Statistics Saturday: Some Improbable Covers of _Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead_

• The Fifth Estate (1967)
• Barbra Streisand (1966, 2002)
• The Kinks (1976, imaginary)
• A nice soft blanket
• Paul McCartney (probably sometime while showering)
• A field of cactuses rustling their needles in the capricious breeze in a way that happens to catch the melody line
• A quarter-inch drizzle of melted cheese
• Meco (1978, and wouldn’t it make more sense if this were made than if it weren’t?)
• Yes (2026)
• Stephen Foster (1854? I dunno when he worked, just old-timey times)

Reference: This Is New Jersey, John T. Cunningham.

Don’t Tell Me You Never Heard of the Movie, I Know You’re Fibbing

Sorry to be late but I was just thinking about the movie Yesterday, as one will, and pondering in that universe what’s the last Beatles song the guy there would bring into his Beatles-less world. I’m feeling like “Doctor Robert” hits that sweet spot of being something a casual fan might know well enough to reconstruct from scratch. Anyway, no, I’ve never had any reason to think I’m not basically neurotypical, why do you ask?

Statistics Saturday: Great Songs With “Goat” In The Title

• A Hard Day’s Goat Night
• The Number One Song In Goat Heaven
• Tired Of Goat Waiting For You
• The Washington Post Goat March
• Anna Sun Goat
• Goat Popcorn
• Goat Powerhouse
• You Goatta Have Heart
• Thank You For Being A Goat Friend
• Goat Theme to The Goat Muppet Show

Reference: Krakatoa: The Day The World Exploded, Simon Winchester.

For the purposes of this list instrumentals are being considered songs and if you don’t like that take it up with a goat, this is all the idea there was and deadline was right there.

I No Longer Think the Major Was a Lady Suffragette

Sorry, I just today learned that the logo the New York Football Jets used from 1978 to 1997, and that they’ve adopted in a modified version for this season, was designed by Jim Pons, bassist for the Leaves, the Turtles, the Mothers of Invention, and the Plastic Ono Band. This is the most “huh” news since I learned Joe Witkin of Sha Na Na went on to be an emergency room doctor.

And imagine that. You’re t-boned at an intersection, the ambulance comes, rushes you to the hospital, someone tells you you’re going to be all right, you’re in the best hands, and you look up and it’s the piano guy from that cover of “Rock and Roll is here to stay” you really liked. And he gets into some small talk, to keep you calm, and asks what you were up to and you were on your way to a big meeting for your Sports Graphic Design magazine and he says, hey, I know the guy you were going to talk to! Small, weird world.

MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 25

Last time in my Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan fiction was a host sketch that didn’t have much to do with anything. So never mind that. Previously in the Sonic the Hedgehog fan fiction Altered Destiny, author-protagonist Keith A— bade farewell to Sally Acorn and went off to the woods to deal with ears. And now, who or what will we find return? Hint: a lot of TV show theme songs for some reason.

The whole of the MiSTing of Altered Destiny should be at this link. After this, I’ll try to explain anything needing that sort of thing.

---

[ ALL settle back in ]

>
>* * * * *
>
> The next morning, the entire village was gathered to
>the eastern border of the town.

CROW: Which was about twenty feet from the western border of town.

> Apparently, there were some
>strange sounds floating over the treetops. It was faint at
>first, but gradually grew louder. It sounded like music!

TOM: Would somebody get the Beatles off the roof, *please*?

>When she heard the voice, Sally’s heart leaped to her
>throat. It couldn’t be! But the singing continued.

JOEL: "Somebody want to turn the human down?"

>
>And the road becomes my bride.
>I have stripped of all but pride,
>So in her I do confide,
>And she keeps me satisfied.

CROW: This isn’t a very good "Underdog" episode.

>Gives me all I need.
>And with dust in throat I crave.

TOM: Oh, and give me a dollar, too.

>Only knowledge will I save.
>To the game you stay a slave.
>Rover Wanderer
>Nomad Vagabond

JOEL: These were early concepts for naming Star Trek: Voyager.

>Call me what you will, yeah.

CROW: Hey, thanks, "Binky."

>
>But I’ll take my time anywhere.
>Free to speak my mind anywhere.

TOM: See, the Internet has trained people to think of free speech
as a blunt instrument.

>And I’ll redefine anywhere,
>Anywhere I roam,
>Where I lay my head is home, yeah.

JOEL: Well, also where I keep my aspirin collection too.

>
>And the earth becomes my throne.
>I adapt to the unknown.
>Under wandering stars I’ve grown.
>By myself but not alone,

CROW: I think this is the theme song to some Japanese animation.

TOM: I think this is the theme song to *all* Japanese animation.

>I ask no one.
>And my ties are severed clean.
>Less I have, the more I gain.

JOEL: [ Theme of "Valerie/Valerie’s Family/The Hogan Family" ] In
the heart of every family…there’s a love that starts by
letting go…

>Off the beaten path I reign.
>Rover Wanderer
>Nomad Vagabond
>Call me what you will

TOM: Biff "Buffington" Biffwell.

>
>But I’ll take my time anywhere.

JOEL: "Other people need to use the facilities, you know."

>Free to speak my mind anywhere.
>And I’ll never mind anywhere.

CROW: [ Theme to "Cheers" ] "You want to go where everybody knows
your name…"

>Any where I roam.
>Where I lay my head is home.
>
> As the music seemed to reach it’s peak,

TOM: A sudden avalanche buried the team and made them cancel
their ascent.

> a figure could
>be seen trotting out of the mists.

CROW: Yet strangely he wasn’t, because everyone was fascinated by
the earthworms that came up after the last rain.

> His attitude was of one
>who had suffered great pain, but has found shelter and
>safety. He stopped, reared back his head, and continued
>singing.

JOEL: It’s always so wacky when Waylon Jennings himself gets involved
in a "Dukes of Hazzard" script.

>
>But I’ll take my time anywhere.
>Free to speak my mind any where.
>And I’ll redefine anywhere.

CROW: From now on, "anywhere" will mean "Camden, New Jersey."

TOM: How horrifying.

>Anywhere I roam,
>Where I lay my head is home.
>Carved upon my stone,
>My body lie, but still I roam, yeah, yeah.

TOM: [ Singing to "Brady Bunch" theme ] "And that’s the way we
became The Brady Bunch!"

>
> The figure stepped completely out of the fog, and the
>villagers gasped at what they saw.

CROW: X-Y-Z…

TOM: Your fly…

JOEL: C’mon, you’re just embarassing yourself.

