Prettie Bettie

April 22, 2007, is Bettie Page's 84th birthday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BETTIE!

In the early 1960s a friend of mine handed me a stack of girly magazines and pointed out one of the models. "That's Bettie Page," I remember him saying.

I'd like to claim that I knew even then that Bettie would become the cult figure she is today, but I didn't. I thought she was pretty and sexy. She even stood apart from the other models, but I didn't imagine then that four decades later people would devote websites, magazines, books, and movie biographies to her.
I think the pictures that we all thought were perverted back in the 1950s look innocent today. Would you be scared if you saw this smiling woman with a whip? Bettie did a lot of bondage photos but frankly, she just wasn't the dominatrix type.Many people have done their own versions of Bettie though artwork……and some by mimicking her look.Here's Bettie a couple of years ago with Anna Nicole Smith and Pamela Anderson. There is a spark in the smile that shows the young Bettie.Click on pictures for full-size images.

The Bettie Page that is the object of the Bettie cultists is an invention, not a real person. There are thousands of pictures of her available everywhere and they are the object of worshipful fans. The real Bettie Page had a life and did all of the everyday things the rest of us did. In later life she even got religion, becoming a born again Christian. As with Marilyn Monroe the image took over the reality. But in her youth she had a look that the camera loved and it is these pictures that we know as Bettie.

Ciao for now.

I Invented Sex

Today I was speaking to a teacher in the faculty room of an elementary school. I was taking a break, having a cup of coffee. Besides working for the same school district, Linda and I have been neighbors for over 30 years.

Neither of us have to have newer, bigger houses, keep up with the Joneses by buying boats, motorhomes or expensive cars. Since we're both still married to our original spouses we got on the subject of when we were young and first married. I said, "When Sally and I went through our hippie phase we had no money for anything but rent, groceries and utilities. We didn't miss money. We invented things to do. We had sex. We went to the park and fed the ducks, we went to the public library and read books."

Without missing a beat Linda said, "You invented sex? Well, thank you!"

I blushed, thrilled to be finally thanked for my contribution to humankind.

Ciao for now.

Husband Of The Murdered Woman

I was watching one of those cop shows, Law and Order or CSI. The cops were grilling the husband of a murdered woman. "Where were you on Tuesday night at 9:00?"

"I was at the hotel bar. You can ask anyone. Everyone saw me. I was the one who spilled my drink on the bouncer."

Aha. An alibi. An easily checked alibi. Sounds good, right? The cops go away frustrated. They can't hang this killing on the husband.

So where were you on Tuesday night at 9:00? Do you know? I don't know where I was.

It's a paranoid's nightmare. I can't account for myself 90% of the time I'm not at work, in between punches of the time clock. I'm obviously guilty, slap the cuffs on me, because I don't know where I was and even if I did I can't prove it. I was in a dark theater watching a movie, I was watching a basketball game on TV, I was watching an idiot TV cop show where a guy could prove he was somewhere on the night in question. And in none of those situations could I prove where I was or what I was doing.

Years ago I worked with a married couple named Warren and Margo. Margo was a head custodian in a junior high, Warren worked for us, but had recently quit to go to work on the loading dock of a truck line. On February 21, 1992 Margo went to work and wasn't seen again for four months until someone found her remains in the desert west of us, a murder victim.

Warren worked nights so he usually went to the school to visit Margo in the morning, or if he couldn't do that he called her. He called that morning of February 21 and no one could find her. He went to the school. No one knew where she was. They conducted a search. Police were called, dogs were used. No Margo. It made the news, and police said it looked suspicious but they had no indication of foul play. Police questioned Warren. When did you last see your wife? When did you last talk to her? Typical cop questions. Cops know when someone goes missing there's a reason. There's been a fight and they have walked off to cool down; they have decided to run off with the mailman; they are injured or dead in a ditch somewhere.

Because of it happening in a school, and Margo's pretty girl looks, her photo was often on local TV newscasts. I remember Margo as a cute, petite woman in her early forties who worked out at the gym. She was also in fitness contests and not a few of my female coworkers were outraged that Warren had let her parade around in a bikini in some of these contests. The speculation was that it was because of that she had disappeared, that Warren was jealous of the attention others gave to her.

Early on it looked like the cops were focusing on Warren. Because of the buzz about the case, for a time it got national attention. Warren appeared on Oprah with some other spouses of missing persons. Based on working with him, my personal opinion of Warren was that he was immature for his age, even though he was in his thirties. He was a few years younger than his 42-year-old wife. I saw him as emotionally stunted at about a 17 or 18-year-old level. He was a braggart, embellishing stories of being in fights, and he was a liar when it suited his purposes. So knowing those things made me--and others of his former coworkers--wonder if in a jealous rage he had done something to his wife. I thought he came off pretty well on Oprah, though. I knew Warren as an unconvincing liar, and on this show he didn't sound like he usually did when I'd heard him lie. At the time I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He didn't sound like a murdering husband.

A father and son were out in the desert hunting in June, 1992, when they saw what looked like an animal bone stuck in the ground. It turned out to be Margo's arm, and her skeletal remains were beneath it in a shallow grave. Something I found out at the time about our west desert: because of the chemical composition of the soil, decomposition is vastly sped up.

