Meal Ticket

Hello World,

And so here we find ourselves at the very last weekend in August, and after this, next up will be Labor Day weekend, believe that or don't, and in many places, that will mean back-to-school in earnest. Next weekend will also be the last pre-season football games, which means that actual regular season football will start the week after that, while the baseball teams in pennant races will still be jockeying for position. Bill reports that the supermarkets already have aisles full of Halloween decorations, which comes as no surprise whatsoever, but also all of their Halloween candy, which apparently has two full months to get good and stale, before even the first trick-or-treaters will be ringing the doorbells. Of course, we would never have sorts of problems like that, because fun-size Halloween candy treats wouldn't last for two weeks around here, much less two months, so our visitors can always be assured of the very freshest confections that the stores have to offer, and that's not just a lot of candy corn, believe me.

In other sports news, Bill and I were watching the hapless Mets play last week, and we noticed that even the announcers had gotten discouraged with the way their season was shaping up, after starting out bright with promise. Their pitchers have been doing all they can, but the offense isn't scoring any runs, and they've probably been in more one-run ballgames this season than any other team in history. So in a scoreless game that we were watching, the very last thing the Mets needed at that point was having a homerun called back by the umpires, and not counted, thank you so very much not. In fact, the umpiring crew somehow decided to categorize that as a "ground rule triple," of which there is no such thing in major league baseball, and made the hitter go back to third base, rather than scoring on what should have been a homerun. This is the kind of thing that only happens to the Mets, where they not only catch all the bad breaks, but also fall victim to rules that don't even exist that the umpires just make up on the spot. In fact, it caused one of the announcers to quip: "The Mets are the only team that can have a lead-off homerun to start an inning, and still can't score."

Meanwhile at church, we had gotten to the point in the service where we were supposed to stand up and sing "Thy Holy Wings," when the overhead projector malfunctioned, and the screen went completely black. The organist plunged ahead regardless, unaware of the glitch, and of course I was singing at full throttle, because I was using the hymnal instead, which is easier for me than following the words printed with no music. Suddenly one of the other members joined me from across the aisle, apologizing because she had no hymnal, and this was the first I realized that the projector was not working, so I shared my hymnal with her in an attempt to be hospitable. Unfortunately, I find the printing in the new hymnals is less distinct, and with the two of us sharing it, it was almost impossible for me to see all of the words clearly. It got to the point where I was basically just guessing at the lyrics from memory, and even worse when I would lead my neighbor down the garden path by inventing words that were entirely wrong, and she would follow right along with me, I'm sure, to the astonishment of everyone else around us with their own hymnal. Fortunately, the projector was soon put to rights, and disaster was averted for the remainder of the worship service. I was in the office later working on the computer, so I didn't go downstairs for coffee hour, but I can just visualize her down there, and she would be shaking her head and saying about me, "You know, she's a nice girl, but she can't read."

And what may be happening in the wide world of entertainment, you may be wondering, and well may you wonder. Bill heard about a new action movie and looked it up with our friends at wikipedia.org:

==================
I checked out that action picture with all the people in it and here's part of the scoop:
The Expendables is an upcoming ensemble action-war film written by Dave Callaham and Sylvester Stallone, and directed by Stallone. Filming began on March 28, 2009, in Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and is expected to be released on August 13, 2010. The film pays tribute to the blockbuster action films of the 1980s and early '90s, and stars an array of action veterans from those decades, including Stallone himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, and Jet Li, as well as more recent stars such as Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Steve Austin.
The article goes on to say:
Jean-Claude Van Damme was personally offered a role by Stallone, but turned it down because he felt there was no substance to his character.
==================

Okay, I admit that I'm easily amused, but that last part is my favorite, where Jean-Claude van Damme, of all people, refuses to take part in a movie - not because of money or billing - but because of poor character development. Well, my apologies to Sir Jean-Claude van Olivier, but I personally think that's a whole big crock of brass-plated, 100-proof malarkey, although it does make a great story, so if that's his story, he's welcome to stick with it. On the other hand, if it was really true, you'd have to wonder if this wasn't the end of civilization as we know it, or "Hasta la vista, baby!"

