You knit too much.

If you live with a knitter and you celebrate Christmas, you're probably up to your ankles in yarn by now. If your knitter has not been at it since Labor Day at the latest, take her to the doctor. There must be something wrong.

My wife delights people (including me) every Christmas with handmade presents, knitted or crocheted with loving care. Like a home cook who has progressed beyond the basics, she takes instructions (patterns) and modifies them to her own preferences. Many she makes up on her own.

But I do worry about her knitting, and I'm not kidding when I say she's actually given herself knitting injuries and yarn callouses. Knitting may one day become a safer alternative to football, since people love to watch it but the injuries are less severe. She promises to stand for the national anthem.

She may be drafted by the Washington
Redskeins or the Tennessee Tatting.

Yarn crafters know they are addicted, and they seldom try to hide it. Some celebrate it. Check out Yarn Harlot or Yarn Addict or Mochimochi Land or the Crochet Crowd. They love their addiction. Some make a living from it. They may die in the alley with a skein under each arm, knowing how sad their relatives will be that they took the needle, but they don't care.

And that's why I fret a little.

One day I serenaded the lovely Mrs. Key thus:

You knit too much
You worry me to death
You knit too much
You even knit for my pet

You just knit
Knit too much

You knit for people
That you don't know
You carry your stash
Wherever you go

You just knit
Knit too much

You knitted in the car 
Till they made you stop
Then you knit a holster
For the traffic cop

You just knit
Knit too much

You knit your afghans
More than fifteen feet
You yarn-bombed
East Forty-second Street

You just knit
Knit too much

She didn't approve. She just sneered at me over her flying needles.

I have a feeling I'm gonna get some knitted lumps of coal in my homemade Christmas stocking now.

Fridgit.

As I write this, I am sitting on death watch for this old pal.

The guys are coming to take away the fridge after almost 18 years of dependable service. I hated to say farewell at this time, just because it was a bad time to drop a grand on another appliance, but when one's ice cubes become mushy, one must do what one must.

It's a blank canvas now, for the first time since we moved in. Business cards, photos, kiddie drawings, comical magnets, calendars, lists, schedules, cartoons, magnetic clips, holiday decorations, all manner of things have been stuck to the face of this humble machine. It has been our Kenmore. But tonight we shall be Kenless.

Eighteen Thanksgiving turkeys have gone in and out of this thing; eighteen roasts for Easter. Just seventeen for Christmas, since we didn't make it to this year's Christmas.

Oh, well. It was the first fridge we bought. Well, not counting the tiny one we got after the landlord's fridge died at our old apartment and he wouldn't replace it. That one was -- no kidding -- built in Yugoslavia, and performed about as well as a Communist country appliance might be expected to. What it mostly did was generate enormous hunks of impenetrable ice around the interior freezer. After it went kaputski, we got by with a little bar-size fridge until we inherited another one. Then we got a new one with the house.

And now it's going away.

Since we've been here we've replaced every other appliance, small or large, except the stove. From the hand mixer and microwave and toaster oven to the furnace and AC unit and water heater, from the dishwasher to multiple coffeemakers and coffee grinders to the rechargeable flashlight, even parts for the ice maker inside the fridge -- twice -- everything has been replaced but the stove and the refrigerator. After tonight, the stove stands alone.

My wife never cared for this fridge. I was just happy that it was frost-free. And that it's seen us through years, happy and hard, flush and busted, challenging and simple. I can get sentimental for something that just happened to be standing around during major milestones, it's true.

All right, Kenmore, your refrigeration is done. Time to get you emptied of your remaining half-chilled contents as we await the new machine.

LATER TUESDAY... 

The outfit from which we purchased the new one, which I will identify only as "Blowe's," called us to say, well, looks like the fridge didn't get on the truck after all. To which I explained that the shipper (a subcontracting outfit), whom we had been told by "Blowe's" to call this morning, had said that the guys were coming late, and was "Blowe's" sure that the fridge did not make it on the truck?

Call ya right back...

Nope, still there in the store! How about that! Well, we'll just try to get that to you tomorrow. 

I strive to be polite to customer service people, having done some of that work myself and having reached an age of some sober adulthood, but that set off Angry Yoda immediately, and boy was he pissed.

OH NO. THERE IS NO TRY. WE PLANNED THE WHOLE DAY AROUND THIS AFTER YOU CALLED TO TELL US ON SUNDAY THAT IT WOULD BE HERE TUESDAY, AND NOW WE HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN WEDNESDAY AND YOU'RE GOING TO TRY TO GET IT OUT? YOU HAVE TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN. THERE IS NO TRY. 

Yes, right, we'll do that. 

