 |
| "Clark, you know we're so proud to have raised you as our own, and we're so happy you want to use your superpowers to help your adopted planet. But what your mother is trying to say is... the secret identity idea isn't working out." |
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Meanwhile, on Earth-70912...
Friday, August 30, 2019
The big weekend starts.
The chorus of moaning and wailing as New York kids go into the Last Weekend of Summer is almost deafening, but I shall try to work through the distraction.
As a matter of fact, I've been called on to work over the weekend, so I don't think I'm going to be enjoying it much myself. If I were getting time and a half or double time, I suppose I wouldn't mind so much. Ah, well, the life of the freelance editor...
Of course, in my first blush of youth it wasn't just school that started after Labor Day weekend. Everything started. The three networks -- and I suppose PBS, if you were some damn hippie -- began all their new shows, and there were new episodes of returning series. There was none of this staggered start stuff, where a few would begin in October and maybe even later. Hell, the least popular shows would be gone by Halloween.
New cars also appeared like magic, September being (at least to my kid eyes, seeing car commercials) when every car manufacturer released its new automobiles for the model year. That too no longer appears to be a hard and fast rule. Some come out earlier, some in the spring... was it always like this?
In a way, Labor Day was New Year's II: The Sequel, and in some ways even better. For a student, you were mired in the school year on January 1, so there was no point in vowing to do better. When you started a new grade in September, that's when you would be vowing to do better. Of course, like a bad TV show, that vow would also be gone by Halloween.
Another way Labor Day was better than New Year's was the weather. Coming off the summer heat and humidity in New York was almost like being released from a jail made of hot Jell-O. The very molecules of your body seemed to be free to move again, and move fast, especially if your back-to-school wardrobe included cool new sneakers.
And there were no new Saturday morning cartoons on New Year's Day.
Maybe the best part of Labor Day for a kid is that you have all the best holidays coming up in the next few months -- Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. At New Year's, they're all behind you, and you face a long slog just to get to adult-type holidays (MLK Day, Presidents Day, Valentine's [yuck!] Day)....
I'm glad that the actual calendar year starts in January for other reasons, but Labor Day is an excellent time to take stock and get busy. And isn't that what fresh starts are all about?
As a matter of fact, I've been called on to work over the weekend, so I don't think I'm going to be enjoying it much myself. If I were getting time and a half or double time, I suppose I wouldn't mind so much. Ah, well, the life of the freelance editor...
Of course, in my first blush of youth it wasn't just school that started after Labor Day weekend. Everything started. The three networks -- and I suppose PBS, if you were some damn hippie -- began all their new shows, and there were new episodes of returning series. There was none of this staggered start stuff, where a few would begin in October and maybe even later. Hell, the least popular shows would be gone by Halloween.
New cars also appeared like magic, September being (at least to my kid eyes, seeing car commercials) when every car manufacturer released its new automobiles for the model year. That too no longer appears to be a hard and fast rule. Some come out earlier, some in the spring... was it always like this?
In a way, Labor Day was New Year's II: The Sequel, and in some ways even better. For a student, you were mired in the school year on January 1, so there was no point in vowing to do better. When you started a new grade in September, that's when you would be vowing to do better. Of course, like a bad TV show, that vow would also be gone by Halloween.
Another way Labor Day was better than New Year's was the weather. Coming off the summer heat and humidity in New York was almost like being released from a jail made of hot Jell-O. The very molecules of your body seemed to be free to move again, and move fast, especially if your back-to-school wardrobe included cool new sneakers.
And there were no new Saturday morning cartoons on New Year's Day.
Maybe the best part of Labor Day for a kid is that you have all the best holidays coming up in the next few months -- Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. At New Year's, they're all behind you, and you face a long slog just to get to adult-type holidays (MLK Day, Presidents Day, Valentine's [yuck!] Day)....
I'm glad that the actual calendar year starts in January for other reasons, but Labor Day is an excellent time to take stock and get busy. And isn't that what fresh starts are all about?
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Pancakes... in a cup!
I have profiled many cereals in this blog, but this may be the strangest breakfast food product ever seen on Your Daily Dose of Vitamin Fred...
Pancakes in a cup!
I thought that this cardboard cup contained a flapjack mix, something that you'd combine with wet ingredients and pour onto the ol' griddle. But no -- you just add water or milk, stir, and microwave for a minute, and it becomes a pancake in a paper cup.
Those guys at Kodiak Cakes are weird, man,
When I realized what it was, of course I had to buy it. This breakthrough in breakfast technology demanded attention. Even Mr. Breakfast doesn't seem to have tested it. So I've stepped into the breach.
First you mix in a quarter of a cup of milk or water...
...then, as I said, nuke for a minute. About this time you're thinking this couldn't possibly work. But it totally does.
That is a microwave-baked good, pretty darn close to a real blueberry pancake, or at least a reasonable facsimile. I did add a little maple syrup, but you could eat it just as is. Make sure you stir it thoroughly in step 1, or you'll get bits of pancake mix at the bottom.
If you're craving pancakes, this is a good, fast way to ease the obsession; no one wants the mess of making the real thing to get one pancake. But it's just as easy and more pancake-like to zap some frozen pancakes. I think Kodiak is after the office eater, someone who can guesstimate a quarter cup volume and use the office microwave to nuke up breakfast. And the coworkers are not going to kvetch -- it made my whole kitchen smell like blueberry pancake. Hell, some people would wear that as a cologne.
The weird food geniuses at Kodiak, not content with inventing Cup-O-Pancake, also have oatmeal in a cup (of course), brownie in a cup (wacky), muffin in a cup (bizarre), and cornbread in a cup (bizarre and Southern). One has to wonder: Is pizza in a cup far behind?
Pancakes in a cup!
I thought that this cardboard cup contained a flapjack mix, something that you'd combine with wet ingredients and pour onto the ol' griddle. But no -- you just add water or milk, stir, and microwave for a minute, and it becomes a pancake in a paper cup.
Those guys at Kodiak Cakes are weird, man,
When I realized what it was, of course I had to buy it. This breakthrough in breakfast technology demanded attention. Even Mr. Breakfast doesn't seem to have tested it. So I've stepped into the breach.
First you mix in a quarter of a cup of milk or water...
...then, as I said, nuke for a minute. About this time you're thinking this couldn't possibly work. But it totally does.
If you're craving pancakes, this is a good, fast way to ease the obsession; no one wants the mess of making the real thing to get one pancake. But it's just as easy and more pancake-like to zap some frozen pancakes. I think Kodiak is after the office eater, someone who can guesstimate a quarter cup volume and use the office microwave to nuke up breakfast. And the coworkers are not going to kvetch -- it made my whole kitchen smell like blueberry pancake. Hell, some people would wear that as a cologne.
The weird food geniuses at Kodiak, not content with inventing Cup-O-Pancake, also have oatmeal in a cup (of course), brownie in a cup (wacky), muffin in a cup (bizarre), and cornbread in a cup (bizarre and Southern). One has to wonder: Is pizza in a cup far behind?
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Fred's Book Club: Hermit.
I thought we might try a new feature here on the ol' blogeroo, the Wednesday Fred's Book Club. Just a brief run-down of books I have read, whether I liked them or not. It does not require audience participation; there is no obligation to read a book, even if I go gaga over it like an idiot tween over an Auto-Tuned pop star. However, if you'd like more information, or want to weigh in on my selection, please pile on in comments.
Since I want to do this on Wednesdays, I'm calling this the Humpback Writers feature -- this does not indicate that any of our writers in fact have or had humps on their backs, nor are or were they ungulates in the Camelus family. Just that it's Hump Day, and here's a book, and a writer wrote it.
Our first selection is one that I have found very useful over the years:
Will Cuppy, book reviewer and humorist best remembered now for The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, published the helpful guide How to Be a Hermit in 1929. It was inspired by his time of living alone in a shack out on Jones's Island, which is what Jones Beach was before it became Jones Beach State Park under Robert Moses. He survived in solitude with his typewriter and his rowboat, with the help of his razor-sharp mind, his manly fortitude, and the Zach's Inlet Coast Guard Station, without whom he could not change the ribbon on his typewriter.
I love this book, and not just because of the strong urge I have sometimes to find a hole somewhere and pull it in after me. Cuppy's wit suffuses the whole thing, of course, and he has very helpful tips for the hermits among us (or should I say not among us). For example, here is Cuppy on...
Cleaning:
Organization:
Survival:
He also gives some helpful recipes for the nascent bachelor slob, such as for Poor Man's Duff and a marvelously complex sardine sandwich.
The book is available for free on Australia's Project Guternberg site, but of course you'll want your own physical copy to treasure and mark up and take with you where WiFi has no sway. Fortunately it is still in print and can be purchased online.
Sadly, Will Cuppy was forced off his island in the end as the state park was being constructed, and became a hermit instead on Manhattan, but it just wasn't the same. Happiness eluded him, and he died in 1949.
O Cuppy! O Humanity!
Since I want to do this on Wednesdays, I'm calling this the Humpback Writers feature -- this does not indicate that any of our writers in fact have or had humps on their backs, nor are or were they ungulates in the Camelus family. Just that it's Hump Day, and here's a book, and a writer wrote it.
Our first selection is one that I have found very useful over the years:
Will Cuppy, book reviewer and humorist best remembered now for The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, published the helpful guide How to Be a Hermit in 1929. It was inspired by his time of living alone in a shack out on Jones's Island, which is what Jones Beach was before it became Jones Beach State Park under Robert Moses. He survived in solitude with his typewriter and his rowboat, with the help of his razor-sharp mind, his manly fortitude, and the Zach's Inlet Coast Guard Station, without whom he could not change the ribbon on his typewriter.
I love this book, and not just because of the strong urge I have sometimes to find a hole somewhere and pull it in after me. Cuppy's wit suffuses the whole thing, of course, and he has very helpful tips for the hermits among us (or should I say not among us). For example, here is Cuppy on...
Cleaning:
My windows are something else again. Whoever built my house was an ardent advocate of those windows with twelve little panes of glass in each, and how he managed to get six windows into one small shack beats me. That makes seventy-two panes, all rattling at once. "They must be awfully hard to keep clean," a lady once observed, and I often wonder if she wasn't kidding me. It was the first time that aspect of the subject had occurred to your humble hermit. They must be, indeed. I must leave my readers to decide for themselves how I solve this part of my housecleaning problem.
