Happy Chanukah

The Chanukah Song

Written By: Adam Sandler

Put on your yarmulke

Here comes Chanukah

So much funukah

To celebrate Chanukah

Chanukah is the festival of lights

Instead of one day of presents, we have eight crazy nights

When you feel like the only kid in town without a Christmas tree

Here's a list of people who are Jewish just like you and me

David Lee Roth lights the menorah

So do Kirk Douglas, James Caan and the late Dina Shore-ah

Guess who eats together at the Carnegie Deli

Bowser from Sha Na Na and Arthur Fonzarelli

Paul Newman's half Jewish, Goldie Hawn's half too

Put them together, what a fine lookin' Jew

You don't need 'Deck the Halls' or 'Jingle Bell Rock'

'Cause you can spin a dreidel with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock --

both Jewish!

Put on your yarmulke

It's time for Chanukah

The owner of the Seattle Supersonicahs

Celebrates Chanukah

O.J. Simpson,......NOT A JEW!

But guess who is? Hall of famer Rod Carew -- he converted.

We got Ann Landers and her sister Dear Abby

Harrison Ford's a quarter Jewish -- not too shabby!

Some people think that Ebeneezer Scrooge is,

well he's not, but guess who is

All Three Stooges!

So many Jews are in showbiz

Tom Cruise isn't, but I heard his agent is

Tell your friend Veronica

It's time to celebrate Chanukah

I hope I get a harmonicah

On this lovely, lovely Chanukah

So drink your gin and tonicah

And smoke your MARIJUANICA

if you really, really wannakah

Have a happy, happy, happy, happy Chanukah

December 1st

Now the first of December was covered with snow

And so was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston.

Lord, the Berkshires seemed dream-like on account of that frosting

With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go.

-Sweet Baby James-

This should have been earlier in the week, but the roads were closed. See ya at the mall.

Toad

Tru's Aunt Marie

"Imagine a morning in late November.
A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature;but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar...it's fruitcake weather" from A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote.

As a young boy Truman lived with his Aunt Marie and cousin Sook. "A Christmas Memory" tells the story of a boy and his best friend, his "slow" 60 year old cousin in depression era Alabama preparing for the coming of Christmas. A large part of the story is focused on baking 31 fruitcakes on which they spend all the money they saved throughout the year, and then gave as gifts to those who had befriended them.

Aunt Marie became a writer. Her 2000 book "Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote and Sook" is a collection of 19th and early 20th century country fruitcake recipes. When word of its publication hit Jay Leno people Aunt Marie was invited onto The Tonight Show, after which she became known as the Fruitcake Lady. She appeared as a demure old country lady, but Jay's audience soon learned the old gal had a saucy mouth and quick wit.

That led to further appearances and finally a semi regular guest spot in a segment known as "Ask the Fruitcake Lady" during which she would answer audience questions on any subject allowed by the censors.



The following exchange is typical:
Viewer: My husband wants a new tool set for Christmas, but I know he won't use it and it'll just be a waste of money. What else can I give him that will make him happy?

Rudisill: Well, I should say it'd be to your benefit to give him sex. It'd be a lot cheaper for you to do that. I mean, why not? You -- I would, because even if you give him the other thing, then he's still going to come back for sex, you see. So just give him sex to begin with, and you don't have to buy the other thing. Go with the sex.

It's fruitcake weather in Mayberry. I'm late, but with Aunt Marie's tome in hand cakes will soon appear. I love fruitcake, I love fruitcake season.

Toad

Happy Chanukah

Award Season has Begun

The Literary Review of London held its annual Bad Sex in Fiction award banquet last night. The prize exists, according to Review editor, Alexander Waugh, "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it."

Previous winners and shortlistees include distinguished writers Norman Mailer (The Castle in the Forest), John Updike (shortlist), and Tom Wolfe (I am Charlotte Simmons).

This year's nominees were:

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon
The Shape of Her by Rowan Somerville
Maya by Alastair Campbell
A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee
Heartbreak by Craig Raine
Mr Peanut by Adam Ross

And the winner....
Rowan Somerville for passages from, The Shape of Her.

Mr. Somerville, personally accepted the ward with good grace and humor.

Nowhere but Britain.
Toad

Sam's Birthday

happy Birthday Mr. Clemons. I'm still wraslin with the Autobiography.

Toad

Dem Bones?

Do you read Will Boehlke's A Suitable Wardrobe? I read it much as I do Town and Country, more aspirational than anything, but it is a great daily read.

