Blog #72

I’m reading a Larry McMurtry book in which one of the characters says, “Old age is a worthless damn thing.”  I can’t agree.  I believe my senior years are filled with great opportunities to add and contribute.  And I don’t mean reading more books or going to classes or visiting places I’ve never seen.  Whatever I might gain from those things will be gone when I’m gone.  No, I mean the opportunities to leave behind some of yourself in the things you teach, in the care you take of others, even in the entertainment you might provide.  “It’s not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived.”  Helen Walton said that, and Helen should know.  Being the wife of Sam Walton, and the richest woman in America at one time, she gathered and scattered more than most.  Helen is also famous for another quote:  Marriage is a relationship where one is always right and the other is always the husband.

Ok, now that the serious crap is out of the way, let’s get started.  I love my doctors.  I love them so much that I have forgotten their names.  That’s why I call them Dr. Heart and Dr. Skin and Dr. Back.  I do have one criticism of doctors – they all seem to be in love with their titles.  On every list – donors’ list, membership list, guest list – their names have to have the DR in front.  Nobody else has his or her occupation permanently affixed to his or her name.  Geez, I hate that “his or her” phrase.  From now on, I’m just saying “his”.  That will save two words.  You don’t like it, send me a note.

So I was at a funeral (yes, another one) and there, on the marble walls lining the chapel, were names memorializing the deceased.  And on one, instead of Joe Schmo, it said Dr. Joe Schmo.  Seriously?  I thought death was the Grand Equalizer.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  I guess now it’s dust to Dr. Dust.

My favorite doctor is Dr. David, my son-in-law in North Carolina.  Not only is he a radiologist, but he has his own rock n’ roll band.  He has some goofy name for the band, and I don’t like it, so I gave him a list of names appropriate for a radiologist’s band.  Here they are:

The Rolling Bones, X-Ray Charles, Cat Scan Stevens, The Mammograms and the Papagrams, Donnie & MRI, Jethro Skull and, of course, Pelvis Presley.

I love lists.  Hello and welcome back.  I hope you are doing well in this super-heated Summer we’re having.  Summer means golf and swimming and vacations.  I remember one Summer, my North Carolina family was vacationing in Orlando, when I got a call from my granddaughter.  “Poppy,” she said, “I got splashed by a whale!”  She was not excited at all.  On the contrary, she was wet and cold and bummed.

That whale was much bigger than me

And jumped up right out of the sea

He splashed all my clothes

From my head to my toes

He did it on porpoise, you see.

When my little granddaughter first told me she had been splashed by the whale, I responded with the dumbest question of the year:  Was it a big whale?  A big whale?  Of course it was a big whale, you ignorant old poop.  They don’t make little whales.  That’s why they call them whales!  The book’s not called Moby Little Dick, is it?  She’s precocious. 

I have many faults.  One is, according to my wife, not driving fast enough.  I know I don’t drive as fast or aggressively as she’d like, but I look at it this way – in the car I can adjust the temperature precisely as I like, listen to whatever kind of music I want and rest comfortably in a cushioned seat.  I’m happy!  Do I need to go faster?  Do I need to get to the doctor’s office two minutes earlier so that I can wait forty minutes?  Do I need to race home so I won’t miss the opening minutes of The View?  What’s the hurry?  Relax and enjoy the Summer.  I could eliminate her criticism of my driving just by letting her drive, but she makes me nervous when she’s behind the wheel.  First of all, she sits too far forward.  She’s closer to the steering wheel than the guy who painted it.

And second, my wife is good at everything -- except waiting.  She is starting now to time the red lights and is majorly unhappy if they are too long.  And she has zero patience for anyone that is in her way.  “I’m going around that person. Who allows them to drive?  I’m not stopping for that light.  MOVE!”  She’s like a Maxine Waters who has skipped her Ritalin. 

Last week, near the end of the blog, I said I hoped that I brightened your Thursdays.  That’s a pretty slimy way of begging for a compliment, isn’t it?  It was gratifying to learn that none of you would fall for a cheap trick like that.

You men know what begging for a compliment is.  It’s when your wife says, “Honey, do you think this dress makes me look fat?”  A husband must either know how to respond to that properly or have a good orthopedic surgeon.

Actually, I did receive a few responses that said, “Yes, you do brighten my day.”  Thank you, Sheila and Joyce and Fern and Carol and Nancy.  That was truly very sweet.  I wonder if my wife is upset that I talk to so many of my limerick girlfriends via email.  Just to be safe, let’s keep it among ourselves.  If she got mad and stopped picking out my clothes, that would be a bad thing. I’d leave the house half the time looking like Clarabell.   

