LIMERICK    OYSTER

Blog #268                                April 28, 2022

 

One night, when we were in Florida, there were eleven of us sitting in a rented condo with an unfamiliar television 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 thousands of your senior citizens to suffer attacks of apoplexy trying to record Jeopardy and Dancing with the Stars 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.  We also got an actual 1996 episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with Chris Rock as a guest star.  Maybe that’s where the fractious relationship between Will Smith and Chris Rock originated.  You never know.  Lillian Hellman famously said, “Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.”

 

Still playing with the remotes, I got the GUIDE button on one to open the door on the microwave oven.  And Carol rigged one 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.

 

Tuesday was my cat Shakespeare’s birthday.  He was 3.  We’re not sure of the exact day, since he was dropped off at the shelter with a mangled leg and no history, but I chose April 26^th because that’s William Shakespeare’s birthday.  Will is 458.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  I would not wish any companion in the world but you (The Tempest).  I think I’ll write Pops a limerick. 

 

I think that old man is the tops

He buys me cute toys when he shops

I just have to say

That if I had my way

I’d spend all nine lives with my Pops.

 

That counts as my missing limerick.  Get it?  Limb-erick?  Missing limb?  I guess I’m not as clever as the old man.  And don’t tell him I wrote something nice about him.  Purr.

 

Carol must have been watching some program about oligarchs.  She would and often does watch anything and everything on the air.  She would watch snakes molt if it had Hoda Kotb in it.  Anyway, she just came in and said, “I want to grow up to be an Oligarch.”  I wonder what you call a female oligarch.  You know, a female who is wise, powerful and domineering?  An Oligarchess?  An Oligarchette?  I’m pretty sure they would just call her A Jewish Wife?  Ogden Nash said, “The phrase weaker sex was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm.”  I’ll settle for being the Oligarch’s personal grocery shopper.

 

And speaking of groceries – I often use these stupid little segues, don’t I?  I guess I think it makes your job of reading a little easier.  So, speaking of groceries, 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 did you give your toddlers when they pooped on the potty, kale?  No, you gave 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.  And use some catchy little phrases, like “Stop grazing on curds; chow down with the nerds.”  Or, “Get an A in French if you want French fries.”  I promise you, it will work.

 

I’m sorry if that was fractious which, as our Weekly Word, means quarrelsome, unruly or difficult to control.

 

And speaking of school children (there he goes again!), I was showing one of my granddaughters a song I had written some years back making fun of fancy salads.  Here’s one stanza:

 

Big gobs of radicchio, endives even bigger

Out back in the yard they go; they’re for Trigger.

 

She said, “Poppy, I like the song, but who’s Trigger?”  Who’s Trigger?  I realize that there is and always has been a generational divide between young and old.  They don’t know Peggy Lee; I don’t know Dr. Dre.  I don’t know what to do with TikTok; they wouldn’t know what to do with a phone that’s attached to the wall.  I think I’m a “father”.  They think I’m a “non-birthing parent”.

 

But some things are universal.  How could you not know Trigger, Roy Roger’s golden palomino and the smartest horse in the world?  Trigger was one of the biggest movie stars of the 1940’s and 1950’s.  I love children, but I am obviously most comfortable with someone who has the same background, the same references, the same milieu as myself, someone smart and with a good sense of humor.  And cute.  Luckily, I married her.  She knows who Trigger is.  Sometimes she even slaps me on the rump with a whip when she wants me to move faster.  I like it!

 

How many famous horses do you know?  I can think of a few.  Trigger, Black Beauty, Flicka, Silver, Scout, Pegasus and, of course, Rosinante.  That was Don Quixote’s horse.  Yes, I’m still reading Don Quixote, four pages a day.  It is brutally boring.  I’ll be finished in October.

 

Another thing my grandchildren don’t know about are the great old songs of the 50s and 60s, songs like Shake a Tail Feather, The Five Du-Tones (1963).

 

I’m sorry, I have to stop now.  I can’t write while I’m shakin’ my tail feather.  I love that song.  Please stay well, count your blessings and let’s all shake our tail feathers together.  Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it Baby.  C’mon, you can still do it.  Don’t hurt yourself.  See you next week.  Rock n Roll!

