I was looking at the website of the Xerces Society recently and came upon the following sentences, which I swear I am not making up. I was so enchanted by this info that I immediately sent them a donation. I mean, you’ve got to love an organization that’s devoted to things without backbones (excluding the New York State Legislature), and that can produce prose like this:

“There have been few sitings of the Oregon giant earthworm in recent years. It can reach up to 60 centimeters long and it reportedly has spit that smells of lilies.”

Growing more comfortable in my nerdiness, I have been spending my recent old age studying Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. This odd hobby is an outgrowth of my decision not to read anything new until I’ve finished reading and/or re-reading all the things I was supposed to read as a high-school student and/or college English major but somehow never did, or did but didn’t understand or appreciate them, or managed to forget what they were all about.

It started a few years ago with my husband’s talking me into reading “Moby Dick,” a book whose title was carved into many a desk as part of students’ universal jack-knife advice on what not to read. But when I finally did read it, at my own leisurely pace and with no tests to face, I loved it. And so I have plunged ahead into the works of everyone from William Blake to Carson McCullers, Dostoyevsky to Vonnegut. Now I am reading, for the first time, the Sonnets.

And you know what? Something’s weird! How come so many sonnets express in so many different ways the poet’s passion for a man? And so many others directly nag, like a classic Jewish mother, his (expressly male) subject to hurry up and get married, already? And how come so many of them seem to be “doublets,” where one has the exact same subject, style, attitude and voice, and uses the same metaphors, as the one just before it? I am fantasizing that old Will had a contest with a pal: Who can write the better sonnet about how “thinking on you” can rescue the poet from the depths of misery? Who can write the better one about Cupid getting his arrow (“brand,” he called it) stolen by a virgin while he slept? And so on. I’m certainly enjoying delving into this.

But here’s the first thing that jumped right out at me: For sheer, low-rent sarcasm expressing how the writer is so enamored of his gal that he’s like her “slave,” just waiting around to do her bidding while she, apparently, doesn’t know or care if he exists, Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 57” falls a distant second to the Statler Brothers’ “Flowers on the Wall,” the great country song written in 1962 or so by Lew DeWitt of Staunton, Va.

Hear me out. Here’s Shakespeare: “Being your slave, what should I do but tend/ Upon the hours and times of your desire?/ I have no precious time at all to spend,/ Nor services to do, till you require.” Here’s DeWitt: “Countin’ flowers on the wall/ That don’t bother me at all/ Playin’ solitaire till dawn/ With a deck of 51/ Smokin’ cigarettes and watchin’ Captain Kangaroo,/ Now don’t tell me/ I’ve nothin’ to do…”

Shakespeare: “Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour/ Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you…” DeWitt: “So please don’t give a thought to me/ I’m really doin’ fine,/ You can always find me here/ I’m havin’ quite a time…”

Well, I could go on, but for my money, DeWitt wins that matchup, hands down.

Running score: Statler Brothers 1, Shakespeare 0. I’ll keep you updated.

In the newsroom, the TV is always on in the Sports Department and, from our vantage point in News, we can’t help seeing what’s going on over there. Now, after suffering through coverage of umpteen holes of the US Open and the seemingly endless British Open (Motto: “Last Man Standing Wins”), which have been very much like a 1930s dance marathon, only on grass, I’ve come up with a new sport, which should replace regular golf immediately: Extreme Golf.

It’s for people without plaid pants. I think college students, especially, would take to it, the way they love Extreme Frisbie. Here’s how you play:

Use regular golf courses. (G-d knows, the Concord’s “Monster” isn’t doing anything right now.) You and your opponent(s), at the starting whistle (OK, you can use a bell, or just yell, “Go!”) must try to be the first one(s) to get a golf ball in the cup by hitting it with the ONE club each player is allowed to use – it can be a putter, a driver, an iron, a wood, a formica, whatever – and/or by throwing it. You cannot run WITH the ball; instead, you run TO it. You can play 9 holes, 18 holes, or any number you like.

There are 2 versions: (A) Whoever wins the most holes –that is, has the fastest time on the most holes — wins the match. (B) A timed version, in which whoever finishes the full 9 or 18 holes (or however many you play) in the fastest time wins. But here’s the thing: There’s defense in it, because you’re allowed at any time you want, to leave off from running after your own ball and instead run to your opponent’s ball, and hit it ONCE with your club, away from the cup. So you could find yourself at some point(s) guarding the cup like a goalie.

You can play one-on-one, but the team version would be most fun: You throw (or hit) the ball to team members who, at the starting whistle, all take off running like hell down the fairway, strategically placing themselves in spots where they’d be most likely to pick up or catch (feel free to use baseball gloves!) the ball that the one guy left behind at the tee, hits or throws. I’m thinking, finishing the whole 18 holes would take less than an hour.

If this sounds to you like a cross between a footrace and demented field-hockey, then you’re understanding it perfectly.

But oh, wouldn’t it be oodles more fun than watching fat white guys walking for hours with a servant, while people whisper near the rough?

And, best of all, in Extreme Golf: NO PLAID PANTS ALLOWED!

i just realized why G-d made St. Patrick’s Day be right before Passover:

So you can get rid of all your beer.

Did you hear that the N.Y. Mets have hired former player Mookie Wilson as their minor-league “Baserunning Coach”?? My immediate reaction was: PLEASE RE-THINK THAT, GUYS.

There’s no way i couldn’t do that job, and i’d do it for probably a tenth the salary they’re paying Mookie (… which would no doubt quadruple my current salary: a win-win!)

