Meet my neighbors

I’m a person who tends to forget names quickly, especially when I’m first introduced to someone. I think I’m so concerned with getting my name right I simply lose focus, and this issue has plagued me for much of my life.

Scott Adamson’s humor column appears whenever he has a funny feeling. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl and Instagram @adamsons60

What I can remember, however, are nicknames – especially those I give some of the neighbors I frequently encounter during my morning walks.

For the most part these are not folks that I actually know in the sense that we’re close friends and hang out. Basically I just wave at them and say things like, “Looks like it’s gonna be a warm one today with highs in the mid-80s and light winds blowing east-southeast at five miles per hour,” “Man, I wish Batman was real,” or “I can’t wait for Halloween because I’m dressing as a werewolf again this year.”

Our conversations are neither long nor deep, which is just the way I like them.

But as a point of reference I’ve decided to assign many of them a sobriquet. Here are a few that stand out:

CHURCH LADY

I see this woman almost every day. Her nickname stems from the hairstyle she sports, which is reminiscent of  Dana Carvey’s Church Lady from “Saturday Night Live.”

She’s stands about 5-2 and weighs 75 pounds and I’m guessing she’s between the age of 130 and 165. But she can move – she doesn’t so much walk as she glides.

One thing I’ve noticed is she’s always carrying what looks to be a hurley (hurling stick), which makes me wonder if perhaps she’s from Ireland and once played the game.

Probably, though, it’s just a stick she uses to ward off suitors, coyotes and the kinds of people you see in Gatlinburg who try to get you to listen to a seminar about condos.

THE LONE RANGER

OK, this is the one neighbor’s name I can remember because when he introduced himself it immediately rang a bell. It’s John Reid. John Reid, as you know, was the Lone Ranger’s true identity, and he teamed up with Tonto to fight outlaws in the Old West.

This John Reid, however, doesn’t fight outlaws – at least as far as I know. I’m pretty sure he works construction.

Due to the  COVID-19 global pandemic he does wear a mask, though, so that’s pretty cool.

Sadly, his dog is not named Silver, which is bitterly disappointing to me.

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE AND NAPOLEON DYNAMATE

This couple lives around the corner. The guy not only has hair and eyeglasses identical to Jon Heder’s “Napoleon Dynamite” character, but he also walks like him and often has a vacant expression. So many times I’ve wanted to yell, “Vote for Pedro!” but I don’t because I’m sure he gets that a lot.

As for his wife/girlfriend/partner/roommate, she looks normal. I just call her Napoleon Dynamate because I think it’s funny.

BUTT PATTER

There is a friendly woman on our street who pats her boyfriend on the butt whenever he comes out of their house. Sometimes they’ll walk together toward the street, turn around and look back at their house, and she’ll pat his butt then.

Once she was cutting grass and he was putting down mulch, and she patted his butt while his butt was aimed skyward.

Point being, if the dude is outside and his butt is within reach, Butt Patter is gonna pat it.

I can only imagine what the man’s butt endures inside the house.

ON GOLDEN POND DOG WALKER

This woman looks like Henry Fonda in his “On Golden Pond” role, right down to the fishing bucket hat and wire-rimmed glasses. Each time she sees me walking Charlie, our Sheltie, she screams, “Is your dog friendly?”

I always tell her that Charlie is old and nervous – much like myself – and would rather keep his distance (also much like myself). So naturally, she trots over with her dog, who tries to lick Charlie’s bits and pieces.

Needless to say, these encounters are awkward.

THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN

This dude is gigantic – tall, heavy – just mountainous. I imagine him eating entire herds of cattle, drinking from a water tank and then when he’s done, stomping his way through the city Godzilla-style.

Of course when I see him out walking I don’t call him the Amazing Colossal Man. I address him as “sir” and try to make as little eye contact as possible.

MANLEY STUD AND PRECIOUS MUFFIN

This young couple can often be seen jogging down our street. Manley strikes me as someone who works out at the gym seven days a week, holds an important job in high finance, drinks nothing but microbrews and calls other males “Bro.”

Precious wears designer outfits while running, never sweats, has blinding white Britney Spears teeth and has probably played Elle in a community theater production of “Legally Blonde.”

Based on our brief interactions they’re nice people but I hate them both.

THAT ASSHOLE

It’s just what I call this one guy because, well, he’s that asshole.

