It all started earlier today when I told Peggy that of the entire cast of "I Love Lucy,'' I found Lucy to be the least amusing. And then she told me how for years, the antics of Lucy have left her convulsed. This might be some sort of Rorschach test: what does it say when I rank the cast of "I L L" in this order of how-they-made-me-laugh?
#1 - Fred Mertz
#2 - Ricky Ricardo
#3 - Ethel Mertz
#4 - Lucy Ricardo
And I'm not about to say that Lucy wasn't funny. Just not as funny as gruff old Fred, exasperated Ricky or frumpy Ethel.
Beatles, you say? All right, then:
#1 - John Lennon
#2 - Ringo Starr
#3 - George Harrison
#4 - Paul McCartney
I don't think there is any question that John Lennon is tops. And who couldn't love Ringo, with his (as Tom Wolfe called it) "curious backwater adenoidal voice" ? And when Lennon was killed, George Harrison wrote "All Those Years Ago" and said he always looked up to John. Mr. McCartney, eyebrows hoisted, said "It's a drag, innit?" when asked about his late partner.
Ask me to rank the four seasons, and of course Frankie Valli is the top. But if we're talking solstices and equinoxes, please give me
#1 - Fall
#2 - Winter
#3 - Spring
#4 - Summer
I love the fall colors and the fact that fall leads to winter, which, although noticeably short on snow around here for the past several years, at least has bone-chilling cold going for it. Spring means pollen, and as soon as you get finished sneezing and infusing eye drops, better go get your shorts and your t-shirts out. Spring leads to summer as inevitably as July 4th means another Will Smith blockbuster is coming to the Googolplex.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
It's The Cool Thing
#1 in a series...
And not that I am considered cool by any standards, but as a longtime observer of the scenes we live by, I have a graduated scale to measure ostentatious actions. For instance, when all of a sudden our parched celebrities became conscious of the need for rehydration, every time you saw a picture of Jack Nicholson, he was carrying a bottle of water and walking around with his eyebrows raised. The actions of Nicholson are pretty much a good way to gauge what is and is not cool.
But here's a move currently being employed by singers, American Idol contestants (and there is a difference), politicians and others who enjoy moments in the spotlight as applause rains down on them like hotdog wrappers at a ballpark on Safety Patrol day: Walking through the crowd as the tumult reaches its apogee, you point your finger or chin out toward a certain person in the audience. This doublecoats the image of adoration, because it leaves the viewer thinking "wow, all those people screaming for him/her and he/she spots a good friend in the crowd and gives them a fingerwag and a little personal smile and headnod." I don't know; it's like one of those shrinkwrapped deals where you buy a bottle of mouthwash and there's a tiny sample tube of zit cream attached at the bottleneck. Here's the Famous One, awash in a sea of love, and yet there is time to acknowledge someone from the home town, or their first parole agent, or the guy who has the keys to the car outside.
And a bonus cool thing: you get a dip recipe put out by some food manufacturer...let's say Kraft...and it calls for Worcestershire sauce, cheddar cheese, sour cream and Italian seasoning. The recipe will say, in boldface, that you should use French's Worcestershire sauce and Kraft cheddar cheese and Land O'Lakes sour cream and Spiceland Italian seasoning, because their integrated horizontal marketing strategies tell them to make you feel like a cheater for using Lea & Perrins, Cracker Barrel, Safeway brand, and McCormick...but go ahead! They can't stop you! There are no brand inspectors knocking on your door! And if anyone asks why you dared to stand up to corporate America, tell 'em you did it because it's the cool thing!
And not that I am considered cool by any standards, but as a longtime observer of the scenes we live by, I have a graduated scale to measure ostentatious actions. For instance, when all of a sudden our parched celebrities became conscious of the need for rehydration, every time you saw a picture of Jack Nicholson, he was carrying a bottle of water and walking around with his eyebrows raised. The actions of Nicholson are pretty much a good way to gauge what is and is not cool.
But here's a move currently being employed by singers, American Idol contestants (and there is a difference), politicians and others who enjoy moments in the spotlight as applause rains down on them like hotdog wrappers at a ballpark on Safety Patrol day: Walking through the crowd as the tumult reaches its apogee, you point your finger or chin out toward a certain person in the audience. This doublecoats the image of adoration, because it leaves the viewer thinking "wow, all those people screaming for him/her and he/she spots a good friend in the crowd and gives them a fingerwag and a little personal smile and headnod." I don't know; it's like one of those shrinkwrapped deals where you buy a bottle of mouthwash and there's a tiny sample tube of zit cream attached at the bottleneck. Here's the Famous One, awash in a sea of love, and yet there is time to acknowledge someone from the home town, or their first parole agent, or the guy who has the keys to the car outside.
And a bonus cool thing: you get a dip recipe put out by some food manufacturer...let's say Kraft...and it calls for Worcestershire sauce, cheddar cheese, sour cream and Italian seasoning. The recipe will say, in boldface, that you should use French's Worcestershire sauce and Kraft cheddar cheese and Land O'Lakes sour cream and Spiceland Italian seasoning, because their integrated horizontal marketing strategies tell them to make you feel like a cheater for using Lea & Perrins, Cracker Barrel, Safeway brand, and McCormick...but go ahead! They can't stop you! There are no brand inspectors knocking on your door! And if anyone asks why you dared to stand up to corporate America, tell 'em you did it because it's the cool thing!
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Love Forever Changes
This will be a rather short diatribe, as my posts go. It's just that I feel like Frank Sinatra in that movie where he comes back from wherever he was and goes to his hometown and no one recognizes him.
Actually, it's not like that. I recognize people all the time and I run into friends, acquaintances, and far-flung kin (and I fling them again, if need be) and that's the great part about living in The Biggest Small Town On Earth. Just yesterday at Giant Food I ran into a fellow from my class in high school. We both admitted to putting on a few pounds and letting our hair gray gracefully.
No, the lack of recognition I decry is for the great band LOVE, whose legendary 1967 album Forever Changes
was recently released in expanded form, with alternate versions, outtakes and extra cuts. I feel terrible that the genius behind the band, Arthur Lee, died in August 2006 without ever receiving the acclaim that should rightly have come to him. I believe they are the best band ever because they fold so many types of music into one...rock, soul, blues, mariachi, classical - all there. Their three first albums, LOVE, Da Capo, and Forever Changes were revered by my buddies and me all through high school, and then when the band dissolved in a late-60's haze of drug troubles, crimes and misdeeds, their public support waned with everyone I know but me. Stubborn to the end, I urge you to visit http://love.torbenskott.dk/default.asp andhttp://lovearthurlee.com/ and check it out. I am also available to proselytize for the band at any venue you choose. Ask any friend of mine - I WILL play their music at the very slightest drop of a hint.
Because I never know when I'll find another convert to the cause, someone to discuss the band's lyrics, their exquisite musicianship, Arthur's vocal stylings, the whole magilla. Peggy no longer makes me listen to them with headphones only! That's progress, right?
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Dayf of future paft
Back in Baltimore! Always good to be there. Peggy and I went to Williamsburg VA last week - this summer marks the 35th anniversary of the day we met, and this December will mark the 35th anniversary of our gala wedding and honeymoon in Williamsburg VA. 35 years. I love Williamsburg, if only for the olde-timey signs that tell you where the gunfmith shop or the beft jeweller
is.As does every sixth-grader from here to Montana, I went to Williamsburg in the fall of 1962, and then, a scant eleven years later, there I was, a married man, back in town. We arrived on a Sunday, and I remember the man who showed us to our room. Ever the swanky boulevardier, I asked him how I could score a six-pack of beer (apparently it would have been easier to purchase Thomas Jefferson's original legal pad than to buy six cans of suds on a Sunday down South) and he regarded us curiously, asking, "Y'all just weddin'?" You bet! came the reply, and he said he'd be back. Back he was, in a trice, and he handed me a crumpled paper sack with six different frosty cans of lager and his best wishes for marital happiness! Thank you, sir! Things are still going fine.
So off we went, down the road less traveled. Route 301
begins, for us, just south of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and takes you all the way down into deepest Virginia, and then you swing off 301 in an enchanting little burg we call Stanktown and pick up rte 30 right into Wmsbg. (I have decided, after years of going back and forth on the topic, to be one of those guys who says "we picked up 30 and took it down to 33, and then took that new cutoff..." It just sounds like you know what you're doing when you talk that way!) Now, the real name for Stanktown is West Point, Virginia. It's situated at the confluence of the York, Mattaponi and Pamunkey Rivers. If you'll recall the story from Animal House, Faber College 
was located near a grove of eraserroot bushes, a stand of pencilwood trees, and deep graphite mines, which gave rise to the pencil factory that endowed the college which educated Bluto and D. Day, among others. Well, right upstream from where all those Virginia rivers come together, there are forests just full of stenopad trees and soupbox elders, because the main occupation of residents in West Point seems to be the production of cardboard. 
Unless you have driven through Stanktown, you can't/won't believe how bad it smells. It's as if a hundred flatulent wet dogs were chased by two hundred skunks and then rolled around in wet cardboard, as I wrote to a friend last night. But, like people in some zombie movie, the people there seem unaware of the possibly-lethal stinkarama that envelopes them and renders air freshener and deodorant useless as we know them. The locals stroll through the miasma, playing golf, buying hair products at RiteAid, wolfing down Italian food at Maria's Italian Food Restaurant and wondering why so many cars with out-of-state tags roll up their windows as they career through town. What must it be like to sell real estate in that town, when out-of-towners get out of the car and cry, "What the hell is that odor??"
