Freddogg Off The Chain

Life imitates art or perhaps velvet paintings and art one students who can't fathom the vanishing point that overrides of our lives.
I am fascinated by all things theological, illogical and philosophical and stories of lives lost that seemed to be functioning well moments before exiting the planet like Sylvester the cat stage right or left.
A 1970 off Broadway play Steambath-click the link- cast Bill Bixby in the starring role and basically he is recently dead guy the Steambath a sort of Limbo before the Catholics cancelled it holding tank and god was the Puerto Rican attendant who looked down to earth and heartlessly and impulsively decided who he wanted whacked and under what ridiculous circumstances it should occur before the body/spirit ascended to that great Spanish speaking steam bath in the sky.
Last Saturday a 20 year old Supermodel with “Fairytale good looks” back away from that pie Jack Horner Ruslana Korshunova from Kazakh did a suicide swan dive from her ninth floor apartment in the downtown financial district of New York.
I kept thinking “she must have discovered a photo of her grandmother” which ain’t funny but I can’t help it none of us can.
And then at Six Flags or Fags whatever the name of the amusement park some teenager scaled two six foot fences with signs “keep out morons” because he lost his hat on a roller coaster ride. The convergence of events led to the boy's decapitation and my question “was he wearing his hat?”
You see none of us can help who we are or how we think. So stay happy and don’t take chances like my grandmother always said, ”when in doubt don’t do it. Just don’t! “



http://www.hometheaterinfo.com/steambath.htm

Let’s call it nervous full service. A Friday night in 1965, friends of John Conklin were riding around in his Father’s forest green Cadillac convertible. We had no gas and no money except for the pooled pockets that generated seven cents.
Conklin was the most nervous stutterer in the history of the pla-pla-planet. His father was a big time successful something for Ballantine beer and we all had mechanical pencils with a beer bottle inside coking oil and three little rings that we could try to hook around the neck of the bottle. We played with our pencils in math class which is certainly an odd thing to confess to the court of history. Conklin couldn’t hang with his successful dad and when he tried to brag that his dad was Vice President of Ballantine it usually began “Ah, ba ba ba ba” and we would pick up the rest “Ba ba ba ba barbara ann Oh barbara ann, take my hand Barbara ann” and we would be rocking and they don’t write them like that anymore.
The Caddy convertible pulled up to the pump. The attendant walked up to Coklin. Sa-sa-sa-Seven cents “John said in sincere stutteration ‘and we all just went nuts because it was so funny we thought.
Later in 1974 I was head football coach at a private school for emotionally disturbed adolescents. I am such an idiot that for the first game I choose a chronic stutterer as game captain. Some people stammer but one who stutters has problems taking off with the sentence. The coin was tossed and big Jim the designated coin called simply pointed and spit into the air. Luckily my other captain who suffered from impulsive dyslexic disorder with short term memory lapses was there to save the day. “Quarter,” he yelled!
The referees were black and threw themselves onto the turf in laughter. It was a magic moment-so different and so new.
You can't even imagine the full contact games?

freddogg

The irony and agony of No Child Left Behind legislation is that more middle class kids than ever are bolting public education because their parents don’t want them socializing with anyone who can’t nail down a 3 on a 5 point scale on some test constructed by some nerd in a room somewhere.
And I’ll tell you something else, in spite of a parent’s money if they are analytical blockheads then so is the kid 95 percent of the time.
Separate but Equal public schools have bounced all the way back in urban American and those kids are not left behind but rather lost forever and in most cases unsalvageable.
Why am I thinking about this? Because in my world as “Big Loser Guy” sports reporter I am running into concerned parents who are taking the first opportunity to “choice away” from public school and in a sense it makes me mad although it is none of my business but something distasteful is happening but no one will talk about.
Cultural diversity it’s called in polite conversation, kids of color is another buzz word, but white flight is in plain sight as social groups move and maneuver to avoid other social groups.
The “Urban Left Behinds” may exhibit a lot of loud and distasteful behaviors in the high school classroom and hallways but they ain’t stupid and no matter what whitey tells them “nothing racist going on here” they know their role in society is to break laws use an excess of drugs and alcohol and take no responsibility for their actions because if they do they will be the only ones who care.
Freddogg

Who cried when the funny man died?


I liked George Carlin and the way he used language and there is no doubt left in my mind after watching his last HBO special that at 70 he was out of his ever loving mind. Not “out of his mind funny” but sharp and satirical in a mental illness sort of way nuts. George left us a bitter guy, angered by the clear picture of human life on this planet.


Last Saturday I stayed up to watch Dana Carvey on HBO, now 53 years old, and I was so disappointed because he has all the talent one needs to be funny but he ain’t funny no more, I mean, who needs to hear bathroom jokes from a guy his age and a five minute Andy Rooney impression?

