads last year. That's up 4% since 2017 and an alarming 35% since 2008!

Here in Maryland, the death toll for walkers and bicyclists was up 25%.

“The alarm bells continue to sound on this issue,” says Jonathan Adkins, the Executive Director of the GHSA. “It’s clear we need to fortify our collective efforts to protect pedestrians and reverse the trend.”

So what's up with this? The GHSA points to "increased exposure for pedestrians," "inadequate pedestrian infrastructure" (crumbling roadways and sidewalks), and all those BA cars and trucks and SUVs on the road.  And of course, don't forget impairment on the part of drivers and walkers, and inattention to the road ahead or cars behind in favor of electronic devices.

“Crossing the street should not be a death sentence,” says Richard Retting, who wrote the Governor's Association report. “We have a range of proven infrastructure, engineering, and behavioral strategies that we know can reduce pedestrian deaths. Critical improvements to road and vehicle design are being made, but take significant time and resources to implement.”

So, while we wait for the roads to be built up to safe standards, it behooves us all - drivers and walkers alone - to be careful, to turn down the music, and to look out for people.

That doesn't sound like too much to ask, even in a day and age when people think 100% of themselves.

Sad twice

Jacquelyn Smith was 54 and she was employed as an electrical engineer at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, the big Army facility up in Harford County.  She met a violent death in Baltimore's Johnston Square neighborhood last December 1, according to her husband, Keith Smith, who spoke with media and police after the murder.

Keith Smith told a harrowing tale in which he pulled his car over so that his wife and his daughter Valeria could give some money to a man and a woman panhandling on the street.

Mr Smith said the couple were carrying what looked like a baby wrapped in a blanket, and holding a sign that read, "Help me feed my baby, God Bless."

This sort of generosity was in keeping with the character of Mrs Smith. Her grieving husband said at the time that he and his wife are members of the Helping Hands Ministries Church up in Churchville, where Jacquelyn's memorial service was held on Dec. 7.

So that was the story we got; Mrs Smith gave the woman ten dollars and the man reached into the car and stabbed her to death.

December, January and February went by, the city got another new interim police commissioner, and still the detectives from the Baltimore Police and several other agencies stayed on the care, producing a stunning twist yesterday afternoon when they announced two arrests have been made in the case.

Keith Smith, and Valeria Smith.

Father and daughter were arrested near the U.S.-Mexico border in Harlingen, Texas, where the Mexicans really ought to think about building some sort of wall to keep American murder suspects out.

Keith and Valeria are charged with first-degree murder. Acting on information received, police had learned that Keith Smith was leaving Maryland, and worked with the Texas State Police to fit him for a nice set of handcuffs yesterday morning.


If you'll recall, Mr Smith (pictured here with his late wife) went into heartbreaking detail at the time of the murder, saying of the intended recipient of his wife's charity, "For most people, the last thing you're going to think about is that this person is about to take your life for a few dollars."
 
"I think the reality is, we forget about the times that we're living in," he said. "You may have the best intentions on helping this person, but when you let a person get into your safe zone, you're actually opening yourself up to whatever this person has intended for you."

It's a pity that the Smiths, père et fille, apparently came up with this depraved scheme to end the life of a stepmother and wife. And more's the pity that they dragged the city of Baltimore through the mud, blaming it on some monsters who never existed, except in the souls of Keith and Valeria Smith.

Sunday Rerun: It All Depends

When you consider the work of actress Lisa Rinna, star of great cinematic triumphs such as Captive Rage and Night Sins, you recognize her position as a great chronicler of Hollwood history.

She's been married to Harry Hamlin for almost 20 years, a veritable lifetime by Hollywood standards, and we know Harry from the celebrated films You Lucky Dog and Shoot Or Be Shot, which I believe was the life story of Richard "Dick" Cheney.

Sid's final picture

Sid Vicious is listed as the bass player for the Sex Pistols, although he did not know how to play the bass. Sid, born John Simon Ritchie, had joined the original punk band because he hung with the same crowd as singer/leader Johnny Rotten (ne John Lydon) but he did not know how to play a bass guitar any more than you or I do (unless you are Paul McCartney.) So, Sid (who was named for Rotten's parakeet) conveniently came down with hepatitis as the band prepared to record their great "Never Mind The Bollocks" album.  Later he left the band to move to New York and devote himself full time to using heroin, and killed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen at a fleabag hotel.  Upon his bailout from jail, he celebrated by overdosing on heroin supplied by his mother, and died.  

His was not a life to be celebrated. The poor bloke did not quite catch on that show business is half show and half business, and took his punk act to a stupid conclusion.  While he lived, he was fond of attracting attention to himself by wearing clothing with Nazi swastikas, and safety pins in his cheeks.

So this is what they do now

So, Harry and Lisa, with time off from their busy schedule of making commercials for adult diapers, cast about for a legendary couple from a famous movie to portray this Halloween.  Rose and Jack from Titanic?  Scarlett and Rhett from Gone With The Wind? Latika and Jamal from Slumdog Millionaire? No.  They chose to go as Sid and Nancy from Sid And Nancy. 