It happened again a couple of times, and I think it's time for some sort of national debate to occur on a topic that threatens to rend the fabric of America. I'm not talking about the rise in gas prices and the concomitant rise in oil company profits, assuming, as I do, that the good people in the Bush "administration" are doing their best as selfless defenders of the public weal, and turning their backs on their friends in the oil business. Surely, even as we speak, the president and his top advisors are working on a plan to lower the price of gas, just like right before the 2006 midterm elections when...what? He's not running again, nor is Cheney? Oh well, there goes that notion. And I'm going to leave the matter of the "racy" "topless" photos of Miley Cyrus
to her family to sort out. I call for a national discussion on why so many people sit in a restaurant and bellow their business out so loudly. I mean, are there so many people with hearing loss that people speaking to them have to be so clangorous? On the way down, we hit a Popeye's
in Waldorf MD. Friends, if you're like me, you love that chicken from Popeye's, and you buy it and take it home and put it down your neck with alacrity, and also red beans and rice. But there is nothing like fresh Popeye's right out of the Popeye's pressure cooker! Lord have mercy, what a lunch we had, right in the middle of the town that Joel Madden 
of Good Charlotte calls home (and his ex, Hilary Duff, calls "a ghetto somewhere in Maryland.") (In happier days, here they were:) 
But among the other finger-lickin' diners in the opulent dining room sat a man of great knowledge and experience, and while he completed his toothy bowdlerization of a four-piece dinner, he occasionally paused to deliver, at stentorian levels, a rambling discourse which covered such topics as his friend who is in the Army in Iraq ("he can call home most every night"), the performance of his truck ("she was a-stallin' on me but I took her down to the crankshaft and rebuilt her"), his experiences at a Jimmy Buffett concert ("you know the guy I mean, that 'Margaritaville' guy"), and the beaver who only recently was inhabiting his backyard pond ("my dog, she like to dive right in there after that gawdamn beaver, and then, the last time, she done lit out and I ain't seen her since.") I had to hang around for the end of the last anecdote, since I couldn't discern at first whether it was the dog or the beaver who "done lit out," but I am here to report that the dog is still around, and it was the beaver that left for parts unknown - perhaps to a new pond owned by someone with a greater understanding of pronoun reference.
And then at the Williamsburg Woodlands
where we stayed, there was a free breakfast every morning from 7 til 10:30, although Peggy pointed out that they really didn't expect guests to eat for three and a half hours. But you could! So here we were, toasting our muffins on that track-driven toaster where you place your baked goods at the upper aperture and hold your breath until, moments later, they tumble down, all golden brown from their journey through a land of red-hot coils. The hotel also served juices, cereal, fruits, coffee and tea and sweet rolls. There were a lot of middle-school kids around now, just as in 1962, but with iPods. I love kids for many reasons, one of which is they sit down and eat their breakfast and don't sit around yakety-yakking for hours on end. But some guy, a bit older than I, sat there holding court with his two friends, and again, daggone if he wasn't one or two decibels louder than that emotional man who talks about the stock market on CNBC. His talking points consisted mainly of relating whom he had spoken with last, and about what, but I lost interest, there being a total lack of beaver stories in his repertoire.
We had a great time in Williamsburg. For the most part, it's a quiet town, and from not one of the colonial kitchens did we hear "Kashmir"
blasting out as we dined. And I'm pleased to report that I fought back the impulse to purchase one of those three-cornered hats to wear around. That's one of those things that are pretty cool to do while you're there but once you get home and unpack it, what do you do with it? Either put it in the back of the closet or get a job as drummer for Paul Revere and the Raiders, 
and either way, you're out $27.50.
is.As does every sixth-grader from here to Montana, I went to Williamsburg in the fall of 1962, and then, a scant eleven years later, there I was, a married man, back in town. We arrived on a Sunday, and I remember the man who showed us to our room. Ever the swanky boulevardier, I asked him how I could score a six-pack of beer (apparently it would have been easier to purchase Thomas Jefferson's original legal pad than to buy six cans of suds on a Sunday down South) and he regarded us curiously, asking, "Y'all just weddin'?" You bet! came the reply, and he said he'd be back. Back he was, in a trice, and he handed me a crumpled paper sack with six different frosty cans of lager and his best wishes for marital happiness! Thank you, sir! Things are still going fine.So off we went, down the road less traveled. Route 301
begins, for us, just south of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and takes you all the way down into deepest Virginia, and then you swing off 301 in an enchanting little burg we call Stanktown and pick up rte 30 right into Wmsbg. (I have decided, after years of going back and forth on the topic, to be one of those guys who says "we picked up 30 and took it down to 33, and then took that new cutoff..." It just sounds like you know what you're doing when you talk that way!) Now, the real name for Stanktown is West Point, Virginia. It's situated at the confluence of the York, Mattaponi and Pamunkey Rivers. If you'll recall the story from Animal House, Faber College 
was located near a grove of eraserroot bushes, a stand of pencilwood trees, and deep graphite mines, which gave rise to the pencil factory that endowed the college which educated Bluto and D. Day, among others. Well, right upstream from where all those Virginia rivers come together, there are forests just full of stenopad trees and soupbox elders, because the main occupation of residents in West Point seems to be the production of cardboard. 
Unless you have driven through Stanktown, you can't/won't believe how bad it smells. It's as if a hundred flatulent wet dogs were chased by two hundred skunks and then rolled around in wet cardboard, as I wrote to a friend last night. But, like people in some zombie movie, the people there seem unaware of the possibly-lethal stinkarama that envelopes them and renders air freshener and deodorant useless as we know them. The locals stroll through the miasma, playing golf, buying hair products at RiteAid, wolfing down Italian food at Maria's Italian Food Restaurant and wondering why so many cars with out-of-state tags roll up their windows as they career through town. What must it be like to sell real estate in that town, when out-of-towners get out of the car and cry, "What the hell is that odor??"It happened again a couple of times, and I think it's time for some sort of national debate to occur on a topic that threatens to rend the fabric of America. I'm not talking about the rise in gas prices and the concomitant rise in oil company profits, assuming, as I do, that the good people in the Bush "administration" are doing their best as selfless defenders of the public weal, and turning their backs on their friends in the oil business. Surely, even as we speak, the president and his top advisors are working on a plan to lower the price of gas, just like right before the 2006 midterm elections when...what? He's not running again, nor is Cheney? Oh well, there goes that notion. And I'm going to leave the matter of the "racy" "topless" photos of Miley Cyrus
to her family to sort out. I call for a national discussion on why so many people sit in a restaurant and bellow their business out so loudly. I mean, are there so many people with hearing loss that people speaking to them have to be so clangorous? On the way down, we hit a Popeye'sin Waldorf MD. Friends, if you're like me, you love that chicken from Popeye's, and you buy it and take it home and put it down your neck with alacrity, and also red beans and rice. But there is nothing like fresh Popeye's right out of the Popeye's pressure cooker! Lord have mercy, what a lunch we had, right in the middle of the town that Joel Madden 
of Good Charlotte calls home (and his ex, Hilary Duff, calls "a ghetto somewhere in Maryland.") (In happier days, here they were:) 
But among the other finger-lickin' diners in the opulent dining room sat a man of great knowledge and experience, and while he completed his toothy bowdlerization of a four-piece dinner, he occasionally paused to deliver, at stentorian levels, a rambling discourse which covered such topics as his friend who is in the Army in Iraq ("he can call home most every night"), the performance of his truck ("she was a-stallin' on me but I took her down to the crankshaft and rebuilt her"), his experiences at a Jimmy Buffett concert ("you know the guy I mean, that 'Margaritaville' guy"), and the beaver who only recently was inhabiting his backyard pond ("my dog, she like to dive right in there after that gawdamn beaver, and then, the last time, she done lit out and I ain't seen her since.") I had to hang around for the end of the last anecdote, since I couldn't discern at first whether it was the dog or the beaver who "done lit out," but I am here to report that the dog is still around, and it was the beaver that left for parts unknown - perhaps to a new pond owned by someone with a greater understanding of pronoun reference.And then at the Williamsburg Woodlands
where we stayed, there was a free breakfast every morning from 7 til 10:30, although Peggy pointed out that they really didn't expect guests to eat for three and a half hours. But you could! So here we were, toasting our muffins on that track-driven toaster where you place your baked goods at the upper aperture and hold your breath until, moments later, they tumble down, all golden brown from their journey through a land of red-hot coils. The hotel also served juices, cereal, fruits, coffee and tea and sweet rolls. There were a lot of middle-school kids around now, just as in 1962, but with iPods. I love kids for many reasons, one of which is they sit down and eat their breakfast and don't sit around yakety-yakking for hours on end. But some guy, a bit older than I, sat there holding court with his two friends, and again, daggone if he wasn't one or two decibels louder than that emotional man who talks about the stock market on CNBC. His talking points consisted mainly of relating whom he had spoken with last, and about what, but I lost interest, there being a total lack of beaver stories in his repertoire.We had a great time in Williamsburg. For the most part, it's a quiet town, and from not one of the colonial kitchens did we hear "Kashmir"
blasting out as we dined. And I'm pleased to report that I fought back the impulse to purchase one of those three-cornered hats to wear around. That's one of those things that are pretty cool to do while you're there but once you get home and unpack it, what do you do with it? Either put it in the back of the closet or get a job as drummer for Paul Revere and the Raiders, 
and either way, you're out $27.50.Sunday, April 20, 2008
George on my mind
I've heard it said that all of us can be broken down into four groups:
1 - People who know, and know they know: Learn from them
2 - People who know, and don't know they know: Tell them
3 - People who don't know, and know they don't know: Teach them
4 - People who don't know, and don't know they don't know: Avoid them
Of course, all generalities are bad. Comparisons are odious, but not as odious as giving billions in war supply contracts to your chum's war supply firm, who in turn improperly installs water pumps on showers used by our troops in Iraq, which is why soldiers are being electrocuted in Iraq. Check it out, but it's sad:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/20/electrocuted.soldier.ap/
And before anyone gets all up in my grill for constantly picking on the person in photo 4, anyone should remember that unlike Mr. Garrison Keillor, Mr. Arthur Lee, and Mr. Forrest Gump, the cute little shaver above is responsible for the deaths of countless individuals the world over.
