The Bizarre Subcontext of "Wally's Haircomb"

I'll get right to the main topic: there's a Leave It To Beaver episode where Wally starts combing his hair like his mom.  

 

It's not explicit- in fact, they gloss over the whole thing with the idea that Wally's hair is done up like a dumb teenager, in the "jellyroll" style, swept up on the sides, and piled on top of the head in an inverted "U".

 

Coincidentally, his mom, June, also wears her hair swept up on the sides and kind of piled on top.  

 

Hmm.  Are they trying to make a point, here?  Well, we can certainly try.

The point of the episode (I think) is how embarrassed June and Ward are, for Wally, on his account, as he happily goes through life with hair like his mom a very strange haircut.  (The accompanying juke box jive whenever Wally's hair heaves into sight is a nice touch.  Maybe it's a fragrant pomade.)

 

 

 

It might be that they're concerned about how Wally's doing high-hair like an amateur; the "fallen cake" effect on top looks like June's 'do with clippers run through the middle.  

 

But even if it weren't soaked with 30-weight, the question remains:  why would their eldest son want hair like his mother?  Is it the smell of the pomade?

 

 

Ask Your Doctor

MAD Magazine, and don't you dare forget it!

From the late 90s.  But things haven't changed much.

 

Ask Your Doctor (5:09)

1941 in Review

Josephine Baker

This week's feature appears to be a fragment that fell out of the film can that contained last week's feature.  

 

1941 in Review (1:52) 

 

Not sure what to do about these short old-time-radio cutups.  Maybe I should just dump them on the Internet Archive like my hero, Mr. F. Le Mur. 

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Stupid

 

Wherein Dr Watson quacks like a duck.

 

Play (5:55) 

Ken Nordine

 

I've got this strange idea for a story.

It's about this guy, a regular guy, like everybody else.  Except his words were too big for his head.  And it made him nervous.  (It would make you nervous, wouldn't it?)  And he tried everything to make his words smaller, so they'd fit into his brain.

He tried whistling.  He tried selling picture-window ant colonies, and Bury-It-Yourself time capsules.  He tried writing poetry about jazz.  But nothing worked.

Until one day, when he heard about this strange way of doing radio.   It seems that if you take the heebie-jeebie of Radio and mix it with the fribble-frabble of Jazz, you end up with something that takes on a life of its own.  And words tossed into this mix of dreams and electricity become huge electromagnetic waves rolling across the landscape.  Even the words which, up to that moment, had no other place to go.

So the man tried it- this "special radio".  He took the words out of his head and sent them off on their own.  And they did grow.  They started wearing double-breasted suits, and appearing in small clubs across the country, complete with a 3-piece combo (featuring cello).  There they'd take control of the stage and go on scatting wild ideas into the early dawn, with all the kool Katz and kittens caught up in the eternal now, simply snapping their fingers and saying, "Yes!...Yes!...Yes!"

Ken's birthday is April 13, 1920. And ya know what?  The Internet Archive has him covered!

I'm stunned.  "An Introduction to Stereophonic Sound"?  Thought I'd never see this outside a thrift store.  And here's the "Colors" album.  And, it looks like, all the Word Jazz albums.  More poetry, with Ringo Starr singing?  Wait a minute-

Wow.   I don't even know where some of this stuff comes from!  Here's a Taster's Choice ad...reading "The Conqueror Worm" by Poe (hope I remember to post that, next Halloween)..."Sounds in Space" ...a 1966 ad for "Top Eliminator Dragstrip Set"; I already knew Ken narrated those "ding" filmstrips we saw in grade school.  But ads, too, and for cool toys!  No wonder he sounded so familiar when I first heard Word Jazz in the 70's.  (Ok, they don't have the ads, or the filmstrip soundtrack, which we posted last year.)

This is amazing.  Thank you once again, mighty Internet Archive.  You are the mother of 10,000 things. 

 

Fun with Dental Mannequins

 

The Previous War

Apparently, I never posted these.  Do you think 24 years is long enough to wait?  

 

Iraqitanic (12:15)

 

Bring Em On (4:39)

 

(It seems like I've been on a War Binge recently.  Actually, I'm just cleaning out my archive, until, if and when the new things are done.)