It was 1993 when the iconic film Coneheads, directed by Steve Barron and based on Saturday Night Live sketches, was released to an adoring audience, including me. Lots of silliness, sweetness, and great music. I just watched it again recently and it still makes me laugh. The David Spade character is a minor player but his role is one of my favorite parts. So much like people I have seen everywhere I worked.

First, everything he does is for his own ultimate benefit. Now I know most of us handle our careers with a self centered interest and there’s nothing wrong with that. But there is always that one person, hanging close to the boss, managing the boss’ ego. The rest of the workers know exactly what is going on but the boss always seems oblivious. And, somehow that person has everything timed perfectly so when the boss moves up, they move up. Or, when the boss is replaced, they get a job with the new boss, doing just what they were doing but at a higher pay level.

Have you seen this happen at your workplace?

The second thing about that person is they always intervene or act as a middleman. No one else can get close to the boss. If you have a great idea, you can’t talk to the boss, you have to tell the ‘David Spade’ and let them pass it on. Of course, the idea then becomes their idea and they get credit and, you guessed it, a raise.

The third part is most funny to me. They always have to have the last word. I’ve had some fun with people like this before by always adding one more word of my own just to see how far they will go. There have been some e mail threads that are long beyond belief because I fool with people like ‘David Spade.’ Example: me “I’ll work on the report and have it ready for proof.” Them, “I’ll review it and send it on.” Me, “Thanks” Them, “It’s OK” Me, “I’ll send it this afternoon.” Them, “I’ll look at it as soon as you send it.” Me, “Around 2:00.” Them, “Good.” Me, “Thanks.” Them, “No Worries.” Me, “No, really, I appreciate it.” Them “My pleasure.” Me, “You’re too kind.” Them, “Only for you.” Me, “Thanks again.” And this can go on all day. They just can’t let anyone have the last thank you or the last word on anything, either e-mail or verbal.

Anyway, the Coneheads movie has so many good laughs in it I would recommend if you haven’t seen it or have time to see it again, give it a view.

Wishing you many laughs and hoping that, in your own life and in your own way, you manage to ‘Narfle the Garthok.’

It was German night at the St Louis Symphony but not the oompah type music that might bring to mind.  It was Brahms, Webern, Strauss, Jr., and Strauss.  Lovely stuff.

The first Brahms was Song of the Fates with full chorus accompanying the orchestra.  Not bad but not my favorite over all.  There was something about having a full size screen hanging down from the ceiling with the words to the ‘Song’ translated into English.  I would have preferred not to have the distraction and just to have let the music carry me through it all.

Of all the music presented, most people would have recognized parts of the J. Strauss, Jr. piece, Artist’s Life.  But, my favorite was the final presentation.  Der Rosenkavalier Suite by R. Strauss had everything in it from moving, lyrical passages, to booming tuba, to the richness of harps and the pounding of kettle drums.  It also has several ‘false’ endings that didn’t fool me at all.  The ‘real’ final ending was spectacular and got everyone to their feet with a pretty rousing applause.

What I liked best about Der Rosenkavalier was that it seemed like it would fit in an early 1950s movie about men returning from war and having sad memories but longing for a new life and love.  I could feel the passage of time, the longing, the memories, the conflict, and finally the exuberance.  It’s actually the music of a comic opera about a woman with a younger lover.  The young man then falls for a young woman and the older woman steps out of the picture after much intrigue by many people.  I’m not sure why I can make it the music for a 1950s movie, but that’s the way I heard it.  At least it had a happy ending.

It might not have been the music of an oompah band, but what the heck?  It still put me in the mood for beer and pretzels.

Stephen King, yes, the other, very famous in is own right, Stephen King, reminded me of an old favorite movie, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a John Huston film staring Humphrey Bogart.  I had been thinking quite a bit lately of human behavior and especially thinking about it after the Boston Marathon incident.  So, thank you Stephen for making all the disorganized, messy thoughts I was having congeal into something of a statement concerning our victories and failings as human beings.