> A male raccoon, in his
>late teens, and wearing clothes they’d only previously seen
>on a certain human, stood before them, grinning like a
>maniac.

TOM: When’d Tom Bodett become a raccoon?

> He stepped back, and gave a deep bow to Sally.

CROW: Sally instinctively picked him up by the scruff of his neck
and carried him back into the tree.

>"Hello, Princess. I, Christopher Jonathan Petrucci, wish to
>thank you on behalf of Keith A—, who, he said, had
>stayed with you for a brief period."

JOEL: "Aw, it was nothing. Who’s Keith?"

> He looked at Rebecca.
>"You like?" he said, turning this way and that. Rebecca
>nodded, smiling through tears. "I like. Oh, do I ever
>like!" With that, she dashed into his arms.

CROW: "My four and a half hours of estrus next year are going to be
extra-special!"

JOEL: Behave yourself.

>
> Sally was still speechless. The voice, and the
>attitude… it had to be him!

JOEL: [ Pointing to TOM ] It couldn’t be you; [ Pointing to CROW ]
It couldn’t be you; [ Pointing to KEITH ] It had to be him!

> "Keith, is that you?!" The
>raccoon shook his head. "I told you, Sally, Keith is dead.
>Well, kind of.

TOM: Well, okay, he’s alive and living in Portland, Maine. There,
I said it and I’m glad.

> Anyway, can we get back home, please? I’m
>tired, and looking for a real bed to sleep in.

JOEL: At least a knot in a tree, or a limestone cavern.

> He trotted
>back in the general direction of Rebecca’s hut, still
>humming bars from the odd song he’d just finished singing.

CROW: Oh, great, he’s a Neil Diamond fan.

[ To continue … ]

---

Wow, apparently in the 90s I remembered the sitcom Valerie / Valerie’s Family / The Hogan Family and, more, thought it mattered that I list all three titles. I am so glad to know my brain has managed to forget at least some bit of nonsense, once.

I hope Neil Diamond’s ego has recovered from the devastating blow this work landed.

Statistics Saturday: Popular Songs of the 70s

Not pictured: weird experimental instrumental compositions on a synthesizer programmed to sound like a bell but it’s also a violin somehow.

Reference: My love, who did the research and explained these findings to me. honest; thank you, dear.

Statistics Saturday: Some Mild Clickbait

• You Totally Believed What Happend to This Co-Star From Married To The Mob but Forgot, and Would It Hurt to Have a Reminder?
• As Many New England States as We Can Name
• How The Wizard of Oz Made Judy Garland Appear To Talk to Bert Lahr On-Screen (It’s Like You Thought)
• Ten Celebrities Who Don’t Choose to Eat Grasshoppers
• Doctors Hate It When You Jab Them With a Stick Like This! Most Everyone Does, We’re Only Talking About Doctors Right Now
• Martin Van Buren
• You Probably Do Remember the Chorus of American Pie
• How Many 10-Piece Chicken Nuggets It Takes to Make a 20-Piece Chicken Nuggets
• Twelve Christmas Movies That Have Happy Endings
• This Novelty Stick-On ‘Magic Faucet’ Offers Two, Maybe Three Ways to Amuse and Prank Friends
• You’re Not Getting the Full Benefit of Your Shower if You Don’t Have This (It’s Water)
• Not Just You: It Is Weird Freakazoid Never Did an Episode Where He Got Swapped Into The Star Hustler’s Body or Transmogrified Into a Fancy Rat or Something

Reference: Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Wrangham.

It had to be a fancy rat because you know everyone on the show would pronounce it with this long, wavering emphasis, like, “FaaAAAAAAncy” and it would be so funny by the end of the episode.

Statistics Saturday: Records That Could Well Have Been The Last John Lennon Ever Bought

• Pink Floyd, The Wall
• Paul McCartney, Wonderful Christmastime
• Frank Zappa, Joe’s Garage Acts II & III
• Styx, Babe
• The Beatles, Love Me Do/PS I Love You (single)
• Rick Wakeman, Lisztomania (soundtrack)
• Supertramp, Breakfast in America
• Dickie Goodman, Mrs Jaws/Chomp Chomp (single)
• Motörhead, Overkill
• Frank Zappa, Joe’s Garage Act I

Reference: Moon Lander: How We Developed The Apollo Lunar Module, Thomas J Kelly.

Statistics Saturday: The Last Six Listeners-DJ-Our-Christmas-Station Selections

• Frank (Pompous Lakes, New Jersey): Jingle Bell Rock; Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer; Silver Bells.
• Bob (Mendacity, Arkansas): Jingle Bell Rock; Silver Bells; Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
• Doris (Pavement Narrows, West Virginia): Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer; Silver Bells; Jingle Bell Rock.
• Ken (Fatigue Lake, Wisconsin): Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer; Jingle Bell Rock; Silver Bells.
• Angela (Polygon, Nebraska): Silver Bells; Jingle Bell Rock; Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
• Mitch (Garry with two R’s, Indianana) Silver Bells; Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer; Jingle Bell Rock.

Reference: Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II, Ronald Takaki.

I was all set to make him listen to Camel’s _Snow Goose_

(The scene: a conversation the other day.)

My love’s father: … Did you say “prog rock”?

Me: Yes.

Him: That’s “progressive rock”, right?

Me: Yes.

Him: Mmm.

Me: [ Quivering with anticipation that he ask me for an example of a prog rock band. ]

He: [ Never does. ]

Thinking of Ways the World Might Be Different

You ever think about how the world would have been different if the original film The Exorcist hadn’t used Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells but had instead gone with Frank Mills’s Music Box Dancer? I mean besides the movie having to wait until 1979 to come out. That would have taken a lot of patience on everybody’s parts.

Statistics Saturday: Answers To Every Question Asked Of Casey Kasem On American Top 40 in the 70s

Also, the #1 song that week was Helen Reddy’s “Angie Baby”. I know, right, I forgot that one too.

Reference: The Temperature of History, Stephen G Brush.

The Strangest Comfort of My Life

I went and checked and it turns out I don’t remember the theme to It’s A Living nearly as well as I thought. Mostly what I remember is the chorus about how “it’s … a living” and that bit about a bed of roses. So, good, I guess, that I don’t have that taking up otherwise useful space in my mind but then why do I remember anything at all about the theme to the sitcom It’s Your Move? It’s not just because it had a checkerboard for its opening credits, right? It can’t be just that?

