I Married a Teenager

A couple of Saturday nights ago, we were at a steak house with a friend, and I, for whatever dumb reason, ordered something I had never had before, and I don't think anyone else has either...or should.  The taste of the turkeyburger was quite like how I perceive tree bark, or soggy ceiling tiles, to taste. 

I didn't know what to do.  I hate to cause a scene, and I've heard enough urban myths about how food sent back to a restaurant kitchen returns to the table covered with "special sauce" and "secret spices."  But it was OK, because Peggy knew what to do.  "Just let the waitress know you don't like it, and she'll get you something else," counseled my wonderful wife.  And it all worked out fine, as always.

Today is the 37th anniversary of the sweet December day when I, lean, lanky and longhaired, donned a rented tuxedo and took as my wife the lovely 19-year-old Peggy.  You know how on TV shows and in cartoons, they always call the wife "The Better Half"?  Well, it couldn't be more true in this case. I always figured that God in heaven looked down and saw a life of confusion and perplexed wanderlust ahead for me, and sent down an angel to guide me.

Peggy's the one who keeps the family finances, and the checkbook, and knows enough not to send me to the Credit Union without a sticky note for the teller, telling her what bills to pay, checks to cash, savings to add.

Peggy's the one who deals with my mother's finances, groceries, and in tandem with my sister, her medications and day-to-day needs.  And if you think that's not a handful, well.....think twice.

Peggy's the one around here to listen to me, support me, prop up my tender feelings when someone sticks out their figurative tongue at me, and encourage me when I need it. 

When I need a peanut-butter-and-jelly sammy, there's no one who can fix one for me better than Peggy.  When something breaks around here and I need someone to steady the step ladder while I teeter in midair, there's no one I count on like Peggy. Decorating the house with Christmas joy or decorating my heart with love, it's Peggy every time.



Of course, I'm a little biased here, but it would be hard to think of how anyone wouldn't love Peggy as soon as they met.  She is unfailingly kind to others, always looks for the best in everything and everyone, and people tend to confide in her, always a sign of affectionate trust.  She's been a trusted and dependable employee of the same firm for more than 38 years, and she is without doubt the best person in the whole wide world.

Which leaves only one question, namely, why would she put up with me for 37 years?   But did I mention already that she's an angel?

Thanks, Peggy.  I love you forever and always. Thanks for always knowing what to do!

Uh-Oh

OK. I'm starting to worry now.

Not about the Ravens or whether it might snow this weekend or how cold it's been or whether Peggy will like the diamond necklace flannel pajamas I got her.

It's this psychic thing I seem to have going on.  It's getting worse. We talked about it before, when I reported on my weird predilection for thinking about people just before they cash in their chips.  It's to where Peggy will call upstairs, while reading the morning paper, "Honey, have you been thinking about Leslie Neilsen lately?  Because, he passed away."

And let the record state that I had not been thinking of the deadpan Airplane! star just before he entered his final approach.

But yesterday morning, while doing my morning chores, a song came into my mind, and there it stayed for most of the morning.  You may see it here on YouTube. It's from 1971.  A former country swing band leader named Tex Williams, who also was famous for his recording of "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette," lets loose on a song by Dick Feller, who also wrote lots of country hits such as "Lord, Mr Ford," "Eastbound and Down," and "Some Days are Diamonds (Some Days are Stones)."

The name of this song is "The Night Miss Nancy Ann's Hotel for Single Girls Burned Down."  It's catchy, witty, well-performed by Tex in his drawling bass. It's about a house of ill repute that catches fire, and how funny it was to see the "so-called elite caught out in the street with their pompous purity down."    I thought nothing of it when, after several hours of the words flying in my mind, it was replaced by "Ragg Mopp," about which we'll talk another day. 

A great line in the "Nancy Ann's" song is 

The grand parade of girls in gowns and half-clad gentlemen
Through the thick gray smoke that sweetly smelled like french perfume and gin...

and so imagine how my eyebrows shot skyward when they interrupted "Oprah" to talk about a huge fire in downtown Baltimore.  All the tv crews were there, but too late to see the Baltimore version of the grand parade.   You see, the fire downtown started in the Gayety Show World, and spread to the swanky Blue Mirrors saloon.  Gayety Show World is kind of a swanky-sounding name for a place where they sell girlie magazines and nekkid pictures and they have real friendly women working who just want to get to know you and the contents of your wallet a little better.  According to what an observer told one news crew, right before the flames blew out the front window and the smoke billowed out into the street, nekkid strippers were running out into the street trying to a) get dressed and b) escape the blaze.

The flames were hot and the smoke was thick

This all took place on Baltimore's famous Block, where generation after generation of Baltimore's young men, and the sailors who visit our port, have traditionally ventured in search of love and watered-down booze.  The damage to the city's adult entertainment industry is unknown at this time, but one thing is for certain: the sight of undressed bargirls running down Baltimore Street getting dressed might very well serve as a benchmark of coolness for a certain segment of our population. On that same street in 1814 was printed a copy of The Star-Spangled Banner that recently sold at auction for $550,000, and now look what goes on down there. 

So I wonder why I was thinking about "Ragg Mopp" and how that will all turn out.  Hmm.

