I want to let you in on an exciting moment my action-packed, thrill-a-minute life. It begins with my wife getting a tub of chili from Costco. It was good! Beany, zesty, with much beef. Once the seal is sundered it has to be eaten, and since there are but two of us we have to dispatch it with speed. That meant a supper of Chili, with all the trimmings. (Note: no trimmings for her. For me, fresh-chopped jalapeños.) It meant she would have it for lunch the next day, and I would take it to work for lunch as well.

It was a good lunch, but as sometimes happens, a portion fell prey to the grasp of gravity and fell on my pants. This was a khaki day, so I had a substantial stain that needed to be addressed immediately. Not to worry! I have prepared for this. I have always been prepared for this. For years, since I started my great initiative to travel the world and be prepared for everything, I have had small packets of Shout! stain remover, ready for any mishap.

I went into my backpack, to the pouch that contained essentials. Glasses cleaner, laptop screen cleaner, disinfectant, hot sauce packet, Shout.

(Wait a minute, you say. One of these things is not like the other. Okay, you got me. I have the hot sauce and other condiments in a separate plastic sleeve, containing Cholula, Sriracha, black pepper packets, horseradish, mustard, hot mustard, and a new product called “Pepperhouse Gourmaise” by Boar’s Head. This assures maximum condiment satisfaction no matter what emergency arises.)

I got out the “cleaning” plastic bag, and was confused: there wasn’t any Shout.

But I always have Shout. I have bought little Shout packets now and then before every big trip, anticipating just this moment, assuming they dry up after a year. Here I am in need. Here I am in the exact situation for which I have prepared.

Yet there is no Shout.

This was humbling. I realized I’d have to go to the office-drawer supplies, which surely had a Shout packet. Now, you’re probably thinking this is the start of some grand tale where I fail to find the Shout in the office-drawer supplies, which throws the whole preparedness preconceptions into a hat (cocked), and makes me rethink my ability to map out my life and prepare for contingencies. Nope! There it was. Next to the packet of stamps, the small box of matches to be used for the afternoon cigar if the lighter failed, the quarters for the vending machine to get peanuts in case I forgot to bring the post-workout snack, and the backup-backup-backup earbuds I use in case I forget the earbuds or the backup earbuds.

Better plug those earbuds in and charge them up, just in case.

I wiped off the stain with the Shout! Towellete, realizing this was the first time I’d used these things in years. I worked just fine. Not a trace of the chili. I put the chili back in the microwave and finished my lunch. This meant it was time for the Allotment of Licorice, the brief sweet coda to the meaty spicy lunch, and then it was downstairs, outside, for a consultation with a tiny cigarillo, followed by a lozenge of minty zest that signaled the end of the lunch routine.

The lozenge is usually unwrapped during the brief elevator ride to the skyway. I have trained myself not to look at my phone during this period, since it’s just one floor. It is permissible to look at the phone in the other elevator ride from skyway to office, because that is an unendurable 11 floors. Now it is 11:52, on the average, and it is time to write for an hour. Too early to work out. The gym will be too busy - six, maybe eight people there. Forget that!

Everything else unrolls as it should - the gym, the proud walk out across the lobby after I’m done, feeling buff & accomplished, the vague interval of typing and thinking afterwards, the walk to the car, the drive home, the bestowal of the snack to Birch who is happy to see me Because Snack, the nap with its own rituals (turning on the bluetooth speaker, calling up the white-noise app, checking work email, silencing notifications), the post-nap Cuban coffee, the late afternoon website work, the making of the supper. All these gears in their easy and familiar mesh.

But for a moment there I had reached for a Shout packet, and it wasn’t where I thought it would be. Off to Target tomorrow to buy some more, and preposition them at strategic locations.

Addendum: my life, every day, is full of surprises. Despite this. And for that I am so very grateful.

