I’ve been sitting here reading Dave Barry’s book, “Best State Ever: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland.” It was published in 2016 and every time I read something from it, I laugh my fool head off. I used to have more than 20 of Barry’s non-fiction books. Now I have only this one. The others went to Goodwill during the many moves we’ve made.
Books are always better than TV. No matter what technology we have, TV is a disappointment. Half the time, our choices are mindless violence, sports, UFOs and Bigfoot, endlessly looping reruns of vintage programs only people my age remember, or loud and idiotic commercials. The other half the set is on the fritz.
I had more fun reading one chapter in Barry’s book than I’ve had in any given month of watching TV.
Admittedly, I have a couple of weaknesses for certain TV programs. The Svengoolie show is one of them. I watch the old schlocky horror movies mostly so I can do wacky fake reviews on my blog—which are fun to write. The other is the trilogy of Men in Black movies: Men in Black (1997), Men in Black II (2002), and Men in Black 3 (2012). I always look for them.
Dave Barry’s “Best State Ever…” book is the only book by him I have left of my former collection. This one is not going to Goodwill. Sometimes, it’s the only alternative to TV.
OK, so I’m the least handy guy on the planet and Sena got this do-it-yourself steel cart I had to assemble yesterday.
I’ve been on break from projects like this for a good while now. The instructions weren’t great, even though the box came with an extraterrestrial assistant.
That won’t help guys like me.
At first, I tried the instructions. I’m 71 years old and I had to sit cross-legged on the garage floor (yes, I’m complaining and that’s my constitutionally-guaranteed right!). My joints are still sore. I didn’t have the right size socket for the odd-size lock nuts, so I had to make do with a couple of adjustable wrenches.
Oh, and I had to check a YouTube video about how to cope with cotter pin installation for the wheels. I don’t care if I never have to pump air into them. I need more specific instructions than extraterrestrials are capable of giving.
OK, and who was in charge of making sure each and every one of the washers was packed with the parts? I know the instructions told me to check to see that every part was sent and wait for missing parts to be sent from the manufacturer first before attempting to assemble this product, but by the time I found out that only one washer was missing—I skipped it because by that time I was done with assembly—well, sort of done.
Did I mention that my joints are sore?
I tried to follow the instructions, but from my pictures you can see they didn’t help. The drawings weren’t that helpful, and the extraterrestrial was across the street smoking and joking with the construction workers across the street who no doubt could have assembled the Artemis II rocket blindfolded—with a fully functional toilet.
By the way, one of them had a clear line of sight into our garage, seemed to stare at my wonky project and probably wondered whether he should help me out. He probably knew I didn’t have the cart assembly right because I stood there staring at it with a baffled expression on my face.
And by the way—my joints are sore.
I could tell it wasn’t right because the sides were all at wonky angles. Sena knew it wasn’t right but didn’t mention anything about it after she saw it.
Finally, I found a video that clearly showed how to fix a wonky steel cart. I told the extraterrestrial assistant to take a hike and fixed the thing in a few minutes.
We have before and after pictures. Thank you for your time. I have sore joints.
We’ve got a YouTube video of our 9 card cribbage wars game yesterday. I think it took at least half a dozen tries because the counts were so high. We used the skunked.club computer scorer, but it still took 70 minutes to finish the game.
The skunked.club scorer helped a lot but it doesn’t work if you need to count complicated runs containing any 10 cards. It’s OK with face cards, but it doesn’t handle ones and zeros in counting runs. It also doesn’t take suits into account so it won’t count the nob jacks or flushes. You’re on your own for those.
I just recorded the highlights because it took so much time to play and count the hand and crib scores.
We switched out 3 batteries for the camera to keep filming progress going although we also reviewed the clips in between. It was an all-day thing!
I don’t know if anyone else has ever tried to record a mashup game of 9 card cribbage and cribbage wars. What did I learn from it?
Hey, this is an announcement of our forthcoming marathon 9 card cribbage wars mashup YouTube video. We played 9 card cribbage on our Cribbage Wars board. We made liberal use of the skunked.club computer scoring program, which is why I had the laptop computer on the table.
We had a fun, albeit at times confusing adventure on this experiment, which I don’t know if anyone’s ever attempted before. Give us a shout-out if you have!
Today is Easter Monday, which is a part of Easter that we heard of for the first time today. That reminds me; we got some photos last week of daffodils and a purple flower we called a crocus—which is actually a hyacinth. So, I got another picture of the daffodils and hyacinths, which are popular flowers for Easter.
I’m not sure why we’ve never heard of Easter Monday before. I looked it up and it’s part of Eastertide, and it’s the second day of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s also called Bright Monday.
In the U.S., Easter Monday is not a federal holiday, but it is in over 100 countries. I guess there’s a White House Easter egg roll, which I’ve never heard either. It’s observed in certain places in North Dakota.
Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
Let me get this off my chest first. Sena and I watched the Svengoolie show the 1981 movie, “An American Werewolf in London” directed by John Landis last night and neither of us remember hearing Sam Cooke’s version of the song “Blue Moon” during the transformation scene when David Naughton (David Kessler) turns into a werewolf. We found other videos in which Cook’s smooth delivery of “Blue Moon” is clearly playing while David is morphing into a monster.
But neither one of us remembers hearing it on the Svengoolie show last night. Anyway, IMDB has a short paragraph which says director John Landis wanted the Sam Cooke version of “Blue Moon” playing during the transformation scene because he wanted to contrast the sadness of the song with the horror of the transformation. The composer, Elmer Bernstein, made an alternate music for the scene which never got used because Landis vetoed it.
That said, this is not going to be my usual tongue-in-cheek fake review with a lot of fibs and dad jokes. I should also mention that Sena watched the movie in a different room from mine because she doesn’t like the number of commercials on the Svengoolie show and switches channels a lot.
The movie is supposed to be a mix of comedy and horror and I liked that. Sena was a bit ambivalent about it but overall thought parts of it were pretty funny.
The movie opens with David Naughton (David Kessler) and Griffin Dunne (Jack Goodman) ignoring the advice of patrons at a tavern with the cheerful name The Slaughtered Lamb to stick to the road and avoid the moor. A werewolf attacks them, kills Jack but David is hospitalized with wounds. Jack appears to David periodically (each time more decayed) to tell him he needs to commit suicide in order to stop the werewolf bloodline so that Jack can die because he’s now undead.
Alex Price (Jenny Agutter) is David’s nurse in the hospital. She gets a crush on him and takes him home with her when he’s ready to leave. David’s doctor eventually gets the idea that he might be delusional about being a werewolf. David tries to convince Alex that he’s a werewolf by explaining the 1941 movie “The Wolfman.” The key is that he can be saved from his fate only by someone who loves him. Alex doesn’t get it—at first.
David’s transformation scene was pretty intense, which may be why neither of us actually heard Sam Cooke’s smooth delivery of the song “Blue Moon.” That might speak against Landis’s idea that a sad song might moderate the horror of David’s terrifying metamorphosis into a huge, demonic wolf. However, I did find out that the film’s composer, Elmer Bernstein, wanted to use a scary music. Landis wanted to use Cooke’s rendition of “Blue Moon” and prevailed. However, there’s a clip with Bernstein’s music, which is pretty intense. I didn’t much care for it, although Sena thought it fit better with the transformation.
There were actually three versions of the song “Blue Moon” in the movie: one by Bobby Vinton, one by Sam Cooke, and the third by The Marcels. Neither of us heard “Blue Moon” by Sam Cook. We couldn’t find evidence on the web that the Svengoolie version edited out the song. On the other hand, neither did we hear the sexually suggestive noises in the porno theater when David’s slaughtered victims give him helpful advice about how to commit suicide so that they can get out of limbo. Again, that’s because they’re undead and David has to kill himself in order for them to move on. Even his friend Jack, who was killed by the werewolf who attacked him and David early in the movie, supports this effort—although he scoffs at the idea of a silver bullet being the weapon of choice.
The link between the 1941 movie “The Wolfman” and “An American Werewolf in London” becomes clearer late in the film. Readers can figure it out.
There’s an Easter egg in this movie and it’s the Piccadilly Circus adult film theater marquee, “See You Next Wednesday.” This is a recurring gag in many films by John Landis. It’s a line from the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
“See You Next Wednesday” is a line from the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It is the last line spoken by Frank Poole’s father during Poole’s video message from his parents.
Sena and I both think the movie is pretty good and give it a Shrilling Chicken rating of 4.5/5.
We heard the song “Life is Beautiful” by Keb’ Mo’ last night on the Big Mo Blues Show. It was released 20 years ago. Big Mo said it helped him get through a difficult time. We think the song is beautiful and so do hundreds of other people on the YouTube video posted 16 years ago.
Keb’ Mo’ also did a very fine cover of Bill Withers’ song “Lean on Me” a few years ago in tribute to Withers who was his friend and mentor.
