Boston Strangler

Everybody's talking about those tiny houses nowadays! Talking about them, just not buying them, because claustrophobia is a horrible, horrible thing, and there is a well-known scientific rule called the Pauli exclusion principle (no two particles can occupy the same quantum state). Thank Austrian-Swiss physicist  Wolfgang Pauli for the definition. The concept came to him while watching two linemen for the Green Bay Packers try to occupy a phone booth to call a girl from Sheboygan. 

So these little houses might be good for one person, or two, if they don't want to be around each other very much. And if you're of a mind to live in a historic house, check out the "skinny house" up in Boston. Ten feet wide and thirty feet long (same size as a lot of cars I see), it can be yours for the un-skinny bop price of $1.2 million.

It was sold for $900,000 in 2017.

The backstory on this North End (44 Hull Street) dwelling is, two brothers inherited the land during the Civil War. One of them went off to fight in the war, and while he was gone, the other built a house on the lot.

Johnny came marching home to a house that took up most of the property he was supposed to be sharing equally. So, as brothers will, he exacted revenge by building this house, oddly-shapen as it was, just to block his brother's view! And that house is this one, still standing 4 stories high with a roof deck, private garden, 2 bedrooms, kitchen, and a bathroom.  This pie-shaped pied-à-terre narrows down further to a mere 9.25 feet wide at the rear. Total square footage is like 1,165 square feet.

It comes with a plaque on the front identifying it as "The Skinny House (Spite House)". 

Longtime Boston denizens will tell you the legend of the Spite House. 'Tis said that on clear, starry starry nights, you can hear the ghost of the first brother screaming, "I cahn't see the hahbuh or Hahvahd Yahd, you inconsiderate bahstahd!"

 

So simple

What was it that GEICO used to say: it's so simple, even a caveman could do it?

The point in that commercial was to shame us into thinking if some Neanderthal could figure out how to save big on insuring his Buick, any of us modern types would have no problem doing the same.

Life often follows in the form of commercials, so say hi to Panta Petrovic, a Serbian who gave up the fast pace of modernity and moved into a cave in the mountains outside the city of Pirot. 

He's really far out! To get to his abode, one must climb a steep climb up a mountain.  And when you get to his house, you might not want to hang around for long. It's notably lacking in amenities, unless you consider an old bathtub being used as a toilet something you'd like to see or use.  

And don't look for a Sealy Comfort Sleeper or a Posturepedic with high thread count sheets. The man sleeps on piles of hay.

Before dropping out of Serbian society, Petrovic worked as a laborer and was just as busy after work, what with his six children by four different women. 

I guess it was that sixth kid that did it. Petrovic had had enough, and he decided to really get away from it by becoming a hermit.  He saw this as totally organic: "I was not free in this city. There is always someone in your way – you either argue with your wife, neighbors, or the police. Here, nobody is hassling me," he explained.

Petrovic

Lacking a phone to call Domino's for delivery, Petrovic has to eat mushrooms he finds and fish he hooks. And as a bonus, now and then he wanders into town and dumpster dives for food and barely-used socks. For companionships, he takes in whatever pets wander into his cave, be they tapirs, aardvarks, whatever.  I found it surprising that he gets welfare checks, but I have no idea how.  

But here's the thing: last year when he came to town for the annual J.C. Penney October Madness sale, he was told about the coronavirus. And as soon as it was available in his town, he TOOK it because he cares about his own health as well as that of his community. He figures the COVID "does not pick," and points out, "It will come here to my cave, too."

Here's a man about as remote from modern society as there can be, and even he  "doesn't understand the fuss" about this vaccine hesitancy.  He even says he will come back to town for a booster shot if such is recommended. And he doesn't need Facebook Doctors to tell him this is up to all of us: "I urge every citizen to get vaccinated, every single one of them," he says.

At press time, I was informed that a 
production error led to an incorrect
photograph in today's blog. The photo
above left identified as "Petrovic" is
actually that of former Red Sox and Yankees
slugger Johnny Damon. Your editor regrets
the error. The real hermit is shown here.

Maybe it's the pure isolation of his existence that leads him to clear thinking. All of us are enriched by removing the thoughts of Marjorie Taylor Greene and her deniers from our zeitgeist. 

It may be that if more of us were left alone, we, too, would become wiser. After all, a very great man in our spiritual life began his life sleeping on hay in a manger.

 

Mayor Grossman

Japanese Olympian Miu Goto (r), from the softball champs, is in line to get a new gold medal  - one without any tooth marks.

Now that's a sentence you don't see every day, but then again, Takashi Kawamura, the Mayor of Nagoya, isn't the kind of public official you see every day. 

Kawamura BIT her first gold medal. Social media folks are calling that "unhygienic" and "impolite" and whatever the Japanese word for "yucky" is.

The mayor was at an event celebrating the hometown hero, Ms Goto, and for reasons best known to hizzoner, he pulled off his mask and sank his incisors and bicuspids into the precious prize.