AND WE WILL BE EXPECTING A CALL IN THE MORNING TO TELL US WHAT TIME. (Which we did not get this morning, which is when we called and were referred to the truck guys, and someone just lie lie lied to us.)

Yes, you bet.

As you can guess, I was pretty sore. Imagine how mad I would have been if I did not work from home, and had taken off Tuesday to accept delivery of the appliance, just to be told that maybe I should have taken Wednesday off instead, or possibly Thursday... I'm sure my supervisor would have loved that.

So we'll see, "Blowe's," we'll see. Keep you posted....

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE:

New fridge arrived at one, actually sooner than we'd been told, so I had to scramble to empty the old one. We bid Ken a fond farewell. The new one seems to be working just fine. A happy ending? Mmmmyeah, but not entirely, not till I pay the credit card bill....

Unsuccessful automobiles.

The Hudson Gnat

This small version of the popular Hornet was known as "the car with the imaginary backseat,"  years before AMC made one for real with the Gremlin.

The Ford Mocus
Drivers could not successfully direct this vehicle.

The Chrysler Le Viscount
Sequels are seldom as good as the original.

The Nissan Rubric
Dull.

The Suzuki Geisha
Putting a lighter spin on the Samurai's notorious rollover problems, the marketing campaign ("It Rolls Over...For You!") offended geisha and disenchanted the public.

The Nash Blobular
A monster-movie inspired relic of the early 1950s, the "monster Nash" was also known as "Nash Teeth" and "the Thing that Ate Nash."

The Holden Oldie
Attempt at retro seldom works in automobile design.

The Ford Bhopal
Only regional appeal in foreign markets.

The AMC Burner
"Hot stuff!" they said; "Combustible!" said National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The Cadillac Boat
Just a bigass car with power everything. "Feels like you're driving nuthin'!" said its fans. Did not feel that way to the people outside of it.

The Dodge Bullet
Name was just silly.

The Pontiac Zipper
Someone asleep in the Department of Naming the Cars that week.

The Chrysler Plea
Part of the original bailout in the 1970s.

The Buick YCAC
The popularity of Ford's LTD led to Buick trying nonsense initials on this car. Unfortunately people guessed what  it stood for (You Can't Afford a Caddy) and caught a resentment.

The Volkswagen Karmann Sutra
Too racy for the 1960s.

The Saab Story
"Not funny," said Car and Driver.

The Rolls-Royce Spook
Went one specter too far.

The Volvo Box
At this point they just threw up their hands and admitted the cars were boxy, so they released a cube with wheels. Didn't work out. Years later Nissan had better luck with essentially the same car.

The Subaru Emote
Even too cutesy for Subaru.

The Renault Guppy
Just sad.

Then there's this.

The lion and the mouse.

A lion was awakened from sleep by a Mouse running over his face. Rising up angrily, he caught him and was about to kill him, when the Mouse piteously entreated, saying: "If you would only spare my life, I would be sure to repay your kindness." The Lion laughed and let him go. It happened shortly after this that the Lion was caught by some hunters, who bound him by strong ropes to the ground. The Mouse, recognizing his roar, came and gnawed the rope with his teeth, and set him free, exclaiming:

"You ridiculed the idea of my ever being able to help you, not expecting to receive from me any repayment of your favor; now you know that it is possible for even a Mouse to confer benefits on a Lion."

Aesop's “The Lion and the Mouse” is a stirring and beloved story that has been filmed several times. Here are some of well-known versions from the American cinema.

The Lion and the Mouse (1915, Edison)
An 18-minute silent comedy about sharp-edged secretary Hilda Brass (Florence Fair) who to plots to help a timid office boy Percival Meek (James Montgomery Flagg) by getting him to assert himself and get a promotion. They fall in love and with his new assertiveness he asks her to marry him.

Cat and Mouse (1939, United Artists)
Small-time gumshoe Max Magee (George Raft) is hired to find Alice Taylor (Sylvia Sidney), who may have faked her own death, in this early noir film. Alice did indeed fake her death to protect her family from mobster Knuckles Kerwin (Boris Karloff); as Max takes down Kerwin's mob, she comes out of hiding to save Max’s life. It rains a lot.

Cheyenne and the Tot (1949, Monogram)
Against his will, Cheyenne Jim (Jimmy Wakely) is left to take a little rich girl (Lucy Baines) across Wyoming to her family after he inadvertently saves her from the bandits who kidnapped her. They face hard weather, Apaches, and the pursuing bandits, but the girl saves his life more than once, and Cheyenne becomes like a second father to the kid. Jim sings “Down on the Old Wyomin’ Farm” and “Horace the Cow.”

