Rant #1,338: Pugsley

In a year where we have experienced some major deaths in the entertainment field--namely Joan Rivers and Robin Williams--this passing isn't on the same level, but for some, it probably is.

Ken Weatherwax died, and if that name doesn't ring a bell if you are not a Baby Boomer, here is why we mourn his death today.

He was Pugsley, yes, Pugsley Addams of the TV show "The Addams Family."

As fat, short and pretty weird looking brother to comely Wednesday Addams, Pugsley was rarely the focus of any of the shows on the classic sitcom, but he was there, setting fires, eating bugs and doing other things that in the world of this ghoulish family, were perfectly normal.

No, this show could never run today, because the PC police would be all over it.

But back in 1965 and 1966, Pugsley fit right in with this family, which was led by dad Gomez and mother Morticia.

And all the while, with the prune face that looked like it was extra disturbed by someone eating a lemon, Weatherwax played Pugsley perfectly.

Could you ever imagine anyone else playing that role?

Weatherwax came from something of a theatrical family, with his aunt being actress and dancer Ruby Keeler. His brother played the best friend of Jeff on the original Lassie TV show, and he was also related to some other Hollywood stars.

He earned a few early roles in toothpaste commercials and on TV in shows like "Wagon Train," but his signature role was to come.

But if there was ever anyone who did not fit the Hollywood glamor profile, it was Weatherwax, and it ended up hurting him as far as roles after "The Addams Family" show ended.

When work dried up, he went back to being a "normal" kid, which was difficult after being Pugsley, and kids he went to school with never let him forget who he had been. He reportedly went from school to school, bullied by kids for his former role.

He sought his escape through joining the Army, and that is reportedly where he got his "real" life back.

Afterwards, he moved onto the other side of the screen, being a technical worker on dozens of TV shows and movies, as a grip and set builder, and he pretty much faded into obscurity, only being brought up during revivals of the show as a "whatever happened to ... " question.

He passed away on Sunday at age 59. The first time I looked, he evidently passed away in his sleep, and it hadn't been determined what was the cause of death. Later, I found out that he died of a heart attack.

Whatever the case, Weatherwax, sort of like Butch Patrick, lived in all Baby Boomers' psyches as that kid, who was pretty much our age, who was one of the stars of one of those two "monster" shows that we loved when we were kids, the other being "The Munsters," of course.

Oh, how we would have loved to live in those families, but we did it through Weatherwax, and Butch Patrick as Eddie.

So R.I.P. Ken Weatherwax, you did a great job.

Although the actor that portrayed Pugsley is now gone, because of TV reruns ...

Pugsley lives!

Rant #1,337: Royal Flush

So the Royals are in New York City.

No, not the American League Champion Kansas City Royals, who will be in New York City during the 2015 baseball season.

We are talking about the British Royals, who are staying at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan during their brief stopover in Manhattan.

All the fascination over the Royals in this country really throws me for a loop.

Why we care about this is beyond me.

We could have had our own Royals in this country, but George Washington did not want to be called "King" here. He wanted to be called "President," and the rest is history.

But seemingly since that time, we have been intrigued by the Royal Family over here as much as we are intrigued by the family of whoever the sitting President and his family is.

Why are we so interested in the Royals, I ask?

I really think that this is a gender-based thing.

Yes, I am going to sound like a male chauvinist pig, which I am anyway, but women seem to be fascinated with the Royals way more than men are.

I think it has to do with that "fantasy" that a lot of women grow up with that their "prince in shining armor" is going to come and whisk them away in the most romantic fashion.

Somehow, that translates to the Royal Family, and everything they bring to the table.

And then there are the pregnancies, the ups, the downs--Princess Diana, for one--the failures, the triumphs.

This appears to me to be a female thing, something that men don't get into, and from what I saw on television last night, applies once again.

I would say that the crowd that had been waiting for hours for them to come was about 98 percent female, and I bet the only males there tagged along with their other half.

But whatever the case, they will be at the Brooklyn Nets game, where I am sure they will meet up with our own royalty, in the name of Lebron James, affectionately known as "King."

That is the only "royal" that men care about, for sure.

Rant #1,336: "SmElements"

Online retailer Amazon.com has announced that it will soon be premiering its own line of products, under the "Elements" brand name.