But the Main Thing, I Suppose, Is

Sorry, I’m feeling humbled right now. It’s struck me that if I were cast into a Yesterday-type scenario, cast into a world eerily like ours except where none of the Beatles songs were known, I’d be hard-pressed to reconstruct “Eleanor Rigby,” one of the greatest expressions of the alienation of modernity. And yet, I’d be in great shape if the world needed the theme to It’s A Living, a short-lived early-80s sitcom brought back for first-run syndication for the latter half of the decade for no reason anyone ever wrote down so they could remember.

What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? What’s this beef Terry Beatty has with you? March – May 2023

Terry Beatty does not have any beef with me. There is maybe one chance in sixty that Terry Beatty is even aware I exist, and if he is, his opinion is “there are other people out there for me to have opinions about”. But, this is like the third time he’s run a plot recap of his own, on or near the week I had scheduled for my plot recaps of his Rex Morgan, M.D., seen here. (See January 2022 and also February 2021.)

Well, if he’d rather do the plot recaps than trust me to do it, that’s fine. I can use some easy weeks, believe me. Next week is for Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp, after all, and that’s got a lot of things happening. Reducing it all to a plot recap will take work.

Rex Morgan, M.D..

4 March – 28 May 2023.

Last time, Hank Junior Harwood and Yvonne Grey were planning their honeymoon on a cruise ship. How did that go?

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 28th of May, 2023. Rene Belluso, multi-failed con artist, was in the ocean because he missed while trying to shove Hank Junior in. This because Belluso suspected, correctly, that Hank Junior recognized him as the ‘Professor Augustus Mirakle’ whose snake-oil therapy had coaxed the wonderfully bombastic ‘Mud’ Murphy into being a nice, gentle person. This prompted Murphy to write and perform a lot of treacly, pointless numbers that disappointed his fans, Hank Junior and Yvonne included. I don’t care for the implication that an artist has to be screwed up to be good — it leads to the idea that it’s a good thing to make artists miserable — but it’s not a notion Beatty invented from nowhere. Anyway, Murphy has to deal with the realization that a scammer helped him to fix some of the many issues in his life. But he can use the accidental wisdom and blend that into his life. Plus a children’s TV producer thinks Murphy’s twee little musical doodlings are just what kids want to hear. So that’s all happy endings, including for Rene, who somehow escaped from the ship’s brig, to be seen in some later story.

Thanks for checking in! See you next time.

MiSTed: The Tale of Grumpy Weasel, Chapter 18

Yes, it’s one more chapter in Arthur Scott Bailey’s The Tale of Grumpy Weasel. The whole of my Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan fiction of it should be at this link. And I’ll try and put explanations of riffs a the end of all this.

The story so far: Grumpy Weasel has had unpleasant run-ins with several birds, a muskrat, a rabbit, and Fatty Raccoon. I mean unpleasant for them. Grumpy enjoyed it all by not enjoying any of it. Who’s going to be next on Grumpy’s agenda of disliking things? Read on …

---

>
>
> XVIII

CROW: Prequel to the prequel to XXX: Ecks versus Sever.

>
> POP! GOES THE WEASEL

TOM: Out east they say ‘Soda! goes the weasel.’

>
> There were many things that did not please Grumpy
> Weasel

JOEL: So be gone with them!

> —things that almost any one else would have liked.

CROW: How do we count Fatty Raccoon’s likability?

> For instance, there was music.

TOM: [ Singing ‘Til There Was You ] o/` And wonderful roses o/`

> The Pleasant Valley Singing
> Society,

CROW: Aren’t they the people Cherry Trail keeps doing garden stuff for?

> to which most of the bird people belonged,

TOM: What, Twitter?

> did not
> number Grumpy Weasel among its admirers.

CROW: They’re hoping he supports them on Patreon, though.

> He never cared to
> hear a bird sing—not even Jolly Robin’s cousin the Hermit,

JOEL: They’ve got a lovely daughter …

> who was one of the most beautiful singers in the woods. And
> as for Buddy Brown Thrasher,

TOM: Death metal comes to the Pleasant Valley!

> whom most people thought a
> brilliant performer, Grumpy Weasel always groaned whenever he
> heard him singing in the topmost branches of a tree.

CROW: When he sung in a bush, that was different.

>
> A bird-song—according to Grumpy Weasel—

TOM: [ As Grumpy, giving a report ] ‘Webster’s Dictionary defines birdsong as the song of one or more birds.’

JOEL: Webster wasn’t working hard the day he filled out the ‘birdsong’ card.

> was of use

> in only one way: it told you where the bird was.

CROW: [ As Grumpy ] ‘Oh! Well, that’s two ways, then.’

> And that was
> a help, of course, if you were trying to catch him.

JOEL: To catch a bird, it helps to think like a bird … hey, seed!

>
> Nor did the musical Frog family’s nightly concerts

TOM: To a sold-out arena!

> have much charm for Grumpy, though he did admit that some of
> their songs were not so bad as others.

JOEL: The closer they get to that Lesley Gore sound the better for him.

>
> "I can stand it now and then," he said, "to hear a
> good, glum croaking, provided there are plenty of discords."

CROW: Grumpy’s a huge fan of the 7-chord.

>
> Naturally, knowing how he felt, Grumpy Weasel’s
> neighbors never invited him to listen to their concerts.

TOM: Sounds like a problem solved, then.

> On
> the contrary they usually asked him please to go away, if he
> happened to come along.

JOEL: It only hurt when they started inviting him over so they can leave.

> Certainly nobody could sing his best,
> with such a listener.

CROW: [ As Grumpy ] ‘Well how good do you expect me to listen with such singing?’

>
> As a rule Grumpy Weasel was glad to go on about his
> business,

TOM: Mankind was your business!

> though to be sure he hated to oblige anybody.

CROW: Has Grumpy considered passive-aggression?

JOEL: Oh, he’s thought about it but he probably wouldn’t do it nearly well enough to annoy.

> But
> one day he stopped and scolded at the top of his voice when
> he came upon the Woodchuck brothers whistling in the pasture.

TOM: How were the Whistling Woodchuck Brothers not a regular blackout gag on _The Muppet Show_?

>
> Their whistles quavered a bit when they noticed who
> was present.

JOEL: [ Whistling ‘Sidewalks of New York’, but after a few bars breaking it off to a questioning tone. ]

> And they moved a little nearer their front door,
> in order to dodge out of sight if need be.

TOM: They hope to fool Grumpy into thinking the door was whistling.

