Cagle World

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

I’m proud of my son Gideon for doing his civic duty and casting a vote for the first time.

(This comes mere months after he did his civic duty and signed up for Selective Service. And, would you believe it, not one of the candidates for dogcatcher was remotely prepared to answer his questions about their position on reinstating the draft! What has become of the true statesmen???)

It was an especially meaningful milestone because local early voting takes place at the multi-use building that formerly housed my first elementary school. I got to regale Gideon with stories of those familiar emergency drills where we had to hide under our desks to practice surviving Redcoat cannonballs.

Oh, and the morning assemblies when we recited the Pledge of Allegiance. (“I pledge allegiance to the…Betsy, would you hurry up sewing that flag???”)

Ah, yes, it was a time when “woke” meant “Mrs. Shelton, Johnny is eating library paste instead of taking his nap.”

I’m just sorry that Gideon had to wait until October. His summer classes interfered with voting in the primary election. Odd thing about the primaries: they’re supposed to thin out the herd, but the amount of bovine excrement is just as plentiful in the general election.

Gideon was conscientious enough to vote for the right reasons. Don’t get me started on the people who showed up at the polls only because they misunderstood campaign rhetoric. Someone described the election as being like “Jim Crow 2.0” and they heard “Jim Beam 2.0.”

My wife deigns to dabble in politics only on rare occasions (and then only pertaining to the infrastructure considerations of hell freezing over), but Gideon has been paying attention to talk radio since he was six years old.

This has kept him abreast of current events, but it has not exactly helped with his engineering courses. (“Tut tut. No need for equations. The answer to this problem is…invest in gold bullion.”)

All three of us had to do some quick thinking when we learned there were multiple amendments to the state constitution on the ballot. Wordy amendments with side effects such as “We no longer have a state tree because we had to chop them all down to print these ballots.”

Don’t you hate amendments that you just assumed were already state law? You know, like “No male person of good moral character shall be compelled to unionize dodo birds.”

Somehow or another, Gideon managed the arduous tasks of pulling his photo ID out of his wallet and signing his name. (If only he weren’t so exhausted, he could probably have walked and chewed gum at the same time.)

Gideon looked quite spiffy with his “I Voted” sticker on his t-shirt. I understand that some voters had a less pleasant experience. (“This sticker really clashes with my shroud. Worst fashion mistake since I accepted that stovepipe hat from Honest A–, er, Honest Bill Clinton.”)

I hope Gideon never becomes disillusioned with our system (although after having pollsters interrupt supper for the 4,000th time, pulling a sword out of a stone sounds awfully inviting), but I must admit to my own bouts with cynicism.

Again, I ask, what has become of the true statesmen? And what has become of my front yard? Mr. Dogcatcher Elect, you need to worry less about fleeing to Canada and more about stray dogs!

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

Perhaps it’s partly because my mother owns a huge antique desk from Milky Way Farm (the former estate of Franklin C. Mars, founder of Mars Candies), but I pay keen attention to the annual flurry of “filler” news items about Halloween candy.

“Prices up or down? What’s hot and what’s not? Should I call my manual laborer cousin and rub this sweet gig in his face or not?”

(Think of the perennial stories as being like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, except with cavities, tummy aches and hyperactivity.)

According to a survey by the oral care platform Byte (“Rinse, spit, blurt out the name of a favorite candy before cussing and slamming the phone down…”), candy corn is this year’s favorite treat in Ohio and five other states – although a plurality of Americans are ambivalent about the confection and 34 percent actively detest it. (“Let’s drag it to the town square and string it up by its neck with… black licorice! No – stone it with circus peanuts!”)

I happen to like candy corn (although my consumption of it resembles the frustration of trying to eat just one Lay’s potato chip). It gets a bum rap because it’s like a wide-open target in a game of dodgeball. Some candy mogul got cold feet and abandoned all the OTHER candies designed to remind you of the school cafeteria. You know, the Grape Greasy Ladle, Chocolate Hairnets and Sweet-and-Sour Popular Kids’ Table.

As a former geography whiz, I am aware that different states have different ethnic mixes, industries and traditions. But I must confess it bugs me that there is such a wild variation of favorite and least-favorite candies between the states. Are taste buds so sensitive to state borders?

