Look up!

There used to be a show on the public radio called The Dinner Party Show. It came on Saturdays around 4 PM or so, just ahead of the weekend edition of the news and the Prairie Home Companion.

The point of the show was to put us in the mood to attend the salons and high-tone gatherings that awaited us on Saturday evenings, and as we looked around for our cummerbunds and shirt studs, the Dinner Party Show imparted information and factoid tidbits that we could sprinkle into the conversation that evening. 

I mean, rather than everyone sitting around the living room whinging about the prices of things, it's always better to be able to tell people that Charles Darwin had a pet who died in 2006.  Darwin, the naturalist from whose teachings came the wonderful world of evolution, died in 1882, but he brought back a turtle named Harriet from the Galapagos Islands, and that pet lived until 2006.

Drop that into the dinner conversation and everyone will go home and Google it!

I bring this up so that in case you are having company (ten guests or fewer, six feet apart please) for equinox tonight, you can let them all know that this will be the earliest arrival of Spring since 1896.

CBS News points out that, while the Spring equinox usually occurs on March 20th or 21st, "complicated reasons for 2020's earlier equinox involve leap years, centuries and the length of time it takes Earth to revolve around the sun."

If you want to set your watch by it, the equinox will occur at 11:50 PM EDT tonight. That is when the Sun's rays will shine directly on the equator.

With the axis of Earth not tilted toward or away from the Sun today, that gives us exactly 12 hours of daylight, and 12 hours of darkness. This also happens in September, when Autumn begins.

That's what equi-nox means: equal amounts of day and night (nox). And now, every day until the Summer solstice in June, there will be more and more daylight as we roast beneath the merciless Sun.

Some parts of nature are predictable. We know those facts about daytime and nighttime. Some parts of nature are unpredictable. We have no idea when the coronavirus will be controlled, or when schools will reopen.

Life is interesting. Enjoy it! But use sunscreen and sanitizer as you do.

Get in line

Last week, we saw America in a food fight unlike any since the days of Animal House, but only in rare cases did it turn violent.

Americans were storming from store to store in search of food and non-food items such as meat and milk and toilet paper, disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer.  It was crazy, almost like people were calling for a hurricane or blizzard, with the likelihood of being stuck at home for hours on end.

What started it was the coronavirus commotion, and a rumor that spread like wildfire on social media.

I think we can agree that it was a problem for the people at the top of the federal government not to take the virus seriously at first. Claiming that we would be down to zero cases in a matter of days, or that the warm weather in April would chase the virus out of town, delayed preparations and led to confusion on the part of citizens.

But that happens a lot these days, mixed messages from 1600 Pennsylvania Av. 

Some misguided joker started a rumor that we all needed to "stock up” on two weeks of supplies; it went around the internet faster than lightning. The rumor falsely claimed that a “mandatory” nationwide quarantine would soon go into effect because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unfortunately, the old expression is true: A lie can get around the world twice before the truth even gets its pants on.

Some versions had a text or instant message with a screenshot of a fake memo saying " within 48 to 72 Hours… The president will order a two week mandatory quarantine for the nation. Stock up on whatever you guys need to make sure you have a two week supply of everything. Please forward to your network.”

People who perpetrate this sort of fraud like to make it look all legitimate and everything, so various versions of the message attribute this falsehood to something apparently real: “military friends,” the “DC mayor,” and “a physician at the Clev. Clinic.”

The  National Security Council shot down the rumor with a tweet: "Text message rumors of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown.”

As usual, it didn't take long to read far enough to see a syntax error that indicates the person who came up with this legerdemain is not exactly an official official. Some versions of the fake mention the Stafford Act, a federal disaster relief law.  But instead of saying that the president would invoke the Stafford Act, the phony message said “within 48 to 72 Hours the president will evoke what is called the Stafford act.”

That sort of thing always evokes laughter from me. Stay healthy!

The Wearing Of Green

You're darn Tuten

Why does every story with the words "longtime", "Alabama," and "sheriff" wind up sounding like there's a movie coming up, with Matthew McConnaughey playing Sheriff Jim Bob?

Here's something from the Associated Press:

ATHENS, Ala. (AP) — Lawyers for a longtime Alabama sheriff seeking a delay in his theft trial wrongly claimed the officer was being tested for the illness caused by a new coronavirus.

With Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely set to go on trial on felony charges, his attorneys told a judge in a court document filed March 6 he was hospitalized and being tested for COVID-19.

But testimony during a rare Saturday hearing showed the 69-year-old Blakely wasn’t being tested for the illness, and Circuit Judge Pride Tompkins criticized the defense for making claims that could cause a public panic, The News Courier of Athens reported.

