Trash Talk

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So, in a bit of frivolity, Pete T and Jim White tried to get me to feature the Mike Huckabee Band for Trash Talk. That is just not going to happen. And, yes, there may have been a bit of extra attention paid to Little Feat lately. Sorry!

I set out to publish the Trash about 4am here, but things got in the way, namely rebuilding of an outdoor BBQ and an indoor fireplace. Mrs. bmaz thought those more pressing. What can you do? So, here is a little Little Feat, and some placeholders for if I, Marcy or Jim feeds more content into this late post.

Alabama hosting LSU is basically everything in college football today, with a shout out to Penn State at Minnesota, Iowa at Wisconsin (doubt the Badgers will blow this at Canp Randall). How in the world 9-0 Clemson was not in the BCS top four is a crime, given their record in the final football four the last four years. Stop being stupid NCAA.

In the Pros, the Rayduhs already beat the Bolts in a game the Bolts should have won. Detroit at Bears is a yawner. Bills at Brownies might be interesting. Jeebus, the Jets Jets Jets and Gents are actually going to play each other in their home stadium? Why? Rams at Steelers could be interesting. Steelers not the same without Big Ben, but they are not dead yet either. They may well beat the Rams in this one. The SNF game of Vikings and Boys could be fairly decent. And the MNF game of Squawks at Niners looks downright fantastic. I’ll take the Niners at home here, but not against the Squawks at home at the end of the year.

Rock on.

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141 replies
  2. TooLoose LeTruck says:

    The Mike Huckabee Band…

    Damn… just seeing that name in print made me flinch…

    And what would be a good song for Mike’s band to play?

    “There’s a dead possum in the middle of the road… and dang that’s good eatin!”

    Sorry if anyone’s offended… is that trashy enough for trash talk?

    And I just read the whistleblower’s actual complaint (I think that’s what it is, over at NPR)
    and my god, are those people guilty… I haven’t doubted this all along but when you read what the whistleblower actually had to say, point after point, it’s like getting smacked in the face w/ a phonebook, a la “Goodfellas”… I know this has been dissected and discussed endlessly here AND reading the actual complaint brings it home in a whole different way…

    • drouse says:

      Going back my old Dr. Demento days, a good song would be:
      Dead skunk lying in the middle of the road, stinking to high heaven.

    • Valley girl says:

      Why did the chicken cross the road?
      To show the possum it could be done.

      When he was young. a friend of mine would go to the family farm in Alabama for the summer. His Unka Billy taught him to shoot sqwirls, for sqwirl pie. Never asked him about possum pie, though.

    • Xboxershorts says:

      Speakin of dead possum bein good eatin…

      I have been binge watching the Beverly Hillbillies from S1E1 and on, it’s on Amazon and it’s brilliant satire, relevant even today. I love Irene Ryan (Gramma) Donna Douglas and Max Baer and all tied in together with the incredible Buddy Ebsen

      Maybe it’s because I moved from a serious backwoods place (entire town is <1000) to the big city (Ok, we moved to the county seat with a pop of 2000) that I find myself drawn to this comedy….

      But the characters they caricature are very real today, where we live…

      • Tom says:

        Some of those old comedy shows don’t wear so well. It’s hard not to wince when Jackie Gleason shakes his fist at Audrey Meadows and threatens, “One of these days, Alice! Bang! Zoom! Straight to the Moon!” in “The Honeymooners”.

        To me, the funniest show EVER was the old “Car 54, Where Are You?” sitcom with Joe E. Ross and Fred Gwynne as two New York police officers. Some of those episodes are still laugh-out-loud hilarious. Like the one where Ross (as Officer Gunther Toody) decides he’s going to become as smart as his partner Officer Francis Muldoon (Gwynne) and so he starts to read the encyclopedia and all he can talk about is aardvarks. Or where Toody and Muldoon decide to get one of their fellow officers a pair of orthopedic shoes as a surprise present, so they sneak into his apartment at night to try and make a plaster cast of his feet while he’s sleeping. Or where Captain Block goes on vacation and leaves his pet parakeet for Toody to babysit. For years, Captain Block has tried to teach his parakeet to talk with no success, but as soon as Toody says, “Oh, I hate Captain Block!” for saddling him with this unwelcome bird-sitting chore, the parakeet immediately pipes up, “I hate Captain Block! I hate Captain Block!” and won’t shut up. Toody then takes the parakeet to a pet store to try and find a lookalike replacement, but within minutes every single bird in the pet store is squawking, “I hate Captain Block! I hate Captain Block!” And those are just the episodes that first come to mind.

