Freakbook

I started to write a satire about Facebook.  Then it hit me that I could not possibly invent anything funnier,  crazier or scarier than the actual posts that the 750 million FB members put on it for the whole world  to read.

Call Me Paul

My blog name is now Paul Barbour.  It's a tribute to a favorite character on "One Man's Family," a radio drama that was on the air for 27 years.  I  wrote about it back in '08 here.

Winnie the Pooh

What a total delight.  Walt would like it. Being a voice freak, I was concerned that nobody could sound like Sterling Holloway.  But Jim Miller comes pretty close.

Dr. Phil's Looney Bin Again

Dr. Phil to his hopelessly screwed up, nutcase, high drama addicted guest who should be in a rubber room:  "Forget the cameras.  This is not about television."  Does he really believe that???

R. I. P. Norma Zimmer

Norma Zimmer has died at 87.  Known today mostly as Lawrence Welk's Champagne Lady, she was a busy studio singer, working in  background groups for all the famous stars. She is heard on Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," among dozens of other all-time classic recordings.

Oh Frances

I am in love with a younger woman.  Frances Sternhagen is about a week and a half younger.

JANE RUSSELL

We lost Jane Russell on the last day of February, 2011.  Here's my tribute, a post from last March

                                                            Supporting Jane Russell

I didn't see The Outlaw when it titillated audiences and irritated censors back in 1943. Turner Classics recently ran it for us who wonder (as in Wonder Bra) what all the fuss was about. I was mighty impressed with the cantilevered bra that Howard Hughes designed for Jane Russell.

It gets even better when you know what a cantilever is. It's a beam supported on only one end. It carries the load to the support where it is resisted by shear stress. They use them for building bridges and structures that project horizontally into space.

Why do I keep staring at photos of Jane's horizontal structure and the marvelous appliance that  engineer Hughes designed to support it? Why can't I leave 'er?
                                             ----------------------------
Friend Harry Heuser's punny comment is the best part of this one:

Bra-vo! Rarely has the matter in question been captured so well.


There’s a tricky design

of the cantilevered kind

of which canny Mr. Hughes,

made such clever use

that I’ve got “cantaloupes” on my mind.

The Lone Hornet

Three of my otherwise splendid offspring do not read the newspaper.  Only first-born Clifton Jr. and his community activist wife, Ann, keep up with what's up the old fashioned way. For those three and all others of the digital generation, Here's my  letter to the Chronicle about the true origin of the Green Hornet.  Incidentally, I don't hear much good about the film.

A review of "The Green Hornet film in the Jan. 20 Chronicle said  the story began as a movie serial in the 1940s.  Wrong!
Britt Reid, publisher of the Daily Sentinel, first drove the Black Beauty on Detroit's WXYZ Radio in the mid '30s.
The series was created by the people who had come up with "The Lone Ranger" and " Challenge of the Yukon." They thought it was time for a more contemporary, urban crime fighter.
They invented Reid as the great  nephew of the Lone Ranger, Dan Reid.