AND  the mayor must have been paying attention to certain American politicians, because not only did he slobber all over someone's medal, he made inappropriate sexual remarks to the softball champ (pro tip: there are no appropriate ones).

"Are you prohibited from having romantic relationships?" he said to Ms Goto.

In the time-honored tradition of politicos everywhere, the mayor soon admitted that he was being inappropriate, and had made an "error in judgement."

"I deeply regret making her uncomfortable with remarks that went too far," he said. "When I ask a young person if they have a boyfriend or girlfriend, it allows them to relax and speak more. As a mayor, it's important to put people one is talking to at ease."

The mayor also was taken to school by Japanese Olympic Committee head Yasuhiro Yamashita, from whom Kawamura said he "received guidance."

And then he offered to pay for a replacement medal, which should be delivered free of his DNA.

"I hope the arrangements are made in line with Ms. Goto's wishes, or as close as possible," Kawamura said. Goto is expected to get her replacement medal, which her team won by defeating the US, soon.

This May surprise you

Mexican actress Lyn May is saying she is pregnant. So what's the story? Women get pregnant all the time, but not so often when they are 68 years old. Which is what Ms May is. 

She made the announcement along with her partner, Markos D I (no relation). He is 29.

The happy couple

I am not familiar with either Ms May or Mr D I, but she has 163,000 followers on Instagram, which tops me by about 162,990, so she is well known. She is an actress, dancer and showgirl, among the most popular actresses of Ficheras (Mexican sex comedy) cinema, with over 100 films to her credit. She's often called "The Goddess of Love."

Born to a family of Chinese immigrants, she was christened Lilia Mendiola de Chi in Guerrero, Mexico. 

She wrote on Instagram, "I am very happy to announce that I am 3 months pregnant and @markosd1official is very happy that he will be a dad."

I tell you all this as background because we stand on the verge of world medical history here. Should Ms May give birth at 68, she will shatter the Guinness World Record of the oldest woman to have given birth.

Currently, that title is held by Maria del Carmen Bousada Lara, who took the title back in December 2006 after she gave birth via cesarean section to twin boys, Christian and Pau, at the Sant Pau hospital in Barcelona, Spain.

Ms Lara was but 66 when she became the twins' mom following IVF treatment in the United States. So even if Ms May gives birth to but one child, Ms Lara will remain the titleholder in the category of oldest woman to bear twins.

They really ought to publish the Guinness Book in a loose-leaf edition. I see lots of changes coming soon!

 

Hands Up, Florida!

Castles Made Of Sand is now opening a Florida Bureau so we can keep you up to date with all the latest news from DeSantisland. I saw a story on the newswire about a Floridian who killed his imaginary friend, but it turned out to be a story from 2015, and there is no need to give you OLD Florida news when there is live, local, latebreaking stuff like this:

What does it take to have the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office call YOUR crime spree an "impressive crime spree"? I mean, in a state where people kill imaginary people, this man racked up a total of at least four stolen vehicles and property damage.

Volusia County deputies piled into a squad car, bound for the Pierson area last Tuesday morning. They had a report of a crash at U.S. Highway 17 and Palmetto Avenue. 

I have to stop and say how funny "Palmetto" sounds to me, like the "Walnettos," the chewy caramel-walnut candy that's everything I look for in a candy: chewy, caramel, and walnut.

Anyway, the county mounties pull up on a stolen Ford F-150 pick-'em-up stuck in the mud up to the tailgate at that location. No one was around the grounded truck but the deputies figured it out it came from Marion County.

Volusia County has a new service for easy crime reporting, it seems. While the deputies were processing the stolen abandoned Ford, people stopped off to tell them about two buildings being broken into and also the thefts of another Ford truck (they're like peanuts; you can't stop at one) and a forklift. 

The thief had scooted around town in the forklift until it ran out of fuel. Fortunately, it ran out of fuel right near another Ford pickup, so the crook piled into that and drove off, crashing it into the woods. Deputies said the catalytic converter had been ripped off from under the truck. Those things do make nice souvenirs.

The next thing you know, the law piles back into the car to check out a report of a burglary. At the house in question, the busy thief got into the garage, where he stole a pair of shoes, and a key for the car he then stole.

Next up on Casey's Countdown, he stole a four-wheeler, the owners of which were in the hospital with coronavirus at the time of the theft. Their daughter was supposed to be watching the property, but she missed this part.

Here's where it really becomes Floridafied.  Someone called deputies, saying he was out spraying pesticides, but could hear the four-wheeler racing across his property.

Covid-era Kojak tracked the vehicle tracks and came upon a man walking around. 

The walking fellow asked if he could drink from the sprinklers, but the property owner informed him that there was "poison in the water lines" and it was therefore not safe to drink.

At that, the walking man took off running. Deputies rounded up one Charles Harrington, 24, walking down County Road 3. They got a tip from a neighbor who had seen him jumping a fence and lurking in the woods.

