Thursday, October 29, 2009

A Whitman Sampler


50's Pop Culture Marches On
     Today's post probably won't interest too many people, but it interests me so I thought I'd write a short entry about it.  If you've read along with The Blue Moon Grille, you might remember that, earlier this summer, I started collecting Whitman books from the 1950's.  My collection has grown a bit, and I've expanded into items other than books.  
     A couple of days ago, I received a 78 rpm record from the Mickey Mouse Club serial CORKY AND WHITE SHADOW.  This large plastic record contains a total of 3 songs, "Uncle Dan," "Buckwheat Cakes," and "My Pa."  As I write this, I feel like one of those pitchmen on the tv ads.  "All the hits from CORKY AND THE WHITE SHADOW on one record!!"  The serial starred Darlene Gillespie, who was always the runner-up to Annette Funicello in the Mickey Mouse Club hottest mouseketeer contests.  Buddy Ebsen played her Pa, and the bad guy was the Durango Dude.
Hanging next to the CAWS album on my wall is a 78 rpm single of "The Ballad of Andy Burnett" sung by Mitch Miller and the Gang.  ANDY BURNETT was an obscure but memorable series broadcast on the early Sunday night DISNEYLAND hour long television show.  The original price of the record was 25 cents.  Luckily, Linda gave me one of those little Crosby turntable stereos for Christmas a couple of years ago so I can play not only 33's but 45's and 78's as well.
Above the record albums and tucked behind the Whitman books RIN TIN TIN'S RINTY and LASSIE, FORBIDDEN VALLEY, is a copy of the MICKEY MOUSE CLUB ANNUAL for the year 1956.  It contains the contents of the four MICKEY MOUSE CLUB MAGAZINES for that year.  Although, I could never get the money together to subscribe, I remember the words to the jingle:  "TO GET YOUR MICKEY MOUSE CLUB MAGAZINE/PRINT YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS REAL NEAT AND CLEAN/AND SEND IT ALONG WITH A DOLLAR BILL/FOR FOUR BIG ISSUES AND A GREAT BIG THRILL.  What that thrill was was never explained.  On the cover of the annual is a surprisingly buxom Darlene Gillespie and a boy Mouseketeer name Lonnie.  I always thought there was something a little strange about Lonnie.
My collection also contains Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Cheyenne, and Annette titles from Whitman, and copies of TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB and TOM SWIFT AND HIS ROCKET SHIP.  
Enough said, but before I stop blogging, I must make an announcement.  I am waiting for a copy of Whitman's THE ADVENTURES OF SPIN AND MARTY.  This volume will become the centerpiece of my collection.

Monday, October 26, 2009

A Most Beautiful Burning Bush


Lucy continues to improve.  The prednisone seems to be helping.  Of course, anyone who has every taken that particular steroid knows that it makes you both hungry and thirsty.  For Lucy, who is already ravenous, the addition of a steroid makes her want to eat 24 hours a day. And her thirst insures that no toilet in our house is safe.  With her already chubby frame, the last thing Lucy needs is more of an appetite.  But a blood test she had last week revealed that she has a very low functioning thyroid, ergo, she puts on weight.  She'll have to take thyroid supplements.  We should have guessed something like that when we picked her up at the breeder 5 years back.  She was 7 weeks old and shaped like a Yellow Labrador soccer ball.
In regards to this blog's title, we planted the burning bush in the pic in the summer of 1974, the year we moved into our house.  We weren't up on the usual uses of burning bushes, (besides, of course being the location of the voice of God).  Most people plant them by their houses as foundation hiding shrubbery or create burning bush hedges and prune and shape them annually.  We just stuck ours in the middle of our side yard and let it grow and grow. Using our basketball hoop for judgment purposes, I would say our burning bush now stands 9 feet tall and is at least twice that distance wide.  It's a real Shaquille O'Neal of a shrub.  People comment on its magnificence, having never seen such a monstrous burning bush.  With the attention it receives, I though it worthy of an analogy, sort of like the "Giving Tree" in Shel Silverstein's little classic book.
I think our burning bush could be the symbol of a human spirit both well made and well aged.  It is rooted solidly to the earth and yet wide open to the sky.  Most often it stolidly exists, but on occasion it shows its beauty.  It has been shaped by the warmth of sun, the nurturing of the rain, and the tough love of the snow and wind.  No man forced its shape upon this burning bush.  Only the hand of God showed it how to be.
I kind of like that analogy, but you know, if you look carefully at the picture of our burning bush, you will see that there's a little niche that's formed in its side, just perfect for kids to crawl into.  So if it doesn't make it as analogy, that's fine, but if you know any pre-school kids looking for a fort or a hideout--send them over!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

How Come I Remember This?