Lion and Mouse (1958, MGM)
All singing, all dancing extravaganza in Technicolor! Film star Leo O’Malley (Gene Kelly) saves the job of costume girl Millie Gouda (Jane Powell), but doesn't think of her again. After she saves his reputation in Hollywood, he begins to fall hard. Musical numbers by Comden and Green include “Twice-Told Tails,” “I Smell a Rat” (sung by Donald O’Connor), and the big finale, “Roarin’ Rumba.”

Mouse Moskowitz and Kitty Katz (1973, 20^th Century Fox)
Two old guys in New York (Lee J. Cobb, Art Carney) walk around Central Park, complain, play chess outside, get mugged, complain, look at closed stores and rotten vandalized New York landmarks, reminisce about how great things used to be, and complain some more. Slowly the story emerges of how Julius “Kitty” Katz (Cobb) saved Herschel “Mouse” Moskowitz (Carney) from making a bad marriage, and  Moskowitz then saved Katz's hat store on Orchard Street, although it closed later when Kennedy ruined the hat trade.

Of Lions and Mice (1980, Merchant Ivory)
Elsa Cheerwin (Meryl Streep), a servant in England in 1910, has an affair with the master of the house, Regis Thicklewaite (Albert Finney). When a sleazy footman (Bob Hoskins) spreads the gossip and ruins their reputation, Regis sacrifices everything to get Elsa to Minnesota for a fresh start. She tries to protect him but he shoots himself. Everyone is miserable.

Squeak to Me (1987, Orion)
Teenage loser Davey “the Dork” Dirkless (Wil Wheaton) gets it bad for bad girl Tammy Blanche (Jennifer Connelly) when she does an act of kindness to save him from the ridicule of her entourage. Worse, due to an ill-considered wager, Davey has just thirty days to actually touch a girl’s breast or he loses his summer-job money to his cousin Marco (River Phoenix). It all seems impossible until Davey rescues Tammy from the wrath of her drunken stepfather (Paul Gleason). Laughs ensue.

Mouse/Lion (1997, Touchstone)
Hal Nowell (Nicholas Cage) is an FBI forensic accountant drawn in to a case against mob boss Jimmy Polpettone (Robert DeNiro). Jimmy almost has Hal whacked but shows mercy when he sees Hal's baby daughter. Hal then accidentally saves Jimmy by deleting evidence. Jimmy plies Hal with gifts, thinking he’s his new inside man. This puts Hal on the spot, suspected by his superiors and targeted by Jimmy’s rivals, the Jamaican Rum Kings mob. Many people are shot.

Free the Lion (2011, Sony)
Billy Sliver (Matt Damon) is a low-level lawyer at Black and Black Co., hired off the unemployment line by CEO Dick Black (Michael Douglas). Sliver saves the CEO from jail on a technicality. Dick Black then tries to have Sliver killed since only he knows the truth, but his thugs only manage to get Sliver’s family killed. Sliver goes after Black for revenge. Even the New York Times called it a “big bucket of crap.”

Lady Mondegreen's revenge.

There's no excuse not to know the words anymore, is there? Or is there?

I confess that I am old enough to remember life before the Internet, children, when there were no lyrics sites to find out what the idiot on the radio was singing. If the album didn't come with lyrics written on the liner notes, as they usually did not, you had to take your best guess, rock singers not being known for their exacting pronunciation.

I recall many nights with the lads trying to resolve conflicts along these lines.

"Wait -- did he sing 'paperback' or 'paper bag'?"

"Paperback." 

"I heard paper bag."

"That can change the whole meaning of the verse. In one version he's reading and in the other he's sneaking alcohol."

"Let's listen to it again, loud and careful."

[rewind rewind rewind]

[listen listen listen]

"You're right, it's paper bag."

"I was gonna say it's paperback and you were right."

This kind of thing went on all the time.

So Mondegreens were plentiful back then, but we can't blame rock 'n roll entirely. In fact, the term dates back to 1954 and a reading of a 1765 poem from Thomas Percy.  Misheard lyrics even inspired not just one but two series of books, one by Gavin Edwards (example below) and one by Martin Toseland. There may be more.

But there's no excuse for this anymore, right? We have sites online like lyrics.com, azlyrics.com, lyricsfreak.com, and even -- if you must -- Google Play. So we can find out whether it's paperback or paper bag at the touch of a phone, right?

Well, yes, but that's no help when you're driving and singing along. Don't research and drive. Besides, you can't even trust the lyrics sites. How would they know the lyrics of a song if they've never been printed? Scouring the copyright offices? Nope. They just do the same thing you do -- make their best dumb guess.

I'll give you an example. Roy Wood with the Move wrote "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues," a great bluesy rocker with incomprehensible lyrics. Two different sites have two different lyrics for some of the lines, and they have lines written like "Along the western (middle?) line" and "Once on a time the...kids..." In other words, they couldn't decipher it either. Roy Wood is still around, but seems determined to take his secrets to the grave.

