A Clashing of Symbols

Here we are!  It's Election Day.  And you thought it would never get here.

As I have been saying, I have total respect for everyone who votes and none at all for those who don't.  You may feel free to discuss your political preferences and persuasions with me here any time you wish to, or you may stop me on the street or in the produce aisles at the Giant, or you may call me on the phones to say why you feel as you do on topics ranging from who should be president to legalized gambling in Maryland, but only if you vote.  If you vote, to me, that means that you care enough about things to discuss them.  If voting is too much trouble for you, tell your story walking, my friend.

That much said, I have to holler about something that all politicians of both parties seem to do all the time.  I find it irksome.  I'm talking about what you might call "participatory politics," and it takes place when the mayor of a city shows up at a place where residents can get free sand for sandbags to fortify their homes and businesses against impending floods.  I think it's GOOD when the government provides this sort of commodity and I find it a waste of time when the mayor is seen shoveling sand into vinyl bags.

Yesterday on the news, as schools in New York City opened up for the first session since Hurricane Sandy, the president of the city council up there found it necessary to pose for a photo op while spooning mac and cheese onto cafeteria trays for the returning scholars.

Not long ago, Paul Ryan showed up at a homeless shelter after the dinner dishes had all been put away.  But he wanted to be photographed helping the homeless!  So he dragged some clean pots and pans back into the suds so he could roll up his sleeves and be seen working out with the SOS pads.

Democrats do it, Republicans do it, and heaven knows if we ever have a serious candidate from the Socialist Workers Party, he or she will insist on being filmed while handing out cups of borscht to children at a Labor Day rally. 

To my mind, politicians got where they are by going to school and learning to run things.  Sure, we need people to fill the sandbags...the people who came to the dump site were ready to do so.  Some cafeteria lady in NYC had to step back and hand over her ladle to that city council lady, who probably could have been in her office doing the greater good on a much larger scale than symbolically plopping down starch tubes on a plate. 

And if Paul Ryan really wants to scrub pots and pans, I know a good place for him to visit.  But I don't want him to have my home address.

Everyone says "keep it real."  Giving up the habit of putting on a show for the news cameras would be a start.

Aw, Gee Whiz

Hello, friends.  Are you lonesome?  Do you seek new friends in what seems to be a cold, cold world?  Do you wish that total strangers would approach you in malls, at gas-and-go outlets and in library parking lots with a hearty smile and a welcoming greeting?


Well, sir and/or ma'am...wear some Crimson.  Put on a t-shirt or cap that signifies your support of the unbeaten football team from the University of Alabama, and I guarandamntee you that people you have never met in your long life will walk up to you in various places and say, "Roll TIDE!"

We still don't know how I got to be a 'Bama Booster; it must have been some sort of osmosis.  I woke up one day and found myself being a fan. This thing where people walk up to me hooting and hollering about that school down in Tuscaloosa happens to me all the time, and face it, nothing about my everyday appearance says "Alabama" whatsoever.  But when I'm sporting my 'Bama duds, it's almost as if I were Liberace or something, the way my clothing draws attention. 

So, on Saturday, with the big game against Louisiana State (the "Bayou Beatdown") looming that evening, I donned my Tide finery while Peggy and I ran errands at Harford Mall (Pearle Vision, the best place in town to see and be seen!) and then to Lowe's, before dining sumptuously at the Bonefish Grill.  I also had to make a stop at that Hollister store in the mall to get something for someone else.  I took my place in line, while my fillings rattled from the sound of the techno-hip-hop-pop that poured out of speakers and almost took my mind off the aroma of the sweet perfumes they (apparently) sell there.  So thick was the attar of their SoCal cologne, it was making it SoHard to breathe.

And then!  A kid - he couldn't have been more than 13! - spotted me.  He was wearing a Redskins hat, so we have nothing in common anyway, but he ankled right over to me and said, "AlaBAMA!  You like Alabama?  They suck, man!"  He told me that he favored LSU in the game that night.  I saw his mom at the register, giving me that "OK - you deal with him now if you can" look and I said, "Well, son, you won't have to worry about asking if you can stay up to watch the whole game, because it'll be all over by halftime!"

(That turned out to be an inaccurate prediction, not my first.  But the record shows that the Tide pulled out a victory in the final 90 seconds, 21-17.)

The youth and I bantered for a while before his mother finished making her purchase and steeled herself for the journey home.  What I really liked about this kid, his choice of football teams notwithstanding, was that he had no qualms about mixing it up with an old duffer almost 5 times his age.  It was fun; I felt like I was back in junior high or something.