Harry thought it best to sport a swastika T-shirt on Friday night.

Monday's apology on Instagram read like every celebrity apology you've ever scoffed at: 

"If I hurt you we were being authentic to the characters of Sid and Nancy for our Halloween costumes. It hurt and angered many of you and we are deeply sorry for that. That was never our intention. We did not mean to offend. With love, Lisa and Harry."

Of course, you have to wonder if Harry, faced with career oblivion at age 64, might have thought this was a clever way to get publicity, by traipsing about with the symbol that meant death for six million people. 

And then you realize that it's career decisions such as this that will keep him in the cast of diaper commercials and movies named Quarantine forever.

The Satur Picture Show, March 2, 2019

At one time, the US led the world in page-folding, a Western version of Origami in which each page of a book gets to form a letter, rendering the book unreadable, but also a work of art. This must take more patience than most of us have.

The Transportation Section § 21-1003 (m) of the Maryland code states: "A person may not stand or park a vehicle within 15 feet of a fire hydrant." However, if it's REALLY important or if you're in a BIG hurry, firefighters will gladly make alternate arrangements to put water on a fire.

This guy doesn't know it yet, but there won't be a whole lot left for him.

The most flexible doors know all the ins and outs.

This is just the time of year when the afternoon sun bounces off the coffee table by the sofa and right into my eyes as I sit on my decliner. That same sun also goes to the beach and lights up the pier.

This rare coin was minted in Rome in 107 AD.  1,909 years later, tourist Lori Rimon was walking in the eastern section of Galilee (Northern Israel). As she walked in the archeological site, she caught the glint of the coin in the sun, and turned it over to authorities, later learning that it's only the second such coin ever found with the picture of Augustus and the words "Augustus Divine." Numismatists assume that the other coins are in the ashtrays of 107 Chevrolets and the pillows of really old sofas.

All the other medical professionals in the area were so impressed with the new logo for Dr Katz the dentist that they contacted the company to have something similarly appropriate installed on their building entrances. First up: Dr Sprinkle, the urologist.

This upcoming Tuesday the 5th is Shrove Tuesday, so we will be at the Diner, loading up on pancakes and a side of shroves.

Bad Heir Day

I don't believe in lying on the ground and looking up at the branches of my family tree, although I am reliably informed that my father's great uncle Hezekiah B. Clark was an amateur genealogist, and when I tell people I have a lot of kinfolk "down under," I'm not talking about Australia, you get what I mean here?


All my antecedents, I honor them, but their stories are their stories, in my opinion. My maternal grandfather's brother Ed was famous in the family for being able to switch hands in the middle of writing a letter. His ambidexterity was the stuff of legends, but I just typed *this* with my left hand and *this* with my right, and no one can tell the difference anyway.

And, let's be honest. You send your cheek swabs off to some company and six weeks later you get a report that says you are 12% Scottish, and you get so mad, someone's gonna get kilt!

For real, I have heard from several people who find their DNA test came back with questionable results, so I'm not sending off any of my cheekiness for testing.  And I hear all the time that we should live in the moment, so why do I want to hear about when my 7th cousin twice removed Abner met and married a waspish syndicate bookkeeper?

But that's just I; what's is prologue, sayeth Shakespeare, and who's related to him?

Schools are getting kids to do family tree projects, and can you imagine that it could lead to confusion?

Rachel Garlinghouse is a mother of four adopted children and she wrote an article called "Teachers, Please Stop Assigning Family Tree Projects," for Scary Mommy dot com, and her point is this: "Not only do families-by-adoption see the numerous problems with such assignments, but so do foster families, families where children do not know who their biological fathers are, and children with many parents, some biological and some not. There are also the children of single parents or children being raised by another relative, such as a grandparent, older sibling, or aunt. There are kids with two moms or two dads and kids with several step-parents."

Tiffani Onwuachi is a mom who told Good Morning America that she was opposed to having her son's teacher assign a family tree project.  Why? "We found out the maternal grandfather was not our grandfather through Ancestry.com," she told the show. "It’s been a little sticky to say the least."

I will admit to having grown up in the Ozzie and Harriet era with two parents and one sibling and everything was standard.  Boring, but standard. In fact, when a new kid came to our class in fourth grade, the teacher had him wait in the hall while she explained to us that his parents were divorced so he lived with just his father.  She might as well have told us his name was Oliver and he worked with a group of young men who separated people from their wallets.

I suppose that this can be a good way for the young'uns to learn that Uncle Nutsy came to the family by jumping off a tramp steamer off the coast of Nova Scotia. They have been wondering why he's always tieing charger cords into exotic knots and hollering "Ahoy" when he picks them up after soccer.

Mary Ann with the shaky plan

It causes me no small embarrassment to see that a woman from the next county up the road, a Democrat, a delegate to the Maryland Legislature by the name of Mary Ann Lisanti, has disgraced herself to a point where people are calling for her resignation.

But that's the situation the way it stands for Lisanti, 51, who used the vile n-word to refer to Prince George's County while speaking with other lawmakers at a cigar bar in Annapolis.  She told the Washington Post  that she didn’t recall saying that word, but was “sure everyone has used it.”

