Rant #2,850: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good …
 
The Bad …
 
And the Ugly.
 
That is what I have to tell you about today.
 
What order do you want it in?
 
Let’s do it backwards—
 
The Ugly.
 
The Bad.
 
And the Good.
 
OK, let’s do “The Ugly” first.
 
Major League Baseball finally settled their differences and it is “Play Ball!” finally after 99 days of acrimony.
 
There is a bit of good in this, as there will be a full 162-game season, and lots of interesting changes, including the establishment of the universal designated hitter.
 
But the road to get to an agreement was as ugly as can be, and it put off a lot of people, who looked at these negotiations over millions of dollars of greed as so against what the current world is going through, what with “real” problems like COVID and a raging war in Europe.
 
People were turned off, but the two warring sides feel that this will all be better for the fans, who will now bear the brunt of their greed with higher prices related to everything related to the sport.
 
And we fans will just have to learn to like it.
 
Further, with the threat of games being permanently canceled, do you think that the two sides wanted a further public relations disaster if those games that were threatened to be canceled included the hallowed “Jackie Robinson Day” event that is held every year, which would have been among the next games on the chopping block if an agreement was not reached?
 
So yes, it is good that there is going to be baseball played, but the whole thing was as ugly as my feral-eaten garbage was yesterday, and the stench will remain.
 
“The Bad” …
 
Well, unlike baseball, this is the real world, and this really is bad, folks.
 
My son lost one of his jobs yesterday due to a cut in payroll at the business he worked at for the past year and a half or so.
 
What’s worse is that they strung him out for three weeks to tell him this, and if he didn’t call his former employer each week to find out his schedule, he might still be sitting at home wondering what was going on.
 
It is not as if this came as a total surprise.
 
After he was put on “furlough” for seven months by the firm he was working for, we got a tip from a long-time friend about this particular job, and he started off working five days a week there, part time but still 20 hours a week.
 
He was hired as a COVID clean-up person—wiping down shopping carts for customers—and also as a shopping cart person, retrieving these carts for people who shopped there.
 
As the rate of COVID diminished, he was let go from the job about a year ago and then quickly rehired … so goes COVID.
 
Anyway, in the interim, he got another job, a much better job, a job in the very same company that put him on furlough, a job where he works four days a week on a part-time basis, 16 hours a week.
 
So for several months he worked two jobs, but the job he eventually lost cut him down to one day a week, if he was lucky, so the job really became expendable, leading up to yesterday’s chop block move, which he was told had to do with cutting payroll and had nothing to do with his job performance, which was good.
 
So he now has the one job, and in the long run, he might just be better off with that situation.
 
If you live on Long Island, you know that the mall that the business operates in—Sunrise Mall in Massapequa—has a fate that is completely unknown at this stage, and current owners are asking tenants to terminate their leases, so that the owners can use the land for another purpose.
 
So, the store that he worked in—one of two successful stores in the entire mall—has a fate that isn’t good, so for once, a member of this family won’t go down with the ship when the business they work for is down and out.
 
“The Good”
 
“The Good” is not only really good, but it is stupendous!
 
My mother turns 91 years young today, and heck, let’s all rejoice!
 
She is doing well in this crazy world, and while she doesn’t get out and about as much as she used to do, she is still dong quite well.
 
In fact, we always tell her that she is probably the healthiest one of all of us in our house—including my wife, my son and I—and there is no stopping her at all.
 
We are going to have a lot of stuff going on during the next few days related to her birthday.
 
My sister and I are taking her out to dinner separately, making twice the fun, we will have a cake today for her, we will present her with a few gifts, and there is going to be a lot of laughs and fun for her over the next few days.
 
I wish my father was here to revel in all of this too, but he will be here in spirit, that’s for sure.
 
We often tell my mother that in this topsy turvy world we live in, her age is really reversed, and she is not 91 … she is really 19 years of age.
 
While he body tells her that that is not possible, her mind tells her that it is.
 
My family and my sister’s family are so blessed to have her with us … she is our Rock of Gibraltar, and she simply makes us stronger as a family and as people in general.
 
So happy 91st birthday mom … and many, many more!
 
That type of “Good” pretty much wipes out “The Bad” and “The Ugly,” wouldn’t you agree?
 
Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday. 