I was hoping that he would ask his mom if he and I could hang around the mall and ogle women and eat pretzels and get chased by the rent-a-cops and let me relive being 13 again, but he said he had to go, and all, and see ya later, Mister.

Then I felt like Holden Caulfield, because that kills me, the way kids always call us old guys "Mister."

Peggy says I need to find better things to do than to argue with adolescents about football.  I'm not so sure that there are any many better things to do than that.

Sunday rerun: Those who forget history are doomed to repeat the 11th grade

ON Sunday, The Simpsons was all about Superintendent Chalmers shaming Principal Skinner by getting Bart to develop an interest in learning about Teddy Roosevelt.  And if you know anything about The Simpsons, you know what a feat that was.  

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, namesake of the Teddy Bear, giver of football, first to say "Speak softly and carry a big stick," an outdoorsman, naturalist, historian, explorer, first police commissioner of New York City (look for his picture on Tom Selleck's office wall in "Blue Bloods") and a man who was shot in 1914 as he began making a speech in Milwaukee, always a tough town.  Shot in the chest!  And he still kept talking for ninety minutes!

(I hope that the local news anchor who referred to Sen. Edward Kennedy, on the night of that wonderful man's passage into heaven, as "Theodore" Kennedy, was watching The Simpsons the other night. He might have learned something.)

Czolgosz

I was disappointed that the cartoon didn't mention Leon Czolgosz.  Czolgosz, known in every schoolbook as "crazed anarchist Leon Czolgosz," assassinated President William McKinley in Buffalo in 1901, and that is how Spanish-American war hero Teddy became el presidente.  Czolgosz, having shot the president on September 6, was granted a speedy trial and given three 1800-volt jolts on October 29, which ended his days on earth rather suddenly.

Twenty years prior to the McKinley slaying, President James Garfield was shot to death by the assassin known in every schoolbook as "disappointed office seeker Charles J. Guiteau."  Guiteau shot Garfield in the DC train station in July of 1881. Mortally wounded, Garfield nevertheless lived for 80 days, succumbing to his wound eighty days later, and Guiteau was put to death in June of 1882, following a slam-dunk trial that saw him sing to the jury, publish his autobiography - with an appeal for a "nice Christian lady under thirty" - in a newspaper. He even admitted to choosing the murder weapon based on finding a gun that would look best in a museum.   

You can't really believe it when people say history isn't interesting!

Saturday rerun: Orange You Glad You Don't Work There?

Fourteen employees of the Elizabeth R. Wellborn Law Firm in Deerfield Beach FL were recently fired for the grievous sin of wearing orange shirts to work.

They say they wore the shirts so that when they hit the saloons after work for happy hour, they would be part of an identifiable group.

The bosses say that the fired employees were protesting new office policies that forbade, among other things, going to get coffee while on the clock, and talking to each other over cubicle walls.  The bosses also aver that they heard rumblings that the support staff were donning orange as a protest against the strict new office rules, and that they wore orange because that is the color of the jumpsuits worn in Florida prisons.

Another attorney, Donna Ballman, has been hired to represent eight of the fourteen employees in their suit filed with the National Labor Relations Board.  She admits that some of the staffers were upset with the new rules, but adds, "Different people were wearing orange for different reasons that day, but the fact is it doesn't matter."

Now, Ms Wellborn herself is speaking up, saying that at first, the people fired claimed they were getting into these get-ups because they were going to happy hour after work, and now they say the shirts represented a protest.  And she goes on to say that the protest took the form of "efforts to harass, bully and intimidate the new office manager into quitting. Particularly upsetting is that supervisors were among those talking about the office manager using obscene and vulgar language, as well as encouraging others to disregard her instructions. Our office manager felt threatened and subsequently left the state."

I don't imagine that any of these people are old enough to remember The Monkees, who said "I don't wanna fight...I'm a little bit wrong...you're a little bit right."

Could we have Ms Wellborn and her top brass sit down with the Fired Fourteen and talk?  Maybe she'll ease up on some draconian rules, and the FF will start feeling like part of the firm and knock off the harassment?

Or will we just see this case file grow huge day by day as it is dragged from courtroom to courtroom?

