There's Such a Lot of World to See

 Sept 26, 2012


As I stood in line at a grocery store earlier today, I heard the cashier say to the customer ahead of me, "Did you hear that Andy Williams died?" The customer, a woman in her 70s at least, didn't react much. It was news to me, but I'd spent much of the morning working on an item that didn't require that I look at Google News, or I would have.

Naturally the articles about him mention "Moon River." You have to wonder whether he ever got tired of it. Maybe not: as the AP reported, "... though 'Moon River' was covered by countless artists and became a hit single for Jerry Butler, Williams made the song his personal brand. In fact, he insisted on it. " 'When I hear anybody else sing it, it's all I can to do stop myself from shouting at the television screen, "No! That's my song!" ' Williams wrote in his 2009 memoir titled, fittingly, Moon River and Me."

Less mentioned in Williams' obits -- not all all, that I could see -- is the The Claudine Longet Invitational, but my mind has some roundabout and peculiar associations sometimes.

New Product Thursday

Sept 20, 2012

Corn and Chile Tomato-Less Salsa. Bottles of this product, containing 13.75 oz. (390g) of salsa without a speck of tomato, are available at Trader Joe's. In case you don't get the point, the verbage on the bottle exclaims (in all caps) NOT ALL SALSAS ARE MADE WITH TOMATOES! "Popular recipes found throughout Mexico & the Tex-Mex border region contain everything but the tomato. [Everything?] We searched for a tomato-less salsa & found a unique recipe with corn, red bell peppers, onion & jalapeño peppers..."

Like I've said before, I like good product-label advertising blarney, and Trader Joe's produces some of the best. The text on the bottle implies that intrepid culinary explorers fanned out throughout Mexico, enduring heat and illness and long bus rides on bad roads to seek out cafés and taquerías and hovels whose tomato-less recipes might be right for Trader Joe's selection of novelties.

Whatever it says on the jar, I have to report that it's a good salsa. But the real reason for that isn't mentioned anywhere in the advertising on the jar, with its listing of corn, red bell peppers, onion & jalapeño peppers, which are nos. 1, 4, 3 and 5, respectively, on the ingredient list. Rather, it's the no. 2 ingredient that makes the salsa sing: sugar.

Downmarket from Trader Joe's, but controlled by the same obscure German billionaires, is Aldi. There you can buy Simply Nature brand Sweet Potato Corn Tortilla Chips. Or maybe it's Simply Nature All Natural Food brand. "Simply Nature" is in much larger text (36 pts, maybe), while "All Natural Food" is maybe 12 pts. So maybe Simply Nature is the headline and All Natural Food is the subhead, to put like a journalist would.

Anyway, it drives home the point that "Nature" and "Natural" on food labels are completely meaningless. This particular product contains corn -- let's assume they mean maize -- and sweet potatoes as ingredients nos. 1 and 2. In as much as I understand the history of maize, it was created by Indians through selective breeding of much less useful ancestor plants, and exists only because of human intervention. So from the get-go, corn is as natural as Hoover Dam.

Never mind, the chips are outrageously tasty. Good, as it happens, with Corn and Chile Tomato-Less Salsa, but also other species of salsa that sport crushed bits of red orbs.

One more thing, not a food item. Yuriko came home not long ago with Valerie Bertinelli brand measuring spoons. I didn't know the actress had any lines of cooking equipment, but I don't know a lot of things. Included are four spoons, 1/4 Tsp, 1/2 Tsp, 1 Tsp, and 1 Tbsp, or 1.25 ml, 2.5 ml, 5 ml, and 15 ml. Google, at least, tells us that 1 Tbsp = 14.7867648 ml, though I'm not sure where the search engine got that number. Seems close enough.

The spoons are stainless steel with blue silicone handles, and are strung together on a small steel triangle like keys on a triangular keychain. They seem like perfectly adequate measuring spoons. The tag has English and French on it -- my guess would be for export to Canada -- and a small picture of Ms. Bertinelli apparently at a picnic table, spooning colorful food (fruit?) from a larger bowl to a serving-sized bowl. She's wearing a bright yellow apron and, either because it's an old picture, or through the magic of modern photography, about 20 years seem to have been shaved off her appearance.