Lucy is feeling much better today.  The attached picture shows a much happier countenance than yesterday.  She's not dog-smiling yet, but she's getting closer.
I blogged about salad a couple of posts back, and mentioned that I vividly remember a salad conversation with Heather Ozinsky 15 years ago.  I know nothing else about that day.  Nor, for that matter what year it was.  But I remember that salad remark.  How come our minds work that way, leaving most of our past as a generally remembered sort of fuzzy recollection, while some moments stand out brightly?
One of those amazingly remembered moments occurred in my sophomore year of high school in the fall of 1962.  It was the autumn of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when President Kennedy went nose to nose and eye to eye with the Soviet Premier Kruschev over nuclear warheads in Cuba and Kruschev finally sneezed and blinked.  I'm pretty sure I've mentioned those 13 days at another time in my blogging.  It was a pretty scary stretch in history.  My specific, remembered moment from that time was during my Spanish class.  We were in a brand new high school building, not only worried about our school work but worried about nuclear war as well.  Our Spanish teacher was teaching us something Spanish, when the heating system turned on for the first time ever in our new h.s.  The radiators behind us roared to life.  Everyone in the back row, me included, almost passed out.  The rest of the class jumped, too.  For a split second, we thought they were launching missiles from the courtyard behind us. I don't remember looking at each other and laughing embarrassedly after we jumped, either. It had been too scary.
I suppose there is logic in remembering this traumatic moment from a traumatic time.  But why the salad?

Friday, October 23, 2009

Strange Lyrics, Man!


Before beginning my official topic for today, I have to report that poor Lucy Lima Bean, our sweet Yellow Labrador, is suffering from IVDD.  If one is a dog, this is much worse than H1N1.  IVDD stands for Invertebral Disc Disease, a condition of the upper spine for which Labs have a genetic predisposition.  The poor girl is on prednisone and pain pills, cries when she stands up, and generally breaks our hearts with the sad look on her sweet face.  I swear, sometimes having a dog is like having another kid.
Now to the strange lyrics of the title.  I have Sirius Radio in my car.  It's great, and I particularly love station #6 which is all 60's music with DJ's like Cousin Brucie, who younger people reading this blog probably never heard of.  This morning #6 had a tribute to Soupy Sales, another radio and tv icon of the past, who passed away yesterday.  
Sorry, for sliding away from my point.  Listening to 60's music reminded me of some of my favorite strange lyrics of that time.  My first nomination for weirdness and ineffectiveness in words goes to that 60's masterpiece "Love Potion #9."  Here's the lyric that bothers me:  "I took my troubles down to Madame Rue/You know that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth/ She's got a pad down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine/ Sellin' little bottles of Love Potion Number Nine."  To this point, the words are great.  It's the next line that gets me:  "I told her that I was a flop with chicks/ I've been this way since 1956."  Has a dumber line ever been written than "I've been this way since 
1956?"  Can't you see the lyricist sitting at his piano trying to get a rhyme for "chicks" and having to settle for "1956."  I mean what happened in 1956?  Was he successful with chicks in 1955?  The lyricist needed to be more specific.  Something like, "it's just that chicks and I don't work/perhaps 'cause I am such a jerk." That sets the reason right out there for the listener to understand and maybe identify with?
Even more thought provoking is the repeated chorus in the Lovin' Spoonful song "Darlin' Be Home Soon." The verse goes like this, "But darling be home soon/ I couldn't bear to wait an extra minute if you dawdled/My darling be home soon/It's not just these few hours but I've been waiting since I toddled."  That's some bizarre lines.  How many rock songs feature dawdled and toddled as a rhyme.  But the chorus that follows, "For the great relief of having you to talk to," is the line I have always wondered about it.  This guy adores this girl.  He's adored her since he "toddled."  And he can't wait for her to come home because he wants to talk!?!  Just what does the line "for the great relief of having you to talk to" really mean!?  And for that matter, just what is a "lovin' spoonful?"  