My Book Review: My Cross to Bear: Gregg Allman

Gregg Allman

Married six times, father of five children by five different women, owner and operator of a transplanted kidney and a long string of music behind him, Gregg Allman wrote his autobiography this year and he has some interesting stories to tell.  I recommend the book to anyone interested in a career in the music business.  It reads like a how-to manual in reverse:  just don't do as he and his bandmates have done, and you have a much better chance of living out your full three-score-and-ten in a much less dissolute manner than they chose.

Ironies abound here.  Gregg calls himself the songwriter and lead singer of the Allman Brothers Band, but he did not write the song that most people associate with them, 1973's Ramblin' Man.  ABB guitarist Dickey Betts wrote that song and sang it on a record that went all the way to #2 on Billboard in 1973.  It would have reached #1, but Cher's Half Breed kept it out of the top spot.  Three years later, Cher became Mrs Allman #3.  Betts dated Cher's personal assistant, too.  Cher fired the assistant.  Gregg fired Betts from the band.  Then Cher dumped Gregg and he hired Betts again, only to fire him again later.

The acrimony within the band resulting from overindulgence in drugs, alcohol and having each and every song sound exactly the same as the one before eventually led to the band breaking up.  Although he claims he once considered a career in medicine, Gregg (or "Gregory" as he likes to be called) forsook a chance to heal others and fell back on music, forming The Gregg Allman Band, of which he was to be the songwriter and lead singer.  The best-known song of the GAB is I'm No Angel.  Gregg did not write that song, although he did sing it.  As did Cher on a TV special.

Duane Allman

Led by his brother Duane, the original Allman Bros Band were true pioneers, developing a new sound in rock.  Duane's career died aborning in a 1971 motorcycle crash, but even today he is recognized by Rolling Stone magazine as the #2 guitarist of all time (running up to Jimi Hendrix, whose early death preceded Duane's by a year.)  They were based in Macon GA and were considered avatars of Southern Rock, which comprised rock, country, rockabilly and traditional blues.

Gregg says now that he was never interested in furthering the cause of Southern Rock, and considered his band to be the best in all the land. In the interest of continuing to make the best music he could, he devoted as much time as he could to doing the hibbidy-dibbidy with as many young women as he could place in horizontal positions.  The book details much of his bacchanalian past for no clear reason.

There was a time that they were the best band in the land.  Reading the book will show you why that did not last.

I vote for early voting

Last Saturday, with partly cloudy skies overhead and Sandy on our minds, Peggy and I decided to do our early voting. It was the first of six days of the chance to go to the great Honeygo Run Park and cast our ballots, as part of the great thing we call American democracy.

By the way, Honeygo Run Park is something that I like to point out to people who holler about their taxes.  Residents of our area have full, free access to all of these features:

• Two lighted ball diamonds.
• Three athletic fields (one artificial, two lighted).
• A 13,000 square foot indoor recreation center.
• A roller hockey court (lighted).
• An ADA accessible playground.
• Two picnic pavilions (holds maximum 60 guests).
• Pedestrian bridge over Honeygo Boulevard.
• 350 space parking lot.
• An extensive path and trail system traversing most of the park's wooded areas.

It's a wonderful treasure and it's provided by the government in exchange for a few tax dollars. 

Anyway, we were an hour and a half in line to vote, or ninety minutes (sounds shorter somehow.)  No problem.  We talked to people around us, saw some friends, and had a chance to reflect on people who went to war in places all around the world - including Mississippi - to ensure the right to vote for all citizens.

In spite of the fact that I am passionately committed to the ideals and proposals of one particular political party, I really don't care how anyone else votes, but I really don't want to hear any later-on political opinions from people who don't care enough to do this little thing known as getting in line and making your choice and voice heard.

Go ahead and vote for my guy, or your guy, but please don't miss the chance to vote.  Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini didn't want you to, and many people were lost in the battles to make sure you could.

Carrying charge

Wow.  Just wow is about all I can say about Sandy.  The hurricane (HAIR-i-kin in Baltimorese) that became a post-tropical cyclone after it left our area and went up and just pounded the living hell out of New York and New Jersey is something like we will never see again.  The other night, I mentioned something about it being a once-in-a-lifetime event, and someone was quick to pooh-pooh me. 

I get pooh-poohed on all the time, but for once, I was right.  I'm not one for meteorological data, but I am fairly certain that no one currently alive will ever see a storm of this magnitude again. 

So, after seeing what happened here in Baltimore and points north and south, many people are going to be thinking about being prepared for the next time the ship hits the Sandy.  I catch a lot of grief for the amount of things I make sure to have on hand at all times, but I also see a lot of people asking me to lend them a flashlight or a multitool when they're trying to cut into something in the dark.

