Tuesday, March 19, 2024


’Cause you’ve got to blame someone

For your own confusion



I’ve refereed basketball at all of the 25 public high schools in my county and nearly all of the 40 middle schools.


This season, I made my first visit to Roberto Clemente Middle School, which opened in 1994.  


My game there was unusual because the visiting team scored 75 points, which is more than most high-school teams score in a game.  (Middle-school game quarters are only six minutes long, while high-school teams play eight-minute quarters.  So scoring 75 points in a middle-school game is the equivalent of scoring 100 points in a high-school game.)


After the game had ended, I strolled through the halls of Roberto Clemente Middle School and took these photos:








And last but not least:



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“Lunatic Fringe” – which was written as a commentary on anti-Semitism – sounded familiar when I heard it on Sirius/XM recently, but I’m not sure why.  Maybe I heard it on the radio back in 1981, when it was released on Red Rider’s second studio album, As Far as Siam.  


Or maybe I remember it from the soundtrack of “Smuggler’s Blues,” the Miami Vice episode that featured it on its soundtrack.  (That episode’s soundtrack also featured the late Glenn Frey’s “Smuggler’s Blues.”  Frey had a prominent on-screen role in that episode as well.)


Click here to listen to “Lunatic Fringe.” 


Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.



Isley Brothers – "Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2)" (1975)


I tried talking about it

I got the big runaround . . .

We got to fight the powers that be!



Here’s a query I recently received from a loyal 2 or 3 lines reader:


The grocery store where I usually shop recently sent me an e-mail that said I could get up to $75 off my groceries if I transferred my prescriptions to that store’s pharmacy.  I jumped on the offer.  


The pharmacist there didn’t know what I needed to do to get my $75 off, so I called the grocery store’s customer service number.


The customer service rep told me that I wasn’t eligible for the advertised discount because I was a Medicare recipient, and the offer didn’t apply to beneficiaries of government programs such as Medicare or Medicaid.


The signs in the store promising the $75 discount said nothing about Medicare recipients not being eligible for the offer.  


I did a little research, and learned that approximately 40% of all the prescriptions filled in this country are for Medicare and Medicaid recipients.  That’s a lot.  


The $75 offer was also subject to a number of other conditions.  (For example, you weren’t eligible if you had filled a prescription at the store in the previous 12 months.)


Put it all together, and I’m guessing that at least half the people who were sent the e-mail offering the $75 discount weren’t eligible for it.  


Shouldn’t the company have disclosed that there were significant limitations on the offer?  If I had known I wasn’t going to get the $75 off, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of transferring my prescriptions.  I’m sure the grocery store is going to make a lot of profit of my prescriptions, but I’m not getting doodly-squat for my trouble.


Taking the company to court obviously isn’t worth it given that only $75 is involved.  And sending a complaint to a government agency would probably be a total waste of time.


I always use the self-checkout machines at that store, so I could simply help myself to something every time I visit that store until I’ve gotten my $75 worth of food.


I’m guessing that would be technically illegal.  But do you think it would be wrong?  


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Some of you may not know that before I became a wildly successful blogger, I was a wildly successful lawyer.  So I was able to confirm to my loyal reader that walking out of a grocery store with food you haven’t paid for is illegal, and would subject him to prosecution for shoplifting.  (That’s assuming that law enforcement where he lives gives a you-know-what about shoplifting, a crime that seems to be completely ignored in many places.)


As for whether it would be wrong to get even with the company for its deceptive advertising by simply taking the $75 worth of free food he was promised, that’s a very different matter.  I was trained as a lawyer – not as a moral philosopher – and have no special qualifications to opine on issues of right and wrong.


What I will say is that it has long been my belief that some things that are illegal are not necessarily wrong – and that some things that are perfectly legal are still wrong.


Further affiant sayeth naught.


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The six men who recorded as “The Isley Brothers” were brothers O’Kelly, Rudolph, Ronald, Ernie, and Marvin Isley and Rudolph’s brother-in-law, Chris Jasper – but I guess it would have been awkward if they had called themselves “The Isley Brothers and an Isley Brother-in-Law.”


“Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2)” was released in 1975 on there group’s thirteenth studio album, The Heat Is On.  It was a huge hit for the Isleys, occupying the top spot on the Billboard R&B chart for three weeks and making it all the way to #4 on the “Hot 100” chart.


The other tracks on The Heat Is On album include “For the Love of You (Part 1 & 2),” “Sensuality (Part 1 & 2),” “Make Me Say It Again Girl (Part 1 & 2)” . . . well, you get the picture.


Click here to listen to “Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2).”


Click here to buy today’s featured recording from Amazon.


