Blog #55

Tomorrow is Good Friday, the Super Bowl of Catholicism.  Today is Holy Thursday, the day Rabbi Jesus and his followers celebrated Passover.  That Passover meal is now called The Last Supper.  Good Friday is the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.  It might have been “good” for Catholics, but not so good for Jesus.  Easter Sunday is the day Christ rose from the grave.  Anybody who had Jesus in his or her bracket back then did great.  I had Pontius Pilate to go all the way.

I went to a funeral recently.  As Yogi Berra said, “always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise they won’t go to yours.”  At the funeral I ran into a woman I have not seen for many years.  You know, after my heart problems years ago, people kept expecting me to look shrunken and weak and as dead as gun-control legislation.  So when they saw me looking fit as a Stradivarius, they would tell me how good I looked.  It pays to have bypass surgery!  Well, the woman at the funeral, not having seen me in many years, told me I looked magnificent.  Magnificent!  Can you imagine?  I was really flattered.  Do you think she was hitting on me?  I think she was hitting on me.

At funerals, when I hear everyone speak about how terrific the deceased was, I often wonder what people will say about me.  How will I be perceived and remembered?  I’d like to be there.  Come to think of it, I guess I will be.  It would be nice if people would stand up and say nice things about me.  Let’s start with the lady who thinks I’m magnificent. 

Carol needed a battery in her watch and I went to Hong Trading, a place that sells purses and belts and hats and gimcracks of all sorts.  I walked in and said Ni Hau to the owner.  That’s Mandarin for “hello”.  I learned that from my Chinese students.  She replied, “We’re Korean. We all look alike.”  I apologized, of course.  When I left she said, “Goodbye, John.”  No, I said.  Don’t you remember me?  I’m Michael.  Oh, she replied:

Please put on my record a strike

I truly forgot you were Mike.

I’m just poor Korean

Have trouble with seein’

Besides all you Whites look alike.

I deserved that!  Ni Hau and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling peachy.  “Peachy” is not actually a good thing for me, for you see I have haptodysphoria.  No, no, don’t get out the hand sanitizer.  It’s not contagious.  It just means that I hate to touch peach-fuzz.  Really!  The taste of peaches is great, but the fuzz makes me shiver and go Yeccch!  So what did my lovely children used to do to me when they were growing up?  They would toss me a peach.  I would catch it instinctively, screech and drop it like a – like a fuzzy peach!  Kids!

Last week, I told you that I was not a highbrow, didn’t love the symphony or opera.  “Call me a boor, call me Ishmael”, I wrote.  My friends Deb and Carol commented that I couldn’t be a boor and still quote “Call me Ishmael”, the opening line of Moby Dick.  In high school, I got a D in Miss Bowers’ English class because of Moby Dick.  It was the only D that I ever received.  As a Freshman in college I got an A+ in English Literature.  I took the grade report back to Miss Bowers just to show her how wrong she had been.  She had forgotten who I was.  Did you know that Starbucks was named after a character in Moby Dick?  I have read Moby Dick six times.  Call me Ridiculous!

I was at a fancy restaurant recently, relaxing in my comfortable seat, sipping chilled water from immaculate and expensive glassware and listening to the daily special described by our highly professional waitperson.  Is that the right term – waitperson?  It describes the job, but not much about the person himself or herself or itself or themself.  Isn’t this getting sillier and sillier?  Our waitperson was a lady, so must I say a lady waitperson?  To me, that is the monumentally moronic conclusion to this linguistic contortionism we practice in order to de-genderize our language.  She was a waitress.  Must I first strip her of her gender, turning her into a waitperson and then add the gender back to make her a lady waitperson?  Even Lewis Carroll couldn’t invent such absurd gyres and gimbles.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.  The specialty of the day was – get ready, take a deep breath – Decomposed Lobster Lasagna.  “Decomposed lobster?”  We all gasped and silently waited for her to describe the Prix Fixe Menu of Spoiled Salad, Fetid Fruit, Decayed Dessert and, as the main course, Foul Fowl.  I inquired and learned that “decomposed” meant that the lasagna was separated on the plate into its constituent parts, but the name was so off-putting that I bet no-one ever ordered it.  Who came up with such a disgusting name?  Probably the same clown who came up with waitperson.

