HIT THE LIGHTS FAT BOY!

I can tell that she's itching to do it. She watched as the neighbors hopped aboard the "let's see if they can see this from the space station" parade of lights. She has already dragged me on an "exploratory" expedition to Lowes and Home Depot just to "see" what's out there in Christmas lights land.

This year we are home for Christmas. Our youngest daughter, Katie, and her husband are available and we haven't spent the holidays with them or close to home for a few years; so that is good. The only problem, at least for me, is that means there is no acceptable excuse for not putting up a tree and doing that decorating thing. I didn't even like doing it as a kid and left all of that mess to Linda and the girls when they were available. Wrapping presents is also a pain. (You can always spot gifts I have prepared by simply checking for duct tape secured paper bags under the tree.)

We will spend this Thanksgiving with the family of my old radio partner, Cynthia, and her wackjob husband Bill and I'm sure it will be a great time. The chance to corrupt their grand-children inspires me to new heights of creative weirdness. (Can't wait to get to work on some of my own.)

But.... I know tomorrow brings the start of the Christmas decorating madness. The neighbors will fire up their professionally installed (somehow NOT fair) mega watt illumination and the gauntlet will have been thrown down. Christmas crap fest here we come!

I'm thinking perhaps an Elvis theme this year?

How about the Simpsons?

Live From Detroit...The 3 Stooges!

There they were, live and in high def, still not getting it.

The presidents of the Big 3 automakers and their union goon were getting a verbal high colonic from, appropriately, Barney "There's something in my mouth so I talk funny" Frank, and several other camera hogging political nitwits.

It really wasn't fair because all defendants were jet lagged from the grueling individual private corporate flights that had transported them from Motown to Halloween-by-the-Potomac. I loved it when a "show of hands" was asked regarding pooling their travel arrangements or...God forbid, the possibility of traveling First Class or (GASP!) Coach on a domestic commercial airline.

(For the record: No hands went up.)

The three stooges and their union Shemp were in town to beg for a "bailout" of their sorry collective asses. It seems, we're told, that the whole damn country will fall apart if they are not allowed to continue making crappy cars that are not only uninspired and ugly, but expensive too.

It was especially gratifying to see Mr. Nardelli of Chrysler trying to explain why he wasn't good enough to get the big job at GE when Jack Welch retired and how he had single-handily nearly taken down Home Depot when he had the gig, extorting from them somewhere around $200 million just to GO AWAY. Oh wait...he didn't address that issue at all.

There was also Mr. Wagoner of GM explaining his company's need of a fleet of TEN corporate jets to keep his VIPs mobile and Ford's Alan Mullally allowing that he was "okay" with his $14 million dollar annual salary. Right.

Here is my take...

Each of these out of touch incompetent morons needs to get into one of their Detroit clown cars and head back to Michigan. Sorry, NO SALE! You guys deserve a firing squad; not a handout.

It's time to turn the page to a new chapter.

You know...ELEVEN.

Up Yours Microsoft!

Not only has their stock sucked massively for the past several years, but now Microsoft has managed to really piss me off with the most useless software I have ever used. Microsoft Vista is a nightmare!

I recently decided to chuck my Sony laptop which had served me well with Microsoft XP for the past several years. The siren call of a new toy packing lots more memory and the "New and Improved" Vista program reeled me in like a fat wall-eyed pike. What a mistake!

I realize that I'm not telling many of you anything that you are not already painfully aware of, but I remain truly stunned by just how much doesn't work on Vista. The failure to boot up with any degree of predictability should have been my first clue. No wonder the guys and gals in Redmond are in a big hurry to replace this turkey!

I am writing this on my faithful old Sony with XP because some idiotic "cookie thingy", which is supposed to make my blogging experience better, doesn't allow me to sign-in on my own damn blog page!

I HATE Vista; I hate Microsoft but I love my old computer with its dependable XP.
Screw you Bill Gates and your nerd minions! I'm taking my now beloved Sony, ( featuring XP), out for dinner and dancing.

Don't wait up for us.

WAIT? You've gotta be kidding me!

So I'm reading about this big ass study by some clown at Columbia University, I think his name is Walter Mischel, which deals with how our brains manage delayed gratification...

What? Where was I? I got distracted.
I have the attention span of a gnat. I was jonesing for some of that Halloween candy we withheld from the neighborhood hooligans. (Once again I was successful in my annual con job on Linda regarding the amount of sweets we would need to protect ourselves from the local urchins.) Looks like there's enough chocolate goodness in the house to keep me happy until just before Christmas.


My only 0versight appears to be forgetting to load up on candy corn. That stuff is super hard to come by during your post Halloween holiday shopping excursions. (Something to do with ethanol production is my guess.)


Anyway...this study of delayed gratification employs a simple test. This test, according to the Boston Globe, has surprising power to predict a child's future. It works like this: A 4 year-old is left sitting at a table with a marshmallow or other treat and is given the challenge of either eating the marshmallow right away or waiting for a grown-up to come back into the room at which time he or she will be rewarded with two marshmallows.

