1018 Remembering Mike McGrady

1018 Remembering Mike McGrady

Mike McGrady used to like to quote me.  I never could figure out why, because I never had much to say, didn’t say it all that well and was a relative kid and worked in radio, which at the time, most newspapermen deplored as superficial and sensationalist.

Mike was the Newsday columnist, creator of one of the great literary hoaxes of the last 50 years and a fairly conflicted guy.  But he was also a brilliant writer, perceptive observer and a quiet hellion.

His best known work was a parody compilation called “Naked Came the Stranger,” which was the story of a nymphomaniac woman from Long Island and her exploits with half the neighborhood.  Each chapter was written by a different Newsday reporter, editor or writer, with McGrady putting the whole thing together along with Harvey Aronson also of Newsday.   

It was a best seller.  It still is more than 40 years later.  Mike’s other books didn’t do as well.  There was one about how he became a house husband.  Neither the book nor the job lasted long.  And there were two books about Linda Lovlace, star of the porn movie “Deep Throat,” and the troubling life she had before, during and after her swing at stardom.

Mike went from columnist to food critic for the paper.  As such, he put on colossal weight.  And the accompanying brown bottle didn’t help.  He also put on some financial weight that some say came from writing good reviews -- or bad ones about someone’s competitor.  Didn’t happen.  But once that was in the air, Mike was washed up as a restaurant critic.  Didn’t exactly help that everyone knew what he looked like, either.  Can’t do much anonymous dining like that.

We saw eye to eye on a lot of important issues.  The fight for birth control rights, civil rights, opposition to the Viet Nam war, the gross stupidity and corruption of local officials.  And we traded notes.

Then one day, he vanished.  Gone.  No one knew where.  Well, almost no one.  He ended up in  Lilliwaup, Washington.  Huh? Where?  Strange place for a New Yorker and with a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard.
When Newsday finally got around to writing the obituary, it said he “retired” in 1990.  No writer retires at 57.  No writer retires, period.

McGrady had the talent to be in the same pantheon as Henican and Breslin Kempton and Earl Wilson and Paul Sann.  But he never made it that far, which is our loss and was his.

And dying at 78 as he did the other day, was too early.  Far too early.

Shrapnel:

----A Texas website called webuyjunk.com has linked these posts on its webpage and wants us to link to theirs in return, which won’t happen. In return for the additional exposure, they deserve a plug, which they now have.  But what does it say about this site that it interests places that deal in used car parts, broken down farm machinery and scrap metal?

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

1017 Mitt Fitt

1017 Mitt Fitt

It’s really hard for a parodist to come up with anything funny about Romney.  He leaves us no material.  And parody has to start with reality.

With Mitt, reality changes so often, there’s nothing to sink your teeth into.  

The other guys in the Republican primary were easy.  Some of you received our notes from Sick Rantorum as he campaigned for the US Championship in the more-Catholic-than-the-pope contest.

What’s his name from Texas... the other Rick... the guy with the craggy-faced good looks of a movie cowboy and had the brains of a rutabaga, but with a poorer memory was an easy target for verbal cartoonists.

Ron Paul?  All you have to say is he looks so much like Jack Kevorkian, they could have been cousins or maybe roommates at med school.

And the balloon man Gingrich is a treasure trove of marital, economic, nutty professor academic hot air so outrageous and off the charts he’s impossible to resist.

But Romney? Ken Doll but with less personality?  Prep school-nanny-raised rich kid who hoses down dogs which he’d previously tortured with that top of the car trip to Canada, and who writes off his cruel bullying as “pranking?”  How do you get funny about stuff like that?

How do you write off leading a roving band of nasty private school boys who cut off the blond-dyed long hair of a fellow student who likely was gay?  And how do you excuse provoking a blind teacher to walk into a glass door?

Taken as individual incidents, all of this stuff is relatively petty.  Taken as a pattern -- and it is a pattern -- the whole becomes more important than the sum of its parts.

Cruelty is cruelty.  Picking on the weak is picking on the weak.  And that was still going on with Romney as late as his days at that crumb-vacuuming, bottom feeding takeover firm.  Loot the weak.

The real issue is that America has allowed the Romney campaign to frame the conversation around his simplistic and unworkable and so far mostly secret economic plan.  

The real issue is character, character, character.

And it’s tough to make fun of something that doesn’t exist.