Speaking of the end of civilization, our friends at Denny's restaurants have apparently decided that people are not dying fast enough from their gastronomically excessive meals, over-laden with deep fried foods, high-fat meats, hefty potatoes smothered in toppings, and gooey desserts, as hard as that may seem to believe. So the diabolical research trolls in their test kitchens have found a way to kick it up a notch, by inventing the Denny's New Fried Cheese Melt, which appears to be part of a trend of new extreme meals like the Double Down from KFC, the Grilled Cheese Burger Melt from Friendlys, and the Foot-Long Cheeseburger from Carl's Jr. For this new creation, here's how they describe it: "Take the classic grilled cheese with sourdough bread and American cheese, then stuff it with four fried mozzarella sticks and serve it with a side of marinara sauce. The $4 value meal is rounded out with a choice of soup or salad and served with a side of French fries." Well, if that's not a letter-perfect definition of a heart attack on a plate, I don't know what is, unless they strap you down and inject the fried cheese and hot oil directly into your veins. Denny's very helpfully provides the Nutritional Information, presumably for the sheer entertainment value, because obviously anybody who orders something so outrageous, couldn't give two hoots about how bad it would be for them. In fact, if a person ate the entire meal - the Fried Cheese Melt with Fries and Marinara Sauce - they would consume a whopping 1,260 calories at one time, with 63 grams of fat, and a staggering 3,010 mg of sodium. Our friends at slashfood.com took it for a taste test, and gave it high marks for deliciousness (they were practically giddy over it) while acknowledging that it was so extremely unhealthy that it should not be recommended. I think this explains why Denny's menu gets a top rating from the American Cardiologists Society, although for all the wrong reasons, and it would take a brave person to come out in favor of this decadent extravagance. I understand that they asked Jean-Claude van Damme to be their spokesperson, but he had to turn them down, because he said their commercials had no substance.

Elle

Beam Me Up, Scotty

Hello World,

Well, here we are, way past the middle of August, and hurtling headlong toward September at such a dizzying pace that it would make anyone of the "back-to-school" generation pale with apprehension at its approach. In many ways, it seems like I just got back from vacation, and you really have to wonder where the time goes, that's for sure. For the boys of summer, the pennant races are starting to heat up in earnest, while for the teams that are already out of contention, I'm sure it seems like the season can't end soon enough. In the NFL, the training camps are underway, and they've even started playing pre-season games, which can only be viewed with relief by desperate legions of football-deprived fans around the world. Even the NBA and NHL are making off-season deals to shore up their rosters, because the start of their seasons will be here before we know it, and that's not just a lot of Gatorade, believe me.

One of my coworkers has been out on Disability, and as much as I would love to share with you all the gory details, I'm afraid that HIPAA regulations would make that impossible, so I could tell you, as the saying goes, but then I'd have to kill you. In any case, after about a week or so, it occurred to me that no one was checking on the spider plant in the empty office, and making sure it was getting all the sun and water that it needed in its owner's absence. So I let myself in to check on it and open the blinds, and I gave it some water while I was at it. Then it dawned on me that when my coworker is in his office, he listens to WFAN sports radio all day long, and so I couldn't help but think that the poor plant was not only starved for nutrients and company, but also news from the wide world of sports that had been suddenly ripped from its everyday existence. So now I feel that I should go in there each day and give it the sports updates in person, so it doesn't feel so completely cut off from the rest of society during this unforeseen period of temporary job abandonment. I can't say for sure that it makes any difference to the plant, although it did seem to perk up when I told it about Terrell Owens signing with the Cincinnati Bengals, so I suppose that we can't ignore the possibility that the plant is in a fantasy football league. In fact, it would go a long way toward explaining why there always seems to be a Daily News next to our bookkeeper's philodendron.

In other sports news, the local newspaper ran a big story about the Little League Senior Softball World Series, and included a picture of one of the players with this caption:

[[ Haverstraw pitcher Vittoria Adams beems with confidence
on the mound and is always smiling off of it ... ]]

Of course, it's all too easy to decry the lack of standards nowadays, and heaven knows it's true, not to mention, the deplorable incompetence and/or lack of any real editorial oversight in the current print media, and that goes across the board with no exceptions. But frankly, in a case like this, I have to wonder that the captioning program doesn't have a spell-check feature to prevent these sorts of routine errors, after all, it's not like they used another actual word like "beans" instead of "beams," which the spell checker would not be able to detect on its own. Since "beems" isn't even a word, at least on this planet that I know of, it should have been a simple thing to catch and correct, way before it hit the newsstands, and made all of us alert readers and purists wonder what they were smoking that day at the caption desk. Of course, they might be in the fantasy caption league, and this might have been their bye week.

