Category Life

I’ll Have What He’s Having

Michael 3 Comments
The Academy Awards are behind us and the Oscar hoopla has pretty much faded away. I have a few more old Oscar nominees to watch. I’m still used to the awards being presented in March and February being the time to relish in the performances. Is it just me or do actors tend to speak better when reading somebody else’s lines as scripted than when they try to go their own way on the award stage? Anyway, I prefer the movie actor to the award show actor and often the movie world to real realty. Ironic, no?
 
Something that hit me this year watching my usual overdose level of film history is how much out there in movie land we can really use in real people land. Television land also has some pretty nifty gadgetry that we mere mortals could benefit from. Take for instance in 1966 just asking “Yo computer, how much longer till we get to the Romulan border?” and sure enough some snarky female voice speaks back “the. border. is. one. hundred. forty. light. years. away. and. will. be. reached. in. twenty. eight. and. one. half. minutes. if. you. don’t. stop. for. take. out. on. the. way.” Did Gene Roddenberry know Siri and Alexa were coming? If we’ve been able to harness computer power to become our personal assistants, why not some other seemingly outlandish inventions.
 
For example:
Movie people must have dishes that dry and put themselves away. I’ve seen dozens of movies this month with people eating and drinking and even in some instances washing dishes. But nobody ever dries them or puts them away. The only Oscar nominated movie I recall seeing somebody with towel in hand, drying dishes was Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey. She didn’t do a really great job of drying and didn’t put them away but she was a millionaire socialite so I guess just the attempt at drying part was something special. They all have self-cleaning carpets also.
 
TelephoneThis one we sort of had but then technology took it away and we need it back – a phone you can pick up the reciever and just say who you want and somebody gets them for you. You need to go back to the 1930s for this invention. Everybody from cops to robbers to femme fatales to innocent bystanders could go to any phone and say “Get me John Smith” and sure enough, an operator would find John Smith, and the right John Smith. Progress took this away quickly (The Front Page). By the 1940s people were dailing their own numbers (Going My Way), by the 50s were getting wrong numbers (Anatomy of a Murder), by the 60s they were tearing pages out of phone books (In the Heat of the Night), and eventually we’ve worked our way to a time when there are no phone books and if you ask your computer assistant for John Snith’s number, unless John Smith is among you personal contacts, the answer will be, “I’m sorry I don’t have enough information.”
 
Cars run on no gas. Imagine not just driving for days, week, even months without filling up, but driving hard, fast, and often in multiple countries and never visiting a fuel station. Racing movies aside, nobody ever stops to fill up. The French Connection wouldn’t have stood a chance for Best movie if Popeye Doyle ran out of gas on 86th Street. The only movies I recall seeing somebody at a gas pump are High Sierra and National Lampoon’s Vacation and neither were Oscar nominees in any category. (I should note that in Vacation, Chevy Chase is seen wiping and putting away dishes but I believe they hadn’t been washed yet, so…)
 
Since I brought up non-nominees there are some things in almost every movie I’d like to see happen. 
 
Airplanes with aisles wide enough to walk down two abreast (with a refreshment cart even) and seats with more legroom than in my living room. Sticking with the travel theme, cruise ships with cabins bigger than my living room. Entire blocks unoccupied in front of the building I want to enter so I can just pull up and park – and never having to parallel park (nobody parallel parks in the movies), and airport parking lots that never charge for parking. Formal wear for casinos. Subways never overcrowded and always on time unless being hijacked. And those telephones that when they are set to vibrate you still know a call is incoming even if you are 3 rooms away. 
 
And – a hot tub time machine. Hey Alexa, let’s kick some past!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Lights, Camera, Action!

Michael Leave a comment
Yes, it’s February and that’s my favorite month of the year, or at least one of my 12 favorites and not just because of Groundhog Day. It’s Oscar Month!
 
Okay, okay, I’m not all that choked up about this year’s Academy Awards any more than any other year. Once again I have not seen any of the nominees for Best Picture although for a change I have at least heard of most of them. Some time over the next 3 or 4 years I might even get around to seeing most of them.
 
To me, the better awards go to the performers anyway. Of course they need talented writers working with good material and it has to be well produced and adequately funded, but you could say the same thing about a municipal mass transit system. The actors bring the movie to life and in the four performance categories I can honestly say I have heard of everybody.
 
Once again the movies displaying those nominated performances are important, shall we say dramatic stories that certainly will be told well by this group of talented actors but will they really entertain? Where is the laughter? Why is comedy always getting left behind? (Oh if you read the description of Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit you will see that are classified as “drama, comedy/drama” but isn’t that like “politically correct?” It’s pretty hard to be both. And I’m sorry Jojo, The Producers might have made Hitler funny but that lightning isn’t going to strike again.)
 
So where was I? Oh yes, comedy. Where are the great comedic performances?  There was once a time comedies dominated the Oscar nominations. The first movies to ever feature nominated performances in all four performance categories (actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress) was the comedy My Man Godfrey in 1936, the year awards for performances in supporting roles were introduced.  
 
In the 91 times the Academy has recognized excellence in the performing arts, less than 100 performers have been recognized for excellence in comedic performances. That’s using their definition of comedy which is everything not dramatic. For examples, James Garner was nominated for Murphy’s Romance, a cute movie but not laugh until you fall out of your chair funny, and Tatum O’Neal’s win was well deserved but Paper Moon will never be confused with Blazing Saddles. So to say 100 comedy performance have been represented by the four acting award nominees is already a stretch and many of those movies sported multiple nominations. It would be difficult to find more than fifty true comedies among the performance nominations. Narrow the field down to the winners and you are looking at barely two dozen films. But of the winners featuring comedic performances that excelled, excellence might be an understatement. 
 
It just so happened one recent evening I found myself bored more than usual and took a tentative step into the wonderland we call the Internet. And there I found a list of all the comedy performances that had ever been nominated for any of the four performing awards. I was surprised to see how many of them I had seen – nearly 80 of the 90 some movies listed. So I decided to compile my own awards and then and there selected the top ten comedy roles of all moviedom or at least those once upon a time nominated. Here, for the first time ever, are The Realies!
 
unnamed10. Peter O’Toole, My Favorite Year (1983). Mention Peter O’Toole and your first thought has to be Lawrence of Arabia. From there you may recall Beckett and Lion in Winter, big, broad, epic roles where he fills the screen. Even his earlier side trip to comedy, How to Steal a Million will be on more people’s minds than My Favorite Year. It was pretty much a nothing movie. But his performance was big, brash, over the top, fill the screen in his best Errol Flynnesque style. A drunken hasbeen agrees to appear on a prototypical 1950s variety show to work off his debt to the IRS and takes Manhattan by storm, until he realizes he must performed in front of a live audience. “I’m not an actor! I’m a movie star!” His performance is worth the price of a ticket (or movie rental). Unfortunately for O’toole he was up against another great comedic performance by Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie and the winner Ben Kingsley in Gandhi for Best Actor. 
 
9. Jack Lemmon, Some Like It Hot (1960). What’s funnier than a couple of musicians joining a band to escape the mob looking to rub them out? Did I mention it’s a all women band? Um, did I mention the musicians are men? Lemmon’s character and his fellow musician played by Tony Curtis accidentally witness a mob murder and have to get out of town fast. Their “only” choice is to dress as women and join up with Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators leaving town that day. At their destination Lemmon is pursued by a much married millionaire while Curtis pursues a member of the band (played by Marilyn Monroe) while both are pursued by guys with guns. If you haven’t seen it, you have to see it and stay all the way to the end to see Joe E. Brown’s deadpan reaction to Lemmon’s line about why he can’t marry Brown, “I’m a man!” Brown’s answer? You’ll have to watch the movie.  Lemmon’s performance almost wasn’t as he was the third choice to play the character. He lost the award for Best Actor to Charlton Heston in Ben Hur.
 
8. Marisa Tomei, My Cousin Vinnie (1993). Marisa Tomei’s Best Supporting Actress winning role as Mona Lisa Vito the brash fiancee to Joe Pesci’s brasher Vinnie Gambini shocked the movie going public and most critics of the time. It was the height of “The Important Movies Era.” There was no place for an old fashioned farce. But it was a triumphant return to the old fashioned farce and Tomei’s performance was reminiscent of Myrna Loy as Nora Charles or Katharine Hepburn’s Susan Vance, as the ditzy dame who is neither ditzy nor a dame and the movie wouldn’t be worth remembering without her. Tomei may have had unexpected encouragement to give an award winning performance. During filming Pesci brought the Oscar he won in 1990 for his role in Goodfellas.
 
7. Walter Matthau, The Fortune Cookie (1967). Walter Matthau’s first pairing with Jack Lemmon earned him a Best Supporting Actor award for his role as William “Whiplash Willie” Gingrich, Lemmon’s brother-in-law and lawyer. Matthau convinces Lemmon to feign paralysis after being run over by a pro football player while he was working as a television cameraman. Matthau suffered a heart attack during filming which was suspended while he recovered. He lost 30 pounds during his convalesence. He got 8-1/2 pounds back when he carried away his Oscar.
 
6. William Powell, The Thin Man (1935). The first of six “Thin Man” movies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, The Thin Man is a fun adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel. Roger Ebert said of Powell, “William Powell is to dialog as Fred Astaire is to dance.” The film was shot in just two weeks owing partly to director W. S. VanDyke’s propensity for speedy single takes but also to Powell and Loy not acting but being “two people in perfect harmony” according to Powell. The plot is impossible to follow and clues seem to elude everybody except Powell’s Nick Charles who has a drink in hand whenever Loy’s Nora isn’t. And sometimes when. The acting is so smooth, the dialogue so sharp, and the chemistry so obvious you often lose track of the fact that a murder is being solved before your eyes. Sort of. Powell lost this his first nomination for Best Actor to Clark Gable in the comedy It Happened One Night.
 