I don't like it if he lied to the court, but you gotta love that hat.

There's a bonus for you: the judge's name is Judge Pride Tompkins! Hot a'mighty!

And the judge said, "I don’t know what your tactic is, but it’s condemned by the court. And the court won’t tolerate it.”

The sheriff is being represented in court by attorney Robert Tuten, and with a straight face,  he told the judge that he simply made a mistake about the sheriff's health, and wasn’t “trying to pull a fast one.” The fact is that Blakely was in a hospital, complaining of a respiratory problem, but they brought a doctor to court who said no way was it COVID-19, and no testing was required.

Can't you just hear Tuten saying this: “There are apparently several different kinds of coronaviruses, but all we had to go on was what we knew at that moment”?  That's what he said.

That physician was Dr. Maria Onoya, who testified that Blakely was tested for several things, influenza and walking pneumonia among them, with all the results negative. She added that the sheriff had shown up at the ER three times.

Blakely, who has been the sheriff for 36 years, was indicted last year on multiple felony counts and one misdemeanor count, alleging that he stole campaign donations, got interest-free loans because of his job status, and solicited money from employees.

I have no idea if he's guilty or not, but this must have Hollywood screaming over who will produce the film. Hint: It won't be Harvey Weinstein.

Sunday Rerun: Oh Rochester!

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

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

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

Meanwhile, someone came up with a brilliant idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Saturday Picture Show, March 14, 2020

This beautiful blue bird is not a bluebird; it's a grandala. The males are the bright blue ones. Their habitat is the northeastern Indian Subcontinent and the low-to-mid altitudes of the Himalayas. That's all I know about grandalas, but they sure are pretty!

For your Thanksgiving planning, here's the Canadian cranberry harvest looking fine!

This is a terrific hill on a street in San Francisco. I think the best way to travel it is by flying, like the birds do.

Next time you have some rice for dinner, think of how happy this fellow was to raise it for you.

I love those photorealistic paintings. The hours and the training that it must take to create this art! And in 1/64th of a second, you could take a photograph.

You don't have to be a great baseball fan to know who wore this legendary raiment. The Babe was Baltimore's gift to the world.

Sorry this is a day late. Yesterday was Friday the 13th, for the superstitious among us.

They really used to make hats to last back in the day. This was worn by an ill-fated passenger on the Titanic, and left behind, where it stayed preserved for decades.

It's a Schock

You might remember this fellow, Aaron Schock. Just a few years ago, people thought he was the Next Big Deal in Republican circles. Why,  he started buying real estate in high school, took a position on the local school board at 19, became an Illinois legislator at 23, and then took a seat in the U.S. Congress at just 27.

Along the way, he was famous among readers of Men’s Health magazine in 2011 after he posed to pictures showing his well-developed physique, and famous across the country among staunch fiscal conservatives for his eagle-eyed watch- dogging of government spending.

"Eagle-eyed watch-dogging" is the sort of metaphor-mixing that drove many a creative writing instructor to drink.

It goes without saying that he was also a staunch Republican, an opponent of marriage equality, the quaint notion that other people have every right to marry whomever they wish.

If you remember Aaron Schock for anything, it would probably be for the jackpot he found himself in for spending a king's ransom on taxpayer-paid office renovations, as he apparently attempted to have his Capital Hill workplace look like the main shack on "Downton Abbey." His spending on interior deco and lavish air travel ended up costing him his career as a politician; he was out on his asterisk in 2015, awash in a sea of indictments.

And then...last year his extremely religious family saw pictures of him attending that Coachella hippiefest out in California. After that, he was on the way to his family home to come out to his parents, and his mom called him to say don't bother coming home.

He was banned from Easter dinner.

So he came out publicly, which was probably not an easy thing to do, and said that his opposition to gay marriage was just an effort to align himself with the stance of 2008 presidential nominee John McCain.

“That fact doesn’t make my then position any less wrong, but it’s sometimes easy to forget that it was leaders of both parties who for so long wrongly understood what it was to defend the right to marry,” Schock says now, adding that if he were back in office now, he “would support LGBTQ rights in every way.”

The only contact he has with family members now is when they write to him trying to interest him in this thing called conversion therapy, where they pray the gay away.

And the flashback?

“Aaron Schock's statement fails to acknowledge the years of hurt that his votes against hate crimes protections, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and more caused LGBTQ Americans,” GLAAD tweeted.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-NY, said that Schock “needs to own up to his misconduct in office & apologize to all who fought (over his opposition) to win him his new found rights," but added that he should be welcomed.