I hear there’s a fancy new restaurant opening on the Moon – great food, no atmosphere.

There was a big push a while back to put salad bars in all public schools.  I think it’s a great idea.  Our children should be encouraged to eat a balanced and healthy diet, but I would make one adjustment.  If you make a C or worse, you eat at the salad bar.  If you make As or Bs you get a burger with fries and if you are in the top 10% of your class – cupcakes!  C’mon!  What do you give your toddlers when they poop on the potty, kale?  No, you give them a Hershey’s Kiss.  Your students can’t possibly respond to some faint dream of a better job fifteen years from now if they study hard.  If you want kids to take school seriously and work hard, give them something they want right now.  If you want to put on some pounds at lunch, pound those books.  Stop grazing on curds; chow down with the nerds.  Get an A in French if you want French fries.  I promise you, it will work.

I think I’m finished for this week.  You made it through another one.  I’m proud of you.  Stay happy and in good health.   And Hung Hau.  That’s Mandarin for “Your camel has whooping cough.”  You’d be surprised how often that comes up. 

Have a Happy Easter and a Happy Passover and, while you’re spending that time with God, thank Him (or Her) for all your blessings. Bye for now.  See you next week.

Michael                                             Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #54

It’s Spring!  Are you happy?  Robin Williams said “Spring is Nature’s way of saying Let’s Party.”  Here in St Louis, Spring is often Nature’s way of saying, “Do you remember where your umbrella is?”  But rain or shine, I’m back, so let’s get started.

I was recently in North Carolina visiting my daughter.  Yes, there is a McDonald’s in Pinehurst, where she lives, and I am well-known there.  I was sipping and reading one morning at a counter.  There was a man, 50-ish, across from me.  We nodded to each other and said good morning.  A television lurked very close above us with the sound muted, but we both happened to notice the scroll informing us that some hooker was suing President Trump.  We looked at each other and started a conversation.  There we were, a black man from the South and a white man from the Midwest, agreeing that something had to be done about guns and that Trump was unpredictable and crazy.  I enjoyed the conversation.  I don’t know which side he votes for and vice-versa, but there are just some things we can all agree upon if we have a little intelligence, a little patience and a little common sense.  It is remarkable to me how few of us meet even that minimal threshold.

But not you, my loyal readers.  You have intelligence, common sense and obviously a lot of patience if you put up with me every week.  So welcome back.  I hope you’re doing well.  Let’s test that patience of yours by telling you a long, but 100% true story? 

I don’t gamble.  Gee, there are so many things I don’t do.  I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble, I don’t eat spaghetti that’s made out of zucchini.   I had a bad gambling experience 45 or so years ago.  Carol and I were young, in our twenties, and one Sunday night we had her sister and her cousin and her brother and their assorted spouses over for dinner.  Four couples, in case you lost count.  We had a nice dinner and afterwards the men were talking about playing craps in Las Vegas.  My brother-in-law said he didn’t know how to play, so we proposed to teach him.  We set up a crap game and played for nickels.  We gave my brother-in-law the dice when I was the banker.  He began to roll and didn’t stop until I had lost $78.  IN NICKELS!

We were young, saving for our family, and I had just lost $78 playing craps on the floor for nickels!  Carol was furious.  She was madder than Miss Colombia when Steve Harvey said, “Oops, you’re not Miss Universe.”  She was so furious, she wouldn’t talk to me.  For a week.  Not one word for a week because I had foolishly lost $78.  It was so quiet, I could hear my car rust.  At the end of that week I came home from the store and said, “Look, Honey, I bought this case of soda on sale.  I saved $2.”  She fixed me with those big brown eyes and said two words:  Seventy-six! 

I have admitted many of my faults and failings to you over the past year.  Here’s another.  I’m just not into highbrow stuff -- art, symphony, opera.  I must not have been around when they handed out the gene for high-class sophistication and good taste.  Except, of course, my taste in women.  But you know that already.

