Blog #68

The Fourth of July is coming up next week.  Independence Day celebrates the birth of the United States of America.  It celebrates our flag and our Constitution and our national Anthem.  Do you have a problem with any of that?  Well, some people do and they show it with protests and demonstrations.  But just like other things, protests just aren’t what they used to be.  In the 60s, we had real protests – fiery protests.   Feminists burned their bras, anti-war activists burned the flag, students burned the ROTC building, blacks burned Watts and the occasional Buddhist burned himself.  Those were the days!  Everybody had a Zippo and they knew how to use it.

Nowadays, people don’t burn anything on the Fourth except the burgers.  But be careful!  The golf, the fireworks, the barbecue -- they could all kill you, you know.  Especially golf!   I used to play golf twice a week.  I was never great.  I was never horrible.  But as the years go by and my back becomes more troublesome, I play less and worry less about my score.  My friends are the same.  Why worry about pars and birdies when you can worry about tripping over your putter and breaking a hip.  Or being thrown from a cart and gouging your leg.  Or driving into a lake and drowning.  Or having a heart attack from the heat.  It’s a par-72 jungle out there!

At golf today nobody died

And nobody fainted or cried

No back pain, no scars

No birdies or pars

So all that was hurt was our pride.

Another dangerous summer activity is boating.  Riding a boat is great fun and brings out, mostly in men, some instinct, ancient and genetic, that has come down to us from Ulysses and makes us believe we actually know how to tie a knot or steer a boat.  Of course I can’t do any of that.  I’m Jewish!  If Jews knew how to sail a boat, God would not have had to part the Red Sea.

When Moses thanked God for the Red Sea spectacular, God replied.  No problem, Moses.  Hey, you know those matzos you guys made?  Sensational!  Try them with a little manna.  I’ll send a few years’ supply down to you.  Have a nice wander and say hi to Zipporah for Me.  Tell her in a few thousand years I’m going to name the Zippo lighter after her.

Hi there and welcome back to my crazy blog.  I hope you’re doing well.  I get a lot of feedback from my readers.  I like the feedback.  I was at a golf-outing last week with about twenty people.  They all read my blog and are very, very nice people, all about my age.  We spent some time counting how many of us had pacemakers and comparing Lunesta and Ambien.  Then several wanted to know when I would mention them in the blog.  I get that a lot, and my stock answer is, “When you say something hilariously stupid.”  They never did, but I’ll say hello anyway.  Hi, Schleppers and thanks to our fabulous hosts S&H.

Hey, that reminds me of S&H Green Stamps and Eagle Stamps that we used to have back in those fuzzy years long ago.  We’d shop and the store would give us stamps.  We’d lick the stamps and paste them in a book and when the book was full we’d trade it in for a few dollars.  It was like Frequent Licker Mileage.  My Mom was an Olympic-Class Consumer, and she would give me all the stamps to lick.  The glue was probably poisonous, but who knew?

I just received an email from a high-school friend, a psychiatrist somewhere out east, Philadelphia, I think.  He told me he was writing a book about mental illness and wanted to use a poem I had written back in high-school.  Why he has saved one of my 55-year-old poems till now, I can’t say.  Maybe he had a crush on me.  I won’t bore you with the poem, but it was a 12-line rhyming version of the following joke:

A man took his wife to a faith-healer.  “Guru,” he said, “my wife is sick.”  The Guru looked into the woman’s tired and swollen eyes and touched her pallid, shrunken skin and said, “No, my friend, your wife is well.  She only thinks she’s sick.”  A week later the man saw the healer again.  “Well,” said the Guru, “is your wife better?”  “She’s worse,” said the man.  “She thinks she’s dead.”  It figures -- I finally get a poem published and it’s in a book about mental illness!

Did you notice I used the word till two paragraphs earlier?  The word is actually until.  For a while, I tried writing ‘til, the apostrophe being my sacrifice to the Grammar Gods, but I have decided to abandon my poor apostrophe and give in to the common usage of till.  I feel somehow dirty and weathered by that decision, but life goes on, the language changes and we old dinosaurs of diction must adapt or become extinct.

