Other Loves

 

"Love is a many splendored thing."  (Paul Francis Weber, 1955.)  💟💟💟💟💟 Love is so much more than romantic love.

There are special times of the year we highlight "love."  Displays of love are wonderful to ponder throughout the year. W & A is highlighting some of the birthday cakes I made, or at least decorated, for some of the people I love.   🎂🎂🎂🎂🎂

This is pretty simplistic stuff, as I'm aware.  Just frosting out of a tube, often without even the tips you can screw on.  (Kind of parallels the amount of photo editing I do on blogs:  just "Paint" & Microsoft photo apps; not trying to fool anyone!)

At 2, this one wanted a cake with both Clifford & Elmo.  At 21, she welcomed the throwback!

Someone else either wanted or was talked into this:  Clifford jumping over the moon.  Taking the old nursery rhyme a new direction.  All the food dye colored everyone's mouths a lot!

A wish for a New Orleans style King Cake, but later in the year for a birthday.  The candles are faux-crayon candles.

He loved (and still loves) red and Cars.   Skipped the frosting for red sugar.  (At the edge is a Baskin-Robbins Thomas the Train ice cream cake.)

The teen wanted a big cookie rather than a traditional cake.  (I'd done them before, but with less personal decorating, so those aren't pictured.)

Resident artist, with favorite colors of red and blue.  There was a bit of hippy chic going on, too.  The family values religious learning, and that has stayed alive through these growing ages.

Monster theme!  Sometimes Walmart and Kroger affiliates (as well as others) have some pretty fun decorations.  The teen asked for these.

Sweet 16 for the one who loves red & blue.  Clouds drifting by in a blue sky to suggest dreaming and daydreaming.  

Eclectic sports preferences.  (UNM is University of New Mexico; LSU is Louisiana Sate.)

The "idea" was basic on this one because the teen didn't have any preferences.   It caught the age, a favorite color, and the high school colors!

The Barbie Movie was a big deal.  Amazon had cute decorations to oblige! 

At 19, this teen still liked The Railway Series.  "Thomas" is derived from this, but the books have so many more good lessons (and higher-level vocabulary) than the various TV series.

Something literary for this young adult.  Amazon was a help, once again, in finding a creative way to decorate.

A couple more for adults.  

However you celebrate with loved ones throughout this year, I hope it's great!   💟  💟  💟

Luckiest Man Alive

MLB just started up.  Normally, I don't give a lot of attention to sports, first-run movies or basically any entertainment that make the rich richer.  I have one exception:  I follow the Yankees somewhat and buy a little of their gear. This is due to how impressed I was with Pride of the Yankees, the Lou Gehrig story, when I was a kid.

Here's a clip with both the real Lou Gehrig with an animated story behind it.  There is not much of the original speech surviving.  In fact, it had to be crafted from various memories.

The speech was first given at a Fourth of July double header in 1939.

Lou Gehrig, Class Act

 Here's a version that has that short amount of Gehrig footage plus the movie version of his famous speech, starring Gary Cooper:  

Gehrig's 4th of July Farewell Speech

Here are some fun photos as an homage. 

NEWS EXTRA!!!!

BREAKING NEWS: The FBI is investigating irregularities into the 2016 World Series. Director James Comey has decided to make this information public before there are leaks from Kurds attempting to show that Russians were attempting to influence the outcome of America's favorite pastime.
      It has recently been revealed that the originator the Cubbies' curse, William Slanis, was actually of Russian origin; his actual name was William Stanislavsky. He was a Cold War era spy for the Russians. Although Communism has failed and Slanis has long since passed, there is evidence that his Moscow relations, close friends of Vladimir Putin, had been working with WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, to influence the outcome. The attempt was to create a tied score, to create more disruption and suspicion in American culture at a time when many Americans were already saying, "Holy smokes... how'd we end up in this situation?"

     This came after high-ranking Russians insisted that they would be observers at all games, to ensure that the outcome was not rigged. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, in private talks which were secretly recorded by the CIA & just made public, said, "It's absolutely possible for you to have observers at at the Word Series. It's called 'buying a ticket.' Just make sure you do it early." There are now investigatons opening into how many World Series seats were bought by Russians, their exact positions in the stands, and how the tickets were paid for.
      There are also investigations into complaints from all major league teams that the umpiring was rigged throughout the entire season. Many fans took up this position over the season, but felt their opinions went unheard. Ken Bone (the "red sweater guy") commented exclusively (to every major news outlet) that a system is rigged when you can no longer yell at the umpire, "The ump needs glasses!", due to political correctness run amok. (This in spite of his own use of eyewear.) His remarks are under suspicion, now, because he first gained fame by wearing a RED sweater ("red" for Cardinals, not for communists, at least not until more innuendo surfaces) and talking in ST. LOUIS!!!
Russians, knowing that baseball is already steeped in superstition, felt that they could mastermind this. If successful, their next step was to muscle into the Ukrainian vodka business, the true fuel of that part of the world.
      Neither Putin nor Assange would comment. But it has been discovered they speak regularly on red phones named "The Bat-**** Super-Crazy Phone."
It is not known yet whether Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg has been favoring the posts of one team over the other. Alogorithms are being carefully analyzed by the FBI, the CIA, and Mad Magazine.
      Megyn Kelly is undergoing serious new hairstyling, sources reveal, to be prepared to take on this story live. Although Ms. Kelly would not comment herself, one of her staffers leaked, "It's so stupid to have to make it about a woman's hair at a time like this, but you know how it is..."

Groan-Fest (email puns)

(from an e-mail circular)

• I changed my I-Pod’s name to Titanic. It's syncing now. 
• When chemists die, they barium. 
• Jokes about German sausage are the “wurst.” 
• A soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. 
• I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time. 
• I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me. 
  
• This girl said she recognized me from the Vegetarian Club, but I'd never met herbivore. 
• I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I can't put it down. 
• I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words. 
• They told me I had type A blood, but it was a Type-O. 
• PMS jokes aren't funny, period. 
• A class trip to the Coca-Cola factory: I hope there's no pop quiz. 
• Energizer bunny arrested. Charged with battery. 
• I didn't like my beard at first. Then it grew on me. 
• Did you hear about the cross eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils? 
• When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble. 
• I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me! 
• Broken pencils are pointless. 
• England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool. 
• I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx. 
• I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough. 
• Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes. 
• Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.
• Be kind to your dentist. He has fillings, too.
• I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
• Never fall in love with a tennis player because to a tennis player, love means nothing.
• I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.
• All the toilets in New York 's police stations have been stolen. Police have nothing to go on.

FOR ALL YOU LEXOPHILES

(LOVERS OF WORDS)

1. A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.

2. A will is a dead giveaway.

3. Don't join dangerous cults: practice safe sects.

4. A backward poet writes inverse.

5. A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.

6. When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.

7. The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.

8. You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

9. He broke into song because he couldn't find the key.

10. A calendar's days are numbered.

11. A boiled egg is hard to beat.

12. He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

13. The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison: a small medium at large.

14. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

15. When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.

16. If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine.

17. When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye..

18. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

19. Acupuncture: a jab well done.

20. Marathon runners with bad shoes suffer the agony of de feet.

21. The roundest knight at king Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

22. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

23. She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still.

24. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.

25. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

26. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

27. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

28. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

29. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

30. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

31. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

32. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said 'No change yet

---from an e-mail circular