Fred's Book Club: Pet and 'Net.

Welcome, friends, to another episode in the Humpback Writers series, which runs every week on Wednesday, or Hump Day. Are there actually humps, or camels, or anything like that connected to these books? Beats me. Humps be damned! Sometimes these things are only even books by a stretch of the imagination. 

That applies today, as we have a look at the sad remains of what once, briefly, was a titan of the Internet bubble, now almost entirely forgotten. I am referring to the "author" of a novelty book produced during that wild era, a book featuring a character that was for a short time one of the most popular advertising mascots in the world. And this is that book:

Those of us over age 23 or so will probably remember the brief renown of the commercials for Pets.com. This was a pet supply site founded in 1998 for that World Wide Web thingy, which was advertised by a wacky sock puppet in the shape of a dog, voiced by actor Michael Ian Black. This is that dog, and this is the short book that featured some of his signature humor. 

These are three spreads from the book, and there's not a whole lot more; as it promises on the back cover, "as much as I could fit on a roll of 35mm film." That's about all there is to it. It's short and funny, meant to cash in on the popularity of the commercials. Unfortunately that was about the only thing Pets.com did cash in on. 

In these days of streaming TV I wonder if we'll ever have such an advertising phenomenon again. The puppet was interviewed on network television -- it even was a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. So naturally branded sock puppet products like this book would follow.

This was an era when bales of funding went to any old startup online, after which the entrepreneurs would reveal that they didn't know what they were doing, didn't have any idea how to get a customer base that would support the massive spending used to get things going, were only interested in blowing money on pool tables and employee backrubs and high salaries and nothing else, or some other combination of incompetence and malfeasance. As noted in Wikipedia's necropsy of the site, "Although sales rose dramatically due to the attention [of the sock puppet], the company lost money on most of its sales through mismanagement. Its high public profile during its brief existence made it one of the more notable victims of the dot-com bubble in the 2000s." I'd heard that Petco bought much of the remains of the property, but now the URL Pets.com leads you to the PetSmart site.

Running a pet supply site can be tricky. Pet food in any bulk, canned or bagged, is quite heavy and expensive to ship. Pet owners who know that regulation of pet products is nothing compared to that for human products are often wary of buying online, or at least they were in 2000. Amazon started a pet site called Wag (after losing its own stake in Pets.com), but has pretty much folded it into the regular site now. The real breakout in the field was Chewy.com, which we at Key Casa have found to be an amazing and dedicated site for pet owners. Unfortunately it was bought by PetSmart, whose own site was so-so, but so far Chewy has remained very good and we are regular customers.

As for the sock puppet -- well, you may remember that for a while he was doing ads for auto loans, saying "everyone deserves a second chance." But the ads were not funny, just sad; someone else was doing his distinctive voice, and it was not quite right. It all came to an end soon enough. Sic transit gloria puppi, and all that. 

But in this era where sock puppets are so often in the news, sometimes serving as our politicians, let's pause for a moment to remember a really popular sock puppet, who had a day in the sun that was so brilliant, it was doomed to burn out quickly.

Gotham needs us!

Longtime readers (who are just the greatest, believe me, above average and good-looking, everyone says so) may know I'm a little obsessed with comics, and maybe specifically Batman. They may be aware that I have mentioned Batman many times on this blog -- and have even discussed the famous Bat-Signal that the police use to call the Caped Crusader for help. 

Well, thanks to my wife, I now have my own Bat-Signal!

Yes, it looks like an ordinary Batman-themed pen, as one might see anywhere, but it actually has a secret button that turns it into the Bat-Signal Projector Pen! The batteries inside power the light that shoots the signal from the top, so it can shine anywhere you might need to notify Batman that there is perfidy on the prowl!

On the ceiling! 

On the street!

On the lawn! 

You may say it's silly for a grown man to carry such a thing, but you know, it's a dangerous world. I'll bet that the president carries a pen just like this. If I were him I would insist on using it to sign a big treaty with some important country like Sweden. Just to remind those Swedes that we have Batman and they don't.

