Blog #414                                February 13, 2025

 

I’ve been having this cough for months now and it is made me languorous, listless and languid.  Many of you well-meaning and loyal readers have offered various diagnoses: pneumonia, long-Covid, bronchitis.  I appreciate the concern and the helpful advice, truly, but even so, I went to see Dr. Lung this week.  And you know what?  All of you were wrong.  Acid reflux!  That’s what he says.  I don’t believe him, but he seems to be a knowledgeable and very pleasant fellow, so we’ll see.  He prescribed an inhaler.  At least he’s not making me eat kale.

 

My daughter, Jennifer, eats kale.  She loves kale.  She calls it a Super-Food, and I have figured out why it’s called kale.  You know who Superman is.  Remember?  The it’s a bird it’s a plane guy?  Well, Superman’s real name on Krypton was Kal-El.  Sounds pretty much like kale, doesn’t it?  If you want a super-food, name it after Superman. 

 

Jennifer makes salads of kale and fries it in olive oil for a snack and tries to sneak it into my food.  I’m not interested.  I’m not excited about reinventing the wheel, or the salad for that matter.  Any bowl filled with something that looks like a divot is not for me.  They tried kale once before, a couple of hundred years ago during the French Revolution, and it didn’t work.  You know, of course, that Marie Antoinette actually said, “Let ‘em eat kale!”

 

The peasants were starving for bread

When Marie Antoinette rudely said,

“I hate when they wail

“Just let ‘em eat kale.”

And that’s when they chopped off her head.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Dream on, dream on, of bloody deeds and death (Richard III).  In one of my previous lives, I was Meow Antoine-Cat and I said “Let ‘em eat cat-food.”  That’s when they cut off my leg.  That was supposed to be a joke, but I’m only a cat and not very funny.  Neither is Pops most of the time.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  I know you watched the Super Bowl.  Here are some of my thoughts:

·        If you were an Eagles fan, you were as happy as a small flea on a big dog.

·        If you were a Chiefs fan, you were as miserable as Kamala Harris watching the returns from the battleground states.

·        If you were neither, the game was pretty much over at half-time.

·        I didn’t watch the half-time extravaganza.  I don’t know who Kendrick Lamar is.  No-one will remember Kendrick Lamar in 50 years, but I still remember the Dinah Shore Chevrolet song.

·        In recent years, Super Bowl commercials have all been We love rainbows and puppies and raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but you never knew what they were advertising.  This year’s were better. My favorite was the Harry Met Sally scene for Hellmann’s Mayonnaise.  My second favorite was the Budweiser ad with the little Clydesdale who they said was too small to pull the wagon.  Poor little thing.  But then he saw a barrel fall off the wagon and pushed it himself all the way to where it was supposed to go.  I cried.  I actually did.  Such a pretty little horse.

 

Are you ready for Valentine’s Day?  It is because of Valentine’s Day that you are reading this.  Did I mention I have three daughters?  You know how dads are with their little girls, and when they were young, Valentine’s Day was my special thing.  Candy and sweets and cookies for my girls.  We all ignored the “They don’t need that crap” from their mother and everybody was happy.  Then they grew up and went to college and I had to mail all the sweeties to their dorms or apartments.  When my youngest was a sophomore at Indiana, my wife told me that they all had secretly begged her to make Dad stop sending them that fattening stuff every February.  So I stopped.  On February 15^th I got three phone calls.  “Where’s my candy, you disloyal old coot?  What kind of father are you?  Don’t you love me anymore?”  So I wrote a letter of apology and sent a copy to each daughter begging forgiveness.  I kind of liked writing the letter, so I wrote another the next week and now have done so every week for twenty-eight years.  Twenty-eight years – over 1,400 letters. 

 

Eight years ago, my wife suggested I turn that letter format into a blog.  I refused.  She called me stubborn.  Then she noodged, cajoled, browbeat, intimidated and thoroughly stampeded me into doing a blog and I resisted and fought and refused.  Until one morning when my granddaughter said, “C’mon, Pops, I can help you.”  And, my wife was right.  She usually is.  Sure, I write the songs and the poems.  I even wrote her college papers for her.  And yes, I get more of the Final Jeopardies than she does.  But she’s the one with the brains, if you know what I mean.  And, of course, the looks.  So there it is, the story of the blog, and here I am and there you are.  And no, I’m not sending you any candy.  I’m too busy sending stuff to my three daughters, eight grandchildren and Carol.

 

Carol consistently calls me stubborn, and I have finally determined what it is she means.  A man is “stubborn”, according to women, when he does not do exactly what his wife tells him to do:

·        Eat some kale. -- I don’t like kale. -- You’re so stubborn.

·        Read this Holocaust book. -- I don’t like Holocaust books. -- You’re so stubborn.

 

See what I mean!  It’s pretty simple – if you open your mouth and the first two words you speak are not “Yes Dear”, then you’re stubborn.

 

You remember “listless, languid and languorous” from the first paragraph?  Of course not.  How could you?  Let’s make languid our Weekly Word.  It means weak from illness or fatigue.  And that makes me want to rest, so I’ll say goodbye.  But before you go, I want you to take a deep breath and sing the Dinah Shore Chevrolet song.  C’mon, I know you want to.  Nobody’s listening.  Sing it loud.  It’ll make you feel young again.  C’mon!  No?  You won’t do that for me?  You’re so stubborn.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com