Monday, October 19, 2009

The Quintessence of Salad


I love the word "quintessence."  Meaning the perfect embodiment of something, the word just sounds right to me.  I even remember when I first heard the word.  It was in my senior year of high school, and I was writing a term paper about George Bernard Shaw.  One of the Shavian works I researched was called "The Quintessence of Ibsenism."  I looked up the word then, was taken by it, and have liked it ever since.
I also love salad.  Not all salad, mind you, but many of them.  I am still not overwhelmed by basic garden salads with things like grapes or raisins or mandarin oranges added.  Linda likes adding things like that, and I eat them, although, I believe that when the first salad chefs were thinking about salads, there was a reason that they  came up with separate "garden" and "fruit" varieties.
In this post, I would like to name my choice as the "quintessence of salad" available in the greater Syracuse area.  First, I would like to mention my second favorite local salad.  It is the "House Salad" served at Hullar's in Fayetteville.  Always crisp, fresh, and tasty, the Hullar salad demonstrates excellence in locally produced green cuisine.  But the quintessence of salad, the perfect embodiment, for me, anyway, is created at the Olive Garden on Erie Boulevard.  Now, I know that the Olive Garden is a chain, and therefore suspect to some.  And I don't know if their pastas are terribly lacking when compared to those found in Rome or Tuscany.  But I do know that their salad is a gustatory triumph.
I have one of those crazy memories that stick in your mind for no good reason about salad at the Olive Garden.  Fourteen or fifteen years ago, I was talking, in school, to Heather Ozinsky. Heather mentioned she had been to the Olive Garden the day before, and I said how much we liked the place.  Heather nodded her head and sagely said, "Great salad!"  To this day, I agree.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Swine Flu Confessions


I have tried not to worry about the swine flu.  I mean, worrying is a waste of time, and I don't believe that I'm generally hypochondriacal. . . but the media spends so much time obsessing over this new flu, and, of course have given it the official name, the H1N1 virus.  I pronounce it heinie virus! 
I felt terrible when I heard that Sarah Baidel had gotten whacked by the heinie virus in her first fall as a teacher.  It's unfair, but new teachers often get all the bugs their students have. When you get to be a veteran teacher, you've become immune to most of that stuff.
So now, I'm a veteran retired teacher, so I'm wondering how all my antibodies are doing, and I must make a couple of "swine flu confessions."  Confession #1 comes from church this morning. Instead of thinking holy thoughts, when the plate with the little chunks of communion wafer was passed to me, I wondered if anyone who had been exposed to the heinie virus had mistakenly touched the little chunk I chose.  
Now confession #2 is  a bit more ludicrous.  Yesterday afternoon, I was looking for something to do, so I went to watch Caz play Ilion in football on Chittenango's field.  It was a nice, sunny, really properly autumnal afternoon.  I was sitting in the bleachers, right at the end of the row enjoying the game, when a group of boys and girls from Caz, probably 9th or 10th graders, came swarming up the steps.  There were about 15 of them, and they moved like a fifteen celled creature, sort of happily oozing along in a mass until settling across the aisle from me.  They looked like really nice kids.  Well dressed, clean, happy!  They laughed and talked and pushed each other and told each other to "shut up" and such.  It was the kind of all-American group of teens whose apparent innocence should be a joy to witness.  As I watched the game, I did get a kick out of listening to their happy silliness.  Then one of them sneezed, and the words flashed in my mind.  SWINE FLU!  Was the dread heinie virus right across the aisle.  So, I sort of covertly and slowly slid away from them.  Luckily my row was empty for quite a ways to my left.  I got a nice 10 foot buffer between me and their germs.  Foolish, yes, but hey, a veteran retired teacher has to be careful! And when this whole heinie thing is done, I'll go looking for those kids and. . .share a communion wafer with them.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Listen, Read, and Watch