Stand up comedy is mostly inhabited by stupid people with no talent playing to an ADD crowd half drunk. Even Dennis Miller the master of the sub reference went and stayed out of bounds with his right wing paranoia.
But do you know who I think is the funniest old man in the history of the world besides my late Poppy? It’s not Mel Brooks, its Jackie Mason, who is still writing his own routines and currently starring in a one man show off Broadway “The Ultimate Jew”
Mason wrote the joke “I want an 11 foot pole for my birthday so I can go back to high school and touch all those girls I wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole.”
You can read the New York Times review below “Barack Obama looks like a Jew with a tan” and there are several Clinton jokes.
Carlin was genius in the late middle of his career and like most of us there is a time to step off or at least stop ranting in favor of a more gentle and appreciative phase of late life. What the fuck am I talking about?

Freddogg

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/theater/reviews/22maso.html

Remember when biofeedback was cool? I view the brain like the cockpit of a 747 and sometimes it is on automatic pilot and goes where it wants. But we are so susceptible to comments “are you working out? “ and digital read outs “my resting heart rate is 45” to which the appropriate response is “and when your dead it will be zero.”
Two fit women I know causally threw unsolicited compliments my way on the same morning. I played them off the way I usually do “Fredman have you lost weight?” to which I respond,”No,” I’m just not as fat as you remember me. “
And later that same day my trainer consultant and friend Super Dave sat down next to me on the stationary bike and asked, ”How much do you weigh? I responded “why?” and he said because you look like you’re gaining weight.”
I told him that Heidi and Cat think I look good so why should I listen to Bronco Nagurski. Dave wanted me to get on a scale right then but I refused. Later at home I went Balance beam-center the bubble scale- and of course Dave was right and now five pounds lighter I look imperceptibly different and I’m missing meatballs.
I like the blood pressure machine at Happy Harry’s because every time I use it the number comes back too high BUT if I clear it and use it again the second time I am normal which makes me feel good which is why you check it in the first place.
Have you ever noticed that only “on ideal weight” people know their weight to the pound you never hear a fat lady say,” Dam up to 287 its time for me to join the gym.”
Some I’m riding this bike and if you squeeze the handle grips it will flash your heart rate. I have to peddle like I’m heading towards some type of climatic conclusion just to get my heart rate to go over 100 but the other day out of no where it read 186 so I quickly removed my hands and I was slightly biofeedback unnerved but I deduced technical glitch bitch and when I put my hands back on the number was 86 and before any of you readers start let me tell you I don’t believe 186 anymore than I believed it when a blood test showed an alarming number on my billiruben count to which I replied “false positive” and I was right and can there even be a condition known as “false positive?”
I had a fever last night easily detectable for males without a thermometer but I had one it recorded my temperature as 5 but my wife told me to turn it right side up and then it was 100.5 but what if it had said 103.5? “I’d have felt the same but the biofeedback would have hyperventilated me and I would have passed out and killed the cat sleeping next to my deck chair.
The moral of the story is go by how you feel don’t search for numbers you don’t want to know and only entertain positive comments.

Freddogg

I left a backyard get together last night with good people and great food because ‘Big Loser Boy’ had to go cover a Rehoboth Little League Championship game between 12 year olds which began at 7:30 p.m.
I can deliver "the juice" to any local story so when summoned I’m more than happy to show up, my neurotic need to be loved satisfied for another night.
But I get there and some people begin to give me grief “this isn’t Lewes” insinuating that I am biased towards Lewes and I told then “No, Lewes had just as many gay people as they did” which left them bewildered which is their day time walk around psychological state.
Then some young dad said,”You wrote and took pictures of Lewes minor league baseball but what about us? My team finished 12 & 0 and we didn’t receive any publicity.”
Let me mention that one weekend I covered two games in Lewes Little League and it never dawned on me that adults from the next town would see the great coverage and react “what about us” but how great is it to slight peoples with all kinds of advantages. I’d just like to know I’m doing it so I can have the appropriate fun along the way.
I jumped this minor league guy like a base stealer on a catcher with a lollipop arm.
“Coach, tell me one thing you have done this season to promote your team. Tell me about one phone call or email, anything.”
A young second story boy behind a screen in the building behind the backstop –it looked so Bronx ghetto-announced the batters. ‘Now batting Calvin… Now batting Alec.” I yelled up “Hey announcer boy! Got any last names?” He shook his head no, like who has last names, and his mother looked out like “leave my son alone” and I’m thinking “Announcing 102 Class –Last names delivered.
The game ended as all games do but I’m left as a writer to make sense of it all but you can’t write," Luke had a double and the pitcher with un-hittable not to mention un-catchable as a walk followed by three consecutive wild pitches lead to a run and Johnny threw his helmet and cried but nobody likes being tagged out sliding into home as opposing parents screech in ecstasy.
I did interviews of 12 year old boys afterwards who said things like “sure, yea, I guess so and I don’t know" and when I got in my truck it dawned on me,’ what the hell was the final score?’
Last I checked it was 3 to 0 but it may have been 4 to 0 and if I get it wrong grandparents will be on me like Rodan on an Early Bird Special.
I am out at home!

FReddogg

First picture is college Coach Tom Marshall the classiest of people whose eulogy was delivered at lunch following mass--just because--I don't know.

Grandson Mikey "You Fredman! Where you at? I'm supposed to catch this ride!"

I dropped my grandson Mikey off at Vacation Bible School in Rehoboth Beach this morning because my lovely daughter-in-law was caught between the devil and deep blue sea running kids around so I was the manatee to the deep blue sea express.
‘You’re picking me up, right Fredman,”Mikey asked. “No, your mom is picking you up,”I said and he does protest “No you are” and I did bold face lie “Sure I’ll pick you up.”
I told the lady at the registration table “I picked this kid up hitchhiking and he had a sign “Vacation Bible School” so I brought him here and at first the lady looked concerned then said “I know who you are, are you ever on vacation” and I said “Only from the lord.”
I brought Mikey inside and whispered to myself “this looks cultish” because growing up Catholic in the sixties I have a real distrust of smiling protestants with that “it’s all goodness” smile.
Later I was at a funeral mass at the catholic church for a classy man, author and football coach. I sat next to a younger friend whose brother is a priest. In a packed church my otherwise normal friend also a football coach was the first to stand, sit and kneel and I whispered to him “what the hell is wrong with you.”
The offer each other the "sign of peace handshakes all around" is so New Christie Minstrels hootenanny bullshit what happened to the surly catholics of my youth?
It was a predictably non-rousing and relevant ceremony then the priest skipped the two personalized eulogies at the end and went right to the recessional song Battle Hymn of the Republic which I always confuse with we just gotta Sink the Bismarck because the world depends on us.
I asked a eulogizer outside of church “what happened to seizing the moment? I was ready to reflect back, to hear warm stories of the coach and to contemplate my own mortality.”
“The priest said “we had to shut it down” that he had another mass”the nephew said in good humor but I went into attack mode inside my head.
What in the freaky freak is freaking wrong with these tax exempt clergy critters?
By the way two church appearances on a Tuesday before noon what is up? Like my grandmother told us at Poppy’s funeral. “If you ever see me born again please do the family a favor and shoot us both.”

The lead sports page of the Allentown Morning Call has a special feature “Pig of the Week” and I thought “Why Not?” sounds like an idea for my paper. I’ll just take my camera and head off to the boardwalk and start making snap judgments.
Excuse me Miss Spiked Hair with Pete Rose throw back jersey and calf tattoos; don’t take this the wrong way but I think you would make an excellent choice for our Pig of the Week profile and I was wondering if you would consent to taking pauses from that fry bucket long enough to help me construct some biographical data?
In the sixties there were ‘Pig Parties” long before Politically Incorrect Pigs now suddenly there are no causal pigs only enraged pigs like “you better get out of my face you fat pig!” and by the way would you like to go to a party Friday night? Don’t get me wrong I have never participated or condoned such cruelty towards another person or pig but I know such things happened.
The Major League Triple A affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies are the Iron Pigs which I guess is a motorcycle reference you know like riding a hog which brings up the joke what is the difference between a Hoover and a Harley? The location of the dirt bag!
Now I’m finding that Iron Pigs were blast furnaces at Bethlehem Steel and I’m not interested anymore too public television documentary for me.
I like Heavy Metal Pigs better. Pig of the Week? Why not Whale Shark of the Month? My favorite Rhino?

freddogg

Something in the way she moos.
Check out these three graphs from a story in the New York Daily News.

LOS ANGELES - The obscenity trial of a a Bronx-born porn king was put on hold today after the respected judge presiding over the case was caught with kinky fetish photos on his personal website.
The images on Judge Alex Kozinski's site included a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Kozinski is presiding over the trial of Bronx-born Ira Isaacs, who has been brought up on rare anti-smut charges for his hard-core videos - which include portrayals of bestiality.
Women on all fours painted to look like cows. Remember Gateway computers and the cow cartons arriving in the mail? I am scaring myself even as I write this trying to imagine if three naked women painted to look like cows were to crawl across my braided rug would I look at them? Perhaps leer even? Perhaps the judge has Borden Line Personality Disorder?
Let’s say you just happen upon a sexually aroused farm animal do you peel off your shirt and begin cavorting and I don’t really know what that is but it doesn’t sound good. I just looked it up it means to bound or prance around in a sprightly manner.
Harold why on earth are you prancing around the plow horse? Hey! Leave him alone!

I find it so refreshing to know there are accomplished people like a federal judge who is at a place that most brave men have never boldly traveled.

