Can one have too many cats?
Saturday, April 29, 2023
Friday, April 28, 2023
THE FRIDAY FUNNIES
Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes!
It is FRIDAY once again.
Can you tell I'm excited?
I'm thinkin', Tucker Carlson was fired and Jerry Springer passed on.
What more could make me happy?
Oh, I know, I know, I'll chill.
So at the end of this rather thrilling week, what can I do?
I know.
I'll submit you to an all-text Friday Funnies.
No cartoons, just words.
So stop frowning, turn those expressions right side up and get ready to chortul, chuckle, guffaw and LAUGH!
Okay, now that your eyes are tired from all the reading, I'm gonna cheat and change the game.
Because.
Well, because.
Because I couldn't end the Funnies without these guys.
So that's it.
Your humor potpourri for the week is over.
Now you have to find your own good humor.
And good food.
And good drink.
And have yourselves a good weekend.
No!
A GREAT weekend!
Enjoy!
And always remember to keep laughing!!!
Here, kitty-kitty . . .
Thursday, April 27, 2023
MYSTERY WOMAN
I was going through a huge collection of family photographs recently and found this tiny one.
It's only about two inches tall by an inch and a half wide and mounted on some stiff cardboard or pasteboard.
Do you know her?
I found it in a collection of photographs from my Berry family.
My paternal grandmother, Daisy Berry, married my grandfather, Berthold Wayne Taylor, B.W., as he was known most of his life.
They came from southern Minnesota.
The photo apparently was taken at a photo studio on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis.
It may be of someone in the Berry family or it may be a friend of one of the many brothers or sisters in that family.
I can not identify her but thought I'd throw it out to you Internet sleuths to see if anyone can solve the mystery of this rather smartly dressed young lady.
Unfortunately there is no reward for solving the puzzle, other than the eternal gratitude from your scribe.
And, of course, the international adulation that might arise from this blog!
Wednesday, April 26, 2023
BREAKFAST
Taking a cue from my friend, Cross Town Lori (LL), I'm having a senior's breakfast this morning.
A slice of my birthday carrot cake with whipped cream!
Old age comes with benefits.
One of them is you can eat whatever you want whenever you want.
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
BIRTHDAY DINNER
Several of you made comments on yesterday's post wondering if I had a celebratory meal to mark the beginning of my 84th year on this planet.
And I can tell you (Yorkshire Pudding) that it did not involve a quick run for a Big Mac.
As I told you (RedPat) it was exceptional.
And (LL) though it was tempting, I did NOT eat dessert first.
But let me not delay tempting your taste buds and making your mouths water a moment longer.
My birthday repast began with this salad of blanched snow peas, cucumbers and red mini-peppers.
As long time readers of this blog know, my wife Judy is not only an exceptional cook but an artist as well and I think she excels at her arranged salads.
The entree was one of our favorite meals - Chicken Picatta and Fettucini Alfredo topped with freshly grated Parmigianno Reggiano cheese from Italy, accompanied by toasted garlic bread.
Mmmmmm. I just recreated the flavors in my mind and I'm hungry again!
And then - - dessert.
Judy's legendary Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting.
And SPRINKLES!
The master chef in my house created all of this herself.
I was only allowed to grate the cheese, mix pre-prandial drinks and pour the wine.
We could have gone out to some fine (and expensive) restaurant or even to Mickey D's for a couple of Big Macs but why spend the money when I have one of the world's great cooks right here at home.
It was a highly rewarding (and filling) celebration of my special day.
Monday, April 24, 2023
THE BLOODY 24TH
Let's see what's in the news of my world today.
Oh my, the big news comes to us from Fox, of all places.
It seems their big star, Tucker Carlson, and his employer have parted company.
That's in the wake of a 787.5 million dollar settlement the company made with Dominion to make a lawsuit go away.
But listen: when the news of Tucker's "departure" broke, the company's stock price tanked and their market value was down 700 million dollars!
In other news, a friend of mine said that over at CNN they "buried the lede" with the news that one of their longtime stars, Don Lemon, had been fired.
But let's get on to news of some survivors.
Barbra Streisand is celebrating (?) her 81st birthday today.
And another famous lady, the actress Shirley MacLaine is marking her 89th whirl around the sun today.
These last two are probably having a better day than the first two but, you know, life is what you make it.
Oh, I almost forgot one - this time a birthday BOY.
Well not exactly a boy, as the hair color can tell you.
And the moustache and chin whiskers have been white for seeming forever.
Now if you guessed this is your scribe, you'd be correct.
I share my birthday with the two talented ladies above and today is my 83rd.
I've only found one celebrity who was born on the exact same day I was.
That would be the author of the alphabet mysteries, Sue Grafton.
Regrettably she won't be around to blow out the candles today.
She died in 2017 before she could write that final novel in her series which she had already titled: Z is for Zero.
She was 77 when she lost a battle with cancer.
As those two media stars who started this post might say:
Sic transit gloria.
Saturday, April 22, 2023
Friday, April 21, 2023
THE FRIDAY FUNNIES
I hope you made it through 4/20 day smoking hot.
