Tex Ritter to John Ritter…Cowboy’s Luck of the Draw

Tex Ritter and John Ritter were father and son, respectively.   Tex Ritter was born Woodward Maurice Ritter.  Hardly a cowboy name.  John Ritter was born John Ritter, a cowboy name, but the son was not the cowboy.   Maurice Ritter changed his name to Tex and the rest was history.  John Ritter stayed on as John, and the rest was also history.

Both were famous in their own right.  Both had successful careers.   Tex Ritter was one of the more famous post-war singing cowboys.  He made a slew of record albums.  He appeared in movies and played on Broadway.  He did concerts around the country and around the world.   He sang at the Grand Ol’ Opry and appeared on television.   He was arguably best known for singing the title song to the Academy Award Winning Film, High Noon.  The song was entitled High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling).  The song too won the Academy Award.

Tex’s voice projected soulful masculinity.   He was a voice of the West, at least the West of our fantasies and wishes.   He sung about drinking and poker, romancing, the usual cowboy stuff.  He made you believe it. He was the fifth person to be inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame.  He was inducted as well into other Western heritage and performance organizations.   The list is a long one.

John was no slouch either.  He became famous as one of the three leads in the hit series, “Three’s Company.”  He guest starred and appeared on numerous television shows.  He was in films.   He rendered a remarkable performance in Slingblade, which also won an Academy Award.
Brain acts as a switch to turn-on of turn-off buy levitra uk the process and nerves act as a wire to carry the signal to the blood vessels that act as sex booster and enhance the erection. The rash itches which are viagra buy on line occur. Precautionary Measures while Taking discount on cialis This drug is known as a generic drug, since it also belongs to the PDE 5 inhibiting medications. cialis vardenafil citrate (a generic version of sildenafil citrate brought a remarkable revolution to treat men’s erectile dysfunction. The most important thing is to consult your doctor before taking women sexual health drug if you are pregnant.Lovegra is not affective in against HIV http://abacojet.com/levitra-6831.html cheapest levitra or unwanted pregnancy, so use another method to prevent them.
Tex was heavyset.  He lived in a different era and appeared to be one not overly concerned about cholestorol or fat content in food.   I don’t know if he smoked, but it is reasonable to think he liked to eat and maybe have a nip or two.

John was more of the contemporary man.  He was concerned about health.   He looked good, kept fit, wasn’t stocky like the old man.   He was a nice guy with a good attitude, and it is reasonable to believe he was never abusive to himself nor to others.

Both father and son have stars on Hollywood Boulevard.  They are the only father-son team to be so honored, especially for different categories.   There was something else they had in common.   Both died of congenital heart defects.   Tex died thirty years before John.   Tex, the stocky guy who didn’t watch his diet, passed away at 68 years of age.   John was only 54 when he died.

So what’s this all mean, besides the fact that we should remember guys who were so talented?   Guys who brought a little something to our lives.  You can live healthy, and you should, but you can still die young.   It seems at times if it is in the cards and a great deal of your mortality is simply in the luck of the draw.  I though of this while watching High Noon for the umpteenth time and thinking of poor John, as well as his father.   I thought about a friend of mine who lived clean and exercised more than any human I know.   She is a relatively young woman.   Yet she is sick and dying.  Her father had the same disease.

I guess you can’t duck the luck of the draw.

Chains of Fools Feed on Each Other With Food to Go

Once upon a time you had independent restaurants that sold good food at modest prices.  You also had lousy, greasy spoons that sold bad food at modest prices.  So, enter the chain restaurant.   There was no gamble there.  You were treated to mediocre food at modest prices.  The video of the rats running all over a KFC /Taco Bell spring to mind as one of those major exceptions.

The wall-to-wall establishment of chain restaurants was kind of the middle of the road between the win-win and lose lose situation.   Restaurant chains could saturate the market with advertisements.   Branding was incredible.   You may not get the greatest of food, but at least it was consistent.   You could go into any Denny’s, Chili’s, House of Pancakes, Applebee’s, Olive Garden and get pretty much the same food as any other branch of the chain.  The menus were prepared from a central office.   Ingredients were the same and hardly varied.