Shrapnel:

--Attention jurors in the John Edwards case.  His fate will soon be in your hands.  Check your mail each day for a little something from Bunny Mellon.

--Edwards has been quoted as saying he could be to poverty what Al Gore is to the environment.  What is that?  It’s a guy in a mansion with a bigger carbon footprint than his neighbor, Neyland Stadium and who chases grants instead of ambulances.

--The legal case against Edwards is iffy at best and it wouldn’t be surprising if the jury declares him not guilty, even without any encouragement from Bunny.  But as a public figure, he’s through. And like so many other politicians it isn’t what he did that got him in trouble -- we have high tolerance for guys who can’t keep their pants on and even those who embezzle or make secret tapes of their oval office meetings and phone calls.  It’s the coverup, stupid.


I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

1016 Dish Washer Logistics

1016 Dish Washer Logistics

The first logistic problem is deciding whether “dishwasher” is one word or two.  Because the spelling police prefer one, you’ll see it here as two.

But the main issue is how much stuff do you put in and where do you put it.  We all know that the lower shelf gets hotter than the upper.  So putting “dish washer safe” stuff made of plastic or rubber you know automatically you put on the top shelf so it doesn’t melt and ooze all over everything else.

And since you load the machine throughout the day, running it only once to save water and electricity, you’re constantly rearranging everything in it.

The teeth rising from the bottom shelf seem skillfully designed to hold... nothing.  The spaces are not narrow enough to hold a flat plate up straight and they’re too big to hold a bowl or a bowl-shaped plate upright.  So you’re forever placing and re-placing stuff so they kind of prop each other up.

Then there’s that square hole dead center in the bottom shelf.  You have to keep it “clear.”  Why waste that space?  Here’s information could save you from finding out the hard way:  the hole sits over the center of what looks like a ceiling fan in the base of the unit.  During the wash cycle, water pressure pushes a collapsible telescoping phallic symbol up through that hole and it squirts hot water all over everything.

This telescope and square hole arrangement is hidden from young prying eyes and questioning little minds, thank goodness.  Else GE, Kenmore and Kitchen Aid would constantly be hit with porn charges.

Then there’s the basket that holds flatware.  The intuitive thing would be for you to put all the spoons in one, the forks in another and so on.  But that would be wrong.  Not only is your dishwasher performing a sex act behind closed door, but it’s a big advocate of diversity.  If you don’t alternate utensils in the little places they don’t wash properly.

Damn Godless liberals at Maytag.

You do this for awhile and you get to be pretty good at arranging things.  Especially when you screw up and have to hand wash everything when the cycle is over.  After you inspect them... after you clean the steam off your glasses.


Shrapnel:

--You can’t make this stuff up.  A police car in Syosset on New York’s Long Island caught fire the other day.  It was parked in front of the village fire house.  The guys inside watching a security camera saw the flames coming from the engine compartment before the cops could make a 911 call.

--Dud grenade department.  No one commented the other day on this space’s definition of an Israeli centrist.  Maybe no one reads this far down on the page.

--A drug store in Kansas submitted a total of 1,000 prescriptions for each of two Medicare patients last year.  When people get sick in Kansas, they must get really sick.  Impossible to believe that there’s any other explanation for something like this from those upstanding heartlanders... is there?

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

1015 OMG, Austerity!

1015  OMG, Austerity!

Back in the school days, our parents voted each year on a proposed budget.  Most times, the budgets were approved even though they usually meant a tax increase.  There was always the threat hanging in the air -- clearly articulated by the sponsors of the budget -- that with rejection came “austerity.”

In the case of a local school district that means cutting all discretionary stuff, firing faculty (but not administrators) reducing or eliminating bus service, extracurricular activities, athletics and programs in music and arts.  No one ever seemed to consider the third way, which was to cut some stuff, but not to eliminate everything that wasn’t mandated by an outside authority.

(Note to PA readers:  in the real world school and public library districts vote on budgets every year and political parties are barred from participating in school board elections.)

Now, here in America and over in Europe, there’s that threat of “austerity” once again.  Except now it’s not about music and art, it’s about medicine, social security, welfare, food stamps, road repairs, and anything else you happen to like or need.  (But never congressional or White House staffs, overlapping agency programs and the Pentagon.)

The problem both here and there is the so-called leadership falling at the feet of the central bankers.  The bankers can’t help themselves... they’re doing only what’s in their DNA:  trying to squeeze money out of people who don’t have it and wrecking the lives of people who can’t fight back.