Organization:
It may prove helpful, and the moral harm practically nil, to spend a part of each Sunday in searching for household necessities that have been lost in the shuffle. That's the one little weakness of the Cuppy Plan, you never know where the can-opener is. Short of attaching it to one's person with a piece of stout cord and dragging the rest of the essentials about on a leash, there is no way of getting around that sort of thing—you just have to put up with it. Why not make capital of this small fault? You need never subscribe to a memory strengthening course if you try to remember that the nail that pries open the pantry door is probably under the newspapers in the corner behind the stove, that the salt water soap doubtless got mixed up in the winter woolens and extra bedding on the tool chest (where it's as good as in a safe-deposit vault), that the review of J. S. Fletcher's latest must have blown out the window and that the Coast Guards borrowed the camphorated oil summer before last that time Comanche had the lumbago. I couldn't swear to where much of anything is in my house, but it's not as if I had spectacles to lose. I haven't the faintest where my dustrag is, and I care less. I haven't seen it in the last six months, and good riddance.
Survival:
Clothes, of course, one can't get away from. The weather being what it is, and it is certainly all of that, we of Great South Bay require a lot of good durable clothes; though, truth to tell, the changing fashions do not disturb us at all. Why should we be slaves to some dim arbiter in Paris, who couldn't tell a stiff gale from a cyclone? What do they know in Paris of the needs of High Hill Beach, Goose Crick and Crow Island? The hermit will do well to leave to the very last his pink pajamas, silk socks and suchlike, including first in his budget the best obtainable grade of hip boots, oilskins, flannel shirts and woolen breeches—that's where the money goes. And if the Rue de la Paix objects, he can tell the rue to lump it.
He also gives some helpful recipes for the nascent bachelor slob, such as for Poor Man's Duff and a marvelously complex sardine sandwich.
The book is available for free on Australia's Project Guternberg site, but of course you'll want your own physical copy to treasure and mark up and take with you where WiFi has no sway. Fortunately it is still in print and can be purchased online.
Sadly, Will Cuppy was forced off his island in the end as the state park was being constructed, and became a hermit instead on Manhattan, but it just wasn't the same. Happiness eluded him, and he died in 1949.
O Cuppy! O Humanity!
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Exploding with flavor!
My quest for a great sinus-clearing ginger beer continues, especially in light of the fact that I am not allowing myself the use of ibuprofen as an aid to allergy-related sinus headaches. With fall on the way, I anticipate more such attacks, and I want to be ready.
I've mentioned before how I learned that the potent ginger spice in ginger beer -- generally greater than that of ginger ale by an order of magnitude -- can act as an astringent on the tender tissues of the sinuses, relieving pressure. This is what I seek in ginger beer. Not for making Moscow Mules, although if your taste runs to that, go daddy go.
Well, a friend recommended Bundaberg, an Aussie brand. I found it in a local supermarket, and saw the price tag:
What's the word?
Bundaberg!
What's the price?
Three dollars twice! For a four-pack!
But by now I had become determined to find a ginger beer that would help me in my quest, so I bought it. It was on sale, anyhow.
Craft sodas, like craft beers, usually are worth the money if you want to splurge, and Bundaberg is a fine example. It has a rich taste, more layered and refined than other ginger drinks, and you can tell that the money is spent on production. It tastes good.
The only problems: It does not have that strong astringency that can clear my sinuses, and it has the explosion problem.
The bottles have a strange pop cap; each bottletop has its own pull tab, and you remove it in a two-step method, pulling the tab out and up. Or, if you follow the advice on the label and "invert bottle before opening," as I did, it can go off like a gunshot. It scared my wife and woke the dogs up from where they were keeping razor-sharp watch on the property. My wife was afraid I'd get a throat full of broken glass if I tried to drink it, but the glass was completely intact. When I tried to open the bottle without inverting it first, it was much calmer.
Ultimately, the Bundaberg not spicy enough for medicinal use, but my friend had warned me of that -- she's of Caribbean extraction and also suffers terribly from seasonal allergies.
So the quest continues. As I noted last time, ginger beer is Doctor-recommended! If I make any progress, I'll pull a Bundaberg cap off to alert everybody. You'll hear it.
I've mentioned before how I learned that the potent ginger spice in ginger beer -- generally greater than that of ginger ale by an order of magnitude -- can act as an astringent on the tender tissues of the sinuses, relieving pressure. This is what I seek in ginger beer. Not for making Moscow Mules, although if your taste runs to that, go daddy go.
Well, a friend recommended Bundaberg, an Aussie brand. I found it in a local supermarket, and saw the price tag:
What's the word?
Bundaberg!
What's the price?
Three dollars twice! For a four-pack!
But by now I had become determined to find a ginger beer that would help me in my quest, so I bought it. It was on sale, anyhow.
Craft sodas, like craft beers, usually are worth the money if you want to splurge, and Bundaberg is a fine example. It has a rich taste, more layered and refined than other ginger drinks, and you can tell that the money is spent on production. It tastes good.
The only problems: It does not have that strong astringency that can clear my sinuses, and it has the explosion problem.
The bottles have a strange pop cap; each bottletop has its own pull tab, and you remove it in a two-step method, pulling the tab out and up. Or, if you follow the advice on the label and "invert bottle before opening," as I did, it can go off like a gunshot. It scared my wife and woke the dogs up from where they were keeping razor-sharp watch on the property. My wife was afraid I'd get a throat full of broken glass if I tried to drink it, but the glass was completely intact. When I tried to open the bottle without inverting it first, it was much calmer.
Ultimately, the Bundaberg not spicy enough for medicinal use, but my friend had warned me of that -- she's of Caribbean extraction and also suffers terribly from seasonal allergies.
So the quest continues. As I noted last time, ginger beer is Doctor-recommended! If I make any progress, I'll pull a Bundaberg cap off to alert everybody. You'll hear it.
Monday, August 26, 2019
Poems for Monday.
📅
COUPLETS
The klaxon rings, down falls the dread
The sunset glow of weekend shred
The morning call to go to work
And answer to some dopey jerk
By dint of some seniority
Appointed my authority
LIMERICK
There once was a feller named Bundy
Said "I have no problem with Mundy
Or there would be no hitch
If we just made a switch
So that Tuesdy would follow the Sundy."
HAIKU
Morning bus is late
Traffic jam fills my Monday
Murder me now please
SONNET
This Monday causes great distress, I fear
The Ferguson report is overdue
I open my Excel sheet with a tear
The data blur, I haven't got a clue
Vice presidents await this numbered chart
To crunch and chew the figures I present
And yet I feel so deeply in my heart
My figures will be battered, bruised, and rent
Alas! The wheat from overseas is chaff
And trade wars, threats, and tariffs overcome
The best I can compile on this graph
Can't fail to make our CEO look dumb
I fear the officers must then save face
By dumping blame upon my humble place
FREE VERSE
YOU SUCK MONDAY
EAT my PANTS
GO AWAY and DIE
and TAKE WEDNESDAY WITH YOU JUST
BECAUSE
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Toilet day.
Saturday was one of the most spectacular days of the summer here in the jolly old Hudson Valley, and I spent the day cleaning toilets.
Welcome to suburbia!
To be accurate, there were other household jobs on the agenda, as well as a short piece I'd promised to check out for a client (twenty bucks is twenty bucks). But if I lived in an apartment in the city, jammed in with my wife and one minuscule bathroom, I'd have been done with everything in two hours. Then I'd have been free to... go where?
To the park? But everyone would have been in the park.
To the beach? Everyone else would have been at the beach.
To my cabin in the country? Where I could clean that toilet.
If living in the city is so awesome, why are there such ferocious traffic jams to get out on Friday nights and to get back in on Sunday nights, especially in the summer?
If I lived in a small apartment in the city again, we would not have our big hairy hounds. We might have a small yappy thing that would annoy the neighbors, who would express their displeasure by banging on walls, floor, and ceiling. And if I lived in a small apartment with a minuscule bathroom, I might be divorced by now. When young people ask me the secret to our long marriage, I tell them: separate bathrooms.
Well, I would tell them that if they ever asked.
So many slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are out of our control, the things that can ruin a relationship, but if you never have to share a bathroom, you have one major irritant off the table.
This would be clear to most men married to women, I think. Women's beauty and health products have a tendency to expand to fill the amount of space available, a trick that happens to many possessions but not nearly as fast. Further, couples may have strong and yet differing opinions on what constitutes cleanliness or neatness, and that disagreement reaches its apex at the bathroom. Finally, we have the issue of the bathroom's importance in preparing to leave the house, added to the fact that -- as the memes say -- "five minutes" to a woman means the last five minutes in an NFL game where both teams have all their time-outs. Anyone can see how this leads to annoyance and frustration.
But that's enough about toilets.
Ultimately I took some time Saturday to sit on the porch with the dogs, to bark at any kids coming down the block. The dogs had something to say about them, too. I wasn't kayaking down the rapids or biking up a wall or climbing a mountain in my skivvies or paragliding over a volcano or surfing upside down or anything else that active life-loving people are supposed to do to prove how awesome they are, but you know what? I'm glad I have a porch. I'm glad I have these big, often annoying dogs. And I'm glad I have a bathroom of my own to hide in.
Welcome to suburbia!
To be accurate, there were other household jobs on the agenda, as well as a short piece I'd promised to check out for a client (twenty bucks is twenty bucks). But if I lived in an apartment in the city, jammed in with my wife and one minuscule bathroom, I'd have been done with everything in two hours. Then I'd have been free to... go where?
To the park? But everyone would have been in the park.
To the beach? Everyone else would have been at the beach.
To my cabin in the country? Where I could clean that toilet.
If living in the city is so awesome, why are there such ferocious traffic jams to get out on Friday nights and to get back in on Sunday nights, especially in the summer?
If I lived in a small apartment in the city again, we would not have our big hairy hounds. We might have a small yappy thing that would annoy the neighbors, who would express their displeasure by banging on walls, floor, and ceiling. And if I lived in a small apartment with a minuscule bathroom, I might be divorced by now. When young people ask me the secret to our long marriage, I tell them: separate bathrooms.
Well, I would tell them that if they ever asked.
So many slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are out of our control, the things that can ruin a relationship, but if you never have to share a bathroom, you have one major irritant off the table.
