Recent Comments

1. 6 days ago on Peanuts

   One of the sororities at NYU required its pledges to measure the circumference of Washington Square Park, by linking arms at 3 a.m. and doing so in cubits. They would then get “caught” by campus security and the sorority’s Queen Bees, and suitably embarrassed.

   I told one of the pledges to just look up the actual figure in a book in the vast NYU Bobst Library (they had an incredible collection of wonderful stuff for historians like me) and find the exact number.

   She did, which annoyed the Queen Bees. They were even more annoyed when she and her pals walked into the sorority house and flipped the figure onto her desk. I think they let them in, recognizing their cleverness.

2. 6 days ago on Red and Rover

   For me, it was Lt. Uhura’s stateroom…ZING!!!!

3. 7 days ago on Dick Tracy

   Good old Pruneface! He’s a 1940s-era Tracy villain.

   Mad magazine had him caught in the steam room. By then, he was “Prune Tush.”

4. 9 days ago on Red and Rover

   When we lived in New Zealand, around 4 p.m., Emma the Blunder Dog, our RSPCA farm dog rescue, would sit in the living room, staring out the glass door, waiting for me to come home. She was overjoyed when I did.

   Today, our dogs leap up and start barking when I come home, and as soon as they see me, they start trying to jump on me and kiss me. However, I think that’s mostly because they know that when I come home, I’ll give them dinner.

5. 12 days ago on Peanuts

   Those books were first written in the 1930s. By the 1950s, they were changing the text.

   The Hardy Boys books were worse…they had a servile “colored man” running a Civil War museum about a fictional battle. The boys were investigating a treasure buried on the battlefield.

6. 12 days ago on Fred Basset

   Sounds like a great dog.

   Monster never begged for human food, but my wife trained him to beg for treats.

7. 13 days ago on Peanuts

   “Pilgrim’s Progress” is a better choice than “The Mystery of the Old Clock,” the first Nancy Drew mystery.

   The actual author of that series and the Hardy Boys was Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, and she wrote them here in Newark, where the Stratemeyer Publishing Company spewed them out for decades. Grosset & Dunlap prints them now, and has periodically tweaked the series to remove racist dialogue.

8. 13 days ago on Fred Basset

   Monster would jump up, put his front paws on your shoulders, and give kisses. The power of him doing that could knock you back if you weren’t ready.

   Everything about him was loyalty and sweetness. He just HAD to be with us. We would leave a chair with armrest for him at dinners, so he could jump up and sit in it. He would stare at each diner in turn, to make sure we knew he was there, then hop back down. Without eating a bite of food.

   Oscar the Easygoing Blue Dobe was similar…when our daughter and her pals would run around the house, he would solemnly lumber after them, to keep them company.

9. 13 days ago on Fred Basset

   The only problem with Monsty Boy was if he did that in summer…he was heavy and hot.

10. 14 days ago on Fred Basset

    Monster the Mighty Moose (150 lbs.) would make friends with you by walking behind you, through your legs from back to front, raise his head, and you would then chuckle him under his chin.

    Then he was your friend forever.

    After that, he would greet you by leaping up, planting his paws on your shoulders, and kissing you.

    If you sat down on the couch, he would hop up, put his head in your lap, make a few happy growls…and go to sleep.