And if you remember Clarabell, you’re my kind of people.  Thanks for visiting with me today.  You know I like it when we talk.  Stay well and count your blessings.  I’ll see you next week.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #71

I am writing to you from the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri where we are spending a few days with some friends.  Today we boated on the large, beautiful lake, three senior guys and their wives.  As we pulled away from the dock, the friend who was driving handed me a map of the lake.  Now I could show you on a globe where Djibouti is, or Komodo or the Andaman Islands or Timbuktu for that matter.  But with directions – well, not so good.  Men, although they will never admit it, are just not good at directions.  Let me put it this way – if they dropped me on first base, I couldn’t find second base.  But, we puttered around while the girls enjoyed the outdoors by sitting in the part of the boat farthest away from the sunshine and the water and discussing the color of their toenails and whether Donald and Melania will stay married.

The guys ignored the girls (isn’t it cute that I call these 70+ women “girls”?), because we were too busy obsessing over the multi-million-dollar mansions crowding the shoreline.  That one must cost $3 million.  Look at that one.  It looks like a castle.  I just don’t get a thrill ogling an $8 million mansion, knowing that I can’t afford the light-fixture in the 9^th bathroom.

I used to be rich, and it was good to be rich for a couple of years, until it all went away.  But I can’t say I spent my life that much differently.  I just spent it in different places – Hawaii, France, Italy, Martha’s Vineyard, Russia.  Talking about getting lost, that Russia trip was a challenge.  We started in Stockholm on a cruise ship and visited Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Germany and Denmark.  By the sixth day, I was totally confused.

There’s so many places I’ve been

I don’t know what country I’m in

I cannot determine

A Swede from a German

And can’t tell a Pole from a Finn.

Poor Poland!  Being stuck between Russians and Germans for a thousand years makes Dante’s Inferno look like Canyon Ranch. 

Hi, everyone and welcome back.  I hope you’re well and hanging in there.  I apologize if last week’s edition came out a bit late.  There I was, Wednesday night about 9:00, back at home, ready to post all my wacky thoughts to you when – BAM! – my heart started acting up.  Shortly thereafter I was in an ambulance headed for the hospital, and you know what?  The driver got lost.  I told you, didn’t I?  Men couldn’t find their way out of a McDonald’s bag if you left them a trail of French fries.

When I arrived, they didn't call my cardiologist.  Instead, they called the technician who worked for the pacemaker company.  He showed up with his little computer, and, without actually touching me, read my heart activity and adjusted my internal device.  Isn’t that amazing?  I’m not sure exactly what he did, but now I can make popcorn pop in my mouth.  When he was done, he informed the desk that he had spoken to my doctor and I could be released.  Well, that didn’t happen quickly enough for my little Princess.  What could?  So she grabbed a sheet of paper and a magic marker and wrote a sign which she taped to her shirt.  It said:

I am currently in PRE-BITCH mode.  You do NOT want to be here when I upgrade.

It worked, and Mr. Patient and Mrs. Im-Patient were discharged instantly.  When my speedy little woman is in a hurry, the rest of the world had better move.  We got home after midnight and I posted my blog. 

And speaking of unspeakable things like hearts and hospitals, do you read the obituaries every morning?  Most of my friends do.  Not me.  I’ll learn the bad news soon enough.  My good friend Deb in North Carolina says the obituaries are beginning to look like her address book.  That’s the price we pay for aging.  So let’s all try to stay healthy.  Laughter is good for your health, they say, so I’ll try to make you laugh.

Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump and Mike Pence were flying on a plane.  Donald looks out the window at the wide expanse of America.  “You know,” he says, “I could drop a thousand hundred-dollar bills out the window and make a thousand people happy.”  Ivanka says, “Yes, Daddy, but I could drop two thousand fifty-dollar bills and make twice as many people happy.”  Then the Vice-President says, “And I could drop a hundred thousand one-dollar bills and delight many more of my flock.”  At which point the pilot turns his head and says, “Well, I could drop all three of your asses out the window and make half the world ecstatic.”

There, I made you laugh!

I don’t have to tell you that America has a large population of obese people as well as a large population of hungry people.  Isn’t there a way to work that out?  That’s what we call in the Literary Biz a rhetorical question.

Wait a minute, that was pompous, wasn’t it?  Me, calling myself literary?  Silly poems and letters are hardly literary, so I apologize for the hubris.  The question we were talking about was rhetorical because I wasn’t asking you for an answer.  That’s because I (there’s that pomposity again) have the answer.   It’s called the Food Transfer Management Association (FTMA), lovingly shortened to “Fatty Mae”.   Everybody who is overweight by some reasonable measure will be forced to pay a Fat Tax.  The tax will be paid not in dollars, but in nutritious food which will then be distributed to the needy.  So, for those who want to fill themselves up like the Hindenburg, fine, but it’s going to cost them.