Roll that around in your mind a minute. Of all the places where one can lurk, who has "the woods" high on their list?

Anyhow, all these thefts occurred within an 18-hour time frame, says the arrest report.

“To be clear, this is a very rural area and foot traffic in these areas is unheard of,” the arresting deputy wrote in the report. Lurking is virtually unheard of.

When the deputy stopped Harrington afoot, the suspect claimed he had been  “swimming” with his “old lady.” The officer's body camera video has a moving image of Harrington saying he "knocked on someone’s door asking for some water but other than that I didn’t do nothing.”

It also shows the the deputy telling Harrinregton the sheriff’s office had received “several calls about you.” And then a search of the suspect turned up the keys to one of the stolen F-150s and a lanyard associated with another theft. Searching further, the police found the stolen catalytic converter from the truck on the abandoned four-wheeler.

As Harrington was fitted for a nice pair of handcuffs, he was told the police found  an open warrant on him out of Marion County.

Today's final score: three counts of unarmed burglary and three counts of grand theft less than $100,000.

Remember what David Spade said about the "COPS" TV show being filled with people not wearing shirts who were not a bit surprised to see police in their living rooms.

Sunday Rerun: 1/8/35 - 8/16/77

 From the New Yorker, December 6, 1999

JESUS AND ELVIS



Twenty years after the death, St. Paul

was sending the first of his epistles,

and bits of myth or faithful memory -

multitudes fed on scraps, the dead small girl

told "Talitha, cumi" - were self-assembling

as proto-Gospels.  Twenty years since pills

and chiliburgers did another in,

they gather at Graceland, the simple believers,

the turnpike pilgrims from the sere Midwest,

mother and daughter bleached to look alike,

Marys and Lazaruses, you and me,

brains riddled with song, with hand-tinted visions

of a lovely young man, reckless and cool

as a lily.  He lives. We live. He lives.



                                           John Updike

The Saturday Picture Show, August 14, 2021

 

I thought I would start you off this morning with the clam before the storm.

He's never gonna give you up, and why should he? Rick Astley's 1988 record of that name has now been streamed a billion times, and that means he's made dinner out of the same pot of stew a billion times. Rickrolling lives.

Dot's Bakery in Ocean City, New Jersey, ties up your dozen danish or sweet rolls or cookies with that red-and-white string that bakeries have used since Lincoln was in high school. But Dot's had a machine to do the wrapping and tying, and people loved seeing it in operation so much, the whole town was bummed when it broke recently. They finally found a repairman who understood 1936 German machinery, and all is well. I'll have a dozen coconut muffins, please.

Here's a straw hat, perfect for the firefighter in your life, as it's woven in the shape of a helmet. It bears the name of St Florian, patron saint of chimney sweeps, soapmakers, and firefighters.  Are there so few saints that they have to triple up on their patronages? 

Alabama Coach Nick Saban eulogized the late Bobby Bowden in this Instagram post.  A touching tribute indeed, and it gave me an expression I have already stolen: "He didn't know me from Adam's house cat."

It's a whole different view inside of a guitar.

Grandpa made this cradle and I think he hopes the baby will take to boating.

At one time, there were 27 million of these in operation in American homes. Today there are maybe 27.

Delightful teen actress/singer Olivia Rodrigo visited the White House to beat the drum for vaccinations and wound up with a pair of souvenir Ray-Ban aviators.

You would think he could figure some way to fix his disabled vehicle with the elastic band from a used mask, a McDonald's straw, and a souvenir can opener, but maybe there are challenges that not even Richard Dean Anderson, the original MacGyver, can handle. 

"What are the roots that clutch..."

I don't do much yardwork anymore, but I learned how to do all that stuff under the tutelage of my father, and those lessons learned stick with me yet today. 

You don't have to be a tree surgeon to understand how things work out in the yard. Take mulch.  The goal is to provide a bowl for the tree to hold water and keep nutrients in place. Using organic mulch (bark mulch, wood chips, leaves, and so forth...even pine needles) is the only way to go. It helps the tree to retain moisture (especially important in summer!), keeps the soil from washing away,  improves the soil as it decomposes, and keeps the soil temperature more consistent by insulating the ground against cold and heat.

And not mulching properly leads to disease and decay from moisture retention on the trunk, insect damage, rodent damage, too much dampness for the roots (just as bad as too little), and this: if the roots do not develop what they call a normal "root flare," the tree will be unstable and more prone to falling in a storm.

The rule is to form a donut of mulch...and the mulch is not supposed to be touching the trunk! A lot of people go by the  “3x3x3 rule”: 3 inches of mulch, 3 inches from the trunk, in a circle 3 feet wide.

And that leads us to the worst mulch sin of all: piling it up against the trunk. The dreaded "volcano mulch" is quick and easy (and bad for the trees), but you see it in shopping center parking lots, apartment complex common areas, and other areas where a quick and dirty job fills the bill. So avoid this: 

and go for this!