This would be clear to most men married to women, I think. Women's beauty and health products have a tendency to expand to fill the amount of space available, a trick that happens to many possessions but not nearly as fast. Further, couples may have strong and yet differing opinions on what constitutes cleanliness or neatness, and that disagreement reaches its apex at the bathroom. Finally, we have the issue of the bathroom's importance in preparing to leave the house, added to the fact that -- as the memes say -- "five minutes" to a woman means the last five minutes in an NFL game where both teams have all their time-outs. Anyone can see how this leads to annoyance and frustration.
 |
| Not to mention the Carpeted Bowl issue. |
Ultimately I took some time Saturday to sit on the porch with the dogs, to bark at any kids coming down the block. The dogs had something to say about them, too. I wasn't kayaking down the rapids or biking up a wall or climbing a mountain in my skivvies or paragliding over a volcano or surfing upside down or anything else that active life-loving people are supposed to do to prove how awesome they are, but you know what? I'm glad I have a porch. I'm glad I have these big, often annoying dogs. And I'm glad I have a bathroom of my own to hide in.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Friday, August 23, 2019
NOOOO!
I saw this in Dunkin' Donuts (still not giving up the Donuts part of the name) and it shook me with dread:
Pumpkin coffee is back! It's Halloween time! In August!
But then I was in the ol' wholesale club the next day and I saw THIS, lurking above:
NOOOOOOOOOOO!
I swear to God, I feel like I just was making cookies with Prep & Landing on the TV a week ago. I know time gets faster as you get older -- just as the roll of toilet paper goes faster the closer it gets to the cardboard -- but this is ridiculous. And yes, all these Christmas goodies were up on high shelves, wrapped with plastic... but still. Christmas in August.
Now, I have to admit that the pumpkin spice thing isn't that far off, it being less than two weeks until Labor Day and the unofficial start of autumn. In New York, at least, Labor Day = school = fall. Yes, we will have three more weeks of summer, but the equation is ironclad: Labor Day = school = fall. So pumpkin spice stuff is not totally out of line.
But we are only two thirds of the way through the year at the end of August. Unless we are in the business of manufacturing holiday stuff, we should be safe from all external signs of Christmas this early. I do magazine work, and yes, it's Christmas-minded already. But having it in my face like this at a retail establishment gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Obviously none of that stuff was for sale yet; it was just sitting there, getting ready. And to be fair, in a warehouse club, where else are they supposed to put it? The place is a warehouse!
I don't know. I just can't take it. You all know how much I love Christmas. But I can't bear to think of it yet, nor of the miserable winter that lies on the other side of that fence. It's a Christmas nightmare, I tell ya, worse than Ebeneezer's. Make it go away!
Pumpkin coffee is back! It's Halloween time! In August!
But then I was in the ol' wholesale club the next day and I saw THIS, lurking above:
NOOOOOOOOOOO!
I swear to God, I feel like I just was making cookies with Prep & Landing on the TV a week ago. I know time gets faster as you get older -- just as the roll of toilet paper goes faster the closer it gets to the cardboard -- but this is ridiculous. And yes, all these Christmas goodies were up on high shelves, wrapped with plastic... but still. Christmas in August.
Now, I have to admit that the pumpkin spice thing isn't that far off, it being less than two weeks until Labor Day and the unofficial start of autumn. In New York, at least, Labor Day = school = fall. Yes, we will have three more weeks of summer, but the equation is ironclad: Labor Day = school = fall. So pumpkin spice stuff is not totally out of line.
But we are only two thirds of the way through the year at the end of August. Unless we are in the business of manufacturing holiday stuff, we should be safe from all external signs of Christmas this early. I do magazine work, and yes, it's Christmas-minded already. But having it in my face like this at a retail establishment gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Obviously none of that stuff was for sale yet; it was just sitting there, getting ready. And to be fair, in a warehouse club, where else are they supposed to put it? The place is a warehouse!
I don't know. I just can't take it. You all know how much I love Christmas. But I can't bear to think of it yet, nor of the miserable winter that lies on the other side of that fence. It's a Christmas nightmare, I tell ya, worse than Ebeneezer's. Make it go away!
Thursday, August 22, 2019
It's Thursday!
A friend of mine, who has worked in Manhattan since he was a mere barefoot boy with cheek of tan, running about from client to client, told us about a day he was happening along a busy thoroughfare when he saw a cardboard box on the sidewalk. As he drew near, a homeless gentleman popped out of the box and proclaimed, "It's Thursday!"
Now, you may have some questions, as we did:
1) Was it indeed Thursday? (It was.)
2) Was this some kind of calendar service he provided in hopes of getting spare change? (It did not appear so.)
3) Were there seven boxes along the sidewalk, each with its own friendly indigent, ready to proclaim the day of the week on his appointed day? (There were not.)
4) Did our jack-in-the-box seem happy, like he was glad the weekend was coming and he could take a break from his busy schedule? (That would be pure supposition.)
5) Was it my friend's appearance on that street that prompted the declaration of the day, as if the man were lying in wait for such a thing?
(No, there were many pedestrians going to and fro.)
6) Did my friend know that it was Thursday, or was this angel-in-a-box sent to remind him of a crucial appointment by telling him the day? (He did know, and it was no help.)
7) After the proclamation, did the man stay out and wait for applause, slink back in his box, or what? (My friend sped up his pace and does not know.)
So many questions, and yet the answers fail to satisfy.
That was decades ago, and probably every Thursday morning since I have greeted the day in my own mind by thinking, or saying aloud, or telling the dogs, "It's Thursday!"
I sometimes think too of the strange man whose message of the day impressed even those of us who never had the chance to see him. I hope he got free from whatever problems put him in that box, and retired somewhere for quiet contemplation, thinking of the Fourth Day in Genesis, where God separated the Light from the Darkness. Or just looking forward to the weekend.
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Super water!
Okay, so this was stupid, but I got it anyway. There's a reason.
Yes, kids, you too can enjoy a refreshing bottle of water with your favorite DC heroes! Sort of. Don't worry about Superman being neglected; he's on the other side of this package. You fans of Deadman or Brother Power the Geek are out of luck, though.
When you take out a bottle of water, it at first looks like a pretty common plastic bottle, designed at appeal to the little ones.
Or perhaps it's designed to appeal to supervillains, who can act demonstrate what they will do to the heroes when their master plans get into action:
 |
| "I WILL CRUSH YOU, CAPED CRUSADER!" |
A couple of things to note -- this package featured four different heroes on the packaging, but only three different heroes in the six pack. The total count was one Superman, two Batmans, and three REAL Captain Marvels. (Don't you dare call him "Shazam!".) I guess they are assigned randomly to the packages, but it's like a male chauvinist six pack. Woe betide the Wonder Woman fan who bought one like it, such as the many Lynda Carter devotees on the Great Lileks's comments page! Moreover, shouldn't water bottles have an Aquaman selection? The guy did have a big hit movie.
Missing a Wonder Woman meant I couldn't test her light-up logo feature. Oh, yes, this is a bottle gimmick. You can shine a flashlight through one side of the bottle, and the logo shines out the other side.
Two caveats: You have to drink the water first, or the logo is a shimmery blob; and you have to use a very small light to get any kind of definition from the logo. Coincidentally, your smartphone has a flashlight that works perfectly!
 |
| Superman is a little blurry, but it's clear. |
 |
| The Bat-Signal! |
 |
| Captain Marvel? Flash? Gatorade? Reddy Kilowatt? He never did have the most distinctive symbol. |
The bottles are overpriced, of course, but may get your kid -- or your middle-aged man -- to drink enough water to stay hydrated in these hot weeks. After all, how are we supposed to fight crime thirsty?
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Look out, kids!
It's funny -- as we get closer to the start of a new school year, the topic has come up more and more in my circle about the memories we adults have about the end of summer break and the return to classrooms, books, and teacher's dirty looks. What's funny is, most everyone I spoke with, from all walks of life, remembers being excited for the first day of school. Mileage varied considerably for how long the excitement lasted beyond that first day.
A few weeks ago, duty called on me to be in the halls of a public school a few towns over (long story), and I have to say, they always kinda look the same. Weird sloping halls, moisture on every surface as if the building itself is sweating it out, and predominance of Municipal Beige (I believe that is a Glidden color).
The best part of getting ready for the start of school was the stocking up of supplies. This was probably true for every year of my schooling until college, when "supplies" could include "textbooks that cost more than my first car." Then, not so fun.
I would fall under crushing boredom as August waned, and that could make September look more welcoming -- as did the triple H of August in the city. These days I struggle to remember what it was like being bored. If I ever have nothing to do now, I take a nap. Yay, naps! Back then, naps were for babies. Boo, naps!
My memories of the actual first day of the school year are pretty scant. I remember a few of them, some curious, some happy, some terrifying. I probably remember the first day of kindergarten the most, in that scary school with the tremendous fifth-graders who, I secretly believed, wanted nothing more than to beat kindergartners into paste for laughs. Man, I coulda used a drink that first day, amirite?
New schools were always a problem. Either I knew some kids from the last school and we were all in for a rude awakening (entering middle school was like running with glee and sliding into a long cheese grater) or I knew no one and was thus an outcast.
College was better because everyone was trying to be an adult and no frosh knew anyone else anyway. But the pressure to not screw up was very strong.
I remember a lot of teachers fondly, and a few school events, but I seldom think about school much anymore. I know I learned a lot, and even the things I've forgotten at least gave my brain some sharpening in the formative years (anyone for quadratic equations?). But I don't remember the annual return to school as well as I would have expected to.
How about you? Any years that stand out?
Monday, August 19, 2019
Not Fredo Key.
Of course I dislike the fact that the weakest, stupidest character in the Godfather movies is named Fred, and now the dumbest idiot in TV news has been named for him as well. It's another black eye for Freds.
I don't wish to recount the whole Fredo incident, where CNN host Chris Cuomo threatened violence against a live troll who used the term "Fredo" toward him as an insult. You've probably heard the story, wondered why a TV personality who supports a brutish masked gang can't handle a little name-calling. But I'm just looking at the cultural issues.
The question that struck some people who were not Chris Cuomo's supporters is whether using the term "Fredo" is ethnic slur on Italians. At first, I said no. After all, George W. Bush was tagged as the Fredo of the Bush family, when people thought his dad, who couldn't beat a womanizing goober for reelection, was the Don, and Jeb, who looked hapless and anti-Republican in a national campaign, was the Michael. So no, the term is used to insult non-Italians too.
Then again, it does specifically attack a character who was the dumbest brother in an Italian family, and specifically a crooked Italian family. Which would mean that calling Chris Cuomo "Fredo" is like calling him not just an idiot, but the idiot in a family of ruthless Italian criminals. I suppose that's what he was trying to say when he wanted to make it into a racial epithet (although as far as I know, "Italian" is not a race). It would make his late father, Mario, the former governor of New York, into the Don, and his brother Andrew, the current governor of New York, into the Michael. And all of them into thugs. I don't really think that the Cuomo political family are more (or that much more) crooked than any other New York political family, but that is an exceptionally low bar for good behavior.
