It's Bob and Doug, eh, hoser

As every schoolkid knows, Edison invented the telephone in 1876, because he wanted to call a girl he had met in Kankakee, Illinois.

But did you know that it only took eight years for schoolkids to invent prank phone calls? The first mention of a fake call was mentioned in "Electric World" magazine in 1884:

A Grave Joke on Undertakers.—Some malicious wag at Providence, R.I., has been playing a grave practical joke on the undertakers there, by summoning them over the telephone to bring freezers, candlesticks and coffins for persons alleged to be dead. In each case the denouement was highly farcical, and the reputed corpses are now hunting in a lively manner for that telephonist.

Of course, the modern version of that one is calling an undertaker and asking to speak to "Myra Mains." Or calling Bekins Moving and Storage under the name May Flower Van Lines. Or calling the French Embassy as "Lafayette S. Cadrille."
Or calling a plumber and saying your name is "Lee Keysink."

(If this is starting to sound like pranks I might have pulled, well.)

But we who used the phone for amusement now can feel better. Those Dad Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken "landed" in the Gulf of Mexico (why don't we say they "waterered" in the Gulf?) on Sunday, they were just bobbing around with time on their hands...and a satellite phone. They had to wait for a pickup ride in a boat, so....

"Five hours ago we were in a spaceship bobbing around making prank satellite phone calls to whoever we could get ahold of," Hurley said later at a press conference. "Which was kind of fun, by the way."

Whom did they call? So who did they call? At least a few familiar names, according to Space.com. NASA flight director Anthony Vareha said, "I received one of these calls at the flight director console. It started with an opening line like 'Hi, it's Doug and Bob, and we're in the ocean.' I think my response was, 'Yeah, I can see that.'"

Behnken's wife is a fellow astronaut named Megan McArthur, and she also got a call. "On my phone it said 'Spam Risk.' Glad I answered anyway!" she tweeted.

Please note that Hurley and Behnken did not order a pizza or call a bar and ask for Hugh Jass or ask a tobacconist if he had Prince Albert in a can.  But after their nine-week space jaunt, the path is clear to launch SpaceX in September to send a crew of six to the International Space Station.

And if among six people, no one can call some random number and say you're calling from the phone company and a guy is outside on the pole working on the lines, so DO NOT ANSWER the phone for the next fifteen minutes or he will be seriously shocked and then as soon as you hang up, you call them back and shriek like a banshee, then this is not the country where I grew up. Or not.

Sunday Rerun: from APRIL FOOL'S DAY 2019

Today's the day when Burger King sold Left-Handed Whoppers (1998) and Taco Bell got everyone all worked up by claiming that they had bought the Liberty Bell, with plans to rename that national treasure "The Taco Bell Liberty Bell" (1996).

A great many "Sports Illustrated" readers were duped on this day in 1985, when that magazine, always known for accuracy and dependable reporting, claimed that the New York Mets had signed a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch, and that young Finch was capable of throwing a baseball 168 miles per hour.  The backstory, as supplied by master storyteller (and inveterate practical joker) George Plimpton, was that Finch, raised in an English orphanage, had traveled to Tibet to learn "yogic mastery of mind-body" under "the great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa", and that's why he could toss that ball with such speed and accuracy.

Like all great pranks, it took great skill to pull that one off, and it was a few days before most people realized that Finch was a fake, perhaps the most elaborate since Piltdown Man.

The Piltdown composite skull was used as
a stand-in for Gary Busey later.

And it took 41 years for people to realize they had been fooled by Piltdown Man, although some men seem to fool people every single day. What happened was, 1912 was a very boring year, except for that Titanic thing and the opening of Fenway Park, so some paleoanthropologists (always a fun-loving bunch) decided to throw some old skulls, a jawbone, more skull fragments, a set of teeth, and primitive tools from an area called Piltdown in England into an empty ginger ale carton and tell the rubes that these were fossils, the remains of  an early human previously undiscovered.

Not until 1953 was it proven that Piltdown Man was a fakeroo, since he had the jaw and some teeth of an orangutan crammed into the cranium of a modern man.

This makes the Piltdown Man skullduggery, if you will, the longest-running hoax perpetrated on people, even longer than trickle-down economics, which is, admittedly, still fooling them since the 1980s.

That's the economic theory that states that giving the rich more money will be good for the poor, on the grounds that if you pile so much food onto the roofs of rich people's cars, a certain amount of it will fall off on their way to Richville, and the poor can forage for it happily.

Happy April Fool's Day!

The Saturday Picture Show, August 8, 2020

This week, Melanie Newman became the first female to do play-by-play of Orioles game on radio. I think she did a great job. There are seemingly dozens of people doing O's games on radio and TV this year; it doesn't make sense to me how they are working it, but I'll be happy to listen to her on the radio any time!

I think it "wood" be a good idea to use this as a Rorschach test. Who else sees a wolf?