State nicknames must figure in there somewhere. It’s like the Tar Heel State, Wolverine State and Garden State are joined by the “Nougat Is the Spawn of Satan” State or “Almonds Can Bite ME” state.

Okay, maybe it is better to have a little diversity rather than allowing one or two populous states dictate what everyone else likes. (“Kids, don’t fret about messy candy wrappers. Tickle your tonsils with the new delivery system: discarded syringes!”)

I’m not the first person to mock the “fun-size” designation for candy bars and I won’t be the last (unless those new hate-crime laws go into effect, incarcerating people who persist in heinous acts such as referring to Butterfinger bars instead of Digital Coordination-Challenged bars).

To me, “fun-size” candy would be Lifesavers you can use as a hula hoop or Twix bars you could wield as a light saber. Razor blades? A fun-size Snickers should be able to accommodate a machete!

According to Byte, a whopping 52 percent of Americans are going to tick off trick-or-treaters by not dispensing treats this Halloween. Official excuses include inflation, “don’t celebrate Halloween” and lingering pandemic fears. Digging deeper brings confessions of “I really need the eggs and toilet paper.”

I hope next year’s filler stories are tame. Alas, the signs are not good, with politics and social trends intruding.

“How many licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? You and your Western European math!”

“REESE’S Pieces? How capitalistic! This piece is your piece, this piece is my piece, from California to the New York Island…”

“Because you demanded it…one musketeer and two self-service musketeers!”

*Sigh*

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“Were you raised in a barn?”

I never had the legendary Mrs. Montgomery as a teacher; but she was a senior class adviser and I needed her input on a school program script, so I made the rookie mistake of assuming her wide-open door meant I could forego the formality of knocking.

Thus, the piercing glare and the intimidating inquiry about sharing living quarters with cattle, swine and the occasional hobo (who was presumably condemned to a vagrant lifestyle because he insisted on CHEWING GUM IN CLASS).

The late Mrs. Montgomery would doubtless be delighted by the recent release of the centennial edition of Emily Post’s definitive guide “Etiquette,” completely rewritten by two of Ms. Post’s great-great-grandchildren. The book is calibrated to bring decorum to a society complicated by Uber, online dating, Zoom meetings, artificial intelligence, self-checkout and the like.

Not that there aren’t critics. (“Dude, they didn’t list a single tuxedo shop specializing in tuxes that display your underwear for the whole world to see.”)

Many others see the book as an indispensable referee in the clash between technology and manners. (“It only took me six months, Grandma, but I’m texting to thank you for saving my life by donating both your kidn – oh, wait, here’s another TikTok video. Gotta go.”)

On the other hand (the hand reserved for firm handshakes, which – combined with making eye contact and smiling — will render everyone you meet so compliant that they will let you whack their butler repeatedly with a croquet mallet), most of us have a love-hate relationship with the demands of etiquette.

We love it when other poor slobs get brought to justice and hate it when our own charming eccentricities are put under the microscope. (“Okay, smarty – which fancy fork am I SUPPOSED to use to scratch my bunion?”)

The book arrives just in time for families torn apart by political disagreements. (“I really want to make my cousin eat crow, but she’s a vegan and I need to know the non-fowl equivalent of crow.”)

Yes, we live in a time when dinner parties and other invitation-only events are unreasonably stressful. (“I was going to bring a ‘plus one,’ but the math is too hard. Wish we had better school systems, like in Belgium and those other African countries.”)

Guests expecting potent potables at a reception or society soiree face more awkward situations than ever. It used to be a question of “open bar” or “cash bar.” Now it’s just as likely to be a “let the next generation figure out how to pay for it” bar.

Sure, we chafe at arbitrary, hoity-toity rules of civility; but deep down most of us appreciate an authoritative voice. We know it’s not going to kill us to say “please” or “thank you” or “let me pay half since the weight of my body piercings blew out your tires”; but we still like experts to compile the morbidity charts. (“’Please’ and ‘thank you’ – declared mostly non-lethal. Still hashing out whether ‘excuse me’ is tied to chronic irritable bellybutton syndrome.”)

