First we take Manhattan

I love my 11-year-old daughter Leah, and she loves… a good arts and crafts project. She’s quite Pinterest-y. A few days ago, she found a can of chalkboard paint (“create a chalkboard on almost any surface”) in our basement and decided to make a small memo board for her room. Friday she found a piece of cardboard and painted it with the chalkboard paint. Yesterday she cut the cardboard and put it in an old 8.5″ x 11″ picture frame. Today she has a soccer game at 1:30, so she wrote that on her memo board. So far, so good, right?

Well, I also have a 15-year-old son who loves teasing his little sister (what older brother doesn’t?). So when he walked past the memo board after Leah had gone to sleep last night, he decided to add another item to her to-do list.

todo snip

Sorry Putin, but my money’s on Leah. If she gets half as mad at you as she does at her older brother, you’re toast.

 

Sit on it, Potsie!

You know you’re getting old when Alan Thicke is hawking tax relief services and “Fonzie” is trying to sell you a reverse mortgage.

 

Where did the time go? One day Dr. Seaver is giving Kirk Cameron a heart to heart talk about the dangers of religious cults (it didn’t work) and Fonzie is making out with the Hooper triplets. Turn around and they’re both geezers hawking questionable products and services on the boob tube.

 

Fonzie even traded in his leather jacket and t-shirt for some relaxed fit khakis. He’s a bigger nerd than Potsie!

fonz

By now, most folks know that Alan Thicke is the father of Robin “Blurred Lines” Thicke. But wait, there’s more. My exhaustive research for this blog post (aka 5 minutes of Googlin’) unearthed these fun facts about Alan Thicke:

  • He wrote the theme songs for Diff’rent Strokes, The Facts of Life and the Chuck Woolery-era Wheel of Fortune
  • He was a producer and writer for Fernwood 2 Night, one of the greatest shows of all time (sez me).
  • He was part of a 1988 TV special called “Kenny Rogers Classic Weekend” where sports stars, musicians and actors were grouped together in teams to play sports like golf, tennis and basketball. That show features Kenny Rogers faking out Michael Jordan on the hardwood and draining a jumper. “The Gambler” roasted MJ like he was a chicken.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting with my mortgage expert, Mr. A. Fonzarelli.

 

You spin me right round, baby

NPR had a nice story this week about how flexi-discs are making a comeback of sorts. To the uninitiated (i.e. pretty much anyone under the age of 40), flexi-discs were the cheapest, flimsiest 45rpm singles you could ever find. (Don’t know what a 45rpm single is? Get off my lawn!) Back in the 60s and 70s, they were usually freebies with the purchase of a magazine or a box of cereal or detergent. You often had to cut them out because they were printed right onto the product package.

To me, flexi-discs have never fallen out of favor, ever since I got one on the back of a box of Super Sugar Crisp cereal back in the 70s.

Sugar-Bears-cut-out-flexi-disc-record (1)

That’s right, I said Super Sugar Crisp… not the watered down name they changed it to when sugar became Public Enemy #1 to health experts. I have to admit it was a genius marketing move. Sugar was a no-no, so they changed the cereal’s name to Super Golden Crisp… and kept all the sugar in it. Brilliant!

I got the “Sugar Bears” flexi-disc; better taste in cereals might’ve resulted in better taste in music. The Monkees were on a cereal box flexi.

honeycomb

The Jackson 5 was on one!

j5

Then again, so was my older sister’s teen idol crush, Bobby Sherman.

lisa_sherman.jpg

So maybe I was better off with Sugar Bear and his band after all.

2 turntables and a microphone… and a bouquet, and a garter…

Every week, LinkedIn sends me an email with “jobs you may be interested in.” Check out the sweet gig that was at the top of my list this week – a wedding DJ/MC in Davenport, Iowa.

image001

 

Now granted, I did work at radio stations as a DJ for several years, but radio DJ and wedding DJ are miles apart. Radio DJs are totally cool, and wedding DJs are totally cheesy. Suggesting I might be interested in a wedding DJ gig is like suggesting that Michelangelo might be interested in a job as a house painter. (I’m really not that vain, just engaging in a bit of hyperbole.)

But maybe I should apply. I’ll send them an audition tape with me saying “OK, Quad Cities, please welcome for the very first time, Mr. and Mrs. Radar O’Reilly” and “Who’s ready to do the Cha-Cha Slide?” I have no idea how much it pays but I’m pretty sure I’d be eating cake every weekend.

Guess I should’ve stayed in radio, then I could’ve turned out like these super suave disc jockeys from WIXY-1260:

WIXYbasketball

Pretty sure that’s Rob “Meathead” Reiner holding the basketball.

Rock on!

 

Wake and fake

Yesterday was 4/20, bro, the unofficial stoner’s holiday. A group in Ohio wants to turn every day into a green day by legalizing recreational and medical use of marijuana. But the green that’s their real motivation isn’t a stash, it’s cold cash.

The group, called Responsible Ohio, is currently gathering petition signatures in an effort to have voters weigh in on a November ballot proposal that will designate 10 farms in the state as official marijuana growing sites. And guess who owns those sites? That’s right, it’s the rich investors that formed Responsible Ohio! They’re looking to create a government-protected corporate cartel. The only way that this could be more of a monopoly is if the Responsible Ohio folks all wore top hats.

monopoly guy

The latest high-profile (see what I did there?) backer of (Ir)Responsible Ohio is former B-list boy band member and reality TV actor Nick Lachey. Mr. 98 Degrees is not exactly in the Hot 100 on the Snoop Dogg “Smoke It if You Got It” charts. But he’s been on a reality show or three, so he knows all about false pretenses.

Personally, I’ve never partaken in weed. I’m stupid enough without it. Whether you are for or against recreational use, this petition is a wolf in tie-dyed sheep’s clothing. It may reek of patchouli, but it’d really stink for Ohio.

You can read more here:

http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-32080-going_for_the_green.html

http://blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2015/03/20/legal-marijuana-cartel-forms-in-ohio/