Yes, it was a cold. It is a cold. Hence yesterday was a day of grot and fatigue. I took some daytime medicine I assumed would diminish the symptoms without sedation, but the idea behind the potion seemed to be “you will sleep for four hours, during which you will not notice your symptoms at all.” Put me right out. One of those days where you get up, feel a bit perkier, lose your momentum an hour later and just huddle in your chair doing rote work and binging TV until you fall asleep again.

In the old days when I worked from home, I listened to Old Time Radio. The problem is that I listened to all of it. I have run out. I can recognize a Dragnet from the way Friday describes the weather. It was Tuesday. It was cool in Los Angeles. Oh, that’s the two-parter where he has to get the confidence of Red, the heroin-pushing guy who’s the middleman for the kindly old man who raises prize-winning flowers but is also an H pusher.

Well surely I don’t know all of them. Ah: it’s a Sam Spade. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few . . . no, it’s the one where the secretary is bullied by her boss, who of course is Joe Kearns, since every show by law had to have Joe Kearns or Conrad or McNear.

Kearns would be known to my generation as Mr. Wilson on Dennis the Menace. I was looking at Hank Ketcham’ bio, and, ah, er -

Ketcham's first wife, Alice Louise Mahar Ketcham, died on June 22, 1959, of a drug overdose. The real-life Dennis was 12 when his mother died. Ketcham and Alice were separated at the time of her death. Ketcham did not inform his son of his mother's death, or visit his son, until she was buried, and Dennis was not present at the funeral. Three weeks later, Ketcham married Jo Anne Stevens, who he met on a blind date.

Then Dennis went to fight in Vietnam.

When looking through the Dennis the Menace wikipedia (his father, Mr. Menace, was an aeronautic engineer) I came across the ill-starred effort to introduce a black friend for Dennis, Jackson. Well, let me back up. Ketchum took heat for Jackson, after he restyled him. This was the first version, using the patented Charles Schultz cross-hatching technique to indicate skin color:

Then he redid him. Reaction was not positive. I found Ketcham’s reply in the letters-to-the-editor section in 1970:

“Surely if I had dreamed it possible that anyone would have been offended, I could have never drawn the cartoon.

"I don't wish to give you the impression that drawing Jackson in this style was a hasty decision. As you know, the success of Dennis has been built on his ability to amuse people, not to hurt feelings.

"On the contrary. Jackson appeared on January 6, 1970, and his introduction brought many favorable comments from across the nation and around the world. So encouraging was this response that 1 decided to work up a new design concept for Jackson, more in keeping with the caricatures of Dennis and offers in the strip.

"Dennis and Jackson are cartoon characters, They are not drawn to look like people, but symbols of people - a convention that goes back to the dawn of history. If I am to draw Dennis and his parents as caricatures, doesn't it make sense that i draw his playmates as caricatures as well?

"Dennis' friend, Jackson, is black. draw him black, feeling confident that in cartooning as in life, black is beautiful. He's a caricature, yet, but so are all my cartoon characters.

"It has not been my intention to offend anyone. Evidently in my effort to improve my design of Jackson l was mistaken in reading the public heart and mind. Now, Il's back to the drawing board to create a new playmate for Dennis who will be as appealing as the first Jackson that everyone loved."

Annnnd here’s the revised version that led directly to the character being dropped entirely forever.

Anyway, I'm better now, go Vikes, back to work tomorrow, etc.

Then again, perhaps I'd best take it easy.

Nothing particularly innovative or surprising today, except to note that my ongoing project of watching every Alfred Hitchcock Presents / Hour pays the oddest dividends. There's an ep called "The Jar," based on a Bradbury story, that might be one of the strangest things ever aired. It's set in the backwoods, with a cast of all the rural guys: Pat Buttram, Goober, Slim Pickens. Oh, and Billy Barty.

Anyway. I watched an ep called "Don't Interrupt," about an annoying kid on a train with his parents, one of whom, Cloris Leachman, hates him. They're trying to pacify him in the dining car with hot milk. A strange old man shows up to tell stories. Also, there's a killer on the loose. Also, the train is stopped. The old man asks one of the waiters what's going on, and I thought: well, it absolutely has to be him.

He's just one of those unmistakable men.

At the end, after which absolutely nothing has been resolved, he steals the dollar coin they gave the kid to shut up. At which point it's affirmed: it absolutely is him.

It is not inconceivable that this character went on to work at a famous old hotel.

So many interesting people popping up in these old anthology shows.

It’s 1968.

We are still in a World of Men, a magazine with the usual smattering of disreputable ads in the back.

A dynamic new product of advanced research! It’s so good and so effective that you shouldn’t ask at all why it’s not available at the TV store, but is sold in the back of magazines about bare chested men fighting Nazi she-wolves. Well, fighting them eventually. First, the luff.

Wonder if it worked.

Warning: bears no resemblance whatsoever to football

“Gale Sayers and Mike Garrett will threaten to run for daylight every time YOU call their number…”

Uh huh. Fran was the man, though.

		Guaranteed to get you shot by someone with a real gun, or your money back

		The . . . Travesty of the Foreign Professional Rural Strippers

The fellow is letting out his collar because he’s gettin’ a little hot, what with all this stripper-travesty talk. No, he's pointing to himself, I guess. Me? You're asking me? Why? Did someone say they saw me leafing through it at the used book store? Did they? Who?

		This guy’s not showing any unease or nervousness. His brains are smoking and blasting out his ears, his hair’s coming off, he’s licking his face, and sweating. REAL stag stories! It’s “an authentic privately printed edition of those rare humorous pass-along favorites you used to enjoy; often type-written, now published with every description vividly retained!”

It says something that “Lady and St. Bernard” is the second story. “Midget and Duchess” must have hit the sweet spot for more guys than you suspect.

A torrid expose of dusky loveliness:

		Sorry, no CODs, because we know you guys will feel a sense of shame eventually and not want to pay up and forget it ever happened

		It’s a “satire,” written by “a master of description.” Don’t think the Master got royalties. One of those guys who just turned this stuff out by the yard. Ed Wood, probably.

		Are you getting the flavor of the back of the book? Right.

They ran these in comic books, too, which tells you something about the guys who read comic books. We all considered this, if only for a moment.

I mean, it might work. That Van Dyke one was always intriguing. You could be Jonny Quest’s dad.

That'll do for today. Thank you for your visit. Now it's time for Quasicomics!