If you saw this man's interview on Axios, you understand the utter befuddlement.

Egypt lights up the Pyramids at Giza in solidarity with those lost in Beirut.

This looks like the only time I would want to play Monopoly. I'm with Ben. He really didn't forget the board; he didn't want to play!

Do people still do that "Loves me, loves me not" thing with daisies?

If you love cats, you get this. They will do what they will do. In fact, I believe the very word "will" was created for them.

This took some planning on the part of the architect and the builders. It came naturally to the tree.

Always be honest. No one likes a cheddar.

I see on the wonderful website Gastro Obscura  that there is cheese even stankier than Limburger or Beerkaese.  Beerkaese is described as "robust and pungent" in the way that you might describe Freddie Mercury as "flamboyant" and Terry Bradshaw as "goofy." The word beerkaese literally means beer cheese, and there is no beer in the cheese at all, but it got the name because it goes so well with beer, and the only problem is, when you go to schmear some on a cracker, you are made to think about the time you spent changing the foundation garmentry of a particularly incontinent toddler.

But the name Beerkaese doesn't tell you about how its aroma would send a buzzard running for cover. How about this stuff? Stinking Bishop cheese!

They say that it's an award-winning cheese, and they say it's the “smelliest cheese in Britain.” The article says it has a "subtle, nutty flavor," and also says it smells like a "rugby team's locker room," and that doesn't sound subtle at all, but a little bit nutty.

Cheese is funny stuff, no matter how you slice it. You wouldn't call a men's cologne "Rotten Feet," nor would you call a canned cherry pie filling "Putrid Pie Stuff," but the cheese manufacturers of the world seem to delight in slapping repulsive names on their goods. 

So it is with this Stinkin' cheese. The odor comes from soaking the ripening cheese in pear cider.  The cider was named for the pear that gets squeezed in its making.

The pear in question is called a Stinking Bishop pear because it was grown in Gloucestershire, England by a man who eschewed such niceties as taking a bath every now and then and not getting drunk every once in a while. The rank old man was Frederick Bishop (1847 - 1919) and his name was hung on the pears he raised.

Meanwhile, long after Freddy shuffled off to that meadow in the sky, a dairy farmer by the name of Charles Martell had some cows making milk to make cheese from, and he decided to do it the way monks made cheese in the 17th Century, and wash the cheese rinds in pear cider.

I know you think I'm making this up, but this happened in 1972.

And then it was years and years until 2005, when a movie called "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" was made, in which someone named Gromit waves Stinking Bishop cheese around to revive a friend.

This ain't exactly Kraft Cheddar or Land O' Lakes American we're talking about here. This is the malodorous product of the coagulated, compressed, and  ripened milk curd that has been separated from the whey.

It's the perfect sandwich cheese for those who are tired of having that new guy in the office ripping off your lunch every day. He'll never pilfer from you twice.

Mask of Commerce

Stylish to a fault (of which I have dozens), I make it a point to read Vogue magazine to find out what people are wearing.  One day, I hope they will have a column that tells me WHY people are wearing what they wear, but that doesn't seem to be any of my beeswax.

Speaking of what people are wearing, how about masks?  I mean, on New Year's Day, did you even imagine that by August, we'd all be strapping them on?  And then, it took fifteen minutes for the big names to realize that there was money to be made in this pandemic. 

I saw an ad online for shirts that came with matching masks made of the same material. And designers are selling masks in summer-style prints, which makes us wonder if they will also be producing fall-style masks with pictures of leaves and hayrides, and Thanksgiving finery with "Mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce" as a nod to the dearly departed Little Richard.

And who's surprised that stars like Katy Perry, who has new music out on an album called "Smile," are selling "merch masks" to tie their musical product to the masks they are selling.  It's the perfect tie-in - the mask sells the music and the music sells the mask.

Lady Gaga is hawking a pink “Sour Candy” mask  - it has fangs on it!  Nicki Minaj, Bad Bunny  - the singer/rapper born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio  -and BTS have masks for you too.

BTS, of course, is a K-pop hip-hop pop band from Korea, and they are also known as the Bangtan Boys, not to be confused with the Backstreet Boys.  As if you could have.

Vogue says that most of the merchy mask moolah goes right to your favorite singers' pockets, but Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber have a duet out together called “Stuck With U” and all the money rolling in from the mask (sold separately) goes to the First Responders Children’s Foundation. The Weeknd has a record label called "XO Records" and you can buy an “XO” face mask.  100% of those proceeds go to the MusiCares Covid-19 relief efforts.  He could have spent the money to buy the missing "e" from his name, but he didn't.

It just goes to show that there's always something new coming up. When t-shirts with designs and logos printed on them became popular, we figured it was cheaper and less permanent than a tattoo. So a mask with the name of your favorite musical artist to cover your mouth and nose is the same  -  faster, cheaper, less permanent and 100% less stupid than a face tattoo!