The same old tired argument

 From NPR News, December 2, 2010:
McCain Calls Pentagon's 'Don't Ask' Study Flawed


Sen. John McCain rejected a Pentagon study on "don't ask, don't tell" as flawed and said it would be dangerous to allow gays to serve openly in the military during a time of war.

"I am not saying this law should never change. I am simply saying that it may be premature to make such a change at this time and in this manner," the Arizona Republican told Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen at a Senate hearing Thursday.

McCain, a decorated war veteran who has helped block debate on the issue on the Senate floor, said he was concerned that the majority of troops surveyed in Marine Corps and Army combat units thought repealing the 17-year-old law would adversely affect unit cohesion.

McCain, to the right of Sen Carl
"Combover" Levin

Here we go again, down into the tired old valley of whether or not to allow gay people to be people.  I thought that the service trained people to be reliable and responsible, following orders and commands at the behest of any and all superior officers and non-coms.  So why the fear?  And if you've ever been a supervisor, you know how polls like that go...ask any group of semi-gruntled (not everyone can be fully disgruntled) persons if they'd like to "change everything around here" and you'll get a lot of "yes!"es!

 
If you're telling me that you are shamelessly trotting out the old clichés about gays, get ready to trot out the ones about straights, too.  "Oh no, we can't serve with gays because they might..." does not cut it.  You probably should give up thinking that every member of your same sex wants you horizontal right now, same as the members of the opposite sex.  And by the same token, does a gay person have to live in fear that some straights are going after him or her to make them change the way they roll? 
 
We always hear from everyone in service life that they are just too busy to worry about messing around with anyone.  So let's toss that argument aside, and top it off with this one: I say, if you want to question courage, it takes more courage to be gay than to be straight. 
 
Again, leave people alone.  This McCain, I have respect for his forbearance as a prisoner of war, but not so much for the way he came home and dumped his wife, who had waited for him so patiently while he was held captive, as soon as he put down his suitcase.  He just had to run off and marry a beer baron's daughter, and then run for DC, where he made some awfully dumb statements indicating that he thought Spain was a Latin American nation and some awfully nasty ones about Chelsea Clinton's parentage. And now the "old maverick" says we can't consider the issue now because the economy is down and I think you should click on the link above and read the article.  It contains a quote from the chief of naval operations, whose name is Adm. Gary Roughhead, and you know I could not be making that up.

I think it's also worth considering that the armed forces of a nation ought to be reflective of the nation. If a certain segment of the population is not allowed free entry, how fair is that?
 

To me, none of these objections mean that gays can't serve in the military.  I think it's up to them.  And I think if you're so worried about them, maybe you could look into what your issues are. 

I'm not Captain Buzzkill; I'm Private Practical

Last summer, Peggy and I were going to visit a friend at a hospital located outside of Ellicott City, MD, which is one of those towns that just oozes quaintness and tiny stores and coffee shops and "divine" bakeries.  Off the main street (Main Street) we turned left and went up a hill, on serpentine roads around a wistful vista that wound back and forth and went all over the place, much like John Boehner's tax reduction policies.  There were dozens of houses located up there along the road leading to the hospital, and Peggy was so taken with the picturesque setting and the wonderfulness of being so close to the old mill town.  In a word, she was enchanted with the area.

Not to be Captain Bringdown, but I had to point out that residents along that long and winding road would be well-served to follow a strict program of fire prevention, because I think the local fire company would really play hell getting a ladder truck up that path, not to mention how hard it would be getting in or out of that neighborhood following a big blizzard like the one we had two of last winter.

Maybe that's why Peggy and I blend so well.  She sees the pure beauty of people feeding birds and squirrels; I envision the squirrel's second cousins, the rats and mice, chowing down at a public trough.  She sees someone's lovely front yard full of maples and oaks in a gracefully sloping sylvan wonderland; I wonder how long it takes to plow the long curving 45° angle driveway.  And my heavens, how my wonderful Peggy loves seeing deer along the road or in a distant field!  I see deer as large heavy objects that are always running out of the woods, crashing into cars and trucks. 

Peggy sees the lilting, tedious melodies of Enya and Yanni as the pinnacle of musical accomplishment, and yet she can't understand my devotion to Frank Zappa's songs.  And her favorite poems usually read like this:

The Swan  by Mary Oliver


Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

Whereas, my kind of poetry reads and looks like a poem, instead of an unpunctuated essay:

The Boy and His Nuts  by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The boy stood on the burning deck,
Eating peanuts by the peck.
His mother called; he would not go,
because he loved those peanuts so.

No one is right or wrong, and I love the differences.  But if you had to guess which one of us giggles and guffaws over words such as, say, "Wadsworth" and "Longfellow,"  whom would you pick?

Giggidy.

Rolling numbers, rock 'n' rolling, got my Trick records out

I can't think of a faster way to get pepped up than to slide a Cheap Trick CD into the machine and let the four-man band from Rockford, IL have at it.  To think that these guys have been together for more than thirty years - only one brief departure took place, and that was when bassist Tom Petersson left for a while, to take the H & R Block tax course, I think it was - and that has meant a legacy of some really fine music.

When you watch "Fast Times At Ridgemont High," you see Damone trying to sell concert tickets, and he's singing their "Surrender" to a would-be buyer.  "Mommy's all right, Daddy's all right, they just seem a little weird...The Dream Police, da da da daaaa da da daaaaaaaaaaaah," he warbles, turning two tunes into one. 