I have to admit I've often wondered how the Bat-Signal is supposed to work. You can't just flash it in the sky; it vanishes into the night. Maybe it would shine on a cloud, but what if it's clear? 

The first time I attended an arena concert that used laser light to form words and shapes in the air, I thought it would make a much more effective signal. Would it work in the skies over Gotham? No idea. Maybe just shoot into space or blind pilots. Anyway, they didn't have lasers in 1942, when the Bat-Signal was first seen in a comic book. 

It was all mysterious to me when I was a little kid, when I saw Batman and Robin just get a phone call from the Commissioner and drive over to see him in broad daylight. They used the Bat-Signal only a couple of times on the sixties TV show, although it appeared in cartoon form over the opening and closing credits. 

However it works, the Bat-Signal plays a crucial role in Gotham crimefighting. So the pen is not silly at all. What IS silly are the Bat pants that I got five years ago. Silly, but comfortable. But my wife, who gave them to me, still won't let me wear them outside unless it's pitch-black, and even then she's worried I'll faint or get another concussion and be found there in the morning in my Bat pants. As the Swedes say, Hur pinsamt! (How embarrassing!)

Sail some more.

I was thinking about a new project -- Sail Some More: The Columbus Musical. Doesn't that sound exciting? I've heard that historical musicals are all the rage now, and not quite so likely as other things to get canceled. 

Best of all, we can use existing songs for the show! Most musicals on Broadway no longer debut a raft of new numbers; they use songs very familiar to the audience. If we can get the rights to numbers like these, half the job is done! 

"Money (That's What I Want)" (Court of Ferdinand and Isabella)
"Come Sail Away" (Recruiting crew)
"Stuck Like Glue" (Sargasso Sea)
"Hello, I Love You" (The New World)
"Gold" (Got any dough?)
"Get Back" (Return to Spain)

And so on. 

Now, for a non-stupid take on Columbus Day, I recommend this short article by Dave Seminara in the incomparable City Journal about the destruction of Columbus statues throughout American cities, statues often paid for by proud but poor Italian immigrants of the sort who often faced discrimination here and did not think that films like Goodfellas were a how-to guide:

Columbus’s voyages to the New World did result in the decimation of Native American communities that lived under Spanish rule. But this was obviously not a premeditated genocide—neither Columbus nor anyone alive at the time understood what we now know about infectious diseases and germs. That makes no difference to the woke police, for whom no historical figure born decades or centuries ago can pass muster.

Or you can read my piece from 2017 on how America-hating Islamists have only themselves to blame for the creation of America. 

Here in New York, Governor Andrew "Evil Eyes" Cuomo, the biggest embarrassment to American Italians since Sacco and Venzetti, is unveiling a new statue not of Columbus but of Mother Frances Cabrini in Battery Park. Of course, this being New York, the reason Cuomo got involved is that the literally sainted nun was snubbed by the wife of Kaiser Wilhelm, mayor of New York, when she was putting together a program to honor prominent city women with statues. Cuomo used state funds to add Mother Cabrini. 

It's one of the few moves made by Cuomo that I think is acceptable. It's always worth raising another martini to Mother Cabrini. By doing it on Columbus Day, he also allows Italians to have something to celebrate that is not Columbus, so it is a clever move. Of course, he'd like to have some good press for anything at the moment, if you know what I mean. De Blasio doesn't seem to care anymore, though.

Manhattan has at least not yet lost its famous statue of the bold navigator in Columbus Circle on Central Park West. It helps that it's on the National Register of Historic Places -- also that it's 76 feet above a busy traffic circle and hard for the wokeistas to get at.

Not to mention that the city is still full of Italians who would probably be ready to kick some Antifass if they threatened it. 

Christopher Columbus was no saint, but he suffered plenty for his sins in this life, and most of the things he's hated for by the politically correct were things he didn't even intend to do. Keep alert up there, Chris; let us know if you see them coming for you. 

To Serve Pumpkin.

Jack gets a rude surprise in the bookstore. 

