Friday! The long, arduous week is over, and the ten-day feast begins. I know, it’s only one day, but it manages to sprawl out over ten.

Note: the week was not arduous. On the contrary; it was light as a fine soufflé. Today was a perfect example of why I love my job – I read that the Mall of America was accepting cast-off electronics for Recycling Day, and I thought: that’s a quick video. So I drove off to the Mall, improvised a commentary over dead, inert visuals, drove home, and got it up on the web in 97 minutes, total. I know it seems odd to regard speed as a virtue, rather than quality, but I want to be able to do this as often as possible, and that means shoot, snip, crunch and post before the afternoon winds down. 

Anyway, I’m done for a while. Not much to add here. Not in a writing mood at the moment. I do have a Diner at the bottom of the page, if you care; it’s a pre-Thanksgiving special, as well as the following:

I was stunned to find this clip on YouTube. It’s the opening credits for a show I mentioned yesterday, “My World and Welcome To It.” I loved it as a ten-year-old; it seemed so grown-up and wise and funny, and I loved Thurber’s cartoons, even if I had a vague sense I would have to grow into some of them.

Well. It seems rather sour now. He doesn’t want to spend the effort to know his wife and doesn’t get along with his dogs or daughters. One suspects it’s not their fault:

The credits! I remember those. It’s been decades, but I remember those. YouTube also has a lengthy excerpt from one of the shows – unembeddable, alas, but probably just as well, because it’s interminable and preachy and full of what passed for enlightenment in the late 60s: a dialogue between a Caveman and a Dinosaur that proves how the latter was enlightened because he was gentle and simple, and Man was bad because he was boastful and contemptuous of lesser species. It took the late 60s to make self-hatred a form of intellectual preening. What makes the scene more tiresome is the setting: the cartoonist is telling his daughter (Lisa Geretson, upon whom I had a crush of immense proportions when she showed up on the Mary Tyler Moore show) a little fable, and the point of the fable is the pleasures and virtues of accepting extinction. Ugh.

Peacock chaser, as they might say on BoingBoing:

Enjoy the many iterations arrayed for your viewing pleasure.

Oh, okay, one more, since I mentioned the Mary Tyler Moore show. The opening credits:

Not only have I been everywhere in the opening credits - except the newsroom set, although I worked in that building - I washed that car. That exact car. The one you see. Seriously. Maybe I'll prove it next week.

A Gastro-outtake:

Cakes to cheer about - and they're insured! To understand the dread and hesitation that accompanied cake-making in the olden days:

Apparently people believed that cake-making was inherited. On the contrary: the Land of Cakes awaits, and you can sail there, plainly.

Hey, have a Diner! It's the Thanksgiving edition. MP3 is here. Apparently Veoh has changed the rules, and now the embeddable versions are only five minutes; you have download the entire thing. Well, since I still don't have time to add the embedded graphics, you might as well hit the MP3 version or this site, which is here. Goodbye Veoh. I'd say good riddance - the main page has some questionable content - but they have given me bandwidth galore for some time, so: thanks. And goodbye.

Still here? Buy the book! Thank you very much.