PMSimon.com

The convention ended with the usual routine- nobody recovered from Friday night (Beer! Another beer! Unlimited meat! More beer!) early enough to make the morning sessions, they did the luncheon (hosted as always by Mr. Sabo), and the moment the luncheon was over, hundreds of people disappeared more completely than if David Copperfield had set up mirrors. Seriously, I saw people actually breaking into a sprint out the door as soon as the last "thank you" hit the PA. I think there were scorch marks on H Street towards Union Station from the stampede heading for Amtrak. I wasn't joining the exodus- one of the distinct pleasures of going to DC in alternate years for this convention is that I get to visit my friends the Scott family after the radio stuff's done- so I stayed in the lobby killing a few moments waiting for them to arrive, and that's when the guns showed up.

When the radio people checked out, another convention checked in, this one for a political action committee which represents a cause that makes some folks upset. It's not that the PAC's cause is bad, it's that, well, some people out there hate the nation that the PAC represents and the religion with which it's associated, hate them so much that they would like to wipe them off the map. And I was unaware that they were in the hotel- MY hotel- until I saw the armed guards walk by and the big projection TV screens overhead which had switched from CNN Headline News to instructions on registration for the newcomers. My friends saw a bus pull up to the hotel, accompanied by a police escort.

Shouldn't they warn people about that? I might have chosen another place to stay that night had I known that... oh, right, they wanted me to stay right there and pay for another night. Never mind.

So after a lovely evening on Chesapeake Bay and in Annapolis, I returned to Camp Renaissance, where the guards were still lurking and the folks from the PAC were partying all night long in my hallway, which made the prospect of getting up at 4:30 am Eastern pretty horrifying. No sleep, no sleep on the plane, no sleep today, no sleep. I've been up since the equivalent of 1:30 this morning, Pacific time. Brutal. I'm so loopy right now, I can swear I just heard them give the Best Picture Oscar to "Crash."

But I know that can't be true. It's the exhaustion talking.

 Share

Travel's caught up with me- brain's fried, sleep necessary. Long day. Don't even have another thought about the Oscars. It all just kinda flew right out of my head.

I'll try again tomorrow.

 Share

Back to the old basketball programs and media guides for another round of "Where Were They Then?" This time, it's the special "Let's Marvel At How They've Changed" edition. Ready? Let's begin.

First, you know what happened to this youngster, depicted in the 1974-75 Spirits of St. Louis yearbook:

He was 22 at the time, and check out that glare. He looks like he wants to kill the photographer. And before you laugh at the mop on his head, we ALL looked like that in 1974. They'd laugh at you if your hair was short.

These guys on the Notre Dame team that played at UCLA on December 9, 1978, from whence this program came, went on to the NBA, and are still around, Laimbeer coaching in the WNBA and Tripucka scouting for the Knicks:

Here's the tough guy now:

And here's Tripucka now:

Weirdly enough, Tripucka was the star of Bloomfield High when they played my high school team, and Laimbeer went to the high school up the road from where I now live. And doesn't the young Kelly Tripucka look like Jon "Napoleon Dynamite" Heder?

Now, here's the big finale. Who's this young San Antonio Spur with the big mop of hair?

Here's another shot- he's the third from the left:

Oh, okay, here he is as a rookie:

And here he is as you know him now, on the left, of course, as the coach of the Denver Nuggets:

I mean not to make fun of the guy for losing his hair, bulking up, getting older. We all do it, and Lord knows I'm not fitting into the clothes I wore at age 22, either.

My point? Aging sucks.

But you know that.

 Share

From some TV Guides in 1964-66, proof that Nabisco hasn't had an unblemished track record in snack development:

Perhaps it's just me, but does ham strike you as what you want your snack cracker or chip to taste like?

Crackers and salty snacks shouldn't taste like meat. You can put meat ON them, but they should not taste like meat. (Unless they ARE meat, like pork rinds or jerky)

(Note: The ad says these are shaped "funny." Yeah, they're hilarious.)

I'd say it for beef, too, and chicken's dicey as well, but under no circumstances should a cracker or Cheeto-equivalent taste like pork. No wonder you don't see these in stores today. (You DO see Chicken in a Biskit or whatever those crackers are called, but that's right on the borderline- you COULD use chicken broth in the baking process. But not pork. No pork. Are we clear on this?)

