What? Me speechless?

I'm in a slump.  I like to crank out a new posting on this here blog every day, but the last few days I just haven't had anything to say.

I actually almost came up with a topic yesterday while watching the Michigan State women's basketball game, not because they beat Penn State, but because of the star of the game, 5'8" senior guard Porsche Poole.  And not because she scored a career-high 32 points and had 6 rebounds, 6 assists and 3 steals.  No, it was because of her name.

Even though she pronounces it POR-shay, it still looks like the car.  And by the second half, instead of "Way to go, Porsche" I found myself saying "Way to go, Cadillac!" or "Nice shot, Honda!" whenever she scored.  I wondered if she had a brother named Plymouth, but then I decided that any brother of Porsche's would have to be called Jaguar, at least.

I thought it would be fun if she had a teammate named Volkswagen Smith -- then I thought, no, that should be Volkswagen Schmidt.  The rest of the team could be Fiat diBenidetto, Volvo Jorgenson, and, of course, the 7'5" center named Beatrix-Maria Wurstenburger, known to her teammates as BMW.

And then I got to feeling ashamed of myself.  That's not nice, making fun of the girl's name. 

So, I didn't write about that yesterday.

Bee-Bo-Banana-Fanna

I just had a piece of the yummy banana bread I made the other day. It's Grandma Bozzo's recipe, which I got from her granddaughter. In Italian, the family name is pronounced Boat-so. Some of my friend's cousins pronounce it Bah-zo, but her side of the family says Bo-zo, just like Bozo the Clown.

The reason I'm mentioning this is (a) Grandma Bozzo's banana bread is so good you would happily pay to eat it and (b) it reminds me of a time her granddaughter and I were shopping in a gift boutique. She was on the other side of the little store when I saw something I thought she'd like, and I said, "Hey, Bozzo -- come look at this."

A clerk who had been hovering nearby got an I-am-absolutely-appalled look on her face and reproached me with, "That's a terrible thing to call your friend!"

I retorted, "Well, first of all, it's none of your business, and second -- that's her name."

Bozo.

You said it, Jack

I see that today is the birthday of sportscaster Jack Brickhouse (1916-1998). He called games of Chicago teams for more than 40 years on WGN radio and television, but he is most remembered as the voice of the Chicago Cubs from 1948 until he retired in 1981.

Like most sportscasters, Brickhouse had a cache of things he said all the time. I can still hear him giving the Cubs’ defensive positions at the beginning of a game. During Leo Durocher’s tenure as manager (1966-1972), it would go like this:

"Williams, Hickman, and Spangler in left, center, and right; Santo, Kessinger, Beckert, and Banks, the infield third to first; and a battery of Hundley and Jenkins." (Or Hundley and whoever -- Holtzman, Hands, Pappas, Niekro, and many others.) 

In almost every baseball game I see, something happens that causes me to say out loud what Brickhouse always said in that situation:

When the 0-2 pitch was a ball: "He wasted one."

When it was time for the seventh-inning stretch: "All right, on your feet, you Cubs fans."

When the Cubs came from behind to tie the game: "We've got us a brand-new ball game!"

When the score was tied going into the Cubs' bottom of the 9th or any extra inning: "Any old kind of a run wins this ball game."

When the score was tied after nine innings: "We'll have an extra-inning ball game today."

When something really good happened for the Cubs: "Wheeee!"

When something really bad happened for the Cubs: "Oh, brother."

When the Cubs dodged a bullet on a close play: "Whew boy!"

And, of course, when a Cub hit a home run: "That's pretty well hit! Back ... back ... back ... Hey hey! A home run!"

Shame On You

The practice of performing our national anthem before sporting events began during World War II when it was sung or played before baseball games as part of an effort to boost morale.  The idea caught on, though, and within a few years even high school basketball games were preceded by the anthem.

