It looks like “Right We Are,” has bitten the dust.

Bummer.

A short while ago, I shared with you my fear of alligators. I felt no particular discomfort in making such a revelation, because being afraid of alligators hardly cuts me from the herd. This is so, because, face it, it makes sense to be afraid of animals that can grow to be eight feet long, with teeth akin to those of a T. Rex. There is no shame in being fraidy-scared of anything that can sneak up on you and turn you into brunch.

Dogs, even big ones, don’t frighten me. Snakes? No big deal. Rats, mice, raccoons, no problem. I am, however, frightened to death of crabs. I have been afraid of these ugly, disgusting creatures for as long as I can remember. Their insect-like appearance, and their sidewinding scamper, always with their loathsome claws held defiantly upward in order to bite anything in site, scares the Bejesus out of me.

I freely admit that the depth of my fear of these miserable crustaceans is not rational. After all, the worst thing that can happen as a result of an unfortunate encounter with a crab is a moderately painful bite from one of their claws. The damage is nothing in comparison to what an alligator can do. Still, the thought of grabbing one of these bug-like bastards gives me the chills.

Had I grown up in a place like Nebraska, I doubt that I would have had to confront my fear and loathing of these crawly, snapping pieces of shit very often, if at all. But growing up in New Jersey and taking annual vacations to the Jersey Shore (where crabbing is damned near a religion) provided me with plenty of opportunities to be up close to the vile creatures. Indeed these vacations often turned into an ongoing crab fest.

It seemed that every day someone (often uncles, including Cousin Jack’s dad – a crab lover extraordinaire) was either out in a rented rowboat crabbing or constantly dragging up crab traps that were tied to the dock (in those years when the family could afford to rented house a lagoon) 24 hours a day for two straight weeks.

Getting crabs out of a crab trap often results in one or more of them falling onto the dock, which for my uncle, was a genuine emergency. Having the little beasts sidestrut their way back into the water was unthinkable to him. On those occasions, my uncle, who normally moved with the speed of a tortoise, would spring into action at warp speed and with the agility of a jungle cat. “Catch him, Jimmy! He’s headed for the water!”

I’d make a show of trying to catch the fast moving, snapping beast, but I had no intention of actually touching one of those things. “Damn!” I’d say, as the crab plopped into the water. “He got away.”

If a day’s crabbing produced a couple dozen crabs, the big pot would be placed on the stove and the various spices (most of which were red) would be added to the boiling water. At that point, the very much alive and clawing crabs would be brought into the house in a crummy bushel basket and removed by my mother and uncle to be tossed live into the boiling water, a fitting end for these hateful things, I must say. My mother and uncle never missed a chance to ask me if I wanted to help. “No thanks,” I’d say, all the while thinking, ”Sure, how about I put both hands into that basket and toss the snapping bastards about as if they were some kind of salad?”

The kitchen table would be covered with newspapers and the cooked crabs, now bright red in color, would be heaped in a pile, or placed in a couple bowls. My mother and uncle would then take what seemed to be hours to eat them, and they obviously relished every morsel. To me, it was just gross. I always found something else to eat, for the thought of actually eating one of those things was revolting.

Of course, I was quite young then. I’m much, much older now, and probably a good deal wiser. I’ve changed in many ways.

However, I’m still scared of crabs, and I’d sooner eat a turd.

The author of Unbillable Hours, another Jersey lawyer blogger, attended a local meeting of the citizenry, the subject being, ““Deer In The Headlights: Pest Populations and Suburban Sprawl.” I needed a good laugh today and, his hilarious account of the meeting, as my Granny used to say, “handed me a laugh.”

I promise that it will hand you a laugh as well.

First, I would like to thank all the great folks who shared their expertise and experience with me with their comments to the previous post.

So, far, I did the CDshredder and installed Spy Blaster. Spy Blaster doesn’t find and remove bad stuff, but rather (so it says) it keeps it away in the first instance. Therefore, later tonight I will run Ad Aware to zap whatever may be sitting around. So far (fingers crossed), the only pop-up I get the one that accompanies the New York Times page. Maybe Ad Aware will zap that one. Maureen Dowd AND pop-ups. What the hell is wrong with me?

Maybe Mozilla next, but I prefer to take baby steps in these matters.

Thanks again. You guys are the best.

I apparently have demons residing in this box.

