OK, so Sena picked all the patio tomatoes and most of them didn’t turn red, especially the slicers. She’s done with growing vegetables. I saw an article about why tomatoes don’t turn red and it makes sense. The featured image shows the patio tomatoes in the plastic bucket for comparison with the red store-bought tomatoes. The bigger green ones are the slicers.
I’m a little leery about eating green tomatoes. According to another article, it’s safe to eat them as long as you don’t gorge on a lot of them. You’d have to eat about a pound and a half to get the amount of some compounds called solanine, atropine, and tomatine, which would turn you into an extraterrestrial. And University of Iowa researchers discovered green tomatoes have an alkaloid called tomatidine which may actually build muscles (don’t tell teenage boys!).
I found a photo of me in the Downs-Jones Library files at Huston-Tillotson University (formerly Huston-Tillotson College) today. It’s the featured image for this post. I was going down memory lane looking at old pictures of former classmates and teachers at H-TU and—there I was. It’s a photo of me in 1975, and it looks like I’m sitting in the Downs-Jones Library on campus posing for the picture. I don’t remember sitting for it. I had hair then and afros were in style.
I was a little worried about copyright issues just downloading or printing the image until I finally noticed the icons for doing both on the web page. I guess they wouldn’t be there if it were prohibited.
What’s also funny is that the caption above my picture says “James Amos—Reporter.” This meant that I was contributing to the college newspaper, The Ramshorn Journal. Funny thing is, I couldn’t remember writing anything for it.
I tried to find copies of the Ramshorn Journal for 1975, but there were only records for issues published in the early to mid-1960s. I guess I’ll never know what I wrote, if anything.
I’m surprised there would be any photos of me at all since I didn’t graduate from H-TU but transferred to Iowa State University and graduated from there in 1985.
I clipped out my photo from a few others. The group included the sponsor of the Ramshorn Journal, the editor, and the typist. That makes it looks I was a part of the staff. I’ll be darned if I remember doing anything for it. If I had written anything, I would think I’d have kept copies. But I have no documents proving it. I don’t have copies of the Ramshorn either. I’m a writer by inclination and habit so this is a mystery.
As I looked through yearbooks, I couldn’t find anyone I could ask about it either. That makes sense because it was 50 years ago. On the other hand, if there are digitized issues of the Ramshorn Journal from the 1960s, there might be some later issues kept somewhere in the library. Maybe there’s something with my byline on it.
If I get curious enough about it, I might ask somebody at the Downs-Jones Library if they could check on it.
I was noodling around the web yesterday and accidentally on purpose found out thumb wrestling used to be a thing. Sure, it’s been about 20 years ago, but it’s overdue for a comeback. They even had this little wrestling ring box that athletes could put their thumbs through. Did you know there used to be a Thumb Wrestling Federation? It was nuts, I guess.
I’m in training for thumb wrestling—sort of. There’s also toe wrestling, but in addition to toe jam, broken toes are a problem. This Toe Wrestling Federation began in the 1970s and I think it’s still going on in England.
Thumb wrestling has been out for a while now. But I can think of ways to bring it back. This is how politicians could settle their differences.
Svengoolie intro: “Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
The Svengoolie show will be airing the movie “Werewolf of London” this coming Saturday night. It was released in 1935 and features something I don’t usually associate with werewolves—a special flower.
Anyway, it’s the first full-length werewolf film. This guy is not looking for beef chow mein.
Hey, I watched the Svengoolie show “The Black Scorpion” last night and I think a subtitle could have been “Stay Out of Trouble, Juanito!” Every time I woke up, that seven-year-old kid was getting himself into another jam.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is a 1957 film starring Richard Denning as Hank Scott, Carlos Rivas as Artur Ramas, Mara Corday as Teresa Alvarez, and Mario Navarro as the irrepressible Juanito. Perry Mason has a bit part as a scorpion.
Hank and Scott are geologists who get roped into investigating the cause of a disaster in Mexico City after a volcano blows its top, waking up a gang of giant scorpions who can’t stop drooling partly because they’re hungry for human flesh, but vitamin B12 deficiency can’t be ruled out. The scorpions are stop motion animation creations which look pretty good, actually.
Right away, Juanito starts messing around getting attached to Hank, opening doors for him, shining his shoes and just making a general nuisance of himself, especially when he starts ignoring his safety from the scorpions—which in turn necessitates his need for being rescued dozens of times. I think this is just attention-seeking after the first few times, one of which involves wandering around and dropping dead fireflies behind him to get the giant arachnids to follow him within shouting distance of Hank, who has to constantly snatch him away from danger.
