Pants macabre.

I've lost four pairs of jeans because of this move already, and if I lose anymore I will be walking around like the guy in the barrel. 

Yeah, him
again

It has become ridiculous. 

The day we left the house, after spending a full day of work getting stuff together and working with the movers to load of the truck, I had intended to take a fast shower and then head out the door, leaving New York behind. This did not happen. The day was so arduous that my wife determined that we would never make it to our new home alive if we set out then, so we just left as is and went to a local hotel (since we were required to be out of the house that night). Of course, I left my favorite pair of jeans and a shirt hanging in the bathroom, where I had intended to change into them after my shower. I did not realize this. When I showered in the hotel, I figured I had just packed them somewhere and couldn't find them. Only a day and hundreds of miles later did I realize what I'd done. 

Jeans total: -1

On arrival in our new state, we checked into another hotel. Our things were roaming the land, as I noted in my last blog entry. I was pretty sure my second-favorite pair of jeans was in one of the boxes, but as of today, a couple of weeks later, they have yet to show. 

Jeans total: -2

So I ordered a couple of pairs from JCPennney. Mock if you well, but their stuff has always fit me well. I got the notice yesterday that my package of jeans had been delivered . . . to my old address. I did not give Penney's the new address. Because I'm stunad. I have no means of contacting the owners of our new place. And I wouldn't want to bug them if I did. 

Jeans total: -4

I did buy one pair at Kohl's while we were in the hotel, because I was not going to wear shorts or sweatpants to a lawyer's office for the closing. 

Jeans total: -3

I've heard of guys losing their shirts, but this . . . !

In sum, I'm down three pairs on the enterprise, and I'm afraid to try to buy any more clothes. I seem to be losing pants on the deal each time. Love 'em or hate 'em, you just gotta have pants. It's impossible to find a good barrel these days.

Live white man's clothes.

Over the weekend I completed a chore I've been dreading for years. 

When preparing to move, it's important to identify the things that should not move with you, to cut down on the waste of lugging things that you didn't use and won't use. That meant, among other things, trying on every single article of my clothing, discarding the worn-out ones, and donating the ones that don't fit anymore.  

It's time.

I've done some weeding before, but this is the first wholesale clearance I've done in twenty-plus years. So you know a LOT of things have been hanging around, waiting for me to lose those excess pounds I put on over Christmas/New Year's/Easter/the Giants winning Super Bowl XLII. And it's time to say, well, if I ever accomplish the weight loss, I can buy some new duds. 

Meanwhile, I had to try on everything. 

The upshot: two lawn bags full of trash, for starters. Old painting clothes, beloved tees with holes, socks and sweatpants with weak elastic, suspect underwear. Out out out. Then: FOUR lawn bags with clothes in good shape that either don't fit at all or just make me look like a potato. That's a pretty good load that won't make the moving truck. 

For the first time in decades I can wear every article of clothing that I own.

The trash men got the garbage and the good stuff was broken down into smaller bags and dropped off at the church clothing collection box. 

Now, about that: I understand that so-called "fast fashion" is polluting the Third World:

Dead White Man's Clothes: It’s the dirty secret behind the world’s fashion addiction. Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill, creating an environmental catastrophe on the other side of the world.

In short, 15 million garments show up in Ghana a week; no one will wear most of them again, and it's all turned into a tremendous landfill. And that's just one African country. Our donations are also said to have collapsed the local clothing industry.

It's depressing, and I have plenty of reason to accept the Australian Broadcasting Company's report. However, I have to ask: If the clothing collection boxes we see everywhere are just essentially collecting garbage, why is there money in it? Who's paying for them? Most of them are not for local thrift stores or charity drives. When you see them in a parking lot, that means someone is paying rent for those boxes to be there. Who's spending money to collect clothing no one wants?

There's more to all this than I know. 

But in my personal defense, I am not a buyer of fast fashion. I have very little fashion sense of any kind. If I have a shirt that is not obviously stained or ripped and is comfortable, I will wear it until it becomes embarrassing. 

Unless I get too fat for it. 

What I'm saying is that I get quality clothing, not stuff meant to be worn once and discarded. So I have reason to hope that the things I've donated will find a better user along the line. There's still a lot of life in that suit I had to give up. 

Or maybe that suit will be picked up by a funeral home. The jacket will be split up the back for ease of use and put on suitless corpse so he looks nice at the wake. And then my good suit will be interned, not in a landfill, but a human landfill -- the cemetery. 

And who knows? When the final trump is blown and the dead emerge from their tombs, there will be one guy who looks at himself in his resurrected body and say, "Hey, this suit isn't mine! But -- it looks fabulous!"

And: "Why'd they have to slice up the back?"

Real estate time zones.