Two years from now, when we've all been "inarkulated" against the 'Rona, we'll see these masks sitting in the drawer next to our underwear and look back wistfully.

Thigh bone's connected to the knee bone

I remember taking aptitude tests, the psych exam designed to reveal the sort of career one might follow down the path of eternal happiness.

Mine usually came back advising me to marry someone extremely wealthy and patient. 

I got the second part right, at least.  But nowhere did they tell me that there is a job out there known as "reindeer herder"!  That's the work for me. Plenty of time outside in the bracing cold air, and a chance to work with Mr Claus himself!  And even though my sheer size and stentorian tone would preclude the chance to be promoted to "elf," well, a boy can dream, right?

And here is what the reindeer herders in northern Siberia are up to: they found the skeleton of a woolly mammoth! The big beast's ligaments are still intact, and he bought the ranch about 10,000 years ago.

There they were, at scenic Pechevalavato Lake in the Yamalo-Nenets district of Russia, and they found his skull, ribs, and foot. They have a team digging around to try to find more olde time animals hanging around in the muck.

Dmitry Frolov, director of the Arctic Research Centre, tells the Siberian Times that it appears “the whole skeleton is there,” and that “Judging by the pictures this was a young mammoth, but we’ll have to wait for tests to give the exact age.”  This is borne out by the finding of K-Pop on his phone.

For years, this part of Siberia was frozen like BirdsEye frozen peas in permafrost, but thanks to global warming, things are in the defrost cycle, and so now people are up there finding enormous bones, soft tissue, and hastily discarded Smoothie cups.  Other animal parts that have come to the surface, as it were, include a 42,000-year-old foal well preserved, a 32,000-year-old wolf head, and an extinct cave lion cub.

Artist's depiction of recently found wolf.

According to Keith Richards, mammoths went extinct 10,000 years ago, but there are those who say some mammoth gangs hung around Alaska and the coast of Siberia for a while longer, because they couldn't find a place to plug in their chargers. That proves that these bones are at least 10,000 years old.

And when scientists took the tickets that they found in the mammoth's pockets to the cleaner, they were told "It'll be ready Friday."

See for yourself

We saw a picture of sweet friend the other day; she was wearing a mask, but you could still tell she was smiling. Her eyes light up when she smiles, and no mask is going to hide that lovely feature.

But imagine being a newborn baby and never having seen the faces of the woman and man who just gave you life!

Aria Mason-Folse gave birth recently, and to add another layer of stress atop pregnancy during a pandemic, she had to deal with preeclampsia along the way.  That's a fairly common, but nonetheless dangerous, complication during pregnancy.

So when Mason-Folse and her husband Henri finally got see Amara Mason-Folse, the preemie weighed just one pound, eight ounces. And they didn't get to see the baby for three days, which must have felt like three decades. Newborn Amara was taken directly after birth to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Ochsner Baptist Medical Center in New Orleans.

 So Ms Mason-Folse began to sing when they were united.

"I was wondering if she'd know I was her mom, we didn't have that moment at delivery," she explained. "She took my hand once I started and her pulse evened out, other vital signs came up instantly. That meant the world to me. Having the ability to connect with her this way has been its little ray of sunshine through all of this."

And another wrinkle: COVID-19 means infection risks, meaning that face masks were required, and only one parent at a time could visit. The new parents worried that little Amara might be stunted in terms of social cue development and non-verbal communication skills.  That stuff starts early, you know.

So a speech therapist at the hospital mentioned that people at the hospital were making clear masks for those who work with patients with hearing deficits.
The Mason-Folses put on the masks, and their daughter perked up at the sight of her parents' faces!

"You can see her watching our mouths, especially when I was singing to her," Mason-Folse says. "She likes the silly faces we make too. I feel excited by that, that she is responding so well to it. It's really reassuring that we made the right decision."

The baby is still in the NICU as her lungs mature, and she will be home soon, and she will be with the parents she has gotten to see all along, because someone had a good idea!

Birds of a feather

The Outback is more than just a steakhouse - it's a huge part of Australia. And down there, there are plenty of wild stories.

Like these two siblings, named Kevin and Carol. They have been banned from the only hotel in this one town down under.  Everyone on the first floor loved it when Kevin and Carol cavorted around in their amusing fashion.

But then Kevin and Carol started ascending the stairs. And now they go chasing each other around the pub of the Yaraka Hotel in Queensland. They steal toast and french fries from other people sitting there trying to have their dinner.

I guess this is a good time to mention that Kevin and Carol are emus.

SO the hotel put up a sign that also serves as a barrier to the staircase. It says, "Emus have been banned from this establishment for bad behavior," and it asks any humans to put the "emu barrier" sign back in place when they climb the stairs.

"We put the sign up, but we're not quite sure whether they're able to read or not," the hotel's co-owner, Gerry Gimblett, says. "So, we've had to put a bar across there, as well."