5. Dustin Hoffman, Tootsie (1983). Dustin Hoffman solidifies his position as one of the greatest actors of his generation by playing the screwball comedienne and her/his own foil in the same role. Um, sort of. Hoffman’s character Michael Dorsey is a difficult to work with, unemployed actor who successfully passes himself off as Dorothy Michaels to secure a role in a daytime television soap opera. As the story unfolds Dorothy takes on a role within the role, a liberated, self-assured, ground zero “bad ass woman” before women thought they could be bad ass. The movie is a little bit farce, a lot of satire, some social commentary, and tons of fun. Hoffman lost out as Best Actor to Ben Kingsley’s Gandhi. The movie also contributed two nominees for Best Supporting Actress, Teri Garr and winner Jessica Lange.
 
4. Jack Lemmon, The Apartment (1961). I place Jack Lemmon’s role as C. C. Baxter, the overworked office underling who lends his apartment to his bosses for their affairs as one of his best. Lemmon’s trading eventually earned him a promotion as assistant to Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) but has second thoughts when he discovers they both have designs on the same woman (played by Shirley MacLaine). Admittedly this falls into that comedy/drama description but Lemmon’s performance has some pure comedy gold such as when he drains the spaghetti through his tennis his racket (yeah, you really have to see that to experience the full impact) and juggles his desk-size Rolodex to solve a “scheduling” problem. The movie won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and received nominations in three of the four performers categories, Best Actor (Lemmon), Best Actress (MacLaine), and Best Supporting Actor (Jack Kruschen). Lemmon lost his bid to Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry. (Although MacLaine’s acting was Oscar worthy,  she won’t appear in The Realies Top Ten for The Apartment as I consider her performance more dramatic than comedic but it was a great role in one of my favorite movies. And don’t worry about her, she’ll be back.)
 
3. Shirley MacLaine, Irma La Douce (1964). (She’s back!) Shirley MacLaine is reunited with Jack Lemmon in this adaptation of Marguerite Monnot’s and Alexandre Breffort’s musical for the French stage. Lemmon is a policeman fired from the force who falls in love with a prostitute, MacLaine’s Irma. In order to keep her from working he attempts to monopolize her time as the mysterious Lord X. All through the convoluted plot, amid bribery, lies, and a murder that didn’t happen, MacLaine provides the anchor for an otherwise exceptionally outrageous, and long (nearly 2-1/2 hours long!) farce. MacLaine agreed to the part without reading the script because of Lemmon’s and Director Billy Wilder’s involvement in the movie. Afterward, she did not like the final product and contrary to reviews at the time felt the movie was not among her best work. She was surprised to have been nominated for Best Actress but based on her own assessment probably wasn’t surprised that she lost to Patricia Neal in Hud.
 
1 (tie). William Powell and Carole Lombard, My Man Godfrey (1937). No I wasn’t getting tired when I got to this point. I really believe without the other,  neither would be this good and together they are the best. William Powell plays Godfrey, one of the depression’s “forgotten men,” a target of a society scavenger hunt. Carole Lombard as Irene Bullock convinces Godfrey to allow her to bring him in to mark her scavenger list complete. In gratitude, but without the knowledge of her family, Irene offers Godfrey a job as their butler. Godfrey accepts and smoothly makes the position his own. But he has a secret background and a secret mission. Carole Lombard perfected the role of screwball comedienne and is particularly screwy here. Powell brings an enjoyable sense of a diamond from the rough among the family more resembling the discarded shards from the diamond cuttting. The movie is a shining example of “they don’t make them like that anymore” in large part to there not being actors like that any more. Powell and Lombard were nominated for Best Actor and Actress and Mischa Auer and Alice Brady were nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Actress. It was a shame that none of the four won nor did it win in the other categories it was nominated, Best Director (Gregory La Cava) and Best Screenplay (Eric Hatch and Morris Ryskind). It remains a mystery that it was not even nominated for Best Picture. Powell lost to Paul Muni in The Story of Louis Pasteur and Lombard to Luise Rainer in The Great Ziegfeld.
 
There are my pick for the top nominated comedic performances. Obviously I have a preference for the older entries and I admit I have some favorites. The years represent the year the Oscar was awarded, not the movie’s release date.
 
If you are still reading, I congratulate you. This is a long post, but I bet it takes less time to read than some acceptance speeches will this year! Thank you for reading! Now go have a laugh or two.
 
 
 

Stupid is as stupid does

Michael 4 Comments
It’s official, or as official as it can be on my say so. We can stop worrying about global warming, international terrorism, party politics, and the Game of Thrones unsatisfying ending (just bby what I hear, I never watched the show). We can forget about all of them because I am no so sure we will make it through February. Stupidity has finally caught up with us and we are surely going to perish.
 
