The Cow on Brentano Boulevard

Normally, you could wait until the cows came home before you found two news items about cows within ten days, one of which actually does involve cows coming to your home, presuming that you live on Brentano Boulevard. We waited, and the cows came home.

This story was reported by the CBC. It was a bit unclear—the CBC apparently doesn’t have a regular reporter on the cow beat. If you’re on the cow beat, you have to know your cows from your steers. We think we have the facts right. If we don’t, go moo.

According to the CBC cow beat reporter, a trailer carrying two cows, a steer and a bull tipped on the Queen Elizabeth Way. (We don’t normally get to combine cows and Queen Elizabeth in the same sentence. The cows have made our day, and we haven’t even mentioned the bull yet.)

Remember watching Steve McQueen on a motorcycle in “The Great Escape”? Replace Steve McQueen with a cow and you will understand why we find this funny.

The cows immediately headed west—Go West, Young Cows!—then headed for the nearest residential neighborhood.

“Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?" “Cow.” “Cow who?” “Cow about opening the bloody door, the Ontario Provincial Police are after me!”

The cow was right. The Ontario Provincial Police were in fact after the cow.

The cows made it to Brentano Boulevard in Mississauga, and that's when their luck ran out. After beeing arrested, they were photographed and taken to the hooscow. (Sorry, readers, we couldn’t resist.)

One of the cows used its moments of freedom to track down a CBC Sports producer. This doesn't happen often. "We get all kinds of animals…coyotes, foxes, deer, but never a cow," said the producer, Bridget O'Toole.

Cows are not known for their athleticism, so we are trying to imagine why cows would tip a trailer on the Queen Elizabeth Way and bust out in order to visit a CBC Sports producer. We are nothing if not inquisitive.

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Happy Birthday, War!

Happy birthday, war!

The Iraq war is five years old today. We were going to buy it a pony but try gift wrapping a pony and you’ll see why we didn’t buy the war a pony. We got the war a gift certificate instead. It can choose its own pony.

None of the editors of Imaginary Grapefruit were invited to the birthday party, probably because we didn’t send the pony. We doubt that Lawrence Lindsey was invited either, and we doubt that he bought the war a pony for its birthday.

In 2002, Lawrence Lindsey, then the President’s chief economic advisor, estimated that the cost of the war could be in the range of $100 to $200 billion and was shoved out the door in less time than it took Smarty Jones to win the 2004 Preakness Stakes.

And rightly so, he was way off. According to recent estimates, the United States has ponied up about $500 billion so far. Lindsey deserved to be sent back to his stall.

Of course, we could point out that Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget, predicted that the cost of the war would be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion. But—we’re quoting the New York Times—“Mr. Daniels cautioned…that it was impossible to know what any military campaign against Iraq would ultimately cost.”

In other words, “I’m wearing a blindfold and swinging a broomstick at a piñata. If I hit it, it’s sheer luck.”

Or, as Yogi Berra supposedly said, "it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Mr. Berra, send your resume to the Office of Management and Budget.

The President of the United States, speaking this morning at the Pentagon, said that “war critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in Iraq, so now they argue the war costs too much…"

And he’s right! Ignore the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found, ignore the thousands of deaths and grievous bodily injuries among military personnel and civilians, ignore the fact that the expense is already ten times the amount initially estimated by director of the Office of Management and Budget and is still growing, and you have to conclude that it has been a brilliant success, and well worth the cost.

Mission accomplished!

Happy birthday, war, and we’re sorry about the pony. It is really hard to gift wrap a pony, but we tried.

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Eliot Spitzer Night at Luther Williams Field--really, we're not making this up...

We would love to hear what Yogi Berra would say about this. He did once say that “…only in America could a thing like this happen…” and that seems about right.

The Macon Music, a baseball team in the South Coast League, announced a few days ago that its game against the Aiken Foxhounds would be played on Eliot Spitzer Night and—heck, we’ll just quote the team’s Web site:

1. The Music have extended an invitation for former New York Governor Spitzer to be on hand and throw out the first pitch;
2. The team will give away a Washington, DC vacation including a one night stay at the Mayflower Hotel;
3. Client #9 (or fan #9) will receive a free Music prize pack;
4. Any fan with the name Eliot, Spitzer, or “Kristen” along with any fan from New York will receive $1 off admission;
5. The Music will play Frank Sinatra music throughout the evening in honor of New York;
6. Wire Taps will be placed throughout the ballpark this evening;
7. ATMs will be available for cash withdrawals not to exceed $5,000 per hour;
8. Any fan who has resigned their position will be given $1 off admission;
9. The 871 fan will receive a gift certificate for the Macon Music Team store.