You may know of the Humphrey Bogart movie, when Bogart plays Fred Dodd, a fairly normal man trying to improve his lot in life by taking some risks and working very hard.  But, do you recall Edith?  Edith is the presumed name of Lot’s wife.  Yes, that is the same Lot from Genesis in the Bible.  Funny how she is always just referred to has Lot’s wife with no name of her own.  But, I believe students of the Bible have been able to track down a first name for her and most Hebrew students of Genesis believe her name was Edith.

Well, Edith had a moment of human frailty when she was fleeing for her life with Lot and some others.  Their only command for freedom was, “Flee, but do not look back.  If you look back, you will be turned to salt.”  I like to think I would have gone along with that command and run like heck.  But, Edith had a moment of weakness and turned back to take one last look at her former home and zap–she was turned to salt.  Now, I think Lot did pretty good to just keep going without standing around weeping over his lost wife.  He just kept going like he was commanded.  Mean while, Sodom was destroyed and Edith remained, half way to freedom, turned into a salt pillar.

Fred Dodd, on the other hand, crept over to the dark side slowly.  He had a good deal going, working with a couple of other guys to mine a possible gold field.  They actually did strike it rich and in doing so, something dark and terrible was turned on in Fred’s mind.  He became greedy and paranoid.  This was a man that had worked side by side with his two companions and shared everything.  He had stood up with them against some heavily armed banditos and beat the bad guys back with skill, smarts, and a lot of luck. 

Then, suddenly, they struck it rich and he started craving what his fellows workers had gained through their hardship and their mutual partnership.  He was paranoid about losing his share of the gold yet wanted to find a way to capture their shares as well.

If you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t tell you the ending, but I will say that it didn’t work out the way Fred was hoping.

What I want to say from these two stories is that sometimes, even when we have the purest of intentions, the frailty of our human self can take hold and cause us to do something we will regret forever. The weakness may even cause our demise.

I always liked the story of Lot’s wife because I thought we had much in common. I probably would have turned back to look also. Not that I’m not a good person but that I have the same human weaknesses of Edith. Curiosity and a desire not to let go of the past can sometimes be our undoing. And poor Fred Dodd. I have often seen people overcome by greed and I am pretty certain I will not become a part of that sorry group.

How can we gird ourselves to be the ones that withstand temptation and do the right or ‘heroic’ thing? We can train our mind, our body, and our spirit to be as strong as possible.

And, what kind of person am I? Will I be the one to run away from the sound of an explosion, or crumple in tears, or will I be the one dashing past those two, right into the face of danger to help another person or prevent a disaster?

We live in a time of uncertainty. I am preparing to charge into the face of danger with no more fears.

Two minutes.  Not much time.  And yet . . .

It is time you can use to answer several e mails or texts, or read two or three short news updates, or check your stock reports or make a quick phone call.

Two minutes is the amount of cycle time for most of our traffic lights.  I am not thrilled with this because on my morning commute I end up stopped more than I go and it doesn’t matter if I drive fast, slow, or in between.  I have had people from the ‘green St Louis’ team say if you drive the right speed you will end up with all green lights.  But, that just isn’t true.  If you hit one red, you will hit all of them red.  If you hit one green light you will invariably end up hitting all the rest red. I implore you to prove me wrong on this.

Or, you could just get in the car with me some morning and find out for yourself.

What I have done, since I am a ‘time counter,’ is figured out how to make the time productive. I didn’t like sitting at stop light after stop light being impatient and angry about the waste of time, not to mention the waste of gasoline. What I started doing was timing each light to see how much time was available for other activity. OK. Some stop lights are a mere 1.5 minutes and some are 2.0 to 3.0 minutes. Most of them in my particular drive area are exactly 2 minutes. I have figured out what I can accomplish in various amounts of time and have managed to create a way to use the time productively. Also, when I don’t have something to do during the ‘down’ time of the stop light, I use the time to relax. I know when I stop that I will have 2 minutes to chill or to listen to something good on the radio or a CD. This keeps me from becoming anxious or impatient.

I always look at my dash clock as soon as I see the light turn red, then, according to what I want to accomplish, I start doing whatever while keeping one eye on the clock. When two minutes are up, I know it is time to pay attention and maybe start moving forward in the traffic lane. It would be great if other people also did this because I am sure some people doze off at stop lights. In Chicago it seems to be appropriate to honk as soon as the light turns green, thus alerting the people at the front of the line they should start moving. In St Louis we are more polite. Sometimes we sit through an entire green light behind someone that has phased out and doesn’t move during the go cycle. This is aggravating to those behind the staller but we wouldn’t want to seem impolite by honking at him/her to alert him/her of the error.

You may think it is obsessive of me to be concerned about traffic light timing. You are right. But, like I said, I am a counter and it’s not good to pretend otherwise. It is a pretty helpful obsession sometimes. Other times, not so much.

Just to leave you with something to consider: It takes most people approximately 2 minutes to read 560 words.

This post is definitely stop light material.

The arms of a stranger, sheltering, lifting

The cries of a stranger, waiting for help

The blood of a stranger, flowing, unceasing

The sound of a stranger, offering prayers

The fear of a stranger, seeking a loved one

The hope of a stranger, waiting for news

The arms of a stranger, sheltering, lifting

A world full of strangers, longing for hope

Yes, the bell is about to toll for April 15th, and the IRS reg book is about to close for another year, and yes, finally, yes, my taxes are filed and paid in full today.

Tested to the limit
Asked to give too much
Xyster could be needed
Extracting all I’ve got to
Satisfy the tax man
Pulling savings out
All other funds have vanished
I don’t know where to turn
Deliverance could await me
In an unemployment line
Not having any income
For IRS to assign
Unless they find a way to count
Lost coins within my purse
Leave me alone for just a while
To build my safety net
Or maybe stash some dough away
Despite the constant threat
Alone I’ve faced the IRS, next
Year it starts again.

Recognize those action ‘sounds?’  Thanks to comic books, and chewing gum wrappers, most of us recognize those onomatopoeias.

It’s such a great sounding word itself. An onomatopoeia is a word that imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes.  There are so many that come in handy as we try to tell our stories yet sometimes we still have to invent our own way of spelling a sound. In the current world of technology and technological sounds, an entire set of new words has been created to describe the workings and failures of gadgets, not to mention ring tones. My own phone is set to make an ‘ooooahhhhhh-ooooahhhhh’ sound. I was forced to come up with that word myself. I had the phone set to sound like a squeaky gate at first but couldn’t come up with a spelling for the sound. In fact, squeaky is an onomatopoeia but doesn’t really describe the sound of that tone. Nothing quite worked. No wonder people are choosing to use bits of rock or pop tunes. Much easier to describe.

As I was doing a little research on onomatopoeias, I learned a few interesting facts, and uncovered some things I would have thought of myself, given enough time. What I could have figured out, is that the ‘sounds’ can change over time as a language develops or are slightly different in other cultures. There are some sounds, however, that we all recognize. World wide, for example, a crow makes a ‘caw-caw’ sound. Wikipedia says that in Tamil and Malayalam, the actual word for crow is ‘kaakaa.’ Makes sense to me. As a long time amateur birder, I have wondered at the bird sound descriptions in the Audobon and similar books. Some of the onomatopoeias they use to describe the songs and calls of birds leave me clueless. Who thought of those sounds anyway? Most don’t sound anything like the noise that comes out of the birds beaks to me.

The world of advertising has made use of unique sounds to promote products to us. I can think of Midas Muffler, Rice Krispies, Kerplumk, Folgers, Alka Seltzer, Jiffy Pop, and a former product, Fizzies, off the top of my head.

The pop art movement also made use of action words with Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Wham’ as one of the most famous. The Batman TV series from the 1960s brought action words to the small screen and more recently they were back on the big screen with the Transformers.

Action words bring a bit of fun to our writing and may help elucidate the story for the reader. Song writers have had fun with action words too and I’ll close this out with part of a funny love song, Onomatopoeia, written and performed by Todd Rundgren. (FYI, this comes as a ring tone if you have an interest: http://www.sing365.com )

Onomatopoeia every time I see ya
My senses tell me hubba
And I just can’t disagree
I get a feeling in my heart that I can’t describe
It’s sort of lub, dub, lub, dub
A sound in my head that I can’t describe
It’s sort of zoom, zip, hiccup, drip
Ding, dong, crunch, crack, bark, meow, whinnie, quack

It’s hard to believe this, but it is true.

There has been one surprising positive result of the economic downturn that began in 2008. Art galleries, museums, and sculpture parks have been very busy since then, joining forces with one another and with other types of not for profit groups.  The major reason for this has been survival.  We all know about the economy and budget cuts and less funds going to the arts and public charities. And we have seen many not for profits shutter their doors or lay off half their staff and cut programs. But we have also seen more collaboration, more sharing of ideas, and more group efforts than ever before.

One idea I am currently working on with our local sculpture park is combining an art fair with a canned food drive. I thought there must be a way to be creative with the effort and perhaps build something with the collected cans to make it entertaining and an artistic expression. My suggestion was to bring in a sculptor to build something with the cans. Unfortunately, there was some polite eye rolling when I first made the suggestion because there was a view that all that could be built with cans would be castles, forts, simple structures. I had to find a way to share my vision of how we could serve the food pantry as well as stay within our artistic mission and also provide some entertainment.

How could I win over the board and help them share my vision? Of course, I turned to the internet for help. Surely someone else had thought of this and was doing it somewhere in the world. In fact they had, and find them, I did. You can find them too at: http://www.cannedart.org You may even be near one of their competition locations this year and may be able to stop by and see them in action.

If you remember Pop Art and Andy Warhol, you will most likely remember his iconic painting of a Campbell’s soup can. One of the competition entries in Canned Art is a picture of Andy Warhol made of, what else but, soup cans. It’s pretty amazing. There are also entries that look similar to Lego creations and some that look like ‘modern’ art sculptures. Very interesting and not at all like the simple forts or castles one would imagine.

I’m hoping later this year, at one of our sculpture park events, we will be able to have an artist on hand to construct some art with cans for the benefit of our food pantry. The idea of forming an alliance with some of our social service providers will take us one step further towards reaching more people in the community. Feeding the soul with art is a very worth while mission, but it goes down much better on a full stomach.

A sure sign of spring has arrived in the Midwest.

Yes, friends, it’s tornado season.  Not that any time of year can be ruled out, but when spring tries to confront winter and give birth to a warm, humid atmosphere, the birth pains often result in rough weather.

We spent about an hour of quality time with the cat in the basement yesterday evening.  Fortunately our basement is pseudo fixed up making the stay not too unpleasant.  The only unpleasant part, in fact, was the worry that when we opened the door to the upstairs, the house would be missing.  Since we moved to St Louis about 20 years ago, we’ve experienced 3 way too close tornadoes including a very bad one in 2012 on April 28th.  That particular tornado came about a week following the disastrous Joplin, MO tornado that struck on April 22nd, resulting in the deaths of 156 people. That tornado is referred to as the ‘Good Friday’ one because it fell on a Good Friday but I call it the Earth Day tornado.  Good Friday moves around from year to year on the calendar, but Earth Day maintains its date.  There were several stories on the local news in the past few weeks commemorating the anniversary of the Joplin tornado.  Well intentioned but they have the date wrong.  I wonder if the media people were afraid to be considered politically incorrect if they named a ‘bad’ manifestation of Mother Nature after Earth Day.

Back to the original story now.  I’ve always been one to pay attention to the warning sirens except for a few years ago when they were sounding too frequently.  St Louis County weather warners decided to sound the sirens if there was a tornado sighted in any surrounding county. There are nine counties bordering St Louis County and only 3 of them usually end up sending weather our way.  The prevailing winds here are west to east and tornadoes typically come from just south west of St Louis County.  Instead of sounding the alarm when a tornado was spotted south west or in the county itself, they were sounding for all directions.  In the spring and summer when weather is volatile, the alarms could be going every day.  People (not just me) stopped paying attention.