Two problems here: a) if you drop bombs like that in public and are unable to remember doing it, you might be dealing with some sort of impairment, and 2) this is the standard political apology.

I don't recall that. OK, now I remember. And I have issued a written apology and I will attend sensitivity training.

That paraphrase of her bumbling apologia reminds me that she forgot the other time-honored defense of telling us that a lot of her friends are black.

Meanwhile, she has lost her leadership position in the House. House Speaker Michael Busch announced Tuesday he has removed Lisanti as chair of the workers' comp subcommittee. Lisanti, a Democrat from Harford County pictured below, issued a statement later in which she weirdly claimed the ability to say words she did not know.

She apologized to the House Democratic Caucus Tuesday morning, after apologizing to leaders of the state’s Legislative Black Caucus on Monday.

Del. Darryl Barnes, the chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, called Lisanti’s words “a blatant act of racism.” After all, this is Black History Month, “a time where we should be recognizing achievements in the African-American community.”

Maryland taxpayers pay 141 delegates, and 47 state senators, annual salaries of $50,330 to make laws to govern our lives. It's not too much to expect a bit of probity from these men and women.

More Bang for the buck

Down in Montgomery County, Maryland, a Washington DC suburb, officials are reeling about a theft of $6.7 million in county (that means tax!) money.

What's most embarrassing is that the theft was big-time embezzlement by the chief operating officer of the county Department of Economic Development.

Byung Il Bang, 59, also known as Peter Bang, is the man whose job it was to help small businesses and businesses run by women and minorities, as well as businesses in the fields of computer technology and biological technology.  He was paid to bring these businesses to Montgomery County and help them flourish.

He just wasn't paid $6,705,669, which was how much he figured he needed to cover his gambling debts, so he reached into the county cash register, so to speak, and helped himself.

The IRS got wise to the scheme when Bang was unable to explain where he was getting these big checks he cashed at casinos.  They check on these things, you know.  Good thing there was no government shutdown at the time.

"Everyone who holds positions of trust should prove themselves worthy of that trust," said U.S. attorney Robert Hur, the prosecutor. But he said that Bang betrayed that trust.

The scheme went this way:  Montgomery County struck a deal with a  province in South Korea to create an "incubator fund," the purpose being to help the growth of Korean-run businesses in the county. Bang then set up a shell corporation called Chungbuk Incubator Fund LLC with four bank accounts in that name.

He used his own home address as the address of all four accounts. From there, it was a snap to direct money to the accounts. The Montgomery County Department of Finance transferred $5.4 million, the Maryland Economic Development Corporation transferred $1.2 million, and the Maryland Conference & Visitors Bureau chipped in $43,000.  All of these agencies believed they were investing in Montgomery County's economic future, but were in fact supporting Bang as he poured all of it into casinos around the nation.

Of course, Bang (pictured above) not only pled guilty to ripping off the money, but also admitted he didn't report the income on his taxes.

Bang is obligated to pay the money back, per his plea agreement. The court left it up to him to figure out how, and we only hope the plan doesn't involve winning it in casinos, race tracks, or scratchers.

The judge pointed out that Bang did good work for the county, just before she sent him up the federal river for a four-year bid.

And Montgomery County officials said they will set up oversight to make sure no one is ever able to commit this level of crime again. They did not say what Bang's supervisors were doing while they should have been overseeing his sketchy practices.

Gorilla My Dreams

With the baseball season getting underway, and Orioles fans relieved of the worry about getting the money to pay for home playoff tickets, we still have a lot to look forward to with the local nine.

The team has been putzing around for the last few years since winning the American League East pennant in 2014, and the time has come to see if the old saw about having to hit rock bottom before things get better is true. There are fewer bottoms rockier than when you lose 115 games out of 162, and that's the sad state of recent Orioles history.

Just like a motel on Rte 40 with a hastily scrawled sign on the front desk reading "NOW UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT," the O's have new management, new players, and, one hopes, a new spirit of trying a bit harder than recent teams seem to have. There will be plenty of rookies and plenty of rookie mistakes, but let's see...

And it also seems that a new radio voice will be calling the play-by-play. I was very sad to read that Joe Angel, longtime announcer, decided to retire, but he is 71 and deserves not to sit through rain delays in Cleveland any longer.

The picture up top ^ shows engineer "Tiny" Tim Jones in the back, with Joe (l) and Ben McDonald (r) in front. Ben was a pretty fair pitcher back in the '89-'95 glory days, and now all 6'7" of him flies up from Louisiana to join the radio broadcasting team on some games. He does what the best of the radio sidekicks do - he shares experience from the vantage point of a player, with a little humor thrown in. It just might be an interesting season with the Orioles this year.

Speaking of interesting things, and Louisiana, that's where a would-be crook made a rookie mistake.

The Sulphur Police Dept down there responded to a call for a subject acting in a suspicious manner. Sulphurians (Sulphurites?) called 911 to say that a man was prowling through yards and looking into houses, both of which activities add up to crimes about to occur.