They’re not the same kind of deadly creatures that cratered my computer the night before Easter, which thankfully were hunted down and vanquished by my friend Craig. No, these are the hobgoblins that spawn endless pop-ups, even when one does not click on anything. In fact, I have found that if I walk away from the computer for a few hours, I come back to find it hopelessly clogged with pop-ups, many of which are primed to download some crap if I click anything other than the word “NO.” These annoying cyber-vermin also launch a Lycos search where my bookmarks normally appear each time I do a Google search.

Between that and the comment spam (more on this hateful phenomenon another time), I have just about lost my patience. I run Ad Aware (the free version) every night, and each night it finds a dozen or so new cyber turds in my computer, which I dutifully zap, but the nasty ones escape detection.

If I am not too tired later, I am going to download “Spy Sweeper,” as that seems to be pretty good stuff, at least according to the reviews. The part I like the best is that, according to the review, “after one quick download automatic installation begins.” We’ll farookin’ see.

Speaking of pop-ups, one wonders if the New York Times knows that every time one opens its web page, the reader is treated to a pop-up ad pitching, not penis pills but rather big companies like “American Express.” I wonder whether the Times or American Express seriously thinks that this is a way to foster goodwill.

Of course, I watched the Sopranos and Deadwood. Here are my not terribly literate impressions, for what they’re worth, which most certainly is zilch. Humor me. I can’t help myself.

The Sopranos

The Tony Blundetto (Steve Buschemi) character makes my skin crawl, particularly when he makes jokes. Buschemi is one of the very best actors at consistently being able to make my skin crawl.

I got a kick out of Christopher and Tony Blundetto spending time in the bucolic setting of his uncle’s country home for the sole purpose of locating and digging up bodies of previous hits in order to prevent a developer from finding them. Chris’s and Tony’s casual conversation as they smashed the uncovered human bones to smithereens with hammers was some seriously dark humor. Finally, I could not help notice the brief (about a second) shot of Chris holding the skull of the first body they unearthed (Chris’s first hit) and staring at it as if he were Hamlet looking at the skull of Yorick.

I could not believe that the Georgie, the sorry-ass bartender at the Bada-Bing (played by Frank Santorelli), got yet another serious beating, this time from Tony Soprano. Tony vented his rage on Georgie (Tony’s rage being a central theme in the episode) when poor Georgie didn’t show sufficient concern about the possibility that terrorists could import a bomb or even a really bad person inside a sea container. In earlier episodes, Tony gave Georgie a beating with a phone and Ralphie Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano) smashed him in the face with a padlock on the end of a chain. The guy definitely needs a new gig.

Since last week’s episode, every time I see Vito in a scene, I become apprehensive that the business with Meadow’s boyfriend will be revisited. That whole thing could go any number of ways – all bad.

Is Tony’s gang really going to get screwed by Johnny Sack’s mob out of the hijacking of a future shipment of provolone – the good stuff? Tony has a load of business problems on his plate.

Tony’s sister Janice might just be the biggest piece of shit of them all. Tony’s evil, but successful prodding of her managed to undo all that she claimed her “anger management” therapy had accomplished. I think that Tony wanted to prove to himself that Janice was full of shit and that the anger management therapy wasn’t worth a damn, thereby satisfying himself that anger management is not something he should bother with.

As I continue to become involved with the characters, and come to be amused by them, and even, on a certain level, like them, I must regularly remind myself that they are anything but nice folks. Rather, they are lazy, stupid, violent, hardcore criminals.

Deadwood

Like Towdawg, I was glad to see Flora and Miles, the angel-faced grifters get their comeuppance, which ended with them being beaten, shot and served up as dinner for Mr. Wu’s pigs. However, I did not expect that it would happen so soon.

I was bummed when Trixie, “the whore,” could have taken advantage of Alma Garret’s offer and gotten out of town with a large chunk of change and a promise of future support. But, nooooooo. She waltzed back into the Gem saloon and back into Al’s bed (and with him in those never-washed long johns, yet). However, before hopping in the sack, she did give Al a smack in the face, which he did not return. What’s up with that? Al, the softy?

Finally, E.B. Farnum’s “bold” idea for killing Bullock while he slept included “steadying the ladder” while Dority was to climb up to the second floor to do shooting. His lickspittle, toady, scuzzoid, weasely character slays me.

Update: Thanks to John Shabe at NJ.com for correcting my spelling of “Blundetto.” I have fixed it in the text.

My mother died about ten years ago, and I think about her every day, Mother’s Day certainly being no exception. Rather than even try to write the definitive piece about my mother (which could fill a book, the writing of which would turn me into a bowl of quivering jelly), I thought I would share a story that goes a long way to convey what kind of person she was and provide a sense of our priceless relationship.