I've been thinking about knowledge and its all-too-often missing cousin, wisdom. We've all known highly educated people who do stupid things (stick a knife in the toaster, try to add 12 gallons of gas to a 10-gallon tank, cut self shaving) and we've all seen flashes of brilliance in otherwise dim lights (viz. any Matt Damon movie.) My father worked with a man of no-more-than average standing, a guy who hardly spoke to anyone as he slumped about. Little known to his co-workers was the fact that the fellow had been stationed in England during World War II and had become fascinated with the days of the Roman invasion of England, and read everything printed about those days and spent his vacation every summer touring English archaeological digs, digging that he was digging up artifacts.
My father, master of subtlety, told me about this one summer when I was fourteen and on vacation at the beach, trying to amass enough Skee-Ball
tickets to get a pocket comb. The lesson was not lost on me. In a recent comparison with every pre-schooler in my family, it turned out that I know much more about the Roman invasion of England than all of them! Ha!
It does take all kinds to keep this village raised. Knowing the steps to true enlightenment is valuable knowledge, yet when your carburetor malfunctions, you don't care whether the tech can find his way to Satori or not.
I see that Laura Bush will be "guest host" on "Today" the day after tomorrow. This, of course, places her maladroit husband squarely on the horns of a dilemma - should he watch The First Lady swap recipes with Natalie Morales after watching Ann Curry make sad eyes about a story involving a lost dog and then glad eyes about a story about a woman who found an original Van Gogh in a frame purchased at a swap meet, below a print of dogs playing poker - or should he stick with his usual morning fare of "Walker, Texas Ranger" on USA Network and that smart-aleck "Frasier" on Lifetime? Decisions, decisions.
Not many people even remember Senator Roman Hruska, (R., Of Course)
who is best known for responding to criticism that Harold Carswell, who had been nominated by "Dick" Nixon to the Supreme Court in 1970, was a mediocre judge, by saying, "So what if he is mediocre?There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises, Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there."
Mediocre people everywhere still rally to the stirring words of Roman Hruska, and heeded them en masse in 2000 and 2004. I can't help but feel that we would have been better electing my father's long-ago co-worker. At least he knew something about the invasion of sovereign foreign nations, and why there are damned few English men named Julius Caesar Wilberforce-Humphreys III.
1 - People who know, and know they know: Learn from them
2 - People who know, and don't know they know: Tell them
3 - People who don't know, and know they don't know: Teach them
4 - People who don't know, and don't know they don't know: Avoid them
Of course, all generalities are bad. Comparisons are odious, but not as odious as giving billions in war supply contracts to your chum's war supply firm, who in turn improperly installs water pumps on showers used by our troops in Iraq, which is why soldiers are being electrocuted in Iraq. Check it out, but it's sad:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/20/electrocuted.soldier.ap/
And before anyone gets all up in my grill for constantly picking on the person in photo 4, anyone should remember that unlike Mr. Garrison Keillor, Mr. Arthur Lee, and Mr. Forrest Gump, the cute little shaver above is responsible for the deaths of countless individuals the world over.
I've been thinking about knowledge and its all-too-often missing cousin, wisdom. We've all known highly educated people who do stupid things (stick a knife in the toaster, try to add 12 gallons of gas to a 10-gallon tank, cut self shaving) and we've all seen flashes of brilliance in otherwise dim lights (viz. any Matt Damon movie.) My father worked with a man of no-more-than average standing, a guy who hardly spoke to anyone as he slumped about. Little known to his co-workers was the fact that the fellow had been stationed in England during World War II and had become fascinated with the days of the Roman invasion of England, and read everything printed about those days and spent his vacation every summer touring English archaeological digs, digging that he was digging up artifacts.
My father, master of subtlety, told me about this one summer when I was fourteen and on vacation at the beach, trying to amass enough Skee-Ball
tickets to get a pocket comb. The lesson was not lost on me. In a recent comparison with every pre-schooler in my family, it turned out that I know much more about the Roman invasion of England than all of them! Ha!It does take all kinds to keep this village raised. Knowing the steps to true enlightenment is valuable knowledge, yet when your carburetor malfunctions, you don't care whether the tech can find his way to Satori or not.
I see that Laura Bush will be "guest host" on "Today" the day after tomorrow. This, of course, places her maladroit husband squarely on the horns of a dilemma - should he watch The First Lady swap recipes with Natalie Morales after watching Ann Curry make sad eyes about a story involving a lost dog and then glad eyes about a story about a woman who found an original Van Gogh in a frame purchased at a swap meet, below a print of dogs playing poker - or should he stick with his usual morning fare of "Walker, Texas Ranger" on USA Network and that smart-aleck "Frasier" on Lifetime? Decisions, decisions.
Not many people even remember Senator Roman Hruska, (R., Of Course)
who is best known for responding to criticism that Harold Carswell, who had been nominated by "Dick" Nixon to the Supreme Court in 1970, was a mediocre judge, by saying, "So what if he is mediocre?There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises, Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there."Mediocre people everywhere still rally to the stirring words of Roman Hruska, and heeded them en masse in 2000 and 2004. I can't help but feel that we would have been better electing my father's long-ago co-worker. At least he knew something about the invasion of sovereign foreign nations, and why there are damned few English men named Julius Caesar Wilberforce-Humphreys III.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Four things on my mind
Happy Saturday - and yes, there are more than four things on my mind, but let's go bloggin'!
The Baltimore area has had indignities heaped upon it like slag at a steel mill. If your home computer has been running a bit slowly of late, it might be because The Internets are too busy having videos of city school teachers being pummeled by their students downloaded onto them. These students, apparently driven mad by too much exposure to "enlightened" education (pause for laughter), are alerting their friends that they intend to smack the teacher down so that the cellphone cameras can be rolling. An art teacher at Reginald F. Lewis Academy was confronted by a student who asserted her plan to "bang" the teacher (terms do change their meaning over the years, it would seem) and so the teacher announced her plan to defend her space, if same was invaded. Moments later, the donnybrook was on, and yet the principal of this august academy of learning told the teacher she was inciting the student to violence by warning that she would be offering a defense.
And that's not even the indignity about which I planned to write, since educators are in their own little world about these matters. The indignity I had in mind is the imminent invasion of Jenna Bush (seen here in all her wedding finery :)
and her husband. News reports are rampant, indicating that the twin daughter of the dense man who refers to the world wide web as "the internets" and to himself as "the decider" is planning to move to South Baltimore with her new husband, following their gala May 10 nuptials in tony Crawford, TX. Almost certainly with no outside help or influence, her fiance, one Henry Hager, has landed a big job with Constellation Energy, the monolith which even at this moment is generating the power that supplies this computer with the juice that says welcome to town, you crazy newlyweds, you. That $400,000 row house you bought in SoBa would have been available for about $8,450 back in the days when your father was a cheerleader for Andover and your mother was blowing stop signs, but that's the sort of economic progress that your beloved republican party has wrought upon our land, so drink up, kids!Personal to all those who advised me to eat bananas to ward off the dreaded leg cramps - I have been eating at least one 'nanner per day for some time now, so I am loaded with potassium like a Penn Central rail car, but this morning as I lay abed, here came another one. The cool thing about my leg cramps is that I get this little signal that one is approaching - a little cramplet, one might say - a precursor to the biggie that feels as if some art student from Reginald F. Lewis Academy is running a bandsaw broadwise across my Gastrocnemius (Latin for "calf muscle that makes people hop like they just got a hotfoot.") As a former giver of hotfoots (hotfeet?) I see the karmic twist here. Advice to newlyweds or people who are just beginning to sleep together: if you suffer from nightly leg cramps, tell your partner, lest they be as stunned as Peggy that night, early in our marriage, when I woke her up, jumping around the bedroom as if the angels of death had come to call for me, several decades too soon. "Oh, I forgot to tell you!" I said, ricocheting off a chiffonier, "I get these leg cramps..." It was not to be the last big surprise of our marriage (see blog entry from August 1974, in which I was booked for suspicion as a Watergate co-conspirator.)
I was listening to Mr. Bon Jovi sing his "It's My Life" song, which has the line, "Like Frankie said, I did it my way." Francis A. Sinatra, a once-popular singer, did not write the song "My Way," and he was a bantam-sized man who kept himself surrounded by a coterie of henchmen. Anyone who incurred his bantam-sized wrath was soon set upon by Frankie's men. I'd rather do it my way, which means writing my own stuff and fighting my own battles. Just sayin'.
I feel that an important aspect of my life ended yesterday with the final broadcast of the "Don and Mike" Show.
What I love about blogging - the reality, the human contact of real unvarnished lives - was all there with D&M. Sure they were sometimes tasteless, occasionally cruel, wildly funny, all those things, but they were on the air here since late 1991, and over the course of almost 17 years, a lot happens to people. We were there when Mike O'Meara's marriages ended, when his relationships with his daughters flourished, when he opened and closed his restaurant/bar, and so much more. And Don Geronimo, whose real name is Michael Sorce, as newspaper articles about his travails inevitably said, has had a life of triumph and tragedy, and he shared every single second of it on the air. His son Bart was known as "the six-year-old weather boy" when they came to town; he would read the weather for his Dad. Next month he will be graduated from Clemson. But Freda, Don's beloved wife, was killed by some damned fool driver going 90 miles an hour outside Ocean City three summers ago, and Don was never the same. He had to give up the show because being with the same workgroup every day reminded him too much of his loss, and he chose not to continue in sadness. His woebegone brother Jim (who married a woman who worked for the Frito-Lay factory but betrayed him by doing it with some co-worker atop a mountain of freshly-made Fritos), his battles with upper management, utility companies, and people who talk in movie theaters, his dealings with his birth mother whom he located after a long search, only to have her say "I gave you away because I didn't want you then and I don't want you now," his rejection of his adoptive parents and reconciliation with his adoptive mom after his adoptive father died....all fascinating, and no longer to be shared with us.Good luck to Jenna's husband, any teacher who needs to don armor, and to Don and Mike.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Six-Word Memoir
I was tagged by a blogger I love, Kat, from http://katry.blogspot.com. Her blog is called "Keep The Coffee Coming," and I read it every day with never a trace of jitters. So I'll accept the tagulation, and here's the assignment:
Write your own six word memoir.