As I write this, many Americans are encouraging the president and his administration to get rid of Daylight Savings Time. I'm in favor of that idea, but I've lived with it all my life and can get through with it to the end if I must. 

For work purposes, the various time zones in our great nation have caused me issues more frequently than DST, but there's nothing that can be done about that. If I'm hired to work with a company on the West Coast, I have to plan scheduling and deadlines on Pacific Time. We're not going to be like China and force our giant nation to all observe Washington time -- nor should we. 

But real estate time zones are causing me the main trouble right now. 

What I mean by that is this: When you sell a house in New York state with a financed purchase, it can take three months from the signing of the purchase agreement to when you get the money and can move. But then the New Yorker, trying to buy a house elsewhere, finds that he may be on the hook for the new place within 30 days -- two months before he has the cash in hand -- because other states don't fart around like we do here. 

This is our situation now. We have a contract to sell our place, but we don't dare make an offer on a house where we want to go until we're further along. People can get stuck this way, not being able to follow through on an offer and losing their entire deposit. 

I'm not blaming anyone. The system is what it is. The danger of falling between chairs is there; we just have to be careful and not jump at buying until our selling is assured. 

Meanwhile, if I want to distract myself from this tense situation, I should probably start trying on every piece of clothing I own. Now is the time to stop saying "When I lose weight I will fit into this" or "Holes or not, this shirt still has some wears in it" and start saying "Trash or giveaway?" Because there is nothing to be gained by paying to move a bunch of stuff hundreds of miles and then throw it all away. 

But trying all those clothes would ruin my day too, so maybe I'll just take a nap. That sounds nice. I think we can all agree on that. 

Logos on the bogos.

Part one: Logos.

I bought a package of pretty good socks from Adidas. As one would expect, the famous brand logo appears on the shin end.

But these are the first socks I’ve owned where the logo only appears on one side.

It made me think.

1. One purpose of stitching the logo on socks is to remind you what company made this great footwear that your feet are enjoying, so you'll buy it again. 

2. But another purpose is to advertise the socks and the company to any who see the logo. It seems to me that the company knows we will instinctively want to don the sock with the logo on the outer side of the shin. It would look silly with the logos just facing each other, inwardly as it were, right? Careless. Like cross-eyed socks. We should know that one sock is intended for the left leg, and the other, the right, and act accordingly.

3. But the joke's on them because I hate shorts anyway. 

Part two: On the Bogos.

A hundred years ago people were familiar with the goofy term "logos on the bogos." It seems to indicate a kind of mild mental disorder in a humorous way. 

I don't know where the expression came from, and it's so obscure that searches turn up very little. I'm pretty sure I first encountered the term via the Great Lileks's site, but I couldn't find evidence of that on a search. His site has no search feature, and Google is too busy promoting paid links and shadowbanning badthink to do proper searches anymore. 

Nevertheless, here's another example from Two Bells, the newspaper for the employees of the Los Angeles Transit Lines: 

This clip comes from the issue of June 2, 1923, a four-page paper that included industry, company, and member news. 

Like every paper of its time, it also filled space with chuckles:

So, it would have bloomed last year, right? How about that. 

Part three: More Logos. 

In the classical sense, the term Logos refers to reason, as in divine wisdom and/or the controlling reason that has created a consistent universe that may be understood with human logic (logic comes from the same root). The word logo, as in what's on your socks, is short for logotype, but logotype comes from the Greek logos, in the sense of word. Which brings us back to the first meaning -- and the First Meaning -- for as stated in the opening of the Gospel according to John:

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

All of which takes us from socks to silliness to God in less than 450 words. So I'm going to lie down. I think I have logos on the legs or something. 

Wear your colors.

I was a regular listener of Don Imus and the Imus in the Morning radio program in the nineties and into the oughts. It was one reason, and not the most important one, that my wife bought me a denim jacket for Christmas 2001. 

By that year, Don Imus had started marketing Imus-branded products with his brother Fred (no relation) branded through Fred's company, Auto Body Express. They sold Imus-branded coffee, hats, and other things to raise money for children's charities. As such, they were not cheap. 

Shortly after 9/11, Imus was selling a patriotic-themed denim jacket, and I wanted one. I needed a casual coat for mid-chilly temperatures, and I loved the one Imus was selling, but I didn't want to spend the dough. She completely surprised me with it. 

I still have it. 

I've worn it ever since, and in turn it has become quite worn. I saw another guy in Midtown wearing one a couple of years after 2001; he looked like a grumpy tourist who had had quite enough of New York, and I was dressed for work and did not have my jacket so I couldn't go "Twinsies!" So I let him be. But he did look mighty sharp in that jacket. 

