captainsblog | "Nurse! Administer the Anecdote!"

When work's quiet, and I'm not going anywhere afterwards, and Eleanor and I see each other about 60 waking minutes a day, there's not much to talk about here. I'm left sharing mostly odd little inspirations from books, websites or other media that strike me as funny or interesting or whatever. All of these have been Facebooked at least in original versions, some as comments on others' posts, but since I keep this collection as a more semi-permanent record of life going back, wow, close to a third of my life now, I'll just toss them off more or less in the order they entered my head:

Bless my mother, may she rest in Vestal. She had an answer for everything, even if the answer wasn't particularly good.

When I was a kid, if we were watching a tv show or a movie on the tv with some kind of inexplicable visual- and this was way back before CGI or anything close- I'd pipe up and ask, "Mom! How'd Superman fly out of that window without falling to the ground?" Or, "how did Roadrunner make a hole in the side of that cliff shaped just like his body?" Her answer was, "Camera tricks"- as if that explained anything and everything.

All these years later, it's become a catch phrase between Eleanor and me when we're watching things- even if we question a plot hole in the script, or new actor suddenly taking over a role in a series, it will be explained away by me saying in my Mom voice, "Camera tricks," and her responding, "Thank you, Dorothy!"

I thought of this the other day when Eleanor mentioned that she'd emailed some photos to her brother, which for some reason came out sideways in the attachments. When she asked how that might have happened, I gave the Mom Stock Answer- and then we both realized, that, possibly for the first time ever, Dorothy was literally right:)

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That was before my one trip of the week to Rochester yesterday- yeah, I guess I did do a little something this week- which began at 9 with a two-hour small claims trial and then followed with a couple of client meetups. I ended that day heading home in the afternoon, and as I sometimes do, I decided to check in on the enemy broadcasts on the AM talk radio dial. By far the biggest blood pressure-raiser is Sean Hannity, affectionately dubbed "Lumpy" by Jon Stewart. For months, he's been whining about this one remark that a Justice Department never-Trumper supposedly made about "smelly WalMart voters." He rails about their insensitivity: "How dare they demonize you good people on account of a stereotype?" Yet for all of this week, Lumpy's been all-in on the President of the United States demonizing the entire population of a Congressional District in Baltimore as being "rat-infested slumdwellers," as if that's totally legitimate. Tonight on my Fox show- we'll show you a picture of a rat in Baltimore, so it must be true!

Dude. I've been to Wally World. You can't post photos of smelly, but trust me, if we're playing the Anecdotal Evidence Game, we've both got ammunition.

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Once home from that, we both read a bit and turned in kinda early, but insomnia set in for some reason. It didn't help that the Mets were still playing in Chicago (against the American League team there) until close to midnight- and, amazin'ly, were leading! Despite my remarks the other day about them being pretty much out of contention this year, they've had a nice run of wins, the last seven of them in a row- and the radio announcers and even the fairly cynical regular bloggers were assessing the upcoming schedule and going, Hmmm, maybe, if this and then that and definitely not that other thing, we could sneak back into the pennant race! I'm always enough of a Polyanna to buy into it, but a long-suffering enough fan to not put actual wagers on it.

I understand it, though. For I'm also a Bills fan- and every December, we go through this. Despite the team missing the playoffs for 18 of the past 19 years (and sneaking in on a wing and prayer two seasons ago), despite their talent and schedule usually consigning them to having no real chance of making it by Thanksgiving, and despite the Killer B's in Foxboro stealing our lunch money every year since 2001, the networks still put the Bills' 5-8 record on the onscreen graphic and say we're "In the Hunt."

And that leads to only one image. Not of Dog the Bounty Hunter, or of Hill Street's Howard Hunter, or of Fred Dryer AS Hunter. No, of the one who championed fearlessness and oxygen deprivation as an inspiration to us all....

SEA Hunt, starring Lloyd Bridges! Who went on to be better known for a later project:

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I've been re-reading Jim Bouton's book Ball Four all the way through, to honor his memory after his passing last month. One cool thing I came across last night was that a few weeks before his death, the Library of Congress announced that it had acquired Bouton's collection of personal papers, including his notes, recordings and edited drafts of the legendary book:

I remember exactly where in the book that was, and am glad the crossed-out section got retained- "stet" means "forget my editor's cross-out, I lost the argument with the author, put it back".

No plans to visit the Library of Congress for a look at these, but it's definitely going on the Bucket List, and hey- the kids aren't too far from DC,....

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Today was an even more uneventful workday- the only excitement being that I got to write a delicious set of papers to try to hold a cranky old man in contempt for ignoring my client's recent bankruptcy filing and continuing to send her passive-aggressive texts. I'd sent him my "fair warning" letter a couple of weeks ago, and my client outright told him he was risking a contempt citation, but today he crossed over into practically stalking her near her new residence and sending one final text saying "RUN BUT U CAN'T HIDE U NEED TO PAY UR PAST RENT." The bad l33tsp33k alone is gonna cost him an extra 200 bucks in my attorneys fees.

But I did have time for some inappropriate behavior of my own. I'd gotten in a couple of potential lawsuits yesterday, but only realized today what the name of one of them was. Fortunately, Facebook provides the perfect background to set up the joke:

There followed the obligatory references to the Pope and to Sherlock. Because all of my online friends are also twelve;)

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Trying to finish the latest episode of Handmaid's Tale- just two to go in this season after the one that dropped yesterday. I'm still trying to get my brain around learning that the lead actress, Elisabeth Moss, is a Scientologist, and working on how she can reconcile her performance with that real-life membership. Member-controlling religion? Check. Rejection of accepted mental health treatment? Check. Totally paranoid leadership? Check.

At least I haven't seen OfLRon jumping up and down on a couch yet.

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One day of August down. Two games to get back to .500. And nothing ahead in life that a few good camera tricks can't fix:)