Egg-o Maniac

Honey Bear created by Shyness and Bloom

"JUST AS bees will swarm about to protect their nest,
so will I ‘swarm about’ to protect my nest of
chocolate eggs." –Jack Handey

Happy
Jack Handey
Friday!

A TIMELY Handeyism at that, huh? Although, I suppose you can’t help but wonder, "Why in the heck not post this particular one next Friday, when it’d be practically on top of Easter, where it most likely should be planted?" Here’s the thing: April 10th, Good Friday, Friday next marks an especially close-to-home holiday, Technicoloredly circled yearly on the SparkleFarkle calendar, and with a giant flash-on/flash-off neon arrow pointing at it in earnest, "lest they forget," as it is

(Costume presently not on me.
What? You don’t have a closetful of stuff like this to play in?!

The Farkle Personal Fun Time Collection also includes
Winky Dink, SoupySales, Buzzy the Crow, Broom-Hilda,
Beetle Bailey, Top Cat, and Bullwinkle.
If you ever get the urge, I, a lender be!)

Yours Tah-ruly’s
Birthday!

YES, I SOON WILL be sinking
one hundred and six teensy candles into a

Cadbury egg!

OKAY, MAYBE NOT one hundred and six, but some days it feels like that total would be the one to explain the aches and pains and gripes that WEREN'T barnacled to me when I was twenty-something, thirty-something, etc. Oh, and definitely NOT a Cadbury Creme Egg, as it has become my last year’s favorite Easter candy, indubitably replaced by the

Willy Wonka

Golden Chocolate Egg!

--Magical golden egg from the Willy Wonka factory,
molded from yummy graham cracker-bitted milk chocolate,

and to which the fondant-yolk-inside Cadbury cannot hold a
candle to, birthday or otherwise, and that of which

is NOT made by Keebler elves,
and comes foiled in

the same kind of shiny paper
as the infamous,
sometimes-packing-a-
Golden-Ticket Wonka Bars--

PLEASE NOTE:
I will continue to follow my new springtime

treat with the already established
ultimate "chaser":

Cadbury Mini Eggs
(solid milk chocolate eggs in a crisp sugar shell),

‘cause if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

SECOND PLEASE NOTE: All above mentioned LARGE eggs are suitable for vegetarians-- Priceless! Cadbury Mini Eggs have traces of real chicken embryos, making them more suitable for discernable,

Coneheaded-palates.

WHICH REMINDS me: remember how in old days' cartoons, when someone would get a rap on the head and it would immediately grow into a swollen, pointy knob, and then a grassy belt-nest would appear around it like a sticky-outy Hula skirt, and a BIG vulture or turkey buzzard or something like that would come sit on it, waiting for the "egg" to hatch, but the cartoon had to go on, so the swelling was only a momentary thing, and then the bird would just fly off? Tell me again why this was entertaining??

And, uh-huh, uh-huh,
I have

one of these
in my stash, too.

AHHH, yes!
YES!!
YES TO

Chocolate Easter Eggs!!!
THE SYMBOL OF NEW life melded together
with what Heaven probably tastes like!

FIVE WORDS:
Not just for breakfast anymore.

Eggstatically,
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo and Drea.

P.S. Go ahead, live a little.

Put them all in one basket!

Color Me Pink, I'm Growing Barbies!

BUNNY! BUNNY!

I AM SOOO INCREDIBLY

HAPPY

AND ENTIRELY THRILLED, that I can’t get my heels to stop clicking, even while I sit here at the keyboard! I just received a frantic-blissful-excited call from my mother, telling me that the

Barbie doll shoes

I planted in the backyard

when I was a smitch,

in hopes I could grow

my own collection of

Babs and the rest,

have, after all these years, finally sprouted! Little heads are popping up everywhere!! I can’t wait until harvest time!!! Mom said the local newspaper is on its way over to take pictures and get the scoop, so I’m going to have to cut you short. I have to quickly get dressed and speeed the 35+ miles to my hometown for an exclusive interview! What should I wear?! WHAT SHOULD I WEAR?!?! Barbie Pink or something striped, like her original swimsuit?! I CAN’T THINK!!! WHAT WOULD BARBIE DO?!?!

Huh?

WHA-WHAT DO YOU mean,

you’re on to me?!

*dons Annie Lennox getup and breaks into song*

Would I lie to you?

Would I lie to you, Honey?

Now would I say something that wasn’t true?

I’m asking you, Sugar,

Would I lie-ah-ie-ah-ie
to you?