If your parents failed to teach you all the niceties of polite society, don’t despair. It’s never too late to learn. When one door closes – another one has a Mrs. Montgomery wannabe waving a big stack of detention slips.

Party until the cows come home – unless it’s your home, too.
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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

Have you heard of the “quiet quitting” trend that is being breathlessly reported on social media?

Quiet quitting refers to doing the minimum requirements of one’s job and putting in no more time, effort or enthusiasm than absolutely necessary.

Quiet quitters continue to draw a paycheck, but they have finally seen the folly of arriving early, staying late, attending non-mandatory meetings and the like. (“This is an accounting firm! How come I never questioned why there are barges to tote and bales to lift???”)

In Greek mythology, Icarus erred by flying too close to the sun. Now workers get in trouble by flying too close to the RADAR. (“Elliot! Abort mission! Put your hand down! Be another face in the crowd!”)

Many quiet quitters had an epiphany because of author Dan (“The Da Vinci Code”) Brown. Brown claims that the unredacted version of the Ten Commandments includes the edict “Thou shalt not covet the coveted Employee of the Month award. Verily, it hath less value than diddly-squat.”

I’ve even heard internet rumors that quiet quitters have their own theme song, courtesy of George Thorogood & the Destroyers. (“I’m mediocre to the bone. M-M-M-M-Mediocre to the bone!”)

I could’ve sworn I’ve seen my share of slackers, bums and goof-offs throughout my 40-plus-years working career; but social media treats this like something unprecedented. (“Up next: teenagers act surly, cats cough up hairballs and carbonated beverages spew after being shaken!”)

A 2022 Gallup survey suggests that about half the U.S. workforce consists of quiet quitters! When pushed for details, one pollster acknowledged, “Yeah, I pretty much engaged with 1,000-ISH respondents, and I think I left the raw data on a Post-it Note for the analysts. Like Alan Jackson said, it’s 50 percent SOMEWHERE.”

Although skeptics say worker dissatisfaction levels haven’t really changed that much in the past 20 years, I do hear anecdotal evidence of fewer disgruntled employees slamming the boss’s door on their way out of the company. It’s like we have shifted to semi-gruntled employees. But they cause trouble even for the old-style ex-employees. (“Okay, I’m back to shoot up the place, you wage slaves! CLICK CLICK Darn! This pistol was assembled by a quiet quitter!”)

There are still employees whose GPS coordinates are “halfway up the boss’s sphincter,” but now we have faux-getters instead of go-getters. Gone are the glory days of self-starters, eager beavers and the Puritan work ethic. (Granted, some companies still have Brad in HR who wears a Pilgrim hat and gushes, “Hey, I can work a second shift – off the clock – and throw rotten cabbages at rule-breakers in the pillory. Please? Please?”)

Should managers respond by cracking down or easing up? Sometimes managers need to ask, “Am I the problem?” This is especially true of the bosses who cheerlead, “Let’s get out there and go the extra mile for the customer – and afterwards, you can give me the usual foot rub.”

Many of my readers are retirees, but the quiet quitting trend has expanded to them. Diners are merely carrying a clipboard around instead of getting seconds from the Early Bird buffet. Homeowners are yelling, “Hey, you kids get off my – ah, let the ‘no trespassing’ sign take care of it.”

Next week: another insightful column –assuming the big hand doesn’t go past five, I’ve already heard the water cooler gossip and…

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

At my day job, we recently underwent a major upgrade of our security cameras.

Yes, shoplifting has gotten bad enough and technology has gotten good enough that we have made this major investment.

Retailers have come to the sad realization that they face losses from both the traditional lowlife thieves and the thrill-seeking youngsters who rationalize, “Hey, the store has insurance!”

(Apparently these youngsters have seen enough neighbors with wheelbarrows of free zucchini to assume that insurance agents are roaming the countryside insisting, “Premiums? Shucks, we don’t need any premiums. Our assets were just going to waste!”)

When I worked in a convenience market during high school, we used the low-tech ancestor of a surveillance camera – a big mirror hanging from the ceiling at a jaunty angle, ostensibly so the cashier could monitor suspicious activity. (In those hippie-phobic days, my boss considered “lingering more than two seconds on the personal hygiene aisle” to be suspicious activity.)