The emus are smart enough to figure that people will trade them a quick snack in return for having them pose for a selfie. But, "the interesting thing is when people are making toast in the annex, a head comes across, takes the toast and gobbles it up as it pops," Gimblett told the Brisbane Times.

And his wife, Chris, told NPR, "It is not safe to get between an emu and food; they have a sharp strong beak and their long neck can suck up food like a high powered vacuum cleaner."

Chris Gimblett says she is willing to overlook the birds' minor peccadilloes (such as running around stealing food and chasing patrons). She found them were they were just two eggs in an abandoned nest.  All their brothers and sisters have moved on.

Se's glad Kevin and Carol have stuck around — two survivors of a nest full of eggs that was found abandoned. All their brothers and sisters have since moved on.

Leanne Byrne is the local resident who actually raised them from yolk status and she points out that their behavior wouldn't be quite so irritating if they had better control of their bowels.  "They're a tad incontinent" is how she puts it.

Still, here I am, saying they aren't as irritating as the emu in that insurance commercial.

Sunday Rerun: Oh, Archie!

We may not have kids of our own, but we fully appreciate what a lot of work it is to be parents.  Many people are very surprised to find that the child they proudly brought home from Maternityville will not be able to make himself a sandwich, pay a bill, or clean up her own room until their late 20s.  If then!

So it might come as a surprise to American Royal Watchers that the newest of royal parents, Prince Opie Harry and his lovely wife Meghan Markle have not hired a nanny to care for little screamin' Archie.

Now, it must be remembered that the royal family over in jolly Olde Englande has every kind of help available 24-7, so it's really not like Reds 'n' Meg are really truly going it alone.

At first, the news from London told us that they were hoping to hire an American nanny, but when Fran Drescher was busy doing other things, they planned to go with what they call a "scaled down team."  That means no nanny, but her mother, Doria Ragland, is on the job.  She came over from her home in sunny Los Angeles to be there for the birth, and is hanging around for the diaper changes and burping.  And from all reports, her help has been indispensable.

Har and Meggie, A/K/A the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, said all along they intend to be hand-on parents, and observers say this is a tradition they got from his mom, the late Princess Diana, who was said to bring a sense of normality to bringin' up Brits.

Why, they even report that Prince William (his brother) and his wife Kate Middleton even have dinner with their children! And go bug-hunting, and other family fun.

Royal Biographer Duncan Larcombe of the Daily Mail says, “Diana made sure William and Harry lived as much as a normal life as possible and as parents, William and Harry will always be influenced by their mother. Her desire to give them a taste of normality runs through the veins of William and Harry.”

So yes, it's laudable that these two youngsters in love want to be in there for every step of the way, as opposed to lots of upper crust types who are crummy parents.  It's not like they live in a cottage small by a waterfall, and she's not out there doing the laundry on rocks, but it's closer to normal than most.

The Saturday Picture Show, August 1, 2020

Food trucks are the big thing now, and you have to figure, when this one got to Woodstock in 1969, they had trouble cutting one pie into 395,783 slices to feed the crowd.

Well, then. Let's move up to level 2.

You summer lovers can hate me, but I show this just to prove that the time for cider doughnuts and raking leaves and wearing hoodies again is coming soon.

It seems to happen to me all the time - you're taking out a DOA light bulb, and you come away with the bulb in your hand and the base still in the socket. Don't reach in there with the needlenose pliers unless you really feel like getting shocked. Cut a potato in half and schmooze it onto the base, twist off. Serve with butter and sour cream.

On this date in 1971, two concerts took place at Madison Square Garden in NY for the benefit of the people of Bangla Desh, so torn by genocide. An All-Starr (Ringo) cast assembled, including George Harrison, Leon Russell and Bob Dylan.

IF there is trick or treating this year, I hope that some kids I know will Van Gogh this way.

I'm not much for metaphors and symbols, but this photo from the Detroit Tigers' home opener, with no crowd allowed and a huge storm brewing over a major league ballgame, says a lot.

You can go here to see this story if you take a notion to do so. A guy came across this negative photo of a cat in a time capsule, and had it developed. The negative is 120 years old. Cats haven't changed much, have they?

Seedy

You really wouldn't think that, especially in this lunatic year we call 2020, that people would receive an anonymously-sent pack of seeds bearing a Chinese postmark, and then plant them.

BUT that seems to be what's happening.

People all over this great country of ours are getting seeds in the mail and then heading for the shed to get the hoe and shovel and putting those bad boys in the ground, with not a whit of an idea what will grow.

And really, how do they know they aren't Covid seeds, eh?

The seeds are in all different shapes, colors and sizes, but they all seem to have been mailed from China.  BUT no one knows what they might be, or what might grow, and why people would stick them in the garden and water them is beyond me.

I mean, doesn't there even seem to be a chance that something is wrong here?

