Blog #229                                                       July 29, 2021

 

When I work at the Zoo, I’m on my feet for 2½ hours, handing out maps and talking to everyone.  I would never ask tourists where they were from, but when I heard a young woman and her kids speaking what sounded to me like Russian, I did ask.  She said she was from Ukraine.  I smiled and said dobri ruta which, in Ukrainian, means either “have a nice day” or “your zebra plays the clarinet”.  I’m not sure which.  I used to teach English as a Second Language to foreign adults.  That was BC, Before Covid.  I had students from 30 different countries and, though I could not speak their languages, I at least learned how to say good morning in each language from Amharic (Ethiopia) and Tamil (India) to Korean and, yes, Ukrainian.   I apparently remembered the Ukrainian greeting well enough to make her laugh and give me a big smile.

 

If you’re from Sudan or Peru

From Singapore or Timbuktu

From Spain or Iran

As best as I can

I’ll say, “Hi, good morning to you.”

 

Hi, good morning to you and welcome back.  Buenos dias, Ni hao, Shalom, Salaam alaikum.  I hope you’re feeling well.  We have two sinks in our bathroom, and when we moved in, after some weeks of intensive study and energetic debate, we decided that Carol should have one and I should have one.  Each is of pearly white porcelain.  I have noticed however that mine is sometimes marked with little black pieces of something or other.  Here’s what I think is the cause.  Carol likes her sink to be clean, so whenever she has to use eye-liner or eye-shadow or whatever eye-schmutz she uses, she moves over to my sink and gets it dirty instead of hers.  Her sink is as white and brilliant as Beyoncé’s teeth, whereas mine looks like the nesting place of a family of seagulls.   I don’t mind; her eyes look great, and I am a loving husband.  And besides, it’s Gorgeous Grandma Day.

 

You know I like to research special days.  Last week we had National Wrong Way Day and National Hammock Day.  Well, last Friday was Gorgeous Grandma Day, and I’m sure all you Grandmas out there qualified.  My wife certainly did!

 

Message from Shakespeare:  If I could write the beauty of your eyes, … the age to come would say this poet lies (Sonnet 17).  I asked my Pops when it would be Gorgeous Three-Legged Cat Day.  He said in our house, every day is Gorgeous Three-Legged Cat Day.  Purr!

 

And last Saturday was Tell an Old Joke Day.  So I will.  A monkey had escaped from the Zoo and was captured by a police officer.  The officer was about to take the monkey back to the Zoo when he got a call that a serious crime was in progress, so he went up to an old man sitting on a park bench and said, “Do me a favor and take this monkey to the Zoo.”  The next day, the officer saw the same man sitting on the same bench with the same monkey.  “I thought I told you to take this monkey to the Zoo,” said the officer.  “I did,” said the old man, “and we had such a good time that today we’re going to Six Flags.”

 

Every man who read that just now is shaking his head thinking that’s such an old joke; I’ve heard it a thousand times.  And every woman reader is thinking that’s really cute; I’ve never heard that before.  Am I right?

 

Aren’t the Olympics fun?  Like everyone, I always wanted to win an Olympic medal.  I just couldn’t figure out what event I should enter.  I tried Water Polo, but my horse drowned.  I thought my wife and I could enter the Synchronized Pancake-Flipping competition, but we don’t move at the same speed.  Carol has such high energy, we used to call her Ethel.  And me?  Well, the last time I was sitting in McDonald’s, a nice young woman put some lilies in my lap.

 

I’m waiting for them to have Limerick Writing as an event, although there would have to be judges to choose the best poem.  I don’t like the events with judges.  I like Faster-Higher-Stronger, the original motto of the Olympics.  The person who wins the 100-meter dash is the one who gets to the finish line first.  It isn’t the one that some judge thought had better form.  Dick Fosbury would never have been allowed to compete in the High-Jump without the approbation of some judge who thought his flop was pretty.  Now all high-jumpers use the Fosbury Flop.