When you hear the theme song to "That 70's Show," you're hearing a recycled Trick song called "In The Street." 

When you know a guy who once vowed to hear CT do "Surrender" or "California Man" every single day of his life, and has pretty much kept to that promise, that would be your friend here on the left.  I am that guy. 

I was thrilled when their first big album "At Budokan" came out in '79 and have been listening ever since.  "Surrender." "I Want You to Want Me." "Ain't That a Shame." "Dream Police."  "California Man."  "Voices." "Everything Works if You Let It." "Way Of The World." "Tonight It's You."  The list goes on and on, and so does the music.

John Lennon liked them, and they did a lot of the instrumental tracks for Lennon's final album "Double Fantasy."

Not only did Trick pioneer a half-Beatles, half-punk kind of music - and just listen! to the way lead guitarist Rick Neilsen weaves snatches of Beatles tunes into the songs, such as a bit of "Please Please Me" in the intro to "Ain't That A Shame" - but they had a half-and-half look as well.  Their earlier albums featured singer Robin Zander posing handsomely with Petersson, and then a separate goofy picture of Neilsen and drummer Bun E. Carlos, looking like Bowery Boys.  Or contrasting group shots such as the one above!

Since most guys aren't classically good-looking either, we related to them more.  And we even bought the story that Carlos's real name was Carlos E. Bunezuela and that he was from South America, a legend which the band floated for years before it turned out that he was born Brad Carlson, and if there's a more midwestern American name than than, I can't think of it.  So avid a cigarette smoker was Carlos that he was often seen flailing away at his drums with a Marlboro pasted on his mug. 

This was years ago, you understand. Meanwhile, Cheap Trick music from the 70s sounds just as fresh today as it did back then, and I hope you'll enjoy some soon.

Here's the band in Baltimore in 2007  -- that's Robin singing, and Rick Neilsen with his guitar of many heads, and I can just hear the music, can't you? 

Four crying out loud

Well, for those of you who enjoy the brisk, refreshing taste of 4 Loko - the bold new taste of the with-it generation - you'd better drink up fast.  Cities and counties all over the map are banning the drink, and with good reason.  It can't be good for you to drink this stuff, as it contains four (hence the name) main ingredients: alcohol, caffeine, taurine, and guarana to drive you loco (hence the other part of the name.) It also contains carbonated water, sugar, and natural and artificial flavoring.

Taurine, as it turns out, is an organic acid found in bile, and that's what I look for in a sport-utility beverage.  Lots of bile!  Bring on the bile! I want to be able to remark, "Say, that's good bile!"

Guarana, according to those in the know, is the nut-like seed of a climbing vine that grows in the Amazon basin in Brazil.  And you'll be pleased to read that in the United States, Guarana holds a GRAS-status (Generally Regarded As Safe), much like Paris Hilton.

So the bottom line is, this drink is the equivalent of three cans of beer and two cups of coffee, which would, surely, drive one loco.  No one needs to guzzle three beers and two coffees at once.  The combination of the sedative alcohol and the stimulant caffeine must be like Woody Allen's old comic bit about opening his windows on a cold winter day, so that the warm front in his apartment would meet the cold front coming in, and produce a snowstorm right in his living room.  
This is not what your body is crying out for, so it's good that the makers of 4 Loko are going to stop making their vile fluid.  

Now, if we can just get someone to stop selling Diet Cherry Dr Pepper, we'll be all right! 

All Wet

Used to be, a certain amount (over 8") of snow was enough to send Baltimore and surrounding counties into spasms of fear and panic.  Then, because everyone saw everyone else rushing out to buy the essentials for life as we know it (bread, milk, toilet paper) every time they called for so much as a flake of snow to land in the road, the area just declared that any amount of snow - even just in the forecast, not even on the ground yet! - was sufficient to induce paroxysms of nerves and twitching in the general public. 

Would that we could go back to those easygoing days.  The new problem is that the city goes into a sweatfunk because it's raining, or going to rain, or it might. I tell you, you never saw anything like it.  The new thing is, the weather forecasters now have the ability to predict how much rain will fall, and, armed with that information, people just crazy go nuts to think of two inches of liquid hell befouling their ride to work or Aunt Martha's.



Will not kill you!



Life can be so simple if we'd just let it be.  When it's dark, turn on the headlights.  When it's cold, turn on the heater.  When it's raining and the streets are wet, drive a little more slowly. 

And then, when you get to where you're going, please, someone tell me why all children must sit in a car at the school bus stop when it's raining.  There's nothing a kid going to school wouldn't love more than arriving there soaked to the gills, but we're taking that away from our hermetically-sealed youth. 

And they said it might snow a little on Saturday.  Just sayin'.

751777

Apropos of last week's rant about the truck passing 77,777 miles and then the CHECK ENGINE LIGHT NOW light coming on the very next morning...it's like the old expression says it...stick around, and your luck might change.

We had our luncheon saluting the annual United Way fund drive at work the other day.  I've been involved with that since 1989 on the accounting side, which leads me to the old joke about a pilot coming on the loudspeaker and informing his passengers that all the engines are dying and the plane is losing power and they are going to put it down in the middle of Lake Erie.  A guy sitting in the coach section sees that the man in the next seat is a minister, so he goes, "Reverend?  Do you think if the crash turns out fatal, we'll go to heaven?"