At one time, spectators stood, removed hats, put hands over hearts, and even if they didn't sing along, they did face the flag, and even if they weren't exactly solemn, they were at least quiet for the duration.  When it was over, they applauded and cheered, not for the performance but for the anthem and the republic for which it stands.

Or, am I too naive?  Maybe it wasn't patriotism at all, maybe they cheered because they were glad the damn song was over and they could get on with the game.  Considering what came later, that may be closer to the truth, because as time went on, the sports crowds appeared to have grown quite impatient for the game to begin and started their cheers and applause before the anthem ended, somewhere around the last phrase, "...and the home of the brave."  Every decade, it seemed, the end of the fans' patience with it moved further and further back until the whole last section of the song was spoiled by premature applause, and worse still, the number of folks actually singing dwindled, along with the number who stood, removed hats, and put hands over hearts, or even, for that matter, paid attention to it.

This encroachment reached its absolute limit today at the NFC Championship game in San Francisco where the crowd clapped and cheered and yelled from beginning to end of the singing of the national anthem.

I freely admit that I am not overly fond of "The Star Spangled Banner" either as a song or a poem, but it is the official national anthem of the United States of America and, as such, deserves my attention and respect and that of very other citizen of this country.

The most disheartening aspect of that disgraceful display in San Francisco is that all those people should be ashamed of themselves, and they're not.

Another one bites it

A couple years ago I decided I needed to read Isaac Asimov's I Robot because I never had.  Not being much of sci fi fan, I was basically bored stiff by it.  There is one interesting thing I remember about the book, which, incidentally, was written in 1950.  Among all the robots, space stations, inter-galactic travel and other futuristic stuff, the characters still took photographs with a camera that used film, which they had to drop off at a lab to be developed.  Cameras nowadays don't need film, of course, but Asimov never saw that one coming.

Apparently, neither did Kodak.  They're in Chapter 11.

And so is Hostess.  That one is not my fault.  It's true that I haven't bought a Kodak camera since 1972, and I haven't bought Kodak film since going digital in 2001, but I still buy Hostess Cupcakes.  I love them, even though they are embarrassing to eat.  You know the ones I mean -- the chocolate ones with the creamy center and the white squiggle on top, the ones you don't dare eat in front of anybody because when you finish one you can't help smiling a big grin because you are so happy, and then everybody can see you have chocolate all over your teeth.  Yeah, those.  (It's a good idea to make sure there are no cameras around if you're going to eat one.)

Timid is as timid does

I once worked with a young woman who was the shyest person I ever met.  This was back in the mid-60's when I was in my early twenties, and so was she.  She was tall and slim, dark and rather pretty, but she was painfully shy.  She spoke to no one unless spoken to first.  When she did talk, she was so quiet you could hardly hear her, and she never made eye contact.

One day she came up to my desk and just stood there looking at the top of it.  I asked her if I could help her, and after a great deal of hesitation and stammering, she finally managed to convey to me that she was wondering if the two of us could go out to lunch some time.  I said that would be delightful, and we made a date for the very next day.

When the time came and we were walking out into the parking lot, I asked whose car we should take, and she pointed hers out, which was nearby.  I don't remember the make or model of her car at all, but it was a large sedan that was probably four or five years old.  I opened the passenger door and noticed that the interior door panel was missing.  When I got in, I saw that all the door panels were missing and that the car had no dashboard.  It also had no back seat.

"What happened to your car?" I asked in alarm.

"I took everything out to make it lighter," she said.  "I race it at US-30 Drag Strip on weekends."

Not quite as shy as I thought, I guess.

The Box contains more mysteries than it solves

For some reason I was trying to remember the name of the math teacher I had in junior high, so I dug out my report cards.  All of them, from Kindergarten through graduate school, are stored safely in The Box (you know, The Box that I wrote about in October).  I was hoping the teacher's name would be on the grade report, but it wasn't.

