Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, July 8, 2023

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OPINIONOPINION

Mountain Views-News Saturday, July 8, 2023 

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

PRODUCTION

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

DISTRIBUTION

Peter Lamendola

CONTRIBUTORS

Stuart Tolchin 

Harvey Hyde

Audrey Swanson

Meghan Malooley

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Dinah Chong Watkins

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee

STUART TOLCHIN

DAN TYREE

RICH JOHNSON 

NOW THAT’S RICH


PUT THE LIGHTS 
ON


IS THERE A 
LOUD TALKER 
IN YOUR LIFE?

SUMMERTIME & THE 
LIVIN' IS EASY!

STUFF THAT 
BOTHERS ME

 “Summertime

 and the livin’ is easy, 

 Fish are jumpin’ 

and the cotton is high

Oh your daddy’s rich 

and your ma is good lookin’ 

So hush little baby

don’t you cry”

I know what you’re thinking. Easy? Livin’? For who? 
Whoever wrote that song must not know how tough 
life is for us here in 2023. 

Ha! The song was written by George Gershwin in 
1935 as part of the American opera Porgy and Bess. 
Remember 1935? The middle of the great Depression. 
Life wasn’t easier in 1935. And the play itself was centered 
around the black community. Easy for them? 
1935?

Possibly George Gershwin’s finest song, Summertime 
evokes a wonderful perspective on how we should 
enjoy life, friends and family even in the toughest of 
times. (Kudos also to older brother Ira Gershwin, 
and DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, who wrote the 
lyrics.)

And as you may recall, the self-proclaimed hope and 
purpose of my columns is to lighten the load for all 
of us. So, to that end, how about some graffiti from 
around the world.

“Bad spellers of the world – untie”

 “Coffee, a person who is coughed upon”

“Deja moo: The feeling you’ve heard this BS before”

“Dwn wth vwls”

“Earn cash in your spare time – blackmail friends”

(sign over urinal in pub) “Express lane: five beers or 
less”

“Help wanted: Telepath. You know where to apply”

“Indecision is the key to flexibility”

“Love is grand; divorce is a hundred grand”

“My daughter thinks I’m nosy. At least that’s what she 
says in her diary”

“My mother was the travel agent for guilt trips”

“Perforation is a rip-off”

“Veni, Vidi, Velcro: I came, I saw, I stuck around”

“Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again”

Finally, it’s embarrassing (not really) for me to keep 
promoting my band’s upcoming concerts. But since 
you asked (someone ask me) JJ Jukebox is performing 
again on July 22 (Saturday night 6:30-9:30) right 
here in town at Nano Café. Good food, good drinks, 
good dancing, good friends and totally tubular music 
from the 1960s-70s. What more could you want? 
Make reservations by calling Nanos (626) 325-3334. 
Best to call after 4:00 Wednesday through Saturdays. 
322 W. Sierra Madre Blvd.

 Have a good week everyone here in SoCal…where 
the livin’s easy!

“We are the Cubs from Den 3/And 
no one could be prouder/If you 
cannot hear our shout/We’ll yell a little LOUDER.”

That chant from my Cub Scout pack-meeting days 
comes to mind as I explore the issue of moderation-
challenged speakers, or, as the prestigious 
American Psychiatric Association clinically labels 
them, “bozos who wouldn’t know an indoor voice 
if it bit them on the rear.”

Surely you could name some loud talkers. Maybe 
you are a loud talker. When you overhear people 
whispering about boorish behavior, perhaps 
you should consider asking, “Lord, is it I? I said, 
LORD, IS IT I????”

Booming voices disseminating too-much-information 
revelations are everywhere: across the 
hedge, in the classroom (my second-grade teacher 
Mrs. Shubert dubbed me “Old Cannon Mouth”), 
on the beach, in the grocery store, in the homes of 
people who use recorded jackhammer sounds in 
their “white noise” machine…

Retailers certainly need all the business they can 
get, but frontline employees dread the arrival of 
certain clueless extroverts. Everyone in the building 
hears them as soon as they enter the front 
door. Heck, the store’s vendors in Southeast Asia 
hear them as soon as they enter the front door!

You should consider yourself lucky if you meet 
an acquaintance who is merely loud. Sometimes 
you also get a dislocated shoulder from vigorous 
handshaking, a stinging slap on the back and a 
public recitation of how you obtained the embarrassing 
nickname you’ve been trying to live down 
since high school. (“I know you’re trying to get to 
the ER, stranger, but the ambulance driver can 
wait until you hear about Mr. Who Put the Dissected 
Frog in my Jockstrap?”)

Count your blessings (not out loud!) when you 
encounter a solo loudmouth. Too often, there are 
entire families who have been competing for attention 
for generations. (“Yes! Let’s play Twister! 
Then I can get even closer to your ear! What? No, 
I love YOU more. What? You actually said, ‘let’s 
make some s’mores’? I love you even more.”)

It’s obvious that some people unleash the decibels 
because they grew up poor in the middle of the 
20th century. (“I can’t change my volume because 
I can’t find the pliers.”)

I wish all loud talkers could take some subtle hints 
when they’re getting carried away, but apparently 
many of them are colorblind as well. They mistake 
the blood oozing from your ears for sweat.

Don’t fall into the trap of pigeonholing people 
purely on the basis of volume. Some people are 
loud only intermittently, when they’re excited to 
share some news; others are always “on.” Some are 
apologetic; some are oblivious. Some are amiable 
and earnest with their gushing. Others are downright 
obnoxious. Some you make excuses for. Others, 
you make burial-in-a-shallow-grave plans for.

Not all loud talkers are egotistical. Some are 
preemptively bluffing to cover their insecurities. 
(Judging by the intensity of their utterances, 
they must think that alien invaders are about to 
drain their bank account and induce male pattern 
baldness.)

I would shout, “Yahoo!” now that I have met my 
deadline, but my wife is sensitive to loud noises, 
and I don’t want to trigger 
any migraines.

She might throw out my 
Cub Scout merit badge 
for Untying Sheepshank 
Knots by Yodeling at 
Them.

Almost as coveted as the 
one for Scaring Little 
Old Ladies into Crossing 
the Street to Avoid You.

Danny Tyree welcomes 
email responses at 
tyreetyrades@aol.com 
and visits to his Facebook 
fan page “Tyree’s 
Tyrades.”

There are many things that 
continue to go on that really disturb me and 
I don’t seem to be able to do anything about 
them. Yesterday was the 4th of July, a designated 
day of celebration. Instead what did 
America display. Quoting ABCNEWS.com 
“Amid celebrations and fireworks over the 
long Fourth of July holiday weekend cities 
across the country were left reeling from the 
scourge of mass shootings this weekend. The 
story I read said that combined, the shootings 
this weekend left seven people dead and 
46 injured. The Memorial Day holiday resulted 
in at least 17 shootings which left 13 
people dead and 79 injured in cities across 
this country. I don’t know how accurate 
these statistics are, I now doubt everything 
I hear on the news, but I do know that last 
night sounded like a War Zone right here in 
Sierra Madre.

 People are fearful; perhaps rightly so. 
Today school children are driven to School 
by a single parent and these single parents in 
their cars are lined up around the block to 
pick up the kids after school contributing to 
all sorts of environmental problems.

 I want to keep talking a while about 
cars before I go back to the subject of guns. 
I am sure you have noticed the single far left 
lane of the freeway reserved for cars with 
multiple occupants is always pretty empty 
while the other four lanes filled with sole 
occupant cars are always jammed. I know 
that I am also an offender but really something 
should be done. There is no question 
that gas driven vehicles are damaging to the 
overall environment but the single driver 
congestion is as bad as it always was. Maybe 
the future environment will be less damaged 
by electric cars but those noiseless vehicles 
present other problems. Twice, here in our 
canyon, which has no sidewalks, I have seen 
small children endangered as they walked 
along the street not hearing approaching 
soundless electric cars. Both times, thankfully, 
an adult arm reached out and pulled 
the children to safety. I worry.

 Back to guns. I hate these “patriotic” 
holidays wherein wars are celebrated. 
Nobody wins a war—there are always huge 
numbers of innocent young people killed 
over disputes between the rulers of warring 
nations fought for the benefit of a favored 
few. Yes, money is made from war, business 
is good and jobs are plentiful and the 
whole things makes me sick. What about 
our wonderful Revolutionary War, you say? 
Read Candy by Terry Southern wherein a 
person driving in the northeast is asked if 
they see much of a difference in where they 
are now and where they were a few minutes 
ago. The driver says he doesn’t see any difference 
and the passenger says “Now we are 
in Canada which became free from England 
without the necessity of war.” Candy was a 
“dirty book” I read outside of classes before I 
graduated High School. As is clear 65 years 
later, this book made more of an impression 
on me that any of the books I read in School.

 Lots of other things bother me and 
before I reach my word limit I will mention 
a few. Recently, all kinds of drugs have been 
legalized and I want to feel that these drugs 
will not interact negatively with the fifteen 
or so prescription drugs I take every day. I 
recently asked my diabetic advisor, a doctor 
of pharmacy, about this and she explained 
that she had no knowledge about non-prescription 
drugs. A couple of days later I 
asked my cardiologist the same thing and he 
had no information. I got angry and asked 
why he had no information, and he patiently 
explained that the Federal Government had, 
until recently made no attempt to study the 
interactions of prescription drugs and generally 
illegal non-prescription drugs. Yes people 
have been overdosing and dying but our 
wonderful caring government did not want 
to do anything to allow people to be more 
informed about their (yours and mine) drug 
taking. 

 There are many other things that 
bother me but that’s enough for now. I’m 
glad you survived the 4th. 

Mountain Views News 
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of Los Angeles in Court 
Case number GS004724: 
for the City of Sierra 
Madre; in Court Case 
GS005940 and for the 
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Madre, California, 91024. 
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Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com