Rant #2,619: World Shut Your Mouth

As I write today’s Rant on the 83rd day of this year, I find that the world continues to turn as it has since the beginning of time.
 
I woke up today to hear of the death of actor George Segal, who for the past 60 years or so, was perhaps Hollywood’s busiest actor. He passed away from complications from bypass surgery at age 87.

 
His boy-next-door good looks, pared with his acting skills, propelled him to stardom, when he was in his 30s with his Oscar nomination for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” through his late 80s with “The Goldbergs” TV show, and everything in between on the movies and on TV.
 
I do have a personal reminiscence of him which I am not too proud of.
 
Years ago, probably 30 years ago or more on a Sunday morning, I went out to get bagels or something else that I don’t remember, and on Sunrise Highway in Merrick, Long Island, I stopped by a red light.
 
I just happened to look out the front passenger window and this car pulls next to me, a small car whose make I don’t remember, but I look at the guy in the car, and lo and behold—it took me a moment to figure it out—it was Segal.
 
I believe he had a house out east at the time, and he was probably driving to that house when I saw him.
 
I decided to follow him as far as I could, and I did for a few miles. I think he probably figured out that I was following him, and he revved up the accelerator and took off, and I decided how stupid I was for doing this, and I went on my merry way.
 
Anyway, Segal’s career really spanned the ages, and he will be missed.
 
And then we have Elvis Presley …
 
No, he hasn’t been sighted anywhere lately, he is still not with us, but today is a major date in his life.
 
Today, in 1958, 63 years ago, Presley started his Army hitch, being inducted by the draft board in his native Memphis, Tennessee. He then boarded a bus like all the other new recruits, and went to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas.
 
He later went through basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, and he was then deployed to Germany, serving his two-year hitch in Europe and then returning to the States to continue his singing career.
 
It is difficult to understand all these years later how big a story this was, the most popular young singer in the world being drafted like every other young man and serving his military time like anybody else.
 
Some claimed that he was never the same after coming out of the Army—I believe John Lennon said that, and that his Army hitch took away the bite in his music—but whatever the case, Elvis did his service time, supposedly met the under-age Priscilla there, later married her, and later resumed his career pretty much unabated.
 
His management team covered his time in the service by releasing a slew of records, some of which even capitalized on his Army hitch.

 
But Lennon was right. His music was never the same after his military service, and although he continued to have massive records, few were as revolutionary as his early recordings were.
 
And to prove that the world really does turn, but for some it turns in the completely opposite direction as it does for most of us, my Yahoo News feed of the day brought me this startling revelation:
 
“Woman Left Horrified After Noticing Racy Reflection In Her Wine Glass: ‘My Worst Fear’”
 
Evidently, some really stupid people do exist on this planet, and here is certainly one of them, nearly as stupid of the “glue-head” lady and certainly one whose fame will last an even shorter time than that woman’s 15 minutes of fame endured.

 
According to the story, a woman took a photo which she posted on Instagram—the Internet site that seems to be the refuge of people with less than an ideal IQ—that showed her reflection in a wine glass.
 
The problem was, she did not realize that the photo of the reflection showed her to be naked, and she showed her skin to the world on Instagram without realizing it, until some “savvy” viewers told her what she had done.
 
Of course, she went to another Internet site, TikTok—on the level of Instagram for the number of morons who use it—to explain to the world what it really didn’t care about, that she had made such a terrible mistake.
 
“Seventy-four people saw my cooter,” she said. “That’s 74 people and my husband’s mom too many.”
 
If that is not the quote of the year, I don’t know what is.
 
So yes, the world continues to turn in this world we are living in.
 
The pandemic has not stopped history, it has not stopped people from dying from other things than the coronavirus, and it has certainly not stopped stupidity.
 
George Segal, Elvis Presley, and the moron with the naked reflection … you can only get those things in one single column here at the Ranting and Raving Blog.
 
Thanks for reading, and come back tomorrow—same Bat time, same Bat channel—for more riveting stories that continue to demonstrate that they world does continue to turn—
 
Maybe slightly off its axis, but it hasn’t stopped spinning—
 
Just like my own head.