The callers added that it wouldn't be too hard to spot the peeper, as he was wearing a gorilla costume.

Jeremie Moran is the name of the ALLEGED ne'er-do-well, and when police arrived in the neighborhood and told Moran to stop, he pranced right on in through the front door of one of the houses.  Three steps behind came the law. They searched the house and found no Moran. (Spell check, save me!) When they got to the back of the house, the back door was wide open as well, leading officers to deduce that Moran had gone sailing off into the night.


But NO! He wasn't outside anywhere!



So they circled back and check the house a little more thoroughly, and you know all those dustballs and empty McWrappers that you find under the bed when you turn the mattress? Well, among all that detritus, they found Moran, wearing a gorilla suit and a black eye. He was arrested and booked on several charges, including resisting an officer, unauthorized entry and meth possession.

As of this writing, it is unclear if Moran has a lawyer, or a dentist or a barber.

Help from an unexpected source!

It's well known among law enforcement types that a typical child molester is so perverse as to enjoy keeping detailed records of his "conquests," and in this new digital age, what better way to log one's filthy depravities than to write about them on one's personal computer?

A police officer from another county in Maryland told me of a case in which his department, some years ago, raided the home of a child molester and took into custody his computer, which they were sure would yield a treasure trove of inculpatory evidence.

So the top brainiacs in the department set about opening up the computer's files, only to find that they were password-protected. Time after time they fiddled with password after password, only to be rebuffed every time.

At length, they did the only thing they could do, which was to go down to the high school and round up the King Of All Smalltown Hackers. They took him back to the precinct, and with a few taps on the keyboard, he was in there in a twinkling, and asked for a ride to Game Stop.

The point is, sometimes you need help, and sometimes the skills that will help you are not exactly on Angie's List.

Which brings us to sun-drenched Florida, where Pasco County Sheriff's deputies were trying to help a family.  The father had locked his keys in his SUV on Valentine's Day, and his efforts to jimmy the door were fruitless, and with his one-year-old daughter perched inside in her car seat, it was an emergency to get into the car.

Even with the temperature at 56°, it's not safe for the baby to be stuck in the car, even though she seemed comfortable when the deputies came along.

After a few more minutes with no luck, the parents told the deputies that the dad was going to break the front driver's side window.  That's not optimal, and it turned out that they didn't have to be, because...

Working nearby was one of those prison work gangs you see all over the south, uniformly dressed in stripes and busily repairing parking lot medians. They saw what was going on, and volunteered their unique skill sets to get into the car.

I mean, why not, you know what I mean?

The deputies told the dad to get up close to a window so the baby would see Daddy and not some scary-looking dudes.

The men went to work, their skilled hands like those of a surgeon performing a bladder cystectomy.

It took two minutes for the robbin' hoods to pry open the front door enough for one of their number to reach in with a coat hanger and work the door lock button. Two minutes.

Please remember this, the next time you can't get your car started. That sketchy-looking guy hanging around the LP gas canisters in front of Home Depot should be able to help.

Sunday Rerun: Earache, my eye

Even though my daily pace has been measured at somewhere between "glacial" and "somnambulent," there is one thing you can say about me.  I am an early riser.  The cats don't even bother dive -bombing me awake any more; they know they can count on me shuffling down to the kitchen and doling out the Tuna 'n' Kibble while Marty Bass is still tieing his tie. 

Remember us?

I can't rely on the old Native American trick of guzzling a gallon of water just before shutting the peepers so as to guarantee an early wakeup, so I use an alarm clock.  And the one that I've been using has just been relegated to second-string status, sitting in my den with the sole job of keeping my second-string iPod charged.  

And why?  Simple?  It had the annoying feature of the alarm, whether on buzzer or radio, starting out super quiet and then gradually getting louder.

Very annoying, to me, at least. It's like someone trying to awaken you by whispering in your ear for a few seconds and then ramping it up to a bellow in a while.  

Look at this way...if an emergency vehicle is behind you and you are so intently listening to Adele rolling around in deep deep sorrow that you don't see the 27 flashing lights behind you, the driver will hit the siren. And that siren starts off loud and stays that way. 

So what I want in an alarm is something that says "Wake up!" And not something that says,"hey listen Mark good morning it's Friday and it looks like a sunny day with temps in the 60s so anytime you see fit to go ahead and get your socks on and feed the cats and empty the dishwasher and make coffee and tea, that would be great..."

(Click on the highlighted words "wake up" to hear an explanation for today's title.)

Nope.  Wake me up so I stay that way!  

And the other plus of the new clock radio is that I will be one minute earlier getting downstairs to see the morning news.  The old one, you hit the snooze button and you got ten more minutes in the arms of Morpheus.  This new one, the snooze cycle is NINE minutes!

See you in the morning!

The Saturday Picture Show, February 23, 2019

I always loved advertisements that made humanoid characters out of commercial products. And extra points for "Speedy," the Alka-Seltzer mascot, whose hat was an Alka-Seltzer tablet.

People in New Bedford, PA, are restoring the old Orpheum Theater. These classic old theaters can't be allowed to just disappear!