Rowan at Fortify Your Oasis challenged his readers to do this because he was challenged by Grannymar who was challenged by Alice.
Post it on your blog, including an illustration if you’d like.
Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to the original post if possible so that it can be tracked as it travels across the blogosphere.
Tag at least five more blogs with links.
Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!
Here goes mine:
Winter
cold
Spring
Peggy
love
blooms
Now, here's what's funny. If you know me, you probably hear me use words such as garrulous, prolix or voluble to define myself in terms of speech habits. Many might say, "He sure can talk." Or the always-popular, "He was vaccinated with a phonograph needle." I've tried my hand at haiku, but there's a real art in minimalism that escapes me completely. So I don't think this is such a good six-word memoir, but it rings true to me. Out of necessity, it omits a lot of chapters from my life and references only the pre-Peggy chill that life gave me, and the joy that love has brought me continuously since the day fate joined our hearts.
I tried to go for the Burma-Shave school of poetry one time and couldn't even shorten my spiel enough to turn out great verses such as: HENRY THE EIGHTH / SURE HAD / TROUBLE / SHORT TERM WIVES / LONG TERM STUBBLE
Please read the greatest memoir of all time when you get a chance. Genius neurotic anxious pianist Oscar Levant (hey! that's a six-word autobio for you!) wrote Memoirs Of An Amnesiac, which I re-read more or less annually, along with The Catcher In The Rye and On The Road.
The following beloved bloggers are tagged:
Laura
Jamie
Abby
Sarah
Anne
I'll email y'all.
Write your own six word memoir.
Rowan at Fortify Your Oasis challenged his readers to do this because he was challenged by Grannymar who was challenged by Alice.
Post it on your blog, including an illustration if you’d like.
Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to the original post if possible so that it can be tracked as it travels across the blogosphere.
Tag at least five more blogs with links.
Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!
Here goes mine:
Winter
cold
Spring
Peggy
love
blooms
Now, here's what's funny. If you know me, you probably hear me use words such as garrulous, prolix or voluble to define myself in terms of speech habits. Many might say, "He sure can talk." Or the always-popular, "He was vaccinated with a phonograph needle." I've tried my hand at haiku, but there's a real art in minimalism that escapes me completely. So I don't think this is such a good six-word memoir, but it rings true to me. Out of necessity, it omits a lot of chapters from my life and references only the pre-Peggy chill that life gave me, and the joy that love has brought me continuously since the day fate joined our hearts.
I tried to go for the Burma-Shave school of poetry one time and couldn't even shorten my spiel enough to turn out great verses such as: HENRY THE EIGHTH / SURE HAD / TROUBLE / SHORT TERM WIVES / LONG TERM STUBBLE
Please read the greatest memoir of all time when you get a chance. Genius neurotic anxious pianist Oscar Levant (hey! that's a six-word autobio for you!) wrote Memoirs Of An Amnesiac, which I re-read more or less annually, along with The Catcher In The Rye and On The Road.
The following beloved bloggers are tagged:
Laura
Jamie
Abby
Sarah
Anne
I'll email y'all.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
I Love You Because
I am a man who appreciates what I have been given in this life, and that's a considerable amount of things. I realize that I am luckier than I deserve to be, and I want to stop taking so much for granted, so I am vowing to tell people of my appreciation. Just for instance: there is a group of people with space in my building who are doing such noble and good work for a group of deserving individuals, and with their skill sets and abilities, they could go for the big bucks elsewhere, but, thank God, they are here among us every day. I see the faces of the people they help. I've seen their faces in times of no hope and now I see what adding a little hope, a helping hand, and a little encouragement can do for people. I won't go into more detail except to say that these caregivers are not out there talking about themselves or telling others what they ought to be doing; they're just doing something noble and good and life-giving.
Not long ago I heard someone mention the period immediately following 9/11. Remember how people would allow others to merge in traffic, how they would say "excuse me" and "thanks" and "you go first" and other nice things? There was an upsurge in patriotism, but even more important to me was an upsurge in human kindness. It felt as if those of us who had survived that awful day were going to help everyone deal with the common grief. And of course, as a child of the era in which we all refused to believe in that incredible unanimal mankind described by cummings, I felt heartened enough to believe that the long-forecast days of peace and harmony were finally here.
I tend to relate to things in terms of things already experienced. I look back a good deal more than I look ahead, because I know more about history than about the future. Honest to Pete, when 9/11 was going on, the lines from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland came to mind: "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow, out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot say or guess..." I was wrong when I predicted that a whole new time of peace and love and harmony would grow out of that stony rubbish, because I foolishly forgot that the man down at 1600 Pa. Av. DC would leap at the opportunity to help his friends in the oil, electronics, bullet, uniform, tank, rifle and guided missile industries become filthy rich on the backs of the same people who were saying "excuse me" to each other in the supermarket.
Another poem came to mind today. Peggy and I were at Trader Joe's, buying some appetizers for Easter dinner, and I cleverly decided to shake a bottle of Asian dipping sauce to see the sesame seeds dance about in the rich brown goo-goodness. This would have been a better idea had I not been holding, in the same hand, a little cup of the free sample coffee that Trader Joe graciously provides. Mocha goodness poured out of the little cup and cascaded onto the front of the frozen food counter. Peggy immediately put down the package of spinach whatsises she was examining, and did which of the following?
a) laughed and laughed
b) called the store cleanup guy
c) pulled a Kleenex out of her purse, mopped my caffeinated hand dry, wiped up the counter, and asked me if I needed a refill on the coffee.
Anyone who has ever met Peggy, or even heard of her, knows at once the right answer is "C." She amazes me with her love, even though she has blessed me with it for almost 35 years. The song that came to mind was "I Love You Because," an old country standard sung by just about everyone back in the day:
I love you because you understand dear every single thing I try to do
You're always there to lend a helping hand dear
I love you most of all because you're you
No matter what the world may say about me
I know your love will always see me through
I love you for the way you never doubt me but most of all I love you cause you're you
I love you because my heart is lighter every time I'm walking by your side
I love you because the future's brighter
The door to happiness you've opened wide
No matter what may be the style or season I know your heart will always be true
I love you for a hundred thousand reasons but most of all I love you cause you're you
Friends, I still believe in love, and I believe that much love is out there for everyone. I was lucky and found it, or, more likely, the cosmos could not bear the thought of me rolling through life unhinged. If you have found the love of your life, cherish it, please. If you're still waiting for it to come to you, I bless the day it will arrive. And I know it will!
Not long ago I heard someone mention the period immediately following 9/11. Remember how people would allow others to merge in traffic, how they would say "excuse me" and "thanks" and "you go first" and other nice things? There was an upsurge in patriotism, but even more important to me was an upsurge in human kindness. It felt as if those of us who had survived that awful day were going to help everyone deal with the common grief. And of course, as a child of the era in which we all refused to believe in that incredible unanimal mankind described by cummings, I felt heartened enough to believe that the long-forecast days of peace and harmony were finally here.
I tend to relate to things in terms of things already experienced. I look back a good deal more than I look ahead, because I know more about history than about the future. Honest to Pete, when 9/11 was going on, the lines from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland came to mind: "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow, out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot say or guess..." I was wrong when I predicted that a whole new time of peace and love and harmony would grow out of that stony rubbish, because I foolishly forgot that the man down at 1600 Pa. Av. DC would leap at the opportunity to help his friends in the oil, electronics, bullet, uniform, tank, rifle and guided missile industries become filthy rich on the backs of the same people who were saying "excuse me" to each other in the supermarket.
Another poem came to mind today. Peggy and I were at Trader Joe's, buying some appetizers for Easter dinner, and I cleverly decided to shake a bottle of Asian dipping sauce to see the sesame seeds dance about in the rich brown goo-goodness. This would have been a better idea had I not been holding, in the same hand, a little cup of the free sample coffee that Trader Joe graciously provides. Mocha goodness poured out of the little cup and cascaded onto the front of the frozen food counter. Peggy immediately put down the package of spinach whatsises she was examining, and did which of the following?
a) laughed and laughed
b) called the store cleanup guy
c) pulled a Kleenex out of her purse, mopped my caffeinated hand dry, wiped up the counter, and asked me if I needed a refill on the coffee.
Anyone who has ever met Peggy, or even heard of her, knows at once the right answer is "C." She amazes me with her love, even though she has blessed me with it for almost 35 years. The song that came to mind was "I Love You Because," an old country standard sung by just about everyone back in the day:
I love you because you understand dear every single thing I try to do
You're always there to lend a helping hand dear
I love you most of all because you're you
No matter what the world may say about me
I know your love will always see me through
I love you for the way you never doubt me but most of all I love you cause you're you
I love you because my heart is lighter every time I'm walking by your side
I love you because the future's brighter
The door to happiness you've opened wide
No matter what may be the style or season I know your heart will always be true
I love you for a hundred thousand reasons but most of all I love you cause you're you
Friends, I still believe in love, and I believe that much love is out there for everyone. I was lucky and found it, or, more likely, the cosmos could not bear the thought of me rolling through life unhinged. If you have found the love of your life, cherish it, please. If you're still waiting for it to come to you, I bless the day it will arrive. And I know it will!
Saturday, March 8, 2008
"Hey Yogi, what time is it?" "You mean now?"
I am not the smartest man anyone will ever meet. A man's just got to know his limitations, right! And I know people ranging from someone who refused to eat corned beef because "they just keep these little cows in a pen, and all they let them eat is corn, and it's so mean!" to a guy who was driving north on I-83 and encountered a car heading south with a stuck horn blaring. Doing a bit of mental jotto from the Doppler Effect of the change of pitch of that horn, and factoring in his own speed, John was able to calculate the speed of the car heading south. That's brains, is what that is.