    • Pete T says:

      Well in defense the Mike Huckabee Band was playing “Sweet Home Alabama” in 2018 Israel and it tied in with Jim’s recent post. Unfortunately that YouTube video was deleted and Wayback only has a still pic. There is one from 2017 that is pretty terrible – almost as bad as Bama played in the first half. Easy to find.

      Now if the Dogs can find the wisdom to lose two and the Gators stay clean Jim will be happy.

      In the meantime: Sweet Home Louisiana

      • Mooser says:

        “Well in defense the Mike Huckabee Band was playing “Sweet Home Alabama” in 2018 Israel…”
        All I can say is, ‘that’s the way the matzoh crumbles, sometimes…’

  3. Jim White says:

    Hey, the suggestion for Huckabee attempting to play “Sweet Home Alabama” was entirely Pete’s idea! I even gave it a face palm on Twitter.

    My Gators were still a bit hungover from their Cocktail Party loss last week, but after a slow start are now rolling strong against Vandy early in the fourth quarter.

    We have a bunch of errands to run right after the Gator game, so I will miss whether the Bama fans come through for us and boo Trump. I have pledged to tweet an unironic R T phrase if they do, so I may have to count on you folks for the final say on whether the boos are louder than the cheers.

  5. scribe says:

    Bucky Badger up 14-6 at half. Looks like a pretty good game.
    Something about Minnesota beating up on PSU.
    Solons of sports talk were going on about how the team in the top 4 who lost this weekend would be replaced by Clemson. So, the earth will return to its axis b/c PSU was #4 on the preliminary playoff list released earlier this week.
    See! Nothing to worry about there.
    Going out for dinner tonight – I sold the snows off my soon-to-be-scrapped car and I have $75 burning a hole in my pocket.

    • Eureka says:

      Well what did you eat? The suspense…!

      Surely it was rounded by a nice (butter- or other savory fat-) roasted allium, but that’s an easy guess.

      75 seems like a good yet decades-stable market for used snows.

  6. punaise says:

    One of the short-listed candidates to replace Bruce Bochy at the helm of the SF Giants is Gabe Kapler, recently fired as Phillies’ manager. Not a good thing, as he has a history of turning a blind eye to #metoo problems when he was a coach with the Dodgers. Kind of tone deaf given CEO Larry Baer’s own fairly recent episode of domestic violence.

    (As Chronicle sportswriter Ann Killion explains here: https://www.sfchronicle.com/giants/annkillion/article/Giants-are-linked-to-Gabe-Kapler-in-manager-14554553.php)

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Why-domestic-violence-advocates-called-for-SF-13701337.php

  7. Peterr says:

    . . . but things got in the way, namely rebuilding of an outdoor BBQ and an indoor fireplace. Mrs. bmaz thought those more pressing.

    Mrs Bmaz is a wise woman.

    The larger question is “why was the outdoor BBQ in need of rebuilding in the first place?” with the followup question being “why did you not *immediately* rebuild it when it was clear it needed rebuilding?”

    I shudder to think of being without a BBQ for any length of time. It’s not quite as urgent as having a working coffeemaker in the house, but damn close.

    Did a small turkey on the grill yesterday . . . yum! Tonight it’s Mrs Dr Peterr’s turn, with a Korean-style marinated flank stake as the main course. Mmmmmmmm . . .