Juanito: “Hank, help, Hank! The scorpion is about to catch me!”
Hank: “Thunderation, Juanito! What the heck are you doing down here in the cave?”
Juanito: “Save me, Hank! And then I will shine your shoes for only 11,436 pesos!”
Hank (after getting out his exchange rate calculator): “That’s 600 dollars you little hustler!”
Juanito: “Hurry, Hank, before the rate changes; and now the scorpion is close enough to drool on me!”
I found out one thing on the web about one of the items (which was tequila) that Dr. Delacruz wanted to run further tests on with the corpse of one of the scorpion’s victims. Of course, he was joking about the tequila but I guess there is such a thing as a scorpion drink from a bottle of tequila that contains a scorpion. It turns out that the scorpion shot tequila is a macho thing which the giant scorpions hate and destroying mankind is their revenge for it. Just so you know.
Juanito: “Help, Hank! The scorpion is inches away from me now that I’m in their cave after sneaking down here in the bucket with the weapons and the press cameras!”
Hank: “What on earth made you do a stupid thing like that, Juanito?”
Juanito: “I was bringing you this bottle of tequila with a little, edible scorpion in it because I know you’re a macho guy! Then you could waste your time chewing the little scorpion instead of wasting your time taking pictures of the giant drooling scorpion with the old-fashioned big clunky press camera with the huge bulb.”
Hank: “Shut up, Juanito, and bring me another bulb!
The movie could have been shorter if it had ended after the good guys exploded the rocks into the cave. But no, there was a long segment of a guy explaining in pseudoscientific language why Hank and Artur had to return after they left thinking they had finished off the bugs. The guy used a map and PowerPoint slide presentation, carefully explaining while using a laser pointer to indicate various places that provided an implausible escape route for the scorpion which did not clearly show why the giant scorpion had not been killed in the explosion. So much for PowerPoint!
But it did prolong the movie and provided more gruesome footage of scorpions snacking on various human hors d’oeuvres. None of them managed to catch Juanito.
I fell asleep very briefly only a couple of times during the film, so overall I thought it was OK. I believe there’s a sequel in which Juanito, now a teenager, challenges a giant inchworm to a thumb wrestling match.
I got off my schedule last week on listening to the Big Mo blues show, but as it turns out, he was gone last Friday. I heard last night’s blues show and heard Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Riviera Paradise.
So, of course that was not on the list of songs for the pod show today, but Big Mo did mention that Riviera Paradise and the name of the collection, which was In Step was related to Stevie Ray Vaughn’s having been successful at staying sober from substance use disorder for a year. The name In Step was evidently related to his going through a 12-step program to achieve sobriety. I learned about Stevie Ray Vaughn early in my residency (if I recall correctly) from a University of Iowa psychiatrist who is now the chair of the psychiatry department.
The name of today’s pod show was “The Yellow Butane Curse” which is about superstition. I’m not sure if this means that blues music enthusiasts are prone to being superstitious, but Big Mo did admit to believing that yellow butane lighters were unlucky for him.
This is probably going to seem like a disconnected transition but I missed last week’s pod show (“He plays what can’t be written down” see below), which was not the usual format of song talk but an interview with a successful local musician, Merrill Miller. I don’t know anything about him except what I learned in the podcast. I got a kick out of listening to a couple of musicians just more or less shooting the breeze about living the musician’s life.
Merrill mentioned playing in places like Strawberry Point, Iowa. I don’t have a musical connection to Strawberry Point, and I never went anywhere there that was connected with music like Merrill did. In fact, the only reason I was in Strawberry Point was because I was part of a survey crew staking Highway 13 between there and Elkader to straighten out some of the many curves in the road. We didn’t have much time to listen to music.
One piece of Iowa history they talked about was the issue of black musicians not being able to find a place to stay in this area because of racism. They had to find somebody they knew who would put them up while they were in town for a gig. Funny where a rambling, relaxed conversation will sometimes lead you.
I had few connections to music while I was growing up. My mother tried to teach my little brother and I how to play piano. It was an old out of tune piano. I managed to learn where the “middle C note” was—and that’s about all I recall about it. I took guitar lessons and got pretty good at making buzzing notes with it. Man, I could make that guitar buzz, although my teacher got a good laugh out of it—and couldn’t get me to break the habit. I could blow into a harmonica (what real musicians like Merrill and Big Mo call a harp), but I couldn’t kidnap any notes out of it. I tried picking notes on a banjo for a short while, had a second stab at the guitar, and got not much more than callouses on my fingers before moving on to non-music making careers.