Police then really turned their attention to Warren. Warren felt heat and hired a lawyer. He must be guilty! He's hired a lawyer! The lawyer wouldn't let Warren take a police lie detector test, but had Warren take a test with an outside polygraph expert. Over a period of time Warren passed three tests but the cops didn't care. They weren't tests under their control.

Some years later a man came forward and confessed to murdering some teenage girls and Margo. He had gone into the junior high looking for a student to abduct. Petite Margo was there instead, and became his unlucky victim. But years before we learned that I had a conversation with Margo's former boss who outlined "exactly how Warren had killed her and disposed of her." This was from his conversations with the police, who had formulated the theory.

Warren and Margo had fought, the police said, quoted to me by her boss. Warren came to the school early on the morning of February 21 right after Margo had opened the building, before anyone else arrived. They continued their fight, he got violent, overpowered her and strangled her. He put her body in the trunk of his car, then drove home. He coolly called the school to ask to speak to her and when she couldn't be found he drove back to the school, Margo still in the trunk. He pretended to help in the search. That night he drove to his parents' home. They were out of town. He stashed Margo's body. Later he drove Margo to the west desert and buried her, returning home with no one the wiser. I knew Margo's boss did not like Warren. He told me he thought Warren was a pest because of the time he had spent at the school keeping Margo from her duties.

In the time between Margo's disappearance and the confession of the serial murderer Warren had been the main suspect. That's because in most cases it is the spouse who is the killer. Warren had this hanging over his head for years. Many times during those years I had heard others say, "He killed her." I thought back to his displays of childish temper, his lying and denial on the job even when caught in acts of nonfeasance. My imagination got the better of me and at times I fell into the common consensus that it was probably true; despite my initial opinion of his truthfulness to Oprah, he must've killed his wife.

Warren took the rap for his wife's murder even though he was never officially charged. It's a Hitchcock movie: wrong man accused, looks guilty as hell, but turns out to be innocent when the real perpetrator is caught. That's the movies, but this was real life.

Warren lost his wife, but he must've also lost whatever trust a person has in the system in this country. Often we hear of people released from prison after decades because DNA evidence exonerates them. How could they feel while doing time but not the crime? Warren had been in a vortex of accusation, both vocal and silent. He also had some extremely good luck when, like in a Hitchcock plot, the murderer confessed.

So, Mr. Postino, where were you at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, April 14, 2007?

Well, Detective, I was typing up my blog, and…and you can check it out! It's time-stamped on my computer! Really, I can prove it!

Ciao for now.

Lloyd I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken

The other day I took my wife's car in for an oil change and lube job. Getting Sally out of that car long enough to even check the oil is a chore, so I usually have to finally throw myself over the hood and yell, "No! You're not going anywhere! We're going to get your oil changed!"

We went to a local establishment that sells tires and does oil changes, amongst other services. The guy putting our information on the computer told us it'd be about 30 minutes, so we wandered off, coming back in about 35 minutes. We showed up at an empty cash register. I could see the car was done, but I wanted to pay the bill and get my key back. A woman standing to the side of the counter near me said, "There was a girl here a few minutes ago, but I don't know where she went." A technician came out of the back, said, "I'll go look for her." He was gone about five minutes, came back, said: "I'm still looking," and took off again.

After standing like this for about 10 minutes--and feeling the fuse of my dynamite temper start to sizzle--one of the other technicians came out and said, "Sorry, I don't know where the girl went, so I'll ring you up." I noticed his name tag said, "Hi! My Name Is LLOYD." He gave me my bill and then proceeded to talk to the woman who was standing by the counter, telling her he couldn't get the rims off her car because he didn't have the proper tools. Huh! A tire shop without the proper tools to get a rim off a car…? Say what? Anyway, I was trying to run my debit card through his machine but he was doing something that caused the transaction to cancel. He went back and started over, but in the meantime never stopped talking to the woman about his tools and her rims (that sounds dirty!)

By now I was muttering things like, "You folks are something else…" and then the girl who was supposed to be behind the cash register showed up. So he proceeded to tell her where she had gone wrong. She got sullen and defensive, said something about going on break, to which he said, "You didn't have anyone to cover for you," which made her more sullen. He was yakking at the girl and talking to the woman while I was trying to get my card to work. With my wife hovering nearby I knew better than to say anything but what I wanted to say was, "PAY ATTENTION, LLOYD, GODDAMMIT. I'M THE ONE MAKING THE PAYMENT. QUIT TALKING TO EVERYONE BUT ME AND LET'S GET ME OUTTA HERE." I would have also added, "GO BACK TO PLAYING WITH YOUR TOOL, LLOYD, AND LET SOMEONE CHECK ME OUT WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING!"

Sally said when we left, "It doesn't do you any good to say anything. It only makes you look bad." Oh yeah…? Who was looking bad in there? Lloyd or me? I decided not to have her decide because I knew her answer. I just swallowed my mad, damped the dynamite fuse in my brain. In a few minutes it was over and I was glad I hadn't said anything. She was right, as usual.

By coincidence two days later my son handed me a CD by a Scottish band named Camera Obscura. The first song on the album Is "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken." So for Lloyd and all of the other people who have forgotten their lessons in customer service, I present this video.

The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring, Tra-la

It was Easter yesterday and a quiet day for my family and me.