Thank you very mulch.

Can you dig this?

Say, how's the food in Facebook jail?

I ask because I have never been there, as amazing as that would sound, given my predilection for arguing with vaccine resisters, supporters of voter suppression, and of course the "gay marriage threatens the sanctity of my fourth marriage" crowd. 

Somehow, I stop just short of saying whatever it is that sets off bells and whistles in Mark Zuckerberg's breakfast nook, but lots of people don't.

And then there are those who do nothing wrong and still get thrown in the calaboose.

F'rinstance...a Facebook gardening group in western New York.  They are known as  WNY Gardeners, and with more than 7,500 members, they are a widely known and respected source of information about bulbs and seeds and fertilizers and when to cover the aspidistra and the difference between a rake and a push-pull hoe...

That last word gets flagged by Facebook’s language police algorithms. They will pull the user over and write him/her up for “violating community standards.” The word they're really looking for has no "e" on the end, but sometimes people don't know the difference between picking up a ho or picking up a hoe.

Just as in any other judicial system, the first few violations will trigger warnings, but repeated offenses means the authorities can shut down the miscreant.

Up in New York, group moderator Elizabeth Licata saw her group burgeoning in size, with so many people homebound since last year and sinking roots into the earth in search of a hobby.

Ms Licata chose not to delete every instance of the "h" word on the page, accurately figuring that grownups know how to use both words and tilling implements. But one day, when the topic of conversation on the page turned to “your most loved & indispensable weeding tool,” a group member replied, "Push pull hoe!” 

And the sword of Facebookian justice was swift and sure. They sent a notification that said “We reviewed this comment and found it goes against our standards for harassment and bullying.”

Ms Licata

We don't know whether this mistake was made by a human inspector or by  artificial intelligence. FB uses both to scour their corner of the web, looking for offensive behavior.   

And whereas every day, we see FB scofflaws using the basest language to demean others and getting away with it, here are people discussing garden tools and getting their knuckles rapped.

Ms Licata replied. “And so I contacted Facebook, which was useless. How do you do that?” she said. “You know, I said this is a gardening group, a hoe is gardening tool.”

She got no reply.

Not until the The Associated Press got involved did a Facebook representative say they checked out the page and removed the incorrect enforcements.  And they promised to double-check all the gardening double-entendres before issuing more Zuckertickets.

“We have plans to build out better customer support for our products and to provide the public with even more information about our policies and how we enforce them,” Facebook said, in reference to Licata’s complaints.

All taken care of, right? No. Next thing you know, Facebook shut down a post because of “possible violence, incitement, or hate in multiple comments.”

Here are the comments that resulted in the latest violations:  “Kill them all. Drown them in soapy water,” and “Japanese beetles are jerks.”

Let's see if I get in trouble for using the word "clematis." 

Some people call me the Space Farmer

Good news and bad news for the NAStronauts flying around in space...their food will not be bland and non-spicy soon.

That'd the good news. Bad news is, they will not be splashing Texas Pete on their packaged dinners.  

NASA has a new initiative cooking to add some pepper to the chow, and like so much else up there, it's all part of a do-it-yourself project. The Lost Planet Airmen and Women aboard the International Space Station are growing red and green chili peppers now. Seeds for Hatch chili peppers arrived at the station in June, carried into space by a SpaceX commercial resupply services mission ("When it absolutely, positively has to be there sometime this month"). 

This was the idea of  astronaut Shane Kimbrough, who just got to the Int'l Space Station in April. He gave it the catchy title "Plant Habitat-04 (PH-04)". Back in 2016, he grew and ate "outredgeous" red romaine lettuce way up there. 

Kimbrough

The setup was, back on earth, staffers at the Kennedy Space Center started 48 seeds in a science carrier, which must look at lot like a science project. The carries is full of clay where roots can sink and fertilizer on a time-release basis.  There are these three slots aboard called the the Advanced Plant Habitat.

"The APH is the largest plant growth facility on the space station and has 180 sensors and controls for monitoring plant growth and the environment," said project manager Nicole Dufour. "It is a diverse growth chamber, and it allows us to help control the experiment from Kennedy, reducing the time astronauts spend tending to the crops."

Back to the hot stuff...it will take about four months for the peppers to grow before they are harvested and eaten. This will be the first ever Pepper In Space. The crew will grind on some and bring the rest back to earth for analysis.

Principal investigator Matt Romeyn says, "It is one of the most complex plant experiments on the station to date because of the long germination and growing times. We have previously tested flowering to increase the chance for a successful harvest because astronauts will have to pollinate the peppers to grow fruit."

He also adds that "We are limited to crops that don't need storage, or extensive processing."

  

Because of living in microgravity, astronauts tend to lose their taste of sense and smell, so a little pepper in the menu might bring those senses back.

"Growing colorful vegetables in space can have long-term benefits for physical and psychological health," Romeyn said. "We are discovering that growing plants and vegetables with colors and smells helps to improve astronauts' well-being."