So, next time you're stuffing your pockets or your manpurse or ladypurse, try picking out a few ideas from this list: (ideas from the Code Name Insight blog)

• A good cell phone with internet and GPS service.
• Some extra cash and coins
• Pocket knife or multitool - e.g a Leatherman
• Thumb drive with back-up files and medical info on it.
• List of phone numbers for emergency contacts (you'll want the printout should your cell die)
• List of medical info (kept in my wallet and includes allergies, medications, doctor's name, brief health history, etc).
• A small flashlight (spend a few bucks on a Mini Maglite and you can count on it working in the dark)
• Pens (2), pencil, Moleskin-style agenda book with extra pages for jotting notes and what-have-you
• Aspirin (the kind that comes two to a foil pack which makes them easy to carry).
• Floss for both flossing your teeth or for tying a string around a bundle
• A bandana or handkerchief

I just noticed, when I wrote about the agenda book, I used the expression "what-have-you."  If the past few days have taught us anything about being prepared for all Hades breaking loose, it would be that we can't say for sure when we leave the house that we won't encounter a little bit of Hades or Heaven before we get home again.  Might as well be ready.

A Hunker Hunker Burnin' Love

Sitting here at the old pc just as the hurricane named Sandy drags herself up the Atlantic Coast, and the next 24 hours are supposed to be a test for all of us like hell by water.  Our neighboring state of Delaware has shut down, their governor saying that the only people who are to be on the roads are essential personnel.  Our governor has asked everyone to hunker down, so here I am, a-hunkerin'. 

The radio is full of dire predictions and advice.  It's always interesting to hear them tell people to have an old-fashioned plug-in-the-wall phone to use, since when the power goes out, cordless phones are as useful as a sundial in a snowstorm, so you need the old technology after all.

Got this tip from old pal Jamie Costello at Channel 2 News here in town...fill sandwich baggies with water and freeze them for later use in the cooler.  If you look in either of our Kelvinators right now, you'll see oddly-shaped icebags keeping company with Marie Callender's turkey pot pies.  They're eying each other warily, just as we're eying Sandy, unwelcome visitor from another planet.

Unjustified

Gee whiz.  Justin Timberlake marries Jessica Biel, and you'd think those two crazy kids could go off and have a happy honeymoon before beginning their days of man and wifetime.  But noooo!

As if JT wasn't busy enough denying that he spent 6-and-a-half million semolians on this shindig, along comes a story about his buddyboy Justin Huchel, whose name we should know because he's a big real estate hotshot in Los Angeles, Cal. Well, we know the name "Justin" ok.  Huchel, I'll have to look around.

So Huchel made an eight-minute "gag" video featuring edentulous Hollywood street people wishing the newlyweds the best, promising to send along gifts, and saying they were sorry they couldn't make it to the vow-saying.  In case you missed it, the "funny" part of this is that these are poor people who do not fit in the high-level social stratum that Huchel, Timberlake and Biel occupy.  One man was shown saying, "Justin and Jessica, I haven't seen you for a long time. I hope the wedding goes fine for you. My gift is in the mail."  But the joke's on him.  He wasn't even invited!

Isn't that the funniest damn thing you ever read?

Well, the worst thing that could have happened, happened.  Some goofball lost a copy of the DVD and they showed a clip of it on that pesky internets thing, and here's Happy Honeymooner about breaking his neck to a) apologize and b) throw his friend under the closest bus.

Justin says his friends who were involved are all real good people - most real estate magnates are - and they suffer from lapses in judgements just like everybody so we're all guilty and should stop being so smug.

Read what he wrote: the video "was clearly a lapse in judgment which I'm sure no one who is reading this is exempt from. But, I don't believe it was made to be insensitive."  In other words, we'd have all done the same, given the chance to humiliate other human beings and rob them of some more of their dignity, and you're being a prude if you found it insensitive.

The truth is, I find Timberlake to be an engaging performer.  His bits on Saturday Night Live are generally funny, and he shows talent in music and acting as well.  We can't blame him and his friends if they get a little puffed about him marrying rebellious Mary from 7th Heaven and cavorting around like fools.  And although he hasn't checked in with my free advice website (GuideMeMark@yahoo.com) I still pass along this advice to him and anyone else who finds themselves in with bad companions:

If you can't change the people around you, change the people around you.

Sandy Davis, Jr

Six o'clock on Sunday morning usually finds our town sleepy.  Not today though; with Hurricane Sandy on her way, we find ourselves awash in storm preparation.