I was going to work as usual last week, and stopped at a traffic light, letting my mind wander as it so often does and paying attention to nothing in particular. Suddenly coming around the corner from the other street was the most adorable thing, it was a shocking pink stretch Mini Cooper limousine, probably for a wedding or some other special occasion, and it turned right in front of me. It was so cute you couldn't stand it, and I had to laugh at the idea of taking a little tiny car and stretching it out to make a limo out of it. The fact that it was Barbie pink made it even more precious, and I can certainly see where it would be a perfect conveyance for any little princess and her court on their way to romance and adventure. On the other hand, if I was trying to deflect attention of the law enforcement community away from a Mafia kingpin's funeral, I'm thinking this would also be about the best way to do that. I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as the fantasy funeral league, but if they start one, I've got dibs on the pink stretch Mini Cooper limousine.

Speaking of small and funny things, last month the newspaper ran a front page story about the Jacob Burns Film Center's "Minds in Motion" project, where 4th-grade students from the PEARLS Hawthorne Elementary School in Yonkers created their own animated short films. The 39 one-minute films had their premieres at the organization's auditorium in Pleasantville, for which they rolled out the red carpet for the students and their families, and in fact, the paper had a picture of one of the youngsters arriving in a party dress and large sunglasses, just like any celebrity. This was my favorite part:

=============================
The red carpet was flanked by
parental paparazzi who were out in
force, some clutching programs, all
beaming at their kids' achievements.
When one girl took her stroll, a dad
yelled, "Who are you wearing?"
=============================

I admit that I am easily amused, but I thought that was hilarious, and especially witty for the suburban father of a 4th grader, no less. I don't see any way to improve upon that, and I'm thinking if my fantasy film team needs a joke writer, I'm going to keep that guy in mind.

While we're on the subject of coming up with good ideas, I was outside feeding the birds last weekend when who should show up, and certainly no surprise to anyone, but the neighbor's cat Cinna-mooch, who apparently was not whisked off to stardom in Hollywood after insinuating herself into the commercial shoot across the street. She saw that I had a bag in my hand, and naturally supposing it to be something for her to eat, she jumped up to investigate. I told her that it was bird seed, and nothing that she would be interested in, and suddenly I could see all the little wheels turning around in her mind, and everyone knows that my eyesight is not all that sharp. She was thinking that if she ate bird seed, she would smell like a bird feeder, and the birds would walk right into her mouth, instead of having to chase them all through the bushes like she usually does. I said she was welcome to nibble on the furry varmints that chewed holes in my camping supplies instead, but she pointed out with irrefutable logic that they would taste like nylon tents and orange plastic flip-flops, thanks not. I told her that if I wanted a joke writer, I'd call the father of the 4th grader in Yonkers. She said she would love to stay and debate the point with me, but she and the spider plant had to get together and go over their rosters for the fantasy football league, and the philodendron had already beaten them to Terrell Owens.

Elle

That Old Black Magic

Hello World,

Well, we've all learned already that any month that starts on a Sunday is going to have a Friday the 13th in it, and August no different, so that's just about where we find ourselves, more or less and like it or not. For the superstitious among us, this would be a good time for being especially vigilant, and keep away from ladders and broken mirrors and the like. This is actually a good year for anyone with a fear of Friday the 13th, since August is the only month that has one during the entire year, so if you already made it through Friday, you can face the rest of 2010 with impunity, or whatever is your "Dutch courage" of choice. And it's also a good thing that "Friday the 12th" doesn't bother anybody, because there are three of them this year, due to the three months that start on a Monday. Speaking of Monday, anyone who was up early on Monday would have experienced a unique moment in time, at 05:06:07 08/09/10, and we certainly won't be seeing that again for quite a while, that's for sure. Of course, the dinosaurs and I have seen them come and go, heaven knows, but back in the good old days of the primordial ooze and unformed land masses, our categories were more like "Twig:Rock:Bone Fire/Cave/Sun" so it really wasn't the same in a lot of ways. Lucky thing the ancient aliens came along when they did and built Stonehenge so the Druids could tell what time it was, or who knows what might have happened, and we wouldn't know where we were at. By now, we'd still be telling time with hourglasses, and just imagine what all that sand would do to our Blackberry's and laptops.

Of course, it's finally August, so it's not too early for giant newspaper ads selling tickets for the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, because heaven forbid that people would wait until the last minute - for instance, October - for a holiday that is still four months in the future. Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm not one to rain on anybody's parade, but I do think that while kids are still away at camp, and haven't even gone back to school yet, throwing the Christmas Rockettes in our faces is just a little too much to take. Meanwhile at CVS, they've apparently decided that we've already lost interest in the whole concept of Back-to-School, so they've dragged out their Halloween displays in an effort to tempt our hard-earned cash out of our beleaguered wallets. This is the time of year - when it's still 90 degrees in these parts, and millions of people are still on vacation - that I like to go to the department stores and try to buy a swimsuit or sandals, while the racks are bursting with winter coats, wool pants, velour dresses and flannel nightgowns, and the sales clerks are wearing turtleneck sweaters and suede boots. Talk about a time warp, this is like Stonehenge on steroids.