I looked through all the report cards, however, and I came across some other names that brought back a memory or two.  There was Miss Liddberg, my seventh-grade gym teacher.  Say her name out loud -- doesn't it sound like you're trying to say Lindberg when you have a code in your dose?

I believe I have mentioned before my favorite teacher, the alliterative Wilma W. Watkins, from third-grade, but as names go, you can't beat my fifth-grade teacher.  I couldn't understand why adults always laughed when I told them my teacher's name was Mrs. Sexauer.  (Kind of like Happy Hour, they must have thought.)

And then there is the mystery of Miss Lauschke.  She was my first-grade teacher, and she left us for a week or so toward the end of the school year to get married.  When she came back, she told us she had a new name, so it was inappropriate for us to call her Miss Lauschke and incorrect to call her Mrs. Lauschke, but she was afraid her new last name would be hard for us to pronounce (like Lauschke was a bargain?) and since there was only a week or so left of school, she decided we could just call her Mrs. Anna.  I assumed at the time and have believed ever since that Anna was her first name.

Then today, nearly 60 years later, I see on that report card, where it says Name of Teacher, she has written Corinne Lauschke.

So, who the hell was Anna?  Or was her new last name Annamagdalena or Annaproximato or something like that?  And why get married a few weeks before school lets out?  Why not just wait?

Oh.  Never mind.  I can think of a reason.

Special Aces

My partner and I were playing gin rummy.  At the end of a hand, after we had both laid out the cards from our hands and reckoned the score, she pushed her cards toward me as I gathered them to shuffle and deal for the next hand.  "There are four aces here," she said, pointing to one end of the pile, "in case you want separate them."

It struck me as an odd thing for her to say.  Not the notion of separating like cards -- canasta players are used to separating red threes before shuffling.  But this was gin. An ace has no special status at all in gin rummy -- it's just another card that can be part of a run or one of set, just like any other card.  Besides, she never had and probably never would point out a group of four jacks or four sevens or four of anything else.

It was because they were aces that she said it, underscoring the general attitude of card players toward aces.  They are special, perhaps for many reasons, but fundamentally because the ace is, of course, the highest card in many games.

I wonder why that is.  Could it be that in the evolution of card games over the centuries, people elevated the ace to premier status because of some subconscious desire to raise the fortunes of the lowly lowest number, the lonely singleton -- perhaps symbolically looking out for number one?
 

Wait long enough and everything comes back eventually

When I was a kid, any time I asked for something that my mother considered outside the realm of absolute necessity, her standard response was, "You save your money, and when you have enough, you can buy one."

I was in the seventh grade when I decided I needed to play the guitar.  Someone had told me that a classmate of mine played the guitar (it turned out she didn't), and I wanted to be like her so much that I wanted to play the guitar too.  I brought the matter up to my mother who said, "You save your money, and when you have enough, you can buy one."

Well, I saved my money -- my allowance and babysitting money and whatever other sums came my way -- and after months of self-sacrifice, I managed to amass a grand total of $8.50.  That was nowhere near enough to buy a guitar, said the man in the local music store, (the cheapest bottom-of-the-line guitar in the Sears catalogue went for about $20 in those days), but he showed me a ukulele that cost about that much.  I decided to take it.

I brought the ukulele home, along with an instruction book the guy threw in, and tried to figure out how to play it, making my fingers sore but getting nowhere.  I then put the thing in the closet and forgot about it for a year or so.  And then one day when I was a freshman in high school and was supposed to be studying for a Latin test, I got the ukulele out and started fooling with it.  I finally figured out that you don't need to play tunes on it, you just strum chords and sing along.  Once I figured that out, I was off to the races.

From what I see on the Internet and elsewhere, the ukulele might be making a comeback.  I'm ready for it.  I can still bring the house down with my rendition of I Want To Go Back To My Little Grass Shack In Kealakakua Hawaii.