 

Cousin Brucie                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

LIMERICK    OYSTER

Blog #267                                          April 21, 2022

 

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?  I know that I was born a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but I have trouble with this linguistic contortionism we practice today in an effort to de-genderize our language.  She was a waitress.  Must I first strip her of her gender, turning her into a waitperson and then adding 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 – Decomposed Lobster Lasagna.  “Decomposed lobster?”  We all gasped.  Were they joking?  Was there also 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.

 

Hi there 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!  I like the taste of peaches, but the fuzz makes me shiver and cringe!  So what did my lovely children used to do 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!

 

To celebrate Passover, Carol and I climbed into an airplane and passed over Illinois, Kentucky and Virginia to drop into North Carolina and my daughter Jennifer.  If you celebrated Passover, I hope your seder was delicious and your services meaningful and not inappropriately lengthy.

 

We all had a wonderful Seder

During which we beseeched our Creator

That the length of the Service

Would not make us nervous

‘Cause we’d rather eat sooner than later.

 

The prayer worked and the meal arrived.  And a glorious meal it was -- an eponymous conglomeration of delicious traditional dishes.  Boy, that was a mouthful, wasn’t it?  So was dinner.  Eponymous, you may recall, means named after someone.  There was Heideman Brisket (named after my daughter Abby’s mother-in-law), Grandma’s Chicken (named after Carol’s mother), Nonnie’s Matzo Ball Soup (named after Carol) and Gefilte Fish (named after my Uncle Gefilte who was pretty salty and a little smelly).

 

Message from Shakespeare: Now I am past all comforts here but prayers (Henry VIII).  The only prayer I have now is that Pops comes home soon.  Don’t tell him I missed him.  He gets all full of himself.  Purr.

 

I played pickleball with my daughter and son-in-law and a friend.  Raise your hand if you have ever fallen playing pickleball.  What?  You can’t raise your hand because you broke that arm playing you-know-what?  See, I told you it was dangerous.  I don’t want you to play.  And why am I playing, I hear you ask?  Because I’m just as damn stubborn as you are.  I told my wife I don’t want her playing pickle-ball.  I put my foot down.  The last time I put my foot down to Carol was during the Ford Administration and she promptly dropped a Vegematic on it.  Ouch!

 

I also got a rugby lesson from my granddaughter who plays in college.  I admit I don’t understand the game.  To me, rugby resembled 30 people trying to buy the last 50%-off television on Black Friday.

 

And then there are the chickens.  My daughter currently has nine chickens and two roosters, and for the life of me, I cannot understand what these birds do all day.  Maybe they watch television – maybe NetChicks or T-Hen-T.  Chicken jokes are so easy.  Their favorite shows are The Eggs File, F-Coop, and Wings.  See, they’re easy.

 

Our first morning in North Carolina, I went to the McDonald’s I always visit when I’m there.  It had been converted into one of these modern McDonald’s where you could not order from a person.  You had to order from a computerized kiosk.  You also could not get a refill and you couldn’t pay in cash.  I could go on a rant about old people using these new-fangled machines and all, but that’s not the point.  The sadness of the place was smothering – there was no-one to talk to.  I used to go in there and talk to the lady at the counter.  She would complain about the weather or how long her shift was, but she would always make me smile and call me Sweetie.  There was often a gregarious, elderly man sitting with his friends at a corner table, and I would say hello and exchange useless morning phrases with him.  But he wasn’t there anymore.  In fact, no-one was there.  Not one person was sitting in the restaurant where before there had been dozens.  I missed the jocose banter among the staff and the customers.  The absence of human contact and the banishment of friendliness was striking.  I left without making a purchase.

 

It's the same at grocery stores and banks and so many other places.  We either can’t find a real person to talk to or we simply stay away from people because we are afraid of Covid and of crime.  Even if we wanted to talk to someone, everybody is wearing a mask.  Our entire society is suffering from a lack of friendly contact.

 

Except on Thursday mornings when I can hopefully give you some of that jocose banter I mentioned.  Jocose (Weekly Word) means playful or humorous, and I am always playful and sometimes humorous.  So stay well, stay healthy and stay playful, except pickleball.  See you next week.

 

Michael                          Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Blog #266                                April 14, 2022

 

Do you lie?  Of course you don’t!  Maybe a little?  I’m told that Catholics are very good at lying, having practiced it at confession since they were seven.  Maybe some of my Catholic readers can set me straight.  My friends, most of whom are Jewish, are pretty good at it too.  We call it exaggeration.  I have made a study of the most common topics of exaggeration.