Last week, Will had a piece on boning shoes. Once upon a time, the outer portion of men's shoes were polished suede, meticulously rubbed with deer bones to give the perfect finish. Today riding boots are about the sole application for boning.

The post got me wondering just where would one pick up a supply of bones for shoe polishing. I asked my friends at Cobblestone, the local Alden source, and got one of those looks. It dawned on me that perhaps if you had to ask...



Where I went wrong was asking people.



Place your order with a 10 pound Shih Tzu and she'll return with the goods.

Toad

Sometimes things never change

I'm becoming my father.

I realized much too late that my father was a car guy. He just had an odd way of showing it. From the early 1960's through the mid 80's, every 3 years he ordered a Chevy Impala. Convertible, coupe, sedan, hot rod, he had them all. Six in a row in fact (1961-1984).

In reaction to a lifetime of the same, I have never purchased the same car twice. My bride on the other hand likes what she likes, and doesn't much care for change. To Mrs. T a car is an appliance. (I wrote about it lovingly here.) It better work. It had better be big enough to carry all the grandkids, their stuff, our stuff and any other stuff.

Her last two cars have been trouble free Mercury Grand Marquis's. Imagine a police cruiser. It looks like that.



Since I broadcast that I was looking for a car, Mrs. T and her land yacht have been in a serious accident. Early in the week, her yacht was laid to rest by the insurance adjuster. My car search went on hold, while we replaced "the family car".

Unthinkingly male, I foolishly said "that deep down, I really couldn't do 3 Merc's in a row. We've done it, time to move on," That was met with "it just saved my life, it's reliable", and other sensible girl rationalizations along with a rasher of hot tongue and cold shoulder. Mrs. T eventually did consent to an open minded look see. Like the trooper she is, she went.

Armed with your suggestions we looked, we narrowed, we drove, we reached a compromise. Then we got home.

On top of the mail was an advert from a local dealer. The ad read,"We have a boatload of pre owned 2010 Grand Marquis's. Each has 10,000 miles and is priced at 55% of the original sticker." So what if Mercury is an orphan brand, so am I.

The car Mrs. T WANTED all along, in the right color, right trim, and thousands less than our compromise choice? It's a done deal.

It looks exactly like this.



The New York Times had a wonderful obit for the GM on Sunday. Mrs T's comes home tomorrow.

Toad

Happy Birthday Nancy Mitford

Happy Birthday Nancy!!!!!

If you are unfamiliar with her writing, try her 2 semi-autobiographical novels, "The Pursuit of Love" and "Love in a Cold Climate". Perfect holiday escape literature.



If you've a fan of 20th century Brit Lit on your holiday shopping list, you could do far worse than the Penguin re-release boxed set "Love From Nancy" which includes "Love in a Cold Climate", "The Pursuit of Love", "Don't Tell Alfred", "The Blessings" and "Wigs on the Green"



Francophiles on your gift list will appreciate receiving a copy of her biographies of Voltaire, The Sun King and Madame De Pompadour.

Give her a try. She knew everyone worth knowing,was funny, sarcastic, a great tease and a wonderful writer. All may be found at her war time employer, Heywood Hill

Toad

The Price of Poker just went up

Tempted by the holiday ads for the "Star Registry"?

If you're unfamiliar, the program works like this. Tonight take a look outside. If the night is clear, you're likely to notice lots of stars. Peek through a spy glass and you're likely to see even more. Click on the Hubble telescope site and there are more stars than even you can count, on both hands even.

For a nominal fee, the Star Registry, and their ilk (there are lots of sites to chose from) offer exclusive naming rights (some offer ownership) of the star of your choosing. To hell with a star on the Walk of Fame, when you're a celestial owner.



Sounds too good to be true doesn't it? It was until...

Senora Angeles Duran, from Salvaterra do Mino, Galicia, Spain reported Friday that she bought the Sun (sol, soleil, sole...). The same one you see many mornings and afternoons.

Sra. Duran's certificate of ownership,"issued by the notary public declares Duran to be the "owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, located in the centre of the solar system, located at an average distance from Earth of about 149,600,000 kilometres".

In a move which may put the kibosh to many solar energy projects, Angeles is planning a use tax. The Sun is now on a pay to play plan. Use the sun, pony up. This may put a crimp in Alice's Hermes budget.

We night owls have little to fear.

Toad

The Game is Afoot

Let the holiday shopping commence, just without me please.

I mentioned in the past that there is little in the phrase "Black Friday" which motivates me to reach for me wallet, and for that I blame retailers.

From the bottom of my heart I understand how important the holiday season is to many stores. I get it, I truly do. My cynicism stems from how holiday shopping is marketed.

Once upon a time, Christmas season in the US began the day after Thanksgiving, today. Now holiday creep has set in and the day after Halloween is leaning towards opening day. Once upon a time, merchants provided true incentive to be at their stores at 4 AM. Now, bargains and supply are better next week.

On-line shopping hasn't killed brick and mortar yet, but it has certainly made shopping easier, provided you know what you want.

My advice. Sleep in today, have a nice breakfast, get a few chores out of the way, and if you must, go shopping. By the time you are washing up from breakfast,the amateurs will be out of your way.

Enjoy your day. Mrs. T and I will be out, buying a car, Black Friday or no.

Toad

Happy Thanksgiving

While you prepare for your traditional Thanksgiving celebration, its good to remember a bit of American History.

Americans tend to believe the first European settlers to hit what is now the continental US were those dastardly, witch baiting Pilgrims who arrived near Plymouth Rock, Mass. Not true. Tidewater Virginians duel over less slanderous allegations.

Englishmen hit Jamestown settlement, in what is now Virginia in May, 1607, a good 13 years before Pilgrims came to our shores. In one of the great coincidences in history, the Jamestown settlers were met by English speaking natives. The native locals learned English during the earlier, lost Roanoke settlement. One of their first questions was "Did you bring beer?" True story.

Those in the west take a longer view of history than those in the east. Plymouth Rock and all their shenanigans is a long way from the Pacific. Westerners have a completely different dynamic than Virginians or Mass Bay colonists.

Those west of Denver know the Spanish arrived first. Spanish explorers came to America 40 years ahead of the English. So successful were their explorations that Sante Fe,New Mexico had a large, thriving population when in 1607, several months prior to the Jamestown landing, it was named capital of the Spanish New Mexico territory,

Easterners have a truly tough time wrapping that idea around their brains.

Had the Spanish a bit more luck and better PR, we might all be enjoying tacos and dramas about Coronado instead of turkey, mini marshmallows and Pilgrims.

Enjoy your day, count your blessings and come back safely.
Toad

Holiday travel

While hanging in line at the airport, waiting to visit the family, have your laundry done, and be asked 10 thousand times how your love life is, keep this in mind. It will make you glad you came.


see more Funny Graphs

Last graph for a while, I promise.

On a bright note, the Apple 1 computer sold for (US)$210,000.

Toad

Tradition!!!!!!

Thursday is Thanksgiving Day in the US. A day which commemorates the first harvest feast celebrated by the earliest British Puritan settlers after their arrival in the North America. The history of the event is steeped in American iconography and mythology.

Most histories tell something of the gratitude of the British settlers towards the Native Americans, who taught the new kids what grew where, introduced them to new foods,(Calvin Trillin has written that Spaghetti Carbonara was an revered gift from the Native peoples to the Brits)and generally helped them survive their first winters in America.



Little is written about how whitey showed his gratitude, repaying his debt primarily with the wrong end of a blunderbust, and systematic genocide, but we moderns prefer to overlook these inconvenient truths, at least this week.

Each family has there own Thanksgiving dinner tradition.

Bless her bones, my mother was not a good cook. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, and factor in how a lifetime of 3 squares/day, 4 picky eaters, a traveling husband, and general lack of interest will take its toll on anyone. It didn't keep her from facing the kitchen every day though. Thanksgiving was her day to shine.

If you have never done it, Thanksgiving dinner is not a hard meal to prepare. A bit of prior planning helps, as does a thorough knowledge of what is expected by your family. If everyone is expecting turkey, and you serve pork, regardless of how great dinner was you have set yourself up for failure.



This post kicked off in a battle of comments last week. Most T-day foods are cliches, kicked off by the makers of mini marshmallows, canned onion ring bits, or cream of soup. Real food need hardly apply.

So what family foods will show up on your table this week, and does anyone really like or eat it, or has it just always been there?

Toad

We're number 1

This news item is likely to attract local spin, fabrication, lies, urgent calls for reform and calls for heads to roll. You won't hear many local talking heads using this opportunity get the city's name out, an unlikely example of all publicity being good publicity. So incredibly sad.
************************************************************************************
TRENTON, N.J. (Nov. 21) -- A national study finds St. Louis overtook Camden, N.J., as the nation's most dangerous city in 2009.

