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.
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