But I think my main problem is that, since childhood, whenever I could not quite understand what a lyric was, my mind would supply its own words, stupid as they might be. So I can read the correct lyrics of a song that I knew when I was 11, I can read them several times, but when I'm tooling around in my automobile and the song comes up, which do you think I'm going to remember? That's right, my own stupid version, complete with all the "mmuuhhh bluh blurg"s that cover the areas where I couldn't even make a poor guess what the words were.

So I guess Mondegreens will always be with us, or at least with me, because my brain is essentially gone. Or as Ozzy Osbourne sang in "Crazy Train":

Ankle ghouls still squeezing
Driving me insane
I'm goin' off the rails on a crazy train

(P.S.: Big No-Prize to whoever can guess the paperback / paper bag song.)

Black Sunday fell two days too soon?

Well, here it is, the day after Thanksgiving, and I hope you have not been trampled to death. If so, please inform me immediately, and I shall send my condolences to your next of kin.

The stores seem to invite this. What is a "doorbuster" if not an invitation to break in and grab everything? Like advertising for barbarians. This is the mall, not the Bastille. These stores are asking for trouble.

A few years ago on the old blog I christened the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as Puce Wednesday. I think my idea was that it would darken to a nice festive brown on Thursday and go all black for Friday. My original 2013 piece went down with the Blog.com Website, but I retained pictorial proof of the research I did on the rainy Wednesday before Thanksgiving at the Macy's mother ship in Herald Square:

Checkin' out the merch

After Friday we transfer out of the colors and straight into no-euphemism mercantilism. Saturday is Small Business Saturday, when we repent of buying stuff at Walmart and Target and buy from the local knuckleheads instead of national chain stores run by local knuckleheads. Monday of course is Cyber Monday, the day we shop at the office while we're supposed to be working. 

I guess we get Sunday off from shopping, maybe to digest leftovers. If you're so inclined, the first Sunday after Thanksgiving is often the First Sunday in Advent, but not in 2017; this year December has five Sundays, and Advent doesn't start until December 3.

So I guess that's our list of assignments for the weekend. Please be safe out there and don't put life and/or limb on the line for the sake of some bargain. Your people need you more than they need more stuff, no matter what your teenager may say.

(P.S.: Classic title reference -- hi, Stiiv!)

Another Thanksgiving miracle?

Today hundreds if not thousands of out-of-towners will descend on Manhattan to see giant balloons and Santa Claus and excerpts from Broadway shows written by twits all come schlepping down the avenue. I already did it this week.

When you're a freelancer you sometimes have to do weird things. I had to go to Manhattan to pay a fifteen-minute call on a client to satisfy Homeland Security by proving that I am not an illegal immigrant trying to steal American job. You know how in the wee hours of the morning trucks pull up to Staples and any illegal alien editors who want work for the day get on?

My job would likely be among the last that an illegal immigrant might be expected to do or perhaps want to do, but a broad brush paints all, I understand. I live quite a ways from town, though, so my morning was entirely spent traveling to midtown, turning around, and traveling home.

In the past I might have thought the trip a good excuse to do some Christmas shopping, or visit friends at work, or go get drunk in one of the congenial New York bars I used to visit. Now, though, I do most of my Christmas shopping online; my friends have mostly left the city and those who remain were busy or had already fled for the holiday; and I don't get drunk in strange places anymore. So, let's go home.

It had been a slight ordeal already. Since I didn't know how long I would be in town, I opted to drive down, park in the Secaucus Junction lot, and take the train in from there. Many of the trains in and out of Penn stop at Secaucus, so I could leave without having to wait around for ages for a bus or train all the way home. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea. But it rained all morning, making the drive treacherous, and in trying to find the fastest route to Secaucus station, Siri led me onto the wrong highway -- New Jersey has a few -- and instantly added 20 minutes to the trip. (Pro tip: Siri will sometimes tell you to stay in the right or middle or left lane and sometimes won't. You will need this information and will not always get it. How do you know when you need it? If you're on the wrong highway in rush hour traffic, you needed it.)

Then there was my Otterbox.

Secaucus Junction opened in 2003, and while it gets a lot of foot traffic from passengers making transfers from north-south trains to east-west trains, no one, unlike Penn and Grand Central, lives in it. So it's a lot cleaner than those train stations. Bear that in mind as I tell my tale of woe.