Readers of this blog may know that I have nothing but contempt for Andrew, a wicked, wicked man who thinks he is some kind of hero, and who seriously may have been the one person most responsible for the world economic crisis of the late 2000s. But put him aside for now -- please. The question is, should any Italian be angry at being compared to the Corleones? And this is where it gets sticky.
I would say that Godfather references are a slur on Italians, except for one thing: I grew up in working-class New York City surrounded by Italians, going to a high school dominated by Italians, and they almost universally loved the Godfather movies, had no problem with organized crime in the city, and did things like sell illegal fireworks (through order forms) and run betting slips right in school. It wasn't the Irish kids, the Jewish kids, or the approximately four black kids doing these things.
Was this all of the Italians I knew? Of course not. One of my best friends was an Italian nerd who had nothing to do with anything illicit and thought the Godfather was operatic nonsense. But I didn't know a single one of them to say anything like Gee, those mob movies are painting us in a bad light. The ones who expressed an opinion liked that the films made Italian people looked scary, liked looking powerful. It was certainly better than looking like Hitler's Fredo during World War II.
That's why Goodfellas was to me a great curative -- because it showed what low, mean, often psychotic creeps mobsters are, and how they completely ruin the lives of innocent people who get in their way. All that honor and family bull from the Corleones was nowhere to be seen. At its heart it is the anti-Godfather, and good for it. Were it taken seriously, and the facts behind the story grasped, it would do to mobsters what the Superman radio show did to the Klan -- make it clear that being involved in these things was for creeps and losers. It might also get the point across to people that lawlessness results in what Richard Fernandez recently called "a low-trust society where nobody can rely on the formal rules and reliance is placed on nepotism, tribalism, personal loyalty, and threats to transact business at all."
There is one important thing that Godfather II and Goodfellas have in common: Fredo would have gotten murdered in both of them for being an idiot. Stupid is as stupid does, as another nineties movie taught us.
(In a side note, John Cazale, who played Fredo Corleone, only made five feature films in his short life, and in back-to-back years his character gets shot to death while doing things according to Al Pacino's plans. Weird.)
I don't wish to recount the whole Fredo incident, where CNN host Chris Cuomo threatened violence against a live troll who used the term "Fredo" toward him as an insult. You've probably heard the story, wondered why a TV personality who supports a brutish masked gang can't handle a little name-calling. But I'm just looking at the cultural issues.
The question that struck some people who were not Chris Cuomo's supporters is whether using the term "Fredo" is ethnic slur on Italians. At first, I said no. After all, George W. Bush was tagged as the Fredo of the Bush family, when people thought his dad, who couldn't beat a womanizing goober for reelection, was the Don, and Jeb, who looked hapless and anti-Republican in a national campaign, was the Michael. So no, the term is used to insult non-Italians too.
Then again, it does specifically attack a character who was the dumbest brother in an Italian family, and specifically a crooked Italian family. Which would mean that calling Chris Cuomo "Fredo" is like calling him not just an idiot, but the idiot in a family of ruthless Italian criminals. I suppose that's what he was trying to say when he wanted to make it into a racial epithet (although as far as I know, "Italian" is not a race). It would make his late father, Mario, the former governor of New York, into the Don, and his brother Andrew, the current governor of New York, into the Michael. And all of them into thugs. I don't really think that the Cuomo political family are more (or that much more) crooked than any other New York political family, but that is an exceptionally low bar for good behavior.
Readers of this blog may know that I have nothing but contempt for Andrew, a wicked, wicked man who thinks he is some kind of hero, and who seriously may have been the one person most responsible for the world economic crisis of the late 2000s. But put him aside for now -- please. The question is, should any Italian be angry at being compared to the Corleones? And this is where it gets sticky.
I would say that Godfather references are a slur on Italians, except for one thing: I grew up in working-class New York City surrounded by Italians, going to a high school dominated by Italians, and they almost universally loved the Godfather movies, had no problem with organized crime in the city, and did things like sell illegal fireworks (through order forms) and run betting slips right in school. It wasn't the Irish kids, the Jewish kids, or the approximately four black kids doing these things.
Was this all of the Italians I knew? Of course not. One of my best friends was an Italian nerd who had nothing to do with anything illicit and thought the Godfather was operatic nonsense. But I didn't know a single one of them to say anything like Gee, those mob movies are painting us in a bad light. The ones who expressed an opinion liked that the films made Italian people looked scary, liked looking powerful. It was certainly better than looking like Hitler's Fredo during World War II.
That's why Goodfellas was to me a great curative -- because it showed what low, mean, often psychotic creeps mobsters are, and how they completely ruin the lives of innocent people who get in their way. All that honor and family bull from the Corleones was nowhere to be seen. At its heart it is the anti-Godfather, and good for it. Were it taken seriously, and the facts behind the story grasped, it would do to mobsters what the Superman radio show did to the Klan -- make it clear that being involved in these things was for creeps and losers. It might also get the point across to people that lawlessness results in what Richard Fernandez recently called "a low-trust society where nobody can rely on the formal rules and reliance is placed on nepotism, tribalism, personal loyalty, and threats to transact business at all."
There is one important thing that Godfather II and Goodfellas have in common: Fredo would have gotten murdered in both of them for being an idiot. Stupid is as stupid does, as another nineties movie taught us.
(In a side note, John Cazale, who played Fredo Corleone, only made five feature films in his short life, and in back-to-back years his character gets shot to death while doing things according to Al Pacino's plans. Weird.)
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Smile, bake, be killed in nasty ways.
[There may be a spoiler below, so if you've been living in a cave for twenty years and are just coming around to the works of J. K. Rowling, be warned.]
I took one of those silly online quizzes -- you know, the kind that show you Which Character from The Office You Are, or Which Pop-Tart You Are, or Which Element on the Periodic Table You Are. ("You're ZINC!")
In this case it was EW's Which Harry Potter House Am I In? Not the kind of thing I would normally do, but my wife took it and got Gryffindor, so I wanted to see if she'd date me if we were at Hogwarts.
Not a chance. I got Hufflepuff.
I've seen some of the films more than once, but only read the series one time, and yet I think it's fair to say that Hufflepuff, while generally composed of good guys, is the most useless student house in the Potter universe. One gets the impression of friendly, huggy kids who aim to please, bake cookies just because, and are the first to get it in the neck when the Death Eaters walk in.
My wife said I was being silly. I asked her to name a big-time Hufflepuff character.
"Cedric Diggory!" she said.
"Who grabs the Triwizard Cup Portkey and is immediately blasted to death!"
"Well... yeah."
He never had a chance. Unlike Harry, who went with him, Cedric landed right in front of the enemy and blammo! Gone. His tomb probably read "He Never Knew What Hit Him," like half the tombs in Hufflepuff Cemetery. (The other half say "She Never Knew What Hit Her.")
Other key Hufflepuffs mentioned in the series include magic plant lady Pomona Sprout and house ghost Fat Friar, two names that surely struck terror in the hearts of evildoers.
Everyone knows that all the action in the school is between Slytherin (boo!) and Gryffindor (yay!) anyway, and the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws are just NPCs. At least the Ravenclaws have a reputation for being smart and witty. Hufflepuffs just have a reputation for being nice. It's the only house with a mascot that's a fuzzy animal. The others get a lion or a snake or an eagle. Hufflepuff gets a badger. Now, I know that badgers can fight if they have to, but they're not one of nature's scariest animals, unless you're an earthworm. It's not even a honey badger, which had a brief vogue as the Chuck Norris of badgers. Hufflepuff has just a plain English badger.
The worst thing is, I know I'm a Hufflepuff at heart. I like being nice to people, at least giving them the benefit of the doubt, and I dislike anger and fighting. I like baking. I'm hosed.
The old Sorting Hat supposedly takes into account the desires of the student, but that wouldn't help a bit.
"All right, Freddy, put on the hat."
I am strong I am brave I am smart please please Gryff--
"HUFFLEPUFF!"
Bastard hat.
I wondered after taking the test if anyone would be honest enough to get Slytherin. The quiz answers were not phrased like "Do you want to take over the world?" or "Do you like subjugating inferiors?" but rather more along the lines of being sharply goal-oriented and not suffering fools gladly. Even then it is plain which answers would lead to Slytherin. The thing is, in real life, most Slytherins in high social situations (like an important school admission) can cover up their evil intentions very well. How could they not? Lying and deception are two traits that the evil love best. You may not be able to fool the Sorting Hat, but you can surely fool EW.
Just don't let them into Hufflepuff, okay? They'd probably burn our cookies just for fun, and we would get the sads. 😢
I took one of those silly online quizzes -- you know, the kind that show you Which Character from The Office You Are, or Which Pop-Tart You Are, or Which Element on the Periodic Table You Are. ("You're ZINC!")
In this case it was EW's Which Harry Potter House Am I In? Not the kind of thing I would normally do, but my wife took it and got Gryffindor, so I wanted to see if she'd date me if we were at Hogwarts.
Not a chance. I got Hufflepuff.
My wife said I was being silly. I asked her to name a big-time Hufflepuff character.
"Cedric Diggory!" she said.
"Who grabs the Triwizard Cup Portkey and is immediately blasted to death!"
"Well... yeah."
He never had a chance. Unlike Harry, who went with him, Cedric landed right in front of the enemy and blammo! Gone. His tomb probably read "He Never Knew What Hit Him," like half the tombs in Hufflepuff Cemetery. (The other half say "She Never Knew What Hit Her.")
Other key Hufflepuffs mentioned in the series include magic plant lady Pomona Sprout and house ghost Fat Friar, two names that surely struck terror in the hearts of evildoers.
Everyone knows that all the action in the school is between Slytherin (boo!) and Gryffindor (yay!) anyway, and the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws are just NPCs. At least the Ravenclaws have a reputation for being smart and witty. Hufflepuffs just have a reputation for being nice. It's the only house with a mascot that's a fuzzy animal. The others get a lion or a snake or an eagle. Hufflepuff gets a badger. Now, I know that badgers can fight if they have to, but they're not one of nature's scariest animals, unless you're an earthworm. It's not even a honey badger, which had a brief vogue as the Chuck Norris of badgers. Hufflepuff has just a plain English badger.
The worst thing is, I know I'm a Hufflepuff at heart. I like being nice to people, at least giving them the benefit of the doubt, and I dislike anger and fighting. I like baking. I'm hosed.
The old Sorting Hat supposedly takes into account the desires of the student, but that wouldn't help a bit.
"All right, Freddy, put on the hat."
I am strong I am brave I am smart please please Gryff--
"HUFFLEPUFF!"
Bastard hat.
