CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENTS

What they're saying about Jim's provocative blog:

--"Джим - забавный парень, но он не Яков Смирнов!" (Jim's a funny guy, but he's no Yakov Smirnoff!  Nyet!")--Vladimir Putin

--"I love how he says he doesn't always agree with everything he says!"--Joe Biden
--"He's from this country, Mexicans don't read him, so that's good enough for me."--Donald Trump
--"The one thing I didn't delete from my private server."--Hillary Clinton
--"Jimaschizzle!"--Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. (aka Snoop Dogg)

--"The one thing I DO read!"--Sarah Palin

--"The most fun you can have with your clothes on (but DO take a shower afterwards)."--Dick Cavett

POPCORN

                                                                By Jim Szantor

Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric and whimsical observations about the absurdities of contemporary life

I was a teenage hostage negotiator.

Overheard: “About 99% of the time, the right time is right now.”

Marianne and I just discovered a great new vegetarian restaurant.  Very pricy, though.  Cost us an arm and a legume!

“I went to a record store that said they specialized in hard-to-find records.” Nothing was alphabetized!”—Mitch Hedberg

Has anyone ever seen Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow in the same room?  Courtney Cox and Demi Moore? Amal Clooney and Anne Hathaway? (Thanks to People magazine online, your go-to source for Flavor of the Month celebrities.)

I don't care what anyone says:  We never had weather like this when Mr. Wizard was alive.

People who think what just happened in the Middle East won’t affect them probably had never heard of Pearl Harbor until Pearl Harbor.

The six phases of an actor's career: Teen idol, leading man, supporting roles, character parts, infomercials, obscurity.

We all get them—many of them—and no one reads them. So as a public service, here once again is jimjustsaying's Privacy Notices Made Simple—and they could be put on a postcard, saving tons of paper (not to mention trees):

 "We can do anything we want, and you can't do anything about it, unless your battery of attorneys is bigger and more politically connected than ours.  Thank you and get lost." The Management

There will never be a Whoopie Goldberg Lookalike Contest.

What I wouldn't give for a button on the remote control (or a Menu setting) that would make those irritating and relentless "crawls" disappear from the bottom of the TV screen.  (Ditto for those intrusive pop-up promo logos, or whatever they are.)

Quarterback names have taken a curious turn in recent years: Donovan, Peyton, Eli, Tarvaris, Troy, Drew, Brett, Aaron. . . .

And, drawing from a recent online listing of current starting QB's: Desmond, Bryce, Tyson, Deshaun, Jared, Trevor, Tua, Tyrod and Jalen. I'm thinking when Joe Montana retired, they must have retired his first name! (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

First move I'd make if I were NFL commissioner:  Any touchdown would be automatically nullified if the player scoring it didn't hand the ball to the referee (instead of "spiking" it and dancing around like a deranged buffoon with itching powder in his pants).  Better yet:  Add 6 points to the other team's total!  Grow up, guys! High school is over.

“Ask anyone you admire: Their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal. So, embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone.”—The Technium

jimjustsaying's "Word That Doesn't Exist But Should" of the Week: "Camera-maritan":  The stranger you draft into taking a picture of your group so that everyone in your group will be in it.—“More Sniglets,” Rich Hall and Friends.

Seems like every time I go to the grocery store, I see a variety of apple I've never seen before and no one I know has ever heard of.   Believe it or not, there is variety called Jazz. Tastes pretty good. (No Rhythm ‘n’ Blues apples as yet, apparently.  Haven’t noticed any Soul or Hip-Hop apples, either. Would probably sell well in certain neighborhoods.) 

I'm so old, I used to eat at NHOP--you know, the National House of Pancakes!

"The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards."--Novelist Arthur Koestler

Memo to the increasing number of females (and a few males) with pink, blue, green or purple hair:   Bring something to read when you go to the unemployment office.

Can't remember the last time I saw something we all used to see fairly often: A hitchiker.  Seen one lately?  

Toothbrush manufacturers amuse me no end.  They're always coming up with new angles (almost literally), new selling points.  The latest one I bought proclaimed "90% Deeper Reach/removes plaque between teeth."  

