The First Norelco

I love to travel. You learn so much. I saw my first holiday billboard for an attorney while traveling last week. The sign just said “Fa la la la Law” or something. Harmless, I suppose. Maybe one of the wise men was an attorney…

My favorite Christmas commercial on TV was the Norelco commercial where Santa rides the Norelco shaver down the slope. He hits a mogul and goes flying and comes down right in front of the lodge. At the end of the commercial they showed the name of the company, but they replaced the ”R” with a snowflake, so it became “No*elco”. It was a clever touch. People dug it. That commercial aired for like 20 years.

The most amazing thing about that commercial is that they selected Santa as the guy to represent their company, to represent their shaver. Yet, ironically, Santa never shaved – at least not that we know of. I wonder how hard it was to convince Santa to do the commercial. I bet him shaving his beard was part of the original script and he negotiated that out…

All the Trim(mings)

I went to the barber today for my Thanksgiving haircut. It’s a one chair shop. The guy ahead of me talked on and on about how his family got their Thanksgiving meal last year from Bob Evans and how terrible it was.  He said the meat was “just sliced cold cuts” and that the dressing was “inedible mush” (not the more edible Bob Evans corn mush I mentioned on this blog (3/16/25)). They had given up on Bob Evans and were getting their food somewhere else this year.

When it was my turn in the chair the barber asked me what we were doing for Thanksgiving. I told him we were having family over. I asked him what they were doing and he said they were getting food from Bob Evans. Well, talk about putting a damper on the conversation! It didn’t seem to affect my haircut but it was awkward.  When I left I gave him a half-hearted “Have a nice Thanksgiving”.

So, do I bring this up at my next haircut? I’m afraid to ask him what he’s doing for Christmas…

Wizards

When I was a kid the Baltimore Bullets were a good basketball team. Wesley Unseld, Gus Johnson, Jack Marin, Kevin Loughery. Oh, and Earl “The Pearl” Monroe. I wanted to play like Earl Monroe. I was disappointed when we read Steinbeck’s “The Pearl” in 7^th grade and found out it had nothing to do with basketball. Well, eventually the Bullets moved to DC and became the Washington Bullets. Then the NBA decided they wanted a less violent nickname for the team so they became the Washington Wizards.

The rest of the world needs to fall in line with appropriate name changes:

•                 “Wizards Over Broadway” – Woody Allen needs to change his movie title.
•           “Wizard” – Frank Bullit becomes Frank Wizard in the Steve McQueen classic
•            “Number One with a Wizard” – Yeah
•            “Red Wiz” Energy Drink – OK, we need to re-visit that one…
•           “Wizard Proof Vest” – Uh-huh
•           “Wizard Points” in a blog post – Uh-oh. You caught me…

We need to replace the black dots with little wizards. Anybody got a phone # for Microsoft?

Livernois

 

Last Tuesday I was in an important meeting with two other people at about 11:20 when my stomach started making that hungry gurgling noise. I call it livernois. I was on one side of the table and the other people were on the other side. So, like, what do you do in that situation? Here are the options:

1.           Acknowledge it, say it’s you. This can lead to a premature end to your meeting. They’ll think you’re hungry.
2. Invite them to lunch. This can also lead to a premature end to your meeting.
3. Try to flip the sound to them. Ask them if they’re OK.  It’s pretty challenging, but the higher the number of people in the meeting, the higher chance the potential the sound can be deflected.
4. Look behind you to non-verbally cast the blame on something behind you, perhaps a printer or something outside the window (“Those pesky squirrels are bad this year!”). If allowed to choose your seat, always pick the seat near the window for this purpose.

But the ultimate response in this situation is to check your phone immediately after each gurgle. This tells the other people in the room that your ring tone is on the “gurgle setting”.  This is guaranteed to work. You can thank me later. Maybe buy me lunch.

New York Jett

I saw Joan Jett perform once. Well, sorta. She was in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. But I was there in person. After 950 posts, you loyal readers thought you knew everything about me, didn’t you?

But yeah, Joan’s name came up recently. We were talking about hockey, and somebody wondered why the Chicago team is still allowed to be called the Black Hawks. It would take more than this humble blog to sort that all out. But I mentioned that, as far as I knew, Joan Jett’s band was still called the Black Hawks.  Well, despite having seen Joan perform, I was wrong. Her band of course is called The Black Hearts.

I, like many, associate Black Hearts with Black Lung Disease.  Not sure why anyone would name their band after something like that. Maybe the Black Hawks get to keep their name ‘cause it’s less offensive than Black Hearts…

Delay of Game

My wife and I have identical clock radios on each side of our bed. Today, after being out of town for 3 days, her clock was an hour behind mine. Hers had automatically changed with the time change while mine did not. I have no idea why. It had always changed automatically on the correct day prior to this.  I checked the date and the AM PM on the clock. It was all correct. I checked the AM FM thing as well although that probably was overkill…

So yeah, I’m on edge. I don’t know if or when the clock will automatically fall back an hour. Will it fall back on another Sunday morning? Or will it fall back on a week day? Will it fall back on an afternoon? Will it fall back more than once? Will it fall back at some increment less than an hour? Like I said, I’m on edge.

On the bright side, this whole episode has provided me with yet another excuse for being late. “Yeah, my clock turned back again on the wrong day.” I can’t wait to try this out.