I wondered after taking the test if anyone would be honest enough to get Slytherin. The quiz answers were not phrased like "Do you want to take over the world?" or "Do you like subjugating inferiors?" but rather more along the lines of being sharply goal-oriented and not suffering fools gladly. Even then it is plain which answers would lead to Slytherin. The thing is, in real life, most Slytherins in high social situations (like an important school admission) can cover up their evil intentions very well. How could they not? Lying and deception are two traits that the evil love best. You may not be able to fool the Sorting Hat, but you can surely fool EW.
Just don't let them into Hufflepuff, okay? They'd probably burn our cookies just for fun, and we would get the sads. 😢
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Friday, August 16, 2019
Gotta have my Pops!
Sometimes you fall into a topic and it just sticks to you, or perhaps I should say sticks to the roof of your mouth. I am surprised to note that I've addressed the topic of breakfast cereals so many times that this is the third time I'm writing about the subtopic of peanut butter flavored cereals. But that's where we are.
In 2018 I wrote about Reese's Puffs, a General Mills cereal based on the popular peanut butter cups. I liked it, and said it was not overly sweet, being basically Reese's-flavored Kix. Then, this past June, I reviewed Post's Nutter Butter cereal, which was not as good, having lame taste and poor consistency. I ate it, of course, but I didn't like it. I also mentioned in that review the late and somewhat lamented JIF peanut butter cereal by Kellogg's.
Now we have this, also from Kellogg's:
Corn Pops were introduced in 1950, became Sugar Corn Pops in 1951, Sugar Pops later, back to Sugar Corn Pops in 1978, and back to Corn Pops in 1984, according to Dr. Wikipedia. This new variation adds the flavors of chocolate and peanut butter to the mix.
I was hesitant to try it. I'd never really been a Corn Pops kid growing up. I don't know why. The cereal has always had good slogans.
I did have a lame (for a little kid) mascot for a while, using a real-life cowboy instead of a possibly-insane leprechaun or toucan or ship's captain or tiger or something loopy like that. Eventually they brought on a wacky cowboy with a huge yellow hat, but that's another story.
I always thought Corn Pops were just okay, not exciting. But I eat a lot of foods nowadays that my young self would have felt were gross or boring, so what the hey -- let's try 'em.
Verdict: Good!
Chocolate Peanut Butter Corn Pops are not too sweet, but definitely have good chocolate and PB flavors. It's a very dry cereal, though, and better in milk than just out of the box. But if these are the flavors you want at breakfast, I say go for it.
This cereal is so new that Mr. Breakfast's Cereal Project hasn't even reviewed it as of this writing. I'm ahead of the curve!
So I recommend it, at least if you're a fan of Corn Pops or peanut butter and chocolate. I guess it comes down to, as Lincoln never said, that people who like this sort of thing will find this to be the sort of thing they like -- but in a way, isn't that true for everything?
Thursday, August 15, 2019
A genuine pain in the butt.
I am not sure what I did -- I didn't fall, I didn't trip, I didn't get thrown into the legendary ass-kicking contest that so many busy one-legged men enjoy -- but I had a bad pain in my back that was located a good deal lower than usual, in the posterior area. If I had to put it on the Pain Scale, I think it would be a 7, maybe 7.5. Bad enough to cause a terrible night of sleep; bad enough to guarantee that Uncle Joe could beat me handily in a 100-yard dash.
I've had a tooth extracted, and I went through a period of really awful backaches; those were the only cases where I was in as much pain as I was on Tuesday night. (A friend of mine recently said that it's amazing how much the human back can hurt without actually killing you.)
The pain had been on me for a bit, but was hardly more than a minor nuisance. Monday it was worse, and Tuesday it felt like a nasty little devil was jabbing a red-hot poker into my butt cheek. The only thing I did that could have brought it on was a volunteer gig on Saturday that required me to stand up for four hours. I'm normally one of nature's sit-down type workers.
Next year: folding chair.
My wife -- I think correctly -- says it stems from an old disk injury, and will probably go away soon enough with the proper treatment. Rest, heat, mild stretches, and lots and lots of ibuprofen.
There was just one problem -- I'm off ibuprofen.
"WHAT?!" you say, knowing as you do that I have led the campaign to get a posthumous Nobel awarded to Stewart Adams, the brilliant chemist who created ibuprofen, who passed away in January at the tender age of 95. But sadly, I have to find out whether Advil has been causing my hearing issues.
Long-suffering readers of this blog will recall my ear-itating problems from last year, where I lost a range of hearing in my right ear for no known reason. One of the possible causes was the use of ototoxic drugs, drugs that have been shown to damage the hearing. Most of them are strong antibiotics, but some powerful painkillers like Vicodin have been identified as possible culprits. I'd had none of these drugs. What I have had is a pretty steady diet of ibuprofen in middle age, and that is suspected of being ototoxic as well.
Some of these effects go away when the drug is removed for a time, so I've been using Tylenol instead for minor aches and pains. It is sometimes helpful, but for this pain it was as useless as a pair of concrete shoes in an ass-kicking contest.
Having hardly slept on Tuesday night, I broke down and took Advil at 4:00 a.m. Wednesday morning -- and finally started to improve. Today I feel like the effects of the weekend's exertion have gone away; maybe they would have without the anti-inflammatory properties of the ibuprofen, but maybe not. I should also note that within two hours of taking the pills, I had ringing in that ear.
I am due back at the ear doctor in March, and was hoping to have made progress by that time. I guess I'll just have to eschew the ibuprofen as much as I can until then, only using it if I get some serious pain as described, 7 and up on the scale. And remember, kids, use only as directed.
I've had a tooth extracted, and I went through a period of really awful backaches; those were the only cases where I was in as much pain as I was on Tuesday night. (A friend of mine recently said that it's amazing how much the human back can hurt without actually killing you.)
Next year: folding chair.
My wife -- I think correctly -- says it stems from an old disk injury, and will probably go away soon enough with the proper treatment. Rest, heat, mild stretches, and lots and lots of ibuprofen.
There was just one problem -- I'm off ibuprofen.
"WHAT?!" you say, knowing as you do that I have led the campaign to get a posthumous Nobel awarded to Stewart Adams, the brilliant chemist who created ibuprofen, who passed away in January at the tender age of 95. But sadly, I have to find out whether Advil has been causing my hearing issues.
Long-suffering readers of this blog will recall my ear-itating problems from last year, where I lost a range of hearing in my right ear for no known reason. One of the possible causes was the use of ototoxic drugs, drugs that have been shown to damage the hearing. Most of them are strong antibiotics, but some powerful painkillers like Vicodin have been identified as possible culprits. I'd had none of these drugs. What I have had is a pretty steady diet of ibuprofen in middle age, and that is suspected of being ototoxic as well.
Some of these effects go away when the drug is removed for a time, so I've been using Tylenol instead for minor aches and pains. It is sometimes helpful, but for this pain it was as useless as a pair of concrete shoes in an ass-kicking contest.
Having hardly slept on Tuesday night, I broke down and took Advil at 4:00 a.m. Wednesday morning -- and finally started to improve. Today I feel like the effects of the weekend's exertion have gone away; maybe they would have without the anti-inflammatory properties of the ibuprofen, but maybe not. I should also note that within two hours of taking the pills, I had ringing in that ear.
I am due back at the ear doctor in March, and was hoping to have made progress by that time. I guess I'll just have to eschew the ibuprofen as much as I can until then, only using it if I get some serious pain as described, 7 and up on the scale. And remember, kids, use only as directed.
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Suckers!
My wife was lamenting the fact that the lemon drops of her childhood were impossible to find. I looked in the supermarket; I looked in the drugstore. I bought some Lemonheads, by Ferrara, but they were not the ones she wanted. She said the ones she recalled fondly had a dusty sugar coating, but were not too sweet, not too sour, and then I figured it out.
First, a little backup: In the 1970s, there was a big, nostalgic, small-town-values movement in American culture, as people disgusted with huge corporations and corrupt Washington and failing cities and artificial stuff in general wanted to return to the roots of good old-fashioned decency. From this came all sorts of things, shows like The Waltons, songs like "Sweet Home Alabama," foods like Ben & Jerry's, slogans like "Pepperidge Farm Remembers," presidents like Jimmy Carter. (Okay, he was a one-off.) Candy too was given the old-fashioned look, and the kind of lemon drops my wife likes best were the type shown here, not too hard to find right up through the 1980s.
When the 1990s hit, all that went out the window candywise, and we entered the Jolly Rancher era -- strong flavors, sours, crazy colors. Such old-fashioned stuff got harder to find, and remains so.
Claeys has continued to make its old-fashioned candy, as it has since 1919. But I can't find it in the local stores. Fortunately, using the newfangled Internet, I was able to order their lemon drops, and a real old-time fave, horehound candy. (Claeys has its own Web site, but it looks like it was designed in 1919; you can order through Amazon, CandyWarehouse, GroovyCandies, et al.) One taste and my wife said these were just the lemon drops she wanted.
As for the horehound: Horehound is a mint, botanically speaking, but not minty. I'd sometimes seen horehound candy mentioned in old books, and was curious about it. Well, I finally got a bag. You see on the package that, unlike lemon drops, the horehound candy is sold as medicine, "Soothing to the throat." It's quite delicious, almost like the mild-mannered brother of Ricola herb drops. Would it help a sore throat? I'll let you know, if the bag holds out until I get sick again.
So there you have it -- old-fashioned quality candy available for delivery by Internet-age technology. Server farms remember.
First, a little backup: In the 1970s, there was a big, nostalgic, small-town-values movement in American culture, as people disgusted with huge corporations and corrupt Washington and failing cities and artificial stuff in general wanted to return to the roots of good old-fashioned decency. From this came all sorts of things, shows like The Waltons, songs like "Sweet Home Alabama," foods like Ben & Jerry's, slogans like "Pepperidge Farm Remembers," presidents like Jimmy Carter. (Okay, he was a one-off.) Candy too was given the old-fashioned look, and the kind of lemon drops my wife likes best were the type shown here, not too hard to find right up through the 1980s.
When the 1990s hit, all that went out the window candywise, and we entered the Jolly Rancher era -- strong flavors, sours, crazy colors. Such old-fashioned stuff got harder to find, and remains so.
Claeys has continued to make its old-fashioned candy, as it has since 1919. But I can't find it in the local stores. Fortunately, using the newfangled Internet, I was able to order their lemon drops, and a real old-time fave, horehound candy. (Claeys has its own Web site, but it looks like it was designed in 1919; you can order through Amazon, CandyWarehouse, GroovyCandies, et al.) One taste and my wife said these were just the lemon drops she wanted.