While we're on the subject of Halloween, the strangest thing has happened, or rather, it was the strangest time for the strangest thing to happen. We all miss our beloved MoJo, our exquisite black princess who died suddenly when I was on vacation. She only lasted eight months after the chief of our Invisible Cats, Captain Midnight, also shuffled off this mortal coil, and we went from having two solid black cats, to suddenly having none at all. We had picked them both up as strays around our property, but until then, we had never seen black cats in this area, and never saw any after we took them in either. It seemed the neighborhood was full of mostly gray or orange cats, and we took in a string of them - Tootsie, Little Spot, PapaCat, FiddleSticks, Smudge, GingerSnap, Zanzibar - while the only black ones - TomTom and Pinto - were instead black and white, not solid black. But four days after I came back from vacation, I was standing by the front steps, and suddenly out of the back yard came a solid black cat who just walked right into the front yard and right up to me. I was astonished. It was like our dear little princess was sending us a messenger from the great beyond, and this nice friendly black cat just materialized right before my eyes, where none had been before. We gave the visitor some food, and took pictures, mostly to convince ourselves that we weren't hallucinating this apparition in our grief. It seemed like a large and older cat, so we assumed it belonged to someone, but the timing of it was what really caught our attention. We didn't see it after that, but when I related this story to a coworker a few days later, he said, "Oh yeah, we just had a little black kitten show up in our yard this week too." At that point, I was dumbfounded and wondered what tricks The Fates were playing on us, taking away our MoJo and then dangling these inky black strangers in front of us. It was at exactly this same time that I received an email from a relative (thanks, Arlene!) with a picture of yet another solid black cat who, incredibly, had just wandered into her neighbor's yard and was looking for a home. I admit that I am not now, nor have I ever been superstitious, but having these three black cats all turn up within a week of losing our precious black pearl, well, it certainly seems just way too coincidental for my tastes.

On the subject of scary things, we've been through this before, so we were less than delirious with joy when we got a notice stuck in our door that there would be a commercial filming in our neighborhood during the week. Our whole neighborhood is two nesting semi-circles, and as a result there's only two ways in and out of the entire place, so any disruption to the normal flow of activity can easily turn into a nightmare of epic proportions, that would make "The Nightmare on Elm Street" look like Sesame Street instead. Bill left for work before they got started, but I was still here when the first trucks and buses pulled up from Sweet Genius, the photo production company (please feel free to visit their website at www.sweetgenius.net and see for yourself) and began unloading the dozens of people and tons of equipment that would go into taking the shoot from the glimmer of an idea, into the reality that we would someday see on our very own TV sets. It turned out to be for some product that I had never heard of called Vimovo, which seems to be some new medication that is being introduced for the treatment of arthritis. It was invented by our friends at the pharmaceutical giant Astra Zeneca, and you're also welcome to go visit their website at www.vimovo.com to find out more about it. As for myself, I got out while the getting was good, and also went to work, on the theory that a bad day at work was still better than being at home while "The Nightmare on Elm Street" was shooting across the street, which for me, is in the "been there, done that" category that I don't need to revisit, and thank you so very much not. But I'm afraid the joke was on them this time, because as everyone else fled the neighborhood to avoid the hullabaloo, there remained one intrepid soul who has never been afraid of anything in her life, and wasn't about to start now. Yes, it was the neighbor's cat, whose name is Cinnamon, but we call her Cinna-mooch because she would eat us out of house and home if we would let her, not to mention, all of the other neighbors who succumb to her entreaties for hand-outs when we're not there. (We believe that her ostensible "owners" are in the Federal Witness Protection Program, and have been given a cat as part of their cover, because they seem to have no more understanding of cats, than someone who had been given a unicycle as a gift would know how to ride one.) Cinnamon is not a bit shy when it comes to hunting down a meal ticket, so she trotted right into the thick of the action as the shoot was getting underway, and if she didn't wind up getting a star part in the commercial itself, I'd be willing to bet that there wasn't a donut, candy bar, box lunch, creamer, cookie, trail mix or Tic-Tac left standing when it was all over. I was going to write myself a note to be on the lookout for the Vimovo commercial when it finally comes out, but my hourglass leaked and got sand all over my Blackberry, and now all it does is blink "Twig:Rock:Bone Fire/Cave/Sun" all day long. By golly, where are those ancient aliens when you need them?