Why now, at this late date?  What part of "deeper" wasn't possible or advisable 100 years ago?  What led to the "breakthrough"? Have teeth changed that much--if at all--over time? Is it that hard to make THE perfect brush, once and for all?  Help me out here.

Same thing applies to razors, especially men’s.  What exactly has changed about facial hair that necessitates a “new, revolutionary shaving system”?  Answer: The need to increase sales.  Period.  So please stop insulting us with the technical mumbo jumbo.

Speaking of “discoveries”:

"There are three stages of scientific discovery:  First, people deny that it is true; then, they deny that it is important; finally, they credit [or blame?] the wrong person."--Alexander von Humboldt, 19th Century naturalist 

How come you never see anyone with a pencil behind his ear anymore?

Faded Phrase of the Week: "Let's get down to brass tacks." 

jimjustsaying's Media Word of the Week (a word you see only in print and never hear an actual person use in real life):  Plethora.  As in, "2023 has seen a plethora of mass shootings."

DRUDGING AROUND: Woman batters daughter with frozen chicken, cops say . . . SHOCK:  Hospital propped dead woman up in bed to fool family . . .  Genius monkey hijacks computer, types on keyboard and flicks through files in office . . .  Report: Terrorists will hack driverless cars and use them for horrific attacks . . . Teacher: Student loan debt drove me to porn career . . . New residential cruise ship would let travelers live at sea . . . Pilot who tried to shut off plane engines mid-flight took psychedelic mushrooms . . . Woman mauled by pet Rottweiler after feeding it THC gummy . . . Automakers come clean: EVs not working. (Thanks as always to Matt Drudge and his merry band of aggregators.)

“Fog and smog rolled over Los Angeles, closing airports and slowing snails to a traffic pace.”—Los Angeles News, via “Still More Press Boners,” by Earle Tempel.

Cultural priorities run amok:  Seeing TV sports anchors not only interviewing but hanging on every word of high school (or even younger) athletes.  It has come to this!  I don’t think the New York Times even COVERS prep sports, which is as it should be.  Name a paper or TV station that reviews high school plays or band concerts?  The kids will be playing their instruments long after they’ve put football or track behind them.

You could probably assemble a halfway decent news team if you could cherry-pick among all personnel at Chicago TV stations, taking an anchor from one station, a co-anchor from another, the sports guy from a third and the weather guy from another (picking similarly from the reportorial ranks).  Right now, they too often all fall under the rubric of Chucklehead Newsfaces with one or two good people at each station!  And there’s too many time-wasting teasers about “what’s coming up,” time that would allow for an additional bona fide story or two. And why this penchant for “reporting” in front of darkened, empty buildings after 10 p.m.?

Then there’s the lame banter between the “anchors” and the weather person/sports guy?  Another time-waster that’s banal beyond belief.  There are no Lenos or Lettermans in TV news.

Redundancy patrol:  "Component parts," "bouquet of flowers," "eradicate completely."

He said it: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”—H.L. Mencken

Just bought a bag of the 2-inch Snicker’s “Fun Size” bars.  I had to. I couldn’t handle the full-size bars—you know, the dreaded "Twelve Labors of Hercules" size!

I mean, aren’t all Snicker’s fun?  Apparently not.  (And did you know that there are about 16 varieties of the popular confection, including an espresso version?  And that they were sold under the name Marathon in the UK until 1990? Who else would tell you these things?)

jimjustsaying’s Newspaper Obituary Headline Nickname of the Month: “Abu.” As in, John “Abu” Kodl, Kenosha News, Sept. 12, 2023. R.I.P., Abu.

Flour and water, salt, amylopectin, mineral or vegetable oil, fragrance, aluminum sulfate, borax, peg 1500 monostearate and coloring.  Put them all together and you have . . . Play-Doh! (There are Fun Facts and then there are . . . fillers!)

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”--Albert Einstein

Today's Latin lesson:  Nusquam video vidi visum hic, populus, iustus eo. ("Nothing to see here, folks, just move along.")

Thanks to Noah Zark, this month’s Popcorn intern.

jimjustselling . . .

