From August 18, 2016
Hey, remember this commercial? All about cowboys herding cats instead of cattle. Generally I don’t pay any attention at all to Super Bowl commercials, but this one was really funny, and famous, too. Notice the cowboy carefully rolling cat hairs off his shirt!
From February 12, 2022
The “Cone of Silence” bits from Get Smart were some of the funniest TV comedy ever. Edward Platt (the Chief) never failed to make me laugh; and of course you had Don Adams, too.
It made me laugh then, and it makes me laugh now. They worked up several dozen variations on this theme, every one of them hilarious. YouTube has a bunch of them, if you want to laugh yourself silly.
Get Smart ran from 1965 to 1970. That’s a lot of Cone of Silence gags!
From June 9, 2018
Before the advent of video games featuring blood and guts flying all over the screen, children had to be content with benign, peaceful, harmless games–like this one.
Remco put out “Melvin the Moon Man” in 1959, and it was a hit. My parents got it for us for Christmas, and it was simple enough for all three of us to play: my sister, age 4, my brother, 7, and me, 10. If we had had a cat, he probably could’ve played, too.
You spin the handle of the unique Tumblebum dice glass (that, and the colorful graphics, were the game’s big selling points), and your plastic Spaceman traveled around the United Craters of the Moon collecting Moonbucks. The one with the most Moonbucks wins. No tactics or strategy involved. Just follow the map according to the roll of the dice.
I don’t know what Melvin cost in 1959, but it’s selling on eBay today for up to $150. In 1959 anything over $5 was a major expenditure for my father which my mother would have to weigh carefully. They really must have loved us to buy us silly stuff like this.
And that’s what makes this memory so sweet.
The predicted snow did materialize, but not quite as much as they had forecast. That’s fine with me.
Yesterday, the handymen came and I now have a nice bright fluorescent light in the kitchen. What a difference that makes. No more preparing supper a la flashlight. They were very efficient and were here for only 15 minutes. Now I can see how sadly neglected that kitchen is. That will be one of my projects for next week. That and getting my car to inspection.
Every year, for our anniversary, Lee would make me a card. He was a good cartoonist, and the cards would be decorated with these various characters that he had made up. These characters were featured in the story he would tell me at bedtime. Yes–I got a bedtime story. Every night. Except for the last few years. Today I came upon the large manila envelope that I had saved many of them in. Should I open this–I asked myself.
I did open it and I shouldn’t have. It’s far too soon to look at anything like that. To be honest, it set me off for a while.
It is very gray and overcast today. It looks like it could snow some more, but it isn’t supposed to.
I am going to watch some TV, prepare my supper and go to bed early. As I usually do.
God bless everybody
Patty
From February 14, 2018
So my wife’s new bra was too tight and she wanted to stretch it. She turned to me–without first explaining the situation–and asked, “Would you please wear my bra?”
“Certainly not! I’d look like a pervert.”
“You can wear it backwards.”
“Then I’ll look like a crazy pervert.”
That was a few years ago, but Patty was laughing about it this morning. Ah, memories!
From September 22, 2018
It is not the usual thing for boys to be afraid of dolls. Nevertheless, I knew a boy, who grew up to be a star athlete and a model citizen, who had a dreadful experience with a certain doll. I must not reveal his name, lest he be embarrassed by this anecdote. For the sake of convenience, I’ll call him Ariobarzanes.
As he was a new boy in the neighborhood, my friends and I decided to introduce him to our local wilderness, preparing him with lurid tales of Hangman’s Tree, which stood at the very heart of it. To this day, we whispered to him, as we followed the trail beside the creek, some evil force continued to string up people from that tree. But it ought to be safe to go there in the daytime. Probably.
Meanwhile, my friend Ellen, a very good tree climber, went on ahead to set the stage.
We had poor Ario pretty well pumped up by the time we entered the clearing where the tree glowered down on all of Middlesex County. And there Bobby and I stopped short, pointing and crying out, “Oh, no, not again! Oh, no!”
A hapless little doll hung from the lowest branch, swaying dismally in the wind.
With a great cry, Ariobarzanes turned and ran all the way back home without stopping even once, showing great promise of the track star he would one day be. He didn’t even need to use the path: he made one of his own.
I admit that this was a naughty prank, but Ario soon laughed it off and he and I became great friends. Best freakin’ shortstop we ever had, too.
But now you see, I’m sure, that under the right circumstances, a boy can be scared by a doll.
Sometimes what you knew turned out to be not true.
All this bowing down to children and asking them to please tell us what our public policies should be, reminds me of how wise we all were when I was in fifth grade.
Out on the playground, which was our grove of Academe, we liked to discuss weighty topics with one another: the more philosophically abstruse, the better. We especially liked scientific subjects.
One of the topics we discussed at great length went like this: “Ya know, every time they talk about shooting a rocket to the moon, these two dubular clouds appear on Mars…”
Dubular? What does that mean? Well, nobody asked! Each of us took it for granted that everybody else knew exactly what it meant. I didn’t know, but that didn’t stop me from repeating that baloney. It got so I didn’t have to know what it meant! Just saying it made us sound so wise.
If only adults had listened to us, back then! Obviously they had no appreciation for our childly wisdom.
But that seems to be changing fast.
Keep your eyes peeled for dubular clouds on Mars.
From November 2019
This is from 2017. The picture is a different one, as I couldn’t bring Lee’s picture over, I put a picture of a dog that looked exactly like my little guy from many years ago. Dobie.
All right, so I don’t have a dog. I wouldn’t let my cats read it, either.
Oy, Rodney! by Violet Crepuscular is one of those awful romance novels, but with an added twist: the author has hired goons–formal job description “literary consultants”–to go into bookstores and make thinly veiled threats. The plot ain’t nothin’ to write home about, either.
Can young Lord Jeremy Coldsore, 5th Viscount Atropine, win the love of the aging but still quite homely Dame Margo Cargo, the richest woman in Scurvyshire? Or will the mysterious stranger who looks like Ed Begley, but isn’t, get in first? What is the awful secret concealed under the Vicar’s plastic wading pool? And how come there’s no character in this book actually named Rodney?
I haven’t been this sick since I was in knee-pants.
It’s horrible. Everything hurts. No Daddy to scoop me up from bed and sing Sweet Violets. My wife is very worried. I miss my mother coming up the stairs to serve me ginger ale.
What can I do now, but ask for prayers?
And plenty of ’em.
The trouble I have, posting blog posts on this site! Would you believe it took me 45 minutes to do this?
Well, it’s here now–Rock of Ages, one of the best-loved hymns in Christendom