I believe Imus, who started out as a typical hippie but was more thoughtful than that, really did love America. He was falsely accused of racism at one point in his show because of a bit that went too far. People forgot the theme of his program, which basically was: We Hate Everybody. Their self-proclaimed slogan was, "We're not happy until you're not happy." 

Still, I stopped listening regularly after longtime sidekick and newscaster Chuck McCord retired in 2011. Charles had been a counterbalance to Imus's weenie hippie tendencies and the "normal" in the room (although he wrote a lot of their sketch material). It was a less funny show after that, to my ear. But I was still sad to hear that Don himself retired in 2018, and two years later died of lung problems -- which he'd had quite a few of long before COVID. 

My favorite feature of the jacket is on the back. It's a replica of the flag that flew over Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, the flag that inspired the poem of Francis Scott Key (no relation) that became our national anthem. 

I remember seeing the actual flag itself in the Smithsonian when I was young, and being flabbergasted: "THAT? THAT's the ACTUAL FLAG?" It was not only like meeting a celebrity; it was like meeting one whom you loved and thought was dead. 

One time I was going with a friend to McDonald's for breakfast. A crusty old-timer with his veteran's cap told me that the number of stars was wrong on my jacket. I explained that the flag was supposed to look like the Fort McHenry flag, but he still objected. Maybe because there were 15 stripes and 15 stars in 1814, but the damaged flag (and thus the replica) only has 14 stars. There is a hole where one of the stars should be. Or perhaps he knew that there were actually 18 states in 1814 -- but the Fort McHenry flag never had more than 15. It was not until 1818 that Congress decided to increase the stars to match the number of states, and make more room for the field by decreasing the number of stripes to 13. The old vet was wrong, but I didn't know why at the time, and we parted amicably. 

I'd like to close this memory with a meme I think is suitable to the occasion: 

I think Imus would have liked that. 

All fall down.

Temperatures have been in the low 50s overnight this week, and you know what that means! 

I'm mostly past the age where my clothes have to be seasonal, beyond the point of survival. My last Hawaiian shirt went to the charity box as a gift to my wife. Now it's someone else's problem. Everything else is just layers. 

But then there's plaid. I have a short-sleeve plaid shirt, but a part of me will always think of plaid as being the color scheme for thick cotton shirts, thus the kind that you leave in the closet until the first day of autumn. And not crazy colorful plaid, either -- they don't wear that stuff in Quito or Honolulu, you know. I mean plaid based on black + one other color.

The sad thing is, that with the loss of my Hawaiian shirt, I only have one other really summery number, a very bright blue that's quite airy and good for the heat. But it also must be ironed after washing, or it looks like it was balled up under the car seat from September to May. That's an issue because 1) I'm lazy and 2) the dog is scared of the steam iron. That hissing really bothers him. Consequently I have worn that blue shirt once this summer, and at the rate things are going it may not come out of the closet again. 

There's another problem with happy colors, and that's you just look dumb wearing them if your countenance is very serious. I used to wear lighthearted ties to work sometimes for that very reason -- to remind me that if I went around grumpy with, say, my Looney Tunes tie, I would look like a fool. And then I got sacked. And then no one was wearing ties anymore. And then I was working from home. So now I just go around grumpy anyway, and wear dark colors. 

This is a lot more than I intended to say about clothes, and I apologize if I've wasted your time. If it made you grumpy, put on a Hawaiian shirt and smile. There's still almost a month of summer to go. 

Deeper memeing.

Hello, pals! Just a few memes here to keep your strength up as you face the weekend. Be careful out there! 

Too dark?

I hope so! Enjoy your day.

Puff, the magic jacket.

I know I'm getting to be an old fart, but I'm not sure I understand the modern take on the puffer jacket.

Is it really helpful to have no use of your hands? I guess the collar part is useful for when you come home from the vet and they don't want you biting at the stitches. 

The classic down jacket was a great innovation, a lightweight garment that used the insulating power of air to provide better protection against the wind and cold than wool, all in a water-resistant outer layer. Add the faux-fur collar that zipped into a hood, completely covering the head but for a fist-sized front viewport, and you had a snorkel. A friend of mine went to college in Buffalo and swore that the snorkel was the only way he survived the winter.

The disadvantage of the down jacket was that it was only a jacket -- as with so much cold-weather gear, the upper body was kept nice and toasty but the legs had to fend for themselves. I might leave the house with an undershirt, shirt, sweater or sweatshirt, and coat, while between the waist and the boots all I had were tighty whities and a layer of cotton or denim. Poor legs! 

Down jackets got longer, becoming down coats, but I don't know what the hell this is:

For only $3,075 at Bergdorf Goodman you too can own this padded circus tent. Such a bargain! And this isn't even the biggest one I've seen.

I guess there's an advantage, as if you're cold enough and tired enough you can just tuck yourself in at the ends and have a cozy place to nap wherever you are. Good luck sitting in any kind of chair with that thing on, though.

Happy pants!

Sorry I was so low yesterday. I took steps to remediate it. Actually, I got right to it and put on my happy pants! 

You can't go around looking glum with bright red sweatpants on. You just look like an idiot. It's the same reason I used to wear amusing neckties to the office when I was unhappy -- if someone would cheese me off or something would fill me with disgust or discomfort, I'd look down and see I had on a tie with Warner Brothers critters or cartoon elephants or something, and I'd have to turn that frown upside down. It was my Sun-Will-Come-Out-Tomorrow, Give-a-Little-Whistle, Fake-It-Till-You-Make-It, Whistle-a-Happy-Tune, even Smile-Though-Your-Heart-Is-Breaking moment, and it would get me through the day. Then I'd take the tie off and scowl all the way home. But I'd made it to five!

The bright red sweatpants were a bit of an error. I love Jockey's sweatpants, and while ordering a couple of pairs I noticed the red ones were on sale. They looked red on screen, but they looked REALLY red on my legs. I'm not one to wear bright colors, being more old-fashioned in my couture, so this was a surprise for my wife. I had to explain that my cheapness had brought about this change in style.

I do wear these semi-clown sweats at times other than needed to cheer myself up. I dig out my New York Giants cap and wear the sweats with a blue shirt to annoy my Cowboys-fan neighbor. I think that wearing them with a blue shirt and white socks (as pictured) also makes me look like a Great Value Golden Age Superhero. Sweatsman! And Panty, the Wonder Pooch!

And then there's Santa. It's warm now, but Christmas morning was freezing. I put on a Santa hat, my red sweatpants, and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man coat that I only wear when it gets close to zero. It was very early, and figured maybe some kiddies might like to see Santa out walking his dog. Or I'd just tell them I was an elf, since I have no beard. "Yeah, all us elves actually are about my height. A lot of us own dogs, sure. Only friendly ones. Santa uses the dog crap when he stuffs the stockings of Congressmen."

Well, I didn't see a soul -- it was really early and really cold -- but the next day I had the same getup on when I got up, and a pickup truck honked at me. Local utility company truck, I think. Anyway, I gave him a Merry Christmas salute as he went by. 

Red pants: The cure for mopeyness. 

A guy could get kilt.

Saw a fellow in church wearing a skirt yesterday. Of course it was not a skirt, but a kilt; it was plaid and had one of those crazy sideways/diagonal belts visible under his jacket. 

I suppose there was a time when you would always assume a bearded man in a skirt was a Scotsman of some sort. Now, however hirsute the chap may be, your first thought could be: It's a guy who thinks he's a girl. That just seems to be the going idea these days.

Looking way back, however, history had lots of men in skirt or "skort" outfits or the like. For example: 

Ancient Egypt: Everyone wore the shendyt, a skirt-like wraparound loincloth. Couldn't tell the girls from the guys by the clothes. I guess you could look at their chests.

Ancient Rome: Lots of long tunics, belted or not, or the toga virilis, a very manly, masculine sort of working toga, not a dress at all. Still no pants on the horizon. 

Greece, 6th century BC: First pants spotted. That is, not that they were decorated with spots; they emerged for use by horsemen around this time, as reported by Greeks. Eventually pants would become a land-office business. 

Scotsmen, 1700s: Started back up with the skirts early in the century. Theory has emerged that they just were waiting for someone to make a remark so they could kick some ass. 

Then we move into the modern era. Men in skirts included:

1950s: Scotsmen, Milton Berle

1960s: Scotsmen, normal men turned into Scotsmen by aliens

1970s: Scotsmen, Benny Hill

1980s: Scotsmen, New Wave bands, professional transvestites

2020s: Scotsmen, TikTok influencers, many others

I'm going to stick with pants, personally. No skirts for me. I look bad enough in shorts as it is. And considering what a hash I made of learning to play the recorder in grammar school, there is no way I can ever play the bagpipes. It would take an invasion by alien blancmanges to make that happen.

Technicalities.

"Well, in that case, dude, your store rests on a foundation of LIES!"

 

Washday!

Mondays were traditionally known as washday in the Western world. Sundays were the dress-up church days, the days to feast, and for those in domestic work (wives, daughters, servants), everything from table linens to undies got the treatment in the kitchen on Mondays. With everything being done by hand, and water heated on the woodstove, it was a much different process than it is now. 

Thank God, ingenuity, and capitalism that we don't have to do it that way anymore. 

Some people still hate dealing with laundry, and I can understand that. If you have to fetch the teens' perilously odiferous clothes from all over the room -- God forbid they should use the hamper -- you might resent the work, and you might almost wish for the old laundry pot on the woodstove, because at least you could boil the stink out of Junior's socks. 