    • punaise says:

      You know how there’s a saying for the remedy for over-indulging the night prior (i.e. a good Bloody Mary with brunch)… Well, had you overdone it on grilled pork ribs or similar tonight, you’d obviously need a big helping of bacon with breakfast:

      “the dare of the hog”

    • bmaz says:

      Eh, it is built in and kind of big. Still worked okay, just had bad hot spots and flare points if you were not careful. The rebuild kit was fairly cheap and had new burner tubes, flame deflectors and grates. But, yes, clearly should have done this three years or more ago. It is like new now!

    • P J Evans says:

      I guess we were spoiled when we moved while I was in HS. The house we moved to had a fireplace n the living room and an indoor barbecue pit in the family room. (It worked fine after we filled it halfway with ashes.)

  8. dakine01 says:

    Never, ever apologize for featuring The Feat.

    While the LSU/Alabama game is final with the visitors winning, I will contend that the Hilltopper beat down of Arkansas at Arkansas was a bigger upset.

    Seriously? 45 – 19?

    Go Hilltoppers!

    • bmaz says:

      WKU!

      Yeah, I have no compunction about featuring the Feat. With Lowell George, they were seriously incredible. Even after his death and with the singer from Pure Prairie League, they were still astounding.

        • Chaparral says:

          AMEN Brother! Many thanks for the connecting the old wires Mr bmaz. For no good reason I had forgotten this gem. Let It Roll fueled the consumption of vast swaths of America for me. Time has past. Things have changed. I hardly get to Dallas more than once a year. But I just hit the replay for the third time and I’m starting think could be on I10 in about an hour. I could make LA in a day or so…

          Thank you.

  9. Peterr says:

    In Chefs news, Patrick Mahomes is expected to play tomorrow against Tennessee. The local KC sports-talk folks are divided between “Yay!” and “What – are you nuts? Don’t bring him back too soon and get him hurt again.”

  10. punaise says:

    Cal just ceded a field goal’s worth of points to visiting WSU: a blocked PAT returned for 2 pts. I doubt that happens often.

  13. Molly Pitcher says:

    HAHAHA, gotta love this tweet:

    Adam Parkhomenko
    @AdamParkhomenko
    ·
    16h
    The sports gods have spoken: Boo trump and be rewarded with a championship. Cheer him and be defeated on your home turf. Choose wisely.

  14. vvv says:

    (Apologies that I don’t recall the user name I used on my only other post earlier in the year.) Just kicking into trash talk to note that I had the honor of being spit on by Lowell George, as well as being sweated on by David Byrne, back in college days. The Feat was touring *Waiting for Columbus* so mebbe ’79 or ’80 – IMO one of the best live albums ever. (The T-heads were doing the *Fear of Music* tour, and “Life During Wartime” feels somehow current and relevant, like, what good are notebooks?) “Spanish Moon” was my then fave, altho’ “Fatman Inna Bathtub” might be more applicable nowadays, if ever I took baths instead of showers.

  16. scribe says:

    Well, it wasn’t his clock management that got Andy Reid this time. It was that Ryan Tannehill has suddenly turned into a football god.
    What had been a medium-boring Chefs game turned into a real thriller at the end.
    Nice job, Titans.

    • Rick Ryan says:

      Between Tannehill’s post-Gase breakout and Darnold’s intra-Gase regression, I’m starting to think Gase might be this generation’s Jeff Fisher.

  18. Eureka says:

    ‘Oh jeebus’ etiquette query:
    How do I do this- keep yelling SKOL SKOL SKOL SKOL at the teevee???

    Also, Washington is Trash # 5,956 (comments under both tweets, tho 2nd one listed is main point):

    Victor Williams: “#Eagles still paid Nick Foles after being 4 snaps short of his signing bonus. Redskins should be embarrassed.… ”
    https://twitter.com/ThePhillyPod/status/1193196412344901632

    Adam Schefter: “After placing OT Trent Williams on the non-football injury list, the Redskins have elected to not pay him the remaining balance of his $5.1 million base salary for the 2019 season, league sources tell @FieldYates and me.”
    https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1192883611457994753

    —
    WHEW
    OH THANK GOODNESS

  19. scribe says:

    Well, all the games I watched turned out to have been something more than the boring spectacles I’d expected.
    Chefs losing to Titans was a nail-biter.
    Pack and Carolina turned into one, made better by the onset of The Frozen Tundra, putting the Charlotte’s a bit back on their heels. Still, they came up short when McCaffery couldn’t extend his arms b/c his own lineman was in the way.
    And then the Stillers. My Stillers. Minka Fitzpatrick making a good defense great, and Watt the Younger turning into the force we all thought he might have been. Tomlin and some Rudolph ineptitude after getting a turnover on downs made the end of that game entirely too interesting. I mean, you run three rushing plays and cannot gain a single yard? Knowing the Rams would burn each timeout they had? Puhleeze.
    And then there was a 20-something yard punt capped by a ran out of bounds penalty, then a defensive PI that put the Goffs in a fine position to steal a win. Stillers won in spite of themselves.

    And the Owboys lost. Wikings, come blow your horn.

    2 out of 3 – Stillers win, Owboys loss, Iggles on a bye – ain’t bad.

    I just realized: my Stillers have the same record as the playoff-touted Owboys. I’m feeling pretty good about that, though there are like 3 or 4 AFC teams at 5-4.

    At Browns Thursday night. See if we can make Mr. Overrated into a smoking crater.

    In other news, Bezos may want to buy the Squawks.

  20. Bay State Librul says:

    Philly Special after the Bye
    Number 15 on deck

    The Patsies and Eagles have played each other 14 times in NFL history dating back to 1973. The Eagles lead the all-time head-to-head series 8–6.

    Nov. 4, 1973 – Eagles 24, Patriots 23 at Veterans Stadium (Philadelphia, PA)
    Nov. 27, 1977 – Patriots 14, Eagles 6 at Schaefer Stadium (Foxborough, MA)
    Oct. 8, 1978 – Patriots, 24, Eagles 14 at Schaefer Stadium (Foxborough, MA)
    Sept. 13, 1981 – Eagles 13, Patriots 3 at Veterans Stadium (Philadelphia, PA)
    Dec. 9, 1984 – Eagles 27, Patriots 17 at Veterans Stadium (Philadelphia, PA)
    Nov. 29, 1987 – Eagles 34, Patriots 31 OT at Sullivan Stadium (Foxborough, MA)
    Nov. 4, 1990 – Eagles 48, Patriots 20 at Veterans Stadium (Philadelphia, PA)
    Dec. 19, 1999 – Eagles 24, Patriots 9 at Veterans Stadium (Philadelphia, PA)
    Sept. 14, 2003 – Patriots 31, Eagles 10 at Lincoln Financial Field (Philadelphia, PA)
    Feb. 6, 2005 – Patriots 24, Eagles 21 in Super Bowl XXXIX at Alltel Stadium (Jacksonville, FL)
    Nov. 25, 2007 – Patriots 31, Eagles 28 at Gillette Stadium (Foxborough, MA)
    Nov. 27, 2011 – Patriots 38, Eagles 20 at Lincoln Financial Field (Philadelphia, PA)
    Dec. 6, 2015 – Eagles 35, Patriots 28 at Gillette Stadium (Foxborough, MA)
    Feb. 4, 2018 – Eagles 41, Patriots 33 in Super Bowl LII (Minneapolis)

    • scribe says:

      To be fair, the first several games in the mid-70s, both the Iggles and the Patsies sucked.

      Then, circa 1980 and a year or two on either side, the Iggles were pretty darn good (Dick Vermeil era) – they went to the Super Bowl (and got hosed by the Raiduhs) in the 1980-81 season.

      Then in the mid-80s, the Patsies returned the favor, getting hosed by Da Bearss in the 85-86 SB.

      Late 80s, early 90s, was the Randall Cunningham era.

      Cheatin’ Bill didn’t come on for some years after that, so during the amazing gap of 9 years when they didn’t play each other, they missed out on Parcells and so on.