Elle

Hall of Fame

Hello World,

Happy August! We have now officially entered into that season of lore and legend known as "The Dog Days of August," although if it's going to be worse than what we've already been through in July, those would have to be some pretty enormous dogs at this point, I can tell you that. It got so bad the last couple of weeks that I really didn't feel like doing anything when I came back from vacation, and a lot of things suffered that normally would have been more up-to-date. But I did make prodigious progress in my camping laundry, which is always a daunting task, and even re-packed it back with my camping gear, so it would be ready for the next excursion, and I don't mind saying, at a moment's notice. Although I wouldn't dare put my camping stuff back up in the attic where the furry varmints could chew more holes in it, so right now it's in the temporary camping storage in the corner of the living room, where I will admit that it's somewhat unsightly, but by golly, it's certainly close at hand if I need to grab a beach towel or bungee cord in a big fat hurry. Frankly, I'm afraid to go in the attic and see what the varmints are chewing on now that my camping supplies are safely out of their reach, although I will say that if they develop a taste for vinyl, I'm afraid that my collection of polka records could be in big trouble.

I left the rain behind me on my vacation, and came home to the same scorching temperatures and stifling humidity as when I left. In fact, it turns out that this just narrowly missed being the hottest July on record in this area, by mere fractions, since they started keeping weather statistics over 150 years ago. I understand that they're going to put an asterisk in the record books to acknowledge the fact that it would have easily been the hottest July ever, except for the imperative that it had to rain on me the entire week when I was on vacation, which made the competition unequal and could not be considered a level playing field among all of the other contenders. After all, anyone could see that it was entitled to break the record - it certainly deserved it based on the rest of the month - and my rainy vacation should not have been the booby-trap that spoiled an award-winning month, like an over-eager fan who reaches onto the field and interferes with a ball in play. I'm sure we can count on the Commissioner's office to make July 2010 the new Roger Maris, and for which I have only one thing to say: "You're welcome."

Speaking of temperatures, ya gotta love this entry from Bill's online calendar of quotes:

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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ON WHEN IT HITS 1000, THAT'S REAL A/C WEATHER
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Temperature tomorrow is expected to reach triple digits or higher."

TV weatherperson in Fresno, California, during a heat wave (thanks to Denton Sifford)
===================================

I think we can all agree that by the time it gets to be over 999 degrees, it would put our usual "dog days" to shame, and the comparisons to the "fire and brimstone days" would be a little too close for comfort.

In other local news, the Life & Style section of our newspaper recently ran a front-page story about fresh produce, with the giant headline: BLUEBERRY HEAVEN, while the sub-head below that promised:

=================
Hugh health benefits
mix with great taste
=================

I don't know about Hugh, but I would like to think that it wouldn't be beyond the competency of the newspaper editors to know the difference between "hugh" and "huge," and use the right one, at least on the front page. Of course, there are no standards anymore, heaven knows, and far be it from me to cast aspersions on the unjustly maligned Hugh and his health benefits, but I always say there's a time and a place for everything, and this was no time or place for Hugh, and that's not just a lot of applesauce, believe me.

Meanwhile at work, I was in the main building last week picking up time cards, and noticed that the entire hallway in front of Administration had been stripped bare, from the Lobby all the way to the Laboratory. There was not a baseboard, plaque, picture, speaker, wall sconce, fire extinguisher, room number, sign or evacuation plan to be seen, from one end of the hallway to the other, and side to side. It had been painted that stark primer white, giving it a sort of eerie shimmering glow that made it hard to distinguish features, or establish any sense of depth perception. In fact, I believe they were even replacing the floor, making it even more bland and disorienting, after literally decades of looking pretty much the same. Now, I'm figuring that enough people must have complained about the hospital spending all this time and money to renovate a perfectly good hallway, while at the same time talking about layoffs and union give-backs, because our Public Relations department hurried out a message to everyone that the renovation project was being entirely funded by a federal grant for the specific purpose of upgrading this particular hallway, and the hospital wasn't spending their own money at all, much less renovating this hallway on the backs of their hard-working employees. So ladies and gentlemen of this great country, to all of you citizens in the U.S. of A., this is what we call "Your Tax Dollars At Work," and I'd just like to take this opportunity to say: "Thank you." Or rather, perhaps we should thank Hugh, since this hallway is in a hospital, so it does indeed constitute a health benefit. I'll have blueberries with mine, thank you very much.

Elle