Mars stopped making the Mars bar in 2002, and I think it's because of a shortage of a vital ingredient. There's plenty of milk chocolate and almonds, but our national nougat reserves are tapped out. Once, giant vats of raw nougat dotted the landscape near where nougat grew wild. A pity.

We had a wild turkey up on our deck one day a few years ago, and the next day, a fox was up there, apparently sensing a turkey dinner. It's a tough world out there.

Charles Chaplin (r) met Albert Einstein in 1931, and Einstein said, “What I admire most about your art is its universality. You do not say a word, and yet the world understands you." “It's true,” replied Chaplin, "But your fame is even greater. The world admires you, when no one understands you."

Not that I could have done better, but this street mural saluting Kurt Cobain wound up looking for all the world like David Spade.

America was crazy about riding bicycles at about the time the American Playing Card company came into being, so that's why we call a deck of cards a pack of bicycles. It is almost impossible to draw a good hand at poker while riding a bike, though.

Just keep telling yourself there's no climate change going on as the snow piles up in Las Vegas.

Space Race

They call her The Queen of All Declutter, this Marie Kondo, and now all this straightening up of America's basements, garages and porticos has been good for the good people over at Goodwill. 


Lauren Lawson-Zilai, senior director of public relations for Goodwill, says they are seeing a jump in donations to Goodwill outlets, and that surely must mean that other repurposing organizations are seeing cars pull up everyday and people hopping out to drop off old lamps, Englebert Humperdinck albums, and 8-track players. 

She adds that January donations were up more than 32 percent in Washington, D.C, 22 percent in Houston, 20 percent in Roanoke, Virginia, and 16 percent in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“Some of the local Goodwills cite other factors that might have contributed to an increase in donations like warm weather and New Year’s resolutions,” Zilai says.

There are any number of stores like that around here: Savers, Goodwill, and so forth, and while there are questions about how "charitable" some of them are, and where the profits go, to most people, just getting that old ottoman out of the house so Dick Van Dyke won't trip over it again is the whole point.

And don't forget to get a receipt in exchange for your bag of Members Only jackets and OP corduroy shorts and VHS tapes of "Ernest Needs A Kidney," because you may also be entitled to claim a charitable deduction for your donations on your taxes.  According to the IRS, and they would be the ones who know, a taxpayer can deduct a fair market value of clothing, household goods, used furniture, shoes, books and whatnot.


The late great talk show host Allan Prell, beloved here and elsewhere as elfin "Uncle Allie, your radio pally" used to say that there were only three stationary bikes in all of Baltimore, and once someone gave up on riding one of them, he or she would drop it off to Goodwill or sell it for $5 at a yard sale, and the cycle would start all over again.

Still, enjoy all that empty space you'll have in your house! Marie Kondo is proud of you.

The shoestring broke

If you have a pair of mauve canvas espadrilles that need to be returned to Payless, you should get there as soon as you can.

This week, Payless ShoeSource, a company that's been shoeing us all since 1956, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and this is it. They mean business this time, which is to say they mean no more business because they are pulling down the chainlink doors for good on all their stores in the U.S. and Canada.

Two years ago, Payless cut a deal to lower debts and close their struggling stores, and they seemed to come out of bankruptcy with both feet on the ground.

The reorganization left them with 2,500 locations in the U.S. and Canada. But even that wasn't enough.

We've seen this with so many retailers: liquidation sales and the gradual closing of the stores, and the loss of thousands of jobs. By the end of March, some of the stores will be shuttered, and they will all be gone by Memorial Day.

“The challenges facing retailers today are well documented, and unfortunately Payless emerged from its prior reorganization ill-equipped to survive in today’s retail environment," Payless chief restructuring officer Stephen Marotta said in a statement. "The prior proceedings left the company with too much remaining debt, too large a store footprint and a yet-to-be realized systems and corporate overhead structure consolidation."

If you have a gift card, use it before March 11, they said.

Or you can always go to one of three dozen other countries where 420 company-owned stores and 370 international franchisee stores will remain open. It's the perfect excuse for a getaway to scenic Bora Bora.

Experts are blaming the closing of Payless on the problems all mall stores have these days: declining foot traffic (got to love the irony there), digital competition and the changing tastes of shoppers.

And maybe it didn't help that as their business was getting run down at the heels, they still found time to play games with customers, pretending to be a swanky store. Ha ha. That will give the bosses something to laugh about soon, huh?

I'm hardly a fashionable shopper. I buy wool sox that last forever, shoes from the Rockport Outlet, pants from LL Bean and T shirts from Walmart. 


But there was a certain bit of fun in parading down the aisles at a shoe store, taking care not to trip over the 47 boxes and shoes tossed on the floor by prior customers, and parking my carcass on a bench to pull on a pair of Weejuns.

You don't get that when you buy shoes by mail order, although the letter carrier will often wait while you try on your new shoes and walk around the truck to see what he or she thinks.

