Brett Somers, RIP

Sorry I've been away (not that there's anyone reading this).

Brett Somers, a favorite of Match Game fans for her sharp-tongued wit, has passed on to join her old pal Charles Nelson Reilly, who died earlier this year. Somers was 83.

A surprising detail: She separated from husband Jack Klugman in 1974, but they never divorced.

Here's a little clip of Brett and Charles from Match Game '74.



At this somber time, I could say, "Prepare to meet your Maker," but I think I'll close with, "Get ready to match the stars!"

Off to D. C., A-SAP

It's a tough job, but someone needs to do it. As a regular feature of this here blog, I'm going to post a daily comic strip that has successfully made me laugh out loud. A mere snigger or smirk will not be sufficient. Here's the first one, from syndicated reruns of Al Capp's Li'l Abner.

Until I figure out how to widen the blog, you'll have to click through to see the full sized versions.



This is part of a story thread that begins with a hot dog length war, leading to Mammy Yokum's invention of the "Endless Hot Dog". When Mammy Yokum accidentally overcharged an Important Visitor (who is only seen from behind, carries a golf bag, and has a "U. S. 1" Washington, DC, license plate) by a nickel, she feels obliged to return it at all costs. The concept was
covered by the mainstream media:



I'm glad United Media is still offering Li'l Abner (and Peanuts) for syndication.

Potrzebie potshots

How can you not like a blog named "Potrzebie"? If I'd been thinking, I'd have called this blog "Pop Culture Potrzebie."

Mark Evanier sent us over to look at an entry about Mad cartoonist Wally Wood, a brilliant print ad he did for Alka-Seltzer, and a TV commercial based on it. But I was drawn to an earlier entry, a childhood memory from blogger Bhob Stewart about a sharpshooter who performed a demonstration for an assembly at his high school circa 1954, and what happened when he volunteered for one of the sharpshooter's stunts.

Bhob has a huge collection of pop culture related links that I want to explore, so I'm adding his Potrzebie blog to my list of links.

Phi phun

Cool, in a nerdy sort of way: An entire website devoted to phi, also known as the golden number or golden ratio, a number that turns up in nature, in the Fibonacci series, and in architecture as an ideal proportion. The page on the relationship between phi and the number five is quite interesting.

Pudenda on a plane

pudenda: (1) Feminine gerundive adjective of pudeo (to feel shame). That of which one ought to be ashamed, shameful, scandalous, disgraceful, abominable. (Used as a noun) A scandalous woman. (2) Neuter plural gerundive adjective of pudeo. The private parts.

So a young woman named Kyla Ebbert, a college student and Hooters waitress, gets on a Southwest Airlines flight, heading from San Diego to Tucson on a day trip for a doctor's visit. An FA named Keith tells her that her attire is inappropriate and that she'll have to catch a later flight and find something decent to wear in the meantime.

I saw her appearance on Friday's Today show. Although it doesn't appear on the online video, when the story ran live, when Ebbert sat back down, NBC superimposed a small oval where her crotch would have been visible under her very short skirt, if you could call it that. (Looks like the top cut off of a pair of white jeans.) NBC was afraid of the viewing public seeing what the FA worried his other passengers would see.

Looking at her outfit, as worn on Today, and seeing the un-ovaled video, I think I know how she transformed herself to look slightly less trashy on national TV. Watch the video and look at her when she's standing up. Based on the position of her hips, the top of the band of fabric she calls a skirt can't be much higher than her pubis. She then pulled down her shirt to cover what should have been covered by her skirt. How low her skirt was would have been more evident had we been allowed to see her from behind, particularly as she sat down.

Look at the screen cap of her sitting down. (And will you look at the simpering smile on her mom's face!) That small dark circle is the button on the waistband of her skirt, right at the top of the skirt. When she sits down, she's sitting on the entire skirt. No way is any of that covering her posterior. In fact (sorry for the bluntness) with her skirt in that position, she could probably use the toilet by just pulling up her shirt in back.

Having seen this mode of dress, my best guess is that she had the bottom of the shirt gathered above her navel, the skirt's top pulled up to her hips, somewhere below her navel, and showing everyone what Britney Spears showed everyone when she carelessly emerged from that car. Quite right for the flight attendant to require her to adjust her clothing.

As to what was she thinking, wearing that on a plane: My theory is that she was going to see the gynecologist, was on a tight travel schedule, and didn't want to waste any time having to undress.

Dawn Eden has a great take on this story, as always wittily making a profound point, in this case to the woman she calls "That Big-Chested, Long-Legged Hooters Hottie Who Almost Got Kicked Off a Plane."

That embarrassment is a gift, TBCLLHHWAGKOP. Instead of suing the airline, you should be paying it out of gratitude for showing you the truth of what you are doing every day — treating yourself as a walking commodity, and others as consumers.

(Great headline, too: "Runway Muddle.")

A true LOL cat

I promise not to post too many of these, but this one truly made me laugh out loud.

Moonset

A USA Today story about two new documentaries on the moon landings dramatizes the passing of the years.