It will only be available to Amazon Prime members, and will feature a full line of products.

It is starting off with diapers and baby wipes--hence the title of this Rant--and other products will follow.

I don't know about you, but for the life of me, why would anybody buy diapers and baby wipes online?

I know that people do buy these things electronically, but to me, these are two items that I would buy in my local, brick and mortar store, but so removed from having a real little one in the house, what do I know?

When my kids were small, we always had stacks of this stuff in the house, at the ready when they were needed.

There are plenty of good brands available locally--and Amazon, by the way, will still offer those too--so why would you order such products online?

I guess if you had a stack of diapers, and plenty of wipes, and the need wasn't immediate, you could wait a few days to get such items, so online ordering would be OK for you.

More importantly, Amazon.com will be pretty much entering the electronic grocery business with this line, and for the life of me, I don't understand how people can do their grocery shopping that way, either.

It is a rapidly growing industry. Even the military stores offer online ordering.

But to me, the grocery experience is a one on one experience between yourself and your local store.

I certainly could not buy produce online--you have to really see, feel, and touch produce to know what you are getting--but people do buy this stuff this way.

No, it is not for me, but I guess that people who don't think they have enough time to visit a supermarket will do their shopping this way.

Not having an hour's time a week to go to your local supermarket, at least to me, translates into laziness.

My wife often works on the weekend, and I do, too, during the summer.

Nonetheless, we find the time--at least one of us--to do real, live grocery shopping.

We do not order these things online. I don't think I would ever order these things online.

But people do, and Amazon is counting on their high-ticket customers--Amazon Prime customers who pay a premium for this service--to make a go of this.

I wish them luck, but I am not an Amazon Prime customer, so it won't affect me right now at least.

And tomorrow morning, my wife and I will do what we always do on Saturday morning--or at least one of us does if the other is working--and we will do our shopping in the local supermarket.

Good luck, Amazon, but I don't think I will be doing any online grocery ordering using your service.

Now as for other things ... can you clean a dirty tushy with a new CD?

Speak to you on Monday.

Rant #1,335: No Indictment

Once again, a white police officer has not received an indictment in a case where a black man was killed.

And it happened in my neck of the woods, which brings it up close and personal to myself and everyone who lives in the New York Metropolitan area.

In this case, Eric Garner, another person with a criminal history as long as your arm, was put into a choke hold when he was apprehended for selling cigarettes on a street in the New York City borough of Staten Island.

He had asthma, could not breath, told the five officers who were on top of him that he could not breath, and he died.

All of it was recorded on a cell phone, and honestly, I personally thought that he officer in question would be indicted for reckless endangerment, the lesser of the charges.

He was not.

Some people say that based on the video alone, this was a total miscarriage of justice.

And if you simply take the video alone, it probably was.

However, a jury heard testimony of 22 witnesses, saw other evidence that the public has not seen, heard from the police officer that applied the hold, and came up with no indictment.

What happened?

Again, I am not a lawyer, but it appears that the 22 witnesses may have painted a different picture of what happened to Garner than what the video showed.

And the police officer must have made an extremely compelling argument about why he had to apply such a hold on Garner.

The video showed the last few moments of Garner's life. But what precipitated what happened before the video was shot?

Was there just cause for the police to act the way they did?

Did Garner physically threaten them, either with his words or by actually having a physical altercation with them?

Did he do anything else to make the police act the way they did?

Evidently so, because no indictment was made. The feds are now looking into this situation, but the proof of the pudding can be found in what the witnesses said happened prior to the video being shot.

The police do not go out to kill people, but they will if such an act is necessary.

In this case, unlike the Ferguson case, there was no reason for Garner to have died.

But what were his actions before the video was made that led the policeman to apply such a hold on Garner?

I do believe that that is where we find out what led to this unfortunate situation.

This case is so different than what happened in Ferguson, but it will be lumped together, of course, as situations where police may have not have used their best judgment.

But did they actually use the only judgment that they possibly could, under these circumstances, in each of the cases?

I do believe in Ferguson that the officer was threatened with bodily harm, and he did make the correct choice, the only choice he could make under the circumstances.

In New York, the whole thing from top to bottom was unfortunate, but evidently, the evidence found no reason to indict.