Remember, we talked about the problem of doing laundry in space not long ago. Maybe losing the sense of smell is not the worst thing in the world.

 

Who's the drummer?

 The only thing I have been doing consistently since 1963 is following the Orioles, and none of the players from their 1963 are still around on the field.  

I started following The Rolling Stones in 1964, though, and that was a year after their drummer Charlie Watts joined the band. Unlike Buster Narum, Brooks Robinson, and Robin Roberts (no, not THAT Robin Roberts!), who were with the O's back then, Charlie is still the drummer for the Rolling Stones.

Except when he isn't. He just underwent a medical procedure (that's the word they use on old people; it makes us less anxious than "operation") and so he will miss at least the first leg of the Stones' upcoming "This Is It, I Swear to Heaven Above" Tour, set to begin next month. Steve Jordan will fill in for him on the kit, although it will be awkward, because, at 64, Jordan is not even old enough for the senior discount when the band breaks their fast at Denny's.

And this talk of substitute drummers reminds me of a day when another English beatkeeper was unable to get on the sticks, as it were. Set your wayback machine to November 20, 1973. The place is the Cow Palace in San Francisco, and that evening, The Who were set to perform, and began to do so, in fact, in support of their "Quadrophenia" album tour, when their legendarily crapulous drummer, Keith "The Loon" Moon, having had his standard pre-show tipple of horse tranquilizer and brandy, fell off his stool at the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again." Lovers of irony, please take note.

After a short period of trying to rouse Moon, it becomes apparent to many that he will not be able to finish the show, unless he could do it from the ambulance that was taking him to the drunk tank hospital to have his stomach pumped.

You've probably seen movies where the Broadway star turns up lame and the producer turns to her understudy and says, "You're going out there a nobody, but you're coming back as a star, kid!" because that's how it works in the pictures.

In real life, Scot Haplin, 19, a longtime Who fan and drummer, was up near the stage, having paid his way into the show. When Moon's incapacity became certain, Scot's friend told a security guy, "My friend can play the drums!" And just as Who leader Peter Townshend was asking the crowd if there are any volunteers to be Keith For A Night, famed concert promoter Bill Graham was asking Scot if he could play for real.

 "Can you fly this plane and land it?"

On his way to the throne (that's what a drummer calls that little stool), someone handed Scot a Dixie Cup of brandy, and he sat down, picked up the sticks, and told Townshend he was ready. Like a rookie up from the minor leagues to replace a slugger, Haplin warmed up, with the band playing the old blues tune "Smokestack Lightning," segueing into "Spoonful." And once he was up to speed, The Who got back in high gear with the nine-minute song "Naked Eye."

"Sure I can!"

There is no recording from that night; from all accounts, Scot acquitted himself well on the drums. He was no Keith Moon, but then again, that night, neither was Keith, who died of predictability in 1978.

Haplin was given an official Who tour jacket, which someone ripped off that night. He went on to earn an MA in interdisciplinary arts and still played drums for a number of local bands in California before moving to Indiana to work in the visual arts field. He passed in 2008, a footnote long remembered. 

  

Up, up and away!

A lot of people say they would love to see a rocket launch, but Cape Canaveral is too far away, and they aren't Jeff Bezos or that Englishman...

But no problem! If you're in the mid-Atlantic, you might see the rocket's red glare from a launch at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in eastern Virginia tomorrow!

The Northrop Grumman Antares rocket will head for the heights TOMORROW, August 10, at 5:56 p.m. Eastern time. This will be Northrop Grumman's 16th flight to deliver supplies, equipment and NASA science investigations up there to the International Space Station.

I capitalized TOMORROW because if you're on vacation or on the shore because you live there, you don't want to miss this free show.

From Maryland, Delaware, or Virginia, NASA recommends six prime viewing spots in those states:

• The Wallops Visitor Center on Wallops Island in Virginia
• Chincoteague Island in Chincoteague, Virginia
• Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland
• Ocean City, Maryland
• Delaware Seashore and Fenwick Island State Park in Delaware
• Virginia Beach, Virginia

5:56 PM tomorrow, Tuesday!

And you may also watch livestream:

• Live coverage of the mission countdown is scheduled to begin at about 1 p.m. Tuesday on the Wallops IBM video site.
• Launch coverage on NASA TV is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
• Launch updates will be available on the Wallops Facebook page and Wallops Twitter page.

Sunday Rerun: from 2020: 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.

The Saturday Picture Show, August 7, 2021

 

I think that one of the kindest things people can do is grow their hair to be donated to Locks Of Love, where those who have lost hair due to medical conditions can receive a wig and feel more whole again. This young lady made a great sacrifice (12") and she's starting over with a cool new short hairdid!

The guy on the right has a great career ahead of him with his ability to become and remain airborne!

Some great artists work in charcoal, or colored pencil, or watercolor, oils, or acrylics. Only the truly gifted make art from used Taco Bell sauce packets.

