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The Fall Classic
As today marks the first game of the 2024 World Series, I thought it a good time to share my time-tested and remarkably successful betting scheme. But before I do, can we just acknowledge the arrogance of calling a sporting contest played exclusively by American teams a “world” series? I am reliably informed that there…
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Fifteen
Today, and every October 4th, is the Roman Catholic feast day (commemoration) of St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order, patron of animals and the environment, champion of the poor and outcast, and the namesake of my alma mater. In 1980, I was a student at Toll Junior High School, a public school…
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Medieval Humor
Imagine yourself inside a Medieval scriptorium. In the Middle Ages (roughly 500–1500 CE) books were written and copied by hand, as Johannes Gutenberg wouldn’t invent the printing press till around 1440. Scriptorium is a Latin word meaning “place for writing;” a scriptorium was most often found in a monastery where manuscripts (handmade books) were written…
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Swimming to Long Beach
29 miles off the coast of the continental United States, located southwest of Los Angeles, you’ll find the island of Santa Catalina, known simply as Catalina to Angelenos. The Glendale Y.M.C.A. has operated a week-long summer camp on the island at their facility known as Camp Fox since 1926. It was here that my father,…
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The City and the Pillar
Gore Vidal was 21 (photo at left) when he published his first novel, Williwaw, in 1946. He was an out gay man at a time when to be openly gay was fraught with genuine peril – both professionally and personally – though he believed that all humans are naturally bisexual, and this natural inclination is…
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Mondegreens
The American writer Sylvia Wright, writing about how she misheard the words “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen” when her mother read her the Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray as a child, created the neologism “mondegreen.” In a 1954 essay in Harper’s Magazine entitled “The Death of Lady Mondegreen,” she wrote:…
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Stampeding Ostriches and a Homicidal Pope
It includes an observatory, an amphitheater, a zoo, two museums – one dedicated to trains, one dedicated to the history of the American west, a merry-go-round, and not one but two golf courses within the boundaries of its 4,310 acres. It is the second-largest city park in California, after Mission Trails Preserve in San Diego,…
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Consider the Anus Radish
Now at first blush, it may seem I chose this topic for its shock value, for its “ewwww” factor, or just because it is silly and intriguing at the same time, so it made me laugh out loud and say quietly to myself “hmmmm.” On reflection, I think all of those things are true. It…
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Philosophus hortulanus esset
Two things animate me. The first actually came second, and the second first. As an undergraduate, I studied philosophy, and that remains to this day my keenest interest. But before that, when I was a teenager, I worked after classes let out for the day at the Armstrong Garden Centers on San Fernando Boulevard in my hometown…
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Catsup vs. Ketchup
As we prepare to celebrate our nation’s birthday tomorrow with hot dogs and fireworks – there is something that is gnawing at me. And that something is ketchup. I mean, am I the only one who is bothered by it sometimes being presented as ketchup and other times as catsup? Is there a difference between…
Your mileage may vary.