*sigh*

OKAY.

YOU WIN, but at least give me

the satisfaction of being able to say it.

TWO WORDS:
APRIL FOOL!!!

*sniff-sniffle*

AHHH...

*sniff-sniff*

IT’S IN THE air, alright.
Yep.
It’s going to be a mighty fine month,
dontcha think?

GO AHEAD,
have a couple more.
They’re on me:

BUNNY! BUNNY!

Stay close,
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo and Drea.

P.S.

IF YOU GOT 'em,

wear ‘em.

P.P.S.

THE TRUTH of the matter is,

I actually did

plant Barbie doll shoes!

Midnight Movie Poster Boy Turns Sixty-One

YEPPERS, THAT’S right: yesterday marked necrophiliac, suicide-obsessed, proto-goth Harold Chasen’s special day! Well, actually, it was actor Bud Cort’s 61st birthday, who, along with Chasen, I’m suring –that’s my new word; doesn’t it strike a positive chord? Uh-huh, uh-huh, I think I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh!– you remember from the quirky, 70s-spawned black comedy Harold and Maude (Please, DO allow yourself the 2½ minutes it will take you, and give the movie's name a "click", because it will only set those little toes of yours to tapping, and, really, isn’t that the sort of luxury we should all be affording ourselves in the first place?), in which Bud as Harold follows the filled-with-piss-and-vinegar septuagenarian Maude’s groove and learns to embrace the un-embraceable (or so his doleful self thought): life!

HAPPY BELATED,

oh, you

necktie-partying, you!

BUT, PUT ALL THE above celebrating temporarily "to rest," if you will (I’m confident an earlier Chasen would approve.), as the gist of this blog is NOT ONLY the day-late Walter E. Cox yearly for-he’s-a-jolly-good-fellow-blow-out-the-candles stuff. (SparkleFarkle Sidestep: Good thing his SAG card says differently– Bud Cort much better suites him,

dontcha thin ’?)

NOW EVERYONE, hand over your movie Must Sees list so I can scratch out whatever you have written in the number one slot, and scrawl this title across the top instead:

Driving Lessons (2006)

IT’S MY NEW Harold and Maude sans the underlying, peculiar suicidal ideation. You’ve got to see it: Ron Weasley and his mum making with the magic, again! (THREAT ADVISORY: Elevated– significant risk of entertaining activities!)

RUPERT GRINT AND JULIE WALTERS PLAY off each other so incredibly well in this rites-of-passage comedy, which introduces a shy and downtrodden Ben (RUPERT GRINT) with yet another dreary school holiday coming around. (Here’s the rest of the lowdown I carefully lifted from the CIA aka Cinematic Intelligence Agency, because I couldn’t have said it better myself, and quite frankly, why should I, if someone else has it all piping hot, waiting for us in

(range warming pan, Harry Potter-style)
the warmer?

ON WITH THE SHOW, then:

"Seventeen years of living in an absurdly conservative and traditional household with his highly-strung and overbearing mother (LAURA LINNEY) and quiet, mild mannered vicar father have taken its toll on young Ben. While the other kids are out having fun, Ben spends these precious few weeks attending bible classes, having driving lessons with his mother and helping out at a local old people's home.

However, Ben's world is turned upside down when he's employed by an eccentric retired actress Evie (JULIE WALTERS). Vulgar, dignified and childish all at once, she certainly is not the kind of person Ben expected when searching through the job listings in the stuffy parish magazine, Hello Jesus. Evie enters Ben's life with a cataclysmic force, whisking him away on a series of adventures from camping, to performing Shakespeare in the garden, to attending the Edinburgh festival -- where he finally meets a girl much nearer his own age.

Evie's unconventional and often downright bizarre behavior challenges Ben's beliefs, and forces him to confront the very idea of who he wants to be. Then, when it seems that his new-found freedom is about to be taken away, Ben has to suddenly choose; should he continue to conform, or break out and live his life as his own man?

LIKE I BEGGED before, you’ve gotta see it. This is NOT a chick flick, it’s a laugh-out-LOUDEST, convulsively hearty, self-respecting sidesplitter! So, run out right now, if you can, and rent it. If you don’t think you have the time, quit your job or whatever’s getting in your way, and do it anyhow. Honestly, it will be worth it, I promise you.

NOW FOR A BACKTOIT: this from Cat Stevens’ do-your-own-thing musical creed that Harold Chasen learned to heed:

Well

If you want to sing out,

Sing out.

And if you want to be free,

Be free.