At the end of his post, Schock pays tribute for those who opened the world up for those who just wish to live as they see fit:

“I can live openly now as a gay man because of the extraordinary brave people who had the courage to fight for our rights when I did not,” he said.

I haven't learned all that much as I wander this earth, but one thing I know for sure: that thing that people deny so strenuously usually turns out to be the thing they really want.

Oh, and also that people can love as they wish, and adults should be free to consent to their own choices.

Taking arrest

A guy named Brendan McLoughlin became a New York City police officer, and somewhere along the line he met Miranda Lambert, the country singer who used to be married to that Blake Shelton guy.

Last month, McLoughlin retired from the cops and now works as a security guard for his wife, Miranda Lambert! How about that! Those crazy kids got married a year ago and now he's traded in his NYPD Blue for an official Miranda lanyard.

"His current duty status is retired," Sergeant Jessica McRorie, an NYPD Deputy Chief for Public Information Spokesperson, told Fox News.  He had been on a leave of absence since last summer.

Now, wherever she goes, and performs, he's more than just the guy holding her purse while she tries on frocks and more than the guy in the front row cheering and waving a tshirt with her picture on it.

She's on her "Wildcard" tour, and former officer McLoughlin is right there on the security team. And if you're lucky enough to be invited to a meet and greet for a grip and grin with Miranda, he's the guy who lets you into the inner sanctum. He checks the eddying mob backstage and looks through everyone's purses and bags before they meet their favorite singer.

"Brendan was the security guard right before you go in to meet Miranda for her meet and greet," some eyewitness told Foxxxxx News. "Other members of the security team told fans, 'No photos with Brendan.'"

Is there a demand for pictures of the star singer's husband?

And then, another eyewitness told F. News that McLoughlin was part of  Lambert's security team at her Dallas concert at the American Airlines Center. .

"Brendan was one of the security guys checking fans and when it was your turn it was actually Brendan asking if fans had anything they wanted Miranda to sign," said the witness. "Brendan was overheard telling one fan, 'Have her sign your boot!'"

The witnesses happily told Fox "Brendan wears a lanyard representing he's on Miranda's team and he even wears a little earpiece."

I guess he's got the whole Secret Service affect down...wire frame sunnies and furtive looks all over the crowd.

Miranda performed and Brendan did security duty for the 2020 Coors Light Birds Nest which, as we all know, took place during the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament in Phoenix, Ariz. in late January.

Say what you will about my disdain for golf, but you can't tell me a better name for a golf tournament than The Waste Management Tournament."

I guess he was smart to hold onto his regular police job while they went through that crucial first year of marriage, but I would have to wonder if he doesn't feel a bit...marginalized, going from respected community server to patting down people waiting to tell a singer that they have all her albums "and everything!"

We're in an epoch now in which we can all take turns feeling canalized, moved to a less important lane. I remember being in a little resort-town sandwich shop when a male and a female were working behind the counter making subs.  Apparently she had decided that he was going to take a less important role in the upcoming lunch rush, but, "You're not going to marginalize ME!" he inveighed.

And that was over a matter of who made the BLTs and who fried burger patties.

Whereas, this is a matter of hefting purses, looking for revolvers or other weapons.

Of course, he probably got a nice raise. I hope there's some job security, working security.

Born Every Minute

There is actually something worse to worry about than the coronavirus.  And that is that good old Swindlin' Jim Bakker, the horny televangelist, is trying to tell people that the silver potion he is hawking can cure the coronavirus.

And there's something even worse than that.

People are buying it! They're sending money to that charlatan as soon as they get home from BuySumMor with 137 bottles of Purell, cases of toilet paper, and 35-packs of water.

Bakker's latest endeavor is The Jim Bakker Show, and it's among seven companies sent warning letters by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for selling unapproved products and treatments.


"The FDA considers the sale and promotion of fraudulent COVID-19 products to be a threat to the public health. We have an aggressive surveillance program that routinely monitors online sources for health fraud products, especially during a significant public health issue such as this one," FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement.

Johns Hopkins University, where people who know what they're talking about work, reports that there are no vaccines or approved drugs to treat or prevent the coronavirus. COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, is responsible for  at least 24 deaths in the U.S. as of Monday. More than 3,800 have died around the world.

"There already is a high level of anxiety over the potential spread of coronavirus," FTC Chairman Joe Simons said in a statement. "What we don't need in this situation are companies preying on consumers by promoting products with fraudulent prevention and treatment claims. These warning letters are just the first step. We're prepared to take enforcement actions against companies that continue to market this type of scam."