And the sinbuster says, "That would be up to Administration.  My department has always been Sales."

Well, it cracks them up at the preacher's convention.  Anyway, since I'm a guy not known to be adept with numbers nor adroit with ciphering, I guess I got into this all those years ago because I'm too a) dumb and b) honest to c) steal.  So I enjoy it, and it's been a great way to know some really nice people.

And at the luncheon, they have a little raffle drawing with door prizes.  And they asked me to step up and pull out a winning stub.  And I did, and the prize was a nice gift card to a nice restaurant where Peggy has always wished to dine (as opposed to the greasy spoons and rib joints where I take her.)  

Well, she's gonna go to the swanky bistro, because I was the winner.  Eyes closed and looking the other way, I pulled my own ticket number out of the basket.  And here was the winning stub:

I like all those 7's! They finally paid off (I knew they would!)

Surely He'll Be Missed

From the Naked Gun days

I was so sorry to hear of the passing of Leslie Nielsen over the past weekend, and I hope that many people get the message from his life...which was, to me, not to take things so doggone seriously.

A classically handsome leading-man type with a voice of authority, Leslie William Neilsen grew up way up in the Yukon, where his father was the local Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman.  After serving in the Canadian Air Force in World War II, Leslie answered the calling of the world's second-oldest, and certainly most noble, profession, and became a disc jockey.

Leslie with Anne Francis in "Forbidden Planet"

However, unlike most disc jockeys, the public actually wanted to see his face, so off he went to become an actor.  And he did very well in those leading-guy roles, in movies such as "Forbidden Planet" and all those movies with exclamation points in the titles!  Such as "Ransom!" and "Rosie!" and "Viva Knievel!" and "...And Millions Die!"  He continued making movies all through the 1970s, and his propensity for deadpan comedy was never on public display in those days; he played all those roles for straight drama.


When the producers of "Airplane!" called him, planning a spoof on airway disaster movies such as "Airport!" he turned down the role of Dr Rumack initially, feeling that he was still in a good groove in the leading man business.  But that very night, the way he told the story, he saw himself in a made-for-TV movie, and he felt he looked a little silly, a white-haired man in his 50's schmoozing a woman three decades younger.  So he changed his mind, and went on to do "Airplane!" and the six brilliant episodes of "Police Squad!" on TV, which led to the movies "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!" along with "The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear" and "The Naked Gun: The Final Insult," which was also the final film in the acting career of O.J. Simpson.  There were other roles in other comedies, but the part of Sgt. Frank Drebin, "Detective-Lieutenant" of Police Squad, basically Dr Rumack with a gun, defined his career in a way that means a lot to those who like that sort of laughs.


From the UK Guardian, here's a list of his ten greatest lines.  Surely you will remember them:




Dr Rumack (played by Nielsen): Can you fly this plane, and land it?
Ted Striker: Surely you can't be serious.
Dr Rumack: I am serious ... and don't call me Shirley.
(Airplane!)
2.
[Jane Spencer climbs a ladder]
Lt Frank Drebin (played by Nielsen: Nice beaver!
Jane: [producing a stuffed beaver] Thank you. I just had it stuffed.
(The Naked Gun: From the files of Police Squad)
3.
Dr Rumack: You'd better tell the Captain we've got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.
Elaine Dickinson: A hospital? What is it?
Dr Rumack: It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.
(Airplane!)
4.
Dutch Gunderson: Who are you and how did you get in here?
Frank Drebin: I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.
(Police Squad)
5.
Frank Drebin: It's the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girl dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day.
Jane: Goodyear?
Frank Drebin: No, the worst.
(The Naked Gun: From the files of Police Squad)
6.
Frank Drebin: Now, Jane, what can you tell us about the man you saw last night?
Jane: He's Caucasian.
Ed: Caucasian?
Jane: Yeah, you know, a white guy. A moustache. About six-foot-three.
Frank Drebin: Awfully big moustache.
(The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear)
7.
Frank Drebin: That's the red-light district. I wonder why Savage is hanging around down there.
Ed: Sex, Frank?
Frank Drebin: Uh, no, not right now, Ed.
(The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear)
8.
Jane: I've heard police work is dangerous.
Frank Drebin: It is. That's why I carry a big gun.
Jane: Aren't you afraid it might go off accidentally?
Frank Drebin: I used to have that problem.
Jane: What did you do about it?
Frank Drebin: I just think about baseball.
(The Naked Gun: From the files of Police Squad)
9.
Frank Drebin: This is Frank Drebin, Police Squad. Throw down your guns, and come on out with your hands up. Or come on out, then throw down your guns, whichever way you want to do it. Just remember the two key elements here: one, guns to be thrown down; two, come on out!
(The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear)
10.
Dr Rumack: What was it we had for dinner tonight?
Elaine Dickinson: Well, we had a choice: steak or fish.
Dr Rumack: Yes, yes, I remember, I had lasagna.
(Airplane!)
 
I think we'd all do well to have that conversation with ourselves that Leslie Nielsen had and start seeing the lighter side of life.  It's to laugh.  Have some lasagna.

Let's have sox

It's no surprise to me that if one Googles "wool sox," one gets 644,000 responses, or one for every call I have had from a mortgage lender or credit card service that is NOT out to sell me anything. 