Friday, March 15, 2024

Beat Farmers – "Baby's Liquored Up" (1994)


Now she’s goin’ too far

She just blew lunch in my new car

She’s all liquored up!


I once almost had a girlfriend blow her lunch in my car.


It was New Year’s Eve,  and the two of us were out celebrating with my best friend and his girlfriend.  We were driving from one party to another party when “Gayle” suddenly announced that I needed to stop the car.


I quickly pulled over and stepped on the brakes just in time for her to open the door, step out of the car, and throw up in the gutter.


It was a freezing cold night, but I’ll never forget the pair of cuffed, peach-colored hot pants that she was wearing.  It was 1972, or perhaps 1973 – I’m not sure if she threw up before or after midnight – when hot pants were at their height of popularity.  


As Gayle was cleaning herself up after blowing lunch – or, more likely, blowing dinner – my friend looked at me and shook his head.  “Pard,” he said, “you need to end this.”


He was right.  A few days later, I retuned to college – and I don’t think I ever saw Gayle again.   


Looking back on that “relationship,” I don’t we ever spent time together without alcohol being involved.  


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I could tell stories for hours about my male friends and me drinking to excess.  (Believe me, I’m not proud of that – but it’s the truth.)  But I only have one other anecdote about a woman drinking until she was past the point of no return.


Once evening, some friends were visiting me in the apartment I lived in my junior year of college.  Near the end of the evening, I handed one of the girls in the group a can of beer.  As soon as I let go of the can, it fell through her hand and went splat on my kitchen floor.  


In other words, she was so drunk that she was unable to grasp the beer can when I put it into her hand.


That’s pretty drunk.


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The Beat Farmers formed in San Diego in 1983.  The band broke up shortly after their drummer and co-founder, Country Dick Montana (who was born Daniel Monte McLain), had a heart attack and died three songs into a live appearance in Whistler, British Columbia.


The nom de scène “Country Dick Montana” sounds suspiciously like “Handsome Dick Manitoba,” the name used by Richard Blum when he was the lead singer of the Dictators – a wonderful band that released its first album about eight years before the Beat Farmers got together.


Click here to listen to “Baby’s Liquored Up.”


Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Letters to Cleo – "Here & Now" (1995)


Thecomfortofaknowledge

    ofariseabovethesky

Butcouldneverparallelthechallenge

    ofanacquisitioninthe

Here and now, here and now


From a recent article in USA Today:


Could picking your nose be bad for your brain? According to one report, it could be possible. . . .


A recent review paper published in the journal Biomolecules explored the potential relationship between nose-picking and the development of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, which may be related via neuroinflammation.


Recent evidence suggests that neuroinflammation, or the swelling of nervous tissue, including tissue in the brain, may play at least a partial role in Alzheimer’s disease.  According to the paper's authors, beta-amyloid, a protein believed to be a factor in causing Alzheimer's, may be produced by the brain in response to certain pathogens.


One way for these pathogens to get into your nose and interact with your brain? A dirty finger up the nostril.


Oh, sh*t!  (It’s TOO LATE now – I needed to hear this years ago!)


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However, there is hope that you and I aren’t doomed to suffer from Alzheimer’s.  Here’s the concluding paragraph of the journal article that is referenced in the USA Today news story:


Understanding the potential role of olfactory pathogen entry in AD-associated neuroinflammation opens up new avenues for prevention. . . . [T]he improvement of hand hygiene might be an easy prevention step, as learned from the COVID-19 epidemic.  One of the lessons learned from COVID-19 is the value of hand hygiene through frequent hand washing and the use of hand sanitizers, and we suggest these routine hygienic procedures be mandatory routine procedures for the incurable nose-picker.


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Letters to Cleo formed in Boston in 1990.  From Wikipedia:


The name “Letters to Cleo” is a reference to [lead singer Kay] Hanley's childhood pen pal.  They spent their summers together in Canada, and they wrote each other letters to keep in touch over a ten-year period.  At some point Cleo moved without giving Hanley her new mailing address, and Hanley's letters to Cleo were returned to sender.  Hanley rediscovered a box of these letters during the band-naming process, and the band adopted the name.  Hanley called it “the least crappy of all the names” they came up with at the time.


Letters to Cleo

“Here & Now” was released on the group’s first album, Aurora Gory Alice, in 1995.  It became a hit after being featured on the Melrose Place soundtrack.


Click here to listen to “Here & Now.”  Feel free to attempt to sing the lyrics quoted at the beginning of this post, but my bet is that you won’t be able to keep up with Kay Hanley.  (I know I wasn’t.)


Click here to buy the recording from Amazon.