So they’ll do what they’ve always done, cutting benefits, extending work days, years and eligibility ages.  Not one of these guys ever had to work for a living.  But they depend on the rest of us for their ill gotten gains.

The EU has to kill the Euro and send Brussels back to the backwater it was before someone decided it was the capital of the continent.

Austerity in school budgets can sometimes hurt.  In national budgets, it can kill.  And it will if we don’t kill it first.

Shrapnel:

--Lugar lost his primary in Indiana and North Carolina approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.  Lugar was one of the few normal Republicans left in the Senate and North Carolina has created the (Bible) Belt and Suspenders template since a law banning same sex marriage already was on its books.  This country is turning into a Parody of the parody movie “The Dictator.”

--Israel’s centrist party has joined with Likud to form a coalition government.  What, you may ask, is an Israeli centrist?  An Israeli centrist is a guy who wants to give away only half the country.

--Karma’s a bitch as you might ask Thomas Bodenschatts, of rural Cambria County PA, but you can’t.  Bodenschatts, 66, ran biology programs at local schools and was collecting frogs along a road when he was struck by a car and killed. The coroner has elected not to dissect... er... conduct an autopsy.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

1014 BMW Envy

1014 BMW Envy

(Note: this post contains adult content.)

So there’s this guy, Henry Wolf of somewhere in California, and he has a lawsuit against BMW about his motorcycle.  This was reported by radio station WWJ in Detroit.  It says Wolf bought this Beemer bike, a 1993 model with an after-market seat made by an outfit called Corbin Pacific.

He gets on the thing and drives it around for awhile and he gets an erection he now says lasted for almost two years.  He says erection or not, he can’t have sex and he can’t work.  So he wants Beemer and Corbin Pacific to compensate him for his emotional pain and lost wages.

An informal survey of two doctors, plus one interview the radio station conducted says, in essence, “huh?  Who’s he kidding?  But then, in true CYA (or CYP) medicalese each launches into a small lecture about compression of blood vessels... blah blah blah.  One of our medical experts says there are no data to support the guy’s claim.

Another says “I should have his problems.”  

The third said “When I had a bike I used to try and warm up the girls by giving them a vibro ride.  It never worked.”

Alas, poor Henry.  Legions of willing California Girls may be writing him to ask if they can show him how to overcome this relatively new disability.  But all he wants is to contravene the side effects.  No matter he saved hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars in Viagra expenses.

Maybe the things should come with the same warnings that as the erectile dysfunction pills:  “four hours is too long.  See a doctor.”

Can you imagine taking one of those pills on, say, a Saturday night and Sunday morning you’re still “ready?”  Find a doctor on a Sunday morning... or head to the emergency room and wait while they clean up all the shootings and stabbings and car crashes from the previous evening.  Where does something like this fit in the triage hierarchy?  

Probably the guy is uncomfortable.  Probably he doesn’t want to work because his condition might be obvious when he walks into the office or factory.  But a lawsuit?

For the record, BMW North America/Southern Michigan in Detroit says it’s not the fault of the bike, it’s the fault of the seat.  The seat maker hasn’t been heard from.


Shrapnel:

--Who writes those odd graphics with letters you put into an “e-mail this” box to prove you’re a human being and not a bot?  The machines can’t read phrases like “flongi beato” or “hapdig vlidim” in distorted letters.  But much of the time, neither can we.

--Guy next door is in full compliance with the Disabilities Act.  The squirrels have grown so fat they no longer can climb up the bird feeder to eat, leaving it completely to the birds.  But before they sued, he made sure there was a ground floor supply for the little rats, too.


I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

1013 Big Spenders from Arkansas

1013 Big Spenders from Arkansas

Wal-Mart, the giant you love to hate, is back in the business of spending lavishly.  Wal-mart? Spending lavishly?  Depends on what you mean by lavish.  Eight figures qualifies.

That’s the money supposedly paid to authorities in Mexico, where corruption is legal and publicly celebrated.  It went to get building permits abutting ancient ruins.  Or making the glacially slow Mexican approval process for new structures move as fast as cars on the autobahn.

Of course, there is a question about whether these apparently shady payments were actually made.  If you ask the folks at Bentonville, Arkansas, retail capital of the known universe, they’ll tell you they’re looking into it.  An internal investigation is moving apace, much like those cars on the autobahn... the ones that ran out of gas halfway between Cologne and Bonn.