Actually, I'm not, but the good folks at HenschelHAUS are.
https://henschelhausbooks.com/product/lol-i-gags/


The book is also available at:

http://www.amazon.com/LOL-i-Gags-One-liners-irreverent-opinions-observations/dp/1595983368/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406350559&sr=1-1&keywords=Jim+Szantor

A NICE SHOUT-OUT

From the Summer/Fall issue of THE NOTE, a celebrated quarterly publication devoted to jazz.  I knew they were running my interview with Willie Maiden, a genius of a composer/arranger/saxophonist and longtime confidant of Maynard Ferguson, but I didn't expect this!  (They said they would add "a little blurb" about me.)

Scroll down to Page 7 (and also enjoy the interviews with two of my all-time favorites, alto sax legend Phil Woods and clarinet virtuoso Eddie Daniels).

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=6966ff0ee36d89b9JmltdHM9MTY4Njk2MDAwMCZpZ3VpZD0wNzAwMmUxNS1kNjE1LTYwOTctMTVmYi0zY2FlZDc4NjYxMGMmaW5zaWQ9NTE3MA&ptn=3&hsh=3&fclid=07002e15-d615-6097-15fb-3caed786610c&psq=The+Multi-faceted+Jim+Szantor&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWcxLndzaW1nLmNvbS9ibG9iYnkvZ28vMzM5NjYyZmEtNzJkMi00ODI5LWE3MmItMzU0YWJmZjNkNWYwL1RIRSUyME5PVEUlMjBTVU1NRVIlMjBGQUxMJTIwMjAyMiUyMHdlYi1lMzJiOGM4LnBkZg&ntb=1

THE LINK TANK

Job? Check. Place to live? Not so much

Lack of affordable housing puts employers in a bind

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/a-job-check-a-place-to-live-not-so-much/ar-AA1k8zsQ

Big House (or Big Ship)?

NY's Vernon C. Bain jail barge bailing out

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=f5b1b001b846e0d6JmltdHM9MTY5ODcxMDQwMCZpZ3VpZD0xMTU2MTAxNy04YjkzLTZlMmUtMWQxYi0wM2EzOGEwMDZmZDMmaW5zaWQ9NTUzMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=11561017-8b93-6e2e-1d1b-03a38a006fd3&psq=jake+offenhartz+prison+ship&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubXNuLmNvbS9lbi11cy9uZXdzL2NyaW1lL2xhc3Qtb3BlcmF0aW5nLXVzLXByaXNvbi1zaGlwLWEtZ3JpbS12ZXN0aWdlLW9mLW1hc3MtaW5jYXJjZXJhdGlvbi1zZXQtdG8tY2xvc2UtaW4tbnljL2FyLUFBMWo3WEla&ntb=1

Requiem for a newsroom

Nobody's going to make a movie about reporters and their cursors

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

'Tiredness of life'

As scientists race to lengthen life, more elderly itch for early dismissal

https://studyfinds.org/tiredness-of-life/

Near misses, fires, severe turbulence . . .  

What’s happening to flying?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/near-misses-fires-severe-turbulence-what-happened-to-flying/ar-AA18ERMu

A trashy subject!

Here’s why students love Garbology

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjf5pn6-PT9AhWDpIkEHY6KD1AQFnoECBQQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2F2023%2F03%2F22%2F1160896402%2Fgarbology-is-the-study-of-trash-this-is-why-students-love-it&usg=AOvVaw1Ox2gJE-s3KkFYDWfP4fzN

jimjustplaying

THE SOCRATIC METHOD?

As Socrates famously wrote, "The unexamined life is not worth living." One would well posit  that the unchallenged life is not worth living.  Or, if it is,  not as satisfying.

Most of my music-related activity since leaving the Air Force Band in late 1969 has been as an author and critic, my playing restricted solely to playing along with records at home.

Soloist Jim Szantor as lead alto David Bixler gives the cutoff on the final chord.

But that changed on Aug. 11 when I performed as a guest soloist on clarinet with the fabled Birch Creek Jazz Orchestra, a big band made up of some of the best jazz players in the country, comprising as they do the faculty that teaches the students who come to Egg Harbor in Door County for two-week sessions of intensive training and performance opportunities.  It's sort of a musical boot camp but with kindly but highly decorated instructors.  

