Blog #146

Do you remember the names Margaret Gorman and Camille Schrier?  Of course you don’t.  Margaret Gorman was the first Miss America back in 1921 and Camille Schrier was just crowned Miss America for 2020, but the pageant has changed throughout the years.  Carol and I used to watch Miss America every year.  I watched to see the gorgeous, sexy girls prancing around in their bathing suits, and Carol watched so she could criticize.  Who picked out that horrible dress for her?  she would say.  Or, too much hair.  Or, didn’t she look in the mirror?  Or, one too many chins.  Alas, somehow the magic is gone for me.  Plus, the talent part has changed.  They used to sing or play the xylophone or twirl batons.  This year’s winner was a Bio-Chemical Engineer.  She made so many things explode onstage, I thought she was Miss Palestine.  I will no longer watch the pageant, but that’s ok.  I have my own Miss America.  I’ve had her for 52 years.

I need to ask you something.  What is the biggest waste of your time?  I have a few suggestions.  Watching Congressional Hearings must certainly rank near the top.  Four hours of an Italian opera is high on my list.  How about this – exiting an airplane?  We live in the age of cellphones and Artificial Intelligence, where we can talk to anybody in the world and command our televisions to play anything we want.  Can we not, as a society, find a better way to get 100 or 200 people off an airplane in less time than it takes to cook a turkey?  Anybody have a suggestion?

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling full of joy, full of good cheer and full of good holiday food.  Yummy!  My wife wishes you Good Tidings of Whoopi and Joy.  She’s not here right now.  She’s attending her Jewish Princess Continuing Education class.  This week she’s learning how to tell her husband he’s lost in seventeen languages.  Next week she’s teaching a class on How to Make Your Husband Believe the Restaurant Was His Choice.

Did you know it was Winter already?  According to Wikipedia, the winter solstice or hibernal solstice occurs when one of the Earth's poles has its maximum tilt away from the Sun. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere.  It happened last Saturday, which was the shortest day of the year.  It was so short that Nancy Pelosi only had time to say she hates Donald Trump six times.

At the end of January, we are going to escape some of the St. Louis winter by driving to Florida to mooch on some friends and relatives.  It scares me a little to go to Florida.  I’ve heard of so many people, healthy vibrant people in their 60s, who move to Florida and within thirty years, they’re dead.  We’ll try to be careful.

Over all these weeks we have spent considerable time talking about disposing of our remains.  It’s a thing old people do.  We’ve talked about cremation, about sending our remains into space and other schemes.  I just found a new option, and this is not made up:  LifeGem – we turn your loved one’s ashes into diamonds.  That’s right, Friends and Neighbors, diamonds manufactured out of human ashes.  My body, once you remove the pacemaker and the titanium hip and the cornea transplant, is mostly carbon and water.  Cremation gets rid of the water and that leaves carbon, the stuff of which diamonds are made. Necklaces, earrings, rings, bracelets – all manufactured out of your ashes.  Now you can bequeath your bodily remains (transposed into diamonds) to your loved ones so they can wear a piece of you wherever they go.  The company even provides a sample of how to do that in your will:

To make all my memories linger

A fob for my wife, a hum-dinger

My nephew and niece

Get an earring apiece

And my in-laws?  They just get the finger.

As long as this is the Christmas Issue of L.O., I must mention that Christmas Eve ten years ago was the date my heart started racing faster than a Kardashian heading for a camera.  They rushed me to the hospital where they thought I was deader than the Bill Cosby Show.  They screamed Code Blue and grabbed a Handy-Dandy Defibrillator and shocked me back to life. Ten years!  Amazing!

And speaking of body parts, I went to a Physical Therapist for my knee.  He kneaded my ligaments and gave me some exercises.  I’m dubious.  But hey, it’s nice to be kneaded.

Christmas Eve was movie night, and Carol and I arrived about 20 minutes early so we could people-watch.  It’s kind of like bird-watching.  Oh look, Honey, there’s a Ruby-Cheeked Face-Lifter walking with a Duck-Billed Fatty-Puss.  We saw a Yellow-Tufted Perma Bird, a New York Cocky-Jew, a Dark-Haired Annoying Bitch-Bird, a Great-Horned Scowler and an Eastern Seagull – or was it Siegel?  And then, of course, there were us – The Grey-Haired Limping Rhyming-Bird and the Slender Yapping Road-Runner.  We finally went in to see the movie.   

