Remembering my dad and all others who serve on this Memorial Day.

Yesterday, I bought a carton of ladybugs at the nursery. They’re supposed to be good for the garden and they were on sale so I decided to try it. The package said it contained 1,500 ladybugs. The top was vented so they could breathe and I could see some movement inside. You’re supposed to release them in the evening when they’re less likely to fly away. Oh right…they have wings… they can fly. But out of 1,500, if half flew away, I’d be in ladybug heaven. So last night, I slowly opened the carton to let them go, afraid they’d all make a run for it. But no. They were in one sticky mass in the bottom of the carton, not moving much, resembling a giant meatball. So I shook the carton and spread them around my garden (mostly in lumps) and then night fell.

This morning, I went out with my camera expecting to spend the whole day taking ladybug pictures as they filled the air, flying from flower to flower in my magical garden. How would I decide which ones to shoot?  It was an easy decision – I found two. What happened? Where did they go?  1,498 ladybugs gone! How do I know the one on the daisy was from the box? Maybe he flew in from next door. Hey, isn’t he missing some spots?  Never buy ladybugs on sale. They must have been seconds.

Jeff Conaway has died.  He was terrific as one of the stars of Taxi, a TV series that ran from 1978-1981, and we loved him in the musical Grease. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy when he appeared on my talk show in the early 90s.  I extend my condolences to his family and I’m sharing this video in his memory.
Click here.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s  cheating doesn’t really come as a surprise, but WHO he did it with, WHERE he did it, and WHEN he did it (babies delivered FIVE days apart!) puts him in a whole new category. His story is best described using his own movie titles:

PREDATOR – What he is.

RAW DEAL – What Maria got.

TRUE LIES – How he lived his life.

TWINS – His two sons are almost twins.

CONAN the DESTROYER – What he did to his wife.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE – What this did to his family.

TOTAL RECALL – Will he recall another love-child?

END OF DAYS – Where his career is headed.

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY – What his future holds.

A mother injected her 8-year-old daughter with Botox, then lost custody of her child. But wait, now she claims it was all a hoax. What’s worse? Injecting your child’s face with toxins or teaching her to lie for money? Botox paralyzes muscles, so let’s inject some into her lips so they will stop flapping.

International Monetary Fund chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, went from Penthouse to Rikers Island for a reported sexual assault at  New York hotel. Rich & powerful men don’t like prison. They can’t relate to the riff-raff in there. Hey, maybe he and O.J. can be pen pals!

Everyone’s talking about the big rupture that’s supposed to happen today but they never said what kind. Is it a volcano rupture? Or maybe an underground gas line rupture – that would be big. Wait. Maybe it’s a famous person’s spleen. Oh well, I guess I’ll find out tomor…..what? Oooh…. RAPture!… My bad.

Donald Trump is not running for president after all. He chose a reality show over the presidency. Why not do both? With Trump in the White House, we could call it: The Biggest Ego: Cameras show the oval office being enlarged to accomodate Trump’s head.

My caramel corn is so good… Everybody will want some.

You’ll be hiding it in your closet!

It’s easy to make.

It’s super crispy & just sweet enough.

Nothing compares!

Make it. Do it. Eat it…Just not all at once!

Click here to watch the video.

REWARD $10,000 FOR CAPTURE

Listen to me you little punk. If I catch you even glancing at my apple tree, you’re dead.  Like a flat skunk on the side of the road: dead. Like Osama Bin Laden: dead. Like Arnold Schwarzeneggar’s marriage: dead. Do you feel me?

See this picture?

There are seven apples on this branch. The day I see six, I will hunt you down like a menopausal maniac. You’d better watch your back.

I just found a video from my stand up days where I closed the show with a parody of Gloria Gaynor’s monster hit, “I Will Survive.”

It was 1985 and I think this was at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas.

Let’s not talk about why I was wearing a Wilma Flintstone dress… hey, it was the 80s!

My version of the song is all about how I handled an obscene call. Click the picture to watch this Vintage Video.

I was stunned to see Scotty and both Haley and Lauren in the final three and not James. He wanted it more than any of them and clearly had a hard time accepting defeat. Watching this show is too sad when losing is so painful.  I remember being on Star Search and how with every performance my heart pounded so hard I was afraid the microphone would pick it up. Everything was at stake. And when I won, my career soared. But the comic I defeated seemed to disappear. Watching this episode brought back a lot of memories of striving for acceptance, dealing with rejection, and the roller coaster of emotion that being a struggling performer brings. I thought once I succeeded, things would change and I’d no longer have to face rejection and even worse, I’d never feel like I didn’t matter. Some day, I will talk about the many times I was rejected at the peak of my television career and by whom. Maybe that’s why I won’t go back…

Wild birds must love my back yard because we had another visitor this morning.

It’s a California quail and it was sitting up high for a while and as I got closer with my camera, it flew away.

This was the best photo I could get.

I never know what to expect when I walk out to the back yard.

It wasn’t long ago that a beautiful ring-necked pheasant hung around for almost two weeks. He was so regal looking, I had named him “Baron Von Jonesenheimer III.”

He was not afraid of people and everyone who came by was stunned to see him just walking around. We fed him for a few days in hopes he would stay but he finally flew away.

I had my “supposed to be annual but wasn’t” eye exam yesterday. I went to Lenscrafters and there were only two of us customers there but it still took almost two hours. But the good news is my eyes are healthy, but my reading glasses need a new prescription. No wonder I can’t read a dinner menu in a candle-lit restaurant!