I was crossing the concourse, looking at the train schedule, absently tucking my phone in my shirt pocket, or where a pocket would have been if my shirt had had one. The phone smacked on the floor loudly and went sliding from an inadvertent kick from my shoe. Mind you, I've already lost one smartphone this year to phone droppage, and this trip of no billable hours was getting pricey enough already. Happily I saw the screen was intact as I scooped it off the floor and went on my way.

No sooner was I on a train to Penn Station when I realized that part of the case had not come with me. The Otterbox case for my iPhone comes in two parts, the back cover and the frame. The frame had come off on impact and vanished. Now this trip was costing me more than $38.50 (parking and train tickets) plus gasoline; it would cost another $30 or more for a new case. (I wasn't real mad, since I had caused the incident and the Otterbox had done what it was designed to do: protect the phone.)

So I got to midtown, walking past Macy's and all the scaffolding and lights set up for the big parade, had my meeting, turned around, walked back to Penn, and was back in Secaucus Junction 56 minutes later. And guess what was on the floor, right in the middle of the concourse? Yep, the Otterbox frame hadn't been touched! I snapped it back on and was on my way.

Another Thanksgiving miracle!

I'm grateful for everything on this day -- that I got my phone case back, that I took care of business, that I can deduct travel expenses from profits on my taxes, that I'm not starting the day with a screaming hangover, that I get to spend Thanksgiving with Mrs. Key, the sweetest sweetie I've ever known. And I'm grateful for you, dear reader, for stopping by my little establishment. Without you I'm just a grumpy nut mouthing off my to myself; with you I am a grumpy nut mouthing off to people. And that makes a world of difference.

Happy and blessed Thanksgiving to you and yours.

Vive lz Francz!

AP (Paris) -- Prime Minister of France Édouard Philippe stunned linguists, philologists, and middle-school students Tuesday by announcing that beginning in 2018, as a means of embracing "a more gender-fluid world," France would cease using masculine and feminine words. "From now on," said Philippe in a speech at National Assembly, "there will be no more masculine or feminine, just humanine."

According to the plan, which will be adopted by all government agencies beginning 1 January, the pronouns il and elle will be replaced by the non-gendered ull. The articles le and la will be replaced by lz. Likewise, all nouns -- which as in other Romance languages were categorized as either masculine or feminine and expressed in that way -- will have any gender-identifying letters replaced by gender-free letters, such as T. Some examples provided by M. Philippe's office include:

English / old French / new French

the author / le auteur / lz auteut

the fly / la mouche / lz moucht

the pipe / le tuyau / lz tuyaz

the fair / la foire / lz foirt

Some words will be shortened as well to make them unoffensive. Accordingly, the motto of France -- Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité -- will now be rendered as Libz + Egaliz, and Fraternity has been eliminated altogether.

Lz Tricoltz

Not all French are embracing the government's order, however. The Academie Française, long considered a bastion of language conservatism in France, has stated its opposition to the change, saying that "la langue française est d'une grande importance culturelle et ne peut être arrachée par des weenies bureaucratiques" ("the French language is of vast cultural importance, and cannot be wrenched about by bureaucratic weenies").

But the government has dismissed such complaints. A spokesperson said that people would see how much improved French was when everyone acclimated to it. Examples of new versions of famous French phrases were provided:

Original: Au long aller, peti fardeau pèse (On a lengthy journey even a small burden weighs)
New: Au long allt, petiz fardeau pez

Original: La vérité est dans la vin (There is truth in vine)
New: Lz véritt ez danz lz vin

Original: Je crains l'homme de un seul livre (Fear the man of one book)
New: Je craint lz personnz de ut seul livrt

Original: Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop (Chase away the natural and it returns at a gallop)
New: Chassz lz neuturel, ull revient au galop

Original: Cherchez la femme (Look for the woman)
New: Cherzchzt lz personnz

Original: Vive la différence! (Long live diversity)
New: Viv lz similitudt!

The spokesperson claimed that the only difference shown was in the new version, no one can be offended on the basis of gender or genders or lack thereof; "In fact," it went on to say, "with the new rules in place, it would be easy to imagine that France has no men whatever."

What I expect to hear on Friday.

H.R. Rough 'n stuff.

When my chums are down, you know what I like to tell them? I like to tell them, “Cheer up, chum! It could always be worse!” And they say, “No it can’t!” And then I punch them in the mouth and say, “See? Now it’s worse!”

Because indeed, no matter how bad something is, it can always be worse.

Take, for example, the children’s programs of my youth by those showbiz tycoons Sid and Marty Krofft. In the early 1970’s they produced a lot of bizarre TV shows for kids, and if you haven’t seen them there is very little I can say that would do justice to how weird they were.

Start with H.R. Pufnstuf. They made seventeen episodes of the show in 1969---I was astonished to find that that was all there ever were---and it stayed on TV in one form or another for the next FIFTEEN YEARS. See what you kids missed before everyone had cable? The show centered around a British boy on the brink of puberty and his magic flute that an evil witch was always trying to steal.