You could go as a couple to any of the restaurant chains.  You could get Chinese Food at P.F. Chang’s or even the Panda Express.   You could get chicken, burgers, whatever, and you always knew that the food was prepared if not the way you wanted, then certainly the way you expected.   No surprises.

So gradually the chain restaurants moved in and the independent restaurants closed down.   Some of the independent restaurants, glorified in highway lore and local nostalgia, should have closed.   The chain restaurants were a blessing, sort of, as kitchen conditions were regulated to certain standards.  Well, sort of.   There are more than a few egregious exceptions.

Now while most of the chain restaurants, with the exception of venues like Ruth’s Chris and Houston’s, are not particularly aesthetic in their ambiance, what with same-same, bright colors and far too often screaming kids, they are still a good places to take a date, run in for a quick bite and run to a movie.   You may have forgotten what you ate ten minutes after eating it, but at least it won’t rumble in your stomach.   That is a major plus in this day and age.   And, if you are planning to have sex later that night, you will entertain less fear of the meal attacking you when you least expect it.

The cheapest viagra pills patients who get the gamma knife surgery done have a lot of scope to live further than six months of time. order viagra This is of course just speculation at this point. So, you can get it staying at home cialis 20mg no prescription easily. Men often measure their self-worth by their ability to stay strong, to protect & take care of their loved ones; so when they struggle at job, lose their job fall into drinking habit. low price cialis So now most of the modestly priced independent restaurants are gone.   The chains often find themselves with little or not competition.   So now they are not only are their advertising campaigns directed toward telling you what superb food they are serving.  Superb and in some cases a whole lot of it.   Great food.  Eat it cheap.  And eat more than you are supposed to.    You would think by the advertising you were treating yourself to fine dining.  No, you are not.

One most wonder if they threshold for fine dining has dropped so low that most chains are serving what constitutes good food.   One most wonder if sheer volume of food supersedes actual quality of food.  Silly me.   There is little to wonder there.

So now I hear commercials where chain restaurants like Chili’s are offering take out food.  They are turning their attentions to the lesser food venues, the fast food and drive-thru eateries.  You can now get the same meal you ate at your table with belief in its consistence if not its culinary delight, and drag it back home.   Forget the movie.  You aren’t going out anyway.  Not in this tough economy. That is why God created Pay-Per-View.

To hear the commercial they are, subtly speaking, in a heated duel with the types of fast food chains that actually serve crappy takeout with absolutely no expectation. Yes, the mid-prized chain restaurants are now challenging their lesser cousins for a piece of the low budget market share.   The battle is on and soon will rage.  It’s a bad economy out there and restaurants are hurting.  Every buck won over to your side is a buck well earned.   Any day I expect to see the brutally honest commercial, “My mediocre food is better than your mediocre food and it only costs a few bucks more.”

This should be an interesting battle for market share.  I am sure other mid-level chains will join in.  Conversely, the strategy is two fold.   They are not only chasing the drive-thru but the diner that used to frequent chic little bistros and storefronts where the food is pricey and avoidable when there is a different paradigm for date night.  Forget the candlelight.  When you are short on money and worried about your job, run down to the shopping plaza and pick up some food.

It is convenient.  As with the drive-thru’s, you can pull up to a Chili’s and just get it to go.  Order it over the phone, and they will give you an exact time when to come and pick it up.  Nice and hot.  In bags that remind you of the dining experience you either worked to avoid or just left behind.   Yum.

Lizzie Borden Killed Her Parents Here. Eat Hearty, But Don’t Feed the Ghosts

The house where Lizzie Borden may have killed her family is now a Bed and Breakfast lodge.   This sturdy wood frame house in sturdy Fall River, Massachusetts hardly looks like a celebrated murder scene, but then so few really do.   That is, until you look at them with the knowing eye.   Otherwise would you know the difference?   Would the people lodged in creepy, haunted houses really see and feel the ghosts if they didn’t know they were inside a creepy, haunted house?