I hardly think of Easter as a holiday, but understand how important it is to others. What's more important to me is that it means spring is finally here after a long, cold winter.

My friend gave me these pictures of some daffodils and poppies to prove to me that it is indeed spring. The young redheaded girl amongst the flowers is not from my friend, but a picture I found on the Internet. Girls that young make me think of flowers coming into bloom. It's an appropriate setting for her.And of course there are the other signs of spring; ants marching into the house, dandelions in the lawn, the smell of Pax fertilizer, the sound of my cursing as I try to get just one more season out of my old Craftsman lawn mower. Yep, when I've thrown my back out and given myself tendinitis from trying to get the old beast roaring full-throat I know it's definitely spring.

Space In My Head

Going through some old files I ran into the oldest story of mine I still have, a science fiction short called "Zero Hour." Many more of my stories went the way of all things over the years. It seems that some of us--me, in particular--put no value on much of our pasts, and let a lot of it get away from us.

Click on the picture to get a full-size image.

Based on the handwriting I was probably in fourth grade when I wrote it, about 1955 or 1956. It isn't necessary to read past the first page to see where the story is going. Joe McLenen (sic) is checking out some "intsurements" on the rocketship SP-12. The dumb "enginner" wasn't "carefull" and slammed the hatch on poor Joe. Joe compounded his problems by slipping on some "greese" and falling.

I can say something for "Zero Hour," reading it 51 years later: it has a beginning, a middle and an end, which means I was already familiar with plots and story structure. It also showed my early interest in space, rockets, trips to the moon and even beyond.

I was a solitary kid, just as I am a solitary adult. I have lived most of my life in my head. If I'm awake I'm dreaming up stuff and when I'm asleep I'm dreaming of stuff to dream up. I used to read books on the future and talk about space and rockets a lot. So much so that when my third grade teacher saw me in the hall during my fourth grade year she said to me, "I thought you'd be on Mars by now."

I wasn't on Mars, but Mars was in me. I read everything I could on the subject of the solar system and knew as much as anyone about the then-current knowledge of the planets.

One Saturday morning last year my brother and I were having coffee. We both said that in some ways we didn't regret getting older because it meant he had lived through some important parts of the Twentieth Century. The thing that stuck out most in his mind was the moon landing on July 20, 1969. It was one of my Top Ten life-moments, too.

It seems that as a species we made that giant leap, and then have gone back to taking baby steps on our way into space. Of course, as I watch the days dwindle down to a precious few, as the old song says, I get less patient. I want to see people boldly go where no one has gone before!

Ciao for now.

The Movie Star Who Wasn't

Tim Holt is an actor probably mostly forgotten except by old time movie fans. He was the star of a series of B-westerns in the late 1940s and early '50s, and ended his motion picture career at age 38 after starring in a terrible 1957 monster movie.Holt was born in 1919 as Charles John Holt III. He served in World War II as a lieutenant in the Air Force. He died of cancer in 1973 at the young age of 54.

Tim Holt acted in one of my personal top ten movies of all time, Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, co-starring with Humphrey Bogart and director John Huston's father, Walter. It wasn't the first A-movie Holt had made; he'd been in Orson Welles' Magnificent Ambersons, for instance, but Sierra Madre should have cemented his reputation as an A-list movie star. So what the hell happened? I've read the biographies on the Internet and they don't really tell me. I wonder if it was personal problems or enemies in the studios? Maybe contract problems? They don't say.

What I know is what I saw on the screen. In a movie like Sierra Madre it would have been easy for Holt to get lost between two scenery-chewers like Bogart and Huston. Neither of those guys was ever accused of being subtle as far as acting technique. But Holt is the man in the middle. He's the glue that holds the team of three together. It is understated as far as acting goes, but his character is as important as the other two, and in examining the themes of the movie, maybe even more so.

This is a blog that's supposed to be about paranoia, and that's what Bogie's character, Fred C. Dobbs is, in spades. While Director Huston allowed his father, actor Huston to emote without restraint, adding to the din caused by Bogart's character, Holt stands quietly by and is the solid force on which the three of them depend as they dig for gold in some of the most remote and treacherous country on earth.

Maybe in 1948, then as now, the accolades went to the actors who got the most attention on the screen. There was no doubt that Bogart was the star. Why Holt's star didn't go on the ascendancy after this movie is one of those Hollywood mysteries. I'm sure there were reasons unknown to those of us who wonder. Tim Holt was a fine movie cowboy in the Saturday matinee tradition of Western movies... ...but he was also a fine actor with a great presence on screen who should've been a major movie star.Ciao for now.

Goodbye Little Brother...?

I've written about Little Brother, our feral cat, before. In the summer of 2005 we saw a Siamese cat with her two black kittens hunting birds in our back yard. We had several feeders and the cats thought this was a good place to catch some meals. We eventually took down the feeders, captured the two kittens, and was that a story! We couldn't ever catch Mamacat. We took the two trapped cats to the vet and had them neutered under a special program to cut down on strays and feral colonies.

We took responsibility and fed the two ferals. At the time we called them Black and Decker, but Black was killed in December 2005 when he ran across the street in the dark and was hit by a car. I buried him. Decker was renamed Little Brother. Another cat showed up a few weeks later, another feral we call Whitepaws. Then Mamacat showed up again. But Little Brother disappeared about three weeks ago and we haven't seen him since.

