Never Forget

"A veteran is someone who, at one point, wrote a check made payable to The United States of America for an amount up to and including their life."

I've searched and have yet to find the source of that quote, but it's beautiful. During this long Memorial Day weekend let's all spend some time thanking the unselfish men and women who's checks were cashed so that we might continue to live in freedom and prosperity.  They earned what we so often take for granted in these United States of America.  May their sacrifice never be forgotten.

Nathan's Turns 100...and other stuff

I see that Nathan's Famous franks just turned 100.  Until you've had one at their New York Coney Island stand, you haven't lived the American dream.  These days you can buy Nathan's at most supermarkets but the dogs eaten after watching the freak show at the Coney carnival are the best.   The guy who eats glass and the Elastic Lady

Coney Island Freak Show cast

 are a great opening act for a Nathan's redhot loaded with mustard. The olfactory lobe assault of the Big Apple summer miasma of slightly ripe garbage, pizza and pee is guaranteed transport to hot dog heaven.

Not that I mean to inflict harshness on Nathan's centennial celebration, but I do have a question for their management:  What the hell have you done with the tube steaks proffered in "natural casings"??  I can't find those bad boys anywhere of late and they most certainly were the crown jewel of the franchise.  The snap as you bite into a hotdog with skin is far superior to the wimpy "skinless" wienie.  What gives?   Surely this can't be a nod to those millennial sissies who want nothing to do with resistance of any kind, including food they actually have to chew. Is there a "safe zone" for processed meats that I don't know about?   Trigger words?  I need answers!

Moving on to other annoyances:  It's official, I will no longer watch the evening news on any one of the three major TV networks.  These shows, once captained by real news hounds, have deteriorated into programs not unlike those godawful local PM Magazine atrocities of the 1980's that featured lost dogs, cute kids, weather, and lovable curmudgeons.  CBS, NBC and ABC are completely bereft of any real news at all.  Stripped clean, they make USA Today seem like the Congressional Record.  Unwatchable!

And, since we're on a media rant, have you noticed that the majority of the TV meatheads have now dropped all pretense of objectivity?  The embarrassment of these idiots being turned out by our nation's journalism schools is beyond tragic.  I guess it should be no surprise as they are all being "taught" by the losers who couldn't get hired for genuine newspaper, radio or TV jobs thirty years ago and are now chairing college communications departments.  These clowns have given us TV reporters who have, at both the local and network level, turned "guys" into an all purpose, non gender specific collective noun.  Nothing says mental midget quite like, "now back to YOU GUYS in the studio".  More often than not they are tossing back to at least one or two "guys" who wear dresses and use the ladies room.  (Oh, that's right, bathrooms are no longer gender specific.  Don't get me started.)

With the November election looming like taxes and/or tooth extraction and already inflicting plenty of unwanted pain,  check this out for network "objective reporting":  Norah O'Donnell of the CBS Morning (ha!) News recently sat down with Donald Trump's daughter to grill her about allegations that her father had made unwanted advances toward women.  This had been reported in a New York Times article and was fair game for any reporter until you consider that Elvis will turn up alive and well in a Florida retirement community before ANY reporter dares to put the same questions to  Chelsea Clinton.  The sad part of all this is that most journalists are too dumb to see that there is a problem.

Other problems that need to be handled:  basketball season is still WAY too long, baseball has made no progress toward speeding up the game, Obama remains in the White House and Survivor is still on television.   Get these things fixed and bring me a Nathan's dog in natural casing and maybe I'll calm down.

Or not.

Now, back to you GUYS in the studio.

Nirvana!

If You Haven't Read Him, You Should

Jim Harrison

In March Jim Harrison, a man of big appetites and even bigger talent, slipped out the side door of life while at his home in Patagonia, Arizona.  He was 78 and, lucky for us, left a magnificent collection of prose and poetry to wander through for generations.  The man could write.

He was a product of northern Michigan and his style, like the woods of the Upper Peninsula, is rough, hard scrabble and often reflective in the kind of "born there, die there" mentality of the people who inhabit that state.  Unlike Hemingway, he employed complex sentences and far more complex characters who almost always struggle with a weakness for both sex and alcohol, problems not unknown to Mr. Harrison himself.

