Category Archives: Entertainment

The No Name Storm

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Heavy snow this evening, but it didn’t rise to the level of blizzard. For one thing, there was practically no wind. First rain, than big snow flakes fell almost straight down. Nothing like the promised blizzard in the Northeast, which the Weather Channel is trying to name after a fictional submarine captain or a spunky animated clown fish.

Name winter storms? No, if it’s a real corker, the likes of the “Great Blizzard of 1888” or the “Armistice Day Blizzard,” or the “Blizzard of 1978” will do. Trying to name a winter storm like a hurricane is just the Weather Channel drifting a little more toward infotainment. I’m with the National Weather Service on that score: no names for winter storms.

And speaking of which: no to the new cat Monopoly token. There’s a dog token, of course, but dogs are loyal creatures who will follow you around the board. Cats will lounge around Free Parking all day, waiting to be fed. I’m old enough to remember to man-on-horseback and cannon tokens, which shouldn’t have been retired either. When it comes to weather nomenclature and Monopoly, I’m a mossbacked reactionary.

More Bullwinkle

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Sometime in 1987, I bought a Bullwinkle clock at a clock shop in Water Tower Place. It’s one of only a few things I ever remember buying at that mall on Michigan Ave. It was an impulse purchase. When I saw it, I knew I had to have it.

Note that the numbers are in reverse order. The hands moved counterclockwise, and the clock kept good time, only backwards. I hung it in my apartment in Chicago from ’87 to ’90, and more than one person commented on how confusing the clock was.

Near Bullwinkle is a copyright mark, “1987 P.A.T. Ward,” so I hope the $20 or so I spend provided a bit of income to Jay Ward (d. 1989), who deserved to profit mightily from Bullwinkle. On the back is “H.I. Enterprises, Milwaukee.” Not Frostbite Falls, but not too far away.

At some point (I think), a battery leaked and damaged the movement, so it doesn’t run any more. But years ago I hung it on the wall in my office over the large bookcase all the same. Recently I took it down for dusting, and had Ann pose with it.

New Media Moose & Squirrel

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Not long ago, Ann wanted to see something on Hulu, and came to me for suggestions. I discovered that regular old Hulu, not the pay-extra Hulu, offers Rocky and Bullwinkle. I picked Season 2, Episode 1, the beginning of the shaggy-moose story about Upsidasium.

Upon further investigation, I discovered that as a story arc, “Upsidasium” has its own Wiki page. According to that source, it was the second-longest story arc for Moose & Squirrel, coming in at 36 episodes. The fictional metal also appears on this list.

Ann’s taken a liking to the show, and asks to watch it more often than I have time for, and we’re not done with the Upsidasium story yet. We have some Rocky and Bullwinkle on VHS (or, to be pedantic, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends), but it’s been years since she’s seen any of those.

She’s also been taking pictures of some of the characters. I thought the one she took of Mr. Know-It-All (above, in a sauna) turned out well, considering it’s a shot of a video in progress on a laptop. This is a Mr. Know-It-All I’m particularly fond of.

Thursday Salmagundi

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While working on an article the other day, I came across a press release that said in part: “Seminole Classic Casino, the first Native American Casino in the country, today celebrated its grand re-opening…. Seminole Gaming CEO Jim Allen provided welcoming remarks and historical background of the casino, while Good Times television personality Jimmie ‘J.J.’ Walker warmed-up the crowd with Tribal and 1970s trivia.”

Jimmie Walker. Now there’s a name I hadn’t heard in a long time. I hope the Seminoles paid him a reasonable amount. Even has-beens have to make some kind of living. 1970s trivia? Such as, “What was Jimmie Walker’s catchphrase?” I’m not going to repeat it here. If you know it, you know it. If not, leave it be.

Snippet of recent conversation:

Ann: “Lance Armstrong, he’s the one who went to the Moon?”

Me: “No, that was Neil Armstrong. He was a test pilot, astronaut and explorer. Lance Armstrong is a guy who can stand riding a bicycle for hours and hours.” (Link includes salty George Carlin language.) (And if you’re going to sit on a bike for that long, maybe you need the drugs.)