I know where corned beef comes from. I am simply mad about cows. But I can't even figure how fast I'm driving without a look at the speedometer - the device on my dashboard for holding coupons and sticky notes. However, I know another way to figure out how fast that car was going. Simply get off at the next exit, get back on 83 headed southbound, drive like a bastard and catch up with him, follow him home and then ask "Excuse me, but how fast were you driving on the interstate? I need to know this because....."
Done and done.
But in the interest of allowing everyone to gauge my relative IQ (right now, you're thinking it's somewhere between Stephen Hawking and the guy who told Mitt Romney "Don't change a thing - people like you the way you are!"), I have to be totally honest about one huge mental black hole.
Daylight Savings Time.
Oh yeah, I pretty much have that "spring forward, fall backward" thing memorized, But how does it come that every time we either spring or fall, I have to get a pencil and paper and calculate whether it will be darker or lighter in the morning, and then do the same figurin' thing for dinnertime? Then I get really confused, because I have come to associate nightfall with the time that the "King of Queens" rerun comes on channel 45. Now, nightfall will coincide with "Two and a Half Men."
I have a friend who works in Kansas City and I keep meaning to give her a call at work one of these weekend mornings, but there only are certain times she can get a call. I am so afraid that I can't figure out that when it's 8 AM in Baltimore, it's 7 AM in Kansas City. Or is it 9 there already?
When we drove to Pensacola in 2004 for Drew and Laura's wedding, I was momentarily distracted from blissful daydreams involving grits and waffles, the two foods that make traveling through the sunny South such a blissful daydream, when we passed a sign even more terrifying to me than the one that says "Now entering radiation zone." It was a rather small sign for the terror it handed to me: Now entering Central Time Zone. ! Well, I come through Alabama with a steering wheel on my knee, for I'm programming my Timex Ironman, the right time for to see, as Stephen Foster would have said, had he cared. The rented minivan careered* across the state line out of Georgia as I entered this whole new dimension in which Letterman comes on at 10:35, the late news is on during dinner, and Dios Mio, what would happen if you were driving across that state line at 2 AM tomorrow morning? What time would it be when you got to one of the 27 conveniently located Waffle House, Waffle King, Wafflemaster or El Waffle Loco restaurants in Opelika?
Time to join this group,
that's what time it is! Fight for your syrup amendment rights! I'll talk to you tomorrow...sometime.* To "careen" means to tilt or tip over and to "career" means to speed wildly out of control.
(I had to look it up.)
Sunday, March 2, 2008
This is what it's like inside my melon
Time for a blog where I just open up the sluice gates and let the stream of consciousness flow over the banks and onto the page. There are certain things I think about all the time, such as why books and bookstores smell so nice and paper factories stink up entire towns. But, the water that flows makes the trees grow, and then carries the trees to a paper mill. Someone needs to write a book about why paper mills are so shtinky. They'll need a lot of paper to print it.
Here are a few thoughts: the first is totally spurious, and the others merely whimsical. I think I'll have a whimsicle right now!
...Ennui-rich British popster Phil Collins
is largely responsible for ending a crime spree in the greater Brattleboro (VT) area. Bemused cops report that persons arrested on suspicion of having committed crimes were locked in a small interview room and forced to listen to an endless loop tape of Collins "classics."
" 'Against All Odds', " quipped Brattleboro PD spokesperson Gene Sis, "we improved our crime clearance rate by 36% by forcing miscreants to listen to 'Sussudio,' 'You Can't Hurry Love,' and the real heavy weapon that we only trotted out against the most recalcitrant suspects, the deadly 'In The Air Tonight.' "
...In many jurisdictions, the police sell off used squad cars
to two main buyers: cop wannabes, and taxi companies. Is it not possible that someone could be arrested, taken in by the police in a certain Ford sedan, be sentenced to jail, and emerge from jail some months later, only to hail a cab to get home. And is it not possible that the cab could be the same vehicle that took him off to the hoosegow?
Driven by a cop wannabe?
...Since the beginning of time, there has been only a certain, albeit high, amount of water on the earth. They just aren't making hydrogen and oxygen molecules any more; it's too hard to get help.
Therefore, it follows that the next time you guzzle some water from the water cooler at work, or sip a mocha frappuccino, or take a shower after a long day on the job when the guy in the next cube was playing Phil Collins CD's for so long that you went down to the boss and confessed to ripping off wite-out just to get away from the din, you might be in contact with some of the same molecules that once bore Noah's Ark on its voyage. Then again, you may not. Who's to say?
...In 1978, the movie "Animal House"
came out (and I'm still laffin'!) The movie centered on college hi-jinx at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis of November, 1962. So the movie was about stuff that happened 16 years earlier. Well, it's 30 years since the movie came out. Would you care to see a movie about the funny stuff going on at Faber College in 1992? I can see it now...the students are all moping around, listening to Nirvana's Nevermind on tape cassettes, lining up to see The Silence of the Lambs and cheering the lifting of US trade sanctions with China. Let's face it: recent history is nowhere near as much fun as it used to be.
...I worked at a grocery store in high school and college, so my food choices when it came to lunch time (and it always did!) were fairly broad. I loved the A & P
and being surrounded by an endless vista of ginger ale, Fig Newtons and Vienna sausage. But what if you work at a restaurant, and more to the point, what if that restaurant is limited to one cuisine? Even if it's the best burger, ice cream sundae or falafel in town that you're frying/scooping/whatever the hell one does to serve falafel, you're going to be sick of eating it really soon. I'm sure there are thousands of former McEmployees who can't think of eating a Big Mac or former fish house cooks who can't look a catfish in the eye. I think the Labor Department ought to look into this.
...We've all been here: you're in the mall, or on the street, or running with the bulls at Pamplona. Out of the corner of your eye you see a dude that you kinda know, but you're in a hurry, or you just don't feel like hearing 30 minutes about the cutting edge of software technology, or where the stock market is heading, or why the Orioles don't have a chance to win anything this year or anytime before the next century begins. You sidle away, like a defensive back getting ready to make an interception, and when you see a path, off you go! into the clear and you get that exhilarated feeling because you know with every step You! Could! Go! All! The! Way.
I admit to the escape-and-evade several months ago, and as I darted away, my nonchalance giving way to what was certainly red-faced sweaty guilt until I must have looked like James Cagney in "White Heat," I got to thinking - how many times has someone seen ME and done the same thing? Now, that's what I call neurotic!
Good night! Top of the world!
Here are a few thoughts: the first is totally spurious, and the others merely whimsical. I think I'll have a whimsicle right now!
...Ennui-rich British popster Phil Collins
is largely responsible for ending a crime spree in the greater Brattleboro (VT) area. Bemused cops report that persons arrested on suspicion of having committed crimes were locked in a small interview room and forced to listen to an endless loop tape of Collins "classics."" 'Against All Odds', " quipped Brattleboro PD spokesperson Gene Sis, "we improved our crime clearance rate by 36% by forcing miscreants to listen to 'Sussudio,' 'You Can't Hurry Love,' and the real heavy weapon that we only trotted out against the most recalcitrant suspects, the deadly 'In The Air Tonight.' "
...In many jurisdictions, the police sell off used squad cars
to two main buyers: cop wannabes, and taxi companies. Is it not possible that someone could be arrested, taken in by the police in a certain Ford sedan, be sentenced to jail, and emerge from jail some months later, only to hail a cab to get home. And is it not possible that the cab could be the same vehicle that took him off to the hoosegow?
Driven by a cop wannabe?...Since the beginning of time, there has been only a certain, albeit high, amount of water on the earth. They just aren't making hydrogen and oxygen molecules any more; it's too hard to get help.
Therefore, it follows that the next time you guzzle some water from the water cooler at work, or sip a mocha frappuccino, or take a shower after a long day on the job when the guy in the next cube was playing Phil Collins CD's for so long that you went down to the boss and confessed to ripping off wite-out just to get away from the din, you might be in contact with some of the same molecules that once bore Noah's Ark on its voyage. Then again, you may not. Who's to say?...In 1978, the movie "Animal House"
came out (and I'm still laffin'!) The movie centered on college hi-jinx at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis of November, 1962. So the movie was about stuff that happened 16 years earlier. Well, it's 30 years since the movie came out. Would you care to see a movie about the funny stuff going on at Faber College in 1992? I can see it now...the students are all moping around, listening to Nirvana's Nevermind on tape cassettes, lining up to see The Silence of the Lambs and cheering the lifting of US trade sanctions with China. Let's face it: recent history is nowhere near as much fun as it used to be....I worked at a grocery store in high school and college, so my food choices when it came to lunch time (and it always did!) were fairly broad. I loved the A & P
and being surrounded by an endless vista of ginger ale, Fig Newtons and Vienna sausage. But what if you work at a restaurant, and more to the point, what if that restaurant is limited to one cuisine? Even if it's the best burger, ice cream sundae or falafel in town that you're frying/scooping/whatever the hell one does to serve falafel, you're going to be sick of eating it really soon. I'm sure there are thousands of former McEmployees who can't think of eating a Big Mac or former fish house cooks who can't look a catfish in the eye. I think the Labor Department ought to look into this....We've all been here: you're in the mall, or on the street, or running with the bulls at Pamplona. Out of the corner of your eye you see a dude that you kinda know, but you're in a hurry, or you just don't feel like hearing 30 minutes about the cutting edge of software technology, or where the stock market is heading, or why the Orioles don't have a chance to win anything this year or anytime before the next century begins. You sidle away, like a defensive back getting ready to make an interception, and when you see a path, off you go! into the clear and you get that exhilarated feeling because you know with every step You! Could! Go! All! The! Way.
I admit to the escape-and-evade several months ago, and as I darted away, my nonchalance giving way to what was certainly red-faced sweaty guilt until I must have looked like James Cagney in "White Heat," I got to thinking - how many times has someone seen ME and done the same thing? Now, that's what I call neurotic!
Good night! Top of the world!