Yuriko didn't have the slightest idea who Valerie Bertinelli was. She was just looking for measuring spoons. But I noticed instantly. I think to fully appreciate Valerie Bertinelli's charms, it helps a lot to have been a 15-year-old boy in 1976 with access to American television.

So Long, Mr. Coffee

I'd been paying some attention to the voyage of Curiosity, but in the last few days only enough to know that the landing was supposed to be today. I figured I would check its progress through the day, but I hadn't noticed that the scheduled landing time was very early in the morning here in North America. So I slept through the Seven Minutes of Terror. I opened up Google News this morning and there they were: numerous stories about the successful landing, an astonishing bit of spacefaring by an unbelievably complicated set of machines.

Here on Earth, more specifically in my kitchen, a much simpler machine gave up the ghost today, our Mr. Coffee. Relatively simple, I have to add, because I understand that Mr. Coffee represents a nifty bit of engineering itself, one that revolutionized home coffee-making in the early '70s, and introduced young TV-watchers to Joe DiMaggio.

I don't have any opinion about the quality of Mr. Coffee coffee, since I don't drink coffee. But Yuriko seemed to like it. Often, late in the afternoon, I would use it to prepare her some coffee to drink after she returns from work. Today, I loaded it up with coffee grounds and water, and flipped the switch. The little green light went on, but other than that, nothing. Tried it a few more times: still nothing. Cleaned it out and tried again. Nothing.

There'd been nothing unusual about the appliance's performance lately or any strange noises. No hint that the end was near after what -- six or seven years on the job? (I can't really remember.) Mr. Coffee just up and died.

Be Not Afear'd; the Isle is Full of Noises

About four years ago I wrote, "the London Games would do well not to ape [the Beijing] show, but instead try for something simpler, more focused on individuals, rather than masses. China's got masses, that's for sure. Western Civilization is about something else."

We watched most of the opening ceremony on Friday, and liked it in spite of NBC's dumbed down, annoying presentation (and its ludicrous decision not to show the implicit 7/7 tribute). I don't know that I'd call the '12 ceremony simpler than '08, since there were a lot of moving parts. Sure was more festive, though.

And something of an answer to Beijing's message: Look here, we're strong and modern! To which the London replied, we invented modern. While having a spot of fun. Do the Chinese have an equivalent to Mr. Bean? Probably they do, but the party mandarins wouldn't dream of putting him front and center before a worldwide audience of a billion.

Ann was full of questions for me: What's that? What are they doing? What's that supposed to be? I told her as much as I could, but the references were flying by. The onrush of British content was something to behold, and must be bewildering if you're nine. Still, she'll pick most of it eventually. Such are the connections between the UK and the rest of the English-speaking world. I was reminded just how fortunate I am, being able to understand (most) of what the British have to offer the world, in the original language.

How is it I never made it to Glastonbury Tor? I don't think it was that obscure before the opening ceremony featured a model of it. But when I visited Bath in '83, which isn't very far away, I probably hadn't heard of it yet. During later visits to the country, it never occurred to me. Ah, well. Just another place to visit if I live long enough (and there are many such places in the British Isles).

We sat through the Parade of Nations, though as usual it was butchered by NBC. Why, for instance, since it's on tape delay, does the network pretend that a number of teams paraded by when the commercials were on? Sometimes the patter of the announcers told me some interesting tidbit about the teams, especially about one or another of the competitors, but a lot of the time their assumption was that the audience didn't know anything about anywhere, and didn't really need to.

Also as usual, I got to wonder how it is that some subnational places get Olympic committees, while others do not. American Samoa, Aruba, Bermuda, the BVI, the Caymans, Guam, Hong Kong, Palestine, Puerto Rico and the USVI all count as non-nation participants, though in the case of Palestine, it's pretty much a de facto nation (or two) and Hong Kong makes sense because it was a distinct entity for so long. But if Puerto Rico can get its own team, why not French Guiana? American Samoa but not French Polynesia? The British Virgin Islands but not Martinique? Maybe Martinique isn't big enough to field a team, but I'm sensing a pattern. French territories compete for the glory of France, or not at all. C'est la vie.

The Olympic cauldron lighting was pretty cool, with 204 copper petals, one for each team, rising up to be conduits for one of the many fingers of the giant flame. Not bad, but it couldn't top Paralympian Antonio Rebollo shooting a flaming arrow into the cauldron in Barcelona (or near it, since I've read the flame wasn't actually lit by his arrow, but who cares). Still, the London lighting was effective, and I didn't learn until today that the unexplained girls in floaty dresses carrying cup-like items along with each team were in fact carrying the copper petals that would be part of the cauldron. Nice touch.

One more question: What about Ringo? Couldn't he have played drums with Sir Paul? I haven't heard that he's ill, and surely he could have played that short set list. Maybe there were other considerations. Still, it would have been fitting.

I suspect the '16 ceremony will be a whole lotta festive. After after, it's Rio. But we'll have to wait and see.

The Big Oranges of Memory

What, Independence Day again? I should have taken the hint when Canada Day came and went so quickly. In honor of the occasion I was going to find some poutine, but had no luck. Anyway, back again on Sunday.

Naturally recollections of The Andy Griffith Show are being dusted off now, but that isn't the only encounter I had with Griffith's entertainments, not counting Matlock, an item best forgotten. Sophomore year in high school, which would put it in 1976 or '77, our English teacher, the remarkable Bill Swinny, played a record featuring Griffith for the class. (Last I heard, Mr. Swinny is still alive in his early 90s. Most remember him as a drama teacher, but he taught English too.)

What we heard was, "What it Was, Was a Football Game," by a young Andy Griffith. It must have been a favorite of Mr. Swinny's, besides an example of how to create a character and a comic situation only by voice. We all would have known Andy Griffith, of course, but it's unlikely that many of us had heard the record, we who were imbibing the antics of Saturday Night Live's original cast at that moment. I know I'd never heard it. I was mildly amused. I think most of the class was.

When I heard that Griffith had died, I remembered hearing the story -- a surprise, since I don't think I'd heard it since that remote day in English class. I didn't remember much, but I remembered Griffith talking about his "big orange." Odd what sticks with you, but it isn't just me. Google "Andy Griffith big orange" and you get all kinds of relevant hits.

In those days, you needed a record and a turntable. Now a computer and high-speed Internet connection are enough. So I decided to listen to "What it Was, Was a Football Game," again. It made me smile, and laugh a few times. Quite an achievement, since a lot of comedy doesn't age well. I'll have to go find a big orange and drink it in memory of the comedian.

Dick Clark's Pyramid

American Bandstand and his New Year's Eve show might be getting most of the mentions with the passing of Dick Clark, but I liked him best as host of The $10,000 Pyramid, my favorite game show. I remember it as far back as the summer of 1973, the first year it was on, and remember its transformation into The $20,000 Pyramid later in the decade (indeed, those were inflationary times). After I quit watching much TV in the early '80s, I seldom saw its later iterations.

Other people, of course, kept up with it. Such as whoever compiled this detailed page on TV Tropes.

But I don't need to know that much to appreciate the show, which contestants won infrequently but just often enough to be interesting, and which combined its visual and auditory elements so well -- the contestants facing each other, the quick flip of the pyramid boards, the lights on the edge of the pyramid, and especially the mechanical drip of the 60-second clock: plonk, plonk, plonk. As if to say, Time is Your Enemy.

Clark added his own touches to the proceedings as well. These are two Winner's Circle clips from 1973 and 1987, well over a decade apart. And what did Clark always say to kick things off in the Winner's Circle? "Here's your first subject. Go!"