It Max a Difference

Max McGee

Max McGee

Baltimore recently welcomed a new anchor/reporter to Channel 13. Max McGee is his name, and chances are, he is not related to Max McGee, a football player for the Green Bay Packers in their glory days of the 1960s.

The first thing one learns about sharing a name with a famous person is that all the jokers who crack wise about it always think they are the first to do so.  I happen to share the name of men who were, in no particular order, a World War II general, a Black Panther gunned down by Chicago police in 1969, and a major league baseball pitcher. All of the men who called me "General" when I was but a wise guy in short pants got the biggest kick out of that, just as I did when I would listen to a ball game and hear that I was warming up for the Mets, Cubs, or Indians. And no one ever saw fit to conflate me with an urban revolutionary.

Of course, fewer and fewer people these days remember any of the three men whose name I still sign on legal documents. That's the thing about time passages; some things stand still and some don't. We went to the graduation exercises when a friend of ours became a county police officer, and in the class was another graduate whose name was a homophone for that of a fairly well known rock star. (I won't mention his name, but it rhymes with "Bindsey Luckingham.") 

At any rate, when I asked our friend if the other cop had been teased for having a famous name, he was genuinely surprised to hear about it. That '70s star was not known to '00s people at all.

Albert Brooks, the comedian, was given the name Albert Einstein at birth. His father, Harry Einstein, was a comedian as well, performing under the name "Parkyakarkus," which is funnier than sticking your son with the name of a doggone genius.  Imagine Albert's teachers and classmates teasing him in school. Please, parents, think before naming your children!

If your surname is Knight, don't have your son go around as "Jed I. Knight."  And no matter how much they like "Catcher In The Rye," the Butts family just cannot have a son named Holden.

Turnin' Up the Heat

I know I am going to get a lot of comments on this, and I welcome it. Hell, I love to start a conversation.

Here's the setup: A long-married couple we know - we'll call them "Mark" and "Peggy" - keep their thermostat set at a constant temperature all winter long. For the record, that temp is 68°, and please don't bother trying to persuade us to turn it up. I know, some of you keep your houses so warm that a pan of cake batter left sitting on the kitchen counter will bake itself to a golden turn in half an hour, and some could hang sides of beef in your sunrooms.  That's not the point of this, as you will see in a minute.

The person we are calling "Peggy" in this scenario said, on a day when the temperature outside was almost 50°, that the house had been warmer on the days a couple of weeks ago when it was like 4° out.

"Mark," as he likes to be called, pointed out that the house temperature is a constant 68° day and night, and that while the heating system has to work more on the 4° days to keep the house at 68° than it does when it's 50°, the house stays at the same temp all the time, so the feeling that it's warmer in their fashionable suburban home is illusory at best.

This was followed by a pithy discussion of how warm it is and how warm it ought to be, and so forth.

"Mark", logical and scientific, but with a disarming wit, dragged out the old saw about people believing that a ton of lead weighs more than a ton of feathers, although he does give certain credence to the notion that 60 minutes spent watching Tim Allen on television is much longer than any other hour.

"Peggy", possessed of her own wisdom, and being the person who pays the gas and electric bill every month, pointed out that she "felt warmer" when the heat was running, ended her summation with a classic, "That's what I believe!"

I believe it was best that I put on a sweater and shut up. First time for everything, and I have worn a sweater before.

Presidential Rules from GW

Lauren Cowling of MentalFloss.com went through the list of 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation that George Washington copied from a book as a young man, before he cut the book in half with his hatchet and threw it across the Rappahannock.

From those 110, Ms Cowling picked the Top 12, and to celebrate Presidents' Day 2019, here we go...... 

1. In the presence of others, sing not to yourself with a humming noise, nor drum with your fingers or feet.

2. Read no letters, books, or papers in company but when there is a necessity for the doing of it you must ask leave: come not near the books or writings of another so as to read them unless desired or give your opinion of them unasked also look not nigh when another is writing a letter.

3. Do not laugh too loud or too much at any public spectacle.

4. Let your discourse with men of business be short and comprehensive.

5. In visiting the sick, do not presently play the physician if you be not knowing therein.

6. Be not immodest in urging your friends to discover a secret.

7. Be not apt to relate news if you know not the truth thereof.

8. Undertake not what you cannot perform but be careful to keep your promise.

9. A man ought not to value himself of his achievements, or rare qualities of wit; much less of his riches, virtue or kindred.

10. Speak not evil of the absent for it is unjust.

11. Think before you speak, pronounce not imperfectly nor bring out your words too hastily but orderly & distinctly.

12. Drink not too leisurely nor yet too hastily. Before and after drinking, wipe your lips; breath not then or ever with too great a noise, for its uncivil.

PS: I break #3 more than any of them!

Sunday Rerun: Uncle Mark's Cabin

If you're on Facebook, you might have seen this.  It's one of many brain teasers that people post for each other to noodle over.

The deal is, would you spend a month in this rustic cabin?  It doesn't say where it is, so all we can do is hope that it's not out in Oregon, where a band of misguided "patriots" is showing how unpatriotic they are by complaining about people having to go to jail for burning up federal land. 

I mean, really.  A patriot follows the law.