Sunday, February 24, 2008
I didn't know
Well, Saturday was one of those days in which the wisdom of the old axiom "You never can tell" came true. On Friday, our entire metro area was supposed to be plunged into a New Ice Age, replete with snow, sleet, sleety snow, freezing rain, rainy freeze, and sniffles. Even the normally nonemotional National Weather Service got all nervous - on Thursday, before I left work, the NWS sent a bulletin advising that travel would be "difficult if not impossible" on Friday. That turned out to be "wrong if not wrongest" when we had a little freezing rain that was easily vanquished by the guys and gals from the Highways department and their vast salt domes, and life somehow went on.
So on Saturday, after the usual breakfast-nap-trip-to-the-Food King triumvirate of fun, we took Mom's groceries over to her house, did a few chores over there at the site of my upbringing (see my autobiography FRONTIER DAYS: Boy in Buckskin for more details) and then Peggy and I looked forward to our culinary pleasure, my weekly break from dieting, that hebdomadal hedonistic Valhalla, the Old Country Buffet.
As I do with Willis Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning, I revere the Frenchman Jean-Claude Buffet, the first man to realize that the best choice for dinner is EVERY choice. This is, of course, completely fake information. There was no Jean-Claude Buffet, just as, yesterday, there was no Old Country Buffet.
I thought at first it was because we approached Satyr Hill Shopping Center from the west, having just come from Mom's, and maybe the sun was playing tricks on me. At first, I noticed there was no price listed for gasoline at the Texaco right across the parking lot from the OCB, and I figured it was because finally the oil industry had finally achieved a measure of modesty and no longer saw fit to emblazon in the sky just how badly they are ripping off an entire nation -yea, all mankind - for their hi-test. But no, it turned out that they were installing new pumps. I figured,"fine; we'll fill up the car somewhere else after we fill ourselves." But no!
I thought, wow, this is great - there are so many parking spots on the lot! Yeah, buddy, that would be because the Old County Buffet was closed. I mean, shut down for good, Katie bar the door, 126 pages Dear John. Except, the doors weren't barred; they simply had the blinds drawn, and the Dear John letter was an inelegantly phrased Word Document advising that the Old Country Buffet had closed for business at this location, but we were welcome to drive 30 miles to Catonsville to visit their one remaining Baltimore location. I bet they didn't even save that consarned document after they printed out three copies, taped them up and locked the doors.
I reacted as would any fully-realized adult when his dinner has suddenly disappeared. I wept and wailed, and I'm fairly sure there was gnashing of teeth. We wound up going to the Towson Diner, which is quite great in its own way, but unlike buffets, diners have that one little difference. At the Old Country Buffet, it's all you can eat. At the Towson Diner, what they place in front of you is all you can eat. Owing to some sort of oddball policy, you're not allowed to go roam among the huge steaming tureens (I hereby offer that phrase as a band name for any musical aggravation willing to assume it) and giant beef roasts and ribs of the sort favored by Dino Flintstone
at the Bedrock Drive-In. And then there was the Taco Bar, the Salad Bar, the Soup Buckets, the Shrimp Boat and the Make-Your-Own-Damn-Dessert area, featuring soft-serve ice cream, carrot cake, oatmeal cookies, incredible peach or cherry "gobblers" and the whole American concept of come on in, sit down and spell, we're just fixin' to eat. You'd see people there every time - the same people, the same groups and families and couples. There was one man who used to read to his wife while they ate, a widower-looking guy going around greeting his friends, a woman who used to get her hair "did" at the same place we used to before our tonsorial expert chose a lifestyle of avid drug consumption, and buses of high-school and college kids, usually on their way back from something thrilling they had done here, just having a little dinner, a little of that and a lot of this, and some fun.
Old Country Buffet, Nos quisnam iam epulor alibi tutus vos! That's Latin for "we who now dine elsewhere salute you!" (I think the Romans are hinting that we should try Quizno's...) But I remember another use of the word "buffet" that we hear on the radio and TV during hurricane season (Jan 1 - Dec 31) around here. "Strong winds buffeted the Caroline Coast today as Hurricane Duane made landfall at 3 AM..." is something we hear all the time, when the electricity is on. In this case, buffet means, well, let's go to Merriam-Webster to see for sure:
(transitive) To strike or blow with a buffet or buffets.
I bow my head once again at the wisdom and foresight of the framers of our language. John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in their wisdom, knew that our language needed a word for a great place to eat, and how it felt when that place closed down suddenly. I've been buffeted! See you at the diner.
So on Saturday, after the usual breakfast-nap-trip-to-the-Food King triumvirate of fun, we took Mom's groceries over to her house, did a few chores over there at the site of my upbringing (see my autobiography FRONTIER DAYS: Boy in Buckskin for more details) and then Peggy and I looked forward to our culinary pleasure, my weekly break from dieting, that hebdomadal hedonistic Valhalla, the Old Country Buffet.
As I do with Willis Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning, I revere the Frenchman Jean-Claude Buffet, the first man to realize that the best choice for dinner is EVERY choice. This is, of course, completely fake information. There was no Jean-Claude Buffet, just as, yesterday, there was no Old Country Buffet.
I thought at first it was because we approached Satyr Hill Shopping Center from the west, having just come from Mom's, and maybe the sun was playing tricks on me. At first, I noticed there was no price listed for gasoline at the Texaco right across the parking lot from the OCB, and I figured it was because finally the oil industry had finally achieved a measure of modesty and no longer saw fit to emblazon in the sky just how badly they are ripping off an entire nation -yea, all mankind - for their hi-test. But no, it turned out that they were installing new pumps. I figured,"fine; we'll fill up the car somewhere else after we fill ourselves." But no!
I thought, wow, this is great - there are so many parking spots on the lot! Yeah, buddy, that would be because the Old County Buffet was closed. I mean, shut down for good, Katie bar the door, 126 pages Dear John. Except, the doors weren't barred; they simply had the blinds drawn, and the Dear John letter was an inelegantly phrased Word Document advising that the Old Country Buffet had closed for business at this location, but we were welcome to drive 30 miles to Catonsville to visit their one remaining Baltimore location. I bet they didn't even save that consarned document after they printed out three copies, taped them up and locked the doors.
I reacted as would any fully-realized adult when his dinner has suddenly disappeared. I wept and wailed, and I'm fairly sure there was gnashing of teeth. We wound up going to the Towson Diner, which is quite great in its own way, but unlike buffets, diners have that one little difference. At the Old Country Buffet, it's all you can eat. At the Towson Diner, what they place in front of you is all you can eat. Owing to some sort of oddball policy, you're not allowed to go roam among the huge steaming tureens (I hereby offer that phrase as a band name for any musical aggravation willing to assume it) and giant beef roasts and ribs of the sort favored by Dino Flintstone
at the Bedrock Drive-In. And then there was the Taco Bar, the Salad Bar, the Soup Buckets, the Shrimp Boat and the Make-Your-Own-Damn-Dessert area, featuring soft-serve ice cream, carrot cake, oatmeal cookies, incredible peach or cherry "gobblers" and the whole American concept of come on in, sit down and spell, we're just fixin' to eat. You'd see people there every time - the same people, the same groups and families and couples. There was one man who used to read to his wife while they ate, a widower-looking guy going around greeting his friends, a woman who used to get her hair "did" at the same place we used to before our tonsorial expert chose a lifestyle of avid drug consumption, and buses of high-school and college kids, usually on their way back from something thrilling they had done here, just having a little dinner, a little of that and a lot of this, and some fun.Old Country Buffet, Nos quisnam iam epulor alibi tutus vos! That's Latin for "we who now dine elsewhere salute you!" (I think the Romans are hinting that we should try Quizno's...) But I remember another use of the word "buffet" that we hear on the radio and TV during hurricane season (Jan 1 - Dec 31) around here. "Strong winds buffeted the Caroline Coast today as Hurricane Duane made landfall at 3 AM..." is something we hear all the time, when the electricity is on. In this case, buffet means, well, let's go to Merriam-Webster to see for sure:
- buffet
- Function:
- verb
- Date:
- 13th century
1 : to strike sharply especially with the hand : cuff 2 : to strike repeatedly : batter buffeted the shore> 3 : to drive, force, move, or attack by or as if by repeated blows intransitive verb : to make one's way especially under difficult conditions
(transitive) To strike or blow with a buffet or buffets.
I bow my head once again at the wisdom and foresight of the framers of our language. John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in their wisdom, knew that our language needed a word for a great place to eat, and how it felt when that place closed down suddenly. I've been buffeted! See you at the diner.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Sticks and Stones
With the Maryland primary election coming up on Tuesday (and here's a big shout-out to everyone who tried to vote this past Tuesday, only to find out that our Tuesday was just a Tuesday, nothing Super about it) the campaign ads are proliferating in just a couple of races. Maryland's 1st Congressional District - the entire Eastern Shore, and parts of Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Harford Counties - has a real barnburner going on in their Republican primary, as two candidates seek to oust the incumbent. They would want me to mention their names. The amusing thing about all this is the ads they are running on TV and radio. The entire focus of the ads of both would-be congressmen is "The incumbent is LIBERAL!" And as if to prove the point, they show pictures of the man that were snapped right after he sneezed or something, and juxtapose the photos next to images of Nancy Pelosi looking like something smells bad and she's wrinkling her nose. Very subtle stuff.
But when did it become such a sin to be a liberal? What is the definition of a liberal? Why don't we do what millions of truth-seekers have done over the years, and check it out in the good old Roget's Thesaurus:
liberal
NOUN: A person with liberal political opinions: liberalist, progressive. See POLITICS.
ADJECTIVE: 1. Not narrow or conservative in thought, expression, or conduct: broad, broad-minded, open-minded, progressive, tolerant. See ATTITUDE, WIDE. 2. Characterized by bounteous giving: free, freehanded, generous, handsome, lavish, munificent, openhanded, unsparing, unstinting. See GIVE. 3. Favoring civil liberties and social progress: liberalistic, progressive. See POLITICS.
conservative
NOUN: One who strongly favors retention of the existing order: orthodox, rightist, right-winger, Tory, traditionalist. See KEEP.