If you have to use a Laundromat, or a communal laundry in your building or complex, you might also find it a heinous chore, stuck outside the home with anyone wandering by to watch you fold your unmentionables. My first apartment was a mother-in-law type arrangement that actually had a washer and dryer, but when the landlord threw me out to get his actual mother-in-law in the place, my next bachelor pad had no such amenity. I had to take my clothes down to one of the local laundries and sit there while they went round and round.

Except for the schlepping, it wasn't so bad, though. I'd go on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, when nothing much was going on. It was quiet enough so I could read there. During baseball season I could run across the street to a bar and watch the ball game for a while. But I had to make sure I got back before my quarters ran out. Once in a while someone comes up with the bright idea to open a combination laundry/bar, but we never had one where I lived in the city. 

I like doing laundry now. I have a washer and dryer off the kitchen, not downstairs in the unfinished crypt, and let's face it -- this is one chore now where the machine does most of the work. If I had a machine that could clean my refrigerator, I would be using it every week.  

Shaggy dogs story.

Do I own the hairiest dogs in town?

Yes.

Here's one of those lint-removing roller brushes, shown before and after running it over my sweatshirt. 

Before

After

We're on our third major vacuum now since we started with the hairy beasts, and that doesn't count the Dyson for hard floors and the ol' Oreck. The Oreck, which predated the Hoover acquisition, was a fine machine for normal carpet use, but couldn't keep up with two hairy dogs. It sits upstairs, where the dogs seldom go. 

The thing that I would like to see is a laundry additive that helps get pet hair off clothing. You'd think that would be a layup for the boffins who make this stuff, but apparently not. Bounce makes a dryer sheet that supposedly helps get the pet hair out, but that's no-fly territory around here. Not because it's manufactured by the evil Procter & Gamble, but that my wife is concerned about dryer sheets being a fire hazard. I do clean out the vent, but is it this fire thing a myth or not? Who knows? Anyway, The Boss Has Spoken.

One thing we have tried is this:

The FurZapper goes into the washing machine and the dryer and magically removes pet hair from clothing. How? The rubbery things do the dance with your clothing and rub the hair off it. In the washer the hair goes down the drain; in the dryer, into your lint filter. So, we tried them. 

The problem is, it's hard to say that they work. There's still hair on the clothes. But would there be more if we didn't use them? I can't really tell the difference between loads done with or without the FurZapper. There's always more puppy glitter than I would want to see.

Everything in life is a trade-off, I know, and you can't have big ol' cute fuzzy dogs without a lot of dog hair around. We do our best to keep on top of it, but it's a Sisyphean task. I keep threatening to weave a toupee out of it, but so far my wife has managed to stop me. I just think it's unfair that I have more hair on my shirt than on my head. 

The cold, hard truth.

I think I may have pulled this gag before, but it's still true. Oh, too true.

Caps off to America.

So I bought a new cap. One I really wanted. I resisted for a while, but succumbed at last. Just seeing the symbol on it brought back happy childhood memories. This was the official logo of the United States Bicentennial in 1976. 

What finally sold me was the knowledge that we are just four years from the U.S. Semiquincentennial, an event that already has an organization and a Web site. I want to keep my Bicentennial cap around long enough to wear it then. 

Of course, I do not expect the Semiquencentennial to be as big as the Bicentennial was. First of all, hundredth anniversaries are bigger than half-hundreths. Second, the Bicentennial was embraced by a strong civic spirit that barely exists in the United States today -- membership in everything from civic clubs, business associations, local boosters, lodges, churches, even bowling leagues has plummeted even as the population soars. We're all loners and wonder why we're so lonely. And third, despite Vietnam and Watergate, in 1976 most Americans believed that our country was good and worth celebrating. Now it seems that at least half of Americans despise their own country and vote for its ruin. I, at least, want to express the opposite opinion.

I bought this hat from Civil Standard, which sells a lot of gear with logos from all kinds of U.S. organizations of the past, from the Hale America campaign of 1942 to the TVA to Maine's 1901 state flag. For the socialists on your gift list, you can buy things with the logo of FDR's chock full o' unconstitutional Works Progress Administration. 

Seems like Civil Standard's stuff is well made. This is a nice cap, comfortable and sturdy. Unfortunately, and perhaps all too appropriately, it has this zinger:

Yes, this site celebrating American history has its products made in China, but still charges thirty bucks for a ball cap. For all I know this was sewn by Uyghur slave labor in China's work "campuses." Suddenly this looks wrong in several ways. 

"...it doesn't get much more American than that."

The Civil Standard site doesn't tell you anywhere that the stuff is made in China. I guess our rule of thumb now has to be that unless something is specifically said to be made entirely in the United States, it's going to actually be made in China. 