It was not supposed to be this way.  Hurricane season is coming to an end this coming Thursday, but old Sandy just couldn't refrain from hanging back and making her last-minute appearance.  She is due to arrive tomorrow evening and depart by Tuesday night.  Her opening act, "Wind and Rain," should be onstage later today, then Sandy takes the main stage for her solo.

Wednesday is Halloween, and the storm is said to be a real son of a witch.  As always, Baltimore is of two minds about how to get ready.  Some worker bees have been replenishing supplies of water, batteries, flashlights and transistor radios in which to put the batteries, lashing down patio furniture and filling the Biscayne with gasoline.  Others, less worried, cling to the hopeful belief that Sandy will just blow out to sea and leave us alone.

One thing's for certain, as they always say at the end of TV news reports.  There may be coastal flooding, many people might be without electricity for quite a while, and we may or may not go through a couple of tough days...but November will be here on Thursday and if we stay safe and make wise choices, we'll be here to enjoy it.

May you have courage and be safe!

Saturday rerun: In heaven, there is no beer bread

Not so long ago I got involved in one of those modern versions of a chain letter: an email recipe exchange.  So far, I have gotten quite a few recipes back, and one was for something I used to make all the time, but haven't of late, and I pass it on to you today.

It's that rarest of recipes that does two things well: first, it makes a delicious loaf of bread, and second, you can forget about lighting all those Yankee Candles® on the day you make this recipe.  Your entire house will have that yeasty smell so common in bakeries.

It's Beer Bread.  And it's about as simple to make as it can be. Three simple ingredients:
 
3 cups self rising flour
3/4 cup  of sugar
1 can or bottle of beer - it can't be light beer and it needs to be at room temperature
 
Mix in loaf pan (spray sides and bottom with Pam)  and let sit 1/2 hr
Bake 40 mins @ 350


And there you have it. Let that loaf cool a while, slather with olive oil or butter or some cheddar spread and go to town, all the while enjoying the sweet smell of Kwik 'n' E-Z home baking!

Happy Saturday!

Singing a classic ballot

Early voting starts tomorrow in Maryland, and you can avoid the commotion of lining up on Election Day by going to this site and finding out how to vote early.  We go this way every time and it's easy in, easy out, and back on with your life.  Try it!

Don't fall for the foolishness in this story from Virginia and Florida, where unwary voters might be fooled by robocalls telling them they can now vote by phone.  They can't, and while it's still a mystery why anyone would believe anything they hear in a robocall from some anonymous entity...just don't believe it!

My favorite election memory involves a woman who lives right up the road from us.  Somehow she got elected to the Maryland House of Delegates twenty-some odd years ago, and served without great distinction for one term.  I went to the post office one morning and there she was, climbing into her car in front of the dry cleaner, a pile of hangered suits in her hand.

She even had her special "Maryland House of Delegates" license tag on her car, which was parked in front of the dry cleaner's establishment.  Right by the yellow-painted curb, meaning that she was parked in a fire lane.

Never one to be shy in the face of misdemeanors, I spoke right up, saying, "So!  You go to Annapolis to make the laws and you come home to break them?"

It wasn't her most statespersonlike moment when she looked back at me, hand all full of recently cleaned garments, and said, "But I'm in a HURRY!"

Well, sir, that November, before the days of early voting, we went over to the elementary school to vote, and guess who was standing on the parking lot, handing out fliers, asking for our vote?

"How could I vote for someone who violates traffic laws with impunity?" I asked, rhetorically.

"Oh, it's YOU!" she said, emphatically.

She lost the election, justifiably.

Free Speech and all that

You may read this without any thought of who supports whom in the upcoming presidential election, because no matter where you stand on the issues and the candidates, if you don't understand that a basic tenet of this country is freedom of speech, we might as well call England and ask to come home.

Mike O'Meara, former co-host of the late, lamented Don and Mike Show on radio, and currently the host of his own show on internet radio, lives in Virginia.  Apparently, he supports President Obama's re-election, so he put up some yard signs to that effect.

That's still legal, isn't it?

So, anyway, a few days later, Mike gets an anonymous letter from Harrisburg PA from someone who opposes the president's re-election.  And the letter is nasty and slanted in tone - referring to Mr Obama's “socialist, communist, anti-semetic and generally anti-American” family members, friends, and political backers.

And it's signed "Concerned Citizen."  Typical lack of guts.

The great Mike O'Meara

Why would someone, as Mike says, "reach into his home" and try to bully him into removing his signs?  Have we reached the point in this country where bullying, bombastic verbal shoving have replaced any level of respect for the views of others? 

Mike says he will now not work as hard to be moderate about his opinions.  So this sort of harassment does no good, incurs wrath and ill-feeling, and contributes nothing to our national discussion.

47% of the people will never understand that this is a participatory government and they need to take responsibility for expressing themselves and allowing others to do the same.  

Gosh, I thought everyone knew that.

Blame the son

I used to work in radio, and I can attest that it's a business that often times attracts the sort of people who are not quite nailed down tightly enough.

Not speaking about you, Ann Coulter!  You're doing just fine, if being a vile enormity was your goal.

This fellow on the local classic rock station, Stephen Smith, went by the air name "Stash" and was on 98 Rock for more than 20 years, until this past summer, when he plowed his car into a chain-reaction collision that left a few fellow citizens injured and inconvenienced to a great degree.  The radio station fired him for this.  Radio is a numbers business, and this sort of bad publicity was likely to affect their ratings numbers.  Here are some other numbers that station management should have considered earlier: 1, 32, and 56.  1 being the number of marijuana arrests he has in his folder, 32 being the number of prior traffic convictions he has racked up, and 56 being the number of payable tickets he has had.

And yet, last July 22, he was legal to drive a car in the state of Maryland, although he had no insurance (wonder why).  On that evening, his wife found him drunk in their Bel Air home and told him to get out, which he did.  And he drove to where Rt 24 and I-95 meet and slammed into history, tossing a can of Four Loko out of his car, denying that he had alcohol, and then admitting to it.

So now, because he could not control his alcohol intake,  he's off to the Ironbar Hilton for six months, he has lost his job, he owes legal bills like the size of Fergie's plastic surgery tab, and things are looking pretty bleak for him, his wife and his five children.

I've seen people who can't control their boozing and it is a damned shame.  Not to put myself on a pedestal, because I don't do so well when it comes to following a proper food diet.  I guess I'm lucky; I like a beer with dinner, and if we go someplace that does not serve beer, I don't miss it one little bit.  Persons dealing with alcoholism have to fight the urge to dilute their bloodstreams all day and all night.  It's tough. 

But.  You read the attached article and his attorney is saying that the former DJ sank into the sauce because of the stress of dealing with a severely autistic son, to which I say this:  there are millions of parents who deal with millions of burdens without reaching for the bottle to get them through, and I surely hope that no one tells the son involved that his dad blames all this trouble on the situation that the young man lives with every day and night.

A man owns up to his problems and owns his problems and takes care of them the best he can.  With the same hand that he used to throw away the Four Loko can, he is pointing now at his son and blaming him for the whole sad story.  It's hardly the mature approach. In fact, it's despicable.  I hope that after he gets out of the tank, he goes somewhere and gets serious help, and then spends the rest of his life trying to restore his family. 

I'm left, you're right, she's gone

Her father was known for firing up a jet plane (named for her!) to fly across the country to get a special PBJ sammich, so it's hardly a surprise that Lisa Marie Presley has moved to England and is selling fish and chips from a friend's van.

The local pub is called the "Kings Arms" (no apostrophe).  In England, they have had plenty of kings, but we Americans have had but one. (photo, right >>)



The story about her move is all true, according to the New York Daily News, which ran a story on Sept 28.  Lisa Marie, her husband Michael, and their twins Harper and Finley moved to jolly old Rotherfield, England two years ago to get away from what she calls "self-absorbed" Californians.

Well. I've never been to California, but I know some Californians, and they are fine people, and living near them would be a pleasure for me.

But if Lisa Marie is happier there, what the heck?  The money from her dad's estate keeps rolling in, so it's really not like she needs the pin money that selling fish and chips will bring in. 

It just seems that she likes the lifestyle across the sea more than she likes it here, and it's her choice.
In an English online article, LMP said,    "We have found the quality of life so much more enriching and fulfilling. The civility, the culture, the people and its beauty have reawakened me and have smoothed out some of my bleak and jagged views about people and life. I can honestly say I am the only person who came to England for the weather. I love the cold and the rain."

Pardon me.  I have to go show some travel brochures to Peggy now.  I want that cold and rain too!

 

Ring a ding

Ever find yourself wishing for a button or an app on the phone that would cause a meltdown of the phone of the person who just called you?