I guess I’m finished for this week.  Stay well, count your blessings and be sure to come back next week.  I’ll be here.  Neither rain nor snow nor ventricular fibrillation will keep me from brightening your Thursdays.  I hope I do brighten them.  See you then.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #70

Have you noticed that on every corner, they’re building a new Senior Citizens Residence Center?  Do you know who they’re building them for?  All those people who rode bikes without a helmet when they were kids.  All those people who drank water from a hose, played outside without sunscreen, put butter on their popcorn and rode with nine other kids in the back of the station wagon with no seatbelts.  All those people who played with dirt and acorns and bugs, ate hotdogs every day and swam in the quarry.  And all those people who stared for hours at Howdy Doody and Lash Larue while double-dipping their spoon in the Peter Pan jar.  I wonder how we all made it this far.

But I’m glad we did.  Hi and welcome back.  Hope you are feeling spiffy!  Carol’s out celebrating her birthday for the 23^rd time, so I have some time to chat.  We made it this far, they tell us, by eating healthily.  By “they”, I mean the ever-increasing accumulation of supercilious busybodies who think they know how to run my life. Well, I have a bulletin for them – there is only one person who knows how to run my life.  Carol.   And she does not need your help!

I pay some reluctant lip-service to the Gods of nutrition, but I have to like what I eat, don’t I?  Since Carol’s out, I decided to go to the grocery store and buy some stuff for dinner.  Nothing appealed to me, and I decided if nothing turned me on, I might as well eat something healthy.  I bought a package of zero fat, zero cholesterol veggie hot dogs.  I got home and put them on broil.  While they were so engaged, I sliced up a pickle and splashed a dollop of mustard on a plate and opened a can of sliced pineapple.  My faux frankfurters began to sizzle and I turned them over.  I poured some tea and set up my dish and silverware all ready for a delicious hotdog dinner.  Then I let my little gardenwurst burn a bit and accumulate a black crust.  I have learned an important lesson in life and this is something you should remember.  A burnt carrot tastes the same as a burnt pig.  So I ate my overcooked veggie wieners with pickles and mustard and they were just fine.

There are, however, some things I just cannot abide, one of which is popcorn with no oil and no salt.  It tastes like packing peanuts.

You probably can tell that I love telling stories.  Most of my stories have been told to my grandchildren.  Tyler used to sit on my lap and say, “Poppy, say a onceuponatime.”  I tried telling stories to Carol, but it didn’t work out.  She’d always be working a crossword puzzle, reading a book and Candy Crushing all at the same time and still was able to butt in and correct everything.

Forget that Rapunzel woman.  Nobody wears their hair that long anymore.

Who would name a kid Rumpelstiltskin?  That’s ridiculous.

Seven dwarves?  I think the girl has a fetish.

Glass slippers are out!

The tortoise beats the hare?  That’s stupid.  The damned tortoise is too slow.

Gotta go now.  Thanks for the story.  Next time talk faster.

Maybe I’ll do better telling you a onceuponatime.  Once upon a time, 51 years ago, a skinny little boy (21) married a beautiful girl (21).  They saved her wedding gown for over 30 years thinking their first daughter, Jennifer, would wear it, but Jennifer was taller than her mother.  Besides, a bride wants her own dress.  I’m surmising this, of course, never having been a bride or being in possession of even the smallest sliver of fashion acumen.  (Or is it acu-person now?  They’ve changed everything else.) Anyway, Jennifer got her own wedding gown and we saved that and then there was Abby’s wedding dress and we saved that too.  And that made three. Stephanie was married at a ranch in the wine country of California, and the wedding attire was more blue-jean than white.   

I’m rambling here, but it’s making me think of the time years ago when one of my employees told me her granddaughter was getting married and they were doing everything without spending money.  Grandma was doing the cooking and a friend had offered their house for the reception.  In the spirit, I told her we had three wedding dresses in the cedar closet and I’d be happy to let her granddaughter choose one.  I don’t think it would fit, Grandma said; she’s 8 ½ months pregnant.  Wow, I said, I hope she doesn’t have the baby while she’s walking down the aisle.

The wedding was slightly belated

The bride was already dilated

We sang “Here Comes the Bride

Eight centimeters wide

To get herself wed, then sedated.”