In the seventies we were all about the little guys, the workers who made America great. Crystal Lee Sutton was fighting to unionize her mill, for example— her story became a book and then the 1979 film Norma Rae. In the eighties the company she worked for was sold to WestPoint Home, and in 2003 Sutton's mill closed permanently. Now the new company does its manufacturing overseas. Guess where?

Good job, everybody! I've said before that if you think a factory town looks sad, wait until the factory is gone. 

My enjoyment of my new cap is thus diminished, but I intend to wear it as a sign of hope. We ought to celebrate our nation, not denigrate it. That is what I intend to do, anyway, on July 4, 2026. After all, America has been a beacon of hope for millions, and maybe even to the very person who made this very cap. One can hope.

Silly-con valley.

 

The BodiSocc, a one-piece garment, is becoming popular among Silicon Valley types
who hate dealing with laundry.

You know they'd go for it because it:

• features technologically advanced fabric
• is anti-cultural
• is good for the lazy
• has a stupid name
• is childish

Fred's Book Club: And What About Shrinky Dinks?

It's Hump Day! And that means it's time for our Wednesday book feature, the Humpback Writers! It's the stress of carrying Wednesday on their backs that causes the injury, you know, and.... Oh, skip it. I'm thinking of changing the name of the feature to the U#TIG’Hd836& Writers, which will make about as much sense. 

Today we go back in time, back to our younger days, or even the days before we were born, to ask the musical question... Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops?

Freelance journalist Gael Fishingbauer Cooper and PR agent Brian Bellmont created this project, and publisher Perigree turned it into a book in 2011. It's a fabulous collection of things pegged to the 1970-1990 era, especially for things that kids loved. That's an important feature, because most of us are at least a little nostalgic for the world of our childhood, and because nothing goes in and out of fashion faster than kid stuff. 

The book is a series of articles, arranged alphabetically, about the things of the past, and at the end of each there's a summation of its status in the current time (as of 2011), written as its "X-Tinction Rating." Here's one:

TIME FOR TIMER

TV was pretty lecturey in the 1970s and 1980s. Somewhere along the line, someone panicked that kids weren't eating proper snacks and decided the way to solve that was to offer nutritional advice from a yellow blob of fat with spindly legs and a ginormous hat. Thus, the birth of Timer, a disturbing but memorable PSA star whose segments were apparently dashed off by a bored but starving copywriter who had to make deadline before he could hit the drive-thru for a Big Mac.

     Timer's most memorable video has him "hankering for a hunka cheese," but any kid who needed to be shown how to place cheese between two crackers was really too dumb to be allowed to watch TV. In another, Timer takes a tour of the stomach and then apparently just gives up, encouraging kids to eat random leftovers out of the fridge. "Sunshine on a Stick" oversells the result by half, as it's just orange juice frozen in ice-cube trays. Timer also shows up in a segment demonstrating toothbrushing, which is odd when you consider that his teeth are as yellow as the rest of him.

 

X-TINCTION RATING: Gone for good.

REPLACED BY: Nothing. Television networks have since decided that kids can eat random food out of the fridge without frightening cartoon guidance. 

You get the idea. Each little profile is snappily written, with good humor, and appropriate kudos for products and other cultural phenomena that really came through.

Not everything is X-Tinct, either. Take those Shrinky Dinks:

SHRINKY DINKS

Invented in 1973, Shrinky Dinks brought into play the one appliance that Mom never really wanted you to mess with: the oven. In fact, the whole Shrinky Dink process seemed kind of like a joyous, don't-tell-the-parents experiment. Melting plastic on a hot cookie sheet without getting yelled at? Sign us up! 

     Shrinky Dinks never looked like they were going to work. You colored in the shape, be it a Smurf, Mr. T, or a rainbow-maned unicorn, threw it on a cookie sheet, and hoped for the best. Watching through the oven door, you were convinced you'd done it wrong and nothing would ever happen when suddenly it started to curl up like an old sheet of fax paper. It twisted, and then fixed itself, and the end product was tiny, bright and colorful, and thick and strong. As with Homer Simpson and his Flaming Moe drink, fire made it good.

     Few kids really knew what to do with Shrinky Dinks once they were shrunky dunk. One can only have so many zipper pulls, key chains, and napkin rings, after all. But no one ever thought about that when they were watching the plastic writhe in its little kitchen torture chamber. Sometimes the journey is indeed way more fun than the destination.

X-TINCTION RATING: Still going strong.

FUN FACT: In the 1970s, superheroes were the bestselling Shrinky Dinks theme; in the 1980s, it was the Smurfs. 

And indeed, in 2021, Shrinky Dinks are still out there, making kids ask themselves: What shall I create? And why is the oven door so grungy? Can't see nothin'!