The US Department of Agriculture says people in at least 27 states have received these mystery seeds, and they urge you to contact local agricultural officials if a package lands in your mailbox.

"Please hold onto the seeds and packaging, including the mailing label, until someone from your State department of agriculture or APHIS contacts you with further instructions," the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service says. "Do not plant seeds from unknown origins."

The USDA says this might be part of what it known as a "brushing scam." That's where people receive such fakeroos and then the crooks who sent them make up glowing reviews to make it look like you raved about their Coconut Patties.

Or - you could be planting an invasive species, causing an ecological disaster.

"An invasive plant species might not sound threatening, but these small invaders could destroy Texas agriculture," Sid Miller, Texas's agriculture commissioner, says.

And scientists agree — that's why the USDA has such strict rules on importing plants and other organic materials.

Professor Carolee Bull with Penn State's Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology study, told The New York Times: "The reason that people are concerned is — especially if the seed is the seed of a similar crop that is grown for income and food, or food for animals — that there may be plant pathogens or insects that are harbored in the seed."

And of course, there's this.  One woman told a local tv station that the package she received was labeled "jewelry."

“It was labeled on the outside chrysanthemum-studded earrings; I didn't want to put it in the ground because I didn't know what it was going to do, so I put it in its own individual pot, right then and there and been watering it ever since, but nothing ever grew,” the woman said.

I'm no Luther Burbank, but I'm sure that earrings don't grow in the ground, so if you receive these weird seeds, call the Maryland Dept of Agriculture at 410-841-5920.

Moon shot

Pluto and friend

I will freely admit that most three-year-olds know more about what's up in outer space than I do. I must have been out sick the day they taught us that in elementary school. I can't keep it straight whether the earth revolves around the sun or the moon, or if we sit still and Pluto and the rest of them spin around us, and at this stage of my life (late) it hardly seems to matter. If any kids hover around me and start asking questions about the cosmos, I can just tell them to run and get a mask, and while they go look for one, I hide.

However, the good old Washington POST publishes a page called KidsPost, and I can glean a lot of good information on that. F'rinstance, how does it come that we see the moon during the daytime sometimes, huh? I'm grateful that they put it in terms a child can comprehend. Let me paraphrase...

The moon and the stars are up there all the time. We just can't see them all the time.  (I happen to know that the sun spends its nights in other parts of the world).

Ask Cheyenne Polius. She's an astrophysicist, and president and co-founder of the Saint Lucia National Astronomy Association in the Caribbean region.

When we have a new moon (that's when it all starts over) the the half moon that the sun lights up is facing away from us here on Earth. So the moon is still there (don't worry) but it's invisible to us during the day, what with all that sunlight being reflected in the other direction.

Then, the moon goes on a trip around Earth, and little by little more of it is visible, starting off as a crescent or half moon.

“The best time to see the moon during the day is when it’s in the first and last quarter phases (90 degrees away from the sun) because that’s when we can see half of the moon’s lit side while the sun is still up,” Polius says.

Then when the moon is halfway through spinning its way through an orbit, it gets behind the earth, as far as the sun is concerned, and we get to see the entire full moon at night.

The picture of the new moon below just gave me a jarring memory. I WAS in school that day. The kids sitting near me reported hearing a thud as I fell asleep and onto the floor.

"His unwavering positivity and kindness"

I'm sad to say that Mo Gaba passed away last night. The end came just a few hours after the announcement that Mo (born Mossila Gaba), 14, had been elected to the Orioles Hall of Fame. He was the second-ever recipient of the Wild Bill Hagy Award, named after the huge fan who drove a cab by day and drove attendance higher than ever in the 1970s and 1980s at old Memorial Stadium. The award is for fans "who have inspired others with their devotion to the team, and demonstrated an exceptional commitment in support of the Orioles."

If you listen to the sports talk radio shows in Baltimore, you heard Mo. He called in every day to share his vast knowledge and well-informed opinions about local sports. He knew what he was talking about, and radio was the perfect medium for Mo, who had lost his eyesight at the age of nine months, because of a cancerous tumor.

So he became quite the local celebrity with his phone calls. Soon he was at the games and special events, such as Orioles FanFest, where he was a special guest.

In 2017 he was there to throw out a ceremonial first pitch at "Kids' Opening Day, " and in 2019 when he doubled up on the first pitch by calling "PLAAAAAAAAY BALLLLLL!" on the mic to start the season.

Trey Mancini and Mo Gaba

Mo was named Press Box Magazine's Sportsperson of the Year for 2019, and even though the Orioles plumbed the depths of futility last year, the Ravens, with breakout star Lamar Jackson, had a terrific season, and still Mo got the nod as Sportsperson of the Year.

Quite a few of the local athletes really took to Mo. The football Ravens had him announce their 4th-round draft pick last year, making Mo the the first person to read the name of an NFL choice from a Braille selection card when he welcomed Ben Powers from the University of Oklahoma with the Ravens’ fourth-round pick.