Filmmakers realized "a part of history was about to pass them by," said Edgar Mitchell, 76, who spent 1½ days on the moon in 1971. "We're all in our 70s now — better grab us before we're gone."

Of the 12 men who walked on the moon, only nine survive, and those men are all in their seventies. Within a couple of decades the men who went to the moon will have passed into history. Around the middle of this century, the moon landings will have disappeared from living memory. Will future generations even believe that we went to the moon?

This is terribly sad to me. As for most late Boomers, the space program was part of the backdrop to my childhood and the inspiration for this boy's dreams. I grew up watching launches and listening to the commentary of Walter Cronkite on CBS, Frank McGee on NBC, and Frank Reynolds and Jules Bergman on ABC.

To turn this post back toward pop culture, have we seen any breaking news coverage in recent years as dignified and informative as the network space shot coverage of the '60s and '70s? I don't think so. I would dearly love to watch it and relive it all again. I'm on a hunt for video from that coverage, either excerpts on the web, or whole broadcasts on DVD. Drop me a comment if you know where it can be found.

Until I find some of that video, here's this. If Buzz Aldrin wasn't already my hero for being on the first moon landing and continuing to advocate for manned space exploration, I'd love him for the way he dealt with this conspiracy wacko, five years ago when he was about 72 years old:

Pret à Peppermint Patté

Good grief, as it were.

At this week's Fashion Week in New York, more than 20 designers are bringing the Peanuts characters to life in a charity couture show. "At first I thought, 'Snoopy, fashion?'" says Jeannie Schulz, the widow of creator Charles Schulz. "But he was designing clothes that became part of the characters' personalities, and that is what designers are looking for."

Click the link to see sketches of a very short dress with Charlie Brown's trademark yellow with black zig-zag, a shirt modeled after Peppermint Patty's red and white striped shirt, but see-thru where the white stripes should be, and a cocktail dress with feathers inspired by Woodstock.

That was in Newsweek. Here is the press release.

"Good grief" turns into fashion relief as MetLife presents a group designer fashion show featuring exclusively designed fashions for Snoopy on September 7 at 6 p.m. as part of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Bryant Park. Many of fashion's most renowned designers have confirmed their participation, including Heatherette, Isaac Mizrahi, Betsey Johnson, Pamella Roland, and Project Runway alum Laura Bennett. Each designer has taken inspiration from their favorite Peanuts character to create a couture runway outfit, making a bold leap from initialblack-and-white sketch to vibrant, colorful ensemble.

"I love Peanuts because it represents a theme in my childhood to do with not fitting in, with being an outsider," said Mizrahi, who designed a dress based on an outfit Brown would have worn-had he been a woman. "The Peanuts characters, especially Charlie Brown, made the issue of being different easy to understand and gave it a resolution. The outsiders were as wonderful and glamorous as the insiders." Roland, for her part, was inspired by Peppermint Patty for her design.

I just want to see what they come up with for Pigpen.

The runaway snooze button

I'm definitely a nightowl, and mornings are not my bag. The position of the snooze button on my alarm clock is programmed into my arm's muscle memory. It's too easy to snooze my way through seven or eight alarms and all the extra time I allowed myself to sleep. This gadget would solve that problem:

Not only does this alarm clock wake you up, it BASE jumps off your night stand and runs away to make sure you are really awake. You need to chase it down to turn it off.

It's called Clocky and for all the extra smarts and jumping ability, it's only about $50.

Man hugs

Spot on and too funny: The proper way to execute a manly show of affection:



One of many helpful how-to videos at VideoJug. (It's British, so it's automatically funnier.)

Gorey tribbles

You love Edward Gorey's whimiscally macabre artwork and Star Trek: The Original Series? Edward Gorey loved Star Trek, too:

Edward Gorey watched television for the first time this summer, or so he claims, and in the process the 52-year-old artist became a "Star Trek" fan. He watched the science-fiction program re-runs twice a day, five days a week and once on the sixth day, and despite this faithful viewing he has yet to see the TV show's most famous episode, "The Trouble With Tribbles," which is about these furry little creatures in outer space, or so he says.

That was from a 1977 Boston Globe story about Gorey's work as a set designer for a stage production of Dracula. It inspired Shaenon K. Garrity to imagine how Gorey might have drawn the story of the Tribbles. It is dead on and hilarious, especially if you know and love both Gorey and Star Trek. I won't spoil the visuals, but here is one of the captions:

By morning, the mass of mewling fluff had become quite suffocating.

(Hat tip to Ephemeral Isle.)

What's it all about, Alfie?

One of my favorite columnists, Thomas Sowell, makes a good point about a classic '60s film:

With all the old movie favorites being shown again and again on television, it is remarkable that the old movie classic "Alfie" is seldom shown. Could it be fear that the scene where cold-blooded Alfie breaks down and cries at the sight of an aborted baby is something that would unleash the furies of the feminazis?

When the movie was remade in 2004, starring Jude Law, that scene was excised.

A non-rhetorical question, as I don't keep up with present-day pop culture (happily stuck in the past, thanks): Is there a recent movie that deals forthrightly with the consequences of Alfie's promiscuous lifestyle or the realities of abortion?