The hotdogs finally arrive from Peoria

Never let it be said that a hotdog in Peoria, Illinois, can’t eventually find its way to me here in the Philadelphia area.
In a recent “Outta Leftfield” print column, I told a story about a friend of mine, Peoria radio personality Greg Batton, who is a high school friend.
We communicate fairly regularly via various forms, not the least of which is the social networking Web site Facebook.
Recently Greg asked his friends on Facebook, “What can I do for you?” His intent was to use his influence as a local celebrity to try to help his friends and listeners accomplish good deeds.
There were many deserving suggestions, but Greg seemed intrigued with my request. See, I was going to new Yankee Stadium for the first time the next day and my request was for Greg to buy me a hotdog at the ballpark.
I know him well enough to know how much he likes a challenge. I had gotten a heads up from my brother in Illinois via a text message that Greg was on the air that morning in Peoria trying to arrange to buy me a hotdog in New York.
I waited the whole ballgame for that hotdog to arrive, but it never did. Try as he might, Greg couldn’t pull it off.
But that wasn’t the end of The Great Hotdog Request.
This week I returned to my office after a morning filled with meetings to find a brown paper bag filled to the brim with what smelled like lunch.
Inside were 12 hotdogs, wrapped in tin foil, and delivered with all the fixings from Twining Deli III in Fort Washington.
Our receptionist, Theresa, had gotten a call from Greg in Illinois. He apparently was determined to buy me a hotdog, so enlisted the help of Theresa and some other in the classified department of Montgomery Newspapers to get me a hotdog, or 12 for that matter. Greg obviously knows me well enough to know that I am much more capable of eating 12 hotdogs than I am of eating just one. I don’t consider one hotdog any more than just a warm-up.
It was all great fun and the folks here at Montgomery Newspapers who Greg had enlisted as co-conspirators were good sports about the whole thing.
I shared the hotdogs with any staff members who were interested. I, myself gobbled down three dogs with mustard, somehow managing not to spill anything on my shirt, a rarity to be sure.
And then I went to lunch. After all, with three hotdogs already under my belt, I was sufficiently warmed up.

Who was that masked dentist?

I’ve found that after the fact, going to the dentist can be pretty funny. Getting to the funny part can be problematic, however.
Last month I had a wisdom tooth extracted. It turned out to be no big deal and it proved to be a minimally painful experience overall.
Unfortunately, though, it wasn’t the only dental procedure on my dance card. Once I had healed from the wisdom tooth extraction, I was signed up for something called “root planing.”
If you do not know what this is, I will spare you the details of this particular torture method. I will say, though, that I am confident that if former Vice President Dick Cheney had known about “root planing,” I’m pretty sure that he would have told the boys at the CIA to forget that sissy water boarding stuff and go directly to the nearest dentist for briefing and training.
Oddly enough, I had experienced root planing once before, about 25 years ago, and I already knew it wasn’t going to a day at the beach.
Naturally, I showed up 10 minutes early to the dentist’s office, because one always wants to be early for a procedure that involves sharp dental implements being jabbed into the soft tissue inside one’s mouth.
Still, the dentist and his assistant were somewhat busy, enough so that I dozed off a bit in the waiting room chair as I waited for my number to be up.
“You can come back now,” said the dental assistant, who had noticed me napping in the lobby. “Maybe you’ll be more comfortable in the exam room chair.”
Huh? You think I’m going to be more comfortable in the very same chair in which Zorro The Dentist is going to assault me with various swords? Surely you jest?
That comment by the dental assistant didn’t become humorous to me until well after the fact.
A couple of days later, when the pain and swelling went away, I looked inside my mouth. I thought I saw a Z carved into my gums.
Here is the fun part: I only had root planing on the lower teeth. I have to go back again next month to have the same procedure done on the upper teeth.
I don’t think I’m going to show up early for that one.