As for the horehound: Horehound is a mint, botanically speaking, but not minty. I'd sometimes seen horehound candy mentioned in old books, and was curious about it. Well, I finally got a bag. You see on the package that, unlike lemon drops, the horehound candy is sold as medicine, "Soothing to the throat." It's quite delicious, almost like the mild-mannered brother of Ricola herb drops. Would it help a sore throat? I'll let you know, if the bag holds out until I get sick again.
So there you have it -- old-fashioned quality candy available for delivery by Internet-age technology. Server farms remember.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Monday, August 12, 2019
Mints pie.
My wife has an astonishing knack for liking products that go off the market soon after. Look at me! She liked me and I went off the market three years later.
No, really; over the years she has come to like products like Saran Disposable Cutting Sheets (gone), Diet Coke with Lemon (outta here), Bounty Paper Towels with Dawn (kaput), and Ragu Italian Cooking Sauce (è morto).
One of the most recent products she likes that is now fading away is this:
Centrum VitaMints were introduced with great fanfare four years ago; advertising blitz, free samples on request, coupons out the bazooty. They started with a Cool Mint flavor, then added Wintergreen and Raspberry. They had all the vitamins and minerals of a typical multivitamin, plus a refreshing mint flavor, perfect for those who take their vitamins after dinner. Wintergreen was her preferred, so I bought those. Then they became hard to find, and I could only find the Cool Mint, so I started buying her Wintergreen from Amazon. And then Amazon on its "Buy It Again" feature said the Wintergreen was discontinued, and I found out that all the VitaMints have been discontinued. Alas!
You may find it fitting or weird that the Vitamin Fred blog is krexing about vitamins, or that my family even goes in for vitamins at all, as many health professionals say that a multivitamin is unnecessary for anyone with a healthy diet. Well, health of our diet aside, I'm not even sure how we got on the habit, but my family was always a One-A-Day crowd, the thought being that it was worth the money to avoid any deficiencies in nutrients. But this entry is not about that so much as it is the mourning over discontinued products.
I'm certain that every product, however lousy, has its fans who are crushed when it disappears, just as every TV show or movie has its defenders. And I'm sure everyone in America has at some point seen a personal favorite vanish. I have friends who thought Zima got a screwed, who lament the end of Whitney's yogurt, who even still miss Koogle almost fifty years down the road. Zima was brought back in limited release in 2017 and 2018, but seems to have returned to the beer graveyard for good. Koogle lovers will have no such luck -- it was a Kraft product, and Kraft has a corporate policy against bringing back brands from the dead. Kellogg's, which made Whitney's, also tends to not bring things back -- Mr. Breakfast's Cereal Project site lists many that will never see the light of day again. Meanwhile, ice cream hippie weirdos Ben & Jerry's don't hide its flops -- they even have a Flavor Graveyard.
We all have mourned the loss of some product that we liked a lot. What product did you love that has gone to Product Heaven? Did you write angry letters? Try to start an Internet campaign to bring it back? Join a support group? Or just say the hell with it?
No, really; over the years she has come to like products like Saran Disposable Cutting Sheets (gone), Diet Coke with Lemon (outta here), Bounty Paper Towels with Dawn (kaput), and Ragu Italian Cooking Sauce (è morto).
One of the most recent products she likes that is now fading away is this:
Centrum VitaMints were introduced with great fanfare four years ago; advertising blitz, free samples on request, coupons out the bazooty. They started with a Cool Mint flavor, then added Wintergreen and Raspberry. They had all the vitamins and minerals of a typical multivitamin, plus a refreshing mint flavor, perfect for those who take their vitamins after dinner. Wintergreen was her preferred, so I bought those. Then they became hard to find, and I could only find the Cool Mint, so I started buying her Wintergreen from Amazon. And then Amazon on its "Buy It Again" feature said the Wintergreen was discontinued, and I found out that all the VitaMints have been discontinued. Alas!
You may find it fitting or weird that the Vitamin Fred blog is krexing about vitamins, or that my family even goes in for vitamins at all, as many health professionals say that a multivitamin is unnecessary for anyone with a healthy diet. Well, health of our diet aside, I'm not even sure how we got on the habit, but my family was always a One-A-Day crowd, the thought being that it was worth the money to avoid any deficiencies in nutrients. But this entry is not about that so much as it is the mourning over discontinued products.
I'm certain that every product, however lousy, has its fans who are crushed when it disappears, just as every TV show or movie has its defenders. And I'm sure everyone in America has at some point seen a personal favorite vanish. I have friends who thought Zima got a screwed, who lament the end of Whitney's yogurt, who even still miss Koogle almost fifty years down the road. Zima was brought back in limited release in 2017 and 2018, but seems to have returned to the beer graveyard for good. Koogle lovers will have no such luck -- it was a Kraft product, and Kraft has a corporate policy against bringing back brands from the dead. Kellogg's, which made Whitney's, also tends to not bring things back -- Mr. Breakfast's Cereal Project site lists many that will never see the light of day again. Meanwhile, ice cream hippie weirdos Ben & Jerry's don't hide its flops -- they even have a Flavor Graveyard.
We all have mourned the loss of some product that we liked a lot. What product did you love that has gone to Product Heaven? Did you write angry letters? Try to start an Internet campaign to bring it back? Join a support group? Or just say the hell with it?
Sunday, August 11, 2019
We're closed-garage people.
During my time here in outer suburbia, I have made a study of the natives, and I have come to realize that family tribes come in two varieties: open-garage people and closed-garage people.
Open-garage people are, as the name suggests, people who leave the garage door open all the time. Doesn't matter what the weather is; doesn't matter if the garage is neat as a pin or stuffed to the rafters like a hoarder's nightmare; doesn't matter if the garage is a tricked-out workshop or just a covered parking spot. That door stays open. It only gets closed at night -- maybe.
On the other hand, closed-garage people keep their garage doors shut as much as possible. Some may park in the driveway and never open the garage. Are there dead bodies stacked up in there? Who knows? Some of them will park in the garage and shut the door fast, like they're ashamed. Some are so ashamed they may try to back out of the garage without opening the door; this never ends well.
Are they afraid of having things stolen? An invasion of wild animals? Is this a survival instinct, indicating a stronger such instinct in these groups than in open-garage groups? Possibly. Maybe the remote opener is just busted.
It would be simple to make the deduction that open-garage people leave the door up for easy access to the house, if that's the primary way in and out. I have observed that that is not necessarily the case. Families that use their back decks constantly, park on the driveway, go in and out the front door to get to the car, and have a keypad entrance to open the garage if needed, still leave the garage door open all day. Why? Well, I have yet to penetrate the origins of this behavior.
Closed-garage people, in contrast, will leave that door shut as much as they can, even when it's a major inconvenience to have it closed. That's just how they roll... or don't, if they're parked inside.
Both types of people can annoy their neighbors, because being annoyed by each other is what neighbors do, but I suspect the open-garage people are more vexatious to closed-garage people than vice-versa. Open-garage people can pop out at any second like a Whac-a-Mole, usually when Mr. Closed is hoping for some peace and quiet or trying to get his dog to pee. Some of the open-doorers have garages so full of crap that leaving the door up lowers property values. Closed-garage people may seem unfriendly or standoffish, but that's passively rather than aggressively annoying.
My final observation is that, like morning people and night people marrying each other, open-garage people and closed-garage people invariably find themselves living next to each other. In the former case, I still follow my Saber-Tooth Tiger Survival Theory, which states that morning people and night people are evolutionarily suited to get married so that someone will always be alert in case a saber-tooth tiger wanders into camp. But I can't figure out why open/closed-garage people wind up in proximity.
I'm working on a Survival Theory of the Distribution of Annoyance, but I'm still gathering field data. If you have access to a huge pile of grant money, please get in touch c/o this blog. Thank you.
Open-garage people are, as the name suggests, people who leave the garage door open all the time. Doesn't matter what the weather is; doesn't matter if the garage is neat as a pin or stuffed to the rafters like a hoarder's nightmare; doesn't matter if the garage is a tricked-out workshop or just a covered parking spot. That door stays open. It only gets closed at night -- maybe.
On the other hand, closed-garage people keep their garage doors shut as much as possible. Some may park in the driveway and never open the garage. Are there dead bodies stacked up in there? Who knows? Some of them will park in the garage and shut the door fast, like they're ashamed. Some are so ashamed they may try to back out of the garage without opening the door; this never ends well.
Are they afraid of having things stolen? An invasion of wild animals? Is this a survival instinct, indicating a stronger such instinct in these groups than in open-garage groups? Possibly. Maybe the remote opener is just busted.
 |
| Pictured: Closed-garage people. |
Closed-garage people, in contrast, will leave that door shut as much as they can, even when it's a major inconvenience to have it closed. That's just how they roll... or don't, if they're parked inside.
Both types of people can annoy their neighbors, because being annoyed by each other is what neighbors do, but I suspect the open-garage people are more vexatious to closed-garage people than vice-versa. Open-garage people can pop out at any second like a Whac-a-Mole, usually when Mr. Closed is hoping for some peace and quiet or trying to get his dog to pee. Some of the open-doorers have garages so full of crap that leaving the door up lowers property values. Closed-garage people may seem unfriendly or standoffish, but that's passively rather than aggressively annoying.
My final observation is that, like morning people and night people marrying each other, open-garage people and closed-garage people invariably find themselves living next to each other. In the former case, I still follow my Saber-Tooth Tiger Survival Theory, which states that morning people and night people are evolutionarily suited to get married so that someone will always be alert in case a saber-tooth tiger wanders into camp. But I can't figure out why open/closed-garage people wind up in proximity.
I'm working on a Survival Theory of the Distribution of Annoyance, but I'm still gathering field data. If you have access to a huge pile of grant money, please get in touch c/o this blog. Thank you.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Poets doing ad copy.
William Blake
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
On the highways of the night;
When E is what the gas gauge pecks on,
Pull into your friendly Exxon.
T. S. Eliot
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like stromboli laid out upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted malls,
The hungry stomach calls
Of cheerful nights with pasta bowls tremendous
A family restaurant with bread sticks endless.
Emily Dickinson
Because I could not brush with Crest –
It kindly brushed for me –
The Toothbrush held but just Ourselves –
And not one cavity.
Allen Ginsberg
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the strip-mall streets at dawn looking
for an Egg McMuffin,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the tasty hash browns and the coffee freshly brewed.
William Shakespeare
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st, I recognize,
The charter of thy four wheels gave me blessing;
My rental of thee, thanks to Enterprise.
