Banner Columnist Archive - Knightstown, Indiana

Tales from the Licked: Devastating Dorkhound

By Mike Redmond

Published July 4, 2007

~~not yet posted to website~~

The Ideal Pizza Remains ‘Pie’ in the Sky

By Mike Redmond

Published July 11, 2007

~~not yet posted to website~~

We’ll Always Have Paris, Mika My Love

By Mike Redmond

Published July 18, 2007

I am in love with Mika Brzezinski.

I guess a lot of other people are, too, and for the same reason: Ms. Brzezinski (oh, what the heck, let’s call her Mika) is the MSNBC anchor who finally decided enough was enough where alleged “news” about Paris Hilton was concerned.

A few weeks ago, as the “news” about Ms. Hilton (oh, what the heck, let’s keep calling her Ms. Hilton) kept showing up in Mika’s copy for MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program – as the lead story, no less, on the day after Sen. Richard Lugar made his important statement about the administration’s Iraq strategy -- Mika finally did what I and many others have been hoping, wishing, even praying for.

She said no.

She crumpled the story into a ball and threw it away. When it turned up again, she ran it though a paper shredder. When it happened again, she took a lighter to it.

"My skin was crawling,” she said. “This was our lead? On a day like this? To me, it was just the ultimate Paris Hilton out-of-control moment. We've gone too far and we've got to stop.”

Now, I didn’t see any this on television. I was among the millions who caught it online, as a clip on YouTube. Personally, I don’t believe in turning on the television in the morning for anything but emergencies and matters of national importance. Or a Marx Brothers movie.

I clicked on the clip because Mika and I go back, sort of. I used to do commentary for the CBS News overnight program, “Up To The Minute.” Mika was an anchor, and the only one who didn’t give the camera that “I have no idea what this man is talking about looks” when my pieces aired. She actually sort of laughed, once. Ok, smiled.

But I love her because Mika (what a great name; it’s just like Mike, only different) did something that every other media outlet short of the National Enquirer should have been doing long ago, but is afraid to. Yes, afraid.

Big time news – network and big-city level -- is a fear-based enterprise, folks. The people who run it are (a.) scared by declining viewership and readership, with virtually no young viewers and readers. Since advertisers want the all-inportant Kid Market, the decline cuts into advertising revenue, which makes shareholders unhappy.

So the news execs try to attract young people by (b.) dumbing down the news with junk about Paris Hilton and the like. This, they hope, will increase readership and revenue, making shareholders happy so the executives can (c.) keep their phoney-baloney jobs, to quote Mel Brooks. Meanwhile, reporters are being laid off coast to coast, which stinks on ice, also to quote Mel Brooks.

The other day I was wondering what the answer might be if we asked the American people to do a word-association test on “Paris.” Something tells me the answer would not be “France.” It wouldn’t even be “Illinois.”

Mika Brzezinski took a stand against that kind of stupidity. Some say it was nothing more than a stunt. So what? If it was, it still delivered an important message, and I thank her for it. I salute her for it. I love her for it.

I’m still not going to watch morning TV, though. Unless they’re showing “Duck Soup,” that is.

Warning: Bathroom Could Be ‘Bugged'

By Mike Redmond

Published July 25, 2007

The strange people who keep track of such things say the majority of home accidents occur in the bathroom. Today, I know why:

Bugs.

Big bugs. Big, weird-looking bugs with long legs and waving antennae and a penchant for going places they really shouldn’t. Bugs such as the one who just last night made my evening routine much more interesting than I really needed.

The story goes like this:

It was after midnight and I was wrapping up an evening of sitting at my computer playing games and … wait. I was wrapping up an evening of sitting at my computer working hard on an Extremely Important Writing Project (there, that’s better). I gave my dog Cookie one last chance to go out, swatting furiously at the bug convention that gathered around the back porch light while Her Slowness took her sweet time meandering back to the house after her Nighttime Tinkle.

Once the canine was inside, I locked up and headed upstairs to the bathroom for my own evening ritual, including brushing of the teeth I paid so much money for, and gulping down the handful of pills I take for the handful of problems that have popped up since my warranty expired on my 50th birthday.

I had just gulped down the pills and was helping myself to a second Dixie cup of water when suddenly I was aware of a dark presence just at the edge of my field of vision, on the left. Since I’ve had floaters in my left eye, I figured that’s what it was. Then it was gone. I drank the water.

Immediately I knew the dark presence was no floater. I also knew where it had gone.

It was in my mouth. Buzzing.

In the next quarter of a second I did five things:

1. I jumped four feet straight up.

2. I banged my left knee, the bum one, on the sink.

3. I blew water all over the mirror.

4. I spit into the sink the big, weird-looking bug with long legs and waving antennae.

5. Then I landed on a bathmat that flew out from under my feet, and fell smack on my butt.

It was like being in my own personal Three Stooges movie.