I like realism in art, but not Modern art.  I was once in a museum in Bentonville, Arkansas looking at a painting that was completely black.  I found a nearby docent and asked, “Can you explain to me what there is in that painting that is supposed to stimulate my admiration?”  He replied, “Damned if I know.”  And the symphony?  I like some classical music, but I must admit I grew up on three-minute songs that started with Take out the papers and the trash or I heard about the fella you been dancin’ with.  Three minutes is a good length for a song.  Twenty minutes or sixty minutes – I’ve already forgotten where I am.  And opera is four hours!  In Italian!

I guess that I’m just not aesthetic

I think modern art is pathetic

And Mozart and Bach

Are pretty much schlock

And opera requires anesthetic.

What can I say?  Call me a boor, call me low-class, call me Ishmael.  And anyway, should I care what other people think?  You’ll worry less about what people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

There’s something I have to ask you.  Are you tired of Mike Lindell?  He’s the slimy, mustachioed guy that’s on television 24-hours a day hugging his pillow and trying to sell you two for the price of one if you call now.  How many damned pillows can the man sell?  I believe that during most days I see his face more than I see my wife’s.

When we were recently in Florida, we went to the Cardinals Spring Training game.  The game was fine and the weather was good and the seats were great.  What bothered me was the cost.  $50 for a ticket, $7 for a horrible hotdog, $4 for a water.  It’s a game played by rookies and no-names and maybe one or two regulars.  Why do they have to swindle and impoverish their fans – their loyal, year-in year-out followers who suffer these rapacious ravages of their finances only because they love their team.  Four people is $300 to go, park and eat.  That’s criminal.  Fan Lives Matter!

By the way, those two songs I mentioned above:

Take out the papers and the trash – Yakety Yak, The Coasters (1958) written by Leiber and Stoller. 

 I heard about the fella you been dancin’ with -  Shake a Tail Feather, The Five Du-Tones (1963) written by Andre Williams.

I have to stop now.  I can’t write while I’m shakin’ my tail feather.  I love that song.  C’mon, do it with me – shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it Baby.  You can still do it.  Don’t hurt yourself.  See you next week.  Rock n Roll!

Michael                                             Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

 

Blog #53

Some of my grandkids were over and we were watching a bit of children’s television.  Wouldn’t it be nice if the real world was like the world of children’s TV?  Everyone would be kind to others and eat organic foods and exercise every day.  Everyone could spell in both English and Spanish and no-one would be constipated.  And everyone would have a nice singing voice.  No bullying, no fertilizer, no guns, no Joy Behar.  And old men would never be allowed out wearing shorts and black socks. 

Yesterday was π Day.  You know:  March 14^th, 3/14, 3.14?  Anyway, I wrote about it a few weeks ago and I got a note from my friend Bruce in Sandy Springs, Georgia.  He told me he celebrates π Day by running around in circles.  I wish I had thought of that.

Did you know that citizens of Missouri have the right to carry a gun, open or concealed, into most public places – movie theaters, weddings, even grocery stores.  Our local grocery chain is called Schnucks.  The name is ridiculous, but the fresh baked donuts are to-die-for!  But be careful.  That guy rifling through the fresh fruit?  Or the woman looking for the special on Smith & Wesson Oil?  You never know -- they could be packing an automatic weapon.  And be sure to stay away from the Cheerios section.

Bananas, some chips and a Miller?

Just going to Schnucks is a thriller

But try not to shop

Near Snap-Crackle-Pop

You might meet a cereal-killer.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are staying well.  As we get older, it gets harder to stay well.  Too many of my friends have medical issues, and every day I have to ask Carol for the health news.  Of course, she knows all the scoop about everyone who has been medicated, irradiated, ablated, defibrillated or sedated.  I hope you are not one of them.  But if you are, get well fast.

Hey, I have a question for you.  Do you lie?  Of course you don’t.  I would never suggest that you lie.  But do you exaggerate – maybe a little?  I have made a study of the most common topics of exaggeration.

First Exaggeration: Have you seen my grandson hit a golf ball?  Yesterday, on the 11^th hole, my Jacob hit a ball, I guarantee it was 300 yards if it was a nickel.

Truth:  Jacob is seven and the farthest he has ever hit a ball is 42 yards – into a hot-dog cart.