      Then Cheatin’ Bill, Kraft and Biebs took over in the early oughts and did what they did. Recall, SB XXXIX was the spectacle of Andy Reid’s Clock Management, Donovan McNabb (he of being booed lustily when drafted) and T.O. and His Broken Leg combining to hand Beibs another SB. You can watch the last 6 minutes of that game pass by in almost real time, while McNabb was puking his guts out as the clock ran.

      In short, the relevant history these two teams have is the last 2 games, ’15 and the SB in ’18. And IIRC Nick Foles QB’d the Iggles in both. Oops – my bad. In ’15, the Iggles QB was the immortal Sam Bradford. The team was mired in the Chip Kelly Experiment of trying to tank so they could pick Marcus Mariota (remember that failure?) and was 5-7. Surprisingly, it was one of those Any Given Sunday* games and the Iggles found a way to beat the Cheaters.

      So, in sum we have the Cheaters, who went unbeaten by bad teams and lost the minute they hit Balmer, and the Iggles, struggling their way up from injuries and trying to reset themselves after Wentz was out, then in, then out. They seem to have gotten their feet under them. It’ll be an interesting game, fer sher.

      And I’m betting Cheatin’ Bill has spent no small amount of time and effort scheming up revenge for the Philly Special. They’ll have to go by the larger-than-life statute of Foles and Doug Pederson making that decision on their way into the Linc. Just the kind of rub-it-in motivation they’ll enjoy getting.

      * An underrated, under-appreciated movie, BTW. I’ve long thought Lawrence Taylor’s part and performance were superb. Yes, he was showing he had not much acting range, basically playing himself, but his was nonetheless a convincing, effective performance. Likewise, the minor characters – Dick Butkus, Warren Moon, Y.A. Tittle and Johnny Unitas as opposing coaches, James Woods and Matthew Modine as team doctors, Jim Brown as an assistant coach, Ann-Margaret as Cameron Diaz’ sodden mom and most of the rest of the supporting cast – did uniformly good work and made this a rare sports movie that was a good movie, too. It’s something of a love song to the game, and worth watching again. cast list: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0146838/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast

      • Pete T says:

        The Iggles could have a shot at Mariota now if they want it from what I have read. He’s apparently out of favor in Titan Land. One or more offensive schemes (coaches) – per season – and a major broken leg can hinder realizing one’s potential.

      • Eureka says:

        All I remember of the Super Bowl in 2005 is that *I* was puking all over, starting the night before, with some nasty rotavirus-type thing that was going around, or maybe bad food. The game was on in the background as I finally slept some and quasi-convalesced. Totally blocked it out, haven’t seen it since.

        Since scribe elaborated from BSL’s Philly Special reference to … The Statue — and how the Pats will have eaten that all up — I might as well address-to-dismiss the heretofore hexy effect of all things acutely Foles and LII. Witness the (return to) MN (pre-) game, and slide into Cowboys, but really it was the press interviews and behavior beforehand. The devils are in the close details here, as usual, which I’ll just sum as It Has Effected Wentz, particularly as it interacts with the receivers drama– adding however many microseconds to plays, beyond any scheme ‘defects’– and hopefully is, altogether, Now Past Us. I’ll add that a few weeks ago, Chris Long gave an interview saying what I said last year about all this (some of which I noted here). The Statue with denotations has had some bewitching effect on our franchise QB, however directly or through team relationships and the press.

        That said, I am not feeling bad about this game; that may change as info updates (and my foreboding senses are generally accurate: I’m batting a 1.0 this season so far, despite improbabilities). I’d feel even better if Wentz had an independent win history vs. the Pats, but it’s good that Foles isn’t the only recent-era QB to defeat them. The only question is how susceptible the Eagles are now to the effing “storylines” pushed by the N-F-L (I mean really, how can these color commenters open games with straight faces using the word “storylines” to introduce them, even if they do chatter like soap opera producers throughout the subsequent plays?). I’ve noted that Foles is scheduled to return to the field for the Jags at 1pm. We shall see. Lots of Eagles upsides with players returned/ing and so forth. Pederson and even OC Groh are smart enough to have done something about the predictability problem — flat offensive field be damned — though we sure seem to be missing Reich (and DeFilippo). [I don’t know that this will be the game where something breaks for rookie receiver JJ Arcega-Whiteside wrt actual gameplay (On-The-Job training is safer vs. Wash & NY), but they are scrambling the kid’s brains, having him ‘memorize’ three routes for every play, every game. Give the kid some chance at growth and success.]