Check out these symptoms.
 
The coronavirus is a horrible, unexpected, seemingly uncontrollable health disaster. According to this morning’s news over 8,000 cases have been confirmed by the World Health Organization resulting in 361 deaths and that will probably be higher by the time you read this. The interwebs are buzzing, as they should be. We should be trying to do what we can to understand how to prevent its spread. But you aren’t going to find it looking for Corona Beer Virus. That’s what people are searching for on Google trying to find out more about it. Maybe it was last week’s Superbowl hype that had everybody thinking beer instead of flu like pandemics.
 
Speaking of flu, according to the CDC, as of January 31 there had been 300,000 hospitalizations due to the “common” flu this season and over 10,000 deaths (that’s ten thousand) (one comma and lots of zeros), 80% of whom reported not having received this year’s flu shot. I would call that a horrible, unexpected, clearly controllable health disaster.
 
There was a report over the weekend that if former Vice President Joe Biden wins this year’s election the Republicans will begin impeachment immediately upon his inauguration for something or other. I found it telling that the news reports last month were that the Democrats voted to impeach Donald Trump. As I recall my civics class, admittedly many, many years ago, it is the House of Representatives who impeach. It’s a shame we have replaced a rather well thought out form of government with a couple herds of sheep.
 
Americans don’t have the market cornered on odd political stances – or odd politicians for that matter. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was quoted in a Reuters report last month that he wants to lose weight but won’t join the 300,000+ who are expected to sign up for Veganuary 2020. (Yes, it’s a real thing and had been since 2014.) (Sigh) According to Johnson, “I thought about it but it requires so much concentration.” 
 
Speaking to The Financial Times, Mastercard’s CEO expressed his dismay at countries adopting or considering nationalizing payment systems saying consumers worried about their privacy may shift back to cash for purchases. Oh my, what would the world be if we were all reduced to being able to buy only what we can afford. Soon people would be forced to work for what they want. In case you are wondering, Mastercard reported $17 billion dollars in revenue for 2019. For comparison Americans spent $1.6 billion to treat the flu during the 2018-2019 flu season. Sorry, no word on if that was cash or charge.
 
Last month the Japanese billionaire selected to be the first civilian passenger to the moon aboard a SpaceX rocket halted his search for “a girlfriend to take on a voyage around the moon.” About 28,000 women applied. And I still have trouble getting a woman to go to the movies with me.
 
Finally back in the coronavirus world, a man was escorted off a Dallas to Houston American Airlines flight last Thursday when he refused to remove a full-face gas mask. According to a passenger, “My gut reaction was that he was probably worried about the coronavirus and had put on the gas mask as overkill kind of protection. But then I noticed it didn’t have the filter, so that didn’t really make sense. What we heard from the lady sitting next to him was he said he wanted to make a statement. I don’t know what the statement was. I’m not sure what his goals were. To me, it seemed inconsiderate.” That might be considered understatement! 
 
There you have it, living proof we’re never going to life long enough to see melting glaciers turn the midwest back into swamp land, California fall into the ocean, or cars flying themselves powered by dilithium crystals. Stupidity is the pandemic that is going to get us. 
 
(The real proof is that the best part of the Superbowl for me was the commercial starring Punxsutawney Phil and that Bill Murray guy. See, even I’m not immune to stupidity, but come on, that was good!)
 
..
2020-jeep-gladiator-super-bowl-2020-groundhog-day-featuring-bill-murray-song-by-sonny-and-cher-t1-large-9
..

Groundhog Day Eve Eve Eve… and it better not be the last one!

Michael 2 Comments
I love Groundhog Day. There. I said it. Again. And will again. And again. It’s a love that never abates. How could anyone not live Groundhog Day?  A furry woodland creature not known for building dams, outsmarting waskly hunters, or becoming Daniel Boone’s hat, gets more than his 15 minutes of anthropomorphic fame each February 2 and the ensuing six weeks.
 
The great and wonderful groundhog with special and semi-secret skills has the power to capture man’s interest and captivate the entire human race or at least those in the know like no other furry friend since the mink in the 1950s. Without the groundhog we would never know if we should pack away our parkas or beef up our boggins. Yes, our resident rodent is truly righteous.
 
But now the prognosticator of prognosticators, the seer of seers, the meteorological marmot is under attack, personal attack, attack by name, as in we want you Punxsutawney Phil, to be no more, to cease and desist the sharing that special knowledge of seasonal weather patterns with the ever waiting world, and retire to a life of obscurity and be replaced by a (my hands are shaking as I type this), by a (deep breath here), by a, a, a robot. A robot! Hmmph!
 
