Shakespearean Dragnet

Dragnet was a popular police procedural (I love alliteration) show from 1951-1958 and again from 1967-1970. Few people do not know the four beat lead in: dum-da-dem-dum. Most are likely familiar with the rapid fire delivery of lines by the actors too. 

At first glance the acting is almost comical. Does anyone really talk that way? Of course not. But the more I watch reruns the more I like the approach. Abrupt, but to the point. Once you get into the flow of it you take to the style.

I've heard it said that Shakespeare is much the same: you have to get into the rhythm of the writing. Although I've read little of the Bard, when I do I find it relatively easy going as soon as I'm one with the cadence.

This morning I find myself believing that the styles might mesh well in a new detective show. "Gadzooks! Yon felon escapes custody! Apprehend the dastardly miscreant forthwith, Yeoman Friday!

It's just a thought.

Golf Rap

Whenever I see the commercial I wonder what the point is supposed to be. Are they trying to make golf sound cool? Perhaps they mean to make it appear tough and, I suppose, streetwise, maybe? That is a rather lamentable common theme with sports anymore: we're tough and we want to make sure you know how tough we are. But golf?

What I'm talking about is a commercial for the upcoming Tournament Players Championship on March 9-12. It shows several great golf shots but with RUN DMC's (I'm supposed to capitalize their name, aren't I?) Tricky as the background music. It's, uh, incongruent.

I don't care for rap as a genre but I like Tricky. It's catchy. It's - I mean this quite seriously - a toe tapper. The words aren't offensive. But applied to golf? Rich white guys wearing polo shirts and khakis? On the surface, it's not a fit. It isn't going to make me more likely to watch. But then, while not rich, I am an old white guy (golf's primary audience) who wears polos and khakis. I watch golf naturally. And baseball. Yes, I'm dull.

I really don't see how it might influence anyone else to watch the sport, quite honestly. I don't see who it's supposed to appeal to; it simply seems weird. But perhaps that's just me.

Time To Play

On the one hand, I don't care for the idea that baseball has added time clocks. On the other, you still have to give the other guy his chance. You can't play keep away and burn the clock. That's still an important difference between it and any timed sport.

The real bottom line is that had players played and not dallied no clocks would be necessary. Look up a game on You Tube from 1975. The pitchers threw promptly and the batters were ready to hit and not adjusting every article of clothing between pitches. Go look at game times from 80 or 100 years ago. Everyone kept a pace, and you could get a match done in a reasonable time.

So there have been a couple embarrassing moments during spring training so far. Pay attention, Manny Machado. The players only have themselves to blame for this.

Old TV Puppets

We were sitting around, me and three of my brothers, when the subject of old TV shows came up. Me brother Phil for whatever reason asks, "Remember Kukla, Fran, and Ollie?" For those who can't remember, see here.

Anyway, I responded, "Kukla, Fran, and Ollie? I haven't heard those names in years."

Phil cleared his throat and said, "You just heard them a minute ago, Marty."

He won't understand why his paycheck will be short next week.

I Love Ya, Tomorrow

I love ya, I love ya, tomorrow, tomorrow. You're only a day away.

Today that has extra meaning for me. Detroit Tigers baseball begins tomorrow with the Grapefruit League opening game against the Phillies. Hope springs eternal. One of these years I'm going to take a week and check out some spring games.

Intellectually, I don't expect much from the club this coming season. The Tigers seemed to have taken a step backwards in 2022, and the April schedule is brutal. We may be out of the pennant race by May 1st. But the future is unwritten despite what our prognosticators, and yours truly, might think. You still gotta play the games. 

So for right this minute, that leaves tomorrow. And I love ya, tomorrow. At least, I love ya from this vantage point. Tomorrow's tomorrow may be a whole new, uh, ball game.

Listeners

 Bill Newman was a fella who used to come into the Shop a lot. He was a plumber and a gregarious sort. Mr. Newman liked to talk. Perhaps the best word to describe him was raconteur, a teller of fanciful stories. 

Now, me Grandpa Joe liked to talk too. I remember many days where Mr. Newman would come in and Joe would stop his work to visit. And, no doubt, swap tales with his cohort.