It’s not worth debating whether this song is classifiable as Blues—it doesn’t matter. I think it’s notable that of the many songs I heard on the KCCK Big Mo Blues Show last night, the list of the songs he posted early this morning after the broadcast was very short. He posted only a few, and we’re glad he listed this one.
Most would agree that “Life is Beautiful” is a fine example of contemporary acoustic blues. Compared to what we might usually hear in music labeled as the blues you might think it’s the opposite—almost “too happy” and soul-soothing to be the blues. Blues isn’t always about badness in life.
Sena’s daffodil and crocus are coming up in the garden, so I took 3 snapshots, each with a different camera: my iPhone 17 pro; a Canon point and shoot; and a Nikon D3400. Pick which one you think is best and comment.
We both heard a barred owl last night. This was a line of thunderstorms rolled through the area. Sena thought it was in the front yard, but there are no trees out there and it’s more likely it was in the back yard.
I searched my photo files and couldn’t find one of a barred owl, although I remarked on seeing one about 11 years ago. It was on top of a street sign and I found an old blog post about it that I wrote about on the same day. I’ll repost it below.
I found a YouTube of a barred owl making typical calls. It might have been calling for a mate. Most articles will point out that this sounds like “Who cooks for you?”
I did a google search about barred owls. When a barred owl visits you, it could mean you’re in a transition in your life. About the time I saw it in 2015, I was a couple of years away from entering the phased retirement transition of my career as a consultation-liaison psychiatrist at University of Iowa Health Care.
I’ve been retired for six years now. I wonder why a barred owl would be visiting now?
Barred Owl Visit Post 2015:
So, the other day as my wife and I were out driving we saw this owl sitting on top of a street sign on the intersection not far from our house.
He looked straight at me. I remember thinking, “Where were you when the voles were gorging on our lawn?”
I’ve never seen an owl up that close, especially roosting on a street sign at a crossroads. Of course, it got me to musing on the crossroads in which we often find ourselves at different times in our careers and at pivotal moments in our lives.
There are big and little stages, the minor and major crossroads we navigate every day and at other transitions: childhood, adolescence, college, medical school, residency, graduation, marriage, divorce, and the birth of children, the death of parents, retirement, and our own approaching death.
Recently I got a funny and thought-provoking essay about this from a former resident who is now an attending herself staffing a psychiatry consultation service at a big university hospital in Cleveland. The title of Dr. Jeanne Lackamp’s perspective article is “The Stages of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry.” In it she describes the stages, the crossroads if you will, of the psychiatric resident in a large general hospital from the perspective of an experienced teacher [1].
I was going to say she does it with the wisdom of a wise owl, but then I thought of the owl sitting on the street sign, whose wisdom I doubted. The owl’s eyesight is keen but there was nothing but concrete on the roads leading away from its perch.
There aren’t any voles out there.
Anyway, short excerpts (which I hope are considered fair use) from Dr. Lackamp’s stages are:
Anticipation: “As though hypomanic, you will eagerly accept the CL challenge….” This is it—Your Big Chance.”
Initiation: “Coping with patient death will become real…and will make you feel sad.” You will wonder how you can possibly do multiple months of this.”
Mastery: “Cockiness may backfire…errors still occur.” “…you feel confident that No One Else could have done better given the circumstances.” “This feeling lasts; until it does not.”
Anger: “Anger will manifest in several ways…” “…it will be tempting to start second-guessing your life choice of going into medicine in general, and Psychiatry in specific.” “Sleep will be rare now too…”
Acceptance: “…you will know what you are doing—but more importantly you will realize that what you know is not everything. “…you will know that you have endured something intense and were changed by it.”
I thought of this as I listened to one of our current senior residents talk about her approaching crossroads. She’ll be a consulting psychiatrist at a private hospital.
She’s excited about it and also wanted to know that her old teacher (which is me, the wise old owl) will be available for collaboration if she needs it.
I suddenly have this craving for voles.
Reference:
Lackamp, J. M. (2015). “The stages of consultation-liaison psychiatry.” Acad Psychiatry 39(2): 217-219.
Hey, we played our first game on our brand-new jumbo cribbage board from Michaud Toys in Canada! It looks great! The numbers are easy to see and it seems easier to peg on.
We also got two new batteries for our Nikon camera and it supports recording an entire game which keeps us from fretting over how much time we play while filming.
You might notice we used what we call a “short cut” in counting runs when scoring hands. See this nifty article on how to do that!
Go Retire Psychiatrist 