ADJECTIVE: 1. Kept within sensible limits: discreet, moderate, reasonable, restrained, temperate. See PLAIN, RESTRAINT. 2. Strongly favoring retention of the existing order: orthodox, right, rightist, right-wing, Tory, traditionalist, traditionalistic. See KEEP. 3. Able to preserve: preservative, protective. See HELP. 4. Clinging to obsolete ideas: backward, reactionary, unprogressive. See POLITICS.
Here's my point: I would much rather be thought of as not narrow in thought, bounteous in giving, and in favor of civil liberties and social progress than have people describe me as clinging to obsolete ideas or favoring retention of the existing order. I know that will likely cost me a treasured invitation to the Bushdaughter wedding in May, but I don't like obsolete ideas.
And, "kept within sensible limits"? Like, Dick Cheney only shot one guy in the face so far...is that a sensible limit on how many people can be shot by the vice-president? Bush only got us into one war so far. So what if it costs a little money or a few thousand lives...
Consider the costs...
But when did it become such a sin to be a liberal? What is the definition of a liberal? Why don't we do what millions of truth-seekers have done over the years, and check it out in the good old Roget's Thesaurus:
liberal
NOUN: A person with liberal political opinions: liberalist, progressive. See POLITICS.
ADJECTIVE: 1. Not narrow or conservative in thought, expression, or conduct: broad, broad-minded, open-minded, progressive, tolerant. See ATTITUDE, WIDE. 2. Characterized by bounteous giving: free, freehanded, generous, handsome, lavish, munificent, openhanded, unsparing, unstinting. See GIVE. 3. Favoring civil liberties and social progress: liberalistic, progressive. See POLITICS.
conservative
NOUN: One who strongly favors retention of the existing order: orthodox, rightist, right-winger, Tory, traditionalist. See KEEP.
ADJECTIVE: 1. Kept within sensible limits: discreet, moderate, reasonable, restrained, temperate. See PLAIN, RESTRAINT. 2. Strongly favoring retention of the existing order: orthodox, right, rightist, right-wing, Tory, traditionalist, traditionalistic. See KEEP. 3. Able to preserve: preservative, protective. See HELP. 4. Clinging to obsolete ideas: backward, reactionary, unprogressive. See POLITICS.
Here's my point: I would much rather be thought of as not narrow in thought, bounteous in giving, and in favor of civil liberties and social progress than have people describe me as clinging to obsolete ideas or favoring retention of the existing order. I know that will likely cost me a treasured invitation to the Bushdaughter wedding in May, but I don't like obsolete ideas.
And, "kept within sensible limits"? Like, Dick Cheney only shot one guy in the face so far...is that a sensible limit on how many people can be shot by the vice-president? Bush only got us into one war so far. So what if it costs a little money or a few thousand lives...
Consider the costs...
- $275 million per day
- $4,100 per household
- Almost 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed and more than 60,000 wounded
- 700,000 Iraqis killed and 4 million refugees
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Easy does it
First of all today, I have to ask why so many people are walking around wearing those Bluetooth earpieces. I mean, it would be one thing if the people we saw with these blinking devices stuck on their melons were at work, expecting an important message about the Harrigan account, or from the kidnappers holding their family for ransom, or urgent instructions for reporting to the hospital to donate a vital organ or a pint of O-negative. But no. I don't see them on people at work; I see them on people waiting for a table at Carrabba's, or filling the tank of the Biscayne at the Pump 'n' Pay, or running to the bakery for a dozen bagels.
And, you might think that people who feel they can't leave the house and simply plan to get their cell phone out of their pocket or purse in case it rings would have some supercilious smirk on their mugs, or that whole techie show-off aspect. Again -but no! I really feel that most of these people are just scared to death that it might take an extra second to hoist that cell faceward to take the call from Aunt Mildred about how much spice to add to the chili.
But I'll bet if people's employers told them they had to wear this teardrop-shaped earplug to the restaurant, the gas station or the bakery so as not to miss a call, people would balk and holler. Hey - maybe between calls, they are hearing important inter-galactic transmissions to which the rest of us are not privy!
Speaking of transmissions, there's a local radio show on the air here in B'more on which the host asks for your "list of 4" - favorite pies, worst highways, best reasons to eat more noodles, whatever. As far as I know, this is a list that has not been asked for yet, but herewith, my list of the Four Easiest Jobs in the World:
1. Jockey.
Be small, get on a horse, hang on, get off a mile and a half later.2. Photographer.
Get a camera, turn it on, look at the viewfinder, push a button.3. High-school cross-country coach.
Get some skinny kids in sneakers, tank tops and shorts, and tell them to run like hell!4. Director of movies featuring Jack Nicholson.
Tell your star "Just act like Mr Udall from As Good As It Gets again."There are other jobs - president of the United States comes to mind - that seem to be easy enough for the average George to do, but can you top these?
Saturday, January 19, 2008
100 Things
Not trying to be solipsistic here...but I found the prototype for this on a wonderful blog called Catheroominations ( http://www.catheroo.com/) and I thought I'd fill it out for myself, keeping just a few of hers which fit me, and making the rest up. I love filling out those online survey quizzes, and I recommend this exercise for getting in touch with the you only you know best! Thanks, Catheroo. If I were to add a #101, it would be to say that your blog is really great!
As Jackie Gleason used to say, "And aw-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaay we go!"
100 Things About Me
1. I like online jigsaw puzzles
2. I like tea in the morning and coffee every night after dinner
3. I don’t like noises from outside of the house, especially loud car stereos
4. I’m more likely to be hot than cold
5. I love football and baseball jerseys and my favorite is the Browns home jersey (brown and orange)
6. I would love to write a book, but who would read it?
7. Bad spelling annoys me but bad grammar is worse
8. I hate liars
9. I like people-watching and find it endlessly fascinating
10. I like to drive, except in the city
11. I get crazy leg cramps while asleep
12. I believe in the spirit of Elvis
13. I wonder if newspaper advice columnists ever make up the letters they answer
14. I believe in fate and signs and certain personal superstitions
15. I never cry
16. I think the lyrics to a song are far more important than the music
17. I am loved by someone special
16. I could live the rest of my life without chocolate
17. I like to drink beer in a frozen mug
18. I used to drink Coke but have not had a soda of any sort since June 2005
19. I like to ride the exercise bike while watching sitcoms
20. I have a bizarrely good memory for dates and a terrible memory for names
21. I hate Brussels sprouts and lima beans
22. I hate bullies even though my size and quick tongue kept me from being their victim
23. I am a Cancer born on 6/30, but so is Mike Tyson: so what good is astrology?
24. I believe that an occasional flareup helps relieve built-up tensions at work
25. I have never voted for a Republican for any office at any time and never will
26. I have lost too many friends and loved ones to cancer (actually, one is too many)
27. I think the glass is half full - I am basically optimistic
28. I keep promising myself to never split infinitives
29. I can’t stand bad table manners
30. I used to love country music but now it seems banal in its present state
31. I love to drive around in my truck with Peggy, looking at changing leaves in the fall, and Christmas lights
32. I believe I am relatively easy to please but I can see how others might not agree with that
33. I love music with saxophones, ukuleles and accordions
34. I used to go to grocery stores where no one knew me, speak with a quasi-European accent, and ask a clerk, “Please to tell, where are ze potato cheeps?”
35. I love being married
36. I can speak Spanish well enough to get by and sometimes think in Spanish to keep it sharp in my mind
37. I would love to learn ventriloquism
38. I love words and etymology
39. I want more time to read
40. I am a morning person
41. I began watching TV news fanatically when I was 5
42. I’m generally happy
43. If you are sick or injured, I will be glad to help take care of you
44. Wind chimes irritate me
45. I like reading newspapers and at one time was plowing through four per day
46. I wonder about California: they send their drunk-driving celebrities to jail and their murdering celebrities get off scot-free
47. I love to wear shorts outside in the winter
48. I once had a friend whose husband’s mother was the cook for a prison in Alabama, and I wanted to meet her to swap creamed chipped beef recipes
49. I miss the anticipation of getting pictures back from the photo developing shop - digital photography just might catch on!
50. I love popcorn but the smell of the fake butter makes me nauseated, so I have to search hither and yon for “natural” flavor nukecorn
51. I love old New Yorker and Life magazines for the slices of old-time life they provide
52. I love to cast actors to play my family, friends and co-workers in the forthcoming movie of my life - Drew Carey as me, Edward G. Robinson as my grandfather
53. I can drive a manual transmission vehicle
54. I have the greatest assistant in the working world and our entire department would be much less great without her
55. I have forsworn many of my OCD traits but I will never yield on my stance on punctuality - I am fanatically early for everything
56. I like a beer with my dinner but I can live without it
57. When I was a kid, I would spend hours reading the Information Please Almanac and the World Book Encyclopedia- that‘s why I love surfing the net - so much information to be gleaned!
58. I love the oral histories written by Studs Terkel and love to hear people’s reminiscences on my own
59. I think that Norm MacDonald is one of the funniest human beings
60. Bad pronunciation bugs me
61. I have never eaten venison, nor rabbit, nor buffalo
62. I love it when pompous blowbags use malapropisms
63. I’m considered witty
64. Favorite snack: handful of mixed nuts
65. I have absolutely zero talent at acting, which puts me in some highly-paid company (Hi there, Jim Belushi!)
66. I was well into my 50’s before I realized that people would just as soon NOT have their grammar, spelling or pronunciation corrected.