My feature spot was "Ballad for Benny" a tune written by the late, great jazz composer and saxophonist Oliver Nelson, who was commissioned by Benny Goodman to write new material for the band's historic 1962 tour of the Soviet Union.   It was such a  significant cultural/political event back then that Walter Cronkite often led the CBS Nightly News with the band's latest exploits.

The 17-piece Birch Creek Jazz Orchestra prior to my introduction.

This tune was recorded by the Oliver Nelson Orchestra (with the great Phil Woods in a rare outing on clarinet instead of his usual lustrous alto sax) but never performed publicly in this country--till now.  If you do an internet search on some of the illustrious players in the band behind me --Dennis Mackrel, Clay Jenkins, Doug Stone, David Bixler, Tanya Darby, to name a few--you'll see why I'm so proud to have been selected to perform with them.

Part of the evening's program.

It was an oppressively muggy night (close to 100 percent humidity) in the un-air-conditioned hall, making intonation more of a challenge than usual. It took some months of chipping away at the rust that had accumulated over the years on my woodwind chops, but I was determined to have one last dance, so to speak, with the idiom that I have loved for a lifetime.  To paraphrase the late Karl Wallenda of the famed aerial troupe The Flying Wallendas, "Life is the bandstand.  The rest is just waiting."  

Luckily for me, the wait is over.

https://youtu.be/InbMLd1vgSI

LAGNIAPPE

 

THE ONION MANIFESTO

By Jim Szantor

Some people do not cry when onions are peeled, chopped sliced or diced.  Others cry when they are merely mentioned or even implied.  What is it about the allium cepa that causes it to be de rigueur in recipes, seemingly mandatory at McDonald’s and compulsory in casseroles?

What magical properties accrue to this vile vegetable of the hollow, tubular leaves and edible, rounded bulb? What culinary clout does it hold? Do onions cure cancer, prevent baldness or remove unsightly age spots? Are they a surefire Covid killer?

Were onions served at the Last Supper?  Does Taylor Swift eat them?

Some answers, assertions and affirmations in a moment. First, though, a position paper of sorts on the plight of one who must make his way as a consumer in an onion-obsessed world.

If the onion does to you all the things it does to someone who cannot stand, bear, countenance, abide or otherwise tolerate its taste, you know what it is:

--To sit down to a meal anywhere and find the main dish (not to mention the appetizer, soup or salad) loaded with the loathsome ingredient.  How to negotiate this culinary minefield politely if not furtively without offending the hostess?  How to suppress the whimpering and retching attendant to the ordeal?

--To wait endlessly—punitively—at fast-food establishments that package the item with other, more respectable and comestible condiments.  Kudos to the franchises that make the onion an option; a pox on those that operate under the assumption that those little white, chopped interlopers will be loved and consumed with relish by all.

--To grab eagerly for a new entrée in the supermarket’s frozen food section, only to recoil when it is discovered that onions--dehydrated, flaked, powdered or fuel-injected--are part of the bargain, take it or leave it. (In the finest of print, of course.)

It is a mystery why the onions are so omnipresent in the gustatory scheme of things, when to some they are slimy if boiled, repugnant if raw and palatable only if fried to a crisp—to such a crisp, that is, that only the crisp, and not the actual onion essence, is tasted.  (Full disclosure: I recall quite fondly the Onion Straws served by a New Orleans eatery, a close encounter I have yet to live down, there being is a living witness.)

The true enemy of the onion feels not only persecuted but also triumphant when able to detect the faintest evidence of its flavoring.  Cook a beef stew with boiled onions in a mesh bag and remove them prior to serving? The congenital onion-hater can tell.   That’s because the onion has little subtlety, is totally devoid of finesse.  It always lingers near the scene of the crime, fouling the breath and otherwise making its ingestion hard to forget.  But this seasoned onion adversary survives each close encounter, his palate and olfactory glands able to detect its unpleasant properties everywhere.

It could be argued that eating a hamburger with onions is—dare I say it?—an antisocial act.  My hamburger with tomato and pickles flies under the radar, even in close quarters.  Someone eating one loaded with onions in whatever form?  He or she is, in effect, broadcasting with appallingly broad bandwidth, callously indifferent to the consequences!

