I think this will bring a curl to your lip…you tell me whether it’s a smile or a sneer.
I am working on the website for the second book in the Cheesie Mack series: Cheesie Mack Is Cool in a Duel. The book will be released later this month.
In this book, Cheesie wonders…since the word dud is so negative, why would a candy company name its product Milk Duds? Continue reading “Are Milk Duds Duds?”
Marty Stein and Benny Silverstein operated shoe stores in Oxnard, my California childhood’s small town. Marty’s store (Kirby’s Shoes) was on A Street’s east side, right next to my father’s men’s & boys’ clothing store. Benny’s store (GallenKamp’s Shoes) was directly across the street. Marty carried a marginally higher-priced line, but in a town that lived off three 
military bases and farming, they competed for the same clientele. The men were not friends, but they ate lunch together at least once a week, at which they spoke only lies.
Both Benny and Marty were Continue reading “A Teenager Selling Shoes”
I know a woman (she shall remain nameless) who loses her sunglasses repeatedly. A retired attorney, she is neither careless nor insouciant. It just happens. And each time her cheaters go AWOL, she reacts with dismay and a bit of self-directed anger. Then, after a mourning period shortened imperatively by the next glary day, her chagrin wanes, and she buys a new pair.
Over the years, her disappearing shades routine, unpredictable, yet certain as California earthquakes, Continue reading “No Sunglasses, No Service”
So that the world’s level of good humor may be raised, Violet Charles, my cartoonist/illustrator daughter, has inaugurated the Bridget over troubled Waters comic strip.
For all the panels, go to the Bridget over troubled Waters website.
On a balmy Saturday morning in late-1978, two 30-something brothers boarded a Pacific Southwest Airlines flight in Los Angeles. As they walked up the outdoor stairway into the PSA jet, the two men looked suspiciously like Arab terrorists during a time when Arab terrorism was non-existent. They were traveling under their real names, but to almost any observer they could have been Ali Balak Qatlar and Satif Luwi Qatlar. The former looked deranged, the latter somewhat simple.
Their destination was Oakland, where they would be met by their widowed 61-year old mother. She had decided Continue reading “Sheiks on a Plane”
Irie (EYE-ree)—to be at total peace with your current state of being. The way you feel when you have no worries. (Jamaican)
The small-town paraders and bystanders were more than irie long before the procession began just before noon. This is a big deal in Christiansted. Everyone knows this isn’t the right day, but we’re on an island, so what the hey!
Continue reading “Kiss Me, I’m Irie!–St. Patrick’s Day on St. Croix”