67. I have never been arrested
68. I’m old-fashioned with my VCRs instead of TiVO but I tape the news just in case we miss it “live”
69. I sing along in the truck but I am a terrible singer
70. I don’t know whether Phil Spector killed that woman, but I sure know he made some of the greatest records ever
71. I am a Maryland native
72. I had almost no self-confidence growing up and then one day I said, hey what the hell, I’m good enough
73. I love listening to old-time radio shows such as Phil Harris, Jack Benny and the Great Gildersleeve
74. I laugh a lot and hope to make others laugh, the better to share the maxim “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine”
75. I believe in karma
76. There are times when nothing will do for dinner but McDonald’s
77. I get cranky when I’m tired or hungry
78. I was pleasantly surprised at how much more courteous Southern drivers were than Northerners when we went down South in ‘04
79. I am tremendously nostalgic about the 50’s and 60’s and have been known to visit my old public schools just to walk down the halls and bask in memories
80. I was a volunteer firefighter for 7 years and still claim kinship to the fire dept brother-and-sisterhood
81. I believe in love at first sight and my marriage is a testament to it
82. Like most Baltimoreans, I idolize Cal Ripken, Jr., and have always found him to be a kind and admirable person
83. I am an Orioles and Ravens fan but I don’t take it as a personal shortcoming if the teams don’t do so well
84. When Oprah was a local Baltimore newscaster, I grew so tired of her grammatical errors that I called channel 13 and asked them to counsel her against saying “Join Richard Sher and I this morning at 9...”
85. I wonder why anyone takes what they read in the gossip magazines to be any kind of true
86. I love driving my pickup truck and can’t imagine not having one
87. I love a band called LOVE from the late 60’s and no one else I know does!
88. At 6’ 5”, I have come to know the look of a woman in the grocery store who cannot quite reach the Vienna sausage, fig newtons or hoisin sauce on the back of the top shelf, and I’ll be glad to help
89. I bought a professional hair trimmer so Peggy can keep me buzz-cut in between visits to Gail at the Groomin’ Saloon
90. I like to use 50’s-hepcat words for money, like “semolian” for dollars, “sawbuck” for 10 dollars and “yard” for 100 bucks.
91. If I like a joke, you can count on hearing it again for 20 or 30 years
92. I don’t like going to the movies anymore because of the boorish way people behave - talking, phones ringing, etc
93. I love pop songs sung by Sammy Davis, Jr., Bing Crosby and Matt Monro
94. I was an A&P grocery clerk before I became a young DJ
95. I love my job but my dream job has always been to be the booth announcer on a game show (“Tell her what she’s won, Mark!” “Be glad to, Bob! First, a year’s supply of Turtle Wax, a case of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat, and a new gas range from Tappan - Tappan: the leader in kitchen appliances since 1888”)
96. I have plenty of faults, but I do think I can cheer people up when they need it
97. I prefer to shave with a razor; it gives a much cleaner shave than an electric
98. I will never forget the night a friend called and asked what I was doing and I answered, “I’m organizing my spare light bulbs by size and wattage” and I don’t think she believed me
99. I talk back to the television but I never get an answer
100. My heart still skips a beat when I see my wife
Who's next?
As Jackie Gleason used to say, "And aw-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaay we go!"
100 Things About Me
1. I like online jigsaw puzzles
2. I like tea in the morning and coffee every night after dinner
3. I don’t like noises from outside of the house, especially loud car stereos
4. I’m more likely to be hot than cold
5. I love football and baseball jerseys and my favorite is the Browns home jersey (brown and orange)
6. I would love to write a book, but who would read it?
7. Bad spelling annoys me but bad grammar is worse
8. I hate liars
9. I like people-watching and find it endlessly fascinating
10. I like to drive, except in the city
11. I get crazy leg cramps while asleep
12. I believe in the spirit of Elvis
13. I wonder if newspaper advice columnists ever make up the letters they answer
14. I believe in fate and signs and certain personal superstitions
15. I never cry
16. I think the lyrics to a song are far more important than the music
17. I am loved by someone special
16. I could live the rest of my life without chocolate
17. I like to drink beer in a frozen mug
18. I used to drink Coke but have not had a soda of any sort since June 2005
19. I like to ride the exercise bike while watching sitcoms
20. I have a bizarrely good memory for dates and a terrible memory for names
21. I hate Brussels sprouts and lima beans
22. I hate bullies even though my size and quick tongue kept me from being their victim
23. I am a Cancer born on 6/30, but so is Mike Tyson: so what good is astrology?
24. I believe that an occasional flareup helps relieve built-up tensions at work
25. I have never voted for a Republican for any office at any time and never will
26. I have lost too many friends and loved ones to cancer (actually, one is too many)
27. I think the glass is half full - I am basically optimistic
28. I keep promising myself to never split infinitives
29. I can’t stand bad table manners
30. I used to love country music but now it seems banal in its present state
31. I love to drive around in my truck with Peggy, looking at changing leaves in the fall, and Christmas lights
32. I believe I am relatively easy to please but I can see how others might not agree with that
33. I love music with saxophones, ukuleles and accordions
34. I used to go to grocery stores where no one knew me, speak with a quasi-European accent, and ask a clerk, “Please to tell, where are ze potato cheeps?”
35. I love being married
36. I can speak Spanish well enough to get by and sometimes think in Spanish to keep it sharp in my mind
37. I would love to learn ventriloquism
38. I love words and etymology
39. I want more time to read
40. I am a morning person
41. I began watching TV news fanatically when I was 5
42. I’m generally happy
43. If you are sick or injured, I will be glad to help take care of you
44. Wind chimes irritate me
45. I like reading newspapers and at one time was plowing through four per day
46. I wonder about California: they send their drunk-driving celebrities to jail and their murdering celebrities get off scot-free
47. I love to wear shorts outside in the winter
48. I once had a friend whose husband’s mother was the cook for a prison in Alabama, and I wanted to meet her to swap creamed chipped beef recipes
49. I miss the anticipation of getting pictures back from the photo developing shop - digital photography just might catch on!
50. I love popcorn but the smell of the fake butter makes me nauseated, so I have to search hither and yon for “natural” flavor nukecorn
51. I love old New Yorker and Life magazines for the slices of old-time life they provide
52. I love to cast actors to play my family, friends and co-workers in the forthcoming movie of my life - Drew Carey as me, Edward G. Robinson as my grandfather
53. I can drive a manual transmission vehicle
54. I have the greatest assistant in the working world and our entire department would be much less great without her
55. I have forsworn many of my OCD traits but I will never yield on my stance on punctuality - I am fanatically early for everything
56. I like a beer with my dinner but I can live without it
57. When I was a kid, I would spend hours reading the Information Please Almanac and the World Book Encyclopedia- that‘s why I love surfing the net - so much information to be gleaned!
58. I love the oral histories written by Studs Terkel and love to hear people’s reminiscences on my own
59. I think that Norm MacDonald is one of the funniest human beings
60. Bad pronunciation bugs me
61. I have never eaten venison, nor rabbit, nor buffalo
62. I love it when pompous blowbags use malapropisms
63. I’m considered witty
64. Favorite snack: handful of mixed nuts
65. I have absolutely zero talent at acting, which puts me in some highly-paid company (Hi there, Jim Belushi!)
66. I was well into my 50’s before I realized that people would just as soon NOT have their grammar, spelling or pronunciation corrected.
67. I have never been arrested
68. I’m old-fashioned with my VCRs instead of TiVO but I tape the news just in case we miss it “live”
69. I sing along in the truck but I am a terrible singer
70. I don’t know whether Phil Spector killed that woman, but I sure know he made some of the greatest records ever
71. I am a Maryland native
72. I had almost no self-confidence growing up and then one day I said, hey what the hell, I’m good enough
73. I love listening to old-time radio shows such as Phil Harris, Jack Benny and the Great Gildersleeve
74. I laugh a lot and hope to make others laugh, the better to share the maxim “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine”
75. I believe in karma
76. There are times when nothing will do for dinner but McDonald’s
77. I get cranky when I’m tired or hungry
78. I was pleasantly surprised at how much more courteous Southern drivers were than Northerners when we went down South in ‘04
79. I am tremendously nostalgic about the 50’s and 60’s and have been known to visit my old public schools just to walk down the halls and bask in memories
80. I was a volunteer firefighter for 7 years and still claim kinship to the fire dept brother-and-sisterhood
81. I believe in love at first sight and my marriage is a testament to it
82. Like most Baltimoreans, I idolize Cal Ripken, Jr., and have always found him to be a kind and admirable person
83. I am an Orioles and Ravens fan but I don’t take it as a personal shortcoming if the teams don’t do so well
84. When Oprah was a local Baltimore newscaster, I grew so tired of her grammatical errors that I called channel 13 and asked them to counsel her against saying “Join Richard Sher and I this morning at 9...”
85. I wonder why anyone takes what they read in the gossip magazines to be any kind of true
86. I love driving my pickup truck and can’t imagine not having one
87. I love a band called LOVE from the late 60’s and no one else I know does!
88. At 6’ 5”, I have come to know the look of a woman in the grocery store who cannot quite reach the Vienna sausage, fig newtons or hoisin sauce on the back of the top shelf, and I’ll be glad to help
89. I bought a professional hair trimmer so Peggy can keep me buzz-cut in between visits to Gail at the Groomin’ Saloon
90. I like to use 50’s-hepcat words for money, like “semolian” for dollars, “sawbuck” for 10 dollars and “yard” for 100 bucks.
91. If I like a joke, you can count on hearing it again for 20 or 30 years
92. I don’t like going to the movies anymore because of the boorish way people behave - talking, phones ringing, etc
93. I love pop songs sung by Sammy Davis, Jr., Bing Crosby and Matt Monro
94. I was an A&P grocery clerk before I became a young DJ
95. I love my job but my dream job has always been to be the booth announcer on a game show (“Tell her what she’s won, Mark!” “Be glad to, Bob! First, a year’s supply of Turtle Wax, a case of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat, and a new gas range from Tappan - Tappan: the leader in kitchen appliances since 1888”)
96. I have plenty of faults, but I do think I can cheer people up when they need it
97. I prefer to shave with a razor; it gives a much cleaner shave than an electric
98. I will never forget the night a friend called and asked what I was doing and I answered, “I’m organizing my spare light bulbs by size and wattage” and I don’t think she believed me
99. I talk back to the television but I never get an answer
100. My heart still skips a beat when I see my wife
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