And speaking of words, a friend told me that some woman named Bee who was on the TV used a word with a C that was not rated G.  There’s a limerick there somewhere, but you only get one a week.  Yes, my friend said, she used the dreaded C-Word.  “What,” I exclaimed, “Constipation?”  Well, each generation has its own forbidden words.  When I was young, Hell, Damn and Bitch were forbidden in my house.  Lucy and Desi were not allowed to share a bed.  And “gay” meant lively and happy.  Things are certainly different today!  As the Wicked Witch of the West would say, “What a world!”  Besides constipation, there is another dreaded and forbidden word for those of the older generation.  It’s the F-Word – Fried Foods.

You know what else has changed?  Toilets.  Now, as I walk away from a public  urinal or seat, it flushes itself.  Then at the sink I just pass my hand under the soap dispenser and soap comes out.  I wave my hands under the faucet and water comes out.  I approach the towel dispenser and towels come out.  If they could just figure it out so that if we waved our hands behind us, crap would come out, then we wouldn’t have to eat navy beans and chick peas.

Ok, I’m talking about toilets again, and that means it’s time to leave.  Stay well and be careful.  Stay away from boats and self-immolating Buddhists, and be sure to count your blessings.  Have a great Fourth and come back next week.  Maybe I’ll mention your name.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #67

A few weeks ago, I was trying to describe to you how hot it was.  I told you it was so hot that J-Lo had traded Marc Anthony for Ice T.  Cute, right?  Well Abby, my youngest daughter, corrected me.  J-Lo apparently divorced Marc Anthony several years ago and is now an item with A-Rod.  I’d apologize for my mistake, but I know you don’t give a rat’s posterior which alphabet soup J-Lo is dating this week.  I have so much to do and cannot waste my time on which multi-millionaire actress is dating which mega-millionaire athlete and who is cheating on whom and who is having whose baby and what they are wearing or how much they weigh.  I’m too old for that.

I don’t care whose baby they’re carryin’

No interest in whom they are marryin’

Not one bit of passion

For any Kardashian

I’m just an old septuagenarian.

And by the way, as long as I’m bitching, I might as well get it all out of my system.  Who came up with initial-names like J-Lo and A-Rod?  Do they think that’s a new thing?  Nope, those kinds of names have been around since the Romans.   In fact, Cleopatra’s nickname for Julius Caesar was Ju-C.  That was before Cleo got involved with Mark Antony.  Which was before Mark Antony changed his name to Marc Anthony and got involved with J-Lo.  It’s complicated.

Back when I was young, there were plenty of celebrities with cute nicknames.  Here are some:

Tom Selleck was T-Sell                      Lloyd Nolan was L-No

Doris Day was D-Day                        Sandra Dee was San-D

Red Buttons was Red-Butt                 Julie Christie was Ju-Christ

And Isaac Newton was referred to as I-New.  Yes, he did.

Welcome back, everyone.  Are you feeling ok?  Did you have a nice Father’s Day?  Mine was great – some cards and little gifts and warm thoughts from my three daughters and my eight grandchildren and my wife.  Lovely!  I’m glad I’m not raising kids today.  It just seems like the world has changed so much, and not all for the better, but let’s hold that topic for another day.

Everybody says that retail is dead, but I’m not so sure.  Now trending are small stores that specialize in only one or two items.  It makes life so simple.  For instance, if you need bags, go to Sacks.  If you need bagels or donuts, go to Hole Foods.  And if you need dice, go to Seven-Eleven.

I’ve had a cough for weeks, and I finally decided to go to Dr. Intern.  I’m usually reluctant to visit doctors.  There are two reasons: 1) because the doctor might find something really bad which I probably should know about but don’t want to, and 2) because Carol usually knows more than the doctor.  But this had been going on for a while and I just wanted some antibiotic to kill it.  So I went and I got the prescription, but when I picked it up, the chief pharmacist drew me aside to voice his concern that this particular antibiotic, when taken with another of my medications, can cause some serious side effects.  He had ok’d it with Dr. Intern, but still felt the need to give me a written list.

I started to read the list of possible side effects.  The first group included the ever-popular internal bleeding, stomach pains and swelling, but I thought I could take the chance.  In the second group, the word “death” caught my attention, but what the heck, nobody lives forever.  The next group included back pain, blurred vision and confusion, but I already have those.  The last group included the deal breaker – acne.  I’d rather cough. 

