And how was your day?

Did you have a lousy Monday? I hope not. Mine was just okay. I was busier than a cramped-up blogger at a metaphor-writin' contest, but the Sisyphean tasks I'm on at the moment didn't show any significant progress. I wish I worked in Hollywood, where you don't have to work to get paid. In fact, they seem to pay you more.

But I shall complain no longer, for a story from 2017 was brought to my attention recently, about an officer in Minnesota who had a bad night on the beat. It seems that Brad Browning and another officer got into a scuffle with a knucklehead named Hietala who had outstanding warrants. Browning's fellow officer pulled out the ol' Taser, aimed... and shot Browning by mistake.

It got worse:

Hietala immediately fled, running through the neighborhood with Browning in pursuit. By the time Hietala hid between two garages in an alley, a Clay County sheriff’s deputy had arrived with a police dog. The dog was cut loose, but instead of biting Hietala, it bit Browning, the police report said.

It's not a good thing when your life turns into a Looney Tune. I wonder if they call him Brad E. Coyote now. Good thing for him that the Piano & Anvil Squad didn't show up to help with the collar.

My other new hero is Tsutomu Yamaguchi, an engineer for Mitsubishi. Perhaps you've heard of him. He accomplished an amazing feat -- by showing up for work twice.

The first time he was on a business trip, just about to leave the city and head home. It was August 6, 1945. He was in Hiroshima.

Yamaguchi was thrown through the air by the shock wave by the freaking atom bomb that fell on the city, and got burned and pretty roughed up, but all things considered, and compared to most of his countrymen in the city, he was in good shape. He spent the night in a shelter and managed to get to the train station the next day, having heard that some trains were running.

This guy, who'd just had the first atomic bomb used in war dropped on him, was going back to his home office to go to work. So remember that next time you call in with the sniffles.

Oh, and the home office? In Nagasaki.

Yes, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was the only human being confirmed by the Japanese government to have survived both atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Not only that, he lived to the age of 93. Hell, if two A-bombs can't stop you, you deserve to live a long time. I'm almost surprised anything could kill him.

So remind me of these guys the next time I complain about work. I'm on velvet here. No one seems to want to drop a nuke on me at the moment, nor sic the K-9s on me, nor friendly-fire a Taser at my behind.

But I'm watching out for the Piano & Anvil Squad. Don't trust those guys a bit.

Laid to rest.

The people in my neighborhood are crazy.

At least that's what I was thinking a few days back. Not because of my immediate neighbors, the Hellbound Cable Thief on one side, the Dysfunctionals on the other. Nor was it the fact that every single one of us is constitutionally incapable of following simple rules for recycling. (Whether you believe it's legit or not, if you're gonna bother to do it, at least try to do it right.)

No, I was thinking this because someone seemed to think this was just fine to leave out for our garbage men.

This photo of the mountain of home furnishings does not begin to do it justice. There was a second, bigger TV and a huge iron frame and an entire sofa, for example. TV sets are not considered appropriate for trash pickup; grills, sofas, and bureaus probably cause consternation as well. I couldn't believe someone would just put this enormous pile out as is.

I should have known there was more to the story.

A few weeks after the stuff was carted off -- and it was, although it took the trash men a couple of different collections -- the people in the house disappeared. The driveway, which had had a boat and a plateless car rusting away for years, was suddenly empty. Closer examination a couple of days later showed a notice on the front door that appeared to indicate the property had been secured for nonpayment of debt (or possibly taxes). In which case the town may have arranged to have the stuff hauled away by the company that does our garbage collection.

None of this should have come as a surprise to me. I'm sure it didn't to people who live closer and are even nosier and more likely to notice than no one in the place ever seemed to go to work.

The house is in very sad shape. It needs paint, but that's like saying the Titanic needed to be patched up a little. God knows what the inside looks like. Whoever takes the property over may just flatten it and build anew. Although they ought to know that it may be haunted.

Yep -- no lie; a man was murdered in that house. That's 100% true. One night when we'd been here a couple of years, the police came stopped by to ask if we'd seen anything. We hadn't, but the killer was caught, so rest easy, citizens.

It's a sordid tale for another time.

I suspect most or maybe all of the stuff that was dumped had belonged to the dead man. It looked old enough.

As for the person who moved in, a distant heir of the victim, I guess he never had the dough to do upkeep, let alone pay his taxes. Or perhaps the ability. One of the things left behind when the rest of the trash was hauled away, along with some broken glass and bits of cardboard, were a couple of Tramadol in the blister packs that expired in 2013. Probably got lost in the sofa. I found them while walking one of the dogs and flushed them down to Davy Jones's locker. Glad I got them and not one of the local kids.

What does this have to do with me, aside from providing me with the plot for my next book (The Haunted Garbage Pile)? Nothing, except I have a mattress to dispose of, and if the garbage truck will take that giant pile, I guess I can leave my mattress out. Nothing in the town's notice on trash collection that prohibits mattresses, just the usual dangerous stuff like refrigerators. And TV sets.