The life of a feral can be short and miserable. We tried to give Little Brother the best we could. We made a house for him under our back deck, a warm and insulated place where he could sleep and he took advantage of it. We fed him twice a day on our back porch and made sure he had fresh water. During the coldest parts of two winters we made sure the water didn't freeze by putting the water dish on one of those cup warmers people use at their desks to keep their coffee warm.

We never got to touch Little Brother. He was just too skittish. He would never get closer than five or six feet from us; just far enough away that if we made a sudden move he could get out of there. We don't think he was caught by a dog or a person; he was just too wary of other animals and people. We wondered if we killed him with contaminated cat food, but in searching the lists of products Menu Foods of Canada made we don't find the brand we feed our cats, and besides, the other cats ate the same food and they're still healthy.

My guess is that like his big brother, Little Brother was probably hit by a car and killed on a dark night. A jet black cat running across a dark street couldn't beat the odds for long, and Little Brother did wander.

We love cats and we loved Little Brother. We knew we'd never be able to have him stretch out next to us on the sofa or be underfoot when we walked through the house. We knew we'd never come home from work and find him asleep on the back of the couch. But it didn't stop us from wishing we could do more for him than give him a dish of food, fresh water twice a day and a homemade crash pad to stay the night.

Ciao for now.

Hated By Hounds

As a follow-up to the previous story of my $45 ass-bite, I've found over the years that big dogs hate me. Little dogs and cats don't seem to mind me, some even like me, but big dogs suddenly become vicious killers when I walk into the vicinity. I don't know why, but maybe it's because I'm a mailman. I'm not a postal carrier, but I carry mail for the school district. To a dog I might be more hated than a U.S. mailman because I'm a fake mailman.

I found this drawing on illustration board being used as backing for a photo in a frame. I probably put it there in the 1970s and forgot about it. When I was learning how to draw cartoons and how to ink them with a brush and pen I did this drawing as practice. Even in the 1970s this sort of comic art was long passé, but there was something about this panel from a 1941 Batman comic that appealed to me. I've forgotten exactly what it was now, but maybe I was reaching back into my own past to the day when the big dog ran out of its house and bit me on my ass.

Ciao for now.

My $45 Ass

In a March 28 posting my friend Eddie's blog, Chicken Fat, mentions him riding into a strange neighborhood on a bicycle, being wary of dogs. Nowadays with ordinances regarding animals you don’t expect to see dogs that aren't kept restrained, on leashes or behind fences, but occasionally it happens.

When I grew up in suburban Salt Lake City in the 1950s and early '60s there might have been laws, but no one observed them. In our neighborhood it was a rare homeowner who had a fence, and when walking the dog forget about a leash. Our dogs were free to roam around, shit on the neighbor's lawn, smell the bushes and telephone poles, chase a cat or even another dog.

In July, 1960 we were having a hot spell, over 100º for about 10 days in a row. That's fine in Tucson or Phoenix, but not Salt Lake. Our house was so hot inside it was cooler to be outside on my bike, with a bit of breeze from riding drying off my sweat. I was riding past the neighbor's house--I'll call them the Juneaus, although their last name is really the name of another city in Alaska--when they were coming out of the front door. The Juneaus, mom, dad, two kids including Larry, my age, were getting into their car to go somewhere. Their big dog, Legion, bounded out of the door, into the street, bit me, turned around and bounded home. In retrospect I think Legion was crazed from the heat. It happened so fast I don't think the Juneaus saw it, or if they did they claimed they didn't. I didn't even have time to react. I just looked down and saw blood spreading on my shorts. I rode my bike into their driveway which meant Mr. Juneau had to stop his car and ask me what I was doing. I pointed to the blood and said, "Your dog just bit me." Mr. Juneau looked at the blood and said, "We're late for an appointment," impatiently waved me out of the way and they drove off.

I pedaled home and my mother went into Mom-action! She wrapped a towel around me, got me into the car and off to the doctor's office we went. The doctor swabbed me with an antiseptic, then put stitches in me to close the bite holes. I might mention the dog bite was right in my butt. It was embarrassing to be face down on the table with my butt in the air while a doctor sewed me and a nurse assisted. I guess a 13-year-old ass wasn't all that new to them, but exposing it was new to me.

Mom was pretty mad about the whole thing. She called someone at County Animal Control (we called it the dog catcher) who said the dog who bit me would have to be kept inside for 10 days to see if it showed signs of rabies. I remember Mom carried that news to the Juneaus herself, so it had no weight of law behind it. They denied their dog had done anything, they didn't keep Legion inside for even one day, he didn't have rabies and I healed up.

My mom was pretty steamed for a long time. It was one of those situations where you don't want to say too much and risk the neighborhood turning against you. The Juneaus were good church members in the local Mormon ward, and we weren't. There was a class division there…they were "good," and we were "bad." I'm sure that class distinction still exists in Salt Lake but I'm way past caring. Nowadays if a dog bite happens, forget about church, someone will probably get sued. I don't remember my folks ever even mentioning the word.

A few weeks later Larry Juneau, his buddies and dog Legion were playing in the street in front of my house and Mom was still mad enough about the incident to go yell at him in front of his friends. She said, among other things, that bite to me had cost her $45 to have stitched up. She indicated with her hand that the bite was in my butt.