Goodbye, XFL

When billionaire rasslin’ tycoon Vince McMahon decided to reboot the XFL, he dumped enough of his own money into the league that it could last three years without taking in any other cash.

Scott Adamson’s sports column appears whenever he feels sporty. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl and Instagram @adamsons60

There’s a big difference, however, between “could last” and “would last.”

The COVID-19 global pandemic forced the league to join all other sports entities across the world and suspend play in March. Yet while the economic devastation has already taken its toll on the likes of the NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball, those leagues have enough long-term stability and capital to survive.

Obviously, that’s not the case for the XFL.

Last Friday the league announced that it was laying off all employees with no plans to return in 2021, and then on Monday it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Debts and assets ranging from $10 million to $50 million were listed in the filing, and seven of the XFL’s eight head coaches were among the top creditors.

So how did McMahon go from having plenty of disposable income to being forced to dispose of his second attempt at the XFL?

According to Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Radio, McMahon was prepared to lose $375 million during the first three years of the XFL revival. After that, he expected to secure TV deals totaling $125 million annually which – eventually – would help him recoup his losses. Ultimately, of course, the goal was to see the XFL finish each year in the black and become a staple of the spring sports scene.

But back in January Bloomberg reported that McMahon’s primary business, World Wrestling Entertainment, lost more than $1 billion in market value following a corporate shakeup, so suddenly the XFL went from something of a vanity project for McMahon to a venture much more important to his bottom line.

Then came the pandemic.

XFL employees were paid up through what would’ve been the final week of the 10-game schedule. But while they were supposed to be on the payroll at least through playoffs that never came, the axe fell on Good Friday. McMahon had lost millions more dollars, and I’m guessing he’s unwilling to lose any more on offseason football.

Thus will be the conundrum of any person or group going forward who wants to create what has yet to be created – an alternative American football league with staying power. Simply put, you have to be willing and able to lose millions and millions of dollars for who knows how many years on the slim hope that eventually you might – might – make a profit.

Back when the new XFL kicked off I was asked how long I thought the league would last. I predicted a two-year run, figuring the novelty would wear off by then and McMahon would decide to cut his losses. Now we’ll never know, but had the pandemic not hit I still think that would’ve been the case.

With the notable exception of St. Louis, in-house fan support was starting to dip and TV ratings were sliding at the midway point of the league. If the season played out I think that trend would’ve continued (although not to the degree that it would cause McMahon to bail on it like he did the XFL’s one-and-done 2001 iteration).

But when the XFL returned in 2021, it would’ve done so without that new car smell. Plus, some of the stars established in its inaugural season would’ve moved on to the NFL, and each team would basically be starting from scratch again.

TV viewership for all programing tends to drop in the spring, so I find it difficult to believe the broadcast revenue McMahon was hoping for would ever materialize. I’m not confident the number of hardcore fans (like me) needed to turn a gap league into a box office success are there, either.

None of this is a criticism of the product itself; with the notable exception of the United States Football League, I think this was far and away the best spring circuit to come along. It had cool rules, good players and coaches, and overall it was minor league football done extremely well. Ultimately, though, it was not a moneymaker. No non-NFL pro football organization since the American Football League has turned a profit.

And regardless of how badly McMahon or anyone else wants a new football venture to succeed, I can’t imagine they’d be willing to endlessly lose money to keep one afloat.

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the economy, and I think it’ll be a long, long while before an entrepreneur gives spring pro football another try. But, it will happen eventually.

And when it does it’ll join the USFL, World League of American Football, NFL Europe, XFL 2001, the Alliance of American Football and XFL 2020 as good ideas that will never make enough dollars to make enough business sense.

Quarantine dining tips

I’m a weird dude, and my weirdness (if not my dudeness) can probably be traced back to my mother.

Scott Adamson’s humor column appears whenever he has a funny feeling. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl and Instagram @adamsons60

Mom, rest her soul, liked to think outside the box, especially when it came to recipes. Her idea was to take simple ingredients and transform them into fancy dishes (applying her own odd definition of fancy).

Sometimes she’d take a good idea and experiment too much, though. Her Rice Krispies Treats were incredible when she first started making them, but then in later batches she’d add other bizarre ingredients like applesauce and syrup.

Had she been Dr. Frankenstein, she wouldn’t have been satisfied with merely bringing the creature to life – she’d have added donkey ears and dressed him in a leisure suit.