I got a new mattress to replace the old one in the guest room, where I love to take naps because the dogs can't find me. Following the advice of Lewes and others from the comments section of the site of the Great Lileks, I got a bed-in-a-box type mattress from Amazon (I was at the tail end of a free Amazon Prime trial, so what the hell). If you've never gotten a mattress this way, I recommend it. It's amazing. The mattress comes in a box that's way too small for a queen-size mattress, rolled up and pressed as flat as a respectable potholder. As soon as it is unrolled and unfolded and the plastic cover is cut, it begins to inflate. It's like a slow-motion version of an emergency inflatable raft going off. Laura Petrie would be fascinated.

I haven't tried out the mattress yet, as you have to let it sit in place for 48 hours to recover from the smush-down it got in the factory. But it looks pretty good.

Trash day is tomorrow, so the old mattress leaves (I hope) in the morning. Do not worry, trash collectors: my garbage is free of all tormented spirits. I'm the only tormented spirit that ever laid on that mattress.

Top 10 Surprises in Avengers: Endgame!

Spoiler nonalert!

1. Thor unveils an ancient Asgardian fighting technique known as the Hyperborean Wedgie.

2. Tony Stark? Gay as old Paree.

3. Kevin Zavian on Antiques Roadshow estimates the value of the stones on Infinity Gauntlet as "Maybe two thousand bucks; there's some damage and flaws, and the color is a little wonky. But the provenance is good."

4. Rocket Raccoon is appointed to lead an important mission, known as the Raid on the Garbage Cans on Lintel Street.

5. Groot returns as a sunflower. He feels pretty.

6. Captain America admits to using anabolic steroids; the FDA promises to investigate the claims on his infomercials for Cappy's Protein Shakes.

7. Black Widow and Captain Marvel are infuriated when they show up to the apocalypse in the same outfit.

8. The Avengers' custodial force unionizes while they're gone; picket lines have formed around the building.

9. There is a secret Seventh Stone that Thanos knows nothing about. This "Plot Stone," found in a gumball machine in Peoria, nullifies the power of the other stones, allowing Ant-Man to punch Thanos out.

10. Nick Fury wakes up in the apartment he shares with Dorothy Gale and Bob Hartley and stuns them with his amazing, weird dream.

Tooth dismay.

I find mint to be a little harsh in my mouth, at least in the concentrated forms found in toothpaste. Maybe it makes my breath better, but hey, it's not like I have to reel back from my own bad breath. I have to do that from everyone else's.

A combination of harshness and boredom occasionally sends me looking for non-mint toothpastes (my wife is very brand-loyal and uses her own tube). The thing is, most adult toothpastes are minty and there's little variety. So I've been known to swipe the kids' brands at the store, at least as long as they have the same amount of fluoride as the adult versions.

So yes, I may be seen sometimes brushing my teeth with a toothpaste that has Captain America or the Minions on the tube. Bubblegum! Mmm.

Recently I got this:

Burt's Bees, the kind and natural brand that was bought by Clorox from founders Burt Shavitz and Roxanne Quimby for almost a billion bucks in 2007, has expanded into all kinds of markets now, including makeup and, as you see, toothpaste. I actually picked up this "Fruit Fusion" toothpaste before I started seeing online ads for it, and then the ads were everywhere. I liked the fact they they had cute fruit instead of an expensively licensed character on the tube.

I'd been happy with the few Burt's products I'd tried. I have a lip balm that my wife gave me that is smooth and protective. I once got a free bottle of the Garden Tomato Toner, which made a great aftershave.

But Burt's Bees for Kids Fruit Fusion Toothpaste? Worst tasting toothpaste I ever tried.

When you start to brush, you get the fruity flavor found in many popular kids' items, like Froot Loops. And then it starts to taste like soap. Like, genuine Ralphie-said-fudge-but-not-really-fudge kind of soap. It's a really bad taste and at its strongest as an aftertaste, when you spit the crap out.

What were they thinking? Children swear so much that they must be used to the taste of soap? Sadly, we no longer have the mores we had about swearing in Ralphie's day, so I doubt it. Then again, they claim that they have a 4.7 of 5 rating for the stuff, so maybe kids are just stupid. Or maybe the adults, who are writing the reviews, never bothered to try it themselves. When you see reviews like "It is free of all the unnecessary things other companies put in their toothpastes and I feel comfortable giving this to my son," you get the feeling the adult is carried away by environmentalism and is blind to the product's screamingly obvious defects. Bleah.

And, by the way, the company has discontinued my Garden Tomato Toner. Fie on you, Burt, and your stupid bees.

So it looks like it's back to mint for me for a while. Or the Minions....

Rock candy bottom.

No matter how big the Easter basket,

eventually you hit the bottom.

(Worse when the bottom comes up to hit you.)

Things I learned the hard way.

There are different ways to learn in life -- you can learn from applying yourself to theory and being out front with research; you can learn from good experience, if you're paying attention; you can learn from others' experience, if you're open to it; and you can learn from my favorite means, doing something stupid and suffering the consequences. "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn from no other," says that Franklin guy, and maybe he should know.

So today here is the benefit of things I had to learn the hard way, usually because I would not read the label, listen to the experience of others, or follow common sense. I was quite young for most of these, but sadly, not all of these. Maybe this will save some trouble for you out there in Internet land.