Eventually, heads that didn’t roll when word first leaked out will roll, too.  And Wal-mart will be clean as a whistle for a while.

But the Mexico thing raises some questions.   Who knew about this?  Who signed the checks?  Where else might this be taking place?

No worries, folks.  Nothing to see.  Move along.  And oh by the way “Have you noticed our plastic bags are now made of recycled materials?”

Yes... we have noticed.  Because their color is clothes dryer lint gray instead of white and there, in huge letters, is the notice “Made of 30% recycled materials.”  We’ve also noticed because the new eco-friendly bags break more easily than a one dollar wine glass.  (The old ones broke only more easily than a $2 wine glass. Big difference.”)

Checkout clerks, being actual human beings have taken to doubling bags when there’s anything heavier to be packed than a greeting card and the latest edition of the Midnight Globe tabloid. Saving... what?

But the company’s three biggest problems remain officially off the in-house radar: the way employees are treated … or not treated... the enforced hillbilly lifestyle of what they sell, along with book and movie selection only an Arkansas fundamentalist could embrace... and the endless lines that make checking out seem like a Tai Chi marathon.

Maybe they should bribe you to shop there.

Shrapnel (Media Mogul Edition):

--A British parliament committee has declared Rupert Murdoch “unfit” to own the huge media conglomerate he owns, what with all the hullabaloo about phone taps and payoffs.  In Britain that can be grounds to yank broadcast licenses.  But he’ll still cry all the way to the bank.

--CNN insiders are complaining about reduced ratings, and fiddling with programming and personalities without realizing that the slump is not because of something they do or don’t do but because of something they don’t have:  Ted Turner.  The buttoned down MBAs at the network’s owner, Time Warner, can’t run something that was designed and built to be run by a strong personality with brains and guts.  Until they hire someone like that, they’ll continue to be what they are:  something about which it’s easy to say “Turner off.”



I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

1012 Spring Renewal

1012  Spring Renewal

“I can’t die, I’m booked.” -- George Burns

He said that on turning 100.  He made it another 45 days and then, booked or not, he died.

Those not quite of the age where buying green bananas is an iffy proposition or the sight of flowers scares us still have to consider the future.

For example, do we renew our AARP membership for one year, or take advantage of some discounts in the fee for renewing for two or even three years.

When a five-year certificate of deposit matures, and the only interest rate approaching a whopping two percent is for a five year renewal... what do we do?  (It’s entirely possible these days that the bank will die before we do, but you never know.)

And what happens to those term life insurance policies we bought 50 years ago and which now have predeceased us?

We are the children of the parents of what Tom Brokaw calls “The Greatest Generation.”  And we are not getting the same kind of attention now given to the baby boomers.  Probably that’s good.  And it’s not something we’re going to have to worry about as long as they will.

Last time someone paid us heed, we were told we had a duty to die.  That was the idiot Governor Richard Lamm (D-Colorado) who this year will turn 77 and has yet to do his “duty.”  Guy should have gotten in touch with Dr. Kevorkian while he had the chance.  “Doctor, I have a problem, a permanent and debilitating disease, age.  Can you help me?”  No one ever saw Jack Kevorkian smile in public.  This might have changed that.

Eventually we're all going to go.  Life is, after all, temporary.  And with the onset of age we can expect changes.  AARP dues, CD terms and life insurance that expires before we do shouldn't have to be among them.


Shrapnel (Imbecile websites edition):

-- “Facebook” needs a “hate” button or at least a “dislike” button to go along with its “Like” button.   Clicking on this would send a message to the receiver. As with everything else with that site, you could “customize” what you send by checking one of a series of boxes: “your site sucks,”  “you are really annoying,” “get off my (virtual) lawn,” to cite some examples.

--You can customize “Google Drive” and “Google+.” The more you customize the more annoying the ads they send.  You can defeat this by logging out.  But then, you can’t use the features... which isn’t a half bad idea.

--And “Twitter” should get rid of the instant viral “retweet” selection.  If you have one or two people you’re following and they retweet everything that they see on the internet, you’ll have trouble finding the posts you DO want.

Note to readers:  John Wydra’s superb coverage of world events and his intelligent and perceptive commentary, linked on the right side of this page, has ceased publication.  His reasons are here.  Thanks, John for good reads. And any time you have something you want to say to Wessays readers, please send them along... your ideas always will have a welcome and a home here.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012