And they all lived happily ever after.  And so, it seems, is my cough.  It has gone on for too long, so I took myself to Dr. Primary for another look-see.  I didn’t get to see the M-D.  I didn’t get to see the P-A or even the R-N.  But I did see the N-P, and she was O-K by M-E.   She was actually terrific, and, in my best Alfonso Bedoya impersonation, I told her, “We don’t need no stinkin’ doctors!”  She gave me a regimen of over-the-counter stuff to take, some in the A-M, some in the P-M.  And I won’t need the E-R.

Or GERITOL.  Do you remember Geritol?  That was the 1950s product advertised to cure iron-poor blood.  It was 12% alcohol, so it really didn’t matter whether it cured anything or not.  I haven’t heard of that since I was a kid.  Back then there was also SERUTAN, which is Natures spelled backwards.  I think it was a laxative, but I was ten then and didn’t care about such things.  Little did I know!  But I did like the backwards-spelling idea.  I think more medicines should be words spelled backwards.  If you’re throwing up, get some FRAB-ON.  If you need an anti-depression medicine, use ELIMS.  Or, if you need a laxative, try POOP.

See, whenever I start talking toilet, it must be time to go, and so it is.  Please come back next week.  I’ll tell you another story if you do.  And in the meantime, stay well and count your blessings. 

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #69

I’m throwing out a suggestion about the Fourth of July.  I think we should move it to the middle of December.  In December, we could start the fireworks at 5:00, eat some ribs and be in bed by 8:00.  In July, we don’t start until 9:00 and we get home way too late.  I need my beauty sleep.  Don’t you dare send me a snarky little response to that!

Hello and welcome back.  I love when you come back.  Are you still celebrating the Fourth?  I hope you didn’t get burned or drunk or fat, and that you’re feeling fine, but if you’ve recently been to a kid’s birthday party, I’m worried for you.  I was at my granddaughter’s birthday party, or as I like to call it, This Is Pus.  There were about 15 kids plus their parents all huddled in the basement sharing pizza, coughs, cupcakes, sneezes, air and bodily fluids.  It was great fun.  I had door duty and greeted the parents. 

Hi, glad you could come, how are you?  I’ve got 103 fever, cold sweats and I’ve been bleeding from the eyeballs, but I can stay for a little bit.  Hi, Little Joey looks a bit pale.  He’s been throwing up all night, but I think he’ll be all right.  Hi, I see your wife in the car. Is she coming in?  Well, she’s covered with black, pustulating buboes and smells like rotten chicken, but she can come in for a while.  Glad you could make it.

Thanks for your presents and sneezes

The sniffles, the coughs and the wheezes

We’re glad you could come

With your bacterium

And share your infectious diseases.

I guarantee you I am now a carrier of every spore, virus, bacterium and parasite known to modern medicine.  I have lime disease, bird flu, Zika, tapeworm and rickets.  I have bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, cholera, shingles and mad cow.  I’ve got African sleeping sickness, Japanese swine flu, Malaysian jungle rot and acne.  I’m not even sure you should read this blog without dousing your device with antiseptic. 

Naturally, my granddaughter got sick.  The doctor said it was Fifth Disease.  Have you ever heard of that?  Google has, so it must be real.  I wonder if there is a Fourth or a Sixth disease.  Hang on, I’ll be right back.  Shazam!  Google tells me that there is a sextet of numbered children’s diseases.  Here they are: First Disease – Rubeola; Second Disease – Scarlet Fever; Third Disease – Rubella; Fourth Disease – Filatov-Dukes’ disease; Fifth Disease – Erythema Infectiosum; and, Sixth Disease – Roseola.

Well, ‘Tis the Season.  Carol’s birthday season has begun.  She will get wined, dined, feted, gifted and lavishly entertained for at least the next nine months.  It’s gotten so outrageous that last night when she told me she was being taken out for her birthday, I replied, “This year’s or last year’s?”

Before she went out, she told me she had been trying to get a refund on something she bought and the woman on the phone had given her a hard time.  “You talk to her”, she said, “a man does better.”  She thinks I can get this woman to give in where she could not?  Me, who has been browbeaten, ordered around and basically enslaved by my wife and daughters for so long that the sight of a lipstick makes me shake more uncontrollably than the thought of wearing linen in October?  She thinks I can convince a female on the phone to do what I want?

But I will try – yes, this strong, persuasive epitome of dominant manhood will do exactly as his diminutive wife tells him to do.  And after that mean old woman on the phone tells me I can’t have my refund and my clothes don’t match, I’ll let my oldest daughter do it.  That phone lady’ll be in trouble then!