 

Faster-Higher-Stronger.  That’s why I like Track & Field the most.  I also love Table Tennis.  My middle daughter was a six-time National Table Tennis Champion, so we played a lot of table tennis in our house.  Here’s an Olympic Quiz:

 

1.     If the table tennis ball is the lightest ball used in the Olympics, what’s the heaviest?

2.     What Olympic object has sixteen feathers from the left wing of a goose?

 

And did you know that there were many Olympic athletes who became actors?  Here are a few:

·        Johnny Weissmuller won five Gold Medals in swimming and starred in 34 Tarzan movies.

·        Buster Crabbe won Gold in swimming and played Flash Gordon in the movies as well as Tarzan.

·        Harold Sakata won a Silver in weightlifting and played Odd Job in the James Bond movie Goldfinger.

·        O. J. Simpson won Silver for Hurdling Suitcases in an Airport and Gold for Knife Slashing.  Actually, OJ at one time held the world record as a member of the USC 440-yard relay team. 

 

Ok, let’s tie up some loose ends.  The heaviest ball in the Olympics is the one in the Shot Put.  The men’s shot weighs sixteen pounds; the women’s about nine.  And what Olympic object has sixteen feathers from the left wing of a goose?  The shuttlecock used in Badminton.  And our Weekly Word is approbation which means approval or praise., both of which I try to earn here every week.

 

And here’s another special day: Today is Tell Everybody to Stay Well and Count Their Blessings Day.  Well, at least it is to me, so do both of those things and I’ll see you next week. 

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

Blog #228                                                             July 22, 2021

 

See you next week.  Stay well.  Count your blessings.  Wait, that’s what I say at the end of the blog, not the beginning.  I’m so confused.  I’m turned upside down, and it’s all because last Saturday was National Wrong Way Day.  Seriously.  Look it up.  Members of the National Wrong Way Society used to celebrate it by driving on the wrong side of the road, but they’re no longer with us.  Nowadays, it’s celebrated by grocery shopping from left to right.

 

I always go in the entrance on the right, near the produce.  I start at bananas and end with milk and that’s the way it’s been for thousands of years.  It all started because that’s how King Tut shopped 3,350 years ago at the local Yummy Mummy.  Actually, Mrs. Tut did all the shopping.  Her name was Ankhesenamun.  He called her Cupcake.  Anyway, Ankhe would start with bananas and work her way right to left and we’ve all been doing that for millennia.  Saturday, however, to show my support for Wrong Way Day, I started on the left side – eggs, cheese, milk. Well, you can imagine my disorientation.  I felt like an American trying to drive in London.  I felt like a breech baby.  I felt like the world was a tuxedo and I was a pair of brown shoes.  (Thank you, George Gobel.)  So, did I adapt?  Did I improvise?  Did I overcome?  No, I walked like an Egyptian down the length of the store and started at bananas.  You would have done the same thing.

 

All right, let’s get started on the 228^th adventure through the strange thing in my head that passes for a brain.  Do you realize what an exhaustive effort goes into writing these blogs?  Have you ever tried writing a thousand-word essay every week?  I know you can’t because you all lead very busy lives and have little time for frivolity.  Me too!  I have to throw out the trash and squeeze the last droplet out of my toothpaste tube and put all my unmatched socks in a pile, hoping they’ll mate.  And buy a peach. 

 

Do you know the ultimate gesture of love?  No, it isn’t a dozen roses or a big diamond.  It isn’t hiring an airplane to skywrite I LOVE YOU.  The most selfless gesture of love is buying your sweetheart a peach when you are haptodysphoric.  I’ll bet you guessed that, didn’t you?  If you didn’t, at least you guessed there’s a Weekly Word coming.  Haptodysphoria is an odd feeling felt by certain people when handling peaches or other fuzzy objects.  I have it, always have.  My loving, sweet and adorable daughters, when they were growing up, used to toss me a peach knowing I would reflexively catch it, utter a loud yecch and then drop it on the floor.  Miserable, evil little creatures!  But my Main Squeeze wanted a peach, not a diamond bracelet or a new car, just a juicy peach.  So today, at the Yummy Mummy, I held my breath, curled my toes, thought about bunnies and kittens and bought my wife a peach.  If that isn’t love, what is? 

 

Life has a lesson to teach

That nothing is quite out of reach

Though you can’t afford bling

You can make her heart sing

If you just buy your Honey a peach.

 

Awww!  And Yecch!