The onion’s raison d’etre?

According to noted chef Jean Banchet of Le Francaise in the Chicago suburb of Wheeling’s fabled Restaurant Row, “Onions add a lot of flavor, a unique flavor, to soups, sauces and salads.”  He prefers cooked over raw, though, and opts for the shallot, an onion cousin, for fish and bordelaise sauce.

The onion, in the allium giganteum genus, is a real attention-getter, both in the garden and in cut flower arrangements.  It is one, however, that even Mr. Anti-Onion can appreciate, for this flowery version is not to be eaten.

But the more common garden variety is one that a former colleague, Chicago Tribune food editor Joanne Will, says “is worth crying over.”

“Onions not only enrich other flavors but they make a statement of their own.  Just think of some of the things onionophiles would have to give up: deeply browned and caramelized sweet onion soup, boiled baby onions saturated with cream sauce (a must with Thanksgiving turkey), crisply delicious, battered onion rings.”

To a close and cherished associate (one who has prepared this author’s meals for 53-plus years), the onion is an ingredient both pleasurable and problematic.  To cater to her husband’s unfathomable oddity, meal preparation is fraught with strategies, dodges, reluctant omissions and, sometimes, downright deceit. In short, to keep peace in the family, she has to keep the onions out of the crock pot.

There are untold hardships for one who was born unequal in that his tase buds are out of step with the rest of humanity’s.  The onion, in its ubiquity, has made coping more cumbersome, ordering more odious and tasting more tentative for the afflicted.  Unquestionably, the onion is an affront, an imposition, equally detestable, whether served by gracious hostesses, celebrated chefs or sullen countermen.

But if you are among the majority who cannot live without onions, by all means indulge and enjoy.  This is only an open admission of an aberration, a venting of a lifelong loathing, not a produce section polemic.  Some of my best friends buy, cook eat and even grow them. But they’ve never grown on me.

Until the onion makes the headlines (remember the Great Potato Famine, the cranberry scare of 1959, Red Dye No. 2 and other periodic pantry-related panics), it will be the same old story for those who can’t stand them, those who dream of the day when restaurant signs and menus everywhere will contain these words:

No smoking, no substitutions, no onions.

ODE TO THE GREASY SPOON

BY JIM SZANTOR

The chili could be malicious and downright unforgiving.  The omelets sometimes look like yellow Play-Doh flecked with foreign bodies.  The coffee isn’t strong enough to defend itself, and the waitress puts the plates down with an offhand finality.  Breakfast served any time.  Eggs any style.  The soup? It’s navy bean.

 It’s easy to put down the greasy spoon, that ubiquitous testament to the tacky and the Tums.  But by whatever name—luncheonette, diner, café, grill, coffee shop, ptomaine parlor—it used to account for 40-50 percent of the eat-out dollar, according to industry sources.  Now?  Not so much, as changing tastes and the sweep of urban renewal have relegated it into a virtual museum piece--a slow-food square peg in a round hole of a fast-food, instant-everything, drive-through and highly hyphenated universe. Some things just sort of happen, with no grand design or Machiavellian malice aforethought.

 But the greasy spoon was a slice of Americana that clung to the fork with nary a nod to fad or fashion.  There were no vegetarian plates, as meat and potatoes carried the day and the night and the mortgage.  The Serv-Naps filed out of their countertop compartments as the daily duet of eat-and-runs and lingerers played their way through an unconducted arrangement.  The beef was “govt.-inspected”—but did it pass?  There was a counter-top jukebox selector, with some pop, some country, some rock but definitely no Rachmaninoff.

You know the place.  Everyone, whether through happenstance, resignation or momentary indifference has ended up at one of these Edward Hopper-esque establishments, clutching a greasy knife or fork. How the spoon, which generally just stirred the coffee, got left holding the bag is a mysteryforever lost in the mists of time.