For the months of December, January and February - the "fearsome threesome" of Baltimore weather - you can't beat a nice pair of wool sox for keeping the old dogs warm.  And they're great on your feet, too.

You can't beat them, but often, you can't find them.  Go to Target, WalMart, KMart, Macy's, Costington's...they don't have wool sox.

They have all sorts of heavy, burly "winter sox" or "boot sox" or "outdoor sox," but these are sox innocent of any connection with a sheep, except that their makers ought to feel sheepish for suggesting that any polyster/acrylic/rayon blend, which for all I know means the fabric is spun from recycled Diet Sprite bottles and old grocery bags, could be as warm as a sock made of 80% wool with a little sumpin' else to keep the shape together.

Ladies and gentlemen, you can try all the Moc-a-Sox and "fleece"-lined slippers and manmade substitutes you wish, but I wish you'd take it from me: there is nothing like a warm wool sock when it gets chilly. 

It's a shame that you need to go to OutDoor Ernie's or Mr Camper or Tents, Tents and More Tents to find wool sox, but it's worth the trip!  Just tell 'em a snug happy gentleman sent you...and so did I!

Flash Mob, What a Feeling

I hope your Thanksgiving was full of fun and thanks, and that all is well in your world!  Most people are going to be headed out for some shopping in the next few days, and the nation is clearly well divided on how we all feel about the touchy topic of the flash mob.

No, it's not a bunch of hoodlums and thugs, pulling down their trousers and waving their doodles.  No.  As seen on tv's Modern Family and in this video from upstate New York, a flash mob is a well-rehearsed singin'-and-swingin' and gettin' Merry like Christmas production number, spontaneously performed by dozens or hundreds of people who have rehearsed it for months and have been called to perform by email or text or whatever.

You notice in the mall scenes, all malls look alike?  Peggy and I like to go Christiana Mall up in Delaware, but it's not as if there is a certain Delawarity to that mall. Although I understand that Christine O'Donnell has taken a part-time job at Hickory Farms for the holidays, so we'll see.  Point is, from Maine to California, all mall food courts have the same chain eateries.  One Potato Two and Mr Pizza and Wok With Me and Popcorn Shack and Yogurt Hut and Cookie Cookie Cookie are businesses that each gross over a billion dollars a year per outlet, doling out carbs and calories as fast as seventeen-year-old hands can!  And we love them all.

Have you ever:  seen a flash mob in action? Participated in a flash mob?  Known anyone who has seen or participated in a flash mob?  Had Christine O'Donnell accost you in an atrium, handing out gouda wedges on toothpicks?

I sort of hope I get to see one one time.  We did go to Golden Ring Mall one time and there in the center court was tv's Jeff Conaway - Kenickie from Grease! Bobby from Taxi! - acting as emcee for a local cheerleading competition.   I was impressed by his kindness to the kids and his ability to relate to an audience, most of whom were carrying plastic shopping bags and puzzled expressions because a guy who looked just like Kenickie was down there talkin' to the girls from Kenwood High School!

But I'm fairly certain that someone paid Conaway to be there, and that it was not a spontaneous mob.  I'm hoping to see the real thing this Christmas, and I hope I know the song they're singing.  I might just join in!

And you're SURE Alaska is a state?

It seems more like a gigantic movie set or backdrop for a painting of an Inuit riding a dog sled, but Alaska just keeps getting in the news more often than when it was named an honorary state, and they didn't get the joke, and started sending people to Congress and Dancing With The Stars.

Well, most anyone can get elected to Congress.  Gopher from the Love Boat, Enos from Dukes of Hazzard, Sonny Bono from Sonny and Cher, and Sonny Bono's widow: all are, or have been, members of that august body.  But Dancing With The Stars!  Oh, you must be one of the brightest luminaries in the night sky to get to trip on your light fantastic on that show, hosted by Tom Bergeron, who might just as well get his home video camera rolling and get some segments for the other show he hosts on ABC: World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer.

Which brings me to the present hubbub concerning the win this week in that dance show by Jennifer Grey.  Jennifer Grey, who stole America's hearts in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller disappeared for reasons we're just learning, showed up and won the competition even though she was dancing on a ruptured disc.  Her story of coming back from spinal injuries suffered in a car wreck and from cancer is truly inspiring, and we wish her well as she continues her comeback climb.



You know the difference between dancing and pea green paint?
ALMOST anyone can learn to dance.

 One of her opponents was teen mom Bristol Palin, daughter of comedian Sarah Palin. Showing the class, taste and sophistication that her rebarbative mother brings to everything from running for office to huntin'-and-a-fishin', Bristol said, after the final dance-off this past Monday, "We went out there. I did my best. I had fun, regardless of our low scores. It's whatever, it's up to the voters now."

Keep it classy, teen mom!

She then said "Going out there and winning this would mean a lot. It would be like a big middle finger to all the people out there who hate my mom and hate me."

So these are the people, this family, that so many people want to see in the White House? Waving their middle fingers at the world, brazenly flaunting their gaucheness?

Of course, I caught nine kinds of hell for saying something about Bristol's kid sister Willow when this happened:


When a boy named Tre said something negative about new TLC reality show "Sarah Palin's Alaska" on Facebook, Willow Palin, Sarah Palin's 16-year-old daughter, got a little riled up -- and dropped some homophobic slurs.