One time – many, many years ago – I brought a date home to meet mom and even though I told her we weren’t coming for dinner, she insisted on providing a “snack.”

The snack consisted of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner, with upright cocktail weenies forming a crown around the inside of the bowl. Adding a flourish of class was paprika liberally sprinkled over the dish.

To the untrained eye it looked as though the mac and cheese – bleeding after sustaining a grave injury – had been surrounded by cocktail weenies.

It probably also looked that way to the trained eye.

The good news is that it wasn’t bad – as long as you like mac and cheese and cocktail weenies. And paprika has no flavor anyway, so it was just added for dramatic effect.

As for my date, she didn’t try it. She must’ve been spooked by the food’s appearance because after looking at it briefly she ran out of the house and I don’t recall ever seeing her again.

Anyway, that tale is just a sidebar to the main story, and the main story involves quarantine food. Since we aren’t going to restaurants right now and are trying to eat the food we already have due to the global pandemic, I decided to take a cue from mom and spice things up.

In other words, we can keep eating the same things but we don’t have to eat them the same way.

For example, we have a can of vegetarian baked beans in the cabinet. They’re good, but there’s nothing particularly special about them.

Well, there WAS nothing special about them.

Now they’re “Fonzie Beans.”

What are “Fonzie Beans,” you ask?

In December, 1974, there was a Christmas-themed episode of “Happy Days” where Fonzie was bragging about the big plans he had for the holiday.

But Richie spotted Fonzie alone in his garage, eating a can of beans by the light of a small, sparse Christmas Tree.

Oh, I cried like a Baby Boomer. To this day, I get weepy when I see someone eating beans near trees.

But In Quarantine Life, you, too, can eat Fonzie Beans. All you have to do is pretend to be Fonzie and eat beans.

To enhance the experience I like to put on a leather jacket and style my hair in a ducktail. I also say, “Ayyyyy!” and give the thumb’s up sign, but that’s an individual character choice on my part.

We make a lot of soup at our house and the base we use is something called “Imagine Soup.” It comes in a variety of flavors (organic garden tomato is our go-to) and it’s quite good.

But just think of the name. It’s Imagine Soup, so we can imagine it to be whatever we want. I ate a bowl yesterday and imagined it was a frosted cherry Pop-Tart.

It didn’t really taste like it, but as the quarantine drags on there could come a time I forget what a frosted cherry Pop-Tart tastes like so it won’t matter.

I might have some this weekend and call it chicken. I don’t eat meat, but a chicken pissed me off once, so this is a way to be passive-aggressive.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to fun with food.

Have any potato chips around the house?

Pour them into a bowl, hit them with your fist, and suddenly you have “mini-chips.” Or, you can take a bag, pulverize it before opening it, and when you dump it out you can enjoy a bowl of “Tater dust.”

Canned Pringles are also fun because you can take two of them and situate them in such a way on your lips that it looks like you have a duck bill.

Here’s another great idea – since Cap’n Crunch is already nautical by nature, serve it while in the swimming pool, bathtub or when you’re still wet after getting out of the shower.

And if you want to entertain your kids (or your evolved chimps – I have no idea who or what you’re living with) you can change Cap’n Crunch’s rank every time you serve a bowl.

Tuesday he can be Rear Admiral Crunch, Wednesday he’s Vice Admiral Crunch, by Thursday he’s Admiral Chief of Naval Operations Crunch and heading into the weekend he’s been promoted to Fleet Admiral Crunch.

This morning I’ll be enjoying a heaping helping of Secretary of the Navy Crunch and Sunday I’ll have some Retired Crunch.

As for me, perhaps the one quarantine dish that comes closest to being “mom-inspired” is one I make using vegan link sausage and canned crescent rolls.

Really, this is just another version of “pig in a blanket.” You roll out a triangle of dough, wrap it around a sausage, and bake it.

However, since this is vegetarian fare I call it “friend in a quilt.”

I put a pair of toothpicks in one of them and placed green olives at the end of each toothpick. Thus “friend in a quilt” became “monster in a bedspread,” but then I realized maybe I had overdone it because the olives really didn’t have a major role to play.

In summation, my advice as our social isolation continues is to make your own fun with your own food. How you do it is entirely up to you and, obviously, there’s no right way or wrong way.

The key is to eat what you have and have fun while you eat.

And if you have a box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner, cocktail weenies and paprika on hand, well, you know what to do.