As weathermen go, in general, no one compares in dapperness to KARK’s Mike Francis. I wonder who his tailor is? Custom fitted suits and shirts with all the trimmings. Then you change channels and come to a sharp contrast in style with KTHV’s laid-back, flannel wearing, weather garden camper, Ed Buckner.
I like Ed too, and his bantering with Crazy Craig O’Neill (I still think of O’Neill that way from his morning radio show on KLAZ and all of those prank phone calls he used to make. Like telling the lady they couldn’t get her cable hooked up, or calling the University of Texas athletic department two days before their game with Arkansas in Austin, and telling them he was the helmet manufacturer and there was a recall. Or when he was working the drive thru at Wendy’s on Markham when my wife was there and after she ordered he told her it would be $400). Rounding out Little Rock’s forecasters is KATV and the storm team of Ned Perme and Todd “get to your safe place” Yakoubian.
These guys have gotten a lot of airtime since winter became history, especially the past few weeks. Kathy and I actually did get in our safe place, which we decided was our hall bathroom. Gus, my Cairn terrier joined us. It’s a tight fit and I didn’t feel entirely safe so I didn’t last long.
Kathy stayed longer, telling me I better come back. Gus chose to stay with her, and didn’t even follow when she came out. He peaked around the door at us as if to say, “Who told you humans it was safe to come out yet?”
I tuned into Francis, my personal favorite, who had removed his Armani coat and was acting out Mother Nature by pretending to be a crossbow hunter, something to do with the flex and hooks of the storm. It reminded me of my high school Latin teacher, Father Raymond Rossi, who used to come to class wearing a shield and sandals, and carrying a javelin, every March 15, eerily chanting the warning of the soothsayer to Caesar, “Beware the Ides of March.”
My brother Bill was in Birmingham on business when things were getting dicey for the Heart of Dixie. I was talking with him as hotel management was moving guests into the Sheraton safe place. My safe place had a toilet and a terrier while his had a bar and leather sofas. We talked a little longer, it was the first I’d heard about the massive tornado traveling through northern Alabama.
“This will be all over the news tomorrow,” he told me. But it didn’t take that long. Hours later YouTube was already posting some incredible footage, one taken by a student in a classroom as the tornado moved right next to Bryant Denny Stadium. I swear I thought I saw the Auburn “A” twirling around in there.
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Well the world’s public enemy number one has been bumped off after nearly a decade of escaping the wrath of the west. I was a little curious at the buried at sea deal, as was my Fayetteville friend Fred. “What was he, Yeoman Purser Bin Laden?” Fred asked. “I want to see pictures, like with Saddam, or Bonnie and Clyde. And what sea? There’s no sea in Afghanistan. This seems very fishy to me.”
I kind of agree more with friend Warren Simpson, who said, “Now he rests with the fishes.”
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News this week that the mummified body of Yvette Vick-ers, Playboy’s Miss July in 1959, as well as B-movie actress from that era, was found in her Beverly Hills home by a neighbor. Susan Savage discovered the body last Wednesday when her suspicions were aroused by old letters and cobwebs in the mailbox. The house was packed with boxes, and at least one window was broken. A space heater was running in the upstairs room where the body was lying on the floor.
I remember Vickers, not as Miss July in 1959, but later when I was about 14, and saw her in that classic film, “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman.” Vickers did not play the lead, instead landing the roll as the mistress of the giant’s hubby, Harry. How can any self-disrespecting 14-year-old not be glued to the set when that’s on?
Vickers’ career began in a legitimate classic, “Sunset Boulevard.” But after her roll in “50-Foot Woman,” she was apparently typecast, next showing up in “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” about a pair of larger-than-human, intelligent leeches, who are living in an underwater cave. They begin dragging local people there, where they hold them prisoner and slowly drain them of blood.
Given a choice I’m going with the large lady movie every time.