ROTTEN OYSTERS:  Bombshell was terrific!  I guess there are no beautiful blondes in America, because they had to use a South African (Charlize Theron) and two Australians (Margot Robbie and Nicole Kidman) to play American women.  But beautiful they certainly were and fine actresses as well.  Charlize and John Lithgow deserve Academy Award nominations.  A very, very good film.

Ok, I'm done.  Just another week of laboring in the vineyards of the Lord, as the Pope might say.  I am not Catholic, but also not above borrowing a well-turned Catholic parable, especially at Christmas time.  I hope you had a lovely Christmas yesterday, or, if you didn’t celebrate, at least a peaceful day of relaxation.  Wow, Christmas is over already.  The time just flies.  I haven’t even finished x-raying my Halloween candy.

I wish you a wonderful Holiday Week.  I’ll be back next year to tell you to stay well and count your blessings, so you might as well start now.  Thanks for joining me in 2019.  It’s nice to be kneaded.  We’ll have a great 2020.  See you then.

Michael                                             Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #145

You’ve all heard of the Me Too Movement.  Now, there’s a new one started by Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots.  It’s called the Who Me Movement.  How many times do we have to catch them cheating before we reject their “Who Me” excuses?  Bill has even started a new magazine called Cheater’s Digest.  It’s one of a crop of trendy new magazines that include:

·        Martha Stewart’s tips on how to decorate your prison cell.  It’s called Big- House Beautiful.  She has another called Better Homes and Wardens,

·        Peep-Hole Magazine by Harvey Weinstein,

·        Torts Illustrated by Alan Dershowitz,

·        And Fifteen, edited by Prince Andrew.

Guess what’s coming up.  Hanukkah, that wonderful Jewish holiday that comes between Thanksgiving and Christmas and celebrates the rededication of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.  It also commemorates the Hanukkah Miracle by which a small amount of oil, enough to give light for one day, miraculously lasted eight days.  My granddaughter suggested that was akin to having your cellphone work all day on 1% battery charge.  She’s very modern.

The celebration lasts eight days, which allows you to spell Hanukkah a different way each day and to receive eight different presents.  Which is why, with all due respect to my Jingle Bell friends, Hanukkah is better than Christmas.  You see, if on Day One of Hanukkah you receive a present from a loved one that is way better than the one you gave her, you have seven more days to go shopping and buy her something appropriate.  But if that should happen on Christmas, you’re out of luck and you’ll be in more trouble than Donald Trump.

I have been very busy with my Hanukkah shopping, and I know I’ve spent way too much money.  Presents are for kids.  Like my grandchildren, like my children, like me.  Women tend to be more mature, so I only got my wife one little thing – one little, practical, inexpensive, useful, boring thing.  She’ll hate it of course.  She probably already knows what it is and wants to return it before I waste my time wrapping it.  She always hates what I get her.  Too bad, because it’s really fun buying people presents.  I saved the receipt. 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and full of cheer for the holiday season, whether it’s Hanukkah or Christmas or anything else.  I also hope you are somewhere warm and away from the snow we have had here in St. Louis.   I hear people singing Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow, so at least they’re happy.  There are other versions of that song, you know.  Audience members at a strip-club sing Let it Show, men with prostate problems sing Let it Flow and House Democrats sing Let it Quid Pro Quo.

I’m going to escape the cold next week, and spread goodwill for the Holiday Season as well, by going to California to nurse my daughter back to health.  Stephanie, the middle of my three precious girls, is having a little hip surgery, outpatient stuff.  I guess her hip takes after mine.  At the same time, Daughter Jennifer is coming to spend Hanukkah with us and Daughter Abby.  You have that all straight?  There’ll be a test later.  Well, we apparently don’t have it all straight because that causes a conflict.  But, as Burnham’s Law states, “If there’s no alternative, there’s no problem”, so Carol will stay here for Hanukkah and I will go to El Cerrito, CA for a few days.  I already told my daughter that if she expects me to cook, we shall both surely starve. 