Yes, I was quite surprised that the police officer was not indicted on the lesser charge, but he was not indicted, so the evidence must have pointed in his favor in some way, shape or form.

Let the feds look into it now. I am sure they will find something that the local court could not find.

And that is what scares me, and should scare you, too.

They are going to be under intense pressure to find something, and with that pressure over their heads, you can bet that this case is one that is far, far from over.

[And the one constant in the two cases is again the Rev. Al Sharpton, who feeds off these incidents like the leech that he is.

He is truly the Martin Luther King of the Bizzarro World, and his mere presence makes his ignorant flock seem so righteous.

Please, please, put this tax evader away in jail, where he belongs, not sitting with the President of the United States, who doesn't appear to have a clue that all of this nonsense is going on during his watch, and that makes him somewhat responsible for the lax environment we currently live in.

And if people are calling for New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton's head, how about Mayor Bill deBlasio's head too? The Garner incident happened under his watch. I get the increasing suspicion that deBlasio is being given a bye on matters like this because he married a black woman and has a bi-racial family. He used the race card to perfection to get into office, and I do believe that people are willing to forgive and forget with him because of his living situation. Believe me, I hope that I am wrong, and both Bratton and deBlasio are held to the same level of responsibility in this and other similar matters.]

Rant #1,334: The Email Blues

I don't know about you, but my email has kind of morphed over the years from a true message center to what is akin to an electronic garbage pail.

I used to get messages from friends, people who belonged to my groups, from groups I belonged to, and others, with interesting tidbits about this and that.

I always enjoyed getting regular mail, now known as snail mail, so I was sort of in a mail "nirvana" with my email.

However, over the years, those interesting messages have lessened to a few a week, and now, my email is overrun with ads ...

Ads mainly cajoling me to buy things I don't need, ads for organizations hoping to engage me, and ads from department stores and online entities, all looking for my interest.

Well, I have to tell you, I am not interested one bit.

Maybe not one bit, maybe extremely slightly, at best.

Every day, I go through my email, and I have to tell you, I immediately delete between 10 and 30 messages each day, all pertaining to some sort of advertising.

And since we are in the holiday season, it is getting even worse.

I have to say that once in a while, there is one of these advertising emails that does engage me, and I did use one coupon when I did my holiday shopping, which ended up saving me about $30 on something that I bought, so I am not immune to using these things to my advantage.

But honestly, those types of emails are few and far between. If I am deleting between 10 and 30 messages a day, that equals out to between 3,650 and over 10,000 messages a year. If I get two or three that interest me over the course of a year ... well, as you can see, the percentage of "good" advertising emails is very, very low.

But those that send these things--which to me are almost "legal" spam--are banking on it that you will use what they have to sell you, and I guess if I am using one during the holiday season, millions of others are using one, two, and it all ads up to big business for these entities.

I don't even worry about "real" spam anymore--I might get one or two of these a year now. It is the advertising emails that I really have to think about.

Happily, just about every one that I get is from a legitimate organization, whether it is a retailer, a charity, or some online presence.

I don't have to worry about that, but I do hate the proliferation of these things.

And for Black Friday ... don't ask. I was getting rid of emails left and right.

Look, I understand that this is the latest way to advertise your goods and trumpet issues that you back.

But there are just so many of them, that whatever the sender is trying to do is getting lost in the email fog, to a certain extent.

Heck, some entities send three or four such messages out to me each day.

Enough already!

I get the message, literally, and it generally goes right where it belongs ...

In the trash.

Rant #1,333: Record Store Day

As I mentioned yesterday, the only shopping I did on Black Friday was for myself, at my local record store.

Record Store Day has been around for the past couple of years, and it highlights local record stores, which had been a dying breed until recently.

Yes, digital downloads have knocked out many of the record stores that proliferated the planet since the 1950s, and even larger chains have gone under because of this, including Tower Records and Virgin Records.

But the local record stores live on, because there are many, many people, like myself, who are serious record collectors, and quite frankly, the only place to get "serious" records--mainly vinyl--are at these local stores.

Sure, you have eBay, but who wants to go through the hassle of bidding on an item?

Yes, we also have GEMM, but like all shopping on the Internet, you can't hold, feel and look at what you want right before you when you order from this site.

Yes, you need an actual store, and that is what Record Store Day is all about.