> Although Grumpy
> Weasel might follow them, there was a back door they could
> rush out of.

CROW: Won’t they be surprised when Grumpy runs in the back door?

> And since they knew their way about their
> underground halls better than he did they did not worry
> greatly.

JOEL: They know every speakeasy, pool joint, and crooked pinball parlor in the Bowery.

>
> "We’re sorry—"

CROW: But your mauling has been disconnected.

> said the biggest brother, who was
> called Billy Woodchuck—"we’re sorry you don’t like our
> music.

TOM: Would you like a coupon good for two musics?

> And we’d like to know what’s the matter with it; for
> we always strive to please."

JOEL: They’re very professional, I bet they make it big someday.

>
> "It’s not so much the way you whistle," Grumpy
> snarled, "though your whistling is bad enough, it’s so
> cheerful.

CROW: [ As Billy ] What if we’re doing it while shivering in our shoes?

TOM: [ As Grumpy ] You don’t wear shoes!

> What I find fault with especially is the tune. It’s
> insulting to me. And you can’t deny it."

JOEL: [ As Billy ] What’s so insulting about I Don’t Like Weasels? Oh, now I say it out loud I hear it.

>
> Well, the Woodchuck brothers looked at one another in
> a puzzled fashion.

TOM: They’re stumped by today’s Woodchuck Wordle.

CROW: It’s ‘WHEEP’! It’s always ‘WHEEP’!

>
> "Never again let me hear you whistling, ‘Pop! Goes
> the Weasel,’" Grumpy warned them.

TOM: Got it, only sing it a capella from now on.

> That was the name of the
> Woodchuck brothers’ favorite air,

JOEL: Huh. Well, my favorite air is four parts nitrogen to one oxygen but hey, you like what you like.

> and the one they could
> whistle best. And any one could see that they were quite
> upset.

CROW: [ As Billy ] Would you like to race to the finish of the song?

>
> "Why don’t you like that tune?" Billy Woodchuck asked
> Grumpy Weasel politely.

TOM: [ As Grumpy ] I was cheated out of the royalties.

>
> "It’s that word ‘pop,’" Grumpy said.

CROW: Oh, he’s not into pop music.

> "It reminds me
> of a pop-gun. And a pop-gun reminds me of a real gun. And
> that’s something I don’t want to think about."

TOM: He’s making a good case, have to give him that.

>
> Well, the Woodchuck brothers looked at one another
> again. But this time they smiled.

JOEL: [ Billy, as Leo Gorcey ] Give ’em the ol’ Routine 29!

TOM: [ As Huntz Hall ] Ooh! Ooh! Right, chief!

>
> "You’ve misunderstood," Billy Woodchuck told Grumpy
> Weasel. "This is a different kind of pop.

CROW: Technically it’s a sort of ginger beer.

> It means that when
> you enter a hole you pop into it in a jiffy, without taking
> all day to do it."

JOEL: Oh come on, that … makes … sense?

TOM: [ Muttering, going over the lyrics ] Go around the mulberry bush, monkey chase the weasel, all in good fun …

>
> For a wonder Grumpy Weasel was almost pleased.

CROW: For two wonders Grumpy might almost experience Gemuetlichkeit.

>
> "That’s true!" he cried. "I couldn’t be slow if I
> wanted to be!"

JOEL: [ As Grumpy ] ‘But if I wanted to I could be the fastest to being the slowest thing imaginable! You’d be so slow getting to being slow compared to me you’d never get to me! Nobody could beat my pace to not being fast if I tried at it!’

TOM: [ As Billy ] ‘Are you high?’

> And he actually asked the Woodchuck brothers
> to whistle "Pop! Goes the Weasel" once more.

CROW: Wait, Grumpy’s first moment of happiness was caused by a *fan theory*?

>
> But Grumpy Weasel never thought of thanking them.

JOEL: [ As Billy ] ‘That’s all right, our real thanks is in messing with people’s heads!’

---

[ To continue … ? ]

The 7-chord is what came up when I looked up ‘most dissonant chord’ and this site says C# diminished sounds dissonant at least. The reference to the Bowery wasn’t meant to set up the Bowery Boys riff but it works nicely. There is, of course, no agreement about what the song Pop Goes The Weasel means, but a lot of theories. Considering the lyrics now I’m not sure the Whistling Woodchuck Brothers are wrong in saying it means weasels are fast.

What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Why don’t you make forecasts about where story comics are going? December 2022 – March 2023

I’m posting this a day ‘early’ to prove that I can too sometimes make deadline and even when it isn’t one of the Sunday-only strips that have easier plots to recap.

Yeah so this is what happens when I try to think like a writer. Last story recap came after a couple months of dealing with ‘Mud’ Murphy, ten headaches of a performer stuffed into one gigantic body. I thought there were hints being dropped that Murphy was dealing, badly, with self-destructive issues. Maybe he is, but they went unexamined in the strip. Maybe a future storyline; Terry Beatty does like bringing back characters and Murphy’s bombast does play well.

This recap, meanwhile, should catch you up to early March 2023 in Rex Morgan, M.D.. Any news about the strip I’ll post here. And there should be a more up-to-date plot recap around June 2023, in case you’re in the far future and everything I write is more irrelevant than usual.

Rex Morgan, M.D..

4 December 2022 – 4 March 2023.

After everyone called Mud Murphy a Wilbur Weston for his attention-grabbing stunt he quit Lew’s Nite Spot and the strip, at least for now. ‘Truck’ Tyler apologizes to Wanda Lastname, who turns out to be the owner of Nick’s Diner. (I hadn’t known she was anything besides a server there.) They enjoy a happy after-hours dinner. Watch this space.

---

We transition over to watching Rex Morgan’s family the 13th of December. It’s some hanging around with family, particularly for the holidays. There’s a bunch of that, filling the strip from December through mid-February. The high points there are the kids worrying about getting Christmas right and then Valentine’s Day. Sarah is peeved to learn her little brothers, Michael and Johnny, have girlfriends and a whole life she (and the readers) don’t know about. It’s a deft touch. It might plant story options for the two young boys, although see my preamble for my ability to forecast what’s going on in a comic strip.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 8th of January, 2023. How did Rex, who works at the same clinic June does, get home before her?

But most of what we see is June Morgan having a full day, that gets started with January of the year. She’s trying to go to the supermarket. But a man slips on the ice in front of her and she does your basic first-response work, checking that he’s all right and able to get up and about and all. She recommends they go to the local hospital and that the Morgan Clinic is available for follow-ups.