If a man speaks in a forest and there’s no-one there, is he still wrong?

 

I do get my way sometimes.  The last time was my birthday – in January.  Our friends were going to take me out and Carol said we could go anywhere I wanted.  After all, it was my birthday.  I said I really like XYZ.  “Well,” she said, “XYZ is noisy and doesn’t have a round table for ten, but ABC does.  You like that, don’t you?”  Well, sure, I said.  At least she was happy, and you know that our marriage is a success because we have the same goal in life – to make her happy.

I decided to take my two local grandsons to a movie, Jurassic Park XXXVII.  Go to the movie early, wait in line, buy the tickets, enjoy – right?  Not any more.  No, I had to go online, sign up for some kind of Dango something, pick my seats, the size of the screen and how many dimensions I wanted.  I had less options on the last car I bought. Then I had to come up with a password, give them a credit card, pay a service fee and tell them who my fifth-grade teacher was (Mr. Diamond).  I could have applied for citizenship to North Korea in less time.  By the time I was done, I no longer wanted to see the movie, or a computer, or my grandsons!  Why is everything so ridiculously complicated?  I want my world back.

In my world, we went to see two movies at once.  We sat in a seat with gum stuck to the bottom and ate popcorn with butter.  Today, the seats recline, heat our behinds, massage our feet, blow cold air on our hair, rub our necks.  In my world, there were places that did all that, but they didn’t show movies and not even my father was allowed to go there.  And now I can’t even get butter on my popcorn or the Cholesterol Police with tell my wife.  I want my world back.

And I want you back too, so make a note to come see me next week.  Or, if you’re such a hi-tech, modern smart-ass, put it on your Google Calendar.  However you do it, be back a week from today and see who I’m mad at then.  I hope it’s not you.  In the meantime, stay well and count your blessings.

Sorry to say we have one less blessing to count this week.  Our beautiful friend Diane has passed away.  A truly lovely and classy woman.  We will miss her.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

                                     

Blog #68

The Fourth of July is coming up next week.  Independence Day celebrates the birth of the United States of America.  It celebrates our flag and our Constitution and our national Anthem.  Do you have a problem with any of that?  Well, some people do and they show it with protests and demonstrations.  But just like other things, protests just aren’t what they used to be.  In the 60s, we had real protests – fiery protests.   Feminists burned their bras, anti-war activists burned the flag, students burned the ROTC building, blacks burned Watts and the occasional Buddhist burned himself.  Those were the days!  Everybody had a Zippo and they knew how to use it.

Nowadays, people don’t burn anything on the Fourth except the burgers.  But be careful!  The golf, the fireworks, the barbecue -- they could all kill you, you know.  Especially golf!   I used to play golf twice a week.  I was never great.  I was never horrible.  But as the years go by and my back becomes more troublesome, I play less and worry less about my score.  My friends are the same.  Why worry about pars and birdies when you can worry about tripping over your putter and breaking a hip.  Or being thrown from a cart and gouging your leg.  Or driving into a lake and drowning.  Or having a heart attack from the heat.  It’s a par-72 jungle out there!

At golf today nobody died

And nobody fainted or cried

No back pain, no scars

No birdies or pars

So all that was hurt was our pride.

Another dangerous summer activity is boating.  Riding a boat is great fun and brings out, mostly in men, some instinct, ancient and genetic, that has come down to us from Ulysses and makes us believe we actually know how to tie a knot or steer a boat.  Of course I can’t do any of that.  I’m Jewish!  If Jews knew how to sail a boat, God would not have had to part the Red Sea.

When Moses thanked God for the Red Sea spectacular, God replied.  No problem, Moses.  Hey, you know those matzos you guys made?  Sensational!  Try them with a little manna.  I’ll send a few years’ supply down to you.  Have a nice wander and say hi to Zipporah for Me.  Tell her in a few thousand years I’m going to name the Zippo lighter after her.

Hi there and welcome back to my crazy blog.  I hope you’re doing well.  I get a lot of feedback from my readers.  I like the feedback.  I was at a golf-outing last week with about twenty people.  They all read my blog and are very, very nice people, all about my age.  We spent some time counting how many of us had pacemakers and comparing Lunesta and Ambien.  Then several wanted to know when I would mention them in the blog.  I get that a lot, and my stock answer is, “When you say something hilariously stupid.”  They never did, but I’ll say hello anyway.  Hi, Schleppers and thanks to our fabulous hosts S&H.