(heh-heh-heh)
(If you don't know what that means, just Google "420".)
At any rate, most of us have survived until another Friday shows up on the calendar.
And you all know what that means.
It's time to LAUGH!
Maybe we should change the name to Star Tricks.
Regardless, let's get out there and energize ourselves for the next few days so that, come Monday, we can all say "Hey, I had a great weekend!"
And always remember to keep laughing!
Here, kitty-kitty . . .
Thursday, April 20, 2023
Wednesday, April 19, 2023
NEW MEMBER OF THE FAMILY
Seems like I've been writing too much recently about old age and death.
So today I'm going to change the tone.
We have a new member of our family.
Tuesday, April 18, 2023
NEWS OF A PASSING
Yesterday I was moaning writing about birthdays and reaching advanced ages and what that means (great-grand-kids).
But not all of us are getting older.
One, for instance, is the legendary Buster Bodine.
I know.
Crazy name, right?
Well that's because it wasn't his real name.
His real name was Michael Hanks.
Buster Bodine was his radio name, the name he used as a rock and roll disc jockey.
Oh, for some of you younger readers, rock and roll was a music genre that . . .oh, never mind.
Just know that Buster Bodine turned radio on its head when he landed at WNAP - FM 93.1 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
He had followed his brother, Charles Hanks, better known on WIBC-AM in Indy as Chuck Riley.
Chuck was known for his deep, resonant voice.
Then Buster arrived for a visit and, as the story goes and I've been telling it for decades, he said "hello" and his voice was an octave lower than Chucks'.
He was hired on the spot.
Buster spent some years in Indy and other locations before once again following his big brother to Los Angeles and voice-over work.
Well, now it's all over.
He died this week following complications from heart surgery.
He was 70.
Chuck died a number of years ago, also of a heart ailment, at the age of 66.
I worked with Chuck but never directly with Buster, though he was just starting at WNAP as I was getting ready to leave WIBC.
The back room and the front room, as they were known back around 1969-1971.
So . . . so long, Buster.
Like Chuck, you'll be long remembered.
Monday, April 17, 2023
AGEING UPDATE
April and May and June are big birthday months in our family.
The BRD's birthday was nearly a week ago.
My son's birthday was yesterday.
My birthday is coming up in less than a week.
SWMBO's birthday is next month.
Our younger daughter's birthday is in June.
Gadfrey!
After all that, plus our wedding anniversary, it's little wonder that we are exhausted.
Not only that.
I heard from my son late last night, saying that he had not done much on his birthday yesterday.
Just entertained the grandchildren in the afternoon.
The GRAND-children!
That means our GREAT-grandchildren.
Talk about making a guy feel old!
So we went out to a Mexican restaurant this afternoon . . . Judy and I and Gayle . . . to celebrate multiple trips around the sun.
It was good, actually great.
The Margaritas were fine.
The food was wonderful and much of it came home with us.
So how did we look afterward?
With apologies to the BRD, whose picture I neglected to take . . . first SWMBO, whom I know you all want to see.
And then your faithful scribe.
Sunday, April 16, 2023
MUFFIN, MUFFIN, WHO'S GOT THE MUFFIN?
Last Friday morning I decided to try broiling a couple of eggs in our muffin tin.
The first time I opened the oven door I was met with a cloud of smoke.
SWMBO estimates that muffin tin had been with us for a few decades and maybe it's time to throw the relic out.
I gladly leaped at her suggestion and did a bit of searching on-line before suggesting that now they had ones made out of silicon that made baking and exiting the pan as easy as A, B, C.
She said she thought they might be difficult to get into the oven if they were loaded with something sort of liquid and suggested maybe to just get the silicon-coated non-stick metal pan.
So I went to the store before she could change her mind and came home with this.
Yup, it's flexible silicon but it has a metal framework that holds it steady when being put in or taken out of the oven.
SWMBO quickly agreed to my great wisdom in buying it, even though she noted it was the most expensive one in the store.
But then she sent me to the kitchen with instructions to inaugurate it, especially since we had some blueberries in the fridge that were getting close to going bad.
Well, I am never one to turn up my nose at homemade blueberry muffins.
Here's a couple of pictures of the result. (And, BTW, the new pan worked great!)
Saturday, April 15, 2023
THE STAFF OF LIFE
SWMBO, my wife, would probably tell you that nothing is better than homemade bread.
Nothing smells as good.
Nothing tastes as good.
So I try to keep her happy.
And because making bread is one of the easiest kitchen duties I can imagine.
Recently I tried one of Jacques Pépin's recipes.
It's for soda bread and he insisted that it was simple and fast.
In fact, it was.
Here's my first loaf ever.
Friday, April 14, 2023
THE FRIDAY FUNNIES
Oh, gosh, what a dark dreary day it was yesterday.
And the day before.
SWMBO said she was sure it was going to rain for two reasons.
The first was the way the sky looked.
The second was the way her joints felt.
But there came no rain, just wind and temperatures about 20 degrees cooler than a few days before.
Up and down, up and down.
As I said to someone today, "It's Arizona."
At any rate it has not caused my sense of humor to freeze up.
Which is why you're getting these: