I love canned crap.

It’s just past 7 p.m. and time once again for the ultimate senior citizen condundrum: I can’t decide what the hell to make for dinner tonight. Therefore I think I’ll go gourmet with a sack of zero-carb pork rinds and some nice onion dip. If I’m still hungry afterwards I’ll probably open a can of whatever. I love canned crap.

Never in a million years will you ever guess where Sam wanted to shop this morning. Give up? The 99¢ Store! And he went VOLUNTARILY! Because I haven’t been able to visit fun stores like this for years due to a variety of mobility issues like lousy feet, lousy knees and getting dizzy a lot, I told Sam to call me from inside to describe their current collection of crap. And he did, eventually coming home with two bags of the aforementioned zero-carb pork rinds and a tube of braunschweiger. Holy crap, people! BRAUNSCHWEIGER! Sam said they also had a lot of great deals on toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant and umbrellas except we didn’t need any today. Especially umbrellas, as it hasn’t rained in Texas since October 2011. (This might be an exaggeration, but not by much.)

Since Rosh Hashanah begins tomorrow at sundown I’d like to take this opportunity to wish my Jewish readers a sweet and happy new year. Happy 5774!

I’ve got another Putz of the Week award to share with y’all but it’ll have to wait for my next Howdygram post because I need to eat dinner now. Thank you for reading this.

Never give a Jewish dwarf exercise equipment for Hanukkah.

Everything in the news is pretty disgusting these days. We’ve got hysteria in the Middle East, royal titties on magazine covers across the globe, Twinkies going bankrupt and fringe nutjobs like Paul Ryan calling President Obama “an extremist.” That being said, the only articles I allowed myself to read online this morning were Dear Abby and a photo retrospective of Florence Henderson’s hairstyles from “The Brady Bunch.”

L’shana tovah, everybody! Sam and I ushered in the first night of Rosh Hashanah with a pot of Jewish chili and two crappy films: 1) Along Came a Spider (1970) starring Suzanne Pleshette and a lot of orange furniture; and 2) The Wasp Woman (1959) directed by shlockmeister Roger Corman and featuring Susan Cabot plus a lot of other people nobody ever heard of.

Please allow me to swing off on a screwball tangent for a minute to discuss the aforementioned Susan Cabot, whose actual life and death were stranger than anything Roger Corman dished out in his drecky horror movies. Apparently Cabot’s son was a dwarf named Timothy Scott Roman who, following years of emotional abuse, bludgeoned mom to death with a barbell in 1986 while she slept. At trial the court found him mostly nuts due to taking an experimental growth hormone for 15 years that didn’t work, and teeny Tim wound up with three years of probation and a cash fine more appropriate for a speeding violation. In addition — here’s the best part — Cabot apparently had a torrid love affair with King Hussein of Jordan in 1959 that ended when he found out she was actually Jewish. Cabot’s real name was HARRIET SHAPIRO. Holy crap.

I can hear Sam slamming cabinets in the kitchen so I think I’ll go join the fun. Thank you for reading this.

The Great Twinkie Bailout of 2012.

I woke up two hours ago with a song in my head, a screwy yet catchy thing called “Oh What a Horse Was Charlie” from the movie Going Places (1938) starring Dick Powell, Louis Armstrong and a horse. Ronald Reagan had a non-singing bit part that included two (too many) lines of dialog.

The plot is actually really stupid and really funny at the same time. Powell is a sporting goods salesman who attends a snooty steeplechase event pretending to be an Australian jockey (seriously) and gets conned into riding a wild horse named Jeepers Creepers in the big race. Poor Louis Armstrong — already a huge international star at this point — is badly cast as a stable boy who serenades the horse, obviously the studio’s attempt to introduce Johnny Mercer’s big hit song (“Jeepers Creepers”) and humiliate Armstrong at the same time. Here, for your possible amusement, is a video clip in case you think I’m making this up.


Before I forget ... happy new year from your pals at the Howdygram! I always make an effort to keep track of the basics even though Sam and I are not religious or observant except for matzo balls. For instance, I know that Rosh Hashanah begins tomorrow at sundown (mazel tov) and Yom Kippur is September 25 and 26.

Breaking news from the world of cheap and tasteless snacks! Apparently Hostess Brands, teetering on the edge of demise, has asked a bankruptcy judge to force the baker’s union to accept a revised contract with substantial cuts in pay and health benefits so Twinkies and Ding-Dongs can live a long and happy life at the expense of 18,500 employees.