💣💢🚔💔💩🔪🚽🚑

Don't take up smoking. If you never smoke, you'll never miss it; if you take it up, you can quit, but years and years later you'll still miss it.

Do not avoid asking the person on a date because you're afraid of what third parties will think.

Never put Dawn in the dishwasher.

If you want to join a serious league, make sure you are serious about the sport. Otherwise you can and will get hurt. And lose.

When cooking for someone for the first time, don't combine unexpected things, like peas in the omelets, even if someone else sprung that one on you in the past.

Drunkeness is never appropriate, except when everyone else is drunk, and even then some idiot will suggest driving someplace and it will seem like a fine idea.

Many college professors will not put up with sloppy, chucked-together homework the way high school teachers will, no matter what a genius you are, Precious.

Do not lose focus on ladders.

In winter, be aware that black ice is always an option.

Redheads are evil. Okay, not all of them. Maybe not most. Maybe I was just attracted to evil ones. Or maybe my behavior encouraged evil responses. Maybe I need to think this one out some more.

Never cut frozen bacon. Thawed bacon is slippery enough.

When you get your driver's license for the first time, pay special attention to turning lanes, speed limits, and your proximity to the car in front of you. This will save you tickets, money, and embarrassment, at least.

You don't see them around that much anymore in the era of the big battery, but: When using plug-in yard appliances, never lose sight of where the freaking electrical cord is. This is especially true for appliances with sharp blades, like lawn mowers and hedge clippers. Especially lawn mowers and hedge clippers. And especially especially when you're supposedly getting paid to use them.

Small children, puppies, and dumb people require more patience than you have. If you expect to encounter these, you had better get some more.

Limit the Oreos. Decide how many you should have in advance and take just those. That number should be in single digits. Talking to you, Teens of America.

Those stupid things your dentist tells you to do? Do them.

💀🏥🚒🚫🔥❌👊👿

Is this everything I learned in life the hard way? No, since I pretty much learn everything the hard way. I might have to visit this topic again.

Covers.

Yesterday I was writing about the darker side of Stan Lee, but I have to admit his Marvel Comics were eating DC's lunch in the mid to late sixties. It took a while for DC to realize that older kids were reading comics, kids who wanted more serious plots and characters, and Marvel gave them what they wanted while DC was still giving them the Legion of Super-Pets. 

One of DC's approaches to fix this in the late sixties was to elevate the role of artists, for more dramatic stories and covers. Results were mixed. But I loved the issues where they would play with the superhero logos. They looked great and told the reader that they were trying to be more interesting, to drop off some of the moribund and silly business that had accumulated on DC's popular heroes in the forties and fifties. 

I always liked the Blockbuster. DC has never done much with him, though. Well, he's pretty dumb.

Classic evil triumphant pose. Not the first appearance of Black Manta, but an especially villainous one.

The Flash has one of the best rogues' galleries in the business. Batman and Spider-Man are the only heroes with a better corps of enemies. 

This last one was of particular interest -- the large Justice League shield logo was removed, the letters squashed above a triumphant Superman. Of course everyone always thought Superman could beat up the whole League by himself; Jerry Seinfeld even got a whole bit out of Superman's superiority (used in the "Stand In" episode of his sitcom). And some covers in the series showed hero-vs.-hero fighting. But this was the first one where we actually saw the whole League's collective crap beaten out by the Man of Steel.

And best of all was the villain of the piece -- who else but the Key? 😀

Mwah ah ah!

Jack and Stan: My take.

When Stan Lee died last year, I got sick of the hagiography pretty quickly.

Polite people, of course, prefer not to speak ill of the dead, especially when the dead is still warm, but it's silly to ignore the fact that Stan was a personal wrecking crew to some very talented people, a glory hog, and before being rescued by Disney movies, his Marvel Comics stock was tanking and the company was in danger of falling apart. It had bounced back from its debt-ridden depths, and Lee was not the man behind the worst of the financial shenanigans, but if the Mouse had not stepped in to snap up the works in 2009, Marvel might have sunk without trace in a quagmire of unreadable comics and bad Sony movies.

The thing that irked me most, though, were several cartoons of Jack Kirby (who died in 1994) welcoming Stan into heaven. When I heard Kirby speak in the eighties, he sounded like a guy who would have been promising St. Peter a great action-packed portrait if he could arrange to keep the gates closed when Stan the Man showed up.

It was a long time ago, and I was a kid, so I don't remember the Kirby event very well. I certainly don't recall Kirby sitting on the panel complaining "Stan Lee is a bastard" and such. But he gave Stan as little credit as possible for any of their supposed collaborative efforts. Jack explained how he had created the Fantastic Four, for example, and detailed meticulously how he came up with the Silver Surfer, whom he imagined as an angelic herald from the Bible, and how that led to Galactus -- because you can't have an angelic herald without a god. Jack gave Stan no credit for any of this.

When Kirby jumped ship to DC Comics, he created a minor toupee-clad character named Funky Flashman, a fast-talking promotional jerk, as a sort of foil to escape-artist hero Mister Miracle. It was an obvious and unflattering portrayal of Stan. So there was clearly not a lot of love.