But there is no internet, tv or cell service. So, you would really be cut off from the world, since I doubt that there would be a good newspaper on your doorsill every morning.  

And how bad would it be to avoid hearing about a bloviating, hirsute real estate mogul and his insane rants?  Would you really miss seeing "CSI: Cincinnati" or any of the 27 other hourlong dramas that show completely unreal versions of people's jobs? Or any of the completely unreal reality shows?  

I would miss Facebook and the NFL playoffs.  Peggy would miss "Downton Abbey" and "Supergirl." 

And you.  I would miss you.  But in a month, we would have a $100,000 worth of party.  Pass that caviar right on over my way, would you please?

The Saturday Picture Show, February 16, 2019

I don't think I've seen anything like this before, but this tree fell victim to a lightning strike that started a fire inside the tree. I assume that the tree was already rotting, if it were that combustible, and this fire isn't going to help that at all.

Happy birthday in the great beyond to Lee Marvin (1924 - 1987) who starred in "The Dirty Dozen" and lots of other movies. He did indeed serve in World War II, and was wounded quite severely in the Battle of Saipan. But, no matter what you read, he did not serve with Bob Keeshan, and never told a late night TV show that the man who played Captain Kangaroo was the bravest man he served with. One can only wonder what sort of person sits around and makes this nonsense up?

To celebrate their 150th season of baseball, the Cincinnati Reds will be wearing 15 different throwback uniforms this year, showing their finery from years gone by. This is the 1956 model, featuring baseball-headed "Mr Redlegs" on the vest. The Reds were originally the Red Stockings, but changed to just being the Reds when the Boston Red Sox came along. But during the Red Scare of the 1950s, when dunderheads came to believe that dirty communists were hiding underneath every mattress, it was not good to be called "Red," so they called themselves the Redlegs until cooler heads prevailed.

The USS Hornet was a Navy aircraft carrier that was sunk in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in the South Pacific in October, 1942. It was found last month, and robot cameras are sending back amazing images from 17,5000 feet below the ocean's surface. Check this tractor, still aboard and still looking ready to work, 77 years later. You can even see the International Harvester logo on the machine.

Following the death of Chuck Berry, we are down to two of the original pioneers of our rock and roll music. Jerry Lee Lewis turned 83 last fall and he is still cool as a moose. This recording of a 1964 concert has been a prized possession of mine since high school, and still sounds just as great today.

Richard Wayne Penniman had 86 candles on his last cake. Little Richard, as I and his others trillions of fans call him, shines brightly in every endeavor. Last I heard, the years were catching up with him, but he have our records and the best-ever GEICO commercial to remember him by.

When I first saw this tribute to American Mastication, I thought the cowboy was sporting a pretty sweet ponytail, but no.

I've always thought that the Monarch Butterfly looked a lot like the Maryland state flag. It's sad that the butterfly population is dwindling rapidly, but fortunately, our ship of state is being steered by a wise leader who is in tune with the needs of nature and the flora and fauna,so I'm sure he will devote a great deal of attention to the matter.

Book-O-Matic

Today I wish to salute Diane Dwyer, principal at Umatilla Elementary in Umatilla, Florida (where else could it be?)

In a day and age when kids put coins and bills into vending machines and get nothing but Everlasting Gobsmackers and that blue juice that looks like windshield washer fluid in return, Ms Dwyer has set it up so that students get books, rather than crappy sweet food and drink, out of the moneygrabbers.

She says, "It's been a success. It has created excitement and joy around reading and anything that encourages reading is a win in our book."

Actually, Ms Dwyer told "Good Morning America" that Susan Caldwell, the school's media specialist, came up with the idea to begin with.

The school rounded up books from Scholastic Book Fair points, parent donations, and purchases by other school staff.

Umatilla students, kindergarten through 5th grade, have the choice of spending their own allowance money on books or earning special "Bulldog Bucks" tokens that the machine takes like money. One can earn some "Bulldog Bucks" for doing some act of kindness, or working hard on an assignment.




"It would be wonderful if we can partner with local businesses to donate more books because it's been a hit," Ms Caldwell, in full hint-dropping mode, told "GMA."

Already, a local church donated another machine, so that there can be one machine stocked with books for kids in kindergarten through 2nd grade, and another for the upper grades.

As a lifelong reader, I have to sympathize with parents who struggle to get their children to read. Maybe the answer is to make them equate reading a book with winning a prize.

Because reading and gaining knowledge is the greatest prize of all!

Don't shake hands with this man

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about how some people feel that allowing their children to go without proper vaccinations is just dandy.

I'm starting to see where these questionable notions come from.  Where else but Fox "News"?

That cable channel, which some people use like an IV drip to fill their brains with nonsense, employs a man named Pete Hegseth to appear as part of a show called "Fox and Friends."

The other day, Hegseth said that he has not washed his hands for 10 years because "germs are not a real thing" and that not washing his hands helps him to "inoculate himself."

From what, he didn't say.

Hegseth said that germs -  infectious micro-organisms -  don't exist because they could not be seen with the naked eye.