Sure, the back end is a pretty standard Winnebago from the 70s, but look at the front! An old classic, a 1956 Cadillac, probably a former ambulance or hearse. That's some fancy welding for sure!

I talk to a lot of people who express a desire to move away to a deserted island and be all alone forever.  Well, this island was abandoned years ago, so it can probably be yours for cheap, but you have to figure the restoration will be a hassle, because it's probably a good amount of miles to the closest Lowe's!

Yes, it's true, every dog has his day, and the other night at the dreadful Yankee Stadium, this cat had his (or her!) day! It ran onto the field in the 8th inning to celebrate the Orioles creaming the Yankees and took its time getting off the field, being chased by some Yankee functionaries who had clearly never been around a cat. They thought they could catch it! At length he jumped back into the stands and went back to his life down under the ballpark, living off discarded popcorn and the occasional rodent. 

With a little bit of time and really sharp set of X-acto knife blades, these blackout curtains were turned into art!

Soon the hills will be alive with the sight of pumpkins, and fall will descend upon the land, and all will be right again.

Paleopathology is the branch of science that looks into the diseases and cures of the ancient peoples that plodded around on this old earth. For years we assumed that Fred & Wilma had no medical problems, but recent discoveries and analyses of Cro-Magnon Era corpses reveal not only medical conditions, but also some pretty nice medical treatments! They've gotten a but rusty over the years, but these are scalpels that were found at what must have been the medical center of a Cro-Magnon village.  Also found: well-thumbed copies of "Reader's Digest" and small packets of ointment samples.

Did you ever get the impression that birds have a certain time and place they assemble to begin their day's work? These guys are ready to go, but they're waiting for that one slowpoke to show up.

Stick to the point

Occasionally, my gang would discuss what kind of medical specialty we would pursue if we were doctors.  As if.

Some would be general practitioners, patching up torn-up elbows and prescribing prescriptions for the croup or rickets or scurvy.  A couple wanted to be podiatrists (yuck) and one or two said maybe they'd be gastroenterologists (yuckier). The smart money said to go into dermatology (no nights or weekends, no emergency calls, lots of time to write scripts for ointments and creams).

The closest any of us came to being M.D.s was when I was Music Director of a radio station, but that honor did not confer upon me the right to double park or get free subscriptions to The Reader's Digest for my waiting room. And I guess none of us knew of the bountiful field of aesthetic medicine, the demanding science of making Kardashians look presentable and allowing poker players to fool the table. 

Here's the deal: if you play cards, there is a doctor of aesthetic medicine wants to fill your craggy face with for botox.

Dr. Jack Berdy calls this “Pokertox.” Pokertox is a combination platter of Botox and facial fillers he uses to make your poker face a lot pokier. No wrinkles means no facial emotion that registers when you have a bad  - or good - hand.

If you're interested, you will meet with Berdy to he can figure out your "tells." Those are the unconscious signals you send off when you get a bad hand and try to bluff it.

“Some people might get a card they like or don’t like and raise their eyebrows,” Berdy told The Huffington Post. “If that’s the common reaction, we can put Botox in certain areas to minimize them.”

Or, maybe you can't believe how rotten your hand is, so you squint at the pasteboards. Or drawing a good hand makes you smile that little smile where the corners of your mouth curl up.

The stiff upper lip is good to make even stiffer, so the good doctor will plump you up with Pokertox.

“We can also put Botox in areas to make it look like the player has a ‘tell’ they really don’t have,” he said.

You won't be surprised to read that Doc Berdy loves to gamble, and he sees this as a jackpot, because your Pokertox will only last for three or four months, so you'll be back to see him after a few weeks.

“It’s brilliant marketing,” says Ellen Leikind, author of the book “PokerWoman: How To Win At Love, Life And Business Using The Principles Of Poker.” “However, there are lots of ‘tells’ that can’t be covered up with Botox, such as a throbbing vein in the neck or a tendency to start chatting when you have a good hand, or reaching into your chips subconsciously.”

I just decided to give up medicine and start a rock band called My Throbbing Neck Vein.

A real live Dolly

The people at Sara Lee - makers of frozen pound cakes, pies, and I don't know what-all else - used to have an advertising slogan: "Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee."

Well. That may or may not be true, but this is: Nobody doesn't like Dolly Parton.

You might not be crazy about her music, which goes back to her first hits in the 60's. She was determined to make it big in Nashville, so she got on the first bus to Music City the morning after she was graduated from high school, and it wasn't long before we were hearing her records "Dumb Blonde" and "Something Fishy." The 70s saw her hit hard with "Jolene," "I Will Always Love You," and dozens more.

"I Will Always Love You" was a huge country hit, but when it was covered by Whitney Houston in the 1992 movie "The Bodyguard," Dolly came to the attention of even people who don't like country music (yes, there are some, I know). 