Hey Phillies fans, reading really is fun

You know, I love Phillies fans. Hey, I’m one of them. But really, a few of them need to work on their reading skills.
Recently I was in New York and while there, I picked up a t-shirt that read: “New York Mess: Back to back collapses, 2007 and 2008.”
See, we Phillies fans really don’t like the New York Mets too much, and the fact that they horked up their playoff chances the past few seasons in a couple of late-season choke jobs gives Phillies fans particular delight.
Figuring that a t-shirt like that would play pretty well at Citizens Bank Park with the faithful, I purchased the shirt and wore in last Friday night to the Phillies game against the St. Louis Cardinals.
I guess my first mistake was thinking that once mass quantities of cold adult beverages had been consumed by a Phillies crowd, that fans could still tell the difference between “Mets” and “Mess” printed on a t-shirt.
That’s not to say that everybody in the crowd got it wrong. Several people commented to me that they liked the t-shirt. But a few jamoke spelling bee refugees didn’t focus quite enough and spent some time jamming me up verbally, like they would do to any Mets fan. The Phillies ball cap I was wearing apparently wasn’t enough of a clue either.
Knuckleheads. The t-shirt is an anti-Mets shirt. Take an extra moment to read it correctly.
One guy in my section in right field referred to me as “Mr. Met” all evening until my patience finally ran out in about the eighth inning. I stood up, turned around, pointed to the shirt and yelled, “Read carefully!”
His response? “Oh.”
Brilliant retort. We should ship that guy to New York and let him root for the Mets. It would raise the I.Q. of both fan bases.

Upper Dublin Summer Concert Series

Free is good, especially when it comes to local entertainment.
If you get a chance, check out the Sunday Evening Concerts at the Temple Ambler campus, presented by the Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation Department.
Bring lawn chairs, blankets and maybe even a picnic basket and plop yourself down – just like The Blonde Accountant and I did Sunday evening – on the Learning Center lawn on the campus. Actually, I was the one who plopped. The Blonde Accountant, a girly girl by nature, daintily placed her derriere into the lawn chair once we had staked out a place on the lawn.
This week featured Steve & Steve, who bill themselves as two “fiftysomething guys” originally from northern Jersey who started performing together in 1969 while students at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster.
One of the Steves is Steve Bernstein, a healthcare lawyer in Jenkintown. The other Steve is Steve Messigner, a public defender from just outside of Savannah, Ga. For a couple of mouthpieces, they do a pretty good job of carrying tunes from the 1960s, including those of Simon and Garfunkel, The Everly Brothers and The Beatles to name a few.
The Steves are not unfamiliar to local fans of ‘60s music as they have opened for the Beatles-era British duo Chad and Jeremy at the Keswick Theater in Glenside. And on Oct. 3, they’re scheduled to open for Herman’s Hermits starring Peter Noone for two shows at the Sellersville Theater 1984.
The rest of the summer concert series includes: the barbershop chorus group The Delchordians on July 26; the boogie woogie and jump blues group Melissa Martin and The Mighty Rhythm Kings on Aug. 2; and the Barbone Street Jazz Band on Aug. 9.
The concerts are free, the parking is free and all ages are welcome. If it rains, the concerts move from the lawn of the Learning center to inside the Learning Center.
Oh, and don’t forget the summer bug spray. I failed to take mine along and the Temple Ambler ant brigade took all of about 14 second to build a summer home and hold a family reunion inside my open-toed sandals. Ratfink crumb bum bugs.

Shopping vs. napping at Limerick outlets

I love shopping on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, especially at the outlet mall in Limerick. It sure beats being on the beach or at the ballpark.
Fortunately, the outdoor mall has a sufficient number of benches on which me and the other men who like to shop can park our hind ends while our significant others frequent places like the Coach, Ann Taylor and Loft stores.
When I wasn’t dozing, I was keeping an eye on the mall security guy riding around on that little two-wheel scooter. Those things are cool. I wish I could figure out a way to work that thing into my job.
The only time I left my perch on the bench was to accompany The Blonde Accountant into the Coach handbag store, not because I need a new handbag of course, but because we were looking for a birthday gift for her mother.
I love the smell of all that leather in the Coach store. The Coach folks smell something completely different in their stores, and one look at the pricetags on those handbags and it’s evident that what they’re smelling is money.
Aside from the benches, which while sufficient could be a bit softer for my tastes, the mall restrooms feature my favorite type of hand dryer, the Xlerator, which dries one’s hands by essentially blowing the outer layer of skin clean off.
“You didn’t go in there and take video of the hand dryer, did you?” asked The Blonde Accountant when she noticed that I had awakened from my nap on the bench and disappeared for a few moments.
“Uh . . . that would be a little silly, wouldn’t it? Taking a video of a hand dryer. Sheesh, do I look that bored?” I said.
You will have to look at the accompanying video to see if I was indeed that bored.