Walt Whitman
I sing the shaver electric,
The razors of those I love unfuzz me and I unfuzz them,
Norelco will not let me off till I go, respond to them,
And dis-hirsute them, and charge them full with battery.
Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel each
And be one traveler, long I stood
And peered at my phone as best I could
To Google Maps, to find the beach.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
On the highways of the night;
When E is what the gas gauge pecks on,
Pull into your friendly Exxon.
📜
T. S. Eliot
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like stromboli laid out upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted malls,
The hungry stomach calls
Of cheerful nights with pasta bowls tremendous
A family restaurant with bread sticks endless.
📝
Emily Dickinson
Because I could not brush with Crest –
It kindly brushed for me –
The Toothbrush held but just Ourselves –
And not one cavity.
📚
Allen Ginsberg
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the strip-mall streets at dawn looking
for an Egg McMuffin,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the tasty hash browns and the coffee freshly brewed.
📃
William Shakespeare
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st, I recognize,
The charter of thy four wheels gave me blessing;
My rental of thee, thanks to Enterprise.
📖
Walt Whitman
I sing the shaver electric,
The razors of those I love unfuzz me and I unfuzz them,
Norelco will not let me off till I go, respond to them,
And dis-hirsute them, and charge them full with battery.
🖋
Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel each
And be one traveler, long I stood
And peered at my phone as best I could
To Google Maps, to find the beach.
Friday, August 9, 2019
Same with my old office.
One group text was all it took, and Clown, Incorporated's productivity was shot to hell for the day.
Thursday, August 8, 2019
How have I been wasting time?
Summertime, the silly season, the time to waste time. Even though the seasonal aisle in the grocery store says it's Halloween, we all know it's still summer. So how've I been wasting time?
Not too well, I'm afraid. Summer's been okay, and I have been appreciating not wearing coats and mukluks and big woolly hats, and not having skin that cracks like an egg whenever I move, and I bear these things in mind when the bugs annoy the hell out of me. So that's good, but appreciating/not appreciating doesn't take very long.
Funerals and other death-related things have taken some time, sad to say, but that can happen in any season.
I've been wasting time on room-escape games. Par for the course. I do enjoy these games, which are usually free on the app store, and sometimes the translation from the Japanese is almost decent. My wife likes a good hidden-object game. So she's a treasure-seeker at heart and I'm a... guy who wants to run away from everything, I guess.
I've also been wasting time on a trip down memory lane, reading the Attack of the 50-Year-Old Comics blog. Back when I fancied myself a collector, I loved the Silver Age books the most. This blog reminds me of some books I had, and shows me some I never got. I sold my collection a long time ago and have no intention of starting up again, but it's fun to read about this stuff. Seemed so important to me back then, especially on hot summer afternoons. (A couple of years ago I was reading through Benton Grey's Greylands blog for similar material, but he seems to have shut it down for the time being, alas.)
I've done a little reading, but not too much. Started another book on World War II. Maybe you've heard of it? It was in all the papers at the time (1939 to 1945). I mean, if you're not a modern journalist, or a college student, you probably have. The book is interesting, but I keep looking to read it before bedtime and I seldom get many pages in before I'm asleep. No offense to the book; I'm just tired. I'll be glad to put in a plug, but I have to get a little deeper into it before I can tell if it's plugworthy.
I was thinking about rereading Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber, which I haven't read in decades but remember as being fun. Will they still hold up? Last year I read a book by Zelazny's sometime collaborator Robert Sheckley, a book I remembered fondly, and it was pretty bad and very dated. Had its moments, but it was hard not to think Man, lay off the drugs for a week, all right? I had a lot more tolerance for that stuff in high school and college.
I've also been working on my own book, and having spent an extraordinary amount of time hammering out the plot, I discovered a second act problem and a shortness problem. Eventually I realized that the solution to the first also would solve the second, but for a while I looked like a strange visionary of some sort as I walked the dogs, blank eyes, seeking answers from the clouds and the trees.
We didn't travel again this year, for two reasons: 1) The need to buy a new car ate into the budget a wee bit, and 2) We've yet to find a kennel we really like, and you can't ask someone to look after your two gigantic hairy dogs for a week. Nor have we found any kind of vacation place that says "Please come visit and bring your multiple gigantic hairy dogs." A few look promising until you find out that they only allow dogs small enough to fit in the average handbag. Well, Samsonite doesn't make a bag big enough for our guys.
Plus. my preferred destinations -- Bedrock City, Storytown USA, and the World of Sid and Marty Krofft -- were all unavailable this year. Phooey!
So I've been working. Not even a staycation. I'm glad to be able to work, but as a freelancer, if I don't get work I don't get paid. It's one of those immutable law of nature -- gravity, light, matter, money. And if you don't think money is one of the immutable laws, try telling high school physics teacher you're cutting his pay. You'll get an equal and opposite reaction, all right.
It doesn't bother me that fall is on the way, as evidenced by the aforementioned candy and the baby Muppet fruit I've been seeing.
I love the fall and enjoy the weather. But I feel like I just put away the Christmas stuff. Well, in four months I'll be hauling it out again. What the heck?
Not too well, I'm afraid. Summer's been okay, and I have been appreciating not wearing coats and mukluks and big woolly hats, and not having skin that cracks like an egg whenever I move, and I bear these things in mind when the bugs annoy the hell out of me. So that's good, but appreciating/not appreciating doesn't take very long.
Funerals and other death-related things have taken some time, sad to say, but that can happen in any season.
I've been wasting time on room-escape games. Par for the course. I do enjoy these games, which are usually free on the app store, and sometimes the translation from the Japanese is almost decent. My wife likes a good hidden-object game. So she's a treasure-seeker at heart and I'm a... guy who wants to run away from everything, I guess.
I've also been wasting time on a trip down memory lane, reading the Attack of the 50-Year-Old Comics blog. Back when I fancied myself a collector, I loved the Silver Age books the most. This blog reminds me of some books I had, and shows me some I never got. I sold my collection a long time ago and have no intention of starting up again, but it's fun to read about this stuff. Seemed so important to me back then, especially on hot summer afternoons. (A couple of years ago I was reading through Benton Grey's Greylands blog for similar material, but he seems to have shut it down for the time being, alas.)
I've done a little reading, but not too much. Started another book on World War II. Maybe you've heard of it? It was in all the papers at the time (1939 to 1945). I mean, if you're not a modern journalist, or a college student, you probably have. The book is interesting, but I keep looking to read it before bedtime and I seldom get many pages in before I'm asleep. No offense to the book; I'm just tired. I'll be glad to put in a plug, but I have to get a little deeper into it before I can tell if it's plugworthy.
I was thinking about rereading Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber, which I haven't read in decades but remember as being fun. Will they still hold up? Last year I read a book by Zelazny's sometime collaborator Robert Sheckley, a book I remembered fondly, and it was pretty bad and very dated. Had its moments, but it was hard not to think Man, lay off the drugs for a week, all right? I had a lot more tolerance for that stuff in high school and college.
I've also been working on my own book, and having spent an extraordinary amount of time hammering out the plot, I discovered a second act problem and a shortness problem. Eventually I realized that the solution to the first also would solve the second, but for a while I looked like a strange visionary of some sort as I walked the dogs, blank eyes, seeking answers from the clouds and the trees.
We didn't travel again this year, for two reasons: 1) The need to buy a new car ate into the budget a wee bit, and 2) We've yet to find a kennel we really like, and you can't ask someone to look after your two gigantic hairy dogs for a week. Nor have we found any kind of vacation place that says "Please come visit and bring your multiple gigantic hairy dogs." A few look promising until you find out that they only allow dogs small enough to fit in the average handbag. Well, Samsonite doesn't make a bag big enough for our guys.
Plus. my preferred destinations -- Bedrock City, Storytown USA, and the World of Sid and Marty Krofft -- were all unavailable this year. Phooey!
So I've been working. Not even a staycation. I'm glad to be able to work, but as a freelancer, if I don't get work I don't get paid. It's one of those immutable law of nature -- gravity, light, matter, money. And if you don't think money is one of the immutable laws, try telling high school physics teacher you're cutting his pay. You'll get an equal and opposite reaction, all right.
It doesn't bother me that fall is on the way, as evidenced by the aforementioned candy and the baby Muppet fruit I've been seeing.
I love the fall and enjoy the weather. But I feel like I just put away the Christmas stuff. Well, in four months I'll be hauling it out again. What the heck?
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Bad covers.
Was talking about pop music with my wife, and she noted that while it's fun to hear musicians and bands take a crack at other people's hits, some combinations would be a Bad Idea.
I like hearing different takes on well-known songs. I've enjoyed records like Enjoy Every Sandwich (the Zevon tribute album) and To Cry You a Song (Jethro Tull tribute) and Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits, for example, and at Christmastime we all hear miscellaneous idiots trying out Christmas classics. There's even some bits from the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie soundtrack that are worth listening to, although that's counterbalanced by all the bits that are so very, very much the opposite of worth listening to.
My bride and I were agreed, though, that it's a good thing that singers and groups have wisely steered clear of songs that would not have suited them. So we made a list of our top 20 covers that we're glad did not happen. And believe me, it was hard to stop at 20. Your contributions are most sincerely welcomed in comments.
In no particular order:
Aerosmith: "Yakety Sax" (Boots Randolph)
Stevie Nicks: "Shaddap You Face" (Joe Dolce)
Yes: "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" (Patti Page)
Barry White: "Woody Woodpecker Song" (Kay Kyser)
The Verve: "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" (Rupert Holmes)
Stormtroopers of Death: "My Favorite Things" (The Sound of Music)
The Archies: "Run for Your Life" (The Beatles)
Bruce Springsteen: "Major-General's Song" (The Pirates of Penzance)
The Carpenters: "Animal (I F__ Like a Beast)" (W.A.S.P.)
Bing Crosby: "Black Dog" (Led Zeppelin)
The Crash Test Dummies: "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" (Spike Jones)
Iggy Azalea: "Honeymooners Rap" (Joe Piscopo)
Madonna: "Seasons in the Sun" (Terry Jacks)
Hank Williams Jr.: "Get Together" (The Youngbloods)
Whitesnake: "Daydream Believer" (The Monkees)
PSY: "Born in the USA" (Bruce Springsteen)
Taylor Swift: "Purple Haze" (Jimi Hendrix)
Mojo Nixon: "Be Our Guest" (Beauty and the Beast)
The Silver Platters: "Because I Got High" (Afroman)
Sonny & Cher: "Last Caress" (The Misfits)
(To be fair, some of these songs shouldn't have ever been released by anybody.)