Is there a better way to get Dad to take the kids to the ballpark than to dedicate a night to a philandering disgraced politician who was forced to resign after his unseemly behavior was disclosed? Of course not. Plus, if the kids are named Eliot and Kristen, that’s two bucks off admission.

The team’s plan to have an Eliot Spitzer Night has probably attracted more attention than anything else that has ever happened in the South Coast League.

Four days after announcing that Friday, June 13 would be Eliot Spitzer Night, the team began an online poll to let fans decide whether Eliot Spitzer Night should be cancelled.

The voting, as of this minute, is evenly split. Half of the team's fans are in favor of having a Philandering Disgraced Politician Forced To Resign After His Unseemly Behavior Was Disclosed night. Bring the kids.

Will Eliot Spitzer Night at Luther Williams Field happen? We don’t know, because as Yogi Berra said “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” (That quotation is attributed to Yogi. We don’t know if he actually said it—some quotations are incorrectly attributed to Yogi and we imagine that Yogi might say that “if I said it, I didn’t say it”—but we like it anyway.)

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There are some things you don't imagine yourself writing--"Naked Guy on a Forklift" is one example...

This is true--it was reported by the Associated Press and we saw it in the Philadelphia Inquirer: a naked guy in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, went totally Keith Moon at the Willow Valley Resort, drove a forklift through a wall, then crossed the street to Darrenkamp's Market, where he overturned a 300-pound pizza oven. (The oven weighed 300 pounds, not the pizza.)

The naked guy caused some other damage but, from our perspective, once you've combined a naked guy, a forklift and a pizza oven in one story, you've hit the trifecta.

What else is new today? Well, the governor of New York resigned, a major Wall Street investment bank crashed and burned in less time than it takes for a fly to land on a banana, and a naked guy drove a forklift.

When Bob Woodward was told that burglars had busted into the office of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate, he didn't think that the story would amount to much.

Someone at the Associated Press probably said "oh bugger me, not another naked pizza oven flipping guy on a forklift story..."

But Woodward was wrong and, similarly, it is possible that someone at the Associated Press didn't immediately see the larger picture.

The two Democratic presidential candidates are running neck and neck, both need Pennsylvania's delegates like fish need water, and both will be in the state tomorrow. Can it really be a coincidence that a guy chooses this particular time to get naked, drive a forklift through a wall and flip a pizza oven in a state critical to both candidates? We don't think so.

This is exactly what Nixon's henchmen did to Ed Muskie in 1972. Anyone else notice that the likely Republican candidate, John McCain, went to Iraq just before the naked guy drove a forklift through a wall and flipped a pizza oven in a mainly Democratic state? Another coincidence? We don't think so.

Clearly, the strategy of the Republican party is to discredit its opponents by implying an association between the Democratic party and naked guys on forklifts.

Forkliftgate!

Welcome to the new Imaginary Grapefruit. We put the pieces together for you, because no one else will.

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All we are saying is, give puppets a chance

Yesterday, a report by KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City said that “a bomb was inadvertently dropped from a military jet onto the Canyon Creek Apartments in Tulsa on Thursday…military officials are trying to figure out how the pilot could have dropped the training weapon.”

The residents of the apartment were out at the time, but their aloe plants are missing and their cat will be in therapy for a long time.

Last year, the Army Times reported that nuclear missiles were inadvertently loaded onto a B52 bomber that flew from North Dakota to Louisiana. An Air Force spokesman called it “an "isolated incident,”adding that "the Air Force takes its mission to safeguard weapons seriously.”

He didn’t use the words “don’t be concerned that we mishandled nuclear missiles and flew them across the country, possibly over your apartment building.”

And a few days ago, we reported that the United States had dropped a bomb on three cows in Iraq. That one, we understand. The cows were hiding WMPs—weapons of milk production.

The editors of Imaginary Grapefruit have reached a conclusion: bombs and nuclear missiles are dangerous!

We propose using lawn darts instead...oops, we forgot that lawn darts have been banned in the United States since 1988, when they were deemed to be too dangerous.