But we seem to associate Mo with Orioles outfielder more than anyone else. They've been buddying around for years down at the ballpark. Mancini was probably the best player on the O's last year, and that represented a good comeback for someone who had a not-so-great season in 2018. Mancini credits Mo as the inspiration for getting his batting back on track, and as 2019 ended and the 2020 season was getting underway, Mancini himself was stricken with colon cancer, and had surgery in March to remove the tumor.

Trey had this to say yesterday as the announcement of the award was made, just hours before Mo left this vale:

“There is no one more deserving of this incredible honor than Mo. Throughout his battles with cancer, Mo never lost his kind spirit, his sense of humor, or his love of the Orioles. His tremendous courage and unwavering positivity in the face of such challenging circumstances have made him an inspiration to me and so many others,” shared Mancini. “It is fitting that Mo will now have a place in the Orioles Hall of Fame alongside some of the most iconic figures in franchise history, and for him to be honored as the recipient of the Wild Bill Hagy Award is truly special. I could not be happier for my friend, Mo, and his mother, Sonsy.”

The Orioles added this: "Mo’s positive energy has been constant throughout every battle and continues to bring the entire city of Baltimore together in the face of ongoing crisis. His unwavering positivity and kindness are qualities every Baltimorean aspires to emulate. Mo Gaba has impacted more people in his 14 years than most people do in an entire lifetime."

I've been saying this a lot lately: we'll be talking about 2020 for a long long time, and we'll remember Mo Gaba at least that long.

It's the pits

"(This) has been catastrophic for the industry, says Jim Sitton. “Covid has pretty much shut our business down for the moment,” Sitton says. “If the industry comes back, hopefully we’ll be around to see that happen.”

"This" is the COVID-19 novel coronavirus, you know.  Care to guess what industry Mr Sitton is part of?

The restaurant industry? Not directly.

Automobile sales? No.

Gambling, airlines, hotels, movie theaters, live sports?

No, no, no, no, and no.

He is president of 21st Century Products, which manufactures ball-pit balls.

Foolhardy

Think about it. Even the most foolhardy of us knows the basics of keeping oneself free of the deadly virus.  Well, almost.

And who's about to share drinks or attend large parties or hug strangers or reach into a communal dish of bar snacks, knowing the risks inherent?

And who in the world would send their child to a pool of colorful plastic balls to "swim" among the cooties left behind by who knows who?

As the Washington POST describes them, a ball pit is "What once looked like an ocean of color is now a sea of respiratory droplets. Unsafe waters. A breeding ground for extremophile bacteria, like the darkest crevices of the Mariana Trench."

Professor Peter Raynor from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health notes that when we look at covid risks, "We talk about the three C's:

• Closed spaces
• Crowded places
• Close contact

Ball pits tick off all three!

All across the country, it's sort of a back-burner issue as to when ball pits will be open again.  Massachusetts puts them in Phase 4 (and we're having trouble getting past phase 2 in most states). California put out a list of recreational facilities that could reopen, and they were nowhere to be seen. Even Tennessee, which seemed so avid to reopen everything asap, calls pits “areas where social distancing is difficult or impossible to maintain” and that means they are off limits to visitors.

Nationally, when you think ball pits, you think of McDonald's Play Places (Closed) and IKEA's Småland (that's the Swedish word for "place to leave the kids so you can go upstairs and shop for bar stools and knife blocks) “will remain closed at this time as an added safety measure. We are unable to comment about the future of ball pits at this time," says an IKEA spökeswömän.

Professor Raynor reminds us that even though people will tell you that play areas, dining spaces, and theater seats have been treated with antibacterial cootie spray, antibacterial is not anti­viral.

And he points out that it would be embarrassing "for someone who contracts the corona­virus to have to admit to a contact tracer that they had been playing in a ball pit during a pandemic. It’s something that’s not necessary, and it’s kind of pointless,” he says. “Why take the risk at this point in time?”

So let's not.

Now you see him

How about I tell you a story that begins with "Florida man," but no one gets shot out of a homemade cannon or loses his Cremaster muscles to a crocodile outside of Parrotland or is found smuggling styrofoam cleverly hidden inside other styrofoam?

Florida Man Paul Cole was not planning to be famous, but it's the old thing about right place, right time. The right time was August 8 of 1969, and the right place was on a street in London when four men he later called "kooks" "went across the street like a row of ducks."

Holler out when you figure what I'm talking about here.

Mr Cole was on a European vacation with his wife at the time. She wanted to go see an aviation museum; he didn't, so he stayed out walking about, talking to a policeman he met when the kooky ducks walked across the street before him.

The four were later identified as John Lennon (white suit), Ringo Starr (mod black suit, white shirt), George Harrison (two-tone denim) and Paul McCartney (blue suit, no shoes) - The Beatles, strutting their way into history.