 

First Exaggeration: Have you seen my grandson hit a golf ball?  Yesterday 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:  I’m going to a new neurologist.  He’s one of the top doctors in his field and 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.

 

Third 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.

 

And speaking of Catholics and Jews, 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.  Got it all straight?  There’s going to be a quiz.

 

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 Al Franken’s career.  So when they saw me looking fit as a Stradivarius, they would tell me how good I looked.  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 wonderful the deceased was, I often wonder what people will say about me.  How will I be perceived and remembered?  I would settle for how Cervantes described Don Quixote, about whom it will be said that if he did not achieve great things, he died in the effort to perform them.  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. 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are all feeling magnificent and getting ready for the holidays.  And don’t forget that Sunday is Blah Blah Blah Day.  I did not make that up.  Blah Blah Blah Day is celebrated every April 17^th to recognize the importance of meaningless chatter and useless balderdash.  Boy, have you come to the right place!  At Limerick Oyster, every Thursday is Blah-Blah-Blah Day.  Let’s get to it.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Is it not a language I speak? (All’s Well That Ends Well).  I can purr.  That’s the only language I know.  You’d think the old man would figure out what I’m saying.  But no, when I say I’m hungry, he thinks I want to play.  What a dummy.  Blah-blah-blah.  And also purr.

 

Sorry about Shakespeare’s rude interruption.  It was Election Day on Tuesday, and I voted.  St. Louis County, where I live, is composed of over 90 municipalities, none of which, strangely, is the City of St. Louis.  Each of these municipalities had its own unique set of issues to vote on – school board, mayor, sales tax and so on.  The election results are now in.  A Use Tax Proposition failed in the city of Kinloch, where I used to teach High School math.  The vote was 3-3.  That was the total vote – 3 yea, 3 no.  But that wasn’t even close to the weirdest.  In the city of Maryland Heights, the Mayor won re-election to his fifth term with a vote of 1-0.  One to nothing?  That’s not an election; that’s a soccer score. I think they’re planning a recount. 

 

Let’s see, what other blah-blah-blah happened this week?  Another visit to Dr. Retina for some more shots.  Did I tell you he was #1 in his class?  My condition has improved 90%, so that’s good, and the shots don’t hurt.  There are lots of worse things: 

 

I don’t love the shots; I won’t lie,

But there’s lots of worse things I could try:

I could fall from a plane

Or get hit by a train

Or get a sharp stick in the eye.

 

Wait, the shot is a sharp stick in the eye!  Oh, well, I liked the limerick.

Recently, 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.  Everyone would have a nice singing voice.  No bullying, no fertilizer, no guns, no Putin, no Covid and no politicians.  

Speaking of Covid, Carol and I have now each received our 4^th vaccinations.  I think they gave us a Frequent-Puncture Discount.

The Weekly Word today is balderdash which means senseless talk, nonsense.  Many of you have described my blog that way. Thanks.  Where’s the lady who thought I was magnificent?

Well, was that enough balderdash for you?  Have a Happy Easter and a Happy Passover and, while you’re spending that time with God, thank Him (or Her or It or They) for all your blessings. Stay well.  See you next week, and don’t forget to pay your taxes.

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746 @gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #265                                         April 7, 2022

 

Things end. Let me repeat – Things End!  The Roman Empire ended; Egypt of the Pharaohs is no more; The Ottoman, Mongol and Aztec Empires live only in history books.  Even Breaking Bad ended.  And the powerful and glorious experiment in freedom that is America can and will go the way of the Pharaohs.  Is that scary?  I think so, especially when watching how our government has turned into two gangs of six-year-olds shouting at each other on the playground.  Politics is corrupt and horrible!  Just look at its Latin origins:  poli meaning many and tics meaning blood-sucking parasites.

 

And it’s not just the politicians fighting over Supreme Court Justices and Supreme Court Justices’ wives and what Donald Trump might have said.  It’s everything!  It’s Will Smith and Disney and so many other things.

 

Barack Obama famously said, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”  Will Smith has apparently interpreted that to mean if they bring a joke, I bring my fist.  How crazy is that?  Don Rickles and Jackie Mason would be rolling (hysterically of course) in their graves.  They insulted everyone. 

