Friday, November 23, 2018

The Big Day...

...has once again come and gone...and here we are on the day after already...hope your feast with friends and family was filled with gratitude, good times and laughter.

We ended up with a houseful eventually...12 of us altogether, which I know pales in comparison to some family gatherings I hear about...but for us, that's twice as many as the year before.

And Karen did a masterful job of preparing and presenting the meal...


...she's such a great cook and so very gracious...truly was a wonderful day.

Here are few happy faces from my side of the fence...
....but what can you expect when you're watching yet another Lion's loss on Thanksgiving Day...
apparently that's from 2009 but 9 years later the tradition continues...
In spite of the inevitable in Detroit, a good time was had by all here in our neck of the woods.

And speaking of woods...
...that's a friend's blind out in the woods...did you spot it on the right?  He's up north this weekend hunting Bambi's Dad and celebrating Thanksgiving with his family...and this is what he drove in to...
...I'm sorry, but snow in November is just too early...at least they were kind enough to keep most of it up north...here's Larry and his family doing the traditional Happy Thanksgiving selfie...
Larry, his brother, Dad and Mom...

Well, even though it's only November 23rd, I guess we have officially started the Christmas season...Karen's been itching to start decking the halls but I insisted we wait until Thanksgiving is over..so...here we go, up on the roof top click click click 'cause I gotta put up Old St. Nick...and his reindeer...and all the other stuff out in front of our home...and inside.

I expect by Sunday Christmas will have arrived in grand fashion..
...if Karen has anything to say about it...and of course she does.

Updates to follow...until then...

later, mcm fans...

* Crass Commercialism Corner *

In the "so convenient you can't stand it" department, you can purchase my books here and on Amazon.com!

Get your paperback books here:



Get your ebooks here:


Saturday, November 3, 2018

All The Leaves Are Brown...

...and the skies are gray...or so sang the Mamas and the Papas in California Dreamin', and it's true here in Michigan, too...
...definitely past peak now, and when the wind blows we have swirling leaf storms...
...pretty, if a little bit depressing.

Still fairly scenic on the golf course, however...
...and I enjoyed a couple of almost decent rounds yesterday and today.

I say "almost" because I had 8.5 pretty good holes...did very well with my cleek and niblick, but both days I had a minor crisis with my mashie on the last half of the 9th hole...just suddenly and completely forgot how to hit it, which was actually fairly unnerving, especially since I'd been doing alright up until then.

Came home and spent some time in the backyard with my wiffle golf balls and finally got it straight.

As usual it came down to the basics of the grip and my personal mantra of "relaxed swing, lead with my hips, head down".

But it perfectly illustrates something the great Bobby Jones...
...said way back in the day:


"Golf is assuredly a mystifying game. It would seem that if a person has hit a golf ball correctly a thousand times, he should be able to duplicate the performance at will. But such is certainly not the case."

To which duffers everywhere offer a heartfelt "amen".

Karen's "to do" list for this weekend was to vanquish Halloween to the bowels of the garage for another year.

The problem is Karen's "to do" list is like The Blob from the 1958 horror flick of the same name...
...it just keeps getting bigger and bigger every time it consumes something...in the movie of course The Blob ate people...thankfully Karen's "to do" list isn't that carnivorous, but it does have a growing appetite and the more you feed it the hungrier it gets.

I usually try to disguise myself as a piece of living room furniture and wait for the storm to pass...
...but alas, that didn't work.

Actually, for some reason that never works, but hope springs eternal in the breast of desperate men who willingly, nay eagerly, do desperate things.

Driven on by the sting of the cat'o'nine tails...
...we did get Halloween all packed up and stored away, and then moved on to packing up all the various and sundry summer items still adorning our yard...adirondack chairs, umbrellas and the like.

Have to admit everything looks better and the place is starting to have that "buttoned up for winter" appearance...both a good and bad thing.

But speaking of The Blob...Steve McQueen was the star...
...well, human star anyway - and it was his first role, for which he made the less than impressive sum of $3,000.

He had the option of taking less up front and getting 10% of the profits, but since it was a low budget ($110,000 total cost) B movie that was marketed as the 2nd feature of a 2 movie teen Drive-In package, he didn't think it would make any money...and he needed the scratch up front for rent and food.

Little did he know it would become a hit that grossed over $4 million which in 1958 was pretty ding dang diggety dong good, and he definitely kicked himself for that.

However, weep not for poor Steve...he managed fairly well later on...The Great Escape, Bullitt, The Magnificent Seven, Papillon...

Don't forget this is "time change" weekend...
...and we turn the clocks back an hour...and thus begins months of increasing cold and darkness...o joy...

And on that happy note, The Atomic Monster Cafe Express...
...has arrived at the terminus of yet another thrillin' edition.  Thank you for traveling with us and we hope you enjoyed your journey.

If in the future your intellectual plans should necessitate sparkling wit, literary excellence and stunning imagery, why don't you just scale back your expectations a bit and travel with us instead?

Who do you think you are, anyway?  Einstein?

Don't try to fool us...we've seen your elementary school report cards.

And don't get us started on your behavioral reports.  We know you used to pull Susie's pig tails and dip them in the ink well.

Besides, we're so much easier on the brain than all that high brow stuff.

Just downshift your cerebral cortex into neutral, sit back and let us wash over you like someone's used dishwater thrown out their kitchen window.

later, mcm fans...

* Crass Commercialism Corner *

In the "so convenient you can't stand it" department, you can purchase my books here and on Amazon.com!

Get your paperback books here:



Get your ebooks here: