+

Rants February 24, 2013

+

1. Have you been watching the news? Nowadays, couples living in a home in which shots have not been fired are considered to have a good marriage.

+

2. You might have seen that Morning TV show where people got injections to remove the wrinkles around their eyes. I didn’t know about this procedure although I was aware that old women could have wrinkles removed by surgery. You can usually tell who these women are because after two or three of these operations their skin is stretched out like a silk stocking filled with softballs and you get the impression that they must sleep with their eyes open. It is also no secret that there is a great market for a pill that takes the wrinkles out of something else. One of the great tragedies in life is that young people do not think about impending wrinkles. And, of course, it might be 40 or 50 years before kids realize that the old man knew what he was talking about and that, had they listened, they could have been spared a bit of grief. This is too bad because young people are the only people who are in a position to do something about wrinkles. Hey kids. If you don’t want wrinkles --- on any part of your body --- 30, 40 or 50 years from now, don’t smoke, stay out of the sun and never, ever be foolish enough to get in a tanning booth.

+

3. You might have read that 5 people were accidentally shot at gun shows over a recent weekend. Because the people who attend these shows tell us over and over that they know all there is to know about guns, one cannot help but wonder if the shootings really were accidental. Keeping this in mind, some people from way down east believe that Maine high schools can easily find a place in the core curriculum for gun classes. Any teacher of American history will quickly tell you that a class on Stockpile Management And The Control of Small Arms would fit in very neatly between Football and Testing.

+

4. Barefoot once again in the park, dear friend. Do you remember that old news clip of Katie Couric interviewing the politician? He looked down at her and mentioned that she wasn’t wearing shoes. She had kicked them off because they were impossible to run in and weren’t fit to walk in and because they crushed her feet into an unnatural position they weren’t even fit to wear while sitting down. Anyway, Katie had run to get this interview that she wanted and she could never have caught her subjects had she not kicked off her hideous looking pointy-toed high heeled shoes. I can’t think of an ill-fitting anything that would cause me pain that I am expected to wear in the name of fashion. Please remember that I can slack off my belt. So who says that women can’t wear sneakers to state dinners? Who says that women have to cram ten pounds of foot into a five pound shoe? Is there a law on the books that says they must do it or do women cheerfully inflict this pain and discomfort upon themselves? When women are referred to as the Weaker Sex, is it a commentary on their minds? Is it possible that in countries where women must keep their faces covered or cannot go to school, that there are many women who feel bad for their American counterparts who are forced by men to wear high heel shoes?

+

5. There are people in America today who might have watched with amusement the folks on the cruise ship who went for days without good food or toilet facilities. Because --- a week on that cruise ship would have been a walk in the park to the few folks who, 70 years ago, survived a long train ride in a European country where same sex marriage and unions were both banned.

+

6. You’ve heard of dentists who could look at fillings and recognize the work of a former professor. And there are literary scholars who can read several chapters in a book and tell you from the style who wrote it. Art. Paintings? They say that some people can look at a painting and just from the brush work tell you who did it. And then there are things that ordinary people --- you and I can do. Did you ever hear Tony Bennett singing Just the Way you Look Tonight? Of course the first thing that comes into your head when you hear it is, Ah, bridge goes up a minor third. Must be Jerome Kern.

+

7. You might recall hearing me say that I have read the first and last two chapters of the Da Vinci Code. Whenever I read a book I always first read the first chapter and the last two chapters. Reading the first chapter tells me who the book is about and reading the last two chapters tells me if he or she is still going to be standing at the end. If the book doesn’t have a happy ending, I’m not going to waste my time reading it. I like books and movies that make me laugh. I am dependent upon movie subtitles and even though I didn’t understand most of what they were saying, because I like to laugh, the other night I once again watched Thank You for Smoking. If I want to be depressed I can look in an old diary and see what I was doing 50 years ago today or watch the evening news. I am now half a dozen pages deeper into the Da Vinci Code, and am not comforted. I get the impression that the author is talking down to me when he patiently explains that the Jardins des Tuileris has nothing to do with tulips. A week or two ago I mentioned the Louvre and Vigeland on this show, but --- because I know you, I did not need to say The Louvre --- in Paris and Vigeland --- in Oslo. It would have been like slapping your face. Also, although we read how much research had been put into this book to obtain accuracy, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read, in The Da Vinci Code, that Art Buchwald boasted that he had seen the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory in five minutes and fifty six seconds. Argh. I almost cried. You know that this is not true. As everyone knows, Art Buchwald wrote that an American tourist, Peter Stone, saw all three in five minutes and fifty six seconds. You will recall that Peter Stone was the American tourist who once studied the Winged Victory for an hour and then said, “It will never fly.” Now. You might ask yourself, how can Robert Skoglund, who cannot remember the names or faces of his friends --- Robert Skoglund who can’t remember to hang out the wash --- Robert Skoglund who puts a plate of food in the microwave at noon and forgets to eat it until his wife finds it in there 5 hours later --- How can this man with the intellectual prowess of a zombie critique a book that has sold 40 million copies? Here he is --- pretending to have an archeologist’s knowledge of the Jardins des Tuileris. And how could he know that Art Buchwald never boasted of a Six Minute Louvre? Es mye sincio. Ecutay. May I explain? You might remember my mentioning that one evening, during a quiz at a grange meeting, my brother knew how many million sheep were in Australia. And afterwards, when I asked him how he knew how many sheep were in Australia, he said that Mr. Moberg had mentioned it in a geography class down at Gorham Normal School. And I allowed as how that was nice, but how in the world could he remember it for over 45 years? And my brother straightened his shoulders, and he looked me in the eye, and he simply said, “How could you forget anything that Moberg said?” May I, with slouched shoulders, study my shoes as I advance the same argument? “How could you forget anything that Art Buchwald wrote?”