I don’t know what kind of bug it was. It was larger than a lightning bug and smaller than a roach, but other than that I didn’t get a good look. I was too busy clutching my knee and knocking things off the counter, groping for the mouthwash.

Evidently, Mr. Bug was one of the conventioneers clustered around the porch light and became separated from his tour group while I was holding the door for the dog. No matter. His convention is over. First I hit him with a mouthful of Listerine, and then, while he was reeling from all that minty freshness, I scooped him up and sent him down where the dead goldfish go.

Today I can add to the usual complaints a swollen knee and a sore behind (I wish I could say the behind was swollen, too, but I’m afraid it’s always that size). But I’ve learned my lesson about dangerous bathrooms and have begun to think about taking steps to minimize the hazards.

From now on, when I let Cookie out at night, I might just join her.

Trailblazing Cousin Earns Just Desserts

By Mike Redmond

Published August 1, 2007

Somewhere around here is a coffee cup bearing the slogan, “Life’s Short. Eat Dessert First.” It was given to me when … well, I can’t remember when. All I can say is that it was when that saying was (a.) New and (b.) Thought To Be Amusing. In other words, quite a while ago.

Back then, we were all struck by the Universal Truth of the message. Life IS short. You could have an aneurism right in the middle of lunch and find yourself face down in the lima beans, and then you wouldn’t get that slice of Boston cream pie you were thinking of ordering. Do you really want your last earthly food to be lima beans when it could have been Boston cream pie?

But then the Slogan People came up with another Universal Truth and we were all struck by that one, too, so the “Life Is Short. Eat Dessert First” cups went to attics and garage sales in order to make room for the cups that said “Have A Nice Day.”

Well, since I’ve never had a garage sale I’m pretty sure my old coffee cup is in my attic, gathering dust with the old skates and National Geographics. And I need to find it so I can send it to my cousin Nate.

Last Saturday, at the family reunion, Nate ate dessert first. And here’s the astonishing part: He’s the first person in the family ever to do that at the reunion.

You might remember Nate. He’s the older cousin who sort of took me under his wing when I was a semi-lost kid. He taught me to drive, to fish and to hunt. He also taught me about girls, although when I tried to apply this knowledge a few years later, I discovered that as a romantic advisor, Nate made an excellent driving, fishing and hunting teacher.

OK, back to the reunion: As big as our family is (I have 50 first cousins) and as many reunions as we’ve had (innumerable) and as much as we all love dessert (off the chart), you’d think SOMEONE would have done eaten dessert first before now, but no. Nate blazed the trail.

I think his reasoning had less to do with life being short, however, and more to do with the fact that he was way back in the food line, and it wasn’t moving very fast because people ahead of him were taking their sweet time picking over the main dishes and salads, and he was hungry.

Also, it gave Nate a clear shot at all the desserts before they got scarfed up. You know how it is. You make your way past the fried chicken and the peas-and-cheese salad to get some dessert, only to find the locusts have gotten there ahead of you, and so you find yourself scraping raspberry pie remnants out of a collapsing foil pan.

Of course, all the old lady aunts (including my mother and for that matter, his) gave Nate some good-natured grief about it, but he was holding the trump card: He knew he was only doing something they had all wanted to do at one time or another.

So I have to give my cup to Nate, my boyhood hero and mentor (except for the stuff about girls). He lived the slogan. He ate dessert first.

And then he had a nice day.

Is Obesity Contagious? Fat Chance!

By Mike Redmond

Published August 8, 2007

OK, let me see if I get this straight: Obesity is now a socially contagious disease.

Wow. Things certainly have changed since Mr. Rostenkowski showed that movie about socially contagious diseases to the seventh grade boys. It was an Army training film and it was so scary that Alan Kruglak wet his pants. But I digress.

The obesity thing was all over the news recently, about how researchers have found a social component – in other words, if your friends and family are chunky, chances are you will be, too.

Now, by no means do I want you to think I am making light of the obesity epidemic. Far from it. One look at me would indicate that this would be a SERIOUS case of a pot belly calling someone else a kettle butt. Just wanted to make that clear.

The federally-funded study found a person's chances of becoming obese went up 57 percent if a friend did, 40 percent if a sibling did and 37 percent if a spouse did. In the closest friendships, the risk almost tripled. In same-sex friendships, a person's obesity risk increased by 71 percent if a friend gained weight. Between brothers, the risk was up by 44 percent, but it was 67 percent between sisters. I can already hear my sisters complaining.