Bakker is selling nostrums that he claims contain silver, such as "Silver Sol Liquid," and he says this stuff will diagnose or cure COVID-19. He admits that his product hasn't been tested on COVID-19, but he does allow that God sent it to us.

A proud moment, when Jim swapped his expensive suits for prison jumpsuits

Some of you were not around for the Bakker heyday. Although he claims to be a minister, he is not a graduate of any college or university that offers divinity degrees. Instead, he is an evangelist, which anyone can be. He started out in the 60s with Pat Robertson's network and formed his own in the 70s. By the 80s, when cable tv brought both Ozzie and Harriet reruns and godless men of God to our living rooms, Bakker was rolling in dough with his daily "PTL Club" show. We knew people who were sending him a couple of hundred bucks a month, and "Jim and Tammy" (his then-wife was the oddly-made-up Tammy Faye Bakker) became America's new religious icons, rolling in ill-gotten gains.  They even had an air-conditioned dog house, and the now-defunct Heritage USA, a Christian themed amusement park in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

It all ended in the most 80s way possible. A bosomy church secretary, Jessica Hahn, charged that he paid her hush money (sound familiar, Donald?) to keep their affair a secret. That led him to resign from the "ministry." And then Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy, after which  Judge Robert Daniel Potter sentenced Bakker to 45 years in federal prison and imposed a $500,000 fine.  He served 5.

Tammy Faye divorced him, and after laying low for a few years, he remarried and started a new hustle called the Jim Bakker Show, from the Morningside Church in Blue Eye, Missouri.

Besides "cures" for coronavirus, he also peddles survival food in "Bakker Buckets."  His "50-day Survival Food" sampler bucket contains 154 meals. He wants $135 for it, but when the world comes to an end and the Apocalypse is nigh, you'll be sitting pretty on your Bakker Bucket with freeze-dried dinners and your silver solution.

Stranger than...

So, a friend posted this on Instagram:

I feel like I'm in season 5 of my life and the writers are just making ridiculous (ish) happen to keep it interesting

On one level, it's sad but true. Anyone who has ever enjoyed a TV series for a long time looks back ruefully after the fifth or sixth year as the characters age and the situations on a situation comedy become much less comedic.  "Modern Family" is a great example of that; it's a show that rarely missed in its early days and now, as it limps across the finish line in its eleventh and final season, the laughs are just not there so much.

When you think about it, nothing is really funny after eleven years, except for seeing some pompous stuffed shift take a pratfall on the icy sidewalk outside a diner. That never fails.

Ask and I will tell it

<<<<<<< And my English hitchhiker joke.

Drama shows seem to do better as they age, but still, they can grow stale. One good thing that the "Law & Order" shows - the original, the SVU, the Criminal Intent, whatever  - do is, they change the cast every so often to keep things fresh, so with the exception of Mariska Hargitay and Ice T, you never know who will be around.

One of my favorite memories of the Diane Rehm radio show- which, by the way, was on for years and years until the host decided to give it up, and was still just as fresh the day it left as the day it began - was when Alan Alda said he didn't like fiction because, as he said, "You can tell they're just making it up as they go along."

I don't enjoy fiction for that reason, my reason being that there are 65 billion facts I have yet to learn, so why read something someone created, instead of real stuff? 

Take any of the stories in the news these days...a virus spreading, threatening to be a pandemic, a mom and her new husband (whose wife died under mysterious circumstances) can't explain where her children are, a long war is supposed to end with a truce that lasts two days, a Hollywood mogul goes to prison for crimes against women, a member of British royalty and his wife no longer wish to be part of British royalty and the world recoils in horror...who could make up these scenarios and have them be so interesting?

I chews Bazooka

Do kids still chew bubble gum? I was quite the Bazooka enthusiast as a kid, much preferring it to the sweeter taste of Dubble Bubble. I enjoyed loading up on two chunks, maybe three, and blowing a bubble big enough to use as a weather balloon.

By the time I gave up gum, Bazooka had gummed up the works by adding flavors. How absurd! Bubble gum should taste like bubble gum! But here came "Strawberry Shake," "Cherry Berry," "Watermelon Whirl," and "Grape Rage."

I guess the kids that followed in my path had to try all these flavors out.

Of course, for your penny (!) you also got a Bazooka Joe comic! Beside priceless humor that was repeated in classrooms and playgrounds from Portland to Portland, the comics were worth prizes. How many packs of youngsters planned to chew how many packs of gum to get enough comics to get a free camera? And how many cavities did how many dentists fill?