You can be glad about that. Now about that suggestion that I have for a tee shirt design about my favorite faux sponsor created by Big Mo, Mayree of the legendary Mayree’s hand battered catfish; it’s better because it’s battered. I wonder if there’s any movement on that.
After a short break during the Thanksgiving holiday your hosts are back at it again with another episode! This week features the usual mix of blues eras you’ve come to expect along with a few Californian artists, tune in to see which ones! Songs featured in the episode: Solomon Hicks – “Further On Up The … Continue reading
So, for the past several days, Sena has been bugging me to let her give me a facial. I’ve never had a facial; it never occurred to me; I had no idea what it even entailed. I looked it up on the web. I read things that kind of scared me.
Facials can result in something called “purges.” It turns out facials can sometimes lead to them and it could transport you pack to the days when you were a pimply teenager. Yeah, like I want to break out in pimples! Are you kidding me?
I read about the shaving controversy surrounding facials. Should you shave or not before a facial? No, because it’s like a double exfoliation, and that’s against federal law! Nah, no reason to worry about shaving or not shaving, just go and get the facial!
She just kept after me. Every single day, the question was some variation on the same theme: And when would you like your facial? Are you ready for your facial? Did I mention I can give you a facial? Have I asked you yet about your facial?
Yeah, about five minutes ago.
Sena gives herself facials and says it’s relaxing and does wonders for her skin. What’s wrong with my skin? Is my facial skin defective? It covers my skull. That’s what it’s for.
I also recalled the Men in Black scene in which Agents J and K question Beatrice about what happened to her husband Edgar, who got eaten by a giant alien cockroach who took his skin and wore it as a disguise. When Agent K neuralyzed Beatrice, Agent J suggested she “find somewhere where you can get a facial.” I don’t think anybody suggested Edgar get a facial, but he probably needed one more than Beatrice did.
I finally realized I would never hear the end of it, so I said yeah, go ahead give me a facial. It tingled. It didn’t take an hour. So far there has been no purging of any kind. I think I glow. Maybe I could try another one in a year or so.
Hey, I thought it would be fun to share an interview that somebody did of Svengoolie at the Comic-Con in San Diego yesterday. Svengoolie is played by Rich Koz and he’s been around a long time. He’s definitely not thinkinig of retiring. The only way we would have recognized him is by his voice!
Svengoolie intro: Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!
I plan to watch the upcoming blockbuster Svengoolie movie this Saturday night, “The Black Scorpion” and so far, I haven’t read much about it except for a couple of lines from a synopsis or two. A volcano erupts and all of a sudden, a little town in Mexico is infested with giant scorpions.
I bet you, just like me, remember the TV series Meerkat Manor. Why would I say that, since probably none of you will fess up to it? Because meerkats eat scorpions! Not to mention the meerkats were often not much bigger than the scorpions. But could a mob of meerkats tip the scales? You’d need more than a mob to take down a bed of giant scorpions.
So, can you use bug spray on them? I mean the scorpions, not the meerkats. It turns out that scorpions are arachnids, not insects—but that doesn’t mean some bug sprays won’t work. On the other hand, you could just stick them in a freezer to kill them—not yours, of course. You’d need a freezer the size of a warehouse.
By the way, a bunch of scorpions is called a bed (see above). And so, I guess you can figure out a punch line for a Chuck Norris joke with the lead-in: What does Chuck Norris sleep on when he camps out in the desert?
Today we saw this cool Red-Tailed Hawk on the fence—sort of, in a manner of speaking. This hawk was definitely not on the fence about getting brunch though. It would fly off the fence a few times and we expected it would come up with a mouse or squirrel or something—empty claws.
The woodchucks are too big for the hawk.
The experts say you can distinguish a male from a female Red-Tailed Hawk because the female is “25% larger.” I guess that might work if you saw them together—doing something X-rated.
On the other hand, there was a Red-Tailed Hawk named Pale Male that was famous in the New York City Central Park area. He got his name because his head was white. He took several females as mates during his life. They raised several eyasses, which was a new word for me today; it means young hawks. Mary Tyler Moore (“Oh, Rob”) participated along with other neighbors in protests about anti-pigeon spikes being removed and eventually they were replaced by “cradles.”
If you don’t remember the “Oh, Rob!” quote it was Mary Tyler Moore’s (as Laura Petrie) frequent complaint about husband Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) on the Dick Van Dyke show (sitcom in the 1960s). Give yourself a gold star if you thought of the X-File episode “Arcadia” in which Agents Mulder and Scully took the names of the Petries.
Anyway, the Red-Tail Hawk is an impressive bird. It was just not a lucky day for hunting.
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