Hey, that reminds me of S&H Green Stamps and Eagle Stamps that we used to have back in those fuzzy years long ago.  We’d shop and the store would give us stamps.  We’d lick the stamps and paste them in a book and when the book was full we’d trade it in for a few dollars.  It was like Frequent Licker Mileage.  My Mom was an Olympic-Class Consumer, and she would give me all the stamps to lick.  The glue was probably poisonous, but who knew?

I just received an email from a high-school friend, a psychiatrist somewhere out east, Philadelphia, I think.  He told me he was writing a book about mental illness and wanted to use a poem I had written back in high-school.  Why he has saved one of my 55-year-old poems till now, I can’t say.  Maybe he had a crush on me.  I won’t bore you with the poem, but it was a 12-line rhyming version of the following joke:

A man took his wife to a faith-healer.  “Guru,” he said, “my wife is sick.”  The Guru looked into the woman’s tired and swollen eyes and touched her pallid, shrunken skin and said, “No, my friend, your wife is well.  She only thinks she’s sick.”  A week later the man saw the healer again.  “Well,” said the Guru, “is your wife better?”  “She’s worse,” said the man.  “She thinks she’s dead.”  It figures -- I finally get a poem published and it’s in a book about mental illness!

Did you notice I used the word till two paragraphs earlier?  The word is actually until.  For a while, I tried writing ‘til, the apostrophe being my sacrifice to the Grammar Gods, but I have decided to abandon my poor apostrophe and give in to the common usage of till.  I feel somehow dirty and weathered by that decision, but life goes on, the language changes and we old dinosaurs of diction must adapt or become extinct.

And speaking of words, a friend told me that some woman named Bee who was on the TV used a word with a C that was not rated G.  There’s a limerick there somewhere, but you only get one a week.  Yes, my friend said, she used the dreaded C-Word.  “What,” I exclaimed, “Constipation?”  Well, each generation has its own forbidden words.  When I was young, Hell, Damn and Bitch were forbidden in my house.  Lucy and Desi were not allowed to share a bed.  And “gay” meant lively and happy.  Things are certainly different today!  As the Wicked Witch of the West would say, “What a world!”  Besides constipation, there is another dreaded and forbidden word for those of the older generation.  It’s the F-Word – Fried Foods.

You know what else has changed?  Toilets.  Now, as I walk away from a public  urinal or seat, it flushes itself.  Then at the sink I just pass my hand under the soap dispenser and soap comes out.  I wave my hands under the faucet and water comes out.  I approach the towel dispenser and towels come out.  If they could just figure it out so that if we waved our hands behind us, crap would come out, then we wouldn’t have to eat navy beans and chick peas.

Ok, I’m talking about toilets again, and that means it’s time to leave.  Stay well and be careful.  Stay away from boats and self-immolating Buddhists, and be sure to count your blessings.  Have a great Fourth and come back next week.  Maybe I’ll mention your name.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #67

A few weeks ago, I was trying to describe to you how hot it was.  I told you it was so hot that J-Lo had traded Marc Anthony for Ice T.  Cute, right?  Well Abby, my youngest daughter, corrected me.  J-Lo apparently divorced Marc Anthony several years ago and is now an item with A-Rod.  I’d apologize for my mistake, but I know you don’t give a rat’s posterior which alphabet soup J-Lo is dating this week.  I have so much to do and cannot waste my time on which multi-millionaire actress is dating which mega-millionaire athlete and who is cheating on whom and who is having whose baby and what they are wearing or how much they weigh.  I’m too old for that.

I don’t care whose baby they’re carryin’

No interest in whom they are marryin’

Not one bit of passion

For any Kardashian

I’m just an old septuagenarian.

And by the way, as long as I’m bitching, I might as well get it all out of my system.  Who came up with initial-names like J-Lo and A-Rod?  Do they think that’s a new thing?  Nope, those kinds of names have been around since the Romans.   In fact, Cleopatra’s nickname for Julius Caesar was Ju-C.  That was before Cleo got involved with Mark Antony.  Which was before Mark Antony changed his name to Marc Anthony and got involved with J-Lo.  It’s complicated.

Back when I was young, there were plenty of celebrities with cute nicknames.  Here are some:

Tom Selleck was T-Sell                      Lloyd Nolan was L-No

Doris Day was D-Day                        Sandra Dee was San-D

Red Buttons was Red-Butt                 Julie Christie was Ju-Christ

And Isaac Newton was referred to as I-New.  Yes, he did.

Welcome back, everyone.  Are you feeling ok?  Did you have a nice Father’s Day?  Mine was great – some cards and little gifts and warm thoughts from my three daughters and my eight grandchildren and my wife.  Lovely!  I’m glad I’m not raising kids today.  It just seems like the world has changed so much, and not all for the better, but let’s hold that topic for another day.