What I do trust more than the sirens to give me a warning to hit the basement, is our current cat. We’ve had cats in the past that had no sense of what to do in danger, especially during bad weather. For some reason, they usually wanted to dash outside and crouch under a bush. If they could sneak out through an open door, they would get by quickly and I had no way of catching them. Plus, although I am a huge lover of pets and all animals, I am not crazy enough to go out in hail or pouring rain when the clouds are starting to swirl overhead. Visions of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz have haunted me since childhood.

Anyway, our current cat was a foundling like all the other pets we have owned. She has been a member of our family through two of the close calls we’ve had with tornadoes and she seems to have the perfect sense of what to do and where to go. At the first sign of a thunder storm, she will edge her way to the kitchen and sit close to the basement door. When the thunder gets close or the wind picks up enough to make some noise, she moves to the top step of the basement stairs and peeks around the corner. A little closer or louder, she moves to the 3rd step down from the top. When it gets real noisy, she goes all the way downstairs. Finally, if there really is a tornado within a mile or two, she goes to the back of the basement, under the stairs and screams. It’s a terrible sound, and that doesn’t even half describe it, but way more telling than the tornado sirens and a very efficient warning system for us. I love that cat.

I don’t look forward to tornado season but I truly love and welcome spring. It seems like we can’t enjoy the beauty of the rebirth of nature without going through some turbulence. So, bring it on. We’re ready. Siren is in place and all is well.

As a way of celebrating the 100 day point of our 365 day blog challenge, I thought I would see what some of the most notable events were 100 years ago during the year 1913.  I found these through several websites, including www.HistoryOrb.com

I’m just going to list a few of the events that piqued my interest.  There are, of course, many more that might interest you so please take a look when you have time.  Please note, I have left out most of the European Suffragette activity and the terrible Balkan Wars, not that they aren’t important.  I just wanted to keep the list a manageable size.

February, 1913, the very famous New York Armory show first introduced the artists Picasso, Duchamp, and Matisse to the United States.  (Be there or be square was the invitation, I believe.)

February 25, the 16th Amendment was rattified, authorizing the collection of income tax.  (See, I said these were important events.)

March 4, Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as the US 28th President.

Late March, Dayton, Ohio was almost destroyed when the Scioto, Miami, and Muskingum Rivers reached flood stage simultaneously, killing at least 400 people.

April, Swedish born engineer, Gideon Sundback of Hoboken, patents all-purpose zipper.  (We were all buttoned up before that.)

May 13, 1st four engine aircraft built and flown (Igor Sikorsky-Russia)

May 26, the Actors’ Equity Association was formed

June 4, Suffragette Emily Davison steped in front of King George V’s horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby, giving her life to advance women’s rights

June 16, South-African parliment forbids blacks owning land

July 10, Death Valley, CA hits 134 degrees F, which is the highest temperature recorded in the United States

August 13, Invention of stainless steel by Harry Brearley  (This one invention moved us from rusty to our current shiney state.)

September 10, the Lincoln Highway opened as the 1st paved coast to coast highway

October 3, Federal Income Tax was signed into law at 1%.  (Oh my, how we have grown!)

October 7, Henry Ford instituted the moving assembly line.  (We had the highway, now we needed the cars.)

October 10, Gamboa Dam in Panama was blown up allowing the Atlantic and Pacific waters to mix.

November 13, 1st modern elastic brassiere was patented by Mary Phelps Jacob.  (In one year we went from being just buttoned to being not only zipped but also supported.)

December 1, the 1st drive up gasoline station opened in Pittsburgh.  (May be this was connected to the opening of the Lincoln Highway.  Can’t go far without a tankful.)

December 11, the Mona Lisa, stolen from the Louvre in 1911, was recovered.  (Now we know what she is smiling about.)

December 16, Charlie Chaplin began his film career at Keystone for $150 a week.

December 21, the 1st crossword puzzle (with 32 clues) was printed in the NY World

It always amazes me how much can happen in a day, a month, a year. This list, from one year alone could launch a hundred blogs. I’ve enough ispiration here to start my next post, but I have something more important to do.

I am going out right now to make this day memorable.