Dear, dear Mom…moms mean so well and sometimes do such damage instead. From that time on when I would encounter Larry and his posse in school they'd yell out, "How's that $45 ass?" "How's your $45 ass doing?" "That $45 ass feeling OK today?"

It probably wasn't even that Legion had bit me, or that the neighbors had blown it off and done nothing, but that she had to pay $45 to have my fanny stitched. That was the thinking of my mom at the time. We had no medical insurance and doctors were expensive! Naturally the other kids seized on that as a way of torturing me by adding, literally, insult to injury.

Ciao for now.

The Geezer Discount

On Saturday I visited my local Great Clips and one of the attractive young women gave me a haircut. I don't think a guy has touched my head in about 15 years or so, not since I start going to Great Clips. I did the usual chitchat, just enough mouth movement to make the girl feel like I was paying attention. Some people have the need to talk in a barber chair, but I don't really care.

When I was done I had my checkbook ready. "Is that $12.00?" I asked. "No," she said. "You have the senior discount, so it's $10.00."

I was more or less stunned. What, the senior discount? Me? But I didn't say anything, just wrote the check for $10.00. Hey, $2.00 is $2.00.

A senior discount at Great Clips means 60 years old. When I was in my mid-50s I shopped at a store where 55 was the age for a senior discount. I'd ask for it. My wife wouldn't do it, so I took the purchases to the register. Like the Great Clips discount, saving money is more important than my pride. One day I went to the cash register and said, "I'd like the senior discount, please." The checker said, "Sorry, we had to discontinue that policy."

Like Great Clips, I felt stunned. She continued. "There are getting to be so many old geezers out there that my boss thought we were losing money." What, geezer? Me?

Once again I would like to reiterate to those younger than me: It is not the fault of my generation that baby boomers are everywhere, and that we are all getting to be seniors, of retirement age. It was our parents' fault, see…our dads came home from World War II and they were all really horny. Within a year of the end of the war the babies started to arrive, and we haven't stopped booming yet.

My white beard makes me look older than I am.
And watch that "old geezer" talk, willya? I can call myself an old geezer, but you can't say it to me.

Ciao for now.

Jingo Jerks

Wandering around the Internet I found this ridiculous statement appended to the American flag. This is the descendant of the decals and bumper stickers we used to see during the time of the Vietnam War, "America Love It Or Leave It."

I always wonder about people who create these sorts of images, wondering exactly what is in their minds. Is patriotism standing up in front of a flag and issuing a challenge, "If you don't love FREEDOM then you GET THE HELL OUT." Is it patriotic to kick people out of the country if they don't agree with you? And who doesn't love freedom? But exactly what "freedom" are the people who created this image talking about?

Are they talking about their right to make ridiculous pronouncements and by positioning them next to an American flag give them some sort of credibility? Or is it just a handy symbol to hang onto a threat? Are they talking about the freedom of speech, which means that I can disagree with them? I can tell them when they say things like this I think they're stupid?

I wonder what people in other countries think when they see this sort of provincialism on the part of Americans, or are they used to our arrogance and our "we're the only people that matter" attitude toward the rest of the world's population? Have you ever seen a bumper strip that says anything like this originating in Great Britain or even Botswana? I'm sure their citizens feel every bit as patriotic about their countries but they don't go about making total asses of themselves like some folks in our country do.

"If you don't love freedom, then get the hell out of the U.S.A.!" isn't patriotic. It's idiotic. It isn't thinking, it's just a jerk and his knee, and it's jingoism in its rawest form.

*******

Wednesday, March 21, MSNBC aired a special called War Zone Diary from correspondent Richard Engel, who's been in Baghdad for four years. He's paid a high cost for being there. I thought the documentary was fascinating. It shows what our President and his buddies have wrought in our names. There are some scenes that aren't for the squeamish, but it's important to see how ugly this war has been since the beginning, and just how much uglier it gets all the time.

War Zone Diary

Ciao for now

Other Peoples' Families

Click on pictures for full-size images.

I ran into this picture on the Internet so, like any good Internet "appropriator" I took it. (We don't want to say "thief," because after all, it's just out there for the taking, isn't it? Like peaches on your neighbor's tree. You can take them because the branch is hanging over the fence into your yard.) For some reason I love pictures of other peoples' families. I like to look at them and try to figure out the approximate dates based on clothes and hairstyles. I like to think of what the people were doing when the picture was being taken.

This picture says it was taken "probably at Skegness," which is a seaside resort in Great Britain. I love Grandfather in the center. What a classic-looking granddad! Like Paul McCartney's "clean old man" granddad, Wilfred Brambell in A Hard Day's Night. Hard to tell the date, but maybe early 1960s?

The other picture below is of my friend Dave and his family, taken in Sacramento about 1959 or '60, if I'm good at guessing based on fashion. Dave is the youngest one. I love his dad's tie and the glasses on his mom. I love the clip-on ties and the way all three boys show their mom's hand in the way their hair is combed with the same upsweep in front. These are definite mom-combjobs. No boy would wear his hair like this voluntarily. I'm sure as soon as they got out of their suits and raced around the yard a few times the hair didn't look that neat.I bring this up because there are no pictures of my family all together. There were individual pictures of us all, or maybe two or three together, but there was never a formal portrait and never a picture of the four of us. I remember lots of pictures of us individually I wish I had now, but the only place they could have been would have been at my mother's apartment, and when I cleaned it out in 2004 after moving her into a nursing home there were no pictures. You take this stuff for granted--or at least we did--and then it's gone.