I don't know if Kirby and Lee ever made up, but I doubt it. The irreplaceable Mark Steyn had this bit of information in his obit for Lee:

With the exception of Spider-Man, almost all of Lee's household-name heroes were drawn by a fellow called Jack Kirby, who never enjoyed the star cameos Stan did in the Marvel movies. Kirby lived modestly in Irvine, California, and spent his days sat on "an old, straightback kitchen chair parked in front of the crummiest old drawing table you ever saw". He ought to have died the wealthiest guy in Irvine. Instead, his widow had to beseech Marvel for a modest pension sufficient to cover her mortgage, groceries and medical bills.

Stan was worth $50 million when he died.

The biggest names in the Avengers movies were all Kirby creations, if you asked him: Captain America (with Joe Simon), Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Ant-Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye -- even Groot started life as a Kirby monster. Oh, but not Spider-Man and Dr. Strange -- Steve Ditko created them. I'm not saying Stan Lee had no part in the creation of these characters; other people would know better than I. I'm saying that neither Kirby nor Ditko would give Stan much credit. Something about Stan Lee, at least in the sixties, was not inspiring a lot of love among the artists.

At DC, Kirby had a gigantic creative explosion, a pile of "Fourth World" books that seemed to contain every idea he'd ever wanted to use at Marvel, maybe some he shouldn't have. He started proudly by reforming DC's lowest-selling title, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen; people are amazed to hear that it was in Jimmy Olsen's book that the great villain Darkseid of Apokolips was first seen. (Darkseid was totally ripped off when Jim Starlin created Thanos, a bad guy currently causing some fuss in the Avengers movies.) At DC, Kirby set himself a workload as artist and writer that was probably more than even he could handle, fountain of crazy ideas that he was. The books New Gods, Mister Miracle, Forever People, and even Jimmy Olsen were really wild, unlike anything seen before in DC or maybe anywhere else.

But, to be fair to Lee, Kirby needed a good editor, and DC didn't give him one. Letting Kirby go his own way gave us some truly bad ideas, including the infamous Don Rickles series in Jimmy Olsen.

Yes, that Don Rickles. Benton Grey, who's been running a great series on Bronze Age DC comics on his blog, summed it up neatly:

Apparently Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman, Kirby’s assistants, were huge fans of then popular insult-comedian Don Rickles, and they thought it would be fun to have him appear in a comic for a few panels and insult Superman. They wrote up some dialog and showed it to Jack, who loved the idea. He, in turn, took it to Carmine Infantino, who never met a gimmick he didn’t like. The editor got permission from Rickles and decided that this needed to be promoted and made into a two-issue feature. Then, out of the unfathomable, beautiful madness of Kirby’s mind came what followed. Apparently, Rickles himself was none-too-pleased with the final result, and I can’t say I really blame him.

The problem was, Kirby was a lot better at writing ponderous operatic hero fantasy than stand-up comedy, and his assistants weren't much help (and I say this as a guy who loved Evanier's work on Blackhawk and other DC properties).

Amazingly, the series continued publication for three more years, but Kirby left a year after this storyline.

Kirby and Lee were probably better together, even if all Lee did was prevent Jack's excesses and sillier ideas from running amok. I have always felt that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were much better together than apart for the same reason, curbing each other's worse impulses. Possibly the same was true with Ditko, judging by his work with DC. What happened to Kirby was like if John Lennon had kept the rights to all the music and Paul was stuck begging for work. Guest starring Steve Ditko as George Harrison.

So I don't quite see Stan Lee as saint material, no.

(Fair warning: This deep dive into dorkitude continues tomorrow, on a different but equally dorky topic....)

Bunzooka!

The Easter Bunny reports significant improvement for Techinicolor Henfruit
targeted distribution using the tactical Bunzooka 3000. 

Redeem here.

Went to the Easter Vigil last night and it was beautiful -- plenty music from the choir, a powerful homily, and lots of good ol' fashioned Catholic smells & bells. A little sad because the archdiocese has reassigned the pastor and he'll be leaving us, and we don't know what's going to happen next. But we can't be sad on Easter. God bless you, all who happen on this page, and may we all have reasons for rejoicing.

Good spring day.

Just feeling a little down today -- wanted to give myself a reminder that it is spring and there's a lot to enjoy out there.

The flowers!

The dogwoods!

The buds!

The... What is wrong with this tree?

This tree is a slob. I would think that this is a spring thing, that the tree has gotten bigger and is shedding its old bark, but I've seen this tree many times and it looks like some kind of caveman tree all the time. I call it Ogg.

I think this may be a river birch, or Betula nigra, but I have no idea. I don't know from trees. Anyway, it needs to pull up its socks and get its act together.

Sadly, spring also means the return of the ticks, and I've already pulled a bunch of them off little dog Nipper. He takes a tick-killing medication and wears a flea and tick collar, but the little creeps love his fuzz. So I went out back with two bottles of bug spray and drenched all the high grass and reeds at the back of the yard. Napalm for ticks.

Well, I feel a little better; I hope you do too. It's not that nature brings me peace and joy. Usually it brings me bug bites, sunburn, concussions... but it does remind me that nature is just as imperfect and sometimes as ugly as I am. So I fit right in.

The perfect sign.

I've long thought that the perfect symbol for something momentous has got to be the cross, which Christians think is the perfect sign of the most momentous sacrifice in history. It works out so well that it's easy to see God's hand in it.

