Rant #2,511: Strange Magic

This was already a crazy day for me, and thus, I am writing this Rant a little later than I had anticipated.

I got up around 6 a.m. as I always try to do, waited for my wife to finish preparing for her day, and when she was done, I prepared for my day.

I went into the kitchen to eat my bowl of cereal, but alas, my wife told me that we were out of milk, which is something that rarely happens in our household, in particular because I am a very big milk drinker (always have been, no coffee for me).

So I thought I would go out, bring the garbage pails back to our house, get the newspaper, bring our papers in, and then go out to a local place and get us a container of milk.

I got outside, retrieved the garbage pail and the newspapers, and I discovered that my mother's car was running.

I thought to myself, "Where is she going this early in the morning?" but then I thought to myself that she would have nowhere to go at roughly 6:20 a.m.

I walked over to the car, and she wasn't in it.

I went back to the house with my newspapers in hand, and my mother--who lives with my father below us in a mother/daughter house--had just gotten up.

"Why is your car on?" I asked.

"I don't know," she replied.

I asked her again why her car was on, she didn't know, and I figured that she had automatic start, which she claimed she did not have in this car.

"Well," I then told her, "you evidently have it and never knew it."

My mother gave me the keys, I shut the car off, and it was probably on all night for all we know.

She claims she didn't put it on, but she must have pushed a combination of buttons on her fob and activated it.

I believe her that she didn't put it on purposely, because in the past, my mother has told me that she doesn't have automatic start with this car, but evidently, after owning the car for the past two or three years, she has just learned that she has a brand new feature in her car.

But how to activate it is anyone's guess.

So with that taken care of, I went out to get a bottle of milk. I figured I would get bagels, too, for my trouble, and I went to one bagel store which, believe it or not, did not have any milk available other than to add to coffee.

I went to another one, and yes, I found a container of milk, bought 12 bagels, and got some store-made cream cheese for my efforts thrown in for free.

How this all leads up to talking about the death of actor John Karlen is beyond me, but I am going to segueway into this by saying that while my day already is kind of strange--also later today, I am getting the front window of my car replaced because of an expanding notch in it--I guess "Dark Shadows" continue to be in abundance over me.

Maybe it is even a full moon today?

Karlen, who played Willie Loomis on the gothic soap opera and later attained even greater fame on "Cagney and Lacey," died after years of ill health at age 86.

He was a versatile actor, who took the character of Willie Loomis--he was not the original actor in the role--from a street punk to the lackey and punching bag of vampire Barnabas Collins to the vampire's most trusted friend over the course of the show's five-year run.

He humanized a character that at first was nothing but a punk stereotype, but he made it his own, showing what a good actor he really was.

The show was so popular that he found himself in the same teen magazines as the Monkees and Paul Revere and the Raiders, becoming something of a teen idol for a short period of time.

After a number of years out of the spotlight, he played the role of Harvey Lacey, the husband of the NYPD detective in the popular show, and won an Emmy for his work as a supporting player on that drama.

He regularly attended "Dark Shadows" conventions and reunions, and let's just say he let everyone attending know that he "lived the life."

He will be missed.

But don't miss me next week. Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.