******

My friend Eddie's blog Chicken Fat has a nice segment for March 18 about a favorite barbecue restaurant that closed.

Years ago Eddie and I had a discussion on restaurants. He said when a restaurant got fancy décor and added ferns it was no good. I told him about a barbecue restaurant we had called Bubba's. I wish I had a picture of Bubba's. It had an airplane on the roof, which was made to look as if it had crashed into the building. It was set at a 45º angle. Part of one wing and the pilot's compartment of the small plane had been sawed off, and driving up on it the first time was startling. On the inside the restaurant was set up with long wooden tables with benches. You sat Army-style, either by or across from strangers. And there were no ferns. Eddie said, "Any restaurant called Bubba's with an airplane on the roof has got to be good!" It didn't last long. The county came along and said, "You can't put an airplane on the roof." Killjoys. So Bubba took off the airplane and it wasn't long before the restaurant closed. It opened later as The Firehouse, and we ate there once. It was OK, but unmemorable. I never went back. They closed their doors, too. Now the restaurant has stood empty for years, the lot around it getting more weedy and seedy looking.

Sally and I also ate a few times at a strip mall restaurant called Tio's. It was just six or seven tables set against a wall in a skinny building. It was great Mexican food, but it also didn't last long. It turned into a Chinese restaurant and I lost interest. Eddie's law was in effect: Tio's had no ferns, the Chinese restaurant did.

After Tio's closed we found a Mexican restaurant on South State Street in Salt Lake County. I won't say the name because they are still there. When we went in we noticed we were the only gringos and I thought, great! This food has got to be authentic. We had good Mexican food at reasonable prices and drank Corona beers with lime. About the third time we went into the restaurant we noticed more Anglos in there and when I bit into the complimentary chips I felt the top of my head lift off. They were coated with cayenne pepper, and the whole meal was hot like that. I couldn't eat it, but rather than complain we just left. My paranoia was full-blown, thinking, "They did that because we're not Mexicans. They were trying to chase us off." I have no way of knowing if that was true or not. I mean, why would anyone chase away customers. It doesn't make any sense, but then paranoia makes you think things like that.

Ciao for now.

Pictures Don't Lie

When I complained about a backache the other day my boss told me I was "getting old." I have a pretty low opinion of my boss, anyway, and that really set my teeth--or what's left of them--on edge. Thinking about it, though, he was right. I'm getting old, he's getting old, and unless something happens to interrupt us, we'll all get old. Still, it's hard to accept the inexorable fact of aging. The mirror won't necessarily tell you because the process is gradual and we are in denial. Photos will tell you. Photos are the proof.

My friend Dave Miller went to WonderCon in Oakland last month armed with his camera. He took some pictures of celebrities who were there pitching products, and a couple of them especially caught my eye.

Noel Neill was there selling her biography. Noel was Lois Lane in the old Superman TV series. Phyllis Coates played Lois in the first season, and from then on Noel was Lois. Before I saw this picture of Noel Neill, now in her mid-eighties, I thought of her as the dark-haired, professionally dressed reporter in the series.* What I see in this picture is a smiling octogenarian, looking sharp but casual--check out the Superman t-shirt under her smart jacket!--her hair white and on her shoulders. This is a pleasing photo to me. She looks healthy and looks happy. It's a big leap from her image of 50 years ago to now, but it seems she has aged well. When I see someone like that it gives me hope for the future.

I'm sure lots of young and hormonal fanboys went to WonderCon to see Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark, only to find her alter ego, Cassandra Peterson. Elvira is a campy, vampy creation of this talented actress. Elvira has been around for about 25 years, which qualifies her as aging, I suppose. I find this picture of Cassandra, next to the image of her as the sexy Elvira, really telling. As stupid men, driven by hormones to wild fantasies--I call it "testostomoronic"--we want someone like Elvira to exist in real life. We want a woman whose breasts are bulging out of her dress, toddling in high heels with her butt in the air. We don’t find that, though, because women like that, like Elvira, are just in our imagination. Elvira is a parody not just of the horror movie clichés of the female vampire, but of the artificial woman that men worship.

I'm just as testostomoronic as all the other guys. I love sexy Elvira. I can't imagine going on a date with her, though. Can you see yourself sitting across from Elvira in a nice restaurant, trying to read the menu and ogle her boobs at the same time? How about taking her to a movie? Her beehive hair would block the view of the guy behind her. Elvira would be a date to remember.

Vampires don't age, and Cassandra, who is only two years younger than me (grizzled photo on top), seems to be doing pretty well in that department, herself.

Ciao for now.

*Has anyone ever noted that Noel may have been a role-model for girls of my generation? In those days most women stayed home and raised their children while their husbands went off to work. Lois Lane was a "career woman." How many young girls saw her and said, "I want to do that."

Blending In

A week ago Sally and I were driving home. We stopped at Sears so I could have my eyeglasses tightened. I didn't plan on doing anything but run up to the second floor, get someone to tighten the glasses--for no charge--and be on my way.