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Ay, there’s the rub (Hamlet).  He’d better not have any of that hapto-crap when he rubs me.  I’m fuzzy too.  Mostly, I like being rubbed on my left cheek because I don’t have a left paw to do it myself.  But a good rub anywhere is purrfect.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well.  I’m feeling aggravated, actually, and I need to get this off my chest.  I have started wearing a mask again in Walmart and other stores.  Missouri is having a surge of Covid cases among people who have refused to get vaccinated, and it worries me.  Let me answer some of the excuses people have for not getting vaccinated.  Then I’ll shut up.

 

1.     It’s a free country and nobody can punish me for not getting vaccinated.  Wrong.  They can punish you for not wearing a seat-belt, can’t they?  Or a motorcycle helmet?

2.     The vaccines might have unhealthy side effects.  That didn’t stop you from smoking or drinking or sitting on the couch for 18 hours a day.

3.     Those scientists really don’t know that much about the disease.  Right, and they’re the same evil bastards who told you the world was round.

4.     I don’t know what’s in those vaccines.  Have you ever eaten bratwurst?  You don’t know what’s in that either.

 

Do yourself a favor, People.  Do the rest of us a favor.  Get vaccinated.  It doesn’t hurt.  I’ll hold your hand.

 

I was with a friend today who said he was feeling weak and listless.  I suggested he might have an electrolyte imbalance.  That’s what my Dad used to have, and he went from horrible to normal with just a little dose of magnesium or something.  “Go have a blood test and the doctor will fix you right up,” I said.  “If not, we’ll see you at the shiva.  But don’t make it on a Wednesday.  I work at the Zoo on Wednesdays.”  At least I got him to smile.

 

Everybody seems to be going into Space these days – Richard Virgin, Jeff Bezos.  Would you like to go up into Space?  When you’re weightless and step on a scale, it will show zero.  That would be good.  Maybe the weightlessness would make your back feel better.  And you could watch old Jetsons cartoons.  “Meet George Jetson, his boy Elroy, daughter Judy, Jane his wife.”  Or Star Trek episodes.  Space, the final frontier.  Now Amazon Prime has a new Space Channel with shows like:

 

Star 54, Where Are You

Married … with Asteroids

Name That Moon

Orange is the New Black Hole

How I met Uranus

 

Ok, enough uproarious laughter.  Let’s get back to strange days, like National Wrong Way Day.  Today is National Hammock Day – seriously!  So drop your butt right in there, relax, swing back and forth and count your blessings.  And stay well.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

Blog #227                                July 15, 2021

 

In his prologue to Cannery Row, John Steinbeck says you don’t write a story by forcing it onto the paper; you open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.  Hmm, let’s see what slimy thing has crawled in today.

 

I recently noticed that in my wife’s contact list, I am listed as Mikey.  No-one ever calls me Mikey.  My brother used to, but he’s dead now.  My business-partner did, but he’s gone as well.  I confronted her.  Yes, she confirmed, under Michael in her contacts she already had a friend of ours (we’ll call him Michael X.), so she made me Mikey.  What, I wailed?  Michael X. has my name in her address book and I’m relegated to some frivolous childish nickname?  Talk about your Shock & Awe!  I was incredulous.  How would she like it if, in my contact list, the monikers Carol and Honey and Sweetie and Cupcake were already assigned to girls I work with at the Zoo and I had her listed under First Wife?  This whole traumatic revelation has caused me to re-evaluate my position on her hierarchy of importance.  It now looks like this:  her first tier of friends, her grandchildren, her children, her second tier of friends, her third tier of friends, Michael X. and, finally, me.

 

Hi there, and welcome back.  I’m surprised you even bother to come back to a blog written by such an insignificant creature as myself.  And don’t call me Mikey.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Did you have a nice three-day weekend for Independence Day?  I’m retired, so I’m not sure it mattered.  A three-day weekend means nothing to a man who exists in a seven-day weekend. 