Bazooka gum came out in 1947, in the days when there was chewing gum and bubble gum and not much else in the form of gooey mouth stuff. But now, there are dozens of gums and things such as Trident and Ouch and Thrills and Razzle, the candy that becomes chewing gum. So, they don't sell as much Bazooka as they used to, and when that happens, who's first to go? The people who make the comics!

Those artists and gagwriters were let go in 2012, when the firm announced that the wrappers would now include brain teasers and codes to unlock video games and whatnot.  But, like the original Chef Boy-Ar-Dee canned ravioli and Dr Pepper made with real sugar, all these products once consigned to the scrap heap are brought back eventually, and they say we can find the original good old Bazooka with (reprinted) original comics at WallyWorld and other fine retailers near you.

By the way, on the comic, where it said "Bazooka Joe and His Gang," that meant the following cast:

Pesty  - we always figured he was Joe's little brother. He wore a sombrero.

Mort - the tall lanky kid who covered his mouth with his turtleneck sweater

Toughie - a wannabe hood with a sailor hat. In the 50s and 60s, someone in every pack of guys wore a sailor hat, sometimes inverted like Gilligan

Hungry Herman -  Joe's husky pal

Jane - Joe's girl

Walkie Talkie - the doggie dogg (again, there was always one in the crowd)

Sundar Rerun: Never a boast or brag

I'm here to tell you something about men.  None of this will come as a surprise at all to any woman, who all know everything about men right off. Nothing can fool a woman.

But for those who don't know it...here's a rule of thumb.  The more a guy talks about how great he is/was about something, the less great he really was. 

You find these guys everywhere...and their stories are nowhere. They will change the topic of conversation around to how they once bagged a bull moose with a cap pistol and six feet of twine...how he scored the winning touchdown on Homecoming against crosstown rival Spiro Agnew High School with five would-be tacklers hanging on for dear life as he carried the ball into the endzone...how they rescued that carload of teachers and orphans that plunged into the Great Suwahaheanowmee River...how they can bench-press someone their own weight and the bench that person is sitting on...how the fish just give up and jump into their boat as soon as they drop in their line...and how many women they have been with in a lifetime of carnal conquests...

A great place to spot these dudes is at a high school reunion, where the urge to show off their accomplishments is paramount. Time after time, I've seen guys boasting about their fabulous lives at a reunion, only to leave later in a 1989 Chevrolet Caprice <<< beater that needed a hotshot to get off the lot.

Women know that the men who actually accomplish things are too busy accomplishing things to stand around talking about accomplishing things.

And at the same time, the reunion talk will turn to someone who didn't show up for the reunion.  Where is "so and so" now? Guess he couldn't make the reunion because he's too busy running the news division of a TV network or being an emergency room trauma surgeon or...even better...he's out doing something good for needy members of his community with his devoted family.

That sort of thing is the best success of all, but when did you ever hear someone boast about it?  

The Saturday Picture Show. March 7, 2020

There are sites that chronicle the photos of people who roam about, taking pictures of abandoned houses, factories, schools, theaters, churches, you name it. But this one seems poignant more than most, because you can picture the family gathered around watching "Bonanza" every Sunday night.

They are real - they are black roses! And they only grow in one place on our earth - Helfeti, Turkey.

The damage in Nashville, after a tornado rolled through Tuesday morning, was much worse than they even feared before the sun came up.

This is one of two things - either it's a car owned by two people OR it's the property of one person who changes his or her mind all the time.

Having posed for a pretty picture on this lollipop, it's a lot to ask this bee to fly away, because his tiny feet are probably stuck.

This is the spiral staircase in the pagoda at Patterson Park, near downtown Baltimore.

Let this past week be remembered as the week the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile mustard up the strength to ketchup with fans in Baltimore. I relished the chance to share this with you!

This 2,000-year-old silver dagger was found in Germany by an intern! What he found was a weapon that very likely may have helped the Romans in their battles against Germanic tribes in the first century A.D.

Romo wasn't built in a day

He never played in a Super Bowl, although he did broadcast one. And now Tony Romo, who as a Dallas Cowboys quarterback rang up the highest passer rating of any qb not to play in the Big Game, is making super money.

You'll recall being told that if you work hard enough and display enough skill in your job, you'll be paid fairly. Tony would agree with that!

If you follow pro football, you know the drill. Aging players retire and move into an analyst job with a TV network, but most of them sit there, watching the game, and muttering things such as:

• "They have to establish the running game"
• "They need to air it out with long passes"
• "The (insert name of team) just need to go out and play (insert name of team) football"
• "Time for the hurry-up offense"
• "You've got to make that catch"

And several thousand more.