Some kids wait less than a minute and others last as long as twenty minutes. The longer the child can hold back, the better the outlook in later life for everything from SAT scores to social skills and academic achievement. Neuroscientists say it's all pre-wired in our brains.

This goes a long way toward explaining why I spent nearly forty years tucked away in very small sound proof rooms playing phonograph records and talking to people I couldn't see. I was, alas, a ONE marshmallow kid.

Sorry....What was I going on about?

Hey, did you hear that Obama won?

That is so cool! I have nothing to worry about anymore. My IRA will be whole again, gasoline is going to be free AND my house will be PAID IN FULL.

I'm a reasonable guy. I'll give him until March, my birth month, to make this all happen. People I know have assured me that he's THE MAN!


In the meantime...pass me the marshmallows.

I don't see any grown-ups around.

Change that will KILL you...

Naw...I'm not going off on a political rant. I'm really tired of all that bullshit and will be forever grateful when Tuesday has come and gone. Although, if you are of a mind to vote for Change because you think it might make a difference in your life, please know that the only change "The One" intends to leave you is a change of underwear. (If you're lucky) You see, I've been around long enough to know when somebody is peeing on my shoes and telling me it's raining.
Take that to the bank, if you still have one.

NO, what is pressing on my gourd today is life in general. Can you tell that I've just finished checking the obituaries? (It's always a good day when I'm not in there.)

As I scan the names and faces of the most recent planet departees, I find myself grading the duration of their respective "runs". I'll see a guy who pegged-out in his late seventies and think, "that seems like a good run" or, a woman who's odometer turned eighty-something and decide that "she can't complain". By the same token I lament the passing of folks who seem to have been given the bum's rush off the planet. There's something not right about receiving the ultimate short-change. You know...getting screwed!

What I have decided lately is that there is a situation that is actually worse than an early death. WAY worse. Sticking around passed your expiration date of seventy or eighty has got to be a special kind of hell. Why? It's simple, ...CHANGE. Change is the one thing that gets harder and harder to accept as the years roll by. It quite simply pisses us off. Seventy-five years is about all the change a man can handle and women, being way more tolerant, are able to put up with an additional five or ten more years of people "messing with stuff".

Think about it. When was the last time you knew who Don Pardo was talking about when he introduced the host of Saturday Night Live? Or, could even understand the name of this week's musical guest. Hell, Don's 90 now and I'm sure he doesn't know if he's wearing pants let alone who or what he's talking about. (Though I'm sure he's still cashing his checks.)

Face it. When was the last time you stayed up late enough to watch Saturday Night Live? I TIVO the damn thing and watch it at a more reasonable hour, but am beginning to wonder why I bother. It's just not that funny anymore. It has changed.

CHANGE, that's what kills us. A person can only accept so much of it and that is IT. "Get me out of here" syndrome begins to overtake us as the years roll by and the stupidity of the generations behind us becomes an unbelievably annoying burden.

Excuse me just a moment....

Hey, YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!!

Have you gotten a load of the tattoos the whippersnappers are sporting?

When I was a kid, the only time you saw people with tattoos was when either a circus or carnival was in town. Now, in our age of enlightenment, body mutilation has become an accepted form of self expression. I'm guessing that next those snappy homemade prison tats will become all the rage as the younger demographic opts for more "realism" in their exterior decoration. These are, after all, the same clowns that popularized the "bed head" hair style.
According to the Pew Research Center, 36% of all 18-to-25 year-olds now have tattoos. Makes a parent proud doesn't it?

I just want to stick around long enough to see how all these tattooed hunks and honeys deal with their body art when sagging skin and dunes of cellulite turn some of those bitchin' tats into something resembling the Blue Ribbon eggplant at the Iowa State Fair.
OH...it'll happen.

You see, I have been very carefully buying stock in several companies that produce the lasers needed by plastic surgeons for the removal of unwanted tattoos. I'll be RICH! I'll be 90, but I'll be RICH!

Better put in my request for an additional ten years. There must be hundreds of expensive cigars and cases of whiskey with my name on them that will need taking care of.

Now, that's Change I can Believe In.

Let Me Talk to Ma Bell...Not "Nancy" from Mumbai

My wife smiles as she watches me try to keep it together. I am about an hour into a conversation regarding my e-mail account with the ever so helpful "Nancy" from- "Oh sir, please do not be asking me where I am located as I am not allowed to say.". She is polite to a fault, but my blood pressure is escalating rapidly as I struggle to understand the majority of what she is saying.

"Please sir, I am thanking you for your patience. I will have an answer for you in a moment. Please hold." If only she could see my face and hear the not so flattering suggestions I am making under my breath. WHY does it have to be so HARD????? We've had all this computer crap and high speed Internet access for years now and yet it seems like we're all doomed to the same type of problems that plagued early automobiles. It is not yet idiot proof!

What has prompted this, my second call, to the folks who used to be referred to as "Ma Bell"and were formerly located in a country where people actually talked like they were from "around here" is an e-mail that I have been finding in my in box for the past several days.