Second Exaggeration:  My daughter’s boyfriend just got a new job.  He’s the CFO of a new start-up that’s all over the world.  I can’t tell you exactly what they do, but they’re huge.  He’s doing very well. 

Truth:  He quit his job as a Bar-Mitzvah disc jockey and is selling a line of pizza ovens in Rapid City.

Third Exaggeration:  I’m going to a new neurologist.  He’s one of the top doctors.  He’s the foremost expert in the world on the kind of disease I have.  He graduated first in his class.

Truth:  Dr. Patel Rajmiri was the only one in his class at the Karachi School of Incantations and Pita Making.  His office is in the back of a Lebanese deli.

Fourth Exaggeration: I’ve got a great new sleeping thing for you.  You place a rotten apple under your pillow.  It works great.

Truth: I haven’t slept since the Bush administration.  No, the old one.  And I have tried every pill, powder, lotion, potion, salve, inhaler, concoction and Haitian Voodoo ritual known to man or beast.  The rotten apple doesn’t work either and smells like crap.

You absolutely know someone who is guilty of one or all of the above.  Maybe even you.

I was visiting friends in Florida, and one night eleven of us were sitting in a rented condo with an unfamiliar TV and two remotes.  The ensuing hour was funny enough to be its own sit-com.  We’ll call it My Friend Clicka or something.  Can you just imagine eleven old people trying to figure out something that the best Japanese engineers have devoted their entire careers to making complicated?  It is their revenge for Hiroshima, you know.  What goes around comes around.  “You vaporized two of our cities, so now each year we’ll cause 50,000 of you to die of apoplexy trying to record Jeopardy and Dancing with the Stars while watching The View all at the same time.”  At one point we actually got a Saudi Arabian sit-com on the TV.  It was called Oil in the Family.  A few minutes later I got the GUIDE button on one of the remotes to open the door on the microwave oven.  And Carol rigged one remote up to fire AA batteries like an AK-47.  It was hilarious.  Did we ever get to watch television?  No, but we had fun picking up the batteries.

I parked today in a restaurant parking lot and, as I got out of the car, I noticed a shiny reflection of some coins on the ground.  So I began to calculate the threshold of how much money it would take for me to bend down and risk injuring my back, my legs, my pelvis or my pride.  What’s your limit for bending like a pauper and scraping virus-coated change off a filthy pavement?  I looked a little closer and discovered there were two quarters and two dimes.  That was definitely above my threshold.  I could buy a greeting card with that at the Dollar Store!

I used to think I could write greeting cards.  It can’t be that hard.  Let’s try one:

Roses sure are red when they come out each day to greet us

Sugar may be sweet but it can give you diabetes

Violets attract the bugs, but certainly they’re blue

And you are still a royal pain, but Honey, I love you.

Like it?  Wait, I hear the phone ringing.  It might be someone from Hallmark.

I’m reading Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck, a record of a road-trip which he took in 1960.  He took along as source material several dictionaries, a set of encyclopedias and other reference books.  How the world has changed!  Do you own an encyclopedia?  Do you even have a dictionary?  Reference books?  Of course not. The Encyclopedia Britannica sure used to look nice in the bookshelf. But now you just have Google in your pocket and that’s all you need.

And all you need now is a rest, so I’ll stop.  But not for long.  I’ll be back next week.  Stay well until then.   

 Michael                                            Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #52

(Fifty-two)   (52)   (LII)  – it doesn’t matter how you write it, it means we’ve been doing this for a whole year.  Can you believe it’s a year already?  Have you been around through all 52 episodes?  I remember that after writing the first two or three blogs, I began to wonder how I would ever find anything else to say.  Apparently, however, I have turned out to be considerably wordier than any of us could have imagined.

Sometimes, when I’m looking for something to share with you, I just review local news stories from around the country.  There’s always something interesting.  In Kentucky, for example, cattle are dying from “frothy bloat”, a condition they get from eating too much clover, and the US Department of Agriculture has agreed to reimburse them for their losses.  What?  The Dept. of Agriculture (which means your tax dollars) is going to reimburse farmers because their cows got sick from eating too much clover?  Just think about that for a while.  What has this country come to?  Are we supposed to collect as much taxes as we can and use them to make sure no American (or illegal immigrant for that matter) has a bad day?  Oh, your cow got sick?  I’m so sorry.  I’ll use some tax money from someone who has never heard of you to buy you a new cow.  Just vote for me in the next election.