I am thrilled, just THRILLED, to learn that my personal poundage isn’t just because I find it difficult to stop at the customary four servings of chicken and noodles, with mashed potatoes underneath and bread and butter on the side. Nope, I’m a pie butt because I have overweight friends and relatives. And the same, of course, is true for them because they have me.

Now to this corpulent influence of friends and relatives we must apply certain mathematical, sociological and anthropological concepts in order to gain context, or something. Therefore, by adding the theory of six degrees of separation, by which everyone pretty much knows everyone else in the world give or take six people, plus the tradition of hospitality (“Water for my horses and hot fudge sundaes for my men!”), times The Clean Plate Rule, The Take All You Want But Eat All You Take Rule, The Share With Your Sister Rule, Robert’s Rules Of Order, and the Order Of The Flaming Shish Kebab First Class, we can determine as follows:

Everyone who is overweight can blame it on one guy who lives in Pittsburgh.

Either that or it’s the fault of everyone you know, and everyone they know, and every one THEY know, and so on, until the entire population of the Earth is implicated.

Either THAT or we’re all responsible for everyone else’s weight in addition to our own. Frankly, I don’t need that kind of pressure. I feel enough guilt as it is.

Actually, it seems to me that no matter what the percentages say, ultimately we’re still all responsible for our own individual shapes. Our friends and relatives may have influence, but the responsibility still rests – and dines – with us.

Which, come to think of it, was kind of what Mr. Rostenkowski was trying to tell me when he said I was running with a bad crowd. All of whom, I now remember, were not only little hoodlums, but doughnut lovers as well. Especially Alan. Or, as he was also known, Ol’ Soggy Britches.

When Good Appliances Go Bad

By Mike Redmond

Published August 15, 2007

My dishwasher died.

I had no idea how disruptive this would be.

It happened the other night when I had a full load of dirty tableware ready to be Sanitized For My Protection. Actually, it was probably closer to a load-and-a-half, come to think of it. I’m almost as good at loading a dishwasher as I am at packing a car trunk, which is to say amazing, if I do say so myself.

A lot of men are like this. We learned it from our fathers, who learned it from their fathers, and so on back to the days when great-great-great-great-grandpa was standing on a street somewhere with a house’s worth of possessions, looking into the back of a Conestoga wagon and saying, “Oh, for crying out loud, stop worrying. All this stuff will fit just fine if you know how to pack it in there.”

Of course, half the stuff fell off before the wagon got out of Pennsylvania, but that’s beside the point. Everything was in place – smashed, crumpled and held there by rope, but in place just the same -- when the wagon started moving west, and that’s what counts. Besides… oh, wait a minute. I was complaining about my dishwasher, wasn’t I? Sorry about that.

Well, it gagged and coughed and belched smoke through the garbage disposal, and then sighed and died.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I had too many dishes in the dishwasher and the poor thing croaked while trying to clean them all. Well, you’re wrong. That was the dishwasher before this one.

No, this dishwasher, the “new” dishwasher that’s only about four years old, the “reliable” dishwasher built by the company with the great reputation for “dependability,” took a powder because its electronic brain fried a circuit or two.

This, of course, makes it like so many other tools that wreak havoc upon the household because there’s something wrong with the brain. However, in those cases the brain tends to be situated in a human being, customarily of the male variety (see above under “Great-great-great-great-grandpa” and “What do you mean the dishes were in that box?”)

Ordinarily, a failed electronic brain in a dishwasher would be an easy fix. The service man comes, pulls the old one out and plugs the new one in. You give the service man a check for about half what you paid for the dishwasher in the first place, and you’re good to go.

But my serviceman, Larry (they’re all named Larry; I think it’s a union rule) says this particular electronic brain is on backorder.

“How long?” I asked.

“Well, the guy I talked to at the distributor said he’s been waiting on one for about six months.”

Well. Doesn’t THAT just chap your … uh, knuckles. It does mine, anyway, because now I have dishpan hands while trying to decide just how long I’m going to wait on this electronic brain -- knowing full well that the day I throw in the (dish)towel and buy a new dishwasher, I’ll get a call from Larry telling me my part’s in.

Oh well. As I keep reminding myself, this is a disruption, but that’s all it is. And a lot of people are facing far greater problems, life and death stuff, every day of their lives. Compared to them, this is just sinkful of dishes.

Which I had better go wash.

Getting Ahead in Animal Smuggling

By Mike Redmond

Published August 22, 2007

Of all the idiots in the world, my favorites are people who try to smuggle small animals by hiding them in their clothing. Really. It takes a special brand of idiocy to think you can get away with that one.

For example, a guy I read about the other day. Actually, he almost DID get away with it, flying all the way from Lima, Peru to Ft. Lauderdale, FL with a marmoset under his hat.