I cook about as well as our President combs his hair, but one thing I can do is keep track of everything. I’ve been a collector and record-keeper all my life, and have a list of all my credit-card charges and how much I’ve won at poker and the books I’ve read and anything else I can think of.  That’s just me.  The last book I finished raised me to 330,000 pages read since 1979.  That’s one page for every person in Riverside, CA.  Thought you’d like to know.

Another thing I can do is play games.  I can play almost anything.  When we were last in North Carolina, Carol was recruited to give mahjong lessons to my daughter and some of her friends.  When one had to leave, I was drafted to fill in.  Mahjong is a frightening game!  Dragons and Jokers and Winds, oh my!  But was I afraid?  Nope, I grabbed my dots and cracks and bams, my dragons and flowers and winds and I stepped up.  Just call me Bam-Bam.  Wasn’t that a Flintstone kid?  Was that the girl or the boy?  I looked it up.  You can look up anything nowadays.  Bamm-Bamm Rubble was Barney’s adopted son.  The girl was Pebbles.  Anyway, as I said, I can play anything.

In Bridge I know how to bid slam

In Mahjong I play crack and bam

Each week I play Poker

And Canasta with jokers

It shows you how useful I am!

Rotten Oysters:  The movie this week was A Beautiful day in the Neighborhood.  I was expecting to see Tom Hanks playing Fred Rogers.  Instead, I saw a boring and predictable family drama that I could watch every day on any soap opera.  Who thought up this useless way of making a movie about Mr. Rogers?  However, for the 25% of the movie when I was watching Mr. Rogers (no, Tom Hanks didn’t play Mr. Rogers; Tom Hanks was Mr. Rogers) – during those scenes, I was mesmerized, hypnotized, seduced by this perfect, saintly, unreal person who was full of unselfish goodness and understanding.  It truly made me want to be a better person.

And I’ll start being a better person by ending this so you can get back to your lives.  Stay well, count your blessings and have a wonderful holiday.  May the star on your Christmas Tree shine with love and may your dreidel spin forever.  And be sure to come back to me next week.  As Mr. Rogers said, “There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.” 

Michael                                             Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #144

My family has initiated a new holiday tradition called “Let Mikey Try It”.  I am extremely skeptical of alternative medical schemes, especially those that require six months of treatment before they relieve you of your ailment.  The people pushing the product figure that by the end of six months you will have forgotten who sold it to you.  Besides, it doesn’t work for everybody.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, my wife met a man who was promoting the wondrous effects of CBD oil, so Carol said, “Let Mikey Try It.”  Well, I had to be polite, so I rubbed some hempy goop on my knee.  Nothing.  But, of course, I need to do it for six months and spend hundreds of dollars before I can tell if it really works.  And it doesn’t work for everybody.

The next day, David, my son-in-law doctor, showed me a kind of TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) device that perhaps could help. I reminded him that I have a defibrillator and that an electrical charge run through my body could light me up like the Fourth of July.  David called the manufacturer of this electrical device who said that, technically, you cannot use it on someone with a Pacemaker-Defibrillator, but what the hell! It’s the holiday season so “Let Mikey Try It”. 

David got out the device and attached it to my knee.  But before I let him turn it on, I had my daughter get her phone and enter the 9 and the 1, so she wouldn’t waste any time getting me emergency relief should my defib decide to turn me into Southern Fried Chicken.  Although, that would have been festive. 

We know you have pain in your knee

Let’s try this machine and we’ll see

Plus it might be quite nice

To set off your device

So you’ll shine like a big Christmas Tree.

My family is always thoughtful, but I disappointed them.  My nose did not catch on fire and lightning did not come out of my posterior.  Maybe next time.  Oh, I forgot to tell you, you have to use it for six months before you get results.  Besides, it doesn’t work for everybody.

Hi there and welcome back?  I hope you’re feeling well and looking forward to Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Years and National Monkey Day, which is this Saturday.  I’m not sure how to celebrate National Monkey Day, but it sounds more festive than National Ding-A-Ling Day, which is today.  I’m not making these up, you know.  You celebrate National Ding-A-Ling day by calling someone you haven’t spoken to in a long time.  I don’t get it.  If I cared about them, I would have called them long before this.