Mr Cole didn't even see a photographer taking one of the most famous pictures in music history. He didn't even know anything about The Beatles, other than he didn't like them (“If they were on television, I’d flip to something else," he told interviewers) and had no idea about any of this until he and his wife had returned to their home in Deerfield Beach and she, an organist, bought a copy of the LP to learn a song for a wedding for which she was hired to play.

Looking at the album cover, he reported, “I did a double-take and said, ‘Hey, that’s me!’ "

For years until he left this earth, he was able to say,  "You don’t realize it, but you’re talking to a person whose picture is in millions of homes throughout the world."

That autumn, the rumor about Paul McCartney being dead ("slain in a bloody car crash") since 1966, replaced by the winner of a Paul McCartney Look-Alike Contest, went around. Part of the proof some of its proponents proffered was that Paul was in the picture not wearing shoes, because in some faiths people are buried barefoot.

McCartney was seen out of step with the other "ducks" in the picture, but that can be explained if you ask yourself what it's like to cross a paved street in August.

A cool website!

I'm fascinated with names, and I often consult this website www.names.org to find out things about names.

Things such as, what are the trending names these days? (Liam, Noah, William; Emma, Olivia, Ava).

Names with English origin now popular for American babies? (Oliver, Maverick, Leo, Lincoln, Grayson; Amelia, Everly, Charlotte, Eleanor, Hazel).

Most popular names in the 1960s? (Scott, Todd, Jeff, Chris, Tim; Lisa, Tammy, Lori, Tina, Robin.)

This one knocks me out: Most popular girl names in the 1920s: Marjorie, Muriel, Bette, Imogene, Eleanore, Dortha, Leatrice, Emogene, Ruthe, Mafalda.

"Mafalda? Dortha?"

Boy names, 1920s: Seymour, Morton, Patsy, Harding, Hoover, Hideo, Toshio, Minoru, Coolidge, Mitsuo.

You know this elementary educator as Seymour Skinner, but his actual birth name is Armin Tamzarian. Please don't ask why I know this.

Most popular names for boys in the US Mideast (DE, DC, MD, NJ, NY, and PA):  Salvatore, Gerard,  Dominick,  Angelo, Francis, Vincent, Peter, Bernard, Joseph.

Girls, same area:  Rosemarie, Maryann,  Eileen, Antoinette, Maureen, Miriam, Michele,  Joan,  Joanne,  Dolores.

Not from the website, but based on what I hear around town: This week's most popular baby names: Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV.

Sunday Rerun: Yeah, I remember MY first beer too

We got to talking about school field trips the other day. Living in Baltimore, America's Greatest City*, we are close to terrific places for schoolchildren to visit as part of their academic enrichment*. Sixth graders used to go to Williamsburg, VA, for what is for many the first time they have slept away from the watchful eyes of their parents. I don't know if they still do this.

Nor do I know if journalism students go to New York for the School Paper convention held at Columbia University, and who knows if the 8th graders go to Washington DC anymore?

I remember the trip to Williamsburg very well, and I bought a paisley tie at the Columbia bookstore that I still wear, and the trip to DC was fun too. I always loved the Smithsonian Museum and all the cool stuff they show.

Speaking of being shown stuff in DC, say hi to Michael Comeau, erstwhile principal of Holy Family School in Louisiana. I say erstwhile, because he just resigned his position, about 12 seconds before he was going to have a can tied to him.

On Friday morning last at 0220 hours, District Police responded to the Archibald Gentlemen's Club for a report of “an intoxicated man refusing to pay his bill,” according to report in The Advocate.  Arriving police found Comeau “standing in the roadway, refusing to move.”

The popo asked the drunk principal time after time to get out of the street, but he was having none of it (he had already had plenty of something else). So they popped him on charges of public intoxication and possession of an open container.  All this took place within a mile of the White House, that well-known bastion of rectitude and clean living.

Back home in Bayou Country, the Diocese of Baton Rouge confirmed the incident, but took pains to point out that all the students were in their hotel rooms being supervised by chaperones while the principal was getting shafahzed in a nudie bar.

We were foolish enough to go to Williamsburg a few years ago during spring break week, meaning that we wound up in a hotel with dozens of testosterony and estrogenified 14-year-olds. One poor chaperone told us they had to take shifts sitting in a chair in a hallway, lest young Rupert gain entrance to Priscilla Mae's chambers as the clock struck 2.

I can't speak for (ex)Principal Comeau, and I don't know what he will tell his family when he gets back in LA, but I know this much for sure: the kids on that trip will have a story to tell their children's children's children.

The Saturday Picture Show, July 25, 2020

In Margate, New Jersey, they are celebrating the 139th birthday of local attraction Lucy The Elephant. It's pretty cool up in there; I saw it when I was a kid. Stop by and see her, because an elephant never forgets!

