Category: default || By jt3y

Things I learned from the Internet while I was looking for other things:

...

Good grief!

It's been five years this month since Charles Schulz died. Feb. 13, 2000, to be exact. I can remember exactly where I was when I heard the news, and while I'm soft (in the head, mostly), I'm not too proud to admit I cried a little. I think the idea that he had died the night before his last comic strip was set to run was a little bit too much for me.

...

This is truly a bizarre waste of time. TV Party has posted a page of pilots and promos for '70s TV shows. The promo for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" includes a version of the famous "You've got spunk" scene that you've probably never seen before. You'll also get to see the original anchors of "20/20," who were replaced after the pilot.

...

Have you seen those online services that allow you to create a smaller URL? "Abcde ... Whatever" allows you to create the world's longest email addresses.

...

Why do the people at "Anti-Magnet" hate America?

We don't hate America, we hate that people think slapping a stupid magnet on the back of their car has meaning. Mostly everyone in this country supports the troops and hopes they will return safely. Maybe you should be telling them directly in person, on the phone or in a letter and not driving around with a big magnetic banner you probably got at Wal-Mart that simply attempts to prove to everybody but the troops that you support the troops more than everybody else.

...

Another fake journalist has snuck into a White House press conference, according to Denis Horgan of the Hartford Courant:

Reporter: Yes, Bill Jones here, a.k.a. Tom True, a.k.a. Rev. Wholey Rowler. My tough independent question is, Do you think that the President is even more handsome today than he was a week or ago? And, really, is there any end to how dashing and gallant he can be? Whatta hunk.

...

The Palm Beach man who bought Cracked magazine a few years ago has sold it to a group of Arab investors. One wonders how well poop jokes are going to go over in Bahrain.

...

Should Walt Disney's "Song of the South" --- an animated and live-action feature long believed to be racially insensitive --- be released on home video? An African-American animator who worked on the project thinks so:

Those old enough to have worked at the Mouse House back in the sixties might remember that Disney animated features were often loaned to employees for private screenings. Of course, the films were not meant for the general public. In order for my experiment to work, I had to fudge the rules a bit, but it was worth it. I borrowed a copy of Disney's "Song of the South," and filled a hall with dozens of black families. I threaded the 16mm film into my Bell and Howell projector, and the show began. The audience laughed, cried and cheered the film. It appeared the movie made by a "racist" named Walt Disney failed to enrage black people -- it delighted them. And, it seemed to me that Disney's fear factor was not real, but imagined.

...

Frequent Roger Ebert contributor Andy Ihnatko writes a very funny online column (I hate that word "blog!") called "YellowText."

...

I don't know who runs "Bizbag," but he or she's got a great collection of vintage cartoons from National Lampoon, The New Yorker, and other publications, along with texts from H.L. Mencken, Mark Twain, and other writers and funny, famous quotes. (Warning: Some of the Lampoon stuff is only marginally safe for work viewing.)

...

You can search for --- and purchase! --- photos and advertising art of your favorite GM cars and trucks from the General Motors archives at "GM Photo Store." And even if you're not buying, it's a lot of fun to look at images like this one from 1962 showing kids playing around the new Chevy Impala, Pontiac Bonneville, Cadillac Sedan de Ville, Olds Starfire and Buick Electra 225. (I'd darned near kill for that Olds convertible, by the way.)

...

And finally, Chef Boyardee was a real person. Hector Boiardi was a famous chef who finally opened his own restaurant in Cleveland, from where he began selling jars of his famous spaghetti sauce. He finally had to open a factory to keep up the demand; that operation was eventually sold, and is now part of ConAgra Foods.

Of course, Chef Boiardi would probably gag if he tasted the tomato-flavored library paste that's mass-produced now with his photo on the cans, but he died 20 years ago, so what can he do about it?

No word yet on what Mr. Spaghettios thinks of the products made with his name on them.

...

(OK, before you email me, of course there was no Mr. Spaghetti-o's. The inventor's name was Ralph Miller, but I guess they couldn't call them "Ralph-os," since that's more a description of what you do after you eat them than before.)

(And speaking of anniversaries, Spaghetti-o's are 40 years old this year. Whether that means the concept of Spaghetti-o's or the actual Spaghetti-o's they're selling right now, I leave to your own imagination.)