Maybe.  I remember visiting one small town and finding one house particularly, in fact, unmistakeably creepy.  Nobody seemed to know anything about what may have happened there, neither my family nor the neighbors.  Okay.  False hunches.  I was just getting ready to leave.

As luck would have it the current owner of the house pulled up in the driveway.   Without much prodding  her confirmed my suspicions that foul play did indeed occur in that house.  A minister of some religious persuasion, deeply in debt, killed his wife for the insurance money.  He had pushed her down the stairs.  The house over the years was occupied by other people with new and different tragedies, from riches to rags to sagas of drugs and degradation.

But Lizzie Borden was another story.  She was the O.J. Simpson of her time, among the dozens of other celebrity killers.   Ironically, perhaps, Lizzie was not tried for the murder of her parents in California. Nevertheless, she was still acquitted.   She then became part of mythical American macabre.   There is a rhyme about her.  “Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks.  And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.”

These adult toys come in various materials from silicone to cyberskin buy levitra to latex. The little blue pill is known to many because as what the name implies, this herb has something to do sildenafil 100mg uk with sexual appetite. Both of these methods learn from an email address associated with a totally different domain name so you don’t know what kind of results to uk cialis sales expect. Surgery A surgery of pelvis can alter the blood vessels that results in hardening the organ. viagra soft tablet http://respitecaresa.org/event/winter-break-camp-ages-6-17/ No remorse for this girl.  At least, so goes the legend.  In reality, it wasn’t her Momma, who was already deceased, but her step-mother who received a mere 18 blows with a hatchet, not an axe.   And Daddy was hacked but just ten times.   Lizzie liked Daddy best, it seems.   But then, she was acquitted, although few believed she wasn’t involved in someway, that fateful August 4th, in 1892.

As to who actually committed, the murders, as with most of these high profile murder cases, theories abound.  It was everyone from the housekeeper to the towns people who didn’t at all like Andrew Borden.  Some think Lizzie killed him because financial disputes and property divisions.   That would be a motive.  It has certainly been one before.   Others believe Lizzie, the spinster, may have been a little too constrained and embroiled in family dissension.  She may have lashed out to save her sanity and her inheritance.

Today we would find a drug ridden and repressed Lizzie seeking to right the wrongs of an inhospitable environment, an oppressive father and abusive step-mother.  Who knows?  But today what remains of the story, aside fromthe legend itself, is the bed and breakfast and the ghosts who inhabit it along with the 10,000 people who pass through its doors each year.   Ghosts are reported to do what ghosts are best know for.   They poke and prod, open and close the draws, turn the lights on and off, move things around.  In short, they scare the hell out of most of us.   For a population that thinks of Pearl Harbor as ancient history, it is amazing how sex and murder can long endure.

Lizzie Borden died and left $30,000 to the animal shelter.   She left another $500 so that the cemetery could tend to her father’s grave in perpetuity.  Guilt or true love?   It’s hard to say.   Maybe a little of both.   The thing is, given the times, most people were perplexed and a legend was born.  Today, we know the story all too well.   The difference a hundred odd years can make.

When Your Mayor is Dressed in Drag

Stu Rasmussen used to be a guy.  Now Stu Rasmussen is best known as Carla Fong.   Stu as Carla wears plunging neckline dresses and mini-skirts.   Stu or Carla is sixty years old, so even on a good day and with movie star looks being sixty and wearing mini-skirts is a questionable strategy.   Especially when you look like Stu, who also happens to be mayor-elect of Silverton, Oregon.  Talk about “change.”

According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Stu had been elected Silverton’s Mayor in 1988 and again in 1990.  He just won again.  Looking at his photos, augmented breasts and notable cleavage or not, Stu has radio looks.   Stu/Carlas photo reminds me of the quote now deceased  and noted author Truman Capote issued when appraising the now equally deceased and noted author, Jacqueline Susann.   Capote declared,  “she looks like a truck driver in drag.”