The songwriting royalties from the movie using the song have come to - are you sitting down? - ten million dollars. $10,000,000.  A ten followed by six zeros, all wrapped up in dollar bills.

So what did Dolly do with this tidy sum? Last week she told Bravo TV's “Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen” she invested in a building located in a historically Black Nashville neighborhood.

 “I bought my big office complex down in Nashville, and so I thought, ‘Well, this is a wonderful place to be,’ ” Parton told the show host Andy Cohen. 

Cohen and Dolly were talking about her always-positive outlook, and she mentioned how glad she was that she took that movie loot and used it in the Nashville neighborhood called Sevier Park. She said it was the best investment she ever made.

“It was a whole strip mall, and I thought this is the perfect place for me to be, considering it was Whitney, so I just thought, ‘This is great, I’m just going to be down here with her people, who are my people as well,’ ” Dolly said.

She added, “I love the fact that I spent that money on a complex and I think, ‘This is the house that Whitney built.’ ”

I think that it's even more noteworthy that Dolly, the woman who devoted a million of her dollars to developing the Moderna COVID vaccine that so many people credit with saving their lives, waited all these years before casually mentioning this assistance to a neighborhood in need.

Her Dollywood Foundation gives books to kids  - it's called the Imagination Library, and kids in it get a book every month from cradle to first grade. 

Every kid who graduates high school in her home county gets $500.

After some doofus set a fire that caused gigantic damage in her part of Tennessee, she put together a telethon that raised $13 million to put things back together.

Families displaced by the fire got $11,000 to rebuild.

She gave half a million to the LeConte Medical Center to establish a center for women's services.

This young man Morgan Wallen, with the biggest record of the year and the habit of making a dissolute patootie of himself - I hope he is paying attention. This is how you show your gratitude.

Spare Me

"FURY!...The story of a horse...and a boy who loves him."

I was fortunate enough as a kid to have the Johnny Unitas Colt Lanes bowling center (they don't like to be called bowling alleys) a mile from my house. I could go down there and hang around with everyone else who had nothing to do on a Saturday morning until "Fury" came on.

Being at Colt Lanes was fun, it got me out of the house (to the relief of many), and now and again we would see Johnny Unitas himself walking around the place. Typical Towson childhood.

Now and again, we would even scrape up the price of a game and a pair of rental shoes, and bowl. I can still hear the sound of the place, the balls on their way to meet the pins, the pins flying and landing with a wooden chaos, the ball on the way back to where it started...

And then one day a big wheeler came in carrying a case, Was it a typewriter? A ham? What was in there? Turns out, he had his OWN bowling ball! To those of us in the rabble, that was like showing up for a formal dance in your own tuxedo! Or owning your own helicopter. Who owned a bowling ball, when the place was full of them to use?

All these thoughts came racing back when I read about the man in Michigan who went to knock down his back stairs...and found 160 bowling balls!

33-year-old David Olson is remodeling the back deck and when he started digging earlier this month he unearthed an old bowling ball.

OK. One bowling ball, that could happen anywhere. But Olson kept on digging and the next thing you know, he dug a veritable trove of the spheres.

“I was actually a little happy about that because it’s a little easier to roll bowling balls out of the way than to move the sand and figure out where to put all that,” he told the Detroit Free Press, using a sentence that has probably never been spoken by anyone ever.

Olson, who is from Norton Shores (Norton!) 
figures there have to be even more of them under the house.

They were Brunswick balls, so he called that company and got an answer. There was a bowling ball factory in that area back in the 1950s, and he was told that employees were allowed to take scrapped balls - the ones that were not perfectly round or otherwise lacking in quality -  home with them for whatever purpose. And one of the purposes a lot of people found for them was to use them as an alternative to gravel or sand.

I will avoid the obvious jokes.

I mean, you want to fill up a hole with something durable, one of those bad boys will do the job. Big hole to fill? Try 160.

The plant in Muskegon MI has been shuttered since 2006. The balls really aren't useable, or they would have been sold, not scrapped. But Olsen gave some away, donated some to the local Heritage Museum, and he'll keep a few around because you never can tell what use you'll have for a bowling ball or two!

 

Love Tennis

Novak Djokovic, a tennis player from Serbia, headed into this year's Olympics hoping to win a gold medal and a "Golden Slam," but came up quite a bit short on Saturday.

One wins a Golden Slam by a) winning all four Grand Slam tournaments b) winning an Olympic gold medal  and c) dating Taylor Swift, all in a single year.

Just kidding about Tay. She doesn't need jokers like Djokovic. But as no man has ever won a Golden Slam, Djokovic had it in his sights, having won the first three Grand Slams this year.

But on Saturday, Djokovic lost for the third time in two days in the Olympics. He lost the men's singles bronze medal match singles to Pablo Carreño Busta, of Spain, 6-4, 6-7 (8-6), 6-3, at Ariake Tennis Park in Tokyo.