I believe I was about five or six years old, when my mother took me along with her on the bus for the fifteen or twenty-minute ride into downtown Newark to do some shopping. The bus route crossed one of the bridges over the Passaic River that separated our town from Newark (for the Jersey readers, it was the Clay Street Bridge). The short ride was always an adventure for me, particularly the part that included crossing over the river on the bridge.

On this particular day, as the bus was crossing the bridge, I remarked, “I’d love to spit from the bridge.”

“Would you really like to do that?” she asked.

I responded that I would love to actually stand on the bridge that we had crossed many times on the bus and spit into the water.

Next thing I knew, she reached up and pulled the cord that controlled the buzzer signaling the bus driver to stop at the next stop. We got off the bus and walked the block or so back to the bridge. We walked to the center of the bridge, and I recall being amazed that I could actually see the water through the metal grating that was the “road” over the bridge, and I could really hear the singing sounds made by the car and truck tires as they passed over the grating. I had never seen or heard that from the bus.

We looked for a while at the “view” (It certainly was not very picturesque) from the bridge. Then she hoisted me up high enough to enable me to spit over the rail into the water.

After that, we walked the couple blocks back to the bus stop to catch the next bus into Newark.

Later in life, I asked her why she had interrupted her shopping trip and incurred the extra bus fare (money not being plentiful at the time), so that I could spit off a bridge. She said, “I wasn’t in any rush, and it sounded to me like something important that a little boy would want to do, so why not?”

She maintained that attitude until the day she died.

I don’t remember whether she spit into the river on that day, but I would not be surprised if she had.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Why that would be Edgar Ely, of course.

The photo of Mr. Ely is just one from a great collection of photos of late 19th and early 20th century vaudevillians that I came across at The Ultimate Insult, which is a regular haunt of mine.

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country, and who are very good at crosswords.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand the Washington Post. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn’t have to leave LA to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country, and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country …. or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from ANY country or galaxy as long as they are Democrats.

10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.

I’d like to add one of my own.

The Newark Star Ledger is read by people who know how good a Taylor ham on a hard roll is.

Thanks (for #’s 1-10) to Melinda, a Bay Area resident with a healthy sense of humor.

Yep. Another Deadwood Post. So shoot me and feed my dead ass to Mr. Wu’s pigs. Topdawg and LeeAnn are also Deadwood fans, and I am a Topdawg and LeeAnn fan, so If you have not yet come around to being a Deadwood regular, the three of us will just toowalk amongst ourselves.

As Topdawg mentioned in her comments, much of the show is based, to one degree or another, on fact. For instance, the “good guy” in the program is Seth Bullock (played by Timothy Olyphant), who came to town with his partner Sol Star to establish a hardware store. Well, it turns out that there really was a Seth Bullock, and he really did come to Deadwood with Sol Starr, and they did establish the hardware store pictured above.

The real Seth Bullock ultimately became the Sheriff of Deadwood, eventually brining order to the place. After the hardware store burned down, he founded and built the Bullock Hotel, which, after several renovations, still operates today.** He also became good friends with Teddy Roosevelt, which most certainly will be fodder for future episodes.

As noted above, Bullock’s partner, Sol Star, is also based in fact. Sol Star ultimately served as Mayor of Deadwood for fourteen years, once hosting William Jennings Bryant during a presidential campaign visit. Following the vote that actually incorporated Deadwood a real town, Star was one of the first town councilmen elected. He also served as Postmaster and Clerk of the Courts, once real courts actually replaced the local saloon (or theater — see below) as the place for dispensing justice.

Oh, and Wild Bill Hickok actually was plugged by Jack McCall in Deadwood. Perhaps paving the way for OJ, McCall was acquitted despite a ton of evidence against him, including eight eyewitnesses to the shooting. Because the “trial” (actually held in a local theater, not in the saloon as was depicted on the show) was later determined to lack any legal authority, McCall was re-captured and tried in Yankton, South Dakota, where he was convicted of Hickok’s murder and ultimately hanged. (No double jeopardy defense for ol’ Jack.) He was buried with the noose still around his neck.

Finally (at least for now), Calamity Jane really was in Deadwood, and she really did help to nurse the victims of a smallpox epidemic that hit the town. After leaving Deadwood, she married, gave birth to a daughter, and toured with Wild West shows. Following her death in 1903, she was buried in Deadwood, next to Wild Bill.

**There have been numerous alleged paranormal events reported at the Bullock Hotel, many of which are attributed to the ghost of Seth Bullock who is thought to still wander about the place.

[/end Deadwood blather]