Bye-Bye to the Beast, Part 2 Last week I wrote about selling our family’s beloved 1999 Chevy Suburban, aka: “The Beast.” To recap, the supersized SUV was simply too old, too big and too costly to keep on the road. Too bad. It’s not like we didn’t get more than our money’s worth from the […]
Shooting Down Grade School Paranoia Gun Paranoia Continuing on the subject of out-of-control paranoia about gun-related toys, actions and speech in our grade schools, I’ve been asked if I made up any of the news items in my last column. Sadly, no. In fact, I didn’t have room last week for even more examples of […]
Ban Foolish Educators, Not Toys I’ll begin by stating unequivocally that I don’t for one minute think students should be allowed to bring guns or any other actual weapon to school. Period. No exceptions. Should teachers and administrators be armed? Possibly; under very strict circumstances and with considerable training and supervision (like airline pilots). […]
Nanny State Nonsense, Part 2 Last week I wrote about the post-Independence Day shock I received when coming face-to-face with the latest in a long streak of over-regulation courtesy of the fine folks in Glendale City government. Namely, that as of July 1, retailers in the Jewel City are no longer allowed to provide plastic […]
Nannies Bag Another Victory Life has a way of creating ironic moments when you least expect it. For example, on Sunday my wife and I were returning from celebrating the long Independence Day holiday in the Eastern Sierra. Arriving back home in the sweltering Crescenta Valley, we made a quick stop at our usual local […]
Pyrotechnics, Patriotism and Panko Flakes Forget Mom, baseball, hot dogs and apple pie. In my book of cultural icons, the quintessence of Americana is the 4th of July trinity made of flags, fireworks and fried chicken (make mine with panko flakes, please!). Oh, and I’d definitely drop a dollop of potato salad on that patriotic […]
Happy (Or Not) Anniversaries On our family calendar during any given year, June is typically the month with the most entries. It’s a month with once-blank squares for each day crammed full of important date reminders notated in various colors of markers, ball point pens, pencils and highlighters and featuring cartoon-like stars, hearts, underlines, arrows, […]
It’s Already a Wonder-full Summer Regular readers know that a few times each year the wonders in my noggin spill over onto my keyboard. With all the scandalous news of late – from Boston to Benghazi and the IRS to the NSA – the wonderings have become a flood. So strap on your waders and […]
A Firestorm of P.R. Being a lifetime Southern California resident, I’ve always been extremely appreciative and regularly in awe of the dangerous work done by our many thousands of wildfire fighters when faced with blast furnace temperatures, hellacious Santa Ana winds and thousands of acres of tinder-dry brush that cover our Southland. Fighting out-of-control fires […]
Innovation by the Bottle It’s no secret that many people – especially men – have, shall we say, unusual hobbies. My dad, for example, loved to carve tri-tone train whistles out of solid blocks of wood and then hand the noisy things out to family members, friends and other unsuspecting people. Go figure. One of […]