'Cause there's a million things to be,

You know that there are.

*

And if you want to live high,

Live high.

And if you want to live low,

Live low.

'Cause there's a million ways to go,

You know that there are.

*
You can do what you want.

The opportunity's on.

And if you find a new way,

You can do it today.

You can make it all true.

And you can make it undo,

You see,

Ah ah ah,

It's easy.

Ah ah ah,

You only need to know.

*

Well

If you want to say yes,

Say yes.

And if you want to say no,

Say no.
Cause there's a million ways to go.

You know that there are.

*

And if you want to be me,

Be me.

And if you want to be you,

Be you.

Cause thee's a million things to do,

You know that there are.

TRULY, STEVENS’ is the meow!

ONE WORD: heed

Onward, then!
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo, Drea, Ruth Gordon AND Maude.

P.S.

IT’s A

*singing manically up-tempo*
Memories, Like the Corners
of Your Mind
Moment:

EXACTLY HOW MANY of you
out there entered

this contest

and wished to die
you would have won?!

NOT you,

Marcia,

I’ve already tallied you in.

SHOW OF HANDS, please.

Guys, too.

*resoundingly*

Me, ME! ME!!
You, YOU, YOU, too?!

Stalking in a Winters Wonderland

"DAD ALWAYS thought

laughter was the best medicine,

which I guess was why
several of us died." –Jack Handey

HAPPY

JACK HANDEY

FRIDAY!

DO YOU RECALL hearing "clickings"
on Tuesday, not unlike

those

which accompanied Dorothy’s Get Me Outta Here mantra in The Wizard of Oz, only up higher, yet you knew it wasn’t Dot Gale’s clicketies, but you still couldn’t put your finger on it, and then you put it out of your mind because, hey, what’s for supper?!

THAT WAS ME! No, not the "what’s for supper," but, yeah, on Tuesday, I was blissfully clicking my heels together –at one point, I even stopped mid-air for just a few seconds, where they clashed several times in succession– because TV.com (a self-explanatory website, doh!) sent word that all the hard work I did scouring the Internet, dog-eared library books, entertainment archives, stale TV Guides, Edward R. Morrow’s private journals, old shopping lists, bathroom walls, etc. --I rather call it sociably acceptable stalking– had paid off: I’d been named the editor of the Jonathan Winters Person Guide !

YES, I’M DEFINITELY pleased!

Jonathan Winters

may be the funniest man on Earth. I think so. And here’s the deal: he is truly my favorite (male) comedic genius, who I like to think I am the BIGgest fan of. In fact, as a kid, when people didn’t buy my Walt Disney-is-my-real-father idea, I retracted and pushed the Jonathan Winters-is-my-long-lost-pop claim. He’s just gotta be; I can only look up to a guy who perceives the world with the joy of a young child and the mind of a madman. And, I insist on believing all that incredible prop improv stuff Mr. Winters, uh, Father did is what (bizarrely, if you will) got me through the roughest patches, when I was a smitch. Jonathan was (and remains to be) the positive influence that ignited the part of my grey matter, which enabled me to look at life from absolutely every angle. He helped put the sparkle in SparkleFarkle! The "valuable" JW instilled in me is one that I, to this day, try to always keep.

THREE WORDS: an open mind

THANKS FOR ALWAYS being there,

Dad.

SO, WHILE I WAS turning Jonathan Winters inside out, questing to come up with enough interesting trivia blurbs and profound Winters utterings to land me as his editor, I found myself, again, giddy-deep in one of my favorite books about him:

IN THE LATE eighties, Jonathan’s dear friend, James B. Smith, was one of the first people to buy a telephone answering machine, and did so solely with Winters in mind. Sure enough, JW began to leave wild and wonderful character messages on the machine as soon as he set it up. Over the years, Smith collected more than three thousand of these unprompted, unpredictable free-form flights of Winters imagination, and then suggested to Jonathan that he could sprinkle a little sunshine o’er the troubled land, if a selection of the transcripts were published. The afternoon, last week, when I reread them, was a howling good time filled with wet-my-pants laughter! Might I interest you in an excerpt from the book? I thought so! Here’s one called "Blind Luck..." (Mr. Smith kindly prefaced each message):

"Jonathan is the keenest observer of people that I have ever seen. He somehow gets inside them, and he can pretty much feel and think like them. It was

getting to look a lot like Christmas

when this message came in. Although it is funny, there is a genuine pathos that comes through as Jon assumes the role of Edmond Gerard, an engaging blind man. I wear saddle shoes and jog– which explains some of the dialogue.