And various record labels have noticed, and they put out special edition records just for the occasion.

This year, when I visited my local record store on Record Store Day, I was looking specifically for two special edition records to add to my collection.

One was a Beatles' extended play record, a re-released disk on heavier vinyl. One can't pass up a Beatles record during this special day, and being a 1960s music lover, I certainly wasn't going to let it get by me.

Then there was another record by an artist who really isn't much of a singer and is better known for another craft.

His name is Mick Foley, and if you know anything about pro wrestling, you know that Foley, who lives right on Long Island, is one of the all-time greats. Beyond the ring, he is a best-selling author, a comedian, and most importantly, a family man, and I just had to get his Christmas record, which will allow my son and myself to meet him at an in-store appearance later this month.

So I bought those two records, and a bit more.

The store I went to is the type of store that I can get buried in, going through all the aisles, and seemingly miles and miles of records that they have.

I bought some singles that I needed--with picture sleeves, no less--and a few LPs, and I didn't really spend very much money doing it.

And it made me happy, because serious record collectors know that the best way to listen to music is not on CD, not through digital files, but on vinyl.

Sure, I do copy them over to MP3s via my turntable/computer setup, but I do this to listen to what I have on my car radio.

Otherwise, the greatest listening experience is truly via vinyl. Rock and roll was made for that format, and vinyl sales are rising each year, because the younger generation--kids between 18 and 25--are rediscovering vinyl, which I think is great.

There is hope for this world!

I almost forgot to mention that a sidelight of the day was actually quite important--the store I went to donated a percentage of its sales to various local charities.

So all in all, while I missed the hustle and bustle of Black Friday, I really enjoyed myself on that day, shopping in a different, less frenzied way.

To me, there is nothing more relaxing than going through hundreds upon hundreds of records at my local record store.

If you haven't done so, brush off your turntable and go to your local record store.

Vinyl lives!

Rant #1,332: "Potpourri"

Funny, I was thinking of this word last night when I was deciding what I was going to write about today.

Remember on the old "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" show, where Dick Martin would have fun with this word with Dan Rowan?

Dick would say "POT-pourri," with the emphasis on the "Pot" part of the word, and we would all laugh?

And I am not talking about that smelly stuff called Potpourri, either. 

Well, today's Rant--the first one since Thanksgiving--has nothing to do with "POT," or really anything much.

It is just a conglomeration of some thoughts about stuff that has happened over the past few days, a virtual "potpourri" of thoughts and actions that have taken place during the past few days..

As has become a personal tradition, I did my holiday shopping on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

I like it that way. Nobody is in the stores, and you can pretty much do everything you need to do in a relatively short time.

So I didn't wrestle with either Thanksgiving Day or Black Friday or Black Friday weekend crowds, and I won't bother today, on Cyber Monday, to shop.

Thanksgiving Day could have been better, could have been worse.

My sister got pneumonia right before the holiday, so the brood that we were expecting at our home for the holiday never materialized.

At first, we thought we would only have my family and my parents, but two of my nephews did come on the holiday, one with his girlfriend, so it was kind of a subdued feast.

My wife had to work Friday and Saturday, and I was off on Friday, so on those days, I did pretty much absolutely nothing.

I did food shopping, and yes, I went to my local record store for Record Store Day, which is on Black Friday, so I did do some shopping--admittedly for myself.

I did get some bargains, or what I think are bargains, but that was pretty much that.

Even with my wife home yesterday, we just took it easy, watching TV and I never really even ventured out of the house.

Yesterday was my father's 83rd birthday, so we gave him his gifts, wished him well.

And before we knew it, everything went back to normal today.

We are in the stretch run of the year, basically 90 feet away from home plate.

To me, December is the longest month on the calendar. It seems to take twice as long for this month to end, with all the holidays we are looking forward to just a stone's throw away.

It is a busy month, and we are almost there.

Honestly, with such a lousy 11 months behind myself and my family, I simply hope that December just comes, and goes, pretty quickly.

And you don't know the half of it.

I tell you a lot here, but I don't tell you everything.

This has just been a very poor year for myself and my family, in all honesty, and I just hope that December flies by.

I have to be an optimist, and I have to believe that 2015 will be better.

But at least one hurdle in the stretch run has been jumped over, and that is Thanksgiving.

I hope you had a good one.