TMZ reports that Palin posted on Tre's wall, "Haha your so gay. I have no idea who you are, But what I've seen pictures of, your disgusting ... My sister had a kid and is still hot." and "Tre stfu. Your such a f*****."

Some people are trying to tell young people, especially those being bullied and traumatized, that it gets better.  And it does, but kids, not at the hands of people who talk like this:

Big sis Bristol Palin got into the act too, writing to another user named Jon, "You'll be as successful as my baby daddy, And actually I do work my a** off. I've been a single mom for the last two years."


And Willow finished up with, "Sorry that you guys are all jealous of my families success and you guys aren't goin to go anywhere with your lives."


A source close to the family tells TMZ that Willow doesn't normally use that kind of language but she felt attacked and was just the baby bear defending mama grizzly.

Sarah, Bristol, Willow?  Will you stop with the bad grammar?  "Your" driving me crazy, and your "families" success is just a tribute to the same aspects of America that make reckless driving popular. Your homophobia is disgusting, your constant zoomorphic references to yourselves as ursine females is a little overdone now, your grammar is appalling, and from reading the snippets of the book that someone just wrote for Sarah, your grasp of history is tenuous. But it's whatever, as Bristol so elegantly puts it.

I do have to add one note.  Do not pick on the Palin Pixies for the term "stfu."  It is a completely inoffensive acronym, one that has it origins in my Baltimore boyhood, when we would wait to see our great quarterback as he finished shopping at the Acme Market on York Rd.  We would ask the people at the store where we could wait, and they said, "STFU!"

And that meant, Stand There For Unitas!

It's true, I tell you. Don't try to refudiate me.

Hey Leo, Man!

Well sir, with all this hooting' and hollerin' about airport patdowns and body scans, I don't care to get in the air and I don't plan to get on a plane.  Although, I did hear someone say the other night, two wrongs don't make a right, but two Wrights make a plane.  F. & A. Wright!

But I'll tell you who WAS on a plane last Saturday night; it was the King of hard-luck travel, Mr Leonardo DiCaprio, whose previous adventures convinced many a person to avoid cruise ships.  Apparently heeding his own advice, Leo was jetting out of New York on Saturday night when the plane he was on had some sort of engine trouble, and the plane returned to Kennedy Airport, to be met by a hundred firefighters, ready to handle the situation. 

According to the story I saw, Leo was flying to Moscow to travel eventually to St Petersburg for a Tiger Summit. 

No, not that Tiger.  This is about saving the four-legged variety.  I had no idea there was a problem, but I guess we can be glad that Leonardo and Vladimir Putin can hold this international seminar to help out.  It just must be pretty cool to be able to say, "I have to go to Russia now and help save tigers from extinction." 

Hey, later on I have to stop at Big Lots and see about Christmas gifts!  I know Peggy has been wanting one of those electronic nutcrackers and the gallon-size tub of bath salts.  I notice that for all these salts, lotions, gels and goos, one scent is never enough.  You can't just have something that smells like "apple" or "coconut."  There must be at least two fragrances, which is why we have "Coconut Lime Verbena" and "Honeydew Vanilla."  Someday, some smart guy or woman will realize that what we really want is a candle that smells like a Cheesesteak sub or a tray of nachos.  We can only hope.

But I don't know if I'd like to be on a plane and hear the intercom come on:

"Ahhhhhhhhhh this is your Captain, Glenn Quagmire, ahhhhhhhhhh we are uh having a little bit of engine trouble ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh we're just gonna turn this bird around and put 'er down at Kennedy ahhhhhhhhhhhhh be just a few minutes.  I'm ahhhhhhhhhh going to ask the flight attendants to uh go over the instructions as we prepare to go down. Giggity."

Then to look and see the guy in the next aisle is that guy from Titanic!  We're staying home.  Auburn plays Alabama on today!

Roll Tide!

Calendar makers save the prettiest pictures for this time of year

You know it's Thanksgiving time when you're running to Mars late at night for more pie crusts, Granny Smith® apples and egg nog.

You know it's Baltimore when you say you're "going to Mars" late at night and everyone knows you're going to the grocery store, and not some distant planet.

You also know it's Baltimore when you find a parking spot at Mars and a nice lady gets out of her minivan and walks to the store with you and, as you step back to allow her to enter first, she calls you "Hon."  And she has a bumper sticker on the back of that minivan saying "Angels Are Watching Over Me."

"Thanks, Hon" is as Baltimore as the sauerkraut on our turkey dinners, the curiously adenoidal backwater 'O' sound that true natives bestow on words (to hear sportcaster Keith Mills call out baseball's Magglio Ordóñez is to hear a symphony of vowel sounds in the key of F-flat major) or the acceptance of the glee of civic leaders that it took until Thanksgiving week for the city to reach 200 homicides this year.

It's the same thing every year, and it's beyond the point of being a tired cliché to say that we are rushing around early and late, dashing to Mars or Big Lots! or the indescribable Ollie's Bargain Outlet, a chain of stores that vies annually for the shopping dollar of cheapskates such as I with the legendary Good Stuff Cheap stores, and making ready to make merry through the holidays. 

The good folks at Lifetime Movie Network and Turner Classic Movies will show you lots of celluloid examples of Rich Famous Good-Looking Actors portraying Everyday People Doing Wonderful Things, but we can't always be watching TV.