Personally, I never cared much for Twinkies. Even as a kid I thought they tasted like polyester. My favorite was always Hostess SnoBalls, but that was half a century ago before the marshmallow chewed like rubber and nobody dyed the damn things pink. Maybe somebody should put this company out of its misery already.

I think I’ll go back to bed for a while and annoy Sam. Thank you for reading this!

Pass the matzo balls, y'all.

L’shana tovah — and happy 5772 — from your pals at the Howdygram! We may not be wearing stupid hats and dancing to Guy Lombardo, but we’re celebrating the new year with a nice pot of homemade chicken soup and a couple of Charlton Heston movies. Nothing says Rosh Hashana like Charlton Heston, the most inspiring faux-Jew EVER, who definitely knew how to turn an ordinary high holiday into a Cecil B. DeMille production.

I can’t sleep. I thought I was tired when I went to bed at 12:15 with Sam, but I woke up about 90 minutes later and still can’t figure out WHY. My bladder is empty, I’m not hungry, nothing hurts, I don’t especially want to watch TV, I’ve already done more than my share of online shopping and there aren’t any socks to fold. I suppose if I get desperate enough I can always eat cheese and watch a few “Millionaire Matchmaker” reruns; I wonder if Bravo knows this is the best sedative on earth.

Thank you for reading this.

Our guardian angel really knows his stuff.

Sam and I have a guardian angel. There are millions of little reasons why we believe this, but four events today convinced us beyond all doubt. In case you’re a skeptic, read on.

Divine Intervention with Serious Medical Issues. It all started this morning when I went to the doctor for my quarterly checkup. First the receptionist tells me she doesn’t need a $25 co-pay because I’ve got a CREDIT on the books, then my doctor gives me a huge bear hug when she walks in the room and makes me feel like a long-lost best friend who showed up to return her favorite sweater, and finally the phlebotomist in the lab actually finds a good vein on the very first try and doesn’t have to yell at me for not drinking enough water. At this point I’m pretty sure I’m in the Twilight Zone.

Divine Financial Assistance. Sam’s cell phone rings as soon as we get home from the doctor and it’s our mortgage guy at Wells Fargo. He tells us that we not only won’t owe $700 out-of-pocket when we refinance our mortgage later this month, THE BANK ACTUALLY OWES US $118. Even better, we don’t need to make our September 10 mortgage payment, and because Wells Fargo accidentally overpaid our annual homeowners insurance a couple of months ago we’re also getting an unexpected REFUND of about $1,000. All of a sudden it’s like someone threw a Christmas party in our checking account with free hors d’oeuvres.

Divine Revenge Against Stupid and Mysterious Fees. And then I get my August merchant account statement in the mail this morning and discover a deduction for a bogus “mystery fee” of $99.95. I call to find out what’s going on and talk to Valerie the Crab, who insists that it’s a routine annual charge designed to defraud their customers and steal from their bank accounts without explanation (my interpretation) ... but surprisingly Val can’t tell me what the fee is for or why I have to pay it. This definitely gets me irritated because these bozos already keep a percentage of my credit card transactions, which is the cost of doing business when you own a credit card terminal. So I call my account executive, the brilliant and wonderful Evelyn, who agrees to reverse the charge. I’m so happy I want to buy her breakfast, except I’m in Texas and she’s in Los Angeles cleaning her condo for the Jewish high holidays.

Divine Protection Against Tornadoes. Thanks to tropical storm Hermine we had a LOT of weather around here today, including seven inches of rain and two tornadoes ... one around 5:30 slightly east of us in Sunnyvale, Forney and Heath that interrupted my “People’s Court” rerun with a lot of frantic National Weather Service warnings, and another just north of downtown Dallas (see below) a few minutes later that sent Sam scrambling to the main floor of his office building with a Clif bar. This was a very major hoo-hah. The downtown twister plowed through the Park Cities area, down Mockingbird Lane into Love Field airport and then headed toward a strip mall in the northern suburbs. At last report the tornado was pulling into Wendy’s for a burger and fries.

Incidentally, it’s Rosh Hashanah, and Sam and I would like to wish L’SHANA TOVAH (Happy New Year) to our Jewish friends and relatives. Please enjoy the following religious video with our very best wishes. Thank you for reading this. Pass the chicken soup, y’all.