Sally has never gone into a store without looking around. Unlike men, women will look around, window shop. A guy might run into a store, go straight for whatever it is he's looking for, bread, milk, condoms, buy them and rush right out. Women never do that. They dawdle. They do not consider time spent in stores as time off their lives.

So I got my glasses tightened; the whole process took about two minutes from beginning to end. Sally said, "I need to look at mattresses." Look at mattresses we did, but on our way to the mattresses we went through housewares. Her eye was caught by a bright red blender with a brushed steel base. She said, "Oh look! That blender matches our toaster and coffeemaker." Sure enough, it did. But we already have a blender, a very fine blender that works really well. Unfortunately, it is white and doesn't match the other things on the counter, specifically the toaster and coffeemaker. So we ended up paying $30 for a blender to replace an otherwise working blender. We didn't buy the mattress, thank god, but that trip to have my eyeglasses tightened for free ended up costing me $30. Somewhere in some retail afterlife Mr. Sears and Mr. Roebuck slapped a high five.

*******

Yesterday I arrived at one of the high schools on my route only to find a FedEx Ground truck in my usual spot. I pulled around him and parked and as I walked around FedEx the driver, a young guy in his twenties, called me over. "Can you help me? I've rolled my ankle and I've got this load to take into the school. I'm having a helluva time." Well, despite my usual inclination to avert my eyes and run fast to avoid having to help someone--and I hope you know that's a joke, heh-heh--I pitched in. The driver had a big ice bag strapped to his ankle and he was hobbling. The load he had was three boxes of unassembled furniture, each weighing about 100 pounds. I'm aware that FedEx and UPS drivers can have packages weighing up to 150 pounds.

I helped him get the load on his cart and was talking with him as we pulled it toward the school door. I figured I was roughly 35 years older than him. I told him when I got my job the job description said, "Able to lift 100 pounds." I said in all my 30+ years with the school district I've never had to lift anything close to 100 pounds, and even if I'd been able to do it when I signed on at age 29, I know I couldn't do it now. He looked at me and said, "Well, hey, you look in great shape for a guy your age."

At that my head got so big I couldn't get it through the door, so I called the school office on my cell phone and told them to send a custodian to help this fine, hard-working, astute, intelligent, observant but injured young man at their front door.

Ciao for now.

The Beatles Go To Smithereens

My son gave me a copy of the Smithereens tribute to the Beatles, Meet The Smithereens. I am so far behind on music I depend on him to tell me if there's anything out there I might be interested in. The CD has been out since January, but I just found out about it when he handed it to me.

I listened to it with interest but also some skepticism. I hadn't heard the album, Meet The Beatles in a few years, but I heard it so many times in years past it's as familiar as my mother's voice. I've loved it, but over time and as the Beatles evolved I thought of it as a freshman effort.

The Smithereens have done a fine homage. They have kept the original arrangements, even down to the "One…two…three…four!" count at the beginning of "I Saw Her Standing There." But they haven't tried to imitate the voices. The voices of individual members of the Smithereens have much the same qualities as the Beatles, so the vocals are handled very well, they just aren't the Beatles.

When Gus Van Sant remade Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho with Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche in the leads, and then promoted it as being "scene-for-scene" the same as the original I'm sure other people were like me, thinking what's the point? How do you improve on a movie like the original Psycho? I saw the remake and didn't think it added anything to the original, but it didn't really detract, either. So it is with the Smithereens and their versions of the Beatles tunes from Meet The Beatles. The Smithereens are very, very good at what they do, but why wouldn't they be? The band was formed in 1980, 27 years ago. None of the Beatles were even 27 years old when they recorded the songs that came out in record form in the U.S. as Meet The Beatles. The Smithereens also have the advantage of using the original arrangements, all tried-and-true. When George Martin and the Beatles made these songs the five of them were flying by the seats of their pants. No one knew that those songs, with those arrangements, would still sound fresh over 40 years later.

I remember in 1964 how many Beatles "fake" albums showed up in the bargain bins at drug stores; crude copies of the Beatles songs sung and played by studio singers and musicians, trying to get even a piece of that Beatles action at the cash register. Nowadays those records are collectible, but in those days I wouldn't go close to them. The Smithereens haven't done what those johnny-come-latelies did, just put out crap hoping to fool the unwary. They did these songs for the love of the originals and their enthusiasm for them comes through on the CD. But, like the scene-for-scene re-creation of Psycho you have to wonder what they have added to the songs, and why we should listen to the Smithereens note-for-note versions rather than just listen to a CD, or even better, the 12" vinyl, of the original Beatles.

Grade A Milquetoast

H. T. Webster was a cartoonist who was very popular in his day, earning a rare--for a cartoonist--Time Magazine cover in November, 1945. Sadly, he's nearly forgotten now.Well, forgotten except for us people who think that cartoonists are very special people with very special talent. Webster had that. He created daily panels with titles like "How To Torture Your Husband," or "How to Torture Your Wife." He also created "The Thrill That Comes Once In A Lifetime" and "Boyhood Ambitions." He's the only cartoonist I know who mined the subject of card playing with "Poker Portraits" and "Bridge Portraits." Webster's most famous panel was "The Timid Soul," which introduced the world to Caspar Milquetoast, entering a name into the English language synonymous with the unmanly men who are easily frightened or lack self-confidence. It had origins that went further back, with the word milksop, meaning much the same thing.