I know.  Try as I might, sometimes I have to put the remote down.

And I'm glad I do, because then I go to Mars and have a nice lady call me "hon" just because I stepped aside and allowed a lady to pass, as my father taught me to do when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and then I read about people who give up their day off to prepare and feed a multitude of hungry, sad strangers, and then I come to work and talk to a friend who, for every holiday, rounds up this widower guy she works with and brings him home for dinner with her family.  These are the angels who are walking among us, my father included, and showing us a better way than Lifetime could ever depict.

I am fortunate and glad to have you in my life.  I know and love a lot of people, and although I wasn't blessed with a lot of talent in a lot of areas, I surely was given all the love one heart can hold. Thank you for putting with my old jokes, arcane references, bluntly-stated political opinions and did I mention, old jokes? I can't remember.  I am the luckiest man in the world, to have friends such as you, the most wonderful wife - my Peggy! - and all the joy of the holidays to share with you.

Ready?  Let's go!

Meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, and thank you for meaning so much to me all year.

Mark

Keep the quizzes coming

These were the instructions:

Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen fictional characters (television, films, plays, video games, books) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

This is my list.  I am a lot like many of these people, and nothing like some of them.  Interesting!

I'll be delighted to see your list!

1. Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye
2. Carson Wyler, Garrison Keillor's alter ego on A Prairie Home Companion
3. Bluto Blutarsky, Animal House
4. John Winger, Stripes
5. Melvin Udall, As Good As It Gets
6. Ensign Willie Keith,  The Caine Mutiny
7. Andy Taylor, The Andy Griffith Show
8. Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes
9. Spenser in the Robert B. Parker mystery series
10. Kojak
11. Sal Paradise, On The Road
12. Alibi Ike, in the Ring Lardner baseball series
13. Harry Callahan, Dirty Harry
14. The Lone Ranger
15. Dennis the Menace

People I'd Rather Not Be

Everyone doing their own thing, that's what we like to see.  But there are people that I see doing their own things, and while I give them as wide a berth as they need to do so, I can't be like:

• those guys who take their wives to the Try 'n' Shop and then stand in the parking lot doing their auto maintenance.  Gladys goes in the store, up goes the hood, and they do everything short of overhauling their transmissions right on the lot.  I also see this at work, when men who bring their wives in for meetings or counseling or whatever are out there.  Betcha if someone left a hose out there, a lot of the cars would get washed, too.
• that mom behind me in line at the grocery store. She was with her high-school age daughter.  She told the cashier, loudly, "I'm going to the rest room and leaving my daughter here with the groceries!  I can't wait! I have to go now!"  This told the world that a) she must feel that her daughter needs help purchasing groceries and b) she feels that we all need to know about her frequency of bathroom use. Ma'am, you embarrassed your daughter in public. Please don't do that any more.
• those married couples who can sit and eat an entire meal in a restaurant without so much as a word to each other.  Come on now; you must have something to say to her, mister! Even if it's only about how firm your grits are.  And madam, I know it's an unappealing view you are being offered, the top of his head as she shovels peas into his maw, but you could say something! Right?
• those Bluetooth-equipped people who can't go anywhere in public without making a phone call, topic: nothing.  We don't need to know that your brother-in-law didn't come home until 5 in the morning, or that your couldn't get your meringue to rise for the pie.  
• those people who say they don't like the holidays and then try to wreck yours with their reasons!  
• people who are proud of not knowing things, of not reading, of being willfully uninformed.
• people who turn 60 and decide they are over the hill and might as well just get measured for the final blue suit and the casket this week
• people who turn 60 and decide this is the time to dress like they're 20 and act like they're 30.  

Not that I know anyone who does any of this, you understand!!! I'm just observing...

77,777

So I was thrilled the other night on the way home from work...the odometer in the truck hit the nice round lucky number 77,777 miles.  Which is not a round number at all, I guess, but you have to admire the symmetry.


Maryland has laws against texting and using a handheld phone while driving, and so I'm fairly certain that using a cell camera to take a picture of the dashboard would be frowned upon.  I pulled over into an alley to get a shot of the famous digits.




So with all that luck riding on my side, how does it come that the VERY NEXT MORNING, on my way to work, after giving many thanks to above that we were spared the wreckage wrought by the tornado, and praying for those not so lucky to get through this all right, the CHECK ENGINE light came on?




$478.69, but as my friend Jamie down at the Credit Union said, at least it wasn't $77,777!  See! It's all in the perspective!

This could be I.

And a young lady who works at the fabulous Jones Toyota, the people who gave me the free use of a Rav4 to get home and back to work while the truck was on the lift, wants to buy the truck.  And paint it black.  And lift it another 5 inches so that it takes on Brobdingnagian proportions, like you see above.




And she said she's gonna take me off-roading!  In my former truck!  


"Hello, GEICO?"

I Answer the Jeff Adams Challenge

1. Turn on your MP3 player or music player on your computer.
2. Shuffle the songs on your All Songs playlist (or press play in shuffle mode)
3. List the first 25 songs that come up (song title and artist). NO editing/cheating, please. Even if you might skip the song when you it comes up or be embarrassed for people to know that it's in your collection, you still must list it.
4. Choose people to be tagged. It is generally considered to be in good taste to tag the person who tagged you.  If I tagged you, it's because I'm betting that your musical selection is entertaining.