Everybody says that retail is dead, but I’m not so sure.  Now trending are small stores that specialize in only one or two items.  It makes life so simple.  For instance, if you need bags, go to Sacks.  If you need bagels or donuts, go to Hole Foods.  And if you need dice, go to Seven-Eleven.

I’ve had a cough for weeks, and I finally decided to go to Dr. Intern.  I’m usually reluctant to visit doctors.  There are two reasons: 1) because the doctor might find something really bad which I probably should know about but don’t want to, and 2) because Carol usually knows more than the doctor.  But this had been going on for a while and I just wanted some antibiotic to kill it.  So I went and I got the prescription, but when I picked it up, the chief pharmacist drew me aside to voice his concern that this particular antibiotic, when taken with another of my medications, can cause some serious side effects.  He had ok’d it with Dr. Intern, but still felt the need to give me a written list.

I started to read the list of possible side effects.  The first group included the ever-popular internal bleeding, stomach pains and swelling, but I thought I could take the chance.  In the second group, the word “death” caught my attention, but what the heck, nobody lives forever.  The next group included back pain, blurred vision and confusion, but I already have those.  The last group included the deal breaker – acne.  I’d rather cough. 

I was at the Zoo yesterday handing out maps and important answers to highly intricate and technical questions like Where’s the bathroom?  When I handed one tourist a Zoo map with the words ZOO MAP clearly emblazoned thereon, she asked me, “Is this a map to the Zoo?”  Dumb as a pot-sticker.  “No,” I replied calmly, “it’s a map of Venezuela in case you’re planning to visit there later.”  Jeesh!  Another tourist, upon receiving his map, handed me a $5 tip.  Wow, I must really have looked old and decrepit!  I refused and told him to buy his daughter an ice-cream instead.

If you’re depressed, go to Lows.  If you want to buy marijuana, go to Quick Trip.  And if you want to take your first wife to lunch, go to Fed Ex.

Back to the pharmacist and the Zoo.  After about fifteen minutes at the Zoo, I had an overwhelming attack of dizziness and had to be treated by the medics.  It was the pills.  See, never make fun of your pharmacist.

Last week I mentioned Carol likes those colorful, anti-slip hospital socks.  My friend Bruce was in the hospital when he read that blog, so he requisitioned a pair of socks and gave them to Carol as a present.  Sure, I slave and strain for hours every day on my blog, sweating and squeezing my superannuated brain cells for their last bits of amusing fluff just to entertain my loyal readers!  And who gets the present?  She does. I know how Rodney Dangerfield felt.

If you need cheap landscaping, go to Dollar Tree.  If you need help in doing a blog, go to Write Aid.  Or if you’re looking for a boorish, insulting and obnoxious man, go to Dicks.

I got a letter today addressed to Resident.  Here’s what it said, word for word, no joke: Dear Jesus, we pray that you will bless someone in this home spiritually, physically and financially.

         

Do they think Jesus lives here?  Who knows?  I looked everywhere.  I even looked in the bathtub.  He could be taking a walk.  I’ve heard of Dear John letters and Dear Santa and Dear Abby, but Dear Jesus?  I should be careful what I write about Jesus.  He could sneak out of wherever He’s hiding and read it.  And my luck – I’d be the first person He doesn’t forgive.

Well, you’ll forgive me, won’t you, if I apologize for anything I’ve said in the last sixty-seven weeks that has shocked, insulted, scandalized or disappointed you?  I’ve been married fifty-one years, so I’m good at apologies.  Come to think of it, I retract it all.  I am who I am and you get what you get.  I’m not apologizing to anyone.  Except Carol.  So come back next week and be shocked and scandalized some more. I know you love it.  Count your blessings, stay well and watch out for the heat.  I’ll see you next week.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #66

Fifty-one years.  That’s how long Carol and I have been married as of this week.  Boy, that seems like a lot of years.  Until you remember that Queen Elizabeth had already been Queen for 15 years when Carol said I Do and I said Yes Dear.  Quite a ride!  I’m strapped in for a whole bunch more.  Bring it on.

Last week, if you remember, I said that making fun of your wife was as old as Adam, and we eavesdropped on a few conversations between God and Adam.  Here’s another.

“Hi, God, it’s Adam again.  I don’t know what to say, God.  I told you what a horrible mistake it was to create that woman, but in the past week or so I’ve gotten used to her a little.  I mean she’s annoying and a real pain in the rib, but she’s taken up gardening and I’ve learned how to hunt and we pretty much stay out of each other’s way.  But then, God, you made an even worse mistake.  You made another woman!  Now everyone’s miserable.  Now she wants a new cold shoulder fig-leaf outfit.  Something called Figtoria’s Secret.  And she wants a nicer donkey – something German.  Why don’t You just make two more of them so they can get up a bridge game and get out of my hair.”