It doesn’t end there, though. Inside, a man stumbles around asking for help. He’s diabetic and can’t read his blood sugar monitor. He is low; she gets him some orange juice and sits with him until it gets better. She scolds him to be more careful about watching his blood sugar levels and drops another plug for the Morgan Clinic.

And that’s not the end of her emergency medical caring. As she’s driving home she sees a car accident, caused by a teen driver going too fast on icy roads. The kid’s all right apart from how his dad’s going to kill him. The other driver is Melinda Jenkins, someone June knows from the PTA. I don’t know if Melinda Jenkins has been in the strip before worth mentioning. She needs an ambulance, but also calls out asking if Petey in the back seat is okay. Her son is named Tommy. Petey, it turns out, is their dog, who is fine if nervous. Once Jenkins has the ambulance crew watching over her, June’s day turns to delivering Petey to his home. That goes without incident. And it gives her time to authorize Rex to make frozen pizza like the kids have been asking for since the story started.

---

Valentine’s Day is the transition to a new story, based on the multiple sets of older men finding romance with diner owners current in the strip. It starts with Truck Tyler coming back to town and visiting Wanda in her diner. (She’d inherited it from her father.) He’s thinking of settling down, now that he’s doing well enough to not have to live out of his car. And Glenwood seems like a great place what with it being where his life turned around and Wanda being a lovely woman who doesn’t mind him. Wanda confesses to liking him too, and they kiss.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 26th of February, 2023. I like how the relationships this strip get started, by the way. There’s not much drama in them, just the terror of opening up to someone you can’t ever be completely sure is going to be responsive. But it feels true to me. Like, imagine staging this scene; would it be hard to get actors to play this well? Compare even to how you’d need a pretty skilled line read to get June Morgan’s thought balloons in the other strip to not sound weird or smug.

As Tyler leaves for his upcoming gig, in walk Hank Harwood Junior and his new bride, Yvonne Grey, the Route 66 diner dowager. They talk a little about the diner and how nice it is to be retired from running one. And about their upcoming honeymoon, a country music cruise. No, Truck Tyler’s not one of the performers. This suggests where the story might be going in the next few months but, again, see my preamble. I’m not making guesses about anything.

Next Week!

And if it weren’t hard enough to guess where things are going, it’s time for my biggest challenge saying where they’ve been! Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp is the next on my schedule, for next week. I need to start work a couple days ago.

Appetite for Destruction, Satisfied by Spready Swiss-Almond Cheese

New in the neighborhood: the grocery store, the one that’s been around for a hundred-plus years and that’s just where to go when you realized you somehow both ran out of bread crumbs and need bread crumbs? It’s now got a record section. Yes, just like it’s the 70s or something. The records have got a chunk of the aisle next to the Elmer’s glue and the off-brand index cards. Not, like, obscurities, just the stuff you’d expect to get from Record Store Day For Middle-Aged Guys. Metallica’s first album. Thriller. Rush’s Album Where It’s Black and White and the Title Is Really Tiny in Little Script Letters Like It’s an Electrocardiogram or Something. Guns N Roses. I have questions about why the store has put in a record section, but the important thing is we’re all set if we need a can of cream of mushroom soup and Queen’s A Night At The Opera because our casserole is going wrong.

Why is everyone mad at _Funky Winkerbean_ this week? (December 25, 2022)

I’m not sure everyone is mad at Funky Winkerbean in its penultimate week. Annoyed, perhaps. Irritated. But mad takes a special level of broken trust between audience and creator. Annoyance or impatience is more appropriate when we-the-audience see where this is going and the story won’t get there.

Last week everyone was mad because we’d learned a time-travelling janitor manipulated minds for decades so Summer Moore could start to write a world-healing book. But it was all a dream. Then she wandered around an empty town looking at places she didn’t have any emotional connection to. Then, last Sunday, we switched to Harry Dinkle worried that the incoming blizzard might spoil the church choir concert at St Spires, his side gig. They’re doing “Claude Barlow’s Jazz Messiah”.

This week showed, in both Funky Winkerbean and its spinoff strip Crankshaft, all the big characters braving a massive storm to get to the concert. Like, everybody. Summer Moore hitchhikes her way onto the bus from the Bedside Manor Senior Living Home. (The implication is she’s spent the whole day moping and looking at, like, the instant-photo-print-shop her dad’s high school chem lab partner worked at while home from college and thinking how in the end we are all unfocused Polaroids, and now she wants to go see Harry Dinkle’s church choir sing.) The whole staff of Montoni’s. Les Moore and his wife, Not-Lisa, and Not-Lisa’s daughter from her first marriage Not-Summer. Everyone.

Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers’s Funky Winkerbean for the 21st of December, 2022. So, uh, apparently they raised enough cash at Montoni’s going-out-of-business sale to get new snow tires? Or was Montoni’s Closing all part of Summer’s dream? But she thought her “dream” might have been overwork from doing interview for her book, that she only announced she was going to try doing when she heard Montoni’s was closing?

So everyone, I trust, gets the reason Tom Batiuk wants this. He’s getting the whole cast of both his strips together so they can bask in one another’s presence one last time. What has gone unexplained, to everyone’s mild annoyance, is the lack of any idea why it’s so important everyone get there. Especially since the church is set in Centerview, the town Crankshaft takes place in. The Funky Winkerbean folks live in Westview, nearby but still, a bit of a drive.

Especially in the face of a storm that we were told could drop a record amount of snow. It’s the church choir doing a concert that you’d think would have been postponed or cancelled for the weather anyway. It’s not, like, John and George coming back from the dead to play with Paul and Ringo one last time.

It makes sense for Harry Dinkle to carry on despite the weather; that’s almost his defining joke. And to rope his choir into that, yeah, that’s necessary for his joke. Roping the Bedside Manor senior band, that’s his other side gig, in to providing music? Yeah, sure. But once you’re past Sgt Pepper’s Sad and Lonely Hearts Club Band? Nobody else has a reason to be there. The Time Janitor stuff somehow easier to buy, an application of that Father Brown line about Gladstone and the ghost of Parnell. The only person who wants them there is Tom Batiuk, looking to have the whole cast under one roof for the last time, and he gets his way.

Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers’s Funky Winkerbean for the 25th of December, 2022. Once again the Son of Stuck Funky folks do a heroic job: they’ve figured the most likely identities of all 69 characters in this panel. And tagged which ones are Crankshaft characters so it’s okay if you don’t recognize them from hate-reading Funky Winkerbean.

