1. "When I was your age, I had to walk to school. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways!" It seems like everyone's dad said this. They must have lived in a world painted by Salvador Dali, since, even though this memory was suspect, it remained persistent in the face of the obvious skepticism of their children.
2. Dr Weil is a syndicated newspaper columnist. A recent column of his was titled is "For healthier diet, avoid deep-frying." Really now?!
3. During a TV news conference in Los Angeles soon after I moved there, a police sergeant described the LAPD's response to a particular incident something like this: "We have 6 patrol cars, 10 officers, 2 helicopters, and1 K-9...dog." As opposed to what - a K-8...dog? A K-9...cat ?!
4. My Uncle Bob isn't the biggest fan of watching basketball games. He says you should start them with the score 100-100 and with two minutes left on the clock.
5. A few years ago, Channel 9 in Los Angeles ran an item on firefighter cooks and how some in LA were selling cookbooks to raise money for charity. During an interview, one of the firefighters was talking about the importance of a good-looking meal. He said, "presentation of a meal is 90%, so if you make a meal look good, that's half the battle right there."
6. Why do kids prefer the box the toy came in over the toy itself? Is it just something about boxes, like my niece Isabella seems to think?
October 2006
December 2007
7. I was flipping through the channels on TV one day and there was a special on how certain fried foods were made. An employee of Frito-Lay was describing the making of Fritos and their unique taste and said, "that's the taste we like to see in a Frito." I guess if you work at Frito-Lay, your taste buds have to be good at visualizing.
8. English Muffins promote, on their packages, "hearty nooks" and "tasty crannies." Hmmm. More visualization problems here. How can things like holes or spaces be tasty? You cold fill them up with butter - or, better yet, peanut butter - but then they wouldn't be holes or spaces anymore. Furthermore, wouldn't it be the just the butter or peanut butter that is "hearty" and "tasty?"
9. On my family's annual beach week at Long Beach on Oak Island in North Carolina, my brother-in-law Steve and I used to go down to the pier - a mile away - to get sausage biscuits for breakfast. Well, three years ago, some very wise investors bought the property and tore down "the longest pier in North Carolina," the only pier with "reef balls." Reef balls? Sounds like a rash you might catch when you've been standing in the surf fishing too long.
Anyway, the investors broke the property up into five lots, which have been on the market ever since. The only way that was a wise investment was if they bought Beana's, the only other place nearby to get a half-decent sausage biscuit, since the longest/reef ball pier was deconstructed. Well, even though their biscuits aren't all that - they're undercooked and the sausage patties are too small - early this month when we were at the beach, I had to satisfy my craving, so I drove down to Beana's, about three miles away at the other end of Long Beach.
A lady that works there - I don't know if she's Beana, or a waitress, or what - had bought her two kids in to help out. The older one, a girl of about eleven or twelve, was writing the specials of the day on a dry erase board. She had just written "Cheeseburger and French Fries," when her mother walked by and saw what was on the board. "No, no," she said, in a thick southern accent. "We don't call them 'French' fries, because we don't like the French people." Hmmm..."the" French people. Thank God we're not dealing in hyperbole here. "French," of course, by the way, was pronounced "Free-unch."
On another note, my cousin Melissa used to refer to her two grandmothers as "city grandma" and "country grandma..."
10. So back to the "country"...
One morning at the beach, I went to Food Lion to get some groceries and to pick up the Charlotte Observer - Charlotte, of course, being the closest urban area with a newspaper worth picking (literally) up. I must clarify here, that the reason I wanted the Charlotte Observer wasn't for the quality of news reporting (we had cable and Nancy Grace - another story WAY altogether for that), but for the quality of the crossword puzzle. Yes, I am addicted to the crossword puzzle. Thanks, Mom. To be fair to her, though, she says it helps the brain function better.
Anyway, I asked the cashier if they sold the Charlotte newspaper there, and the man said, "Oh, that's a little too advay-unced for us around here. I might have to git out the Webster's dictionary. But ahll read the sports page."
You couldn't script those two scenes, because reality is truly stranger than fiction.
P.S. That was "advanced," for all of you who don' t speak Southern.
P.P.S. I think I need to do more crossword puzzles.
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