I do love the view from Fred Base One. Every evening, something new.

Cold worse upon awakening, horrible sore throat, couldn’t speak. It got better. Still zincing.

I have a dim memory from youth of an ad for Contac: a Summer Cold is a Different Animal. The TV ad had an enormous creature - which bore a resemblance to the Nauga, in my recollection - floating over the streets of New York, threatening people with catarrh and aches. You would take tiny time-pills to fight it. Right now I wish I had some tiny time-pills, with the soothing voice of Mason Adams or William Schallert telling me how they worked.

As it turns out, the government was skeptical about this whole “different animal” thing.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 (UPI) —Sixteen makers of popular cough and cold remedies reported under Government order today what is in their products that prompts them to advertise the way they do.

Among other things, the reports filed with the Federal Trade Commission said that the “fever reducer” in Dristan was nothing more than aspirin; that the “children's aspirin” advertised in Congespirin was just a smaller dose of aspirin, and that the summer cold is a “different animal,” as Contac says, only because most people think it is.

The 16 volumes of material, containing medical, reports and research documents, were submitted to the F.T.C. as part of a continuing Government effort to look behind advertisers' assertions.

I’d embed the ad, but as Google AI says: “This particular commercial has become a legendary "Holy Grail" for vintage ad collectors, as the video footage of the balloon monster ad is not currently available online.”

Well, at least I know it existed. Which brings us to something else this new age of AI might be able to unearth.

Question to Gemini: "Was there a Mexican cartoon character in the 40s, 50s, or 60s named El Soretoe, or anything else that suggested a comic character with a large red throbbing toe, and in every episode it would inevitably be struck, causing comic howls of pain."

Answer:

You are on to a very real, incredibly obscure piece of internet and cartoon history!

My pulse quickened. Whoa! Maybe I will figure this out once and for all!

While there was never a syndicated theatrical short or TV series with this character, "El Soretoe" was a specific concept created by writer James Lileks on his popular culture and nostalgia site, Lileks.com.

Lileks used the fictional character "El Soretoe" as a parody to mock the incredibly specific, formulaic, and painful tropes of 1940s and 1950s animation.

Did he now.

Well, it makes me think I should use AI to bring El Soretoe to life, even thought I’m sure it would contain offensive stereotypes. But that would be the point, to satirize and mock the stereotypes. There would be complaints.

Did you not know how offensive this would be?

To whom? It’s clearly a recreation of an old idea, not an endorsement.

But the dress, the speech, the physiognomy - they’re all cultural stereotypes.

So? Are you saying that these stereotypes did not exist in the 40s and 50s and beyond? How can anyone learn about the attitudes of a previous era if they don’t see how they were manifested in the popular culture?

Now I really want to spend all of my credits on an El Soretoe cartoon.

But is he a good guy or a bad guy? If he’s a good guy, we don’t want him to suffer a lot, just enough to keep us amused. If he’s a bad guy, he should avoid having his toe hammered for the entire short, constructing a series of comic devices to prevent the pain, only to have the toe get utterly hammered in the last gag. El Soretoe as a bad guy, however, would require him to be a foil to someone smaller and smarter. So I’m thinking he’s hapless. Loveable but hapless, and he gets hit in the toe about five times per cartoon, then cleverly avoids it in the last set-piece before really getting it.

The question is whether AI would let me make it. It’s possible Gemini Nano Banana won’t.

It am certain Grok would.

Stay tuned.

Turns out I didn't post all the results of the AI end-of-billing-cycle credit use.

I've been upscaling and colorizing old TV, in particular, the ads.

Betty Furness, for Westinghouse!

Let's see what the most basic model can do . . . er, now we have Bobby Furness

The washing machine is alarmed at what it sees, and what it has experienced

Let's see what we can do with this one:

Ah

Now, let's create catastrophe.

The AI can't handle the non-standard door.

Longer, breaking the 4th wall:

Forgive me, but I find this stuff fascinating when it gets things wrong.

"Why don't you run old grainy pictures of the Gobbler through upscale filters and animate those?"

Patience, my friends.