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I’m the odd man out among most of my friends, because I’m not a dyed-in-the-laundry Red Sox fan. I enjoyed playing baseball as a kid, at least until needing glasses but, like Stephen Colbert, professional sports doesn’t interest me. I like to go running, and I used to participate in the Boston Marathon, but that’s it.

I am obviously very much into enjoying and appreciating music, to the extent of being a former radio DJ, and yet I’ve never felt much of a connection to Bruce Springsteen. So it’s perhaps semi-ironic that my favorite song by the Boss is “Glory Days”.

What got me started on this was watching “Fenway Park”, the first episode in the PBS series Iconic America, with rich guy David Rubenstein. Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the Red Sox ending the Curse of the Bambino. The documentary makes the case that the curse was less about superstition and Babe Ruth, and more about management and longtime owner Tom Yawkey.

Now streaming in the backyard.

On the MOVIES! channel, now back on Boston OTA TV, I was intrigued when catching a bit of High Time, from 1960. In this Blake Edwards farce Bing Crosby, showing his age, starts college 30 years too late. Rodney Dangerfield would do the same thing in the 1986 remake.

Just knowing that Tuesday Weld and Yvonne Craig are in High Time was enough to pull me in, but seeing Bing in drag made it a must-see. Thanks to some fan’s hard work, it’s available in HD CinemaScope splendor on YouTube.

I’ve just started watching it, with the opening 20th Century Fox fanfare that will forever be associated with Star Wars. I had to laugh when Bing was assigned to Davis Dorm, because that’s where Denro and I met at Westfield State.

I’m only two degrees of separation away from Blake Edwards. I’ll explain later.

This photo from Christmas, 1939 was taken in the living room of George Burns and Gracie Allen, with their adopted children, Ronnie and Sandra.

That is the second photo of the Burns living room I have seen. The first was the one my mother had. It was taken in late 40’s or early 50’s.

Mom’s dear lifelong friend Ted, who was gay, was George and Gracie’s personal secretary for almost 20 years. After Gracie died in 1964, George financed Ted’s successful interior decorating business.

In 1996, when my parents were preparing to retire in Arizona, Ted, who was retired in Tucson, took my mother house shopping. One of her visits had to be postponed because George Burns had died, and Ted was in charge of the memorial service, as well as some matters of the estate. After my father died, the Sun City West, AZ house I sold in 2018 was the one that Ted helped my mother find.