That animal support group that assumes only its ways are the ethical ways to treat animals yet cannot count even one single groundhog, nor any other animal for that matter among their leadership, claim to know what is best for that most famous furball and insist it is “long overdue for Phil to be retired.” Notice “to be retired” not even just ‘retire’ like it would be his choice, but “to be retired,” like some old horse put out to pasture. All true Phil fanatics know this is no ordinary groundhog living his peaceful and quite cushy existence at Gobblers Knob. He has been forecasting for 134 years. That one single, extraordinary example of Marmota monax has been the center of the winter weather world for 134 years. That’s one hundred, thirty seven years! To suggest he is “to be retired” is to encourage and support age discrimination, hardly an ethical stance for any mammal.
 
And what would those manic meddlers suggest we do every Second of February for our prophetic forecast fix? Artificial Intelligence.  Hmmph – again! As stated by a representative of that nebby group, an AI module attach to an animatronic groundhog could “actually predict the weather.” I can see it now, the president of the Inner Circle knocks on former Phil’s front door and says, “Alexa, tell me the weather for the next 6 weeks.” Double Hmmph!!!
 
I say no! This is not the time for Punxsutawney Phil to be retired. Not this year, not any year. We’ve seen what so-called progress does. Bulging landfills, holes in the ozone, pet rocks! When will our march to oblivion stop? Now I say, now! This is the time to embrace Phil (not too tight – he is 134 years old after all) and demand he never retire and will always guide us to our destinies. Or at least to the next six week. 
 
Phil

The robots are not coming! Long live Phil!

.

For The Heck Of It

Michael Leave a comment
Last summer was a bad time for me. A baaaaaad time. After I got out of the hospital I was anxious to get home but smart enough to know that wasn’t the wisest choice. That’s one of the things that people who loooove the freedom of living alone don’t often consider. Long story short, particularly because I wrote about it often enough last summer, I spent several weeks at my daughter’s getting my feet and other body parts used to stepping in time for themselves. And even after I ventured back to my lonesome life, the child of mine continued to assist with daily activities that eventually morphed into weekly activities that now ultimately has settled at one weekly activity.
 
It’s been seven months, 3 minor procedures, two rounds of physical therapy, and one new ongoing exercise routine since my reentry into “the outside world” and if I say so myself I’m just as good as new! Or at least as good as the average slighty used, only driven on Sunday, new inspection but no warranty, as is, all sales final, yet you’ll still get some decent use out of it. Certainly well enough that household chores aren’t much problem as long as I stay away from “the big vacuum” and split my grocery shopping into no more than 10 pound bags. As far as cooking is concerned, especially since the last round of therapy, I can stand in the kitchen and slave over a hot stove as well as I ever could (as long as I don’t use the big cast iron skillet) (that weight limit goes in the kitchen too you know). Still, yesterday my daughter was over for our weekly 4 hour cooking extravaganza and we prepared a week’s worth of meals for the both of us – me because I need the help and she because she is so busy during the week. Except neither of those is true. 
 
Why do we still do this? Because it’s fun! I’ve always been good in the kitchen but as a 60-something Italian-American it most often involved red meat, red tomatoes, and fresh cheese. Add a glass of wine and I had the 4 basic food groups at every meal. The daughter has always been good in the kitchen but as a 30 year old urbanite her refrigerator has things like leftover pad thai, vegetables of every color, and a token chicken breast to satisfy the occasional meat craving. Fortunately wine rounds out her fourth food group also. Different color but still it was a common starting point. 
 
I firmly believe if you want to put people together, regardless of how different they spend the rest of the week there should be one day each week they must cook together. It is much too difficult to complain about trivial matters like politics and religion while you’re trying desperately to whisk fast enough to make mayonnaise knowing no store bought stuff will make a good enough base for your Romesco. And when you can’t get your point across about why you think your way might be better, an immediate taste test removes all doubt and answers all questions. 
 
After 7 months of cooking with each other we’ve both expanded our tolerances and are practicing cultural inclusion through yummy dishes from every continent except Antarctica. (Being involved Pittsburgh hockey fans neither of us is in a hurry to add penguin to our meal prep.) (Another common point.) Oh if only the rest of the world could come over every Sunday afternoon we’d all be doing so much better.
.
bubble-wrap-groceries
Oh hey, not that it has anything to do with anything else but today, the last Monday in January, is Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day. Thought you might want to pop that in your calendars, you know, just for the heck of it.
 
.

More Than a Dream

Michael Leave a comment
A big announcement is coming up. On February 1 the National Football League selects its Hall of Fame “Class of 2020.” I’ve always been sort of tickled by sports halls of fall identifying those selected in a particular year as the “class of.”  But then what should we expect from a business built on little boys’ games most others set aside right around graduation day?
 
There are halls of fame for everything, not all have “classes of” but they routinely preserve the memories of those ostensibly demonstrating greatness in their chosen field. There are the sports halls of fame for professionals and amateurs, music halls of fame from country to rock to gospel to blues, there are transportation halls of fame including aviation and motorcar entries, there are entertainment, business, and industrial halls of fame. There are more halls of fame than just that one that made Canton famous even if it is a little better known that say the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum of Leadville, Colorado.
 