No, I’m not being curmudgeonly.  Well, not yet.  National Curmudgeons Day isn’t until January 29^th.  I’m actually feeling kind of chipper this week.  In fact, I’m as happy as a chicken on Thanksgiving morning.  I’m as happy as the man who turned down Jeffrey Epstein’s life insurance policy.  I’m as happy as the guy who patented the Impeach the Bastard bumper sticker. Why?  Because I did not get anywhere near Cyber Monday.  Did you participate?  It’s not really a popular holiday for old people.  Especially people like me who think PayPal and eBay are the Scylla and Charybdis of the modern world.  How about that for some obscure Odyssean reference?  I think old people (you know who you are) should have their own set of holidays.  Not Black Friday or Cyber Monday or National Monkey Day.  How about Medicare Monday or Stool Softener Saturday?  I had one for Friday, but I forget.  Oh yes, Forgetting Friday.

Hey, Guys out there.  Do you ever feel like a car?  Sometimes I feel that, to a woman, a husband is no more than a useful, easy to maintain appliance – like a car.  All she has to do is fill it up, keep it clean and it takes her anywhere she wants to go.  It carries her packages, keeps her warm and keeps the rain off her head.  Sure, there are glitches here and there – a broken axle (hip replacement), a damaged fuel pump (bypass surgery), but she just takes it in for repairs and it’s fine.  The only difference is they don’t give her a loaner.  But that’s ok, I don’t mind.  I’m just glad she hasn’t traded me in for a shiny new model -- yet.  But I’m getting a little tired of being called Edsel.

ROTTEN OYSTERS:  This will be my new name for movie reviews.  Like it?  Let’s start with Dark Waters, an Erin Brockovich type story with a bad guy, the nasty old chemical company, and a good guy, the overmatched lawyer trying to help the poor people who were poisoned.  It was an okay movie, I guess, a little slow, a little long.  And let’s face it, Mark Ruffalo is no Julia Roberts.  If there’s nothing else to do, go see it.

People send me a lot of jokes and funny stuff.  I got one this week about a boy who was taking a math test.  The question was: Bill has 36 candy bars. He eats 29. Now what does Bill have?  The boy answered: Diabetes.

Here’s something that’s not funny.  I went to a Panera Bread store and placed an order to go.  The young girl who took the order asked for a name.  Michael, I said.  What did you want me to say, Edsel?  The order was ready quickly and the man who read the ticket called out the name Michelle.  Could that be Michael, I asked?  He showed me the ticket.  It read MIKELLL.  And you want to raise the minimum wage?  What exactly should we pay a 15-year-old who can’t spell the single most common name in the English-speaking world?

Ok, that’s it.  I’m through with you, and you’re happily through with me.  I will not lighten your spirits or tickle your brain for another week.  Until then, stay well, count your blessings and be nice – give someone a ding-a-ling.  And go ahead, read The Odyssey.  As Anthony D’Angelo urged, “Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow."  See you next week.

Edsel                                         Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #143

I have not spoken to you since the morning of Thanksgiving, so I have not mentioned all my blessings.  Truly, it is unnecessary to tell you how much I have to be thankful for.  You already know that I have a wife precious beyond compare, three daughters as bright and lively as the stars, two sons-in-law as warm and loyal as long-time friends and eight grandchildren packed with beauty, smiles and love.  Like I said, it is unnecessary to tell you how much I have to be thankful for.  So I won’t.

And then there’s you, of course, and I am humbly thankful for a pack of loyal readers bored enough to listen to a silly old man’s musings every week.  I am often asked how I can come up with something to talk about every week.  Well, Rudyard Kipling said, “All the earth is full of tales to him who listens.”  And you think this is easy?  I had originally written that my sons-in-law were as warm and loyal as your favorite dog.  Then I re-thought the dog reference.  I wouldn’t want one of them to get rabid on me.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and have recovered from Thanksgiving.  We had a lovely holiday dinner in North Carolina at the house of my daughter’s friend Amy.  Thank you, Amy, for a warm and delicious evening.