It occurred to me that shoplifters could just as easily use the mirror to determine when the cashier was distracted. I became increasingly distracted when the old country song lyrics “I was looking back to see if you were looking back to see if I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me” lodged in my head.

I experienced an even earlier brush with surveillance (or faux surveillance) when I was in elementary school and desperately needed to use the restroom at my father’s office. Some comedian wannabe had placed a “Smile! You’re on ‘Candid Camera’!” sticker smackdab on the inside of the door. Luckily, I was later able to BUY a giant-size Ex-Lax instead of shoplifting one.

I’m not sure how much the presence of cameras deters thieves, but the cameras can make employees self-conscious and inclined to repress normal habits. The Jaws of Life are often required to rescue workers who indulge their pent-up urges while driving home. (“You wouldn’t believe how much nose-picking and jock itch-scratching one human can do in the split-second after the airbag activates!”)

Surveillance plans vary widely in accessibility, storage capacity and resolution. (“Are you SURE the suspect didn’t bear a striking resemblance to your baby’s six-week sonogram?”)

You’ve probably seen stories about New York City grocers having to keep cans of SPAM (!) under lock and key. I understand that other items soon to be locked up nationwide are religious tracts, jury duty notices, “honey do” lists and kale fruitcake.

Of course, much of the shoplifting is caused by soft-on-crime DAs and judges. Granted, you can no longer refer to it as “revolving-door justice,” because the thieves usually take the revolving door as well!

Cities that decide not to prosecute thefts under $1,000 also exacerbate the problem, although a few dummies still wind up serving jail time. (“Okay, my understanding of math in school made me think two $650 flatscreen TVs would total less than $1,000. But at least I grasped the important part, about the store once allowing a man to hold a door open for a woman!”)

I’m up late writing this, so I’m tempted to call in sick tomorrow. But then a little voice asks, “What? And give up SHOWBIZ?”

I’m sure my guardian angel will get me to work safely. Guardian angel? That opens another privacy can of worms! Talk about incriminating images stored in the cloud!

*Sigh*

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

My brother and I rarely saw eye-to-eye about TV viewing choices in our teens and twenties, but we were both among the handful of people who imbibed the hilarity of a sitcom that NBC unleashed upon an unresponsive world on September 30, 1982.

You may remember “Cheers” as the hit show (set in a Boston pub) that ran for 11 seasons, won 28 Emmy awards, drew 93 million viewers for its finale and spawned the equally long-running spin-off “Frasier.”  But “last call” almost came early, as the show ranked No. 74 out of 77 programs in the Nielsen ratings its first season. Belly up to the bar? More like go belly-up!

NBC executives stuck with the underappreciated freshman show because they lacked a viable replacement and because they had faith that the adult, sophisticated humor would eventually catch on with audiences more accustomed to “CHiPs” and “Diff’rent Strokes.”

They were quite the optimists. Some folks in my neighborhood took several months to decide that “Cheers” wasn’t an infomercial for a furniture store. (“We ain’t spendin’ no more money on tables an’ cheers! Just pull up a box if you need it.”)

I don’t drink, but that didn’t matter, because as the theme song pointed out, “people are all the same.” Of course, that line became a little awkward in later years when Ted Danson was pulling in $250,000 per episode and the others …weren’t.

I must confess that when my wife and I were newlyweds, we missed the penultimate season of “Cheers” in favor of the short-lived ABC soap opera “Homefront”; but that was my only straying. My viewing was as reliable as “the little pop thing” on Norm’s Thanksgiving turkey.

I keep hearing about a “Frasier” reboot; but so far, the existing 275 episodes of “Cheers” have been allowed to speak for themselves (perhaps with slurred speech, but still for themselves).

In the Reagan-Bush era, Americans longed to congregate “where everybody knows your name.” I’m not so sure that citizens today want everyone knowing their name, especially if by “everyone” you mean the 87,000 new IRS agents in the Inflation Reduction Act.

We used to be able to enjoy our catchphrases such as “NORM!” But in an era of supply-chain issues, rising interest rates and lingering pandemic protocols, I just don’t think “NEW norm!” has the same appeal.