It's difficult to imagine anything so ridiculous, but Harvard and Princeton both placed diplomas in his cruddy, germy hands at one time, you know.

All this came up after his co-hosts, Ed Henry and Jedediah Bila, saw him eating a the remains of a pizza that had been left out on their set from the day before. They started ragging on him about germs, but Hegseth defended himself and promised to tell his faithful viewers everything.

"My 2019 resolution is to say things on air that I say off air," he added.

I don't know if any of his degrees were in the field of immunology, but Hegseth dug in a bit deeper:

"We live in a society where people walk around with bottles of Purell in their pockets, and they sanitise 19,000 times a day as if that's going to save their life," he said.

It'a also a society in which people walk around with bottles of Old Granddad in their pockets, so there's that.

Hegseth continued: "I take care of myself and all that, but I don't obsess over everything all the time."

So this fellow on the news says that washing one's hands - basic human hygiene - counts as an obsession.

This comes to us from a network which lionizes a peculiar fellow who obsesses over building a magical wall to keep crime at bay, since there no Americans committing crimes.

Science fact: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says regular hand washing "is one of the best ways to remove germs, avoid getting sick, and prevent the spread of germs to others."

Bacteria that can be spread by unwashed hands include salmonella and E coli.

Even Donald Trump is a germaphobe.

In his 1997 book, The Art of the Comeback, Mr Trump's ghostwriter wrote: "One of the curses of American society is the simple act of shaking hands, and the more successful and famous one becomes the worse this terrible custom seems to get.

"I happen to be a clean hands freak. I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible."




Hegseth displays his filthy paws.

Love Connection

Here's some real inside police lingo for you: BOLO means "Be On the LookOut."

And staff and students at Towson University here have been given the BOLO heads-up to keep both eyes peeled for a woman, in her 50s, wearing a multi-colored scarf. (I would assume her daily raiment includes more than a scarf, but you never know.)

She has been prowling the campus, most notably at the Cook Library and Center for the Arts, bracing one and all.

Her M.O. (modus operandi) is that she shows one and all a cell phone picture of her L.S. (lonely son) and says she is trying to hook him up with a date, and so she is advertising his lonesomeness around the school in an effort to find true love for the young man.

As a crime, this isn't one per se, although it could be called a crime to embarrass your children like this. I mean, unless this kid has the pre-surgical appearance of the situation pictured at right, or the personality of The Situation (currently incarcerated), he should be able to find his own dates.

But, ever vigilant, the TU Police Squad  alerted students via an “incident advisory” that linked one and all to surveillance footage of the guy's mom accosting students in search of The One For Junior.



"This incident advisory is being provided in order to make the TU Community aware of an incident on campus that may cause concern,” Charles Herring, chief of the university police department, wrote in an e-mail to the campus community. “This advisory is intended to heighten awareness and inform the community of incidents that may impact their safety and security.”

In an exclusive to this blog, the young man involved issued the following statement: "Come on, Ma! Leave me alone, will ya?"

The Astounding Silence

There was an interesting story on the CBS Sunday Morning about John Francis, an environmentalist with a fascinating fact in his life story...so much so that they ought to bring back that "I've Got A Secret" show.

But if you didn't see the show Sunday, I'll tell you the secret.  This man Francis went 17 years without speaking to anyone, from his birthday in 1973 to Earth Day, 1990.

It all started when he was thunderstruck by the damage in San Francisco Bay in January of 1971 when two tankers collided in the San Francisco Bay, spilling 840,000 gallons of oil. Francis thought then that it would be a good idea never to ride in a motor vehicle anymore, and then, when a neighbor died suddenly in 1972, he thought that was his signal, and for the next 22 years (1972- 1994) he walked everywhere he wanted to go.

As we have all learned while trying to get somewhere on foot, you can't go ten feet without someone stopping you to demand why you are walking. "Whaddya, got no car?" (or friends, or cab money), they ask.

Francis's completely rational response (slight sarcasm alert) to all this hectoring was to stop speaking to anyone anywhere about anything. He communicated with others by the use of gestures (hoo man!) and written notes exclusively for 17 years.

Now here is the part that tends to strain credulity (and if you've ever had your credulity strained, you know how bad it feels.) Somehow, without saying a word out loud, Francis was able to earn three college degrees, topping off his academic achievement with a a Ph.D. in Land Management from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

I guess he had to write to his professors back in those pre-email days to tell them he would be in the class, but would not be engaging in the normal discourse that passes among students and professors, because of his pledge of silence.

The article I read said that he learned to communicate through the banjo that he taught himself to play. Surely, his stirring renditions of "Dueling Banjos," "I'll Have a Ham Sandwich and a Coffee," and "Do You Know A Good Shoe Repair Place Within Walking Distance" helped him say a lot with zero words.

It all seems true, although I'm not sure about the benefits of being silent for 17 years. And get this - the day after he broke his vow of silence, he was struck by a car in D.C, and was able to talk the medic crew into letting him walk to the hospital.

Just in time!


Assignment for tonight: list the ten people you wish would take up the 17-Year-Silence Challenge.  Give reasons.

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