The "Zou Bisou Bisou" Tangent

I'm surprised that Lionsgate or AMC, in a fit of copyrighteousness, hasn't quashed this high-quality clip of Megan Draper (Jessica Paré) dancing to "Zou Bisou Bisou," which was a high point of Mad Men's season premiere in late March. Who knows, maybe they've figured out that clips like this will inspire people to seek out the entire episode. You know, as a kind of marketing.

Like most of the audience, I'd never heard of "Zou Bisou Bisou" before seeing the episode, not being as interested in mid-century French pop culture as Matthew Weiner seems to be. But it's a charming song, light and sweet as meringue. Also, it took me on a tangent. I'm often willing to be taken on tangents, which can be little trips from the routine of settled life. First, I went to the Gillian Hills version of the song, the video of which must have been made for the French Scopitones.

Proceeding from that, I learned that nearly 10 years later Gillian Hills was one of the girls with the ice lollies in A Clockwork Orange, and that her father was Denis Hills. They don't make 'em like him any more. Once I started reading about the elder Hills, I remembered where I'd heard of him before.

In 1975, he ran afoul of Idi Amin, who threatened to execute Hills for writing disparaging things about the Conqueror of the British Empire -- foolishly writing them, as Hills was still in Uganda at the time. A wrangle between the UK and Uganda followed, and eventually a message from Queen Elizabeth herself, which presumably stoked the dictator's vanity, persuaded Amin to spring Hills. All of this played out in news reports that year, which I remember hearing (that was also the year Franco died so slowly).

More Evidence of a Misspent Youth

I was doing a phone interview this morning, talking about a certain segment of commercial real estate here in the Chicago area, and the fellow at the other end of the line said, "There are three things driving the market -- no, make that four."

I had an urge to say, "The three drivers are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. No, make that four..." But I held my tongue.

New Year Entertainments

The stretch of days between Christmas and New Year's proved to be brown and dry, at least around here, except for the rain and dank drizzle on Friday, and a weak spot of snow on New Year's Day. It's like November never ended -- the least-white December I've seen since '94 in London, which, a native told us, was a strangely warm month as well. Suits me.

Unlike last year, we didn't happen to see any of the holiday movies showing at theaters, such as We Bought a Cemetery for Christmas, Who Cares About the Adventures of Tintin? or The Girl Regretting Her Dragon Tattoo. I did manage to see Duck Soup on television on New Year's Eve.

That was my nth viewing of that movie at intervals of once every two or three years since the mid-70s. I know all the gags but laughed again all the same, and saw some details I'd never noticed before (or had forgotten). I paid particular close attention this time to Margaret Dumont, whose face was remarkably expressive. I've come to doubt the story that she didn't get most of the brothers' jokes, which sounds like something Groucho would make up.

I also paid closer attention to Edgar Kennedy, the lemonade vendor tormented by Chico and Harpo. Turns out he had quite a career and, if Duck Soup is anything to go by, a fitting sobriquet in "Master of the Slow Burn."

Over the holidays I also chewed at some of the books I've been reading lately, such as The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice Presidency (Jeremy Lott, 2007), an entertaining read that (among many other things) makes a good case for regarding President Tyler more highly. Still, I didn't find myself in the grip of an intensely good book, as I did with True Grit this time last year.

I did spend some time reading the entertaining blog Lifetime, Wow! which consists of reviews of movies shown on the Lifetime Movie Channel. I'm not particularly familiar with Lifetime, but apparently it shows a lot of risible movies, and the bloggers at Lifetime, Wow! shoot those fish in that barrel with glee. The blog's plot synopses are probably more fun than most of the movies themselves.

Teeth & Bones

There will come a time when I see very little children's TV programming, maybe none if I play my cards right. Even now I don't see all that much, but enough to be amazed occasionally at some toy or other I'd never heard of. Such as Dr. Drill & Fill, a Play-Doh-based toy that simulates dentistry. That's a real toy? People really buy that for their children, even those who haven't expressed a desire to grow up and practice dentistry?

Maybe there's a market for this toy among the most demented kids, who like to re-enact scenes like this.