Whatever their culinary merits, one could develop an irrational affection for the emporiums of this genre.  And they were more than eating places.  Sociologically they could be an over-the-counter salve for the tattered psyches of the urban disenfranchised, who hoped they wouldn’t close on Christmas and trap them in their cheap hotel rooms.  They were sort of halfway hash house social clubs, with no membership list but plenty of dues, where the help was as transient as the trade.

Some of these motley establishments were actually respectable—sometimes good—and do not deserve to be painted in such tawdry tones.  Almost always locally owned, they were probably more consistent at their level than some tonier “destination dining” spots and had a more devoted clientele, who prided themselves on being regulars, never had to state their orders and were probably as good as the National Guard should someone get surly with the waitress.  Perhaps the key to their fate is how many such places are opening these days, not how many are closing.

But while there’s time, the eyes above the menu survey the scene and laugh and marvel at a few things:

--The waitress always looks like she is glad they are out of whatever they are out of.

--The catsup bottle says “restaurant pack,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.

--The busboy is a strong man--a bit too strong—but he didn’t shower up with Irish Spring.

--There’s a fill-up-the-sugar-container fetish that is hard to fathom.  Today’s two fingers’ worth on top of yesterday’s two fingers’ worth.  The sugar at the bottom was refined in 1952.

--The “chef” has more tattoos than specialties and thinks “Guide Michelin” plays for the Montreal Canadiens.

--The cream pies and such are kept at a tongue-numbing 33 degrees.

--The sandwich plates are larger than they need to be, but the dinner plates. . . .

--The cashier/owner always seems to be eating ice cream out of a coffee cup on a stool near the cash register.

--They honor the “law” that says coleslaw shall be served in flimsy paper or plastic cups and in minute amounts.

--The spaghetti always comes with “rich meat sauce.”

--The menu always has an item or two that no one has ever ordered.  Who orders Red Snapper in places like this?

--If you want something to go, you have to stand in a special place, probably so they won’t confuse you with people who prefer to eat standing up with their hands in their pockets.

--The floor is usually brown-and-yellow tile squares, in accordance with the Seedy Restaurant Color Scheme Act of 1942.

--Some old guy always comes in about 10 p.m. and orders a bowl of bran cereal.

---The menu is a Sargasso Sea of misspelled names and fanciful if not fraudulent descriptions.  From the Broiler.  From the Sea.  But never From the Freezer.

--The server never fills in all those bureaucratic squares at the top of the “guest check” and writes diagonally across the lined form.  What’s more, she has a Ph.D. in abbreviations.

--One of the customers always looks like he is doing his income tax at one of the tables.

--Somebody always walks by the window and waves in just before he disappears.

--You’re the only one at the counter, and some guy walks in and sits right next to you.

--The french-fried shrimp comes with enough cocktail sauce to cover about two pieces.

--The table’s wobble is always half-corrected with a dirty folded napkin or three.

--The clock is always stopped at something like 2:42.

--The Muzak is always playing something like “Never on Sunday” or “Nom Domenticar.”

--The cook flip-slides the plates across the high stainless-steel counter, and they always stop short, as if equipped with disk brakes.

--The cashier always puts your change down on a spikey rubber thing that looks like an oversized scalp massager.

****************************************************************************

In the early morning lull, after the midnight rush hour subsides, the buzz of the fluorescent now equals the sizzle of the grill as the beat cop walks in and sinks into the house booth.

 “Say, where’s Sally?  She off tonight?”

“Nah, she quit.  Went back with her old man.”

“Oh . . . . Say, you got any a that meat loaf left.  Haven’t eaten all day.”

“Nah, meat loaf’s out.  All’s I got left is thuringer.”

“Thuringer, huh.  Well . . . gimme a piece of that blueberry.”

(Illustration:  Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks,” 1942)

Forecast Follies (or . . . "Here's Jim with the Weather")

Mark Twain famously said, ”Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” 

And since reports of Mr. Twain’s death were not highly exaggerated, I’d like to fill in for him and address something we apparently can’t do anything about, either—the nonsensical, downright insulting barrage of verbiage issuing forth daily from what used to be called TV “weathermen” (and they were all of that gender back in the day) but are now known as “meteorologists,” as if space rocks were an omnipresent factor in our lives.  As in, “60 percent chance of precipitation by daybreak, with 0.000001 percent chance of meteor collision.”  (Meteor showers do occur, but usually are not perilous enough to cancel your picnic plans. They have yet to be seen in the Bus Stop Forecasts or the Car Wash Advisories that “humanize” these bloated segments.)

