Cadillac

The delightful Liz Clarke on Dale Earnhardt in a piece from the Post (is she the last of their memorable sportswriters?), although I don't know if I would say "nowhere was Earnhardt’s supremacy more evident than at Daytona" given that he only won the 500 one time.  Anyway, the piece reminded me of Springsteen's "Cadillac Ranch" and its line about Junior Johnson runnin' through the woods of Caroline.  I wouldn't have thought that NASCAR was noteworthy enough to merit a line in a song by a Northerner in 1980, but Bruce did like cars.  And the "Born in the USA"-era E Street Band really liked stage choreography as shown in the clip below.  Seeing Nils in that oversized, ten-gallon novelty hat always cracks me up, too.

Sha-La-La-La

Antenna TV has been airing episodes of "Family Ties" (often before Newhart!), which has reminded me of how big (and formulaic) that show was in the mid-80s.  The show clearly went through stages, namely:

1. The early years (1982-1984) - The show was on Wednesday nights and Alex was in high school and Michael J. Fox was somewhat credible as a teenager even though he was probably already about 25.  The show was originally supposed to be about the Baby Boomer parents (original premise:  cool parents, square kids), but the precocious kids, especially Alex, quickly stole the show.  Some of these episodes are actually pretty good, especially the ones with Tom Hanks as Uncle Ned, the stockbroker on the lam and eventually a wino.  I also remember the one with the acerbic teacher Mr. Tedesco.  The show wasn't a huge hit but had to be viewed as a bright spot on an otherwise bleak NBC line-up.


2. The glory years (1984-1987) - The show moved to Thursday nights after a new show that you may have heard of called "The Cosby Show."  The third season was transitional with Meredith Baxter-Birney on maternity leave and the show becoming even more clearly "The Alex P. Keaton Show."  After the huge box office success of "Back to the Future" in the summer of 1985, the transformation was complete.  Perhaps to accommodate Fox, the show, which had always been kind of formulaic, eventually became flat-out lazy.  Characters were added (a girlfriend and then another for Alex, a supposedly cute kid as baby Keaton, Mallory's inexplicably Neanderthal-ish boyfriend Nick), countless long-lost friends and relatives with problems were introduced and assisted in single episodes and never seen or mentioned again, and most of the remaining episodes came to be clearly focused on individual characters ("Mallory is a ditz," "Jennifer is maturing awkwardly," and especially "Alex loves to make money, ha, ha, ha!") instead of being ensemble pieces.  Ratings were through the roof.


3. The later years (1987-1989) - The show was moved to Sunday nights.  I can't say much about these episodes because I and most of America had stopped watching by this point.  My favorite episode from this era in reruns is the one where Skippy of all people joins the army before washing out of boot camp (ultraconservative Alex of course is visibly frightened when the recruiting officer encourages him to enlist).

Anyway, the show was a big hit and then we all forgot about it.  I don't remember "Family Ties" sticking around very long in syndication originally, and I hadn't seen an episode in almost 30 years.  Even so, the show's episode list is a fascinating compendium of many, many clip shows, the aforementioned troubled friends and relatives episodes, and episodes (usually featuring Mallory, Jennifer, or Elise) that were filmed and then inexplicably not aired before being burnt off during the summer several years later.

Y Kant Tori Read

I recently learned that Tori Amos did a commercial for the launch of Just Right cereal -

She claims, however, that the experience did not influence the creation of her song "Cornflake Girl."  That's about female genital mutilation, of course.

The Trans-Atlantic Accent (Or Why People In Old-Timey Movies Talk That Way)

I think that the dominant motivation was a desire to emulate if not ape supposedly more sophisticated British pronunciation. My sense is that it was taught and modeled in Northeastern private and New England boarding schools, which tended to appropriate British elements more generally. The accent fell out of favor after World War II when Britain ceased to be the cultural, and certainly economic and military center, of the English-speaking world and focus shifted to metropoles such as New York and Los Angeles.

East Bay, Baby

ESPN had an oral history of Marshawn Lynch, pride of Oakland Tech and UC Berkeley, and his celebratory ride in a golf cart following a 2006 victory against Washington.  I was at the game.


Technically speaking, Marshawn wasn't really "ghost riding the whip" because he did not exit the vehicle while it was in motion, but close enough.

Also, Ty Willingham was a very bad college football coach.

The Most Amazing Thing that I Have Ever Learned on Wikipedia

Long-time Milwaukee Bucks journeyman role player Junior Bridgeman is supposedly worth $400 million due to shrewd investments in Wendy's franchises.  Well, that and his can-do attitude and attention to customer service.

Anyway, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, for whom Bridgeman along with Brian Winters, David Myers, and Elmore Smith was traded by the Bucks to the Lakers in '75, is supposedly worth $20 million.  Then again, Kareem never seemed much interested in endorsing products, let along running fast food franchises, and seems to prefer writing novels about Sherlock Holmes's brother set in Trinidad.