Ann brought home some mouse bones today. This was unexpected. She told me that the bones were created when an owl swallowed a mouse whole, digesting the good-and-soft parts, but later bringing the bones and fur up again. I'm not sure exactly where the school got these bones and pellets -- I like to imagine that the process involves a friendly farmer who owns a large barn staffed with hungry owls, and who cleans the residue and brings it to Ann's school for science class.

Ann's share is in a small clear-plastic Solo cup with a lid. Honestly, the pellets aren't that much to look at -- like fuzzballs that a vacuum picks up. But the bones are interesting. She picked them out of the cup and showed them to me: a skull, a jaw bone, some leg bones. "It's interesting and particular," she said.

Grumbling About Halloween

Against my better judgment, I went with my family to a big box retailer on Sunday that has a lot of Halloween merchandise right now. The store was crowded. The store was noisy. The store was stocked with overpriced faux-macabre trappings for a holiday that doesn't need many trappings. Some of the made-for-dollar-in-China adult costumes were $40 or $50, but even the flimsiest, cheapest item wasn't cheap.

I managed to get out without spending anything, but only because we could go to another big box nearby, one with a different array of normal merchandise that hadn't gone over so heavily toward Halloween. But it was advertising Halloween items at a significant discount, and it turned out to be true. We managed to outfit the girls with some costume items -- things they actually wanted -- for a little less than $15.

Halloween, bah. Or rather, the ridiculous trappings of the day. It's gotten even more annoying since Beldar Conehead complained about it.

Beldar: Oh, Connie, I want no knowledge of this human activity. Halloween, a miserable Earth festival. It is regrettable that the High Master demanded that we return to this planet. On our home planet, Remulak, at this moment, all cones are celebrating the Harvest Under the Moons of Meepzor. Now, that's a party! All the gellato spirots will be harvested and smoked.

Connie: So what? Big deal!

Prymaat: The Harvest of Meepzor, long ago, was when I first saw Beldar's cone. How young and strong he looked as he pursued and captured the greased garfok, which was roasted for all to consume.

Beldar: This miserable Earth festival is nothing but a ritual costume fantasy for the young ones, who move through the night demanding small consumables.

Winter is Nigh, Maude Drove a Truck, and Braces Are Gone

Got a short note from Winter today. Seems he'll be coming soon for a considerable stay. But there's been no freezing temps just yet. We need to harvest those Lilliputian tomatoes still on the vine in the back yard.

I wasn't able to go out among the falling leaves today, but the day wasn't a total loss. I learned (sketchily) the difference between admitted and non-admitted insurance for an article I wrote. Who knows, that factoid might come in handy some other time. Also, I learned mostly by chance -- chance favors the idly curious on the Internet -- that the late Bea Arthur was a truck-driving marine. Who would have guessed that Maude did more time in the service than John Wayne?

Also, Lilly's braces are finally off and she's been fitted with a retainer. The ortho did a fine job. More importantly (for me), I don't have to pay him any more.

Retro Moment

I was in line at the post office today -- something that might be remembered as retro someday -- when I heard a phone ring from ahead of me in the line. Nothing odd in that, except it was a real telephone ring.

That is, a Western Electric ring that anyone my age or even somewhat younger would remember as very common during the period before the breakup of the Phone Company. I was a little startled. Other than at my mother's house (and on old TV shows), that's a ring I never hear any more. I guess the guy with the phone, who probably about 30, was going for a retro-cool ringtone.

Occasionally I toy with the idea of making a list of things most of us never see or hear any more, but I've never gotten around to it. One thing comes to mind is the way -- to give a visual example -- television sets used to power down after they were switched turned off (using a knob). When I was small, I was fascinated by the way the picture compressed quickly into a small, bluish dot that lingered for a while, sometimes drifting away from the center of the screen before it faded completely.

That's as gone as TV station signoffs complete with the National Anthem. Except that online, everything lives on. This is a 1978 Dallas-Fort Worth station signoff, which is close enough to what I saw in San Antonio.