1) It's simple.

A small child can make a cross. It's even easier to draw than the ichthus, the fish symbol composed of two arcs, because you have to make curved lines -- straight lines are easier to draw. The cross is simpler than any sign of a supernatural faith -- the Star of David, the pentacle, the star and crescent, and surely every motif associated with Hinduism. It's simpler than secular signs like the hammer and sickle. It's even simpler than the Bass Ale triangle. Simplicity helps a message spread.

2) Its essence and scope are in the design.

It's not hard to understand the principles of the public torture and murder method known as crucifixion; once we do, we see it in those simple lines. It is also the post and beam that holds up the roof to shield us, the sail to move us. The cross also means a crossroads, a change of direction, and believers find that the cross is the ultimate change of direction for humanity. The cross is sturdy, as faith must be. In other words, the sign expresses so many things within its two lines, many that require no prior knowledge of crucifixion. G. K. Chesterton has a lot to say on this topic in his novel The Ball and the Cross. 

3) It speaks history.

The public nature of the cross is vital to the story; Jesus's death was a public event, witnessed by many. He did not go sneaking off somewhere before he died. You can't go sneaking off the cross; even if you could get off, the Romans would stick you right back up there. It is crucial (if you will) that we know that Jesus died, because when He was seen later, that was pretty significant. It goes to the faith as being tied to a definite event that happened in a definite time and place, unlike the legends of gods in other cultures. For all its cruelty, though, the cross leaves a body that is recognizable and not in pieces; not that God cannot reassemble pieces, but it would have just made Jesus seem more like a ghost on His return than the One who had defeated death. (As it was, He had to prove to the Apostles twice that He was not a ghost.)

The cross teaches us about cultures that used (and sometimes still use) the evil of crucifixion, meant to be a shameful as well as cruel means of death; in it we also remember the triumph of the faith. The cross was not used commonly as a Christian symbol until after Constantine. After that, it was seen on all the structures of Christianity through the march of the centuries. 

4) It works better than any other sacrificial sign you can think of.

Think of saints who were tortured to death or otherwise murdered in the course of God's work. Do we symbolize St. Paul or St. John the Baptist with the headman's ax? The answer is not usually. These would not put one immediately in mind of the victim. You might think St. Paul was a Viking if we used the ax. St. Lawrence, famously grilled to death, is often symbolized by the gridiron, but that's not a device normally associated with torture as the cross is. The Catherine Wheel is the closest sacrificial sign I can think of, and St. Catherine of Alexandria did not die on it; the spiked wheel shattered at her touch.

5) It works better than any other simple sign you can think of.

Think of other very simple things to draw -- line, square, circle, scribble. Do any of these suggest a means of fatal torture, let alone a high public one, let alone one that tells the story of God's sacrifice to reconcile the world to Himself?

6) It is easily embellished for related uses.

Catholics display the cross as a crucifix, with the body of the Victim on it. Most Protestants just leave the cross unadorned. Some saints have different crosses; the upside-down cross is a sign of evil in Hollywood and among other ignoramuses, but in truth it is St. Peter's cross, as tradition says Peter did not think himself worthy to be crucified in the same way as Jesus. St. George, St. Andrew, St. Brigid and others have variations on the cross. St. Florian's is well known as a symbol of fire departments. At its heart, it remains the cross.

7) It spells agony, and holiness.

And sometimes it appears as such in the most appropriate times.

Wrong Said Fred.

Any major holiday says "family," doesn't it? And thus it also says "annoyance." Of course they push all your buttons; they were the ones who installed them.

One thing that's always been curious to me are family nicknames that break out into the wider world. You will occasionally encounter something like the man who introduces himself as Cooter, and it turns out that his younger brother couldn't pronounce his actual name of Cooper, and everyone in the family started calling him Cooter, and it stuck to this day, and he's 71 years old. That's a long time to be a cooter. 

Fortunately I did not have that kind of an issue. Mine is much more common; at home they called me Freddy, which helped distinguish me from my dad, Ed (not Eddie). A lot of guys will stick to the childhood diminutive, calling themselves Eddie or Chucky or Bobby or Jimmy all their lives. The teachers called me Fred, though, so that's what the kids at school called me. It became the way I would introduce myself. Nowadays I'm Fred to everyone except my family -- with some exceptions. 

One guy I know calls me Right Said Fred, and has done since that wonder had its one hit in 1991. Another likes to call me Freddy Krueger, which I'm not fond of, although I have to admit I like the character's snap-brim fedora. 

lookin' sharp

I've gotten the Flintstone treatment off and on for years, which bothered me as a child but less so when I got older. Fred Flintstone is, after all, a man of many admirable traits. I just wish I didn't share his physique.

Strangely, despite my attraction to cardigans, I've seldom been compared to Fred Rogers. He was so calm, so wise, so not-screaming-his-fool-head-off, that I guess people sensed we were not interchangeable.

I have sometimes been called Astaire by wits who have seen me try to dance. In one psych class a couple of the girls called me Sigmund Fred, which I still think is funny. I've gotten a few Fredericks, which is fine, and Frederick the Great, which is better. Generally I've refrained from using the full Frederick as too formal; I use it on writing and such just to stand out from any Alfreds or Fredas or Fredericas or plain Freds named Key that might be around.