The next day was Black Friday.  I took my little honey to her favorite store where she shopped until I dropped.  I retired to the car to sit and read, but she continued.  She never drops.  She has more energy than Richard Simmons in his prime.  (Richard is 71.)  

Now let’s get right down to what’s important – the Royals.  In the news, Queen Elizabeth the Second has summarily cancelled a 60^th birthday bash planned for Prince Andrew, her second son.  Prince Andrew, Duke of York and currently 8^th in the Royal line of succession is in a royal pickle for gallivanting around with Jeffrey Epstein.  As punishment, Liz has changed his title to Duke of Porn and vowed that he’ll succeed as King when snakes learn to tap dance.

I kind of have a crush on Liz.  I was six when she became Queen.  She was 26.  And we’re both still here!  I saw her on TV recently.  She was attending some function, resplendent in her aquamarine suit, matching hat the size and shape of an airplane propeller and matching purse.  Why, I have always wondered, is she carrying a purse?  What could she possibly need to carry, the key to the palace?  Money?  For what?  Identification?  Puh-leez!  Perfume?  Who is going to smell the Queen of England?  Credit Card?  Does she need to petrol up the limo?  I wonder if Liz has ever stopped at a petrol station in order to use the loo. 

Pardon me, my name is Liz

I’m the wealthiest woman there is

But though I’m the Queen

I could use a latrine

For even a Royal must whiz.

I suppose that means I will not be invited to Buckingham Palace this year.  That’s ok, my wing-tipped collar is being starched anyway.  The truth about the purse is that the Queen carries a comb, a handkerchief, a small gold compact and a lipstick.  She is, after all, one of the girls.  And on Sundays she carries some money for the collection box.  Really!  I looked it up.

My goodness, it’s December already, and all the radio stations are playing Christmas music.  That, in itself, is not surprising, but I happened to tune in to what is normally a political talk-show channel and what did I hear?  Political Christmas songs!  Who would have thought of such a thing?  Me, of course.  Here they are:

• I saw Biden kissing AOC
• Trump's nuts roasting on an open fire
• It's beginning to look a lot like Fake News

        You'd better watch out and don't take a breath

         If he thinks your rich, he'll tax you to death

         Bernie Sanders' coming to town.

•  Rudy the red-faced lawyer
•   Ukraine Upon a Midnight Clear

 I even heard Nancy Pelosi herself singing:

                   God bless you Justice Kavanaugh

There’s nothing you can do

As soon as we are through with Trump

We’re coming after you

And the President’s version of that warm holiday classic, I’ll be Gone by Christmas.

I suppose that means I will not be invited to the White House either.  If I keep going, I might not even be let back into my own home. 

MOVIE REVIEW:  Knives Out.  Stay out!  It was a silly, twisted murder spoof, like some Agatha Christie thing on Quaaludes.  It was as tedious and convoluted as the Mueller Report. The acting was phoned in and Daniel Craig’s bullshit accent was annoying.  Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play? 

While in North Carolina, we had my grandson Zach, home from Duke on his Thanksgiving break.  Well, we had him, but we didn’t see him.  There was one 48-hour period where I didn’t see him at all.  I thought he was up in his room or out with his friends, but who knows?  He could have been abducted by some aliens who fly around the Galaxy collecting rude teenagers.

On Sunday, we drove him back to Duke.  He was asleep in the back seat the whole time.  I love Zach.  He’s my first grandchild.  He’s the one who made me a Poppy, and all I wish for him is that, one day, he will have a beloved grandson of his own who ignores him, doesn’t return his phone calls and doesn’t want to spend any time with him.  When we dropped him off, I went in to look at his dorm room.  It was small and, as expected, cluttered.  On his desk I saw two framed photos.  Only two!  One was of a teenaged Zach with his parents.  The other was of a ten or eleven- year-old Zach hugging his old Poppy.  Such a good boy!  I love you, Zach.

And I love writing to you as well.  So be sure to come back next week and bring your reading glasses.  That print just keeps getting smaller and smaller.  And stay well and count your blessings.  Can you do all that?  Multitask!  See you next week.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com