Something almost every hall of fame can relate to is that as soon as new inductees are announced criticism of the choice or oversight of some more worthy selection commences. Criteria is questioned, motivation is questioned, often the parentage of those making the selections is questioned! I am certain among the thousands of people enshrined in the hundreds of halls of fames none would be a unanimous choice if the choice was made by the entire represented avocation, sport, or profession. We just aren’t built for agreement that way.
 
Staying with sports halls of fame for the moment, every year at announcement time the sports talk shows are flooded with calls from fans who know So-And-So was a much better PositionInQuestion than Whatshisname could ever be followed quickly by calls from others pointing out that’s only because Whatshisname played in the LiveBall, DeadBall, LessInflatedBall, LeatherHelmet, PreSteriod, or Paleolithic Era or perhaps because the players in So-And-So’s time were bigger, smaller, faster, slower, taller, better trained, or nongenetically modified. And all might be valid points if anybody really cared or if we were talking about statistics. Performance will change as time changes and standards of performance change as performance itself changes. But are statistics all it should take to be enshrined in a hall or fame. In fact, should statistics even be considered when selecting somebody for enshrinement.
 
If you’re still reading don’t bail on me yet because a point really is coming up. 
 
Criterion 1: If you are telling the story of us, can you do it without saying his or her name?
..
While I was reading an article about the recent NFL special “Centennial Class,” among the readers’ comments was a surprisingly intelligent one. While others debated the merits of those selected and ignored, making what they probably thought were very compelling arguments, one reader observed the only criterion should be “can you tell football’s story without mentioning his name?” Now that’s selection criteria in a nutshell. Not victories or championships or statistics, but contribution.
 
Halls of Fame have something else in common. They all “enshrine” their recipients. Not recognize or honor. Enshrine. To enshrine is to preserve or cherish as sacred, something worthy of awe. That anonymous commenter had the right idea. If you are going to enshrine somebody that person should be such a big part of the story that the story would not exist without him or her. You might have noticed when I mentioned the different types of halls of fame from automotive to wrestling, there is no Human Hall of Fame. Maybe that’s why we don’t have a human hall of fame. Who has given so much we wouldn’t be us otherwise? Who is so worthy that we could “enshrine?”
 
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Many celebrate it with a day of service as a means of commemorating Dr. King’s service to the civil rights cause. An interesting thing about Dr. King’s famous “I have a dream” speech is that every American, recognizes the words “I have a dream.” Not many speeches have that level of recognition. Say Martin Luther King and the first thing most people hear I their heads is “I have a dream.” It’s up there in our subconscious right beside “four score and seven years ago,” “a day which will live in infamy,” and “ask not what your country can do for you.” You hear the words and you know the speech. Or do you?
 
Did you know on August 28, 1963 when Dr. King addressed the crowd i  Washington he uttered the words “I have a dream” eight times. Do you know what came after any of them? One time it followed that his dream was his children would be judged by the “content of their character.” Not by their name, their color, or their station in life, but by their character. Character. Who they are and what they do to make them them part of us. 
 
Is that not for what we all should dream and thus strive? To be of character worthy of being remembered. To not be able to tell the story of us without mentioning us. If we were to have a Human Hall of Fame and we used that single criterion – Can you tell our story without saying his name? – Martin Luther King Jr. certainly would be in the inaugural class.  
 
Later this week when you’ve done your service and you’re back to debating the various halls’ of fame classes of 2020 take a moment and pretend you’re on the selection committee for the Human Hall of Fame. You get to ask one question. Can you tell the story of humankind, how we got to be us, without mentioning somebody? Who would you enshrine there? 
..

Cleaning My Desk

Michael Leave a comment
Today is “Clean Out Your Desk Day” so I think I will. Before I get to the one in the corner I’ll clear out some of the mental clutter. I warn you right now that today’s thoughts cover politics, society, and religion so I’m sure to tick off everybody with something before you reach the end of this post. But if I missed you, please let me know in the comments section and I’ll be happy to try harder next time. 
—–
 
This morning’s news had an report of a toddler vaping. According to their release the Pennsylvania State Police received a “Snapchat-like video showing what looks like a young toddler taking a hit with the help of a woman, then the video shows the toddler sit down and take another hit. The camera then cuts to a shot of another woman laughing.” The women have been identified as high school students and the toddler is a two year old one of the girls was baby sitting for the evening. There’s just so much wrong with this. The obvious is you don’t give a baby something to smoke, vape, swallow, or inject. Then where did high school kids get vaping pens and solution since the legal age to buy vaping accessories and supplies in Pennsylvania is 21? (Yeah, I know, nobody enforces “legal age” before the fact for anything anywhere except alcohol and that often only poorly.) Last on my list but certainly just one off many more things wrong with this picture is why is it going out on social media? If there was not an audience for this type of behavior it wouldn’t be shared so blatantly. Are we are better off now than when teenagers lived in a “Leave it to Beaver” world?
..
Groundhog Day is the best holiday ever!
 