When I was a kid I used to hear that a lot from my mom as she'd exhort me into some activity: "Don't be like Caspar Milquetoast." My grandmother used the name a lot, too, but she pronounced it "Milkytoast," which was her way of trying to make sense of the variant spelling of milk.

When Webster died in 1952 his creations lasted a while longer until his assistant also died. At that point a book, The Best of H. T. Webster, was published. It must've sold in high numbers because it isn't an uncommon book to find. I found a first edition for $2.00 in a thrift store, and I've found several copies in used book stores.

It also isn't too surprising that Webster, despite his popularity for 40 years in the first half of the century, isn't known now. Styles change, but Webster's didn't. When he died he was still drawing in the same style as cartoonists of the World War I and 1920's era. He had a vibrant pen line, done with a flexible nib, and it appears his panels are loosely penciled to give them a very spontaneous look. Nowadays panels and comic strips have shrunk in size until it isn't even necessary to draw well. As a matter of fact, it's a plus to look like a cartoonist can't draw. Witness Scott Adams' Dilbert. Webster drew very well, but in his day panels had the room to show off great drawing.

I could go out on a limb and say that 99% of the cartoonists published today will be unread and unheard of 50 years from now. That goes for Scott Adams, Gary Larson, and Dan Piraro. They have each created niches for themselves with fans, but their work seems too much tied to their own times and like Webster's and many others of his generation it will fade into obscurity. About the only cartoonist who won't is Charles Schulz. He's been dead for seven years now and his work is as popular as ever. The syndicate need only run about the last 25 years of his output (out of the 50 he did the strip) and they can run that forever, picking up new fans along the way. But Schulz was the exception. Webster is admired by fans of cartooning but unknown by today's general public. Schulz is admired by fans of cartooning and the general public and the "Peanuts" franchise will still be around in 50 years.

Here are two panels of Webster's "Timid Soul" I really like, which seem to capture the exact thing about Caspar Milquetoast that made him so popular in his day. Click on pictures for full-size images.
The second panel, Caspar in the rain, is partially repeated above so you can see Webster's excellent but speedy pen line. His vision of a rainy day is perfectly captured with just a few simple pen-and-ink techniques.Today a person like Caspar would be known as a doormat, but I prefer the name Milquetoast. It just has that special quality to it that perfectly captures what I want to say when I use it.

Ciao for now.

Tired, But Not Retired

Sadly, this March 8 "Close To Home" panel is close to home for me. Right now the only way I'll be able to retire is if I die of other causes before I starve to death on my paltry pension.

This has been a cranky week for me. I feel like this great cartoon by Phil Interlandi:

More Oddball Odds 'n' Ends

More oddball stuff I've collected from the internet over the past few years. Click on pictures for full-size images.

• Women like to look good for a night out, so these chic Ku Klux Klan gals are all decked out for an evening of cross burning or lynching in their best KKK finery, circa 1922. Didn't we see something like this feminine attire when we invaded Afghanistan in 2001?

• Lisa Nowak, the astronaut who tried to get rid of her boyfriend's lover, is back in the news this week. The controversy, repeated on CNN by Nastyface Nancy Grace, is that she wasn't charged with attempted murder because she's an astronaut (correction, ex-astronaut, since I doubt she'll be feeling weightless again anytime soon). The folks who put out the magazine True Space Secrets in 1958 prophetically had some of this covered almost 50 years ago when they ran an article called, "What The Medics Say About Sex in Space!"
• Speaking of sex…gay cowboys? Princesses waiting to be queens? Is this about Brokeback Mountain? No, it's a 1955 book from the famous Landmark Books series for young readers on cattle drives from Texas. I admit when I read that first paragraph my curiosity was piqued. Just another example of how language changes and over time how words take on new meanings.

• And sex raises its head (heh-heh-heh…I said "head") again with this cover of an old 1950's love comic book. Whew. I'll bet the little girls reading this book got a delicious thrill when they saw this cover. I'll bet the guys who saw it got a vicarious thrill, too!

Ciao for now.

Oddball Odds 'n' Ends

Here are a collection of oddball pictures I've downloaded from various places on the internet. I don't remember where I got most of them, nor the exact reason I wanted to save them. Let's just say that I have a strange sense of humor. Click on the pictures for full-size images.

• Would you want a shave from a guy with a bush like this growing on his face?

• Does anyone remember Julie London, the sultry singer? The last time I saw her was on the '70s show, Emergency, where she played a nurse, Dixie. Her real-life husband was Bobby Troup, who played a doctor on the show. Troup was most famous for writing the song, "Route 66," a staple of jazz and rock bands for decades. This 1955 EP jacket of London, and her terrific cleavage, reminds me of an old joke. A guy picks up his blind date at her house. She's stacked, and is wearing a low-cut strapless dress. The guy says to her, "That’s quite a dress! What's holding it up?" She replies, "Play your cards right tonight and you'll find out."

• You can find these darling little Ku Klux Klansmen figures at a KKK website. They make a "great gift," the site claims. Indeed! You can get one with lights, or one without.

• This young woman loves her trophy. Absolutely loves it! I wouldn't doubt she takes it to bed with her.

• Finally, this is one of those you are so screwed moments.