One day they were off to the side talking and things became animated. Not because they were mad or upset with one another, no. It was due to the fact they were each so wanting to tell their stories that they were constantly interrupting one another, making it hard for either to finish what they was sayin.

Finally Bill Newman, who was about a head taller than Joe, grabbed me Grandpa by his lapels and lifted him off the floor just enough that Grandpa's toes were all that was left touching the ground. He pulled Joe's face in close to his own. "Joe! Joe! Joe! We got a problem here!"

"What's that?" me Grandpa asked, actually laughing already at his predicament.

"We're both talkers! We gotta find us a couple'a listeners!"

Maybe you had to be there, but it was funny watching Joe being held by the lapels like that, and him just laughing along with it.

Grammar

The thing about grammar is that it makes you put your thoughts down in a coherent, rational manner. It makes your knee jerk ideas concrete. If that doesn't scare you, well, then grammar is not your forte.

Grammar is scary. It really is. Because grammar is not, it most definitely is not, the mere rules of language. Grammar is, it really and most certainly is, the relationship between objects in reality. I say that sky is blue precisely because the sky is blue.  If it isn't, then you don't get it. And you don't get grammar.

Tell me truth, and you tell me grammar. Otherwise you tell what is not true. And we all know what that is.

Pointed TP

I don't stay in hotels often. But I am living out of one for most of this week as I attend a trade show. And I am struck by some of the amenities.

They're all good, mind you. I'm making no complaints. Nice big rooms, plenty of hot water, microwave oven, refrigerator, color TV; and what coffee lover doesn't love the single cup Keurigs at their service? I even brought several extra coffee pods because the two they leave you are nowhere near enough for a true coffee hound. But I quibble.

Still, I find myself obsessing over things such as, why do they bother to the fold the ends of the toilet paper into triangles? Why is the first facial tissue out of the box fluffed out into a design of some sort (I can't actually tell what it's supposed to be, but I assume a flower of some kind). Why do I get a washcloth folded origami style into a little fan? Are people actually impressed by these efforts?

None of it would encourage me to stay in any particular place. Don't misunderstand; I love the hotel I'm in. I wouldn't think twice about staying here again. I'll almost certainly house myself in this very same establishment for the 2024 version of this show.

Only not for the origami washcloths. I simply can't imagine stuff such as that mattering to a traveler. "Oh, we can't stay there. They don't have the toilet paper ends folded into triangles.' I mean, who even considers these things?

The first person who says, clearly you Marty, gets a smack on the head with a wet spaghetti noodle. I'm not thinking about this, I'm reacting to it. So. There.

Reviewing Reviews

I must admit that it's heartening to read good reviews of one's own stories. Currently there are three books of mine, A Subtle Armageddon, Michael's Story, and David Gideon, available here Armageddon here Michael's and here David Gideon on Amazon (and other sales platforms too). 

This year, my vows are to improve my life and self discipline in general. As part of that, I'm striving to be more proactive with my writing. That means a blog post every day (which I've pretty much achieved for the last several years anyway) while promoting my books. Now that I'm seeing progress, it's become one of those V8 moments where I realize I should have been more committed to my authorship years ago.

It's been fun so far. All three books are hovering around 4 of 5 stars in review; indeed I only had one review as low as a two. I take it all as good. 

One thing I am telling myself is not to, ahem, read too much into the good or the bad. Some people just won't like your work and some may be being overly kind. Indeed, the sole (so far) two star review (of A Subtle Armageddon) actually touches on worries I've had about the book from the start. If there are things which concern me I can't be too upset if someone else sees them too. Further, and although the overall reviews are good, Michael's Story is scoring the least (3.9 average as I type this), which surprises me. I thought it would be Armageddon, precisely because I feared it was obscure while believing Michael's Story more straightforward. Go figure; maybe we are our own worst critics.

So as of today things are going well, and I appreciate the support of everyone out there. Just reading the daily blog helps more than you might think, because in the long run hits on it help get my name out there. I simply hope that it's all as enjoyable for you as it is for me.  

She Didn't Mean It

I did have to chastise Mom once. Mildly.

A few years back someone gave her a bunch of small, magnetic voice balloons. They looked exactly like what you see in a comic strip when the characters spoke: a cloud of sorts floating above their heads containing what they were saying. They held short sayings along the lines of "I Love You" "That's cool" and such on each one. Mom used the stickers to hold things like birthday cards and what not up on her metal kitchen cabinet doors.