Hi there and welcome back to my craziness.  Have I told you my wife is speedy at everything?  She likes to call it “efficient”.  Let me put it this way -- if she had been married to Frederic Chopin, the Minute Waltz would have lasted 30 seconds and Jules Verne would have made it around the world in a week.  Yesterday we were at the grocery store and she was running the aisles like a kangaroo with a hot coal in her pouch.  I mean she was in a New York hurry!  And all the while she was talking to me: “Why aren’t these bags over here? It would save so much time. Why are these here? Why aren’t those there? Get that old lady out of my way. Go stand in line at the deli so I don’t have to wait. Go to the third checker; she’s the fastest.”

         

Then she saw somebody she knew and stopped in the aisle to talk for twenty minutes while I stood around shuffling my feet and trying to figure out the difference between a rutabaga and a turnip.  I wonder if Adam has a cell phone.

I went to a funeral.  Dozens of cars were guided into the cemetery grounds by the funeral home employees and efficiently lined up in a tight parking queue.  As I turned my engine off, one of these employees walked up to the car and I rolled down the window.  Stop the story!  I did not actually “roll” down the window.  Ford introduced the power window in 1941, and although some of us may remember driving a car with windows that you had to “roll”, pretty much we haven’t rolled any windows since Phineas T. Bluster was Mayor of Doodyville.

So I lowered the window, whereupon the funeral person asked me what I considered to be a patently unnecessary question.  He said, “Are you here for the funeral?”  There I was, with fifty other cars parked in an immovable line in the middle of a cemetery.  “No,” I calmly replied, “I was wondering when the Jennifer Aniston movie started.  And hold the butter on the popcorn.”

Funerals depress me.  I hope you are not depressed.  I hope you are never depressed, but I know better.  We all have our periods of depression.  Health, money, politics, a dozen other things.  They say the signs of depression are losing appetite or sleeping too much.  I’ve had some depression to deal with, and I’ll tell you this: depression isn’t sleeping too late.  Depression is being told you have a week to live the day after you paid $700 apiece for two tickets to Hamilton next month, and you know your wife will take some other guy.  Depression isn’t losing weight.  Depression is losing your job and having the employment office tell you that the only position for which you are qualified is to manage the Eric Greitens Re-Election Campaign.

And happiness is maybe making you smile a little on a depressing Thursday.

A lady comes home from the plastic surgeon.  “The doctor told me I had the breasts of a sixteen-year old,” she tells her husband.  “What did he say about your 75-year-old ass?” the husband asks.  “He didn’t mention you,” she replies.

Hey, a little history, a little politics, a little poetry, a little rock n’ roll, a joke or two.  It’s all right here in your weekly Limerick Oyster.  Step right up!

I’m sure you’ve heard that the Miss America Organization will no longer include the swimsuit competition or the evening gown competition in judging the contestants.  I wonder how many people will tune in to see which covered-up young lady is the most environmentally sensitive.  Probably less than the number of letters in BOREDOM. The only audience for the pageant consists of men who want to see sexy bodies and women who want to criticize everything. 

I always turn the sound off when the pageant is on and just listen to my wife.  She’s better than Bert Parks!  “Too short-waisted.  Too flat-chested.  How did her mother let her go out with that hairdo?  That gown is horrible!  Who dressed her?”  My math is pretty good:  No Bodies + No Gowns = No Audience.   The next change, of course, will be the name.  MISS is gender insensitive and exclusive.  And AMERICA congers up thoughts of the flag, the Constitution and the National Anthem, all things we want to avoid.   So next year the pageant will be called The Most Politically Correct Person in the Western Hemisphere and not even their mothers will watch.  The organizers have already written their instructions to the contestants:

We won’t play the anthem to start

So don’t put your hand on your heart

We’ll dress you like nuns

No boobs and no buns

And please don’t say anything smart.

Maybe they’ll get the Boy Scouts of America to sponsor them.  Oops, they’re gone too.  What’s next to go, The Mickey Mouse Club?  M-I-C (see you at the Rodent Lives Matter march) K-E-Y (why? Because Walt Disney was a capitalist) P-E-T-A.

On a lighter note, why didn’t the lobster share his dinner?  Because he was shellfish.  Don’t be shellfish.  Share my blog with your friends or anyone else who likes goofy old men.  Stay well please and count your blessings.  See you in a week.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com