BEEP: This is Edmond Gerard. I’m a man with a white stick, and, uh, with a red tip at the end of it... and a tin cup. I’m a blind man in the neighborhood. What you’ve done, Mr. Smith, is what I call really extremely unnecessary...putting not even wooden nickels, but

buffalo chips,

as it were, in my steel cup. Also pieces of marshmallow, some kitty litter, ah, you know, Friskies, pellets for parrots, anything but money. And you know, to screw a blind man is not good. This is the time of the year when I would like to feel like the rest of the people down there at the Blue Anchor, the bar, the Playa Del Rey, all these wonderful places to eat. And I’m sure you’ve got warm quarters...but I’m a guy who has empty sockets. Although I can’t see to read notes, I’ve learned to play the harmonica, some carols, some music. You know, people like yourself hope to skip by me unnoticed, but I know and I hear red rubber-sole shoes, those remakes of the old saddle shoes. You can’t fool my a**, Mr. Smith. I’ve had people tell me, ‘Mr. Smith just passed you.,’ and I say, ‘Oh, come on, I know scent.’ I know the scent of a male...blond, black, yellow, brown, Mexican...doesn’t make any difference to me. I know the scent of a male. I know the scent of a fifty-nine-year old, ya understand, running by, gasp. Pant, pant, pant, gasp...I can’t run because I can’t see, I’ve got bronchial pneumonia, I have bronchitis, I have a... deviated septum. I have definite blindness. That goes without saying. I have a brain tumor on the right side, I’m going partially deaf, I’ve got Alzheimer’s disease, and, uh, ...on top of that...arthritis in both of my hands and pelvic disorders, but my chances of getting through this Christmas are not good. If you could find it in your heart...drop me

a fin!"

ON THAT LAUGH-HAPPY note, grab a couple of these (which I have so aptly renamed), for the road, then, this aft, make a batch to share with your family this weekend!

Photo and recipe: Dawn R. Scott

EDMOND GERARD’s
Buffalo Chips

INGREDIENTS
2 cups margarine, melted
2 cups packed brown sugar
2 cups white sugar
2 cups raisin bran cereal
2 cups raisins
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup chopped walnuts
4 eggs
2 cups rolled oats
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Combine the margarine, sugars, eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour baking soda, baking powder, raisin bran, oats, raisins, coconut, chopped nuts and chocolate chips. Mix until well combined. Drop Ice cream-scoop sized "plops" onto a baking sheet. Bake until golden, approximately 10 minutes.

Stay close, SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo and Drea.

P.S.
Jogging in

saddle shoes?!

Jonathan Winters black and white photo credit: Dan Dion

Four and Twenty Equals Thanks, But No Thanks!

Will Salisbury, Sculptor

"THE CROWS SEEMED to be calling
his name, thought Caw." --Jack Handey

Happy
Jack Handey
Friday!

*glances at clock*

SYNCHRONIZE, PEOPLE, synchronize. In two seconds, starting NOW, it will be time for a "Did You Know?" moment. Did you know the above Handeyism owns the dubious distinction of being the first of its kind to be a centerpiece in one of my blogs? Shortly thereafter, it

morphed

into the tip of a weekly iceberg, when I declared all of my day-before-Saturday entries to be Jack Handey Fridays, each of which whose contents would revolve around its featured JH blurp.

YESSIREEBOB, a long, looong time ago in a land far, faaar and away, I tore the pages from my dog-eared copy of Deep Thoughts and, using a pink plastic shovel, I planted them in rows in my backyard, watering them with Mountain Dew and hot chocolate, alternately on Mondays and Thursdays, until their little, germinating selves grew into what looked like mighty oaks, but weren’t, that shed acorns, which I gathered and stored in old Moravian ginger biscuit tins, randomly selecting one and opening it Chinese fortune cookie-style every Friday, and from which I would pluck an even deeper Deep Thought to blog-post. Then carefully pulling its Magical Mystery Tour "chain" (similar to the stringed-ring at the nape of Chatty Cathy’s neck), I’d get it to say what ever more (Raven-speak, to be sure) I wanted to be said, so long as Jack Handey remained in charge. (By the way, who is "Reebob," and how do such unknowns go about getting knighted, for crying out loud???)