 

And I don’t even know how to talk about the new Disney policy.  In the Washington Free Beacon, I read this:  The Walt Disney Company is eliminating the words "ladies," "gentlemen," "boys," and "girls" in its theme parks, Diversity and Inclusion Manager Vivian Ware announced.  Diversity and Inclusion Manager?  It seems that inclusivity nowadays is all about excluding things we can say or watch.  I guess we should start practicing the song, Some Day My Asexual Royal Person Will Come.  And I guess the names of movies will have to change.  Lady and the Tramp will become Canine and the Tramp.  The Lion King will become The Lion.  And The Little Mermaid will become The Little Fish-Looking Thing.  Or maybe all those movies will just be banned and every kindergarten class will have a Diversity and Inclusion Manager and every children’s story will start out with Once upon a time, there were bad people who said bad things like “Boys and girls” or “Princes and Princesses.”

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  You could all hate me for that, but I will proceed under the assumption that, even though having fun has been outlawed for kids, it has not yet been banned for Senior Citizens.

 

At lunch today, I opened a can of food for Shakespeare.  Salmon in gravy – yum!  He didn’t like it; he didn’t want it; he wouldn’t touch it, even with one paw.  I felt awful.  Apparently, cat food can be gravy or grilled or flaked or pâté.  He only likes the pâté and I had bought the wrong kind.  Well, he’s my baby, so I put on my coat and ran to the store to buy what he liked.  I used my Senior GPS.  It not only tells you where you’re going, it reminds you of why you wanted to go there in the first place.  When I got home, I opened the new can for him.  He was happy.  I was relieved.  Carol was chuckling.  “Well, I do the same for you,” I told her.  “Yes you do, Honey,” she replied with a big Cheshire Cat grin on her face, “and all I have to do is purr.” 

 

Message from Shakespeare: Thy food is such as hath been belch’d on by infected lungs (Pericles, Prince of Tyre).  What’s a Cheshire Cat?  Must be something from one of those Disney movies I’m not allowed to watch.  I’m a Chesterfield Cat, and I purr much better than Carol does, although we both purr for the same reason – to get the old man to do what we want.  He’s such a good boy.  Purr (see, it's better).

 

The last few weeks have been marred with sadness; we attended several funerals of friends or relations of friends.  Very sad.  One of the graveside services was held during a rainstorm.  Have you ever been to a funeral in the rain?  No-one, of course, would complain.

The family and friends gathered round

At the grave with the rain pouring down

Each one, you can bet,

Would rather be wet

Than dry, in a box, in the ground.

 

May the earth rest lightly on those in the box.  Sorry if that limerick was a bit stark.

 

Late last night, I found Carol in a panic.  No, that is not a small electric car.  She had misplaced a new bottle of medication and, finding it nowhere, had come to the conclusion that the bottle had been thrown into the trash.  I would never gainsay the deductive powers of my Sherlock Fox.  She purred, and guess who went rummaging through the garbage.  That’s right – faithful Dr. Watson.  Now sifting through the trash of a suburban American home is very interesting, albeit smelly.  I went through every piece of trash: an empty Peter Pan Creamy jar (I don’t trust people who eat chunky peanut butter), discarded razors, a tube of toothpaste squeezed so flat that if you turned it sideways it vanished, plus offers for pre-approved credit cards from four different banks.  All told, my trash can was pre-approved for three million dollars.  Interspersed among these generally inoffensive items were banana peels and rotted apple cores, Pasta House “to go” containers and the various other examples of the noxious detritus of a wasteful domicile.  But lo!  There, near the end, in the last corner of the last can was a pill vial.  Dare I hope?  I reached for it.  It rattled.  I brought it inside, wiped off the linguini melanzane and presented it to Sherlock herself.  She was pleased.  Next time I go looking for something, I’m going to start in the final, most remote place.  That’s where it always is, isn’t it?

And this is where I always am – every Thursday, every week.  Sometimes I make you smile; sometimes I make you angry.  As long as I make you come back.  If I do happen to make you angry, you can always call Will Smith and hire him to come beat me up.  You can find him on Slapchat. 

Weekly Word:  Gainsay means to doubt or contradict.  You wouldn’t gainsay me about that, would you?  Stay well please, count your blessings and pray for the Ukrainians.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com