Rant #2,849: Animal House

Yes, I overslept pretty badly today.
 
And then I got hit with a couple of things that I had to do before writing this daily Rant, including cleaning up outside as the feral animals had their way with our garbage.
 
They are out even earlier this year to do their destruction, as the weather has been really inconsistent and crazy during this nearly-over winter.
 
We had a day in the 70s just recently, and yesterday, we had snow, rain and ice all mixed into one weather day.
 
Today it is pretty warm out and very foggy.
 
All that it amounts to is that the hibernation period for these pests has been upset, and once they are up and about, they look to eat, and they look to garbage to find their meals and fill their tummies.
 
They destroy the garbage cans, they rip into the bags, and they leave a mess for humans like me to clean up.
 
And humans like me can’t do a darn thing about it.
 
In New York State, Gov. Mario Cuomo declared a generation ago that these animals are protected, and that you cannot poison, shoot or otherwise harm them in any way.
 
Even if they destroy your garbage, eat at parts of your house, and use your grass as a grazing area, you cannot do anything about it.
 
The state does allow you to set up mechanisms to cage them, but my nearly 91-year-old mother is not going to set up a cage like this, nor am I.
 
I guess that the protection of feral animals is just part of suburban living.
 
What I don’t understand are other human beings who become enablers by feeding these pests.
 
I have been on the line in the supermarket where people actually go out of their way to buy these varmints food, which they put out so these feral pests have something to eat.
 
Wouldn’t their money be better spent in feeding hungry humans?
 
All they are doing is enabling these pests to live and further destroy things … and I guess if they fed some humans that needed food, they would probably be doing the same thing, being enablers so these people could continue to live on the street.
 
So give to a human food pantry then, where you know the food that you are donating will go to people who actually need it big time.
 
Don’t waste your money and buy food for feral animals, who live off what they can find and destroy the environment in the process.
 
In my neck of the woods, we have cats and squirrels and possums and other animals which feed off of the generosity of morons, and these are the same animals that destroy our garbage pails and lawns and whatever else they can get their paws on.
 
This has been going on for ages, one of the legacies of the former governor that I really wish would change, in favor of humans, after all of these years.
 
His son might not be able to keep his hands off other humans, but Mario Cuomo decided it was “hands off” of these feral animals.
 
What can a suburbanite do?
 
Really, nothing, nothing at all.
 
You just have to learn to live with it,, look at it as an annoyance, and roll with the flow, baby!
 
You can actually serve jail time if you break the law against these animals, but you just know that there are people who would risk it just to get rid of these pests once and for all.
 
I know that I have tried using special bags to protect the garbage, supposedly bags that repel these pests, but it simply does not work.
 
I have tried pouring bleach on the garbage bags, and it does work for a short time, but once the animals get used to the smell—and I guess the taste—of the bleach, that supposed remedy goes out the window.
 
You can’t even secure the garbage pails with a firm cover, because the animals rip off the covers with ease, or they knock over the barrels so that the covers come off, allowing them to feast on whatever is in the bags in the pails.
 
So there really is nothing one can do to get rid of these things.
 
If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know, because quite frankly, I am completely out of ideas … other than to store the garbage in our closed garage until pickup day.
 
That is the one solution that works …
 
Other than the fact that it brings bugs into the garage and possibly into our house, so I go from one varmint to another by doing this.
 
No, you really can’t win. 

Rant #2,848: Puppet Man

Hey, it’s March 9!
 
Another day of excitement for this (semi-) retired guy!
 
What do I do today?
 
I have a virtual cornucopia of choices.
 
I will certainly do some writing and editing, both here and for my little side job that I have.
 
I will watch some TV, maybe digitize some records.
 
I will drive my son back and forth to work, which quite honestly, breaks up my day.
 
I will see how my mom is doing … nearly 91 years old and going strong!
 
Yes, it is the same old same old in my situation, and since there is nothing I can do about it, I have to roll with it, baby.
 
I heard that they have found that one football player—on his time off for mental health problems—has been using pro sports betting apps to bide his time.
 
He was found to not only to be betting on pro football, but on his own team.
 
The NFL, which like the other pro sports leagues is in bed with these sports betting apps, has not only fined this player a sizeable amount, but they have suspended him from playing for a yet-to-be-determined time.
 