I was at the Zoo yesterday handing out maps and important answers to highly intricate and technical questions like Where’s the bathroom?  When I handed one tourist a Zoo map with the words ZOO MAP clearly emblazoned thereon, she asked me, “Is this a map to the Zoo?”  Dumb as a pot-sticker.  “No,” I replied calmly, “it’s a map of Venezuela in case you’re planning to visit there later.”  Jeesh!  Another tourist, upon receiving his map, handed me a $5 tip.  Wow, I must really have looked old and decrepit!  I refused and told him to buy his daughter an ice-cream instead.

If you’re depressed, go to Lows.  If you want to buy marijuana, go to Quick Trip.  And if you want to take your first wife to lunch, go to Fed Ex.

Back to the pharmacist and the Zoo.  After about fifteen minutes at the Zoo, I had an overwhelming attack of dizziness and had to be treated by the medics.  It was the pills.  See, never make fun of your pharmacist.

Last week I mentioned Carol likes those colorful, anti-slip hospital socks.  My friend Bruce was in the hospital when he read that blog, so he requisitioned a pair of socks and gave them to Carol as a present.  Sure, I slave and strain for hours every day on my blog, sweating and squeezing my superannuated brain cells for their last bits of amusing fluff just to entertain my loyal readers!  And who gets the present?  She does. I know how Rodney Dangerfield felt.

If you need cheap landscaping, go to Dollar Tree.  If you need help in doing a blog, go to Write Aid.  Or if you’re looking for a boorish, insulting and obnoxious man, go to Dicks.

I got a letter today addressed to Resident.  Here’s what it said, word for word, no joke: Dear Jesus, we pray that you will bless someone in this home spiritually, physically and financially.

         

Do they think Jesus lives here?  Who knows?  I looked everywhere.  I even looked in the bathtub.  He could be taking a walk.  I’ve heard of Dear John letters and Dear Santa and Dear Abby, but Dear Jesus?  I should be careful what I write about Jesus.  He could sneak out of wherever He’s hiding and read it.  And my luck – I’d be the first person He doesn’t forgive.

Well, you’ll forgive me, won’t you, if I apologize for anything I’ve said in the last sixty-seven weeks that has shocked, insulted, scandalized or disappointed you?  I’ve been married fifty-one years, so I’m good at apologies.  Come to think of it, I retract it all.  I am who I am and you get what you get.  I’m not apologizing to anyone.  Except Carol.  So come back next week and be shocked and scandalized some more. I know you love it.  Count your blessings, stay well and watch out for the heat.  I’ll see you next week.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #66

Fifty-one years.  That’s how long Carol and I have been married as of this week.  Boy, that seems like a lot of years.  Until you remember that Queen Elizabeth had already been Queen for 15 years when Carol said I Do and I said Yes Dear.  Quite a ride!  I’m strapped in for a whole bunch more.  Bring it on.

Last week, if you remember, I said that making fun of your wife was as old as Adam, and we eavesdropped on a few conversations between God and Adam.  Here’s another.

“Hi, God, it’s Adam again.  I don’t know what to say, God.  I told you what a horrible mistake it was to create that woman, but in the past week or so I’ve gotten used to her a little.  I mean she’s annoying and a real pain in the rib, but she’s taken up gardening and I’ve learned how to hunt and we pretty much stay out of each other’s way.  But then, God, you made an even worse mistake.  You made another woman!  Now everyone’s miserable.  Now she wants a new cold shoulder fig-leaf outfit.  Something called Figtoria’s Secret.  And she wants a nicer donkey – something German.  Why don’t You just make two more of them so they can get up a bridge game and get out of my hair.”

Hi there and welcome back to my craziness.  Have I told you my wife is speedy at everything?  She likes to call it “efficient”.  Let me put it this way -- if she had been married to Frederic Chopin, the Minute Waltz would have lasted 30 seconds and Jules Verne would have made it around the world in a week.  Yesterday we were at the grocery store and she was running the aisles like a kangaroo with a hot coal in her pouch.  I mean she was in a New York hurry!  And all the while she was talking to me: “Why aren’t these bags over here? It would save so much time. Why are these here? Why aren’t those there? Get that old lady out of my way. Go stand in line at the deli so I don’t have to wait. Go to the third checker; she’s the fastest.”