OK, i could never keep a secret: Below is exactly what i would do if hired. Here, my friends, are the 3 steps that every successful Baserunning Coach must master.

1. Wait till someone hits the ball. (With the Mets, this could take a very long time.) Anyway, the moment bat meets ball, leap from your seat and charge up the dugout steps, yelling, “Run, you bastard! Run!”

2. When a hitter arrives safely at first base, that’s when you really swing into action. Of course, there’s already a first-base coach there — whom the Mets are paying WAY more than they’re paying you, but let’s not think about that. Instead, think about The Signal you and the players have set up for this very situation. The Signal consists of you, the professional Baserunning Coach, ”wiping your nose” in a secret and very clever way so as to hide the fact that you’re actually “pointing” across the field to the third-base coach — who makes more than you and the first-base coach combined, but let’s ignore that. The goal here is to remind your baserunner to watch the third-base coach, who will tell him how big a lead to take, whether and when to steal, and when and how far to run. In other words, he’s five times more important than you’ll ever be – and makes 20 times more money, but we don’t really care.

3. Go and sit down in the dugout again, looking very thoughtful and clapping your hands a few times. This makes viewers, players, and managment think you’ve done something.

And there you have it. Mookie, take notes and practice, practice, practice; you’ll get it. But meanwhile, i already have it.

So, Mets: If on second thought you realize i’d be every bit as good a Baserunning Coach as the Mookster, and quite a bit cheaper, just give me a call! I’m available.

It occurred to me after yesterday’s “game” that being selected for the NFL Pro Bowl is a lot like being selected for jury duty.

Your mind immediately rushes to what you’d rather be doing that day, how you can get out of it, and who’ll back up your story.

“February 3? It was an honor to be chosen, and i’d love to do it, but i’m going to have a death in the family that day.”

“Your honor, my family’s flying to Costa Rica the day before that, and we’re staying for a week. Non-refundable tickets.”

“My (wife) (girlfriend) is going into labor that day. Yes, we know it already. It’s one of those scheduled deals. She’s overdue already.”

Keep thinking. Keep thinking. You DON’T want to do this.

And yet, most invited participants DO show up, and it never turns out to be as bad as you thought. You even get your travel, meals, and parking expenses paid.

It’s just hard to imagine anyone paying to watch it.

You know what people don’t do anymore? And we used to do it all the time, as kids.

When we were trying to show, in a self-mocking way, that we were very proud of ourselves, or describing someone who was very proud of himself, we’d fold up the fingers (not thumb) of one hand the way you do when you’re just starting to make a fist, hold them in front of our wide-open mouths and make a voiceless, “Hah!” onto them (like you do to your eyeglasses when you’re about to wipe their lenses), and then we’d rub those fingernails several times very quickly up and down the middle of our chests.

We’d do this after some small public recognition, like a teacher saying, “Oh, Genie, thanks for shutting that door during the fire drill!” And then we’d perform this gesture while replying with a little irony, like, “Oh, I know; I’m quite a saint, actually.” Usually spoken with the best imitation we could do of a  British accent.

Did we think that ritzy, upper-class people all had shiny fingernails, and we were polishing ours now, because we had become like one of them?

Or what?

And when and why did that gesture die out? I haven’t seen anyone do that in years.

Please, all you Scholars of Gestures (SOGs), get to the bottom of this for me, would you?

Two of the comments my Web administrators (or whatever you call them — the good folks at SiteGround, i mean) directed straight to my “spam” bin recently are these: “If Charlie and Charles have the same number of letters, and Charlie has two syllables and Charles only one, then in what sense is ‘Charlie’ short for ‘Charles’? And: “If there’s a crumb on your table and you pick it up and break it in half and put both halves back down on the table, are there two crumbs there, or two halves of one crumb?’

Makes me think the standup comic Steven Wright is reading my blog. (Hello, Steven; hello!)

A few days ago i heard a Muslim standup comic on NPR. It occurred to me: The phrase “funny Jew” is a redundancy; “funny Muslim,” an oxymoron.

By a show of hands, please: Who remembers the great Dixie Cups song, “Iko Iko”? Yes, you do: it was a hit arond 1960 and a “novelty song” in that it sounded like a hand-slapping, rope-skipping, counting-out-rhyme, hambone chant: MY grandma and YOUR grandma, sitting by the fire; MY grandma told YOUR grandma, “I’m gonna set your house on fire.”
NOW do you remember it?
i heard it on an AM oldies station the other day for the first time in decades, and i haven’t gotten it out of my head since. It struck me, somehow, as New Orleans/Creole in origin. The nonsense syllables had something French in them: “Iko, iko,” could that be like Creole for the French words for “listen up,” “Ecou(tez)? Turns out, after Webbing around for an hour or so, and hearing Dr. John’s version/explanation and reading some of the guesses on the Web about its origins, and finding out that the Dixie Cups were indeed from New Orleans, i’m convinced that the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians had a chant/shout/song that became the basis for this fun, mysterious song.

Whatever happened to the Dixie Cups, anyway? Hope they’re still getting royalties. (And i hope the guy who REALLY wrote it, James “Sugar Daddy” Crawford, is still getting royalties, too! They fought a wonderful court case over that, which i read all about online.)

i often wonder what it’s like to be, like, 78 and be saying to people, “You know, i used to be a Dixie Cup!” And then the other people at the nursing home would go, “Oh, yeah!” And start slapping their hands, going,  ”MY grandma and YOUR grandma, sitting by the fire…”