DID YOU BUY any of that?
I didn’t think so.
Here’s the actual:

HALFWAY THROUGH MY near two-year stint at my old stomping ground (TV.com), I gave my Friday blogs a reason to live by scouring my three Jack Handey-written paperbacks for just the right thought. Once claimed, I expounded on it, and then made a habit out of repeating the process on the Fridays of the weeks that followed.

AND NOW,
*pulling the Chatty Cathy string*

The
SparkleFarkle

Untold Story

THE TOWN I GREW up in had unusually more than its share of crows. In fact, the population was so great that if it weren’t for the lack of coastal waters, Alfred Hitchcock probably would have chosen it for the filming of

Tippi Hedren Doll (MONSTER?!)
by Alesia Newman-Breen
(Sorry, Tippi!)

his ornithological masterpiece.

UNO MOMENTO por favor! Before I make a long story short– WAIT. I never do that. Before I go on (and on and on), I’d like to take this opportunity to inform: I was THE most gullible person to grace the planet when I was a smitch. Thank ya, thank ya very much. (No, Elvis has not entered the building)

ANYWAY, MY MOM liked to single out particular crows and entertain thoughts of them out loud. "Look at the size of that one!" she’d exclaim, pointing at an exceedingly large Poe bird in the middle of the road pecking at something resembling flattened cherry pie (but you and I know it wasn’t AND we don’t want to go "there," DO WE?!) "I’m sure it could feed a family of three," she’d surmise. WE (Mom, my sister, and I) WERE A FAMILY OF THREE!!! And all those times my mother had helped my Aunt Mildred "dress" chickens out on the farm, came flooding back to me, not to mention that odd look in my mom’s eyes! Did I say "odd"? I meant "ODD"!!! And was that drool glistening in the corner of her mouth?!

BESIDES, MY MOTHER would, on many occasions, NOT announce what was being offered at mealtime (Among other things, Mom was an unintentional mystery cook; sometimes even her hamburgers had to be identified as such.) in a lame attempt to get always-a-picky-eater me to try something new. As a result of these goings-on, I was forced to secretly (Being that she was a staunch Catholic, my mother positootly would have had me exorcised, if she would have seen me in action.) chase crows away for fear one would show up for dinner--

Literally!

IT WAS CRAZY! Not so much the running after and flapping my arms like a whirligig in heat at a bunch of oversized, feathered caw-monsters, but that d*** nursery rhyme playing over and over in my head as I was happening to the crows:

(Is that you, Robin "Wrong Bird" Williams,
or your alter ego, Dr. Ruth???)

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye;

Four and twenty blackbirds

Photographer: Carol Pelligrinelli
Keep watching, one will pop out!
KIDDING!
(Now who’s gullible?)

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,

They all began to sing.

Dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah

Dah dah dah– Eh, heck you get the drift.

WELL, IT was

The maid was in the garden,

hanging out the clothes, etc.

that sent me careening over another edge: around the same time I started chasing crows, I quit going outside whenever my Aunt Mertie was putting laundry on the line. Maybe she didn’t need hers, but my nose played a big part in who I was.

TRULY, GOD ONLY KNOWS when all the gullibility finally subsided (If you ask me, it’s a miracle I survived childhood at all!), I’m just glad it did. Or did it? That would definitely explain why a

Sheryl "Caw-ruso" Crow
fan I’m NOT.

AND Oo! Oo! Oo!
Did you catch 30 Rock last night?
Tracy Morgan’s character, Tracy Jordan,
threw out some timely food
for thought when he said:

"I think it’s weird that
we even eat birds."

Bah DUM Bum.

NINE WORDS:

"See you next week
with a brand new show!"

Stay close, except for you crows,
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo, Drea, and Ms Richardson.

Nursery rhyme illustrations: Walter Crane

O Heavy Heart

I FIND MYSELF WITHOUT words,
drawing from those of others.
Blythe Danner says it best:

NATASHA RICHARDSON
May 11, 1963 - March 18, 2009

"I DON’T THINK that I can handle it."

"PERHAPS THEY ARE not stars in the sky...
but openings for our loved ones to shine thru
to let us know they are at peace." –Anonymous

SF~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo, Drea and Ms. Richardson

Sorry, Wrong Number

MY MOM JUST CALLED to

drive home her point across the miles:

“See the bad in everything

so as not to get your hopes up.”

WITH THAT being said: Hmm... ?
Hmm, again.
I think I’ll take my own advice instead.

FOUR WORDS: Subscribe to caller ID.

STAY CLOSE, peoples, and remember:

"NO WIRE HANGERS EVER!!!"

SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo and Drea.

P.S.

?

Uncanny.