The boots really bring the outfit together.

And yet even this show could have been worse than it was. All of them could. Let’s see how:

Actual show: H.R. Pufnstuf

Jimmy is wrecked on Living Island, where an evil witch tries to steal his magic flute, Freddy. A friendly dragon helps protect Jimmy and tries to help get him back home.

Worse show: H.R. Freudnstuf

Norman is wrecked on Bates Island where an evil witch tries to steal his “magic flute.” A friendly, long, muscular, serpentine dragon tries to protect Norman and send him someplace other than home. (There is a dramatic scene halfway through the series where Witchiepoo has Norman injured and hanging from a tree, and then tells him, “Norman…I am your mother!”)

Actual show: Sigmund and the Sea Monsters

Two brothers harbor and must hide a friendly sea monster named Sigmund, separated from his family because he refuses to frighten humans.

Worse show: Sigmoid and the Pee Monsters

Two brothers deal with an anthropomorphic intestinal fluke who is always getting up their asses. Sigmoid’s family of urinary schistosomiases are always wrecking the plumbing.

Actual show: The Bugaloos

Harmony, I.Q., Courage, and Joy are the Bugaloos, a quartet of human winged insects who have a hippie rock band; they are opposed by Benita Bizarre, who lives in a giant jukebox and plays lousy music.

Worse show: The Bugaboos

Lowgiene, O.C.D., Manic, and Depressive are the Bugaboos, a quartet of human vermin who have a grunge rock band; they are opposed by Norma Normal, who lives on PBS and plays old rock reunion shows. Complimentary Peter, Paul, and Mary tote bag with a $100 donation!

Actual show: Lidsville

Teenage Mark falls into a magic hat and winds up in Lidsville, the land of living hats. The evil HooDoo tries to kidnap Weenie the Genie away from Mark, while the good hats try to help Mark get home.

Worse show: Libsville

College freshman Marq falls into a magic bong and winds up in Libsville, the land where Communism is still considered plausible. The evil TopHat Pennybags tries to kidnap Pepe the Proletarian away from Marq, while Ushanka, Chairman Meow Cap, and the other good hats try to export revolution to Marq’s home.

See? Like I said, anything can be worse. You can say that the worse versions of the shows could not have gotten on network TV---but I would add that network TV could have been worse than it was, too.

Hard to believe, I know.

It happens.

"Oh, Mom, you know what kids are like. She won't go anywhere without her bear."

What are we eating?

I do editing work when I'm not pounding away at the keyboard on my own stuff, and have become something of an expert on cookbooks. As I've noted before, cookbook writing and editing is a very specialized area with a lot of stylistic quirks, and a lot of copy editors won't touch them. But I will. Partly because I like to think about food.

I've recently done a few projects for a publisher that involved reader-submitted recipes. These were a particular chore from an editorial point of view, because the people sending these in are not familiar with the style guidelines (nor should they be expected to be), and thus the editors ought to have rewritten everything to fit the standards of the books. Ought to have.

But I learned a few things about food, and people, and I thought I might share my thoughts with you. So here are the top -- oh, shall we say 10? -- 10 things I learned doing cookbooks with recipes from the common folk.

1. You people love cheese. I mean you love cheese. These books had so much cheese in them that they should come with a bottle of Lipitor.  Even the chapters of vegetarian dishes and vegetable side dishes were loaded with cheese.

2. And not just cheese. "Cheese Product."

3. I'm glad to know some classic first names are still popular away from New York. People around here name their children Efram and Fisher and Cortlandt -- and that's just the girls. I'm glad that there are still Jans and Cathys and Jills out there. It feels like there's still a vast and untapped vein of sanity in the nation's culture.

4. And it's almost entirely Jans and Cathys and Jills who are sending in the recipes. Oh, you may get a Bob or a Jack somewhere in there, especially if there are sections on grilling, but by and large the women are still doing the cooking. I say with admiration for them, as a home cook myself, and just an observational thing. We're not judging here.

Maybe a little judging.

5. Before our Neighbors to the North get snooty on us: Canadians submitted a lot of recipes to these projects, identical in type and theme to those of the Americans. Kraft's Canadian site also features plenty of that you-know-what, and that's not all.

6. Many people are generally unclear at what constitutes a recipe. I blame the editors for this, really, as they often include things I would not. If your recipe starts with an ingredient that is itself a completed product, it doesn't really count, does it?

HOT SPICY PIZZA
Step one: Take 1 DeGiorno Pizza and bake according to package directions.
Step two: Add 1 tablespoon Tabasco.
Step three: Eat. 