So when Tony Romo retired from the Cowboys after the 2016 season, he got a new job as an analyst with CBS, but it was interesting that he moved right into the top spot, working with the lead team on CBS doing the biggest games every Sunday, with Jim Nantz as the play-by-play guy. Phil Simms had been doing that job, but it seemed that he was sound asleep by the third quarter of most games, so he was moved to the "NFL Today" pregame show and here came Tony.

And it says here that even though he was far from the greatest player in NFL history, he is the best color analyst ever.  Most people used to think that John Madden was the best, but his over-reliance on constantly mentioning players with interesting nicknames ("look at that path Jumbo Elliott cleared for him to run!") and onomatopoeia ("and then, BOOM!") seemed trite and dated when Romo came along and did so well, and he does well for one reason...

He analyzes the games.

As a former quarterback, he is used to looking at the formations of the defense and offense on the field, and therefore, he can predict - quite uncannily - what's going to happen in the next few seconds. If the defense is going to blitz, Tony tells you so. If the quarterback is going to run a sneak, he can feel it in his aching bones and he will tell you!

Plus, he has a sense of humor that places NFL football in the proper perspective, enough sense of history to talk about past players without becoming one of those "Back in MY day..." guys, and, as the Washington POST put it, he's "spontaneous in the booth, joyous and free-wheeling."

“There’s no plan of doing it at all,” Romo says. “Sometimes you just get passionate and you get excited and in the moment you start, you know, just really talking out loud what’s going through your brain. Sometimes you see a lot of stuff and then you just try and articulate that to the people who are watching.”

And his partner Nantz, who is often quite in awe of Romo's analysis, says, “This is the testament to years and years of his work and preparation. He’s not guessing. He’s not getting some sort of message from the gods.”

And the wonderful thing about being so good at his job is the financial reward. As a football player for 14 years, Tony made $127,422,458.

This past year, he pitched another $4 million on that pile, and his contract was up. CBS had the right to match any offer he received from another network, and when ESPN came up with $14 million a year to do Monday Night Football, the CBS eye saw that and raised the pot to $17 million a year for the next five years.

For the rest of us living here in Palookaville, that seems like quite a large amount of money. But when you're that good, you're that good!

The case of the case

You might have heard about this fellow, Carlos Ghosn by name. He used to be the HMFIC (Head ManuFacturer In Charge) at Nissan over in Japan.

I say he used to be in charge because he left Japan, and his job at the end of December. He is accused of hiding earnings, transferring investment losses to Nissan and misappropriating company funds. It would appear that he was tapping into the company cash register, in other words.

So he left town in a huff. Or, more correctly, he left in a musical instrument case.

Media reports say that he contorted himself inside a metal case made for an instrument. The story was, his helpers smuggled him through a private lounge in Kansai Airport in western Japan. He was reportedly hidden in a large speaker box that just happened to be too large to fit through the facility’s X-ray scanner.

Clever, eh?

The criminal downside is that the Japanese authorities are hot on his trail; they've sworn to run him down and they have put out an international wanted notice for Ghosn and his wife Carole.

And, for those trying to emulate his great escape, this bit of advice from the Yamaha Corporation, makers of these giant musical equipment cases. They say don't try to do like that!

“We won’t mention the reason, but there have been many tweets about climbing inside large musical instrument cases. A warning after any unfortunate accident would be too late, so we ask everyone not to try it,” Yamaha's corporate twitter tweeted.

And then, that tweet was reposted 50,000 times, and the ever-polite Yamahamians thanked people for the loving attention, and reminded one and all that their instrument cases are made for musical instruments and not people, no matter how musical they may be.

Men men men men men

I still shake my head over the reluctance of some men to acknowledge that this is the year 2020 and it's no longer appropriate to regard women the same way we look at furniture or a painting or something.

I happened to be watching MSNBC the other night when Chris Matthews came on to do his "Hardball" show and said it would be the last show, that he was retiring, had not lost interest in politics, but...

It didn't take a genius (good thing!) to figure out that retirement wasn't exactly Chris's idea, what with it being Monday, and the eve of Super Tuesday, and election season in full frenzy and Chris seeming to be the kind of guy who feels America is better off with him on TV nightly...

Gone too late.

He said, “The younger generations . . . are improving the workplace, we’re talking here about better standards than we grew up with, fair standards. A lot of it has to do with how we talk to each other, compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men — including me — might have once incorrectly thought were okay were never okay. Not then and certainly not today, and for making such comments in the past, I’m sorry.”

Sort of a 1/2-assed apology, but what do you expect from a man whose final words sought to link him to Humphrey Bogart, the hero of "Casablanca"?

“We’ll always have ‘Hardball.’ So let’s not say goodbye but till we meet again.”

