So your favorite Aunt Betsy is flying to Chicago and arranges for assistance since she uses a wheelchair. How lovely it is when a handsome young man and attractive young woman show up at the gate: airline employees who will assist Aunt Betsy in boarding her flight. But before you know it poor Betsy is splattered all over the floor, shrieking in pain, and the wheelchair goes bounding out of the gate and onto the tarmac. Apparently, scenes like that happen on a regular basis. American Airlines was just fined $50 million by the Department of Transportation in response to a shitload (plane-load?) of complaints.
Passengers reported being roughly handled, even dropped on the ground, and their wheelchairs, which can cost up to tens of thousands of dollars, being damaged beyond repair. At Miami International Airport, a ramp agent reportedly dropped a wheelchair down a baggage ramp, which then ricocheted onto the tarmac. (There it goes! Get it!) At Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, American employees dropped a passenger on the floor while transferring her from a wheelchair to her seat on the plane. Oopsies!
Aunt Betsy survived her ordeal in one piece. Lookin’ good, Auntie B!
And speaking of millions of dollars in fines, Owl Chatter is thrilled to welcome our Georgie back! He’ll be on the job again “until they throw me into the f*cking slammer!” The OC fridge is already bulging with diet soda, including some new stuff he says is out of this world. We missed you buddy. Welcome home!
Where does he find this stuff? He’s, like, a genius.
As I approach retirement after 38 years of teaching and with my 75th birthday looming, I was sitting in the doctor’s office this morning waiting for my annual checkup, and I realized my entire life has been a charade. Then I remembered that I like charades, so I guess that’s okay.
Do you like stuffed cabbage? Silly question, right? Who doesn’t? I’ve made it a few times and found the actual assembling of each little cabbage leaf, after softening them, was a pain the neck. But then I got an email with a recipe for a stuffed cabbage “casserole” that avoided those steps so I tried it. Yum! It has all the taste of stuffed cabbage with none of the hassle.
OK, so cook up some rice: you’ll need one cup (cooked). Then saute an onion in some olive oil with a little garlic and set it aside. Brown a pound of ground beef and drain the fat off. Stir in the onion/garlic, plus: a 15oz can of tomato sauce; a 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes (undrained); 1 T of Worcestershire sauce; 1 t of paprika; salt and pepper. (You are also supposed to add 1 t of thyme, but I didn’t have the thyme.) Simmer for 5 min, remove from heat and stir in one cup of cooked rice.
Now use your head. That is, chop up a medium-sized head of cabbage. Take your casserole thingie and put 60% of the chopped cabbage across the bottom. Top it with all of the meat mixture and top that with the rest of the cabbage.
Cover and bake at 350 for 45 min. Uncover, sprinkle with your favorite cheese and return to oven for 15 minutes.
Voila — all the enjoyment of stuffed cabbage with much less work — tastes just like it! (Philly — amirite?)
In the NYTXW today at 47D, the clue was “Rock singer Shirley.” Word of Shirley MANSON had not reached me under my rock, so I was lucky the crosses were easy. She’s the singer with the band Garbage, which I also hadn’t heard of. Apparently, Manson suffers from an unusual condition causing her to only be happy when it rains. She only smiles in the dark. Take a listen.
Do you lava lava lamp? They were invented in1963 by Edwin Craven Walker, British founder of a lighting company, Mathmos. At 21A we were asked what the lava really is. Three letters. Did you know it’s WAX? The heat from the lamp causes the wax mixture to become less dense and rise. Here’s an original Mathmos lamp.
Crossworld was saddened by the death of Teri Garr, who was (and should remain) a popular puzzle answer. Rex shared this lovely note: “RIP to my favorite crosswordese—the only TERI I’m interested in, the only GARR there is, my beloved TERI GARR. Best comic actress of my lifetime. xoxo”
He also shared this wonderful scene of hers (with Dustin Hoffman), which I will shamelessly steal for Owl Chatter.
A numerologist told her that having double letters in both her first and last names (Terry Garr) was not propitious, so Terry became Teri. “It was the best $35 I ever spent,” she said. She dismissed the adage about being nice to people on your way up because you’ll see them again on your way down. “Not true, really,” she said. “I find that as I gently descend the ladder of fame (the same one I viciously clawed my way up), I’m meeting an entirely different set of people.”
Garr suffered from MS for many years and was 79 when it led to her death. She had aged, of course, but the gleam in her eyes never dimmed. She is survived by a daughter and a grandson.
Rest in peace, Teri.
I don’t think Alice Ahearn of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) meant for her inquiry to be as funny as it turned out to be, in which case she’s a natural. Here’s her post: “I’m staying near sir pancreas London. Anything nice and dull nearby?”
It’s funny because she meant she was staying near the Saint Pancras railway station: not Sir Pancreas. Here are some comments:
Mark Daniels: I think you’ll find the stomach nearby and a couple of kidneys around the corner.
Dennis Low: If you’re prepared to travel, there’s the Breadboard Museum.
Alice: That sounds brilliant.
Dennis: Yeah, not dull at all. Six hundred years of breadboards and you get to pick one from the collection and eat off it at the end.
Alice: Wow do you get to eat bread?
Dennis: Totally.
David Wilkinson: Sir Pancreas!!! Was he a knight of the round table or has he been ennobled more recently?
Benjamin Bavardi replied to David with this odd verse:
When a knight won his spleen in the torsos of old,
His intestine was blocked and his liver was cold.
With a splint on his arm, an IV in his hand,
In intensive care waiting til covered in sand.
The actual St. Pancras station features this statue of John Betjeman, a lifelong advocate of Victorian architecture who led the campaign to save the station from demolition in the 1960s.
Go ahead – amaze your friends and your creepy relatives with all of this knowledge. What do you think they thought the lava was — actual lava?
See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 