Fifty years ago today, I ran the third Falmouth Road Race, along with Denro and Brad. I faded in the heat, as I always do, and they finished ahead of me.
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TikTap
When I was just turning three, I had spinal meningitis. My very first memory is of being restrained and having an extremely painful spinal tap.
My parents were told to prepare for my death, as my condition was hopeless. To the best of my recollection I did not die, but my condition has always remained hopeless.
Spinal Tap II is coming! For me, it’ll be III.
HELP! Pythons!
When starting this bloggy, with its 19th anniversary coming up on 9/5, I added a gallery section that is no longer working. The first thing I put in there were scans of a fumetti (photo comic) from the May, 1965 issue of Harvey Kurtzman’s HELP! magazine.
Not to be confused with the 1965 Beatles movie HELP! that had not yet been named when the January, 1965 issue of HELP! was published.
“Christopher’s Punctured Romance” starred John Cleese as a man with an unhealthy interest in his daughter’s Barbie doll. It starts on page 17.
Terry Gilliam started at HELP! when Gloria Steinem — yes, her — was leaving. Gilliam was the art director at HELP! when he met John Cleese in New York, and “Christopher’s Punctured Romance” was the result.
When Gilliam followed Cleese to England, he recruited Robert Crumb to be his replacement. Crumb arrived just as HELP! publisher James Warren was shutting it down.
I first heard about this amazing sequence of events from Harvey Kurtzman at a Boston NewCon, in 1975 or ’76. Maybe Denro remembers better than I do.
What’s Age Got To Do With It?
The words of an 85-year-old man, as spoken by a 56-year-old actor.
I Beat the Reaper!
A year ago I was in the first week of chemo and radiation treatments. They delayed the ablation for my persistent and asymptomatic, 24/7 AFib, thereby increasing the risk that it would become incurably chronic.
Today, thanks to Boston having the finest medical care in the world, I am greatly relieved to be free of cancer at my first three quarterly check-ups, and to know the AFib is gone.
Ear Ringing No More
It seems every day there’s another music death. Now it’s George Kooymans of Golden Earring.
The picture on Golden Earring’s album Cut was taken by MIT Professor “Doc” Edgerton. He was the “E” in EG&G, the company that provided the startup venture capital for my employer of 36 years.