A local supermarket chain is joining the growing number of stores eliminating single use plastic bags, plastic food containers and plastic straws. A very positive step in the fight for the environment by reducing resources required to supply a disposable world and the impact on the world after their disposal. A word of caution though. Once you put a biodegradable item into a black plastic garbage bag you just threw away all your good effort. 
 
If your parents used to threaten you with no dessert until you ate your veggies don’t complain that Burger King is cooking plant burgers on the same grill as the real burgers. 
 
In the “Just Because You Can” drawer boy do I have a lot of things I bought on sale.
 
Have you seen the commercial where a guy walks away from the coffee shop register after paying for his latte with a debit card and a balloon pops up displaying “overdraft fee $35?” He opines that he wishes a bank existed that won’t keep charging him all these fees. His companion happily informed him that one does, the sponsor of that very ad they are in. Imagine that! No more annoying overdraft or any other fee – yay! Hey, I have a way to avoid overdraft fees too. Don’t spend money you don’t have! Schmuck.
 
Thank you Ricky Gervais.
 
Over the weekend Ontario officials apologized for sending a false emergency alert regarding an unspecified issue at an atomic power plant outside of Toronto. It was not the first time a government warned of impending peril that wasn’t there. Most recently in 2018 the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security apologized when an erroneous alert was distributed in Hawaii warning of incoming missiles. Maybe the world is getting used to false alarms. In Canada, Jonathan Davies noticed Sunday’s alert while he was driving but he waited until after he picked up his Tim Hortons to check the news. “I can’t cope with much until I have my coffee,” he was quoted in an Associate Press article. 
 
Today Pope Francis tweeted (yes he does, doesn’t everybody?), “it is not enough to be knowledgeable: unless we step out of ourselves, unless we worship, we cannot not know God.” Sound advice for all religions, all societies, and all people. It’s not enough to just think, if you want to matter you have to do.
 
Finally,  an oldie but goodie:  love thy neighbor, no exceptions!
—–
Okay, I think I’m ready to work on that other desk now. Altogether now,  go clean your desks!
.
20200113_102329.jpg

I Firmly Dissolve

Michael 2 Comments
The new year is already more than a week old and I haven’t published a new post yet. I should be swiftly and severely punished for this. Or not. I pick not. I tried to write. Really I did. But I’ve been busy. I’ve been doing my spring cleaning, clearing out the herb garden, and ordering candy corn. Yeah, my chronology is a little disheveled. And I mix metaphors in my spare time too. 
 
Jan9Something I haven’t done yet this year, besides writing until today, is I also have yet to resolve anything. But hey, that’s the norm for me. I won’t even think about “New Year’s Resolutions” until sometime in March. I may not do anything then either but I will give it a good think. My resolution of years and years ago not to make New Year’s Resolutions in January (which I am proud to say I have kept quite well thank you) did not have the universal impact I was hoping for, encouraging others to likewise temper their plans for self, and often world,  improvement as each year begins. I see by delaying my first post of 2020 for 9 days I’ve gotten here too late to see many people who forged ahead with New Year’s Resolutions on January 1 adhering to those grand plans. How can I tell? Well…
  • You don’t “spend less time on social media” if you are posting to Instagram you doing things without your phone in hand.
  • “Eat healthier” is more than picking a non-GMO and gluten free beer for your weekly binge. (Is that even a thing?)
  • You do not get credit for “being nice to everybody” for adding 🤫 to end of a Twitter rant in which you call anybody a blithering idiot. (Yes, even exes and politicians) 
  • Getting up to find your remote does not mean you “take more walks.”
Surely there are some still resolving successfully even 9 days in. To you, congratulations! To the others more representative of my examples, well, at least you think you tried.
 
Look, it’s a new year and in another 357 days (leap year, remember) it will be another new year then yet another and so on and so on and so on. The only resolution you really need to make and keep is to do your best to make it to your next chance to resolve. Or not. 
.

Happy Old Year

Michael 2 Comments
Movie goers who are certain they don’t make ’em like that any more, like me, often find themselves wishing for 1946 again. The Big Sleep, Razor’s Edge, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Gilda. Those were some of 1946’s bigger box office pay days. Oh yes, there was that big box office flop, It’s a Wonderful Life. 
 
Oh to relive 1946. That’s just what Sheila Page played by Joan Leslie gets to do in 1947’s Repeat Performance. In a heavily reworked version of the 1942 William O’Farrell novel, Sheila gets to relive 1946 from New Years Eve to New Years Eve. Well people had been reliving past cinematic lives for a while, particularly around the holidays, the previous year’s Capra classic being just the latest. Ah, but this one had a twist. Sheila doesn’t just watch her past life like Ebenezer Scrooge or George Bailey. Nor does she dream or imagine what a do over might get her the second time around. She gets dropped right back into her previous year with the full knowledge of the happenings of her first go at it and her plan for rewriting the script. 
 