        As to all of those players we could have used that I now see thriving on other teams: “We all we got, we all we need.”

  21. Eureka says:

    BSL, you forgot the most important part: the game is not at 1pm. Cheers in advance!

    Ima haveto get some fresh beer of my liking; at least it’s available at the grocery store now, since loosening of PA’s neo-archaic alcohol-selling rules. My frosh year roommate was from MA, and back then referred to such places as sold booze as “the package store,” which was my intro to odd alcohol controls by misc. Commonwealths. So perhaps you know of what I speak.

    The bye week was, on the whole, good for the Eagles. NFC is a tough crowd this year. A Bills win would have been helpful, but oh well.

    Agree, scribe, that Panthers at Pack grew more interesting as the snow picked up. It turned into (enough of a glimpse of) a great classic sloppy-cold game. [After confirming that they did bring cameras to East Rutherford, my early afternoon was spent alternating tasks with feeling sorrow for the Lions and their sub QB: confident bomb here, interception/over-running line of scrimmage there… and they still had a chance against da Bearss. As was the refrain yesterday, any given Sunday…]

    I was picking through some old Trash I missed* and found some gems — The Blues Brothers! Elton John! Yes, EJ is even still a great live act (as I noted here last year as to the Farewell tour). And of course, Bennett to the Cowboys. Great fit, especially since he didn’t straighten up under BillBel and your Pats DC.

    *My Mom died suddenly, which merits far more than reference-by-asterisk but as I’ve wound it down to this, here we are. This is my bye-weekend from my new life, and mounds of paperwork and laundry and such, to catch up and chat here.

    • P J Evans says:

      Condolences. (It will probably take a year to get all the follow-up stuff done, going by my parents’ deaths.)

    • bmaz says:

      Eureka. Good gawd, I am so sorry. We had a pet die recently, and were beside ourselves here. That pales in comparison. I wish I had something better to say, but seeing this pretty much brought me to tears. All the best, in every regard.

    • Eureka says:

      Thank you scribe, PJ, bmaz, BSL, and Molly, I really appreciate it– and bmaz, what you said was just right.

      It’s been devastating, but with a lot of responsibility such that I/we can only mourn in the interstitial spaces. And it’s been kind of like skirting time this weekend, living in a sort of suspended animation like this isn’t what’s happened and is happening. I still have a couple of good friends in far-flung places, who couldn’t have come to the funeral or anything, who I haven’t told and I kind of don’t want to. Know what I mean?

      • Jim White says:

        Wow. Losing that last connection to a generation is tough. Hope you find a few cherished treasures you never knew she held onto as you sort through things.

      • P J Evans says:

        Yeah.
        I remember when my grandmother died, there’s about three weeks when I was going to school and doing homework – I think – but I don’t remember anything but that loss.

    • punaise says:

      Gosh, Eureka, je suis vraiment desole. As someone who is currently (along with two siblings) trying to gently guide our mom through her last years, this resonates.

      • Eureka says:

        My husband and I had thought that we — like you, punaise, & sibs — were ushering and supporting Mom through the declining years, but then something else happened out of the blue.

        Something I often think of, and did again after reading Jim’s comment, is how folks can give signs for perhaps months before they die that they somehow know, sense, or have accepted that their time is coming to a close — and so it does. I’m adding that here in case anyone might benefit from seeing those things as ‘hints.’ Things like, while reminiscing family history, the younger generation recounts the details more faithfully; the elder reviewing or telling you about mundane things like (even) home maintenance providers; content can be quite particular to the person and their/ family’s circumstances. Granted, I ‘knew’ from past experience what things like these might mean but didn’t ‘act’ on it, because, for the most part, one can’t. It’s just ‘there’ to contemplate, and subject to alternate explanation as well– like maybe it just foresages a higher-level of caregiving from you. But with this additional experience, I say nope, it means what it means.