As I noted, the book covers all sorts of cultural items, like typing classes, Bicentennial mania, Roosevelt Franklin, Jolt Cola, Halloween costumes "with unbreathable plastic masks," killer animal movies, Judy Blume books, and Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific shampoo. If you were alive and aware in the United States in the two decades covered, there's some cultural resonance for you in this book.

The authors have since moved on with their careers. They did a sequel book about the nineties, which looks like fun, but the original Web site for the project has been allowed to turn into a cobweb. I guess my looking back at this book that looks back at the past is like being nostalgic for Happy Days ("Fascination with the 1950s" is an entry in the book as well, by the way). 

And say -- before I close this entry, whatever DID happen to Jell-O Pudding Pops? Well, despite their popularity in the eighties, thanks to pitchman Bill Cosby (whose life went in the toilet after this book was published), the company had trouble making a profit from them. Then, "the Jell-O name was later licensed to Popsicle, which reintroduced the Jell-O Pudding Pops in 2004. Sadly, sharp-eyed eaters say its just not the same." And have since been discontinued. 

Well, sic transit Jell-O Pop mundi, I guess.  

The buzz on the fuzz.

Greetings, friends! Reader Mark dropped a line the other day asking about the beard project that I had announced back on January 9, to wit: As a lockdown protest, and something less troublesome than a tattoo or a mid-life sports car, I was going to grow a beard. So, what happened to it? 

Then I realized there were some other topics broached during the year to date that deserved follow-up, so here's a run-down on the works. 

BEARD

So yes, about the beard. Well, if this winter feels like it's been as long for you as it does for me, you might imagine that my beard has become like that of the legendary Charlemagne, whose beard was not only silvery and long but was said to have continued to grow after his death until it filled the sarcophagus and eked through the joins. 

But I stand before you today barefaced. With an explanation.

Shortly after I began the Facial Fungus Project, my wife announced we had been invited over to friends' for dinner a couple of weeks hence. I had to promise that if I still looked like a grubby prospector at that time that I would remove the growth to preserve a neat appearance. And alas, I looked worse than Humphrey Bogart in the last reel of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and thus the beard had to go. My spirit broken, I have not returned to the project since. 

DOG

Friends have been asking me how we've coped in the last month since we lost junior varsity dog Nipper. And indeed we are still sad. But people have also been asking how senior varsity dog Tralfaz is getting on without his little buddy, and that's more complicated. 

Fazzy was never really close to Nipper; Nipper always wanted to jump and play, and Fazzy is more your laid-back observer-of-the-scene type. So they never really bonded the way we had hoped. 

The strange thing is that I expected we'd fall into our old pre-Nipper patterns from four and a half years ago, but for a big guy like the Fazz, that's half a lifetime. New patterns were set. Tralfaz was perfectly happy to let Nipper take the lead on playtime, snacktime, and general attention-demanding time. I wouldn't ever call him a sidekick -- he's way too independent -- but he liked having the little guy take the initiative. So he's been a bit confused as to how to act. Consequently, when he does want something, it's all whine, all the time. Drives us nuts. 

But he's still a sweetheart, and we love him. We're all just a little confused. 

DIET

I would like to say my attempt to cut down on unhealthy food is going along fine, but you see, I suffer from hand, food, and mouth disease. My hand shoves food in my mouth, and my mouth eats it. 

If I weren't wearing sweats all the time here in New York, Lockdown Land USA, I would have a better grip on my progress. Sweats are too forgiving. They tell you everything is fine; have the cheesecake. Khakis and jeans are less so. Work denim has little mercy. Dress pants will give you one warning, then the pants will rip on the day of your presentation. 

I think I've made progress, but as I reported a few days back, since the loss of Nipper my Fitbit thinks I died. Nips always wanted walks, but Fazzy is less interested. So the exercise level is down.

There are my excuses explanations. What's new with you?

Cold hands, warm heart.

It's supposed to reach the sixties today, so spring fever is running pretty high at the Key Compound. Birds are singing in the morning. More lawn is exposed as the glaciers retreat. Yes, there's a chance of snow next week, but it's not a serious amount. Besides, I can't think that far ahead. If I could, my life would be a lot more organized. 

Now that it looks like Old Man Winter is finally lurching out of here, I can pass along one of the secrets for how I survived. 

The thing that bothers me most about the winter is probably that my hands get so desperately cold. Well, this year I Took Steps. And enlisted technology. Behold, the battery powered heated gloves.

Each glove has a little power pack that zips into a pocket. You can run the heat on three different levels, but I can't tell the difference between them. They are waterproof and supposedly windproof, but since I don't ride a motorbike (for whom these things are intended) I can't really tell. 