A marmoset, for those of you who didn’t pay attention in zoology, is a small monkey, one of 18 species of the genus Callithrix. It is native to the New World, rather primitive in appearance, with claws instead of nails. Marmosets of all varieties are known to be, in the language of the scientists, “active little devils.”

OK, let’s do the math: Claws, active … oh sure, where else would you put it EXCEPT under your hat?

I guess the little dickens stayed quiet for the flight from Peru to Florida. It was only after they caught another plane to New York that the cat was out of the bag, or, to be more precise, the lid was off the marmoset.

The giveaway was when his tail popped out. This is when people realized it was an actual small monkey up there, and not a really cheap toupee.

“Excuse me,” they asked the man, who was not identified, “do you have a monkey on your head?” That’s a first. Monkey on your back, I’ve heard of, but ...

Well, anyway, the monkey spent the rest of the flight on the guy’s seat (I’m guessing he enjoyed the little bag of peanuts and perhaps even the in-flight movie) and was taken into custody upon arriving in New York.

Like I said, this is a special kind of idiocy. I’m thinking now of a woman I read about two years ago who stole a Greenwing macaw from her employer, a pet shop, smuggling it out in her brassiere.

Her intention was to trade the macaw for a car. She only made one mistake: She told the guy with the car how she got the macaw out of the store right under the owner’s beak. Turns out the guy with the car was friends with the shop owner, and the woman was busted. So to speak.

Speaking of which, the story didn’t indicate whether the macaw could talk. I kind of wish it could. I mean, can you imagine the looks the woman would have gotten if she’d been walking to her car with a bird in her bra, and a voice started saying “Pretty bird! Pretty bird!” from in there?

Of course, neither of these adventures hold a candle to something I read about 20 years ago in Outside magazine: Ferret legging. It’s a “sport” in Yorkshire, England, in which a man’s pants are tied shut at the ankles (while the man is in them). Then two ferrets, equipped with the standard number of sharp teeth and claws, are placed inside and the pants are cinched tight around the waist. The winner is the man who lasts the longest without ripping off his pants, screaming. The record? Five hours and 26 minutes.

Personally, I’d much prefer a monkey under my hat. I can’t really speak with much authority about the parrot in the bra, but I’m willing to bet it’s better than a ferret in your pants. Or worse, two ferrets.

Fixing a Hole Where the Goop Gets In

By Mike Redmond

Published August 29, 2007

Did you miss me?

Oh, wait. I worked up some columns ahead of time so you wouldn’t know I was gone. Well, then, how’s this?

Would you have missed me if you had known I was gone?

Wait. I may not want to know the answer. Let me try one more time.

Hi there. Nice to see you. And when I say “see,” I mean for the first time in months.

I’m just now getting back to – well, for lack of a better term, I’ll continue to refer to it as “work” -- after a little time off for eye surgery. It almost makes me wish I were back in school. Just think of the reaction when you stand up to read “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” and begin with: “I spent my summer vacation getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick.”

Talk about your attention-getter. Sure beats the heck out of the same-old same-old about going to Grandma’s and then to Scout camp.

The surgery was to remove a glob of blood from the vitreous humor of my left eye. It had been hanging around in there since last February and giving no indication it planned to move out on its own. In fact, it liked it so much that even after my doctor spot-welded the leaking blood vessel with a laser, my eye popped ANOTHER gasket and yanked the retina loose as well.

The result was that my left eye was more or less just taking up space, but lucky for me, it was still under warranty, and so off I went to have it fixed by Dr. Raj Maturi, my new best friend.

The procedure, as best as I can describe it, is as follows:

Poke a hole in the eye and suck out all the goop with blood in it.

Fix the leak.

Get the retina back where it’s supposed to go.

Put a bubble in the eye to keep things in place until it’s all healed.

Pour into a prepared pan and bake in a 350 degree oven.

Check the oil and battery and rotate the tires every 3,000 miles.

Keep charged when not in use.

Of course, I could be wrong about those last ones. You see, the surgery was done while I was in that state of anesthesia known to the Medical Community as “Awake, Numb and Whacked Out Of His Gourd.”

That meant I could see what was happening – I could actually see the little nozzle siphoning the blood out of my eye – and be fascinated by it, instead of what I would have been without the drugs, which is to say Panicked Beyond All Reason. Instead, I just thought it was cool.

Then, as soon as the hole was fixed, the retina fell back into place all by itself.

I went home, got plenty of rest, got better, and that’s pretty much the story of how I spent my summer vacation.

Now it’s time to get back to the serious business of making fun of things. But before I do, let me just say that today my sight is completely clear and I am grateful for the talented doctors and nurses who work with the amazing technology that fixed my eye.

Truly we live in an age of miracles. If I couldn’t see that before I can sure see it now.

The Banner, PO Box 116, Knightstown, IN 46148 (765) 345-2292