See that? Not a recipe. I exaggerate a little for effect, but less than you might think.

I will grant that sometimes it's a judgment call. Using M&M's in a cookie recipe isn't the same as starting with a pre-made pizza. You don't have to make your own M&M's from scratch. You don't have to bake bread to have a slice in your meatloaf recipe. It's a clear distinction but maybe a little hard to articulate.

7. Everyone has a variation on the classics. Speaking of meatloaf. If you cook at home and you're an American and don't have some necessary or voluntary dietary restrictions, you probably make a meatloaf, a pasta sauce, a stew, a soup, a roast, and so on. The nation has bales of little faded cards with mushy corners and sauce stains that Grandma scribbled on sixty years ago. I think it's great.

8. There is a widespread belief that every dessert ought to be served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, even ice cream. I thoroughly endorse this plan.

9. America has some exceedingly comical town names. (You too, Canada.)

10. We eat well in America, even if the so-called elites and influencers freak out over what we eat. Well, screw 'em. Freedom of food choice is freedom. We didn't like the metric system so we said to hell with that, and we still do. We cook in cups and tablespoons, not grams and milliliters. Because we like it that way.

Enjoy yourself, America. Don't let anyone tell you what to do, in your kitchen or anywhere else. Even if it means eating Velveeta.

Apologizing for the topic.

No, seriously, I am already sorry, because today's topic involves these:

If you own a dog, you know exactly what these are for. If you dton't, you probably guessed.

We run through a lot of poop bags in our house, because a lot of things run through our dogs. Mostly, but not entirely, food things. So someone has to pick it up off the lawn, or in the park, or in the parking lot outside the PetSmart, or wherever. It's what responsible owners do. It's a gross and dispiriting work, so the poop bag manufacturers try to make the job Fun! and the finished product something you could actually look at. These bags came in a package set of colorful bag rolls -- there were light blue ones too, but we used them up first. My wife couldn't believe the pink one had little hearts.

So I pack up the poop and it goes into a sealed-tight drum in the backyard until trash day. Sometimes I have to leave the bags on the lawn until I can get them to the back, usually if I'm in a rush or if I have to get the younger dog in the house (if you take him in the back it's PLAYTIME and you'll be there for at least fifteen minutes). So as many as three or four could be sitting in the grass. When the bags are this colorful it looks like the Easter Bunny has paid us an unseasonal call and dropped off some gift bags. Yay! Easter Bunny!

Worse, though, was when I almost left some of the bags on the lawn on Halloween.

I mentioned a couple of weeks back that I am meticulous about clearing the lawn of poop on that day because I know little kids will be running straight across as a shortcut. Contrary to popular belief I am not so old that I want to a poo penalty for the kids who walk on my grass. But I did realize, with only  minutes to go before the first kids came a-schnorring, that there were some brightly colored mystery sacks on the grass by the walkway.

It played out quickly in my imagination.

"Hey, look! Goodie bags!"

"Oh, boy!"

Next morning. Early.

HAMMER ON THE DOOR

"Whuh?"

Angry Mom: "Just. What. The. HELL. Was THAT?"

"Wuz whuh?"

"The little DOG CRAP TRICK you pulled on MY KIDS!?"

"Whuuuuuh....?!"

POW (rolling pin, pepper spray, frying pan, you name it)

All that in mind, I motored.

So you see, there's a downside to bright, cheerful bags meant to contain excrement. Maybe we can all learn a lesson from this.

Rung-a-dung-dung.

I was listening to Mark Steyn’s podcasts about the songs of the great lyricist Sammy Cahn, who had more American standards than the Home Depot. Whoever you are, you've heard his songs, and you'll hear many again as Christmas approaches. “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head,” “Come Fly with Me,” “Come Dance with Me,” “High Hopes,” “Written on the Wind,” “My Kind of Town,” “Three Coins in the Fountain,” "Let It Snow," “Love and Marriage,” “The Christmas Waltz,” “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” "I've Heard That Song Before," “Call Me Irresponsible,” “It’s Magic,” “All the Way”---four Oscars among those and another 23 Oscar nominations, and those are only the songs used in the movies.

You’ll notice a lot of these were recorded by Sinatra, and Steyn makes the point that Cahn’s easy lyrical style was perfect for Sinatra’s ring-a-ding style, and did so much for what would be considered the Rat Pack lounge style.

One of the things Sinatra liked to do was sling nicknames at people in the Cahn songs of his Capitol Records days, and possibly in real life for all I know. For example, in “Come Blow Your Horn”:

You've got to sound your "A" the day you're born,
I tell ya, chum, it’s time to come blow your horn.

