My Big Fat Grease Musical

Notes on foods sharing names with countries:

·         Turkey – See the post last Thanksgiving. We’ve covered this.

·         Chile – I almost purchased a can of Wolf Chili at Kroger recently. I think Wolf is the brand name, but it may be made from wolf.  The lighting was bad and I could not read the ingredients. And what’s with expiration dates being so hard to read? Old people can’t read those. Regardless, I’m open to new meats.

·         Greece – French fries were invented in Greece. I’m guessing they ate them at the Parthenon. And don’t forget the musical Greece. I’m kidding of course. That musical is called Grease. But what if they remade the musical Grease in ancient Greece and the people all wore togas and stuff? And they could maybe change the lead’s name to Olympia Newton John.

I think actress Grace (sounds like Greece) Kelly lived in Greece, now that I think about it. Somewhere over there. She married that prince dude. She was from a different era, but had she been from this era, she woulda never married Harry...

 

Big League Chew

Hey, pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training in a couple of weeks. I still have my baseball cards from my youth. All of ‘em. Mine were all made by Topps. Some of the cards have some value, but I’m not going to get rich off ‘em. I, like most, did not keep the gum that came with the cards. In hindsight, it’s so weird if you think about it that you got that skinny piece of gum with your cards, don’t you think? Everybody pooh-poohs the quality of that Topps gum but I’m here to tell you that the gum was not horrible. Yes, it was hard, and it might take you a block or two walking to work it into a chewable wad, but the flavor was decent I thought.

There’s never been a good baseball card movie, but if one is made, it needs to star Tom Cruise. It would simply be called Topp(s) Gum. Chew on that for a while. And don’t think I can’t write a script, Tom…  

 

Mr. Manners

Here’s a list of phrases to remove from conversations in 2023:

1.       “That’s a cute picture!” No. Your use of this phrase could be interpreted as “That person’s not cute in real life, but that’s a cute picture”. A better phrase would be, “She’s really cute!”

2.       “Here’s what I think he’s trying to say.” Huh-uh. Sounds arrogant. Let the person speak for themself.*

3.       “You’re thinking of…” Never use this phrase. It comes across as arrogant. A better phrase would be to ask, “Are you perhaps thing of…?”

4.       “I read Harry’s book.”**

*An exception of #2 would be pets. Some people have that innate ability to listen to pets. 

** Exceptions to #4 would be Harry Potter and Harry S. Truman. Not sure if Dirty Harry was ever a book. 

 

Nova News is Good News

Tonight’s “In the News” segment covers the spotted leopard named Nova who escaped her confines at the Dallas zoo last week. Fortunately Nova has been caught and returned unharmed. Actually she was found on the zoo property. She, like us, apparently wanted to see the animals at the zoo. Imagine that! Probably wanted to ride the train. I didn’t hear, but I bet whoever caught her put out a warm saucer of milk – cats like warm saucers of milk.

They plastered pictures of the leopard all over the internet. I’m sure that really helped the locals who were looking for the animal and wondering, “Now exactly which leopard am I looking for?”

 

Damaged Goods

Do you ever read book reviews on Amazon and see the one star-two word review from the angry guy who only writes, “Arrived damaged.” Well, I’m kind of tired of that guy. That’s a review of Amazon, not a review of the book. Is that ever an indicator of future events? Has anybody ever not ordered a book because this guy’s book "arrived damaged? “Don’t order that new book by Prince Harry hon; I hear it arrives damaged.”

You can’t tell me that a good percentage of these “arrived damaged” types don’t get the book, read it, damage it themselves(!) and then send it back and get a refund. You know they’re doing it. But to make it look real, they write the review saying the book “arrived damaged”.

One of these days they’ll get caught and some judge will throw the book at ‘em.

 

Digit Fidget

I was in a line at the bank recently, and the teller asked the guy in front of me (a little too loudly) for the last four of his social security number. The guy responded, “6-37-5” (number changed for privacy obviously). Wait. What? Nobody EVER states a four digit number that way. Nobody. You might combine the first two and the last two (“63-75”). We call this the 2-2. But nobody, I mean nobody, does the 1-2-1.  Or the 3-1 or 1-3, for that matter.

Speaking of numbers, remember when they had to add new area codes ‘cause all the phone #’s were used up? C’mon. Prior to that we all had had nice tidy 7 digit phone #’s. With 7 digits, you get 9,999,999 combinations of numbers by my count, right? There’s no way that there are that many phone #’s in my area code. Regardless, now we all have to dial the area code when we make a call. Ten digits instead of seven.

I’m running a blog here. I don’t have time for that.