On Tuesday, we went to the Civic Center to see Khaled Hosseini, the author of THE KITE RUNNER, speak as part of the lecture series sponsored by the friends of the Onondaga County Library.  I have to admit that on my first attempt at reading it, I wasn't taken by his book.  In fact, I stopped reading it at the point where the young wealthy boy fails to protect his servant friend.  His failure to act so angered me that I put the book down.  Only when we saw the film version, did I become a fan of Hosseini's story.  He is a very interesting speaker and person. He's been in America since he was about 12 and is probably in his early 40's now.  A physician who now writes full time, he is a cultural combination.  On one side a modern American who is  a great football fan. Hosseini loves the 49'ers, and parties on game Sundays with pizza and nachos.  And yet he's a traditionalist as well, who after talking with a young Afghani-American woman for only 20 minutes, called her within a day or so, and asked her if he could propose marriage to her through her father. Years later, they are very happy.  Although, he has been in America for many, he has real insight about his homeland.  Recently, he visited Afghanistan incognito for the U.N.  He didn't dare travel openly for many Aghanis believe that THE KITE RUNNER and his other novel A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS reveal too much about their culture. 
That was the listening part. Now to the reading part. A week or so ago, Linda discovered a book on one of our shelves that's been collecting dust since the mid-90's I bet.  It's called MONTANA, 1948 by Larry Watson, and it's one of the best books about which I had heard nothing.  It takes place in the northeastern corner of Montana, almost to the Canadian border.  The novel is the story of a 12 year old boy, who in light of the discovery of horrible events that have been occurring in his town, has to come to grips with his father's ineffectiveness and his uncle's evil nature.  I haven't quite finished it, but I love it and recommend it.  If you see it on the shelf of a library or used bookstore, grab it.
    Finally, last night we saw a really quirky, happy/sad movie called THE 500 DAYS OF SUMMER.  It stars Zooey Deschanel and the guy who used to play the kid in THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN.  It is a love story which is not a love story and which sometimes threatens to become a musical when it isn't transitioning with a cartoon backdrop. Enough said.  

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Snug, the Dog Who Looked Like Eeyore