         

Then she saw somebody she knew and stopped in the aisle to talk for twenty minutes while I stood around shuffling my feet and trying to figure out the difference between a rutabaga and a turnip.  I wonder if Adam has a cell phone.

I went to a funeral.  Dozens of cars were guided into the cemetery grounds by the funeral home employees and efficiently lined up in a tight parking queue.  As I turned my engine off, one of these employees walked up to the car and I rolled down the window.  Stop the story!  I did not actually “roll” down the window.  Ford introduced the power window in 1941, and although some of us may remember driving a car with windows that you had to “roll”, pretty much we haven’t rolled any windows since Phineas T. Bluster was Mayor of Doodyville.

So I lowered the window, whereupon the funeral person asked me what I considered to be a patently unnecessary question.  He said, “Are you here for the funeral?”  There I was, with fifty other cars parked in an immovable line in the middle of a cemetery.  “No,” I calmly replied, “I was wondering when the Jennifer Aniston movie started.  And hold the butter on the popcorn.”

Funerals depress me.  I hope you are not depressed.  I hope you are never depressed, but I know better.  We all have our periods of depression.  Health, money, politics, a dozen other things.  They say the signs of depression are losing appetite or sleeping too much.  I’ve had some depression to deal with, and I’ll tell you this: depression isn’t sleeping too late.  Depression is being told you have a week to live the day after you paid $700 apiece for two tickets to Hamilton next month, and you know your wife will take some other guy.  Depression isn’t losing weight.  Depression is losing your job and having the employment office tell you that the only position for which you are qualified is to manage the Eric Greitens Re-Election Campaign.

And happiness is maybe making you smile a little on a depressing Thursday.

A lady comes home from the plastic surgeon.  “The doctor told me I had the breasts of a sixteen-year old,” she tells her husband.  “What did he say about your 75-year-old ass?” the husband asks.  “He didn’t mention you,” she replies.

Hey, a little history, a little politics, a little poetry, a little rock n’ roll, a joke or two.  It’s all right here in your weekly Limerick Oyster.  Step right up!

I’m sure you’ve heard that the Miss America Organization will no longer include the swimsuit competition or the evening gown competition in judging the contestants.  I wonder how many people will tune in to see which covered-up young lady is the most environmentally sensitive.  Probably less than the number of letters in BOREDOM. The only audience for the pageant consists of men who want to see sexy bodies and women who want to criticize everything. 

I always turn the sound off when the pageant is on and just listen to my wife.  She’s better than Bert Parks!  “Too short-waisted.  Too flat-chested.  How did her mother let her go out with that hairdo?  That gown is horrible!  Who dressed her?”  My math is pretty good:  No Bodies + No Gowns = No Audience.   The next change, of course, will be the name.  MISS is gender insensitive and exclusive.  And AMERICA congers up thoughts of the flag, the Constitution and the National Anthem, all things we want to avoid.   So next year the pageant will be called The Most Politically Correct Person in the Western Hemisphere and not even their mothers will watch.  The organizers have already written their instructions to the contestants:

We won’t play the anthem to start

So don’t put your hand on your heart

We’ll dress you like nuns

No boobs and no buns

And please don’t say anything smart.

Maybe they’ll get the Boy Scouts of America to sponsor them.  Oops, they’re gone too.  What’s next to go, The Mickey Mouse Club?  M-I-C (see you at the Rodent Lives Matter march) K-E-Y (why? Because Walt Disney was a capitalist) P-E-T-A.

On a lighter note, why didn’t the lobster share his dinner?  Because he was shellfish.  Don’t be shellfish.  Share my blog with your friends or anyone else who likes goofy old men.  Stay well please and count your blessings.  See you in a week.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #65

I’m back.  And so, apparently, are you, so let’s get started.  I came home the other day and was met by my lovely wife.  We started to compare stories of the day, but after ten seconds her phone rang.  She answered it, said “Hold on” to whoever it was, and looked at me.  You see, I like talking to my wife.  I like to tell her about the people I have met or how my tutoring went or how many times I took the wrong exit on the highway.  What I hate most is getting shoved aside by a phone call from one of her over-talkative friends.  You know who you are.  She recognized my feeling and started to tell the caller she’d call back.  But instead, she looked at me and asked, “Are you going to clean up?”  Clean up?  Did I look dirty?  Well, I knew how to translate that simple question after five decades of marriage.  Are you going to clean up? translates to, “I really would rather talk to this person than you, but I know you don’t like it, so if you have something to do, do it now.”