 

Should also note that the book is a real one -- and (sorry, Jack) one of many on the topic. 

The ranch menace.

Why are Americans so fat? 

Well, there are many reasons given for this problem. One is that our food is so plentiful nnd cheap and just tastes so darn good. Another is that healthy foods like kale and okra taste so darn bad. But that's not enough for our lard-studying boffins, who have done deeper dives to determine things like:

1) The 1990s Food Pyramid was a disaster, encouraging the preference of useless sugar over appetite-satiating fat;

2) Technology had led us steadily to a more sedentary lifestyle, removing physical effort from work, going to work, doing household work, traveling anywhere, socializing, and even making food;

3) Fat parents have fatter children, as the former are unable to instill discipline in the latter;

4) Our splintered communities and loss of faith in institutions have led to less self-discipline and more depression, leading to unhealthy habits including poor diet choices.

And so on and so forth. I don't argue with any of it. But they do tend to overlook... THE RANCH MENACE. 

Why is this valley hidden, anyway?
What's it hiding?

I don't think it's any coincidence that our problems with obesity began when ranch dressing moved from a largely unknown condiment to an omnipotent treat. Wikipedia tells us it originated in the 1950s on an actual dude ranch, but didn't reach the wider world until the 1970s, when Clorox bought the brand and started pushing it nationally. 

By the 1980s, "ranch" started to appear as a flavor built into chips. In 1992, ranch topped Italian as Americans' favorite salad dressing. And this is where the problem comes in -- ranch is more fattening than Italian. Original Hidden Valley ranch dressing has 14g of fat, 2g saturated fat, and 130 calories in just two lousy tablespoons. The same amount of Wishbone Italian would yield half the fat, half the saturated fat, and 80 calories. 

And it's not just the numbers. Something about ranch dressing inspires crazed addiction in some people. You never saw Italian Herb Doritos, but Cool Ranch Doritos have been a moneymaker for more than thirty years. People buy ranch dressing by gallon. You want a recipe for ranch dressing ice cream? Kraft has one for you. I've never seen Catalina French ice cream. Ranch fans are a little crazy.

I'm not saying that among the junkies filling the parks and lining the streets of California are helpless ranch addicts, shivering in the morning dew, in need of a creamy fix. But I'm not NOT saying that, either. 

I see that celeb food guy Alton Brown has teamed up with Conagra's Healthy Choice brand to push a line of so-called "Power Dressings," including Creamy Ranch. A glance at the numbers make it look much healthier indeed -- 1.5g fat per 2 tablespoons, 45 calories, no saturated fat -- but will this sate the cravings of the ranch addict? We all know fat tastes good, because it conveys flavor like nothing else. Can it do the job?

I say nay. I think it's a methadone program for ranch addicts, but not as effective, and I believe ranchiacs (as they are sometimes called) will reject it. 

I simply don't think we can make America slim again until we abolish the ranch menace entirely. My slogan for the mission is "If fat we much stanch, abolish the ranch." (All right, I know that requires pronouncing ranch as rahnch, but work with me here.)

A chunk of history.

I found this brick by the site where an old retaining wall had been taken down and a new one put up. 

"Salina 40" is written on it; this meant nothing to me. But a short visit to the Internet yielded some interesting information. 

Salina, Pennsylvania, about five and half hours west of here by car, was a factory town built in the early 1900s to house workers at the Kier Firebrick Company. Kier was quite an operation at the time. Established in 1874, it "was known internationally for building the first continuous tunnel kilns for producing fire brick. The new kilns allowed streamlined manufacturing of the brick, which was more efficient than the traditional beehive-shaped kilns," according to an article in the Trib. The firebrick, which was made with and used to endure extremely high temperatures, is probably the type seen here labeled No. 40 (although according to Steve Nelson of the town's historic society, the No. 9 was supposedly the finest firebrick ever made).