The Inclemency Gauntlet

Yes, they're from China, and yes, I bought them from our oligarchical friends at Amazon. It's almost impossible to not buy from China. Even if the label doesn't admit it, parts of everything are made there, or they just ship things to Vietnam or other places and pretend they originated there. Anyway, I couldn't find a pair of heated gloves made anywhere else.

Do they work? Yes, but not quite as much as I might have hoped. When it's really cold they don't seem to do much, but they definitely keep the edge off. The batteries last about an hour or so before recharging, which isn't bad. And I could still make snowballs while wearing them to throw at the dog. So, a success. 

For those chilly spring mornings, I'm planning to invent a heated umbrella -- it pours waves of warmth onto your head as you walk. Money in the bank, if I can think of a way to keep heat from rising.

Products at the end of the world.

So, as the week draws to a close, and the world comes to an end (your mileage may vary) due to Chinese Death Virus and election shenanigans and all the other fun from 2020, what's out there worth buying?

Well, we all still need hand sanitizer, and now we have to get kiddie hand sanitizer, just like we have kiddie toothpaste and kiddie bubble bath. So who wants some SpongeBob hand sanitizer?

While suspended by a handy carabiner, the product does have three problems I can identify. One, it is made in China, who started all the trouble in the first place. Two, it wants to trade off the fame of cartoon TV star SpongeBob SquarePants, but he barely appears on the packaging. Three, it is supposed to smell like bubble gum, but mostly smells like fake banana candy -- you know, as in circus peanuts.

Oh, and four -- it looks like someone peed in your hand. For real.

The yellow color is quite vivid and goes all over your hands as you sanitize, but seems to fade into your skin as you go. I'm not sure how this works. Maybe it just becomes faint. If you use it as an aftershave you might look jaundiced, and maybe get out of work for the day. 

This too came from China, via Target:

So that's cheerful hand sanitizer, isn't it? "Winter Wonderland"! Blue color! Snowman! Snowflakes! "Scentfull"! So what do you think it smells like? 

Wrong! I don't know what it smells like -- maybe some cheap 70's cologne with Tabasco mixed in -- but if you guessed mint or whipped cream or something, you're off base. The Target site says it has "the cozy scent of Frosted Balsam, Vanilla & Musk," which "will leave your hands delightfully fragranced." I don't know what Balsam smells like, let alone Frosted Balsam, and Musk I know not either. 

Years ago, long before this whole COVID-19 crap broke out, I bought a store-brand hand sanitizer from Home Depot, an HDX-branded bottle that came from China. At that time Purell and GermX were the only brands in the game, and they smelled nice. The HDX stuff smelled like peppered tequila that had been infected with some kind of fungus. I later heard that the soap at the Hotel Millennium in Downtown Manhattan also had an odd peppery scent that was meant to appeal to its many travelers from China and Japan. Well, the HDX didn't appeal to me. I got rid of it. Little could I foresee the weird sanitizers in our future. 

I think I finally figured out this scent: It's Fang Fang's femme fatale perfume. 

Let's get to something more useful. Mr. Fix-It here has had a busy week at the homestead. I found a flood under the kitchen sink and fixed it! (Seems like the dishwasher's vibrations had loosened the wastepipe over the years and a leak suddenly developed, fixed by... tightening the pipes!) Worse, one of the two little pre-lit trees that stand vigil at the front door lost half its lights during the off-season. Since these were pre-strung, pulling off the old lights to replace them is virtually impossible, but finding the entwined outage is about as difficult. Quelle damage! What's do be done? Shoot it! 

I love the little Light Keeper kit. It can detect outages in the bulbs and the cords! It can test individual bulbs! It carries replacement bulbs! Best of all, you can try to restart a line by shooting into an empty bulb socket! Okay, it didn't work, but it helped me find and replace the dead bulb in no time. It was $23 from Home Depot, but a lot cheaper than replacing the little tree, or both of them if a match could not be found. I'm getting a little holster for this gun to carry with me next year during decorating. 

Now, for those out there saying, "The perfect ornament doesn't exist for 2020! We know because Fred looked at all the Hallmark ornaments in October!" I say "Ha!" And add, "I looked farther afield than Hallmark and found this!"

Yes, it's the festive and lovely toilet paper roll ornament from the one and only Old World Christmas. What better way to celebrate 2020? It comes with a little card that explains the history of toilet paper right up to its first US production in 1857. It's going to look great on my tree. At least until my wife finds it. The only question I have is, why didn't it make Dave Barry's annual gift guide?

Finally, I got myself a present this year, something I've been putting off. The comedian Larry Miller has been doing a podcast for eleven seasons, but due to the coronavirus crisis has decided to call it quits at last. Well, I've been eyeing the shirts and such in his souvenir shop, and have long wanted this:

For those who know the world of Milleronia, no explanation is needed; for those who do not, no explanation will suffice.