I was toying with the idea of reading only books that I already own this year. Got a fair number on the shelves that I haven’t gotten around to, after all. But I was at the library the other day and that notion flew out the window. I was looking for The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey  (Candice Millard), which is about TR’s expedition to one of the remotest of the Amazon’s tributaries in 1914, but it was checked out, so I checked out 1920: The Year of Six Presidents by David Pietrusza.

Not that there were six serving U.S. presidents in 1920, unlike the four emperors of AD 69. Just one: Wilson, a shadow of his former self by then. But the book promises to track TR (odd, since he was dead by 1920), Harding, Coolidge, Hoover and FDR and their involvement in the 1920 election. I’ve only read a few chapters. So far, not bad, but Pietrusza has a few annoying writing tics, and I’ve spotted a couple of small errors. The Armistice did not, for example, take place at 11:11 am.

I’m going to stick with it for now, because 1920 was a pretty interesting year in this country, besides for the election of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge: the last of the Palmer raids and the Red Scare, the beginning of Prohibition, the Wall Street bombing, the final push to secure women’s suffrage, and the first commercial radio station on the air, whose first broadcast concerned the results of the election. Among other things.

I just looked up salmagundi, long a favorite word. Never looked into its origin before. I’d have guessed it was one of those words the English language picked up in British India. Sounds like it, doesn’t it? “Sahib, the salmagundi is served.”

But no. My American Heritage New College Dictionary tells me it’s from French, salmigondis, and before that, origin obscure. Just another one of the French food words, then. Maybe next time I’ll call a jumble like this a gallimaufry, another good word that needs more use, also with a Frenchy origin.

More on Fibber

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After mentioning Fibber McGee yesterday, I found an episode of Fibber McGee & Molly online and listened to it in segments, between everything else that I had to do. It’s been a while, but I’ve heard the show before on WDCB’s old-time radio program. The particular episode I just heard, dating from early 1941, deals with Fibber erroneously believing he’s been drafted. It didn’t include his closet.

Most of the comedy stems from the disbelief of various characters to Fibber’s news. He had been, after all, “in the last war.” (Something about working in a kitchen the whole time; no one called it the Great War, but there was a mention of Gen. Pershing)  The show holds up better than some (much) radio comedy from the era. The oddest thing to modern ears is the way one of the characters lapses into talking about the sponsor, Johnson Wax.

And when did linoleum become so important as a flooring? The late 19th century, come to find out, so that few listeners in 1941 would have remembered a time without it. To hear Johnson Wax tell it, of course, keeping your linoleum floors clean and shiny is a top priority.

Fibber McGee’s Garage

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Winter warm through most of Friday and Saturday – in the 50s at times – and then freezing rain came on Saturday night, followed by normal January temps again plus ice. Not major ice, just enough to leave thin sheets underfoot here and there, which I coated with sand. Why isn’t sand more popular for dealing with icy patches? It doesn’t melt the ice, but it neutralizes the slip danger, which is what matters.

But I couldn’t deal with the ice sheet on the Sienna with sand. Lilly wanted to practice some driving on Sunday, so I made her chip parts of the ice off the windows with me. If you’re going to have a car in the North, and a two-car garage organized by Fibber McGee so that only one car goes in there, you’ll have to de-ice your car windows sometimes.

I wonder how long Fibber McGee’s closet will be a widely understood reference. Or has it already passed into obscurity, and I didn’t get the memo? It’s easy to ignore that kind of change. I do it all the time. Then again, you can’t ever know what’s going to die out in the age of YouTube. (This is cheating, since it isn’t the radio show, but it’s still worth a link.)

At the Movies With Lincoln

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Lilly didn’t want to go to the movies by herself on Saturday. Her mother and younger sister were going to one picture she didn’t want to see, and I was going to another, and we each offered to take her to our respective multiplexes to see something else of her choosing. Hastily texted friends couldn’t make it, so she stayed home.