 

I’m 75 now, so I think my next colonoscopy will be my last.  Where else can you come to read quotes from Steinbeck followed by a discussion of colonoscopies?  There actually is a Hallmark card for a final colonoscopy.  It reads: I ran into your proctologist the other day and your name came up.  He said “I never want to see that asshole again”.  Only kidding.  But I’m not kidding when I tell you that my friend went to buy a new car when he was 77 or thereabouts.  The bilious juvenile who was his salesman said, “Sir (I hate when they call you Sir), since this is probably the last car you’re going to buy . . .”  What a jerk!  The only satisfaction in dealing with a young jerk like that is knowing that he has all his colonoscopies in front of him.  (Can you actually have one “in front” of you?  I guess not, but we have spent too much time on this subject, so let’s put it behind us.)

 

Instead, we can talk about the weather.  Everybody talks about the weather.  Keeping track of the weather these days is a full-time job.  It is no longer good enough for them to tell you the temperature and the chance for rain.  Now, it’s the wind-chill factor and the heat index and the dew point (do you care what the damned dew point is?), and the sunrise and the sunset and the UV Index and the wind velocity and the visibility and the Polar Vortex and the Lake Snow Effect and the air quality.  By the time I’ve finished reading all of that, I’ve spent the whole day inside so who needs the weather.  And now they have a new one.  Are you ready?  THE MOSQUITO FORECAST.  I’m telling you, it really doesn’t pay to go outside:

 

Outside it’s too cold or too hot

And you think the air’s fresh but it’s not

Don’t go out; just stay in

‘Cause you know you can’t win

On a nice day you still might get shot.

 

You know we’re in big trouble when on a weekend in Chicago, more people got shot than got Covid.  DO SOMETHING!

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Many can brook the weather that love not the wind (Love’s Labour’s Lost).  I don’t get to go outside, but the window on the porch is usually open.  Most days I take a nap in my cat tree by the window.  I love the breeze and the sound of birds and the sight of ugly dogs being yanked around by the neck.  Purr.

 

I honked at a driver yesterday.  I shouldn’t have done it, I know.  It’s too dangerous, but he (I didn’t see the driver, but I’m using “he”.  Sue me!) was right in front of me and failed to move after the light turned green.  It was a little beep.  He proceeded to stick his hand out the window with two fingers extended.  I was uncertain as to the meaning:

 

·        If it was the index finger and the middle finger, it was the Peace Sign. 

·        If it was the middle finger and the ring finger, it was the Vulcan gesture for Live Long and Prosper. 

·        If it was any other combination, it meant Honk at me again sucker and I’ll shoot you twice.

 

Damn!  I just dropped my car keys right between the two front seats – you know, the place where everything disappears forever.  I looked; I reached – nothing!  There I was, freaking out and reaching between the seats with two restless grandchildren in the back seat wondering what Oldilocks was up to.  I got out and felt under the front seat – nothing.  I pulled the driver’s seat as far up as it would go; then I went to the back seat to see what was uncovered.  Holy Buried Treasure, Batman!  There, in the revealed space formerly under the front seat, were nine colored markers, two straw wrappers, a Nilla Wafer, Jimmy Hoffa, the Cardinals World Series chances and a previously unknown Kardashian sister – and my car keys.  Whew!

 

Our Weekly Word is bilious, which means sickeningly unpleasant, and it certainly looks like enough bilious things have crawled onto the page to fill it up for this week.   But there’s always next week, and I, along with Shaky and First Wife, promise to be back.  I know you will be too, so stay well, count your blessings and check your dew-point.  See you next Thursday.

 

Mikey                            Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Blog #226                                July 8, 2021

 

There are four places I remember where I have experienced a sense of mystic and glorious wonder.  One was on the uppermost deck of a sailing ship in the Aegean Sea at midnight staring at a cloudless sky filled with stars and imagining Odysseus using those same stars to lead him home.  One was in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris where I sat one afternoon and stared upwards in the reverential silence with the almost palpable expectation of glimpsing Quasimodo scuttling among the beams.  Third was a boat trip on the Zambezi River surrounded by hippos and crocodiles and the legend of Dr. Livingston.  And fourth is at Frying Pan Shoals on the tip of Bald Head Island where the warm Gulf Stream current blasts into the cold Atlantic Ocean and where you can stand or sit in two feet of water being pounded by waves from two directions.  The Island issues warnings against walking out there, but that’s part of the thrill.  Everything will kill you; you might as well do something fun.  Besides, my daughter and granddaughter were on the beach keeping watch over me so they could report my being washed away toward Morocco.  I just outright loved it.  Besides, I hear Morocco is nice this time of year.

