Friday Four

Friday, March 11, 2016

Editor's Note: Posting may be irregular until next Saturday due to travel.

1. In an effort to get our picky-eater son to find more energy from solid food, our doctor has advised us to try reduced fat milk.

Well, apparently, some government regulator in Maryland neglected to dictate that all caps for that variety be blue, so some dairies go to town, and that apparently doesn't sit well with Little Man. I was about to pour from a purple-capped bottle one day, when he shouted, "I want blue milk!" I have since stockpiled a few blue caps, which I quietly replace when necessary to make fridge time go a little more smoothly.

2. A writer has decided to move, lock, stock, and barrel, to a place he once called "America's worst place to live." The following, at least, makes me somewhat envious:

Life along the I-95 corridor was starting to lose its charm too. I commute in to D.C. most days. A one-way trip, involving car, train, metro and a walk takes about 90 minutes on a good day. I count myself among that woebegone 2.62 percent of workers who spend 15 hours or more each week stuck in traffic, shivering on subway platforms, and otherwise squandering a huge chunk of their waking hours on one of their most-hated activities. [link omitted]
I'd live elsewhere, too, and for similar reasons, if my wife's job did not require us to be where we are now.

3. Fellow Mad Magazine aficionados will probably enjoy learning about the latest theory about the origin of Alfred E. Newman.

4. Yes, Japan has its own "soul food." I'm not horsing around.

-- CAV

2 comments:

Dismuke said...

When I was around two and three years old there was a local brand of milk called Metzger's Milk which had a picture of a baby on the bottle. Despite how young I was I still very much remember thinking how cool the Metzger baby was - and I referred to the milk as "Metzger-baby-milk."

I had to have learned the phrase "Metzger baby milk" from my parents as I was too young to read. My guess is that they initially called it that to coax me into drinking the stuff in the first place. At that age I had an aversion to any food that was either white or yellow in color. I still remember being in a high chair and my mother force feeding me mashed potatoes. I wouldn't touch vanilla ice cream either. And even into grade school I was suspicious of anything that had cheese in it because of its yellow color. My guess is my mother probably told me something to the effect that by drinking the milk I would make the Metzger baby happy.

Anyhow, if telling me about the Metzger baby was a way to coax me into drinking the milk, it worked but it also backfired. My parents tell me that I absolutely refused to drink any milk that didn't come from the Metzger baby - and the problem was that Metzger's Milk was much more expensive than store brands and, for my parentsm money was tight. So they did something similar to what you are doing: they bought store brand milk and, when I wasn't looking, they poured it into an empty Metzger's Milk bottle which I happily drank. It wasn't until I was an adult that they told me about the deception.

I found online an advertising picture of the Metzger baby:

http://tinyurl.com/zmceuqj

Looking at it all these years later the baby seems kinda odd: he looks almost middle aged!

Gus Van Horn said...

Dismuke,


I seem to remember you telling me that story ages ago. Nice to get a look at that baby.

Gus