Earlier comedies had kept viewers wondering about romance, but the creative minds behind “Cheers” brought near-perfection to the Sam and Diane “will they or won’t they?” paradigm during the show’s first five seasons. Today’s artsy streaming shows would never be able to pull it off. (“Will they or won’t they? Maybe they already did! It’s so &^%$# dark! Wait…we’ve been seeing the events in backwards chronological order? Here come the subtitles about the vampire ex-beau with the heroin addiction…”)

If know-it-all mail carrier Cliff Clavin were around today spewing trivia, a new cottage industry would spring up. We already have oodles of fact-checkers, but newspapers and networks would begin relying on certified “who-gives-a-crap-ers.”

Most viewers today raise a glass to live sporting events instead of sitcoms; but “Cheers” spoke to the Human Condition, and reruns featuring its lovable losers will spread a message of common humanity no matter where humankind goes.

“Making your way on Mars soil today/Takes everything you’ve got/Taking a break from death-ray punctures/Sure would help a lot…”

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

So, having earned an associate’s degree from our local community college, my son Gideon is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in mechatronic engineering from my old alma mater.

This only child who had never really spent the night away from home is cautiously adapting to dormitory life. (“Dormitory”: from the Latin for “Who needs Latin? We have panties to raid and fire extinguishers to discharge!”)

So far, he and his roommate are coexisting amicably. But I have seen enough “roommate from hell” stories online to know this is not everyone’s college experience. (Atheists have terrible dorm anecdotes. Who wants to hear about the “roommate from a post-death state of nonexistence”? But I digress.)

Numerous circumstances can create friction between roommates. The recurring complaint about “failure to observe boundaries” figures into one of Gideon’s favorite anecdotes about my college days.

I remember following my friend John back to his dorm room. (Perhaps this was the time we failed to get into a sold-out showing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”). John generously offered me some potato chips. While I was munching, his roomie Ralph (a future lawyer) walked in and let it be known that he was the actual owner of the aforementioned snacks. Ralph dryly quipped, “Huh. It says right on the bag, ‘Goes great with dips,’ and you were drawn right to them!”

Yes, ground rules must be set – about borrowing, bedtime, thermostats, hygiene, visitors, decorations, TV/stereo volume and the like. And still there are problems. (“Were you raised in a barn??? Those pastel earbuds are throwing off the whole feng shui of the room!”)

I can think of at least two freshmen who assumed it would be fun, fun, fun to room with their high school compadre, only to have things head south in a hurry. Suddenly, BFF started standing for Butthead Facing Fury.

I always took the luck of the draw when it came to roommates. I have not been in contact with any of my roomies since I graduated, but I still cherish my memories.

Ken pulled off the lofty goal of being both a comic book nerd and a ladies’ man. I remember Ken playing a Richard Pryor LP, which had the Pied Piper effect of drawing neighbors into the room one by one, until we had a full house. Of course, that’s not saying much for a dorm room. You can’t write home, “Dear Mom and Dad, I’m feeling claustrophobic” without opening the window or hallway door to have room to write “claustrophobic.”

Nate was a gentle soul who had issues with my politics, my lack of rhythm and the audacity I displayed in not being born in Philadelphia. (What can I say? I won “rebellious fetus of the trimester” three times in a row.)

At least I didn’t have to room with the guy who lived in my friend Jack’s dorm. Jack dubbed him “Sieg Heil!” because he could often be seen alone in his room doing a sort of goosestepping dance to loud polka music. I suspect Sieg! was next to worthless in late-night study sessions. (“I know nothing! I see nothing! I hear nothing!”)

I hope Gideon continues to enjoy dorm life, earns his degree and lands a respectable job. I hope he finds plentiful chips for his electronic projects.

And that Ralph doesn’t show up with a cease-and-desist order. *Sigh*

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

I didn’t watch all of them from the very beginning, but several significant TV shows debuted in the fall of 1972.

“The Bob Newhart Show” starred Bob Newhart (who turned 93 on September 5) as psychologist Bob Hartley. Bob’s trademark stammer didn’t seem all that noticeable to me. I was just starting junior high school and being at a loss for words was par for the course around the ninth-grade girls. I imagined lying face-down on Bob’s couch to hide the zits. If Bob had added a P.E. climbing rope in his office, I’ll bet all his patients would have plunged out the window.

“M*A*S*H,” of course, followed the doctors and support staff of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. The comedy-drama could genuinely surprise us (as with Corporal Radar O’Reilly announcing the death of Col. Henry Blake). If “M*A*S*H” had been created in the 2020s, we would instead steel ourselves for the predictable, with a dazed Radar muttering, “My teddy bear just announced that he’s a lesbian.”

The “M*A*S*H” producers scrupulously turned off the laugh track during surgery scenes. Our hypothetical “M*A*S*H” of 2022? They would doubtless instead have guest-star Joe Biden pop in to remind the audience, “Not a joke.”

“M*A*S*H” ranked #46 in the Nielsen ratings for its inaugural season and was nearly canceled. When it bowed out 11 years later, the finale became the most watched U.S. television broadcast in history at that time, with 106 million viewers. TV programmers still haven’t learned patience. Most shows come on and off faster than one of Klinger’s gowns.

“Maude” gave us both Bea Arthur (as “that uncompromisin’, enterprisin’, anything but tranquilizin’ right on Maude”) and Rue McClanahan (as her confidante Vivian Harmon) more than a decade before their “Golden Girls” misadventures. During the fourth season, I ran home from my afterschool job every Monday night to catch “Maude” (and its lead-in, “All in the Family,” featuring Maude’s cousin, Edith Bunker).

“Maude” was a ratings powerhouse for most of its network run, but I read in Norman Lear’s autobiography that local station program directors balked at the syndicated reruns, using a crude term for a domineering woman. I can just imagine Maude sternly announcing, “God will get you for that, local station program directors.”

“The Waltons” became a nostalgic Thursday night destination for entire families, but that was then. Nowadays, the familiar “Good night, John-Boy” would be replaced with “Be sure to turn off your back-lit electronic devices half an hour before bedtime, John-Boy.”

ABC’s wildly popular “Kung Fu” starred David Carradine as Shaolin priest and martial arts expert Kwai Chang Caine. The show could truly have used a “Grasshopper, don’t try this at home” disclaimer. No telling how many pulled muscles, bruised jaws and broken vases came out of kids imitating the action.

“The Streets of San Francisco” (pairing Hollywood veteran Karl Malden with a young Michael Douglas) was a worthy addition to the Quinn Martin Productions stable. Mercifully, it came and went before the current trend of police procedural “franchises,” or we would have “The Streets of San Francisco: Dirt Roads of Podunk.”

The TV networks are breathlessly hyping their new shows, but will anyone remember them this fondly in 2072?

Maybe, just maybe. And maybe by then I will finally be rid of this wedgie. *Sigh* Good old school days.

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

When does a 500th anniversary require an asterisk?

If you’re a fan of trivia and myth-busting, you’ve doubtless heard umpteen repetitions of “George Washington didn’t really have wooden teeth,” “Napoleon wasn’t short,” “Lemmings don’t commit mass suicide” and “Ferdinand Magellan didn’t sail all the way around the world.”

Sure enough, Magellan was killed two years into the three-year voyage to circumnavigate the globe. (That probably saved him from an ugly scene at home. Before he set sail, he told Mrs. Magellan he was just going to the corner market to buy a pack of Marlboros. She should have been tipped off by the Doc Brown-ish “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!” comment, but love is blind.)

On the other hand, a milestone is still a milestone. Sept. 8 marks the 500th anniversary of Spanish navigator Juan Sebastian Elcano’s return to Spain in the only vessel to survive Magellan’s 1519 expedition to the Spice Islands. (Posh Spice, meet Scurvy Spice.)

I guess Magellan (rather than Elcano) sticks in the public consciousness because of expert PR work. You know, “Magellan would have sailed all the way himself if not for that ‘getting killed in the Philippines’ thingie.” I need a publicist myself. (“Danny Tyree cured the common cold, except for that ‘not getting his butt off the sofa and doing research’ thingie.”)

So perilous was Magellan’s journey that another 55 years passed before Sir Francis Drake accomplished the second circumnavigation of the globe. Well, the perils and the bad Yelp reviews Magellan wrote combined to slow down copycats.

Magellan had an incalculable impact on the entire world. He helped give empirical support for the idea of the earth being spherical. (Many of his contemporaries took an attitude of “Follow the science – but not off the edge of the world! Aaaiiieee!”)

He discovered (to his chagrin) the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, discovered South American animals unknown to Europeans and inspired indigenous peoples to learn phrases such as “Indigenous peoples? No indigenous peoples around here. Just good ol’ white European males with no gold or anything.”

I understand that Magellan met with heaps of skepticism before embarking on his voyage. Pondering the circumnavigation aspect, one shade-tree philosopher drawled, “You can’t get here from here.”

Even after Elcano’s return, the doubts persisted. (“They filmed the whole journey out in the desert somewhere. I’ll bet Magellan had Neil Armstrong on speed-dial.”)

Merchandise and commemorations tied to the anniversary are getting people worldwide revved up, but some folks remain blasé. This includes those who loathed World History in school and others who are all too familiar with people (like my late father-in-law) who go All the Way Around the World to tell a story. (“The 3/16-inch wrench didn’t work, so I got my trusty 7/32-inch wrench off the front seat…or was it the floorboard…?”)

Magellan’s pioneering efforts seem quaint nowadays, since we have jet planes, satellites and TV spoilers traveling around the world with breathtaking speed.

But Magellan was one of the giants of the Age of Exploration. For all the talk of a Mars mission, we’re now stuck in the Middle Age of Exploration.

(“Glad I didn’t become an astronaut. I just want to send my hot younger girlfriend to get my cholesterol medicine while I let my imagination run free as I listen to my favorite podcast: ‘Only Laxatives in the Building.’”)

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

Believe it or not, August 31 is the 25th anniversary of the traffic accident that robbed the world of the effervescent Diana, Princess of Wales.

Diana was a distant, distant cousin (my great-great grandfather Tyree married Mary Ann Spencer a century before I was born). But even without that connection, I feel compelled to dedicate this week’s column to drawing a few lessons from her too-brief life.

The philosophy “Seemed like a good idea at the time” sums up so much of her public career.

In retrospect, marrying a much-older heir to the throne (whose personality was incompatible with hers and who carried a torch for his present wife) doesn’t sound like the classic recipe for “lived happily ever after.” But it seemed like a good idea at the time to Diana and the millions who watched the wedding on TV.

Agreeing to keep up with all the arbitrary royal etiquette and obligations apparently seemed like a good idea at the time, since Netflix’s “The Crown” wasn’t around in 1981 to air dirty laundry.

The extramarital affairs that brought Diana and Prince Charles to the point of separation and divorce probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but the scandal had a lasting impact on the family and the world.

The paparazzi who giddily chased Diana’s vehicle through Paris’s Pont de l’Alma tunnel obviously thought it seemed like a good idea to wallow in wretched excess and snap just one more batch of photographs of one of the most photographed women in the world.

The driver of Diana’s car thought it was a good idea to outrun the paparazzi, but the crash soon cost the lives of Diana, her boyfriend and the driver.

Royalty and commoners alike could learn from the way Diana’s life and death played out.

“You only live once” is the sparkly mantra of many, but there is still a place for doing cost-benefit analyses and counting to ten before making a decision. There remains virtue in adages such as “Measure twice, cut once,” “Haste makes waste,” “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” and the like.

Luckily, several good things did come out of the bad decisions surrounding Diana.

As part of the royal family, Diana had a bully pulpit for advancing her pet projects, including the welfare of AIDS patients and the International Red Cross campaign for the removal of landmines.

(My best friend from third grade passed away from AIDS complications as an adult, so the issue resonates with me.)

Diana’s beloved sons are still with us. Although Harry seems to revel in being the outcast of the family, William gives all indications of being a solid monarch someday.

And of course, by dying at the tender age of 36, Diana remains forever young in the public imagination.

Queen Elizabeth II remains immensely popular at age 96, but who knows what a fickle press would have done with a 61-year-old Diana? As it is, her style, compassion and zest for life remain preserved in amber for future generations.

As you hum the “Goodbye, England’s Rose” version of “Candle in the Wind” this month, spend a little time analyzing your own decision-making processes. You may not ensure a fairytale ending for you and your loved ones, but maybe you can avoid royally messing up.

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”