I do that all the time, especially when the call is from some crackpot outfit like Americans for Prosperity (for the Ruling Class), who robocalled me last night at 8 PM.  On a Sunday. 

I have to answer just about any calls that come in because of my mom's parlous medical condition...it might always be a medical person from the senior high rise...but to get these lunatic messages from a group of disordered people is really more than I wish to handle.

This is what the AFP looks like

It's easy to get people to follow a cause like that...just question the patriotism of others and they will break their necks to proclaim their nationalistic fealty.  People with huge money at stake on the hopes that a certain "R" party will regain the White House have convinced rubes all across the nation to join this group.  Which is fine by me.  Start all the groups you want, have your meetings, fool as many people as you can.  Having people work as volunteers to make the rich richer is a perfect example.

Just don't call my home phone. Is that ok?  Does that sound fair? 

Sunday rerun: And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark

I see from watching "The Talk" that ageless pop singer Barry Manilow and ageless sitcom actress/diet expert Suzanne Somers have some sort of pact concerning their deaths, which is that, whoever dies first, the other is going to be responsible for planning their funeral.

Or "producing" a funeral, as Ms Somers, showbiz to the core, put it.  (When she said that, I had a vision of her in a headset with microphone and a clipboard, darting around the mortuary giving orders: "All right, cue the mourners...Rabbi, you're on..musicians, give me  "Looks Like We Made It", nice and tastefully slow...dirge-like..annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd dim the lights and we're on!"

Of course, I immediately started wondering how my final appearance will go.  And then I started fretting about who should go first...I or Peggy.  Normally, my policy is "ladies first," but not in this case.  I don't think I would be a very good cranky widower.  I would be the Arthur Spooneriest of all Arthur Spooners, the crazy uncle to top all crazy uncles.




I will now leave a space for all my nieces  - in the family and out - to rebut the above.











I'd like to think that there would be a great outpouring of humanity, with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I'll settle for a couple of dozen people rattling change in their pockets (male) or rooting through their purses for a Kleenex (female) while someone reminisces about the time I won a crab feast or how we used to go fishing at the lake, hoping that the fish would leave us alone, or how I used to go into grocery stores and pretend to be French.  I got that idea from Sebastian Cabot.   
But after I have crossed that bar and am meeting my Pilot face to face, I hope there is jubilation back here.  There will be laughter aplenty when they read the will, I can promise you that!

Well, anyway, if I go first and Peggy is still here, her life wouldn't change too much, except if she wanted a nice big salad, because I'm the only one who can reach the top cabinets, which is where the big salad bowl and giant wooden salad pitchforks are.  Same with batteries for the remotes; they are up high above the Frigidaire, but I realize, the second call she would make after calling Digger O'Dell would be to CableTown to have them disconnect the TV, except for the Oprah Channel, and The Talk, 2 PM weekdays on CBS.

Which is how I got on this topic in the first place.  Don't worry, I'm not ready just yet.

Saturday rerun: The Traipse of Roth

Roth and Rat

You know what I really feel sad about?  It's the saddening fact that we are all bound for that same sorrowful destination, that place where our hopes and dreams all wind up, heaven's waiting room....the court system.
Everything winds up as a big fight in front of a judge or mediator these days.  The most recent example that came to my mind was the fact that Ed "Big Daddy" Roth had to go to court before he died to settle down all the hue and cry ("Hugh and cry" as I saw it in a magazine not long ago) over the rights to his beloved artwork.

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth?  you ask yourself.  Is he a Dadaist, a Cubist, a Neo-Impressionist, a Primitive, a pre-Raphaelite?  Well, he is certainly a pre-Rafaelite, in that he was famous before Rafael Palmeiro was, but we remember Ed for his hot rods and his beloved "Rat Fink" character which came to be seen like a rodent version of Dino Flintstone, gigantic head sticking out of a car, holding a 6-foot long stick shift and roaring off in a supercharged car.  There were Rat Fink decals on almost every notebook in my junior high school, and plenty t-shirts too, being proudly worn by the same guys who toted those notebooks. 

I re-read Tom Wolfe's "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby" at least once every year, amazed that a book of essays from the early 1960's is still relevant today. (One of the pieces, "The First Tycoon of Teen," is about Phil Spector, and we were just talking about his Christmas music and Darlene Love last week.)  The title essay in the book centers on the "Kustom Kulture" of highly-stylized cars created by guys like Roth and George Barris in Southern California, and how the car culture was so predominant in those waning days of the American 1950's (which ended on November 22, 1963.)  Wolfe refers to Roth as the Salvador Dali of the hot rod world, and that implies a timelessness to his art (although without a drippy melting clock to tell the time.)