Jumbo flying squid

Apparently thousands of jumbo flying squid, described in various reports as 5-foot-long sea monsters with razor-sharp beaks and toothy tentacles that can weigh as much as 100 pounds, have invaded shallow waters off San Diego and are raising seven kinds of heck with scuba divers.
Not only that, but they’re scaring the beejeezus out of the tourists lounging about because the squid have the audacity to kick the bucket too close to the surface of the ocean and their dead carcasses wash up on the beach.
See where I come from in the Midwest, this is not a problem. I don’t ever recall a dead squid washing up on the edge of a cornfield. In fact, I did not know until I moved out here nearly 10 years ago that squid was called calamari and that people out here on the East Coast actually eat the ugly, nasty things.
Imagine if you will, Grog the Caveman, fishing one day a bazillion years ago, when something washes up on the beach and brushes against his foot. The thing is five feet long, weighs 100 pounds, has all kinds of tentacles, is ugly – no, make that fugly – big eyeballs and moos like a cow. (Editor’s note: I do not know for a fact that a squid moos like a cow, but I will never know for sure because I will never get close enough to a squid to find out. I will, however, listen closely to the next plate of calamari that passes my way and report back on anything that I hear.)
But back to Grog. Do you think he took one look at this nastiness and said to himself, “Gee, this thing looks like it might taste pretty good? Maybe I should fry it up?”
No, no, no. Grog said, “This thing looks like a big slimy pile of hooey. I am going to kick it back into the drink from whence it came.”
So the San Diego squid apparently came up from the depths of the ocean in swarms and started picking fights with the scuba divers. The squid did things like grab the masks of the divers with their tentacles, and latch on to divers’ air tanks and camera gear.
Scientists aren’t sure why the squid - which generally live in deep, tropical waters off Mexico and Central America – are having a big lodge meeting off the coast of Southern California. Maybe the squid are Beach Boys fans.
The aquatic creatures, called Humboldt squid, have been known to attack humans. They are nicknamed “Red Devils” because they have a rust color and are said to be meaner than a rattlesnake. Divers who frequent their neighborhood sometimes get into a metal cage or wear chain mail to avoid being lashed by tentacles.
Here is a note to you scuba divers out there: If a big old squid nicknamed Red Devil taps you on the shoulder with one tentacle and proceeds to grab your air supply with another tentacle . . . get . . . out . . . of . . . the . . . dad gummed . . . ocean! The squid is likely telling you that’s it’s time to find a new hobby, like snow skiing. It seems to be a pretty safe bet that there are fewer jumbo flying squid sightings near ski slopes than there are on the beaches of Southern California.
And please, let’s not eat any more squid. Throw them back, even if they know all the words to “Help Me Rhonda.”

Smokey and the Bandit

The great thing about not being able to sleep sometimes? Getting up and watching old movies on TV, of course.
Recently, I caught one of my favorite movies of all time, "Smokey and The Bandit," starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed and Jackie Gleason. It was released in 1977, the year that I graduated from high school.
It's actually just one long car-chase of a movie, but I've always thought that the performances were hilarious, especially the one delivered by the legendary Jackie Gleason. In the film, Gleason plays Sheriff Buford T. Justice of Texas, and he is chasing The Bandit (Burt Reynolds). Reynolds and his sidekick, Cletus Snow (Jerry Reed) have agreed to haul a truckload of beer from Texas to Georgia in 24 hours, violating all kinds of bootlegging laws and speed limits. Along the way, The Bandit picks up Frog (Sally Field) who left the sheriff's son at the altar, and boy is the sheriff peeved.
Not really much of a plot, but Reynolds was a big star in the 1970s and Fields and Gleason were established big names as well by that time. As for Jerry Reed, the first time I saw him in person was in Florida at a minor league ballpark where he was a concert headliner around 1985. His opening act for that show was . . . an up-and-coming Reba McEntire.
This film is worth looking at for the soundtrack by Reed and for the creative profanity spewed forth by the sheriff, much of which, legend has it, was ad-libbed by Gleason. His version of the profanity "some beach" (of course I can't write the actual profanity online here but you get the idea), is absolute classic movie stuff.
Of course, there is nothing like a classic redneck movie like this one to . . . put me to sleep. Dreaming of some beach, of course.