It may be a long while before we meet Chris again on a television show. He ankled out of the studio, leaving Steve Kornacki to have to fill 55 minutes of dead air. That was completely unprofessional, too.

Here's what I have to say. Matthews seems to be implying that he was pushed out because he complimented women. But what happened was, Laura Bassett, a journalist, said that she was getting ready to appear on "Fastball" in October, 2016, to talk about sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump. And she said that Matthews began talking about her clothing, makeup, and dating life, asking, "Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?”

And she said Matthews said to the makeup person, “Keep putting makeup on her, I’ll fall in love with her.”

Added to some other ill-advised comments on and off the air Matthews has been said to make, that was enough for NBC to cut him loose.

Earth to Chris Matthews: there are over 149 ways to pay a compliment to someone. "It's nice to see you! That's a very nice jacket you're wearing! I enjoyed your thoughts about the best choices to make at the Asian Buffet!" are three examples.

Whereas, "Why haven't I fallen in love with you yet?" is not on the list.

It's 2020, and women are tired of being feeling like they're not enough if they don't measure up to some male standard of "beauty" and they don't have to put up with it anymore, so either raise your consciousness or fade away...

Money talks, and says goodbye for five months

Because my father was in the Navy in World War II, serving aboard the USS Delta, he was served Spam (the meat byproduct, not the fake email) as often as three meals a day. One result of this was his lifelong disdain for fatty canned meat foods, so we never once had it for any meal around the house when I was supposed to be growing up.

Not that I am any kind of gourmet, but I never eat circus peanuts (or their bastard cousin candy corn), cilantro, beets, bologna, baloney, hummus, anything that looks like hummus, and anything pumpkin spiced.

And Hot Pockets! Never had one. If I want a calzone, there are plenty of sub shops around to find a good calzone, so why get some frozen substitute?

And don't even mention that they have a Hot Pockets Breakfast fruit pastry.

I am glad to be no fan of the Hot Pocket, now that Michelle Janavs, the daughter of the co-founder of the brand, owned up to being one of those helicopter moms who paid big money to have their unqualified children get into college.  In her case, she reached into her hot pocket and pulled out $200,000 to have her daughter get into the University of Southern California.  It's all part of that “Varsity Blues” uni admissions scandal. Last week, she was sent to the Ironbar Hilton for five months.

Wondering if they serve Hot Pockets in prison

For the record, here's the apology she uttered: “I am so very sorry that I tried to create an unfair advantage for my children,” Janavs said, telling U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton that she decided to lie and cheat because she loves her children so doggone much.

Gorton pointed out that the “vast majority of parents do not brazenly try to push their kids in the side door…They don’t love their children any less than you do. They just play by the rules of common decency and fair play.”

Janavs also thought it a good idea to shell out $100,000 for an ACT proctor who corrected her daughters' exam before turning them in to be graded.

Sing along with Hall and Oates: "You're a rich girl, and you've gone too far."  America's too-wealthy class never lets me down.

"That's it! I'm filing a formal complaint!"

It's always something, and these past few weeks, instead of worrying about the economy, the ecology, the number of people injured and dead because of drunk driving, and the reason why there are so many commercials with that Mayhem guy in them, a significant number (1312) of Americans took time to file complaints with the Federal Communications Commission about this year's Super Bowl halftime show.

Not last year's show, the one with the turgid music of Maroon 5 and the haunting sight of a shirtless Adam N. Levine singing in that wispy voice of his. No, all 1312 complainants (from an audience of over 100 million) were in reference to the show put on by Jennifer Lopez and Shakira this year. That's Adam on the left, with late NBC reporter Irving R. Levine on the right.

I think I would rather read a cereal box than these complaints, but someone at the FCC already did that for us. It seems the chief gripe is that some parents thought their kids were being forced to watch a "porno show." Chances are that none of these writers has even seen a porno show, or at least admitted to doing so to their spouse.

Here are some actual quotes from our fellow citizens:

“Jennifer Lopez’s performance at the Super Bowl halftime show was extremely explicit and completely unacceptable for a event where families including children are watching. I had to send my children out of the room so that they weren’t exposed to something they should not have seen.”

“My family was very excited to watch the Super Bowl tonight. However, I was not prepared to explain to my 11 yo daughter why Jennifer Lopez was dressed so scantily or why she kept grabbing her crotch. My daughter was asking if she was feeling sick from having so much skin showing.”

“The half time show was very sexual in nature. I have never seen so many sex poses outside porn magazines.”