The weather portions (there are usually two—a fairly brief “teaser” early on and later, the Big Production) of most TV newscasts are, first of all, way too long (and coupled with all those time-wasting teasers about “what’s coming up,” leave precious little time for what we actually tune in for—news).  We don’t need to know where the Alberta Clipper fizzled, that an El Nino is in mid-formation or that a front in central Montana caused a “dusting” in northern Iowa.  And as for those “pockets of snow” we were supposed to get last night, I looked in mine and, blessedly, found none. But the station has paid serious coin for all of the glitzy graphics and radar capabilities, and by God, they are going to be used, if even just to show us what the rainfall looks like in downtown Racine “right at this very moment.”  Gripping.

And then there is the universal, comically contrived “personalization” factor, apparently de rigueur on all stations. It’s never “Thursday’s forecast,” it’s (ahem), “the forecast for your Thursday . . . .”  One can only envision the rapturous glow viewers must feel when luxuriating in the warmth of that gratuitous pronoun! (As if that forecast applies only to you, no one else. Ah, exclusivity.)

If one were to awaken from a 30-year coma, he or she would probably be mystified not only by cellphones, laptops and GPS devices but also by the existence of a curious phenomenon known as The Weather Channel: All weather, all the time--a nonstop barrage of jargon, gaudy graphics and arcane factoids.  How did we ever exist without it? When it’s a slow weather day (and in this day of acute climate change, there’s always a crisis on the front burner somewhere), footage of past calamities will fill the bill for weather junkies or the aficionados of disaster porn.

Those with (ahem) backgrounds as editors find the nightly weather segments to be cringefests in the extreme.  Temps don’t just drop into the 20s, they “drop down,” as if “dropping up” were a physical possibility.  Is snow or rain in the forecast? No, we’ll have “snow showers” or “rain showers.”  And it’s never just “sun”; it’s “sunshine,” as if that extra syllable ramps up the warmth.  These folks never pass up an opportunity to gild the lily, because we’re often told of the possibility of “rain events” or “snow events,” which leads me, at least, to wonder if I will need a ticket, if there will be guest speakers and if refreshments will be served.  (Spotty Showers?  That was my clown name back in the day, a story to be told when the Vernal Equinox rolls around.  Which this year, in the Northern Hemisphere, will be at 10:33 a.m. CST on March 20.  Mark your calendar.)

But my pique rises to fever pitch in winter, when we’re often told during our seven-month layered-look season to “bundle up,” as if we lifelong Midwesterners have no prior experience with winter weather--as if we had all just parachuted in from Jamaica in our underwear and had no idea on how to adorn ourselves in these brutal climes.  We don’t need to be told how to dress when icicles form—we’ve been there, done that—and resent the insinuation. One of the local weather wordsmiths hails from San Diego, and he’s telling us what to wear?  Outrageous.  I’d like to send him back to sunny California on his surfboard or his skateboard, preferably when the barometric pressure equals the dew point and, optimally, on a jet stream.

More and more women are seen these days holding forth during TV weather segments, and they have proven themselves every bit the equal of the men—long-winded and grammatically challenged. Positive role models apparently are non-existent; the often-parodied “weather bunnies” are blessedly a thing of the past (their anatomical attributes far outweighed their academic credentials), and the first exemplary female trailblazer with any gravitas has yet to be found. 

So please, Mr., Mrs. or Ms. Meteorologist, do us all a favor:  Stop behaving as if you are getting paid by the word, spare me the details about weather phenomena that have no bearing on our locale and, most of all, stop insulting our intelligence.  Chill out, stick to the weather and let us worry about our wardrobes.  Failing that, my fondest wish is that I could take all of you, get you all bundled up and sent to the Sahara.  There’s a 99.99 percent chance that you won’t need an umbrella or have to worry about a lake effect, a polar vortex or banal banter with the anchor desk. 

And now here’s Al with the Sports.

--Jim Szantor