Displaying the jejune sense of maturity that so many enfants terribles of tennis seem to share, Djokovic couldn’t reach a game-winning shot from Carreño Busta in the first game of the third set. As children will, he flung his racket over the fifth row. Then in the third game, he golden-slammed his racket against the net post and received a verbal slap on the wrist.

So he lost. He was supposed to play in a doubles match later on Saturday, another bronze medal event, but he claimed a sudden-onset left shoulder injury and withdrew, handing the medal to Australia. 

Now here comes the part where the hero with the big mouth is exposed as just another bloviating male, of which the world has already entirely too many.

Several days before his Saturday debacle, Djokovic was asked about pressure, after  four-time gold medalist Simone Biles had to withdraw from gymnastics competition, citing the need to take care of her mental health in lieu of performing vaults and stunts. Both Biles and Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka have been upfront about the crush of pressure and challenges of worldwide competition.

Ever the ungallant oaf, Djokovic said, “Pressure is a privilege. Without pressure there is no professional sport. If you are aiming to be at the top of the game you better start learning how to deal with pressure. And how to cope with those moments on the court but also off the court, all the expectations.”

After losing to Carreño Busta, Djokovic was still telling the press he wanted to keep playing, but oh, that doggone left shoulder....

“I think it’s part of the DNA of professional athletes, I think it’s a given, it’s a must to always give your very last source of energy that you have left,” he said. “I’ve done that and result wasn’t great.”

He went on to say that he was pleased with his effort on Saturday and asked that be awarded some sort of medal for throwing his racket way up there into the stands.

 

Of Fins and Feathers

A normal work day is eight hours for most; like 9 to 5, 3 to 11, whatever. For a lot of people, they clock in, do their thing, check email, pass along filthy memes, go get coffee, do some work, take a phone call, do some work, go to lunch, rinse and repeat for the rest of the shift.

8 hours can zip by like that (snaps fingers) and before you know it, you're back in the car, headed home.

But like the old joke about what goes by faster, an hour in the dentist's chair, or an hour eating ice cream, 8 hours is not always just 8 hours.

Especially when you're Peter Schultz, a Maryland guy who was participating in the Big Fish Classic Tournament in Ocean City the other day. He hooked himself a swordfish, did Peter, a state-record 301-pounder, and it took him 8 hours to reel Charlie in!

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources says Peter Schultz, who is 36, snagged the giant sandwich-maker 50 miles offshore at Washington Canyon.

Peter Schultz, second from left, earned the Maryland record by catching a 301-pound swordfish.

Schultz acknowledges that his fishing buddies helped on the sea; after all, he is not an old man in a Hemingway story. He says it was the "fish of a lifetime." Well, I should say!

And for the benefit of non-Marylanders: that "M. R. Ducks" sign does not mean there is a Mr Ducks involved. M.R. Ducks is a seaside bar & grill named after a conversation between two duck hunters:

First guy says, "Them are ducks!" His buddy says, "Them are not!"

First guy says, "Oh yes they are! See them wings?

And his buddy finally agrees. "Well, I'll be! Them ARE ducks!"

It's a Maryland thing to disregard grammar and spelling and so forth while out looking for waterfowl.

By the way, last year's winner in the fishing contest was disqualified. He hooked and landed a 245-pound tuna, but it was a PIANO tuna!

Sunday Rerun (from September 2016: If a farmer eats at a restaurant and takes the leftovers home, is that farm-to-table-to-farm?

 When no one was looking, restaurant owners came up with a new term for their cuisine..they said, "Let's call it Farm To Table, and then people will figure that the string beans they are eating were hanging on a pole in some farmer's back yard three hours ago.

Listen, I know there is a diffy-diff between fresh chow and something that has Libby's Libby's Libby's on the label label label. Why, young barefoot Mark would run to the back 40 and grab corn off the stalk, shucking it on the way back to the house, once the water was boiling in the big stockpot, so when I gobbled corn on the cob back then, the corn was as fresh as could be.  That was the great thing about the life in the real Farmville...our house bordered a big farm and we were able to get corn and berries and melons and pay the farmer at his stand down by the church on Sundays.  

You will never get that much flavor out of a can or frozen bag o'corn.

And beyond certain curiosities such as New York City eateries being able to offer "local" honey because there is a certain goodness from the pollen gathered in Central Park and all those high-rise flower pots on the Lower East Side, all that gourmet grindage you enjoy at Chez Quis comes from somewhere. Assuming that the lumps in your crabcake did not come from the chef's crabtraps on Middle River, does it matter if they are lumps from Carolina or Florida or elsewhere?

It didn't take long for a reporter from the Tampa Bay Times to investigate the claims of farm-to-tableness and find many of them bogus.

My thing is, having heard so many stories about diners substituting cutout circles of shark for scallops (and this is really awful when they use a pool shark!) or lobster bisque that is totally devoid of lobster, just serve me what I order and don't try faking me out by claiming it's local or never frozen or never canned.  


And, yes, please, I will need a go-box.