And in “The Boys’ Night Out”:

Hey there, buster, it’s the Injuns after Custer
It's the boys’ night out

And in “Love and Marriage”:

This I tell ya, brother,
You can't have one without the other.

And in “Come Dance with Me”:

Hey there, cutes, put on your dancin’ boots
And come dance with me

Sinatra would do that kind of thing with other songs not written by Cahn, things like taking the devoted “darling” out of Cole Porter and replacing it with the diminutive “baby.” I don’t want to read too much into it, but there’s a definite lack of respect being shown even to the supposed object of one’s affection.

Now, maybe some people like to be called chum or buster or cutes or sweetheart or chuckles, but it’s always struck me that Frankie and his admirers did it as a means of not having to learn your name, a prelude to his peeling a couple of bills from the roll and expecting you to roll over for him. Guys like that kind of thing when they’re the roll-holder, but let’s face it---most of us are the rolled.

It becomes more obvious if you just move the nicknames a little further down the scale of acceptability:

You've got to toot your flute the day you're born,
I tell ya, ho, it’s time to go blow your horn.

Hey there, schmuck, it’s the Injuns run amok
It's the boys’ night out

This I tell ya, stupid,
You can’t go running out on cupid

Hey there, fats, put on your dancin’ spats
And come dance with me

This is why, no matter how much I smoked and drank and wore sharp hats and chased after women, I was never asked to join the Rat Pack. I might have passed the physical but I’d have still washed out of basic.

Scrubbing history.

If you're old enough you might just know who these guys are. And if you do, and your brain works like mine (and you're not under medication yet), you might know what they have to do with Sprint and Verizon.

First, the easy stuff. This is an animation cel on sale at Etsy from an ad for S.O.S soap pads. For a while in the 1970s, S.O.S ran a series of commercials wherein its blue hero "Big Blue" combated "Pink Pad" (a not-even-barely-disguised Brillo pad) over whose soap held out longest. Pink Pad usually lost his pink soap after a single shot from a water pistol or the like. Blue Pad had no such difficulty. He had endurance. I wish I could post one of the old ads, but despite my belief that YouTube has everything, it doesn't have any of them.

S.O.S pads and Brillo pads, interestingly, emerged the same year in American history, 1917, as a pad made specially for use in scrubbing hard-to-clean pots and pans. (The last period in S.O.S was left off intentionally, Wikipedia tells us, so that the name could be trademarked.) In time a fierce battle arose over which steel wool pad would become the king of America's kitchen sinks. In 1967 (according to Betty Bock's 1968 edition of Mergers and Markets) the two brands accounted for 98.6% of the steel wool pad market. Families generally were loyal to one or the other, as they were to Coke or Pepsi, Tide or All, Hertz or Avis, Crest or Colgate. We were a Brillo family.

The S.O.S animated commercials were fun, and certainly caught the eye of any kids watching daytime TV (we were starved for cartoons). I have read that no less than Oscar winner Broderick Crawford himself did the voice of the pink pad. As he later said of all TV work: "To pay the rent and keep your face up there, you do TV. Hell, if they're stupid enough to pay you for that junk, that's their problem.''

I hated that my family's soap pad was being humiliated by that blue goon, though.

In time the ad campaign ended, and here's where things got odd. As part of his campaign to do anything for a buck, Broderick Crawford then made a TV ad for Brillo. He was seen in person scouring pots with Brillo, and heard saying, "Hi, I'm Brillo, the pink pad. You remember me from that -- blue pad commercial... Well, you haven't seen that commercial around much lately. That's because, due to a new Brillo formula, my soap now outlasts that blue pad's. And I couldn't say that on TV if it weren't true. So if that blue pad claims longer lasting soap than Brillo, don't you believe it!" (Thanks to American Radio History's archive of Broadcasting newsweekly for filling in all the blanks in my and my family's memory.)

Which brings me to Paul Marcarelli, the actor who for years played the Test Man for Verizon commercials and now plays, I don't know, Revenge Guy for Sprint commercials. It's a curious thing when commercial actors are turned loose and go after the competition. I wonder if Lily (Milana Vayntrub) from AT&T will wind up doing ads for Boost Mobile, or if Flo (Stephanie Courtney) will ever be tossed from Progressive and wind up making ads with that gekko. Could happen.

As for Brillo and S.O.S, despite being the biggest soap pads on the block, things have been challenging for those veritable brands since the 1970s. Miles Brands sold S.O.S to Clorox, and Brillo's parent company was bought by Dial, who sold it to Church & Dwight, who sold it to Armaly Brands. Store brands and other competitors have taken Big Blue and Pink Pad down a few pegs.

Will Sprint and Verizon wind up the same way? And what does this have to do with anything?

Beats me. I just love this stuff.