(Today’s surprise: found a Shout! packet in the bottom drawer at the office)

The other day Amazon, or Hulu, or Netflix, or some unnamed service that just exists and whose operators are unknown to mortal man, suggested that I might want to watch The Prisoner. Why? No idea. But of course I would like to revisit it, to see if my memories are correct. It was a great thrill to discover it in college, playing late at night on Public TV, black-and-white, fascinating, odd - and eventually insane, but that's another Bleat.

I have a DVD rip from somewhere, or maybe VHS to DVD. The condition is very bad.

The streaming version, shall we say, is something of an improvement:

Hence it makes the show much more immediate and compelling, as well as more of an artifact of an era.

During the second ep, "The Chimes of Big Ben," I was startled to hear . . . this.

Well well well

		X-Minus 1, 12 years earlier.

The cue also shows up in the first ep of The Singing Detective, nineteen years after The Prisoner. What is an American cue doing in two British shows?

Anyway. I'll probably work my way through The Prisoner again, skipping the weak episodes, and enduring the flamboyant, indulgent, absolute mess of an ending. I have to recommend the show to everyone, and warn them how ludicrous its conclusion will get.

Except for one moment, at the end, that tells you everything. And it's a sound cue.

It’s 1971.

Music ads this year, exploring a time when pop music was alllll over the road.

It’s 81 with a star!

Where was Mancini’s career at this point? Obviously he’s charting, and obviously he’s not hip with the young folk and their with-it, relevant music - why, they sneered at this mood music, this elevator pablum, this easy-listening tripe.

How little we knew.

This album was released in 1970, one of those soundtrack compilations. I’m sure it’s fantastic.

As I mentioned the last time she came up in one of these Billboard ad reviews: this was the artist seriously people were supposed to like.

“Christmas and the Beads of Sweat.” Oh, the singer-songwriter era.

Wikipedia: “Her father gave her the name "Laura", after hearing the title theme of the 1944 film Laura." So she could’ve been named Gilda, in another world.

What?

The hell is this? Someone raised a stink, I guess.

On the other hand, it puts the ball in Mr. Drew’s court. What did he think of Brinkley Schwarz? Which, by the way, contained Nick Lowe and had a part-time roadie named Declan MacManus.

Karl Drew was an influential PD, and died in 2013.

“Of course, kid! We’re going to take out ads in Billboard and everything.”

We have it:

Rare Bird had an eclectic output, shall we say. Compare Mr. Lemongello’s tween-girl twaddle to this:

It’s time for our annual Tiny Tim Appreciation!

Note: no actual appreciation is involved. The kitsch-endurance levels his work requires are too much. I mean, I admire the way the guy got his act over, and lasted as long as he did. But this is just awful, and you can imagine the guy in the sound booth wincing and waiting for it to be over, and feeling bad for this poor girl.

Never heard of it.

But yes, it's that song.

But after the gaseous intro, it does come on hard. That’s Alex Korner.

Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner (19 April 1928 – 1 January 1984), known professionally as Alexis Korner, was a British blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a founding father of British blues". A major influence on the sound of the British music scene in the 1960s, he was instrumental in the formation of several notable British bands including The Rolling Stones and Free.

One of those immensely talented guys who never gets the big fame? Seems so.

In 1970, Korner and Thorup formed a big-band ensemble, CCS – short for "The Collective Consciousness Society" – which had several hit singles produced by Mickie Most, including a version of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love", which was used as the theme for BBC's Top of the Pops between 1970 and 1981.

This was the period of Korner's greatest commercial success in the UK. In 1973, he provided a voice part for the Hot Chocolate single release Brother Louie.

Guys who were into stereo and prog rock and smart things were all about this medieval crap.

Mancini and Anita bracket a Zep cover and some gutbucket blues. See what I mean about allll over the place? AM radio, baby. If you don’t like this song, you’ll probably like the next one.

Or you might not.

That'll do. Now it's time to end the tales of the Sweetheart of the Comics, the Black Cat!