I am almost scared at what's here, but let's go find out who pops up. There are 1185 songs on the old 'Pod...thanks, Jeff Adams!

1. We're An American Band - Grand Funk
2. Stand! - Sly and the Family Stone
3. She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye - Jerry Lee Lewis
4. Just Between You and Me - Charley Pride
5. Boo Hoo - Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians
6. Walkin' the Floor Over You - Ernest Tubb
7. I Want You Back - Jackson 5ive
8. New Lips - Roy Drusky
9. I Know - Fiona Apple
10. Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hillsdale - LOVE
11. Let Me Serenade You - Three Dog Night
12. Bodhisattva (Live) - Steely Dan
13. Swearin' to God - The Four Seasons
14. Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast - Wayne Newton
15. China Girl - David Bowie
16. Living A Lie - Al Martino
17. Out Behind the Barn - "Little" Jimmy Dickens
18. True Love Never Runs Smooth - Gene Pitney
19. Jazz: Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold - Bonzo Dog Band
20. Rock-a-Bye Your Baby - Sammy Davis, Jr.
21. Not Too Young To Get Married - Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans
22. Remembering - Johnny Russell
23. LOnesome 7 - 7203 - Hawkshaw Hawkins
24. Britney Spears Pepsi Spot - Britney Spears
25. I Want You, I Need You, I Love You - Elvis Presley

The REALLY Social Network

I'm on Facebook and so is my wife and so are hundreds of people we know well, and some we know only as FB friends.  And we like it, and it's fun, so no problem.

I have 600 and some-odd friends.

Except for Rev Cedric Miller, who tells his New Jersey flock that they can't be married and be on Facebook because being on FB makes people want to "know" their friends on that biblical level.

I like the quote from Ms Dawson of that church: "It can be a useful tool, but it also can cause great problems in a relationship. If your spouse won't give you his or her password, you've got a problem."

Here we go with the snooping and the computer checking and the steaming-open-of-letters and the listening in on phone calls and so on and so forth.  If you are married or otherwise committed, you should trust the person you are with.  If you can't trust them, why are you there? 

Peggy does not need to give me her password.  We use the same password all over the place ("O U C I 8 3 BLTs", a tribute to my favorite sandwich) so there is nothing to hide.  Peggy has been keeping a journal since the early days of our marriage, and none of that will stand up in court  I have no need to snoop into any of the 47 volumes she has written about her life and ours because we have nothing to hide.

It's like this:  People always drag out the old tales about how, if you just don't talk to teenagers about sex, they won't be interested in it.  And you saw how well that works, didn't you, Sarah?  Teens are interested in each other and they will find ways to get together.  The job of their parents, guardians, teachers and mall security guards is to arm them with wisdom and encourage proper choices.

Facebook is a microcosm of society and, as such, there are opportunities to shine and opportunities to sin.  If you are really interested in getting horizontal with someone who sat next to you in 7th grade US History, you can locate that person and recreate the Battle of Big Ol' Horndog if you care to.  If you enjoy sharing stories and pictures, thoughts and inspirations, with friends old and new, it's a delightful place to do so.

And if you feel that you are a bit short on self-restraint and maybe you might be too tempted if you see one more picture of your old flame at a cookout, then you also might be tempted to tell everyone else that they shouldn't look at cookout photos either, lest they be so tempted.

But that would be overlaying your values and issues over an entire group of people, wouldn't it? 

Fly me to the moon

Neil Page, Del Griffith

"Trains, Planes and Automobiles" must be on one of the movie channels next week; it's a federal law.

All this talk about travel, right before next Wednesday, which is, as we all know, The Busiest Travel Day Of The Year.


Then comes Thanksgiving, and that's followed by The Busiest Shopping Day Of The Year.

I'll tell you who might not be shopping, and that would be the people who travel by air.  Everyone's all worked up about the Federal Air Transport Armed Security Service and their new policy: either you submit to an x-ray, which you know will be passed from agent to agent and goofed on at countless holiday parties, or you step up and let them have at you with The Pat-Down Supreme. With cheese.

Members of your same sex will be touching your junk.

And so once again I choose not to travel by air.

"What do you mean, 'Tuesday' ?"

But I'm having a hard time understanding people.  We do want the airplanes to be full of people that we are totally 100% sure are not carrying guns, bombs, flamethrowers, incendiary devices, knives, anything sharp, anything flammable, or anything bearing scary images of a Kardashian sister that might be used to stun a pilot and divert his attention.  We want safety in the sky and we want everyone checked thoroughly.  That guy over there, for instance.  He looks rather sketchy.

But we don't want to have any inconvenience or delay while traveling!  So unless you know a way to have it two ways, the best way to get to grandmother's house is to pile the kids in the Biscayne and hit the interstate.  Exits with diners, gas and lodging are clearly marked, as are the signs that say that the NorthSide Chowder and Marching Society has adopted this stretch of the road.  And you'll skip those nasty waiting lines in stanky airports, where masses of humanity snake about in serpentine lines, waiting for flight 1492 to Plymouth Rock.  While they're in line or graciously being interviewed by CBS for a report on tonight's Evening News, you're sailing down I-95 without a care in the world.

Uh, better frisk the older kids before starting off; you can't be too safe these days.