The study released Sunday by CQ Press found St. Louis had 2,070.1 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 429.4. That helped St. Louis beat out Camden, which topped last year's list and was the most dangerous city for 2003 and 2004.

Detroit, Flint, Mich., and Oakland, Calif., rounded out the top five.

For the second straight year, the safest city with more than 75,000 residents was Colonie, N.Y.

The annual rankings are based on population figures and crime data compiled by the FBI. Some criminologists question the findings, saying the methodology is unfair.
********************************************************************************

When you hear a city is dying, your first, second...tenth thought isn't that the locals are killing themselves off, is it?

Toad

Katy Day

You may be anticipating Thanksgiving, but in our house the greater celebration is Katy Day.

Today is my first born's birthday, she was born on Thanksgiving Day, yet is no turkey.

I'm incredibly proud of her, and so very happy to be able to bask in her radiance, albeit distantly.

We love you dahlink, celebrate well, I wish we were there to celebrate with you.

OO

To buy or not to buy

Speaking of the Beatles, it appears that Yoko has relented and the various owners of the Beatles music catalog have agreed that Beatles tunes may now be sold on ITunes, although I doubt John or George much care. If you're pondering a personal spending decision, or perhaps a little holiday shopping based upon this opportunity, let the following concept map from graphjam be your guide.



see more Funny Graphs

Toad

Others do it too!

I've written previously about pre-aging new clothes, but I haven't done this...yet.

I was unsuccessfully attempting to identify a tartan recently. One thing led to another ,and as is the way of the internet, an hour later I was reading a forum dedicated to things Scottish when I came across one man's description of his efforts to resize his new Balmoral hat. Photos from the forum.

Toss it in a stream...

Hang it on a branch in the sun.

Repeat.

It's a story I know well, having done the same countless times with other items of clothing. What caught me up short was a comment from a South Carolina boy on the forum. I present it here.

>The 50 Mission Crush...

In my experience., almost anything that looks new when it is has been made to look old by someone. I read on a blog (Maxminimus:http://maxminimus.blogspot.com/ ) where the author was trying to "Get the Jos. Bank" out of his sportcoat, presumably, meaning he wanted it to look less off-the-rack and more "his". I have heard of all manner of aging processes applied to boat shoes, jeans ( before you paid $300 for someone else to do this) US Navy chambray shirts, etc. A fighter pilot taught me the phrase in the title. He also said the quickest way to achieve it was to remove the stiffener.

That boy do get around.

Toad

Le Car-Le Mon

A bit over a year ago, I gave my car to #2 son. I haven't replaced it. I neither miss not having it, nor am I terribly inconvenienced by its loss, but I have this sinking feeling that I need to begin giving some thought to getting another.

So once again I come hat in hand, soliciting opinions. What should I buy?

My requirements are simple. I need to be able to haul 4 adults in comfort, periodically I may need to carry something a bit more cumbersome than groceries, but not often, and certainly not far. have I mentioned I am unwilling to pay a great deal?

From what I've noticed my choice is either a car, or something that looks like a truck. I've always had cars, and have never fancied trucks, but something is drawing me towards a crossover. A Chevy Equinox, or Hyundai Elantra Touring perhaps? Do I like front wheel drive, rear wheel, AWD? The motoring world is almost unrecognizable to someone who last had a 20 year old car.

So what's in your garage? What do you like, or perhaps more importantly what do you hate? Which motoring decision do you regret? All ideas and opinions gratefully received. Please, help steer me to the right decision.

Toad

The Lennon's

This is a once in a lifetime occurance. Sean, Yoko, Cynthia and Julian Lennon posing as one big happy family, together at the September 16,2010 opening of Julian's photography show at New York's Morrison Hotel Gallery. Photo by Bob Gruen.

For reasons known only to themselves, next week is John Lennon week on PBS. Sunday night on Masterpiece Contemporary is "Lennon Naked" a dramatization of the last days of the Beatles, John and Yoko's marriage, and John's search for his father. Monday on American Masters, is "Lennon NYC". I was near certain that however much John loved being in the US, he was British. Shows what little I know.

The Mr. Mort photo of Sean Lennon and girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl is a segue to an NPR podcast series Tiny Desk Concerts. Earlier this week NPR released a podcast of the duo recorded at the NPR offices in Washington. Not only is Charlotte inoffensive to look at, she also plays accordion. That's high on my list. Their concert may be seen and heard here.

Toad