When I joined the law firm in Norristown PA as my first job out of law school one of the partners ducked into my office one morning and said he needed me to cover an appointment for him because a family crisis was calling him away. One of the firm’s clients was facing criminal charges and was being evaluated psychologically. A lawyer from the firm had to be present but would just have to sit there. I said, “Sure.”
So I met the client at the doctor’s office and she explained she would be asking him a series of questions and recording his responses. The questioning lasted about an hour and a half. At that point, the psychologist left, saying she’d return in about fifteen minutes. When she returned, she said the client’s responses revealed a deep-seated psychosis and that he posed a danger to himself and others. He was being remanded to a psychiatric facility for further evaluation and would be held until it was determined it was safe to release him. She gave us five minutes to confer and left the room.
At that point, the client turned to me, terrified, and said “They’re taking me to the fucking nuthouse — why didn’t you say anything??!!” And I said “I’m not opening my mouth — my answers were all the same as yours!”
I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to be Trump. Well, maybe I can see one piece of it – the pardons. He must flip through magazines and stuff going — yeah, “pardoning him would be nice,” or “no pardon for that schmuck!” And so I see in today’s NYT that, out of the blue, great ex-Met, ex-Dodger, and ex-Yankee Darryl Strawberry was pardoned! What was the crime — striking out with men on second and third? Dropping a pop-up in the ninth against Boston? Nope: tax fraud and drugs. Boring. Here’s how Straw tells it:
“Half asleep, I glanced over and saw a call from Washington DC. Curious, I answered, and to my amazement, the lady on the line said, ‘Darryl Strawberry, you have a call from the President of the United States, Donald Trump.’ I put it on speakerphone with my wife nearby, and President Trump spoke warmly about my baseball days in NYC, praising me as one the greatest player of the ’80s and celebrating the Mets. Then, he told me he was granting me a full pardon from my past.”
Maybe it wasn’t entirely out of the blue. Darryl appeared on Trump’s idiotic Apprentice show back in 2010. Must have made a good impression.
Love you, Straw!
Answers in today’s puzzle included SNOW and HAIL CAESAR. The following dreadful/wonderful explosion of puns, courtesy of egs made me wonder if he might be a distant relative of Owl Chatter friend Brookline Carl.
Julius: Hey Cleo! What is that stuff coming down? SNOW?
Cleopatra: HAIL CAESAR
Julius: Thanks, but I was hoping for a report on weather conditions.
Cleopatra: Can’t help you there. You hungry?
Julius: Yeah, I think I’ll get a Gallic pizza. It gives me bad breath, but I can eat a whole pie and still want more. Brutus claimed to have had doubles the other day! I didn’t believe him. I said “Ate two, Brute?”
Cleopatra: He has lot of Gaul! What’d he say?
Julius: Something about me joining his friends, the Idesofs, for a walk. I think he said “Be where the Idesofs march.”
Cleopatra: Sounds weird but you might take a stab at it.
De ball has been taken out of Daboll’s hands. In a move that can only be called Kafka-esque, the Jints fired their head coach Brian Daboll after blowing another fourth quarter lead on the way to their 2-8 record, an incredible half game worse than the Jets! Why “Kafka-esque?” Because Daboll will be replaced by assistant coach Mike Kafka.
Remember Eartha Kitt, old timers? She popped by for a visit today, even though she’s been dead since 2008. She was at 20A: KITT, and her clue was “‘Santa Baby’ singer, Eartha.”
An activist for peace and civil and gay rights, she is famously remembered for taking the Johnsons to task during a White House visit in 1968 over the Vietnam War. She said: “The children of America are not rebelling for no reason. . . . They are rebelling against something. There are so many things burning the people of this country, particularly mothers. They feel they are going to raise sons – and I know what it’s like, and you have children of your own, Mrs. Johnson – we raise children and send them to war.” Kitt’s remarks reportedly caused Mrs. Johnson to burst into tears. It ended Kitt’s career in the U.S. but she continued to perform in Europe and Asia. The CIA branded her a “sadistic nymphomaniac.” Ouch! She returned to the White House in 1978, accepting an invitation from President Carter who, apparently, was not averse to sadistic nymphomaniacs.
Kitt married John Macdonald and they had a daughter they named Kitt. John was white and Kitt came out white too. Here’s a shot of Kitt (Eartha) and Kitt together.
They lived near each other in Connecticut and had a very strong bond. Kitt said this about her mom’s death: It was just the two of us hanging out [during the last days] and she was very funny. We didn’t have to [talk] because I always knew how she felt about me. I was the love of her life, so the last part of her life we didn’t have to have these heart to heart talks. She started to see people that weren’t there. She thought I could see them too, but, of course, I couldn’t. I would make fun of her like, “I’m going to go in the other room and you stay here and talk to your friends.”
She was 81 when she died. In her youth she was, well, here, take a look.
Story of Local Interest from The Onion:
Area Dad Needs More Time With Museum Plaque
NEW YORK—Leaning in close to the paragraph of text as his family continued on to the museum’s other exhibits, area dad and Frick Collection visitor Phillip Schermeier, 58, reportedly needed more time with the plaque beside Rembrandt’s 1626 painting Palamedes In Front Of Agamemnon Thursday. “We were already heading over to the Goya stuff, but then we looked back and saw Dad still standing next to the first Rembrandt painting, staring pretty hard at the description on the wall,” said Schermeier’s daughter Laura, noting how her father at several points glanced back and forth between the plaque and the painting as he took in facts about the scene depicting the mythological warrior Palamedes, who helped lead the Greek forces in the Trojan War, genuflecting at the feet of the legendary king of Argos. “His face couldn’t have been much more than a foot away from the plaque, and I think he may have even started nodding a little as he read. I honestly don’t even know how long he was there, because by the time he finished up, we had already moved on to another room.”
If you watched the World Series, you may have noticed a small number 51 added to the sides of some players’ baseball caps. It’s not unusual for someone in an organization or an organization’s past to pass away and be honored in that fashion by the players, more often with a number on a shirtsleeve. I hadn’t heard what it was about and thought nothing of it. But today I learned #51 is the number worn by Dodger relief pitcher Alex Vesia. Before Game 1 of the Series, the Dodgers announced Vesia would be away to attend to a “deeply personal family matter.” As a show of support, the other Dodger pitchers played the Series with Vesia’s number inscribed on their caps.
Sadly, Vesia and his wife Kayla announced that their baby daughter Sterling Sol Vesia passed away on October 26. They offered their deepest thanks to the doctors, nurses, and countless well-wishers. They said there were no words to describe the pain of their loss.
Dodger outfielder Kiki Hernandez was walking back to the dugout after striking out in the ninth inning of Friday night’s Game 6, and when he glanced up at the big scoreboard screen he noticed a little “51” on the side of Toronto pitcher Chris Bassitt’s cap. He wasn’t aware that the Blue Jay relief pitchers had also inscribed their caps with Vesia’s number. “For those guys to do that [with all the pressure they were under from the Series], it’s incredible,” Hernandez said.
The Vesias included this photo of Sterling’s little hand in their announcement. May her memory be a blessing.
The Wellington Files 