Absently mindedly checking them out as I visited one day, I saw that the one she used on a holy card with Joseph and Mary, Jesus' mother and earthly father, said, "Go away!"

"Mom!" I teased her when I saw it. "Look what you have Mary saying!"

She got up from her chair and walked over to the cabinet. Putting her hand over her mouth to cover an embarrassed smile (or was it a teenage smirk?) she said, "Oh my. I'll have to change that!" 

Wholly inadvertent, but funny just the same.

Mannix, Cannon, and Barnaby Jones

As the title may suggest, if it doesn't in fact hit you over the head like the proverbial hammer, I just finished a trifecta of old detective shows this morning. In three hours I watched one episode each of Mannix, Cannon, and Barnaby Jones. Do you know what they had in common? Other, that is, than being old TV shows about private eyes?

The cars they drove were huge. Veritable battleships.

I had forgotten how big cars from the Sixties and Seventies had been. I remember driving them well enough. Me Grandpa Joe had several which required a city block to park. One old Chrysler Imperial alone of his could have served as an aircraft carrier. I think it had 12 large white wall tires. Per side.

Frank Cannon drove a Ford LTD which could be surrounded by a moat and serve as a siege castle. It had its own drawbridge. Mannix, well, you couldn't actually see him as he worked. The car took up the whole screen. Barnaby Jones took 30 seconds getting out of his Caddy. He nicked the camera on a wide right turn.

I had truly forgotten how big those old vehicles could be. They totally distracted from the plots of the shows. I think somebody got murdered and the detectives caught them as the guilty died of boredom waiting for their cars to completely arrive.

Thailand Golf

You know what's cool? Since I've asked a question you haven't asked you know that means I'm going to answer it in a way which benefits what I'm thinking this morning. And what I'm thinking is, isn't it cool to watch live golf from Thailand at three o'clock in the morning?

Here's an event half way around the world from Detroit and it's beamed right into my home. While it's dark and snowing here, there's bright sunshine and warmth on the tube. They've wearing short sleeves, for crying out loud! It's more than spring, it's, it's, summer. The course is lovely.

We're impressed by all the wrong things in this world today. We're impressed by crude halftime performances at the Super Bowl or during the Grammy awards when a simply beautiful golf course is better for the eyes. And the soul.

Mom's Birthday

Mom would have been 89 today. Not that long ago I had every expectation she would make it, and beyond. For some reason 93 had always been in my mind. Ah well. She went quickly and she went at home, for both of which I am sure she's grateful. 

I don't feel as though it's really hit me yet. We're coming on five months now. Sundays have reverted to plain old Sundays. The pair of us no longer tool around, doing minor shopping and having all those lunchtime cheeseburgers. Most of the rest of the week feels like usual: work, write, travel a bit, have an occasional dinner out. When I do stop by her house, I always say hi to her front porch chair as I enter.

There's granola bars left in the console of my new old van, remnants of having them on hand for when she got the munchies. She probably ate more granola bars in the last five years of her life than most of us eat, ever. But she ate. That was the main thing. 

What is, is, I suppose. I just don't feel more than vaguely numb even now, and that worries me. 

A rather melancholy way to say Happy Birthday, ain't it? But, Happy Birthday, Mom. No doubt it's a good one. 

Oh-Kay

Yesterday, seeing as I was running out of business cards, I hopped online and ordered new ones. Everything was fine until it came to complete the order. Even then there were no real issues, but I had to stifle a bemused chuckle at one point. 

The company requested my address, which of course I wanted them to have precisely so I could get my order. I duly typed it in the spaces provided for such important nuance. Hitting enter, a window immediately opened, proudly proclaiming that the Internet Powers That Be had found a better address to use than the one I had offered. How much better? It added 'Street' after my street name. That's all. Instead of my order simply coming to Avery, it could apparently come more efficiently to Avery Street.

Good catch there, Internet. What would I do without you?

Zeke's Bad Day

Northwestern Highway is a road which, interestingly enough, runs at a northwesterly angle away from Detroit. Several years ago me Uncle John who me Pops called Zeke had a bad day on that road.