Maybe it’s a function of being a 15-year-old girl. I don’t ever remember being reluctant to park myself alone in a movie theater. If I’d never gone to the movies by myself, particularly in my early 20s, there’s a lot of worthwhile ones I might never have seen. One of my early experiences along those lines was seeing a revival of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Broadway Theatre in Alamo Heights when I was younger than her — too young to really appreciate it, but I was wowed by the spaceships. Of course, going alone would defeat the purpose at some movies, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I went to see Lincoln. Been meaning to for a while. Aside from a few quibbles, such as (especially) the business about the soldiers reciting the Gettysburg Address and the stretcher that had Mrs. Lincoln and her black servant attending the debate in the House regarding the 13th Amendment, along with some lesser odd details, it’s rousing good historical fiction, about as good as you’re going to get in a movie.

The Mad Little Boot

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I, Claudius, that remarkable combination of comedy and horror, is worth watching (again) for many reasons, but few better than seeing John Hurt do Caligula. Such as in this scene, which only goes to show there’s no profit in reasoning with a lunatic who also happens to hold absolute power.

It’s all a fine production all the way through, but once Caligula is offed, the story loses a bit of its spark. A bit of its insane spark, that is.

Christmas Morning ’12

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Christmas morning isn’t quite the land rush it used to be, but the girls still want to open their presents as they always have. Ann had some trouble going to sleep on Christmas Eve, but that was because she’d slept late that morning, rather than excess excitement for Christmas morning (though there was strong anticipation).

Gift cards, clothes, a little money, toys for Ann, a lot of sweets—it was all in the mix.

This year on Christmas and on the Sunday before, I managed to catch a few hours of a radio show devoted to Christmas music oddities hosted by two guys called Johnny & Andy on WDCB, the public radio station at the College of DuPage. I’d heard them years ago, maybe even these shows, since this year’s seemed to be rebroadcasts from earlier years.

So I got to hear “Solar System Simon, Santa’s Supersonic Son,” by one Francis Smith, which I haven’t heard in years. I’d forgotten how bluegrass-like it was. I’m also happy to report that when you Google that title, mid-2000s BTST entries turn up. Space Age Santa songs seemed to form a short-lived, and little remembered, subgenre of Christmas songs ca mid-1950s. Johnny & Andy even played a song of that exact name by I-forget-who-and-am-too-lazy-to-look-up (that guy records a lot of songs).

Other Christmas recordings played by Johnny & Andy included elf songs, Cajin-themed holiday tunes, Christmas polkas, and songs that tried to capitalize on the monster success of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” all in vain. One involved putting a light on Dasher’s tail, another had two reindeer named Percival and Chauncy becoming Donder and Blitzen, and one parody included the line, “Rudolph is lazy, tired, and has been fired.”

Even Gene Autry recorded other reindeer-themed songs, such as “32 Feet – 8 Little Tails,” and “Nine Little Reindeer,” which aren’t exactly forgotten, but hardly the hit Rudolph was. Then again, Autry recorded a lot of Christmas songs.

Christmas Tintinnabulation

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Ann wanted to go to the library last night, and when we got there we chanced on a performance of the Random Ringers, a handbell ensemble. They were playing in a part of the Schaumburg Township Library sometimes given over to movies and small concerts, with about 50 people watching.

The ringers were more than half finished when we got there. Ann wasn’t especially charmed by the music, but I insisted on staying for a few songs, because I liked them—especially the large bells. The handy “Major American Handbells Sizes and Weights for Diatonic Pitches” says that the bells can weigh as little as 7 oz. or more than 18 lbs. I’m not sure the largest of the Random Ringers’ bells were at the large end of that scale, but they looked big enough to be weapons.

The Random Ringers include 12 performers and a conductor, Beth McFarland of Mundelein, Ill. “Random Ringers is a community-based choir and not affiliated with any religious environment, but most members ring in their own churches,” says the concert program (leaflet, really). “Members hail from the North and Northwest suburbs and practice in Arlington Heights each Monday night.”

We heard “Welcome Christmas,” “Good Christian Men Rejoice,” “He is Born” and “Silent Night.” A fine tintinnabulation, it was.