We were married in July of 1972, and bought our house about a year and a half later in February of '74.  Both Linda and I are animal lovers, and within a couple of months, we decided our new house needed a new dog.  So one Saturday we went to the SPCA in Mattydale to find a puppy.
The puppy presentation method at the SPCA back then was weird.  All the available puppies were in a small, fenced-in area in the middle of the room.  They were bouncing and barking and dying to be played with and hugged, but there was a sign that said, "Don't Touch the Puppies."  Heck, the sign might as well have said, "Stop Breathing While in the Building."  I and a lot of other people were reaching in and touching, unable to help ourselves.
Linda wasn't touching.  Rather she was choosing.  She picked for us a little black and white puppy who was hiding in the corner of the enclosure.  Her reasoning was that this little one was more in need of a home because she was both cute and frightened.  So, we got an attendant, who legally picked the puppy out of the pen, and shortly afterward, we took the sweet little girl home. 
We loved her immediately.  She was happy and affectionate and pretty good at becoming house broken.  What we didn't realize was just how determined this little puppy was.  Linda was also determined that our puppy would sleep in the cellar, because when we were kids, the dogs of both our families had been nighttime basement dwellers.  So on night #1, we put her in the cellar.  She cried and cried.  We went down and got her and let her sleep by our bed. Night #2 progressed the same way.  But on night #3, we were sure we would be strong. The puppy cried and cried, but we fell asleep.  When we woke up in the morning, she was sleeping on the pillow next to me.  Somehow she had made her way up two sets of stairs that towered above her and hopped onto a bad at least 3 times as tall as she was.  From then on she slept at the foot of our bed.  That was the first battle won by Snug.
That was her name--Snug.  We were so literary at the time, both being relatively new English teachers, that we wanted a Shakespearean name for our puppy.  First, we were going to call her "Mab," like Queen Mab in ROMEO AND JULIET, but then we found out that two doors down the street from us lived the Mabe family.  We didn't want them to think we were mispronouncing their name and shouting to them when we called our dog.  So, I thought a bit, and remembered the clowns, in particular Snug the joiner, in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.  So the little black puppy was given the name Snug, which was much better than Mab, because she loved to curl up and get "snug" in a nice warm place, even if she wasn't supposed to be there.
Snuggy was both affectionate and darling.  She was also voracious and suffered severely from separation anxiety.  (Warning:  If you pick the puppy hiding in the corner, you may be adopting both a puppy and its neuroses.)  Not only did Snug like to eat, but she liked to clean up food with her sand paper-rough tongue!  Snug worked a kitchen floor better than any maintenance man with a mop.  Jan's high chair was always spotless because Snuggy cleaned every drop of dropped food off it.  Jan also enjoyed feeding Snug with her spoon, when we were too far away to prevent it.  It was a time in the neighborhood when there were lots of stay-at- home moms and new babies, so not only did Snuggy get to clean our floor and high chair, she visited the neighbors and worked for them as well.  Her cleaning and eating prowess remain legendary in the Ellstrom, Smolnycki, and Gordon houses.  One time, in a fit of voraciousness, she took a frozen pound of hamburger off the Gordon's counter, where it was defrosting, and ate it paper and all.  Another time, when Sam and Jan had frosted little cupcakes while sitting on the porch, Snug snuck in when they went away for a moment, and licked the icing off every single one.
Snug didn't like being left home!  Ever!  But if she was going to be left home, there was no way she was staying in the cellar.  So I figured out a compromise, I thought.  I bought a sheet of plywood, used it to enclose Snug in the back hall, and off we went somewhere.  This was when Snug was about 2 months old.  When we got home, Snug was sitting on the chest that sits under one of our upstairs windows.  Her tiny body had somehow scaled a 4 foot sheet of plywood.
This refusal to be anywhere but with us or in the house continued.  We tried leaving her in the garage.  She began to eat and tear the garage door apart.  Later, I covered the bottom of the garage door with sheet metal.  Surely, I thought, this would stop her.  She tore into the corner of the sheet metal with such determination that we came home to find her bleeding from her paws and her mouth.  It was then we decided that if she didn't come with us, Snug should probably be allowed to stay inside.
I wouldn't want anyone to think that because of her personality glitch that we didn't adore Snug.  She was a wonderful dog as long as you didn't leave her.  She was my first dog traveling companion.  Because she so loved being with me, I took her in the car as many places as I could, be it the mall, Byrne Dairy, or the drugstore.  And because we were young and relatively poor, we didn't like paying kennel fees.  So Snug got to go visit our parents' houses on weekends and holidays.  In fact, when at 11 months old, Jan took her first steps in front of my in-laws' Christmas tree, Snug was there to give her a congratulatory lick.
Even though she was hungry, Snuggy was healthy and sleek.  She could run like a little black and white deer and loved to orbit around me in the front yard.   She was a good leaper, too, and more than once leaped into Jan's crib from a standing position.  In addition, she was a dog that people just liked.  She wasn't an Einstein, but she could do the basic tricks for entertainment purposes, and the staff at the veterinary hospital, where she was occasionally boarded, always got a kick out of her sweetness.
When she was 6 or 7, the health problems began for Snug.  There was a good dose of Black Labrador in the girl, and the bane of labs, dysplasia, struck Snuggy's back legs.  The dog who had been so quick, suddenly couldn't run anymore, and instead, sort of waddled along. Still, she was happy, and the vet said she wasn't in any pain, just no longer a candidate for the track team.  As the years passed, she put on weight because of her lack of activity.  She also got an infection in her tail, which caused all the hair on the top of it to fall off.  Snug was something to behold, a chubby, black and white mutt, with mutated tail between her legs, who slowly ambled along. Soon, we realized, that although she wasn't unhappy, she looked a lot like Eeyore, the perpetually gloomy donkey friend of Winnie the Pooh.
Snug's dysplasia and resulting inability to move quickly turned out to be bad for the rug in my office.   When her legs were strong, she had always waited to go to the bathroom until we came home from school.  But when waiting to go outside became a chore, she began, every so often, to urinate on my office rug.  What to do now?
In good weather, Snug hated to have to be in the house while we were in school.  Every morning, we would put her out the front door to go to the bathroom.  When I would go to get her, she would be hiding.  Always in the same place--behind the bush under the picture window, and always noisily--as soon as she heard me call for her, she'd begin to root deeper into the leaves and things in her hideaway.  Remember, I said she was no Einstein.  Every morning I would fetch her from behind the bushes.  So, finally, we decided to leave her outside in the morning where she would be happy and wouldn't be wetting any rugs.  It worked.  She seldom left our yard.  When she did, it was only to go a house or two away where she was welcome, anyway.  When the weather turned bad during the morning, I would come home and put her in at lunchtime.
For the next few years, she spent fall and spring days outside, winter days in the house, and summer days, happily and constantly with us.  With those years, her joints began to grow stiffer, and she moved more slowly, and we knew that it wouldn't be long before we'd have to consider the quality of Snug's life.
On New Year's Eve day, with a party at our house that night, Snug disappeared for awhile. When she got home, she curled up at the bottom of the stairs.  Linda or I was first to notice a strange smell in the house.  It smelled like some machine oil, kind of like the smell of a train transformer.  We were concerned, and some of the guys from the fire department came up to help us search out the smell.  We searched in the basement, sniffed at the wall plugs and by the furnace, and then, one of the firemen said, "Here's the smell."  It was Snug.  Some work was going on in the neighborhood and either Snug had rolled in some kind of oil or kerosene or someone had tossed some on her.  Up we went to the bathroom, and I gave Snug a good scrubbing.  
I guess that scrubbing on that cold day was about all that Snuggy's old body could take.  A week or so later at breakfast, when I called her to come have a piece of toast, she couldn't get to her feet.  Linda went to school, and I took Snug to Dr. Marshall's.  When he looked at her old body and saw that she was over 13, he said to me, "Most of her contemporaries are gone.  She's very old.  Are you ready to let her go."  I had steeled myself to answer "Yes," so I hugged the old girl and told her what a great dog she was and how much we loved her.  I stayed with her to the end, and the only mistake I made, was not covering her eyes when Dr. Marshall administered the shot.  If you've never stayed with a dog when she was euthanized, remember this admonition.  Don't watch the life disappear from their old eyes.
I left her there, not yet tearful, but I didn't make it across the lobby before I sighed hugely and it turned into a sob.  Then I cried all the way home and cried again when I called Linda at school to let her know, what she had figured was inevitable, that our old girl wasn't coming home.
I remember Snug in two different incarnations.  First, I remember the swift black dog racing in happy circles around me.  Second, I remember her Eeyore version, being brought home in a wheelbarrow by Phil Gordon, because she didn't have it in her to walk back up the hill.  I treasure the memories of both those dogs, both our Snuggies.