I like hearing different takes on well-known songs. I've enjoyed records like Enjoy Every Sandwich (the Zevon tribute album) and To Cry You a Song (Jethro Tull tribute) and Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits, for example, and at Christmastime we all hear miscellaneous idiots trying out Christmas classics. There's even some bits from the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie soundtrack that are worth listening to, although that's counterbalanced by all the bits that are so very, very much the opposite of worth listening to.
My bride and I were agreed, though, that it's a good thing that singers and groups have wisely steered clear of songs that would not have suited them. So we made a list of our top 20 covers that we're glad did not happen. And believe me, it was hard to stop at 20. Your contributions are most sincerely welcomed in comments.
In no particular order:
Aerosmith: "Yakety Sax" (Boots Randolph)
Stevie Nicks: "Shaddap You Face" (Joe Dolce)
Yes: "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" (Patti Page)
Barry White: "Woody Woodpecker Song" (Kay Kyser)
The Verve: "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" (Rupert Holmes)
Stormtroopers of Death: "My Favorite Things" (The Sound of Music)
The Archies: "Run for Your Life" (The Beatles)
Bruce Springsteen: "Major-General's Song" (The Pirates of Penzance)
The Carpenters: "Animal (I F__ Like a Beast)" (W.A.S.P.)
Bing Crosby: "Black Dog" (Led Zeppelin)
The Crash Test Dummies: "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" (Spike Jones)
Iggy Azalea: "Honeymooners Rap" (Joe Piscopo)
Madonna: "Seasons in the Sun" (Terry Jacks)
Hank Williams Jr.: "Get Together" (The Youngbloods)
Whitesnake: "Daydream Believer" (The Monkees)
PSY: "Born in the USA" (Bruce Springsteen)
Taylor Swift: "Purple Haze" (Jimi Hendrix)
Mojo Nixon: "Be Our Guest" (Beauty and the Beast)
The Silver Platters: "Because I Got High" (Afroman)
Sonny & Cher: "Last Caress" (The Misfits)
(To be fair, some of these songs shouldn't have ever been released by anybody.)
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Die!
I'm thinking of opening my own casino. I think it's a pretty good investment. I'm a little short on cash for the actual building, but I have the prototype dice:
Ha ha! No, of course this is not a prototype for my hotel casino project. Rather, it is a six-sided die (only a dork would feel obliged to point out the number of sides) that a relative got for me as a kind of "Someone Went to Vegas and All I Got Was This Lousy Souvenir" type gift. And I love it. You just don't find a lot of Fred merch among the name souvenirs.
I find gambling to be fun, but I'm too cheap to do it seriously. It's about the only vice that doesn't grab me. I keep thinking of exactly how hard I had to work for that C-note that just went flying into the croupier's drawer.
But owning a casino is another matter. Somebody's got to make money from all that gambling, and that's the house. Slot machines particularly line the house's pockets. Why not mine?
I might feel a little bad about it. I've seen real dedicated gamblers in action, and when they're in the zone, winning or losing, they are on Planet Gamble. Old ladies playing six machines at once would probably have to be pulled bodily from the chair in the event of a fire. I wouldn't want to be the fireman who had to try it. So maybe I'm too softhearted for that kind of thing.
Well, I don't have a good name for it anyway. "Fred's" might be okay for a barbecue joint but not for a classy casino. If I were to open it in Vegas, I'd have to find a gimmick. Maybe all Googie stuff; turn the page to the New Frontier era and keep it there. Space-agey but still Rat Pack friendly. Maybe we could call it Planet Gamble.
Hey, I'm starting to like the idea after all! Anybody got a spare half billion?
Ha ha! No, of course this is not a prototype for my hotel casino project. Rather, it is a six-sided die (only a dork would feel obliged to point out the number of sides) that a relative got for me as a kind of "Someone Went to Vegas and All I Got Was This Lousy Souvenir" type gift. And I love it. You just don't find a lot of Fred merch among the name souvenirs.
I find gambling to be fun, but I'm too cheap to do it seriously. It's about the only vice that doesn't grab me. I keep thinking of exactly how hard I had to work for that C-note that just went flying into the croupier's drawer.
But owning a casino is another matter. Somebody's got to make money from all that gambling, and that's the house. Slot machines particularly line the house's pockets. Why not mine?
I might feel a little bad about it. I've seen real dedicated gamblers in action, and when they're in the zone, winning or losing, they are on Planet Gamble. Old ladies playing six machines at once would probably have to be pulled bodily from the chair in the event of a fire. I wouldn't want to be the fireman who had to try it. So maybe I'm too softhearted for that kind of thing.
Well, I don't have a good name for it anyway. "Fred's" might be okay for a barbecue joint but not for a classy casino. If I were to open it in Vegas, I'd have to find a gimmick. Maybe all Googie stuff; turn the page to the New Frontier era and keep it there. Space-agey but still Rat Pack friendly. Maybe we could call it Planet Gamble.
Hey, I'm starting to like the idea after all! Anybody got a spare half billion?
Monday, August 5, 2019
Return of the Spurn.
About a month ago I suggested that my younger dog, Nipper, had gotten to spurning breakfast so often that he could have been part of one of those mid-sixties groups that had maybe one hit -- Nipper and the Spurners! And he has continued to spurn periodically since I posted on the topic.
Well, longtime friend and never-commenter Mr. Philbin demanded a fake history of this fake band. And at Your Daily Dose of Vitamin Fred, we live to oblige.
The Spurners were formed in 1963 in the proud city of Paterson, following a sound now known in legend as Jerseybeat. Johnny Nipper (born Johann Hinklegosser Maximilian von Ulm) formed the band, originally known as Nipper and the Spurners. "We were too poor to be a garage band," he told MTV's Beat the Music in 1993. "More like a garbage band. We practiced in an abandoned bowling alley, running extension cords to Mrs. O'Reilly's patio. We were formed on the premise that everything was stupid and we were spurning it."
The Spurners became fast favorites of large and grumpy crowds of teenagers throughout the state of New Jersey. They released their own single by pressing the 45s onto old X-ray film from autopsies. The songs, "I Kibble You Not" and "Denial Aisle," got the attention of music promoters in New York, and the band began to get gigs in the big city. At that time the group name was shortened to The Spurners, which fit better on marquees.
Moonbat Records signed the group in 1965, and "Kibble" reached #52 on the charts by December of that year. Their first full album, No, was commercially successful but not a hit. Songs like "Go Away (Stay Away)," "Ain't Too Proud to Shun," and "Rainy Day Spurnin'" did get some radio play.
The Spurners might have had a better career, but they turned down many opportunities. They refused to do an Asian tour, saying they'd heard bad things about the food. They chose not to appear on television's American Bandstand when they found out the host was not Dick Bark, as they'd thought. And when a rising young Jerseyite tried to join the group in the late sixties, they told him no, that he was a lousy singer, and Bruce was a funny name.
Still, they managed to keep recording, releasing many more tracks, such as "Put a Little Shun in Your Heart" (1969), "One Nope Over the Line" (1970), "Can Get (and Have Had) Enough of Your Love" (1974), "No No No No No No No No Song" (1975), then, in a change of gears, "Disco Inspurno (Spurn Baby Spurn)" (1976) and "I Just Want to Stop, Period" (1978). Their last song to chart, from the 1981 record Too Much Is More Than Enough, was "Spurnin' for You," which got to #99. After that, the group was tired of the whole business. Charges of plagiarism, which the band refused to answer, had dogged them for years. At last the legal troubles and personal difficulties got to be too much, and after two decades the Spurners began to spurn one another.
At different times, members have toured solo, using the Spurner name. Others, like drummer Hank "Hot" Doggerel, toured on their own into the late 1990s, in his case with the group Juncyard Dawgz, while bassist Fredo Poodelski started a group called the Nix.
But that was about it for the Spurners, who never tried to reunite and never gave interviews after 1993. As rock historian Stiiv Johnson wrote in his memoir, Pop Stars I Have Seen Vomit, "So dedicated were they to the fine arts of spurning, shunning, rejection, and negativity, it's actually amazing that they managed to form a band in the first place, let alone continue for almost twenty years."
Well, longtime friend and never-commenter Mr. Philbin demanded a fake history of this fake band. And at Your Daily Dose of Vitamin Fred, we live to oblige.
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The Spurners became fast favorites of large and grumpy crowds of teenagers throughout the state of New Jersey. They released their own single by pressing the 45s onto old X-ray film from autopsies. The songs, "I Kibble You Not" and "Denial Aisle," got the attention of music promoters in New York, and the band began to get gigs in the big city. At that time the group name was shortened to The Spurners, which fit better on marquees.
Moonbat Records signed the group in 1965, and "Kibble" reached #52 on the charts by December of that year. Their first full album, No, was commercially successful but not a hit. Songs like "Go Away (Stay Away)," "Ain't Too Proud to Shun," and "Rainy Day Spurnin'" did get some radio play.
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| Other songs included "This Dog Won't Hunt or Anything Else" and "All You Need Is Shove" |
The Spurners might have had a better career, but they turned down many opportunities. They refused to do an Asian tour, saying they'd heard bad things about the food. They chose not to appear on television's American Bandstand when they found out the host was not Dick Bark, as they'd thought. And when a rising young Jerseyite tried to join the group in the late sixties, they told him no, that he was a lousy singer, and Bruce was a funny name.
Still, they managed to keep recording, releasing many more tracks, such as "Put a Little Shun in Your Heart" (1969), "One Nope Over the Line" (1970), "Can Get (and Have Had) Enough of Your Love" (1974), "No No No No No No No No Song" (1975), then, in a change of gears, "Disco Inspurno (Spurn Baby Spurn)" (1976) and "I Just Want to Stop, Period" (1978). Their last song to chart, from the 1981 record Too Much Is More Than Enough, was "Spurnin' for You," which got to #99. After that, the group was tired of the whole business. Charges of plagiarism, which the band refused to answer, had dogged them for years. At last the legal troubles and personal difficulties got to be too much, and after two decades the Spurners began to spurn one another.
At different times, members have toured solo, using the Spurner name. Others, like drummer Hank "Hot" Doggerel, toured on their own into the late 1990s, in his case with the group Juncyard Dawgz, while bassist Fredo Poodelski started a group called the Nix.
But that was about it for the Spurners, who never tried to reunite and never gave interviews after 1993. As rock historian Stiiv Johnson wrote in his memoir, Pop Stars I Have Seen Vomit, "So dedicated were they to the fine arts of spurning, shunning, rejection, and negativity, it's actually amazing that they managed to form a band in the first place, let alone continue for almost twenty years."
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