What I Heard This Week! 09-05-2019
Popeye’s ran out of chicken for their newly released and “wildly popular” chicken sandwich. It was an immediate hit with employees, managers, cashiers, that were working 60-plus hour weeks and sometimes days without breaks. (Hmmm, like small business ☹) The reporter that I saw speaking to a Popeye’s employee, said, “So, you’re out of chicken for the chicken sandwich?” The girl answered, “Yes.” He questioned, “But I CAN still order some chicken??” The girl answered, “Oh, yes, we have chicken.” He responded with, “But you can’t sell me a chicken sandwich?” “No, we don’t have any chicken sandwiches.” I’m guessing it must be a prefab boneless piece of chicken that comes frozen. It did remind me of the time I took my relatives and kids to the beach to eat. I won’t mention the restaurant name. The adults ordered margaritas. Oops. They were out of margaritas. Four of us ordered fish tacos. “Oh, I’m sorry. We are out of fish for the tacos.” Hmmm. Wait, we are staring at the ocean and you are out of fish? So, I asked her if I could order the fish basket. “Oh, yes, we have fish baskets.” Then I asked if they could just take the fish from the fish basket, cook the fish, then make fish tacos for us and we would pay the difference. “No, we are out of fish for the fish tacos.” Oh, but I’m not done…
This morning on the news I heard that in Kyle, Texas, one customer became so enraged to find that Popeye’s was out of the chicken sandwich, he came inside the restaurant with his group (leaving a child in the car) and demanded chicken sandwiches all while waving a pistol and threatening the staff. One man in Tennessee has sued Popeye’s for $5,000 alleging false advertising and deceptive business practices. What kind of people are we raising now that would even think of doing something like this?
LEGO now has instructions in audio and braille for the visually impaired. Can you imagine the satisfaction of being able to build a replica of the London Tower Bridge or the Sydney Opera House? In celebration of “Friends” 25th anniversary, LEGO is turning New York City’s most iconic residents – Chandler, Rachel, Ross, Monica, Phoebe and Joey, into LEGO bricks. It’s the LEGO Ideas Central Perk set and includes the sitcom’s café, favorite couch, sofa, armchair, table, cookie jar, two cookies and a menu board. A total of 1,070 pieces for $59.99, and yes, Rachel’s hair is iconic in plastic.
A Dr. Seuss-inspired attraction is headed to Houston. “The Dr. Seuss Experience” will feature The Cat in The Hat, The Lorax, Horton Hears a Who! and others, as well as a maze inspired by Oh, The Places You’ll Go! comprised of thousands of suspended balloons. No arrival date yet for the 15,000-square-foot “interactive and immersive touring experience” exhibition yet. Dr. Seuss is one of the most quoted authors with over 40 published books, great movies and is studied in university classrooms. Horse Museum, a never-before-published Dr. Seuss book about creating and looking at art, based on manuscript and sketches discovered in 2013, was released this week, twenty years after his death.
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” Dr. Seuss
They weigh no more than a penny but are migrating from distant breeding grounds throughout the eastern half of North America. All 7 million ruby-throated hummingbirds will pass through our area now thru November on their way to fly 600 miles across the Gulf of Mexico to their winter homes in Mexico and Central America. Some will stay the winter with us, but most will linger for weeks to double their body weight to fuel the journey. They need us right now. Clean your feeder (I take mine apart once a week and put it in the dishwasher) then fill a ratio of one-part sugar to three-parts water. Keep what you don’t use in the refrigerator. It’s important to keep the feeder clean and get ready because by the middle of September there will be so many more birds. My feeder is busiest in the early morning hours.
RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Rock musician ‘Ginger’ Baker is 80. Considered to be rock’s first superstar drummer. Cream, Blind Faith. Singer Walter Williams is 76. The O’Jays. Chef Rachael Ray is 51. Actor Tom Skerritt is 86. M*A*S*H, Alien, Top Gun, A River Runs Through It, Up in Smoke, and Picket Fences. Singer Valerie Simpson is 74. Ashford and Simpson. Singer Bob Cowsill is 70. The Cowsills. Bandleader Branford Marsalis is 59. Humanitarian and actor Richard Gere is 70. His latest child was born in February of 2019. Drummer Gina Schock is 62. The Go-Go’s.
Actress Melissa McCarthy is 49. Actor Macaulay Culkin is 39. Little stinker Kevin McCallister in Home Alone. Disney has announced that it is rebooting the classic comedy film. Culkin posted a picture of what the reboot might look like – a scruffy picture of him relaxing on the couch in underwear, binging on fast food with a laptop in his lap, belly overstuffed. Actress Tuesday Weld is 76. Queen of Teen. Singer-bassist Tim Bogert is 75. Vanilla Fudge. Guitarist Jeff Cook is 70. Alabama. Actor Paul Reubens is 67. Pee-Wee Herman. Guitarist Alex Lifeson Is 66. Rush. Bassist Glen Matlock is 63. The Sex Pistols. Actor Sonny Shroyer is 84. The Dukes of Hazzard. Actor David Soul is 76. Starsky & Hutch.
Actress Barbara Bach is 73. Bond girl in The Spy Who Loved Me. Married to Ringo Starr since ’81. Singer Wayne Osmond is 68. The Osmonds. Actor Jason Priestley is 50. Beverly Hills, 90210. Reality TV personality Alana Thompson is 14. Honey Boo-Boo. Actress Betty Lynn is 93. Thelma Lou, Deputy Barney Fife’s girlfriend, on The Andy Griffith Show. Actor Elliott Gould is 81. Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve & Thirteen. Actress Elizabeth Ashley is 80. The Carpetbaggers. Singer Rachael Price is 34. Lake Street Dive.