 Share

Just browsing through some more old TV Guides- hey, you do heroin, I look at old magazines- and found a few

things....

One evening in 1977, you may have plopped down in the Laz-E-Boy, pulled out the new TV Guide, and saw this:

True confessions: I never saw "Roots." I never saw "Titanic" or countless other "universal" TV and movie events.

That's not to say they're not any good- can't tell you, 'cause I never saw them. Why? Dunno. Just didn't strike

me as my kind of entertainment. I never go to see sad or overly serious movies, don't like soap operas. I'd rather

watch "Odd Couple" reruns. Does that make me a bad person?

Now, this evening was priceless:

Arnold meets The Greatest! Followed by "Hello, Larry!" Co-starring Meadowlark Lemon! Damn straight I'm watching

that! (I probably did...)

And then there was this attempt:

The ads tried to make it Canada's "All in the Family," but it wasn't- the King ("Larry King," no joke) was more of a warmhearted sort. But check this out- among the guest stars during this sitcom's run were Eugene Levy, John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, Robin Duke, Tony Rosato... most of the eventual "SCTV" cast. And Maury Chaykin, Linda Thorson, Saul Rubinek, Helen Shaver, and, yes, Mike Myers. And the star, the late Al Waxman, went on to success on American TV in "Cagney and Lacey" and as one of those "that guy" character actors.

And the show STILL kinda sucked. You can get all the best Canadian actors available, but it helps to give them a funny script.

 Share

It's actually very cool that this is happening: several cartoonists are pitching in with one comic strip each to fill in for "Big Top" cartoonist Rob Harrell, who's recovering from the removal and treatment of a cancerous tumor behind his eye. You can read about it here and see the results here- the cartoonists each take the regular characters and spin them their own way. As I said, it's pretty cool.

And it reminded me of the one and only time I took off and had someone else fill in- that was about six years ago, when we went to Hawaii for a week and I arranged for some of my regular Talk Topics contributors to post items for me. They did a great job. And all I got was complaints- why wasn't I there, where was I, why did I abandon everyone. And it wasn't that I'm so damn special- no, they just didn't like the break in continuity.

I hope Rob Harrell's readers aren't that way. If they are, he may end up like me, lugging a laptop everywhere I go, lest I get another wave of indignant reaction. Vacation? Not unless I'm ready to face a firing squad.

 Share

Mr. Boh is back, sort of, in Baltimore, where there's a big market for nostalgia and the beer icon is selling on souvenirs and even on a tall building, where they've put a neon winking Mr. Boh on top. Mr. Boh was the character on commercials and labels for National Bohemian beer, a Baltimore brew known as "Natty Boh." It still exists, but only as a label for a beer brewed by Pabst. There's an article in today's Baltimore Sun about it, with a clip from a documentary about Mr. Boh and Natty Boh- read it by clicking here.

(And there are some great old Natty Boh commercials here)

Beer wasn't always a business dominated by huge, taste-free national brands. You had Rheingold in New York, Schmidt's and Ortlieb's in Philly, Yuengling in York, Narragansett in New England, Hamm's in the Midwest, Old Style, Pearl, Iron City, Rainier, Utica Club, Genesee Cream Ale, lots of local and regional brands. Most of these still exist, some the same as ever, most only as labels- Heileman, then Pabst ended up brewing a lot of them, and they're now brewed by another company under contract with Pabst, which owns the names. They all taste the same now. And they pretty mich all did back then, too.

But there was something good about having different dominant regional and local beers, just like it was cool to have different local and regional department store chains and gas station brands and everything else. It was a sense of being in a specific place- you could identify by the local brands and stores where you were. Then, Philadelphia was Schmidt's and Ortlieb's and Strawbridge and Wanamakers, Seattle was Olympia and Rainier and the Bon, Detroit was Stroh's and Hudsons. Now, every place is Budweiser and Macy's. In some ways, that's better- you know what to expect when you're in a strange city, and your credit cards are good everywhere. Doesn't matter- I still miss those little differences.

But not the beer. Schmidt's sucked and gave you the runs. At a quarter a glass at Roache's bar on Lancaster Avenue, along with a great Roacheburger on a hard roll, it was fine. On its own, a quarter was too much.

And now, I'm thirsty. There's a Red Hook in the fridge. The actual beer is better nowadays, come to think of it.

 Share