        If you think they are talking about a future without them in it or at the helm, they are.*

        I am eminently thankful that I had a great, long conversation with her right before this– a lot of people don’t get that chance.

        —
        *A fair analogy can be made, if over different time courses, between changing speech *content* by the elderly or ill and their subsequent deaths, and, say, altered, dolorous, voice *tones* in the imminently suicidal.
        —
        As it happens, much of my work life has been spent with those who were dying, had died, the (hundreds- of-) thousands- of- years dead… and so I revere talking about it and them.

        • P J Evans says:

          My grandmother had written fifteen or twenty pages of memoirs several years before she died – in Nov 1972, actually, reminiscing about her childhood. (One of her earliest memories was a torchlight political parade, in 1888 or so.) Her childhood home, chores, that kind of thing. And why she didn’t drink coffee.

        • Eureka says:

          That’s awesome, PJ! My grandmother did similar with poems (so not at the same fine grain you have), which I have ‘somewhere’ but did rediscover (also) in my mom’s stuff.

          So far, the only unexpected writings I’ve found seem to (further) document a handyman-type taking advantage of her, which of course just pisses me off and adds to my list of nebulae to deal with.

        • Tom says:

          That’s what I’ve been mentally composing for my kids, a collection of my earliest memories and recollections from my childhood. One of my earliest memories is standing up in my crib and placing a saliva-glistening licorice all-sorts candy on the white enamel painted top of my crib-side table. It was the clear jelly one with the blue sprinkles. I didn’t like the taste. That was back when parents gave their kids choking hazards before putting them down for their afternoon nap.

        • punaise says:

          Eureka, at this point it’s about coming to terms with gradual but accelerating loss of function (memory mostly, mobility some) and continuously recalibrating the meaning of “quality of life”.

          Just for fun we’re doing this in France at the same time…

        • Eureka says:

          I wish you all ease, clarity, and peace. The France part buoys my heart for your family. You’re in my thoughts.

        • punaise says:

          they say our most important parenting is done by our kids’ age five, but this might be the exception to that maxim.

  22. Bay State Librul says:

    Eureka,

    Back in time, I procured my first beer at sixteen, from a “packy” store. Actually, we bribed a guy to buy a six pack for us. It was probably Narragansett Beer.

    You’ll get a kick from this poem that my wife found for me.

    Saying you grew up in Boston is not an excuse for your behavior

    I knew where you grew up.

    I have met you family and friends and I am well aware of the fact that they are not normal.

    But you are a grown man with a family and we don’t live in Boston.

    So you cannot scream at the television during a hockey game and say Fuck the Rangers!
    I don’t know what that means.
    That’s not a thing people say even when children aren’t in the room.
    And do you really hope that every member of the New York Yankees gets food poisoning?

    Why would you say that?

    Yes, Tom Brady is talented

    But I disagree that he is more important historical figure than Gandhi

    Remind me again.

    What’s an ahhs-hole, anyway?

    John Kenney
    Love Poems
    (for people with Children)

    • Eureka says:

      Ha- that’s a great poem, BSL- thanks to your wife for having found it. Many of my college cohorts, including the funn(i)est one, hail from Bahston and environs (albeit pre-Brady years), so I get it.

      One October years ago, apropos of I forget but that because we could, my husband and I decided to drive to Boston. Turns out it was a special college weekend, the traffic circle was more of a nightmare than could be dealt with, and we just circled right out and showed up on a friend’s doorstep in Maine.

      New England is beautiful in the fall.

    • scribe says:

      I yell at the TV regularly, like I will tonight when my Penguins play the Rangers. Sometimes its profane, sometimes not.
      I don’t make excuses for my behavior, having grown up in Boston or not.

      Deal with it.

  24. Tom says:

    With so many workplaces and other buildings being scent-free these days, why is so hard to find unscented deodorant?