So, how about puppets? Indonesian wayang puppets, Chinese stick puppets, whatever. Puppets are harmless. They don’t fall on buildings, kill cows or hurt anyone except, occasionally, other puppets. We like puppets.

All we are saying is, give puppets a chance.

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All the news, before it happens...

We do not like to boast, but we have to point out that we have just hammered two nails squarely on their steel heads.

First, we predicted that the emperor of the Empire State was going to drop faster than a pig tossed from a Bell 47B helicopter.

We have no idea why the fall of the emperor of the Empire State made us think of pigs falling from a Bell 47B.

There is an explanation for the Bell 47B, though. According to the American Helicopter Museum: "On March 8, 1946 the Bell 47B became the first commercially certified helicopter in the United States."

So, if you're going to toss pigs from a helicopter, the Bell 47B is a good choice. That model is historically significant.

The plummeting pigs part, we can’t explain. It was the first thing we thought of.

We do not approve of flinging pigs from helicopters. But the point is that we predicted that the emperor of the Empire State would fall faster than a pig tossed from a Bell 47B helicopter it before it happened, and we were right.

Second, we predicted that the morning news would describe the emperor's--let's use a polite term--consort--in such detail that we would know what's in her CD player.

Bingo. This morning's news reported that she prefers Etta James, Aretha Franklin and Frank Sinatra. Two out of two.

That's why Imaginary Grapefruit is here, to report the news before it happens. Read it here first.

We do, however, owe an apology to the emperor of the Empire State's consort. We said he overpaid, but a consort that likes Etta James and Aretha Franklin is probably worth $4,600. One suggestion for the emperor, though, next time, knock a few bucks off if you have to listen to Frank Sinatra.

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Love Potion, Client 9?

Anyone else notice that the governor of New York—let’s call him the emperor—ran the Empire State and was caught indulging at the Emperors Club? It is possible—we admit that we have no confirmation that this is true, largely because we made it up, but it is possible—that the emperor used Amtrak’s Empire service, the train that runs from Albany to Penn Station, on his way from the Empire State to the Emperors Club. How’s that for symmetry?

William Shakespeare would be in dog heaven, although as far as I know, there is no character in any of Shakespeare’s plays named Kristen. Had Shakespeare written a play called “Romeo and Kristen,” it would have been a dog’s breakfast. Shakespeare had more sense than his dog, which is why he never used Amtrak’s Empire service and never hired a girl named Kristen.

We, the staff of Imaginary Grapefruit, do not want to know anything more about the emperor or Kristen. We now know the color of Kristen’s hair, her weight and what’s in her CD player, and we don’t care.

There are better things to think about than where the emperor of the Empire State hangs his trousers, or how much he spends to hang them there. He can afford a place to hang his trousers and where the trousers hang is not our concern. There are other things to think about. Spring training has started, for heaven’s sake.

The total population of the world is 6,656,215,567—whoops, 568—congratulations, someone—and if this morning’s news provides any guidance, half are reporters and the other half have been asked by the first half for an opinion of the emperor.

Enough, already!

There is no need to interview at least one person from every geographic location in the world. Eliminate everyone from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, for example, and that's 480,222 fewer people for Matt Lauer to interview on The Today Show right there, leaving more time for The Today Show to demonstrate interesting things to do with waffles. At this point, we’d rather make banana nut buttermilk waffles than hear another word about the Emperors Club.

There is no question about it; the emperor of the Empire State is a mosquito in a bug zapper. According to the Associated Press: “…70 percent of New Yorkers think the emperor should resign, while 66 percent believe he should be impeached and removed from office if he doesn't.”

We have no idea, of course, what Kristen was wearing at the hotel, but the label on at least one undergarment must have said “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"--"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Memo to the emperor: always read the labels. Use Woolite. And always pay your girls in cash.

We regret having to say this, but there is no way to put it gently: the Spitz has hit the fan.

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Cow Lateral Damage

Imaginary Grapefruit is cow-friendly. If we had more space, we'd have cows in here right now. They could do some typing, work in the mail room, graze--we wouldn't care. We just like cows. We do not approve of firing missiles at cows. But when the morning news reports that the United States fired a missile at cows, it is just plain funny. It is regrettable, of course, and we will send our condolences to the families of the cows as soon as we stop laughing at the absurdity.