It would be touching if it didn’t look like the populations of two towns decided to get stuck in a single church’s parking lot.

Incidentally on the 24th, Ed Crankshaft saw the Funky cast and said “seems like there’s a lot of new folks here tonight! Hope they’re not all planning to move into the neighborhood!”. It’s a cute way to acknowledge the Funky gang will likely still make appearances in Crankshaft. It would also be a good tip to Funky readers who haven’t heard that they might want to pick up Crankshaft.

It reminds me of when Darrin Bell put the comic strip Rudy Park into reruns. Bell had a natural disaster strike that strip and evacuate all the residents to nearby Candorville, his other — and still going — comic strip. Catch here is I don’t believe Crankshaft’s name has been spoken in Funky for, like, thirty years. It started as a cute and even realistic affectation. Characters remembered there had been a cranky old bus driver who said a bunch of funny malapropisms, but not his name. It’s a bit of a disadvantage trying to point readers to your other project, though. Even Ronald-Ann spent a week shoving the name Outland into Opus’s ears before Bloom County ended the first time. Maybe that’s this coming, final, week in Funky Winkerbean. We’ll see, and we’ll see how mad that gets us all.

The Things You Only Notice in Their Absence

You know, I think this is the farthest I’ve gotten into December without hearing about anybody’s Wham!ageddon results. I hope I didn’t just mess it up for everybody!

What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? What was Mud Murphy sick with? September – December 2022

‘Mud Mountain’ Murphy was a delight to see enter Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.. Most of the characters, as Beatty writes them, are pleasant enough if a bit vague. Not Murphy, who entered as a Brian Blessed-esque force of nature, all bold text and boundless energy. Story strips do great with outsized emotions and Murphy carried himself so even saying hello was outsized.

During the current story he had to run offstage rather than perform. It looked like some digestive issue, since he had just eaten four steaks, three dozen pancakes, thirty eggs (scrambled), eight gallons of mashed potatoes, a quadruple order of bacon-fried hash browns, two bystanders, six quarts of ice cream topped with twelve bananas, a Honda Civic hatchback, and five packzi. He claimed later that it was all a stunt to make himself the headliner rather than the opener. But —

Well, I noticed some points Terry Beatty dropped. We’re told that Murphy hasn’t performed in a decade. A club owner and another musician say it’s because he was unreliable about actually showing up. When Murphy does appear at the venue he talks about not having any merchandise to sell. Murphy tells a fan who mentions having a complete set of his albums that he doesn’t even have a full set of his own albums. I’d call that good crowd work if it weren’t for other mentions suggesting Murphy’s in dire straits.

When Murphy arrives at the venue Truck Tyler mentions how “I don’t think he’s showered in a while”. Murphy’s diner order is enormous like you expect from a bombastic person. But also like you expect from a starving person eating on someone else’s account. I was a grad student, I know this pattern.

Right now we’re at a point where Murphy’s story is at a sensible conclusion. He’s been a manipulative jerk and got called out on it and the regular cast are done with him. But. There is plenty of material in-text to suggest that Murphy’s dealing with some issues, plausibly a social anxiety, that sabotage his career and relationships. I don’t know whether we’re going to see him rehabilitated in the coming weeks. The room is there, is all I want to flag.

If you’re reading this after about March 2023, though, you know whether this story continued. If you don’t know how it’s turned out there’s likely a plot recap at this link which explains it. For now, for the early-December 2022 report? Read on, please, and let’s explore it.

Rex Morgan, M.D.

18 September – 3 December 2022.

We were near enough the beginning of a story last time I visited Rex Morgan, M.D. Hank Harwood Junior paid a visit to Yvonne Grey, daughter of one of his father’s old flames. They met when Hank Senior reconnected with Yvonne’s mother shortly before her death. Well, they’ve been cyber’ing, as the local news wants us to believe people call it, and the relationship got serious enough to be worth an in-person visit.

Through the visit Hank and Yvonne talk about their past relationships, and how much comfort they’ve found in each other. How close Yvonne is to retiring and turning the family diner over to her kids. Hank Junior’s challenges caring for his father. And then they turn up in the strip the next day, married.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 10th of October, 2022. The story carried on a while, mostly Hank and Yvonne figuring out whether they’ll take a honeymoon and that sort of thing. It’s all pleasant enough, getting back to Beatty’s main mission of having pleasant people to whom nothing very bad happens.

I found the development interesting. To us readers it’s entirely a retcon; we never saw a word about their relationship before this story. But it didn’t feel arbitrary. I bought that they had a happy long-distance relationship and that it made sense to them to marry on a day’s notice. It seems fast to me, but not arbitrary or foolish. So here’s hoping that all turns out well. And I note that Rex Morgan is up at least three weddings on Mary Worth in the time I’ve been doing recaps, here.

---

From about the 16th of October the story moved from Hank Jr and Yvonne’s relationship over to roots country singer Truck Tyler, his agent Buck Wise, and returned-from-exile singer ‘Mud Mountain’ Murphy. Murphy’s first gig in a decade is opening for Tyler at Lew’s Nite Spot. Murphy defies his reputation by showing up in enough time that he, Tyler, and Wise can go get a bite to eat. Or, for Murphy, can get all the bites to eat. It’s a pretty fun scene in Nick’s Diner as he charms Wanda, their server, who’s a fan of Murphy. And eats pages three through eight off the menu.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 12th of November, 2022. “I have an honorary degree from Anderson College!” Yes, all the ironic readers were excited to see how Rex Morgan, M.D., would get out of doing doctoring stuff this time. Murphy saved Rex Morgan from having to M.D. anything by locking himself in the bathroom for an hour.

After his Brobdingnagian dinner, though, he gets on stage and looks unsteady. He apologizes and runs off stage, promising to be back in a little bit. Rex Morgan gets ready to do a medicine, but Murphy won’t come out of the bathroom. With the audience growing restless Tyler steps out on stage and reassures everyone that Murphy will be fine once his tummy settles. And he puts on a good show, doing his set list an hour earlier than he figured.

And as Tyler finishes, Murphy emerges, insisting all he needed was a little time for his stomach to settle. He steps out and thanks Tyler for warming up the crowd for him, a joke that Tyler doesn’t laugh at. It gets worse as Murphy repeats the joke. And after the show, talking to Wanda from the diner, he boasts how this was all a fake. He couldn’t face being only an opening act; he had to be the headliner.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 29th of November, 2022. As you maybe gathered, I’m torn whether to take it at face value that Murphy does figure this kind of stunt is how he wants to live or whether it’s the best scheme he has to cope with whatever his real problems are.