Friday, October 9, 2009

When Life and Movies Collide


Today's posting is my 100th blog.  I'm sorry that I don't have anything more insightful to write about than a humorous moment at my fraternity reunion last weekend.  The reunion, by the way, was wonderful.  And sometime, when I have had some time to process the event, I will blog about it at length.
Back in the middle 70's, we had a reunion of a few of my fraternity brothers, and as part of it, we went to see ANIMAL HOUSE, which had just been released.  We loved it, particularly because it celebrated (?) some things about fraternity life that we held dear like beer parties, road trips, and wild homecoming parade floats.  My favorite beer party was a Bonnie and Clyde theme party we had, where everyone dressed like a member of the Barrow gang or a cop in pursuit of that group of outlaws.  I hadn't even thought of it until this moment, but that party demonstrates life and movies coming together.  A great road trip of my recollection was from UAlbany to Boston University, where we visited one of my high school friends at a fraternity house near party central of that era, Marlboro Street.  The two fraternity brothers who came along with me didn't have such a good time, though.  In fact, on the way back, they made me stop the car at the NY state line, so they could urinate back on Massachusetts.   If I told you the positions of importance that those two gentlemen now held, you would be amazed.  
Now to the homecoming floats.   I'm not going to discuss the year that we got in trouble for our float.  That moment is better left in the past.  Rather, I am recalling the year that the brothers of Alpha Lambda Chi decided to be socially conscious.  One of our brothers had an African-America roommate.  We asked them if they would pose, shaking hands, in front of a black and white back drop of the university campus, which also bore some words of civil rights wisdom.  These guys and this backdrop would be mounted on a flat bed truck.  Remember, this was only 3 or 4 years after Lyndon Johnson's groundbreaking civil rights legislation.  Ergo, we felt pretty politically correct, even though that expression didn't exist at the time.  And the parade went off without a hitch.  Those of you who are ANIMAL HOUSE addicts and have seen it several times, (I own the 25th Anniversary DVD), may remember that one of the floats in the Faber College homecoming parade was a giant black hand and a giant white hand on the back of a truck.  I remember how hard we laughed back in the mid-70's when we realized that a float like ours must have appeared in a lot of parades in the late 60's.  So many, in fact, that National Lampoon chose to parody it in the movie.
Flash forward 42 years or so to a banquet room in the Queensbury Hotel. Twenty-seven of the brothers of Alpha Lambda Chi and their wives are having a fantastic evening.  One of the fun events was a trivia contest.  The question, which I asked, went something like, "What did our socially conscious parade float look like?" In the back of the room, one of the guys raised his hand, probably groaned, "Oo oo I know it!" then shouted it, "a big black hand and a big white hand!" "Sorry," I replied, "but that was the float in ANIMAL HOUSE!"  At that point the whole joint cracked up.
Now, this may very well have been a had-to-be-there kind of moment, but I found it really interesting that in one guy's mind, at least for a second, our lives had morphed into the movies.  Also, on the back of our REUNION T-shirts was the statement, "Forty-two years later and still on double secret probation."