    • Eureka says:

      Short answer that flies in my unscented deodorant household: because the corporations had to diversify markets / create new products to sell more crap, and they started making a variety of men’s products to smell like whores, too. Thus pits were pulled into this arms race (cf. not only the profusion of Koch*-scented body sprays for all surfaces, but the problematizing (yes) of women’s shaved armpits (new deodorant ingredients to make that skin look nicer)).

      There is no shelf space left for rebels with a cause.

      *petroleum products, just ask the Am Chem Society for deets

      • P J Evans says:

        And the over-scented detergents, which can be smelled twenty feet away from the laundry room. (If you want clothes to be scented, do it in your own closet.)

        • Eureka says:

          Yes, and what I hate most about that here is going to walk my dog or otherwise enjoy the outdoors, and having my yard filled with the neighbor’s air-choking dryer vent effluent. Or worse, it wafting in through the windows.

        • Jim White says:

          About those dryer sheets: when we had squirrels invade the roof of our barn and chew the insulation off the wires for the lighting, after a bit of reading I found that they could be induced to leave by filling the area with dryer sheets and chopped up Irish Spring bar soap. That was over a year ago, and they haven’t re-established residence although the occasional squirrel scurries through.

          I must admit, though, that we had scented dryer sheets on hand and that I use Irish Spring bar soap in the shower (mainly because it’s super-cheap at Sam’s Club…).

          But, I do have issues with the over-scented lotion my wife likes to put on her hands and feet at bedtime. I make her wait until I’ve turned on my CPAP machine so that I have filtered air coming from the other side of the bed before she opens the lotion.

        • Eureka says:

          I’ve heard that too re use as squirrel- repellent (and would deploy them myself as necessary); not for nothing but I think it’s because it impairs their breathing (we use mint oil and herbs to repel smaller rodents like mice out in the country, and those do repel via breathing impairment).

          As an Irish Spring sidenote, I had that in the back of my mind when I was noting vasodilatory impacts of scents in colognes below, as putting a bar of Irish Spring by the legs to prevent leg cramps at night is believed to work, to the extent that it does, by that mechanism (the People’s Pharmacy, as I recall, has info on that: they review scientific/ physiological bases for home remedies and other folk medicine. Additional germane aside: Included in their reviews is the use of magnesium hydroxide as a deodorant– unscented!! They make and sell a roll-on, but one can just use the plain powder– I have done that).

          I used to like things like dryer sheets and scented soaps until the parts changed to become ever-louder. Even like Seventh Generation used to have a Lavender and Eucalyptus detergent that was pleasant; they changed it to “Lavender” with a huge list of “natural” scent oils that compete with current standard brands in scent strength, complexity, and persistence and it’s just too much.

      • Eureka says:

        Oh, and as long as we’re on the topic of mal-placed scents, the absolute worst is when your groceries are off-gassing some compounds (they are usually vasodilatory, too, just to help make migraines and such) because the stock person who carried and shelved them was doused in their favorite scent, so they could, you know, smell good at work, attract mates, whatever.

        Adding: and to clarify, this problem IMO is just worse in recent decades because of both the increased volatility and number of the scent compounds (“variety” and “novelty”) and the marketed social rules regarding who needs to be properly scented (everyone) and how (heavily, uniquely).

        • P J Evans says:

          I have (mild) asthma, but a lot of the perfumes used in detergents and soaps set it off, about as well as cigarette smoke. (Cigars, for some reason, don’t have the same effect. Lack of chemicals, maybe, though some do have added perfumes that do it.) So I’m a customer for unscented stuff. (Ivory soap is good.)

        • Eureka says:

          Yep, Ivory here, too.

          —
          Also, I’m gonna stick a PS on my football comment from tonight above: it’s the Seahawks in two weeks I’ve been worried about, and that was before they were holding their own so far against the 9ers.

  25. P J Evans says:

    In other sports news (or maybe it’s “Norts Spews”, they finally voted Spicer off the island in “Dancing with the Stars”.

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