Buck Wise is furious, but Murphy says — not wrongly — that it made a good show so what else matters? Well, it’s still jerk behavior. Wise fires Murphy as a client. And Wanda, whose name Murphy insists on pronouncing ‘Rhonda’, says after that stunt she’s not so much a fan. An angry Murphy storms out, even calling an innocent autograph-seeking fan a ‘loser’. This seems like an end to the story, but, who knows? Besides someone reading this like four weeks from now?

Next Week!

Uh-oh.

I’ll have to start writing my recap early, because it’s the manyfold story threads of Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp next week, and I know I don’t have good enough notes about them yet. Stop by next week and see if I’m completely defeated!

In Which I Consider My Music for Once

I have noticed I’m listening more to the Broadway Musicals channel on the satellite radio, and I’m curious why. Is it simply that the audience-tested crowd-pleasing music is catching my ear? Do I have a preference for the more strongly narrative, often sung-dialogue patter of many of these songs? Or is it just that so many of these songs have 16 verses and 22 choruses and, being a nerd, if I like something then I want to have a lot of it? Like, great heaping piles, enough to overflow canyons. Enough to smother giants under an avalanche of “thing”. Possibly as a side note, I also really like prog rock, a genre where a tune that runs on for 38 minutes with seven major and four minor movements in eight different kinds of acoustic character plus three poetry readings is regarded as “a quick little trifle”. There’s no way to say.

“Side note” was not intended as a pun but you’ll notice I’m letting it stand.

What’s Going On In Gasoline Alley? What’s with this Terrence Smiles guy? August – November 2022

A good deal of September and October in Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley starred mall-based piano player Sir Terrence Smiles. He was illustrated with that odd specificity that inspires the question, was this based on some real person? And yes, it was. I admit I know this only because of a comment the 15th of September by charliefarmrhere over at GoComics, but I can pass that on. Sir Terrence Smiles is a riff on Terry Miles, a YouTube guy who plays boogie woogie at shopping malls. Here’s a five-minute video with one example of this. Seems like fun. Miles has a whole YouTube channel of this stuff and that’s all I know about him and his groove. I trust he’s flattered to inspire a comic strip character.

This should catch you up to early November 2022 in Gasoline Alley. If you’re reading this after about — wow — January 2023, or any news about the strip comes out, you might find a more up-to-date recap here.

Gasoline Alley.

22 August – 5 November 2022.

Boog’s fantasy of building a spaceship for Jimmy had faded, last I checked in, replaced with building a model. He impresses his would-be girlfriend Charlotte with the toy, and everyone gets excited to launch it. Polly the parrot even calls Gasoline Alley Television to get some media coverage for the model rocket launch. This doesn’t pan out to anything. They show up after the accidental launch. But it does foreshadow the Gasoline Alley media coming around for the current story.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 27th of August, 2022. To say more direct nice things about Scancarelli’s artwork: Polly being drawn so large in the last panel is a great choice. Polly’s tail sticking over the boundary to the panel before makes for a neat transition between camera angles, and showing the bird so large supports how Polly’s dominating the story beat. It flows great. Also Scancarelli draws a nice parrot.

Polly sits on the remote control by accident, launching the rocket inside the house. It flies around, smashing up everything, just before Jimmy and Charlotte’s parents get home. They’re okay with this. Charlotte’s Mom says they were going to get new lamps and vases anyway, and jabs her husband in the gut until he agrees they totally were. You know how the women-folk be with the shopping.

---

So, the 14th of September, the story transitions from all the model-rocket stuff to the mall. Jimmy discovers Sir Terrence Smiles at the piano, playing boogie-woogie. Smiles is a relentlessly cheerful, enthusiastic person, and he encourages Jimmy to sit up and play with him.

This takes us onto a conflict-free patch of story. It’s all about Smiles and Jimmy playing together. Jimmy’s a novice; Smiles is a most enthusiastic … teacher isn’t the right word. But the person introducing him to piano-playing. This includes some fanciful scenes, the sorts of nonrepresentational mood imagery that Scancarelli does well but not enough. It’s a nice depiction of struggling to learn a little of playing music. And then we get into some silliness, Smiles’s getting his sock stuck in the piano keys somehow and going on from that for a while.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 24th of September, 2022. And again, saying nice things about art: this is a great depiction of having fun while you struggle and learn a skill. Two great body language panels giving way to a non-literal representation. Good going.

Jimmy’s parents come over; he never answered their texts about it being time to go for ice cream. Smiles talks about how Jimmy’s got an impressive ability, and he goes with Jimmy and Charlotte and parents to the ice cream place.

---

And so, with the 10th of October, we start the current story. It’s a Walt Wallet story. He’s working on his bucket list, in the touching belief that he might someday die. He has a couple of the wide-eyed ambitions any of us might, like walking on the moon or skydiving. He’s also got one that seems so mundane it ought to be possible: riding on the back of a garbage truck. It’s one of those fanciful ideas that caught him in childhood, to the disapproval of his teachers. They didn’t like the idea of his being a cowboy, either.

Rufus and Joel, junk dealers, are glad to give Walt a ride on their mule-pulled wagon. But that’s not the fantasy, which is to ride a garbage truck like Denzel Washington rides in the movie Fences, which I never saw. Rufus and Joel ask their friend DC, who’s in the city Refuse Department. DC would be glad to, if that were possible. The city’s garbage trucks don’t have running boards or grab bars anymore. The yard waste trucks do, but they’re not used, and anyone letting someone ride on them would get fired fast. Even if that person weren’t eight years older than the number zero.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 2nd of November, 2022. I did not catch the yard waste guy’s name, although since his friend with the refuse department was DC I’m going to guess this guy is AC? Anyway, the comments in this whole segment of the story have been people discovering their local garbage trucks don’t have running boards anymore. Ours have those robot arms that I’m amazed can grab garbage bins and, even, the paper bags used for bagged leaves. I’ve watched this happen over and over and still can’t believe it works.

All may not be lost, though. Hulla Ballew — failing for once to identify herself as Bob and Ray reporter Wally Ballew’s sister — hears something’s up and wants to know what it is. She also forgets one time that she works for the Gasette, introducing herself as working for the Gazette instead. How will this lead to a happy conclusion? Is there a happy conclusion possible? We’ll see over the next couple months.

Next Week!