Oh the whole, as fusty and unpopular as Fred may be, it's really a pretty good name, not too given to mockery, at least not since I was in grammar school. Kids always find things to mock about one another in grammar school anyway.

I know a Mark who is enraged by being called Marky Mark, feeling that he's been stuck with Mark Wahlberg's cast-off stage name. I know an Ed whose friends have assured me that his nickname is Oed, as in Oedipus, but clearly this in-joke is hard to express vocally. Whatever your name is, someone can use it to stick a bad name on you, though.

So what's your lousy nickname story?

Tears.

I just wanted to post some other piece of nonsense today; I didn't want to get sad with the saddest days on the church calendar staring us in the face. But that's all I have right now.

You don't need me to repeat the news about the burning of Notre Dame. It hit me harder than I would have expected. I still don't know why. It's part of my Catholic faith, loaded with relics, far older than any Christian structure in the New World or any American structure connected with Western Civilization. And it looked for a while like the church would be gutted, another loss in the war against civilization. But thank God, there was no loss of life as in the 9/11 attacks, no believed perpetrators to require police or military response.

Now I'm thinking that the French loved Jerry Lewis so much that they let a Jerry-like idiot work on the construction project.

I didn't break down and cry over it; not that I'm so full of toxic manhood, but maybe because there were so many unknowns when the news broke.

But later that night, I did think about my reaction, and I thought about times when I was pretty much brought to tears by movies. There is a connection, if you'll bear with me. (Spoilers ahead, but no new movies. I know nothing about Avengers: Endgame.)

I was on a date the first time I saw Field of Dreams, and I had an idea how the film would end because I'd read the book it was based on, Shoeless Joe. But the ending still punished me, and almost had me bawling in front of my date, which is not a situation a man wants to be in, no matter how much Gillette thinks it's okay. (The funny thing is, my dad was still alive at the time, and he and I almost never played catch when I was a kid.)

More recently I was horrified by my weepy reaction to Disney's Tangled, even though I think it is the best of the recent Princess movies. The self-sacrifice of the (toxic male!) character came as a tear-inducing shock.

I was not as surprised by the weepiness associated with A Dog's Purpose, except that the death of any character voiced by Josh Gad would normally be cause for me to throw a freaking parade. But even though the movie was horribly flawed, full of stupid characters, still: dogs. World War II veterans would sob at the end of Old Yeller, I've heard.

The most recent film that got my eyeballs liquefied was -- also surprising because I knew how it ended -- Paul, Apostle of Christ.

It's not a great movie -- rather uneven, with some stilted dialogue, and as is often the case with small-budget indies, some of the actors certainly seem of a quality one might describe as "the unemployed sibling of one of the backers." But its merits are strong. Despite the film's meager $5 million budget, the director manages to evoke the setting of pre-Christian Rome quite effectively. James Caviezel is excellent as Luke, and James Faulkner is outstanding as Paul. The old man is mesmerizing, which is no easy feat. He looks like a bum. But you can't take your eyes off him.

Paul is known to have been compelling, which made him such a powerful promoter of the faith, but no glad-hander. Here he is resigned to being imprisoned in lousy conditions and killed by the Romans, but still determined to bring the message of salvation to the small, persecuted group in Rome. Faulkner's Paul is never shown in a rage, but is easy to believe as the man who got into a fight with Barnabas over Mark's discipleship in Acts 15: 38-39, causing them to go their separate ways, Paul to Syria, Barnabas to Cyprus. A lot of Paul's history is told and some (especially his dramatic conversion) portrayed in flashbacks. One critic beaned the movie for providing Paul with dialogue straight from his Epistles, but what else would we want Paul to say? You can't present the man without giving him his own words.

There's a compelling story line here that is fictionalized -- I suspect you'd never fill a movie with any story in the Bible as is except  those of Jesus or Moses -- but it shows how Luke survived the persecutions to compile his Gospel and how Paul met his death. It fills in the historical gaps, and does it with no miracles, no supernatural escapes. There's nothing I didn't expect, and yet Paul's death made me want to sob.

But we know it's not a sad story. Paul didn't think of it that way. And maybe in the long run, all stories have happy endings. If sometimes the endings make me want to cry, well, it shows I've still got some heart.

As for Notre Dame, that same chapter of Acts I mentioned above quotes the Prophets saying:

After this I shall return
and rebuild the fallen hut of David;
from its ruins I shall rebuild it
and raise it up again,
so that the rest of humanity may seek out the Lord,
even all the Gentiles on whom my name is invoked.
Thus says the Lord who accomplishes these things,
known from of old.

Insult to injury.

So Santa gave a pack of these bandages from novelty company Archie McPhee to my wife a Christmas or two ago as a gag. Santa was informed that it was not a great stocking stuffer.

I can't imagine why. First of all, for novelty bandages they are really quite good, hygienic and sticky. As I type this I am wearing the one show above on a finger that got bitten by a folding chair. It says, "Thou art a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave." How useful! If I get into a fight with my neighbor again -- not the insane dysfunctional ones, but rather the cable thief who is fated to die in prison -- I need just look down at my finger to see what I should call him. Which, since it is my middle finger, will be upraised already.