This is an actual news item--honestly, we have not changed a word: "A US missile strike...aimed at a man described by the Pentagon as 'a known al-Qa'ida terrorist' succeeded only in...killing three cows."

A White House press release said "We regret the cow lateral damage, but we have achieved our goal of depriving international dairyists of milk and other dairy products that we cannot mention at this time for national security reasons. These were not just cows, they were bovine extremists. America needs to be united in the war against dairyists."

Yeah, we admit that we made up that last part. We have stopped laughing and we apologize, for our country, to the families of the cows for...oh heck, we're laughing again. We have just imagined Slim Pickens riding the missile in "Dr. Strangecow."

For the cows reading this post, for your safety, if you are a cow, keep moving. America knows where you moo.

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The Super Bowl, Super Tuesday and a groundhog’s search for order in chaotic times

"Today is groundhog day, and up to the time of going to press the beast has not seen his shadow." – published in The Punxsutawney Spirit in 1886, noting the first celebration of Groundhog Day in the United States.

Earlier this week, Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his hole on Gobbler’s Knob and spotted his shadow, thereby predicting six more weeks of winter. Phil’s prediction was itself predictable—historically, the probability of Phil predicting six more frigid weeks has been about 80%. Considering that the low temperature during the six weeks following Groundhog Day tends to range from 26 to 35 degrees, Phil is generally on safe frozen ground.

Once in a while, though, events occur that even a prognosticating groundhog cannot foresee. Phil predicted six more weeks of winter in 1945 and exactly six weeks later, the temperature reached an improbable 82 degrees.

Since Phil generally makes safe bets, it's reasonable to believe that he probably didn’t wager on the New York Giants winning Super Bowl XLII, Eli Manning being named the game’s Most Valuable Player or John McCain becoming the likely Republican nominee for President of the United States. Not all that long ago, these events seemed as likely as an 82-degree day in March. The few Giants fans anticipating flights to Arizona were the ones wearing blue Krylon paint in lieu of shirts, Eli Manning wasn’t even the most valuable player in his family, and John McCain’s Straight Talk Express was waiting in the switching yard for a crew to board.

There are days when a groundhog should stay in his hole even though thousands of people, multiple television cameras and men dressed like the guy on a Get Out of Jail Free card are waiting for a prediction. Phil’s happened to arrive on the first day on October.

On October 1, 2007, the New York Giants had an uninspiring 2-2 record. On the same day, John McCain came in third in the Rasmussen Reports Weekly Presidential Tracking Poll, trailing Rudy Giuliani by 13 percentage points.

(The symmetry is interesting, and is even more interesting if you recall that the New York Giants last reached the Super Bowl in 2000 but lost both their mojo hand and the game, while John McCain led all other Republican candidates for a time in 2000 before losing his own mojo hand and withdrawing from the Presidential race.)

McCain didn't become a serious contender until the week of January 13, 2008, the same week that the Giants beat the Dallas Cowboys by a score of 21-17 and were one game away from being serious contenders to win the Super Bowl.

The last Rasmussen Reports Weekly Presidential Tracking Poll before Groundhog Day showed John McCain and Mitt Romney deadlocked with 26% and 25% respectively, followed by Mike Huckabee with 17% and Rudy Giuliani with a truly uninspiring 12%. Exactly eleven months earlier, Giuliani had been the front-runner, but this was before he adopted his own variation of the groundhog strategy. Having held a healthy lead over the other GOP candidates, Rudy Giuliani capitalized on his momentum by doing absolutely nothing.

Betting heavily on a win in Florida, Giuliani essentially ignored Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Michigan and South Carolina, a strategy was proved to be enormously successful assuming that the objective was to ensure that someone not named Giuliani would move into the White House after the general election. It is possible to be competitive and finish second, and Giuliani did neither. Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30 after attracting a meager 15% of Florida’s GOP voters and winning exactly zero delegates. Even Ron Paul, whose campaign staff appears to consist of two interns and a photocopier, has won five delegates to date.

When the clear frontrunner nosedives, groundhogs preferring safe bets get upset. But at least JoinRudy’08 lasted until Super Tuesday, even if pretty much no one actually joined Rudy in ’08. That is more than can be said about the presidential aspirations of Fred Dalton Thompson.