He was bringing one of me Grandpa Joe's welding machines back from a job, towing it behind a car. As he pulled away from a traffic light, he felt the sudden jump of his vehicle losing weight. It had indeed lost weight: the machine he was towing had slid off its trailer and was sitting serenely blocking the right lane on Northwestern. All 2,000 pounds of it just sat there, quietly unconcerned with the world around it, just not caring one blip about the trouble it had caused.

Unbeknownst to anyone, the bolts which held the welder to its trailer had weakened and broke. Yet all was well...several hours later, after involving a crane, many police officers, an uncountable number of irate commuters, and an Uncle John happy to actually get home before dark. It could have been worse, I suppose, but it was not a good day.

Super What?

As I write this, it's 3:15 in the morning and I've been up about a half hour. I don't know who won the Super Bowl. I didn't watch it in great part because I go to sleep early, and that includes Sundays. It's just the sleep pattern I've chosen. Doctors say you should adopt and keep a definite sleep schedule, and early to bed, early to rise works best for me.

Still, in trolling Facebook for most of this half hour since rising, there was nothing I saw about the game itself but a lot - a tremendous, absurd, lot - about the halftime show. And quite a bit about the food and drinks folks were consuming. And gripes about the commercials. But not one thing about the game. None of my friends who posted (well, to be fair, of the three dozen or so who came up in my feed) said anything about football, but were analyzing the Hell out of everything else involved.

What does that tell me? That it ain't about football by and large but about the party. It's not about the game but the event. I'm not calling that wrong, for the record (although the excess is disconcerting on several levels), but a symptom of a long held belief of mine. The Super Bowl isn't really about football. It's about the party. 

Again, that might be all right, so far as it goes. But it's no real indicator about how popular football might be any more than Christmas excess validates Christianity. I doubt that most anyone outside KC or Philly really cared about the actual outcome of the actual game. Or, at least, their interest was only, ha, ha, in passing.

Disappointment Reigns

All right, I'll fess up immediately and concede that disappointment didn't actually reign. But it did sigh heavily.

Believe it or not, I am sometimes enamored with new things. Or, as the case may be, in relatively new things, as halogen lights have been around for awhile. Decipher Marty's will as you may (Quiet Ron), I had a long put off chore to do in a dark corner of my basement and elected to buy a floor model halogen light to facilitate actually doing the job. I'm glad I did, because it really lit up the place. I could set it down and, unlike an old drop cord where you could never quite find the right angle, or, Heaven forbid, a narrow beam flashlight whose help is marginal, Halogen Light illuminated the area perfectly while out of the way to the side. I'm in love.

I was truly giddy with excitement at the thought of the first use of my new toy. As I cleared the area of the flotsam and jetsam which basements naturally attract in order to access the spot, all I could think of and in the absolute joy of anticipation (I mean this; I was absurdly excited) was putting that new halogen lamp to use. Once everything was set so that I could triumphantly see to the task, I grabbed the box with the light and tore it open as though it were a Christmas present and I was eight.

And it needed to be assembled.

Wha-what? Assembly? That's going to take nine, ten minutes! I want to use now!

True, disappointment did not reign. But it sighed. Heavily.

 

Nine Oh Six

While tooling around yesterday for work and not wasting my day away at all, being very productive, you know, paying Ron's Social Security, the odometer on my new old van hit 906. Well, the last three digits were 906. My new old van is way beyond a mere 906 miles. The full number was 201,906 miles if all you OCD folks among my readers simply must know.

906 is the area code for Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula. The significance is that upon seeing that trifecta of digits, I'm pining for da U.P.  I can't wait to get back up there now, perhaps not until June but I'm really hoping for May. Especially now. The switch has been flipped on.

Friday Oatmeal

We're all, well, many of us anyway, a little too undisciplined with our spending. I know I am. And the fact is that it generally isn't the big expenditures which break our budgets. It's the nickel and dime stuff which leave us with $12.87 and payday three days off.

So in resolving to try and spend more wisely, on Fridays I am eating oatmeal for breakfast until I've eaten all the Quaker Oats I have. I'm trying to be old school Catholic anyhow and go meatless on Fridays as it is. This should help.

What brought this on was the big box of instant oatmeal which I bought at a warehouse store back in July. It was on sale, I liked the various flavors offered, and I should eat more oatmeal anyway, right? Good source of fiber or roughage or something, my doctor tells me. 