Freddogg

I must go Star Words Non Intervention on all these dumb assed people that are playing in my world like wooden Weeble dropouts from a Fisher Price Play School
Today I was in line at Wawa with a little hardhat Mexican behind me and a large Hispanic wannabe soft taco dumb ass behind him.
The authentic Hispanic was inspired to say ‘Que Pasa’ to the imitation Hispanic who replied “Nada” and followed that with “Better than ‘No Mas.’
“Do you know why No Mas is a famous expression from the world of sports” I said jumping into the ring. “I wasn’t aware it was ”The guy said looking back with an expressing like he didn’t want to hear “No Mas” from my old blanca butt.
Roberto Duran waved off Sugar Leonard in the eight round of their 1980 championship bout because Ray Ray was toying with his fat and under trained ass and said “No Mas! No Mas!”
Duran would later claim he was saying “"No boxeo con el payaso," (I'm not boxing with this clown)
I walked back to my 54 dollar fill up, gave each of the dogs a crumpet-what is this England-and one for daddy-and said do them-“it’s not my fault nobody know shit about anything no mas” and "No Mas" makes no sense in response to Que’ Pasa because how can you be happening no more if you were never happening in the first place.



Hasta Luego

My Clockwork orange Under Armour shirt wearing self was walking into Food Lion today when an older man driving one of those electric shopping carts for the handicapped was stuck on the doorway threshold leading into the store.
I came up behind him broke down into my lineman stance and said,”Hold on I got this!” I used short choppy steps over a wide base and pushed him into the store. The cart wouldn’t work so I pushed it over to the side and the guy turned around and said,”Do you want it?”
“I just pushed you and your cart over two obstacles and into a parking spot so what makes you think I can’t walk around the store under my own power,”I asked.
Then I offered him my arm and to take him to his car if he needed assistance. He said,”No, I’m fine,” and just got up and walked away and out the door.
What was that all about?

Everyone read where the lady who spent 60 years inside an iron lung died when the power went out and her family couldn’t pull the crank to start the gas powered generator. That was basically that and forever and ever amen is not enough time to pay that person back for a lousy life with such an ignominious ending.
Last week I heard on the radio that drug companies spend more money to research male pattern baldness in American then they do on any of the parasitic plagues in Africa manly because the bald American white guy will pay big bucks for Rogaine, Viagra, Avadart, Flomax, Lipitor , Lipton Soup, Xanax, Xanadu, Lithium, in pill of battery form, while the bald black guy goes Isaac Hayes or Green Mile on your ass.
So I conclude that baldness is a luxury and not a handicap and most bald guys are chosen by god to be the bald guy because they are so good at it. You know Jesus wasn’t going to be a bald guy because look at all the hair on his fathers head and genetics always prevail especially when there’s no mother but if Jesus was the son of god then how is hairy guy Joseph introduced at the family reunion. And the Holy Ghost had hair like Jim from Taxi. He remains my personal favorite.
Speaking of Ghost poor Patrick Swayze that is just wrong you like make a movie Ghost then become a living ghost and imagine going into the ghost world and finding Whoopee Goldberg?
A friend of mine back in college stole samples of all my grandfathers medications saying “if it makes that crazy old bastard feel better just think what it will do for me." In the new millennium it may make you the relaxed bald guy with a four hour erection that takes eight hours to explain.
I am so out.

Dr. Freddogg

I mean no disrespect when I capture a photo and write Flexible Fat Girl in the subject line. In fact this young woman has all my admiration because any “Boney Maroni” can stroke a 5k the bigger question is how can skinny people run slow I mean what is their excuse?
Offensive lineman in the NFL couldn’t run a 5k at the beginning of training camp if their salary depended upon it. There was a time period in the 70’s when all backs and receivers showing up for football camps from high school through the pros were expected to break six minutes in the mile. And the linemen were expected to break 6:30 and then it was seven minutes and later eight minutes and finally some sensible person asked “what is the point? Do these individuals ever have occasion to chase a ball carrier for a country mile and what running back in the universes could they hump down unless they caught them in the shower but let’s leave real guy locker room horse play out of this conversation.
My belly is hard if you poke it won’t move but it is orbital. Fitness experts say subcutaneous hard fat is the most dangerous kind and I say, “Get down in a four point stance and let me drive your ass and we’ll see who is dangerous.”
After this morning race a too tan woman was sitting at a table on a bay side deck and very politely said, “I hope I didn’t steal your seat I’m just trying to get some sun.”
‘You are getting pretty white ,”I said ,and she said, ”I know I just fad so quickly and I told her she need a city soot roof tar row house tan like me just a flash of sunlight and 60 years of crud shines so bright it hurts.
I’m done this treatise was pointless and would be a D in a creative class judged by a non creative person.

freddogg