Recently in Whimsy Category
Bob & Ray on the Internet Archive
A vast treasure-house of great radio comedy, spoofing the pomposity of mass media, the dry sort of humor that sneaks up on you.
An early day Rainman, and an interesting look at change in word meanings:
"IDIOT STRONG ON FIGURES"
"Mentally Unbalanced, but Can Outdistance Reliable Calculators."
"Before a Hamburg Medical society a 'perfect idiot' was produced who is able, it is said, to outdistance the most reliable calculator in the world. He is twenty-five years old, of good physique, but mentally unbalanced.... Questioned as to the day of the week in dates during the past year or century, he answered after a few moments' reflection counting in the leap years. As an adding machine he does wonders, but in all other respect he has no sense whatever."
Why Bill Watterson Vanished - The American Conservative
"The trouble with Calvin and Hobbes started at the very beginning, when Watterson was a year out of college. In those days, he was nothing if not earnest. He was working at the Cincinnati Enquirer as a political cartoonist, a job he had scored through Jim Borgman, a school connection on the paper's staff. (Borgman is better known now for illustrating Zits.) The job was a bad fit: Watterson had no feel for horse race politics. At Kenyon College, he had studied political science under the school's resident Straussians, reading Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke--but decontextualized theories of political life did him little good in the 1980 presidential primaries, which he had been assigned to cover. Watterson recalls absentmindedly doodling George H.W. Bush in an editorial board meeting as the rest of the staff drilled the future vice president on Ronald Reagan's fitness for office. He felt totally lost. Within a few months, he was fired.
"Then came a long period of bitterness. Watterson moved back in with his parents and took a job designing layouts for a weekly free ad sheet which was handed out at his local grocery store. He received minimum wage and slaved in a windowless basement office. His boss shouted at him frequently. His car was in constant need of repair. During his lunch break, he read books in a cemetery. He did this job for four years.
"And he developed a monomania that would become the force behind his life's work. He had failed at politics. He could feel himself failing at advertising. There was only one other career he could envision, and it was in humor. But there was nothing funny about how he achieved it. Calvin and Hobbes was conceived in desperation and executed in panic."
A Brief History of the Plastic Pink Flamingo - New England Historical Society
"Then in the 1930s another invention put Leominster on the path of birthing the plastic pink flamingo. A German-American named Samuel Foster started a company called Foster Grant. In 1931 he visited a New York factory and saw an injection molding machine. He immediately ordered several and had them shipped to Worcester. He then had a team of mechanics and engineers spend two years modifying them so they worked.
"In 1937, Foster Grant churned out 20 million sunglasses. The next year, Tupperware started up in Leominster....
"Featherstone designed the pink flamingo based on photographs in National Geographic Magazine. Sold in pairs, they went on sale in 1958 for $2.76. The Sears catalogue carried them, with the instructions, 'Place in garden, lawn, to beautify landscape.'"
The Secret Life of Beatrix Potter | The New Yorker
Review of a new book about Beatrix Potter. In 2018, our family visited the gallery in the office of Potter's lawyer husband, in Hawkshead, Lancashire, in the Lake District.
"In early adulthood, Potter observed her pets closely, inventing narratives about them, and filling her letters to the children of friends with their adventures. Her dispatches are playful and alive, illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings of rabbits.... Potter sent the Moore children story after story in illustrated letters, until Noel's mother suggested that she try to turn them into books. (The children had saved their copies.) In 1901, Potter self-published the first edition of 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit,' which appeared almost exactly as she had written it to Noel, down to Peter's 'blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new.'... Potter believed that her first books found an audience because they were written for real children. 'It is much more satisfactory to address a real live child,' she wrote. 'I often think that that was the secret of the success of Peter Rabbit, it was written to a child--not made to order.'"
Were McDonald's Fries Better Before the '90s? - The Ringer
Malcolm Gladwell on McDonald's French Fries: "I mean, it's a french fry. It's never going to be a healthy product. And it turns out to be false that vegetable oil is healthier for you than beef tallow. That's also wrong. So not only did they destroy the french fry, they gave us something that was worse for us from a health perspective. So everything about it was a mistake. If they had any balls at all, they would turn around and say, 'We were wrong, and we're going back to fries the old way.'" (Via Atlas Obscura, which mentions that McDonald's original oil blend was an accident of cost-cutting. "By providing clients with a blend of about 7% vegetable oil and 93% beef tallow, [Interstate Foods] could extend the oil's shelf life without the use of costly [hydrogenation] machinery.")
Inside Jeff Overturf's Head: "Gopo Gossum!" - Wally Wood - Mad Monday!
Color scans of the Mad Magazine parody of Walt Kelly's Pogo comic strip.
Descriptions and videos of training drills for warm-up, batting, bowling, and fielding, and descriptions of modified cricket games that can be played with a limited number of players or a limited space.
(See also MegaCricket, a kids' version played six-a-side with a 6" tennis ball.)
Phil Silvers Interview, CJCL Radio, 1983 by RadioGuy
"One of the hosts read an article that Silvers, a one-time huge movie, TV and Broadway star, was feeling depressed after a stroke and felt forgotten. So one night, after getting in touch with his agent, he managed to get the actor's home phone number and the fallen star agreed to do a rare radio interview looking back at his life.
"It was supposed to be a half hour chat. But when the phones went crazy with fans, Silvers got so into it and felt so much love from the audience, that they cancelled all the following programming and just kept going. (Despite saying his stroke prevented him doing the Sgt. Bilko yell, he finally does do it towards the end.)
"What started at midnight ended up running until 3 in the morning Eastern time and probably could have gone longer."
Philosophia Christi: Whether Augustine's Name Should Be Pronounced AW-gus-teen or aw-GUS-tin?
Biola philosophy Prof. David Horner: "Now, it should be remembered that the issue here is one of grammar, and not one of eternal happiness. It is possible for one to be mistaken in this matter and still to lead a flourishing, albeit less perfectly flourishing, life. Unfortunately some demand slavish conformity to AW-gus-teen as if it were obligatory, and thus "tie up heavy loads and put them upon men's shoulders" (Matt. 23:4). By contrast, we who seek "the more excellent way" (1 Cor. 12:31) of pronunciation are yet able to welcome into our midst those who choose the other path, while, of course, not affirming their choice as equally appropriate. Indeed, some of those who persist in and even insist upon pronouncing Augustine's name as AW-gus-teen are our friends.... In sum, as it has been wisely said: in Florida it's AW-gus-teen, but in heaven it's aw-GUS-tin. And we should certainly not confuse the two places."