Alas, nothing remains but the brickworks' foundation now. It closed in 1981. I suppose it wasn't a matter of the brick-making all going to China, but rather the demand for firebricks bottoming out. The Trib article said that "A vital part of the Industrial Revolution, fire brick companies were busy in the late 1800s and first half of the 20th century producing the fire brick to line equipment in steel mills and locomotives, both industrial processes involving high heat." But materials science came a long way in the twentieth century, and diesel-electric locomotives overtook steam in the United States between the 1930s and 1950s. 

Still, it's another sign of what happened to Pennsylvania, which at times led the country in oil, natural gas, coal, and steel. This purple swing state seems to have been stuck in a rut for a long time now -- or has it?

Salena Zito, whose first name is coincidentally almost the same as this town, has a different take in one of her periodic dispatches for PJ Media. She finds that there are still plenty of manufacturing jobs in the state of Pennsylvania, but too few people qualified to do them:

For generations, people in the U.S. were known for their work ethic, for making things, for using their hands alongside their intellect, from farming to mining to building roads and bridges. Our parents and grandparents and their parents before them built this country with those types of skills.

     Those same jobs are often not just financially rewarding but also emotionally rewarding, often giving children and grandchildren the opportunity to remain in the communities that suit them rather than migrating to larger cities or faraway states that break up those family and community bonds.

On the other hand, a lot of Americans have reason to distrust factory towns because we know what happens when the factory closes, perhaps because the company went bust or decided to move its jobs elsewhere. It's like the sun went out -- everything in town revolved around one workplace, which granted light and warmth. You can't even leave because your house has lost its value because everyone else wants to leave. The children flee for other places. It's an awful situation.

On the other other hand (get someone to lend a hand), people on the Left tend to look on every instance of manufacturing and think of Blake's dark satanic mills. They act as if the Triangle Shirtwaist fire happened just last Saturday, that nothing has changed in 109 years. For generations, our social elites have despised manufacturing as ecologically dangerous, soul-killing, exploitive, fit only for morons. Few of them have ever spent a day at a real job, I suspect. 

I guess when you've been to college you know everything.  

I certainly don't know everything. I don't know enough mechanics or physics or engineering to get any kind of a advanced job with a plant, but all those things go into it. 

I also have no idea why a Salina No. 40 firebrick wound up in a retaining wall, seemingly all on its own, now left by the side of the road. Some mysteries just have to remain mysterious. 

Putting the fun in fungus.

Isn't the autumn so lovely? The trees, slackers that they are, spend half the year naked, but we must admit they go out with a bang. 

And of course one mustn't forget the DEVIL WEENIES COMING UP IN THE MULCH! 

All right, so it's not actually an evil supernatural phenomenon, although I can imagine someone being scared silly the first time this appeared. And it does seem to fit October, Halloween, and 2020 pretty well. 

What we have here is -- like so many things and people that are repellent -- a fungus. Stinkhorn is the vivid name for the obscene beast, "so called because the slime on the end of its fruiting body gives off an unpleasant odor," according to HGTV. I have not gotten close enough to verify that, nor do I intend to. Life has enough unpleasant odors without going out of one's way to sample more. 

The dogs tend to like things that stink to high heaven, unfortunately, but this is a fenced-off area. They also have not shown any interest. Possibly because I've left the fungi alone to fung-die. The Penn Live site informs us that "They’re called 'stinkhorns' because of their odor when you knock them over." So we won't be doing that. Also, "From a gardener’s viewpoint, stinkhorns are actually beneficial in that they’re helping to decay wood and organic matter into nutrients that plants need to grow." Creative destruction, in other words. 

It only seems to come up in the red mulch I use around the dahlias and rhododendrons and the mums and the one baby azalea. (Don't get the idea that I'm Joe Garden here; those plants all fit neatly along the front of the porch.) I'm sure black mulch has its own fun fungus, but we use the red stuff, so: devil weenies.

It'll probably all be gone by Halloween, which is too bad. I would display the evil stinkhorns with clip-on lights and encourage them to grow. That'd scare the kiddies. Although Governor Corleone might still shut down all the trick-or-treating in New York if he feels like it. Speaking of evil.