He countered back that he does not have a gambling problem.
 
And you think that this will be the only instance that the sports leagues will find of their own players betting on games in their respective leagues?
 
I think not, and just the fact that these betting apps are literally in bed with these leagues makes the likelihood of this happening even greater.
 
And with “March Madness” coming right up, you don’t think the NCAA is looking into college players using these apps to bet on games that impact their own teams?
 
Look, as I have said countless times, making these apps legal has opened up a Pandora’s Box of problems, and the box can never be closed once it is open.
 
Shame on the leagues for engaging with these legal swindlers in the first place, but now, they are going to have to deal with the aftermath.
 
And in the corner is Pete Rose, who I don’t know if he is laughing or crying about this current state of affairs.
 
But even with my own endless time to do nothing—me, being (semi-) retired, you know—these are apps that I will stay away from like the plague.
 
I have no interest in them at all, and I will say it again, those that feel the need to use them are not sports fans, as these apps have absolutely nothing to do with sports.
 
I will find the time to do more constructive things with my time and with my limited funds.
 
Yesterday, after a kind of busy day doing my work—I edited two stories, one long one where I had to really bear down and make things a bit more readable and newsworthy, and another which was a piece of cake—I had a little time after I picked up my son from work and my mother from the dentist, so I digitized two records, both from relatively the same time period.
 
The first was a President John F. Kennedy tribute record made by Golden Records.

 
You might remember Golden Records, as they put out scads of kids records way back when.
 
Here, they jumped on the record bandwagon after the president was assassinated in November 1963, and released an extended play record of a few speeches that he made, gearing it to little kids like I was back then.
 
It is a nice record and a nice find for me, and althoiugh the speeches are whittled down to their barest components, you can hear how JFK was able to use the language and his oratory skills to engage a nation and a world.
 
Then I digitized an album which featured music that was popular during JFK’s time in office.

 
It is called “Groovy Goodies,” and focuses on the Colpix Records label, the Columbia Pictures record label of yore that eventually morphed into Colgems Records, the Monkees’ label.
 
On this record, we have early-1960s hits by the likes of James Darren, Paul Petersen, Shelly Fabares and the like, so it really is a time capsule of a different time, when JFK was president and we were going through our own “Camelot.”
 
Digitizing both records was a fun thing to do, and put a capper on my day and made me happy that I will eventually be able to listen to these recordings in my car … probably while driving my son back and forth to work.
 
You see, everything is really circuitous when you are (semi-) retired, everything leads into another thing, and yes, you are on something of a hamster treadmill roll all day, every day.
 
My word of wisdom is this: do not retire, unless you absolutely have to, before you are at least 67 years of age, and try to push it to 70 if you possibly can.
 
If you are forced to do it early, like I was, then you are going to get screwed by all sides, and “Camelot” and JFK and “Johnny Angel” will seem an even more distant memory than they should be.
 
Let me get off of my soapbox for just a little bit … like I said, I expect more work to do today, and what shall I digitize next when I get a chance?
 
Spanky and Our Gang? Nancy Sinatra? How about Liz Damon’s Orient Express?
 
Yes, my choices as a (semi-) retired person are endless, aren’t they?
 
You can bet on that!

Rant #2,847: Gone

Happy International Women’s Day!
 
And on this day, as circumstances have it, I am not going to be talking about any women, but three men, each of whom made an impression on me--and countless other Baby Boomers--over the many decades and have recently left us.
 
Their passings when they happened were kind of ironic to me, because one of the reasons that I did not write a Rant yesterday was, as I told you, I had a funeral to attend, for a relative of my wife’s, but leading up to that, these three personalities—who had their 15 minutes-plus of attention during their lengthy careers—all passed away seemingly one after another, so they had to be mentioned 9n unison.
 
Anyway, I am going to talk about these three personalities in the context that I knew them best, not what the height of their careers perhaps were.
 
The first is Tim Considine, who passed at age 81, and who will forever be linked with the “My Three Sons” TV show as the eldest of the three—or actually four—sons on the show.
 
Considine—a former Mousketeer--played Mike, the oldest of the original three sons on the show—the other two were Robby, another former Mousketeer, played by Don Grady, and Chip, played by Stanley Livingston—during the early,, black-and-white episodes that were on ABC.
 
