This has been my week for losing things. I can see losing a set of keys. I can see losing a spare pair of glasses. But how could I have lost a 26-inch suitcase?
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During last night's downpour, the air conditioner in my bedroom was apparently placed in such a way that the raindrops created a loud PING every few seconds. After an hour of that in the middle of the night, I fully understood the efficacy of Chinese water torture.
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If President Obama had said the Cambridge, Mass., police acted rashly instead of saying they acted stupidly, I don't think such a hullabaloo would have ensued. And the president is usually so careful in choosing his words.
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I'm off to Prince Edward Island for a two-week stay, after spending a night in Bangor, Maine, at the local casino/hotel. Here's hoping I have money left to spend on the island. Chances are I won't be doing much posting for a couple of weeks, so enjoy the summer and maybe find something that's actually worth reading..
“It happens to lots of leading men as they fade into supporting roles,” writes Larry Tye in a new biography of Satchel Paige. “Loneliness sets in, along with sadness. There is more time to remember all you have achieved and to wonder why others have forgotten.” Kind of makes me glad I was never a leading man.
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I cannot believe that some of the most valuable video in history -- the moon-landing tape -- was accidentally erased by NASA. No wonder there are conspiracy theorists.
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I finally saw the film version of "Mamma Mia!", then wondered why.
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A new book says Jacqueline Kennedy had a romantic relationship with Bobby Kennedy. RFK has also been linked to Marilyn Monroe. Gee, when did he find the time to be ruthless?
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I may be the only person in the world whose favorite Paul Simon song is "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War." But that's because the song mentions the "deep forbidden music" of the Penguins, the Orioles, the Moonglows and the Five Satins. Oh, for the days of doo-wop.
For decades, he lived and sang in the shadow of his famous father. While Frank Sinatra took the bows in packed stadiums around the world, Frank Sinatra Jr. sang for sometimes sparse crowds in out-of-the way, no-name lounges. It wasn't that he didn't have a great voice -- he did and does -- but inevitably comparisons were made with a singer who defied comparison. And it didn't help that, early in his career, Frank Jr.'s very real kidnapping was tagged a hoax by the lawyer for the guilty party. But after his father died, the younger Sinatra's fortunes improved. That was evident in an appearance at Rhode Island's Twin River Casino last Saturday when he packed a very big hall and won a well-deserved standing ovation. Unlike when his father was alive, Frank Jr. nowadays mainly sings numbers associated with Ol' Blue Eyes in a voice that is as close to his dad's as anyone is going to get. In a sense, that is too bad because the non-Sinatra songs he began the concert with were excellent, yet the audience response was tempered. The people, of course, comes for the songs and the memories of the greatest entertainer of the 20th century and that is why the place was jammed. As Frank Jr. replied when someone asked if he'd ever played in Rhode Island before, when he was young and seeking his own path, "I played in places you don't even know existed."
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When I was driving to the concert, my text-to-speech GPS told me to "take the Lincoln Ree exit." I puzzled over that until I realized that Gina the GPS was translating "RI" as "Ree." She must not be from these parts.
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Finally getting a sunny day and spending it at the zoo with my grandson -- it doesn't get a whole lot better than that.
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Speaking of the zoo, the people who run it recently made a bogus claim that budget cuts would lead to closing the zoo and euthanizing animals. That reminded me of that wonderful National Lampoon magazine cover picturing a dog with a gun to his head. The accompanying words were, "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog."
I was a fifth grader walking home from school when suddenly an older boy grabbed my cap and began flipping it in the air, taunting me all the while. "Hey," said his companion, "don't bother the kid. Let's give him back his hat." He took the cap from his friend and held it in front of me. But when I reached out to get it, he slammed his other hand into my stomach, making me double over. The twosome, it turned out, was a well-practiced tag team of bullies, who had pulled that cruel trick perhaps dozens of times. After that incident, it took a while before I was again able to trust my fellow man, or at least my fellow boy.
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When we grow up and have jobs and relationships, all but the fortunate few experience a lot more pain than the above-mentioned punch in the solar plexus. The inflicter of that pain doesn't even have to make a fist and, in fact, may be smiling as he or she delivers the figurative wallop. When that happens, think of the lyrics of "The Mary Ellen Carter," a song that on the surface is about saving a sunken boat:
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling b**tards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
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Now that Robert McNamara is dead, it will be extremely hard to find an American male with his hair parted in the middle.
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"Hawaii Five-0" had the greatest TV theme music ever.
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Aretha Franklin has grown quite big, but her voice remains even bigger.
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Grover has always been my favorite "Sesame Street" character. In fact, I do a pretty fair imitation of him.
In my memory at least, the Independence Days of my late childhood were always sunny and hot and wonderful. Wonderful because many of them were spent at my aunt and uncle's big, old house in Connecticut, where fireworks were still legal. After a seemingly endless ride in those pre-superhighway days, we would arrive in Somers, a town so small that every resident's birthday was printed on the calendar. My brother and I would quickly renew acquaintances with our cousin, Jackie Brennan, who was my age, and off we would go to the corner store, named Flossie's. We would spend our life savings on firecrackers and for the rest of the day devise daring, creative and, in retrospect, dangerous ways to set them off -- under bottles and on the hoods of passing cars, for example. Sometimes we would ignite a whole package, and, as the day waned, an entire brick. At night, the grownups would put on a show with fountains and rockets, a show that in many ways was more marvelous than the professional, big-buck spectacles of today. Then came the Fourth when we arrived to find that fireworks had been declared illegal, a move that undoubtedly prevented injuries and saved lives, maybe even our own. But in all the years that followed, I have never had an Independence Day that could hold a roman candle to the firecracker-flinging Fourths of my late childhood.
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Yesterday my wife took me to see the movie "My Sister's Keeper." Watching children suffer is not my idea of a good time. If it hadn't been pouring, I would have walked the quarter-mile to BJ's warehouse and spent the remainder of the movie time roaming the aisles.
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I can't remember who wrote it, but my favorite description of the Rat Pack (Sinatra, Martin, Davis and Bishop) labels them "baggy-eyed, boozed-up, middle-aged men trying to make it New Year's Eve forever."
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Everyone has a cellphone. My 5-year-old grandson has a cellphone.
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When I was dating my wife, one day I said, "Linda, if I were a Carpenter and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway, would you have my baby?" She married me anyway.
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For someone who can't carry a tune and whose singing voice sounds like the squawk of an angry penguin, I spend a lot of time thinking about songs and singers.
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In days of old, I would hve several drinks and go wild. Now I have one drink and go beddy-bye.
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A couple years back, I nodded off during the movie version of "The Da Vinci Code," so it was only fitting that the other day I nodded off during the sequel, "Angels & Demons."
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My favorite Michael Jackson song is the poignant "She's Out of My Life." And you can't even moonwalk to it.
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Homer Simpson is my role model.
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I love the Heineken TV ad featuring a bunch of drunks singing in a taxi.
