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Just a quick follow up on Dick and Mary:

Carl Reiner is writing a script for a CBS special that will show what Rob and Laurie Petrie have been doing since THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW went off the air in 1966. Reiner isn’t worried about tampering with a classic, or how viewers will react to seeing Rob and Laura much older. Van Dyke will concede one thing to age, though. Reiner said they won’t make him trip over the ottoman at the beginning of the show, which debuted in 1961. “No, he’s too old. He’d kill himself, if he trips over the ottoman,” Reiner said with a laugh.
Source: Yahoo News

George Wyle, the guy who wrote the theme song for Gilligan’s Island died a few days ago at the ripe old age of 87. He also wrote the Christmas song The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, among other things, and was an Emmy nominated producer for things like the Brady Bunch Special and The Captain and Tenille. Here’s the whole enchilada: ZENtertainment. By the way, we’ve talked quite a bit about personality types like cat and dog people, shower and bath people, etc. Whenever I’m asked the infamous question, “Ginger or Mary Ann?” it’s like, duh… Mary Ann! By the way, if you click her pic, you can go to the official Mary Ann website.

On a sadder note, it’s hard to find George Wyle on Google if you don’t put quotes around it, because it keeps trying to show results for ‘George Clooney’ and ‘Noah Wyle’ – I think I’m ready for Z-Gen.

I had one of those magical moments this morning while I was getting ready for work – I was getting a cup of coffee when I looked out of our kitchen window and saw a Great Blue Heron sitting on top of the privacy screen of our deck. This isn’t him in the picture, but that’s OK, because I looked at a whole bunch of pictures on Google, and you just can’t get the sense that this thing is like 42″ tall. He was bigger than the wild turkeys that have also passed through, and I’m pretty sure that if he’d been inside the kitchen there with me, he could easily have eaten off our counters.

Hey, here’s a neat thing. I’ve discovered that it works great to cook Tater Tots on a piece of aluminum foil on the top rack of my gas grill. I make a little tray and spray it with cooking spray and put the Tots out while the grill is warming up and I’m in making the burgers. They get done just in time to come off with the burgers, you don’t have to heat up the oven or dirty a pan, and I think they come out especially crisp and delicious.

SMUD (Sacramento Metropolitan Utility District) had an offer to trade in your gas powered lawnmower for a rechargeable electric one that they advertised in the paper about a month ago – you bring them your old mower, and they give you a $469 mower for $225.

I clipped this and carried it around for almost a month. Bad news, though. I got fooled by my watch into thinking that yesterday was April 31 (I’m kinda dumb about some [arbitrary] stuff, you see), so I missed the boat, though I did figure out what’s what in time to post the announcement below. Any-who, here’s the scoop on trading up to a clean, quiet mower this year:

Mow Down Pollution 2003: All 600 of the electric mowers we had available for trade were claimed within the first hour on a first-come, first-served basis. No further registrations will be accepted. Thank you for your interest in the Mow Down!

Isn’t that great!? (I’m serious – I love that it only takes an hour for good people in SMUD’s service area to try to do the right thing.)

On the other hand, if they had the option to get more than 600 from Black & Decker, here are some interesting stats:

SMUD services 1.2 Million people in a 900 square mile area, and Auburn isn’t even serviced by SMUD, so why have they made me think and talk about this for the last month?

In 1995, the folks at Good Vibrations in San Francisco declared that henceforth, May is National Masturbation Month, and we here at Asparagus Pee salute them. That’s all I’m going to say, but we’re hoping that each of you will do your part. Click the pic to go to Good Vibrations’ site for more information.

Duh! Matters of Emphasis

Special thanks to my friend Mark for the heads up on this insightful inquiry into the necessity of the Iraq war.

Here’s a good Buffy review – I especially like the stuff about the ‘stick-like object.’ Spoilers if you care and haven’t watched it yet. ZENtertainment

PBS is getting Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore together again in “The Gin Game,” which seems kinda pointless, because Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy certainly nailed it, but…

“It’s like nothing has changed,” said Moore.

“I don’t know where the time went,” echoed Van Dyke.

Then giddiness takes over and he veers into a skillful bit of tap dancing and an impromptu concert watched by an amused Moore.

“Just what makes my little old aunt think she can smoke that cannabis plant. Everyone knows an aunt, can’t, smoke a cannabis plant,” he sings to the tune of “High Hopes.”

So maybe you missed your chance to buy a pet rock, or you slept through the Pokemon craze, or you never quite got around to collecting pogs? Well here’s your chance to own a little piece of history. Support the troops and buy an Iraq’s Most Wanted deck. (Don’t bother clicking the picture, there’s no link – this is supposed to be sarcastic.) I find all of this nonsense patently offensive, and it’s in my face as often as those ubiquitous pop-under ads for the X10 camera. Here’s something that’s not offensive. It’s actor Tim Robbins speaking to the press on behalf of his wife Susan Sarandon and the rest of his family: click to read By the way, I did spend about 6 1/2 continuous hours weeding out in the back yard yesterday, so now I have separated things into a big pile of dirt and a big pile of weeds, but it feels like progress!

Just a quick update. The week without TV lasted until about 10 minutes after I got home from work. Wife says I should have consulted her before putting the caution banner on the TV because daughter was right in the middle of a Bob the Builder tape from the library. Daughter says, “Hey, I was watching something, daddy!” and runs around the house with the banner, so I end up watching an American Idol where there wasn’t even a vote, the premier of Mr. Personality, and a tape of the Survivor rehash from last week, again with no vote. And all of that suits me just peachy.

Here’s a pretty cool idea if you have a diesel engine: Run your Car on Salvaged Vegetable Oil!