Is a shirtless Rex Scorpius going to get himself eaten by a tiger or trampled by a rogue elephant? Lots of endearingly odd developments to recap in Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail, next week, I hope!

Statistics Saturday: 1980s Music Videos

Not listed: whatever the heck is going on in Sparks’s All You Ever Think About Is Sex.

Reference: The Grand Idea: George Washington’s Potomac and the Race to the West, Joel Achenbach.

I’m Not Saying It’s a Bad Mash-Up, Just, It’s a Mash-Up

Woke up this morning with a mash-up of the themes to The Munsters and F-Troop on infinite play in my mind. Here’s hoping you find your heads in a better space.

60s Popeye: Popeye’s Corn-Certo (I wonder if Hungarian Rhapsody #2 gets played)

It does not. Today’s King Features Popeye is another Jack Kinney-produced short. The story’s by Joe Siracusa and Cliff Millsap. Both are new names around here, and the Internet Movie Database lists this as the only writing credit of any kind for both. Cliff Milsap was also editor for about two dozen of these shorts and that’s all IMDB knows about him. Joe Siracusa has more of a filmography, although nearly all of it as editor or composer or music editor, all the way up to the 80s G.I.Joe and Transformers. He was also drummer for Spike Jones from 1946 through 1952. Animation direction is credited to our old friend Eddie Rehberg. From 1960 here’s Popeye’s Corn-Certo.

This short has the feel of one of the theatrical Popeye cartoons. It’s a return to the plot line where Popeye and Brutus compete in showing off their expertise. Eventually Brutus incapacitates Popeye and tries making off with Olive Oyl. Popeye eats his spinach, we get some quick fighting, happy ending. The specific of competing by musical instruments calls to mind 1948’s Symphony in Spinach.

There are some structural differences from a theatrical version of this plot. The major one is Popeye and Brutus don’t take turns showing off. Popeye gets several instruments in a row to play the “3rd movement from the 2nd Pizzicato by Mozarella, the big cheese of the musical world”, which sounds like the Popeye the Sailor Man theme. (I like the choice. I imagine it’s for budget reasons. But it also plays as tweaking the artifice of the premise.) That seems like an improvement. It lets us get a bunch of Brutus-sabotages-an-unaware-Popeye jokes in a row. And it doesn’t require Popeye to sabotage Brutus or to find so many ways Brutus’s playing can go wrong. I’m not sure that would work for every challenge cartoon like this, but it works here.

I couldn’t get a screenshot of this moment that didn’t have a bit of blur in it. They must have decided to animate this moment on the ones, or the YouTube compression worked against it. Anyway you can see how Brutus, even if he did cheat by using a player piano here, is a natural piano player when he has fingers that long.

And the short offers several good little bits. The performing contest being introduced as though it were a boxing match, for example. Or Popeye getting a couple of muttered interjections in, such as saying “Man the lifeboats! I sprung a leak!” or “I should’ve played `Over the Waves`” when his flute produces water. That sort of throwaway joke could have been a muttered 30s gag and fit right in. It’s a good energy to invoke. There’s even a gorgeous throwaway bit. When Popeye says he’s beginning to smell a rat we see a delighted Brutus smiling at the camera and pointing to himself. It’s playful, in a way the best Popeye cartoons are. I got good feelings from watching this.

Given how well this works I don’t know why Siracusa and Millsap didn’t write more shorts. Maybe they didn’t enjoy the writing. Maybe they saw a chance to adapt Symphony in Spinach but didn’t see another theatrical short they were interested in. Too bad. The writing is strong enough to make a good cartoon within the studio’s constraints.

Another Curious Gap That Pop Culture Science Tells Us Should Be Filled

You know this phenomenon about things that have big enough fandoms. There’s some group that champions whatever the least important, least-loved part of it was. They’ll explain why everybody’s assessments are clouded by faulty expectations or big stereotypes or peer pressure. And they’re not being contrary hipsters. They really do think Zager and Evans deserve to be remembered for whatever song they did that wasn’t In The Year 2525.

So here’s what I’m getting at. There must be Beatles fans who figure the best, most purest expression of what was great about The Beatles was in their Saturday morning cartoon. Not the movie Yellow Submarine, understand, but the cartoon churned out in the mid-60s where Paul Frees and that guy who wasn’t Paul Frees did all the voices. The one you can get from the guy selling “totally legal” DVDs with the names written on the case in marker.

And the idiosyncratic fans are not being snarky, is the thing. They see themselves as advocates for an overlooked gem where, like, the Beatles are rehearsing in a haunted house but there’s a vampire and a ghost and a werewolf out to get them. Reason tells us they must exist.

But you don’t see them. They’re not out there raising squabbles and telling us how A Hard Day’s Night is not good, actually. There are very silly flame wars that are missing. So where are they? They must be massing their forces, gathering energy and organizing and getting ready to intrude on the public consciousness at some point. What are they waiting for and when will the invasion start? If you should know please give me a tip so I can avoid the Internet that day. Or make sure I don’t miss it because … like, I haven’t seen the cartoon but I’m guessing there’s probably an episode where, like, the Beatles swap bodies with a set of singing dogs, the Beagles, and I don’t want to miss that.

Statistics Saturday: Some People It Is Incorrect to List as “the Fifth Beatle”

• George R R Martin
• That Guy From Oasis
• Beatles cartoon producer Al Broadax
• Pelé
• St Francis of Assisi
• The Archies
• Erasmus Darwin
• Grover Cleveland
• Tommy Smothers
• 1982 Senior PGA Tour Champion Don January
• Pope Sixtus IV
• Alan Arkin

Reference: Over Here! New York City During World War II, Lorraine B Diehl.

Statistics Saturday: The Alphabet In Order Of Its First Appearance in _We Didn’t Start The Fire_

1. H
2. A
3. R
4. Y
5. T
6. U
7. M
8. N
9. D
10. O
11. I
12. S
13. E
14. C
15. J
16. P
17. F
18. W
19. L
20. G
21. X
22. B
23. K
24. V
25. Q
26. Z

Reference: Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear, Paul Fussell.

March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: The Final Pairing: HTML’s span element vs Pizzicato

HTML’s span element

The Case For: Span, short for ‘spaniel’, lets you add a dog to any web page.

The Case Against: Semantic confusion as this adds any kind of dog, not just spaniels.

Pizzicato

The Case For: Thoroughly fun sound to hear and one of music’s beautiful words to say.

The Case Against: When you’re nine years old and taking violin lessons it hurts your fingers to do.