“A disgusting spectacle was on display during the halftime show of the Super Bowl yesterday and I’m sickened by the idea that this was broadcast in to so many homes in America and possibly around the world. Selling sex seems to be the job nowadays, despite human trafficking and the Me Too movement. Shame on Fox.”

I have said that very sentence myself a million times about the news wing of Fox, but in this case, it would be good to remember that the halftime show is not put on by the television network whose turn it is to broadcast the proceedings. Blaming Fox for the cheesy content would be like blaming them for the 49ers' collapse at the end of the game.

It is also worth noting that some people's letters used language that could never be broadcast on network tv or spoken aloud in the family rooms and kitchens of the type of homes that were so roiled by seeing JLo's unadorned iliac crest that they forgot where the "power off" button is on their remote, forcing the entire family - Mom, Dad, Junior, Sis, and Aunt Hortense - to watch the undulating singers.

Also of note - some of the letters to the FCC mentioned that those upstanding families so revolted by women dancing would be boycotting Pepsi. Wonder how long that lasted.

It reminds that since 1975, people at the FCC, and US Congresspersons, have had to receive and file hundreds of thousands of complaints and protests because of a rumor that said the FCC is going to ban religious broadcasting. People who file these querulous queries mention that they heard that atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair is behind the effort to keep Jimmy Lee Swaggart and Joel Osteen et al  from electronically entering their homes.

They usually spell O'Hair "O'Hare," but the point is made. Although MMO'H died in 1995.

In any case, the FCC has no authority to prohibit radio or television broadcasts  of religious programs.

I can hardly wait til next year's halftime show. Betty White is already rehearsing.

Sunday Rerun (from 2012) : Wire you sending me this?

Not for the first time, the joke was on me!

Not our kitten, but a cute one, huh?

An early wireless router

Now that our home is filled with PCs, smart phones and tablets, it seems propitious to go wireless.  So I ran around the house removing wires where I found them, and soon found that it's not enough just to yank out wires to go wireless. One needs a doodad called a wireless router. As I understand it, rather than being powered by the good people over at Baltimore Gas Electric (which must be their name now, since they insist on being called "BGE" rather than the sensible "BG & E"), these devices are self powered, and look like this (at right).

Well, just like the time that I thought a "psychopath" was a trail in the woods for the insane, I was wrong. A wireless router is much smaller than this, and requires no churning by the user. I found this out by calling the good people who provide me cable and internet service.  I called 'em and they said they'd send a wireless router right on over, and I was all set for installation, because I am fortunate enough to have a friend who knows how to set these things up who volunteered to help.

So I emailed him when the package was delivered by the good people over at UP & S.  I was so excited to live in this modern age when a little device that hardly weighed more than the box it came in could connect me to a world that showed me pictures of the entire Kardashian family!

This is all that was in the box!

And then, curiosity getting the best of me, I decided to open the box to see up close this talisman of the electronic age.  And I found that they had sent me an empty box, reminiscent of earlier days in which box factories were set up to ship air from place to place.

I knew that today's doodads were light and also not heavy, but they are not invisible.  The lady on the phone over at the cable company, once she finished chortling over the image of me opening an empty box, expecting it to be packed with more than just air, said they would send a router for real, real soon.

The Saturday Picture Show, February 29, 2020

In my bachelor days, I would often show up and chow down at HoJo's on Clamboree weekends. Sometimes they had an all-you-can-eat special, so I would skip lunch and breakfast and bring a book to my table and start sliding as many deep-fried mollusks down my neck as I could until the waiter refused to bring more. I would always say, "But the sign says, 'All You Can Eat'!" and the guy would say, "Son, that's all you can eat."

Never having been anywhere near Hawaii, I did not know that this is how pineapples were grown. I guess I thought they grew on trees, like other apples.

We haven't had snow in Baltimore AT ALL this year, but up north in New England, some waggish pranksters (possible ne'er-do-wells) rolled this gigantic snowball into the big intersection in town and Officer Obie had to come down and figure out what to do.

These guys are called Mandarin Fish. How perfectly beautiful! Another gift from nature for us.

And then we thank nature by leaving our foul detritus. We should be sent to our rooms without dinner.

A lighthouse on a starry night. Romance is in the air.

Now here's an idea from Italy: a restaurant set inside a lemon grove. These places usually have a choice of steak or fish. I usually have the lasagna. But if you have the fish, no need to ask for extra lemon! Just pluck one, and you're all set.

"Suddenly it's 1960."  If only.  But look at the tail fins on this block-long behemoth, this gas-guzzling land buffalo from Detroit.  They don't make Plymouths any more, and if they did, they would do like all the others do in 2020: make a little car that looks like every other little car on the road.