"We have noticed that you are accessing email using non-secure settings in your email software....blah blah blah"
It then wraps up by saying: "Please make the necessary changes immediately. Remember, you need to make these changes if you want to continue to send/receive email using a mail client."

"Nancy" is the second person I have spoken with in the last two days regarding this email. "Ben" had assured me that everything was taken care of and that I was "not to worry" less than 24 hours ago, yet I have just received another warning. All I am trying to determine is just what the hell they are talking about and how I can fix it. That's all! I have been using this email account for several years and wonder what has changed and what I need do to insure continued email service. Simple.

Perhaps it's all the excitement of their Chandrayaan-I moon shot from the Satish Dhawan Space Center that happened this week. (Oops, I may have said too much.) But, after a grand total of over three hours on the phone with "Nancy" and "Ben", neither they nor I have a clue regarding the purpose of my email notice about the security of my account. They both have assured me that I won't be getting that notice again and that I should not worry about having my email cut off.

Wait. Let me check.....

Yep, there it is again. Good work "Nancy" and "Ben"!
I guess I'll just continue to delete these notices until Ma Bell gets her head out of her ass or until...HELL BLOWS UP!

If you need me, I'll be in the garage...sitting in my car.
My car understands me.

Well, at least until it tries to send me an email.

In Supermarket Parking Lots...They were #1

The 1950's were tough for my dad. He was a TV holdout.
We were absolutely the LAST family in our neighborhood to get an idiot box.

"It'll ruin everybody!" "Kids won't play outside; won't get their homework done." They'll all be morons!" (As usual, you could take his prescience to the bank.)

Until he succumbed to the lure of televised baseball and the Friday Night Fights, (How are YOU fixed for blades by the way?), I had to practically live next door at the Chamberlain's house. They HAD TV and six kids...their very own peanut gallery. And, there I was every weekday afternoon huddled with the Chamberlains as we gazed at the TV test pattern waiting for the magic hour of 5 o'clock when we would hear the magic begin.

"HEY KIDS, WHAT TIME IS IT?" It was, as we all responded: "HOWDY DOODY TIME!"

Howdy, Buffalo Bob, Dilly Dally, Mr. Bluster, Clarabelle, Chief Thunder Thud and the always HOT Princess Tinka Tonka were a national show out of New York that every kid in America thought was just about the best damn thing they had ever seen. It was the cat's nuts and it was just for us.

Local broadcasters, never shy about copying success especially when it would allow them to pocket a couple jillionty dollars, were quick to get on board the kid train.
Local kiddie shows sprang up in nearly every metropolitan area large enough to support a TV station. Playing to the tykes was a GOLD MINE! Overnight, guys,( it was mostly guys), who were perhaps weathermen or TV engineers donned cowboy, clown or space cadet get-ups to entertain and sell stuff to the ever so coddled baby boomers. It was a classic scenario of local broadcast ner'- do- wells becoming very LARGE celebrity fish in dinky show biz ponds.

While it lasted, it was sweet.

In southern Michigan, Detroit spawned a huge stable of kid show hosts. I thought they were just about the biggest stars EVER and so did the Chamberlains and the rest of my gutter-snipe pals.

There was Soupy Sales on Channel 7, WXYZ. Soupy went on to greater fame at all the ABC owned and operated stations and enjoyed a long career. (The kids missed most of the innuendo on Soupy's shows, but the adults didn't and that produced jumbo ratings.)

There was also Johnny Ginger, Wixey, and Milky the Clown who didn't do much for me.




Milky and his loser friends





One of the best Detroit area kid show hosts was a guy named Ted Lloyd. Thanks to the Internet I just recently learned his name. (Hey, what's 50 or 60 years when it comes to finding out important information?) To me his name will always be Sagebrush Shorty.

"Here he comes ridin' into town again
It's Sagebrush...Sagebrush Shorty.
Here's Shorty NOW!"

Every time I heard that jingle I knew it was going to be a good time with Shorty. He had his little wooden pal, Bronco Billy Buttons, and a whole mess of really cool cartoons. It was kid heaven. I loved that show.


Thanks again to the Internet, I learned that Shorty left Detroit in 1965 and headed for L.A. where he mostly paid the bills by teaching ventriloquism until his death in 1999.
It made me sad to think that old Shorty was living just up the road from me in Southern California for all of those years and I never even knew it.

Sometime in the late 60's or early 70's the government got involved in children's television programing producing shows like Sesame Street and the Electric Company. They were, and I guess still are, good shows that kids enjoy. Why our tax dollars are helping to provide this entertainment is lost on me. It's just another example of the federal government getting into a business they don't understand...like maybe... banking. Oops.

With the assent of children's programming on public television, just as the blacksmiths and telegraph operators of the old West, the local commercial kiddie show hosts began to disappear. Today, like investment bankers, they are all gone.

Hey gang, how about a Popeye cartoon for old time sake??

Now, where's that cartoon machine?

Do we need a cartoon machine bailout?