In addition to poetry and fiction, Harrison also wrote extensively about food and drink for magazines like Esquire.  His book, The Raw and The Cooked, is a collection of tales recalling his Rabelaisian immoderation.  For example:  there was the summer he personally tested 38 varieties  of Cotes du Rhone which he referred to as a "small wine festival, just me, really."  And, my personal favorite, the story of the day he ate 144 oysters just to see if he could finish them.  (He could.)  Having once, in 1971,  consumed 132 of those delicious bi-valves while in New Orleans, I am now ashamed to have often bragged of the feat.  In my defense, I was at Felix's  Oyster Bar on Iberville Street and may have been under the influence of ardent spirits.

Harrison lived most recently near Livingston, Montana during the summer where he often spent afternoons blasting rattlesnakes in his yard while quaffing a beverage or three.  Winters found him in Arizona near the Mexican border where he also took aim at any critters that dared offend him.  His prose still mostly employed Michigan as a backdrop but he no longer maintained a home there.

In his time the man produced an impressive amount of fiction, including Legends of the Fall,  Dalva, Farmer, Wolf, True North and many others.  Most recently The Ancient Minstrel  , a book of fiction, and Dead Man's Float, a poetry collection were both published.  Both are great.  But, if you have never read the man, I would suggest his memoir, Off to the Side,  and The Raw and the Cooked, as an excellent introduction to his work.  Do yourself a favor and order one or both from Amazon.  For my money he is one of the finest writers America has ever produced.  A true character of True North.

You're In Charge Now, Millennials...FIX THIS!

"Shake and shake the catsup bottle, none will come and then a lot'll."--  Richard Armour

Oh the humanity!  The squeeze bottle disaster continues.

Humorist Richard Armour penned those words in the 1950's when we boomers were still spelling ketchup C A T S U P and pounding the crap out of the bottom of its glass bottle just to get a delicious blob or two splattered onto our hamburger.  It was slow work but we got the job done.  A knife or a splash of vinegar was enough to free the last of the precious "red lead" before we tossed the empty container into the trash.  There was none of this recycling nonsense to contend with in those days.  EVERYTHING we didn't eat, drink or smoke went into the garbage can and was spirited away to the landfill or--even better-- was burned in a big old barrel behind the garage.  (Personally, I was a big fan of the trash barrel method of dispatch as it provided we youngsters a chance to play with matches while we practiced flame broiling weenies and marshmallows over smoldering household detritus.

Recently I read that the Millennial generation has now surpassed we Boomers as the largest demographic segment of our American society.  The torch has been passed as those of us brought forth via the lust of parents made horny by World War II's forced separation,  to a generation sired by helicopter progenitors hell bent on making sure every one of their offspring brought home a trophy  for merely showing up.  Is it any wonder that this now jumbo generation is enamored of a seventy-four year-old pink-o pant load from Vermont who promises them free college, condoms, and a carefree existence?  It's time to kick start some Millennial ass...er ambition!

Granted, it was most certainly a Boomer who decided that the glass bottle ketchup delivery system had to go and that a plastic squeeze bottle was the answer to the container that needed spanking before it gave up it's tomato wine.   Flip-top cap, plastic bottle, PROBLEM SOLVED!  Right??
WRONG!

TRIGGER WARNING!  (Millennials require notification prior to hearing scary stuff.)

SQUEEZE BOTTLE CONDIMENT DISPENSERS ARE A DISASTER!  They don't freaking work! Instead of making it easy to extract the very last drop of gooey goodness from a ketchup, relish, mustard, or mayo container, we've made it harder.  Starting with the flip-top cap that NOBODY ever remembers to snap shut to the embarrassing gastro-intestinal sounds made possible by air, goopy content and squeezable plastic,  the whole delivery system is a catastrophe. It must be fixed!

We Boomers, now that Millennials have pushed us aside, are too busy doing retired stuff to help with this one.  The torch has been passed Millennial youngsters.  Run with it.  We need a fix pronto, or sometime next week if you can manage.  Your country, the ketchup, mustard, relish and mayo need you!  When you have something let us know.  We'll be on the golf course, riding our bikes, fishing or doing other important retired people stuff like cheating on our taxes.  Don't want to accept the challenge of making condiment consumption great again?  Move to Russia and take that commie, Bernie, with you.   Now, if you'll excuse me,  I'll be in the bathroom.   I believe I left the flip-top cap off my toothpaste, which, by the way, doesn't work worth a damn.

This is just WRONG!