Drummer Jerry Allison is 80. Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Violinist Itzhak Perlman is 74. Guitarist Rudolf Schenker is 71. The Scorpions. Singer Van Morrison is 74. If I was ‘forced’ to pick my favorite album or song it would be Moondance by Van Morrison. Hmmm. Maybe Tupelo Honey would be second…wait, or it would be Crazy Love. But if you ask me next week, it might be Whenever God Shines His Light. No question, I am definitely a fan of Van Morrison. Remember Into the Mystic? And The Last Waltz. Music sure brings back sweet memories.
Animator, Richard Williams, died at the age of 86. Roger Rabbit. At 15, Williams ‘ran away from home’ to Hollywood on a five-day bus trip, where he took the Disney studio tour three days in a row, each day breaking away from his guides to seek out the studio animators, who then ejected him from the studio lot. Eventually his persistence paid off, the studio relented, and he was able to meet animators, who showed him how the animation process worked. Mom said to come home so he took courses at Ontario College of Art, then at 16 was earning a living as an illustrator. Good story.
Valerie Harper died at 80. Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
The man in one of the most famous photographs in U.S. history died. He was former Dallas police detective James Leavelle who was handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot to death by Dallas Strip club owner, Jack Ruby, on November 24th, 1963, two days after Oswald had been charged with the murder of President John F. Kennedy. Leavelle was transferring Oswald from police headquarters to the county jail when Ruby reached through a crowd of reporters and opened fire on live television. Dallas Time Herald photographer Bob Jackson won a Pulitzer for the photograph.
Eddie Money says he has Stage 4 esophageal cancer that has spread to his liver and that his fate is in God’s hands. He is known for hits like “Two Tickets to Paradise” & “Take Me Home Tonight” & “Baby, Hold On.” The cancer was found during a routine checkup. Money is 70.
Jeffrey Epstein signed a will declaring he was worth $577 million only two days before he hanged himself in federal jail. OK. We all read that, but did you know that one of the witnesses to the signing of the ‘will’ was Mariel Colon Miro, a 26-year-old New York lawyer who worked for El Chapo during the Mexican drug lord’s recent trafficking trial in Brooklyn. Colon Miro was often at the side of El Chapo’s beauty queen wife during the trial that ended with his conviction in February and was also accused by prosecutors of smuggling a banned cellphone to the wife at one point, but the judge declined to sanction her. Hmmm.
Little Vivian Lord was playing ‘Army Man’ with her older brother. She was disappointed that all the plastic army men were, well, male. So, the 6-year-old girl wrote different companies that manufacture army men. No one replied except BMC Toys in Pennsylvania. He said, “I’m not a big company. It’s expensive to produce a new figure set. So, I’ve got to do my due diligence and make sure it’s something people actually want.” “Women in vintage plastic military would be hard because there were no women in combat during WWII so banishing anything other than a nurse’s bag would not be historically accurate.” He’s going to do it anyway and expects Army women to hit store shelves by Christmas 2020. I bet he will sell quite a few. OK, more than quite a few.
A few months ago, Mattel announced that after 57 years, faced with slumping sales, they decided to make Barbie look more like the girls that play with her, you know, like real people. There is now Original Barbie along with petite, tall and curvy. The new shapes, along with new skin tones and hair textures introduced last year, have boosted sales by 44%. Maybe Mattel should have introduced Army Barbie.
If you’re not a Downton Abbey and Harry Potter fan, then just skip this part and go to the next paragraph. This will not mean a thing to you. Jim Carter, who plays the dependable, sharp and very wise butler, Mr. Carson, of Downton Abbey fame, is married in real life to…drumroll please…Imelda Staunton (of Harry Potter’s ‘Delores Umbridge’ fame.) Listen, she scared the bejeebers out of me. She has now joined the cast of the Downton Abbey movie that will be released (in case you missed it the 27 times that I’ve mentioned it before) on September 20th. I’m a fan.
When local teacher and volunteer Bryan Adams died, the Earth, the stars, all the animals, birds and reptiles lost a great friend. On Sunday, September 8th at 2.p.m. there will be the Bryan Adams Memorial Bench Dedication at the BASF Planetarium at The Center for the Arts and Sciences. Please come.
The Department of Motor Vehicles has given one mother in New Hampshire, ten days to surrender her vanity license plate. You know the plates where you can spell out things like: “White Ford Bronco that says ‘NOT OJ’ and the Chevrolet electric Volt with “LOL GAS”. There are plenty of them, but not as good as this one. It says PB4WEGO. The DVM claims that the plate violates state codes due to its reference to an “excretory function.” Quit it. I would fight to keep that plate. It’s priceless and every mother everywhere would support her on it. She has appealed and we will see.
After parking itself over The Bahamas for two days, Dorian left total devastation. Pray for the people as they begin to start over. Disney stands with the people affected and will donate over $1 million to help relief and recovery efforts after the most powerful storm on record ever to hit the islands.
Gage sent this: In Vegas, people can tithe by dropping casino chips in the offertory. And at the end of the weekend there is a Brother that goes around to all the casinos to cash them out and make a deposit. He’s the Chip Monk. As always, thank you for reading us. We appreciate it. Don’t forget that Grandparents Day is Sunday, September 8th. Wish mine were still here. They were the best part of my family. Lisa Baker