When the show was picked up by CBS, Considine—who had been in a contract dispute with the show, much of it revolving around his desire to write and direct an increasing amount of the show’s episodes—bowed out of the series, with one appearance in the now-color shows, as he was sent off in a wedding episode and pretty much never heard from again on the long-running show.
 
Robbie than became the eldest son, with a change of character from a goof to a straight-edge role, much like the role that Considine played in the early episodes. Chip then moved up a peg to the middle brother, while Barry Livingston—Stanley’s real-life brother and a member of the cast as Chip’s best friend—became the third brother in a pretty-ahead-of-its-time adoption arc.
 
Anyway, since the black-and-white episodes were not shown or available for decades, Considine’s character was never known or see by a generation of viewers—me included—until TV Land showed those episodes for the first time in the 1990s, so this pivotal character to the show’s success—as well as William Frawley’s post-Fred Mertz character of Bub—were not known by many viewers.
 
In the intervening years, Considine became a well-known writer and photographer of sports like auto racing and soccer, and in later years, he was included in a few “My Three Sons” reunions with his other “brothers.”
 
The second passing I want to talk about is Mitchell Ryan, the square-jawed actor who had a long Hollywood career both in the movies and on television.
 
Most younger viewers will remember him as one of the stars of the “Dharma and Greg” sitcom, but many years before, he played the original Burke Devlin in the “Dark Shadows” gothic soap opera on ABC.
 
Ryan, 87, was in that gothic soap opera during its early days, before the addition of Jonathan Frid as the vampire Barnabas Collins made the show the cult item that it remains today.
 
A lot of the early focus was not only on the Collins family, a rich New England family with a lot of secrets, or “dark shadows” to their very being, but also on Devlin, and his dealings with that family.
 
But once Frid was added to the cast, the Devlin character was pretty much pushed into the background, and Ryan left the show in July 1967 and was replaced by Anthony George in a role that was slowly being written out of the series to begin with.
 
The reason why he left the show was somewhat controversial, and certainly was so at the time.
 
Ryan was a heavy drinker during this period, and he did not leave the show; rather, he was fired for his alcoholism, something that it took him decades to lick while he continued as a popular character actor.
 
Although alcoholism was not new to Hollywood, it was perhaps the first time that an entity in Hollywood came out and announced that an actor had been fired for being an alcoholic—Robert Young did not work for years as he battled his addiction, which was kept pretty secret,, but forced him to develop the “Father Knows Best” show first on radio and then on TV because no one would hire him—so Ryan was something of a trailblazer, in a weird sort of way, for popular actors who have various addictions and how they are handled both personally and professionally.
 
The third personality who I would like to talk about right now is perhaps my favorite of the three.
 
Johnny Brown, 84, was one of the most versatile performers I have ever seen. This guy could sing, dance, do impressions, and with one of the great smiles, captivate the audience like few others could.
 
He was pretty much a nightclub performer both as a solo artist and in the Hines, Hines and Brown troupe with Gregory Hines.
 
But he finally got his big break in 1970, when he was one of the newest cast members of “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.” He brought a portly character to the show, one that again could captivate you with his smile, but also change his voice to sort of a deep "Amos and Andy"-type baritone when he was making a point about race relations--and do it in a funny way to get his point across.
 
And he could also sing and dance with the best of them on that show, which he stayed with until it ended in 1972.
 
He then dovetailed into the “Good Times” TV show, playing Nathan Bookman, the building superintendent, and he later went on to other shows, where he showed off his spot-on impressions, often while singing, of everyone from Louis Armstrong to Pearl Bailey.
 
He is also part of a trivia question of some note: who were the only cast members of “Laugh-In” ever to be on “The Ed Sullivan Show?”
 
To my recollection, the answer is Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, when they were Las Vegas entertainers; Tiny Tim, when he became one of the most popular entertainers around for about 15 minutes via his “Laugh-In” exposure; and Johnny Brown, when he was a member of Hines, Hines and Brown.
 
So there you have it, three personalities that touched my life—and perhaps your lives too—even if it was for just their 15 minutes-plus of fame.
 
With their passings, another chapter of the Baby Boomer book is closed forever, but the great thing is that their best work is preserved on video on the shows that they were on … so their “fame” will last forever.