So there's 52 servings of instant oatmeal which I had to have back in July, and four of them have been consumed. Two of those were by my son and daughter in law respectively when they were in for Christmas. And that's not including the 8 count box of pumpkin spice flavor I bought in October because, pumpkin spice, right? So there's 52-4+8, or, wait, getting my calculator, 56 packets of instant oatmeal in a box on the fridge.

I'm going to eat them, two at a time, for my Friday breakfasts until they're gone. Then I will not buy that much oatmeal at once ever again. 

Unless it's a good price.

And it's the fruit and cream flavors.

And until the next time I lose my self discipline.

But up till then, it's not happening.

Funny or Not?

A couple of days ago I watched a documentary about Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon. You might know her better as Minnie Pearl, the country comedienne. The program had a clip of her and Dean Martin performing a sketch which had, for my money, one of the funniest jokes I've ever heard.

Minnie was telling Dean about a wedding which took place in her fictional hometown of Grinders Switch, Tennessee. Part way through the act Dean asked, "Who gave the bride away?"

"Well so far, everyone's held their tongue," Minnie replied.

I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. What do you think of the joke?

To Be Too Late

There was this very helpful and concerned fella who used to come into the old barn, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who really cared about our well being. Indeed whenever we might face peril, he'd call out a warning. Trouble was, his warnings were always just a tad too late. Or at least, late enough that they'd have been no help at all.

"Watch it Phil!' he'd yell to me brother just exactly one instant after Phil had lost his grip on something and it fell to the floor, shattering. 

"Watch it Marty!" he'd scream at me the very moment after the tool I was using under pressure had slipped and was flying across the Shop.

"Watch it Bill!" Cloyce would belatedly warn me Pops precisely when a red hot fitting he had been heating had already popped out of the bench vise and just missed falling into his boot. 

To this day whenever I have narrowly averted catastrophe I can hear Cloyce's panicked yell, "Watch it Marty!"

Cloyce's warnings were truly just in time to be too late. Every. Single. Time. But I suppose he meant well.

Triple Honest

Now that I'm making a heartfelt effort at putting myself 'out there' I'm getting more and more Amazon reviews on my books. Here's a favorite, about my first book A Subtle Armageddon:

I had to make a decision to rate the novel either a 3 or 4 star. It was a tough read for me since the story just seemed to describe a man wandering around and experiencing many things for the first time. I decided that perhaps I did not like the book since I am not a big fan of either of the two authors that seems to influence the author and decided on awarding a 4 star. Perhaps if you like this type of genre, you might be more impressed.

I like this little review, basically for its honesty. There are to my mind three levels of honesty within it.

First, the man is honest with me. He admits that he isn't a fan of the writers who inspire me (Tolkien and CS Lewis). That's all right. I'm an adult, and I realize that what I pen isn't going to be everybody's cup of tea. Still, he informs me without rancor that the story isn't for him. I respect that.

Second, he's factually correct. The main actor in ASA is (at least at first) simply wandering around and things just 'happen' to him. That was done on purpose as I developed the story and, I will argue, was necessary under the circumstances I imposed upon myself in writing the book. But the reviewer makes a fair criticism: it all can appear random and unimportant, at least at a casual glance. 

Third, while grading it in the standard Amazon five star format, he waffles between 3 and 4 but then assigns it a fourth star precisely because he realizes his prejudices might be affecting his judgement. He's playing fair (to my writing as well as his views) and I highly respect that.

So, for something which is less than a stellar review it is nonetheless a decent and valid one. I have to appreciate it on that ground, and I wish more folks (including me) might be more like that in things we say and do. I think it's how human interaction should be.

Out of this World Golf

Fifty Two years ago today, it happened. The longest golf shot in history.

It had a little help. Astronaut Alan Shepard had hidden a six iron and a couple golf balls on the lunar lander of Apollo 14. How he managed that I don't know; engineers were notorious for checking and rechecking weights on spaceships because it affected important things like escape velocity.

Still, he was able to get away with it. I remember watching on TV, through the grainy camera set up on the moon. This big guy in an oversized white suit digging something out of a crevice, Mission Control itself mystified, and dropping small items on the lunar surface. The Shepard produced the club, and swung at the golf balls one at a time. He had to hit them one handed because of the bulky suit. After one, during his follow through, Shepard remarked, "Miles and miles and miles!"