But that's not all you get with the pack of Shakespearean Insult Bandages! As the box says, "Thy Prize Awaits Inside!" So it's like a box of kids' cereal, except instead of having to eat all the Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs to get the prize, you just have to, uh, get hurt a lot.

Fortunately, I do! And look at this neato prize!

Yes, folks, a genuine fake tattoo of an eighties-style boom box. Put it on your wrist and swing it in the air outside your girlfriend's house while singing "In Your Eyes"! Draw questionable looks! Explain to the cops that it's a John Cusack tribute! Arrange for bail!

No one in jail will mess with a
guy who has ruff tats.

If these things don't entice you to get your Shakespeare bandages, note that their bandages also come in other varieties, like Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln, bacon, and my personal favorite, rubber chicken.

So shop Archie McPhee for all your embarrassing and/or fistfight-provoking first-aid needs. Don't let someone tell you "Thy wit's as thick as Tewksbury mustard" (Henry IV, Part II). Wear the bandage and prove it! Or something.

Animals you may know.

"Cry 'Havoc!,' and let slip the dogs of war." --Julius Caesar, Act III, scene i

The dogs of war

The rabbit of peace

The tabby cat of ambivalence

The wombat of our discontent

Otter disgust

Palm Pilate, or Barabba-Dabba-Doo!

Went to the Vigil Mass last night, because Palm Sunday usually gets a crowd and the Mass can run a good hour and a half. It's a tough Mass because it requires audience participation. As I noted a couple of years ago, we get all the stupid dialogue, too.

"We want Barabbas!"

Morons.

We don't know much about the Barabbas in question, except that he was a notorious thief, some sort of rebel, maybe a murderer, possibly the son of a rabbi (based on the etymology of the name Barabbas), and was played by Stacy Keach in the epic Jesus of Nazareth. 

Not a lot of mustache for this part.

Swedish author Pär Lagerkvist wrote a novel about the man, published in 1950. Unlike a lot of novels based on the New Testament (Ben-Hur, The Robe, Quo Vadis), there's no joy or sacrifice or salvation in Barabbas. The character based on the man is a thug, a man who ultimately would like to believe in Christ but is incapable of giving or receiving love, and dies in his sins. This is the kind of book Scandinavians enjoy -- loveless people who embrace despair. That's why they gave Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize. (Kidding!)

I don't quite agree with the Swedes. I don't see a great story of salvation in Barabbas, either. I just think of him and so many other figures in the Gospels as I probably would have been had I been there, someone deeply protective of his self-interests and desiring nothing that would lead to more trouble, like, say, following the cult of a crucified savior. I probably would have been as far away from Calvary as I could possibly be.

The Romans were no joke in their occupation. I've always been a little sympathetic toward Pontius Pilate, stuck in this dusty outpost with these ungovernable people and trying not to look bad before his cruel bosses in Rome. Then again, he was marked by your average Roman cruelty; he doesn't want to have Jesus killed because he sees no fault in the guy, but he's fine with flaying him half to death. I was quite taken by Rod Steiger's portrayal in Jesus of Nazareth; yeah, Steiger liked to overact, but he seemed to get the measure of the man. I am sure I have also been unduly influenced by the sympathetic portrayal of Pilate in Mikhail Bulgakov's famous novel The Master and Margarita. 

But if I'd been a Jew in Jerusalem, I'd have gone nowhere near any Romans if I could help it.

When I was confirmed I was supposed to receive the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and Fear of the Lord. I think readers of this blog will agree that many of these don't apply to me (Wisdom! Ha!), and I can assure you that Fortitude, also known as the Spirit of Courage, seems to have been lost in transit with the others.

"We want Barabbas"?

I'd have been saying, "Feet, don't fail me now!"

America's fortune cookie crisis.

In 2017 your intrepid reporter covered the sad case of Donald Lau, the Chinese fortune cookie writer who had to give up his career because of an insurmountable case of writer's block. A pity when a writer who was probably one of the most-read wordsmiths in the country has to walk away.

Well, today I'm here to tell you that the crisis is deepening.

I noted as far back as 2016 -- doesn't that seem like a long time ago? So much going on -- that our fortune cookies seldom included fortunes anymore, meaning predictions about the future, and were in fact pretty anodyne, even dull. I hope I did not add to Mr. Lau's woes with my blog entry, because since his retirement from the writing game, things have gotten a good deal worse.

Here's a sampling from a couple of our recent Chinese takeout meals:

Well, I think this one is... huh? The more I think about this the less sense it starts to make. Things are gained by ignoring the future but no one knows how much... I have no idea what this is supposed saying. I got to thinking it was a Buddhist koan, a paradox that reveals wisdom on meditation, but I don't think it's quite a paradox. Irony, maybe, but to what purpose? Maybe it's a lousy translation of a more cohesive statement. I've thought about this long enough.

This is kind of sweet, especially if you're getting the cookie with a loved one. On a first date? MMmmmeh, not so sure.
"So... I got a restraining order against me, I'm almost bankrupt, and I got toenail fungus." 
"CHECK, PLEASE!"