Dali's "The Persistence of Memory"

But, according to the Los Angeles Times, all this happiness and mirth came crashing down with the sound of legal briefs being filed and decisions being handed down.  To think of a jury sitting around deciding who would get the rights to "Sick But Happy" t-shirts or "Grim Reaper" decals is cause for a head shake.  

My will will be a simple will, and I will will my few belongings to those who I feel will care for them well.  One of you will come into possession of several thousand 45-rpm records and as many LPs.  If I'm up on my cloud somewhere playing a harp and I hear that people are down here in a courtroom arguing over ownership of Jerry Lee Lewis's classic album "The Greatest Live Show on Earth" I will smite you mightily, so don't be a rat fink!

The next big thing

Let's face it.  We all blew many chances to make a fortune. 

It only takes one good idea to make a mint, as the man who invented LifeSavers always said.  Bill Gates had an idea that he rode to the top of the money heap, and so did his onetime competitor Steve Jobs.  Big ideas, big payoffs.

A few years ago, if we had just come up with the idea to scrounge up a few thousand dollars, we could have bought up some ocean waterfront property, or a new 1964 Mustang, or a few shares of Apple stock.  If we had done that, the only Jobs we would have had to fool with would have been those dividend checks from Steve. 

It's too late for me, but I saw an idea and I wish to pass it along to someone with a few bucks and a willingness to do a little digging.  It's bound to be the moneymaker of the future, my friends.  And there are only a few of them in the nation as of now, so there is still room on the ground floor for you.

We're talking about Pizza Farms, here.  Get yourself some fertile farmland, divide it into 8 "slices," and get to work.  You plant herbs for spices, wheat for dough, tomatoes for sauce, and olives and peppers for topping.  With the three remaining land wedges, you have room for dairy cattle (cheese) and beef cattle and hogs for meat toppings. 

Everything is all contained, right there:  Here's how one looks at the Pierce College campus in Los Angeles (please excuse their misspelling of "agriculture.")

This all reminds me of the setting for Faber College, of Animal House fame.  As the movie will tell you,  "FABER COLLEGE was founded in 1904 by Emil Faber, philanthropist, father of the modern American lead pencil and brother of Germany's Eberhard Faber. The campus was once the site of the original Faber Pencil Works. The pencil mill was built in Faber because of the town's happy proximity to a natural graphite quarry, forests of virgin pencilwood trees, and plentiful wild eraser-root."

So you see?  You have all you need right there when you start your own pizza farm, and I wish you lots of luck.  Send me a postcard when you make your million, and save a slice with pepperoni for me!

Think it over

When I say what I have to say here, please understand that I am speaking to very, very few of my friends.  Real friends, that is. 

I just have to ask one question of people who so thoughtlessly use portmanteaus* such as "libtards" and the entire word "retard" in otherwise polite conversation.  The question would be, why do it?

Not to get all preachy about it, but there are people who have used that sort of term in polite conversation and have been asked (by me) why they would use an offensive term.  Often, they say they did not realize that the word was offensive.

Over the years, we have gradually gotten to the point at which racial, ethnic and gender slurs have been removed from the everyday lexicon of sentient individuals, but still, they have no compunctions about calling some a "retard" when they trip over the carpet, spilling coffee in the office, or make a simple math error.

As it happens, I know and love people who have family members with Down Syndrome.  They would be hurt to hear people use such language.  Disagree all you want with people who discuss the news on NPR, but don't use a loathsome term in reference to them.

As if people dealing with intellectual disability don't have it tough enough already...

It's best to try to know what you're talking about. Just a year ago, Michele Bachmann took herself out of the running for the presidential campaign when she repeated an unfounded rumor, advising young women not to get the HPV vaccine because "it causes mental retardation."  Her political demise was sealed when Sarah Palin agreed with her.

More on the r-word, and a valiant effort to get people to stop using it, is here on the web.  You can click here to see how many times the word is used on the web.

I'm not saying I've never said anything offensive.  I'm just saying that if we all try to stop this mean word, some people who are dealing with a lot would feel a lot better.



* words formed from combining part of or all of two words, as in "Microsoft" from microcomputer and software.  A portmanteau is one of those old suitcases that opened into two parts and then closed as a single unit...hence the term...which is itself a portmanteau of the French "porter" (carry) and "manteau" ( a cloak).