Back on September 5, 2007, Fred Dalton Thompson used his appearance on The Tonight Show to launch his bid for the presidency. Apart from being strangely timed—memo to future presidential candidates: if your strategy is to enter the race late and skip a debate in New Hampshire to appear on The Tonight Show with Jerome Bettis and Travis Tritt, remember Fred Dalton Thompson—Thompson’s announcement revealed some shortcomings of the English language, particularly with respect to verbs. To say that Thompson launched a campaign was definitely wrong, as the word implies characteristics that Thompson’s campaign lacked, such as ignition. There was speculation about a possible Thompson run—again, wrong verb—as early as April, he quit Law and Order in May, and he was expected to make a formal announcement around the Fourth of July. As anyone who has worked on an internal combustion engine knows, if there’s no spark, the Chevy is staying right where it is. Ther was no spark. Between the Fourth of July and the fifth of September, the phrase most often used when discussing Thompson’s candidacy ended with the words “…or get off the pot.”

Language matters. Saying that Thompson was “running” for President was wrong; Thompson wouldn’t have run if he had dropped a lit match on his pajamas and set himself on fire. “Walking in the general direction of the White House” might have been a more appropriate choice of verb and prepositional phrase, as Thompson successfully conveyed the energy and momentum of someone heading somnambulistically toward the refrigerator to see what might be there.

A song called “I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground,” is running through Punxsutawney Phil’s mind. Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the Minstrel of the Appalachians, recorded it in April 1928, but the song is much older; Lunsford learned it from Fred Moody in 1901 and no one knows where or when Moody learned it.

…I wish I was a mole in the ground…if I was a mole in the ground, I would root that mountain down.

Eli Manning is that mole. Rudy Giuliani, Fred Dalton Thompson and now Mitt Romney are not moles, and they are not going to root that mountain down. Mike Huckabee is that mole. He may not root that mountain down but, to his credit, if he fails, it will not be because he didn’t try.

According to the Chinese calendar, or the paper placemats in the local Chinese buffet, the year of the rat has just begun. There is no year of the mole, but if there was one, 2008 just might be the year of the mole. This idea does not appeal to Punxsutawney Phil.

A groundhog that has made the same weather prediction 97 times in 121 years prefers order to chaos, and as Punxsutawney Phil reaches for the Stoli, he wonders whether any meaning can be found in a series of events that occur through random chance.

As the Krylon-painted guys in the Meadowlands will tell you, sometimes even groundhogs get the blues.

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Taking a moment to appreciate Oscar Peterson

Jazz musician Oscar Peterson, one of the world’s most proficient pianists, was born in Montreal on August 15, 1925. He died last Sunday in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto. He was 82.

Mr. Peterson recorded prolifically. In one three-year period, from 1950 to 1952, he released 25 albums, and he continued to record frequently throughout his life.

The musicians with whom Mr. Peterson played would fill an encyclopedia of jazz history. The list includes trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Clark Terry and Dizzy Gillespie; guitarists Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis and Joe Pass; and bassist Ray Brown.

His accomplishments include fourteen Grammy awards, including a lifetime achievement award, and sixteen honorary degrees. He was the first living person other than a reigning monarch to be honored with a commemorative stamp by Canada Post.

I am listening to recordings that Mr. Peterson made in 1973, a year when many jazz musicians were exploring new sounds. By 1973, Joe Zawinul, who had recorded with Duke Ellington’s tenor saxophonist Ben Webster ten years earlier, was playing synthesizers in Weather Report; Chick Corea, who had played with Sarah Vaughn, Stan Getz and Blue Mitchell, had formed Return to Forever; and Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis’ former pianist, had recorded Head Hunters. Jazz was changing.

Oscar Peterson did not change. He preferred to play the music of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II.

The album I am listening to features violinist Stephane Grappelli, who was making records in France with Django Reinhardt in 1934, before Mr. Peterson’s tenth birthday. The songs that Mr. Peterson recorded with Grappelli—“Autumn Leaves,” “My Heart Stood Still,” “My One and Only Love”—have been recorded countless times, but Mr. Peterson’s recordings with Mr. Grappelli sound like none of the others. I have not found a record on which Mr. Peterson plays more exuberantly and, more than thirty years later, it is still a pleasure to hear.

Among Mr. Peterson’s other recordings are collections of songs by Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin.

Oscar Peterson chose to play good songs and played them extraordinarily well. That is not a bad way to spend a life, and his was a life worth remembering.

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