+

8. While looking through Dateline’s webpage, this is what I read. I quote without permission: “The earliest known ancestors of modern humans might have reproduced with early chimpanzees to create a hybrid species, a new genetic analysis suggests. …Scientists can't say how long the hybridization carried on, but the final speciation occurred around 5.3 million years ago, possibly because the two species' genetic codes were too different to mix, or because the animals were simply physically unappealing to each other.” Wow. Would this not also substantiate the hypothesis that they didn’t have alcohol back then?

+

9. If you have friends or relatives in Europe you know that they all do it to you. You can email them in the best German or Spanish that you can muster, and the next day you’ll get an email back in German or Spanish. And on the bottom will be one last sentence where they shifted over to English to say: “If you can’t understand my German, I’ll write in English instead.” Even though our ability to communicate with them in their language breaks the American stereotype, that stereotype is so strong they suspect we must be doing it with mirrors. Have we brought this on ourselves? Have you found that in Europe Americans are not famous for their prowess in the humanities? Noam Chomsky is probably the only person in this country who can still remember which despotic governments and which guerilla groups we were funding to over throw democratic governments as recently as 30 or 40 years ago. Don’t expect to see anything more recent than the American Revolution taught in your local school because reading about the countries we have invaded is embarrassing and the sooner we forget it, the better. And while most any European kid might grow up learning 4 or 5 languages, the business community in this country pushes for a curriculum where graduates will unthinkingly obey any order and then stand behind a checkout counter in a big box store and make correct change (for no more than 22 or so hours a week so they won’t have to get benefits). But I was talking about the shock Europeans get when they encounter an American able to exchange even a few common phrases in their language. It might remind a European of Samuel Johnson’s comment that “a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

+

10. Do you remember seeing that Dateline program where they filmed 50 year old men showing up at a house, ostensibly to keep a date they’d made on line with a 12 year old girl? We are talking first class reality TV here that puts Cops to shame, and if you can’t feign an interest in seeing a naked man walking into a house with a box of cool whip in his hand, I strongly suggest that for the good of your kids and the other children in your community that you at least read about this show so you can meet some of the fellows your kids are chatting with on line. Perhaps you can also go to your computer right now and still watch this show on Dateline’s webpage. I’m 77 years old. I have been in the Coast Guard and I have four years of grad school. I have walked darkened back streets in Rome, Athens, Amsterdam, Paris, Bucharest, Casablanca and Boston. I can still vividly remember the hazards of hitchhiking over 50 years ago when I’d actually have to fight off men, who obviously trolled the roads for hitchhiking sailors. They tried to paw me and whined and cried and begged me for what they promised would be a wonderful experience. But this Dateline show made it clear that I ain’t never seen nothing and I don’t know nothing. There is another world out there now that old folks can’t even imagine, and we owe it to our kids to start catching up. When you saw the cops on Dateline grab 20 men, some of whom showed up at 4 in the morning to keep dates with 12 year old girls, you must have realized that you would have to multiply this one operation by every town and city in the world to understand the extent of the problem. Listen to what I turned up on Google. “During the Fort Myers sting, more than 100 men contacted expressed interest and fit the profile of an adult sex predator, and some even posed as children themselves Perverted Justice officials said. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 50,000 sexual predators are online at any time, and between 500,000 and 750,000 are online each day.” We are talking on line numbers here, so the predators don’t even need to be in your state: you can’t escape by being rural. You can see that there is a problem here. I don’t have an answer. But if I had children I would take a very close look at what they were doing on line.

+

11. Have you ever seen men whom you might think have nothing going for them who are married to attractive, intelligent, industrious women? If you asked whatever got them together in the first place, she might say, “He makes me laugh.” Unfortunately for many men, they run out of material. Movies, books and plays have been written about wives who are still able to evoke a painful smile the 38th time they hear their husband tell one of his shopworn stories. My hat goes off to any woman who can laugh at her husband’s old jokes, and any husband who can come up with quality new material has my admiration. You know that I am not one to boast or brag, but I have the ability to make my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, laugh any time, any place. And I am not talking here about a chuckle but a wholesome, honest laugh that would make Jack Benny proud. To employ the vernacular --- I can crack her up. You know I have no secrets from you and you know that I am now going to tell you how I do it. Any man is welcome to follow my example, as long as he uses his own wife and chalks up a mental thanks to me each time. Ready to write this down? I gently seize Marsha by the shoulders, I gaze deeply and lovingly into her eyes, and then, having captured her attention as it were, I say with a deep and mellifluous voice, “My dear, please remember that I am the boss in this house.”

+