DIY -- I don't THINK so

Grocery stores need to give a discount to shoppers who use the do-it-yourself checkouts.  After all, the store is saving money that would otherwise be paid in salary to a cashier.  Until they begin making it worth my while, I refuse to stoop so low as to be at the mercy of a DIY-checkout machine.

It is humiliating to stand there removing items from my little basket, waving them in front of the scanner for five to thirty seconds until it finally reads the bar code, and then be subjected to the sound of the snotty female voice repeating over and over again, "Please place the item in the bagging area, please place the item in the bagging area, please place the item in the bagging area," until finally I shock and awe all nearby shoppers by shouting back, "I'm putting the freaking thing in the freaking bagging freaking area already, damn you."

Actually, even cash incentives might not be enough.

Some things haven't changed much in the last six centuries

Joan of Arc was born 600 years ago today -- perhaps. The year, 1412, and the month are fairly certain, the day is not, but it is the one generally recognized.

I have been fascinated by Joan of Arc since I was a kid, reading everything (in English) I could get my hands on.  It was definitely hero worship, for as young teens, Joan and I shared a common feminism that was personal rather than general.  We both rebelled against the traditional female lot in life.

Although it was perfectly impossible for a teen-aged girl to become a soldier, that's exactly what Joan of Arc wanted to do.  And not just any soldier, but a leader, a general, a hero.  That's why she didn't just disguise herself as a boy and run off to join the army.  To maintain the subterfuge, she would have had to remain a private soldier.  What she needed was a compelling reason to do it as herself, and what better reason than orders from God?

Believers will accept her having been visited by saints and archangels as a matter of fact.  Others will say she lied about them, some that she, like anybody else who claims to hear voices, was insane. The truth is that she wanted be a soldier so desperately that she subconsciously let her vivid imagination and her simple and devout faith combine to convince her conscious mind that heavenly messengers appeared before her telling her that God wanted her to go to war to save France.  And how could she refuse to do that?  It is a testament to her intelligence, strength of character, and determination that she succeeded.

Joyeux anniversaire, Sainte-Jeanne.  Et merci.

On Sale Now

I have to admit it sometimes takes me a while to get around to things.  This time it didn't take 30 years, like the beer bread recipe I finally tried, but I am a bit behind.

A year ago I said that after I retired, I was going to sell the contents of our house on eBay -- and also that when the house was empty, we'd sell it too and move to somewhere where it doesn't snow.

Well, last evening I finally listed an item for sale.  We were cleaning out a cabinet, found two of these things, neither of which had been used even once, kept one and put the other up for auction on eBay.  And somebody has bid on it, which means it is sold.

On the heels of that success, I listed another thing today, a toy somebody gave me as a joke.  If that sells, that will leave only four or five thousand other things to put on the block.

Zowee.

Joy to the World

I have always found it curious that the playing and singing of Christmas songs stops the day after Christmas.  That may be understandable with popular songs, since they are generally anticipatory -- hoping you have yourself a merry little Christmas, or a white Christmas, or you avoid a blue Christmas, or that you get your two front teeth for Christmas, or that Santa Claus is coming right down Santa-Claus Lane.

Traditional Christmas carols, on the other hand, are all about glory to the new-born king, indicating that the anticipated event has already occurred.  For weeks and months up to and including December 25, we hear that baby Jesus is away in a manger with no crib for his bed, and that three kings and a drummer boy come to visit him, but once the day of his birth actually comes, that's it -- no more songs about it.

We hear tell (ad nauseum) of the strange and wonderful gifts given on each of the twelve days of Christmas before Christmas comes, but thereafter we don't hear that song even once during Christmastide.  Today is only the ninth* of the twelve days of Christmas, so why are we not still hearing those carols that admonish all ye faithful to come to Bethlehem and behold him?

Never mind the five gold rings or the partridge in a pear tree.  Bring on the nine ladies dancing.


__________________________
*Or the tenth, depending on which Christian calendar you follow.