Surely you’ve said to yourself a time or two “if I could only do that again” or “I wish I could have that day back.” Without revealing any more of the tale if you should want to see it for yourself* you probably can figure out that things aren’t going to go as planned. Obviously she didn’t live her first shot at 1946 in a vacuum and she isn’t going through version 2 alone. That’s the trouble with wishing for a redo, everyone else comes along too. Whether you want them or not. And there’s no guarantee that even if you could do your part differently that with everybody else adjusting and refining the end result won’t be the same.
 
My 2019 was not a banner year for me. If you’ve been reading these posts for a while you know that. If you are new just read the last posted kidney transplant update and you’ll get an idea of what I did on my summer vacation and it didn’t involve Disneyland. So if I had a chance to repeat this year would I leap at it? 
 
I think I’ll take a crack at revising things in the new year. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if we could dispense with today and tomorrow. I’ve already had enough of 2019.
.
NewYearsClock
.
*The 1947 movie Repeat Performance was lost until very recently. There are plans for a DVD and BluRay release. It is currently available in Turner Classic Movie’s on demand listings. There is a newer movie of the same name from 1996 that was a completely different story, perhaps even more obscure that the one lost for 70 years. Don’t be fooled by that. In 1989 NBC released a remake of the 1947 film as the made for TV movie Turn Back the Clock starring Connie Sellecca in the Sheila Page role as Stephanie Powers. That movie should not be confused with the 1933 comedy offering Turn Back the Clock which involves people reliving past lives but they were having a lot more fun than those that came in William O’Farrell’s novel released 9 years later which became the source material for the 1947 and 1989 movies. And you wondered why I wouldn’t want to redo a year. They can’t even get redoing movies right and that stuff is made up!
.

‘Twas the Day After Christmas

Michael 1 Comment
All right everyone,  gather around over here. We off to a late start today and this stuff has to be done by opening of business tomorrow.
 
You, up on the ladder, since you didn’t bother to come down when I said to gather around you can stay up there and pull down those silver and gold streamers and the fake snowflakes and get the red ribbons and hearts up. Do we have any cupid cutouts you can hang at the end of each aisle? Good. Get those up too but not that last row. Make that one green and find the shamrocks we had up last year.
 
I need someone in the window to get Santa out of the chimney and wrap the trees up. Fine, you’ll do. After you get the fat man packed away find the most of whatever we have and make a big pile in the middle of each window and change the signs from Holiday Sale! to Year End Clearance! What? No, don’t change the prices! Are you new here?
 
Now then in the candy section, any candy canes, foil wrap bells, those Christmas packaged candies, and the prefilled stockings get loaded up into 2 or 3 shopping carts and tape a 50% off sign on the front of them. Yeah, I know last week they were 75% off. That’ll teach people to try and hold off for a better deal. So what if somebody notices. If they remember next year we can get rid of all this junk before Christmas Eve and not have to scramble like this. After you get those shelves empty there are a bunch cases of those sappy heart shaped boxes of candy that didn’t sell last year. Put them out, mark them up a third higher than whatever they were then mark the whole section 10% off.
..
I need somebody to check the ad copy before it hits the emails tomorrow. It should say FLASH SALE, ONE DAY ONLY, PRICES GOOD ON ALL ITEMS* FRIDAY THROUGH TUESDAY and then in the real small letters “some exceptions apply.” Last week somebody used a readable size for that and three customers actually wanted to know what wasn’t on sale before they got to the check out lines.
..
BigSale
..
Okay then the cards and ornaments let’s make buy 1 get 19 free. I know we’ll be cutting our profit down to under 300% but we need the space for the sunblock and flip flops that we have to put out next week. What? Hmm. Yeah I know those guys down the street have their leftover gift wrap 90% off but I figure it doesn’t go stale and we’re just going to have to buy more next year. Look, most people are using gift bags for presents any way. Just stuff whatever is left in the fake chimneys when they come out of the windows and push it all to the back corner of the stock room. We’ll put them back out in October.
.
You two, take this list and go through the store and anything you find that looks like a match bring to the guys in the crafts section. That’s the list of Olympic sports. Yeah it’s time for them again. I don’t know exactly, July something. Whenever they are we’re running out of time. Corporate sent some people to stencil something that looks almost like the real logo on whatever we got. We need to get started with that so we’ll be ready when we pull whatever Dads and Grads crap that didn’t sell off the shelves in April.
 
You all have your jobs to do. Any questions? New Years? Get a few bucks out of petty cash and go down to the dollar store and buy some noise makers and cardboard hats. We can set up that end caps right across from the cash registers. We can probably make a pretty penny on some last minute shoppers. Good thinking! 
 
Now let’s get out there and remember, sales sales sales! That’s the reason for the season!