 

You might have been to some of these same places or have your own special experiences.  Hi there and welcome back.  Where’s your favorite place?  I hope it’s here with me every Thursday.  And I hope you are feeling well and had a nice Fourth of July, which soon will be changed to Cuatro de Julio.  We celebrated at an outdoor gathering that was loud and crowded and filled with mosquitoes – everything you look for on the 4^th.  Fun! 

 

 I had a spooky experience here on the Island.  I was in a long line at the Shop-And-Don’t-Save waiting to check out when I noticed the man behind me was carrying a 24-pack of water bottles and his wife was carrying a big watermelon.  The simple concept of carts had obviously escaped these people, so I offered to ease their burdens by sharing my cart with them.  Naturally, we started to talk.  Where are you from?  St. Louis, and you?  North Carolina, but I grew up in St. Louis.  It turned out that not only had we both graduated from University City High School, but both in the same year.  Is that not spooky, that I should be on a remote island 900 miles from home and run into a high-school classmate, Fred Teitelbaum, that I didn’t even know?  Carol, also a member of that class, remembered going to Grammar School with him.

 

We went to Grammar School; my daughters went to Grade School; my grandchildren went to Elementary School.  Isn’t it interesting how the term has changed?  And that’s not all that has changed.  Our high-school teams were called the Indians.  That had to disappear, of course, and now they’re the Lions.  Plus, back then the worst thing we could bring to school was chewing gum.  Not anymore.

 

When I was attending sixth grade

For recess we went out and played

Now Tommy and Susie

Are packing an Uzi

And three different kinds of grenade

 

The trip to Bald Head Island is over and we are home.  Shakespeare was very happy to see us.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  That is my home of love; if I have ranged, like him

that travels, I return again (Sonnet 109).  Well, it’s a-meowt time they came

home.  Ten days is a long time without my People.  I think I’ll keep them

up all night just to punish them.  Purr.

 

With all the pickle-ball and the pounding of the ocean surf, my body is bruised,

bedraggled, beaten, battered, besotted, broken and besmirched.  And that’s only

the Bs.  I need a vacation!  Do you know what you call the sport when four Jews

play pickle-ball?  Kosher Pickle-Ball, of course.

 

I’m going to get myself into trouble now but, like I said before, everything will kill you.  When my first grandson was born twenty years ago, I thought how wonderful it would be to watch him grow up and become – well, whatever he wanted:  a lawyer, a doctor, a tinker, a tailor.  Not once, I promise you, did I consider the possibility that he would grow up to be Miss Nevada.  Yes, friends and enemies, the new Miss Nevada is a trans-gender woman (not my grandson) named Kataluna Enriquez, who will now compete in the Miss USA contest. 

 

Listen, I don’t care what you want to be or who you want to love.  I’m all in favor of accepting everyone in whatever package they arrive.  Or should that be “he or she arrives”?  In this world, I no longer think it matters.

 

But acceptance doesn’t seem to be the goal anymore.  The goal seems to be to destroy and ridicule every institution in sight.  Now the road to destroying beauty pageants has begun.  That’s ok, why should we reward someone for being attractive and ignore those who are average?  Why should we reward anyone who is smart and ignore those who are not?  Goodbye Jeopardy.  Why should we reward someone who can run fast and ignore those who can’t?  Goodbye Olympics.  Why should we reward people who write limericks and ignore those who can’t?  Because maybe these endeavors bring some happiness to those of us who like to escape our daily commonness to enjoy something beautiful or entertaining or amazing.  You know where to send the hate mail.

 

The Word of the Week is palpable which means so intense as to seem almost tangible, touchable.  Kind of like the intense wish you have right now that I would stop.  Ok, I will.  That’s called making fun of oneself.  Epictetus said, “He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”  You remember Epictetus.  I think he was Miss Parthenon of CXII.  Ok, it’s a Greek guy with Roman numerals, but I was too lazy to look up Greek numerals.  Stay well, count your blessings, send me your hate mail and don’t forget tomorrow is O. J. Simpson’s birthday, better known as National Get Away with Murder Day.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com