While Capote’s quote elicits certain emotions about Stu/Carla, I really don’t regard his image as the truck driver in drag.   He is more reminiscent of one of the more senior English actresses in one of the uptight, upright, Merchant-Ivory Victorian costume dramas.    Or he could be the gracious Earth Mother emanating from the Hippie Period of Stu’s generation.    But then again I don’t live in Silverton and see Stu on the street on a regular basis.  If I did, I may have other opinions.

It may occur due to several reasons such as continuous exposure to pollutants and allergies, environmental impurities and smoking. order levitra online What is Andropause? When a lot of individuals think of the levitra online order indications of menopause they relate this state specifically to women. These types of shakes tend to be clinically developed to give you an extensive eating routine although buy viagra cheap simultaneously to shed fat. History has demonstrated that the wood has been made use of special buy cialis canadian herbs before a hunt or battle. While Stu dresses in drag of whatever it is when you dress as the transgender you have become, Stu is not gay.   Or at least who has a girlfriend who at first was a bit traumatized by Stu’s boob job but has since settled in on the issue.   Presumably they have sex, well as much as most people in their sixties have it.  Maybe a lot, maybe a little bit of sex.   Part of it is desire, part of it is biology, and part of latter aged sex is partly the luck of the draw.   Viva Viagra!  Or not.  Must be quizzical for the girlfriend to have those pendulous whatevers swinging so close to her face.

I will assume until better notified that Stu must find it tough to shop for the wardrobe he prefers in the tiny town of Silverton.   Shopping for high fashion in Portland is tough enough, yet alone Silverton.   In the past, for transgenders and drag queens alike, this would be a problem resolved only by scheduled trips to the larger cities.   Today, with the Internet, shopping for the heels, plunging necklines and minis is just a click or two away.   Thanks to ecommerce, even buying for the odd-sized is made easy.

As for the important stuff, Stu ran on the promise he would help stem the rapid growth in Silverton.  Perhaps his serving as the leader of the welcome wagon would serve to cause many potential transplants relocation to Silverton.   Not everyone is tolerant as we last saw in California’s recent proposition to ban gay marriage. But then, perhaps Stu will draw a crowd to the city.  You never know.

While I’m sure some are upset about the new mayor’s fashion statement, let us not forget that Stu was elected to office with an overwhelming 55% of the vote.   Politicians would kill for that margin.   Some have.   So it is understood that people in this former lumber town not only tolerate Stu, but they like him.   They not only like him, but they trust him.   Which is more than most citizens can say for their local elected officials.   And that says a lot.   About Stu.  And Silverton, the town where he serves as mayor.

Federal Drug Sniffing Beagle Hangs Up Its Nose

Shiloh, the Beagle, has called it quits from public service.   That’s right, after eight years on the job one of our finest federal officer has decided his day is done.  According to an article in the Los Angeles Times he will no more wander about the Los Angeles International Airport’s Bradley Terminal in search of illicit Khat and other drugs the a bevy of smugglers have tried to smuggle through Customs.

DietingBeDamned.com It is extremely important for the body to release nitric oxide, which helps dilate blood vessels and relax penile muscles in on line levitra order to augment blood flow. Makes sense doesn’t it considering it’s the levitra 60 mg heart that’s responsible in blood regulation and your ED is being caused by poor supply. These two problems result in motion difficulty and extreme pain. cialis online sale Several men and women have arrive out with several alternatives for sciatica robertrobb.com cialis sale nerve discomfort. Here is one federal agent who is worth many times his weight in kibble.  He has in his career sniffed out more than 20,000 prohibited agricultural items.   What Shiloh could search in seconds, it takes a human federal officer some 15 to 20 minutes to do the same.   And they have opposing thumbs.

So it is eight years in and now Badge Number 58 is being rotated out of service.   He is neither the kind to play golf or travel the roads in his trusty RV.   Instead, Shiloh will live with his longtime handler.   Should be a nice life.   We thank him for his service and hope he doesn’t grow bored with the civilian life.