Welcome back everyone.  I hope you are well today.  If you have read even a small sample of these blogs, you know that I talk about my wife a lot and that I sometimes pick on her.  Making fun of your wife is as old as Adam and Eve.

“She’s always nagging at me, God -- something about those damned apples.  She probably thinks an apple a day keeps the Devil away.  Women! And now she wants clothes! Clothes?  Who needs clothes?  And she wants to know on what day You’re going to create flip flops. Her feet hurt.  Plus, she thinks You’re a woman.  Seriously, God? What were You thinking? You could have just created three other guys and a golf course”

Making fun of my wife is often humorous because you, as the reader, can recognize some of yourself or your spouse in the story.  Let’s do it some more.  It appears that Carol knows the amount and location of every edible morsel in the house.  I firmly believe she weighs the Cheerios, counts the nuts and marks the level in the milk carton.  She knows everything!  Last week when she had dinner out with friends, she came home, spent four seconds in the kitchen and said, “So you ate the chicken parmesan leftovers.  Then you had two m&m peanuts – a red and a yellow.”  Damn, I hate it when she’s right!

But although I make fun of her, you all know I would do anything for her, even clean up when I wasn’t dirty just so she could yabber with her friends.  You still know who you are.  Or give her my socks.  We went to a movie and Carol reached into her purse for a pair of hospital socks to keep her feet warm.  You must have some of those, don’t you?  They’re the ones with rubber on the bottom so when you walk around in the hospital you won’t slip and break something that you haven’t broken already.  I love long sentences. She has at least one pair of every color of these socks, and the sad truth is that she got them all from the various times I was in the hospital.  “How do you feel? When are you getting out? Grab me a few pairs of socks. I like pink.”  But when she searched at the movie, she realized she had forgotten socks so I removed mine and handed them to her.  Is that love or what?  I have a warm heart.  And cold feet.

I have been tutoring at the jail for three or four years now, and I have a weird idea.  You may have noticed that I am overflowing with weird ideas.  This one involves the inmates participating in an exhibition of their talents.  No, not breaking and entering -- singing and dancing.  There must be a lot of talent among the prison population.  We could have a show and call it Broadway Felonies or something.  Or maybe a game show like Let’s Make A Plea Deal or You Bet Your Life Sentence.  Or maybe we’ll just do a talent show.  We’ll call it So You Think You Can Sing Sing.

2018 is an Election Year, and I’m already nauseous.  It’s only June, but with primaries and special elections and pre-election character assassinations – well, watching television is no fun anymore.  The late-night shows have nothing but political ads and commercials for male enhancement pills.

Now all those commercials I viewed

Have totally soured my mood

They’re all for elections

Or pills for erections

And, Man, either way you get screwed.

I have a great line that I use at the Zoo when one of the big snakes, the anaconda or a boa constrictor, is not on exhibit.  “Where’s the snake,” some little urchin asks.  “It’s got reptile dysfunction,” I tell them.

I went to a program where my 4^th grader, Charley did a short presentation followed by similar presentations from the rest of her class.  Yes, Charley is a girl.  It’s impossible to tell gender from the names nowadays.  Besides which, mothers are trying to outdo each other by creating names no-one has ever had before.  The pattern I discovered is that it doesn’t matter what you name your child as long as you spell it wrong.  Here are a few examples from the program: Lauryn, Abbe, Maddisson, Cayleigh, Madysen, Xzavier, Jaxson, Zoie, Destinee.  I think I’m going to change my name to Mycull.  Now that’s catchy!

“Hey, God.  It’s Adam again.  That woman you made just gathered some fruit and wants me to ask if You have a round table.  There’s only two of us on the whole planet and she thinks she needs a reservation!  Oh, and she wants it not too near the serpent.  Jesus Christ!  Oh, You like that, God?  That Jesus Christ thing?  I just made it up.  You like it so much, you’re going to name Your Son that?  Now that’s catchy.”

Ok, it’s about time for me to get hit by lightning.  I’ll see you next week.  Count your blessings and stay well.  Do you think I’m in trouble with God now?  Maybe I should change my name.

Mycull                                               Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com