How many miles? Who really knows. I believe an alien race will one day find the golf balls and remark in their home language, "What the hell?"

For the curious, here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_jYOubJmfM

Who Needs Him?

Father Jernej Sostar is the pastor of Our Lady of the Snows in Hessel, Michigan, the Church I attend when I'm in Michigan's Glorious Upper Peninsula. I like him. His homilies are to the point, and you can learn from them.

One of my favorites came in the summer of 2022. He was speaking about how we all need Jesus because we all need His grace and forgiveness. Not a one of us is perfect, yet He is willing to help us along the road to personal improvement. But we have to understand that need first. If we don't, we won't ask Jesus to help, because we're not open to it. And then, of course, we may not get it. Jesus respects our free will that much.

Roughly paraphrasing the good priest, if we think we're okay as we are, if we tell Jesus 'I'm a good guy as I am' then Our Lord is liable to say, "Then what do you need me for? If you're already certain you're fine as you are, I can't help. I'll go help someone else." 

Basically, if you aren't examining who and what you are and trying to honestly assess your own level of good or badness, you aren't open to Christ's help because you believe you don't need it. Where will such thoughts lead, or leave, us?

No Quarter From Phil

Without express permission, me brother Phil will not negotiate price. A part cost what it costs, period, and that's that.

A customer once tried to talk him down on a cutter. "You can knock a couple dollars off, man."

"Nope," Phil replied.

"How bout a dollar?" 

Me brother still refused.

"Come on, man, a quarter?"

"No."

"Are you telling me a quarter means that much to you?"

Phil drolly responded, "It means that much to you."

Touche.

A Matter of Trust

Technology. It allows us to do many things quickly and efficiently. Still, I have trust issues with it. Or, rather, technology has given me trust issues with, uh, me.

At one time I would add up a list of numbers all on my own. No help from a calculator was necessary. Years ago a customer might come into the Shop and want 6, 7, 10 items, and I'd write out an invoice, add it all up, multiply the total for the sales tax, and Bob's yer uncle, land on a figure which I completely trusted. I completely trusted it because I could do basic math.

In my defense, I still can. Yet now that we have calculators everywhere, even on our cell phones, I have to pull the program up and do the math, well, I suppose mechanically. Hell, if it's one cutting tool I still get out the calculator to multiply the price by .06 for the tax.

I can still do the math. I'm still pretty good at it too. But I no longer trust me. I fear the mistake which might cost me or the customer money. Thanks, technology.

Beatles Dental Care

Two minutes. That, I've long understood, is how long you ought to brush your teeth. Yet how can you know you've accomplished that?

It was suggested to me that an easy way to do it was to listen to a song in your head which was about two minutes long while brushing. So I 'play' the Beatles' Can't Buy Me Love in my mind as I take care of my twice daily dental chores. That's not a terrible earworm either.

I wonder if Sir Paul ever imagined that his rock standard would be used for the health of an old Detroiter in 2023? Hmm...I bet he doesn't give it a second thought. Or first for that matter.

Joe's Freezing Dander

It never took much to get me Grandpa Joe's dander up. Still, some things, believe it or not, got his dander up to stratospheric levels remarkably fast even by comparison to his normal, uh, standard.

Joe rented welding equipment, as I think I've well established in these pages. And while you likely couldn't do it now even if you wanted, as most water lines are nonmetallic, at one time you could de-ice frozen pipes with a welding generator. 

What makes a welder weld is that you complete a circuit when you 'strike arc', that is, apply the welding electrode to the items you wish to fuse together. Don't fret this too much if you can't picture it. Suffice it to say that when you weld, you're completing an electric circuit. When you do that, you create heat. Heating a metal pipe will then melt the ice which has formed within it.

You also effectively create a short circuit when using a welder to de-ice pipes, causing it to overheat. This will eventually, very eventually in Joe's book, destroy his welder.

Grandpa would fly off the handle even faster than usual when he'd hear of some numbskull using one of his machines to thaw pipe. If you believe he had a quick temper anyway, use his equipment wrongly. You'll find out that nothing really is impossible, even shortening Joe's profusely short fuse.