Author: DOuG pRATt

Welcome 2007!

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HAPPY NEW YEAR! Here’s the countdown, with Dick Clark.

For decades Clark was the butt of jokes about being a perpetual teenager. No longer.

Two years ago Clark had a stroke, and I was one of the many who were surprised to see him make a New Year’s Eve appearance last year. This year his speech is still slurred, and once again he lost track of the countdown.

Clark’s clean-cut image belied the fact that in the late 50’s he was paid to promote records on “American Bandstand.” I assume he survived the payola scandal by having ABC-TV, and not just a local radio station, behind him.

Pratt Attack – 7

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I had mentioned my late mother was a fan of Phyllis Diller. Another comedienne she enjoyed watching was Carol Burnett. Before Burnett’s long-running variety show, she did a series of TV specials with Julie Andrews.

One of shows included a musical sketch with Andrews making fun of her role of Maria in The Sound of Music. The only catch was, the movie wasn’t yet in production and she hadn’t even been cast for the part!

A little wordplay turned the large Trapp family into the Pratt family. We had only six kids in our Pratt family!

The video quality is shaky, but the sound is very good. Burnett looks concerned at the end after hitting Andrews because Julie was pregnant.

Hackers On The Net – 4

One popular new feature on the Net is [the] Associated Press service. From anywhere on the Net you can log in and get the news that’s coming live over the wire or ask for all the items on a particular subject that have come in during the last 24 hours. Plus a fortune cookie. Project that to household terminals, and so much for newspapers (in present form).

Stewart Brand
Rolling Stone
December 7, 1972

In 1972 a truly astounding educational film was made, with the thoroughly boring title, “Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.” It’s a bunch of academics and engineers in Boston explaining how they were changing the world forever.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/DEC06/ComputerNetworks.flv 440 330]If you’re not into technology, probably only the last few minutes of this 25-minute film will be of interest. The original format of this video prevents me from extracting excerpts, but I can offer you a few minutes of audio. Listen to this, and keep in mind that it’s from 1972. The voice at the start and the end is J.C.R. Licklider, who died in 1990.