Rajaratnam, Roddenberry & Redshirts

I can't say that I've been following the case of Raj Rajaratnam very closely, but I did note that he was sentenced today for insider trading -- 11 years. I read a NYT article about the sentencing, and it said: "Prosecutors accused Mr. Rajaratnam of using a corrupt network of well-placed tipsters — including former executives of Intel, IBM and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company — to illicitly gain about $70 million."

Rajaratnam is a hedge-fund billionaire, as recently as 2009 the 559th richest person in the world or some such. His elaborate scheme netted him all of $70 million, vast money to almost anyone else, but only about 5 percent of his net worth. What's the psychology of that? He did it for sport? Because he was bored? Because he was absolutely sure the government would never make an example of him? Guess he miscalculated on that score.

He didn't testify, but I doubt that his thinking involved anything as grand as shaping the future (how could it?), as the rich villain Noah Cross told Jake Gittes in Chinatown, when Jake was able to ask him why he'd perpetrated his land grab.

Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?

Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?

Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you're worth. More than 10 million?

Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!

Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?

Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.

I didn't have much time to waste today, but what little I did I spent watching a trio of videos on YouTube posted by one "led4acs." They're fun watching for anyone familiar with the original Star Trek. The videos keep a running track of all the deaths on the show, and illustrate them with well-edited clips and occasional funny comments. The dead include crew members, guest stars, assorted extras, aliens and even the sentient computers that Capt. Kirk manages to destroy.

Some 26 redshirts bite the dust, in case you're wondering. Joining Star Fleet is clearly going to be a lot like shipping out with the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century -- a third or a half of the recruits aren't coming back. Sure, Gene Roddenberry imagined a more rational future for mankind, but Star Trek is also a carnival of death.

This is Part One, followed by Part Two and then Part Three.

No More Gumby for Me

Cool rain ahead, they say. Today seemed to be the last day I could eat lunch on my back-yard deck in some comfort, so I did. A leaf fell into my drink. But that's better than attracting bees, as al fresco summertime lunches sometimes do.

The last lawn mowing of the year was recently as well. Maybe. Part of the function this time of the year is to deal with leaves without raking them.

Gumby gets a Google doodle? Really? Or rather, Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby, is the honoree. His claymation artistry should be acknowledged, I guess, but Gumby the character? Gumby was shown on weekday afternoon kid shows when I was a kid, but I never could get that excited about it.

Yet I'm (sometimes) willing to revise my opinions in the light of new experience, so I looked up an episode of Gumby easily available on YouTube, an early '60s one called "Scrooge Loose," and watched it. Obviously a lot of work on the part of Clokey and his staff, but otherwise I'm still not that impressed, though I did chuckle once.

The Lucille Ball Translation Chain

I Love Lucy was never a favorite of mine, but I did watch a fair number of episodes as a lad, mostly after school, when it tended to be paired with the likes of The Honeymooners. One scene that has stuck with me all these years involved Lucy getting into some scrape in Paris, through a typical hi-larious Lucy misunderstanding, and being hauled in by a gendarme. But the police at the station had no English, and of course Lucy had no French.

Ricky shows up and asks if any of the police speak Spanish. None do, but they bring out a fellow obviously arrested for public drunkenness who speaks German and Spanish. One of the cops can speak German as well as French, so they set up a translation chain: from the monolingual French sergeant to the French/German policeman to the German/Spanish drunk to Spanish/English Ricky to monolingual English Lucy. Even as a kid, I appreciated the comic inspiration of the setup.

Naturally, the clip is on YouTube, and information about the episode is freely available elsewhere (original air date: January 12, 1956). Lucy had paid for something with counterfeit money, it seems. I'd forgotten that detail. But for something I hadn't seen in at least 40 years, I remembered the gist of the scene almost exactly. Guess it made an impression.

I thought of that scene recently when using Google Translate to gather information from some German and French web sites. I wondered what would happen if you ran some famous text through a translation chain. As someone familiar with English signs written by Japanese speakers, I know that human translation can be drop-dead funny. But what about machine translation?