This I think is just wrong. As the Despair.com people have said so well, "A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction." And, "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." Ignorance on fire is much, much worse than knowledge on ice. Now, it may be that what is meant is "Ignorance with a desire to learn is better than knowledge that does nothing," but that's not the first reading you get, is it?

And this is just an embarrassment.

What is to be done? I'm not sure. We can't just say "That's how the cookie crumbles"; we're not quitters.

If it weren't for the disastrous backlash I'd get for cultural appropriation, I'd find a good recipe and start my own fortune cookie company. I don't think I'd necessarily be better at this than the current cookie authors, but a fresh perspective might elevate the industry, don't you think? Remember, "Better to say 'I can!' than just sit around on yours." See? You can have that one for free.

I love a piano.

"Look, I don't know where it came from either, but you're the one who's been
complaining since we landed here that nothing ever happens on this island."

Concussions installed and serviced.

I was quite disappointed by a news item I received yesterday from medical information site Medscape. Here's the headline:

FDA Takes Action on Bogus Claims for DIY Concussion Devices

It's not because I want a concussion; goodness, you all know I had one in February. Yes, I am a survivor. But no, I was concerned because I couldn't imagine how the FDA was going to take action on all those DIY concussion devices. Well, look, here's one now, just hanging around unregulated!

Bonk.

You can imagine how embarrassed I was to find out that the problem is not unregulated devices that cause concussions but rather unregulated devices that supposedly fix concussions. Mea maxima stupida!

The report says, "In a safety communication issued today, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that unapproved medical devices and tools that claim to help assess, diagnose, or manage concussion are being marketed to the public." 

Approved devices include things with names like EyeBOX, Ahead 300, and BrainScope One. Well, if the real medically-approved items can have names like that, I wondered, how bad are the names of phony devices? Unfortunately, the FDA does not go on to list them. 

I think we have enough imagination at VitaminFred to envision what they might be...

The Chewmanka: Covers head to protect noggin
from all stimuli while healing; bell rings when too
much movement is detected

The Crunchomatic: Tightening band causes
skull to realign, fixing acute nogginitis

The Blastolopha: Insert head; sound waves reset
brain patterns, cure concussion

The Perwheewheel: Insert into ear, turn handle; if concussion
is detected, handle will get stuck

The Buzzinga VII: Detects out-of-order areas of brain due to
trauma; uses light beams to refocus

The Zipzeddoo Zing: Electronic impulses detect sections
of concussion in head, correct same with electrical arc 

Of course, if you really want a concussion installed, trust the professionals. I recommend Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Howard. For duty and humanity!

[NB: None of these items are, of course, the ones that the FDA is after; these are just pictures grabbed at random off the Internet. All appear to be olde-tyme medical devices except for the air-raid siren.]

Big boy bites.

Last year in this space I name-dropped Burt Ward, famous as TV's Robin on Batman -- although some people might point out that the late Casey Kasem did the voice of Robin for cartoons between 1968 and 1985, making him TV's longest-running Robin. But Casey never had to put on tights, so I think Burt Ward gets the title. (Tightle?)

(NB: Did anyone ever notice that Burt Ward played Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne's ward? Oh, you did? Never mind.)

(Bonus fact: In crossovers with Scooby-Doo, Kasem had to voice Robin and Shaggy, a challenge for any thespian.)

Anyway, Casey may have had a famous fit about a dead dog, but he never made a line of food for dogs. Burt Ward did. And Ward managed to get permission to use old Batman show photos in a very comic-book-like design for the bags.

You can't miss it if the store carries it, These days other dog foods use packaging to make you feel serene and strong, like a proud master giving sound nutrition to his noble canine companion. Gentle Giants bags are an absolute mess.

So too, I imagine, is Mr. Ward's home; click on the link above to see him there with the 50-odd dogs he maintains. It ain't just him and Ace the Bat-Hound; this guy loves dogs.

When Ward was interviewed on the Gilbert Gottfried podcast, he used the opportunity to discuss how he developed Gentle Giants and to promote its attraction to dogs and its health benefits. Well, my dogs are large, especially Tralfaz, and sometimes picky eaters, so I figured I'd get a bag and let them try it. Down to the store and Pow! Zap! got a bag. There's a salmon variety, and also canned food, but our store only carries the dry chicken, so I bought that.

It's a dicey thing, changing a dog's diet, and you have to do it gradually. It also required a switch from a lamb-based food. So I was easing the dogs into it. Or I started to. Little dog Nipper refused the stuff. Shied away like it was on fire.

I'm not blaming Gentle Giants; I think Nipper's just not that into chicken. Big dog Tralfaz liked it just fine, and soon was enjoying it straight. So for him it was a success.

I can't vouch for Ward's claims of tremendous longevity from the food's health benefits compared to those of other brands of dog food, because when the bag was finished I had to switch Tralfaz back. Since we have to keep gigantic sacks of food around to feed these guys, they were not going to each get his own bag. Soon Fazzy was back on the Diamond Naturals, which both the guys like, at least most of the time.

It's too bad, though; if the food had really done them that much good, gotten them in fighting shape, I and the dogs could have started going out at night, busting crime together. Although I guess I would have had to start eating it too. Well, I do like chicken.

He's still got it.