I Remember JFK: A Baby Boomer's Pleasant Reminiscing Spot

My kind of book is the type that grabs you and forces you to read it when you should really be doing other tasks.

I would say that perhaps one out of five books I read affects me this way. The ratio is that high because I stick with the tried-and-true: Grisham, Clancy, Clarke, Heinlein, and a handful of other authors who hit a lot more home runs than ground into double plays.

However, as the purveyor of this humble website, I am often approached by publishers and authors with works that they would like me to review.

Most of the time, if I don't like the book, I'll ignore it. It's not in my nature to trash the work of others, even if it's deserved. Ergo, if I review it, it's because I am favorably impressed.

This review is about Scrambled Leggs: A Snarky Tale of Hospital Hooey, a Boomer writer's account of dealing with a health crisis, and various idiots whose job it is is to help, but instead make the misery much greater. However, please note: there is not a trace of self-pity to be found here. Instead, the author, Sally Franz, chooses to poke sarcastic fun at the incompetence, the arrogance, and the overall ignorance of basic patient needs that she encountered.

The result is this magnificent book, which will alternately make you laugh and wish evil on self-absorbed medical staff who don't see humans, they see cases.

If you youngsters out there think that North Korea's current ruler is a nutcase, you would be right. But if you think he's the first, well, then you don't remember the news headlines of 1968.

In January of that year, the USS Pueblo was on patrol in international waters in the Sea of Japan. Her mission was to monitor communications from North Korea. On the 22nd, two DPRK fishing trawlers approached the ship and circled her for a while. Captain Lloyd Bucher radioed the incident in, but such actions weren't uncommon, and he wasn't unduly alarmed.

What he was NOT aware of were the events that had recently taken place on the mainland. The night before, 31 North Korean soldiers had crossed the ironically named DMZ and headed for the Presidential Palace. Their mission: assassinate the President of South Korea.

They were apprehended within a block of their goal, and thirty of them ended up losing their lives in the ensuing battle. The lone survivor revealed the nature of their mission.

Thus, tension was quite high on both sides of the border when the Pueblo was spotted. Within hours of their encounter with the fishing boats, they were approached at high speed by a warship at full battle stations.

At presstime, the largest oil spill in history is being battled in the Gulf of Mexico. My wife and I have fears about what St. Pete Beach will be like in September, when we make our annual pilgrimage. The public is angry, the oil company is spinning the facts with all its might, and the wildlife is suffering more than anyone else.

Thus, the environment is on my mind.

I try really hard to stay apolitical. Truth be told, I probably lean a bit right. But I am also supportive of movements that are decidedly leftist in nature.

An example of this is the environment.

Even as a child, I felt a strong desire to protect our ecology. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring didn't affect me like it did my elders, but the crying Indian certainly did.

Therefore, my parents never had to chide me for throwing trash out the window. Would I do that to that poor Indian?

While I was making my own personal dedication to being as nice as possible to our planet and ecology, a movement of concerned young adults was doing the same thing.

There are only a few memories that are common to practically every Boomer kid. Examples: we all got the smallpox vaccination. We all were blown away by man's first moonwalk. And I'm pretty sure that we have all watched The Beverly Hillbillies.

The show actually spawned a genre that I was not familiar with: fish-out-of-water. In 1962, it was the first television program to take a group of individuals from one world and plant them in another, a trend continued by the likes of Green Acres, Mork and Mindy, and even The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

But, IMHO, nobody ever did it like Paul Henning and his wonderful creation.

As everybody on the planet knows, one day Jed Clampett was out hunting with his faithful bloodhound Duke, when he shot into the ground and spawned a miniature gusher.

The next thing you know, old Jed's a millionaire. Banker Milburn Drysdale convinces him that he needs to move into a nice mansion in Beverly Hills, right next to him. And thus began TV history.

Charles Monroe Schulz was born on November 26, 1922 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His uncle, possibly in an act of prescience, gave him the nickname "Sparky," after Barney Google's Horse Spark Plug.

Charles grew up loving to draw. Once, he drew a picture of his dog Spike, who relished eating nails and tacks, and sent it in to Ripley's Believe It or Not. They published the prodigy's cartoon verbatim!

As a teenager, he offered drawings to the high school yearbook staff. They turned him down.

After a stint on the military, Schulz took a job as an art instructor at Art Instruction Schools, headquartered in his home town. Never heard of them? Picture a magazine ad of a cute figure with the exhortation "Draw me!" He also took on a side job doing lettering for a Catholic periodical.

But in 1947, he persuaded The St. Paul Pioneer Press to carry a comic called Lil' Folks. The strip included a kid named Charlie brown and an unnamed, but quite intelligent, dog. The next year, he sold some single-panel toons to The Saturday Evening Post. In 1950, he approached United Features with his best Lil' Folks strips. With considerably more savvy than his school's yearbook staff, they agreed to syndicate them under the name Peanuts. The rest was history.

I have a soft spot in my heart for comfortable, feel-good movies. Sometimes, I'm just not in the mood to be blown away by special effects, or to be emotionally drug all over the theater, or to laugh myself silly.

When I'm in that sort of mood, a film like Calling It Quits is just what the doctor ordered.

It's one of those little indy films that went straight to DVD. Often, you never know what you're going to get with those bad boys, but rest assured: this is a wonderful movie.

It stars easy-going Dennis Boutsikaris as Dante Milestone. Dante is a successful businessman who is undergoing a mid-life crisis. The rat-race is too much for the fifty-something, and he decides to retire early and try to find the passion for life that he once had.

He is accompanied in his search by best buddy Jake (Robert Clohessy), who encourages him to find something, ANYTHING to get his head back in the game.

Early retirement gives Dante a bad case of too much time with himself, and he is soon out of the house seeking...