In other news, a North Dakota public golf course has taken a new approach to keeping the course clear of weeds – goats.  The goats graze on the weeds and everybody’s fat and happy.  Hey, why don’t we send the goats down to Kentucky so they can eat the clover that’s making their stupid cows sick.  Think of all the money that will save.  You just need to think outside the box.  Or the goat.               

I saw a truck on the highway this morning.  It said Brightfield Casket Company.  On the back it read, “Drive safely.  We can wait.”  Actually, I have another thing they could write on the back of the casket truck:

You can die from electrical shocks

Or the flu or the flux or the pox

But we’ll be your friend

When it comes to the end

Cause we’re thinking INSIDE the box.

Hi there and welcome back.  Did you watch the Academy Awards?  I really had no interest, but I did walk in while Carol was watching, and I noticed one thing:  Luke Skywalker is fat!  I was horrified!  Obi-Wan fed you well, young Skywalker.  May the lasagna be with you.

I was in a restaurant washroom the other day.  I had just washed my hands and was looking for something to dry them.  Aha, a towel dispenser!  Thank goodness!  I hate those hot-air things.  I always say they just turn the cold water on my hands into hot water on my hands.  But no, this was an actual towel dispenser.  So I started to wave my hands under the thing.  I waved until I began to feel like Toscanini.  I got through Beethoven’s 5^th and The Nutcracker Suite before I realized that all I had to do was reach underneath and pull a paper-towel out.  I felt sillier than a man wearing shoes that don’t match.  I think I’ve done that one about three times.    

I am reading a book about the United States Merchant Marine.  Of course, that doesn’t surprise you.  In it, I learned that the phrase used to describe the captain of a Merchant Marine vessel is the “undisputed master of any gross tons upon oceans”.  I, in my own home, am the undisputed master of precisely nothing.  Last week I dressed up to go out for dinner with friends.  Nice shirt, sweater, slacks, two shoes that matched, two socks that matched (well, you never know).  I presented my sartorially splendid self to my wife who instantaneously forbade me to leave the house

What?  Forbidden? What kind of pusillanimous worm does she think I am?  I’m a man! I can do what I want and no woman is going to push me around.

Not one of the above thoughts actually entered my head.  I said, “Yes, Dear” and marched my 50-year-married and highly trained rear-end back to my alcove that my wife lovingly calls “your closet” to change every piece of my wardrobe.  But I still think I can do whatever I want any time I want.  Can’t I?

How tall are you?  No, no, don’t lie to me.  And don’t bring out your driver’s license either.  You lied on that too.  Admit it, you’re shorter than you were when you were nineteen.  Every time you go for a physical, they measure your height.  For two months before your appointment you let your hair grow longer so you have an extra cushion of fluff on your head.  You wear the thickest socks you can find.  Then you stretch and strive and lift your heels – and still you’re half an inch shorter than the last time.  It’s inevitable.  Get over it.  You didn’t want to go on that roller-coaster ride anyway -- you know, the one where you have to be taller than Minnie Mouse?  Just start memorizing the words to Follow the Yellow Brick Road and live with it.  Those slacks look better anyway with a little break on your shoes.

When Zach, my oldest grandson, was ten and grew out of his clothes, they put the clothes aside for my next-oldest, Tyler, who was six.  When he was ten they passed down to his brother Austin who was then six, and then lastly to Parker, my youngest grandson.  When he is ten and grows out of those same trustworthy clothes, they will come to me.  By that time, I’ll be three-foot-seven.

Well, this is the end of the 52^nd blog we have shared -- a whole year of stories, musings, rantings, poems, confessions and picking on my wife.  She doesn’t mind.  There was one blog where I didn’t mention her at all and she was so pissed she forbade me to leave the house.  I’ve had tremendous fun writing to you.  I hope you have had fun too.  What do you say, let’s do it for another year!  I’ll be back next week.  Hope you’ll be there too.  Stay well.

Michael                                             Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com