So I ran the Gettysburg Address through a Lucy chain: English to Spanish to German to French and then back again to English. Not as funny as Macho Business Donkey Wrestler, but interesting for its rough spots, and also for the things that came through exactly, such as the famed last phrase. Maybe the equivalent phrase is almost as famed in other languages. Anyway, this is the translation.

For 87 years, our ancestors on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are in a great civil war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We met on a great battlefield of that war. We arrived at a part of the field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live to pay. It is only right and proper that we need to do this.

But in a broader sense, we can not consecrate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have hallowed above our poor power to add or delete. The world will little note nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, but now the unfinished work which they fought so far so nobly dedicated. It is rather for us to be is the big task ahead dedicated - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last and devotion - to solve that this high dead have not died in vain - that this nation under God, then a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

And the original, for reference.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Who Shot What's-His-Name?

I read that All My Children is going to end its run this month after 40-plus years. Not counting spoofs such as Soap and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, it was one of only two soap operas I ever took any interest in. That's because during the 1979-80 academic year at Vanderbilt, my freshman year, I roomed on the fifth floor of Lupton Hall with a fellow named Harry. We'd been put together randomly, or so I assume. I believe random roommate selection is usually a good thing, since you're bound to learn something from your random roommate.

I hope Harry learned something from me. I know I did from him. For example, some people live in Indiana and feel some affection for it. Also, some people care deeply about sports and even have an astonishing talent for sports statistics. Finally, I learned that soap operas have other viewers besides housewives.

Harry, for one. He watched All My Children regularly, even arranged his schedule (I think) so that he could be back in our room to see it. Sometimes other lads from down the hall would watch it, too. TVs were a fairly rare item on the hall, hard as that is to believe. All Harry had was a small black-and-white set.

I watched enough of the show to get the gist of the story sometimes, and knew some of the characters' names. In the spring of 1980 (again, I think), there was a weeks-long story line about the murder of one of the characters, an unlikable man who had many enemies among the other characters. For weeks, it seemed, the show teased the audience with the question of who'd shot the bastard. Come to think of it, that story line might have been inspired by J.R. Ewing's shooting, which was the same spring. The goal of goosing up viewership was certainly the same.

I don't remember how that All My Children story arc played out. But there was a fair amount of speculation about whodunnit among the Lupton 5 residents who came to our room to watch. I made my own suggestion, mostly to annoy Harry, which was the "some guy" theory. That is, none of the regular characters did it. Some guy came in off the street and blew him away.

The Fleas of a Thousand Camels

I had a lot to do today. So naturally I spent some time watching clips of Carnac the Magnificent on YouTube. There seem to be a lot of them posted. As brilliant as Johnny Carson was, the humor is aging fast, and not just because most of the jokes were topical. The tone of the humor is also aging. So it goes.

I'm reminded of a visual gag from a long-lost era that hung in my grandmother's bathroom, which I always saw when I visited her before her death in 1971. It was a small wooden box with a glass window. Attached to the box by a small chain was a small hammer. Behind the glass was a small corn cob. The lettering on the box said, IN CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS.

I also spent a minute or two wondering whether the Smithsonian has possession of the Carnac costume, or at least the headgear. A simple Google search didn't answer that question, so I'm going to leave it alone. But the institution should have it.

It was a treat when Carson did Carnac. The prospect of it always kept me watching the show a little longer. The sketch might have been the first time I ever heard of Funk & Wagnell's, since we didn't have that brand of dictionary around the house that I knew of, and it was already old-timey even in the 1970s. But maybe I heard of it on Laugh-In before that. ("Go look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls.")

Ed McMahon's introductory shtick is easy enough to find.

I hold in my hand these envelopes. As a child of four can plainly see, these envelopes have been hermetically sealed. They've been kept in a #2 mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnell's porch since noon today. No one knows the contents of these envelopes, but you, in your mystical and borderline divine way, will ascertain the answers to these questions having never seen them before.

I also spent time reading an interview with Marshall Brickman about writing for The Tonight Show.

Brickman: One of the things that I’ll go to my grave having to apologize for is having invented the Carnac Saver.

