At some point Fred Rogers' death from stomach cancer is going to hit me, but so far mostly I think it's kind of passed by me in a glaze. Somehow I'm associating Mr. Rogers with my maternal grandfather, an equally calming presence. An op-ed in the Times today nearly brought a tear to my eye, and reminded me of the X the Owl puppet character. I vividly remember them enhancing the Z pattern of supports on the inside of his Owl-hole door with pieces to turn it into an X.
B hadn't known that the king's full name was King Friday the Thirteenth (or, I suppose, Friday XIII).
Few people knew that Mr. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and I gather that the story I once heard that he was a convicted felon is an urban legend, since none of the obituaries have mnetioned.
I had at least one Mr. Rogers record as a kid (it went national in 1968 when I was 4), the one with the closeup of the little trolley train on it. I always loved the way the opening sequence of the show enhanced the whole make-believe theme.
My mother liked that he spoke kindly and gently. My father hated the record almost as much as our I Love Lucy record and fretted that Mr. Rogers was going to turn me gay. Later on a National Lampoon Radio Hour LP that made the rounds in my dorm featured a sketch based on the same insinuation, with an angry father complaining to Rogers, "What kind of a gift is lederhosen for a six year-old boy?" To which the faux Rogers replied, "I lined them with silk so they wouldn't chafe him."
I'm somewhat relieved to hear the McFeely was Rogers' middle name, because the Mr. McFeely character always weirded me out a little. I think those weakly acted visits broke the illusion a bit for me, even when I was little. Contrast that with the way Pee-Wee's friends on his Playhouse show made the camp overt.
In college one of my roommates remembered the show fondly. It sure beat Captain Kangaroo for entertainment. After that came Sesame Street and The Electric Company, which I felt I was too old for, but watched anyway, and later Zoom.
I wanted to end this with a quote from the song he sang at the end of each show, but I can't remember it.
categories: x-syndicate
3:17:41 PM 
say what []
Sometimes the only thing more entertaining than Craigslist personals is the CL job listings. Take this one, PCBootyCall.com Model Recruiter Wanted.
Apparently, "PCBootyCall.com is a new promotional service for adult models in the USA." They're seeking "professional and responsible" female escorts, dancers, and "adult companions" (high quality only) to advertise presumably on their site. Apparently PCBootyCall.com will be unique, especially when compared to Eros-Guide, Lovings, Spectator Magazine and no doubt countless other massage and escort listings nationwide.
The CL ad is for recruiters to "get the word out in the adult community." Interestingly, the unique thing seems to be that "models" in fact don't have to pay for space at PCBootycall. "We provide models with their own web page, advertising, online appointment setting, fantasy auctions and more at no cost to them."
So what's the business plan? So, is this some kind of multilevel marketing for procurers? A pimper's pyramid scheme? Not quite. Recruiters get a base fee (based on what revenue?) plus a "commission on her first three appointments."
So, it sounds like the site gets a referral fee for each appointment, the first three of which it splits with the recruiter. I wonder if this involved more legal exposure than the sites I mentioned abov, which function more like the ad pages in the back of your local "alternative" weekly tabloid.
If you've got contacts in the adult community, here's your chance to get in on the ground floor:
PCBootyCall.com is growing rapidly thanks to our Fantasy Auctions, Internet Reservations process, and of course our lovely models!
categories: x-syndicate
3:17:20 PM say what []
1997: | 2003: |
categories: memewatch
3:14:40 PM say what []
If Orcinus had a syndicated (RSS) feed, I'd put his headlines write on the main Mediajunkie page. By catching up with him today, I learned that someone actually is now transcribing Rush Limbaugh, got frightened by signs of the demonization of dissent, read about a Karl Rove lie on the record, got caught up on the right-wing hate movement's terroristic strategies as well as a creepy rapprochement with the equally antisemitic Islamist movement, heard about the latest Republican Trent-style bigot eruption.
Best of all was his reply to CPO Sharkey over at Sgt. Stryker (no relation to Jeff Stryker). I gather that reading about this debate must be some sort of political Rorschach test. Neiwert's analysis and documentation convince me utterly, aside from the occasional rhetorical fillip, while Sharkey's retorts brings to mind nothing so much as Usenet newsgroups, in which self-congratulatory told-ya's and asides to an insular supportive audience substitute for reasoned debate.
I have no doubt that to regular readers of Stryker's page, the opposite is true. Unfortunately, I suspect there's a "classwarfare" issue at play here. Perhaps Neiwert's educated prose and logic read as elitist to the more one-of-the-guys Sharkey? (Speaking of class warfare, howzabout we call Bush's tax plan, "a tax cut for Barbra Streisand"?)
I believe Instapundit has pointed to the exchange, which could even the playing field a bit, implicitly lending credibility to Sharkey's thin bluster. I noticed that Stryker categorized his triumphant rebuttal under "anti-idiotarian," a good way of signalling to his cohorts that Neiwert is one-a them kooky America-hating lefties will probably oppose doing the right thing when push comes to shove. The backslapping comments to the post show the flavor of the discourse among Stryker's readership.
UPDATE: I shouldn't have tortured myself, but naturally htere is yet another followup by the main host of the Sgt. Stryker site, but by this time the entire range of discussion has veered off into namecalling and trivia. It's a pretty funny case of "panties in a bunch," naturally followed by a chorus of hooting support in the comments. The list of invective (one of the worst pejoratives apparently being "journalist") amounts to a series of sputters. I don't imagine any of Stryker's readers will follow the entire sequence or wonder in fact why only one of Dave's points was ever addressed before the theatrical washing of hands and "farting in your direction" kicked in.
categories: x-syndicate
1:17:33 PM say what []