They only made one of these, in 1936. It's called an autogiro, a combo car and helicopter. The guy who invented it flew it to DC, landed on a street, folded up the rotors and drove it to the Smithsonian, where it resides yet today.

Potato Chips were invented when a chef got tired of people sending their fried potatoes back to the kitchen, demanding thinner and thinner slices. This took place in Saratoga Springs, New York, and the name of the chef was George Crum. He has a restaurant called Crum's House, and how cool would it be to eat at a place with a name like that?

Death Valley CA lives up to its name, because I would rather be gone for good than live in a place where it's 129°.

This is certainly the test of anyone's navigational skills...piloting a ship through the Corinth Canal in Greece.

Did you forget about Lucy already? Someone took this picture at just the right time in Nairobi, Kenya.

Continuing our series of pictures of leaders of nations around the world acting like everyday people, let's take an ice cream break with Armen Sarkissian of Armenia.

I had forgotten about these 90's doodads, but here's another Magic Eye picture for you. Put your eyes right up close and see the magic!

Hold It

Oh, the way things used to be!

You'll tell your grandchildren about the days when, if you saw something cool that you wanted a photo of, you had to tell the guy who just spilled a whole tray of beer, or the squirrel who looked so cute eating corn on your back porch, or the person who's just about to smack down in the pool with a belly-whopper like no one has ever seen before to wait while you ran home and grabbed the Brownie camera.

Now, that phone is out of your pocket or pockeybook before the last glass of beer hits the barroom floor, the squirrel reaches for his tiny dental floss, or Uncle Jimbo has the time to say, "Hold my beer, Cletus! Watch this rightcheer!"

And you snap and video and the whole thing is on the web before Jimbo finds his soggy t-shirt!

There was another alternative, and it's enjoying some sort of renaissance. A mainstay at every boardwalk arcade and Skee-Ball joint was always the 25 cent photobooth.  You and your friend or significant other or just yourself sat down on a tiny stool that had hosted butts since Lincoln was in Junior High, dropped in a quarter, and sat there for three snapshots that were "delivered in 3 minutes" from a little slot on the side of the booth.

The new life I spoke of is that technology has given us the ability to have portable versions of these photobooths at weddings, retirement parties, bar-and-bat mitzvahs and Quinceañeras so that attendees may remember the day by posting the picture on the front of the Kelvinator.

Another use for the photostrips? Bookmarks! People love marking their place in the latest John Grisham page turner with their vacation booth photos, and that brings us to Emma Smreker. Emma (no idea how to pronounce her last name) is from Oklahoma (OKE-la-HOME-a) goes to a half-price bookstore called Half Priced Books. One day not long ago, she was flipping through a used book and one of those strips popped out.  This is it, above.

The picture shows a young girl and an adult man mugging for the camera.  It seems like they're having a good time and everyone is there of their own volition, but Ms Smreker is on the case to return the picture.

"It's so darling.. the silly little faces they're making and everything," Smreker told KOCO-TV. "I can't imagine that someone would just willingly give that away in a book without realizing that they're losing that photo."

Emma pasted the photo array all over social media, but so far, no one has contacted her to say, "Hey! That's my uncle Nabob and me at Sunova Beach last summer!"

If you recognize these two, you know what to do.  Because I don't.

World's biggest ass kills world's biggest ram

You might recall the "Driller Killer," a dentist from Minnesota who seems to take pleasure from killing animals. A few years ago he hid in a tree and illegally lured Cecil The Lion out of Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.  Cecil was six years old, a beloved figure that was taking part in studies led by a team from Oxford University, and this toothyanker ambushed him.

Dr. Walter Palmer is 60 now, still identified as a "recreational big-game hunter" (although just how killing defenseless animals is part of someone's "recreation" is hard to figure) and now it turns out that last August, he spent almost $100,000 to partake in the pleasure of a trip to Mongolia for the pleasure of killing an endangered Altai argali, the world’s biggest ram, with a crossbow.

"I shoot defenseless animals. I consider myself admirable. I'm wrong twice."

Dr Teresa Telecky, wildlife vice-president at Humane Society International, said this to the Daily Mirror: “For trophy hunters to travel to Mongolia to kill a beautiful and ­endangered ram is an absolute outrage. The argali ram is a species in danger of extinction, so the idea that these animals can be killed for pleasure is abhorrent. The killing of Cecil the lion five years ago caused international shock. But clearly the killing for kicks continues. It’s time for the law to stop wildlife killers in their tracks by banning trophy hunting.”

I can see the argument in favor of hunting for food. I know a guy who bags his limit of deer every fall and personally pays for the meat to be delivered to homeless shelters, and many others do the same.

And I can see hunting when it comes to protecting life and property from menacing animals. That happens.

But when it comes down to thrill killing an animal to obtain hides, heads and claws to be displayed as a symbol of one's "superiority," I don't see it, which is why I am in favor of teaching animals to operate crossbows and rifles to make it a fair fight.