Interviewer: Which was what?

Brickman: Every time Johnny’s character Carnac the Magnificent told a joke that bombed, he would have a line that would save him. Like a “heckler-stopper.” And we would give Johnny a page of these jokes: “May the Great Camel of Giza leave you a present in your undershorts.” I can’t believe we were paid for this.

It's been almost exactly 30 years to the day since the Siss-Boom-Baa gag by Carnac the Magnificent. That's got to be a pop culture milestone of some kind, along with a better-publicized 30th anniversary this week.

Item From the Past: The Eclipse of July 20, 1963

I found this picture in a box of mostly '50s and early '60s black-and-white images at my mother's house last year.

I'm the one sitting on the stairs to the left, the smallest boy in the picture, wearing only shorts. It gets pretty hot in North Texas during the summer, after all. I was a little younger then, just two years old, because according to the information on the back of the print, the photo was taken by my father on July 20, 1963.

The date is significant because there was a solar eclipse visible from much of North America that day -- a partial eclipse from our vantage. According to my brother Jay, 11 at the time and holding a camera in the picture, it was a highly publicized event. Naturally I have no memory of it.

This NASA map shows that totality was visible mostly in Canada, but also in parts of Alaska and Maine. Curiously, the eclipse figures in "Seven Twenty Three," a third-season episode of Mad Men. When Don Draper's daughter and some other school kids are out looking at the eclipse through camera obscuras that a teacher, the fetching Miss Farrell, helps them make, it's a chance for Don to eye Miss Farrell more closely than the eclipse.

Fictional characters weren't the only ones using camera obscuras that day, it seems.

I've experienced a couple of partial solar eclipses that I do remember: one on March 7, 1970 and another on May 30, 1984. In 1970, I made my own camera obscura, which worked well enough even though the day was partly cloudy in San Antonio. Before I went inside, I had to see the thing with my own eyes, despite being warned ad nauseam against it. I glanced upward for an instant and my timing was perfect. I saw the bright disk of the Sun, the dark disk of the Moon, and clouds rolling past them, all in a fraction of a second. No harm done.

In 1984, North America experienced an annular eclipse. I worked part time as a proofreader for a publisher in Nashville in those days, and all of us in the proofreading ghetto noticed a distinct dimming of the daylight. We were in a single-story office building, so we spilled out into the parking lot for a few minutes. The sky was clear and this time I didn't look at the solar or lunar disks. But I didn't need to for the full experience. It was the strangest daylight I've ever seen, as if a dimmer switch had been turning down the Sun.

The 7Up Deco-Psychedelia Mashup

Hot weekend. But it should be here in the Northern Hemisphere, considering that the calendar says July.

I spent some time roaming the vast aisles of a certain do-it-yourself warehouse retailer one day recently, looking for this and that, but mostly looking at this and that. In the men's room of this particular store, I noticed that both of the urinals and one of the three sit-down toilets had OUT OF ORDER signs taped to them. And where is the one place that broken toilets should be fixed quickly? A do-it-yourself store.

Yesterday's posting, which is also posted on Facebook, got a fair amount of attention on that social media site, mostly from my old friends who are in the picture. But one friend of a friend asked if, indeed, that was a bottle of 7Up on the table. It was a liter bottle, I think, in a style that's probably long gone, though I haven't examined any glass 7Up bottles lately. It just seems likely that a design available 30 years ago wouldn't be available any more.

That bottle called to mind this commercial, made in 1974 and aired for some time afterward. Everyone in the room with me that day in 1981 would have seen it any number of times.

Link for Facebook readers.

Watching it again after so many years, I'm taken with the luminous artistry of the thing, created by the fine blending of '20s and '70s styles, visually and musically. What to call that? Psychedelic deco? I'm sure I didn't appreciate it when it was new, as with so many things.

More on the commercial's director, the late Robert Abel, is here. He went on to be a computer animation pioneer, among other things, and seems to have gotten a Clio for his efforts on the "Bubbles" commercial. I hope so. More on 7Up is here, from Snopes, of all places.