America's Culture Imperiled!

And one more article about the loss of America's innocence, precipitated by terrorist activity: The offices of the National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids, contaminated by anthrax spores, will lose their photo and source archives! All those pictures of Batboy gone!

Remembering the Good Old Days

I was "Googling" to see if my hometown newspaper, the Schaller Herald had any online presence yet (it didn't), and stumbled across a web page citing the Herald's editor as one among many who were dumbfounded by an 1898 tour by the pride of Marion, Iowa: the Cherry Sisters. Click the link here to read. Newspapermen in those days had quite a way with the language. Since they were also usually their own typesetters, you'd think they would want to write a bit more tersely.

For those who didn't know, the Cherry Sisters were to vaudeville what Florence Foster Jenkins was to opera, Elva Miller to 60's pop and the Shaggs to rock'n'roll: quite probably the worst to take the stage in that field. The linked article has its own links to other info about the Sisters, including an article that surmises the ladies knew how terrible they were: but they had an agenda.

Catching Up

Finally got a little time to mention: I went to Minneapolis a few weekends ago on business. Spotted two culturally iconic cars during the trip: on a suburban Minneapolis street, I passed a panel van painted to look like The Mystery Machine from the Scooby-Doo cartoons (not the first time I've seen it, or maybe one of many: last year I spotted one in a storage lot in Bourbonnais, Illinois).

Then, while driving home, I was taking the two-lane highway 12 to avoid fighting Wisconsin Dells traffic in the middle of a thunderstorm. As I was coming around the south of Madison, what should be tooling down the opposite lane but one of the Oscar Meyer Wienermobiles! It'd be polite to link this to something, I know, but Oscar Meyer's web site is pretty scant about its Wienermobiles.

Wouldn't it be a just slightly cooler world if there were more cars like this on the highway? It'd sure lighten the morning commute to be stuck in traffic ahead of the Munstermobile.

I just go on, but in a Fair and Balanced way

Okay, I promise, my two absolutely last words on Bob Hope (I can't help it, I'm a pop culture maven). The entertaining TVParty has a feature story on Bob's TV career, which points out how he managed to avoid burning out in the medium like his contemporaries did by only appearing in "specials," instead of weekly sitcoms or variety shows, never more than once a month. And that through the 70s and 80s, despite replacing his jokewriting staff in an effort to shake things up, the only notable attempt and becoming "more contemporary" was to replace Joey Heatherton with Loni Anderson then Brooke Shields. Last Christmas season one of Chicago's public TV stantions ran a 1950 Bob Hope Christmas special it just happened to have, and the skits, jokes and show order were almost exactly the same as they were 30 years later. (But in order to remain Fair and Balanced, I wanna point out that even if his "politcal" humor was more blunted than blunt, he was doing it on the radio and in his live shows at a time when the only other "topical" humor was Fred Allan interviewing Senator Claghorn about his opinions on National Fire Safety Week.

PS, TVParty also has--at this writing--a piece about the great Daws Butler's voice work on cereal commercials, with Real Player movies from his demo reel! See Pixie & Dixie and Mr. Jinx don Beatle wigs to sing about Kellogg's Raisin Bran! See Hokey Wolf disguide himself to steal Corn Flakes from Yogi Bear (and what is the deal with cartoon commercials in which characters steal cereal from each other?!). And best of all, early Cap'n Crunch and Quisp and Quake commercials!

Okay, the other thing is that some of the editorial cartoon memorials also showed an army field helmet hung on a microphone stand, in imitation of a fallen soldier being marked with his rifle stuck into ground. That's well, and good, but a few months earlier, these same cartoonists showed a helmet hung on a large drawing pen in tribute to Bill Mauldin. Pat, I'd like to buy a new idea!

"See? I told you so"

Even Chicago Sun-Times Columnists Richard Roeper agrees!

Memo to the editorial cartoonists of the world: I love the creativity you show in your work, but the next time a celebrity dies and you're thinking about doing a drawing of God or St. Peter greeting the celeb at the gates of heaven, hmmm, maybe not. It's been done about a million times by now. (Not to mention the fact that some of these famous folks hardly led ticket-to-heaven lives.)
Thanks for your consideration.

The final count of editorial cartoons for Bob Hope (collected on Slate.com):
Bob Hope meeting St. Peter: 11
Hope & Crosby in Heaven: 4 (they're playing golf on the clouds in 3 of 'em) But where's Dorothy Lamour? She's dead, too!
Entertaining troops in Heaven: 5
Simple portraits: 6
"Thanks for the memories:" 3.

Hollywood writer Mark Evanier has added lots of good stories and correspondence about Hope on his weblog. Among the fun facts we've learned: Mention the licensed DC Comics series "The Adventures of Bob Hope," and he'd proudly point out that he owned a complete run of the series, which ran from 1950 to the late 60's. Also, that he really did have a photograph of Gen. Patton pi**ing in the Rhine River. It appears from these reminiscences that if you got to visit Bob at home, you were bound to be entertained. Evanier also points out that most of these cartoonists seem to be totally unable to draw Bob Hope! The most distinctive schnozz in the entertainment world! Come on!

And yes, my ranting was originally inspired by an essay written a few years back by George Carlin. He has reprinted it on his own website. Carlin was more accurate than even he could have imagined: CBS really did have the major Bob Hope tribute special, not NBC.